quiet riot

you do this to me everytime

2012-02-01T08:52:00.004-08:00

its been over a month here in india and seeing the end of my stay in sight, a weird feeling of nostalgia has taken over me. this has been perhaps my longest stay after i moved out of the country. i am sure anybody, native, who comes to visit this country always feels this way on his / her way back. i had a really good company of friends. a lot of good nights out having fun in one form or the other. then again, i was at home so there is that feeling. but i think most of all that i would miss is my identity of an indian. out here i share a common identity. i don't have to make an effort to establish that identity which has been ingrained in me since my childhood. i am at ease.

after staying for so long and then visiting for short durations it gets you. first foot into the country and you see her mischievous smile and eyes as if asking where have i been all this long. and then of course when you try to get re-acquainted with her you notice that she is not what your memory had her to be. she has changed in countless ways without you and expects you to make the effort to familiarize yourself with her. and just when you are getting comfortable with her you are all set to head back from where you once came, leaving an unfinished conversation with her. and that is all you'll get.

you will take this unfinished conversation and yearn to finish it, perhaps the next time.alas! that is a lie and you don't acknowledge it to be a lie....

stop

2011-08-05T12:12:00.001-07:00

the buck stops here!

dont make no sense

2010-11-23T22:40:00.000-08:00

To me: The plot that Lucifer goes against the will of God is ludicrous, since the premise is that nothing strays away from the will of God.

scribble

2010-11-02T07:51:00.001-07:00

the sub conscious is a terrible place. we have a terrible understanding of the conscious part of ourselves, sub conscious is a whole different league. it has in it deeply seated thoroughly processed ideas, highly opinionated answers which, on the face of it, a person would deny any bias whatsoever.

the outcome or behavior of the sub conscious ,when manifested, can be termed as highly irrational, mainly because it contradicts the rational lie that the conscious self is purporting. we all have a mad man inside of us. a state when he is sedated and when he is active. more specifically we function in 2 states:

1. an irrational state - here the mind primarily becomes reptilian and seeks out to protect itself through whatever means necessary.

2. not so irrational but not completely rational state - no man can be completely rational. there are a few strands of irrationality found.

state #2 is where the person usually stays when he is not in stress. when a man is left to fend for himself is when he is more often in state #1 than in state #2.

we are in stress as a result of fear. fear is one strong emotion that evokes the darkest of behavior in us. and in hindsight one often wonders about the course of actions that he had undertaken. what had seemingly made sense then,now in hindsight, makes him question his decisions.

today, we live in a world with high stress levels. and people constantly try to address this issue through a variety of means. not being aware of any and also of their efficacy, i think the solution resides in addressing something more innate. one of the primary feeling / emotion / idea that needs bolstering up is confidence.

for any situation resulting in stress, we can perform a simple cost benefit analysis. check if there can be anything that can be done about it. if not, then accept it and move ahead and work on the losses. it ,however, is not an easy thing to do. the hardest part is the first sentence. followed by the third part. and i say this because they address the emotional part of the brain - which is prone to irrationality.

in the first point, i suggest performing a cost benefit analysis. a cost benefit analysis can be performed 1. subjectively and 2. objectively. objectively is more difficult and not possible every time but with training we can get better if not by a good margin. similarly in the third point consoling ourselves / the conscious self is more like suppressing the sub conscious ( which is stronger as we are in stress).

this makes me wonder though if we were like spock ( the star trek character who is completely rational), we would be stress free and not have a sub conscious at all, atleast have it on mute. what would it be like to be completely rational? one thing for sure is that it would be less fun.

that said, i am not sure if i would want to know the make up of my sub conscious. i think it is too scary for me to come to terms with.

notes:
i mainly speak about sub conscious promoting dark thoughts which certainly is not the case. the sub conscious is responsible for all emotions that are primitive. i just chose to highlight the ones relevant to the topic.

love

2010-08-16T00:16:00.001-07:00

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'Maybe we should just be friends' or 'How very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love." ~ Rose Walker (Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman: The Kindly Ones")

equation for the future - part 1

2010-06-13T14:02:00.004-07:00

in all things scientific, we have a rock solid explanation for everything. well i thought so till i read a very interesting book. it may be rock solid at the level of our observance / needs. but if we were to delve much deeper, chances are the same explanations might not hold true for similar behaviors. and these usually don't matter unless we really care about things at that level.

the book made me question could there be an equation to predict the future reasonably well? the reason for the question to occur is largely due to the book i am reading. to be succinct, if we aren't able to formulate an equation for a phenomenon, we aren't looking at it from a scale where we have enough information. put differently, all the participants required for the phenomenon are very chaotic to be represented as a formula. however if chaotic participants are looked at a level where their cumulative behavior is in order, that is when you can formulate an equation to represent the phenomenon ( which might be a level lower than we are currently looking at it).

this means that any idea can be represented as an equation. different ideas obviously will have a varying scale of observation for us to qualify an equation.

back to my original question? can we formulate an equation that will predict the future? notice, i modified my question, in it, i don't have reasonably the second time anymore. there are two reasons :

1. the equations are formulated to give out an exact value ( whilst formulating the equations, there might be certain assumptions made that introduce an error ).
2. if they introduce the error into the value, that means the system has not been examined well enough to adjust the error.

therefore, i can effectively say that since we formulate an equation, it should be able to predict the future with absolute accuracy.

so all this while, i have been circling the topic but have not actually addressed it. can we predict the future? lets talk it out on the factors affecting the system in the order of importance.

1. your actions - the main driving force for your
2. people around you who influence your decision.
3. other external factors (chaos theory).

notice that #3 can sometimes be really aggravated sometimes small enough to disqualify. this introduces the error into our equation.

enough for part 1. i hope this is going somewhere . i have no idea as to where it going as of now and what i type is something sort of an extempore.

cheers,

2010-05-20T23:13:00.001-07:00

ok, so i have come to a conclusion that every observant man is a philosopher because man has to voice his opinions in some medium. and if he voices his opinion observations or human behavior, he becomes a philosopher.

cheers,

amapi

2010-05-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

amapi

mein sharabi hoon

2010-05-15T01:12:00.000-07:00

Kissi Pe Husn Ka Guroor Jawaani Ka Nasha
Kissi Ke Dil Pe Mohabbat Ki Rawaani Ka Nasha
Kissi Ko Dekhke Saanso Se Ubharta Hai Nasha
Bina Piye Bhi Kahin Hadh Se Guzarta Hai Nasha
Nashe Mein Kaun Nahin Hai Mujhe Bataao Zara
Kisse Hai Hosh Mere Saamne To Laao Zara
Nasha Hai Sab Pe Magar Rang Nashe Ka Hai Juda
Khili Khili Hui Subah Pe Hai Shabnam Ka Nasha
Hawa Pe Khushbu Ka Baadal Pe Hai Rimjhim Ka Nasha
Kahin Suroor Hai Khushiyon Ka Kahin Gham Ka Nasha
Nasha Sharaab Mein Hota To Naachti Botal
Maikade Jhoomte Paimaanon Mein Hoti Hulchul
Nasha Sharaab Mein Hota To Naachti Botal
Nashe Mein Kaun Nahin Hai Mujhe Bataao Zara

paisa paisa

2010-04-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

ye duniya paison ki inti deewani kyun hai?

2010-04-12T13:04:00.002-07:00

my first take on rap

Title: Dreams
Date : 04/12/2010

Dreams are fazing
Escaping
Pondering if they are mocking
At you for believing
That you could fly,
With arms wide and head high

Here is a word of advice
There isn't going to be a reprise,
You will be left in frays in the world
Filled with anarchists
And a whole lot of narcissists
Dull dumb drones
Resistant to change
So they bring anyone down
Sap all the juice
Reduce

But no matter what you do,
Believe in you,
The world won't, cause there are lotsa fools
Accept no substitutes
The journey is rough, its tough and lonely
So buck up, pack up
And spread your wings.

Its like a battle
You are the Lucifer and they come from the heavens
You will fall
And fall and fall
And fall
But not without a rattle
So loud
That even the cattle
Will tremble and fumble
Before your mere presence
You know there's difference
You made an interference

But best be aware
That this is just a start
You have a lot more to take apart
Dreams are not fazing,
They aren't even escaping
It's your call,
Take it or fall.

where?

2010-04-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

where does the buck stop?

how i met your mother

2010-03-28T12:26:00.002-07:00

having found nothing to do and being utterly bored, i decided to ensconce and watch how i met your mother?

turns out it isnt so funny. it is a bad mixture of comedy and a sitcom. they never gel together.

i will tell you whats funny? seinfeld, simpsons- two of the greatest shows ever!

'nuf said!

price

2010-03-21T19:28:00.002-07:00

the price you pay to follow your dreams is a costly one, yet if it is worthwhile or not, is something only time is aware of. and it is known to keep its cards close to its chest, but the strategy to play them is beyond it.

kyos

design patters my foot

2010-02-21T13:43:00.003-08:00

for the past few days, i was browsing through some of the interview questions on object oriented designing. what was peppered around the questions where, prospective candidates carelessly throwing out jargon of design patterns.

i don't know if they fully comprehend these design patterns to the fullest to make such a commentary on their usage, but i know that being constricted to rules often lets you settle for less optimum solutions.

i find design patterns to be useless. for some, i have committed heresy. because they introduce restrictions to our thought processes. if we apply ourselves to it, i am sure we will be able to build up designs in level with the design patterns. this however will come with experience.

and jargons were only created for the deceits to cover their tracks!

cheers

one night at on an i.t. company

2010-02-20T17:19:00.003-08:00

so chetan bhagat wrote one night at a call center. not having read that book, and judging the book by its cover, i believe i can surmise it to be a story of a person who works at the call center.

now i imagine, what would be one night in an i.t. company. basically when you are rushing towards a deadline, i.t. folks usually bend their backs to meet them. as if they already weren't, considering the fact that the projects themselves were won on the unrealistic time spans and cheap cost.

come deadlines and you will find the i.t. folks stay back till wee hours of the morn, and most probably successful in meeting the deadlines. i have worked in an i.t. company sometime ago, when we weren't heading towards a deadline. so things were calm. this wasn't the case with the team at the other side of the room. they were for as long as i can remember, working towards mysterious deadlines. and as is the case everywhere, women are let go much earlier than their male counterparts ( this is what i had seen and experienced, not that i have a problem with it) and leave their onus on the folks staying back, adding more to the list.

so to complete this story, one night at an i.t. company is a sausage fest.

cheers,

p.s.: sorry if you had any expectations :P

sex and the mindset

2010-02-08T22:25:00.003-08:00

the only reason why sex is such a hush hush topic is because it is not as open as talking or drinking coffee in a cafe, for the good or for the bad. and it being a natural "thing" should be dismissed just as one of those things that people do like talking or drinking coffee.

however a civilization will never let that happen.

cheers,

pedantic vs pedestrian

2010-02-01T13:33:00.002-08:00

just recently, i presented this question to a bunch of my friends eliciting interesting thought processes. here it goes.

> ME
What are your thoughts ?

There is a problem statement. There are a group of experts on that statement ( say 15 -20 ) in a room. There are a 10000-50000 thousand people ( read the general population, that includes people from a cross section of variety of fields, you know knowledgeble, educated kinds) in another room.

Whom do you think will come up with better solution to the problem. The problem can be anything.

>Friend #1
I guess it will depend on the question. Lets say for eg an FMCG company comes out with some product and they are stuck up, in this case more the number of people better is the result. I guess that’s why Market research is such an important entity in these times.

Case 2: Company x wants to launch its IPO. In such a situation the 10-15 SMEs will provide a better solution.

If you are talking in a general sense, then assuming that the 10k-50k people are educated,the latter will provide a better solution.

>Friend #2:
I disagree.

I would say a group of experts will always come up with a better solution provided they are open to fresh opinions. (read some sample from the other room).

@Friend #1: you’re going into an altogether different trajectory. You’re combining two different fundas and coming with a wrong conclusion. Market research is different from decision making. Taking your example, lets say ITC wants to market its two new cigar products. One is Columbian, you know privileged kind and other is mass product a la king Edwards. People in 1st room will do market research and come up with sales and marketing strategy based upon responses from 2nd room but decision will theirs. 2nd room is just sample population.

Another fact is bell curve. Decision making time considerably goes down as number of people increases after a certain point of time. That’s why we have reprsentatives.

>ME
No information is exchanged between rooms, but information is exchanged inside the rooms.

>Friend #2
that was just an example. 2nd room can be outside world.

>Friend #1
I understand that Market research is only a basis to reach the solution and not the soultion itself. That said,its part of the solution all right. The experts from ITC will not be able to reach the solution without the data retrieved from MR.

Another fact is that experts are rigid with their views, and assuming that they are not allowed to take outside views, the solution might not be the best possible answer. I will still go with the larger group of people and then get some rep from among them to conclude the preccedings and come out with one common solution

>ME

I agree with Friend #1's stance but with a different argument. Taking reference to what Friend #1 posted in his firstly reply, it can be concluded that the accuracy of the decision or say the guidance to the correct solution is derived from the benefactor of the solution / decision to the said problem. Thus in the first case, the public was the benefactor ( in a way) so the public opinion mattered a lot more as the product was going to be manufactured ( or whatever) as per the constraints of the public ( ideally all opinions would have been met, in reality some are omitted ). In the second case, the company was the prime benefactor and hence the decisions were to be made by those who were completely aware of the environment of which they needed to take a decisino on.

Now in room #2 , there are, as I stated earlier, educated people, knowledgible people. Solutions to problems are more often than not a result of mere a) common sense b) observation of surroundings of the environment c) experience around which the decision has to be made. So if the dataset is small ( read common sense , observation / experience) then the chances of being "aware" or whatever are statistically lesser, despite the fact that they are experts. Lesser is always relative. Lesser here is in the terms of the 50k population, where the dataset itself is so huge that the experience (say) itself counters the solution purported by the smaller dataset. Here you are using mere 1 attribute ( not the 3 attributes listed earlier, but you might/can as well use all 3). We as humans have a learning mechanism, because of which we rely more on experience and then fall back upon common sense or whatever.

Taking your (Friend #2 argument of a bell curve, and assuming that the argument made (because it wasnt clear to me) was that the decision if plotted for the 50k dataset will result in a bell curve because they are the general audience ( and their solution would be average case) is wrong because there you are considering that each of the 50k come up with their own solution ( and thus contrasting against the solution of 15 - 20 experts), which obviously has to fail. But if there was a suitable environment / system where the solution were modeled based on the inputs of the 50k dataset, then it will either a) align with what the experts suggested b) surpass it by a long shot.

