Friday, January 27, 2006

Nosatagia and Agony Aunties !!

Today was was my first official holiday, i mean my manager had told me on wednesday not to show my face anywhere near office premises today. It wasn't as sinister as it sounds she actually wanted to give me a day off on account of me working my ass off over the past few days.

So i went to sleep yesteday nite with the comforting feeling that i would be able laze around all day and mock my friends who had to work today. But alas!! i was rudely awakened from my beauty sleep at 7 am in the morning by my mother-turned sergant major with just one brief - "Drop your sister to the Metro station !!"......i mean my sister is a nice'ol bird but why do i have to drop her everywhere.....what does this world have against innocent brothers ??

Anyways that done i proceeded to have a rather liesurely bath n breakfast after which i headed towards gud'ol college to collect my certificates and marksheets. Surprise...surprise !! got the certis in just 5 mins and that mean lady in the admin office (one with red hair and long teeth) has suddenly transformed from a student devouring T-Rex into a perfect angel. Made some small talk with her and remembered how she used to cut me down to size.

It also happened to be the first day of INNOVISON - the annual tech fest and all the chaos and madness that acompanies such a historical day was very much there. The emotion was getting to me now n just as i cleared my misty eyes i saw old chum Anish Johnson striding purposefully towards me and gaving me a warm reception. He was a distressed soul n this is where the nostalgia hit hard. He was organising the General Quiz to be held today.....well K n chinks would remember the fun and pressures we had to go through to to put up a top quality quiz show which left the audience dazzaled and begging for more.

Anyway next thing i know i am helping the dude conduct his prelims and around the same time making up some silly rhymey poem involving Kurt Cobain. With Johnny organising the quiz the questions were always gonna be gud and it was in line with the proud quizzing traditions of NSIT although not quite the classics the college had witnessed in the past few years with us (me, K n chinks) incharge. I left with the final advice about not to agree for anything less than a primetime slot in the Audi for the finals later that evening.

Later in the evening i got the chance to play agony aunt to a friend in need of either a helpful conversation or couple of strong drinks to clear the head a little bit. So naturally for the sake of the pal i grabbed the phone and called.....ahem well during the coversation i got a feeling that the conversation wasn't going anywhere and it would have been better to let the balmy soul be alone with the spirit of its choice. But the friend actually called me back to tell me among other things what a pathetic job i had done and had been a disgrace to agony aunts in general.

So as i ready to go sleep its in sound knowledge that one more career option is not for me....sigh....i really thought i could make it big with this one.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

When God Closes All Doors, He Gives You a Satellite Radio

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

I love you too people !!!
Noooo i am not........but then some people insist on calling me that !!

Friday, January 13, 2006

Talk about strategies...

There's this book I've been reading........well, eating, sleeping, dreaming about these days. And though the book is desparately trying to teach me something wierd...er....tea? coffee...? beans?......ah, EJBs. Phew. But interestingly, what hangs on to my poor brain is a unique strategy the book claims to employ to make my brain hang on to what it's trying to say..........


We know what you're thinking
"How can this be a serious programming book?"
"What's with all the graphics?"
"Can I actually learn this way?"
"Do I smell pizza?"

And we know what your brain is thinking
Your brain craves novelty. It's always searching, scanning, waiting for something unusual. It was built this way. And it helps you stay alive.
Today, you're less likely to be a tiger snack. But you brain's still looking out. You just never know.
So what does your brain do with all the routine, ordinary things you encounter? Everything it can to stop them from interfering with the brain's real job-recording things that matter. It does'nt bother saving the boring things; they never make it past the "this is obviously not important" filter.
Now how does your brain know what's important? Suppose you're out for a day hike and a tiger jumps in front of you, what happens inside your head?
Nerons fire. Emotions crack up. Chemicals surge.
And that's how your brain knows...

This must be important! Don't forget it!
But imagine you're at home, or in a library. It's a safe, warm, relatively tiger-free zone. You're studying. Trying to learn some tough technical topics your boss thinks will take a week, ten days at the most.
Just one problem. Your brain's trying to do you a big favour. It's trying to make sure that this obviously non-important content does'nt clutter up scarce resources. Resources that are better spent storing the really big things. Like tigers. Like the danger of fire. Like how you would never again snowboard in shorts.
And there's no simple way to tell your brain, "Hey brain, thank you very much, but no matter how dull this book is, and how little I'm registering on the emotional richter scale right now, I really want you to keep this stuff around...


Well, then the preface goes on to explaining something boring called metacognition (read- the crux of the strategy), and how DO I get my brain to treat an EJB like a hungry tiger. This of course I'm unable to recollect.

An interesting strategy, but as you can see, a total failure in my case!

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Just sitting at my seat, still in office, waiting for the damn test case to run, wishing nothing goes wrong.
The whole atmosphere of office changes when everyone's left (well, almost)
Some people are still sitting, creating craters on the cushion beneath them.
All in all, there seem to the following categories of people who stay till wee hours of the day (or night) in the office -

  • The guy, who has been given work, much more than he can handle.
  • The guy, who is eager to complete the job of 2 days in 1 day. Maybe he wants to impress his boss or maybe is too ambitious (or disillusioned, I may say :))
  • The guy, who wasted all day, giving company to everyone going for a smoke, coffee.
  • The latecomer. He probably reached office after enjoying a leisurely brunch and deserves to stay late for completing those mandatory 8.25hrs/day.

