Theoretical Probability

Is there anybody out there?

2006-01-03T04:20:00.000-08:00

Hellooooo ooooo ooooooo...... is there anybody out there?? Its been a long long time... is blogging still in or is that concept defunct now? Is there anyone left of what was the blogging community? Or is my obituary premature right now?
So many questions... lets wait for some answers ;).

Creative ways to kill yourself – A Compendium

2005-08-12T16:13:00.000-07:00

Depression depression… seems to get the better of me these days. There are so many things going wrong lately. First we completed our degree which meant the end of student life to most of us. Then it was vacating the hostels, which was a bigger blow. Then there is this stupid custom to fend for ourselves in the form of doing a job. And the biggest blow lies in the fact that I will have to leave for Bangalore tomorrow!

Man now this is sacrilege, blasphemous, heresy… all the adjectives fall short of describing my feelings about leaving Hyderabad and it’s biryani. You see when you stay in Hyderabad for a long period like 11 years, you automatically become a hyderabadi at heart. And ofcourse there is this pain of leaving my family too (I kinda got habituated to coming home on the weekends… though many of my friends will find that quite debatable). Then added to these already towering pains, there is also this streak of screwed up interviews, which in retrospect, were quite funny… it will make a good topic for my next blog. But all this doesn’t abate the pain I am undergoing right now :((.

Then, one day, I was taking a stroll on the beach in Chennai…err… wait a second, it wasn’t me, it was some photographer from TOI. He caught this interesting photo and the article was even more interesting. But, I couldn’t help but observe that the odd coincidence of this photo and the article, making complete sense. It is like the photograph was “engineered” in a way to appeal specially to the people of our batch. Our interest lies in the male protagonist in the photograph. There is a striking resemblance between the person in photograph and the person we know. Now ofcourse our friend denies this allegation in the sourest of terms, but, what does he know? :)

8^th August, 2005. Page Number 14, Times Of India.

No matter how hilarious the situation is, but it didn’t help my depressed state of mind at all. It made me think where the world is heading to? Man why do hot bombshells always fall for the gay’est men (gay boleto, happy and gay wala… not the homo one ;) )…ok ok, I know that there is no justice in this world because, if the world were to do justice to us, we will be picking up rags and classifying trash as “bio-degradable” and hmm… “raw material for our mess”, but Alas! We have just graduated from one of the best institutes in India.

But, the aforesaid, disturbing chain of events made me brood over the possibility of committing suicide by squeezing my balls or pulling my eye balls out of the socket. But then I thought, why not list all the possibilities of killing oneself in STYLE (I am trying to buy some time here by writing something immaterial, hope you understand my spirit to live a bit longer and do this great service to mankind).

I don’t want the news of my suicide to be a mundane one like “he hanged himself from the ceiling fan like Tom/D**k/Harry”, or “he consumed poison like Tom/D**k/Harry”, or “he slit his wrist like Tom/D**k/Harry”. The above mentioned methods don’t do justice to a creative person like yours truly :). So here are a few entries/experiments I jotted down on my “Record Book” (yes I believe in doing everything in a systematic manner, even when it involves killing myself!)

Experiment 1

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : Our own mess “food” (there is a reason for my quoting the so called food ok).

Procedure : (Now if you were thinking that this experiment involves eating of mess “food” to die, damn you don’t know what creativity is at all! I pray to god that even my enemies shouldn’t have the ill fate of eating the “food” here ;) ) Take a small sample of our mess “food” in a plate. Now remove all your protective clothing and your hand gloves. Don’t forget to remove your mask. Now that we have removed all the protective anti-radiation suit, the harmful radiations from our mess “food” will do the job in couple of minutes.

Note : The radiation emanating from the “food” is strong enough. Don’t get over enthusiastic and actually consume the “food”!

Observation : All the harmful radiation in the spectrum were found emanating from the sample taken.

Conclusion : mess “food” is the best way to kill yourself and also, it is available thrice a day!

Experiment 2

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : lots of money.

Procedure : Using the money, take a flight to London. After landing at the Heathrow airport, when you come across the police personnel, just start running in the opposite direction.

Note : For best results, sport a stubble and have a constipated look on your face. Your skin colour and your Asian origin will do the rest.

Observation : Probability of your head brimming with bullets is approximately = 1.1

Conclusion : Success guaranteed under the present scenario.

Experiment 3

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : A blunt blade, balls(metaphorical ones)

Procedure : Take the blunt blade and start rubbing it on your throat.

Note : Blood loss might result in you passing out and fail in your quest.

Observation : A messy experiment in general. Tests your drive.

Conclusion : Tests have shown that it is quite impossible to survive in a decapitated state.

Experiment 4

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : Manja or a copper wire (without the sheath of course!), a tree or a ceiling fan

Procedure : This is a variant of “hanging from the ceiling by a rope” procedure. In place of a rope, you are using the manja, which is used when flying kites or the copper wire.

Note : the manja/copper wire and the ceiling fan or the tree branch should be able to support your weight.

Observation : More effective than the rope version.

Conclusion : Quite a practical method but lacks much creativity because we are effectively changing the variables here (from rope to wire).

Experiment 5

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : A 2 inch pocket knife, a handkerchief

Procedure : Tie your handkerchief around your face. Hold the pocket knife menacingly in your hand. Go to a butcher’s shop and threaten them to give you all their money or bear the consequence (waving your pocket knife).

Note : Choose a shop with more number of butchers for better result.

Observation : Human flesh, like the animal flesh is quite susceptible to the butcher’s blade.

Conclusion : Don’t know whether it is more creative or taking dumbness to a new extreme... but what the heck, I like this one :).

Experiment 6

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : A pistol, president of the US

Procedure : Approach the president and take out your pistol. Strike an impressive pose (like the one in the promos of “James Bond” flicks ) in front of the president.

Note : There might be a risk of failure in your attempt if the secret service is too intelligent and allows you to shoot the president and then award you a medal of honor for saving the US from the embarrassment that he is.

Observation : Security of the US president is quite impressive.

Conclusion : The best method to be famous and also dead!

Experiment 7

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : A pistol, large number of blanks (i.e. fake bullets, you @#$%)

Procedure : Go to a bank and hold everybody hostage. When all the police battalions (including the ones from the neighboring states) arrive with their semi-automatics and AK47s, come out of the bank and start shooting the blanks at them at random.

Note : Wait till there are enough policemen.

Observation : Probability of “atleast” one policeman hitting the target out of the 100s assembled, is quite good.

Conclusion : You get to mock the police and fool them too, before dying i.e.

Experiment 8

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : a lot of worst movies ever made.

Procedure : Just watch all the movies in a row. Movies like “Pootie Tang”, “The Ring”, “The Village”, “Gigli”, “Signs”, “Naach”, “Jaani Dushman” are known to be injurious to health. Any cheap hindi or telugu remake of any English blockbuster will do too. Try to fight off slumber by using gadgets as shown in the image below

Note : Movies like “Jaani Dushman” can be hilariously stupid. Don’t forget to keep all these movies in a playlist lest you lose some valuable “Entertainment” time changing the disks or even double clicking.

Observation : zzzZZZ

Conclusion : Quite a painful way to die.

Experiment 9

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : Rain fall, large varieties of mosquitoes.

Procedure : Go out in the rain and keep your mouth open. Wait till it is filled with water. Try to drink as much water as possible until your stomach explodes or you choke to death (can also be done with anything to eat, like peanuts or chips etc. etc.). If both of the above things don’t happen, the mosquitoes will definitely take care of you, especially when there is an epidemic of malaria and dengue.

Note : You might have a neck cramp or something when facing the sky for long durations. You don’t want to be unfit when you kill yourself. Or else, it wont account to suicide you jacks, it will be like dying of some disease!

Observation : There were cases of irritability due to a rash caused by the wet clothes.

Conclusion : This method of dying is only for the most patient of humans.

Experiment 10

Aim : To kill yourself creatively.

Apparatus : Red, white and black paint.

Procedure : Take off your shirt, paint round concentric circles of alternate colours of white and black and put a big red dot at the centre. Now you have a custom made bulls-eye on your shirt. Now go to a firing range where the army is training its cadets in well.. shooting (what else did you expect in a firing range you dumbasses?)and replace one of the targets with yourself.

Note : Stand completely still for better results.

Observation : Our army cadets are GOOD with guns :).

Conclusion : It makes you wonder about the last moments of Mata-Hari somehow…

Miscellaneous Experiments

1) Chatting on your cell phone on the railway track, holding your other ear with your hand to cut out all the train whistles disturbing you.

2) Try to learn the composition of a hand grenade by sawing it open laterally.

3) Drying your wet clothes on a high voltage power line.

4) Drinking water from the “Tank Bund” (really don’t know which moron will do that).

5) Do a ghulam trick, just with a variation that you don’t jump out when the train arrives.

6) Attending all the classes…. And then meeting the placement officer to top it all off.

7) Pillion riding with some of the most illustrious drivers of our time viz. Cheddi, Undar, Pondy, Tejo etc. etc.

8) Wearing Red clothes from head to toe and then trying to pull off as a cowboy in the vicinity of angered cattle.

9) Strangle yourself… don’t let yourself to blackout due to oxygen depravation (now that’s tricky).

10) Well there are always diseases like AIDS, Cancer etc. etc. (if all the above methods fail)

The list is quite endless. But there might still be some more creative ideas. You see I don’t want to do away with anything that is inferior. It has to be the best way possible. Truly an “Idea to die for”! So until then, let me try and adjust with this wretched life of mine.

