kniOledge is power supreme !

Time flies

2011-10-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

Here I am, as the October of 2011 dies, many miles away from the place where it all began, resurrecting my dead blog. I pen my thoughts, with a strange feeling of distant wonder, of the things that were, things that are, and the things that lie ahead.

One of my good friends is tying the knot this week, and it just jolted me into wondering where all these years have gone. It seems just like yesterday that we used to go to learn music together, still young and without a care in the world. It seems scary at times, the way we grow up so fast. Perhaps a little too fast. The last few years have changed me so much, it seems surreal, as if everything is a blur and I'm just hurtling towards an unknown destination, without stopping to enjoy the view.

Finally free of the shackles of studenthood, this side of the world seems to be exciting. I just don't know if I'm using these years to really reach out and do something meaningful. Sure, I'm working and taking on real life responsibility in a different country. But it just feels like .. a bottle waiting to be opened. A cork waiting to be unscrewed. A bubble waiting to burst.

I don't know if I'm making any sense, or whether this is some form of a mid-mid-life (or a quarter life) crisis manifesting itself in the form of an out of the blue post. I just wish time went by slower, so that I could savor the sights along the highway that my life seems to be speeding on.

Organized Chaos #1

2011-06-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

RainShadow, my first attempt at bringing about some order in the musical chaos in my head :)

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_8938371s

Objective Subjectivity

2011-01-15T00:43:00.000-08:00

A lot has been said about IIMA's shortlisting criteria this year, for CAT aspirants and applicants. "This system is absolutely unjust."

"What have engineers done to deserve this?"

"Why don't they tell us before hand that they would be having such a system, I would not have applied at all"

"Bullshit"

You get the drift. There is some merit to these grumblings. In fact, had I given CAT this year as a fresher, and even gone and scored 100 %ile, I would not have made it to the IIM Ahmedabad interview roster.

But then, CAT was never meant as an IIMA-only exam. It opens up a variety of options in the form of admission to so called B-Schools. People crib about the quality of education in India, about the herd mentality, they compare IITs and IIMs to the MITs and Harvards. They complain about the hype surrounding these institutions, the hallowed portals that they have become in the minds of the Indian public without actually deserving it. They complain about the 6 and 7 figure salaries paid out to 'mere engineering graduates'.

And again, a lot of it has merit, and this comes from an insider. But when these questions arise, there also exists a persistent effort from those who care to change, from those who know that these problems will in the end be the cause of our own undoing. And stemming from this, is an outcome that is not aligned with the trend of the past. It is a deviant trajectory, in stern defiance to the well established but often ignored norms of meritocracy.

One such instance is this year's criteria for calling candidates for interviews for admission into IIMA. So you think CAT is a good judgement of one's meritocratic superiority? You say that it is a way to wash away past sins? There is no such thing. For a long time, I have wondered, why do they still have this over dependence on CAT, which is nothing but a mundane and outdated way of knowing the intellectual capability of an individual. By not giving undue weight to CAT alone, but dividing the weights to assess the consistency and persistent motivation of a candidate to excel, IIMA has just gone one step towards testing a candidate on more than just his ability to grind for an exam that tests concepts that should ideally be tested on an above average 10th standard kid.

What do the Ivy League universities across the world have in common with regards to the admission procedure? They choose who they want. They choose their criteria. They choose the overall profile of students they want in their university. Where are all the dissenters? Isn't subjectivity a damnation of meritocracy? Would you not give Gmat, simply because Stanford GSB decides one fine day that they do not want IT Engineers from India this year?

IIM A, by giving differential weightage to the undergraduate disciplines, is merely cognizant of the fact that to scale up to a level where it can be spoken of in the same breadth as the best in the world, there needs to be one extremely important ingredient: Diversity.

So is this at the cost of meritocracy? In India, we have such a mutated version of meritocracy, that any version different from it is deemed to be not worthy of attention. Just ask yourself - If you are an engineer - did you seriously go into engineering because of interest? Rather, ask yourself whether you would have had the sheer guts to even propose to the society to leave engineering for, say, Arts? To those of you who did, how easy was it?

And what is the difference really, between the one who scores 99.01 and the one who scores 99.7 percentile? I have long felt that IIMA would produce much better managers if only they would let loose their extremely strict adherence to CAT percentiles, and give a little weightage to the overall performance of the candidate.

Which is exactly what they have done. The intellectual capacity of the average IIMA call getter would not be substantially different from the previous batches. However, I am pretty confident, it augurs well for the entire post graduate experience, if we are more than just a bunch of engineers following big bucks, much of which, I must add, is overly hyped up.

I had forgotten

2010-03-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

how much I loved music. Yesterday was the first music club performance I was not a part of. Why? I had simply faded out of touch with music over the last couple of months. After the insanely awesome IIMB trip, music somehow just slipped out of my life. And I hadn't realised that till yesterday, when it hit me full on.

Right now, I'm extremely guilt ridden, and the reason i'm posting this, when the final PGP1 exams are just round the corner and there's no dearth of stuff I've to do, is that I just realized this morning how empty, how colourless my life has become without music. Over the past week, in the post-placement season lull period, I've been watching movies, going out with people every other day, playing sports, catching up on some sleep, and doing all the other things that had been unthinkable before. Suffices to say, I've been neglecting music, something that has been a part of my life since before I can remember. I do not want this to happen again.

I needed to get this out somehow, and I saw no better way than to post it on a rusty and forgotten blog which no one will probably read again. Suits me. I'm feeling somewhat better now, and I'm off to break my musical hiatus.

Something

2010-01-04T07:23:00.001-08:00

There's this strange feeling. Something I've not quite felt before. It seems far away, yet near enough to leave a prickling feeling at the back of my mind. Can't quite pinpoint what or where or why.

It feels horribly like fear.

Its that time of the year again ...

2009-12-24T08:16:00.001-08:00

Its christmas time again ! \m/
This has always been my favorite time of the year... everything and everyone around is so ...happy :D
I thought about it today, and discovered that there are many reasons as to why I like christmas time more than any other time of the year:

1.) Its just a purely happy time :D, although other festivals like diwali also are similar in theri happiness quotient
2.) There are festivities all around, everything just becomes so colorful. I like that :D ( again, diwali scores here )
3.) The holidays are neither too short, nor too long. Diwali time, the holiday is generally too short :-/
4.) Even after christmas eve and christmas, the holidays continue for a few more days at least. And theres also the new year which is another happy day. That keeps up my optimism :D
New year is also a happy time, but there's the whole new year ahead, that somehow feels like a monday :| . Diwali, of course, is standalone.
5.) There are no colors or crackers or insanely loud sounds that one usually experiences during Diwali or holi. I like this way better. Of course, the year would be too empty and drab without the diwali and its crackers and colors, but once a year seems to be just perfect.
6.) The whole world celebrates ! I like to imagine people in various countries, celebrating in their own way

there might be some more points, but I'm too happy to think of any more right now :D
There's this carol singing that the institute has organised, and I just came from there... although I'm bang in the middle of term end exams, today's the day when I blissfully enjoy the moment :D

Just felt like posting and spreading some of this happiness that invariably swells up inside me every year during christmas :D
merry christmas and a happy new year to all !

Musical musings

2009-11-30T16:48:00.001-08:00

I always associate a particular song with a particular period in my life. I don't do it consciously, it just sort of associates itself with that time, and whenever I hear that music, I'm flooded with memories of that particular period. Memories that are surprisingly rich in detail.
The problem with this is that I can't really subjectively simply enjoy the song from that point. It has a 'tag' etched in it forever, which I can never really disassociate from the song.
On the plus side, I like it when memories come flooding back. Be it good or bad. Good, because it makes me smile, bad because it makes me smile that I somehow got through those times.
One such song is floyd's 'high hopes' , which is exactly what I was listening to right now. It reminded me of my last 2 weeks at BITS.
Even as i type, a new song is getting associated with this time of chillmax life, when the usual assignments and quizzes etc fail to really burden you anymore and in general that's about all there is to academic life right now.

I'm learning the guitar on my own now, though it sucks that I have to make a tremendous effort to actually put it down after a while and get on with some courses that i'd rather not spend any time on.
Its CAT time again, heres wishing all the candidates the best of luck :)
thats all folks!

Bhook value

2009-09-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

V

2009-09-22T02:01:00.000-07:00

Its that time of the year, when life is the most hectic it will get in my 2 years here. This half-term is punctuated with innumerable presentations by companies pitching for recruiting for summers, each presentation lasting on an average for about two hours. Two hours is precious time (lost), especially in these times, when the sleep receivables are accruing to ominous levels, and even weekends are somewhat dreaded, for the flurry of deadlines we have to meet, either regarding company forms, some mundane assignments no one gives too much of a damn about but have to be completed anyways, and attempting to address the accumulating summer prep backlogs, among other things.
This is also the time when I'm actually quite enjoying things out here. Till now, it was mainly about cribbing about the enormous workload dumped upon us, the apparently useless assignments that invariably form a part of any course anywhere in the world, and all the other things worth complaining about. However, with summers, the actual implementation of what we're supposed to have learnt, how little we know right now, how much one has to cover to even have a faint hope of not appalling the recruiter with our profound ignorance, and most importantly, how practical all this really is, has come to the fore.
This is also the term when our section has got the most wonderful profs, and the subjects seem more relevant than ever. Each prof brings his/her own eccentricities to the class, which makes it all the more interesting. Of course, you can't help but sleep in some of the classes, either because you have been up last night, doing something which you should have done in a fraction of the time you actually took to complete, or simply because you find that particular subject to be not half as interesting as some of the other ones.

I have this exam I have signed up for, to obtain a certification from NSE, called NCFM (NSE certification iin Financial Markets) tomorrow, and theres 150 pages of esoteric stuff that I'v got to study for that, so I'll sign off.
I can almost smell the light at the end of the tunnel. Just about a month and a half now. Then its freedom, at least relatively :D

Fun @ iima

2009-09-08T06:13:00.000-07:00

One of the untold (and probably, only) fun parts of being a PGP1 Student at IIMA:

Zooming about in your room, in these awesome chairs-with-wheels that they provide you with.

Wheeeeee !

I should seriously consider getting a life.

The million dollar question

2009-09-02T07:00:00.001-07:00

8 Days. 8 quizzes. Surprise.

P( 9th quiz | 8 consecutive quiz days ) = .9999999....

So which subject's gonna be next ?

Ladies and Gentlemen, don't go anywhere! We'll find out on the other side of this short break !

The experience

2009-08-27T04:33:00.000-07:00

I'm back to the blogging scene as a temporary moment of insanity consumes me, what with the hellish week we've been having after the blissful no-quiz routine that I had unfortunately gotten quite used to.

Three surprise quizzes in three days, not entirely unexpected. So whats the surprise here ?

Well, owing to the fact that the we were strangely fortunate to have the last week declared as a no-quiz week, which of course resulted in some pretty crude celebrations, the likes of which had hardly been seen during the second week after midterms, the time when the word 'quiz' becomes the most feared thing, and it was pretty much expected that after that piece of good..,no, supremely outstanding piece of good fortune, the third week was pretty much gonna be a killer.

And it has lived upto our expectations. Though the surprise element in there being a quiz has been obliviated, there is still the aspect of which subject.

To make matters even more convenient, all subjects are completely up to date on the 'askable-in-quiz' part of portions, so there's no respite for us poor over exploited souls.

Now that the cribbing part has been dealt with, I must say the last week was quite fabulous. Though the number of assignments was in no measure small, the feeling of impending doom in the quiz that might happen the next day was conspicuously absent :D.

Of course, one gets immune to such tactics by the system to bow you down to submission.

I saw the Arsenal game yesterday although there was the really horrible prospect of there being a quiz in one of particularly disastrous (for me) two courses, and then blissfully slept off.

One of the consequenses of which was that I was totally unprepared for a class (Unprepared here does not mean not read the case or something, that I never do anyways, unprepared means we had a presentation by a random group in class, and our group had not done anything, which, btw, is a cardinal sin at iima).

God helps those who help themselves, and He also helps Oink from time to time. After some nerve wreaking random group number generating moments, I heaved a sigh of relieef.

My phone rang. That itself is quite phenomenal as my phone seldom rings. Putting that aside, my phone rang today in class. It was then that the thought struck me that today might be quite my lucky day. The unbelievable part was that the phone rang 5 minutes after the class was over, in the 15 minute break given between classes. It was not in silent. 5 minutes earlier, or 10 minutes later, and I would have been screwed. Yet another inexpilcable quirk of fate, only this time, and its been some time coming, in my favor.

To top it all, the two subjects I was abso-freaking-lutely dreading, had no quiz today. It was some random globe subject that was to take the honors of having a quiz today. Though I have no idea how I have done, I do know that I shall not flunk.

Well, time seems to not whoosh by you, it seems to actually disapparate and leave you with a 'Smack! you're late!' feeling.

That feeling's just struck me now, and i realize i gotta rush.

Adios

Long un

2009-06-28T11:16:00.001-07:00

its ironic, isin't it , that i never posted when i was at the pinnacle of joblessness, but now that im buried under with never ending assignments deadlines etc, this is my second post in, what, 4 days ?

Well, not quite. There is this thing of having something to post about. Or even if nothing very postable has happened in the recent past, at least something other than nothing that is getting on your nerves. What has happened is that im totaly sick of this fart course that im having to study, this has no credits whatsoever, just random philosophical stuff picked out from heaven knows where, pages and pages of globalization of a few random, repeating, so-called facts, which is then randomly shot down, ending with something of the 'we can't really decide at this point' variety, and all this after about the only 100 odd pages of reading assignment even before the subject has actually begun as part of the classes, and as if this wern't enough, making this a group assignment so you can't even finish this at your own pace, but have to wait and match teh schedules of everyone in the group, wait for everyone to finish their part, which seldom happens synchronously, so that the thing that you could have done, with tremendous application and focus, i have to add, say, in less than an hour and a half, you end up not completing even in a little over 3 hours, the remaining of which you spill over for the next day, when you'd rather be pursuing other things, sleep being one of them.

Now that that not so short a sentence is complete, my mind is fresh again, and i shall resume attacking this mundane 0 credit subject.

adios

iimba

2009-06-25T14:36:00.000-07:00

Its 3 20 am, tomorrow's the, correction, today's the first iim ahmedabad class for us. I just thought i'd post a small post before going off to sleep. Yes, im sleeping at 3 am, its wayy to early by iima standards, seeing as i'v been sleepin not before 5 the last two days, when classes were non existent. Today, after preparation of two cases and an assignment, all this before even a millisecond of class is underway for that mba degree waiting at the end, i feel a sense of deep satisaction. For the past two days iv been more busy than my entire stint at bits put together, minus the waves time.

The thing is, im loving it. This is what college should be like. Bits had its own awesome moments. Its just that i needed a change, and this is just it. I have so much fallen for this place.

I should really not be spending any spare time doing anything other than sleeping, as its a rare commodity here, even before the first bouncer has been bowled by the profs. The seniors are the most amazing people i'v ever met. They not only inspire, not only are they the most helpful, they are almost the managers that one would expect out of this hyped an institute. i am awed by the tremendous change that one year at B-school brings to the personality. The way things are gone about here is just ... inspiring. I never quite believed the hype associated with these so called premier institutes. But i see now that it does change you, and for the better. Management is much more than a load of tosh, as i have come to experience these past few days.

I just hope this love affair lasts a long long time.

ID Mubarak !

2009-05-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, my stint in bits comes to an end, and im back to blogger. Net speed is now back to what i would like it to be.
On my way home from bits, i was thinking about the alarming amount of time i spend in front of my computer, especially if i have nothing to do. well, yours truly decided that once home, the computer will get to see a lot less of me.
It went on well on Day 1. The laptop lay blissfully packed in its cover, and the resolution looked to live the first day.
Only to be spectacularly broken the second day. Not that i became desperate or anything. What just started with a seemingly harmless pestering by my sis to open the laptop and show her all that i'd downloaded from DC in college, snowballed into the breaking of my resolution that i had really wanted to keep.
again, it started because of the fact that my sis, what with her unique name n all, could get, at quite a late stage, an email id hername@gmail.com. Pure. elegant.
Thus began my attempt at obtaining elegant emails.
Obviously, myname@gmail.com was not an option, courtesy my oh-so-not-uncommon name.
Then began the variations, ranging from myname.initial to initialmyname, to all possible variations that i percieved to be an email worthy of posting in my ceve.
I gave up in the end, cursing the day when i chose horcruxer as my email id, when i could very well have gotten any damn ID that i had wanted, seeing as gmail had just been launched then and was through invites only.
Then comes microsoft to the rescue :D . apparently they have launched this live.com, a new thing that combines multiple windows utilities. What the heck, who cares. All i care is that i got my yogeshp@live.com ID :D :D
yoyo. Now i'l re-resolve to not sit in front of the comp for to long. Hopefully, nothing as interesting as this will come up in the next 2-3 weeks. ( ??!!! )
ID mubarak to me :D

Tata, Birla!

2009-05-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

Its the final fortnight of my Bitsian life. Compres are under way, and familiar exam-time scenes are now not too infrequent.

I'd be lying if i said that this sem has not been a bit boring. The fact that half our batch is actually not in campus adds to the 'emptiness' thats largely what this sem felt like. Nevertheless, it has been a wondrous journey, not just this sem, but the entire 4 years at Bits.

Statutory Warning: This is gonna be a long post, so bear with me. You have been warned!

I remember when i first came to the campus, all excited about living a hostel life for the first time, meeting new people, expecting to learn from some really awesome profs in such a renowned institute, that too in goa, the land of beaches. It would be fair to say that the first few weeks were really exciting, to say the least. Those were the days when my attendance per unit time was at never to be seen levels. Well, that was prolly the case with everyone at that time.

My antics in one of the first classes, prob stats, taken by a certain SKG, saw me getting nicknamed with a really hilarious nick, of which i wasnt to learn until much later :P. Well, the attendance curve soon became precipitous, falling to zero within a couple of weeks. I remember the system of surprise quizzes and tests that really screwed me upside down, primarily because i attended almost none. Hostel life changed my sleeping patterns, i became , like most others, a creature of teh night. Well, in November, i got my comp, and there started my gaming addiction. There was no LAN at that time, still i managed to get hooked on to comp gaming. It was perhaps due to the fact that i never had any exposure to any kind of gaming, except perhaps the occasional bouts of mario at home. Anyways, GTA san andreas was the first game to catch my fancy. For the uninitiated, it is a really huge game. It consists of a set of three cities in which you can roam about, almost like in the real world. People moving about, cars, traffic, shops, and all that. Well, the point is that it takes a while to complete it, and take a while it did.

Enter 2nd sem, and my GTA addiction continued, even though my CGPA was screaming for improvement. Well, who cares about marks, right? This is college, for heavens sake!

With that optimistic attitude, i played GTA like there was no tomorrow. I made some good friends, all of whom seemed to find classes a unnecessary pain. The scrapping of the insane surprise quizzes and mini tests did nothing to change that point of view. This was also the sem which i managed to pass without buying a single text book. How i did it, i dunno, but somehow at that time i felt books were unnecessary expenditure. In retrospect, i should have utilized those times better. What else happened in that sem, largely remains a blur, primarily because i dont think i did anything at all except play GTA on my comp. Come sem-end, and partial LAN was up, and all the excitement was about when full lan would come. Needless to say, i performed no better this sem, though it hardly caused a flutter.

