Oh man, so near yet so faaaaaar..........

Yeah, we met through a common friend. I must express my gratitude to him. It was definately love at first sight. I looked and admired her like a car enthusiast admiring a ferrari. A bit dazzled by her beauty, by her looks and then she was in my arms, in my hands. Oh boy, what a feeling it was. Yes, God must have taken ages to carve her out. In the black darkness of the night, she shone like a star. She was in a black dress, all quiet and reserved. I had to make the first move for sure. A single touch was all needed for her to open up and did she open up or what. Like a small child, who opens his eyes to the lightest of touch, a smile lit her face, so bright, that all other things around her faded into darkness. It was my dream to see her, but I never imagined that she would be in my hands. All the right curves, right shape and .....she could fit inside a pocket too.......er... pocket? Yeah the I-Phone, Apple's I-phone, Apple I Phone it was and what a piece of technology it is. Watching the features and the demos on TV is one thing but experiencing its super cool features in hand is 100 times more exciting. Great work by the Apple team. Hats off for thinking and then producing such magic. I wish i would own it someday..............

Someday someway together we'll be baby, I will take n you will take your time..........................

Hum aisehi hain,aise hi rahenge, kabhi nahi sudharenge

When will this country's citizens acquire some civic sense? When? When?
Last evening, I went out for some Diwali shopping with my friends and the entire journey....from home to the shopping malls and back was worth remembering for all the wrong reasons. The journey had just started when a sleek Honda Civic came and stopped beside us. The window rolled down and guess what, a young guy brandishing his designer glasses and his designer clothes, pushes his sick face out of the window and guess what, spits right on the road. Would he have done the same thing had he been in any other country? The answer is no. Its just here, in India, that he has got the guts to do it. That was just the beginning of the evening.
Next we stop at a traffic signal for the obvious reason.....The traffic signal was RED. Again, we hear of a vroom, another young guy, rich,spoilt brat, wearing black shades(maybe thats why he couldnt see the red light), leather jacket, on his million dollar bike, zips past us, breaking the signal with such impunity that it would put any politician in Bihar to shame. Again, the same question, Would he have the balls to cross even the Zebra Crossing, had he been in say US or any other country?
The worse was yet to come. While walking in the walking plaza on the MG road, we saw it so littered by the crowd, that it was almost stinking. MG road, by virtue of being in camp, would be used by a cosmopolitan crowd, who can be safely assumed to be rich and literate. But wait a minute, does literate mean having civic sense too? Well, as far as India is considered, the answer is no. So what do we see? We see, many people most of them young and from well to do families, throwing filth on the road as if MG road was a part of Dust bin. Again the question repeats, why cant these people have simple,plain civic sense of keeping their city clean?
All of the above three incidents were all the more disappointing since everyone was young, and broke the law with impunity. Although making roads filthy is not punishable out here in my country, but people just don't believe in exercising some self-control. They need some fear, fear of being punished,fear of being put into jail, fear of being fined, fear of being rapped on their knuckles for them to obey a rule.But my question is why? We live in a civilized society and these are simple,plain unwritten rules.
These idiotic rich brats will speak in flawless English, imitate everything from the West, their clothes, style,accent,music everything except plain civic sense. I have become fed up with sights of such stupid young people. I am reminded of Madhav Apte from the movie Dombivali Fast, and feel like taking a baseball bat and breaking the mouth of anyone who spits on the road, smashing the vehicles which break traffic signal and rapping the knuckles of those who make the streets filthy.
Why on earth, is it so damn hard for people to acquire civic sense? How stupid can one be? I hope all such people become a part of Brain Drain. But wait a minute, this cant even be called "Brain" drain.
Yeh log kabhi nahi sudharenge, Aise logon ko sirf dande ki bhasha samajhti hai.