PS0 : To add to my depression, I have to inform you with a heavy heart that my biographical flick (see two posts below or follow this ) has been shelved owing to some financial troubles due to the alleged “links” of the producer with the underworld and the cameraman being shot in London when he was jogging in the park listening to his brand new i-pod in the opposite direction of the police (you see, he couldn’t have heard their soft plea to stop). Also there were some reports sparking apprehensions that the movie would not be received with the enthusiasm which was expected at the start of the venture.

PS1 : I am going to the movie “Mangal Pandey – The Rising” after much ado (You know, this movie is booked for a month or so), had to tell dad how patriotic the movie is (my father watches only patriotic movies and police flicks.. the only exception being Lagaan… basically, he hates watching movies in the theater). He made a phone call and lo… I hear a Merc E-Class screech to halt in front of our gate and the owner of Sangeet himself (some Tiwary) has come to deliver the tickets to us personally, that too for the first day second show… “Profession ho to aisa!” .. now I too want to be an IPS officer :). Does anybody know the easiest subjects and the syllabus for the UPSC?

PS2 : In my effort to assimilate as much of Hyderabad as possible in the last day of my stay here, we are going to Nagarjuna sagar to see all the gates open in their full glory today (13^th August, 2005)!

PS3 : This might as well be my last posts. And I am taking a bow on a … ya you guessed it right.. on a “Depressing” note. You see, there is a vague possibility that the company wont pay me to sit on my a$$ and might contemplate MAKING me work.

PS4 : No “Shaik of Hyderabad”/s was/were hurt/killed/injured in the above experiments.

Great News!

2005-08-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

No, no, Indian armed forces didn’t recapture POK. But good news shouldn’t always be at that big a scale. Even small things in life can bring you much happiness (yes that IS true!).

Well what I wanted to tell here was, sometime back I had this discussion with my father where he said that there are people in India who ate dogs and cats. It was really hard for me to believe that at that time. I thought that such recipes were rife only in countries like China and the likes.

So when I saw one of the cats (I might add that this cat belongs to the family of cats who were born in the vast nooks, corners, storerooms and garages of my house. In fact, I have seen atleast 8-10 generations of this feline’s "family tree" before my very eyes... so that makes them very special) being captured by some mysterious looking people from the rooftop of a house nearby. I couldn’t make out whether it was the cat which we know or some other one.

But you see, the cat had these cute little kittens (4 in number) and after that incident, I observed that these little kittens were prowling in our garden and boundary wall and looked very sad (yes I know when the animals are sad) and the absence of their mother was very conspicuous by its absence. They are so small that they dont even know how to drink the milk kept in the saucer. Dont know how they are going to survive :(.

Now I remembered the story of my father about that gross cuisines, when i was thinking about the current context of the absence of the cat. I was too depressed to even put two and two together and I hoped away from hope that it wont happen. Atleast not in my locality!

But today (in fact just now) I saw the cat return and in good health. I just couldn’t help but jump with joy and tell my mom and dad to have a look and reprimanded dad for his theory that really upset (exasperate) me so much…

But the cat was too busy to even give us any heed. She was more than busy looking at a mouse which has just ran into the drain. You see it is waiting very patiently for that mouse to come out, showing us what “concentration” really means. It looks more like a statue now (when I last checked) from the last half an hour or so. I cant help but pity that poor mouse, but you see the cat has to have her lunch too especially when it has those quite little kittens to feed :).

So anyways, folks, I am leaving for Ongole (at 6pm to be precise after an hour i.e.) for someone’s wedding whom I hardly know. God I hate attending any functions or parties. My parents insist that you should meet everybody before going for your job. Man do they think that I am going to some war from where I can never return? But well, reason before parents is like common-sense before Bush. So let's leave it at that.

And as far as my previous blog is concerned, I will complete it when I come back on 11^th. Till then cio and let there be plenty of mices around the corner :).

"Size Does Matter" – A Biography of my unnamed friend - Part1

2005-08-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

Now now, before you start cracking Lil’ Johny jokes, let me elucidate a bit.

Was in the bed squirming, at 6am in the morning, for the insomniac that I have become [sigh!]. Then suddenly I have this idea, “Why not write a biography about one of my very close friend, and then ask him to write one about me and then swapping our masterpieces and changing the title to Autobiography”?. Great idea right? Worth writing at this odd hour! So anyways, here it goes. Now before I start, let me tell you that as we are going to swap our work, I am going to write in first person ;).

Also, since everybody is writing their blogs in text, let me put some animation and characters in this biography and transform it into a movie, atleast story wise okey?

Chalo then lets have a mahurat shot…. where’s the coconut?

[ Scene-1 Biography-I – The Early Days ]

Picture this scene in black and white… and with some scratches on the VHS tape (in short a very old movie if you please. Back when I was in LKG)

A little boy is trying to have his lunch with his girl next door sweetheart. He is an obedient and a certified “Good Boy”. Teachers used to address him as “Hey “Good Boy” please come here” and “Wow good boy, you are so great! Here’s a chocolate for you.”

Now coming back to the context, so he was having lunch with his sweet friend when this bully (with a big mole on his cheek and a scar spanning his face and in UKG…sheesh big guy this) comes and puts mud in his lunch box.

Now as our lil kid here is a “good boy” right, so he ignores imbecility of the bully and turns a blind eye to his actions.

But you know the psychology of a bully right? They are very persistent. So, obviously, this bully starts pushing and poking this “good boy” and in other words, tries his level best to pick up a fight. At that time our “good boy” doesn’t know that the bully has a big time crush on the lil’ sweet girl by his side (you can say that there is a twist in this story!).

Now the little sweet gal by the “good boy”s side doesn’t want the bully to get the better of her mate so she starts to shout “Run good boy RUN!” and then she shouts again and again and again and again…. Until the good boy is out of the scene or too small to be visible by a camera, unless a n00b director tries to shoot this film with a telescope instead of a camera :).

/* Next shot : The camera zooms to the little feet of the “good boy” and in a Speilberg’s blockbuster level of graphics, they are magically transformed into the feet of a teenage boy running AFTER a bully */

CUT Great shot :)

[ End Scene-1]

More to follow in this “future Oscar winning” Biographical work… Stay tuned! (Hope my friend accepts his biography in a .avi format rather than the .doc or .txt one.)

Broadband?? Lets talk about “band” first…

2005-08-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

So, when we had (alleged) 4Mbps connection for internet in the college, the most useful thing I ever did was to go to the imdb site to read the reviews. I never had to use internet in the college because the LAN was more than whatever I needed. LAN is one of the biggest thing I miss after my Room No:91 (and now now… I miss my friends too, but let us be very honest here you don’t even come close to my room and LAN okey? And ya truth hurts ;) shoo shoo).

But once you leave the cozy insulated realms of your college, the most important thing you have to bother about is – checking your mails and to have something so that we don’t die of boredom in the house. And its kinda given that being a lazy person as I am, I don’t like to cross the road to go to a cyber café. So, like any other normal person, I conspired to burn my dad’s hard-earned money by taking an internet connection.

But there was again one problem. I (ya me i.e.) had to go and search for the providers in our area. Baah, sounded like too much work so I did what every elder brother does. I called my younger brother and asked him to scamp around and get a good ISP provider. I did have to reason with him on why HE should go and search for the internet. A great manipulist that I am, it took me little time to brainwash him into doing all the dirty ground work. Now there was another ulterior motive. If the connection sucks, I will have somebody to pin the blame on J. Now that is quite a motive haan?

So after some time on a very fateful day we got the guys from “Sify Broadband” to set up an installation. Ok, everything was fine. Now after the installation I asked them what is their proxy’s IP. Those people were looking at me with eyes and mouth wide open. It gave me a kick imagining that those people thought that I am some kind of a bond. So, I decided to push further…

Moi : “Does your facility support Linux fedora core 3 and above?”
Stupid Sify Man(SSM): (Eyes wide open and so is his mouth)
Moi: “Ok ok you might not know that. So what Network topology did you use for giving this connection?”
SSM: (same expression as above with a little more animation)
Moi: “Ok, do you atleast know what routing algorithm you are using to direct the traffic coming from all the nodes you installed in this area?”
SSM: (his expression remained the same… but now I could hear a distant wolf howling and frogs croaking… in other words, there was a dead silence… like in a grave yard…no.. not the ones in a horror movie with all the “action”.. the normal grave yards…sheeesh.. you guys don’t know anything!)
Moi : “Ok now please tell me that you atleast know what the “tunneling” and “Socket programming” is and what is on the page no. 1691 of the “Networks for Bonds” text book”
SSM: “Saab aap hamare saab se baat karo… unka number yeh hai”

[I take that number and dial up… come to know that he calls himself the CTO of sify (lol)]

Moi : “Aapke bande ko proxy nahin pata… ab bina proxy ke main apne conf set kaise karronga haan? Chalo ab aap proxy address bataiye”

[The so called CTO turned out to be a more dumb than the SSM after all he is his boss right]

CTO: “haan..? praisiey?”
Moi : "Proxy … Proxy….!!"
CTO: “mujhe nahin pata saab aap yeh number le lo aur unse baat karo…”

Now you must note that I wasn’t using a toll free number and with each passing minute, Mr. Hutch was smirking at my expense. So, I cut the line and wait for the chips to fall in their place.

After a day or two after initial installation of the wires, I finally get the internet. This is where the real story starts. Never in my life have I seen anything more pathetic than this (maybe MyCrowSoft products… but I must accept the fact that it won by the slightest of margins for taking the crown of “THE WORST THING EVER”).

