Random Thoughts...

An Update

2010-11-23T18:24:00.007-05:00

Its exactly 10 months since when I last promised to update my blog, and here I am, finally, putting my plan into action (Clearly, the idea of a getting a really really old post out of the draft mode went down the drain! But at least I stuck to my words of not posting another tag! ) . Well, in my defence, a lot of things have happened since I last blogged that have kept me quite busy - time flew by looking for a job, writing to a zillion people, drafting and re-drafting the resume, writing to people again to remind them that I still needed a job, taking a bunch of phone interviews, spending days crying over how I would end up unemployed, travelling across the country multiple times a week for really long on-site interviews and then finally landing a job! (Sorry for ranting on about the whole process, but thats how painful it is!) And then I graduated and moved to California (which by the way, is a beeeyoootiful place :) ). That basically means I am a "working professional" now which pretty much gives me more reasons to make false promises of blogging and completely abandon writing, but ironically, I decided to update my long dead blog on a Tuesday afternoon at work when I have a pile of things to do lying in front of me (You see why they hired me? ;) )

I don't really have anything to write about in my mind ( and in all probability, there wouldn't be many reading this considering the blog's been dead for a while) so I decided I would just let the few remaining readers of the blog (thank you so much for coming back to read my blog!) know why I have been MIA this past year. While I think about what I want to write about next, take a look at this -

( It's three months old, and it's mine! :) )

Of a writer's block and other things..

2010-01-23T20:55:00.005-05:00

Its been a really really long time since I blogged at all and I have had people saying that my blog is dead ( refer comments section of last post). So far I have been blaming it all on a writer's block. Every time I felt like blogging, I would open up the New Post window and draw a blank. A couple of times I got away with a "Tag" and a funny comic strip (which by the way is very very true and maybe I should write about that sometime). Other times I would write a few lines about something and then shut the window thinking it was just not good enough. I've actually had one post lying in my drafts folder for almost six months now and I have not gone past some four sentences!

I kept blaming my schedule or my so called writer's block for it all (Honestly, now I don't think I am sure what a writer's block means exactly). I thought I would resurrect my blog over my winter break when I would have all the time in the world. The break came and went and I did nothing. Instead I spent time watching some crappy TV series online or on Facebook. Its funny how you can spend time on Facebook doing nothing other than jumping from one person's profile to another and reading their status updates ( and within an hour you know who's doing what, who's going out with whom and which part of the world they are in right now). But, anyway, I am not writing about that now.

Finally, yesterday night I figured that if I did not blog, this would become another one of those things that I used to do, but gave up in between for some reason or other which I regret doing now. So here I am, writing about whatever comes to my head right now. I figured the block that I claim to have would not go away magically and that I had to start writing something to get out of it. And boring as it might be, I've actually managed to rant for three paragraphs. So yes, I intend to get that post out of my drafts sometime soon. And no, its not another boring old tag! :)

True Story!

2009-08-02T18:00:00.002-04:00

Picture courtesy : PHD Comics

Home sweet home

2009-06-09T23:59:00.002-04:00

10 June, 12: 30 pm Central Time : Chicago O' Hare

11 June, 9 pm IST : Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport

Sigh! :)

Tagged.. again!

2009-02-27T12:07:00.028-05:00

So every time I decide to go into hibernation, someone tags me (this time its my sister) and my poor webspace that has been screaming for activity finally gets its way :) I have been suffering from a particularly prolonged bout of lethargy that I wish to attribute to a writer's block, and since a tag does not require much creativity on my part (as can be seen from the post title), I decided to update. The rule goes that for every answer you have to google/live search an image and pick an image from the first page and provide minimal explanation.

1. Your favourite place

Well, mine looks nothing like that. But yeah, there's nothing like a long, refreshing bath!

2. Your favourite food

Yeah, I consider it food.

3. Your favourite colour combination

Elegant and classy!

4. Your favourite pet

Cute? Aren't they? :)

5. Your favourite drink

Eat chocolate, drink chocolate, live on chocolates!

6. A place you would like to travel to

I have a whole world tour planned, but Paris is where I want to travel to first ;)

7. Your favourite TV show

:D That's all I get to watch where I get to watch TV ;) Abi vaazhga!

8. Your worst fear

What if Ba dies?! :O (If you don't know who Ba is, go figure!)

9. The first thing you will buy if you get $1000,000

Kick off the world tour!

10. What or who do you want to be in your next life?

I want to own that. Now, that would take care of a lifetime's supply of what is supposedly the drink of Gods ;)

11. If you had to punch someone who would that be?

(Sigh! Its getting tiresome now, I have never had to format any of my posts so much! And I'm running out of whatever little ideas I had! :-/ )

The Indian news channels for the crap that they air in the name of news. And yeah, probably Blogger too, for its horrible formatting capabilities :-/

12. What would you do on a rainy day?

Dance in the rain!

13. If you could time travel, where would you be now?

The City of Joy :)

14. One thing that has fascinated you lately

Beautiful, innit?

I am not going to tag anyone on this either. If you are completely vetti and don't know how to kill time, please leave a comment and I shall tag you.

P.S : The author apologises for her complete lack of creativity. Blame it on Blogger's formatting issues, and the time of the day :-/

Wall E - An attempted review

2008-12-30T07:54:00.001-05:00

This is the first time I'm reviewing a movie, barring a course that I did in my final semester in BITS (which is better not mentioned anymore). I don't seem to be able to come up with anything better to write about and I have been badly wanting to write. So, here goes.

I don't know when this movie released in the theatres (if at all it did) and how long it ran either (which is quite strange because I don't usually miss movies by Pixar Studios). I read about it the first time on Sap's blog. And ever since I've wanted to get hold of a copy of the movie. Unfortunately for me though, piracy and copyright violation is a punishable offence in the US (DC ++ and piracy totally rocks!). I finally got around to watching it online. And I fell in love with Wall E! Its amazing how Pixar manages to give so much life to a bunch of drawings. Especially that of a robot. And a cockroach!

Its not often that you come across a movie, more than half of which you can watch on mute and still completely follow. Wall E is one such movie(Of course, you can turn on the volume for the background score which I thought was decent too!). You have to hand it to the creators for having fleshed out the characters without much use of dialogues. Although some people might find the lack of dialogues boring, I never quite noticed its absence. And as is the case with most Pixar creations, the 3D animation was very life-like.

The plot is fairly simple. Its the 22nd century. Earth is covered with trash and man has migrated to space leaving behind a bunch of robots to clean up after him so that he can return once the planet becomes more habitable. However, the plan fails miserably and people continue to live aboard a spaceship called Axiom for the next 700 years. Wall E is now the only active robot on Earth who goes about his daily duties, compacting trash and collecting odds and ends that he finds interesting. One day he meets EVE, a probe sent by humans to look for any signs of life on the planet. There on begins an endearing romance. The movie ends with Wall E having to save humanity from Auto the autopilot that the spaceship runs on which does not allow them to return to Earth.

It is endearing to see Wall E watch "Hello Dolly" longingly hoping to meet someone to hold hands with someday. The scenes in which Wall E walks around groggily after he wakes up and when he orders his pet cockroach out of his way add a very human touch to the robot. When you watch him look timidly at EVE from a distance, trying to express his feelings for her and going back dejected when she does not reciprocate them or when he tries to nonchalantly edge closer to her while watching a ship go up in flames and then falling over in surprise when she turns to speak to him or when he takes her on walks and protects her when EVE becomes inactive; I for one, wanted to pick Wall E up and hug him! :) The robot that grumbles and keeps cleaning up after Wall E when he lands on the spaceship is equally adorable.

The movie like most other animated ones leaves you with a very good aftertaste and an urge to get a copy for yourself to watch on a rainy day. A must-watch, if not for my review, at least for its 34th position on the IMDb Top 250! :D

Black Magic Woman

2008-12-05T17:56:00.009-05:00

I never for once imagined bargaining for anything would be possible in the US. I mean people just go to the Mall, pick up the stuff they want, pay the amount that shows up on the label and leave, right? Apparently not.

Last Monday when I went to the mall with Jo and we were walking around checking out the big stores, we got stopped by a woman who was selling her wares in a makeshift booth right outside the big stores. And here's what happened -

W (the woman) : Are you Chinese?

H : Me? No. *Smiles and walks on*

W: Oh wait! You aren't Chinese?Where are you from?

H : *Stops* No. I'm Indian *Starts walking again*

W: Come here. I love India! I have lived in India for a year.

H: *Smiles again* I am sorry we have a bus to catch.

W: Give me just one minute. Please?

H and J start walking toward her.

W: So are you both twins?

J: Yes yes. We are twins *grins*

(Anyone who knows us both would immediately notice we aren't)

W: Oh wow! What are your names? I am *some name I do not remember now* and I am from Israel.

H: I am Hema

J: I am Jyothi

W: Hima?Jooti?

J:Yeah yeah. Jooti

W holds up H's right hand and looks at her fingers

W: So do you go for manicure and pedicure?

H: Er.. no.

W looks at the ring on H's finger

W: Nice ring. Is this real?

H: The gold is, yes. The stone isn't diamond or anything.

W: Your husband must really love you

H: !

W: Now I am going to show you some magic.

W starts rubbing a block of something on H's thumbnail.

W: This is *some other name I have no idea about* and it removes dirt from your nails. And this is *another weird block-like something apparently used for a manicure* and it removes dead skin cells around the nail. And this is cuticle oil that has Vitamins A and E which is really good for your skin.

All this while, W is applying all those things she named on H's thumbnail.

W: Now feel this. It is pure silk!

W rubs a small white block on H's and J's hand so we could feel the material.

J: Wooww!

W: And now I will show you magic. You want to see magic?

J: Yeah show us!

W rubs the silk on H's thumbnail and removes it and it leaves the nail looking like transparent nail polish has been applied on it.

J: Woww!

W: Its awesome no?

J: Yeah!

W: You want to see more magic?

J: Show us!

W: Smell this.

W thrusts a cotton swab dipped in a solution at our noses

H: Er...

J: Acetone?

W: Yes! It is nail polish remover. Now watch!

W wipes H's nail with it. Nothing happens.

W:See? Nothing happens! This shine stays on for 3 weeks! No remover, no water, nothing in the world will remove it!

W: And now I tell you something even better! All those things that I put on your nail *she hands us each a box*comes in a pack for $99 only! And you have 2 years guarantee on it. When the cuticle oil finishes you can come back here and I'll give you a refill for free! And you also get this really good natural moisturiser that has the salts of the Red Sea!

J: Er.. we are sorry. We don't want to buy this. We don't have the money.

W: Come here.. I tell you something. I like the two of you. I will do something I have never done before. You pay for one, and I give you the other free! Isn't that great?

J: Oh wow! Yeah it is. But you see we have no money.Sorry!

W: Oh yeah? I knew you were a tough cookie! I will do some more good for you because I like you people so much! And I like India so much. I will throw in this plastic cover for free!

(No, plastic covers do not usually cost us anything. H wants to tell W that SHE could get W some free plastic covers. There are some gazillion lying at home from the Walmart trips)

J: Awesome! But no, thanks.

W:Do you both love each other? You are both twins no?

J: Oh yeah yeah we are! We absolutely adore each other! I hope you are around for some more time and we will come back and take it later.