Which category do I fit in?
Don't know. Don't have enough time to think about that.

Damn! the test case failed.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Rockstar?

It all happened last year.

During one of the rounds of Indian Idol (the desi version of American Idol), Farah Khan was so overjoyed by one of the performances that she declared that the poor chap performed like a rockstar & his performance rocked :O

And, damn, how quickly did everyone in India added the term – rockstar into their (so inspired by the in-thing) vocab.

Now every other singer wants to rock, look like a rockstar. And all they dish out is some crappy, mushy number by Sonu Nigam or some shitty Punjabi number.

And look what they have done to Pal by KK. It was such a nice number and the fools turned it into a disco song.

Why the hell can’t we have some good Indi-rockers. And methods to promote them.

Look how Paki artists are doing. Fuzon, String, Jal, Junoon… they all rock. Tight composition, meaningful lyrics, sticking to the basics (and not going too dhin-chak), these guys are damn good.

But, alas, we can’t think something in the similar lines happening here in India.

Just when the golden era of Mithun da’s, Govinda’s & Jeetendra’s songs was over, came the new age of Remix (and I don’t think they deserve any more space in this blog).

P.S. I vow to myself that I won’t write anything about music the next time. Maybe something about the Cake Theory (and how I became a victim of it), Auto Expo’06, the cute girl at office :), or maybe dissing some assO I meet on day to day basis.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

HAPPY BUDDAY !!

Eons ago on 8th Jan a peculiar round-shaped penguin like creature was first sighted on this planet n since then the day is celebrated as the birthday of my ol’chum Marvin aka Kshitij Sanghi aka K.

So how’s life treating you at 30, you old fossil ??

Well how do I describe this bloke….hmm…..he’s one of those super brainy nerds n thinks he’s all smooth n sophisticated but is actually as simple as a rice pudding. He does from time to time drift into a sweet lil world of his own, can really take a stand against popular opinion n generally be a royal pain in the ass.Yours truly would like to take all the credit for turning K from a social embarrassment to a pretty likable creature.

Dude!! I actually have a birthday wish for you :- may the number of hair on ur egg-shaped head (no, i am not kidding u can actually count the number of hair on this guy’s head) stop growing inversely proportionally to ur age, in simpler terms may you have a full crop again to complete ur smashing looks.

Its common knowledge now that we can’t start, continue or finish sentences to each other without a liberal sprinkling of abuses but still dude…..ur a great friend and an awesome person (hullo!! this is the vodka speaking)

In Floyd’s words:
“How I wish, how I wish you were here…..”

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

CHAOS THEORY

Ok this is actually not one of my famed theories [ I dunn wanna brag but my Cake Theory pretty much took all the spoils and was featured at # 8,00,00,00,008 in the “amazingly simple (to understand) yet stupefyingly difficult (to apply) n brilliantly original theories for the year 2005” list]

Reading newspapers in this day n age is a damn depressing activity…..but just yesterday I read this article which talked about some happenings from around the world which oddly enough n inexplicably were missed by most of us……now before u go..oh ok yet another list.....do give it a read, some of it is real informative n enlightening stuff. This is a personal pick (with intersperced comments) from the article……

The year got off to a fairly conventional start in January, a toilet paper roll refused by the Beatles was auctioned. Things got a little stranger in Feb, when a German zoo decided to allow same-sex civil unions among penguins after attempts to tempt male German gay penguins by importing luscious Swedish females failed; a German thug got knocked out trying to mug an 88-year-old boxing champion and Tom Jones asked feamle fans to remove price tags before throwing underwear at him.

In April Rajesh from Jharkhand, spent 2 days in a well to persuade his parents to find him a bride (that could have so easily been me). In May, a chicken with four working legs was born in Romania n Gopal Singh, a police constable, was caught picking pockets at an elephant’s rest-house inauguration ceremony in Jaipur.

In June, things got serious. The Queen bought an iPod (so did our very own Blatherer) and Christina Aguilera’s music was used to break down an Al-Queda suspect in Guantanamo Bay. July was the strangest month. An Austrian museum offered free entry to naked people, 200 porn movie viewers in Balasore, Orissa, had to do sit-ups publicly and promise never to see porn again (ahem…..ok). A Russian man impersonating his sister for an examination got expelled because his breasts were too big.

In August, a cow was jailed in Columbia for causing a road accident. In September, Germans invented a thinking beer mat, which calls for a refill when your pint is almost empty (whats the big deal....so do my stomach n liver). And in October two Bengali brothers were fined huge sums by their village council for keeping a pet ghost.

In November, four police cars took over an hour to catch a teen gang on a donkey cart in Greece. A trial in Britain was abandoned because of a smelly juror. And in December, a bank robber in Austria was referred to a different counter, Serbian activists were sued for unrolling a 60-foot condom on a monument to promote safe sex and an escaped prisoner in the US was caught returning to jail with four MacDonald’s burgers.

