The unconcious

A symphony of thoughts plays in my head , with the sounds sometimes deafening , sometimes making me feel numb ,sometimes rejoicing.

These thoughts are but dots , scattered randomly on the parchment , of the network in my brain , with pulses being visual traction of the quill.

Connecting the dots is all people say is to life , like an onion - peel after peel , they reveal themselves , like the stars in the sky.

You might miss them some day , the sky may be cloudy , but they will be shimmering all the way through , serene and calm with their energy only known to them.

The sages and the saints lead a life dedicated to them ,aren't they astronomers and astrologers too , and no matter how hard we try to escape it , but aren't we them in our own righteous ways?

Trying to interpret them , whatever they are ; stars , thoughts , sounds, visuals , symphonies.

The uncouncious.

Why Geeks?

I don't know why some people take Linux as a crusade against Microsoft , why can't they just appreciate if Microsoft , after a decade , comes up with some decent technology?

See the comments in the following article for further details

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/23/linus-torvalds-gives-windows-7-a-big-thumbs-up/

PS: Linus Trovalds is the creater of Linux.

Diwali thoughts

How perceptions have changed. Only a decade ago , the number of crackers burst on Diwali were directly propotional to the prosperity of a person.
Today , that number is propotional to your height of ignorance.
My area saw a significant reduction on the number of crackers burst this year. Recession? May be.
But I would look that in the light of environmental conciousness of the people.
For me , it were the horrendous memories of this summer and the long delayed monsoons , and its effects on the agricultural economy , that haunted me .

gung-ho

Today , after talking to a friend , I feel optimistic . Or it may be the effect of the Diwali Lightings that I see around . Any which way , I am sure that one of the biggest reasons for it being so is the confusion that I see around my generation . It was so even in my elder sister's ( I do not remember about the eldest's) , but at last we have started questioning ourselves palpably.

The confusion is an indicator to us started thinking aloud. About our future , about our knowledge base , about our information , about our work and about our lives at large. I feel that this has been made possible by the 'India shining' phenomina in the past five years , which , has been proved by the recent bout of global recession having no pre-dominant effect on India compared to the rest of the world.

This confidence indulges us in thinking out-of-the-box. It gives us the strength to remove the shackles of , as I would say , 'the middle class' mentality viz-a-viz a degree implies a job implies finding a good match implies ....implies.

People brand us being impatient and unfocussed. I would rephrase that to take things 'just-in-time'.

Students dropping out of college , sometimes even in their final year , some opting out of placements that would come with a stinkingly fat paycheck , forces me to think of an Indian Bill Gates or Steve Jobs in the making.

We have overcome the initial inertia for thinking , for innovating. The momentum needs to be maintained.

Would an egalitarian society remove this disparity and make us all equals , in terms of independance or would it shackle the elite and the priveleged , as in the above context?

Seeing into the history of India from the 70's to the late 80's , I find the above to be impossible the socialistic way.

Though our vision would be a free society , the above can only be achieved by having a society where nothing comes free. Teenagers coming to the metros from the villages of Bihar , Jharkhand , Karnataka , Tamil Nadu and making it big , have been able to do so , only because of the fire which was kindled by the age old disparities in their hometowns. Not that I would like that happening , but it is the biggest incentive.

The dreams have been percolated down to them , in some cases by observing these teenagers, an osmosis has occured into the higher and privelaged classes.

Any which way , the spirit is high and till the time this euphoric society of all being equal is not achieved , which I find impossible to be so in every letter and in every word , the above metamorphosis is bound to continue.

The only problem that could arise can be in the form of the '77 emergency that Mrs. Gandhi had imposed on the youth of then , curtailing them of their fundamental right , the right to freedom.

The government should focus on just the law and order to be mantained. The rest , we are confident , we can very well manage.

Problem with Pidgin

Disclaimer : This post totally highlights the problems that one could face while installing the pidgin music tracker plugin . All the events described are fictitious.

