Switched off for good

The End of the Beginning

2010-10-16T15:01:00.000-07:00

Let's go back to the drawing board. Let's ask the WHATNEXT question yet again. Let's not fall off the grid. Let's plan yet again.

It is done. Things have this notoriously beautiful habit of falling in place. This is my small moment of joy :)

Colors in an unequal world

2010-01-08T10:32:00.003-08:00

Friday, January the 8th 2010. The day shall go down in the annals of human history as a day when our fellow human inhabitants from across the gender divide asserted en-masse that they continue to remain capable of imbecilities well beyond human comprehension. I base my rather harsh stance on the unusual course of ethereal activity that I came to witness today evening. I am sure the reader of this post is well in the know of the mode of public expression associated with instant messaging client software: that which we call the Status Message and exploit as the medium of dissemination of our current indulgence to the world at large.

The Instant Messaging Software has been a popular mode of entertainment ever since it was popularized late in the last decade by the software firm Yahoo. It's use has largely been restricted to strictly formal requirements of everyday subsistence such as:

searching for prospective partners for engaging in sexual intercourse in the long run via the 'Chat Room' facility;
needlessly talking away all night in hope of wooing a long lost school friend;
spying;
other activities of equal if not more serious consequence

More recently, a new exploit has been discovered by the devoted clientelle of such software - the status message. It has been pressed into useful service in the most trying of circumstances, and has performed upto expectation in most cases and surpassing in the remaining few. Personally, the Status Message came to my rescue when I needed a calculator at an extremely short notice prior to an examination. The Status Message helped me locate accommodation for a 2 month stay in Bangalore sometime back. It came in particularly handy when I had to dutifully announce to the world that Debjeet Biswas used barrier contraceptive-gear each evening despite the lack of feminine companionship. My peers have been equally upright and prompt in their innovations with the Status Message too. I vaguely remember Robin frequently inviting accompaniment for that last remaining portion of liqueur.

And ofcourse, my favourite one -- although I do not remember who hosted it -- went something like this: "I want to have sex. Volunteers?" While the expression was a delight for direct and concise business-writing proponents, I doubt whether the owner ever got satiated.

Which brings us to today, and the motive behind drafting this exceedingly unreadable manuscript. This evening when I logged into my instant messaging service provider Google's client software, I was greeted by a rather odd phenomenon. To quote from Dasi's Status Message, "My Gtalk list looks like a Photoshop Color Pallette gone horribly wrong." After some investigation, it became apparent that it was solely women who were displaying colors as their Status Messages. Certain fruitless deliberations over instant messaging with several female associates remained fruitless. And then the almighty 800-pound search gorrilla (Google) answered. "What Color Is Your Bra? Facebook's Pointless Underwear Protest." is the title of an entry on the world-renowned weekly NewsWeek. Yes, several young women decided to let the world know what color brassiere they were wearing under their shirts.

There was Pink, Black, Pink!!, white, baby pink, pink and blue, carnation pink and several others -- all over Facebook and GoogleTalk. Yes, women chose to go berserk. Apparently it was for some sort of a noble cause centered around Cancer Awareness. What was more intriguing was the sheer promptness in their responses. Proud they were all, without exception. As an open question to all females who're so wasted as to stop by and read this blog, may I ask how divulging the color of your innerware shall make the world a better place? Let me be honest, I am not whining about the incredible happenings of the day. It is just that I am slightly purturbed at the sheer lack of intelligence that plagued half of humanity today. Let me close with a small quote I remembered (modified for current context): "Brassiere are like options and futures. They derive their value from underlying assets."

And of course, here's a good friend of mine who convincingly won an Extempore today evening; only to follow it up with this:

And the reason why this last image down here figures on my blog is simple: the two people, who apart from '6 others' who 'like' the declaration below in the status message are great friends who'd be extremely pleased to see this. :P

Term 2 and Year 2009

2009-12-27T10:13:00.000-08:00

...and the second term at IIM Lucknow comes to an end. It is done, and what an eventful one it has been. Started as usual with academic rigour and quizzes n all; gradually all that took a back-seat, and for a month I was busy nursing an A4 sized sheet's content (37 iterations on the content), mugging away rudderless, watching short-lists pass me by with a whoosh sound; five formal shirts were duly purchased for five eventful days; and it all culminated in me being one seriously lucky chap. In the last post I wrote in a similar context, I put forth certain remarks and observations about the MBA culture -- more specifically its Great Indian equivalent -- the PGDM.

This post comes at cross-roads between a term-end and an year-end. I'll try and summarize both, from my perspective. The past year has been quite an eventful one for me. The key notables were some academic eventualities I hadn't exactly wished for, some minor instances of ill-luck which worked entirely against me, and some extremely mechanised competing machines whom I ran into at IIML (I wrote an entry on such mugging-machines here). Things were consistently failing to fall in place. This term flagged in a much warranted recess.

Some of my favorite Key takeaways from the year have been:

I knocked a convincing 99.91 percentile in cat, something I'll cherish all my life.
Submitted the first resignation of my life. The good bye letter I wrote to the company is here.
Bought my new tele-lens and opened a Flickr Account. Click here to see it.
Completed one third of my MBA.
Made some really really really great friends.
Learnt how to give exams. (Roughly 90 exam-hall appearences in 6 months).
Realized that the honour of feminine companionship is unlikely for mono-plane flyers like myself. Officially giving up on any prospects/pursuits :P
Officially scored a Type-A score of 150+ [Type A personalities defined here]
Secured a summers stint with an awesome firm. [The recess I spoke of up there somewhere]. Looking forward to it :)
My first picture to be used for some constructive purpose :D [Click here to see the picture]
Learnt plenty of economic theory. The only and maximal value add over the past year, I'd say.

Looking forward to the following in the coming year:

Learning shall continue to be the primary motive here at Lucknow. I continue to hope that it doesn't take a toll on my gradecard ;) [Refer to previous term's post here]
Buy a macro lens and go up n close with wildlife.
Buy a portrait lens and convince some female into volunteering for portrait shots :P [Tried Seth's Lens and click here for one of the pics I grabbed with it.]
Buy a Mach-V and learn some serious TT from Adi-Jain and Pandhi.
Have fun :)

Next post on this theme shall follow right before summers...

Starshine

2009-11-25T04:25:00.001-08:00

Those that fell through:

--1--

When Starshine decided that her time was done, she spoke with her Constellation Mother and decided to bloat and disappear for good. The Constellation Mother was rather surprised, for it was not typical of young stars, barely in their prime, to give up on shining so easily. After all, not every cosmic gas cloud had the co-ordinated set of coincidences falling in its favour to convert it into a Star. It was also a matter of pride amongst the Interstellar Gas Clouds to metamorphose into a full blown star. They all vied for it, and very few actually managed to secure the required gravity pulls that allowed for sustainable nuclear reactions so typical of stars.

Starshine too, had started out as a low-profile interstellar gas cloud. She however, never bore ambitions of turning into a full blown star. "It isn't my cup of tea really. I'd rather float around free of any commitments. Sticking out as a star and shining all day long doesn't really appeal to me much." But then things turned that way for her. There was this very random cosmic dust storm which swirled her into a magnanimous typhoon of dust, radiation and gravity. (Some say it was an ex-lover of her's who had lived out as a Star and was now a blackhole, who decided to rub her off. But no one could prove anything since he was a Black-Hole afterall). Things never looked back thereafter. She rapidly transformed through the stages in due agreement with Hawking's research to come out as a beautiful silvery shining star. And what a beautiful silvery blue she was. She was the envy of every star-femme in the constellation, and all the big and burly hunks wanted to get into inter-stellar gravity games with her.

--2--

But she chose to remain aloof. She never spoke with anyone. She shone extravagantly. She never compromised on what her core purpose and what her singular motive of existence now was. Then one fine afternoon it happened. A white-dwarf who had once been the biggest star in the neighboring constellation and was now the loner carbon-burning-wanderer crossed her by. He hardly shone. But he had a nice white glow, something which struck Starshine. She knew that the White-Dwarf's glow was different, something she hadn't witnessed before. It was more like the warmth of her heart. The White-Dwarf swerved off course, pulled by that gravitational field variation so typical of young Star-femmes who want to associate with stars but yet wish not to be noticed.

They exchanged some cosmic radiation, but Starshine was extremely reserved in her mannerisms. The White-Dwarf fell for her stardust. He collected some of it and stashed it away in his core-nucleus. It was the most warm and comforting stardust he had ever encountered. After trying invain to negotiate a gravitational space-time warp to attract Starshine's attention, White-Dwarf gave up. He realized that his was not the time nor prerogative to woo a full-blown Star-femme. And a Star-femme as lovely as Starshine. He was, afterall, a petty white-dwarf. What good could he possibly be, when pitted against supernovas, blackholes and burly big super-stars. Other members of the constellation had witnessed this rather unusual cosmic anomaly, and were amused by what looked like a rather quick closeout of nebular interactions.

The White-dwarf moved on. No one ever saw him or heard of him again. Starshine continued to shine. She grew more beautiful each day, adding newer chromatic frequencies to her already rich offering. Even the ever-lovely NorthStar noticed Starshine's nonchalant diligence. Then a few years later, a very young and very energetic comet streaked by with some news. (Constellations welcomed comets, since these young gypsies always brought news from across galaxies, adding to the usually drab folklore which the Constellation Mother would always relate to everyone). A few light years down the Milky Way, just off the Sagittarius constellation, he had seen the remains of an unusual white-dwarf. The White-dwarf had burnt its last around that area, and amongst its remains were found stardust which were still intact in form. The Stardust had belonged to someone from this corner of the galaxy, and was the most beautiful stardust anyone had ever seen.

When Starshine heard of it from her friends, she knew what they were speaking of. And she was crestfallen. Never did she know that there was such fire within the white-dwarf's nucleus that it could contain her stardust in perfect form even after several years. She knew not how to react. So she went and spoke with the Constellation Mother and related her intent to metamorphose out of stardom. The Constellation members didn't let her do so, ofcourse. She was the most beautiful amongst them all. Their pride. But she never shone with the foregone splendour. She added no more frequencies to her rich spectrum. She's still up there in the sky, but the White-Dwarf is gone.

Randomness and How to beat it

2009-10-06T03:14:00.000-07:00

Geek-speak:

I recently interviewed the Nobel Laureate in Statistical Sciences (play along guys, that's a hypothetical award made up exclusively to cater to this article) Lord Codesmith Cipher, and asked him his views on information entropy. The senior scientist got beautifully philosophical in course of elucidating his answer. Find below the precise transcript of what he spoke:

"Randomness is what we use to describe lack of predictability. It essentially signifies the uncertainty associated with precisely identifying consequences of fluctuations in inputs to an other-wise understood system. Information theorists with a background in communication systems employ entropy considerations to quantify randomness in a system. Statisticians call it 'error', and minimize it using least squares. Signal processing engineers usually model randomness against a 'baseline' and try to 'fit it' with a gaussian or 'colored noise' frequency response. The credit-worthiness analyst calls it 'risk', and uses a host of tools and tactics to bridle it.

What is common to all of the above is the intent to quantify randomness. When Man was faced with uncertainty He did not give in to it. True, you cannot predict the precise consequences of an input fluctuation until you know all the driving forces of the system. You can only do so well as to minimize the uncertainty associated with the expected output or response. But does that mean we do not give it a fight at all?

Bowing to uncertainty isn't what brought Man to where he is today. It's the intent to fight it out, which got him here. Most of us who make it across those notoriously competitive tests held for admission into prestigious institutions of higher learning do so because they choose to fight the uncertainty. To take randomness by its horns. To evaluate the merits of the System, to identify beatable elements, to work around unbeatable ones. To quantify risk. To do a SWOT analysis and lock onto opportunities. To break set patterns. To walk that one extra mile to narrow down that uncertainty window by one micron.

From experience of having interacted with several high-performers of varying capacities, I have come to understand something interesting about fighting randomness: "The incremental reduction in uncertainty increases as a function of applied effort." In English, what it means it means is this: to reduce the uncertainty from 15% to 10%, the effort required will always be more than that required to reduce uncertainty from 20% to 15%. And so on as we reach zero.

The corollary to the aforementioned hypothesis is even more interesting: "Incremental reduction in uncertainty so as to reach zero uncertainty will require infinite effort, and consequently is unattainable in the real world." If you've ever fought for a cause, you'll know that the aforementioned hypothesis-and-corrollary are eerily correct. So, however hard you try for something, you can never be 100% sure about the outcome. But that's how the world is.

We all have causes that are close to our hearts. Each of which merits an effort that'll make eyeballs turn. How about you pick up your cause and take it through? Why sit back and give up in the face of uncertainty? I respect my uncertainties. They give me a reason to exist. To fend against. They're my food for thought. My intellectual high. Where's yours?"

"Kahan chali gayi hai saali khushi"

2009-09-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

A conversation with Makdi post-examinations:

Me: "Yaar these exams suck. They don't let you sit down and understand the subject per-se"

Makdi: "Abe you and your subjects are like fuck-buddies. You're not supposed to fall in love. Hell, you're not even supposed to engage in foreplay. Try getting fanciful, and you get it in the rear. Screw your subjects, and move on."

(Makdi the analyst is a peer at IIM Lucknow, and happens to be my college senior from IIT Kgp).

Okay I might be the usual jackass who may not really be the best-fit into a screw-'em-all regime. Fine. No worries. I still do happen to have some key takeaways I'd like to pen down, after having come to the end of the famed term-1 at IIM Lucknow. Here they are:

1. Vendetta: Its a big bad world out there. It gets worse if you think its bad. Assume its rosy, and that you're the king, sweetie...

2. De rigueur: You're there to get your ass whipped. So get it whipped. You may not walk away with accolades and a rank one in class. Relax. Remember, though, that you're here for something bigger than that. Make the most of it.

