Fasih's ruminations

The Times They Are A-Changing

2011-11-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

We have all done our bit of monkeying around in school and though I was the kinds that other kids made fun of because I didn't monkey around much, I still did get my bit of scolding and even a slap from a teacher (I know!) for fooling around. I remember once we irritated our teacher so much that she said she wont take a class for us again. It took a lot of persuading and cajoling to get her in our class again.

In my second year at IIT, we had a rather young and cute looking English teacher who was very aware of the fact that she was young and cute looking :). So one evening when she was taking a class she suddenly looks up and says "Who was it?", we are all stunned, we all look at each other clueless as to what it was that had made her rosy cheeks redder with embarrassment or anger. There was silence for a while, pin-drop and awkward silence, suddenly we knew who did what and we broke into a peel of laughter. It happened again, "it" was a tweet (of a bird. Boy! These days you got to clarify) which the teacher mistook for a boy whistling at her. For a couple of classes we could all notice her a little embarrassed and red cheeked at the incident.

Time passes, we grow with the bittersweet memories of the past, laughing at our mistakes. Sometimes we learn from them and many a times we can't fix what we broke. And sometimes, tables turn, the pestering kid of yesterday will be pestered by his own kids tomorrow. As for me, I get to teach a bunch of imps.

I am a part of an NGO which aims to bring awareness to the society by teaching the younger generation about their rights and responsibilities. The course is wonderfully designed for 8th class students as a no credit course with a year end project. The project itself involves creating real solutions to real life problems like Garbage disposals, mismanaged road network etc. Now it all sounds fun, at least to me it does but only till I enter the class, for once I do, the ruckus that those small devils create bring back those fleeting memories of the teachers we so cruelly tormented and Bob Dylan's old song...

The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

IIT & Rickshawala

2011-08-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

This was an interesting mail forward I got. Not very sure of the authenticity, but definitely fun and worth a read.

There were two rickshaw-walas vying for our business, when we wanted to go to Sankat-Mochan temple in Benaras. I agreed to go with the one, who was about 20 years of age, seemed like a regular young rickshaw-wala, but I found something interesting about him. I was not proved wrong.

He wanted Rs 50, we said Rs 30. We settled for Rs 40.

Here are the highlights of the conversation that ensued, while we rode the rickshaw:

"Aap kahan se aaye hain?"

"Delhi."

"Bijness, ya kaam karte hain?"

"Naukri karte hain."

"Kismein?"

"Internet mein."

"Humara bhi kuch wahin kaam lagwa dijiye."

I just chuckled.

"Main try kar raha hoon engineering padhne kee. Achchi naukri lag jaayegi tab."

"Achcha?" I asked a little interested.

"Haan, delhi mein Guru Gobind Singh Indraprashta University mein engineering ke liye apply kiya hai. Achchi hai woh university."

"Haan, achchi hai", I agreed.

"Haan, kal hee maine JEE bhi diya."

"JEE matlab, IIT ka?"

"Haan, Joint Entrance Examination" he pronounced it perfectly.Just to make it clear to me what JEE stood for. "Mushkil hota hai exam."

"Haan, 2 saal toh log padhte hee hain uske liye, asaan nahin hai."

"Delhi mein Akaash coaching institute hain na?"

"Haan, hai."

"Aapne kya padhai kee?"

"Main engineer hoon, aur phir MBA bhi kiya."

"Kahan se engineer?"

"IIT Delhi se."

He swung back, surprised, a little delighted, and smiled. "Ok, aapke liye Rs 30."

Swati and I laughed.

Swati asked "Padhai kab karte they IIT ke liye?"

"Bas, rickshaw chalaane ke baad raat mein". Then he added

"Kismein engineering kee aapne?"

"Chemical."

"Toh aapki Chemistry toh badi strong hogi."

"Nahin, aisa nahin hai."

He continued "Yeh bataiye....jab Mendeleev ne Periodic Table banaya tha tab kitne elements they usmein?"

Now it was my turn to get surprised. He was quizzing me. I said "Shayad 70-80."

"No, 63" he said sharply. "Kaunse element kee electronegativity highest hai?"

Swati was laughing, and I didnt try too hard and said "Pata nahin."

"Flourine", he said confidently. Without a break he asked,"Kaunse element kee electron affinity highest hoti hai?"

Now I was laughing too and said "Nahin pata"

"Chlorine. toh aapka kaunsa subject strong tha?" clearly having proven that my chemistry wasn't a strong point.

