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My results were pretty okay :-(

You scored 86% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 55% Expert!

sap....

SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP

Junoon.

I just loved this track by junoon

Try to listen to it.

Pakistani rockers are good.

over the air!!!

today i tried to send some mms pdus (protocol data unit) generated by my code 'over the air' ..using a linux box and a gprs modem ( am i impressed with the gadgets or what?)
man i had almost forgotten how thrilling it could be to look at something that u have developed( well in my case modified) actually work ..in front of u..
well atleast for the first time..i may get used to it..but it had been a long time since i experienced the sheer joy of accomplishment..
may be i can blame it on the XP principle of breaking things into small 'tasks' ..which robs u of the oppurtunity to handle something 'big'..
or it may be just that i was never able to relate to the specific set of end users of the products developed at subex..anyway i am happy that my first task was completed without a hitch.. :)

Samsara....

Mausi: Bura mat maan na beta, magar yeh toh puchna padega ki ladka kaam kahan karta hain, uske lachchan kaise hai....
Amitabh: Mausi ladka Infy mein kaam karta hai...
Mausi: Hai raam...
Amitabh: Aajkal allocated bhi hai...
Mausi: To kya kabhi unallocated (i.e. bench pe) bhi rahta hai????
Amitabh: Ab 1 ki rating waalon ka allocation itni asaani se kahaan hota
hai mausi...
Mausi: To kya 1 ki rating bhi aati hai uski????
Amitabh: PL se ladaai karne ke baad 3 ya uske upar ki rating to nahin na
milti hai mausi...
Mausi: To kya ladaaku bhi hai????
Amitabh: Ab onsite jaane ko na mile to ho jaati hai kabhi-kabhi anban...
Mausi: To kya onsite bhi nahin gayaa aaj tak????
Amitabh: Ab kuch pada nahi hain, to Visa itni jaldi kahaan lagta hai mausi...
Mausi: To kya ladka gawaar hain???? Engineering kaun se college se
kiya hai????
Amitabh: Bas uska pataa lagte hi hum aapko khabar kar denge!!!!!
Amitabh: To kya main rishta pakka samjhun mausi??
Mausi: Bhale hi hamaari ladki call center waale se shaadi kar le, par Infy
waale se kabhi nahin karegi.......

Bangalore traffic????

For all my clueless readers in Bangalore who have started shouting about the rising traffic there, and how its the worst ever etc; Mumbai traffic is EXTREME. It is so incredibly dense, and so frustrating, I can only let you imagine. On my way back from the airport today, I was on a double decker bus, on the front seat on the first floor, looking ahead at the sea of traffic facing me. I could see traffic till the horizon....and it was a Saturday afternoon. Unbelievable!

Anyways, it was two trips to the airport today, one a failed attempt to rendezvous with my sister on her way to Bangalore; but the next one was not too bad. Met up with Raghotham of Yahoo! for half an hour, couldn't talk much, but still felt good to see him after around a year. Whatta year it has been!! Last year this time, I had gotten my Rutgers reject, and that was the sixth and final reject in a season of faith's betrayal. Well, almost. :-))))

In other news, these days, I have gone fully, absolutely, insanely bonkers over Susan Sarandon......never ever ever realized she was this sexy. Older women, wow.

post-exam romanticism

Here is my ghost, writing this; while I died in the exam halls.

Yeah, it was as bad this time. And still one more exam coming up on March 11th. Anyways, this was meant to be. Let us talk about other beautiful things.

The weather in Bombay for one. It has been soothingly cold for the last 2 weeks or so. Some depression thing in the Arabian Sea I suppose. Going back to the hostel from the lab at around 7 in the morning to get some breakfast; It feels very cool, very green, and very relaxed. Joggers with dogs, sweepers with long brooms, a whiff of breakfast as I cycle past hostel-8 on my way to hostel-5, the entire grassy field covered with dew - I really haven't felt the dew myself, but I am sure it feels moist on the grass there. I envy those who play football there every morning. It is a great ride back from my lab to the hostel. Did I talk about the birds chirping? :)

This is one aspect of my IIT-life that I will surely remember for a long time. The morning feel of a peaceful campus.

Is Sudeep gonna be the next 007

With Brosnan giving public statements he will be no more 'James Bond' and Su Depp deciding to operate in clandestine mode, is there a possibility of Su Deep being Bond .. James Bond.

With impeccable looks and flawless drving style the new bond would manouver himself in his dream machine Maruti - 800 through the dust filled BTM and HOSUR main roads and will reach office....

Okies looks like I am trying to be Ian Fleming. Su Deep is the most eligible scrpit writer too. So Ravichandran style ?? 007 in From hoskerehalli to Hosur Road -- Actor, Director, Producer, Screenplay, Music, Lyrics - Su Deep

Sudeepa Kshamisu .. Will be landing in Bangalore Saturday Morning .

Boys how about meeting Saturday night or Sunday night.

GD

The theory of Predictability

Well It's been awhile since we've been in the verbose mode and spewing out words faster than people and blog readers can digest.

The intent of this blog was to remain in touch. However we are so much "in touch" , that we really need a break and stop typing.

As I always say "connectivity" is a nuisance.You are so-connected that you have a mobile, you are online on yahoo! messenger abt 5 hrs a day , you read blogs of 35 people you know and 812 people whom you dont know.So life has become VERY PREDICTABLE.Thoughts and actions and everything.
You see photoblogs and then you check mails everyday.There is nothing you dont know abt friends.
Thats why DISconnectivity is the new buzzword.

So I will be taking a short break and I will be back when I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY.
So I will be blogging whenever events happen.

I will be back, definitely. :-)

Bye (for a little while),

quandry...

There is a situation of sorts in HYD and again I have thrown myself into turmoils.
My PM has requested/ordered me to stay in HYD for 6 months as agaisnt he initial plan of 2 months and an official period of 3 months.

Its way too obvious to everyone that my personal view about this decision is nothing less than a mockery.

coming to the indecisiveness which is bothering me about looking for a new job in Bangalore.

1. I have my hike lingering arnd the corner (APRIL)
2. I might just be promoted to a higher post, the chances of which is 50-50
3. 30% of my shares ( 120 in number) will be allocated in June , worth about 1.5 lakhs
4. It would be difficult for me to accept that I couldnt make my way through all these managerial politics.

While people are focussing on bigger issues of life, I am still stuck at official issues.

Anyways I am disregarding the above 4 conditions and going ahead with the jobhunt in a full fledged way.

Moving

I will be blogging my opinions, and other thoughts on my new blog: woolee.blogspot.

Alpha-Q has made me more of an opinion and thought blogger than a whats-happening-in-my-life blogger; the latter of which was my intent when Sudeep created an account for me here. So, other stuff moves to the new blog while life/fact updates will be around this virtual table.

Dreams

Last nite I had a very weird dream. (I know dreams are always weird but this one takes the cake)

While browsing I land into a very strange search engine.The website doesnt have any name.The url is extremely long.

I figure out that I have forgotten how to read!

Then I type something on the keyboard and press enter.

Then I land into the personal web page of "someone special"./* grin */
I am surprised that she maintains a web page.

Immediately, I try to save the web page.

Alas....There is no "Save As" option when I right click the mouse.
Hilarious....

The next day on "Crime Story" ( a stupid kannada serial dealing with serial killers) I am introduced as the most wanted killer....

ugh! I got up....

Manufacture of Consent?

Currently a very heated discussion is on in the IITB.general newsgroup here at IIT-Bombay. The topic is somewhat pertaining to the lack of academic and research interest of undergraduate (UG) students (as compared to postgraduate (PG)), and their building interest in extra-curricular activities. Replying to the "IIT-B.Tech-praised-by-press-across-the-world" comment by some UG, one of the professors replied that both the Indian and the US presses are biased and self serving, or serving some kind of big-brother of sorts. These presses want go glorify BTech education in IITs, and not bother about MTech and PhDs, and esp any form of research conducted in IISc, and IITs. Why is it that we never hear about IISc in the Indian Media? Is it cuz it is sub-standard? Think again!

I have put the entire text of the professor's IIT newsgroup posting in this blog entry. Make sure you read the last section about Indian Media, and self-censorship. The posting was titled "Mysterious sedition on part of Indian Press," and here is the full text.

After reading that, followed by summaries and excerpts of Manufacturing of Consent, I was put into some deep thought regarding what I personally think are cool in this world. Here are a few questions that I asked myself:

- Why do Star Movies/HBO rarely play non-American movies (with English subtitles) ?

- Same applies to TV series on AXN/StarWorld/etc

- Why do I know the Fifth Ammendment of the US consitution? (courtesy TV series - The Practice)

- Why do I care about Mardi Gras?

- Why am I charmed by NYC so much?

- Why do I understand the American accent better than I understand, say British?

- Whatever happened to Varsha Bhosle and Rajeev Sreenivasan and other columnists of that ilk on Rediff.com?

- How come European sites never get listed as frequently on Google's search results as are American sites. Trust me, this is more common than you'd notice, and you wouldn't notice it probably cuz of the what you are reading right now.

- etc. etc.

I do not deny the non-American influence on me, and of course, the native Indian/Kannada/Bangalore/Family influence on me is perhaps the strongest; but the proactive pro-American influence on my thinking, actions, personality and what I spread as my sphere of influence on others, is incredibly high, done subtly and is very effective - startling!!