3. Busy Bee: procrastination isn't the way out here. Attend all classes, and try to listen to what the prof says. Every day must reduce your accounts payable and long term liabilities; it shouldn't add to them!

4. ROI: you've invested two years, have incurred an opportunity cost that can raise eyebrows, and then there's the fee which amounts to a honda city car. Make the most of it all. You're here to learn business. Do NOT treat it as a placement agency. It might be the best way to look at it given the state of affairs, but try not to fall for it. Learn, jackass, learn.

5. Thy Peers: Some of your peers are real gems. They're the people who'll keep their head low, talk less, and know exactly which way they're headed. They're the non-descript kind who may/may-not be on top of the class... but they'll be where they have planned, in the near future. Look out for them. Associate with them. Learn from them. Caution: Look out for lemons too!

6. Forget your past: You might have been an IITian with a 400 odd rank and a notoriously high CAT score. All that doesn't count here. If you're here, you're as well or as poorly aligned to the system as is any other of your peers. Shed thy past.

7. Marks or learning?: Oft spoken dilemma. For a lucky few, the two domains align. For the happier few, marks come, learning they don't consider essential. For the unlucky few (like the intellectually superior being writing this blog), marks don't come. So he fashionably speaks of learning as his intention. Decide which category you belong to, and develop yourself accordingly! :)

8. Proffessionalism: Be particular about what you do, and how you do it. Try not to go the 'get-by-just-like-that' method. It may work for some, but I believe it defeats the purpose. Every presentation you give, should be the best effort you could showcase. And so on with your assignments.

9. Love thy excel, powerpoint and word: I started off the term submitting assignments in LaTeX documentation, but soon realized that word was far better. Stick to MS Office. They're the lords.

10. Regression sells: If you can't do it qualitatively, try regression. That's what they say about prof-pleasing-analyses. Might be true, but as one with a fairly decent numbers background, let me tell you that you need more than regression to get by. When things fail, Try multivariate logistic regressions, and do not discount classification-regression-trees based on pre-specified tree depths! :P :P

To close it out, I'm looking forward to term - 2. I hope I don't have to get ass-whipped as harshly. I propose to stay bullish on learning. I hope it doesn't cause much trouble to my grade card.

Thanks :)

2009-09-14T11:51:00.001-07:00

Somethings can put a smile on a face. Especially when they come at the right moment. Thanks :) And wishing you the same.

She

2009-09-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

What follows is heavily laden with expletives and may not make for a good read at all. However, it was the best parallel I could draw against my current state of affairs.

"She was the most beautiful amongst them. Her moves enchanted them all. Her smile was the best thing which ever happened to them. Her every move was titillating. Yet she was unaware of them all. She was beautiful, yet unaware. And happily so. She only concentrated on building upon her learnings. She offered the best dance performance each evening, and never cared whether they jeered or cheered. Her own dance is what she loved. And when most left - save a few - her second self would emerge. That which was hopelessly given into serving the pleasurable interests of a sickly few. She pleased them. It was her job to do so. She was, afterall, a prostitute.

One fine evening, she decided it was her time to go beyond the gala evenings. She went out, and explored the world yonder. In the years that followed, her skill deteriorated. She couldn't dance well anymore. Nor could she please the ones who intended to pay. She grew old. Her physique wasn't attractive anymore. So when I, her owner, asked her to dance once again; to get laid with strangers once again; she agreed faithfully. There was a afterall, a time when she danced carefree. And earned shamelessly in lieu of her physique. But dance she could not. And sexual drive she had none remaining. "

Why do I relate this story here? Because I believe that She, the protagonist in the anecdote above, is much like my resume. Your resume. Everyone's resume. There was a time when you added things to your resume. For the love of the activities. Not for how they would show up on an A4 sized paper. That is when your resume was most beautiful. And lovable. You let it off when you went to work. Now you are back, asking a rusty old thing to perform again. You are decorating a dancer well beyond her prime, and asking her to dance again. To get laid again. For sheer transactional interests.

Ask yourself. Is it the same today? Are your skills getting overstretched by the requirement of an extra line on your resume? Is your prostitute dancing with the physique of a 58 year old woman well into her menopause? Go carefree people, do not manufacture your persona to fit an A4 paper. I'm trying hard, but as they say, advice is always easier to deliver than follow!

The Crescent

2009-08-25T02:49:00.001-07:00

The Crescent
Originally uploaded by Hansraj Mishra

Another shot at the moon. Strange as it may seem, the moon is usually yellowish here. No idea why. But anyways, I don't complain as long as its cool to look at. Meanwhile, life seems to have come to terms with me here. (Or is it the other way round?). I don't quite have any further qualms I suppose... at least not as of now! Aage aage dekho hota hai kya :)

Of Snooker Balls

2009-08-16T03:21:00.001-07:00

IMG_4095
Originally uploaded by hansraj1

Clicked this one late yesterday night... I've really made good use of this weekend I suppose! :) The heat shall catch on tomorrow onwards... lets see what's in store. :D

Night Grabs

2009-08-15T03:56:00.001-07:00

IMG_3969
Originally uploaded by hansraj1

Took a nice loong expose yesterday night; what you see in this picture is the faculty block at IIM Lucknow. Peole have been asking me several questions about the red tinge in the sky. Without any intent of getting nasty, here goes the explanation: This is night time, and the radiations that rayleigh's scattering is entertaining as of now are infrared in nature and are emitted by earth's surface. With a long enough exposure, you can grab all of it on film, and you get the beautiful red.

Okay, it might all actually be wrong too, but the color's there naturally. No off-cam edits to bring out the red!

Musings of an idle mind

2009-08-10T04:56:00.000-07:00

I am idle right now. Mid term papers got over yesterday; ate like a lousy animal @ KFC; went to theatre; strains of music and liqueur flowed through the night; had a photo session today - formals n all; represented my hostel in TT league matches(ask not the result!); attended a focus group discussion for a marketing research project; updated my to-do-list; and I'm idle finally.

We got over with our mid-term papers yesterday. As one with scant regard for academics but a notoriously stiff head, I did fairly well. Tried to keep silly mistakes to the minimum (though not zero: and they can be crucial). I had vowed to go on a full-on mugging spree here; and I did so. I mugged a lot, But then you can't compete with certain species of muggers at all. Such as people with photographic memories and extremely mechanical precision in answering examination question papers. (My previous post relates to them). And I decided I wouldn't lower myself enough to trade off an extra wikipedia read with a silly glance at last-year-question-paper-shit. Even though that might compromise a grade here or there.

But anyways, I'm loving it all. Love the new subjects out here. Love the profs, love the people I associate with. And I'm particularly excited about learning how to make solid presentations. Given four already in a span of a month, which included one where I spoke my entire slides without looking at the PPT at all. It was beautiful. I speak first, and the point drops on the slide later.

Let us see how do things shape up here. I went and watched a film yesterday. Usually I am not film-friendly. I sleep through them most of the time. To me they're more like 125 rupee sleeping passes in an air-conditioned enclosure with crying kids in one corner, boring old women in another, and lots of flashy lights shining on a big silver screen. But this one managed to keep me awake for quite some time. It was called Love-aajkal. Was on contemporary love affairs. And I liked the theme. To a certain extent, I thought it relates to all of us -- somewhat. Go watch it, and you'll know why I said so.

You know what's the best thing that has happened to me in all my life? It is the cumulative summation of all events that has landed me precisely at my current space-time-emotion co-ordinates. Things could have been better, no doubt. But then they could as well have been much worse! Guess what guys, its the same with all of us. Take cues. Smile today, for tomorrow may be worse.

Pictures we took after the photo session -

From Formals n all

Arthur the artist

2009-08-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

Arthur was an artist. Arthur loved painting pictures. He could sense the colors on the pallette by sheer experience. He never needed vials to measure out precise quantities of any colors to come up with the perfect vermillion red or ochre yellow. It was in his blood. And ever so frequently would he come across those one or two instances when the measurement would fail. But his piece of art wouldn't go bad because of this mis-measurement. It would acquire a new hue. A new enigma. A new vibrance about it. And the crowds loved it.

Then Arthur landed into the New World. People here were machines. They weren't artists. They were more of chemists. They knew not what worth a bright maroon carried; they simply knew how to concoct it. They knew how to fill in the borders, they knew not how to sketch the borders. But the sketches and the colors were given to them by the Great Lord of the New World in a blueprint manual. They merely followed their instructions.

And lets give it to them. They were good at executing the pieces of art flawlessly. They came up with wonderful compositions. But the compositions didn't have a soul. Their soul was what had been defined by the Great Lord of the New World. But they were duly rewarded for following the blueprints. This was a world where art was merely a mechanical device meant to be done for the sake of doing. No one knew to what end their pictures were.

Arthur tried his skills to beat these People. He tried compositions that would have awed his older world. People there would have loved him for his experiments with colors, and his sheer disbelief in modernist art. But people here thought differently. They knew he was a different blood. But they knew him as one with little respect for order. They thought Arthur was not one amongst them.

Arthur still lives in the New World. He still loves his art. And he still continues to do without vials to measure out precise quantities of ochre and indigo. His art is respected in a select community of other Old-World dwellers. And he simply laughs at The People of The New World who follow the Blueprints of the Great Lord. For he knows, that in the end, its The Skill he carries, his legacy from the Old World... which will win him the pie.

Trying to hold out

2009-07-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

The drunken kid at the Godfather's feet:

"Things haven't quite turned out the way should have. Okay. There is little that can be done about it. Cool.

You know, the one thing I have learnt in my short life is this: if you intend to do something well -- really well -- you've got to tie your hands, tie your feet, and jump into the water. Drown a little. Let the water subsume you. Let it overwhelm you. Panic a bit. Go wrong. Bang into the wall headfirst. Bleed a bit. But through and through, know that it is all just strokes in the bigger picture. 'Coz once you're done banging your head, bleeding, drowning, panicking... boy you're serious trouble for them all. Been-there-done-that has no substitute.

I have been bleeding, panicking, drowning for quite sometime now. And am beginning to reconsider... is it really part of a bigger picture? Or is it just sadistic pleasure that I derive by inflicting pain upon myself? In case it is so, then maybe I need to sit back and peace out. Let things take their own course. But if it isn't, then I need to hold ground. And as a consequence to which I shall ask: 'How long? This is becoming painful.'"

Give him an answer, people. The kid needs answers. My Professor on Organizational Behaviour quoted a nice one-liner from the textbook: "God gave the simplest of the problems to physicists and mathematicians." :)

And yea, I took a few pics here at the IIM-L campus recently, check them out:

Lucknow Campus Photos

Boo it is

2009-06-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

Do I have a right to sit with myself. Help myself out a little. I am troubled, tainted, tortured, tired and tormented by it all. It is like attending to an accident where several people have died, and you can't attend to your own dead family because you can't afford yourself that luxury right now. Shit. Pardon the expletive.

Someone show me out of the theatre. The protagonist that I am, has played a controversial role already. The audience is gawking. People have been pained by my act. I know not why. Is it too bad to want something?

Fed lost to Rafa @ hardcourt, and said this, "The problem is you can’t go in the locker room and just take it easy and take a cold shower. You’re stuck out there. It’s the worst feeling. ... It’s rough."

I can somehow see what he meant. I need to go back to the shower now. Ever spent that much of time under a shower in a single day?

G'nite folks.

"Extreme Ways"

2009-06-27T02:23:00.000-07:00

[Theme song, the Bourne Supremacy]

Extreme ways are back again

Extreme places I didn't know

I broke everything new again

Everything that I'd owned

I threw it out the windows, came along

Extreme ways I know move apart

The colors of my sea

Perfect color me

Extreme ways that help me

That help me out late at night

Extreme places I had gone

But never seen any light

Dirty basements, dirty noise

Dirty places coming through

Extreme worlds alone

Did you ever like it then

I would stand in line for this

There's always room in life for this

Oh baby, oh baby

Then it fell apart, it fell apart

Oh baby, oh baby

Then it fell apart, it fell apart

Oh baby, oh baby

Then it fell apart, it fell apart

Oh baby, oh baby

Like it always does, always does

Extreme songs that told me

They helped me down every night

I didn't have much to say

I didn't get above the light

I closed my eyes and closed myself

And closed my world and never opened

Up to anything

That could get me along

I had to close down everything

I had to close down my mind

Too many things to cover me

Too much can make me blind

I've seen so much in so many places

So many heartaches, so many faces

So many dirty things

You couldn't even believe

I would stand in line for this

It's always good in life for this

Oh baby, oh baby

Then it fell apart, it fell apart

Oh baby, oh baby

Then it fell apart, it fell apart

Oh baby, oh baby

Then it fell apart, it fell apart

Oh baby, oh baby

Like it always does, always does

Jack and his alter-ego

2009-06-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

A very drunk and very frustrated Jack happened to meet up with his alter-ego the other day. They shared another drink, and the Alter-ego asked Jack, "You don't look too good. What's wrong?"

To which Jack said, "I love her. I do not intend to live a life of nymph-less misogyny. And I am not a philanderer. I love them. I do not intend to lose their vicarious omni-presence because of a break of faith. I want it to be painless. I know not how it shall come about. Someone drug me to sleep. And wake me up when it is all over. Like in Click. Like in the song 'wake me up when September ends.'"

"Do I really fit into the scheme of things. Am I really one who can handle this. I am not wont to giving up easily. And of all the causes I have pursued as an erst-while zealot, this one cause warrants more effort than all others put together. Or is it so. You think so too? You defer? Maybe. I might be wrong. Maybe this isn't something I should be putting my head into."

"Should I rather not be concentrating on studies? Have I not begun to 'go astray', in their terminology? But again, dear alter-ego, I ask myself: Till when, jackass. Kab tak karte rahoge mugai. And how far do you think its going to take you, eh?"

"I have become a failure-prone device that has run out of warranty. Wear and tear seem to be the only plausible reasons. And the Lord Almighty doesn't cover that sort of thing in the terms of the sale agreement. I might take this up. But will I be able to drive it to a conclusion. Will this be the end of the road? Okay, what if this does materialize actually. What if it all goes hunky dory, and then things begin to fall apart. Will I be able to face upto them?"

