Happy Birthday, Mr. Tejaswi

Hope you have a great day studying for all the tests. Anyway you are zipping in as 26, soon Richie , me and Kummi are going to follow.

Phone calls bantha.

Current Music : Lionel Richie - Hello, Is it me u r looking for ?

Teachers

Back after a break.
(No, my back is not broken.....I will take up the posture during typing anything in a later post)

Had a good two day training. This time I was the trainer :-)
I had a great time in explaining things.It is fun to explain.

But I guess a great teacher INSPIRES people not just explains things.
Thats why we remember (atleast most of us remember) our primary school teachers. Their job is really difficult.Try explaining "London bridge is falling down " to a small child.

And being a primary school teacher, is selfless, also.
Because if you are a teacher to a BE/MS/PhD, there might be a motive of putting your name on the project book cover.But as a primary school teacher, you teach something which people KNOW.It is very service oriented profession.

Inspiring adults is very difficult, because you got to be a super-achiever to inspire adults. Otherwise most adults dont give you the respect.

I had attended a small talk about "Why IT clicks in India" by Prof.Sadagopan and I was tocuhed when one of the slides read, "Our Village school masters , still do a good job".

Sepaking of teachers, I observed this link on the VTU official site. One thing which is objectionable is printing salaries against the names of the lecturers.Does a company print the salaries of its employees just like that ?
Another objectionable things is preparing a godammn excel sheet. Why cant they prepare a decent html page listing their profiles? It looks like a godammn voters list page.We, as Indians will never get the right method to do things.

If it is an internal document, why circulate it on the web ?

Current Music : Jethro Tull - Teacher

Some kannada scenes / dialogs

A film is mostly a 80s Kannada Movie if it satisfies one of the following axioms :-

0. Stereotype #0
==================
A god is shown after the certification of the movie.A shloka by PB Srinivas or SPB.

1. Stereotype #1
==================
Police Senior Boss (like Lohitashwa) telling the Hero (like Devaraj or Shanker Nag)

Inspector Pratap , nimmanta NISHTAVANTHA POLICE ADHIKARAIGALU irodrinda ne, namma samaajadalli nyaaya neeti innu irodu...Keep up the good work , my boy! Naavu police aagi Dasayya antha GOMUKHA VYAAGRA rannu nyayalakke tarabeku

"Dasayya" referred in the above sentence is mostly a rowdy MLA or an MP.He usually has a pervert/spoilt brat son in his late 20s addicted to drugs and women.

2. Stereotype #2
==================
Hero(like Dr.Rajkumar or Ambarish) goes to a hifi party where "drinks" are being served.One wealthy man offers the hero a drink.Hero says :-

Sorry sir, nanage idara ABHYASA villa. And takes a torrino or goldspot with a straw


3. Stereotype #3
==================
Oh No!! Damsel in Distress!!!

It is a horrible time for the heroine! She is being chased by the villain and her garments are torn by the villain. She shouts the same old cliched dialog :-

Kaapaadi...Yaardru Kaapaadi

When the villain actually grabs her, the shout becomes,
Bidu Nanna

The hero bashes up the villian and later offers his suit, to cover her up.
He is the chivalrous man.

4. Stereotype #4
==================
Hero (like Dr.Rajkumar or Tiger Prabhakar) goes to a BAR or PUB, to track the baddies ...As bars and pubs are regular hangouts for the rowdies!

Our Heroes are actually police officers or CID officers(not CBI) dressed as dancers to shake a leg in the cabaret song.....Hero says :-

Hello Ms Rosy to the female cabaret dancer.

The question which bugs me in this aspect is :- WHY DID VAMPS HAVE CHRISTIAN NAMES like Rosy or Lucy instead of Annapurna or Savithri ?

5. Stereotype #5
==================
Whenever a hero or a heroine park their car , they always park the car just near to the building (or in front of the building)....But in reality :-(((((....you have to search FOR MANY ROADS to find a decent place to park your car !!! This is true in Hollywood movies also!


6. Stereotype #6
==================
Even though there are n-opponents for a hero in the action scene, the opponents keep waiting dumbly to be beaten up by the hero...


7. Stereotype #7
==================
The BEST cliched scenes in the climax is:-
To tie the mother of the hero, the heroine , child etc etc and put them in cages......The hero first does the initial bashing and finally the police arrive (the background music for the police ALWAYS has to be sidedrum....You cannot have a pungi here, I know)

8. Stereotype #8
==================
Ending:-
a)Shubham (if it is a comedy)
b)the tagline/theme/inference of the movie(if it is a tragedy).


Current Music : Unknown - Dhairya Ve Himalaya

The interview

Actors: Self, Company (big brother)
=============================

Big brother stooge: so tell me about your prior work.
self: I used to write next gen rocket + dezign + code + test. Can i do that in your company?

stooge: Nope.
( awkard pause )

stooge: One tech question. swap nth node from last with nth from beg in singly linked list.
self: hmmm.

self: I shall swap values not pointers. Should be okay?
stooge: yeah.

self: After struggling for 5 minutes to write C code, I had to resort to writing pseudocode for this :D, and then C code again.

stooge: any questions
self: none
oh , I had one, when will I know my rezult.

stooge: 2 weeks

end rezult -> failure :(, and hence the big brother, stooge. Good thing, so many flaws in my interview, that I should improve :D.

Mahabharata trivia

1) What is the name of Arjuna's conch?

2) How could Jayadratha stop the 4 Pandavas from entering the vyuha, and following Abhimanyu?

3) What is the name of the Asura that Agastya digests for wealth?

Random Thots

1. Manja's wedding tmrw

2. Extra enthusiasm causing immediate embarassment.

3. Coffee and TV.I want PURE filter coffee :-(.

4. 80s Kannada Song and Shankar Nag wearing a Police Dress

5. The letter "e". Love it.2.7182

6. Me wearing a wollen cap at office (thats right) and getting stares by everyone....I dont care a damn...I have a headache.I am NOT imitating Enrique. Fine. Bring Anna.

7. Boring week ahead with very little work.

8. Ottawa

9. Hair cut needed....Lots of hair and headache.

10.Wisdom is the best thing to get in life.I just realised it.

11.Frustrated Champion attitude sucks.

12.Air conditioning sucks.

13.Funny email forward calling merger of Google and e-bay as "goobay"...hahaha

14.Fat throat lobes.

15.Belief != Thought.

Music : Sheryl Crow - I think a change would do you good.

100 % original

This is a paradox. You cant create something which is 100% original. There will be influenzes from many people and you add your take to it and prepare the resulting pot pourri.

This applies to anything in life :-

-> Career (This is where the concept of "role model" helps. You may not try to base your whole career on some perosn "X"

-> Dress (check out Oasis's lead singer copying his role model

->Attitude

->Coding style.

->Everything!!!

I remember this funny saying :-


Copying something from a single person is STEALING, copying something from many people is research.


So,do we need to copy ? Yes and No.
Dont ask me :-)

Music : The Cranberries - Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?

Weakend

Weekends are weakends , really. Sometimes they SUCK. Especially when the car is in the garage.

My clutch is back to normal, and my car is up and running. For the uninitiated , my car provides B2B solutions to me.(Basement to Basement Solutions)

Zeeds had accompanied me and we had all the standard kutchax and one quick visit to Naga's place, dose camp and a Pani puri shop in BTM layout.Veena's kid is adorable and noisy.....

Maruthi Swift looks too good. The red one.

And the weekend ended with a nonsense comedy called "Along Came Polly". The best part of the movie was Jennifer Aniston.

And yeah , on Sat I met many PESITians.....I am convinced we are all entering the realm of Unclehood and auntiehood.We deny it....but it's happening.


I havent started work today....Time to start.....

Current Music: Bangarada Manushya Aagadu endu Kai katti Kulithare

Email Characteristics

I have identified the following email characteristics in people :-

a)Routers
----------
These people have a set of email addresses in their address books. Any forward they get, they just route it to the group, if THEY think is funny/useful etc!.

You might have not seen PHYSICALLY, a "router" kind of person since ages, yet he keeps sending email to you...

I think I belong to this category :-D


b)Originators
--------------------
These people originate spam. They have a theme or a central idea which they want to propogate, they start the spam. (These are a rare species, they have a powerful vision which actually starts off a spam).They are the "root nodes" of a spam and they know what they are doing.

I dont know anyone in this category.


c)Active Repliers
--------------------
They PROMPTLY reply when they get a message.They never start off a conversation, but they are there.

I know four people under this category.

c)Naturally Passive repliers
----------------------------------------
These people are usually bored to type a reply , they prefer calling on the telephone and talking .Many girls come under this category (my observation)

I know Two people under this category.


d)Selectively Passive Repliers
----------------------------------------
These people dont initiate conversation and they are selectively passive, depending on their mood.

I know three people in this category.

Hood vinc ;-)

The attitude of "Get Rich or Die Trying" is so stereotypical, but it is as natural as can get.

"The Vini Vinc Souharda Co-operative Society Limited", is the name of the company which is creating headlines.

Interestingly, the founding director of this company, Shastry, (now popularised by Yellow Journalism TV crims shows as "Vini Vinc Shastry") was a priest in the temple before starting this financial body.

The modus operandi of this instituion was pretty simple.

People invest money, and get an unheard rate of interest. And if you introduce five more people, your interest increases.

Shastry inturn used to invest the money acquired from Vini Vinc in shares and bonds, and thereby support this "get rich" scheme.Initially Vini Vinc, offered really high interest rates and a lot of people made money. Soon, the number of people to receive high interest rates increased like hell and the directors of the company including Shastry, did the vanishing act because, they couldnt pay that much money. The official money made by Vini Vinc is 150 Crores! This company was started in 2003.

Now Shastry the thug, was caught in Andhra Pradesh while making a transaction on Internet.

Related links :- 1


Just like Telgi, Shastry will be subjected to Narco Test, wherein you inject heroin or LSD into a criminal and allow him to speak whatever he wants and gather all the information....


