Inside Man..

Have you watched this movie? It wasnt a big flick .. dint make a big noise at the box office..

what caught my attention was .. the title track of this movie was "Chayya Chayya" from Dil Se.. I was very surprised.. I had to mute my comp.. switch off the TV and restart, change channels, check my iPod etc to make sure that "Chayya Chayya" was indeed being played as the title track of the movie ..

The film starts as a dull "bank roberry" plot .. you wonder why such a powerful start cast - denzel washington, jodie foster, agreed to make such a movie.. but the movie unravels quickly and the bank robbery turns out to be a masterpiece ..

the movie can be best described as "unexpectedly unpredictable" .. - quoted by someone on IMDB.. rating 7.7/10..


oh yes .. and it ends with "Chayya Chayya".. again I had to check my comp, ipod and change channels to confirm I wasn't mistaken.. and glad that I was not ..

Whats your identity..??

For majority of the people living outside their countries its their Nationality followed by religion.
(Now this could vary a lot for specific ppl .. esp like for americans whether is he a democratic or republican, what he thinks about Iran / N. Korea / Iraq ?? ;-)...

It mostly ends there. Anyone who wants to know more about my identity beyond being an Indian stops at my food preference, and concludes these are my religious restrictions.. (with a bit of apathy that I am indeed missing a lot of juicy stuff )


Now turn the scenario domestically and it becomes more complex .. and I think the complexity in India increases .. It becomes a taxonomy.. we have an obsession with dissection .. region (north south india, state, city, area .. the last level of granularity reached in here was till South Bangalore .. now its heading towards individual localities like katriguppe, Girinagar etc ), religion, caste,language, food, movie star idols (ask a rajini fan)...


this is the price we pay for having a history which dates back to 3000BC .. and 2000 years more we will be back like Jews with a single identity.. and hopefully its INDIAN...

The most remarkable achievement for India or of India , is to be a cohesive democracy, with so much diversity (and adversity too).. This is one front where we have excelled beyond any country in the world.. despite numerous races, religions, castes, languages etc we are functioning as a single country for 60 years..

Some Business guru recently said homogeneity increases productivity and diversity decreases it.. he was referring to corporations only.. looks like it applies to nations as well

Gates' last day

So today , it seems is the last day of Bill Gates at office. A Microsoft without Bill Gates is something unimaginable.

I first heard of the name Bill Gates in a function called "Unveiling Windows 95" at a five star hotel in MGRoad. It was in 1995 (of course). There were around 300+ people attending the presentation. At that time, I was using windows 3.1 and I was curious about this "Windows 95" (yeah, really!). There was a small movie clip in which Bill Gates talks about the features of Windows 95 and all that. In the clip they showed this photo. . I had thought "So this guy is the man who made the Windows Software"

And then I saw him when I was in Infy. At that time, the opinions had changed. Heheh.

But still MS will be affected by his departure, no doubts about that.

What will he do next ?
Bill Gates for US President ?

item News ..

are not the same as News items,
item News' are the 'item number' equivalents .. in my dictionary ofcourse ..

with so many news channels, publication and websites today, almost anyone can make it to the news .. and can make a item News ..

e.g checkout the following link .. http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2008/jun/25mba.htm
no offence to the person involved ... or the concerned school ..

some item News of the future..

GD - Blr to HK and IT to Chemical .. what is he doing..
Richie - Back to Y! or Y! Blor to Y! Sunny Vale ..an incredible journey through Ask

or watever ..

back to the future..

@ work last week we kicked-off the 5-year strategic planning process. It was quite hectic and there were lots of socializing events too which was incredible fun..I seriously cant think how to plan for 5-years.. It became very easy when I assumed that whatever I plan would be wrong.. and I just need to put an explanation for that .. ;-)

I am kind of stuck in post-meeting trauma.. the 5-year strat plan process has set me in thinking mode. How would life be in 2013 ??? My main concern is not "What will I be doing?" cos thats easy.. I would not be doing anything unusual .. i would still be contemplating on life and cribbing out many a things including work :-) .. I would be married for sure..

My main question ins "what kind of an environment would I be living in??"