Pidgin is a chatting client that comes pre-installed in Ubuntu( it comes for windows platform as well). I recommend it because of its proxy support and the various protocols that it supports. I use it for IRC , which is a wonderful resource for geeks. XChat on unix or MIrc on Windows are other clients for the same with more functionalities.
This is a warning for all those who use pidgin . "BE careful if you use the music tracker plugin". Music tracker, as the name suggests , should set as your status message the current track that is being played in your music player.
Now, in Gtalk , the plugin like the above only sets the name of an mp3 being played in your media player as your status message.
Music tracker is evil on that front.
I only got to realize that when at 3:15 am , I recieved a burst of chats , each with either a 'lol' , 'haha' , 'mazze' .... and some being a lot bold with ' apna haath. .....'
One of them was kind enough to tell me that my status message was ' extreme pe**tra**ons'.
Well ... the next time you use pidgin , either do not use musictracker or configure it properly.
It even sets the name of the videos being played in your media player as your status message , to embarass you.

Frustation

Downloading stuff for the semester project from the internet can become morassing sometimes.

It has been 3 hours writing the script for downloading the csvs from the nse website , scratching my head over why 2009 comes out as 3909 , only to know that the developers of the java Date class , for no logical reason that can come to my head right now , started recording years in excess of 1900. The class is deprecated all right , but this?

The online forum that gave me the above idea , ridiculed me for not seeing the warning messages generated.

Do Indians really care about warnings?

And why my work was wasted?

When the script was ready , I got to know that the URLs generated are not following a pattern.

How random can the NSE website get in storing their content?

BSE India , at least for it's online content is way better managed.

A total waste of 3 hours.

tragiComedy

Recession was just a stranger to me till now. Today I met it in person , and even though it haunted me while the afternoon siesta, I still find myself optimistic while writing this post ( may be the reality has not just sunk in).

I called up some 10 HR people of various companies , and some would not believe it , I could not talk to even one of them , on my first call. It was lunch time alright , but well , does one ignore a call on ones personal mobile number?

Even the number from which I was calling is so easy to remember that it seems like a corporate number. Still?

Well , though I got a treble call backs. With each one of them informing me that they are on a hiring freeze. No problems , who says we want immediate recruitments ? We are aiming for Jan 2010 , that's like a few corporate light years away.

One of the companies told me that they would first place my seniors , then our chance would come . Fair enough.

One of the guys called company A , pursued it , and things looked very optimistic. Only to know that the HR person had changed the firm, and we were talking about some other company? When the HR person realized that , he fired us left and right.

A few calls would be put forth to pacify him. His new company is even better a brand [;)].

One guy called company C , started talking in Telugu , for 10 minutes , only to inform us that it wasn't company C , rather a bar in Hyderabad.

Company D , even though we were sure of the authenticity of the phone number , would tell us that it was a wrong number . Well what about basic courtesy company D?

Recession has taken its toll. Some of the people around me have been telling me that. Seniors told me that the conversion ratio of bringing the companies to the campus to the companies contacted is a menial 5% , that too in the good times . Those were some things I could not understand.

That truth .... somehow seems to sink in now!

A new direction

Finally I have some answers to do the question asked cursorily in the previous post."Why should someone recruit us"? Today , while discussing the same question in reference to the financial , banking , investment and consulting firms , I, though quite slickly , only to keep the spirits of my fellow mates up with regards to placement ( and which gives me a sense of reassurance myself) , answered them with we having an exposure which no matter how hard a private institute tries to give to its students , would never even come close. Being in a government college , and that too of national level , the students of IIITA know the emerging markets , their need , the psychology of the people , their mores , their inhibitions , their secret pride , their understanding of things better than the rest of our peers.
We are well versed with the government machinery , the policies which it tries to push in the name of social welfare and what makes it click in that organization. The huge investment to the tune of 10 thousand crores announced by the Congress government , and the project hence which would be given out to these companies , would require them naturally to look for the aforementioned traits.
The diversity , which IIITA offers through admissions through the AIEEE examination makes us know India better than the rest.
It seems hypocrisy , the very things I condemn seem like something which could work to our advantage.
Hypocrisy or no hypocrisy , the above makes me smug , temporarily.
I think , I am learning the ways of this world , is this what people called maturity?
These apprehensions.