Current Music : Marilyn Manson - I dont like Drugs, but the drugs like me.

x (

Sitting at office after a HUGE weekend with a compile error and server shutdown so that you cant start off, is a wonderful way to start off the first day of the week.

Anyway hope everyone had a great Diwali Blast!

Current Music: Bobby McFerrin - Don't worry , Be Happy

Dilbertesque attempt #2

The Manager goes to the security guard.

MANAGER
Hey Boss, Can you give me a laxative.

SECURITY MAN
Sir, I am not your boss.

MANAGER
When I want to keep my conversation very short,I use the word "boss.", you fool.

SECURITY GUARD
Sir, you can get laxatives in the medical shop.We keep first aid medicines and paracetamol here.We dont keep laxatives.Why dont you go home for purge?
(pause)
By the way, I use the word "buffoon", if an employee uses laxatives to stimulate evacuation of bowels at office.

MANAGER
Really? I can fire you , if you talk like that.

The security guard points his rifle.

SECURITY GUARD
(very stylish american accent)
So can I.

The shapely RECEPTIONIST winks at the security guard.

RECEPTIONIST
You are my hero.

The manager goes to the medical shop to buy the laxative.

INT. CUBICLE - DAY

The SOFTWARE ENGINEER is typing a size 48 font size "WELCOME", on slide #1, on a Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation.The phone rings.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Hello ?

GIRL's VOICE
Hi techie, Would you like to buy a Manhattan Credit Card ?

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
How do you know I am a techie ?

GIRL's VOICE
All techies are stupid, boring males....

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
I will buy your credit card, but on one condition.
If your company buys our software , I will buy your credit card.

GIRL's VOICE
What software do you guys write ?

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Stepper motor Software..

A slam of the phone is heard.

The Software Engineer resumes writing his presentation on "Effective techniques to write bug free Programs".

Another phone ring is heard.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Hallo ?

MANAGER
I have powdered the laxative and put it in the coffee machine.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Great! So shall I bring Dr.Reddy for coffee.

MANAGER
Sure, but first, I have to offer the coffee to a security guard.We have some unfinished business.


EXT. SOMETIME LATER - DAY

Dr.REDDY is a 40-ish man , very conscious of his appearance.Grey hair at the sides, casual Tee-shirts and jeans.

He walks along with the Software Engineer and the Manager, bragging his history.

Dr.REDDY
Before getting promoted to an astronaut, I was a Software Engineer just like you.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
I didnt know this sir!

Dr.REDDY
But I was a very curious one....I experimented with all kinds of Software, I was brilliant!

MANAGER
Thats really great sir!

Dr.REDDY
We didnt have these Pentium Machines then. I wrote a whole database system using only 1s and 0s. Before that I wrote a compiler using only 0s.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Wow! We have a genius with us.....You are a role model.

Dr.REDDY
I used to take HUGE coffee breaks whenever I achieved a short term goal or when I solved a bug.
(proudly)
And to this day, I keep that habit!

MANAGER
We are privileged to have a legend with us, sir.Can we have some coffee.

Dr.REDDY
Sure!

To be continued

Cats and Dogs

It is raining like hell in Bangalore. Literally like hell. Non stop downpour for the past 48 hours. Traffic Jam lengths reaching epic proportions. It is all happening.Gd must have spent maximum hours today and yesterday in the bus. I heard about infy stories like leaving home at 6 : 50 in the morning and reaching at 11:45 in the afternoon.

Here I am , at my cubicle stranded because the Rishabahavati has overflown (with full of fresh rain water) and swallowed Mysore Road. A lot of people have not left the office and holidays have been declared for schools and colleges

Oh God!
Please save us from Deve Gowda and Rains.

Life is really a downpour.

Current Music: Garbage - I am only happy when it rains.

A very Dilbertesque attempt.

Tried a dilbert below :-



The performance review starts and the software engineer adjusts his tie.

SE
(narration VO)

In the early days, men and knights of strength and valor, wore striped ties and smeared their tie with their opponents' blood using the swords after killing the opponent.That explains the allignment of the stripes.That was ths significance of the stripes and the culture of stripe ties..Nowadays the striped ties are worn during the performance appraisal.I am about to face the battle for this quarter.
Lets get back to reality.


The Manager and the software engineer enter the room.
The engineer closes the door.

The MANAGER flashes the customary smile.

MANAGER
Please sit down.

The Engineer sits down.

The Manager clears his throat and starts off.

MANAGER
Your performance can be described as "simian".

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Thanks :-) I am feeling on top of a tree!

MANAGER
Hahaha....How do you consider this as a compliment ?

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Since our business is nothing but "monkey business", I would love to have a simian performance for my appraisal.

MANAGER
(as a matter of fact-ed ly)
Look this is no time for monkey tricks.
Lets get to what we have done,this quarter.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Allright.

MANAGER
Begin with what you did this quarter.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
I wrote the stepper motor software which unrolls the toilet paper for the astronauts for the Moon-Moon spaceship project.

MANAGER
(sighs heavily, adjusts his specs)
Actually I have some doubts on this project. Who suggested this idea ?

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
It was your brain child.I think you roped this project after convincing the Moon-Moon Project Manager about our core competency in stepper motor.

MANAGER
(suspiciously)
Allright. So when is the testing supposed to start ?

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
I have done the unitary testing which ensures that the stepper motor unrolls at a uniform rotational speed.I used Rotational Mechanics Principles.

MANAGER
Okay.I have asked the test team to come up with the test plan. But they didnt oblige because they dont know how to test this.They said they were actually testing the Moon-Moon spaceship itself.
Some button on the spaceship is malfunctioning.....I am just confused. How do we test your component ?

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
How about giving some laxatives to astronauts and putting them in a 0 gravity state in the Moon-Moon simulator, and testing our software ?

MANAGER
Sounds like a great idea.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Then give me a good grade for my performance appraisal.

MANAGER
Surely, I will.But I guess we need to buy some laxatives first , for the astronauts and put some in their floor's coffee machine. They will gladly oblige for the tests later.


SOFTWARE ENGINNER
Whom shall we call ?

MANAGER
We will persuade Dr.Reddy for drinking laxative concentrated coffee and later bring him to our test chamber.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER.
So what grade do I get ?

MANAGER
B+

SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Thank you.

To be continued.....

Weekend

Welll yesterday I had been to Rajesh's wedding, probably the first guy to get married from our PESIT group (I hope my facts are right...).Rajesh is famous for his devotion to extremely fast and loud black metal and thrash metal songs.I doubt whether he will continue his devotion to the genre !!
And there was an orchestra playing Kannada and Hindi songs.

I met many people from the PESIT gang (and now fellow bloogers like dhimant and chilli.)

BV was famously missing yesterday and met Harsha (Haahsha) and Putta.Met Raghuram's mom....
All and all it was a good experience......

PESIT seemed like a long time ago.


Current Music: Paula Cole : Where have all the Cowboys Gone ?

Venky

If you have played rubber-ball cricket in bangalore, then read the post entitled "motte" in Venky's post on motte .

Hilarious!

20 questions

1) Male/Female? yes

2) Male? yes

3) he taught us in college? yes ( you are given one lucky guess)

Description of the class:
a) Attendance: prof:Raghuram.
Response from Raghu: yess siiir, with various levels of intonations and syllable stress.

b) classic time pass dialogue:
Think of a day, you can think of monday, tuesday,.. friday.

Notable feature
c) prof saved most of our projects with his red coloured book.

Why do I recall all this, because I am taking a class by his suaver soulmate, with super signal to noise characteristics.

Spam to get the hype and hooplah

How do you ensure you get SPEEDY JUSTICE, MEDIA COVERAGE to a certain injustice which happened to you?

Answer :- Use the internet and SPAM it UP.

Nimish Adani, who spammed all the Yahoo! groups and journalists for getting justice has finally got the justice.

But however today's paper confirmed that some of his allegations were false and he was in an inebriated state and had not bought platform tickets and it was he who started the physical squabble by pushing around the railway guards.Hmm not surprising at all.
Eradu kai seridrene chappaale


The more important question is below :-

Now why am I taking so much pain to put it on my blog ?

BECAUSE, spam mails can be easily used/misused/tampered and create a mass opinion.It is worse than a windows virus mail.So I think , verify the truth of a mail before blindly forwarding it to another 10000 people....Just because your mail says :-

Forward this mail to everyone you know!!You will get a chance to be in bed with 5 playboy models of this month!!!

Article

I came across this article which says C programming is obsolete and procedural programming is dead. Since , I have been working on C after PROTEL , I vehemently disagree with most of the article.

C has to be taught at college level.Procedural line of thinking has to be taught at college level.Although pseudocode which is procedural is great from a "compile, execute & practice" procedural code point of view , C has to be taught. Because , I guess the other procedural languages are really older.

The points for NOT to learn C in college according to the author are :-


# It's not a skill you'll use in most of the software development jobs you'd want to have

The author uses SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT JOBS in a very loose manner. C code is STILL used in many applications , although there are elaborate frameworks of C (yeah , there are C frameworks!) I think only embedded systems and software which are actually meant to be lean and fast prefer to "implement classes" rather than use the big fat C++.

Thats why you SHOULD learn C from an industry requirement pov.C is definitely applicable even in industry level. You have energymeters, mobile telephone code , elevator software , software for hitech cars written on C, the compilers (either ported on small operating systems) or just compilers spewing out bits and bytes.


# It can give you a false sense of control

There is no such thing as "Sense of Control".Any language can be misused.In Java and C++ you ALWAYS tend to convert every damn problem into an Object Oriented Problem and have actors and sequence diagrams.So in this case, more effort is SPENT on trying to imagine every godammn problem as OOP and create classes and objects which are created just to satisfy your object oriented thinking lust. C++/Java says "You follow OOP, you will be safe, you will have control". Now tell me who is controlling whom? (Especially if you cannot think a problem beyond objects and classes).Isnt Operator Overloading also miused just like C pointers? What is the big deal? Java, currently I dont see any "misuse" as such but I am sure there will be something or the other.

