Musings on life ... Saurabh Jain

I have moved ...

2007-08-02T09:09:00.000+05:30

I guess it was time to move ...

This blog has now moved to :
http://blog.saurabhj.com

Please update your bookmarks and blogrolls...
Thank you.

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Atlas Shrugged ...

2007-05-18T01:05:00.000+05:30

This is to inform all you people who doubted me - I finally finished Atlas Shrugged!
Woohoo !!!

Okay, I shamelessly took 2 years and 2 attempts (the first time I gave up mid way at the John Galt speech) to finish it, but I finally did it last week and just wanted to pat my back a bit for the achievement ...

Honestly, Atlas Shrugged is not a page turner per se ...
It requires a good amount of dedicated reading and a lot of effort to get through some pages sometimes.
But saying that, its an awesome, awesome book - and a definite read if you had read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and liked it.

I am not going to do a book review here (because I am pretty sure I'll suck at it) but if you have sometime to spare and want to get into the entire philosophical reading mode (without reading absolutely boring theoretical stuff), I suggest this book would be a good read.

The scope of the book is quite far fetched and exaggerated - and yet you wish such things could happen. You wish one person could stand up and stop the functioning of the world.

The name comes from the question about Atlas.
Atlas is shown carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders ... What would happen to the world if he shrugged?

One of the most powerful lines from the book and my favourite (which is kinda clichéd) is by John Galt - the main protagonist of the book. It goes like this:

"I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 83. Why am I counting? ]

The getting to places on time thing ...

2007-05-13T09:47:00.000+05:30

I am generally a pretty punctual guy (though results may vary sometimes)
I do get to places within a couple of minutes of the scheduled time - and then spend 30 minutes waiting for other people to show up ...
All this waiting experience, has given me qualities of a saint and one thing I can do for eons is wait for people to show up ...
Though it is absolutely frustrating sitting somewhere "alone" and looking like an idiot waiting for people to show up, I guess I have gotten used to it ...

Some people from my college group of friends (you know who you are) are so often, so obnoxiously late that they believe that you would be stupid to expect them to be anywhere within 30 minutes of the scheduled time. (An exception to this is Mr. Mayank Tripathi who actually turns up much before the scheduled time)

After all these years and with the friends that God has gifted me, I have learnt that it is entirely stupid of me to actually get to the place "before" time - so I am trying to devise ways and prediction algorithms to get to the place "exactly" on time - give or take a few minutes.
(In my definition a few minutes = not more than 5)

So how do I do it you ask?
Well, what I am now going to share with you are years of careful observations and conclusions ...

[Step 1]
First you figure out who are you going to meet and check whether these people have a history of being punctual. If yes, keep the scheduled time as it is.
If I am meeting my school friends (who are generally mostly on time), I add about 5 minutes.
If I am meeting my college group of friends, unless I have called one of the attendees up and made him solemnly swear to be on time - so that I can have company - I add about 20 minutes.

And when you are going to meet really important people, you MUST always be on time.
This has two benefits.
If the really important people are prospective clients or people you meet for business, there is nothing more pathetic than turning up late and wasting the other person's time ...

When the really important person is not a someone from the above category, it makes sense turning up on time because when she turns up later, you can make her feel guilty for having to make you wait for so long ... :)

[Step 2]
After you have properly selected your end goal time, you have to move backwards.
You first figure out how much time it would take you to get to that place given perfect roads, no traffic and no signals.
Then you add all factors in ...

[Step 3]
If you are going to face bad traffic, add that much time to it.
Other things to consider:

Time of day (early mornings and late nights have less traffic and all signals are turned off).
Bad and potholed roads (reduction in speed of travel)
Whether you will be riding with a pillion (can't drive like a maniac then)
Whether there are some excruciatingly long signals on the way
The vehicle you are traveling in (cars take 50% more time than bikes in traffic)
etc etc

[Step 4]
Once you have considered all these points, and gotten the estimated time of travel, you have to start calculating the time it will take you to get ready and leave the house.
Other factors that come into play in this scenario are whether you will be alone at home while leaving - because in that case locking all the doors and gates would throw in an additional 5 minutes before you can get out ...

Putting all these steps into use (1-4) you will come across a time at which you have to stop doing whatever you were and start getting ready.

I shall explain with an example:
Say I need to meet school friends at 6:30 for coffee in Camp which is about 9 kms from my place.
Mode of travel - bike.

[Step 1] - Umm ... I guess I could reach on time (some of the guys come on time) - so 6:30 it is.
If I was meeting college friends, this would slip to 6:50 (You get the workings ...)

[Step 2] - Perfect roads, it takes me 15 mins to get there on bike.

[Step 3] - Adding the time of day, signals, bad roads and traffic, it would take me 8 mins more.

[Step 4] - Time to leave the chair and get ready to leave in the evening - about 10 mins.
No body at home - so have to lock up - 5 mins more.

Putting it to a total of 15+8+15 = 38 minutes to get to the place from my chair.
Rounded off to 40 minutes.
So, I gotta stop doing whatever I was and start getting ready at about 5:50 in order to make the appointment on time.

So there! Now you know ...

I hope this extremely nerdy, though very insightful article will inspire some of you to get to places - more on time. (Yeah! You know who you are! Don't make me spell it out)

:)

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 84. Why am I counting? ]

Gandhigiri actually works!

2007-04-18T02:22:00.000+05:30

Before I actually start this post, I must disclaim that I am not very fond of the word "Gandhigiri" - but it has come so much into the everyday parlance, that I cannot find any other alternative.
I wouldn't be surprised if the word finds itself in the Oxford dictionary pretty soon.

For those unfamiliar with the term, "Gandhigiri" means doing as (Mahatma) Gandhi would. The word comes from a very popular (and extremely hilarious) Hindi film - "Lage Raho Munnabhai" in which the protagonist follows on the steps prescribed by Mahatma Gandhi to bring about revolutionary changes.
This involves using the path of non violence and satyagraha.

Though, I found the movie to be extremely hilarious and enjoyable, I didn't actually think working on these philosophies would produce results in our modern, day to day life.

However, the cynic in me was silenced when I actually happened to try the technique at home for a very interesting (though trivial problem) and it produced astonishing results.
Let me enunciate as follows:

At the onset of summer, the chore that becomes the biggest pain in our house - is filling up bottles of water to store in the refrigerator.
Though the cold water is consumed by everyone, it is usually my mother and me who end up filling the water. This is actually frustrating, because we have a "Fill up water when you consume it" policy which no one seems to follow.

You will empathize with me when I tell you how homicidal I feel when I open the refrigerator to find that - not only is all the cold water over, but bottles are missing entirely - the ones which my brother conveniently bootlegs to the confines of his room.

This naturally infuriates me because not only do I NOT get the cold water which I so painstakingly filled up, but I know that after I fill up the bottles again - the same scenario will take place and I might actually end up strangling my brother.

None of the tactics to make my brother start filling up after he drank worked. No amount of tantrums, abuses, nagging ever got him to fill a single bottle.

Then, while re-filling the bottles that evening, the concept of Gandhigiri hit me.

One of the biggest and most pro-active emotions that human beings experience - something that more often than not makes someone get up and do something is that of guilt. And this is what the principle is based on. (I think)

So, I decided, to somehow make my brother feel guilty for what he was doing. (He's human - so he has to eventually - right?)

That evening, once I had done filling up the bottles, I poured in a glass of ice cold water and took it up to his room and put in on his desk.
After looking suspiciously at the utensil on his desk, smelling it and finally taking a sip, he asked what was wrong with me.

To which I replied: "I am now embarking on the path of Gandhigiri and everytime I fill up bottles of water which YOU drink, I'll get you a glass of water."
He was on the floor laughing and told me that there was no way in hell he was going to fall for this, and I could go and keep filling bottles till kingdom-com for all he cared.

I knew this was coming and had mentally prepared myself to go through this ritual for a couple of months atleast!

I couldn't be more wrong.
The next day, I get back home after work to find the refrigerator completely stocked - every empty nook and corner of it - with bottled water.
My mom was as shocked as me - and told me that my brother had come to the kitchen, dug up hundreds of empty bottles, filled them up and stocked them - all without her telling him anything.
I couldn't believe it!

It worked!!! Gandhigiri worked!
Results within 1 day (though your mileage may vary).

So, if you have similar problems, I suggest you give this a shot. The trick is finding the right angle to make the person feel guilty as soon as possible (you don't want to keep doing this forever and look like an idiot) - like in this case offering a glass of water did the trick.
If this does not work, threatening the concerned person that you are going to blog about this usually does the trick. :)

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 85. Why am I counting? ]

And I was transported ...

2007-04-05T22:55:00.000+05:30

Our family dinners are generally boring ... we have a selection of a couple of places we generally go to - and as no one is particularly fond of experimenting with their food, that too is generally from a tried and tested selection.

Anyways, the incidents which took place today were far from the usual boring stuff that we end up doing. (I know I am using the words boring a lot - which I just realised how dinners generally go anyways - I mean what else can you do besides eat, drink and talk?)

In the evening, my dad comes up and asks me whether I'd like to go out for food - and being the hog that I am, the question was redundant. This time around, we decided to go to this far off place called "Chandraphool Gardens" which is a huge garden restaurant - little ahead of Dighi on the way to Bhosari.

We've been to this place only a couple of times - way back in the past and have always had a pleasant experience.
The place has sprawling lawns, good natural air, decent lighting and decent food - which made it a decent enough place to visit any time of the year.
And, as we had not been there off late, we decided to pay the place a visit.

So, all of us ready and 40 minutes later - turn up at the venue.
We're surprised to see their pretty huge parking lot, full with cars - as it was a very sparsely populated place on our previous visits.

Once we entered, we realised that there was a party going on at the other end of the lawn (which is again pretty, pretty big - easily about 200 - 250 mts in length).
After being seated and having ordered the drinks, we realised that it was sort of an all - mens party - probably thrown by a guy for his co-workers who recently got promoted.
This was underlined by the fact that extremely loud, item number type of music soon started playing including "Babuji zarra ...". The sight of grown up, formally dressed (possibly drunk) men - holding hands and gyrating to these numbers was particularly amusing.

I was instantly transported to the Bihar of the movies and the ambiance and the crowd added to the effect.

Things got more interesting when two drunk men sitting on the table behind us, got up and assaulted the waiter who was serving them for no apparent reason.
The waiter fought back - but was soon over powered by the two goons who looked like some cheap political party workers.
Soon, the poor waiter was falling around, dropping plates and landed next to our table.
(Just to be clear, by assaulting, I mean - being slapped repeatedly, lots of pushing, shoving around and trying to sock the other guy in the face)

Thankfully, the manager showed up in time with a couple of other waiters to break up the fight and save the poor guy's life.
"Perfect" I tell myself - an experience worth driving all the way out of Pune for.

All this while, my extremely charged up little brother shouting - "If anyone did that to me, I'd _beep_ him and _beep_ him and _beep_ him", added to the entire experience of seeing a guy get clobbered. (Just to clear matters more, my little brother is not so little - he's almost 6 feet and pretty big and probably capable of doing the _beep_ things that he said he'd do. So you better not try messing with me! I've got protection :))

Funnily, after the break up, the two guys get back to their seats and continue with their meal, booze and even order something more.
(If cooks and waiters spit in your food for being slightly rude to them - I'd hate to see what they must have done to their food for assaulting a fellow worker).

These two fellows might have gotten scared of being clobbered by the rest of the waiters when they stepped out - because one of them calls his other goon friends up for back up.
In fifteen minutes, four other equally goony looking men show up.

All my hopes of a goon Vs waiters show down went up in smoke when instead of barging into the kitchen and clobbering up the waiter, these guys made for the exit. Whether they paid their bill or not - is sort of irrelevant at this point I think.
However, the other families sitting around looked sort of relieved at their departure.

And if you're wondering, the party men at the other end of the lawn, were dancing all this while - holding hands to the tune of Babuji, a Titanic Remix, a Himmesh Reshammiya number and also an "We're going to Ibiza" track.

So if any of you people are interested in experiencing the "Bihar of the movies" ambiance, please head to Chandraphool Gardens - I'd be happy to give you directions.
This place beats the artificial environs of Horn Ok Please on F.C. Road hands down.
Brilliant experience and highly recommended.

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 86. Why am I counting? ]

Sweltering Summer Heat ...

2007-03-28T22:23:00.000+05:30

It's that time of the year again - Summer.

Some years ago, while back in school, summers would bring with them unlimited joy and would be regarded as "My favourite season" in the so many essays we've had to write on the topic back then.
More than bringing with them longer days (the sun sets at around 7 p.m) - which meant more time to squeeze in another game of galli (road-side) cricket, summers would be so much fun because of the 2 month, blissfully long summer vacations which would stretch from April to the first week of June.

Back then, the temperatures would be moderate and going out to play even in the then hot sun at 4:00 pm would be a possibility.

Not any more though ...
For all those debating on whether global warming is for real, I have experienced first hand, temperatures of Pune rising steadily over the years to unbearable levels now.

Back then, winters would mean cuddling with a book under a warm blanket.
Winters nowadays can be easily seen through without the use of a single blanket.

The temperature right now in Pune is touching 42 degrees Celsius - something at which I remember, people died of heat stroke in Ahemdabad some years ago (Ahemdabad is one of the hotter Indian cities)

This is what my weather bar displays so frequently nowadays ...

I would blissfully sit in the comfort of my house the entire day, but I have to go to work.
We have completely flexible timings at my new company and we basically get to decide what time we should come and leave ...

We get to work between 9:30 and 10:00, then leave for lunch for an hour or so at around 2:00.
The company being close to home, I come home for lunch and then leave in 40 minutes.

The really sucky part is that once you are all well fed and stuff, going back to work in the extremely hot and dusty conditions on your two wheeler is extremely painful at 3:00 p.m.

We then supposedly work till 7:30 - 8:00 and head back home for a total of 8 to 9 (apparently) productive hours.

This schedule is turning out to be sort of difficult due to the excessive heat we have to face on two trips back and forth.
Any suggestions?

Summer basically ain't so great anymore ...
Can't wait for the first showers to hit ...

Yeah, and also - please stop polluting the earth!!!
And please go watch "An Inconvenient Truth"

It is one of the most hard hitting documentaries I have seen off late and is extremely well made.
Definitely deserved its Oscars I think ...

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 87. Why am I counting? ]

Why do we Indians have to suck at providing quality service?

2007-03-19T09:50:00.000+05:30

I have always realised, that we in India - don't give a damn about quality.
I don't exactly know why, but I am guessing it has something to do with the demand always exceeding the supply - considering, we're bursting at our seams with the large population.
So, as long as the goods keep coming, the manufacturer (and not the customer) is king - and they can keep dishing out crap - because there will always be someone to buy it.

I have a complete live example to give - hence this post.
This is about the Pune International Film Festival (PIFF website).

Last year, we guys from college had gone for the 4th Pune International Film Festival and it was tonnes of fun (even though the organisation had a lot to be desired).
So, when it came around this year - we went for it again (It is still going on - at the time of writing this).

This time around, the movies are pretty good and we're having lots of fun again - but nothing has changed organization side.
And considering it is an "International" film festival, the standards are far from it.

The schedule of movies was available extremely late - just a day before the festival and the catalogue (which has the synopsis of all the movies) - only a couple of days after the festival started.
The schedule is given only for the next 3 days (out of the total 7 days of the festival).
So, if I am working and need to really catch a movie and need to inform my boss about it, there are chances that I would be doing it only hours in advance

Quite a few movies had their running times mis-reported in the schedule - which caused a mix up of our plans.
Then, the schedule (or the catalogue) ends up having movies in the wrong category - so you never find the movie you're looking for (there is no index or a table of content).

In 3 days the festival has been running, the schedule has on been changed on 2 occasions , on the fly. They exchanged the timing of a couple of movies minutes before they started - which again threw all our plans out of the window.

Their website (which I think is one of the most important things) is totally un-updated and you have news from PIFF 2006 lying around.
It also has a schedule section - which lists movies which have already finished showing and a catalogue section which contains information on only 1/10th of the movies running.

But, the icing on the cake is this - which actually prompted me to write this blog.
I wrote the organizers, the following email:

Dear Sir / Madam,

This is a very humble request to the organising committee to please put up the complete schedule of films on the website (preferably in the document / excel / pdf format) which is also up to date.

Today (18th), the schedule for the remaining days became available at the venues (19th onwards), but the website still shows the schedule only till the 18th.

I request you to please update this - so that we can better plan which movies to go for.

Thank you and regards,

- Saurabh Jain

To this, I got the following reply from a Moti Irani:

Please stop visiting our website we are all far too busy collect the schedule from INOX or Esquare

Hah!
Hows that for providing shoddy service and having the audacity to tell your customers to F*** Off? A perfect case of demand more than supply.
I don't know, but if something is worth doing, its worth doing well.

In my opinion, if they have a website running, it should be updated - otherwise there is absolutely no point in having it in the first place.

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 88. Why am I counting? ]

Awesome upsets ...

2007-03-18T07:26:00.000+05:30

I woke up today, to the news that India lost to Bangladesh in their Cricket World Cup opening match by 5 wickets.
For those who do not follow cricket very much, or don't see the magnitude of the situation, here is a brief comparison.

Bangladesh is a small country to the north east of India with an area of 144,000 sq. kms and a population of 147,365,352 compared to India which has an area of 3,287,590 sq. kms and a population of 1.027 billion.
Bangladesh was given the status of a test playing nation only in 2000 as compared to India who is playing tests from 1932.
And out of the previous 14 encounters, Bangladesh has managed to beat India only once.
[ stats courtesy - Wikipedia.org ]

In all fairness, Bangladesh deserved to win the match yesterday.
They played an awesome game - did everything perfectly and I am really happy for them.

The other major, major upset was Ireland beating Pakistan which was such a shocker that the Indian upset match looks pale in comparison.

But this is not what the post is about.

This entire upset situation got me thinking about the difference in professionalism exhibited by professional cricket players playing in the Indian Cricket team and working professionals in other professions (software, automobiles, etc - you get the picture).

I did some research and found out that the Indian team is the highest paid sports team in the world in terms of sponsorships.
Moreover, even if you leave out the sponsorships and other things which contribute to the income of players, the top Indian players get a salary of about Rs. 5,000,000 (USD 113,324) which makes it a professional sport.
By professional sport, I mean - Indian players now, do not need to get other day jobs (like players from other countries like Scotland, UAE have to do) - they can make do by just playing the sport.

So the thought that comes to my mind is - shouldn't the players be made accountable if they lose a particular game - especially very pathetically?

I mean, how difficult is it to play cricket?
Every kid in the country can play cricket - so there is no extreme skill involved per se.
And when you're a professional player, all you are supposed to do is just practice, play and be good at what you do.
At the time of writing this, the Indian team ranks 6th out of the 11 test playing teams - not a very good stat considering the amounts they make and they come from a country of a billion people compared to higher ranked, much smaller countries like New Zealand (3rd), Pakistan (4th) and Sri Lanka (5th).

If cricket is like any other profession, why shouldn't you be penalized for screwing up?
If you're working in say, an automobile company, and make a major mistake - you'll not only get your salary docked, but may also lose your job.
So, why can't this be done to our cricketers?
If its a profession, why should there be different rules and points of views of judging performances?

Maybe losing marginally to a much stronger team very closely could be forgiven - after all its a sport, but then any major loss should be properly penalized and salaries should be docked.
I might be prejudiced and harsh and just talking through my head, but don't most of the people think that nowadays, its the "money" which is the biggest incentive for the men in blue?
So be it ...

What say?

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 89. Why am I counting? ]

Coming soon ...

2007-03-17T21:23:00.000+05:30

I always tend to do this ...
Take long blogging breaks - I dunno why - but it just stops all of a sudden, and I don't feel like writing, or just get too lazy to actually sit and type out a blog even if I do feel like ...

Writing makes you think, and helps you maintain your control over the language - so, I have decided to actually force myself to write once in every 4 days at least.

So, I should clock at least 90 good posts a year.
Now, that I have put this into writing, I will try to keep this up.

So starting from today, (this post is of course not counted), I plan to take my post count to a minimum of 240 posts by the 16th of Mar, 2008

Watch this space for more :)

Being emotional versus being logical ...

2007-01-01T20:43:00.000+05:30

I've wondered about this a lot lately ...
Human beings are logical creatures (when they are in the right frame of mind) ...
Very, very logical creatures ...

And I feel (out of a lot of personal experiences), that any problem can be solved and worked out by being completely logical about it, thinking in a clear and concise manner.
Keeping emotions out of the equation ...

Emotions - always get in the way of things ...
But that cannot really be helped, can it? Human beings are also very emotional creatures ...

Sometimes, you take drastic steps - by just being emotional about the whole episode - without thinking things through - and later are happy about the fact that you did.
On some contemplation, you will realize, that you would have not taken those steps if you had sat and thought about the situation in a logical manner.

Which brings us to an interesting juncture - what is the right mix of logic and emotion that needs to go in making an important decision ...
This can actually be a dumb point, because when you're highly charged about and emotional about something - you're probably not thinking straight about it - no logic.

Whereas in many situations, if you actually sit and think about something through, the charged up feeling and emotions have probably drained off ...

I can probably enunciate with a couple of situations where this dilemma may arise ...

Say you're at work - and have probably been wronged in someway.
Maybe you got passed off for the promotion you were expecting, or probably someone (your boss) insulted you etc. etc. - and you're in a rage.
Very charged up, very emotional - you probably want to quit right then and there - throw your resignation on the guy's face and walk out of there ...
Maybe its a stupid thing to do - and maybe you'll regret it later. But you want to do it.
You'll probably regret NOT doing it at all ...
Thats the defining moment ...
If you take the plunge, you will probably be happy at the fact that you served just desserts.
You're ego will definitely have jumped a couple of notches ...

However, once you start thinking about it, you probably will NOT do it.
Maybe you will feel guilty of being tame and afraid of a confrontation. Things will probably go on as they were - without much change.

So, what would probably be a correct alternative to take?
I know I am generalizing this thing to a great deal and it depends from person to person ... But still, what according to a third party watching the proceedings, would be the right thing to do?
Listening to your heart or to your mind?

Another completely different situation can be as such ...

Say you like somebody a lot and want to ask him / her out.
You are pretty much at a point in which you cannot help but think about this person a lot.
Pure logic would suggest that you talk to the person concerned and find out whether he / she feels the same.
If they do, awesome. Otherwise, you will know for sure and you can move on.
When emotion kicks into the scene, things get pretty messed up.
You don't know whether you should ask, whether its the right thing to do, whether you will mess up his / her life, whether you will mess up your life, whether you will still be able to be friends, (and lots of such whether questions).

As Dennis Hopper would say (from Speed): What do you do Jack? What - do - you - do?

It is a very interesting situation actually - and probably millions of people find themselves in it every day of the year.

Basically, I feel - the underlying principal in all such scenarios is "change" - and how much people are afraid of it.
Or maybe, I am just generalizing again and may be completely off the topic.

If you read the book "Who Moved My Cheese" - there is an interesting question:

"What would you do if you were not afraid?"

I think the answer to this probably would help a bit in such situations ...

Umm ... How bout a few billions?

