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Made this design for Proto.in, the second edition of which is coming up in IIT Madras on July 21-22 2007. And yeah, did all of this sitting in office since I really didn't have any work to do ( I still don't have). You can get gyaan about Proto.in here on their site.

Also made this badge:

Remember I talked about shooting a video at uncle's place when he cooked Chicken Biryani? After giving up on using a firewire cable, I finally did the video-transfer using USB and then edited it yesterday (basically to bring the whole thing down to less than 10 minutes).

By the way, don't watch this video if you are hungry right now and you are a non-vegetarian and you are sure that you won't be getting to eat anything for at least quite some time. I say so, because this video will definitely bring water to your mouth and make you twice more hungry than you are.

And yeah, the Biryani was mast! :) Enjoy watching the video (it's in Hindi).

IIT Madras get together in Bangalore

Let's meet. If you are from IIT Madras and you are in Bangalore and you are jobless this coming Sunday (3rd of June, 2007), come, catch up. Even if you are a pass out, you are dearly welcome! Let's fart and bring the IIT Madras charm to this city (of gardens?).

This is the proposed plan but you are welcome to suggest changes.

11AM-2Pm: Beer at Mojoz Mojo's
2AM onwards: Lunch (we shall decide the place once we meet)

So those who want to join the get-together, leave your information on the comments section of this post.

How to reach Mojo's: It is on Residency Road, opposite the Hyundai Showroom, Near Ballal Residency. You can come down brigades, take the left, and then the first right again and BANG, you are at Mojo's!!


Note: For those who don't drink, still join us. We shall have fun.

Update 1: Please let your friends from insti know about this get-together. There are various ways of doing so besides of course blogging about it or putting this up on your status message. All I would like to say it, help promote this holy cause :P in your own way. More guys (girls?), more fun!

Never say Delete

The new cable

Most of you already know about the cable incidence. Those who don't, check that out before you further read this post.

Yesterday I finally decided to buy the 'original' JVC cable which came for 350 bucks. But this time, I was a man who had learned from his past mistakes. I took my laptop along. And asked them to let me check if the cable fit properly. Well, they didn't mind me doing that. And well, the cable fit.

The first thing that I did after reaching home was to connect the video-camera to the laptop using this new 4pin-4pin firewire cable. The camera detected it, but the laptop still didn't. Now, this was too much. This was frustrating. Since the camera detected it perfectly each time I would connect, the cable couldn't possibly be bad. So the problem lied with my laptop.

A long-tiresome-frustrating internet research began which started yesterday and continued till I decided to give up a few moments ago (sitting in office). Many many people out there have faced similar problems. Their laptop doesn't detect their cameras when connected by firewire cables. Only few claimed that trying out different cables solved their problems but for most of them, the fault was never with the cable. Out there, I could find a lot of frustrated people, (like I am right now) who could do nothing but give up.

A stupid thing is that I already have done this video transfer from camera to computer. I know that it works. So I am all the more frustrated that right now, when I so desperately want to edit videos, this whole damn thing is not working out for me. Eh, too much! The last time I did the video transfer, I didn't have a laptop though. I had a regular desktop. The CPU did not have a firewire card by default. So I had to buy one separately when I purchased the camera. It was a firewire card with two 6-pin slots and came with a free 4pin-6pin cable (the 4pin end would go into the camera and the 6pin end would go into the firewire card). And it had worked amazingly well then. The video quality that I had got was really really awesome.

Today is the first time that I am disappointed with my Dellruba. I was so happy (while ordering her) to know that, she came with an inbuilt firewire card. I didn't know that this card won't have a six pin slot like the one that I got for my CPU. Dellruba had a 4pin slot, exactly like the camera. So the earlier 6pin-4pin cable was of no use. And now finally after having 270+350 bucks on buying a 4pin-4pin cable (and blogging about it), I still CANNOT transfer videos!

For the time being, I will continue to transfer using USB cable. Something is better than nothing. And anyways, my readers wont be able to notice much difference in the video quality because on youtube, you anyways don't get great quality (ah, what a nice way of consoling myself).

Himesh on Hit-list

Saw this happening on TV a couple of days ago. Himesh Reshammiya is supposedly on Ejaz Lakdawala's hit list. It was funny to hear the Don speak himself to the news channel. What a drama!

Now all of us know why these Mumbai-ka-dons (better known as Bhai's) threaten celebrity lives. For money! But I guess in Himesh's case, something else happened:

Don: Hello, Himesh?
Himesh: Yeah, who is this? Look if you are some singer, try approaching me through Indian Idol. I really don't have any time. Don't you know that I am also doing one stupid movie? I really don't have time.

Don: No, I am no singer.
Himesh: Then who are you?

Don: I am Don. I am Ezaz Lakdawala. I kill celebrities for money.
Himesh: Oh, so you need money from me.

Don: No.
Himesh: No? Why did you call me up then.

Don: I wanted to make a request to you.
Himesh: I don't believe it. Ezaz Lakdavaala is making me a request.

Don: Yeah. I am fuckin fed up of your voice. Wherever I go, I find your songs playing. You make nice music, alright but your voice totally sucks. I beg to you. Stop singing. I will give you money for doing that. Tell me your demand.
Himesh: No money can stop me from singing. And I am anyways making enough money, thanks to my God gifted talent (read God gifted nose).

Don: I won't ask again. You are the only celebrity who is getting money from a Don! You dare refuse me.
Himesh: I can pay you some cash. But please let me sing.

