2013

Resolutions:

• Read more
• Write more
• Learn more
• Travel more
• Play more

Happy New Year, folks :)

PS: Be less like:

'Hello', he lied

For about a week now, a majority of the daytime has been spent in documenting stuff already done, stuff that needs to be done, and the way to do the stuff. Since I have been creative writing for days on end, and also as this blog is somehow turning out to be a place where I report what I have watched in the recent remember-able past, herewith lies one more in the same vein:

In reverse chronological order, here goes:
[Start date - 19/4/2010]
1. Saw Eddie Izzard's - 'Definite Article' (1996) because of a comment about this post - Top Stand Up Comedians - in Buzz. This dude will make the top 15 in the list. Easily. Had forgotten how good he was since the last stand up bit I'd seen of him was years and years ago.

2. Watched 'Like Totally' and 'Melbourne International Comedy Festival' by Dylan Moran. Added respect for the dude. Bumping this guy two places up in the original Top Stand Up Comedians list. One of the few guys who do not re-use 90% of their material from their first show in all their acts.

3. Watched the latest episodes of One Piece. This still remains as the best anime on the Top Anime list. Eiichiro Oda has still a God status. Berserk is up 50% or so from last week too. Mostly because I realized that Kentaro Miura has restarted drawing Berserk, after a long hiatus where he up and left to professionally learn to play Guitar Hero.

4. Watched the whole series of - The Wire - which according to Wikipedia "has been described by critics as the greatest television series ever made". And I must say, it is worth every single decimal point in the 9.7 rating in IMDB.

5. Discovered that the DVD release of FRIENDS has some decent amount of un-aired footage in every episode. And this realization after having watched the aired version over four times completely. /facepalm

6. A bunch of decent movies - will try to make a honest post out of this.

7. Briefly tried to continue watching Samurai Deeper Kyo. Still does not seem to show any more promise than the usual action anime.

8. IPL. On and off.

9. Simulation Waveforms. In VCS by Synopsys.
[End date - 19/3/2010]

Action Items:
a. Re-populate this anime list.
b. Do something about Point 6.

Random information:
Presently listening to - 'Breath of Life' by Shamindra from the Album: Secrets Of Zen - "Japanese Chill Out" Volume.1

Guess with the picture added and all this post may be of a decent length by now.
/kthxbai

It really ain't

Gmail: Set status here [Part 2]

After having seriously considered putting up a blank post tagged Life is still like that, for about 10 minutes, I thought since all the gchat status message space is being occupied these days... I would just put up random lines here that probably might have been put up there:

These follow no particular order. They make no particular sense too.

• Been to Hyderabad. Attended cousin sister's wedding. Came back. That's about all that happened.

• Read the Watchmen comics. The only non-manga comics till now. Liked them better than the movie. The movie wasn't that bad to be fair too.
  

• Read Ender's Game. Best science fiction I have read till now. Though the only others I remember reading are Asimov's 'A Child of Time' and Arthur Clarke's '3001, The Final Odyssey'. I do remember reading a book about sci-fi short stories, but its too far into the past and all too vague.
  

• Saw Harry Potter -and the Half Blood Prince in Inox, Forum. Liked Ron and Luna's acting. Liked the scene with the fire and Inferi in the end. The rest of the movie was trash. Re-reading the book to get over it.

• One Piece and Bleach manga are reaching amazing heights these days. And if you in any way like anime or manga, I would really recommend that you start on these. Naruto Shippuden is not too bad too. But the first two over shadow this.

• Been watching a lot of Joe Odagiri's movies. Yet to see one movie of his which was not downright brilliant. Saw Dream last. New respect for the dude.

• Watched the second season of Black Lagoon. Hate that they stopped at that. It was really good.
  

• Watched Trigun. Liked it better than Gun vs Sword, which is of the same genre.

• Started watching Samurai Deeper Kyo. Seems better than Buso Renkin. But still don't feel it measures in any way up to most other anime series that I have seen

• Read A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follet. The last paper back I read. Again, since I mostly used to read bits of it on the bus, and it was not all in one sitting, it didn't feel all that great.

• Have a Wilbur Smith(Wild Justice) and a Arthur Hailey (In High Places) now. Yet to start either. Miss reading books in one sitting.

• Saw the trailer for Dexter 4. Hate that no decent serials restart in the near future.