2006-12-24T22:53:00.000+05:30

This post comes as a result of some musing after watching the movie - Notting Hill recently.
Apart from being an extremely well made, highly entertaining romantic comedy which I thoroughly enjoyed - an incident from the movie struck me ...

If you have seen the film, it's at the dinner (William's (Hugh Grant's) sister's birthday party) at which Bernie (Hugh Bonneville) asks Anna (Julia Roberts) how much she made in the last film she worked - and she says "15 million dollars".

Hmm ...
So I pondered ...
How did it all start? I mean - how did movie stars start getting paid so much.

If you think about it, every job comes with an upper and lower limits of payment - which are pretty much well defined for a period of time.

Like, for example, it is an accepted fact that most of the bigger movie stars make millions of dollars for a film. If you think about this a bit more - you can say that this is justified as the distributors of the film eventually rake in enough money which justifies them being able to pay their actors.
This finally brings us to how much we end up paying for a movie ticket.
Here in Pune - a night show in a decent enough hall costs anywhere from 150 bucks - 200 bucks ($3 - $4) a ticket which even though is kinda on the higher side by Indian standards - I don't think people seem to mind paying it nowadays (by the number of shows running housefull even on weekdays).
And finally again, people don't seem to mind because the standards of living have gone up.
So indirectly, the more money we tend to make, the more money those actors tend to make :).
I know this is a dumb metaphor - but there is a definitely connection there (I can sense it :)).

In the end if you think about it, (even though I haven't got the faintest idea about acting) - does it warrant a sum of 15 million dollars to be paid for a film?

I will consider the next case - that of a software developer which I can more relate to.
Again, in India - it is a well known fact that software developers (or Computer Science / Engineering graduates) tend to make more money than most of the other faculties when they start off.
Even further down the line (couple of years), a software developer is likely to make more money than a similarly skilled mechanical engineer working in an automobile company.

And if you think about it - all software developers do is sit in front of a monitor all day long and type code. You don't actually need to be a genius to do it - just about any human being with a normal level of IQ and will power can do it.
Furthermore, in most of the projects - major parts of the code which you need, can be found somewhere on the internet by careful searching - which makes it more of a jigsaw puzzle assembling job than actual, smart work.

So what do software developers do - which results in them getting higher salaries, air conditioned offices and the like?

Where did all this trend start?
And how do we go about accelerating it ... ? :)

Just a small heads up ...

2006-12-20T21:51:00.000+05:30

Yes. I am still alive and kicking.
This post comes almost a month after my last one - and though I have been pretty lazy in not blogging as much as I would like to, I will still go ahead and blame the weather ...

Somehow, even though the colder months bring with them the promise of sitting by a nice fire in the garden, curling up on the couch under a blanket with a nice book - and many such activities that one can indulge in when the weather is so cold generally, the winters have always brought a lot of stress and difficult decisions to make for me ...

One way or the other, I manage to get myself into these really cascading depressing situations which takes the bright and warm (nowadays exceedingly hot) summers to get out off ...

In the meantime, I have read this book - Freakonomics - which I will recommend.
Even if you don't agree with many of the controversial topics of debate that the authors have chosen (I somehow agreed to 99% of them), you will find yourself looking at things from a more economist's point of view once you have gone through all the pages.

The other very interesting book that I am going through right now is - Games People Play - a book which deals with transactional analysis and social psychology in general. Though it makes for a pretty interesting read, it does tend to get technical at places ...

Does cheering actually help?

2006-11-18T22:56:00.000+05:30

We're having a table tennis tourney going on in the company with lots of people participating in both the singles and doubles matches.
This is directly proportional to the reduction in the amount of work done by the people - those who are participating and those who come to watch the matches and cheer their friends.

In table tennis, unlike outdoor sports, you are not allowed to cheer / jeer while the game is in progress. Therefore, except the occasional "wooos" and "ahhs", there is nothing going on during the game play.
However, when a point is won, people do come out and encourage their friends.
The more popular you are, the more support you have during the games.

However, even though we are a very small company (the numbers in the range of 40 - 50), we do not know everyone well.
It's more or less like a typical office.
You have a few close chums, some people good friends and others acquaintances whom you share a very casual greeting relationship.

Anyways, the point I am trying to make here is that you don't know everyone decently well.
During one of the matches in which a friend of mine was playing, it got pretty close - even though she had just learned to play recently and the other guy played decently, but looked somewhat nervous.

At that point, I wondered, that if we all got behind our friend and cheered her (she had more support definitely), it would break the other guy down and she might win the last round - and thus the game.
However, the cheering actually never happened and thus we will never know - but this sparked a debate between me and my team mate whether cheering actually makes any difference.

I was of the opinion that it always definitely helps and he was of the opinion that it doesn't - and sometimes even is detrimental to the player.
After countless minutes of debate, we finally agreed on two points - which I definitely feel does not do complete justice to the entire topic of "Does cheering actually help?"

One point was thus:

I'd like to refer to my previous post here "That moment of giving up" in which my boxer friend told me that he gives up sometimes when he's fighting it out in a god forsaken place where no one cares about the result of the game - he wonders whether getting all beat is really worth it.
Thus, the point here is - that when you are down by a few points, having no support whatsoever, makes you wonder whether it is worth it - and you end up not fighting back as best as you could.
On the other hand, if you have people behind you egging you on - no matter what the result, you atleast fight till the end - which is a good thing!

The other point made was:

This takes the case of Indian cricketers who enjoy the status of demi-gods in the country.
Many of them comment that playing a game in India, draws huge crowds, and thus an awesome support which can create quite a lot of pressure to perform. Many players feel that they enjoy and play a more natural game when they are abroad as they don't feel the heat of the pressure the crowds bring in. So in this case, all the cheering and support is a bad thing.

So, in what conditions is cheering a good thing or a bad thing?
Is it always good? Always bad?
Does it always depend on the individual in question? Does it depend on the way the crowd is cheering you?

Do players who are trying to be something they are not, fear the pressure that crowd support brings? And do underdog players thrive on cheering and perform that extra bit because of it?

A very open ended debate and I'd really like to hear your thoughts on it!

CampusCombine ...

2006-11-06T23:08:00.000+05:30

http://www.campuscombine.com

Hey!

We (The ActiveCiti Team) just wanted to inform you about the new initiative we just started - CampusCombine.

How many times have you felt the need to know what was going on in other colleges - from which questions were asked by the external examiner during the viva to which companies are coming for campus placements to when that inter collegiate event is going to take place. How do you know if the college/stream you are entering is the right one for you?

How many times have you felt frustrated while completing an assignment which even the staff members had no idea about? Wouldn't it be awesome if you could ask people from other colleges for help - those who had completed the assignments you wanted...

How many times have you got stuck due to lack of ideas and guidance while working on a project and had no one to take help from or turn to...

Well, trying to provide a solution to all these problems and thousands more - which students face, we give you "CampusCombine".
CampusCombine aims to bring students, ex-students, companies and interested mentors - all together on a common platform so that they can help each other out.

So, if you are a student and the next time you are wondering how a particular problem can be solved, or what questions were asked by the external examiner in other colleges, all you need to do is log on to CampusCombine for your particular city and get your doubts and queries cleared.

And if you are someone who has gone through the rigors of the Indian education system and wants to lend a helping hand to people still stuck there, you can log on to CampusCombine and help out the students and make their lives a little easier.

So, please head on to http://www.campuscombine.com and be a part of this revolution that we're trying to start.

Aao banaye education behtar :)

- The ActiveCiti Team

PS: As we are very short on our advertising budget, please could you forward this email to all the people you know who you think could use this service?
Thanks :)

What you just read up there was the pitch to a new site that we started a day before called CampusCombine.
As this is a non profit venture, with no revenues whatsoever and no venture capitalists or angel investors backing us up, it gets kinda difficult to sometimes spread the word.

So we have to resort to emailing friends, asking them to forward the link and hoping that they will do. We had already done this for ActiveCiti - and the initial response was great - but once you run out of people to email, the number of people signing up everyday slowly dwindles down.

The important thing then, becomes to get as many people as you can email to actually join the site and hope that you did a good job with the site - so that people can refer people and so on ...

The very difficult and thus quite interesting part of this job becomes to word the email.
You have to keep it somewhat short and get all your ideas in place - worded properly so that your readers can empathize with what you're doing.

However, this time I think we're working with a more serious problem than we were with ActiveCiti - coz the response has been fairly decent.
Not to mention these are very early days and the student population of Pune is monstrous.
So only time will tell ... :)

Observing people ...

2006-11-03T02:27:00.000+05:30

Its 2:30 am in the morning and I have gotten back (a while ago) from a friend from work's surprise birthday party.
It was lots of fun and I for one, had a good time.

Anyways, I realised something about myself and people in general today.
Most of the party, (actually for all part of it), we were just sitting around in a living room and talking (there were 16 of us and her folks).
Maximum of the conversations that took place involved the entire group with one or the other person narrating a joke or an incident.
At one particular point of time, we were made to go in order and narrate one joke, incident or just amuse the large gathering of people.

Anyways, firstly, what I noticed about people was that listening to what people have to say (or not) at a party or a social discussion tells a lot about them - if you notice that is.
The second thing that I realized (about myself) is that I tend to observe people a lot and am sub consciously analyzing them.
I dug a little deeper (into my conscience) and this is what happens.

When a person is going to speak or narrate something or do anything at all, you form a sort of prediction of what he is going to do or how he is going to do it - depending on all the knowledge you have of the person.
Depending on how much the person sways from your prediction, you assess them and fine tune your understanding of the person.
If your prediction was spot on, you kinda know that you know the person decently well.

I probably haven't even gotten close to the level at which I can be dead on right about a person, but I feel that I am getting there slowly - but steadily.
Just observing how people behave in a social group, what they say things, how they say it, how much effort they are applying, how conscious they are tells loads about a person - and I just felt that I got to know almost all of the people present there - a lot more even though I hardly spoke to many of them.

The point I am trying to make here is that its is sometimes more interesting in observing the reactions of people to a particular interesting situation than observing the situation itself.
Like for example, I have caught myself (and am very disturbed by the fact) that many a times, I actually observe how people react when say, a very pretty girl walks into the room instead of looking at her.

Very disturbing, I know.
But right now, at 2:45 a.m - I am pretty much at my twilight zone and really cannot say that I am talking sense ...
So you cannot hold anything said on this particular post against me.
So there! :)

That moment of giving up ...

2006-10-19T01:27:00.000+05:30

I was watching the Australia, West Indies match tonight in which West Indies actually pulled a surprise when it beat Australia.
I was favouring Australia to win till the last minutes of the match, when the wicket of Clarke fell and I knew then, that the Aussies had given up on the match.

It's a very funny feeling this ... giving up on something.
Knowing that no matter what you try, what you do, you aren't going to make it.
The thought of it is actually very depressing - who would ever want to give up on someone or something that they want real bad, but life is ruthless and more often than you'd like, you end up 'giving up' on the thing that you were chasing.

I have faced this situation a lot while playing basketball back in school and junior college.
We had one of the best teams while in school and we lost very rarely, so I was not hit by this feeling that often.

However, once we moved into junior college, people went in different directions, our team shrunk, and the 10 good players who'd play the 40 minutes shrunk to 4 or 5.
More often than not, we'd lose closely contested games in the dying minutes due to the sheer exhaustion that we'd experience towards the end of playing time.

I am guilty of giving up on many occasions, but all of them, as much as I can remember were due to physical (and fitness) reasons.
The series of events would be such ...

You've been playing for 35 minutes continuously and you don't have the stamina you had back in school. You are barely just able to run.
The other team is leading by 2 points. There are 5 minutes left in the game and you can easily win it.
At precisely this time, some random guy from the other team comes around, takes a three and makes it. Your heart sinks with the ball and you trail by 5 points now.
You are completely exhausted, panting, and want nothing more than to crash on the ground and lie there for eternity.
You are pushing yourself to run all the way across court to get in position for the pass. Somehow your team loses the ball, the opponents are on a fast break and you are chasing them.
At precisely this moment, a couple of thoughts will flash in your mind.

1. That you can't take this anymore and you are going to die soon.
2. That this is just a game ... is it really worth it?

I think the entire game turns around depending on the answer each player gives himself.
If everyone (or the majority) push themselves harder, your chances of winning increase a lot. Any rational person would definitely say that people need to push themselves ... and stick with it – giving themselves a good chance.

However, nothing seems rational at that particular point of time. When you can hear your heartbeats distinctively, but not the voices of those around you nor the crowds cheering insanely.
More often than not, people give in ... and the rest is history!

I was speaking to a friend of mine who recently took up boxing and did exceptionally well at it (he represented the state in his first tournament).

I asked him what made him give up sometimes, while he was boxing.
He thought for a while and said that boxing is a very tiring sport (and painful and very risky too). So while you are out there, fighting this random guy from another never heard of city, in some small town where nobody cares, you come to a point where you ask yourself whether it is worth it ...
And there you get your answer ...

I feel the trick here is to postpone the "Is it worth it" question as much as possible ...
Every human being has a break-in point - and so, everyone can be broken ... the question is to find that point and somehow avoid, postpone or hasten it depending on which side you are on.

Anyways, experience tells me that once you give up, there is no way even a miracle can save you ... What I'd really like to know is why people give up in other life scenarios and what drives them to it ...

The difference between understanding and thinking that you do ...

2006-10-04T23:25:00.000+05:30

This is one more of those grey area posts - where I am myself not so certain about anything - and in the end it turns out to be - just some sort of general loud musing actually ...

The story begins with my brother (with no prior computer programming experience whatsoever) turning up to me two days before his IT exam and asking me to teach him javascript programming.
The task was pretty much uphill from the beginning itself, as he had no experience at all - and he gave me so much little time to teach him in.

So anyways, I thought of giving it a shot and got down to teaching him.
After a couple of hours of tutoring and assignments, he told me that he had understood whatever I had taught him and seeing that he was getting the hang of things and actually doing the assignments right, I thought he had too.
So, I left it at that and decided to continue with much more advance topics the next day.

However, when I did start the next day, I realised that he had not understood a thing - had got all his concepts wrong, but still somehow, was able to do the assignments that I had given him.
He had found some vague similarity and a coincidental method by which he was able to solve the assignments. His method, though not entirely incorrect, was a one off thing and actually ended up being a series of (coincidental) flukes which made him think that what he had understood was correct.

Hence, in short, what had actually happened was that he "thought" he had understood, whereas he clearly hadn't.

Which brings me back to the post ... the difference between "actually understanding something" and "thinking" that you understood something ...
This boils down to some sort of a paradox, because how can you say you understand something unless you "think" you do, and vice versa ...

Also, even though you think you understood something because your application worked using the principles that you applied (which you thought were correct), how will you know for sure whether what you "think" you have understood was the exact same thing the author / teacher was supposed to make you understand?

You can probably run a larger number of test cases but then again, there is no limit to how many different cases there could be and for how many your theories would fail ...
Which kinda brings us to the thought that nothing in this world is absolute - and everything is relative ...

Or then maybe, we just need to invent some higher means (or forms) of communication by which we could eliminate all these paradoxes and come to absolute conclusions ...
Here is me again wandering off into the oblivion ... :p

The acid test ...

2006-09-22T01:03:00.000+05:30

If you have seen the movie "Finding Nemo", there is a scene in the aquarium (at the dentists) in which the aquarium fish put Nemo through a test of courage - at the great Volcano (or something) before they induct him into their group ...

Maybe what I am talking about here is not exactly the same thing, but the above example is the closest reference I could find.
I again don't know whether this happens between different cultures, age groups, genders (with respect to groups of friends) or maybe we are just a plain weird bunch of people, but here is something I have noticed that happens in my group of friends ...

I shall hence call it the acid test and this phenomenon is very peculiar because it performs a function completely different to what it would seem to many (in fact most) of the people witnessing the events ...
I must admit, I realized the significance of it just sometime ago, and so have decided to put it in writing ...

Here goes ...

When we are with our own groups of friends, we put on a show for everybody.
We don’t behave in the same way when we are all alone, or are with our families (or a different group of friends) ...
Everybody, has a persona which he or she tries to maintain - something which gives the person substance and more importantly, (probably) a reason why the person was admitted to the group in the first place.

We start relating to each person in our friends circle by their default behaviour.
For example, one of my good friends plays the part of a completely indifferent, 'couldn't care less', 'don't give a rat's ass about anything' non conformist very well.
To someone meeting him for the first few times, he will come across as a person who couldn't care less about anything or anybody - and you could not for the life of you extract any sympathy or help from the individual no matter what you try ...
Over a period of years that we have gotten to know him well, we have learnt what a nice guy he is and no matter how much he will abuse you and make fun of you and act all haughty when somebody asks for help, he will eventually help the person - sometimes even going way out of his way to help them.

So, here is the acid test then.
When someone from a group, actually tries to do something good for a change - basically try to change an age old bad habit into something radically different, he is made fun off - by his good friends.
They will go to the extent of bugging you for days about it -

For e.g: "What happened to the I don't care, I will not wake up before 11:00 am attitude?"
Or
"Weren't you the one who said, reading is for nerds?"

Anyways, basically what happens is that when you are trying to do something good to yourself for your own sake (or possibly someone else's), its your friends who come in your way and try to dissuade you from it - making fun of you and basically embarrassing you till you've had enough.

Now, if you are thinking that this is a really sorry thing to happen, and that the person with such friends has something wrong with his taste ... you won't be very wrong ...

But then again, if you look closer, you will realize, that even though it is happening sub consciously, what your friends are achieving here is that they are making sure that whatever you are really doing, is something that you really want to do.
Going ahead and changing your character (or habits) is a difficult thing to do - not to mention majorly huge.

With all the nagging and laughing, you tend to think about the situation a bit more - and then you make up your mind.
Once you realize that this is exactly what you want to do, your friends automatically seem to shut up and nobody else's opinion matters much anyways - so you go ahead and do it. And more often than not, you are successful.

If on the other hand, you succumb to your friends' taunts and fun insults, you were not going to do the thing anyways (cause you were not enough mentally prepared) - and in the process save a lot of time by not going ahead with this ...

So there !

However, the downside of this is that if you have a really bad group of friends, and either they always get the better of you or vice versa, the probability of you succeeding in changing a habit or yourself reduces drastically ...

So basically, the moral of the story here is that it is always good to have good friends.
And no matter how much your friends taunt you, make fun of you or use your self consciousness to their advantage, its always a good thing to have friends who do all this :)

-----------------
As an end note would like to mention that this is just something that I thought about ...
Don't know how much of it is psychologically correct, but would love to hear other opinions on the issue...

Two donkeys ...

2006-09-14T01:02:00.000+05:30

I received this story via email recently and would like to share my musings on it ...
Please excuse the english, because it has been a percolating forward ....

Anyways, here goes

A good story for all of us to follow in our careers and social life............ very true
Once upon a time a Washerman was bringing up two donkeys.

Let us say Donkey-A and Donkey-B.

Donkey-A felt it was very energetic and could do better than the other. It always tried to pull the washerman's attraction over it by taking more load and walking fast in front of him.

Innocent Donkey-B is normal, so it will walk normal, irrespective of the washerman's presence. After a period of time, Washerman started pressurising Donkey-B to be like Donkey-A. But Donkey-B unable to walk fast, got continuous punishment from washerman. It was crying and told personally to Donkey-A "Dear friend, only we two are here, why to compete with each other?
We can carry equal load at normal speed ".

That made Donkey-A all the more energetic and next day it told to washerman that it can carry more load and even it can run fast also.

Obviously happier washerman looked at Donkey-B.., his BP raised and he started kicking Donkey-B. Next day with smile, Donkey-A carried more load and started running fast. But it was breathtaking for Donkey-B and it couldn't act that way....But the washerman was frustrated, so he harassed Donkey-B terribly, and finally it fell down hopelessly.

Then Donkey-A felt itself as a supremo and happily started carrying more load with great speed. But now the Load of the Donkey-B is also being carried by Donkey-A., and still it has to run fast. For some period it did, finally due to fatigue it got tired and started feeling the pain. But washerman expected more from Donkey-A. It also
tried best, but couldn't cope up with his owners demand. The Washerman got angry with Donkey-A also and started harassing to take more load... Donkey-A was crying for long time and then tried its best...

But it couldn't meet the owner's satisfaction.

Finally the day came when due to frustration the washerman killed Donkey-A and went for searching some other Donkeys.

Its an endless story..........

But the moral of the Story in Corporate and social life is......

"Think all colleagues are same and that everyone is capable.... Always Share the Load equally..... Don't ever act smart in front of your Boss and never try for getting over-credit. ..

Don't feel happy when ur colleague is under pressure.. "

It doesn't matter if u r A or B, for the Boss u shall be always DONKEY

I don't know who really started this email - I have heard this kind of story before - something that encourages you to be average (or even below average) so as to not get killed by your boss - or more importantly, give your weaker colleagues at work, a chance to survive.

Somehow, I have never been able to relate this story to actual human beings.
The first impression that you'd get after finishing the story is ... "how true" ... and ... "yeah ! this is what happens to people who act smart ... "

But if I'd permit myself to be a little cynical, I'd say - that what we are talking about here - are donkeys - and not humans.
Donkey's don't get paid by the amount of work that they do - nor do they ever get promoted for doing better or efficient work.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that - if you are doing the work of a donkey, then:
1. You are a fool to be doing it anyways
2. You should probably not try to show off - coz its basically not worth it

However, if you are working in a 'REAL' company - where your intelligence, talent, ethics and determination (and dedication) are merit to success, the earlier story is just pointless and baseless and I for one, cannot try to get into the mind of the person who must have created it.

Trying to be average - and just flow with the crowd is probably the most dangerous thought that one can get - and yet people do it - day in and day out - diminishing the difference between people and sheep.

This is in short, how a similar situation would go with 'REAL' people - and not donkeys

There are two employees - Employee A and Employee B
Employee A is always energetic while Employee B is just another average guy who is happy to get on with his work.

Employee A being the more enthusiastic and energetic of the two, finishes his work much before time and hence has time to take up some other initiatives.
He does his work to the best of his abilities.

Now, after a period of time, two things could happen.

1. The boss is extremely happy with Employee A.
He gives him a promotion and a big fat raise.
Both the employees A and B work the same hours, however, employee A makes 1.5 times the same amount as Employee B - even though they both started at the same time with the same qualifications.

2. The boss thinks he can take advantage of Employee A and starts loading him with extra work.
Now because Employee A is human (and not a donkey) and because he is not tied to a rope around his neck - and also because he very well knows his worth ...
He tells his boss to kiss his ass, quits the job and gets a better one (because he is good and can get another job)

Either way, the better employee wins.
In the end, I guess, its the attitude which makes all the difference - no matter how talented you are or whether you were born with an IQ of 220. Unless you have the attitude and actually want to go ahead and do something, nothing is gonna get done.

This might be only slightly related to the original story, but I'd like to end with some very powerful lines that I came across in "Atlas Shrugged"

It goes something like this ...

"I swear by my life and the love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"

Comments ...

2006-09-10T01:10:00.000+05:30

I am very fortunate to have a very good set of readers who contribute a lot to my blogs by way of comments and discussions ... so much so, that it ends up adding more value to the blog than the blog itself ...

Of late, I have been receiving some really good comments which throw more light on the topic and just prove how you can never analyse a situation or a particular event from all angles and how it is so important to do so ...