I really need to rework myself. Never knew that I, as an individual, had a ghost of an elder brother.

infrastructure chaos ..

the KEC General folder has some intersting facts about the new flyover, near the Jayadeva hospital. In my opinion most of the flyovers are built with NO vision, leave alon the long term visions. Flyovers are a merely metric for the government's performance measeure, the numbers they can quote in their annual list of achievements. It also is a source for the inspirational quote - 'Traffic can neither be created or destroyed, it shifts from one junction to another ' ;-)

Having travelled miles in Bangalore, in my minimal two weeks stay and after a weeks of bare minimal travelling in Hyderabad, I can vote HYD is way far better in terms of ROAD infrastructure. I havent seen a bad road still.( with potholes) Traffic is organisedly managed ( atleast in the parts which I travel). Havent had a chance to look at the old hyd, which is the heart of the city.

Other updates, been to Birla mandir and loafed arnd the necklace road near hussainsagar lake. I think Bangalore really lacks something ..

have landed with a CRR 2 once again at Infy. so I now have a 2-2-2 .. the last three years it has been the same. As they populary qutoe ( 6akke yeralla, moorakke iliyolla ). This is inspite of me putting extra hours, being more polite, being more helpful to my colleagues, bitching less about infy, from my first appraisal. Looks like most of others too have done the same. So the company's HR policies are marvellous indeed. Producitvity increase at no extra cost.

Samba, if you reading this, whats the latest on you MBA expedition. I have start my own.

The Jackfruit Letter

The Indian Railways is so fascinating. Mesmerising legacy, mindboggling scale, unbelievable efficiency and of course, the romance of a train journey. My earliest memories of train fascination is that of Gopi: a very close friend from high school days. He used to rattle the starting and ending stations of _all_ train names from the Railway Timetable. Believe me, I used to actually quiz him with that book.

There is this very cooL urban legend about Gopi that made its rounds in our high school corridors (I think its due to Dhruva, but he might claim innocence, like always ;-> ). Legend has it that when some friends had been to Gopi's place to call him for a customary game of cricket. Gopi and his brother were all dressed up and ready to go somewhere. They were pestering their father about how they would be late for some train and would miss it and all. The unsuspecting friends assumed that their pal was going out of station or something, and decided not to include him in the next day's game. But it so turned out later (much to their amazement) that the party was going to the Bangalore City Railway Station not to travel soemwhere, but to check out some train that would halt there for some half an hour, and had some "cool" technical specification!!!. Whoa, now, that is a true enthusiast, considering that we were around 12 that time, and his brother was barely 10. Imagine being 10 and being interested in Railway Gauges. Anwyays, thats just the legend. I wonder if Gopi still has his passion for Indian Rail.

Of all the longest-fastest-oldest of the Indian Railways, I find Bangalore only once; The Bangalore Mail has supposedly been running since 1864! If you did visit that page, do check out the listing of speciality food items in specific stations. I am pleased to see the very delicious Maddur Vade listed (and not pathetically called "vada", but sticking to the Kannada "vade"). I also feel quite sad that I missed out on all the Lonavala and Khandala station goodies during my train rides between Mumbai and Bangalore on the very normal and quait and non-famous Lokamanya Tilak Express. Will make it a point to eat the Chikis and the Burfis the next time around. Gosh, in retrospect, flights are somewhat boring.

As for the title of this posting, its worth checking out the Jackfruit Letter. Quite funny.

Pretty flyover for a brown guy

The State Govt has given us another present. Introducing the new flyover over the jayadeva cardiac hospital which will give heartaches for the people who travel beneath it.Evidently the patients rooms have been curtained so that they shouldnt witness the horrid jams.

The first thing you will notice about the flyover is that it has "risen from the dust".It's so dusty that it is as brown as the golden sand of an exotic eastern beach.It looks like it is already 53 years old.

But I should say that the take off part is pretty smooth.
But the first impression is like you'll feel like Schumaker (if you are in a 4 wheeler) or like John Abraham (if you have a bike and a gal) while climbing the flyover. The moment you descend it you will remember the age-old infy saying :-


"Traffic Jams can neither be created nor destroyed.They can be transferred from one place to another"


A huge jam awaits at the bottom of the flyover.

Anyway since my Jam Endurance Quotient(J.E.Q) is pretty high I watched the whole
scene with a lot of awe :)

Other than that,
I got to watch the movie Wild Strawberries (the one recommended by richie). It just makes you feel that if you live till a ripe old age it is more like a curse cos' the memories keep getting longer and life keeps getting shorter.It is a good movie and sort of timeless even though it is in black and white.

Anchor Text and Focused Crawling

Its been a while since I have blogged anything technical.

These days, I am working on the open source search engine, Nutch. Before I get into what I am doing, let me explain why, in the last sentence, I put the phrase "open source search engine" as a part of the href tag. Search engines use anchor text extensively to figure out what a page is about. For example, the home page of Tejaswi doesn't have the phrase "home page" anywhere. So, by looking at the anchor text of all the in-links to a page, the search engine figures out what the content of the page might be about. This is a latent way of identifying the content of a page: by looking at what in-links call it. Now, when I say "the open source search engine Nutch" in the anchor text and link to nutch.org, that phrase gets associated with the site, and helps someone searching for an open source search engine, but has no clue about Nutch itself.

Currently, I am working on the crawler part of the search engine. The crawler/spider is an offline process that goes all over the web and gets pages for the search engine to index. The idea is to start the crawler with a set of seed pages. The crawler then starts indexing the textual content of each page, and recursively crawls each page's out-links. This goes on ad-infinitum. This part is pretty standard, and is already implemented. My job is to ensure that the crawl is not ad-hoc, ie. not all out-links are crawled. I am trying to "focus" the crawl so that only pages pertinent to certain topics get crawled, and subsequently indexed. Topics like "cycling", "art cinema", "photography", "BDSM" etc. Why do we need to focus a crawl?

Google currently claims that it indexes 8 billion webpages. According to recent estimates, un-indexed pages outnumber indexed pages by a factor of 4-5. This means that there are at at least 33 billion pages out there that Google can index, but is not indexing. Why not? well, for one, more pages doesn't necessarily mean better search results. Good number of pages representing a broad range of topics means better search results. This is where a focused crawl might be preferred over an ad-hoc crawl. If you are really interested, take a look at my advisor's Focused Crawling page for more information.

In other news, read Jeremy Zawodny's post on Mark Jen to know about the Google employee who got fired for blogging some company internals. All corporate bloggers out there....you reading this?

updates from HYD

3rd day into office .. still dragging with cold, boreedomm and lotsa giddiness.
I like the part of HYD in which I move around, the traffic can be accomodated in Infys bus timings. Office is quite borring. PM isnt concerned abt me :( . Am picking up work for myself. I dont know shud I be doing that.

I need to talk to him, abt my release to blore.

Also Raghupathy updates me that SAP doesnt hire ppl >3 yrs exp .. now isnt that saddd .. ?? so I have 3 months time before I take a concrete decision on job hopping.

Todays discussion would be one of the determing factors.

Heard teju is visiting Blore in March . Is that so ??

I would be travelling to Shabarimalai around March 15th or so ??
Its a nice place have heard. Anyone wants to join for a trek on bare foot ?

first day first show...

first impression abt new job...not bad...
have to learn a lot abt WAP before i can actually make correct judgement..
the basic history is like this..we have mms 1.0 compliant client..now that has to be migrated to mms 1.2 ..
apparently there is a lot of diff between the two versions...so not much of scope for copy paste..
and currently its a team with single developer..which hopefully will be expanded soon...so looks like loads of work..
and lot of new things to be learnt...

Unromantic Romance

Here is a song for the day.....(do read the lyrics till the end)
-------------------------------
And so it is
Just like you said it would be
.....
.....
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you

And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
.....
.....
Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?

I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...
My mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new
----------------------------

[ V ]

Happy Valentine's day Guys.


~Su Depp

(closed) gate..

..well almost..
i am talking abt gate exam..it did not go that very well ..for me..
the paper was easy..most of the questions were asking for definition/ formula..
so it was like u know the ans only if u know the ans..u can not sit and deduce it over there...
coming to my case..left few questions unanswered..a few guesses..or may be i should say that i am confident
about only few of them...

btw..today is my first day at innvo..will update abt it soon...

nostalgic timing ??

My feeling are mixed .. abt US, Blore and Hyd ..

Blore's really dirty and there are countless things to complain abt. The good moments came from the people I met during my two weeks stay.

The big question ... if the same set of people who matter to you, friends, relatives etc etc who matter to me were in Scottsdale.. would I have retruned for the
billion botherhood our country provides us ??

speaking in the idealistic sense ( swades way )the whole billion matters .. but does it really matter ??
Anyways ..planning to join JANAGRAHA ..

Hyd is really good , the roads are way better . The infrastructure rocks ..( compared to blore ) but the weather really sucks ....
I have cold , headache and thorat pain on my first day ..I despise my status.

People at office are busy abt some CMM audit and I am absolutely free.
I love this. But tomorrow I shall be diving into action. I need to settle matters regarding my stay, get my dates for Blore asap . I need to start and look out for other options like SAP, Cap Gemini etc. ( just incase types )

other targets .. reduce weight .. gmat prep and tennis .. but how well this would materilaise I am not sure.

