Wrapping Up 008

Last day of the year has come. What's the verdict? Neutral I would say. I had a few highs this year, but enough lows to cancel out the good stuff. Lots of fun combined with lots of misery and tragedy marked 2008 for me, and compared to the previous years, I wouldn't call it a great one. It was slow and sometimes almost painfully frustrating. The end of the year has actually brought relief, a hope that there would be a better start to the next year. Or else, it could be just the same. I have my results coming up soon, probably in the first week of Jan, and that would mark my bad beginning to '09. A round-up of this year in my eyes looks something like this:

The better memories - Manchester United snatching 3 trophies - Christiano Ronaldo - Maradona in India - my crazy visiting spree to Warangal, Goa, Chennai, Kirandul, Jagdalpur, Kakinada, and Bangalore - IPL Twenty20 - Olympics 2008 - Abhinav Bindra - Abdul Kalam's visit to Hyd, and me being present there - Srikar's Ibanez Ltd. Edition - My new acoustic - My BHEL experience - Civil Aviation Exhibition in Hyderabad - A380 Landing - My iPod completes 1 year - Raj Kiran's iPod Touch - Audi R8 in India - Natarajan's Yamaha FZ16 - Rock On!! - Vector Art - The improved patriotism - and maybe a few that I can't recollect.

The Neutral Memories - The MRCET Annual Day performance - The Shamshabad Airport opening and then delayed and then opened again - Roads in Hyd (sometimes felt good, sometimes horrible!) - The F1 championship, I enjoyed it though Ferrari couldn't win - My paper presentation on F1 (gave it wonderfully, but couldn't win) - My guitarring skills that kept fluctuating - College memories that are fast fading - Our so called 'band' which is dying - My internet connection(??) - and lastly, this entire year 2008 with its highs and lows.

The BAD Memories were - My soccer life which got stalled - ACE United (nearly dead) - The 3-1 loss to ECE (still hurts!) - All my exams (internals, onlines, externals, others too!!) - The experience one night in OU with the Police - My ear trouble - My PC blowing up - Deaths - China Quake - Burma Cyclone - Deaths of people I knew - Mumbai attacks - Images of the hotels - The Jewish Family torn apart - and finally my whole learning experience this year which went only one way, DOWN.

As a whole, I am happy 2008 is over. I am pretty anxious about how 2009 will turn out to be, but there's only one way of knowing it. Live through it and find out. Moving on to 2009, with my fingers crossed...

Did someone say 'Jam' ?

I think I heard it right. Someone did really say 'Let's Jam'. And that was the word I was waiting to hear from the past many months. At this point of time, it's beginning to get highly frustrating, playing weird chords on the guitar, recording them, adding some stuff on FL, exporting it, sending it to friends, and end of story. The spoilt amp spoilt everything. I couldn't practise on the electric for many months both due to exams and that missing amp. A few days ago, I finally bought a new amp along with a new acoustic. Post-shopping, I turned into a temporary acoustic player. I left the amp under wraps and began strumming away on the new box. The better sound quality urged me to play more and more. But soon, unsurprisingly, I got bored of the box and went back to the electric. I noticed something that I never did before...

The strings on the elec were so high compared to the new acoustic, I was actually finding it difficult to shift simple chords. That's when I began a minor re-adjustment. But as fate had it, the guitar wasn't built as accurately as it was supposed to be. Once I lowered the strings (with a lot of difficulty), the frets began buzzing, and 16, 17, and 18, all frets had the same sound of 19th. I tried hammering some frets down, but soon stopped before taking any more crazy risks. Also the elevated screws at the bridge were so uneven and sharp that they cut into the palm whenever I tried to mute. I was forced to revert everything I had done -I couldn't 'unhammer' the hammered frets!- and play with the unusually high strings.

The frustration reached a peak when I wanted to chuck everything out of the window. But suddenly I met my brother at college and he mentioned this one last jam in 2008. I was more than ready for it, preparing to miss college even after having a less than 50% attendance. Tomorrow's the day. Hopefully, New Year's Eve will bring something more fun for the New Year atleast in music. I don't expect improvement in other stuff anyway.





Let's Jam. One last time in 2008.

What season is this?

Place: 17N 78E, Northern Hemishpere.
Time: December
Season: Winter

Winter?

Yes Winter.

C'mon, this can't be Winter! Why isn't it cold?

Trust me, it's Winter. Don't you know your Geography?

But does this feel like Winter? I remember last year, I was tucked away inside my jacket from nearly September through January. In the beginning due to the rains, and later due to the cold. But the lower half of 2008 has been weird. I used my jacket hardly a few times. I drove around a lot, especially to college and exam centres, and never found the necessity to protect myself from the cold. No blanket at night, no jacket in the mornings, just odd heat around. I had to drive my family to a Christmas party in Maredpalli, and I assumed it would be very cold as it was late evening. I put on the jacket, and within minutes, I was sweating. I had to stop the car and get rid of the jacket. I never felt too cold the rest of the night! I was returning nearly at 10 and it just wasn't cold enough.

All these factors are seemingly pointing to a scary thought. Is the Global Warming really beginning to show its effect? One winter isn't enough to prove that point anyway. But In case this warm winter trend stays consistent, then its time to realise, sooner than later, that Global Warming is not a myth.

Firefox or Chrome or something else?

Now, I am really confused. Till a few months ago, Firefox(FF) was my favourite browser. I stuck to it like a leech for almost 3-4 years now. Of late I have experienced enough problems with 'my favourite' browser, and presently, I am constantly shifting between the hyped Chrome(GC) and dear old Firefox(FF).

Problem is, almost every alternate site seems to be crashing FF for some reason. This happens especially when I use orkut, or any guitar tabs sites. These are the ones I use most, and they don't work on FF. Because of that, I have shifted almost full time to GC. GC didn't crash anywhere yet. But I don't like this browser either. A single tab creates 2-3 'chrome.exe' processes, and each one uses a substantial amount of RAM. Also in GC, I hate that address bar acting like a 'search bar'. I think I sound weird, but FF has a definite advantage over GC on this issue. The address bar in FF not only acts as a search bar but actually redirects into a website automatically if the keywords match. (Type 'gmail' and you are redirected to www.mail.google.com) That's such a neat way of saving time! But unfortunately, the excessive crashes in recent browsing is forcing me to change my mind. Bottom line, I love everything about FF except the crashes, they are so annoyingly unpredictable. So I need a new browser.

I heard some positive comments about Safari from a few friends. Maybe it's time for me to check that out as well. In all this, where's MS IE? 20,000 leagues under the sea? Yes it is drowned, at least for me. My system is still reeling from the trojan horse blow that IE gave it recently. I am struggling to get rid of those 'invasions'.

So another post describing pain, this time about my computer's pain in finding a smart browser with good features, and low CPU usage and less crashes!! Thank god, blogger works on FF...

4-2 ? What a joke!

My fourth year's second semester started on the 1st of December. As usual, we were a week late in realising that. And the 'exams' caused me to skip college even more. Finally, I started attending classes from 11th, and found that nobody was really interested. The disease spread like an epidemic. The result? I never attended a full day of college even after more than 3 weeks. I swore to myself, I won't miss college. And I did anything but that. According to the schedule, the number of days left for teaching are about 20, in which there are atleast 4-5 holidays. There are 3 subjects that need to be taught, and two of them haven't even started. One subject is done by about 20%. So in the remaining 15 days, there are 2 complete subjects and 80% of another subject yet to be done!