I have been so happily made to eat my own words on my blog by people who look at things from an entirely different (and better) point of view ...

Thank you all so much for teaching me something new everytime ...

As blogger lacks a feature by which a person cannot choose to receive an email indication after someone last left comments after his, and just because many people do not generally read the comments, I have decided to put down a list of my previous posts in which the comments have really added a lot of value to the blog.
Thank you once again ...

The links are as follows (in reverse chronological order)

1. Indian Movies ...
In which Rishi and Shantesh gave more dimension to my view of why Indian movies suck in some respect compared to Hollywood flicks.

2. Choice, the problem is choice ...
In which Rishi and Ashwin point out that everything to do with choice is connected to your Karma in some way or the other (sorry, my knowledge about this is very poor) and then Id tops it off with one of his brilliant poems ...

3. Being Prejudiced ...
I feel, all the comments added a lot of value to this post - and especially the brilliant one by eshuneutics which hit the nail, right on the head ...

4. Remember Remember ...
This post had some really nice comments from Rishi, Id and Yuvi with totally different points of view ...

This may have sounded somewhat like a "Comments" Oscar award, but it really isn't.
I guess what I am trying to say here is - that its always good to know someone else's point of view (We all have only 1 brain .. right?)
And reading a comment always feels nice, you know that people are reading the stuff that you are writing and always encouranges you to write more ...
Not to mention the richness it adds to a particular post.

So, if you do have anything to say on anything written here, please feel free to do so ...
A small investment of time ends up serving a lot of purposes ...
As a matter of fact, lot of people's blog that I check out often, have been the result of comment following ...
So more the reason ... eheheh ;)

Voices in my head ...

2006-09-09T15:32:00.000+05:30

I really don't know whether this happens to a lot of people, but I have been noticing that there is a constant monologue running through my head ...
Either I have flipped the lid, or have been watching lots of Scrubs lately, actually a bit of both, coz only a crazy person would watch 5 seasons of scrubs within the span of a month !

Anyways, getting back to the voices in my head ...
Actually, for all you know, the voices are typing this blog out ...
As a matter of fact, they are ...

I am not complaining though, most of the wise cracks that come out of my mouth, are via these voices and they keep me amused (and sane??) for most parts of the day.
My co-workers would beg to differ though ...

Nothing much to write now, I guess the voices have stopped !
OMG ... I've lost it :p

(PS: Sorry for making you read this ... I thought I'd go crazy for once ... If you want to use explicit words in the comments, I'd rather you email me your comments.
This is a family blog and rated PG-13)

Indian Movies ...

2006-09-03T00:39:00.000+05:30

Today being Saturday, I sat and watched a movie in the afternoon - Silent Hill - which is a game inspired movie. And me having played (and loved) the game earlier and having seen brilliant promos of the movie, I was pretty excited to watch this.
However, expectations were not that high - considering how other games related movie turn up (Tomb Raider, Resident Evil)

However, when I started watching the movie, I was shocked and astonished at the level of details which the director had taken care of very painstakingly.
The sets and creatures were right out of the video game and even the shops on the streets of Silent Hill had names from the game.

It felt like playing the game itself.

The two hours that I spent watching the movie, made me feel squirmish, eerie, sad, confused, grossed out and lots of other things which you generally don't go through during your normal life (and thank God for that!)

Anyways, that made me wonder, why no such movies EVER get made here in India.
Mind you, India makes the maximum number of movies in a year (compared to any other country), but if you ponder over the number of gold medals a country of a billion produce at the olympics, the fate of most of the movies is very cliche'd.

Here, most of the directors rarely give any attention to details and if you were to start writing goof ups on movies made here, you could end up writing books on a single movie.
Basically the order of priority of Bollywood movies is:

1. Have good songs
2. Dress all women in such short clothes that they qualify as belts (almost anyways ;))
3. Raise a lot of hype
4. Get the best stars
5.
6.
.
.
.
.
1354. Write a good story
1355. Make sure everything is technically and logically correct.

Very few people here, make movies out of passion - most of the movies are made to just make money and they dont care what crap they put into it as long as the general populous buys it.
The 'chalta hai' attitude of most of the people is highly annoying ...
This fact can be affirmed by a statement which a popular producer of commercial (gaudy) films made.

He said, "If you make movies for Rickshawalas (people who drive Rickshaws), you will travel in cars, but if you make movies for people who drive (and hence can afford) cars, you will have to travel by rickshaws"

The general quality of production and acting of the movies is so pathetic that most of the times, I would not even consider spending that much time watching the movie.
Actually buying tickets and spending money on it is out of the question!

I have never seen any 'out of track' movie ever become hugely successful.
There have been a recent spurt of movies which have swayed a wee bit off track and become hits, but they too have lots of content which is downright impossible.

This entire revolution may still take a million years to come, until more and more of the masses get educated (and stop buying crap) or we get more passionate and talented film makers inside ...

However, till that happens, it is three cheers for Hollywood :)
The biggest plus point of a hollywood flick (a carefully chosen one) is that at the end of it all, you don't regret the time you spent watching it.

*Update - My review of Silent Hill is up and can be read here.

Choice, the problem is choice ...

2006-08-22T00:01:00.000+05:30

If you are wondering where you have heard the above statement before, it is from the movie "Matrix Reloaded".

The movie, apart from being a huge treat for the eyes with the brilliant special effects, action sequences and acting, delved deeply into yet another very intriguing subject - that of choice.

I have tried many times writing on this topic, but it has turned out to be so complicated (more often that not) that I have had to delete the post everytime - even before I got midway.
But if you are reading this, I was successful in putting my thoughts into words (not very well, but it should be just good enough ...)

Anyways, this entire film revolves around the concept of choice and whether we have a choice - if at all.
The very interesting character of Merovingian has this to say during the movie:

Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.

And then, there have been so many situations in my life which have made me feel exactly the same way.

For instance, how can one know whether something that he or she did was a result of a choice - they had taken, things happening beyond their control or just plain fate?
How do you know - that once you have taken an option, that you were not meant to take the other one anyways. Either way, how would you ever know ?
It forms a huge paradox.

"But if YOU already know, how can I make a choice?"
"Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand *why* you made it."

Whatever we do in our lives, is because of the choices we make, and (I feel that) every little event that happens around us, is responsible in some way for the events to happen in the future. Its like a domino effect.

However, I have seen people make choices which have doomed their lives and I have known about it and the moment of them making their choice. So many times have I advised people against it, but to no avail.

Like, I have this friend of mine who took up the branch of ENTC (Electronics and Telecommunications) in Engineering against my better judgement and is suffering for it now.
But then this is pushes it more towards the argument of fate, doesn't it?

However, though we may never know whether we actually have a choice or whether Merovingian was right - what we should probably make sure is to *really* think about what path we choose at the cross roads and make up our minds, never to regret it later in life - come what may...

Umm .. blogging !

2006-08-17T00:42:00.000+05:30

A non - blogger friend of mine, specifically sent me this cartoon a while ago.
And as I have nothing to blog about today, or maybe I am just tired and suffering the after effects of playing a whole day of basketball yesterday (I realised that I am getting older ...), I could not agree more with my good chum ! :)

[Please click on the image to see the actual size]

Why nerds are unpopular ...

2006-08-06T12:37:00.000+05:30

I generally don't link to other posts, but really couldn't help myself on this one.

Its by Paul Graham and the title reads "Why Nerds and Unpopular"
It IS definitely a long essay but is very, very insightful and well written.

The links here : http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Being Prejudiced ...

2006-08-05T19:25:00.000+05:30

Each one of us has been prejudiced sometime or the other in his or her life and regretted it later.
I know I have ...

But I guess its more like a human emotion than a process which everyone experiences and something I really hate doing ... but it happens at a sub concious level nevertheless ...
The one thing worse than being prejudiced is voicing strong (and loud) opinions based on your (prejudiced) opinions ...
Its something that really ticks me off ...

People cannot help being prejudiced, but atleast they should save others the trouble of perceiving them as complete idiots when they go announcing that this thing is bad and I really hate that stuff ... and oh that is so gay ... even without having given the thing a try ...

I have come across people reacting very strongly to things that they have never tried ...
Like, take the famous Harry Potter for example ...

I had never read any of the books till just about some months ago - that too out of curiosity, because basically the fantasy genre was never my type.
But when I did read the first couple of books, I really liked it and realised what all the hype was about !

Recently in a conversation with a person about books, this topic came up and I enquired whether he had read Harry Potter ...
To this, the guy gives me a very weird looked (cocked eyebrows and all) and says : "Puh-lese ... I don't read such crappy children's books ..."

Whoever did say they were for children only?

People generally have a tendency to be rebels and NOT do things that the entire world is doing at the moment.
They want to stand out of the crowd and "try" to be different.
I know because I do it many times ...

They form false opinions about things just to defend themselves as to why they aren't doing something which everyone else is doing ...
And then later, these opinions turn to convictions and then they start despising the people who form the herd ...

How many times have I heard "Oh ! You love the Lord of the Rings movies? Man ... you're weird"
Or, "How the hell can you like Batman Begins? That sux dude ..."
And the latest has been ... "You listen to Celine Dion ... Umm ... are you gay?"
Can you believe this?

It's amusing actually ... and, after you have come to terms with the fact that people will continue to be prejudiced about things and form opinions about you from the things that you like or dislike, you can have your own fun by disgusting them even more with harmless things like ...
"Oh ! By the way, I also listen to Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and N'Sync !"

Hehe .. Good times :)

Stop, start, restart ...

2006-07-24T22:52:00.000+05:30

I don't know why ... but I just tend to stop doing things for no reason at all - take blogging for example.
I won't give reasons that I am too busy working nowadays and stuff ... because, I can, if I want, take some time out for blogging everyday ...

But then, every now and then, I just tend to stop it - and it takes a great deal of effort to start back - but once it has started, I am sure it will go the distance...

This did not really prompt me to write the blog, but its worth talking about anyways.
The story is about a little 6 year old boy who fell into a very narrow well type structure and was stuck there for more than 50 hours before the rescue team managed to dig a tunnel from a parallel larger well and rescue him ...

The child was going to be saved eventually and would be unharmed - everybody knew that, but what was really sickening was how the media made such a fuss about it with all the sensationalising, that it was worse than the hundreds of soaps doing the rounds on air these days.

A couple of news channels, showed nothing else but 11 hours of continuous footage of the scene while the army was trying to rescue the child.
The child was ofcourse rescued eventually and as I had predicted, got quite some amount in cash ... and I do believe, will get all his education and stuff sponsored eventually.

Then there was the other thing recently about the Govt. banning quite a few blog sites in the wake of the Mumbai terror blasts.
They originally wanted about 17 sites to be blocked, but as the technology to do this does not exist, the ISPs ended up blocking the entire domain and so, all the blogger sites ... this one included.

Apparently a couple of blogs were being used by SIMI activists to plan other attacks.
In my opinion, all this mess happens due to pure idiots existing in the Govt Technology dept who would not know the difference between an operating system and a web browser.

On the plus side, it turned out to be great business for proxy sites (esp. kproxy) and a lot of people ended up learning inadvertently, about proxies and how blocking of sites is just not possible in most of the cases ...
So much for sheer stupidness and tonnes of revenue loss ...

Anywho, this was just a wake up post for me ... nothing to really muse about in that sense ...
But now that I am up and atom, should have better things to muse about soon ... :)

Job and life as it stands !

2006-07-03T22:48:00.000+05:30

Today was the "big" day - apparently - when you go to work on your first ever job - and all the works.
At home, everybody except you is excited - calls keep coming from distant relatives who are all like - "Your first day at work? Best of Luck !!!"
And though you were pretty excited at one particular point of the time in the distant past, you fail to see what all the big deal is about.

So there, amidst the worst rains of the season, I stepped out of the house to go to - where else - WORK ! (Sounds pretty funny now ...)

So, in as few words as possible - this is how it went ...
Well, reached there almost on time at 9:07 a.m (can always damn the traffics and the roads!) but nothing seemed to be happening till 9:30 - thats when we have our Day Start meeting.
Being the first day, all the freshers had to come out and introduce themselves and also tell a funny to make everybody laugh.

After everybody had their turn, the day kicked off officially.

Lots of stuff was going on today - from setting up your workspaces to tonnes of meetings in which each of the project leads came and explained the projects they were working on.
Couple of forms to be filled up - setting up of company email accounts, working environments and stuff like that.

We also had an interesting coding challenge - which I managed to figure out partially - which was followed by an excruciating open book C# test - which I must admit was extremely difficult.

This test took most of the day - along with the occasional meeting and some formalities to be completed. And the pace of answering the test questions came to a crawl towards the end ...

Towards the end of the day, there was a birthday party with two awesome cakes - so it was fun. Then we helped out going through some papers before finally heading home at 9.

But even now that life has taken a huge turn with 10+ hour working days under artificial lighting and temperature control (with no bunking possible whatsoever), the place where I am working at is a darn good place to be.

The thing that hit me just as I was leaving was that - I have to go home now, hit the sack, get up and come back - aaaaarghh !!!!

All said and done, this is probably one of the coolest places to work.
All the people are young, in our age group and extremely friendly.
You don't have to bother about wearing a T Shirt which does not have a collar or that your jeans are blue in colour.
You can walk in wearing floaters and steal one of the many bean bags lying around to work on.
You can have all your instant messengers running throughout and even catch up with friends elsewhere - as long as you get your work done on time.

So it begins ... I guess :p

Finally done and over with ...

2006-06-22T00:10:00.000+05:30

Today probably marked a pretty important day for me - college is finally done and over with !
I know this has been said before, but we had our project demonstration today, and so (considering I clear all my papers), I should not have any official reason for going back to college ever (except for collecting my marksheet)

Anyways, even though all these past four years have had many pleasant memorable experiences, I would be leaving with sort of a bad taste ...

The only requirement for our project demonstration that we had off the college was access to a decent internet connection - we were carrying our own notebook (mainly because the college computers would not be able to support our development environment :p)

Anyways, our project guide from college called us personally a day before and informed us that the college was having some trouble with their internet lines and asked us if we could make some arrangements ourselves.
We ended up carrying a CDMA Wireless phone which gives dial-up speeds internet connectivity. It did get our job done, but was painfully slow and frustruating !

Anyways, on reaching college, we realised that the internet connection had been down from a couple of days and no one had many arrangements to fix it - or even call the customer care support for that matter, even though many teams needed an active connection to demonstrate their projects.

Moreover, all the computers were infected with worms and viruses which caused unexpected behaviour on the systems - adding to our misery.

The final 'real' downer - was that the examiner who came to check out our project was very, very unqualified to do so ...
I'd go as far as to say that he was a complete idiot and had no idea at all about software development.

The college is not to be blamed for it - because the University sends these people - but c'mon, there has to be atleast some level of competence!
The guy who came to us, asked us questions like:
- What are the number of classes have you used in your project?
- How many tables are there in your database?
- How many pages does your site have?

It was very apparent that the guy knew nothing at all within the first five minutes, and to save his blushes, he had to ask us questions - many of which could clearly be termed as 'stupid beyond belief'.

The demonstration did go past 60 minutes and he kept interupting us with his moronic questions throughout - half of which we had to strain to make sense off in the context of our demonstration!

It actually hurts when people spend months in completing a project - with the time, money and energy spent - and the person who is supposed to assess the project turns out to be a complete moronic idiot and does not even make an effort to understand what you have done.

With everything said and done, my other project partners feel that we did the best we could with this sort of a guy and we should be happy that its gone well.
I guess so ... but the Pune University really needs a wake up call !!!

Out for a while ...

2006-06-02T21:08:00.000+05:30

Should have put this up sometime ago ...
Exams going on till the 9th and as such, have substantially reduced the time that I generally spend on the PC - so there wont be to blog for a while till the exams have passed ...

ActiveCiti goes LIVE

2006-05-23T01:36:00.000+05:30

This post is coming after a fairly long time - and for good reason too...
The last week was pretty hectic - I was very busy studying for my exams and more busy in trying to get our Final Year Engineering Project done and released.

Well, I am happy to inform you that we went live today at 5:30 pm (thats when our faulty registration page got fixed) :p

Presenting ... ActiveCiti
(clap clap clap clap ... )

Unlike so many other Final Year projects that we had seen - which mostly are very, very niche and no one ever seems to use them, we decided to go and do a complete product from scratch - however insignificant it might be, or no matter how many people use it.
We wanted to go through the entire site of developing a product ...
So we wrote our own spec document, did our own database designs, did all our own interface designs, chalked out flow diagrams and made our own mistakes (which are quite a lot actually)

And to tell you frankly - the feeling is brilliantly awesome.
At the other end of the road, seeing the number of registered users increase by the hour is damn awesome :)

As of writing this - 7 hours into launch, we now have 50 registered users.
I know that this will now decline exponentially, but we hope that we make 100 atleast.

Something about the project
The entire project is a web application which makes planning a piece of cake.
It removes all the hassles of calling so many people back and forth while planning anything - a movie, a trip or even just planning to hang out at a local coffee place.

Though the content on the site is Pune Centric - that should not be a drawback and everybody anywhere should be able to use it - as we let users customize and add to the already existing content.

The entire application is done up in ASP.Net 2.0 with SQL Server 2000 as the backend database.
It took us about 4 months to get this done - working part time, managing college and stuff.
But it feels awesome now ...

We did have some anxious - adrenalilne pumping moments when 2 hours into the launch (we actually did it at 3 pm) we found out that the register page was not working.
Then later quite a few pages started acting up and were not working as expected ... but we managed to fix them and as of now everything seems to be chugging along nicely (touchwood)

We still have some way to go before this is finalised and polished.
Have got tonnes of feedback and our list of todo's has already gotten filled.

Anyways, please do visit the site and register there.
The address is : http://www.activeciti.com

Any feedback would be deeply appreciated and you can drop it off at : http://www.activeciti.com/contact.aspx

Yay ! ActiveCiti is LIVE :)

Windows Media Player 11

2006-05-14T19:05:00.000+05:30

I've always used Windows Media Player 11 because it has got awesome library management capabilities.
Yes - it may not be the lightest or the fastest players - but its library is plain, simple, clutter free and very effective.

I got to try out Windows Media Player 11 beta for Windows Xp - for a couple of days now and here are some screenshots.

In short, it is much sleeker, looks a lot better and takes its library management duties more seriously.

This is the main interface screenshot.
As I said, it is sleeker and more pleasing to the eye.

Different things to notice are the controls in the bottom of the screen and to the bottom left, they have some sort of graphic equalizer display kinda thingy which looks cool.

On top you will notice a button called URGE - which is an online music store that microsoft has tied up with. Something that iTunes is to the iTunes Player.

This shows the Albums that I have on the player - it displays any album art very nicely and looks damn nice.
The albums are categorized alphabetically with each letter getting its own group.

This is one very nifty feature.
You can select an album, right click>Update Album Info and it downloads the album art and album details from the internet and updates the stuff on the fly.
Damn cool.

This is another interesting feature - the artiste view shows CDs stacked for artistes having more than one album.
And the number of CDs depicted here equals to the number that actually exist on your PC.

Very nice.

I heard the Vista version allows you to fly through the stack - though I could not manage it on the Xp Version.

And finally this is the mini player which comes onto the taskbar.
Its all black.

Though the installation was smooth - it installs over your Windows Media Player 10 and updates the library - it took a hell lot of time (maybe coz its still Beta)

Also one main feature that its missing is the Auto Playlist feature from Media Player 10.
Hopefully it will make a comeback in the final release which is scheduled for the June 6th.

Surprisingly, the player was just taking 7 MB of RAM in the minimized mode and 13 MB in the full screen mode while playing mp3s.

The beta version was a 23 MB download.

Another first time feature in this release is a "Search as you Type" feature.
Overall, its worth an upgrade if you are a Windows Media Player fan.

Remember remember ...

2006-05-03T19:18:00.000+05:30

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.

Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah! Hip hip hoorah!

"V for Vendetta" is an excellent movie.
Apart from the brilliant acting, direction, cinematography and everything else which made it such a treat to watch, it had a very, very strong message ...

"People should not be afraid of their governments ... The governments should be afraid of their people ..."

PS: The following blog contains references to the movies "V for Vendetta" and "Rang De Basanti" ... Though the references might be obvious to the plot of the movie, it may turn out to be spoilers for the majority of the people who haven't seen the movies.
So, if you do intend to watch the movies, I must sadly ask you to skip this post ... else, please carry on ...

Though, we as Indians cannot relate to the movie a lot, I think most of the americans will be able to ...

Michael Ironside who does voice acting for Sam Fisher - an NSA agent in the game "Splinter Cell" says that there are only two primary emotions that every animal understands : more so human beings - "Love and Fear"

What America is going through or went through (atleast from what we hear or see here) corresponds in some way the Britain in the movie "V for Vendetta" is going through ...
I remember - after the 9/11 attacks, people were petrified beyond belief ...

In the movie, "V", which is an analogy to the Guy Fawkes incident, V (Hugo Weaving) successfully bombs the parliament building (without killing innocent people).
Though actually blowing up a building does not solve much of a purpose practically, it does bring hope and faith to the people and shows the government that people are not to be taken for granted.
According to him (V), its not the act of destroying a building, but the ideology behind it and what it (the building) stands for that you are destroying.

Strength through unity! Unity through faith!

Anyways, the problem with the government in the movie was that it was bullying its people and using fear as a method of controlling them.
That got me thinking whether a similar scheme of things would work for our country ...
The problem with India is that its not bullying its people in a way that blowing up a building (parliament maybe?) would solve .

The problems that India faces (from its government) is mainly of corruption and apathy and having incompetent fools who don't know what they are supposed to do.
Unlike the U.S, there is no restriction on the number of times someone can come to power, so the main agenda of the politicians is to please the majority voter bank before the elections so that they can be elected again.

A prime example is the government trying to impose another 27% reservations for the OBC (Other Backward Classes) (taking the total reservations to 49.5%) in the Education sector. The main reason for doing this, as blatantly mentioned by many of the politicians is to please a section of the society.
Thanks to the election commission, this matter has been halted for the time being and now the government is giving thought whether the move would be politically feasible for them.

In such a scenario ... another movie comes to mind which I recently caught - "Rang De Basanti".
In the movie, some college students go and assasinate the defence minister of the country because he was corrupt.
Again, the movie was brilliantly made and a treat to the eyes.

In the movie, after they have knocked off the defence minister (which is a relatively easy thing to do) - and not get caught, the government puts the assasination blame on terrorists (India has plenty of them to pass the blame around) and work of Pakistan's ISI.

However, our protagonists go to a radio station and broadcast saying that it was them and not some terrorists who knocked off the minister - also giving complete reasons as to why they did it. This is the best part of the movie and apparently brings the government down to its knees.
However, unfortunately, these unarmed students are gunned down by the special task force with orders from higher authorities that there should be no survivors left.

Again, though going and knocking off corrupt politicians one by one may seem to some - an excellent method to rid the country of idiots, it will take a very long time and is not at all feasible. (because India has just so many politicians ... we are the largest democracy in the world)
Besides, you also run the risk of getting killed soon...

This actually got me thinking and being the conspiracy theorist that I am ... what if ... just what if ... the Parliament Attacks on Dec 13, 2001 were not actually done by millitants, but a couple of kids who just wanted to change something ...
(some sort of a Rang De Basanti meets V for Vendetta)

But the bottom line is ... change by the constitutional means ... going to vote, electing a new government, etc etc ... takes a very long time ...
We need a V ;)

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

Of education and jobs and you know ... money !