2-1, perhaps, gaming wise, the most efficient sem. A large number of people got introduced to that mother of all acad-screwers, Counter Strike. Coupled with the timely arrival of lan, this sem saw me engrossed in the game, so thoroughly that i wondered how i had survived the previous year. Clans were made, forging friendships that would last a lifetime. lan was my life at that time. Sometimes i feel i kind of overdid it, but then, it was an experience. Something that i perhaps will never experience again. acads were as neglected as ever. Many people say 2-1 was the best sem of their bits life. for me, it was a lot of fun, though not the best one. DC was introduced to the campus, and i was one of the early hosts of the Titan hub. It brought with it a plethora of possibilities.

2-2 brought along with it, the shadow of the CDCs. A couple of courses that were sort of alarm bells for the dreaded core subjects on their way to engulf us. They however, did little to drive home any sense into me. This was the sem when i would get sort of tired of CS, and get introduced to what i still feel is the greatest game ever made - World of warcraft.

This was also the sem when i would truly become an integral part of my corridor, which was made up of the strangest specimens that bits could come up with. Im thankful for the wonderful corridor that i had been allotted. Those were some of the most fun days of my bits life. Well, WoW came and stayed, and i gradually got really hooked on to it. Waves 07 was one of the most memorable times of my life. Exam times were most fun, when the entire corridor came out, hurling insults at the mundane subjects, shouting at the top of our voices, discussing absolutely unrelated topics with tremendous enthusiasm, and in the process often disturbing the more serious 9Ps who were at it trying to conquer yet another subject. And so went on another sem.

Then came PS1. My preference of PS station caused large scale laughter mingled with pity. Bitsunami, chennai, one of my top 3 options, i was allotted. Braving widespread ridicule, i went to chennai in not-so-high spirits. PS1 however, turned out to be the best 2 months for me in bits. I might have cribbed and crabbed, but i thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. Trips to remote villages, roaming about chennai with friends, exploring the city like never before, taking random buses to wherever, falling in love with the city in the process, it was a most unique experience. _/\_ bits for including this in the curriculum.

3-1 came, and my WoW playing consumed almost the entire sem. Music club occupied a major part of my non-wow time, and i at last started to look at a life beyond my 17 inch screen. At the end of the sem, the realization dawned upon me that cg does matter, and i forced myself to develop an interest in my core subjects. The CDCs were unrelenting, yet classes largely remained an ignored entity. It was this sem that i decided that i would try my hand at actually doing some justice to the 'engineer' tag. The Pilani trip, my attempt at learning french, the realization that electronics wasnt as bad as it was made out to be, all these made this sem unforgettable.

So began 3-2, a sem that was made up of very less gaming, a non-zero attendance curve, a desperate attempt to change my sleeping patterns (in vain ) , the sudden addiction to trivia on dc mainchat, the desperate attempts at doing something in electronics, and a steep increase in the gpa curve. That sem was largely made up of electronics and music club, and then some more of both. Projects in the core domain, CY and DSP clubs, labs, etc formed a part of my daily routine. Frequent meetings of the music club, Waves committee meetings, and in general, the non-gaming part of college life is what i will remember. Then came the part which i feel is the most stupid thing in bits. Farewell, given a whole year early. It was an emotional time, knowing that half the batch perhaps i might never meet again. The farewell, with all the suits and sarees was, again, one of those unforgettable moments in bits. But i feel, as do most others, that it was a year too soon. In the end, it was goodbye time for the batch.

PS2,well, i got screwed. To keep it simple, it wasn't the most thrilling of experiences. Nevertheless, it was a different one.

With the anticipation of 4-2 being the most fun sem of all, what with the almost nil load and the unlimited free time, people were most looking forward to this sem. For me, it has not lived upto the expectations. To be fair though, expectations were a little too high, and PS changed a lot of people. Those who usually revelled in doing nothing actually wanted to do something useful. Hardcore gamers left gaming, lazy joles started working dilligently, and people were a lot more serious about the future. Its like growing up, this system of PS. suddenly you are catapulted into the big bad world, and you experience first hand how life is gonna be hereafter. For me, this is the sem when i'v spent the least time on campus. More often than not, i was either in Bangalore or Mumbai. Its been fun, to say the least. But the time in campus, it's sort of suffocating. Well, the only thing is that im now savoring the time i have left on campus. Frankly, im not too big a fan of the campus. Neither do i find goa to live up to even a fraction of the hype that it is usually given. I shall, however, miss the people. All the bitsians, who have been part of this wonderful journey, the friends and acquaintances and strangers, the seniors and juniors, my batchmates, profs, the mess guys, monginis, nescafe, the jhopdi that i seldom visited, shop C guy, the miser aunty, and everyone else who made these 4 years, an unforgettable vacation :P

This sem is not over, yet. Who knows, it might yet throw up a few more surprises. This is prolly the last time i'll be posting from college, however. So ends, my time here.

Tata, Birla!

Pro - pose

2009-04-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

I just heard about this TV news reporter who proposed to his anchorwoman girlfriend on live television at the end of a news broadcast.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/805210/journalist-proposes-to-anchor-on-air

The Indian news channels are infatuated with this story. Its understandable, to them, this must be the most romantic thing in the world. On the face of it, it looks to be a perfectly sincere and creative way to propose. But i can't help marveling at the brilliant idea of the reporter guy. Not because of the inherently innovative way he employed, but because of the near fail-proof nature of the plan.

Think of it from the anchorwoman's point of view: This was completely unexpected. True, to some, this might just be the perfect proposal. Provided the guy is the right match.
Now consider the situation where the woman wants to say no. the catch is that she can't say no without coming across as a heartless inhuman non- friend. I mean, who the hell says no to such an innovative and wonderful proposal, right ?
For the guy, its a win-win situation: She says yes, all's well that ends well; she says no, he becomes the martyr to creativity who was shot down by the evil anchorwoman who can't appreciate genuine love.
The thing becomes even more complex for the anchorwoman if she wants to actually consider her answer, like if she wants to think it over. What could she do, with the whole world watching ?
and her boss breathing down her neck ? (Oh cmon, if she says no, think of the boss' reaction: Ratings plummet negative publicity blah blah : in short, both her personal and professional lives are screwed up). The only option for her, say yes.
Moreover, the guy gets all the credit. 'oh, how brilliant that was! ' and 'He's such a romantic'
And the woman ? She's blissfully forgotten. She's the side show.
That's called strategy.

PS: In case you are reading this, Mr reporter, ( oh yeah, now thats a stretch ! ) im sure you meant well.
Thats the second straight post that might get me labelled as crazy :-/

But it (sp)Rained !

2009-04-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

I had wanted to post something a few days ago, but was thwarted by the stubborn refusal of the bits net to get me signed into blogger.
Im just back from yet another trip to Bangalore, although unlike the others, this one was strictly a chumma trip.
Anyways, today i decided to go play tennis for a change. Back home, i play at least 4-5 hours on weekends. In college, due to the laughable courts combined with my racquet being nicely hoarded back home, my playing frequency is zero. However, today it seemed to be a favorable alternative to being bored to death, and so there i went, off to the newly being (re)built tennis court. Someone had mentioned the courts were blue like in US open, though made of tar. Well, that was enough to spark off my curiosity, and i went-a-searching for a tennis racquet. I found one with a friend, and promptly headed off to the courts.
There i found the nets hanging dead barely a feew inches over the ground, as if some hurricane had come there and demolished everything in its path. The courts, lived up (down) to my expectations of resembling more a road than a tennis court.
Anyways, all the effort gone into gearing up and walking right upto the tennis court was not going to go to waste, oh no. A few juniors playing, i joined them. Ah, long time. New court, new racquet, new opponents, and the ever so fickle wind changing direction every other minute, being sometimes a boon blowing cool sea-breeze into the face and sometimes a curse swinging the ball wildly according to its own whims and fancies. Anyways, it was fun simply because it was something other than staring at a 17 inch screen.
During the last rally, i sprained my leg. Perhaps it was due to the lack of tennis in the past 3 months. It should be just another sprain, i know. But i can't help glorifying it, because its been aeons since i had any physical injury. It feels good to be human sometimes. It might be a minor sprain, and then again, it might not. I can't really remember when i last sprained my ankle, or for that matter any part of the body. Its not that i don't play much. At home, tennis forms my major weekend activity. In college, of course, i take recourse to other activities, most of which involve sitting idiotically in front of the machine which im using to post this right now. Its just that I haven't got hurt much. All around me i see people on plasters and temporary crutches and Volinis. I kinda feel this sprain was long time due.

Obviously, i dint visit the doc or anythin, despite the assurance of some basketball n football players that i might regret it later that night. Lets see, if it swells to conspicuous levels, then i might go tomorow. Till then, i will savor this once in a blue moon occurence. Even if it means a painful night. The only downside is that i might not be able to play for a few days. Ah well, one can't have everything in life now, can they?
I aint no masochist, just another crazy human, with just another crazy post.

Soup

2009-04-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

Some mixed feelings here. Spurred by the sudden joblessness that has creeped in lately partly due to the clarity of what im going to do the next two years and my giving up gaming altogether, these thoughts are more prominent now.
Happy i am, for me, and many of my friends, all of whom will start a new journey of their lives.
Sad i am, that i will be leaving this college and all the people i have been associated with in here, in a month, on my own path to wherever.
Hopeful i am, that these friendships will be maintained. That these memories will never be forgotten.

A longer and more detailed post on this will come, when the time is set, for us to set off from here. Till then, i shall relive these memories in the unlimited spare time i seem to be having at the moment.

My latest impractical plan for saving the world

2009-04-04T03:11:00.000-07:00

The world is currently a sad place. There is recession looming everywhere, terrorists are havign the time of their lives blowing up people every other day, and roger federer failed to win yet another tournament.

In these times of grave crisis, i come as a messiah of hope. Here goes my plan for eliminating recession and bringing peace to India. Like most ideas, this one isint original, but has cleverly been tweaked so that any claim on the idea, in case it goes on to win me the nobel peace prize, would be seen as merely yet another zietgiest.

For starters, lets find some country that terrorists ( like al qaeda, US govt, or Investment bankers) would never target. Lets take the swiss, for example. Those neutral bastards found the perfect scam to avoid being attacked by terrorists or dictators. Thats called good defense strategy.

Obviously, it is impossible for India to stage the neutral scam, although not for lack of trying. Take the case of hospitals. Rarely would one hear of a hospital being blown up ( except in case of 'joker' of the Batman: Dark knight fame). Even terrorists try to avoid that sort of target. My plan is to make India the country to look up to when there is an emergency. With the right foriegn policy, India could become the country to fall back upon.

The problem is, India is neither a supremely rich country that can afford to aid monetarily, nor is it a superpower so it can support militarily. The one thing that we do have in excess, however, is population. We could have a national disaster relief consortium, that goes to the various nations and provides the labour to rebuild it. This could be in the form of manual laborers or skilled ones. We could even customize it according to the GDP of the nation concerned and charge for our services. For example, Australia and Canada would be heavily charged, while it would be free for afghanistan. In the times of recession, this could provide the much needed job openings for people, and remove us as the target of radical groups.The lure of foriegn travel is also something that could be used to attract people to the job, not that they need it during these times.

The great thing is, there is no shortage of disasters in the world. Thus, there would never be any actual joblessness. The best part is that we could use the same in case we ever get struck by disaster. We would still need a big-ass military, just in case. But it would be efficient if they would be dual trained, for fighting and for disaster recovery. Foriegn policy is completely over rated :|

As most of my ideas are, this is probably unoriginal and completely impractical. I just think its interesting to think why.

This Cushion

2009-04-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

After quite a long time, actually, for the first time this semester really, i had a good two and a half hour long discussion/debate on politics, policies, world happenings, history etc etc.

Only three of us, but its been some time since i'v had a good long debate about these things in college, so, man, that felt good! Interspersed were facts and quotes that were googled just to make sure none of us was bluffing our way to dominion.

It started with the usual rambling about the job scenario in rDx's room, which, by the way, is way too damn hot , where any air circulation goes to die. The eternal optimist in me still felt that the scenario wasn't as bad as was being portrayed, and that bitsians would still have some advantage, hopefully, to weather the storm, only to be laughed at, and then followed by the regular college,economy, wall street, etc abusing.

A small innocent comment about the inefficacy of the govt proved to be the tipping point for the discussion, further fueled by the arrival of Samya, the walking-talking-world-war-2 dictionary. From whether or not the NDA would be better than the UPA, to their past policies, Samya siding with with the latter while rDx with teh former, n yours truly, in the true spirit of a dilly dallier, with both (:P), it then spiralled into the posible solutions for kashmir, then into the balochistan-kashmir comparison, china, russia, europe, world war 2 ( at which point samya almost jumped with delight ), g20, manmohan vs advani, modi, sonia, PoK, tibet, afghanistan, intelligence, osama, WTC, and the like.

Why im posting this is because it reaffirmed how little we know (or at least i know) about what is happening in the world around us, how we are just another face in the crowd, how there is so much scope for expanding our sphere of information, how my quest for keeping myself abreast of the latest developments has to keep pace with the ever changing world.

Nothing like a good ol' discussion to remind us that we are truly just an insignificant seed in the forest of knowledge, and only by absorbing all that the environment offers can we rise above the weeds and reach out to the sun.

If theres one thing iv learnt in the past few months, its that im pathetically ignorant, and its about time i do something about it :|

Edit: Tan ta daaan !!! My new avatar is here 0.0

Intriguing question of the day

2009-03-31T08:42:00.000-07:00

I walked into a most wonderful bookstore in Brigade Road, bangalore called Blossoms. They have both new and 2nd hand books, and the most important thing, they have almost any book u would want. Just ask the librarian, and they wil take you to the book you had been searching for eons.

I spent like 2 hours there, just browsing books, and trying to reach a decision on which books to select to fit my then limited budget. Im definitely going back there during my next bangalore trip, this time with a considerably fatter wallet.

While i was looking thru the books, i came across this interesting book, the name of which i unfortunately don't remember, but whose summary, like of so many others, i read. It posed an interesting question:

What would be the one piece of wisdom/knowledge/contribution you would give to the world, if you knew these were your last few moments on earth ?

Happenings

2009-03-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

This is gonna be just about anything that comes to my mind as i type at 4 am.

For starters, something that really set me off thinking, almost making a skeptic out of me regarding the apparent forward thinking mindset that's supposed to be a characteristic of the urban Indian. Im assuming of course, that fellow students of our so called well known institute constitute a fair representation of our urban youth. I was having a discussion with a group of friends who i just happened to cross on my way to the mess for snacks. Who they were, i don't really want to go into that, for reasons that will be fairly obvious in a while. The discussion as usual started off with the usual stuff about the college turning more into a prison sort of place and about the need for a student union that actually has the balls to do something, then launched off tangentially in the direction of jobs and salaries and future and all that stuff that we'v been hearing all too frequently lately. Someone then remarked Mr. X's gf would be earning more than him, and got a mortified reply that that wasn't the case and that he would be the one earning more, pointing out some things like cost to company and the like. What i really noticed was the fervor with which he replied, almost with a sign of triumph or relief, cant say which, that he was with the higher paying job. I casually remarked that i wouldn't really mind at all if it were the opposite in my case, only to get a curious, almost pitiful stare from everyone in the group. They were seeing me as if i had uttered something blasphemous, which is what set me off into a debate with the rest of the 5-odd people, all of whom were appalled by my stance. The debate was inconsequential in the end, each side sticking to their guns, although i was heavily outnumbered. I got the cup of tea which is just one of the extremely few things that i like in the mess just in time, and set off thinking about where was all the forward thinking that is so hyped in the papers? I just met a bunch of well read, young and brilliant students at a premier institute, all with good backgrounds and so called forwards thinking youth of the country appalled by the possibility of their better halves earning more than them. I was almost amused by the pettiness of their stand, then later dissapointed and disheartened that such things really matter to the educated youth. I'd like to think that such a stand is fairly uncommon and i just happened to cross a group of people who all thought this way, and that all the recent hubub about gender equality is not just plain empty talk.

In a more lighter vein, iv been playing more WoW than ever before lately, and the guilt of doing nothing better has been eating me from inside, so i thought i'd better post something here to take my mind off the guilt of having wasted the few hours that im awake, and am likely to waste in the future. Coming to this sem, its been awesomely (or awfully ) light, especially because i havnt taken any project. A little boring, compensated by the occasional thought of this being the last of its kind 'vacation', and the frequent 'house' episodes that i still havnt got remotely tired of. The college is at its notorious worst, reprimanding people in its usual manner for things as trivial as not opening the door when warden comes knocking and ur sleeping, dead tired, or playin loud music that no one in the corridor seems to mind. I'll be visiting Bangalore next week, so i guess that would be a break from the monotony. This post is looking more like a letter than a blog post, so i think i'll stop, and go to sleep, got work to do tomorrow, technically, today, that really can't afford to be procrastinated.
gg

House it possible ?

2008-12-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

Time for a post :)

Been watching Gregory House MD, a series about an insanely gifted doctor who wants to be as miserable as life can make him, yet never runs short of a seemingly unending stream of sarcasm bordering on hurling insults at everyone and anyone who gets too close to him, both physically and not (at least till half of the second season, which is where i am right now, after a humungous marathon house-watching session was interrupted rudely by a much needed dose of sleep, followed by a not at all rude session of going and seeing what waves is all about this year, when im not associated with it at all, which makes me miss the running around-tackling unforseen problems which invariably creep up on you from behind whenever ur managing or organising or that sort of thing, while knowing that any screw up would directly affect the event or program or some such thing or person(s) or etc-etc-this-sentence-is-too-long-anyways-n-im-running-short-of-breath-phew! )
Well, the point is, the break from the house marathon got me out of my room, during a time when im not supposed to be in my room because a cultural festival with which i have been directly associated during its formative years is going on in my backyard (so to speak).
Well, i have been thinking for a long time as to what reason i have for completely divorcing my blog for such a long time, that would stand trial in any court (of my mind), and i have arrived at the conclusion after briefly being reminded during the waves-exploring session about the fact that my blog is miserable and lonely and iv got to make it up to her (i like to think its feminine), that i have nothing in my defense that would stand the test of trial, except that the net speed is crappy negated by the incriminating fact that im too damn lazy to go type in my username password in blogspot.com and just type a damn post.
Ok, back to house.
Oh my god its exactly what i needed. It felt like a splash of freshly bred sarcasm. After the months of boring monotonous existence that i lead, in which im including almost all of my bits years, and where i'd almost forgotten to read or write (or type), this was like rediscovering the joy of creative english speaking. The dialogue writers for the series 'house MD' are a bunch of geniuses. I would recommend the series to anyone who is not allergic to anything remotely connected with medicine. Now im transformed into the erupting volcano of sarcasm and anything i touch suddenly sprouts into a sarcasm spitting machine!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, im overplaying it, but you get the point. Watch it if its the last thing you do.