Don: I will pay you double of what you can offer. But please, stop singing. Entire India is fed up of you and your nose.
Himesh: I'll prefer dying than not singing. I am sure that many people who kept listening to my voice for a long time must have died a painful death. I guess it's time for me to payback. Kill me if you want to but however much you give to me, I wont stop from torturing the world.

Don: You are a dead man. Right now, at this very moment, I am putting you on top of my hitlist. Sing as many songs as you can, before I save the world from your atrocities. That will be the only good thing I would be doing in my entire life as a Don. I am hanging up now. Gotta call some news channel to give them this happy news. Because I am sure, a lot of people out there will be delighted to know that they wont have to bear you shortly. Chal bye.

After Forum

Here I am, sitting on aunt's laptop at uncle's place. Half an hour ago uncle and myself were out on street, getting drenched in the massive downpour that has subsided moments ago. We had gone out to get samosas and got caught in the rains that errupted all of a sudden. It's good that I won the AMD t-shirt earlier today so that I didn't have to change to my uncle's tee after getting back. But of course he had to lend me his pyjama. :P

The rain was lovely. I feel so fresh and so does uncle. He will soon be making mooli-ka-parantha for the three of us. He cooks good. Good for me. Good for Aunt. :) This Sunday rocks.

While coming back from Forum, I had run into two insti guys. One was a branch senior who had passed out last year; has been working in Bangalore since then; and now going to IIM A. The other guy was a junior who is the current Academic Affaris Secretory of the insti. It feels great to run into known faces. Though for a matter of fact I had been wishing all the time while in Forum to run into yet another known face. That never happened. :( But then this was real life. Not a movie, right?

A routine life shall begin once more from tomorrow. And in all liklihood, some real work should begin. I wish life weren't real. I wish life were a dream.

From Forum

Blogging from a mall which has wifi. First time experience. Nice experience.

Being amidst a crowd that's moving and continuously changing makes the environment a lot lively. There's some energy about it.

Shot a "How to make Chicken Biryani" yesterday when Uncle and Aunt made it for the three of us. A youtube video shall be out soon.

Came to the Forum mall to catch up with friends cum classmates who are interning in the same city. The Bengaluru city! Didn't really have much to do. So we thought we would shoot something. I had got my hanycam with me.

We caught up few guys, told them we were from IIT Madras and were here in Bangalore to shoot a documentary. I told that the documentary was on the difference in rural lifestyle and metro lifestyle and that we would like to know if they would ever be willing to contribute to the betterment of rural India's life. I appeared confident and they thought we were serious. And they talked bullshit which didn't make much sense! :P But nevetheless it was a nice timepass. :D I will upload the videos for you to see it for yourself how serious they were (and how serious I was :P )

But to be frank, our aim was to get to talk to babes! The mall was full of them. It was Sunday and this was Bangalore! After our warm up session with guys, we started looking for girls. Single girls roaming without any stupid looking males around. We hardly found any! Of course not a surprise. And I was kinda too nervous to approach the few whom we could spot.

After a long long time (read one hour), finally one of the friends went over to a babe (he doesn't think she was a babe!). It appeared that the whole thing would go off well. She was listening. And then all of a sudden, she asked for our I cards! Fuck her! We showed her mine. And then, tragedy struck. We saw her waving a loving 'hi' to someone on the escalator. He was a stupid looking male. Coming down the escalator. Looked like her boyfriend. He came over. We chatted for sometime, but finally they fuckin refused to appear in our doc. Attitude! Fuck em all. They refused to listen to us, IITians! Fuck em real hard! Fuck their attitude.

We gave up. We dropped the idea of shooting any more. One friend had to leave.

Once again, there was nothing more. The two of us were wondering what more to do when we saw something happening at the AMD stall. Guys were screaming! We reached there. Whoever screamed "AMD rocks" loudest, would get a tee. Cool! A black ADM tee!

With an intel based laptop lying inside my bag, I jumped up on the small stage, and shouted "AMD rocks". I was loudest as was one more guy. Both of us got the tee. Yayyy. AMD rocks!! :P

Never before in my life, I have spent morning till evening in one mall. There was something else in my mind which kept forcing me to be there for as long as possible. Someone out there, readng this post will understand what I mean. And to you 'that someone', I would like to say 'Yes, I missed you all the time I was there'. By the way, Forum looks like home to me now. Both of us are sitting in McD sipping coke. And it's time we leave because this female attendent just came over and asked if we are done. Fuck her!

Sunday. Funday.

God is Great

The cable post should tell you that after my first shopping experience in MG Road, I was left with only nine and a half bucks. In coins.

The bus fair to reach home from office is ten bucks.

I was supposed to withdraw money from ATM. But I remembered it only when I was there at the bus stop. There's an ATM close to my office but at the bus stop I could not find any. Ah, why did I forget?. It was 6:30 PM. Bus no. 201 would reach any time. If I missed it I would have to wait for another half an hour for the next bus. But then there was no other option but to walk back to that ATM near office, withdraw cash and then come back to the stop. There was no other option, unless of course, I generally went and asked someone to lend me fifty paise. :)

I wished I were in IIT where it was really easy to spot people anywhere, people whom you knew and could ask for money when in such conditions. I looked around. I saw a logo. It was the IIT Madras logo! Were my eyes playing with me? I noticed the t-shirt which was sporting that logo. I had seen many people wearing that t-shirt back in insti. This whole thing was real! The eyes were not playing! I looked at the guy wearing it. Hell, I knew him! He saw me. We waved at each other. He was coming towards me. The t-shirt was the latest hostel jersey. He was a hostel mate, a Civil junior. God is Great!