• Listening to Tool after a long time. Sounds good.

• And from 11:10 pm to 11:17 pm these are the only things that came into the mind.

• Life goes on.

• Sigh!

PS: Gmail: Set Status Here was posted April 16th,2008. Thus the [Part 2] in the title.

Evacuation Drill - Advance Notification

And there was a mail titled: "Evacuation Drill - Advance Notification" about a couple of days ago.

Since this has been about the most `happening' thing here for a while now; and since this usually involves some movement away from the well set route from the main building to the cubicle; and since it has been a long time since the last post and waiting for some divine inspiration seems like a waste of time; and since this is compilation time plus since this monitor is a CRT, and also since there is no decent room among the aisles to follow this advice... [The alt-text in the original strip reads: "'Are you stealing those LCDs?' 'Yeah, but I'm doing it while my code compiles.'"]
... I created a new virtual desktop, named it Arbits, invoked MS Word from Linux and started from - "And there was a mail...".

As the story goes, It was just another Thursday yesterday. For all practical purposes, it could have been a Tuesday, and none the wiser. This would be the direct result of all the working days mashing into one entity called the Weekday. And then there is the Weekend entity. And thus the week is constituted.
I digress. For good reason though.

As stated, it was just another Thursday yesterday. It was the compilation time again. I had decided to use it to return a library book that I had borrowed. The only purpose the book had served, for about three months, was to add about 138 gms to my bag, but since I had got a much thicker Ken Follet novel - 'A Dangerous Fortune', after serious thought, decided to let this one go.

Along the way from the library, I met with a few people who were on the way to play table tennis, and I decided to go along. We went all the way there, through the drizzle that was falling from the heavens all around us, and just as we managed to find some rackets that could be remotely identified, from a few angles, as being used to play table tennis at some point of time in their lifetimes; this guard runs up to us and says that the centre needs to be closed down as there is a Fire Drill in the main building - which is a five minutes walk away. I go that place to play after more than a month, and I get shooed away because of the fear of a fake fire spreading to an unconnected building, two furlongs way, through the now steadily falling downpour.

The best part was when, moments before we were ushered out, another guard ran into the changing rooms, and together both guards started banging on the door of this dude who was having a bath inside. It's a pity that I couldn't stay to watch the person's expression, as he was kicked off half way through his shower.

I spent the evacuated time sitting near the parking lot, under a sheet roof, watching the rain fall on the parked cars, and waiting for some guard to call me off from there, as evacuation protocol dictates, in no unclear terms, that all personnel should gather only at the front of the building. Mostly, since they were all too busy fighting invisible flames, or pasting post-it notes, all of which were scribbled with the grim message "Evacuation - Fire Alarm. Do Not Enter" on everything that can be called as doors or windows, I was left undisturbed.

Anyway.. the story ends with the guys coming back to play fifteen minutes later, under one huge umbrella, and me joining them... But that would be tagged 'digression' again.

Guess this is enough build-up to copy paste the mail that I had sent to the new hire email group, about a year ago, after a very similar fire drill exercise. The compilation should be done in another few minutes anyway.

The mail follows:
________________________________________
Subject: Re: Rescue Operations - Part 2
From: "P N, Aniruddha"
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 21:29:47 +0530
To: [all new hires]

Things learned:

0. In case of a real fire - DO NOT use the stairs immediately.
a. Sleepwalking snails cover the same distance in a shorter time period.
b. It is just a stampede waiting to happen
c. The fire alarms are really loud, and most of those seem to be concentrated near the stairs
d. The surrounding people are good conductors of fire

So, this is what you do:
Relax in your cubicle and think of a good status message along the lines of 'brb.. building in flames'; check the latest news; random xkcd, or whatever else makes you happy - till the smoke gets so thick that you can no longer see the monitor -

Then:
1. Take the lift. Feel real happy because for once at least you can look at something else except your shoes or your mobile
2. If 1 is not an option, get to the terrace and wait for a fireman with a makeshift ladder - it is way cooler to get down that way.
3. None of the above + no other creative ideas - like using ropes and imitating Tarzan, using Sharingan imitating Sasuke etc. + then give up, put on some music to shut out the sound of alarms, sigh and go to 0.
[But by now a., b., and d. are taken care off - so it's a 75% better situation]

:P

Happy weekend ya'all,

Kampai,
Aniruddha P N

Statutory Warning: All described actions to be carried out at your own risk

PS: I thought of putting a J at the end of the mail, but I figured a warning would serve a better purpose.
___________________________________________________________
In response to:
________________________________________
From: [undisclosed sender]
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 4:39 AM
To: [all new hires]
Subject: Rescue Operations

Can some one summarize how many people got affected due to the emergency? How many got rescued with no injuries etc
________________________________________

Life. In a nutshell.