# It can teach you to get in the way

This is all covered in my previous argument.C is allows you to be "intrusive" if I may use that word.That was the purpose it was written! And C++ which was written on top of C, tries to close it.Weird.

The most sensible thing to do is FOLLOW CERTAIN RULES and CODING LINES in C and you wont make a mistake!

# It can make it hard for you to love famework based development

I am currently working on a framework based development.But I have to admit , it is not as elegant as an OOP framework but it is a good one! :-) and ofcourse I cant disclose it.

Any framework based development goes on like this :-

1. Look at framework API.
2. Imagine the problem in terms of the API.
3. Identify the API,
4. Grep the source code to see the usage.
5. Copy paste the source file

Step 5 may bring smiles on some faces and some people may think copy and pasting is stupid but to write maintainable , uniform code requires a coder to actually use the cut & paste options.These tools are like hammer and chisels for SEs.

# It can teach you philosophies which will prevent you from really understanding modern programming

Fuck the philosophy. Philosophy may come and philosophy may go, but a common man uses procedural line of thought to solve a problem.

# It can teach you divert your problems from the real challenges of software engineering

Most software Engineering challenges are not generic.Ofcourse some are very obscurely technical, , some are generic and some challenges are based on "what i have right now in my hands".

The bottomline is Software Engineers gain some experience. They want to share their learnings to everybody. They write articles which are right in their own way but very different if to others.
Example, people say follow code convention.

Coding convention in Linux kernel (written in lovely C) names a variable like this :-
int i_am_an_integer;

Microsoft uses the hungarian notation :-
int iCountForMaxEmployees;

Both are right in their own way!So all you C-programmers out there ( ;-( ) we are not obsolete.
Read this book and enjoy !

To summarise , choose your language based on what you are writing and LEARNING C is NOT DETRIMENTAL. Learning LISP is not detrimental. But changing the language you code is something you gotta watch out for!

Sneezy day

I have sneezed so much, that my neck has sprained like hell and I am down with fever and it has affected my driving speed (you cant turn your head around when your neck is sprained). Because of a lot of work, I am at office.

I am taking a break from blogging atleast a week, because I think it is getting very much into my life

Indians good only at theory : Microsoft

"Computer engineers are more into theory and less in managing businesses, building businesses or writing source codes, the key to software development," Mundie told Business Standard.

I dont think this statement is wrong at all. Most of us are good at Mathematics but not innovating or thinking for what is needed to the market point of view.

That will continue to be a piece of cake for the college dropouts who will become future billionaires.

Google , I am afraid is heading towards the same direction.(This is a gut feel, and I humbly accept if I am wrong at this analysis of mine.)

Take for example Google Earth. Great Innovation.Great technology.But, What is the use ?
It'll just be a passing fad and an extra cost to the company very soon, like other products like Froogle etc.Or most of the Google labs products.

America, will continue to be the epi-centre of innovation.They are damn good at innovation.We will continue to be the service providers.

I am no education expert, but I think emphasis should be given more on assignments (like what the post graduate(ME,MTech,MS etc) students have) at the BE level itself. We can become better engineers.We just had 15 programs when some programs were first written/printed out in practicals book, later we used to understand them. Worse, we remembered them by-heart.

I remember the LRU method or the Strassen's Matrix Multiplication which was really complicated stuff.

All these boil down to having REALLY good teachers. I disagree that a large number of students can be autonomous at Bachelor's level, even if they have an IQ of Einstein.

See the whole article here

This reminds me of the movie se7en => Gluttony

Stupid Snake

Generally emails have some moronic pythons eating something.Eating a huge crocodile - height of overestimation.

Infrastructure woes

The never ending debate of who owns the responsibility of infrastructure developemnt of bangalore finally ended with a PPP (Public Private Patnership) model.

We recently recieved updates on the proposed changes from none other than MD Pai - the CFO. The updates are about plans and more plans and a few clearances for the existing plans, budgeting, fidgeting ;-) etc .. By the time these get resolved and all the measures adopted to successful completion, Banglore would have quadrapled and we wont even feel the diffrence

goodddddddddddddd when would I travel from BSK to electronic city within an hour.
Are you listening ?? God says ask me anything else .. GRRRRRRRRRR

Unbelievable!

Disgusting

anything happend ??

Sudeep is still alive .. but the biggg question is .. what did he do after seeing DK in his naitive land aka hoskerehalli, sita circle ..

may be DK would been impressed to see sudeepa in a Maruti and not a scooter. Also she might be impressed about the fact that the car is running on LPG( environmental friendly etc etc)..

Sudeepa .. all these details requried ..

Detour

I took a detour today morning and I decide I will go past my old home via Sita Circle et al.
It was a while since I had been to those areas. I was suprised to see a big slum extend till the Sita Circle Petrol bunk.

I also found that these people made wooden statues (excellent wooden statues) which resemble Inca gods, almost 4 feet high. They also have brought camels! Yes, CAMELS!!! Elephants are not uncommon in India, but Camels! I had seen a camel in a zoo....I havent seen Camels in Bank Colony or Sita Circle in my 25+ years of my life.I was just wondering how on earth did they find the camels...

and then,

I saw "DK".

Wow! it was like 5 years or more...(remember DK???) and all the circuitous cycle trips in the rain ...... It was a long time ago.

And now, if looks can kill, she can easily become a murderer.

Current Music: Air - Playground Love

Smart alec

Question to Infy CEO:-
Things are happening much faster in China, where they build infrastructure so rapidly.

CEO anwers :-

It's going to happen, but not the way it happens in China. In China, a bunch of guys get in a room and decide to build a 16-lane highway from Shanghai to Beijing, and it's going to happen.

There's no way that will happen in India. It's too chaotic and argumentative. But what's going to happen is 200 planes will be ordered, they won't land. They'll be circling. Everybody will get very angry. Finally, there will be such public outcry that the airports will get built. It's a different model. But it's a model.


My analysis :-

I loved the 200 planes analogy. It is a model as Nandan Nilekeni puts it.

We follow the model which can be said by the below sentence :-


If it is inevitable and it can burn your derriere, then, we have to start doing it.


This is what, I call the extreme form of petty selfishness.We extend it everywhere and screw the whole system.

The taxidriver accident and appointing of a new taxidriver in the novel Shantaram is a typical example of this petty selfishness.

We are selfish even while driving.The autodriver first turns the handle of his auto and later sees if any poor soul is behind him.The poor soul applies breaks and curses the autodriver and goes away.


As zeeds puts it, absolute selflessness does not exist.It is basically anti-life.

Kutchax aside,I love the stereotypical management lingo of bigwigs using jargons like "a bunch of guys" and "folks". Unfortunately , our government cannot comprehend corporate lingo like that. They hate that lingo. Imagine somebody addressing Maaji Pradhaana Mantri DeveGowda as a "guy".

Whenever there is a meeting with these honchos, these globe trotters have grandiose planes to cities (like talking about "intelligent traffic surveillance systems".....)
Our government is totally D-uh about it.

Whatever I am tired of this infrastructure mess....hopefully I wont talk about this for a long time.

Read Nandan Nilikeni's interview here

You've come a long way baby.

Just take the concept of "evolvution" into account.

A startling similarity exists between the biological explanation and the hindu philosohpy.

The Dashavataars.The 10 avatars of Vishnu.

Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha , Vamana , Rama , Krishna , Buddha , Kalki.

At first,animals lived only in water.The Matsya avatar can be equated to the theory of Eustenopteron.The fish which came on land, in search of vegetation and plants and later evolving in to amphibians which is the Kurma avatar. (That of a turtle).Then the reptiles and then the mammals started to evolve from the rodent form, came into picture.We had the varaha avatar. Later evolution presented the carnivorous cats to balance the food chain. and voila! we can equate it to The Narasimha avatar.Then the apes, the "smaller" human look alike can be compared to the vamana avatar.Where Lord Vishnu is described as a physically small boy.

Then we have the full fledged human being, the Rama avatar.

Now comes the development of the mind.

Lord Krishna was a clever person.Budha was a spiritual person.Kalki is supposed to be very street smart and frustrated because of the corruption and he goes on to destroy the whole world.

But what is particularly interesting is the evolution of the human character.
Is there anything like , man's nature has evolved in the ages.As he moved on from Autrailopithecus to Cro-Magnon Man ?

Though it is admitted that man has arisen from a lower animal form, i dont think that it is clear whether his whole intellectual, aesthetic, and moral nature has been produced by the action of the very same laws and processes of evolution.

Nietzsche talks about a concept called as the Overman as the ultimate wise-man.

Will homo-sapien ever evolve into a wiseman ?

yipeeee ..

not much work today :-) .. just need high level flirting with the requests
Its been a long time I relaxed at work. Today is THE day.
I term it is OTLA day at ARC (ARC is my project)

Back to school

The friends that you make at school are the best. The ones in college they are the best too. The onces at work,yup they too are the best. Now it's back to school. Life has turned full circle in 20 years.

Read this ongoing series of articles on rediff about the 1965 Indo-Pak war.I found the series interesting and the best part is that rediff has made an attempt at providing both sides of the story ( or should I say stories of both sides). My only complaint is with the layout and incase you are not able to find previous articles, look at the top right corner of the page.

Missing tele calls

Never thought I would think of something that absurd. But the time has come, where getting credit cards without credit history is tough, and getting the stupid credit history without the credit ain't possible. Yeah, I could have written of there being only one catch, you know the rest, so didn't feel like it.
So all you telecallers, I will be waiting.

In Bangalore I propose C/C++/Java

and COBOL for people like me ..

Unity in Diversity ?