But of course, the first thing that you do when you run into a known face in an unknown place is not to ask him for 50 paise. In fact asking for 50 paise is too cheap a thing to do. You should at least ask for a rupee coin. :P

I greeted him. We talked about each other's internships and few more things. I didn't mention anything about my need for 50 paise. We were still talking when I saw 201 pass by.

Hey that's my bus. I gotta go. Do you have a rupee coin?
What?
A rupee coin.
Yeah sure.

I took that coin from him, rushed to catch my bus and waved him a goodbye while still running. There was no time to explain the situation to him and I guess I left him totally confused. When inside, I paid 1o bucks. All I was left with now was a 50 paise coin. I held it with my right hand, looked at it and said to myself, 'God is Great'!

The cable

I decided to stroll. Stroll in MG Road. It was the lunch time. The weather was cool. I wished I had a girl friend around, with whom I could walk with and have ice cream and talk about beautiful things. I strolled alone. I was missing someone.

Tonnes of babes can be spotted in and around the MG Road market in Bangalore. Babes weren't on my mind though. Something else was. A cable. I wondered if I could find some shop which sold firewire cables. For those who don't know, these cables are used to transfer videos from a video camera tape (analogue) to the computer (digital) without undermining the quality (unlike the USB cables).

I found a nice camera shop. It had the cable that I was looking for.

'350 bucks', told the shopkeeper. An internet search on ebay, some time back before the lunch, had told me that the cost was around 15o rupees. So, it was a shock to hear him asking for double that money.

'The last time I bought one, it cost me only 150 rupees. Are you sure that it costs 350?'
'Oh, then you must have bought a local thing. This is a JVC original cable. You can get the local thing in this shop called Computer Planet on S.P Road.'

'Do you think, there's any advantage in taking an original by paying so much more? After all, it's just a cable'!
'Yeah, I don't think it matters. In that shop, you should find both original and local. You can check out for yourself'.

He told me how to reach that other shop. I reached that other shop.

'350 bucks'.
'No, get me a local one'.

'This is a local one'
.
'But I just found out that a JVC orginal cable costs 350 bucks. How can a locally made cable cost the same?

'Ok, pay 280 bucks for it'.

I had a look a the cable. Black. New. Sealed. A cable is just a cable, I thought. Let me buy it. I browsed my wallet. 270 bucks. And nine and a half more bucks as coins.

'Can you give it to me for 250'?
'No boss'.

'At least give it to me for 270'.
'Rima, make bill for sir'.

The bill was a computer print out on an A4 sheet. Total waste of paper! Nevertheless, finally, I was a proud owner of a black cable. But the pride didn't lost long. In fact, it lasted only till I reached home later yesterday evening. The four pin end of the cable that was supposed to go inside the firewire port of my laptop, wouldn't fit properly and hence would go undetected. I tried it a few times and then during one such trial, I kind of applied too much force and that was it. I was done. One of the pins got crushed and lost its alignment. The cable was done. The black new cable. The local cable. I had not bothered to read the bill when at Computer Planet. Sitting on the sofa, I took out the bill lying somewhere inside my bag, unfolded it, and read it.

Goods once sold will not be taken back or exchanged.

Local Talk


You see me standing inside a running local train in Chennai. In this city, people hardly avail the local train services. This was my first and so far the only experience in a local in Chennai.This pic was taken some time back in early May but posting it now 'coz I received it late.

I have lived in Mumbai for some time and there's one thing for sure. Inside a Mumbai local, no one thinks about taking pics. Or rather, no one has the time to do so. Mumbai locals are crowded like hell.

But tell me, what's the fun of riding a local if you don't have to face a crowded cabin; where you need to struggle to get in, struggle to stand, struggle to get a seat, and struggle hardest to board off? The fact is that in Mumbai, the crowd speaks about the efficiency of the local train service. You have a train every two minutes there. It runs fast and it runs on time. No wonder everyone wants to use it! No wonder everyone uses it!

A to Z

Twilight Fairy's post where she jots down the first word that comes to her mind when she thinks of the letters of the English alphabet, made me come up with a similar post.

A
dobe Photoshop
Blog
Coffee
Die
Exercise
Fag
Gmail
Hate
Ice
Juice
Kiss
Love
Ma
Nescafe
Orkut
Princess
Queer
Rich
Sex
Tata
U
Vatsap?
Work
XXX
Yawn!
Zero

By the way, if you are also a blogger, why don't you go ahead and post your A-Z. Believe me, it's fun. And like me you will end up editing some of the words that actually strike you first! :P So that you appear cooler than you actually are! :P

Let's have what?

Let's have sex.
No, I am not ready for it.

As if I am.
Then why are you asking for it?

I wanted to see how you'd react.
So I thought. But tell me, What if I had said yes?

Opportunity doesn't knock your door twice. Bye.
Shit.

....
SHIT.

In Bangalore

In Chennai you cannot survive a second without a fan. A running fan. In Bangalore, you can. I realized this on Saturday when there was a powercut the entire day and yet I didn't sweat much. It's sunny but the breeze that blows is cool.