Which brings me to the question, do you talk to yourself? Yes, im asking you , the occasional reader of this divorced blog.

Well, i do. A lot. Infact, more often than not, you can find me talking to myself in an animated manner, provided i think ur not looking. It might seem a bit boring, me talking continuously about myself like a self obsessed narcissist, but hey, if i am that, run away, shoo, before i nauseate you to death with my seemingly unending quips about myself, and if i am not that, you know i cant keep up with this myself for long.

More often than not, this self-talking-whenever-i-get-the-opportunity is mistaken for a classic case of a candidacy for a mental institution. Ok, its not the same positive self-talk crap that they try to teach us at the phonetics and english speaking class,
but it helps me pass the time, pretending im someone else having a conversation with an imaginary someone, who replies just as i want him/her to.

When i talk to myslf, most likely im anybody other than an engineer, talking something abstruse to someone who is just as intrigued in my imaginary ability to vomit out sentences that would make little sense were it made to a real person, as i am in my imaginary friend's reply.

Dont fret, im not schizopreniac or anythin, and i wont eat you. Its just sad that there's nothing half as interesting going on in my life as i would like it to be, and pretending is just a way of pepping it up a little.
Call me crazy. Are you ?

Funny prof quotes

2008-10-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

I found this site that gives some assorted quotes from professors in premier higher degree educational institutes. (read: MIT, Stanford, Berkeley etc) I found some of them absolutely hilarious, and i daresay those who are goin abroad for higher studies can expect some really geeky humor. Here are some of the most hilarious ones:

“The best way to do that is with… reagents that probably don’t
exist, which is why that’s not such a great way to do that.”

(after finishing his presentation) “Why is everyone watching me?”

“He went to Switzerland and took injections of baboon prostates.
Then he wrote these poems.” on Wordsworth

“Titanic is just Romeo and Juliet. And an iceberg.”

“Even if we think ‘that man has a cork up his butt,’ we don’t _say_ it…”

Subject: 8.08 Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics
“There are (N + f - 1)! / [N! (f - 1)!] ways to permute my balls.”

Subject: 8.04 Quantum Mechanics
“By geometry, … [pause] … Well, just by looking at it actually.”

Subject: ASU CSC210 Data Structures
“We want to take these components and see if we can grope them–er,
group them into sets”.

Subject: 8.08 Statistical and Quantum Physics
“The partition function is an animal which was invented in chapter 6.
It is not a fundamental animal, but it is a convenient animal.”

“Tarzan knew E=3NkT even before Einstein. Jane didn’t know; he had to
tell her … that’s what marriage is all about.” (after a long discussion of how even in the jungle you need to know about specific heats so that you can warm up your coconut milk)

“The partition function has to be clear to you. . . like honey has to be
clear. Or maple syrup. It will work much better if you think of it as
maple syrup.”

“When multiple metal atoms get together, their valence electrons run
wild, like kids in a hippie commune.”

I won’t give you a transparent proof. I’ll give you the most obscure proof I can find.

That’s outside the scope of this course. That’s in the next course, which you won’t take.

This is a true fact, like all facts.

How many people don’t know omega is the cube-root of unity?
That’s a lie; I just told you.

When something is beautiful and elegant, it is of no help in actual computation.

“F” isn’t a function anymore. It’s just the letter that comes after “e”.

"A finite plane is a very good approximation to an infinite plane."

"My efforts to simplify it have led to complexifying it."

"OK. I'll work on it, and you'll work on it, and we'll discuss it when it's too late.''

"It looks like the hypothesis has nothing to do with the solution. That makes a good theorem."

"Where the pressure is a maximum, the displacement is zero. On the other hand, where the displacement is zero, the pressure is a maximum."

Set theory is ... the kind of muddy water where logicians like to swim.

However, it's a very infinite set.

Well, let’s just defer that. Maybe we’ll defer that off to infinity.

But of course that takes some thinking. So let’s omit proving that.

“At certain critical values of b, something terrible is going to happen.”

“These are Maxwell’s equations, and you can find them on any MIT t-shirt.”

“We do what mathematicians always do: we assume all physical constants are equal to 1. Well, except maybe the square root of 2 pi, but I usually assume the square root of 2 pi is equal to 1, too.”

“Let’s take a tube of toilet paper without the ends — often called a cylinder.”

(Trying to derive as much as he could without any actual calculation:) “Of course, at some point we have to know SOMETHING.”

“There is no motivation for doing what we’re going to do.” -before giving some twisted derivation

“Riemann wrote this in an eight-page paper around 100 years ago, and mathematicians have been trying to understand it ever since. Of course, it _was_ written in German…”

"Notice the nonobvious insensitivity of the rhs to reciprocating Y.” - Referring to the method of computing the average value of a function over a closed interval by integration…

“This is one of those things which you probably already understand but won’t after I’m finished explaining it.”

“We’ll call this one mu. Do you all know what mu is? If nothing, higher education gives you a deeper understanding of greek”

“The sum of the heights of eight Canadians is close enough to infinity…”

While discussing multivariable max/min problems: “It’s obvious that there’s a maximum…it’s obvious to me, anyway, and I’m giving the lecture.”

“Oh my god, it’s working!”

“All I’ve done is shrink it from its former greatness.”

“This is the only time during a lecture that I am going to show off.”

“I would like to summarize a hundred years of statistics in the next ten minutes. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

“You can address each point separately byte by byte, er, bit by bit, by bytes…”

“logic programming: reducing programming to a previously unsolved problem.”

“I misunderstood your question, but it was a good one.”

“If not a biggest element, then certainly an element than which no other element is bigger.”

(clearly spoken by a computer science professor…) “In digital systems you have to take into account things that _almost_ work. And when I say `almost work’ I mean it doesn’t really work.”

This would be visible if it were visible, but it’s not.

“So a girl is like a system failure.” (while calculating the number of expected childern a couple would have before they had a girl)

Too much pipelineing is bad for the soul.

“There is a point I want to make.” *pause* “That was my point.”

“A linear cat is a cat that when you tug on this ear it says “meow,” and when you tug on the other ear it says “meow,” and when you tug on both ears it says it twice as loud. [...] There are no linear cats.”

“You may have noticed that I ran out of letters a while ago.”

“No hardcore math people here…?” “then I can get away with this.”

All of your hard work sometimes gets reduced to a good figure.

“Don’t worry, I can’t pass the exams either.”

“I’m not trying to say anything interesting.”

“Look - a review session is just like sex. You can tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you, or you can not tell me what you want, and you’ll just get screwed.”

Yea, long post, but i loved it!

Changing demographies

2008-10-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

A serious post, to show im not always clowning and bufooning around.
Someone asked me the other day, 'Which party do you support?'
On the surface, i might have replied with nonchalance 'i support no political party, they're all just the same - corrupt, selfish and without vision.' Later, on a closer inspection, however, i found that i do have a soft spot for the right wing parties like the BJP. This self realization somewhat disconcerted me for a moment, left me wondering whether there was inadvertently a touch of communalism in me. Almost immediately, i dismiss this notion. The reason why i support the right wing parties is because they are much more likely to follow an agenda of reforms and development than others. It is by this yardstick that governments are supposed to be measured, not according to the degree of appeasement of one community or section of people. Why should such a simple yardstick be colored with the muck of regional and communal politics ? Why do the governments that are supposed to be the torch wielders and initiators of progress need to be bogged down with the completely counterproductive acts of appeasing this section and that group ?
Coming to the recent developments, which started out as local, but unsurprisingly assumed national proportions, the arrest of Mr. Raj Thackeray of the MNS (in)fame.
Early next year, in all probability, i shall be exercising my right to vote. The trouble, however, is choosing whom to vote for. I have never been a supporter of strong-arm tactics of some political parties like the Shiv Sena. However, the current Maharashtra government is just a synonym for corruption and stagnancy. The way i see it, i have to choose the lesser of the two evils. Just about a few days ago, i thought i had almost decided that progress and development take precedence, even if marred by regional tirades. I still feel that the Shiv Sena and its allies in the state would be much better for overall development than the Democratic front govt. (whose dismal performance we have been seeing for the past 10 years).
However, the brazen sedition by Raj Thackeray and the unflinching claim of the Shiv Sena that it is actually responsible for the dastardly acts of urban terrorism, forces me to rethink my stand. Mr Raj Thackeray was born with a silver spoon, in the powerful house of the Thackerays. Not given the prominence that perhaps he desired, he left his uncle's party and formed his own. Hardly having known any privation, he perhaps does not realize the value of things he takes for granted. Sitting in his mansion, he dictates his minions to decimate the poor man's attempt at a decent living. His fanatical followers go on a rampage destroying taxis and busses and shops without realizing that entire lives have been spent in acquiring them. And what about all those who have sustained bodily harm? Will Mr. Raj Thackeray step forward and donate his eyes, arms and legs to those who have suffered at the hands of his minions for a crime that is no more than appearing for an exam ? What will he do if his son is beaten up in the US for snatching jobs of the locals ? Agreed, local youth are unemployed. Agreed, they are going through difficult times. But it is not that there is no level playing field. There is no reservation for north indians. Everyone can write the exam. And they get selected on their own merit. Moreover, this is Mumbai, Mr. Thackeray . Where else would people turn up for jobs, if not the commercial capital of India?
I regard Raj Thackeray as no more than a stray diseased dog whose brain is addled, and which goes about biting every other person it sets its eyes upon. Even now i have no doubt that the Democratic fron govt is still the worst bet for Maharashtra as far as development and progress are concerened. My frustration, however, is not that the 'dog catcher' Government is as indolent and stagnant as ever about this arrogant defiance of civil decorum, but the fact that once again, in the name of divisive politics, progress and development have been forced to take a backseat.
PS: I found there to be glaring similarities between Raj Thackeray and Hitler.
Just as Western powers during the 1930s let Hitler flourish hoping that he would destroy the soviet union and with it, the danger of communism, so too is this government giving MNS a free rein hoping it would divide the Shiv Sena's vote bank. Like Hitler at his time, Raj has a fanatical following in people blinded by mindless aggression . Violence, for both, has been the primary tool of expression. Both are characterized by inflammatory speeches demonizing other cultures. Things look really ominous from this perspective. Going by the current govt. response, however, one's best bet would be to hope the dog succumbs to its disease.

The (sc)roll out of the next big thing

2008-09-18T11:28:00.001-07:00

When one is in college, especially one where attendance, classes etc are not mandatory, and where students spend their lives getting wasted away without gaining an ounce of knowledge, and where the internet speed is so brilliant that people eventually manage to live by without it, it is not surprising to find them completely weaning away from regular thinking. It is only when we step into the outside world, that we miss the comforts we so much took for granted.

To those of you who are currently in an office space of roughly 1000 sq feet, with people moving all around you whilst you pretend to be working on something in front of the computer that is so important that you can’t notice anything, while all you actually do is try and squeeze in a small period of time, say, at least a few seconds when there’s no one behind your back so you can sneak peek into sites as simple as Dilbert’s blog, which obviously won’t be taken in good humor by the office people if they catch you reading it, this will be a familiar feeling. However, since I know that I am not a world famous blogger, and that the handful of people who actually put up with all this nonsense are not likely to have experienced such situations, either because they are still in that abode of joblessness, college, or because their stations do not qualify within miles of the above mentioned criteria, this might not particularly qualify as a basic necessity. However, I suggest you hold on, because you never know, you might just be the next one!

After that massive preamble, lemme come to the point. Due to the above-mentioned extreme circumstances, I am unable to savor the use of net when I get it. Instead, I have to pretend to be extremely interested in some web pages pertaining to some arcane topic quite beyond my ability of comprehension in this environment.

So, I need an invention from you comp sci guys. Actually branch is no bar. Im just assuming that going by the average knowledge of CDCs among engineers, I reckon Comp sci ppl are best positioned to act upon this, although the difference is not much between them n other branches on how much they know about computers. Ok, so I need some sort of mechanism to scroll a web page that is in a tab not in front of you. The tab is in the background, while you are looking at some other page on your screen. I want to scroll up or down the page in the tab that’s next to it, without actually going to it. It could be through some shortcut keys, u know, like ctrl+tab+arrows or whatever. This is so that there is lesser chance of being caught when all you are doing is scrolling a webpage. OK, if youre reading it in front of everyone, then obviously ur a dumass. But getting busted because of a stupid scroll, that’s an insult to the entire generation of such sneak peekers. Think of this as a philanthropic act for the future generations. Or maybe if the idea sells, charge for the services. Just remember who the founding father of the idea was, and give it to me for free. Of course, if you become a billionaire or something in the process, generous donations are welcome.

so whoz up to it ?

2008-09-02T02:59:00.000-07:00

The odds of being shat upon

2008-07-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, so iv copied it from Scott Adams. Big deal. As if we all are not guilty of plagiarism in almost every sphere of life. Back to the story.
I was as usual standing at the bus stop after gettin my a** off the bed in the wee hours of the morning ( 6:45 am ). I usually stand in the Bus stop shade area, and dont have to wait for more than 5 minutes for the bus to arrive. I take pride in the precise timing that iv developed in the only 2 weeks that iv been exposed to the drudgery of work. The only way in which today was different was that i did not have to wait 5 minutes for the bus, i went and stood at the bus stop ( in the shade, i must remind you ) , i couldnt have counted to 5 that the bus arrived. And so i get out of the shade, ready to board the approaching bus in order to get the usual seat that i always occupy (read: have been occupying for 2 weeks ) .

Within those 5 seconds, a crow shit on my head.

Its aim was phenomenal. Suddenly the amount of white matter in my head increased to never before seen levels. From the bird's point of view, it must have been an irresistible target.
Credit must be given to the crow. It waited for the right opportunity and then delivered with extraordinary precision. That bastard must have been eating all night and saving it up for the right moment. The main tonnage hit right on top, but there was plenty left over for my shirt and my arm. If i hadnt seen what bird it was, i might well have thought it to be an ostrich or maybe a pterodactyl or a flying cow or an UFO full of aliens with dysentery.

Needless to say, i missed the bus. Taking an auto i go home, only to find no one in. Okay, so i cleaned up the best i could, and then walked back to the bus stop, all the way, getting reminded of the phenomenal similarities between me and what happened to Scott in New york. And then of course, thinking about the odds of being shat upon so early in the morning.

Lets say there are about 15 million people in Mumbai. Of whom lets say, and this is a reasonable estimate, about a third of the people are out on the streets at about 7 30 to 8:30 am. ( if u disagree with me, this is the starting of the peak hour, when about two-thirds of the population gets out of their homes, however counter-intuitive it might sound). So that makes it about 5 million.
Out of these people, i daresay, not more than a hundred thousand people must have got shat upon in that time frame. thats a 1/50 = .02 probability right there. Further, i was out of the shade for an estimated 5 seconds. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. That makes it a probability of .02 X 5/3600 = 0.000027 . Further, we all know that crows are not creatures of the night. In fact, a majority of crow droppings are observed during the evening time, before they go to sleep ( presumably to avoid sleepless nights ). Lets say, not more than 75 % of crows would need to down load this early in the morning. That makes it a probability of 0.000020 of being shat upon within time to travel from the bus stop to the bus.
I got straight C s in math, so thats probably wrong. All i know is that it was unlikely, and that 'my ps is shit' just got a whole new meaning.
I obviously got late today, and adding to it, my pro 3-week-deadline-but-completed-in-a-week report was discarded away casually with a remark ' this is excellent, you have really done a brilliant job' and then a completely unrelated piece of work given to me for the next 2 weeks, one which involves looking at google page results that would make a honey bee ( that btw, has to visit only about a million flowers to collect a kilo of honey, and which it does too :-\) want to go hibernate, that too on a computer that stubbornly refuses to open microsoft word if it has explorer.exe running.
So if you will excuse me, ill get going outside for now, when there is much less danger of me being a victim of specieal ( derived from species ) discrimination.

The perfect weak

2008-07-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

Ok , so what i though had been a near perfect week, what with the godlike GRE n all, turned out quite sour in the end. Primarily because, i found out, to my utter dismay, that i hate, repeat, h.a.t.e work. I hate jobs, and everything that comes along with it. And i had to find that out during my first day at my internship. No, not the 2nd day, not the 3rd, but the 1st. Someone up there was not happy with me having a perfect week, and voila ! No, the internship aint bad. In fact, to most, it would actually seem quite nice. The people are very friendly, my instructor is quite cool, and despite his insistence on completing all the formalities like di-ary, quiz et cetera according to schedule, he is quite a nice,understanding and cool guy, one who, im sure, wont give anyone a B grade for reaching ps a minute late. No, i simply hate it. I guess its like hating having a martian frog liver for breakfast. especially if ur a veggie. i surmise its inbuilt.

So lemme get back to the beginning. It had been a near perfect week. Maybe it would have stayed that way for another day, had i not checked my alternate email address that i never check usually, but which i had given for internship communication,. Any intuition that had no doubt played a mega role in the gre earlier that week mysteriously disappeared and i did check the fateful mail that spoiled my entire sense of euphoria, actually, completely destroyed it. I had gotten a mail from the instructor, that among other things , mentioned that i had to wear formals for work. formals ! that unheard of thing that strikes fear in the most intrepid person (read: me ). I dont own anything close to formal. Unless you count that suit, which i bought out of compulsion. So here goes all my euphoria, and along with it , my glorious week. So mum drags me to one of those never-before-stepped-into formals shops . The nightmare begins.

Now on to the travel. Forty minutes is what i had thought i would have to endure. Of course, the FM radio would provide some relief. Then came the double-triple-quadruple-penta-hex-hepta-etcetra blows. I get stuck in a traffic jam for an hour. My FM headset suddenly stops working.Reach registration an hour late. (which, by the way, was at a place diff from the internship place ) Which actually lasted all of 5 minutes. Then got sent to the company. Then there was an attempt on my life. Then ... screeeeeeeeech. Attempt on my life ? u bet.

They tried to kill me. I escaped, greviously injured, holding a scar for life, but alive. Yes, i almost died. Of boredom. Yes it was the book that i still cant fathom what it is really about, if not beating around the bush trying to say ' Save electricity, Save electricity !'. To make matters worse, the returning traffic was even more horrible. All this on the first day. Blah ! I guess the only bright spot ultimately was during the weekend, when i decided to join CAT classes. No no, going to classes aint my idea of fun. The teacher is hot. Most people would join up just to attend her classes. Anyways, back to the more sombre topics.

