Insanity Unleashed

Is it.. over ??

2008-11-16T01:33:00.005+05:30

Update: I have start blogging at http://srinidhicr.wordpress.com/
I have received many requests to keep this blog going as well. Lets see how things turn out..

Hey folks,

Its been a really long time since I wrote something here. Its not like I posted too often in any case, but still, I think there is a good reason somewhere for the delay.

Over the last few weeks, anytime I thought of writing up a new post, I just haven't been able to bring myself to start writing. There has been enough opportunity, but its just not happening. For example, I could've written a sequel to this, cos I just got ripped off of 300 bucks for wrong parking. Or the fact that my rotten luck with HR managers seems to get worse everyday. Or the fact that I almost burned my own bike's tyres by accident.

But, I seem to have lost the patience, or the imagination for writing about such things. And so fellas, I believe the time has come to call it quits, for now at least.

Its been a fairly good ride, I've had a small, but loyal audience for a period of about 2 years, I started writing just for the heck of it, maybe I had too much free time, maybe I wanted to say things I could never say out loud in the real world, I'm not really sure what got me here. But I do know that the time has come to move on.. And the recent twitter experiment, that is going as well.

So, what happens now? I'm not really sure. I will probably start another blog, bit different from Insanity-Unleashed, maybe with a little less insanity perhaps ?? I honestly don't know yet, What I do know is, I will put up the link for the new blog here, once I start it.

Thank you all for visiting here, and writing comments, I know its not a wide audience, just a few close friends from college and some from earlier. I hope you will still visit my new ventures in the future.

And so, for possibly the last time, Adios, and Alvida,
The Insane One.

What would happen if..

2008-10-24T16:00:00.002+05:30

You took 2 diwali rockets, tied them end to end, and lit them at the exact same time ??

Just a curiosity, and since its been more than 15 years since I've lit a firecracker, maybe you should try this and let me know what happens. :)

Its just not f***ing fair !!!

2008-08-24T01:50:00.005+05:30

Ohh yeah, I’m pissed.. Big time..

I don’t quite know what is wrong with me. Or what's wrong with the world we live in. You know, I’m a simple guy, simple tastes, nothing complicated. And I live my life by a few simple rules, simple principles. Things that have been taught to me by personal experience, a sense of right and wrong, good and evil.. And I see all these principles and values breaking down into pieces right in front of my face, day after day.. What do I do when every belief, every core value that I have been taught over the years just crashes down ?? Was I that wrong about myself ? Have I been overrating my understanding of the world ? Or has the “system” finally got the better of me ?? I honestly don’t know. I feel upset, confused, scared, angry (in that order) just thinking about it..

I put myself out there, hoping for a change, almost every single day, sometimes the nights too, hoping for an esteemed gentleman, (or lady nowadays) to step up from his seat, call me with a smile, and extend a friendly arm, ask a few quick questions, and get down to talking money.. And every wrong would be set right. But, It never happens.. And they never, ever stop to give a goddamn reasonable explanation. Fucking hell…

Ok stay with me for a little while longer.. You’ll know what I’m so bent up about.. Some of you really smart ones may already think you know, but just hang on nevertheless..

So here’s what it is.. Pat yourself on the back, if you got this right.. (or smack your head on the keyboard if you are wrong) Ever since I wrote a piece about Bangalore cops, and their ways, I have a running bet with myself. I have been waiting, with bated breath, for the day the cops stop me and try to extort money.. Yep, its weird I know, but the next time I get stopped by the traffic cops I’m going to give him a nice big smile, or a cruel laugh, like The Joker does, show him all my documents and wait for the look on his face.. This is the day, I know that everything is right with the world. All the wrongs would be set right, Bangalore’s cops are just as corruptible, and shallow as they were during the glory days.. But, and this is the kicker: They have not stopped me for last 7 fucking years..

If there is a God up there somewhere, then please, oh please tell me.. When will the day finally come ?? I don’t ask for too much, like I said, I’m a simple guy.. Isn’t there even one pot-bellied mooch sporting douchebag in khaki with the cahones to stop me for no reason and ask for a little bribe ? Is that too much to ask for ?? What the hell has happened to the Bangalore Traffic police that I have come to love, and hate over the years ??

I have had some close calls over these few years.. But still somehow, they keep waving me by, no stopping, no snatching of bike keys, no sniffing my garlic spewing odour. In fact, they have actually been nice to me, I mean the real definition of nice. One of them even offered me a cup of chai on the road. God, its sickening to even think of that day..

So I’m on my way to college, for a lecture, stop on the way at a bakery at EC for a little fresh air, if you know what I mean, and riding away happily, when this huge guy in khakis waves me over. I stop right away and pull over, thinking that my day finally arrived.. Is this the cop with the said cahones after all ? It was so exciting I tell you, I was almost giggling like a little girl inside. He had his white Pulsar bike nearby, a nice brick-size radio, and a menacing lathi in hand, all great signs. This was the dialogue that ensued.. Most of it was in Kannada, here is a rough translation:

Cop in gruff voice: Grrrr.. Do you have a license..

Me: Couldn’t wait for you to ask, Mr Cop, Yes I do.. I have my DL, RC, and insurance.. Would your highness please to peruse them ??

Cop in very meek voice: He he.. That’s ok saar..

Me: (Uh-oh a cop calling me saar ?? Something’s not right)

Cop: Stop pulling out the documents saar, the thing is, my bike over there, has run out of petrol, Can you please spare me 100 ml of your petrol ??

Me: (WTF) Huh ?? What ?? (Eyeballs popping out of spectacles and helmet visor..)

Cop: No this stupid constable took it out and it went dry.. Can you please spare me 100 ml.. Not much, just enough to go to the bunk..

Me: (Ohh no.. wtf.. wtf.. and wait.. what the fuckk ???? NNOooooooooooo)

Cop: Saar… what happened ?? I don’t want any money.. Just some petrol..

Me: (This can’t be happening.. No, not this time.. ) Ok ok.. let me pull over…

Cop: (With a big smile..) Would you like some tea ?? Samosas ??

Me: Gaaaaaaaawdd.. wtf ?

So that was it.. He stopped me to beg for fuel. I didn’t even open the tool box for the documents. Pretty surreal huh.. I thought Bangalore cops were tougher than that. And this is not just a one off thing. Almost every other weekend night as I come down the Windsor Manor flyover, there will be the usual barricade. 6-7 cops with bikes and their out-of-date receipt books I used to fear so much.. Stopping every single thing that moves. But not once have I been stopped. In something like 9-10 times I’ve been down that road, often sloshed with booze, but not once have they stopped me. In my rather drowsy state, I could see they took more interest in stopping cars, rather than bikes, and checking for drunken drivers. Didn’t make any sense, but then I convinced myself that the ones who owned 4 wheels would give a better ROI than a guy on 2 wheels. But what happened the last weekend was the final straw.

This time I was back from a movie, not under the influence whatsoever… ok I did have some weed but that was like 4 hours earlier. Anyway, I’m cruising down the road, full speed, hoping to see my friends in white and brown. Then I see they are stopping everyone. Yep, the cars, the bikes, everyone.. And they were doing the usual checks.. License, registration, the good old stick-your-nose-in-the-helmet-and-sniff routine. Perfect, I thought.. maybe the drought will end. I got all my vehicle docs with me, the only odor coming out of me is that of potatoes and ketchup, in short, purrrfect.. Ohh yeah baby, come to daddy...

So I carefully stop right in front of the cop, open the helmet visor, and give him a nice scared, guilty look.. He gives one glance and waves me by.. WTF again… As I pulled out, I cursed out so loudly, you would think I was ripped of by a few thousands..

What the hell is wrong with me ?? Have I lost my mojo ?? Have I become one of those wussies that would never cause trouble ?? Its been horrifying man.. In theory, I do everything right.. I always wear dirty jeans, ride the notorious RX135, which by the way, has no horn, no indicators, no crash guard, no mirrors, a rather dubious braking system and makes so much noise the local neighborhood buffaloes make way for me.. What more can I do ?? Why does life have to be so unkind to me ??

Why God why ??

Whats the difference between HR managers and earthworms ?

2008-08-04T23:34:00.005+05:30

Nothing, both are full of shit.

Updates coming soon..

2008-06-27T23:07:00.006+05:30

Really really, really soon..

Meanwhile many congrats to James, Big Foot, Munna and others on their jobs.. On the other hand, to Silpa and Gingi.. Dudes, lets start praying :)

Is Mallya mixing something in his merchandise ??

2008-05-29T13:35:00.003+05:30

So, the last post was no great shakes. I was too lazy to clean, and thought of cooking the damn pan instead. Big deal..

Its weird how when one is totally and completely slammed even the most dumbass ideas seem awesome and deserving a Nobel no less.. The other day I had a similar brainwave. Something about the lack of cops in the sky and the ability to fly a plane without a license. It sounded insanely hilarious at the time, but now that I think about it, doesn't seem all that great. In fact, it sounds downright retarded.. Which brings me to the question. Is Vijay Mallya mixing hallucinogens in his drinks?

Should I apply for a patent ??

2008-05-24T06:19:00.006+05:30

I have this great new idea. Its the perfect solution to one of the biggest problems facing bachelor guys.. This new “invention” of mine is so elegant, so perfect, and yet so simple I feel I deserve something like a Nobel Prize.. If there is a category in the Nobel Prizes for Outstanding Contribution to the field of “Domestic Chore Optimization” then I should deserve it.. ok, enough buildup, lets cut to the chase..

Suppose its 3 am, you’re at home, very hungry, and mommy is not around.. The fridge is empty, and no shops are open at 3 am. What do you do? Curse the rest of humanity for not being up at such an un-ungodly hour. Now what do you do.. There’s no one around to even listen to your curses.. Don’t deny it, we’ve all been there. 97% of all bachelor guys faced with this situation would unanimously answer “Maggi”. No surprise too, cos for so many years, Maggi has been the single, hungry guy’s best friend. Always reliable, cheap and widely available. And yeah I made up that statistic.. I figured 3% of any population consists of people would think of Top-Ramen, so I left them out. Anyway, back to the story. So you go ahead, make that Maggi, savor it with some good ol’ fashioned test cricket on the telly for a change.. All good and done, your tummy thinks you’re the best cook in the whole world, and the Maggi has served its rightful purpose. By the way, you can find a very endearing, and honorable dedication to the lords of Maggi here..

In the middle of all this, there is one tiny detail you glaze over.. We all forget this little thing called the dirty pan you used to make that holiest of holy life-saviour.. After you’ve finished the noodles, the pan is still on the stove, and you conveniently forgot all about it.. If you have been in this situation, raise your hand.. Yes ? Okay now no need to raise both hands, we all know how much you like your instant noodles and hate cleaning up..

Right, now get ready for the great Next Big Thing in Domestic Utensil Management.. So it’s the next day, same situation, hungry at 3 am, again.. Big surprise.. So you wanna make Maggi again. But No!, the pan is still on the stove, and worse still its got all greasy, and sticky with some dried up green goo all over it, and there are cockroaches who enjoy the Maggi as much as you did. You try poking the inside of the pan with a spoon, no success.. You pour water over it, and then scrape it with a spoon, Still no success. What to do? You can’t clean it cos, well lets face it, you don’t know how.. Desperate times my friend. This is where my new “thing” comes in.. You have to follow the steps given below carefully, and you’re on your way to another Maggi in no time.

1. Put the pan back on the stove.
2. Put some water in it. The level of water should be exactly the same as the level of the green dried up goo.
3. Now find some dish-cleaning liquid. Preferably you want to use dish-wash concentrate, like Vim, or Pril, but in case its not available, you could use Surf, Ariel or any other washing powder.. If you use the washing powder, be careful cos the thing lathers like crazy..
4.Now put the dish-wash concentrate in the dirty pan on the stove..
5. Stir generously. The hot water, combined with the detergent should break down the grease in no time. Again, be careful if you use washing powder otherwise your kitchen will look like the inside of a washing machine in no time.
6. The mixture in the pan will start to get foamy once the water boils, so turn off the stove. Stir the concoction generously. Your initial poking idea should come into use now.
7. Rinse and repeat if necessary.

That’s it.. now take a piece of cloth, wrap your hands with it, and take the pan out carefully. The pan would be hot you see, a little detail that we guys need to be reminded time to time. Rinse the pan thoroughly with water.. Okay just keep the thing on your bathroom floor and turn the tap on. Good. Now wipe the pan, and it would be so clean, you can see your own hungry face in it..

Awesome.. In about 2-3 more minutes, your hot plate of instant noodles will be done !! Pat yourself on the back for being so kitchen-savvy, and go back to whatever you were doing. Don’t forget to send me a check for 5000 bucks, for I gave you this wonderful, life-saving recipe, and phrases such as ‘un-ungodly hour’..

I’m pretty sure this will be a “thing” very soon.. So the next time you are hungry for Maggi, and have a dirty pan, remember “Don’t clean the dirty dish, just cook it !!”

-Adios

License and registration, please !!

2008-05-01T02:19:00.006+05:30

Yes kids.. This post is about the times I’ve had run-ins with that pot-bellied mustache-sporting middle-aged man in brown and white we hate to see at every unexpected corner. Most of these incidents happened when I was around 17-18 years old. A time when the Yamaha RX135 was the rage, petrol cost 24 bucks per liter, cell phones were unheard of and FTV was the best program on the telly.. Good times those..

