Palmistry and Sun signs

Yesterday, we went to Pittsburgh. Ofcourse, it was fun. Put together a few tams and a couple of gults, what else will you get. Add on totti on top of it and you have an Orgy! A couple of people might think that as an arrogant statment. But, isnt that the part of the nature of a Leo. Arrogant, self-centered. We had a brief discussion about sun signs at our stopover at denny's. Arians ( people from Mars) were of the belief that Leos were arrogant and self-centered people. I would not know. I havent thought about myself a lot. I was thinking about how this whole sun sign thing work. Consider animals, are all Lions leo ? I mean if leo people are like lions (that kind of attitude) and everything,then shouldnt all Lions be Leos? But then, are all lions born in the same narrow window of time? Jul-Aug. Douglas adams in one of his books had an interesting question. How do the rules of Astronomy change when you discover that there is an extra planet, that you have been forgetting all along? Charan (an Arian) put me fundaes that you can take all the unexpected behavior into account by introducing two random variables Rahu and Ketu. R and K account for all the systematic error and still allow for prediction within specified limits. Fascinating. HP knows how to read hands and she commented "Totti, you are gonna make significant contributions to your field!". Sarcastic Basha said,"Yeah! by dropping out from phd!" . Totti yearns for revenge.

Serenity Now...Insanity Later!

A dialogue from Seinfield. Anger management is one of the survival techniques humans have developed. I wonder if animals ever get angry. They do show signs of aggression. It has to be an instinctive behavior since we are the only conscious beings on this world.Lucky us. One of the 9 primal emotions, anger has to be the most complex. As we keep interacting with our surroundings, we feel differently about many things including ourselves. There are lot of things that piss us off! As we grow, the way we things handle also change. At work, you can't show off your anger to your boss. People have gotten into trouble for shouting at their bosses. Recently, there was the SLAP-YOUR-WORKER day. If you are irritated by your colleague or someone at the work you can slap them! Anyways, some people have the knack of paining you immensely. Just even looking at them seems to set off a volcano in your mind. Make sure you don't get one of these as your life partners! Bottling up anger is probably the worst thing you can do to yourself. Once you start feeling bad about a person/thing, there has to be some relieving mechanism. Slowly, it starts eating into your life. It is like having a bad apple in bag of apples! Great people control their anger! They find other means of expressing it. Like plotting the downfall of their enemies through calculated sly plans. Talking of Sly things, i havent plotted since many days. A few days back, i hid the bag of this guy to pain him. My plan backfired when that guy didnt realise that his bag was missing. I feel like those guys who commit the perfect crime and then confess it because nobody ever found that a crime was committed!

Typical Indian attitude towards girls

Yesterday, while playing cricket we had a guest. I think she was from chillar's lab. It is great that she showed so much enthu to come down to play with us.Our behavior though,was typical of indian guys towards females. Whenever she hit a shot (curiously she lofted almost every ball that shiva bowled to her), there was laughing from the audience. None of us even talked to her. We were all waiting to be introduced to her!! I guess if Mandy/Aatre were there, they would have gone and talked to her for sure.Anyways, there was a blog that pointy had sent me that a nice article on the typical indian attitude.Pointy, may be you can give that link somewhere??

Name of the book?

A few years back, i happened to hear this story from one of my friends. It was about this land of storks(or some bird like that). One of these birds was a bit different from others.It would always yearn to do something different.Like try new tricks of flying, fly faster than the rest, fly inches from the water and other cool things.The rest of the community started avoiding this stork because of its "Weirdness". So, this lone stork started to fly faster and faster. One day it was flying at breathtaking pace and suddenly it saw two very swift storks on its sides. One of them said,"We have come to take you to our land". Do any of you guys know, which is this book? It is supposedly a very famous book.Google hasnt developed a context based search yet!

Taj Mahal

Golu's blog has a pic of Taj Mahal, i don't know why he has it. Some tragic love affair probably :p.I always felt that my knowledge of india is very limited.So, i thought i will read up something about Taj mahal. When you mention to some foreigner that you are from India, the assosciation with Taj is the most pleasurable one (as compared to the land of snake charmers and many other things). One of the seven wonders of this world, Taj is known for what it stands(love!) and its architectural beauty. Taller than qutab minar, it is a seven storyed building. Home for the tomb of Mumtaz, it is widely accepted that it was ordered to be built by Shah-jahan. Apparently, the mogul emperor did not build the Taj but acquired it from a Raja Jai singh and then did some decoration stuff and thats about it. I don't know how much truth there is in it! but it is nevertheless a very interesting story. Another rumor is that some fellow italian had designed the whole thing! Come to think of it, sometimes at nights i have visions of some obscure blueprints, plans of some building with domes.May be i was the designer of the Taj mahal in my previous incarnation.