I wanted to talk abt consumerism and its effects ..but adakke bombay trip hakona ..

okies chao ..
gd

The adda: Nostalgia

Just finished watching 'Wild Strawberries', which expounds the nostalgia/memories theory. 'Ingmar Bergman presents the past as a time of innocence before the faults of old age begin to creep in' , slightly contraian to the original post.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0050986/
I found the movie to be very interesting, with gr8 dialogue( from the english subtitles :) ), and a bunch of interesting characters.
my Rating: *****

Nostalgia

While browsing through someone's website, I came across this thought provoking take on nostalgia -

"I've always viewed nostalgia as a heresy, but it becomes increasingly harder to fight it off as one grows older. Perhaps it is part of the mechanism we use to cope with regret: when enough patina accumulates, mistakes can be viewed as formative experiences, and switch from being sources of regret to being key moments that contributed to the development of one's present self. Viewed in that light, nostalgia is a form of self-deception, which doesn't make it any easier to accept."

I pondered over it for a while: in the abstract, through the light of my own experiences, my own ideas on it. I conclude (at least for now) that for me, nostalgia is prevalent, but not important/controlling/mood-altering. As I write this, a nagging doubt that nostalgia is indeed mood altering, though not controlling, is creeping in. Why do I say this? As my mood....

I lost a few "instense-nostalgia-triggers" with my wallet a few days back. The first thought was of sadness at loosing these nostalgia-triggers. And now, I can think of the sadness these triggers themselves used to bring about each time by making me take nostalgic trips down memory lane. Now, as I think of the lost triggers, I am struck that I now have memories of my memories. Time to move on.

H. W. Longfellow thought that Nostalgia is a feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. Poetic eh?

An opinion on Communism

Akshai Srinivasan wrote:

>Have made an attempt to write something political, abt certain communists to be more >specific...Check it out, if u are totally bored. (dont blame me if ur boredom >increases after reading this)

http://akshai47.blogspot.com

>Note: "Attempt" is the keyword here...;-)

Blogger Help

I check around 4-5 different blogs a day, and all of them are on blogspot. But, I get kind of irritated each day because I have to remember all 5 of them, type in their URLs on the browser and check whether they have updated their blogs. I am wondering if blogspot has some feature similar to livejournal, where you can add people as your friends and read all their blog updates on a single page. If you want to know what I mean, visit http://www.livejournal.com/users/tejaswi/friends/ . Anyone knows?

JEE, CET, GMAT; harnessing efforts

Here is my interpretation of one of Samba's various bursts of inspiration. An abstract idea whose viability, logistics, implementation etc. need to be worked out.

We know that a lot of effort goes into the preparation for these competitive exams; out of which only the top 2% or so make it in to IITs, IIMs etc. Out of say every 100 candidates that takes each exam, 2 of them actually make it in, and so, in some sense, their efforts are not wasted. And I will assume that around 40 of them just took it up as a part of their regular path, and weren't really serious about them. These numbers can be inaccurate; but bear with me.

The real wasted effort lies in those 50 of them, who actually put in a lot of effort, and out of them, there are at least 10 of them who almost as good as the 2 of them that get in, but just cannot make it in because the number of seats are limited. Now, the question is: can this effort be harnessed to do something good? something profitable? Can the exam structure or the interview structure be changed to do this?

One concrete implementation of this idea. The top few percentile people from CAT are called in for a GD/PI stage, where they are put against each other, and are evaluated for managerial potential, stress, ability to think on their feet etc. One idea is to divide them into chunks, and assign them to random villages in the rural heartland of India. Their job is to stay in these villages for a week (along with an official from the IIMs), and involve themselves in some constructive activity. Call this a real case study as opposed to the arm-chair variety that gets done right now.

This suggestion is not all that preposterous for few reasons
- Candidates are quite serious about their admissions and an IIM admit is a great incentive.
- Its more realistic than an arm-chair case study because real results can be evaluated giving better candidates to these institutes.
- The candidates are smart and some real work that might be useful to these villages can be carried out.
- As CAT filtering has already been carried out, we have a more manageable number of people.

Of course, all these details, and the basic idea itself are up for debate, and thats why the posting :) The rationale behind this thinking is to somehow harness the efforts and the incentives that are a part of this big circus.

Any ideas? problems? possibilities?

City of God

Fellas, I recommend you to see the movie "City of God".

City of God.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well this movie spawns three decades and takes a look into the slums of brazil more specifically the slums in Rio. The film can be described as stark, disturbing and abnormal by an average viewer like me.

It is about a bunch of pre-teen and teen guys fighting for power in the slums and a look into their lives.
The film has so many tense moments (like the usual confrontattion and ego and encounters and all that), dramatic moments (like friendship), disturbing moments (like murdering a kid barely aged 10 years)
The film aims to show that crime is a lucrative career and we have kids talking about moving up the ladder and owning territories. It seems so abnormal yet I was surprised to see it was based on a real story and they showed the real gangsters at the end.It doesnt propose a solution to the problem just highlights the problem and ends like taht.

What I liked about the movie was the sheer number of characters and each one very intricate and detail that it is hard to imagine that so much info. was conveyed to the audience by showing so little of the characters on the screen.The names are very gangster-ish.You have guys whose names are like Li'l Dice who later becomes Li'l Z , you have rocket , you have knockout ned and so on.

AFter seeing the movie I suddenly have the feeling that we have a "better order" over here in India.

But one of the BEST foreign movies I have seen.Dont expect brilliant auteurism , but the story is so detail that it is heard to imagine that somebody actually cooked this story up.

So IMO, if Schindler's List/Amelie/AMerican Beauty were a Director's movie,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were an Actor's movie,
this movie is the scriptwriter's movie.

Playing the Devil's Advocate

My usual gang here at IIT, we hang out at Nishant's room (H5, #76), be it after dinner, after lunch, just bored, just about anytime. And occasionally, we end up having disagreements. And today was one such. It was the usual Capitalism vs. Socialism debate that's been haunting me for a while now. And this time, I tried playing the devil's advocate and tried defending Capitalism; tried everything I had in my arsenal: globalization, trickle-down effect, jungle-culture, primal-instinct, and myriad other theories. When Amit was here a few weeks back, we had had the same argument through his entire stay in Bombay, and I tried to remember what he had used then, and tried in vain to use it now. But after an hour of heated discussions, I realized that it is incredibly hard to defend something you truly don't believe in.

I salute this aspect of defence lawyers, esp. the ones who know whether their clients are guilty. I wonder how many of them go through conscience turmoils when their professional ethics force them to defend a guilty client and their personal morals abhor the same client.

Speaking of dilemmas, I watched and loved Swades. As Upperstall put it, its one of the few good big movies which has some social message. I will watch it again in a theatre.

Speaking of academics, I am working on the open source search engine, Nutch these days. I don't know whether it will result in any solid contribution to the community, but I do hope that I get the required grades :)). Will get back to that now.....

Substring search algorithms

Yes amigos....
I am a little free today :-)

I am on a mailing rampage today :-))

My colleague showed me this about searching substrings and they were pretty clever !

ANy ideas abt implementing KMP algorithm anyone ?

:-)

The 5 point palm heart exploding technique.

Silly and Hillarious and........Stylish (as usual)

My gawd. I really loved the movie Kill Bill #2
I am really bored to analyse a movie. So i'll present you some quotes which i loved.

QT is the man.
Some fave quotes from the movie:-

#1
(The Pimp to Beatrix Kiddo)
I must warn you, young lady, I am susceptible to flattery.

#2
(Bill to Beatrix Kiddo)
Once upon a time in China, some believe, around the year one double-aught three, head priest of the White Lotus Clan, Pai Mei, was walking down the road, contemplating whatever it is that a man of Pai Mei's infinite power contemplates - which is another way of saying "who knows?"

#3
(The strip club owner to Budd who's wearing a Texan Hat)
That hat! That f_wking f_wking hat!

I also caught up with a foreign movie called City of God.

Thats a good one too. Catch the movie if you can ....

Jag has bought a great deal of movies....

The brilliance

Ooh....

The world is full of brilliant people.
I need to wear sunglasses.

/* Wears sunglasses. */

Aah...
That feels a lot better.

By the way , I am back after some viral infection.
more useless stuff will be blogged after some time.

:-)

solaris 10 released

From the linux-here-i-come dept.

Well, Solaris 10 has been released for both Sparc and intel architectures.And they have a license called RTU (right to use) license.It is your usual sign up and download kinda thing.They have released free binaries.But the point is, they havent released their kernel code (atleast, i didnt see that) however they have released the source code for an "innovative application" called DTRACE.

Just check opensolaris.org for details.

Feeling sick (physically) today.
I guess I gotta go home early :-)

some updates

well..yesterday was my last day at subex..so i am kinda 'jobless' for next 2 weeks...
now that i am thinking abt this..i did not feel sad/bad abt leaving subex..actually it was
like any other day..no 'senti scenes'..does this imply that i was frustrated to such an extent
or is it that i refrained from getting emotionaly attached to subex..donno..

had been to zeeds place yesterday..and ran into papu and richie..had some good 'harate'..
it was good to see that gd hasnt changed much..except for the fact that his signs of
prosperity have become more prominent ;)

btw .. i was lisetning to 'yaaron sun lo zara..' from rangeela..and was amazed at the extent to
which its applicable to me..esp the lines

Gaadi bangla nahin na sahi na sahi
Bank balance nahin na sahi na sahi
TV video nahin na sahi na sahi
Suiting shirting nahin na sahi na sahi
Inki humko kyon ho fikar
Jee lo jaise mast kalandar

Bombay

Bombay is an experience; and esp. after living in a hamlet like Bangalore, Bombay hits me each time I venture out of the campus. And this weekend was especially severe. Two friends (Amit Rathore from ThoughtWorks and Akshay from IIM-Lucknow) were visiting, one for the exclusive purpose of "chilling out" and the other had some official work. But the three of us hit the yuppie circuit here, in full blast. And as Amit said before leaving, it was some severe shit. Restaurants, cafes, bars, beaches, local trains, never ending taxi drives, late late night chilly auto rides, malls, and all the other elements which every urban jungle has. But its sheer scale, and the way things are intertwined here; that is the difference. Amidst all our chaotic travelling and induldence, there was a lot of talk on economics, India, Kannada, Bombay, mis-adventures with women, books and so on. Coffeehouse philosophy at its very best; three geeks, what else can you get?!