So turn your clocks back by 7-8 years before you read the rest.. And like last time, I promise I’m not making up any of these.. At times I wish they didn’t happen, but then life would be that much less fun without such things wouldn’t it ?

You there.. Stop!!.. You.. Whack !!..

I was on the way back from another one of my “sessions” late one night. Ahh.. the things we used to do in the name of 2nd PU tuitions those days !! I was on my very first bike, a bent-up Kinetic Honda my dad reluctantly allowed me to ride. Near one of the traffic junctions, I could see the cops stopping bikes. I decided to follow my tried n trusted formula, which is to trail behind a big car, and escape the cops’ eye. I found only a little maruti just ahead, and trailed it. The damn cop saw me and started waving frantically to stop. Had I stopped, there would be many questions I’d had to answer, both right there, and at home. So I decided to do a bit of a stunt, pulled up close to him, and suddenly took off from his wrong side. I must have pissed him off big-time, cos I felt a very sharp rap on my back just as I took off.. It was the lathi, and it was square across my back. Fortunately, I had a backpack on (tuitions you see !!) and it didn’t hurt as much. But boy was it an experience.. A few seconds later, I went all cold with the adrenaline -rush. Imagine an under-aged, mildly intoxicated goof with no license who just evaded two cops, and took a lathi hit in the middle of the night.. I felt scared, happy, stupid, relieved, and proud all at the same time!!

I’ll be baack!!

This was when that Terminator 3 movie just got released. 3 people, on a borrowed bike, on the busy street at 4 pm en-route to Vaibhav theater. We had tickets, and were late. I saw 2 cops in front, one in the middle of the street almost, doing what they do best! There was just no way we could get away without a fine, which also meant precious few minutes of the show missed. So again I decided not to stop, and swerved twice in front of the cops, and then accelerated wildly. Somehow managed to miss the cops hands, and the lathi, but this just pissed him off enough to scream “You Ba****d” in the middle of the road. I must say, we were a bit lucky to get away with just that. And balancing three guys on a rickety bike, and avoiding a cop is one tough thing to do.. Also that was the first time I saw a cop curse in full, flawless English!!

You did what ? Who’s the girl ?? And whose was the bike ?? Where did you go ?? What did you do ??

This time, I was on a hmm..ahem.. (cough cough).. date! That’s right, back then, I was not quite the complete loser I've become now. It was probably the last time too. Anyway I had borrowed a bike from my old pal Slum, cos girls normally don’t take too well to a broken up Kinetic, with the bloody stepney attached at the end.. (God I hated that stepney!!) And yes my friend was called Slumm, and the reason does not fit into this post.

Back to the bike, and the girl. We went to some place near M.G Road, and were on our way back. Just then, out of nowhere 2 cops came, and grabbed the keys when I was waiting on a signal. This was a bit weird.. I was caught, no license, no documents in the bike, and worse still, I could not do the usual “pleeeeaassee saaar I’m just a poor student” tamasha. Because well.. u know.. there was a girl with me !! And just when things could not get any worse, I saw that we had stopped bang in front of my dad’s office. The universe was punishing me! I ended up paying the entire fine the cop asked, scrambled out of there as fast as I could. Still, thanks to that stinkin’ Murphy fella, some colleague of my dad’s had seen me, and later at home I had to face questions like the one you read at the heading of this story.

And now for the last, but definitely the most awesome story,

I was in 2nd PU (12th std), and again, on my Kinetic, with a friend on our way to visit another friend in the hospital. The reason why he got in the hospital is another bizarre story, but lets not digress.. Now a little bit about my pal who was riding with me. His name was Kiran, we called him “Kirik Kiran”. Translated, that literally means “Big Trouble Kiran”. This guy was a real bad ass.. a real wild one, known to cause serious trouble wherever he went.

We were on our way back, and got stopped at the Sheshadripuram police station. As always, we played the poor student bit, and even showed the little torn up paper I called the LL, but no luck. Kirik claimed he had a “LL for Motorcycle with gear”,(not sure if they even exist !) and tried to wriggle out, but still no luck. Kirik then tried the effective-but-risky name dropping game. You know when you claim to know that someone you know knows someone who knows someone whom the cop in turn has to salute.. That didn’t work either. So we dug our pockets, and found only 50 bucks, and the cop took it with a condescending smirk and a curse..

This ticked off our man Kirik to no end, and he thought he’d put this cop in place. The plan was as follows: he asked me to ride a few meters further, wait for him, and as soon as he came, asked me to ride away like crazy. I still didn’t know what he was going to do, but knew it would be something crazy. So I waited. He walked back to the cop, now there were 3 of them, with the inspector who caught us. And so in the middle of a busy junction, in front of a police station, Kirik called the cops. He took a quick look around and screamed “Leyy, hogo nin a****n” at their faces. And then he ran. And I took off..
(For those in the unknown, that phrase translates to “Abey, jaa teri m** *i”.(Clue: The word rhymes with paki)

After we had gotten away, we stopped, caught our breath, and laughed for about 15 minutes non-stop..

As soon as I turned 18, first thing I did was to get a permanent license, and so such amazing and juvenile incidents have not happened much recently.. Funny how the cops never stop you when you have a valid license :) That’s it for now, I'm pretty sure all of you have had similar if not crazier experiences. Do share them.

Till then, Adios..

Beware of the young doctor, and the old barber..

2008-04-11T23:23:00.006+05:30

That’s the actual quote but I'd turn it around and say "Beware of the old doctor and a young barber". For those who don't know about my barber experience, here it is. Now for the doctor..

Few weeks ago, I had a mild throat infection, for which I thought it best to visit a doc instead of doing any self-medication. Now there was this family doctor of ours, one whom I've been visiting since I was a kid. Lets call him Dr. A. It also turned out that his daughter went to the same engineering college that I did, and from what I gathered, she wasn't doing as well as her dad expected. Any time I'd go to him during this time, this was the conversation that took place.

Me: Hello doctor, I've been having this chest infection for a few days.

Dr. A: Hmm, you are doing BE right ?

Me: Yes Doctor.

Dr. A: Computer science ?

Me: Yes.

Dr. A: So how much did you get in your 4th semester ?

Me: huh.. 76%

Dr. A: Hmmm.. You know Computer science is a very easy subject. Anybody can score marks..

Me: (Being more concerned about my condition) Yes Doctor.. Now I've had this
problem for about a week…

Dr. A: Yes yes, we'll come to that.. You know Electronics students tend to get better job placements. (this coming from a doctor !!).

Me: Ohh I'm not so sure about that doctor..

Dr. A: Yes yes, Computers are going down I say.. (???)

Me: yes doc,.. but in the long run...

All this was happening when he had about 20 more patients waiting outside. Eventually, he would relent, and write up some pills, and I'd be okay in a few days.. He took care to give me different pills each time I went, although the condition was just about the same. Else I'd remember the pills, and chose not to go to him the next time.. Clever people these docs.

So now when it was time for another visit, I thought it would be best to go to a different doc, otherwise I'd be fending off questions about why a Masters course is irrelevant in recent times :)

I ended up going to another place, to a doctor who was a bit older, and gave the impression of someone who knew all the answers. Lets call him Dr. R. This is how it went..

Me: Hello doctor, I'm having a scratchy throat for the past few days….

Dr. R: Hmm.. So what is it that you do betaaa..

Me: I’m doing a Masters course in IT doctor..

Dr. R: So how many days have you had this problem..

Me: About a week or so..

Dr. R: (With a giant smirk, looking at the ceiling)And what alll did you do in the name of so-called self medication ??

Me: Nothing doc, just a few cold tablets..

Dr. R: You know this generation of kids.. You go shake hands with Bush and everything, Yet when it comes to you own health, you don't do anything.. (I am not kidding he said the same words !!)

Me: Huh.. what doc ??

Dr. R: You go meet all these big people, attend big meetings, still when it comes to your health...

Me: (Stopping him from going any further) Doc but I'm still a student !!

Dr. R: Ya ya.. You come out with a throat infection in this cold, and you may want to run a nudist camp with all your ideals, but this is not the time.. (again, not kidding !!)

Me: (now more than a little puzzled) What doctor ??

Dr. R: See what you are wearing.. this chaddi and banian..
(Ok, I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt but come on.. nudist ??)

Me: (I just wanted the prescription, and I was outta there) Ok doctor, now can you help me here..

Dr. R: You know it all starts with the throat, then the infection goes to the nose, then to the brain, the sinus gets infected, then the virus spreads to the lungs, then the whole body.. You have to wear warm clothes, eat only steamed food, no cold juices.. blah bla..(There was some more, but I stopped caring at this stage. The way he said it, I thought I'd die the next day !! And all this from a simple cold..)

Me: Ok doc, can you just give me a few pills, and not the injection or syrups, cos I live in a hostel and I canno....

Dr. R: See you people are so impatient these days.. What will you do when you get married.. You want to have kids, and no patience.. You have to fire repeatedly, to get results.. And still when there are no results, you got to fire some more..

(I swear to you, I didn't make that up !!)

Me: OK OK doctor, all I asked was for some pills..

Dr. R: Yes yes.. see.. no patience...

Me: Yes doc, I know.. I'll work on it..

Boy was I happy to get out of that place. Imagine if that guy had a kid son/daughter. I don't know if they would have got this "fire, and then fire some more" talk.. Shudder !!

Now you know why I reverse the quote about young doctor :) I’d call it “beware of the old creepy doctor, and the young, over-enthusiastic barber”.

Just curious..

2008-04-08T02:50:00.008+05:30

Some of you would know I use a nice little utility from 160by2.com to send free text messages to any mobile phone in India. It turns out that they have a new site that can be used inside the web browser of your phone to send out free SMS.. What I don't understand is, why would anyone want to use GPRS on their phone to connect to the internet, and then send out a free message. Unless GPRS becomes cheaper than SMS rates, wouldn't it be easier to just type out an SMS in the old fashioned way and send it ??

Also there is a new ad these days about yahoo messsenger on mobile phones.. Again, same question. Why connect to the net on your phone to send a message to someone ?

Am I missing something here ??

Update: Having seen the nature of replies in the comments section, the best way to explain this would be a quote from TV series The Big Bang Theory (S01E09)

Geek: I am now about to send a signal from this laptop through our local ISP racing down fibre optic cable at the speed of light to San Francisco bouncing off a satellite in geo synchronous orbit to Lisbon,Portugal, where the data packets wil be handed off through submerged transatlantic cables terminating in Halifax, and transferred across the continent via microwave relays back to our ISP, and the X10 receiver attached to this .. lamp !

Girl: Umm.. Here's a question, why ??
Geeks: Because we can !!

I had been bowling today !!

2008-04-08T02:42:00.003+05:30

You know, the one where you wear some smelly shoes that a million other guys have used, take a giant ball and roll it down at 10 pins.. And I was so bad at it, in the immortal words of Bart Simpson, “I didn’t know if one could suck and blow at the same thing”

The only saving grace was a very hot female at the other lane, who put on a show just for us, with her perfect form and technique. Maybe that’s why I did so bad after all.. :P

An unlikely hero.

2008-03-10T00:55:00.004+05:30

Note: If you are not a part of our institute, you would not be able to understand or appreciate the events that are described here in the right perspective. I'll point you to this piece or this for some more general reading.

A wise man once said “Cricket is a funny game”. Indeed it is. Anyone who thought otherwise should have been there today to witness our match. It was one of the most astonishing, and humbling experiences on a cricket field for me.

If you remember, I had mentioned here about a little tennis-ball cricket competition held at our place every year. This time round, we entered the finals, which were held today at 3 pm at our campus lawn. Now our team is considered to be a pretty good one, on paper at least. But like most favorite teams, we tend to muck it up when it comes to the high pressure games. Our opponents in the finals were our senior team, who also fancied their chances of winning.

Our skipper lost the toss, and we were asked to field in some fairly hot and sultry weather. To the credit of our team, the bowling, and fielding was close to impeccable, and we restricted them to a total of 69 in 12 overs. On a ground where the straight boundaries are no more than 30 meters from the batting crease, this total should have been a cake walk.

But then, as another wise man said, “Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties”. Case in point, our pitch. If you land a ball on the exact same area on the pitch 6 times, it can behave in 6 different ways ! Im not kidding. And so the technique part goes out of the window, and all the plans and theories that one makes are simply irrelevant once the game starts. So I suppose the best way to play is to back your instincts, swing the bat, and pray :).

We started our innings, and before you could say “Adaa Paavi”, we were 4/4 in 2 overs. Now one of the many quirky little things about playing at our place is that you could actually find newer and stranger ways to get out, that nobody, including yourself would ever imagine. Our opener Jadoo picked out the only guy placed on the offside, Anna patted back a leg-side volley straight to midwicket. Our skipper played a very strange shot, I don’t know how to call it, a slow rising ball outside off was scooped up to the keeper !! We were well on our way to another batting collapse. Then came in yours truly, and fiddled around for a bit, meanwhile we lost another key wicket, and now we were well and truly in some deep shit.