And obviously, decision making time will increase but if we have that controlled, I believe that the decision made by the general audience in a shared environment will result in a "more optimal" solution than suggested by the experts.

>Friend #1
BTW, Why did u ask the question in first place? (out of curiosity)

>Friend #2
Consider this scenario now…

Building spaceship.

Problem Statement: Whom do you think will come up with better solution to the problem. The problem can be anything.

1st Room: Experts on that problem

2nd room: general public (knowledgeable but not necessarily experts in that field)

Any decision has to be made on data. In case of FMCG, that data comes from MR and in case of satellite building, it comes from experience and knowledge.

Any decision making requires considerable knowledge, expertise and experience to lessen the risks involved. Even the FMCG decision requires knowledge and expertise. Just on the basis of MR we can’t launch the product. We have many other constraints like when, how, where to enter the market etc… hence solution provided by experts will always be better provided they are open to fresh ideas.

>Friend #1
as I said the answer is very situation specific. In general sense however the larger group will provide a better idea (space ship building me the scientists will not even bother to get public opinion. Since the question has been put up, I assume that it will be for a situation where public participation can be debated, unlike space ship or IPO or nuclear power plants etc.)

>ME

Well, as I said earlier, the prime benefactors of the decision in case of building the spaceship arent the general public, it is the organization that is intending to build ( which is only meant for public consumption once it is operational). In your argument about FMCG, the aspect of problem that you are addressing is different to what i am addressing. In your scenario, the prime benefactors are the company whose benefit is to maximize the profits or whatever. The aspect that I am addressing is shaping and manufacturing the product itself, and in htis scenario, the mass opinion will be more helpful.

To re-iterate, the accurate decision, IMO depends on the benefactors of the solution to the problem and hence the actors the general mass and the expert vary.

@Friend #1: I dunno. It just struck to me, when I was reading an article on whale hunting on time.com / some video (not sure). The gist was: A user(s) had posted a simple statement on stumbleupon.com which asked the Japan government to ban whale hunting. The popularity of a statement is dependent on the votes associated to that statement / link or content. It took time but in a matter of months, this statement alone forced the Japan government to introduce the ban, due to its popularity. So this made me think, in a hypothetical scenario if the public is given an opportunity to decide something on a problem, and then say submit their decision in a restricted time and present it to teh local government, the government then can go over its feasibility (budgeting and crap) and take a decision to finally go ahead with it. This way the people will be responsible for the change around them and will give enough gauge to the public on governments performance to make a decision in the next elections.

Or even yet let not the public (lazy people) arrive at a solution but atleast point out the problem to the government by an online (say) voting mechanism and submit that issue.

Lastly, as an offshoot, if we were to model a game: with a reasonable lively interaction ( so as the people dont get bored of it), and model disasters or crisis or whatever, and the folks have to improve a situation, over a period of time, we are sure to get a VERY interesting / effecient techniques to say govern, distribution of supplies etc. And if we model them around real / recent ones, then once these models have matured enough, they can provide a better light to launch relief efforts and bring back normalcy. And the large audience who would participate in such a game would be users of Facebook. I know of people who spend most of their day playing mafia wars and farmville, so why not this ? But the big IF is that the modelling should be really carefully done and is very difficult.

>Friend #1:
You just gave a perfect example of Democracy. That said in the business sense of the word, democracy might not be the best option always. Whe I buy a share of a company, I actually buy the voting rights. I can vote for any decision the company makes. That said the company is not obliged to listening to me. They will only hear me out.

This works only in decisions where the onus lies with the government (talking of democratic countries) like the example you sighted

now only 2 of 5 participated in the discussion and the current state of the discussion is thus. however for a question of this nature, it needs to be put to the masses and i believe that would be a more accurate result to what is discussed above (not denying in anyway the truthfulness of the discussion so far).

what are your thoughts?

cheers,

bc

2010-01-13T10:41:00.001-08:00

From Maximum City:

I missed saying bhenchod to people who understood it. It does not mean 'sister fucker'. That is too literal, too crude. It is, rather, punctuation, or emphasis, as innocuous a word as 'shit' or 'damn'. The different countries of India can be identified by the way each pronounces this word - from the Punjabi bhaenchod to the thin Bambaiyya pinchud to the Gujarati bhenchow to the Bhopali elaboration bhen-ka-lowda. Parsis use it all the time, grandmothers, five-year-olds, casually and without any discernible purpose except as filler: 'Here, bhenchod, get me a glass of water.' 'Arre, bhenchod, I went to the bhenchod bank today.'

2010-01-07T12:34:00.002-08:00

i have a theme in mind. i dont know how i am going to lay it out, but i think it is going to be nice!

watch out for this space

cheers

to bone or not to bone

2010-01-02T02:21:00.003-08:00

my cousin put forth a question: why do you want a girlfriend? ( for the record it was not a consequence to any discussion whatsoever)

after much ( or little) thought i concluded:

its our primal nature to group. so to put it in a rather crude manner, we ( both sexes) have that need to bone each other. but ladies have this habit of talking about a whole lot of shit and it can become a tad irritating for us blokes. in my opinion, the reason why we wait for that someone, is merely that we stand the conversation post-act. :-P

cheers,

to a new decade

2009-12-31T01:36:00.003-08:00

31 dec 2009

end of a decade. this has been an eventful decade for us all. we have been through trials and tribulations and we have managed to survive them- most of them, which will linger around to haunt us. to me this decade has been quite a learning experience. firstly because, this was the decade where i could perceive and question. the core of my influence took shape in this decade where i had the privilege of interacting with many people with different perspectives.

this was the decade where boys became men, ready to take on the future, head on. the transition wasn't easy, no transition is. it will take further 25 years for the next transition and this will be a tumultuous period marked by confusion, precision decision making and exorbitant amount of stress.

this decade found us at the cusp of our careers, and the next decade; at the zenith. and with that i raise a toast.

to exciting times,

cheers

adverts

2009-12-13T06:29:00.002-08:00

did you know that the reason why your hair loss is so pronounced is because your hair follicles are split at the ends and that because you have dried hair and because you dont play a banjo at full moon or some other ridiculous reason here.

i was channel surfing on the tv( after a long long time) when i caught some commercials / advertisements. so finally they say, they have identified the cause for hair loss and the cause for fighting cavities, or why your skin goes black under the sun and what you can do to prevent it.

and they did that 5 years ago and if my memory serves me well the same spf (whatever that means) 15 sun screen lotions 10 years ago and yet they convince us today that they have revolutionized their products and the way we think about our body and our failings to keep it in the way we should not the way we want.

enough said.

cheers,

2009-12-12T01:48:00.002-08:00

perseverance, who has it ? hats off

dekha hai aise bhi

2009-12-05T02:50:00.002-08:00

re-post but worth it

Dekha hai aise bhi kisi ko aise hi
Apne bhi dil mein basaaye huye kuch iraade hain
Dil ke kisi koney mein kuch aise vaade hain
Inko liye jab hum chaley nazaare bhi humse miley

Dekha hai aise bhi, kisi ko aise hi
Dil ke jharokon mein ab bhi mohabbat ke saaye hain
Reh jaaye jo baad mein bhi hamaare wafaayein hain
Inke liye ab tak chalein, hazaaron mein hum bhi mile

rendezvous

2009-12-05T00:21:00.001-08:00

looking through the window,
i gaze at a girl,
with skin so white,
and cheeks with hue

a passing glance she throws,
an eternity goes by,
as if a spell cast by her alluring eyes?

with the bewitching smile, the angelic voice
and the mischievous eyes
she asked,
Shall we dance,
dance the night away?

and we danced, danced under the moon light.

an unfamiliar touch,
an unexpected shrug,
jostled me back to my senses.

alas, the girl was ethereal,
a concot of my desires
dejected
sore
i walked to my abode,
in a drunken stupor

hallelujah! who were to tread upon the same path as me
my muse,
in a joyful glee,
gathering the remnants of my sobriety
i approach to her

i approach to her
with a thought
a motive
of a rendezvous

i recall asking her
for a rendezvous
whilst i awaited her reply
it seemed eternity passed by
and still i await for her reply
for the rendezvous...
or was this a ethereal yet again?

How about a cup of coffee?

2009-12-05T00:17:00.001-08:00

The aroma that filled the air was inviting
The flavor enriching
The taste full filling.

As the vapor danced with the air,
I noticed the table was sad,
Inquired I,
Why was it sad?
Said the table,
"Alas! there be a room for one more"
"And there be no one to sit"
I thought to myself,
Dude,
I must be wasted,
The coffee must be spiked,
For I am talking to a table,
And the table to me,

Assured I, to the table,
That I would make it happy.
Absurd as it may sound,
Would you help me make the table happy?

The aroma is inviting,
The flavor is enriching,
The taste is full filling,
And the coffee is wonderful.

And maybe then,
I could recite to you,
A poem or two,
Or may be not,
Its all upto you.

You have my number,
You have my mail,
Can I have yours?
So that I can ask you yet again,
Would you help me make the table happy?

Life's weird.....

2009-12-04T23:45:00.001-08:00

Isnt it weird that the people you wanna talk to arent really that interested in you, and the people whom you’re not that interested in wanna talk to you all the time….. I guess both mean the same thing dont they?

Original credit to: Just a kid :)

hypocrisy at its best

2009-12-01T11:15:00.003-08:00

the problem with us indians is very few have a vision to move forward or change something that is stagnant, something for which there is a huge societal contempt. despite such hurdles, mental and physical, these visionaries survive and stride to see success and once they do, the very same society that held contempt for the vision and the visionary, suddenly label it and the doer as one of their own and don't fall short of claiming the delirious belief they shared of the vision and the visionary.

hypocrisy at its best!

thanks!

2009-11-25T22:53:00.002-08:00

i think this was long due so here it is.

i want to thank all of them who were a source of inspiration to me. to me you have been a driving force without which i wouldn't have been able to experience / enjoy the wondrous things around me. you are still a driving force to push myself and to give my best to measure up to be a fraction of your achievements. its been a fun and a memorable journey and i intend to keep it that way.

thank you all again! i was just lucky to be a part of your company!

cheers,

haircuts and lines

2009-10-16T00:01:00.003-07:00

a visit to a barber can be daunting at times. especially when you believe your do accentuates your hunkiness. also when you are trying out a new barber on an occasion when you have to look good.

so i had to have this haircut. i had a natural afro every morning. it was raining and my friend ( who also wanted his hair done) suggested a place close by. after much dissing about how "we" didn't know about the place, i said it was safer to go to the tried and tested. then he gave a long list of references and eventually i gave in. i mean whats the worst that can happen? the hair will grow back - at least at this point of my youth.

with that assurance, i went ahead and glad that it was not a screw up at all and ended up much better than expected.

the occasion was a career fair. i feel it is kind of necessary where you connect with the recruiters and pointless as well. countless resumes are wasted ( i believe they end up in the bon fire that night, where all the recruiters gather up and ridicule the candidate's capabilities as they throw his resume in the fire).

i myself tend to chose lines that are short. anything longer, i try to find out an alternative, mainly because i dont like standing in lines as with anyone else, and i intend to express that dissent at that point :P

till we meet

kyos

earthquakes and sharks

2009-10-06T11:41:00.001-07:00

Went down to Mexico,
I drove my black El Camino
I met up with an old gringo
He showed me round, and said to call him Joe.
I was there about a week or so,
Wound up in the general hospital,
Joe said don't drink the water no more,
How the hell was I supposed to know?

Drove up to San Diego
Saw a sign for Mission Beach
And so, went out deep into the ocean,
Saw a shark and had a stroke.
Back in the ambulance I go,
Had a dream about a girl I used to know,
She said "I got to warn ya bout Mexico and California."

Earthquakes and sharks to start us off,
If Chupacabras ain't enough,
Black widow spiders and killer bees,
Ain't no shade and ain't no trees.
Black bears and heat, polluted air,
There's traffic jams beyond compare.
That's all I got to warn ya bout Mexico and California.

Woke up and said I got to go,
Doc said "Relax, just take it slow."
I tried to argue, but don't you know,
Bout California and Mexico?
Right then, the doctor hit the floor,
The building shook, then shook some more,
I looked down at him and swore,
"You son of a bitch! I told you so!"

