A couple of things motivated me to write this blog. I was reading a book and then I read a couple of articles in the newspaper.
I am reading "Atlas Shrugged" and I am almost done with it. In my personal opinion it is a "just ok" book. It has some high points to it but the world that Ayn Rand describes is overly exagerated. The good guys are perfect and the bad guys are pure evil. I hate that kind of characterization. I feel all of us are grey rather than black or white. Also her description of love defies my logic. Initially I thought I understood what she was saying but I was disillusioned as soon as the female lead starts sleeping with almost all the male leads of the story. That was a bit too much for me to digest. It is as if, everytime she found the perfect man to sleep with, she found someone even more perfect. It is a fair assumption that Ayn Rand must have been sexually frustrated in life as all the sex scene in all her books are so violent that at the end of it the lady involved is always left with bruises all over her body.
For all it's flaws there is something to be got out of the book. The main premise of the book is about "work". As in how dedicated you are to your work and how well you do it etc etc. It, rightly, glorifies people who are mighty good at their work and are ready to undertake any hardship to make money. To cut the long story short, she suggests that "work" and money are the only moral codes of a man's life and anything done in order to achieve the best in your work is justified.
Just as I am about to finish the book I read an article (http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/nov/03msg.htm) which got me thinking. The article pertains to the Jessica Lal murder case. The country's top lawyer Ram Jethmalani is defending the accused, Manu Sharma after the case was reopened following a huge media campaign and public outcry against the acquital of Manu. Based on the initially evidence and eyewitness accounts it has been wildly publicised and accepted that Manu Sharma is the murderer (though none of us other than the eye witnesses and Manu himself, know what happened on that unfortunate day) . The article questions "Do you agree with Ram Jethmalani's decision to defend Manu Sharma?" and there are 512 replies to the query. All of them berating Ram Jethmalani, the former law minister, the well respected lawyer and declare him to be a senile old man.
What is the connection is between "Atlas shrugged" and the "Jessica Lal case"?
The point I want to focus on here is Mr. Ram Jethmalani and his work of being a defending lawyer. Are we justified in questioning Ram's choice of clients? According to the moral codes popularised by Ayn Rand, you are not supposed to question a man who is true to his profession, who does his best with whatever job he takes up. Ram is doing just the same. He is one hell of a criminal lawyer. His cross examination skills are supposed to be the best in the country, he is true to his profession, he tries his best to win all his cases. But does that justify his choice of clients? Now before you start damning me, pause for a second and think about it. It is not as straightforward as you think it is.
Everyone in the modern society accepts that "a man is innocent until proven guilty". So Manu Sharma (like Sadam Hussein) is innocent until he is proven guilty. So if you have to try him at all, then why should'nt he have the best defense lawyer in the country. He has all the right's to hire Ram. From Ram's perspective, there is a man charged of murder to be defended. He is the best so he is getting a payment worthy of his talent. So why is'nt iy acceptable that he chooses to defend Manu Sharma? Think about it and leave me your comments.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Change of action or rather action of change.
Oh my god!!!!! The number of changes that have taken place in my life and that of the people around me is phenomenal. In the past month and a half my life has taken a 180 degrees turn. (yeah the usual 360 degrees is wrong because u end up being at the same place then :P : source (townsend)).
Life as I knew it has changed. I am not sure whether it for the better or for the worse.
Before I moved to the US of A, I had never lived away from my parents. As my mom was working, we (my bro n me) were well disciplined and took some responsibilities at home but I must say that we were pretty much pampered. There used to be food ready for us all the time. If mom had' nt cooked anything Dad would take us out and I can say we lead a comfortable life. I had loads of friends. I used to go out with them , blew my parent's hard earned cash. There was no real responsibilities at all. I used to be one lazy bum. All i did was eat, drink , sleep, hang out with friends, thats it. I had all the time in the world and did nothing with it.
After I moved to Us of A, things changed. I moved in with 3 other guys from bangalore (subbu, Harsha and Vinay). Initially i felt like we were runnin a family. We had so many decisions to take. N I am sure we din't necessarily take the right decision all the time. everything happened so fast that I can gladly say that after one and a half month I am kinda well settled into this place. Of course, having nice roomies helped a lot. We get to here a lot of stories of roomies not getting along but we guys are having loads of fun. I think we have learnt to keep our ego aside and work together to run the house. The biggest change ofcourse is how much of work we do here. We cook, wash our own clothes, wash vessels, clean our toilets and all this besides studying and doing assignments. It has almost become natural to us. All of us were hesitating to cook in blore. One of my roomies dint't even know how to break a egg till recently and now we make good tasty food to eat. So far everything has been a "almost" smooth ride and hope it continues.
I say " almost because there have been days when we goofed up and there has been no food to eat at home and we went hungry and stuff like that. But overall we r not doing that bad.
We owe a lot to the seniors who have helped us out here, especially Prem Swaroop ( we call him our god sent angel :P). We also have made lots of amazing friends here, from different backgrounds and its been quite a experience. I can confidently say I am having a good time.
On the hind side being here also means that I cannot talk to our stay in touch with all my close friends as often as I would liek to do. I used to meet these ppl almost everyday and now I would n thave spoken to them for days. My friends back home have become very busy with there work and even they are hard pressed for time. I just hope that we don't lose touch with each other altogether. It would be tragic if that happened. Also the added responsibilities can be a pain sometimes. Like we almost forgot to pay our rent on time this time around. In a country where everything depends on your credit history that was a huge risk to take. There is no if and but here. If we screw up the penalty is very huge and we don't get second chances often.
Like they say only thing constant in this world is "change". I hope we all change for the better.
Life as I knew it has changed. I am not sure whether it for the better or for the worse.
Before I moved to the US of A, I had never lived away from my parents. As my mom was working, we (my bro n me) were well disciplined and took some responsibilities at home but I must say that we were pretty much pampered. There used to be food ready for us all the time. If mom had' nt cooked anything Dad would take us out and I can say we lead a comfortable life. I had loads of friends. I used to go out with them , blew my parent's hard earned cash. There was no real responsibilities at all. I used to be one lazy bum. All i did was eat, drink , sleep, hang out with friends, thats it. I had all the time in the world and did nothing with it.