In walks Silver Spoon Silpakumar. Now Silpa is a fantastic fast bowler, but his batting was a little err.. dodgy if I may say so.. Until today that is. Now I quite fancy myself with the bat in hand, and being the royal dipshit, proclaimed to him, ”You just stay there, I’ll score all the runs”. He simply nodded. Few minutes later, he deposited the ball into the pond. And this just repeated over and over for about 30 minutes. I was standing there at the other end, shell-shocked. Silpa had a little niggle with his leg, so Guru came to run for him. Now Guru and myself fancy ourselves as batsmen, and so were repeatedly giving Silpa gyaan about playing safe, and building partnerships. Silpa simply nodded, and then blasted everything that came his way into orbit without a care in the world. The more we asked him to cool down and relax, he hit the ball harder and further. Sure there were a few close calls, but then the way Silpa was smacking the living hell out of a fancied bowling attack, it made the rest of us look like complete imbeciles.

After the dust settled, we had romped home with 2 overs to spare, Silpa unbeaten on 52, with 7 sixes. It was quite an astonishing knock, every single six was a clean hit, bang in the middle of the bat, and carrying well over the boundary. And the “batsman” at the other end, yours truly had 6 n.o. I didn’t even get strike for the last 3 overs of the innings, such was Silpa’s domination. When I look back on what I said to him when he came in, boy do I feel like a loser !!

Just goes to show the nature of this game. You can call yourself a batsman, bowler, or whatever, and no matter what kind of reputation you carry, its only how you play on the given day, that determines how good you are. It does not matter how good you think you are, or what others think of you, what matters is the bottom-line. The scorecard. In this case it read Silpa: 52 n.o, out of a total of 71. Next highest score: extras. And this with a team full of batsmen. I have played many cricket matches over the years, but this one ranks right up there, for the sheer humbling experience it gave me.

In the midst of all the celebrations and the hoopla, we tend to forget the little things that make days like these special. Many thanks should go to Big Foot, who came in as a replacement for a teammate who was occupied elsewhere. Also, during the course of the game, the ball would be frequently hit into the adjacent building, and the game would come to a standstill. The batting team members usually go out to fetch it, but since these were our seniors, I guess they had too much of an ego to do it. At this time, it took a very generous gesture from James, and Ravi, who offered to go and get it. This saved us a lot of time, and made sure we didn’t lose momentum. Thanks guys, for being so considerate and supportive.

And finally three cheers to our team.. We are the champs of Spandan’08 !!.

Adios !!

P.S: You can find our very own Silpa writing about this day here.

Seriously, what were you thinking ??

2008-03-03T00:09:00.006+05:30

You know something.. I don’t watch much television nowadays, In fact, if it was not for the Indian cricket team whooping little Ricky and his babies Down Under, I’d probably not watch any TV at all. Which is a good thing in some ways. Why is that you ask.. It goes like this..

I come home every weekend from college, and all I want is some time to stretch out on the sofa, and let the good ol’ idiot box enlighten me for some time. But then, there are some people out there who take it upon themselves to repeatedly punish and torture us with their inane dumbass ideas that I’m sure they think are very brilliant and creative. And I’m not talking about reality shows. You know the ones where some morons vote for other morons and even more morons sit and watch it like, well.. morons. That topic deserves a whole book or a novel. There are so many things wrong with these kind of shows I don’t even want to get started..

What I’m really disturbed about are these stupid “im-so-smart-im-actually-dumb” commercials that keep coming all the time. Worst part is these things keep coming on during live cricket telecasts.

Im told there are professionals who conceive and make these ads. They work in the so-called ad agencies and are supposed to make bags of money doing very “creative” work. In the cases mentioned here, and possibly some more, maybe a bunch of goats could have done a better job.

So lets start, here is a partial list of all the really dumbass commercials seen on Indian TV at this time. Its partial because, well there are so many of them it would be impossible to give an exhaustive list. And they are not listed in order of their stupidity or anything, they are all equally bad.

1.Bingo chips

These ads take the “if you cant convince - confuse” idea to a whole new level. In one of them, a bunch of medically-inclined morons (sorry they cannot be called doctors) torture a guy, testing him for crunchiness.
I seriously wonder.. what were the ad makers thinking ?

Another one in the series is here. Something about glad bangles, mad angels ?? There are more.. one about a flamingo, even one on a pregnant woman.. Its really hard to come up with descriptions for these. Serious mind-fuck is all I can say.

2.Visa

This is one with a very rotund Shankar Mahadevan and his band singing “Mind and body, heart and soul” And there is a fake suggestion that they are supporting the Indian team. I don’t see how or why this is an ad for a credit card company.

3.Idea cellular

This is one where Bachchan Jr. is some sort of village headman, and he swaps the names of people with their phone numbers. And there is another imbecile at the end who says “What an idea sirjee”. This ad is bad on so many levels its mind-boggling how anyone could think it is worthy for public viewing. Reducing the whole caste/creed issue to a mere change of nomenclature, and in a country like ours, it simply smacks of a complete lack of social awareness.

4. Close up

Do you remember this one ? It is thankfully off the air now. There was a “Kyaa aap Close-up Karte hainnnn” in a very annoying nasal tone.

5.Orbit white.

I really feel sorry for the guy in this ad. The cow, well it got some mileage but the poor schmuk who had the part of the cow-keeper, I wonder if he has any friends left. After “yellow yellow dirty fellow, white white orbit white” I’m sure even his mom would refuse to see him again.

6. Vodafone.

Mr. Irrfan Khan, there is a very good reason why you are not a mainstream actor in Bollywood. Its because you are ugly. And your diction and narration is equally pathetic. So please, stick to playing weirdo goofball roles in movies, and spare us.

7. The Innerwear ads of Sunny Deol and Salman Khan

These guys are just plain pathetic. Please, go get a life.

8.Lux

Shah Rukh Khan naked in a bathtub full of roses.. Need I say more ??
No link for that video cos I don’t ever want to see it again, nor do I want anyone to see it.

9. Fairness cream

SRK again, advising some guy who tries to sneak into a girls hostel to steal fairness cream ?? Again, wrong on so many levels its hard to believe.

10.Toilet-cleaners

There is Aman Varma who keeps going door to door, and the housewives, having nothing better to do, invite him right into their toilets and have him clean them.. And for some reason, this ad comes just when its dinner-time !!

11.ibibo.com

Whats with the f***ing balti ?? Seriously.. Did any of you get what they are trying to say ?

12.Shark tooth..

The ad with Shiney Ahuja whistling (??) for a shark (??) to bring justice (??) How the f***ing hell is this supposed to sell vodka ?

13. 8 P.M.

This was an ad for a brand of whiskey, where guys carried someone else on their shoulder all day, and then at night, they were gone.. Add to it a very annoying tune, and you have the perfect wrong ad.

These were just the ads that I can remember as of now. I’m sure there are many more equally ridiculous commercials you have seen. Do suggest some in your comments.

Whats happening ??

2008-02-24T03:32:00.005+05:30

So.. its been a long time since there was something new on this blog. Lets see.. while I was away, Saurav Ganguly got himself back into the Indian team, then for once scored a pile of runs, flopped hopelessly in Australia, was dropped from the one-day team, and is now leading a team in a Twenty20 version.. Phew.. I was away for a really long time.. !!

Now although I would like everybody to think I’ve been busy as hell with my Masters course and all that, truth is I’ve just been so lazy it’s hard to find an adjective to describe the true extent of my sloth.

Many things have happened over the last few months. Firstly, I’m now doing a Masters thesis at college.. Never thought I would be the kind who would take up research with any seriousness, but here I am !! For the un-initiated, here is how it goes.. Research is what you call a job where one can doodle away 90% of the time, and then cook up something in a frenzy and claim that it has “profound philosophical implications”.

I am now a Teaching Assistant (TA) for an Operating Systems course for our junior batch here. The job was somehow thrust upon me, and I had no intentions of ever being a TA. Some of you regular readers might remember I never took too kindly to the TAs last year when I was in 1st sem. Just to refresh your memories, (and to get some hits on my older posts ) you can find some of my not-so-kind opinions of the TAs here and here.

And now I am one of them. I guess life has come around a full circle !! It’s a little hard to describe how it’s been, this whole TA thing. There have been a few amusing “incidents”, and maybe I will describe them in future posts..

Then there is Spandan, an annual sports fest conducted at our college, and yours truly, is part of a cricket team that has reached the final few rounds of the tournament. You can find more on Spandan by our team captain here, and here.. Playing cricket at our college is a very unique and very humbling experience at times. I have played at various levels previously, but this experience has been truly special. More about that in another post in the future.

I know what you think, the rate at which things are updated at insanity-unleashed, those promised posts might not come till the next Haley’s comet comes around. Still, hang around, you never know..

In other news, there seems to be a new wave of blog-mania taken over my classmates. In the space of just a few months, there must have been about 15 of my classmates who have opened their own little space on the Net.. Its been a surprise, in a good way.. There are blogs of every kind, from the funny, to the philosophical, there is even one about a possible new world order. A partial list of some of the new blogs I’ve mentioned can be found on this page, in the "My Friends" section. Here’s wishing the very best to all these people, I hope they have a good time writing.

The irony of all this is, the few of us who had been writing for sometime, myself included, have gone off the blogging scene. This was a very recent update of one such dude, and there is still nothing new from this fella, or this. The newer bloggers are much better in this regard, they update far more frequently, and good on them for that, I hope they continue to do so. I think it’s relatively easy to write the first few pieces when you open a new blog, but only the ones who are regularly posting tend to be the well known ones.

Well, that been a quick round-up of the things happening around me.. That’s about it for now, you can look forward to some real nonsense the next time.

P.S: This is the first time I'm linking to other blogs.. Let me know if it is useful, or just distracting..

Guide to fine dining in Bangalore

2007-10-22T01:29:00.002+05:30

So you are in Bangalore for a few months/years now, and was interested in checking out some of the good places to eat. If you happen to be studying in our institute, I'd say 'Stop daydreaming. Slap yourself and get back to work'. If you still wanted to go out to a nice place to eat with friends and don't happen to know how to go about it, this is for you. Better still, stop reading, pick up the phone, call me and I ll show you the way. Of course you would be paying, do you think I'm running a charity here ?? Slap yourself again.

The first thing you need to do is, to select a place. I'd recommend a place that has the weirdest name of all your choices. The weirder the name, the better the experience. I said the experience mind you, this does not necessarily translate to better food. If you happen to have been around the city for sometime you would know what I'm talking about – “Hypnos”, “Indi-Joe”, “Spiga”, “Sahib Something somethingelse” or any combination of Chung, Ming,Wing, Ping,Bing. You get the drift..

Most of these places are around the M.G. Road, Brigade Rd, GPO area so finding the place would not be much of a problem. All these places have a common pattern in the way the food is served and the ambience, so here is a short guide. I'll just take you through all the scenarios and tell you how to react.

You enter the place, and it is nicely done, well-lit, expensively furnished, and has some paintings that were obviously done when the artist was on dope. If any of these are true, then my friend, I say RUN, run away from there, forget your friends, go to the nearest kaati roll place and you will thank me for it.

--The Doorman. This creature is there solely for the purpose of collecting tips and nothing else. So when you enter a place and the doorman actually salutes, wishes you and all this with a fake smile, then you should know that the best thing to do is to turn back n run.. Worse still if he happens to be better dressed than you are. In case you are pestered to proceed, you have the following choices. You can just nod along, give an even faker smile, make monkey faces or give him a little tip, and make sure it is a parking ticket and not currency. If he salutes you when you return after your meal too, then it is considered polite to hand him a few paper tissues nicely folded up.

-- If the restaurant has a live band performing for you, and I’m not talking about those cheesy night-club kinds, this being done by very neat, professional musicians, then its still never too late to run back.

-- When ordering, make sure you order for dish that you can at least pronounce, without looking at the words for more than 15 minutes. And no, pointing to something in the menu and telling the waiter “Give me this” is generally not the best way to go about it. Its simple really, if you cant pronounce it, how the hell can you hope to finish it, let alone afford it??

-- Do not attempt to try some of the fancy sauces and peppers kept on the table, if you happen to add a copious combination of these in your soup, then the going might get very tough the next morning.

-- Warning: Watch out for any dish that is made from a toxic waste known as 'asparagus'. You know if you are eating this potentially radioactive element if your soup looks like the sewage water collected at your local drainage facility. Indications include a dark soggy semi-liquid with a layer of fungus-like greenish outgrowth on the surface. I swear coming even near this scum would turn you instantly into a mutant.

-- Suppose you are really, really hungry and the situation looks like there would be a feeding frenzy once the food arrives, then for heavens sake do not, and I mean DO NOT order a sizzler. The thing keeps boiling for 10 minutes after its on your table .. I swear those fancy chefs just created this dish so they can laugh at seeing people burn themselves trying to eat it too fast.

-- Excuse yourself to the bathroom the exact moment that the bill arrives. The washrooms these days usually have secret exits. If you cant find any, try some of the Jason Bourne/Frank Abagnale moves and get out. It looks pretty simple in the movies doesn't it.

So there it is folks, your one stop guide to fine dining in the city. I will accept any thanks from your side in the form of treats, parties subject to involvement of substantial amounts of CH3CH2OH, and various forms of cooked poultry and/or livestock.

Sayonara till then..

P.S: That formula is what you think it is..

Who's the monkey now ??