In the first 10 days of installation, the net was down for atleast a week. Even when it did come, the connection was something like this…

Now, I really wondered if these Sify people used coaxial cable or some ropes of bad quality. Then I thought that ropes if wet can atleast conduct some voltage and the proverbial binary “sunnas” and “ohns”. But the thingis that the Sify people used was just plain anti-conductor. There wasn’t a vestige of signal transfer in their network. The slightest of wind or god forbid rain could cause the whole network to collapse as reason does before a nincompoop. They expected their network to run in some test tube or in some vacuum…because, they didn’t give a damn to their customers anyway. So no oxygen for them, after all it is the customers’ fault to breathe oxygen and for being incapable of living in vacuum for their network’s sake!

I saw their ad on television and it had some sweet nothings like “reliability”, “high speed”, “customer service”and what nots and I almost puked in disgust.

Well it is against my code to use any names on my blog for the anonymity of my esteemed readers and the coterie of distinguished people surrounding me. But I had to take this “Sify Broadband”s name because I am of the opinion that I am “saving lives” here… hope you appreciate my integrity :).

So, owing to their abysmal service, I put up a big fight with the sify fellows and reprimand them for their stupid ISP. I ask them to refund the entire sum including the installation charges or get their asses kicked. So they decide to give me some local connection provided by some local vendor. But I have to tell you, it has been almost 2 days since the new connection and it is working great (there goes my inclination and trust in a "brand name"… these “Nobodies” delivered where an established bigwig in “broadband” failed miserably). So let me hope that this nice connection continues and lasts the innumerable downloads and BC or did I just praise these new guys too much prematurely?

Why quake unites and CS divides…

2005-07-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

Well keeping in the tempo developed by me from the last two posts, I will like to continue posting spam again on my blog. There is really nothing to post these days. Nothing seems to be happening now, well there were some really memorable interviews but I am not in the mood to write about them right now. Will think about posting those “experiences” later. As for now, I really miss the college life.
Thinking about college life, I don’t recall anything I studied or “researched”. Let me tell you what I really did in the college life. That is, gaming.
The two games I spent really a substantial amount of time were Quake and CS. Well, through the whole second year I don’t recall anything else other than playing Quake3 in our cozy old lab2. We used to have the potential of quaking day and night, continuously, non-stop.
Now coming back to the title of this post. Why I project quake with a halo on its head lies in its concept of TDMs (if you don’t know what TDM is you really lost your way to this blog… so shooo shooo!). When you are playing the TDMs, you tend to divide the teams on presumed equality wherein the game will be worthwhile and even more entertaining. Anybody can join in any teams and there wont be any effect to the game play. It is played more on the lines of fun and as far as our batch was concerned, there was no ego of being in a specific team. And anyways, the teams were just temporary and we used to switch the teams often after each game.
But when it comes to CS, our college seems to have come up with this crazy concept of “clans”. Now i don’t know but something about these “clans”, the very concept used to erk me. At that time I was not so free to “analyze” the philosophical questions like “Why does clans rub you in the wrong way?” because I had a game to play and kick the so called clans’ a$$.
But now, I presumably have the luxury of time. To smell the roses. To dig the long forgotten graves!
After a good deal of soul searching ;) and brainstorming ;)), I have come up with the following explanation. The very concept of forming a clan means that you want to establish your supremacy (well that’s the general trait.. now if you want to form a clan to be the worst clan ever, then you are welcome you weirdo!). You choose the best players you can bribe and pester till they agree to play their normal game save that little tag before their name and voila! a clan is formed.
This very concept of clans in CS is biased towards the better players and forming a stronger team. Now, I don’t know to whom you want to “prove” your “supremacy”. But what is the point of going through with all the above pains to just prove nothing?
Even if you do form, there will come the virtual copyright associated with the clan. A lesser mortal cant use that name. Or else, the non-existent stocks of the clan fall in value.
Well clans do exist in Quake too at the international level but in our local college level there is no clan as such. The closest thing to the clan concept in quake comes when you are playing inter-batch tourney. But this anamoly just proves the point. If some clan is formed in quake on the lines of CS, I can very well tell you that it will just be impossible to beat that clan because that is the very nature of quake that makes it very biased to the stronger team. So on the flip side, it takes away the “entertainment” quotient. You know it for sure who is going to win.
So what do you achieve from these clans in CS? It doesn’t mean that you become formidable or something like in quake. A magnum even in the hands of a n00b can prove disastrous to the greatest of the clans. An AK in the hands of a person with a two digit IQ, who knows how to differentiate his teammates from the enemies can get a kill even if he sprays blindly towards the enemies’ direction. So why is all this fuss about? I don’t know you tell me!
So the next time you hear someone shout “abe naam change kar” in the lab, just chuckle and think about the banality of life.

(Man I really have to write something meaningful in my blog… but err… that will be against the code or something!!)

A Panacea for disasters

2005-07-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

"Yeah yeah... of course we are good for nothing. But you dont have to rub it in!!"...
This was the general feeling one used to undergo after each disastrous failures or interviews ;). It can really put you down and drastically cut your blogging tendencies. Because, there is nothing left to write or brag about.
Ok, so what is the cure for this sorry state? Well it is good old BC or gaming. Some people listen to music and stuff. But i prefer reading "Calvin and Hobbes" (as there is no BC or Gaming for me here :( )and consider Bill Waterson as the GOD of cartooning. It is in fact more than just a cartoon strip. It stands for a philosophy of life with profound morals... if you think that is quite heavy, here's a particularly hilarious one...

Feel any better?

this is your life

2005-06-29T00:41:00.000-07:00

Its all about MONEY!!

2005-06-10T17:23:00.000-07:00

Now that I am quite free for quite some time to come, I can think about some things which might be quite trivial or mundane for some. But a person with a sophisticated sense of ethics and good mannerism might appreciate it a bit. And to all the cynics who might be tempted to question my credentials for this philosophical work, let me explain my "achievements".
As you might be knowing, I have *seen* everything i.e. a corporate life, working in a company, and also leaving a company and also keeping many people guessing and making some people fuming from the mouth (quite literally at that)! and many more things that too in too short a span of time. So if you come up with an occasional smirk, I might attribute it to your immaturity ;).
I can safely assume that many of you might have experienced quite a few embarrassing situations. Coping with CHANGE is quite a difficult situation. Now that is what differentiates the boys from the PROFESSIONALS that we have eventually become (again an assumed fact which many would like to agree for quite selfish reasons or to ward off a controversial fact).
There are some sort of changes which are weird like the ones when you find when you grow hair in your armpits viz. when u hit puberty. There are some changes which are irritating, like for instance, when you are told to shift your room from one hostel to another. There are some more changes which are plain old dumb like the speedbrakers and the road blocks that can pop up anytime in our insti. You are walking on the road and you can see a mile of clearly and *bam* you ram into a road block or the chain blocks that are set up and changed with a deadly punctuality (as far as it is permissible by our more than modest “security” guards). Maybe they want to pretend that the changing the location of the chain or the road block or opening or closing one portion of the magnificent main gate with each passing hour of the day is their answer to the raising and lowering of the Indian tricolour at the Wagah border. Who knows. That is the only logical explanation I can think of. Please enlighten me if I am wrong.
But the CHANGE in question is of the embarrassing type. You have been pampered and nourished and spoon fed by your parents till you were dumped here to face this cruel world (well I might be an exception here). Your parents have taken care of you through out. “Paal pos ke bada kiya hai”.
Now swoooosh… you start earning more than your parents (with a few exceptions here and there, we are basically from middle class families whose parents work in those *safe* and *secure* government jobs). Suddenly, your parents realize that after having slogged for some 30 odd years, their tiny tot is earning more money than them….
Now assuming that you are a NORMAL kind of Indian guy or a girl, raised on morals and most of all conservative line of thinking, naturally, you want to give your parents all the material comfort you can give. Because believe me, you cannot even imagine to get the kind of respect your father or your mother gets in your entire life. The only thing that you can achieve in this rat race is the plain old $$. You will not have anything if this “M Power” is taken away from your profession!! There is no pride working in a cubicle which mysteriously resembles like a kennel or a stable minus the bonds (I mean a leash here but some companies do have those literally ;) ).
Now the embarrassing situation I alluded not too long ago is, suppose you go to a hotel, or for that matter a super market, or even the vegetable market like monda market. When the bill comes, as you have sucked your parents dry of all their life’s saving, it is quite natural for you to take the bill. But your mom cracks and says that you haven’t grown so much as to start paying the bills.
Your body freezes. The only feeling you can have if this happens is to rip some part of your body off (if it is not so important like the head…. or is it really important??). There has to be some rule or something as to how you should do your level best when it comes to matters related to $$. The optimal result being “To piss off your parents the LEAST”.
As any good research paper. I will give one optimal solution to the above problem. Maybe you can buy stuff that you think, your parents need and pretend that it is really for your own use or need or something like… I hope you understand what I mean. But the difficult part is, you should do this so subtly that your parents don’t find out that you are giving them something or trying to overdo them (kinda reminds me of that F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode when Chandler tries to give money to Joey and comes up with all sort of stupid ways to give him the money without hurting his pride). Because, coming from my home as I usually do quite often, there is a really really thin line between “patting my back” and a “kick in the bottom”.
If you have any good algorithms or set of instructions on this issue about “How to spend your money for the ones who made you what you are and by not belittling them”, please do share your thoughts.

Lets NOT TALK about Confidentiality please...

2005-05-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

[WARNING : All the characters and events in this post -- even those based on real people -- are entirely fictitious. The following post contains highly confidential matter which sould not be read or referred to, by anyone either living or dead.]

