Thursday, April 28, 2005

Guru Shishys#3 :- Purpose

The guru sits meditating on the circular mud platform encircling the peepal tree.The forest is calm and beautiful as usual.

Shishya#1 and Shishya#2 come in search of the guru.
Shishya#1 and Shishya#2 stand in front of the guru and bow to the guru.

The guru opens his eyes and gives a mischievous smile.

Guru:-
What brings you here, shishyas ?

Shishya#1:-
Oh holy one! We need some clarifications for our doubts from you

Guru:-
What sort of clarifications ?

Shishya#1:-
The PURPOSE of our lives

Guru:-
This is a difficult one.

The guru gets up and walks aside.

Guru:-
What were you in previous lives ?

Shishya#1 and Shishya#2 :-
We were software engineers working in India.

Guru :-
I am shocked to know that almost 90% of my shishyas were SEs or Senior Software Engineers!Anyway, to answer ur questions, I need to STOOP down to YOUR LEVEL to answer these questions.

Shishya#1:-
Please do, Sir!

Guru:-
Have u seen the movie Matrix-2 in ur past life.

Shishya#2:-
Yes Oh holy one!

Guru:-
I'll quote Agent Smith.

The guru clones himself to 10 Gurus.

Guru:-
"It is purpose that created us.Purpose that connects us.Purpose that pulls us.That guides us.That drives us.It is purpose that defines us.Purpose that binds us."

Now did you guys understand ?

Shishya #1 :-
I didnt.I hated the Matrix 2 and 3.

The Guru tries to explain things in a different way.

Guru:-
You must have prepared several documents.....
Did you observe the heading like PURPOSE and SCOPE in your software specifications document ?

Shishya#1 :-
Yes Oh holy one!

Guru:-
God defines Purpose and Scope for humans.Then the next page is left INTENTIONALLY BLANK . You got to fill those up before you are out of scope. Did u Understand , my dear brain dead sishya?

Shishya #1 :-
Yes, oh learned one.

The shishya is satisfied with the explanations.

Guru :-
Okay, I think I should take bath in the holy Ganga river now.Please have some sweets inside my house. It is prepared by my sexy biwi , Gurupathni. She was a BPO executuive in her previous birth.

Both the Shishyas run happily inside the ashram while the Guru prepares for bath.

Monday, April 25, 2005

G = { V, T , P , S}

Well , check out this wikipedia article on Indian English esp. the one titled "grammar tweaks".This one really makes me alert/conscious about the way I speak to people.I think everyone of us here can make out how a :-

a) Northie speaks
b) Mallu/Tamilian speaks
c) Kannadiga speaks

But do we really have to be compilers , in real life throwing syntax errors for grammatical mistakes?

Someone said "f___ the grammar" on a train, sometime ago.

Hahaha....

Guru Shishya #2

The Shishya sits at a nearby pond.
Shishya ogles at another female Shishya...

Female shishya is a Shakuntala clone exposing midriff and all that....
Swans sail on that pond.

The Guru sits ON the pond. (Guru floats on water...he is the boss)

Shishya asks a question:
"Tell me Guru, about Love"

Before the guru can reply,The female shishya replies,

"You see this water carefully contained on my hand? It Symbolizes Love."

"As long as you keep your hand caringly open and allow it to remain there,
it will always be there. However, if you attempt to close your fingers round
it and try to posses it,it will spill through the first crack it finds."

The guru now takes over....

"This is the greatest mistake that people do when they meet love...they
try to posses it, they demand, they expect... and just like the water
spilling out of your hand, love will leave you. For love is
meant to be free, you cannot change its nature. If there are people you
love, allow them to be free beings."

After listening to the lecture, Shishya is madly in love with the female shishya.

-----------
short story edited and re-engineered by su depp

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Sans teju

Everyone of us here at Bangalore met and it was nice meeting after a really long time.

The food was good and the hotel was one of the nearby hangouts near Mindtree...
"Kadamba"....

Hmm the weekend just swooshed away and I am trying hard to concentrate today morning...

Well , havent got anything to blog....