Earthquakes and sharks to start us off,
If Chupacabras ain't enough,
Black widow spiders and killer bees,
Ain't no shade and ain't no trees.
Black bears and heat, polluted air,
There's traffic jams beyond compare.
That's all I got to warn ya bout Mexico and California.

hell with it

2009-09-28T23:01:00.002-07:00

why are we so worried about going to hell? dont we have enough challenges here that we have to worry about? why worry about something that may or may not exist?

apu and the simpsons

2009-09-28T11:49:00.002-07:00

what havent the simpsons taught us? this multi-emmy award winning show has showcased the true american culture with tact,wit and humor.

yesterday when i was doing something important ( actually i was peeing, in a motel, that was owned by a fellow indian), i realised something. something very interesting. it is common knowledge that simpsons are the longest running tv sitcom in history. one of the characters in the simpsons is Apu ( who is an indian). i cross checked this with wiki and turns out that Apu was first seen in an episode around 1990. that makes you think now, doesn't it ? the influence of the indians working in convenience stores must have been so strong that they just had to introduce an indian character in a convenience store. which consequently means that we had already made an imprint then, when, atleast i thought, it was then the migration had just started.

cheers
kyos

moments of ephiphany

2009-06-12T00:27:00.000-07:00

its all in the outlook

saffron bridage and the hand

2009-05-21T13:55:00.003-07:00

with so much hubbub on the forming of a stable government in india by the congress, here are my two cents on it. i have not been following their adherence to promises since their accession to power but i do remember two episodes that shot them in limelight for all the good reasons.

episode #1: the nuclear deal

everybody wanted to sign the deal. everybody in power that is. consequently, the opposition opposed it, despite it being a good thing for india. and upon every opportunity the congress, especially the pm, fielded 'for' the deal and stated its advantages.

what ensued was the dissolution of the government, a vote of confidence in the parliament. fortunately, the government persisted and signed the deal.

people to win : congress, its allies ( dont remember)

people to lose : left, bjp etc..

cost: limelight.

episode #2: the saffron charade

piece by piece the nandigram attacks were unraveled with all the fingers pointing to the saffron parade. the pursuit went cold when the inspecting officer passed away in the bombay attacks.

and this unfortunately for the opposition happened in the very last leg of the government tenure because of which it was fresh in the minds of the voters. hence left failed miserably because of its staunch opposition for the deal and bjp for its negative role in both counts.

just my two cents. what are yours?

cheers,

of age and its hesitance

2009-05-21T00:46:00.002-07:00

so lately, i have been putting people in an awkward position. well basically, i was just testing people to see their reaction when their age was slightly exaggerated. what i found was people are a bit touchy when it comes to age.

now ten years ago, when they were in their teens, if you exaggerated the age, it was dismissed as a mistake and the conversation moved on. but ten years hence, its a different story. people are just scared to be considered old in the eyes of the others.

all my test "subjects" were males, whom i thought were impervious to matters of age. but they fell for it and raised issue for the exaggerated guess of their age even by a margin of 2 years. girls are out of the question. they would reach for their sandals or purses and fling one at me. so i aint taking those chances.

what i do is, in the middle of a conversation, i pick up a point where you could put the opposite guys/gals age into the discussion and then slightly exaggerate the number :P and wait for the reaction and take it from there.

its hella fun, you should try it sometime.

thats it for now from me ,

cheers,

roses

2009-05-13T01:39:00.000-07:00

small expressions change your life in great many ways. though it may not relate to you, a mere observation of it changes your perception. this happened to me when i was in my teens. a typical boy growing up. a typical house with parents and a brother. a house that needed cleaning. a house with a maid for cleaning the utensils ( mom had way too much on her hands). now as with maids, we had a period where we had to shuffle a bit. and one of those shuffles, i felt something. i could quantify the feeling then and thankfully despite what i have become (not much), i still can quantify it. i am sure, that it if nothing else, it is going to give me the touch that makes us human. we need that feeling sometimes. something that makes you human.

anyway, during one of those shuffles, in came 2 girls, barely at the age of 4 or 5. when they first walked in, i was dumbstruck. i couldn't even fathom the thought of them cleaning the utensils. cleaning for fun is different from cleaning out of compulsion. so unbearable was the thought, that i walked out of the house. mom, who was/is very kind, gave them biscuits and something to drink every time. she confessed that even she felt sad for them, but the work gives them the money they badly need. i still can remember their tiny little hands with a rag cloth cleaning the utensils. it was such a tragic image. their eyes were so innocent. they should be having roses than rag clothes in their hands.

i guess i am thankful for that, in a way. i do my best to support such unfortunate folks, but whatever i do, in a way feels incomplete. the only consolation is that a step forward, is a step towards progress. one of my aims after have a stable life is to setup an ngo for education, especially for girls and the under privilege kids. its their only chance out the rag clothes. so join me won't you, to free these kids from the shackles bound by fate.

cheers,

p.s. : (unrelated but powerful) opening lines from crash:

Graham: It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.

guess the song

2009-04-28T13:11:00.004-07:00

haha, well i bumped into this amazing song on youtube ( as always and i kept listening to it for couple of hours now). in an attempt not to destroy the song, i try to translate it into english, and hopefully you should get the song. i have stripped few lines from the song as they give it away.

i am all alone in this world,
vacant is my heart and house,
but in it will live a fortunate,
whosoever wants to see me,
comes whenever they want to see me,

right here right now,
i have noticed somebody,
yes noticed, certainly noticed somebody,
that,
she is giving me those vibes,
but then may be she is afraid of someone.
scared, petrified.

how would a scared one love?
i like someone who isnt,
whosoever wants to see me,
comes whenever they want to see me,

there are the rich and famous here, but do always remember,
yes remember, do remember,
that,
though there are the rich and famous here,
true love is the wealth which the poor have,
the rest is just a matter of chance,
these matters of the heart,
are the most beautiful in the world,
alas,but how would these wealthy understand?

whosoever wants to see me,
comes whenever they want to see me,

i think i did a decent job, considering the short span of time i did it in. can you guess the name of the song?

leave it as a comment.

cheers,

-edit-thu 30 apr 2009-

i massacred the song, sigh

longest two minutes

2009-04-24T13:12:00.012-07:00

metrosexual: just because a man likes to take care of himself doesn't mean he is gay anymore - southpark

so taking influence from this statement and owing to the ample amount of free time i have at my disposal, i set out to do just that. what you may ask? being metro sexual that is, to the most extent possible, my will permitted. now i didnt actually knew what the term meant and hence i decided to get the word on the street about metrosexuality.

apparently, it turns out that the only other people who are as free as i am are homeless people. at an intersection, i asked one homeless guy, what does it mean to be a metrosexual. i don't know how but soon enough the central theme was of his donkey named jesse and an onion. so i then went to the university village, at around lunch, as it was a host to college students and people with "different" lifestyles. i noticed a guy who was groomed and decided to ask him, what metrosexuality meant to him. and this is what i got, " get on with the times girlfriend, metrosexual is soooo 2005. these days you switch your lifestyle altogether and express yourself more freely."

okaaaaay. my luck! the first time i try to take a survey amongst the people and i bump into a gay guy making advances on me. needless to say, i ran away - to the other side of the pavement. here was a welcoming change. a couple of girls were walking towards me. my thinking was, if anybody knew about grooming, it would be them. not because how they looked :D but because grooming, in my ignorant? opinion is a girl thing :D.

so i waited for them, not staring at them ( you dont want to scare them away!) and when they were at earshot, i put forward this question. now as straightforward and simple this question seemed, they just giggled and walked away.

puzzled, i thought to answer the question myself. what would one look at when you see somebody. my instinct told me, apart from the handsome face would be the hair. that seemed to be a reasonable conclusion. so i rushed to superior ( a super market) near by and headed for the shampoo counter.

seeing the options that i was given, i decided to buy a moisturizer. and eventually i chose the pantene pro v ( that strengthens my hair 10x times and is a daily moisture something) moisturizer. i must admit it was the 10x thing that lured me to buy it, not the moisturizer part. a first step "forward", i thought. as soon as i reached home, i headed for the shower.

as a staunch believer in rules, i read the instructions behind the back of the moisturizer bottle. it said take sufficient quantity, rinse your head with it and wait for two minutes. the bottle held high up in the air with two hands, as if performing a ritual, i said, " to metro-sexuality" and poured some on my hand and rinsed it. now i don't know about you guys, but those were the longest two minutes ever. it seemed like eternity and then soon enough i lost my patience. i think i am determined enough but the 2 minute wait wore me out. minutes later i found myself ensconced on the bed, the moisturizer in the drain and my will that had given up the idea to discover "metro-sexuality".

yet again, this new found fickle fad sits atop the pile of to do things before i die, which is a host for the flies. that said i think i have a new fad coming along, if only i could put my finger on it.

so nowadays you would find me smelling fresh ( thanks only to the deodorant). the rest of the whole bathing, cleaning is a sham that i will not partake in.

so until next time, fruit cake

cheers,

inside

2009-04-21T09:19:00.001-07:00

arms shackled by the leather straps bound tightly to restrict any movement. the room didn't seem to embrace the light from the flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling. as the rusted hinges set out to work together with restrain, and opening the door, in came the gentlemen in white uniforms helped daniel stand up. the drab combination of pale green and white on the corridor walls wasnt an uplifting sight. the journey ended in another room with a table, two chairs and a lamp far brighter than the earlier one.

daniel sat down, a little restless, and the gentlemen who brought him there ushered themselves out. he saw himself facing a lady doctor. he felt they werent the only people in the room. jordan a well built man, jack a neurotic, joey a punk, janice a teen, jenna a school girl and jim a bum were all there too. he didnt feel alone. she started by asking daniel, "who are you?". " i am jordan and you have no right to keep me here", came the reply from jordan and daniel in a gruff voice. "i am not asking you!", said the doctor. looking at daniel, "now what is your name?", she asked again. jack came the answer. followed by joey, jim, jenna, janice, jordan, jack and daniel fighting with himself everytime and reciting their names than his own. soon enough the calmness in the room was gave in to chaos, with each one shouting their name unison, more aggressively each time.

"ENOUGH!", shouted the doctor, "we have to work together if you want him to get out.", pointing at daniel. gaining her composure and restoring silence, she asked again, " what is your name?" jenna started singing and with daniel in unison , " row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merryly merryly merryly merryly, life is but a d...", at which daniel hesitated and jenna stopped. the doctor interjected, " does it begin with a d?" no answer. "do you think it begins with a d?", she asked again, only to be replied by silence. "does your name begin with a D?" she asked firmly. daniel now gaining a better hold of himself and much calmer, said "daniel, my name is daniel."

with that all other members but the doctor and daniel, went away as though vanishing into thin air. the lady doctor then stood up from her chair, walked upto daniel to compliment him. in came another doctor who seemed to be pre-occupied with thoughts and sat on the chair facing daniel. as the doctor shifted his spectacles, he browsed through daniel's records and looked up. he started, "so daniel, you know you are up for a review next week. if your behavior is good, you will go free. so lets begin. how are you feeling, daniel?" with her right hand on daniel's left shoulder, the lady doctor and daniel said in unison in daniel's voice, " I feel fine doctor."

cheers,

fyi:
1. for those who didn't get the plot, the protagonist suffers from mpd ( multiple personality disorder).
2. the lady doctor was also a part of daniel's personality.

2009-04-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

one of the most fabulous songs, i am so floored:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE0tIPK3jdo

conversations with god

2009-03-31T22:28:00.004-08:00

so i was going to the library today. i wasnt a library person earlier, but i like the desk space and the natural light it throws in the basement, which brings me back day and day after to it. i digressed. anyway so i was on my way to the library and as i was walking towards it, a girl walked upto me asking me if i had time. if she could wrap it up in 5 mins., then i am all ears, said i.

which is when she started talking about jesus as the savior so on and so forth. what was amazing was she came from korea ( dunno which one), just for this! i wanted to start a discussion about the veracity of His existence, but I could see it would go nowhere due to 1. lack of time and couple of other reasons, which is why i post it here.

i have a different perspective here.

religion for me is an idea, a powerful idea, with God as the central figure. its a notion perpetuated since time imemorial.

religion was and is used as a medium to bring people together. now nobody wants to willingly go to hell, everybody wants to go to heaven (because the notion of heaven and hell is perpetuated as a good place to be and bad place to be). and if the idea is permeated that only by doing certain activities would you be granted a place in heaven, more often than not, people will do those activities. and what happens when like minded people come in contact? they live in harmony and peace.

and even though one doesnt subscribe to the above idea, here is another way to look at it. it is a fair assumption to make that at most 3 people among 10 are intelligent. the rest are sheeple ( herds) who like to be directed. so one of these "people" figured to get the "sheeple" to be productive by uniting them with a cause. and thus by introducting the notion of a super natural entity, they were more or less directed in their activities.

hence in my opinion religion and God are the most powerful ideas that man has ever come up with that has gained an unanimous acceptance in every era.

to further this argument, its the belief that characterizes God. say for example, there is a magic teapot somewhere in the universe. now some one says there is a magic teapot and its cosmic rays will benefit mankind so on and so forth. if just one guy or a small group believes in it, they are tagged as lunatics. BUT if the whole town (say) believes in the magic teapot, then it is suddenly God like, magical etc. (even though there is no such magic teapot).

devouts say if you dont accept God, you are a sinner and you go to hell. they also say that if one does good things, then one will go to heaven. so does a man, who doesnt accept God (atheist) , but does one's exemplary work for the benefit of mankind, have no chance in heaven?

i guess God exists for those who see Him as a source of hope, saviour etc, and doesnt for those who have their own sources of hope ( which may make them their Gods ;according to the reasoning above; albeit having them to accept it). so does that mean everyone needs hope to continue, to which i say a resounding, YES! after all that was only one of the positive things that came out of Pandora's box. :)

for some this post is tantamount to blasphemy and heresy but i hope it was thought provoking at least.

cheers,

2009-03-26T10:25:00.003-08:00

its like talking to a wall

-edit-
but you sometimes wonder if the wall is talking back to you,
only to realise its a wall

-edit-
epiphany in a state of stupor

lights and camera

2009-03-25T20:25:00.003-08:00

i have taken to photography lately. i dont think its a fad that is soon going to wane. i started with absolutely no idea on photography and whatever i have learnt is through experimentation. i have also been using a loaner camera but i have got acquainted with it. personally i love canon. i havent tried nikon but have heard its great to use. the camera i use nowadays is panasonic dmz fz 18. now dont go about wondering about panasonic being a camera company. its lens is from leica which is amazing!

so this post is dedicated to photography. my views on it ( which necessarily dont have to be true :P ).

3 components make up a photograph (assuming is auto focus).

1. amount of light on the subject.
2. amount of time that amount of light is exposed on the subject.
3. color.
4. the subject itself.

in my opinion the subject doesn't have to be majestic to make the photo spectacular. even an apple or a bottle of drinking water can be a really good subject. what matters is your perspective on the subject. people who are born with such perspectives, to capture a subject that garners most attention, go on to become professional photographers.

if you view enough photographs, you tend to form your own perspective (which although highly is dependent on the kind of photographs you have seen), but you get there eventually and with time, like wine, become better.

lets assume that you are a beginner and dont have any perspective at all. thats a reasonable assumption. but that doesnt stop from taking breath taking photographs.

what you need then is the proper values of light and amount of exposure. from here on, i will refer to amount of light as apertue, amount of exposure as shutter speed and the color value as ISO.

aperture - lower - more light is going to fall on the lens and hence the photo is going to be brighter

shutter speed - higher it is ( 1/n is more than n because we are talking about speed in time here)

iso - higher it is, more will be the noise or dirtier the picture.

modern day cameras have a metering mode that tell you how bright or dark the photograph is actually going to be depending upon the settings of the aperture and shutter speed. the metering mode is between the range of -2 to 2 in steps of 1/3.

at this point you check if the subject can do with a bright / normal / dark photograph. if you are unsure take one in -1 0 1 and then decide after the viewing the result. eventually you will understand how you want your photograph to be.

one of the challenges is to take snaps at night. an aid for you is a tripod. it helps a lot in night photography. the challenge here is that there is a dearth of light. to counter you decrease the shutter speed ( take it couple of seconds) and increase the aperture (allow more light in). decreasing the shutter speed means that more time is spent on capturing the subject and hence more color is absorbed. increasing the aperture will increase the light coming on your lens. you will be surprised to see the results of this.

one other thing that will help you in night photography is to drop your ISO. the more you drop the less picky the camera will be about the color. i have captured star constellations this way, using the normal lens and they turned out to be great.

i dont prefer to use flash, unless really really necessary, simply because it doesnt have any range but to your surroundings.

i think this about covers the basics of it. there is a whole world out there to discover.

cheers,

cigarette and the flame

2009-03-20T14:23:00.005-08:00

Driving on the freeway, Fred had an urge for a light. Perusing his pockets, he managed to find a crumpled cigarette. He reached for the lighter on the dashboard and went ahead to light the cigarette, now perched on his mouth.