After I moved to Us of A, things changed. I moved in with 3 other guys from bangalore (subbu, Harsha and Vinay). Initially i felt like we were runnin a family. We had so many decisions to take. N I am sure we din't necessarily take the right decision all the time. everything happened so fast that I can gladly say that after one and a half month I am kinda well settled into this place. Of course, having nice roomies helped a lot. We get to here a lot of stories of roomies not getting along but we guys are having loads of fun. I think we have learnt to keep our ego aside and work together to run the house. The biggest change ofcourse is how much of work we do here. We cook, wash our own clothes, wash vessels, clean our toilets and all this besides studying and doing assignments. It has almost become natural to us. All of us were hesitating to cook in blore. One of my roomies dint't even know how to break a egg till recently and now we make good tasty food to eat. So far everything has been a "almost" smooth ride and hope it continues.
I say " almost because there have been days when we goofed up and there has been no food to eat at home and we went hungry and stuff like that. But overall we r not doing that bad.
We owe a lot to the seniors who have helped us out here, especially Prem Swaroop ( we call him our god sent angel :P). We also have made lots of amazing friends here, from different backgrounds and its been quite a experience. I can confidently say I am having a good time.
On the hind side being here also means that I cannot talk to our stay in touch with all my close friends as often as I would liek to do. I used to meet these ppl almost everyday and now I would n thave spoken to them for days. My friends back home have become very busy with there work and even they are hard pressed for time. I just hope that we don't lose touch with each other altogether. It would be tragic if that happened. Also the added responsibilities can be a pain sometimes. Like we almost forgot to pay our rent on time this time around. In a country where everything depends on your credit history that was a huge risk to take. There is no if and but here. If we screw up the penalty is very huge and we don't get second chances often.
Like they say only thing constant in this world is "change". I hope we all change for the better.
Monday, August 14, 2006
In US finally.
Yeah people, I am in the US right now. Everything is fine here, but India has improved so much in the past few years, I dont feel the difference between India and the US ( except for the girls and cars and bikes ofcourse ;)).
One thing I don't want to do in this blog is to bore you about my flight and my life here. All I have got to say is I am fine and this place is very pleasent to live in. I have nt had major difficulties as yet. I got a nice apt and luckily nice room mates. We are having a lot of fun. The icing on the cake would be when I get a job.
Anyways let me entertain you with one of the most stupidest mistake that anyone could do. It all started when we set on friday, 11th aug to the Uni to apply for the on campus job. Now in order to get there we need to take a bus called wolfline, run by the uni. We went there and we walked around a lot and got extremely tired and hungry. Oh ya and I forgot, before we went to the uni, we went to the university surplus and got a few chairs ( 1 dollar each) and stuff. So by around 5 pm when we got into the bus to head back to our apt we r freaking tired and hungry.
So we got into the bus and as usual the bus is full of indians. (there are so many of them here that I sometimes doubt whether I am in India or in US. hehe) We got chatting and I met these 2 guys for the the first time and we struck a conversation. We then got off the bus near our house. I was still talking to this new guys when my room mates subbu and vinay started yelling at me to get going. Then suddenly I realized that something was amiss. I realized that I dint have my bag with me anymore. Now people this is not an ordinary backsack, it contains my PASSPORT, VISA, I 20, ALL MARKSHEET and in short it was the record of my entire life till date. So in short I was instantly an alien in this big bad country.
Panic instantly set in and I came running towards my roomies and shouting that i left the bag in the bus. All of us became instantly tensed. We started running on the return route of the bus. then a brain wave hit me and I asked nmy friend Vinay to wait on the main road as the bus usually takes 2 different routes on the return journey but laways crosses the main road. Then I called the bus service from subbu's cell and reported that my bag was mising. Unfortunately it was the start of the weekend and there was no one to answer the phone.
Now I started freaking out, i started running as fast as I could on the bus route. Subbu came along with me, panting and struggling to keep up as he was also trying to call the bus service. So we went running all the way to where we thought was the last bus stop and there was no bus to be seen. I was thinking about the consequences now. It was a disaster in all respects. I would have to probably go to washington n get a new passport. I have to call home n get new transcripts. It was going to be a pain in the ass. i could also get deported back to India without even attending a single class. I started abusing myself for being so careless.
Finally subbu caught up with me and we started going thought our options. We called up this senior and he suggested that we mail the bus service guys and tell them about this. he said there was a good chance of getting the bag but nothing could be done till monday. I was devasted. How could I go through the 2 days till monday. I was totally wrecked. subbu and me started walking to the computer centre to send the mail. We were scared, we were exhausted by the running and dint know what to do. Then we see our friend Vinay running towards us fromt he other side. Initially I was not very positive about what was happening and thought he was running towards us because even he dint know what to do standing on the main road all that time. Then subbu told me " dude look at his hand is that your bag in it?". Now I became alert and started concentrating. Before I could react, Subbu started shouting to vinay " Is that the bag, did u get?" and all we got in return was a "what? what?" and a million dollar smile. Man was i relieved at that point.
the bus had indeed come on the main road on the return journey, and my friend Vinay was able to stop it. He was able to somehow convince the driver that it was his friend's (my) bag and so he had to hand it over. I was so relieved I could have cried easily. Anyway after promising to buy these guys a 24 pack for their invaluable help, we finally headed home.
I owe these guys a lot for getting my bag back. I would have been in deep shit without them. Thanks a lot buddies. Anyways, now I have kept all my documents at our home and only carry the stuff required for the day. Who says miracles don't happen? With friends like this it could happen everyday.
Oh by the way Harsha is our other roomie and at present we are having a ball of a time. We are having awesome fun. Will keep you posted about my other misadventures. [:)]
One thing I don't want to do in this blog is to bore you about my flight and my life here. All I have got to say is I am fine and this place is very pleasent to live in. I have nt had major difficulties as yet. I got a nice apt and luckily nice room mates. We are having a lot of fun. The icing on the cake would be when I get a job.
Anyways let me entertain you with one of the most stupidest mistake that anyone could do. It all started when we set on friday, 11th aug to the Uni to apply for the on campus job. Now in order to get there we need to take a bus called wolfline, run by the uni. We went there and we walked around a lot and got extremely tired and hungry. Oh ya and I forgot, before we went to the uni, we went to the university surplus and got a few chairs ( 1 dollar each) and stuff. So by around 5 pm when we got into the bus to head back to our apt we r freaking tired and hungry.