A decade ago Blore weather ranged between 22-28. Today it swings betwee 12-40.
How would this be in 2013 ??? 0-50 ??

Looking forward the biggest threat to human well-being (including mine, assuming I shall be still human in a competitive environment) seems to be the unpredictable and harsh weather.
there will be more deaths to harsher unpredictable weather patterns than to any other cause (assuming al qaida stops bombing, US stops invading at free will, human genocide problem in africa, burma etc would be solved, politicians become wiser and ofcos no nuclear explosions or something like Bhopal tragedy)

okies.. enuf of crap.. its typhoon 3 warning.. pack your bags and leave office before it gets worser.. the future shall be there.. u need to survive the present hour...

adios

I attended a birthday party and another function this weekend. In other words, this means, that the weekend literally flew away before I realize it and I am already sitting here and typing something hastily.

My niece Lakshmi's birthday party was a very well planned and a 'deftly' executed party.

Just like any other kid of today, it featured cake-cutting, party games, spraying some kind of weird foam in the air, dance, "return gifts" like a pack of pencils or story books (ps: return gifts reminds me of the taamboola). The parents of the kids are generally enthusiastic about these kind of things.

As far as I can remember we never had such birthday parties : That was a long time ago.

Our previous generation would say the same thing.

Ditto previous of the previous generation and so on.

Since I am doing some linked list programming, let me put it like this :-


curr = last;
while ( curr != GENERATION_CAVE_MAN)
{
curr->display("As far as I can remember we never had such birthday parties");
curr = curr->prev;
}


That sums up humanity's opinion on birthday parties.

Women generally like socializing. Thats a fact. So mothers of the kids would team up discussing many things like their dresses, their kids' dresses , the colors etc.

The fathers' of the kids were of two types :-

a)TYPE#1 : Tailing their wives going wherever they go.

b)TYPE#2 : Antisocial psychopaths who make faces because they have been put into an uncomfortable situation like attending a birthday party and want the cake to be cut immediately, because they don't want to talk with the neighboring father about "technology you are working on" OR "prospective customers in a value driven economy"

But both the types of fathers regardless of race, age, income in harmony watched one thing in unison. The beautiful sight of a balloon floating in air. It is human tendency to pat a balloon which comes near you. Some people also make that extra effort like jumping to hit a balloon and acting like a clown.

The other function was a formal one. It was the 60th birthday of my beloved maternal uncle. Great food. It is called as 60 year "Shanti". He has undergone quite a bit of rough patch in his life and now he's quite good and happy. Happy for him.

After driving slowly for quite sometime, have you ever felt the need to throttle?

I will give you an example:-

If you had seen the movie Ghulam, Aamir Khan will be going slowly bending his bike rhythmically as his bike waddles. Suddenly on the quite road, there is this array of bikes, which just swooshes past him with an defiance as though he never existed. Thats' enough to drag him into the race. Aamir Khan just wants to be on top of the other bikers, and he chases the guys to catch up with them.

Hmmm.

It's not just on road. It's with life too. My basic observation is the human instinct to be the bigger/better/faster/stronger wherever you are, whatever you do. Human, all too human.

Everything is looking so resigned and so philosophical today. I am looking fwd for the weekend. Lots of things to be done - everything will be taken one by one.

the indian dinner..

15 people from 9 different nationalities (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Canadian, British, American, Australian, and Hongkongese (trust me they need to be treated as a different nationality :P) ) were introduced to paani poori, samosas, tandoori, roti and curry, pulao and raita, gulab jamoon and ras malai..

they were quite open to the food and everyone ate too much .. (some were scared they might have a sensitive tummy) and the the taste was authentic ..
the atmosphere was fun filled, and I was the scape goat and butt of many jokes.. (unusual position)

I showed the way paani poori is prepared on the streets of Bangalore .. using the hand, dipping the filling first and dipping into the paani bowl.. many followed suit to my surprise.. no one stopped eating fearing contamination.. this was my main contribution for the day.. made sure ppl ate samosas with hand, paani poori with hand and ofcos rotis with hand (believe me many eat with knife and fork..) WELL DONE GD on this front..


and there was a caveat that it was all north indian ..
so the next round would be south indian with idli, vade and dose ..

how to test if someone is a bangalorean

some possible methods..