Is that even practical? All I know is, 24 hours a day definitely won't work. Extra time needs to be created. Say, 24 extra hours everyday which makes it 48 hours a day! Will that be enough? I don't think so. Rather than travelling distances, we need to travel through time. Aha! Time travel! Now how practical is that? It's as practical as asking Hermione Granger to use the Time-Turner. So what's happening to this semester? It's already over... no point trying to save it.

Balancing Pain with Pleasure? Or is it the other way?

One of them should be true - I have too much fun all the time and meet with regular bursts of discouraging, demoralising moments, or I have too many disasters around me, and I get to see an occasional moment of fun - don't know which one.

My recent few months are a perfect example. I got a mild upgrade on my system, had fun staying away from college, etc. and some kind of a balancing act forced me into horrible performances in the famous overseas exams, and also the semester exams. We all know Nature's balancing act. At least, I strongly believe in it. Maybe I should finally accept that fact that, this principle works even for individuals and their lives, not just for humanity in general. This is a neat example for balancing pleasure with pain.

What happened yesterday was an example of the anti-thesis. I had a pretty unsatisfactory performance in the exam yesterday (Eng as a Foreign Lingo), later, within 2 hours, I was in the music shop checking out some new guitars. It was completely unplanned. Whatever depressed face I was supposed to carry around for a few days with me, disappeared as soon as I stepped out of the shop with a shiny new acoustic and an amp (yet to come) ready to restart my electric guitarring. Once home, I was so highly immersed with the new guitar, that I completely forgot I had taken a test in the morning! This case now, clearly is a bright moment compensating for a dull one. I never even asked for the bright moment.

So which of these 2 theories is true?

Maybe I know the answer myself! None of them. The whole ride is just about smooths and bumps. Whether the smooth road comes later, or in the beginning, or alternates between patches of rough roads, it doesn't matter. It will come but it won't come without a rough patch associated with it... tit for tat.

My 'Global' Experience !!

I always believed, we Indian motorists are pretty rash and unplanned on the road. And that's the reason for most of the accidents around us. But I never thought our roads could actually bend people from another country. Definitely there would have been instances where we saw foreign nationals driving 2 or 4 wheelers in India. We always have an assumption that the roads in their respective country would have been a lot better than here, and hence they would be driving in a more organized and linear fashion. But what I saw today showed the dirty underside of misleadingly clean stones. Shockingly there were 2 instances where I nearly had an accident today, and both of them involved foreigners driving.

#1. I was heading home from Raj Kiran's and was taking the flyover leading towards Begumpet. I was on the lane leading to the flyover, and nearly at the entrance of the flyover, a black car swooped from my right towards the left, and took the lane that leads to the underside of the bridge. I had to react in time to avoid a collision, and the person in the car was a woman from another country, most probably European. She cut across me so rashly, that I was disoriented for a brief moment. I just couldn't make the connection. A foreign lady, with pale white hair (that was all i could see), in a black car just cut across and scared the hell out of me. It was hard to imagine but it definitely happened. And I tried keeping my eyes more open after that, especially on the rear-view.

#2. I was approaching Habsiguda's cross roads. As I neared the signal, i was trying to take the left-most lane which is usually occupied by bikes. Just then another vehicle cut across me. This time from the left to the right (which is more dangerous!). It was a gearless scooter (didn't bother with the name), and had a foreign couple on it. The were most probably Korean (as for my guess). As they cut across me, I braked hard. The crazy uneven road worsened the situation and I nearly lost balance. I was once again disoriented. Just because it was another incident with foreigners driving. I was lost making the connection once again. They were literally giving us a run for our own money. I felt weird driving there like an 'I-follow-all-rules' idiot. But this time we were more or less driving together, and I found that they were driving pretty decently. Maybe that 'cutting-across' incident went unnoticed from their point of view. In fact, I found my driving more erroneous, after taking a U-turn without indicating, and found a nice glowing indicator on their vehicle. I felt stupid again, this time for not following the rules!

All this would count to be just a bizzare incident, and we surely shouldn't jump to any kind of conclusions. But what I saw today, makes my head spin. One from the west, and one from the east. Both scaring me madly.

Globalization is here, and here to stay. We shouldn't make a fuss about anything foreign.

Talk about somethin' else !!

Well, it's kinda getting bugging to watch the news or read the paper. Every channel and every page just wants to talk about Terror attacks, 'acid' attacks, fake encounters and more stuff like that. Oh gimme a break! It's fine to know about these things, but not daily! Every morning is broken with some kind of harsh news and this might actually be playing a role in spoiling the whole day after that.

I wanted something fun, something humorous. The best I could find on the paper was a column about what Hyderabad didn't want to see anymore. Before reading on, I expected to find certain things like bad roads, bad govt., bad education, etc. Ofcourse all that was there, but I was pleasantly surprised to read a few very different kinds of views in addition to these usual ones. I found a particular Male-Female clash very interesting. There was a view by a female about how the 'gravity-defying' spiked hair and jeans that sweeps the ground is getting disgusting to watch. The other point stated was the sickening usage of silly Hip-hop words like 'Yo' plus the excessive usage of deodrants and perfumes (this is true!!).. dudes, wake up, people out there are tired of these things. Stop those weird bell-shaped trousers, and apple-shaped shirts. Get rid of the 'Hip-hop' phrases. They are clearly dying out.. I remember how people trying to imitate me in the class constantly use stuff like 'Yo'. Little do they know that I never ever used such words, and in fact hate this genre of music itself... it's a weird misconception that if you can start saying 'Yo', you can start speaking English!! Get rid of it!!
But on the contrary, not all guys are like this, but as a general trend this is what even I observed and would love it if people stopped being so stereotypic in dressing and talking.

And then there was the male community tired of the downside of the female intelligence quotient. This guy considers the girls to be scoring high grades in almost anything, but when it comes to basic 'presence-of-mind' they fall back considerably. I consider this view to be true too. Though once again, there can be many exceptions. But these 2 views can actually exist anywhere else too. Not particularly in this city alone. So I don't know how far this can actually change attitudes around us.

Then came the weirder part. There were a majority of comments talking about human 'hose-pipes'. This is the truest of all and if the city needs to get rid of something, it is this! Emptying over-filled bladders at every other corner and leaving back that unbearable stench. Ew! Humans have developed and evolved a long long way, but when it comes to this, there's been no change. And stop honking on the roads guys, even Heavy Metal on 10000W speakers is bearable!!

Hyderabad surely looks like it needs a serious make-over to be a good example. It's still a young city with a lot of scope to learn. If we can mend ourselves now, this city can make leaps in the future..

Complete Fiasco

It feels awkward when an exaggerated build-up leads to a total fiasco. It happened to me a few times before, and it did once again. No surprises there. Well the exam that I was supposed to write got so highly publicized that I couldn't get it off my head, nor the heads of the people around me. For the past 10 days I was only hearing and talking and looking at stuff related to this exam. People from the third floor, the second floor and even a neighboring building came to know of my so-called exam. It was almost intoxicating. The innumerable words I was brushing through, the endless passages I was reading, the crazy problems I was solving.. Maybe it didn't want to add up to a good result after all.

