somniloquism

Knocked the bastard off again ! (via snow chute)

2011-06-17T20:49:00.002+04:30

22 miles RT, (12 miles backpacking + 10 miles day hike)
Elevation Gain: 6500+ ft
Trailhead: 8300 ft
Summit : 14500 ft.

Bill, Sarah, Arun & I did a 2-day backpacking trip to Mt Whitney. We camped @ Trail Camp (Elev. 12,000 ft) on Saturday night and day-hiked to the summit via the snow chute on Sunday morning. The chute was precarious and some sections were over 70 degrees in slope, requiring crampons & ice-axes. Bill, Arun & I summited, while Sarah almost made it, but had to turn back to Trail Crest, a mile away from the summit, due to AMS. Glad she got better later.

This was my second ascent, the last being in sep 2009 as a day hike. It was a fantastic experience, my first experimenting with winter skills, crampons, ice-axes and glissading. As always, Whitney did not disappoint !

As of 2 PM, I think only 10 people summited, I saw 2-3 people who had come up the MR to the summit and another group of 6 who summited after 3 PM (probably less than 20 people summited on June 12 - seems quite low).

Weather forecasts indicated a temperature of 32 F at the summit, however, it was blazing hot at 60+ F.

There are sections in the chute that are actually 60-70 degrees in slope.

Couple of observations:
- Best time to climb up the chute is early in the morning, when the snow is still hard and frozen.
- The main trail is hard to locate in some sections after Mirror Lake.
- There is a snow slope that leads from Trail Camp, all the way to Lone Pine Lake, and this is the quickest and perhaps the easiest way to descend. (We got to LP lake from Trail camp in an hour, with our backpacks).
- There is a lot of snow from Lone Pine Lake, this is one looooong winter.

Sophistication via Android

2011-05-22T08:53:00.006+04:30

I've been an avid hiker for a long time, but all the while this far, I've been keeping track of my pace, distance covered and elevation gained etc through plain old trail signs and a clock on my iPhone.

It is only after I switched to an Android phone (Xperia X10a), which I then de-branded and rooted, have I gotten hooked to smartphones. I downloaded "Backcountry Navigator", from Marketplace, couple of days back. This is a GPS app for Android and I fell in love with it soon after I installed it.

I used it on a recent hike up Mission Peak, a regional preserve in Fremont, CA. This was my third ascent and my first solo ascent. Here are some statistics from the hike, gathered through Backcountry Navigator.

I bettered my previous ascent by 15 minutes and descent by 20 minutes. My average uphill speed was 3.1 mph and downhill speed was around 4.8 mph, for an overall average of around 3.8-4 mph, with a 2600+ ft elevation gain. Looks like my workouts are showing some results.

In veritas clausura

2011-04-19T10:39:00.004+04:30

Where dwells happiness ? In love or in fortune or in fame or in faith ? Where lies closure ?

It couldn't have been put more beautifully than by Christopher McCandless a.k.a "Alexander Supertramp" quoting Henry David Thoreau, from "Into the Wild"

"Rather than Love, than Money, than Faith, than Fame, than Fairness, give me Truth".

Of what good is the rest, without truth ? I've come to realize that even hope becomes hopeless sans the light of truth.

I am reminded of the biblical quote, engraved in the facade of the main building in one of my alma-maters - "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free".

Am I bound then, or am I free ?

Knocked the (little) Bastard Off ! *

2010-09-09T00:08:00.008+04:30

It was an adventure with as many twists and turns as there were switchbacks on the trail to the summit. I just got back after a long overnight drive , after summiting Mt Whitney.

At about 14,500 feet, Mt Whitney is the highest point in the contiguous states of the USA (the lower-48 states). The Mt Whitney Trail starts at 8300 feet from Whitney Portal and is 11 miles long to the summit, making it a 22 mile round-trip hike, with over 6500 feet in elevation gain. Every year thousands of people apply for the "Mt Whitney Lottery", as the permits are few and the seekers many. This year a friend of mine had applied for the lottery, but we didn't make it. But thankfully, I re-applied for the "left-over slots" and I was granted 4 permits for 07 Sep, for a day hike !

The permits are usually open from early April to late October and the demand is higher for multi-night trips. The reason being - Acclimatization. For the uninformed, at such altitudes, many can experience Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) and it is important hence, to acclimate before venturing out on such hikes. But since I was only granted permits for a day-hike, it was going to be a challenge even before it started.

I had everything (well almost) planned out well in advance. Had explained to my hiking buddies the risks involved, the trail conditions, the gear list and the plan. I had booked campsites at Lone Pine campground, which was about 6 miles from the trail head. It is a 7 hour long drive to the town of Lone Pine, via US 395, through Tioga Pass Rd (Yosemite) from the San Francisco Bay Area. The Tioga Pass Rd rises up to an elevation of 10,000 ft towards the end, at the ranger station, before merging on to US 395 (elevation ~ 7000 ft) and since my old car had some difficulty in climbing up this road the last time we were here, I decided to go in my friend's much newer car. But seems like I was mistaken and here is where we had the first "twist" in the story !

It was all hunky-dory until we crossed the ranger station on Tioga Pass Rd, on Sunday evening. We had decided to spend about an hour by the Tioga Lake (elevation 9000+ ft) to acclimatize a little, and we did, but when I got back to the car and tried to start it, it wouldn't. It indicated that the battery was low. As always, AT&T is the least reliable of any cellphone carriers, and we had no signal on our iPhones. We could have walked to the ranger station about 2 miles up the road and used the call phone there, but much to my annoyance, my friend neither had his insurance papers nor was he sure if he had road-side assistance coverage. While we were evaluating our options, he asked an old lady in a van near by, if she had any jump-start cables and if she could help us. Thanks to that good old lady (there are many such Samaritans here in the US) she helped us jump-start our car. We were still wondering how could the battery have drained out all of a sudden. My friend declared it could have "just happened" and was confident that it would recharge itself as we drive.

We took off from there and got to the Mobil station at the end of Tioga Pass Rd and decided to fill our tank, but before I could warn my friend, he switched off the engine and lo! It wouldn't start again! This time the owner of the gas station was our good Samaritan. He biked for couple of minutes and brought his truck and the jump start cables. By then I had googled for AAA towing service nearby and learned that there was one in the town of Lee Vinning, which was about a mile away. The good Samaritan also informed us that there was a station mechanic in Lee Vinning who could replace car batteries. So we drove to Lee Vinning and explained the problem to the mechanic. He immediately suggested that we replace the battery. My clueless friend also thought that was the best thing to do. But then as the mechanic was pouring through his battery catalog, we learned that the car's battery was replaced only about 2 years back and technically it should last for 84 months (from its specs). When we told him about this, the guy said he wouldn't know (wtf ?!). He then examined the circuitry and declared that it wasn't the battery, but the alternator that was at fault, which was why the battery wasn't charging. He told us that he could order a replacement, but that won't happen till Tuesday as Monday was labour day. He also discouraged us from driving out of Lee Vinning at night (lights would consume the remaining battery) and suggested we find a place to stay in that town for the night. He also told us it was unlikely that we'd find any mechanic shop nearby who'd be open on Labour Day.

By now, we had also found out that all the motels (which is like 4) in Lee Vinning were full. Luckily there was an RV park nearby where I could call and book 2 tent sites (thankfully we had tents with us). We pitched out tents and then started evaluating our options.

1) Call up a friend and ask him pick us up. Leave the car @ Lee Vinning, to be fixed by the mechanic on Tuesday. Skip Mt Whitney.
2) Charge the car's battery, carry a spare (with tools) and take a chance driving back to San Francisco in the morning. Skip Mt Whitney.
3) Get an iPhone charger (we were running out of charge), use the wireless in the RV Park to search for mechanic shops in nearby towns, who were open on Labour Day and who could replace/fix an Alternator and if by some miracle that could happen, try to continue with the Whitney plan.

Evidently, the chances of continuing with the Mt Whitney plan was very bleak. We got a charger from a nearby gas station and incidentally while asking the shopkeeper for suggestions, we stumbled on this AAA tow-truck driver who informed us that his store in Reno, NV was open on Labour Day and they could replace an alternator. This raised our hopes and we thought perhaps Whitney was a possibility, albeit a distant one. Our plan was to go charge our battery the next morning from the local mechanic and try and make it to Reno, which was about 132 miles away, before the battery drained out.

Next morning, I had called up the Interagency Visitor Center of Inyo National Forest and informed them that there were only 3 in our group (there by releasing the 4th permit for someone else, if they were waiting) and that I'd like a night-drop-box pick up of the permits, as we were running late. The mechanic charged our battery for about an hour and we were all set to drive to Reno (and barely make it before the auto service shop there closed at 2 pm) when we discovered the car wouldn't start again. This made the mechanic examine the situation further and conclude that it was the battery that was fault and he suspected that it had short-circuited, thereby not allowing itself to get charged again. He replaced the battery and confirmed that everything was fine now (the alternator was all fine) and we should be good to go. This brought back a smile on our faces (although I still wasn't sure if his diagnosis was right, but hell, the car seemed fine and we were going to give Whitney a shot again!).

We reached Lone Pine, I went and collected our permits and poop-bags (you are supposed to poop in a bag and pack it out , should you have to answer nature's call in the Mt Whitney Trail :-D ), we devoured some burritos for lunch and head to the Lone Pine Campground (elevation: 5700 ft). I was afraid they'd have canceled my reservation as we didn't show up the previous day. Thankfully, our campsite was still good and we went and pitched our tents. It was very hot and the terrain around us was plain desert. We were told that there were rattle snakes all around (hunting for mice/chipmunks
). We stashed our food in bear-proof lockers and then decided to drive to Whitney Portal campground (elevation: 8300 ft), which was where the Mt Whitney Trail started. Our original plan (before running into car troubles) was to hike up to Lone Pine Lake on the Mt Whitney Trail (elevation: 10,300 ft) and spend couple of hours there to acclimate. But now we had but 2 hours in all. We hiked up the trail for about 45 minutes, spent couple of minutes sitting there and we returned. We had decided to get up early next morning (Tuesday) around 1 am, and start the hike by 2 am. According to some estimates on other hiking blogs, a fast hike up to the summit would take 5 hrs, a moderate would take 8 and a slow hike would take 11. So we thought we should be able to get back by 2 pm (grossly underestimated).

Things went like clockwork that night, we dozed off for a while, woke up at 1 am, packed out tents, had some bread and fruits for a quick breakfast and drove to the trail head. It was 3 am by the time we started our hike. We had already concluded that we cudn't stay as a single group and yet complete the hike by 2 pm like we had initially thought, based on our "acclimatization" hike the previous day. My friend V (whose car we had drove in) was pretty slow and inexperienced. My other friend VK and I had given clear instructions to V on what should be done and we discussed general protocols and precautions for everyone. There were about a dozen people assembling near the trail head by then, all ready to start the hike.

We started precisely at 3 and soon VK and I were ahead of the rest of the gang. We overtook several other hikers along the way and reach Lone Pine Lake (2.8 miles from Trail Head, 10,300 ft) in 70 minutes. That was a good pace. However, as we began to gain elevation, I began to slow down. I had to take pictures, I could only sleep for 2 hours the previous night and I had annoying bouts of head-aches (mild AMS symptom) and all of this was contributing to my slowing down. About over an hour later, I reached Trail Camp (which is where the multi-night hikers camp before ascending to the summit the next day). This place was like a Wind Tunnel. Although weather forecasts indicated it was going to be a bright and sunny day, there were fast chill gusts and winds blowing through this region. I had to put on my gloves and Balaclava by now. The next 2 mile stretch was agonizingly slow, by some counts, there are a total of 99 switchbacks from this point, to the summit.

By this time, couple of other hikers, many whom I had overtaken in my first 3 miles, were going past me. The trick to climbing up the trail at such altitude is to take small and slow steps, while maintaining a steady heart-beat. It was something I could never do. I have never been the one who climbs a flight of stairs patiently, I had to always run. This inability was crippling me. For every 20-30 feet I ascended rapidly, I had to catch my breath, it was worse at times that I had to sit on a rock to get enough oxygen, before ascending again. The annoying headache had to be contained through 2 doses of Ibuprofen. By this time VK had gained couple of hundred feet more than I had and he was beginning to disappear from my line of sight. It was day break by then and I could see the brilliant golden orange rays of the sun, bouncing off the rocky walls of the Sierras. It was beautiful and I clicked several shots.

After couple of more agonizing hours of dragging my feet along, I reached Trail Crest (elevation:13700 ft). I was delighted. For it was only 700 more feet to climb, over 2 miles (or so I thought!). Turns out that the trail descends about 400 feet from Trail Crest to the John Muir Trail Junction. 400 feet at this altitude, without proper acclimatization seemed like climbing a vertical mile! The last 1.9 mile stretch to the summit was the most strenuous of all. There was a blast of chilly wind between the "Needles" next to Mt Whitney, but the views from there were beautiful. By now I had learned the art of taking slow and small steps and getting into a rhythm. I took over 2 hours to cross this stretch and get to the summit. It was 11 am, sharp, when I reached the summit. It had taken me 8 long hours to summit. I saw VK there, who was shivering in cold. He didn't bring his jacket or gloves or a beanie! It seems he had reached the summit an hour before I did (around 10 am) and he was trying to get warm in the stone hut on top. I suggested he descend immediately before he froze and sent him off.

I had some other hikers shoot some pictures of me> I ate some trail nuts and an apple for lunch and began my descent at 11:40 am. While Sheldon Cooper's "Gravity Thou Art a Heartless Bitch" is right for the most part, there can be no better friend than Gravity during the descent! All you need is strong knees and a great sense of balance (part of which perhaps I inherited and part of which I nurtured as a kid), and you can literally run down the trail. Unlike many other trails, the Mt Whitney trail is built on solid rocks. It has a lot of big and small boulders all along the trail making it ideal for downhill-parkouring :-). I was galloping down the trail. I cleared the switchback section alone in 20 minutes and got to the trail camp in 1.5 hours, overtaking many of the other hikers who had summited much before I did. Towards the end of the trail camp, I overtook VK, who was filling up his Camelbak with water from a stream. In 3 hours, I had reached Lone Pine Lake. The lake was beautiful and it was hard to believe I had passed through somethings so beautiful without realizing it, earlier in the morning.

It was just another 2.8 miles to trail-head and I figured I could cover that in 30 minutes, but by then my stomach was showing signs of being upset (thanks to all the water I drank from the taps and streams) and I didn't want to inaugurate my poop-bag :-). So I slowed down to a brisk walk. I reached the trail-head at 3:40 pm, 12 hours and 40 minutes after we had started the hike. I examined my feet for any blisters, but thanks to the Vaseline that I had applied on them, and to the liner I had underneath my hiking socks, my feet were okay. I rested on the rocky walls next to the trail-head for an hour when finally VK came down at about 4:45 pm. We then got into the car and took a nap, hoping for V to show up by about 6:30 pm. But there was no sign of him. It was dark already and we were worried. We thought of inquiring at the Whitney Portal Store for some Park Ranger's number but the store had closed at 8. There was no signal on our cellphones again ! It was 8:30 pm already and we were wondering what should we do if he doesn't show up. We got to the trail-head and wanted to inquire with the other hikers who were descending, if they'd seen V. But there weren't any hikers descending at that time. V was perhaps the last man on the trail. Finally, at about 8:45 pm, we spotted a bright LED light somewhere up the trail. We were sure it was a hiker descending and were about to approach him to inquire about V. But thankfully, behind that hiker, was V, he had finally made it back, after 17.6 hours!

The original plan was to drive back to SF, but it was too late now and given the condition in which we were, we thought it might be a better idea to check-in into a motel somewhere near Lee Vinning for the night and drive back home in the morning. But when we got to Lee Vinning at 11 pm, we still saw the same old "No Vacancy" boards in the 4 motels (seriously, you guys are completely booked even on a Tuesday night ?!). As a last resort we decided to drive back to SF instead of looking around for other motels in nearby towns. V and I took turns to drive from time to time. We even stopped at the Yosemite entrance center and took an hours nap. I drove for the most part back home as I had managed to take a quick nap after my hike. V was in no shape to drive, he was pretty confused and I'd say even non-compos-mentis! After several agonizing hours of "Driving-under-the-influence-of-Redbull", we reached SF at 8:30 am. I had to take the day off from work, to catch some sleep.

* - The words uttered by Sir Edmund Hillary to his friend, after he summited Mt Everest.
I am not Edmund Hillary and Mt Whitney is not Mt Everest, but hey, it is 0.5 time Mt Everest :-D
(14,500 ft Mt Whitney, Vs 29000 ft, Mt Everest :-D ).

Immune System Breach

2010-08-18T07:55:00.002+04:30

After almost 4 years, my immune system has been breached. I have a sore throat now, I don't recall when was the last time I caught cold. All thanks to the Mt Dana hike on Independence Day. The 3100 ft elevation gain hike, in which we ascended from 9945 ft, to 13,061 ft gave me mild systems of dehydration , and it was so hard to breathe up there at that elevation.

Now a cold is all that I needed x-(

You can't go wrong with yourself !

2010-06-09T07:44:00.003+04:30

Work kept me busy for couple of weeks that I had to skip my regular workouts at the gym. After a long-weekend spent rafting and camping in Yosemite (which didn't involve much physical activity), I thought it was time to get back to my regular weekend hikes.

The Stanford Outing Community is not pretty active during summer, so I didn't have the company of strangers. As always asking out friends to join you is pointless. So I decided to hike alone. I decided to hike the 11 mile Berry Creek Falls loop in the Big Basin Redwood State Park, about 50 miles from home. The last time I was in this state park, it was with a friend. She didn't dress warm enough and couldn't stand the cold weather. So we had to settle for a "local" 1 mile loop. I didn't complain, but I was getting a little annoyed with her mood swings (which seems to afflict most of the females I know/I've known --- some things never change I guess).

It was much different this time. The sun was scorching and I could feel the heat even while amidst giant Redwoods! But I was by myself, and I had my gear : Camelbak, Ace-bandage, Ibuprofen tablets, flashlights (I don't hike without all of these, nowadays!) and my lunch. I could be reckless and free again. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I clocked 3 miles/hour on the 11 mile loop which gained 2000+ ft in cumulative elevation. Half-way through the hike, my right foot (which doesn't seem to have healed completely yet) began to hurt, but a dose of Ibuprofen fixed it. I had lunch by the beautiful Golden Cascade waterfall and rested beneath the 60 foot tall Silver Falls and the beautiful Berry Creek falls.

It was a good time connecting with my inner self. I didn't have to get annoyed by someone's eccentricities or super erratic mood swings. I was free from bickering. The trail didn't have to be beautiful to motivate me.

I don't share your appreciation for Art or your appreciation for alien cuisine or your tastes for exotic wine. Call me a Philistine, but this is what I love; being out there connecting with mother nature, may it rain or may it shine.

There is pleasure in loneliness too :-), after all, you cannot go wrong with yourself (?)!

Man Vs Wild, Adventure

2010-05-02T20:09:00.003+04:30

I set out on a 23 mile hike with a 7000 ft elevation gain, with the s.o.c (mostly strangers) last morning. The plan was to start at Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, make our way into the Mt Diablo State Park, Ascend both the peaks of Mt Diablo and take a shuttle to get back to our parking lot in Morgan Park's staging area. In my last couple of 15+ miles hikes, I've always had trouble with my hiking shoes. My feet are the weakest link in my body, with these crappy shoes. Either my toes begin to hurt by constantly impinging on the front part of my shoe (while descending steep slopes), or the soles develop blisters (thanks to the crappy insoles). A great pair of hiking socks mitigates the problem to an extent, but in the end the crappy shoes always win.

We started around 10:30 am (quite a late start) and were averaging 2-2.5 miles/hour as we took frequent breaks to discuss about the geology, the plant and wildlife around us. After covering about 6 miles and ascending 2000 ft, we decided to take a lunch break. Around this time my plantar-facia began to develop some internal inflammation and was sending me a signal that I shouldn't put much weight on my right heel. I thought it should get better along the way and kept moving with the group. By the time we had descended 2000 ft and reached the foothill of Mt Diablo, my heel was in very bad shape. I could barely walk on my right foot. We had covered about 12 miles now and it was already 4 PM. I continued with the group for another 15 minutes by dragging myself behind them. During our next stop at a trail junction, I informed the hike leader Val (who btw, is a 68 yr old female, a former ultra marathoner, mountain biker, trail runner.... very impressive background) that my feet were giving way and I couldn't keep up with them. Val showed me some directions on her map and suggested I hike back for 3.5 miles and reach the Morgan Territory Rd, from where I should be able to hitchhike a ride to the parking lot where I had left my car. I didn't have a map of my own and the park was pretty deserted. Seemed like around that time of the evening, we were the only hikers in a 9 sq mile area.

I figured that this might be easier on my heels and chose to find my way back. Val gave me couple of Ibuprofen tablets and I gulped them down. Ibuprofen is a wonder-drug. Couple of months back when I had gone skiing with KD and SP to Tahoe, I had a bad fall that injured my left knee (LCL strain/tear). I was limping and in couple of hours the knee began to swell. Although I had initially refused to take Ibuprofen when SP insisted, I had to when the pain became unbearable. Thanks to Ibuprofen, I was able to climb up the stairs to my apartment and send-off KD and SP. This time was no different, Ibuprofen was my savior.

It was quite an adventure tracing my way back to the parking lot. Soon after I left the group, I hit Curry Canyon Rd, however, I went in the opposite direction (west) towards Curry Point. I walked for a mile and all the while I kept thinking the route looked unfamiliar. Then I found the sun to be right ahead of me and then what Ejaz said struck me ("keep traveling east"). Realizing I had made a stupid mistake, I retraced my steps and hiked for about 2.5 miles to get to the park boundary of Mt Diablo State Park. From there it was another 2-2.5 miles on Curry Canyon Rd to get to Morgan Territory Rd.

By now my right foot seemed to have gotten alright (thanks to the Ibuprofen dose!) and I didn't see why I should take a ride as I had no reason now to complain. It was around 6 PM and fortunately my iPhone had 3G coverage. I found out that I had about 6 miles to go along Morgan Territory Rd to reach the staging area. I kept walking and from time to time I jogged. A handful of motor vehicles passed by, probably around 5 in all but I chose not to hitchhike. I figured that I should be able to get to the staging area by 7:30 PM, but it turned out that my GPS wasn't accurate enough (frickin Google maps ><, this wasn't the first time!). It was 7:30 and I still couldn't see the staging area in sight. I decided I would hitchhike on any vehicle that passed by after 7:30 as I wasn't too sure how far away I was from the staging area, and it was getting dark. Unfortunately not even one vehicle passed by after 7 PM.

It was almost dark, the road was long, narrow and winding. There were flies and mosquitoes all over the place (I was walking on the road through a dense forest). At times the thought crossed my mind as to what would I do when it gets pitch dark and not one vehicle should pass by. I had about a 500 ml of water left, I had my rain jacket, perhaps I could find some spot beside the road to rest. I was thinking about Snakes, Coyotes and Giant Mosquitoes. How was I going to deal with them all without fire or a flashlight? But it wasn't time for that yet. My feet were now sore and I had developed multiple blisters, but I had to keep pushing myself.

I kept walking, jogging, walking and I was totally frustrated. Then I saw the board "Morgan Territory Regional Preserve" and I was so relieved! It was 8:10 PM when I got into my car, by then there were only 2 other cars left in the parking lot. In the end it was 12 (when I left the group) + 4.5 (via Curry Canyon Rd to Morgan Territory Rd, including my screw-ups) + 7.2 (from Curry Canyon Rd and Morgan Territory Rd junction to the Staging Area) = 23.7 miles hike for me. I would have gained 3000 ft + in elevation. I drove for an hour and reached home around 9:30 PM and crashed in my bed

It was a nice experience. Unfortunately my shoes and feet weren't on my side today. The last time I was in a similar situation was 6 years back, when I had gone to meet my senior in IIM-B. I was stranded in Bannerghetta Rd, in pitch dark at 10:30 PM at night. My herniated disc on the lumbar spine made it nearly impossible to walk for more than 100m without taking a break. But hey, I lived to tell the tale :-p!

Weeding out facebook feeds

2010-03-20T10:12:00.005+03:30

Over the years I've hidden 188 off 294 friends from my facebook feeds. No wonder i don't see much activity in my feeds these days.

From what I recollect, here are some of the reasons why I have hidden feeds from ppl :

1) Calling Trisha beautiful
2) Praising Microsoft
3) Approving 6 or more friends in one go.
4) Those wanting me to become a farmer (multiple requests)
5) Showing signs of being a communist
6) Logging on to facebook once a month.
7) Horoscope app users
8) Emo-freaks
9) Posting obviously fake videos :-p
10) Guys/girls brooding over a lost bf/gf for over 2 days.
11) gf/bf liking every other status update of the other (even if it was about taking a dump!)

Don't take it personally folks (if i am still visible on your feeds). I love ya'all. Its just that I get bored of/pissed-off at most things after a while...like 2-3 days :-p

First experiments with Skiing

2010-01-26T04:40:00.004+03:30

Went to the Lake Tahoe region to spend a day skiing in the beautiful weather with KD and SP. It was my first attempt at skiing. Just when it looked like I had "got it", my reckless nature took over. I gained a lot of speed and momentum skiing down a slope and thought the easiest way to break my speed would be to take a fall. What a fall it was....and now I am left nursing an injured leg :-)

>> The Redwoods <<

2010-01-03T11:04:00.005+03:30

What a way to begin the New Year! I drove to the Redwood National and State Parks in northern California. What a trip it was ! The Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwood State park, Jedediah Redwood State Park and Del Norte Redwood State Park in Crescent City followed by the Lady Bird Johnson Redwood State Park and Prairie Creek Redwood State park.

Pictures won't do justice. Here are some pictures nevertheless.

Neither can words do justice, but this one gets close to ....

"The Redwoods"

Here, sown by the Creator's hand,
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand;
No other clime is honored so,
No other lands their glory know.

The greatest of Earth's living forms,
Tall conquerors that laugh at storms;
Their challenge still unanswered rings,
Through fifty centuries of kings.

The nations that with them were young,
Rich empires, with their forts far-flung,
Lie buried now - their splendor gone;
But these proud monarchs still live on.

So shall they live, when ends our day,
When our crude citadels decay;
For brief the years allotted man,
But infinite perennials' span.

This is their temple, vaulted high,
And here we pause with reverent eye,
With silent tongue and awe-struck soul;
For here we sense life's proper goal;

To be like these, straight, true and fine,
To make our world, like theirs, a shrine;
Sink down, oh traveler, on your knees,
God stands before you in these trees.”