The other thing that I have noted about this city is that you will rarely find a State Bank of India branch here. Not that I needed to find one. But I was surprised to observe that in here, what you usually come across are branches with names like the State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Hyderabad and on and on! I am trying to find out how many more such branches with interesting names like these exist. It would be awesome if I could come across a State Bank of Patna. :D

Eleven Minutes

To kill the ninety minutes that it takes to reach office, I started reading 'Eleven minutes'. This is a book by Paulo Coelho. I didn't pick it from amongst many. One friend passed it on to me a couple of days back and I decided to keep it for some time.

I have read 120 pages of the 275. The book is interesting. The book is about a prostitute. Or rather, the making of a prostitute. The book occasionally talks about love and a couple of sentences did leave a mark. Let me quote something for those who haven't read 'Eleven minutes'.

In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.

It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.

That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in world without owning it.

Vatsap 5/7 : 1

No I wont rank the five posts that I have picked up for this week. It's very stupid to try doing that. In fact I already had a tough time picking these posts from the infinite that I read. Don't really want to put more energy towards ranking them now. Having said that, here I go.

Here, you will find a different yet interesting movie review of Spiderman3 while here, you get to see a funny graphic take on the same movie. Moving from funny to something serious, a 'thought provoking' reflection on being a teacher can be found here. The remaining two in this week's Vatsap 5/7 are neat, informative posts. This introduces a nice site for listening to nice music and this informs you about a flickr game that's on.

Today is the fourth day to work. And I have no work. Lucky me?

Sometimes, I think I should go and ask for it. Ask someone to give me something to do. But something from deep inside whispers to me (in a low but firm voice) that asking for work myself is a bad idea. A bad, stupid, dumb idea! In fact it isn't even an idea. It's a crime! This thing from deep inside tells me that once real work actually comes my way, I am going to get pretty busy. So till work comes my way, I should enjoy my freedom and chill out.

The sad thing is, I am not sure if I really am chilling out!

There is this other something (though may be not so deep inside), which keeps reminding me that it IS a total waste of time to travel for one and a half hours in a non AC bus to reach this AC office and then do nothing. Nothing that can remotely be labeled work! Nothing for eight hours.

But 'no work' is what exactly I have been doing since last three days. Today is the fourth. And I am very sure, it's going to be the same. Boredom is creeping in. Slowly. But yes, it is. Afterall, there is a limit to kill time just by being online. Most friends have got work and hence aren't available for chat most of the times. And more so, even when I don't have any work, it some how doesn't feel great to be orkutting and chatting full time. So, I end up reading some infrastructure stuffs which are kinda boring. I mean reading pages and pages of 'useful' material makes little sense when you have no idea when and where you are going to use them.

This place, so far appears like a cyber cafe to me. An air conditioned cyber cafe where you are allowed to use your own laptop. A cyber cafe where they serve you hot coffee twice, once at 10AM and then next at 3PM. A cyber cafe where during lunch time, the office boy comes and takes order and then gets you food. A cyber cafe, where they don't charge you for using net. This IS the most ideal internet center that can possibly exist! And yeah, they of course pay you 12.5k per month for visiting!

After a long long time, I really don't feel excited with the fact that I have no work to do. I don't even like blogging so often now. Best blog comes when you have other very important things to do, but you just don't feel like doing any of them. But when leave alone 'very important things' or even 'important things', you simply don't have 'things' to do, you end up writing a boring blog which still receives comments.:P

Reflections on the blogging circuit

Some time back, I had decided to regularly update whats up in my blogging circuit. But now, I feel that this doesn't make much sense. Just because I read infinite blogs doesn't mean that others who are regulars to my site should also read them.

The blogging circuit however still makes sense. If only, I cut down on the number of blogs that I promote in my posts. How about five posts per week? Sounds cool?

So shall I call it like Vatsap's five favourites for the week? Eh, too long a name! Okay, how about 5/7? Naah, "Vatsap 5/7". Yeah this is good enough (till of course someone comes up with a better name).

So here goes the declaration: Vatsap 5/7 shall release every Friday on this site!

Tell me when

Wow. It's 6:20 PM already and no in the office appears to be in any mood to leave. Someone please tell me when does this office close.

I've been going through infinite pdf pages to kill time since morning, just because the project in which I am supposed to jump in hasn't yet been finalized.

Bangalore, welcome me. Two months to go. Hope the work gets interesting. By the way the office is cool. And so are the people who work here.

Update: ended up staying till 8:15 PM!! Gosh. And when I came out of my cabin, I saw that only two people were still there. One was a female working on her desktop. The other one was the security guard!

Straight from the heart



Conceptualized and Designed by Vatsap


This is the raw version of the External Publicity (EP) Tee for Shaastra 2007. If you wanna grab this tee, be there to help the IIT Madras team that arrives at your college for putting presentations on Shaastra. They have other free goodies to offer too. So all the best.

If you have read the last post, you should be knowing why day before yesterday I labeled a train delay 'delightful'. God didn't like my attitude. And I think He also didn't like this post where I cribbed about traveling in a sleeper class. So he made sure that I didn't get to do even that in my return trip. He put me inside hell. For thirty hours. Disastrous return trip! It wasn't even supposed to be a return trip. I had to go to Bangalore but here I am, back to insti!

So what exactly happend?