Random

Things have not been going on at the same pace as they should have been , I sometimes feel there is paucity of time , that has never been so , even during dire situations during exams. That is something new for me.
It was kind of some of my friends to tell me that I have forgotten everything of the past. I acknowledge that , I do not remember what I was three years ago , even two , it seems I have awoken after a long slumber , may be I have gone into one.
Though I wish I hadn't forgotten my quantitative skills , which unfortunately has been .
I was going into the 'phase' , which some people glorify , some condemn , but this time it could not acquaintance rape me off my self-esteem , self-pride , and whatever pompous words people use to define themselves. May be it was because of the paucity of time , may be because of me growing into a stoic ( which makes me wonder ) , may be .
I would never like to acknowledge to have lost the above characteristics and so would not write further on it.
Which brings me to a question which has been forcing me to think a lot recently. If someone asks me why they should hire me , and I tell them a few things that I could do , and if they append an "and" to it , what should be my answer ? For I do not see something overtly exceptional that I can do , something which not many in this world might be able to do.
While typing this , I reminisce a shot from the movie 'Pursuit of Happyness' when Will Smith goes into the interview room and is asked about his grades and to which he replies something like ' If I do not know anything , I will say I do not know , but I will find it how to do it , and I'll do it'.
Well cannot anything like the above be done by a sophomore who has access to Google? What is so special in that?
Well , may be I am reading too much into abstract , may be the Pareto Principle of the 80-20 follows up here , may be ignorance is indeed bliss. May be?
Yesterday while talking to one of my friends ,I was a fervent advocate for living a life for passion , and yet right now I am not totally convinced myself , but I find myself more and more accepting the idea in the above lines.
Day before yesterday was India's 62nd Independence Day , and my dad was not at all happy to know I did not go for the flag hoisting. In this clime of aggrandizing a leader who has canvassed herself to the top on account of her caste , where she is wasting away my dad's taxes on her larger than life statues , where freedom to education and competition of some has been compromised on an excuse of social inclusion and welfare , well not many would have envisioned a free India of such sorts. If Salman Rushdie writes another book on the lines Midnight's children about the present scenario , he would write about a man sitting in a hostel of Allahabad hallucinating ways in which the country would be free of parasites and leeches of the country.

I heard to Bob Marley today. His songs have some great lyrics. I think I like reggae.
Enough of this random rant.

The Transformers

It has been 3 years since the beginning of this college and hostel journey. But never have such turns been experienced.
Being a premier institute in IT insures us of uninterrupted power supply.
That is the only insurance that has not been backed out on.
The network is down in the boys hostels , most often. People console themselves with that being a step by the authorities to make us attend classes . The reality seems otherwise.
Twice in this week , there was no water in the loos , I had to use water from the water cooler.
Yesterday itself , water stopped coming from the shower when I was bathing , I had to , again seek rescue from the water cooler. I cannot comment much except that it was ' way -way cool '.


The water problems are not the institute's fault , rather it is a side effect of global warming . This and the refusal of the rain Gods to show mercy on parched lips and broken earth this summer makes me panicky for the need of immediate and adequate steps to be taken , even if the motive be as selfish as survival for me.
The infrastructure that I once boasted about my campus seems to have vanished in the recent months . The major transformations point to only a couple reasons .
Firstly , according to the directives of the central government on reservation, the number of students enrolled for a course have gone up by 20% , which now comprises an additional 400 student population.


