Time of your life

The Motorcycle Diaries (Part 2) - The Two Blunders

2010-06-28T00:30:00.011+05:30

Long long time ago, about 20 days ago (okay not so long ago), in the city of Nizams when weekends were boring and there were no new movies to be jeered at and nothing new to do except time to pass, 3 like minded fellows decided to take their horses err... bikes out for a ride rather than sleeping through the day. Anyway, the point of telling all this background is, just like that, me, Lord and SRK had decided to go to a far away place - the beautiful Nagarjuna Sagar Dam, about 175 km from Hyderabad on that fateful Saturday morning. Everything was so ominously set up for us, including the atmosphere as well. And then, with no real plan, no real map or exact directional route, no real inventory (first aid, mechanical kit) and not much currency in paper form, the fellowship of the bikers set on for the ride of their life (till date, that is). By the way, if you are reading this without reading the previous part of this series, please don't proceed ahead. You will only end up messing up your neurological circuits, trying to understand what this gibberish is all about. If you've already gone through that ordeal, then well, you're all set for the next part of the Motorcycle Diaries and the ensuing blunders.

1) Time Stamp - 12 June, 2010 (8:30 AM)
Place - Hyderabad outskirts, NH 9 begins.
Distance covered - 30 km

Having topped up the fuel tanks of the vehicles to the full capacity from an outside city petrol pump ("city ke baahar petrol sasta milta hai") and thankfully we paid it with SRK's credit card, it finally began. The weather was absolutely fantastic, with the sun shying and hiding behind the dark gray skies, but it never rained and with cool breeze hitting our faces while we pushed the bike to the highest gear - thus achieving the max throttle, that was a feeling to beat. Thankfully, the Hyderabad - Bangalore highway - NH 9 was surprisingly empty that day, at least early on in the morning. The kind of adrenalin rush you get, when you are driving at 100+ km/hr and that too for a period of more than 5 minutes at a stretch - its really unique and somewhat consciousness shattering. Some good news for those who have played Need For Speed Most Wanted- yes... the motion blur exists in the real world too... but please don't experience it for longer durations. And definitely not on corners. Extremely dangerous stuff, its like that one puff you take and forget it later, forever.

At around 10 AM after having covered around 120 kms, we stopped at a random place in between where we had a temple like structure on a hillock, which also offered us a dirt racing track with quite a steep incline. After testing our biking skills and some pretty narcissistic photos of us all, we then began the final stretch to Nagarjuna Sagar. It all turned out pretty awesome, just what we expected from this rage for speedy bike trips. The whole time some of the following bits and pieces of conversations popped out randomly and frequently -

Me: This is simply awesome man...
Lord: Kya jabardast view hai...
SRK: abe ulti feel aa gayi...

Me: abe ek bhi ATM kyu nahi aa raha??
SRK: load mat le, aage aa jayega...

2) Time Stamp - 12 June, 2010 (11:30 AM)
Place - Nagarjuna Sagar Dam/ Nagarjuna Sagar Lake
Distance covered - 180 km

And then it finally came in sight. And what a sight it was. Majestic, really. There is a reason why they call all the lakes in and around Hyderabad as Sagars. They are all unbelievably gigantic. (ok, not all of them, but most of them). Nagarjuna Sagar, true to its name was freaking huge and a pleasant surprise for us. My, the blues stretched towards the horizon as if it were a sea. And towards one far end lied a wall which obstructed this chunk of water body like the wall of Troy. Overall, pretty fantastic and worth 180 km and we felt great. The pain in the behinds suddenly went away and after having a decent enough lunch, visiting some panoramic view points and some more chai(tea) + limbu(lemon) /mosambi(sweet lime) sharbats(drink) later, we finally came down to the waters, down to those slippery rocks. And it was on these rocks, while SRK got full drenched, me half drenched and Lord still fooling around with his Nikon DSLR, that somehow we had the following conversation - which was basically was the foundation for "the Two Blunders". And it went on something like this:-

Timestamp (12 June, 2010 (3:30 PM))

(much time had passed while we loitered around in the clean waters of the Nagarjuna Sagar after having a refreshing lunch)

SRK: abe ek baat bolu?
Lord: ek kya, tu do baat bol... I'm very happy today !!
SRK: yaha se Srisailam kitna door hai?
Me: abe Srisailam is 240 km away from Hyderabad, and we've already covered 180, so its only 60 km away from here...
Lord: yes, that's correct, why what happened?
SRK: nahi, main soch raha may be we can visit that place as well since we have already come so far... what say?
Me: (after thinking really hard) lets go, it will be fun... we can still make it back by late night if we press hard...
Lord: yes, and the road to Srisailam is godly as well... it goes through this awesome forest reserve and its too good (google maps expert, we don't argue on this front with him)
SRK: okay, great !!

And thus, the fellowship decided to extend their trip further to Srisailam. Its a nice place where there is a very famous temple atop a gigantic mountain situated amidst a beautiful tiger sanctuary forest. The prospects of driving to and back from there was irresistible, in spite of the exhaustion. But before all this, one more blunder, a bit minor one was in store for us.

About 10 km from Nagarjuna Sagar, we had come to know that there existed a very famous waterfall by the name of Ethipothala. We decided to officially take a bath under it. But due to the lack of spare clothing, we were in a fix. No problem, we go to local village and buy everything (yes everything, right from towels to the undies) and get ready to be bombarded with vertical jets of water!!

3) Time Stamp - 12 June, 2010 (4:30 PM)
Place - Ethipothala Waterfalls
Distance covered - 190 km

After much huffing and puffing and admiring the scenery speeding past us, we arrived at the waterfalls. However, we were in for a blinder of a shock. This waterfall, yes, this very waterfall had made a super big fool of us all, mocked us and left us in total shambles. Why, you ask? Well, because it was just a waterfall you get to watch from about 200 meters away and there's no chance of getting underneath it - at least legally and without any danger to your life!! Goddamn!! And we spent half an hour in the market arguing and bargaining the price of those... Grrr... Disappointment and shocked that we were, we managed to hide it pretty well from the pretty faces present there and soon got out of there real quick to forget it. These waterfalls, even if they are not much pain for the eyes, they can mock you big time!!

4) Time Stamp - 12 June, 2010 (6:00 PM)
Place - Random T Point, some village
Distance covered - 210 km

Well, we were already 210 km, as far as our odometers were suggesting, but to add to our earlier feeling of shock and awe (Ethipothala waterfalls), we were wondering why we didn't pass through that super forest drive yet and why wasn't Srisailam any nearer still? We stopped for another Tea/ Bisleri Break and casually asked a person at the "tapri" (slang for tea stalls in India which can sell stuff you wont expect it to sell even in your dreams) about how far Srisailam was from here. Answer was - 160 km!! We were like "what the !@#$". We confirmed and we re-confirmed, the place was damn 160 km away... It took about 2 minutes for the fact to completely sink in and before any of us spoke again, as we were still in the process of recovering from the first blunder.

Now we had the following choices :-

--> head back to Hyderabad, a straight 210 km drive back, in all that growing darkness and torturing everything from top to bottom on that now very busy highway!! This also meant enduring a severe pain in the behinds since driving at night time meant reduced speeds.

--> Continue to Srisailam, try to reach there before dinner time, make a night stop over, explore the place next morning in peace and then return back to Hyderabad next afternoon. Seems like our earlier assumption of Hyderabad, Nagarjuna Sagar and Srisailam being 3 collinear points on a line stretching 240 km was not really factually correct. Hyderabad - Srisailam was 250 km, yes, but it was a totally different route altogether (see the map, that's the road we took during return journey)

Since the second option ensured more adventure than any sort of social life we could have had on the following day in Hyderabad, we just spontaneously decided to carry on. But seems like there were still more surprises in store for us. The thing is, Srisailam being situated in a dense forest, they stop entry and exit to/ from it at 9 pm at night. So this meant, we had to stop over even before Srisailam in a village called Dornala 50 kms earlier. According to the people in the village where we made this decision to go on, the road was not really driver's paradise and it goes through some Ghat sections (curvy, zig-zag, treacherous roads carved on the sides of mountains) as well. And being in complete darkness, the region was prone to Naxal attacks (dense AP forests + deserted roads + darkness = probable naxal attacks?) as well. Wow, this was scary indeed... What followed next that scary evening and the following day's unbelievably awesome morning, is actually the bestest and most amazing part of this whole journey. Please don't forget to read the concluding part, the finale of this series - The Motorcycle Diaries (Part 3) - The Return of the Awesomeness !!

The Motorcycle Diaries (Part 1) - The Fellowship of the Bikers

2010-06-24T23:44:00.016+05:30

Well, first of all, this blog post is not at all related to the iconic Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. But yes, this one is about a legendary, ultra awesome and super godly bike trip. Continuing my bad habit of finding time to blog only on special occasions, the reason for you reading this is - that I've survived successfully for 2 years in Hyderabad and it has been quite an enlightening experience both personally and professionally. While I will be happy to en-cash my 24th pay check at the end of this month, this has been a unique phase of life and has seen its fair share of crests and troughs. Hyderabad, Oracle, 205-Silpa Emerald - there are so many things from these 2 years which have turned me over, flipped me inside out and changed me to some extent but this blog is not about all those things. Its about 2 grand days when me, Lord and SRK (names modified for the sake of protecting... usual stuff) "planned" a bike trip to Nagarjuna Sagar Dam and what followed next on the weekend was indeed, a tragic comedy of errors - but being engineers and being used to last minute management (read chaos), we ended up enjoying it never the less !!

To make this sound sweet and short (very difficult for me) I will just split this up chronologically with respect to time, assumption and the resultant blunders interspersed with moments of awesomeness. Read ahead at your own risk.

1) Time stamp - 11 June, 2010 (8 PM)
Place - Random cubicle, 3rd Floor, Campus Phase 2, Oracle IDC - Hyderabad

Lord - "abe kal nagarjun sagar chal raha kya? SRK and me are going. Its about 175 kms from Hyderabad."
Me - "Oh yesss... I've been dying to go to that place, or rather any place which is far away and would let me drive for a long time !! lekin ek locha hai, I've something important to do tomorrow, can we go on sunday please?"
Lord - "abe we need to get MOCKed at on sunday, we need to go tomorrow only"
Me - (cursing) "hmm... wait... (calls A - gives the number of B, calls B - gives the number of A, apologies etc) chal locha resolved. I'm in !!"
Lord - "chalo abhi ghar jaate, kal subah 5 baje uthna (what a joke !!), me and SRK will rap you at 6 AM "sharp", okay ?"
Me - "wokay !!

2) Time Stamp - 11 June, 2010 (time unknown, probably late at night)
Place - Google Talk

this is a fictional but somewhat true reproduction of the possible conversation in author's own words, as he was not a part of this conspiracy...

SRK/Lord - "abe, Nagarjuna Sagar is effing 175 kms far away man, it will take super long to go and come back!!"
Lord/SRK - "we knew this already right ?"
SRK/Lord - "but now I'm having doubts whether we can actually survive on bikes for that long. It will be dee-fi-cult, you know..."
Lord/SRK - "ok, let's go to some place which is a bit closer, what about cool_place_abc ? Its about 50 kms only."
SRK/Lord - "great, that would be easy. What about Suyash?"
Lord/SRK - "we can't tell him right now. We will drop the bomb in the morning at 5 am regarding the change of plans. He wont even know what swept him over !!"
SRK/Lord - "awesome !!"

3) Time stamp - 12 June, 2010 (6:15 AM)
Place - 205, Silpa Emerald (via Vodafone cellular network)

Me - (after snoozing off the alarm for 15th time) "abe kya hua, tum log abhi tak aaye nahi? (as if I was all dressed up and ready), kitna late karoge ?"
Lord - "Yes, both me and SRK were unable to get up at 5 am (surprise !!). Abe Nagarjuna Sagar Dam is very far, apne ko poora din bhar lag jayega and it would be too tiring, lets go to cool_place_abc instead, what say?"
Me ---> got busy in putting convincing skills into play and after a few more phone calls to SRK...
Lord - "okay, we are going to Nagarjuna Sagar then... Lets start at 7 am."
Me - "wokay !!"

4) Time stamp - 12 June, 2010 (7:45 AM)
Place - Samrat Darshini, Kondapur
Distance Covered - 0.5 kms

while munching on plates of idli and wada sambhar with backpacks containing nothing but cameras and a water bottle, we chalked out the following "pee-lan" for the day...

Assumption #0 -

The place is about 175 kms away. Considering multiple stoppage points for chai and nature calls if any, we should be able to reach Nagarjuna Sagar at around 11:30 am something. We have dinner, we roam around the dam, then dish dash to the lake, get wet to get rid of the sweat and after some more rest, we head back ( I always knew there was a poet in me !!). If all goes well according to plan, we should be back to Hyderabad by lets say, 6:30 pm - 7 pm. Sounds great !! (alas, things happened so differently though :)

Blunder Sequence #0 -

We plan to get wet, but we don't take any spare clothes. We have a super long drive ahead, but we don't know how much fuel we have. We would be traveling to a remote place in AP and yet we decide to depend on ATM and Credit cards more than hard cash. (atm to har jagah hota hai, load kya hai ??) And of course, none of us is completely sure of the exact route as well, just a rough idea, we go with the google maps expert and depend on sun and helping people of AP as guides. I hope this should provide a somewhat translucent picture of the disasters which were waiting for us in the near future!! It took us about 45 minutes to get outside Hyderabad city and we topped up our fuel tanks to the max limit (by credit card, thank God) before hitting the highway to hell... err Nagarjuna Sagar i.e. on the expressway called NH 9.

And thus the fellowship of us 3 bikers with our trusted motorcycles - pulsar 150 cc (new one), an xcd 135 cc (unique piece) and another pulsar 150 cc (old one) began a very very eventful bike trip - which lay in store for us some really unforgettable memories. Since the entire trip ultimately stretched further beyond our present imagination, I need to continue this further in the sequel. Please do wait with bated breath for - The Motorcycle Diaries (Part 2) - The Two Blunders.

Life is an Agneepath

2010-02-01T00:13:00.004+05:30

Disclaimer: What follows next is a truly random, crappy and perhaps illogical post, written in an absolutely frustrated state of mind. Please don't bother to read or comment. There, you were warned.

24. The number is indeed special. It represents so many things. Its the number of hours we spend everyday on this planet. Its the number of hours the planet takes to rotate around itself. You may ask whats the difference, aren't they both one and same? Think again. One definitely needs a wake up call if he/she thinks that something extra ordinarily unique like a day from his/her life can be equated with a super repetitive natural phenomenon like the rotation of a 6 trillion trillion KGs of mass around a hypothetical rod of length 12000 km. 24, for me represents Life - and now that I'm have completed my 24th revolution around the sun today, I am being made aware of the quintessential fact, that Life does not remain a bed of roses forever. Its a path of fire or an Agneepath and everyone feels the heat sometime or later. I guess the heat was always there for me but the coals are getting just too hot now to ignore it anymore.

I never thought everything would suddenly change like the way it has from the last 18 months or so. Some changes were welcome and anticipated, some unexpected and ready-to-be-faced but to see the smooth machinery of my comfortable existence to be brought down to such a grinding halt like this is scaring. I thought I would get used to it soon, but seems like I don't really like the fact that someone has moved my cheese. It hurts and it pains big time, and there simply is no looking away from the fact. So what should one do next? Introspect and think of a solution to replace what you're missing while retaining what you like from the new life?

Why is it so difficult for some of us to forget the fading past and race ahead for that bright future? I guess the answer lies in what a person's Ikigai is. Ikigai - translated from Japanese literally means - "something important one lives for". I absolutely hate it when I see people deciding on almost every important course of their life based on the "economic prospects" instead of doing something they are passionate about. How can someone be truly happy from within and live a satisfying life if he is not doing something he enjoys? The very fact that almost everything that happens today is being controlled by the greedy capitalist economies that we live in, nauseates me. Look at us, how we have forgotten to enjoy God's best gift of "growing up" and instead slog for that Engineering / MBA degree. Instead of following the pursuit of happiness during the flagrant youth life that we had been looking forward to, most of the times we dedicate more than what we are expected to, to the "productive" part of our life craving for that promotion/ raise/ appraisal. If one should eat to live and not live to eat, then why do we live to work instead of working to live?

But Alas, its something for which we don't have a solution yet. After all, the very survival and satisfaction of our material needs depends on the world we live in. So accept it, we must, anyway it is. But in the end, its imperative to take out time for oneself every single day. Because if you don't do that today, thats 24 hours gone from your life like Keyser Soze disappears... poof... just like that. And its important to mention here that, unless proved otherwise, we have only one life. Damn it. Only One. And the length of this solitary life is beeping uncertain. As Mark Twain once said, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn`t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore... Dream.. Discover". But the point here is that, does the world we live in allow us to do all these things at our will? Certainly not. We need to slog and work and learn and earn to do everything. Why does that sound like a vicious circle looping us into captivity forever? If ever there exists a "day of redemption", I hope I get an opportunity to clarify some of these issues with "Him".

The only thing we mortals can do is to just pick ourselves up from the fallen depths and try to rise from the ashes like that mystical phoenix. As to the challenges we face, perhaps they too are required in the long run or else how would we cope with the unexpected events? All said and done, I guess its only easy to speak and write about such stuff but terribly difficult to act upon. Or is it? If life is indeed meant to be an Agneepath then maybe that heat does act as a catalyst to surge us ahead or else we might just limp towards nothing. Its the fire that enables us but at the same time we need to carry that compressed CO2 Can with us to cool off things as frequently as we can. When things get bad, you should stop being sad and be awesome instead (True Story, Barney Stinson). When it seems that things are becoming impossible you need to shout back to the world, "It ain't over till I say its over. I'll be Back". And to top all the cliches that I've used so far, I would like to end it with what Hariwansh Rai Bacchhan once famously penned down and I now agree with:

Vriksh ho bhale khade, ho ghane, ho bade...
Ek patra chhav bhi mang mat, mang mat, mang mat...
Agneepath, Agneepath, Agneepath.

Tu na thakega kabhi, tu na thamega kabhi, tu na mudega kabhi...
Kar shapath, kar shapath, kar shapath...
Agneepath, Agneepath, Agneepath.

Ye mahaan drishya hai, chal raha manushya hai...
Ashru shwet raqt se lathpath, lathpath, lathpath...
Agneepath, Agneepath, Agneepath.

P.S.: I love the concept of Head Fakes (Randy Pausch - really achieving your Childhood dreams) and the head fake here is that the above blog post was actually meant only for me. The rest of the world reading this is just a bonus.

CBT CAT 09 - Evaluation and Ranking

2009-12-06T09:53:00.013+05:30

Update: I got a re-assuring reply from Professor Pankaj Chandra, Director IIM B, saying - "Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. We will address the issues that you have raised in your email." Thank you Sir, it means the world to me for you taking out time to reply to my email. Hope everything is sorted out and resolved pretty soon so that everyone gets a fair chance to start their MBA from the IIMs !!

Also check out this TOI article.
End of Update

Following is the email which I've written to the directors of the prestigious IIMs regarding information for evaluation and ranking of scores obtained by students in the CBT CAT 09. Decided to post it in the blog sphere as well so as to know if there are others who share a similar concern.

Disclaimer : I'm not whining against CBT CAT 09 nor asking for a re-test / paper based test to be conducted again. Also those who have scored awesomely in this years CAT might be against the views expressed in this post and will definitely tell me to "adapt" to the changes and that this is the system and that we have to live with it. Okay, thanks in advance. And congrats to all of you for cracking CAT. Please spare me the lecture.

Respected Sir(s)

I, the undersigned, aspire to start my management studies in one of the prestigious IIMs from next year. I have appeared for CAT 09 on 5th Dec from Hyderabad and I have no complaints with respect to the actual test conduction process on a personal level since everything went smooth for me. There were no technical glitches or inconvenience of any type. I guess the situation has been improved drastically from what it was at the onset and I thank the quick measures taken for the same.

However, keeping asides all the other issues we have seen bogging CBT CAT 09 so far, I always thought that the greatest challenge of this year's exam was to arrive at 20 papers with questions having more or less similar difficulty level. This is based on the presumption that, the evaluation of candidates is going to remain constant as earlier years - i.e. - the "percentile" marking / grading system - where you rank students based on the "score" they obtain.

However, me and a very large number of students who have appeared for CAT 09 feel otherwise (that the difficulty level was different and waving in different slots) due to the following reasons:

1) Students who gave CAT in the earlier two days, though had to under go the trauma of delayed server responses and virus attacks, have reported that the level of questions was very easy and most of them managed to score 50+ out of 60 which was so unlike a CAT exam. Unless, it was intended that the CAT exam be brought down to a lower level, I feel this has really dented the image of CAT as an exam where scoring 50% of the total marks was considered as a daunting task earlier.

2) Students who gave CAT in the middle days reported that the questions were getting repeated from the earlier slots and also were being taken "as_it_is" from previous years CAT papers. This, I feel, was a big blow to those who took the tests earlier because they would never even have got wind of some of the difficult questions since they were actually attempting it for the first time. It might be unnecessary to point it out Sir, but even 3-4 questions solved in a minute just because of "prior knowledge" ensure that you make a quantum leap by saving time and dedicating it to other ques. Is this fair to all others who instead got unique questions ?

3) After the break out of all the above issues along with numerous others, it seems that the CAT has been brought back to being CAT on the last few days. Suddenly, the level of difficulty of questions in some sections has been steeped up making it really difficult to cross even the 45 mark !! I will admit, I might not be the brightest of the CAT aspirants, but then I am definitely not among the dumbest. Now we are seeing almost a no-show of repeat questions and no previous CAT questions. This is good from an exam point of view, but how do you justify the same happening for some students earlier, which clearly gives them advantage over others. As you know, a difference of a couple of questions make it a big deal of difference due to the current "percentile" based marking / grading.

The issue which I want to address through this letter is that how are we going to grade students appearing for CAT 09 based on questions with varying difficulty level ? Is it really fair to compare someone who got 50 correct in a easy paper (By easy I mean and include any / all of the following : easier questions lifted from database, questions repeated from earlier slots, questions taken from earlier slots, questions passed on by friends / teachers / forums etc) to someone who got 40 correct in a paper which did not have the above mentioned features ? Unless of course, there is going to be some sort of normalization based on the difficulty level, some sort of relative grading, I believe many are going to suffer from gross injustice and would only be left to regret at not being offered a fair shot at the IIMs.

From IIMs stand point I have heard that the argument being offered is that such things happen with other exams like GMAT as well and no body complains there. However, I would like to point out some key differences between the two, which I know you are definitely aware of :

- GMAT can definitely be taken more than once in a year in a testing window which is very large as compared to that of CAT 09. The point being, one can improve upon his / her score if he / she feels she got a bad deal. CAT 09, on the other hand can be given only once, and you just have to live with it and give it next year only.

- While GMAT also sometime may show up with repeat questions and different difficulty level questions, we can't forget its a "Computer Adaptive Test" - where the difficulty level depends on how many questions you answer correctly. The database is repeatedly updated to avoid repetitions. Even the scoring algorithm makes sure you can't skip to the next question until you answer the current one. Most importantly, the "result" is generated at the end of the test itself.

In the case of CAT which is a "Computer Based Test" - and most importantly - where the results are based on "%tile" and not "%tage", it really boils down to how many students you outscore / outperform. In such an evaluation scenario, how is it justified to have some students face a difficult paper and some an easy one (the demarcation of the above being done in Point 3) and on top of it, its just unbelievable to imagine that our futures will now be controlled via a random algorithm which is modified "midway" between the exam after glitches being pointed out by earlier CAT takers !!

I believe that there are many things which have gone the undesired way in CBT CAT 09. But the most serious issue according to me which needs to be addressed is how the "ranking" of students is now going to be done? Do we just have to live with the earlier ranking scheme based on %tiles and cut offs which will be same for everyone or are the IIMs going to take pain to make a definitive analysis of the different slots and come out with something which is just for all ?

By the way let me just repeat, I am not asking for a re-test / paper based test as some might perceive but I'm only asking for the right to know how will the grading and ranking be done and would it be fair to everyone given the above things which have hampered this year's CAT.

I don't know if this letter will even be "opened / read / thought upon" by the busy IIM directors since you must be receiving thousands of such emails / letters by now and one more student crying out aloud will just be like a drop in an ocean. They might even consider me treating CAT as sour grapes. But at least I will be in peace thinking that I did raise my voice / concern when I had the time and means and would avoid the regret in case I don't complete my MBA from an IIM.

I sincerely hope that I would get a fitting reply from some of the authorities responsible for CAT 09.

Thanks,
Suyash Joshi

Please feel free to comment and provide your feedback about the above "rant" by clicking here. Also read the disclaimer at the top of the post before posting your opinion on me / any views in the post.

Theft, Copyright Infringement, File Sharing and Piracy

2009-03-31T02:36:00.006+05:30

Please Click the picture to enlarge and view the "fine text" in between with greater detail.