2006-04-28T21:51:00.000+05:30

We had our final practical exams today - which went relatively well.
The external examiner, apart from being a jovial fellow, turned out to be pretty much entertaining also ...

Anyways, I did finish my program (assignment we are supposed to code in 3 hours) well before time and was left musing on some issues, which finally resulted in this post.

A recent news article flashed through my memory - one which in 4 ISB (Indian School of Business) graduates were offered jobs which paid salaries of approximately Rs. 10,400,000 - the highest that any MBA graduate from the country.
Now, ignoring the fact, that the salaries are actually in US Dollars (USD 233,800 to be precise) and these students will probably be abroad (where it is much more expensive to live), the salaries ARE pretty high. More so, when you are starting in a company.

Now comparing this to the salaries that we (Engineering graduates) from the Pune University make - which is more or less in the range of Rs. 200,000 to Rs. 450,000, it would take us approximate 20 years to make the same amount that one of these ISB guys make in 1 year.

Which in more harsh and simpler terms means that one of these 4 guys will make more in 15 days of working compared to what we guys will make in a year of working.

A pretty compelling reason to do an MBA, ain't it?

However, IIM-Ahemdabad, which is considered one of the toughest schools in the world to get into and which is also one of the better IIMs in the country, has a national average package of Rs. 1,000,000 (10 lacs) and their highest Indian offer was Rs. 3,400,000 (34 lacs). I'm not aware of their international packages.

Makes you do some thinking ...

Doing some more research on this subject, brought me to this very interesting artice by the Hindustan Times - titled : The Jobs Paradox

A quote from the article states:

They are qualified engineers and MBAs, but they have no jobs. India had more than 60,000 unemployed graduate engineers at last count, according to government figures. No official figure for unemployed MBAs has been published yet.
And yet, India also has a shortage of skilled technical manpower. The country will face a shortfall of 1,50,000 IT engineers in 2010, says a Nasscom-McKinsey report released four months ago.

The article further goes to say that though India produces a LOT of Engineers and other graduates - many of them are "unemployable".

The only standard body governing technical education in the country is the AICTE - which sadly cannot maintain standards ... Most of the institutes certified by them are not upto the standards at all - and it does not take an expert to notice this.

Another problem (which the article also states) that there is big shortage of good teachers. The main reason being that teachers don't draw a big salary in most of the colleges. Freshly placed students tend to make as much as the teachers - if not more ... one reason, why teaching is not such a lucrative option and why there is such a dearth of good teachers.

Even in my college, though we always tend to get good overall results every year, barring a few teachers, others don't make a case for joining the college.
This is the case with most of the colleges around Pune - even the so called better colleges.

A good teacher is recognised instantly and respected by all the students - so we do get to hear accounts of "good" teachers - but these have been too far and few ...

This finally brings us back to the question of how the results tend to be good irrespective of the teachers?
There are two points to the answer - students who are sincere and/or brilliant from the beginning who carry themselves through and a very redundant and predictable education system - the latter of which I'll leave for discussion on a different article.

Hence, this creates a catch 22 situation.
Colleges, in order to do well, need to pick good students from the starting -- and good students only go to colleges that are doing well.

The case with our college is slightly different - its more of a proximity thing.
Our college is located in the heart of the city - and thus is more or less close to every corner of the city. ( The average time of getting to college is about 15 mins)
This draws more or less the good students from around who probably don't want to spend their lives travelling to colleges - and hence, the college is doing well.

But at the end of the day, all the colleges are failing to produce engineers which companies can use - so much, that the companies, given up all hope of finding good people, have started picking up good students early (before graduation) and training them on weekends - so that, by the time they pass out, they can start working immediately.

Then there is the question of reservation - and with it now poised to reach 50%, I pity the students and more so the companies - because finding good talent will become even more difficult.
One of the recruiters who came to our college mentioned that they prefer "a particular college in the city" over others - because they have no - or very low reservation policies.
Hence, the probability of finding brilliant students is much more there.

Other colleges do have brilliant students, but they are more difficult to locate and generally lost because of such reservation policies.

Something for everone to ponder about ...

By the way, do give the original article a read. Very worth it ...
Links here : The Jobs Paradox - Hindustan Times

Social Networking ...

2006-04-24T02:10:00.000+05:30

What started off sometime ago as just filling out a large form for kicks ... (it was quite a novelty back then and the term social networking was probably not coined) has become a huge phenomenon today.

I never really went back to my orkut account for quite some time actually ... probably a year atleast.
For me it was just something that would help some old classmate find me - if ever the need be ... I did not feel the need to even update my profile ... except for some very rudimentary contact details ...

I even forgot I had an account there ... I had friends on orkut in single digits and no one really cared about the site.

And nowadays, I'm hitting the site almost everyday ... sometimes more than four to five times ... and everybody I know is on orkut ...

Over the past few months, orkut has just propelled into a the next big "2 point O" thing on the web - so much that google bought it - and now you log in using your google account.

Honestly speaking, Orkut is very poorly implemented - but its a great idea.
The reason it is so alive and kicking even today - and after the gzillion "No Donut For You - Bad Server" messages, people are still using it.

The conditions have definitely improved, because at one point of time, I remember people would not sign up, coz Orkut would keep rejecting their registrations due to server problems ... and filling out those huge forms was a pain in the rear.

Saying all this, Orkut is still much better than the many other sites that have sprung up in its wake ...
Google has a huge task on its hand - cleaning up a lot of bugs and getting a more stable release out. Orkut has had its share of security issues ... which is even more scary considering the large amounts of personal information stored out there.

I had recently read a movie director saying that a good story generally sells even though it may not be very nicely shot ... which I think is the case with Orkut.
Good idea, bad implementation.

But with google now in the picture, things have already started to look bright (slightly though)

In the end, you love it or hate it ... but you find yourself being drawn to it so often ... and this will probably be something which would help us friends and classmates communicate more easily once we're on our own and the common college grounds cease to exist ...

Goodbye college ...

2006-04-17T00:35:00.000+05:30

Today, unfortunately (for some) or fortunately (for most), was our Engineering College Farewell to all the final year students ... Something to explicitly tell us - that its now officially over - end of student life for the most of us ...

Most of us who have been placed, have to join by the first week of July - so its a big step, moving onto a job and whole new world ...

Anyways, as I turned up for the farewell at 6:30 - there was the usual, the boring principal speech and the yada yada ... Something which nobody enjoys ...

As the evening progressed, the motley crowd of students that we are - some were enjoying it thoroughly while others were getting bored ...

After the speeches that were given by members of the staff, there were some contests organised by the juniors ... of which some were fun, and some weird ...

I was dragged into taking part in two contests - one which involved recognising a junior student and being able to give out his full name - these guys brought in front of me, a guy - whom I had never seen before - and thus guessing his name was way out of the question - much to the embarrasment of both of us.

The only solace was that the best anybody got was one guy guessing the last name of his junior.

The second contest which I was dragged into - which I would never have gone into - on my own free will was the Mr. College Contest ...

Here things got a bit awry ...
The guys who got called up (there were about 12 of us there initially) did not like the fact that the compere was dictating rules very sternly to the participants ...

The contest was supposed to be a fun contest - nothing was at stake and the rules could be bent a little.

Added to the fact, that the Final Year students of our college (and a good percentage of people on the stage at that time) are NOT the most affable, the guys decided to screw up the event.
So one common line was thought, and everybody introduced themselves as : "Hi ! My name is so and so ... and I'd like to be known as XXXX" (XXXX being a common joke that we have amongst us)
So, basically - the Mr and Ms. College Contest got completely ruined

Anyways, what struck me at that time was that farewells are pretty difficult to organise ... especially in colleges like ours where there is not much interaction between the juniors and the seniors at other times of the year.

The thing that screwed up the last Mr. and Ms. College contest was that people thought that they were being dictated rules - rules to a party which was being thrown for them.
This is the difficult part in organising such a thing ...

I have organised a couple of things, but never a farewell of such sorts - nor have I thought about how I'd do it ...
The difficulty comes in drawing the line between doing it well and over doing it a bit ... and mostly in catering to the people whom the party is for, making the rules - and at the same time pulling it off without making the people think that they are being bossed over.

Then again, we have a pretty rowdy crowd - which makes it even more difficult to organise such an event. But at the end of it, it was fun nevertheless and people should probably be grateful to the organisers for atleast taking the initiative to hold such a thing.

Anyways, so long MESCOE ... sort of mixed reactions for me ...
Technically, still a long way to college "officially" being over - there are submissions, and exams and projects to demonstrate - so shall write an "official college over post" once all those things are taken care off ...

Haaaave you met Ted ?

2006-04-11T23:19:00.000+05:30

There is this new comedy on air nowadays - happened to catch one of the episodes, thanks to a good chum of mine, and now have fallen in love with the series.

The series is just in its first season as of today, with about 18 episodes aired.
Sadly, the show has not come to India (and I pretty much doubt it will) and we generally get to see it due to the magic of bittorrents :)

Anyways, the show is called - "How I met your mother" and tells us the story of how the protagonist - Ted (Josh Radnor) falls in love. The series is kind of a flashback in which he is telling this story to his kids - and hence the weird sounding name.

Anyways, the cast also includes Neil Patrick Harris - Ted's friend Barney - who I feel would be the primary reason for watching the show.
His character and the way he portrays it is brilliant - something that Chandler was to friends - but with no ethics ... which makes it so much more enjoyable.

The second reason to watch the show would be the utterly cute Cobie Smulders - who plays Robin - Ted's on and off love interest in the series.

The other two people who make up the team of five are Jason Segal - Marshall (Ted's best friend from college) and Alyson Hannigan (from American Pie) - who plays Lily - Marshall's fiancee.

The chemistry between the five is very good which eases you into the show at once and makes you feel right at home.
The show is like Friends in some ways, but still very different in its own way which is very refreshing ...

If you're a fan of friends, you'll love this show ...

Anyways, what prompted me to write this blog today, was that I came across Barney's blog : http://www.barneysblog.com

In the show, Barney talks about blogging many times and all those incidents are right there.
Its nice to see that the producers take that extra effort to do these things which gives the show a more real feel to it and makes the characters a bit more believable.

Be sure to check out Barney's Lemon Law (even if you haven't watched that episode)

Aeon Flux

2006-04-03T19:36:00.000+05:30

Was unfortunate to have ended up going for the movie today.
What could have been our only solace that it had Charlize Theron - wasn't worth it ...

Spending a hundered bucks on the film still hurts and will do for sometime now ...

Will have to watch a couple of good movies just to wash the bad taste down ...
Just goes to show that even Hollywood can churn out utterly crappy movies ...

This one, just had a lot of budget to add to it the slickness (and also Charlize Theron)

Which makes this movie, in one sentence - "An utterly crappy, slick flick which also happens to have Charlize Theron" :p

Catch my review of the movie here.

Life comes a full circle ...

2006-03-22T01:04:00.000+05:30

For all those who wanted to know, we didn't make it to National Finals of the Imagine Cup this year.

Now, unfortunately (or fortunately) the BE Project that we guys were doing and our IC submission was one and the same thing (for the sake of our sanities) - so atleast we will be seeing this thing through (hopefully)

Our theme and ideas were kept somewhat hushed up (which feels kinda stupid now) but anyways, will be letting the cat out of the bag soon enough.

In other news, came back from an awesome two day picnic to Nagaon (which is about 8 odd kms from Alibaug) and it was awesome fun. Will be posting pictures of the trip soon.

Perhaps the last with the guys from college - everything went off nicely and everybody had loads of fun.

For starters, here are a couple of images that I took on the beach ...

Low tide at the Alibaug beach at sunset - small kid with his dad

A family of four moving towards the Alibaug fort which is accessible by foot during low tides

The Constant Gardener

2006-03-10T22:14:00.000+05:30

I caught this movie recently, after a friend of mine "highly" recommended it to me ... and I'm glad that I caught it.

This is one more addition to African Centric movies - though this is of a different nature.
The last african centric movie that I had watched was Hotel Rwanda, which to be frank, was brilliant.

These movies paint a very sad picture of Africa, and honestly, even India, with the gzillion problems that we face everyday, seems like heaven compared to what some people out there go through.

Some parts of Africa, are really, really bad - which results in the more well to do countries treating them like expendable guinea pigs - a premise on which the Constant Gardener is based on.

I've heard that the promos of the movie are very misleading and you'll be better if you've missed them completely - and if you have not, don't go according to what they say.
But a movie very well worth watching for its underlying base.

BTW .. the movie has Rachel Weisz (Mummy, Runaway Jury) who is brilliant and won the best supporting actress for her role in the movie.
Also has Ralph Fiennes (Schlinders List, Maid in Manhattan, The Prince of Egypt) who is equally brilliant.

A definite watch.

My review on the film : Here

Gdrive ...

2006-03-09T09:53:00.000+05:30

I was surprised to see a pretty big article in the Indian Express talking about Google's GDrive. For those of you who still haven't heard about it, GDrive is supposed to be google's entry into the online file sharing business.

This news however, was not supposed to be released to the public, but as the story goes, a presentation made by Google for its investors on GDrive, got placed on Google's investor site by mistake and was downloaded by many people and the news spread like wild fire - thanks to the blogger community.

The presentation, has since then, been taken off the site and Google has kept a "no comments" policy on the entire thing.

Anyways, the GDrive is to offer its users, unlimited file storage - including many different file formats.

I did some lookup and found out that GDrive was infact a product of a thrid party company which had created an app by which you could store files of a max size of 999 MB in your gmail account using their tool.
They even had the domain name (http://www.gdrive.com) registered with them.

The version 0.6 of the tool can be found at this site : http://www.puremango.co.uk/cm_gdrive_109.php

Now, the reason why I am posting this is that all this thing about gDrive and unlimited storage being awesome and all, does bring up the entire issue of privacy and security.

How many people will trust google with their files?

In recent events, the Bush administration had forced google into giving them (anonymous) data on user search patterns.
What if tomorrow (though this is very unlikely) they make them give them access to files and stuff? After all Google IS a U.S based company.

Google is slowly, but surely, growing bigger and bigger - and they are becoming for the internet, what microsoft is for the personal PCs today. Even as of now, Google is pretty respected - with millions of people trusting its search, email, Earth (Google Earth) and many other such services.
All it will take for all this to end is one teensy weensy mistake ...
For my sake and everyone else's, I hope that this never happens ...

People are like ... crazy man !!!

2006-02-26T23:21:00.000+05:30

While doing some webdev work today, I wanted to know what are the best methods to get rounded edges on layers, images etc ...

I know I am not very brilliant googling (it generally takes me some effort before I can zoom into the stuff I was looking for) but I was shocked beyond belief today.

I use firefox (which rocks by the way) and it has the google search bar with the auto completion feature turned on.
( for those who don't know, the google auto completion feature is something which fills in your search query by the most popular queries which other users have used - it is quite helpful when your brain is not working and you need to get a proper query in)

So, I start by query with "methods of ..." and before I could type further, the list gets filled up with suggestions.

(my actual query was : methods of getting round edges using CSS)

But these are things which google filled up:

methods of suicide - 3,410,000 results
methods of abortion - 1,210,000 results
methods of execution - 5,370,000 results
methods of mayhem - 29,000 results
methods of torture - 1,450,000 results

I mean - what the hell are people searching for?
There was an actual page in the "methods of suicide" search result which would be about 40 pages in printed pages - which talked about all the methods of killing yourself, along with tips, tricks and also an advice column.

Freak ... some people are just plain crazy (which is an understatement - it should be more like retarded !!!)

Please dont read the links above and kill yourself - not that I care much, but I don't have time to attend funerals :p
Hehehe ...

And if you're still wondering if you can get rounded edges in CSS, it will be supported in CSS3 - which does not have a proper spec - so will have to wait a while.
Till then, images are the only way to go ...

Education thingy ...

2006-02-20T01:06:00.000+05:30

This semester, the college attendance for our class has been pretty low.
On a good day, the class attendance has been about 60% at best.

I think this stems from the fact, that nothing much is happening in college, we have crappy subjects and people are basically bored having attended the last 3 and a half years of their lives coming everyday to college -- so they want to cut it short.

Not to mention project work !!

Besides, we have only 4 subjects this semester and our time table has been put up in such a way - that we have Thursdays off for project work and then again Saturday and Sunday (which is normal college holiday too) - so we're basically working only 4 days a week.

On top of that, we have no practicals on Friday - which makes it the juicy day to bunk on - something I did this friday - with disastrous effects.

It turns out, that more than half the class had the same idea which resulted in the only the other half turning up for class which eventually resulted in a very, very *angry* (read pissed off) Head of the Department.

So in order to get us back on track, there was a long lecture (I heard about it via many people who actually were present) and we're having a test tomorrow on 2 chapters -- in which, if we score less than 75% (which is again a pretty impossible result to achieve), we will be chucked out of the class.

Also, there were a lot of warnings about us getting very, very poor grades in our projects (which make up a good 150 marks) and term work if we didn't attend sincerely enough.
Warnings also on "how what we do for projects does not matter", as the marks eventually come from the internal and external examiner - whose good books we need to be in.

Using this logic, people who spend more time doing credible and decent work (and who happen to miss classes due to this reason) will end up getting less marks than other people who come up with some half baked projects BUT attend sincerely.

So, why should we bother at all?
As sad as it seems, this is how most of the places work - I think.
You need to suck up to the higher authorities to get anything done at all.

Luckily in our case, this fact has just been more "explicitly" mentioned.

Reports from a Bank ...

2006-02-10T18:20:00.000+05:30

I don't know how many people will agree with me, but ICICI banks, generally, suck !

All the money they spend on the Amitabh Bachan ads and the stupid "Bharosa hai" campaign could be put to better use, buying some sense for the people running the bank.

My dad and grandfather both have an account at the Shangrila Garden ICICI branch which is quite near my college - and to my great misery as well.
The proximity of the bank to my college, accounts for my gzillion trips to the bank - mostly to deposit cheques and stuff.

These guys have installed a cheque accepting machine, which, hardly anyone knows how to use - and most people are afraid, would eat up their cheques.
If you want to withdraw money, you probably have to wait in line for 20 minutes atleast during anytime of the day - at the ATM adjacent to the bank - which most probably is out of cash and is being refuelled.

Many times, I've had to deal with their not so helpful employees who'd give you the "Oh - why the hell did you ever be born" look everytime I made a minor mistake filling out a form or something.

Once, they refused to make me a demand draft to pay my fees ( which I had to do in about 4 hours time ) because apparently, their central server was down.

So, basically, ICICI is one of the banks in my "I will not bank here off my free will" list and atleast for the time being, plan to keep it there.

So, today, to my awesome luck - I was to go and deposit a couple of cheques ( 4 actually ) in the bank.
I was already late for my first lecture at 8, so I decided to bunk it and go and deposit the cheques first. ( the bank opens at 8 am )

So, I enter the bank at 8:30 - and I learn that I cannot use the machine to deposit the cheques and I need to do it the old fashioned way off the counter.
Then to my surprise, I learn that they have changed the system and I now need to take a token to even do that ...
Agony !!!

Anyways, I do that and wait .... and wait ... and wait ...
With about 10 minutes left for my next lecture and still about 20 guys in front of me at 8:50 in the morning, I throw my token in the bin and decide to come back later.

Fast forward to 1:15 pm
I enter the bank again - and it seems like the entire population of Pune had decided to bank at the same time.

There is total chaos at the bank - with about gzillion people running about, with no place for a guy like me with his big college bag to even stand.
I knew I had it !

Luckily, the token generating machine crashed - and all the token numbers of the gzillion people there got mixed up.
When I went to get my token - the guard asked me to just go directly and give the cheques to the person at the counter.

There was a line out there - surprisingly consisting of only 5 people. I blessed the guard for having some sense and headed for the counter.

Now here is where the surprises start.
The female at counter number 5 - inspite of all the chaos and rush and madness was pretty chilled out.
She was actually genuinely smiling and thanking all the people for banking there.
She actually apologized when she asked another female to fill out another form which the other female herself had screwed up!
Hmm ...

When my turn came - I gave her the entire pile of 4 cheques - she flipped through them - and found that the last cheque slip did not have my dad's cell phone number.
The horror !
At other times, I would have gotten a look from the employee which would make me want to kill myself and everyone else in the room - but this time, this person at the other end of the counter, just smiled - and said "Sir, all the cheques will go separately - so you need to fill the cell phone numbers on all the slips."

I was dumbstruck! I just took the slip, filled it up, and returned it back to her which she promptly stamped and returned the counterfoil back to me.

I slowly made my way out of the maddening crowds - the counterfoils in my hand - wondering what was going on ...
Maybe ICICI got some employee etiquette program going on - or maybe she was just a nice person.
Anyways, need more such service around.

Even though I still don't approve of ICICI, just want to give credit where it is due ...
So there ...

Life on track ...

2006-02-07T18:54:00.000+05:30

I haven't been blogging of late - have not had much time.

The last couple of weeks have gone in a blur actually. I was actively involved in organising our inter collegiate festival - and it was a mad rush of things ...

One thing that I learnt after the event got over was - to never organise anything like this ever again. Its very very painful.

However, the event went off decently well - and most of the people were happy at the end of it.

However, this saturday - the last day of the event, all our sponsor banners disappeared from the parking in broad daylight - due to which, this event hasn't gotten over - yet.

These things just never end.
Anyways, now that most of the thing is over and I have more free time, will be blogging more often.

The Pune International Film Festival

2006-01-14T22:14:00.000+05:30

The 4th Pune International Film Festival is going around in town.
About 4 venues, with 6 screens are participating this time and they are showing about 100 movies.
The halls participating are: Gold Adlabs, E-Square, Citypride Kothrud and NFAI (National Film Archive Institute)

I, along with all the rest of my college crowd, went and got the delegate pass for 300 bucks (if you are not a student, it will cost you 500 bucks)
However, the benefit of a delegate pass is that you can walk into any movie without having to purchase any tickets at all.

Anyways, the general opinion is that if the pass costs 300 bucks, you should see 6 movies atleast to cover up for it.

Its a funny feeling actually, the all you can eat feeling.
However, I came up with my own rating - after having see a couple of really sidey movies.

My approach to this entire thing is, to pick and choose carefully which movies to watch - after which I decide an amount which I could spend to watch the movie, which would justify the movie.

If at the end of 7 days, I have made up the 300 bucks, I would be more than happy.
Anyways, got the opportunity to see some really awesome (and some really pathetic films).

Here is the story so far ( in the descending order of awesomeness)

1. Hotel Rwanda (English)
The movie is set in Rwanda (as the name suggests) and depicts the very violent struggle between the two different sects of people from Rwanda - the Hutus and the Tutsis.
The film has some very powerful performances and was nominated for 3 oscars.
A very hard hitting film.

My review on the film.
How much I would pay for this movie : Rs. 200

2. Dombivli Fast (Marathi)
This was my second good movie of the day (yesterday) and was pretty well made.
Told the story of a person - Madhav Apte - and what happens when you're driven up the wall (kinda). You flip.
Again, contains some really powerful performances and some awesome screenplay.
Last I heard, it won the Hero Honda Screen Award for Best Direction and the Best Actor (Sandeep Kulkarni) in leading role.