So we got into the bus and as usual the bus is full of indians. (there are so many of them here that I sometimes doubt whether I am in India or in US. hehe) We got chatting and I met these 2 guys for the the first time and we struck a conversation. We then got off the bus near our house. I was still talking to this new guys when my room mates subbu and vinay started yelling at me to get going. Then suddenly I realized that something was amiss. I realized that I dint have my bag with me anymore. Now people this is not an ordinary backsack, it contains my PASSPORT, VISA, I 20, ALL MARKSHEET and in short it was the record of my entire life till date. So in short I was instantly an alien in this big bad country.
Panic instantly set in and I came running towards my roomies and shouting that i left the bag in the bus. All of us became instantly tensed. We started running on the return route of the bus. then a brain wave hit me and I asked nmy friend Vinay to wait on the main road as the bus usually takes 2 different routes on the return journey but laways crosses the main road. Then I called the bus service from subbu's cell and reported that my bag was mising. Unfortunately it was the start of the weekend and there was no one to answer the phone.
Now I started freaking out, i started running as fast as I could on the bus route. Subbu came along with me, panting and struggling to keep up as he was also trying to call the bus service. So we went running all the way to where we thought was the last bus stop and there was no bus to be seen. I was thinking about the consequences now. It was a disaster in all respects. I would have to probably go to washington n get a new passport. I have to call home n get new transcripts. It was going to be a pain in the ass. i could also get deported back to India without even attending a single class. I started abusing myself for being so careless.
Finally subbu caught up with me and we started going thought our options. We called up this senior and he suggested that we mail the bus service guys and tell them about this. he said there was a good chance of getting the bag but nothing could be done till monday. I was devasted. How could I go through the 2 days till monday. I was totally wrecked. subbu and me started walking to the computer centre to send the mail. We were scared, we were exhausted by the running and dint know what to do. Then we see our friend Vinay running towards us fromt he other side. Initially I was not very positive about what was happening and thought he was running towards us because even he dint know what to do standing on the main road all that time. Then subbu told me " dude look at his hand is that your bag in it?". Now I became alert and started concentrating. Before I could react, Subbu started shouting to vinay " Is that the bag, did u get?" and all we got in return was a "what? what?" and a million dollar smile. Man was i relieved at that point.
the bus had indeed come on the main road on the return journey, and my friend Vinay was able to stop it. He was able to somehow convince the driver that it was his friend's (my) bag and so he had to hand it over. I was so relieved I could have cried easily. Anyway after promising to buy these guys a 24 pack for their invaluable help, we finally headed home.
I owe these guys a lot for getting my bag back. I would have been in deep shit without them. Thanks a lot buddies. Anyways, now I have kept all my documents at our home and only carry the stuff required for the day. Who says miracles don't happen? With friends like this it could happen everyday.
Oh by the way Harsha is our other roomie and at present we are having a ball of a time. We are having awesome fun. Will keep you posted about my other misadventures. [:)]
Saturday, June 17, 2006
BE or Not to BE!!!!!!!
Could not help but use this title. Sounds cliched as I have seen it on many orkut profiles as well as on yahoo but what the hell, who cares? Finally all of us from VTU are done with our BE, hopefully. Waiting for the results now, lets see what happens?
The project VIVA was blown to nightmarish proportions by some tension party's of our class including my project mate DD. We were all freaking out and seeing that our great KN Raja Rao, HOD, was the internal evaluater did not soothe our nerves. Our batch was supposed to start at 2 but it eventually started at 3 30. By then DD had almost shit his pants. I agree that I was also a bit shaken seeing DD. He is usually the cool cat kinds who is not tensed about any exams. But seeing him sweat for the Viva created a doubt in me too.
Finally at 3 30 we entered the lab. We had to write some shit for half an hour in our papers. we had discussed what all to write before we entered but eventually I realized I had nt written even half of it though i filled up 8 pages :P. So that should do. Next we had our PPT for which we had to wait until the previous batch finished theirs. Hod grilled them properly which increased our tension levels. Then our PPT started and I can safely say that it went smoother than what all three of us had expected. There was no hiccups, stammering or hesitation of any sort. I was a little tense when Hod asked me to explain an equation during the PPT but we had expected it and I think HOD was convinced by the reply. DD and Goof finished their parts without much ado.
We sat down for the viva after this, expecting that we would get properly grilled. But thankfully, HOD dint ask a single question. He just went thru the report and pointed out one amongst the zillions of mistakes we had made in it and after that nothing. He just asked us to show him the demo. I believe that the HOD could have
1) been just too bored of grilling ppl as we were the last batch for the day and so let us go.
2) dint understand a thing bcoz he does nt now much about antennas or signal processing, the premise of our project
3) thought that we had done a stupid project in which there was nothing much to ask anyways.
But whatever the reason we got away cheaply and I am pretty sure he will surely pass us, so all three of us were not too bothered about the marks he gave us.
So this is how my engineering ended, fortunately, rather uneventfully. Hope my MS would be a smooth sailing too. :P. too much too ask I guess.
The project VIVA was blown to nightmarish proportions by some tension party's of our class including my project mate DD. We were all freaking out and seeing that our great KN Raja Rao, HOD, was the internal evaluater did not soothe our nerves. Our batch was supposed to start at 2 but it eventually started at 3 30. By then DD had almost shit his pants. I agree that I was also a bit shaken seeing DD. He is usually the cool cat kinds who is not tensed about any exams. But seeing him sweat for the Viva created a doubt in me too.
Finally at 3 30 we entered the lab. We had to write some shit for half an hour in our papers. we had discussed what all to write before we entered but eventually I realized I had nt written even half of it though i filled up 8 pages :P. So that should do. Next we had our PPT for which we had to wait until the previous batch finished theirs. Hod grilled them properly which increased our tension levels. Then our PPT started and I can safely say that it went smoother than what all three of us had expected. There was no hiccups, stammering or hesitation of any sort. I was a little tense when Hod asked me to explain an equation during the PPT but we had expected it and I think HOD was convinced by the reply. DD and Goof finished their parts without much ado.
We sat down for the viva after this, expecting that we would get properly grilled. But thankfully, HOD dint ask a single question. He just went thru the report and pointed out one amongst the zillions of mistakes we had made in it and after that nothing. He just asked us to show him the demo. I believe that the HOD could have
1) been just too bored of grilling ppl as we were the last batch for the day and so let us go.