Among other things, I got my wallet picked during a local train ride. The irony of it was, this was right after an eye-opening RSS meeting/lunch on Republic Day. Done with blocking all my bank-cards, still have to get new ones, get duplicate identity card, driver's licence, etc. But, more significantly, all my other personal belongings in the wallet are gone now, and all of them are beyond replacement. All of them, beyond replacement.

Bombay is a cauldron. Lot of heat, tons of volume. A single wallet?

Corporate lunch (munch ? munch??)

Everyday during lunch time, I dont feel like having lunch.Blame it on "corporate lunch".Every company has its "canteen committee" who take pains in ensuring that everyone is sufficiently pained by bringing a caterer whose food can simply be described as INedible.

We have a very good foodcourt at our groundfloor with a confused bunch of caterers who can make heavy breakfast (like dosas etc) not the lighter ones.And the lunch....well..I prefer not to talk abt lunch.The best part of the lunch is the "saunf" which is sweet and I look forward for the time I eat the saunf.

Then we take a brisk walk around the building campus like a pradakshina and get back to whatever we've been doing in the morning.

The question I pose to the caterers of today is :-
(we live in a free world, so i am posing this question)

why do caterers complicate lunch with all sorts of specialities and screw up the main essentials like chapathi/rice or the sabji that goes with it?

Eaters like me are overwhelmed by variety and I am not able to single out a defect.
Okay I'll stop the crib :))

So, zeeds is back in bangalore and I spoke to him over the fone a couple of hours ago.
It's been like a year.....

Weekend was okay and I am back here :)
Met suri (the footballer) for a treat and I bumped into Sihi Kahi Chandru yet again.

haha.
Sihi Kahi Chandru and the stupid french movies.

btw I watched "The Lady Killers". Tom Hanks is incredible as the professor.

Time changes everything.

It is healer.It is a killer.It is one of the greatest teachers.
It just shows what a big fool you have been or what a great decision you have taken....

Is time merely relational.....Is "time without change" conceptually impossible.....Are the ideas of past, present and future entirely subjective, descriptions only of our deception by the senses?

I asked Mr. J Krishna Murthy from the web and this is what he had to say

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution.

hmpf jan 27 did no good.

Purloined letter

Nice short story by Poe: http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/p_letter.html
Try to read this when you get time.
Also read a book by 'Amy Tan - Joyluck club'
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804106304/104-7929629-0627922
A very good read, with a fascinating interplay of ideas, words ..

And looking -> to jan 30th :D

human equilibrium

Are there enough people in this world for all the tasks that are around? I mean, is the load distributed properly? are there enough complexity theorists? enough newsreaders? enough teachers? enough sportsmen? enough truck drivers? enough glassblowers?

Is it balanced? or are we fooling ourselves that things are in equilibrium? Lemme tell you why this equilibrium is floating in my head now. I was pondering about the so called "micro" and "macro" level interests of any person. At least me. At a micro level, I am working on web-search, or in a more general sense, concerned about computer science. At a macro level, I feel for India, Indian politics, socialism, economics, historical injustice, hunger, etc. Though my macro level interests are viable career options, I just dont take them for various reasons. Now, I somewhere, deep down, subconsciously, desperately hope that human equilibrium exists and all those areas of work that I am not involved in, but are important to me, are being taken care of; by professionals, by passionate people, by zealots, by selfless volunteers etc. And my working on search engines will somehow help them do their job better. Some theory guy proving approximation lower bounds for some O.R scheduling problem will save some money in some facotry line up which will be given as bonus. Some IAS officer streamlining infrastructure efforts might get me from KanjurMarg to Mulund in time for a movie.

Anyways, as I am writing this, I feel quite stupid, but the equilibrium thought did come to my mind and was quite futile in convincing me that what I am doing currently is worthwhile...

Benny Hinn

Well , most of us Bangalore folks, went back home early , this saturday because of protests about Benny Hinn's sermon at Jakkur Grounds.Well the situation was pretty bad on Hosur road because of some stone throwing here and there and the traffic line longer than half a kilometer.Personally, I had no idea of what was going on in the morning, but the situation was grimmer in the afternoon and we left home early say about 5 in the evening.Buses from Infosys and Wipro were there at sharp 4 late afternoon.And we got mails from the building security to get our asses out of the place asap.

And then as I went home I could see the Khakhi policewallahs with their helmets and their cooling glasses on the cheetah painted fieros everywhere.I presumed, amidst these protests, the sermon would solely comprise of some organisers and other people.However Benny Hinn drew crowds like a rock star. I mean , better than a rockstar! 5 lakh people on day one was something like a shock.....wow! so many people ...The main complaint of the BJP is conversion from a religion X to a religion Y. I think (personally) conversion is an individual's prerogative and an individual's rationale should help him decide which faith he wants to adopt to.However, the Benny Hinn is also said to be a healer.And his touch caused a woman with a bent spine to jump with joy on the stage.Well I really dont know it's whether the touch of Benny Hinn or just the mood / ambience / belief make people act like that. I saw that on NDTV and I am just confused.

I also heard that all our esteemed secular leaders had visited Benny Hinn's show and prayed for India with Benny Hinn.Nice.
However the conclusion is that :- FAITH is a billion dollar industry.You get to philosophise, touch people's hearts , popularity and earn all at the same time and also say that you are not interested in materialistic pleasures.

Speaking of materialistic pleasures, another article from a Kannada Tabloid claimed that there is a new Live Music Band (like the one in Chandini Bar) has sprung up at Urban Edge. The owner of the place is ...hold your breath....a Stanford Graduate.
Well the guy knew where the money was I guess....haha.

Not an interesting weekend.Two movies and some work at office, some chat with Kummi.....and I am back at my cubicle.....

B2B on Jan 30 11:45 pm ..

hope to catch you all pretty soon .. Monday ratre obbradru sikkri makkla ..
illa andre khoon bhari haath .. aagi hogotte.. ;-)

Ability & Responsibility

I heard someone say that "If you have the ability to do something (good), its your responsibility to do so."

This put me in a quandry of sorts; I have always known that I have had the ability to do a lot of things, and some of these things could've made the world a better place, maybe in a very limited way. But, I have never taken the responsibility for most of these. Mostly, moments of this sort pass by without us realizing that it is indeed our responsibility to do certain things in life. The irony is that there are also times in life when the responsibility is very clear, but the ability is somewhat questionable. Both situations arise in life, and we give them both a raw deal.

Thats the moral question of the day (for me at least).

Among other things, this January has seen a deluge of holidays for us. A lot of 3-day weekends, some inbetween holidays. And so, on January 26th, I will be at Shivaji Park in Dadar meeting up with the RSS relative of mine during the RSS Republic Day function. I am really surprised (also happy) that he actually took time out of his busy schedule and asked me to join him for some talk that day. Maybe this time, it might be some implementation of some ideal/ideas. I might get to see some logistical aspects of what really goes on at that level. Watch this space for the Republic Day update.

me and my award

(speech of acceptance)

and this "haward" i would like to dedicate to everybody who have made my life so meaningful and people who been there with me when i down and all the people who took part in the competition.

Sudeep wins; (almost) flawless victory

2/3rd of the average of five numbers I got was 26. Sudeep's answer was 27. So, heres to the winner of a fabulous gift from my side. There is much more to this than just random number generation. I am reading a text on game theory currently, and will update more stuff related to it soon.

For the record, here were the numbers I got: 55, 54, 20, 39 & 27. A few people whom I expected to participate didn't and maybe that did affect the strategies of those who did participate.

I posted the same thread in our dept. newsgroup and got eight responses, and the 2/3 of the average was 30.38 and the closest number to that was 35.

More normal postings in the next post.

I <3 spam !

This spam deserves a standing applause.
Check out the subject line of the spam and the content !

------------------------------------------------------------
From "Neateye" <>
Subject Gouranga
Date Mon, 17 Jan 2005 04:32:57 -0000

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!
------------------------------------------------------------

that was one helluva spam!

another verbal diarrhoea

rip-off by an LJ communtie'

These were the best parts of what i read....

It is a feeling that our emotions, while wonderful, are transpiring in a vacuum, and I think it boils down to the fact that we’re middle class.You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning’s will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.


My friends are all either married, boring, and depressed; single, bored, and depressed; or moved out of town to avoid boredom and depression.

{chuckle}

People always like to give 'fundas'....Funda is the new f-word.

Another PJ b4 i go amigos, :-))

What did y say to x in the calculus class ?
"f" off x.

Introduction to Game Theory

Mail a number between 0 and 100 (inclusive) to me at tejaswi(at)it.iitb.ac.in before 2359 hours, Wednesday, 19th January. The person who comes up with the number which is closest to 2/3-rd the average of all the responses will get a personal gift from me.