I am trying to understand some scary radio channel multiplexing here and it is not going inside my head despite repeated attempts...

:-)

CHOW

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Algorithms Pit - Deja Vu

Oh, how familiar it feels. To have screwed up an algorithms exam. Again!

Today, it was Approximation Algorithms, one of the tougher courses there is in IITB (CS/IT). The exams were especially bad; for various reasons: the professor expects a lot, teaches very fast, reference books are esoteric at best, basic building blocks are still beyond me, and mostly, I didn't work on it through the semester. And the less work I did, the tougher the subject got. And now, at the end, it had just gotten beyond me.

Though, to be fair, the end-sem paper was not as hard as I expected it to be. Its just that I was so bad, so very bad, that the level of the question paper made no difference to my pathetic overall effort on this great subject. The one thing I did get though, out of this course: Theory/Algorithms needs variety of mathematical tools that I have no clue about, creativity and patience that are beyond me, and mostly, passionate effort that I am surprised I didn't put in.

I will be working on this one again. Maybe yet again. Rarely have I gotten this helpless where I am unable to get what I really and truly desire. Time to start again.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Guru Shishya #1

"Oh holy Guru" , said the shishya with his hands folded as the Guru sat under the holy Vruksha, "was life always supposed to be this hopeless?"

The guru who is an age old rishi opens an eye and winks at the shishya.

"I have always told you that desire is the chief cause of misery, oh dear shishya.What is it that is bothering you?"

"I am not able to find happiness in this world , oh master!"

"Dont desire happiness.It is very elusive.Just get off it.You will be happy".

"I tried that very hard master".

"You DESIRED (not to desire happiness).So you are miserable.
Dont follow the principle DESIRE IS THE CHIEF OF MISERY very rigidly.
If you DESIRE to follow that principle in order to lead a happy life, u r a mess.
It is very tricky."

"So how can I get it?"

"I will repeat it. Dont desire happiness.You will be happy".

Shishya is a shiny, happy man and walks away.
----------
Hahaha short story by Su Depp
More of this series coming.

Monday, April 18, 2005

Thrusday yen kathe ?

april 22nd rite ?? sudeepa answer .

My office has changed

So has my project, for the good.

And I am at Sasken's main office at Indiranagar-Domlur area near Diamond District.I have an odyssey in the morning and evening and I am still trying to find the shortest path from RR-Nagar to Domlur.I am not accessing my mails here etc because of some shifting problems.So if any one has mailed anything, I may not have replied.

This office is good....the cubicles are AMAZING to say the least.They make you feel like one reallllly important guy...

Well, still lot of work to be done...(Official YET non technical...You get the idea i hope)....

I havent blogged for sometime....
Wokie boys...May the force be with u....

Friday, April 15, 2005

Shubham

I always "eff" up things.

Always.

Really dont know, what next.

The Grind

Semester end crunch time, and the Grind is on. Everyone here is grooving to the hip-hop music of projects, term papers, grade-saving quizzes, lab reports, frantic study towards hopeless exams, and add to all this, the sweltering heat of the metropolis is giving it a very sweaty, sexy look. I am in the middle of this melee, contributing my own bit of color to the show. Have various reports and project coding lined up for the next 3 days and exams starting in 6 days, with Approximation Algorithms looking to be the opening salvo in whats going to be my worst exams ever.

Time is moving quickly, but not in a flash to get it all over with quickly, painlessly. No, its not that easy. Crunch time is all about the slow churning of those days, where each hour of work can be felt, but more are needed as its never enough to catch up with all the procrastination of the last month. In IIT, they have a special name for this feeling - "NaBaD' - a pronouncable acronym for NBD, which stands for Nervous Breakdown. So, people are either in nabaD, or some have become nabaDus, folders get renamed from /syslab to /syslab_nbd etc.

So, with all the nadaDus flocking the pool this summer, the Grind is rocking.

Monday, April 11, 2005

the inevitable finally happened

my dear friend managed to bang the car :-(, and spoilt my reputation of a good driving instructor ( self-claimed).