This is by far not the end the end of the list but here’s hoping that may things around us get even weirder in 2006.
Biggest dolt of em all ???

Suddenly, in virtual space that hugs an insignificantly small blue greenplanet, there seems to be an attempt towards (dis)order. The planet has reportedly noticed a negligbly small shift in the seemingly harmless world of bloging. Instead of the widely accepted one moron per blog, there seems to be a gang of verbal-hooligans out to distroy blog-peace and take down with them all conventional ways of expression…
Mostly Harmless has now become a cause for concern…

This five member cult consists of various living examples of what-one-should-never-be. They obey no rules, spare no one and unleash verbal mayhem fast enough to deteriorate the planet’s supply of creative ideas by the next millionth of a thought…

Even Bertram, the originator of this conspiracy against the conventional thought process, could not have forseen its impact on all thegrey-colored-cells in the human body…

A seemingly innocent attempt to entertain and tickle the funny-boned-reader has turned into an ugly competition between the straight yet undecided breed of modern thinkers…

This internal dispute and struggle for the funniest-entry-award has unleashed the demons inside each cult member. The war is on, on Mostly Harmless, the result being a naïve Blatherer, an amused Marvin, an excited ZZ9, a clueless Bertram and lastly, the most probable winner, a scheming Madmita… All typing away with more smoke coming from their fingers than their cigs…

FRIENDLY DISCLAIMER: This is not my post but one by scheming Mad Madmita......she threatended me at gunpoint to post it for her......so any fustrations, abuse or use of colourful unparliamentary language should be directed at her and not a peace-loving soul like myself
CAT-as(s?)trophe

So the 3 almighty IIMs decided to show me the finger this year round. Big Deal. I'm kinda used to the gesture anyways. But the kind of response it evoked from ahem... my well-wishers was.....surprising, to say the least.

It all begins on a gloomy foggy morning on the 2nd of Jan, when, after almost 3 sleepless, crazy, boozed up nights in a row, I wake up to a strange feeling that this year promises to be as crappy as the previous one. Talk about deja vu. So off i head unclean, unshaven and unwantingly to the office....forcing smiles and "Happy New Year to you too"s.
Anyhow, just as the black coffee was beginning to hit me and bring some senses back to the head, I'm greeted by good 'ol Razdan, not with another "Happy New Year" but the news that the Truth is finally out, er... i.e., the calls have been announced.
Cheerful as he sounds and zombie-like that i am right now, I mistake his enthu for a positive news and congratulate him. Damn, another hit on the head. Should start bringing my helmet in from now on. Only then do I check my own results, and the middle-finger slowly begins to materialise on my monitor.

Call it a hangover, or a "I don't care" attitude for....well Life, the Universe and Everything, I seriously feel no remorse on the news. Suddenly Homer Simpson is my idol. But then as the phone calls/emails begin to pour in, I start to fel the gravity of the situation (and jus so u shud know, gravity is the laaast thing I need more of!)

Some responses from people:
*Oh shit!
*Sorry yaar, shit happens.
*U r a stupid useless creature.
*Don't kill urself, u were at my B'day treat, now I want urs. (I swear this is true)
*More Oh shit!s

Such heart-wrenching thoughts. I suddenly feel an urge to listen to Floyd. Or Eminem, for that matter.
I mean, come on people. I know that my lesser-brained compatriots expect nothing short of perfection from my side, but I'm no god. Not according to most cultures. Besides, not getting some shitty calls from an institute that can turn me into a millionaire before i can imagine, well.....that's not the end of the world. I can still try for Trilogy ;-), or easier still, apply the next time.
So, at the end, I feel that this year may not be that crappy after all. For starters, I learnt the best way to get rid of hangovers. And hey, this wise ass attitude feels really cool too!

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Confessions of a sober mind

Yipee!! It’s new year’s day, a NEW YEAR full of hope, excitement, something to look forward to…………zzzzzzzzz……..but wait after 2 days of partying it’s more like full of drowsiness and an irritating buzz in my head. So it’s time for reflections…..which is a bit weird when u think of it coz to go forward we have to actually reflect….anyways I am amazed at the amount of talent god has bestowed on me – NIL. I mean how far can Greek-god good looks, an Einsteinian brain and a kicking sense of humor get me. I can’t:

Sing - even if my freakin life depended on it
Cook
Draw or sketch
Write (stating the obvious here)
Play a musical instrument
I am a lousy dancer
I am blessed with the laziest butt in the whole world

Apart from all this (and a hundred other things) life is bliss. People say one can’t improve perfection so I decided I am gonna prove them wrong n on those lines have come up with a couple of resolutions (not new year ones but plain old simple regular ones).

Firstly get hold of my sweet’ol rotting guitar n learn to play it…..well not just that one but most guitars in general unless ofcourse I don’t get along with one. Then I will probably join some gym or akhara, main intent being to turn my body into some kind of fucking lean mean fighting machine.

For once I am not thinking of the whole world but am going to be a selfish bastard. (contrary to the friendly n nice image I seem to have)

The first thing I did this year – for some insanely absurd reason checked my weight…..it’s 67 kgs.