Well, they say, pictures talk louder than words. I have nothing more to say on this super controversial topic. And of course, this does not mean that I endorse absolutely everything depicted in the above picture. But then, you must not misunderstand this as just another image since I might as well be echoing a very popular sentiment amongst one of the ever growing community in the world.

Avast matey, Shiver me timbers !! All hands on decks... Leave nothing behind. That by the way, in plain English means, please pour your heart with the comments about what you feel regarding this glaring issue by clicking here. Savvy, eh?

My Quarter Life Crisis

2009-03-28T12:16:00.004+05:30

Well, I officially turned 23 this year on 3rd Feb, 2009. No Big Deal, since I'm not traveling at speeds more than that of light, I'm going to age forward only. (For more info on this, do read "How to build a Time Machine" by Paul Davies, awesome book there...) Anyways, the point is, this birthday was unique since it was the first time probably that I "celebrated" this day away from my home and family. It kind of brought home some sort of awareness, since the last 9 months of my life have not been the same as they were for the last 22 years. Some things, or rather many things have changed after I left the cozy comfort of family, friends and college. This new life, where I go to "work" is not something I could take less seriously since with freedom and power comes greater responsibility and bigger challenges. And I'm not really sculpted for them yet. Though the iron hammer of life and the experiences I'm undergoing act as the required heat/catalyst to mold me as an individual (Don't think much about metallurgy references there), I realized that day, that indeed, I'm also undergoing some of the symptoms of the well known Quarter Life Crisis.

According to the Wiki, The quarterlife crisis (QLC) is a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the early twenties to the early thirties. The term is named by analogy with mid-life crisis. This is what being in twenties something makes me think about.

It was only after I came to Oracle, Hyderabad and after I stopped going along with the crowd, I started realizing that there are many things about me that I didn't know and some of them were something that I myself don't like. Due to the things I feel I'm good at and due to the things I hate myself I did get me that mixed feeling of being confident and insecure at the same time about where I will be in a year or two. And then I get scared because I barely know what I'm capable of doing and what not.

I started realizing that some people are really selfish and would go to the extreme to achieve their ends and maybe some of the friends that I hanged out with earlier aren't really the greatest people living on Earth as I get to meet new people. Also, its a really sad thing to acknowledge that some of the friends with whom I lost touch with are those I am missing the most. Maybe everyone isn't really so cold, mean or insincere because even they might be undergoing this same state of confusion.

One thing that I like though is at least I got to choose the right job that I wanted. It would have been a personal disaster had I been working with something that was not even close to what I had planned. Although, it does make me aware of how vast the canvas of professional life can extend if everyone tries their level best to succeed, whether it's about PG programs, scaling up the ladder or becoming an entrepreneur!!

My opinions about some things have really gotten stronger. Whether it's about communism or equality, about balancing personal and professional life, about India as a country - (is it really united due to the religion diversity ?? ) or about my beliefs, I now really am looking out to find a purpose to my existence. And at the same time I'm questioning more and more about why the universe has formed the way it is and about meta physical things like God and Death. Someone needs to provide me these answers real fast or I'm soon going to suffer with insomnia!!

I can understand and judge other people why they are doing things in a certain way and I constantly update my list of things of what is acceptable and what is not. What is good and what is bad are really relative. And this scares me to no end.

Sometimes I laugh and sometimes I cry with the greatest force in my life over what's going on around me. Talk of being alone, confused and scared. Suddenly, change is the enemy and I try to refuse to come out of the shell that I hibernated in the last 22 years. But I can't really cling on to whats dear to me since the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

Some people affected by QLC get their heart broken and wonder how someone they loved could do such damage to them. Or they lie in bed and wonder why they can't meet anyone decent enough that they want to get to know better. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. They go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with their friends about the same topics because they cannot seem to make a decision. They worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now everyone would just like to be a contender!

I believe many people in their twenties something might relate to the QLC factor. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure out what really this whole thing called LIFE is all about.

Please let me know if anyone has some cure for this "Quarter Life Crisis". Please feel free to post your comments by clicking here.

World of GOO !!

2008-11-03T14:49:00.007+05:30

Ameya Khandekar writes:

I am glad to guest-blog here again, - Here is my earlier attempt.
I confess, I am not an avid gamer i.e. I don't go on downloading FIFA - 200X each year or install the latest version of NFS i.e. Carbon (you can see how outdated I am with my knowledge of EA's latest in racing). I don't detest gaming, in fact I would love to play all these games, but my PC isn't boosted with steroids such as NVIDIA-GEforce 8800. So when one of my friends suggested me a game compatible with my PC, I installed it. My experience with it ensues:

World of GOO is a game based on construction and physics, it is a game developed by a team of two people (amazing isn't it?). The game is 150 MB in size and should run on all of your PCs because it ran on mine. The game is basically a 2-d game but that doesn't take the fun aspect out of it. Each stage requires the player to build a structure made of GOO-balls (yep, GOO balls) and reach an exit point. The structures commonly would consist of bridges,towers etc (see the figure below).

And the amazing thing is the game keeps on surprising you with innovative stages. As can be seen from the figure the building blocks are goo-balls. Now, in this game there are various species of goo-balls such as flying ones (see the figure below), inflammable ones, explosive ones, sticky ones etc. So you can imagine how different structures can be constructed.

So if you want to indulge in some creativity and brainwork do play this game in it's entirety. I myself, am in the last stage currently. Most of the gaming websites such as IGN and Nintendo gaming world have given the game a rating of 9+. Also, the game has got a very humorous plot, animation that makes you laugh, and there are subtle witticisms throughout the game. You will know what I mean, when you play a stage named EUREKA, which requires you to make use of the Archimedes principle ;).

Reviews by some gaming sites :-

IGN (<---courtesy for images, hehe)

Eurogamer

And a very Hilarious Trailer on Youtube

P.S:- A GAME WHICH COMBINES THE ART OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION !!! LOL !!!

P.S.2: - dont take the meaning of GOO in a derogatory way... It means Grease balls, I was just joking above.

Click here to write your comments to provide an ode to this fantastic game which is sure to rattle the grey matter in your brains and might make you revise engineering mechanics once again !!

Try to Beat this Resume !!

2008-09-13T18:00:00.003+05:30

The content of this post comes from one of the "FWD" type of mails. Generally, I don't support the popular trend of forwarding meaningless crappy mails unless they are really of some value. Some of my friends forward good interesting stuff and some forward stuff that they find funny, amusing or are "propelled" to mass mail it due to some kind of desire or threat(?) or for the betterment of their life!! I find it really hilarious as to how many people continue to fall trap to this kind of hypocrisy. Anyways, coming back to the post, this is something that really made my heart flutter and I hope will make yours too. If you've read this earlier, then do let others know about it. This Curriculum Vitae, is really top of the tops and something every Indian should be proud of. Someone really said it correctly, the cream is there only at the top of the milk !!

RESUME

EDUCATION/ QUALIFICATIONS

1950: Stood first in BA (Hons), Economics, Punjab University, Chandigarh
1952: Stood first in MA (Economics), Punjab University , Chandigarh
1954: Wright's Prize for distinguished performance at St John's College, Cambridge
1955, 1957: Wrenbury scholar, University of Cambridge
1957: DPhil ( Oxford ), DLitt (Honoris Causa), PhD thesis on India 's export competitiveness

OCCUPATION /Teaching Experience

1957-59: Senior lecturer, Economics, Punjab University, Chandigarh
1959-63: Reader, Economics
1963-65: Professor, Economics, Punjab University , Chandigarh
1969-71: Professor, International Trade, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
1976: Honorary Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
1996: Honorary Professor, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi

POSITIONS /Working Experience

1) 1971-72: Economic Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Trade

2) 1972-76: Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance

3) 1976-80:

Director, Reserve Bank of India ;
Director, Industrial Development Bank of India;
Alternate governor for India, Board of governors, Asian Development Bank;
Alternate governor for India, Board of governors, IBRD

4) November 1976 - April 1980:

Secretary, Ministry of Finance (Department of economic affairs);
Member, finance, Atomic Energy Commission;
Member,finance, Space Commission

5) April 1980 - September 1982: Member-secretary, Planning Commission

6) 1980-83: Chairman(India), Indo-Japan Joint Study Committee

7) September 1982 - January 1985: Governor, Reserve Bank of India

8) 1982-85: Alternate Governor for India, Board of Governors, International Monetary Fund

9) 1983-84: Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister

10) 1985: President, Indian Economic Association

11) January 1985 - July 1987: Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission

12) August 1987 - November 1990: Secretary-General and Commissioner, Geneva

13) December 1990 - March 1991: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Economic Affairs

14) March 1991 - June 1991: Chairman, UGC

15) June 1991 - May 1996: Union Finance Minister

16) October 1991: Elected to Rajya Sabha from Assam on Congress Ticket

17) June 1995: Re-elected to Rajya Sabha

18) 1996: Member, Consultative Committee for the Ministry of Finance

19) August 1996 - December 1997: Chairman, Parliamentary standing committee on commerce

20) March 1998 onwards: Leader of the Opposition, Rajya Sabha

21) June 1998 onwards: Member, Committee on Finance

22) August 1998 onwards: Member, Committee on Rules

23) 1998-2001: Member, Committee of Privileges

24) 2000 onwards: Member, Executive Committee, Indian Parliamentary Group

25) June 2001: Re-elected to Rajya Sabha

26) August 2001 onwards: Member, General Purposes Committee

27) May 2004 onwards: Prime Minister of India !!

BOOKS

1964: India 's Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth - Clarendon Press, Oxford University
Also published a large number of articles in various economic journals.

OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Adam Smith Prize, University of Cambridge - 1956
Padma Vibhushan - 1987
Euro money Award, Finance Minister of the Year - 1993
Asia money Award, Finance Minister of the Year for Asia - 1993, 1994

INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS

1966: Economic Affairs Officer
1966-69: Chief, Financing for Trade Section, UNCTAD
1972-74: Deputy for India in IMF Committee International Monetary Reform
1977-79: Indian Delegation to Aid-India Consortium Meetings
1980-82: Indo-Soviet Joint Planning Group eeting
1982: Indo-Soviet Monitoring Group Meeting
1993: Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Cyprus
1993: Human Rights World Conference, Vienna

RECREATION

Gymkhana Club, New Delhi; Life Member, India International Centre, New Delhi

PERSONAL DETAILS

Name: Dr Manmohan Singh

DOB: September 26, 1932

Place of Birth: Gah ( West Punjab )

Our Prime Minister seems to be the most qualified PM all over the world !! We are all proud of him !!

Batman : The Dark Knight

2008-09-13T17:54:00.005+05:30

As I had said in my last post (which was ages ago), Batman: The Dark Knight is simply the most awesome and God level movie (It's a master piece) ever made till date. (Note the date: It's 13th Sept '08, unless Chris Nolan and Christian Bale have again teamed up together for Batman 3 at the time of reading). The list of adjectives that I can use is simply endless to praise it. In fact, the one word which is apt might be Ubercool!! The proof of this obvious statement can be judged by the fact that it stayed on #1 on IMDB for a couple of months (yeah, the internet movie database, I am really surprised so many people haven't heard about it yet !!) and while some people (who don't have a taste in anything other than classy non fictions or those who don't appreciate the super hero mythology) cried foul and said it would slid down are still amazed as to why its still #3 on IMDB... Of course, its based on perception, but you can't deny the fact that the movie is really class apart - which can be attributed to the unbelievably good direction and vision of Chris Nolan and the way his cast have been supporting him. The basic difference between Nolan's Batman and the earlier one can be credited to the one of the most fundamental attributes of Batman - the darkness within, the complicated chaos and the mindsets of characters involved in the storyline. My message to super hero film makers: "It's all about portraying the mythos and storyline as properly as it's done in comics". And that's where Batman: The Dark Knight and it's prequel (Batman Begins) score.

The movie obviously had an advantage of being a blockbuster even before it's scheduled release. It was riding high on the earlier prequel, Batman Begins' success and so the expectations were high. It had a really great ensemble of a cast. Plus the tragic death of Heath Ledger (who was really, really exceptionally brilliant in portraying the menacing Joker) put the movie in a lime light. Of course, as a super hero, Superman has always overshadowed Batman in terms of popularity and fan following, but I think this movie might as well reverse the trend (After all, I've always been a Batman fan, from the last 8 years when I had read the first DC Comics of my life ever).

To sum up the movie in brief, it begins with the sheer maniac and genius plan of the legendary Joker, who in Alfred's words is someone "who just wants to see the world burn" !! I mean, he is someone who believes that Gotham needs an altogether different class of criminals and this, coming from someone who believes in sending a message... "Everything Burns !!" and he really does torch a 15 feet high mound of cash... Insanity at its level best, must say that. He wants the end of Batman, by unmasking him and spins such a finely meshed web involving the mafia and the dark knight himself. In between the skirmish, Harvey Dent, the local super hero who makes a terrific effort to squash the crime in Gotham using his tremendous law skills, is entangled and life becomes messy for him. Another distinguishing highlight of this movie is that every charecter plays a hero - whether it is Alfred who continues to remove doubts from the fragile but impervious mind of Bruce Wayne or whether it is Det. Gordon who is simply superb yet again and you can't forget Morgan Freeman - who believes in certain sets of ethics and signs off in the end with style. Between all the punches, explosions and stunt-work is some great dialog work. All the actors have their moments and this list is endless.

Bale's Batman is THE definitive Batman because we see everything in this character finally on film. Martial arts skills, cunning, great tactical thinking, forensic application, technological genius to advance or improve Luscious Fox's inventions/technological breakthroughs, intimidating personality, and even a little swashbuckling.

As for Heath, yes he gets credit for his performance as the Joker. But you have to also recognize Jonathan and Chris Nolan for the writing and treatment of the character. It's not just the fact that Ledger makes the Joker so menacing, but the Nolans have given the character this great manifesto that drives its actions. The Joker's stance on chaos, order, anarchy, the morality of the average modern human being make the character so interesting psychologically. The Nolans have drafted a complex character and only a perfect performance could've pulled something like this off. That's how difficult of a role this was, and that's why Ledger's performance is so great.

An imperishable, spectacular and chaotically-brilliant movie. The Dark Knight possesses the essence that should always exist in the handover from comics to the big screen. Sequence after sequence, this is the absolute glory. A great movie that does not give even a single frame to breathe. An ode to chaos and anarchy, while shares are confronted inevitably lead to a path dirty, black and hostile. A real Gotham City, dominated by fear.

This is the best film of the all time. Simply put, The Dark Knight belongs to a category where no comic adaptation could enter before. Thanks Christopher Nolan. Thank you very much for a film that's a lot more than the typical film based on comic books. Please do post your views about what you felt about this legendary movie by clicking here.

Why so busy?

2008-07-15T15:01:00.008+05:30

As you must have figured out by now, I have not been much active on the blogging front from the last few weeks. I will be trying to give the reason for the same through this hurriedly typed post, so please excuse if there are any grammatical mistakes or typos. It seems that life is really a blur now, and quite routine which really contrasts what I had been living earlier. Its a new day, says Brian Adams, and how truly... Because the things around you are new, the people are new and the activities that define your life are new. Some of these aspects are pleasantly good, and at the same time, some of them are too bad to remind you of the luxuries you enjoyed earlier at home. If you are still with me, kindly proceed forward to read about the recent transition of ways, which I'm braving like a brave warrior caught unawares amidst an infinite sea on a black stormy night !! I know, I know, I am extremely good at Hyperboles :-)

Que.1) Exactly When and Where did I first become busy?

Day : 21st June 2008
Time: 11 PM
Venue: Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad
Occasion: Suyash Joshi arrives in the Tech Capital of India.
Status: Feeling sleepy...

Que.2) Why did I become busy?

Because after completing graduation and spending a glorious summer at home, I decided to join Oracle which is a multinational software company at Hyderabad, and about which you can read more on Wikipedia. I could have ranted more about Oracle, but if you remember, this post is about me being busy. So Later... :)
Status: Getting pumped up...

Que.3) What (was/am/will be) I busy in?

Pre-Induction and Joining Process - I've never done so much paper work in a span of 6 hours in my life. Joining formalities, Company policies, Finance, Accommodation, Bank Account, Mobile Connection... and many others - I gave a lot of autographs for sure that day !!

Setting up Desktop - Arranging for your own system and phone, stationaries and other facilities. Also includes opening and configuring many (yeah, many) accounts / login id's for various services, even the machine login

Interaction and getting to know more about the work and people around you - My team is a very good one, and I am fortunate enough to have got such cool friends right away. And then there are the experienced guys, the Manager and HR Representatives etc. Everybody sure makes it a point in Oracle to make freshers feel at home, and boy do they succeed. But then they say, everything is nice and a storm is just waiting for you in the next corner (work, after training)

Training - Ahh... Now that I am finished with this part, I'm really relieved. Some of our technical skills were "enhanced", some were entirely new and we also got to know more about what "eggjactly" we are supposed to do and how to it. Platform, Framework, Standards etc. Pretty boring stuff. Hopefully, when atmy workstation, I will be allowed lotsa extra curriculars (:D ...hehe... The only part that I hated was the duration. I mean, 8 hours a day - that equals a week's quota of classes what I attended while engineering. Seems like we are better off at self study (last night study, tu put it up in a better way). Thank God - It's August. Training over. Work Starts. And 31st of last month was my life's first Pay-Day. Feels good !!

Que.4) Proof that I was busy...?

- My last blog post was 41 days ago.
- I wasn't able to catch up with my regular quota of Gtalk"ing" and Orkut"ing".
- I missed the complete Asia Cricket Cup and also the India Sri-Lanka test match !!
- I was not able to communicate (in detail) with friends and relatives via mails / phone calls.
- I saw only 2 movies since I came to Hyderabad... :(
- Forget computer games... I don't yet own a laptop yet...
- I have not yet taken any pics of my workplace, Oracle or Hyderabad. Will be doing it today.
- I hardly got time to read news paper in the morning.It was rush rush for training everyday and in the night we slept late. These people who stay with me are night hawks !!
- I could finish up reading only one book in the entire month...
- We didn't spend much time shopping (now my new economical state played a role in that too...)
- and lots more for sure.

But come August '09 and things will change. A new era will begin. I might post a few more blogs to this infinitely expanding blogosphere and bore my readers even more. and amen to that [:D] !!

And before we depart, let me tell you. Batman - The Dark Knight is the most awesome superhero movie, in fact the most awesome movie ever made !! More on that in the next post...

If you wanna squabble or complain like me about how not to be busy, then please Click here and offer your feedback.

Home Sweet Home

2008-06-20T23:47:00.005+05:30

"Home! Sweet Home!" (also known as "Home, Sweet Home") is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. Adapted from the 1823 opera "Clari, Maid of Milan", the song's melody was composed by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop with lyrics by American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne. Key phrases from the song have been a cultural staple for several generations. The opening lines of the song have become very famous, worldwide. There is also another version of this song, sung by the Motley Crew, but I like the traditional version more. It's true after all that "Old is Gold". If you want to hear the melody tune for the song, it is available at the end of the lyrics. Before you sing the song posted below, in the end, I must say "There (really) is no place like home". Adios Nagpur... See ya soon !!

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain;
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!
The birds singing gayly, that come at my call --
Give me them -- and the peace of mind, dearer than all!
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!

I gaze on the moon as I tread the drear wild,
And feel that my mother now thinks of her child,
As she looks on that moon from our own cottage door
Thro' the woodbine, whose fragrance shall cheer me no more.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!

How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile,
And the caress of a mother to soothe and beguile!
Let others delight mid new pleasures to roam,
But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of home.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!

To thee I'll return, overburdened with care;
The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there;
No more from that cottage again will I roam;
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
Home, home, sweet, sweet, home!
There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!

by John Howard Payne

Click here to download the tune for "Home Sweet Home"

Crazy Engineers.com interviews Suyash Joshi

2008-06-18T16:25:00.008+05:30

If you are an Engineer (by profession or by thought, inclination, aptitude etc) and still haven't heard of Crazy Engineers, you are surely missing something great. You can read more about the same from this earlier blog post of mine. Since I had nothing to post today, I felt like blowing my own trumpet for a while. (If you are thinking whats new in that, then maybe you are at loss... hehe) Anyways, instead of gloating over my likes and dislikes like I've done in my Orkut profile, I will only like you to kindly read my interview taken by CE which was a really good one. Hopefully, it covers almost everything you need to know more about me. It will be even great if you read the interview directly on the website, which will surely have you hooked on, since it is a vast resource of informative reading and knowledge storehouse!!

CEans, We all know CEan Suyash through his posts on CE Forums. CEan - Patty aka Prateek got in touch with Suyash and grilled him for "Know your CEan": Suyash, first of all, congratulations on completing your B.Tech. You have been an active member of CE for quite a time now. We would like to learn more about you for the benefit of the future generations of CE (and for the present too!) -

Q. What are your most memorable experiences in college?

Suyash: VNIT (Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology) has indeed been a great chapter in my life which has made me what I am today and I will continue to draw inspiration from the various events that occurred with me during the wonderful four years spent here. Amongst the most unforgettable experiences in college, I can list quite a few of them: hanging out with my friends, eleventh hour exam preparations and spending quality time to continuously upgrade my technological knowhow... and of course campus placements also have been an exciting phase in the final year !!

Q. Tell us something about your Engineering Trade i.e. Metallurgy and Material Science.
Suyash: Metallurgy and Materials Science Engineering (MME) has always bought me mixed feelings (mainly due to the highly theoretical approach in some courses and some of the really advanced modern applications of the others). Nanotechnology, which will definitely be at the core of the things to come in future, promises scientific breakthroughs never imagined before. Selection of Materials has never been so crucial before, given the stringent requirements based on modern applications. My final year engineering project too gave me a very critical insight into Materials Science and it will be really great if aspiring graduates turn up their sleeves for research and development in this field.

Q. How have you planned your future now that your graduation is over?

Suyash: Despite my engineering trade, I've always found myself fascinated with the world of Computers and programming in general (which can be associated to my penchant of playing games from a young age). As a result, after being placed in Oracle India Pvt. Ltd via the campus placements, I'll be looking forward to enhance the technical skills that I learnt during my engineering curriculum to the fullest extent. I've planned to complete an MBA program affiliated with Software Enterprise Management and then return back to IT industry. Ultimately, it would be dream come true if I could be a part of an organization which deals with high end gaming development for the PC platform!

Q. Tell us about your extra curricular activities in college.

Suyash: VNIT provided me a plethora of activities to indulge into and they have been a really great source of entertainment, learning centers as well as a pathway to let the academics heat out. I have been involved in managing and organizing of Aarohi - Cultural Festival (coordinator Quiz), Axis - Technical Festival (Manager - Lan Gaming Contest) as well as being part of the college Cricket team. Besides these, I am also involved in participation of quizzes, programming contests etc.

Q. When not studying, how does Suyash Joshi kill time?

Suyash: When I am not studying (which occupies the larger section of my 24 hours) I indulge myself with reading books ranging from fictional to biographical and other great works. I also heavily pass time by playing games on my PC, which I upgraded recently to give a performance boost. But Crysis still demands more juice out of my gaming rig L. Other than that recently I've developed a keen liking for solving puzzles (began during campus placements) and of course CE and other such great sites ensure that I never get bored. Watching movies and playing Cricket with friends ensures that not a single day of my life can be labeled as a boring one :)

Q. You ask(ed) people (your friends) to subscribe to your blog (Time of your life - Suyash Joshi). Why do you think people should read your blog & what makes you think that you are maverick - blogger?

Suyash: Ahem... I knew this one was coming [:D] . I think that in my blog I post articles based on absolutely anything, from my personal idiosyncrasies to diverse topics like sports, entertainment, computers and gaming, jokes and whacky ideas. Given the range of the crap that I post, I feel that my blog is an entertaining read for most of the people (my friends [:D] ) and hence the title "Maverick" - since I am someone who feels it's necessary to exhibit great independence in thoughts and actions. I ask(ed) people to subscribe to my blog via email so that they don't have to check my blog every now and then for a new post. Though, these days, services like Google reader serve the purpose very well, but still I feel email subscription is one of the best ways to keep your readership alive and kicking. Anyways, there is always an option of unsubscribing at a later date.

Okay here is a Rapid Question Round

Q. What do like the most about CE?

Suyash: CE - the conglomeration of crazy engineers from around the globe, gives me an opportunity to interact with some of the great brains of the world, to share ideas and actively participate in some really interesting chats about the latest path breaking technologies, scientific discussions and lets me have real fun, and most importantly, is one of the best platforms for an engineer to be himself.

Q. One thing you don't like about CE?

Suyash: Not much really. But it would be great if we can have a better participation from the elder generation of engineers (Since I feel that the majority of members on CE are youngsters like me or just about to be engineers). Having a record of the experience and wisdom of the tried and tested hands is always beneficial whenever you try to innovate or create something. But I'm sure, with the given track record, the average age of CEan's is definitely going soar real high in a matter of time.