I don’t know if there is any confidentiality policy with regards to blogging. No, I am not talking about the ones which we actually HAVE to read before clicking the “I Agree” button, I am talking about the spread of critical information which you share in your blogs.
You might be tempted to write your heart out in your blog which you believe is just like another brick in the wall, that it will be just like another drop in the ocean, but no, that is not the case always as I learnt it the hard way.
One should always keep in mind that there are some people who derive, what can I say some pleasure by passing on the information to someone whom you believe should know about what you have written in your blog in hmm… your death bed or some other places or situations where you might gather such a huge amount of sympathy so as to escape scot-free from being ravaged or eaten alive.
Don’t get it? Let me elaborate a bit. Suppose you have written something in your blog and don’t want the faculty to know about it (I have heard rumours that faculty does read some of the blogs, but I am quite sure or rather pray to god that I am not one of those lucky elite!). But now as there is with any good masala movie, comes a villain, lets call him “Mr. Squealer” or Mr. S for simplicity.
Now Mr. S. goes through your blog, being a self confessed smarty, he interprets the meaning of your blog in such a way that the best of interpreters and compilers are put to shame. Now armed with these WMDs (now using the information given by you against you is like, a person, borrowing your dagger to stab you), he decides to take some expert opinion on the topic. He thinks and thinks, and as it is quite obvious, there pops on his head a bulb which glows with a blinding brightness. He concludes, who can be better than “Guru Devo Bhava”, yes he goes to the faculty who is also the self confessed “Know It All” or in other words, the master of that subject.
They discuss all possible interpretations and other unforeseen inferences and conclusions which will put the best of critics of Bollywood (if you read DC, you will know what I am talking about, for instance let me tell you that the review of Titanic read as follows “It is a pretty sick movie with people drowning, and if you are the person who derives pleasure from other peoples’ suffering, this is the movie for you!” yes, I am not kidding) to shame and make the innocent blogger gloat with pride for writing such a masterpiece with so many interpretations, easily beating the paintings of Da Vinci as it was illustrated in the best selling novel of Dan Brown, “The Da Vinci Code”.
Now the consequence of such enlightening discussions or tete-a-tete of Mr. S leaves little to imagination. The poor blogger is left to the gallows, that too in the best case.
Now, the moral of the story is, No, I don’t want some elaborately written pledge of confidentiality upon which we attest with our blood. What I am asking is, there has to be some sort of a code or something regarding the use of the information gathered from our blogs especially when you meant them to be taken in a light vein with no aforeseen harm to the society and to the human race.
Please give it a thought.

My Achilles heel

2005-05-19T03:23:00.000-07:00

As I have said in the heading of my blog, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease”, but you shouldn’t forget that “life” is not like some other incurable diseases, it IS curable and that is the root of all the problems and it is the ultimate truth of life.
I was trying so hard not to talk about this incident which will, I believe will change me for ever, even if I don’t give it much credit, I will be just deceiving myself. I read in one of my friend’s blog about how he doesn’t miss anybody even if he loves them very much. At that time I just had a hearty laugh for his immaturity. When you really care or love somebody, it is not in your powers to miss or don’t miss them. They actually BECOME a part of you and they show in every action you take. The values and things your loved ones stand for become your OWN and becomes a part of your very personality. So, when do you ACTUALLY miss your loved ones? When you are not “yourself”. That is, you remember your loved ones when you are not being yourself, when you are not what THEY have made you what you call “me”. And thus, your mind takes you to the loved ones and you cannot help but think about them.
So, what is this incident I was talking about which has changed me? It might look trivial or inconsequential to *beep* but the problem is, if you ASSOCIATE a big part of your life with even a small thing, may that be a piece of trash, it becomes very significant to you. But being lesser mortals, we humans always tend to “associate” and “identify” with all the thing they spend even a fraction of time in their lifetime, this is how you create your own experiences.
Though I am not such a huge believer in paranormal or numerology, I don’t take much time in putting one and one together and make a two.
It all started when I was in school and to be more precise on 5th September, 1997. Yes, that was the teacher’s day and me being the school prefect had to suit up to take the reigns from the principal and lord over the lesser mortals. I remember that day distinctly as I was trying hard to read a chapter on Mother Teresa. I was having a hard time cramming all the awards she has won which I must concede ran into pages and pages. I was cursing her for being so good. How was I to know that she will die on the same day. Man I was feeling terrible. Yes it was also because of her death and the world losing a good human like her. But also because I had one of the most major accident in my life which led to the selling of my bike (Yamaha RX 100). Also, I tore the suit which was sewn for the same purpose and from that day I don’t own a suit.
After that incident, a month later on 5th October and again a month after that on 5th November I met with more accidents that too I was rammed by a metro liner. Which paradoxically was like a merc of the public transport. It was at this time that it dawned to me that there has to be something with this 5th phenomenon. From that day, I try not to drive on 5th.
So, if you are thinking that 5th was unlucky for me, then even a child would have guessed that 5th May 05 i.e. 05-05-05 would have been a disaster in my life. And that child wont be wrong in guessing that.
My dear pet dog about whom I alluded not that long back in my post http://bookophobic.blogspot.com/2005/03/dont-even-think-about-it-god.html
passed away on that day. I don’t know but something inside me broke on that day. We were taking him to the hospital almost daily and he was living on glucose bottles. Seeing his condition was really heart wrenching to me. He was after all, with me right from my childhood. He was something that I cherished and was a reminder to me about how I was before in more carefree times. I don’t know but why we have pets whose average life span is far less than humans. Maybe an elephant or turtles will make better pets. Even if they aren’t so good and useful as what dogs and cats are, they will at least save us of all the pain!
I was cursing myself daily for being home on what was becoming quite obvious as his last days. But I couldn’t even leave him like that. Me and my brother used to fight wildly on this issue as I didn’t want to look at him in that condition. I remember we were still fighting on that damned day. My father was out of station so I went to the hospital on that day at about 7:30 pm to find that it was already closed. But the board on the wall displayed “Open 24 hours”. I was just furious and so helpless that I lashed at the supervisor there. I went to the dog squad and asked someone to come and see if something could be done.
Thankfully 2 people arrived at our house and said that he wont make it to the morning. I was so damned pissed at them for saying that. I told them that the hospital was closed, they said that the doctors lived nearby but wont come to the hospital in the evenings. Now, what kind of sick bastards are they? Seriously that’s why the veterinarians are supposed to be such second grade citizens (if they are actually humans i.e.). By this time Boozoo’s health had deteriorated and with great pain I suggested that they give him a fatal injection or something to atleast put him out of his misery. To which the dog squad people said that why to do that in his last hour and to let him die in peace. Man it was the worst day in my life. I wished that some metro liner should hit me and save me of this situation at home!
Not able to look at him in his condition nor having a heart to walk away, I sat on a chair in our verandah separating me and Boozoo by a wall from where I tried my level best to pacify him. God, so many thoughts came to my mind, but none of them was good all were equally depressing. After some time, I went to take a look but he lied there motionless. My mind was completely blank. I didn’t know what to do, I came to my room and started the tv.
By this time my brother also came back and he took it very badly. I had completely forgotten about my brother altogether. If there was someone who was more close to Boozoo than me, it was my brother. Even my mother, for whom Boozoo served as the only security when everybody was away.
That night I was not able to think anything and I don’t know when I slept. But in the morning, my father arrived. I could hear what was happening but I didn’t wanted to get up. But you know, how life is. Of all the innumerable hours we sleep, that one day when I tried the hardest to sleep and to cut down on the noises, I was not even able to get a wink. So I decided to keep a pillow on my head so as to just cut away the voices of the people from the dog squad who had come to take him on his last journey. And all that time, I was trying hard to run away from reality. I am really a weak weak man!
I got up after an hour or so when my father returned, unable to stay in bed and trying hard not to go outside even to the toilet lest I will see the empty bed of Boozoo and wont be able to control myself. My father came and my mother asked him where he was buried. It is at this time when my father started describing that I just couldn’t help myself and involuntarily tears started rolling from my eyes. I don’t cry usually but when I do, I am just inconsolable. It was at that time I looked at my parents to see them all controlling their emotions, I know that he meant more to them than what he was to me. I was always away from home right from my school and was partially away in IIIT too. But my parents and my brother were always with him. And they stood there tall and I felt so low for not being to control myself. Really, I might be bigger physically but I have a long way to go when I truly grow emotionally. I was feeling like a child, like I was on the day when I brought Boozoo to my house without my father’s consent. I used to take care of him of course with the help of my mom. It was all not so bad as he was in fact the only true memory of me of my childhood. My brother used to say that “hum kutton ke saath hi bade hue hai”, at that time I used to laugh at him at interpreting the statement differently. But he wasn’t wrong. We always had a pet right from my childhood. But at that time my parents used to screen us from their demise. They said that I was very ill and in a bad condition when our first dog who ironically was also named Boozoo died. My parents always said that I was weak but I used to dismiss their comments. But now I know, I have a long way to go emotionally. I might be the strongest among my peers physically as I always was, but I discovered that I am very very very sensitive to my own dismay and who can know that other than your parents and of course your friends.
I called one of my oldest friend and informed him about Boozoo he came rushing to my house because he knew how huge this news was to me. Man my friends KNOW me more than I do myself!
I went to the hospital the next day to collect the reports of his blood tests. Now talk of irony, seems that he suffered from some sort of a lung cancer. Now of all the smokers and dopers in this world, why him? Is there any justice in this world? I confronted the doctor and asked him why he wasn’t there the other day. One thing led to another and he said “whats the big deal?”… opsss wrong answer. I broke a long standing promise, a word I have given to someone special before I came to IIIT. I punched him smack on his mouth. Of course it hurt my knuckles as his teeth seemed to be harder than my knuckles but it felt good anyway. Maybe that’s the reason people fight in the climax. It is not about hurting the villain or something, it is about the “Feel Good Factor”.
My brother went to the grave the next day, he too didn’t go when Boozoo was being buried and planted a sapling at the site near his head. I too wanted to go there but didn’t have the courage. Finally I half heartedly went to the grave yard and tried my level best not to find his grave (which I didn’t btw). Maybe something inside me said that if I didn’t find his grave, there might be a chance that he will still be alive and will return someday. I thought about the families of the victims dying in the innumerable accidents and thought that they too would feel the same thing about finding the bodies of their loved ones. I didn’t try to find his grave to date.
I might go on writing about the sweet memories I shared with Boozoo, but it will make me feel worse. He was actually there in all my moments of greatest achievements in my life and the happy memories far outdo the sad ones that I have near his end. Those memories are enough to cherish and keep me going throughout my life. My brother wants another dog and wants to name it Boozoo too but I have reservations about this, I don’t want to lose any more. It is bad already and even my father is giving the initial resistance which he gives usually whenever I wanted to bring a pet. But once I used to bring a pet as I did 3 previous times, it is actually he who really takes care of them too. Maybe he too has something with the pets which reminds him about his past too.
Now I look forward to the next presumably apocalyptic days which might come in my life viz. 05-05-50 or 05-05-55 but I hope it is a metro liner at that time too. I am more than willing to being hit by it rather than losing something that I hold too dear more than my life. Future seems to be bleak but this is how life is. So I will try to take the past in my stride and walk into my future because, after all, tomorrow is just another day.