The train from my home to Kolkata got delayed so much that by the the time I reached Kolkata, the other train which was to take me to Bangalore had already left! Thank you so much God! I didn't have the time to kill Lalu Yadav or I'd definitely had! I felt like crying! I missed the train just by half an hour! And for no fault of mine.

But then, it was not a time to moan and cry. It was a time to face the challenge. Like a true Spartan, I decided to face the challenge.

Another train would leave for Chennai in like two hours. I waited for it and when it came, entered the general compartment. And what followed was hell. No, wait. Hell is an understatement. If hell's a two bedroom apartment with an attached discarded toilet, then what followed next was that discarded toilet.

The night when I crashed

I could find no seat initially. Seats were of pure wood anyways. In some time when I did find a small space for my tired ass, I realized that the rest of the body was equally tired to stay awake. Sitting on a wooden seat for two nights and one day was not something I was prepared to do. I decided to crash.

The only place where I could stretch myself was the dirty compartment floor, amidst stinking bodies. One dude had already taken position. He was flat. If I waited any longer, even the floor area would be gone. I had to move fast. I moved fast. Soon, I was lying on the dirty compartment floor. Not even a bed-sheet to make things easy. Awesome night. An awesome dirty night.

The day and the night when I didn't crash

The next day and the night that followed were worse. After getting up in the morning, I moved to an upper berth. But of course not without having to enter into a heated argument with those already sitting there. I didn't argue much. I just sat.

In some time there after, the number of passengers in the compartment started increasing. Exponentially. Within few hours, the compartment was so fuckin full that at certain station, few passengers could not even enter it! I looked around from top. The whole coach was fuckin full in all the fuckin sense. People were hanging out of doors. People were sitting over doors. People were lying in the side-shelves meant for luggage. Every inch of the floor area was occupied. People between seats, inside seats, over the seats. People. People. More people. The only way one could move across the compartment was by climbing up the edges of upper berths. Everyone who was fagging, was fagging a bidi! Everyone who was not fagging was stinking anyways. Traveling in a sleeper class is thousand times better than traveling in a compartment where there is no theoretical upper limit to the number of passengers that can jump in.

You will wonder if vendors come when in such air tight places. Believe me they do. Especially the samosa vallahs. For them its makes pure business sense. People=money. More people=more money. They will climp up, jump around, hang in mid air and sell samosas! These guys can seriously give inferiority complex to Spiderman and Batman. No, I didn't buy any samosas from the samosamen but I was mesmerized by their hard work.

And well the real reason why I didn't eat or drink much was that I didn't want to use the toilet! :P For two nights and one day, I didn't use the toilet! The train-toilet to be precise. Only once did I leave my upper berth before arriving Chennai, coz I HAD to. I am human afterall. But that time, I left the train itself to find a place in the platform. When the compartment itself is worse than a toilet, who even wants to take chance by visiting the train toilet! My life is precious to be wasted dying a cruel death inside a train. The short break out of train was refreshing. In all its sense.

The bottomline

I missed my first day of internship. Nice beginning! Why is that the first day of internship, always so happening? This is what happened last summer.

Lesson learnt

Never crib about traveling in sleeper class. There are worse ways of traveling.

Delightful Delay

Me: Cummon mom, make a sad face. Me leaving.
Mom: Don't make me laugh more. Click now. Take the snap.

Me: Do some drama yaar. Show as if you are wiping tears with your left hand
Mom: Enough. Click. Now. (laughing)

Me: :( Click.

I got all the time to take snaps and blog because my train has been delayed by five hours! Three cheers to the Indian railways. But it's good for me. It's good because otherwise I would have reached Calcutta, oops, Kolkata, at about 2pm today. I need to board another train from Kolkata which shall take me to Bangalore. That train leaves Kolkata at 8:30 PM tonight. So now instead of waiting at the dirty Howrah Junction (this is what the Kolkata raiway station is called), for like more than six hours, I'll have to kill only something more than an hour. That's cool. But only as long as this running-goddamn-late train doesn't get delayed any more. If it does, then my entire plan is going to get bloddy messed up. And in that case, I will go and kill Lalu Prasad Yadav.


Yes,I am proud to be a light traveller. I don't understand why people don't travel light. Look at me. One laptop bag. Another small bag for clothes and food and camera. Done!

Milky Bite



Came across this brilliant ad campaign! Ah, now I know why I grew up without ever being a champion. I never tried "good milk in cartons". Damn me!
So the bottomline is, it is NOT enough if the milk is good. It also has to be in a carton! Or else you definitely do not stand any chance to qualify as a champion. And what do champions do by the way? Well, if the champion happens to be a school going kid, he empties the carton in the latest shining cup that he won, and then raises the cup a feet above his mouth to spill milk all over his face to show to the world what a champion he is. On the other hand, if the champion happens to be an actress, she sports a fake smile and conducts a survey on the number of 'good people in world' who use 'good milk in cartons'.
On second thought, I guess I would prefer just growing up. I wish the same for the guys who came up with this wonderful ad. Champions, grow up!

Help me Doctor

Patient (name and address withheld):

My boyfriend of four years loses his cool at the drop of a hat. For instance, he blows his top whenvever he can't reach me over the phone, which of course, is not my fault. Owing to such behaviour, I've started feeling that our relationship is not based on trust. I am confused about what to do in these circumstances. Please help!

Dr. Vatsa:

It could have been a good idea to get a slightly older boyfriend. Four years is kinda too less. Well, but if you don't really wanna go for anyone else, there still are a couple of solutions. To get started, stop dropping hats. Why do you have to wear hats by the way? Are they so cool, eh?