Q. Name three CEans that you would like to meet in person

Suyash: Since I've already met Big K in my college, I feel it would be great if I get an opportunity to meet Kidakaka (hopefully in Hyderabad in the latter half of 2008), Maro (don't know when the trip to Egypt will materialize, at least in the near future) and Mahul (I'm still yet to complete the NFS MW Challenge Series dude, stuck on #61)

Q. Describe yourself in 1 word

Suyash: Maverick

Q. If not an Engineer then....

Suyash: I always wanted to be in the Indian Air Force, but certain unfortunate events made it sure that I became an engineer instead. In foresight, not a bad alternative career though.

Q. Your best achievement till date

Suyash: Campus Placement in Oracle India Pvt. Ltd.

Q. Your most embarrassing moment

Suyash: Scoring negative marks in Data Interpretation in one of the Mock CAT (Common Admission Test). That was a rare blunder though, which only happens when you give an exam in a sleepy state.

Q. One thing you would like to change about yourself

Suyash: It seems that the world wants me to be less impulsive in doing things the haphazard way, to think for a moment more before taking that last step, since I believe in the "never-fret-about-anything-ever" policy. Of course, I'm still trying to work on it.

Q. One thing you wish you would have invented or discovered

Suyash: It would be great, (and it's high time) if someone works with me to find a shielding material for the obstruction of disasters caused by nuclear radiations emitted by atomic bombs.

Q. Suyash is a Crazy Engineer because:

Suyash: There's no point in living life the ordinary way. And to obtain extra ordinary results, you have to be crazy enough to venture into that unexplored territory. Believe me, it's really a wonderful combo to be an engineer and be crazy to think about seemingly impossible ideas and to actually put them into action.

Patty: It was a pleasure talking to you and getting to know you better. Have a nice day and a great life ahead. And enjoy your vacations.
Suyash: Thanks for providing me space in "Know your CEan" section on CE. It's been a real pleasure to be a part of CE.

Do enter your comments and feedback (and doubts, if any, of course) by clicking here.

Con Jargon

2008-06-17T17:36:00.002+05:30

If you liked the article about the TV Series "Hustle" (to read it, click Here) and yourself enjoy the same, here's more food (?) for thought. Some of the people who have seen it complained that there are many "keywords" used in the grifter lingo, that they weren't able to comprehend. For eg: Do you know what "a mark" is? What would you do with a "cackle-bladder"? Don't be depressed, reader. The official BBC site has a solution which I will be shamelessly posting here, only for the benefit of the less privileged. Without any hurry, be ready to get the low-down on the world of the con and the jargon used in Hustle. Hope you enjoy the list and it adds to your vocabulary!!

# 'The mark' is the intended victim of the planned con.

# A 'short con' refers to taking 'the mark' for all the money he has on his person. It's an opportunist scam that isn't pre-planned to any great deal.

# A 'long con' or 'big con' refers to a more complex, planned con, whereby 'the mark' is sent to get more money or used to get more money than is just on his person.

# 'Putting him on the send' is another term for a 'long con' or 'big con'.

# The 'big con' is a form of theatre - "staged with minute naturalistic illusionism for an audience of one who is enlisted as part of the cast".

# 'A mark' is lured in by the conman by, in the first instance, by making money himself on one of their scams. Having gained 'the mark's' trust, the conmen 'sting' him for a load of money.

# There are two types of con settings, real life (ie. restaurants and hotel rooms) and 'The Big Store', where empty offices are rigged out to look like a real life setting.

# 'The Roper' is the 'Outsideman' - the man who identifies with 'the mark' (the victim) and gains their confidence.

# 'The Insideman' is the key player, the member of the con mob who stays near the 'big store' and receives 'the mark' (the victim) whom 'The Roper' brings.

# 'The Manager' manages the outfit and is often the bookmaker for the group.

# 'Extras' are unemployed conmen playing the role of extras in the con.

# 'Putting up the mark' refers to the process of locating a well-to-do victim.

# 'Playing the con for him' refers to gaining the victim's confidence.

# 'Roping the Mark' refers to steering him to meet the 'insideman' who will eventually fleece him.

# 'Giving him the convincer' refers to the process of allowing the victim to make a substantial profit on the first scam, thereby gaining his trust.

# 'Blowing him off' refers to the process of getting the victim out of the way as quickly as possible.

# 'Putting the fix' refers to forestalling action by the Law.

# 'Playing a man against the wall' refers to conning a man in a real setting, eg. a hotel room.

# 'Cackle-bladder' is a method of faking the death of one of the conmen. It involves filling a small receptacle with chicken blood which the conman conceals on his person for the fake gunshot.

# If 'the mark' 'beefs' then he's gone to the Police to grass up the conmen.

# 'The Fix' refers to the cooperation bought from the Police. A Fixer usually has political connections and is paid off by the conmen for fixing people in the banks, police, and the courts. Most con mobs can't exist without 'Fixers'.

It would be wrong on my part if I don't mention the actors who make up the best Grifter crew ever seen in the world at this juncture, since Hustle won't have come so far (not forgetting the writers, of course)...

The Legendary "Mickey Bricks" a.k.a. Micheal Stone played by Adrian Lester - He is the Leader and the Inside Man.
"Alby" a.k.a Albert Stroller played by Robert Vaughn - He is the Roper.
Ash "three socks" Morgan played by Robert Glenister - He is the Fixer.
"Stacie Monroe" played by Jaime Murray - She is the Lure.
"Dannie Blue" played by Marc Warren - He is the Inside Man and the Floater.
"Billy Bond" played by Ashley Walters - He is the Rookie.

If you have anything else to add to the list, feel free to do so. Click here to comment, add or to notify any correction with respect to the above data. And beware, don't ever be greedy and dishonest, you never know when somebody cons you !!

Super Sunday

2008-06-16T23:41:00.003+05:30

I came to Nagpur when I was about 6 years old or maybe just short of that. I can say that with total confidence because I had completed pre-primary education in Chandrapur till KG-I (that's kindergarten stage 1 (?) for those who missed it from their life) and I hadn't flunked even once before that. Anyways, the point behind all this crap is that now I'm 22 years old and that means I've spent more than 70% of my life span in the Orange City - Nagpur. It's only today, when there are just 5 days left for me to leave this beautiful city for another, that I have begun to appreciate my life here in my home city. As you all know (and damn you if you dont...hehe) I'll be leaving for Hyderabad soon to begin a new phase of my life. Must admit here, that this time which lies between post-engineering and pre-joining your workplace, is simply the best time of your life. And it was on 15th June, 2008 that I spent one of the coolest day ever with my family and friends, one which falls under that ideal day category and hence has been christened as "Super Sunday" by me...

Being an Engineer, generally I like to be technically correct. So this Super Sunday of mine begins at 12 noon. I wasn't asleep then, of course, but was busy surfing the net for some useful stuff (really, believe me), while simultaneously chatting up with night hawks like me on Google talk. Later on, just before sleeping I saw another great episode of a TV show called "Numb3rs" on my computer and then went to sleep when BSNL's free downloading zone (2 AM, IST) was initialized.

I woke up at 8 AM, to the loud voice of some irritating cartoon of "Shin Chan" being watched by my 16 year old brother... of course watching cartoons is not at all a bad thing, but I prefer the subtle ones like "Tom and Jerry" and "Batman" etc. After going through the newspapers (mainly the sports pages) I got a call from my cousin brother for playing Cricket with his friends!! Since I had been deprived of the fantastic sport from quite a few days, I decided to grab the opportunity hands on with no delay. But alas, I had to quickly devour a tasty break fast of hot and fresh "Idli Sambhar"... now delicious food and cricket always need to be adjusted delicately in balance, since neither of them can be compromised for the other. After a rather dismal performance on the field that day and saying Adios to fellow cricketers (since I won't be coming next weekend) I came back to home to find another surprise. My mother had prepared a great home made "Tomato Soup" for starters and "Palak Paneer" for the lunch and now did I realize why all the hustle and bustle that was going around during all the morning. On inquiring if I was missing something, my father told me that since it was the last Sunday that I was going to spend in Nagpur before leaving for Hyderabad, all of them wanted to make it a special sunday... and boy, the splendor of the day exceeded by leaps and bounds even beyond my own expectations !!

After eating to my heart's content, I settled down lazily in front of the TV to find my all time favorite movie "Swades" and decided to watch it again, if I am not wrong, for the eleventh time!! My father gave me company while shuffling between news papers, my mother took a deserving nap and my brother ran off to some friend's home to do something else. When the movie finished at 4 PM, I spent the next hour reading the book "The World is Flat" which I am trying to finish from the last two weeks. Not that it's bad, but it has many pages and a very small font...hehe... As if the special treatment so far was not enough, my mother offered me with another delicacy for evening snacks known as "Shankar Pale" (which by a definition given by my friend Kartik is - square shaped sweet flat cookies made out of wheat) which were gobbled up by everyone with tea/ coffee almost instantly.

Later on in the evening Pravin came to my home and we went to Chaitanya's place to see him off, since he would be going to Mumbai for his visa interview and we won't be meeting for quite a time. So we spent some quality time at his home (?) watching tv and discussing national and socio-political issues :) and culminated the meet with a hurried up gathering at a nearby food joint for one last "Kulfi" (flavoured frozen milk wrapped around a wooden stick) or cottage ice cream (this one from Ameya) and later we went home. That was because, my uncle and aunty wanted to treat me for the same reason which was responsible for most of the events on that day. And on top of that, I also got to take the family car for a long drive and the experience behind the wheel was a good one. The dinner was absolutely smashing which comprised of the conventional Suyash Joshi favorites - "Crispy Veg" as Starters along with, you guessed it right, "Cream of Tomato Soup" followed by the all time "Paneer Butter Masala" and "Aloo Mutter" along with a helping of "Steamed Rice" and "Dal Fry". What more does a man need, other than such feasts and a great happy family to chat up with !! The day began at 12 AM so when it ended, at midnight, at that moment I was busy enjoying the Matt Damon starrer and Oscar winner "Good Will Hunting" on my computer. Great movie indeed.

Later on that night, I really felt that it had really been a "Super Special Sunday" for me, as my father had remarked earlier. After all, who gets to have his cake and eat it too? If destiny permits, I would like to live my life this very same day - get up late, play cricket, eat tasty home made food, spend great time with friends and family and watch movies and read good books !! Alas, all this is going to change soon. I, suddenly, had this sinking feeling in my mind, that the world should go static, as in not in the literal sense, but everyone must remain of the same age as they are right now. No more growing up. That way, my loving parents never get old and I always get to spend this carefree life that I've taken for granted for so many years. But as Uncle Ben says, "With growing powers, come greater responsibilities" I must get ready to tackle this new phase of life with courage and common sense. However, life would have been good if I had got a job here at Nagpur only. Am I feeling homesick already?? None the less, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family and friends for this Super Sunday !! Simply loved it... :) I can assure you, there will be many more like these in future for sure.

Hustle - The CON is ON !!

2008-06-13T11:44:00.005+05:30

Previously on Time of your life : You read about Suyash's favorite game on PC i.e. the Need for Speed: Most Wanted. In this episode, err, in this blog post, you will read about my favorite TV show: Hustle. But a bit of flash back before I begin raving about Hustle. You can read about some other tv shows (American, mostly) which caught my eye while I was "busy" completing my engineering. But this one is different. First and foremost, its a British Series. And the next highlighting point is, its the only series which is a really good blend of brilliant direction, awesome acting powerhouses and unbelievable support from the background staff (writers, cinematographers etc). And its highly addictive for those who get a kick out of making a fool of others with a simultaneous application of unparalleled wit and intelligence. As Morpheus (from Matrix, the movie) says, "You gotta see it, to believe it". Get ready to be Hustled !!

Here's a compressed summary of what Hustle is all about (compiled from wiki and popular tv websites) : This is a story of a group of elite con artists, who each week pull off a complicated scam with several twists. A slick and stylish drama, Hustle is an action-packed blend of humour and intrigue, following the fortunes of a gang of expert cons on the loose in London. They are specialists in the way of the grifter and all are keen to liberate cash from the amoral and undeserving. From faking film sets and expensive paintings to double-crossing the duplicitous head of a bank's security system... they can pull off absolutely anything. Despite their chosen trade, they adhere to codes such as "bad behaviour breeds bad luck" and actually follow some rules that they've chalked out for themselves. Read carefully, for these are the rules of con:

You Can't Con An Honest Man - because an honest man doesn't want something for nothing.
Feed The Greed - the greedier the victim, the more the extraction.
Always Give The Mark An Out - part of the "convincer", just in case the "mark" feels something is fishy.
Never Give A Sucker An Even Break - hehe :)
"It's All In The Detail" - The great "Mickey Bricks" (you, always, must have a plan B)
Don't Have Anything In Your Life You Can't Walk Away From In A Second
Always Look Out For Number One
It's Not Just About The Money - And that's one thing that makes these grifters stand apart from the rest...

Each episode amounts to a confidence game played upon the viewers through the use of misdirection and hidden plot details that are revealed at the end of the story, only to leave you flabbergasted !! In addition to one long con, each episode features a number of short cons played by the major characters on members of the public. The short cons demonstrate the seemingly endless array of tricks professional con men possess and the ease with which short cons can be played. Not all cons depicted are successful, and some episodes focus on the characters dealing with the consequences of their actions. However, even if a con does fail, the characters usually come out on top in some way or other. It helps to illustrate why the life of a grifter isn’t as much fun as it may seem – it can undermine a person’s ability to ever lead a normal life.

All right, one will say, "what's the big deal? I've seen so many movies/series about confidence tricksters/ con artistes / con men that I know every damn trick out there." But Hustle has tons of surprises in store for you, in each of the episodes, which really stand out from the crowd. Hat's off to BBC for thinking of such "ethical grifters", who have this awesome gift of thinking on their feet in crunch situations, helping each other like family members (and thats the fundamaental difference betwwen them and the other crews, which are just crews" - as aptly quoted by Ash Morgan.) They exhibit superb team work who in the end have a joyous laugh on achieving yet another scoop of the richie block. I, like millions other fans of Hustle, like the concept because each story actually reflects the hard work put in by the script writers and the amazing detail level thought process which has been underway by the production crew. Since the characters have some moral obligations to follow, they are not really criminals, thus making them even more lovable, in addition to their spectacular prowess of pulling off each con with meticulous precision. These grifters do not resort to violence, or "force" to achieve their goals, instead it all depends on a really smooth plan. Add the humour element, a bit of dramatics, the Sherlock Holmes type suspense at the end and you have a perfect potboiler which keeps you grillled to your seat for an hour, and after 58 minutes, leaves you panting for more !!

If you haven't seen Hustle yet, you are certainly missing something. There have been 4 season's so far (each comprising of 6 episodes) and it's currently on a break now. Let's hope that the 5th season rolls out real soon with Adrian Lester back in action. Click here to post your comments about Hustle - because the CON is ON !!

Need for Speed Most Wanted

2008-06-07T19:38:00.027+05:30

Let me admit it first and foremost to everyone in this world, at least to those who aren't yet acquainted to me. I suffer from a compulsive disorder of gaming obsession. CDGO - That's a term coined by me, and is characterized by an excessive desire to try out on each and every genre of games on different platforms and never leaving it till you complete it. Next - hop on to another one. So far, I've played lots of games, but the one that will always stand out, rest games not the least neglected - Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Black Edition v1.3). Those who have completed the game 100% (career and challenge series) will agree that this is, unarguably, the best addictive car racing in the whole world, literally!!

Amongst all the games, racing genre has always had me hooked up the most, since its something that I can't do in real life. Driving at breakneck speed, at least in India, is strictly forbidden. Maybe, Autobahn, but next time... Initially, (before Y2K) it was Road Rash, and then I graduated to the marvelous creation of EA games (and thank you guys, you rock !!) - the NFS or Need for Speed series. NFS MW was the 9th glorious edition, and the improvements and hard work put in the series speaks volumes of itself by the sheer amount of amazing graphics, awesome gameplay, superb car dynamics and mind blowing physics engine along with the unbelievable engine sounds !! Add to it, a nerve wrenching story line packed with illegal street racing and cop chases and throw in a pretty girl, you have the best entertainment package at your fingertips.

According to Gamespot review, NFS MW follows the highly successful Underground series, and brings all the action to daylight and takes it to an even greater height. The actual racing hasn't changed too much, but the ever-present police make this game a whole lot more interesting. The game's career mode starts out with a hilarious bang. You take on the role of a nameless, faceless new racer attempting to hit the scene in the beautiful but shady city of Rockport. An underground ranking known as the Blacklist governs who can race who, and when. You almost immediately run into a punk named Razor, who's definitely the sort of dude that lives his life a quarter-mile at a time. He's at the bottom of the list, but a few races later, he's sabotaged your ride and has won it from you in a race. Meanwhile, you're carted off to jail. Left with nothing but some mysterious help from a stranger named Mia (played by the sexy Josie Maran, who sizzles your screen in many of the cutscenes), your task is to get back in the race game to work your way to the top of the Blacklist, which is now topped by Razor, who's using your old car to wipe out the competition.

The game actually has a great story hook at the beginning that makes you want to see the career mode through to completion. You'll have to see the story through to find out where everyone's allegiances lie. Working your way up the Blacklist is a multistep progress. Before you can challenge the next Blacklist racer, you have to satisfy a list of requirements. You'll have to win a set number of race events. And you'll have to reach a set number of pursuit milestones and earn enough bounty by riling up the police. The cops hate street racers and will give chase when they see you rolling around the open city.

Running from the cops is the best action the game has to offer. Chases usually start with just one car on your tail. But as you resist, you might find 20 cars giving chase, in addition to a chopper flying overhead. Losing the cops gets tougher as your heat level rises. Level one heat results in the appearance of just your standard squad cars. But by the time you get up to level five, you'll be dealing with roadblocks, spike strips, helicopters, and federal-driven Corvettes (and they are really wicked, believe me !!).

There's also a lot of racing in Most Wanted's career mode--almost too much, in fact. You'll engage in multilap circuit races, point-A-to-point-B sprint races, drag racing, checkpoint-driven tollbooth races, and speed trap, where the winner is the player that accumulates the most speed while passing by a handful of radar cameras spread throughout the track. The game has more than 30 licensed cars that you'll be able to purchase or win from other racers. We start out with a pretty weak Chevy Cobalt, but eventually we pick up a much faster Supra, a new Covette C6, and so on. You can also find the Ford GT, a Ford Mustang GT, and other cars from BMW, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Lotus, and more. Lamborghini Gallardo is my personal favorite, and I'm dying to own one some day !! You'll buy your first car, but as you move through the Blacklist, you'll get a shot at the pink slip of the other racer, letting you ease right into the driver's seat of a new, tuned vehicle. Buying them from scratch means you'll have to apply enhancements yourself. You can buy a lot of different performance gear and a ton of visual stuff, like body kits, spoilers, vinyls, and so on. Applying visual upgrades lowers your heat level, making them pretty useful once the cops take notice of your faster cars.

Aside from the career mode, there's also a challenge series that gives you a car and a specific goal. Race goals are fairly easy to understand, but the pursuit challenges ask you to achieve specific milestones, like blasting through five roadblocks or racking up a specific amount of property damage. You can also just dive into quick races, or take it online.

Graphically, the game looks great, overall. Actually speaking, the sleek car designs look quite exquisite set in the greatly architectured city of Rockport and its suburbs, which are really great to explore. On the sound side, the game has outstanding engine noises that change depending on which car you're in and which upgrades you have. The rest of the sound effects are also of excellent quality. The music included is the standard mix of rock and hip-hop you've come to expect from EA's games, including a few songs from Styles of Beyond.

Do write about what you feel about this legendary game, which I feel is even better as compared to its successors like Carbon and Pro-Street. Click here to enter about your experience with this Most Wanted game !!

B.Tech. today... Engineer for Life !!

2008-05-03T00:41:00.025+05:30

Hello everyone, as you can see from the title, its finally done. Yes, I don't know how it will change the world around you, but this day, will remain forever in my memories as one of the great days which you share with your grand children while sipping hot coffee in a comfy rock chair! Of course, there have been other such magical moments earlier too, when I felt really proud (Click here), and there will be others as well (Click here, in future), but this will forever be one of the greatest ever.

Anyways, to come to the point straight away, let me first create the exact scenario. It was roughly 12:25 PM on 1st May, 2008 and the sound boomed loud and clear in my ears, "5 minutes remaining (and enter your roll no and tie your supplements, as if I ever use one !!)." It was then, that I gave up. I turned around carefully, to see my colleague scribbling something forcibly in his answer book and when I finally got "the moment" to speak to him, "Hey, please tell me the answer for the 4th and the 5th... and the... ahem... 6th fill-in-the-blank fast dude!!". The dude looked petty disturbed at this sudden late interjection of mine, which kind of obstructed the smooth flow with which he was drawing a diagram. After he kindly objected to my demand, thanking him dutifully, I later found out that I had not attempted one small question, which was placed as if it was some "conditions apply" type thing they have in the ads. As I frantically began to pen it down, the clock struck 12:30 PM (IST), and the examiner snatched my answer sheet from my desperate attempts to finish that one last answer !! After cursing him soundly along with my bad luck, I finally knew this, ultimately, was the end. After all, as Neo says, everything which has a beginning (16th August, 2004) has an end (1st May, 2008). And this was the way my stint as an Engineer in Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur (also sweetly referred as VNIT, in the local circles) was put to a grinding halt.

Soon, as the dust settled (i.e. when the examiners left the hall) all of us fellow warriors leapt out with a jubilant cry of victory. Yes... this was the class of '08 , which just had just finished with Metallurgical and Materials Engineering on an all time high... !! Some of the people hugged each other with delight, while others gave a thundering Hi-five; some of them laughed like monsters and some even had tears of nostalgia. Most of us had felt greatly relieved as the exam had ended while simultaneously knowing the fact that we are going to see very little of each other after this day. Truly, this bunch of 40 people, coming from different parts of the country, had become really one big ensemble of awesome friends and legendary memories shared in VNIT, which was going to be missed big time hereon. As everyone gushed with each other about how happy everyone was, there indeed was a feeling of void, as to how life will shape out for each of us ahead. With mixed feelings of joy and sadness, everyone spent this day like none other.

How I spent the rest of the day? In the aftermath of this event, we later went to a really expensive restaurant that day (out of sheer compulsion, since it was a local holiday that day) and ate to our hearts fill. Then most of us slept in the afternoon (to complete the sleep deprivation caused due to the night out yesterday, instead of the earlier thought of plan of watching the latest movie) and in the evening it was time to celebrate the euphoria again along with other batch mates!! The feeling that my family too was proud of me for the completion of B.Tech. gave me tremendous happiness which I will cherish forever. After all, this won't have been possible without their constant support, motivation and encouragement !!

It's indeed been my privilege to be graduating from such a prestigious institute, due to which, most of us have achieved what we have so far. Some of us have bagged great jobs; some have humbled the exams like GATE and CAT and GRE (the list is countless...) to continue with further education; while some have plans to become entrepreneurs !! Talent overflows like a tsunami here and I am grateful that I got to rub my shoulders with it. As someone said, "God Created the World. Engineers Created the Rest." And all of us, intend to add value to this statement, by contributing, in every possible measure by the application of the knowledge earned here. After all, in spite of the type of career or life style one chooses, once an Engineer, always an Engineer !! I'll be looking forward to joining my work place 2 months later in Hyderabad, but till then, I will ensure that these days, which shall never come back, are spent so that there are no regrets in future. The wheels of fate and destiny are now smoothly placed in motion and the steering wheel is in our hands to choose the freeway of our life to reach the destination. Here's congratulating the class of '08 once again, for achieving brilliantly, what we set out for 4 years ago and wishing all of us the really best in future!!

Adios VNIT !! I will miss you... [:(]

For posting your comments, views and sharing similar experiences, please click Here.

The most motivational video ever !!

2008-04-29T13:48:00.005+05:30

I am just a paper away from completing my engineering final exams, and during this troubled times of the year, I always surf the internet for some cool stuff to get my mind off the boring world of metals and materials (just a personal opinion, no offense meant to great researchers in the field). And on youtube, keying the words "motivational" (since thats the prime important thing, which people like me, who begin to study at the eleventh hour need :-) ), I found this video which has really inspired me... like anything... Seems like everyone must watch it at least once. What are you waiting for? Click the "play" button now !!

Its about What a man can do and and there is nothing called impossible in this world... Truly awesome stuff... Though the video seems to be an Indianised version of the original, it has many global facets as well. Enjoy watching the video !!

The song is "Ameno" by Era Group. And don't bother to look for translation. The song is just a collection of myriad sounds from a modified Latin format. Hope you liked it. Somehow one gets a feeling its been funded by Apple, but what the heck, its good anyway. Please do comment, which was "the" moment that touched your heart most in the video !! (for me, it was Gandhiji lifting the pinch of salt... quite a revolutionary moment which laid the foundations of not obeying the Imperial Rule).