"Or should I really worry about it? I mean, I have been doing what they always wanted me to. Do I not owe this much to myself? A pursuit such as this doesn't look good if you're a good-for-nothing jackass. I am not a good-for-nothing jackass. Maybe a little fautly and failure-prone and slightly low on self confidence offlate, but I am not good-for-nothing. It won't be considered another jewel in a crown of going-astray. It is something that I owe to myself. And to her."

"But of all things, dear alter-ego, tell me this: At 23, am I thinking too much. Why should I rather not feel happy in her company, and leave things for the future. Let them fall around and sort themselves out for themselves."

"Give me a solution. I am an analyst with a keen eye for numbers. Talk to me. Speak with me in numbers. Give me answers. And if that which I seek isn't what I am destined for, then make it apparent as soon as you can. I do not want to tarnish that which isn't mine." Having said this, Jack, who was already over-drunk, rolled over to the edge of the table and dozed off.

"I am touched, Jack," said the Alter-ego, "you seem to have learned a lot of things that you weren't inherently programmed for. It is good for you. But this isn't you. Think dude. Are you really in for this."

But Jack wasn't listening. He had been over-dosed, and he was dead for a good forty seconds now.

That was Jack's predicament. What about mine. Sala mai toh daru bhi nahi maarta. :|

...But Mallu can't ride ssala!...

2009-06-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

So Mallu recently got committed. [Mallu's a jackass who happens to be a great buddy and a fellow wingie from Kgp. This is a second entry on my blog which involves the idiot. The first one is here]. And even more recently, he and his bandi were out boozing on a lazy afternoon. While returning, stupid Mallu rode rash on the bike and managed to meet with an accident. Though the thick-skinned fatass survived the fall with minor abrasions, his babe got hurt big time. She broke her wrist (yea, you know with bandi's na... feathery, fragile and shit).

I just happened to come by a nice song whose lyrics can be hacked to fit mallu:

Hai mota, hai popular, hai mota, hai popular, spectacular, he is a bachelor

Mallu ki Buddhi tez hai, Mallu kudiyon mein craze hai

Mallu ki skin hai jet black, Mallu dikhta african hai

Fenny ki Bottle haath mein Sutta Kings wala

But Mallu can’t ride-a-bike saala, Mallu can’t ride saala

Mallu chala nahi sakta

Tirkit tana tirkit tana teeri tana let’s dance

I know I have invited the ire of Mallu and his babe upon having written this entry :P, Though I do firmly believe that neither will really care :D

Two Birds

2009-05-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

I have been recently working birds, either midflight or static kind. The trouble with tele-lenses is in the shake that occurs. And focussing sharply is also rather cumbersome... lots to learn. This is one of the better shots:

From tele-pics3

And here's another that I forgot to put up:

From tele-pics2

More are available on my picasa foto-logue on picasa

Two Shoppers and one Male - III

2009-05-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Part 3: Putting numbers in perspective.

(Scroll down for Part 1 and Part 2 before you read this)

Saturdays can be long. Yesterday was the longest I have encountered in quite sometime. The third leg of my voyage into the den of metropolitan-womanhood landed me in the confines of Lovely-M and Rare-Flower's home. This was my first chance to observe a functional woman-storage device, replete with unmarried young female inmates. It was dusty, had ceiling-fans and all, there was a refrigerator, a microwave, beds on four legs... pretty much the kind of things you encounter in normal human homes. But this was, afterall, a woman-storage device; and I had to ensure I did not fall for the obvious looking traps.

Lets not get into what was the primary purpose of my visit, lets just get down to why there has to be a part 3 to the adventure. Lovely-M had to attend to her friend's boyfriend's parents' Marriage Anniversary, and had to get ready in 20 minutes sharp. So now my educational tour promised a live demonstration of how the woman-storage device produces party-ready women in twenty-minute time constraints.

Lovely-M jumped like a cat onto a pile of clean clothes, vanished with what they call in phylum-female terminology a salwar suit, and re-appeared draped in it. Now normal human psyche would govern that you next put on your shoes, and leave for the evening get-together. But then this was a woman here. And in a woman-storage device replete with unmarried young female fellow inmates. Therefore, as though obliged to serve at their positions responsibly, Rare-Flower and The-Third-Inmate quickly appeared on the scene, and inspected Lovely-M. 'Nope, this sucks.', was The-Third-Inmate's conclusion. 'Yep it does, lemme find you something.' was Rare-flower's rejoinder.

Rare-flower whipped out a something, which Lovely-M quickly snapped up and vanished. Emerged moments later, re-dressed and anxious. 'What now?', said she. 'Nope, not done. A bit too forward-going for a gathering of the sort in question.', said one amongst Rare-Flower and The-Third-Inmate. So there she went, tearing down the hallway with another something, desparate to try it out. Emerged again, this time 'round inviting lesser noises from the fellow-inmates.

I, as one with a feeble woman-intellect, stared on in disbelief. I mean, How can any mortal creature - even a woman - actually spend time being confused between CLOTHES to wear, of all things? There were several to-and-fro wear-and-rewear iterations, and finally something was finalized upon. And with an initial commitment to twenty minutes, it was all over in a fairly allowable 34 minutes. Spellbound is how I can describe my emotions in the least. Rare-flower was all through suggesting that I try not to listen and observe; she could notice my visible awe and shock at the happenings.

Anyways, women and their clothes. I am an erstwhile-statistician, and here's my key take-away from the observations last evening:

The Law of Marginal Confusion, if there was such a thing would go something like this: "A stable equilibriated woman-storage device, when imposed upon with the problem of party-dressing-an-inmate, shall iteratively converge to a solution in finite time, assuming of course, that the number of inmates is a constant and the number of available clothes is an integral number nowhere near infinity."

Corollary to the Law of Marginal Confusion: "The time taken for the convergence to a non-divergent stable solution, will be directly proportional to the number of inmates involved in helping the party-animal-inmate and shall exponentially vary as the number of clothes each one contributes to the cause of the party-dressing-an-inmate problem."

I shall leave the proofs to be figured out by the jobless few such as yours sincerely, for, given my feeble woman-intellect, I can merely assert hypotheses and frame conjectures. Proofs shall follow from the Smarter Few.

Two Shoppers and one Male - II

2009-05-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

Part 2: Skip to Shoppoholism

(Try reading Part 1 first, to keep with the flow)

If the previously written protest against the vagaries of the Feminine gender are of any consequence to you, I am sure you shall look forth to this write-up too. With the Wait behind me and the ladies securely in my attention, we moved on to a local Hyper-Mart (or Mall if you may). The nearly 107 minutes of extra waiting time had taken a severe gastronomic toll on me, necessitating a quick nourishing food-treatment. So we ate a neat Buffet upstairs, talked a little, and then walked out into the Ocean of Shop-till-you-drop stores.

Now my quests at The Shopping Mall are usually limited to good food, good film and most importantly, lovely flowers to appreciate as they fly by. The good food was well settled in my viscera, good films there were none (the producers' strike) and lovely flowers I had two in my accompaniment. I was rich and content, by my standard parameters therefore. But the ladies were not. And they intended to make good of their visit to The Shopping Mall. Peeping over the balustrade on the highest storey, the ladies undertook a quick aerial reconnaissance: Lovely-M immediately recalled that she had to shop for the evening-dinner function marking the 25th Marriage Anniversary of a friend's boyfriend's parents; and Rare-Flower had her feathers visibly ruffled by what looked like a 'Free Test/Trial and Product Launch' kiosk on the ground floor.

Diligent that they were, in no time it was decided that the 'Free Test/Trial and whatever' must be given its due foremost. And so I next found myself peeking under the hood of the newly launched Mitsubishi Outlander on display, while my accompaniments were merrily busy getting some white gelatinous stuff rubbed onto their forelimbs. There was also a picto-graphic session at the end of it -- the ladies were required to pose one after the other in (what to me looked like VERY GAY AND VERY STUPID) a beautiful manner. The picture would find its way to the cover of a leading indian womens' magazine if they were lucky enough.

Okay, skip to phase 2. Lovely-M suddenly realizes that the shopping for her friend's boyfriend's parents' Anniversary is yet to be inaugrated. A quick budget is frozen upon, after minor deliberations, and the hunt begins. Like a herded sheep, I follow the two pack-leaders as they scamper from shop to shop, intense fury and fuss in abundance all along. The Wall-clock will do justice to the occasion, but what with the color of the wall? Data-insufficient, and pursuit abandoned. Yes! How 'bout Interior decoration equipment? They are usually occasion non-specific, fit well into nice little boxes, and make for a good gift. I chip in at this point with a rather ill-received suggestion that in all likelihood, interior decoration stuff will get passed onto the next occasion without least consideration (read: without even opening the box). After a few more moments of vacillation, the ladies decide to pursue Wallets.

Wallets are non-controversial, useful for a change, and typically can reflect the cost incurred on part of the presenter. The perfect gift, so to speak. So now the ladies make their way to Shopper's Stop, and ask for the whereabouts of the Wallets' Section. They are directed to the second floor, to which the elevator would faithfully take them. The elevator though, to the shreiking ecstacy of the ladies (and to my horror) opens in the ladies garments' section. There are several tattered scantily patched rags hung on hangers all around, and the enthusiasm of the ladies hardly looks like anything abating. The Wallets have, apparently, taken a backseat for now. Thankfully, a few moments yonder, the mission-wallet is resumed much to my relief. The ladies proceed to the next shop, with me in tow. A few deliberations later, it is brought to my notice that the His-Wallet has been frozen, and shall be purchased once the She-Wallet is frozen too.

The hunt for the Her-wallet draws us into the Wills-lifestyle Exclusive outlet, the Arrow's Outlet, and Marks-and-spencers' in quick succession. Shopping women are like sprinters running down the track on steroids. Tiring out is hardly an excuse or a recourse. Anyways, our finale femme-wallet was a rather non-descript looking satin-ish thing in the last store amongst the aforementioned. There was some discontent between the ladies though, on the lack of any partitions in the same; partitions which are so important as to ensure that your lipstick and brow-shades do not mix when either is called upon in dire emergency. Thankfully, there were other considerations which heavily tilted the scale in favour of this piece (things like the brand tag, the lack of time, and an apparent frustration at the 'lack of variety and choice').

So right when I was about to heave a sigh of relief, Lovely-M attended to a phone call from a fellow contributor to the anniversary gift expense. There was some discussion, and I could hear Lovely-M make noises about how drab the choice-list was, and how difficult it was to locate the perfect gift for an occasion such as this. (Mind you, dear reader, we're in one of the best stocked malls the country can offer). Moments later, I learned that the gift-plan had been trashed. Lovely-M rushed to the previously visited Wills-lifestle outlet, flashed her credit card, and bought for herself a very red and very smart wallet. Uncle and Aunty would have to make do with a large bouquet and I presume some chocolates. And your narrator here, one with a feeble woman-intellect, stood stumped.

Try reading Part 3 if you liked this one.

Two Shoppers and one Male - I

2009-05-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

Part 1: The Wait.

Find an excuse, if you will, to land yourself in my shoes on the hot Saturday afternoon that today was. My office-friend has oflate been making herself more-than-useful in facilitating my interaction with someone-in-particular. And today I offered to take her (and my office-friend) out to lunch. In the following passages, I shall detail the happenings that were eye-openers, demeaners, and stress-testers all rolled into one awesome afternoon.

The day begins with an unseemingly timely call from Lovely-M (my office-friend) at 11.55AM, inquiring of me whether I am up and awake. I faithfully fake a very active and chirpy voice, suggesting that I de-slumbered atleast 2 hours before; an argument she buys without contention. Upon further deliberations, we agree to meet up at Galleria Market, where I have some business to attend to. It is mutually decided that 1.00PM seems a comfortable pitstop -- it would give me the 65 minutes to wash up, get ready, board a bus, get off, switch to a quick ramble and reach galleria, wind up my work and be ready to receive my accompaniments for the afternoon.

(The caveat, which Lovely-M divulged in a very happy-go-lucky fashion, was that Rare-Flower (her fellow companion and the key lady in question from my perspective) was still asleep while our conference was in progress. To one with feeble woman-intellect as I, 65 minutes was still good enough a window for two ladies to get ready -- even with one who was merrily sleeping away at the start.)

Fine, So I wash up, get ready, board a bus, get off, switch to a quick ramble, reach galleria, hurriedly wind up my work and get ready to receive my accompaniments. And I am done by 1:15PM, roughly 10 minutes late by the 1 o'clock Golden Deadline. I apologetically call up Lovely-M, and ask whether they have been waiting. And lo and behold! It isn't Lovely-M who responds, but the Rare-Flower! And the flower has just blossomed out of her slumber, Lovely-M is in the shower, AFTER WHICH Rare-Flower shall proceed for the cleansing, and even with a reasonably okayish overlap permitted, it will still be a good hour and a half before they are in good stead to meet me.

[Lets switch from present-tense to the narrative past-tense form of writing now. This is becoming painfully difficult to sustain.]

So I was in possession of three Chocolate slabs by now, which were duly purchased for the three of us; and given the time window of 95 odd minutes which I was so rudely blessed with, I knew what to do with the chocolates. It had to be either the summer heat melting them to a gooey or yours-sincerely, gobbling them up into a gooey. I obliged, and in no time did the first slab out of sight. With 90 minutes, 2 rapidly melting chocolate slabs and absolutely nothing to do, I decided to go around Galleria Market place. I chanced upon the Airtel DSL Care center, inquired about the timelines on which disconnection can be done, paid off my dues; then I went over to the post-paid connection Care Center, inquired about cancellation again, paid off dues. Next I barged into a food/stationery shop, asked for a large soft-drink bottle, guzzled it down with the second chocolate in what can be fairly described as a jiffy. Another 60 odd minutes to go. I tried calling up some old friends, but serially all of them were conspicuously missing from the side of their handsets.