We will continue with actual game theory in my subsequent posts, but this will give you an insight into how complex a simple problem will get if there are competing rational agents in a system who can anticipate and double guess others, and normally do. We will also see how this can be formally and thoroughly studied. Please do participate. And don't mail anonymously :)

It will help if the subject of the mail is "game theory". Also, I will consider the last email I get from each of you as your response. So, feel free to change your response; but not too many times :)

What it's like - by everlast

We've all seen the man at the liquor store beggin' for your change
The hair on his face is dirty, dreadlocked and full of mange
He ask the man for what he could spare with shame in his eyes
Get a job you f**kin' slob's all he replied
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues

Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom who said he was in love
He said "don't worry about a thing baby doll I'm the man you've
been dreamin' of"
But three months later he said he won't date her or return her call
And she sweared god damn if I find that man I'm cuttin' off his balls
And then she heads for the clinic and she gets some static walkin' through the doors
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner, and they call her a whore
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to choose

I've seen a rich man beg
I've seen a good man sin
I've seen a tough man cry
I've seen a loser win
And a sad man grin
I heard an honest man lie
I've seen the good side of bad
And the down side of up
And everything between
I licked the silver spoon
Drank from the golden cup
Smoked the finest green
I stroked daddies dimes at least a couple of times
Before I broke their heart
You know where it ends
Yo, it usually depends on where you start

I knew this kid named Max
He used to get fat stacks out on the corner with drugs
He liked to hang out late at night
Liked to get shit faced
And keep pace with thugs
Until late one night there was a big gun fight
Max lost his head
He pulled out his chrome. 45
Talked some shit
And wound up dead
Now his wife and his kids are caught in the midst of all of his pain
You know it crumbles that way
At least that's what they say when you play the game
God forbid you ever had to wake up to hear the news
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to lose

Joel on S/W

Guess what ???? I had this prescription, but never really bothered to open the mail. Probably, by now, this is being christined as Spam and flushed to 'Bluk' folder.

Obvious doubts - Microeconomics is for Programmers, for lesser mortals like me who wants to be in the industry, and has to know the supply demand for survival. I think Teju u r flirting with this course. Isnt somthing inline with your research ambitions more appropriate here. Or are you BORRED with blah blah blah ..
Anyways have fun.

And guys inspire me to fight with my PM for Jan 28th.
The best news in months. Samba's admission to YALE. Hope he gets some sort of a financial aid.

where r the nerds ?? nerds != bookish .. movie nerds, swimming nerds and oops sorry one boookish bugger.

Finance and Friends

Samba makes it into Yale for a (tentative) $100K+ MBA. Gotta see whether he takes it or not, and if he does, how he is going to do it, and whether he makes it or not; in the long run I mean.

Speaking of finance, Amit Rathore has started his finance blog, after his general blog, theory of everything blog and the somewhat ambitious entrepreneurial blog. But still, his "spirit for a concept" is commendable. He is probably the most prolific of all the bloggers I know in person.

I am crediting the Applied Economics course this semseter, and lets see if economics is indeed as interesting as I think it is. Somewhere, I see the analytical and the social aspects of human thought merging in Economics. Even if it ain't that interesting by itself, Joel Spolsky advices that one ought to learn microeconomics before graduating out of college just to ensure a balance at work.

star and buc

these two idiots are rjs from a radio channel and they have abused a call centre worker from india.

Sounds plain ?

Then download the mp3 from here and just listen to it.

It really angered me.

chigurida kanasu

As per my resources ( movie geeks) Swadesh is a remake of the award winning movie chigurida kanasu from Karnad ( ante ... I havent verifed it )
yargadru enthu iddre nodi

A brief history of internet time

google has recently released the usenet archives have a look at that!

amazing.

the internet has come a long way.

|-&

I am feeling unusually intoxicated and sleepy rite now! The lunch was the usual thing.But as I type there might be some typing mistakes here and there cos rite now i am struggling to keep my eyes open.Trying to figure out what's wrong in a code in the afternoon with a very very light head is difficult.

With that in mind here are the updates :-
I caught up with 2 french movies which sucked like hell.And I saw Coppola's "Dracula" which is original story and contains characters like Van Helsing etc.Anthony Hopkins plays a solid role as Van Helsing.Boy! the women biting Keanu's Reeves neck were sexy and there was absolutely no horror in the movie.

Do check akshai's blog for swades and Alexander movie reviews.

Suzanna

Got into a music mood today, was talking to a friend here on messenger and we were listening to a few of my favorite songs, and digged up this old song which I used to hear during my second year PU days: Suzanna - Art Company. This is an awesome self-deprecating humor song, with loser-moments that makes me smile at how it used to be back then. Whoa, things have changed so much since second year PU. Almost 10 years now. Shucks, oh Shucks, those were the days of the angsts of the sweetest types. I miss those days right now, I seem to be someone else.

Listening to some of my other favorite songs, Against All Odds - Phil Collins, Cats in the Cradle - Ugly Kid Joe, NIB - Ozzy, Jeremy - Pearl Jam, Drops of Jupiter - Train, Stranger in Moscow - Michael Jackson and so on.......gotta figure out what makes music so sublime. I mean, its truly sublime, it can get into me (whatever "me" is), and change the way I feel, catalyse my moods, take me elsewhere, time-travel and memory-refreshes take over, there is something about music that transcends reason and rationality, it just cannot be discrete notes of tones strung together in some order, it just cannot be.

nice to know

blore hasnt changed much :-)
What really matters to me .. not certainly in this order

All restuarants should taste the same or better
Temprature should be same or lesser
Lesser traffic .. I am not stupid to expect this ..

Whats really sadddd ..

Teju being in Bombaby ..
Sudepp moving to RR nagar
Well I think I will have Jag and Kummi to walk along ..

Apart from that there would be lotsa action.

another weekend wailed in bowling and tennis.
well tennis is really cool .

matte innen makkla ..

bullish

Bull is not yemme. Yemme is buffalo. Bull has more meanings than I care to lookup and post here.

irli.

I have a question to the reader, to the literature cognoscenti. Why is it that there are very few books that cater to the romantically oriented male? The girls have Mills and Boon, Danielle Steele, Barbara Cartland, Georgette Heyer, and a whole load of other writers who can dish out tons of mush, emotional double guessing games, first person narratives of romantic angsts of love-sick women, all in all stuff that somewhat bores men. But this doesn't mean that we men do not want to read romantic stuff at all. I have personally liked Georgette Heyer, and sections of other regular books where there is a male romantic angle; literature where the subtle male romantic nature is shown. Devdas might have been one I think, though I haven't read it myself. But without going to such extreme sad endings, there ought to be other novels that explore the male romantic perspective. Hmmmmm......I will probably write a short story of that sort and post it here sometime. Or maybe a short script.

Movie critique/s anybody

yak, yak; movies and more movies, siskel, ebert and tejbert would be a neat trio I guess. Things have changed here gds, you can draw your conclusions in your one weeks stay, but for starters:
* paapu: is the cool dude ( that's new :D )
* kummi: shifting jobs! ( that's earth shattering news )
* teju: into movies
* self: investing in the stock market ( being bullish, and paapu,bull is english for yemme, or is it something else!).

between, I finished my apping for the initial list of colleges UCSB, Pennstate, tamu and ohio. So have got loads of free time to continue doing what I have been doing in the past: read.

schrodinger's cat

I got this ultra-cool t-shirt as a gift from my sister; take a look (http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/6dff/)

And now, there is a sudden interest in pop-quantum mechanics in my lab and around. Not bad for a t-shirt. A t-shirt with an attitude reminds me of how Brad Pitt comments "You are a fuckin T-shirt" to John Doe in the movie Se7en. Anyways, I got two other ThinkGeek shirts which are superb too. And also some book on paradoxes and reasoning. All in all, a great birthday/ new year gift from my sister.

Inagurated my return to IIT with more movies: Incredibles, Anna and the King, Se7en, etc. Life is getting back to normal with 4 courses and 1 lab; I have decided to take applied economics.

Sudeep's post brings back great memories. Richie's post just re-affirms his bias.

The adda

The adda: "The weather in Elbonia is either sunny or rainy. If it is sunny on a given day, there is a probability of 1/5 that it will be sunny the next day. If it is rainy on a given day, there is a probability of 3/5 that it will be rainy the next day. What is the probability that it will rain thirty days from today given that today is sunny?"

The probability that it is sunny seems to converge to 1/3.

:-)

GD that was a nice post but there is nothing yippee happening here.
But i guess YOU coming back can make the difference.

There is no tremendous growth here....Thats all bullshit.
Well the way you left was different dude....

there was tejaswi as an owl going to the office at night
the days when richie was talking abt the chinese PERL expert "Lord Keith" and "Amr"
the days when kummi and tayswi were prep-ing for GATE and teju was confused abt the long hrs of mobile phone of kummi.
and I was (as usual) lost in some details which I dunno/too bored to recollect.

The last day I met u was on a thursday morning when you were giving an obscure explanation that traffic jams are peak on thursday mornings.And you were carrying that white mobile phone of yours with the "godfather" ringtone.and i was very much an infoscion who had just finished mugging words like "apothecary" and all that.

that was 2003.
this is 2005.....and we know what we're upto these days :-)

anyways,
sometimes it feels good to be in the "information age".