I have already got a project allotted to me. here's the catch: Only i was allotted a project. Perhaps i nodded my head a lil bit too much when the project coordinator was speaking. And along with it, a three week deadline. At the end of which i have to give a seminar. The last time i heard, people were still undergoing orientation midway september last time in all ps stations. To top it, i have to share a PC for 2-3 weeks. I get to use it for half the time. Which means half the time i am not in front of the pc. Thats like depriving a crocodile of its teeth for half the day.
And so i stay in that damned place, all day. At the current rate, at the end of this sem, ill have spent more time in the office than i have totally spent in the institute building over the past 3 years. I get so bored, so zombie-ish, that i begin to see strange patterns in things that are usually not glanced upon. For eg, who in the world would give a rats ass for a book titled : 'beeeeeeeep' (censored due to excessive risk of falling inadvertently into the wrong hands) ? well, i had to study it and absorb all i could from it.
All that of course, was before i had found out about this glorious scheme that BEST ( the bus service in Mumbai ) had started a few months ago. Buy a 20 Rs ticket, and u can travel in any bus in any direction for any time for the entire day. So i dont have to wait for my single once-a-decade frequency bus, but can jump buses every two stops, and gleefully reach home. For the first time in ...err .. wait a minute .. its not years, not months, heavens, its been just a day ! Goddamnit , whatever! for the first time in the day, i felt free. Free to get into whatever bus i like, choose the empty bus going someplace iv never heard of, over the overly crowded bus i would usually get into, and all that without taking out the wallet and handing over to the conductor anything. In fact, i quite enjoyed the power of the one, that enabled me to flash it like a VIP flashing his Identity and enter into any bus of my choice. Dang, i sound like one of those employees who have to resort to such things to give them happiness.

Therefore, i have already begun counting my remaining days in the ps station. Thats my best bet at maintaining my sanity. I just want it to end. Fast. And then i can go back to my sleeping-gaming-nowork ritual in campus.
Now i truly understand Dilbert. Iv got to read it again. ciao ( or whatever it is zombies use to sign off) !

IHDNAG AMTAHAM ?

2008-07-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

There is a pattern observable in the recent news broadcasts. Perhaps it is a temporary fad. Or perhaps it is basically a radical new methodology. Something very opposite of what Indians are proud to have given to the world. It began, in a major way, with the Gujjar agitation. Then came to the fore the Darjeeling case. And now, the Jammu one. All these headlines have two things in common . One, they resort to insane violence to draw attention to themselves and Two, the demands have been somewhat addressed by the govts.

Is this truly the way a civilised nation works ? It is understandable , that courts and politicians are not really trustworthy, just postponing the tough work of pacifying people from all spheres. However, when was violence ever a cogent argument ? To add to this ludicrous fad, the govts are heeding to their demands. First the Gujjars got what they wanted through extensive unjustified protests. Drawing inspiration from them, the relatively quieter agitation of the gorkhas in darjeeling area have greatly intensified the agitation hoping to achieve the same. The recent Jammu agitation over the Amarnath shrine land allotment got its demands met after a state wide violent agitation. In fact, the opposition to the revoking of the deal has started violent protests in the area. Since when was violence such a profitable path ? Have we forgotten that we are , even today, proud, through the numerous history texts to have intrduced the concept of a peaceful struggle ? This retrograde to the animal-like kingdom, where might rules the roost, is certainly disconcerting.
this, i guess, if not anything else, shows elections are round the corner.

abridged to naught

2008-06-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

Yet another day in the series of mind-numbing ennui has passed, and with it, any hope of galvanizing my flagging fortunes with the blog with a post worthy of not being tossed into the garbage. In a desperate attempt to maintain a roseate outlook, however, i will hope tomorrow shall be a day of vicissitudes and i shall rise like a phoenix only to prolly discover that i am allergic to the ashes iv risen from.
seriously , i shud chuck this lame pretense of optimism.

The road to el dorado

2008-05-30T01:09:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful and mysterious place. It was filled with wonders never seen or heard of before. Strange yet very hospitable people inhabited this land. Tales of its vast riches spread far and wide, twists and contortions in the stories portraying this land as the el dorado.
All was not well in this land, however. Just beneath the surface you could see insane rituals and practices rule the day. Then came the british. And began the process of murdering and modernization.
In the glorious struggle for freedom from this tyranny, many lives were lost. But we emerged victorious. So emerged a new age India, one that was free from the shackles of the past, one that would look forward and emerge as one of the foremost nations in the world, one that would regain its lost and plundered glory, one that would be the epitome of prosperity and happiness.

Keep dreaming.
Maharashtra state finance and planning minister Mr. Jayant Patil has come up with yet another ingenious idea. He wants to bring in another quota system in jobs. Only this time, the quota stands at a stagerring 80 % . 80 % quota for the locals in all industries across maharashtra. Can you believe these ludicrous schemes, the extent to which these numbskulls will go to increase their chances of staying in power ? Having stayed in mumbai all my life, i am definitely one of the so called beneficiaries of this junk of a rule. That, however, hardly makes it any rosier. Now that maharashtra has come up with such a quota, how long will it be , till other states that are to go to polls follow suit ? The most irritating part is that due to coalition politics, the central government, that boasts of stalwarts of the indian economic revolution like chidambaram, the PM himself, etc remain dumb to these insane ideas that their allies dream up, no doubt helped by the string of defeats that the Ruling party has sufered in various state polls over the past year. Blinded by this lust for power, the long term goals lay forgotten.
Perhaps India is the only country in the world where people fight, struggle and even kill to be branded under-developed or under-privileged A lot has been said and debated on reservations. While the time for abolishment of reservations is no where near in the foreseeable future, having 80% quota defies human logic from any angle.
Few things get me as worked up as reservations. It is steps like this that make me completely disillusioned with the future of this country, or lack thereof.
The british were better, one would be inclined to think.

The garden in the pig

2008-05-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

There is a certain chill in the air. Almost mocking the intense indian summer, a slight shiver runs through the body at the peak of the afternoon time. I remember, about the same time, 5 years ago, when i was on a trip from trichy to chennai, a similar chill, one that cannot be banished by sweaters and wollen clothes and jackets and the like, made its presence felt like never before. That was one of the longest journeys of my life.
Of course, my time has gone. I am inured to the chill. A hardened soul, if i may say that.
At least, thats what i thought, until today afternoon. Thats when i found out, through some rumour doing the rounds, and then verified via the omnicient internet, that the 10th std CBSE board results are gonna be announced tomorow. Quite a shock, seeing as it wasnt expected until the 29th of may. No, i havent retrograded n all, its my sis who's given those boards. For some really unknown reason, this apparently hardened soul is starting to feel the jitters. It is reminded of that fateful journey, from trichy to chennai. Maybe those first jitters have made a comeback.

It was ominous from the begining. The results were to be announced at 5 pm. I boarded the train at a time such that i would be at chennai, and hence have the internet at my disposal, a full 2 hrs before the results were to be announced. However much i try not to be a fatalist, the quirks of fate were enough to convince me that everything was beyond anything i could do. The train, much to my dismay, and to the delight of the millions of butterflies flitting about in my stomach, was 3 hrs late. Bloody three hours ! That poor little 15 year old kid, having to undergo all that trauma ! I boarded the train, trying not to think. However, just as it happens when you are desperately trying not to do something, fate hands us that very thing in various disguises. In my case, it was nightmares. Only, i wasnt sleeping, and it wasnt night time. Haunted by the much feared number that magically seemed to bind itself to my thoughts like viscid glue, 78%, i spent the journey oblivious to all the comforting that my mum was trying to give me. Afterall, it was my first brush with the board exams. And how was i to know that it would have little or no bearing on anything in the future ? Subsequently of course, the air came gushing back and i heaved a sigh of relief when my atthai ( aunt ) , there to pick us up at the station, beaming, and to the enormous relief of everyone on the train, informed us that i had done quite decently. The coming years would then make me so indifferent to such exams, however, that until today, i had not thought it possible for any such result to take the wind right out of me.
The butterflies have mysteriously reappeared, doing all they can to remind me of that day. Needless to say, my sis is in a much worse condition. She's currently gone for a walk to take her mind of things, but i doubt if its going to succeed. Its after all her first one too, and magnanimous that i am, i have so far refrained from making things any worse for her. ( by of course not reminding her again n again about the impending doom of results ) . I dont think i have the stomach to do it even if i wanted to. For some wierd, unheard of, nonsense reason, im at least half as nervous as her. And i have no idea why. Of course, she's never shown any outstanding promise for expecting anything out of the ordinary from her, but one hopes, again the fatalist tendency creeping in, that when things are out of our control ( and here the optimist takes over ) , the least they can do is take shape for the better.
Well, we'll know for sure by tomorow 5 pm. Till then, ill continue to be a haven for those damned butterflies that are having the time of their life.
ps: dont ask me the results :P

No straw, damnus

2008-05-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

I think i have finally got the hang of this world. So i propound a theory which actually fits in with the various ongoing lame attempts that try to explain everything that happens. Well, in order to justify such a claim, i must substantiate it with some solid proof.
Ill begin by predicting the future.
For example, heres tomorrow's news:

1.) Financial calamity may trigger mass panic
2.) X company buys Y company
3.) Idiots kill innocent victims
4.) rich spoilt pop star does something interesting
5.) Politician does something illegal
6.) Research proves that this discovery may affect the way we live
7.) Govt screws up some goal
8.) Someone wont play some sport for some time because of injury

In fact, its the day after tomorrow's news also , and even the day after the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, n so on.

If thats not enough, ill predict some future scientific discoveries, which will be made based on groundbreaking research.
1.) If a black cat crosses ur path in the morning , it may not mean bad luck for the day.
2.) The probability of taking bath twice a day is increased by being shat upon by a flying bird.
3.) Jogging during an earthquake increases the risk of a panic attack.
4.) Cockroaches may rule the earth one day if treated well.
5.) In 50,000 years, there may not be enough straw on earth to feed our cattle.

Nostradamus would have been put to shame.
So now that it is clear that i possess, at the risk of sounding braggy, a phenomenal gift that has eluded scores of geniuses , here goes my propounded theory.
warning : this is not an original one. Many variations of this have been prevalent in the past, lets call it coincidence, a supreme piece of good fortune for some madmen, who have the good fortune of concurring with me

We are all pawns in a game. An alien kid has got this universe ball that he can control. All the tiny random events that occur are us. He can, however, assume control of anyone of us, and direct them to follow strange commands. As this transmission is in a format as yet undiscovered by us, we think it is our subconcious that decides what we do. Most of it is artificial intelligence, but sometimes , some wierd deviant behaviour is the fault of that stupid kid who cant yet get this game figured out.
Once he does figure out however, he'll know what a waste of alien money and time it is, and he'll flush it down the toilet. Welcome, big bang/crunch.

This certainly does explain my sudden yet inexplicable enlightenment. After all, we are all AI. All that was needed was by some quirk of fate a change in my wiring to make me receptive to the transmission mechanism, which of course was performed unwittingly by that stupid alien kid.

So what exactly is my point here ?

why, nothing of course.

ta;fapfhak;fnaipghak;

2008-05-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

we all have invariably done it sometime. Irritating to some, natural to others. But all have their own style.
I first noticed it when i was as usual starin at that giant time-killing application, DC++, trying to type some answer for the king of all timepasses - trivia, when i just realised that my typin was a lil too slow for gettin any benefit out of the otherwise us3less bit of information that i had stored in my head for some god-knows-what reason. This of course , was followed by a series of apparently random letters spewed into one bigass word that nobody in this wide world gave a damn about, not even myself, and everyone just went about their business of doin whatever it is that people do. o[agjaeo[gjaeo[
they have all kinds of personality tests today. Some utterly randomly bullshit questions that u would like nothing more than to shove it up the question-setters ass , try to give you an over all picture of what you actually are, based on a few questions that will gauge you better than all the years of experience of you have having put up with yourself.
I say this is a better way to assess whatever it is that personality tests aim to assess. Everyone DO seem to have their own style, innit ?
moreover, they have the added advantage of being a tol for instant topic change, stopping whatever it is that you wanna stop for whatever reason, and begining afresh. Like now.
[aogjaiphgi[aoghip
this is mine . Whats yours ?

Wakation

2008-05-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

One of my previous posts durin the last vacations bore a similar topic. The difference, was a question mark at the end.
This post is dedicated to my newfound joy of waking up early in the morning ( ! ).
Well, the final serious (?) comprees are done with, dreaded CDCs over, a PS2 to look forward to,
things do seem to be lookin up, dont they ?
Well, no actually. Theres also this thing that iv met some fello bitsians for prolly the last time in my life. No matter how much complainin we'v done, how grudgingly we'v gone bac to campus after vacations , its still like a void, this realization that a quarter of my batchmates ill hardly meet again.
And then theres this GRE comin this july. God knows wat im gonna do, havnt started properly yet.
enrolled i have for some much needed C++ coaching, Cp1 n 2 were obviously a joke. So this vacation looks just as full to me as any.
hope i do, that my ps station will allow me to take a few days off so i can visit teh campus during waves or zephyr. Just one last time.
But now, is the time for nothingness to fil in all the void. The time for relaxation, for just dreamily watching wafting leaves in the wind from the window, waiting for all the awesome food to be digested, n drift off to sleep with no worries about anything, thinking of nothing remotely close to anythin but nothing. At least till my mum comes n tells me to do sumthin useful with my life. Like right now.
anyways, this is a pointless post, almost a re-inaugural of this dead piece of webspace. Ill post soon simply cos iv nothing better to do. till then, adios !

there and back again

2008-04-21T06:42:00.001-07:00

okay, this has been getting kinda really bugging. iv been trying to blog for quite
some time now, but im always thwarted by this one-in-a-million amazing net
that we'r gettin here at bits. Dunno if its just my comp, but im unable to sign into my gmail,
unable to open comments in any blog, etc. But here i am at last, someone up there must have had
a hint of pity for me i guess. Or it may be the new firefox i installed.

Yesterday was the farewell party for the 2005 batch.the glorious class of 2009. felt wierd,
to be frank, im almost an engineer. or atleast supposed to be one. But let me not get into THAT
line of thought now. the thing is, college life is over. Half the people will stay on, rest will
disperse throughout the country during the next 6 months.
Its like a roller coaster ride, zig zag, up n down. These 3 years have been both slow n fast,
its been both fun n nonsensical, some unforgettable and some perfectly forgettable experiences.
Its been one huge package of sweet and sour.
the farewell was an experience in itself, suits n sarees everywhere, and everyone on a clicking spree,
finding just about any excuse to take a pic.

which is why its been quite a frustrating day for me today. Primarily because, two of the Cams in which most ofyday's farewell
pics were taken, are currentlly unusable. One lost, and another broken. So u can imagine why i feel
bloody miserable.
Ill stop here, mebbe continue some other time, when something other than sorry ramblings are pouring
out of me mind.

Bombye

2008-01-05T03:58:00.000-08:00

This is the final straw. I do not want to go into the details, but this is roughly what happened.

I did not know when i was gettin bac to campus. So i asked here n there now n then, n roughly somehow got the idea that ill reach the campus on 7th morning. Now that idea got so much ingrained into this dumbass head of mine, that i evenyually assumed it to be true. N today, on the 5th of january, when im nicely roaming about the small lanes of lamington road, i get a call from my friend, about the time of departure. N thats when catastrophe struck. Ok, not right then, mebbe a lil later, when i scampered home n timidly told my mum n dad about my revised schedule. lol . So now the final story is that im leaving for the campus a whole day early, n though everything seems to be goin along smoothly at last, which is the reason i wrote this post that was initially planned for later tonite, goin to the campus a whole day early just blind sucks. anyways, i prolly wont be posting from campus cos of the ob net speed, so adios sayonara bye bye au revoir blah.

goodbye to james bond

2007-12-31T06:24:00.000-08:00

The air is chilly. So much, i feel like making a sauce out of it n eating it with pizza.
Mumbai has a minimum temp of 13.8 degrees. And people went to Darjeeling these hols, ROFL.
MoodI was great, though i missed Livewire. in fact i think i should say, because i missed Livewire.
anyways, Christmas has come and gone, and the year is about to draw to a close.
So of course, i shall embark upon the much trodden path of makin the new year resolution.

So how do i go about it ? After much contemplating, i find myself at square one. But i am determined to succeed by the end of this post. My aim, is to find my optimum new year resolution that i can stick to. The resolution must be such that it offers ample oppurtunity for other activities to run, it does not hamper any other interests of mine, and most of all, does not slow me down.
Deciding on my new year resolutions isint new to me. Sticking to them is. The major problem is that they get boring. Quotes about embracing change never look more attractive. And there goes the resolution painstakingly adopted.
Another problem is that everyone has so many opinions about what to decide upon. This time however, i have decided to just introspect, and see whats best for me. Forget about what the world feels. Just do it. Nike .
So just why do i find it difficult to stick long enough ? Wel, one reason is already mentioned, they get boring. I do accept, on the surface, it might mean nothing at all. I mean, what implications could my new year resolution have on how the overall year goes? But it does ! It is major deterrant to many activities that you might be tempted to pursue, but should'nt. So, i decide now, to really stick to my resolution this year, no matter what. Many times i feel there should be a locking system in place, that ensures that what resolution u adopt, u have to stick to it. Japanese people, im waiting.
Im still not started about my resolution. Hmm. Not an inch from square one. Its the 31st of december. 9 pm . I debate with myself wether to put thhis off till 11:59:00, give it a full 59 seconds, and then stick to whatever random one i pick. Im sure though it wont make my task of sticking to it any easier than the previous years. But then at least i wont have myself, or rather my bad decision skills to blame. Fate is so much better a scapegoat.
But no, difficult paths must be tread upon, hard choices have to be made. and i have made mine. This post shall be the bearer of the beacon that lights my future path. with this out of my way, i now come bac to square one.
Now, which direction should i choose ? lets say i have a few resolutions in mind. Like in goal programming, i must prioritize my goals. Lets name them A, B, C etc etc

A --> Hmm. Looks tempting. But it comes at a cost. Will reduce my working speed. Hmm lets see. Will have to devote all my resource to follow this one.
B --> A bit less attractive than 'A', nevertheless, quite costly on multitasking. Will have to devote almost all my resources for it.
C --> Hmm. Difficult. Not that attractive as the previous two, but quite easy on my other activities. I shouldnt take this up if i want to increase my chances of sticking to it though, as it defnitely lacks the sexy look.
D --> The most bland one, lowest level that one can expect. However, i can work with ease. Multitasking also is unhindered. will go easy on my limited resources. The only problem is that it is glaringly ugly. Not something that i shall be proud to stick to every morning(?) i wake up n have a look.

well looking at the pros n cons, like a pro, i decide. Yes. Now that yet another new year's resolution has been decided, i shall strive to stick to it like fevicol.

Got it ?

Yes, my new years resolution is

D : 640 X 480 . yoyo . Now i wont play games like WoW ( i wish ).

Ahh. even though i know most wont appreciate the fine art of such pointless Mokkai, Pj , Fattas watever, i thoroughly enjoyed finishing the year with one big one :-B. Hope to continue the following year with more :-B
heres wishing a happy new year to all.
Adios.
PS : Hope u understood the topic :P

catch !

2007-12-26T05:57:00.000-08:00

Another Christmas has gone past, the last one seems just like yesterday.
Christmas time is fun, at least in bombay, its one of the rare times i enjoy goin out n just watchin all the decorations all around. Malls are the best part, all kinds of unique ideas that those people conjure out from nowhere to attract crowds, all kinds of people in festive spirit to be seen everywhere, the entire atmosphere appears just jolly.
This time, apart from roaming around in the usual places, i went to the electronics hub of the city, Lamington road. The items they display there are amazing, and at unbelievable prices. They have all kinds of stuff. Anything electronic thats there in India, n sumthings that are not supposed to be, are found here. At killer rates. So one has to possess an exceptional control over the temptation to buy everything in sight. Or have an empty pocket like me. This was, surprisingly, my first visit to the place. And boy am i hooked ! i am definitely goin there once more this vacation. without an empty pocket, mind you.