Nevermind, my eyes flashed as I took notice of a nice bookstore in a corner. I walked in through the tinkle-door, went over to the non-fiction section, comfortably perched my tanned rear upon the beanbag and began surfing books. (Never had an Air Conditioner been such a welcome relief). And thus the last half the agonizing wait became easy to cope with. Save the hunger component, which there was little I could do about. With around 15 more minutes of the Wait left, I received another call from the ladies. In this call, I am informed that Lovely-M hadn't factored her newly acquired driving skills into the equation, and that I should add another comfortable 20 minutes-worth of extra-cautious driving to the balance.

Let us not get into how the final 30 odd mintues passed, there is truly nothing exceptional worth mentioning. I however did have one chocolate remaining on me when the ladies were in breathing distance. Now courtesy would dictate that I save it for the encounter, and that I cordially forward it to the ladies as the sole remaining warrior(apologizing ofcourse, profusely for having eaten the other two). But somethings get to your head. I munched it to the wrapper with surgical precision in time, and the first thing I said when I seated myself in Lovely-M's car was, "Can I stick this empty chocolate wrapper on your car seat?"

Read up Part 2 if you liked this one...

Goodbye :-)

2009-05-15T01:44:00.001-07:00

Manuscript of my goodbye mail to company friends:

Everyone,

So this happens to be the last and final mail flying off my Inductis mail ID. I intend to make it as readable and non-boring a read as can get. For those not in the know, I'll be pursing a management degree from IIM Lucknow this fall onwards. Right. So what does it feel like to be putting in your papers after 10 months 1 day and 3 hours at one of the best places to work after you're out of IIT? Lonely, and more importantly, poor! :P Lonely because of all the amazing peers and seniors you're going to miss, and poor because of the lavish pay that I'm not going to see for another two years!

The people you associate with, they say, are your greatest asset. Consequently, I guess I've got one helluva lavish year behind me. I've been mentored and guided by really nice seniors, and I thank them for all their help. I just hope I can look up to them for guidance later on too. My heart goes out to all my peers, who've bravely faced up to my (allegedly) poor jokes and (purportedly) stupid idiosyncracies. Good job guys. :-P

I am thankful to all my immediate seniors who taught me most of the things I learned here, from writing SAS code to drafting and formatting EXCEL documents to wooing girls (well okay, the last one I still am an ameteur at). I am also grateful to everyone whom I bugged so frequently for help and guidance for my b-school interviews, thankyou all! :-)

I would like to thank Facilities for making available the TT board and the undying supply of tt balls, my forehand has seen a significant improvement and I can now defend cross-court shots fairly well. I would also like to thank HR for arranging that really nice Offsite party and the treats, the dance-floors rocked and so did the liqueur! Unmesh Sir and the IT team were amazing; I still remember when on the night of first of January, when the world was partying, Unmesh sir helped us set up remote access so as to facilitate a timely deliverable. Thanks :-)

Guys do keep the vibrant culture alive, please do keep in touch; I shall be available on my mail address CYBERHANSRAJ[AT]GMAIL[DOT]COM all the time ( no laughing at the mail-address :-P ). Do drop in your phone numbers/mail-address on the same!

Best of luck and thanks,

Hansraj Mishra

In Service of the Departed Geek

2009-05-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

In remembrance of the Geek:

Allow me to draw your attention to the untimely demise of the Geek who resided in the heart and soul of Codesmith Cipher. The Geek was born on March the 21st Two Thousand and Two on a windy spring evening. He grew up intellect hungry, did numbers for food and nourishment, and watched documentaries and FTV for entertainment. The Geek was known for his light sense of humour, which would periodically subside and rise intermittently. The Geek learned, he sailed to various lands, met interesting people, learned from them, shared his experiences once in a while. The Geek associated with more Geeks, they liked him; and he felt warm in their company. It was all good.

And then the testing times came. The Geek saw himself heading to the City-of-Castles. There were tall castles and minars all around, and he had money to spend. The Geek was a village-boy who grew up on numbers and literature for nourishment; he knew very soon that the City-of-Castles wasn't his home. It would never satiate him. Further, the Geek's ways and sense of humour and actions were misconstrued as being stupid and were associated with imbecility. So the Geek lay low for quite sometime. But even in lying low, Mankind was unkind to him. He was continually ridiculed for his mundane ways.

Finally, the Geek realized that the ways of the people who inhabit the City-of-Castles would not change. And that for the survival of his kind, the City-of-Castles wasn't the place at all. Now in order to make it to the City, the Geek had valiantly blazed his way across the Abyss-of-No-Return. He very well knew it wasn't in his capacity to forge a way back across it again. So the Geek decided that his presence was one that could be done without. And accordingly, he went over to the top of the Tower-of-Intellect (located in the centre of the city), talked with Godel the Lord, and offered his demise.

The Lord inquired of him whether he had explored all plausible alternatives before he had come to the Tower-of-Intellect. The Geek heaved and puffed and said 'Yes my Lord. I am not one from these lands. I cannot go home. I intend not to be ridiculed further. Free me.' And the Lord said, 'Okay ye of little consequence, remember thy abilities, and jump off the cliff!' And the Geek loyally obeyed.

The Geek is gone, but his ways shall remain. He leaves behind a legacy that shall be of immeasurable value to Codesmith Cipher during his proposed long stint in the City-of-Castles. Let us observe a minute-worth of silence for the soul of the departed.

In anticipation of a resurrection,

Amen.

11 Days to Nirvana

2009-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

I'm 11 days away from freedom. Freedom from a salaried life. Freedom from a daily routine. Freedom from accountability. Freedom from credit card statements. Freedom from bills and payments. Freedom from PPT's and Excel's. Freedom from the Metropoli lifestyle. Freedom from the bland lifeless post-11PM hours. Freedom from performance orientation. Freedom to do what I like. Freedom to think what I want. Freedom to read what interests. Freedom to go home with no strings attached, this one last time. Freedom to go blading down the boulevards of my township back home. Freedom to take pictures. Freedom to browse wiki again. Freedom. Once again :)

Its been four years and 346 days since I took that test, and I have reached a pitstop finally :) Lets begin again, lets go easy this time :) Let's maneveur the curves more easily this time. Let's not throttle the engine beyond what its designed for :) Let's chart out some new routes. Let's not worry about where it ends. Maybe let's just get out of the cockpit :) Aah this is an amazing feeling. I'm high already. Goodnight folks.

Free :)

The Tele-magic!

2009-04-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

It has been quite sometime since I got bored of working my 18-55mm standard lens. I had been waiting for an excuse to spend nearly 250 odd dollars to bring home a nice telescopic lens. And after a rather soggy ending to a fairly well negotiated war, I decided to go spend it. So the all new Canon EF 75-300mm lens is the latest toy in my arsenal.

It comes fitted with a fast-focussing USM motor, is nearly 10.5'' long when fully extended to accomodate 300mm of focal length, allows for amazingly narrow depth of fields, looks cool and gives others a jitter for their gizmos-in-the-name-of-cameras. And oh yea, for the unschooled, combined with my former wide-angle lens, I can now officially boast of a 17x optical zoom to go with the mighty 7-point AF powerhouse-of-an-SLR Canon Rebel XT.

I tried familiarizing with the lens, and have come up with the following few experimental pictures. Haven't been able to find time to do further justice to the pursuit though. The one part that sucks about tele-photography is the fact that even slight shakes in the camera get magnified into heavy vibrations in the final image placement. Its something I'll need to work around.

The Broken Rule

2009-04-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

We all have those fanciful likings about doing the right things in the right environs and in the right coordinates in space-time. You may love to sleep on a particular pillow, you might love that precise half-cup of tea at that very tea-stall right below your office every morning, and so on. Somehow, there is a comfort factor associated with this obduracy towards certain activities. I just broke one such rule of mine today.

This rule has to do with attending to mother nature's call -- the one that's more frequent in occurence and less inconvenient to execute. Whenever possible, I try and delay it till I get to a nice place relieve the stress -- and the fluid. Somehow, it gives a sense of comfort not to water public lawns under the clear blue skies with cars honking away along the road alongside. Today, however, saw this rule take a beating. While on way back from work [which sees me travel 53km one way each morning and evening] it had rained all through the day it had been rather chilly. And we all know that of several physical process that get expedited due to chill (such as shivering in case of all, excessive talking in case of women, white noses turning pink in case of the fair-complexioned etc.) one that certainly doesn't fail to speed up is your leakage system.

I had been noticing the driver push the throttle a bit too generously through the evening. He was putting the vehicle through notorious swerves and jumpy breaks. He seemed quite a bit in a hurry to get over with the employee-drops. So I asked him to go easy, since it would hardly save us 5-10 minutes overall [Sadly the whole universe conspires to prevent any time-arbitrage in your favour, especially during the 7.30PM evening hours]. The driver, upon my suggestion, gave me an classy nasty look, and said, "Bhaiya gajjab jor se pesab laga hai. Idher gaddi rokenge aur chalan ho jayega. Batao kya karein." [Translated -- Sir I'm under extreme pressure to leak my bladder. If I stop here, they'll fine me. Tell me what to do]. Clearly the man had been done in by the chilly weather. But he wasn't alone. Upon his desparate rejoinder, another fellow astronaut suggested that he needed to free up his assets too. To which the driver, obviously excited, took it upon himself to find a place to do the honours.

Five minutes further, the engines hummed to a halt. And two very frantic people alighted from the vehicle and ran towards that big banyan tree. While at it, the driver turned his head around and asked me why I wasn't joining in. It was, ofcourse, chilly, and I am as ordinary a man as all else. But I was a man of rules, and I smiled and said, "Ab ghar jaake aaram se halka hoyenge sir." [Translated -- I'll go home and easy out dude]. The man smiled, shook his head in a sagely fashion, and said... "Mauka milta hai toh kar lena chahiye... kya pata aage kya hoye." [Translated -- Do it when you get a chance, never know what's in store]. I laughed it off. I was too prejudiced in favour of enjoying the process of relief in my own private jacuzzi fitted gala bath-cum-washroom.

So by the time I got back home some 45 minutes back, the chill had taken grip, and I really needed to free up. I rushed upstairs only to find the door locked, and my McKinsey flatmate conspicuously missing with the keys. Now the locality where I stay is infested with gardens and pruned shrubs and playing kids and fairly big cars in the parking outside. The minimum you can run to find a likely spot is atleast 100m. So I held on, made a few frantic calls, and waited for a good 35 minutes till a friend from office crossed by with the keys. I just drilled a hole through the washroom commode. And the rule's gone. Next time, I shall fire-at-first-opportunity. Never rely on what the future holds for thee.

Notice Regarding this Blog

2009-03-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

This blog is grounded until further notice.

Prisoner of Self

2009-03-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

What follows is an excerpt from 'The Bet', a short story by Anton Chekhov, and a discussion upon certain aspects of it. The story is about a bet between a rich banker and a young unwise man. The banker stakes two millions that the young man wouldn't be able to spend fifteen years in solitary confinement voluntarily. The young man agrees to the bet, on the condition that he be given access to all kinds of necessities and amenities; the only condition being that he be denied the right to communicate with humans. The most critical aspect of the bet was that the confinement was voluntary on part of the Prisoner. He had the right to walk out of his room the moment he desired. Which obviously made the stay a lot more difficult. After fifteen years, around 12 hours prior to the scheduled end of the bet the Banker gets a chance to read this note written by his Prisoner:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom and the right to associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you. With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called the good things of the world.

For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in the forests, have loved women ... Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl. In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I have watched from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds' pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse with me of God ... In your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms ...

Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man has created in the ages is compressed into a small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of you.

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two million of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact ..."

And the Prisoner of Self walked out as he said, never to claim the 2 millions he had set out to win. My dilemma here is simple: which was the greater of the two mistakes, was it the fact that he imposed that voluntary confinement upon himself; or was it his action of having walked out of the bet just in time to lose the bet? I can't decide. Can you?

PS: You can read the full story here: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml

The Passion

2009-03-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

The Visiting-Warlord's Guest Lecture

"Goodevening, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Viktor the Warlord. I wage battles and kill people. Occasionally I carry home the spoils of war for the Wife and kids. Firstly, I would want to thank the administration of the college for inviting me over to speak to such a distinguished audience. It is truly an honour. I tried to decide upon what I should lecture on, but believe me it was pretty difficult to do so. So Rather than making it the formal drab discourse we so much fear, let me begin by asking you this question: Why did Achilles fight? And why did Hitler do so? Hitler did it for gains in this world. Achilles did it for those beyond. For Achilles, it was glory that mattered most. For Hitler, it was the honour of his people and geographical superiority. But what was common to both, was that they both waged with an intent, a motive.

I intend to tell you today, of a third possibility. How about waging wars without an intent? Or a motive? Or a direction? Sounds funny doesn't it. I mean, why all the bloodshed and ransacking. But just consider this for a moment... how about waging wars just for the sake of it? What if I were to tell you, that there exist warlords who fight not for a cause, who fight not for a gain, but who just fight for the sake of it? I am one of that kind. I fight my wars because I love the war. I love the battlefield. I find the roar of the battledrums inebriating. The rumbling earth upon the march gives me a high. I love the moans of dying men, the sound of bones being crushed and lacerating flesh. I absolutely enjoy the all-night strategizing sessions with my soldiers, and the tactical moves made on the turf. The only thing I hate about wars, is the prospect of fighting another pitched battle on the same battlefield. I find it nightmarish to fend off scavengers from a battlefield where I have previously fought and lost. I don't lose usually though and it is painful, believe me. Give me a new war each time, and I shall fight it with all my might. Give me an old war, and I will not want to fight it.