(By Joseph B. Strauss, Chief Engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge)

>> Pristine Pacific <<

2009-12-07T03:41:00.004+03:30

>> Learning the probability distribution of the Uni(?)verse <<

2009-07-15T20:49:00.003+04:30

A friend of mine recently asked through his status message on facebook "Why is it that we follow the decimal system (other than the fact that we have had 10 fingers)".

Following are some of our hilarious (?) exchanges :-p

Jugger:

One doubt. Whats this "decimal" number system? Btw, humans have 1010 fingers. Can't you count?

Friend:

"Suppose we had followed binary system, all calculations would have been tougher, representing (and hence remembering) even small numbers would have required more digits. Would that have led to better neuro-evlotions (in terms of computation and memory) ?"

Jugger:

Memory is for those who can't compute. A string of bits is more easily compressible than a string of chars (more likely to have repeatition). So we can store numbers in compressed form :-p besides, it is easy to compute in binary. Again what is this "digit" that u just mentioned? Is it something like our "bit" ? :-p

Friend:

"memory is for those who can't compute." - NO. The Turing machine has memory. All theoretical computer models assume availability of memory. Yes; digit is like bittu. If we had followed binary system, we would have used the word digitu instead of bittu.

Jugger:

the intended meaning was that anything that can be computed (efficiently), shouldn't be stored. (In other words, if the Kolmogorov complexity of the object you would like to store is less than the size of the object itself, you'd rather store the computation).

Friend:

Yea, the kangaroo complexity matter makes sense.

Jugger:

On a serious Note:

1) You ask this question only because the decimal system is popular today. (Sumerians and the Babylonians used Sexagecimal system -- base 60)

2) The same can be asked about why anthropomorphs have a pair of arms, pair of legs. We could have certainly done better with 4 pairs of them. I believe evolution is an optimization algorithm, that has its quirks (exploration vs exploitation) in the form of random mutation. Not everything we have is "optimal".... Read More

3) The same can be asked about religion. Why is Christianity, Islam the two most popular religions in the world. Are they the "optimal" ? (I guess not :-p)

4) The entire universe in the space-time continuum (the state of every matter in it) can be considered as a string of bits (infinitely long). The current "configuration" is only one of the infinite possibilities. We do not know the "distribution" of these configuration (yet?). May be all configurations have a finite probability, may be some are more probable.

so the right question to ask is perhaps NOT "why is this possible?", but "how probable is this"

:-)

Ippidi pesittu irundha no scope for finding a figure....so lets dissolve this debate and get back to work.

Not sure how much of that techno-babble makes sense :-).

>> Half-dome hike <<

2009-06-17T06:10:00.007+04:30

Finally after a year, SP and I hiked half-dome with a couple of her other friends.

The weather was expected to be worse, but thanks to good planning we managed to get to the peak by 11 AM and back by 12 noon. There was a heavy rain, followed by hail storm which made the cables wet and the route to the peak very slippery. Unfortunately this resulted in a fatal fall for a 41 yr old, who fell to his death some 1000 feet below the peak. Details here: Hiker Falls to Death. Probably someone we saw on our way back from the peak.

I was also terribly irritated by the sick bastards pushing their way up and down the cables.....many of them have little respect for those who are slow. One slip up there by one man could spell disaster for dozens of others....if only they had some common sense! I hope one of these bastards wasn't the reason behind the poor Hiker's death.

It was funny (and scary) to see SP swear at a man who pushed his way past her, during our descent from the cables :-)). Some wise thinking made her bring a harness...it proved handy. I was the reckless one up there...sans gloves, sans hiking shoes, sans harness ...

Yosemite and Half dome....a fantastic place indeed, was a wonderful weekend well spent in YNP!

>> Facebook killed the blogger <<

2009-05-30T07:21:00.002+04:30

When it is much easier to post quick status updates on Facebook, there is not much of an urge to blog.

This place is perhaps goinna be devoid of new posts for a while.

>> It happens only in India? <<

2009-03-12T10:27:00.004+03:30

A conglomeration of breakers of coalitions (AIADMK,CPI,JD,BJD,TDP) form a coalition (Third front) and expect to be voted to power....it happens only in India!

Look at the track record of the members of this Coalition called Third Front!

The shameless AIADMK which withdrew support from the NDA govt in 1998 leading to the Lok Sabha elections being conducted twice within a period of 2 years in India.

The party of maggots JD (HD Sleping Gowda and his son) refused to honor the agreement they had with BJP in sharing power after having ruled for 3 years, were kicked out of power in 2008 with a resounding win for the BJP (and its first victory in the south).

Patnaik and his BJD who withdrew support last week, from the NDA with false hopes of being a major player in their dreams of a "third front" govt.

Mayawati and her BSP which called the Nuclear deal as "anti-islamic" coz it was being considered in place of bringing natural gas from Iran, THROUGH PAKISTAN!

The party of communists (the word "communist" by itself is more insulting than my coterie of choicest abuses!) who want to establish a Chinese regime in India, withdrew their support from the UPA coz they did not want India alienating itself from China by palling with the USA.

These uncouth maggots form a coalition and expect to be voted to power? Can we let them?
It will be a grave shame and error on judgment if you my countrymen vote these scoundrels into power. India can forget the sustained 10% GDP growth rate it dreams of, (the seeds of which were sown in the 90s, into which our economy was catapulted during the NDA regime and sadly squandered by the UPA in the end!)

Let us bid adieu to the Useless Political Alliance (UPA) and dynasty politics of the Congress. I can't recall any significant achievement of the UPA govt (barring the N-Deal which the NDA could have gotten done anyway!) to boost our infrastructure (hell they even messed up the Golden Quadrilateral which was initiated and gained great momentum under Vajpayee's NDA govt), to boost our economy, to create wealth and include all sections of the society without alienating some! Our country has become the playground for terrorists exported out of the failed states that surround ours. The UPA inherited an economy that was growing at 8% PA in 2004 and now have unbelievably brought it down to 5.7% last quarter. Some blame this as a side-effect of the poor performance of the economy of the world over as a whole, but then shouldn't the 9.5% GDP that was achieved in 2007 also be attributed to the good performance of the world economy? The UPA which thinks Slumdog Millionaire winning oscars is an achievement of their govt, the UPA which bluffed about using "Tycoon Services" to retrieve Bapu's memorablia (and ulimately got snubbed and their lie was exposed by Mallya).

Can we let our nation be wasted by these incompetent imbecile oafs who "represent" us at the lice-nest?

Vote for NDA, vote for BJP! (Not because I ask you to, but go explore and vote when you are convinced what the best choice would be).I am a supporter of LK Advani , if you would like to know more about him, the BJP's manifesto or the upcoming talks of "Advani on Campus" visit www.lkadvani.in

If you are a blogger who is a supporter of Advani, add the "Bloggers for Advani" button you will find to the right of this blog post.(simply click on it and follow the directions).

It is great to see Advani reach out to the youth of India like Barack Obama did here in the US. It will be great to see the day when the battle for Lok Sabha is fought in the colleges and universities in India with the promise of prosperity and catapulting India into an economic and military superpower through sound policies that are well debated, as the ammunition and not with 100 Rupee notes or packets of Biriyani in remote villages or city slums!

GO AND VOTE my countrymen.... we are a YOUNG NATION, 650 million of us are under 35, let us be the change we want to see in India!
Spread the word!

oblivion

2009-02-28T11:55:00.002+03:30

Another sidereal revolution of the sun went unnoticed but for family and 2 not so close friends.
Feels normal.

The Quitter

2009-02-25T11:21:00.001+03:30

inspiring...
---------------
(by Robert Service)

When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and . . . die.
But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . .
It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard.

"You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame.
You're young and you're brave and you're bright.
"You've had a raw deal!" I know -- but don't squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It's the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit:
It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard.

It's easy to cry that you're beaten -- and die;
It's easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight --
Why, that's the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try -- it's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.
----------------

>> The Outlanders <<

2009-02-22T05:54:00.004+03:30

A friend of mine happened to raise the following question on a discussion board

"Will you work (legally) in a foreign country against popular wishes?"

His personal view was that it was far better to get back to one's home country (where we are wanted) than work in a foreign land no matter what "dream job" you may have (and you are not wanted).

I had to say this:

What makes you think we are wanted/accepted in India?

Manus/MNS/Thackeray don't want Bhaiyas in Mumbai.
Karuna and his clowns don't want Northies/Kannadigas in TN.
Communists in West Bengal don't want any form of development (they are happy with their barren lands).
Kashmiris don't want people from other states in "their" land (Article 370 forbids it anyway).
Kannada Rakhshana Vedike and other such orgs in KA want reservation for kannadigas in IT and BT.
Mayawati wants dalits
Arjun Singh wants OBCs (not so long ago an Indian Brain was on sale on e-bay!)
Barkha,Sagarika,Rajdeep et al want Sickulars (aka Hindu Bashers)
Muthalik, Bajrang Dal and other such useless orgs want "moral" folks.

Makes me wonder....aren't we "Outlanders" anyway anywhere?

>> Barkha Dutt Silences right to free speech <<

2009-01-29T22:37:00.003+03:30

Shame on NDTV and Shame on Barkha Dutt to use their strong arm tactics and political clout to silence a blogger who posted his views on 26/11 coverage by Barkha Dutt and NDTV.

For details follow this link.
Barkha Dutt silences free speech

>> Atheists Acknowledged <<

2009-01-26T05:42:00.002+03:30

Did you watch Barack Obama's inaugural address last week? Well, I didn't as I was on my way back from my winter vacation in India. (Too bad I should have chosen a different return date). But I picked up the Wall street journal while waiting @ Frankfurt airport and found the transcript of Obama's inaugural speech. It was quite interesting, sensible and avoided hot-air. But what impressed me the most were the following lines:

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers."

I think he is the first American President to have acknowledged Atheists as Citizens.

When George Bush Sr was asked way back in 1987 what message he had for his Atheist supporters, he had said:

"I don't think Atheists should be considered as Citizens, nor can they be patriotic. We are one nation under God".

May sense prevail (again)!

>> Vulnerability of Economic Progress <<

2008-12-04T19:16:00.003+03:30

Yeah right......secure your police forces, get better equipment, give higher bonuses, better pay, upgrade technology, seal the borders bla bla bla .... spend as much as you want and "protect" yourself.

While the terrorists keep hatching more plans to inflict more damage.... the best defense is a strong offense! period! Nobody should mess around with India.... Bush's administration failed for so many reasons, not necessarily coz it invaded Iraq.

He who says WAR is not a solution should remember that if humans are alive today it is coz we wiped out other "competing species". Survival is indeed of the fittest.

There is no point in spending 28 billion $ on our defense budget if it cannot be exercised in such times of national crisis from external militancy.

India is not a war monger, but it is pusillanimous to back-off from war. You will become vulnerable and this economic progress alone is our biggest vulnerability if we don't fearlessly tackle external threat. While the terrorist bastards and pak will continue to mess around by abetting and inciting countless terrorists.

When your house is being looted by marauders, will you blow the shit outta the marauders or will you build a fence around the house?

It is a well known fact that US became the "official superpower" and recovered from the great economic depression after the war economy took over starting from late 1936. War greatly progresses technology that at the end of the war the economy is strengthened (if planned properly).

Look at what the former chief of ISI says about "bombing bangalore".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBb3aLAJ3Lc

These cowards can't even dream of economic progress, all that they can dream of is destroying the symbols of economic progress.

While neo-(pseudo)intellectuals in Paki parliament (like Marvi Memon) concoct stories like this is an international conspiracy and that India is trying to destabilize pakistan (as if your country has ever been stable) and that India is fighting a war for resources "Oil, Wheat and Water", she said.

Yeah right, your country is staring bankruptcy in its face and we are interested in your "resources"!!! What filth. Are you guys even in control of your own democracy? Every time zardari makes a spontaneous statement only to be made to retract it by the army/ISI. Taliban in the meanwhile has been threatening to take over Pakistan.

>> Who are the real cowards? <<

2008-11-28T15:43:00.004+03:30

"This is an act of cowardice", thats the all too familiar words we hear from UPA politicos after every act of terror.

Shut the fuck up you pusillanimous scoundrels. No they are not the cowards, they have dared to enter the Indian soil from Karachi and have dared to bomb our landmarks, shoot out people, target our railway stations, our commuters and the common man, and they have done it AGAIN!

The real cowards are the 275 in the UPA!
I am so sick of politically correct crap! The shameless MMS delivered a "robotic speech" (as Shobha De --whom I dislike, but it is not relevant right now --- called it), soon after the operations were underway by the NSG commandos.

While Mr Presentable Patil was finding it hard to construct a proper sentence while addressing the media (and he wudn't take questions).

Where the fuck is that bastard Raj Thackeray and his MNS? It is your mumbai (as you claim) that is bleeding, what the fuck can you do to heal its wounds?(some inflicted by you and your men)

He who declared the no flight will take-off from Mumbai until all sacked Jet Employees are re-instated, he who beat up the poor bhaiyas and biharis and the helpless autowallas, taxiwallas and rickshaw-wallas....where the fuck are his men? Chickened out?

I am also so sick of hearing this italian waitress speaking about the economy, about governance, national pride and fighting against terrorism.

What the fuck the whole point of flaunting the Brahmos, the Agni, the Prithvi and SURYA if you we cannot take these cockroaches out, in their breeding ground in Pakistan?

ACT....or QUIT -UPA- Useless Political Alliance....enough is enough!

PS: I saw this movie "A wednesday" couple of minutes back and it has summed up the emotions of the "common man" pretty clearly. I recommend the readers of this blog, to watch the same!

Here is a scene from the movie

>> Samjho Wahin Hame Bhi, Dil Ho Jahan Hamara <<

2008-11-08T23:59:00.011+03:30

Iqbal had written in "Saare Jahan Se Accha"

Gurubat mein ho agar hum, rehti hai dil batan mein
Samjho wahin hame bhi, Dil ho jahaan hamara

(Even when we are away from our Motherland, our heart remains fixated on our home country
Consider us there, where our hearts are).

On my way to the Liberty Island in lower Manhattan, I was pleasantly surprised by a violinist playing a beautiful note which sounded too familiar and melodious.

I tipped him a dollar bill and thanked him for playing.
Here is the video

>> Moonstruck <<

2008-10-22T05:35:00.004+03:30

Woo Hooo!!! I watched with bated breath as PSLV-C11 blasted off the Satish Dhawan Space Centre from Shriharikota in the early hours of wednesday IST.

India has pulled off a successful first stage of the Chandrayaan-I mission and the lunar orbiter is orbiting the earth picking up enough momentum from the centrifugal gravitation force of attraction, to escape off the orbit and head towards the moon. It will be at least 15 days before the moon impact probe with the Indian tricolor plunges onto the surface of the moon.

As the head of the Chandrayaan mission, Mr Mylswamy Annadurai (an alumnus (batch of 1982) of my alma-mater - PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India) put it "Our baby is on its way to the moon"!

Kudos to ISRO!

The Informavore

2008-10-19T16:12:00.010+03:30

There was a time when my life was a lot less complicated growing up in the suburbs (which my friends called as bucolic) of Chennai, India . I'd wake up at 6 in the morning, spend couple of minutes in the terrace gazing at the stray dogs in the streets or at the cows grazing on the juicy grass, inspect the the vicinity for water-logging from the rains that lashed the previous night. After breakfasting on my favourite masala-dosais, I'd pick up my bike and wade through the flowing stream of crystal-clear rain water on our network of roads. I'd board the suburban train at 7:30am and get to school by 8:30 am. How I loved that fresh breath of early morning breeze, the soothing mist and a gentle drizzle during monsoon.

There wasn't much of an "information overload" in school. It was so much fun. On the way back home in the evening, I'd munch on "finger chips" or "wheel chips" or "verkadalai" or "thenga burphy" in the train. How much I enjoyed travelling on the footboard of the trains with the wind in my hair, how much I enjoyed entraining and detraining a moving train, in every station between my school to my home!

On getting home, I used to spend an hour or so watching cartoons on Doordarshan, and then I used to get back to the station on my TVS Champ to pick up my Dad. There seemed to be so much time at my disposal. Procrastination was alien to me. I never suffered from "Inertia of Rest". I could set my mind on anything at anytime and execute it with remarkable aplomb. My day ended at 11 pm (after watching the 9PM movie on HBO or Star Movies).

But now all that I have got is my Latop. I am more "connected" to the world than I have ever been, (I have 435 friends on Orkut, 200 on Facebook besides a 1000 others I know, but have not added to my network) yet I am strangely so aloof! I am this lifeless Zombie that sleeps during the day, works (interleaved with a lot of other activities - of course on my computer!) at odd hours (1AM-6AM) and feeds on information 24 hours a day! (While asleep, I sub-conciously replay the info I fed on while awake) and procrastination has become my bed-fellow!

Yes, I am not a herbivore nor a carnivore. I think informivore describes me better.

I feed on information. Deprive me of information (while keeping me indoors) and I begin to feel withdrawal symptoms.

There was a time when I barely used to skim through the morning newspaper, while my brother and dad would rip it apart and each would take away sections that were of interest to them.

But now although I don't read news in paper form (except for the occasional perusal through Daily Texan while waiting for the UT Shuttle), I don't find even 8 news sources satisfying my appetite.

www.iblive.com
www.ndtv.com
www.cnn.com
www.bbc.com
www.abcnews.com
www.topsamachar.com (contains listings from 4 Indian newspapers).

It is not enough if I keep track of the happenings in India alone. I have to read every goddamned happening in the US and also in the UK :-o

Besides this I also require a daily dose of youtube videos (atleast 20-30 videos on a normal day?).My account on youtube says I joined sometime in 2006 and till this date I have watched 11,752 videos!! Couple of years ago I would not have believed that a great amount of knowledge could be gained on youtube videos (besides the great amount of crap I watch).

And then those countless wikipedia articles (applause to the founder of wiki, there has never been so much information in such readily "digestible" format for an informivore). Gosh! It is so addictive that a breadth-first traversal or a depth first traversal of this polytope could take you into completely uncharted territory. As beautifully illustrated by www.xkcd.com, that is indeed the problem with wiki!!

Times have changed. Perhaps just like an overdose of calories into the body results in obesity, an overdose of information might eventually result in mental obesity. It might be worthwhile for all information sources to publish the "Entropy" (Information Content - {sum_i(p_ixlog(1/p_i)}) of every news item they publish. It is time for me to be "Entropy Conscious" just like people are "Calorie Conscious".

Are you an Informivore?

PS:The term "Informivore", was NOT coined by me.

>> Wallstreet and Mainstreet woes <<

2008-10-10T23:11:00.005+03:30

Doesn't it look too familiar?
Yes, I am sick of seeing such pictures on all new channels and websites, too!!

x-( x-(

>> Yaanaikkum Adi Sarukkum <<

2008-10-03T07:07:00.010+03:30

I don't know when I first got to understand world politics.....but as a kid brought up in Kendriya Vidhyalayas in India, I am proud that patriotism was nourished into me in many languages. The Nation was placed before everything else. My school prayer read

"vatan ke vaaste jeena vatan key vaastey marna, vatan par jaan fida karna prabhu humko sikha dena"
(Lord teach us to live and die for the Nation and sacrifice our life for the Nation)

amongst its many other lines.

My school Pledge read

"Hum apne desh aur desh vasiyon key prathi bafadaar rehney ki pratigya karte hain aur unke kalyaan aur sukh sumridhi mein hi, hamara sukh nihit hai"

(We pledge to be loyal to our country and our countrymen. It is in their progress, lies our happiness").

But I did not know that my Country (in spite of its rich and varied heritage and great history) was not a contemporary Economic, Military or Technological Super-power of any sort. I was told by one of my Teachers that my Country was in debt.....hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. Year after year, I remember watching the Budget (although I had not much idea of what it was, I was informed by my Dad that it was an analogy to the monthly expenditure of a House) where the Finance Minister would announce a hundreds of crores of budget deficit. India was then staring bankruptcy in its face.( Licenseraj and Babudom had crippled the economy) and the future was bleak!

On the other end, USA, that glorified Nation as it was projected in every middle class family in India, the leviathan, the singular economic, technological and military super-power of the world (it was early 1990s, the Soviet Union had collapsed by then) was announcing hundreds of billions of dollars in budget SURPLUS.I used to read in factoids that "There are more cars than people in Los Angeles". All the numerous hollywood movies and tele-series I watched, painted the same picture. I remember watching those missiles being fired by the US Army in Gulf. It was during this time, did I have the first conversations with my dad about missiles and weapons. My dad used to tell me that USA had ICBMs which could travel thousands of kilometers to strike its target. That they had put a man on the moon over a decade before I was born! American political leaders wielded global influence. They had "credibility" in atleast a majority of the "capitalist" nations.

I used to wonder how could one Nation be so powerful? How different were the people of that Nation? Could it really be possible that such a super-power was infallible?

Its been over 18 years now (the time it takes for a baby to earn "universal adult suffrage") and things have changed. They have changed a lot!

This Nation has been at war in Iraq for over 7 years. The economy is on a 3 trillion dollar debt! This year alone, half a trillion dollars of debt were accumulated.
The wallstreet is collapsing, some of the largest banks in America have gone bankrupt and have been acquired by other companies.The Nations largest automobile manufacturers (General Motors and Ford) posted over 4 billion dollars in losses the last quarter. Oil prices soared to over 150$/barrel. The economy has not been doing well and the Federal Govt is debating a 700 billion $ bail out of the Wallstreet, from the tax-payers money!!! (that includes mine :-) )

There has of late, been a historic shift on the focus towards Asia after over hundreds of years, with China and India being touted as the next big players in the Global Arena! The United States has been doing business like crazy with India. There was intense competition very recently between France, Russia and the United States to sell their Defense Systems to India, a market worth over 30 billion dollars (India's National Defense Expenditure) . A strong push from the US helped India obtain an approval from NSG and IAEA to sign a historic Nuclear deal with the USA in what could be a 150 billion $ business that would generate over 250,000 jobs in the US over the next couple of years, which ended "34 years of India's Nuclear Apartheid" as quoted in popular media!

China sent its first man for a Space Walk last week. India is due to launch Chandrayaan-I, the first orbital to the Moon (which I am awaiting with baited breadth). Japanese cars are the most preferred on US roads these days! Efficiency is what matters more to Americans today.

Thus the United States is no longer the undisputed economic and technological super-power that it used to be.

Leaving those aside, it has been over a year since I have been here. My childhood wonders on "How different were the people of USA" have been disillusioned!

Yes, a majority of the Americans are friendly, responsible citizens. I like the way they keep their city clean, the way they smile even at strangers, their helpful nature and all that. A small percentage of them are very smart, hard-working, well-traveled, knowledgeable about the world, kind, rational, respectful to say the least. I commend them....applause to you guys!

But unfortunately I am appalled by the ignorance of the majority! They are no different from any Tarun, Dinesh and Harish (Tom, Dick and Harry?) you would find in India.

The majority in this Nation are religious fanatics in their own ways! You guys view Islam as evil but how less evil are you guys who cannot believe in Evolution just because it is against your faith? We all know the history of the Church, don't we? The Church that burnt the books of my Heroes like Galileo. The Church which killed Copernicus because of his Helio-centric theory!

I could not believe that only 30% of this Nation VOTED! (And those who did, elected GWB Twice!). However I am absolutely flabbergasted by the Vice Presidential Nominee elected by the Presidential Candidate of the GOP - Sarah "Barracuda" (Buruda-udra) Palin! I am at a loss of words to watch the people who support her! Like someone quoted on CNN blogs "She represents the joyful marriage of Ignorance and Confidence" and I think those who support her should be ashamed to know that she might be regarded in the world over, as the symbol for American Woman!

I have been following all the news about her and have watched all of her Interviews (with CBS, CNN, and the VP Debate) since when she shot into limelight. As Bill Maher quotes "she is a Category 5 Moron". With millions of rational, smart and concerned Americans, I (an Alien!) am seriously worried at the possibility of the "Buruda-udra" (lying) becoming the President of the United States! (she as quoted in popular media could possibly be "a 72 year old's heart beat away from Presidency!").The political leadership of this Nation has lost its credibility in the world over.

I am no longer the 8 year old in India who was fascinated by the Economic, Technological and Military Might of America. While I truly commend the great ideas of the Founding Fathers of this Nation and I believe that great ideas have been nourished (and will be nourished) in this country, and that this Nation has the finest academic Universities of Higher Education, I stand corrected about its infallibility. The old adage in my native language- Tamil is quite true: "Yaanaikkum Adi Sarukkum" (The Elephant can slip too - A Super-power can fall as well).

Get Well Soon USA! I am a well-wisher nevertheless. While readers of this blog might believe it is because of my vested interests, I would say the United States is the country I love most after my motherland - India.

I guess this is what the smart minority America that I spoke of feel like:
"(Don't Want to be an) American Idiot" by Green Day

PS: I am not suggesting that my motherland is perfect.....I have been very vocal about the dumb political leadership back there as well, but in this bloglet I am expressing how my perception of the USA has changed in two decades.

>> Maximum Entropy Mademoiselle <<

2008-09-20T20:56:00.024+04:30

It is believed that the Basal Ganglia in the Human Brain is the biological equivalent of the "Scheduler/Processor". It is the general program sequencer, choosing the next event to be processed and sends those for execution. As I write this bloglet, it is the Basal Ganglia that is determining what words come out next (which is usually very relevant to the context).

However, there are those who have managed (willfully) to manupulate their Basal Ganglia. One of them perhaps, is S. S rapidly generates out of context, random topics during the course of any conversation.

Does S have an inbuilt Gibbs Sampler for picking a topic from the joint distribution of the set of all topics? Perhaps yes, S adheres to the Markovian property in her random walks on the landscape of topics, but I am not sure the Markov Chain is of which order!

Or is S's language model a biological version of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation? I have so far not been successful in learning this model in spite of the availability of over two and a half years of training data. In S's case, both the probability of choosing a topic and the probability of picking a word given a topic is Max Entropy.

Nevertheless, S is the only one with whom I can speak to, about all things under the sun! (literally).Politics, Sports, Wildlife, Adventure, Economy, Current Affairs, Science, Math, Atheism, Physics, Health, Nutrition, Computer Science, History.... you name it and S has an opinion to share!

(However, I have to temporally re-organize her responses, binning them into the appropriate topics, to make sense out of it all :-) ).

Who is S? S is the Maximum Entropy Mademoiselle!

PS: Sorry for the technobabble :-p

>> Beware of the Psycho? <<

2008-09-10T09:30:00.007+04:30

S and I had caught up couple of weeks back, this summer at SFO. While recounting some incidents from the past, S told me that she was once warned by the females in the LH: "You are going to Chennai by Train right? Beware of him, he is a Psycho".

S and I have never spoken to each other back then, for that matter, neither was I the kind who went around looking for trouble. Nevertheless, it was a stern caution that the females had issued.