W: I love India so I do something I have never done before

W pulls H and J closer ans starts whispering into their ears.

W: I will give you 40% off. You take both for 59.99. Now take it and run. I do not do this for everyone.

J: That is really nice of you but you see we are just students and we have no money.

W: How much do you earn?

H: Its really not much.

J: Yeah we are quite ashamed to tell you the measly amount that we earn

W: But you won't have to waste 100s of dollars at the beauty parlour anymore!

J: Yeah we know. But we don't have any money. Sorry!

W: Okay! Have a nice day then!

J & H : You too!

About five minutes later J realises that she's forgotten her cap and goes back to the shop to look for it. W is very happy and says that she was positive we would not be able to resist the offer. J and H had to disappoint her.

And we thought only hawkers on Indian city streets quote double the actual price of their wares! :D

Credits : 536, J for her extremely entertaining replies and Flatley for the title and Fleetwood Mac , of course :)

A Whole New World

2008-10-07T07:54:00.002-04:00

A whole new world

A new fantastic point of view

No one to tell us no

Or where to go

Or say we're only dreaming

This song has been going on for a while now in my head and it kind of gives you a picture of how you feel initially when you land in the US. Of course you get used to the whole "My God! It is the United States of America" bit very soon. Especially if you live in a village (in the American sense at least! Wonder what they'd call Pilani then!) in a primarily agrarian state where you can hear snatches of Telugu (actually a LOT of gult) and Hindi conversations in the morning bus, you don't feel like its the other end of the globe. In fact, you'd be surprised at the number of similarities I found between Purdue and Pilani! :D There are a couple of things I have seen and learnt over the past month though that I wanted to put down here :

1. Coke is an essential drink. You can survive without water but you definitely can NOT live without Coke.

2. Americans have about as much civic sense as Indians do. They just have stricter rules.

3. Your limbs are the best mode of transport, because public transport SUCKS!

4. It is OK to sleep or eat in class (Ah! Such bliss! Why don't they allow this in India?) It is also OK to conspicuously read a newspaper or do the Sudoku if you find the class boring (!)

5. You are not expected to reply when a stranger on the road asks "Hey! How are you doin' today?" That is how Americans greet strangers on the road. They are NOT enquiring after your health.

6. When you hail a cab, you don't ask the driver how much he'll charge you for the trip. This is NOT the Chennai Auto service.

7. If undergrads are the future, this country is doomed (Not like its any better now, anyway!).

8. Its "busses","gray","labor","too sell or too buy" and "dialed". And English is their native language :-/

9. Idhayam nalla ennai is not a rarity in this part of the world.

10. Shopkeepers smile, bus-drivers say "Have a nice day!" when you get off and people thank you for every small thing. Its weird, but it's very nice :)

11. Professors treat you like an equal, an adult with an opinion of your own, not like a minion who should follow orders.

12. I'm suffering from a writer's block :| (Took me two whole days to come up with this)

13. And yeah, I'm not a bad cook at all! :D

Tagged!

2008-09-16T22:02:00.026-04:00

I've finally got around to reviving my blog after almost 2 months now, thanks to Harini. I'll hopefully get some time to update soon. My very first tag!

So, here goes :

1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?

If you loved someone, you wouldn't betray them, would you?

2. If you can have a dream to come true, what would it be?

Retire at age 35 and travel the world!

3. Whose butt would you like to kick?

I'd rather not mention names here :D

4. What would you do with a billion dollars?

Refer to Q.2

5. Will you fall in love with your best friend?

Yeah, I could.

6. Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone?

You are truly blessed if you have both! :)

7. How long do you intend to wait for someone you really love?

A long, long time. I don't see it happening in the near future ;) :D

8. If the person you secretly like is already attached, what would you do?

Find someone else!

9. If you like to act with someone, who will it be? Your gf/bf or an actress/actor?

George Clooney! (Sigh!)Or maybe John Stamos (Another sigh!) Oh! I can't decide! :D

10.What takes you down the fastest?

Hunger!And lack of sleep!

11. How would you see yourself in ten years time?

I'd like to see myself all set for retirement and a world tour. But I'll most probably be staring cluelessly at some PLL circuit and wondering what on earth I was doing!

12. What’s your fear?

Darkness!

13. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

Please refer to her orkut testimonial for my thoughts! :D

14. Would you rather be single and rich or married but poor?

Rich and single!Men or Money? Money, of course! :D

15. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

Look at the time, switch off the alarm and get back into the comforter! :D

16. Would you give all in a relationship?

Depends on whether it is worth the effort.

17. If you fall in love with two people simultaneously, who would you pick?

Why pick? ;)

18. Would you forgive and forget no matter how horrible a thing that special someone has done?

Forgive, yeah probably. But I would definitely not forget!

19. If its your last day and you have one call to make, whom would you call. Dont tell me your mom. Someone else. (Original qn:What are your three most important expectations in love )

Someone I do not wish to name! :D ;)

20. List 6 people to tag:

Too much of a bother (Plus I have done this tag some three times over. Blogger keeps conking off! :-/) If you wish to take it, consider yourself tagged!

Dear (PS) Diary

2008-07-24T03:18:00.002-04:00

Disclaimer: All characters/ organizations/ events in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Most importantly, it does not bear any resemblance to the author’s PS experience. However, this does reflect the plight of an average Bitsian over PS.

A PS Diary is a book in which you are supposed to record your day-to-day activities during your internship. Now, had you been given something important to work on (read anything to work on) you’d probably have things to fill up the diary with. But what you actually are, is a hardly-ever-noticed intern in an obscure corner of the company working on some long-given-up-on-extremely-unprofitable project (thank god for the internet connection, at least!). So when you are handed the thick yellow-brown book with ruled pages and a column for references (!) you wonder what to write in it.

You initially contemplate on making note of your actual day-to-day activities at the PS station. Your first entry looks something like this-

January 8, 2008

10:00 am: Came to work (*yawn* The HR had assured you the company followed flexi-timing after all)
10:10- 10:25 am: Checked mail (what if you got some important mail?!)
10:30 am: Signed into Gtalk (your mentor isn’t here yet)
10:30 – 11:30 am: Chatted. Need a tea-break now.
11:30 – 12:00 pm: Tea break.
12:00 pm: Picked up that electronics book and opened the chapter I was told to read
12:15 pm: Lunch
1:00 – 2:30pm: Played TT in the cafeteria
2:30 – 4:00pm: Chatted again (so many people buzz when you are away!)
4:00 pm: Tea break.
4:30 pm: Picked up the book again.
4:45 pm: Slept.
6:00 pm: Left for home (there’s so much traffic in Bangalore!)

Reference: Extremely busy cubicle mate, Gtalk contacts, Bored caterer at the cafeteria

You decide this could get you into trouble with your prof and cancel the entry. Two weeks into PS and your routine hasn’t changed much. You begin to like the sluggish pace at which the day moves. But, you are still not sure what to write in the diary. A gtalk contact tells you about the appreciation he recently got from his PS prof for his brilliant diary entries. Another contact speaks about how he aced his first quiz. Your fellow intern busily scribbles away in the yellow-brown book on a regular basis. You dismiss all of it as over-enthusiasm. You postpone the task of making your entries till later. After all, the handout claims that the date for checking PS diaries is no where in the near future.

Your PS prof comes to conduct your first quiz (This you are confident of cracking after having consulted your seniors about the questions that were set the previous years. But then, the very first question reads “Which product is named CS 408657?” and you lose all hope). He asks you for your PS diaries. You are told off for not carrying it with you on a daily basis. You hang your head in shame and apologize. You are told that the diary is equivalent to your passport at the PS station and is part of your (non-existent) identity. You keep a straight face and promise to submit it the next time.

You decide to work on your diary entry for the next two days (pity, you can’t actually write that in the diary) and finally come up with something that looks like this –

I read the book on the Fundamentals of Power Electronics by X today. My mentor had asked me to read chapter 9 to brush up my fundamentals in the area of power electronics. As there were many new concepts introduced in the chapter, I searched the internet for more information to aid my understanding of the concepts explained in the chapter. I came across some Fourier transforms in a derivation that I had problems following. I approached my mentor with doubts but since he was busy he asked me to wait till evening when he would be free. I spent the rest of the day looking up information on the internet to help me understand the derivation.

You do not provide any references. You are proud of yourself for having converted all the time spent online to what they call literature survey. The entry is just the right length and you have not been very obviously redundant. You modify the earlier day’s entry a bit by adding a line or two to make the next day’s entry.

When you submit the diary to your prof on his next visit, he signs all entries and nods in approval. You breathe a sigh of relief and look at the handout to calculate the number of days you have before you need to spend another evening filling up the diary.

Over the course of the internship, you discover the versatility of the yellow-brown book. You find out that its uses vary from being a personal diary to a telephone directory (You remember noticing the receptionist discreetly jotting down numbers in an older copy of the book). It even serves as a notepad during training lectures and presentations. (You learn to convert these lecture notes into the diary entry for that particular day)

At the end of PS you fret about the fact that you might have to submit your PS diary and that you might breach the confidentiality contract you signed when you joined the company. On the last day, your PS prof tells you the diary is yours. He tells you it is meant for you to be able to make your report easily (And here you were scouring wikipedia for things to copy paste into the report. Sheesh!) He signs the last few pages and tells you that you’ve made an A. You express amazement at the fact and murmur a thank you.

You then make a mental note of the kind of feedback you want to give about the yellow-brown book.

Blogging?

2008-06-27T05:56:00.003-04:00

(My sincere apologies to Psyche for having borrowed his blog title without permission :D)
I first read about blogs way back in 2003, I think. But, I didn't quite understand the idea of maintaining something like an online journal back then. So until my 2nd year at BITS, blogs, to me, were as good as non-existent. Although I've done courses on creative writing (Yeah, we had subjects like that in school but well, that's a completely different story) I never wrote unless it was necessary. This blog came into being during my Christmas holidays in 2006 , when I had nothing better to do. I discovered that reading blogs served for very good time-pass. Back then, there were hardly any people I knew who blogged so I used to stick to "Blogs of Note" that showed up on Blogger and read whatever I found interesting.

These days, however,every second person I know has a blog of his/her own. No, I'm not complaining at all. Its actually quite nice to read people's opinions and thoughts on such a wide variety of things.

But sometimes, I get the feeling that blogging is not just about jotting down interesting experiences anymore. In a way, blogs have become some sort of social networking sites. You have a stat counter to show off how popular your blog is, a blogroll to tell everyone who your friends are, widgets to let people know what you are upto (that, apparently, has now been termed microblogging) or what kind of a person you are and so on and so forth. And of course, there's money. People put all these Google ads all over their blogs hoping some innocent reader might click on it (if their blog is popular that is).

And speaking of popularity, blogging also involves a lot of publicity and marketing these days. So now, you can look up tips online on how to comment so you can draw attention to your blog, how to publicise so you get a large number of hits and so on. Blogging you see, is no mean feat!The other day I read something in the paper about how some people died because of blogging! (*dazed*) Apparently the tension of having to come up with an idea for a new post on a daily basis just got to them.