Me a JOBBER

2005-05-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

So to all the unfortunate souls, still toiling under the "student" status, heehaaw what a bunch of LOSERS!! I am a jobber you dont have a job you are a student na na na na na....
Now that i have gotten that out of my system. Let me tell you something about my first day at the company.
My date of joining was "Friday the 13th", at the end of the day i knew why horror movies are made with that very same name. The day was a complete disaster to say the least. I was expecting just a mild session with the trips around the office park meeting various people and getting back after 3 to 4 hours at max. But man i was mistaken!
I was at their gates at 8:30 A.M. "SHARP" as was mentioned in the offer letter. I saw many employees err… associates or partners (as the company calls them just to make the slaves feel better and work even harder for their over lords) checking in at that early hour. That was the first shock of the day. Come on, you cant expect any employee to turn up at 8:30 in the morning, that is weird!
Now, after the initial strange encounter of meeting with the regular zomby employees, i tried to convince myself that it was just an anamoly int their system and they must have something very important to do or an important deadline to meet. I was wrong again as i realised at the end of the day. Another rooky mistake of failure to read the ominous sings early!
We were called inside and given the company id cards or the access cards ( to all the STUDENTS out there, this is the magnetic id card which you swipe in front of the doors, now don’t go pressing the cards on the doors of your company, rather find the detector, the thingy with the blinking red light and then put your access card before it and the door will open. Hope you STUDENTS with limited mental capabilities understand the complex workings of a true jobber) and we were directed to a conference room with DELL PCs with LCD monitors.
Now, I thought of relaxing a bit in the AC’ed hall but our evil HR walked in and after showing us what actual OA means, went on asking for the names, nicknames, hobbies, place you came from and college, the animal you resemble and all such sort of crap. I as usual, as the well trained student of IIIT would know, I turned off my attention to the disturbance around and was thinking about more important stuff like when I would he getting my first cheque. But suddenly, in a complete disregard to my thought processes, our evil HR decided to ask me to stand up and ordered me to tell the details of all my fellow “associates” like the date of birth, name, nicknames, their father’s names, their great grandfather’s name, their time of birth and also the exact time and date when they attained puberty.
As you could have guessed, I was what can I say, at loss in producing satisfactory answers which the evil HR took very un-sportingly. Her expressions were like when you find a cock roach in your sandwitch in the mess but to be more precise, her expressions hinted as though she has found a lizard with it’s whole family in place of a cockroach.
She started shouting and became all senti that our offers were “provisional” and that we will have to secure atleast 60% of marks in all the pop up quizzes and the projects which I failed very miserably. She also imposed a fine of 2.5 lakhs for referring to her as "Ma'm" and was saying something about flat architecture in the company which i didnt get as the company building seemed to be quite steep consisting of 5 floors.
Believe me guys, it is not a good start when you start the first session in the company with a failure. But, everybody is not such a cool customer like me. The above mentioned episode had no bearing on me whatsoever and I started to count the number of digits which will be in my check with much aplomb and alacrity.
After this, there were several sessions of why the company was so great and also some of the training classes and a bunch load of submissions of our documents and photographs.
Every now and then, somebody will come in and say how critical it is to secure 60% in ALL the tests and assignments and projects.
Now, I saw at the watch and it was noon already and I was waiting for the HR to say that you have worked so hard for the day and to take the month’s pay in advance. But, the HR lived up to our expectations and was “evil” to the core. She kept on sending loads and loads of senior associates to take classes after classes.
Now, being a IIITian, you should know that we are quite conservative when it comes to attending classes. Any class either too early or too long or too boring or too informative or in a class with bad vastu or on a Monday or in fact in the main building is a strict no no to us. So, as you can expect, sitting on my ass with no enemy bots in the LCD monitors was quite depressing and I was longing to see the sun outside even though it was like 50 degree C. I had a vague memory of sitting in such marathon classes in Narayana in my +2 but now I have matured quite a bit and I know that any class which extends beyond 7 minutes is a complete waste. But I suspect, the corporate companies somehow don’t understand that golden rule. They believe in getting the employees glued to their chair.
11 hours had passed now, it was 7:30 in the NIGHT and the classes seemed to be quite never ending though they had one thing in common. Their grim warning and senti tone of that 60% rule. Man I was so pissed at that time with this number “60” that I was ready to kill Prashant (since his roll no. was 60... hope you could understand my frustoo'ness). As you can see, I was really really sick of hearing the same old warnings but more importantly, 11 hours on the first day!!!
The day didn’t end there, we had to wait for another hour to fill in the bank documents which I completed in about 1.6 minutes whereas the other “medhavi” associates who were mostly from NIT- warangal, nagpur, rourkela, trichi etc. took around 40+ minutes to do the same. And to make the matters worse, I had to wait for those dimwits to complete their decoration in their name and email address fields in the form. Talk about dumb asses!
Finally I was free at about 8:10 pm (almost after 12 hours of hectic job of listening and listening) when it was finally over. But our evil HR wasn’t going to leave us so easily. She handed us a form for some medical checkup scheduled for the next day at yes you guessed right at 8:30 AM “Sharp” in Care hospital.
Now there is a limit to everything, you just cant scare and harass the new “Partners” of your company like this on their first day. Enough is enough.
I don’t know how I drove back to the hostel. I came to the room, flung my bag on the chair and crashed to bed. It was at that time I decided to chuck the offer of this crappy company which was not even worth “60%” of my effort. I think that all the corporate companies derive their profits by "rinse drying" their employees of their blood, making them the slaves in their pointless struggle to achieve some graphs with steep slopes on their profit’s slides.
I am looking for a company which considers it’s employees as atleast human beings and not the proverbial “kolu ka bail”. Really fed up of my first taste of the MNC lifestyle and have decided to trim my expectations and prepared myself mentally for long hours of ordeal in the company I will work in near future (which looks like a far better option than the present company I work for....here, I doubt if I can say that i "worked" for it per se on the first and most probably the last day of going to the company).
Now, as far as the medical test tomorrow goes, they can test that thing on my hand called the middle finger! You see, I want to enjoy the student life for as long as possible before the inevitable truth of life called “slogging for a living”.

I strike off "Writing Testimonials" from my TODO list...

2005-04-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

I really have to acknowledge the fact that nothing inspires me to blog more than seeing my dumb friends chopping off the very branch of the tree called life that too when they are sitting on the same.
All my esteemed coterie of friends are having the "Daru party" and they are all bragging about the wonders they accomplished in iiit before leaving it.
In all this hulla hoo… I too have something to celebrate in my boring sober way and colourless life style… I was really planning to write testimonials for EVERYBODY for quite some time now. I was very close in achieving this feat but was a bit late at that time before our farewell party and by the time i tried to start writing the testimonials, i came to know that all the cd's were already written :(.
But now, i seem to accomplished that long overdue objective of mine. The timing of this feat couldnt have been any better. I have finished writing the testimonials on the very auspicious occasion of the departure of many a big wigs (remaining from the already dwindling population of what was once known as the gdit2k1 ) from the campus to the yore.
You can check out the testimonials written by me at our alumni page http://172.16.16.85/alumni . It isnt a mean achievement by the way fellows. It took me almost 5 hours to complete. You see a batch strength of 97 is not such small number especially when u have to write about all the characters.
Wow, it is already 6 in the morning. Let me go and check if everything is fine with the “Grown Up” gang and help them to their rooms in their sorry, pitiful state which definitely as they argue isnt the effect of the drinks because they are of the opinion that they are totally immune to the effects of the alcoholic beverages.... nice way to prove their point but who will explain them from the 3rd person perspective?
Well checked them out and one person is really OUT and seems to have fainted of whatever ppl do when they are full. Going by his size he seemed to be leaking off the poor 6foot bed and also covered quite a substantial amount of bed (maybe 3/4th) in the thickness. Really dont know who it is as there is a strictly no entry for Sober people who will make the "D-Company" realise what they are missing, health wise i.e.
Also, our system administrator guy just walked past my room to go to the place where u go after consuming huge quantities of liquid (hope it is the same for hard/soft/water or anything in liquid form). He seemed to be quite subdued and i cant say whether it is aura of a saint or a person who just experienced the "Big-O" (if you know what i mean). He seems to be okay right now, maybe the effect will be felt after certain time interval or whatever...
So, the moral of the story is, it has been a real great night for "constructive" work, another fruitful night out and unlike some other people (:smirk:) my job has really "enriched" (seriously!!)the history book (of our now, slowly dismembering batch) known as our alumni page and it for all to see and be amazed and be inspired by the hardwork of the gdit2k1's truely "sober" guy and really hardworking one at that ;)

[Will upload the pics as soon as i get them will be a nice reminder :)]

Hum Ghar kyon jaate hai?? Aur gaye to gaye, waapas kyun aate hai??