While S knew (now) that the females were not entirely wrong back then, she wondered what possibly lead to such a judgment on their part.

Well, let me try to infer what could have lead them to that conclusion.

1) You always have this unapproachable glowering look on your face (atleast to the females)

2) You are opposed to the idea of playing a "Chris Game" in class, you refuse to participate in it, and call it "Evangelism" (Why not "Diwali game"?)

3) Some of your classmates (females) wish you on your birthday and ask you for a treat, you thank them for their wishes but rudely disappoint them with a "Whats-so-special-it-is-just-another-day" response.

4) You outrightly turn down an invitation for a "youth festival" ( to sing Alleluia) and also dissuade your fellow classmates from participating in any such non-sensical gatherings that are the first steps in evangelizing people of other faith.

5) If a girl in your class breaks into tears apparently coz of something you objected to, and when your fellow classmates request you to apologise, you show them all the middle finger.

6) If a girl wishes you "Best of Luck", before your exams, you give her a stare back and say nothing. When you catch up with her later on you preach to her that "I don't believe in luck, or exchanging such wishes".

7) When many of your classmates spend time "interacting" with the opposite sex during "Short Breaks" (15 minutes) or gorging on a samosa/cream-bun at NMB, you spend those 15 minutes in pouring through the Encyclopaedia in the library to "look-up" about stuff you had jotted down the previous day.

8) You are passionate about your ideas, about your ambitions, about some/one people/person, but cannot reconcile betrayal.

9) Your mind is in a highly quantized space, you can see the world around you only in black and white. It is either love or hate, friend or foe, all or nothing.

10) And most significantly, you are a complete-chauvinist, semi-misogynist, quartero-narcissist. (Deadly combo).

Sigh..... its been over 7 years now. Perhaps I have mellowed out and may be I am more tolerable now, but I have a feeling "Once a psycho, always a psycho".

>> Lace and Interlace <<

2008-09-07T14:04:00.002+04:30

"Can you tie my lace?", the kid asked.

I did not know what to respond back with. I hesitated for a moment, then bent on my knees and began "tying" the child's lace.

Something didn't seem alright, it was taking longer than expected and was harder than anticipated. But not being the one to give up, I persevered with this monstrous task of taming the child's shoe laces.

But the laces wouldn't obey my dextrous hands.
I had seen my brother tie his laces, had seen my dad tie his....and had also watched my mom tie mine, but somehow I couldn't reproduce what they did. "Knots" I had tied with the kid's laces, not one or two....18 of them.... but it was not even close to how the knots on mine shoe laces looked like. I paused for a moment.....flummoxed by what seemed to have gone wrong....but then a smile light up on my face.... I had atleast made some progress.... it was just a matter of a couple of more seconds (I told myself)..... I continued to let my nimble fingers work on them laces.

Finally it was done.... what were two distinct chords of nylon, when the kid had come to me, was now one.... intertwined by 24 knots. I felt a feeling of accomplishment and announced to the kid that the job was done! The kid gave me a bemused look, but agreed that the job was done....and ran away to play.

(I was in kindergarten back then).

>> Sui-Generis ? <<

2008-09-01T21:36:00.004+04:30

One of my friends had written a quartet on she being "unique", it got me thinking on the chances of every one of us being "unique".

Here is my analysis:
--------------------

while it is not a certainty, i would say it is just a statistical improbability of there being another "you".

What makes us "unique"? Biologically, if we consider our DNA as that which makes our genetic set-up to be unique, then we are simply talking about 6 billion bits of information encoded in the DNA (somatic) . If we consider our "mental wiring" as what which makes us unique, then we are talking about 10^15 synapses in our brain (extra-somatic).

The human DNA has 6 billion bits of encoded information and the human brain has around 10^11 neurons each connected to 10,000 others approx, which means roughly there are 10^15 connections.

So technically, the chances of there being another "you" is atleast

1/2^(10^15)*2^(6*10^9)

("atleast" coz many of these states may be impossible)

However, in real-life there are so many other things that make every one of us "unique". Uniqueness could be defined in terms of our connections to other things living/non-living. Uniqueness could be defined in terms of our place of birth, time of birth, our experiences in life,..... the list goes on.

Sui-generis, is hence only a label on us, and need not necessarily identify our nature (or nurture).

(Take that all you stereotypical imbeciles "who participate in the mass cultural delusion that the apparent positions of arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality" ~ Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, CBS).

>> Ascending Mount Tamalpais <<

2008-08-21T09:06:00.016+04:30

Summer was coming to an end and I hadn't been around much in these 3 months, primarily coz I didn't have the right company.

Although I had met up with an old classmate with whom I toured SFO, reunited with a childhood pal (after 15 years) with whom I went on a biking trip, and adventured with a couple of other friends in northern SFO, I still felt my adrenaline wasn't being expended much.

Thanks to KD who refused to leave her radio-telescopes and get out of the desert, S's plans of our ascent of Half Dome remained undone.

Finally S came up with a plan of hiking the Bootjack Trail to Mt Tamalpais, to the north-east of the Golden Gate Bridge, Mill Valley, CA.

It was a 13 mile round trip hike with an elevation change of over 1500 feet (the peak is at an elevation of 2571 feet though), so we needed around 6 hours for the hike itself and around 4 hours of round-trip driving time.

S was to pick me up on Sunday morning at 8 am (Yes, I CANNOT DRIVE YET.... I WILL GET A DL SOON) but she overslept (alarm clock malfunction) and it was already around 10 by the time she arrived. (By then I had breakfasted on Puliodhare ;-)).

Without further delay, after jotting down the route through Google Maps, we drove first to a super market nearby and got some sandwiches, energy bars and water for our hike and then off we were on US 101-N, heading towards SFO.

By this time Mr Patel had pulled out his Canon Digital Elph and was happily clicking anything that looked like a landmark :-p , while the cycling-crazed S was ogling at all the sleek bikes in SFO city. I was scared she might ram into some pick-up truck, (I am always scared when I am riding pillion.) but S seemed to be sturdy on the wheel.

As we approached the hills of Mill Valley, we saw many biking enthusiasts whiz past us, down the slopes of the hills. We felt a strong urge to get off the Ford Focus and start biking in the open instead!

The hills in the northern part of SFO are always filled with mist and clouds. They aren't really of high altitude, but they give you the kind of experience you have when you travel to some hill station that is at over 2000m in elevation.

The road we took looked too familiar to me, as I had visited the Muir Woods only about a couple of months back with some of my other friends. But I believed we were going to hike a different, more challenging trail. As we approached the spot where S thought was the trail head, I had a dejavu. - lo! we stopped at the same trail head where I had been 3 months back.

The last time I was here, it was around 5 PM, we (a group of 4 guys) did not have a map, nor had we actually planned for a hike. It was extemporaneous; we began a rapid ascent on what we believed was the trail leading to some peak. But we had to turn back after an hour, on not being able to locate the right trail and it was also getting dark. It was disappointing. (I haven't turned back on something I have started in most things in life).

But this time we had gotten there by 1:30 PM, so we asked around other hikekers for directions to the boot jack trail. Thankfully a couple had a map and they gave us directions to get to bootjack. We got into the car (which was precariously perched alongside the road, for lack of any better parking Sace) and drove couple of more miles down the hill and finally arrived at the head of the bootjack trail.

There was a lot of parking space available (all the lazy people drive all the way to the base station of Mt Tamalpais and hike some 300 feet to get the peak and call it an adventure!) as the trail head was a good 6.4 miles away from the peak. There was a 6$ parking fee by "Self-Registration", you pick up a parking slip, fill in your Vehicle number, sign on it, place 6$ and drop it into a box. You leave the receipt on the dashboard of your vehicle so that the person, who checks, knows that you did pay the parking fee.

We now found that there were two trails branching off from this point, one headed to Stinson Beach which apparently was a less strenuous hike, the other lead to Mt Tamalpais and this was supposed to be a more demanding hike. I did not come all the way here to walk on a beach; I wanted to expend some adrenaline. We picked the more arduous trail to the east peak of Mt Tamalpais. (Surprisingly S did not choose the former, I thought she might chicken out on seeing a 6.2 mile 1500 feet elevation gain, strenuous hike. But of late S has become a fitness freak - doing all sorts of crazy work outs and stuff!)

The trail was pretty good, a 2 feet wide serpentine path up the mountain, with lovely Redwoods around. This meant more clicking opportunity for Patel Pics :-p. I have always been awed by anything magnificent in size. Redwoods have captivated me since when I had read about them in primary school. It was time I opened my camera and began taping the beautiful wilderness around us.

It was only couple hundred meters we had traveled when I Sotted a branch of a tree crossing right above the trail, instinctively (simian instincts?) I leaped and clung on to it, swinging back and forth like a Chimpanzee. S also wanted to try (is this why its called "aping"? ;-) ) but she couldn't reach far enough to get a proper hold. We decided to find another place to cater to her simian instincts as well and went ahead.

A couple of hundred meters later we spotted some droppings of an animal, I conjectured it had to be Mountain Lion crap :-p, why else were we advised to be cautious and keep a lookout for Mountain Lions, on a display board at the trail head? I took a close-up shot of this too :-p (If you think that was gross, S wanted me to feel it and see if it was warm x-( which would be an indication of a feline predator lurking nearby!!) I did not have any inclinations of digging my fingers into Mountain Lion crap like the biologist did in the Jurassic Park, so we kept going.

About an hour later (of many breathtaking views in the wilderness of Mother Nature) we arrived at a camping center. There were dining benches here and there was also a small inn called "West Point Inn". S was already hungry as she hadn't breakfasted on Puliodhare like I had, so we opened the sandwiches and gobbled them up. There was a small tree near our dining bench which once again triggered off my simian urge to brachiate, and I did. S now really wanted to climb the tree, but it was not convenient for her from the point where I climbed on it, but we found another way. She was then happily perched on one branch of the tree.

From this point, there was a 4.2 mile fire trail which lead to the base station (Visitor Center) of Mt Tamalpais. This trail only had a minor gradient with many people biking up the trail to the base station, from this Sot.

We could spot many wild lizards, tarantulas (and perhaps snakes as well which we could only hear) along the fire trail. I was still awaiting an encounter with a Mountain Lion, but there were none :-)

At the end of the fire trail, was a gate (like those railway gates we have back in India), which gave me a chance to jump a hurdle, something I had not done after class X, in high school.

You can find the video of me jumping (clowning?) over the hurdle here:

We then hit upon a tar road which lead to the Visitor Centre. There were many vehicles heading up this road (for the lazy ones!). From the Visitor Centre, we had 0.3 mile ascent to get to the east peak of Mt Tamalpais. This was where I got to see some of the most breath-taking views from any hike I have been on so far! Find some samples below

It was indeed worth the hard work, you can feel a sense of great joy on making it to the peak, and there we were at 2571 feet above sea level! The skyline of SFO city was visible (although cloudy) from the peak and so was the beautiful Bay Bridge that connects SFO to Oakland/Berkeley.

It was around 5 PM already so we had to hurry up to get back to the trail head. Descending a steep trail is always hard on the knees (which is why S did not want a high gradient hiking trail). I gave a tip to S on using her toes more and heels less eSecially during the descent, as your calf muscle takes the weight and spares your knee. We managed to get to the trail head in about an hour and a half, hoping our car hadn't gotten stolen down there at the parking lot.

So we made it finally. I was surprised that S did this hike without complaining even once! (Call me a Sexist :-p, but not many women might be able to do that).

We then head back towards SFO; it was around 7 by now (the Sun sets at around 8 PM back here). There was a cool breeze sweeping across the hills and it brought the clouds and along with it. It almost looked like we were driving through the clouds.

We stopped by on our way back at S's apartment, which is in a more scenic neighborhood than mine, to copy all the pictures onto her computer. We then went to Udupi's Restaurant (just because I did not want to go to Saravana Bhavan a third time in 3 months) which turned out to be a bad idea. I ordered my favorite "Mini Sambar Idly" and "Bisi Bela Bath" but it wasn't fresh, had a crappy taste, but when you are terribly hungry you cannot complain. I wouldn't recommend this place to anybody though!

S dropped me back at my home by 11 PM. It was a great day in the end, well spent (compared to my most weekend that are spent on mindless browsing on the Internet). We believed we might feel the soreness in our muscles the next day, when the adrenaline drained out, but much to our surprise, we were perfectly fine. Whats more, is that I have now lost a whole 10 pounds this summer! (Yay!)

My internship ends this week and soon I'd be back in hot hot Austin, perhaps next summer the half dome will be conquered by us!

>> Jo Jitha Wahi Sikandar <<

2008-08-11T22:56:00.011+04:30

Two of the most breath-taking relays in the history of the Olympics.

Seoul 1988, Women's 4x100m Relay (Track and Field)
Watch out in the final leg, Evelyn Ashford (arguably the best female athlete of all times in Track and Field) of the USA overtaking the German who had almost two metres head-start, to win Gold for the USA.

Beijing 2008, Men's 4x100m Relay (Swimming).
Watch out Jason Lezak (6 feet 4 inches tall), the 32 year old American swimmer pull it off against the Frenchman Alain Bernard (6 feet 5 inches tall) who was over a body length away at the end of the 50m mark in the final leg of the relay.

This was breath-taking finish, USA won Gold by beating France by 8/100 th of a second. The French had dismissed off the US contention with a "we-will-smash-them" remark, earlier yesterday.

I also learned that Garret Weber Gale, the guy who swam the 2nd leg in the relay for USA) is a University of Texas Longhorn! (Go Longhorns :-) )

PS: Youtube is busy removing all videos violating copyrights, it is likely that this video might be removed before you get to watch it, interested readers can instead try watching the high quality video directly from NBC11 at http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/index.html?aff=kntv (In the highlights section click on "US men win 4x100m relay" to watch the video).

And yes, finally India struck Gold for the first time since EVER! (in an individual event in the Olympics). Kudos to you Abhinav Bindra! I saw the composure of PISTOL PETE (Sampras) in you after you won Gold! I admire it, unlike others who get overwhelmed by emotion (like the pussy Federer) you stood there like a rock. Like someone rightly said on rediffnews, you truly represent the current generation of India... a generation of self-confident youth!

You also have shown how "private entrepreneurs" can give the momentum that this country needs to compete in an International Arena, in sports!

While elsewhere the Government has been busy screwing up future miracle athletes like Budhia Singh, your Gold was a smack in the face of the screwed up Sports Authority of India (or whatever).

And finally.....Sania Mirza, you can now concentrate on your career (Modeling), like someone rightly said, Tennis has been too much of a distraction in your career. Now that you have retired hurt, you should have all the time in the world, I suggest you consider retirement from Tennis forever!

You have all the time in the world to pose infront of the Camera, but you couldn't wear a Saree during the March Past event at the Olympics? Kalmadi thinks we would believe him when he says "Sania was practising and turned up late, so she did not have time to change. After all she has come here to play Tennis, not dress for the March past" - Yeah we saw how she played Tennis! B*** x-(

I heard her mom was flown to Beijing on Tax-Payers Money x-(

>> Ignorance is SHE <<

2008-08-09T10:51:00.008+04:30

(From a phone conversation sometime back)

SHE: (Reads out some silly Calvin and Hobbes episode and burst into a laugh.
Jugger: Duh! (it was lame and not even childish...perhaps even a foetus may not laugh at it)
SHE: Grrrrr...... What are you doing?
Jugger: I am busy watching the Beijing Olympics
SHE: I heard it is in 2010 only?
Jugger: SHUDDUP (unable to control my anger on her ignorance about wordly affairs)
SHE: Naveen only said.......damn.....am I so gullible....he fooled me.
Jugger: If he hadn't told you, you would have not even known there was going to be an olympics in Beijing.
SHE: Not like that. I know that there is an Olympics every FIVE years....
Jugger: (Speechless)

What do we do with this female?

:-(

>> Saare Jahan Se Accha, Hindustan Hamara <<

2008-08-07T05:41:00.012+04:30

Those were the words Rakesh Sharma uttered 24 years back on board the Soviet Soyuz T-11, when asked by the then PM of India, Indira Gandhi, about how India looked from space.

Over two and a half decades later, India is in its initial stages of preparation for putting an Indian on the moon, on its own rocket.

In about a month and a half, Chandrayaan-I would be launched on a PSLV by ISRO, its mission - to study the lunar surface, more importantly to serve as a test bed for future lunar missions....with the hope of landing an Indian on the moon by 2020-2030.

While many ABCDs and loads of other lowly souls who have been seething with jealousy at the revanance of the "Jagathguru" (Guru of the world), a 5000 year old civilization gradually claiming its rightful place in the world after centuries of suppression and invasions by marauding aliens, smirk in condescension, dismissing India's entry into the space race with a "What the fuck? We guys put a man on the moon in 1969 and you guys are still preparing to launch only a lunar orbiter" .

The achievement of NASA, of putting a man on the moon (stfu conspiracy nuts!) way back in 1969, was a triumph of not just one Nation, but of Humanity. A culmination of over a 100 years of research on modern Rocketry....with tremendous contributions from the Russian Tsiolkovsky, the American Goddard and the Germans - Von Braun and his men at Peenemunde.The Saturn-V is still the most powerful rocket built by man, it burnt enough energy to light up the entire city of New York for 75 minutes.

But even a 3rd grader could tell you if he knew the fact that while NASA, at the peak of the Apollo mission was guzzling a whopping 32 billion $ annually, ISRO having a mere 866 million $ annual budget (as of 2008-2009) at its disposal, is indeed attempting a great stride through these Lunar missions.

Only 5 years back did the Asian dragon, put its man in space. China is in full preparation of landing a man on the Moon by 2020, and has plans for exploration of Mars in the pipeline. (China's GDP is close to 3 times ours).

A bunch of other idiots question the whole point of spending so much on Space exploration while there are millions of those who are starving on Earth. We cannot be left behind in the Space Race. Technology helps to eradicate poverty..and eradicate poverty we will...but that should not deter us for pursuing such high end technological explorations. ....technology drives education....and education is what India badly needs to eradicate poverty at an exponential pace.

I was reading about this article on BBC news today (dated over a year back) about one Indian computer scientist's "Hole in the Wall" experiment. The man drilled a hole in the back wall of his home and put up a computer with internet access. Right behind his posh home in Delhi, was a slum. He wanted to see how people in the slum reacted to it...... soon many curious school kids from the slum were interested in this device. They began exploring it....within days the kids had taught themselves to use the mouse, paint, and browse the Internet! They had even coined their own terms for the cursor ("sui" - Needle), the hour-glass (Damaru - Drums). When one kid was asked what the internet was, he quipped "It is where you can get everything". Technology can work wonders in our Country!

Over 2 decades back when Computers were introduced in India, many people laughed...... today nobody can question our place in the world of Information and Communication Technology. Over 70 million Indians have access to the Internet....although this number is very small....we must know that only 2 years back, we had just half as much. A record of 65 million mobile phones were added in India in 2006 alone making India the fastest growing market for mobile phones.

Yesterday when NASA announced that it had discovered frozen water on Mars, a bunch of Jokers on a third grade Indian news site (Rediffmail) had remarked "78% of Earth is water, why go search for it in Mars?" (They were not being funny).

The same fools question about Lunar missions (and Google's X-Prize). All you ignorant numbnuts, if not for quenching our intellectual thirst, there is so much HUMANITY can gain out of such explorations. There is loads of Helium 3 on the Moon (0% on Earth). It is a non-radio active isotope of Helium which could be used in Nuclear fusion. This would mean "The power of the sun in the palm of our hand"(Spiderman-II)....and NO NUCLEAR WASTE!

But then again it won't knock sense into your ossified brains coz you guys don't want nuclear fuel. The Leftists are against it, the SPs are against it and so are many of the fundamental islamists who consider it "against their religion". (As Nuclear fuel is being bought at the cost of exploring cheaper alternatives - Natural Gas, from Iran). SPs got to be kidding....you guys really believe in bringing Natural Gas from Iran in a pipeline THROUGH PAKISTAN??

Heck so is space exploration against Islam....how could you land a man on a "Holy Object" ?

The estimated cost of the Apollo missions in 2006 $ terms is a staggering 135 billion dollars. That is a tenth of our GDP! But we could learn from the experience of others..... our manned mission should not cost as much. By 2020 we should be a 3 Trillion Dollar Economy (from 1.1 Trillion that we are today) if we maintain our sustained growth rate of 9-10%. If more private players are roped in, we can pull off this mission with flying colors.

As a boy I was fascinated by Space (like a million other kids of my age), when the Swift-Tuttle Comet was rumored to be on a collision course towards Earth, I was afraid (it was in 1992).... I was concerned that the world was going to end. When I asked my dad if there was nothing we could do, he banished my fear. He told me that we could send a rocket and explode a nuclear device on the Comet.....even a slight nudge would give it enough deflection to miss the earth's orbit by a large margin. I was excited by the capabilities of our species. Over 10 years later I saw this in the movie - Armageddon (although it was rife with scientific inaccuracy)

Since then, I had yearned to be a Rocket Scientist.....unfortunately I ended up doing an Engineering in "Information Technology" (coz I thought "Java", which I had heard of from my brother, was the biggest thing in the world of computers lol lol..... I did not know what Computer Science was back then :-) ).

As an Indian, I think these are exciting times to live in, to see the rise of the Asian Elephant. India is rumoured to have been developing an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile code named SURYA (the Sun) with a range of 12500-20000 kms.....our super sonic cruise missile - Brahmos, the joint venture with Russia, has been a stunning success.Only a month back ISRO create a world record by launching 10 remote sensing satellites into orbit....charging a mere 500,000$ for each. Perhaps when it is time to head back home.... if the lunar mission catches up enough critical mass by then... it would be an exciting time to work on OUR Lunar missions.... if not as a Rocket Scientist....perhaps as a Computer Scientist!

I am looking forward eagerly for the launch of Chandrayan-I in October. All the very best ISRO!

And for all those nut cases yelling about Humanity's race into Space....listen up

"Earth is the cradle of mankind, one does not remain in the cradle forever" ~ Constantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.

Here is one of my all favourite patriotic songs on India to all those who belittle India!

@ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO READ IT, LIKED IT (I DOUBT) AND LEAVE WITHOUT SCRAPPING A COMMENT.... PLEASE BE MORE RESPONSIBLE... ALL THE BLOGGERS WILL LOSE INTEREST IF THEY DONT KNOW THAT READERS LIKED READING THEM...THEY NEED NOT PEN DOWN THEIR THOUGHTS IF TO THEMSELVES....... X-(

>> An Eigen Voice <<

2008-08-02T11:33:00.016+04:30

In my roots lie thy spectral note
I am the tell-tale signs of oil in mote

Why seek me for the rendition
the curse of multiplicity's apparition

Respect me,(for) your arachno-page I rank
Neglect me,(and) another Tacoma I'll yank

Oh fair and square hermits, mess not with me
I am the DNA of your daedal circuitry

Deflect, distract or destroy (me) can ye?
I'll dampen, decompose and diagonalize thee

Takes so long to recognize your incarnation?
I am an Eigenvector of your transformation!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hidden References (in each verse) : (For those not familiar)

[1] The natural frequency of vibration of an object, is the square root of the Eigenvalues of a system modelling an object.Eigenvectors surface in the detection of oil under the ground. By determining the frequency of the reflected chirp sent down, researchers can detect the presence of oil.

[2] Indirect reference to PCA (Principal Component Analysis) that is used to visualized high dimensional datasets. (Curse of dimension)

[3] Arachno-page - refers to the Google PageRank algorithm for ranking of web-pages
(Arachno - meaning Spider).Tacoma - a reference to the collapse of Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940) due to wind resonating with the bridge's natural frequency (could have been averted by Eigen Value Analysis)

[4]&[5] Refers to the Eigendecomposition of square matrices . The Eigendecomposition
of a hermitian (hence "hermits") matrix is equivalent to its Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). Daedal Circuitry - Again, Eigenvalue analysis come up in the context of electrical circuits. An Eigenvector is unchanged in its shape (direction) by any linear transformation.

[6] Incarnation used in the context of "Eigen" in german meaning "one's own", "characteristic","not belonging to others"

(Interested readers can learn more from http://ceee.rice.edu/Books/LA/eigen/ to know why Eigenvectors are important).

RELATED POST:

Wooing my Nearest Neighbour

>> Land of Snake Charmers <<

2008-07-25T02:11:00.007+04:30

I come from the land of snake charmers, yes! That is what Stanford Medical thinks!

There was a blood donation drive today in my company, it has been over 2 years since I donated blood, I thought it was another good opportunity to donate my blood.

I filled in a questionnaire which had more than 2 dozen questions some of which included

"Have you come in sexual contact with any other male since 1977?"

(Why shouldn't homesexuals donate blood? I couldn't find convincing reasons when I googled for it, and came to know of many protests on this "sexual profiling").

"Have you had any sexual contact with anyone taking drugs?"

"Have you had any sexual contact with anyone having HIV?"

(wtf... I am still a virgin :-( )

On another question they listed a dozen drugs which I have never heard of (probably a US thing)

Then a medico (she couldn't speak proper English, she looked to me of Asian origin -- probably Chinese/Filipino or Malaysian) noted down my height (6.1), Weight (190) and other attributes.

I had responded to a question "Have you ever been outside the US in the last 3 years" with a "Yes" (being from India, I have lived in India entire my life for the last 24 years before coming to the US). This caught her attention and she became fidgety, she began to mumble something and after over 2 minutes she told me they cannot take my blood because I come from India and that the whole Indian sub-continent is a high-malaria risk region!

Seems if I have been in the US for 3 years, I will become eligible to donate blood (you see my blood then gets purified ) and in the meanwhile if I travel back to India, I won't be able to donate blood for another year from the date of return.

I was like really?? So I come from the land of snake charmers and bushmen. I lived in a bush and ate raw meat all my life until I landed here, where civilization dawned upon me. Wonderful!

You scoundrels! So effectively, if I am an Indian in the US, who visits homeland every other year, you don't want my blood. But you need our doctors, our nurses our engineers and our brains.

We may have a GDP growth rate of 9.5%, we could have gotten 150 million people out of poverty in the last 10 years, our middle-class (390 million) is larger than your entire population (300 million), we might form a significant portion of the world's top 100 billionaires, we might be the single largest ethnic group of Doctors/Engineers in the USA, we might have founded more start-ups in the US than people of any other nationality, our silicon valley (Bangalore) might be much larger than yours, we might have more honor kids than USA has kids (a statistic from a youtube video), we might perform open-heart surgeries on infants at 2000$, we might might perform artificial hip-replacement at 20,000$ (against 120,000$ in the US), people from the world over may visit India on medical-tourism, but we are still the land of snake charmers and bushmen to you.

The whole world knows you guys have very little knowledge of the world outside your 50 states, it is high time you guys woke up.....while you were still sleeping the world around you has changed a lot..... and it is time you realized that you guys are being left behind!