2007-08-10T03:25:00.003+05:30

Afterthought: This was written at a time when "monkey" actually referred to a monkey, and not some Neanderthal caveman who forgot to spit out his toothpaste and stumbled onto a cricket field..

Ok so the last post was shitty, to say the least. Because what this disillusioned doorknob of a writer conveniently forgot was that his mommy dearest has been heading the Accounts department of India's largest insurance firm for the best part of a decade now. All it took was 5 minutes to put me in place, and I was left with a look not unlike Saurav dada when he gives catching practice in a test match.

And so, a thousand apologies to each of the thousands and thousands of accountants and their brethren who never happened to read the last post.

In other news, some of you might be aware that I managed to lynch a Yamaha RX135 from a friend. Owning such a bike I've discovered can be a tricky thing at times. Although the ride is awesome and all that, the thing swallows fuel like a friggin blue whale. In all of 2 months that I've been riding the bike, the thing has run out of petrol nearly 4 times already. The only consolation is that its not a very heavy bike, so pushing it to the nearest bunk wont leave me panting and puffing like Emraan Hashmi when he sees a pair of lips. Still, the pitiful looks I get from the ladies when in the middle of such endeavors don't exactly get my spine tingling. Why is it that all the pretty girls appear only when you are pushing the damn thing, and when you are cruising happily, the only people to notice are disgruntled old hags shaking their heads in disapproval ??

Life is really weird isn't it..

Im angry, I rant, I shout, and you read

2007-07-28T02:46:00.000+05:30

Hello there all you lazy bums.. I’m back and I’m gonna screw with your brains for the next few minutes..

As you must have guessed, I’m not in a particularly good mood now, partly because I just ate a meal that had more turmeric than vegetables, but mostly because I’ve just gone through hell and back.. Why is that u ask, well my friend how would you feel if you just had to write a god-awful exam in the most dreadful subject ever known to a computer engineer. Hold your breath.. hold it some more.. ok u don’t have to kill yourself, the subject is Accounting. That’s right, Accounting.. All of you who thought our institute is the hotbed for cutting edge technical innovation can just go marry Himesh Reshammiya, because we have also have a Marketing subject too. Not only that we have to give an exam as well. Advanced Data structures and Algorithms I can handle, but Balance sheets and Profit/Loss accounts, simply gets me agitated to no end. Now you know why I’ve been away from the blogging scene for a long time. Probably because these wretched classes seem to have dissolved away all the original thought left in my system.

And despite all the knowledge I’ve gained from the last few weeks, I’m still not sure about some basic fundamentals of the subject. Like whether having a girlfriend is an asset, or a liability. Ok so if the girl’s dad owns a chain of pubs and restaurants then maybe it can serve as collateral for future convertible stock, but if he turns out to be a raging alcoholic himself then that would definitely be an accumulated depreciation ultimately leading to insolvency of all assets.. More about that later.

See how I used all those terms without making any sense. Maybe I’m really starting to lose it. As I was preparing for this pathetic exam I began to wonder, “Why would anyone want to be an accountant?” Really, what motivates these people to simply do addition and multiplication, all day long, for their whole lives ?? I really don’t get it. If some of you were thinking on the lines of ‘well, maybe they like mathematics’ then I got two letters for you.. B S. That’s right its the common word for natural fertilizer. If these witless shoe boxes had any sense of maths, they would pursue a career in pure mathematics. No self respecting math enthusiast would sit in front of a calculator all day; adding up numbers and counting money that don’t belong to him in the first place. You teach a monkey how to operate a calculator; it would do the job just as well.

So the reason that accountants do what they do because they like math and number crunching is like saying Laloo Yadav ate all that fodder money just because he wanted more milk. My belief is that these people turn to accounting because they happen to suck at everything else. Consider the life history of an average Chartered Accountant for example. They would usually start out doing a B.Com after their 12th. What kind of a person in this day and age, would go for a Commerce degree? If you dig a little deeper, you would find out that he/she would not have got a seat in any good Engg/Medicine/Law/Management college. Not only that, they wouldn’t have even made it to a B.Sc college. So what do the parents do, they stick their dumb kids in some commerce course, hoping that at least some degree will ensure they are not called illiterates. And so these people are taught about accounts, finance, balance sheets and other mumbo jumbo for 3 years, where they realize that they don’t have to attend classes or work hard in order to pass, they simply have to go to their exams with a calculator with the big + button. After college, they realize they are too stupid to get any real job, heck even the BPO jobs nowadays require some common sense. So they find a smart engineer/lawyer/doctor and start making babies. The ugly ones meanwhile pester their parents to use some influence and get them a job, where they find comfort in the company of more of their kind, and become accountants for life. If you have seen any of these cashiers/book-keepers in any of the banks you’ll see what I mean. They are usually seen issuing or receiving cash, dealing with all the shit that customers give them. And they grow old doing just this. How many times have you seen a pretty young thing sitting across the counter asking “Deposit or Withdrawal Sir ?” None I bet. Because all the pretty ones are reproducing, and the smart ones became officers and managers.

If ever there was an occupation that required a complete lack of imagination, this was it. Even the chai-wala at the railway station has to use his wits to make money, but an accountant, naa. He/she just needs to know that 2+2 will always be 4 and life is done. Every other occupation, let alone the engineers, be it lawyers, management people, businessmen, all need some kind of intelligence to do what they do. Some of you might know that I don’t fancy HR managers too much either, but even they need to have some kind of skills to get through the day. How could anyone sit for a whole lifetime signing cheques and doing addition is simply something I will never be able to understand.

Moral of the story: Never, ever force a computer science student to take up accounts, otherwise, you may get to read more such rants and tirades in the blogosphere. Surely we are all better off without any more of them.

P.S: All of you who came here hoping to read something light-hearted and nonchalant, keep visiting, maybe I won’t disappoint you the next time.

It happened one night..

2007-06-14T01:00:00.000+05:30

So it goes like this..

Me and a few friends went out recently, on a Saturday night to .. well, a place where frustrated people go on a Saturday night.. There were four of us in all and two guys among us, who I, personally did not know very well, they were more like friends of friends. And, their way of doing things, was a bit unknown to me. That fact makes narrating the set of events that happened that night a little easier for me. We decided to go to a rather dingy place, rather than some fancy restaurant, owing to a lack of Vitamin M, if you know what I mean.

We went to a place I used to frequent during my engineering days, partially because they serve cheap food and because it was on the way back from college. A bit of nostalgia is always nice you see.. We found a table, one that was located bang in the middle of the hall amidst 20 other tables, and you could actually smell what the guy next table had for breakfast.. Location or ambience was never a hindrance for me or my pals to have a good time, so we just got right down to it..

This is a real conversation that took place at our table, after about 2 hours.. No prizes for guessing what we did for those 2 hours.. That phrase “delightfully high” is one heck of a politically correct thing isn’t it...

So now, here goes..

First guy: Heyyy doode, you’re drunk..

Second guy: @#$% you mannn.. you’re @#$%ing drunk..

First guy: What the @aaaaaaaaa#$%ing helllll maaan.. Im just @#$%in fine.. You’re the one who is @#$%in drunk..

Imagine the four letter word getting stretched for a really long time, and with a nasal accent, that was what he sounded like.. Mind you, this was in the middle of a hall filled with atleast 50 other people giving very menacing looks..

Second guy: Dooode im telling ya.. stop it.. Im not @#$%in drunk.. You are drunk, these two guys sitting here with that stupid smile.. [gets real pissed off, starts yelling] All of you are drunk.. This whole @#$%ing place is @#$%ing drunk..

First guy: Ok you @#$%er, I’ll prove to you that you are @#$%ing drunk..

Second guy: What the @#$% u gonna do.. shout in the middle of the hall that you are drunk ??

Now the third guy tries to add some more fuel to the fire..

Third guy: [Gentle tap on the shoulder to the second guy]
That was you man..

Second guy: Whaaa.. Huh.. Ummm.. Yeah I know that was me.. I was just trying to see if you were drunk.. Hahaa..

First guy: Ok ok.. now shut it.. I bet that you cant walk all the way to the loo all by yourself..

Second guy: You’re on.. Here goes..

Second guy gets up and starts walking.. After about 3 minutes, he calls the third guy on the cellphone and asks, “Where’s the toilet here ??”

Third guy gets up, and helps the second guy to the loo..

About five minutes later, all of them are back.. There is a very meaningful silence for a few minutes.. It was like one of those soap opera suspenses on TV, where all the fat ladies look at each other, nobody knows who is the culprit.. and the camera zooms from one face to another, along with some swooshing background score.. Something like that..

Five more minutes nobody says a word.. Me and the third guy were busy eating, and the first guy was engaged in a staring contest with a very fat dude sitting next table. Its funny how people lose perception of their size and strength when they are toasted.

Then came the biggest, most loaded statement known to mankind, at the most inappropriate time and place..

Second guy: I love you man..

Now all us stop whatever we were doing, and turn to the second guy... Even the waiter stops moving and pauses.. Second guy is now real confused..

Second guy: [ Thinking ] What the fuck did I say just now ?? I meant I love this biriyani..

What followed next was about 5 seconds of deathly silence.. I m telling you those five seconds were precious. Never in my life had silence seemed so mindblowingly hilarious..

Then, it started. And the howling and the laughing didn’t stop for about 5 minutes. Third guy fell off his chair, the dal fry on the table was all over the floor.. U can imagine right, general anarchy prevailed...

Eventually we settled down again and weird enough, there was another long stretch of silence. Something like the calm after the storm. Then,

Third guy, to the second guy: Dude, you’re drunk.

Second guy: Yeah I guess I am..

Inflammatory contents inside. Leave all your sense of pride before proceeding.

2007-03-31T03:48:00.000+05:30

Statutory Warning: Certain rodents and other related creatures will not like the contents of this post.

Hey y’all.

I’m back after my self imposed exile from blogosphere. Many thanks to some of you jobless souls who happen to still visit here. A special thank you to one particular reader who happened to read all of the junk I write, and was demented enough to actually like it, and actually told me so.. No need to take names, you know who you are, and a big thaanku to you. This kind of thing happens to me as often as our cricket team wins games, so don’t blame me if I happen to get all inspired and shower some more nonsense on all of you.

If you have noticed, the template is different, and I hope to keep my readers interest for longer than the usual microsecond with this one. Not to worry, the material will still border on the same insanity and mindless jabber that is usually seen here.

Anyway, I’m well into graduate studies now, and sometimes wonder how life would be outside of academia. But then every once in a while someone takes the trouble of rudely reminding us of what its like to be in a job in the IT world. And this post is about one such incident.

Some of you might be aware that graduate studies are mostly about project-oriented work. Or, as people here like to call it, "Research Projects". All of you who think we actually do significant work that make life better for mankind; you could not be more mistaken. Our life here is somewhat similar to that of a little guinea pig. We go round and round in a little cage inside a lab, thinking we will be of some use some day, but that day is the day we realize its all a sham and we are just gonna get our balls cut off.

By the way I wonder why a guinea pig is called a guinea pig. It’s not Italian, its worth nothing, and its not even a pig. Weird huh..

Now since we are well into our 2nd semester here, we have come to realize that all of our projects are just a whole big mess, and nothing useful could ever come out of them. Still it doesn’t stop us from making them more messed up and claiming grades for our efforts. We have the wonderful experience of our senior batch of students who previously worked on these same projects and are now guiding us. We often get invaluable advice from these guys on the way these projects are meant to be done. Of course they do not mean anything they say. What follows below is one such mail. The actual contents of the mail are irrelevant, this post correctly describes their state of mind when it was written.

From: seriously_jobless@someMNC.com
To: 2006_batch_losers
Subject: Only for those doing XXX,YYY,ZZZ projects. Rest can continue on GTalk.

Hi All,

Here is a clarification about our roles (Jobless, Seriously jobless and Hopelessly Jobless) in the projects going under The_Most_Demanding_Professor_Ever:-

We are not working as TA's as far as our roles are concerned. Neither we are getting paid for it nor we require any payment for the same. Heck, we never even got our payments the last time, so why bother asking for it. We are just acting as "facilitators" and this is because of the following reasons:-

1. We can use the word "facilitators" without any remote awareness of what it really means.

2. We have messed up each of the projects during our time and posses keen interest in messing them up even further now. Some of us have even worked on more than one project, and so have the unique distinction of writing more useless lines of code than anyone else.

3. We have been given so much work in our internships that we have managed to single-handedly wipe out the mosquito population of Gurgaon. That’s why we are sparing time out of our normal internship schedule for it. The very fact that I can write page long emails to individuals everyday is testimony to this. And yes I am sitting in Gurgaon and giving you instructions. Don’t worry I still wear pink/purple shirts along with faded jeans and shiny brown boots to go with it.

4. We know what pains we took to ruin our projects and think that our experience will help in consolidating on the work we did for each of the projects.

5. We have suffered because of lack of co-ordination from the people who worked earlier on the projects and we don’t want to repeat the same. You see it takes more than one cook to spoil the broth. It is of vital importance that we have a huge bunch of guys working collectively to achieve the kind of anarchy that our projects are.

6. From our experiences, we have understanding of the best practices which can be leveraged to provide growth of the project. Thank God for those team meetings here. How else would I be aware of the word "leveraged".