B2B

I will be back to Blore this month end, and yippee my flight might be on Jan 28th. I dont know how would I feel back home. I am glad about getting back , but will be very different about the Blore now and then.
I want my city to be the way I left it. IMPOSSIBLE rite ??
Too much of expectations from a small city lad. Well even though I dint grow much in the past year, I have heard my city has undergone a tremondous change with a few unfinished flyovers, more vehicles , more buildings and more people.
Hope all the restuarants taste the same, and that Sudeep would not have moved to RR nagar.
I will be there for a week and I will be off to HYD the next week. I have a very remorse feeling about this. I would miss blore for more than one reason now.

Surprisingly my evaluation for the last cycle was good. My PM , whos an ass gave a comment , that my written communciation needs improvement. The reason being "I actually write long sentences which tends to be confusing" .

Apart from that I got a remark as " good at business knowledge and a good team player" which I never have got till now .:))
Its really weird, but am not at all complaining. Theres a little discussion left though.

I want to play as much tennis as possible in the next two weeks and ski for the next two weekends. Yes, I can SKI . I need to pick some finer touches though, so I would be picking a smaller length ski this time.

Sudeepa have u managed to get some paunch ?? U know me and Teju cant really grow thin. I have left that dream.

Will be back and it would GMAT time. Spoke to mega maga, and hes working for AXA as a financial stratergist.

Nairs done his studies. Raghu has clinched a job in Florida, so did Shiva and chakku managed to blow 370$ for an hour. Nothing much from the US of A , apart from some thunderstorms in Phoenix. Weathers really weird.

lkb teju, chat madta illa .
I will take a quick nap.

Tatas

swimming and flying

Visited the pool today. Its a pretty good pool, very good quality, water, lifeguards, showerstalls and all. It is around half the size of the Basavanagudi pool, but has the same depth range (3ft - 16ft). I plan to stick to the 1845-1930 batch. Had to get a medical test done to ensure that I am low-risk. As for the actual swimming, I now realize that I am out of shape, and out of form, and out of energy. Plan to work on each of them with swimming, cycling and a controlled diet. Lets see whether it works. Will test it on innocent Bangalore folks when I visit in May 2005.

Academically, the course merry-go-round is going on, with everyone frantically trying to optimize their courses in terms of load, final year projects, grades, weekly timings etc. I am still debating whether to take Combinatorics or Applied Economics. Other than that, I will be sticking to Hypertext Mining, Data Mining and Approximation Algorithms this semester, coupled with one dud lab, making it a very heavy course indeed. I might also be working with a startup here on some cooL stuff. Will update as things take shape.

Now, for the best part of my post. My flight from Bangalore to Bombay. For a long time now, I had had these expectations, awe, and a feeling of anticipation for flying. It lived upto every bit of my thought and more. Flying is probably as commonplace as driving to many, but for me, it was a new thing, and I haven't felt many new things for sometime now. I loved the initial acceleration, the first few moments of flight, the view of the city fading as we climb, the oh-so-fantastic clouds - in all their myriad shapes and sizes, the tilting of wings, and as we landed, I could recognize a few buildings in Bombay, and we flew so close to a slum, that I could actually make out urchins playing on the gullys, and the feeling of floating as we get close to landing and the sudden feeling of speed as we hit the ground.......overall, a great experience, and I am glad I took the flight this time.

madhuve oota..

...sssssssssss..bai chappariso hage ithu!!!..super!!!
enjoyed a south indian bramhanara madhuve oota after quite some time...and every item from kosambari to mosaranna was good...
eega hotte bhara agidhe..kannu bhara agtha idhe..nidira devi baa kandha yenu thidhale...how can i say no....zzzzzzzz...

okie...

solution here.

Thats abt a tech post or rather a math post goes.
Damn!

Office Canteen updates :-))
-----------------------------
So, we have a new cafeteria at the ground floor
(we used to have one at the 4th floor....we live in the 3rd floor)
It is almost like a foodcourt of infy in size.

They have adopted a hotel kind of service rather than a buffet kind of service.
The result is total chaos cos' the waiters arent familiar with the tables.

Apart from these updates i have some resolutions :-
600 x 800, 1024 x 4096 etc.

enuff of jokes?

Here is a bigger interesting joke/choke on http://www.hiaspire.com/newyear/

Sign up for a FREE monthly New Year's Resolution Reminder e-mail that will be sent to you throughout the entire year — full of helpful tips and internet links to hopefully encourage you to succeed in meeting your personal goals. Get motivated! Get support! Get a Resolutions Buddy! Send a funny Resolutions Postcard to somone you love!

sunny and rainy

are the only two types of weather ??

1/5 sunny next day indcates 4/5 rainy ?? on rite ??

anyways yenakke tale tinnali .. I wont be solving this problem ..

weather in elbonia

Note :- Tech Post

I was just thinking about the applications of matrix multiplcation.
Here is one complicated probability problem i came across....

The weather in Elbonia is either sunny or rainy. If it is sunny on a given day, there is a probability of 1/5 that it will be sunny the next day. If it is rainy on a given day, there is a probability of 3/5 that it will be rainy the next day. What is the probability that it will rain thirty days from today given that today is sunny?

fyi member finds his lakshya by joining navy

All the best chetan!

~Su Depp

----- Original Message -----
From: Chetan Janardhana
To: Pradeep B S ; Akshai Srinivasan ; sudeep ; Narendra V Joshi ; Rohit Rawal ; Venkatesh S ; Manjunath Bhogananjappa ; Bhanuprakash Mahalingappa ; Vikram Das C. G ; Sudhir Konanur Narasimhamurthy ; Siddharth Rao ; harsha.kalkoti@gmail.com ;
Cc: ravi_arasikere(int)
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 4:02 PM
Subject: Getting off the bus

Boys,

Let me start off with the bottom line: I dont know what is in store for me. And I am also a bit scared of the unknown. Which implies that I am scared now. Well, not really scared in the true sense of the word, but I hope you get the picture.

As far as my work is concerned, I am not exactly proud or satisfied with whatever I have done or achieved ("achieved" is an over-statement!!! Just a sec, is there a word called over-statement ? I thought it is the opposite of understatement ;-) in the past 2 and a half years in Infy. But one thing that I look back at with pride is the set of friends I have made here. I mean, I am proud to have been associated with you ppl. Well, I shouldnt exactly say "have been", cause theres no way I am going to let go of you guys that easily. I really mean that, guys. As far as I am concerned, relationships define one's life and we shouldn't let factors like time and distance affect them. In this regard, I hope to keep my end of the bargain, and hope you all will too.

What the !@#$, man. I wanted to tell you guys a lot more, but words are not as forthcoming as I thought they would be. My mind's blank now. I really am not sure if anything is worth leaving behind all the things that you really love.

Forgive me if anything does not make sense above, I have never been such a prolific writer anyway.

Pls use my xxxxx@gmail.com id for all further FYI email interaction. May the curse of Allah befall upon anyone who removes my id from any of the mail exchanged within FYI. Pls pls include my id.

That is all I have to say, guys. In this mail atleast.

Thanks,
Chetan
Ph: 91-80-51167536 (Work)

wishing you all

a happy 2005!

one week was off...and there was teju...he's leaving for bombay today....
i dont have anything else to say...3days flew past....

NY - New Year and New York ..

It was incredible. Met harsha,chakku,maiya,amit,shiva,haseeb,nandihalli .. super duper hitttttttt.. the chinkis ruled the streets of NY followed by the desis and amrus .. ( goras and kalas ) ...

slept for 5 hours in bet' Thursday and Saturday .. nange nambokke aagta illa .
Won 150$ at a casino ( winning 150$ is an achievement ) .. tsunami relief fund ge hogotte ... I shud try once more and do my bit for the relief fund.

papanna .. chakku gave out your secrets.....

2005

Heres wishing you all a very happy new year.....and years to come.

Anyways, it also happens to be my last evening in Bangalore for a while to come. I am leaving for Bombay tomorrow (Monday, Jan 3rd 2005) by the 1445 Jet Airways flight. Will get back to regular blog updates when I reach IIT and am in front of my machine more regularly than here. It was a great month spent at home. Tons of great filter coffee, home made food, comfortable bed with warm blanket, and a feeling of being at home, teriffic times spent with friends; and now, the vacation ends. .

In retrospect, 2004 was an interesting year. I realized quite a few things about myself; mostly the not-so-good. But knowing the not-so-good things about me gives me a chance to improve, rather than feel cushy about how I am; I hope. And 2005, will also be my full year in Bombay, my first fill year out of home. It's gonna rock!

absurd

When thousands lost their lives on Sunday, there were a few znanis ( goons ) who were attributing the natures wrath to Sri Sankaracharya's captivity. WELL WELL WELL :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.

Numerous relief funds have been raised by the government. I do have a complaint about US ( Indians ). It probably took 3-4 hours for the tusnami to hit India. Couldnt we sense its arrival. Couldnt we caution . Are our disaster predicting systems so pathetic. Even the airbase at Andaman and Nicobar Islands dint have a clue till it struck them. If we really lack the infrastructure, then in my opinion we should spend a part of the Releif fund in building better alerting systems.


okies ... namma contribution nenuskondre .. innu bejaar aagotte .. so let me not highlite it..

Mood

The usual. Its been this "usual" mood for a few years now. What happened to other moods, I wonder. Looks like its time for the next level of introspection, coupled with some retrospection.

Today for the first time, I got bored at a Bookshop (Landmark). I went around a mall (Forum) and the boredom got worse. McDonald's was crowded like crazy, and so were other places, with a urbane, boisterous, "family" crowd and all were going through the motions of shopping, eating, drinking, hoping, loafing, and whatever else people do in malls. While writing this, I am now thinking about what I was doing there...will that be the last time I go to malls? I don't think so. I am changing; and I don't like this change.