An off day

This could well be one of my worst days of my life as i feel low in spirit and enthusiasm. Down,down down is the way, in which my day has gone. The day had a good beginning, and i thought that this could very well be a decent day. How wrong was I. Its not that i feel down because things have not gone my way. There have been many days, when things don't go my way, but today, I was hoping, and expecting certain things. They say, never expect. But its a human tendency to expect from everything and anything, but the "day" had other ideas. It slapped and whipped me in all possible ways and in all possible areas, to leave me, at the end of the day, bleeding all over and wrenching in pain. I tried to fight, but you see, you just cannot fight this day. The day was in no mood to just leave in a state of pain. It wanted me to take up a knife, cut me open, gorge out all my organs, and laugh at me in sadistic fashion. Well, now that the day has come to an end, i do not know whether to laugh or cry, because i have reached a level of insensitivity to pain, since you just cant feel the pain after you have been subjected to such things. As the song goes "Gam se ab ghabaraana kaisa gam sau baar mila.....

AI gaa

I have always been intrigued by how the human mind works. They say that what differentiates us humans from other creatures on this planet is this processor. Even science has not been able to explain it in its entirety. They say the gates of this processor are the nerve cells, and apparently some chemical thingy, triggers of various things in the body. Imagine the things that the mind has to take care of.....On the external front, handle the enormous amounts of information that the five senses are sending it continuously. The pictures, the sounds, the tastes, the feel, the smells, analyze each and every thing, decide and then instruct the muscles so as to control the movements accordingly. All this while, it has to cater to the internal workings too, check energy levels, enzyme levels, instruct the glands to secrete them, lookout for cells that need food, see that oxygen level is maintained, monitor heart to see that it keeps on pumping the blood, etc etc. Am no expert in biology, but there must be zillion things on brains mind to take care of. Then theres the third front which probably is what makes us unique in the animal kingdom. This is the meta-physical/spiritual/logical/emotional front. I have clubbed everything in under one front because all of them share the common process of thought-process. What is a thought process? How can some chemical reactions trigger of say my answer to 2+2? or say questions like who am i? or the different feelings that i experience? or for that matter, how can it trigger me to write this thing? The first and second front has been reproduced to a large extent, with automation as the example. As to the third front, the race is on. A.I. Yeah, artificial intelligence as they. Its a no debate as to whos more powerful on the first two fronts, humans or machines? Countless science fiction books, movies have been made as to what happens when machines overtake us in the third front. Could it be possible that one day, science fiction would come true? What would be the tipping point if that happens? Its not possible right now, that the machines/robots start thinking on their own, and when they do so, quite obviously, they shall think for themselves first. But taking a hypothetical scenario in which this thing does happen, how will it all start? Probably, in some research labs, with a computer scientist working with a super computer, trying to run his some AI program. He hits the enter key, sees a bug, and cringes with disappointment. Damn, the value should have been 294.7364 and not 294.4356 Have to build the program all over again. Compiled the program, 0 errors, 214 warnings. Smiles back on the prof's face. . He hits the enter key, and.........

What have we here, laddie? Mysterious scribblings? A secret code? No, poems, no less! Poems, everybody!

Sittin in the audi, n watching the show,
was thinkin to myself, if i could be a pro

can i dance or can i write, can i paint or atleast sing?
isnt there any talent in me, that i can call my own "thing"?

singin is wut i started out wid, but what awaited me was gloom
my songs wouldnt go, beyond the confines of the bathroom

had a shot at painting, thought i would do that with ease
my masterpieces were limited, to graphs in my ppts.

tried my hand at writing,thought its same as writing notes
the only ficion i wrote, were my weekly status reports

writin whackky one liners, that wont require any slog,
but the ones that were appreciated, were sysouts and user-action log.

writing neat little poems, is what i tried in rage,
lookin at the this one, dont think it will go beyond this page.

Sittin in the audi, the show sure was a treat
best place for me out here, seems to be the audience seat.