Though the start was good, as I came near the end, fatigue took over me. About an hour from the end, I almost got disgusted with the goings-on. I started to click madly, and the writing on the scratch paper got messier and messier to point where I couldn't decipher my own handwriting. My craziness peaked when I read a 7 as 4 and got the answer wrong. The 10 minute break did nothing. The 1 minute short breaks did nothing. They simply made me cold, and the last one hour was spent fighting the shivering and shaking rather than moving the mouse around.

And foolishly enough, I chose to "Participate" in the research program and had to endure another half hour of essay-writing at the end. By the time I came out, I was just ashen-faced with no words coming out of the mouth. All I could do was sip-up a milkshake and reply to the spate of SMSes on the mobile phone that it was a Complete Fiasco..

You feel worthless, when you observe a disappointed look on the faces of people around you, and more so if they are disappointed just because you are too!!

Bewildered !!

What does one do when he wants to do too many things at once? Well, he would try to sort out the to-do list in an order of priority. But what am I doing? I am still trying to do all of them together. Something like, reading a GRE word-list from a book while drawing something on a piece of paper and with music playing on the computer.

If things get too out of control, I chuck everything in a corner and pick up the guitar. I have always believed that music is a stress-buster. But what I realise now is that, it's distracting me. I work for 10 minutes and immediately switch over to playing the guitar or listening to a sample or something similar. Am I getting stressed out within 10 minutes? That's a bad bad sign of inconsistency. Maybe it was inevitable after all. It's been about 6 years that I actually sat by myself to learn something educative. I praise myself excessively even if I sit seriously for about half an hour. Whom should I blame? Myself or my college. Maybe I'll end up completing my college by the time I come to know of the answer.

Firing the Canon

After a gap of many days, I went back to snapping some weird pictures. Ofcourse they don't come out great because my Canon A550 doesn't have the Manual Focus setting, which I am craving for right now. Anyway, I somehow managed it, trying in many way to fool the camera to focus in the area that I wanted.. didn't work very well though.


The sky is smiling. At a time when the nation is mourning. Maybe the face in the sky is asking us all to cheer up and move on like we always do.


This isn't some Photoshop art. The blur is natural.


The MotoRazr V3i reflecting what the camera is seeing.

Twisted Illusions ?

What just happened in the last few days? What was happening all over the TV? Was it a movie? Or was it reality? It simply took so long to settle in that it all seems like a Twisted Illusion to me, showing me something that I don't want to believe. Something that rightly suits the name I gave to my blog more than an year ago.

What a plot! As someone rightly put it, Two Birds with One Stone. The Terrorists attacking Mumbai, attacking foreign nationals in India is the perfect example of executing a dual operation with a single plan. But maybe I would call it, 3 birds with 1 stone. (1)They have attacked India , and (2)they have attacked the Rest-of-the-World and (3)most importantly, they attracted the media and got their message sent to the whole world, the message of spreading terror.

Everything is all over the news. What we used to hear about, is now coming out on TV, and Live. Every gunshot, every explosion, every movement can all be heard and watched Live. It's the height of reality... and something that is actually helping the spreading of terror. Within minutes of the siege, the whole world was watching...

I am posting a long time after it was all over. The reason? I was glued to the television. For 3 days, I don't remember doing anything else other than watching it all happen. The action, the grief, the heroic stories (The commandos, the hotel staff, etc.), the tragic stories (The deaths of Top officials, the young child who lost both his parents, the hundreds of deaths including important persons, etc.), the aftermath, the fear, the anger, the reactions, the reforms, it was all there...

Things now are settling down, but clearly they won't be settling down back to normal. Things will change. This particular incident has sparked off wild reactions in the country. People are angry. How is it that countries that previously experienced terror attacks never had such a nightmare again, and India has a major terror attack every month? How can things go so wrong in this country? Why do I hear that certain agencies already warned of such an attack? Where did that information go? How can we afford to let such things happen among the many layers of the government? Well, all such things can only be answered by an honest person who is stuck in those many layers...

Now there will be reforms, because this has shaken the very foundation of the country. But where will they be done? Only in Mumbai? Or the rest of the country as well? There are so many major cities that are so easy to attack in that perspective. Every attack is exposing a weakness in the security of the country. Bombs on trains, bombs in public places, bombs in market places, bombs in buildings, bombs in garbage bins, bombs in stolen cars, bombs on purchased cycles, illegal entries from sea-routes, etc. each of them showed that there was a flaw somewhere. Everytime we corrected a mistake, they found a new way. There will undoubtedly be a next time. And no matter what we do, they might still end up finding a way in. Maybe even by digging some underground stuff or whatever... why the heck should I give ideas??!!

And the biggest surprise to me is the technology that's available with them. How are they gaining access to all the high-end weapons, satellite communications, etc. And how are we not able to track them? Don't we have the equipment? Don't tell me...

Anyway, all that I say hardly matters, and it's the decisions of the 'important' people that matter in all this... but some general views won't hurt. Signing off, remembering the great job done by the commandos.

So-Called Holiday

Exams are over. Good. Holidays are here. Good. But what do I do during the holidays? This isn't a question I should be asking myself. There are so many things to do, like planning out a Final Project, preparing for the 'other' tests, etc. However, there are many more other things that have taken up the priority spot.

I am finally back into some music. My guitar which was slowly getting rusted is now alive with some electricity flowing through it (Thank God, its not flowing through me!! Or else...). The one thing I noticed about Soccer and Guitar Playing is that, you rely on your form. If you are out of touch, even the simplest things feel extremely difficult. My fingers were moving like non-lubricated machine parts. Couldn't reach 3 frets down, when I could reach 5 frets down before my exams. Simply watching people shred on guitar and talking about it later is not a great thing to do. But ofcourse one can't expect every music freak to be able to play and create music. Anyway, coming back to my music status, Bad! Not being able to play simple chords is pretty damaging to the confidence level. So as of now, #1 priority is occupied by my guitar.

#2 is taken by my next favourite thing, Multimedia. Right from creating simple headings for my blog such as the one above, to my quest in learning Flash and more recently, 3D modelling, I am trying to be hooked up to the internet for every possible lesson I can learn. But ironically, the multimedia part on my browsers isn't functioning properly and that is proving to be a great hindrance.

And there is no #3.

The End!

Bridge the Gap !!

But how?
Ok, there are many gaps that should be bridged. Like the Rich-Poor gap, literate-illiterate gap, Developed-Undeveloped gap, etc... but the gap that I am talking about is within my head. Its the gap between my ideas and my work! I was too lazy to notice that before, but recently I did. And frustration is hitting me ever since I discovered the 'Gap'.

Everytime I sit in front of the PC, ideas run through me head like crazy. I open all the software I dumped onto the PC. All the PS, Flash, Maya, etc. As soon as I start working, my brain suddenly goes dry. I even forget why I opened the software. That's the gap I want to bridge.

Everytime I touch my guitar, a new tune runs through my head. I hastily make all the connections, open FL studio, set the recording mode, and finally forget the tune. Or atleast I start off with the tune, but somehow it all goes wrong once I start really working on it. It plays perfectly in the head, but comes out like a mis-made product. That's the gap I want to bridge.