2) dint understand a thing bcoz he does nt now much about antennas or signal processing, the premise of our project
3) thought that we had done a stupid project in which there was nothing much to ask anyways.
But whatever the reason we got away cheaply and I am pretty sure he will surely pass us, so all three of us were not too bothered about the marks he gave us.
So this is how my engineering ended, fortunately, rather uneventfully. Hope my MS would be a smooth sailing too. :P. too much too ask I guess.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Liberated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or are we?
Hey everyone, been away for a while. Not sure whether anyone bothered to see the blog in the mean while. Anyways, I am finally done with my BE. hurrrah!!!!!!!!!!! I am not thrilled to bits though beacuse whatever I am going to do from now on will most definitely shake me from the comfort zone I am in right now. I think I am ready for it but only time will be the true judge. Will write soon. feeling very sleepy now. Oh ya I also bought my tickets for the big bad US of A. Will be flying on aug 3rd if I clear my VISA interview.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Religion
| I had written this about my favourite topic "religion". I just found it somewhere. Posting it now. Hope u like it. Sorry if i hurt any religious sentiments. Hey i know long time no c. But this is how i am " LAZY". I really appreciated a certain Mr. sara n goof who have been blogging regularly. ok let me start off. Now believe me folks I have no problem with faith. It s hard to imagine that there is no higher power governing this universe. So u fear that power and blah blah blah. I am comfortable with that, no issues. But then when things take a communal turn because of ppl getting fanatic about religion, it really pisses me off. Keep ur religion in ur home or rather in ur closet. Don't impose it unto others. Show tolerence not beligerence towards a fellow human being. Think about it and leave ur comments | ||
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Be Cool
Have you lost your cool recently? think about the reason. Was it worthwhile? I am sure that you will anwer yes for the former and no for the latter. More ppl r getting angry easily these days. y can t everyone exercise a little patience. Y do ppl need to yell so much?
Off late evryone s temper level is rising. Ppl get angry more easily. I think it has got to do with the stresses in ones life. The worst part about the situation is that its like a chain reaction. If one person is angry the others dont try to calm him down, instead they too get angry and start howling. this eventually leads to lots of misunderstandings,fights and eventual souring of the relationships.
According to me any person has a threshold level. A person gets angry only if u push him beyond this threshold. Now its very important where we place our personal anger threshold. We need to balance this threshold such that we dont place it too low and get angry easily or place it too high and never get angry at all. we need to kno wen to get angry and wen not too. When you push a person to the threshold all it takes is to control ur anger for that brief period of time. When the moment passes there wil b no anger left. :). Sounds simple but hard to implement as we all know.
The problem withmost ppl tode is that they have a very low threshold of anger these days. its frustrating to get yelled at all the time. But if u respond where is it going to end. I suggest that ppl shud go away from the place wen someone is angry. y blow ur head off too and regret it later. if we get more patient i think we will have lesser fights. Most fights in the world or avoidable.
Let us all try to be a lil more patient from now on. I think we will need a more peaceful and blissful life. Tell me about ur expiriences with anger.
Off late evryone s temper level is rising. Ppl get angry more easily. I think it has got to do with the stresses in ones life. The worst part about the situation is that its like a chain reaction. If one person is angry the others dont try to calm him down, instead they too get angry and start howling. this eventually leads to lots of misunderstandings,fights and eventual souring of the relationships.
According to me any person has a threshold level. A person gets angry only if u push him beyond this threshold. Now its very important where we place our personal anger threshold. We need to balance this threshold such that we dont place it too low and get angry easily or place it too high and never get angry at all. we need to kno wen to get angry and wen not too. When you push a person to the threshold all it takes is to control ur anger for that brief period of time. When the moment passes there wil b no anger left. :). Sounds simple but hard to implement as we all know.
The problem withmost ppl tode is that they have a very low threshold of anger these days. its frustrating to get yelled at all the time. But if u respond where is it going to end. I suggest that ppl shud go away from the place wen someone is angry. y blow ur head off too and regret it later. if we get more patient i think we will have lesser fights. Most fights in the world or avoidable.
Let us all try to be a lil more patient from now on. I think we will need a more peaceful and blissful life. Tell me about ur expiriences with anger.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Tiring day
What a day? it might not b the most tiring day of life but ranks pretty high. It was a also a day of added frustrations, though finally it ended with some good news :).
Today was our proj demo day. we were supposed to be showing our code to to our profs. After a long time of struggling with the code, we had finally got it working (all thanks to goof). We were pretty confident bout it ( a bit over confident i might say). We had done significantly more work than wat our LRDE guide had asked us to do. We generally wasted the morning commenting the code n fooling around. With full confidence we called prof. Ananda babu (AB) n our beloved prehistoric, Rukmini (unfortunately our internal guide) for the demo.
Fully confident that we gonna get some "wah wah!!!!!!" from them we went ahead n showed our code. Then we got hit by nothing less than a nuclear bomb. AB was nt really happy with wat we had done. We had made the best out of the limited guidance we had in a rather difficult fieldof adaptive beam forming to get decent results. but he expected us to have done more. The most hilarious part of the whole incident is that he refused to understand what we had done and kept on forcing his ideas on us (he has worked in the field). He had a problem with one our graph for which i gave a reasonable explanation and he was satisfied. He also asked to implement this set of insanely complicated algoithms (k I am exageratting a bit) within the next 2 days we r left with. Luckily he was better than Ruku who went on flapping around like a fish out of water. She wanted to yell at the LRDE guy bcoz according to her he exploited us. h eh eh e. i cant help but grin at this. We were almost on the verge of killing her, she shud have been long dead neways.
Now our man goofy the gr8 drops the second bomb of the day. He tells me that the explanation that i gave for the graph might not be r8 for the graph we have plotted. Now this was serious news. This could ruin our entire proj. We were all stunned. Belted Ruku n AB n every other person in this world. Thought of all possible solutions. Got off full tension. Only thing we dint do is pee in our pants. So we decided to go work om the prob immediately. But as luck would have it the labs were occupied by our juniors for there scheduled lab. There was no use staying back so we decided to go home n start working. We were itching to get done with the work. As I dont have Matlab I decided to go to either goof or DD s place. I decided to go to DD s place coz neways we needed to start working on our report.