This is the time of the year when people exchange gifts. In fact, contrary to popular belief, Boxing day has nothing to do with boxing. It was named so because on this day, in the medieval ages, people used to give presents inside boxes. ( though there is a variation in this story, that this day is known for the retirement of american professional boxer Rocky Marciano. Somehow i find the former reason more credible). Well, i got my perfect pre-boxing day present, in the form of a brand new black beauty acoustic guitar. Actually its been a long time coming, i had a voucher for a musical instrument purchase, n the last date was 31st of december, so it was not exactly unexpected. Nevertheless, yoyoyo ! Its all iv been occupied with for the last 2 days. Playing the chords i want n singing random things that come into my head is what iv always wanted :D

Philanthropy has always somehow found its way to me. Take my PS1 for instance. The only reason i gave Bitsunami in my top 5 options is because somehow it got planted in my mind that it might be good to be philanthropic for a change. What followed was something that i dont want to do ever again, no matter how enriching i feel it was. Well, the point is, i have once again turned philanthropist. This time though, in a different manner. Fortunately or unfortunately, ( former, if hostel life awaits her, bday durin holidays rok) my sis' Bday falls on boxing day. So what do i do ? I play my trump card and gift my brand new black beauty acoustic guitar to her on her bday. You may now bow :P

There has to be a catch in this supreme sacrifice, isint it ?

yessir , u bet there is. Common sense suggests that i just cannot possibly carry the both the Guitar and my Violin bac to campus. which means that it is stuck here at home.
get it ?
yes, you may bow again :P

Change for once !

2007-12-23T12:32:00.000-08:00

For once, i feel an impulse to discuss politics here. And what better topic can i get than the currently hot topic on all news channels : the decimation of the Congress in the Guj elections.
Narendra Modi has done it again. Not just a victory, a two-thirds majority, for a second consecutive time, a third straight term, which is sumthin quite remarkable in the Indian scenario, almost unprecedented in recent times. Keeping in mind the anti-incumbency factor which was the bane of the BJP in the last general elections, pouring cold water over their 'shining India' campaign, Mr. Modi has to be appreciated, for very effective politics right upto the state elections. Perhaps the most satisfactory result for the BJP will be the way in which the big name rebels lost their constituencies.
A lot has been said about the 'Modi' factor. The man who has been denounced by a large section of the media, the main perpetrator of the gujrat riots, the strongman of hindutva politics, the person who was denied the US visa some time back, is now appearing to be quite invincible. So much that there is talk of his ambitions no longer being limited to the state. Though the BJP would be toasting their victory, and congress licking its wounds, it would be prudent for both parties, to not see too much into the elections. Gujrat has always been a BJP stronghold. There is not much surprise that it has won it yet again. The UPA on the other hand, though expected to make inroads, did not. Although this spells bad news for the campaigners in the state, it hardly has any effect in national politics. Yes, the general elections have been pushed beyond mid 2008, and perhaps the biggest effect will be on the nuclear deal, with the UPA trying to appease the left. However, at the center, the BJP opposition is still too weak to even think of countering the UPA. A higher victory margin is in no way indicative of the type of shift, if at all there is one, at the centre. This is because although Modi may have almost become a larger than life figure in Gujrat, his policies and his agenda will only make life for the already chaotic BJP tougher. Mr. Arun Jaitley hinted at the fact that Mr Modi may play a bigger role at the centre following his huge victory. This would be suicide for the BJP, and a fitting christmas gift for the UPA. If there are any lateral thinkers in the BJP, they would reconsider any thought of reverting back to hindutva politics, as it would be political suicide, both from the coalition point of view, and the votebank point of view.
The UPA, on the other hand, must take steps to ensure that this is not repeated in any other state. The year 2007 has been very bad for the UPA. It has lost many states that formerly were its stronghold. However, the bastion of the UPA is far from weak, let alone a depleted opposition with almost no firepower in its arsenal be able to conquer it. The main aim of the UPA must now be to consolidate its already achieved victories. They must realize that when the next general elections are held, the yardstick of good governance would only have increased. It is up to them to match up to the expectations if any hiccups in their election victory are to be avoided.
Well, now that thats let out, ill sleep :)
au revoir

Since i dunno wat to post, but i wanna blog, here it is.

2007-12-23T11:01:00.001-08:00

Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog
Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog BlogBlog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog BlogBlog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog BlogBlog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog BlogBlog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog BlogBlog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog BlogBlog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog Blog

see ? so much iv blogged 0.0

Of Myths and Urban legends

2007-12-20T09:35:00.000-08:00

today, right in the middle of some engaging conversation with some friends of mine, i was reminded of sum so called fact that i had read numerous times, n which had been etched into my brain so perfectly, that all disregard to logic of the fact was brushed aside, and it was blindly accepted in my mind as one of the axioms of life, just like a + b = b + a is undisputed, its just accepted as a universal truth.
Bio as a subject has always fascinated me. Not that seed n agriculture crap, just what i call pure unadulterated bio, like pertaining to human body organs. The way they are intricately designed, how delicately they depend on each other for overall functionality, etc. But the most intriguing part of all is the brain, something that the best 'brains' have failed to comprehend fully.
well what links the above two paras is something im sure most of you have heard about. Well comin bac to that, in the middle of a conversation, i blurt out as a matter-of-factly that humans use only 10 % of their brain. Well, someone is reminded of Kyle XY or smthin, ( a series in which a person uses 100% of his brain n is thus a supergenius) and a potent topic for discussion is born. Well from here on, we discuss the possibilities, like phsycic abilities, or rather the persons havin them must use a bit extra of their brain. We go on to hypothesize that telepathy, telekinesis must use the stronger electromagnetic waves emnating from the brain due to the extra usage, and that somehow it must be possible to measure the strength of the signals with much more ease, etc etc. And as is typical of such topics, the discussion goes on for quite some time, with each member of the group coming up with even more fantastic possibilities.
I should interrupt here by mentioning that the group consisted of 2 IITians, 1 Bitsian ( excluding me ) , 1 NITian , and 1 CMIian ( CMI = chennai mathematical institute, for those who dont know, its one of the most prestigious institutes in india for pure mathematics ). So obviously the topic shifted to how it can be measured, how it could be used, if such a thing could be developed further etc etc.
In the end it made for quite a nice evening, with all that intellectual talk, leaving each of us a bit starry eyed, with limitless possibilities in front of us. With great fervor, i come home, switch on the PC, and google for more info.
i am greeted by the first site :

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Ten Percent of our Brains

shocked, i go on to read a long article about how most ppl believe the 10% myth, how the gullible ones believe phsycic abilities to be somehow linked to this myth, and how many self declared phsycics claim to use more that 10% of their brain to produce astounding results.
Well, i must say, whatever i expected, it wasnt this. Once i regain my composure, i think about it, and become stumped at my alertness, or rather the lack of it. In my enthusiasm to believe that anything is possible, i failed to see that brain isint that simple to be described as a percntage. In my haste to try n think beyond my level for once, i left all common sense behind. Not just me, all the so called elite members of that group.
Thats what Engineering does to you, i tell ya.

wake - ation

2007-12-18T07:29:00.000-08:00

Since the past few days, im not ol on gtalk. Thats sumthin quite astonishing cos im always ol on gtalk. Well thats all thanx to my awsum vacation ( ??????????????????????) if i can call it one.
lets begin by my definition of a vacation.
1.) Sleep till u like w/o botherin abt anythin
2.) Dont follow any systematic routine, become random gaussian variables ( :P ) ( gaussian is optional :P , if u wanna mingle with nature, its applicable, everythin can be approximated as gaussian in nature , and who car3s abt accuracy anyways ? :P \m/ )
3.) Dont get tired. Tiring is banned. You are supposed to relax so much that ull want to get tired in the end.
4.) Walking is punishable by extra sleep
5.) Be ol on Gtalk for a minimum of 12 hrs everyday, irrespective of wherever u r or whatever ur doin.
6.) See ur sister studying for board exams whilst u have fun. optional : become so jobless u capture a secret video of her trying to study, then show it to her and laugh :P
7.) Sleep more.

Well, i think u get the idea. However, the fates have conspired against me such that none, i repeat, in bold, none of my goals have been met. Brilliant goal programming, no wonder i got C in opti :P
well anyways, yes, i find that none of the conditions of my ideal vacation are met. And how is that?
wel for starters, i wake up daily at abt 8 ( i know ull be doin :o ) due to those stoopid drivin lessons that i left midway last summer. apparently this is the only yime the instructor is free , and my dad says it 'builds character' to wake up early n go drive.
well, thats actually the only thing thats left me fuming, cos the reason for the rest of the ideal-vacation-clauses not being fulfilled, is actually quite a pleasant one :)
i finally get to see BARC. yea, iv stayed here for abt 11 years now, and iv been inside the facility just once before as part of our school study trip. And now i have this all shiny ID card ( temporary nevertheless ) that certifies me to get into the highly secure premises of the reactors n all .... i can roam abt now ( unlike the school trip where we were like line followers :P ) and thats exactly what iv been doin last two days at least. THe formalities, thanx to contacts ;) were completed with unbelievable speed, and today all i did was roam abt. I have one word for it : Awesome.
Its almost like an abroad campus, big sprawling lawns where u can just laze off. But theres also abt a kilometer of labs full of amazing stuff, where they actually make awesome stuff , something that i can only dream abt.
Then theres the library. Sheer size will intimidate you. Though i couldnt enter it today, tomorrow promises to be a nice experience.
Then theres the sheer size of the facility. There are so many places its easy to get lost. At the same time, there are so many ppl goin arnd that it almost feels like the campus we never had :P
Theres a catch though. No mobiles or Cds or Pendrives or camers or any electronic equipment of any sort, so no pics or anythin is possible ( kinda ob actually )
also the distance u have to walk to go from one place to another is too much. As long as ur in the labs and u dont have to go to labs at opposite ends of the building ( which is abt a kilometer in length btw) , its ok. But if ur a noob like me, and u know nothing that will be of any use in places like labs , and all u do whole day is sight see, then u have to pretty much wlk almost all day. Thank Dr. Homi Bhabha for planting those awsum trees 50 years ago that today give their all encompasing shade :)
Anyways, iv hardly done anything useful, but mebbe will (have to) try to do smthin ( theres the Dad factor , dont forget that ) in the future. Anyways its a really nice experience, albeit at the cost of my ideal vacation requisites.
well thats that, i guess, i cant wait to get to that huge library of theirs tomoro :D now iv gotta sleep, cos i gotta get up at 8 tomoro, and theres this minimum sleep that any human being requires. Bon nuit :-h

Countless nothingZzz

2007-12-15T21:29:00.000-08:00

Im Baaac, both home n to blogging :)
The sem's gone by like the wind, n amazingly fast though it has been, uneventful it has not.
firstly, i got a chance to see our mother campus, twas a great experience, albeit at the cost of t2.
secondly, the semester was my WoW sem :D , tauren Druids rock !
One striking feature of this sem was that it seemed so full. Hardly any breathing space, i felt as if i was givin exams all the time. Bless my corridor though, i always felt at peace when i saw the gamers inc. continuing with their daily routines ( sleeping, gaming, n sometimes eating ) mindless of the external influences.
well, the happy days are here again, thats what matters, im home, with this blissful single-click-page-open broadband connection, the delicious aroma of lunch waiting for me to devour it like a mad starving animal, and of course, the arsenal-chelsea match later tonite :).
My incomplete driving lessons will resume , at the end of which ill get my license at long last . Its really been a long time coming.
actually i dont have any particular topic to write here on this lazy sunday afternoon, and obviously im too convieniently lazy to think of one. so i shall just continue to ramble along until i get bored of typin :)
I tried to watch TV earlier today. Tried . That itself is a thing to be shocked about. because i dont try to watch TV. I just watch it. As long as somethings moving on the screen. But the way it has changed, i dunno how anyone can watch anything anymore on TV. Especially Cartoon network, they'v commited a henious crime by changing it to its current state. I remember dreamily as i used to sit hours in frontof the TV watchin my fav cartoons in the afternoon after cmin home from school : Pinky and the Brain, The Mask, Dexter's Lab, Centurions, Johnny quest, X-men evolution, Justice league, ninja robots, The mummy, and what not! Gems, i tell u. But CN has changed beyond recognition. Add to that the mutilated voice transmission of Discovery , that too in hindi , and its enough to make me switch off the TV and sit in front of the comp. So all i watch nowdays are the news channels, though i admit it does get a bit boring when u see the same news repeat every hour.
There's one consolation though. I have something to do at these times of crisis. Newspaper.
If one things changed for the worse, there has to be some change for the better innit ? Newspapers are the answer. i Used to read the paper for about an hour everyday, before cmin to bits. Sad to say, that time was reduced by a substantial amount in campus. this time when i came bac home, i found an overwhelming amount of stuff to read. All of a sudden, due to some wierd offer by our local newspaper vendor, we have started recieving enormous amounts of newspapers everyday. On the surface it looks like an unusually fat edition of the Times of India. On a closer look, i see we get apart from the Times, Mumbai Mirror, Dna, Afterhours, Bombay Times, and a host of other fringe papers that by no means form a small chunk of the newspapers. Added to that theres this special double technology n science paper for colony residents, and heres a perfect setting for my 1 hour of newspaper reading to be converted to 10 hrs. It sorta makes up for the lack of proper TV programmes.
It really is a marvel to see how empty my head is right now. Theres no need for me to think about anything :D aaah this is truly bliss.
now im also feelin drowsy..... drowsy ... sleeepy ....sleeeeeepyy ........

sleeepy

sleeeeeepy ...

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

zZZZ..ZZZzzzzzzz

wanted : suitable topic. Intrested topics apply via post :P

2007-11-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

i just read in the paper about some japanese piggy bank company's brilliant new innovation : exploding piggy banks . Apperently, ppl in japan have a lot of problem trying to get themselves to save money, so the company has manufactured a piggy bank that throws tantrums if not fed regularly ( with coins ob ), n those tantrums, if ignored, culminate in a semi - explosion, causing all the contents to get sprayed on the floor. brilliant piece of junk : sorta makes u want to become a mini human - piggy bank, throw tantrums, get money :P .
another nice innovation that comes to the mind is the much needed alarm clock thingy. Apparently some japanese ( not again ! ) company has designed an alarm clock that rings a very irritating sound thats guaranteed to wake u up. how? simple. it runs. u have to get ouuta bed, and run around behind it to catch it and then make it stop. wish i get one of those. it really would help me, i tell ya .
now for a hilarious incident. i understand that this is only embarrassment for me, but wat the hell, just for a few laughs.
the other day, i forgot that it ws my mum's bday. no that hardly qualifies as hilarious. actually, i had slept like 4 hrs in the past 5 days, and the previous nite full i was wowing ( world of warcrafting , for those not in the know ) , and with a great sigh of relief, went to sleep at 6 am. so now, one expects that ill sleep for at least a day. n ya, the sleep will be so deep , that i doubt that even the aforementined brilliant alarm clock would suffice to wake me up. anyways, i did wake up, much earlier that anticipated, if at all u call that as waking up. i was woken up by my siss' call, at 7 30am, yea right after an hour of goin into the chasms of slumberland, and i vaguely remember her askin me to remind her what day it was. i blinked, ( if i could call that blinking, my eyes were almost shut anyways ) so she did the honors of reminding me the date. ( just the date mind you, NOT the occasion ) so ok, the date sounded familiar so just for the sake of it, i said yes. so she passes on the fone to my mum, n guess what i say. Happy anniversary.
the end.
( the events that followed are too embarrassing to be stated publicly :P )

Survival of the fittest ?

2007-09-12T09:37:00.001-07:00

Mankind has always been a survivor. No matter what the odds, we have prevailed. Sheer grit n the natural tendency to survive, has had us brave calamities of astronomical proportions. After each of these disasters, there has been a marked change in the way mankind has chosen to live. An example is the 9/11 disaster. There is no need to describe the aftereffects of it. Terrorism has now become a household word, n the repurcussions of it have been more than obvious.
Bitsians have been witness to numerous such catastrophes, but in the end, always we have prevailed. I am talking of course, about the upcoming test1.
It is quite amusing, to see the change of habits that a test inspires. The atmosphere suddenly becomes tense, tempers run high, frustration becomes more than common, and there are certainly more papyrus sightings than before. The mood goes from jolly to sombre, suddenly, from lan the focus shifts to ftp, some people think of buying the textbooks at last, and the regular class attenders are besieged with requests to help out those less fortunate. It is during this time that typically chill dudes are in a frenzy as to what to do about the overwhelming portion, common room get togethers become a rarity unless there be an india pak match ( or a ManU - chelsea match ) , more people roam the corridors, n sounds emnating from the rooms are more of songs than the usual game sounds. I admit the true frenzy has not yet started, there is still apparently some time before the effect is most significant, nevertheless, the signs are ominous.

Where there was general discussion about this strat in that map in CS, there is now this component in that circuit in MuE. Where there was talk of these many spectators for the tournament finals, there is now these many pages in that subject. I have to admit though, all this does make me a bit uneasy. I mean, look at me, writing this post, while there are at least a hundred in campus at this very moment who'll be immersed in their books.
Coming to that, the books are a headache in themselves. I get intimidated by the sheer size of some of them. n theres always the braggart somewhere who'll keep askin doubts from here n there to show off his depth of understanding the subject, as if there is even the remotest of chances that ill be able to comprehend the meaning of his doubt. No matter how much i convince myself to forget about such instances, theres always this lurking thought in the deepest trenches of my mind, that ill have to start sometime soon, how soon is soon, that we'll have to see.
All in all, while preparations begin for this impending doom, i brace myself for the inevietable. One thing, however, that keeps insanity at bay, is the knowledge that we are the survivors, that no matter what the cruel n twisted way of fate has in store for us, no matter what unseen horrors are hurled at us, we shall always emerge from the ashes rising like a phoenix, awe-inspiring the next generation of people who are as yet unexposed to the horrors of engineering, only to be decimated once again by t2. However, theres time for t2, i promise u i shall also rise up like a pheonix n come up with yet another post just before t2. until then, all the best to all, i shall not be posting till post t1 unless it be for some awesome trigger , as i now also have t1 as a cover up for the draught of ideas that has left me with no proper topic to talk about.
Go.

PS: i typed Go this time not due to an overdosage of scott adams, but due to lack of ideas for conclusion. Damn the draught !

Bu ... zZZzzZzzzZZZ ... y ?