2005-04-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

Picture this… in not so distant past:
~ 5 years back in a Junior college where I studied ~
Moi (To the the non-French, it is “me” from a phoren angle): Do a wheely on my bike (which is the bestest bike money can buy in the present world economy) and park it in the special place reserved for my bike. My friends, all drooling over it.
Genious Friend (in short GF hhahaha got u there haan… there are other abbreviations for GF too ;) ) : "Hi Imran good morning. How was your ride to the college?"
Moi: "Ya, there were some Hayabusas and XJRs blocking my way on the road, had to slow down my bike a couple of times. Those dimwits don’t know that you have to stick on the left most side of the road if you are driving on slow vehicles. Where is the world heading to (with great regret and exasperation in my voice)?"
GF: "Yes, it is really a pity man. I really understand your pain. I will be sooo lucky if I have a bike like you and god I will kill someone if they try to block my way on that dream machine of yours. It is the best bike you can ever get. You sure would have done some really good deeds in your previous life."
Moi: “Come on.” “Stay away from my bike even in your dreams you jerk. You are degrading my bike’s brand value out of your day dreaming. You are leaving all sorts of finger prints on the chasis even in your dreams you moron… shoo shoo…”(GF snaps out of his dream) “So whats new?”
GF: “My lord, studied your critic about why Einstein was such a jack ass who didn’t see the most elementary things in his theories. I did some problems using Einstein’s equation and found some of them gave correct answers. But according to you that shouldn’t have happened” (feeling awkward for finding an anomaly in my otherwise impeccable logic).
Moi: (with the expression of being stricken by a sudden flash of obvious.. like, like when someone concludes that Ganguly is not fit to play in the Indian side) “My dear friend, how many times shall I tell you that you are supposed to take the space time continuum to be actually CURVED… Get out of my site and study harder if you want to pass.”

~ 7 years back in a school where I studied ~
GFs: “Hello Imran” in chorus.
Moi: “Hello everybody”. “Nice day for assimilating knowledge so that we can further our career goals as rocket scientists and future inventors and Intellectual Capital of the world.”
GFs: “Come on Imran”, “we worked the whole day yesterday trying to solve the complex heuristics which are the very basic for time travel.”
Moi: “What??” “You did that the whole day yesterday? When will you people learn? You should have come to me. Now use the time machine invented by me yesterday and go back in time to yesterday and do something more constructive and complex like understanding the psychology of our Indian cricket team under pressure.”
GFs: Walk to the sparkling “Time Machine” very dejected and ashamed of themselves for letting me down. This “Time Machine” is inside a classroom where ironically Mr. Naidu is taking a class very excitedly, because, when he teaches normally time stops, but when he gets excited the time actually backtracks so as to nullify his effect on the poor souls inside or even in it’s vicinity.

Observations from "Picture this... in not so distant past":

So, the point I want to make here is, If you look closely to the connotation of my "normal" friends. There was definitely no strings even distantly related to “Abe Imran, tu ghar se kab aaya!!!???!!!” expression when they met me, even though I used to ACTUALLY come from my house daily, as I used to study in a day scholars school and college… (shocked as to draw parallels from the above stories and my conclusions and the point I made? Come on guys, I expect your compilers to compile faster for you to stay abreast)

~ Current Trends ~
I get up on a nice Friday morning and go to the end of the wing to brush my teeth. My pesky wing mates “Abe Imran!! Tu ghar se kab aaya??” (with an expression which will put Eve to shame when she opened the Pandora’s box and released all the evils in the world).
Moi: (very diplomatically) "Last SUNDAY evening."
I finish brushing, try to go for a morning (or afternoon depending on the amount of gaming hours last night) walk across the wing. Pesky Ex-wingmates (with a similar expression as that of Eve but with an additional surprise as if seeing Ganguly cross on to a double digit score!!) “Imran? Tu yahan??”
Moi: With a sheepish smile (as on the face of a bowler when Ganguly gets a run on his wretched delivery) “Its ok!”. “Where were you (intending this to sting)?”
So, deciding to get out of this hmm.. situation, I try to go to the mess to have my breakfast/lunch. All the humanity in the mess in chorus “Imran!! Tu yahan mess main kaise??”
Moi: (Finally losing my cool disposition on the intellectual depravity of mankind) “STFU!! You lousy double crossing #!@#%$$&# @#^#$ $%#%*^%& #$%@ “. Come back to my room and eventually order from PR as I do usually on a daily basis. Saalon ne aaj bhi mess main khane nahin diya (feeling sad)….

So this chore continues day after day giving me a feeling of "deja-vu" every instant until the next weekend. Then when I return on the Sunday evening. All the activities are refreshed and are repeated again and again with much alacrity.
This is my typical WORKING day in IIIT. For more explanation and reasons for the actual question “Hum ghar kyon jaate hai?? Aur gaye to gaye, waapas kyun aate hai??
”, stay tuned for the next and final episode of “Hum ghar kyon jaate hai?? Aur gaye to gaye, waapas kyun aate hai?? – RELOADED” until then chao.

PS: And if you people have one of those sudden urges to comment on my post saying any of the above standard strings, here’s a finger in advance. If this doesn’t help, then “screw you guys, I am going home!!” ;)

Heart of a Frustoo

2005-04-08T21:57:00.000-07:00

These days I seem to be shouting on everybody. The time taken by me to react to any situation no matter how small seems to have put the speed of light to shame.
But there is a valid explanation for all this mess… Try the most famous word trying with “F” in our batch…err… try the second most famous word then… common u dimwits.. I will give the answer… “Frustoo”… sheesh… frustoo kar diya.. saale guess bhi nahin kar sakte! You see, I thought that going out of IIIT will be the most beautiful in my life. I will finally have a LIFE and also WWW associated with it (No… Don’t start guessing what WWW is you nincompoops, it stands for Women Wine and Wealth). Now if any smart guy is smirking at me here, here’s another famous word or for that matter a “symbolic expression” __|_ or oo|o or oo0o…or stfu or FUB!!(with due regards to jaya) ab sochne main kya jaata hai? Jhantu hai kya? Baat samajhme nahin aati hai kya?
So as I was saying there are many frustoos in our batch (phew). So, let us write a critic about this phenomenon which seems to be quite natural to the esteemed gdit2k1…. Don’t you say that you have never been frustoo, because chances are that you are already dead or, you are dead inside you ROBOT!!
Types of frustoos:
1) The justifiable frustoos
2) The Vesuvian frustoos
3) Academic frustoos
4) The gaming society

The Justifiable Frustoo :
Don’t even think about falling into this category. This is only restricted to cool personalities like me who have total control of one’s own action both voluntary and involuntary ;). These people can never be unjustified and their frustoo’pan can always have a good reason which is justifiable to the whole world.
This phenomenon can also be explained when you get some mail from people coming especially from middle part of India viz. Bhopal. There is something to this area and receiving any mail from the people living in it’s vicinity or anyone who has even passed it in their journey well qualify for this weird mailing powers. Sometimes, there are people just aspiring to be like them so, they can be some exceptions to this mid-India theory. So, if you get a mail from these guys and you start biting off your table or thrashing your monitor for being such a harbinger of death, is completely natural and is quite justifiable and understandable.

The Vesuvian Frustoos:
Heard of the famous Mount Vesuvious in Fiji? The mountain which always smokes and erupts destroying humanity as we know of in that area. These people are like the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci “The Vitruvian Man” (I don’t believe that the similarity in the name is purely coincidental)… these people are truly state of art and real masterpieces.
Don’t be fooled by the momentary cool headedness of this customer. This is just his instable isotope and can come back to his natural state any time.

Statuary Warning: Being in close vicinity to Vesuvian frustoos might be injurious to your health. Run for your life!!

He might be talking quite normally to you for a while. But deep inside, slowly but steadily, heat signatures emanated by him will be growing exponentially. Then, there will be a bright light… burst in the decibel level of the serene environment…. There will be a tear in space time continuum. And you will wake up in some land unknown to the human civilization and your first expression will be “main kaun hoon?”

The Academic Frustoos:
These are the ones whose sole purpose in life is to get an A or any other good alphabet in their ISAS page and to get the Banyan tree award on their convocation. These people will get senti and emotional after an exam or a lab test. These are the people who cry for actually not understanding the professor’s lecture and are found to be very poor in compiling the jokes put by the professor which will look out of the blue for them.
Very unharmful type but I cant say the same about their “irritating” quotient. These are the people to whom many of us are eternally indebted because of their zeal to do each and every crappy assignments. Thank you, you academic frustoos, IIIT is proud of you.

The Gaming Society:
Please observe the absence of the word “frustoos” at the end of this kind. I dont want it to be like a tautology nor do I want to rub it in ;). “The Gaming Society” is frustoo'panti defined and let me add, in no uncertain terms!
The member of this society live for their score and their castle rush time. These people have absolutely no regard for life and death nor for any such consequences. They will ignore it unanimously until the completion of the game.
These people play when they are is a sudden surge of happiness as a mark of celebration. They also play when struck with a calamity as a mark of remorse. These are the people who play before and after doing anything less substantial like writing the end semester exams or attending the classes (which is quite a “once in a lifetime” phenomenon) and the professor can write this achievement of their's in his/her CV.
The biggest mistake that you can do is (no I am not talking about disturbing them when they are playing because it is not a mistake, it is catastrophic) to be in the lab. Chances are you will be the butt of their jokes in their “strategic” chatting or their names ;) (people who played CS yesterday or for that matter q3 will know).
These people are very passionate and of course, if they miss any shot then all hell is set loose. There will be shouting, ranting, fighting and sometimes even disconnecting from the server (which is the biggest sign of contempt)!!