Click here to post your views and comments. And don't quit because you think something is impossible !!

Restriction of number of foreign players in IPL teams...

2008-04-25T01:51:00.004+05:30

Yesterday, me and a friend of mine has a long and idealistic discussion about whether the restriction of the no of foreign players (currently 4) in the IPL (Indian Premier League) teams is justified or not.

While he was of the view that it gives a wider scope for Indian youngsters to play alongside other talented players from around the globe, I am of the opinion that since IPL is more about the global format of Cricket and not just a launch pad for selection of Indian national team and development of youth as it is perceived. Hence, I feel that the best possible playing 11 should be played, which is more healthy for the game and it will lead to an even more improvement in the skill level of the Indian players, since then, they will have to actually fight for their place in the team which will ultimately lead to an ever increasing talent pool... (and avoid the stagnancy created by the fact that an average player takes his position in the team for granted)

In fact, when it comes to national matches, such a player will be in a better position to compete against the foreigners, since he has actually proved his mettle against the same player in IPL and was not in the playing 11 because of some restriction...

Compare IPL with EPL (yes, soccer...) and you will know that EPL, despite being the largest contributing factor for the development of English soccer, has teams like Arsenal which, at one time played 11 French guys...

This system of restriction of foreign players to 4 simply beats me, since it doesn't let the best 11 on field and thus leads to wastage of talent literally warming the bench... For ex: Scott Styris, Hershelle Gibbs have to sit out from Deccan Chargers game, while they lose against other teams!!

On the other hand, the counter argument is that if there is no such restriction, an IPL team will play only the foreign players (if it has 11), and it wont lead to any scope for Indian youth to show their talent, but at least that will provide an opportunity for development of Indian Cricket at grass root level...

Calling all cricket aficionados to please post your comments, views and issues on this burning topic by clicking HERE.

IPL and Engineering Exams... HELP me !!

2008-04-23T23:01:00.012+05:30

Tomorrow (24th April, 2008) is my first paper of Financial Engineering (End Semester), and I'm watching a cracker of a match between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians while shuffling through zerox pages of some numericals book related to the elective subject mentioned above...

Please do vote in this poll and make the world a better place to live... hehe...

I'm supposed to be engaged in the FINAL 8th Sem. Engg Exams but Indian Premier League has got me hooked up big time... ( surveys)

Please refer your friends, relatives and unknown personalities that you encounter and redirect them to this page to save me from this confusion...
and by the way this poll closes on 1st May, 2008, So HURRY !!

P.S.: Please click here if you can't see the poll. Thanks.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

2008-04-09T23:55:00.004+05:30

I hope that along with changing the look of my blog (the theme remains the same - "stretch" - so as to accommodate maximum text in a line - so as to decrease the vertical height of the posts), there must be something special for this post. Hence, I would like to share with you a really special speech, which might be the first one I have heard without yawning and with rapt attention. Because it came from the legendary Steve Jobs, who has been the brains behind the likes of Apple and Pixar, which have pioneered innovative brilliance beyond all boundaries.

Just do yourselves and your life a favour by listening to the whole speech carefully, since such words of wisdom are rare to find. The ultimate message is delivered in the end, but for grabbing the essence of the whole talk, its imperative you listen the whole thing. Watch it and have the time of your life...

By the way, this was delivered at the Commencement of the 2005 academic session at Stanford University by Steve Jobs and is today regarded as one of the best speeches in the world. Just 3 simple stories... what a way to deliver a great punch !!

Some of the key highlights, which will make a big deal of difference in your life (I'm positive !!)

----> You can't connect the dots of your life looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots (events) will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach will never let you down, and it will make all the difference in your life.

----> Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

---->No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

----> Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Simply awesome, what do you have to say? Click here to share your views.

A little Math never hurt anyone...

2008-04-09T10:20:00.005+05:30

Hello everyone, I am just on the verge of finishing my engineering degree, but before that I'm really being wrecked by my final year project, but more on that later. In order to do some stress relieving, my favorite time pass has always been reading jokes. I feel things which tickle your funny bone really get you going for the next big task of the day. Now since I am not quite getting the time to blog about anything, I felt a compulsive and obsessive urge to share this great one with you. Official Disclaimer : You need to have a certain degree of mathematical sense of humour to understand the moral of humility behind the following story... hehe... Read on.

The cocky exponential function e^x is strolling along the road insulting the functions he sees walking by. He scoffs at a wandering polynomial for the shortness of its Taylor series. He snickers at a passing smooth function of compact support and its glaring lack of a convergent power series about many of its points. He positively laughs as he passes |x| for being non differentiable at the origin. He smiles, thinking to himself, "Damn, it's great to be e^x. I'm real analytic everywhere. I'm my own derivative. I blow up faster than anybody and shrink faster too. All the other functions suck."

Lost in his own egomania, he collides with the constant function 3, who is running in terror in the opposite direction.

"What's wrong with you? Why don't you look where you're going?" demands e^x. He then sees the fear in 3's eyes and says "You look terrified!"

"I am!" says the panicky 3. "There's a differential operator just around the corner. If he differentiates me, I'll be reduced to nothing! I've got to get away!" With that, 3 continues to dash off.

"Stupid constant," thinks e^x. "I've got nothing to fear from a differential operator. He can keep differentiating me as long as he wants, and I'll still be there."

So he scouts off to find the operator and gloat in his smooth glory. He rounds the corner and defiantly introduces himself to the operator. "Hi. I'm e^x."

"Hi. I'm d/dy."

If you are not rolling on floor with laughter, never mind, as the title says, a little math never hurt anyone. But even if you are a yet-to-pass-10th-class person stumbling up here, you can ask for explanation by writing a comment here. Just kidding. Have fun.

Social Networking : Who's better than the rest?

2008-03-20T00:12:00.006+05:30

After a long hiatus in my stint as a blogger, I am glad to announce that I'm BACK !! (well, not in the true sense though), since this is yet another edition of guest blogging. I'm privileged here to announce that my friend and fellow blogger, Ameya Khandekar, who is a great visionary and a GRE topper and always busy in thinking about whacky ideas, helped my blog to get rid of its hibernation by following up something that I was thinking upon a long time back. You will read that later. But, first of all, let me clarify that the views expressed below belong to the guest blogger and bear no resemblance to what I think or feel about the topic. Hence, if any of the mega corporates who feel annoyed by this post you can sue him directly. Or better still, you can visit his blog, but, after reading this article. Read on to get to know more about SNwS or Social Networking webSites.

-Suyash Joshi

Ameya Khandekar writes,

I and Suyash began blogging at around the same time,but it is indisputable as to, whose blog is popular. This blog has become so professional, that guest blogging is being introduced here. I feel privileged to be amongst the first ones to "guest-blog" here. Is the owner of the blog trying to pull a local Microsoft, by getting involved in such pseudo - acquisitions ??? Only time will tell.

Anyways, Suyash asked me to draw comparisons on Orkut and Facebook. He has the impression that I am well equipped to do so, since I while away my time on such social networking sites more than others. But let me make it very clear at the beginning, that I am able to comment on this subject because my visionary insight allows me to make astute observations in less time. So, my account follows :-

I didn't make much use of the internet before 2004 owing to slow speeds. I began using it in 2004 which, interestingly, is also the year of the launch of GMail, Orkut, Facebook etc. But these things were yet to become "hip" in India. I remember how one's mailbox would be full of "forwarded" emails most of them harboring photoshop edited images which are supposed to make you laugh. Those were also the days of IMs which were a pleasant change over stupid chat rooms (strangers with faked up ids).

The internet before 2004 wasn't tapped of it's abilities fully. They say Orkut and Facebook are part of WEB 2.0 - a technology for which the infrastructure was already there, but which was used only recently(i.e 2004). Orkut and Facebook are innovative cause these sites allow changes to be made by users which are visible to a large section of the members (blogging is also similar).
When it comes to popularity, Orkut was the undisputed winner in India (at least till mid-2007). Orkut employed Google's ethic of keeping things simple and fast to load. Facebook was hardly used by people I know, at that time. But, it is said that globally, Facebook comes on second spot after My-space (can't comment on My-space, never used it) with Orkut at third.

Facebook has gained popularity recently because of their decision to introduce a global platform (FBML-facebook markup language) on which users can develop their own applications. This had added more interactivity to the site. One can compare movie tastes with friends , play games , and do other stuff, all under one roof (rather one domain). Facebook has had tie-ups with many smaller sites to develop some of the most popular applications. Some of the notable ones being :- flixster(movies), chess.com(though I would recommend the original site rather than the app here), scrabulous(one can play scrabble here, but this one is in the news for the wrong reasons). There is an app for everything on Facebook. So much have these applications changed the meaning of internet that Orkut is also introducing similar applications on a platform called open-social. Here is testimony from the horse's mouth (Orkut blog):- the official announcement and an example of things to come.

Facebook has a big disadvantage of having a very cluttered page-layout, also application invites are the new spam these days. Let us see how Orkut implements these applications. At the same time, Orkut should fix some security issues(I have seen a Facebook app which allows one to access Orkut from Facebook!!!). Also scripts which allow scrap forwarding to multiple users has added yet another dimension to spamming. Orkut should take care, that they don't lose a user (urs truly) because of this unchecked spamming.

It would be interesting to see who wins this social networking battle which is similar to the cola wars and the MS-Google war. Watch our for the Orkut apps. I read that some users have already got access to those. Are you one of them ???

Post Script : (by the owner of the blog) According to me, it seems that the war of the social networking sites extends well beyond earning revenues for their parent companies and expands to ulterior (?) motives like being established as a super marketing platform, where an advertiser can exactly know more about his target audience, be it their likings, location etc. Orkut, which is soon going to go the Facebook way, might lose the simplicity that it was famous for. Ultimately, I feel that a good social networking site is one which allows you to Connect with friends and family using scraps and instant messaging, Discover new people through friends of friends and communities, Share your videos, pictures, and passions all in one place AND NOTHING ELSE ! The fact that this comes from Orkut's homepage should send a clear signal to the upcoming SNS's...

In case you too want to have your say, you can post your scraps on my blog wall by clicking here.

My new year resolutions

2008-01-21T21:15:00.000+05:30

When the clock strikes twelve on December 31st, people all over the world cheer and wish each other a very Happy New Year. For some, this event is no more than a change of a calendar. For others, the New Year symbolizes the beginning of a better tomorrow. So, if you look forward to a good year ahead, spread happiness with these wonderful New Year wishes.

But one thing that I find really amusing is the concept of new year resolutions !! Some say they are sweet, some they are meant to be broken... But this year, in 2008, I have decided to follow a very unusual list of resolutions. Yes, its not about getting thin or about being a better person and neither about scoring better in exams nor about indulging less in the time pass activities. Since this year will mark the end of my engineering education (?) where most of the time I have spent in gaming, this was the best that suited for me... Here you go !!

* My gaming resolutions *

1) I will not start playing games on the "easiest" difficulty level...

Yeah... when I finally get "Call of Duty 4" I wont be playing it on "greenhorn" level. Sometimes the temptation to select the easiest difficulty setting (prior to even experiencing how hard the game actually is) is just too overwhelming. This is especially true when you start to doubt your gaming skills and worry about the possibility of getting stuck indefinitely at some later point in the game. We've all been there, but we all also know the consequences of automatically picking the least difficult game setting: the game becomes too easy. You begin letting enemies wail on you because the damage you take is so infinitesimal, you stop caring about preserving ammunition/items, and you ultimately don't have as much fun because you're not faced with any real challenge.

2) I wont start a new game unless I complete the one I am playing currently...

For most gamers, it's unrealistic to think that we'll be able to complete 110% of every game we own, but if we put too many games on the backburner it's easy to completely lose interest in putting forth a decent effort to play through them. Just because Need for Speed - ProStreet was released doesn't mean we have to give up on the game(s) we're playing and run to the store, right? Complete the Need for Speed - Most Wanted's "Challenges" first, I can assure you, they will give you a run for your money !!

3) I wont rely on a single source before rating a game...

Be it GameSpot, IGN, or AmputeeGaming, we all have a favorite gaming pub, and sometimes we give too much credit to the reviewer's take on a specific game. Obviously, when GameSpot gives a game a "6.0," the game is more than likely a turd. But when a game that you're excited for receives a less than perfect score, do the right thing and check other media outlets and/or ask your friends. One of the best examples that I can quote here is "Marvel : ultimate alliance" suggested by a friend of mine and its a cool game though most of the gaming sites have rated it on the lower side. As SRK says, "Listen to your heart !!" or whatever...

4) I will limit the number of hours that I put in gaming so that I can get more out of the outdoor life...

The next GTA (yeah, GTA-4 is coming !!) is released and the only time you have to lay your hands over the game is after work. By the time you manage to slip out of the office/college, get your a** to downloading / buying it and you're minutes away from passing out from exhaustion. Before you know it, you're asleep with the controller in your hand and you're barely past the title screen. As a result, you call into work sick, skip college, cancel plans for the following day. Even we've done it at times, but this year we're going to try to keep the number of instances we devote to an entire day of gaming to a minimum. Though I don't fall short in terms of the fun that I have with friends and relatives, from this year I intend to explore even more !!

5) I will force myself to play different genres of game that I was hitherto not so interested in...

Who hasn't said one or more of the following?

"I don't have the patience to sit through the endless lines of dialogue to play RPGs." "First-person shooters make me nauseous, so I don't bother with them."
"Sports games are simply too much boring, same stuff infinite times"
"Racing games require skill, who wants to be a pro??"

And so on and so forth. We all have our favorite genre, but why limit your gaming experience simply because you're too stubborn to try something different? Hate RPGs? Try Mass Effect. Don't care for the mindless shooting of FPS games? Give BioShock a whirl. (though you will require a monster of a system to play them !!)

That's all on the gaming front for this year. Happy gaming to you too. Click here to post your comments.

The CAT is out of the bag !

2008-01-08T23:53:00.000+05:30

First of all Hearty Congratulations to those who cracked it and hard luck to those who got cracked by it... Its none other than the The Common Admission Test (CAT) which is an all-India test conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as an entrance test for the management programmes of its six business schools and is considered (it really is...) the toughest exam to crack through after the prestigious IIT-JEE exam for engineering entrance to the Indian Institutes of Technology. Somehow the common words (II) in both of these have always struck a mesmerizing academic challenge to students in India with respect to their graduation and post graduation.

More than 200,000 (230,000 in the year 2007) students compete for about 1500 seats in the IIMs. This makes the IIMs even more selective than all the Ivy League Universities. Even with a top 1% score, a candidate must also cross the equally stringent hurdles of a group discussion and an individual interview. Hence, graduates all over the country always die to cross that 99 %tile hurdle so that one day they can earn hefty pay scales as investment banker and what not.

The CAT is one of the world's most demanding entrance examinations for any graduate institute. The test taker is expected to excel in arithmetical problem solving, geometry, statistics, data interpretation, logical reasoning in solving complex puzzles, and English Language skills. The test is held on the third Sunday of November for a duration of two and a half hours and everyone gets ready for the final take with his pencils, eraser and sharp mind on this day to bell the CAT.

It is neither expected, nor possible, that all the questions be answered, so the CAT also tests the candidates' ability to prioritise under pressure: a quality necessary in the competitive environment of IIMs' courses. And I experienced the trauma that is CAT, on 18th November last year. Why am I blogging about this stuff? Because the results are out. And I flunked... big time... But no worries. They allow you to give it more than once, and if you work somewhere in between, its said that its even better. So even those who flunked it are optimistic of a better future, thus making true of the words from Geeta, "Jo hota hai acche ke liye hi hota hai" (Whatever happens, happens for good).

Sometimes, I wonder how the trend of the Y-generation has shifted to management education, without actually realizing the importance of the same, irrespective of the judgement whether they actually have the orientation to excel in this chosen field, since the diversity in the aptitude of different people is very well known. Its the latest "rat-race" in education sector, which is being exploited by the ever rising coaching institutes which promise you a birth in IIMs with its last year's record and impeccable faculty stats etc. Its always better for a person to first plan his career in a systematic way and then try to achieve his post graduation in the desired field.

Basically, being an engineer, our lot is divided into five types :

a) the techno geeks : These opt for GATE and GRE to pursue M.Tech and M.S. respectively, and are the true technologists, who find the love in the discipline that they "engineered" themselves in. Honestly speaking, after 4 years of drudgery, these students must get a bravery award just for "carrying on" !!

b) the management kids : They are kids because I think its really silly to get into a "B-School" just after completing your graduation and without any exposure to absolutely any kind of business environment, wherein you can interact with the system and apply your know-how accordingly. Of course, the only force of attraction these days towards MBA as a fresher is the amount of green bucks that you earn and it would be dishonest of me to say that I would turn one down if I had got a call from a super B-School.

c) Job Crackers : These are usually toppers who dominate the placement scene from the word go and might figure in the earlier two categories too. Some of the exceptions, might sneak through the tight filter, but then its all about presenting (correctly) what you know and hiding (efficiently) what you don't. So I have always felt that peaking in this category isn't really a smart indicator of your brilliance, talent or the amount of grey matter in your cranium.

d) The Win-all league : No Comments on this category because I am ideologically against the existence of such people. But this being my blog, I must at least give the reason for my fury against these "envy-of-all" candidates : you just can't have it all, spare some for others too !!

e) The alternatives : Somehow these are the real champs of life. Some of them open up their own business venture. Some of them might end up earning money for doing what they like to do the most. Some of them go on to a really bizarre career like adventure tourism or music development etc but at least they do what they like. Indeed, you get one shot and you gotta hit it spot on.

To end this crap on a rather lighter note, let me show you how education might ruin the simplicity of human life. Consider this sample (which is fictitious of course and copied from orkut :-)), GRE and CAT aspirants tune up their verbal skills that ultimately its useless for the common soul.

NORMAL PERSON : People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
GRE scholar : Individuals who make their abodes in vitreous edifices would be advised to refrain from catapulting perilous projectiles.

NORMAL PERSON : Twinkle, twinkle, little star
GRE scholar : Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minim.

NORMAL PERSON : All that glitters is not gold.
GRE scholar : All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.

NORMAL PERSON : Beggars are not choosers.
GRE scholar : Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.

NORMAL PERSON : Dead men tell no tales.
GRE scholar : Male cadavers are incapable of rendering any testimony.

Hope you had a good laugh with your dictionary reading this awesome stuff. Click here to post your comments and views on entrance exams like CAT and JEE. Many love them and many sulk about them. What about you ??
P.S.: Please pardon me if the article went off the track in between, but I don't know what exactly I was writing on... hehe...

Its a "Gentlemen's" game... NOT !

2008-01-07T21:12:00.000+05:30

Incredible stuff was witnessed in Sydney in the beginning of new year 2008, where India lost out to a 13 man (?) Aussie team. Why 13? Read on...

Blunder # 1

Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting (hereby referred to as Punter, from the next time) nicked a Saurav Ganguly (Dada) delivery going down the leg side to the wicket keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Punter, who was at 17, did not walk as umpire Benson turned down the Indian appeal. The skipper went on to score 55. The Indian team fought hard... reduced the Aussies to 134/6. But...

Blunder # 2
This one changed the course of the match. All rounder Andrew Symonds edged Ishant Sharma to Dhoni but to the horror of the fielding side, umpire Bucknor remained unmoved.

Blunder # 3
Symonds was given another reprieve when the third umpire "shockingly" erred in giving him out o a stumping appeal. The right hander went on to score an unbeaten 162 to take Australia to a massive score.

Blunder # 4
Another escape for Andrew Symonds as Bucknor turns down a close stumping appeal without even consulting the third umpire.

Blunder # 5
The only one which went India's way... Sachin Tendulkar survived a close leg before shout when on 38 before ironically going on to score his 38th century. The Indian team fought hard... and scored a mammoth 500+ total. But...

Blunder # 6
Benson turns down an Anil Kumble appeal for a leg before appeal against Michael Hussey despite the ball hit the batsman's pad plumb in front. Hussey who was on 22, went on to score a match turning century.

Blunder # 7
Benson at it again, Hussey edged one from RP Singh to Dhoni but both the batsman and the umpire were unmoved. Hussey was on 45 then, scored a 100 more later...

Blunder # 8
Having taken Hussey and Clarke in consecutive balls, Kumble seemed to have gotten his hattrick after having Symonds trapped LBW but Bucknor says, "No". Symonds scored a quickfire 61.

Blunder # 9
Probably the most horrifying one for the Indian team, Bucknor gives Rahul Dravid caught behind of Symonds despite the ball missing the bat by miles, yeah... miles !! At lease consult the third umpire if you are unsure, dude...

Blunder # 10
Saurav Ganguly is caught at slips by Michael Clarke but the catch appears to be have been "lifted" off the ground. However, instead of referring to third umpire, Benson checks with Ponting, who quite expectedly calls it clean. Ganguly stays ground. Ponting blurts out, "I'm saying you are out..." Ganguly then showed the finger by the men in white.

The second test match in the currently ongoing India-Australia test series has been a landmark one, which literally challenges the very basics of the game of the Cricket. Whether its the age old tradition of manual umpiring or the spirit of integrity and honesty that characterized this supposedly Gentlemen's game, one thing is for sure, the cradle of sportsmanship has definitely been rocked far and wide. It was Australia's 16th consecutive win, but now I'm beginning to doubt the manner in which they won the last 15. Gavaskar has always been against the "do-anything-to-win-spirit" of the Aussies and I agree with him today, wholeheartedly... Ponting had once critised Nikhil Chopra some 4 years back when he stood ground after the umpire didnt gave him out and he scripted out a brilliant win for India. But I say, why doesnt he practise what he preaches?? Wasn't it he only, who stood ground, and asked for a replay when he was unsure of his dismissal, and that too after the umpire had lifted the finger. Ditto Clarke. And ironically, it was these two honest players that were consulted when Ganguly's doubtful catch was in question. Credibility, where are thou???

Umpiring blunders have always been there, but if they occur against one side only, then something is surely rotten. And if this happens against the same side repeatedly, something is rotten and fishy as well. Umpiring, is a tough job, with super reflexes requiring you to check for a no-ball and you dont get even a second to decide a tough decision like LBW. Couple this with additional norms and one will agree, 61 years is simply not an age to perform this tedious task.

By the way, Harbhajan has been handed a 3 match ban for "allegedly" calling Symonds a "big-monkey". Well, definitely you can't clap with one hand. I wonder how come Symonds was let off the hook. Surely he wasnt just spectating at that time. And of course, the match referee Mike Proctor thought it was cool when Brad Hogg called someone B*****d in the Indian team. Mark this, this is no racism, the aussie way...

Current Scenario : Aussies lead the series 2-0. Anil Kumble, without being on the offensive, very well said, "It was there for all to see". Boy... He has made us all proud. The Indian team didn't lose, at least for me. To hell with the 16th consecutive win. The tour is suspended right now, because ICC and the match referee has hit us where it hits the most. Cricket. One billion people love the sport. Aussies, do remember what happened last time you challenged a spin king from Sri Lanka. You were torn apart. And then they were only 20 Lacs. You might be the champs, but just one request, play the game like the champs do. Period.

If you want to comment on how India was done in by the dreaded finger, please click here. And yeah, the man of the match is Steve Bucknor without doubt...

Rajnikant : There is nothing he can't do !!

2008-01-07T01:11:00.000+05:30

Hello world, Its a new year - 2008, hope you all have a blast and be prosperous and happy and all other good things. Phew... now that, that is done with, I will like the readers of this blog to be humbled and brought down to earth (literally) by some of the slightly (?) exaggerated facets of, none other than, Rajnikant !! yeah... He is literally a demi god for South Indian movie fans and no less than an icon for others. I was inspired to do this bit for this man after I saw his latest multi million dollar flick, "Sivaji". This is a piece contributed by a friend of mine, Saurabh, to show the world that there simply is, no equal, to the legend called Rajnikant... hold your breath, here it comes -->

1) Outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Rajnikant (some science, huh !!)

2) Rajnikant has counted to infinity - twice. (of course, he went on the negative side too...)

3) (Now this one is my favorite...) When Rajnikant does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing earth down.

4) Rajnikant is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head. (and Einstein though nothing runs faster than light...)

5) Rajnikant doesn't wear a watch, HE decides what time it is. (and then there was Rajni !!)

6) Rajnikant can slam a revolving door.

7) Rajnikant gave Mona Lisa that smile. (alas !! the code is solved...)

8) Rajnikant's house has no doors, only walls that he walks through. (birla cement filed a lawsuit on him once, they say...)

9) Rajnikant grinds his coffee with his teeth and boils the water with his own rage. (thats why his movies seem to be having such a pot boiler of an end, huh??)