2007-09-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

Another Wednesday has come n gone. The significance of this apparently innocent just-another-day which many ppl mite regard as not even close to competing with that eternal topper of the horror-day-list, monday,can be mainly realised by the ENI group of Bits-Goa. 8 bloody hours of classes ( ok ok i dint attend all of em, i aint that mad ) n after that this meeting n that , has me pooped as always. It indeed is a wonder how im even typing this post, its prolly because right now im in a relaxed position just abt to drift off into that wonder of a thing - sleep, happy that tomorow aint gonna be as hectic as today, lookin forwad to those blissful hours when there is no worry in the world, oblivious to anything im just floating in my own fantasy world where things are just, different. Well, ill not go too deep into that, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how much i dread each coming wednesday, more so for that waste of a prac - DECO, n its stoopid pointless assignments that the profs religiously adhere to, thinking that their overly sincere students do all of it by themselves, when my assignment is nothing more than a compilation of the best collection of assignments done by the previous batches, a thouht stil lingers at the end of each wednesday, that keeps me alive at the end of all that. It is not a happy thought, it is like that thought that kept Sirius Black sane in Azkaban , shielding him from the Dementors' powers. That at least im not wasting away my time doing nothing, even if it means being just physically present for most of the commitments that i usually end up with.There is , in the end , a sense of satisfaction that at least today, i have been occupied with something other than sleep.
But the funny thing is, after all this, i sleep. No thats not the funny thing, i dont just sleep, i sleeeeeeeeeeeeep. Usually for abt a day. It quite destroys the entire point of being so-called-busy on wednesday. Thursdays are usually a full holiday for me due to stoopid practises like staying up late after such an unusually packed day writing a post in my blog which isint gonna get me any pulitzer anyways. I mean, just why do i have to choose this day for posting ? Drive some sense into me, someone. With a valid liscence, mind u. ( :P )
Ok iv let that out, now mebbe something other than general nonsense will come outta my mind into this post.
The elections are over, results out, celebrations done with, dissapointments kept aside, n just a tiny whiff of that impending doom, Test1. To those who are gettin any ideas, no, i havnt started anything as yet, nor do i intend to, as i know i wont be able to this early, even if i want to.add to all that a million , no, correction, a zillion worries n choices n responsibilities n what nots, n its the perfect situation for some disaster management plan to come into effect.
i gather im still just blaberring, so in case ur wondering when all this is gonna end, ur right there. Here it ends, not because im bored of typing or anything, but because im feeling pity for the people who have no other useful work than reading all this almost random assemblage of angrez words.I wonder what comments this post will gather. (here i go again.)

Go.

Yes , Mr. President ?

2007-08-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Its that time of the year again, when there is no dearth of entertainment all around the campus for those in Bitsg. The ominous signs began appearing a few weeks back itself, power equations being formulated, alliances broken and forged, which has now finally culminated in full large scale campaigning. The big presidential debate's tomorrow, n as always is expected to be one of the most entertaining sessions of debate in the campus. For the past two years, iv been thoroughly enjoying all the antics of the candidates as they go from hostel to hostel , room to room, person to person, all trying to convince ppl to give them their precious vote. The best part is when they come across a person who is overly intrested in them doing some substantial progress pertaining to something in the campus, usually some new infrastructure. It is always intresting to see how the candidates cleverly dodge n survive these inquisitive voters n give an answer that either satisfies them or silences them. These candidates are usually always flanked by their supporters, who resque them should any sticky situation arise. Yes sir, election is indeed a serious matter here in bpgc !
This year, however, the scenario is far more interesting than the previous ones, for me especially, primarily because i personally know most of the candidates for the top positions, in fact, two of the candidates vying for the post of prez are my very good friends The fact that they too are quite friendly with each other and are now placed as opponents in a battle for the top most position that promises to get quite interesting, has made this election an event not to miss at any cost. I havnt decided for whom ill cast my vote, i know both of them equally well, but well, even if i have decided, its a secret ballot, so shoo off. Anyways, it is gonna be a pitched battle for the prez post at least, and im planning to enjoy every step of it :D.
At a personal level, i feel that elections are a fun thing, provided one isint dragged in to be a part of the many murky details n controversies that invariably always dog the campaigners. Elections are fun from the distance. I havnt stood ever, not even out of curiosity of how many ppl would vote for a maniac like me, mainly because, it makes more enemies than friends, creates more animosity than openness. Coupled with the fact that one is expected to sacrifice their morning sleep to keep up with the responsibilities that come with a post , i feel it is not a thing worth plunging into. Just spectate n enjoy while the multidirectional tug-of-war continues, and of course not compromise on that absolutely necessary ingredient for most ppl - sleep :P .
This time, apart from the usual hurricane of questions n queries hurled at the campaigners, the issue of placements will feature as one of the most prominent and intresting topics that the wannabe presidents n VPs must address. Their stance will be quite interesting to note.
Meanwhile, third year continues to keep me occupied like never before since the ancient pre - engg era. From useless attendance n surprise tests to false rumours of to be conducted tests that force even the likes of me to attend the most boring of lectures, to some classes that simply cannot afford to be missed, to a lil bit too frequent meetings of the music club working comittee, the just commenced but real fun french classes, and of course to cap it all, the insane project that i seem to have fancied myself to do last sem, but the repurcussions of which are only just begining to have an effect. The best part, however, is that im liking this activity thats been missing for like 2 years. Well, wether this is an augury or just another phase, one has to wait n see. With this i sign off, the french way :P
Bon nuit

Madness

2007-08-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Hitler's minions would'nt have 8 hrs of classes in a day !

Hey RAM !

2007-08-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ok so im back. So i eat my own words. 15 days seems too short for someone who promised to not blog again for 4- 5 months. Still, this comeback is solely due to the twisted ways of fate.
The primary reason i was looking forward to college is the WoW server that seemed to have established an iron grip over my day to day schedule. I cant describe the amount of effort the game creators must have put in, its simply brilliant. anyways, brilliant as it may be, it is also a bloody fat memory eating glutton of a game. So much that half my RAM got burnt. Yes, my dear frends, i am here because my comp no longer suports any game that a self respecting gamer would play, so here i am, back to blogging. So now im reduced to haunting others rooms in the hope of taking over their comps when they indulge in non- comp activities ( which, i assure u, is rare ).
The other alternative is spammin on dc++ , but the lure of dc has been steadily declining, especially because i shut down Titan hub on my comp due to the frequent restarts that i subject my comp to, as a result of which my admin powers have become fairly limited. So i decide one fine morning, ( ahem, morning means past 12 am, NOT actual morning wen it goes all sunny ... thats the time i sleep ) that its time to pay my blog a visit.
And as this premature visit is basically a result of pointless joblessness, u should have no further expectations from this post as well. But just for the sake of ...err of ...watever, i dedicate this post to WoW. As it is very likely that i wont be playing it again in the near future at least. It is a freakin 8 GB game , n iv already deleted it, so its highly unlikely that ill have the patience to download 8 GB again onto my comp.
To all WoW players, especially horde ( ok if ur alliance, its thu , cept mebbe for nite elves, they'r ok ) ashenvale must be a familiar name. Well, all i want to say is that, It rox. Its a beautiful place. best place actually, competes with Mulgore n the thunderbluff area. And the music as soon as u enter ashenvale, well, simply astounding. I had a female blood- elf character ( :P :D )
with which i attained level 20, when catastrophe struck ( yea my RAM ) . If someone suddenly has the urge to turn philanthropist, i appeal to u to start off with me, n kindly donate some desktop RAM, as i wont have the heart to pay to screw my acads anymore. Yea, if i start WoW again, my acads will be screwed beyond repair. Im sure. But its that type of a game. Godlike.
Well enuf of WoW now, its too painful ( :P ) . Hmm i dunno wat to type, but this post seems too short ( is it ? ) ...
ok heres another thing ... iv been working my ass off for the music club, meeting almost everyday for more than 4 hrs n all .... trying to overhaul a disorganized system into something worthy of emulation and a subject of envy for others. And the worst part is that some ppl have to be layed off .... the problem being that they arent that bad.... in fact they arent bad at all .. just that the club doesnt need their type of talent ..... and of course, the working comittee will have difference of opinions, all that has to be sorted out ... n then the hard part of tellin the ex - clubbers to let go, well, thats real crap, especially if some of them are ones whom u really do not want to let off, but the power of voting outdoes any hope that u have of having it ur way. Well moving on from the serious tpoic to a lighter one, im kinda bored now without the tools that make lan a boon beyond ones dreams. Im now occupied with ways to outdo all the antics of this joker of a virus Brontok.A thats been trying to wreck havoc in my comp. ( yea, i dont have an antivirus installed, i think they are all lame, wen u have a virus, format ur comp :P ) . Well, nowdays im mostly just lookin for ways in which to cheat the virus without using any readymade virus removal tool like brontok-remover etc. Its a funny virus really, i sometimes like to think about its ambition ... just go n spread to as many comps as possible ... like the time when a temporary folder waiting to be burnt was infected with the virus, but i had no intention of burning that onto a disc, i was thinking of how im outwitting the virus, makin a fool out of it, while it is waiting , mebbe anticipating n lookin forward to spread to a portable data storage device like a cd, i had no plans of makin that come true. Mad i know i appear, but this is a pointless post. So well u should have braced urself for seemingly endless n pointless rantings about this n that, i think the post is long enough to qualify as a post, so i leave it at that. I dunno when ill be posting again, but i think it shall not be long b4 i do post again, owing of course, to the amazing 256 MB RAM.

Where am i ?

2007-07-27T01:38:00.000-07:00

"I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder !"

---- Prof. R.P.Feynman

Starry eyed. Big dreams. Glorious future.
Just a glimpse of what i was, in those days. Dad n Mum always kept me inspired, to go for that extra, and not necessarily be a just another sheep in the flock. I was made to try my hand at almost everything, lest some hidden talent go unnoticed. Unfortunately, no such prodigous ability came to light. A jack of all trades, and abmysal at studies. Well, abmysal means i was just another average kiddo, never topping any exam, never giving anyone the impression that i would amount to anything extraordinary. The jack was just sailing with the wind, when he came to an abyss. 8th std, n i truly put my parents in a tizzy as to wat could be done. The other side of 8th std is agonizingly close to the board exams, and the apprehension was totally justified.
But the abysmal performance seemed to have given me something to ponder, of what would i do as just another average person. So came 9th std. I surprised everyone with an antithetical performance as compared to the last year. The inspired days had begun.
It begun with the NTSE , gettin selected in the 1st round, n going on to pass the 2nd n interview rounds, more so coz i was the only one in the colony that year, which is saying something because The colony is famous for churning out some of the country's finest brains. I was no way even near the level of my peers, but the fact that i was the sole awardee brought in more confidence. The board exams were a breeze.
It was folowed by olympiad n Nts camps, fervered Discussions on scientific subjects, and an innate love for Physics , no doubt shaped by my dad and my IIT coaching class prof. Those were the days i would call glorious. Sitting with a few ppl, n solving our way thru irodov , krotov, and animatedly discussing elegant ways of solving problems, idolizing greats like feynman n einstein, n thinkin about a problem even durin those coveted free hours in Junior coll. Those two years were really the most exercise my grey matter got, and life was really good. How was i to know, that in little more than a few months, the attenuation would began !
I sometimes wonder, where i have landed up. I had dreams of becoming a researcher, a scientist like my dad n mum, just to folow my impulse at that moment, to go free n do what i really wanted, what really gave me immense joy, unleash all the creativity that i could muster inside me, just throw away the pressure of the society that still looks with mild amusement at anyone who trods a line a bit different from the stereotype.
But i landed in BITs. All those entrance exams later, i am now doing what i think half the country must be doing. Engg.
It is a joke really, nothing more than 4 years of beating around the bush, no learning, no nothing. It is a convienient way to hide the fact that the glory days are behind. Just today i was poking around in some unfamiliar territory ( on the net of course :P ), n asked some noobish question on some forum regarding certain javascripts, and was the subject of jeers and spectacular mocking of my ignorance in that forum. It really alarms me to see so many bloody comp fodus in the world, ppl who are so brilliant, so knowledgeable. And i start the introspection, where am i, what the hell am i doing, have done in the past 2 years, or what am i going to do in the remainder of the engg. program. N well i get the answer from my cousin, an IItian herself, nothing. Its perfectly normal to not know anything after engg. Infact, its a matter of great pride to actually remember something from the pre-engg era. Its all about brainwashing, she says. Jokes apart, am i sorry for coming to BITS ? No i say , im happy, its alrite, its the way it works. There wont be 4 years like these again.
And just why have i almost written my biography in this post ? Because there is a high probability that this is going to be the only post in quite some time, as ill be occupied with other things on lan :P. This is a likely goodbye on my front to blogging, at least till the christmas vacation. So cya ppl, 5th sem beckons, cant believe that im half an engineer already, i dunno anything that can be remotely qualified as engineering, but wat the hell, thats the case with the majority. So off i go to start the damn packing, thank god its raining cats n dogs here, so mum cant drag me along to one of her shopping expedietions. To all Bitsians, happy journey, n cya in coll. To all others, tah tah anyways.
sayonara.

license to kill

2007-07-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

Yet another reason to be extremely careful on Mumbai roads in general. Me on the road :D
Went for so-called driving classes today ( for all those who'r clucking their tongues, yea yea im very late i know , still better late than never :) ). The only reason im putting up with them classes is because me dad feels it is wise if i get some formal training, before posing a grave threat to pedestrians. They'r ( the classes i mean, not pedestrians :P ) seriously a drab, imagine drivin in 1st gear for an hour without touching the accelerator even once ! Well, hope tomorow ill be given a freer reign so that i can explore my creativity a bit :P . The best part, however, is not compromising on my sleeping patterns :D . i can still sleep till a respectable 10:30 , and be well in time for the classes. Although the time frame of learning is usually 20 days, im supposed to complete it by 29th, not that it is gonna be difficult, its just a matter of multitasking, which,we the gaming psychos know only too well :P

Anyone who has been to the colony where i stay, will agree that it is a paradise for driving. Amateur drivers, that is. Hardly any bumps, large deserted streches of decently maintained roads, and no police to check license :P . Closest to an empty highway in the city. So its relatively easy to comment on the trivial task that is driving. Once out into the Mumbai roads just outside though, its a different story altogether. Vehicles darting past at dizzying speeds, adherence to the lane rule in general, all make it an effort well worth concentrating on. Well, thats for the next vacation. This time around im resigned to just complete the classes, give my test ( hopefully ) and get the license. WEll at least that process will be over. Driving on the fast n furious mumbai traffic can be left for another day ! ( Mind you, i am NOT generalizing mumbai traffic as fast , all im saying is that the region outside my colony has a smooth moving traffic. We all know the infamous traffic in other parts of the city :P )
Add to it the rain, and things seem only more exciting :D . Thats it ppl for this post, i know this isint any mind boggling or earth-shattering enlightenment, but wat the heck , who cares !
signed,
:@) <---------------------- try typing this in yahoo msgr, to get it.

PS : Scott was hilarious today, not to mention the comments. Bush's really gettin it ROFL.

:(

2007-07-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

Warning : this post does not contain any spoilers, or any information about the deathly hallows. It is a review in general, without naming or hinting at any particular event in the book. So for those who do not want to be exposed to spoilers, fear not, this is not where you need to stop. And for those who read the spoilers in the last post, it is a load of rubbish anyways.

ok, i just finished reading the much awaited super hyped blown out of proportion so called literary phenomenon Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows. And my dear friends, i do know that if Ms Joanne Kathleen Rowling had ever got the oppurtunity to don the sorting hat to get sorted to her house, she would have definitely gone to gryffindor. Her tremendous courage would have seen to that. Yes, she is courageous to the point of ridiculousness. Courageous enough to even think of composing such a load of tosh, especially when it was common knowledge that half the educated world was hanging on to her every word, every letter that she either spoke, or more importantly, wrote. To say HP7 was dissapointing, would be a gross understatement. It was totally not what i expected of JKR. The begining was, to put it briefly, perfect. It managed to make me cling on to the book, turn the pages with a mad fervor, creating that element of suspense that is so ingrained into the series. But she really ruined it in the end. It was, to be frank, ridiculous. Ludicrous. The end wasnt just dissapointing, it was nauseating. The epilogue that is included, pathetic. She could have very well done without it. It has at last rid me of the potter mania. I now know what happens at the end of it all as Ms JKR envisaged. And to know that all the events that have taken place in the previous 6 boks would ultimately culminate into this, has removed any magic that the books held. I have read and re read the books previous to this one, but i seriously doubt if i would want to read this again.
Ultimately, the book has reached out to the very audience that it might have been targteted at before becoming a global phenomenon trangressing all ages - children. They are the only ones who are likely to revel in such a fairy tale ending.I am sure, the book will get a lukewarm response from the rest of its readers. It has been a marvellous ride till date, especially the long gap between the HBP and this one enabling me to let my imaginations wild, make up theories, and complete the story in my own, satisfactory way. I had braced myself for a not-so-brilliant finish to the series. But this was like a bolt of lightning, as if suddenly JKr has descended from her apex of unbelievable writing, to the mundane world of childish non-best sellers. It has indeed been a fairy tale. However, i would like to forget what the end had in store for the wizarding world, rather, i would like to delve into the misty and wild escapades of my imagination, and continue the legacy that JKR had begun when she was travelling on that fateful train, and when harry potter strolled into her head, right here in my head.
I would advise all out there to read it once, and see if your views concur with mine. i shall be highly surprised if it doesnt :P .

Bac to the topic - Spoilers - lol

2007-07-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

WARNING : The contents of this post might be distressing to some people. This post contains possible spoilers about the latest Harry potter book. Though i doubt its authenticity, those who do not want to take the risk of it being a real spoiler should read no further. You have been warned.