Everytime I see the question paper in the exam hall, my head runs wild. Partly because I don't know how to answer the questions, and partly because my head already starts finding solutions to those vaguely-familiar-but-I-wish-i-learnt-more questions. Within 5 minutes, I have all the answers in my head, even to the questions that I don't know. But once I start writing, it's a different ball game altogether. It's either lack of planning or that "GAP" which I am talking about, which results in a very bad set of answers. When the exam is over, I start to doubt even the answers that I thought I knew very well. Somehow the answer rolls well in the head but goes out of order while coming out. I start off with a point that I was reserving for the end. I suddenly remember that I missed out a point in between and I squeeze it in somewhere later. All because of that 'Gap'. A gap that might lead to some really bad results this time! That's the Gap I want to bridge.

And this should happen sooner than later or else I would be left like a crafty workman without his tools. I just got an idea how to bridge it.... but how do I implement it????? Oh no! Back to square one!

No Interest Yet again !!

There's no interest to say anything but this is just to keep things alive here. My exam talk will come later which is as unstable as it ever was. And the new craze in India, the Audi R8 which was posted an year ago on this blog and which was released as a concept(leMans Concept) much before that. My friends were surprised I was discussing this car just 10 minutes before the exam. But the fine thing today is, it's my Mom's Birthday.

Diwali 2008

I am posting this very late and at a time when I should have been preoccupied by books. But I love to waste time when it's not supposed to be wasted. That's me and I can't help it. Anyway, as usual, my experiments with photography never get exhausted and this Diwali, just like last year, gave me a lot of scope to experiment. However, this time I was somehow very unfortunate in timing. And most of the photos got distorted. Or in a creative sense, we could say they got tweaked. The end result is that, I don't know what angle or zoom level I was in, for more than half of the photos. They were almost random and almost unplanned. At least, I had not predicted them to come out that way. But still most Master Pieces are made 'by mistake' (that is, if you would ever care to call them master pieces).

This Diwali was spent more or less with the camera and hardly any time actually celebrating the occasion with fireworks. Here are some of my 'better' shots which are actually mistakes but the exposure setting on the camera turned into images that seem to have been edited in Adobe Photoshop. But let me remind you, not one of them has been edited... It's time to let the fireworks take over.

Don't mind the extra long post because of so many photos.



Some evening shots to capture the colours of the setting sun.



As usual, lamps form an intergral part of the festival.




We brighten up the air, but we always forget the smoke that's left behind, and the trash that's strewn on the ground...


The rise of "Fire Trees" from the ground.



I don't know what the camera orientation was for these shots.













This ain't no Photoshop.


The Flowers from the "Fire Trees".


And then there's a chaotic end.

The Last Lab

Today was the last time I attended a Lab Exam in Malla Reddy. And it felt like the first. The same old tension (in fact, more!), the same old confusion (more again!). This set of labs were supposed to be easy for me as they were both software related in my favourite field of 3D modelling and CFD analysis. But these 2 exams left such a mark on me that, I am almost beginning to recoil from the words, '3D modelling', 'Analysis', etc...

And all this was only because of the external viva questions. The first exam was easy but the viva was destroyed without even the presence of an external. The lecturer who taught me for 2 years asked questions that I couldn't answer. I could only get 1 of 3 answers and he asked me to leave. I am pretty sure the score is as bad as my expectations.

The second exam was easier, but the viva was screwed again. The external who had a look that was impossible to read, and a face that looked like a hybrid between an Egyptian Pharaoh and Barack Obama (Congratulations, President Obama), asked the stupidest questions I ever heard in my life. Stuff like, "Can you design that pencil box you are holding?" or, "Draw an airfoil or else, I'll personally make sure you fail" (was that a question or an order??), or "What is the difference between these 2 toolbars?" (Now how the hell can one point out differences between tool bars??? Commands are different??)... I somehow lived through the psychological game with him and got out as soon as I could.

The last ever Lab Exam made sure I would never forget it, or that face! I might forget CATIA in a week, but I won't forget his haunting face...

When Ferrari was (b)eaten alive!!

Ahh! It was a sad day for me yesterday! Early in the morning I opened the paper and found a picture of Lewis Hamilton celebrating and the text under it saying Hamilton won the Championship. My mega-sad cable operator never gave me a chance to know that the F1 Championship was coming to an end. It was the paper that told me the result and brought my blood to a halt.

Lewis Hamilton winning the title in the last few metres of the race? That was crazy, but true. The overtaking in the last lap when Massa was looking forward to celebrate a well-fought Championship literally brought me down to my knees and I cursed, "How could this happen!". Suddenly Hamilton looks like a villain to me. He's awesome, but he's a villain...

What more can I say about it... it's over this year.

Fright Night Chilly Night

Burr! It was cold and creepy. I got a call from Natarajan and he asked me to come over to his favourite hang-out place in the jungles of Osmania University. It was only 7:30pm, but it was pitch dark, and the place looked creepy under the headlamps of my vehicle. I couldn't hold the handle straight in the cold, I was shivering. I somehow reached the place, and I found him waiting there. And I found the monster waiting there...

The new Yamaha FZ. It was gleaming in the dark, and I immediately jumped onto the bike. Mine was taken by Avinash (who was also present), and we started roaming around. I got to ride it and it was awesome, though I was shaking like crazy, half due to excitement and half due to the cold. I had some good fun on the bike, trying to know all the technicalities of it in a single gulp. 2-3 passersby looked on and asked questions about it, as they could make out the distinct shape in the darkness.

Then plans began flowing and friends started pouring in. It was getting late now, and I was expected back home within an hour at worst, and it was well beyond that. But with nearly 6-7 people present now, the drinks came out. I modestly took one and we kept chatting and joking, and a pair of headlamps approach from nowhere...

We were pretty casually talking until we saw the sign on the jeep. The sign that nobody wants to see when drinks flow in a lonely, dangerous area. It was 100. It was the Police. I suddenly became dazed, numb, and partially unconscious, not because of the drink, but because of the sight that unfolded. 4-5 people jumped out, slammed the doors and got instantly aggressive with us. They thought we were upto something. They found the weakest link, Me. One man grabbed me and started pulling me toward the jeep. The others were also being dragged. We were trying to explain, but they were in no mood to listen. They started checking the smell of our breath. One by one, the facts started to pour out. It was suddenly hot, very hot. I was shivering. I was sweating, I was boiling, yet I was shivering. They snatched our bikes' keys. Were we begging, we were pleading but they knew what they had to do. The drama went on for about 15 minutes. We were made to enter our names, addresses, and phone numbers. We readily gave them. They asked us a hundred questions. We answered them truthfully. They never gave in. They never gave us our bikes back. Finally, when some of them started forcing us to get in, we begged like nobody on earth would have begged. We were in The Good Cop-Bad Cop situation. We begged the good cop and he told us crazy stories about the great happenings in that area where we were standing. After a lot more pleading, he finally asked us to go towards the bad cop and plead again. We did that readily. And he finally gave in and asked us to fork out a 1000 cash. We somehow managed to collect 450 and thrust it into his hands. He thrust the keys in our hands and asked us to get out of there and never be visible again. We promised him that, and escaped as fast as we could...

The cold, creepy night turned into a bad, scary night for all of us, and I hope we learned the lesson of venturing out at such times. Everyone were visibly shaken and extremely pleased to have been let go. We all took off to our homes soon, and it was the end of the 'night'...
For 5 minutes I enjoyed on the Yamaha like I never did, and the next 20 minutes were hell beyond reason. Maybe Pleasure does lead to Pain!!

