I travelled about four hundred fifty kilometers in seven long hours to meet my grandparents today. Daadi and myself were watching TV some time ago. The movie 'Mai meri patni aur vo' was playing on the small colored screen. After watching the movie for a while, she decided to put me fundays on what kinda girl should be selected for me! Daadi dear! It was rather sweet of her to do so nevertheless.

So shall I share some of my enriched knowledge? Sure I will. :)

tip 1: Don't go for a too 'bekaar' nor toooo good looking lass.

I guess the 'too bekar' was pretty intuitive. So she explained to me why the 'not too good looking' concept was as important. 'You can look at this movie for example. (you need to have seen the movie MMPAV to appreciate the analogy)', she said. This was followed by a personal example which I don't remember very well.

tip 2: Prefer a girl from a big city over one from a smaller town. She will have a broader perspective towards stuff.

tip 3: Look for intelligence. What are you going to do with beauty? Intelligence will pay.

I guess this is the summary of all she told me. I might have missed on the details and what appears above might actually be pretty obvious. But all that coming LIVE from Daadi was kinda new thing for me. I suddenly felt I was growing up, getting old. Marital tips! Oh my God. I was blushing and smiling all the time as the funda-session was on. Very silently, I listened to all that she had to say. She loves me a lot. I love her. And I love my DELLruba! ;)

Holidays are going (not so) great. Will get back with more stuff.

There was this kid there, in my cabin on my way back to home from IIT a few days back. He was a small kid, might be 5 or 6 years old. And he was pretty active; kept running from here to there to the chagrin of his parents and custodians. And then there was this police police crap occurring every time he had to be stopped from running out of sight. I will tell you what I mean by that. Somehow the guys using the 'police police' fear factor had convinced the sweet little kid that if he steps beyond a not so well defined terrain, the police will take him away. Occasionally he used to forget that, but then he was reminded more occasionally and thus kept in control.

I do not really think it's a very good way of taming an otherwise agile kid. This sure is an easy way but certainly not the best way. The major disadvantage is that to the child, the word police becomes synonymous to something evil. After all evil is what you fear, don't you? I understand that when this kid grows up, he will come to know why we need policemen and what their real job is. But I am also sure that somewhere deep inside him, he will always fear police. And not because of any fault of his. There are things which settle deeply in your subconscious mind and they affect you later. The case is similar to the fear of ghosts. If you start trying to control a child by bringing in a ghost to him/her, it's a bad strategy. You are only making him a coward kid. Though I haven't read about child psychology at all, this sounds very intuitive to me. I at least remember reading some article somewhere which actually stressed on the need of talking about real things to children than making false stuff appear real. May be when I am back to IIT, I would catch up with some sites to see if my intuition actually has supporting data.

The lights were off; it was slightly more than half past ten, and the passengers were trying to sleep. And I heard this whisper once more: 'Police Police'. I guess the kiddo was not ready to sleep yet. Police at a rescue mission to make a naughty kid sleep! :)

It always feels good when a RAC gets cleared and you get a confirmed seat, especially if it's a night journey in a sleeper class and you are too tired to wait to sleep. This happened to me yesterday. But I do not intend to talk more about my journey at the moment, which is as a matter of fact still continuing ( Yeah, I'm relaxing in my upper berth). I think I have something better to write about. It's about my mother tongue.

When did you last write in your mother tongue (at least 200 words at a stretch)? I never did that after my class X. In fact in my entire life, the only time I have used Hindi (that's my mother tongue) as a written language has been only for the assignments and tests in school. Something similar cab be said about reading Hindi. I hardly get to do that. The sadder thing is that I hardly feel like doing that. I have heard people cry over preserving your mother tongue, but I am never moved. Are you?

I was reading this week's edition of BW to kill some time. There's this short review of a book called 'How languages work' by David Crystal. The subtitle of the book reads how Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages live or die. This very subtitle made the getting-bored-like-everyone-else-in-train me realize how rapidly Hindi is dying. Half the time when I talk even to myself, it happens in English. To be very true, the only time I use Hindi is when I am at home, or when I am chatting with my friends from north. There's one interesting incidence that comes to my mind. I think I was in class fifth or sixth then. I was sitting in the examination hall. There was this language paper that day, and as usual it had one question on writing a letter to your friend (telling him may be how you spent your vacations). I started writing the letter. I had written for about half a page when the invigilator suddenly noticed what I was writing and exclaimed, 'I think it's a Hindi paper'. Oh my God! It actually was a Hindi Language paper and just because I was so used to writing letters in English, I never realized I was writing in English all this while! I laughed at myself, struck off the words in English, and started writing the letter again, in Hindi this time. I am sure the teacher who later checked the paper would have laughed real hard, seeing half a page of English words in a Hindi paper!