DD stays in indranagar and our college is on mysore road. It is 25 kms to his house. We catch 2 buses and 1 n a half hours later we r at DD s place. As soon as we land ther Goof calls n says our graph adhering to the explanation I had given to AB. What it essentially meant was that there was no necessity to go all the way to DD s place. Ok so we decide to work on the report and guess what happens; power failure. Now I thought I have come al the way here anyways so I decided to stay back till the power came back. It is freaking hot in blore these days and I almost got half baked due to the heat. Finally after an hour chit chatting and eating some snacks the power came n we started working. We cut pasted a few paragraphs from an older article and did q lil work n then realised that DD does nt have too much material on the stuff we need and plus he does nt have net. So we decided to call it a day and I left his place at 6, which was much earlier than the time i was supposed to leavehis place.
I reach the bus stop walking. There very few buses from there to my place, so even though the bus which came along eventually was totally crowded I got into it. Then began one of the worst expiriences of my life. I have kinda started enjoying my recent bus journies across the city but today was living hell. At the very next stop a zillion ppl got into the bus. There were ppl literally hanging onto the bus. I was smashed between an array of ppl whom I cud nt see or dint bother to notice. As i mentioned earlier the merscury is soaring. Everyone were sweaty and smelly and pushing each other. I almost felt like puking when standing next to this gentleman who had a horrible stench around him. I had no idea that my body cud be twisted into the many shapes it was twisted into on the bus. Finally lady luck decided that I had enuf for the day I guess. I got the most priced posesssion in the bus, an empty seat. :D. My joy knew no bounds. The rest of the journey was less unpleasant. I finally reached home walking from the bus stop at 8.30. Totally exhausted.
I would' nt like to have more days on the same lines. I am a rather lazy person and hope I this was a one off expirience. But I am happy to note that the proj is almost done. we might try one or more algorithms just to pleae AB. But what code we have now is good enuf as such.
Today was our proj demo day. we were supposed to be showing our code to to our profs. After a long time of struggling with the code, we had finally got it working (all thanks to goof). We were pretty confident bout it ( a bit over confident i might say). We had done significantly more work than wat our LRDE guide had asked us to do. We generally wasted the morning commenting the code n fooling around. With full confidence we called prof. Ananda babu (AB) n our beloved prehistoric, Rukmini (unfortunately our internal guide) for the demo.
Fully confident that we gonna get some "wah wah!!!!!!" from them we went ahead n showed our code. Then we got hit by nothing less than a nuclear bomb. AB was nt really happy with wat we had done. We had made the best out of the limited guidance we had in a rather difficult fieldof adaptive beam forming to get decent results. but he expected us to have done more. The most hilarious part of the whole incident is that he refused to understand what we had done and kept on forcing his ideas on us (he has worked in the field). He had a problem with one our graph for which i gave a reasonable explanation and he was satisfied. He also asked to implement this set of insanely complicated algoithms (k I am exageratting a bit) within the next 2 days we r left with. Luckily he was better than Ruku who went on flapping around like a fish out of water. She wanted to yell at the LRDE guy bcoz according to her he exploited us. h eh eh e. i cant help but grin at this. We were almost on the verge of killing her, she shud have been long dead neways.
Now our man goofy the gr8 drops the second bomb of the day. He tells me that the explanation that i gave for the graph might not be r8 for the graph we have plotted. Now this was serious news. This could ruin our entire proj. We were all stunned. Belted Ruku n AB n every other person in this world. Thought of all possible solutions. Got off full tension. Only thing we dint do is pee in our pants. So we decided to go work om the prob immediately. But as luck would have it the labs were occupied by our juniors for there scheduled lab. There was no use staying back so we decided to go home n start working. We were itching to get done with the work. As I dont have Matlab I decided to go to either goof or DD s place. I decided to go to DD s place coz neways we needed to start working on our report.
DD stays in indranagar and our college is on mysore road. It is 25 kms to his house. We catch 2 buses and 1 n a half hours later we r at DD s place. As soon as we land ther Goof calls n says our graph adhering to the explanation I had given to AB. What it essentially meant was that there was no necessity to go all the way to DD s place. Ok so we decide to work on the report and guess what happens; power failure. Now I thought I have come al the way here anyways so I decided to stay back till the power came back. It is freaking hot in blore these days and I almost got half baked due to the heat. Finally after an hour chit chatting and eating some snacks the power came n we started working. We cut pasted a few paragraphs from an older article and did q lil work n then realised that DD does nt have too much material on the stuff we need and plus he does nt have net. So we decided to call it a day and I left his place at 6, which was much earlier than the time i was supposed to leavehis place.
I reach the bus stop walking. There very few buses from there to my place, so even though the bus which came along eventually was totally crowded I got into it. Then began one of the worst expiriences of my life. I have kinda started enjoying my recent bus journies across the city but today was living hell. At the very next stop a zillion ppl got into the bus. There were ppl literally hanging onto the bus. I was smashed between an array of ppl whom I cud nt see or dint bother to notice. As i mentioned earlier the merscury is soaring. Everyone were sweaty and smelly and pushing each other. I almost felt like puking when standing next to this gentleman who had a horrible stench around him. I had no idea that my body cud be twisted into the many shapes it was twisted into on the bus. Finally lady luck decided that I had enuf for the day I guess. I got the most priced posesssion in the bus, an empty seat. :D. My joy knew no bounds. The rest of the journey was less unpleasant. I finally reached home walking from the bus stop at 8.30. Totally exhausted.
I would' nt like to have more days on the same lines. I am a rather lazy person and hope I this was a one off expirience. But I am happy to note that the proj is almost done. we might try one or more algorithms just to pleae AB. But what code we have now is good enuf as such.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Misunderstandings.
Whats with the ppl around me? They always tend to misunderstand me. I mean I can't understand how innocent gestures of mine are twisted in a such a way that I end up being potrayed as an evil fiend. Let me tell you y i think so.
I meet (rather saw) this girl X at a friend s party. I don't talk to her nor does nebody introduce me to her. Ya, I am the sort of guy who usually talks to ppl only after being properly introduced. Neways next I see her in a coll fest. Again I dnt show ne special interest in her especially as I was preoccupied with someone special over there ;). X herself talks to me for a bit. After this i see her again in some other coll fest. Again she talks to me generally , so i respond.