P.S: To whoever read this, "Please don't talk about this to me or anyone, within 10 miles radius of my home!!"

For The Biker

A few years ago, there was nothing on the roads. Just the usual autos and buses and a few 'motorbikes', cars and plenty of 'scooters' and walking people. Overnight, all that changed. Those weird looking Italian-like scooters gave way to 'bikes' as we call them. With engines running new technology, high capacity and high efficiency, bikes became the rage. The newer releases attract not only with fuel efficiency, and technology but also with looks. We all know of the famous Pulsar-Karizma war which became almost funny with controversies. Ofcourse, I am not the biker type and the only bikes I ever drove were a Fazer and a Hero Honda Passion. So I can't really compare bikes by their handling characteristics, road grip, engine pickup, etc. But I did have a certain idea about most of the happenings, by watching and listening.

But yesterday was a different story altogether! I cruised on the best I ever saw or drove in India. It was the Yamaha FZ 150 that Natarajan bought recently. It happily discourages a second seater which is a great thing for long-trip bikers. It was dark and I couldn't see it properly, but I could feel the presence of a monster. The huge fuel tank, the low placed headlamp, the curves, the lines, all of them give the bike a look that was never seen before on Indian roads! The ultimate stunner is the Yamaha Logo at the back that glows red in the night! It's expected efficiency is an amazing 45-50 which is almost shocking! The reason it has the potential to beat every other bike in India is that, it's tailor-made for bike-crazy people, and it fits the fuel-efficiency range which is typically an Indian requirement. The feel, ride and handling of the bike is way too awesome. It feels as if the bike's connected to your brain wirelessly and its listening to every touch you make on the accelerator. The comfort as far as a single person drives it is too good, though a pillion rider might feel uneasy and a third person's chance is totally eliminated. The road grip as according to Natarajan is beyond the wildest dreams as he actually got the footrest guard (i mean the guard that guards the footrest while extreme bending) to scrape the road while bending. All of my friends, and me have been blown away by the looks and performance of this bike and the orders for this bike are touching the sky. The Yamaha FZ is the newly crowned 150cc king of Indian Roads!

It's not for college going students who want to save money by traveling 3 at once. It's not for crazy long-dyed-hair guys who want to impress every other girl on the road. It's not for boring office going people who want to jump over every other pothole and zip in the narrowest cracks in traffic. It's for bikers! It's for Biking and it's a way living!

Vital Signs?

It was a week ago that my Internet Cable sent out sparks that resembled the exhaust nozzle of a jet fighter, resulting in some serious damage to the motherboard and SMPS. Suddenly with the computer not working, my life came to chaos. It was then that I realized how much I relied on my computer, and how much, people, in general, rely on their computers. It's very true that most of my time awake is spent either in college or on the computer. But this addictiveness is nothing new obviously. Personally, I can't live one moment without trying out some new software, or designing something, or simply creating some music. For all this, I heavily rely on my computer. Yet I find so many people around me, who have no clue about simple stuff like MS Word!

Is this what is education? Within the same class, there are 20 Year olds who can go to the extent of professional designing, multimedia, and gaming, and there are 20 Year Olds who can't use Powerpoint. How is it that there's so much gap in between. It's similar to the gap between the rich and the poor in India. This Cyber Gap (as i call it) has a different reason though. Its not that computers are not available. People simply don't have the interest. Things have become bloody cheap and almost anyone can own a computer. Yet most of the computers lie in the dust, starting up occasionally to watch movies, play games, etc. Ask a software geek what he does on a computer, and watching movies will be one of the last things on his very long list. Gaming has turned professional, so I don't have the right to call gaming a waste of time. But watching movies? What's professional in that? Making movies, that's good again. Anyway, all this is a personal observation. And putting it all out here won't make an inch of a difference.

At least I am relieved my system is back into working condition, and I can get back to my side dreams other than Aeronautical Engineering in MRCET. Ofcourse those dreams can be shattered by Project Works, Record Works and worst of all, exams, courtesy, MRCET again!

Boeing/Airbus, Going/Airborne, etc, etc...

Sometimes I hate my life, Sometimes I love my life,
Sometimes I hate the people around me, Sometimes I love people around me,
Sometimes I hate my city, Sometimes I love my city,
Sometimes I love airplanes, sometimes I love airplanes more!!

Today was all the second parts of my 'poem'. I was simply too proud of myself, and my 'college' (gosh! yesterday I was hating it!!) and my subject, and my city too..
It all happened because of my hopefully life-long tie-up with the 'Airplane'.

There was a man who told me, "You are an Aeronautical Engineering Student and you must have that passion in you. You must feel something in you when you see an airplane", and he is now working in a bank.

Today, I realised how passionate I really was. Not everyday does one find goosebumps and hair standing on the back of his neck. It happens to me when I watch a really good movie, or when I read a really good novel or when I listen to a great piece of music, or, or, or, when I watch an Airbus A380 fly over my head and land in front of me, shamelessly displaying it's sheer size and power. I was busy snapping away my tiny camera phone (I am still cursing myself and that 7.1MP camera in the cupboard) and got over-nostalgic when I heard the roaring engines of the largest commercial aircraft. It's so damn easy to identify with those curving wings, and 4 engines and huge landing gears... When it swooped down on the runway, I thought it was swooping down on me, first the teasing fly-by and then the landing.. the half hour of action really left me loving myself ...

It was the India Civil Aviation Exhibition for 2008 and it was great to put it in simple words. My parents were wasting time thinking 500 bucks is way too costly. Who the hell gets to see an A380 land in front of them for 500?? Who does!!
Ofcourse the exhibition had lots of planes and helicopters on display, and more importantly lots and lots of Airline/Aircraft/Aviation/whatever company stalls setup. I saw names that I never heard and half of them were Indian! We could identify the International ones and couldn't figure out the Indian ones! Height of patriotism.

Well the pictures sadly didn't come out great and that's the reason I can't put them out here. But this topic might find itself in so many blog posts that it might be almost unecessary to put in any details about it.

As of now, I feel so nostalgic that I wanna stop for now and take some rest after that beating from the hot sun and ... ... haha..

I am going back, March 2010 unless I am elsewhere...

After the Break..

It's back to that usual crappy life that I live. All the pleasure that I had with the junk food, and unlimited music sessions, is going to convert into pain with the writing of record work, exams, etc. Maybe the Princi was right after all. Pleasure leads to pain. As of now, I am pretty tired to continue further, so i'll take a break. Oh what am I saying? Another Break?! In that case, The F grade is waiting for me eagerly...

P.S: The jam sessions in Bangalore were lots of fun. Will miss them.

A Break !! (for what?)

In a few hours, I'll be off to Bangalore on a bus along with Srikar. You could call that a nice break. But a break from what? It was last Friday that I went to college and never went until yesterday which was another Friday. And I wont be going again till next Friday! So it's all been a break. In fact, this whole semester has been a huge vacation for me. Skipping college just for the sake of skipping college. Looking for a million ways to waste time and yet postponing the most important things required for a career. If there's something that's bad, its me and my work. Despite that, I am still gearing up for another short fun trip. At this moment, there are so many things yet to be done and neither me nor the staff in the college are interested in completing them. It's true we can't beat time (Speed of light??) but at least we mustn't let ourselves lag behind so much. The result of this crazy chase will come in 2 months with those weird '0' like symbols on the sheet accompanied by something that strangely resembles 'F'.