The planning and the network infrastructure has fallen short of satiating the need of 1500 students . This might be a result of the administration which simply ignores the needs of the hostels. A network which was designed to serve the needs of 500 students when the institute was conceived simply is overburdened with the deficient infrastructure of only 1 router for 3 hostels. One has to brute force for an IP for an hour to get connected.
The government has been cavalier in its attitude towards quality education , for pleasing its vote bank it seems to have forgotten that only excellence would remedy development , which it blames to be the bottleneck in every issue.
Yesterday , no matter how frivolous we were , the main reason we could identify for we being attractive for placements was us being 'sasta' and 'bikao' , which I see as a manifestation of the maldirections being given to us.
It seems that , especially in the case of government institutes, that we are on the course so vividly depicted in the epic Atlas Shrugged.
IIITA was visioned as an institute of excellence , clearly we have lost that vision , in the murky fog of reservation , social altruism of the government , insufficient planning , and most of all , a compromise on quality education.

Harbinger

Here I would be discussing about the computer requirements of the hoi polloi (and not the ones who require special computing power to earn their money) of India.

Seeing the recent development like Waves, Docs and Skydrive , with previous advancements of streaming music and videos and blogging , the research has rightly been directed to the direction of future needs ( and which I think a person spending 12 hours daily in front of the computer would have realized himself.)

The news of a computer coming with an OS sans everything but an internet interface might seem to be quite a bold step , but vivisecting my daily routine , I could not agree more.

The browser seems to be the only process which runs on my system ( and we all know how pathetic we feel to get our PCs slowed down by the background processes of the anti virus and the updates , even the names of which are so difficult to decrypt.)

Seeing the IO presentation of the Google Waves , I see the new protocols transforming not only the internet business but in particular the OS business.
Anti virus companies now should move on from launching stale products for the PCs to server firewalls which are intelligent enough not to require any PC anti virus.
The only reason why Acrobat seemed convincing to me was for its markup and comment tools. With the incorporation of the same in Google Reader, I guess my need for it is satiated there itself.
For mp3s and videos , Youtube seems to be a great resource. I don't mind seeing a video in the flv format , Indian standards for entertainment , to the dissapointment for the makers of Blu-Ray , are not quite high ( which conforms to the rampart piracy in this part of the world.)
Internet and the browser is a necessity for the orkutters and the facebookers and the tweeters , which itself takes a large chunk of our time ( and still we do not see the community cult blooming in India).
For the office products for which Microsoft drains some $700 out of the pocket , Google Docs is a ready replacement.
Thus , in the future , we might see some hardware company( and a complany for profit) making computers which have only an internet interface , nothing more , selling laptops for less than a $100 , which still is a dream.
The requirement thus is to have the storage capacity for the huge digital footprint , which is growing like a monster everyday. Put your money into NetApps and EMC dear investors.
On the social front , production of the above kinds of laptops would mean a low power consuming device, which inturn would mean lesser of environmental sins commited.
What is required is higher, denser,faster connectivity of regions. With the telecom sector having already spread its coverage , not much of infrastructure would be required for bandwidth requirements.
I wish to see the days in near future of India where internet would be as cheap as that in the US.

Why Atlas Shrugged

Reading the communist manifesto today a week after finishing Atlas Shrugged makes me realize the antagonism that is present between the two philosophies. It seems that Ms. Rand has put in her literature ( which I find highly repetitive after reading atlas shrugged , fountain head and a couple of her essay compilations) what a free thinker should be like. While the bourgeoisie are looked with contempt in communism , it is the same class of people which are celebrated in objectivism.
The romanticism in this novel gives a sense of belonging to the reader where , seeing the fate of communism in the world , is what seems to be the righteous path.
The strong style of writing transforms the reader to the world of the 20s and the 30s where communism was in the rise the world over.
In her reply to Marx and Engels , Ms Rand in the same tone , evangelizes pragmatism and a society which provides for the American pursuit of happiness.
She argues the rectitudinous in selfishness and greed ( which I would like to refer to as the basic instinct of man) , which in the today's competitive world more so, seems to be a morality in itself , much too different from the times when collectivism was considered to be righteous , which might be understood to be , in those times , in the words of Marx , Reactionism by the proletarians against the naked oppression and exploitation by the bourgeious.
It might be hard to grasp people rejoicing smoking a ciggerate , but nonetheless the syllogism, of it supporting Man as the greatest of the minds , through which it has been able to control the once dreaded fire , behind the above argument , as has been thoroughly argued by Ms Rand in her literature should be understood.
The advent of the internet and globalization has created a society , the same as the city of the Atlantis of the Atlas shrugged. The newer generation holds firm Ms Rand's oath of " I shall not live for someone else as they shall not for me" and " Give me liberty or give me death".