UPDATE:

I did a lot of Googling after posting this and found out that this is a rule passed by the FDA and that the red-cross or any other organization conducting blood camps is only adhering to the rule. Nevertheless I am not convinced of the illogical rules layed down by the FDA.

I also found that my frustration is shared by many other people who have travelled to mexico/are gay/lived in the UK between 1985-1995 (Mad cow disease) etc.

You guys are hypo-chondriacs, and are downrightly ridiculous!

>> The Pseudo-Secularists <<

2008-07-23T21:38:00.002+04:30

Rajdeep Sardesai -- Classic example!

IBN Live did not air the controversial tapes of the BJP MPs being allegedly bribed by the SP with crores of rupees to vote for the UPA. When asked why, Rajdeep Sardesai responded "We don't go by politicians will. We do our job. The investigation is not over hence we chose not to air the tapes."

Where did you rent out your pseudo-secularist brain when CBI was still investigating the Aarushi's (another crappy story) murder case when you guys had already given a verdict on who was the killer (Aarushi's dad) and how he should be punished?

(There are countless such counter-examples!)

This fella can stoop so low for increasing his channel's TRP counts. He was interviewing Narendra Modhi once and had "mistakenly" worn a saffron kurta. He made it clear to the people, before the interview, that the saffron kurta had nothing to do with his political/religious beliefs.

Like Modhi rightly said once, secularism in India today means "Hating Hindus".

Another classic example is Burkha Dutt. I donot know why she bitches about the PM in waiting - LK Advani, calling honorable PM Mr MMS as never having had the guts to take a decision without consulting 10 Janpath.

I am so sick of the minority appeasing governments!
I am so sick of these pseudo-secularistic Indian media.... we really need a break!

>> Matter out of Nothing <<

2008-07-23T07:05:00.001+04:30

Yes, matter can be created out of nothing...way to go IBNLive, NDTV ....crapheads....always have something to fill up their pages with even when no news exists!

x-(

>> She strikes yet again!! <<

2008-07-21T23:10:00.003+04:30

She is back with a bang again!
This time it is with the inflation in zimbabwe.

I was chatting with her a couple of minutes back about her tardiness and her shirking of work when we happened to discuss about being a billionaire and stuff.

I told her that I am already a billionaire in Zimbabwe.

Now she, who has no news of the world around her (except the characters in her fairy tales and stuff) remarked that I had picked up this line from the status message of one of our mutual friends.

When I enlightened her about the inflation in Zimbabwe being at 2.2 million %, and told her about the 100 billion $ printed notes that were in circulation in Zimbabwe since this morning, She quipped "they really like large numbers".

lol lol....rofl.... i could not control myself for over 10 minutes!

Hats off to you ... you are THE ONE!

>> The Raconteur <<

2008-07-10T10:48:00.005+04:30

What did I narrate?
Readers can try posting the transcript in the comments section :-p

>> Having an Opinion <<

2008-07-09T08:10:00.004+04:30

Couple of days back She had called me up and during the course of our conversation when i sweared about the Leftists and the Nuke deal, She wanted me to enlighten her about the Indo-US Nuke deal of which she had been hearing quite recently (around a week?).

When I asked her why she was interested, she was like
"Everybody has been speaking of some nuke deal, I don't know what it is, so I also want to have an opinion about it"

lol lol

you have no idea about what something is, but you want to know about it just to "form an opinion" so that if someone asks you what you think of it, you could give your opinion?

For that matter, wouldn't a HashMap do much better? :-)), key in, value out ;-)

I am not trying to ridicule her, she has other interests which I have no idea about (I am a philistine when it comes to the stuff she finds interesting) but the fact that she was interested in the Nuke Deal and (petty) politics (which she is otherwise so aloof from) just coz she wanted to have an opinion of her own cracked me up :-))

It is like yours truly wanting to know some stuff about music (classical) just coz he wants to have an opinion about it :-)

VP even believed it when I told her I was trained in carnatic music by my granny for over 5 years, when I was in middle school.

I saw arethusa's audio-blog and it for a moment inspired me to create one of my own, readers suggestions are welcome!

:-)

>> Independence Day Celebrations <<

2008-07-06T00:35:00.006+04:30

Yesterday, America celebrated 232 years of democracy and freedom.
I had gone out to watch the fireworks display last night. It was supposedly the biggest in the San Jose area, organised by NBC. I was surprised to see the entire city emptying out and heading towards downtown. Perhaps it is only during times such as these do we get to see close to 90% utilization of public transport. The lightrail on which I commute everyday, has never been utilized more than 20% of its capacity. But last night, almost everyone heading to downtown were taking the lightrail. People of all ethnic origins, nationalities and social classes were on board the lightrail. This is because the roads get jam-packed with vehicles during this day, that it is futile to drive.

The police department had neatly organized and managed the whole thing, people were also well behaved (Except for those who were too drunk), this is something you don't get to see back in India. Any large gathering back there meant chaos, stampede or vandalism.

As I headed towards the NBC grounds in Downtown (which is where the fireworks were to be displayed), I could see scores of people all over the place, on the road, on the pavements, on the parking lots.... they were camping on the streets. Many of them had already passed out after boozing to their stomach's full!

There were so many desis around, many a times I have found it hard to believe I am in America when I ve boarded into a train arriving from Mountain View. The train is so full of desis that you might as well think that you are somewhere in a Chennai local train or in Mumbai!!

I heard a voice "Pattasu vedikka poraanga" (lol ...namma aalunga illadha yedam unda? ;-) )

We went and assembled on the NBC11 grounds, all set to watch the fireworks display....and right on time at 9:30, the fireworks light the skies!

After playing the US national anthem, a music group there sang Neil Diamond's "Coming to America".

Interested readers can watch/hear it here

This song truly summarized what I saw around me, immigrants from all over the world, who had gathered on the night of 4th of July to celebrate American Independence Day (or was it to watch the fireworks? ;-) )

As I watched the spectacular fireworks, and the scores of people all around me, I wondered how different the Independence Day celebrations were in India.

We'd start in the morning with the flag hoisting ceremony with "Vijayi Vishwa Tiranga Pyara, Jhanda Ooncha Rahe Hamara" played in the background (found a link on youtube here)

This song makes me nostalgic, it has such beautiful lyrics that gives me goosebumps everytime I listen to it. We'd then devour the much awaited "sweets" (which was usually either a ladoo or a Tiger Biscuit/Parle G Biscuit packet, or Parley Poppins, back in school days) and off we'd go to watch the parade on Doordarshan.

Later in the evening the streets get emptied, with all families confined indoors, deeply immersed in the television, watching "Ungal SUN TV il, mudhal muraiyaaga, thiraiku vandhe sila maadhangal aana ......" -- a three hour movie stretched to 8 hours of screen time with countless commercials played in between.

Here is a small glimpse of the fireworks display from last night, shot on my canon.

and here are some pics

Some rogues were smoking some strange smelling cigarrette, I am wondering if it was grass x-(, I am left with a head splitting headache now!

>> Devolution??<<

2008-06-29T08:03:00.014+04:30

This happened over a year and half back, I had just dispatched my grad school application packets and was anxiously tracking their delivery status on the website of a local (in the literal sense) courier company DTDC. One of my packets addressed to Baltimore was being sent back and forth between two places somewhere in the interior of New York. I called up the courier company and notified them of this and it appeared like they had gotten the address wrong. I updated them with the correct address and in a days time I found that my packet had reached its destination.

However, the status on my application for the receipt of my transcripts had not changed for over a week. When I emailed the university I got back a flippant response

"If there was any packet, it is delivered to me. Not everyone appreciates the footnote in your email that man descended from monkeys"

I was like "wtf is she talking about?". Then I realized it had something to do with the signature in my email, I had then, a beautiful excerpt from Carl Sagan's "Broca's Brain" where he had quoted a few lines from the motion picture version of H.G Wells
"The man who could work miracles"

(The Gods Discussing the Earth:)

"They were apes only yesterday. Give them sometime.

Once an ape, always an ape.

No, this time it will be different, come back here in an age or so and you shall see".

To me these lines were beautiful, it reminded me of one of "Mandrake the Magician" comics that I recollect from my childhood. Its a story of an alien (shaped like a flying saucer) that crash lands on Earth due to a malfunction in its body and finds that Earth is devoid of any form of life. Apparently the flying saucer requires some form of hydro-carbons to fly. So it waits patiently for 4.5 billion years (which in its native terms is just 1 year) witnessing the birth of the unicellular organisms and their evolution ultimately leading to the great apes, followed by humans and their civilizations, their technological advancement which finally leads to them extracting crude-oil and storing them in reservoirs. The alien then sends out its tentacles to "drink" the hydro-carbons it needed for its long inter-galactic flight, and takes off finally from Earth.

In a span of a few hundred million years, evolution had achieved so much in engineering one of the most complex life-forms on this planet. It is a marvel, a beauty and a monumental triumph!

Those lines reverberated this achievement of evolution: us, humans!

I did not realize then why she made that remark. I brushed the thought aside and got back to business (tracking the receipt of my transcripts by the University).

Many months later after arriving in Austin, I was watching one of the videos by "Web Pundit" on youtube in which he presented some interesting statistics about Americans..... "Over 60% of the Americans believe in the book of genesis". I was stunned, I then brachiated into several related videos and slowly began to grasp the whole picture. It was then I realize why that lady had remarked about my signature in my email. x-( Dumb #*&#^*&$^ !!! was my reaction.

I am appalled by the deep ignorance of the "educated minds" of the majority of American today. Every time I see a video of Richard Dawkins on youtube, I feel like punching the bloody face of the ignorant #(*#&(*&# who argue with Dawkins.

One famous TV host said

"Atheists require a LEAP OF FAITH, to me I see no reason why the sun rises in the east, why the tide goes up and the tied goes down, I see not how it could happen without a creator, while all you guys say it all happened just like that".

(Needless to mention how Dawkins retorted, interested reader can watch the video on youtube ---

)

How ignorant and dumb can people get? I wonder why do these people get a college education, why don't they just trash evolution in their science books and drop out of school? May be they should get a degree on the bible "Bachelor of Bible", "Master of Bible", "PhD in Bible". It might be more worthwhile to them.

It seems in the state of Alabama, science teachers should make it clear that "evolution is contested" and should also make a mention of "the book of genesis as an alternate theory" while teaching the kids in school. How ridiculous!!

Another famous (now infamous) Pastor from Colorado Springs while being interviewed by Richard Dawkins said

"You evolutionists make no sense, how is it that you say that the eyes and the nose and all the organ systems just came from nowhere?"

Again, the interested reader can watch the videos of Richard Dawkins ("Root of All Evil") on youtube to know what was Dawkin's reaction to such a mindless remark by one who had no idea about science or evolution --

).

Perhaps Science and Religion can co-exist only in Hinduism for Hinduism is more about a way of life, it does not revolve around God alone. Carl Sagan in his famous "Cosmos" series said that of all known religions perhaps only Hinduism has made an accurate prediction about the age of the universe. (According to the Biblical account, the Universe is only 6000 years old and all beings were created by God in 6 days).

(Interested readers should watch this (Carl Sagan on Hinduism)

)

Being an atheist myself, I am appalled at the hypocrisy and some of the beliefs that the "God fearing" people have. The theists question the atheists on where do they get their morals from, this is nonsensical. You don't need a book to tell you what are morals. What was perfectly moral 1000 years ago is against human-rights today. Every age has a moral of its own, it is illogical and AMORAL i must say to base your morals on the 8th Century or those on the 6th Century!

As quoted by Richard Dawkins

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it: a petty unjust unforgiving control-freak: a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser: a misogynistic homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror.

Source: The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

Those who have distorted perceptions and prejudices against atheists should watch this beautiful video

It is a pity and a contradiction that one of the most technologically advanced Nations in the world has a majority of its population that does not believe in science but some age-old religious books whose origins/contents are questionable. Where Evolutionists are portrayed as the "Satans".

Lastly, to summarize Evolution in 1 minute and 50 seconds, interested readers can watch this , the title song by the Bare Naked Ladies for one of my favourite uber-geeky sit-coms "The Big Bang Theory"

LYRICS: http://www.lyricstime.com/barenaked-ladies-the-big-bang-theory-lyrics.html

2008-06-23T11:02:00.005+04:30

Tranquilitis

Sacred - Stanford

Marvel - Golden Gate, SFO

Heaven - Mini Sambar Idly - Saravana Bhavan, Sunnyvale, SFO

>> Bike Mechanic <<

2008-06-22T13:24:00.002+04:30

Phew....for the first time i patched a flat-tyre, thanks to the crap that Walmart sells and thanks to high costs of manual labour in the US!

I bought a 100$ bike coz the 80$ one I was looking for couldn't be assembled by some asian bike mechanic @ Walmart , for he was more interested in leaving home early.

In 3 days the left pedal cracked under my weight and Walmart wouldn't replace it for they claimed only the frame was their responsibility, so had to buy a new pair of composite pedals (idiots dont have metal pedals x-( ) and the bike mechanic @ Walmart fixed it for me.

After another 2 weeks the front tyre got punctured and I thought a mountain bike was impervious to little thorns. Had to spend another 2 $ to get a peel-n-patch kit and managed to patch the punctured tube. After having observed my local bike-mechanic patch a flat tyre, it wasn't very difficult, but all I had was a pair of kitchen tongs and a small vessel that i make my coffee in. It worked nevertheless.

Learn't something new today....cool.

>> Dasavatharam -- utter crap <<

2008-06-22T09:48:00.002+04:30

expected better out of Kamal.

You are a well-read man with a proclivity towards science and rational thinking, I admire that, but what you have delivered is of poor quality.

The make-up artists have done a crappy job, himesh reshmaiya can screw himself, and the stunt and CG crew should go out of business such a sub-standard performance.

disappointing.

>>> This day, that year <<<

2008-06-20T09:35:00.003+04:30

Summer 2004
-------------

Its a late evening in ABC railway station, X and Y are conversing while Y is waiting for his train and X has come to send Y off.

(X is all set to go to the US for a PhD in a couple of months)

Y : Whenz your VI?

X : DKDC - Don't Know Don't Care

Y : ???? What do you mean?

X : I don't want to go, I wish I could stay here.

Y : PhD is what you always wanted, you have gotten this far, thats where you are supposed to go, don't be childish.

Summer 2008
-----------
X's blog

PhD is this, PhD is that, PhD bla bla, PhD taught me bla bla, PhD made me realize bla bla... PhD bla bla... and more of bla.

--------------------------------------------

It is okay to contradict one's beliefs/opinions in a span of a couple of years, but I wonder if PhD teaches one not to contradict ones beliefs/opinions in a matter of hours/minutes.

>> Engulfed by Ennui <<

2008-06-16T11:36:00.005+04:30

Things change, don't they?

I am advised by "friends" to straighten up my rough ways...it seems I need to be polite while addressing my friends,I got to call them sweet things or call them by their name, nicks are unacceptable!

I wonder if we have all become middle-aged men so soon. It seemed to me like only yesterday we were these college going kids having the fun of our lives pulling each others legs, calling friends only by their nicks and doing all the mischiefs together.But now suddenly peoples' personal space has engulfed the whole universe.....

Leaving that aside.....
I can't believe I have blogged only 4 times in the last 1 year :-o

Is that coz of ennui? Life has been intellectually stimulating and exciting in the last 16 months or so, with so many happenings....have learned a lot of exciting stuff, I have been going places, making a lot of acquaintances, yet things seem to be the same old drab in my social life.

Sometimes when my "new friends" lecture to me about girl friends, relationships and important things in life (having taken for granted that these things are alien to me) I can only smile and listen.

My yoga , kickboxing and body sculpting classes commence tomorrow, hopefully they should make things more exciting besides the fast bike ride down the hills!
(and may be make me shed couple of pounds from the 193 pound hulk that I've become in the last 6 months!)

PS:
and oh yeah.... i am tired of the same old despondent talk by some people.

>> The sport of Kite-Catching <<

2008-05-25T05:39:00.003+04:30

This probably happened btween 13 to 16 summers ago, when I was a kid in primary school. One of our favourite pass-time adventure/hobby/job call it what you will, was "Kite-Catching". Nah, its not the bird that you are thinking of, its the kite thats made of paper and broom-sticks!

Summers in Bangalore were windy and fun, while the rest of the kids outside campus spent money in buying these kites and flying them, we invested our time in tracking those kites drifting in the air, whose "maanja" had snapped. We would then zero in on those in close-range and pursue and fetched them. The hunters and their quarry!

Our campus was known for its greenery, there were over a thousands trees in our campus, which made our jobs tougher and thats what made it more adventurous!

We have hardly found any kite waiting for us to be picked. More often, they'd be precariously perched on top of our school building which was a storey high. Kite-Catching requires skills such as the ability to climb trees, scale building, parkouring and a knack to judge where a kite drifting in air would perch itself when it reaches the ground.

The beauty of this sport is that it works both ways, if you have the skills you can do well in the sport and if you play the sport you gain these skills. At the first time I was introduced to this new sport, I was only a beginner in tree-climbing and wall-running, but I guess I was an auto-didact even back then, so I didn't need anyone to teach me these essential skills. I can still remember, at the time I had started, my brother and his friends were already comfortably wall-running and tree-climbing. I started at a slow pace, my first few steps in wall-running were more like wall-crawling. The top of those walls were sloped....like the roof of a house and we barely had 10 inches to wall-run on! But soon I had mastered the balance thats required to be a superior wall-runner :-) and was probably running 8-10 miles/hour on top of those walls around our campus.

Tree-climbing comes with practice, humans having descended from their simian ancestors, fear heights. The fear of falling is what keeps the apes alive! So it takes a while to overcome this fear and learn to scale trees. Our favourites to tree-climb were the banyan trees. They were conveniently shaped, as if they want kids to climb on them. May be if the trees are more inviting to the kids, they might persuade the adults from chopping them down. Is this darwinian evolution manifested in them trees? I don't know, but thats my theory :-). We had gotten so far as building tree houses on our own, atop these trees. The only thing I feared up in these trees were dark red cockroaches!!!!

We used to scale our school building through the walls of the rest-rooms. They had holes in them which was very convenient for us to hold onto/step on to reach the roof. There was also this water-pipe on top of the roof that looked like it was placed there especially for us, as a hold, while taking the last step to get to the roof-top.

More later
(Damn, I don't find the motivation to blog as I used to before x-( )

crap.

2008-03-23T10:09:00.001+04:30

bla bla hkhdfkhjdf

i am brain dead....creativity in me is gone.

All that remains is some crap i can type here.

>> Taare Zameen Par <<

2008-01-03T06:06:00.000+03:30

Breathtaking! Period.

Every once in a while the otherwise crappy Bollywood cinema produces a gem such as this one!
I am beginning to believe that Aamir Khan will produce/direct many more such gems in future.

The film brought back vivid memories from my own childhood.

I was known to be a bold and mischievous brat back then, but I was bold and mischievous only amongst people I knew (family). In school I was a quiet child, you could call that discipline if you like, but I somehow felt I had to obey all the rules or hell would break-loose.

I couldn't tell what time it was by looking at a clock, my dad tried teaching me but somehow I couldn't pick it up quickly. If the shorter needle of the clock was at 3 and the longer was at 8, I would have said "3:08", I preferred digital watches for this reason. (I couldn't do it until class III).

I couldn't tie my shoe-lace, I couldn't tell people that I didn't know!
When a kid younger than me approached me and asked me to help him tie his lace, I couldn't tell him that I did not know it either.(I was in LKG back then). I boldly tried to tie his lace, but ended up tying 19 knots with his lace, all the way to the top, after which the there wasn't enough length to tie another, thats when I thought "okay it is done". I wondered why the hell did it not take shape of those beautiful double loops that appear when my mom tied my lace or my brother tied his.

On the first day in school, when I was admitted to class IA, I was beaming with confidence and impressed the admission committee. I knew most of them, for they were my brother's class teachers/subject teachers. When all the other kids were whining I was boldly conversing with these women. But i didn't know Hindi (wasn't taught hindi and my dad who although was fluent in spoken and written hindi, had not tried to force it upon me).I wasn't good in math either (why else would i have had trouble in telling the time).

I was in class I-A (yeap, I always used to append the section name along with my class ), it was someday in 1988, perhaps a week had gone past since I was admitted into the school. The english teacher was a notorious termagent who used to scare the shit out of kids. The very look of her was frightening. We had to write down the letters of the alphabet, 5 per page, each 10 times. She wanted them all to be neatly written down to form vertical columns. I had no idea what she was talking about when she yelled out to the class "write it straight!!!".

When I submitted my book, she hit me, she pinched my cheek and yelled at me. Tears trickled down my eyes, but I was afraid even to cry. She shouted "erumaadu, kanna nondiduven, write it straight"(you buffalo, I will gouge your eyes out). I didn't know what fault was mine.

She was a terror in school. She wasn't married, and had an adopted son who was probably in class VII or VIII then. Every time he would approach her to obtain her signature on his progress report, this woman would throw his report card out, in front of our whole class and kick him out. We were all too scared to even show her our homework, for we knew we were all goinna get beaten for sure, the only question was "whose turn was it next"?. When the line of kids waiting to show their homework to her would get over, the rest of us used to form a small cluster near the class door, nobody wanting to go out next to get beaten.

I had trouble picking up Hindi, there was this smart kid in my class Vipu, who used to help me with hindi all the time. He had to explain things to me after the teacher explained it to the class, even while taking exams (it wasn't copying, for the Teacher would herself orally read out the answers to the class).

The little kid in the movie "Ishaan Awasthi" trying to do the math "9x3=?" reminded me of a Hindi dictation we were given in class IIA. That also was the first time in life I had learned I shouldn't copy in tests. The Teacher started dictating 10 words, one after the other. I don't remember them all now ( I am not sure if I would have remembered them even back then). But she started with the first word "Ainak" (for spectacles in Hindi), I wrote it down correctly. But then my attention was diverted, I looked into the notebook of my friend, who had written it incorrectly as "Anak". I didn't know what i was supposed to do, so I struck off what i had written and copied his. As I contemplated about what I had just done, time fleeted past me, when I looked back at the Teacher she had finished dictating all 10 words and the kids were submitting their answers!

I got a straight 0/10. I went home proudly shouting out to my mom " I got a zero zero zero", there were some relatives at home at that time. My mom was gesturing me to hush up but I did not understand why.

I picked things up gradually, probably reaching the Top 3-5% of my class only from class IV.
But my dad never tried to force things upon me. He would patiently explain things to me only when I asked (more to come on this later). But he has never told me "read this now, read it!".

This is something all teachers and parents should realize,one beautiful line from the movie

"Har bachha apni hisaab sey vazan utatha hai,uska alag tez hota hai, aaj nahi tho kal seekh jayega"

(Every child has his own capacity, own pace, he will learn eventually)

You owe yourself to watch this movie!
(One day you will be a Parent/Teacher :-) ).

Wooing my NEAREST NEIGHBOUR ;-)

2007-11-24T11:36:00.001+03:30

(A Machine Learning Enthusiast's ballad for a prospective[:-(] girlfriend (all applications will be considered ;-) )

---------------------------

Gleeful girl, your braided hair is a beautiful BAYES NET
Such beauty seen I haven't in no brunette

I am tuned to your frequency like a PERCEPTRON
It is you i think of from dusk to dawn

Forget my past for my life is MARKOVIAN
Forgive my follies i could have been NAIVE BAYESIAN

BACK-PROPAGATE my love ,from this misery, set me free
My life swings in the branch of your DECISION TREE

Every smile of yours, in my heart I've been BAGGING
One yes from you could give my life a BOOSTING

To live with you is my eternal bliss
I shall win you from VAPNIK or CHERVONENKIS

In the valleys of your heart, I perform GRADIENT DESCENT
Stuck i might get on a LOCAL MINIMA, but I wont relent

I'll be your dream your wish and your protector
Accept me and i shall be your SUPPORT VECTOR

Believe I do, the lost joy in my life you can resurrect
This ballad of love for you, is PROBABLY APPROXIMATELY CORRECT :-)

-------------------------

Glossary:(For those not familiar with Machine Learning)
-------------------------------------------------------

Nearest Neighbour - Nearest Neighbour Classifier (Instance Based Learning)
Bayes Net - Bayesian Belief Networks
Perceptron - THe linear Neural Network Classifier (Rosenblatt Perceptron)
Markovian - Markovian Decision Processes (Future State of the system depends only on the current state and not on any past history)
Naive Bayesian - Naive Bayes Classifier
Back-Propagate - Back propagation in non-linear forms of Neural Networks
Decision Tree - Decision Tree Learning
Bagging - Bagging Algorithm in Decision Trees.
BOOSTING - Boosting in Decision Trees
VAPNIK-CHERVONENKIS - Russian Mathematicians (associated with VC Dimension/SVMs)
Support Vector - Support Vector Machines (SVMs)
Gradient Descent - Gradient Descent Training Algorithm for Neural Networks
Probably Approximately Correct - PAC/Computational Learning Theory

>> Rediffmail's Ingenious Inventions <<

2007-09-27T07:44:00.000+03:30

"Rediff SPAM"

They deliver SPAM to your inbox by calling it a "News Letter". So you cannot "report SPAM" or "BLOCK" or "Unsubscribe". Although they claim that these are customized messages which are tuned according to your "preferences" in their "Tell us about your interests", they have stooped to the level of officiously deciding what your interests are on, coz you see they are going bankrupt.

Whats their point? Oh yeah, they want to rid you off your capal tunnel syndrome, as you cannot aggresively mark their ingenious inventions as spam and deleting them periodically will only cause u frustration, they just want you to ignore their "news letters" .

"Ignoring 10 News-Letters a day,keeps capal syndrome at bay".

"Rediffmail Embedded Chat"

Couple of weeks back you came up with your version of Gmail's Embedded Chat utility, and I don't understand what is this supposed to do, whether i want it or not, it lists all users on my addressbook (in some dumb order....nothing to do with my frequency of mails with them or howoften they appear online or whatever) and I simply can't click on one of those entries and chat.....was it supposed to be supported only on Internet Explorer? Or your developers quit halfway through after designing the UI component? :-))

"Rediffmail Mail Search"

----- This is one helluva joke, you can start a search, go make coffee and get back after 15 minutes, only to find "0 relevant results" .... ROFL like you managed to search 200 irrelevant results..... dumb morons...get a life, you guys suck bigtime.

>> Artificial Intelligence is of no match to Natural Stupidity <<

2007-09-13T04:38:00.000+03:30

This was a funny incident that happened a couple of months back, it did not occur to me then, that it could make up a bloglet for me but somehow I happened to reminisce my good old days in Bangalore this morning, and this incident popped up from my memory.