Mourning for all those who took the brunt of nature on sunday. And sighing at the thought of all those who are talking about how Tamil Nadu is now paying the price for its mistreatment of the Shankaracharya

happy bday richie ..

looks like u had a great bday party ..
cooooooooooooolllllllllll

I will be back in Jan last week ..
meet you guys soon ..

my body is hurting due to skiing ..:((((((((

RSS

I mean, RSS - Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, not RSS - RDF Site Summary (feed). On my way back from Soraba, I met a very interesting relative of mine who works full-time with RSS and has the somewhat lengthy title of "Akila Bharata Saha Boudhika Pramukh", which translates to "Head: RSS Think-Tank". As we had a couple of hours to kill on the bus till we reached Shimoga, it was talk-time for the idealogically confused Tejaswi Nadahalli and the passionate RSS leader/idealogue Dattatreya HosabaLe. We covered some organizational behavior, leadership, Indic-culture, (Neo-)Colonialism, India, Indian-ness, Nehru, Partition, and a whole load of other similar topics. For the very first time in my life, I met a true leader of people; someone who knows the complications of implementing policies, logistics, people, Indian History, is very well read, ideologically driven, unmarried, devoted, and a lot more. Very impressive person, eye-opening conversation....I even checked out http://www.rss.org and a few columns there. Vitriolic as usual, and also extreme in places; but still, after pondering for a while, I am not sure I am as liberal as I think I am.

I will end this with a few quotes that he used, that I still remember.

"If you are below 25 and not a communist, you dont have a heart; If you are over 35 and still a communist, you dont have a brain"

"Gandhi chose the wrong man; and so did God" - (think Nehru and Patel)

the uncles are here

Christmas eve 2004, is something I will recollect fondly :). My sister(Aditi) and brother-in-law(Kartheek) who had come down on holiday to blore, threw a surprise birthday party. It was fun, with my cousins too joining in. Leftovers of chocolate truffle still available at my place, so people can drop in at any time ( other than Kumar, since he was there for the party anyway :D).

happy birthday richie_jag!

have a nice day today!

~Sudeep

AGRE score out

Got a measly 78 percentile :( ... chitranna. I would have been comfortable reporting a score of 80-85 to universities, but now am unsure. It is required for institutions like Rutgers.. hmm.. My pennstate app has been sent anyways; ucsb & ohio by this weekend.
review got over last week. ver 4 of self needs to be released pronto is the verdict :)

the weekday brouhaha

wtf?

w=wednesday
t=thursday
f=friday

after wtf,...we are having holidays!
we are having a VACATION for one week.

i have no plans abt celebrating the janam-din of christ or new year.
i dont think i will have any.

after all i am not the "partying types"

hahaha....i love the phrase after all i am not the "partying types"

Party means something to every human being.
Based on the intrepretation of the word "Party" we have four (right now i can think of 4)
categories of people :-

1) Partying animals(PAs)
Yay! to party....Yay! to bacardi.

2) "Not the partying types."
They have GENUINIEly been in category #1 for sometime and they are out of it.

3)Idiots who CLAIM that they have been in category#1 and later who switched to category#2.
Nobody has a clue what they were upto.

4) (My favorite) People who confuse party for Congress Party and Janata Party.

ANyway i will tell you what class i belong to later....
:-)

Bangalore #3

I am off to my village for 3 days starting tomorrow. Some people to catch up with, a wedding to attend, and a few more sleepless nights are in the pipeline...

Visited IISc today to catch up with both the Dattas, and two others, one from TW, and one from Yahoo!, things are going good at IISc...Christos Papadimitriou is in Bangalore these days at HIPC2004 I heard...thats academics for now....

Will get back to you folks after 3 days......till then, adios.....

After 1 helluva of a

roller coaster debugging session , i figured out that nothing is drastically wrong with my piece of code.Ofcourse there will be some bugs here and there....

Not that my piece of code is a masterpiece.But still it is a good relief.
It is a niraparaadhi.

Whew!

Anyway, weekend just swooshed because of Kummi's parents shaanti and other important things.
Tej is here and manja (the texas-tech manja) is in town.

Okay nothing much to say........
:-)

Shanthi #2

it was a strange feeling watching my mom and dad getting married..
it felt kinda good..some moments to be treasured...also i noticed something..
i felt that they were looking pretty (yes pretty!!) when they were sitting on the 'hase manne' (the wooden plank
on which ppl sit while getting married)..was it because of their costume..with garland and all that..or was it cos
of the whole setting..or was it just my eyes playing tricks..or as one of my aunts suggested..was it cos of the 'hase manne'
itself..(to put it in her own words 'hase male kuthre hage kaLe barathe nodu')..donno..

will send the photos once they are developed..
blore boys..any plans of going out this weekend??janapadha loka anybody???

sops and e-sops....

gimme a place to stand and a rod , i will be able to turn the world....

wah wah!
words of gold, i say....

i dunno which scholar said this....I think it's a greek scholar....
Aristotle ? PythaGoras ? Euclid ?
But he was a shrewd guy.
Why ?
Because nobody could give him a place or a rod.

If the greek scholar lived today and he would write a
writing a SOP to some university if he told those words
what would the chancellor say to him ?

:-)

The inner purpose of a SOP is to make a claim.
But it's good.

Because, i feel ONLY if you make claims you can go into the achievement mode....
because you become responsible for the words u've spoken.....
and you have lit the fire on your own behind.

so i will claim.....
give me some place ....

no i will claim something afterwards...
my filesystem is bombing....

shanthi...

beta chands...ee sunday namma appandhu shanthi idhe..
in ashrya party hall...this place is near ganesh mandhir in thyagarajanagar.. thavalru sakutumbha parivara sametharagi bandhu vadhu vara rige shubha korabekendhu thammali vinanthi..
teju, nenage phone maduve..

sop

i think I need to borrow samba's SOP ..hehe ..
just kidding ..
seriously, it is a painful job to colour your thoughts, when you are not sure of what you want to be ....
well finally(looks like ) samba has got his colors right , or atelease he managed to replicate a 'da vinci'

its high time I go to my PM and get my return dates confrimed .. I mean something concrete like Jan 29th or Jan 22nd ..

Papanna dont shift to rajarajeshwari nagar ..
magane hoskere halli is awesome .. You are just adding more miles to your long and tiring journey to SASKEN .. reconsider.......

blore would be borring without tejaswi ..and richie and kummi who are in line too ..
arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Statements of Purpose

I have read many SOPs, esp during the days when I was applying to those PhD programmes in the US, and rarely have I seen anything like Samba's SOP. Mail him and ask for your own copy to read a pretty well done SOP with the right amount of calculated arrogance, cheeky humor, judicious amount of self confidence, and of course, a great flow of thought. I liked his SOP. After working for a year after writing my first SOP, and after going back to academia, my ideas have kinda changed and now, I find that I dont like my old SOP at all. WhoTF cares about SOPs now eh? lets get to more interesting stuff.

I have postponed my Bombay journey to the afternoon of 3rd Jan 2005. I will be taking a Jet Airways flight out of Bangalore at 1400 hrs, landing in Bombay at around 1530 hrs. Three cheers for my first flight.

Kumara? when is the Tyagarajanagar Oota?

Just like cola wars, we have the

Toilet wars

Today,

I have come on a scooty to the office...
even though it was very noisy,it is better than grave-like silence.
But driving thru the Bommanhalli Service Road is really risky.
But it was a nice change.

Guys at Bangalore ,
Anyone game for a saturday/sunday meet somewhere ?

Janapada Loka ? Utsav ??

touch anything

on my body, and it pains.
I had too much josh over the weekend . First we played volleyball then tennis and yday ended up with trying iceskating . Dont go for iceskating. Its precarious.
ammaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

My buttocks curse me like hell

I had a pretty mournful morning , my neighbour woke me up. at 5 in the morning . Her roomie had gulped over 15 tylanols ( pain killers.. and for us pain providers :P) , over some stupid conversation with her husband ..

we had to rush her to the hospital, and we were pretty lucky , that she had vomitted and the concentration wasnt that higher .

Full actions,morning morning .

No josh to work ...as usual ..
But I am doing good today ..

The weather is bad in Australia ..
My neck painsssssssssssss..

GD

Bangalore #2

Am already into my second week right now. And the first week has been hectic, very hectic. Am done with most of my to-do stuff. Minor Major, Vidyarthi, BCB; have paid first visits to most friends; am having filter coffee everyday; having mosranna and other normal food at home; catching up with relatives and cousins.....and other usual after 6 months kinda stuff. Nothing out of ordinary.

Now that I am back for a week, things seem normal; people are the same, Sudeep still gives disclaimers, Sumanth hasn't lost his staccato accent, Kumar looks the same, Sainath is as geeky as ever, More of my software engineer friends have bought digital cameras, adding to the YASETP count of Bangalore (Yet Another Software Engineer Turned Photographer). Saw power cuts, corporation dog-squads, cable TV failures, traffic jams, roadside masale puri, churmuri, auto rickshaws, radio city 91FM, Gandhi Bazaar tarkari market and all the usual stuff that makes regular life here. It was great fun back then, it still is. Love this place.

Will be visiting Yahoo! and ThoughtWorks this week. Am gonna be at Dhimant's play this weekend. And a host of relatives to visit. Will be out of town next week for a wedding, and the last week in Bangalore - will be on call.