In today's scenario , the role of the government should only be restricted to , in addition to the one of providing liberty , monitoring of the human rights of the people , where the greed and selfishness , not understood in terms of objectivism , by the lowest of the animals roaming this earth ,would lead to a revolution of communism , leaving the society in utter anarchy , as the times which are so horrifically and abundantly described in this epic novel.
For the rest , the greed and selfishness will lead Man to the place like Atlantis.

Bing Bang in India

Microsoft has unveiled its new search engine BING , 2 days before the scheduled date.
A quick overview of the Bing gives a feel that at last Microsoft has come up with a search engine which can be a competitor to the near monopolist Google search.
The loading time of both the sites is nearly a blink.
The search results for the queries ( like shopping malls in Noida or natural language processing) , essentially are the same. MS no longer refrains from using Wikipedia as its top source of search query results , which I found was not there in the Live Search.
Bing let me down with multiple results hyper linking essentially to the same website( in the case of NLP to Wikipedia ) which does not make a lot of sense as , if I can go to a website which is textual enough for me to read , I would be intelligent enough to go to the links myself.
Where Bing scores is the added functionality given other than the basic returning of web pages , which makes it an intelligent search engine ( though not as per the capabilities of the industry like the one shown in WolframAlpha.)
The summary of the web page which can be accessed through the red dot at the side is a very novel idea , though the summary of certain web pages were disappointing. A better summarizer would make it a great feature for future search business.
Another great part of the engine is the customized search results presented. For example , shopping malls in Noida return a few places ( though personally I feel they can be among the worst search results that can be returned.)
I find the yahoo search engine to score in search query results in this domain over Bing or Google.
A feature which appeals though in Bing is the incorporation of the Live Map showing the landmarks of these places.
The related search queries at the left hand side of the window though gives better results.

The videos results have the same feature as the Ubuntu where hovering the mouse over a video plays it.
The search result for Noida in videos returns as the top result an MMS scandal of some B school , which reflects the quality of the search results returned.
Maps returns the Live map which is non-elaborative in comparison to Google maps.


People have been worried over Bing being a search engine which is able to decide for itself as to what kind of search results should be returned in comparison to Google giving all the search results possible. When seeing the current power of this engine to take decisions , it seems a non-decision approach would be a better idea for places such as India where data related to a particular city is not ample to take the decisions.But the potential is immense in having a search engine which is capable of taking intelligent search engines , like the Wolfram Alpha search engine.
Microsoft should , as opposed to limited spending proposed by Steve Balmer , invest more into Bing , to increase its market share from 2-3% presently , to something respectable to become a true competitor of Google in the search business.

The polythene bag

It rained here yesterday night. We were playing cricket.
In the white light from the florescent lamps mounted high up , with the background of the pitch black sky and the slanted drizzle in the wind , I saw a white polythene bag floating by.
High above the rest of its type on the road , it was as if it was flying , enjoying the wind , gliding in it like a seagull , careless and free , brave enough to have left the security of its company , kissing every raindrop which fell on it , and which shimmered on its body in the white light.

But there was something missing , and it was the control it should have had over itself.
Yet, till the time it was in my sight ,it was so beautiful.