"Physics", I said.

"Achha, Newton's second law of motion kya hai?"

I thought I knew this one. "F=ma", I said.

"Physics is not about formula, it is understanding concept!", he reprimanded me in near perfect English. "Tell me in statement"

I was shocked. Swati continued to laugh.

I said "ok, Newtons second law, er....was...."

" 'Was' nahin, 'is'!Second law abhi bhi hai!" he snapped at my use of 'was'.

Surely, my physics wasn't impressing him either. "Yaad nahin, I said"

"Force on an object is directly proportional to the mass of the object and the acceleration of the object", he said it in near perfect English. "Aapne M.Tech nahin kiya?"

"Nahin, MBA kiya"

"MBA waale toh sirf paisa kamana chahte hain, kaam nahin karte."

"Nahin, aisa nahin hai, paisa kamaane ke liye kaam karna padta hai." Didn't think too highly of me apparently anymore.

In a minute we reached our destination. We got off and I told him that he must and should definitely study more, and that I thought he was sharp as hell. He took only Rs 30, smiled and began to leave. I got my camera out and said "Raju, ek photo leta hoon tumhari". He waved me off, dismissed the idea and rode off before I could say anything more....leaving me feeling high and dry like a spurned lover.

Damn, what a ride that was! India is changing, and changing fast.

Cause and effect

2011-08-16T01:19:00.000-07:00

I love economics, that does not go on to say or even hint that I understand economics or the complex and lengthy policies that FED/RBI comes up with every now and then. But I do find it absolutely interesting to see the cause and effect of seemingly unrelated things. How we react to changes around us. How a seemingly simple .01% hike in interest rates change our long term and short term goals. And more interestingly how the basics of economics apply to our everyday decisions.

There is this very famous principle of return on investment, you give an orange to a guy, he will eat it with a relish; give him two, he will love it more but give him three, he probably wont eat the third one so happily and the fourth one he will probably leave. Basically it says that you cant keep giving the same incentive/reward and expect more and more output from it. There is another one which I like, this one talks about the counter-intuitive greedy approach, where a group of people all competing for something try to get the best for themselves, but as a group they lose as they don't see that the equilibrium though slower than the optimal is best for everyone. Simple example, there is a narrow lane, all want to get to the other side, the best is that they form a queue and all can go smoothly if one of them decides to be greedy and jump the line, they will all get stuck in a jam that could take them much much longer than being in the equilibrium state where they take more time than the best(jumping the queue - 0 time).

Anyway, I was reminded of this because of a study I came across today, it basically talks about food price index and the riots around the world. Found it pretty interesting, knowing that a behaviour as abstract as rioting is related to something measurable and controllable as Food price index gives me hope that we can create a world with lesser riots and more peace.

The most stunnning illusion EVER

2011-02-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

I am sure we have all seen numerous illusions but this one so darn stunning that I literally let out a shriek seeing this one.

Look at squares A and B. They are the same shade of gray. I am sure you wont believe this, I didn't, well take a printout, cut it into 4 pieces, take the squares A & B side by side and see for yourself. Lazier ones can use mspaint/gimp to see the magic.

Brightness and color can have powerful effects on perception. In this illusion created by vision scientist Edward H. Adelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our brain does not perceive the true brightness and color of each square but instead determines the brightness and color of A and B by comparison with the squares surrounding them

Edward de Bono and String Theory

2011-02-08T05:08:00.000-08:00

Every now and then I am sure we hear of analogies that seem to make absolutely no co-relation to the topic of discussion to anyone other than the analogizer [;)]. I once had a friend, lets call her XXX who used to boil down allllllll things known to mankind to a sambar wada problem [XXX if you are reading this, I am not talking about you, its about some other friend who has that same~~problem~~ interesting habit ;)]. We have a long interview process for a candidate and we sit together to decide if the candidate is the right choice. She goes - "He is an idliwala and we want to make samosas!". We have a week long sales meeting trying to see if a product makes sense for India market, she says: "We are trying to sell idli in Chandni Chowk" [which in all probabilities meant that its not going to sell ;)]. I could go and on with how everything from string theory to making tea can all boil down to idli sambhar problem but then it wont leave anything for your imaginations :). It sometimes gets entertaining to watch an analogizer stretch his analogy thin to demonstrate that indeed it does make sense.