But that's that. I would expect you to question, is it alright to fight wars without a motive or an intent or a direction in mind? Is it correct to push for a buildup of such magnanimous proportions, just to wage a war which you don't intend to see the consequences of? I frankly, believe it is absolutely correct. As long as the battle itself feeds your passion, gives you the fodder you need, fight it. And fight it well. People will confuse you for the Joker in the film The-Dark-Knight. The Joker fought, without an intent or a motive or a direction. But he did so, senselessly. It did not feed his passion. It was just something he did. 'I am a dog chasing cars, don't know what I'll do if I caught one.' Let the people be. Maybe it is the Joker you intend to become. But most likely not. Eitherways you will be happy. Atleast you'll not go to your grave feeling guilty of not having waged that war, or won that battle.

I once thought it was wrong to fight without a motive or a direction or an intent. I believed my existence was futile. It took me one long drawn war -- which I know not if I have won yet -- to correct myself. Yes the war is my life. My passion. My karma. I am Viktor the Warlord, and I kill for a living. Thankyou."

For the record

2009-03-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

They first gave us a topic to write on, 'Recession is the mother of innovation.' I highlighted the opinion that innovation will come with governmental spending on newer sectors, jobs that have been lost were mostly to cater to an artificial demand which is no more. Innovation in newer sectors to broaden the base of the economy is the only way to jump-start the system back to life again.

Now, the interview:

Panel Desc: two senior people, one of whom had been on my panel last year too , and had done me in with an acads question... I was thoroughly amused by the prospect of facing the same panel again. Very nice, and very senior people.

P1: Come in, CodesmithCipher.
Cipher:
P1: Hoye! Whoever taught you that. Take your seat young man, you don't need to wait till I ask you to take a seat.
(No point taking chances people, had I sat down he might have wanted to take my case on being stupid enuf not to ask)
Cipher: Big shameless grin, no sir no one taught me that, I'll take the seat. Another big grin.
P1: So, you're with , tell us what you do, I mean, what is your role out there, what do you do...
Cipher: Err, umm, (clumsily)we work in the domain of knowledge discovery... we try and identify risks and opportunities for a client by creating insights in transactional data.
P1: wow. Knowledge discovery, risks, opportunities, Can you simplify that for us :P
Cipher: We work on supervised learning methods to identify the dependence of response variables on other, given data.
P1: So that is like, ANN's and all (artificial neural networks: a machine learning method)?
Cipher: no sir, we dont use ANN's and other machine learning tools... we stick to statistical methods mostly.
P1: Like what all?
Cipher: We do stuff like regressions, logistic, linear, decision trees etc.
P1: Hmm Hmm Hmm regressions eh? (Broad grin).
Cipher: Sir, yes sir.
P1: So do you know what CART is, Cipher? I mean, you must have used it, right?
Cipher: Yes sir I do...
P1: So can you tell me what CART is, what Logistic Regression is, how are they different, when do you use CART, when do you use Logistic Regression, and when would you want to use a combination of the two, and how?

Cipher: Certainly sir... Cart is about...
P1 Before that, can you tell me what does CART stand for???
Cipher: Sir Cart... err, umm... It stands for err... (and then it struck me) Sir it stands for Classification and Regression Trees.
P1: Yes, thankyou. Continue now.
P1: So sir, CART is essentially used, in context of the work we do, to identify sub populations from a large sample size that are markedly different from one another as regards the behaviour of the response variable. Like, in case of a categorical variable, maybe a highly different response rate, or in case of a continuous variable, a large difference in avg. (Mostly on track, but with great deal of clumsiness).

P2: Joins in: Okay, so Cipher do you remember any bit of electrical engineering from college?
P1: How wouldn't he know? Just been seven months out of college. He had better known!
Cipher: Broad 32-all-out grin.
P2: So Cipher, what is a switchgear?

Cipher: Sir, so its about...
P2: Why are you smiling? And on this particular question?
Cipher: Sir, I had taken IIMA interview last year too, and you asked me the same question
P1: So, you know what a switchgear is now?
Cipher: Yes sir, I went back last year, and read about it. Didn't answer it then.
P1: Hmmm! So Cipher lets try and calculate the probability of occurence of such an event. I mean, can you find me the probability that you will encounter the same panelist for two consecutive years?
Cipher: Certainly sir. We will need to take a few numbers as assumptions...
P1: yea yea sure
Cipher: Lets assume the pool of profs to be around say, 40.
P1: They may not always be professors, you know.
Cipher: Okay sir, lets say, 40 panelists. >
P2: Okay, leave it.. gimme the paper you were writing on. Examines it.
P1: So, Cipher, what do you mean by this recession?
Cipher: Sir its about err.. umm... there is this recklessness, and then there is overoptimism about something, and errr.. there is overexpectation from some thing, and then there is a correction about it.. basically goes on in cycles... so the recession is when there is this correction...
P1: You know you are trying to be very evasive, and trying to get away with it without getting yourself hurt... I think this is what you might have messed up last year in your IIMA interview. Be decisive, and give short answers!
Cipher: There goes IIMA again.
Cipher: Sir, lets consider an example, so like lets take the previous recession... .
P2: But then IT is support infrastructure, what do you think of it this time? Why has manufacturing taken a hit?
Cipher: . Sir manufacturing has taken a hit essentially because demand has fallen. And there was also a spike in oil prices in between.
P2: But oils is back now, better than before.

Cipher: Its more about the demand sir, take the example of the big three: Ford, GM and Chrysler, during the good days before recession they were happily working on larger engine sizes, bigger cars, and more cars. More factories, more capacity to feed an artificially high demand. ...
P1: So Can you tell me what is Gini Co-efficient?
Cipher: Sir its in cart... its a kind of a cost function to decide how deep your decision tree should be... I dont know exactly but its a parameter we feed in to the tool that does it for us.
P1: Looking into my form, says to himself: You guys from Electrical engineering background, doing statistics fulltime... why...
Cipher: Sir its not that I just veered into it, I generally like data and have done a couple of nice projects on it (Trying to cash in on my btech project and internship which got a paper).
P1: Ho ho ho! So were you the kind of guy who does internships at IIM's during your study at IIT's??
Cipher: No sir, this was scientific data on which I had worked, I loved technology, I still love it. No IIM Interns for me.
P2: love tech? Why do you want to do this management thing then?
Cipher:
P2: So you're going off your technology love?
Cipher: No sir it will stay with me. Its an enabler. Will give an edge.
P1: Some clarification regarding a certificate i received.
P1: Okay, so tell me, what do you, as a data-miner, do to save the current scenario? What's your client-kind typically?
Cipher: Sir its mostly credit card issuers.
P1: How can you help them in these times.
Cipher: Clumsy again. Sir, err, umm, we can err, umm, help them by reassessing their risk... better analytics to understand how to redistribute credit lines to customers...
P1: THat's done already, and the system is in a mess... they are bleeding right now, how will you help them??
Cipher: Sir, Collections! So when the bank writes off or charges off, they still try and recover some bit of it, and some analytics goes in at that level.
P1: Ya, so collections, what happens in that. Quick quick! make it fast! we need to wind up now.
Cipher:
P1: Looks at timer. Okay, leave it. Pick up a toffee.
Cipher: Sir can I complete please?
P1: Naah naah, pick up a toffee, jaao.
Cipher obviously slightly irritated, fiddles around in that small cup to find an eclairs, says thankyou, and walks. out.

-------

Transcript of what I could remember of the encounter at the IIMA interview.

I can talk geeky numbers too!

2009-03-07T08:56:00.000-08:00

So I had this really chill conversation today with two very nice people. It started with the more elderly of the two asking me what I did for a living. Having acquired a bit of bluntness from the previous standoff a couple of days back, I said: 'I do quantitative analyses for a living.' And then I was asked about variance/standard deviation, was asked about central and non central moments, about kurtosis and skewness and about the expectation of exp{tX} and its role in calculating non central moments about the origin. [Yea I roughly pieced it all together. I rock]. I was asked to give the physical interpretation of the fourth moment about the origin. And I answered that too. Yay. So they then asked me my opinion on Guruji's return after the suspension of president's rule in Jharkhand, asked about the breaking up of Bihar and my opinion on it, discussed wholesale price index and consumer price index and its significance with regard to inflation overall, the value of inflation index right now and so on.

And then I was mostly in good stead, when they asked me, 'What books do you read, Hansraj.' Now I rarely read, and what I do, is mostly wiki and feedreaders and google news and stuff. And recently I did read a couple of books on India in general. But then I decided to name a partially read book which I could never make any head or tail of. I recently wrote a blog out of whatever I interpreted from it, called 'The Inconsistency'. What followed in the interview was an extension of what I wrote in that blog entry. So this is how the interview moved on from there on:

'So Sir I recently reached midway through this book called Godel Escher and Bach: The eternal golden braid. Its a 1979 Pulitzer winner.'

'What's it about?'

'Its about formal systems in mathematics, and how they relate to real-life implications of the philosophy behind the positioning of meaning. It essentially talks of where meaning lies, is it in the axioms of a formal system interpretation of a real-life entity or environ, or is it in the rules with which you construct the theorems. It argues whether meaning is implicated by the way the system behaves, or whether it depends on the genetic code cast in stone. Several arguments for and against it have been posed in the book. Its a very well elucidated literature.'

'Hmm. . So can you tell me the difference between indeterminate and infinite.'

'Certainly sir. Bla bla bla'.

'Any examples?'

'There is this famous summation, 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 ..... people have proved its either of zero or one or one fourth. No one has come up with a perfect proof. The sum is indeterminate.'

'Right... so...'

'There is another example sir... consider the function sine(1/x). The energies in the frequencies at lower domain values in x will gradually tend to indeterminacy, owing to the hyperbolic divergence of the oscillation parameter 1/x.'

'Hmm... what about division by zero?'

'So Sir, this is a classic question posed by ramanujan as a kid to his teacher... what if there are 5 oranges and no kids to take them. Who gets how many? The answer sir, according to my understanding is indeterminate.'

'So Hansraj can you tell me why does Nifty have only thirty shares?'

' Sir, I can't tell you that, since I am not at all into stocks. I guess its basically meant to create an index that is broadbased and gives a good reflection of the economy's health as a whole without biasedness etc. And sir, Nifty has fifty shares, not thirty. .

' Any other calls?'

'All save Bangalore and Shillong'

'Why not Shillong, with that percentile?'

'Wont know sir.'

'Where is Shillong?'

'Sir its in Sikkim?'

'Hahahaha.. which is why they didn't give you a call. Its in Meghalaya'

'I am sooo sorry sir'

'Hahaha... relax.'

'Thankyou sir'

The Honest Joe

2009-03-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

The Honest Joe

What has been the most honest thing you have done in your life? And which made you feel real good and stupid at the same time, afterwards? I'll tell you. I got to spend arguably the twenty-five most coveted minutes with a couple of people today. It is rather difficult to articulate what it takes to get a chance to speak with them, especially a second time. But after having failed to make them happy last year, I got to sit with them again, today.

Let's cut the crap. This was the second time I was taking my IIMA interview. Last year, my interview started with the panelist asking me, 'What is a switchgear?'. I did not know. And then he asked me what an oil-circuit breaker was. I did not know again. And then I lost control over that discussion, and it veered off course. And I had to fend off another 2,44,800 people to be able to speak with them again. This time 'round, 800 miles across from Kolkata, I met with the Profs from A at Delhi. It was a lazy afternoon, and I was allotted Panel #3. And Panel #3 was two professors, one of whom was the same gentleman who asked me what a switchgear was, last year. Yes. And this time, after a minor discussion with the other professor, I got to speak with the same gentleman once again.

And he asked me, in the same tone, that shot me back in time, 'So Hansraj, can you tell me what a switchgear is'. Such are the vagaries of nature. I thought for a split second, and knew the next question he would ask, once I answered this one. And I knew what'll be the one after that too. I knew I could ace it. I could literally talk about the switch-gear ad-infinitum: it was, afterall, what let me down last year!

But guess what, people, something struck me. Call it stupidity, or call it the want of brownie points, I made a clearly observable smile, before I actually gave the answer. And predictably, the man interjected and asked me: 'Why did you smile upon hearing this question? What's so funny?'. Me: 'Sir, you asked me the same question last year. Should I answer it.'

He became quiet. And gave me a blank stare. The other professor, sensing the unusual incident, interjected. Said, 'Okay, so old acquaintace eh. Neat. You know what a switchgear is?' Me: 'Sir, I did my homework this time round.' Prof: 'Okay, so lets get into a nice probability question. Lets evaluate the probability that you meet the same panelist again. And consider your probability of clearing cat this second time as one. No smartness there'.

The interview went on a very average course after that, they didn't get into academics at all. I could have answered that question. And the most beautiful answer it would have been. And probably the next one would have been on an oil-circuit breaker. And the one after that on the grid-transient stability. I would have aced them all. But I chose not to. Don't know why. Call it smartass. Call it stupid. Call it dumb. I had an average interview after that. This was arguably a most important moment for me. And I did what I did. Was it right on my part? I don't know. But I am happy. Tell me guys, was it right?

PS: Just as an aside, the Professor in question happens to have headed finances for Rolls Royce before he decided to teach at IIMA :P

The Inconsistency

2009-03-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

The loop that fails to close.

Formalist theories in mathematics are littered with large volumes devoted to consistency of the system in explaining itself. I intend to discuss here, the implications of such a delicately balanced formalist system gone all wrong. But before that, let's briefly understand what a formal system is.

A formal system is a means of explaining any physical/non-physical system within the bounds of the universe. Perhaps even beyond that. The theory of physics can fall within the purview of a formalist interpretation, but so can the theory of post-modernist philosophy. It is the largest kind of generalization you can have, in view of defining a paradigm.

Within such a system, you have the set of core fundamental truths, or axioms. These fundamental truths, or 'guiding lights', are explaniable and derivable only in a language or system that is one stratum higher -- a meta-language where even the guiding principles are merely derivable entities. Within the bounds of a formal system, however, for all practical purposes, the axioms are unchangable, cast in stone. It is like stating that 'matter exists', and, 'energy exists'. Both are uncontestable truths that cannot be questioned within the framework of the physical universe as we know it. (Possibly there might be an explanation in a meta-universe). A case in point here is, that you can have certain fundamental falsities, or anti-axioms too.