Dell Deals...Agony!

A few days back, i purchased a laptop from Dell. An inspiron 600m (this is the second one). I had got a $600 off deal. Handy. Today morning, i checked the deals website (deals2buy.com) and to my agony i found a $750 off deal. I silently swore. Last time, the same thing happened. I had bought my laptop and then again after a few days, the price went down. Waiting on dell's phone line, to cancel my previous order and get this coupon. Vamsi told me that he is also planning to buy one, so i am gonna send him this link!

A few random thoughts...

Time and again, i feel the sheer luck of having something so valuable as PCG. Ideally located within walkable distance from our house, it is set in amazing location. With its naturally defined boundaries, scenic back drop playing at PCG is blissful. Last weekend, we had a team from a neighbouring town, Indiana. We had some good shots and nice chases. I hope we can make this some kind of a tradition.

Photo by Guru.

Recently, i have been observing a very unsportmanlike behavior from my side. I got out so many times, but the umpire for some reason or other was reluctant to give me out. In lieu, with me being out of form, i decided to stick around the wicket. The resultant guilt factor choked my shots, leaving me in a kind of disgusted aftermath. So, i decided to walk from now-on. If i am out, i don't care what the match situation is, I am gonna walk!

Ajay and Aatre would be leaving PCG.Aatre had left long back, but he revisited us over the past week. Looks like he has been practicing bowling in the lonely valleys of Arkansas.Pointy tells me he went to Pasadena and played cricket there.Those guys had a grassy pitch though!! We have a pitch that does not depend on weather! Cricket seems to be reasonably prevalent in US too! So many leagues all around the US and these people came here to study!! I wonder if the amount of cricket played is at par with whats played back home.Guess not.

Bloglines

People! subscribe to www.bloglines.com, you can add a list of blogs you regularly visit and it will check for RSS feeds. i am going to see for new features and keep anything interesting posted.

Salvaging Lost Reputation

Not very uncommon to me and to my friends, is my great capability of playing down my abilities. Showing me as a supremely stupid individual, it is a hall mark of Totti, the goofer attitude. A few things about myself ought to set this record straight. My jokes are so deep in meaning, that most of the times i have to explain them in great details. Unfortunately, this is in violation with the sixth PJ commandement, "Thou Shalt not explain thy PJs!". I was voted the most intelligent Metallurgist in the past 50 years of the meta dept (my undergrad dept.). Some people say that this is self-proclaimed and has no solid proof. Ignorance is bliss. It is true that most of the times, i project an image of substandard intellectual capability, but if you look hard enough you would see a bright halo around my head. For those who are not aware of the significane of a bright halo around someone's head, i would like to point out some strong examples from History/Mythology. Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Lord Krishna and many others used to don this kind of thing. It is mark of great wisdom, power and compassion! So, people and friends, all i have to say is know your friend for he is wise, powerful and smart.

Train Experiences

I hate travelling in a bus. The stink of the metal, and many other things never failed to make me puke. Until recently, i could never get through one without emptying! Trains, I love. The actuals goofs used to happen once i land at the destination. Though, i was sufficiently warned about the conning capabilities of the people at train stations, confronting with the situation head-on is the same difference as theory and practice.

So, once instead of going to Hyd directly from Chennai (after my sem ended), i decided to take a detour.Vijaywada and then to Hyd. I got down at the railway station. Taking my couple of bags, i strode outside. Assault from all sides, these guys are professionals, like a pack of raptors on a prey, they were on me in a flash. I tried to get away from them. A few followed me and finally one guy persisted long enough. I thought this should be easy. He had a rickshaw ( three wheeler), i told him to take me the nearest hotel. I guess many people have this feeling in an unknown land. You have a kind of perpetual dejavu, until you realise that this guy is taking you round and round the same roads.Finally, after sometime we reached this hotel and asked me for 50 bucks. After a bit of haggling, i had to give in. In the evening, i came out for a stroll. At the corner, there was tea shop. I went there and Lo, Behold there was the Railway station!!.