The other day in a casual office chat AR says "Retail business is like doctors". No worries... I didn't make head or tail of it either [however if you did, read on to make sure that you got it right and if you DID get it right, Hats off to you for the lateral thoughts (as an aside, the same AR just helped me remember the phrase "lateral thinking" by asking me to google Edward de Bono!)]. Anyways, what he meant to say was that professionally unless you are well known as a Doctor or a Retailer, you dont make a lot of money. He went on to explain the analogy; A small retailer cannot make a lot of profit unless people know him, at which point he can go on to charge a premium for the stuff he has, a smaller retailer needs to offer the stuff at the lowest price he can afford to attract customers. NOW do you see the analogy? Well.. honestly I dont :) :)

On the brighter side however, these analogies truly show how wonderfully human mind works. Relating two seemingly very different things to better understand the problem at hand, to see a pattern in the chaos is a quality of a beautiful mind.

PS: If you are thinking how the image of the brain relates to the post. Well.. Its not about relativity.. is it?

An ode to friendship

2010-11-17T22:11:00.000-08:00

It was Eid-Ul-Zuha yesterday, and though there is an Eid every year, this Eid was special for me. Ever since I have moved out of home for college, I have been away from home in Eid only a couple of times. Once in college and once a few years back on job. Now college is always fun, there are way too many friends around, it is almost like a home away from home. But the time I was at job, it really sucked. I had really missed home and I think I had never felt so homesick and desolate before that.

Footage from last year: My Birthday

This time I was again away from home for Eid, but now I am a family man [Cheesy.. I know ;)], and I live in a home and this was the first big festival we are alone (my wife and I).. It was wonderful, though I missed home a lot, but it was fun. We went to a friend's place in the morning and had friends at my place in the evening and at night. We did nothing much, just ate, talked junk [me doing most of the talking, to which I got a feedback that lately I am talking a lot;) ], called home, called friends and talked more. It was fun, the day reminded me of the importance of friends in life. Family is obviously important and cannot be replaced with anything else, but friends have their special place that cannot be filled with something else. I am grateful to have made a few very good friends for making me feel special.

दिये जलते हैं,
फूल खिलते हैं,
बड़ी मुश्किल से मगर,
दुनिया में दोस्त मिलते हैं!

Wheels of change

2010-10-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

After a long pause, here I am, back to the random bakar. The thing about long pauses is that there is so much of an inertia to start again, you keep looking for the big bang to come back with (damn Newton!). Well, but then, mea culpa [One of early comments in code by one of my seniors who opened the doors for me, to the world of absurd comments].

Anyways, I am sure that no one would be interested to know what was keeping me busy; but just in case someone was wondering, well, I got married, switched jobs [after four wonderful years at my last company] and moved to a new place. New job came with new responsibilities, new team and a brand new product that we have to develop. In smaller setups this would typically boil down to ad-hoc meetings, filling every corner of the whiteboard which cannot be erased as no-one keeps meeting notes other than the faithful whiteboard, team huddling up every now and then around every other cubicle and every possible nook and corner for lack of enough meeting rooms (I remember we once huddled up in a restaurant where we had gone for a team outing but ended up talking about work). But in a larger organization where the meeting rooms are a-plenty, you got to "book" a meeting rooom in the outlook organizer for setting up a meeting. You got to send meeting "invitations" to all concerned parties and once the meeting has started, you got to send a "gentle reminder" to everyone to say that everyone should assemble (compared to the smaller setup where all you do is shout out loud, call people and start the "huddle"). One then shares his screen and someone else would take meeting notes and in an hour you would loose the meeting room to someone else who has booked it for the next slot and you walk out satisfied with the heated debate or with the joy of having scheduled a follow-up-meeting to discuss what was left incomplete :).

But that was about what was keeping me busy, the blog was about this new.. mmm... maybe I should call it a hobby... that I have developed of drawing cartoons whenever I have some free time. Hope you like it... :)

Again I am sure no one would be interested in knowing when I get free time to do all this junk, but in case you are wondering... in those long meetings when I dont find anything better to do and I have my notebook and a pen handy :)

Age of Empires

2010-03-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

I am sure most of us would have played or at least would know what Age of Empires is. For the un-initiated, its a game where different players represent kingdoms. It is a game based on the simple paradigm, "Survival of the fittest". The fittest is the one with most resources, most land or most advanced. Countries start from some Age [Industrial Age for instance] and advance to Nuclear Age etc.