"AAAAAA" wrote in message news:dgu8l2$bc8$1

HI ALL.....

ITS FRIDAY AGAIN... AND THIS FRIDAY FOR A CHANGE...... A REGIONAL MOIVE IS GONNA BE SCREENED....GUESS WHO'S IN IT...VIJAY AND JYOTHIKA.........YES ITS ALL TIME HIT "KUSHI" (tamil version).......

hope u all enjoy the show.........
happy weekend.........

"BBBBBBBB" wrote in message
news:dgvvml$iop$1

Hi AAAAAAAA,

Why Tamil? Why not Kannada? If we are screening regional language films,I think we should start with a Kannada film as a mark of respect to the official language of the state we are working in.Have nothing against Tamil, but also cannot see Kannada being ignored as the first choice.

Thanks and Regards
BBBBBBBBB

"CCCCCCCC" wrote in message
news:dh03c3$t2$1@ncc-nt...
Hi,
I strongly recommend not to go for "Regional" films as there will be lot of differences b/w among us.If we are starting any screening of regional films it should be from "Regional Language" of the place where we live in. In this case it is kannada. We should not and shall not tolerate ignorance on kannada/kannada-films.So, it will be good if only Hindi/English films are screened.

DDDDDDDDDDD wrote:

Hi,
I completely agree with Manjunath.

DDDDDDDDDDD

Hi Guys ...
It is highly inappropriate of you guys to be so fanatical about language .... The persons screening the movie would have decided the movie based on some factors of which "ignoring Kannada" would NOT have been one ... Mebe they went on popularity basis or number of people familiar with the language or something similar ... Try to understand the view of the person who has chosen the movie.

Pls Note : I am NOT trying to advocate any language.

Regards,
EEEEEEEEEEEE


I think these kinds of threads are very common nowadays in any workplace.

You cannot remove the linguistic barrier because they are rooted deep in any individual
And although you can promote the concept of Unity in Diversity we have some serious problems for tomorrow's Unified India.

Some serious questions which come to my mind are :-

Will we have Republic of Karnataka , Republic of TN, Republic of Telegu Desam just like Itlay, Germany, France , Spain as in Europe ?

As a short term danger, we already have nationalism of the local language being promoted aggresively. We had Tamil Tigers, we have vatal Nagaraj , we Have karunada sena .....so on.

Sometimes I still think ENGLISH should be the ONLY official language of India.
Or probably sign language / body language.

In Bangalore I propose C/C++/Java

intelllllll

fired 250 ppl for submitting false LTA bills. Hmmm interesting . They have calimed the basis as 'strong ethics'. Well most of the companies limit ethics to empolyees to employer. They never raise the question of ethics wrt client, customers and shareholders. E.g in client billing, customer pricing and profit sharing. They attribute various reasons for this which would be legally correct, but morally screwed. I would like to see some of the Intel employees filing a suit against Intel rather than being guilty.

TOI extrapolates this scandal, to another level altogether. Intel is supposed to have approached the Karnatake Govt for Sops for opening their new Hardware center, and the proposal was put down by the Karnataka Govt on the basis of a report from IT department.
The IT department apparently provided figures of Intel employees embezzeling money via false claims.

A hero/heroine identified from the 250 employees and sentimental reasons behidn the tax evasion and their further struggle to find a job/get reinstigated can make a good movie. I mean a hep/hippy Hinglish movie which lasts for 1.5 hours.

Nagesh kukonoor might be working already. Our own Sudeep can provide a hilarous piece on this one .. Sudeep get your pen err key board tapping .. tumba dina aytu ninna kathe odi ..

Garam Dharam

Karnataka Cheif Minister Dharam Singh has invited Sonia Gandhi to inguarate the annual IT.com to be held on November 1st. The intentions look purely policitcal i.e he wants Madame Gandhi to handle Deve Gowda. In addition it looks like Dharam wants Sonia to tackle the IT Czars.

Blame it on the IT czars who cannot understand the problems of Mannina Maga who rules the coalition govt (again denied vehemently by Dharam Singh) and aspires to make Bangalore look like a rural place. A major part of his dream has been realised with the help of BCC, BMC, CMC, BDA and the other civic bodies.
The bangalore roads no more look black, they are all brown. With the incessant rains all that the roads need to be a FARM is some one to sow the seeds and you can see acres of ragi being cultivated in Bangalore. This might have been done already in new layouts like BSK 4th , 5ht 6th stage, Arkavaty layout etc.

Now cut back to Dharam Singh, who claims he is walking a tight rope. He feels managing the coalition govt (managing ==== not loose the CM post) is the task on his hand. In such a situation we can expect that development would be the last thing on his mind, be it Rural or Urban. Thanks to the rains we do not have the annual Cauvery problem. The rains/floods in North Karnataka is equated to the Tsunami disaster. Altough there is no concrete relief work, all the govt has done is to claim 1000 crores from center. There is no cash with the state govt. Everything is suppose to be used to placate Deve Gowda.

Though the CM has failed in many aspects, he has successfully organised his son's marriage and also paid innumberable visits to his 'mane devaru' in gulbarga. He also has managed to let go siddaramaih. These are his achievements in the present government.

And now he is Garam about people cornering him. He is certainly a bloke. Lets wait for Sonia Magic.

sigh .....

Yesterday I received 3 forwards with photographs of this beautiful girl.

The FIRST forward said that it was the photograph of Tarannum Khan.

The SECOND forward said that it was the photograph of Dharam's Singh's daughter-in-law(lol)

The THIRD forward said that it was the photograph of some actress.Tamil director Shanker saw her in rajinikanth's house when she visited to meet saundarya(rajini's daughter) and shanker immediately booked her.

Finally I came to know that it is a Telegu actress called "Tamanna".
What a weird screen name!

Here are some more photos.

I need to watch Telegu movies!

First impressions

Naaye bagololla.
Magu alolla.
Show ilde jana irolla.
Other than that a bunch of super friendly folks.

Magic Scooters and Soldiers in Knickers

This article has it all.

Article on youthcuryy.

Somehow I felt infuriated by this article on youthcurry.

Calling engineers as bhakras is the limit.

Starting early doesnt help much ..

Start at 8, you reach by 9:20
start at 7:15,you reach by 8:25
start at 7, you reach by 8:10
there is no f**Ing difference in blore ..

I think we should travel at 4 am .. well no use .. stray dog menance ..

Best policy - sleep in the bus , do sudoku, sleep again, do crossword and guess what sleep again ..

Yes Minister!

If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
When The Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay.
Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

---Led Zeppelin



Bash my face, baby!I'll bash yours back!

Houston....Sorry.
Hosur, we have a problem.

There might be umpteen number of splashes of the media regarding the "ineffectiveness" of the Karnataka government and Bangalore's crumbling infrastructure.

People, especially the ones in the private sector just blame the government officials because, the popular notion, is that government officials just snooze in the day , take bribes and do nothing at work.I seriously think the traffic cops at any junction have a much more responsible job of directing the traffic throughout the day than any of these "no-infrastructure" guys.

Bangalore is an urban shitty mess.You have cement , mud and half constructed glass buildings with dust settling on every glass and small companies who want to move into these places and start creating software while the painters are busy painting the walls, the carpenters are yet to polish the wood.And the sweepers are (obviously) confused and they get chided becuase there is still a lot of mud and dust on the floor.

There was , at the FIRST PLACE in Bangalore , NO INFRASTRUCTURE at all.Bangalore was a little bigger than Mysore.You create an office in a god forsaken place very close to Bangalore, which is lead by one dark,narrow mysterious road, where a shepherd used to take his cows, and one fine day you bring about 500+ employees to work and a 100 more people.How can you expect good infrastructure over the night?

What about the goliaths of software?
These companies add about 200 buses at the peak hour to a national highway and they expect smooth traffic.

Can traffic be smooth ?
The answer is a big NO.

Prem-g is making "threatening" calls that his company wants to move away from Bangalore.
(Making threatening calls is not new to any IT workers. They face threatening calls at every conference call during the mid-night...It is the year of Outsourcing, baby!)

The IT czars have boycotted the IT dot com business event because of lack of infrastructure.
The government, they need a reason to explode back.

And some shady consultant comes up with a report on linguistic division of IT workforce.

Then, namma CM hits back with a stupid press note like this

The bottomline is we will NEVER IMPROVE.....This is the truth regardless of which city we live! We are already FUBAR

Soln was this.....

There were actually two solutions to this problem. I found it really interesting. I got the second solution (the recursive one).


Naturally, we'll process the words one at a time, independently. For a given word, create a vertex in a graph for each letter in the word. Then, for each cube, we create another vertex in the graph. Finally, we draw edges from each vertex corresponding to a cube to each vertex corresponding to a letter where that letter is on the cube. This gives us a bipartite graph where one part is the vertices corresponding to the letters in the word, and the other half is the vertices corresponding to the cubes. Then just run bipartite matching, and if the size of the matching is equal to the length of the word, the word can be formed. That's one way to solve the problem anyway...

Most coders, however, opted for the simpler solution.In this solution, a brute force recursive function is written. It takes a word, a position in the word, and an array of booleans stating which cubes have already been used. We need to find a cube that contains the letter at the given position in the word, so we just check every cube:

boolean recurse(word, position, used)
if(position == word.length) return true
for i = 0 to num_cubes
if(!used[i] && cube[i].containsLetter(word[position])
used[i] = true
if(recurse(word,position+1,used)return true
used[i] = false
return false

Playing Cubes..

Guys , try this if you have the time.

------------------------------------------
Children are used to playing with special cubes with letters written on the cubes' faces. The goal of the game is to compose words using such cubes. If you want to compose the word "DOG", you must find 3 cubes, one containing the letter 'D', one containing the letter 'O', and one containing the letter 'G', and orient them so the proper letters are facing upward.

You are also given a String[] words, each element of which contains a word that you would like to spell out using the cubes. Return a int[] containing the 0-based indices of each of the words in words that can be composed using the given cubes. Indices in the return value must be sorted in ascending order.