As a developer in Strandgenomics, Bangalore, I was introduced to this tool called "Valgrind" to detect memory leaks and all things related to memory handling in C++ code. Since there wasn't anyone around in my company who had used this tool much, I had to seek help from GCC forums online.These forums seem to have a very high page rank (considering the number of people who post there, definitely millions of pages could be linked to these forums) and so the Google bot picked up my name from the archives of these forums.

The help i had sought was that, Valgrind the way I had configured it and had ran it, wasn't reporting the exact line number in my program(s) where it had detected a leak, it was pointing to some index in a compiled library instead (i later discovered that i had to compile my module with the CXX flags and debug flags properly set to be able to zero-in on the line number.)

The Google bot had picked up the keywords "memory", "leak", "valgrind" , , "exact leak location" ,"unable to detect" etc.

Some random trawler on the internet who was fishing for "business", picked up my email ID somehow (thanks to the Google Crawler and the keywords it had picked up ) and wrote to me this

"I am writing to you in regards to your interest in leak location work. I was recently notified from my web provider that you were searching for inquiries regarding this subject. Are you interested in having an electrical leak location survey performed for a geosynthetic lined facility? If this is the type of leak location that you are interested in, please feel to contact me via email or telephone to discuss your project details and I would be happy to submit a proposal to perform the work. Also, please view our website at which has some information regarding leak location survey services. I look forward to hearing from you and hope that we can be of assistance."

:-))

Well Mr Trawler, thats what happens when you blindly trust your web provider.
Someone said it well "Artificial Intelligence is of no match to Natural Stupidity".

>> Gone to Texas!! <<

2007-08-29T07:17:00.000+03:30

Today was the last day before classes begin for Fall-2007...so every year there is this festival called "Gone To Texas" where all students gather and there is loads of fun, culturals n stuff...the dean/provost n other officials address the student gathering n share a word or two about college life.

The highlights of today was that i got stuff worth 60$ for free!!!!

On any given such cultural event, there will always be stalls where you can sign up and get a free T-Shirt....i got one "Gone to Texas" burnt orange Tee for free first.
Then there was FREE PIZZA and soft drinks...grabbed and gorged on loads of that.....and then while we were relaxing on the lawns, one man walked up to us with a plastic bag full of tees and asked us to "name any species", couple of us fired with answers like "Homo sapiens" , "panthera Tigris" and "Ophiophagus Hannah"(thats me...and that stands of king cobra)...we were given a free-shirt as a gift :-) (vandhu OC la kuduthaanga).

The best thing was on the eve of this event, they had layed down hundreds of chairs in front of the UT tower for the evening gathering, under each chair was a wind-cheater..of some size, male or female worth 55$!!! Again for free....since i went early, i picked the one that fit me well and also ensured it was for a male :-)

it is simply awesome...55$ worth wind-cheater for free!! I was worried abt getting a good sweater..now i wont need any for the winter...it all has the UT emblem and some UT captions...

Well now comes the interesting part....classes start tomorrow.

I will be attending one of my 3 courses tomorrow - COmputational Learning Theory....it is between 11-12:30 AM ...will be taught by a MIT PhD prof.
There is another classes in the evening "Parallel Algorithms" will be taught by a former IIT Madras lady who has a PhD from Princeton.... bt i will be DROPPING this class...the good thing here is that you can attend upto 3 classes of a particular professor before you choose to continue with that class or drop it.

I just chose 5 courses in all, keeping 2 as back-up.... so will drop 2 , one tomorrow..the other on thursday.

Well on thursday is when i'll be attending my 2 favourites... "Reinforcement Learning" taught by Prof Stone and "Autonomous RObots" by prof kuipers.

More updates later....will get very busy in the coming weeks.

Oh..forgot to add... as a graduate student, i can borrow ANY number of books for one FULL SEMESTER!!!

Had also been to the University Gym today...jsut to look around..it is for free and it has some world class equipment, along with 2 huge swimming pools and spas...all for free!! :-) hoping to use it in the weekend...lemme see.

-----------------------------------
the above transcript is a part of an email i had sent home....since my blog has been lacking activity ...i thought i might as well post it here...probably some wanna be UTite might find it interesting :-)

>> The Revenant Recrudesced! <<

2007-08-13T04:33:00.000+03:30

After a gruelling 72 hour journey, Juggy is reporting from Austin....here goes the complete coverage of the story.

8th August, the Air India flight from mumbai to chennai was delayed by over 4-5 hours coz of bad weather..as a result, i had to miss the connecting flight from mumbai to newark..seems this has been hapening for weeks..... so Air India (*##(* cud not delay the mumbai newark flight bt instead bumped off 20 of us on bound the chennai mumbai flight...and put us up in a big hotel near andheri east in mumbai.

the hotel was really cool..i guess it costs 7000/- per room ...it was posh and expensive.....
had met a tam guy frm chennai heading to IIT-C for MS ... at the chennai airport....also met another guy and a girl working with TCS going ONSITE ...there was this another female as well who was an american of indian origin...she was heading to law school in UPenn.... so by now we had struck a conversation and were kinda killing time well.

so the 24 hours spent in mumbai just sailed thru quickly....we were to get picked up from our hotel around 4:30 AM next morning ..... my body clock refused to let me sleep beyond 2 AM.... had to watch some silly programs on the TV to stay awake until 4....when it was time to leave, as a souvenir i flicked a comb from the hotel room :-).

Mumbai - Newark AI 191 is a notorious flight...known to have been on time only in 11% of its cases, has been on INORDINATE DELAY in 67% of the cases and a minor delay in the remaining % of the cases :-).....so i was not expecting it to be a lucky day for me :-) ....the flight took off after a 1 hour delay in Mumbai Airport....the distance of 7500+ kms from mumbai to paris (charles de gaulle airport) was to be completed in 8 hours.... the flight made up 40 minutes on air and reached CDG around 1:30 PM local time.

90% of those on board the flight were Indians...and 90% of them were golts.... the guy seated beside me was a golt to...he was a preist i guess..heading to some Hindu-American Temple in NJ...there were ppl of all age groups on board the craft....many were oldies..visiting their sons,son in laws, daughters in the US.....and lots of epsilons as well (kids ;-) ).....some of them kept crying like hell .... and their (*#**##*( moms never bothered to take care of them....they jsut let them yell and disturb the rest of us on board.

After a 1.5 hour stopover in CDG Paris, the flight took off to newark....this time, under 7000 kms were to be completed in 7 hours.
The food in Air India was really good...the Air Hostess were mostly old aunties...some were young too :-)

Since it was AI, i did not have to worry about them serving me some fish n steak in the name of VEGATARIAN food..... the on-flight entertainment screened some silly movies...CHEENI KUM, SPIDERMAN-3, BHEJA FRY , SOME OLD DEVANAND MOVIES etc....did not watch any of those...i tried to get as much sleep as i could.

The flight was on time at Newark....i could spot the statue of liberty :-) but since there was a heavy air trafffic congestion as the liberty international airport in Newark, our flight was on 24th slot for landing...so the captain kept circling the plane over the airport....and finally we touched down around 5 PM local time...my connecting flight to austin was at 8:15 PM .....I THOUGHT i might get stuck in the immigration and customs procedures...

i rushed down to collect my baggage....after a couple of minutes of watching out for them in both conveyors...we spotted our baggages and pulled them out n loaded them into our trolleys (had to pay 3$ for the trolley x-( )..... immigration was finished prior to this...this is what the immig officer asked me.

Officer:"why did u choose UT"?
Me: "It has got one of the best Computer Science depts in the country".
Officer: "It sure does!"
Officer: "Do you know that UT has a great football team".
Me: I have heard about it sir.
Officer: Do you play foot ball?
Me: I play Soccer sir.
Officer: So what position do you play?
Me: I don't play in tournaments sir, i play with my friends.... (meaning i am not veryt particular abt the positions)
Officer: you arebeing non-committal.....
Me: Okay..I play forward....
Officer: Whom do you think is the best soccer player of all times.
Me: Zidane sir.
Officer...: nah..have not heard of pele, maradona?
Me: they aren ot players of my times, have not watched them play...
Officer: stamps something on my passport, and on the I-94, staples it to my passport n says Good luck :-)/

We had to take our bags thru the customs officers...they ripped open every baggage and inspected stuff randomly...asking us questions from time to time like "are u carrying drugs?", "are you carrying explosives or germs?" .... :-) they removed big bags of mangoes from many of those andhra guys :-) and gifted it to their female colleagues :-p

i went to teh AI office on Terminal B at the airport, checked in my baggage again there...and took an Air Train to Terminal C. (mono rail).
It is all super-smooth....unlike the silly shuttles here which connects you from one terminal to another...you have got one airt train every 4 mins connecting 4 terminals (A B C and P4) P4 is the parking lot...from where u get shuttles to get to hotels etc and out of the airport... Terminal B is for AI and other international flights...terminal C is mostly domestic...and is full of Continental Airways flights.

There was a huge queue at the check-in counters of continental airways...by the time i reached there, it was 7:10 PM>...the lady at the counter told me i am being put on STANDBY for the flight coz AI did not inform them of the delay in my Arrival in newark.... and she also told me it was unlikely that my ticket might get confirmed....i had to rush to gate C-99 in Terminal C (before this i was frisked extensively again....some SSSS symbol in my boarding pass meant i was to undergo additional security clearance....they checked my sandals, pouch n everything for IONS (some ion detector....to detect explosives i guess).

There was a very kind n helpful young lady at Gate-C99....she told me that there was another guy on standby before me and that would be the order in which we wud be cleared....she told me to wait until she called my name...or until all passenger boaded the plane..... there was a 1 hour delay in this flight....so some passengers got restless and thought of dropping out....they decided to come back next day...a lady and her husband with her 2 kids thought of leaving...but when they called up for hotel accom..none was available within 30 miles frm newark.......so she changed her mind n decided to board the flight...with that my last chance of boarding that flight also vanished :-)

the young lady was like really sorry that she could not get me a seat on that flight.... :-). she had told me sometime back that there was one seat available, and she wud call out the standby-1's name....and if he did not hear that and turn up (she asked me to pray that he wudn't :-) )...she wud put me on that seat...but that bloody afro turned up :-)....so all doors were shut)...but she quickly confirmed my ticket for the next day..and put me on a 2:40 PM flight to austin......i asked her some directions to get some quarters...so that i could call ppl up....she gave me some change that she had.... 8 quarters i guess.... i gave her 2 $.... and finally before leaving she gave me 2 more quarters (thats like 20 Rs) even though i did not have any 50cent to give her back :-)).

i rushed back to the air india office by taking the air train once again ...to terminal B...no bloody asshole was out there......had to go around asking random ppl to direct me to an AI ofice...finally mnaged to find a small room on Level 4....2 other indians bound to mumbai were also stranded coz of misconnecting their flight.... the AI rep there told me that they did have a confirmed ticket for me and was asking me how could continental put me on standby (how the fck wud i know?)....so he told me to check back with them (conti) abt the availability of a seat for the 9:30 AM flight next day...and asked me to get back in 30 mins before they close for the day....he told me he wud give me the hotel accomodation slip then.....i had to rush to terminal C once again ...but the huge queue at the conti air counters made me decide to get back to term B and get my hotel accomodation atleast confirmed...

they put me up on a hotel 10 mins by shuttle..from newark liberty international airport....a place calld holiday inn.
i had to take the air train agan to get to terminal P4...and there were shuttles every 10 mins to this holiday inn..frm the airport....most drivers driving there shuttles are either mexicans, south americans or afros.... they also help passengers with their luggage..in loading them onto the shuttle...and help them in unloading it out of the shuttle as well.

i wAS put up on the 10th floor of that inn....was handed 2 plastic cards..to be swiped in the handle of the room...for unlocking the doors...was also given 3 coupons for dinner, lunch n breakfast....15$, 8$ and 5$ resp.

I did not know what to eat...had fruit salad...then couple of apples, oranges juice for dinner... had a sugAR DOUGHNUT for breakfast..and skipped the lunch :-)
i had to call up ppl...but these wierd coin operated phones suck....it seems i needed calling card for long distance (STD)...and i did not have anyone in newark to call to....so asked the reception for internet access....seems if we have laptops wireless access is free of cost...but since i did not..i had to use comps in a BUSINESS CENTER in their hotel for browsing...since labour is expensive here...all terminals were left unattended...u have a small box kinda stuff where u insert ur dollar notes (1$,5$,10$) and based on the amount inserted, u get either 5 mins or 25 mins or 50 mins of browsing time.....i logged onto orkut and left a message immediately on my own scrapbook..giving details of the number on which i could be reached.

it turned out to be a pretty smart move :-). i then sent emails to couple of my friends ....one close friend decided to come n pick me up next day at Austin on reading my email in distress :-)

My close friend Nisha had by chance visited my scrapbook around that time, picked my number from there and called me up that night......she also gave me some calling card numbers which i could use to call home.

in the meanwhile my roomie anand and close buddy sudipta had also managed to get hold of my hotel number and called me up.....it was a great relieft talking to them all ....

next day i decided to check out pretty early (4 hours before the time i was allowed to stay till)...rushed to the conti office n collected my boarding pass....the flightr was delayed by an hour....at 3:30 PM finally continental flight 1465 took off frm newark.....it was a 3.5 hours journey to Austin...again there were many golts on board the air-craft...one of whom wanted me to cal up his son-in law in Austin...i was like wtf? i dont even know you? besides i have no mobile....and this is my first trip to Austin..... x-(

Gautam, Sindhu and Manohar were waiting for me at the bergstrom airport in Austin....good old buddies frm blore UT meet :-) .....i picked up my baggage frm the Conti office (it had reached Austin 1 day before itself...) and we took a cab to get home...22.5$ was what it cost....had to tip 2.5$ to the driver....

My roomie's sublease came home....then we all went to a local grocery store nearby.....it was like a huge huge place....my friends bought some vegetables n stuff....again as labour is expensive, you gotta bil al the stuff u buy, by yourself...swipe ur card...collect the bill and carry back ur stuff...

there were racks filled with meat...all kinda of meat....i just bought some vegetable oil, some bread and some strange looking butter.
ate bread n butter for dinner.

next morning made upma using the upuma mix :-)....gave some for my roomie as well.
Cooked rice n dal for lunch....used the vatha kozhambhu mix (special thanks to sis in law for this :-) ) to have rice..... and now i am mailing this frm my temp roomie's comp :-)
more later...

Austin is really nice...it is 93 degree fahrenheit here...very much like chennai..the apt is cozy n neat...
will be going to downtown tonight with my friend...more later..

>> Cycling Trek to Hessaraghetta <<

2007-06-18T17:19:00.000+03:30

I don't feel like posting blogs these days, may be I am pre-occupied with work (posting ;-) ) elsewhere.

Anyway, to keep some activity going on here, I shall recount our recent cycling trek to Hessaraghetta Lake (a lake sans water!!!) on 9th June 2007.

As a pack of 25 odd cyclists from Strand and a team of 4 on a jeep started, we started off from office around 7 AM (when we were supposed to start by 6 AM). Thanks to early morning wake-up calls by Razia, most of us were in office by 6 AM, but it took quite some time to pack our lunch, snacks and other refreshments.

The cyclists consisted of people aged 21 to 40 :-) (while the average would have hovered around 25), most of them who hadn't mounted their butt on a bicyle seat for years!

So we had to cycle slowly and safely (considering the terrifying traffic on Bangalore roads, safety was of primal concern). We split up into 3 clusters, the Vanguards, the in-between guards and the rear guards.

...damn

I am losing patience...shall put up the pics...check it out for yourself.

>> A trip to the overpopulated city - Mumbai <<

2007-03-31T15:28:00.000+03:30

I was off last week for a 3 day trip to mumbai - soi disant "economic capital of india", but what i saw there wudn't make anyone agree with what it is called as.

Incidentally, with that visit, I've been to all metropolitan cities in India (Chennai was where i have been for a substantial part of my life, have been to delhi twice n calcutta once).

I did not believe it when many of my friends warned me of the overcrowded trains and the mad rush of the commuters in every station no matter what the time of the day/night, but I experienced it first hand when i got down at dadar around 8 PM on a saturday night!

While the trains seemed to be more reliable as far as their punctuality is concerned, they are simply not enough to pack the scores of people who "POUR" into and out of it in each station. I have commuted to school by EMU trains for over 5 years of my school days in Chennai.....I know how adventurous it gets to manage to get in and out of these trains during peak hours....but Mumbai trains are beyond all imaginations of a chennai lad!

The 8Pm crowd on a saturday in Mumbai is twice as much as the 9AM crowd on a weekday in Chennai :-). I was shocked to see people sitting on roof-tops of EMU trains :-o

Friggin morons have an attraction towards the panto-graph and the 25,000V of electricity i guess.....nobody minds them!

Stayed at my classmate's place in borivilli which mumbai'ites call the "outskirts" of the city, but the population there is unbelievable! The city is full of filthe, dirt and people all over! No effing (*&#(*& has any sense of cleanliness, they are too busy to mind all this filthe!

Slums in mumbai are continuous variables!!! They don't seem to break off at all.... they are all over :-), and I found few men diving n bathing n fishing in the over polluted tributaries that run through the city......it is like having a nice bath in the couum river in Chennai :-)

The next day I was off to meet my e-friends @ phoenix mills.... we were meeting up for the first time after months n years of interaction through online forums/yahoo chat etc....after a quick introduction, we had lunch at a "popular" (as they call it) restaurant where I somehow managed to save myself frm paying up for the hefty bill :-)), and we went to bowl! (did not find it interesting though) then a few photo shots and off we were to Worli beach!

We spent some quality time that evening pulling each others legs, discussing our future plans and the usual crap talk.....it was then time to leave...the same old overcrowded EMU had to get me back to borivilli.

Next morning I had to start pretty late to avoid the mad rush in the trains, managed to get to my destination in just about 10 minutes before my scheduled appointment, after an hours wait, what had to go on went on well :-), there were 3 more familiar ppl around (again those whom i'd known thru chat/email/phone/online), following my whatever, I wasn't supposed to wait there for Megh (my online buddy again :-) ), so i roamed around churchgate, dropped by Oval Maidan and spent an hour there simply watching other kids play....the verdant lawns @ Oval were a treat to watch....such a large open area of land amidst the concrete jungle was simply beautiful.

In an hour's time, Megh had finished her whatever, and we were off to a southy restaurant where i devoured dosas and vadais :-), Marine drive was quite close by and we sat there for over an hour watching the sea n the soaring sky scrapers...my train was at 9 PM, so i had to kill sometime ...megh was good company .....after gorging on ice-cream at a nearby parlour it was time to leave.... megh sent me off frm the churchgate station in a train which she expected to be much less crowded...i waved her and got into the train.... after a gruelling 20 minutes travel, i managed to pull myself and my bag out of the train to get down at Dadar....

Back i was in beautiful blore after those 3 days in overpopulated n filthy mumbai. But i shall cherish the people i met, the quality time i spent with my friends there though :-)

>> Evolution favoured obscenities <<

2007-02-04T09:38:00.000+03:30

Yeah, the evolutionary biologist in Jugger is back from his prolonged state of dormancy, blame it on my boring life .... it is no more peppered with those pangs of frustration out of my ignominious brain degenerating job that once was the salient feature of my life :-)

I have often given "guest lectures" to my circle of friends, roomies and colleagues about the remarkable role played by some of our choicest obscenities in human evolution.Atlast I have found time to enlighten the readers of my blog for free, with this e-lecture of mine :-)) noblesse oblige you see!!! :-)

When humans developed language, it was a giant leap in our species' survival, we could communicate better and complex tasks were achieved by collective intelligence undergirded by our power of speech our power of comprehending emotions encoded in words....while this certainly was a boon to mankind in the way just stated, it was a greater boon in ways that could not have been perceived by many an 'ordinary evolutionary biologists' ;-)

Now why does that madman exclaim so? you might ask....well before we developed our larynx, we were no different from other beasts, we settled all arguments physically, we would have had bloody battles for even the slightest provocations, which would have been threatening to the survival of the homo-sapiens!

As our colonies grew in size, there was bound to be an increased amount of interaction between members of our species, which on the darker side would also have been the cause for our disagreements, our misunderstandings, our frustrations and our rage!

We all need a vent to let out all the steam accumulating within us .... and the easiest way out was through our mouth ;-), that is when we chanced upon our very first and most primitive of our obscenities. In my opinion obscenities aren't special for what they refer to alone, but for how they are pronounced, the acoustic vibrations set forth by the proper pronunciation of these obscenities give our nerves a relaxing effect, which some dopers may compare to the high they may get with a shot of marijuana, or even wine!

While Marijuana and wine and the cig are degenerative to our health, obscenities are not! And they don't cost anything, so very natural, and cause no side-effects.

For example try to vent your frustration by pronouncing "Hand","Head","Green tree","Beautiful girl","morning mist","milky moon" ....does it make you feel better? It certainly wud only aggravate you ;-), now try using "l___ ka b__l","O___ pu___ ma__","kand____hi","ko___","su____","om____","po___" (from tamil) or "f___ ba___","cu___ s___","mo__ f__ b__" (from English) or "gaa__","bho__","be___","ma____ c__" (from hindi) with the proper rise and fall, fall-rise intonations, and voila....all your frustration is gone in seconds!!!!

:-))

Obscenities should no longer be taboo ;-), they are here to stay, long live coprolalia, long live our scatalogical invectives...... so the next time you hear someone condemning you for your language, remember he is a loser, his descendants will "de-evolve" ;-)

JNaut will be back! ;-)
Where am I leaving? that is none of your mo___ _ *&#*&#*&( business you ke___ k%%__%*, i have sh__$*%*% to complete and I can't keep ?#*&#*(&#*(& here for you (*&#(*#&*(&(*$*&*($&97 di__$*&^*&, got that?

:-)) ROFL!

>> Marathon Man?? <<

2006-12-25T17:07:00.000+03:30

It had been a hectic month for me, i was preoccupied all the while with either work related to the release of our product,(scheduled in Jan) or with my own personal stuff. I needed a break, and XMas gave me the breather that I desperately needed .

My rejuvenated love for cycling, took control of me and I decided to drop by to my cousin's place in hosur (something i had been putting off for months now), on my bicycle.Hosur is a small town around 40 kms from Bangalore, on the Bangalore - Chennai highway (NH-7). It is a good 55 kms from my place, and I figured out from the bangalore Map that the quickest way for me to hit the Hosur highway was through Brigade road.

I had been to the place of my childhood buddies, kids a lot younger than me, last week, again on my bicyle, on Airport Road, this had stimulated my interests in long distance cycling, and I had almost decided then, that I'd make my trip to Hosur again on my bike. Not paying any heed to mom n dad's cribbings and scolding(I had ruptured a disc on my lumbar spine 2 years back, and had to undergo micro-discectomy, since then my mom has had an additional excuse for her cribbing and complaints about my reckless ways) I took off on my bike on Sunday Morn, 11 AM.

I surmised that it should take me 2 hours to get to Hosur, given the fact that I can sustain good speeds of over 25 km/hr for over an hour without much exhaustion.I also believed that the NH-7 was a superb highway, where my bike can be sustained at my maximum speed.

It took me only 15 minutes to hit brigade road from my office(thats a good 12-15 kms), and soon I was on NH-7, I crossed PVR soon, and unknowingly I had drifted along another circuitous route that would have merged with NH-7, thanks to my newly developed habit of enquiring ppl for directions now and then (earlier I have had bad experiences for not having let this habit develop ;-) ), I soon realised that I was on the wrong course, and turned my bike back and pedalled towards madivala flyover :-).

It is a gr8 feeling to ride on a flyover especially on a bicycle, but i soon realised after descending from the flyover, that I had grossly underestimated the transit time!

The scorching heat of the noon-time sun, coupled with a dusty highway, and the miserable wind-resistance were too formidable opponents against my muscle power. I had slowed down to 10-15 Km/hr, Infosys was still not in sight, I recalulated my earlier estimate of the transit time, and figured out now that its goinna take atleast an hour more than my previous estimate.

The featureless NH-7, along with tonnes of heavy vehicles, and the unforgiving sun made my cycling more taxing! Where it had taken me only 50 minutes to reach madivala, it was now taking me 30 good minutes to reach Electronics City!

Highways are both dogs' and mens' nightnare, for every few hundred feet, I found a dead dog, freshly knocked down an hour or so ago by a speeding vehicle. They just lie there on the highway, and the stench from the carrion is horrible, some of these animals get "tanned" in the heat of the sun on the tar-road. Some get converted into carpets, by being runover repeatedly by speeding vehicle.... it is a horrible sight, and every 10 kms or so I came across an accident scene!! Reckless lorry drivers (who perhaps wud have been driving for 1000s of kms) ramming into some stupid guy's car!

NH-7 has many an upward slopes! It requires tremendous horse power to ascend these slopes, even motorized vehicles in the 50 CC category almost slow down to 5 km/hr on full throttle on these slopes.I was only an exhaused cyclist under the mid-day heat :-(.Had to get down and walk for a few hundred feet once in a while.

After another hour's travel I reached Narayana Hrudayalaya,(my cousin used to stay close to this place until few years back), I wished then, how gr8 it would be if he still lived there :-) It would have meant that my onward journey was over :-) but now I still had a long way to go!

3 kms later, I reached a huge display on the road which indicated "Hosur - 15 Kms".
I was frustrated, it already seemed to me like i had pedalled over 50 kms....and now this board indicates that I had 40% of my journey still unfinished!

I knew this time, that 15 kms would translate to a solid 1 hour given my current state of exhaustion and the heat was no better! few lines from Lance Armstrong's biography "It is not about the Bike" flashed across my mind....."Go lance go..." :-), it brought back a momentary burst of adrenaline in me, and I was pedalling hard, 3 kms down, I almost got myself killed!! I :-), I tried to get to the edge of the road, not realising that what appeared as a thin later of sand, turned out to be over 3 inches deep and was fine grained.....my wheels skid as I applied brakes, came to a halt 10 feet away :-)).

Onething I hate about cycling in this country is that it is looked down upon by fat bastards driving in cars! I sometimes feel like beating them up black n blue...bloody clumsy oafs expending petrol, polluting the atmosphere and looking down upon we environment friendly fit and agile cyclists!

After another strenuous hour of pedalling I finally reached Hosur, my cousin and his son had been waiting there to receive me for over an hour, thanks to the inordinate delay my cousin sent his son back home, poor kid, was eagerly waiting to receive me :-).

My cousin was surprised to see me with my bike :-) little did he know that when i had told him "that I have started, I'll be there in 2 hours", that I was goinna cycle to his place!!

In the end it turned out to be a pretty good trip.....after spending a day at my cousins, and visiting a beautiful dam the next morning (the 3 of us, my cousin, his son, and I ) it was time for me to start pedalling again :-).