Well, I think blogging should be more about writing than anything else. (Incomprehensible poetry, by the way, DOES NOT qualify as writing. I mean, what's the point of poetry if its gibberish to the reader?). Firstly, I don't find it absolutely necessary to update my blog on a daily basis ( this apparently is essential if you want to improve readership ). I'd rather write only when I'm in a mood for it or when I come across something that I want to express my opinion on. Secondly, blogs are NOT meant for ads. Its irritating to find ads in the middle of a post(They ruin your TV shows already!). And finally, and most imporatantly, blogs, at least, should NOT be in SMS lingo(More on this). I can pardon ' i will ttyl. thnx, tht ws gr8. catch u l8r' in a chat or an SMS but its criminal when it comes to blogging. After all, doesn't writing, to a large extent , have to do with the beauty of the language?

(And in case anybody has any idea about the need/usefulness of what they call microblogging, please do let me know!)

P.S : Another day crossed off the calendar! :D

Mad Ads!

2008-06-19T08:48:00.010-04:00

Its irritating enough to have your TV shows ( the ones that are still sane enough to qualify as not-so-bad-a-timepass, and unfortunately are very rare these days, but well, that's a completely different story) interrupted by advertisements every 10 minutes, what's worse is the fact that most ads are becoming absolutely senseless these days. More often than not, the same ad is aired at least 3 times within a span of one commercial break and by the end of it you'd rather switch channels or turn off the idiot box. Here's my list of mad ads doing the rounds lately :
ibibo.com : A wife wakes up in the middle of the night to find herself buried under a huge pile of photographs. She turns to her husband to scream at him for not managing his photo albums well, only to find a balti (which by the way, is hindi for a bucket) lying next to her. So, don't be a balti! Manage your photographs online on ibibo.com.

(Eh? What?)
Parle Milano : Hrithik Roshan's boss is not happy with his baking skills and locks him up in the bakery for the night so he may come up with something good. While he's trying to figure out what to do, a woman blind-folds him from behind and offers to show him how to make it (and also in the process...well, I don't think I'll give graphic details ;)) The batter is put in the oven and finally they kiss. Next morning, Hrithik's boss is very pleased with the batch of biscuits that have been made and asks him to bake him the same biscuits every night. Hrithik is delighted and he agrees. There's a secret behind every milano!

(I think I lost it somewhere.Was it about Hrithik Roshan's secret romance?Oh no, wait! It was about the biscuit! *dazed*)
Pond's : Part 1 -Priyanka Chopra & Saif Ali Khan break up and walk away in opposite directions. Three years later Priyanka spots Saif with Neha Dhupia in his arms. She's heart-broken and doesn't know what to do. She takes refuge in a Pond's skin whitening cream and emerges all fair and beautiful in a week. Kabhi Kabhi Pyar Mein...
Part 2- The engagement ring that Saif gets for Neha doesn't fit. She's pissed off and dumps him. He goes to a flower shop to buy a bouquet to appease her only to find Priyanka there. He's stunned at her beauty but doesn't say anything. After he leaves, Priyanka is confused about whether or not she still loves him and stares at the "I still Love you" SMS she's typed in her mobile.
Part 3 : Yet to be aired

(Was that a movie trailer being shown in parts? And where did Pond's figure here? Oh yeah! it made the former Ms. World stunningly beautiful! I kinda forgot part 1 after part 2 started coming on air *grin*)
Pepsi : Ranbir Kapoor desperately wants to meet Deepika Padukone (who's being guarded against him by uncle Shahrukh *desperately trying to supress laughter*) and so tries climb up the house wall only to end up as a wreck in the bushes below. When the uncle finds him and questions him about his identity, Ranbir looks at the book on U.F.Os in the uncle's hand and then at a half lit neon sign on the street that reads "istan" and decides to introduce himself as an alien from youngistan who's landed on earth to protect the niece. S.R.K is delighted and decides that Ranbir would henceforth live with Deepika.The niece is shocked and asks Ranbir how he managed it, who grabs a pepsi can and says "Yeh hai youngistan meri jaan"

(*desperately trying to supress laughter* Where do they get such ideas?!)
I could go on and on with the list, but I think I'll stop here. I'll say there are a couple of ads that ARE decent and have something to do with what they sell (the Hutch ad for example, of course the thing about how happy they are to serve us is completely false but that again is another story). I'd rather watch my collection of pre-recorded TV series and movies than turn on the idiot box these days!

Credits : An extremely frustrating and jobless afternoon, Youtube for some ad ideas and of course to John Logie Baird for the idiot box.

Bengalooru!

2008-06-15T05:50:00.004-04:00

The first thing you notice about this city is the frustrating traffic jams and intraversible roads.And of course, the malls and coffee shops. You just CANNOT miss the cafe coffee day that seems to pop up every 100 metres, and surprisingly almost always, all of them are crowded. (At this point, I must confess I have spent quite a bit of my time in the city in one such CCD doing some insane things!;) )And of course, the over-priced (and yet, over-crowded) malls that seem to be everywhere! There's not a day of the week or a time of the day when you would find Forum empty (If you're still wondering what Forum is, go figure!) or Garuda Mall not buzzing with people doing shopping or chatting over plates of food. By some lucky chance though, I've had the pleasure of seeing Forum completely devoid of any activity in the middle of the night, and yeah its quite spooky!

And well, Bangalore is one of the best places to be if you are a foodie. You'd find an eat- out at every 50 metres here offering one or the other kind of cuisine, from chats and juices to Falafel and Tofu.Big restaurants, small road-side shops, extremely overpriced joints and very cheap tiffin rooms, you name it and Bangalore's got it! (Oh! and the other day I even spotted a redi! ) I regret not having been able to check out KC Das (for its sweets) and the Leela's buffet of course! :D

Bangaloreans have a thing for shopping too!If you are a (for the lack of a better phrase) degenerate shopper, then you'd find no place better to feed your addiction :D Commercial street is a haven for shoppers like me who usually have a budget constraint and are still on the lookout for good stuff. And if you are the kind who'd like to flash big brands but who usually almost faints after looking at the price tag, Brand Factory in Marthahalli (as I found out recently) can be heaven! And like I said, bangaloreans have a thing for shopping. You'd find all these places teeming with people ALL the time. And that's not all! Inspite of all those road-side shops, you'll still see people spending enormous amounts shopping at huge malls (Ok, I confess, I've done it too!)

Like one of my colleagues once mentioned, Bangalore is THE best place for the "corrupt youth".

In what would mostly be my last post from the (so-called) garden city (I think they should rename it as Mall city or something like that now!:D) in a long while, I'd like to a make a couple of acknowledgements :

To Dweepika, for her prowess in Kannada (there you go! your name came first! :D)
To Cosmic Circuits, for some new found friends and an extremely frustrating yet fulfilling PLL
To Cosmic again, for TT and bridge sessions
To Blossoms, for my newly acquired collection of books and some "late" memories
To Commercial Street, for having made me a self-confessed shopaholic and for one of the best times I've had with my sidey
To Crossword, for some of the best times I've had in the city
To CCD, for being such a great meeting place
To IIM-B, for the start of a new friendship
To Le Rock & Mint, for things I'd rather not mention here
To Corner House, for a delicious funeral
To Indi Joe's & MTR, for the best buffets I've ever had
To Maruti Driving School, for helping me learn to drive (Finally!)
To Priya akka, the nicest cousin you could EVER ask for

Dhanyavaada!

Love is all around!

2008-04-22T14:01:00.006-04:00

Or is it? Well, if people around me are to be believed, it probably is! Single is passé these days and the “in thing” is to pledge your love to the “someone special”. I remember the first time one of my good friends got committed, I was quite pleasantly shocked. But, nowadays news of people getting committed is no big deal at all. It serves for nothing more than gossip. So is this really love? I’m really not sure about that. However, I’ve made a few interesting observations:

Scene 1: At a Chinese restaurant

X,Y and Z are out for lunch with A and B who are from X and Y’s college respectively. X,Y and Z were together at junior college. X and Y are committed and so are A and B
(we all know who Z is now! ) . After lunch,

B: So, you are in BITS, Pilani no?
Z : Yeah.
A : X told me you have a very high GPA and all.
Z : *smiles*
A : So.. do you have a boyfriend too?
Z : *a little surprised* er.. no.
B : *very surprised* oh!
A: * expression that reads “aah! One of those geeks!”

Moral of the story: Not having a boyfriend/ girlfriend is equivalent to being a geek :-/

Scene 2 : Gtalk chat window

P : So got a boyfriend yet?
Z : Nope!
P : Then what the hell did you do in BITS for 4 years? :D

Mental note: You haven’t done anything in college if you’ve not got/had a boyfriend :-/

Scene 3 : Another gtalk chat window

Z : I heard you also went psenti? :P
C : Hehehe! Had no other choice. All my batchmates went psenti …so no company left :D

Another mental note: You can have no choice but to get a boyfriend when all your other friends are committed. Welcome to the world of short-term relationships for time-pass!

Scene 4 : At a restaurant in Pilani

M: Don’t even think about asking me out! It’s not going to happen!
N: *dazed*

A few months later,

N: Will you be my girlfriend?
M: No!
N: *disappointed*

A few more months later,

N: Will you be my girlfriend?
M: No!
N: *disappointed again*

One year later on a moonlit night on the banks of the Ganga,

N: Will you be my girlfriend?
M: Yes!
N: *delighted*

a) You CAN get third time lucky or the person just says a yes out of irritation ;)
b) The probability of a person accepting a proposal is directly proportional to the mush quotient of the place.

Scene 5 : on the eve of V-day

R is on the look out for a gift for his beloved girlfriend in the land of far-far-away. He takes his friend’s bike and goes hunting for the perfect gift. 45kms (that covers the length and breadth of the city) and a grueling six hours later R settles for a showpiece and a card from the mall opposite his apartment.

*dazed* I don’t know whether love is blind but it sure is crazy! :D

However, fortunately (?) for me, the love bug seems to have happily evaded me. Fourteen hours of brainwash, hundreds of airtel minutes, many more gtalk conversations, many silly crushes, loads of “cute-guys”, lots of sighs( no I have NOT misspelled it), a couple of dances, some more snaps and a farewell later, yes, I’m still very single! ( and definitely not ready to mingle! :D )

Please note: No offence intended to anyone. Also, the author would have left out a lot of details that she found unnecessary and discursive.
To Gtalk and my Bitsian brother, my most dependable sources of gossip- Thank you! :)

May 7, 2008 :

Scene 6 : comments section in a 'Random' blog

Subject of the post : How men can be extremely cheap and indecent

Comment : "Have you recently been dumped? Get over it! "

:D Thank you Chief for your input!

2008-03-26T14:08:00.006-04:00

Man is quite a despicable creature, and when I speak of man I mean the male species, there are some disgusting female specimens I agree, but haven't come across as many. And I have reasons for such an opinion :

1. Men are obssesed with sex, well most are at least. They can't help but take advantage of overcrowded autos or packed buses. And like sowmya says they seem to get attracted to every passerby woman!

2. Some men are jobless enough to follow strangers (from the opposite sex) around town and give them the creeps.

3. It seems to give them pleasure of some form in making women feel uncomfortable. If all else fails, just stare people down to the point of discomfort.

4. Some of them can get cheap enough to hack email ids and threaten to misuse them unless the actual user "talks hot" . Hacking into some stranger's id and snooping around in itself quite a disgusting thing to do, buzzing people on the victim's list and talking cheap is even worse!

Makes me wonder, are we really as civilised as we claim to be? How are we any better than animals if we can't keep our own sexual desires under control?