I had never visited Delhi before. I was to take a flight from Delhi to Austria for a paper presentation. Con Levels in Delhi are much more than vijaywada, apart from Vijaywada being my mother tongue land.Not as bad as mumbai, i hear. I reached Delhi at around 5:30 in the morning. Different place, similar thing. Somehow this guy extracted from me that i was going to the Youth Hostel to stay. He persuaded me to the nearest phone booth and punched the youth hostel number. He asked me to talk to the Youth Hostel guy. I asked him if there was any accomodation available.He told me they did not have any rooms left. Dejected i let this guy take me to some gujrathi hotel. It is not that they charge you more or anything, but it is just that they get you there no matter what. After my head cleared, i realized that this guy did not call the youth hostel number. He had called his friend, i gave up against such inhumane brutality.

Then again, i was going to Hyd. This guy was selling tea. I took one cup and give me a 50 note. He told me he didnt have change and will be back to give me the rest.I nodded. By the time, i finished nodding, i knew what an ass i had been!

Good Natured Sledging!

Today Morning, i woke up with a jolt.Shiva had apparently RGed charan to get into the bogs! and consequently charan lent out blood curdling scream.While coming to the lab, met gollu on the way. We started talking about PCG, as usual. I don't enjoy it so much anymore, he said.Earlier i used to look forward to it. I began to wonder and i could not deny it anymore. I feel a bit down myself now-a-days at PCG. The number of players has gone up a lot, it is more than theoretical limits at PCG. The Sledging has gone up too. I had kind of a divided opinion on this, initially. When i was facing the sledge hammer, i was totally against this kind of thing. Next day, someone else was being sledged.I felt that most of the times, the sledging was unnecessary. Anyway, this is my opinion. I feel thrilled by the force of the game. The final tension minutes, where team mates try to keep each other in the game. Among the crowd, this is kinda lost. I don't know about this world, but for PCG 7 a side is perfect.

About winning/losing the match, i try to detach myself from the end result. I find it much more relaxing this way.Unfortunately, some of my friends see it a sign of "loser attitude". As much as i find that really annoying, I can't help but shrug.

Waiting..Waiting

At iitm,we used to have this mobile book seller. He used to confront people at various locations mumbling "Book,Book". And then, you would think you are safe in your room, there will be an anouncement on the PA System." Room number 353, come to the entrance , Book seller ..waiting..waiting..". The security guards at iitm are a rare breed. They will let people from tarams and vels chop trees and take them out, but when a presitigious alumnus wants to go use the bogs at some Mtech hostel..they begin to crib. I had a huge fight when i went to india this time, with one of the security guards.

Right now, i am sitting at hammond and waiting for the clock to strike 12:30.Time for lunch.Waiting..Waiting. On the Cricket field, if you don't open the innings, the game is waiting.Too many people at PCG. Pointy and i were talking on the field, one day. Eblog was his theme for the next few years. His idea was to research ideas and write a well crafted one. I told him i am thinking about writing something on Unlearning.And guess what, a few days later he writes an article about Unlearning. Now, before you guys jump to conclusions that Pointy is nothing but a hard-core plagiarist , i would like to point out that the article is actually very well written. In india, copying is nothing big. I mean "Junta do it ,da" . If these guys took a look at how the exams at Meta dept are conducted, they would be shocked. I mean , it is a very strongly knit network of cogging (Copying). There were this knowledge hubs and you can clearly make out the nodes receiving uninterrupted data flow. If some one wants to thesis on "Evolution of robust small scale networks with multi-modal data transfer Routing capabilities", this would serve as a very good starting point. Exchanging papers, sign language, other uses of bogs and many more ingenious ways were developed. The pioneer is a worker at TCS.

Start by Cogging

Pointy,subbu,pinky and i were at the OISS. I said," A girl goes to OISS for lunch,Why?" . Because she is bhooki.Get it, no? Boucke! My original PJ. Pointy is going to claim it is his.That cog baad. Never gives credit to other people.So, i decided to post it on my blog. After a discussion, with pointy , i decided to shift my blogging activities to blogspot because of better looking blogs , image posting and also easy blog linking. Trying to solve a problem on NL Optimization. Quite interesting.