The life of a Eunuch

My name is Chandni. I am 25. I was born a boy , I was discovered a eunuch.
My father is a professor at a degree college in Lakheempur , Uttar Pradesh.
I was the first baby of our house. I was 11 and in the 7th standard of the Kendriya Vidyalaya, when I was left in the streets of Delhi by my father.
A police report was filed in the Lakheempur police station about me going missing. It is still open.

I begged for 3 years at the Canought Place inner circle with a group of beggars. Then my appearance gave away my sexuality. I was ridiculed of my being , of my existence by the fellow beggars. They teased me by clapping their hands in front of my face. Some even kicked my genitals. Then , one day they told me to get lost with my 'kind' of people.

I went to Rajghat , to beg. Nobody gave me alms. They stared at my face , as if I was some alien. The women with their children would scamper away when I asked them for some left-over food.
They did not even let me touch their feet. They thought 'it' might be contagious.
I used to cry at night about the sins I would have commited in my past life and the punishment God had given me.
The 500 rupees that I had saved in the past 3 years were about to be finished when the Rajghat group of eunuchs came to my rescue.
They were traveling in the Ambassador when they spotted me there.
The head of the group was Rajni. She took me to a building in the Mandavali area. I did not like Rajni , nor Shanno or Chameli. I was told to learn it from Rajni , the way to dance , to clap , to play the Dholak.
I was even told the way to fend off the ones who 'acted smart' , all the rebukes.
I did not like it. Initially , I was even reluctant to do it. Then one day when I was travelling alone in a local train , the whole compartment shooed me away. Ladies raised their voices. Children cried.3 men came and one of them spit on my feet. That day I rebuked as bad as I could , till the time I could get down at the next station. That evening I cried.
From the next day on , I was a eunuch.
My first independant assignment was on the occasion of house warming. I was 22 then. I started negotiating at 5000 rupees , it came down to 500. I am a poor bargainer. I give into emotions of the old, their eyes seem too innocent. I do not like dealing with 'housewifes', most of them. They make a ruckus about us blessing them , they treat us like filth. I do not understand , when both the Pandit and we are blessing them , in our own ways; well , ours is more physical but that is altogether a different issue. I like doing the rituals with ata and haldi and chawal. It gives me a sense of purity , like I was the same Pandit , like I was also deserving of the same importance and reverence as him.I wish people showed us the same obiesance as him.I wish we too had a cornshell and people would fold their hands in respect , and we would tie the thread in their hands , and they would touch our feet. Ha! romanticism.
In reality , even a genuine smile is what sometimes I crave for.

Hostel Cricket

It is 5 in the morning .
And it has been 4 hours since I have been playing cricket with all the guys who have stayed back in the summer holidays in the hostel.
Love to have started playing again, after nearly 3 years.
And would like to keep this memory forever , the whole 'bakar' game that is played , and where teams seem to be at war , where some are identified for ' uski to bajaani hi hai' , where sometimes the scrotum of the other team players are the target , where , ma- bhen derivatives know no bounds , where sledging happens intra as well as inter-team , where the sound of the bat connecting to the ball is better than any sweet music , where a 4 or a 6 is celebrated by showing gestures which would never be shown in a social gathering , where we can transform into 10 year olds quarreling about a boundary , a wide or even the rules that apply to the game , where a game finishes every 10 minutes and a new star batsmen or bowler emerges for each.

The heat is a deterrent for us in the day , the humidity is the reason for us cribbing to go home , but when it is cricket , we don't even care , whether after an hour of play , even our vests are to be taken off.

Only when the birds start chirping and when the first rays of the sun can be seen destroying the darkness around , giving a heavenly bluish tinge to the sky , do we call our game off.

The public's verdict

16 th May would always be a milestone in the indian politics. The verdict of the people is conspicuously clear , we no more can tolerate a government made of goons (of the RJD), a polity of nonsecular ( yes , which makes more sense after one of my friends told me the three 'basic' issues addressed by the BJP) people or representatives who brand themselves on the basis of caste ( with special reference to Mr. Pasvan).