My review on this film
How much I would pay for this movie : Rs. 150

3. Lemming (French)
Not all french films are good. But this one was very well done. Extremely well done.
The movie had a very Alfred Hitchcockish kind of feel to it with the entire 2 hours 10 mins of it being very intense and gripping.
Though the entire film is mostly shot in one house - indoors - and was subtitled, it was fun to watch. The subtitles were very easy to follow and I really enjoyed the roller coaster ride that the movie took me on.

My review on this film (yet to come)
How much I would pay for this movie : Rs. 80

4. While it rains hard (Malyalam)
This movie was pretty decently made and it was worth my time sitting for it.
It talks about 2 families from South India (don't remember the exact place now) - one muslim and the other hindu.
Both the husbands are working in the Gulf.
Somehow, one manages to kill the other (in the Gulf) and surrenders and faces sure death penalty - unless the wife of the deceased decides to forgive him.
What I really liked about the movie was the "Malgudi Days" touch that it had - and the beautiful portrayal of South India - which transported you directly to the villages there.

How much I would pay for this movie : Rs. 35

5. My Nikofor (Polish)
Honestly, while it was playing, this movie was unbelievably slow.
Though the acting and direction were decently good, there were lots of editing flaws which caused a lot of confusion.
The movie is a story about Nikifor - a 85 year old Polish painter from the 1960s - who was a genius, but was living on the streets.
He also suffers from tubercolosis - and is shunned by everybody.
A 35 year old man takes care of him, and he himself is shunned by his family and friends.

How much I would pay for this movie : Rs. 20

6. A Real Man (French)
And they say, Indians make crappy movies.
After seeing this movie, I developed a phobia of entering movie halls, which, luckily for me lasted only one night.
This was the second movie that I saw, and in one word, it was pathetic.
The plot was paper thin and the movie was pretty badly made.
Though the cast acted decently well, the stupid story and untolerable songs (yes - they had songs equivalent to a Hindi movie) made the movie a definite no no.

How much I would pay for this movie : (minus) - Rs. 40

4 days still left to go ... will update you as we go along ...

The event update ...

2006-01-06T21:01:00.000+05:30

I haven't been getting time of late to blog ... been extremely busy - painting the town red - everyday, going around for sponsors and then later for project.

The funny thing is that I HATE to get out of the house and roam around.
Part of this reason being that to go anyplace worthwhile, I have to go quite a distance.

So, in the vacations, when many of my friends just hung out the entire day, I would wonder why do they do it.
I rarely ever did it, and now I think, have compensated for it in this vacation ... maybe even for the rest of my life ...

Anyways, as per the event, we've made some progress from the last time the post came about, but we are falling drastically short as of now ... unless some miracle happens soon, we don't know whats going to come of it.

The event's gonna be on the 30th of Jan, and we need to get some amount of sponsorship, by the 10th of this month. Then only, we'll be going ahead with additional expenditure, like poster printing, advertising and the works.

I guess, by this Monday, we'll have a much clearer picture.
Either we do a full fledged event as planned (decently possible), a more cut down event - with lesser prize money and stuff (pretty likely), or we'll be scrapping the event altogether (equally likely).

Lets see ...

One more thing that you come across while doing an event is that the various people who you work with, all, have an event which they love.
Now, when the axe is about to fall on a particular event, these people will try and defend the event till the very last.
It is difficult to be stern, coz firstly, very few people are working anyways, so you don't want to upset them, and secondly, coz you generally don't want to upset people.

The other kind of people, which I hate completely are the ones, who come up with their own damn, neat, ideas for contests or additions to the events - last minute - months after everything was planned and months after people have slogged their asses to get to this position.
Whats more worse is, that these people, take the liberty of talking to people and start organizing things for "their" new additions and contests without consulting the others.
Very annoying.

But I guess, these are the typicals.
During this entire month and a half, I've met many not-so-typical people, but I'll leave them for another post.

Lets just wait and watch and see where this all goes.

Playing hardball ...

2005-12-30T01:57:00.000+05:30

I was going to let this post go, but now I am sort of compelled to write this piece.
Yesterday, something very strange happened ... there was a comment on my previous post about sponsorships and stuff, from a guy named saurabh.
When I clicked on the name, I was taken to my own profile ...

At first, I thought that either someone had gotten hold of my blogger password, or I, might have posted the comment in a delirious state myself ...

Anyways, the trick is simple.
You say you want to post a comment, then click on the "other" option and then paste my profile URL in the URL area and volla ... identity theft.

Though I have a pretty good idea who had done it (dude! I have a counter which tells me which ISP you guys come from), I thought I'd let it go and I deleted the comment, because it was pretty rude in context that the particular individual would go to the extent of spoofing my I.D. to probably mock me or for whatever reason he had ...

For the benefit of all the people reading this, this was the comment that was posted to my previous post.

Hehe, But I've agreed to sponsor 100K more to the Prize money from my own pocket money;) Well, If it dosn't suffice, I'd get it by selling my Computer, Bike and anything and everything I own;) For me, the Inter-College Festival is above everyting else...;)

- Saurabh

My verdict - not cool !

But then, after having deleted the comment, this person had the audacity to come and post the some comment again today - at approximately the same time as yesterday.
This time, I am not deleting the comment. You can read it here.

For your benefit, posting it here also ...

Oops! Somebody has impersonated me on the last comment! I just deleted it, and incase any of you saw that last commnet, I suppose I can assure I am not sponsoring my money on that;)

I don't know whether I am reacting to this in a proper manner or not, but I am pretty pissed.
Hence this post.
I am not going to remove the anonymous comment posting feature, because I believe that everybody reading what I write, should be able to express their opinions.

However, going way out and spoofing an identity, is just plain shameless.
I have a fairly good idea who you are, and you know who you are ... and I pretty much know that you are reading this too !

As for the statement about the inter collegiate event being above everything else for me, it isn't quite so.
The only difference is that I believe that something worth doing, is worth doing well - or not at all.

For people who have no motivation in life, and spend most of their lives just "planning" and who probably don't have what it takes to go and actually do something, this concept might be a bit difficult to grasp.

I am not complaining at all.

From the time the vacations have started, a couple of us guys have been slogging our asses off, trying to get sponsorship for an event, which has no "visible" benefit for the whole lot of us.
At times, we wonder, why are we bothering with all this ...
Things aren't going too well ... but we aren't quitting anytime soon.

It is easier to sit on the sidelines and pass judgement.
I don't blame these people ... I actually pity them.
And these are the same people, who will turn up at the end of the event to collect their "Certificate of Appreciation" for helping out in the event.
I am not complaining ... I have made my peace with that.
As long we get our event rolling, we can carry such people along ...
It has always been this way, and I guess will have to continue for times to come ahead.

In retrospect, I won't say that the entire sponsor hunting endeavour has been a waste.
I have learnt how to deal with people, and I now know, whom I can trust with some responsibility and what are the chances of it getting done.

My problem has been that I trust people way too much. I learnt it the hard way this time.
I may not have turned into a cold calculating machine - yet ... but I think I am getting there.
And I know it is for the best.

It takes all kinds of people to make the world ...

Sponsor hunting ...

2005-12-27T20:17:00.000+05:30

These vacations (if they qualify as vacations) have probably been the worse ever ...
Which I guess was pretty obvious after the disastrous exams that I gave before them ...

Anyways, we guys are having our inter collegiate festival in the last week of Jan - from the the 30th Jan to the 3rd of Feb.
After a much smaller event last year, we guys decided to spruce things up a bit - with 5 days instead of the customary 3, and 12 contests compared to the 5 last year.

Naturally, to get more people to participate, we guys even cranked up the prize money we "intended" to offer.
So, from the 19 grand last year, it jumped up to 119 grand this year.

We guys thought, what the heck ... we have lots of time (we've been working on this from the last week of Nov somewhere) - and we should manage to raise the dough.

Now, with only about a month left for the event, and only 46k from 2 sponsors, things are beginning to look a bit hazy.

The reason that the vacations have been sucking so far, more than the fact that we're literally hauling our asses every morning - to go sponsor hunting, is that the response we've got so far is pretty dismal.

We've been trying to analyse the reasons to this and can point to a few, but these are primarily out of our reach.

I just hope things start picking up now, or 2005 will be a year best forgotten.

Hehe ... I intended to put down a blog later about "successful" sponsor hunting, but I don't see that happening now ...
Lets see where this goes ...

Torture on the airwaves ...

2005-12-18T23:56:00.000+05:30

The Pakistani's have developed a new torture technique.
It's guaranteed to get any information out, from any human being, or even otherwise.

What they do is, they tap into Doordarshan signals broadcasted every Sunday night at 9:30 pm and tape this serial called "Kalakaarz".
Then they repeat the 30 min episode 6 times to make it a 3 hour long version and store it by day and date.

They also rank it from 1 - 5 stars depending on the intensity of torture the show can inflict.
Then they tie the victim to the chair, in front of the T.V and play the tape.

Apparently, they later realized that making a 3 hour version of the episode was a waste of man power and good ol' tape, because the victims would either surrender within the first 7 minutes, or if they resisted, they would die by the 9th minute of the episode.

Tests show that none of the victims survived after the 11th minute.

So now, they just tape the first 15 minutes of the episode and save multiple episodes on 1 tape instead.
Quite a save, don't you think?

Not having cable has its good as well as bad effects.

The good thing is that you have ample time (about 3 hours everyday more) than your fellow mates to put to better use.

The bad thing is that once in a while, when you just want to take your dinner and sit in front of the T.V. set, you have only one channel to turn too.
And with Doordarshan and its C grade programming, you'd be better of watching the static screen.

Today was one such day.

I happened to turn on the T.V and watch - one complete episode of that crappy show "Kalakaarz" which recently started on DD - and the worst part is, I somehow managed to survive through the entire show (Doing Engg gives you a lot of patience).

The show is about trying to scout for acting talent.
It is definitely in response to the huge successes that shows like Indian Idol and Fame Gurukul have been.
But even though I don't like the way these shows go about doing what they do, at least they have some quality standards.

No offence, but the people who turn up as participants on the Doordarshan show, would not even qualify to be extras in a C grade flick, even if they offered to work for free.

And I have heard, that these participants undergo a number of screening tests before they go on air.

Woah ! Can you imagine how bad the people must be who dont make the cut?
Or maybe no one turns out for the auditions.
So what these Doordarshan people must be doing is, sending out agents to catch people from the street opposite their studios, kidnap their family members and threaten to kill them unless they turn up for the show.

I really, really pity the judges who come on the show.
Atleast we have the remote control.

I know Doordarshan charges a LOT for advertising time ... even on the most crappiest shows, because their TRP is generated automatically.
If you don't have cable, then you're watching Doordarshan - and the number of people not having cable in India is pretty high ...

The only real good thing about this entire crappy TV channel is that you get to watch decent news and the occasional India match, if its being played in India itself.

My entire point being, if Doordarshan charges so damn much to put up advertisements and the people watching the channel is HUGE, why don't decent shows go to it?
And why does it not push for better shows?

It is not that you cannot make out whether a show is good or not till the end.
It's right there - on your face - and its pretty much pathetic.

And most of the shows look like table scraps from bigger distributors (Balaji telefilms) which were thrown out from other channels.

Doordarshan, once upon a time, was pretty darn good.
Remember Malgudi days, Surabhi, Amravati ki Kathayen, Tipu Sultan, etc etc?
They even had Street Hawk (man how I miss that show) and Knight Rider (pretty lame by today's standards, but still watchable)
Now, those were some really good shows - even compared to today's standards.

They should probably dump all the crap they are showing now and revert back to the programming of about a decade ago.
Sure it won't be glitzy and glamorous with pretty looking stupid women who do nothing but cry, bitch and conspire all day ... but I bet it would have class and grace ... and probably more "cable" TV watching audience would even consider tuning into to maybe watch Malgudi days.

And I challenge any of you cable viewing folk to tune into Doordarshan on Thursday nights at about 9 - I think to watch this show called "Aankhen".
Thats probably the only other show which could beat the one I mentioned above.
Writing more about it, would be wasting blogger's bandwidth and mine also.
So, I shall stop right here.

Thank God for the "moddable" XBOX and Bit torrents and the amazing number of people who seed TV shows like LOST, Whose Line is it Anyways, Joey, etc etc :)
And all your college buds who believe in sharing :)
I love you guys :)

The long march ahead ...

2005-12-16T03:14:00.000+05:30

As I stepped out of the corridors of the college, into the sunset and the open fields, the Gladiator Movie theme (the one with Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerald) started playing somewhere in the background.

Was I imagining things?

No.
It was really playing.

As my other fellow mates slowly trickled out outside, squinting their eyes at the sight of the sun (or whatever of it remained at this time of the day), I slowly made my way to the fields.

The music was still playing in the distance, but I could hear it clearly.
I walked up to the more sandy parts of the field and stood there for a while.
Then, I dug a hole in the ground with my bear hands ... and taking the five sheets of papers from my bag, buried them in the hole which I had dug and covered them up with the mud.

I stood up (the music still playing), looked up at the setting sun and said "Now we're free"

I had just finished writing my last exam paper for the semester, and the five papers that I had buried, were the tragic question papers - ones which had killed many of my fellow mates and would kill even more (including me) once the results are announced.

However, the time had passed.
We were all free to live whatever life we had left.
As I walked across to my bike, the feeling of relief and jubilation set it in ...

The music in the background had gradually stopped and it was now replaced with a soft sort of ringing, which had gradually grown louder and louder.

Till I realised it was my alarm !

I woke up. It was 6:30 am - and I was in my bed with still one paper to go !
I cursed, got out of my bed, when ...

I heard a thud.
It was me falled off the bed.
I was dreaming about the alarm and was actually having a recursive dream (dream in dream) like the picture in picture feature of many TVs.

Just to be sure, I dug out my cell phone and read the date.
It said, 16th Dec 2005, 3:34 am

Exams got over yesterday.
Phew, what a nightmare !

-- NOTE --
Just came from watching King Kong as a post exam treat.
Wrote a review on it, which you can check out by clicking here.

The Tata Safari Dicor Ads

2005-12-11T13:30:00.000+05:30

I had posted sometime ago about the Indian Ad market reving up of late. You can read it here.

Anyways, the TATA Safari Dicor ad is not doing the rounds as it was once ( or maybe I am not watching enough TV ) but I really needed the soundtrack for something.

So, half an hour googling for it, landed up on hundreds of posts and reviews about the ad, but no sight of the ad or the soundtrack.

Finally, thought of checking up the company website and what do you know ?
Both the ads ( though I had seen only one of them ) are up for grabs :)

A mere 2.5 MB with the respective quality also - they are embedded in a swf exe.
So, you can't really monkey around with them unless you have the proper tools ... well atleast most of the people can't, so its a smart move by the company.

Well, atleast have a working copy of it ... one of the best ads ever.
Always brings a smile to my face...

And oh, if you are looking for it yourself, they can be downloaded from :
http://uv.tatamotors.com/safari/gallery/ads.asp

NOTE : Please use Internet Explorer only, the download links don't show up in Firefox !!!
( When will people start making browser independent sites ??? )

Enjoy !

-- Update --
If you're looking for the Bajaj Avenger ad also ( I had written about that too .. ), you can get it from here : http://www.bajajauto.com/avenger/Avenger.zip
It's about 9.7 Meg and at a decent res ( much better than the dicor ads )

Another one of those tp tests ...

2005-12-04T12:44:00.000+05:30

Hehe ...
Pre examination wastage of precious time ...
Well not really actually, took me about a minute and a half ...

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read.
Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.

What kind of blogger are you?

Politics and Religion

2005-12-02T09:49:00.000+05:30

I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend how people - completely logical, sane people - make rules to govern the country based on some religion bias.

If you think, this does not happen in India, you should just take a look around.
Most of the things in our country are based on religion bias.

To me, religion should be a thing which you should practice at home. Period.
Don't bring it out.

Your a hindu, he's a muslim, he's a Parsi, he's catholic - who gives a damn?
Where in the world is all this going to help?

Will it help me get a job?
Imagine me walking into a company, slam my resume on the desk and yell "Hey you ! Yes you there! I'm a jain ... now gimme a job!”

I don't know if this actually is possible - but the thought that it could be ... even in the remotest, possible way is very scary.

Unfortunately, this does happen on the caste level - which is just as stupid.
So many times you find advertisements in the newspaper which go:
Vacancy for the post of a professor: 7 (Open 3, ST 2, BC 2)

Not only is this really bad, what it does is turns us Open category people against the reserved caste people even when we previously had no problem against them.

C'mon - if I was a BC and had a certificate, I would be stupid NOT to use it to get a reserved seat in a college or a job.
But what the law in turn does is, gets the open category people pissed off on the reserved category people - and many times people don't spend a minute to realise that its not
the reserved category people which are to blame, its the damn, stupid pre historic laws.

And why aren't they changed?
Because it is suicidal.
Governments go to power to actually stay in power for eternity.
Doing this will make sure, a large percentage of their votes get depleted.

The biggest, most stupidest things that I have seen on Earth - something which walks away with the top prize for the Most Stupidest, Idiotic thing ever - are religious riots.

Hehe ...

It is like we all have a set of Pokemon cards, and we pull out swords and sticks and go at each other's throats because the other guy said that my Pokemon's powers were not good enough, or it was crappy.

Who cares?
I mean ... most of the religious backgrounds are based on mythological - fairy tale stories.
These things never happened.

But amazingly enough, the people who invented them, must be geniuses because thousands of years down the line, they are still effective - people are still fighting over the same, stupid reasons from the time that they were invented.

Somehow, I don't believe when people say that religion teaches you to live life in a nice way.
It does set down some guidelines on what you should do, but at the end of the day, isn't it just common sense?
Does it have to be written somewhere that it is wrong to kill another guy, or steal from someone else?

If you are not from India, you will not believe that we actually have different laws for different religions...
Some laws go like "You are supposed to do this, this, this blah blah ... unless you are a Muslim" or "You are not allowed to do this and this, unless you are a Hindu ..."

How about inventing one which says "If you kill another person, you will actually go to jail. Unless of course, you are a Jain - in which case, you shall be given the President's medal"
That'd be really cool :)

I studied in one of the best schools in Pune.
But, it was a convent school - Catholics being the minorities and so, had some reservations.

I mean, if you think about it, their primary aim is to encourage Christianity - it being run by the Jesuit society.
But then, that is not a valid enough reason to justify a boy with 60% getting into the institute just for being catholic over a non catholic boy getting 85%.
In the junior college, there were even reservation over vocational seats - the situation was that you could get a Computer Science seat only if you were catholic with a decently high percentage or a non catholic with an impossibly high percentage - above 90% which is only possible if you have just topped the boards exams, or are from one of them ICSE schools.
What this does again, is divide the students.

Imagine how pissed off a student would be who scored 89% and missed out a computer science seat just because another guy with 75% got it because of his religion.

In the hunt for an engineering college, I actually came across this college in Solapur, which had reservations for Jains.
I was like "Full on. For the first time, I can get a taste of reservation."

So, me and my dad go on a one day picnic to Solapur to check out the college and apply for it.
However, to my bad luck, the college was not what I expected it to be (it sucked in my POV) - and I probably would have hung myself on my second day there.
So, we came back which brought an end to my "reservation" dreams.

Hehe ... probably reason why I am so pissed off with this entire issue and am writing this.

But on a serious note, I just can't imagine why normally sane and logical people write such atrocious laws.
I mean, it's like a very bad director making a crappy movie and he knows it - because, he can actually see how it is coming out.
But instead of stopping it and improving it, he goes ahead and makes it anyways ...

I mean, c’mon.... grow a brain!

Some thoughts ....

2005-11-18T00:26:00.000+05:30

The difficult is what gets done quickly.
It's only the impossible which takes some time ....

Shameless self promotion ...

2005-11-15T22:50:00.000+05:30

Hehe ...

Have started this new blog to spread some gyan which I have gathered after years ( 3 and a half to be precise ) doing engineering.

The blog basically talks about Engineering life and different phases of it with how to choose your college or course and then later on to other more 'advanced' topics on submission tips and tricks, what to do for seminars, etc etc.

So, if you are in that field or plan to be in there in sometime, its worth a decko.
Go to : Saurabh on Engineering

Of quality and service ...

2005-11-12T20:08:00.000+05:30

This issue has bugged me for ages ...
Ever since I was able to do most of the things myself ... booking tickets, paying the bills, buying and ordering things, I've had this major issue with Indian Companies ...

Most of them .. and I am talking of about the 99% of them ... have the shoddiest service and their product quality is so pathetic, that you could throw your money - literally - down the drain and be happier for that.

People and companies who actually deliver, are very, very rare in India ... and if you come across some person or organisation which truly does this, you should not even think of going anywhere else and never, ever forget about them ...
Recommend them to all your friends, and those who'd care to listen and do the people ( the customers ) a big favour.

Anyways, I learnt the lesson the hard way.
Never - and I mean NEVER EVER compromise on quality, OR the services of a professional to save a few pennies here and there ..
In the long run, you will be the one losing out on your time and money and mental balance in pursuing a jackass who promises you the world, but can't even deliver a decent product if his life depended on it ...

The story actually starts with us guys needing to make the sweatshirts ...
I am going to take real life examples here ... and these shops do exist.

So, we people decide to make our college sweatshirts ...
We had 2 options - Uberoi sports on MG Road and Champion sports at Deccan ( for those of you who are familiar with Pune )

I had previously got some sweatshirts made from Uberoi when we guys were in the tenth standard in Vincents ... and though they were not stunning, they were affordable and okay.

Plus, Uberoi was a lot closer to our college - and hence we decided to get it made there.
So, we go and place the order sometime on the 10th of September for the sweatshirts and give him the specifications.
Mind you, to do this, we actually visited his shop 3 times because most of the times the guy who owns the place - Sanjeev Brar someone, wasn't at his shop.

So, finally when we meet him, we place the order and he agrees to deliver the sweatshirts for 300 bucks on the 18th of September which is also the last working day of our college.
He collects 50% advance and agrees to get the job done even with the ICICI bank type of "Mein Hoon Naa" kind of glance at himself ...

We give him the slogan to be put on the back, which we write ourselves and mention to him that it has to be specifically done in a particular way, otherwise the meaning would be lost.

On 17th of September ( one day before d day ), his father mysteriously becomes unwell and so the guy does not answer any of my calls.
Later, what ensues is a series of calls which are just cut off. At one time, he himself put me on hold - after 8 minutes, when I disconnect the call and recall him back, his daughter picks up the phone and says that he hasn't been to the shop for the entire day.
I had to resort to asking my other friends to call him to fool him into answering the phone - which he did on all occasions.

Then suddenly, in the middle, someone falls off from the 2nd floor of his building, and our sweatshirts again get delayed because he was in the hospital tending to him.

After lots of hassles ... and believe me ... I have NEVER been so harrased in my life, we finally get to see the sweatshirts on the 28th of September.
But to tell you honestly, the quality of the material looked like stuff they use to make tents.

And best of all, he gets the printing all wrong in the back.
Not only does the sweatshirt suck, we will look like fools if we had to wear it.

To cut a long story short, he tried to rectify the printing job, but he got it all messed up and the idiot tried to sell me the story that it would all go away after washing it ...