Well, I am not here to talk about the game. I came across this article about China building one of the most efficient power plants in the world. "China’s ability to generate its electricity more efficiently could be critical as the sector expands". It is doing everything it can to win this game. From Olympics to Technology and Infrastructure it is racing against the world's super powers, but India seems to be slowly panting along bogged with its baggage of greedy politicians and lazy beaurocrats, with us who dont seem to care a lot about where India goes. The infrastructure for common-wealth is nowhere near the target deadlines, it is apalling to see the "Sheru On Track" hoardings in Delhi, sometimes I wonder if Sheru knows that there is no track ahead.
I dont believe in cribbing and ranting. But it was really a helpless feeling to see this article. Maybe I should have stuck to Electrical Engineering and worked for Power Industry, maybe someone else did and I hope someone is working hard to put Indian Power India on the globe.

What an idea sirji!

2009-12-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

If you havent heard of TED, it is a platform to discuss and share ideas and innovations in various fields of Technology, Entertainment & Design. However, today it is a forum for people with a rich diversity of ideas and innovations, from field of Technology to Theology, Philosophy to Medicines, various amazing ideas are discussed. Recently KS sent me this link which I found particularly relevant and interesting. It is about a for-profit social sector company that aims to eliminate corruption one instance at a time for a small fee. The fact that to avoid paying a bribe or to get something that one is entitled to get, one has to pay a fee to a company is rather sad, but still I think that this would be one more step towards a brighter and corruption free world. Watch the video for more!

Pursuing our dreams

2009-12-26T13:01:00.000-08:00

Movies as a means for mass communication, I think, was never as strong or more impactful as it is these days. Am just back from the last show of 3 Idiots, it is a simple movie with a simple very predictable story, right to the end with no surprises. Yet, it makes a strong point and drives it strongly, it almost rubs it in; it talks about how Indian families stress on taking a main stream course like an Engineer or a Doctor and ignores the likes and dislikes of an individual. How our education system stresses on getting the highest marks, on running a race and not on the importance of learning nor on pursuing our dreams.

I am guilty of this same sin, and somewhere most of us are, but we need to wake up and realize our dreams and enable the dreams of others who we can help. I dont know how one finds the true love or how does one help someone else to find his or her true love. I dont know how a parent will find what the kid truly wants to do. But I am sure that I wont ask someone else to fulfill my dreams. I dont think anyone should.

Letting go of the burden

2009-12-25T06:32:00.001-08:00

Sometime back I was talking with CK about how carrying a burden stops us from seeing the beauty of life. We all do things that we don't want to do, we aren't proud of doing and we feel bad about them. Sometimes we just don't forgive ourselves, I remembered this very good story about an old monk and a young monk. They were walking through a forest when they came to a river bank and saw a beautiful young woman standing at the edge of the bank and was afraid to cross the river.

The old monk, seeing that she needed help offered to help by carrying her across the river on his back. She accepted the offer and thanked him for helping her cross the river.

The 2 monks continued on their journey, but the young monk was shocked and disturbed at having seen his older companion break his vow of not touching a female so nonchalantly. Finally, after 3 hours of walking and thinking, he could contain himself no longer and he burst out in anger, "Why did you break your vow? Why did you let her beauty tempt you?"

The older monk remained silent for several steps and then said, "It is you who should tell me what it is like to carry such a beautiful young woman. You see I put her down 3 hours ago at the river, but you are still carrying her."

It is a simple story, but sometimes we forget simple things and we carry too much load on our back. Let go off the load and we will be a happier person

Mail Notification

2009-12-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

One of the problems of using Unix based OS is that it becomes damn difficult to check office mails. Outlook still doesnt have an equivalent on Linux. Neither Thunderbird nor Evolution support Exchange 2007. I am left with using Outlook Webaccess that sucks. I have been living with this for almost a year now hoping that Thunderbird or Evolution will support Exchange 2007 sooner than later but to no avail.

So, this weekend I wrote this small Mail notifier that checks my Outlook & GMail account and pops up a notifier when there is a new mail. I find it extremely useful. Hope you find it too.

http://code.google.com/p/newmail-notify/

Socialism for Dummies!

2009-09-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor
and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on
socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same
grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had
studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that
socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the
effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Perspectives

2009-08-29T01:12:00.000-07:00

Recently I read a post from a dear one, which talked about how he was ill-treated by life and how he learnt a few of his most important lessons the hard way. We all learn our lessons, life is a tough teacher, every baby falls and hurts itself only to learn how to run (a marathon!). We are betrayed by our trusted friends to learn how to judge a person a better and not to learn never to trust again. Love fails, we loose the most precious, and learn how to value them before they are lost, for loss is inevitable.