Chrome? What's so shiny?

I was avoiding Google's Chrome for a long long time, but this Chrome topic reached such a level that I thought, "Ok, let's check this s**t out afterall". And I downloaded it. After some minor troubles with the download, I got it started. The look was good. Simple and plain and everything about the layout reminded me of Google. The New Tab option is kinda weird. Instead of a blank tab, we get a whole bunch of thumbnails and links and history and everything. It's good for a few and bad for a few (like me). Moreover, every tab can become a new application with a 'smart' drag and drop. Now I don't know how that's going to affect the memory.

There's nothing special about the "Google Search Bar + URL Bar". It's total crap if you ask me. Unless you type the ".com" part, you can't directly open the website you want. You'll simply end up in Google's Search Engine in which you'll have to click on your website (it's a process i hate). Firefox's URL bar is ten times more efficient than that. Type 'orkut' and it goes directly to the website, type 'google map maker' and it goes exactly to "www.google.com/mapmaker". Also, if it doesn't find the exact website, you still end up in the google's search engine. So basically, Firefox has been doing what Chrome is now boasting about and it's doing it way better that Chrome.

The History/Saved passwords/Private Data part is a bit annoying. This is entirely a personal opinion. I like all the stuff like passwords/cookies/cache to be cleared once the browser window is closed. But apparently Google Chrome doesn't do that. You'll have to manually clear the data/cache/cookies or whatever you want. Firefox for me comfortably clears all this and keeps my system fresh after every close. This is particularly useful if you have all members of the family logging into their own accounts in their own websites. And this opens in another annoying tab for Chrome!

The 'Options' tab 'looks' promising with stuff like 'Minor Tweaks', 'Under the Hood', etc, but there are hardly any tweaks available. I didn't like this 'Option' at all. Cool names aren't enough. Google seems to be obsessed with cars, like 'Chrome' and 'Under da Hood'.

The Task Manager is actually cool. It's letting me know what tab is using how much of memory and this is pretty useful for me personally. The fact that a corrupted page can be gotten rid off easily without closing the entire browser is another cool thing I found.

There are many more slight ups and downs here and there. But this is only a Beta Version. And things can always improve over time. As of now, my favourite browser is Firefox (i love it!!) and it has been so from the past 2-3 years. It might continue to be so unless Chrome comes out with a 'Killer Shine' and some serious 'Power Under the Hood'. Goodbye Chrome, I am uninstalling you.

iPod! - Year 1

It was exactly an year ago that I bought the newly launched iPod Classic 80GB at a local store and unsurprisingly, it's still going pretty strong. Other than a few scratches, there is no indication that the iPod is an Year old now. Now and then, there were a few problems with the data transfer rate and stuff, but they have all been manageable. With the iPod now protected with a leather case, it's more secure and scratch free, though it's thickness is now 2 times more.
The original earphones I got with it gave away a long time ago. Whether it was my fault or Apple's, it doesn't matter. They just gave away and are now rotting in some corner. I am using some other weird earphones as a replacement and they seem to be doing fine as of now.
But what I have realized is that, no matter how many problems Apple has with their iPod range, people still buy it crazily. 6 out of 10 people own an Apple iPod of some kind and that's a clear indication of how Apple's ruling the music player market. And they never seem to be running out of ideas. So it's all Apple and the close of Year 1 of my iPod Classic.

Fresh, yet Old

And I am talking about my house which is like, 8 years old and never had a single coat of paint after the original one. It was in pretty good shape all these years, but we knew better. Bored of the same old colours and shades, there were some ‘innovative’ ideas to make things look modern. The result is a drastic change in wall colours and some minor changes in the ‘lighting devices’ of the otherwise boring tube-light lit house. It’s a change I was looking for from the past few years, and now with the changes nearly done, the house feels new. Modern, bold colours and yet a classic touch. Futuristic lights combined with ancient shaded lamps and chandeliers. It’s almost like each room has different personalities under different lights– Made for stereotypes, made for the audacious and also for the sober.

Though it has received mixed reactions I don’t really mind it as long as the building won’t collapse. The recent building collapse stories are sending chills down foundations. Especially the collapse of a wall in a ‘Junior College’ (which wasn’t even legal) and 30 students falling from 30 feet was a pretty sickening story to read. It’s high time the future of our city was taken into proper civil engineers’ hands rather than these so-called ‘builders’ (Don’t know where they came from!). All the engineers out there, listen up. The IT Sector is falling, start thinking from now and save our city at least, you can save the world later…

 

PS: This is my first attempt with an e-mailed post, rather than the usual ‘New Post’ business. Hope this works.

The End (?!?)

It finally came to a close today. It was 10 days ago that we started the Internal Exam 'Preparation' and after so long, it reached The End. Or is it just the beginning? There's a little more than a month left from now when the Real exams will begin and there's another set of internals left and between all that, I got my own GRE to take. Like Physics says Pressure is inversely proportional to Area, I would say, Tension is inversely proportional to Time. As time runs out, the blood starts warming up (Runs Cold in my case!) and finally reaches a temperature where we have to give in and crumble under the pressure.

The usual problems at college still go on. No books to refer to, no materials to prepare from, no lecturers to teach, horrible exams, even more horrible marks, students using the most ingenious methods of copying and yet getting caught, then the begging process, then the arguments, then the suspensions.. it's been the same right from the beginning. The present day 'Engineering Student' only looks bigger, taller, and smarter (new hairstyles, new fashion sense, etc.) than he was 4 years ago, but the rest is just the same. He still knows what he always knew and still doesn't know what he's supposed to know. How is it possible to change? Is there a thing called change in these lives? I don't see any in the coming future anyway.

All these arrows seem to be pointing to one direction. The End. Is it so clear?. Is the 'Software Boom'(as everyone called it), that attracted students from 'Far and Wide' stalling now? Are students are going back to 'Far and Wide'?. It's when the countless colleges around my house might find empty classes and see themselves shut down. They can only look for alternative sources of 'Power' just like the rest of the world needs to, from Petroleum.

There's only one thing that that can't 'End' any time soon and that's the Universe (Because we don't know anything about it!). Everything else will see an end. Be it Hyderabad's Colleges, or the IT Industry or Petrol or The Human Race or The Earth! It might all shut down one day like it never existed..

The New Face of Bollywood

I saw Rock On!! a week ago, and finally got the chance to blog and blab about it. I liked the music a lot and was expecting a pretty good movie to complement that and I must say, the movie lived up to its music. The number of films that I have watched are way too less compared to the others so I can't really compare this. Infact I feel it's best not to compare it to any. Just watch the movie, feel good and come back home. That's it.

As for me, I found it simple yet graceful and looked made for the modern-age. We have movies that are over-modern which completely spoil the show. Racing Bikes in narrow corners of Mumbai, cars, bikes, and trucks flying and planes crashing(!!), crazy dancing, over-smart 'bad guys', 'good guys' even smarter than them, millions of twisted plots and many similar things. This one had nothing of those sorts and that's what forced me to like it. There was no intentional humour. It just cameo ut naturally and people laughed where they were expected to laugh. But I also noticed something I never came across before. The audience were extremely silent throughout the movie. It was packed to the last available seat and yet I felt like I was sitting alone in there. I couldn't help tapping away to the music, and the rest were still just as silent. Was it a tennis match? People applaud a joke for a few seconds and then it's back to silence! Is it only Indian movie-making that has come of age, or has it taught people to come of age as well? The whole experience was simply different. I just didn't feel like I was surrounded by Bollywood. The shouts, whistles, dry jokes, 'masala', etc, all were absent. I actually felt good. The music was inspiring, the film was modern and the crowd was intelligent. It was perfect.

