7/8 : For one last time...

I am yet to figure out which two subjects join Software Agents to give me my three electives for this sem and they say that this semester is over! This semester has given me the maximum Calvin moments, and I am finally glad that it's over. This sense of relief will last until my grades for this sem are out. Somehow, these exams don't tend to shake me these days. It's the results that have bothered me. But I must say that this semester was very very different from the rest of them. 

The sem started with the hunt for a job. This was fun. Go, come, go, come(in a loop) until one day when one company finally decided to give me a job maybe not because I was worth it but because it was high time that I attended some classes in college. The ceg canteen, parking lot and every other random road in that college now has a story with which I can relate to. Sitting and sharing what fun answers we wrote or how we desperately wanted to tell the interview guy,"Poda, answer and all I won't tell."(the Sarcasan way ;)) for reminding us of how we had wasted 3 years of college life, learning absolutely nothing were priceless moments. Oh! And the unexpectedly huge participation on Ants&Locusts group on facebook got me excited. :D

Just as I was feeling low for having to attend classes regularly from then on, a heavenly 3 weeks at home was on its way! When the rain gods decided to let us down by denying us holidays, the students decided to get their due by going on a strike and closing the college indefinitely. I still don't know why the strike had to be there in the first place and whether the problem is solved now. All I know is that those were 3 blissful weeks at home, chilling and relaxing.

Not satisfied with the long breaks that we got 'cos of the above two reasons, we managed to get a few by other means as well. Getting kicked out of the lab as a whole class where everybody gladly walked out, not even trying to have a puppy face was one such occasion! Then the entire class decided to obey the government as it declared a holiday due to rain although we very well knew that college was working that day. The lunch day, canceling of classes, group (not?)studying before assessments.. fun indeed.  

Amidst all this, out of the blue would come a message from the class representative (I dreaded this!).

The text would read : Zeroth review on so-so day.

Then I would start hunting for my team mates, we would gather up all our guts to go and pay a visit to the project guide. Having failed miserably in trying to get some inputs from the guide, we would decide to come up with our own stories for the presentation and the documentation. Done and dusted. Don't even ask how.

After a few days, another forwarded message for review 1. Same story repeats. Only difference, two pages from the wikipedia went into the documentation that we had prepared for the zeroth review to make it look lengthier. Done and dusted. Again, don't ask how.

Another forwarded message after a few days for review 2. Process repeats with some slight progress. The little knowledge that we gained from C/C++ came in handy and we called it implementation!

P.S : Our group is still on the hunt for a base paper and we have given three different titles(for the same work to be/not to be done!) in the three reviews so far.

The last minute printouts, manipulations, preparing stories to be told while facing the project guide, the joy in seeing your other classmates struggle just as you are struggling.. it was all good, you know!

When all this seemed fun, there were quite a lot of moments of desperation too. Projects/assignments/observations/records/striving really really hard to reach college on time but failing miserably/extra hours in college/the travel to and fro college amidst that heavy traffic/saturday classes - enough reasons to make me bless my college with bad words. I would come home and then tweet out all my despair. 

All this happened and an entire semester flew. For most part, I am glad that it's over. The huge take-away from this semester is the astounding number of days that I got to stay away from classes.

Yet another semester done with. Today, as we all came out after the final exam for this semester and exchanged,"HAPPY HOLIDAYS. SEE YOU AFTER THE BREAK.", I just realized that this was the last time in college life that I was getting to say that 'cos by the time I get done with my next semester, I will be done with college life, out in the open, venturing into a whole new world. 


For one last time, 

• I have a vacation all to myself.
• I will be a college student.
• I will make new friends.(For most part, they will be called colleagues later on!)
• I will write exams.
• I can manipulate a project.
• I can go late to college.(Work places threaten you with salary cuts. Sigh!)
• I can be this irresponsible kid to my parents.
• Oh! I will pay for doing nothing useful. Ha!

Three and half years. You don't even know where that went, what you did. I still remember when I walked into college on my first day at 7:45am for an 8:30am lecture. Doesn't seem that long ago! 

So, here's to all my buddies,

"Happy holidays. Make the most of it. Relax. Viva La Vie Boheme!"

Bengaluru musings

A 3-day trip to Bangalore last week with a bunch of friends (Thanks to SAP for giving us a reason to miss college) gave us this opportunity to roam around that city far and wide and observe these Bangalore wale and their lifestyle. Here's what we found out from this trip :

1) People in Bangalore drink only COFFEE. Not just any coffee, only Cafe Coffee Day coffee. Every road in this city has a CCD. A road without  CCD in Bangalore is equivalent to a road with CCD in Chennai. Looks like 'A lot can happen over a Coffee' atleast for these Bangalore wale!