The internet has been abuzz with rumours doing rounds of a leak in the 10 million pound security of Harry Potter and the deathly hallows. These rumours were substantiated by the Times of India, which carries an article about the pages of the latest book being photographed, albiet in an amateurish manner. Many hackers have claimed to have obtained information about the hugely anticipated ending of the mega-series. One such site, gave the following info on the latest spoilers to have propped up on the net:

Ron dies.
Lupin dies.
Percy dies (this death occurs before the wedding, inevitably throwing events into chaos).
Voldemort dies.
Snape dies.
Details arent needed. Just say BELLATRIX KILLS RON!
Snape's loyalty?
I found this to be the saddest part of the book. As many people guessed, all was not what it seemed with Dumbledore, and the two did indeed have a plan that would eventually result in Snape killing him. But, Snape was only in on things for personal gain, and when Voldemort learns of this, he is obviously furious with Snape. Snape tries to make up for things by luring Harry to him, but Harry manages to escape, and Voldemort kills Snape before the final conflict.
I dont know what all these rumours are about Voldemort kidnapping Ron, it?s a complete lie. Ron is killed by Bellatrix Lestrange in The Battle of Hogwarts, but Neville manages to finish off Bellatrix after Ron weakens her before his death.
Harry Potter is not a horcrux.
As Ive already stated, Voldemort kills Snape.
Voldemort is killed in the Department Of Mysteries. He baits Harry Potter about his parents, Sirius, Dumbledore and Ron. which turns out to be the worst thing Voldemort could have done. As Voldemort steps out into the circular bit with many doors, Harry Potter opens the locked door, and Voldemort is destroyed by the blinding light, which heals Harry Potter, who seems close to death (he does not die).
The cover art shows Voldemort + Harry Potter at the Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter is attempting to summon Voldemort's Horcrux, as Voldemort is doing his best to keep the enchantment in place.
No-one loses a body part, no idea where that came from.
Also Harry Potter does not get drunk whoever said that.
Harry Potter does not lose his powers.
Whats the deal with the dragon on the US deluxe cover?
The trio fly on it to get to the Deathly Hallows. Only Harry Potter and Voldemort can fight on the Deathly Hallows, but this is not their final encounter.
Whats happening on the UK kids cover?
Gringotts. The trio are searching for the locket (it isnt there) but they get vital information on Ravenclaws book here.
Hows the epilogue done?
I didnt like it. It was in the form of a newspaper article, a sort of ?Where Are They Now?? thing, 20 years on from the final showdown.
You said Ron dies so what happens to Hermy at the end?
As said, her love life isnt specified. But she becomes a Healer at St. Mungos.
Whats Luna/Hagrid/Weasley twins/Neville's fate?
Becomes editor of Quibbler (her dad passes it on to her)/Remains at Hogwarts to this day/Weasley?s Wizard Wheezes becomes multinational/Herbology teacher at Hogwarts after Sprout?s death (old age she isnt killed)
What happens to Voldys body in the end?
Completely obliterated by the love from locked room.
What are the horcruxes? How does Harry Potter find and destroy them?
Nagini/Locket/Cup/Ravenclaws Book. Symbol on UK spine is a device that enables Harry Potter to locate soul fragments if you will, Harry Potter can destroy them a lot more easily than Dumbledore.
Whats the deal with the mirror? How does RAB and Kreacher come into the story?
Sirius has left an almost a voicemail? message on the mirror, to advise him on destroying the horcrux. Kreacher has to tell the trio (on Harry?s orders) about the history of the symbol and where to find it.
Whats the lies of Dumbledore chapter about?
Neon was right about this, this is to do with the plan with Snape. I don?t know if he got lucky because the Grindelwald thing isnt even close.
What happens to all the teachers? Who?s new headmaster etc?
McGonagall is new headmistress.
Whats Harry?s fate in the end? Job etc?
Becomes an almost freelance Auror but refuses to work for the MoM

There. The site also has the names of the chapters, but i feel to include it here is unnecessary. The claims look pretty probable, to say the least. Whether these are authentic, or pathetic attempts at fame, i dont know. If it is the real thing, i must say i would be a tad dissapointed. I just hope all this is just crap minted out by some jobless individual.. would'nt want to spoil the plot that JKR has in store for muggledom. Don't look at me like that, i shall keep trying my best to get hold of spoilers, and keep wishing that they arent authentic. More updates due, btw.
PS : im currently downloading the torrent version of the apperently 'leaked' .jpg files of the book. Lets see how authentic the seem :P

Have a break, have a kit kat

2007-07-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

This post is a break from the 'Theories' posts, to commemorate my last day in Chennai in the forseeable future, and certainly the last day of my ps1 trip. It has been a most memmorable trip, spanning all of two months. It has been a bag of mixed feelings really, what with all those threats of being sent to live like a villager, to meeting up with frenz and exploring chennai like never before. Owing to the rigours of PS, a common feeling of teaming up against the forces of evil (lol) developed among us bitsunami ps ppl, that looks set to continue for some time.
Chennai is a strange city. It is not the stereotypical metro that most people expect it to be. As a result, most people are really frustrated with common grievances like public road transport and the scorching heat. What is required to come to grips with what chennai offers, is staying here for a considerably longer period of time than most other cities. It offers a really unique blend of traditional and modern facilities. Contrary to popular belief, there ARE places to hang out. Only they need a bit of exploring.
My short stint in this city was rewarding, to say the least. Firstly, i came on doordarshan. Though my delusions of grandeur were shattered by that recording, it was national television nevertheless. Secondly, i did learn something in ps ( i hope ) at least while i was in the city( though wat i took 2 long months to learn could be learnt by anyone in prolly a week, it is much better than nothing, i tell u ). Thirdly, i did take a step for the better in the music perspective ( yea i did, mum, much more than what i would have done at home :P.. at least the strings i bot qualify as a positive step :D ).
I dont think there is any trip to chennai lined up in the near future, unless of course i land up here courtesy ps2. So its adios amigos chennai, and yoyoyo Bombay ( its bombay to me, not mumbai) here i come :D ... ok this is only a short commercial break.

PS:
script type="text/javascript">document,write("Hello World!)
ok i posted a script :P :P

PPS : Thanx to all my frenz who tolerated all my thuisms, and my bugging messaging all day long. Most of them have demonstrated tremendous buggability. Thanx for putting up wid me for so long. I assure u ill bug u all again once bac in campus. And last but not the least in any way, i sincerely thank radio city which kept me company from 9 to 11 am , 5 to 9 pm, and 12 am onwards all the days, n certainly made my travel less painful. Seriously the only decent radio station in chennai.

Theories

2007-07-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

I? I see myself holding a pair of thick woolen socks.

Iv fallen in love with this line. Its made by Dumbledore when harry asks him what he sees in the Mirror of the Erised. Which makes me wonder.... has the Erised served its final purpose ? Will it have any role to play in the final instalment of the series ? We'll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, i just read in the paper, that the security arrangements for the release of the Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows is unprecedented in literary history. Yet another literary first for Ms Rowling. Reportedly, A whopping 10 Million Pounds in security has been invested. These figures just make me laugh out loud. It is still really astonishing, that in spite of a mammoth preparation for security of the book, a copy always leaks out somehow. Well, i hope they come up with an ebook soon enough before some crackpot decides to reveal the plot to me. ( No i aint gettin a copy :( , spent all my allowance on this stoooopid phone of mine ).

Back to the topic. From now on, each post till july 21st shall house one or two cranky theories that i have either ome across during hours of mindless browsing, or that have originated in this brain of mine. ( Oxymoron ?? )
So first of all, What comes to my mind is RAB. Who is this RAB ? Most of the forums and Hp fan sites that iv gone to unanimously agree that the only possible answer to this is Regulus Black.
However, i came across this site, where a member posts this intriguing line of thought : What if it isint a person at all ? What if RAB stands for, say, a place, or some sort of code word or something ? Just the sort of thing JKR may do to catch the entire rumour mongering business wrong footed.
Again, in this fan fic by a writer named Razzberry2 from the veritaserum forums, a theory has surfaced that set my thinking gears into motion. What if RAB is indeed Regulus Black, but like harry accompanied Dumbledore to help him drink the green liquid, it was Kreacher who accompanied regulus into that cave, and it was kreacher who drank the liquid, which permanently affected his brain ? Thought provoking, i must say.
Wikipedia gives an intresting article about RAB's identity.

In several foreign-language versions of the series, the surname Black has been translated into the respective language to correspond to the colour "black". In those cases, the 'B' in R.A.B. has been changed accordingly. For example, the Dutch edition uses the initials R.A.Z. in the locket note, and the Black family name is Zwarts, corresponding to "zwart". In the Norwegian edition, the note has R.A.S. (corresponding to the Svaart family or"svart"), and the Finnish edition has the letters R.A.M., (corresponding to the Musta family, or "musta"). In other editions where the Black family name is not translated to the local language, the initials remain "R.A.B.". For example, the Swedish, Spanish, and French translations keep the family name "Black", rather than translating it to the respective Swedish, Spanish, or French words for "black" ("svart", "negro", and "noir" respectively), and the initials remain as "R.A.B."

This analysis lends support to the theory that regulus is indeed RAB. But as is typical of JKR to squeeze in a twist somewhere, it might well be andromeda ( tonk's mother, another black ) , or even alphardus black, who was disowned by the blacks for supporting sirius.

The turmoil ends july 21st when it shall be clear as to what lies in store for the wizarding world as we know it.Till then, let the speculation get into overdrive !

The pandemic : Prologue

2007-07-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

There is a fever that is spreading around. It knows no geographical boundaries. It spreads through mysterious means. There is no stopping it. It has assumed juggernaut status and has reached epic proportions. In fact it is just short of being branded an epidemic.

Some symptoms are synonymous with those of acute paralysis ,vegetative state and frequent zombie-like characteristics. Other symptoms may be confused with unusual hypnotic behaviour. The origin of this massive fever is believed to be in England. But it has crossed almost all natural and man made barriers. No one is safe from its devastating spell. The global impact of this fever is so alarming, and hapless researchers are finding it so difficult to explain the reason for it, that news channels across the world are focussing on this pandemic.

And i am its latest casualty.

There is light at the end of the tunnel after all. July 21st beckons, but i just cant get myself to wait for the release of the latest, and last book in the harry potter series, The deathly hallows.
I am just one of the millions n billions to have been gripped by it, and by gripped, i mean one so tight it could hold liquid nitrogen at room temperature. And to my dismay, i find that i am not quite in touch with what has happened so far in the magical world. This can mainly be attributed to the fact that i have read and re read so many fake e books and fan fics, that i have lost track of where JKR left us. All that remains is a vague recollection that the Half Blood Prince was left at a tantalizing point of the series, and what ever remains in this woeful memory of mine is just a garbled up version of all the stupid and the not-so-stupid fanfics written under the sun.
So i decide its time to revise. And then i realize, that this is the only thing in my life that i have even thought of revising. And although revising it means back to square one, it hardly hurts. Now, THATS a first !
Stop No. 1 : Philosopher's stone.
To be continued... :P

Over

2007-07-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

Yes. IT is finally over. Fin. Ende. For all the non multi - lingual people people out there, THE END.
PS1 is finally history. A chapter in this book called my life is over. The fact that it has gained enough importance to occupy an entire chapter, warrants an explanation. Because, frankly, who in their right mind would attach any significance to it ?
Well, i feel this is the time to dispel any myths that anyone might have about my PS station. I have been at the recieving end of comments that we at Bitsunami have been doing nothing but whiling away our time to the point of getting bored of boredom. Sorry to pour cold water over these hallucinations, but heres an insider account of what life at bitsunami is really about.

When i got allotted Bitsunami as my ps station, i was the center of ridicule for the rest of the days leading upto PS, especially as it was one of my top 10 options. The 'knowledgeable ones' predicted a summer of catchin fish with the mouth and dancing around fires with adivasis. So encouraging.
I do not deny that i was highly skeptical of where we were supposed to work. Chennai or Vedaranyam ( for those not in the know, its the village that iv been makin field trips to ).
Ever the optimist that i try to be, however, i had a semblence of hope that the PS people would stick to what they had mentioined on paper - Chennai city.
Then began the roller coaster ride that was Bitsunami. An unwanted but non negotiable trip to the village and a sudden visit to Bangalore later, we finally landed up in the place where we were supposed to be stationed.
But unforseen thunderstorms began forming the day after we landed where we should have stayed put. Invisible Remote controls began acting upon us. Powerful energies tried to bend us to their will. The amount of wriggling out of situations that cannot be given justice on a mere blog, is worthy of entering the history books. Negotiations that would have made diplomats proud, were held under wraps of the blissful cover of Bitsunami. Our steadfast belief, and our unprecedented stubborness was what helped us salvage some benefit out of this inutile process. However it was not without consequenses. We came this close to getting our ps station cancelled. I wont go into any details here because of obvious reasons. In the end, a compromise was reached. The headlock was broken and everything continued as if nothing of particular significance had occured.
The entire duration of ps was one of enormous tension and worries. Something that other ps stations were blissfully unexposed to. everyday some new problem, some new but useless idea of a strategically well positioned person, and then endless discussions about how to go about tackling them, Phone calls to various parts of the city, unofficial meetings, and countless cribbings. All in one package . And all this projected to the world with a serene face.
The work done by ps1 students was perhaps more than most other ps stations. This claim may be rubbished by many, but we know, the instructor knows, and the institution knows. It is not the amount of work that is painful. It is the way in which it is conducted. Again, there is neither any need, nor any use of unnecessary details. This is the way it has been, and is likely to be in the future too.
Again the optimist in me crops up, looking for reasons to celebrate this collaboration. It is my insight into the big bad world. It is my glimpse of what may lie ahead. It is preparation for the worst. Although the entire post may seem pretty hollow, there will be people who shall fully be able to explore the depth of every apparent hollow sentence.
PS1 has indeed been a chapter. I might not have been completely successful in impressing the reason for this, but it is important to me that i can keep this as a record of what has been an unforgettable experience.
In the end, there shall be at least one clear straight-forward sentence in this post.

' My ps instructor rox . '

There has been a sudden transition from the old casual topics to this serious post. This is a one time affair, and im glad to say that i am gonna revert back to my original, care-free blogging once again. adios .

YOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOY

2007-07-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

This is gonna be a long one. I can feel it. Not unlike the marathon game that i had the previlige of watching. It really would have been a shame if i had missed it. And so, i begin , by thanking profusely, the Doordarshan management, who telecast the Wimbledon lawn tennis championships live from centre court on sunday the 8th of July. One marathon over, another begins :
Their meeting in the finals was inevietable. In fact, it had become just routine. Just a month ago, Roger had met with defeat at the hands of the king of clay. Any expectations of Federer emulating Bjorn Borg's record as conquerer of Britain n france together were quickly snuffed out with ruthless efficiency by Nadal. On grass, everyone expected to see a repeat of last years rout, by the Emperor ( not king , emperor ) of grass, a man , whose record is as imposing as his reputation of making mincemeat of big names on grass. Today was everything that we did not expect.
For one, i was resigned to once again miss the action live, n contend myself with score updates on the net. So u can image my delight when i saw the match being telecast live in doordarshan .
I started the match poised at 3-0 to roger. It looked all set for another whitewash like last year's
6-0 massacre in the 1st set. To my dismay, nadal clawed his way back to 3-3 . And this is where the point by point update stops. This is gonna be a decent post, not just a bland reproduction of the game.
I sat in front of the idiot box, watching this clash of the titans in the emperor's backyard. It was picturisque. Me, with eyes so wide they musta looked like tennis balls, in front of the tv, while everything else lay forgotten, the gusty winds blowing through the balcony right into me, carrying along with it that heavenly smell, the manvasanai , and roger looking set to romp home for a fifth time. However, the match was anything but a cake walk. The audience, i thought, musta got their money's worth in the first set itself. It was a roller coaster ride- from the pinnacles of ecstacy, to the terrible lows. Bobbing up n down like a madman, surely someone musta thot the heat has gotten to me. Well, the adrenaline refused to die down. I am known to be a staunch federer supporter. But today, i could not help but secretly admire ( ok its no more a secret ) the array of jaw-dropping shots stacked up in nadal's inventory, that too on grass.
For the first time, i was afraid for roger. Nadal was in a murderous mood. Federer had to descend from his usual impasse into the realm of mere mortals. The stupendous effort required to quell the challenge that this young 21 something posed was brought out in his unusually large number of clenched fists. But the game was not Federeresque. It was not even Wimbledonesque. It was more of rallies from the baseline, clay courtish play, in which we all know who is king. Things were looking grim for the emperor. The evergrowing threat to his empire and the way nadal eased into grass tennis was forcing the god of grass to come up with unbelievable shots that had spectators stunned. Wrong hawk eye challenges wernt makin things any easier for the defending champion. Here lay the single greatest challenge to Federer's ascendency on grass, where he has ruled for 4 long years. Things were not as simple as they appeared to the mere onlooker. It was a fierce battle of mental fortitudes. But the tough get going when the going gets tough . Just as things were lookin omnious for Fed-ex, he fired home a string of lightning fast aces that even the famed nadal coudnt return.
The momentum surges were so unpredictable that even the most seasoned astrologers wouldnt have forseen the way in which federer lost the 4th set. One thinks that winning a 2nd tie break in the finals of the greatest grand slam of all would bouy a person to the point of extreme confidence. But the fed serve suddenly looked lack lustre, losing all its lethality. Perhaps for the first time on grass, Fed looked uncomfortable. Rattled and out of sorts, he barely managed to salvage a few games in the set. Perhaps this was the awakening hat he needed. perhaps all he needed was a rude jerk out of his comfort zone. Which is what he got when in the final set, he was 4 break points down. I, was just hoping against hope for some miracle to save this world from the impending disaster.
The flirting with the lines continued for both players, only, after the jerk, fed was on the safe side of these lines. It was a subtle change in fortunes, engineered by the brilliance of Roger Federer, almost by stealth. Somehow, the fortunes turned. Confidence returned, insecurities were brushed aside. All the frustration welled up inside was vented through a once in a blue moon scream from the champion. Feeling at home once more, he rode home comfortably after achieving a break off the nadal serve in the last set.
The 2007 finals left not just the players, but even the specators, both physically and emotionally drained. This year's finals shall be hailed as the spaniards emergence as a new super power in the world of grass, away from his haven of clay. The mouthwatering rivalry between Roger n rafa shall go down in the annals of history as one of the most intriguing rivalries ever in the open era of tennis.
The great Ivan Lendl once said : Grass is for the cows.
well, i say, Rafa, its time, to moo.

The Chennai Marvel

2007-07-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

Fate has been kind to me. Really merciful.In spite of being born a Bombayite, n brought up as a Mumbaikar, i am quite inexperienced regarding the daily grill of a typical mumbaikar. I am , of course, talking about that marvel of mumbai that is called the lifeline of this wonderous city. Local Trains. They say, if you havent travelled in a local train in mumbai, you havent seen mumbai, you havent lived, you have no adventure spirit. Well, i cannot claim to have experienced the true local train ride. Most of my travelling has been by road, and occasionally by the afternoon weekend train. Which is certainly not the 'Mumbai train experience' . Its not that im not an adventurous type ( how wud i have chosen bitsunami otherwise eh ? :P ).