Flick. Flick. Flick. Flick, Flick, Flick,Flick Flick...... not a flame, only sparks. Annoyed, he took out the car lighter and put it in front of the cigarette. But it wasn't meant to be. The car lighter was as cold as cold turkey. Cussing his rotten luck, he tried to feel the objects in the back seat of the car, hoping to find something that would light his cigarette. His eyes lit up when he felt a small rectangular box. He shook the box and sure enough he heard the rustling of matchsticks.

The box revealed to have just one matchstick. Placing his hands on the steering wheel, he took the matchbox in one hand and the stick in the other. Several tries and curses later, he managed to light the stick. As he drew the flame closer, it burnt out, leaving him in a state of distraught that he was in earlier.

Determined, Fred went off of the freeway to a store to buy a lighter. As he was getting off the freeway, he was still looking around for something that could light the still unlit cigarette. THUD !!! And in that neglect for the road, his car hit a man. Annoyed, not for hitting the person, but for one another hurdle in his quest for lighting the cigarette, he got out of the car.

The man was in shorts, running shoes and sweat bands. As Fred stood there pondering on the next course of actions, there came another THUD!!! This time, it was on the bonnet of the car. And there lay the magnificent object, that brought tears to his eyes. It was as though God had heard his prayers. The Olympic torch in all its glory was on his car, with its majestic flame, dancing with the wind. With that, he drew the flame closer and lit the cigarette. He felt elated and as with any matchstick, he blew the eternal flame OUT.

cheers,

must have on the road songs

2009-03-17T23:48:00.003-08:00

the following are the songs but not limited to , worth having on ur iPod or whatever, when you go for a drive:

Highway Star - Deep Purple
I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
Sing - Travis
Let me entertain you - Robbie Williams
Road to mandalay - Robbie Williams
Sabse peeche hum khade - Silk Route
Duur - Strings
Anjane - Strings
Khudi - Junoon
Behind blue eyes - Limp Bizkit
Om shanti om - Karz
Punjab - Karunesh
Gill te guitar - Rabbi Shergill
Tere bin - Rabbi Shergill
Pyaar humein kis mod - Satte pe satta
Desert rose - Sting
Lift - Poets of the fall
I will possess your heart - Death cab for a cutie
Sorrow - Pink Floyd
O re piya - Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
Roobaroo - Naresh Iyer (Rang de basanti)
Yellow - Coldplay
The scientist - Coldplay
Clocks - Coldplay
Return to innocence - Enigma
Principles of lust - Enigma
Sadness - Engima
Dooba Dooba - Silk Route
Dhoom pichak dhoom - Euphoria
I get knocked down - Chumbawumba
Numb - Linkin Park
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Garaj baras - Junoon
Sar kiyae - Strings
Dum maro dum - Hare krishna hare ram
Sing - Blur
Scotty doesnt know - Eurotrip
Soul meets body - Death cab for a cutie
Open skies - Parikrama
Anjani rahoon mein - Lucky Ali
Bring me to life - Evanescence
Top gun anthem - Top Gun
Jahaan char yaar - Sharabi

i'll update as i remember the songs.

cheers,

a short story

2009-03-16T10:03:00.004-08:00

Jumping and wading across refuse and garbage, he ran towards the railway station. He knew he was late but he had a fighting chance to catch the train. Mahesh was a mill worker and lived couple of stations away from the mill. He had just got the job. The money wasn't big but enough to make ends meet. The announcement at the railway station told him that the Howrah Express had departed without him. As he was catching his breath, he realized that he could take another train leaving momentarily, change one another; which would then take him to his destination. Without hesitating, he ran towards Platform 3. Securing a seat, he ordered tea from the tea stall in front of him.

The steam effusing from the tea made it look inviting and the aroma made it irresistible. Carrying in a holder of 6 glasses brimming with tea was Raj, a typical child worker. One couldn't tell through his eyes, if he had lost his innocence. The deal with the owner was simple, the more he sells, the more he gets paid. He was new and still learning the ropes of the job. Walking across the tracks to reach other platforms is faster and a common sight in India. Raj's day had begun just fine, with nothing exciting seeming to happen.

Howrah Express had just reached the station and Raj made his way across the platforms to reach the newly arriving train. He was sold out momentarily and rushed to get more. This time in two holders, he decided. A shiny object in the middle of the tracks caught his eye. It was a coin, but not a regular coin. And not a currency but looked costly. He looked at it with utmost attention whilst waiting for the train on the other track to go by. Mesmerized by it and he was thinking of ways he could put it to his use.

The fresh breeze relaxed Mahesh. He was consoled by the fact that the train was doing good time and he could catch Howrah at the next stop. As the station drew nearer, he saw the Howrah at the other platform and got ready to disembark, although his train didn't show any signs of stopping. Panic set in.

Raj's gaze was broken by the rushing train towards him. Fear sank in and he froze like a deer in front of bright lights. The engine driver was a slob, barely competent to become the driver. He didn't care much for his job. He was the exact opposite of an epitome. Noticing the boy in midst of the tracks he reached for the brakes. He was slow, too slow for the job.

Having decided to board the Howrah Express, Mahesh reached for the emergency brake and pulled it hard. And to the drivers surprise, the train began to stop without him doing anything. Screeching and screaming the train came to a halt meters before the boy. Mahesh disembarked and ran towards the Howrah Express.

A crowd gathered near the engine. Beads of sweat made their way to the cheeks of the driver. Stream of tears ran down Raj's face. The driver heaved a sigh of relief. Raj scampered climbed up the platform and scampered in the midst of the crowd.

Mahesh caught the Howrah Express and was unaware of the result of his deed. Raj still crosses the tracks, he can't let that one incident stop him, but is more cautious now. As for the driver, he got awarded by the Railway Department with a raise in his salary, for his quick thinking.

cheers,

answers

2009-03-11T21:45:00.001-08:00

the answers are all there. its just that we aren't looking hard enough for them. :)

a philosophical epiphany

cheers,

the way we are about sex and the way it is

2009-03-09T01:21:00.004-08:00

i was pondering over our approach to the concept of sex, while the animals otherwise do it so freely and without any inhibitions. but then i found why, here is eddie izzard's perspective on it and its rather amusing.

and Mother Nature revealed itself to the world one day. She said, “Creatures of the world! Gather ‘round,I shall give you your methods of procreation.” All the creatures going, “Oh, cheers, Mother Nature! I’ve been dying for a shag, me!” “All right, gather round…Here’s a big clipboard here, big flipchart! Now… what’s this…?
........
Here we go. Dogs! How you doing, dogs?” “Okay, now dogs…we have got you down, dogs…your method of procreation will be doggy fashion! How about that?”

“Yeah, we invented it!” “I know you did! And it’s caught on big time! Okay, off you go…Be careful with the air lock! "

Now, cats… Cats, good to meet you. Now, we’ve got you down for doggy fashion! How about that? What about catty fashion? No, sorry, dogs got in there first; it’s a ‘patent pending’ situation… Anyway, you’ve got cat flaps, so what the fuck are you arguing about?”

“Next we have… sheep! We’ve got you down for doggy fashion! If you get hot, just take your coats off, right?Okay… You wearing Blakeys?

Off you go… Now giraffes! Good to see you. We’ve got you down for doggy fashion, but it’s whatever you can work out, basically. Hang off a lamppost, lean over a tree, you know… just swing about a bit; I mean, sorry, we were gonna make you like a Spaniel kind of size, but someone brought me a coffee and vooom! when I was doing design work, and there you go… Anyway, chin up!

All right…“Human beings… Well, doggy fashion, catty fashion, giraffe fashion, sheep fashion; whatever the hell you want, basically…Hang upside down like a bat, play the banjo, do it on a golf course! As long as you get guilt in there somewhere, we really don’t mind…"

“Now finally, salmon! Good… Got a bit of a surprise for you, people…What you’re gonna do is to swim upstream against a...down-flowing river until you come to a huge waterfall……and you’re going to leap, and leap, and leap, and leap up this waterfall, and you swim along, and you leap,and leap, and leap, and leap; then you get along,and you lay eggs, and you fertilize the eggs, and then you drop down dead! Ha!”

“We’re quite happy with doggy fashion…”

“No… You piss me off, you salmon!

You’re too expensive
in restaurants, that’s your trouble…”

cheers,

of fatalism and free will

2009-02-18T13:49:00.005-08:00

this has been bogging me all along lately. this is an unending battle. here are some of the thoughts on free will, which is an on going process till i reach to a firm decision on the existence of either:

read this post before proceeding.

some definitions:

free will - the ability to make your own choices under no coercion.
fatalism - everything is written and we follow a script.
determinism - the ability to predict something will occur - fatalism
non determinism - the inability to predict something will occur - free will

i always thought that free will is a part of fatalism. my understanding was that because we see things random enough, we have the notion of non determinism. but what if events weren't as random as they seem to be. what if behind the fog of non determinism lay determinism, so elegant and graceful, that even though if we discovered it, it would be beyond our comprehension.

we all are a product of influences. hence we always react to events after taking the reference from the influences. and so, we have built a causally dependent chain. now this in my earlier post associates with determinism. but here i would like to interject.

i think there is free will here. influences do affect our decisions, but it is we who decide how much we want it to affect us. for e.g. : parents beat up a kid, so 1.) either the kid decides never to lift a hand on his children 2.) or the kid beats his children as well owing to his childhood experience. so it is up to the kid here on how he would react to this beating. he is not forced on to behave in some way.

influences just restrict your ways to behave, they don't decide actions for you. ones decision will always be in his favor. he will not do anything against it and so because we kind of know how he is going to behave, we attribute it to fatalism (fate). for e.g. your friend knows you for quiet sometime and so he will be able to predict with decent accuracy of your decisions. that said you still aren't coercing him to arrive at a decision, you are just commenting on it. and thus he is exhibiting free will.

as said in the earlier post, this may be because we are participants in the system. for someone who is unaffected by it, outside the system, and for that someone who knows everything, it is fatalism. fatalism for him, free will to us because we still do not know. and if he is just an observer, not an all knowing personality, it then is free will to both of us. because he doesnt know how we are going to act, despite that he has all the information of our behaviour.

i guess it is all a matter of attitude. how you look at things. if you just have given up and let the nature of events make the decisions for you, despite you exhibiting free will by showing lack of concern, you will associate it to fate.

from a scientific standpoint, everything follows an equation, everything is ordered. and there are concepts that we havent understood so far. but whenever we did so, we found it to obey an equation (for e.g.: the distribution of prime numbers, reinmann -zeta function)

so is it fair to say that because we have not understood the system enough to formulate rules and which is why we have a notion of free will when everything could be actually ordered?

till i have something more to say, i will leave you with this question, do you believe in free will or fatalism?

cheers,

fatalism

2009-02-18T01:41:00.001-08:00

fatalism 0 free-will 2

fatalism

2009-02-16T18:39:00.001-08:00

fatalism wins again

fatalism 2 - free will 0

going in

2009-02-13T00:40:00.001-08:00

thats it! i am going in!

of goodwill and extremism

2009-02-07T09:53:00.002-08:00

goodwill and extremism. lexicographically, there are antithetical to each other. and on prima facie as well it looks so too. but then is it really? in my opinion in a certain state goodwill borderlines extremism. that state is achieved when somebody has power and is defiant.

for e.g.:

let us assume that there are 10 people who are a hindrance to a community. the problem here is that the word hindrance is purely subjective. hence, a certain set of that community view it as a hindrance and others don't. violence is the easiest way to rid something off and we are animals at core, so the group uses violence and rids the community of the bad blood.

what ensues is that, the group now has equivocally gained the trust of the community and to ensure the situation doesn't repeat itself, it starts policing and has its own laws and of course gets drunk with power. and since it has the power, it now tramples over the constitutional rights of an individual and enforces its then goodwill and now tyranny/extremism.

this goes on until another set finds it unbearable and then upsets the prevalent group and the whole cycle begins again.

what this effectively translates is that, the government should have an effective strategy for mob control. mob = junta, public at large.

people have tolerance factors. when everyone gets upset, it translates as a revolution and history says no governing body survived a revolution and hence in this case, there will a restoration of order. however, it only lasts for a short time, until the tolerance is not pushed and the whole cycle starts over again and again and again.

cheers

p.s.: i realise the flow breaks off somewhere.

my life.....a soap opera II

2009-01-27T11:52:00.003-08:00

so well, i thought a second part would come up.

recap (with the crazy camera angles and arresting(? is that the right word?) music):

i was to get a job offer / a decisive career changing opportunity as foretold by astrologers, whom my mother had consulted. i was also awaiting the final decision on the extension.

intro music (some crap music with images of past episodes)

adverts (close up, vip underwear, 501 detergent tikia, rupa's thermocot etc etc)

finally:

ep II:

as i eagerly awaited the final decision and was ready to pack my bags for a visit to india, i don't hear back from my supervisor. knowing that the week following was christmas, i lost hope of getting the offer letter that week.

on jan 2 /3, i shoot a mail again to my supervisor ( wishing him happy new year and sorts, kinda buttering him up) and then ask him about the status, for which he regretfully informs me that the evil financial controller had rejected the whole proposal. i had prepared myself for this, so it didn't come to me as a shock. only a little resentment, but couple of donuts made me got over it.

this severed my spending capacity (another blow to the american economy).

by the way, in the last month i made 3 trips to san jose! :P one with a visit to a haunted hotel (more on that later).

so i wondered, how is my life not going to be the same mundane routine, as i had nothing to do. surprise suprise i started giving interviews to the university paper on an application that i had made and a tv interview as well on the same topic.

this seemed a welcoming change.

so as i await any further development in my career, i sit on my bed ( which is nice and comfy), with thoughts about someone, guitar, music etc. lingering. they keep me active.

and i am blossoming into a fine cook (i am surprised as you are!)