The real beauty of frustoos is, they can stick their head out anywhere and at anytime. It is really this unknown psychology of the frustoos that stands them apart. This is the only breed in IIIT which is evolving very rapidly. So, if tomorrow many more types of frustoos are added to this list of current known types, it will be just mundane to say the least.
So next time you go out of your secure “shell”, watch out for that frustoo who will be striking at an area near you!

Bad, Bad friend... Spit that butt out of your mouth...Bad, Stay.

2005-04-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

I might be mighty biased against drinking and smoking cos of the background I come from. No one in my family does that. It is a strict no no. But of late all the people seems to be trying this stuff. Some people stick to using the poor branded ones and some people started adding "active" ingredients into their cigarettes, bidis and cigars for that extra kick (i really dont know why these people have to resort to such lame things for that "kick", i am ready to do that always for them).
My two most closest friends who lost their virginity quite recently were the source of inspiration for this post. At first when i saw them i thought that they too must have drifted with that "Try it in your college" adage or as in the South Park where they say, "There is a right place for everything, and that is college". But found out this very instant that it was more than their initial infatuation. They are doing that with a frequency which might leave all the Devdases run for cover. They say that it doesnt affect them, talk about over confidence or the height of stupidity.
I am stuck in quite an embarassing situation here. You see, I "seem" to be a person whom the parents might usually find prone to all such addictions but in reality i am quite the opposite. I just cant afford to see them doing such stupid things for just the kick or just for the heck of it. Say something strongly and you become a cry baby where as they become the macho men. The problem is not them smoking and drinking as such as the shock of seeing them not able to control themselves.
One person still persists that he doesnt smoke so much but the mere frequency with which he smokes half or two thirds cigarettes is mind boggling. Just saw him "Help" a junior with his cigarette. He seems to be doing it daily but with great alacrity and aplomb.
The second person also boasts that they are drinking for the past 2-3 weeks and that drinks doesnt affect them. They also had a story to boot. I suppose they started for Runway9 (where i might add i havent been till now :(( ) and ended up in the opposite direction. And they still say that it wasnt the booze effect but some navigational error ;).
So, the crux of the matter is, I am caught amongst the ever growing gang of cancer-o-philes and i dont know what to do. It gets quite embarassing when everybody whom you have known for so long take out big cartons of cigarettes and gunnybags of drinks and you are there stuck with the soda or any other softer drink to boot with.
I dont know what but something really saddens and disgusts me here. How can people follow such a crowd. Just because "Everybody is doing it i too have to do it or else i will become a wuss" isnt logically correct, leave out ethically and all crap like that.
I dont want their wives and children to come to me in near future for abode from their now addicted, stoned and drunk husbands and dads. If they have beautiful wives, i might be able to help them but from their sexual orientation, i dont want a bunch of guys coming to me to save them from their errr husband ;).
So, let me draw a conclusion here.... Notice the statuatory warning? It is not meant to be as a challenge or something that you have to do contradictory to. It IS really injurious to your health!!

My Farewell Speech...

2005-03-31T14:54:00.000-08:00

Fare well Speech 2005
Imran

I first saw IIIT when I was in school and I just knew that I have to be here. It was a dream come true for me. I not only got into IIIT but also in one of the best batches ever. I couldn’t have asked for more.
Now, talk about coming to the right place at the right time!! Things were really HAPPENING in IIIT. And of course, we were there to witness the institute grow. First came the DEEMED UNIVERSITY status, our own version of “Independence Day”, independence to be autonomous. And WE were there.
It was our batch that actually “COMPLETED IIIT”. For the very first time, IIIT had all the four years of its BTech program and we became the only batch ever to actually KNOW all of it’s alumni that passed before us.
We were the ones who saw IIIT grow, not only IIIT as a matter of fact, but also the surrounding places like all the S/W companies coming up in our vicinity, ISB and we also saw the building of the now, “Land mark of Hyderabad” the GMC Balayogi Stadium. But you should know that we know these places from the time when their address read “Besides IIIT” and not vice-versa.
Our batch was also the trendsetters in its own rights. It was actually from our time that IIIT saw all its cultural festivals in the form of Amalgam and of course FELICITY. And who can forget the first ever inter house sports competitions.
We can also boast of being the only “Truly Nomadic” society of IIIT. For two years, we were always on a run. Running from this hostel to other, from one room to other. That was the time when we never unpacked our luggage for, we knew that we wont stay long in one room and change was on cards every moment. The newly built 3rd floor of OBH as well as the newly constructed NBH were actually “gdit2k1 hostels”. Also we know the problems ,

All those “TEAM BUILDING” exercises truly bonded us together as one entity.

We can also boast of having the best talent in IIIT, be it in programming, sports or music and who can forget the best dancer of our batch (look at patke)….

As SPIDERMAN once said “ With great powers, comes great responsibilities”. Our batch is also responsible for some of the major policies in the institute. Because of our perseverance and hardwork, IIIT is the only institute throughout India with “ZERO RAGGING”. We welcome our juniours with open arms. Maybe, the institute’s policy of taking freshers in huge quantities might have helped the cause here ;)….

Well speaking of institutes’ policies, let me tell you what happened in our first holi, which was quite an “indoor event” at that time. We thought that the colours of hostels were a bit too drab But I don’t know why but the faculty didn’t like our new paint job. And we ended up celebrating holi, for the first time in IIIT, for 2 days… first for colouring and then cleaning. And hence forth, holi became as you know of today a strictly “an outdoor affair”….

Of course we were the bonds of all the “state of art” technology. But we also believed in DIVERSITY. We took upon ourselves the challenge of building the IIIT’s formidable gaming industry. We just have to go to the other colleges to just collect the prizes they offer and in the mean while taking a shot or two at the sitting ducks they try to pass off as our competitors J.

You might be thinking that we know just about everything there is to know about IIIT from my speech so far, but you just mistaken!! We are still trying to figure out the “AC effect” in our labs. The moment the lab “cools” we are in some other “hot” destination in some corner.

But now, it is really sad and difficult to comprehend that our 4 years have come to an end. From now on, all our classmates will sport a small subscript under their names which will read “B. Tech. CSE, IIIT-H”………..

Let me remind you, once again that we were those people who joined IIIT not because of its now reputed “B. Tech” degree or the 100% placement record. There was nothing at the time when we joined, not even this AIEEE. We joined this college because we were passionate about this place and like myself, for many people it was a dream come true. In part, we can boast of being a part of IIIT in it’s growing phase, and have contributed our share in it’s growth. I will always remember this clean and green 62 acres of land for the rest of my life……

And now, my dear juniors. I know that you all are about to cry at your great loss which I might add is quite understandable. But for being - what I can now conclude safely from my lengthy speech – a LEGENDARY batch, we still think about our beloved juniors. It will be too great a blow for you to recover if we were to leave this institute in entirety.
We are leaving behind our representatives, the pioneers, in the form of MSBR, PHD students and even future IIIT professor for your benefit. Yes, the faculty might think that they are here for doing “State Of Art” research and development work, but I think we share a secret here J. They are here to fill in that great “void * main” and will always be there for you.
And now, as the past has been saved, the future generations of IIIT in safe hands, I can now safely bid good bye to you all….and may God bless IIIT.

PS: thank you all the professors for teaching us and our juniors for this farewell party.

The End Is Near!!

2005-03-28T11:25:00.000-08:00

============================
From: AKAnsh khuRANA
To: ug4@students.iiit.net
Cc: Su
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 23:19:06 +0530 (IST)
Subject: Farewell'05

Dear sir jees and madame jees :)We are planning to have ur farewell this Wednesday evening [30thMarch'05]. So, please plan accordingly. Get your suits, sarees ironed.Vaise, juniors might keep a dress code >:)You'll get a formal invitation soon.
Cheers
B Nikhil
Akansh Khurana
========================

Why God, why are you doing this to us!! :((

Don't even think about it, GOD!

2005-03-09T21:52:00.000-08:00

Just when you think that life cant get any worse with all the submissions and exams coming upon u at once, HE comes with something which makes such things look trivial....
My pet BooZoo (pronounce with a musical note), a doberman pincher got sooo sick that he wasn't even able to stand on his own :((. It was 2am in the morning of 6th when I heard slow moans and discovered him lying on the ground so helpless that it was just heart wrenching.
I don't remember a time in my childhood when I wasn't in a company of a pet dog. He is the third dog I had and god I don't want to lose him.
His condition is still miserable. He doesnt eat, nor does he play anymore. Maybe it is because of his age (which is like 75 in human years), but still, damnit, i want him to be in all his glory and good health.