P.S : No offence intended to any guy I know. I believe some men can be decent as well :)

What NOT to do in an interview!

2008-02-28T11:50:00.010-05:00

Please note : This post was supposed to be up last sem but got shelved somehow. Got a sudden brainwave today. So read on! All resemblances to any person living or dead is purely intentional :)

A: Hi! I'm A. Please have a seat. So, you are H?
H: Yeah. *flashes a nice sweet smile*
A: So, H.. tell me something about yourself.
(This by the way is one of the most frequently asked questions in an interview and one that I think serves no purpose really. I mean, if you ask me something like that do you expect me to say I'm a stuck up egoistic b*peep* ;) or that I'm probably the laziest creature on the planet?! So as expected, we hear one of the most frequently heard answers for such an FAQ)
H: I'm a hardworking , dedicated person... I'm an optimist. I like to set goals for myself and then work towards them...
A thinks *yawwnnn* how many times have I heard that answer now! Why even ask!?
(Of course, a classic reply would have been what AAG once came up with "I'm a hard working person and I'm committed to the work I do. I'm compassionate, forward-thinking, and devoted to doing the right thing ,sincere ,love to help others. I also believe I have good organisational and leadership skills which I have achieved through communication, delegation and personal interaction by working in teams in most of my extra-curricular activities." That would have probably left A wide-eyed with admiration ;) )
A: Hmm.. can I please have a look at your resume?
H: Yeah sure! Here..
A: Hmmm... (studying the resume... or at least seems to be doing something like that)
A: Your resume has a lot of hardware projects. How come you are switching to software then?
(The rest of the interview is what you shouldn't do if you badly need the job. In any case, I guess any moron would figure as much after reading the post!)
H: Well, actually there aren't any hardware jobs. So that's why I'm sitting for software companies now. *grin*
A: *Surprised look and also slightly confused* (This by the way is one of those NOT so frequently heard answers ;) )
A: Hmmm.. ok.. so.. how comfortable are you with C?
H: Well. Frankly, I'm not very comfortable with it. Just know basics. (After reading the post of a certain compscite though, the protagonist is quite proud of her coding abilities now ;) )
A: Hmm.. that's ok (Yeah, it really is. Anyway the only thing left for these companies to do now is probably recruit 10th pass and who knows maybe even dogs or something!)
A: I'll just test you on aptitude and some basic coding stuff. Ok?
H: Ok!
A draws some weird shape on a piece of paper.
A: Now split this figure into four equal parts.
H: Hmmm... *stares at the paper for sometime seriously trying to figure out the problem*
(This by the way is one of those questions picked up from the usual R S Aggarwal text that our protagonist happily didn't bother to read. Which idiot prepares for aptitude anyway?)
After about 5 minutes of drawing arbit lines across the figure in an attempt to split it equally,
H: Sorry, I don't know *flashes a nice sweet smile again*
A: Alright. Have you done data structures?
H: Er, no. Only compscites do that course. (Or at least they claim to have done it ;))
A: Ok.. but you would have heard of them no?
H: Yeah I have.
A:You must have worked with linked lists surely?
H: Yeah I have heard of them too! *grin*
A: *A little taken aback* (Poor chap is wondering where the hell did this woman land up from?!)
A: Ok.. I'll give you a basic linked list question. See.. there's this linked list. I want you to delete this node and connect the earlier node to the one after it. How do you do that?
H: Hmmm... delete the node and connect this to this. *draws a line connecting the two nodes after crossing out the one in between*
A: Yeah. How do you do that? (Poor guy thinks H is repeating his question)
H realises this and stares at the paper for some more time.
H: Sorry. No idea.*grins again*
A: Okaaayyy. Hmm.. ok.. I'll give you another basic C question. Give me the code for finding out the square root of a number without using math.h
H stares in space for sometime trying to recollect what is math.h, then realises it doesn't matter anyway now that she is not supposed to use it. Then seriously tries to figure out a way to do it.
H: Welll... I don't really recall syntaxes, but would giving the algo do?
A: Sure.. go ahead. (The guy doesn't have an option anyway. The HR manager is watching and he doesn't want her to think that he shortlisted a dud for the interview)
So H explains the algorithm which to the relief of A turns out to be almost correct except for in the case of irrational numbers.
A: Ok.. That looks good (After all those no ideas of course it does!)Now, I'll give you another aptitude question.
A then explains a really long drawn question about poison, parties,rats and dead prisoners. (Yeah you don't want to know what it is) H then realises she's seen this question before in another of those mindless Ap Ts filled with printing mistakes. But she has absolutely no idea how to solve it. (This again is one of those R S Aggarwal questions which only idiots read). H tries hard to figure out something but is quite lost in the whole story of rats and prisoners.
H: I really have no idea.
A: Hmm... listen H, I really don't want to waste your time and our own (NOW he tells me!). Let me give you some advice as a senior. I really think you should app in VLSI. I mean, your resume is really good!
H: Yeah yeah I know. That's what I plan to do anyway! *grin*
A: Oh! *A little stunned at the answer* Anyway... was nice meeting you.
H: Same here. Although I'd like to know the answer of the last question. I got it in another Ap T and I didn't know how to solve it there either.
A: Oh that! I can't tell you the answer right now. But I can mail it you sometime. Why don't you leave your ID with me.
H: Sure! Thanks a lot.
(In the meantime, the HR manager walks out of the room and fires the student vol for allowing "such people" to sit for aptitude tests ;))
Turns out the answer to the question involved some major binary calculation and all and you are required to mug up the solution so as to be able to answer it pronto :-/

Credits: MSD's brilliant rules, the IT industry, LNS for my CP2 A, Gtalk's chat histories, Anu darling, Dweepika who asked me to put this up on my blog and Mr. Flatley for his C knowledge.
And my sincere apologies to Pavitra.

The French Jinx

2008-02-10T11:31:00.000-05:00

I have mentioned my French jinx in an earlier post of mine but I never got around to writing about it. So here goes!
When I was in 10th my cousin talked me into joining Little flower jr. college for my 11th and 12th (and I have absolutely NO regrets. I have found some awesome friends there! :) ) and I was very kicked about the fact that French was being offered as a second language (Yes! We had language papers in our 11th and 12th!). I have always wanted to learn a foreign language and this was the first proper chance I was getting to learn one. So I gave french as my first preference in my application and sanskrit as a second.. just in case the seats are full, they said. Of course, that couldn't happen I thought. People would rather take sanskrit, since it was a scoring subject no? So I went ahead and bought the prescribed french text books the day before college started and in fact went ahead and read the first chapter!(at least I tried making sense of the first few lines and then finally figured its no point and gave up! :D) The next day, during roll-call our prof announced that she would call out the second languages that we had been given (note: she said "given" not "taken"! :( ) and that we should let her know in case of any discrepancies. When my name was called, she announced that my second language was Sanskrit. I let her know that it should have been French and there must have been some mistake (how wrong I was! :( ) She said that she would check up and let me know and that for now I could attend French. So I happily went to the French class that day and learnt a little bit of the French alphabet and a couple of greetings too.(which is why you would have encountered an occasional " bonne nuit" and "bon jour" in my posts ;) ) Later that day, my prof called me and told me (to my horror!) that I had been given Sanskrit as all the available seats in the French class were already filled! Surely , they had enough place to accomodate one poor soul?! I went to meet our college principal and he told me that I could swap places with someone who was more interested in doing sanskrit than french. And thus began a search for someone who'd be interested in such a change. To my delight, I did find someone of that kind! But like I said that was this jinx that was working against me so the guy all of a sudden changed his mind the next day and decided that he'd rather stick with French. I tried speaking to my principal again but all I was told was "You are taking IIT coaching. This is not the right time for you to learn a new language. I think you are better off doing a language you have already done in school!" ("What the?!? X( ) So there I was, stuck with Sanskrit for the next 2 years! (A class which was taken by I prof who was cross-eyed so you didn't even know whether he was talking to you!) And later in my 2nd year I found out that more than half of the so-called "IIT section" was actually doing French and they were enjoying it too! (@!#!!$$$!@&%@ X( ) So, when I finally got an admission in BITS, Pilani, the first thing I did was pick up the bulletin to check whether they offered any courses in French. Fortunately for me there in fact was an audit-type course in Beginning French that was being offered! I became eligible for audit type courses in my 1-2 and so when I saw a notice in FD-1 calling people to submit their names for taking up french I went ahead and signed up thinking that I'd finally get to learn the language after all (and who knows the prof might even be better here! ) But no! there was this evil little thing called fate that was smiling slyly and working against me! And so ID told me that I couldn't register for the course because there were too many psenti semites who wanted to do the course that particular semester and so they'd obviously be given preference over 1st years! I was so disappointed and so frustrated that I decided no matter what I'd definitely do a foreign language that semester. Which is why I ended up registering for German. ( it wasn't all that bad really. And the compre especially was an interesting experience ;)) After my 1-2 I never got a chance to do the course ever again. I tried Alliance Francaise one vacation but turned out the course would last longer than my vacation. And when I finally got to my psenti sem I thought probably the jinx had worn off and maybe I could do it now(and now that I was a psentisemite myself I'd be given the highest preference). But no! it was not to be. The course was never offered last sem! :( So here I am, as french- illiterate as ever and still wanting to learn it!

Reminiscence

2008-02-06T09:58:00.000-05:00

(This one's from what I wrote for the yearbook 2004)

It had been years since Priya had cleared out the junk in the loft and she was amazed at the all the stuff that was quietly tucked away here, most of which she had almost given up looking for! As she was emptying out the cartons she stumbled upon a wooden crate covered with thick layers of dust in one corner. She waded through the piles of odds and ends around her towards the crate. Blowing off the dust, she read the writing in big black letters "2004A3PS078". A smile spread across her face instantly and she couldn't wait to see the contents of the crate.
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Priya ran her hands over the rubber print on the front of the sweatshirt. Although the print had peeled off at places, she knew exactly what it read 'BITS Pilani 1964'. Her mind raced back to her first year..it could have been yesterday.."Oye.. you there.. where do you think you are going?Come here and sign for this.." "But..but.. I don't want to..." "What?I'm your senior.. you aren't being given a choice...in any case..its a nice sweatshirt..so what's your id?"It wasn't as bad as she had thought after all..considering it was still in wearable condition...she could almost see her school senior sitting at the mess table with the list of names..signing up girls walking in for dinner..dinner! aah..how she hated the mess food!"Maa!I can't take this anymore! We got that gooey baingan ka bhartha again!" "Ask your mom to send something no!Tell her we all loved the savouries she sent last week." How she had cribbed and cribbed the whole of the first month! But now it seemed so trivial..and frankly she wouldn't mind tasting that food again..just to bring back old memories.