2) The time taken to travel from Bangalore to Whitefield(Ok! Whitefield is in Bangalore, but still..) is more that the time taken to travel from Mysore to Bangalore - courtesy Anil Kumble who was the guest speaker at the SAPTeched conference.

3) To add to my previous point, 85% of the Bangaloreans are on the road, 90% of whom are sitting inside cars waiting for the traffic to clear!! 

A thought to all my friends who have found a job for themselves in Bangalore : Don't even think of buying a car in that city. You can walk to your destinations at a much quicker pace! We just experienced it.

4) I still haven't figured out what is Bangalore's regional language. You speak in English, they respond. You speak in Hindi, they respond. Tamil, they respond. Telugu, they still respond. None of us in the group knew Kannada, so we don't know if those people really know Kannada. :P

5) Trains excite these people. Metro train in Bangalore was inaugurated during our 3-day trip. Huge queues outside stations, all to get a ride that lasts just 14 minutes. The next day, newspapers told us how college and school kids bunked classes to get a ride. A 70 year old man had said,"I don't know how much more I will live. Hence, I came to get a ride." Seriously?? A train ride??!! 

#Confession : We took a ride in the train on Day 2 just to see what excited them all. ;)

6) Do not try Tamil food in Bangalore or for that matter, in any other state. Nothing can beat dosa/idli/sambhar/chutney from Tamil Nadu. Sambhar is sweet and dosa is half oil, half batter in this city!

7) We tried hard to spot a thatha and paati(grandpa and grandma) going for a morning or an evening walk. This city has a young population. School kids were also a little rare to find, atleast in the area where we stayed. Freshers rule the city.

8) "Sweat" is not found in the Bangalore dictionary. The only time when we all shed a drop of sweat was when we came out of the 'scary house' in one of the malls. We double-checked and exchanged hi-fives because we were finally sweating in Bangalore.

9) Air-conditioners are the main show-pieces that adorn everything in this city. Every hotel room has one and every car has one but no body uses it because there is no need to use it. Such is the weather in that city.

10) Most of the restaurant names in the city are preceded with a "Bar and.." And this is probably the only thing about this city that saddens me!

The 'like' factor

I have no idea what Mark Zuckerberg had in mind when he came up with the 'like' button on Facebook. From what I understand, there are two main reasons why he devised it. The first is probably just what the name suggests. If I really like a post or a pic, I can just 'like' it, a way of giving some positive feedback which is perfect. The second is that when I 'like' a page, I can get it's content posted to my wall which is also fine.

But there is more to this 'like' feature. I'd rather say, it helps me in more ways than it can ever imagine. Here they are :

• When someone comments on my post and I have no idea what to reply back, I just 'like' their comment. For instance, when I post a status and someone comments, "Hey! Even I did that!!", I have no idea what to reply back. I can't ask,"Wow.. you really did?" Now, that's being foolish. I can't do that. Well.. you might tell me that I needn't even reply back but then common! Some soul has taken a few seconds out of their 'precious' time that is being wasted on facebook to come and comment on my status. How can I just ignore that? Yea, I did not ignore it. I did read it but the folk who commented doesn't know that right? And so it's my way of telling you,"HEY! I JUST READ YOUR POST BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO REPLY BACK!"

• Then comes my birthday and I have my wall flooded with wishes. I know 99.99% of those who wished me never knew it was my birthday untill they saw the notification on the right hand top corner of their page. I have 521 friends in my friendlist on facebook. Even if just 50% of them logged into facebook that day(which is highly unlikely) and 50% of those decide to wish me, I will have to post a 'thank you' to 130 people on a single day! (spare me if my calculations are wrong.) I am generally indolence personified and hence, you can't expect me to reply to all of them and the 'like' button comes in handy. In this case, I do know what to reply but I am just work-shy! (work? Not exactly, but I like that word and so just found an opportunity to use it.)

• It is super useful when on chat, especially when on group chat.

          For instance,

          X : blah blah..

          Y: crap crap :P

         (and now I was thinking in similar terms as Y and so..)

         Me: ^^like like

         Simple! Who doesn't understand the language of fb now? :D

• And now, my favorite use of 'like'. When the thread is just trying to stay alive and when the frequency of PJs being posted are reaching an insurmountable peak, I 'like' the last posted comment. By doing that, I am just trying to send out a message which reads, "I AM NO LONGER INTERESTED IN REPLYING BACK AND THENCE, WE DESPERATELY NEED TO CLOSE THIS THREAD RIGHT NOW! STOP SPAMMING MY WALL!!."