Sometime back I was talking to a friend, and we happened to talk about the movie Crash. I rate it amongst the top 5 movies I have seen; this friend says, "Yes, this is the movie where everyone is screwed by each other"; I was amazed, this very same movie, I remember as the movie where everyone in the end attains salvation, where justice is meted out to everyone. There is realization and forgiveness. There is this particular mini story where, to console his daughter when she was scared, he wraps her with an invisible scarf that has protected him from all the dangers and which his mom gave him and she should hand over to her daughter when she is five. Few days later, this guy is at gunpoint outside his house, by someone who wants to take revenge. The girl comes running to protect her dad - the man shoots - the girl clings on to her dad - the man who had shot realizes his mistake - the girl holds tight, says, "Daddy, my scarf will protect you!" - nobody dies, but in that moment everybody realize their mistakes. Everybody, somewhere in some crude way sees justice and salvation.

Judge not a book by its cover

2009-07-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

I came across this today and I was stunned, touched, shocked and humbled. This is sheer talent that does not always show from the outside. This lady seemed to be one of those who come to the stage for some sadistic pleasure. I couldnt really make a lot of sense of the lyrics, amidst all the shouting, but what I could make was... "I dream a dream"... And yes.. It takes a lot of conviction to stand up for the dream you dream of.

Kudos to BGT for letting such people present before a wide audience.

Conquer Your Weakness

2009-07-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

This is a story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training, the master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?"

"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need to know," the Sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.

Several months later, the Sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals.

This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the Sensei intervened. "No," the Sensei insisted, "Let him continue."

Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and Sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind. "Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"

"You won for two reasons," the Sensei answered. "First, you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second, the only known defence for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm."

The boy's greatest weakness had become his greatest strength.

Life in a Metro

2009-05-17T06:32:00.001-07:00

Anshul, Kishmish & I sweating in the Mumbai local

Few weeks back I was in Mumbai, the second most populous city in the world; I have been to big shining cities, but Mumbai has a charm, its diversity stands out. Much to KM's discord, we travelled in the local train. It was amazing to see the crowd, local workers, students, office goers, they were all there, in an almost figurative harmony, moving towards a common destination. It was pretty hot and by the time we got off at Marine drive, we were all sweaty but the experience was worth the sweat :)

Marine Drive

We walked along the Marine drive in the scorching heat by the Arabian Sea; it was contrast contrasted, the wonderful skyline, spic roads and suddenly a lunch of Pav Bhaaji on a chatai by the beach under a tree at Chaupathi.
It was amusing to see the many many dabbawalaas making their way through the crowds. The fact that they still make their deliveries with a six sigma accuracy (correctness 99.9999% of the time) really sounds like a myth.

We reached The Taj and I was amazed (as usual) to know that I let out a sorrowful moan at the sight of the beautiful Taj being marred by the Terrorist attacks last November.

The city of Mumbai is really full of life and full of contrasts, of intertwined fates of people traveling together in the Mumbai locals. I really fell in love with the city and as we moved back towards the hotel in the evening, I was huming the old tune...

Zaraa haske.. Zaraa bachke... Ye hai mumbai meri jaan...

Of good, bad and technology

2009-04-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

We hear the oft repeated cliched, "Everything happens for a good reason" over and over; and sometimes we wonder what good can come out of bad things, what good can come out of killings and misery, most of the time we are left without an answer, but today I came across this EXTREMELY interesting use of almost a massacre for something that might have a ground breaking impact on way things are today.

Ratan Bhardwaj and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, used radiocarbon dating, which is normally employed to establish the age of archaeological or geological remains, to work out the age of heart cells compared to the chronological age of the person from which they were isolated. To do this, the team took advantage of nuclear tests done during the 1950s and 1960s, which led to a sharp increase of radioactive Carbon 14 in the atmosphere. The radioactive material was captured by plants as CO2 and then worked its way up the food chain and into the DNA of the human body. Soon after the tests were stopped, atmospheric C14 levels declined again, leading to a corresponding drop in the C14 concentration in human DNA.

