Me ... geeky ???

This test was actually amusing ...
Hehehe ...

Another one ...

The dirtiness factor ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

What can I say ?
I am not proud of it ... but anywho ...

Sore, tired and broken ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 !!!

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 ...

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 ...

Just came from watching 'The Island' and thought I'd review it ...
Follow the white rabbit here ...

Home ... sweet home ...

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 ...

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 ?

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 !