Question :-
To compose the function
int[] composeWords(String[] cubes, String[] words)

Example Output :-
0)
{"ABCDEF", "DEFGHI", "OPQRST", "ZZZZZZ", "YYYYYY"}

{"CAT", "DOG", "PIZZA"}

composeWords Returns: {1 }

We can form the word "DOG" using 'D' from the first cube, 'O' from the third and 'G' from the second. Note that if we had used the second cube to get 'D' instead, we would be missing a 'G'.
1)
{"ABCDEF", "DEFGHI", "OPQRST", "MNZLSA", "QEIOGH", "IARJGS"}

{"DOG", "CAT", "MOUSE", "BIRD", "CHICKEN", "PIG", "ANIMAL"}

composeWords Returns: {0, 1, 3, 5 }

2)
{"AAAAAA", "AAAAAA", "AAAAAA", "AAAAAA"}

{"AA", "AAA", "AAAA", "AAAAA", "AAAAAA"}

composeWords Returns: {0, 1, 2 }

3)
{"ABCDEF", "DEFGHI", "OPQRST", "ZZZZZZ", "ZZZZZZ"}

{"CAT", "DOG", "PIZZA"}

composeWords Returns: {1, 2 }

nmnprffgrrrddllll

I am bored today.

However, there is a celebration at my company today.
We have gone public and we got listed.

Meanwhile, I am listless.

Reason:- There is a function and I dont see any attractive women. :-(
I respect all my female colleagues....But we need beautiful women!

There will be food...There will be discotheque....What is the use ?

Only local boys doing annamma dance.....hmpfff
This is good many times....but sometimes it is shit borrring....

I need to learn salsa

all the best, sumanth

have a great time in the university and wish you all the best....

Let the force be with you!

Gates: Lack of Computer Science Spending Is 'Kind of a Crime'

Memorable weekend cos' every vehicle I took or chose to travel broke down.
Right from Friday evening.

All kinds of vehicles trying played tricks when I was trying to be quick and swift.
I dunno whether the vehicles were screwed up or my head ?
Okay, I shouldnt take this so seriously ...

I saw "Jogi" and I should say well filmed tragedies is about "impact"/"aftermath" rather than "entertainment".
Thanks to Dr.Mohan Krishna for getting the tickets!

Here is a stupid limerick......


Cars and scooters in garage
Any Destination is like a mirage
Rude AutoDrivers with insane meters make my temper explode
BTS buses tilt at an angle "theta" as they drag themselves on the road
Omigawd, I feel like a lazy toad

Outsourcing of Nurses

We all know about nurses making it real big in the Gulf or the USA.It is a well known fact that Indian Nurses are known for their hospitality.And it is projected by the media that there is always a shortage of "nurses in the west"

But, however I came across an article in the NYT, which is really saddening to know that , petty corruption exists, in Bangalore! (maybe in other big cities like Delhi, Bombay etc...too!)

After enduring a painful delivery of a baby, the government hospital nurses (the hospital in the article points out an Austin Town Hospital),take away the baby and later give the baby to the mother after you give a bribe.


Before she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a nurse whisked the infant away and an attendant demanded a bribe. If you want to see your child, families are told, the price is $12 for a boy and $7 for a girl, a lot of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar a day. The practice is common here in the city, surveys confirm.


Further the article points out this too....


People pay to give birth, and to collect their loved ones' bodies from mortuaries, and for everything in between: garbage collection, clean water, medicines, admission to public schools. Even policemen double as shakedown artists.


Really sad state of affairs.

You can check out the article here

Sad story #2

Scene: shishya driving, teacher co-passenger, near trinity circle.

Beggar: Swalpa change koDi.

shishya: Fishes in his pocket for a 5 Re coin and gives it.

Teacher: (Says nothing, but starts frowning).
Shishya: I sense great disappointment in you, do you disapprove of the deed, wasn't it a good one? Why didn't you also give something?

Teacher: I don't need to do good to feel good.

Shishya: [ gazing at a good looking woman crossing the road ]
Ah, that essentially is the difference between us.
[ and putters along ]

Hilarious!

Life is difficult, full of trails,
pain, sorrow, but...

if you fall down,just stand up stright,
be confident and ask.....


yavano bolimaga thalliddu?

Political Thrillers

This is one class of movies which are, ahem, intellectual.

Sometimes it is filmed by people who want to use cinema to vent their frustration with a political system.

Sometimes it is filmed more like a "We report this as a film , you decide". Typical examples of political thrillers are :-
a)Guns of Navarone
b)The Day of the Jackal
c)All the movies with some kind of CIA agent running from Lisbon to Madrid to Jerusalem and NewYork to demonstrate "TRUE INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM"
d)Sarfarosh (one of my favorite Bollywood political thrillers)
e)Many many more.

And political thrillers are also a favorite subject for many English authors like Jeffrey Archer or Sidney Sheldon etc.But in books it is easier to realise a political thriller, than a movie.

I had an opportunity to check one of the sloppy political thrillers, "The Interpreter" starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.

The best (and sometimes the worst) part about these thrillers is that, the director doesnt have enuff time to put out the boring political details in a clever way infront of the audience.And if this is not done properly, the thriller/drama part which unfolds BASED on these details fail to grab the attention of the audience.

Okay I admit I have no examples to support the above sentence but thats what I really want to say.

Talking about the interpreter...

Matabo (is it a country?) is plagued by a civil war and there is an assasination plot of the President of Matabo, at the General Assembly.

Fine.

This is overheard by a UN translator, Nicole Kidman, who can speak some African Language called "ku".Now the story drama is what tumoil she faces....etc. etc.

Damn! I am bored to explain this.

Indian help for the Pakistani Temple complex.

Just found this interesting piece of information on "The Hindu".

Pakistan has an ancient temple complex called the Katas Raj Complex, and the BJP leader L.K.Advani had visited this place during his Pakistan Visit.It is good to see that Pakistan has taken the initiative to rebuild the temple complex.

Located some 40 km from the modern city of Chakwal in Pakistan, the Katas Raj temple complex dates back to the Mahabharata era. The focus of many stories about the Pandavas spending time there during their long exile, the lake in the complex -- which is believed to have magical powers -- is where Yudhishtar defeated the Yaksha with his wisdom to bring his brothers back to life.

The best part is about the common heritage we share with the Pakistanis, and this should be indeed, preserved.

And India is doing its bit.The Archaeological Survey of India is reaching across the border to lend a helping hand to preserve the ancient Katas Raj temple complex in Pakistan.


I had also heard about a similar temple complex in Afghanistan of Lord Narasimha , which had become a students' hostel.

Details here

lets camp at Tejus place tonite ..

vote .. without voting buttons ..

Tejaswi is in Bangalore.....We had been to BCB.....
We got to meet in the weekend folks!

Allright! I have come in the BTS bus. (BTS reminds of Base Transmitter Station of GSM :-) )

Took two hours to come to reach 3/4 of my journey, then I switched to a rickshaw and reached office.

JHANTI VAHANA kke jaya vaagali

sudoku

The "Bangalore times" of Times of India have presented a game called "Sudoku."

The details of the game are here

What I want to know is that , can we algorithmise this game ?
In other words, given an input grid can we arrive at one (or more) solutions ?

Did you know ?

That the movie "Jogi"'s ticket in Bangalore is going at a rate of Rs.1250/= in black! That price is unheard for a Kannada movie black ticket....Even Dr.Raj's tickets for Jeevana Chaitra was priced at Rs.400/- in black.

Generating more craze than Dr.Raj's movie is something unheard of...

And another news is that, the film is getting released in California! I hope atleast it will run for a week there...

This movie is directed by a guy called Prem. I have seen his movie "Excuse me"...Not bad...But some songs were heavily inspired by songs like "Suraj huva " (the SRK,Kajol song)

Here is a review of Jogi, if you care.

Art of asking leading questions

Socrates : ( inquest scene )

Socrates: I am the wisest person, and not a sophist, and what better proof than the conversation between my friend and the Oracle.

Conversation:
Socrates friend: (asking the oracle) 'Is Socrates the wisest person alive' !?

Oracle: Obvious answer.

and history was made.

Teacher Shishya #1 (The series begins anew)

Shishya: Teacher I need the meaning of.

Teacher: Say no more, your quest for the things that have eluded you for so long have ended.
http://www.blogger.com/images/ftp.gif
Teacher: ( silent for eons)
Shishya: ( waiting expectantly for words of wisdom ).

Teacher: For your patience, you are rewarded with a truth. 'The world is a stage,and though majority are players, there are a few observers of the play'. The observer watches everything, and isn't influenced by anything. Perfect control over the senses.

Shishya: (Teacher sure looks very pretty in her sarong now).
Teacher: (His mind still wanders.)

Shishya: But, surely there is no such person, though you may have gone closest, and I can prove it to you. Slaps teacher hard.

Teacher: (Enraged, stabs Shishya, whose quest is postponed to the next birth.)

Teacher: I concede, you won the argument, but at what cost.

Guru Shishya #6 - The last one :-)

INT. ROOM - DAWN

Two lovers lie on their bed, without the sheets and a golden ray of light shines liting the room..The Shishya and his girlfriend are about to finish their last lapse of sleep.Suddenly there is a rumbling sound, which muffles the sweet tweety sounds of the birds.

The Yamaraaj rides on his buffalo and shatters the wall of the room and stands before them.....

He sees the coffee on the table.He drinks a little bit of coffee from the flask.
The Shishya's lover wakes up with a start.

Shishya's Lover
Who...who are you? Are you Yamaraaj?

YAMARAAJ
The coffee is fucking cold.

Shishya's Lover
It was not for you... My man doesnt mind drinking stale coffee.

YAMARAAJ
Irony!
No concern over your own lover!!
See you later,woman! I'll whip your ass in hell.Now it is your hubby's turn.