The team measured C14 levels in the heart tissue of twelve deceased patients aged between 19 and 73 at the time of death and found elevated C14 even in those subjects who had been born two decades before the nuclear tests started, indicating that the radioactive carbon must have been incorporated into heart muscle cells long after birth. Similarly, the C14 levels in the hearts of younger patients did not match the year of their birth but rather indicated a younger birthday for the cells.
- MIT Technology Review

It totally amazed me, on multiple counts, foremost, using radioactive dating to find cellular regenaration rate itself sounds absolutely fabulous a concept. But to put to a good use, a nuclear catastrophe, is what amazed me. Hats off to the team and the weirdly fabulous ways that we think.

Next time I hear someone say that everything happens for good, I would surely think twice before neglecting that as a cliche.

A watery weekend

2009-03-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

Last weekend AS4 was all enthu to go somewhere, away from work; after a load of confusion on who is going and who is not, MB & I backing out at the last moment, trip was almost cancelled once, when we finally decided to leave Noida and leave for Rishikesh for a white water rafting "expedition" at 3 o clock in the morning.

Six of us, AS4, AS2, RM, T, MB & I started the trip with a late night movie (Excorcism of Emily Rose) at MB's place. With two cars, four drivers and two walky-talkies [MB has these really fancy toys that he plays with >:)] that we used to call each other names from one car to the other. The first stop was at Roorkee, I stopped over at IMG Lab and had a tea at VK sir's home. As was typical of VK sir, he offered us to arrange the insti guest house to stay and take bath.

The background music is finger-picked guitar played and recorded by me :)

After a brunch at Rishikesh, we started the white water rafting at 2:30 (delayed by MB's shopping for a capri and a "rafting" shoe!!!). Reaching the spot we realized we had left the camera down-stream and decided to request a friendly looking group of people (Chirag & Group) to take our group snap which they could send us later.

The rafting was wonderful, apart from the "adventurous" cliff jumping which RM & I took turns to scare each other for over 15 mins before we finally took the plunge, I "saved" an Ankita from drowning [yes.. that's me! OK... I just taught her how to float, and I guess it worked.. :)]..
We headed back for Delhi at noon the next day. The idea was to stop for a poori-halwa lunch at Har-ki-paudi, Haridwar. It was a like a total recall for me, from the campus days. We spent almost three hours in the water: floating, swimming and shouting till time would not permit us to linger on longer.
The next stop was @ Dominoes & Nirula's for a dinner in Meerut (where MB lost his cap again.. second time in 8 hours... ), we reached back in Noida at around 12.
We slept at 1 in the morning, five of us huddled in my room,bringing an end to the fabulous weekend, very well spent.

Three cheers to the trip.

How fleet is a glance of mind

2009-01-13T10:39:00.000-08:00

How fleet is a glance of the mind! Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light.

It is amazing how easily the mind can shut off all the external voices and how easily it can be transported and carried away to a different world.

It was past midnight as I sat in my room infront of my laptop working on some document, I got up to get some water and I realized that the folks next door were playing loud music to celebrate something. As I drank the water I notice that the songs they were playing were the old dance numbers that were ever so hit on the campus - Summer of 69, Saturday Night, Its my life... In a moment I was back in that Thomso night, dancing like there's not a worry in the world, shouting, running from NesT to Hanger... Incredible.. A fleeting memory of the EE gang, IMG gang, those friends KU, GB, PG.. Those were really the best days of my life.. I call KU to know he is working late in the office.. PG to know she is M***I** [Top secret ;)]

Load shedding... Zoom in to present... MS saying that "woh bhi din the... aur aaj bhi din hein" (those were the days... and these are days too [not exactly... but hope u got the sense if u didnt get the original])... and in that moment my mind takes another flight; to the Kungfu master Tortoise Oogway from Kungfu Panda (Must watch if you like animations or action movies)

Oogway: You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

And yes, today is a present.. to be remembered in the time to come.

Santa Claus, the True Story

2008-12-22T09:39:00.000-08:00

I got this story from KS the other day and found it wonderful... Read on and do read the follow up discussion at the end...

I remember my first Christmas party with Grandma. I was
just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to
visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There
is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"

My grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled
to her that day because I knew she would be straight with
me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that
the truth always went down a whole lot easier when
swallowed with one of her world-famous cinnamon buns.

Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between
bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me.

"No Santa Claus!" she snorted. "Ridiculous! Don't believe it.
That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes
me mad, plain mad. Now, put on your coat, and let's go."

"Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished
my second cinnamon bun.

"Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store
in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we
walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars.
That was a bundle in those days. "Take this money and buy
something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the
car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.