Conversation with Kerala Bus Conductor

Scene 1:
Location: Mangalore Bus Stand

Dialogues:

Me: Yeh bus Kannur jaayega kya?
Conductor: ?(Puzzled look on his face)

Me:(Thinking, that explaining with broken english and hand gestures might help in the conversation) Bus (pointing to the bus) goes("hands on steering wheel" gesture ) Kannur?
Conductor: (With a poker face) This bus will go to Payyanoor. From there, Kannur is pretty near. You can take another bus from there.

Tikdun Motha gumboot aalya mule purna pravaas, tondaawar bot thevun gapchup kela.

Humri photu to kheencho........

A casual conversation with a friend was what introduced me to words like shutter speed, aperture, camera lenses etc. Yes, the world of photography. So, I decided to make myself more aware of these photographic terms and their significance while clicking pitures. The same friend had shown me a Canon SLR camera which costed about 28k, and i said to myself, who in the world would buy something like that for clicking pictures when you get amazin digicams for half the price. I am sure there must be people who treat their SLR's as not some instrument of photography, but as an extension of their own bodies. These are the people for whom, i guess clicking pictures with a digicam would be sacrilege. For gamers, it would be playstations,xboxes...., in similar fashion, i guess for photographers, it would be SLR's. Imagine a converstation between photographers n am sure they would mention a SLR in the same breath as car lovers would mention mercedes, or terrorists would mention AK-47s,56s? eh?
Nowadays, the term googling has become synonymous with searching something, n i had read somewhere that Google Inc had trademarked the term 'googling'. Newez, me veering of the subject....(Apologies to google for using it though.)tried to google some basic stuff about amateur photography. the site https://photo.net explains everything about photography, but it got too technical for me and hence decided to look out on google videos.
I had already heard about the Rule of thirds while clicking pictures, but in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiYHT-JvoqI , it has been explained in neat fashion, where at the end you really find the rule of thirds, extremely simple to put into practice.
Apparently depth of field or depth of focus is an important part of photography. Following video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzedefUXARE explains the same using photographs. Very nicely done tutorial showing how the aperture size affects the depth of field. The next http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpWtq-haaCQ video shows in general usage of a digicam, but i really liked the photoz in which the difference due to shutter speed is shown. I sure am atleast gona try to implement some of these tips so as to say. As far as the SLR goes well i would say, that can wait....

Here Cometh the Rains

2nd July 2007,
After 3 days of incessant rain, the morning is dry and seems like i shall make it to office without having any part of my body 'dripping' in water. But wait a minute....The met dept had predicted 3 more days of rain. Naah, who trusts the met dept anyways. I get ready to go, start my bike and then..... yeah the met dept did get it right this time around. Thankfully, it is a drizzle and i manage to get to office, relatively dry. And then, it starts raining cats n dogs, elephants n dinosaurs or whatever you want to call it. I haven't seen so much water pouring in one day in Pune.
I get down to work and the entire day i keep hearing and seeing the downpour. The day ends prematurely for me at 7:30 but decide to delay my departure hoping that the rains would go away. Plus still had to see the remaining part of the movie Hotel Rwanda. Nice movie though. The movie finishes but not the rains. I eventually decide to push off, but my bike has other ideas. I am reminded of my own version of Murphy's law "If something has to go wrong, it will do so, exactly when you dont want it to." Anyways, the bike seems to be in no mood to take me home. So, I decide to take the PMT as Rickshaws refuse to ferry people to other side of the town. By the time I reach the bus stand, I am completely wet. Theres a threshold point of 'wetness quotient' if i may call it that. beyond which you really stop protecting yourself from the rain, actually you really stop caring because you cant get any 'wetter' than this.
So as i wait for the bus, i remember the recently released movie '1 40 ki last local'. Naah but no Neha dhupias out here. hehehe.... But theres this man, who comes and talks to me regarding how difficult it has been for him to reach work because of the rain I am like, wutever boss, why should i care. But then later realise hes on a high with a peg or two, more than his daily dose. The PMT buses refuse to stop in spite of me frantically waving like a person drowning. Should i go back to office at spend the night? Just then an indica taxi comes. The drunkard gets onto it and the driver asks me if i was interested in joining. Kothrud suddenly seems to be an elusive place. I hop into the car, and then realise, fuck i havent even asked the driver about how much it would cost me. Plus he isnt even dropping me to home, rides only till deccan. Wut if he charges me 500? the cars jam packed, and i start getting weird ideas. Could this be a trap? man, then i am surely screwed big time. The driver misses a turn, n my thoughts drift to the amount of money i am carrying, mobile, watch , aroung 15k? Fuck...but then the driver steers back to the original route. Realise hes drunk too. Hehehe.....Seems like everyone in the city is on a high. I am dropped at Deccan with all my belongings intact and i am lighter by only 10 bucks. Phew....Now to the next bus stop..... As i walk, my floaters seem to have had enough water and are now squeezin it all out. The journey doesnt seem to end. Luckily, i find a bus on my route. As the bus wades through water, i find that Karve road is filled with knee deep water. I find a maruti stuck with water upto its wind sheild and i realise that the concretisation of half of road has led to all this inundation. Finally, get down at my stop. Still about a kilometre of walking to do. The low lying societies and the slums are now filled up with water. I see people with bucket, pipes trying to remove water from their houses, but with rain still continuing, i really feel sorry for them. Decide to click some pics of the road or is it a river? Hehehe... and they say India Shining......Hehehehe.....Finally and yeah finally reach home. Its been a long day for me, and as i sit filling up my blog, i just hope that tomorrow is a much better day.