7. Projects specially Research Projects are one of the reasons why our is recognized to be the one place where a bunch of dorks get together and crib about the lack of beautiful female forms around campus, and we want to contribute in the same.

8. We are doing grading because Grades are part and parcel of the un-learning process in any institution and we are trying our best to ensure 100% transparency in the same. God help you if ever think this statement is true.

9. The practices which we are asking are in compliance with the industrial standard and we think that this will help you and even us to enhance our skills. Obviously none of us ever bothered about code conventions and other such things during our time. These things are discussed in the team meetings we have now you see. So they must be important. And since none of our seniors ever got lousy internships, they never told us about them. Now you have the job of rewriting about a gazillion lines of code.

Above mentioned points are some of the important concern and reasons why we are sparing our time for the projects going in the college. We require your co-operation to manage the same smoothly..

Sir :- Request you to provide clarification from your side.

Thanks and Regards
Jobless,
Seriously jobless,
Hopelessly Jobless.

If you are reading this,

2007-02-02T21:09:00.000+05:30

That means one of two things.

1. Im still alive and breathing, although some of you may think otherwise.
2. You simply have no other means of amusement.

Too bad I have nothing to write about. Maybe some of you can suggest something for me to ramble about.

Till then, keep waiting, I might post again in the next few decades.

The new Recruit

2006-12-15T10:15:00.003+05:30

This story is about when a mild-mannered guy is held hostage, is subjected to some unprecedented, bizzare sensations from the most unexpected situations..

It was a particularly un-interesting day, what with my busy schedule of sleeping, watching TV and eating keeping me busy for the best part. So I decided to get off my butt and visit the neighborhood barber for a little haircut n shave. I've been going to the same hajama for little over 15 years now, and so I never had to give him detailed instruction regarding the cut. But then I go in and find a new guy, he must’ve been my age, looked a lot like Shivnarine Chanderpaul. He spoke only in Telegu, which as some of you know, I have some knowledge of, thanks to life in college.

So I sit in the chair, getting ready for the shave, the guy asks me if I know any telegu. I replied that I can understand bits of it. And that when it started.. This guy, it turns out happened to have a thorough knowledge about everything under the sun, and wanted to shed all of his awareness on me at once. He had an opinion on everything from the latest Chiru flick to how Saurav Ganguly would do in his comeback. Not even Navjot Sidhu and Jayalalitha were spared. If only each of these people would take his opinion, the world would be a better place. Our man also happened to be an expert on hair care and pointed out that my hair was very dry, and suggested an oil massage. In a momentary loss of judgment, I agreed. This decision was going to make my life for the next 20 minutes an endless rollercoaster of pain, relief, and some weird feelings I just don’t have words to describe.

First the guy takes the bottle of oil, which he very proudly pointed out was “Navratna-Thanda-Thanda-Cool-Cool- Oil”. I was not too disturbed and sat back thinking whats the worst that could happen. Then took a fistful of oil, slapped it on the top of my head, and that’s when it really started to get out of hand. There was oil, some violent head-slapping, some more oil, and some finger-slapping, some back breaking, , more oil, ear-pulling and an endless routine of all the above repeated over and over. In the middle of all this, I managed to recognize some distinct moves, be warned, some of these may be a little disturbing.

Presenting the unofficial guide to giving a head massage.

Move 1: The Hammer-Slap.

The first and the most often repeated move, this particular step involves taking a grand amount of oil and simply slapping the head of the subject, in random places. The intensity and vigor of the slapping will increase over time, and shall not stop until the subject writhes in pain like when a mosquito after it has been swatted down.

Move 2: The Strangler.

This move usually follows the first and involves in positioning your hands like you were going to strangle someone. Then the subject’s forehead is grabbed and strangled in a violent circular motion, much like how you would knead some chapatti dough. It does not matter if a copious amount of oil falls in the subject’s eyes. All queries regarding the safety of the exercise shall be answered with a “Don’t worry its only good for you” type of response.

Move 3: The judo-chop.

This move is again one of those universal moves that could be used on any part of the subject upper body. The beauty of this move is in its simplicity. Just take both your hands, imagine them to be swords of some kind and start hacking away on the subject. This move is best executed when both hands are placed in close proximity with each other, in effect creating a rhythmic hacking motion, just to impress the other guys sitting in the salon. Due to the fact that this move has its roots in some ancient Oriental Martial Arts, it is guaranteed to cause pain and in some cases some mild decapitation as well.

Move 4: The four fingered drummer.

This particular move requires some amount of skill otherwise will be confused for “The Judo Chop”. Here one needs to fold the hands, as in a praying position, and then proceed to whack the subjects head with increasing force and tempo. If sufficient squishy noises are not heard, then the force and intensity needs to be increased substantially.

Move 5: The two fingered drummer.

A close relative of The two fingered drummer, here only two fingers need to be used. Using just the fore-finger and the middle finger of both hands, repeat the whacking described earlier. Care should be taken to make a different squishy kind of noise in this move, with the sole purpose of distinguishing it from the The four fingered drummer. After sufficient flopping noises are heard and the subject’s head starts to wobble around by itself even after completing the move, should you proceed further.

Move 6: The Back-breaker.

This move is solely reserved to cause the subject some severe muscle pain, and also to show off to everyone else sitting in the salon, how good you are at this massage thing. Have the subject sit up from his resting position, repeat Move 1 through 5, this time on the subject’s upper back and shoulders. After sufficient pain is caused and the victim yelps in pain more than 5 times, you shall proceed to the climax of this move. Now, have the subject sit up fully erect in the chair, repeat Move 1 through 5 if the subject appears relaxed, then in one swift motion, twist the entire lower back in the opposite direction it was intended to bend. By now the victim should be writhing in pain and calling for mommy. Now comfort your subject in a soothing voice, that its all over. Again any questions about the safety of the exercise shall be given the same ”It all good for you”.

Move 7: The ear-pull.

This move is by far the most difficult and complex and so needs some cooperation from the subject. But since the subject is so weak and tired by now he would have no strength to protest, so it should go just fine. Firstly, grab one of the subject’s ears with a firm grip. Then position your own head against the side of the subjects head. Now in a quick, jerky, not so subtle manner, attempt to yank out the subjects ear in one single swift motion. Repeat the same with the other ear, if possible with more intensity. This move also has the added bonus in that it not only causes the subject substantial physical pain, but also leaves him in a very surreal “What the hell just happened” state of mind.

Move 8: The neck-twister.

Now for the final and the most devastating move of all. This one also takes a fair amount of experience, and only in cases when the move is executed properly, is the subject likely to survive. Hence, proper discipline and discretion should be used while doing this. By the time you have reached to this move, your subject would be sufficiently battered, bruised and only seconds away from passing out. In case your subject has already passed out, proceed without any fear. In case the subject is still breathing, attempt to do some gentle comforting. Ask him to relax his soldiers and neck using a surprisingly gentle firmness. You may mumble to your colleague at the next table ”Hey look at this, he’ gonna die soon”. After your colleague acknowledged your honest motives, simply twist the subjects neck a full 180 degrees in the wrong direction. In the rare case that the victim is still not in shock and worse still understands what you just said to your co-worker, reassure him once or twice, ask him to completely relax everything, and then without warning yank his head off until a loud KkRaacckk is heard. Now you may be satisfied that the subject will cease not be able to even move his head an inch in either direction, so finishing the move in the other direction should not be a problem.

After having completed all your moves, if your subject is still having a moderate awareness of his surroundings, be sure to repeat all of the above again, and if possible using more strength and vigor. Once you are absolutely sure that your subject cannot move, let go of his head, leave him in the chair for a few minutes, switch on the fan, let him have some fresh air. Once your victim has recovered enough to pay you whatever you charge, you should go on to comb his hair in the most dorkiest manner possible, and only then let him leave the salon.

Yabba Dabba Doo !!!

2006-12-04T12:12:00.000+05:30

Yes folks, The first sem is officially finally over.. Well almost..
Hope all the projects are VERY heavily graded, cos I aint gettin' any in the exams..
Looking forward to 25 days of hibernation.

Coming soon, "A Prison Diary of a disillusioned soul who had grand delusions of competence". In other words, a reflection of 4 months of graduate school.

Who knows, I might actually refer to some real people around me this time !!
So be warned, all ye scallywags who dared cross The Insane Ones' path, 'tis the time for yer whipping Wi' a wannion. You be went t' Davy Jones' locker.. Arrrggh!!

P.S Go here to make more sense..

Am I a geek??

2006-11-19T20:49:00.000+05:30

I'm not so sure. Took this test recently, this is what it showed..

My Tribute to Floyd..

2006-11-11T23:35:00.000+05:30

The Professor’ just Flown Across the Ocean
Leaving Just a Memory from MIT
Hey Prof, what else did you leave for me?
Dear Prof, What You Leave Behind for me?

All and all it was just another random variable in space
all in all it was all just another intuition we’ll never get !!

When we grew up and went to grad school, there were certain Prof’s who would hurt the children anyway they could
By pouring their derision upon anything we did
Exposing any weakness however carefully hidden by the kids.
But in the town it was well known
When they got out of the class rooms at night their fat and psychopathic TA’s
Would thrash them within inches of their lives!

We don't need no algo classes
We don’t need no intuitive meaning
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Hey! Prof! Leave us kids alone!
All and all it was just another random variable in space
All in all it was all just another intuition we’ll never get !!

Spoken:
"Wrong, Do it again!
Wrong, Do it again!
If you don't do yer assignments, you can't have any grades.
How can you have any grades if you don't eat do yer assignments?
You! Yes, you hidin behind the bikesheds, stand still laddie!"

I don't need no arms around me
And I dont need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.
All and all it was just another random variable in space
all in all it was all just another intuition we’ll never get !!

BIRUKU- A small movie

2006-10-22T01:19:00.000+05:30

Check this out.. A small movie by a schoolmate of mine..
Didn't know he was upto any good till now :)) Didn't treat him very well in school I must admit !!

Here's wishing him all the best for the future..

Long live the spirit of MES KK..

The Jandu way of life

2006-10-21T05:17:00.001+05:30

Among the good things I’ve got going for myself, is that I’ve got a few friends who speak my language. We call ourselves the “Kandu Jandus”, Kandu for kannadiga and jandu stands for err, how can I put this in a non self-deprecating way.. a person who’s lost all liking for the fancy things in life.. In layman terms, jandu probably means idiot. Some of the identifiable traits of a jandu are listed below:

--- One who prefers to sit in the room and get a head start on an assignment, on the day there is a dance party in college.

--- One who knows the answers to the questions raised in class, but sits quietly, and smirk at himself watching the idiot who had the courage to go up and give the wrong answer.

--- One who gets nightmares of being transformed into an Internet packet and getting lost in the network layer, the night before a test.

---One who wakes up the following the morning and discusses the routing algorithm, which, implemented would not have resulted in the packet getting lost, with his fellow jandus.

---One who has quite a few friends in the seniors group, some of whom are TAs, but somehow the conversation tends to circle on “had dinner?” or the usual “met any old friends” stuff. Whereas the other non-jandus go out of their way to not only make friends with the seniors, but also indulge in what I call “Bucket holding” for them.

---On seeing someone chatting for hours with someone from the opposite sex, a jandu would think “Do these guys really have no work?”.

---One who would prefer to ask a pretty girl for her gmail id rather than her phone number.

--- One who tries to complete all assignments by himself, manages to finish only a few, and gets lower marks than all the people who simply copied.

---One who justifies all the things above, with “Grades don’t matter; it’s about the knowledge gained”.

I’m sure there are more such characteristics, and I’d be thankful if some of these jandus (you know if you are one) could post some here.

We are planning to open a new group blog, just for documenting some more of our little misadventures. Contributions are most welcome.

--Goobe Jandu

Diwali musings..

2006-10-21T05:02:00.000+05:30

Hello all, wish you a very happy Deepavali, and for my Muslim friends, Id Mubarak.

Speaking of Deepavali, I have an interesting observation regarding the etymology of the name Diwali. The festival of lights is described as Diwali or Deepavali alternatively depending on where you come from. I was more interested in the origins of the name “Diwali”. I know that Deepa in Kannada means a lamp, and so the name Deepavali for the festival of lights. What’s been bugging me for a while was why “Diwali”. I have always thought Diwali was for Northies n Deepavali for South Indians. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Hindi, a lamp is called a Diya. So technically, the festival should’ve been called “Diyavali” or “Diyali”. I wonder why then the name Diwali. Is it just an Anglicization or is there something else to it?, if so why the hell do we keep hearing Happy Diwali all the time? I don’t know, if any of you do, please let me know.

The one good thing about Deepavali this year is that we get 4 straight days of leave, which means I’m happily typing this from a super fast broadband connection at home, which is a huge relief from the shitty Wi-fi signal in my hostel room. In addition, Dad tells me we are going to get one of those unlimited downloads offer from BSNL in November.

Sweet.

If any of you know how to make good use of this, do let me know. And no, porn is not the answer to everything, u sick pervert !.

Before all of you go all jealous of me for having a great time off, let me pour my bundle of woes in front of you. Firstly I had to battle about 20 kms of bumper to bumper traffic to get home. And if you thought that I could just chill for 4 days, then you are very wrong my friend. I have a total of about 6 assignments to submit the day I re-enter college. So it’s not going to be all party. Speaking of assignments, there’s a little secret I ‘d like to share with you. It turns out that one of the assignments was lifted straight out of the net. Thanks to my pal Ginji for unearthing it. It so happens that our assignment was a word to word copy, including the solutions. So one of those six tasks was over in less than a minute.