I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my
mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself.
The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling
to finish their Christmas shopping. For a few moments I just
stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering
what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for.

I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my
neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my
church. I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought
of Bobbie Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair,
and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class.

Bobbie Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never
went out for recess during the winter. His mother always wrote
a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids
knew that Bobbie Decker didn't have a cough, and he didn't have
a coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I
would buy Bobbie Decker a coat. I settled on a red corduroy one
that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.

"Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the
counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down.

"Yes," I replied shyly. "It's ... For Bobbie."

The nice lady smiled at me. I didn't get any change, but she put
the coat in a bag and wished me a Merry Christmas.

That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat in Christmas
paper and ribbons, and write, "To Bobbie, From Santa Claus"
on it -- Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy.
Then she drove me over to Bobbie Decker's house, explaining
as we went that I was now and forever officially one of Santa's
helpers.

Grandma parked down the street from Bobbie's house, and
she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front
walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus,"
she whispered, "get going."

I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the
present down on his step, pounded his doorbell and flew back
to the safety of the bushes and Grandma. Together we waited
breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally
it did, and there stood Bobbie.

Forty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent
shivering, beside my grandma, in Bobbie Decker's bushes. That
night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus
were just what Grandma said they were: ridiculous.

Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team.

The story has multiple layers... Once in a while I am confused thinking about how best to bring up kids... I am not sure how ... but this was definitely one of the best ways to do so... the Granny in one go taught the kid a lots and lots of things which would definitely help him in the life ahead.....

What KS liked most about this idea was that the Granny did the teaching while keeping the innocent faith of the boy intact... In modern times, we often tend to be too factual and in the process destroy such beliefs, as that of the boy in Santa.. We should surely not be superstitious but KS thinks we should have at least some bit of faith in things beyond what meets the eye.. Such a belief has the power to give a lot of meaning to life, as it did in the case of the boy in the story.. :-)

A trip to remember

2008-12-02T07:43:00.001-08:00

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With Dusshera holiday on Thursday, people were taking off on Friday to make the last weekend a long one. A recent vacation and an impending delivery at work precluded my further vacationing, however when AS4, AS2 & RD approached me with a plan to go biking to Jaipur I simply found it irresistible, more so because the plan was to leave Delhi Friday evening and be back on Monday for work!!

This was to be my first long distance biking experience so I was obviously excited. Beside the few "glitches" the trip was very smooth and not half as painful as T had said it would be. I have a small logging of major events that happened en-route (recorded on AS4s mobile;)).

Oct 10 2008 9:51 PM - Leave Ghaziabad after fuelling up
Oct 11 2008 1:15 AM - Have Dinner
Oct 11 2008 2:53 AM - Long tea break Baniyala Mod
Oct 11 2008 5:23 AM - Bakar Break @ Shiv villas
Oct 11 2008 7:45 AM - Check in Hotel Sarfaraz
Oct 11 2008 1:25 PM - Lunch @ Bombay Mishtan Bhandar
Oct 11 2008 7:50 PM - Visit Choki Dhani
Oct 11 2008 9:15 PM - Dinner @ Choki Dhani

Choki Dhani deserves a special mention, the place is a complete mockery of indian villages, other than the fact that guys wear ethnic clothes and there are camels and bullock carts roaming around [which, by the way are used to conduct guided 3 mins rides; And.. If you are thinking it sucks :) it does {We did take the camel ride though ;)} ] there is a guy selling popcorn, there's icecream and there is HUGE HUGE HUGE queue for meals. The experience had almost turned out to be the low-point of the trip, seeing the super long Q we had almost decided to turn around and eat at some common restaurant, when we decide that now that we had spent this much time & money to be there, might as well make the most of it. And Boy, we turned it around to make it the high-point of the trip. Random jokes about Tea being served in plastic cups and the resolution to do the Train around the organized folk dance and to get more people involved to make it look like a college disco party and the meticulously ridiculous ideas on how to make sure that we are kicked out of the place not only brought our spirits back but proved a source of entertainment to all around. When we finally managed to get our dinners served, and we did our best in amusing everyone around us, the server poured in extra ghee in my plate saying that I need to be strong like Salman Khan. And in no time, we were back to our cheerful selves [though we didnt do the Train neither did we get kicked out]