Getting back to the old point of how senti we should be towards our mother tongue, I do not have much of an opinion. Why should some languages be saved from dying? What's the point? What's wrong if the whole world eventually starts speaking just one language? Thinking of the whole world speaking a common language actually sounds a great stuff. The way globalization is growing, I actually have reasons to believe this is going to happen sooner or later. And I really don't mind. I know for sure that there are folks with whom I am always going to talk in my mother tongue, and this is all I really care about.

The editing of the video put below was finished today, on my DELLruba (that's what I call my comp). No, I didn't do much. All I did was provide clips that have been used in the first few scenes of the video (the clips were shot by me last sem, including the monkey that you see :) ). I of course also brain-stormed with the guys who were in-charge, but couldn't come up with any nice funda which could have been implemented in the limited time that they had and also given the pain-max cam that they had. Definitely a wonderful job. But you are the better judge. Leave comments. By the way, last but not the least, I offered DELLruba's services ;)

My room has also been featured in the video! Great! Thank you guys! This video is one of many that will be shown during the PAN-IIT Global Conference to be held in Mumbai from Dec 23rd to 25th. [news link]

Question

When I log into Second Life, I get to Verifying Protocol Version and stops. What's wrong?

Answer

If you are on a business or university internet connection, you may need to contact your network administrator to verify that you can make non-web connections to the Internet. Specifically, you need to make both UDP and TCP connections, inbound and outbound, on network ports 443 and 12020 to 13050, inclusive. If your network cannot provide the proper connection, you may be unable to connect to Second Life. [source]

I was sitting on a friend's laptop a few days ago when I noticed that he had nothing on his desktop at all; no files, no folders, no shortcuts. Well, there was almost nothing except of course the 'recycle bin' icon which apparently cannot be deleted. Is it?

Today I suddenly got the enthusiasm to go ahead and say adieu to the I-won't-leave-you icon and it took me less than five minutes to figure out how to do it. Finally, I am happy that I no more have that useless icon on my desktop. I might keep other stuffs on the desktop or might not; don't care much. But I definitely don't understand the need to let the recycle-bin icon permanently sit there on the limited space that exists. No more! :)

Look at the man above. He has not let water touch his body since six days, with hands and face as obvious exceptions. Yes, you read it right. Six long days; and in place like Chennai where humidity makes you sweat almost every time the speed of air around you falls down even a unit below what you obtain from a ceiling-fan running at maximum torque. It was not an easy job to accomplish. Dark clothes were chosen to last. Deodorant was avoided throughout this mission to let the passers by appreciate the effort and 'be concerned'.

But on the sixth day, our warrior surrendered to the bacteria and fungus which promised to rip him apart if he didn't give up. And so, he gave up.

And to answer the question asked in the post title, the pic shown below should suffice.

The wait was over today. Finally. Oh my God, I had been waiting for her since ages! And I am so happy when right now, the two of us are here together, talking to one another.

Ladies and Gentlemen, compless I am no more!

This pic was shot a couple of days ago by one of my friends near CP (Delhi) when he found this smart-ass driving immense pleasure by deciding to attend nature's call at the best place he could find. A photographer's delight!

They were so many of them, all dressed up in 'proper' formals. Most of them had put down a tie; some of them had even gone to the extent of wearing coats! The campus today was looking like the headquarter of a multi national firm, with executives-resembling-crowd doing the show throughout the day. They were there in the coffee house, in the canteen, on the campus lanes, and just almost everywhere.

This is what happens when two i-banks shortlist about two hundred folks who are all desperate to get placed as fast as they can, and hold the interview the same day. Moreover when yet another 'hot' company has about 120 guys lined up for final selection for a plush job (also the same day), and two more companies ready to interview yet some more, such a change of scene on campus is all but natural. So today the dirty rotten smelly t-shirts were elegantly replaced by pure cotton full sleeves, the God-knows-when-washed-last pair of jeans discarded for neatly pressed finest textured trousers, and the could-give-way-any-moment-hawaai-slippers substituted by shining leather shoes. :)

The good thing is that some of my friends will be getting jobs finally. The job-treat season begins. Today! :)