I demanded my money back, for which I had to drag 10 of my classmates - the huge and hefty kind - to his shop ( thanks you guys ! ) to demand the money which he eventually gave us ( that too using a Post dated cheque which thankfully cashed in later )

Now, after collecting the cheque on that day, we rushed to Champion Sports ...

This is on a Saturday - 5th of November and we place the order for our sweatshirts ...
After a lot of thinking and looking at the hundreds of sweatshirts which Champions previously had made, we place the order for the sweatshirts.

He agrees to do it for 310 bucks and not charge us for the printing ( he has his own printer setup ).
They have an inhouse designer, who designs the print job for us on the comp - and hacks at it till we are satisfied with it, and then creates a template for the print job in front of us.

Champions then calls me on Monday - 7th of November - and asks me whether I could come on Tuesday to look at the temp embroidery job ( college name ) which they did.
I check it out on Tuesday and find it satisfactory and approve it.

Thursday evening -10th November - I get a call saying that the sweatshirts are ready and we can pick it up anytime.
Friday evening, we pick up the sweatshirts and by Saturday, everybody has it.
Boom !

Quick and painless - how to get sweatshirts made in 6 days.
After what I had gone through, this looked like a fairy tale ..
The quality of the fabric is awesome and everyone loved the sweatshirt.

I have very high regards for Champion Sports after this, and could not recommend you to anyone else for sports wear related matters.

He may be slightly expensive - for the more jazzy designs ( ours is a plain black with name embroidered and slogan printed on back ), but you can be rest assured he will deliver on time and the quality would be exceptional.

What he offered us for 310 bucks, made the Uberoi sweatshirts for 300 bucks look like rags to clean the floor with.

Lesson learnt !
Point noted !

Never ever ever compromise on quality !
Professionals charge more coz they know what they are offering you.

BUC - Bandwidth under Control

2005-11-09T12:14:00.000+05:30

I don’t know how many of you know this, but BSNL has got this awesome feature called “Bandwidth under control” in which, they themselves help you in controlling your broadband usage.

I am using the Rs. 500 plan in which I get a 256 kbps line and a 1 GB limit for a month.
Now, 1 GB per month is roughly 33 MB per day.

I generally stick to about 25 – 35 MB per day, which keeps me in the 1 GB safe zone … however, during exams and submissions and seminars, this limit touches about 55 – 60 MB per day.

So, what BSNL does is awesome …
During the peak time, exams and practicals and stuff, my phone magically goes dead for 2 days.

No phone, no broadband.
This works perfectly.

Coz, during the peak times, when I really need to use the internet, I would be hitting about 150 MB in 2 days.

So, by cutting my phone, these guys help me save up on that.
It’s really awesome you know …

You should definitely give it a try …

Nitpickings with Pune ...

2005-10-31T20:12:00.000+05:30

I've lived in Pune all my life, and to tell you honestly, I wouldn't probably want to live anywhere else ...
But of late, there have been a few things, really hurting, which I wanted to yell about.

I don't know if this is happening in other parts of the country, but it shouldn't generally happen anywhere at all.
Anyways, here are a few things which really hurt and I have no idea how I could help to fix.

1. Pathetic Roads
When the it rained recently, all the roads got completely damaged.
I mean - the roads were so bad, and nothing was being done about them ... that someone actually came up with an online petition which was the number 1 active online petition till some weeks ago.

Even now, the roads are pretty bad and if you get out of your house, you are sure to face the brunt.

There is a road behind residency club ( which I have also written previously about ) in which people come to one of the ends.
Stop their bikes or cars, get off, observe the stretch, go back to their bikes / cars, turn around and take the longer route.
The Pune Police has actually barricaded the stretch of road to deter adventurous people from venturing there.

It's already a month since the last of the rains and still most of the roads have not been fixed. Going at more than 40 km/hr for more than 2 min at a stretch is next to impossible and even trying to go above 50 km/hr anywhere is plain suicidal.

2. The Public Transportation System
In Pune, this equals to nothing but the PMT ( Pune Municipal Transport ) buses.
Everytime I go to college in the morning and see the scores of hapless people waiting at the bus stop, and hundreds of people hanging out of the bus, I thank my stars that I have a bike and don't have to depend on the crappy system.

Everytime I see people hanging from the buses, and by hanging I mean - atleast 7 people hanging from the bus, I feel this blinding rage at the apathy of the PMT and PMC.

The true story goes that, sometime ago, there were the six seater rickshaws which would ply through most of Pune.
They were not allowed to move in as many places as the PMT buses were, but they covered a major chunk of Pune.
Of course, they were rash drivers and would stuff 8 people in places meant for 6 ... but they were a blessing.
You could walk out of your house and be certain of catching a six seater within 5 minutes.
They stopped everywhere, and their sheer frequency was such a boon.

Anyways, naturally people preferred them, rather than waiting for the buses.
So, PMT went into loses and they got an order passed via the PMC, banishing the six seaters to the outskirts of Pune.
Their reason - six seaters cause too much pollution.

Later, more buses were promised ...
But I think its almost 5 years now, and nothing has changed except the number of commuters.

All the people who switched over to using the public transportation system ( six seaters ) were stranded.
It's so sad and pathetic.

The government creating a monopoly in a market which it itself does not have the resources to satisfy the basic needs.

3. Power Crisis
I have noticed this huge crisis cropping up ever since the congress government came into power.
There hasn't been a single day where you had 24 hours of pure unadultrated power ( electricity ).

And on top of this, the government has the audacity to offer free power to farmers.
The farmers, naturally happy at the offer, elected these people, and are now suffering the most.

All villages around Pune undergo 9 hours of power cuts everyday.
And as all election promises go, the free power deal was eventually cut off ...

On top of this, the maximum revenues of the MSEB come from Pune and it has always gotten step motherly treatment.
With hundreds of BPOs and software companies and industries in and around Pune, needing to manage power themselves for 3 - 4 hours daily, who in their right mind would want to come here ?

4. Fuel Stations
There should be a rule made in the constitution, which makes it illegal for fuel stations to go on strikes.
It has just been happening too frequently off late here.

These people know that they can hold an entire city to ransom, just by going on an indefinite strike.

The latest thing which happened just yesterday is just short of a joke.
The Fuel distribution centers went on an indefinite strike ( which has now been called off ) because they did not want the Oil companies coming and checking the purity of the fuel they were serving.

Their argument being that the oil companies themselves send them adultrated fuel and come later to check it themselves.
What utter crass !

========================
I don't know, but I sincerely hope something is done.
Sell off the PMT, sell off BSNL, sell off MSEB, sell off everything that makes any difference to the life of the general populous to private companies.
Though I doubt anyone stupid enough to actually buy any of these.
Privatisation, it seems might be the only way out ...

You don't see Mumbai undergoing load shedding of 2 hours daily ... do you ?

A different beat ...

2005-10-29T13:21:00.000+05:30

Oral exams or vivas have always been a pain in the rear end ...
And this time, all the timings been missed up ...

We had one AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) Viva yesterday and have another one ( Computer Networks ) tomorrow ... on a Sunday !

Apparently, all the external examiners that come to take orals for BE students are people with jobs - working in companies.

The AI orals, was basically not worth the 3 day effort of cramming the utterly useless Rich and Knigt book.
The people who wrote it should be tied to a pole and stoned ( or booked in this case ) with their own book.
And the people who recommend it to hapless students as 'Good Reading Material' should be tied next, and again stoned with the same book - twice over !
No matter how much I tried, could not get stuff into my head from that book.
It was a frikkin discussion, with 18th century english and language so complex, that would put Ayn Rand to shame.

Fed up, last day, picked up the AI local author textbook and went through it from page to page.
Yeah ... the language was really sucky, and in the end, lots of stuff didnt make sense, but then the satisfaction of having read an entire book is nice :)
Gives you that placebo effect.

Anyways, the external examiner ( bless his heart ) was one of the chillest dudes I have come across sitting on the other side of the table, and everything went off perfectly, awesomely well ...
I had friends gushing "He's so cool ya ..." all over the place :)

Now, tomorrow, on a Sunday, have to haul my ass all the way to college for the Computer Networks Orals, which many people are predicting will be doomsday for most of us.
Again, some person from the 'Industry' is going to pay us a visit and probably, take our case.
Make sure his wasted Sunday holiday is well spent ... eheheh :)

In contrast to that very crappy Rich and Knight book, we have an excellently written network book by Tanenbaum.
Now, this fellow can write ... and very well at that.
The book is peppered with all these interesting anecdotes and examples, which make all the boring stuff network stuff - more interesting ...

But lifes not fair, and we dont have much time.
So, even though I'd have loved reading the entire book - no time.

So, have to sit with the text book on one hand, and make sure to read ONLY the boring part.
Sooo ... anyways, me sitting here blogging with less than 18 hours to go for doomsday, I have kinda given up ...

Watch this space for more news from the grave :)

Painting

2005-10-28T21:45:00.000+05:30

Painting
Originally uploaded by saurabhj.

Because the previous place where I posted the image went offline, and Blogger is somehow not allowing me to upload this, I have put it up on flickr and linking it back here...

Take that Bravenet and Blogger ! :)

Some painting ...

2005-10-27T02:41:00.000+05:30

Just tried my hand at this new form of art ... err ... yeah .. art ... :)

Did some good old mouse painting and then touched it up with flower and bubbles and other kinds of objects ...

Now, to get back to studying AI :(

[ Please see above post for picture ]

Ad - Sense ...

2005-10-23T23:26:00.000+05:30

Wanted to talk about this topic since ages ... but never actually got the chance ...
Anyways, now that I am totally useless with nothing better to do, wanted to take this up ...

Ads ... hmm ...
You get all kinds of them ...
And ad making is not easy ...

Imagine getting your message across in less than 15 seconds ... something experienced speakers cant do in hours of speech.
It is an art ...

How many times have you seen an ad, and gone
"Woah ... Who ever thought of that must be God Damn brilliant !"

I do all the time ...

The only thing going on in India, which we can probably compare on a world level - if you really think of it, are the ad agencies ...

Ofcourse, we have all these crappy, utterly disgusting ads, which make you wanna run to the sink and puke ...
Like all those Fair and Lovely ads ...
I really hate them !
Apart from promoting low self esteem and making women believe that no one will marry you, if you are not fair, they come up with such utter crap like the one in which a mom and her daughter keep showing 5 fingers to each other signifying that a new sachet costs only 5 bucks.
Aaaarghhh !!!
That pissing off ad ran for so long, that I swear, I could have strangled the guy who made it if I ever saw him on the streets ...

And now, that they get a person like Shehnaz Hussain in the ad, who looks absolutely - horrific, their ads have reached an all new low.
I guess she looks like that due to trying out all her products on herself first ...

Anyways, I dont want to talk about all these "crap, waste of air space ads" ...
I want to talk about those extremely slick ones doing the rounds nowadays ... which give you that big grin on your face and that "woah !" feeling ...

I really, really, really love the Tata Safari Dicor ad - the one which reads "Reclaim your life"
The "I always wanted to quit on Monday mornings" line, then the guy in the suit standing alone as the sea of humanity passes him by....
The "I always wanted to ride the waves" line, and then finally the car jumping out with the musical cresendo in the background is just so brilliant !!!
These guys got everything just perfect ... and I just cant get enough of it ...

Come to think of it, Safari has always had very nice ads.
Remember the one with the Canoeing and the "Make your own roads" punchline ?
That was very cool for its time ...

The other really good ad doing the rounds nowadays is the Bajaj Avenger - "Feel like God" ad.
That is also brilliantly done ... just loved it ...
The punchline comes so very nicely in the end, that you cant help grinning everytime you see that ad ...

Another product, which sometime ago had excellent ads, but now they mostly suck is Pepsi.
At one particular point of time, all their ads were brilliant.
The Sumo soccer players one and then the one in which the sky diver feeds the birds some pepsi, were really good ones.
I remember skipping through channels just to catch the Sumo Wrestler ad when it was first aired.

Can't remember it properly now, but wasn't one of their first Indian ads - one in which Aishwarya Rai ( before she became Miss World ) asks Amir Khan for a pepsi, and he jumps around, hopping from one bus to another finally manages to get her one ?
Now, both of them have switched to Coca Cola ... :p

Coca Cola, in comparison, always had bad ads ...
They weren't any smart, but always piggybacked on the star power of Amir Khan and whichever people they could hire ...
Their only catchy ads were about the Amir Khan one in which he pulls out bottles of coke from the well ...

The only other cool ad which comes to mind, even though it gets bugging after a while was the close up one - "Kya aap close up karte hai ?" ad.
It was so different that it had to work.

And lastly, the Pulsar stunt ad, which these 2 bikers show off on Pulsars on a bridge was too slick to be an indian ad.
Very nicely done ...

One thing I would really want to do is be part of the creative team which comes up with the Safari or the Avenger or the Pulsar ads ...

So, incase you have unlimited resources, and are in need of a damn good ad idea, look me up :)
I shall be happy to provide you with my creative insights ...

Tribute to one of the best bands that ever was ...

2005-10-15T00:34:00.000+05:30

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument
I believe we place our happiness in other people's hands
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do
I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem
I believe I'm loved when I'm completely by myself alone

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love until you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold

I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair
I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love until you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe forgiveness is the key to your unhappiness
I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed
I believe that God does not endorse TV evangelists
I believe in love surviving death into eternity

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love until you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

- Savage Garden, Affirmation, 1999

People changing the world ...

2005-10-12T03:30:00.000+05:30

Very often, something happens that makes you stop in your tracks and thank God, for just being alive ...
It's the stories of people ... real people, standing up for what they believe in ...
No matter what it takes, and what sacrifices one needs to make in order to go to sleep at night thinking that he / she has done the right thing ...

One such story is of Gaurav Sabnis ... a name which people will remember for a long time to come.

What it takes for one man to stand against a large, corporate organisation, with fancy lawyers and in the end, come out on tops ...

Read the stories out here ... and please follow each of the links in order ...
And follow the relevant links inside each of the 4 posts ...

- Post 1
- Post 2
- Post 3
- Post 4

And the actual blog of Gaurav Sabnis here.

Kudos to you Gaurav.
It's people like you which make the world a place worth living ...

Guess its time to wake up and smell the coffee ...

2005-10-10T20:49:00.000+05:30

This post comes in the wake of another natural disaster, of which, the total casualties have already gone into 5 digit figures as of today morning ...

Over the past few months, all that things that are making major news are the things that our planet is managing to churn out ever so frequently nowadays ..

Just recall events happening over the last few months ...
First it was the Tsunamis ... then it was the incessant rains in India, and the two hurricanes in the US. And now this ... the earthquake in Pakistan ...

I mean, we have no where to run, no where to hide ...
We are totally helpless ... at nature's mercy ... can't do anything at all ...
You can atmost, only save your life ... and that too only if you have been warned before hand ... which seldom happens ...

People are just dying ...
The tsunamis killed over 300,000
Hurricane Katrina had about 1200 dead and more than 2500 people missing and over a million displaced ...
Then there were the Mumbai rains which I had the privilege to experience first hand ...
More than 1000 people were killed and I think lacs displaced ...

And then finally, the Earthquake which happened some days ago has .. It has already clocked 30,000 and is still counting ...

It's just plain weird ...
Things have been changing rapidly since 2001 - 2002 ...

I guess our planet is a living, breathing entity ...
It responds in the same way we do ...

Some amount of bacteria and virii and germs we can tolerate ... but when they start to get really pissing, our defense mechanism kicks it ...
Most of the time, the cure lies in throwing out stuff from the system ... thats what the planet's doing I guess ...

This might all be non scientific, philosophical crap ...
But I am pretty sure, the root to all these things lies with man messing around with nature ...

The lives of millions of people have been permanently altered ... and there was nothing they could do about it ...
That was the saddest part ...
There was absolutely nothing they could do about it ...

The other theory of mine is that someone has come up with a weather altering device ...
Something a la 'Golden eye' or 'Under Siege 2' kind of thing ... and is plain screwing around ...
The ultimate weapon ...

But as the second possibility is quite remote and far fetched ... I feel we should probably take some initiative ourselves and do stuff which would make a wee bit of difference ... if not much ...

How about walking down to the corner store instead of taking your bike ...
Or .. how about taking a bike instead of taking your car when you're going somewhere in dry weather ?
What about car or bike pooling ?

Yeah ... stuff like that ... I guess ...

In the end,

PLEASE

Bloggers ...

2005-09-27T02:22:00.000+05:30

We're an interesting breed ... aren't we ?
Bloggers ...

Even though I write a lot ( crap .. mostly ) ... I don't read much ..
So, the list of blogs that I read on the right pane might not be as elaborate as it would be for so many bloggers out there ...

But then again, I have been online from 11 tonight ... to now ... that is about 2:24 am ... wandering ... from one blog to another ... just reading ... and honestly, had a lot of fun doing that ... just reading ...

One really funny post that I visited for the easily the tenth time, and still enjoyed reading was : this

I suggest you check that out too ...
You won't be disappointed ...

Slaves to technology ...

2005-09-26T19:34:00.000+05:30

Councillor Harmann: Down here, sometimes I think about all those people still plugged into the Matrix and when I look at these machines I... I can't help thinking that in a way... we are plugged into them.

Neo: But we control these machines; they don't control us.

Councillor Harmann: Of course not. How could they? The idea is pure nonsense. But... it does make one wonder... just... what is control?

Neo: If we wanted, we could shut these machines down.

Councillor Harmann: [Of] course. That's it. You hit it. That's control, isn't it? If we wanted we could smash them to bits. Although, if we did, we'd have to consider what would happen to our lights, our heat, our air...

Neo: So we need machines and they need us, is that your point, Councilor?

Councillor Harmann: No. No point. Old men like me don't bother with making points. There's no point.

Neo: Is that why there are no young men on the council?

Councillor Harmann: Good point.

=============================================

Remember this conversation ?
If you have seen Matrix Reloaded, you probably have ... one of the very key points the movie makes ...

Just a few days ago ( 3 and a half to be precise ), my phone line .. from which I get my broadband, got dinked ...
And, this, as you must have guesses it, starved me out of my internet connection.

Now, I am NOT one of your classic nerds or geeks who cannot do without the internet ... I can ...
But somehow, not being able to access it, check email and stuff, made me restless ...

I could no longer ... just connect and google for something that I didnt understand ...
Didn't know how to do something ? Then was just stuck up there ...
Probably had to pick one of the reference books I had bought years ago and flip through the pages ...
In other words, I was plain paralysed ...

Life was not always like this ...
During my dial up days ( may they rest in peace ), when the prices would pinch the pocket, I could do without checking my mail 3 times a day ...
Whenever got stuck, would pull out some book and actually go through it ...

Just the other day was talking to one of my friends and we were discussing, how we no longer consider accessing the internet as a privelege ... or it being something cool ...
Its a way of life ...

And it confuses me and makes me wonder, how some students doing Engineering have no email account .. or most of them check emails like once in a year, which causes their accounts to expire.

Ignorance is bliss I guess ...
Once you get sucked into all this, it gets difficult to pull out ...

Technology makes life simpler for you ... but then once you have used it, addiction is imperative.
Also, depending on technology, so much, in a country like India, where the basic infrastructure is not strong enough to support technology ... is very dangerous ...

Like, I had to send a parcel to US the other day ... and went to the post office at 8 in the morning hoping to wrap it all up by 8:30
Of course, they didn't have lights ...

I had to wait for an hour while they got their UPS or generators, or whatever they had - started ... because without computers, they could not process my parcel ...
How did they do it BEFORE they started using computers ???

Another place where all hell breaks loose is banks and bill paying counters which use computers exclusively ... and the lights go ...

Had to pick up a draft from ICICI to pay my Engg fees .. and they could not process my request because their central servers were down ...
And they, for the love of God, could not give me a hand written draft like in the good old days ...

Had to wait for four hours for a draft, which I could easily get in 10 minutes from a co operative bank still doing work the old way ...
( I am saying this coz I think almost all Nationalised Banks and Private Banks in Pune are now computerised ... Actually most of the co operative banks are too ... yay !!! )

My point in this entire discussion being ... using technology for simplifying your life, is like tasting blood ( please ... I'm speaking figuratively ) ... it becomes extremely difficult to go back to old ways ...
And if you're in a country like India, and still get roped in, don't forget how to do things the old way ...
Not yet ... anyways ...

The whole people - importance thingy ...

2005-09-18T12:21:00.000+05:30

This blog will be on a different note ... I will be deviating from my usual "trying to be funny" blogs ..

This does not concern with any person in particular, but an ideology in general ...
Why do people expect to be treated with importance ?

By this, I dont mean, the regular respect and courtesy which every individual has a right too ... but I mean, people, who feel offended, if not shown respect too ...
Or the ones, who need that constant licking, so that they feel alright ...

I mean, its not the man, but the achievement which commands the respect ... doesn't it ?
How many of us, admire Bill Gates, not for the money he has ... but the way he's earned it ?

In the past, I have come across so many individuals ... professors, people working in Govt Organisations, etc etc ... who want to be so badly treated with respect ...
We had a professor once, who would start off most of his lectures with .. I did this ... I did that ...
And, the entire class had to sit and tolerate all the non sense, only because our 50 marks were in his hands ...

Isn't the importance you associate with a person - in context ?
Like, we have a prof back in my junior college, whom I respect a lot ...
He told us this thing ... which I want to share now ...

I think, his point was, that there is no practical use of doing Trignometry and Calculus and all that stuff if you really wouldn't want to use it ever ...
He said, that if you go to a rickshawala, and tell him that you have a Phd in Mathematics or something like that ... his reply would most probably be ...
"Who gives a damn ? How does your Phd make a difference to me ?"

The point which I want to state is that everything is in context ...
If you were a PhD in Maths and were talking to a MSc, he would be pretty impressed, but I guess the rickshawala wouldnt care a damn ...

For example, when I were to meet my dad's boss in a wedding, is it supposed to make a difference to me ?
He is my 'dads' boss ... not mine ...
Why should I treat him any differently ...

Wanted to add another point of view ... The entire 'standards' thingy ...
A person might be very important ... if you believe in the same standards as he does.
What if you dont accept the same standards which make the person worthy of importance ...

Like, the people who wrote the constitution of India, felt that the backward class people and related reserved sections of the society, should have a quota reserved for them in Educational institutes, because they need it ...

I believe that if a person wants to pursue a course, he should be worthy of it, and be able to get it on his own merit.
Though that person ( who made the reservations ) would be God for some people, he doesn't make any difference to me ... because I don't believe in his standards ....
On the contrary, I kinda hate him ...

Average students who slog hard throughout their lives and end up with 80 - 85 percent marks, get admission in the second best colleges, end up paying 50 grand a year for their degree ... while the reserved category people, with 60% marks get into the best colleges, finish a 4 year course in 8 years ... that too if they are lucky ...

After all, paying a fees of 5 grand a year is peanuts, when your peers are paying 50 grand which also makes up for bulk of your fees ...

All this, just because you are worthy of studying in the college where you got admission, and they, because they have the need to ...

My typical day

2005-09-17T23:27:00.000+05:30

[0745 hours]
It is a Saturday morning ...
Quite early for me to wake up ...
Logged on to the internet to check mail ...
The plan of the day : simple
Finish 2 writeups, 6 programs

[0930 hours]
Finish putting the last morsel of breakfast in my mouth.
Time to put the plan in action.