Look girl, being cool is not the onely thing in life. At times you gotta be hot! So please, for rat's sake, don't make his losing cool such a big issue.

And what's wrong in blowing his top? Cummon, he doesn't have boobs right? Let him mess with his top if that's what keeps him calm. And of course it's your fault if he can't reach you on phone when he wants to. You should go ahead and by a new cellphone and get a new sim and keep it 24X7 for him to reach you. Or if this is a costly solution, just keep buying him tops regularly so that he doesn't run short of them. Baby tops come very cheap when bought in bulk.

Your relationship is not based on trust? Of course not. By all means, it is based on your sexual fanatasies of God knows doing what with a four year old baby. You are totally sick. Trust me. If you really are looking for help, you should go to a Church and ask Jesus to wash off your sins. And go get your boy friend of four years admitted to some good school. He will bless you. Jesus shall bless you too.

Never write to me again.

PS: The question was picked from some newspaper's suppliment.

From the train

Typed early morning on 9th May 2007

Almost twenty hours have passed. The journey continues. The long boring, frustrating, train journey continues. Sun has shown its face few hours ago and I haven't yet brushed my teeth. Hell, I don't even have a toothpase.

The most important concern for today is money management. I have only seventy three ruppees with me. And I wont be reaching home before nine in the night. I shouldn't say its too less to survive, but yes I can't really afford to have anything more than what should be termed as basic need.

By the way, the reason I woke up my Dellruba in train was not to put this blog. It so happened that as I looked outside the window from my bog facing side lower berth, I saw bridge construction. This semester, I completed a course called Bridge Engineering (I hope I get a P grade and hence am using the word 'completed'). Looking outside I realized that I didn't remember the name of the type of bridge that I was seeing. And then it suddenly struck to me that I didn't have to wait to find that out. I had been scanning my classroom notes and hence had everything as pdf files on my laptop. It was brilliant to refer to notes in the train itself. For the more curious, the type was solid spanndrel.

It really is nice to have access to all the resources through one small machine which you can carry with you always. This is the era of e-books, e-notes and e-friends. More on e-friends later. I will have the morning tea (I can see a vendor coming by) and then finish reading the two magazines that I had picked in Chennai. They cost me twenty five bucks and if I don't finish them off, I'll feel bad for having mismanaged the limited cash that I had. By the way, the morning is cool and the balls not so demanding. :P

Train, Sem and Bangalore

A two day train journey commences today. In the fuckin hot weather. Wish I were rich and did never have to travel in a train and more so in a sleeper class! The only thing I do in sleeper class is to sleep. Restlessly. Scratching my balls. And watching everyone scratching their balls! Disgusting. Boring.

Wo man, eight sems are over. Kinda unbelievable! This sem almost killed me and I am really happy that I am alive and going back to home. Never mind.

So yeah, the whole point of this post is to let you know that there's going to be no kickass blogpost for a couple of days. If this is a good news for you, then fuck you, but if you will be missing my posts, then cummon, I will soon 'bang' into action. So cheer up! I will be in Bangalore from coming Monday. And I shall try to be back with full updates on Bang chicks and the Bang tricks. Interning there for two months in this awesome place called PWC. This post is getting too personal, so I guess I would stop. Wish me happy journey.

A voice came from the cigarette

Staring at the lit cigarette resting between his fingers, he wondered what lied ahead in life. Was he like a burning fag himself? A voice came from the cigarette.

Hi dude, thinking about me?
Hey hi, yeah. Kinda. I was wondering if me like ya as well. You know, burning, reducing, waiting for the end, while others suck me up and enjoy. I mean, look at you. Your life is a shit, total shit. Aint it?

All I know about my life is that once I get lit, I know I am not going to last for more than few minutes. This is all there is about my life. And I don't mind being sucked up. This is what my job is.
That's cool man, you at least know your purpose in life. That's cool. Half the fuckin human beings don't even know that.

Dude, you are missing on something here. I didn't choose this job. I was like, I never had the option to choose my own purpose. You've got that. You got the option to pick your purpose! And you still complaining? What a jerk!
You dare call me a jerk. Do you even realize that in like another minute, whether you like it or not, me goin to rub you off underneath my shoe. Do you fuckin realize that?

I dont' feek like talking to you. Finish me up and crush me. Do you really think I care about what you are going to do with me when you have used me?
Neither do I! Fuck off.

He didn't feel like finishing the fag. Bloody fag. What an attitude! It deserved to be crushed. He threw it and stamped upon it.

He sat there, staring in blank for sometime. He reached out for the packet and pulled out another fag. He lit it. Staring at the lit cigarette resting between his fingers, he wondered what lied ahead in life. Was he like a burning fag himself? A voice came from the cigarette.

Abhishek Bachchan speaks

Amrit requested me to put him fundays on how I managed to crack Aish. I thought I would share the gyaan on his blog which is extremely popular amidst the masses, so that many more benefit from it.

Well, the first thing that I had to do was to make her believe that a man has to be tall, dark and handsome. She fell for this trap. I of course was a living testimony to the 'tall' and 'dark' aspects of the story. So the next job was to prove to her that I was 'handsome' as well. I realized that the best way out would be to hide my face as much as possible. So I decided to have as much facial hairs on my face as possible. Somehow the trick worked!