So the situation at this point was that I knew her name n I knew that she was a friend of my friend. She also seems to be a sweet person. Except for this I had no clue about who she was? While scrapping our common friend I see that she is also a member of orkut and so I add her as a friend and i leave a coupla scraps on her scrapbook. Now I dnt know nething bout her, which coll,? how does my friend kno her? nothing. So I decently ask my friend " hey buddy who is this girl?". He asks me to ask another friend. :P. Ok fortunately the other friend is also online. So i buzz n ask him who she is? but apparently our dude gets pleasure from being online n not being around the comp. So he does nt reply.
Being the cocky guy I am I got sudden enthu n thought wat the hell neways no one is teling me bout her y not i ask her myself, so i left her a scrap saying " hey y haven t u put up a pic." She replies saing i dnt have one. So i say " Oh u dnt have a snap. K u shud have told me I wud have taken a snap on my cell n sent it to u. n hey tel me more about urself i hardly kno u." I wrote this with honest intentions.
The repercussions were hardly nething I expected. Apparently she thought I was hitting on her. She tells my dear friend. He scraps me saying "what da hitting on chick n all". I dint realize who he was talking about immediately but later realized what has happened. Now this left me totally confused. I mean can't a guy get to know a girl just like that. I was confused whether the way I frame sentences gives that impression or its just ppl misunderstanding me. This incident is not the first though, I mean as mentioned in my previous blog there was a HUGE misunderstanding wen I had tried to ask this girl out for a party.
All this has put me in a spot of bother. Should I change being who I am, or should atleast change how I talk or how I express myself. Leave ur comments n of course u can recall any similar incident that u have had to face.
N ppl dnt ask me who that girl is coz i ain't telling u n please dnt go probing into my scrapbook, its of no use I have deleted the relevent scraps :).
I meet (rather saw) this girl X at a friend s party. I don't talk to her nor does nebody introduce me to her. Ya, I am the sort of guy who usually talks to ppl only after being properly introduced. Neways next I see her in a coll fest. Again I dnt show ne special interest in her especially as I was preoccupied with someone special over there ;). X herself talks to me for a bit. After this i see her again in some other coll fest. Again she talks to me generally , so i respond.
So the situation at this point was that I knew her name n I knew that she was a friend of my friend. She also seems to be a sweet person. Except for this I had no clue about who she was? While scrapping our common friend I see that she is also a member of orkut and so I add her as a friend and i leave a coupla scraps on her scrapbook. Now I dnt know nething bout her, which coll,? how does my friend kno her? nothing. So I decently ask my friend " hey buddy who is this girl?". He asks me to ask another friend. :P. Ok fortunately the other friend is also online. So i buzz n ask him who she is? but apparently our dude gets pleasure from being online n not being around the comp. So he does nt reply.
Being the cocky guy I am I got sudden enthu n thought wat the hell neways no one is teling me bout her y not i ask her myself, so i left her a scrap saying " hey y haven t u put up a pic." She replies saing i dnt have one. So i say " Oh u dnt have a snap. K u shud have told me I wud have taken a snap on my cell n sent it to u. n hey tel me more about urself i hardly kno u." I wrote this with honest intentions.
The repercussions were hardly nething I expected. Apparently she thought I was hitting on her. She tells my dear friend. He scraps me saying "what da hitting on chick n all". I dint realize who he was talking about immediately but later realized what has happened. Now this left me totally confused. I mean can't a guy get to know a girl just like that. I was confused whether the way I frame sentences gives that impression or its just ppl misunderstanding me. This incident is not the first though, I mean as mentioned in my previous blog there was a HUGE misunderstanding wen I had tried to ask this girl out for a party.
All this has put me in a spot of bother. Should I change being who I am, or should atleast change how I talk or how I express myself. Leave ur comments n of course u can recall any similar incident that u have had to face.
N ppl dnt ask me who that girl is coz i ain't telling u n please dnt go probing into my scrapbook, its of no use I have deleted the relevent scraps :).
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Season of love
Hey ppl,
Believe me it most definitely is the season of love. After years of inactivity in my friend s group, largely due to the fact that we r doing engineering, ther is lot of lovvvvvvvvvvvely activity going on. I don't know whether this is a harmonal thing or whether it is because we r maturing or some crap like that. But I know for sure that in the past year most of my friends have found a partner for themselves. Including urs truely. It is really fascinating to think about it you know.
Let me start of by explaining the situation before this whole thing started. All my friends belonging to different groups were single. Don't ask me for the reason, there are many to give I guess, but nothing wil explain why "ALL" of us were single. Everywhere we went we went like one stupid gay group, gawking at the girls [not that we have stopped it now]. We used to struggle finding ladies to go with us to the Discos. We were pathetic. Not that we din't try at all. But every effort we made ended in a disaster. We were lucky that none of us got slapped in the process :P. I myself had a really bitter expirience trying to call a girl out for a date n also proposed to a girl 7 times before giving up :D. But we also had over share of freedom, the time to meet each other often , speak our mind out without anyone getting offended n stuff. That was fun.
But all this changed about an year back. I don't know whether we guys became more attractive or the girls just got dumber, but all of a sudden everyone started finding girls interested in them. It is so funny that the last time a group of us friends had gone out for a vacation we were all single n this time wen we went to kerala all of us were hooked. Everyone had a girlfriend. The situaton was comical at times n irritating at others with most of us clamoring for the phones to stay in touch with our girls. Now today I hear one more close friend of mine is hooked.. I just cant believe it. 100% of my friends were single an year ago and now 60% of them r hooked. I mean what are the odds of that happening? I can't explain this if anyone can please leave a comment. There is also the usual changes that can be seen, we have become more busy, lesser time for us boys to meet etc etc. But I don't think anyone of us is complaining. We r having the time of our lives and don't mind the added baggage at all.
So congratulations guys lets celebrate the season of love and all the best to everyone who has not found someone yet.
Believe me it most definitely is the season of love. After years of inactivity in my friend s group, largely due to the fact that we r doing engineering, ther is lot of lovvvvvvvvvvvely activity going on. I don't know whether this is a harmonal thing or whether it is because we r maturing or some crap like that. But I know for sure that in the past year most of my friends have found a partner for themselves. Including urs truely. It is really fascinating to think about it you know.