This happend in a traffic jam, where he managed to stop the car in the first gear, when he was suppose to move. The while restarting the car moved backwords by half a feet and managed to kiss the bus .

loads of meetings up for the day ..

gd

A gruelling journey back to work ..

I unfortunately ( shud be assumed as - lack of planning) landed up in Z - uppper berth of Diwakar travels. The Zee berth is the last one of the 26 elegantly laid deck of beds.

I have been tossed, shaken, almost dropped on the floor and hit to the roof in the gruelling 11-hour journey back to the Nizam's city.

Next time around I should plan better or should not be travelling. My eyes are drooping, thanks to the lack of sleep along the seamless tiresome journey. 'Less work' is the only thing to cheer about for the day.

Am all set to leave from work. Oh have one more job to be accomplished, that of the driving instructor. Is it for me to drive or guide the driver.

Blore news. Met maiya and SP. Had good food ( including masala poori ). Happy Ugadi and great to see the thunder storm with hail stones. I forgot to have one.


ps : ISB placments r rocking... check it out.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Complaints

I am sick of complaining about the roads, the traffic, the power supply, the water supply.. in general the state of affairs in bangalore. I want to get out of this complaining phase and do something to improve the condition. Isnt there anything that I can do about it? and whatever happened to Janagraha?

Thursday, April 07, 2005

a nice story

read this story about a bunch of high school students achievement. Also read the huge number of comments, if u have the time. I was expecting to see comments which lauded their succes, but I was really surprised to see the attitude of 'resident americans' towards immigrants, illegal or otherwise.

Driver Error ..

relax, kummi and papanna. This is not related to any Driver software.

My friend and colleague bought a new ZEN and I am doing the noble ( wished NOBEL) job of being his driving instructor. I thought Big roads are an advantage, but it can be detriment when an "L-board" is driving in a traffic which follows no lane rules.

I control the hand brake and till now have successfully managed not to bang anything and have saved some humanbeings from having borken bones. ( peace prize .?? ) Actually is a very late braker like ?? ( some one from F1 ), or no braker sometimes. So have to do the additional part of screaming at him.

At the end of the ride both of us end with sweaty backs, thanks to the leather couch .. we two more days ..and will be in blore again .

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Organic and Inorganic ..

Certainly would not like to talk about chemistry. :)

Is organic growth slow compared to inorganic. Or is 'Organic growth' a misnomer. I have been wondering why companies(Infy), puts a lower growth slab for its existing employees at the same time keeps the higher growth level or lower bar for the laterals to jump into the company.

This year there have been numerous instances of deserving people not being promoted, whereas people with the same experience or even lower have being wooed into the company with higher salaries and better positions.

The argument goes like this 'A lateral always fulfills a demand and hence get much better pay/position, compared to resident employees'. But one needs to remember, ATTRITION is one of the major fuelling factors for DEMAND.

Imagine 15% of Infy's 35,000 quitting in a quarter. About 5-8% of these people do quit with the dissatisfaction from their latest promotion. The company fills in this by hiring people at a higher cost. So what does the company benefit from playing such an aggressive stratergy when it comes to compensation benefits ?

This is my part of the argument . I want someone who's sitting across the table showcasing his view.

There is a chat with the DC head this week. Will pose the questions to that ass .

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Project Mayhem

No, I am not referring to Tyler Durden's (from Fight Club) crazy plans to take over the world. I am referring to the crazy amount of "projects" that I am supposed to do the next two weeks.

There is a hardcore machine learning paper on text modeling that I have to understand and implement, and prove some results, and I have never done this kind of coding before. Also have to work on this data compression of large data sets for my data mining course. Get this, I am supposed to visit a few IT firms and do some report on Demand Forecasting in the IT-sector. Finally, through this month, my crawler project will be on. One theory subject (Approx. Algorithms) is the saving grace in terms of project-load. But it takes its own sweet revenge by being the toughest subject I have ever studied in my life.

Life is smooth sailing otherwise, have moved over from Caffeine to Horlicks....as a part of my do-all-to-improve-health motto these days.