A note to Mr. Zuckerberg :

"You've made life on facebook a lot easier by giving us this 'like' feature! So, THANK YOU! And here's a request. Sometimes we actually like a post and this 'like' feature seems too small to be used then because we use it for every other purpose than what it was initially designed for and we end up wishing for a 'superlke' option. And hence, a 'superlike' feature will be deeply appreciated. And yea, if you can just add the 'dislike' feature as well.. only if you can... ok?? "

Oh yea.. these are 4 ways in which I use the 'like' feature! So, every time I like your comment/post, remember that I might not be appreciating the creativity in your comment or the beauty of the language being used. I might have not even 'liked' it in literal terms!! I might have just tried to play a peek-a-boo. I know, I know.. I am being so mean and cheap. But hey, I haven't written anything new here. You use it for the same purpose as well. Oh maybe, for even better purposes?!?!

So, what are the other instances when you use the 'like' button?

P.S : If you've read this post and are about to press the 'like' button, I might just know what you are thinking :P

One day in the life of..

If you are wondering why I have cut short on the title above, well.. titles have to concise and I didn't know how to come up with one. The title actually had to be, "One day in the life of an Indian student on a vacation in the Gulf." Pretty long uh!

I had to come up with this probably because the glories of being there was deeply missed during this summer break. Well, not actually deeply missed, but yea, kind of missed it! Why? I am supposed to be a final year student now. So this vacation was meant to be spent to look beyond a life at MIT. Some of you might not agree, but most of you would. To all the GREs and the interns and the blahs and blahs, just want to let you know that our life will be in perfect harmony even without you!

So, what's up with a day in the Gulf? 

MORNING : I wake up, well I try to. Somehow, I tend to get up early when in India but get up late irrespective of the time I go to bed there. I still haven't figured out why! If you do, let me know! Next, go straight to the kitchen. Open the fridge. Munch away something. Then, I throw myself on the sofa, settle comfortably on it and the love affair with the laptop begins. High Internet speed, which means no buffering of videos and downloads at a much faster pace. So I take maximum advantage of it and watch video after video and if I like it, download it quickly 'cos I know that I can't watch it with the same pleasure when I get back to India. Browse, browse, browse. Read a lot! Must admit, I tend to read a lot when I am there.

AFTERNOON : I look at the time, it's 12:15. I finish my lunch by that time in India. But I see no signs of anything on the stove now. Not that I am hungry but just that it's time! So, I look at mom and she gives this look, "Do I have to cook? I am on a vacation as well." Hmmm.. I have no answer to that. And then she slowly walks to the kitchen and spends some half an hour near the stove. We have a hurried lunch. You need to move around, do some work and get some sweat to feel hungry right? That hasn't happened. Thus, the hurried lunch. Back to the bed. Get super comfortable in bed with  the blanket perfectly fixed, ac on and then doze off. If no afternoon naps, then I have all the freedom to try all the weird stuff. Something like... this!

EVENING : Dad comes back from work. Remember, he has worked, we haven't moved an inch. Now, we get ready to move out. Where? No idea. One litre petrol costs 50 bucks in India while just around 12 bucks(Indian money) out there. Reason good enough to get out of the house? I am not sure if there are any recreation centers out there but there are these MALLS. Every road has one. So just bump into one and spend the evening there. Not necessary that you shop but.. err.. Nope! Shopping is a must. What I love about going to the malls is trying to figure out what the Indians do there. 

    There are two types of Indian families who come there. The first category consists of those who stay as a family there. The kids study in those schools and so they come to the malls to actually get stuff needed for their house. There is this second category like mine whose dad works there and the kids come there on a vacation. So how do you differentiate between the two. It's easy. There are two ways. Either you can look into their trolleys or you can look at the parents' reactions. Trolleys belonging to the first category will consist of vegetables, a lil non-veg, some other necessary provision stuff and maybe, a dessert. The second category trolleys will consist of junk and junk and more junk. Strictly no vegetables. Now the best part - parents' reactions. When the kids in the former category ask for something the answer is a strict NO while in the latter, the kids don't ask for anything. The trolley just gets filled. Not sure what exactly the parents think. Do they think we starve in India and get to eat only in the Gulf? Whatever be it, why miss the opportunity, just stand afar and watch your trolley being filled. :D

NIGHT : Eat out and get home! Everyone gets to bed. I am still so fresh. Arey! I haven't actually done anything. Not a drop of sweat. Even the shopping was done by mom where I happily stood afar and watched (:P). And so I get back to my laptop. Again, get to reading something or browse through some random stuff and finally force myself to bed 'cos this cycle has to continue the next day! :D

Holidays in the Gulf are weird. Not doing anything all day means I am not tired at bedtime.. I guess I had better do something, well.. no regrets. I like it that way! Another thing about being on a holiday here - I eat a lot, not because I am hungry but food calls out to me from the fridge every time I walk past it. A pretty good situation to be while on a holiday but trust me, it gets a lil boring after a few days. But they were missed this time around. And so this post had to come up in remembrance of the time WELL WASTED there!