More so Aish feared if I were crazy for her only 'coz of her stunning looks. She was looking for somone to whom beauty meant something more than great face and great boobs. Though frankly speaking, great face and great boobs were the only things I really cared about, I projected myself as though I were an admirer of her intelligence. I would often tell her that only an intelligent woman like her could have decided to stay away from balding, ageing, animal hunters like Salman Khan. And she used to believe me, when the fact is you don't need intelligence to say no to Salman. All you need is animal instinct.

Well, after all the effort that I put, the gain is worth it. She is Aish, damn it. And now she is mine. By the way, Amrit, she has some pretty hot cousins. Want me to introduce them to ya? Lemme know coz I know you are as despo for babes as myself.

The company

What will you do if I gift you 500 bucks?
I'll take it.

Eh. But what will you do with it?
I will keep it.

Fucker in life. For how long? How will you spend it?
I will start a company. I will name it after you.

Wow! Thank you sir. What kinda company by the way. With 500 bucks?
I cannot reveal my business plan. You will get to know about it when it comes up.

When will it come up?
Not before you pass on those fuckin five hundred bucks.

What if I don't?
No. Please don't tell that. Don't tell me my company is not coming up. You can't do that to me. Please. I'll be destroyed. My life will lose meaning. I will end up blogging all my life.

Bye.
Thanks. Are you like coming back with the cash?

Fucker in life.
:)

Eggs

Why do they look like they way they look like, the eggs?
They look funny.

You didn't answer me.
So that when you see them, you realize the importance of fun in life!

Fun? When you look at eggs, is that what you realize?
At least when I look at eggs, I don't fuckin wonder why they look like the way they look like.

The last wing treat

We cracked a total of six wing treats. The last one was thrown by myself, Anshu and Kallu, the three Dual Degree fourth year folks who gotta stay for one more year. And luckily, all three of us are in the same class!

Memories of these treats shall stay for a long long time! I wonder if all of us will ever meet again together! Sounds unrealistic given that five of the twelve of the faces you see above wont even be in India in few months! Ah!

The End Sem posts

Sem ends with end sems! And leaves its marks. On blogs!

Twilight Fairy appears to be totally frustrated by the exams, and wonders "why is that when it comes to acads i don really put my all... i don really care so much.. ?? why...??"! Doesn't it happen to all of us when the exams are about to get over as we realize that we 'could' have done a better job had we put a li'l extra effort? But. But. But. We never really cared so much! Why?

Aniket appears calm and cool when he declares that "it's now time to relax". It of course is! And surprisingly, in second year itself, this dual degree chap already shows hints of sentimentalism towards leaving insti!

Lays realizes how this sem just sucked it out of him. He shoots back at all the 'demons in disguise' who love to call themselves Profs! I like the ending note of his post which states that "I will never have to go through the fourth semester of IIT in my life EVER again"! :)

Then there's this kid on the block, who just wrote her tenth boards. She has gone ahead and described all the teachers that ever taught her. I like this take on her Bio Mam: "She is SUCH a boring teacher that half my class actually slept through the "Reproduction" lesson....Now u get it, don't u?!". LOL!

Czar never mentions anything about exams. But when one tries to prove the existence of God, a few days after the last end sem, it has to be the end sem after-effect! To quote him:

There are two things that one would say when asked a question 'Does god exist?
  1. Yes he does
  2. No he does not

I guess he missed to include a choice 3. Who cares! :P

Ma


Ma, dying to meet you. Will be home on 8th. Hug me the way you hugging me here. Been ages since I slept on your lap. Missing you. Love you!

X A

Top: ?? Gaurav, Pranav, Raman, Chandra Bhanu, Aunindra, Vikas, ?? Devendra, Vimal, Ankur Raj, Aakash, Prashant, Nilesh Jain, ?? Anusheel

Middle: ?? Akhil, ?? Abhishek Sinha, Rajshekhar, ?? Tarique, Anjani, ?? Azim, ?? Aatish, Alok Gautam, ?? Abhishek, ?? Amit, Mayuresh, Neelabh

Bottom: ?? Sakshi Raj, ?? Shalini Pandey, Priyanka, Madhukar Sir, Debolina Mam, Mrs. Mira (Princi), Pandit mam, ?? Vijay Shah (this chap taught me history-n-civics), aditi Kriti, ?? Vineeta, Isac


I would really appreciate it if any Karen's junta reading this, can help me complete the missing names. By the way I actually remember most of them though they were not in my section! Nice memory! :)

And anyone has X C pics?

Update: Akash completed the missing pictures in one go. Thanks! The missing names have been added. By the way still looking for my class pics. Anyone has them?

Jaanwar

Geetali, while going through my mush post, wondered when did Akshay Kumar sport a mush! Luckily I found this youtube video which will answer her comment.



By the way after seeing this video, I realized what 'looking like Akshay Kumar' really meant. He looks ugly in here! Babu Luhaar! LOL!

The making of the Civicube

Neelabh wanted to know how he could do the kind of graphic work that I did for the Civicube for folks at his office. Quite a few guys keep asking me to put them photoshop fundays to get them started. Well, on considering Neelabh's request I thought why not make a video where I teach how to go ahead and create a text cube. After all it's a very easy job! So here is the video. Have fun.



I hope you guys could follow my instructions. Let me know if I could improve.

PS: In case you want to make such videos yourself, but don't have a screen recording software, I would recommend CamStudio. It is free and it works.