Shishya's Lover
Whipping ass in hell ? Hell sounds like a cool place...

YAMARAAJ
I am not interested in plain talk. I will make you regret your words.

The Yamaraaj takes a rope and the soul of the Shishya is bound to the rope,

YAMARAAJ
He's literally out of this world!

Shishya's Lover
Where ?

YAMARAAJ
Hell...or heaven , I really dont know.But first we have to depart from Earth.
Bye...see ya soon.

Shishya's Lover
Bye.. I wud have made him a better coffee today :-(

YAMARAAJ's BUFFALO
Yamraaj, sorry for interruption...The milk you drank..Is it buffalo milk ?

YAMARAAJ
Buddy, stop fantasizing ....let's move.

The buffalo assumes the shape of the Lamborghini Bull and we're off from that place.

EXT. THE HIMALAYAS - TOP OF MOUNT KAILASH

The GURU, ageless , and lonely sits meditating. A sonic boom of a voice is heard from the sky.

THE VOICE
Hello Guruji.

The Guru recognizes the voice.

GURU
Yes Chitragupta. I am on Mount Kailas. What do you want?

CHITRAGUPTA
We have a problem....We need your advice on a matter.
Can you teleport yourself to GATEWAY-215B33.

GURU
Right on.

The Guru teleports himself to the GATEWAY, and he finds the Shishya (referred in the previous shot)...The Shishya stands, although he closes his eyes.The Guru inferes that he is sedated.

GURU
What is the problem, Chitragupta,Oh Divine keeper of Accounts.
Do you need any consulting, now ?

CHITRAGUPTA
Yes Guruji.I cannot decide whether this person can go to hell or heaven.

GURU
What was his Purpose and scope ? What were his actions ?

CHITRAGUPTA
The purpose and scope were left blank by Brahma that day when Brahma created his behaviour-description document..that happens once in (4294967296-1) humanbeings. But generally human beings are intelligent and they do something eventful in their lifespanBased on their actions I decide to put them in hell or heaven....But this guy.....

GURU
What did this guy do ?

CHITRAGUPTA
Nothing.

GURU
Doing nothing is a crime.....BUT sometimes it is a virtue.

CHITRAGUPTA
What do you propose ? Benefit of doubt and send him to heaven ?

GURU
Oh Chitragupta! Keeper of Chronicles of Life and Death! "Benefit of Doubt" is only for batsmen playing cricket....I will take him to heaven and teach him a lesson , so that he learns..

CHITRAGUPTA
I had given him a sedative...He doesnt know that he is dead.Can I wake him up now ?

GURU
Go ahead.

The SHISHYA wakes up.He sees the Guru standing....

SHISHYA
Oh Guru!! I am so glad to see you!

He sees Chitragupta and recognizes him.

SHISHYA
Am I dead ?Is this Chitragupta ?

GURU
Yes.

SHISHYA
I am glad....So I am going to heaven.

GURU
Yes....

SHISHYA
Oh okay.. I cant wait to see heaven.

EXT. HEAVEN's DOOR - DAY

The Shishya knocks on the door.

GURU
Knock knock Knocking on heavens door...I like that song.

SHISHYA
You bet! Oh holy one!

The Door is opened by an extremely beautiful damsel. She is TRISHA.
She wears a French Maid costume. Shoulder length hair.

GURU
Hi Trisha. How are u ?

TRISHA
I am doing really cooL , guruji.

GURU
This is one of my disciples.Shishya , this is Trisha.

SHISHYA
I am thrilled to meet you!

TRISHA
Oh no need to be.The pleasure is mine.

GURU
Dont be so thrilled ..By the way, Shishya, from here on, you get in.I dont have a overnight stay permit in this heaven and I dont die like you mortals. Have a great time.

The Guru winks at Trisha and disappears.

TRISHA
So here we are....Me and you...At heaven...What do you expect ?

SHISHYA
(nervously)
Nothing.

TRISHA
Great....."Nothing" seems to be your fave word.
I heard that you are okay with your lover giving you stale coffee.

SHISHYA
Yeah....I did feel bad sometimes , but now I am okay with stale coffee....

TRISHA
What else are you okay with ?

SHISHYA
(thinks deeply)
I am okay with everything.I just want to avoid quarrel. I want to avoid negativity.

TRISHA
So, compromise is an old friend of yours ?

SHIHSYA
Yeah...I guess compromise is both my friend and enemy.....I feel it is a complicated emotion only human beings are capable of....Animals dont compromise with grace...They compromise bitterly after a war.

TRISHA
Interesting....So you compromised on your aims?

SHISHYA
Maybe....

TRISHA
I am the sort of person who never compromised on anything.

SHISHYA
How long have you been in heaven ?

TRISHA
Heaven ? Who said this is heaven ?

SHISHYA
Am I not in heaven ?

TRISHA
No.

SHISHYA
(terrified)
Am I in hell?.

TRISHA
No.....You are in Trishanku's heaven.I am the female form of Trishanku. Trisha for short....I was feeling lonely here for a long time....I'm glad I found some company!

SHISHYA
Yeowwww!!!! Lemme get out of here....

As the Shishya shrieks , he stands in front of the Guru , Chitragupta.

GURU
Dont Panic, shishya...I seized your soul and brought you back.

SHISHYA
Why do you want to send me to Trishanku's heaven , Oh Guruji ?

The Guru laughs.

GURU
Generally , all the people in this world have to NEGOTIATE when they have differing views and a compromise should be reached after negotiation.Dont EVER compromise at your cost.You have created a blunder in your most recent life, so I wanted to remind you about that. At the same time, you can never get happy by compromising to nobody.You will end up being lonely and snobbish if you are adamant.. Just like Trisha...It is a heaven, yet it isnt.

SHISHYA
Oh Guruji.. Thanks for opening my eyes.

GURU
Okay...I need some time for my meditation...Hope you will do a good job in your next rebirth.
BE SOMEBODY baby!

Came across this link on youthcurry.....

All I can say is Ouch! and nothing else.

I need a way to control the comments because of spamming.Need some advice from any veteran bloggers.If spammers still continue to hit, I guess I will disable the comments section of alpha-q.

Still I dont know why/how spammers reached this blog.

ID

Scenes from Bangalore this weekend :-

1. Young people wearing Nehru caps singing patriotic songs on Mysore Road (7:00 in the morning)

2. Poor Children making flags from Plastic covers and cotton clothes and selling them to Car drivers and auto drivers, during traffic signals. (I didnt see a single car adorning the TriColor , in the exterior...Whereas Buses and autos all wore the tricolor ostentatiously).

3.Conversation with an ex-ABVP president and now a BJP party worker (this guy is our age...)
He literally drove me nuts, after I heard his harangue on support-for-vernacular-education , anti MNC, dont-drink-pepsi-cola-drink-torrino kind of conversation...Couldnt argue with him....Skilled Orator...and he speaks at more than 5 words per second.

4.One day trip to Gaganchukki falls in richie's for ikon zooming at 100kmph....and discovering that there were more people in the falls than your weekend crowd of MGRoad or Brigade ROad.But the trek down the hilly region was awesome....and the falls was beautiful with roaring, milky white water...

5.Bulleteers in front of VidhanaSoudha starting of their Bullet ride to Celebrate the spirit of Freedom by driving their Bullets to some obscure place

6. Finally Rock stars and eager to be rockstars celebrating their freedom by jamming at "The Club ".

This brings to a question :-

We celebrate Independence day to :-

a) Remember the freedom fighters and Martyrs.("Remembering" is very abstract and has no concrete result)

b) It is a holiday with no work to do (unlike festivals like Diwali)...So celebrate by hanging out....movies and friends

c)Celebrate Freedom...(I guess we are born free)...Celebrate freedom by doping and drinking and smoking.....and singing songs from the Norwegian Death Metal Bands.

d)Crib about what is happening in India right now, and just see the distant future fifty years from now for one day (thanks to magazines like Outlook,India Today) ...and get back to work on 16th August.

e)Something Else.

The only thing we can do, is watch the Prime Minister's speech, which I didnt.I saw Mangal Pandey and I felt it was really outdated for today's India.

indiafm adorns new looks

and it sucks .. I am one of the frequent visitors of this website
I used to love the look and feel of it.
The new page isnt that exciting, especially the wallpaper section.
It sucks...

sudeepa reply to my mail

gd

aug 11th is here again

Yesterday I rode to the office on a scooter. And the rains played havoc and the scooter stopped and it didnt budge , no matter how hard I tried to start it.

Last year too, I had ridden my scooter, around the same time.

Had left office at 9 in the night because of work and finally reached home at 10:30.

No auto leads to Rajeshwarinagar in the night.

Got down at Mysore Road and walked home with helmet in one hand and thinking about August 11th 2004 ....

Time surely flies.Need to go to Ashoka Pillar this weekend.

Ashlee

Many people are of the opinion that Jessica Simpson is one hot chick.
But I like ashlee simpson. And I like that song "You make wanna go La la la ".

Jessica is another Britney clone, and Ashlee is a wannabe Sheryl Crow/Michelle Branch.

Request..

Richie , Speak Non-technically on Blog atleast.
THe Geek is finally travelling to his haven. :-) land of dreams, gold and research :D
Congrats on convincing the officer .. Think its the nth time am saying this.

Treat yavaga ?? and yelli ? Oberoi/Taj ???

blog reader/aggregator

I have been using bloglines, but the comments part doesn't come up. Are the comments not provided in the rss feed at all? (say from blogspot), or is that a problem with the aggregator.

The interview

A: algorithms vodakke hoguteene.
Officer: voda mele yenu maaDutiya.
A: research saar.
Officer: Oho, PhD nah.
A: Illa.
Officer: Matte, yenu sha*** research maaDutiya.
A: Illa saar, chikka organization alle, MS ittu konDu research maaDa bahudu
Officer: Tolagu peDe.

