Is there anybody out there?

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

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!

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

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…

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…

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

"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?