And so i happened to see this dude online after the longest time.

[Started: 9:23 am on Tuesday]

me: oye
longest time, man
he: oh, hi
ya
me: still in blore?
he: ya
me: still in [insert the company name here]?
he: ya
me: wrote GATE?
he: no
me: wrote CAT or any of the other similar ones?
he: no
me: continuing in the company for now?
he: yes
u?
me: yes
the job good?
he: ok. job is fine until they pay
me: the food good?
he: food from home
me: oh. ok
me: no plans for higher studies, etc this year then?
he: not yet
me: internet not accessible from your company?
he: gmail, yahoo and all blocked
me: thoo! only
me: any increments in pay?
he: no
urs?
me: no.
me: any new girls that are friends?
he: OMG, do u really know me?
me: is that a yes?
he: it was Oh My God
me: i know, man
he: so..no.
me: ok
me: can i blog this?
he is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when he comes online.

[Sent at 9:34 PM on Tuesday]

Sigh!

別に

Got to get out of this jinx.
:(

PS: 別に = Betsuni

A fat lot can happen over ...

So... I got a sms from this weird number saying:

"May I know who is this do u stay in kengeri"
Receive: THU 19:08 30- 0ct - 08

I promptly replied back, to the same weird number, the same weird message:

"May I know who is this do u stay in kengeri"
Send: THU 19:10 30- 0ct – 08

I Rxed:

"Hey actually I lost my cell i had received call by this number so please tell me where you stay near temple"
Receive: THU 19:12 30- 0ct – 08

I Txed:

"When did u get a call from this cell? And if u have lost ur cell how do u remember a call from this cell?"
Send: THU 19:17 30- 0ct – 08

Twenty five minutes passed with no reply, and then it hit me that I might be missing out on the sequel to “A lot can happen over a coffee”.
But since the start here was hugely different, I texted thus:

"Guess I scared you away. I am sorry u lost ur phone. I don’t think we are acquainted, though. Adios"
Send: THU 19:49 30- 0ct – 08

Calling someone a scaredy - cat works all the time. A reply is guaranteed. No one lets that one slide. I waited eagerly, and sure enough the mobile buzzed and I got this incredible piece of information:

"I didnt get you"
Receive: THU 20:00 30- 0ct - 08

I so wanted to retort with a stronger version of “Go soak your head”, but there was still that chance of it being someone of the fairer sex; so I thought I would play along. But, in order to avoid further colossal misunderstandings like the one above, I resolved to henceforth dumb down my replies, so that even a four year old would go “Sheesh! Talk more mature”

And so I went:

"Hehe. To make things simpler – tell me your name and I will text mine."
Send: THU 20:02 30- 0ct – 08

"First you"
Receive: THU 20:03 30- 0ct - 08

"Lol. Sure. I am Aniruddha. Pleased to meet you. And you are?"
Send: THU 20:05 30- 0ct – 08

"Manoj"
Receive: THU 20:06 30- 0ct – 08

Grrrrrrrr. 58 minutes through this and I end up with a vijaydreamz equivalent.

"Still think we know each other?"
Send: THU 20:10 30- 0ct – 08

"But tell me where do you stay"
Receive: THU 20:09 30- 0ct – 08

"I stay in Bangalore."
Send: THU 20:10 30- 0ct – 08

"Dude reply man"
Receive: THU 20:21 30- 0ct – 08

There was no end in sight to this. So, I resorted to the same thing that had shut him up in the first place:

"I did, mate. Told ya I was from Bangalore. How on earth did you get this number again?"
Send: THU 20:26 30- 0ct – 08

Well… Guess that worked.
Haven’t heard from him again.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles…
Bah!

Reasons...