Rule

Every day YOU START FROM SCRATCH.
What do you scratch ? Head ofcourse.....


FLASH_NEWS :-
Bomb threat at FAC-W, the sasken office at Hosur road.
People have been evacuated and sent home.

Parineeta

I watched this movie a few days ago and liked it.

Vidya Balan......Wow whatta babe!
I cant stop being gaga over this female.

Another useless observation I made is that the bengalis pronounce "Lalitha" as "Lolita."

And the BBC have goofed up in their article referring Lalitha as Lolita intentionally or unintentionally.

However all Vidhu Vinod Chopra's heroines are projected as heavenly creatures flashing their smile,big eyes etc. It is immensely captivating, sometimes when I am bored.

But in the end, Vidhu Vinod Chopra has to understand, item numbers are a very important ingredient in Bollywood.

Ads!

Two banners I see everyday :-

Krishnamachari Srikkanth wearing spectacles and looking spectacular. The words beneath his photograph read :-

I will open again for India

Thats fine.Affirmative statements are always good in celebrity ads.
But the question is WHAT will he open ?

I dont want to comment much about this mannerless banner.

The second banner is near Kathriguppa, near the Foodworld closer to GD's place.

Residents of South Bangalore dont have to go far as they get the cheapest in Big Bazaar

The newly opened Big bazaar is yet another mall, thriving and making a lot of big bucks and is a hit with the friendly neighbourhood aunties, which is a sort of "Forum" in Banashankari.

Heard that Uppi sold his house, because from the second floor of Big Bazaar his swimming pool was visible.Read all this in Lankesh Patrike or some other tabloid.

Lance Armstrong

JACK
I'm in pain.

INTERN
(facetious)
You want to see pain? Swing by First
Methodist Tuesday nights. See the
guys with testicular cancer. That's
pain.

Well this snippet is from one of my favorite movies, fightclub.

Speaking of cancer, one has to really admire Lance Armstrong. Not only does he have the sheer willpower to triumph over cancer, but he has the focus in his work.

Just checkout this link, which speaks about this.

Get Proposals by email ?

As I open my rediffmail account a popup appears on the screen which says "Get Marriage Proposals by Email".

I mean, What the *beep* ?

I wonder,do people like getting marriage proposals by email ?

If yes, soon we may have an advertisement which says "Exhange vows by email.Vows are Secured and powered with SSL,CC-ed to a poojary-bot who automatically mails an instant mantra and the girl/boy with all the relatives put in CC."

If no, Do people like getting registered in marriage portals ?

Most of us guys are frustrated some or the other time because of the thought arranged marriage is the only hope for me .And ads and sites like these add a little mirch to the frustration.What are your likes ? What do you like in a girl/boy?

And mind you, the girl shown in the matrimonial ad advertisement looks like Gayathri Joshi or someone with a bindi and long flowing flawless hair like the Fair and Lovely ad models (after applying fair and lovely for seven weeks)

And the guy.Looky! Oh my !!! He is straight from heaven.
He is a green card holder or an NRI.
He looks like Milind Soman or Arjun Rampal.

We are all perfect people.
We dance like Shahrukh Khan singing "Mehndi laga ke rakhna".
We have catapaults and aim the bums of shapely women and make them sing "Didi tera devar deewana".

Ironic.

Everything is so dumb & cliched.God must be having a good laugh , looking at us buffoons trying all sorts of stunts to find our mate.

Reminds me of the bloohound gang song :-

You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals
So let’s do it like they do on the discovery channel


Another site offers to talk on the online chat client shit they have , so that the hero and heroine can get to know each other.

How will a typical chat conversation look like? I am really curious abt this ?

It definitely wont start with "ASL ?".hahaha...

One catchall question may be, the age-old cliched question,
"What are your interests?Soccer? Bharathanatyam?Books?Mills and Boon?TV Sitcoms like Friends?Cartoon Network?Rock Music?"

The first thing which strikes to anybody is the phrase "Alliance Invited".I havent seen matrimonial ads of any other country, but I have seen many ads in message boards of IT companies.So the ad talks about an ALLIANCE which clearly indicates 2 parties are forming an Alliance.

There was no aim/intention for this post.I dont fully endorse or support any of these views.Just a flow of thoughts , as my IT-OPS guy removes the sun blade hard-disk to get things working.

Chocolates at my desk !

Please have it !!

Whatever.

Work has not yet started here....Many things to be configured and a brand new sun blade workstation awaits me at sasken, from which I can browse code and web pages.

no mp3 :-(

WB ..

Welcome back Papanna ... Waiting to hear your Paris escapades.
Lets meet over the weekend ??? or would you be busy signing autographs to the innumerable relatives who would hawk your place.

Make time to meet me and dear old Richie.

Wanna join Samarthanam ?

Still pondering over GMAT dates. Now the gambit, is to inlcude institutions like ISB, INSEAD, IMD, GSOM, Queen's, PGPX - IIM-A etc etc etc .........anything between 1 to 1.5 years

Anyone game? the game might not even kick-off with GD being the partner :D ..

CAT looks like a mammoth effort, stress and no results. It's not for the brawny ...

Have to have Appam (actually Gundupongalu)for breakfast today.
bartini ..
papanna weekend maribeda .. gimme your home number ..

Paris Au revoir

My stay is coming to an end. Tomorrow at 3:30 , I leave for India and I reach Bombay on Sunday.
It's been around fifty days at Paris.Just three or four days after my sister's wedding, I was asked to go to Paris and the rest is history.

It was professionally a good learning experience.

I will definitely miss Versailles and Chateaufort, more than Paris.

I loved these two places for the sheer natural beauty and the woods at Chateaufort looked very beautiful today morning.

Sunday , I land on Mumbhaai..I think it is too short to be called a visit.Nonetheless , IIT Bombay is going to be a good visit !

EDIT :- I will be at teju's room.

Monday , I go home...to namma bangalore....to my car (i dunno in what state it will be now...lol)...and indiranagar office at Sasken...and food cribs will stop and road and infrastructure cribs will continue as usual here on this blog :)))


If anyone who reads this blog has an idea to go Paris (officially or unofficially) , do get in touch with me....I will be more than happy to tell you whatever I know, and probably direct you to people for whatever I dunno.

Hippy !

Well yesterday at a metro station, they announced something. I knew it meant trouble. I could see people cursing and getting down the metro and I did the same, but in a different language.

One guy , in his late 40s or 50s but dressed in a suit and tie and cleanly shaved, looks at me and asked "Indian?"

I said "Yes"

He introduces himself as Sebastian and says that there was a defect in one of the metro lines and we have to walk one station;

We get into a converstaion.

He said he has been to India 3 times in early 80s...and I asked him what are the places he saw there...He said he had been to Varnasi, Himalayas , Badri.

He said he was deeply influenzed by Indian Philosophy of Hare Rama and Hare Krishna movement.

I realised he had been a hippy that time !
If you see him now , you CANNOT IMAGINE him being a hippy.
Pinstripe suit and a plain shiny blue tie.

And then he said, "We lead a nomadic life in India and believed in Free Love!";
Free love ..... LOL
Richard Stallman could start FLF !

And he added , "In India everything is good, but it is illegal to smoke Hashish".

Varnasi-Hashish-Himalaya-India !

Wah wah wah !!!

Managed to psychee

Not Dawood Ibrahim, but our good friend Sudeep. He was gullible once again.
Nortel employees and contractors have an intra-network and Manja, sudeepa Harsha Goudru use this dedicated n/w for discussion ( plain Harte). So I thot of using a part of this bandwidth.

The security guard in the Nortel bldng is very khadoos, he said Nortel employees only. So had to call papanna from the reception phone. Instead of exchanging plesantaries(ignore the word), I acted as if I am the accounts head of Infosys, and demanded from Sudeep 27,343 Rs, stating that it was an amount is excess that Sudeep had managed to wrestle from Infy. Sudeep sounded uncool (if not tensed) and stammerred a 'But But ..' .. , then I had to utter 'Nimm Ajji' and Sudeep responded 'Yaaru Yaaru' .. Damn, he still doesnt identify my borring voice. :-( Its been 10 years of acquaintance now.

Sudeepa no Striking back .. You can be very deadly

I dont know much French ..
adios

Africa lives on the BBC

is the name of the campaign and Ive seen a LOT of TV about that on the BBC.With the G8 summit and all that.

They have covered virtually every country except for the richer ones like SAfrica and Egypt.

One program called Nollywood explores the Nigerian film industry (which may have 2 or 3 producers ).And the adventures of an American scriptwriter who wants to produce this Nigerian film with Nigerian values.

The best program,is "Geldof in Africa."

One of the most interesting facts which was shown in the program was the theory of human migration.

ALL the people of the world , could be traced to 20 pairs(twenty Adam and Eves)

And these people migrated from Africa in search of water, because Africa was a desert or a
grassland.

The people of the whole world are the descendents of these twenty people who took a decision to cross the sea from Africa to Asia.

More details about the migration here

H.P

I was a victim of the hype. Bought book 6 the last saturday, and managed to finish it with great difficulty over the weekend. The good part of the series is that it will get over by the next book. The average part of the book is most of it; lots of fluff, and I could skip tens of pages, and regain the thread of the plot quite easily. Books 2 & 3 imho, were the best, taut and to the point. The bad part being the end, where my favorite character dies.
Next book to wait for would be George R.R Martin's Feast of Crows,or R.J's book.

My team mates have left the vital , pivotal team player (me).
And my flight ticket has become elusive , I use my blog to vent my frustration.

Metro stations at Paris are doing security checks suspecting godammn suicide bombers
And trains everywhere are delayed.

The police men here can become models....
Most of them resemble hunks from the movie Top Gun.
On a side note, the movie Top gun was Top crap imho.

The song below is Depp's anthem as he munches petité frite (finger chips) prepared at LeBig-Mac
(Mc Donald's...Pulp Fiction rocks!)