Her fingers found a scrap of paper stuffed into the pocket of the shirt. She unfurled it to see what it was. It read 'The Hindi Drama Club presents..BINGO'. A HDC play brochure!Her first play experience came to mind and she started laughing...She remembered how she had found the main door closed and had started going up the stairs to the balcony oblivious of the fact that nobody sat in the balcony for a play. "How weird.. there's no one here!What's happening down there?" "Psst.. who's this guy behind us holding something that looks like a gun?I don't think we should be here.Priya, lets leave na!" "Wait re..I want to see whats happening in the play...hey! why did it go dark? what's wrong?!" She was leaning over the parapet when all of a sudden the spotlight was on her! The entire audience was looking up at her and cheering and clapping! "Oh my god Priya! Come back..get back here! Shucks!" Amrita pulled her back into the shadows."What the hell happened!?" Priya had gone red in the face."It was an act idiot!That chap behind us was supposed to be where you were standing..look!He's supposed to shoot the guy on stage from here!" "Why didn't he tell us to get out in the first place then!This is SO embarrassing! Everyone saw me and started cheering!Shucks! I'm going to be the laughing stock of the college now!" She had indeed become that for the next week with all her friends bursting out with laughter everytime they met her. They had even renamed her after the character who was the shooter in the play!How ridiculously funny it seemed now!

She looked into the crate and pulled out an..album! Brilliant! Just the thing she was hoping she would find. She started flipping through the photos when her eyes fell on the snap of the clock tower. She remembered how she had been awed by the first sight of it and had completely forgotten the weariness from the rickety bus journey and how she had all of a sudden felt proud to be a Bitsian. She still did. Once a bitsian, always a bitsian. How right that was!

Priya smiled to herself and started looking at the photographs again. There was a snap of the guitarist from her first music night. "Priyaaa! I don't understand what to wear yaar! Everyone's decking up MAJORLY! You should see those extended wingies of ours! They look like a bunch of circus performers! I don't want to wear anything jhatak.. but then I have heard junta dress up nicely for music night and all.What are you going to wear?" "I have a nice skirt.I thought I could wear that. Wear that funky white top of yours na, with jeans. You look awesome in that!" On entering the audi, a strong smell of sweat mixed with different kinds of perfume overtook Priya. She could hardly see the people on stage with almost everyone standing up on chairs. "Oh my god! Look at all those people in front dancing!Let's all go up in front and dance too!" "This place is SO crowded!How on earth are we going to get in there?" "Hey wait! Don't leave me behind! I don't want to get lost in here! Ouch!" "Phew! that was such a painful ordeal!And how the HELL are we going to dance in such a chut space?" "WOW!Fanaaaa" They danced till they ran out of all energy and then went and sat at the back of the audi and listened to the rest of the songs. "He's playing Nothing Else Matters SO well!" "Nothing what?" "Priya! You don't know Nothing Else Matters?! Listen to it woman! It's one of my favourite rock songs! It's by Metallica and that guitarist is playing it GOD level! I'm going to go take a snap of his..the guy looks decent too! Give me the cam." She hadn't listened to a better rendition of the song ever since.

A bunch of snaps fell out of the back of the album into Priya's lap. She picked up the snap on top. She was sipping a cup of tea along with Amrita. She had discovered the pleasures of the 4 am chai at nutan during her third Oasis on campus. "You know what I absolutely LOVE about oasis?All night perms! It's just brilliant to be able to walk around campus at 4am!I SO envy these guys yaar! This tea is so good! And imagine, guys can come here every day and enjoy this while we are locked away in MB!"

There was a snap of her being twirled by Tapan at the second year Oasis Dance workshop amongst the bunch. "Priya! There's a dance workshop happening this Oasis. We have to sign up as a couple. There's some choreographer coming to teach it seems. They are teaching Salsa and Jive" "Oh cool!But whom do we go with?!" "Er..well..Amit already asked me!" "What?!?And you accepted?!" "Welll...Yeah" "Help me find someone now!!" "How about...Tapan?" "I don't know.. what if he refuses?" "Oh c'mon!I'm sure he won't. He's on gtalk.Shall I ask?" "Umm..No I'll ask.." That was the first time Priya danced with a guy and she had the best time in the world dancing and swaying to the music.They had so much fun together that they decided to go for all sessions. At the end of it she knew she had fallen for the guy. "What!?You have a crush on Tapan?!Are you nuts?" "Its not a crush..its something more!" "Oh shut up!" "Are you going to ask him?" "No! How do I?He asked me out for dinner today..Maybe I should tell him then?" "Of Course! See.. this is a sign that he likes you too!I think you should tell him." " Oh shut up Sanjana! No, Priya! This is some gen crush that'll be gone in no time!" She DID tell him and was told that he didn't feel that way about her. Priya was heart-broken. She could hardly concentrate on her studies for the next month. When she thought about it now, she couldn't help but laugh at her own foolish self.

The thought of crushes brought back the memories of when she had fallen for a good-looking prof. "WHAT?A prof?Of all kinds of people..you found a prof to fall for?!" "He's good-looking! And he teaches SO well.. I'm not falling for him or anything. I just admire him. He knows so much in electronics you know! And you should have seen him class today! His looks are to die for!" "Sigghhhh!!" Looking at the photo of hers with the prof at her farewell, she thought, her choice hadn't been that bad after all.

Priya opened the crate and found a compre answer sheet lying inside. "Microelectronic Circuits-PART A" was scribbled on top. She thought about the time when she had gone to a compre 45 mins late in her 1-2. "Don't you have a compre today?" "Yeah. It's a german compre." "How come you are at breakfast then? What time is the compre?" "It's a morning compre na..it'll obviously be at 9" "Not in the second sem! My seniors told me that compres start at 8 in the second sem because it's summer." "What?! Are you sure? Can you confirm? Oh my god!" "Just a sec" Priya learned the hard way that compres did indeed start at 8 in the second semester. "Excuse mema'am..may I ...may I please come in?" "Yes.What is it?" "Ma'am.....I am..I am so sorry ma'am..I didn't know.." "Wait. Take a deep breath first. Then tell me what the problem is ." "Thank you ma'am. Ma'am, I'm so sorry..I didn't see the notice. I thought the compre was at 9. Can I please write it now?" The prof looked at her watch. It was 8:45. "Sigh!These students never learn! Alright. Write it while I take the speaking section of the test for the other students." "Thank you so much ma'am" Priya finally made a satisfactory grade in the course.

Her thoughts took her to her CDC year when she had to write 5 mark tuts at 8 am everyday of the week irrespective of the weather outside. "Why?!? Why in the winters? I mean how do the profs wake up in this cold?Its torture! You know I think it's a violation of human rights! And all this for a measly 5 marks which unfortunately in this wretched system could be the difference between a B and a C!!And why only the EEE batch yaar?I mean no other discipline slogs as much I think!" "What rubbish! I'm biosci and believe me, my CDCs are no better!" "Yeah right!" Grades seemed so insignificant when she looked back now.

Under the answer sheet lay a neatly wrapped gift box. It had been a gift delivered to her on her first Valentine's Day in BITS. There had been a lot of excitement in the wing that day with a number of surprise gifts and roses being delivered at people's doors from secret admirers and newly-made psentis. She still had no idea who had sent her the showpiece that was inside the box. Although now she was pretty sure it had been a prank she had at one point foolishly believed that she had a secret admirer in college.

Priya was brought out of her reverie by the ringing of her phone. "Hello Ma! It seems the results are out. Abhishek made it! I'm stuck in a traffic jam. Check my results no.." "Alright dear..I'll call you back.." "The registration number is on the hall ticket next to the laptop" "Yeah ok..I'll check up and tell you."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She typed in the number printed on the hall ticket and clicked submit. She waited with bated breath as the site flashed a "please wait..."sign. After a few seconds a smile spread across her face. She gave Anirudh a hug. "I knew you would make it. Pass me the phone." "Hello?Nitin?This is Priya here. Book me two tickets to Delhi for the 27th of July. Make it a morning flight. I'll have to catch a bus at 1pm to Pilani."

February 10, 2008 : Please note, not ALL above mentioned experiences are my own. (especially, the one involving the girl falling for the guy!)

Outside

2008-01-22T23:34:00.000-05:00

This song's been playing in my head for QUITE sometime now.. if you haven't listened to it yet.. you really should...

And you can bring me to my knees...Again
All the times when I could beg you please....In vain
All the times when I felt insecure....For you
And I leave my burdens at the door

But I'm on the outside
I'm looking in
I can see through you
See your true colors
Cos inside you're ugly
You're ugly like me
I can see through you
See to the real you

All the times that I felt like this won't end
Was from you
And I taste what I could never have
Its from you
All the times that I've tried
My intentions, full of pride
But I waste more time than anyone

But I'm on the outside
I'm looking in
I can see through you
See your true colors
Cos inside you're ugly
You're ugly like me
I can see through you
See to the real you

All the times that I've cried
All this wasted, it's all inside
And I feel, all this pain
I stuffed it down, it's back again
And I lie, here in bed
All alone, I can't mend
But I feel, tomorrow will be okay

But I'm on the outside
And I'm looking in
I can see through you
See your true colors
Cos inside you're ugly
You're ugly like me
I can see through you
See to the real you

P.S.: For all those people who might start thinking why THIS song.. I really have no idea! Its like I suddenly "discovered" the song although I've had it in my collection for a REALLY long time! :D and oh! let me also tell you the song is not for those people who are used to the Backstreet Boys kind of music ;)

Those were the days!

2008-01-10T13:59:00.000-05:00

The resolution ain't all that great but I'm proud of myself! :) And thank you tassu for the inspiration! And thank you dweeps for sugessting google! :D

The "Metrosexual Man"

2007-12-26T09:51:00.003-05:00

Have you noticed the recent hype about "men baring all while the women sit back and enjoy" ? All the craze about SRK's six pack abs, Ranbir Kapoor's bottom and the likes? There was a recent article in the Times Life about this new breed of men who love to groom their bodies and show it off too! Well.. I can't comment on men wanting to groom their bodies.. that's each one's personal choice (but frankly the idea of guys getting a pedicure and a facial done is QUITE hilarious! No offence! ) but showing it off?! Personally I think that a man's body is not a ( for lack of a better phrase) "thing of beauty"..it was never meant to be shown off! I think men look good fully clothed and not made-up.. NOT in a bare chested, hair tied up in a pony-tail, face painted in some fairness lotion avatar! and again coming to clothes.. have you noticed all the floral designs creeping into men's clothing lately?All this apparently is a sign of how confident these men are about their sexuality!Call me old-fashioned if you want.. I think "metrosexual" is just a sophisticated way of saying.. you know what! ;)

Acknowledgements!