Just plain and perfect...

Back to Vectors

I recently discovered the magic of vector drawing. I was totally tired of the same old photoshop effects and brushes and all that crap and decided to do something new. I went back my hand-drawn Guitarist and thought for a while. An idea clicked. I wanted to convert that 'Pixelated Bitmap' into a ultra-high clarity image. Then came up the idea of vector drawing and I started surfing around for some good examples of vector drawings.

So what's special about these drawings? Well, Bitmaps are based on pixels and resolution. But Vectors are purely mathematical. All the lines, curves, fills(areas) are created by mathematical equations and hence any amount of zoom won't damage the clarity. They can literally be saved at any resolution without any loss.

Back to the drawing. I found out that normal bitmaps can be converted into vectors automatically with a threshold limit using some software like Inkscape, Flash(Trace Bitmap Command), etc. but that wasn't what I wanted. Mine was a pencil drawing and every small mark and shade would get converted into a vector line. So I took up the painful procedure of drawing it myself in Flash. Putting the bitmap image as a reference, I started drawing every line and filling it with colours. I had to use my own 'creativity' to 'estimate' where the highlights and shadows would lie, and had to draw more lines and fill more areas. Finally when it was all done, the result is like the image below... This drawing has a few flaws though. The more we zoom in, the easier it is to find flaws, breaks in lines, empty areas, overlapping fills, etc. And in particular, the Cartoon Drawing itself had a few proportionality flaws. The sizes of hands, arms, guitar's headstock, etc. are highly exaggerated just to make it look funny and cartoon-like and all this took an incredibly long time for me. And yet, I must call this easy. If it were a photograph, it would have taken much longer. And generally bitmap photographs can be converted to vectors using the gradient mesh tool in Illustrator. That's something I didn't try yet, but the results of that are simply mind-blowing... I'll get to that soon, but for now, enjoy this Flash Vector Drawing.

Time for the Kill

It's September and time's clearly running out. The tough game of Predator vs. Prey is on and nobody knows yet if the Predator is me or my exams!!

There's only one way to find out! Who's chasing whom? Whose life is in risk? Simple Conclusion: I am the Prey! The Internal exams starting in a coupla days, and soon followed by the GREat GRE and still followed by the 'greater' Semester Exams. On the other side of the vacations, time suddenly runs at double speed and the Prey(me) is fighting a losing battle... One more clear indicator is 'Less Internet' and 'More Music'. Maybe you would have thought 'More books' is my mantra against exams, but the true stress-buster is Music. It's the lubricant that allows easy outflow of your brain's most creative ideas (but you gotta have them to get them out). It's even recommended by professionals who advise people on preparing for exams. Music: Nothing Beats it!

End of Post, but there's a PS:
Last month I followed a rather strange pattern in writing posts. Can you guess that? Some interactivity is definitely fun... it takes about 3 seconds to answer that anyway. Best o' Luck...

Orient to Occident: My Visitors

I hardly put in anything of particular interest, and yet I find so many visitors daily, from so many countries! As of now, the latest 500 entries show visitors from about 50 countries which completely amazes me. What do people do all day? Google search?? Looks like it...



Well this picture clearly shows how many people visited my blog. The nearly opaque dots indicate that there have been many people entering from that particular city. And the transparent dots indicate lesser frequency of visits or just one visit. The stats are only from July 2008. I don't know what the number would have been had I counted ever since I started blogging. I am not very interested to know that anyway, so it's no big deal...

Occasion: Another Birthday

This time it was Raj Kiran's, and we were not gonna let this day go waste like the rest of our birthdays. We decided to skip that Workshop/Seminar/Whatever/?? in college and have some serious fun. We didn't go out for months in spite of having free time, and everybody was clearly desperate to let some hair down. We had plans for a resort with some fun in the pool, some eating, and a long drive out. Though we did go to a resort, the time constraints kept us from taking a dip. An hour's drive and 4 hours of eating burnt down the time 'in no time'. From traditional Tricoloured Kebabs and Murgh Kalmi to Choco-Cognacs and Misty Nights, our 'lunch' covered everything. It was a break we all wanted, though we doubt if it was a well-deserved one as we hardly struggled for anything in the past. A long, decent lunch and some good laughter and photographs closed our first outdoor trip in months and we took in every moment of it. Another long drive brought us back home, and I felt satisfied by the day's events which had some weird music in it too - JLo, Westlife, BSB, Sting, George Michael, etc - exactly the artists that I didn't want to listen to, but in a resto, what else can one play? Yet, it was fine for me 'cause I spent some good time in Natarajan's house later with Fruity Loops and his new experiments in music. It was all fun... except the city roads ofcourse!!

Honestly, I can't Lie

For a teenager, lies would come out as naturally as one would breathe. But when it comes to me, something goes wrong. I stutter and sputter, but the lie just won't come out. All that I can manage is the truth. The last big lie I remember telling was 10 years ago, when my stupid experiment with some plumbing on the terrace went horribly wrong and I broke my hand. Thank god I didn't fall of the terrace. I zipped my lips shut until my mother exclaimed that the hand was broken. At that moment, I burst open and managed to say "I slipped while playing". I don't know if anyone ever bought that lie, but nobody tried to dig in more. After that, any time I attempted to lie, I was caught and went through a pretty bad time. Soon, as time evolved the word Lie was out of my head. I was finding it very difficult to tell a simple lie. The truth would just flow out like water. It should have been a reversed case, but in any case, my case always ends up being an odd one. After joining the engineering college, my lies went down more drastically. A recent one is worth talking about.

I skipped off from college and watched a movie (as everyone always does). Spent some money for all the required stuff including eating and when it was all over, I went back to college to catch the bus back home. Only thing was, I took back the lunch box untouched, as neatly packed as it was in the morning. Once home, my mom asked me why I didn't have my lunch. I could have said a million things there. It was only a small lie about why I didn't eat. Instead, as soon as I opened my mouth, out came this - "I wasn't in college. I mean, I er... didn't want to attend some seminar, so I... went out and watched a movie and I ate some food in the theatre itself." I never planned on saying that. All the time I was devising a way to tell a lie, and when the time came, I blurted out the truth. No pressure, no trouble, yet the truth came out as if I drank Professor Snape's Truth Potion. This wasn't the first time. I always confess when I bunk college or do anything stupid, maybe it's an instinct to stay on the safe side. When we lie, the pieces don't fit. To fit one story, we need another story, and to fit that story, we need yet another one. And with the truth, all the pieces fit like a jigsaw puzzle with a single sentence. No wonder why the proverb "Honesty is the best Policy" so famous. Maybe we need to lie occasionally, like the ones we blabber with the college watchman to get out of college. "I am from another college" "I came for a workshop" "I am the organiser (we remove a brochure of a 2 year old event and wildly sway it around)"... But, in spite of all this, I can make one conclusion about myself, "I just can't lie!!". And that's the truth...

Oh Yeah! Rock On !!