... to explain September (4)

PS: Images from top: Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, One Piece, One Piece

One day at the Passport Office

Prologue:

And so it came to pass that I had to get my passport done. The application form was obtained and filled up. I had also made trip one to the passport-application-submission-office to ascertain the distance from my house, and to clarify for good what documents need to be carried along, what kind of photograph needs to be affixed et cetera. The person I talked with told me that the background of the photograph needed to be white, and the one I was carrying with me, was light [which is exactly what is mentioned in the blue form [comes along with the application form, and contains rules how to fill the first form]], but not white, so I needed to get those. Also, he checked my other documents and told me that I needed to get them attested by a gazetted officer [even though the blue form says only ‘self attested’], and for address proof, any item of the following: a water bill / current bill / an address proof from the employer / ration card / election id / bank pass book would do. I showed him my pass book and the bills I had with me, and he said those were more than enough. This was one week ago.

Scene One:

One week later. Same place. Trip two. I enter the office. There were only a few people comparatively. I asked this female who was sitting nearby what the new protocol for the application was. Because the last time I was there, there were four counters and the original documents were being checked in a two other counters, which were presently empty. She looked back dumbly at me, and told me she had no idea, but was sitting there for the last half hour. I went to the reception-like lady, at the corner of the room, and asked the same question. She unglued her eyes from the TV on the wall, which was playing a Vishnuvardhan movie, without audio, and gave me a token number 3, and asked me to wait till that number was called. I told the female I talked to earlier, about the token. She jumped out of her chair, hurried over to the corner and returned with token number 5. The dude sitting next to her had heard me, and had beaten her to it.

It was 4:30 pm. The token number presently was 0 or some negative value, because I asked around and found a person in the far corner seat with a token 1. And he was actually waiting for his chance, with the expression ‘mera number kab ayega?’ Anyway, since I had nothing else to do, and there were only two others in front of me, I started listening to Stairway to Heaven on my mobile phone.

Scene Two:

Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is 8:03 minutes. I heard the entire song. The next was Eminem's 'Sing for the moment', and that was 5:41 minutes. Yet, the token number was still at 0. I decided that rather than sitting idle, I would at least make sure that I had all documents in order. So I walked over and asked the female behind counter 12 [the counter] whether the address proof given by the company would suffice [I started with that document because it was in glossy paper under a letter-head, with all the necessary details]. She took one glance at it and told me that I need to be working there for at least a year, for that document to be used as a address proof [and this is a on-the-spot-made-up rule. There is not a breath of this anywhere on the blue form]. It’s been only about three weeks through the job till date. So since that document was a no-go, I started pulling other similar stuff out from my bag. I took out a water bill, current bill, another water bill of the previous month, my new pass book, my mom’s pass book, my election id card, a ration card, the another address proof from the company, and attested copies of a few of these. But she came up with new rules for each of these documents. I needed to have bills dated at least one year apart. There needed to be at least one year’s transactions in the passbook [mine is as old as my time in the company]. The election id should not have this years date[I was in Surathkal for the last four years]. And the one rule that was mentioned in the blue form was that if only the ration card was being submitted as address proof, another document had to also be submitted alongside. So, even that couldn't be used.

Man, did that suck. All that time and energy and documents - and I still had nothing that actually could act as a satisfactory address proof.

That was the nadir.

Scene 3:

Then it hit me. My mom’s pass book also had me as a joint account holder. I rifled through the pages and found my name updated on the nineteenth page. I showed her my discovery. She went and discussed the matter over with her boss, came back five minutes later, and told me the decision - As an address proof I needed to get - a xerox of my mom’s pass book in such a way that - the first page having my mom’s name and the name of the bank; and the 19^th page having mine and mom’s name together with the permanent address; and two pages following the 19^th page, showing transactions over a a period of time greater than one year – should all be on the first page of the xerox. Also, I needed a xerox of my new passbook. A xerox of my election id card – printed back to back, like the card itself. And all these xeroxes in duplicate. Additionally, one copy of each of these three xeroxes needed to be attested by a notary [and the nearest one was on the ground floor of the same building]. This would satisfy the office.

Scene 4:

It was now 5:03 pm. I went to the Xerox shop, also on the ground floor, same building, where there was this female with total experience with a Xerox machine less than that of mine. After having successfully screwed up two sheets she got the hang of a back to back xerox. Another two sheets later, she learnt the art of printing multiple pages in the same sheet.