Class Participation and ME

2005-02-24T23:55:00.000-08:00

This phenomenon has really been a mistery to me ever since i came to IIIT. The lecturers seem to be aghast as well as amazed, scared as well as brazen all at the same time at me!!
The case in point is my amazing "performance" and "class participation" in our very first course in iiit i.e. Computer Programming, where i had to prove my total lack of any knowledge of anything even distantly related to programming (like DNA programming) again AND again because the professor was too shocked to believe that, anyone can be in such a bliss (most probably he never heard of the saying "Ignorance is bliss"). He has strived hard in life trying to "extract" information which he thinks is painfully obvious from his students with his ever so excruciating and ofcourse, legendary dialogue of "WHY?? YOU TELL ME" (you will have the desired effect if you add a false malayali accent to it). I really had to try my level best at being my dumbest best in his class to escape from coming to the dreaded keyboard and actually coding a program which gives as an output the actual ingredients of a panacea for all the dreadful, incurable diseases in the world like AIDS, CANCER, LACK OF ATTENTION in his classes, etc. that too the exact concentration of each ingredient with a precision of atleast 10^(-23) and then, there is always that question about hmmm EFFICIENCY!!
Also, our dean's classes where the prime objective of all his slides and movies (no, not those fun movies where there is a person X in love with person Y who is also in love with Z who happens to be the killer of X's third daughter ) was to prove to the class that how scary i was and how my attendence was so abysmal, which, he didnt fail to recapitulate in EVERY class of his ( there was actually a time when i actually believed in his theory of lack of attendence of mine and thought that he might be taking special classes in my absense at a secret time and classified location!) and also, that 5 lacs of sponsorship (which i was supposed to fetch) for our cultural event, was the butt of his curiosity and he actually demanded a daily report from me for being lagging behind the schedule.
There was also this German class where there were actually questions based on me as the "central" character, that too in the mid semester and also the end semester exams!! He made it a point about how i can marry more than one woman and i couldnt miss that twitch in his lips, sparkle in his eyes, and a hint of green on his cheek which hinted of jealousy.
I can go on and on like this for each and every prof and each and every memorable subjects i have taken in my illustrious stay in IIIT. But as i have mentioned it earlier, i really dont recall much of any classes other than the only good effect they had and that was to get me sufficient "rest" and to hone my "passing time" skills "by looking attentive" when i was done relaxing for the day in the class.
The whole inspiration for this blog was today's Building Science class where i was supposed to do the honor of answering all the questions posed by the prof and that too when i was in the middle of the climax of one of the most interesting stories in the "Ruskin Bond Omnibus" containing "great crime stories, true tales of mystery and adventure and great suspence stories" (here i cant help but add that i own this copy personally signed by Mr. Ruskin Bond himself and yes i have a digital image of this to prove... manipulation of this image is out of question for the simple reason that i am not so good at producing image editing marvels like these which i believe require quite some talent and way toooo much free time!)

Thesis: The Euthanasia of Friendship and attrition of happiness OR Human Miserability Life Cycle

2005-02-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

[WARNING : Strictly for research purposes only. All the characters and events in this thesis -- even those based on real people -- are entirely fictional. All the statistics used in this thesis is very confidential and any duplication or distribution of the same will be punishable under the laws of sanity. Any questions regarding the logic and conclusions drawn in the following thesis will amount to blasphemy. The following thesis contains highly inflammable matter which sould not be read or referred to by anyone either living or dead.]

Attrition is the biggest truth of life... it is as true as birth or death. All the good things are not for ever. But they dont come to an end all of a sudden, on a specific place or time. But instead, they gradually deplete in strength in due course of time. This gradual process of wearing away is known as attrition.
Can we do anything about attrition? The logical answer is naturally NO! But we can try to reduce the ill effects or better still, shove it over to that proverbial "tomorrow" (which in academic and corporate culture never comes, and which has a completely opposite meaning in cosmetic industry who swear by the assumed fact that their product can actually stop time i.e. ageing and not only that but in fact cut a couple of years from your age).
So, coming back to the point. TIME can be the greatest boon or bane and nobody in this world or somewhere in the other galaxies not far away (which is not possible without questioning Einstein's Space-Time continuum, and since there is a common notion that Einstein was one of the greates scientific minds in the history of the world just justifies this assumption) from our own milky way can refute.
But time has a completely enigmatic effect on human relations, rather bordering on paranormal to be more precise. It effects the way person comprehends reality and of course other human beings; be it their friends or foes.
This attrition of friendship over time is what i am driving at (if you thought that there was too much melodrama and special effects or plain "build up" then you can just go to "you know where" and you can make "Love" to "you know what" because, after all it is MY Blog and i have a right to be over dramatic!).
So, you might be wondering what triggered this philosophical digression on my part. The case in point is the very recent event of chain mails concerning a friend who is far too close to a hmmm...... yes you guessed it right a girl, of course it might not be so obvious owing to the hype of same sex marriages and gay rights etc. which we will discuss at lenght some other time lest we wander off on a completely independent topic which requires quite a bit of tact and sophistication. Hence, the working hypothesis we make is that we ARE living in a conservative society and *boy* HAS to go after a *girl* for any sort of gratification which is deemed trivial or absurd in his esteemed and elite circle of his DUDE! circle.
And again assuming that you, as the reader of this sauve thesis ARE in fact a rational and mature person, you will not be entitled to any merit certification for guessing that the above stated disgression on the part of this guy going after gals can in fact create problems in the circle of his friends who all happen to boys by chance. This trait of having problems is highly increased when you consider the unhealthy ration of girls and boys in the class to a dismal 1:10, and also the competition for the mean survival instincts (as proposed by Darwin in his memoir "Origin Of Species") of furthering of our kind doesnt really contribute to an amiable solution to the above problem.
So, as any rational person (if you can recall, we very rightfully assumed in the above paragraph, because of your reading this sauve thesis and stuff like that...) , it might be clear to you that there are certain repercussion on his conduct with this girl and ofcourse, as any good love triangle (did i mention mundane Bollywood flick), we also have, in this thesis (to provide a twist to this thesis because it is no ordinary thesis... this is a thesis with a *twist* ) a nemesis of this "lover boy" to whom the girl in question scorned in the past. But as the saying goes, "Nothing is more dangerous than a woman scorned" we can draw a similar parallels to our male counterparts which will sound something like this "Nothing is more entertaining than a male scorned".
And hence, we were all treated for a battle of the titans but of course, being from the best institutes in india and also for the fact that we are of course true gentlemen, the battleground was ofcourse not the field or the playground as any normal, lesser mortals might have waged a war in. There was another problem to this scheme of fighting and dirtying the clothes in the ground (research shows that there is infact a great probability of soiling our clothes during a battle), i.e. gathering of a rowdy crowd to cheer the figheters would have been quite a pain in a** owing to the tight schedules and of course our FYP vivas.
So, they decided to come up with a revolutionary idea of fighting the war on a digital turf (ofcourse, there is no statistic to prove that this is infact a revolutionary idea but we can MAKE the statistics anytime). And according to the dictats of this new battle ground, it was unanimously decided by mutual consent of the fighting parties that spamming the mailboxes of all the fortunate people listed in the batch's mailing list. This battle too had it's share of critics who were of the opinion that the fighting parties are in fact making fools of themselves and could never resolve the actual issue (i.e. the issue of hmmm... let us skip this part).
Now, let us put the whole thing under perspective. Let us study the basic trait of people doing their engineering graduation, especially about the ones who do it in an environment engineered for "excellence".
When a group of people, coming from different backgrounds come together and live in what the faculty or the higher (dumber) management claims as *family*. First year passes in the joy of exploring the unknown which of ofcourse is very gratifying to all the parties and the whole friendship and stuff seems to be going like a song. In the second year, what was at one time considered as one group or a single entity, starts getting stale and eventually fragmented. Individuals form our own small groups or a group of groups and deals with gradual severation of ties from the other groups which doesnt seem to align with our own interest (this can be viewed as DOWNSIZING of our sphere of *actual* influence). There might be some logical explanation to all this stuff like communication problem, etc.. But on the way to the third year of engineering, we go for RE-ENGINEERING of our group or circle. The circles are further filtered based on the knowledge and experience of the past years. Gaps widen. Brevity becomes rampant in our communication with other groups.
Finally, in the fourth year, all the things seem to falling apart. The sub-groups which have already been formed turn into factions. Indifference sets in the air.
So, going by the human psyche, it is good to have a close group of friends who you can really rely upon. But things get out of hand when the different groups so formed come out at arms against each other. The battlefield might be a digital world of crap or the emails but the damage done cannot be refuted leave alone rectified.
Having spent so many years together, we definitely dont want to go to that "dangerous world" with our hearts filled with vendetta. The only way of having atleast perceived peaceful state of mind is by refraining from mudslinging and badmouthing others in the final stage of our student life. Memories of this perioud of time should bring joy to our hearts not the hatred and backlogs of biting off the heads of your figments of frustrated imagination, where you build an evil villain and adding to this you epitomise this *evil villain* by associating it with the person against whom you hold the grude.
And hence, a cry goes out into all corners of the world (and more specifially a small portion of land called iiit), the great Shaik Of Hyderabad has spoken, "Let there be light and happiness everywhere". Now it is your duty to be happy or miserably sad for the rest of your life. May the force be with you. May the evil bots be fragged.

What should i write...

2005-02-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry for such delay in my second post... but as u all know, i have a problem starting (maybe it has something to do with my bike). Dont have any good ideas. You see i am not a *diary* writing person. So i will stick to writing the obvious/mundane (i guess that is the whole point of blogging)...
So, yesterday night, i squeezed out some time from an already hectic schedule to have some time to entertain myself.. or more importantly, to spend some quality time with myself :). So, as any *Average Joe*, i decided to do the obvious, watch a movie.
As u all know, we have a database of many worthless movies on our lan (in our world renowned IIIT-H), which requires atleast a day to search for a watchable movie unless you are not averse to the idea of getting a seizure. But thankfully, we are experts in beating the system. So we have our very own, movie review system (which is vocal in nature and you will have to know which person to ask and also requires some tact and basic understanding of body language and human psychology), i decided to watch "MY SASSY GIRL".
And God, it was GREAT. Really glad to see something good which can appeal universally coming from the Korean film industry. Naturally it had just everything required for a movie to be great... good story, nice characterization, nice acting and ofcourse sphisticated comedy!! I rate it 10/10.

my_first_post.c

2005-02-16T19:01:00.000-08:00

Hope this is not too late to join the bandwagon. You see, our batchmates have created the blog http://gdit2k1.blogspot.com which makes my joining imminent ;).