[1127 hours]
Put the finishing touches on 1st writeup.
1 big one more to go ...

[1131 hours]
Finish drawing the margin for the 2nd write up and start writing

[1133 hours]
Call from mom ... She's given her car for servicing ...
Have to go and buy spares and leave them with mechanic

[1203 hours]
With uncle at car shop, paying the money

[1227 hours]
Sitting at granny's place ... waiting to pick up mom from clinic.
Write ups completed : 1/2
Programs writted : 0/6

[1304 hours]
Reach home after picking up mom.

[1348 hours]
Finished lunch
Back to work

[1452 hours]
Call from Mechanic.
The right drive shaft turned out to be of a Wagon R instead of a Zens

[1512 hours]
At Mechanics
Mechanic remembers he forgot to ask me to get something else ...
Mechanic gives a list of more 3 things to buy before tomorrow

[1517 hours]
On way back home with heavy drive shaft jutting out of my Kiney on potholled roads

[1526 hours]
At entrance of society
Rear tyre starts wobbling tremendously ...

[1527 hours]
Rear tyre completely out of air

[1528 hours]
Kick the bike in frustruation

[1530 hours]
Finally at home, with what feels like an hour of dragging a bike with a flat rear tyre.
Dragged bike for distance of 300 mts in about 2 mins 40 seconds
Number of times bike foot stand hit calf : 12

[1547 hours]
Get up after having changed the flat tyre

[1602 hours]
Back in room
Wasting time on the computer
Write ups done : 1/2
Programs written : 0 / 6

[1806 hours]
Dropped mom to clinic on bike

[1856 hours]
At tyre repair guy's shop
Still getting flat fixed

[1908 hours]
Leaving shop
On scavenger hunt for the remaing stuff to give mechanic

[1912 hours]
Standing in front of closed car shop which was open in the morning

[1921 hours]
Still searching for shops which have the requisite stuff

[1955 hours]
Back at home after successful scavenger hunt

[2214 hours]
Just putting finishing touches on 2nd write up
Write ups completed : 2/2
Programs written : 0/6

[2356 hours]
Finishing stupid blog
Expecting many hate emails and comments
Write ups completed : 2/2
Programs written : 0/6
Result : "Screwed" on Monday

"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong ..."

Comments ... Word Verification ...

2005-09-12T01:42:00.000+05:30

Just a quick thing ...

I enabled the Word Verification on my comments thingy ...
Seems that the only comments I get these days are by spammers ...

So, for all those of you who still take the trouble of commenting and letting me know that there are people who read what I put up, I am sorry, but you'll have to key in an extra word ...

Sorry, but this step has become necessary ...

aarrgghhh!!!!!!!!

2005-09-11T23:55:00.000+05:30

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Read somewhere that bloggers use blogs to remove frustruation ...
My life's a mess ...

I am having one of those mid-mid-life crisis ...
I hope that it gets better soon !!!

Until then,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There ... feeling better already :)

It's the end of the world ... and I feel fine ...

2005-09-10T23:43:00.000+05:30

If you had watched the movie Independence Day carefully, you'd notice that there is a song playing very often in the background which goes
"It's the end of the world ... as we know it ... know it ... and I feel fine ..."

Its sung by R.E.M

Anyways, seriously ... is it really the end of the world .. or am I just being paranoid ?
These have been the worst monsoons ever ... and I have been through the thick and thin of it ...
And the worst part is that it has not yet stopped and does not the least bit look like it ...

It's already almost mid September and the rains seem relentless ...
Mumbai has been flooded for ... I don't know how many times over ...

The infrastructure is pathetic as it is ... but the rains have just worsened it to new heights ...

There is an actual stretch of road here in Pune, which starts from Residency Club to the Don Bosco Bridge ( for those of you in Pune and know the place ) that is so, so, so, so, so bad ... that I swear to God, you would probably be better off taking a 5 km extra long path, just so you could avoid the 500 mts or so of that road ...

I mean, people actually come on bikes till the entrance of the road, look at it and turn back and go another way ...

I had the pleasure of getting stuck on it in my car ...
The only other time, I was so scared was when I was in a pretty big roller coaster sometime ago.

I dont have my camera with me right now, otherwise I would take pictures and post it.

Anyways, the weather has really turned lop sided this year ... and it has happened so suddenly ..
Last year, most of the things were normal .. but now, rain has become such a part of our lives that you wonder why it isn't raining at the moment ...

If I could bring your attention to a very recent movie ... "The Day After Tommorrow" which was completely about the shift in weather patterns and everything freezing over, it does not look so sci - fi now ... does it ?

Saurabh's Seminar Tips ...

2005-09-08T06:49:00.000+05:30

Okay, was just doing TP online in the morning ( ya ! I get up in the morning too ) when I got a comment regarding my previous blog ...
And then I realised ... crap ( its better than saying shit ... ) !
I forgot to post my set of tips in my previous post ... which was the main intention ...

However, the previous one was so long and I wrote it in 2 sittings, that by the end of it, just wanted to finish it off ...
So, naturally forgot to write the tips ...

======================================
These are to be followed on your own risk ... I am not responsible for you getting chucked out of the college ... Though it is a remote possibility ...
But just washing my hands off it anyways ...
======================================

Okay, so here goes ...

====================
The first and the foremost thing is that you DO NOT want to ... and I repeat ... DO NOT want to bore the examiner or any other people sitting for your seminar.

If by the end, the examiner is yawning, and has trouble remembering what your topic was, you are pretty done for anyways ...
=====================

Okay, read carefully ...

How you plan to start, and how much time you spend on preparing your start depends on the time of day and the number at which you will be giving your seminar.

If you are one of the people giving the starting 3 seminars of the day, you probably dont need to work on your starting much ...

But, if you are giving your seminar just before the lunch or towards the end of day, or sometime in the middle, when you know, people will be dead ... a little intro video or music will do wonders to your marks.
No matter how stupid your friends think of your effort to put some stupid sound track on the first page, do it ...

It wakes the people and makes them attentive enough to be able to sit through your seminar.
Not to mention the examiers too ...

A friend of mine had his, second last before break and he started with the Kill Bill soundtrack.
Most of the people were laughing when he said that he'd be putting the soundtrack ...
He almost changed his mind, but last minute decided to go with it ...
His seminar probably turned out to be one of the best of the day ... even though he had a not so interesting topic.

And I noticed that almost 75% of the class sat attentively through his presentation for 8 out of the 15 minutes that he was there ...
So, if your start is good, half the battle is won.

========================
Also, make sure that you end well ... its pretty difficult and I found only a couple of people pulled it off ...
Though, this is not as important as starting well ... for obvious reasons ...

Firstly, most of your audience left are your loyal friends ... and the examiners give the marks somewhere in the middle of your seminar.
So, unless you really botch up your ending, you should do fine ...

Just start well ...

=========================
I cannot stress enough for the fact that you should make your seminar interesting ...
No matter what your topic ...

Your presentation does not have to stick to the paper ... it can deviate a lot ...
When preparing your ppt, ask yourself whether you would actually want to sit and listen to it in the audience ...

If the answer is 'NO' ... you're probably going about it the wrong way ...
==========================

Hard work always pays ...
Search, search, search the internet for flashier icons ... and the works ...

Make your stuff look good ... even though it means burning the mid night oil a day before ...
===========================

Using a default template is definitely a no - no.
Almost all the people in my class made their own templates ....
Not only does it give you originality and allows you to make your presentation resemble your seminar topic, you also avoid putting on a template someone else used already ...
===========================

Watch out for the colour scheme ... What may look good on your monitor, may not look good on the projector ...

Try to keep a white bg with black / blue text or the inverse ...

If there is not enough cover in your seminar hall ( like we did not have curtains and there was a lot of light ), you'd be better of using a black bg and white text ...
I screwed up in this regard ... I had a white bg with Blue text
===========================

And finally, my list of things that will get you killed and things which will save your ass ...
( Compiled painstakingly during the presentations )

THINGS WHICH YOU'D GET KILLED FOR
( i.e. things which you should not do ... duh ! )

1. Going technical very early
- Bad mistake ... People who do this, will lose 80% of their audience within 5 seconds ...
Take my word on it ... No one, and that includes even the examiner, is interested in seeing protocols and architectural diagrams ...
Though this is important ( to show that you did some work ) keep it at last after you've said what you wanted people to hear

2. Lots of Architecture Diagrams
3. Not preparing the presentation well
4. No eye contact with the audience
5. Speaking fast

6. Using an auto timer on the slides.
- This is by far the worst you could do for yourself.
Don't be stupid and dont try to show off unneccesarily ...
Advance the slides yourself ... and if it is too much work, bribe a friend to do it for you.

7. Underlining text
- Does not look cool ... not always anyways ...
Try CAPITALISING or making text bold.

8. Bad font selection ...
- Avoid using fonts like Times etc .. they dont look good on screen

==============================
THINGS THAT WILL SAVE YOUR ASS
( or the things that you SHOULD DO )

1. Give more real life examples
- Something that people can relate too ...

2. Use more easy to understand images

3. Do something to grab people's attention at the beginning of the seminar
- Use video, audio, aliens, do a strip show ... anything ...
Just make sure people give you atleast 5 minutes to get their attention full time.

4. Speak loudly and confidently.

==============================
Okay, that was another long blog ...
So, me will again lay off for a while ...

Put up a comment if you need more help specifically.

And if you find this information useful, please consider making a donation to my PayPal account.
( Hey, I just bought a cell ... down by a lot of cash ... need to make that up somehow ! )

Scenes from a Seminar Hall

2005-09-02T21:28:00.000+05:30

We just finished our BE Seminars a couple of days ago, and I am still basking in the sense of achievement that I did not screw it up ...

Oh well, some idiot messed with the projector settings and my slides got all screwed and stuff, but other then that, it was mostly okay ...

Getting into the meat of things, I wanted to write about the observations that I had during the 4 gruelling days of sitting and listening to other people talk mostly about subjects which I had no interest off ...

So, here goes ... the people who make up a typical seminar situation ...

1. The Guy Giving the Seminar
This without doubt is the most important guy in the seminar room.
The poor soul, whose worst fear is of public speaking ( even greater than death ), is made to stand up in front of 50 people, who are mostly not interested in whatever he has to say.
On top of that, he is expected to narrate and manage the slides in the 15 minutes alloted to him.
These people fall in the following category ...

1.1 - The under time fellows
These are the people who prepared too few a slides, and probably did not practise enough to realise that they did not fall into the 13 - 15 minute category.
These people make up about 35% of the crowd and finish their seminar, to the delight of all others, within 8 - 9 minutes.
The number of slides are typically just around 20 and the topics covered are generally superficial, and application oriented ( non technical ) which does not allow for more matter, and hence more time for the presentation.

Notable features are lots of pausing and umms and aahhs ... which basically help them get to 8 minutes ...

1.2 - The good time fellows
Most of the people fell in this category. I'd say about 50% of the people ...
These people have generally practised atleast once and finish off their seminars between 13 - 14 minutes.
These people generally, are not very hated and the they have a good mix of technical and non technical information, evenly spaced out ...
These people probably end up with the most marks.

Notable features are generally decent presentations and many a times, elocution like speeches which come off as mugged up ...
Quite a few topics falling in this category are decent and worth listening too ...

1.3 - The over time fellows
These people generally shoot off their 15 minutes.
This species, has trouble, not knowing what matter to cut down and how much to speak on.
Either the person has really prepared the entire seminar on his own ( thus not being able to delete the content that he so painstakingly collected ) or the fellow just copied the entire seminar of some person from another college ...

Notable characteristics are skipping through atleast 20 slides, rushing off so fast that people didnt even get the topic.
And mostly, the ability to cram 40 - 50 slides in the space of 15 minutes.

2 - The Examiners
These people are the most confused people sitting in the hall.
They either know that they have no idea about what you are talking or they 'think' they have an idea of what you are talking.

What students generally worry about is not whether they will be able to answer the questions these people ask at the end of the seminar, but whether they will be able to somehow relate their topic to the questions asked by these people ...

Therefore, questions such as "But don't you need some p2p network to use BitTorrents ?" after a seminar on BitTorrents, or a question like "Tell me the application of Red Tacton in touch screens ..." ( Red Tacton is a method of transferring data by human touch ) are asked.

And the students are left totally bewildered and are lost for words.

We had a examiner who had his head so high up his a** that he asked questions to each and every student ...
No matter if the question was the least bit related ...
Naturally, most of the people trying to answer would be left fumbling and confused ...

This guy would sit back, look at the hapless student and smile ... thinking that he was oh, so smart and clever to ask such questions ...
And sitting at the back, we would think, "What a moron !"

3 - The General Audience
These people make up for maximum of the crowd.
If you can speak well and hold their attention, you can keep them interested for exactly 3 minutes.
After which, most of them go to sleep, or put those ear phones back on ...

In the very rare event, do these listen to the entire seminar ...
And if they do, you can be rest assured that you have done a good job.

4 - Your loyal friends
These people are your truest buddies from the class.
They will turn up for your seminar and even sit through it, patiently, attentively trying to grasp every word that comes out of your mouth - never mind it not making the wee bit sense ...

Nodding everytime you look at them - to give you confidence.
These are the people, you'd probably need most during the 15 minutes ... and the ones to start clapping as soon as you've answered a couple of questions, to spare you from the slaughter ...

5 - The Not So Friendly ...
These people are the ones who have been waiting patiently, anxiously even ... for you to get up there for your seminar.
They prepare, conspire, read your report, so that they can ask you questions which you probably wouldn't be able to answer in the Q & A round.

These ploys generally fail and seldom work, thus adding more insult to injury ...
Interesting attributes include, asking multiple variants of the same question and back questioning, till they get tired themselves, or the person answers with a shrug, and the words, "I don't know ..."

6 - The Plants ...
These are the ones which you pass on questions to, to be asked during the Q&A round.
Probably the only ones you can answer properly ... with confidence ...

These are very easily noticeable, because mostly the questions are very lame, multiplied with lamer acting on the part of the person asking the question ...
This is generally followed by some scratching of the head or stammering on the part of the person giving the seminar, so that it all looks authentic ...

The biggest give away of this entire operation is that the plants are generally seated within a radius of 2 to 3 people of the person giving the seminar ... before he got up to give it ...
Helps in the easy passing out of chit questions ...

Next blog, what to do and what not to in a seminar cum presentation ...

Back on dialup ...

2005-08-28T10:00:00.000+05:30

Hmmmm ... ( to be read as a very depressed sigh ... )

After a month of cruising along in what our govt calls broadband ... its that time of the month again when all the past days' "bandwidth spendthrift attitude" comes back and hits you where it hurts ...

I've got the BSNL 256 K home plan, which comes with a 1 GB download limit ...
1 GB ???
Who in the right head comes up with these plans ?
Aren't people not allowed to come in to work drunk ? What about doped ?

Seriously ...
We have night time free ... yeah ...
Or call it early morning free ... from 2 friggin' AM to 8 AM ...
These timings are making a moron out of me ...

Last month, nothing major was happening, so I managed to cut down till about 970 Meg by the month end ...
This time with seminars, all the papers to download and research, and by the end of the month, my XBOX got dinked ...
More research and frantic searching ensued ...
( But I got it up and running finally last night ... yay !!! )

But with 940 MB gone and 4 days to take out on a 60 MB, I'm just holding on ... for a rainy day ...
If any of you'll will need me, I'll be on dial up for a couple of days ...
( BSNL charges 1.2 bucks per MB of download !!! )
It's kinda nostalgic you know ... That 3 tone buzz that comes out of the modem when you try to connect ... the 30 seconds !!! that you need to connect ...
And the best things are the ultra variable connecting speeds ( mostly due to the awesome quality of phone lines that the same morons from BSNL put up )
As of now, I have successfully connected after 7 tries at 9.6 kbps !!!

Thats me signing off ...

And yeah, if you are from BSNL and reading this, please grow a brain !

Me ... geeky ???

2005-08-26T23:27:00.000+05:30

This test was actually amusing ...
Hehehe ...

Another one ...

The dirtiness factor ...

2005-08-23T18:16:00.000+05:30

When does your room become so dirty, that it actually turns into a feature of that place ?

When your mom gives up asking you to clean it and vows never to talk about it ... ever ...
When the maid starts charging extra, just to enter and clean your room ?
When ?

Anyways, I've got a normal room here ...
Lets see ... one cupboard, a study table ( which is never used nowadays ), one computer table ( which is as dusty as it can be ), one bed, two chairs ( I stole one chair from my dad's room ) and quite a few boxes here and there containing stuff, I mostly will never open again ...

You remember, the only time you "actually" clean your room is when your friends come over ... for the first time ?
The first thing you'd probably hear is how "clean" your room looks ...
Then you go something like ... "Nah ... I just did it today because you guys were coming over"

As more people stream into your room and compliment you on your "cleanliness", "cleanliness" doesn't remain a compliment any longer ...
It seems more like a guilt, for a crime which you committed ...
So, next time they come ... they get to see what your room "actually" looks like ...
And they feel better ... and you become one of the tribe ...

And then there is the "switcheroo"
We guys do it so often, that we have even come up a term for it ...

Switcheroo /vb/ : The act of transferring clothes from one location to another, on the arrival of entities in your room, so as to make more space for people to fit in ..

Now, my room is not that bad ... atleast comparing to stuff you see on US Television ...
You can easily walk into the room ... and you can probably sit somewhere too, once I have performed the Switcheroo ...
But my mom kinda gave up on asking me to clean it sometime ago ...

Rooms never stay clean ( or do they, and I am missing something here ? ), so the thought of cleaning it, is just in the back of my memory ... somewhere ...

But that great pile of clothes on the chair besides me, has started to give me the shivers ...
Hence this blog, and maybe ... just maybe ... I'll venture into that dimentia ... the room cleaning one ...

If that ever happens, I'll update all you people ...
Then we could probably have a party or something ... :)

The wet side of things ...

2005-08-22T16:07:00.000+05:30

Today, was a pretty depressing day :(
One of the days, when you just want to quit everything and stay at home ... Not caring a damn ...

Got up to a very dull morning ... Like mornings are nowadays ...
Haven't seen the sun in like - weeks ...

Dragged myself out of bed, and 45 minutes later, on my bike on the way to college ...
Last place I wanted to be at ...

Plus, today was THE monday, the day after the extended 3 day weekend ...
Monday blues at their best !

On the way, it started drizzling ...
You know, that kind of rain which neither stops nor pours ...
Just the slight, very light rain ...
You dont know whether to stop and take shelter or go on ...

Finally reached college ... pants soaking wet ...
Those are the worst things you can get wet ... pants .. and that too jeans ...

Soo, spent the entire day in wet clothes ... and only now, was able to get rid of them and put on some dry comfy clothes ...
Ahhh ... talk about being miserable ...

Feeling my head hurt a lil' ... and think am coming down with a flu :(
And I bet you could swear that this must have been the most depressing post that you've read of late ...

Hope things get better ...
Blame it on the weatherman ...

BitTorrent Seminar Blues ...

2005-08-21T19:54:00.000+05:30

BitTorrents ... doesn't that word have a nice ring to it ?
It does, if you ask me ...
Okay, it does only to Broadband users with some unlimited plan ...

Anyways, I have used and abused that protocol for months now ...
Ever since BSNL dataone started and they had the mind numbing plan to give away unlimited internet ... hehehe ... :)

So, when Seminar time came ( something all us BE in Engineering people have to go through ), I chose BitTorrent ...
C'mon ... I've used it for months ... I know all the settings ... Its not much work ...
Right ?

Wrong !!!

I had to slog my ass off ... but it's okay, because the topic turned out to be interesting ...
So, 13 papers, hundreds of websites, 3 interviews, 1 webcast and 3 days of gruelling typing later, I finished my 30 page report on the damn thing ...

I am so confident ... that I already printed out the report without showing a rough copy to my seminar guide ...
How this works out, only time will tell ...

But, I have this radiant glow by this sense of achievement ...

Anyways, have sat to do the presentation now ...
And after spending a day doing the graphics at 800 x 600 for the ppt ( b'coz our college comps are kinda screwy and mess up at higher res ), I figured out that powerpoint backgrounds unstretched are at 1024 x 768 ...
No matter what the display resolution ...

Aaaahhhhh !!!!

Umm ...

2005-08-20T11:39:00.000+05:30

What can I say ?
I am not proud of it ... but anywho ...

Sore, tired and broken ...

2005-08-16T19:22:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was a rough day ...
I hadn't touched a basketball in ages ... actually no physical activity whatsoever in ages ...

Ended up on the courts ... and at the end of the day, the title says it all ...

We have this tournament called 'Dawn to Dusk' which happens every year on the 15th of August ... and we guys ... the old school team, come together and participate every year ...

This is the 4th year we've played and the results every year, are mostly the same ...

This is an open tournament ... no age limit, nothing ...
So people, from all age groups, from many different districts ... from the School teams to the Sourthen Command and Bombay Sappers team ( both are Army Teams ) take part ...

So, practically speaking, we don't stand much of a chance ...

As usual, we crashed out in the Quarters ...
Actually, honestly, we could have won that game too ...
But everyone was dead from the time the game started ...
I for one, was in a condition to be carried off in a stretcher ...
That was our 4th game in the day, and the previous game that we played was just 10 minutes ago ...

What was surprising was that we got that far ( there were a total 72 teams taking part !!! ) even though we hadn't practised any ...
Most of the guys ( 3 out of 5 ) were touching the basketball in ages ... No practice whatsoever ...

But where we lost out, was in the stamina department ...
If we'd have enough energy, we could have taken that game too ...
We lost by a measly 3 points ...

But I guess ... we all have to make compromises somewhere ...
Hmmmmm ... ( to be read as a long sigh ... )

My Firefox ate my bookmarks ...

2005-08-12T00:02:00.000+05:30

Okay ... I use firefox ...
Have been using since the day it has been released and in my opinion ... it is the best browser to date ... ( sorry MS )

The thing I really love about it is the tabbed interface ... the ability to add enhancements ( otherwise called extensions. Plugins are different things ) ...

One of the better features ( taken from Mozilla ) is the ability to search a document while typing ... on the fly ...
No need to hit CTRL + F ... like you do it in IE ...

But today, after I restarted my Comp, all my bookmarks had disappeared without a sign ...
The bookmarks.html file which was about 73 Kb, when I last saw it, reduced to 1 K

I tried many things ... searching for deleted files, even did a system restore ... but to no avail ...
On searching, realised that many people have gone through this dilemma ...

Luckily, found a backup which I had taken in Jan 05 ... so I am almost back to normal ...
But this is a serious flaw and I am hoping they're doing something about it ...

Saurabh's day out with the camera ...

2005-08-11T23:26:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was results ... very unexpectadly ... but yes ... we had to wait for 2 hours after college to get them ...
The good news is that I cleared all my subjects ...
I was dead sure of flunking an oral exam ... but by some miracle, passed pretty comfortably in that viva too ...
Marks wise, it was worse than last semester ... and my total percentage slipped down by a percent ...

Anyways, I am more than happy, that all the extra curricular stuff - The College CD, the Imagine Cup, et all ... didn't take a toll on my exams ...