--------------------------------
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

--------------------------------

And I change the channel when this song comes......
Au revoir for today betans

Julliet 14th - Indepedence day of France

And I had been to Champs-Elysées which is very near to my apartment here to watch the parades and soldiers and the delightful 6foot+ female blonde soldiers.

I forgot to mention that Champs-Elysées is the happening place of Paris. But it looks empty(very few people) for Bangalore, MGRoad, Forum standards.And when there is no commotion and everything is perfect, we need the imperfection and chaos.

And here at office today, people seem to have taken the word "Independence" very seriously.I am the only BUM in the whole second floor and nobody is around.

I wonder if the English have an Independence Day like many other countries.
If they dont, I can give them a suggestion. Once they get tired of allocating Independence days to other countries , they can celebrate their Independence day.

Whatever.

Probability problem

There are 3 doors, and you have a car behind one of the doors, and nothing behind the other 2.You choose a door(say door 1), and a person who is aware of what is behind all three doors, opens one of doors 2 or 3 showing an empty door.
Now you are given a choice of switching, from door 1 to the other unopened door. Would you choose to switch, and why?

Formula 1

After almost 2 years, I saw more than half a Formula 1 race. I am no longer a fan of the sport, I don't give a damn now. But still, there is an element of nostalgia regarding the sport. Here are my most memorable Formula 1 moments.

1 - Brazil 1999 - My first race. Mika Hakkinen wins using some clever pit stop strategy. This is when I became his fan, and am still one.

2 - Britain 1999 - Schumacher crashes out. Naga is crushed. And so is GD. And so are the rest of the Tifosi.

3 - Austria 1999 - Hakkinen is bumped at the beginning, and catches up from 20th to 3rd. I had a great time watching this race.

4 - Suzuka 1999 - Watched the race with GR Pradeep at his place cuz I didn't have power at my place. Boring race, but for Hakkinen lifting the championship. I had a great day.

5 - Belgium 2000 - The best overtaking moment in my Formula 1 memory. Schumacher has bad tyres, is cooling them off each time on the Radillion straight after Eau Rouge. Hakkinen is catching up, and there are 5 more laps to go. Schumacher goes past the hapless backmarker Zonta from the left, Hakkinen goes past Zonta from the right, and emerges ahead of Schumacher with 4 laps to go. Brilliant stuff shot from the end of Radillion straight. I went up in ecstasy, and my mom also clapped. I remember it being listed as one of the 10 most exciting moments in Formula 1 history till then.

6 - Spain 2001 - Hakkinen retires on the last lap. I am crushed. My worst Formula 1 moment.

7 - Imola qualifying 2000 or 2001, I am not sure of the year. Schumacher has just set the fastest lap. Hakkinen starts his last qualifying run just before the session ends, is behind Schumacher in terms of time after the first two speed traps. Drives like a maniac through the last third, and beats Schumiboy by 1 thousandth of a second. Naga and I saw this together (we made it a point never to be together for any Formula 1 event - exception being this and the first US GP) and it was a moment to cherish for us both, for the sheer thrill of the old format qualifying.

There are a zillion memories attached with Formula 1. The post race press conference couldn't stand up to our own post race gloating/analysis sessions. Formula 1 still holds a special place in my heart. But with Hakkinen and Naga gone, its just not the same anymore.

Highlights!

Well I made bhendi masala today. I overboiled it and the bhendi masala had become a paste.The bhendi was dissolved and it was nowhere to be seen.Nonetheless, it tasted pretty cool.
I have used the word bhendi because it had a very north indian taste to it.

As a few people leave today I get a lion's share of their groceries like ghee and puliyogre powder.Something which I had not brought from India.And we discovered a shop selling the indian riz(rice)at Versailles, a town very near to Paris. Versailles is a better place than Paris, for me because it has small sized shops where you can shop peacefully.

Sidenote #1 :- cd .. is used to go one level higher, a unix command as old as the hills.
The french pronounce the word "point" as "palm".The frenchmen read the command aloud as "cd palm palm".

Sidenote #2 :- It is perfectly okay to blow out a running nose LOUDLY (i mean really very very
loudly ) here. The women also compete fiercely with the men in this regard.You can hear the snotgreen flow when the blow their nose !

hahaha

Friends

What is it about Friends that makes it so popular. Is it the can
relate to it, and so appeals to me. Could be; Sudeeps old home, was
the adda where we (pesit) friends used to meet, during exams, free time between classes, Anand's juice shop, can't say that I have drunk more than 10 banana juice, but according to popular folklore one friend, now a bouncer, maintained a running account with him.

No, this isn't about 'the adda', that shall be the subject of another post. Rather , how the newer seasons of friends, pale in comparison with the older. The jokes got trite, and the interactions between the characters predictable, the only surprise being who sleeps with who, at the end of the season. This makes you notice the other gripe-worthy things in Friends, like the canned laughter. According
to NBC, people can't recognise humour or an emotional scene if it isn't accompanied by HaHaHa or Oooo. Although true of quite a few folks, including yours truly, after a while, I prefer the laughter to be muted, or banished all together.

Now Jerry Seinfeld, the show shows a lot of promise, have zipped through four seasons, and I am impressed by Kramer's humour(totally whacky ideas - is he a genious or mad, or the obvious mad genious), or Jerry's curious observations at the beginning of the episode, and the aha insight, if I do get the thread of logic which connects the entire episode with the observation. Hope the rest of the 10+ seasons have kept the novelty feature going, and not fallen like the once mighty Friends.

'Malazan Empire' continues

That is the name of the latest Fiction Fantasy book that I could get
my hands on. It falls into the sub-genre of High-FF, where magic is
closely entwined in the world that the author describes, part of the norm.

Back to the book, has a bunch of characters, who fall into neither the class of good nor bad, but rather in the infinite classes between. The one thing that I dislike about FF, or Sci-Fi books, are where a book spans generations.It is difficult to break the mould of the characters that the author casts on the readers. Just when you begin to like a certain character, boom, the author decides, that it is time for the character to move on, and replaced by the younger, better,superior generation. {If some of you s/w pros perceive irony in this, I blame you
and your perception, for such ignoble thoughts :) }.
Case in point being the series Foundation - Isaac Asimov, Dune - Frank Herbert. I guess the author's point is that the story doesn't revolve around the characters, but has a life of its own, independent of them. Luckily Steven Erikson ( author ) does believe the characters form the story, and the story chugs along at a fairly even pace.

Another thing that I have observed after reading fiction
fantasy series' (reminds me of the need to check the plural of series), is that I don't know what comes after a trilogy. I mean
according to HGTG, a four volume book,is still a trilogy in 4 parts, but shouldn't there be a word for that, polyogy or something similar? So someone who knows, enlighten me.

cakes

As the people slog here and Depp has finished one big chunk of training, Depp is relatively free.
And one guy walks upto Depp and says in a strong accent "There are cakes at my desk".

The Depp full in anticipation walks to take the cakes , but he finds buns !
Depp is disappointed.

Depp initiates a conversation with the guy.

Depp :- We call these as buns in India.It is called as "cream buns".Cakes are different in India.

The Guy :- No, cakes are the same everywhere...I dunno what they call these in English, so I said cakes.But these are not exactly buns. Buns dont have cream.

Now, Depp cracks the french revolution quote , "If you dont have bread, eat cakes".Nobody gets the joke.

Laugh, and the world thinks that you are an idiot.

Incidentally, July 14th is a holiday here.
Depp is gonna be,watching TV like a bum

After shaking hands wirth almost 35 people everymorning , everyday at office and saying "Bon Jour", I am in high spirits as I sit in my cube...but today I am bored.

No hosh. No josh to work.

Remember the Vicks Action 500 ad.

Someone :- Kelsa idya
Me :- houdu
Someone :- Bejaan Idya ?
Me :- houdu
Someone :- Tumba idya ?
Me :- HOUDU HOUDU HOUDU
Someone :- Nimage beku Vicks action 500

Wonderful blog.

Journalist ge blog aa ?
Something like Conductor ge ticket aa ?

If you are an MBA aspirant, you will know abt Rashmi Bansal.
She used to write articles on rediff regarding MBA courses etc.

Check out her blog here :-

details abt the sat nite :)

AFter BV commenting abt tandoori chicken i will post abt what the guys ate this sat nite.
Nobody spoke abt the pakodas (see mail below).

It was horrible.

PS:- I ate pakodas , sambar, rice, chapathi and gravy.

Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 20:02:11 +0530
From: Milan Jain
To: Sudeep , pankajks, viswanath,Raghavendra MK,Vardhan, bmangala, Sreenivas G
Subject: Enjoy your Party tonite...

So, there is a huge party planned tonite...Hmmmm.

Let me guess...

Raghavendra will prepare his very own unique concoction of "Peas pulav" and "Tomato rice". Sudeep will help out along with his favourite onion pakoda.

Sreeni will prepare the best puliogare / bisibelebath in town !

Mangala will say 5 min...actually take 50 min., but at the end, will prepare amazing sambar and rice.

Vardhan sahaab only believes in FISHHHHHHHHH ! Chicken sucks, rice sucks, daal sucks, sabji sucks...only fish and tons of red wine (along with Pankaj sahaab) !

Visu had started preparing really good chappatis, with some careful tutoring by Pankaj. So, I'm sure he will be the 'chapatti' man.

And finally, the chief chef: Pankaj. I think you must be dying for some good non-veg food. So, the topping of the meal with be some chicken gravy dish. Along with that on one fire, he will preapare some good sabji (curry) on the other fire.

Don't forget to complement all this food with a lot of fun ! And please, NO discussions on "System vs People" to solve India's problems.

Cool guys. Have a GREAT time. These are some of the best times of onsite travel: the fun, bonding and camaraderie of eating and living together. This is your last weekend together...so have a blast ! I will genuinely miss this...

Cheers,
Milan.