10) If you Google Search 'Rajnikant getting kicked', you will generate zero results. It just doesn't happen. (No comments)

11) It takes Rajnikant 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes. (Space time continuum is a joke for this dude, must say...)

12) The Bermuda Triangle used to be the Bermuda Square, until Rajnikant kicked one of the corners off.

13) There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; Rajnikant lives in Chennai. (There you go Mr. Bush, Saddam was innocent, after all !!)

14) Rajnikant once ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills. They made him blink. (No wonder !)

15) The only things that run faster and longer than Rajnikant are his films.

16) Rajnikant's every step creates a mini whirlwind. Hurricane Katrina was the result of a morning jog. (oh Katrina...)

17) (quite proverbial, this one) Where there is a will, there is a way. Where there is Rajnikant, there is no other way.

Hope all of you enjoyed all these accurate facts and they brought a smile to your faces...
Do keep reading this space for more. To add, edit, correct any of the above or to just wish me a new year, click here...
till then Adios !!

What is a RADIO ?

2007-11-24T22:00:00.000+05:30

Some months ago, we Nagpurian's got a taste of what kind of entertainment one can get when the guys at M.S.E.D.C.L. (the people managing the electricity supply in Maharashtra) go crazy and do the load shedding thing leaving you hapless without your idiot box or computers to rely on (of course, people with inverters got away for a while!). The new source of such uninterrupted entertainment was the simple radio which though was existing from a long time but was not quite making waves (at least not among the non-fisherman, people loving old songs and highly curious elders...). The thing is, the state sponsored government channel were simply way too much boring for majority of the masses and were neglected a lot. But after the entry of private entities like Mirchi, My FM, Radiocity etc (in no particular order, of course) the scene in Nagpur has changed dramatically with a major shift towards the erstwhile instrument of information. Most of my friends are now listening to lots of songs and those with radio enabled mobiles go on with a murky smirk on their faces !! Though many of us know how the thing works, except for those people who have done a minor/major course in electronics most of us don't know the intricate details of technology involved in the same. Thats why this effort. Explained in as simple terms as one can. Read on. So that you wont be dumbfounded if your grandchildren were to ask you this very question after some years when you are an oldie. Hehe...

What is it and how does it work?

Radio is the wireless transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travel by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space. It does not require a medium of transport. Information is carried by systematically changing some property of the radiated waves, such as their amplitude or their frequency. When radio waves pass an electrical conductor, the oscillating fields induce an alternating current in the conductor. This can be detected and transformed into sound or other signals that carry information.

Although Nikola Tesla first demonstrated the feasibility of wireless communications in 1893, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, was the first to develop workable radio communication. He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895.

The word 'radio' is used to describe this phenomenon, and radio transmissions are classed as radio frequency emissions.

What is the difference between AM radio and FM radio?

AM stands for “amplitude modulation” – a type of signal. With AM, the amplitude of the combined audio frequency and radio frequency waves varies to match the audio signal. AM radio can develop problems with interference. This makes it hard to hear the radio show. Interference can be caused by many sources. For example, sparks discharge when a car is started, in electric motors in all sorts of electrical appliances, and even lightning. All of these things can produce interference to AM radio. As you can see, there is a lot of background noise that changes the amplitude of the radio wave signal. This creates the random crackling noises call static.

FM stands for “frequency modulation”- a type of radio transmission, the frequency of the combined waves change to reproduce the audio signal. For example, higher frequency is associated with the peak amplitude in the audio wave. FM waves do not have a problem with interference because the noise background does not modify the radio wave frequency. In addition FM waves give better sound reproduction.

Please do post any other insights that will be be valuable to the understanding of this so-commonly-used-yet-so-much-neglected-technology by clicking here.

Joker in the Pack - life at an IIM...

2007-11-22T20:06:00.000+05:30

Fellow Human beings (not that I have ceased to be one, but the kind of routine that I am following these days, certainly doesn't fall into normal human life...) this is to formally announce that I have finally conquered the unbelievable 7th semester with another 7 pointer in the kitty... Jokes apart, the last 20 days after my exam can be compared with that of a very busy executive working under the most monster of a boss, albeit the domain of work might be varying. More on that in some later blog post.

This is another of my boring book review blog post (The first one was about the last Harry Potter book, those who were fortunate to miss it, please click here after you are done with this). The book is titled above - "A Joker in the Pack" - an irreverant view of life at IIM's - so say the two authors, Neeraj Pahlajani (IIM Bangalore 2004-06) and Ritesh Sharma (IIM Lucknow 2003-2005).

Author(s) Speaks

"This is a story of dreaming the great Indian middle class dream, and of life shaped — accidentally or by design, only God knows — by the great Indian middle class values. The joyride begins in the lap of two favourite pastimes of the nation — cricket and television — and after some shattered dreams, leads to the hallowed precincts of the venerated IIMs. It is a story of the life at the IIMs, and of life beyond. It is a story of how to play the IIM game successfully and beat the super distillation system refined by the IIMs to separate the chaff from the grain, the also-rans from the super achievers. The story has bit of raw truth. It is also tongue-in-cheek. It is designed to whet the appetite of those aspiring. It will evoke nostalgia amongst the alumni; it will also anger a few. Read on... you will either love it, or hate it, but will find it difficult to put down."

Wikipedia Speaks

Joker in the Pack describes humorously (and often satirically) the life of Shekhar Verma - a middle class student who grows up in the post liberalization era. The book starts off by describing Shekhar's childhood in a typical urban middle class setting, playing gully cricket and "ice-pice" (I Spy). As Shekhar reaches senior school, he is influenced by his middle class brethren into pursuing a "dream job" with an MNC (defined as any job that pays very well as per prevailing standards). In order to achieve this job, he enrolls into an Information Technology course as it is considered "hot" by recruiters. He gets disenchanted with the course once IT bubble bursts in India and salaries plummet. Shekhar then trains his eyes on the IIMs, in the hope that an MBA from an IIM will help him get his dream job. The book describes in detail Shekhar's life at an IIM and introduces the various personalities that make up life there including 'Northie Lafanders' and 'Dosa Dudes', the influential Placement Committee ('Placecom'), wise 'Daddus' and the glamorous 'Page 3s'. Throughout the book, Shekhar has been shown as being critical of the middle class that "labels kids according to the marks they get in exams and salaries they get in jobs". As a character, Shekhar is shown to mature as the book progresses, culminating in his starting to question his own beliefs and actions and the sarifices he has made to achieve something he is no longer sure he wants."

Suyash Joshi (whose opinion matters, because this blog belongs to him) speaks

Well, Initially I had found it similar to another of those "five point someone" rip offs, but it was, surprisingly, something new. I read it during the last two weeks of my CAT preparation and I found it really encouraging if someone wants some boost up to crack the monster exam (as if anyone does require, but just in case). What I now realize is, that the typical middle class common man is on a resurgent rise in every aspect, intellectually or economically or by other infinite standards. Everyone desires to graduate/ post graduate from a premier institute and make a mark of his own. I will say, this book will let you feel your dreams too, and hence its a must read. As the last line of the riveting prologue said, "Shekhar Verma had finally arrived", I was hooked on to this great piece of work. Grab it up and get ready for another page turner !

Do post your comments about this book here.

My PC gets upgraded !

2007-10-13T00:00:00.000+05:30

This time I will let the "config" do the talking :-)

1) AMD Athlon 64 bit Dual Core AM2 based processor (4400+)
2) ASUS M2A-VM motherboard with 128 MB ATI Radeon Graphics Card
3) 2 GB DDR2 RAM
4) 320 GB SATA hard-disc

Life is peaceful once again !!!

and of course the aero theme on windows Vista absolutely rocks beyond anything... Microsoft has done a great thing finally...

P.S.: The ultimate joie-de-vivre will be complete when I get a 17" wide screen LCD monitor after the exams...

High end gaming... here I come !

American Television : you are awesome !

2007-10-02T23:37:00.000+05:30

Till the time I began to understand the finer nuances of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, I also learned that an under graduate has got lots of time to while away unless he is one of those not so adorable geeks/nerds. Yeah, though I don't exactly flunk in my exams, the situation really helps you to deal with even more tougher real life applications (read crisis !)

So initially I began by doing what all people do... Running amok the campus doing weird stuff with even more weird people (read batch mates) who were in fact similar minded confused individuals trying to re-discover their identity in the jungles of VNIT, Nagpur. So cracking all types of jokes, hanging out in strategically located areas, "interacting" with the first year guys, ogling at the fair sex, playing cricket every now and then and other stuff was generally the routine. Other than that, playing games on the computer and the greatest time pass in the world by communicating with friends online via god knows how many messengers and god only knows how many social networking sites completed the day. It was and in fact is, a fun still. But the fragile human soul that we possess, change of the form of entertainment is a must. After all the real pursuit of happiness that we want is something beyond any body's scope I guess. Anyways, watching Hollywood movies on the trot was a refreshing change indeed and the wide scope of genres that it offered out numbered Bollywood both in terms of quantity, quality and most above anything watchability ! After gobbling up tons of movies that were on the platter, a new search began, for alternative sources ...

and then came the American Television to the rescue !!!

Initially, I was a bit apprehensive as to how can people endure watching some silly crap sit com which has mindless humour and non sensible jokes/stuff all crammed in 20/45 min of sheer madness. It was only later that I realized, that one has to sink in to the bottom to experience the, what may I say, the bliss, that these sitcoms offer. The fellows residing inside the campus seemed to have an endless supply of tons of "episodes" and "seasons"... a terminology that I was new to, since they aren't quite related with the 24/7/365 Hindi serials that we were made to watch in that bygone, but terrible era. Well, i had to take the plunge to test what the fuss was all about and here goes a list of some of my favorite pass times which keep me occupied every time I get bored. These serials are, in fact some of the most popular ones and one must watch from the beginning to get the full essence of the characters and the story, if there is one !

1) F.R.I.E.N.D.s : Can be treated as the single most and highest successful sitcom to ever rule the roost on American Television. Started in 1994 it ran for a brilliant 10 season streak till 2004 and people never got tired of the 6 lively charecters around whom the show revolved. It was a story of some really cool guys and gals who re-defined the meaning of friendship through their riotous antics which never failed to bring a bout of laughter, no matter how many times you watch a scene from any episode ! The show has set some really unbelievably impossible bench marks to achieve and all the credit goes to the cast and the writers alike... Whether it is ross making up his usual goof ups or Chandler doing his wise crack acts or Joey blurting out, "How u doin' ?" to every other gal or Monica taking the house down on floor with her cleanliness is even before to godliness or Rachel adding just the zing to the whole madness or last but not the least, the awesome Pheobe completing the mania with her abnormal qualities... this was simply the best that there ever was !!

2) Prison Break : Presented by FOX, its simply the best in its genre (Action/ Thriller) and its a fact that the whole world can vouch for ! This great potboiler of a story is simply put the most creative hair raiser thats ever been made by the human beings. This is what they call perfection and this suspense thriller which has elements like suspense, mystery and pure hit me and I hit you back type of action coupled with some really brainy plot intermingling some god level charecters. This one is just irresistible once you start, and if you wanna know what addiction is, just watch season 1, episode 1. Unless you are incapable to understand the english or are maybe "those" females (who hate pure brawn and brains), I bet you wont feel ashamed to beg for the next episodes ! The show keeps you on the edge of your mind till it finally culminates to a heart stopping and soul-unnerving end with you wanting more and more !

This is a story of the super intelligent Michael Schofield and his super brave, courageous brother Lincoln Burrows who get entangled in a web of deceit, treachery and what not weaved by a sort of "company" that is so powerful that it even holds the US government as its puppet and the President as its hostage. To cut the long story short, the brothers break out of a US prison (of course, they are innocent !!) to get out of a huge conspiracy only to get stuck again in another trouble in Panama ... The series is in its 3rd season and is racing down to another thrilling finale where we expect the truth to prevail but I doubt it will have a happy ending at that ! I just love Prison break... and its popularity can be gaged by the fact that it's "s03e01" (or season 3 opener for common man) had 23035 seeds on the day I downloaded it from a torrent a day after its telecast ! and thats huge...

3) Heroes : This is the classic series which has made it to the top of the charts due to the great act of realizing the childhood dreams of every human to come true to experience the super heroes that they admire albeit in a different manner. I mean everyone loves the "just-dare-to-beat-me" Superman, the awe inspiring Batman and your friendly neighborhood Spiderman, but then after endless comic strips and cartoons it gets repittive. But NBC has brought a new lease of life to the super power bearing individuals having its own modification of X-men, which is surprisingly too good and all thanks to the great story and the vivid imagination of the writers and the director all alike.

It deals with not so ordinary individuals, who are indeed special and gifted with some great powers and think that all have a path, a goal in their life (but alas ! not everyone thinks the same way and we have super power villains too !) Though the super hero powers are heavily borrowed from the Genetic mutation based X-men, the reason why "Heroes" rocks is due to the amazing plot of the story coupled with complicating dynamics of space-time continuum and its effects on simultaneous developments happening in different lives of the people involved. Now in its 2nd season, the show promises lots of exciting stuff in its store and I cant wait to devour it!

Other than these, there are others like "LOST", "How I met your mother", "24" and "Scrubs" etc and lot more which are also a treat to watch and I will post more on them at a later date. In the end I must say, the US citizens are lucky to have such creative things on their TV's (though their is lots of other crap too), but I wont call it an idiot box for sure, had I been staying there !

Do post your comments/views/ramifications on the same, if you too are one of those "couch potatoes" like me... and it will be great to know what things you watch ... Click here to let me know about your TV time pass/habits from abroad and any criticism about them !

Why Twenty-20 rocks?

2007-09-30T11:57:00.000+05:30

September 2007 brought a fresh new lease of life to the game of Cricket with the awesome innovation of the Twenty 20 which is all about hit, hit and hit at least as some people perceive. But the truth is far from this, really ! One thing is unanimous though, 20-20 has swept one and all through their feet and is a roaring hit which has vroomed past even faster than the fastest of the F1 cars !! Casual sports watchers and die hard cricket lovers are going ga-ga over this new form of cricket and how!

Its magic is there for everyone to see. And in a beautiful place like South Africa plus you add a cameo of strategically (?) dressed dancers/ entertainers/ cheer-leaders whatever you may call them, good music its a win-win combo anytime. But one thing is for sure, the core of the game stil remains the same in spite of the fallacies pointed out by the purists... The fact is, one team still tries to score runs and the other tries to stop it in doing so and chase the same in a role reversal in the second innings. Its just that the duration has been cut down; its like reducing all the ups and downs and periods of nothing happening in your life (Thats test cricket) to a few good weeks with their accompanying successes and heart breaks (Thats one day internationals) to the most enjoyable day in your life (Thats Twenty 20 for you).

The greatest fear among the cricket aficionados has always been that ODI's will kill the finer nuiances and subtleties of test cricket and one can only imagine how petrified they might have been with the latest avatar that has come around. The fact is, as a prophet might say, nothing really dies; it just changes into something else, something even better and thats always good for us in general. So stop whining people, the game has only got sharper and skills have become even more important and technique (yes, technique) has got to be even more crucial. The sloggers may win a few rounds but the overall war will be won by the methodical hitters and wicket takers and agile fielders !

There is absolutely no scope for making errors now, one false move and you are doomed. Isn't that perfection at its best? Isn't that sport is all about? Isn't that what everyone wants to see in a sport, from start to finish? That's precisely why the 100 meter sprint garners more global attraction than the 1500 meters race, though it requires tactics, speed and endurance in equal measure. The analogy of cricket can be extended to the Marathon, 1500 meter race and the 100 meter dash and the picture becomes crystal clear... The difference lies in the scope of recovery element thats somewhat absent in the shorter version, for overcoming a fault. Its cruel, but then ultimately a better team wins, irrespective of its past record. Amazingly 20-20 does give you a chance to stage a fightback. You can bowl badly and still win; you might get bundled out for a negligee and still win; I mean thats really the beauty of the game, isn't it?? A match can dramatically change in just 6 excruciating balls of an over.

The real test of the game lies ahead. What will it displace in the long term? Will it be exciting at the same level in bilateral tournaments too? Indeed, a matter to ponder over is, how will it fare in a cricket crazy nation like India where the stadiums are like dilapidated relics and the fans still quite primtive?

Please do post your views and comments on this blog by clicking here. Your posts will be appreciated !

P.S.: These views are heavily borrowed from the article by Bobilli Vijay Kumar in the Times. But rest assured, its the best way I could express it my way !

T-20 Cricket - Indian team is the World Champion !

2007-09-26T19:52:00.000+05:30

Date : 24th September 2007
Time: 8:30 PM approximately according to IST
Location : Johannesburg, South Africa

Event : Twenty 20 Cricket World Cup Final Match between arch rivals India and Pakistan

Situation : Having scored a paltry 157/5 in the allotted 20 overs, the Indian team came back really good to reduce Pakistan to a mind numbing 145/9 till the 19th over. Climax of the Climaxes. Pakistan needed a bone chilling 13 runs of the last over and Misbah Ul Haq was on fire. Dhoni, the Indian skipper, hands the ball to Joginder Singh. It all begins here. To say that this was like any other "down the wire" match would be a gross insult to the sport of Cricket. Because nothing gets bigger and better than this.

Sample this... Joginder Sharma bowls the first ball down the off stump for a horrendous wide. 12 runs off 6 balls. Follows up with a dot ball as Misbah misses a huge swing. 12 runs off 5 balls. Next up, Misbah comes down the track and hammers a huge one straight above long off. While the Indian camp went into a deathly silence, the Pakistan supporters erupt into a frenzy. Dhoni has a word with the bowler. 6 runs off 4 balls. Joginder bowls one way down the off stump, Misbah reaches it and tries the paddle scoop shot over fine leg. Too bad, it was a slower one !! Due to the lack of pace, in spite of the great shot selection, the ball lands in the cusped hands of Shreesanth and then all hell broke loose. India had won the World Cup !!! Boy oh boy (and gal oh gal) this was simply the most awesome moment in the Indian Cricket for me since it was a dream come true for one and all. Its simply huge and cant be expressed in words. And it came with such a pot boiler of a match, which was just the most god max experience for the Cricket Crazy nation of India.

About twenty 20

For the ones still marveling in ignorance, that Twenty 20 cricket for you and this was the inaugural world cup which had literally took the cricketing world with storm. The fans praised it and the purists hated it. Before that let me post an imaginary (?) tale that circulates the cricketing lore :

"One fine day, at the end of 19th century, some English Gentlemen got bored of their daily routine. So they asked God, "All mighty, please give us something to while away our time in a sport befitting our stature, which will provide for one and all". And then there was Test Cricket. The 5 day version. People liked it. The legends flourished.

And then after 100 years, life moved on. People said we cant see cricket for 5 days. and then they prayed again, "All mighty, please give us something to while away our time in a sport befitting both the players and the spectators watching it." And then there were One Day Internationals. The whites got coloured as the game got quicker and better. The purists hated it, saying that ODI's don't qualify as much the traditionalist version. But they had to bend down. Soon they were proved wrong and how !

Some 30 years later, life got fast and people got even faster zipping and zapping their routine through even tighter schedules. How come Cricket lag behind. Its really true that "Change is the only constant thing". And this time after 30 years of inception of the 50 over game, we got a smaller version : the Twenty 20 Cricket. Faster, Quicker and more dynamic than ever. The game gets over in less than 4 hours and provides incomparable adrenaline and sheer entertainment to absolutely everyone involved. Even though the world has come to accept that this is the way cricket will be played in future, but who will console the purists?? Some of them, past legends and my friends (who are not past legends,beware !) who say that the game is too harsh on the bowlers. Well... if they could only see, the sheer pressure of Twenty-20 has made possible ridiculously new tricks and trade in the bowling departments and has substantially improved it like anything. The matches are indeed won by the bowlers, if someone follows the game closely. Because hitting is business everyone can manage, but good fielding and ability to take wickets is no ordinary job.

Twenty 20, as the name suggests is a blink and you miss type of game, where each side bowls 20 overs and the aim of the game is to blast out from the word go. With a power play of 6 overs, which is a treat, the ending slogging overs provide a fitting culmination for the gala party. With modifications like free hit and bowl outs, T-20 simply rocks ! When life is all about pace, cricket can't be slow. Purists may miss the copybook technique but the neo-converts like me are unanimous - speed thrills ! Batsmen don't block studiously ball after ball and the bowlers have become more and more intelligent. The fielders are on their toes since even a moment of relaxation might cost you the game. It has come a long way in restoring the game's viewer ship by leaps and bounds and its virtually growing at an exponential speed. Its dramatic, swift and unpredictable and gives the minnows more of a chance to retaliate against stronger teams.

I will be posting more on the Twenty 20 world cup later on, but till then it will be great if you could post your opinions and comments about this article. Click here to do so. Adios.

Of Metals and Materials...

2007-09-12T23:13:00.000+05:30

Well, finally I have a guest blogger... After much persistence I have finally managed to convince the great PG or Priya Ghatwai, who is an academically distinguished and illustrious all rounder of my batch in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering in VNIT and has finally relented to pen down her views. And they say that its worth the wait. Just find out what I mean in her own words. Everything that follows below are her opinions and if some one wants to sue me for something below, let me remind you I am just a platform, the culprit is PG, herself. With such a modest and humble beginning, you might actually have a good time reading this great piece about our Engineering life in VNIT !

PG speaks :

"It's finally time to honour my commitment to author this sketch about the meta department. If it's sub-standard, it's because I'm lazy, if it's not, well frankly I am surprised. I was asked to cover these aspects by the generous soul morally attached to me as the legal proprietor of this blog in whose territory I will now venture to trespass ( upon his tireless insistence ) and they are as follows :

1) Weird stuff happening in meta dept...
2) Stories about the "efficiencies" of the Professors, Staff and Implementation of good student friendly rules...
3) the unsung heroes of our class and the tales of their exceptional bravery...
4) And other such stuff...

Well sub-topic one is a meaty one, and as for the second , you will have to make do with my interpretation , not Lara's (And as per the promise by PG, she would be talking about this in more detail in a soon to come update). I am not sure whether he wishes his name to be included in the third writing task - I will modify the topic to encompass all members of Meta- Batch of 2008. Don't know if I'll ever make it to the fourth."

1) Weird stuff happening in meta dept...

"Well, the Final years have four ACs in the classroom and the attendance is at an all-time high though some people are of course never happy. The idea is of course to avail the luxury of sleeping in conditioned comfort at no extra cost. It's a win-win bargain.

Ok, truly weird about our department is that we have people who are ever-ready to take unwarranted unnecessary risks by way of experimenting with unheard of ideas almost absolutely certain to backfire. Sample the way the project allotments were done. Fourth Year students, who , generalizing grossly, cannot tell a TTT from a CCT; peritectic from monotectic; plain stress from plane stress - the very same students who feel ashamed that the youth from the adjoining department are fortified with enough knowledge to earn them dual degrees in mech n meta while they themselves fail - morally - if not technically - to appreciate the single degree that they have been destined, nay, constrained to half-heartedly pursue for the past so many years, ya, well, these same final years were asked to pick their projects based on one-line statements. The names of the project guides were resolutely and deliberately sheathed (steeped ?) in dark mystery. Well, all we can say is, this college has enabled us to know people better than our subjects and on those grounds alone we feel compelled to question what could have been disclosed about what could not. Right to information! Whither thou?

So many of the courses seem like flashbacks from the past. That's because we never really followed when we had the opportunity and of course in seventh semester, we're too disinclined to make amends! All we know is that it's the same course that's being repeated after a gap of one year, marketed under a differnt name . Old wine in New bottle. Doesn't taste any better though."

2) Stories about the "efficiencies" of the Professors, Staff and Implementation of good student friendly rules...

"Coming soon at a later date in the next update" - PG

3) The last stop - the classmates.

SJ - "Since the list provided was incomplete, I had to chip in between to ensure that justice was done for all the people."