P.S : What was eaten and what did the shopping bags contain have been hidden taking into account the best interest of the readers! :P

You are an Indian cricket fan if....

1. which hand Sachin signs with and how many litres of milk Dhoni drinks is as substantial to you as knowing the alphabets of the English language.
2. unlike the foreigners who come to bask in the sun while watching a match, you go to cheer on your team in the stadium only to find yourself having exhausted as much energy as your cricketers if not more. (how we wish we can put .0002% of that interest and energy into our studies! all right, chuck that now. That's not the point here.. )
3. by screaming out their names or by praying or believing in all those weird superstitions(which you otherwise would never even give a thought to), you think you can get your cricketers to get that crucial wicket or hit that huge six.
4. you run a separate cricinfo kinda commentary on facebook, twitter or via texts to your friends although you know they are also watching the same match that you are watching!
5.you are dying to go to school/college the next day and talk about it again and again and again with your friend, not that the commentary that you ran the previous night wasn't enough.
6. you can never get tired of seeing the videos on youtube or watching highlights on tv. You even know when the commentator coughed and which finger bhajji swirled in the air when he got that priced wicket, but still,...
7.you watch every show related to the victory on every news channel and their repeat shows over and over again and then exhaust all the articles that come in the newspaper,e-newspaper about that victory and you still can't get enough of it. On another day, you don't even know if you buy a newspaper at home!!
8.you will say, 'Yea man! WE did it!', if only you hear these words,'WORLD CUP 2011', as if you and I toiled in the hot sun for 15 hours a day for the last 15 years and won the coveted trophy!
9.you are not an atheist. Actually, you cannot be one! Didn't you say, "God, please.." on 2nd april,2011,just before the match started or when Sachin was on 99?
P.S.: so if you think you are an Indian cricket fan and your fb religious view reads 'Atheist', please change it, you are lying big time!
10.you read all of this and are saying,"so true! can't agree more."

If Sachin was...

If Sachin was an Australian, He might have still been the best cricketer the world had ever witnessed, no doubt. But what else? Winning a World Cup would have become a habit. For every century that he scores, he would have had some brilliant bowlers in his team who would have ensured that the team wins that day and his century doesn't go in vain unlike now where it sometimes results in a draw our a loss, thanks to the Indian bowling! He would have become Australia's best cricketer, no doubt!


If Sachin was a South African, he might have probably helped the south africans get rid of their chokers tag. Or who knows, he might have ended up being called a choker as well. He would have become South Africa's best cricketer, no doubt!

If Sachin was a Pakistani, he might have probably helped restore some peace in that country with his batting magic. Who knows.. Kasab could have become a cricketer??!! (Possible na?? )He would have been lucky enough to escape facing some of the finest fast bowlers the world has ever seen. He would have become Pakistan's best cricketer, no doubt!

If Sachin was a Sri Lankan, He would have made the best opening pair combination along with Jayasuriya and both together would have torn apart any famed bowling attack. (Not taking away anything from Ganguly. I love Ganguly! But still.. ) He needn't have faced some fine quality spin which meant piling on more runs. He would have become Sri Lanka's best cricketer, no doubt!

If Sachin was a West Indian, the critics and cricket analysts would have had lesser problems in trying to compare the two cricket greats, Sachin and Lara. There wouldn't have been issues of pressure, the eras in which they played or any other matter. He would have become West Indies' best cricketer, no doubt!

If Sachin was English, England might have just won all the Ashes series! He would have become England's best cricketer, no doubt!

If Sachin had played for any of the minnows, that team would no longer be called a minnow. He would have inspired many young lads from that country to take up cricket. He would have been their best cricketer, no doubt!

Irrespective of the country he plays for, Sachin would have become the best cricketer in the world. That's God blessing for him.