Seeing the mandate , it is clear that the public still wants grass root politics , where candidates go to their villages and ask their problems ( as Rahul Gandhi did in UP) , not pompous advertising on every website you visit ( the campaign showing Advani humped ; which I got to know was even there on some porn sites) or someone who sits on the seat of power as if a queen ( and then calls herself 'dalit ki beti').

Mr Lone loosing his debut election shows that even the awam of Kashmir does not want seperatist leaders( considering a majority of people voting).

It is a landmark election , where at last , after some 15 years we would have a stable and independant government.

Looking = Eveteasing

Attached is a snapshot from the blank noise project .
15% of the people who have voted here think that looking , yes , looking is a way of eve teasing.
Well , I agree staring is , but looking?

And , for me the most surprising part is that 15% people also voted that , other than the ways of eve teasing in the list here, there are other ways of eve teasing as well. How can people think of so many ways!

Languages

And suddenly I want to learn Bengali for reading Tagore , Latin for Dante and Sanskrit for The Gita.

Polls 1

I want to see a national debate between the prime ministerial candidates. For once , something which would have a direct impact on the middle class , instigating them to vote , and that too for the right people.
Yesterday, one of my batchmates forwarded me BJP's IT vision.

I have never read a manifesto as such. But , seeing this, I think , being overtly optimistic about it's implementation , BJP with such points could bring in the digital revolution.
But then, the points specified are so generic that they can be the summary of a GD that takes place on Sundays.
Also, the implementation details are missing. It's something like their erstwhile India Shining , where a rosy picture is being painted, but which is far away from reality.
For example, how in 3 years can they give a national identity device to every citizen of India, when we do not even have a total count of Indian citizens?
Also, once this identity is with every citizen , won't the militant forces have a free access to get this identity of being an Indian citizen.
The country cannot afford to give a billion of identification devices which would be tamper proof.
This seems , on a cursory analysis to be , if implemented , something like the dotcom bust.
Mr. Advani , it would be better if this vision of yours could be tranformed from 'in your dreams' to something realistic.
But I like the idea of all the post offices being given broadband access ( well I feel even a dial-up would be just fine, considering the length and breadth of our nation).
Post offices can serve the dual porpose of being a place for the snail communication and the e-communication.
Advani's IT vision.

The presentation culture

It has been nearly three years since I started my bachelors.
And no matter how much I have been trying to avert the presentation culture which is pervasive in each of my semester, it seems that I am at last accepting it as a necessity to accustom myself to this way of teaching.
But I still have my doubts.

I cannot have the patience nor the tolerance to just let go any piece of information that might be necessary.Nor the ignorance or the co-relating ability , whichever way it might be comprehended , to understand the material in the presentation.
The authors of the books are not crazy to write reams of papers with nothing significant in them , not like in some of the answer scripts which some of my batchmates and even a few of my lecturers urge us to do.

Do presentations save time?
I think if one wants a clearer picture, a book is needed , and a clearer picture is what one should strive for.

I think this very presentation culture is in some way responsible for the economic crisis that the world is seeing these days.
Everything was in the form of the high level presentations, the presentors in no way wanted to present the bad-grade mortage debts.
The high level just talked about the AAA securities which they had been cast into.
The managerial fraternity , which has been groomed on this ' presentation culture' were only interested in the high level presentations, forgetting about what actually constituted the AAA securities.
The presentors were paid hefty sums , so were the ones who were presented the slide-shows , either for them turning a blind eye or else for them accustoming themselves to the presentation culture.

If the presentation culture has such consequences that countries could go bankrupt , that people are stripped off their security,stability and peace of mind , I am sorry but I refuse the presentation culture to pollute me.

A grade lost here or there for my incompetence of finishing off with the course ,well I could manage that.