until there is another episode,

cheers

keep them funny speeches comin

2009-01-12T13:13:00.002-08:00

with all due respect, i sometimes believe that the team that writes speeches for george bush is from the democratic party OR george bush is plain stupid to be vocal about his thoughts rather than just sticking to the script!

cheers

spare change

2009-01-12T12:52:00.004-08:00

how do you pass a judgment on, when you see a person in his/her mid 30-40s asking for alms on the street, whether to part with some spare change or refrain from it?

this question has been poking me around for quite sometime now.

cheers

free will

2009-01-06T03:20:00.003-08:00

lets get on a topic that has been hotly debated.

is there such a thing called free will? as always you will find people from both sides of the camp.

in my opinion free will doesn't exist. it is analogous to the observations of a third party in an event or simply put, to the participant an action might seem random, but for an observer unaffected by the system of the experiment, the actions would be deterministic (chaos theory?)

my stand comes from the fact that our understanding of a state is causally ordered. and because of the dependence relationship, it is deterministic.

for e.g.:

you are reading this article. i didn't coerce you to read this article. it was you who chose to read this article (thus exhibiting free will). now lets make some assumptions. lets assume there is a guy named Fred who was created right after the universe was and is omnipotent, he knows all. thus he knows that you are reading this article because that is a fact. you are reading this article because you were led to it from somewhere. your actions were based on a certain influences (which is the cause). and if you walk back this causal chain, you eventually reach the start of the universe.

obviously there is no such guy named Fred, so the question remains, if you actually came here by your own volition or was it pre-determined? if you reason that if you had chosen not to read this article, what then? then the proposition that you read this article is a fallacy and hence would not exist in the causal chain.

along this line of thought, can this be associated to fate?

fate / destiny is commonly attributed to something that is laid out for you, in the shadows, revealing itself only when necessary. this is similar to the above discussion in that no matter how independently you think you are doing, you actually are working like a cog in a machinery.

so now i ask you, is there such a thing/concept of free will?

cheers

my life.....a soap opera

2008-12-16T21:29:00.003-08:00

well its official. my life is a soap. the one with weird camera angles in split seconds, to emphasize the plot. i am not sure if i am to be proud of it.

every other moment when you feel that yes, life can't screw you anymore, up comes a whopper that knocks your pants off! and with the shocking twists in the plot in the soap, so seems to be my life ( yea so what if i am dramatizing a bit, i did say it is a soap! bunch a puritans).

so it all started when i was talking to my folks and my mother usually shows restrain on one particular topic whilst talking with me. she asked me about the job scene and i said its pretty lame and dont expect to look up before the start of the new quarter. as i completed that sentence, my mom uttered that she had shown my birth chart to some astrologers and they assured her that i would be hearing some good news regarding my career in the week of dec 8 - 15 2008 (irrespective of the economy). i ridiculed it but at the back of my mind, i thought if it was already written that, something sort of a fatalist line of thinking. i dismissed the idea because i knew i had no offers on hand and the one i was working with didnt seem too bright. it was on my mind nevertheless (monologue / thinking out loud here).

that said, the next morning, i hear from my manager about a possible extension. gleefully i call my mom to relate the news only to hear, i told you so ( soap intro song here) . fast forward a week later, i get the information that i wouldnt be able to get the extension because i graduated and the position only was for someone who didnt graduate ( weird camera angle and music here).

when i first heard about the extension, i went to the extent of questioning the veracity of free will or non determinism but seems like there seems to be a hint of it around.

i guess i will have to wait and see how the story unfolds for like the soap opera, you never know what turns up next.

.... and then it happened

2008-12-13T23:30:00.007-08:00

it was a thursday evening like no other. as the christmas break was coming closer, my roommates and i were deliberating over the details of a roadtrip to new york from la. and we had a good reason to be excited about it. it was daring and adventuresome. whilst making our way towards the gym for the daily routine ( we were still deliberating then), a glance on the person walking past us reminded me of someone i knew.

a tad unsure, but later pacing towards her, i called her name out. she stopped her walk, stood there for a split second and turned around. still a couple of feet from her, i waved at her. it was not a full wave. i stopped short half way through. and then it happened. my heart beats went from a steady beat to a panic attack. i said to myself," calm down now, she is not going to bite you". as i assured myself, i covered the ground and was in a conversation distance to her.

and so there i was, with tousled hair, shorts and a windcheater. a scene right out of a teen flick: a pavement, grass on one side, an underdog, and the chick of the flick. we conversed and conversed a little more. the steady beating of the heart resumed and i asked her if i could interest her in a cup of coffee. a few pleasantries later, we bid each good bye and parted ways.

until next time,

cheers,
kyos

snooping

2008-12-02T15:36:00.001-08:00

over a couple of months something struck me.

it is common knowledge that the google search results were populated based on some ranking alogirthm. hence i wondered if it is possible to poison those results such that your websites get populated first. obviously if you had some relavent content, over a period of time it will be somewhere in the top list. but i didnt have any relavent content interesting to the masses out there. (Note: BTW i am not doing something new, look up search engine poisoning, only that i didnt refer to any of the material online to do what i did).

then i reasoned, what would be the most popular search queries in google? the first thing that struck me was movies. mp3s, clips. basically any media that can be mooched for free (bunch of deadbeats!). and i did know that sites such as rapidshare , megaupload etc hosted such media. if one is adequately familiar with the naming conventions of movies, they usually are titled with divx, xvid, rmvb etc.

so here is what i did: i created a post with the following text:

rapidshare
megaupload

rmvb
divx
xvid
700mbs

thats about it. and i published it. and viola! within about a week or less i began receiving hits from people who were searching these terms. in good amounts as well! and more the number of hits, the Page Ranking algorithm gets duped. even the above text will cause numerous hits.

now if i were a virii author ( I AM NOT, SO GET OF MY BACK!), just hypothetically, that would mean that with some amount of social engineering, i could have links to text in the post pointing to some viruses and the rest of the story is all too familiar these days.

well thats about from me,

cheers,

p.s.: this was done purely with the motive of research and with no other intentions!

work work work

2008-10-21T18:09:00.001-07:00

one thing that i realized after coming to the us or perhaps it was bound to happen eventually, is the work life balance; something which hadn't occured to me while i was in india, but then again, perhaps it was bound to happen eventually.

and then once this sank into me, i realised how important it is. and i ensure there is a healthy mix of both. with that in mind, there is a meeting at 8 PM today. I am set to go off at 540 PM. given that this happens like once in a blue moon, i still feel a bit restless. maybe because it takes me an hour to reach home and by the time i am there, the day is already over!

crap!

anyway, till i find some other thing to do ( i wish i had attention deficit disorder right about now for 3 hours).

cheers

loser!

2008-10-21T18:05:00.001-07:00

you have a laundry bag. in it there are lots of innerwear / couple of shirts / couple of jeans / couple of vests. what is the probability that you will pick the innerwear? pretty bad if you are a loser!

paathshala

2008-10-01T23:52:00.001-07:00

na koi padhne wala na koi sikhne wala
apni toh paathshala masti ki paathshala

chehare ki kitaabein hain ham woh padhne aate hai
yeh surat teri meri mobile library
yaaron ki equation hain love multiplication hain
jisne dil ko jeeta hain
woh alpha hain deeta hain

talli hoke girne se samjhi hamne gravity
ishq ka practical kiya tab aayi clearity
na koi padhne wala na koi sikhne wala
naata yeh sannata hai dekho lambu shor hain
har dil mein bud bud karta h2so4 hain
na koi padhne wala na koi sikhnewala
apni toh paathshala masti ki paathshala

apni toh paathsahala masti ki paathshala

dekha hai aise bhi

2008-09-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

Dekha hai aise bhi kisi ko aise hi
Apne bhi dil mein basaaye huye kuch iraade hain
Dil ke kisi koney mein kuch aise vaade hain
Inko liye jab hum chaley nazaare bhi humse miley

of alcohol and inhibitions

2008-08-10T22:30:00.002-07:00

inhibitions. one of the occasions where you experience this is while dancing. not everybody does, but quite a many do. they have this notion of being the laughing stock just because they dont know how to hit the beat.

i went to a club with other day and found people usually in pairs dancing, which was very sexually oriented. nothing wrong with that. they are only laying the foundation for the rest of the night. and so quite a lot of the moves turned out to be really crazy / simple moves that actually dont require any skill.

now one thing that can make you loose your inhibitions is alcohol. whether you like it or not, alcohol just shuts those centres in the brains off and lets you lose. this actually is the best preparation you can have before you go to dance, in case you have any inhibitions. and even if you dont, you can down a drink or two and just go hopping around the floor.

not that i was shy, i still downed a jack and coke and hurled myself at the dance floor, doing mindless stuff basically, but at that point you really dont care what you are doing as long as you are shaking your hips and hands.

so that was one of the occasions i shall remember and will continue to do that. getting high ( no, 1 drink is far to less for me to get high) and senseless jumping is way too much fun. of the other things that i like is to walk after you are REALLY high, on the roads with a group. the antics that happen can be enjoyed only when you are drunk especially when you see a cop. and since we are in a foreign land, we put our fingers on the lips and go F-1 International obedient student whenever we see a cop nearby.

so drink up and enjoy life!

2008-07-28T10:18:00.002-07:00

well, i feel different today. for the record, its monday and the usual office hour and i am not groaning about the week ahead of me. and also i am writing a post as soon as i come to the office.

no motive, no purpose. just random typing of words forming a sentence. until i find out the reason ( i could live without finding it out, more or less the stars have aligned in positions to make me happy :P ) joi de vivre to ye all.

2008-07-19T02:18:00.002-07:00

for the past few days a lot of thoughts passed through my mind. arbitrary in nature, no specific cause or reason but then emotionally loaded.

and so today whilst everyone is asleep i am awake. those thoughts keeping me awake. in a conversation once with a good friend, i said that i want to think nothing. nothing at all. my! what an experience would that be.

i have actually imagined it and looks very alluring. you don't do anything. just float around in nothingness. feels very peaceful. for me it looks like a black background and wherever you go, blackness stretches even further.

listening to pink floyd at 2:30 am is a very different experience. lights out and with high hopes on the playlist, you just let your thoughts go free. with pink floyd playing their psychedelic music, the ambiance is just perfect. and with that all the random thoughts that earlier plagued me are fast disappearing leaving me alone. i guess music heals the spirit.

with that i end my post and look forward to Hey You that would soon croon.

pz

2008-07-14T23:13:00.002-07:00

rapidshare
megaupload
madagascar
2
xVid
divX
movie
rmvb
800 mbs

DvD-RiP

the power of nightmares

2007-05-04T23:14:00.000-07:00

i had chanced upon a spectacular bbc documentary, which gave a thorough analysis and a stunning expose of the present times. i however lack the vocabulary to describe this to the fullest so please bear with me.

nation and religion stand to be the only two reasons that are known to cause demarcation amongst people. yet, it is religion ( read : moral stand / morality) that assumes a bigger picture and dictates our lives, because we want to go to heaven. we all believe in freedom, but it is the very definition of freedom that is so distorted.

we go around doing deeds with a notion of doing good. but even this notion of doing good is very askewed. take for example a liberal society. you can do anything you please. to a conservationist this is a nightmare. he construes this as a society with flimsy morals and selfish interests. with people like him in power, they will ensure that people "cleanse" themselves. they believe that they are doing with "good" intentions and they techniques that they use to materialize their intentions are very questionable if not preposterous . they have nightmares of the society gone awry and hence use their power to weed out their nightmares.

this is exactly what u.s.a. and islam went through. i have deliberately used islam because sadly it has been now misconstrued as a religion of hatred and violence rather than peace. the nature of the present situation today can be cornered down to 2 individuals. one leo strauss and the other sayid qutb.

leo strauss was an american professor who postulated that liberalism is a cancer for the state, which affects people in the long run. sayid qutb, an egyptian sent to america to study the system and implement it back in egpyt, too held the same views. he believed that such liberalism gave way to loose morals and this he attributed as the quality of not being a muslim and stated that he didnt deserve to live any more. it is funny how he distorted religion and the right to take life.

their motive was to create a sense of fear and insecurity amongst the fellow men and in that hour of "darkness" they would look to their all-mighty God and thereby putting an end to the flimsy morals (egypt then was imitating the west).

disciples of leo strauss came into power and did the damage in the u.s. they were paul wolfowitz, donald rumsfeld to name a few. i will leave the whole description aside and will only say that, they were the ones responsible for cold wars, al - qaida etc.

sayid qutb also started working towards an organization to achieve the same. sadly he used violence to prove his point. he was executed but the seeds he had sown, began to sprout into saplings and one such sapling was aymaan al zawahiri. convinced of sayid qutb's beliefs, he worked steadfastly towards materializing it. he is a very educated man. and he is now the left hand man of 0sama. violence is never a key to prove a point.

i have painted a very nebulous picture of the situation today as an off-shoot of their beliefs. but little thinking will give you the exact picture i was trying paint all the while.

so what have we got here? a bevy of paranoia ridden people in power, trying to allay the unfound fears of masses by introducing their paranoia to them and swearing to stand by them and fend off the non-existing axis of evil. a new political propoganda? no comments, but if it is, seems like it worked out all to well.

and the funny part is we elected these leaders who will take us into the glorious future that awaits us.

cheers
kyos

p.s.: all the information was taken from the documentary

hey chum, gimme that and make it snappy

2007-04-27T18:18:00.000-07:00

knowledge is power - so goes the adage. i really have not come across an instance where this was proved wrong.

anyway arguing about it is not the motive behind this post. what i want to talk about is the cost behind accessing the knowledge. we live in a materialistic world where everything is up for sale. money will do your talking.

people put a price on knowledge today and earn a buck out of it. legitimate or not is for the recipient to decide but if the same or higher quality of knowledge is dispensed for free, no one or very few care, just because (i think) the general masses may think it doesn't have proper credentials etc. etc. i still realize that i am not making any sense. i shall give you an actual example that i have experienced myself. and throughout the example, i want you to know that i am certainly not boasting, i am just recounting what i experienced and what i know, however if you think otherwise, i don't care!

i believe knowledge should be free. price tag on knowledge is absurd for me and i know scores of people who will concur. i had chanced upon a certain entity that helped you to enhance your skills in a particular area. intrigued i tried to absorb the information to my capacity and tried to devote time to it. i think i have learned quite something from it. with this, i wish to fulfill my part of spreading this knowledge that with capacitate people for sift information from dirt and for free. even the entity offered its services for free. more importantly, the topic isn't esoteric and will prove helpful in your everyday life!

hence, whenever people came to me to solve a query relating to the above mentioned area, i first helped them and they were amazed by the outcome. i then suggested the entity from where they could learn it. i also offered to put in my thoughts and opinions, with the intention that they would be able to fend for themselves and have no dependence whatsoever. but i was wrong. and time and time again, i was proven wrong. people are just not interested in it. the knowledge that the entity has to offer is available nowhere, and a price tag on it would be too dear. but it is for free. they are far too materialistic. materialistic meaning they want snappy results without putting effort into it. alas, this is a bane. this is not how things are supposed to be, at least in my notion.

they seek to be dependent and feel comfortable with that idea. i, however; fail to reason, how is this going to be good. if i add a price tag to my services, they are still going to come to me and others like me because they have nobody else who can do it.they could have had it for free with a lot of time and energy saved.

the world moves fast enough for anyone to stand and cogitate. but once one does, he can get things to work for him.

i have altruistically tried to help them, but they just aren't interested and so i stop telling them. they will come when they really want to know .

i take this moment to pay my respect to the those people who have strived not to make knowledge a commodity. in no particular order:
+fravia, zero, woodman to name a few amongst the scores who couldn't be named here.

pz out
kyos

knowledge should be free.

where is india going to?