Hemu, Renu, Sweetu, Paru --> The Famous Four - Claim to fame unknown.
Band --> Keyboard artiste. Rehmaan maniac.
Vivek --> Studious, very helpful especially during St. Met Pracs, very resourceful and sincere.
Roshan --> Did NOT get baingan bharta to class due to lack of availability of raw material as evident from a thorough search of the market. (Currently popular as Babuji)
Alok --> Sports Sec. (Founder of biker gang)
Sidharth --> 1=0 and nothing else and of course you'll be convinced because there just isn't an option to argue about.
Ashish Jain and GJ --> Oracle Men, they make simple things difficult - Hey, nothing personal - only referring to their wizardry at contraption.
Shukla --> Well, depends on whether you want comments on "what he was before woh badal gaya", "what he is after woh badal gaya", "woh badla ki nahi" or "woh kab badla". Kindly clarify and I will gladly expostulate.
Vibhav --> music@tt.
Sachin, Digvijay and Sujeet --> The trinity/triumvarate. (Amar Akbar Anthony, anyone?)
Anand, Suyash, Jraman, Rupesh - The N-gage gang. The first three are the CRs of the class and last one very is very helpful especially during St.Met pracs and if cycle chain falls off. Since the blog belongs to the second one, you'll get more on him - autobiographical and authentic. He is a great fellow and his greatness is amplified by the great honour bestowed upon me by him in asking me to embellish his great blog. The third one is synonymous with studies/marks/load. Placement ke baad shayad kuch badlaav lag raha hai.
The Quam --> Gen.Sultan will be glad to comment about this.
Saket --> Tao(/u) of perseverance.
Kuku --> One in a million - Mass bunk karna mera kaam hai, karvana nahi.
Neeraj --> The Marathi maanus, simplicity personified.
Lakshminarayan --> Apparently most appreciated by the professors - be it his taste in selecting books or charming unexpected people into yielding over the sensitive issue of mass bunk.
Mahapatra --> The Gamer.
Zindal --> The Silent warrior.
Pandit --> Enigmatic human being beyond comprehension.
Dinesh and Poku --> These individuals have been brought been together by the "wear" project!
Pankaj and Niranjan --> Laloo is proud of them.
GSVN --> Computer Science Wizard...

"If I have missed out on anybody, please don't mind and feel free to enrich this scraggy bunch of scrappy doodles."

Please feel free to express your feelings here (be it gratitude or rage) by clicking here.

Placed in Oracle - its a Dream come true !

2007-09-11T19:28:00.000+05:30

Well its been a long time since I wasn't blogging and there really is a big reason for that. The thing is that the whole of VNIT was sort of gearing up for the second round of placements, also called as the "Dream Job" round. OK, the thing is, though VNIT is ranked 4th in the NIT's in India and ranks among the top engineering colleges, it really suffers big time when it comes to campus placements. Of course, its a matter of perception of what you are comparing to when it comes to placements, because according to one school of thought, just getting a 100% placement record is simply not the done thing if most of them are being recruited by the ever expanding IT companies who have more orientation towards service and lesser on product development. Anyways, I wont be wasting my time here talking about what is good and what is bad because this is my blog and I must write what happened with me.

Yeah... so here we go. In case you don't know much about VNIT and my eventful existence in here for the last 3.5 years you might as well click here for starters. But if you don't feel the need for doing so read on. After the completion of the 6th semester (or 3rd year) of the engineering curriculum we were all faced with the prospects of campus recruitment program which in itself is a pretty intimidating task for one and all. And why not, because for those who are planning to do postpone their further studies/ post graduation or are planning to skip it completely, getting the best first job is an absolutely crucial thing and people do make the most of it whenever the opportunity is available. Well, besides being a Metallurgical and Materials Engineer, let me warn you that my interest in the Software and Computer Science is more due to the work content than the green bucks to be made. Having said that and done everything I got placed in TCS with 60 other guys and it was awesome then but I wasn't aware that more was coming in my platter. And the thing actually came true on 8th September 2007. But lets roll back a little before that.

24th August 2007, 21:59 PM

Life was going on like as usual, with the same boring lectures spiced with even more boring assignments and tests. Final year, it turned out isn't really much fun as purported by the people who were through with the degree last year. Though some people were busy making preparations to bell the CAT and some giving PowerPrep's to boost their GRE score, there was an air of the dream job round of placement to begin soon. Work less get more kind of students like me were on the prowl to sniff any new developments over the Training and Placement' Notice Board. And then at the above mentioned time, my friend from the Computer Science Department, Pravin, sent me an sms containing this exact text, "Oracle aa rahi 3 sept ko"... and all hell broke loose that day !! or that night to be precise.

How desperate I was to know more about my prospects in Oracle Corporation (which by the way is world's second largest independent software company) and whether it was actually possible can be gaged by the following steps I took in the couple of hours on the same night.

I phoned the informer, who must have been chatting with his girl friend, and asked if he wasn't really joking, since not many people were averse to my inclination to join such a firm...
Later on I phoned the T and P Secretary of the College ( of course, from the students...) and asked him about the dates and the eligibility criteria, who was in a theater watching a hindi movie...
I actually went to college at 12 midnight to satisfy myself about the CGPA required for the same and other details etc.
Then I also called up the another friend who was sharing a similar interest and discussed more about that. And all this on the same night. Not much big deal. Read more.

25th August 2007 to 2nd September 2007

Well, it was preparation time. It was time to get what I had dreamt of while entering this Engineering College and for some reasons which I wont like to state here right now, Oracle was the last company for me to appear for at least in the IT sector. I began by asking the already harrowed seniors for the elimination test and the interviews which were giving an impression of being quite geeky. So I revised all the stuff I had gone through the last 3 years (learning those languages (C and C++ being put major emphasis on) which you can use only with the computers !) and some metallurgical stuff too. Solving puzzles became a huge hit with me during this period and it found a space in my resume pronto. OCF Berkeley and Techinterview were two really great sites where I spent lots of quality time. Also I had to pay some attention to those areas in mathematics and logical reasoning where I was taking more time than required because the aptitude test was supposed to be for those wisecracks who can think fast and accurately. After a brief pumping up of resume and revival of the activities mentioned (the internship, the training and the extra curriculars etc) I was finally ready for the 1st installment of the huge battle that lay ahead, where only an upset could sail my ship through ! And yeah, I also was appointed the placement coordinator of Oracle Ltd. And it really helped, later...

3rd September - The PAC Test

Oracle, for the last few years has been outsourcing the job of conducting aptitude tests for its campus interviews to PAC - Professional Aptitude Council and they do a really great job when it comes to test the analytical and problem solving skills required in the world of Information Technology. The test was, surprisingly, a cakewalk ! (?) and I was expecting not to get through only in the case of some evil conspiracy against me.

4th September 2007 to 6th September 2007

Amidst the gripping tension of whether I would be shortlisted or not, I attempted to improve upon whatever I could and in the process ended up bunking about 20 lectures on the trot since I didnt attend a single day during this tenure. Those were the crazy days and more were to follow. Thanks everyone who helped me to stay mentally fit !

7th September - The interviews begin !!!

After a superb pre-placement talks with the executives of Oracle India Ltd, (where I also got the opportunity to flag off the ceremony) where we were told about the exact nature of job profiles being offered - Oracle Application Software, (Development and Programming) and Oracle Solution Services, (Consulting). Later on, based on the preferences given by the aspirants we were shortlisted in the two categories. Apps had 30 students for the interviews and then it began. I had two really great and amazing rounds of technical interviews which challenged my technical ability to the maximum extent. The conversation was really candid and ranged from all domains like programming skills, mind blowing puzzles and riddles, stuff about oracle and life and what not. The HR interview was a stress reliever in the true sense and it was really cool to talk with these brilliant minds indeed. I was among the rare group of people who had finished all the process on the first day itself and was supposed to wait for 17 agonizing hours for the results to be out, while the other candidates were interviewed. I resumed my coordinator activities next day since I had nothing much to do than wait with all the suspense in the world.

8th September : The day that I wont forget !!!

Yeah... Like in the movies... we are back to present after the flashback. Zip Zap Zoom. Its 4 pm in the afternoon and all are waiting with a gulp in their throat. Everyone was eager to know who was in , who was out, who was flushed out and who finally made it to Oracle ! Well, in the end, my name was there among the 8 people selected in Oracle Application Software and everything went hazy and inexpressible. The thing is, it was really a great and ultimate experience to break through Oracle's selection process (Cant break in, Cant Break it --> as they proudly say... :-) and being a non Comp Sci graduate to do that made it even more special as the Apps profile was preferably oriented towards product development. It was a really euphoric feeling and I came to know what it is like on Cloud nine or whatever it is. For a freak moment, I was on top of the world and the feeling took quite some time to sink in... All the adjectives in the world fall short to describe this, and I would nurture this day as a landmark in my college life. It was a dream come true, indeed !

Do let me know how you feel about this part of my life, which I call being happy... (borrowed from Pursuit of Happiness...) Click here to post your comments.

Dream on...

2007-08-25T01:35:00.000+05:30

Every time I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
It goes by, like dusk to dawn
Isn't that the way
Everybody's got their dues in life to pay

Yeah, I know nobody knows
where it comes and where it goes
I know it's everybody's sin
You got to lose to know how to win

Half my life
is in books' written pages
Lived and learned from fools and
from sages
You know it's true
All the things come back to you

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away

Yeah, sing with me, sing for the year
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Dream On... Dream On... Dream On...
Dream until your dreams come true
Dream On... Dream On... Dream On...
Dream until your dream comes through
Dream On... Dream On... Dream On...
Dream On... Dream On...
Dream On... Dream On...

Sing with me, sing for the year
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Sing with me, sing for the year
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away......

Listen to this song by clicking here

Think Different. Change the world.

2007-08-11T09:34:00.000+05:30

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

The Race - D. H. Groberg

2007-08-04T13:43:00.000+05:30

This is just the kind of stuff that I like to read when it comes to poetry - awesome, inspiring and thought provoking. And I was in for a shocker of a treat when I read this in the 10th class English text book of my younger brother (its not like I skipped it 5 years back then, the S.S.C. syllabus just updates itself better than the meteorological dept of the country !). By the way this cool poetry, though may be looking lengthy but once you are through with it, you will be invigorated with a new fresh lease towards life (or whatever) but seriously believe me... Its about not quitting even when all the hopes are dashed so as to rise and stand again, because winning if not nothing, is certainly not everything. Your life may be placid with all sorts of worries but the true sense of living is to rejuvenate it with the essence of a positive attitude since everyone has a right for the pursuit of happiness ! Read on...

Whenever I start to hang my head in front of failure’s face,
my downward fall is broken by the memory of a race.
A children’s race, young boys, young men; how I remember well,
excitement sure, but also fear, it wasn’t hard to tell.
They all lined up so full of hope, each thought to win that race
or tie for first, or if not that, at least take second place.
Their parents watched from off the side, each cheering for their son,
and each boy hoped to show his folks that he would be the one.

The whistle blew and off they flew, like chariots of fire,
to win, to be the hero there, was each young boy’s desire.
One boy in particular, whose dad was in the crowd,
was running in the lead and thought “My dad will be so proud.”
But as he speeded down the field and crossed a shallow dip,
the little boy who thought he’d win, lost his step and slipped.
Trying hard to catch himself, his arms flew everyplace,
and midst the laughter of the crowd he fell flat on his face.
As he fell, his hope fell too; he couldn’t win it now.
Humiliated, he just wished to disappear somehow.

But as he fell his dad stood up and showed his anxious face,
which to the boy so clearly said, “Get up and win that race!”
He quickly rose, no damage done, behind a bit that’s all,
and ran with all his mind and might to make up for his fall.
So anxious to restore himself, to catch up and to win,
his mind went faster than his legs. He slipped and fell again.
He wished that he had quit before with only one disgrace.
“I’m hopeless as a runner now, I shouldn’t try to race.”

But through the laughing crowd he searched and found his father’s face
with a steady look that said again, “Get up and win that race!”
So he jumped up to try again, ten yards behind the last.
“If I’m to gain those yards,” he thought, “I’ve got to run real fast!”
Exceeding everything he had, he regained eight, then ten...
but trying hard to catch the lead, he slipped and fell again.
Defeat! He lay there silently. A tear dropped from his eye.
“There’s no sense running anymore! Three strikes I’m out! Why try?
I’ve lost, so what’s the use?” he thought. “I’ll live with my disgrace.”
But then he thought about his dad, who soon he’d have to face.

“Get up,” an echo sounded low, “you haven’t lost at all,
for all you have to do to win is rise each time you fall.
Get up!” the echo urged him on, “Get up and take your place!
You were not meant for failure here! Get up and win that race!”
So, up he rose to run once more, refusing to forfeit,
and he resolved that win or lose, at least he wouldn’t quit.
So far behind the others now, the most he’d ever been,
still he gave it all he had and ran like he could win.
Three times he’d fallen stumbling, three times he rose again.
Too far behind to hope to win, he still ran to the end.

They cheered another boy who crossed the line and won first place,
head high and proud and happy -- no falling, no disgrace.
But, when the fallen youngster crossed the line, in last place,
the crowd gave him a greater cheer for finishing the race.
And even though he came in last with head bowed low, unproud,
you would have thought he’d won the race, to listen to the crowd.
And to his dad he sadly said, “I didn’t do so well.”
“To me, you won,” his father said. “You rose each time you fell.”

And now when things seem dark and bleak and difficult to face,
the memory of that little boy helps me in my own race.
For all of life is like that race, with ups and downs and all.
And all you have to do to win is rise each time you fall.
And when depression and despair shout loudly in my face,
another voice within me says, “Get up and win that race!”

Just let me know what you think of this really amazing piece of poetry in the form of this motivating story by posting a small comment !

Eat Cricket. Drink Cricket. Sleep Cricket. Live Cricket 24/7 !!!

2007-08-02T23:00:00.000+05:30

Must agree with my friend and fellow blogger Ameya, whose words of wisdom are still ringing in my ears, "Colleging makes blogging difficult". How true... and you can see by the reduced frequency of my blog posts from the last month (Did I hear a sigh of relief from my worst critics?) Anyways the point is I am done with 75% of the hard work required to the get the B.Tech degree and it seems that the last 25% is the hardest, for reasons that will be disclosed at some later date. Because right now, I am going to tell you about something that has been the first love of my life and will always have a special place in my heart for the rest of my life. So before I get busy in the first sessional exam from the next week let me begin.

As you must have guessed from the title, yes, its Cricket ! By the way, one will say, whats new in that? This country having a population of more than 1 billion is anyway cricket crazy than any other in the world. So whats new if I am just a speck of dust in this huge ocean. I hope I vindicate myself as the most ardent lover of the game by expressing my feelings for this sport which drives the whole nation under a frenzy unparalleled by nothing except an Indo-Pak war. In fact, I believe that some fanatics even want to decide the controversial problem between the two countries by a cricket match. Take that for a starter! And let me know if you could swallow that without a lump in your throat.

Well, one must be wondering about the title : eat,drink and sleep cricket? Yup, that practically happens with cricket lovers like me as we actually "live" the game ..... I have been an admirer of the sport from an age which even I cant remember. The last photographic proof is of a 4 yr me holding a bat of about my height and facing a team consisting of boys about 4-5 times my age back in Chandrapur. That was 1990 I guess. Not Abnormal, one may say. Just wait. Unlike some of the lucky people I have known, I didn't pursue a serious coaching so as to nurture the talent in me (Yeah, I am a bit pompous !) But whenever I got a chance, I used to grab that wooden handle or the red cherry (those days the cricket ball came in various colours and materials by the way) and was always ready to smash the ball out of the park or rattle the wickets that lay in front of me.

And today I can say proudly, that CRICKET is my religion and as you can see, Sachin Tendulkar is my GOD ! You see, one really requires an idol if one needs to push oneself to achieve something in a given way of life. And for me, like most of the other kids, it was the 16 year old Sachin Tendulkar who debuted against the mighty Pakistanis and faced the music of the "Toe Crusher" Waqar Younis and the "Sultan of Swing" Wasim Akram defiantly. He has been an enigma to the bowlers all over the planet as his bat keeps tumbling records after records. This man surely knows how to keep the statisticians busy. Till the date of writing this, this GOD has scored more than 35000 runs with an astonishing no of tons that just keeps on piling. No one has a chance of overtaking him, at least in the recent future.

There have been some of the greatest Cricket matches over the years which have kept the fire burning for the love of the game and let me list a few of them in no particular order which have made quite a mark on my mind:

The recent 5-0 Ashes rout by the Aussies to avenge the 2005 Ashes fallout in England.
The upset chase of 434 runs by the Proteas (South Africans) against the Aussies.
England, powered by Freddie Flintoff, humiliating the Australians by snatching a test match win by a whisker of 1 run !
India's superb run to the finals of the World Cup 2003.
The Natwest Trophy final - Kaif and Yuvraj simply kicked England from a win-win situation.
That crushing ouster of the South African Team from World Cup 1999 in the semi finals.
Remember a depleted West Indies chasing 420 on the last day of Test match against the kangaroos?
Sachin Tendulkar taking 5-32 in Hero Cup final vs South Africa
And who can forget how close the New Zealand- Australia matches have always been?

The fact is, the number of such "amazing" moments just cant be penned down on a piece of paper, since what stares at you is the term - infinity. From the year 1877 - when the First ever test match was played, literally hundreds of individuals have collectively shown that the word impossible isn't present in their dictionaries. After all it takes courage to be a certain Herschelle Gibbs to blast out 175 off 105 balls when you are facing the mother of all run chases. Cricket runs in my blood. I played it during school, with my friends. I played it in the locality with people of all age groups. (even the elders too were forced to play when we were short of fielders!) In this place called as the engineering college, this passion none the less flowered even more as more and more cricket lovers were discovered. Whether its the field or a classroom, seldom has been a day when Cricket hasn't been discussed. Over the years the number of the matches played over the globe has increased tenfold and so has the coverage with a new sports channel coming round the corner every 6 months.

And to the great delight of myself, STAR Cricket - The brilliant initiative by ESPN-STAR has culiminated into what I may call the single largest Cricket Media where the game is highlighted for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Now thats what I call a treat. Finally, the television is no longer an idiot box in the truest of sense. Now whenever I switch on the TV, I do check out this amazing channel to look out for live cricket, matches highlights, greatest cricketing moments, past legends and what not - all presented in a flurry of superb programmes like HitZ, Close Shaves, Super Centuries, India Glorious etc... the list is too long.

As the promos put it correctly,

"ye desh hai deewano ka, jinhe junoon hai is Cricket khel ka,
hume hak hai aise ek channel ka, jo 24 ghante sirf yeh junoon dikhaye !!"

This sums it all. The craze for other popular sports like soccer etc is really temporary, in sporadic phases like the world cup. Even today I am amazed when people talk about English Football clubs with the sheer knowledge of just a couple of teams and a handful of players ! Of course... thats not the way it is with Cricket. Its here to stay - to create newer imprints on our souls with modern changes that will lead to an even huge upheaval for this mind blowing sport.

And by the way... the 20-20 World Cup is just round the Corner. Come September 2007 and the mania begins again. Be a part of it. Live the game !

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-24T00:32:00.000+05:30

The wait is over. Finally on the morning of 21st July, 2007 about 50 million (maybe lots more...) people from all over the world thronged the bookstores and formed humongous queues to bag a copy of the legendary finale of the greatest story ever told - the book 7 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, written by the now multi-billionaire and deservingly so, J.K.Rowling. When the prodigious writer came out with the 1st edition of the exciting series in 1998, very few people took notice of the magical world that she had spun over a cup of coffee, but 10 years later and after 6 sequels to the brilliant plot the entire world is "stunned"... literally. Its the final confrontation between Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the “symbol of hope” for both the Wizard and Muggle worlds, and Lord Voldemort also known as Tom Marvolo Riddle, He Who Must Not Be Named who is the nefarious leader of the Death Eaters. Good versus Evil. Love versus Hate. The Seeker versus the Dark Lord.

To start off, let me make it clear that I am not exactly a Harry Potter freak like some of my friends, but I just used to read the books since it offered me a good read and was something different from the ordinary world. But it would be an understatement if I lay the same claim now, after I have read this final epic which has made me a hard core fan of the entire Harry Potter mania. I mean, there couldn't haven been a better ending to this monumental epic story and even most of the superlatives that I use - God level - fails to describe the ultimate climax that just leaves you wondering if this is really the end. Though I was a wee bit disappointed with Dumbledore's death in the 6th edition, but JKR made up for it big time with the Deathly Hallows. This blog is to salute the insane creativity that the woman has and her innocuous talent by which she planned and crafted such a magnificient masterpiece panning the mind boggling world of wizards and witches, magic and wonder!

With each installment, the “Potter” series has grown increasingly dark, and this one is no exception offering the best of Harry Potter - his bravery and courage, which until now were shadowed by his great mentor - Albus Dumbledore and Sirius Black. This time he faces the supreme forces of evil on his own with the help of his best buddies - Ron Weasley and Hermoine Granger who make up for the small bits which Harry Potter sometimes lacks, of course, no one is perfect. While the author effortlessly tells the details whether it is Ron’s adolescent sarcasm, Hermoine's unbelievable brains or Harry’s growing solemnity and instincts, from youthful exuberance to more philosophical gravity, “Deathly Hallows” is a book that marks Harry’s final initiation into the complexities and sadnesses of adulthood. Its the first book that made me think more of Harry Potter as a character and less of the story that revolved around him.

The Deathly Hallows marks a transformation in the character of Harry Potter. From his first days at Hogwarts, the green-eyed boy bore the burden of his destiny as a leader, coping with the expectations and duties of his role while suffering from the early loss of his family. Harry often wished to himself he were not the de facto leader of the Resistance movement, shouldering terrifying responsibilities, but wanted to be an ordinary teenage boy — free to romance Ginny Weasley and hang out with his friends. Gone are the days of the contantly bickering Harry Potter frustrated with Dumbledore's choice of not telling him all the facts about his life, this time its war and he takes up the mantle of an ultimate warrior effortlessly with a steely resolve to manage the mischief called as Lord Voldemort.

In this volume, the losses mount with unnerving speed: at least a half-dozen characters we have come to know die in alternate chapters, and many others are wounded or tortured. Voldemort and his followers infiltrate Hogwarts (Professor Snape becomes the Headmaster) and the Ministry of Magic, creating havoc and terror in the Wizard and Muggle worlds alike, and the members of various populations — including elves, goblins and centaurs — are choosing sides. No wonder then, Harry often seems overwhelmed with disillusionment and doubt in the final installment of this seven-volume saga. He continues to struggle to control his temper, and as he, Ron and Hermione search for the missing Horcruxes (7 secret magical objects in which Voldemort has stashed parts of his soul, objects that Harry must destroy if he hopes to kill the evil lord) he literally enters a dark wood, in which he must battle out the Death Eaters and eventually the Dark Lord himself.

Harry’s weird psychic connection with Voldemort (symbolized by the lightning-bolt forehead scar he bears as a result of the Dark Lord’s attack on him as a baby) grows stronger giving him clues to Voldemort’s actions and whereabouts. One of the plot’s significant turning points concerns Harry’s decision on whether to continue looking for the Horcruxes — the mission assigned to him by the late Dumbledore — or to pursue the Deathly Hallows, three magical objects said to make their possessor the master of Death.

Harry’s journey propels him forward to a final showdown with his arch enemy and sends him backward into the past - to the house in Godric’s Hollow where his parents died, to learn about his family history and the equally mysterious history of Dumbledore’s family. At the same time, he is forced to ponder the equation between fraternity and independence, free will and fate, and to come to terms with his own frailties and those of others. Ambiguities proliferate throughout “The Deathly Hallows”: as we are read hitherto unexplored facts about the kindly Dumbledore, sinister Severus Snape and perhaps even the awful Muggle cousin Dudley Dursley, who are more complicated than they seem, that all of them, like Harry, have hidden aspects to their personalities, and that choice — more than talent or predisposition — matters most of all.

I might propose that J. K. Rowling has almost created a world as fully detailed as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, a world so minutely imagined in terms of its history, rituals and rules that it qualifies as an alternate universe, which may be one reason the “Potter” books have spawned such a passionate following and such fervent exegesis. With this volume, the reader realizes that small incidents in earlier installments (hidden among a huge number of red herrings) create a breadcrumb trail of clues to the plot, that Rowling has fitted together with the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of this complex puzzle with unparalleled brilliance. Objects and spells from earlier books — like the Invisibility cloak, Polyjuice Potion, Dumbledore’s Pensieve and Sirius’s flying motorcycle — play important roles and characters like the house-elf Dobby, Mr. Ollivander- the wandmaker, the barman at Hogsmeade resurface with a greater role to play.

The world of Harry Potter is a place where the mundane and the marvelous, the ordinary and the surreal coexist. It’s a place where cars can fly and owls can deliver the mail, a place where paintings talk and a mirror reflects people’s innermost desires. It’s also a place utterly recognizable to readers, a place where death and the catastrophes of daily life are inevitable, and people’s lives are defined by love and loss and hope — the same way they are in our own mortal world. Harry Potter rocks..... big time and there doesn't seem to be a distant end to the Potter mania as two more film adaptations of this successful story line are in the offering. I meanwhile, will try to recover from the hang over of scary spells like the "Avada Kedavra" and others. All is well.

P.S.: Review based on the article given in the NY Times and personal experience. Please post your comments about the book/article and feel free to point out any mistake that might have slipped out. And yeah, if you were bored reading this or disliked it... for you, "Obliviate" !

Of Hearts and Heart breaks !

2007-07-09T21:16:00.000+05:30

The Crap

Its been a long time since I blogged due to the re-opening of the prestigious college of mine which has eaten away oodles of my even more prestigious time due to the so boring lectures and practicals which seem to be never ending, but in the end its a part and parcel of the fun that I have in VNIT Campus. Coming back to blogging, after finally a long lull or to quote an "about to be" rich and famous person, "to overcome the writers block" or whatever, I am back... though the content is not original but its really useful and everyone must read to lead a long life.