Derides masal dose in any other city in the world and comments even the worst of the restaurants in blore could beat the best in rest of the world .. (and believe me this is true)..

-Thinks it is wierd when ppl say they miss the cold weather back home or hot weather back home or the rains back home...
for bangalorean its always the cool evening back home ..(well this was a decade ago)

i dont know how to identify a bangalorean in a crowd of indians.. (apart from asking the obvious question.. )

.. u can easily spot a mumbai guy.. (find them to be a little bositerous/bragging to be honest about bombay.. no offence though) or a delhiite (behaves like a politician, talks mostly about power) or a madrasi.. (gets offended with the words Hindi/LTTE etc).. bong from the way he speaks ..(about tagore??)

bangalorean .hmmm ..how to identify this person?? Okies .. may be one more.. gets offended when someone derides rajkumar's ACTING skills? (note only acting).. now that could be a kannadiga ..


today.. my colleagues are going for an indian dinner (north indian dinner to be exact)..
i am expecting this obvious question.. "is this what you have at home daily??"
how do I tell them that the first time I had a full fledged north indian dinner or lunch was in 1st PUC..

Need to culturally educate them about south india..

this reminds me of a conversation..
xyz: Are you from Delhi??
me: No
xyz: Then from Bombay?
me: Err, No
xyz: mmmm
me: I am from Bangalore..
xyz: where is it ?? next to bangladesh?
me: err NO..thats calcutta..
xyz: where is bangalore?
me: Close to Chennai,, errr Madrasss
xyz: clueless stilll,
me: close to SriLanka..
xyz: ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
me: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

There are so many cliches about India which I need to clear .. phewwwwwwwwww

Random

My obsession with randomness lands me with this post. It's got to do with a definition of programming (found on the coding horror website). I am too lazy to create the link, you can go to the website, if you care ....

What is programming ?

Programming is all about knowing when to boil the orange sponge donkey across the phillipines with an orangutang gorilla crossed with a ham sandwich to the fourth power of twelve across the nile with an awful headache from the previous night when all of alfred's naughty jalapeno peppers frog-marched the nordic elves across the loom-lined geronimo induced swamp donkey over and above the fortran fortified kilomanjaro fence past the meticulously crafted anti disgusting sponge cake scenario where all the hats doth quoteth the milk which is not unlike the super werewolf from the infinite realm of ninja-step. it's hard to define, really.

Thats a wonderful definition. But the guy who thought about it deserves to be accoladed.

But, wait a second. It is not a guy who thought about. No not a girl too. It is a random spam program which can generate it. The program uses the concept of Markov chains where a [letter/word] is picked with a degree of probability. Interesting, but we need some time to look into the concept. Here is a link which explains on markov chains. This may be useful in generating some test data for text based programs.

Some play of words with my name :-

sudeeptions
sudeepting
sudeepist
sudeepchism
sudeepheting
sudeeppars
sudeeptulabooking
sudeeptudentlyphered

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious !

I will keep writing random thoughts because it feels good when you are not keeping anything in mind, yet you are writing something.

It is generally a good idea to keep expectations low. Or is it really a good idea ?
I remember seeing a movie called Great Expectations. I liked the movie and Gwyneth Paltrow in that movie. That was a long time ago when the word "Galaxy" reminded me of a theatre.

Speaking of Astronomy, one astronomer wrote something like this :-

I was recently asked to be the external examiner for a PhD thesis entitled A survey of radial velocities in the zodiacal dust cloud. Nothing too extraordinary in that, except that in this case, the candidate had carried out his observational work in the early 1970s, and that at the time when he should have been writing-up, he was enjoying huge music charts success with the band Queen. The candidate was of course their lead guitarist, Brian May.

A rockstar and a PhD. Both are a lifetime achievement. How did he do it?