2007-04-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

well, what is india coming to? the recent developments in india surely give out the message that india isn't a democracy anymore. i may have gone a bit far in saying that but, democracy in its true sense has lost its meaning in india.

we are a developing nation and we have tons of issues to address to, yet what do our politicians go around doing? well working tooth and nail towards materializing their vested interests. their lack of interest on issues , that were promised to be taken of and the reason why they are where they are now, is pretty evident from the current developments.

we are a proud nation which has so much diversity. i dont think a lot many people realise this. i do because i have experienced it. yet what we do about it? demand a reservation of seats based on caste and creed. while i sincerely abhor this to its very core, i do support the need for supporting those people who have the calibre but not the financial support. due to the gold mine of votes in the reserved section, officialdoms are rooting and tooting for passing this bill . and how? based on a 1931 census. surely any half witted moron could figure out that it needed a more credible need.

that narayana murthy said something objectional , that should not have been said, spread like a forest fire. he apologized for it and i guess think that should be end of matter. instead he is being charged for his comments by politicians . surely they would have better things to do!

garlanding a the statue of a man conveys respect for him. regardless if the one garlanding it wears footwear or not! na... the bjp criticizes the congress for "committing such a heinous act".

the man charged with the murder of jessica lal is contesting for the assembly polls. and his mother is going around gathering votes for him. but murderers and politicians go hand in hand atleast in india. the constituition has time and time again been sneered at by politicians with a shady past in commanding positions . the supreme court has though wisely rejected his plea to contest.

these are just the few instances that are notified to the public. there are numerous incidents that arent reported. with this awful scenario do you think it is wise to invest time, effort and money in activities that yield no fruits when we arent able to provide 3 square meals a day to the population of india? while this post has largely been critical about the politicians, it is also our (citizens) lack of interest in matters of the state. we have been promised of facilities during the elections and we know they arent going to be fulfilled and yet we decide to remain mum and complain. fews the reasons that make it into the politician's speech are the failure of the party in power to do anything better and how he will be the change they so sorely need. and next time around he will be the brunt of his rival though the situation wouldnt have changed much. they promise a better lifestyle everytime but dont you think they have gone too far with their lies and we with our hibernation?

it is time to change.

india prevails,
k

the story of search engines

2007-04-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

once upon a time, not too in the distant past, there was a world that was plagued with unsorted files over the internet and was waiting for a messiah who would aid his believers in accessing the files from the utter chaos that was rampant or so goes the prophecy.

then came 1994 and with it the calling of the messiah! two students graduated and paved path for millions to help them access any files they chose to, with relative ease and the believers revelled in glory basking in the splendor of what became to be known as the father of all search engines - Yahoo!

five years went by and yet again another messiah answered the calling of his people. but? the world already had its messiah and who was this brat to hog up the spotlight. it so happened that the former had indexed the forbidden site and with that ensued all the commercial crap of the e-world. ensnared in its grip, Yahoo! tried to escape but in vain. no more could it cater its people with search results they desired but hiding them beneath the bloated commercial garbage.

and so the world needed another savior and then came Google and things have been pretty much the Google way. a folklore suggests it is the Yahweh of search engines.

so what was the silver bullet that Google possessed and Yahoo! didnt? before beginning, i would like you all to know that i am writing this from a totally my point of view ( which happens to be not so broad considering i am unaware of the events during 1994, so cut me some slack!)

coming back, what did Google have? from my point of view Google kept it simple. the motive of Google was that of a search engine and that it sought to provide with exemplary standards. and it did. but wait a minute wasnt/isnt Yahoo! also a search engine with more experience than Google? yes, but i think there were couple of mistakes that Yahoo! made which cost it.

Yahoo! had started out as a search engine and later on progressed to various other activities to keep its customers on its pages as much as possible and thereby earning more revenue. cool,but what happened was, it also invited a lot of commercialization. with commercialization comes degradation in quality if not watched over carefully. this is exactly what happened. it crowded its page with varieties to lure and this went on fine as long as there was no competitor. and then suddenly providing meaningful search results wasnt a priority anymore.

stating that Google didnt vie on commercialization would be wrong, but Google had its priorities straight. it started out as a search engine and maintains its image as a search engine. if one would glance at the interface that Google has provided, it hasnt changed much. the main essence remains the same. a text box to type your query in and a search button. cant get simpler than that.

where Yahoo! failed Google succeeded. i guess it understood the thinking of the common man. rather than dumping him with a plethora of meaningless options, it thought of keeping things simple and direct.when it announced of a 1 gb mailbox, all Yahoo! could reply to it was with an increase of 100 mbs.

Yahoo! revolutionized chatting (started with AOL). it mandated the download of the client to enable chatting. Google went one step further. it embedded the chat feature in the inbox. hence if you want to chat and though you dont have the client, you will still be able to accomplish your work.

Google's approach to mail- GMail is lightening fast and a clutter free interface. Yahoo! tried to give a fitting reply by sprucing up its looks but the time taken for loading, where it mattered the most, was too long.

then GMail came up with online text/document editing. this helped the user not to make any assumptions of the system he was sitting on. he would have his tools everywhere. Yahoo! was nowhere near this scene. GMail isnt commercial free either! rather than images that distract our attention as in Yahoo!, it resorted to using text that didnt divert our attention. but placed strategically enough to catch our attention.

one of the things that Google became instantly rich was because of its AdBots. these were scripts crawling through the cyber space either collecting information or displaying an advertisement pertaining to the subject of the site (if you would notice there are adwords in Gmail when a mail is read, and they are close to the words / content in the mail. and also if the mail happened to contain the number through which checking the status of an activity was possible, it would on its own provide a link to the site with the results corresponding to our number. no hassles.

these are some of the many examples that point to only one fact: Google was far adept in its social engineering skills than Yahoo!. it had the correct notion of the common man's needs and sought to it that they are catered yet keeping its focus on producing refined search results all the time. this translated as more "quality" time spent on Google's pages.

so there wasnt much to think over, quality wins over quantity.

i guess i am pretty much done now. Google seems to be the messiah and lets hope it is here to stay.

cheers,
kyos

P.S.: the post might have sounded pro-Google and anti-Yahoo! but i assure you that i have given an impartial observation of what i have experienced and have not placed either in bad light.

rapidshare godfather xViD rmvb

2007-03-25T13:52:00.001-08:00

this is a new movie. rapidshare.com/files

300 movie

xViD

DivX

rmvb

700Mbs

imagine- john lennon

2007-03-14T02:42:00.000-08:00

i had this wonderful opportunity to see the documentary on the life on John Lennon. and who better could be relating it than John himself!

i guess divorce, troubled childhood and drugs are something that a successful musician must have gone through. i have yet to come across a musician who is successful and hasn't gone through any of the above!

as the world remembers gandhi for his stand with non violence, john lennon is remembered for his effort to spread world peace.

having girls go la la over you at a youthful age of 20s or even in the teens, can fill an individual with arrogance and reckless disregard for anything. but there was something different about john. simplicity pervaded through him and his stardom didn't seem affect his thoughts / motives. he tried to live like a normal man, pursue his interests.

but then things weren't so simple for him. he was caught up in the mania that was "The Beatles". a tumultuous world in a way. with the fame that he achieved anything that he said was something sort of a dogma. often misconstrued, his statements provoked widespread discontent, yet that didn't seem to affect even a little bit of his position in the hearts of his people.

he had this down to earth disposition which you would fail to see in other celebrities, to the extent that he suggested one of his followers to get a real life rather than following him as he meticulously explained that it wasn't doing any good to him. strange eh? who would turn down a fan?

after the beatles split up, he concentrated his life in spreading the message of peace. sadly though he was assassinated, just because there was a consensus that he was responsible for "splitting up" the beatles by introducing yoko ono.

an defiant spirit who was his own master.

his song imagine still resonates in many a people.

imagine- its easy if you try...

//o-o\\

on hiatus

2007-02-08T00:41:00.000-08:00

on hiatus!

blogging will be resumed shortly, hold on tight!

thank you,
The Management

let the adventures begin

2007-01-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

well tis was when i moved into my new rented apartment. it happens to be bigger than my house.

right on the first day we had goof-ups if you may call them. we all had a good laugh at the moments and what's in store for us.

now everywhere in america you have the smoke alarms installed in the house, in every room! and this is quite new to us( me and my room mates) as we never had such a feature in our homes. there is a smoke detector in our kitchen. there is also an exhaust fan available for us to use when we cook. but since it is new to us, we didnt bother to switch on the exhaust fan. and in moments we realised the presence of the smoke alarm. it went out *beep*,*beep*,*beep*.

our memories of a smoke detector going off was only in the movies where the scene was of a burning building. but in this case, the big question was, where is the fire? panic stricken we looked for means to turn it off.

one thing that we also noticed in l.a. was that the fire department is proactive. our house has a window that looked onto the road where we could listen and see the fire truck wailing its siren away almost every 2 hours or so. now we were wondering if they would be heading for us? so we opened up the windows, furled up the blinds and still the alarm wouldn't go off.
this was very similar to a protagonist trying to rescue a baby from a burning building, the only difference was we didnt know what to do. there was this button on the smoke alarm. and some how we figured that upon depressing the button again, the alarm would calm. :P

then i yanked out the stick that supported the hangers from the closet and tried it at the alarm. then another roommate of mine draws a chair underneath the alarm and depresses the alarm button and it goes back to its mute state.

if you think that was all for a day, it isn't.

now the concept of heaters is also new to us naive youngsters. ours works on the concept of gas. the land lady had told us to put the heater in a "pilot" mode when not in use. i asked for its significance she didnt have a reply. in the "pilot" mode however it was still on, on a lower flame though.

things started heating up in sometime though it was on a pilot mode and we couldnt take it anymore. so thats when we shut the gas supply off thereby turning the heater off completely. that worked out all fine and dandy.

that night though we felt the need of the heater, which is when we turned it on and we ready to enjoy the warmth it gave. but it didnt give out anything. and then we looked around and thats when we realised that there wasnt any flame to burn the gas which is when we realised the significance of the pilot mode.

anyway, we needed to strike a flame in that encasement. we neither had a long match stick or any such means light the flame. we took a newspaper. wound it tight so as to form a stick and lit it with a match stick. this is pretty much how the primitive man who invented fire would have done after some point of time minus the newspaper. now we started poking at the gas outlet in the encasement. nothing! again and nothing! then again and zilch! this was demoralizing and puzzling for us because we were engineers by profession and would not accept anything without a proper reasoning.what arrogance!

then we let the gas flow freely and lit. and i was the one hold that torch and *bhoop * came the noise and the flame came right at me and there is was, burning in all its splendor.

oh i forgot to mention that in case something went wrong i had one of my room mates with a cooker filled with water.

then again we had a good laugh.

playing with fire right on the day of signing the lease for the apartment! some fun eh?

i guess i have rambled on for quite some time now. i shall give you some breathing space.

till we meet again

k for kyos

here are the pics!

2007-01-11T19:40:00.000-08:00

bon jour la

2007-01-06T07:40:00.000-08:00

well here i am . in l.a. phew! i must say i was excited.

once you are here is when you realise the hardships,the hurdles that lay ahead of you. the very idea of building everything from scratch with nothing is seemingly very detterent for any faint heart.

everyone faces them,anyone who has come here leaving the rosy family thousands of miles behind him. and everyone has a fresh new identity to start out with. i really dont know how to put it in words but i shall try my best.

i was taken in by a senior of mine who i must say was really helpful in all sorts. i was taken aback by the amount of help that he had extended to me. i shall never forget that. all for a one person whom he had met only 2-3 times. then i was taken where a group of students welcomed me and prepared food. we had a jolly of a time. all for a one person whom they had never met in their life! but then in today's world who would be so nice?

the only tool that you have to start out with ,in this brave new world, is trust. hehe, if you dont have that, consider yourself to be a gonner. i sensed this in the past few days. amongst new people all you can offer is trust and that's a BIG thing and do whatever you can so that they dont loose it on you.

i guess i am done saying. pretty much an arbitrary ending.

till we meet again

good bye

la here I come!

2006-12-21T12:04:00.000-08:00

well its been a long time till i have written, and a lot of events have taken place, which happen to be interesting.

i am now heading to los angeles (or at least planning to,haven't got my visa yet :D, to pursue my masters. whoopee!!! i would have gone to no other place than this.

half an hour ago i was watching an advertisement and that made me realize that i am going a place which breathes glitz and glamor. and there is a stark contrast to the place where i am heading to and the conditions back home.

all my life i have been in couped in one single place. i am going there with an ulterior motive. the world is a huge huge place! in it live lots of interesting people. people who have seen things different from what i have, people who come from a different background altogether. interacting with such people is an eye-piece compared to what the world has to offer. their recounting of a world that i have not seen, their culture that i have not experienced and who knows what!

i am excited by the very exchange of ideas owing to the gamut of environment all of us are in, which i believe should be done in healthy doses. this "expedition" will help me enrich my notion about the world. for any person who cares about his surroundings i think it is a must to have a peek at the world , it will be more than worth it!

i shall end this post by a line from the movie Crash:

It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.

till we meet again,

good bye world!