Let me start of by explaining the situation before this whole thing started. All my friends belonging to different groups were single. Don't ask me for the reason, there are many to give I guess, but nothing wil explain why "ALL" of us were single. Everywhere we went we went like one stupid gay group, gawking at the girls [not that we have stopped it now]. We used to struggle finding ladies to go with us to the Discos. We were pathetic. Not that we din't try at all. But every effort we made ended in a disaster. We were lucky that none of us got slapped in the process :P. I myself had a really bitter expirience trying to call a girl out for a date n also proposed to a girl 7 times before giving up :D. But we also had over share of freedom, the time to meet each other often , speak our mind out without anyone getting offended n stuff. That was fun.
But all this changed about an year back. I don't know whether we guys became more attractive or the girls just got dumber, but all of a sudden everyone started finding girls interested in them. It is so funny that the last time a group of us friends had gone out for a vacation we were all single n this time wen we went to kerala all of us were hooked. Everyone had a girlfriend. The situaton was comical at times n irritating at others with most of us clamoring for the phones to stay in touch with our girls. Now today I hear one more close friend of mine is hooked.. I just cant believe it. 100% of my friends were single an year ago and now 60% of them r hooked. I mean what are the odds of that happening? I can't explain this if anyone can please leave a comment. There is also the usual changes that can be seen, we have become more busy, lesser time for us boys to meet etc etc. But I don't think anyone of us is complaining. We r having the time of our lives and don't mind the added baggage at all.
So congratulations guys lets celebrate the season of love and all the best to everyone who has not found someone yet.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Been away for a long time.
I am not sure if anyone has read my blog ever, but I have been away for a loooooooooong time. Its a rather long delay and the the only excuse that I can give is that I am plain lazy. But recently i realized that I have a lot of things to say and too many opinions about everything to not use this wonderful avenue to express my thoughts.
The incident that infuriated me enough to start blogging again is the whole reservation issue happening in India. Already India is burdened by the whole reservation system existing for the Sheduled caste/ tribes. A bit of a background first. When the fathers of our nation sat down together to frame the constitution of our country they chose Mr. B.R. Ambedkar as the head of the committee. He, being the champions of the scheduled caste people (or as the mahatma called them the harijans), included reservation for these people. 12.5%reservation in all governmemt institutions was implemented. In 1970 due to the increase in the number of ppl belonging to SC/ST according to the 1961 census, the reservation was increased to 15%. Now if u include the reservation for minorities that becomes a huge % for reservation. Now our "esteemed" human resource developement minister Mr. Arjun "vote bank" Singh wants to incread the reservation for SC/ST to 16.25% because according to the latest census the number SC/ST ppl has increased again. It does nt end there now he wants to introduce 27% reservation for OBC s. This brings the total reservation to a lil more than 50%. This is an astonishing figure.
Now why did this happen. The intentions with which reservations were introduced were quite genuine. Due to illogical caste systems in the Hindu society, the SC/St s had suffered humiliation and abuse from the higher classes for centuries. These ppl were at the lower strata of the society when our country became independent. The aim of the reservation was to alleviate the position of these ppl. to help them gain respectability in the society. It was supposed to be implemented for a few years and the situation was supposed to be reviewed after the period expired.
What exactly happened? though the intentions were right as always the implementation went horribly wrong. After more than 50 years of independence the situation of the Sc/ST has nt improved a lot. Untouchability and other crude practices against such ppl is still going on in remote villages all over India. These ppl who actually deserve the benifit of the reservation are still struggling. Who is getting the benifit? Rich well to do ppl and ppl who have no barriers to achieve what they potentially can are recieving the benifit. I wish to state that this is not always the case but is the case with majority of the cases. I am an engineer and I was horrified to realize the kind of benifits that these ppl get. They get free scientific calculators, drafter kits, books, lesser fees etc etc along with of course the quota of seats RESERVED for them. do they deserve it?
Parallely let me tell you about this classmate of mine who had come from a remote village Channapatna which is in Bangalore district. He was a hard working student. He was the first person in his family to have entered an engineering college. He din't know english while the medium of instruction in all the colleges in karnataka is english. Now what were the facilities given to him? nothing. Ya thats the whole worrying issue. He was forced to live in a cheap hostel with 5 to 6 ppl in a room as he could nt afford the college hostel or the other boarding facilities near the college. He was harassed by his peers and his seniors at his hostel for studying too much. He generally used to skip his lunch because he could nt afford it. Inspite of all this he achieved an amazing 78% in 3rd sem which a lot of us, including me, could nt score. But the whole system finally caught up with him. As the subjects got more difficult and as the pressures on him increased, he started dropping subjects, he stopped coming to class because he felt frustrated and finally he dropped an year. All he needed was encouragement which came from no where. Who will tell the HRD minister his story.
Y r they pursuing the reservation policy even though it is nt showing much success? Dirty Vote Bank politics. No politician or party has the balls to try and remove it. They need to appease their votebanks. It has to be noted that SC/ST s make a significant percentage of the total population. By appeasing them the future of the party is secure. What about the future of the country? which politician bothers about it. Most politicians are power brokers to do wanting more and more power and money for themselves.
Reservation is evil because its a burden on the society. No one is getting benifitted by it. A meritous student cant get a seat because there is no reservation for him. A SC/ST student does nt achieve his best because he knows there is loads of reservations to take care of him right from his schooling to his job. It is pathetic when u think of the situation now. We have under qualified ppl getting plush jobs. SC/St doctors engineers and lots of other professional with limited skills are making more errors by the day and causing huge problems.
What is the solution? Now its easy to comment on this issue and say that there should be no reservation. But what about the truely deserving candidates, why should they suffer. Who will help the SC/ST ppl. I propose a list of probable solutions. it is thoroughly my opinion
1) any form of aid or incentive should be performance based. Only ppl who prove there worth should be given the benefits. Like only the top few studentsshould be given the free calculators, books n stuff.
2)any form of aid or incentive should also be need based. Only ppl who clearly cant afford it should be given aid.
3) setting up of technical professional colleges which teach in the local language. This might be depended upon but I am sure this wil help in a big deal. The Russians teach in russian, the japanese teach in japanese, the chinese teach in chinese n so one. So y do we have only english as the medium of instruction in India. If u dnt have books get it translated more than a few authors will be glad to allow it. I am sure it will help rural students who have undegone their entire education in the local language to continue their education in the language of their choice.