Let's assume he did it some how. My head is feeling like an empty vessel.As I type this, noises from a busy office are heard. Some people talk about Form16 and some people are talking about nawk. Some one is singing "Khawja Meri Khawja" with headfones on and a shrill pitch. The human brain adjusts the volume of speech based on the dB it's ears is sensing. In other words people shout when they put on earphones. Loudness is measured in dB. Frequency is measured in Hertz. Frequency and pitch are one and the same.

By the way, talking of pitch, timbre, libretto, flat notes, falsettos and so on, I am reminded of SMS based reality singing contests. People dont seem to have enough of it. In future, all the professional singers will have gone through one round of an SMS contest before they make their mark. We will no longer have SPB and S.Janakis who would sing 200 songs a year. Rather 45 people singing about 75 of the songs.

The retired singers have a good career of SMS Contest Judges. I wonder what kind of profession will retired Software Engineers have ? I am sure most of them will run away from any programming competition that asks them to be a judge.

Today the word inertia, grogginess seem to dominate my thoughts. Of course there are other words which are dominating my thoughts too. RA_TS and TO_DO too!

nightmares..

everyone has them.. mine is different ..they occur inconsequentially.. like yesterday..

my worst ones..

a. falling off from a tall structure.
b. Being surrounded by SNAKES ..


but nothing beats this one..

"flunking an exam" , and the period is mostly my under-graduation..
I really cant understand this fear of failure even after 8 years and having an MBA..

well, BU has an everlasting impression .. still remember those days of group studies (rather discussion on issues other than acads in pretext of group studies).. the pre-exam maniac atmosphere, the post-exam discussion/depression, the lab exams - internals, externals, the wait for the results .. the relief/celebrations post results..

well remembering those days once again for fun and to make the post-nightmare morning a happy one

(from a previous post ..here it goes)

I remember my exam days back in engineering,
--the 15 day marathon,
--xerox notes, from malleshwaram, hanumanthnagar and bsk 3rd stage,
--long nights at tejus place ( long because of discussions .. politics , life, career, girls ..everything except studies) ..
--chakku troubling us by call at 11:30 pm and psyching us out by claiming he had completed
--teju's tea and kummi's biscuits
--morning breakfast by teju's mom
-- sleeping the whole day just to wake up for another night
-- the gathering at sudeep's palce at 8 in the morning for the final sharing and ofcos filter coffee :)
-- nair not coming into the exam hall inspite he being on campus ..last minute cramming
-- chilli's record breaking exam writing 2.25 hours max
-- followed by early exits from Avinash (peer pressure), Harsha and Carren
-- Nair bothering swati for answers
-- Tejaswi's recording breaking additional papers, matched equally by Sumanth (with such a small handwriting)
-- Discussions following exam and Avinash claiming the question wasn't there
-- sudeep misinterpreting (minimum 2 from first section as at least 2 from first section)
-- me copying a major step in Eng mech derivation from NAIR
-- lokesh always saying 'adhu neen andikondange easy illa' and HM bashing him up .. Sandeep J getting frustrated before DEC lab due to this
-- juice after the exam at Anand's juice counter
-- occassional beats
-- Dil Chahta hai after one of the exams .. (me satya teju and naga) and sudeep not participating bcos its a hindi moive
-- Maiya collecting notes for the next exam already - Maiya driving Sumanth to a state of nausea
-- Carren using the F word incessantly accusing all the question paper setters as bastards ..
-- Sandeep micro managed chits and Nair photo-copying a chit - truly innovative .. though not using it to any advantage (I think internal times)
-- Me not studying half of Computer architecture and pysching out the last minute ..and maiya explaining pentium architecture..

and the list goes on and on and on

ohh .. My handicapped stage and climbing 2 stories for writing exams and Sumanth picking/dropping me from home (thank u richie) ..

Memorable ..

Randomness

While coming to the office this morning, I saw a defunct petrol pump. There was an advertisement board which from a popular Oil company which said, we dedicate this year to the most important customer this year : YOU. Just below the board, there were goats tied to the legs of the board.

The petrol bunk was defunct. We might have some defunct petrol bunks soon. The Shell Petrol bunk has lost many customers because the petrol rate is almost 73/= bucks. Yesterday I saw Avinash cycling to (office?) I guess. A new trend in Bangalore. I would have done that if the dist <=10km. Firefox cycles look pretty cool.