An unending saga in the IT domain and other stories(to follow)

2006-11-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

Well last week I was visiting my cousins in Hyderabad. And trust me my cousins have "infiltrated" almost every I.T. company there is in India, which is when I realized that each and everybody working in the I.T. industry strives for one singular motive.

Na, it is not the appraisal! It’s gaining full privileges on the system you are working on. Be it a newbie or a veteran, they yearn for gaining those privileges. Once achieved, they don’t want the word to spread, because if it does boy, you have the admin people knocking on your door, questioning you about the shit that is going on.

And what do you do with those privileges you earned? Nothing! Perhaps brag amongst your confidants and that’s about it. It is a personal victory. You may never use them but you so desperately need them. Something like, it’s my PC so I am the king, not you! Who are you to control my bot anyway?

One always enjoys doing stuff he isn’t supposed to do and he gets even more anxious when he is instructed not to do it. There is a certain thrill to it.

And this saga is unending. Something that will always be fresh. Everyone tries some trick or the other in an attempt to gain those godly powers over one’s computer. It is a sensation very close to: Good triumphing over Evil.

Thank God, they invented the e-mail. Also Thank God they kept it free!!!

People would surely be sore if they hadnt had their quota of forwards or send them till they are satiated. E-mailing is one activity that any I.T. person lavishly indulges himself in. And nobody minds it. That and chatting! People sure can talk a lot!! I mean a LOTTTT!

Well I am done yakking.

Till we meet again

Au Revoir

expertise in what?

2006-11-10T18:39:00.000-08:00

"Experts on cell phone and text message use and etiquette said *********** was not the first to be dumped by text"

Experts in what?(with all due respect!)

(C) of Yahoo ,just an excerpt.

why did the chicken cross the road?

2006-11-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

this happens to be one of the much debated question and here are the reasons proposed by people from various walks of life,enjoy:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

KINDERGARTEN TEACHER: To get to the other side.

PLATO: For the greater good.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.

KARL MARX: It was a historical inevitability.

TIMOTHY LEARY: Because that's the only trip the establishment would let it take.

SADDAM HUSSEIN: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

JACK NICHOLSON: 'cause it f.....g wanted to. That's the f.....g reason.

RONALD REAGAN: I forget.

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

HIPPOCRATES: Because of an excess of phlegm in its pancreas.

ARTHUR ANDERSEN CONSULTANT: Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market.
Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework.
Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with an eterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes.
The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution.
Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become more successful.

LOUIS FARRAKHAN: The road, you see, represents the black man. The chicken 'crossed' the black man in order to trample him and keep him down.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

MOSES: And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the chicken,"Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

FOX MULDER: You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?

RICHARD M. NIXON: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did NOT cross the road.

MACHIAVELLI: The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatever motive there was.

JERRY SEINFELD: Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn't anyone ever think to ask, What the heck was this chicken doing walking around all over the place, anyway?

FREUD: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

BILL GATES: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook.

OLIVER STONE: The question is not, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Rather, it is, "Who was crossing the road at the same time, whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"

DARWIN: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads.

EINSTEIN: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

BUDDHA: Asking this question denies your own chicken nature.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: The chicken did not cross the road ....it transcended it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die. In the rain.

COLONEL SANDERS: I missed one?

my ride in a jeep

2006-11-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

the title sounds like a story for tots doesnt it?

i was returning from office, late relatively to the time i usually bid it farewell.

my transportation is either the bus or the jeep.

i see a jeep flashing its lights towards me and to my luck it takes me almost where i want to go. now this is a traditional jeep, so i had some expectations, owing to the omnipresence of bollywood.

yup jeeps have a long relationship with bollywood. it was the modus operandi of hooligans and the heroes to kidnap and woo the heroines respectively. and who could ever forget the cop chases? cops with their guns, performing gymnastics on their jeeps and evading the barrage of bullets from the fleeing villian and his accomplices.

i was excited that way and luckily it was empty and so i got to sit right beside the panels and the ever so famous steering wheel (of the jeep).

i began to search for all those things that was shown in a bollywood picture. sadly it happens only in the movies.

the ever so beserk needle of the KDO meter lay dead and showed no intentions of moving regardless of the speed of the jeep.

there was this "amps" panel which used to dance from + to - whenever the lights were flashed, other than that pretty much everything lay still. some werent even illuminated!

since jeeps dont have doors, i atleast could enjoy leaning out a bit the way those coppers used to and its barrels of fun. but one should be careful.

probably it was not the best of the jeeps to experience those bollywood delights, maybe someother time.

until we meet

good bye

WW II

2006-10-29T04:02:00.000-08:00

you gotta love this!!!

*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow (Benito Mussolini of Italy) has joined the game.*
*T0J0 (Tojo Hideki of Japan) has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0JO: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got **** to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
Roosevelt: yah thats right ***** im comin for ya
Stalin: church help me
Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
Stalin: dont be an arss
Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
Eisenhower: LOL
benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
Hitler: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: lame
Roosevelt: gj patton
paTTon: thnx
Hitler[AoE]: WTF eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
Eisenhower: Nuts!
benny~tow: wtf that mean?
Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun ++++socker
Stalin: rofl
T0J0: HAHAHHAA
Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
benny~tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
Stalin: OMG LMAO!
Hitler[AoE]: WTF i didnt click there omg this game blows
*Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
paTTon: hahahhah
T0J0: WTF my teammates are n00bs
benny~tow: shut up noob
Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
Eisenhower: yah me too
T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
Eisenhower: fock u
paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
Stalin: go to hell lol
paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
*tru_m4n has joined the game.*
tru_m4n: hi all
T0J0: hey
Stalin: sup
Churchill: hi
tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
T0J0: wtf is nukes?
T0J0: holy ****holy****hoyl****!
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
Eisenhower: awesome!
Churchill: gg noobs no re
T0J0: thats bull**** u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.*
Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
tru_m4n: l8r all
benny~tow: bye
Churchill: l8r
Stalin: fock u all
tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
benny~tow: lololol u commie
Churchill: ROFL
Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny~tow has left the game.*
Stalin: i hate u all fags
*Stalin has left the game.*
paTTon: lol no1 is left
paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
paTTon: o sh1t!
*paTTon has left the game.*

indian ocean- micanvas

2006-10-29T02:35:00.000-08:00

last friday i had a gem of a time. this was because i had been to a concert given by Indian Ocean.

inarguably they are connoiseurs of music. their blend of music is very unique and soothing. the guitar is a modified guitar that behaves as a sitar or a guitar at its whim.

the band is a fusion of classical and rock. bass is their dominating sound. 3 bass instruments. and it seems like every song has undergone a thorough scrutiny and executed perfectly. each song has a sound and a story of its own which is so compelling you just cant get over it!

trivr tandav - a song on shivji's dance, which was to symbolize the killing during the kargil war was started so perfectly, that it almost felt as if a divine voice had initiated it. the voice had that certain thunder and power in it.

musically they stand at par with pink floyd. yet they dont insist on going commercial. they play only on the college circuits.

sadly it took them quite sometime to get their patience recognized but it seems to be paying off.

one of the band members who is reponsible for weaving classical sound into the blues fabric has had no formal training, yet has a very firm control on the pitch, amazingly firm.

i tell you, if ever you get an oppurtunity to see Indian Ocean at a concert, get the tickets without any second thoughts, it will be more than worth the money for sure!!

a truly remarkable band.

till we meet again

paichaan kaun?

2006-10-29T02:21:00.000-08:00

i have to commute to get to my office and back and it usually is done on public transport and usually a state transport bus.

and since India is a land of diversity and culture, you can expect to stumble upon something that will raise your eye.

it was friday and the evening crowd was coming in its full which meant all the seats were occupied. i had to stand during the entire journey. this is were the story begins. there is a eunuch seated nearby. he/she is accompied by a man. i think they know each other pretty well,i mean prettttyy well!

there is some conversation going on, i come to know of it a bit later. the man is eating something and eunuch fools around with him and the man gets irritated a bit but dismisses it.

the man then makes a phone call and to the caller he says," le ab salma se baat kar."(refering to the eunuch ofcourse!)

eunuch:"Mein salma bol rahi hoon...... haaaaaaaainnnnnn? Salllllma, accha utarne ke baad phone karti hoon"

this reminded me of navin prabhakar of the "Paichan kaun?" fame. undoubtedly the only thing that was missing in the conversation was "Paichan kaun? "

a little later the eunuch again fools! around with the man and to which the man yells out : "dimaag ki m* mat ch**, bh**ch**"

hearing this i couldnt help not laughing. but alas! that was the end of my eavesdropping cause my destination had arrived.

it was fun to over hear the conversation! :P

auf weindersehen

p.s.: i have nothing against nobody

pink floyd-a connoisseur

2006-10-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

well i have been listening to a LOT of pink floyd and let me tell you the band kicks ass

although i want to paste a lot of lyrics here, but then one would lose the interest to read the wonderful lyrics, so i shall be posting only a few.

this one is from Time

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

This one has got to be one of the most beautiful songs,for that matter i think all the pink floyd songs have carved a niche. the songwriting is truly exceptional.

A Great Day for Freedom

On the day the wall came down
They threw the locks onto the ground
And with glasses high we raised a cry for freedom had arrived
On the day the wall came down
The Ship of Fools had finally run aground
Promises lit up the night like paper doves in flight
I dreamed you had left my side
No warmth not even pride remained
And even though you needed me
It was clear that I could not do a thing for you
Now life devalues day by day
As friends and neighbours turn away
And there's a change that, even with regret, cannot be undone
Now frontiers shift like desert sands
While nations wash their bloodied hands
Of loyalty, of history, in shades of gray
I woke to the sound of drums
The music played, the morning sun streamed in
I turned and I looked at you
And all but the bitted residue slipped away...slipped away

Wish You Were Here

This song was written for Syd Barrett who was suffering bouts of schizophernia and was eventually kicked out the band for his erratic behaviour. The song is magnifique:

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

i just cant get enough of Pink Floyd! they are truly masters of their craft

ciao

ahh...this is the life!

2006-10-24T06:25:00.001-07:00

yesterday couldnt have been more perfect.

i was home alone and so i was the lord of the house. lazily i got up to get ready for the office but suprise suprise, upon reaching there i found no one. so back i come jauntily.

now i had to plan for lunch and i had to conserve money because the last night as well i was the master of the house and blew up 200 bucks on pizzas :D . so to balance i had to come up with something that wouldnt punch a hole. then as i entered the kitchen,my eyes fell on 2 packs of noodles and i thought,'hey why not?'

so noodles it was for lunch.

about 1 in the afternoon when my stomach started complaining, i got up to make my lunch,not the first time :), though i still need to read the instructions. one thing i concluded after the entire cooking event was that the time to make , mentioned on the packets is always wrong and the amount of water to add is wrong too.

now they had asked me to put 1.5 teacups of water. but! they didnt mention the size of the tea cup. i had 3 sizes. i took the medium sized cup and poured 2 cups fulls of it in the vessel. and i was asked to boil it and then put the noodles. now 30 secs gone with the stove on high,i could see the water level receding and thought i cant cook noodles in that much water. my notion of boiling water comes from the movies where you see the bubbles and all with vapour escaping. so i added another cup and added the noodles to it. after a bit of stirring i added the tastemaker.

NOTE: things get really hot when the vessel is on the stove for more than a minute!!!!! so dont even try to handle anything with your naked hand. i realised this fact only after a slight touch :D.

the noodles was done. and i ate. it was umm.....good,yeah really good!

day turned night.i passed it by sitting in front of the computer,listening songs, playing music, watching simpsons. again i had to plan for supper and was too lazy to make it. so i decided to have it outside. upon reaching the place, it was heavily crowded and so i decided against having it there and pack it home. now i had placed an order for 3 parathas and a curry. simultaneously another chap had placed an order of 6 parathas and a curry.

the lady said,its going to take a while so stroll around and come back after sometime. and i sauntered in the nearby park looking for something interesting. ten minutes gone i returned to the counter, the lady said here is your order. after working up an appetite i was ready to gorge the food. midway in the meal did i realise that not only was the curry i had ordered for was different but the parathas were 6 in number and i couldnt stop laughing. poor guy!

then again at 11 i catched seinfeld and then went to bed to get up for work the next day.

the next day (i.e. today):

i get up and reach office and lo,even the lights that were switched on yesterday were off. stayed there for about an hour(cause i had screwed up my bot :D) and then returned home. and then spent the rest of the day sleeping :D.

and in the 2 days i did a little more than 100 kms of riding the bike. talk about being roadie!!!

well i hope these happy days keep coming.

and yea i am being paid for these 2 days :P .

till next time
ciao

Scribble...Scribble.

2006-10-02T02:22:00.000-07:00

Well its Dashera today and in Gujarat it only spells out as fafda and jalebi! :P

So I was going to get them following the tradition .en-route to the shop at one of the road crossings,there was no policeman at sight,yet the riders behaved as tamed cattle stopping when red and moving when green. not one did break the signal light and speed away,no sir!strange but true...

Its like they are finally getting some brains and learning, good for them.

On an another note,for my brother who might be reading this, I just had hot jalebis and they were awesome followed by fafda and that thing you like the most! ):-]

As they say at your place, Au Revoir

My experiences at the dental clinic

2006-09-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

People say I talk a lot. Well this was one time I felt like keeping my mouth wide shut. Last week when I had gone to the dentist to fix myself an appointment for a regular clean up job, I enquired about my jaw structure to which she didnt bother replying and that was discouraging. She said that I have to get my teeth clean of the tartar or whatever,didnt make much sense to me.

So next week(i.e. today) I visited the dentist again. And the head dentist said,"Boyo you got yourself a cavity there." I said,"I already have four, I could certainly do without one!". He said "There was a cavity in the front tooth,the one you see when one smiles. " I was left with no choice and decided to go ahead with the cavity filling.

Thank God, they discovered anaesthesia!But ask Him why didnt they administer it to me! The drill the dentist used was the mother of all tooth drillers.I can still feel the vibrations. So now he bore a hole into my tooth. The way I felt it,he was mercilessly pounding the tooth, till he got what he desired and it didnt hurt him a wee bit to see me wriggle in pain,horrible, horrible pain. Now I had a peekhole in my front tooth.Imagine that!