Really Sweet.

I am now trying to figure out a really weird implementation of priority queue in C, which by the way could not be obtained from Google. This professor of ours gives some real challenging assignments, and although this doesn’t sound like me, I do enjoy solving them. Among other things, I have to complete a Java/MySql project in December, for which I need to prepare the SRS in 2 days. I am clueless about this. Any of you have done something on similar lines do get in touch with me. You should know that our college has a very strict policy on copying stuff, but then all I’m asking for are pointers and not the whole thing.

Another direct consequence of this truckload of work is that I cannot go for a little 3 day trip. I could have gone on 2 separate trips with different groups of friends, but I had give both of them the same lame reply “Too much work man, maybe next time”. Wonder if there’ll ever be a next time. Come to think of it, I cannot go out in our December vacation, cos I have this big winter project about which I have no idea about. Then the next semester begins, and the same routine repeats. And so until I actually complete the course, I cannot really just take a hike. And mind you after completion I’d probably land another shitty programming job, one that pays more than my earlier job, but I’m pretty sure the manager would not be thrilled about me taking vacations every month. I can already picture him saying, “See all those ducks in the water, and all that grass in the lawn, go relax there for 5 minutes n get back to work.”

Damn these IT companies with their manicured lawns and ponds with smelly ducks and brown water.

And I’m not too thrilled with the number of mosquitoes feeding off me as of now either, given all the cases of Dengue and that chikun-thing going around town as we speak.

See, now you are not so jealous of me are you?? If you are one of my pals from college, then well, this is what its gonna be like my friend, lets just accept it..

Till next time,
Ciao.

Random weekend mumblings

2006-10-04T04:40:00.000+05:30

Hola people..

Hope you had a great Vijayadashami.. May all your new ventures bear unlimited fortunes.

Now, its time to read some more crap from me. Nothing really interesting to write about this time, I just happen to have some free time so writing about my weekend jaunts.

I’m back at campus after a longish weekend. Now let me make it clear right away that for normal folk, weekends may come and go, but for the depraved souls of our college, weekends always mean more work either in the form of assignments/tests/surprise tests/project submissions. Therefore a 3 day weekend combined with a day off due to the bandh is akin to Sourav Dada getting double digit scores In short, such moments are very rare and precious, especially after an exam. Thanks to the bandh call on Wednesday, most of the people here have either left or haven’t come back from their breaks. Which turns out to be a boon in disguise for your truly. How you may ask, well my ignorant friends, it goes like this. My room happens to be bang in the middle of a bunch of hindi/telegu movie buffs, who, at any given time are downloading at least two movies. You can imagine what bandwidth is left for me. Now, as of today n tomorrow at least, there are only about 5 guys in the whole floor, so people like me can happily Google about Silk Smitha and Disco Shanti and hope to see some results. Long live the bandh!!.

As for our exam, well what else could it be, but for a disaster. Now I’m not commenting about every paper but I specifically wish to crib about a particular subject. The people who answered the paper and those who set it should know what I’m talking about. In a Masters course, especially in a college that prides itself on providing practical knowledge, rather than just facts, such a paper was a misfit to say the least. I’m sure that any average BE CSE student would be very happy to see such questions, because all it required was to mug up the text book and reproduce. If you think about it, a question paper that I personally found difficult and something which an undergrad student could solve, in itself raises a few very pertinent questions about my ability. But then this is not the time or place to write about that.. I do admit, had I been slogging for 2 nights at a stretch and somehow managed to digest all of 350 pages and managed to identify all the questions asked, I wouldn’t be such a cry-baby. But as I said earlier, we need to be tested on our “understanding” and not “preparation”. Most of the other papers were quite challenging but definitely more engaging. I’m not claiming that I’m some kind of wiz who “understands” everything under the sun, but when one starts facing an exam where the questions just put you to sleep, I feel that there’s something not right going on...

Coming back to context, I took off from here on Friday noon after the last exam, and was unfortunate enough to pay 45 bucks and stand for about 2 hours in an over- air conditioned Volvo bus for almost 2 hours. Now I’m used to almost everything Hosur road throws at me, but this was a new experience I must say. Not a pretty girl in sight to gawk at either. Just a really cold bus filled with fellow-losers from Infy and to add to it, no seat for me.. Not everybody is as lucky as my pal Keedii, who recently had the fortune of chatting up a very pretty lass all the way on one of such very frequent trips he makes. Now I know why he runs home given 2 hours of free time. Anyway I did get a seat after about 2 hours and the rest of the journey was pretty much uneventful. I reached home, and to my huge disappointment, found that the broadband connection at home is down.. Great timing isn’t it. So I had to do the next best thing, which is to sleep. Thanks to the lifestyle drilled into us in here, one simply cannot sleep after 11 p.m. For more colorful insights into our life here, read my earlier post. Took my good ol’ Honda Activa for a ride around town. This is one amazing machine, takes all the punishment I give it and still runs like a charm. Now riding a bike around in rain is one of my fave things to do, after sleeping, and it felt damn good to just hit the road and whiz past traffic jams. I know its only an Activa and not a Hayabusa, but I’m happy with what I’ve got.. Sometimes I feel its good just to forget all your worries and just enjoy the cool wind in your face and rain on your back, (or the other way round, no much difference).. Gives you a sense of perspective of your place in the world. Now I’m not too good at putting sensible thoughts into words, so that last sentence just plain bullshit. Anyway, I went down to the DVD store nearby and got myself one of those FRIENDS series and spent the next few hours gawking at Jennifer Aniston.

Woke up at 3 pm the next day, yes pals, that’s about 12 hours of sleep. Im good ain’t I ??
Went out with some of my pals for dinner. Had a jolly good time in general. Same routine repeats the next day, only difference being we went to a real fancy restaurant, off Airport Road, called Indi-Joes. Weird name I know, but the place itself was pretty nice, a little too nice and too pretty for someone like me. After having been to more than one such fancy restaurant, here are some tips for people who are not used to going to fancy places..

 When you enter a place and the doorman actually salutes, wishes you and all this with a fake smile, then you should know that the best thing to do is to turn back n run.. I never really know what to do in such a situation. Do you just nod along, or give an even faker smile, or wish him back, or give him a little tip like in those Hollywood movies, I’m never sure.

 If the restaurant has a live band performing for you, and I’m not talking about those cheesy night-club kinds, this being done by very neat, professional musicians, then its still never too late to run back.

 When ordering, make sure you order for dish that you can at least pronounce, without looking at the words for more than 15 minutes. And no, pointing to something in the menu and telling the waiter “Give me this” is generally not the best way to go about it. Its simple really, if you cant pronounce it, how the hell can you hope to finish it, let alone afford it??

 Do not attempt to try some of the fancy sauces and peppers kept on the table, if you happen to add a copious combination of these in your soup, then the going might get very tough the next morning.

In any case, after that heady experience, we downed some ice cream and headed home. I had rented a Clint Eastwood collection just to regain some of my masculinity after all the soppy romantic shit I saw the previous night. Managed to see “A Perfect World” and “Absolute Power”. The movies were awesome. Clint Eastwood still hasn’t lost it. Maybe some of our desi balding heroes of yesteryear can learn something. Time for the Big B n some of his cronies to do some sensible movies and stop playing the same “caring/over-bearing/horny/weird/stupid/angry old man” type of roles and do something more sensible.. If only someone would give these oldies some of the works of Al Pacino/Brando/Eastwood, then our disillusioned youth would learn to, among other things, know how to hold a cigarette with real style, what say? Anyway, “A Perfect World” is about an escaped convict, played by Kevin Costner in one of his better roles and Clint Eastwood playing the hard-nosed cop who’s in the man-hunt. “Absolute Power” is about a real smart thief, played by Eastwood and a corrupt president, played by Gene Hackman. Its one of those movies made by Hollywood where the US president is not a holier-than-thou war-hero turned family man who can do no wrong and also happens to be blessed with supernatural powers. This one is about a philandering president who has to be rescued from his escapades by his secret service agents each time he gets into a situation. Each and every cast member has turned in a power-packed performance and both the movies are a must watch. If you can find a Clint-Eastwood collection DVD near your place then I recommend watching it. Really worth your time and money.

In more news, I’ve found that our cable operator had added an Australian channel to our broadcast. Now I’m all for reaching out and learning about other cultures and all that, but watching an Arnold’s mother look-alike smooching someone who has a really weird resemblance to Andrew ”Neanderthal” Symonds is well, a little too much to digest. We also have a new sports channel called Neo Sports, against which I have no complaints whatsoever, especially if they get some Mandira Bedi types to host their shows. With the rate at which these channels are coming up, our rather newish TV set may soon get obsolete. Again no complaints, in fact if somebody shoots Ekta Kapoor, Himesh Reshammiya and Navjot Sidhu then that would probably result in lessening the suicide rate in India.

Wokay then, enough ranting for now, I’ll be around soon enough to shed some more of my nonsense sometime..

Cheers.

2006-09-10T04:21:00.000+05:30

Note: The post below was written by me in between various degrees of slumber, none of this is to be held against me at any future date/time in any context/pretext.

Some of my friends have recently called and enquired about joining our college in 2007. This is especially meant for them. Just an insight into what happens here in the first semester. Again. it just my opinion, and this is MY blog and since nobody reads it anyway, I can type whatever crap comes to mind.

Of impotent functionalities, brown undies n bird-watching by night.

2006-09-10T04:15:00.000+05:30

Hey all, its been a while since the last post. If you remember, in one of my earlier posts i had mentioned about how everbody in the campus was saying that once we get our laptops, life would never be the same again. Well, as much as i would've liked to disagree, its TRUE, yes folks, life here has become so hectic that i dont have time even for some basic needs of life, like wearing clean clothes, shaving, and watching ftv.

Those of you who think the afore-mentioned things are not really the basic needs of life, then I like the way you think. Its been about 40 days since I've landed here, and i've been wearing the same 2 pairs of jeans right through, shaved only once, and never had a single glimpse of Naomi Campbell.
Dammn.

Our life cycle here is pretty simple (!) and I must say unique in many ways. It goes something like this.

9:30 am. Wake up, thanks mostly to my pal Jinji, who takes the trouble of walking 2 floors and banging my door,( Thanks dude !). Then do some streching, and scratching of some unprintable body parts, go brush, wash face, bathing is optional. If you happen to stay with a roommate, then the obscene scratching should probably be avoided. Since I live all alone, no worrries there.

9:35 am. Ask some guy who happens to be walking in the corrior about the schedule. If he happens to be in his undies, then all conversation should be strictly avoided. A half-asleep face, crumpled hair and brown undies can completely ruin your day before it starts.

Depending on whether class is at 9 am or at 10, do some improptu rescheduling. If you are thinking how can one go to a 9am lecture at 9:30, well you cant, rescheduling here means 30 more minutes of sleep. Ahh sleeeep, let me come back to that a little later. Even if you dont meet such kind of people described above and dont know whats the schedule, its really ok, proceed further.

9:45 : Run to the local pantry in college and ask the dude there for a bread-jam/bread-butter/sandwich. If you were thinking something on the lines of idly/dosa/poori, HA, not happening. Also we would have to confirm the schedule with the dude at the pantry. The guys at the pantry are like walking timetables, they know the schedules better than anyone else. Swallow the bread and the samosa, gulp the coffe, and run to class.

10am: Class starts, The professor starts off about some impotent function on some network layer and some such, but its not really important to us, since we have valuable sleep to catch up on. No that was not a typo in the first line, thats the result of a yankee-bong accent. Also note that i didnt mention impotent body part in the title.. Thats one of the sleazy tricks I use to lure unassuming simple folk into reading the scum that I write..

Coming back, one would think that in a masters course, we would have to concentrate in each lecture, but then we always do things differently in here. The prof does notice, but for some reason chooses to ignore it, albeit temporarily. You see maybe, he can have his vengeance when its grading time! Also we have a super-hi fundoo camera watching us all the time in class. We have a rather sharp assistant who tales care of all the equipment and im sure he'll have the time of his life checking out all the different strategies used to hide from the prof's eyes. Some of these strategies and the camera itself will be described in a later post.

11 am: Coffee break. Time for all those sleepy heads to go grab another coffee. The really weird ones sit in class and share lecture notes. Tsk Tsk.

11:15 am. Another lecture, this time, those who were woken up by the earlier prof can resume their drones. More incoherent words like object orientation, encapsulation and such are randomly heard now and then.

1:15: Lunch time, finally. If you were thinking that we actually look forward to lunch time, wrongo, we actually look forward to the end of lunch even more. You see our caterers here are simply amazing cooks. Somehow they manage to cook every single dish such that everything semi-solid thing on the plate looks, smells and tastes the same. Be it the simple dal, or the paneer masala(without the paneer of course) or the channa masala or the alu gobi, just the vegetables are different, everything else is the same. If you happen to bring a blind man here for lunch, he'd ask you why are they serving the same dish over and over. Thats not all, they somehow manage to maintain the same blandness in food day after day after day.