Apart from this set of 'truths' is a set of Rules or Principles upon which you can derive more truths or 'guiding lights'. Such rules decide how more truths can be derived from the starting fundamental set of 'truths'. An example of such a Rule, (Call it Rule Number One) in light of the starting two 'truths' that we proposed about matter and energy, is as follows: 'One quantum of energy is convertible to a quantum of mass that is proportional to the quantum of energy undergoing the change.' (Essentially, stating that E = mass times speed-of-light squared). The rules give you an opportunity to come upon more 'truths' that are 'consistent' with the original set of truths from which they were 'derived'.

Rules are very crucial, and must be crafted extremely carefully, if you intend to have the system remaining stable and functional under very stressed circumstances too. For example, imagine a rule, for the same formal system in consideration. The Rule Number Two says that 'The quantum of energy can half without the creation of any matter, if Buddha Smiles'. Now, assuming that no correlation Rule between the creation of mass and the smiling of Buddha is given, we can safely assume, that there will be an inconsistency if a quantum of energy either passes through the first rule, or through the second rule.

Essentially, bad Rules such as the ones we just discussed, can lead to arrival upon inconsistent truths in the system. And such truths can render your system unstable and essentially, you will need to get back to the drawing board to re-design your formal system. This is what happened when the constancy of mass and energy was questioned by Einstein, and a new Rule was created and added to the Formal System of Physics (assuming a hypothetical construct such as this exists) which stated that mass and energy are interconvertible by a New Rule (E = mass times speed-of-light squared). This stabilized the system.

Your life is a Formal System. So is mine. We are born, and fed with a set of core truths, and a set of guiding principles to use in order to build upon the set of core truths. More rules are added to your formal system once you interact with the Social Paradigm. But, your fundamental, core truths, the axioms, remain where they were. Gradually, using the Axioms and the Rules engine, you construct a large bank of Truths or Theorems for yourself. You know that eating healthy food helps you gain weight, and that drinking liqueur can harm your body. And it is all good.

What do you do, if this system suddenly encounters a glitch? What do you do, if your set of core-truths or axioms suddenly gets challenged by a Truth that got constructed with the same set of carefully crafted Rules? If you assume the derived truth to be a falsehood, you will have to assume that your rules engine if flawed. And that it can lead to creation of several other falsehoods which apparently show up as truths. Or, you can trust the rules engine, and decide that one of your fundamental, starting truths, possibly, was misguided? Something was wrong with the core of your reactor, and not with the reactions?? Your system becomes unstable. You have no way to explain the inconsistency. You are a formal system now, that has no way to correct itself.

This is a glitch, and as one with an elementary experience in numbers, I can say that glitches are dangerous. They can gradually go away, transit out of your system by a lovely convergence. OR, they can violently diverge, leading your system to an uncontrollable stage from where only a core-dump or a warm-reboot can bring it back.

I stand here, looking at this inconsistency. I am scared, I have a glitch in my system. It can bring down my castle. It can cause untold damage. It is an unrectifiable mistake which has no solution. And I know not a meta-system where I can go back and ask for a re-check of my Formal system. God Help Me.

The Ripoff Sync.

2009-02-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

So while putting my act together for the interview, I decided to visit the local Salon to get my hair in order. The gentleman who obliged with the snips and tweaks was a very cordial fellow. He discussed the weather, the news, got me a coffee to go with the haircut and so on. Towards the end, however, he decided to do a cross-sell. He unsuccessfully tried to thrust a facial upon me. I gently denied the proposal, citing a hypothetical skin allergy. But Mr. Hairdo decided to pursue it. He whipped out his hand-mirror, stuck it up against my face, and counted out no less than 31 blackheads on either side of my nose. He further went on to hilight 17 pimples dotting my forehead and mentioned that I had an oily skin which makes it notoriously difficult to rip off the blackheads once they take root. I suddenly found myself sinking into a complex I had never felt ever before in life.

I realized I was this amazingly sick looking jackass who hadn't seen the world on the other side of a facial! I meekly asked him how will he make the blackheads go away. 'Simple hai sir, Steam kar doonga, ek hot-cloth place karke thoda antiseptic lagaunga, and phir ek bio-adhesive chipkaa kar kheench doonga.' It didn't sound like the most pleasant of experiences to me, and I promptly suggested that lets leave it at that, and that I'll certainly get back to him after a week. 'Painful nahi hota zyada sir, Ladkiyaan toh frequently karwaati hain, wo toh brows be chhilwaati hain.'

And this, dear friends, was an eye-opener. I, for one, used to think that men visit the parlour once in five weeks and shed some hair off their top... and that women, identically, might be doing the same, possibly once in 10 weeks? But here was this man, who tells me that there's more to it. I enquired with a sis, and it came to pass that Yes, the Woman's visit to the parlour isn't just about the haircut. And immediately several links, as though disconnected elements of a circuit, began to link up and a current ran through me.

What follows assumes that the reader is almost as ignorant a nerd as I am, when it comes to women. If yes, be ready to be overwhelmed by the sheer magnanimity of the tide. Did you know, that Gals actually get their eye-brows ripped off to bring in 'shape'?? And did you know that those skinny gals that wear sleeveless shirts once in a while actually undergo a painful process where hair follicles are literally ripped off their skin on the arms? Bear with me, there's more -- seen that gal in your office who will periodically (and with a very constant time-period) wear that conspicuously short skirt, giving you an eye-full of the (usually)lovely flawless limbs? YES, she's simply breaking even upon that investment she made the evening before at the local parlour, getting hair ripped off all the way down to the shin. So now you know, stupid!

Its been a day of revelations. Started with a non-descript haircut, went on to a realization that I have one amazing black-headed nose, and ended with the breakthrough on the periodicity of the short-skirt-phenomenon that de-eclipses once a fortnight... amazing.

It

2008-12-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

It poisons your existence. It makes you believe you're no good. It is something that you know you could do well without, and also that it will not go away. It is as though you and it are strange bedfellows who are destined to make love without want of any filial incentive. It meddles with your thought process, it stymies your endeavours, it pushes you to the bottom of the cusp of frustration. You know its there, that it exists. It isn't hypothetical, it proves its existence in ways of dark humour.

You will try and search for it. You'll ask onlookers, you'll ask the mirror, you'll think it over. You'll try and change yourself in mundane ways, stretching yourself beyond self-recognition. You'll tire yourself over the decidedly inconsequential pursuit. You'll weep within, and smile without. But you'll continue to look for it. And, as though by its own virtue, it will continue to evade you. Your search shall be in vain.

And sadly, it will regularly show up. It will tarnish your castles of gold. And the ravaging will not be a direct display of its wrath -- it will employ the forces of nature to bring about the consequence. It will keep you wondering, was it ill-fate, a bolt out of the blue? And then the introspection will finally lead you to It, and the eerie feeling of helplessness will once again swallow you. You will sit back, and wonder... what am I to do with it? Is it the element-of-uncertainty-incarnate?

But the introspection will rapidly give way to Logic, the Logic you so proudly flaunt. You will once again try to reason it out. How can it bring down Minarets you built after having put consideration to even the most pessimistically improbable disasters? Why? How? What is it?

And consequently, it poisons your existence. It makes you believe you're no good. It is something that you know you could do well without, and also that it will not go away...

What is It anyways? I don't really know. I call it my blind self, a facet of my mind which no one knows of. It is that which ensures that I never put the Car into cruise-mode and doze off... it keeps me awake even on Expressways, let alone the narrow and congested city-driveways. I can't really live with it, but you know what, I guess I can't live without It either.

Education and India - a half baked cake?

2008-12-17T12:53:00.000-08:00

An interesting listenable... it argues that Indian education is half baked, and the 60-odd percent literacy rate we flaunt, is flawed in the very manner we define literacy rate:

Orkut Daily fortune

2008-07-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

A friend suggested this as an interesting game, so I decided that all of us try it out. This is a simple game. Open orkut, read ur "Today's fortune", append an "in the bed" statement to it and post it in the comment section to this blog. For example, if your fortune says "You will have a comfortable old age", post a comment to this blog that says "You will have a comfortable old age in the bed". It will be fun, lets try it :))

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Sky-Hi

2008-07-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

My third foray into the skies is turning out to be the most interesting by far. It isn't everyday that you get to look out of your window and find yourself floating somewhere near the edge of the skies. The LCD display suggests that's near around 8 kilometers, and still climbing.

My previous flights.......

Right, I had just taken on to writing a nice writeup on my experience up here, but was gastronomically interjected with a nice Taj snack. Burp.

Coming back to where we were. The LCD says we're at 11 kilometers above sea level.

As I said, my previous trysts in the skies have been boring, they were night flights, and the only thing I had to entertain myself was the cute private-airline hostesses, and their endlessly long legs.

But this one's different. Why? Firstly Air-India air hostesses retire at 58, and secondly I am looking at the usual monsoon clouds, but from a different perspective. I am as far above them, as you are, below them. It is an invigorating experience. This is familiar and yet so unfamiliar. I mean, it is like looking at the other side of the story, while you've been content with the usual, oft spoken facet all your life. It is like knowing that creationism was right, and Darwin wasn't. It is like looking at Newton's theories, and balking at them, because Einstein was right.

But then there is a certain familiarity that still sticks on. You go to the country side, you relish the sumptuous views of the winding rivulets and the mountains high. You look out of my window right now, and you see an identical view. Save the fact that your fields aren't green anymore. They're white. Like snow. Your mountains ain't the burly looking masculine personifications. They're more lady like. They're feathery. Fluffy.
The moment is really worth relishing. I am in the heavens, a new snowy land one sky-height above my land. In the distance I can see the curvature of the earth too. But then there is this one thing that is still familiar – this land or the one below it, the Sun stays where it always is. I am high up, but the Sun still dwarfs me just the same with its imposing demeanour.

The tall nimbus clouds remind you of smoke clouds emanating from an explosion... but with a minor exception. It is like someone held the explosions midway, right there. You get the eerie feeling of floating through timelessness.

The monsoons sure are an interesting feat of Mother Nature’s. Clouds are a plenty. Enough said, I shall now reach out for my camera, and see if they let me take a few pictures up here.

Enjoy! :)

More photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cyberhansraj/skies

The Obsession

2008-06-23T00:04:00.000-07:00

Overheard at the Local Pub:

(On a table for 2)

"Hic! She was the Spring, and smelled of the verdant. She would smile, and my whole world would come to a grinding halt. I could kill for that lovely smile between those little dimples. You know those times, when something gets to your head, and your every action, every thought, every moment of your existence -- all becomes governed by this One Thing. You hypothesize every occurrence as something towards or owing to, this One Thing.

You begin to dream, and dreams become overtly imposing. Each bit of you panders to the enrichment of the experience of this One Thing. The Thing is so divine, so heartening, that if it were food, you would want to have it little by little... like the greedy child who wishes to eat his cake, and have it to.

She unquestionably was this Thing for me. She was like fresh flowers that bloom along the banks of fabled magical rivers emerging from glacial peaks. And she was the bedazzling Sun as it outshone other stars. Stars even bigger than it, brighter than itself. She was the inebriating, consuming, commandeering thought which refused to part ways with me for even one fleeting moment.

In those days there would always be a constant grin on my face, and a happy thought to fall back upon. I worked better. I didn't waste time over inconsequential pursuits. I didn't have time for them. Somehow, I would drown away Her thoughts into massive volumes of work. And it helped. I found myself hurtling towards something which would earn me accolades, accomplishment, friends, a new life... it put me in the grooves to strive for something I knew earlier as beyond me.

It was all good. I was doing what my close ones wanted me to. I was on, what they call, "The Right Track". But then I barely ever spoke with her. I got lost in my stride. I never reverted to that which was The Obsession. And it all gradually sublimed. Thoughts faded out, memories dissolved and time did what it does best -- flowed forward. Hic!"

"Drink up, you're already seven pegs high. Never knew you'd get so philosophical. And forget about Her. She's possibly somewhere out there, happily settled with some nice guy."

"Hic! She's out there, right... and quite possibly well settled and happy. But oblivious of her role in keeping a loyal heart live and kicking for so long. Times change Jim, but The Obsession lives on. Damn I love her. Hic!"

iMallu

2008-06-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

Your narrator here, having lost possibly every humanely conceivable mode of killing time, decided to interview this rotund corpulent thing.

Note: certain explicit content to follow. Don't say I didn't warn you. The content below is mostly original. All answers are genuine, and haven't been sexed up.

Me: which city were you born in, which was ur school and which was ur first crush

Mallu: why

Me: shut-the-fuck-up and furnish the info

Mallu: no, pehle batao kyun. Gimme a good reason.

Me: (after a few derogatory & inconsequential remarks) I'm interviewing you, you moron.

Mallu: Kodungallur
Schools 3 of them. The last of these were SN Vidya Bhavan Chentrapini

Chantrappinni

CHentrappinni
phew!
(Yup, even Mallu ain't comfy with mallu lingo yet)

Me: and which was ur first crush.

Mallu: (apparently taking us for a ride) when I was in [std] 2nd or 3rd... I remember the crush. Her name was Lydia. Called her Lydia Chidia. :P
(No wonder it never worked out).

Me: right... that's so cute. And which was your first post-puberty crush?
(Yea, that's when it'll matter anyways)

Mallu: Many.
(And he's still single and going strong)

Me: enlighten us

Mallu: most will read this blog, so leave it.

Me: (after a few derogatory remarks) Talk!

Mallu: Ok, there was this girl, smart, and intelligent than all others. Rukhsana. Intelligence does turn me on. :P
(Apparently he gets turned on by intelligence. Now I understand what this intelligent guy does locked in his room all day.)

