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.