At last, I took the xeroxes from her [my new passbook was still xeroxed in such a way that only the king or the jack in a pack of cards could read it correctly. normal people would have to turn it over.] and the duplictes, and went to the notary. It was 5:18 pm by now. There was a big board saying ‘Mr. Vishwanath [Someone]’ [LLb, etc.]. I walked in and there was this fat dude who took three xeroxes from my hand and painstakingly slowly put two seals on them. He asked me to wait for sometime, as ‘Saar tea anta hogidare’. After five minutes he got bored of waiting himself, so he took the three ‘sealed’ documents, along with a few other sheets and disappeared. I was waiting there with these two other clueless females in the same predicament as I was in. [by the way, the passport office closes by 6:00 pm, and I had no intention of going through all this again, so I was desparate of getting this done with].

Twenty five minutes later, he sauntered back with a green signature on the sheets, by some Deeepa Srinivas. I then observed that the seals on the sheets didn't match the name of the notary in any way. I let that slide. Time was against me.

He asked me ‘Amount kottra?’ and I told him that I haven’t paid anything. He says ‘Ondu arvattu rupaayee kodi’ – 60 rupees for three goddamn signatures by one arbit Deeepa with three e’s in her bloody name. She had no nameplate in the room.

It was 5:45 pm already, and I had no choice but to pay him the amount and return in haste.

Scene 5:

I rush back to the first floor only to find out, that that the dreadful pace in which the process was moving along hadn’t changed a bit, and the token number was now at 2. But atleast, I was up next. By this time there was no damn seat to sit. So I stood till the counter-12-female found a dozen ‘faults’ in female-token-2’s form, and at last female-token-2 conceded defeat and left. I stepped up then. It was 5:55 pm.

She looked at the xeroxes and observed me that the address in my voter’s id was slightly different than the others. It is. I knew this. There is one useless extra line saying ‘Fifth Cross, Kuruburahalli’. The first half of the new line is news [as there are no Crosses from 1 – 4 anywhere around my house], and the second half redundant. But the rest of the address is right. But this was a grievous, unforgivable error by her standards. The address had to be same in all three documents. So, she asked me to replace the notary-attested-voter-id-xerox with the company’s address proof itself. A pointless waste of twenty odd bucks for the useless signature and xerox. Then she looked at the other xeroxes and told me then that I need to have xeroxes of these documents after they have been attested by the notary.

Man, how I wished I could have some kind of recording device just to prove how these idiots contradict each other and even themselves all the bloody time. Still. her word was law. I went to the xerox female and helped her increase her experience with the machine, and got three more copies of the notary signed documents.

Scene 6:

It was 6:00 pm. I got back. The other stuff, the more important part, took about 3 minutes. She checked my original documents. Took a photograph from a webcam. Printed a sheet with the details which would be entered into the passport. Gave a receipt with the information that I had applied for a passport and had paid 1000 bucks. It was 6:03 pm. I was done. I walked out.

Epilogue:

After having endured a two and a half hour BMTC bus journey, in the middle of the bloody afternoon; most of that journey spent cramped in the last seat between these two gentlemen who seemed to have had a day long drinking competition, which involved neither of them wanting to concede defeat to the other; a half an hour to the passport office; and with all the documents duly filled, double checked, cross checked, clarified with people working in the same bloody office, all the while following every measly rule given in the blue sheet to the smallest apostrophe– I still had to go through all that utter crap just to prove that the house I have been living in from the last 18 years was indeed my bloody home.

Damn, they should really come up with a better solution.

For starters, if you need to add more rules, update the bloody blue form at least. And remove the on-the-spot rule making power that is so freely exercised by most people on the other side of the table.

Damn, again.

PS: I still have the police verification to look forward to. And there are similar delightful stories about that too.

PS_2: About the length of this post. I was bored. I was pissed off. And strangely not sleepy. Added to the fact that I type slightly faster than I used to, I had three pages typed before I knew it.

Anyway, consider this a heads up, if you haven’t yet got your passport done. Else, last heard, the earth is still rotating from west to east.

Rechristening

His name was called.

He stood up.

The company came forward.

Lifted the urn containing the holy water, and poured it on his head thrice.

Strangely though, the name of the Father and His Son were not taken.

And declared thus:

‘From now on thou shalt be known as A0373839’

There was a loud chorus of ‘Amen’.

The holy water trickled down the side of his face.