But what would he have missed?
He might have not received the love and affection that he receives now.  He might have not been called 'God'. He might have not had 1.2 billion people cheering/roaring on for him every time he stepped onto the field. He wouldn't have had as many people praying for him as he has now.He wouldn't have had the opportunity to torment some of the best bowlers in the World. There would have not been so many well-wishers for him during his injury days. He might have inspired many, but the scale in which he inspires people now wouldn't have been possible. He wouldn't have had as many articles and tv shows dedicated to him as the Indian media does. And more importantly, he wouldn't have given me a post for my blog! :D

Did anyone of you have second thoughts on which Sachin I was gonna talking about when you saw the title?? That's Sachin for you! Not just a wonderful cricketer, but that wonderful human being! He gives me yet another reason to believe that man is a perfect masterpiece by God.

"Thank you Sachin for all that you have given us over these years!"

What did he give? Less marks in examinations, sometimes, the need to bunk classes to watch him play, fight with mom to let me watch that one last ball where he would raise his hands up for a century and what not! None that would help me go higher up in life. But who cares?? Sach is life!


"There has been no better sight in the cricketing field than watching you bat. The only feather that's missing will adorn your cap in a few hours from now. We believe it. You will do it. Bleeding Blue.. Bleeding Sachin!"

P.S. : We have great respect for you, Sanga, Jayawardene and Murali. But still.. Sorry honourable men of cricket! This World Cup is Sachin's!

My techy side! :P

Hold on to all your thoughts that crawled into your mind when you read the title. Let me explain what exactly made me write it.
     My friend called up one evening and said,"Hey Jenifer, we need an article for the 'Kaleidoscope' magazine. Write whatever you want but make sure it is technical and anything related to FOSS". I was like, "How am I and something technical supposed to go together ever?? :O" Upon persuasion, I agreed to write. After trying to sound as serious as I could, this is all that I could come up with!!
( Please spare me if this doesn't sound techy. I tried hard, really hard! :P)

In one of my first ever chat conversations with a friend of mine, where I keyed down a funny incident that had happened with me in school, I got a 3-letter reply that said ‘LOL’. As we kept exchanging conversations, all of a sudden she came up with another 3-letter reply ‘BRB’. I replied to all these with a ‘???’ and I faced the necessary abashment for it from my friend and rightly so. But how am I, who was a rookie with all these words (which I was later introduced to as ‘acronyms’ and not ‘words’:P) supposed to know what she had meant??!! I kept thinking of those acronyms day and night until I happened to trip across an article in Metro Plus later that week on the slang language that people use and presto! Those two acronyms were explained in detail in that article. I took a note of all the acronyms given there so that they'll come in handy next time i chat with my friend. And it did! Guess what! The next time I spoke with her and she used 'lol', i replied with 'rofl'. :D
Had I been a FOSS user and had I been using linux and had I known the command that could have helped me figure out what those acronyms meant, I needn’t have put myself in that sorry state not knowing what to do when my friend had come up with her ‘lols’ and ‘brbs’!!
Wait! Is there a command that could have helped me? Yup, there is! This command is used to help you translate the acronyms that your friends use frequently in IRC that you have no clue about.
The command: wtf
(I am not joking, this works!)

Here's how it works:
'wtf' is a netbsd command. It is part of the bsdgames.
You can install it using the command:
sudo apt-get install bsdgames


And then go ahead with whatever acronyms you want to decode. For instance,

Cool, isn't it? When it doesn’t know any word, it honestly says that as well. For example,

But I am just hoping that you guys know what ‘sos’ expands to!! ;) Else, what do you do? Just google it! After all, Google is FOSSy as well right??!!
P.S: I am saying that Google is FOSSy because it runs its web servers on linux and has its new Android OS built on top of the linux kernel.
Get FOSSy - Stop getting embarrassed. Try sounding cool. ;)

P.S:After the final draft and getting an approval from my friend for considering it fit to be called a techy-article, I coined the title for the article 'WTF!!'
P.S.S: Kaleidoscope is a magazine published by the Computer Society of my college in relation to a tech-event called 'Carte Blache' to promote Free & OpenSource Software (FOSS)
P.S.S.S: I know there are many of you out there who might have not understood head or tail of what I have tried to say here. (I made my 'Mech' bro read it and he asked me, "What have you written about actually??") To all of you out here who are thinking the same, all I can say is that, hey! can't help it - it had to be a technical one! Your bad! 

The Industrial Visit (IV) to kerala

The most awaited event of last semester was the IV. How did it unfold? Read on..

The Prayer Cell within College Campus

The Prayer Cell within College Campus - the beginning of great things to come! Read here..

The message that was shared in the prayer cell on that day.. Read here..