2007-12-04T15:20:00.000-05:00

"What's your id no?",lachcha till 2am on day 1, 9343 MB, My Sacrifice, Temple Interactions, "10 reasons why he looks like a woodpecker!", 8pm at SUB, GLs ragging, Music night, Nothing Else Matters, Fanaa, Wacky dress day, Komolikaaa! , GenB tuts, Sleeping on the 3rd row in ThermoD, Night-outs, 6am breakfast at sub, Pizza hut - breakfast, lunch dinner!, graveyard shifts, LAN, Rock music(?), German classes at 5, Yahoo 24X7, HDC play, Chaman Hatela, "Being the most revolutionizing batch", gandhi statue, anu's phone, meeting in judgesheets, Hershey's chocolate syrup, LinAl nightout,45 min late to compre!, wing allotment, 9111 MB, Yo instru!, "Are you ever going to get out of that bed?", "How could we miss Malveeka?", GL oasis, Judgesheets, Parikrama Concert, Holding 3 lakhs in hand, "We got the best of the batch!!", Khetri, "Our vols can cook!!", EPC "T-shirt" day, Ghoting mech sol with anu, ES1 grade change!, MT2 records!, MuP rocks!, MATLAB assignments,Mature advice,Allotment for the whole of MB with ami, Summer at HAL, Light Combat Aircraft, "I can't work without a cup of tea!", MuE practice in HAL library, VB goddess!, "Marry me!", Single rooms, All day band-baja!, 130MB, 8am tuts, MuE classes, more MuE classes, "He finally knows my name!!", external hard disk!, 10 Gb of music,ghoting TMS with dweeps, my first and only BITSian brother :) , BEP, Formatting till 7am, those b*****s, Scheduling, FD3 terrace, Khalsa college, DCAC, Absolut Vodka & French champagne, Salsa with iyer, ORC fiasco, Poorna's b'day surprise, Digi compre, ADVD addition, CoStAA body meetings, Instru CDCs rock!, APOGEE projects, "everything is screwing up!", OLAB 9-11, only THE ADVD, Being "the only princess on stage", "I have 1 Lakh cash in my name!",Last day of APOGEE, CoStAAn treat, Sariska trip, Dinner at the dhaba, Cake baking enthu, Image 2k7, the "interview", ADVD compre, "I am officially an electronics engineer", GRE prep, 1205MB, "Are we really psentisemites?", Half of controlz is Mue PA!, Ppts, Aditi interview, Being a "software engineer", Schlumberjay, Jaipur trip, AHEM!, DW audition, meetings in SAC, hilarious writeups, the failed doughnuts, OASIS enthu, Jive with devang, gori gori from Main Hoon Na, Rishikesh trip, free- falling, sleeping under the stars, "love is in the air", 10:45pm in front of MB, running around for recos, Nostalghia, HIMYM, Instru farewell, Surprises & more surprises!, my "convocation", being the "VOGCOSECO", psenti speeches, diro's tea party, "what have you guys ever done for us?", "the booze party", to chocolates & cards, to long Gtalk conversations, to lachcha till 4 am, to awful PJs, to Metallica, to Zombie, to Controlz, to 5pm at sky, to chai at sac, to VFAST breakfasts, to having paneer in every possible form, to being master bakers, to DC++, to " 100.00 Mbps LAN", to loving & being loved, to feeling psenti, to the awesomest juniors, to the "most path breaking batch which dared to B.E."....to the most star-lit sky I have ever seen, to BITS, Pilani. Thank you! "8 letters, one blank space & so much left unsaid" :)

An Inconvenient Truth

2007-08-30T09:32:00.000-04:00

Do watch the movie if you get the chance to. Here are some scary facts:

It has been estimated that electricity plants around the world pump 44 million tons of CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere everyday.
Every gallon of gasoline burned produces 28 pounds of CO2, making this the second largest contributor to global warming.
Rain-forests once covered 14% of the Earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rain-forests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
Although local temperatures fluctuate naturally, over the past 50 years the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history.
Wildfires in such regions as Indonesia, the western US and even inland Alaska have been increasing as timberlands and forest floors grow more parched.2006 saw the worst fires in Indonesia in 10 years.
The hotter the weather the bigger and more powerful the hurricane!The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has been the most active season on record.
Scientists have determined that the ice in Greenland and the Arctic is melting so rapidly that much of it could be gone by the end of the century.
If the whole of Greenland ice sheet were to melt it would be enough to raise global sea levels by 23ft., swallowing up large parts of coastal Florida and most of Bangladesh.The Antarctic holds enough ice to raise sea levels more than 215ft.
The melting of the Arctic ice caps will dilute the salinity of the North Atlantic and slow down the life-giving Gulf Stream current that warms northern Europe.
By the year 2100, the Andes range in South America will have less than half its current winter snowpack, mountains across Europe will have lost nearly half of their snowbound water and New Zealand's picturesque snowcaps will all but have vanished.
90% of all corals died over thousands of kms, including virtually all reefs in Maldives, Chagos Archipelago and Seychelles when El Nino cooked the surface of the Indian Ocean.
We are witnessing the death of polar bears who are drowning from having to swim so far between ice islands where they rest during hunting season.

Thought for the day - yet again!

2007-08-28T14:12:00.000-04:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

300

2007-08-24T08:53:00.000-04:00

I usually don't like to watch much bloodshed in movies. 300 though was an exception.I have a bad habit of judging movies by their names and so although almost every friend of mine recommended the movie last sem, I discounted it by the very sound of its name! But then when I watched the movie a couple of days ago in the audi I realised how wrong I was! If you haven't watched it yet.. you simply must! Especially for the cinematography!And of course.. the dialouges!
Some of my favourite:

Spartan Queen : Do not be coy or stupid Persian, you can afford neither in Sparta
Persian : What makes this woman think she can speak among men?
Queen : Because only Spartan women give birth to real men.

Persian Emissary :... By noon this day, you will be dead men. A thousand nations of the Persian empire descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun!
Spartan : Then we will fight in the shade!

Spartan : They( the persian soldiers during combat) look thirsty!
The Spartan king : Then lets give them something to drink! To the cliffs! ( And then the soldiers are pushed off cliff into the sea! )

Persian King:... the world would never know you existed at all!
The King of Sparta : The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many and before this battle was over that even a God king can bleed!

Being a Psentisemite

2007-08-23T05:24:00.000-04:00

Psentisem- Something I have looked forward to ever since my first year and more so since I started doing my CDCs. The idea of having absolutely nothing to do, no classes to attend, no tuts to write and of course the dance workshop was quite fascinating( Yes, the dance workshop too.. although a lot of people think its a complete waste of time...and at such times I really wish Amrita were here! ) and to be frank, I've always envied the psentisemites for this. And now, I'm one myself..so I should be blissfull right? Well, yeah.. kind of... I have gloated about how I have TThS off and how I get to see movies as part of a course, about how I don't have to wake up at 7 anymore for a tut(yeah I have been quite obnoxious!).. I finally decided to give that a rest.. I mean poor things, my juniors who were doing CDCs.. had I been in their place I'd have probably strangled anyone who'd behaved like that! But there's nothing really great about psentisem i figured... in fact I had completely discounted the fact that when you are a psentisemite who's sitting for placements( which is usually the case) you have to put up with hours and hours of PPTs about different companies, give aptitude tests that have more printing mistakes than you can count on your fingers, have a nagging fear at the back of your mind that you may not make a job ( especially if you are not a CompSci ite) , pore over pages of C and C++ especially since you never attended any CP2 classes and completely disregarded any form of coding and unfortunately thats the only kind of knowledge most companies seem to be bothered about, "refresh" whatever you did in your CDCs so that you stand at least a teensy weensy chance of making a hardware job and of course start looking up colleges for apping!!Phew! That's sure a LOT of work! Add to that the fact that half of your friends are a thousand miles away doing PS and you just have about 3 months with the other half on campus and all the fascination is gone just like that!But, hey, I won't crib... I still have no more tuts to write! :D

Food for thought

2007-07-20T02:55:00.000-04:00

I hate forwards.. especially the ones that say that the receiver would be doomed for the rest of his life if he were to keep the mail & not spam the mailboxes of the rest of the souls on his mailing list! I usually open them,read them if they seem interesting & then hit the delete button. However, this post is not about spam and how it should be treated. The other day I received one such forward but this one set me thinking.It was about the picture that won the 'Pulitzer prize of Horror' taken by Kevin Carter. Amey has already mentioned this on his blog long back. In case you haven't seen the picture yet, here it is.Quite horrifying I must say! Its a picture that was taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine.The famine stricken child is crawling to a UN food camp about a kilometre away while the vulture waits for it to die so it can eat the child!
The photographer committed suicide 3 months after the picture was taken.This is what an entry in his diary said

"Dear God, I promise I will never waste my food no matter how bad it can taste and how full I may be. I pray that He will protect this little boy, guide and deliver him away from his misery. I pray that we will be more sensitive towards the world around us and not be blinded by our own selfish nature and interests. I hope this picture will always serve as a reminder to us that how fortunate we are and that we must never ever take things for granted."

It actually makes me feel blessed for everything that I have. But there are so many disparities in the world today I wish something concrete could be done about it. I saw the other day in a fashion magazine an ad for designer footwear.The shoes ( which frankly looked quite ordinary to me) were worth over Rs.20,000!If I were to ever buy such expensive shoes I'd probably never wear them in fear of making them dirty!! Think about the number of mouths that money spent on one ordinary looking designer shoe could feed?Then there was 75 crore spent on one movie! (For the completely dumb.. that was Sivaji,a recent Rajnikanth starrer) That money could have fed a whole African nation!!And I read somwhere that the amount of water we spend in one shower is equal to the amount used by a person in a whole day in Africa!
I know i might sound like this hyper activist for financial equality or whatever ( don't know whether such a thing exists! ) but we could all do our bit and reduce wastage of resources as much as possible.Maybe make sure we don't waste food at home or in our messes, or reduce wastage of water and electricity. Because every bit counts and everyone of us can make a difference!

The importance of having friends :)

2007-07-19T03:58:00.000-04:00

A free bird!

2007-07-16T07:32:00.000-04:00

Its done! And now I can happily spend the last 15 days of my vacation with nothing to do! How blissfull! :)

Today's fortune

2007-07-14T10:02:00.000-04:00

Orkut says :

You will pass a difficult test that will make you happier

I badly hope this comes true!!!

Where's Bollywood heading?! - Part 2

2007-07-14T08:59:00.000-04:00

Like I had said.. I am going to speak some more on this..
There's news that HR is going to sing only in the movies he features in..quite a relief i should say unless of course he plans to act in 4 movies a year! (Torturous!)
Talking of movie songs.. have you noticed the sudden loss of creativity amongst the lyricists?The new age funda seems to be putting in completely incomprehensible rap whenever you run out lines!And say you want to pick up lines from other well known songs.. just add a few angrezi words in it! I recently happened to hear a song called "My mind-blowing mahiya.." mind blowing creativity I must say!
And have you also noticed the sudden spate of movie awards? Especially global movie awards?Wonder whats global about the whole thing..seems to be just the venue of the award ceremony to me! :D
Of course, Bollywood also has its share of good movies, albeit few and far apart these days. Movies like Black, Munna-bhai (now THAT is unadulterated comedy for you! :) ) , Mr. & Mrs. Iyer, Cheeni kum & Parineeta (I liked it inspite of its melodramatic ending :D ), to name a few, are good. I don't say that all movies must be thought- provoking and serious. The whole point of movies is to leave your brain behind and have a good evening out, but I think we have had enough of the boy-meets-girl-falls in love- fights dad-in-law-and finally marries kind of movies...and an absolutely silly plot is definitely NOT my idea of entertainment.I think movie plots should be stories we could relate to in some way...
well, I can think and think and think more... but I do hope Bollywood does something about this!
(Though somehow looking at that aap ka surroor poster I have a strange feeling its the masses that have to do something about their choice! )

How big are we?

2007-07-09T01:33:00.000-04:00

Puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

GRE woes!

2007-07-07T14:40:00.000-04:00

Two reasons I hate ETS:

Faradic - Of, relating to, or using an intermittent asymmetrical alternating electric current produced by an induction coil

Sagittal - Of or relating to the suture uniting the two parietal bones of the skull

@##$%@!!!$#$^&^&^*$

The 1 Tb Hard disk is here!