A Night out at my office

Its been many times that i have spent the entire night at the office doing work, and i have been asked many times how on earth is it possible to work the entire night. My answer is simple. When your Boss is sitting on your head, its not that hard not to work the entire night. Heres an hourly peek into what happens as the night progresses:

6pm-7 : Boss comes in, Hey, i will need that thing complete by tomorrow morning.Me - Oh F*$K, gone my sleep. What all things are on my plate??? Oh shoot , these are things to do??

7-8: Shall do this, wont do that, this need not be done, that can be pushed for next release, that ought to go in.

(tic-toc,tic-toc,)

8-9:(People leaving for their homes) Oh shit, how many hours of work remaining??
2? 3?4?(chances of my work estimates being correct are as less as india winning the WC , futball WC i mean.)

9-10: Food,food,food, gotta have some. Oh Company's canteen's closed, maggi- life saver. phew.
10-11: click click click click, (Me thinkin---This lyf sucks man), damn, this thing aint working , what are my options? do i have any option?? clock races faster than Schumis ferrari.

11-12: Coffee time, glug glug glug glug aaah. sleeps gone for 15 mins, y aint this damn thing working, chuck the elegant options, workarounds? need to complete it tomorrow......man, how on earth is this going to happen.

12-1: (Posture change from sitting in chair to half sleeping with legs on desk) As murphys law says, if something can go wrong it definitely will and(my addition) The level of difficulty of any problem is inversely proportional to the amount of time left before a deadline.

1-2: break needed, orkut, rediff, gmail etc etc. gone 1 hr, need some refreshments, coffee coffee, more coffee.aha, alive for 15 more minutes.

2-3: comp screens getting hazy , ants walkin on my screen, wake up boy wake up, lets put some loud muzzic, speakers, where are the Damn speakers???? search search search, ......... aha here they are. Lets make a playlist( there go 15 mins) atlast, dhik chak dhik chak dhik chak.....$$$$$

3-4: lemme take a power nap of 15 min, which gets translated to 45 mins.(more scattered coffee mugs)

4-5: ooooh, morngs just round the corner. birds chirpin, thats bad news, work left? huge, lemme chop down some to do items......

5-6: morngs here,damn, am screwed big time. no chance , pack up time, mail writing time, asking boss for more time ..........

6-7: send mail, pack up, drive home, see pple going out for jogging, kids to school, while me retrning home. damn wut a lyf.

next day:

Boss: Hey, i will need that thing complete by tomorrow morning.Me - Oh F*$K, gone my sleep ...................................