Me: Right... right... so which class was this in? I mean, when did you attain puberty...(and fall for this girl)

Mallu: end of class 6th vacations.

Me: f*** you! You were done pubing yourself before class 7th??

(conversation segment ommitted in order to preserve readability)

Mallu: ...that's all to it. It was a silly crush.

Me: Keep going...

Mallu: I spent most of my school days shit scared.
So not much luck there.

Me: Scared? What was so scary?

Mallu: Talking to a girl.
(He was IIT material at school already)

Me: Hmm.. lets move on...

Mallu: Then there was this girl. Called Divya. My friends used to make up stories of us.

Me: (cheaply) can you quickly relate one such story

Mallu: (obviously irked) not much there... she was a nice friend. I haven't had the sexual feelings about her.
(He sounds like he pardoned the mademoiselle by not harbouring feelings for her)

Me: ok

Mallu: Are you happy. I spilled my gut out.

Me: just a few more queries... how would Mallu define a girl. Make it quick.

Mallu: #define girl

Me: ok. That sucked. How would you define a girl in english.

Mallu: LMAO (laughing-my-ass-out)

Mallu: a general girl, or The One?

Me: #define theOne

Mallu: ok. I should be able to come home and discuss the world with her and hope she understands, and discuss with me.

Me: and what kind of discussions will you bring home?

Mallu: anything. I like her to be a nut loose like me. The more the better.

Me: where does Mallu see himself 10 years hence.

Mallu: ten years from now... 31. :)

Me: too succinct. Elaborate.

Mallu: start my day, waking up next to my wife. Send kids to school.
Then work at home checking out how business is running. Call a few team meetings online. Write a blog entry about a product launch...

Me: keep going...

Mallu: have a power lunch with a big-shot, convince that guy to do something.
Come back home in a chauffer-driven-car (no more walking)

Me: which car

Mallu: Don't care. Buy a gift for my kids, or something nice for the wife. Come back home by 4pm. Take them out to park. And enjoy the rest of the night with them.. while the stocks are maturing away in the background.

Me: Nice. What does Mallu do, if locked in overnight with a horny bitch, and a net-connected laptop in a dungeon?
(I intended to know which of the two he would screw)

Mallu: We make a porn stream :)
(He screws both)

Me: right

I have had some interaction with ur younger bro. if I told you that 15 years from now, he'll be buying your firm out, how would you react to such a possibility.

Mallu: thats good, cuz i will take the money and buy a boat and retire

Me: at age 59, is Mallu still the usual geek?

Mallu: my life's geeky. Its me.

Me: right. On a closing note, What would you like to tell Bill Gates and the Google Boys, if you were in a meeting with them?

Mallu: why are these numbers so low for this month?? I dont want it the same way next month! :P

Me: Haha. Anything else you'd like to add, Mallu?

Mallu: yeah, Hansraj is a dumb motherfucker.

Me: Right. Spankyou, Mallu, for your time. All the luck for your endeavours.

Mallu: Anytime.

Home

2008-05-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

This is from the movie King Arthur. Someone please find me the OST :)

Land of bear and land of eagle
Land that gave us birth and blessing
Land that called us ever homewards
We will go home across the mountains
We will go home, we will go home
We will go home across the mountains
We will go home, we will go home
We will go home across the mountains

Land of freedom land of heroes
Land that gave us hope and memories
Hear our singing hear our longing
We will go home across the mountains
We will go home, we will go home
We will go home across the mountains
We will go home, we will go home
We will go home across the mountains

Land of sun and land of moonlight
Land that gave us joy and sorrow
Land that gave us love and laughter
We will go home across the mountains
We will go home, we will go home
We will go home across the mountains
We will go home, we will go home
We will go home across the mountains

When the land is there before us
We have gone home across the mountains
We will go home, we will go home
We will go home across the mountains

Pain

2008-05-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

I don't touch booze. Never stuck my lips against it... my friends do, well, most of them. They say it alleviates pain... will it alleviate my kinda pain. The kind of pain that gnaws with twisted claws, tearing open the fine lining of your internal intestines until it hurts beyond all measure. Lets talk of this pain. In some more detail.

You know that feeling, when you get out of home, hop on cheerfully on that bicycle, and go to school. You GO somewhere. You're done with your tenth standard board exams. You GO to the eleventh standard. When you get over with your twelfth standard. You GO to college. And then, something happens. You realize, you've learnt the art of going on, and on, and on... and soon enough, the act loses an incentive, a motivation, a direction. You're good at it, going on, and on, and on. But then, it dawns upon you, that you've not been able to coagulate your thoughts... you don't know, where to go. But you keep going, and going, and going...

And then, one fine evening after a nice long outing with your closest friends, you find out, that you've lost the charisma. The direction. The intent. The motive. You're this, this nice big power-house of a car, with big wheels and spanking bumpers and a chick looking coat of paint... with plenty of oil in it, but no GPS. No maps. No route in mind. Just a car. One that moves.

What do you do with yourself then? You realize, that this is pain. The kind you've been introduced to, in the initial part of this whatever-of-an-essay. This pain poisons you. You look back, and begin to ponder. Abstruse ideas begin to meddle with your thought process, and you begin to turn perplexed. Has it been going the way you wanted it to? Have you really been doing what you wanted to? What some of your closest people wanted you to? Are you in the process of making some good out of your existence? Or are you, simply, going on, and on, and on... humming across valleys and mountains, conquering peaks that have little or no consequence... are you moving for the sake of it?

Think, think, think. Let the warm thoughts flow out, and onto this whatever-of-an-essay. May be it alleviates the pain. Mom said I shouldn't touch booze. She says its not good, and that my dad never did. So I don't touch booze. I simply drown away all my thoughts, into nothingness, onto my keyboard, typing away uselessly... with no intent in mind. No motive, no direction.

A Daily Itinerary at Kgp

2008-05-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

[Last few days phenomenon]:

Arise, awake and brush your teeth at 11.00 AM. Browse net, check mail, drink some water.
12.00PM. A pickup from Aniket. Go address some very mundane work which has little implication to either of us.
1.15PM. Call up ban, link up with hvs, talk to chus. We all go to eat at a very bong and very bland eaterie in PremB.
1.35PM. The place is shut, go eat at Billoo's, after a detour at Chillie's.
2.45PM. Done eating at Billoo's. Count remaining cash. Decide upon an icecream.
3.15PM. Eaten a large block of icecream, relaxing in an air-conditioned enclosure.
4.00PM. Go to dept, meet guide, do some small clearance related work.
5.30PM. Come back to room, quick mail check, locate skates from akash. Go skating.
7.15PM. Done skating 4.4 kilometres apart from around 1 km within insti.
7.30PM. Hatch plan for dinner with ktj-friends.
8.40PM. Go to az to wake up a bunch of sleeping babez, and get them ready.
9.00PM. Its raining. Subdued, not out.
9.30PM. Finally we're set. We go eat at Mehek-e-punjab.
12.45AM. Done eating at Mehek-e-punjab.
1.05AM. Back to campus, go on a ride to prof's quarters area.
1.30AM. Back to room, quick orkut refresh, quick mail check.
2.00AM. Contact man, get bike(get chased by a couple(of dogs))
2.20AM. Contact chhabra, get a ColdDrink, take chhabra and go to park.
4.30AM. Daybreak, romantic enough (with chhabra). Back to room.
4.50AM. Return bike to man, get back to room.
5.00AM. Contact suma, enquire if she has scooty, go eat b'fast with her@chhedis.
5.55AM. Return to hall, aniket comes into play again. This time wearing a sleeveless torn shirt.
6.00AM. Go on an aimless ride with aniket, wander around in insti.
6.10AM. Karan calls, needs a taxi. We go address the issue.
6.15AM. Farewell to karan, all 3 of us shed a tear. We depart.
6.25AM. I sit down to write this itinerary.
6.40AM. I go to sleep.

The H alliteration

2008-05-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

If you have come across the V-for-Vendetta v-alliteration speech, you would have loved to have one of your own too. I tried writing one for myself, with the letter 'H'.

Halcyon hours hoodwinking the harbinger of hostility... hubris hindering humility and harassing the habituate hedonist, His Highness of Heaven the Heckler hyperboles haughtily of the heinous holocaust at hand. Humbled by his harrowing homilies, the hapless heave and hibernate in hazy hinterlands. But not he, the hardy and headstrong. Who heeds not the homilies. Who opines heretically, whose hermetic hovel hath no happiness. It is he, who harbours the will of hegemony, who halts not at hiatus, whose hortatory harangues raise hackles... it is he who shall hew hostility however hazardous, and scale hillocks however high. And it is he, who heckles thus far... humbly and with hale humility, hails Hansraj, "Hallowed be thou! How do you do?"

A Conversation

2008-05-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

An Evening-tea Conversation with the Almighty.
Excerpts:

...and then the lord shot back with a quick rejoinder, "Move on, you prick!". [prick is technically a loose terminology referring to a 1:18 scale model of the usual sized thing most of us guys have, and you gals don't].

I questioned back... "Where to, O' Highness?".

"Have you not been sticking around in this puddle for a little too long? Don't you find the stench of drying dung an incentive enough to move forward?", said the Lord, licking dry the tiny drop of lemon-tea precariously hanging on a strand of his moustache. It was apparent he was relishing the tea as much as the conversation.

"But it is my fate, O' Highness, and I am mired in this cesspool that appeared from nowhere. I thought I was on the correct road -- even the signboards never said I was going the wrong way."

"There you go again! You know, our conversation is like the London-eye. Its the wheel Ferris invented, and it is faithfully going round and round in circles. Every attempt I make at turning you around gets thwarted by this melancholic rhetor of yours.", said the Almighty, "Listen to me! I never deny that you have been wronged. Okay, maybe you weren't really wronged. Lets keep that for later. But eitherways, you need to get going now! Look, you're standing at the mouth of a bi-forked road. And to add to it, you just said you're stuck in a stinking cesspool. There are two possibilities here on. Either you go left, and continue the way you were, following the colorful and commercial signboards, until ofcourse, you hit upon another lovely roadblock and keep wondering where it came from. Or, you can go right, stop by at the tour-operator's franchise outlet, and enquire if the tour is really as fun as it sounds. The former, as you can well imagine by now, may lead you to Vegas and its scantily clad blondes, but it might as well never lead you out of these hinterlands. The latter gives you the flexibility of opting out of the tour-plan (ofcourse without a full-refund), and trying another vacation trip somewhere else.". There was a shine in his eyes. I knew he had made sense, and I also knew he knew I didn't get most of it.

I shook my head in a sagely fashion pretending as though I understood most of it, and uselessly blabbered -- "You said, that maybe I wasn't really wronged. Are you trying to imply that I screwed up somewhere? What was the shortcoming on my part that necessitated the breakdown?"

There was a broad grin on his face by now. "Hey prick, listen up. There is something fundamentally wrong in your understanding. You see, I am not a stupid mathematician. I didn't not design a world of binaries and whites and blacks. The void created by a missing success need not necessarily be filled by admitting to a failure. Okay, a screw-up is always the most important thing that causes the absense of success. But then you cannot disregard entirely, the precence of an element of uncertainty! Look here, prick... I need to wind up now. You wish to stay in there, surrounded by that sickly stench, fine by me. Try eating a bit of that black greasy thing too. May be it'll help you feel worse. Or if something did get to your head, get out, take a bath, and get moving."

He got up to take leave, placing on my left hand a small rolled up piece of cloth, concealing something. "Its not really useful, but it will make sense". As he turned around, with his usual choir of angels and all, he smirked back... "And do drink up that lemon-tea. Its a nice heady liquor."

I later opened that rolled up piece of cloth he gave me, only to find in it a silver lining on a cloud shrouding the sun.

Courage

2008-05-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

Courage is to smile in the face of defeat.
Courage is to laugh when your reason cries.
Courage is to thank your well-wishers after you fail.
Courage is to believe in dad, when he says its just begun.
Courage is to work, more than ever before.
Courage is to agree, when they say may be you aren't that good.
Courage is to carve a new foundation stone out of an old tombstone.
Courage is to starve your ego, and feed your passion.
Courage is to write battle-plans, when battles are all but lost.
Courage is to look back and learn, before looking forward.
Courage is to sit down and think, when thoughts have failed you.
Courage is to fall, and resurrect before the sixtieth second.
Courage is to listen to comfortably numb, and still feel the pain.
Courage is to tell mom that things are fine, when they are not.
Courage is to clap on the sidelines, while the winner walks away with a pound of your flesh.
Courage is to walk the untreaded path, when every predecessor has failed to make it across.
Courage is to strategize, when strategies have convincingly worked against you.
Courage is to begin at the end, and end it at a new beginning.
Courage is to thank the lord for your skill, after your skill has failed you.
Courage is to stay alive, because you have more than yourself to live for.

Know your Nature

2008-03-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

Small touch of ingenuity can bring out a real nice expression from a picture. I present here another couple of photos, where the the background supports the subject, rather than merely acting inert. The first one is shown above. The white background, above, is dry cow-dung, along the side of the footpath. Secondly, how does there appear to be such a stark contrast of the leaf against the white background? It is because of the use of flash, despite the day-light. I used it to brighten the composition, and also to do away with shadows associated with the usual day-light.

The second picture shown above, has a distinctive green background, that looks like minute grass. I dont know whether it gets across to you, but to me, it looks like a massive grassland, with a very huge dry peepal leaf lying in it. (Yeah, I need to appreciate my photos). Well, the background is actually fresh moss, the stuff you come across right after rains.

The thumb rule: Your subject stands out better, if your background co-operates! :D

A composite composition

2008-03-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

You never chance upon a good picture-composition. You find one right next to you. I believe it is the trickiest part of photography.