2007-07-07T09:53:00.000-04:00

Yeah, 1 Tb isn't science fiction anymore! Its for real! Hitachi has brought out Deskstar 7K100 which 1000 Gb of memory space.It apparently costs 19k though.But after formatting and stuff there's only 931 Gb of usable space but i guess thats close enough!

By the way.. I am no computer freak who ardently follows all the developments of the digital world..just that I couldn't stand to see HR's face pop out of my blog anymore as soon as i open it so i plan to push the pic out of the window by this post :D
Also.. I am enormously bored and when I came across this: www.engadget.com/2007/01/05/hitachi-breaks-1tb-hard-drive-barrier-with-7k1000/
so I thought I'd post..
The continuation of my last post to follow soon!

Look at this!

2007-07-04T13:04:00.000-04:00

This was published in the HT cafe , mumbai edition today.A shocker isn't it?! :O

(Click on it to get a clearer view)

Where's Bollywood heading?!

2007-07-02T14:48:00.000-04:00

A very inappropriate time(at least at home!) to post a very inappropriate post.. its about bollywood movies and i'm writing it at 12:19 am exactly 13 days away from D-day..(yeah its the G word i don't plan to type here 'coz i have got the feeling that i have constantly been complaining about it..so much so that it's been mentioned at least once in all my recent posts! )
More discursive talk! Gaah!
Movies.. yes.. I happened to watch JBJ recently and ever since then have been planning to write on this but never got around to doing it. (For the uninitiated.. JBJ is short for Jhoom Barabar Jhoom)And no..I'm not going to review the movie here..its been all over the papers anyway...
What I have been thinking is...why do people make such movies?!Such absolutely pathetic love stories with a lot of slapstick comedy thrown into it.Add to that some garish costumes and a single song played a zillion times over with the lyrics switching between english,hindi and punjabi...voila! Thats JBJ for you! Oh i forgot to add.. a carpet clad Big B too! :O
Oh yeah thats one more thing..why on earth is Amitabh Bachchan doing so many movies?And such absolutely useless roles?Is he paying of the AB Corp debts this way?I thought he'd made enough money evading the IT people already! :D
And HOW can I leave out Himesh Reshammaiya! whoever told him that he could sing, leave alone act!?And WHY would I be interested in knowing the reasons for his serious face and the ever present cap?!That movie( or moviee as its spelt on the posters.. I hope I got the number of 'e's correct!) has rickshawalas from mumbai trying to save HR from the cops in Berlin! God save me! From when did germany start allowing Indian rickshaws to ply in Berlin?! The trailers make you want to burn its negative!Gaah!
Then there are those sick comedies like Apna Sapna Money Money ( HOW could they screen it in BITS!) which are just that... sick!
All that brings me back to where's Bollywood heading?
(Especially when we pat ourselves on our backs in foriegn lands like Yorkshire!)
More to follow soon... Got to sleep now!

Pratyakchetana

2007-06-28T02:48:00.000-04:00

Pratyakchetana in sanskrit means to turns one's thoughts towards oneself.
Its been raining almost non- stop for the past 12 hours and I am so damn bored with Barrons' that I started daydreaming.There this queer thing about thoughts.. you start with one and soon one thing leads to another and in about a minutes time you'd actually be thinking of something else!
I was just watching the rain when all of a sudden it stopped and the sun came out..its pretty amazing...the transformation.. one moment its all dark and the next it becomes completely sunny!
Oh well.. I am digressing a lot now.. as I was saying..one thought led to another and I was wondering..Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? ...and the like.. quiet cliche I know..and in fact quiet unlike me.The very thought of anything being philosophical makes want to run away from it but here ,for a change, I was being philosophical!
So.. who am I?The answer seems very simple doesn't it?Hema, of course! (For god's sake you'd say! its all over the blog! :D ) Yeah I know THAT..but thats not what I'm asking. I remember when I was younger I used to go to these classes called Balavihar conducted by Chinmaya Mission and I was told once by a teacher there that the 'I' that we refer to all the time is in fact our soul and not our brain or heart or anything like that..and the logic I was given for that was that we refer to our brain or heart as 'my brain' and 'my heart' and not as 'I'. And apparently this 'I' leaves the body once we die.Is that really so?Is there something called the soul?What happens to it after death?Does it become one with the cosmos? Or does it , like its widely believed , enter another body to lead another life?And if so, for how long does this cycle go on?
Questions, questions and more questions!!
And what IS the purpose of life? I have been told a lot of times that 'you are here for a reason'. So, whats IS the reason?Will this dawn upon me all of a sudden, one fine day? How will I get to know?
Questions, questions and more questions!!
These thoughts never end.. do they?Good reason to stay away from philosophy I say! :)

Note: Signs of what GRE prep does to a sane person! So future MS aspirants -BEWARE! :D
By the way, do have a look at the video below.Its very inspiring! It inspired me to do resolve to do some charity this year and not be wasteful!

Sarah McLachlan - World On Fire

2007-06-28T00:41:00.001-04:00

Watch this.. The video was made for $15 only!

Power of Music

2007-06-21T02:06:00.000-04:00

" Music is love in search of a word "

Sidney Lanier

Child Sexual Abuse

2007-06-19T08:20:00.000-04:00

What the papers have to say about the situation in India http://digital.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=20&eddate=6/17/2007
Outrageous!

My first love!

2007-06-19T08:06:00.001-04:00

Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done.

My favourite smells

2007-06-19T07:29:00.000-04:00

A list of smells i love:

The smell of wet earth
A chocolate cake just out of the oven (yum!)
A fresh coat of paint
Pudina leaves (Mint)
Este Lauder Perfume
Hot Pav Bhaji (slurrrrppp!)
Campaka flowers

I am not sure why i made that list. Guess thats what half a day spent with Barrons' does to you!

The best thing!

2007-06-13T07:01:00.000-04:00

The sky has become overcast all of a sudden & the air smells of rain! aahh! Its absolutely heavenly!I am having a delicious mango & listening to romantic songs! The best thing that you can possibly do at such times! :D

Of hot days & delicious mangoes!

2007-06-13T06:24:00.000-04:00

Its the time of the year when days are sweltering and the metereologists are busily predicting the days when the monsoon hits the city! (This time though the monsoons seem to be taking their own sweet time to make their way to aamchi mumbai and the reason being given is the 'gonu' )

All i want to do these days is sit in the ac and eat mangoes! Speaking of mangoes.. its absolutely heavenly to bite into its soft flesh and feel the sweet juice fill your mouth and run down your hands all the way to the elbow and then trickle down!i remember when i was younger i used to lick the juice all the way to my elbow( sounds yuck? aah the joys of being a child unaware of table manners and the likes! :) ) and then a glare from mom would make sure that i went and washed myself clean :)

Mangoes happen at the best time of the year i think...the very thought of a cold glass of mango shake is so refreshing!Now think about having hot stuff with mangoes in it? doesn't sound all that great does it now?

And there are these zillion different kinds of mangoes that flood the markets! There's the Banganapalli ( those mangoes are huuge!), the extremely popular Hapoos and the Langra...and a lot more that i don't seem to remember!

The love for mangoes in India is so well known, its even made headlines in the NY Times!

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/travel/10mumbailetter.html

And there are so many different ways to savour a mango- the souffle, the milkshake, the jam and the pickle too! ( though i thats one of my least favourite way to have a mango)

All this talk of mangoes has made me hungry and now i'm going to go relish a delicious mango! :)

A Big "Thank You!"

2007-05-18T01:30:00.000-04:00

Here's a big thanks to amey for making my blog look the way it does right now.. you must have noticed all those new additions on the sidebar..tested his patience to the max i'm sure..what with me having absolutely NO idea where i found those html codes and then making him go 'blog hunting' to find the link to the website where i found them! :D :D
He finally decided to take revenge by making my blog look a horrible shade of PINK!! ( He apparently changed it to yellow also..but then at that point of time i wasn't looking so it saved me a heart attack! :) )But then the nice vol that he is (yes, he's STILL a vol to me :D ) he changed everything back to the way it was! So here's a BIG thank you to him! :)

Computer Dud

2007-05-14T07:25:00.000-04:00

Before i start off on the actual subject line of the post... i am now officially done with all my cdcs and am totally,absolutely,completely vetti!time for celebration!! :D :D

Now..gettting back to the point of the post.. it sucks to not know anything about computers..these days i have taken to trying to make my blog look good..and whenever i want to add stuff to my blog like what i have read lately and stuff like that..they give some 4 lines of HTML code which i'm supposed to figure out where to copy paste ..which i invaribly can't!!Well.. thats about it..the bottom line is i'm a computer DUD!
Can't think of anything else to write about so i'm going to get back to doing nothing and lazing around! Man! this is heaven! :)

Another make-over!

2007-05-09T17:42:00.000-04:00

Compres can get you bored or what!? i invariably seem to end up redoing the look of my blog and posting a lot during my end sems! :D
I'll finish my compres in technically another 3 days!yahoo!! :D i'll be FINALLY done with these wretched CDCs!
Packing is on in full swing and nobody is in the mood to study at all! I'm now all geared up for 2 months of lazing around,good food and lots of sleep! ( the fact that i have to write the GRE this summer has been conveniently forgotten ;) )
I can hardly believe i'm going to be a psentisemite now! The very thought is SO delightful!! :D
Ok i got to get back now...taken a long break already!Electronics instruments and instrumentation technology beckons! ( well... not EXACTLY beckons.. but i don't seem to be able to think of a better word..baah!! )
Until next time..!

Smile :)

2007-04-06T16:57:00.000-04:00

A smile is the cheapest and most effective rejuvenating face cream
Of all the things you wear your expression is most important
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been
Smile lines should never be removed.The marks of affection are of more value than the emptiness of a false youth.
No one needs a smile quite as much as he who has none to give.
Learn to greet your friends with a smile;they carry too many frowns in their own hearts to be bothered with yours.
It is the small, insignificant, simple gestures that make life bearable.A smile, a touch, a word, a kindness, a concern.
Laughter can be more satisfying than honour; more precious than money; more heart-cleansing than prayer.
The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
We smile in sympathy, in greeting, in apology, and in appreciation. It is without doubt the most important social bonding signal in the human gestural repertoire.
Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt, and every grin so merry draws one out.

... and we're back!

2007-04-06T16:56:00.000-04:00

back to blogging after a LONG time...and as usual i don't know what to write about :)
I have almost finished my CDCs(THANK GOD!!) which means i would technically be an electronics and instrumentation engineer by the 12th of May ..but like how i was telling my friend the other day.. i had in my twelfth standard found out that instrumentation involves the conversion of physical quatities into displays...and after my CDCs now.. thats all i seem to know of instrumentation anyway!!kind of makes me wonder how good the educational system in india is really...and the system of evaluation also.. i mean you can make an 'A' in a course and still not know anything in it at all! and its very well possible that the person who makes a 'B' is about 0.5 marks behind the guy who makes an 'A' and so his CGPA would drop by a whole 2 points which is REALLY sad...oh well.. thats how things are and i really wish something would be done to change that..