Now the title may seem to be suggesting about heart breaks but believe me it has got nothing to do with emotional affairs associated with the delicate organ nor is it related to anything dealing with the opposite sex. Its a very useful article that was sent to me by my elder sister which I found to be really good to share it with one and all, and my blog seemed to be crying, "Post something", so here it goes...

The useful stuff

If someone tells you that we must stop the practice of drinking cold water with meals so as to avoid heart attacks, the most likely response is, "Stop kidding!". But its true and well the Chinese and the Japanese do drink hot tea with their meals and maybe it is time we adopt their drinking habits along with the fast foods.

For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is nice to have a cup of cold drink after a meal. However, the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you just consumed. It will slow down the digestion. Once this "sludge" reacts with the amino acids, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. This will cause it to line with the intestine walls. See the figure shown above. Very soon, this will turn into fats and they go on accumulating like anything, and can have effects as mild as making you look more gross and as worse as leading to Cancer. Hence, it is really best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal so as to avoid this dangerous scenario. Savvy?

A serious note about heart attacks - you should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting. Be aware of the intense pain in the jaw line. You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack. Nausea and intense sweating are also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while they are asleep do not wake up. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we have to survive. The original author of this stub who must be a good cardiologist said if everyone who reads this stuff tells it to at least 10 people, can make sure that we'll save at least one life. Read this and tell other friends of yours to read it and it will be even more better if you refer it on my blog ! Its all about saving one more life... !

You may thank me for adding some more years to your life by commenting on the post and add anything more that I may have missed. Cheerio !

The best google hack ever !

2007-06-30T17:06:00.001+05:30

Google Rocks!

Many of the web searchers around the world use google as a superb search tool to satisfy all sorts of needs. But most of us are unaware about the advanced search options that Google has. Not many people know that Google lets you many key options to optimize your search results by the help of thousands of parameters like - phrase modifications, language, file format, domains and there are tons of search operators that 99% of the world is unaware of.

If you want to see the true potential of Google search , just see the video given below. I am sure it will be of great help to everyone by certain modifications to the commands shown in the video.

Video URL : http://www.youtube.com/v/sRv953XZX6Y
Via: Video Blog

When you are through with this stunning video, and after you bow your heads to Google and the amazing Jimmy Ruska, please don't feel shy to post your comments or queries.

Time of your Life - Best of Green Day

2007-06-30T16:07:00.000+05:30

I am not much of a music fan as such, but I do listen to some of the popular hits that go on around me - by the medium of TV, friends, internet radios etc. Let me present you the lyrics of the song that has inspired the title of this blog of mine...

The song is a really good one with some soothing background music with a fantastic guitar playing that will put most of the self acclaimed guitarists to shame. The lyrics too are really amazing and I keep listening to this song many times. Hope you like it too !

The time of your life - By Green Day.

Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.

Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.

So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.

It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs
and still frames in your mind.

Hang it on a shelf
In good health and good time.

Tattoos of memories
and dead skin on trial.

For what it's worth,
it was worth all the while.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

(music break... the best in the world)

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

You can download this amazing song by clicking here.

Tell me about your favorite songs, so that I may increase my collection of great songs

Finally in final year of Engineering !

2007-06-30T16:00:00.001+05:30

Once upon a time...

This dream story began about 5 years ago, when I decided to opt for Engineering as a viable career option for my future life, since it was the best graduation degree that I could get, so as to satisfy the childhood dream - "Software Engineer". There is no such thing though... Technically speaking its more like Computer Science Engineering... Started preparing for IIT-JEE, known to be the toughest of them all, and it must be so, because it caters only to the best of the minds. Sadly, I couldn't make the cut - the blame lies on me entirely - you have to study too hard for that... But then there is no dearth of Engineering colleges in this country (the figure runs in many thousands! ). The next in ladder were the NIT's - National Institute of Technologies and fortunately I didn't screw much in the AIEEE (another entrance exam...) But the Computer Science Engineering dream remained a dream since I somehow got into Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. (please don't say YUK... some of our courses will fetch anyone career options that will be the envy of any engineer from any institute... more of that later...) So here I was, after 2 yrs of HSSC and Engg entrance prep, in VNIT - Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur itself, in my hometown. After a lot of dilemma over choosing over the discipline in engineering and the engineering college, I finally decided to go with the institute. And I can say proudly that its been a great decision so far !!!

VNIT - 1st year - The "FAST" year

Almost everyone, when they are to think about the first year engineering, the first word that comes to his/her mind is ragging ! Yeah... its just like that, but here in VNIT, I found an entirely new dimension of it. The word is "Interaction" - yup... thats the basic purpose of all the leg pulling that went around when we first years, all clad in that boring dress code gathered in the Aarohi Room where lots of thirsty seniors were vying for fresh blood... I loved it all and seriously got grooved in all the fun that went along with the seniors, even on the Cricket Ground. The way they showed us around in all the walks of life of campus and imparting the off-classroom education, I am really grateful to one and all to make me gel in the complicated webs of VNIT. The first year subjects were something that I found really great - whether it was drawing sheets in ED or solving fundoo problems in EM, it was something that fueled my liking for engineering to the fullest. I don't even remember how the first year drifted by as I explored the various 'hideouts' - the canteen, the library, the hostels, the computer center amongst the many others. This was the year when we start at the bottom rung of organizing many events - Aarohi - the cultural festival, Axis - the technical festival, Krikmania - the cricket tournament... it was just amazing. And the day we got freshers was just so memorable as we began flaunting our status as undergraduates to the whole world with unabashed pride smacked on our faces.

The "Second Coming" year and The "Third Grade" year

The activities remained quite the same except for the studies, which saw a new low. The "level" of fun and frolic increased with the feeling that someone below can bear the brunt of our misgivings! All the communities and organizations had the opportunity to be blessed with our skilled managerial tactics and were uplifted from their drudgery. Considering the academic viewpoint of my engineering life, I totally neglected the meta stuff (and that wasn't a good decision, in hindsight) and went on to learn new stuff about CSE (and that was indeed a better decision, in foresight). Went on to do some mini projects, an internship at an upcoming SW company and also went to an industrial excursion to a Steel Plant. Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, IIT Roorkee, Pune and New Delhi - all happened, for all sorts of reasons and suddenly I had travelled a lot during these two years with family, with friends all alike. It was just a glimpse of the great country of mine and I am sure I have not quite have had enough of it. Life took many turns and suddenly I was living on a freeway full of sheer crazyness - bunking college, lots of movies and sitcoms on the PC, orkuting, surfing and going on to new hang outs with buddies. Campus placements gave me a job at TCS - one of the best IT companies in the world and VNIT says that I still have one more shot at it. Started preparing to bell the CAT and get to IIM's, but right now its a distant dream. And then even before I could blink my eyes... It happened... I was suddenly in the Final year of Engineering... gulp !

At the end of the world...

Standing on the altar of 7th semester in this battle to achieve a piece of paper which will have "B.Tech" stamped on it (just kidding, it means a lot more to me), I am feeling really nostalgic right now. VNIT, formerly VRCE, was the place from where my father completed his graduation in Electrical Engineering and there are quite a few ties with VNIT. I hope that I have made them all proud, though, looking back I know that I have been more than a disappointment to everyone's expectations by not doing the required hard work at the right time. But Hey... thats the way I am, always living the moment rather than fretting about the future. And now the Institute seems a lot different to me. More responsibilities, more respect to the ever hard working professors, more yearning for "interaction" with juniors, more studies and more fun. I intend to spend this last year with a new outlook to life. To explore the hitherto unknown dimensions and to find more about the meaning of life... the purpose of existence - thats crazy, I know... But I am far from becoming a hermit right now ! Anyways... I think I owe a lot to VNIT. It has taught me many things which are just indescribable since they are all abstract nouns. When I finally complete it, I hope that it doesn't make my eyes wet. The joke goes around that I shed tears during senti movies, but the only thing that shook my rigid soul was "Swades". I have had the time of my life in this college and can go on continuously. Looking forward to another couple of great semesters where I can continue to extrapolate my stay in this magnificient campus.

Fellow VNITians, please post your comments if I have missed out something worthy of mention. Other blog readers, no one is stopping you to post your feedback and views !

Engineers -> Get ready to get crazy

2007-06-30T13:31:00.000+05:30

Crazy Engineers

Some time ago, I stumbled upon this great online conglomeration of engineers from all over the world and when I registered and gave a shot at the forum, I knew that I was hooked on to something really cool, for life.

Crazy Engineers forum is an assortment of all the crazy activities the engineering community is involved in... Be it the highly technical geek-speak or something as useless as pure chit-chatting about nothing. Catering to all the engineering disciplines, one is sure to find common interests on this ever growing community. Forums like CE-Labs, CE-Ideas/Knowledge sharing/Articles , CE-Finance are really a treat to read. You can set your grey cells running in the debates section and if you are a budding engineer who is craving for more, the Higher Education section is just for you...

Besides all this, what you get is to know fellow techies from all over the world making it a really cool experience to be there. Believe me, the phrase time just flies away is really apt to describe this ultimate forum.

I am already a proud CEan ! What about you?

Solutionz.inc has been launched

2007-06-26T22:52:00.000+05:30

Hello everyone...

I present before you - Solutionz.inc - which is soon going to become a one stop solution for everyone who is seeking some concise and brief information about various topics ranging from engineering to social causes, politics to sports , entertainment to science and technology and what not.

Please do have a look at this small endeavor which may save your time and efforts of web searching.

Introduction

We might be engineers, we might be doctors or we might be sportspersons. But one thing we never forget to say is "Proud to be an Indian". Very true-our country is indeed a beautiful place to live in. Optimism about the country's wonderful economic growth is in the air since our Business Maharajas have declared a war against the companies of the so called developed countries. We make them our ideals and dream to follow their path, but isn't our world too small to live these big dreams. Aren't engineers today only engineers and nothing else, same with the doctors, sportspersons and other proud Indians. So why not learn something beyond what is expected of us? Here at Solutionz we explore a similar opportunity. For those who never get tired of asking "Why?"-we present a wonderful collection of articles on all topics under the sun. Calling all those information hungry to learn and contribute...let us make our nation proud of ourselves.

About Solutionz

The age has come to be known as the “Information Age”-and no other term could have explained better, the vast amount of information available at the click of a button. With internet trying to find its place among the Seven Wonders of the World, the users are facing a new problem-Information Clutter.

So what do we do when we have hundreds of search engines, returning millions and millions of results on every topic. Does it sound logical to search the first 100 sites and filter the data as we need it. We have a solution-why not go to the specialist? A specialist who will search the internet and send you a comprehensive paper on the topic of your choice…and that too absolutely free.

All you have to do is mail the topic with a basic idea of your requirement (depth of information, specific subheads, urgency of need etc.) and we will send you the paper within 24 hours. The required information can be anything under the sun-from current issues to commerce, form engineering to economics, from social issues to science. Our e-mail is solutionz.inc@gmail.com. Do let us know about your comments and suggestions. You can blog us at http://www.solutionz-inc.blogspot.com.

Complications involved in Time Travel

2007-06-21T12:22:00.000+05:30

Pre Script- It would be better if you read my previous post about "time travel" before going through this article, just for the sake of better understanding and getting the feeling of being more involved in it. You can read it by clicking here

I hope that the reader is acquainted with the nuances involved with time travels, I thought that its imperative to show what troubles we might face in this yet to be accomplished but mighty dream of ours. If we are ever able to develop a workable theory for time travel and invent some sort of time machine, we would open up the ability to create very complicated problems called paradoxes. A paradox is defined as something that contradicts itself. Here are some common examples that I could think of.

I Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you could travel back to a time before you were born. You will say, whats the big deal in that? Isn't that one of the purposes of the time machine? To see the unknown... But the mere fact that you could exist in a time before you were born creates a paradox. If you were born in 1986, how could you exist in 1947 to see Jawaharlal Nehru unfurling the flag of India's independence?

II Possibly the most famous paradox is the grandfather paradox. What would happen if a time traveler went back and killed one of his or her ancestors/blood relatives (say father or mother... not that one would actually do that... but its just for the sake o example) before the traveler was born? If the person killed his or her grandfather, then how could that person be born some years later and then go back and kill his or her grandfather? Mind-blowing stuff, one would say but its just a part of infinite intricacies involved. Movie buffs like me would relate this with the famous John Connor from the Terminator trilogy (the 4th part is yet to be released, at the time of writing). If we could change the past, it would create an infinite number of paradoxes.

III And the most baffling one would be if you go just some hours ago in time, at the same space where you existed... Consider seeing a duplicate of oneself for some moments but there are many theories that don't allow such things. Space-time continuum laws, though hypothetical are surely not a piece of cake to understand.

IV Another theory regarding time travel brings up the idea of parallel universes, or alternative histories. Remember the awesome movie Butterfly Effect and its sequel !!! (If you still haven't done that, then be sure to do that the first thing after reading this blog... you are missing something really vital.) Let's say that you do travel back to meet your father when he was a boy. In the theory of parallel universes, you may have traveled to another universe, one that is similar to ours, but has a different succession of events. For instance, if you were to travel back in time and change something in order to alter the future, you've only done the "change" in that one universe, and sadly its no longer the universe that you exist in. And if you then try to travel back to your own time, you may end up in another parallel universe and never be able to get back to the universe you started in the first time.

The idea here is that every action causes the creation of a new universe, and that there are an infinite number of universes that exist. When you killed your ancestor, you created a new universe, a universe that was identical to your own up until the time you changed the original succession of events.

V Predestination Paradox and Ontological Paradox

Consider the following examples...

A man travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him, years later, to travel back in time.

On his 30th birthday, a man who wishes to build a time machine is visited by a future version of himself. This future self explains to him that he should not worry about designing the time machine, as he has done it in the future. The man receives the schematics from his future self and starts building the time machine. Time passes until he finally completes the time machine. He then uses it to travel back in time to his 30th birthday, where he gives the schematics to his past self, closing the loop.

A professor travels forward in time, and reads in a physics journal about a new equation that was recently derived. He travels back to his own time, and relates it to one of his students who writes it up, and the article is published in the same journal which the professor reads in the future.

Confused yet? Welcome to the amazing world of time travel. Makes you think a lot. Just imagine how complicated the ticket prices will be. Anyone up for grabs?

Please post your comments and views with free will...

My take on Time Travel

2007-06-21T11:29:00.000+05:30

Pre-Script: A bit lengthy but interesting read...

There is no other concept that captures the imagination more than the idea of time travel -- the ability to travel to any point in the past or future. What could be more cool? You could jump into your time machine to go back and see major events in history and talk to the people who were there! Who or what would you travel back to see? Mahatma Gandhi? The construction of some ancient wonder? the life of your grand-grandparents? You could go back and meet yourself at an earlier age, go forward and see how you look in the future...regardless of the many complications involved and the paradoxes which may arise. (The most famous paradox is Grandfathers paradox) It's these possibilities that have made time travel the subject of so many science fiction books and movies. The fascination to alter the future or to have a glimpse of what lies ahead has always tempted man to bend the laws of nature, technically speaking, the space-time continuum.

I have been inspired by the following sources while writing this article on time travel

The time machine - H.G.Wells
A brief history of time - Stephen Hawking
Terminator movies trilogy
Butterfly effect - awesome movie !
TV series like Heroes
and there are many more.....

It is a fact that we are all time travelers. As you read this article, doing nothing more than scrolling your mouse, time is traveling around you. The future is constantly being transformed into the past with the present only lasting for a "fleeting moment". Everything that you are doing right now is quickly moving into the past, which means we continue to move through time.

Ideas of time travel have existed for centuries, but when the great Albert Einstein released his theory of special relativity, he laid the foundation for the theoretical possibility of time travel. As we all know, no one has successfully demonstrated time travel, but no one has been able to rule it out either.

Time has been defined as being the fourth dimension of our universe. The other three dimensions are of space. Time cannot exist without space and space cannot exist without time. This interconnected relationship of time and space is called the space-time continuum, which means that any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time.

How to time travel?

While writers have produced some great ideas for time machines over the years, a real-life time machine has yet to be built. Most theories of time travel don't rely on machines at all. Instead, time travel will likely be done by way of natural phenomena that will transport us instantly from one point in time to another. These space phenomena, which I am not even sure exist, include:

Wormholes
Cosmic Strings

1) According to me the best bet for time travel would be - "Wormholes", if they do exist. Wormholes are considered possible based on Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that any mass curves space-time. To understand this lets think about two people holding a bed sheet up and stretching that sheet tight. If one person were to place a baseball on the bed sheet, the weight of the baseball would roll to the middle of the sheet and cause the sheet to curve at that point. Now, if a marble were placed on the edge of the same bed sheet it would travel toward the baseball because of the curve.

Here, space is shown as a two-dimensional plane rather than the four dimensions that actually make up space-time. Now imagine that this sheet is folded, leaving a space between the top and bottom. Placing the baseball on the top side will cause a curvature to form. If an equal mass is placed on the bottom part of the sheet at a point that corresponds with the location of the baseball on the top, the second mass would eventually meet with the baseball. This is one of the ways how wormholes may form, really fascinating, isnt it?

In space, masses that place pressure on different parts of the universe could eventually come together to form a tunnel -- this is a wormhole. We could then travel from Earth to another galaxy and back relatively quickly (within a lifetime). I am saying a bit quickly because hypothetically speaking, we are traveling for a shorter distance at much high speed. Why we need to travel through the worm holes at the speed of light is something that I cant put here in this blog. If wormholes could be discovered, it might allow us to travel to the past as well as the future, though there are infinite complications and intricacies involved in this mind blowing journey.

2) Another way to time travel is by using the concept of cosmic strings -which are string-like objects that some scientists believe were formed in the early universe. These strings may line the entire length of the universe and are under immense pressure -- millions upon millions of tons. These cosmic strings, which are thinner than an atom, can generate an enormous amount of gravitational pull on any objects that pass near them, just like the black holes. Objects attached to a cosmic string could travel at incredible speeds, and because their gravitational force distorts space-time, they could be used for time travel. By pulling two cosmic strings close together, or one string close to a black hole, it might be possible to warp space-time enough to create closed time-like curves.

A spacecraft could be turned into a time machine by using the gravity produced by the two cosmic strings, or the string and black hole, to propel itself into the past. To do this, it would loop around the cosmic strings. However, I read somewhere that in order to travel back in time even one year, it would take a loop of string that contained half the mass-energy of an entire galaxy. Also it has been speculated that one cant go back farther than the point at which the time machine itself was created.

Epilogue

Even if you do decide to choose any one of the way stated above for your time travel dream, be sure that it is still a distant dream. Because I feel that we should not mess up with the beautiful universe that has been created for us. Let the things go as they are. No doubt, the quest for knowledge must continue, we must understand the physics behind everything after all its the basic characteristics that separate us from other living beings on this planet. But then we must not forget that after a point, things are beyond recognition and every mathematical law breaks down, say before the singularity (just before the big bang)

And if all this has been heavy for you, let me propose another mode of time travel devised by me... yes myself ! It may sound ridiculous but then not more than the stuff above. Considering the universally accepted laws of thermodynamics, it has been proved that entropy of a system "always" increases with time. Does that mean that if we manage to decrease the entropy of a finite part of space-time, it will be teleport back to past?? Some food for thought... isn't it?

Comments, views and criticisms are welcome.

Evolution of the Gaming World

2007-06-19T12:26:00.000+05:30

What is gaming?

Gaming has always been a topic of ridicule amongst the learned people who have considered it as a time pass and nothing more, considering it as the best enemy a student can have to spoil his academic career. Before we begin this discussion about gaming which has been neglected as a "small children" activity by "experienced" people who claim that they have seen more than us, please bug off if you aren't interested. And if anyone does want to change his view consider the following facts :

The average age of gamers today is approximately 27 ! (call them kids !)
The gaming industry is on the rise, in spite of the high levels of piracy involved in the same, with big hotshots like EA Games earning revenues in billions of dollars !
There are about 153 gaming platforms in the world, for details click here and you thought that PS-3 is the end of the world !
and many more...

Gaming , as a definition , today is beyond the scope of this blog - but according to a customized definition , it can be stated as an umbrella term which involves lots of subcategories and is a special type of activity/hobby for entertainment and to relax from stress. Another polpular facet of gaming is gambling, but on this page gaming involves everything except gambling - yup... here gaming implies "games" - be it the ones played on your computer, playstation or any other platform. For knowing more about gaming, you can always do a google or wikipedia search, but I dont think it requires any introduction as such.

My tryst with gaming

When I was a kid, 8-12 years, I played the video games and the sega games. I loved them.
When I grew up, 12-16 years, I played the playstation 1 and got introduced to PC games. I loved them even more.
When I grew up even more, I almost got addicted to gaming with Xbox 360 and PS3, but the sheer charm of playing the advanced games on PC remained the best bet for entertainment. I fell for them hook, line and sinker. I knew that this was something I am going to make a future in. I loved gaming even more.

It was because of gaming that my interest in the world of computers was sparked off. I remember advancing from the world of "Mario" and "Battlecity" to the world of "Allan Border Cricket" on DOS. I still cant forget the euphoria that me and a friend of mine had when we completed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, playing 5 hours on a stretch. It takes sheer patience to play strategy games like Age of Mythology without cheatcodes. Games like Need for Speed take you to an entirely new altitude when you race in those thunderbolt cars. Sports like Fifa , Cricket bring you on parallels with the legends you admire and lets you have a shot at the records they created. Multiplayer role playing games and online fiascos brought a new meaning to e-entertainment catapulting the gaming industry to blinding heights. And with the ongoing rivalry between Sony and Microsoft to capture the market with their popular gaming devices, its only more joy for gamers like me. The gaming bug advanced to cell phones too, as Nokia went on to create a special gaming device - N-gage , which I own with pride. (Its another thing that the device was a flop in India, thanks to the unpopularity of gaming at that time, but it sure went on to make record sales everywhere.) People were shell shocked when N-gage production was brought to a halt, but Nokia gave a pleasant relief when it announced that the N-gage hardware is soon going to be implemented in all Nokia models !!!

Gaming has always been a great activity in my friend circle as we exchanged a lots of them among us, and usually had LAN gaming contests of Counter strike and its siblings. Finally I felt that though I couldnt make it as a gaming programmer, I will make it up by keeping loyal with the industry which I have a lot to thank to. Games when played not in excess, can be one of the best stress busters ever and some of them give you lots of food for thought along with some upheaval of creativity and IQ. (Its impossible to prove, but then who cares!)

Future of Gaming Industry

I am ready to predict that it won't be very long before online gaming becomes a spectator sport. Someday in the not-too-distant future, I believe we'll sit around watching online gamers do battle with one another, first on the Internet, and then on something like ESPN. The point being that I think online gaming is going mainstream, joining TV, music, movies, and the Net in the center of our country's entertainment industry. This may sound outlandish, but no more so than ten exceedingly tall people running around in their underwear bouncing an orange ball. Believe me, stranger successes have been made. Console games are already outseling their PC counterparts 10:1 and thats incredible... Over the next 36 months, game consoles and other home Internet hardware, such PCs and wireless access points, will become less and less distinguishable. Put another way, a future Xbox might also be your home's Internet gateway and home entertainment server. Mobile games--meaning games you download into wireless devices like cellular telephones--will generate decent revenue for wireless carriers and expand the video game market to people who don't consider themselves gamers. This will become an interesting diversion for people who have a lot of waiting to do--like in airports. But working against this is the relatively low number of people who play games on their Palms and Pocket PCs. The bottom line is that gaming is likely to only become more important as it reaches out to really embrace the Internet. It will provide more families with a reason to go broadband. That, in turn, will help push a variety of other information and entertainment services into the home. And I dont even need to talk about arcade gaming, though I am not quite into it, I believe that a significant population on earth is.

As more 18- to 34-year-olds check out of network television and check into gaming, marketers will go after that valuable consumer demographic. Product placement may become so abundant in games that NASCAR will look like NPR in comparison. Play a driving game and you'll see familiar landmarks: the Shell gas station on the corner, the McDonald's on Main Street, the Budweiser billboards near highway exits. And thats become a reality in many games already.

Of course there is a downside to excessive gaming too. Its very harmful, if you have an overdose, but then what thing isnt bad when in excess. It may happen that gaming becomes a greater evil than the idiot box. It will be upto us how we embrace this wonderful activity in our life.

Some will be genius. Others will be reprehensible. The key to the future of gaming will be for parents to understand and appreciate those distinctions and to not champion games based on one educational tour-de-force or condemn games entirely based on a violent first-person shooter.

Whatever anyones says, Gaming here is to stay !

The Google dream comes true !

2007-06-19T00:37:00.000+05:30

P.S.: To see what the google dream was, click on the picture lying on the right hand side of the this text --------->

How it all began...