What is so interesting about this picture ? (I do hope you've noticed it already :P). There are lots of straight lines that are all converging into a solitary singularity in the centre of the picture. And ofcourse, there is the toppings by tall trees and sodium-lights and painted-sidewalks and what-nots, all coming together to bring out a beautiful picture. I rock, dont I :D

The picture is a standard "night-shot", with each entity effectively lit up by yellow sodium vapor lamps. (Which is why the darn yellow coloring). Certain pointers that may come in handy, when trying pictures such as these:

you WILL need a tripod or something you can rest your camera upon. This picture here, required 30 second exposure.
Always try and orient your picture composition along the horizontal/vertical (eg, the horizon line, or the sea-coast-line) as closesly as possible. A tilt here leaves a sour under-taste.
Zoom out. A good wide-angle picture always does justice to a land-scape kind of image.
Try to ensure that your picture is "undisturbed". I had to wait for three cyclists to get out of the street, before I could shoot this picture. Any distraction can kill the effect of the photo.

If you notice carefully, a small cute moon can also be found towards the top of the image! The image stats:

ISO: 100
Exposure: 30.0 sec
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 18mm
Flash Used: No

I took a few more shots that evening. Notice how a firm horizontal alignment has been adhered to, in both images.

Do post your feedback. Ciao!

Watch out for the watch!

2008-03-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

There is more you can do with a watch that use it to keep your time -- you can use it to create photographs, ones that people will appreciate.

I took some guidelines from a learned friend recently, in particular on "product photography".

The following were the guidelines I was issued --

In product photography, your prime concern is to capture every feature of the product.
Next, the picture should concentrate on highlighting your product. A disturbing background is always unwelcome.
And finally, the product must look good, aesthetically.

The watch shown above was an attempt to put the aforementioned into practice. The background is white A4 sheet, to keep in tune with the steel body. The shadows (which can offer a distraction) have been minimized by neutral and uniform lighting (achieved using "reflector" A4 sheets). The f-number has been kept low enough to blur out the clasp, leaving a sharp focus on the dial. The white-balance adjust hasn't been touched.
Picture specifications:

Exposure -- 3.2 sec (tripod stabilized)
Depth-of-field -- f/5.6
ISO -- 100
focal length -- 55mm on an 18-55mm EF lens.

This is my first try to formalize my hobby-pursuit of photography. I'll try putting up more such readables in the near future... do put your feedback :)

Bell thy CAT

2008-03-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

NOTE: The methodology suggested below works. I have had to take cat twice (the second time, owing to some freaky stuff I did during interviews after first attempt.). However, the fact that I followed the methodology written below to secure a good set of iim calls again should prove that it all has some element of truth in it. :P

My CAT '07 performance: 99.6%ile with 99.73 in english, 96.5 in DI and 96.3 in Math

My CAT '08 performance: 99.91%ile with 99.56 in english, 99.1 in DI and 98.1 in Math

The following ingredients are NOT required.

An IQ > 150
Super fast Number crunching
An Absolute fetish for bar graphs and charts
English sweeter than that of an Elizabethan Courtier
Atleast 12000 words in your vocabulary
Tables upto 99 by heart

Rule Number One. CAT's way easier than what they make it look like. All your coaching institutes, every one of those, without exception, have the intention of mortifying you. Not their mistake. They make money out of those who dont clear the test, than those who actually do. Sad state of affairs I must say!

If you're seriously serious about cat, think it over. Are you really game for letting go of all that you have learnt during undergraduate days, to get a formal training in selling shampoo? If you're really convinced, then half the game is won. You can continue reading below. Else, if you've suddenly realized the parody behind your decision, you can happily navigate away from this page.

The CAT examination is a test of how you can keep your head straight. There are three sections, Data interpretation, mathematics, and english. Data interpretation tests your comfort levels with graphs, charts, and puzzles. Mathematics simply sees whether you really deserve those 80-85 odd marks you scored in your high-school board exams. And English is all about habit.

So how should you go about it? Lets look at each section in a bit more detail:

English: Read your newspaper regularly for 30 days, (if you haven't been doing it already, its high time you wake up). How much of it? Well, read the bits you find interesting. Start with one article a day, and gradually go upto 5-6 perhaps... Just follow a few simple rules while reading.

Never, ever, let a word go by, without knowing its meaning.
For a new word, always look up a few synonyms, and if possible, jot it down somewhere.
Try to recapitulate all that you read, analytically.
Enjoy it.

Mathematics: How to tackle numbers? Well, you already have. You wouldn't be approaching graduation if you hadn't. What's more, the level of proficiency you need for math in CAT is very very elementary. You dont need to memorize a plethora of tables and tricks. The CAT exam that I gave, never posed a single mathematics question that required a memorized formula. Every single question could be tackled with bare minimum common sense.

Data Interpretation: There are broadly two kinds of questions you can be pitted against. Puzzles, and Charts. This section of your paper, I believe, is one that can be improvised upon by practice. Spend a fortnite prior to cat, touching upon puzzles and charts. Try locating charts such as these, and spend time analyzing them. See what you can derive out of these.

Can you tell me, in the above chart, which commodity's import into China registered the sharpest increase, between 2001 and 2006? And how much more was it than the runner-up?

Key indicators	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Real GDP growth (%)	11.4	9.8	9.0	9.0	8.6	8.4
Consumer price inflation (%; av)	4.8	4.5	3.9	3.7	3.8	3.8
Budget balance (% of GDP)	0.1	0.2	-0.2	-0.3	-0.3	-0.3
Current-account bal. (% of GDP)	11.6	10.4	10.0	9.8	8.9	7.6
Bank prime rate (%; yr end)	7.6	8.0	7.8	7.6	7.8	7.8
Exchange rate Rmb:US$	7.61	7.05	6.77	6.50	6.25	6.03
Exchange rate Rmb:¥100 (av)	6.46	6.78	7.05	6.95	6.81	6.57

See the table above. You have some Rmb's, which can buy you a Broc-Chocolate in China in 2007. However, you exchanged all your Rmb's for dollars. Three years later, you exchange back those dollars for Rmb's. If your Broc-Chocolate's price increased as per the Consumer Price Inflation, how many more Rmb's will you need to buy the chocolate?

To conclude, do not get intimidated by the test. Its very much possible, and very much do-able. I scored a 43 percent of the maximum marks, and was comfortably in the top 0.4 percent of all appearing candidates. While taking the test, my suggestion is that you spend your time evenly on each section, since you need to put up a good performance in each of them independently too. However, if you feel you're rather dicey in one particular section, I would recommend you start with it, and spend more time on it compared to the other two sections.

All you need a cool-head, and do remember to relieve yourself before you enter the exam hall ;)

Curtail the creative power of thinking by guiding it towards the creation of concepts

2008-03-16T03:38:00.000-07:00

Let us analyse the grammatical implications of the title itself. Put aside the implied meaning, and concentrate on the words. "Curtail the creative power of thinking by guiding it towards the creation of concepts." The ever-authoritative dictionary will place 'concept' in the same pool of words that are destined to describe an abstract or symbolic tag meant to capture the essence of 'reality' or a 'perspective'. Lets look at 'creativity'. Our word lord, the dictionary, will once again curtail the word's freedom of expression, chaining it down to a non-descript 'ability to create, think originally and out of the box'.

What do we have here? Why do the words imply only what they have been required to imply? Why does one need to have a collossal vocabulary to write a piece of outstanding literature? Why not an intelligent interplay of words? I will pause here, for I fear I might begin sounding like a bickering old woman. Lets leave the English language to its own miseries and the ever-burgeoning stack of words.

What I am trying to drive at, is that a mere assignment of meaning or tagging of something leads to death of innovation on its front. A spade is a spade and that's that. Not very long ago, a haggard man who claimed that you can move in time and get energy out of mass and other such things; also said something that was an eyeopener of sorts. He said that thethe reason why progress on science (not technology) is slowing down is because the scientist is not reading enough of philosophy and literature. He is getting too much into the habit of sticking to pre-conceived notions, texts and theorems.

Very right indeed. In the crayon-scribbled sky you will find in a six-year old's drawing book, you'll find birds flying around. There is however, a stark difference between that bird and its counterpart in God's sky. God's sky allows birds to fly. Back and forth, in and out. The boy's bird stays in there, in the drawing book. The boy shot the bird out of the sky and into his drawing book, the moment he assigned a set of colors and strokes to it. Not that I am against the kid's attempt to capture god's creation in color. But why use the same colors as did god? Why depict the wings, the beak, the feathers in the same fashion? How about trying to color the wings with terquoise rather than the usual black. How about giving the bird a chance to evolve in the dimension of art too?

The warmth in a morning knock

2008-03-16T03:21:00.000-07:00

He rode a 1927 model atlas goldline super bicycle. As Navjot, our old Hall president had said, he had been allowed to come to the hall to collect newspapers only on compassionate grounds. He was around 70 years of age. He was a sikh by religion. The little hair he had on his head, were coiffured suggesting so. The old man had arthristis, with swollen joints. He would cycle from somewhere in gol bazaar, each weekend, to our campus. (Which would be around 5 kilometres one sided).

Each saturday morning, you could hear the same familiar knock on your door, and in the feeblest of tones, he requested you to sell your used newspapers to him. With the limited vision that he had, he could barely see beyond a couple of metres. (You could often see him talking through an open door, to the room's owner. Only that the room's owner wasn't in there). He would, mind you, never, ever, ever ask you to give your newspapers to him for free. He always offered to pay. And, some of my worthy friends, I distinctly remember, would almost always receive that meagre 20 rupees from him, in liu of their old newspapers. I wonder where their conscience would go.

Having collected a minor bulk of newspapers, he would head to a corner of the hall, deposit them there and head to the next block. Born to a benevolent mother and a social worker father, I would, apart from my usual stock of newspapers, also give him a small amount of money. Why? Not because he was poor. Not because he was in need of help. But because, despite his pain, his lack of eyesight, his aging muscles, he would still work. He would earn his living, buying old newspapers from future leaders of the world -- IITians. And those IITians would be on record of having sold off their conscience and philanthropy for a meagre 20 rupees... but lets not discuss them. They're far worse than you can imagine.

So, I would pay my homage to the grit and determination of this old man. One who would earn his living, at an age, when we'd be retired and playing with grandchildren... feasting off the interest of barrow-loads of money.

Its been five weekends since I last saw the old man. I asked some hall staff to find out about what happened to him, and was told that he was taken away by Lord Almighty. He was at work then, selling off newspapers to a buyer somewhere in the market, when the Lord called him off.

Quick Presentation Tips

2008-03-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: BeeTeaPee Presentation is entirely a hypothetical construct. Any resemblance whatsoever with any real-life incident/person/event is purely co-incidental and unintentional. But yeah, these tips can come in handy. :P

CoolTip#1: Before presentation, ask the panel if they would prefer to have you face them, or the wall.

CoolTip#2: You have the right to request the panel to wear protection before they begin.

CoolTip#3: Never, ever let the panel know that you've done it before.

CoolTip#4: Try to get your btp-ppt rescheduled if it clashes with those five days. (A messy deal will leave the panel unsatiated, and your grades compromised)

CoolTip#5: Tell the panel that you abstain from fellatio on that very day of the week.

CoolTip#6: A one-man-panel's a breeze; two's exhausting; three's an orgy; four's a pain; five... you had better paid a visit to your surgeon

Corollary to CoolTip#6: The age old saying "more the merrier" doesn't hold in the context of the BeeTeaPee-Presentation.

CoolTip#7: If the panel is bi-curious, you've had it.

CoolTip#8: Do not doubt the panel's ability to do it again... and again... and again....

CoolTip#9: See if you can convince the panel that you're underage. (Caution: in certain cases, this can backfire)

CoolTip#10: If the panel fails to get it up, you can't be luckier.

CoolTip#11: Take the pills regularly for atleast a week, after the presentation.

CoolTip#12: It will hurt less if you try to enjoy it.

CoolTip#13: Tell the panel that you like to play with 'toys'. It'll be a neat workaround if they agree.

CoolTip#14: When asked "what was your contribution", dont exclaim "I played the victim, m*****f***r". It can be detrimental.

Valentine's Day Notice

2008-03-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

Owing to the unruly crowd behaviour and the mad rush observed at my doorstep over the past few Valentine-Days, the following security measures have been decided upon, for the forthcoming edition of the V-Day. They shall be enforced upon every interested applicant without exception. Any candidate found attempting to bend/break away from the security norms mentioned below shall be summarily rejected from the selection procedure.

The norms:

The selection procedure shall be carried out at the Insitute's Open Air Theatre to avoid conjestion.
The procedure shall commence at 6.00 PM sharp, on February the 13th, 2007.
Only the first 800 applicants will be allowed into the theatre, after which the gates shall be sealed. (Entry is strictly of first come first serve basis)
There shall be seventeen parallel counters catering to the applicants, and the applicants are to form single-threaded queues at each counter.
Candidates can belong to either of the sexes (sex no bar)
Each applicant is required to be in possession of the following, failing which he/she will be immediately rejected:

proof of age (candidate shouldn't me more than 1.5 times my age)
proof of identity
an attested proof of NOT having an IQ of more than 138
proof of devotion (can be a proof of an attempt to suicide, or a proof of resortment to drugs etc.)
a rose
a self-composed poem

If female, the candidate must bring certification to the effect of NOT HAVING CLEARED JEE, OR EVEN SECURING A RANK WITHIN 200000
Candidates will first be required to register at one of the registration desks following which a shortlist will be put up.
Shortlisted candidateS will be guided to one of the interview panels. (for a max. 30 minutes interview)
Selection will be solely depend upon the interview.
Clarification for female candidates: brains will NOT be a criteria marked upon (qualification no bar)
A maximum of 1 (one) male valentine will be accepted.
A minimum of 37 (thirty-seven) female valentine(s) will be accepted.
Candidates must refrain from killing other candidates (though desirable, this norm is not mandatory)
All candidates must behave in an orderly fashion when His Highness Sir Hansraj arrives.
Any queries will be answered at the help desk at the theatre

For any clarifications, kindly contact me @
(+91)9932681216