2:00 to 4:00 am: Do i really need to repeat, you know the routine right, another lecture, more sleep.

4:00 pm. Head to the pantry again, grab some juice/coffee, get to the room, catch your breath, wallow in your own self pity for about two hours. There is liberal use of profanities in describing our life here, for those who dont want to kill themselves as yet.

6:00 pm. Run to class. We have a visiting faculty for one of our subjects here and he takes classes only after 6. Its not for a subject as a whole, but a part of another subject, kind of a sub-subject. We always have about 3-4 subjects bundled into one, so a 4 credit course somehow always becomes a 8-10 credit course.

8:pm: Run to the mess, and i mean literally run, cos if you dont, then you wont get any curd rice, which is by far the most reliable food you can get here. Then, you run to the room, catch your breath for about about 20 nanoseconds, and run back to class for some test/surprise test/ksm. A ksm is a knowledge sharing module, or as one of my pals here puts it, more of a "Kill-ur-Sleep-Method"

11:pm, Come out of the classroom, indulge in some more self loathing, only this time you have a lot more company. That always happens after a test. Head towards the room. If you are thinkng its sleep time, Wrong again. You see the people who have regular sleep patterns here will get the same treatment as Dubyaman would in a Mensa conference.
We head back finally, at about 12:00 am, after the seniors have showered us with enough gyan about and . Our senoirs and their gyan-giving surely deserve a separate post, so we'll not get into that here.
Then go check mails only to find out we have new test and/or assignments due in the next 2 days. Attempt towards trying to do some work for a few hours, then také a coffee break at 2:30 am, where a solitary owl looks upon us and probably thinking, "what the hell are you staring at me for.. you're the one taking cofee breaks at 3 am".
Proceed for some more studying/slogging/copying/orkutting depending on who you are, and crash at about 5 am.

So there it is my friends, my average day spent in campus. I only hope I dont forget the names of my friends outside campus by the time I'm done here. Im pretty sure i dont remember their faces as of now. Sad life indeed.

P.S: I have the highest regard for all our professors and seniors here and would never také their names in anything other than the utmost respect. This post is meant to be taken as an exercise in "What not to do at an MTech course in the first sem". Maybe I'll even do a Chetan Bhagat at the end of this course, who knows ??

P.S. 2: Of course I was kiddin there. Did you really think I would write a book?? Ha :-))

Finally.. My first post from a laptop!!

2006-08-20T23:02:00.000+05:30

We have our laptops at last. We've been given HP Compaq nx6310 which has a reasonably good amount of processing power but the Wi-Fi signal at my room is extrememly weak.

Still trying to get used to navigation using a touch pad and the smaller keyboard..

Anyways, hope to post regularly now onwards..

Yent ra baabu.. bagunnara ?

2006-08-13T03:06:00.000+05:30

Well that’s all the telegu I can muster.

Which can be a bit of a problem if you are at my college. It turns out that half the literate population of Andhra Pradesh is in the process of pursuing an M-tech here. At every turn you take, at every nook and corner, you have not just one, but a group of andhraites. ( or gultis as they are popularly known ). It wouldn’t be a surprise if the college was renamed The Telangana Institute of Tech, given the majority of its inhabitants.

There are some very basic ground rules that, if followed can lead to a very successful, fulfilling stay at our place. Some of them include:

-->Ability to speak telegu. This is the first and the most basic rule in here. If you happen to be a gulti, then everything here seems to fall in place. Almost everybody here will speak the Andhra word and so all the administration work immediately becomes one smooth process. Everyone, including the hostel supplies supervisor to the caterers happen to be fellow gults.

-->Ability to scream very loudly, (with some incomprehensible, yet rhythmic and synchronized amplitude) always without any particular reason. This has been a personal experience of yours truly, who had the unfortunate opportunity to hear some of these tirades at the unearthly hour of 2 a.m, on the very first night spent here.

-->Ability to identify with/be a die-hard fan of one among Chiranjeevi/Pawan Kayan/Nagarjuna. Being a die hard fan obviously helps a great deal.

-->Moderate ability to play either soccer/poker/table tennis. This will gain you immense respect straightaway and life will be smooth right after you satisfactorily exhibit your talents.

-->A very good understanding of all the Andhra style restaurants in and around Bangalore. Given Bangaloreans’ rather bland taste for food, this one’s sure to win you some quality company. Something that I should start looking at as an option.

Now before any of you fellow gultis who happen to be reading this can come out in all your numbers and start blowing up Sumos behind me ( That somehow always happens in telegu movies ) let me tell you this. I have personally got to know a few of these guys and they seem to be a very honest, straightforward bunch of guys, always smiling and always chilled out. So there I’ve made peace now.

Given all that, there are some things that I do appreciate about the gults, definitely one of them being their innate ability to stay bindaas at all times. Also these guys seem to just endlessly want to party, play sports and sport a general “what’s the worst that could happen” attitude. In short, my kind of people !

So, here’s to a long association with gults, and “Jai Chiru!”

Till next time,

Ciao.

Of Cumulative continuous hypergoemetric distribution probabilites and other such bouncers.

2006-08-12T18:45:00.000+05:30

Well its been about 2 weeks since college started and so far its been pretty much uneventful. Just finished a test on one of my all-time most hated (read feared) subjects, Probability. Somehow I have always hated it right through school n college. I don’t see why someone needs to know in how many ways you can select 10 pairs of red socks from 2 sock bags that contain red, yellow and black socks. Nope, I really don’t care. I’d rather just pick up my one pair of white socks from the clothes line and be done with it. I’m not a math guy, so the whole thing seems pointless to me.

I live in a single occupancy room in our hostel, which I’m told is not such a bad thing because of our hectic schedules and crazy working hours. Our seniors have drilled into us many, many times, how life here is hectic, and slleping hours start at daybreak, and someone sleeping at 11 pm is almost an outlaw ! Personally I’m a bit of a nocturnal person myself, but I still think this whole charade of working till 5 am is a bit over-hyped. Its not like they were losing sleep or anything, its just that there was a rearrangement in sleeping times.

If you are in your first year then you will hear the following almost everyday, from every other person, including professors, admin guys, librarians, including the hostel house-keeping staff.

Statement 1 – You will get your laptop this Friday/Saturday/Monday. This has been going on for nearly everyday for 12 days and its just become joke now.

Statement 2 – Once you get your laptops you wont get time to eat/drink/feel/breathe/poop/scratch or do other such necessary stuff.

Statement 3 – There will be a probability test soon. This is the most dreaded statement for all us poor souls who are not all that excited by the concept of uncertainty.

We finally had the probability test last week after a whole lot of indecision over date/time and place ( uncertainty about a probability test !! is that irony or what ! ) I prepared for all of about 6 hours, not at a stretch of course, but that’s an awful lot of studying for me. Coming to the test, it was a certifiable disaster. I could never figure out what was asked/what was expected and most of all I didn’t have a clue how to solve it. Thank god for the concept of Multiple choice questioning, I might muster a score of 3-4. Otherwise I’d be counting marks in 0s and 1s.

The latest news is that someone has installed a keylogger s/w in one of our osl labs. For those who don’t know, a keylogger is something that can log keystrokes and store the info, all without the user’s knowledge. As a result, there was a plethora of mails from the admin guys asking the guy who did it to own up and how these things will be dealt with in extreme ways and so on. Its really unknown if it was done on purpose or by accident. It could well turn out that someone did it on purpose, just to show off. I hope the guy burns in hell.

We also have a test in OS,Java and Unix (yes all in one) sometime Fri/Saturday so hope things get better then.

What to do.. oh what to do ..

2006-08-02T17:29:00.000+05:30

My Mtech course started this monday.. Arrived at the campus on Sunday night and was thoroughly bored for the best part of three hours. No PC, no books to read, no friends to meet, life was stinking.. It hasnt changed much over the week too much. We still havent got our laptops, college seems to be full of newbies like me and are quite a bit anxious/hesitant/downright weird.

Met a few guys here and there. Unfortunately my room is located amidst a whole lot of Gulti's Its almost like living in hyderabad here. Im not sure whats the worst part of living in a pseudo-hyderabad, the senseless shouting n screaming at very odd hours or the incessant loud gulti songs, again right through the night. Im not too sure why people just dont like to sleep in these regions. Or atleast join the IIIT in Hyderabad and spare us the punishment.

So far I've met about 6-7 guys from Bangalore in our batch which is a litlle sad for a college bang in Electronics city. I somehow get the feeling each one of them are the studious types, the going might get real tough soon.

Im typing this from a local cyber centre and so its time to go. Hope to write some more soon.

Just to add to the two posts below..

2006-07-21T00:12:00.000+05:30

These posts were originally written by me here .. I have a group of friends whose vocabulary and imagination may seem a bit out of this world for most normal people. Hence some of the terminology used may not be always comprehensible to all....

Also some of the parts may be illegible because of some formatting issues. I'm just too lazy to fix them. If you feel you are really missing out on those parts, dont worry you arent missing anything. Most stuff on this blog is crap anyways..

Trip to Wayand, Kerala - 1

2006-07-21T00:10:00.004+05:30

Preface:You may proceed only if you are seriously jobless. In case you are reading this from your office PC then better have a random excel sheet open in front of you just in case the boss walks in.. If you are reading this from your home PC then you should have a few Sylvia Saint pics open in another window. If you are asking yourself why Sylvia Saint, then let me tell you it is for no reason after all. Jenna Jameson would do just fine..

Now that you have had that valuable info, lets get down to the actual trip. We left Bangalore on Friday the 30th of June. The idea communicated to everyone was that the cab would be ready at 7 am sharp. But then if you are a member of our gang or just like any 23 yr old single sleep loving bozo knows, 7 am start for a trip is never going to be a reality. All the guys assembled at our man Slum’s place at about 10:30. Again if you are wondering why this guy is named Slum, then I’m not going to tell you because that’s not what this post is about. I know I’m beginning to get on your nerves already but then you have no choice but to read on. Go on catch a quick glimpse of Sylvia if you really want.

A brief mention about the cab and our driver here. This qualis of ours had the stereo broken for some unknown reason and so we had to make do with Jamoon Jocko’s walkman phone for all our music needs. Jamoon by the way truly lived up to his name by not bringing his charger along, so was cribbing all the way that he’d run out of battery. Why would someone buy a fancy walkman phone, bring it to a 3 day trip and yet forget his charger is a little beyond me. Anyway the driver tried to get the stereo repaired but to no success. This driver of ours was a gazillion times better than the one who drove us to Kemmangundi a few months before. The kemmangundi driver was a real piece of work, one who ate more than us, drank more booze, played the crappiest music, and worse of all, had all the lousiest PJ’s by heart. Our Waynad driver was quite the opposite. He must’ve uttered some ten words all through the trip. A thousand thanks to him for that. May all his kids and grandkids grow up to be excellent drivers like him.

We left Bangalore at about 10:45 or such, proceeding towards Mysore road. The drive was very good to start off and was pretty nice all the way. We made a brief “tiffin” stop at Bidadi to fill up on some heavenly “Tatte Idli’s” and Vada. It never really matter even if you’ve had a heavy breakfast at home, a stop at Bidadi is simply compulsory each time you go through Mysore road. I must say I’ve never tasted better idli’s anywhere else till date. One thing I noticed in Bidadi was that there was about 5 shops which had the same “Renuka Tiffins” as the name. The Renuka tatte idli is a famous name I realized then. I guess the first shop you see to your right when you come from B’lore is the original. After a wholesome breakfast we proceeded again. The Mysore-Bangalore road I must say is very well done now. Except for a few stretches in Mandya and Ramanagaram, the repairs are complete and I’m sure in about a year or so a 2 hr drive to Mysore can be a reality. The BMIC will be ready by the time I have grandkids, so don’t have any dreams about that.

We reached Mysore some 3 hrs later, proceeded towards the Mysore-Ooty highway. We had to take a right at Gundlupet and get on the Calicut road. We took a lunch stop at a place called the Kaveri International hotel. There was nothing international about this place, just a normal Lodge n restaurant which looked so deserted that I’m sure just a few street dogs used the lodge. The good thing was that there was a bar attached and we got a quick drink in just to get warmed up. The food was not really very good, although the price was pretty high.

The road was very nice, hardly any traffic and with some lush green sunflower field to provide scenery.

The dude in the pic is “Pyro-Hydro Jocko” named that because of his affinity towards starting fires wherever and jumping into a water-bodies.

We had to cross the Bandipur forest on the way and it was awesome. Hardly any traffic, thick forest cover on both sides of the read with trees completely covering the road like a canopy.

I guess either Pyro is the most photogenic of all of us, or the cameraman Marthas has a special love towards him, hence the same guy in two pics. As we moved on, there was a bit of a traffic block on the road, on closer inspection, we saw a crane lifting up a maruti 800 that had veered off the highway and crashed into a ditch.

The vehicle was pretty banged up as you can see and I didn’t think the driver would survive, but then we saw a dark thin dude with bandages all over his face and a rather morose look. So the driver probably survived. Fine opportunity for our driver to profess on road safety on wet highways. Thankfully that lasted only a few minutes and we moved on.