I guess oil crisis will be a major problem in the next coming decades. Finding a source of energy is a major concern these days. What could be the next source of energy. Nuclear energy would be the best. A drop of anti matter can make my Swift car run for probably 1000 years. But producing such a drop and also the cost to make the energy safely usable is a different story.

Also one comment on the mode of locomotion. Rewind back 200 years ago. The whole world was of full different human beings than the ones living today. Their tranportation needs were supported by horses and ships for long and short distances respectively.Roads might have been full of horse shit and half-eaten hay, I guess.

Speaking of horse shit, I am reminded about one point on global warming. It seems cows and buffaloes cause global warming because of hydrocarbons they release! You can the news about it here. Cow farts harming the planet. Another link about "Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars".

No wonder that villages with so many cows might be polluted areas, despite sanitation problems. On second thoughts this survey and idea might be promoted by some organization. Anything is possible.

Kannada Haadugalu

I feel glad that Kannada music has found a new breath of fresh air.
I think this is a Renaissance of sorts ..

post Chi. Udayshankar Kannada songs were totally non-hummable (i dont know if thats a word) with occasional decent numbers from Hamasalekha..
and then V. ravichandran started acting, direction, lyrics, music, etc etc etc .. and screwed Hamsalekha ..

Then there was the new star - Gurukiran who did some good numbers and good albums too (I like Jogi).. then the runaway hit - Mungaru Male .. The film is seriously nothing better than mediocre ... not sure why it was such a block buster..

Then there has been a marked improvement .. My guess is the old directors like S.Narayan, Om prakash etc are losing their grip in the industry and new directors (music too) are taking a modern outlook and contributing more...

I was pleasantly surprised the radio channels were playing more kannada songs than hindi (though repetitive).. Some songs I picked up during my trip

- Kaddalu manasanna from Mussanje maatu - starts very well , but loses steam quickly
- aakasha ishte yaakideyo - liked it very much.. especially for this line "EE DOSTIYE NAMMA CHATA " .. am pondering over this.. is this still true in my life ?? it used to be
- Jinke marina na - dint like it much.. but they do play umpteen times..

my iPhone as a dozen plus new Kannada songs ..
(this is just to show off that I have an iPhone.. go the 3G version one guys.. I think Airtel is getting it in August.. looking at the US price $199 with a two year contract, there should not be a high price in India too.. Hutchison is releasing iPhone in HK on July 11th... interesting to c what the price would be .. am sure it would be runaway hit in HK .. there are 100,000 unlocked phones which sell at HKD 4000 already in HK)

on bollywood front.. there is Jannat (Lambi judai, Zara se ) and Kabhi Kabhi Aditi (Aamir's nephew's movie)..

kannada songs rock .. (literally)

Quote for the day :-

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

-Anonymous

Quoting Quotes and reading documents. A day in the life of Sudeep seems to be very interesting these days. I gotta go. Good news is blogger and blogspot are unblocked.

Psycho

The word Psycho reminds me of that legendary movie made by Alfred Hitchcock. However, there is a new Kannada movie by that name !

The promotional artwork looks interesting. Looks very "scorpion"ish.....

But this movie came to my notice because of this song.

Very distinct rock sound. And the part when the singer says "karunadhi kayo" (in the lyrics). I am reminded of Rajkumar. Thats how he would have sung it for sure.

You really got to listen to this song if you haven't heard it. It is by a "Mysore Rocker" called Raghu Dixit.

By the way Raj had sung a some thing of a rock song apart from the infamous Eeef you come today

somethings on my mind now..

Martial Arts - Karate, Kung Fu, Taekwando
Yoga??
Bangalore, Chitradurga visit..
BCB, Vidyarthi bhavan.. adda..

IT / non-IT for carrer - just read an article on how IT has transformed some rural youth.. household income changing from 15K/ year to 3 lakhs/ year and the role of JKC (Jawahar Knowledge Centers)

How to lose (_____) ?? the obvious thing to fill in the blank

Methanol market in China..
and now back to work...