The way back home was a pleasant ride! Thanks to my experience of my journey onward, I had decided that to start around 3:30 PM would be the ideal time to save myself from the scorching sun, and yet get back home before dusk (when it begins to get chiller here!!). I started around 4 PM from his place, this time, the road did not have many upward climbs, there was no wind-resistance, and I had just had a good 2 hour nap after a heavy lunch!

In 1 hour and 20 minutes I had crossed Electronics city, in just another 20 minutes, I had crossed PVR!!, in another 20 minutes, I was back at my office.....looks like i had not underestimated the transit time afterall :p

And here I am typing this bloglet as a record of this "crazy expedition"(as my ppl back home) would call it!

Wondering whats my next destination :-p err perhaps Mysore? :-p (thats 130 kms from blore ;-) )

I know, the distance I cycled does not even measure up to the distance the 5 year old Budhia Singh ran!, but atleast I have crossed the marathon distance with my muscle power ;-)

J'Naut will be back.

>> A Cycle down the memory lane <<

2006-12-02T17:41:00.000+03:30

It been over 12 years since I left KV MEG (1994 VI Std)
I decided to to go back and have a look at the place where I had spent most of my childhood...a good 8 years. I chose to go on my bike (cycle).

KV MEG is no longer the place it used to be.
Somehow the whole area appears to have 'shrunk' in size, perhaps because i have doubled in size and weight. It is a lot less greener than it used to be.

If i remember correctly back then KV MEG was recognized as the KV with highest number of trees in Bangalore. It's all gone now.

The HUGE COMPOUND walls, over which as a Kid I used to run on are now shorter and have a metal fence! Kids can no longer have an escapade up on these walls.

The banyan trees in the ground appear to have been chopped down! I could not locate them. There is no sign of the jackfruit tree on the park either.

The area on either sides of the entrance to the staff quarters now has a stupid car park. I remember in those days, once in a while there used to NCC camps organised in KV MEG, and the junta used to make rope-bridges from the huge tree in front of the staff quarters to a tripod on the opposite side made of casurina. When the camp was over, this bridge was 'OUR PROPERTY' for atleast 2 days! We all used to become mowglies and Tarzans then. But now sadly there is a stupid car park out there.

I tried going around the school campus only to find buildings all over!!!
There appears to be no free land left! To the left of the assembly hall (when you face it) and behind the principal's room there used to be a large area of marshland, it was submerged mostly during the rainy season and had elephant grass much taller than me during the summers. There were 3 huge mango trees out there, where we kids from the staff quarters used to experiment our skills in hurtling projectiles to bring down mangoes.

This was also the place where most of the kites used to get entangled in the trees around it. We were warned by our teachers back then, that this place was infested with a variety of snakes and we should keep off!

Sadly, there is now a concrete jungle in its place, I could not recognise what those buildings were, but they appeared to be an extension of the staff quarters.

The entrance to KV MEG from NAGA Theatre has been sealed, it is no longer open for even cyclists!!
NAGA THEATRE is no more, I mean the building is still out there, but it is goinna be brought down sooner, I read in the papers recently that a shopping mall was goinna come up in its place.

I tried to take a look at our beautiful school stadium, it still appears to be in its pristine state, but from the distance I could see that the ASH TRACK IS GONE!!!! Godamn fellas have layed a TAR ROAD around the track I believe, thats what it appeared to me.

SONA RUPA (if anyone remembers this name), is GONE! This was the kiosk from where we used to buy our rubber balls and bubble gums!

Atleast ulsoor lake looks cleaner (although there isn't as much water as there used to be back then) thanks to the cleaning and renovation efforts by Bangalore Mahanagarapalika! Lake junction, the super market right on the end of the road that hits ulsoors lake from our school is still out there but is now called Lake Side Super Market.

The place where I spent around 8 months of my kindergarten 'Merry Land' (next to the Lake Side Hospital) is now a HIGH SCHOOL!!Back then there were hardly 3-4 classes of kindergarten out there, now the same area of land is a school for a whole 10 grades!!

There is dirt all over.Pollution appears to have increased exponentially! There is a very prominent layer of gray dirt on all buildings and trees.

I saw two kids come out into the balcony of the staff quarters which was once my home.It was covered in the shade of a gargantuan tree back then, but now that tree has been felled! Seeing those kids brought back vivid memories of my childhood escapades with other kids in the staff quarters, our attempts to build tree houses, to create our own gardens or make 'Cork Ball' out of the fruit of the gargantuan trees whose leaves used to fold up after twilight. As I watched them, I could only feel sorry for the kids of today out there who can perhaps never have the same time we had back then.I left the place with a heavy heart.

Within minutes I was on my way to MG Road on my bike.I took a turn and entered the lane directly opposite to Lavanya theatre hoping to see if there was even any ruins of the shops I had known on that lane, when I was a kid. I tried looking for the barber shop where Dad, Bro and I used to visit on a sunday of every second month. It was a routine, I was always the one to have my hair cut first, followed by my brother, and then dad. Knowing my impatience to wait, dad would instruct my brother to take me home after his turn was done. On the way back we used to unfailingly buy a "Double YUM" - a popular bubble gum and chew it for hours the whole day.

There was no sign of that barber shop. I tried looking for the taylor shop where my dad used to regularly have his clothes stitched - 'Petkar Sons', there was no signs of that either!

But I was happy to find the garage which appeared to have not changed at all in these many years. ...I remember I had once found a big magnet in front of the garage, and ever since then I used to watch out for black metal objects whenever I used to pass by the Garage.

Lavanya theatre appears to have been renovated and it is still making good profit i believe.
It was screening Dhoom-2, people were waiting to watch the 6:15 PM show, I also thought for a second if I should park my bike and get a ticket, but then decided to go on, I hadn't come this far to watch a silly movie.

I cycled towards the 'exhibition grounds', but that place appears to have been converted into a cricket-coaching field. There was no signs of the GIANT WHEELS and the 'TORA TORA' on which I was crazy about riding on. There used to be a decrepit old theatre called 'Shree' which was almost abandoned even back then. In that place there now stands a huge shopping complex, the name 'Shree' however has not been wiped out.

Few metres from there, I saw 'Manjushree Hospitals', it used to be a nursing home back then, where my mom was admitted for a day after she had met with a serious accident. The Post office in front of the hospital reminded me of that unknown postman who had lifted my mom who was lying in a pool of blood, knocked unconcious by the collision of her head with the metre of the auto in which she and her neighbour were travelling, and had admitted her in the hospital. The auto had collided with an electric post to avoid a head on collision with a friggin lorry.

Few seconds later I hit the perpendicular road to MG Road. I tried searching for 'Raja Cycle Works', the cycle shop from where I had bought my first bike 'Hero Ranger - Junior'. There was no signs of any such shop having existed there. Within minutes I was on MG Road, never before had i ridden my bike on this road. It was a smooth ride, I went upto Symphony theatre to check out if they had changed the screening of 'Casino Royale', they hadn't, so I turned my bike back and rode towards home.

After a good 10 minutes in the horrible traffic I stopped by HP Labs to have my favourite MASALA POORI. It took me only a quarter of an hour to get back to my office from there.

It was an enjoyable 2 hour, 20 Km long cycling trip down the memory lane.
I am thinking of making many more such trips within bangalore on my bike in the coming weeks.

Juggernaut will be back.

>> Stop bullshitting <<

2006-11-25T19:36:00.000+03:30

After a hectic month, i terribly needed to chill out...thanks to the cult comm at my workplace, i had a gr8 day at a resort in the outskirts of the city!

But that wasn't enough, as always decided to go watch a movie ...was supposed to have waited for my friends to join me tomorrow, but i could not hold on to the excitement and decided to watch Casino Royale....bah!

The makers of the films should stop bullshitting...i donot understand the hype given to such movies...although it was not a total waste of money (unlike MOST HINDI MOVIES), it was nothing that the hype given to it indicated.

Yeah, Daniel Craig is a better BOND.... but his actions look horrible when juxtaposed with the african yamakasi (free-runner) who impresses us with his dextrous maneuvers and toad like leaps!!!

Whoever the hell that Eva Green is ...she looks horrible....
but ultimately, what i liked abt the movie was the dialogue that Bond delivers towards the end
"The mission is over, THE BITCH IS DEAD".

So very true...i appreciate this coldness associated with BOND, and good that he realised it....also reminds me of the lines from Golden Eye where BOND says "It is my coldness that keeps me alive" to which the female responds back with "It is your coldness that keeps you alone"!

Who the hell cares, alive is more important than being alone....
Emotions are too much for men.

Being cold blooded makes life look so much more beautiful.......there seems to be no extremes anywhere...

Although i am not happy about the movie (coz of the hype given to it which is has failed to meet)... I am glad i did not get a ticket for Dhoom-2 (which was what i would have seen otherwise).....and yeah....i felt good to hear those cold lines delivered from the time hardened, ruthless bond!

"The mission is over, the bitch is dead"

>> Romantic Technobabble <<

2006-11-22T19:15:00.000+03:30

Another of jugger's romantic exploits :-))))))))

Friand: vatz, wattzup?
Jugger: 63 wattz up and running?

Friand: why 63 wattzz?
Jugger: coz my heart leaps up 10 cms every second that it beholds you.
(you= 63 kgs*10cms*1 sec = 63 Watts)

:-)))))))))))))))

Alright alright...don't stone me now .

>> October sky <<

2006-10-26T08:55:00.000+03:30

Again some page fillers.
October reminds me of Goddard's 'Anniversary Day', last year around the same time I had keyed an excerpt from Carl Sagan's 'Broca's Brain' on Robert H Goddard.For interested readers, u can pick it from the Oct-2005 archives of my blog.

And aaah..... this day happens to be my beloved company's 6th Birthday yaaay!

>> Inspired by Orkut romeos <<

2006-10-20T09:59:00.000+03:30

Orkut is the best place for entertainment!.
Since i have not been blogging actively for a while now, I am filling up this postlet with 2 of my poems inspired by Orkut ASCII artists and scrapbook romeos! ;-))

---------------------------------------------------
>>>> Principia Romantica <<<
------------------------------
'Your eyes are like two radio galaxies
your nostrils are super blackholes from which emanates no mucus
your hair is a dazzling bunch of macroscopic super-strings

your smile spreads like a photon beam
your rejection of my friendship will be my supernova '
----------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------
>>>> Principia Romantica 2 <<<
------------------------------
from my heart to your heart
is there a hamiltonian path?

oh ye celestial seraph
thine thoughts formeth a eulerian graph

with thy skills linguistic I am unable to compete.
to conquer thy heart is problem NP-Complete
-----------------------------------------------------

bah I don't find anything to write about these days :-((

Jugg will be bak.

>> whats with Thavakalai? <<

2006-09-29T07:17:00.001+03:30

All ye ppl who stumbled upon my blog from Google on searching for "Thavakalai" (which in Tamil means 'Frog') would you care to tell me whats happening??

I am find so many visits from Google with search word "Thavakalai" from all parts of the world.

Wazzup??
:o

>> whats with Thavakalai? <<

2006-09-29T07:17:00.000+03:30

>> Homosapienic arrogance <<

2006-09-11T18:00:00.000+03:30

Last week i got into a small argument with someone who proclaimed that computers cannot behave intelligently.The proponents of weak-AI believe that computers can never behave like humans, and despite them being our own creation, look upon them as things alien and things so 'inhuman'!

I have seen so many movies in which they are portrayed as beasts which are a threat to humanity, and more often some hollywood hero delivers his wisecracks on how he hates machines!

Aren't we being arrogant? We expect our creation to pit its 'logic/brains' against 2 million years of human evolution? Let alone humans, its been over a billion years since life first evolved on this planet, to achieve that level of 'intelligent behaviour' would itself be a triumph for A.I!!

I believe that strong-A.I is possible, so what if like many say that strong A.I is only for dreamers?

"The dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today and the reality of tomorrow"~Robert H. Goddard

hmmm....I had stumbled upon this link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/20/nmaths20.xml about the 'Mathematician who had turned down the Fields medal', I was misguided by the caption of this news-article which spoke of a mathematician who lives with his mom!!!

Didn't pay much attention to it until kd sent me offliners abt this hero!

Jugger salutes and bows to Dr.Perelman!!
Kudos to you ahoy spartan!

>> Croc Man no more :-( <<

2006-09-04T15:39:00.000+03:30

Steve Irwin will no longer continue to entertain millions of children and adults alike in the world over with his crazy acts with his reptilian friends.

I used to ardently watch all of his programs...be it his search for the biggest wild-anacondas or with his first pets, 15 feet long crocs.

Some may call him a luny for risking his life each day with these wild animals....and might call his death 'expected' but I would regard him as a martyr....wouldn't it be strange if a soldier died of common cold?

Steve would be missed badly.

:-(

Hmmm...coming back to my work.... I am reminded of the classic puzzle in which an ant walks on a rubber band with a speed of x m/s, and the rubber band expands at the rate of y m/s, and one is asked to find out how long the ant would take to cross the rubber band.

I am now that ant on a project task which is a rubber band ;-))
with changing requirements, I am receding from the completion point each day :-))

JNaut will be back.

>>> Masculine Effemination <<<

2006-08-30T10:33:00.000+03:30

Happened to watch one of my favourite programmes on Animal Planet few weeks back (after a long time) "The Most Extreme", on the "The battle of the sexes".

It was startled to hear that the Male 'Y' chromosome has been constantly shriking in size for millions of years and it is believed by some scientists that in another 125,000 years we may not have any 'Males' in the Human species, what is observed today in the whiptale lizards.

What surprised me more was that when a man is in love, the feminine hormones are secreted in higher quantities and as a result men are less 'Masculine' when in love ;-)))

Gosh, it looks horrible, I really had a gr8 laugh on hearing that......damn it.... it is indeed funny when men court women, and say all the sweet things, get emotional-romantic and believe that love is the most beautiful thing on earth.

bull-crap, guess people would eventually outgrow it, i think it is not worth to let down our masculinity for things feminine.

to hell with romanticism, to hell with courtship.
IGNORAMUS, but NOT IGNORABIMUS!

>> Chicken pox got chickened out!! <<

2006-08-16T17:50:00.000+03:30

Woah, it was horrible, I had to get infected by the virus only after 23 years!!
My roomie picked it up from somewhere and left me infected, so by the time he was back from his recuperation, my incubation period was over and I saw the pox blisters on my skin for the first time.It has also happened few years back when i was still in college and there was a series of infection spreading around in the hostel, few of my friends got infected, and I was almost a hypochondriac then assuming even the smallest heat boils to be a pox blister, but i was spared then.

This time around, I had to rush home to recover under mom's care ;-)), and was warned by Kd that it could last for over 19 days (the weakling got infected twice :p), and was also told what not to eat, and what to eat (it was equivalent to saying "Thou shalt not eat"...i mean what the hell?? No salt, no masala puri, no pepper, no nothing X-( ).

But anyway, the vericella virus got chickened out in 6 days, and I still was having all that i used to eat even before (except for masala puri ;-), coz it wasn't available)...i scratched the spores, took bath even on day-2, and pricked some blisters using a needle :p, much to the dismay and disappointment of Kd and others back home, I was alright in week's time.

On mom's insistence, I extended my stay and converted it to a vacation, had been to ooty and took some fantabulous snaps, shall be uploading them soon.

:-))

and hey, Iam back!!!

>> The Tyakal trek <<

2006-07-23T16:06:00.000+03:30

It was ages since i had gone out on a trekking expedition, and until yesterday I trekked either alone or with a friend or two.

Yesterday, few of my colleagues decided on a trekking expedition to 'tykal boulders' a remote village about 60 kms from Bangalore.It was their favourite one-day trekking spot, and this time they were overwhelmed by the participation of their fellow colleagues.

I've been to many parties organised by my former employer, most of them were monotonous and boring, I haven't had much fun, but this time, it was a gr8 experience.

We were to meet at the cantonement railway station by 6:30 AM on saturday morn and board the marikuppam passenger at 7 AM, 19 of us had decided to turn-up.

6:30 AM these days to me is like 'Midnight', and working late (until 4 AM on friday morn) had momentarily changed my body-clock, and I couldn't sleep until 2 AM on saturday morn......I had to wake-up at 5:20 AM, just 3 hours after my sleep.

My body clock surprisingly responds to alarms that I register before i go to sleep, I woke up at 5:20 sharp, but thought it was too early, and thought I'd snooze for a few minutes.

The second sleep is always dangerous, you lose track of time, and experience time-contraction, by the next time i woke up the time was 6:10 AM.

I had plans to board an auto by 6 AM in the morn to get to cantonement by 6:30.
I rushed thru my morning chores, and was running to the nearest auto stand by 6:30AM.

The blasted fella wanted me to pay 1.5 times the meter reading, I was helpless, I was late by 30 mins already, I agreed, and reached cantonement by 6:45 AM. Not finding any of my colleagues around I panicked, and happened to check the train timings board and found to my dismay that the marikuppam passenger which we were supposed to board had departed at 6:22 AM!!!

I rushed to the other platform searching for my colleagues, atlast found them waiting near the reservation queue. Told the trek-lead that the notice board says the passenger we were supposed to board had left at 6:22, he was shocked...and we verifie d the timings on the other side of the station and it read 7:05 AM.... in my panick, I had read the 'Arrival time : 18:20' as 6:20 and had assumed we had missed the train ;-))

An hour and a half later, we were at tykal, after quickly devouring our breakfast there at a local hotel (iam sure our breakfast was equivalent to a DAY's business for that small hotel in a remote town from bangalore) we set out on our trekking.

We hit the foot of the tyakal boulders after a 20 minute walk. off the 19 of us who turned up, 3 were females, and rest were male.I suppose our average age should have hovered around 26 (as most of us were fresh college grads).The oldest amongst us should have been 35, so we were a group of young, amateur trekkers, and so we had lots of energy.

It seems, on their last trekking expedition to the tykal boulders, they cudn't manage to climb to the peak and had to abort half-way. So this time we were determined to scale and conquer the peak, not just one or two, but we wanted the entire group to reach the summit.

The rocky terrain had sharp rocks, and even the surface of most rocks had razor sharp granules of sand.....even the calloused palms of my hands got bruised and began to ache after a few hours. The trek-lead had placed orders that for safety-sake, none should go ahead of him, and none should fall behind the trek-organised (the eldest amongst us). So I had to tone my enthusiam and stay right behind the trek-lead.

But after a few minutes into the trekking, he sensed my energy and enthusiam and perhaps athletic ability ;-) and decided that he could use me as the 'route-locator' and he could direct others in the route that I determined was the easiest for all of us. So as he directed the rest of us to follow, I explored the boulders for the safest route up to the next stop..... there were some deep crevice, some pits and some unscalable boulders, often, I had to traverse 2-3 routes to determine which was safer.

Sometime when i was exhausted, the trek-lead took up my place of exploring while i directed the rest of us..... this way we slowly managed to reach a spot that was perhaps 200 metres from ground-level....it was a huge boulder, a little slopy.....but it was a safe-spot to rest and have lunch.

To get to that spot, we had to pull some of our colleagues up.....and when we got there, we unloaded our back-packs...and decided to conquer the peak and get back for lunch.....two of my colleagues chose to stay-back as they were totally exhausted and the boulders up ahead seemed to be all the more daunting.

So we decided to let them there, and we set forth...this time, I was ahead....the trek-lead and few other male colleagues of mine decided to guide the females thru the right route to the top...so friend and I rushed to conquer the peak..... some boulders seemd unscalable, and at times we thought we wudn't make it, coz we seemed to hit a dead-end often, but not wanting to give up, we circumvented the dead-ends and rushed to the peak, finally after 50 more VERTICAL METERS, I was the first to reach the peak.....the peak of the mountain which we had started to climb on, there seemed to be another hillock adjoined to ours, that had a higher peak, but atleast we climbed the peak of our mountain...it was a spectacular sight, from up there we could get a panoramic 360 view of the scenery around us....few minutes later all our colleagues reached up (except for the two who chose to stay-back at the lunch-place).

I was really surprised that all of us had made it.... team-work had worked wonders...what would have otherwise been an impossible task to a few us, now was made possible.

After a few minutes rest on the peak, we decided to go back for lunch, the team lead this time directed me to start preparing lunch(sandwiches) as soon as i got down.....so i rushed, the way down was relatively easy, coz when i stumbled upon a deep descent, I chose to leap down...gravity sometimes is so helpful ;-))

A friend and I went on different routes....finally managed to get to the lunch-place first...but I didn't know how to peel a cucumber and chop tomatoes with the make-shift cutting tools that we had.....luckily the female colleague who had chosen to stay back, peeled the cucumber and another friend of mine cut the tomatoes, while i emptied all food items from our backpacks.

In few minutes were making sandwiches and we all ate like gluttons.....it was delicious to our hungry stomaches and exhausted bodies. Few of our simian ancestors were up there waiting for us to leave, to feast on the remains of our lunch....after a quick rest we started our descent, we had only an hour and a half to board the last train to bangalore.

So we had to make it fast....the descent this time was more difficult.Escpecially when you have few females in your group...who aren't used to these mountaineous maneuvers...... so once again through team effort we helped them descend carefully...sometime having to show them how to descend....sometimes having to pull them down..... in an hours time, we got to the ground......all of us... without any injuries.

I was glad no mishap happened.....those cliffs and boulders weren't really safe...there were boulders which were difficult to ascend/descend, one small mistake could have meant a 6 metre fall.

We boaded the 5 PM train to blore, every muscle in my body ached...it still aches....but it was i can say, the trek of my life.....beautiful.

Iam attaching few pics of the scenery as seen from the boulders.
(I know Kd is goinna burn on seeing these images :-)) )

Jugg will be back.

>> beyond stone-age?? <<

2006-07-19T21:18:00.000+03:30

sp : What happened to the blogs?
Jugger : i am still accessing it thru pkblogs.com
sp : i read they wanted to block one and the numb skulls didnt know how to do that
sp : so they blocked the entire domain
sp : soon entire internet will be gone
Jugger : leave the dumb-heads
sp : :))
Jugger : yeah
Jugger : like u read on my bloglet
sp : no more cell phones, telephones, telephone
Jugger : stone-age
sp : why even post offices will be shut down
sp : new rule
sp : maximum numbe of hours anyone can talk a day : 10 minutes
sp : i did
Jugger : yeah...it pretty much summed up your views as well ;-)
Jugger : no phone at all...no radio
sp : why no talking
Jugger : we don't need anything....we shall go plough the land and use semaphores for communicating
sp : that way even simi people cannot plot
sp : yeah
sp : good one
sp : :))
Jugger : we shall use the strategy of phantom
sp : lol lol :))
Jugger : the ghost who walks in his jungle
Jugger : "dum dum dumb dum"
Jugger : but then they might evacuate all air from earth
Jugger : coz sound needs a medium to propagate
Jugger : so let us create vacuum
sp : great idea
Jugger : :d
sp : we can all wear o2 cylinders to breath
Jugger : what then? only LIGHTING FIRE could be a signal
Jugger : but no air, no fire
sp : super
Jugger : so how to make things burn
Jugger : ?
Jugger : :o
Jugger : politicians will be confused
Jugger : we shall use electricity
Jugger : fuel cells
Jugger : and binary transmission of signals as light
sp : what would happen if arjun singh saw his shitty profile on orkut?
sp : :))
Jugger : let civilisation begin again on earth
sp : :))
Jugger : arjun singh wudn't know how to login to check his mails
sp : senesless move by a clueless babu
Jugger : who the bastard called babu?
sp : the great indian term for beauercrat
Jugger : okie..babudom
Jugger : yeah
sp : vatsan we may not be able to chat in the future
sp : okay
Jugger : :d
Jugger : so sad.
sp : ymessenger will be blocked
Jugger : u will be left in USA with all comm
sp : :))
Jugger : but i'd be in India...ploughing the land...or worse hunting
sp : yeah and u can go and plough ur land or come here
sp : hunting is illegal
Jugger : shall become a gypsy
sp : u can join salman khan in prison
sp : :))
Jugger : :d
Jugger : shall take photo with him ;-)
Jugger : without shirt

*(#@&(#*&(*#& these buggers art goinna remove the ban in 2 days it seems...lemme see....but how have they stopped us from doing all that we did before? I can still post...i can still read blogs.

X-(

>> Back to Stone-age <<

2006-07-18T16:44:00.000+03:30

We are heading back to stone-age, thankx to the brillaint move by the Indian government following the mumbai train blasts.

All Indian ISPs have been been busy blocking access to blogspot, geocities and what not. The stated reason is that "to prevent the usage of such resources by the anti-social elements in propagating their plans".

One thing has always amazed me, why aren't the the right men on the right jobs??Why are our politicians like a menagerie of trolls? Did they in their microscopic cerbellum figure it out that blocking access to these sites, would discourage/disable the anti-social elements from communicating their plans??

How can people be so dumb??There are thousands of private-paid account blogsites,thousands of mail portals.....can these trolls stop them all??

Are these officials in the ministry goinna realise one fine day on hearing from their SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN that there is something called www.orkut.com which is the best thing to have happened in social engineering?? And when they hear that will they ban orkut following suite of Iran??

But why don't they bring down the Internet itself??Why do we need ISPs?Lets bring down the Internet, so that no anti-social element is able to hatch their cruel plans using the Internet.

What of the telecommunication system?? Alrighty....lets bring down the telecommunication system as well, then what of telegraph? No problemo, we don't need the telegraphs either.

What of radio? Oh yeah, that is also a vulnerability, we don't need any radio....we need "safety" ...... let us drop an e-BOMB and blow up our radio-stations....let us blow-out all radio towers.

What next?? Oh what if anti-social elements use the Inland letter in communicating their plans?? We wudn't want that either, so let us close down our postal system.

What next? We surely don't need any private couriers or messengers....lets us ban everything....

let us get back to stone-age......our politicians indeed don't deserve to be in the 21st century with their stone-age brains.

This country sucks.Iam disappointed.

>> Worth the wait? <<

2006-07-10T15:42:00.000+03:30

You call it the human delusion called hope? What makes us wait hoping sb/sth would change? Why are humans so obsessed about 'hope'? Is the sb/sth worth the wait? Why don't we just shrug it off and walk our way? Why wait for something that is so illusive? Why hope against hope when the thing your hoping for persists in being despondent?

Why do our brains educated about bayesian posterior probabilities of occurence of events refuse to behave mathematically? Is it intuition? desperation? or our aversion to reality?

can the routinely retrogressing revertants redeem their lives from the clutches of psychosis?

Why wait when the waitee (sb/sth) doesn't acknowledge the worth of the waiter?

to hell with human delusion...to hell with hope.... X-(

>> Inference : Man's priced possession?? <<

2006-06-19T18:31:00.000+03:30

Well...now i have decided to write something about science as I observe it....I've been fascinated from childhood by mundane activities like observing stray dogs scavenging for food, making love ;-) or the males marking their territory by spraying.As a child i've observed and analysed some of the daily chores of these faithful animals and some of them have made me question "Is the power of inference man's priced possession alone?"