He stared straight ahead.

‘Amen’ he said.

He sat down.

Gmail: Set Status Here

[afternoon, wednesday, sixteenth of april]
[the last week in nitk]
[arbit status msgs follow]

amod - the beginning of the end
ganja - sob sob.... [sigh]
bala - one more exam to go

undie - Batch of 2004 - 08
appar - don't look back in anger
abhi - Tick Tock
yshanta - every great journey has to come to an end...

chindu - the shadow of the end looms high
gupta - last tuesday in college
jagga - if that's the case i wouldn't have wanted to be an engineer so soon
rajiv - truly The Wonder Years
daksh - dil main kuch kuch ho raha hai .. abhi bhi yakin nahi ho raha ki main college chod kar ja raha hun .. :(
puneet - SOMEONE said.. I went through three stages of everything.. May it Be.. Let it Be.. So be it and never again did I find life@NITK any difficult :)
shashank - There comes a time in everybody's life....this is It.
utham - It is the EEEnd :-(
nair - College taught me that to be smart is objective, but to love is futile.

shreyas - done!!..wat next?...nervous future..effervescent past
mojo - Hmmmm....Ok so this is how it feels to be an ENGINEER....
chandru - NITKathe mugiyitu...
kandath - memories pressed between pages of my mind
p - the last BTech exam of me life

jaggi - 56 hours to go
sumukh - it had started in the ATB Main Seminar hall(counselling), now it ended there as well--B.Tech in IT
mulki - and so IT ends
pushkar - its all over
ramesh - exams over.. now i am an engineer

[as for myself, i agree with dickens]
charles dickens -

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only"

Quotable Quotes

disclaimer:
the following is a result of about fifteen minutes of mental groping …and comprises of the first few random utterances to pop up … thus the list, is by no means complete, nor it does any justice to most other (better?) lines by the same/ other people…

• "i can see through everything" - som

• "no, i'm shedding" - bhavay in reply to "dude, did u have a haircut?"

• “come next year” - the jedi warrior to shappa, in final year

• “i’ll wring his neck” - psb with gesticulations to show precisely how the promised action would be carried out

• “hahahahaha” - mom

• “hello frens” - soni

• “people don’t study in iran, people don’t work in calcutta” - one of several Takaalisms

• “neen sariyilaappa” - machonaka

• "yeno?" - .d

• "tHere is a cHarge is tHere" - d kannu

• "my room- mate will continue the course.... " - engg mech. dude

• "feel the figure" - amba s

• "if u want to play with me, i can also play with you"- sharanappa

• "yenchina saavu maraya!" - arbit mess dude
  

• question - “what is thin, long cylindrical and put into something hairy?"

rdp - “a probe”
[stumped]
question: “and the hairs??”
rdp – “virtual”

(a vicks inhaler: is what you are searching for :D )

• "life alli kushi important"TM

ps: never meant no harm to nobody.... peace!