Polls

Around 70% sites that I am visiting are full of the 'LK Advani for PM' advertisement.

It is actually a great step forward by the NDA to address the indian netizens for the polls.

I wonder how many Indians do actually have access to the internet and the luxury to idle away their time and money on sites like youtube.

The color combination of the advertisement is quite catchy and poll-oriented.

Also , can this media , for the Indians described above , be effective in garnering votes for the NDA.

What was surprising was that on youtube , the same ad is on the videopage that has the Jai-Ho camapaign of the UPA.

And what is equally disguting about the Jai-Ho campaign are the frames in which students are shown waving their degrees as if they were just pieces of paper.

As if all those so-called welfare movements that were inititated in the quinquenial period were just a political gimmick and for the sake of education being a few pieces of paper to be waved.

Quizzes

What beer cannot do , where cough-syrups falter , only quizzes are sucessful.

I was thinking of posting something on my demonic lifestyle , sleeping at 7 in the morning and always asking my roommate for a proxy in the morning session.

But today , its not even 2 and iam sleepy.

Tomorrow is my Image Processing quiz and I am already dozing off.

Quizzes should be taken more often.

Revival .. and more

The cook in me has resurrected from its ashes.

Most of my time spent in the room other than sleeping , is eating.

And the pleasure one gets by cooking for himself , is quite smugging.

I make soup , noodles , soup and noodles , cheese-balls and noodles , and whatever which actually does not require any skill , but nevertheless.... But , judging the amount of water to put in is an art , my roommate critics me about.

And so I have found a new friend in the electric kettle that I had bought some one and a half years ago but realized its worth just a few days back.

The last time Dua and I( and well Manish and Crash) went to BigBazaar, we squeeked like hell on discounts and special offers.

The glow on Dua's face when he spotted 25% off on Maggi Tomato soup , was very much noticeable.

And the way he went on bragging about it to Manish and Crash , well I can't find sufficient adjectives to describe that.

Sometimes I think we are becoming the typical housewives they potray in those K-serials. We like to gossip. I want to describe it as 'bitching around' , roadies has made that word popular, but I think we don't have those many beeps to support us , nor those arguments .

We wait for Saturdays to download Roadies , wake whole Monday night to download Heroes for Tuesday , and garnish the other days with an episode or two of numb3rs or a movie everyday.

Manish and I cleaned our room just yesterday. Till now , according to my survey , we have managed to clinch the title of ' the dirtiest room inhabitants ' , with 5 and a half months of straight 'not-even-brooming' policy , but the competition was strong. At last somewhere we are first. Go Manish!

I am waiting like a maniac for DevD. It's not in Allahabad and also because our downloaders have failed IIITA. They could not find a single link on the internet from where they could get a pirated copy. I guess that is because the movie might not have been released in Pakistan.

Placements seem to be grim. I came out with a business plan for movie producers on an efficient way to curb piracy , till the time they are ready to give us a free copy for IIITA. We will direct out downloaders group to report every website , torrent site , where they find a pirated copy. Imagine 300 students on an active watch-out. Nobody could beat our system. IIITA downloaders come just behind the Russians and the Chinese in downloading pirated material. We could rake in money folks. UTV pictures, give us a copy of DevD , and we would ensure no piracy .

Someone give me DevD download links please.

Cellophane

I want to be like cellophane
wrap you around in my arms
like cellophane
shielding from the disturbances outside
like cellophane
pecking you on your lips
like cellophane
showing you the world through my eyes
like cellophane
being transparent and full of colors
like cellophane
being complementary to your beauty
like cellophane
without you which my existence is no more

Slumdog millionare

Amazing movie. Worth each second seen.

The railways

Prayag Raj Express,the best train in India , these days:
Journey time : 9 hours
Late by :10 hours
To make it worse : no food
Results : A headache for 2 days
Though the adventure of escaping the late-fee penalty was something to remember.