Youths everwhere are the same. They curse the system, they feel lonely, they love their friends and they keep questioning the purpose of life. More so, youths who blog always have a lot in common. More than anything, they want to tell others whats up with them. Be it sharing happiness and giving a hint of their sadness, be it declaring to the world some new thing that they discovered or putting up some good work of theirs (sketches, poetry, vidoes), blogging helps them.

But there is something which cannot really be blogged about. You cannot talk too much about people who you know very well. And the reason is simple. They wont like it if you have somthing 'not so good' to say about them. In fact at times, they don't like their names being mentioned even without a genuine reason and even when you have something good to say for them.

Well, I respect their concerns. Not everyone wants the world to know whats up with them. And they sure do have the right to. But the fact is, each one of us who blogs, at times realizes this limitation. We can catch hold of few friends and discuss any person, but we cannot do the same thing up here.

But then, there is a simple alternative to it. We can always pick our 'blog friends' and include them in our posts. I don't know how often I am going to do this, but let me try doing it today. I once read some blogpost called india-uncut, where the guy did nothing else besides putting updates on the blogging circuit. I have other things to tell about about but at times, it's nice to make you guys read things which my blogger friends are up with.

So vatsap on my personal blogging circuit?

Ashtung is trying hard to sell the show 'The week that wasn't'. I saw one episode of this show on the IBN site and I will agree with Ashtung (we call him Jaanwar in hostel; yes he is a hostel mate) that the show indeed is funny. While some guys are busy keeping track of the week that wasn't there are few who are coming up with new stuffs in the week that is. Aniket has taken a break from graphic designing (he is a studd Graphic Artist of the design team that I lead), and this post displays his latest sketch. Aint it beautiful? Neha, a great freind who is also studd in sketching, is back to blogging after quite some time. No new sketches from her end but she sure has has come back stronger after emerging from whatever she faced. And her come back message is as strong as she appears to be: "No one dies virgin, Life f**** everyone". Simply love this line. I also loved the poem that she put up- 'I hope you dance'. It made me feel good. It gave me strength. Hey Neha, hope you blog more often! :) And hope you guys like the poem as much as I did. My best friend Neelabh too has a poem to offer. I never knew he could pen down poems, but then his post will tell you that this is the very reason he wrote a poem. It's in hindi by the way. Now that Neha brought up the delicate topic of life, I should tell you guys about this lovely pic that Aniket found. It shows life; in a very simple way. I like the colors. I have a couple of other designers as my blog friends too. Cryptic Souls is one of them. These female costumes that she has put up here have something charming and authentic about them.Talking about dresses, I liked what Geetali wore on her B'day celebration here. The dress looks sexy, doesn't it? ;)

Footer fans will find this post by Krish interesting. "Up against an away loss to Everton at Goodison Park with Chelsea leading against Bolton this is what Sir Alex had to say to his Manchester United players at half time", is how his post begins. And the rest of it is solid stuff!

Kini has got a serious post here, which should be read by all those in insti. He has expressed his angsts against the stupid new rules that the Insti keeps coming up with. I agree with him on most of the issues. I would like to quote a comment to his post from a foreign student in campus.

I really don't like the fact that you guys don't SAY THINGS to people who should be TOLD things. When a teacher is bad, mean, useless, just TELL HIM what the fuck! you shouldn't be scared by people. Just do it properly and politely, and this is right.


Kini's post will tell you about the mech 10 minute rule in case you haven't already heard about it. And here is a live experience of the mech department atrocities by Mohan. The way Mohan has made fun of the kind of questions they were asked later in the exam will make you ROTFL. No doubts about it.

Eh, I have so many friends to talk about. But I guess I will stop now. Let me see how this style of blogging is taken by you guys. I might put up similar posts if the response is actually good. So do lemme know.

I read few blogs daily. And the credit of course goes to google reader. So seriously, if you haven't tried it yet, please do so. You will never ever miss any blog posted by your friends. I wrote a post some time back, on how to use it. You might find it useful.

By the way if you go back to another earlier post, click on the snapshot picture put up there to have a look at the enlarged version of the image. If you observe carefully, you will notice a 'Feeds' link below the 'starred' link on the top left side. Saw that? Do you recall that regular gmail doesn't have any such link? What is this 'Feeds link'

Well, besides a change in appearance, using the gmail skin that I introduced in that post (read the rest of that post to get the skin funda), you get this option to have a 'feeds' link in gmail. And the beauty is, each time a new post is put up on a blog that you have subscribed to using google reader, a number in brackets pops up right to the word 'Feeds'; exactly the same way numbers come for inbox, spam, draft, various labels etc. And more so, when you click on the link, the whole google reader interface opens inside the gmail interface. This is something too cool! So now, I read all the blog posts in gmail itself. And reading blogposts from blogs that you have subscribed to voluntarily is way better than going through the boring forwards that keep coming to your inbox (or in the 'forwards' label folder in my case).

So guys and girls, if you really love reading my posts and posts from some other friends of yours, and you already are an avid gmail fan, this feature is something that you should setup soon. All you gotta do is run your fingers on keyboard for sometime, and the way you read blogs will change. Forever. And for the good of it. :) Best of luck with the whole finger running job.

Civicube

My class. Parting time is up. Only few of us will be staying back for two more sems to complete our masters in Infrastructural Civil Engineering. It's a strange feeling. It's strange to realize that four years have passed!


 

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