Long since I have traversed (surfed) this vast expanse called the internet, I have seen many people shouting about seeing their websites for one or the other reason and I considered them as morons who had a jobless life and were on the internet to make a quick buck out of the then IT boom. The internet, since then, has evolved out to become the largest ocean of knowledge and information for one and all, whether it be for good or evil purposes..... In this age of information technology, it is imperative for everyone to make a mark of his own in the digital wired world as well. Being an avid internet user from the last 8 years, I have seen the changing ways of this ever increasing giant web called the internet.

And like everyone else in this cyber world, I was fascinated like anything with the "Google" thing that swept everyone on the net with its refreshing charm. Suddenly searching for information was one of the coolest things to do..... people searched for absolutely evrything. Well, man is by nature, a narcissist creature, and by no means am I an exception to this... but somewhere within I had this crazy idea that the cyber world must know about me, about my talents and about the stuff I do. And the best way to do that is to get your name displayed on Google's top search hits. I may sound crazy, but if I am not wrong, I am a part of a group of people who have consistently Googled their names to find their "mark" on the digital world.
Since then, it has been one of my secondary objectives in life to make it on the Google search list when someone types in "Suyash Joshi"

Suyash Joshi starts blogging ...

As I progressed from school to junior college and from there to my engineering college, my fascination for the computer world grew beyond limits. I was consistently learning one or the other thing related to IT field and since internet was my best friend, google kept me going in this quest. I observed that you need to be quite a big hotshot or do some extra ordinary activities to make it to the top on google search list i.e. be something important in the world. I mean, it was no easy task to make it there at this age, since what was at stake was the very reputation of google's searching capacity powered by their "secret sauce" known as the page ranking algorithm which rated websites all over the net along with some 100 other factors. Anyway, I continued putting my name in google search in vain for some more years and all I got was some odd 4th or 5th place mentioning my school or college related activity. Sometimes it mentioned the names database too, but to quote my friend Ameya , its like "the proof that u exist"... Phew! that wasnt quite enough. I wanted the world to know something about me when they put my name there.

Time passed painfully and one fine day I stumbled upon blogger.com , the instant heaven for blogging. I was quite late in the field but I found an instant liking to this mode of letting out some creativity of your mind on your own blog. My blog let me share some of the knowledge and experiences so far, also letting out the momentous happiness and sadness over to others. I thought that this was the chance to make it finally, since blogger is associated with google now, so I researched about increasing the pagerank of the blog, so that it appears higher in google search.

In my mission to fame and glory (read improving pagerank) I had to surpass the following track which made for some 3 really eventful days of my life:

connecting to the blog to other blogs - in this case my friends blogs
publishing blog content on feed hungry sites like technorati.com
using tools like feedburner (now owned by google) to make people subscribe to the blog and get articles directly to inbox
using gimmicks like google adsense, google gadgets
and finally pestering one and all to visit the blog and posting comments (I am sorry, but the intent was pure and without any malice in my heart...)

And we have lift off !

Finally on the auspicious evening of 18th June 2007, my friend and fellow blogger , Ameya Khandekar called me to tell that I had made it on top of the google search list. And I was happy and exuberant like anything... I mean it was a dream come true... Well,it is by no means a great achievement, but has a "feel good" factor associated with it... and for those people who are calling me pompous and other such adjectives, just google yourselves to find more about this thing. I hope that I go on to achieve bigger things in life, and my glory doesnt stop at this blog alone. Personally I will like to thank everyone who read my long and boring articles... (future readers, I am just kidding.... !), and even more grateful to the subscribers who selflessly entered their email ids in spite of dangers of spam (kidding again !) and also blogger.com who provided this platform for me to make a permanent impression of my existence in the cyber world... and yeah, last but not the least the google crawler... may you crawl me forever and keep a permanent index !!!

For all the detectives out there, u can see the triumph of my efforts in the picture posted at the right top corner of this article where it began.

The aftermath

Whenever I searched "Suyash Joshi" on google, it asked me back very rudely,
"Did you mean: Subhash Joshi?" and it does so , even now.... and that always made me furious.

The blow has been soothened now because just below the derogatory question, now lies the link for my blog. The day is not far when one day, I will manage to wipe it out...
In fact, some years down the line, when someone searches "Subhash Joshi", google will say
"Did you mean: Suyash Joshi?" hehehe.....

I am having the Time of my life, what about you??

Feel free to comment, criticise this blog and share your views !

Avoid Spam in GMAIL - lets keep the inbox clean

2007-06-16T13:30:00.000+05:30

Are you worried about spam in your precious gmail account ?

Its been a quite a time since I've been a victim of spam in my gmail account and was tired of deleting tons of emails everyday - so I thought...enough is enough. Finally I found this smart way to get my inbox clean !

If you want to get a spam free inbox, then you would like to consider making aliases of your gmail id to use when you're not sure whether you're signing up for something safe or not.

It is a very simple task to provide an alias of your gmail id. Whenever you sign up on the internet on some site that you think may not be safe(or a site which might send you spam),all you have to do is give out the email address as username+insertanythingyouwanthere@gmail.com

For example if your email id is james@gmail.com,you can provide james+21@gmail.com or james+test@gmail.com .You can put anything after the + and all email sent will still go to your gmail account.

In the event that you did give your email to a spammer and you start receiving spam, don't worry! Just create a filter, and make everything that is sent to username+whateveryouputhere@gmail.com go to the trash. This way all the spam that you might get will automatically be deleted.

Did you find it useful?
In case of queries do post them as comments.....

Sahi re Sahi - is absolutely Sahi !!!

2007-06-14T23:16:00.000+05:30

Marathi theatre - reloaded, relived, recherished...

I saw this super hilarious marathi comedy drama - or naatak, as its called in marathi - "Sahi re Sahi" today with my family in the VasantRao Deshpande hall in Nagpur - which was jam packed like anything with people flooding like anything. I was glad in my mind that marathi theatre is still alive and kicking as compared to the drubbing suffered by marathi movies and literature , due to its glorious elder bothers bollywood, hollywood etc. Its really bad that marathi- which is basically my mother tongue and most of the people in the area is on a serious downhill, both in terms of usage as well as respect for consideration. And to think that we hail from the lands of the great P.L.Deshpande, Kusumagraj and other big wigs, is really a shame and part of it is because of the lack of interest shown by the generation X - teenagers and twenty somethings like me who aint really paying attention to the rich cultural heritage we are born with. Anyways even I was going to the play just because a friend of mine (Pravin) had insisted that its really worth the time and money, and he was right like anything. The show started at 6:30 PM and was about to last for 2 hours flat with an interval and the tickets were as high as 200 bucks - I was like... blimey ! Initially felt like as if this was daylight robbery since even multiplexes like Inox provide more material comforts at lower costs, but then after 2 hours I was about to change my entire view about theatres - and write this in my blog. A helluva laughter riot was in store which kept us all in splits, and in the end everyone was left asking for more.

The drama - directed by the legendary Kedar Shinde was starring the even more legendary actor - Bharat Jadhav who plays a quadrapole role leaving the audience absolutely in splits everytime he utters something or does any jig. Since its inception in the year 2002 has gone on to become the highest grossing marathi drama of all time in the country with 1654 (!!!) shows till date- including the one I saw... now thats something that I felt was really awesome. The other cast in the play involved some really witty dialogue delivery and really funny on the spot, live and spontaneous acting - all embedded in an amazing sense of co-ordination. The background score and sound effects were unbelievably great and held everyone in their seats and reduced everyone to tears - yeah.... the tears which come due to excessive laughter. Such was the magnamity of the comedy act, all the actors got a standing ovation at the end by the so famous audience of Nagpur, known for not appreciating art as such.

Script in brief

The play revolves around Madan Sukhatme (played by the exceptionally talented Bharat Jadhav) who is a leading industrialist living with his wife Mira unaware of the fact that she is betraying him for his Personal assistant Aniket Raje. It happens on one fie day that Madan is killed by the trickster duo accidentally and they decide to dispose his body. Later on they come to know that Madan had made three wills - something really crazy indeed.... but in fact each is for the three inheritors - his first wife Manorama, his present wife Mira and his uncle Anna who took care of him in childhood. So far so simple. But here lies the catch. The absolutely whacky lawyer - Mr Lele tells all the three inheritors that the wills cant be brought into effect till he knows which is authentic since all the wills are signed without date on them, thus bringing into question the right way of distribution of property, bank balance, shares etc. All the greedy people then fall into a common trap where each plans to bring their own Madan Sukhatme to validate their claim for property - all look alikes , of course.

And this starts the great drama called Sahi re Sahi - (In marathi , the word "sahi" literally means signature in english, which is the prime thing everyone is aspiring to obtain from Madan).
Thus we have 3 fake Madans brought along with a great tango with the Real Madan himself - leading us to a visual and sonorous treat of enjoying Bharat Jadhav in 4 different charecters
who rock the stage like hell. The sheer synchronous act put up by the cast is really praise worthy as they leave no stone unturned to make our funny bone ache with pain. What happens in the end is something that I wont reveal since I "insist" that each one of the readers who understands marathi MUST go and see this for himself.

Overall, I will rate this play as 5/5 , since I beleive that the production team has achieved its goal of pure entertainment with supeme perfection. After "all the best" and "varhad nighalaya london la" I believe that "sahi re sahi" is really a pinnacle of paramount excellence which will shine high atop the ever increasing peaks of Marathi theatre.

A word about the awesome Bharat Jadhav

This guy really strides like a colossus on the marathi stage and has been its unconquered ruler for a decade now. Yet, none of the stardust has caught with this humble and down to earth human being. He attributes his success to the director of the play and the entire production and acting team which complement each other beautifully to put up the marvellous act. Its really a treat to watch his energetic and power packed performance on the stage. Its his great devotion to stage that he has got this unparalled success in this field, though he has aso got some wonderful opportunities in movies too, marathi and hindi both.

With Balasaheb Thakrey, Sachin Tendulkar, N Chandra , David Dhawan among the many in his star studded fan club, this brilliant and awesome actor has surely got a long way to go !!

Shootout at Lokhandwala - Whats right and whats wrong?

2007-06-14T14:15:00.001+05:30

My Take on the "underworld"

Recently I had seen this new bollywood flick "Shootout at Lokhandwala" which fell into the general cops vs gangsters category (like its predecessor "Company" by RGV). However, this particular effort by the Director Apurva Lakhia and his entire production crew was something really extraordinary and done with meticulous efforts. It is based upon the real-life police shootout led by Mumbai Police Inspector Aftab Ahmed Khan at Lokhandwala Complex on November 16, 1991. The leading protagonists in the film have slightly different names than their real-life counterparts and the film caption is "based on true rumours."

The "Real" Story

The film, as told earlier revolves around a particular time frame of 1991 which was a significat period in the history of Mumbai Police. The ATS or the Anti terrorist squad formed by Aftab Ahmed Khan, the then Police Chief, was a force of about 30 to 35 selected brave and courageous police officers in Mumbai, India. This Squad had stopped several attacks in the country. After its formation in 1990, ATS's officers won 23 gallantry awards. Its worthwhile to note that the encounter victims count rose from 12 to 53 in 2 yrs after its inception, making it a strong fear in the criminal syndicate of the city.

The Lokhandwala Complex was an upper end middle-class housing area in Andheri, Mumbai, where Shiv Sena criminal-politician Gopal Rajwani had purchased a flat for mega-mobster Dawood Ibrahim. On November 16, 1991, Dawood henchmen Maya Dolas and Dilip Bhuwa, along with four others, were in this apartment when they were surrounded by Khan.

The ensuing fourteen hour shootout, much of it publicized live on news channels, made Khan a household name.About the actual event, Khan has said: "Maya was abusing me a lot when we went to capture him. I asked him to surrender, yet he abused me nonstop. He had escaped from police custody earlier and had created fear in the minds of people."

However, Khan was subsequently accused of having carried out the murder on behalf of Dawood Ibrahim, from whose gang Maya Dolas and Dilip Buwa were said to have defected in 1989. The defection by these two Hindu gangsters, together with Chhota Rajan's alienation, led to the increasing Muslim polarization of Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company gang, and eventually, the 12 March 1993 Bombay Bombings.

It was alleged that Dawood had tipped off Khan about the whereabouts of Maya and Buwa, leading to the shootout. Allegations were also levelled that the anti-terrorist squad (ATS) which had participated in the encounter had made off with Rs. 70 lakh cash found with Maya Dolas. Khan himself was also charged with corruption. Four inquiries were instituted against Khan, and although he was cleared in three of them, his controversial reputation remains. Khan has rejected these allegations, saying "Those were Dawood's men that I killed in that encounter", but reports in the media do indicate that these men may have parted company with Dawood Ibrahim. Although all the allegations were cleared, the ATS was dissolved on humanitarian grounds since it had become an evil facade for the corrupt cops who used it as to masquered as law enforcers in the guile of gangsters.

Soon after its closure in the mid 1993, the tragedy of the December 1993 blasts happened in the country leading to a dilemma whether the scrapping of ATS was worth or not?

Back to the Question

Now that one has got a clear idea of what the entire incident is about, I will like to pose a few queries which have haunted me for some days and given some sleepless nights.

1) How much ethically correct it was to scrap such an integral part of our social protection system like Anti Terrorist Squad, just on the premise that they dared to be "different" to pursue their goals of total annihilation of terrorism from the financial capital of the country? Its important to note that their actually was a 70 % reduction in crime rates involving extortion, murders etc during that regime.

2) Given the current scenario of increasing terrorist and naxalite activities, are we
content with the army and the BSF (Border Security force) operating at the fences of nation?

3) Considering the other view, how much morally correct was the ATS when it decided to literally eliminate the evil from its root instead of giving a second chance, i.e. there were many cases when someone was "encountered" even when they were ready to surrender?

The very purpose of the ATS was endangered when a criminal was sent to the judiciary, from where he could easily buy his way out to freedom, thanks to the corrupt bribe infected system of law enforcement that we inhabit in. This was the reason pouted by the specialist officers to justify their killings. However, sometimes innocent people are also killed in the line of fire or due to lack of proper information, evidence, timing and planning of such dangerous operations. Hence its imperative for us to decide which of the lesser evil we want to control our society - whether its the "trigger happy" gangsters or the "spare none in between" squads like these. The choice lies in the hands of people of India, since ours is a democratic country and the question can be answered by us and us alone, as pointed out by Dia Mirza in the movie. The intricacies involved in the love hate relationship of the cops-gangsters and mafia nexus is beyond of the scope of this article, but it is something that one must dig out for.

I would like to end this stub with the following quote,

"You arrest 'em, You catch 'em, you clean 'em. On second thoughts, forget the arresting part." - Al Capone

The "Future" of KABADDI

2007-06-14T14:08:00.000+05:30

Getting in the groove

Many people are unaware of the glorious game called Kabaddi, which has had its origin in South Asia, though there are many proofs that India played a major role in the advancement of the game. In fact, its origins can be traced back to ancient Punjab about 4000 years ago... (Gulp!). There is a belief that the game has its roots in the way Abhimanyu was killed in Chakravyuha by the Kauravas. We Indians have already discarded the game as a pathetic time pass and have neglected it for long leaving only the Kabaddi Federation of India to worry about its future. I, myself, have played this amazing game while in my teens during the "shakhas" held in the evening with my friends. And that was the last time when I soiled my body, since it was quite an ardent task to continue it further as life sinked into the sands of time.

However, I do feel, that Kabaddi must not be forgotten, since its a part of the rich heritage of our country. It will be prudent to point out here, that while we are neglecting it in our homeland, the game is quite on the rise on foreign shores. For reference do check out how widely the tournaments are held around the globe, click here.

The future of the game, I must say is safe due to its global uprising, but the youth of India must not let happen another "cricket" out of it as had been the case with England.

Kabaddi History

Though Kabaddi is primarily an Indian game, not much is known about the origin of this game. There is, however, concrete evidence, that the game is 4,000 year old. It is a team sport, which requires both skill and power, and combines the characteristics of wrestling and rugby. It was originally meant to develop self-defense, in addition to responses to attack and reflexes of counter attack by individuals and by groups or teams. It is a rather simple and inexpensive game, and neither requires a massive playing area, nor any expensive equipment. This explains the popularity of the game in rural India. Kabaddi is played all over Asia with minor variations.

Kabaddi is known by various names viz. Chedugudu or Hu-Tu-Tu in southern parts of India, Hadudu (Men) and Chu - Kit-Kit (women) in eastern India, and Kabaddi in northern India. The sport is also popular in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Japan and Pakistan.

The Game

In Kabaddi, two teams compete with each other for higher scores, by touching or capturing the players of the opponent team. Each team consists of 12 players, of which seven are on court at a time, and five in reserve. The two teams fight for higher scores, alternating defense and offense. The court is as large as that for a dodge ball game. The game consists of two 20-minute halves, with a break of five minutes for change of sides. The kabaddi playing area is 12.50m x 10m, divided by a line into two halves. The side winning the toss sends a 'raider', who enters the opponents' court chanting, 'kabaddi-kabaddi'. The raider’s aim is to touch any or all players on the opposing side, and return to his court in one breathe. The person, whom the raider touches, will then be out. The aim of the opposing team will be to hold the raider, and stop him from returning to his own court, until he takes another breath. If the raider cannot return to his court in the same breath while chanting ‘kabaddi’, he will be declared out. Each team alternates in sending a player into the opponents’ court. If a player goes out of the boundary line during the course of the play, or if any part of his body touches the ground outside the boundary, he will be out, except during a struggle.

Types of Kabaddi

In India, Kabaddi is recognized in three forms:

1. Surjeevani - The 'Surjeevani' form of Kabaddi is played under the Kabaddi Federation of India, and is governed by its rules and regulations. In the 'Surjeevani' form of Kabaddi, one player is revived against one player of the opposite team who is out. i.e., one out, one in. The duration of the game, the number of players, the dimensions of the court, etc. has been fixed by the Kabaddi Federation of India.

2. Gaminee - In the 'Gaminee' type of Kabaddi, there is no revival. When all the players of team are out, the game ends. So there is no time limit in this category.

3. Amar - This form of Kabaddi is played in Punjab and Punjabi Diaspora overseas. In the 'Amar' form of Kabaddi, whenever any player is touched (out), he does not go out of the court, but stays inside, and one point is awarded to the team that touched him. This game is also played on a time basis, i .e the time is fixed. This form of kabaddi is played in Punjab, Canada, England, New Zealand, USA, Pakistan and Australia. In the Amar form of Kabaddi, each team consists of 5-6 stoppers and 4-5 raiders. At one time, only 4 stoppers are allowed to play on the field. Every time a stopper stops the raider from going back to his starting point, that stoppers team gets 1 point. on the other hand, every time the raider tags one of the stoppers and returns to his starting point, his team gets one point. At one time, only one of the stoppers can try to stop the raider. If more than one touches the raider, an automatic point is awarded to the raider's team. If the stopper is pushed out by the raider or vice versa, then the team whose member is still in the field gets a point. If both the raider and the stopper go out, the result is a common point, where nobody gets a point. There is a 30 second time limit for the raider from the moment he leaves until he returns to his starting point. This rule was only recently introduced (1994) after controversy with some raiders abusing the old system where they were able to struggle through a point until they ran out of breath from repeating the word Kabaddi.

The first World Kabaddi Championship in the history of the game, was organized in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, when more than 14,000 people packed the Copps Coliseum, to watch the top players from India, Pakistan, Canada, England, and the United States compete.

In Kabaddi dominated countries such as India and Canada, it is played on a professional basis with top players earning $25,000 and more for a 2 month season. The player who has made most out of the game is Balwinder Phiddu, who started playing in 1975 and only recently retired after the 1997 World Cup.

My only appeal to the readers of this article is to rekindle the flame of Kabaddi once again in your neighbourhood, one way or the other, while enjoying the other popular sports like Cricket and Soccer.

The laws of Work

2007-06-13T18:51:00.000+05:30

Read Carefully ... Some may apply to you ...

The first 90% of project takes 10% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
If you can't get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.
A pat on the back is only a few inches from a kick in the butt.
Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.
After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a fool about it.
There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.
Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back.
Arriving at work early sets an expectation that your less ambitious co-workers will not appreciate.
Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous."
Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
To err is human, to forgive is not a part of company policy.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he/she is supposed to be doing.
Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work.
If you are really good, you will get out of it.
You are always doing something frivolous when the boss drops by your desk.
The people chosen to go to conferences are always the party animals with no intention of learning a thing.
If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
Following the rules will not get the job done.
Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.
When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
No matter how much you do, you never do enough, let alone too much.
The last person that quit or was fired will be blamed for everything that goes wrong.

Set your favourite video as Wallpaper

2007-06-13T18:29:00.000+05:30

This is a pretty simple tweak using which you can set any video as your desktop wallpaper.

Just follow the steps given below:

1.Download VLC Media Player and install it.

2.Run VLC media player, go to Settings->preferences->Interface->Main interfaces, then click on wxWidgets. Remove the tick on "Taskbar" and put a tick on "Systray icon".

3.Now go to Video->Output Modules->DirectX. On the bottom right put a tick on advanced options check box. You will now see some options. Put a tick on "Enable Wallpaper Mode ".

4.Now,select playlist and put a check or tick on "Repeat current item".

5.Press the Save button. Now close the Vlc player and run it again(to save the settings permanently).

6.Now play any video you would like to set as Wallpaper. Right click on the video and click on "Wallpaper". The video would be set as your wallpaper!!!!

Since you have checked the option "repeat current item ", the selected video will play on continuously. It will start again when finished. VLC player will remain in your system tray.If you wish to remove the wallpaper simply close the player and you will get back your original wallpaper.

If you have any query please feel free to drop a comment.

Things that are very unlikely to happen...

2007-06-13T17:53:00.000+05:30

1. R. Madhavan wins an Oscar.

2. Himesh Reshamiya wins a grammy
3. Manmohan Singh tells Sonia Gandhi what to do
4. India Wins all World cups ( cricket, football and hockey)
5. David Beckham goes with the same hairstyle for 2 years
6. Aishwarya Rai forgets to giggle stupidly to anything anyone says
7. Salman Khan Acts and dances well
8. You find the Ambani brothers sitting and having dinner together
9. You find out that George Bush hasn't attacked any new country
10. America cuts off ties with Pakistan and finds Bin Laden for a change
11. Tom Cruise doesn't do anything highly extravagant
12. Aamir khan releases 10 movies in one year
13. Salman Khan does not remove his shirt for the whole movie
14. Ram Gopal Verma realises that he is a big bore.
15. Siddhu remains quiet all the time, without laughing
16. Cafe Coffee Day charges you 10 rupees for everything.
17. There is no bell in Pizza Hut
18. Stephan King writes a Romantic novel
19. Lindsay Lohan quits drinking
20. Sun Microsystems, Apple, Microsoft, Google and IBM decide to work together on a software related project
21. Microsoft releases the source code for it's software
22. Someone other than Bill Gates tops the Fortune and Forbes lists
23. Someone actually slaps Imraan Haashmi
24. Preity Zinta looks ugly
25. BJP and Congress Join hands
26. There is no riot in India for one whole year
27. Simi Garewal finds out that she is a fake
28. Newspapers stop carrying the Page 3 stuff
29. The Tatas decide to sell everything, give it up as charity and then head out on a pilgrimage
30. People give up Orkut
31. ( You do not read inside this bracket. Are You still reading? Do you have nothing else to do? Get out of this bracket, now!)

The Greatest Theory

2007-06-13T17:42:00.000+05:30

Man has a tendency of assuming things flat or straight unless they are proved to be circular, spherical or in a loop. In fact he continues to live on the circumference of a huge, giant circle without even realizing that it is, after all, a loop. Actually its not his fault. The loop is just so big, that its curvature can easily be neglected without any serious errors in the blip of a human life.

Man designates the point where he stands as 'zero'. He runs to his right , eventually gets tired and calls it 'plus infinity'. Then he tries to run to his left, again gets tired and calls it 'minus infinity'. His vanity has blinded him from seeing the bigger picture.

Consider this example. What is the largest thing or the greatest distance that man has known, say a billion light years. And what is the smallest thing or the least count of the most precise measuring instrument ever, say a billionth part of nanometer. Imagine you have this superhuman power that you can shrink down at your will to whatever size you want. In doing so, you may first shrik down to the size of an ant, then an amoeba, then an electron, but you still want to continue to go smaller and smaller. Here lies the catch. You do not realise that you are in a continuous loop. It has no end. Eventually you will be on the other side, approach 'plus infinity' from behind and suddenly find yourself a billions of light years in size. You continue to shrink, you will cross the 'zero' mark or your original size but still be in the same loop.

Same is the thing with time. If you transport yourself a billion years in the future, you might just end up in a few billion years in the past.

P.S.: This has been borrowed from a fellow friend - Archit's blog. So if anyone is going to sue me for plagiarism, this is a disclaimer... Plz, I am already in heavy debt.