Let me describe one of their chores that I've observed many a times.
Dogs spray on objects around them to mark their territory, we all would have heard of this or watched it on some programme on discovery/animal planet/nat geo.

But i've seen some of them spraying on man-made objects like bicycles, scooters, cars etc.
Did they do it out of intelligence? or did they assume it was just another stationary object?
I believe in the former, dogs do know that vehicles are inanimate, they also know that have seen us riding them.

Could they have possibly figured out that by spraying on such objects that are on the MOVE often, they can expand their territory without having to themselves run-around into the territories of their peers and spraying there (ofcourse not without getting into fights with the other males)?

:-))

I'll be back with more such observation of mine ;-)

>> Muse in hibernation?? <<

2006-06-13T17:58:00.000+03:30

I've been wondering whats happened to the muse in me, i no longer feel inspired/dejected/frustrated to take to blogging with the same vigour with which i used to few months back.

I think happy men can't be poets?
I disoriented, not able to find something to write about :-(

>> Juggernaut sees Juggernaut <<

2006-06-04T19:45:00.000+03:30

Had been to 2 movies today.
The first one was "fanaaa" and the other being "X-Men 3, the last stand".

"Fanaa" was shiploads of bull....I have now made up my mind to NEVER EVER WATCH ANY FRIGGIN HINDI MOVIE whatsoever it may be.... looks like i can even digest tamil movies...but certainly not Hindi.

Kajol's character looked like a desperate bitch who is desperately in need of a man....looks like there aren't any men in Kashmir, and this friggin female falls in love and makes love once she finds some rogue in Delhi who admires her beauty.

The second half of the movie is super-ordinary and looks like it has picked up some idea from an English movie.... but as always, it had nothing different...and it was trite.

HINDI MOVIES SUCK.

X-Men-III was super-cool, I saw "ME" on big screen "Juggernaut"...unfortunately Juggy was made to look like an "All brawn, no brain" moron there in the movie.Perhaps thats what he is in real-life..... someone has made him one.... X-(

>> We're(Humanity) not going to make it <<

2006-05-23T16:52:00.000+03:30

The battle is now on to the streets.....I was ignorant about the happenings in the north, the developments in anti-reservation protests in the student community across India, until i stumbled upon "anti-reservation community" and 'youth for equality community' and the likes on orkut.

I believed that every sane-headed human would distinguish between a logical argument and one thats cartloadfuls of crap.But perhaps i was wrong....it aches me to see protests by 'pro-reservation' groups.... their logic appalls me.

One fanatic of 'pro-reservation' says "it is payback time, you(brahmins) have dominated us for 2000 years, now it is pay back time", "we are 98%, we are the majority, reservation is our RIGHT...and we shall have it".

Needless to speak of the thousand invectives that would have been fired upon the one who said it....politicians have succeeded...."DIVIDE AND RULE" is indeed a beautiful trick.... and it has worked for ages.... now brothers and goinna fight like beasts in their own country.... it is no longer going to be a battle of "THE RATIONAL and the irrational" but it is going to break out as a battle of the castes.

I have friends from communities which are considered to be "deprieved" by the government....and I have known them to reject a "quota-seat" even though it meant that they'd have to spend another year trying to earn a "MERIT-seat"..... I know members from backward communities who shout aloud anti-reservation slogans.....but I think they are easily outnumbered by brainless cattle.

I for once thought that every RATIONAL LITERATE/ILLITERATE would understand that this is a battle between the "COMPETENT and the INEPT".....but it no longer seems to be possible.

This country is going to dogs.....all because of a bunch of @(*@(*@&@(*& politicians.

Go on all you spineless creatures(PRO-RESERVATION)....fight for your rights... fill your stomaches....until when one day you no longer will be able to handle what was thrown on you....you'll perish under the gravity of your own ineptitude....and on that day, I'd dance on your grave.

>> The Exit <<

2006-05-15T15:55:00.000+03:30

People who aspire for a career in 'research/academia' are 'crazy'.....thats what I came to know from mr TPTJ.

What follows is a brief account of my meeting with him.

TPTJ : yes....??

Me : Sir, I was a campus recruit of XYZ and I've been here for 22 months, but now Iam leaving this place, I've always been interested in research, and so Iam going in search of a path that would lead towards my goal.

TPTJ : Why did you come here then?

Me : Back in college my priorities were different, I wanted to sculpt my amorphous theoretical knowledge on the cutting edge of technology in the Industry.I had plans of leaving for the pursuit of research after 2 years of Industrial exposure.

TPTJ : I know why you came here, XYZ is a launchpad.

Me : I didn't get you Sir...

TPTJ : you came here for the brand-name of XYZ, for that tag.

Me(unspoken) : WHAT THE HELL?? DO YOU KNOW THAT THIS PLACE IS A QUAGMIRE? A BLACKHOLE??and YOU CALL IT A LAUNCHPAD?? (#@*&#(*#&(#*&

Me : No Sir, when XYZ visited campus, there was a pamphlet that read "ABC, who aspired to be an
astronaut in NASA, but destiny chose to place him as a software engineer in XYZ, but now after 20 years with XYZ, he is a two time space traveller and a NASA Scientist, come to us, you'll be going places....like OUTER-SPACE for example".But only after coming here I realised,there aint no NASA, and there is a zero probability for me to be ABC.

TPTJ (Pretending he hadn't heard me) : where are you going to do your PhD.

Me : I'd be doing a PhD in the US on Artificial Intelligence, I do have admits this year, but I
have not been funded, so I'd work on some research in my area of app for a while, and then apply for next year.I am hoping to publish a paper in my area for which I would need to spend a lot of time which I cannot do with my current responsibility as a software engineer at XYZ.

TPTJ : What was your branch of study in your B.E?

Me : Information Technology sir.

TPTJ : what were the papers you had in your Bachelors?

Me : Analog and Digital Communications...and

TPTJ(interrupts) : thats not going to help you in A.I...then..

Me : Distributed Computing...and...

TPTJ(as though he is a know-it-all) : thats not going to help you in A.I

Me (decided it was high time I took over this conversation) : No sir, I am interested in Multi-Agent systems, it is a blend of Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Computing....(some technobabble...)

TPTJ (Doesn't know what to speak...thats not his cup of tea....speak of project plan, excel sheet, onsite client visits...and he'll speak for hours on it) : how long is a PhD?

Me : on the average 5-6 years Sir.

TPTJ (bursts in schadenfreude) : 6 years?? CRAZY!!!!! (feeling rapturous in excitement that he
would have accumulated over a crore and a half in his bank account in that time.

Me(unspoken) : you (*#&(#*&#(*#&, absolutely, this has to sound crazy to some #*(#&(#* with an
ossified brain who can't think of anything beyond his daily chores of #@*(#(*#& the client's *@&#*& and demanding for 'summary reports' for a project that has been scrapped, in which 90% of the 'developers' are on bench, 5 % are on maternal leave, and the 5% who think they are working are doing some data-entry.You think you are Sir Newton incarnate, and XYZ is your brainchild - Calculus!

TPTJ : Okay..... I have a meeting now.... so I don't have time for you (throws a facial expression that indicated that i had to leave....without giving a YES/NO on my decision).

Me(unspoken) : #(*#(&#(*&)()*#)(*# it is a pity I had to waste 2 precious years of my life working for (*&(*&$ like you and for a company like #*(#&*(# comprised of a majority of boneheads who are all dancing in a state of drug-induced-stupor (in this case being MONEY/PAY) not realising that XYZ and em all is affected with the Nayagara Syndrome!!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iam glad my days with XYZ and its prodigious brainchildren like TPTJ and thousands more(oh yeah....strength in numbers...) are over.... i've atlast found what I spoke of in my old bloglet on " >> The Flawed World !!<<" (July 25,2005) (http://juggernautvatsan.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_juggernautvatsan_archive.html)

where i had written

"Jugg : it gives me hope that there exists a sublime flawless enclave in this flawed world !!"

it is a gr8 feeling to work with a unique multi-disciplinary team.....with PhDs in Plasma physics, to Algorithmics, to Molecular bilogy!

I only hope now...that all my friends back there @ XYZ...who also were fed-up draining their encephalons, do break-away and find enclaves where they indeed 'belong to'.

Jugg will be back.

>> 'Now i know why you cry, but it is something i can never do' <<

2006-05-02T12:14:00.000+03:30

It was time for me to leave the place where i had spent 22 months of my life, all of my career so far.....and as always i thought this wasn't goinna be no special day for me.....I mean i have been to 4 schools, was away from home for 4 years during my college days...and had to part from friends...leave we all had to back then....the grief was not so overwhelming that it would make me melt...may be it was coz we all had to leave then.....but this time.... I donot know what got into me.

My heart seemed to have grown heavier, and so it seemed that my nostrils were like those of a rocket...from which the propellant expands out at extremely high velocities.... I felt a burst of some intangible, ineffable emotions spurt out of me.....but it left me still as a rock...i didn't shudder, i didn't cry..... I just dropped my head low and left my building, my colleagues and friends with whom i had developed a strong bonding in these 22 months.

Few hours before i had to leave, I bid adieu to all my countless friends, foes and unknown men on the forum that brought me to them all......it was an emotional moment....within minutes, there were several responses to my postlet...should have perhaps been a surprise to most of them who knew me not well enough.....

my best and wisest of friends had to write an 'Ode for me' thus

It all sounds like a bloated write-up on a reckless ruffian.....but well...it did melt me :-(
and so did countless other responses from my friends and foes.

After having backed up all those countless old conversations, chat messages and mail-exchanges....i issued a Shift+Del on my folder.....as those myriad files were being unmarked from the disk's tables.....the final scene from the movie 'Terminator : Judegement Day' as The Terminator asks itself to be lowered down into the molten metal.....

after a few flickers...it was all gone...the last of the gigabytes of data and memories i had stored on my comp...... I rushed out of the office. and went home with a heavy heart....my friends out there had made me feel different....had made me 'Feel' to begin with....the cynical crank had felt close to crying once again.
I was reminded of the closing lines of the Terminator in Judgement day

'Now i know why you cry, but it is something i can never do'

>>> The stoical sentimentalist?? <<<

2006-04-25T10:08:00.000+03:30

For years i believed i was stoical.....I haven't missed home when i was away for 4 years of my college life in hostel, I have basked in comfort of staying incommunicado, not calling up parents/relativs often.

I haven't liked men/women crying....I've hated movie scenes in which the women cried and the men comforted them.I have wondered why people 'Cry' when a relationship goes sour, I have wondered why people cry when they don't get what they pined for.

But perhaps Iam human too......I have emotions burried deep within me in another form.....why then do i get close to crying in exaltation on reading the excerpt on Robert.H. Goddard by Carl Sagan in 'Broca's Brain', why do i lose balance when i read the closing lines of the novel 'CONTACT' by Carl Sagan? Why was I shaken when i read the passing reference to the 'poor and solitary hindu pitting his brains against the
accumulated wisdom of entire Europe' the mathematical mystic Srinivasa Ramanujan in the chapters of 'Music of the Primes' by Marcus Du Sautoy?

Why do i feel moved when i read about Galileo, Kepler and Tyco Brahe in COSMOS by Carl Sagan?Why do i feel like crying when I read about the unmatched, unsurpassable genius of Demi-God Sir Newton cracking the 'Brachistochrone Problem'

overnight, past his fifties when most men would have resigned to the comfort of the easy-chair?

Why do I get glued to the monitor when I watch John Nash in 'A Beautiful Mind' no matter how many times I have watchd it before?Why do i get emotional when i see the schizophrenic Johnny attemping to find out 'Pattern Recurrences in Periodicals over time' (A Beautiful Mind). Why do movies like October Sky inspire me? Why do demonstrations of genius by a roadside labourer, a loafer, without much formal education, in solving mathematical puzzles which were impenetrable to university students, bring tears in me?(Matt Damon in Goodwill Hunting).

Why do the lines on Steven Mallory, Gail Wynand, Henry Cameron and Howard Roark keep resonating in my mind? Why do I feel that my most cherished 'Interviews' of all times was the one between Howard Roark and Henry Cameron in the Fountainhead? Why do i get moody when I watch the scenes from the movie 'Thalapathy' symbolizing 'friendship' in its purest form?

Why why why???
Yes, Iam a Stoical Sentimentalist!!

Jugger will be back.

>>> ruminations of a reckless recluse <<<

2006-04-17T12:07:00.000+03:30

Its been a while since I 'somniloquised'.... didn't find anything to write about...and I was trammeled in my 'fight for salvation'. Looks like I am not yet on the road to exuberance, but perhaps I have began to chart out a path that leads to that road!

Hopefully i should be out of event-horizon, careening in intergalactic space in search of the higher-truth. May be impediments are thrown on one's path only to make you stronger.....

In the meanwhile, I was off my usual-daily routine, spending the weekend off @ Goa with friends...... we had a great time bathing in those beaches....

Something bothered me on my way to Goa....this group of 5 girls turn up on our bus...and @ every pit-stop one of them gets down and smokes....whoa... haven't come across many such females....but guess times have changed...nobody wants to be left out....and everyone shields themselves behind some peculiar 'Reason for their acts'.
Who doesn't have reasons? Everyone has..... and it is their right to booze,smoke,drink...but why give reasons/excuses? Silly!

Guess very few ppl have been left who represent the 'Indianess of our granparents' times'...and soon even that is goinna disappear.

Will be back with some fotos of that trip....it brought some respite from boredom.

>>> Will the Revenant Recrudesce ? <<<

2006-03-24T19:52:00.000+03:30

Perched he was on Jovian land
Kvetched he did on the tellurian band

all his time he prodigally plundered
On terrene trivialities he peevishly palavered

Captivity cholers mighty beasts is an adage
heard have you of the feral fauna that built its cage?

redeem will he,life from his time-warp?
rebuff will he, the foes who carp?

defeat is only when he quits he does surmise
Believes he does, one day the revenant will recrudesce.

JuggerNought will be back!

>> Riding on the wave of hope/despair <<

2006-03-19T13:53:00.000+03:30

HOPE is something i have managed to HATE.
My experiments and experiences in life, I believe have almost made me a masochist now.

Iam beginning to doubt if i am enjoying pain/misery.
There were times when my life was a lot less complicated that it is now.For years I was only concerned about cracking some exam and scoring well. I had almost forgotten most of the other things in life like partying/movies and all that (not that i used to like those much and missed it, but just that i wasn't used to all that!)

Back in college, I was again riding on the rollercoaster of life, I had my highs and my lows, but those days fleeted past me quickly.

And now in my professional life, i believe i have been left behind, the wave of hope/despair seems to have returned and it is of very high-frequency, where the time period may last between 2 hours to a day!

I don't know in what position I am going to be in life few years later, nor do i know if i would make it that long (:-) ), but I just have the feeling that have gone beyond 'getting used to' PAIN, and have began to 'ENJOY' it.

May be one day, the Juggernaut will disappear into oblivion...

>> Misery misery misery, thats all you have chosen! <<

2006-02-28T14:59:00.000+03:30

The Juggernaut turned 23 today, and never before in his past has he been deluged in the B'Day wishes from ppl (most of whom he didn't even know for long)!As a kid, like all others, to him his B'Day was a day of gr8 joy, he would invite all his friends home for a party (like all kids in his campus used to), and his dad n mom would embellish his home with all colorful balloons and color paper rolls cut in fanciful shapes.I guess he liked all that back then, when he used to announce to the morning assembly in the primary school that it was his "Happy Birthday" and he would go around visiting each class and offering the Teachers choclates. It was customary, all kids did that back in school.

As he grew up, it was usually his Mom,Dad and Bro who used to wish him early morning on his B'Day....perhaps he liked that too.....back in college his friends would bash him up,whip him with leather belts and drag him through the entire length of the hostel block floors.Someone used to always unfailingly offer him a B'Day Card (sth no one had done before, it was unusual for him to get B'Day cards! He couldn't stand the embarassment :-))

But since when he grew up, he hasn't liked all the attention, he never asked for it, never announced it, and yet they got him! Few more years later, he enters his
professional life and stumbles upon an employee discussion forum - Voila! Never did he expect/realise he had so many friends and 'Well-Wishers'!

Some stranger posts a link to an E-Card for him on behalf of all employees, in the employee discussion forum in his organisation.Many more of his friends post personal greeting messages on public forums where personal wishes aren't allowed by the HR. Four dozen friends scrap him wishes on his Orkut scrap book, close to 50 ppl declare that they like/admire/appreciate/support the Juggernaut and his ways.A dozen ppl call him up/SMS him on his Mobile phone.He wonders whats gone wrong!

It all seems so artificial, so out-of-place to him. As far as he can remember he has been a maniac in bad temper,almost always hurting ppl with his wrath, being a downright boor pissing off even harmless men with his stinging sarcasm.He has bullied his close friends, wrestled with them and teased them into burrying their head into mud.The heckler has verbally assaulted many ppl on arguments(thought none of his comments were personal!). A frustrated soul, cynical about life, nihilistic in his beliefs,misanthropic in his opinions,masochistic about the miseries in life,agnostic about God is being greeted and befriended by so many people..........

Have his calculations gone WRONG SOMEWHERE?? This is an insane world!!He hopes that one day if he is to die in his struggle, if he has to face this thing called "bootlickerism/life of a second-hander" that were to ask him

(quoting the words of Green Goblin in the Spiderman-II)

"Misery misery misery thats all that you have chosen Juggernaut, I offered you friendship and you spat in my face"

He would show it the finger and bend not till he breathed his last.

>> 'Longanimity lures not lunatics' !! <<<

2006-02-13T13:22:00.000+03:30

Patient thou must be, they say
neutrality thou must nourish, they speak

Passion kills men, they preach
Oh misanthrope, grab your life thats going out of reach,

you coward, you kvetch, revealed you have your impuissance
Sang-froid domiciles not in thine feeble veins

oh ye madman, oh ye creep
will you one day make the quantum leap?

Professed he did in yesteryears that the patient man, is seldom sedate
to dilate time, the photon you must outrun mate!

Oh Unstoppable Juggernaut, there is time aplenty before you die your macabre death
fight it now, fight it until thy last breath

and so the raving looney rolls on, pushing each day with utmost pain
bathed in sweat not tears he is, cleanse him one day will the rain?

between my failures realised he has, that longanimity lures not lunatics
Oh 'Time Almighty', he hopes the fruit of forbearance isn't fulsome!

JNaut.

>> In Perithanatic Reverie <<

2006-02-06T14:35:00.000+03:30

If I am to die young, somebody leave this epitaph of mine on my tombstone(Now i am a Hindu by Birth......so i wouldn't be burried...nevertheless i shalt like to have a gravestone that reserves me some space for the eternal sleep).

I had written in one of my emails

"MY PROBLEM IS INDEED MY CALIBRATION OF EMOTIONS..... I AM DIGITAL...my existence and the way i see this world is HIGHLY QUANTIZED...SOMETIMES IT IS MORE LIKE BINARY
IT IS LOVE OR HATE, CLARITY OR CHAOS, LIFE OR DEATH."

I hope i transcend life!
Jugg will be back!(??????)

>>>Women of Substance??!! <<<

2006-01-31T08:28:00.000+03:30

I was running a channel scan last night on the TV and stopped for a while on Channel 'Zoom', some phase of the 'Femina Miss India-2006' was being telecasted, the contestants were delivering their self-promo attempting to impress the viewers to extract their vote. I stayed tuned deciding to watch what the contestants had to say......

now the MCP in me surfaces and makes this wisecrack ;-))

"Feminine intelligence is equivalent to Asinine stupidity"

So i wasn't expecting a flabbergasting self-promo by any of them there. Yet, I wanted to wait and watch if atleast one lady out there could impress me ;-)

They all came and delivered their stereotypical

"Iam XYZ, Iam XX years old, I come from the heart of India ZZZ,
I like Kids/Travelling/Shopping/Meeting new people/Cooking/Reading/Swimming
What i want you to do is, to vote for me, because i believe I am a unique blend of the traditional and the moden Indian woman, so please vote for me and make my dream come true"

Do people call and accept these boneheads as 'women of substance'?? This is no contest where you treat beauty as an animal transaction!!

Like i have quoted in one of my earlier bloglets, 'Beauty' to me transcends the ocular dimension!

I was just wondering then....how would it sound if a young lady walks down the ramp and speaks up...

"Eleanor Arroway, there have been 21 sidereal revolutions of the pale-blue dot, since I descended from the amniotic cavity of my feminine progenitor by the contractions that disturbed my protracted hypnagogic trance.

I am passionate about particle physics and i love to ferret out anti-matter from my indigenous contraption of the Particle accelerator - my 2.5 GeV Bevatron!

A professional aviatrix, I love cruising low altitude earth orbit at speeds in excess of Mach-12 on my X-47 that i engineered using Pulse-Detonation Technology.

Of late, I have been working as an ethnobotanist studying the ramifications of Marijuana & its trophobiotic association with the Masai tribe.

The Indianess in me is still intact, like all south Indian women, I do wake in the early hours of dawn, and delineate the front yard of my house in patterns of Voronoi diagrams and Archimedian Tessellations"

:-)))))))))))))))

(Pardon me for the using a non-Indian name .....I simply love that character...Eleanor Arroway - 'Presh' in CONTACT by Carl Sagan, hence i used that name.

She surely would not have had the votes of the crowd, but she would have got all of the Juggernaut's votes!!

JNaut will be back!

>> Rang-De-Basanti - Mediocre! <<

2006-01-30T07:54:00.000+03:30

The movie was just OKAY, NOTHING SPECIAL and I understand with the hype given to it.... ppl tend to overlook the fact that it has NOTHING

DIFFERENT.

It was one bloody commercial movie... and i understand what runs in the minds of these Directors... they cannot show principled youth in today's context because those are the rare, and they definitely would lose money making a movie on the rare... they wanted everyone to identify with this movie.. and the 'everyone' are ones who are portrayed in that movie,.....a bunch of fellas who have fun all their life, and senselessly give up their lives to awaken a generation???(if thats the case, sacrificing our lives is the only thing required to bring about a revolution??? )

there have been better movies in the past..in bollywood, Tamil or any other regional language for that matter... but those weren't even recognised... it is only the hype that gives these movies their momentum!

I know movies are meant for 'fun' and they shouldn't be taken to the heart, but Jugger doesn't watch movies for fun!I chose movies and my tastes are eclectic.May be 'entertainment' to me is in the form of 'enlightenment', movies that illumine the mind are the movies that are worth watching for me. Perhaps thats why i cannot stand the hype thats given to nonsensical movies, and junta going ga ga over something which they (perhaps) don't know to judge.

Whom are they kidding, I mean these Directors?
Were the bhagath singhs, and the azads, and the likes "Indisciplined youth"?
They were men of principle.... it takes men of principle to revolt, to fight for their nation..... you simply cannot makes us buy the fact that the beer boozing, party animals, who aren't cared about anything at all but fun, wake up one fine day and take the responsibility of fighting for their nation into their hands!

It is understandable that all movies have flaws...but the brilliance of the movies theme eclipse minor flaws in the picturisation/story.... I think Rang-De-Basanti would have been a lot better, if the directors had kept the partying/bantering/boozing/hang-outing' to a minimum, and had instead concentrated more on the 'fighting back/generation waking up'. Without any established evidence, the fellas set out to murder a defense minister (who probably could have only LIED to save his ASS, out of fear perhaps) and then Anupam Kher(who hasn't been portrayed as a villain with proper evidence)......the DJ gang speak about corruption....corruption thats eating our society...and grunt that it is not going to change...... HOW THE HECK IS IT GOING TO CHANGE WHEN AAMIR KHAN himself BRIBES a policeman when he questions aamir's drunk buddy? Why doesn't that sidharth kill Aamir then?

Okie..let me stop commenting about the minutiaes...I did not like the movie much..in part perhaps coz of my expectations when i went to watch it... the media claimed it was goinna be one helluva flick...and that it received a great response from the populace...my bubble of hope was busted in all that boozing, freaking trash that i witnessed in the first half.....somehow the second half try to repair the damage caused by the first.....but finished somewhere in the line between mediocrity and brilliance.

ONE QUESTION:

Why does a girl get emotional when a guy with whom she is in love with, proposes to marry her? Is this merely a projection of the celluloid world? or is it real?

When a guy and a girl commit, and fall in love, does it not by itself mean that they intend to share their lives unto death?? Or is it all bullshit?

Iam asking this coz i got to witness this yet again in this 'Rang-De-Basanti', and witnessed i have earlier, in so many movies.

Arrrghh... i have written too much i think
Me stops now... shall write about something better next time...

JNaut will be back.

>>> Iam allergic to Morons!! <<<

2006-01-24T08:03:00.000+03:30

Well that whats a karma T-Shirt reads, I wanted to buy one, but decided i shall take it sometime later, I wished i could wear that to office, but then, we aren't allowed to wear 'Round Necks' or anything with printed content, coz it is considered 'Informal' in the corporate world, but oh.. yeah if you art a woman, you can getaway with anything... wear what you please(or don't!) you are beyond reproach, unquestionable coz there ain't no clauses defined for Indian Women about what 'Formal Wear' is.

Over the past 18 months or so, I have become extremely irate, but I have somehow managed to tone my irritation down after going momentarily berserk! yes, IAM ALLERGIC TO MORONS, muscleheads, wimps and those who have ossified their encephalons!

It all started off when i barged into an internal employee discussion forum, it was a great place, pristine, unspoiled by morons then, coz there were only few back then! We all enjoyed healthy discussions and friendly banters, used to exchang few good forwards, host e-quizzes et al. But then as more and more of these loony cretins poured in, they made that extant forum a forward board, they mutilated it, interred it in their ordures and made it a museum of e-rumours and most prevalent hoaxes on the Internet!

That sublime discussion board was gone, but they did not stop at that, any heretic who spoke against their daily dose of drab dross was heavily retaliated with senseless counter arguments, or was met with an infantile petulance of these sissys.

I learnt to ignore them, I've learnt to ignore any PIA(Pain In the Ass) these days. Call it out of futility or out of ennui, I've learnt it for good. There was once a time when i used to battle them out fiercely, and insulted them I did, but my retaliation backlashed on me, not because they had managed to parry my invectives,

but you know it is the kind of feeling you experience when you hurl a grenade on your enemy, who puts it into his pocket not realising what a grenade is, and proudly throws a fire-cracker back on you!

So i let go, one of my friends here advised me long back "NEVER ARGUE WITH A FOOL, COZ HE WILL BRING YOU DOWN TO HIS LEVEL AND BEAT YOU BY EXPERIENCE" ~ woah, golden words, i decided i shall beat them in their own way.