Then I was taken to the regular drilling gig where the she-dentist was incharge to remove the useless deposits otherwise known as tartar and plaque. And she was no less brutal if not more than the he-dentist,with the only difference being that the driller was set to medium level. She was repeatedly asking me to widen my jaw and I was like ,"Yea right!". My gums bled and what not. Then she in accordance to the colour of my enamel, got the filling mixture ready and used some laser gun kinda thing to harden the filling. Now it looked spanking new as if there was no hole there!

The cleaning was done with a lot of bloodshed. During the entire operation, I was suprised to repeat to myself,"Pain is worship", "Pain is worship" ;I really had no idea why. And when there was pain,my body stiffened and thereafter I tried to relax by repeating "Pain is worship".

Before going to the dentist, I said to myself well this is just a routine operation and nothing would happen. I went in there with a strong will not to bow down to pain. But with the tools that the the dentist had put on his table, the sight itself pulverized my first line of defence. But "Pain is worship" and then after the entire job was done, I must admit the job was done perfectly. I could now see the glistening white teeth that were buried underneath the junk I ate so carelessly without bothering to clean my teeth,well I learnt my lesson.

I must warn you though, dentists are not for the weak hearted!

Au revoir

All men are equal, some…. Are more equal

2006-09-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

While I still figure the title for this post, the reason for penning it stems after reading a well known book –Animal Farm by George Orwell.

The pyramid has been one of the frequently used geometric shapes used by historians to describe the distribution of power and the number of people privileged with that power.

Throughout history, there have been revolutions roused by the maltreatment of the junta by the power possessing tyrants and eventually the junta winning it and breathing freedom, well till until another revolution sparks off.

What I can’t seem to figure out is the time the plebeians take to realize the maltreatment by their “lords” and the reasons which compel them to take such a step.

From the way I see it, the horrendous acts were being perpetrated since decades and with the plebeians in majority, they would always stand to win, if they had mutinied. History says they did and only after some lapse of time (decades or hundreds of years after). Were they afraid of giving up something so precious that, the possession of it outweighed the brutality they had to face everyday, till one fine day when they realized that it mattered no more?

Perhaps they were afraid of death, the onslaught of soldiers or the treatment if they had failed in their motive. But what are the odds against a million commoners to a hundred thousand soldiers?

One other aspect that intrigued me was the type of government formed after the mutiny, and the factors influencing it. The Bolsheviks carried out the as per the doctrines of Karl Marx and thus lay the seeds of Communism. Then there is The Congress after the American Revolution which decided to go with the Federal form of governance. The Indian Congress Party opting for Democracy. Any government model will fail, if the power isn’t vested in the hands of the commoners, for the simple reason of them being in majority.

It seems I need to do some sleuthing. George Orwell has done a perfect job to convey an idea through Animal Farm.

Till we meet again,

Au revior.

Nightfall-Issac Asimov

2006-09-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

Nightfall-Issac Asimov

A week now since I had last scribbled something. Surprisingly I have taken something sort of an addiction to books. That’s pretty much what I do at my workplace. And its fun.

Last week I had finished Nightfall by Issac Asimov. It more or less was a decent story but with banal descriptions of the surroundings after a calamity had befallen upon them, makes you shirk it.

Asimov has tried to describe the psyche of the inhabitants of a certain planet Kaglash, which has 6 suns and hence always bathed in their light, when they are left nothing with profound darkness.

The foundations of the plot are neatly laid and as one progresses to the descriptions after the holocaust, the repetitions of the disorientation of the civilians and the resulting rioting and destruction become unwelcomed. The story though ends abruptly. It’s like you are cruising and suddenly out of no where there is a brick wall in your path and you crash into it.

Like any other fiction story, Asimov has included scientific notations and postulates tailored to the planet of course.

A treat for a fiction fanatic!

I would give it 6/10.

Till we meet again 
Cheerio
pz

media circus

2006-09-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

it goes around by many names.the fourth estate for one.

it truly epitomizes the meaning of "the pen is mightier than the sword".although with times cliches need to change too. the adage quoted holds true even now but it could certainly use an updation.

of course i am refering to the media not the print media but the television media. both of them are involved in the same type of work, but what is different is how the information is disseminated amongst the masses and in todays world ,how quickly.

the dawn of the twenty first century ushered in a face lift in indian journalism.all of a sudden there is rush or craze if you may call it;to transmit the news to the people.and this was welcomed by the people initially.

but then everything suffers with time if not well kept. news was no other. in their mad rush to deliver the news, they ran out of quality. on a slow newsday you could see casters and reporters talking really jibberish and talking for the sake of it.

but that doesnt entirely summarize my point. the sole intention of penning this down(if one can call it penning) was roused after i had seen certain news reports.

media, as i have seen it is equivalent to a circus. the one who has enough material to dish out gets the limelight and fades away once he is done with it. i will present 2 instances which were equally contradictory which reveal the some of the many facets of media.

#1 -:-

the media was very successful in raising the nation's voice for the rape cases of the unfortuante victims and played a key role in opening its cases again,so that justice be served!

#2 -:-

recently india or should i say the world lost one of the finest exponents in classical music. Ustad Bismillah Khan. as usual the tv hounds were fast after his trail and started eulogizing a man whom they hadn't mentioned even once for his marvellous achievements. and he did deserve to be on television though he didnt crave for it(he was awarded the bharat ratna-india's highest civilan honour). they were delivering praising anecdotes but that lasted for that very day only. the next day they moved on as if nothing had happened.

well this was quite unfair. there was a man who had spent his life on an instrument and had enthralled an audience with his craft and all he got was a place in the media(i am refering to the tv news channels!) for about 8 hours or so,just so because he was no more.

quite unfair and absurd.

i guess our country doesnt have the knack to recognize and honour the magnificient talents.its a shame and our ill luck.

but the media does get some credit.it atleast enlightens the ignorants about such fine people,though at the time of their death.

thats media for you.

you want to avoid it,but you cannot ignore it!

american gods -neil gaiman

2006-09-03T04:12:00.001-07:00

the front page reads out as "Dark fantasy". i would second that.

anyway, its been a good read. the title itself suggests a saga in biblical proportions and the image of the book seems pretty out of place to befit the title "American Gods",but there had to be an image anyway,so what better than put an image showing what gods are good at, smiting and throwing lightening bolts at creatures/things far less powerful than themselves.

the story opens itself with the rivalry between the new age gods and the old forgotten gods, who seek to make their presence felt. this was materialized through the a battle between the two parties and the winner takes it all. shadow is the protagonist and is picked up by the All-Father, Odin/the Grimnir etc etc.... to act as an errand boy.

lots of stuff happen which merely builds up the plot and one such event which aggravated the old gods was the death of Odin. and then right before the battle, shadow the errand boy discovers that this was all the handiwork of Odin and Loki,the norse gods, to fill the reservoir of faith/sacrifice,which the gods(in general) feeded upon to survive and what better sacrfice would be to them (Odin and Loki)than the sacrifice of gods fighting for him,avenging his death.

so the protagonist steps in and enlightens them all of this fact and the battles stop. then and there. this perhaps was the sudden anticlimax which certainly i didnt expect. they stop and return back to their activities and the world is good again. shadow who has lost it all now seeks to start a new life somewhere afresh.

as Mr.Ibis says "That is the tale,rest is all detail."

as for the story,it was definitely novel, and had taken me by surprise with the turn of certain events,then again, its a story!

one thing i found amusing was the gods were depicted as normal human beings who dealt their emotions pretty much the way humans do, who dealt with the daily activities as humans do. so that is something different.

till we meet ,

au revior

where's the rush???

2006-08-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

well i have been wanting to write a post for a while and the post count has now cumilated to 3 :p.

anyway,

if you are in india and that too particularly in ahmedabad, then you would certainly be confounded by the behaviour of the common people outdoors. surely not like animals who become emancipated(or are atleast potrayed in the movies) in the great outdoors nevertheless it surely doesnt fail to catch the eye of person who is alien to it.

i really dont know if this tendency is cornered only in ahmedabad or the rest of india, but it wouldnt be hard to presume about the latter.

scene #1:
you are standing at a bus stop. waiting for a bus. there are other people as well waiting for the same bus. the bus comes along. it is empty! freeze frame: now typically one would wait till the bus comes to a halt and then let the conductor open the doors . then you board the bus. but no. our junta has it all figured out! the people as soon as they see the bus from a distance start gathering at a place (which by the way is about ~30 meters? or so from the actual bus stop!).

not feeling inundated the bus driver tries his best to halt at the bus stop. but as soon as the bus enters their territory they hunt for the door waiting for it to open/or open it themselves and then board the bus(i think its something sorta a personal victory!yes, first in the bus 3 times, in your face jerry! woohoo i am the king! sorta feeling.although no really bothers to laud him on his personal achievement.) now the bus actually comes to a halt at the bus stop with about 10 people holding the door in all possible directions,imagine that!the bus then halts for yet another 3 minutes or so and then departs.
freeze frame finish.

scene #2:
you are on your way to college. and to reach to it you need to board a train and that too in the general compartment.the train has arrived at the platform. the people who want to board the train faithfully pave the way for the people who want to disembark it.once done its a rat race. shouting ,fighting and altercations fills the then clement atmosphere. now everybody is in, time for the train to move,cause i am in, move go go, why is it not going. well the train lazily sits there for another few minutes and then goes ahead in its journey. now here is a more formal way,they know where it is going to stop and they know they cant stop it where that want it to. they know they would have to let the people out, so wait till it comes to a halt and then attack. better organised than the bus people.

scene #3:
this has to be the best one of all!
you move around the city quite often. and you have a vehicle. so you drive around the city in your gleaming machine. but there are lots of intersections. and in todays world they have traffic signals! dagnamit!! and to put the commuters at ease the traffic police has timers installed that indicate the time left till the signal goes green. but nothing will dissuade our amatuer f1 and superbike racers. no matter what number the timer flashes they have their engines revving up,ready to at the instant of it going green. now there is about 10 whole seconds(now thats a lot of time,for a traffic signal) but our people are half way on the road, religiously waiting for it to go green, since the timer flashed 15 seconds. now the inanimate traffic signal has caused their patience to reach its zenith. there is no stopping now. 10 seconds on the timer and you see people moving ahead! the traffic police however is no match for the sheer rush coming at them. also i have noticed one thing. even though you have no place to go ahead, the guy behind you will honk the hell out thereby insisting go ahead and you look at him puzzled,dude where? to which he replies in sign language and then you pay no heed. the honking then stops. now some people restrict themselves behind the stop line till the signal goes green. once it has gone green, their calm demeanour is overthrown by a crass personality which gives out a barrage of expletives, demanding you to go ahead.

well these scenarios concur to one unanswered question. that would be "where is the rush?" to which apparently many people will be without an answer but logically put, all of them would be given a chance to board the bus/ train , but we are too impatient to wait for our chance!!!!

till we meet again,adios!
:)

you got m@il

2006-08-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

you switch on the internet connection and jot your username and password in the yahoo messenger and it pops a message which reads out that you have no new messages

yet with a spark of hope, you log into the site and again input your name and password only to see that somebody has actually remembered you,though its not from the crowd you would expect or want!

to your dismay you find that your inbox is empty, but your bulk folder has mails!!!

hesitantly you open your bulk folder only to find mails that either amuse you or what were they thinking type of mails!?!

there is a guy who constantly tries to sell me rolex watches at cheap rates. then he adds that they are rolex look alike and they are just like rolexes.

to escape the wrath of the spam filter(which by the way is very weak, in case of yahoo), some mails have weird stories, with their motives revealed later.

then you have pre approved loans. for a person who doesnt earn!!! :P

then this is the best : c@n you s@t!sfy your girlfriend? then the list follows with various medications that assure you of increase in penal length with absolutely no side effects. ahh... i always am strides by the achievements of the medical world.

similar to these are |ncre@se your penal length by 4 inches.... :P

you also get mails from a person who is in possession of a long lost treasure and wants to share it with you. jeez...am i lucky or what!!!!

and then you have ppl selling degrees of your liking with authenticity guarenteed!!!and you must hurry this for a limited time only!!!

and the most amusing part is that, the mailing address doesnt have your address, it has been addressed to some other character.

and they seem to be relentless in sending them and they are increasing by the day.

hehe......

well check your bulk folder now, cause you got mail

funny moments around you

2006-08-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

long time no post....hmm..

well here is one :)

since i was out of the house for a considerable period of time for the past few days, i noticed few events that were quite funny....

i was descending the stairs in the college when i saw a notice board which read out :

Inaugration of abc building ,By def

thats how usual a normal announcement looked like.but the authorities here took care that the notice aroused everybody's interest and the following was appended:

(Refreshments provided)

seemed like the only way to have a sizeable audience would be by assuring them that there is something in store for them if they attend the function. :P

this event happened while i was coming back from the station .

the time was 6 pm and the evening rush was at its peak. with hardly any space to drive comfortably and to be on your toes all the time , you will certainly find it amusing when there is a donkey trying to ride the other donkey who is trying to escape this event ,yet the riding donkey is relentless in his pursuit and that too in your lane with the donkey going the opposite way . donkeys this way ,the public that way turning their heads.

this one happened not with me but with a friend of mine. money speaks !

he had come to the college for some work and found that the intended sir was not at his desk.upon asking the peon for his whereabouts ,he doesnt reply back. when the peon saw a Rs.50 flashing, he grabbed it and reached for the nearest phone and was heard saying :

Sir ,where are you?. Sir would have replied ,"Why what happened?". To which the peon says,"You have to sign some documents." and the next thing you see is the sir walking towards his desk.do you think they are working together?

i ought go out more often, there are tons of pranks that go unnoticed and it is time that someone shot it ,on a camera that is ;)

whats in a name?

2006-07-26T13:01:00.000-07:00

this is a famous quote by shakespeare as all know.

he would have been right during his times,but these days,name is everything.

a docile guy with no talent but job is considered to be intelligent than a guy with brains but no job,they assume!what good is a man without brains?

a growing tendency today is to possess talent that will materialize into lucrative,they say.well then we shouldnt define it as talent then for it is pursued not for the joy but with a purpose!!!

one needs a job to talk eye to eye with the other,they say!bah!!!what absurdity! just so to give an equally befitting reply you need a job,talent is down the drains ,they say. personal thoughts ,desires ,achievements, etc. are of no value until you have job ,they say. you are looked down ,they say.

do what the crowd does,if you do something different you will get royally screwed,they say!dish out your creativity and join the zombie workforce,they imply!

well they say a lot of things.....