4) Reservation if it needs to exist at all, must consider the economic stature of the person only. The supressed class must be helped only when their is a genuine case of ill treatement or lack of oppurtunity.
5) there must be a definite plan to phase the reservation out. It is like they say " if u give a man some food its no use, teach him how to earn it". As long as there is reservation the ppl for whom these reservation exists will never work hard enough and so the quality is always going to suffer. They will know that whatever happens they r protected. Instead set deadlines and the situation should be reviewed at each deadline. This will benifit everyone in the picture.
6) Improve the distance eduction schemes in the country. every remote village in India should have access to these schemes through which technical education and expertise can be gained.
All the above suggestions and opinions are that of my own. I apologize if my thoughts have hurt anyone but I think the points have are very much valid. I would love to here from u after u have read this. [if neone does that is]
The incident that infuriated me enough to start blogging again is the whole reservation issue happening in India. Already India is burdened by the whole reservation system existing for the Sheduled caste/ tribes. A bit of a background first. When the fathers of our nation sat down together to frame the constitution of our country they chose Mr. B.R. Ambedkar as the head of the committee. He, being the champions of the scheduled caste people (or as the mahatma called them the harijans), included reservation for these people. 12.5%reservation in all governmemt institutions was implemented. In 1970 due to the increase in the number of ppl belonging to SC/ST according to the 1961 census, the reservation was increased to 15%. Now if u include the reservation for minorities that becomes a huge % for reservation. Now our "esteemed" human resource developement minister Mr. Arjun "vote bank" Singh wants to incread the reservation for SC/ST to 16.25% because according to the latest census the number SC/ST ppl has increased again. It does nt end there now he wants to introduce 27% reservation for OBC s. This brings the total reservation to a lil more than 50%. This is an astonishing figure.
Now why did this happen. The intentions with which reservations were introduced were quite genuine. Due to illogical caste systems in the Hindu society, the SC/St s had suffered humiliation and abuse from the higher classes for centuries. These ppl were at the lower strata of the society when our country became independent. The aim of the reservation was to alleviate the position of these ppl. to help them gain respectability in the society. It was supposed to be implemented for a few years and the situation was supposed to be reviewed after the period expired.
What exactly happened? though the intentions were right as always the implementation went horribly wrong. After more than 50 years of independence the situation of the Sc/ST has nt improved a lot. Untouchability and other crude practices against such ppl is still going on in remote villages all over India. These ppl who actually deserve the benifit of the reservation are still struggling. Who is getting the benifit? Rich well to do ppl and ppl who have no barriers to achieve what they potentially can are recieving the benifit. I wish to state that this is not always the case but is the case with majority of the cases. I am an engineer and I was horrified to realize the kind of benifits that these ppl get. They get free scientific calculators, drafter kits, books, lesser fees etc etc along with of course the quota of seats RESERVED for them. do they deserve it?
Parallely let me tell you about this classmate of mine who had come from a remote village Channapatna which is in Bangalore district. He was a hard working student. He was the first person in his family to have entered an engineering college. He din't know english while the medium of instruction in all the colleges in karnataka is english. Now what were the facilities given to him? nothing. Ya thats the whole worrying issue. He was forced to live in a cheap hostel with 5 to 6 ppl in a room as he could nt afford the college hostel or the other boarding facilities near the college. He was harassed by his peers and his seniors at his hostel for studying too much. He generally used to skip his lunch because he could nt afford it. Inspite of all this he achieved an amazing 78% in 3rd sem which a lot of us, including me, could nt score. But the whole system finally caught up with him. As the subjects got more difficult and as the pressures on him increased, he started dropping subjects, he stopped coming to class because he felt frustrated and finally he dropped an year. All he needed was encouragement which came from no where. Who will tell the HRD minister his story.
Y r they pursuing the reservation policy even though it is nt showing much success? Dirty Vote Bank politics. No politician or party has the balls to try and remove it. They need to appease their votebanks. It has to be noted that SC/ST s make a significant percentage of the total population. By appeasing them the future of the party is secure. What about the future of the country? which politician bothers about it. Most politicians are power brokers to do wanting more and more power and money for themselves.
Reservation is evil because its a burden on the society. No one is getting benifitted by it. A meritous student cant get a seat because there is no reservation for him. A SC/ST student does nt achieve his best because he knows there is loads of reservations to take care of him right from his schooling to his job. It is pathetic when u think of the situation now. We have under qualified ppl getting plush jobs. SC/St doctors engineers and lots of other professional with limited skills are making more errors by the day and causing huge problems.
What is the solution? Now its easy to comment on this issue and say that there should be no reservation. But what about the truely deserving candidates, why should they suffer. Who will help the SC/ST ppl. I propose a list of probable solutions. it is thoroughly my opinion
1) any form of aid or incentive should be performance based. Only ppl who prove there worth should be given the benefits. Like only the top few studentsshould be given the free calculators, books n stuff.
2)any form of aid or incentive should also be need based. Only ppl who clearly cant afford it should be given aid.
3) setting up of technical professional colleges which teach in the local language. This might be depended upon but I am sure this wil help in a big deal. The Russians teach in russian, the japanese teach in japanese, the chinese teach in chinese n so one. So y do we have only english as the medium of instruction in India. If u dnt have books get it translated more than a few authors will be glad to allow it. I am sure it will help rural students who have undegone their entire education in the local language to continue their education in the language of their choice.
4) Reservation if it needs to exist at all, must consider the economic stature of the person only. The supressed class must be helped only when their is a genuine case of ill treatement or lack of oppurtunity.
5) there must be a definite plan to phase the reservation out. It is like they say " if u give a man some food its no use, teach him how to earn it". As long as there is reservation the ppl for whom these reservation exists will never work hard enough and so the quality is always going to suffer. They will know that whatever happens they r protected. Instead set deadlines and the situation should be reviewed at each deadline. This will benifit everyone in the picture.
6) Improve the distance eduction schemes in the country. every remote village in India should have access to these schemes through which technical education and expertise can be gained.
All the above suggestions and opinions are that of my own. I apologize if my thoughts have hurt anyone but I think the points have are very much valid. I would love to here from u after u have read this. [if neone does that is]
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