So these days, I am not much disturbed by these wimps, but only when you think that a problem has been solved, do you realise that it was only the first step of a solution!

This time, i think the fellow siblings and offsprings of these dolts have taken it to bigger forums, these milktoasts have taken to cowardly concealing their identities by posting anonymously on public forums attempting to damage the Juggernaut's name!

The laggards in love and dastards in war!

Bah, I don't give a damn to their comments, nothing gets past Juggy's mystic defense shield, I should say they art only making me popular ;-))
Few weeks back i wanted to fightback, but then i realised that these weren't even worthy of my wrath! So iam letting go!

I guess i will be allergic to these morons for some more time, until i eventually get inured by my repeated and frequent exposure to them, by when i would have learnt to selectively discard them.

I've changed my ways to suit me, I've been trying to find solace in certain things that have helped me forget things that weren't worthy to be remembered, and I believe I am making progress.

Although i've made a lot of friends over the past few months (the irony is for every 5 enemies i made, i also made a friend back here :-) ) I don't think Jugger is likeable.. I mean i don't know, some believe i am a shammer, some believe iam a bragger, but to me I am just a bored and frustrated soul, yearning to redeem what was lost long back!

I'd requote John Nash's words in 'A Beautiful Mind'

"The truth is, I don't like people much, They don't much like me either!"

Jnaut will be back.

>>>>>> Don’t fight force, use it <<<<

2006-01-16T14:10:00.000+03:30

Buckminster Fuller said that (yeah the one associated with the eponymous Fullerene- Football shaped molecule)….. Last weekend I wanted to have some quality time watching a good movie (English of course!) and I fished out this ‘Shaw shank Redemption’ from a CD Vendor in my area. This movie was something that I have always wanted to watch, but never got to, had heard about it everywhere but then it was so opprobrious of me to not have crunched it being one helluva movie buff that I am. Better late than never, settled down at my friend's place with three more fellas and we watched it late on Saturday night! The Hero of that movie ‘Andy’ did exactly what Fuller said!

He ‘used force’! I have always wondered how we get to see quality movies in English (Agreed, there is plenty of trash there as well… but those fellas simply make some great movies pretty often… unlike our mimics and play it again sams back here X-( )! Everything in the movie fell in place….it was just a simple story told beautifully…. And the climax was the clincher… unlike the ones back here where the climax is what can be regarded as the lid that when blown off lets out the stench of compressed aerosolized reeking shit!

To have such enormous patience is what makes a man inhuman! Can we synthesize in each one of us that quality, to simply lie and wait? Can humans really experience time dilation and harness it to our benefit? Are these psychedelic drugs out here for our own good?(Like sagan says it…there have certain cultures of man in which such narcotic herbs were the only things cultivated….. are these herbs out here only to offer their symbiotic relationship with us?)

This man Andie in the movie…. He uses this Rock Hammer, 6 inches in length to dig a hole thru the prison walls… and he does it for 20 years before he gets out thru it!

It is said that there are these masai warriors of the African Tribes who can lie in wait for a particular variety of fish, that is very sensitive to human ibrations…they hold on patiently for hours together by drugging themselves with marijuana… and impale the fish thru their harpoon!

I am reminded of these lines from my Gita…'The Fountainhead'

“"I’ll straighten it out, if I have to murder a few of them," Kent Lansing told Roark. "I’ll get it out of their hands. We’ll finish it some day, you and I. But it will take time. Probably a long time. I won’t tell you to be patient. Men like you and me would not survive beyond their first fifteen years if they did not acquire the patience of a Chinese executioner. And the hide of a battleship."

If only I only I could acquire that patience!
Annh! Patience and Jugg don’t go hand in hand, we are poles apart! :-(

I’ll be back!

>>Compendium of Soubriquets and their Etymologies <<

2006-01-07T23:29:00.000+03:30

I was on a trip down the memory lanes of the best days of my life 'PSG Tech' last night, perusing my slam book, old photo albums and greeting cards.....was moved by nostalgia :-((

This evening at my friends place... we all watched old farwell videos, cricket videos and everything that we had captured digitally when we were back in college...... it brought back fresh memories of those days.

It occured to me then that we had been using only nick names and soubriquets to identify our friends.... many a time it has so happened that we used to wonder for a while when asked the whereabouts of a person by his name!! So i thought... i shall keep the memories alive by preparing compendium of the Nicknames of my class mates... and also try tracing out its etymology... i hope my friends will add to this list for the names whose roots i am not able to trace... or those which i haven't known.

Let me not include the names of the girls in my class...

NAME ----- NICK NAME(S) --- ETYMOLOGY

Arun Prabhu ---- Kaay Vandi ------- Coz 'Mahes' aka 'Mottai' aka 'Nanbeaen' had a friend back in his school was a look alike of this guy and that friend of his had once ran his cycle onto a vegetable vendors four wheeled trolley..... hence the 'Kaay Vandi'

Balaji Vinodh ----- BirBaal - 'Bir' as in 'Beer' and 'Bal' as in 'Balaji'.

Bhaskar ------- Maaanga ---- coz the fella was notorious for starting gossips and killing time talking about nothing in particular... this habit of his was infectious and he was usually the initiator of such 'time passing'.

Deepak ------ Dhabakku --- thats just a distorted pronunciation of his name that gives the tongue a 'feel good' feeling.

Giridhar ----- Chundu --- he had a unually bloated lip... which according to sources is called 'chundu' in Mallu.

Jagan -- Poname --- Fella looks like a corpse.... hence the name 'Ponameeeeeeeey'

Jaichander - Kai Baal, Kolandhai Kaa Baal ----- Was caught red-HANDED ;-))

Janakan ----- AAAAko, Java Janakan --- is one inquisitive fella --- it so happened that during one of our Java classes when the faculty member was goinna give a lecture on Applets... the fella had shouted 'Aiyaa Applet'!

Mahendran --- Billy , Saaani --- Has a terrible style of walking.. is a clumsy oaf.. like a dung that is dropped in place doesn't move.. so does Billy.

Mahes ---- Mottai, Peiye, Nanbaaeeen ----- Mottai coz of his tonsured head, Peiye coz he called himself one, Nanbaaen coz i used to call him that way ;-))

Manokar ---- Butti, Homo --- Butti coz of his glasses...Homo ;-))(u know what i mean) --- 'Butti, neee homo thaaney?'~ Saran!!

Mugunthan --- M++ -- Creator of the language M++ which used phrases like "Yaaruku theriyum", "..." etc that is only understood by its creator.

Muthukrishnan-- Muthukrishnaa --- Hmm sadly we didn't find one for him in our 4 years :-((

Muthuraj ----- Galeeej--- Galeej coz he was a blatant pervert....his perverted mind always used to rake something from his 'DATABASE' of perverted things.

Prasanna ---- my friends will add on.

Pratheep _-- Mabban --- three pics - Self portraits.. shot after our trip to Trivandum... a heavily drunk Pratheep.. the pic would say it all!!

Rajesh --- Kullan --- Mooorthi sirusu, Keerthi Perusu!

Rajkumar ---- Naatamai --- Etymology will be furnished by my friends.

Ramakrishnan -- Kudumi --- A brahmin... and a tall and lean figure.. hence the name that used to identify brahmin traditionally - kudumi.

Ramasubbu -- BIOS , ROMBIOS --- it was C, C++ and BIOS programming that he used to breathe.. hence it stuck to him

Ramesh --- anandraj and TH_YO_HI --- he used it pretty often.. and it was like VOCAL FILLER in his speech ...deeply intertwined.

Ravi -- Babli Thalayan -- not just 'few extra pounds' he was full of it...

Rizwan - DOG - Day Scholar Naaye --- was a day scholar through out college -- he seems to have expanded 'DOG'(which wasn't an acronym in first place) to 'Day Scholar Organised Group' .

Santhanam -- Sandy, Sarakku Santhanam -- friends will furnish

Saran -- Therappu, Kandraaavi, Thavakalai, Thelivu, Saani, Super sucking mouther ;-))(in tamil) ---- Therappu coz of his frequentl used Tuti lingo, Kandraavi --- Disgusting creature that he was, Thavakalai -- A Frog
looks more like Saran, Thelivu --- he wasn't capable of doing more than one task simultaneously, Saani come saturday/Sunday he wouldn't budge from his 6X5 Bed (except for food --- Not even for his ablutions!!), Super Sucking mouther ---> for what his does in his office ;-)0

Saravanakumar - kungli Vennai, KuMu KuPo KuPi, Ka___se Payalley - Kungli vennai coz of the ayurvedic medication that was prescribed by some fake doc for his facial skin, KuMu KuPo KuPi(Kulikkum Munnal, Kulikkum Podhu, Kulitha Pinnal ) for the very many ointments/powders that he was prescribed to be used after, before and during bathing. Ka___se Payalley --> anything that he used to eat, would find its way out in 2 hours....

SeethaRaman --- Otharaman, Rousa Machhan --- he used the phrase 'Rousa Machan?' too often that we were saturated by it ;-)

Shakeel -- Shakalakka baby, Molla Maari, Cycle Ahamed, Kaatan --- Shakalaka baby coz he was a funky dude, Molla maari ... thats what he was ;-)) and Cycle Ahamed -- coz he was prophet incarnate riding a cycle to college, Kaatan coz his arms were the most powerful pair in our class, he had amazing strength.

Shreehari --- Jetizen --- The film 'Citizen' was released around that time... and it so happened that Shreehari (wo was my roomie) had warned Saran to not dry his innerwears on Hari's COT.... Saran retorted 'Yen inimel potta, nee yeduthu maattiduduvaya"(will you take it and wear it if i repeat it?) --- hence he was called 'Jetizen'

Shreedhar -- AAko Shreedhar, Apdiya daa? --- The perennial Class topper and studious fella -- Apdiya Daa was his trademark usage ;-))

Sreehari -- Theva --- there is an external dependency here, a guy in SW Mech who was this guys roomie and he was called 'Thevanand' .... our nose poker wanted to find out what 'deva' meant, he was terrorized that it was a very very abusive word.. and he believed it ... so thats how his name was coined.

Srivatsan --- Theevatti, vatti, --Srivatsan - theevatti, psycho, potcha nakki, sweat licker, shaggy(by CSE dept guys and this was the reason for his previous nickname), homo.

Theevatti- his grandma call him so,
psycho - by birth
potcha nakki - coimbatore guys will understand this
sweat licker - he does this quite often
shaggy - CSE guys call him, after coming to knowing about his field of interest
homo - after effects of the previous nickname. because he had no other option.

~Above list abt me was complied by Saran

Sundararaman -- Saapattu Raman, cream bun with cherry (reasons behind this name cannot be revealed in public) --- was a voracious and punctual eater..

Suresh -- Kaak (Cockroach), Bodhu paapa, ------ He used to call other guys with disgusting names like 'Cockroach' which boomeranged back to he being called as 'Kaak roach', Bodhu Paapa --- coz of his whopping weight and a high packing density -- 85 Kilos in 5 feet and 5 inches!!

Umanath --- Kutti, Kulla Nari --- Proabably the shortest in our class and we accept he had some amount of vulpine intelligence, like a fox(cunning ;-)) )

VijayKumar -- Mullu --- his sported a porcupine for his hair... hence Mullamandri thalaya -- Mullu Mandaya.

Vinay Mahaveer --- Settu, Rocky -- Sethu coz he was a marvaari, Rocky thats a long story he was like the character 'Rocky' in the movie 'Ishq Vishq'.

Vishnupriyan ---- Jon, Politician, --- back in first year just after 2 months since joining... Vishnu who used to sit beside me and Yokesh narrated a story seriously ... "yenga ooru pakam Jon nu oru rowdy irukkaaan, Semma body,
naraya vaaati jailukku laan poirukkan, avanaaala mudiyaadhadhu yedhuvumey illa... " we were listening interestedly
"avanukku inu oru perum irukku" we asked "yenna?" "Vishnupriyan"! Sadly none of the traits of 'Jon' macthes with his HYDE self 'Vishnupriyan'.

Yokesh --- Probably the max nicknames were coined for him -- Yaanai, Yogi Beer, BEER yaaanai, BEER, ARU OKAY SAAMi (Arokya samy), Porukki, Kamminaati, 'Robert', Tharudhala Bottom (in tamil), Cream Bun ---- Yaanai coz of his weight/walk, beer he drank (beer) like a fish, BEER YAANAI ... coz he was a 'Hippopotamus' relishing in 'Beer' instead of water, ARU OKAY SAMI --- coz of his attraction on the number '6' (rest cannot be revealed in public), porukki, kamminaati --- thats no pseudonym and it is pretty direct.that was what he was, 'Robert' got christianised one fine day when he received an invite from you know who to attend a YOUTH FESTIVAL where he was made to Halleloooyaah countless times!, CREAM BUN coz of his affinity to a close cousin ;-))

FOOTNOTE: Now come on fellas.. don't feel bad now if your names have gone public.. we've been using this all these year and use we will in future as well... so you may shout at me or whatever... but i hope years down the lane..
this compendium would give you all a laugh.

:-))

Dear brethren...feel free to include any corrections/Additions in the 'comments' below.. i shall update the list as and when i get more inputs.

>> Dysfunctional Olfactory Apparatus of Mine!! <<

2006-01-05T20:15:00.001+03:30

I haven't had the privilege of getting to gormandise LUNCH at Office coz of my night shift job, but i have been graced with something that only a few gifted get.. i have dinner almost on all days at Office.... and over the years i have been pondering over the magic 'formulaes' that govern the 'cooking' or rather 'making' of the Dinner by the Caterers(irrespective of whichever Caterer it has been.... we have been thru them all!!)

Mix Sambar that is left over after lunch at XYZ Corp (coz using the same Sambar served for lunch in our Office would be a tell tale) with Daal that was served at ABC Corp in a magic ratio (i am tempted to call it the 'Golden ratio'.. but shall control myself coz each caterer has his own unique ratio ....put it into a centrifuge with an agitator that vibrates at over 20 HZ (higher frequencies of agitation will cause bubbles and effervescence which is unacceptable..hence the low frequency.)

Now if you were wondering what happens to the sambar that is left over after lunch at my office... well that might find its way to XYZ Corp or ABC Corp ...or any other place for that matter... we donot know of their woes.. but the "CYCLE" is maintained...

The Rasam is always so deliciously gorgeously scrumptiously savory that even the most esoteric epicureans are overwhelmed by its taste!
And Rasam when allowed to BACILLIZE , SALMONELLISE and ESCHERICHIA COLI'Se ...gives out a penetrating odour which has baffled even the most sensitive olfactory apparatus manifested in any of the billion species of fauna on planet earth!

Curd is not to be a colloid or a gel..... who needs such semi solid mixtures! Curd is to be served in two distinctive layers "Aar Paar" So clear that the chaff is settled at the bottom, and above it floats a translucent liquid which cannot be called 'Water'.
The idea is to demonstrate that liquids of different densities don't mix well ;-)).

RASAM WAS STALE today.... when i complained to the superviser there... the fella smelt it.. and was himself in doubt in the beginning... then he went in pretending to call up some cook.... and then came back and told me that it was cooked at 5 PM only and that my olfactory apparatus has some serious problems in sensing the 'corpuscular' nature of odour.... i did not go on to argue with him further! Coz i know.. i always knew it... in 2 MONTHS TIME... EVERY CATERER BECOMES THE SAME.

You see it is their model...they are extremely good in business, all superb mathematicians who would put even gaussian genius to shame.
Spend lot of money the first few weeks when you are given the contract... impress employees.. let them think that they are goinna feel gr8

compensate for this amount in later months by "Recycling Food" or following the principle of "Reusability" ...WHEN SOFTWARE ENGINEERS can do it...why can't we caterers? Sure thing!!

"since the human sensory organs aren't real sensitive...and coz the human mind can play the TRICK always and backed by a committee that won't respond to tubthumping employees, there is nothing stopping us"

"We DONT BOW DOWN BEFORE INSOLENT MIGHT".~ the Caterers!

JNaut will be back!

>>Which Super Hero Art you?? <<

2006-01-03T22:43:00.000+03:30

Mine was bang on Target!!
Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk		100%
Green Lantern		100%
Spider-Man		100%
Robin		65%
The Flash		65%
Iron Man		55%
Wonder Woman		50%
Supergirl		50%
Catwoman		45%
Batman		20%
Superman		20%

You are a wanderer with
amazing strength.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

>> Iam back after another revolution ;-) <<

2006-01-03T21:16:00.000+03:30

Doh!...the new year has arrived ...i've wondered many a time about how/why we view the new year as a guest/friend who "Arrives".....i mean what is there thats so special about a new "year"?

The earth has been revolving around the sun for over 4.5 billion years, thats over 4.5 billion revolutions....and yet it is only the "New year" that counts more?

We lay a red-carpet to welcome a new century, a new millenium and stay awake all night to wish friends and relatives a "Happy New year"........but well is not every instance of our planet's position a completion of yet another revolution?

Anyways.....somethings have to be the way it is/was/has been.
I remember perusing thru the pages of "TAOCP: Donald Knuth" last year..i mean when we were 'welcoming' Y2K5, and the year before that it was perhaps the "Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkings" and in 2002 it was perhaps "Computer Networks : Andrew S Tanenbaum"........ i've kinda made it a habit to read a good book when the world is busy partying in welcoming the new year.

This time i had one of Roger Penrose's book "The Emperor's New mind" in hand and was also watching on DVD "i-Robot" ---- both of these deal with perhaps my 'Future' --- Artificial Intelligence.

Let me see.
One the New Year's eve i had been out with my mom, bro and his wife to a famous south indian restaurant in chennai..... i was diverted of my attention on my 'favourite time pass' --gorging...by a kid who was sitting along with his family nearby....now this kiddo was a sweet and cute fella... mom was telling us he is exactly like i was 18 years back in time..... now this fella there was also devouring French Fries ordered by his family ....when he suddenly picked up one long piece of it and told his ppl "Idhu yevalo neelama irukku, Onnan Vaalu maadhiriye" (See how long this is , like the tail of a Garden Lizard)....I went into a rapturous guffaw which i couldn't suppress.

Of all things on earth, it was the "Onnan"(Garden Lizard) tail that it reminded him off!! ;-))

Iam back now, in office... things here seem to be brightening up for me... lemme see.
Perhaps in a few weeks time, the Nocturnal Creature will be made diurnal.....another alteration to the circadian rhythm...this time goinna be triggered off circannually!

J'Naut is alive, afebrile and ambulating!

>>> Intellectually Overwhelmed <<<

2005-12-29T09:17:00.000+03:30

Had been to landmark on my brother's advice, to fish for my favourite sci books.
I was overwhelmed by the number of uber geeky stuff there..... i could read all that they have in their 'Science' section for a year easily!

Picked the mighty expensive 'Billions and Billions' by my Hero Carl Sagan...and another by Roger Penrose. I wanted to pick two books on Prime Numbers and Calculus and also the ones on Schrodinger's Cat and its Kittens...but my bill had lready rocketed sky high....800 bucks for 2 books was too much for me who delighted in 60 bucks a book in my town of the corporate coolies.

Decided that i shall come back for more....atleast now i know wat to read next.....goinna be real busy with these books for the new year.

;-))

Was disgusted at the sight of a whole lotta damn ppl fishing thru piles of books on Personality and Self Improvement!!!

Bah...as Ayn Rand puts it "A search for something by itself indicates a lack of it"!

>>>> Nuggets of Nostalgia !! <<<<

2005-12-27T08:18:00.000+03:30

>>>> Nuggets of Nostalgia!! <<<<<

Had been to my alma-mater last weekend to attend the Young Alumni Meet (YAM), though it was my second visit in 2 months, this visit brought back old cherished memories, in part because i stayed a little longer this time around, and coz many of my friends had turned up.

I had got there a day before the scheduled alumni meet coz i did not want to miss out few precious hours next day by travelling a day after, and the strenuous 24 hour train journey from Hyd to Cbe would render me sleepy....getting there a day earlier was indeed a good decision.

I had gone there with my classmate, we stayed at our sub-junior's room in the hostel for the evening. After a refreshing shower in our 'neat, clean and fragrant' bathrooms, we headed towards 'Aryaas'- A pretty decent restaurant and what used to be our 'occasional' eatout spot ('occasional' coz it was quite expensive for our 800 Rupees/month pocket money back then). After gorging on our south indian meal, we dropped by our department 'The Dept of Information Technology' supposedly the best in the state of TamilNadu (as ranked by SUN TV). Got to meet my mentor, few other members of the faculty and our 'thalaivar' the Head of the Department. After a short talk with each one of them...we headed towards 'Vada-Kovai' to watch some english movie.... the good-old Maruthi with its sultry and dull ambience was screening one silly movie by name king-kong! It stretched for almost 2 hours and appeared to be what my friend called a 'dilated Axe effect ad'...then a long walk back to gandhipuram which i insisted on extending upto VOC Park,and walk we did until we could find our way to 'pure and Natural' a spot which used to be 'special' to me.

I liked the salads and milk shakes and mocktails served there.Gormandised a 'swedish potato with egg' and then a choco milkshake(did not wanna try the silly 'Virgin Mary' ) this time though!)

We were dead tired by this time, and hit the beds as soon as we got back to our hostel(we were allotted a cozy room in the infamous G block which we tormented during our placement days!)

The hostels hadn't changed pretty much, except for the fact that 2 floors of the 'A' block of the men's hostel was now the home for ladies (what the *(&(&(&@#@!).

A sound night's sleep and lo! by 6 AM the army of my simian friends had arrived from chennai! after few minutes of thrashing, bantering and 'mutual leg-pulling', we were off to our good old NMB where we had coffee, we were incidentally joined by our peers from the ECE dept there.......what a time we had!!

We spent a few hours in our department again that day...surveying recent developments and exchanging banters with few of our faculty members.

The Student's Union had organised a welcome meeting at the Assembly Hall which was chaired by the great Radhakrishan, former Principal of PSG College of Technology and the current vice chancellor of VIT.

We had lunch at the IMSR, which was followed by few events organised by the SU and Hostel council (which receieved a lukewarm response from the crowd of 1000 alumni).
That evening i had been to 'Boomerang' with a few friends, devoured a big cup of
ice-cream(Boomeran used to be a 'luxury' back in student days.....it seemed like we were parvenus now, gorging on ice-creams to the point of emptying our abysmmal pockets!)

I had to leave early on sunday morn (there was still a day of party left) to calicut to attend one of my newly acquired DEAR SIS's wedding ;-))

Sis had shouted at me when i had cited that Dec-25th was my YAM and it was so cruel of her to expect me to attend her wedding. Changed my plans for dear sis (Ah! Senti!) and woke up at 5 AM in the morning.....or (Mid-Night in my terms rather) got ready after taking a cold shower and rushed to the bus-stand in Ukkadam...boarded a bus to Palakkad, and then switched over to another bus and headed to calicut...i've always liked the enviroment in kerala....clean, green and vibrant with life.

Sis's wedding was between 11 and 11:30 AM, i was late....but not all too late, got there around 11:45, gave her my gift which i had packaged horribly(i know iam not good at aesthetic chores!)...sis was very excited and happy to see me. All her other friends and colleagues except for one hadn't turned up citing wierd reasons...so she was very happy to see me. She had asked me to wait for sometime and told me that she'd join me in a while....but i knew it wudn't be possible for the bride to step down from the stage that easily.....they are always shoved around by elders who direct them to adhere to some strict customs.......they don't even get to eat well during their wedding!

I knew it would be foolish to wait for someone to invite yu for lunch in a wedding... so i made myself comfortable by heading towards the dining hall.... had a heavy lunch..keralite style!!! wow it was gorgeous!

Sis came and saw me a few minutes later, and handed me over to her mom and dad, she told her mom "Amma, this guys eats a lot.....take him home and give him dosai" ;-)

Her dad had my return tickets, Sis had booked them for me and also wanted me to accompany another female friend of hers to chennai.....it seems that te girl's dad was afraid to send his daughter alone to 'Kerala' which was supposedly not a very safe place for a female to travel alone.

Anyways.....we chatted for hours on the way back....mostly about our job,then about the world and then i ended up convincing her in reading the fountainhead.

She got down after 5 hours in Erode.....i had fallen asleep by then... it is not an easy task to wake me up...and it was good that she didn't....... next morn i reached chennai.

and now here I am......troublin my mom and having a gr8 time devouring dosa's.

J'Naut will be back!

>>> The Intelligent Electron ! <<<

2005-12-14T19:48:00.000+03:30

I ran into this argument somewhere about the 'intelligence of the Cell'& 'Biologists are Atheists',

I was off arguing the intelligence of sth which ppl call 'inanimate' like the electron.
what followed were some counter-arguments and arguments to counter-arguments...

shall paste em below.

Juggernaut Said:

You think the 'cell' alone possesses intelligence? How do you define whats 'living' and whats not?
or that matter, i would quote the example of say an Electron... how does it know it should get attracted to a proton?
and why should it produce a Magnetic field while in motion? Who programmed it?
Why do all bodies in this Universe obey the universal laws of Gravity?
Newton himself confided once 'I understand how it BEHAVES, but not how it WORKS'.
I would say.. all things in this Universe/Multiverse are Self-aware atleast in the atomic level.

and all Men born in this society are by DEFAULT 'Theists' until they start thinking!

The Counter-Argument:

Objection to juggernauts comments on the intelligence of the electron. This is of course a topic which people puruse. Remember that when you there is a 'magnetic field' and you observe interaction you observe the consequence of a physical law. The electron need not know anything to behave in that manner. It is simply bound to physical laws.
Something like bacteria, it doesnt need a nervous system to know food is around. The program just responds. Nothing more nothing less (actually this is more or less what we do but we have the ability to evaluate options...think about this one..it will entertain you)

The Argument to the Counter-Argument:

Juggernaut said...
there are 'Degrees' of intelligence.
I would say that the electron possesses 'Binary' Intelligence.

You apply an electro-magnetic field.. it reacts, if u don't it doesn't.
What if a devout theist tells you, "God govern's the actions of men"....wudn't that mean humans aren't Intelligent?

I would say that a cell or say a unicellular organism behaves the way it does from the multitude of 'states' in which its brain can exist.

To eat or not to eat, to hunt or to sleep is all governed by this 'program' thats manifested in its blue-print of life.

I agree that it 'learns', but learning only contributes to existing multitude!
Physical laws describe the "behaviour" of the electron, not the "reason for its behaviour".

You cannot describe the "behaviour" of a human only because of the billions of states in which his neural net can be in.If thats deciphered... we shall soon become 'unintelligent'.

btw.. what do you think contitutes an EM field?? ;-)) Electrons again!!!
there you go!

I guess the Plaintiff rests ;-))

J'Naut will be back!