We were a little concerned about the customs check at the Kerala border cos we’d been carrying an almost full bottle of Chivas Regal Scotch with us. Had it come to the scotch being confiscated, I think we would’ve drunk up that entire bottle then n there, even if it meant puking on the cop there itself. One of the principles that the Red-Blood-Boys live by is to never ever waste any alcohol. Thankfully it never was a problem. Customs was a breeze.

“Jai Chivas”.

The Red Blood boys, by the way was a cult born in the hallowed corridors of MES KK and now carried forward by the owner of this blog along with the other Jockos. We moved into picturesque Kerala, with lungis and Mohanlal billboards greeting us in to Mallu land. Mohanlal and Mamooty are real big shots in Kerala and to this day I can’t tell them apart. Put a lungi and a veshti on their rather large bellies, slap a big fur ball for a mooch and they look like identical twins. This is something I’ve observed about all south Indian film heroes (some heroines as well ! ) They just can’t seem to get into the slim, trim, good-looking mould down south. For every Mohanlal and Mamooty, we have people like RaviChandran in Kannada and the legendary Gaptain VijayKanth in Tamil. Atleast the Hindi heroes are more presentable, no offence to “Jamoon Jocko a.k.a Ranga a.k.a Kannadada Kanva”. We entered a town called Sulthan Batheri and checked out some very very pretty lady school-teachers on the way. Somehow the one single thought running through all of our minds at the time was “ SHAKEELA”. Dirty minds breed dirty thoughts you see. We were supposed to stay at this place called Sun Valley Resorts, opposite Pookot Lake and went about finding it. None of us knew any Mallu, so finding our way was a litlle challenging to say the least. There is a very weird thing about asking directions to a mallu. Each time we pulled over and asked a cabbie or a rickshaw driver for directions, he would give us a blank “ are-you-from-Pluto “ look We would have to repeat Pookot lake thrice followed by a question mark hand signal for him to comprehend what’s going on. This was not just in SulthanBatheri but right throughout our stay in Kerala, the same routine would repeat. Pull over, ask someone for directions, get the most blank dumbass expression, then repeat the name of the place three times, and only then we would be on our way.

Pookot lake we later saw wasn’t much of a big deal really, just a big pond filled with dirty rain water. A little further we found Sun Valley Resorts. When anyone thinks of “Resorts”, one would imagine a big pool, bar n restaurant, lots of greenery, maybe even a tennis/volleyball court. Big Mistake. Our resort didn’t even have a name plate outside to claim identity. We had to run down, wake up one of the 2 guys snoozing in the reception and repeat the same routine described in the paragraph above. This time there was a difference however, the guy looking after the place, had this habit of repeating everything he said three times. The conversation went something like this.

Us: Sun Valley Resort ? ( followed by a finger pointed at him followed by a question mark hand signal)
Him: Yes,yes,yes, this only Sun Valley Resort this only Sun Valley Resort.
Us: Ok. Rooms ??
Him: Yes,yes,yes, hands over a little brochure showing room rates.

One room for a day costed about 1200 bucks, for a place that had only a reception hall, about 6 rooms in all, no kitchen or cook. There was no other suitable place we know at the time so we got to negotiating.

Us: One room, 1200 rupees (pause) too much ( followed by extravagant shake of the hand).
Him: What saar, only 1200 rupees, only 1200 rupees, only 1200 rupees.
Us: Three rooms, 700 Rs each, one extra bed.
Him: No No no. 3-rooms-1000-Rs-no extra bed, 3-rooms-1000Rs-no extra bed.
Our turn to give him the “are-you-from-Pluto”. He finally agreed for 750 bucks, three rooms with cable tv in each room. It was late evening, so we set about making dinner plans, i.e booze plans. Slum n turka went to get food while the rest of us went for a short walk.

That’s Pyro Jocko, Jamoon, Charlie and DD from left.The walk didn’t last too long, it started raining again and we headed back. We found a dead snake which fascinated pyro for some inexplicable reason. Then there was a rather long wait for the guys to return with food. Time was spent with Marthas giving people a glimpse of his potty habits and other such pointless activities.

Food arrived, booze was there, and the Q/F between Argentina and Germany started. In short, THE PERFECT LIFE for about 2 hrs atleast. Yours truly was backing Argentina along with Pyro, who did so just because Slum was rooting for Germany. All other were backing the hosts I think. In the end Arg lost in penalties and we were jumping around alternately shouting abuses like there was no tomorrow after each goal was scored. I started to realize then that Football and alcohol was a heavenly combination. It was a good thing that there was no one else in the lodge at the time barring us.

“Jai Chivas” again..

The booze was emptied in much merriment and there were no “Omlette” incidents, probably because our Capacity King Jamoon Jocko, who is always first to present a dosa, had only about 60 ml.

No description of Kerala is complete without coconut oil. There is one rule to be followed when in Mallu land. “If you don’t like coconut oil, then you don’t eat”. There seems to be a mind-boggling abundance of coconut oil in these regions and so it is used for everything. I doubt if mallus use any water for cooking, only coconut oil. The French fries and chilly paneer looked like a heart attack served on a late. If you squeezed out the oil from the fries, it would’ve been enough oil to fill up Pookot lake I’m sure. After the bottle was emptied and most of the food wasted, we called it a day.

Trip to Wayanad -2

2006-07-20T23:30:00.000+05:30

Day-2-- July 1^st, 10 am

We woke up on day-2 and the first thing on everybody’s mind was what else, food. Also, we had not covered much in the first day and so we had decided that we need to get a move on day 2 at least. Now if you are aware of the way things are done the Red Blood Boys style, then you know an early start was all but ruled out.

Our first destination for the day was a place called The Viewpoint. The thing that surprised me the most here was that this place, although very picturesque, had no name, just “The Viewpoint”. Having traveled to most hilly regions in South India one has come to expect some fancy name and an even fancier mythological story attached for each tourist attraction around there. Something like “The Devils Peak” or “The Ayyappan’s Point” would been more suitable. Who knows the great Lord Shanmuga could’ve dropped in from the heavens and left his toenail here or something such. But no such story we were aware of here. The stupid place didn’t even have a cigarette vendor. At least there were a few stalls that served breakfast so we filled up on some bread omelets, again literally fried in, what else but coconut oil. There was considerable contesting going on for the single cigarette available and after much debate it was shared between three guys.

You see only a part of the view in the pic, because our cameraman marthas thought that a few wild leaves would be more appropriate for a snap of deep valleys and hills Don’t ask me what Pyro is doing on the rock, I am not sure myself.

The place was in fact very picturesque and served a fine opportunity for Turka and Marthas to take some “solo” snaps for future exhibition to prospective brides. It’s a good thing if we take these pics now, because in a few years I’m pretty sure we all would look like some of the pot bellied South Indian film heroes, without the mooch of course.

Talking of facial hair, a distinct feature of all mallus is the fact they seem to hate the razor. After 2 days in Mallu land I had never come across a single grown man who was clean-shaven. Not one. Everybody had a big mooch and a majority of them looked like they shaved only once a year. Too much coconut oil in their system I guess. Maybe our man DD seen here, can take a clue and grow some hair.

Next, we set off to follow one more of Turka’s build-ups, this one a resort called Vythiri Resort. To be fair, this one had to be one of the best resorts around in South India, barring some of the big fancy ones in Bangalore which are just big hotels with a pool. Vythiri on the other hand, was set bang in the middle of a waterfall, not to mention lush greenery and so the soothing buzz of the stream nearby was always heard.

That’s Hydro Jocko in the pic living upto his name.

The approach to the place can use some improvement but even then, a big thumbs up to whoever conceived of this place. Although a stay will leave a pretty big hole in your wallet, its all worth it I think. We were left ruing the fact that had we come to this place before going to that lousy Sun Valley place, our trip would’ve been much more memorable.

Next destination -- The Edakkal Caves.

There was a famous Kannada movie called “Edakallu Guddada Mele” which was a story of how a wife cheated on her impotent husband in one of these caves. Pyro Jocko was the only one who has seen this movie and so we were narrated the entire plot some 20 times on the way. I personally think it is extremely weird to fornicate in a big, dark damp cave, with various species of bats, algae and mold giving company. But then anything that is shown in the movies automatically qualifies as the cool thing to do.

Reaching the place was much easier, now that we knew the routine to follow. (Routine described in previous post) About 1 km from the caves, we had to park the cab and take the rented jeeps to get to the place. There was a rather prolonged debate to decide whether we would take the jeep or walk it up. In the end some of took the jeep, some others walked. I personally think those who chose to walk, simply took the next jeep. If you are one of the guys who claimed to walk all the way, then please explain to me how you covered the distance of 1 km of a 60 degree steep road in less than 10 minutes. Barring a few Kkrish inspired antics, I don’t see how its possible.

I haven’t been to any of the famous caves Elephanta and such other, so these caves were pretty awe-inspiring to me. Deep gorges, boulders the size of a 5 storey building welcomed us.

The irresistibly handsome hunk you see at the top is me, followed by Jamoon, Slum and Marthas.

We were told by an impromptu guide present, that the caves were named so because of one particular rock getting wedged between two much bigger ones. Here are some more pics of the caves.

He also showed us what he said were prehistoric carvings and some illegible script saying some shit about some king slaying many lions. Why would a king slay all those lions and then get the story carved on a cave wall in a forest in the middle of nowhere was a little beyond me. However, some firaangs who were there found the story very fascinating. If only they gave us sufficient green bucks we would tell them even taller tales.

Next stop was a waterfall some 5 kms from the caves which was, again, very nice, unspoilt by civilization.

That was it then, for the Wayanad trip, we grabbed a few snacks and headed towards Mysore. We had the England-Portugal Q/F to catch and so checked into a big fancy hotel called The Roost.

After a round of washing up and DD wasting an entire shampoo packet on his smooth skull, we headed to the restaurant. I think DD still lives in some imaginary parallel dimension where he has a head full of thick wavy locks. Jamoon and Slum take the trouble of snapping him back to reality every time he has such delusions.

Again the same routine of beer and football followed and was tremendously enjoyed by everyone who had the beer. Our man Jamoon, probably for the first time in his life had more than a glass of beer and still had moderate awareness of his surroundings. Three cheers to Jamoon.

Next day we were back in Bangalore and everyone got back to their dreary old boring jobs, except of course, yours truly, who took the trouble of writing all this.

About me.

2006-07-15T01:09:00.000+05:30

I feel this song by David Byrne describes me the best.

I'm lazy when I'm lovin', I'm lazy when I play
I'm lazy with my girlfriend a thousand times a day
I'm lazy when I'm speaking, I'm lazy when I walk
I'm lazy when I'm dancin' and I'm lazy when I talk

I open up my mouth, it comes rushin' out
Nothin', doin' nadda, never, how you like me now
Wouldn't it be mad, wouldn't it be fine
Lazy, lucky lady, dancin', lovin' all the time

I I I I'm wicked and I'm lazy
Ooooh, don't you wanna save me

Some folks they got money an' some folks lives are sweet
Some folks make decisions an' some folks clean the streets, now
Imagine what it feels like, imagine how it sounds
Imagine life is perfect an' everything works out

No tears are fallin' from my eyes
I'm keepin' all the pain inside
Now don't you wanna live with me
I'm lazy as a man can be

I I I I'm wicked and I'm lazy
Ooooh, don't you wanna save me

Imagine there's a girlfriend, imagine there's a job
Imagine there's an answer, imagine there's a God
Imagine I'm a Devil, imagine I'm a saint
Lazy money, lazy sexy, lazy outta space

No tears are fallin' from my eyes
I'm keepin' all the pain inside
Now don't you wanna live with me
I'm lazy as a man can be

I I I I'm wicked and I'm lazy
Ooooh, don't you wanna save me

Lazy when I work, lazy on the bed
Screamin' all you like, but it only fades away
I'm lazy when I'm prayin', lazy on the job
Got a lazy mind, a lazy eye, a lazy lazy father

Hard men, hard lives
Hard keepin' it all inside
Good times, good God
I'm so lazy I almost stop

I I I I'm wicked and I'm lazy
Ooooh, don't you wanna save me

Intro

2006-07-14T03:19:00.000+05:30

Hey y'all,

Ive decided to start blogging. Because I have nothing better to do.

Some invaluable info on yours truly.

I'm a computer engineer, Finished B.E from Sir MVIT, Bangalore.
Worked in a leading software services company for about 10 months, now I'm joining the premier institute for IT studies in Bangalore to do MTech.

Now is the time between quitting my job and joining Mtech, a period of about a month or so, when I positively have nothing to do. Hence blogging. I also write occasionally here .

In reality I have been thinking of starting a blog of myself for some time. So here goes, I've made a start.

I have observed a few common traits among the bloggers I've seen so far.. Most of them are either one or a combination of the following

1. From some or other B-schools.
2. People who claim to be quizzers / quizmasters.
3. People who follow Formula 1 and/or EPL soccer.

I do realise that I've only gone through a miniscule fraction of the blogging world, but the scene in India atleast is somewhat like this.

Well, I am none of the things above. Im an engineer who worked as a S/W programmer and now pursuing a Masters degree in IT.

And an extremely lazy person too.

So if you are looking to read some witty sarcasm/humour filled commentary on society and life in general then, sorry this is not the place for you. I plan to write mostly about myself, my friends, past,present and future and the many misadventures we are/about to go through.

So good luck to me and good luck to you ( if you plan to revisit here!)