And check this out; I am spending my new years eve at Dharmavaram Junction in Andra Padesh, thats right, my ticket to Bombay is at 1800 Hrs, Dec 31st. Thats crazy, but true. Hope to find someone on the train to party into the morning that night :D

Good morning angels !

(from all of those forgetable movie charlie's angels).

Weekend ended.YIPPIE ! It's monday!!!Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!

Okay the fun part is over...Let's mourn.

Caught up with jag and teju in that order.Jag is into probability theory and all that jazz.

Teju and I had been to the one and only Vidyarthi Bhavan and had some deadly masala dosas.I had not been to VB for 6 or 7 months.Wow that small hotel never lets u down!

Akshai has started a blog and this is the blog.
Hope we will find some good pjs there.

Bye...i am pretty "busy" now...
hahaha

yesterday...

Life was such an easy game to play
Now i need a place to hide away
Oh i believe....
In yesterday!

Suddenly....
I'm not the man i used to be.....
There's a shadow hangin' o'er me...
Oh i believe....
In yesterday!


The beatles.Gr3at song.

Yesterday....
Great rotis at Ghar Ka Khaana
Great coffee at Riu's Lounge.

Bangalore

me is back home, and it looks a trifle different; mostly due to changed interiors at home, different bed, new tables, cupboards, sheets etc.; but maybe some changed perspective as well, from my side; dont know for sure. hmmmm. cant pinpoint the exact feeling and thought, but just not feeling the same: thats the abstract part of the whole come-back-home experience.

bikes good; so, cruising all over the place. Su Depp is doing fantastic, all exciting about nothing and everything at the same time. Me has a mild bout of fever, so, not really venturing out beyond HosakereHalli on one end and Nagendra Block on the other. Will get out into the thick of things starting this weekend.

My professor has given me some work to finish by this week; so, maybe the next couple of days will be on that. Its been a while since I studied at home, maybe time to call Kumar home and start on with some serious study (tea, Britannia milk bikies etc), can get some quality kathe also; what say Richie Rich? UGH, I have become insanely nerdy; sucks!!

Need to get well quick, cuz lotsa people to visit on the other side of town; Yahoo!, TW, Samba, Dhimant, and quite a few others; people keep telling me that Bangalore traffic has worsened, need to check that side of the story too. And of course, gotta visit Vidyarthi, Brahmin's, UD, dont know if I can make it Janapadaloka, but lets see, gotta whole month to plan.

looks like

the lady lucks smiling on kummi ..
and a bit on me too .. but no tangible outcomes on my side ...

me restarted gymming again .. ( nth time reboot ) ..
swalpa kammi adrenu super aagi kanotte .

teju , beware , blore would add more pounds
One reason why I fear comng to BLore .. :p
irli dove yella beda eegaa ..

ivattu tumba bega bande office ge and am feeling all sleepy.. :DDDDDDDDDDDDD

life without a comp @ office

is pretty good...i dont spend time surfing the web after/before/during working hours..
only prob is with checking official mails..
actually i screwed up my sys when trying to install fedora with a corrupt cd..it damaged the hard disk..
although i managed to install Suse 9.1 on the damaged hard disk..the installation was not proper with qt3 missing..
which means text only mode ..finally i gave up today and asked the sys admin's help..and belive it or not he promised me
a new high end m/c with 1 gb ram and 80gb hard disk :)..and he didnt even crib abt me spoiling the sys :)

amale nenne papu manele dhadiya sikidha..my observation: he has taken good care of his tummy...
other than that he hasnt changed a bit..hehehe
we were there for an hour or so..so detail agi kathe hodedhila..looking fwd to this weekend..

Randon plans #1

I plan to move out of PHX in Jan, aptly put to arrive in India in Jan.
Spend a few weeks in HYD and get back to BLORE asap. HYD is mandatory.
I need to start searching for other jobs while in HYD, so that my company
understands how serious I am about BLORE.

I want to utilise all my leaves .. around 25 .. :-), write GMAT during this time.

Anything else ?? lots need to be achieved on the personal front .
Have to visit SFO . I will not able to catch raghu, harsha, amit etc in Newyork .
They have planned to go on Weekdays :( :( :(

I am looking forward for a good appraisal . A bad one will really motivate to change my orgranisation.

What else , I need to know complex systems in the application world . the SAP world is beckoning.

Random Thoughts #2

from my side.

I want to change a few of my traits.
I want to change that thought too.
I hate recursion.
I am beginning to suspect that there is a big gap between what I want, and what I am willing to do to get there;
I am an unclean fellow, my lab-desk is the messiest in the entire IIT; with zillions of papers, a water jug, couple of bags, three to four used handkerchiefs, a fully chewed/bitten tshirt (that can never be worn again), a ton of books, 40-50 one/two rupee coints stewn around, handiplast covers, tablet covers, medicine covers, unopened bank statements, a pair of shoes, chits, an uncountable number of computer cords, used teabags in a plastic cover, and so on......
I am making a few serious mistakes in life.
Its been a long time since I introspected about some of my core theories.
I have lost the craving for good food.
I seem to subsist in vacuum.
Very few things seem to interest me these days.
Very few things seem to move me these days.
My telephone manners have improved.
My general reading has taken a big beating.
I haven't held a TV remote control in 5 months.
I wonder where I will be this time 2 years from now.
The cynic in me is getting a very big share of my actions.
Life is still beautiful, interesting and fun....

I had been to a cousin's place yesterday, in up-market Bandra, and met my cousin's daughter who is in seventh standard. She studies in the best school, carries a 6610, knows more about Yahoo! messenger than I do. With all this and more, she came out of her room, wished me a very good evening and vanished. After a lot of talk with my cousin regarding how young students in up-market Bombay are getting into smoking, drinking, drugs, casual sex (I have also seen the DPS RK-puram video, and was almost disgusted by it), peer-pressure among early teens, and I ended up feeling like I was talking to some American suburbian mom. Bombay is so damn polarized, the cultures are so different from slums to plush apartments, that it is taken to both extremes. Anyways, I went to check the girl's room and found some very interesting books like Richard Feynman's essays, unabridged versions of some classics, and so forth.......and also a few Mills & Boons (Kummi, ask Richie what these are), and so, to make it a good day for our friendship, and to also encourage her to read the kinda books I read, I presented her a good book that I had purchased earlier that day (for myself, called The Brief History of Everything - Bill Bryson)........ the girl lives in a world thats somewhat different from ours........and very different from her mom's.......

life.

Random Thoughts

Random Thought #1
---------------------
Mummyyyyy :-)

I had been to a gruhapravesha and I am back at my seat where I feel
excessively comfortable.

I think I saw half a dozen not exactly new moms from the US of A
They were putting their kids all of them <= 5years in spotlight.

Asking them to sing nursery rhymes.
Asking them to dance.
Why?

Just remembered Roger Waters.

HEY TEACHERS! LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE

And the kids just wanted to be alone.

Random Thought #2
---------------------
Death.

I was thinking about a woman who had made an analysis on death.
Her name is Kubler-Ross or something.
According to her a person dying goes through five phases :-

The five stages go in progression :-
1)denial
2)anger
3)bargaining
4)depression
and
5)acceptance.

Well, I feel these stages go in progression not for death alone
but for something which we can never achieve too, no matter how hard we try.

see ya guys...
Tezz 'twas gr8 talking to U

Google ain't cool everywhere.....

All these days, I was under the impression that Google was THE place to work in, they were doing the coolest stuff around, coming up with geeky ads in Bangalore newspapers etc etc. And so when I heard that there was a talk by Krishna Bharat at the CSI2004 conference today, I registered myself and went for the talk....... In a packed audience of 250.....after the (quite heavy) talk, there were two questions from the audience, and guess who it was; yep, yours truly; thats about it; no other questions; nothing.....as one of my "miss"es would've said in middle school - pin-drop silence.

This was mid-afternoon. Later today, from 1900-2200, there was a Google openhouse, where they were supposed to talk about their Bangalore R&D centre, their work culture, research problems, get to know us better etc; guess how many turned up. I was there, there were 2 fresh-teachers from Punjab University. There were more waiters and maitre'Ds than technical people there. I was bowled. Ain't Google cool? Aren't people interested in knowing what they are looking for?

Couple of thoughts come to mind. The conference was CSI2004 - a historically old-school society; where they highlight topics like "use of technologry to serve rural India better", and other systems areas like DB and OS. Maybe the audience were those types. An interesting observation (confirming this) was that in the morning session on Middleware Technolgies (most of which I attended), there was NOISE, it was chaotic, with tons of questions; the presenter was screwed by a very interested and keen audience.

Does this mean the Indian software companies are still only services driven? excited by J2EE etc.? I mean, it was a proper conference in a 5 star hotel, all the works, not some IT-fair-glitz thing. The delegates here represent a good sample of folks who actually make up our industry and academia. Further, I asked Google how their hiring was going on, and they replied that it was quite frustrating that most Bangalore software people do not know what computer science means and are out applying in droves.

Anyways, I had a few things to talk about with them, but no freebies :((((.....good food, pastres, fruit punch, and back to the campus......

My first time out to Bombay-West......and "MG's", "Brigades", and "Kormangas" of Bangalore are no match for the kinda .........er......... pretty young things I saw on a DVG-road like street in Bandra. Dileep Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Shahrukh Khan, Priety Zinta, Rajesh Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Aamir Khan...saw all their homes. Remembered the nostalgic days of VLSI2001 (you with me till here GD? :)))) )........