Its back!! :)

2006-11-27T05:06:00.000-05:00

My hard disk's back!!My hard disk's back!! :) :) yipppeee! :)
For all those people who have expressed their doubts on what the hard disk stands for lemme clarify..its a portable electronic data storage device ;)..naah there's no "hidden" meaning to the whole hard disk affair..just that some people are trying their best to pull my leg on my own blog :P :P
Now with my music back with me life seems so much more beautiful! :D (yeah i'm a bit cranky this afternoon..this is what happens when you have been trying to make sense out of a course called electronic devices and integrated circuits!;) :) )This also means more frequent "breaks" from my books to "relax" after "long hours of study" so that all the matter "may set in" !! (lolz!!)..well...yeah i'm just looking for excuses to get away from books...but who am i kidding, i have a couple of miserable grades to pull up!boo hoo!!:( :( end sems clearly drive me crazy..and i won't subject you to anymore of my craziness..am on another one of my "breaks" and its high time i got back..so ciao!

Blogging mania!

2006-11-25T15:47:00.000-05:00

All the recent visitors to my blog must have noticed that my blog seems to be changing its look at intervals of 12 hours! :D oh well...what can i say..heights of boredom! Frankly i have loads of work to do with my end sem exams about a week away and a couple of depressing grades to pull up..but the cold(brrrr!!) makes me extremely sleepy( i saw some very sad consequences of sleeping too much today!! ) and i don't feel like picking up my books!Add to that the absence of my hard disk #$#$%^&*^ X-( ....and you have an extremely bored being( i hope the person involved reads the blog and decides to return my hard disk!! :P )... which is why i have been trying out new avatars for my blog and exploring all the new features of blogger beta! :D Oh well..now i can't even think of what else to write here..too sleepy..yaawwnn! :)
so..bonne nuit!( i hope that's correct french..i'll write about my french jinx some other time when i'm more awake)

Beautiful words to live by...

2006-11-24T13:21:00.000-05:00

Anger is a condition in which the tongue works faster than the mind.
You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying over the future.
Love... & you shall be loved.
God always gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him.
All people smile in the same language :)
A hug is a great gift... one size fits all, it can be given for any occasion and its easy to exchange.
Everyone needs to be loved...especially when they do not deserve it.
The real measure of a man's wealth is what he has invested in eternity.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
It is important for parents to live the same things they teach.
Happy memories never wear out...relive them as often as you want.
Home is the place we grumble the most, but are often treated the best.
Take time to laugh, for it is the music of the soul.
If anyone speaks badly of you, live so that none will believe it.
To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it.
We take for granted things that we should be giving thanks for.
You are richer today if you have laughed, given or forgiven.
For every minute you are angry with someone, you lose 60 seconds of happiness you can never get back.
Do what you can, for who you can, with what you have and where you are.
Never be the first to start the quarrel or the last to end it.
The best gifts to give: to a friend- loyalty; to an enemy-forgiveness ; to your boss- service; to a child- a good example ; to your parents- gratitude ; to your life partner- love and faithfulness.

Music..

2006-11-24T03:48:00.000-05:00

I was never really interested in music in school....whatever music i listened to was on these music countdowns they air on television...in fact i hardly had any knowledge of western music.I still remember in my 10th,when my friends used to talk about shakira and her belly dancing, about enrique and his looks, about backstreet boys and ronan keating, it was all very greek and latin to me. I used to take carnatic music lessons and that was all the music i was exposed to other than the popular hindi numbers.Then came my post board exam holidays which saw me completely stuck to itv...its this interactive tv channel where you have to call a particular number and you request for a song from an available list.That was probably the first time i listened to backstreet boys and boyzone and britney spears and JLo.. and i discovered that i actually liked it..although then i couldn't make out head or tail of what they were actually singing..what mattered to me was that the beats were good.. :)
This was the time when i actually got initiated into the world of western music...and i fell in love with westlife.So the next time my uncle asked me what i wanted him to get for me i asked him for a Westlife- the greatest hits CD...my first english music cd..!!
I stuck to english pop and hindi filmi hits after that for sometime...and then in my 12th i happened to listen to Creed's My Sacrifice.It was topping the US charts at that point of time and mann..what a song!That was the first time i listened to rock music...without realising that it was actually rock(I used to believe that rock is sheer noise and it was a genre that was meant for drunkards and drug addicts!!)...and i loved it!A friend of mine happened to have Creed Weathered CD and was sweet enough to burn it for me( actually burn it twice 'coz the first time i tried writing 'creed' on the cd and ended up etching it into the disk! :D ).I was adding to my collection of english music...
And then i came to BITS and i got my comp along...and things changed..completely...music became an ever present thing...i HAD to have music on almost all the time i was in my room...
I started collecting music my second semester on campus...it started with a folder containing an assortment of english songs.The problem with me was i would just listen to the songs i'd heard of and everything else would sound like noise..sometimes i wouldn't even be ready to play it even once..shift+delete was the fate that awaited all those audio files which had names i hadn't heard of before...
In my second year though i somehow started listening to songs i hadn't heard before...and i found out that some of them were actually good...and soon my collection of music began to grow.I had this senior who had an external hard disk which was my major source of good music..everytime i got bored i used to go to her room and ask her to give me any new songs that i may not have.I would come back and listen to all those songs one-by-one and keep the ones that i liked.By this time i had also started following most of the lyrics of the songs...that was one more thing i started doing- downloading lyrics of all these english songs i was listening to...rock still remained classified as "noise" :)
Then in the holidays when i was at my sister's place, i happened to pick up this metallica CD..the original Black album CD..and i fell in love with the first song that i listened to-Enter sandman....voila! i had been initiated into the world of rock music...it didn't classify as "noise" anymore..after that followed Iron maiden, Nirvana,Linkin Park...I started listening to rock,pop,blues..you name it and i listened to it...Except hip-hop..that's one genre i still dislike..especially Eminem...its more or less like they are talking..its not what i'd call music..
My music collection grew and it became too big for my poor 20 gb drive D to hold and so i went ahead and got an external hard disk :) and i simply love it!I dont have to worry about running out of space anymore when i collect music from my friends and i can also carry it back home during hols.
This time when i had gone to my sister's place she was amazed at the size and variety of my music collection..and she was at the stage that i was in my 10th...so she asked me to give her some english music "gyan"....and i did! I can't believe that i have actually reached that stage where i have to have music around me almost all the time (except for maybe when i sleep and when i study..sadly these days though thats all i seem to be doing! ) .
You might be wondering why i actually penned all this down...well you see...my hard disk right now is not with me..which means neither is my music...my friend borrowed it a couple of days ago and i have still not got it back..so out of sheer frustration i decided to revive my blog and when i started thinking about what to write the first thing that came to my head was music!! :D
and now i really can't think of what else i can add to this post so i think i'll stop right here...adios!

Thought for the day..again!

2006-08-22T05:30:00.000-04:00

I came across this really nice quote...
You cannot be lonely if you like the person you are alone with

Quotas...Quotas...

2006-05-22T10:29:00.000-04:00

The last fortnight has seen students all over india voicing their opinion against the quotas that have been proposed in all the major universities and colleges....we have seen everything..from rallies to human chains to voilent protests to peaceful hunger strikes...and STILL the govt. does nothing about it..instead the students get beaten up brutally in mumbai and arjun singh says that the "Decision on the quato is final " @$!#@@@!@$$#!!!! X-(
check this out :http://www.ibnlive.com/news/decision-on-quota-is-final-arjun/11063-4-1.html
This was the interview with our "honourable hrd minister" that was aired today on cnn...
why is the government playing with the lives of so many hard working students for want of votes?do the politicians in the country think that by just providing reservations for the OBCs they can secure their positions of power??arjun singh says that the students who are on strike are "our children too " ...then why isn't anything been done for them??why hasn't anyone from the govt. of india met these student who are on strike?why aren't they clear about their decision on "increasing the number of seats" in the institutions??
The whole issue is making me feel ashamed of all the "leaders" in the country.why is this happening??my support goes out to all my friends out there rallying against this injustice...

civilization...at last :)

2006-05-19T12:23:00.000-04:00

finally i'm done with my fourth semester and hols have begun...spending all my time hogging and sleeping and chatting :) ...and i'm loooovin' it :)
mumbai is a huge relief after pilani..mannn..it touched 54 degrees there!thats like sitting in an oven!and to think we had to write our compres too(thats our end sem exams by the way..)and all the sand storms and everything...gosh it is SUCH a relief!!
feels good to be back in the midst of civilization...it felt so nice when we hogged in delhi at pizza hut and saravana bhavan..its an amazing feeling when you see ccds and pizza huts and everything(which your friends back home have become utterly bored with) after 4 1/2 months!!and theatres..my i missed going to a nic e posh multiplex soo much...i guess its only when you are away from such things that you actually start loving them and enjoying them the most when you get back..
hmm..nothing much to post about today...but i have promised myself i'll blog more often now..
so until next time...ciao!

FINALLY!!!!

2006-04-01T04:23:00.000-05:00

finally!!!...i could sign in and actually start blogging...its been really long since i last blogged and its not like i get so much time these days to do it...and when i do get the time and feel like blogging(believe me i don't get such intentions often..me being extremely lazy:)...no wonder there aren't many posts here...)the internet conspires against me and becomes amazingly sluggish till i almost give up....but thankfully things finally got better and here i am...blogging away...:)
well...so now what DO i write about?umm..i happened to watch schindler's list the other day and started wondering how hitler could have done such inhuman things as set up concentration camps .The movie shows how brutally the germans massacred the jews for no fault of theirs.just because hitler decided that he doesn't like the jews why should they all be murdered?what right does one man have to decide who lives and who doesn't?what makes a jew different from a german?just that he follows a different religion and maybe speaks a different language?why has man created such things as caste,creed,race??why are there so many things dividing people?aren't we all ultimately the same race?why can't we have a world were people do not bother about how the next person prays,or which language he speaks,or what colour he is,or which country he is from?
guess such things may never happen considering the state of things now..but well i started feeling strongly about these things which is why i thought i'd blog...thats about it for this time...

One more question....

2005-12-21T10:38:00.000-05:00

i suddenly got this doubt....
If the plural form of mouse is mice,and that of louse is lice...why isn't the plural form of spouse spice???guess another one of those flaws of the english language...:)

Why are english movies dubbed???

2005-12-21T10:18:00.000-05:00

its christmas vacation now...nothing much to do except eating,sleeping and lazing around...which i must say is very nice...especially after a very long and hectic semester...:)
and so as i was switching channels on tv yesterday i happen to come across this channel which was airing Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone in HINDI!!!i don't get it...why do they dub it in hindi?and even if they do why change the names of the houses??guess what Slytherin is called??Nagshakti!!!!how pathetic is that??...they changed the names of the other houses too...and the sorting hat is called Botli Topi!!!!i just couldn't stand it any more and switched channels....its awful...your interest is lost when you watch the movie in hindi after watching it in english or having read the books...and thats not all they dubbed the movie in tamil,telugu and god alone knows which other languages!!and its not just this movie...its almost all english movies...and these days cartoons too...its been quite a while since i watched cartoon network in english...(not that i watch cn as often...and these days i rarely watch tv).if their idea is to increase veiwership then i don't think they are going to be successful...'coz i know a lot of people who stopped watching all these things once they started getting dubbed...well, i really can't think of anything else to write about so i'll sign off here...until next time...cheers!!

Thought for the day

2005-12-20T06:04:00.000-05:00

couldn't think of anything interesting to post...so thought i'd put this thought on my blog as a starter...came across this in a book i read coupla days back...
"If who I am is what I have and what I have is lost,then who am I?" -Anonymous