Welcome to the new trend in Bollywood. Rock! First of all, I can't believe I am talking about Bollywood. But maybe I can be forgiven if it's for a good cause. "Oh Lord of Rock N Roll, forgive me for talking about Bollywood music, but I assure you, it's for a good cause."

Well, this particular movie was getting too much attention on Channel V and I decided to check it out after all. Some of the stuff that was played on TV was sounding fine and I went a step further and heard the complete songs from this movie, Rock On!!. It's definitely ground breaking music in terms of the crappy Dance/Hip Hop/Punjabi mixes that we produce day and night. In the typical B'wood case, the song is mostly out of sync with the movie coz we can be pretty sure that the singer is not the actor and that the actor might not even have a taste for the music that's playing behind when he is 'running around trees'. Yet he is forced to act that way in order to create that feel which is not needed anyway. Thankfully, Rock On!! seems to be revolving around the rockstar life and the singer is the 'singer', and there are proper instruments used, few but proper. The tracks truly reflect their life and they are not born out of thin air in a dream-like world. This is pure Rock N Roll straight out of Bollywood, and it's a much-needed change and relief. Most of the songs are from this Genre, and there are a few slow ones too, which actually sound better and complete than the faster, raw ones. I don't know anything about the movie or the storyline which means we'll have to wait for it to release, but the music definitely breaks barriers for me. It's not the best music that I heard, but it's definitely good enough to spend some time with.

So, it's goodbye to Artificial Bollywood Crap (ABC), and welcome to Rock On!! Phew!! I can breathe now!

Our India

It's getting a bit of a habit posting atleast 2-3 days late. Maybe I am strictly following the 'Indian Standard Time' = +5:30Hrs or rather 5.5 Days... Anyway the visibility might be poor due to my over-creative attempts at creating posts. And most of them don't even make proper sense. Coming back to 'Our India', the recent I-Day celebrations opened my eyes to a few things. First thing, the Patriotism. Suddenly, with the use of online communities being excessive, people have found a good way to show their patriotism. The flags on the displays, I-day oriented themes, innumerable offlines and scraps about I-day, and stuff like that. Infact, the recent Gold at China has suddenly made people proud of their country. Patriotism has touched a new height this year and I seriously hope it only rises.

Second thing is, the meaning of Freedom itself. 60 Years ago, Freedom meant freedom from slavery, freedom from foreign rule, freedom to live life as a human. Today Freedom is this, "I can do whatever I want. No one can stop me" "My parents have gone out of town, I am Free!" "India is a free country. We can plant bombs and trees anywhere". Suddenly the word Freedom is almost being misutilized and misunderstood. But I am not the one who could make people realize it's true meaning.

Third thing: India is 6 decades old. Maybe in the longterm sense, it's young. But 6 decades is still old enough. What have we done to the country? Have we individually contributed anything towards the country? Nothing, other than a +1 increase in the Demographics. The country is still considered Young and the world is already growing old. The world is getting heated up and losing it's sheen. At such a moment, a young country like ours can easily make a difference. India is a huge country, and boasts of a population more than the whole of Europe and Australia combined! It's like about 15percent of the world's population and can't it make a difference? Surely it can. But what are we doing? We young people are too attracted to the fast-paced life of the other countries. Things like "Studying Abroad", "Working abroad", "Foreign citizen", "NRI" etc. are a matter of pride in the family where infact it should have been the other way round. Every Indian says this, yet every Indian follows this same trend. "After this, it's MS here, PhD there, and work somewhere else.... " Oh! Aren't we tired of this crap? No we are not! We all still love to study somewhere else! That includes me in it too ..... We simply accept the fact that we aren't good enough and take it for granted. That's the reason, in today's world, we don't learn well, we don't teach well, and we don't even work well.. India is a country taken for granted, India is a country that is assumed to be at a 'developing stage' forever. And all these thoughts come only to an Indian. Like me! It's all my fault. It's all our fault!

Occasion: Birthday

11th August 2008: The day I saw the last of my teenage life. Turning 20 should have been a big blast, but well, it didn't turn out quite that way but it was an enjoyable day nonetheless. A city in which roads turned into rivers is hardly a city where one would like to party. Inspite of this, we did open up some plans for a dinner blast at a local pub, but then, some weird forgetfulness and sleepiness got us all stuck at home. That's different story all together.
Most of this day was spent alone. But I do feel one must spend some time alone. It gives you time to think about all the things that you couldn't spare time for. 365 days of friends isn't really a great way to learn life. Some time alone (conscious time and not while dozing!!) really opens up the brain to do things that we've been ignoring from a long time. Anyway, this is a personal opinion and people might say, "2 Brains are better than one and an idle man's brain is a devil's workshop, etc.. " It's crap but it could be true...
11th August came to a silent end with me wishing my neighbour kid who was also born on the same day, 1995. The Gold Medal that "an" Indian won finally proved some "inferiority complexes" wrong and the pointed out that Cricket isn't the only sport/game in India.
Natarajan sent me a weird B'day gift through e-mail. It isn't an e-card, it isn't a greeting of any sort. It was simply a collection of old photographs of the times we spent more than 2 years ago. That bunch of images made me laugh so much - weirdo hairstyles, lecturers in my home, spy photos of our ex-Principal's home, experiments with guitars, car-driving lessons, making cocktails out of Sprite and many more funny things - that I really found it satisfying. Nothing was done on this day, but it was oddly fulfilling. It's all the feeling that one needs on his birthday.









On a closing note, I'll remember 11th August as my Birthday and India will remember 11th August as the day when the Barriers of Inferiority Broke Down and the Prayers of a Billion People were Answered.

Off Track

Something weird is going on around me. There's something that wants me to lose track of time! I cut the straps of 2 watches in 2 days. One of them is a FastTrack that will reach it's last day of Warranty Period tomorrow! The funnier thing is, both the watch straps cut seamlessly and without warning. Both of 'em just fell off suddenly. One second your watch is on, the next, you find it on the floor without realising it. And to add to that, the battery of the wall clock ran out too.

It's funny the way things want to throw me out of gear when I have to keep up with so many more. Yesterday was 08-08-08 and I only realised it when the Olympics in China kicked off with the Opening Ceremony (which was beyond grand). Things came flooding back and I remembered watching a show on Discovery about numbers that 8 is a lucky number for the Chinese as it is believed to bring Prosperity and we find the number everywhere including Number Plates on cars..

Anyway, one can't fall out of track just because his watch can't be worn anymore. We have so many gadgets around with us which do various functions including telling us the time. Things like Cell Phones, iPods, computers, laptops, all of them tell us time. Do we even need a watch then? Almost 95 percent of my class students don't wear watches. The ones who wear, wear them because they are designer watches made of Gold, or fitted with diamond studs. Yet when we see a person wearing a watch, it feels like there is some organised air around him/her. Maybe it's just the magic of a watch that keeps ticking with the help of that tiny Piezoelectric crystal.

Imagine life without time. What if there were no watches, phones, computers, TVs, etc.? Would we fall out? Would it be the end of time? One has to simply revert back to the olden ages and watch the movements of the sun (during day) and stars (at night). Some way or the other, one can find out the time of the day and the time of the year too, with a little observation and calculation. After all, that's how the ancient humans learnt to calculate time...

In the modern day, Time is just Money and nothing else!

It's 5:30PM and I am wasting time!

P.S. Watch out, coz this Watch post has struck a new idea in my brain chip. Keep Watching and observing atleast until i get my Watch back.