nitkspottax

Choose tronix
Choose a great friend circle
Choose the very last bench in class
Choose the topper’s notes for every damn examination. Choose A1
Choose the exact last minute for starting to attempt anything with a deadline
Choose exactly 15 credits each of in the final semesters
Choose robotics, gis, math, or any course with a majority of M-Techs
Choose wikipedia as the single source of the accumulated wisdom and knowledge
Choose looking forward to getting screwed in every examination
Choose eighth block and the king size beds
Choose raucous, bawdy conversations during blackouts
Choose to learn playing a guitar
Choose interning at damn significant places. Choose avuncular profs
Choose to buy any computer with windows 95+, or with any form of Linux. Choose goddamn loud speakers. Choose APC UPS
Choose never to switch off the comp
Choose coming up with arbit T-shirts saying ‘choose not to care’
Choose nitk lingax
Choose bare-back trekking, beach walking and arbit trips. Choose nature
Choose nocturnal behavior. Choose rising after sunset
Choose Bangalore every time you need a haircut
Choose dumb charades, pot pourrie, crossies, trivia, and random quizzes
Choose engineer. Choose incident
Choose either to boycott all committees, lie back and watch the weather change or choose masterminding and executing the entire show
Choose Sam-D for breakfast, Neha Food Court for lunch, Basheer for dinner, FnH for coffee, and Amul for everything else
Choose Mangalore hotels for all kinds of treats. Choose Bittu sometimes, for no reason at all
Choose to avoid drinking. Choose Baba instead
Choose DC++. Choose the weirdest nick. Choose the main chat window for every random thought
Choose watching any movie that you can lay your hands on
Choose psychedelic rock, grunge rock, alternative music, death metal. Choose Tool
Choose House MD, Friends, Lost, Prison Break, Heroes, 2.5 men, Coupling, HIMYM, Scrubs… in that order
Choose anime when all of the above has been exhausted
Choose Russel Peters, Chris Rock, Pablo Francisco, George Carlin, Robin Williams and all other stand up comedians
Choose Quake, DOTA, Counter Strike, Age of Empires, World of Warcraft or atleast Tetris
Choose playing TT overnight
Choose playing badminton with anything that comes close to a cock
Choose four stumps and tennis ball cricket. Choose PG ground
Choose attending men’s football and women’s basketball
Choose chatting with arbit people who are, say, friends of an acquaintance’s room-mate’s sister. Choose gtalk
Choose digg.com as the source of news all over the world.
Choose ultrasurf. Choose to screw ironport
Choose a great job/ top ranked universities/ IIM A, B, C/ IISc whichever makes you happy, for the times to come. Choose a future
Choose sobriety. Choose not to smoke. Choose to get high on random information, music, coffee and other non-lethal stuff
Choose vegetarianism, theism coz they never hurt anyone
Choose staying single before even thinking of trying to choose anything else
Choose (as long as you are still in your wide- eyed formative years) attempting for every damn club, attending every damn class, participating in everything the posters on the wall hint about; choose every movie aired in SAC, choose dancing in all kinds of musical nights, choose CCC; but, later choose to grow up, choose final year, choose the rest of the list

Choose nitk

Choose life

And the reasons? There are no reasons…

Life... Or Something Like It

Red Redding in Shawshank Redemption:

“….But that wasn't the only reason. Prison time is slow time. So you do what you can to keep going. Some fellas collect stamps. Others build matchstick houses…. It was the same reason Andy spent years shaping and polishing those rocks. The same reason he hung his fantasy girls on the wall. In prison... a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied.”

Well…If you ask me, It’s the same reason I played minesweeper millions of times… even after reaching (almost unbeatable) scores of 2 seconds in beginner, 27 seconds intermediate and 101s in expert. The same reason I played 5000+ games of FreeCell … the same reason I continue to play Tetris and Trivia… The same reason I read all the novels I can get my hands on…The same reason why I watched 700 odd movies (regardless of the fact that the frequency of even reasonably watch-able ones only is about 1 in 25, the good ones are even rarer)…watched some 15 different serials (everything from Friends, House MD to Avatar)… The same goddamn reason why the whole bloody lan is drained and empty…

They say that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop (this goes way back to the twelfth century …Chaucer's 'Tale of Melibee' :

“Therefore seith Seint Jerome: "Dooth somme goode deedes that the devil, which is oure enemy, ne fynde yow nat unoccupied.")

Bollocks. A devil’s workshop? Count me in. Any day. Period.

THIS is what happens in an idle mind… give the useless brains like mine a fart a breathing time and questions like the below keep popping up…

And thus, good people, by induction, using the above question as n = 1, introducing. in the place of ‘INTEGERS’, anything from ‘fractions’, ‘imaginary numbers’, ‘chester barnard’s principles’ to ‘Routh - Hurwitz criterion for determining the number of roots on the right half of the s- plane’ et al.... it can easily be shown that for all n, the damn question still remains unanswered.

The shit doesn’t stop right there… things always go from the frying pan to check out the flames below… if that was a tough question… try this… ladies and the gentlemen… introducing the eternal question …POL… the purpose of life... the reason for human existence...

And, likewise… all other theories from pragmatist, utilitarian, existentialist, humanist, spiritual et cetera to even scientific and individual views on the meaning of life, sound just as ridiculous, and provide just as much satisfaction…

Man...these are some haunting questions…it’s so easy to spend the entire lifetime (well… ages, at least) searching futilely for the ghosts of the answers to these questions…
I don’t want to get caught in that chakravyuha …
I really, really need a new project...
I just can’t stay idle...
This is it for now..
I blog.

PS: Shawshank Redemption is one helluva movie. Also, Bill Waterson is a genius.
Hats off to both of ‘em.