Its just that there never arose a need to go through that grinding, quite literally. But i think fate decided it was time i had a taste of what i was missing. They say fate catches up with you no matter where you go, what you do. Thats exactly what happened with me, when i unsuspectingly boarded an otherwise peaceful looking green bus that is typical of chennai. Little did i anticipate what was in store for me. Todaym owing to excess of work at ps, i had to leave on time ( :P ) for once. Which is the rush hour. The stop where i board the bus is relatively near its starting point, so it is quite reasonable to board the bus without a second thought. Buti was in for a shock, as in the very next stop, came rushing a crowd as if someone was giving away free gold inside the bus. From then on, there was no lookin back. Bones i never knew existed came into prominance. A majority of my muscles got a free massage in the bus. There was no room for an elbow. I seriously felt sorry for the bacteria that might have been trapped between two people. It was worst at the stops. People losing all civil sense, and it turned out to be a battle of strength between the tide of people trying to rush in madly, and the desperate ones trying to get out. Ultimately it led to typical chaos and confusion, with squabbles breaking out, slowing the bus journey even more. Infact, the only reason i could make head or tail of the squabble was because being slightly on the taller side as compared to the average indian bus traveller, my head was above most of the heads, and at least got few whiffs of fresh air that seemed like the breeze of my life. As only the portion of my body above the neck region was movable, i craned my neck to see what stop had come. With the result that i got a rude stare from some guy who apparently was in a foul mood. He might have been muttering something, but i was too relieved not to be at the recieving end of some mundane local outburt, so hardly payed attention.
At last Mylapore tank stop arrived, and i now was part of the party that was trying to get out of the bus, against the huge tide of people who were lookin desperately for ways to get in.
A few mutterings and shouts later, the other side compromised, and allowed our team ( lol ) to go through.
This ordeal left me wondering at the marvel that was that rickety bus. It looked as if one good kick would do the job. Yet it was supporting almost an army. To say the bus was overflowing with people would be the understatement of the century. Yet, it chugged along. And that, my dear friends, is the marvel. Just like locals are the lifeline of Mumbai, it can be said busses are the lifelines of chennai. I can also now claim to have a near experience of a mumbai local at rush hour. :D
PS:
Though i have expressed this in a much more positive way than would have been believed of me by most who think they know me, i assure you this trip has rid me of any whim or inclination that i had, of travelling in one of Mumbai's locals :)

OMG

2007-07-04T20:23:00.000-07:00

For the past few days iv been so jobless that even my steadily rusting mind has felt the need for some warming up of those grey cells so unused in the past 2 years. Yesterday, when i was going through the inutile process called PS1, as usual with mindless myriad musings in my head, i decided to calculate the financial aspect of PS1 with the BITS administration's perspective. Yea, i know it is the height of joblessness, but extremely vella that i am, it can be taken as quite a healthy excercise for my grey matter as compared to PS1 at least. But i never expected to be jerked out of my torpor so abruptly, and begin to doubt if all this inactivity has at last taken its toll on my mental health.
The task that i had embarked upon, of calculating the financial aspect of PS1, was not one which neccesitated the use of a calculator. In order to give my brain at least some activity, and owing to my inherent laziness to go to a comp n open calc.exe or take up a calculator from my bag, i decided to do the calculation mentally. The results were so atrocious that i had myself reeling from the aftereffects of the revelation. Here i summarize the results :

The amount paid by Bitsians for ps1 spanning 2 months ( it is 1.5 months, but i take it as two months for simplified calculation .. remember i dint have a calculator :P )
= Rs 11,250.00

Number of students totally = 800 + 600 ( an approximation, nonetheless quite acceptable )
= 1400

Amount recieved for these 2 months = Rs. 11,250 X 1400 = Rs. 15,750,000 ( 15 million ! WOW ! )

Expenses borne by the administration in these 2 months :

Salary for the instructors and staff :
assuming a really generous salary of 75,000 per month for the instructors, and an even more generous estimation of their number at around 75, we get the total cost of employing them instructors = 75,000 X 75 X 2 ( the '2' factor bcoz of two months ) = Rs. 11,250,000
11 million for our dear profs , if that aint generous , i dunno wat is !

Maintanence costs : NONE
other costs : even though i cannot fathom any major expenses for the adminstration, i am so generous as to allot Rs. 500,000 for miscellaneous expenses.

After deducting the expenses, we arrive at a stagerring figure of Rs. 4,000,000 !
( 4 million , c0000000l)

see,me doubting my own sanity is quite reasonable. ( dont worry, i checked it all on a calci, makin sure theres no mistake in the calculations. But the ramifications of my calculations being correct were fully felt by my atthai ( its tamil, for those who dun understand, take it as aunt ) , who had to be party to my infinite cribbings on the financial extravaganza that is ps1 for bits , all day yday :P)

Now i want to ask, where does all this go ? what happpens with all this money ? Mr. chancellor, are you listening ?? :P

Answers ?

2007-07-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

This has been inspired by a number of articles i read in the past 24 hrs pertaining to a basic sense of cleanliness, rather , the lack of it, inbred into the majority of the indian population. This by no means is a new topic... it has been discussed for eons. It is the illogical double standards of our countrymen that is baffling to the mind. Take, for example, our beaches. Starting off with the place im stationed at present, Chennai, we look at the marina beach. A few days back i was just strolling around the beach in the evening, relishing the pleasant change in the weather, from the scorching chennai summer to overcast monsoon clouds. As usual, the Marina was a plethora of activity, from people taking their evening walks, couples snuggled in the cool sea breeze, children running around in their typical playful endeavours, to shopkeepers trying to lure customers into their shops. In the midst of all this i coudnt help observing a fine young couple walking along the sealine, having a couple of wrappers that come with those eatables in the numerous shops spread across the sprawling beach. I observed how they casually passed on the wrappers to the free hand, slided it down and just deposited it on the sandy surface. All this without batting an eyelid. As if it is in their second nature to just keep dropping things anywhere they please. In spite of the fact that there was a dustbin not 5 metres away.
The case is no different in Mumbai. The juhu beach, famed for its proximity to the houses of film stars and celebrities, is a frequented by a large number of people. Although not as encompassing as the Marina, it is still a spot to be visited on the Mumbai tourist's trip. The case here is no different than the one described above. People with the I-Dont-care attitude just dumping things here and there unmindful of any thing. This is the standard scene at most indian beaches on the tourist map.
Which brings me to Goa. The land of the beaches. What strikes particularly about goan beaches is the absence of such garbage in the beaches. In spite of a large number of beaches spread throughout the state, all the beaches that iv gone to are spick n span . It is not as if they are not frequented by tourists and locals alike. In fact they are the most visited places on any tourist's map. Why this double standard ? Im sure it is not the fault of the cleaning agencies in the metros. In both Mumbai and Chennai, the corporators have taken commendable measures to try and clean up the beaches. The marina is extensively cleaned through state-of-the-art machines regularly. The BMC ( brihanmumbai muncipal corp. ) alloted 10 crores of rupees for the cleanliness drive of the juhu beach. These proactive measures are taken up in all these beaches. Yet, the difference. In spite of the fact that it is the same indian tourist who travels to these places. One has to realize that all the unnecessary expenditure is straight out of the tax payer's pockets. Why people dont realize it, is beyond me.
Which brings me back to my question. Why this double standard by the people ? Why the difference in behaviour ? It is something to which i have drawn nought whichever direction i have gone. Answers, anyone ?

Same game, different name

2007-07-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading the book 'To kill a mockingbird' by Harper Lee, and i have to say it is one of the best ones iv read. Although the setting is in the early 1900s upto the 1930s , it is surprisingly relevant today. The story is set in an imaginary plave called Maycomb im the state of Alabama, and basically focusses on the shocking amount of racism prevalent just a few decades ago. Through the eyes of a small girl, it provides an intriguing insight into the world as the little girl sees it. The main character who really gains your respect and sympathy is the girl's father, Atticus, a lawyer by profession. In a conservative town like Maycomb, he does the unthinkable: to defend a coloured man . The story is narrated with expertise, which makes you see the world through the girl's eyes. It is an engaging narration, one that is bound to have you hooked on for more as the story progresses. Mainly, the writer has brought out the meaning that he has wanted to convey very clearly : That a few people steadfast about their beliefs, can bring about a change in the entire attitude of the society that they live in.
The intresting thing is that it is very relevant in todays world also. All around us we see caste politics being shamelessly played by the Politicians. Even in that greenest of grasses yonder, The United States, there is a distinction between blacks and whites, although unoficially. They have their own way of living, and are generally expected to adhere to it.India is an epicenter of caste politics. Everywhere we go, religion comes into play. A muslim is always regarded suspiciously in the UK and the US. An asian is not that easily allowed to blend with the native american people, regardless of his background and potential. All this is still the same as the blatant disregard for the blacks that the whites had during the penning of this book. Only today it has a different name. The game remains the same. Still hope remains. There will always be people like Atticus, who will bring a ray of hope to the oppressed. There will always arise a hero for the downtrodden. That is how a society progresses. Things are slowly changing, as the world continues to shrink, and people get closer and closer. But the point is, why do we need to wait for such a hero ? Why do we need to depend on a person to do what we all can together achieve ? All it needs is a bit of compromise and understanding. And of course a little common sense. Some may argue that recent events have led to a wave of paranoia that is primarily responsible for hostile behaviour. But paranoia was never a solution, caution, perhaps, but never paranoia.
Inspite of such obstacles, the world moves on. Who knows, someday may arise a hero, who, like Atticus, will bring this Maycomb of a world to light. Till then, we shall move on...

Depth ? Whats that ?

2007-06-30T05:30:00.000-07:00

Due to the quite unusual but heartwarming circumstances prevalent in my life currently, which is just another way of expressing the lack of PS activity during the past week, i have been having enormous quantities of free time which is being almost criminally wasted in activities that many would deem worthless to a so-called developing mind. During one of my many escapades from the worldly duties into the webosphere ( yes i coined the word on the spot ) , i came across a set of beautiful blogs on the net. Reading it made me feel like a microbe would feel if it knew how big the earth was. Extraordinarily small and insignificant. And of course, sprang to my mind, the numerous occasions when i have been reminded of the lack of 'depth' in my writing, of how it all is so childish and immature.
So should i change my way of writing ? Should i start expending my effort to compose philosophical talk, which bear no resemblence to the turbulance of thoughts in my mind ?
I say, NO! A blog is supposed to be a medium to let out one's thoughts, and i dont want to change that . So what if my writing is in no way comparable to that 15 year old's, so what if he is to be the next pulitzer prize winner, it is no reason to change the way iv been blogging. When it comes to writing, its a different matter. So, thankful though i am for the criticism pouring my way, i would rather pour out my thoughts in the manner they come, rather than artificially dressing them up in a philosophical manner. Till then, i shall be happy to just be an amatuer, spending my time doing next to nothing in the so called webosphere . :)

Fiasco !

2007-06-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

Yeah, my last post was truly a fiasco. In fact it was so much a fiasco that i am forced to overwrite the post with this one.
There are a few wonderful things that happened this week. Foremost of which is that it rained cats n dogs here in chennai today. Thats quite unusual, for those not aquainted with the usual weather conditions in Chennai. And of course, i din't have to go for ps. So glad to wake up knowing that i wont have to go through that drudgery schedule of mine. And miss all those horrible muddy roads so unaccustomed to downpours .... i think u get the idea.

Also, Roger, the man im rooting for to win Wimbledon this year, and emulate Bjorn Borg, has been performing quite well, showing sparks of his brilliance so much missed at rolland garros :D .

Thirdly, Thierry henry is going to Barca. I know i will irk the hardcore gooners, but frankly, he needs the change. He's given his best to arsenal, and its time he made choices that will allow him to expand. Of course it helps that now Barca is lined up with a forward n midfield that is unparalled anywhere in the world.
( yea im a sportz buff :P )

And of course, im back from the village. Phew. I thought it'd never be over. But the week has gone past swiftly, leaving behind a trail of memories both pleasant and unpleasant, which no doubt shall be etched in the mind forever. My only regret is that i did not carry my camera with me to the village. It would have been nice to share some of the moments with others.

So now a fortnight remains of Ps1. Though it has not been supremely productive, it has given us a new experience, and a glimpse of the world beyond the student life, in its all encompassing nature, waiting to devour us all. That, if not anything else, has thrown into significance the amazing period of life that is youth, the wonderous time that will soon be gone, leaving behind a misty past of fond rememberances.
There. You all Misty eyed now ? Have i enlightened you , brought you to light from the chasms of dark and dreary bottomless pits ? If i have, then good. Please all you Bitsians reading this , do your best to lower the booming average and lemme get a decent gpa for once. lol crashed back to reality eh ?

Ruddy Brilliant >:-[

2007-06-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

What is your usual reaction, when some salesman comes knock knock knocking on your door , and asks you a few worthess questions, and then tries to sell you something pathetic that will live upto its promised standard only if cows sprout wings all of a sudden and start flying here and there ??
Yea, thats our job , the salesman thingy , courtesy:bitsunami . Only we'v got to do this in a village area. Thats where im stationed right now.Brilliant , aint it ?? Especially going to people who have been expecting some developmental work for quite some time, in vain, and then go n ask irritating questions, n then ask them if they would like to buy better quality fuel if and when it is introduced in the village ?? Just like salesmans job, no ?
Well, one of the things that Bitsunami has taught me is that whatever comes your way, comes hard at you. Its upto u, whether u take it like a bouncer thrown by bret lee straight at your face, or u start thinking how you could utilize the kitneic energy to do work. Well, if what i mean to say is too murky to u, all im sayin is that one should learn to take things positively. n blah blah.
Wel i can atleast be hapy that we'r doing some social service. No,not in the village, not by askin iritatin question to the innocent villagers, but doing service to our Fellow bitsians. By making them feel a lot better about their PS stations. This is the way bitsunami spreads happiness all around the country. Amazing institution eh ??
PS: God bless reliance wireless . :P

Ditch, International Ditch !

2007-06-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

There are some things which are never told to the public. Operations , which have no record of existence. Lurking in the background, they play a vital role in effecting various changes which often assume mind boggling proportions. Millions of lives are affected by these operations, but they continue to look elsewhere for the source. The government is hand-in-gloves with the perpetrators of atrocities commited during these discreet operations. Most people never realize the magnitude of the conspiracy behind small matters than may even go unnoticed.

Some, however , unfortunate to have landed against such powerful foes in the first place, fortunately get a glimpse of the enormity of the comspiracy. They are the chosen ones. They are the ones who are hand picked by the secret shadows ( for want of a better name ) and shown a picayune moiety of the world of the mysterious. And gape with eyes as wide as they can get. Gasp . Try to grasp the enormity . And stand there helpless. Paraplegic. Not unlike little clay pigeons. As you probably might have guessed, I am one of the pitiful ones. A subject of international mockery. Starting Sunday the 17th.
Thats what was told to me yesterday by them doordarshan fellas. Starting Sunday the 17th.
7:00 AM . IST . I assumed the standard definition of IST, and prepared for a max of an hour of delay. My violin per4mance to be aired. On national television. My mum had told a plethora of people about it. From the southern most tip of the country, to Uncle Sam's land.
And its 7:00 Am. 17th June . 2007. I am rudely woken up by a phone call from Mumbai. And the usual this n that about being lazy n waking up late n all. Resigned to my fate, but a faint curiosity about the doordarshan telecast arising in my mind, i wake up from slumberland.
Blink. See ? There's the television ! Aah the groggy mind of the just awoken ! Some crap about something going on . When am I coming in there ( pointing to the tv ) ?? Hmm guess id have to wait. IST being followed . Almost religously. Well its only a matter of an hour. Minute after minute of god-knows-what . All for this moment. And ting! Its 8. Aah . Ditchkiyoun !
Nothing Remotely resembling me in there. The last thing i wanted. To be ditched so internationally. But as always, theres an upside. I immediately think of my blog. Of how i can Trick all you people into reading a whole load of crap. And there's my revenge :D . Im not the only fool anymore :D ! Welcome to the club !
yours anonymously,
anonymous,
President,
Fools Anonymous

2007-06-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

Just added some cool new scripts n codes in the html template ...like the cursor ( doesnt work in firefox ) and the virtual pet :P ...ill be adding some more in a while ... bO.ored rite now

Lolism : Thats what is PS1 !

2007-06-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Today, just when i had completed my so called 'work' for today and was preparing to leave the room in my ps1... when i realised that i spend on an average more time in malls than in the ps station ... take today for example ... reported at 10 30, left at 12 for lunch to spencers ... came back at 3 [ :P ] , went bac to spencers at 4 , nd came home at 9 30 [ ;-) ] though this was by no means an average day, how much ever i wish it were , it should give you an idea of what an average day would be like .
And while in spencers, one eats... and while eating, my usual worthless mind was once again devoid of any useful thoughts, just blankly floating in the vast reaches of the parallel universe... and all i did was eat ..
though, today , after trying out many new varieties supposedly from various parts of thw world, i concluded that indian food was the best, unbeatable, unsurpassable in taste, n the height of satisfaction given by eating it unsurmountable .... ( though of course all these comments might be the products of an exceptionally hungry stomach )
im sleepy now so good night i cant type two more words properly.

Phew !

2007-06-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Ever thought what it would be like to be a celebrity ?? No doubt it would have been filled with dreams of swanky cars, hip locality, getting all the good things in life , poof !
One visit to the studio sent all these heveanly thoughts packing into oblivion.

Yesterday was the recording at the Doordarshan Chennai headquarters for my violin performance ... thought i wasnt as excited and enthusiastic about coming on TV as any sane person would be, I never expected to be thoroughly exasperated ...

I missed my Ps as a consequence , for which i am not at all sorry , but the recording sapped up twice the energy that an entirely normal day at ps would. 5 hrs of frustrating shooting, sitting in front of god-knows-how-many cameras and lights and what not, pretending to the world that im having the best time of my life , while in actuality its just sum blown-out-of-proportion thing... Only good thing was that i dint become any poorer for the effort :P

I would really like to continue with my rantings on this n that, but i happened to notice the clock thingy on the left, which brings me crashing back to the ground ( thank god theres no gravity in my thoughts ;) ) ..no there hasnt been a sudden realization or transformation of any kind, its just that i managed to grasp the ingenious way in which i have spent away the entire day . And the doorbell rings. ciao .

Fragment : Consider Revising

2007-06-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

You must be careful, you know, when u wish for something to happen, especially if that something makes other people look at you with that typical stare , that they usually reserve for mentally unstable people , and that happens unexpectedly, just when you are getting used to your not-so-perfect surroundings, and finally making peace with the world, and that sends your aldready confused n frustrated brain crashing into oblivion, making you wonder , what, just what made you wish for such an absurd and ludicrous wish.
My case is an exemplerary example of this situation ...
Why can't i be happy to be just whiling away my time doing next to nothing, just sitting and revising old reports, right clicking the green n red underlined words, and then ' Fragment: consider revising ' ..... especially after having escaped from the otherwise cruel alternative of spending our vacation in a godforsaken village parked south.... but no....my brilliant mind has other ideas..... i just have to wish for proper work to be given ....... cant be satisfied with gettin just bored a bit everyday..... and lo ! behold ! my wish hath cometh true !!!!!
So , my dear jobless readers, i am gonna work my ass off from tomorrow to meet the deadlines given by a raging madman ! AND TO TOP IT ALL , ROGER FEDERER LOST TO NADAL ONCE AGAIN ....BAH TALK ABOUT A VACATION !!!

Justine does it again :D

2007-06-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

And the ladies final at roland garros is over, Justine Henin once again demonstrating her mastery and profieciency on clay....and once again corroborating my nonpareil knack of identifying exceptional and preeminent performers from the not so extraordinary ones, almost always :P ... this might sound like the words of a bloody snobbish bighead, but hey , history is a witness to the great prognostic abilities of Lord Oink !!

And tomorrow is the BIG day ....Fed-ex vs nadass ... no prizes for guessing who i support...
but such is my fate that i get landed in a city with bloody set top boxes and no star sports connection ... so im all set to miss the match that promises to be unmissable ...bah

So my dear jobless readers reading a moonstruck imbecilic moron's maniacal blog :P , lets eat ( i say eat, cuz i dont drink )to a roger federer victory at roland garros at long last !

KniOledge's first !

2007-06-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

the collosal task of peregrinating from my place to the place of my métier, especially in a place like Chennai, is what is making me so frustrated that im begining to use words that i dont quite comprehend ... but what i do is certainly commendable... and to top it, we have the inexorable and intransigent system of the phenomenal ( sarcasm intended ), truculent PS1 station that is Bitsunami...whose imbecilic harebrained moronic nonsensical trustees feel we the brilliant PS1 students of BITS-pilani are naive enough to actually want to do work... and who give two weeks off as a punishment ( ROFL ) but later feel its too harsh a punishment so end up cancelling the holiday to our consternate selves ... call it the iron clad fist of fate or just the pure hebetudinous self that made me choose this as my ps1 station .