So today, the entire class took a day off ... a mass bunk ...
Our very first official mass bunk, where not a single student sat for class ...
It was a long time due ... its our final year now ...
Yes ... you must be thinking ... class of geeks :)

Anyways, today the IEEE student branch of our college organised their cultural event ... a tech fest kinda thing ...
Though these guys come up with many new ideas ... their implementation needs a lot to be desired ... ( sorry people ... nothing personal )

Anyways, they had this photography contest ... where we had to shoot 3 snaps within our college campus, and the theme was either "Fusion" or "Bliss" ...
Even though bought seem to be the worst topics ... especially for our campus, I chose Bliss ...

So, from 10 to 12:30 ... I went trigger happy ...
Armed with my digi cam and tripod stand ... I scouted the college for snaps which would fit the theme ...

With great difficulty, I managed to click a few ... rushed to my friends place ... burnt it on a CD and rushed to Foto Fast and got it printed ...
All this done by 3:00 pm ... which was the submission deadline ...

Glad to say, that all the pictures came decently on print ... though a touch brighter than I expected ...

I was looking forward to this contest a lot ... coz I wanted to put my photography skills to test ...
Only time will tell how I match up with the rest ...

Photography is an awesome job ... but requires a lot of patience and understanding and foresight ...
Knowing your camera inside out is a given ...
As I learnt it the more tougher way ...

Anyways, I am putting up the 3 snaps which I clicked today ... for your viewing pleasure ...

38 cents !!!

2005-08-10T17:36:00.000+05:30

Thats how much I made with Google adsense for the past ... oh .. I dont know ... how many months ...

When I heard of google adsense ... and all the success stories doing the rounds ...
I thought .. this ju-st may be the thing for me ...

But alas... after having some 1900 visitors all this while, only 13 clicked on the ad and 38 cents got added to my piggy bank ...
And google will send you the check only after you get the $150 mark ...

Lets see ... that should take me about another gzillion years ...
bah !
Not worth it ... I think ...

So, I am doing all you people a favour and removing it altogether ...
Half the time, google does not know what ads to display, because the content of my blogs are so diverse ...
Its tough pleasing everybody ...

The Wonder Years ...

2005-08-08T01:58:00.000+05:30

I am feeling the blues ... that nostalgic feeling ...
Just finished watching the fifth season of 'The Wonder Years'

This has to be one of the best TV Shows ever made ...
Everytime I finish watching an episode, the sadness creeps over of lesser episodes remaining to be watched ...
But I just cannot help it ...

You can relate in some way to each and every episode ...
At the end, it always gives you this hope ... that in the end, everything will be alright ...

The only series, in my opinion that can make you laugh and cry at the same time ...
One season, 22 episodes left ... :'(

Will write a big blog after the last episode is done ...
Until then, try and get the shows from somewhere if you can ...
Really, really worth all the effort it took us guys to get the entire series :)

The Entire Wonder Years Gang

Paul, Kevin and Winnie Cooper

Some more shots ...

The Arnold Family

The Island ...

2005-08-05T19:25:00.000+05:30

Just came from watching 'The Island' and thought I'd review it ...
Follow the white rabbit here ...

Home ... sweet home ...

2005-08-04T23:30:00.000+05:30

After the entire experience ... getting stuck in Bombay, losing all hope of making it ... then finally making it ... then coming to know what standards exist ( aka not winning the thing ) ... we finally made it back home yesterday ...

It was quite an experience ...

While coming back, we had to get our flights changed to Delhi, as none of the Thai planes were landing in Mumbai ...

Microsoft India, then booked our tickets from Delhi to Pune ...
They really took great care of us ... made our lives so much easier ...
If it wasn't for their support in India ... we'd probably have never made it ...
And if it wasn't for the ADE team in Japan, we'd probably have starved to death ... I'm serious :)
Thanks you guys :)

Anyways, attended the first day of college today ...
It has been raining pretty bad in Pune too ... comparing to Pune standards ...
All the roads have taken a bad beating ... so it's now officially very hazardous to venture out in your vehicle ...

The task of avoiding the craters and also not getting muck covered at the end of the ride, is just too much to do ...
And, when it rains ... there is a layer of water everywhere ... which makes detecting the depth of the potholes ... I mean the craters ... that much harder ...

I'm happy that we're back to college and life has ( sort of ) become normal again ...
We have our BE Seminars and Projects to do this year ... so expecting stuff to be a lil more on the wild side ...

On top of that, results are due very soon ... which might be the topping on the bad luck of things happening ...

One thing to look forward to this year, are shorter college timings ...
College gets off at 2:30 now ... yay !!!
Plus, Saturday is holiday ... and on a couple of days, we're off by 12:30 itself ...
So, this is atleast some good news :)

Will write more later ...
Adios !

The last one from Japan ...

2005-08-01T20:33:00.000+05:30

I think, and hope that this is the last blog of this trip from Japan ...
We had an awesome time ... and Japan is a great place ...

I really liked the place, the people and the culture ... and got to learn a lot from this place and this entire event ...
Only the language and the food was kind of a problem ... other than that, everything was perfect ...

Today was a tiring day ...
From morning, we were at the conference hall and after all the prize distribution ceremonies, had the flag exchanging stuff and all ...
It was all fun ...

It turns out, my predictions were almost right ...
I got all the three teams right ... but the order got mixed up ...

In the software design, Russia came first ... Followed by Greece and then China ..

In the short film category, our India team came second and the Mexico team won the event ...
The Canadian "Thoughtpulse" team came third ...

If you would like to know what each of these teams ( in the software design ) did in more detail, you can click here.

Night time, we had a fireworks display ...
Today was Japan day ( I think .. ) and all the streets were and the entire harbour was filled with Japanese in Kimonos and traditional dresses ...

All the roads were closed and all the people were on foot ...
I have never seen so many Japanese at a time ... the whole harbour side was jam packed like a rock concert ...

We got a decent show from the convention center ...

Anyways, tomorrow we have to catch a flight at 11:00 am and have to apparently leave the place by the 5:30 bus ... as the ride to the Tokyo Airport is 2 hours long and we need to go and check there whether our flight will actually take off ...

We are supposed to land in Mumbai ... and all the news that we're getting here is bad ...
So, we're trying to get to Delhi and then take a flight to Pune from there ...

I hope everything works out well in the end ...

As always ... some more pictures of the trip ...

Some shots from the fireworks show ... Not at all good ...

I got 2 mediocre shots after clicking about 40 odd or something ...
Didnt have a tripod and impossible to do without one...

The big Japanese rush I was talking about ... All the roads were just full ... of people ...

Anoter fireworks shot ... More decent than the previous one though ...

The entire Indian Contingent ... with the two teams who actually won something ...
The Short Film and the business plan team ...
Seen on the rightmost corner in black ... is Morris Sim ... the guy who started the Imagine Cup.

Lots of other dignitaries and Japanese organisers also seen in the shot ...

What's with Japanese food ?

2005-07-31T22:44:00.000+05:30

Today was more of a chilled out day ... with nothing much to do ...
We went to the amusement park in the morning .. at about 12 and sat on the Ferris Wheel and the roller coaster ... which I dont think I will be doing again for quite sometime now ...

The Roller Coaster was uncomfortable and short and pretty scary ... the Ferris wheel was more of a sight seeing thing than a joy ride ...

Anyways ... the rest of the day, went in watching all the short films which were submitted earlier by the participants and the 6 finalists of the Software Design Invitational ... which were all pretty good ...

The 6 finalists were : Slovenia, Brazil, Germany, Greece, China and Russia ...

Russia had a really innovative app and China was scarily comprehensive ...
Greece tackled a social issue of creating a speech to sign language and sign language to speech app for the hearing impaired ...

The other team presentations were boring ... and the Germany app was not that interesting ...
Whatever they did, we could have implemented on our base system within a matter of a few hours ... We had all the back end ...

Only their presentation was slightly better ...

My prediction is : Russia, China and Greece ... lets see what happens tomorrow...

Note to myself : Next year, the presentation has to be awesome !!!

Anyways, we had this very sophisticated, formal, Japanese dinner in one of the poshest clubs in Japan ...
Again, all of us could just not consume the food.
Whats with the food huh ?
I think rest all people from all over the world can still eat it ... but we Indians just cannot ...
We had an early Indian dinner before we went to the one at the club ...

The dinner was supposed to be 5 course ... and by the 2nd course ... we had excused ourselves to go to the bathroom ... and ditched the entire event ... walking 25 mins to get back to the hotel ...

Had two glasses of ( not so good ) starbuck's cold coffee on the way back ...
Anyways ... next year's Imagine Cup is going to be in India ... so there is going to be a flag handing over ceremony and all of us are supposed to be on stage ...
So, we have some sort of rehearsel at 10 am ...

Thats all from me for now ...

More pictures ... :)

This was supposed to be our main course .. some boiled carrot and some seeweed look alike vegetable ...
We had 9 types of cutlery out there !!! 9 types !!!

Yes ... you can rub your eyes again ... but this is Gaurang in formals !!!
Didn't think that would happen before the world imploded in itself .. did ya ?

The Roller Coaster ride that we sat in ... which solidifed my belief that these things are not for me ...

End of dream run ...

2005-07-30T21:10:00.000+05:30

Okay ...
First, the bad news ...

We didn't make it to the final 6 teams of the Software Design of the Imagine Cup ...
It's okay ...

I think our presentation was the best we had given till now and the software was also working properly ...
Only, the idea didnt click well with all the other international judges ...

I'm happy for the fact that we atleast made it all the way here ... and got to present our solution ...
Would have been really depressed if we had got stuck up at Mumbai itself ...

On the bright side, we still have one year to go ... and besides, winning World two years in a row would be kinda hard anyways ...
So, we'll just win it next year ... promise ...

The other teams to make it were Japan, China, Greece, Slovenia, Russia and one another team which I don't kinda remember now ...

I seriously have no idea what the other solutions are ... so, I have no basis for comparison ... but we'll come to know about it tomorrow ...

Anyways, the entire ceremony was like an Academy Award dinner kinda thing ...
We had round table reservations and all the short films were shown on the screen and we had a 9 course "Vegetarian" Japanese dinner ... which honestly, I could not consume ...
Nothing personal ... but except the noodles, which I ate with a pair of chop sticks for the first time ( Yay !!! ), couldnt think of eating anything else ...
Most of the veggie stuff ... was ... just bamboos ... It tastest okay ... no taste actually ... something like boiled wood ...

Anyways, as soon as the entire thing got over, we hit the Indian restaurant and packed some desi khana ...

Thats all for tonight ... just before I push off ... picture of the day ... clap, clap, clap !!!
We'll hopefully be riding that thing tomorrow ...

The giant ferris wheel ... second in the world only to the one in London ...
Comes with its own Roller Coaster ...

Me thinks, Microsoft India is going to pick up the tab on this ;)

Day 2 at Japan ...

2005-07-30T12:15:00.000+05:30

Hmm ...

Day 2 at Japan ... Yokohama ...
Today is supposed to be a relaxing, chilled out, picnic day ... and we'll come to know whether we will be making it tomorrow or not for the finals ...

We had a trip planned to the Sankeien Gardens at 9:30 ...
We woke up at 9:20 ... and made it to the bus departg for the gardens ...

The gardens, as you would imagine were very beautiful ...
Apparently, it is about 10,000 sq mts and was a private garden of a person ... Sankei Hara ...

They had also lunch there ... but we vegi Indians had to fruits and salads and chocolate pastries.

We later came back and pigged out at a buffet at an Indian Restaurant ...
The place is only about 5 mins walking from our Hotel ...

We have a digital theatre program in the evening along with the preliminary results of the Software design invitationals ...
In the digital theatre, they will be showing us all the entries from the Short Film category ...

There is also a team from BITS Pilani among one of the 6 teams ... so we will be rooting for them ...

Check out some more pictures below ....

Until later then ... :)

The Sankeien Gardens ... Entrance

Lawns at the Garden

Our ADE ( Academic Development Evangelists ) taking a nap :)

More garden shots

We guys ... and Tejas and Pratibha ( 1at and 3rd ) from the left ... They're Microsoft ADEs from India accompanying us for the trip

Bamboo plantations

Our Hotel ... Pan Pacific International

Hotel Lobby

The Giant Ferris Wheel opposite our Hotel

The Imagine Cup welcome board at the Hotel

Pictures from Japan ... I ...

2005-07-29T21:32:00.000+05:30

Some pictures that we clicked today from Japan ...
Will be putting up lots more when I get the time ... and when I click it ...
Clicked them only today after we got into our rooms ...

The harbour ... the bridge can be seen clearly in the background ... from our balcony :)
We have some very nice views ... yet to come ...

Our hotel room ... I've tried to hide most of the messy part of the room ... but it still shows :)

Night view of Japan from our balcony again :)

The Pacifico building opposite our building ...

And it rained on my parade ...

2005-07-29T21:11:00.000+05:30

Finally ... writing this from the comfort of my hotel room in Yokohama, Japan ... but this trip has not at all been easy ...
It has been an adventure ... sort off ... here is an account ...

We were supposed to fly to Japan on the 26th night at around 11:30 from the Sahar Airport in Mumbai ...
Just to be safe, we decided to leave early morning on the 26th by train ...

I woke up in Pune, at 6:00 am to heavy torrential rains ... like there was no tomorrow ...
When we reached the train station, it was still raining ...

We got into the Pragati Express and headed to Mumbai ...
The rain was unrelentless ... it was just pouring all the while with no letting down ...

On the way, the train stalled at the Vittalwadi station, as the tracks were flooded with water and the train could not proceed ...

We were stalled at the station for 3 hours ... before Gaurang's ( my team mate ) dad arranged for a car to pick us up ...
Gaurang's grandparents were also accompanying us ...

The car picked us all up and took us to Mumbai ...
On the way to the Airport, the road ahead got flooded and we got stranded ...
All the cars stopped on the road and there was a pathetic traffic jam ...

Somehow, we switched roads and ended up in front of a eating joint at around 5 pm
The rain was so bad, that all the umbrellas and everything was useless ...

We were stuck there till about 10 pm

Then, once the rain got a bit less, the water started receding and we decided to make our way to the airport ...

On the way, got stuck up at a very bad traffic jam ...
We then got the news that our flights had gotten cancelled ...

On our way out, we landed up at another water clogged place ... where the driver just stopped the car and let it stand ...
There were 5 of us ... trapped inside a car ... with knee deep water all around us ..
We even couldnt open the windows as the rain water would come in ...

Finally at 3 am, we started moving ... and landed up at a hotel at 4 am in the morning ...
We luckily got a room there, and stayed there for 2 days ... before Mumbai got back on its feet ...

The flights were still not leaving ... so we came to Pune, took a flight to Delhi and then to Japan ...
Though we missed one day, the people here, made arrangements for us ... so it was not a problem ...

More about the Japan trip later ...
Here are some pictures that we took of the entire rain onslaught thingy ... the next day ... once most of the water had pulled away and we could analyse the damage done ...

The worst thing was that people had left their cars ... thousands of them on the street and walked away ... many of these cars were still lying there when we saw it the second day after the rain ...

Motorcycle abandoned on way to hotel

Crap in car ... Leaves, sticks ... water hyacinths even ... that were stuck in car radiators, motors, etc ...

Yeah ... I'm still all here ...

2005-07-20T01:41:00.000+05:30

Yes.
Sorry to disappoint you all, but contra-ry to popular mis-belief I am still alive and breathing ... and very much 'all' there ...

I've been in a cocoon kinda thing of late ... emerging out of the house, only in the search of that ever elusive job ... our college is having all the placements going on from week one itself ...

However, I have not attended a single lecture or practical in what has been my largest, ever, bunk exercise which has lasted for about 20 days as of today, and plans to continue till the 3rd of August.
My teachers have given their kind consent to let me ...

We are working the 'big daddy' of student contests ... the World Finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2005, and I'd stay home regardless of whether we got permission or not ...

We have to get flying in less than 10 days and we're still running to get lots of things done ...
So, I'll probably hit the blogging scene after I get back ... with loads of photographs from Japan ...

Till then, adios ... or ... umm .. err ... Sayonara ?
( hehehe :) )

That 'resulty' feeling ...

2005-06-24T22:15:00.000+05:30

Do you remember that feeling ?
When you go up to collect your result ?

The anxiety ... butterflies crawling in the stomach ...
Suicidal tendencies ???

Today were the SSC ( Std X ) results for the Pune Univ ... and were of importance coz by bro was due to get his results today ...
From morning onwards ... he was tensed, harrassed by people calling to ask the results which he hadn't got ( results come out at 3 pm )
Anyways ... basically, he was pissed ... it was his first big examination results ... and it was showing ...

All his crying and self loathing eventually rubbed off on me ... and I was taken back to my time, when I got my 10th standard report ...

For all those of you who don't know, std X is the first exam we people give at the University level ...
At that age, it is the 'grand poo-ba' of all exams ... the very feared class to be in ...

Anyways, my results were pathetic ... considering how much I had expected and how much I had gotten ...
I had come home, miserable ... and locked myself in ... hating myself ... for a couple of days, without any social contact ...

Now that I think of it ... it was pretty stupid ...
I had gotten some 81% ... and I was feeling miserable because I had expected marks in the upper echelons ... 88%

Anyways, the feeling stays ...
Just before you are handed your results ... you study the faces and expressions of people who have got their results ...
Trying to gauge how badly you are going to get slaughtered ...

There are only two feelings that one experiences when one peeks at the result at hand ...
One of utter disappointment ... the lowest you have felt of late ... or the sheer exuberance .. knowing that you didn't flunk out on that extremely dubious paper ... or maybe got the grade that had eluded you for the majority of your lifetime ...

Anyways ... the crux of this blog ... is 'the feeling before knowing'
Something, everyone should experience atleast once in their lifetime ...
( which we guys do twice every year now ... )

And after seeing so many summers, have wisely realised ... that in the end, marks don't mean a thing ...
They're just a crappy way of expanding the boundaries between people ... victims of a crappier education system ...

One of my favourite lines, which I sincerely trust in such situations ...
Everything will be alright in the End ...
If it's not ... it's not the end ...

And oh, by the way ... my bro got almost the same marks as me ... 80.66% ... ( I beat him by 2 marks ... hehehe :) )
That, after crying the entire day about getting 68% ... and he's not the scholarly type ... so we kinda believed him .... :p
Idiot !

When was the last time you enjoyed studying ?

2005-06-19T10:39:00.000+05:30

And by studying, I don't mean members of the opposite sex ...
I mean, actual, practical, "hitting the books" kinda studying ...

And oh, by the way, I am back :D
( Encouraged by the fact that there are people actually out there who read the stuff I write about, I've decided to return ... )

Anyways, back to pressing issues ...
So, when was the last time you actually enjoyed studying ?
I can safely vouch for most of the people there, the answer will be never ...

Just gave the most pathetic exams of my life, just a couple of weeks ago ...
They weren't pathetic because I did not study for them ... but because, I did not, in the least bit, feel like studying ...

We had the worst subjects - ever !
And this made me think, why ... why are we tortured by the Ministry of Education into studying utter crap, which :
(a) : Has no significant use to us, in the least possible way
(b) : Is so outdated, that whatever use it had, has long passed its prime ...

The main reason, this happens is because, I think, we are made to study all this without understanding the application point of view of the entire thing ...

If we knew, where the stuff was applied, and where we could use it ... we would probably study with more interest ...

Instead, we get teachers who walk into the classroom - on the first day of college, and the first thing they do is, to scribble something on the board and speak in Greek and Latin.
This actually goes on for the entire semester ...

The practicals are mostly just copied ... and modified, and it is not until the last month before the exams, do we begin to understand all the stuff ... while hitting the books ...
But, it's too late till then ... the subject is dead ... and I don't think any person would even consider taking it up again in the future, just because of the initial fright - the entire thing gave him / her ...

This semester, we had some good subjects ... well atleast they 'sound' good.
We had databases, our first tryst with Visual Programming languages ( like VB / VC ), Microprocessors, System Programming ...
The syllabus of all these subjects were so bad ... that I don't think I want to databases again ... and I shudder at the thought of writing programs in VC++ with all the crappy MFCs and the like ...

We also had a subject called "Software Engineering" which was supposed to teach us how to 'design' software, before beginning to write it ...
This, I have realised, is a very, very important thing ...
But the way we were taught it, I squirm at the thought of drawing another UML diagram ...

The Ministry of Education is just doing the opposite of what it is supposed to - It is murdering 'Education'

Remember that famous T Shirt quote :
"I was born intelligent ... but Education ruined me ... "

Hanging up the boots

2005-05-07T20:32:00.000+05:30

Honestly, I had seen it coming ...

Of late, I haven't been blogging nor have been having the time to read the blogs of other people whom I generally read ...

I could ... If I planned my time properly, but I don't see it happening ...

There is no point in blogging so infrequently ...

My last blog was on the 18th of April ...

Soo ... I've decided to call it quits ... atleast for now ...
Might decide to come back later ... but it all depends ...

I will be back writing reviews on Mouthshut ... which I can do as infrequently as I want ...
(http://www.mouthshut.com/userinfo.php?uid=sajain84)
So, until next time, this is adios and goodbye ...

Might start blogging again ...
Might be sooner than I think ...

Anyways, thanks for sticking around and going through the stuff I generally crap about.

Adios :)

To Blog or not to blog ...

2005-04-18T19:54:00.000+05:30

Of late, blogging has been pretty much an off - on affair ...
My excuse being ... of no time ..

I guess thats what Engineering and Submissions does to you ...
And more often than not, its the teachers who create all the problems ..

So anyways ... now, that have completed with all the submission crap and stuff ... will try to blog more ...

The LAN partiee ...

2005-04-18T19:51:00.000+05:30

Dreams do come true ...

On the 16th of this month, we had our last day at college - which was sort of an unnecessary extension due to the 'genius' of some stupid people from my class.
If life would be perfect, 13th would be the last day ... but anyways ...

Having a LAN party had been on our agenda for months ... we even almost had it 4 months ago ... but the stupid college got in the way and everything was washed off ...
So, this 16th, with a do or die attitude ... I left college at 10:30 and headed for the Comp Stores.

Most of the guys were already at my place and were setting up their comps ..
I had cleared the entire drawing room of its belongings and had put 3 large tables - edge to edge to house the 8 computers which were gonna come ...

Anyways ... so I went to the comp guy and purchased 30m of LAN cable and 20 crimps and headed home.
A friend of mine has a crimper and also a switch.

According to plan, we should have finished crimping the wires and setting up the Network by 12 and started playing by 12:30 .. but this was not to be ...
After a lot of loose connections and bad crimps and a lot of mess ... we finally got everything in order by 2pm

We then played CZ ( Condition Zero ) with a few bouts of Quake III thrown in till 7 - a good 5 hours of continuous gaming ...
The plan could have easily extended to an over-night affair .. but for a particular person who left early .. grr :@

Anyways ... we had lots of fun ... and if you would have walked alongside my house in between those 5 hours ... you would have heard all the expletives that have ever fallen on your ears in your lifetime ... and even more ... just in the span of 30 seconds !!!
Good times :)

Anyways, the thing is that its not amazing that we played for 5 hours and stuff .. but that we managed to pull it off ...
The first time - our first ever LAN party with a network of 8 different computers ...

Now that we have all the wires crimped and stuff ... next time shouldn't take more than 30 mins to set up.
For any help on how to set up a LAN gig ... feel free to contact me :)