Oct 12 2008 3:51 AM - Sleep after a LOTS of senti talks
Oct 12 2008 1:30 PM - Checkout from Sarfaraz Hotel
Oct 12 2008 1:40 PM - Juice & Lunch
Oct 12 2008 2:30 PM - Photo @ Very cool hill
Oct 12 2008 3:30 PM - Fined. (I was not carrying bike papers, and yeah... I didnt have a license :) [we were not fined for that though... Lucky chance.. AS2 had JUST taken over the bike from me]
Oct 12 2008 6:30 PM - Boating @ Sili Said Lake
Oct 12 2008 7:30 PM - Reached Alwar
Oct 12 2008 9:30 PM - Dinner @ Bivadi
Oct 12 2008 11:10 PM - Reach Dhaula Kuan @ Delhi
Oct 13 2008 12:09 AM - Reach AS4s home
Oct 13 2008 12:50 AM - Back @ my home.yo yo yo

And there it was, a wonderful trip....

Well, the trip would be incomplete if I did not mention the little "glitches" we had. After a night long ride we were pretty tired and sleepy. Now those who know me would know that one thing I CANNOT resist is sleep. So when we reached Jaipur, it was almost 5 in the morning, we were on a hilly road with quite a few steep turns. I was riding, RD is behind me when suddenly RD shouts at me for not being careful, I was almost ready to ram into the railing. I am quite shocked, not knowing that I was careless but knowing that I hadnt seen the railing AT ALL... I had dozed off :) [well its not something to be happy about.. But... in retrospect it really looks funny :)] we changed seats but boy I was in such a bad shape I just couldnt keep my eyes open, I drank all the water that was there, kept sprinkling myself with water but I just couldnt manage to keep sitting straight till we reached this hotel and I dozed off at the reception and was hauled to the room :)

But as they say.. Alls well that ends well... and it did for us...

True love...

2008-11-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

They say that true love is eternal and that it is beyond life and death... There are innumerous stories on how true lovers brought back their loved ones from the very grasp of death... I experienced something like this recently....

When I met her four years back, I knew I had fallen in love with her on first sight.. There was no mistaking it for infatuation or a crush... It was love... in the purest form... Her voice sounded like the clearest note of a ringing bell to my ears... I remember the first time I heard her... I could not stop smiling... I must have looked so stupid then.. But thus is true love.. you are happy to look stupid...

Four years went by, in the blink of an eye... I wished time were less cruel... a little slower... but that was how it was to be... Last month as I fondly saw her rest... recharging herself for the day to come... to my horror and shock she just collapsed... over a period of a few weeks the frequency of the collapses increased... It was stupid of me... but I was scared to show her to a doctor least it turned out to be something serious... knowing that she could have been treated on a timely consultation... I resisted the doctor on some pretext or the other... Deep down I knew that she would not be able to be with me for long.. She had a heart problem...

My world was almost shattered... But as true love would have it... this Diwali I got my gift... I was at KG's place when to my utter surprise I notice that Miss MG had long killed an innocent soul and left the unused heart to rot.... it was almost like the universe conspiring to make sure my love prevails... it was a perfect match for her... most eagerly and earnestly KG donated... A heart replacement.. and my phone is now as good as new... True love prevails.....

PS: If you are wondering what the heart was... well.. it was "her" battery

Highest goal of life

2008-09-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

Recently PG forwarded an article to me. It was as if I was reading my own thoughts about life. Everybody has a simple choice to make, being happy or being sad; this choice I strongly feel can be made independently of the events happening around us. This might sound difficult and high philosophy, but I have often found this natural and I really hope that in future we never so bogged down with the events happening that we are unable to make this choice for us.

Read on.

+Fasih

The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. To begin with, you have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it's not about your career, whom you want to marry, or whether you want to seek God. People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It's really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.

Most people don't dare give themselves that choice because they think it's not under their control. Someone might say, "Well, of course I want to be happy, but my wife left me." In other words, they want to be happy, but not if their wife leaves them. But that wasn't the question. The question was, very simply, "Do you want to be happy or not?" If you keep it that simple, you will see that it really is under your control. It's just that you have a deep-seated set of preferences that gets in the way. […]

It's not a question of whether your happiness is under your control. Of course it's under your control. It's just that you don't really mean it when you say you're willing to stay happy. You want to qualify it. You want to say that as long as this doesn't happen, or as long as that does happen, then you're willing to be happy. That's why it seems like it is out of your control. Any condition you create will limit your happiness. You simply aren't going to be able to control things and keep them the way you want them.

You have to give an unconditional answer. If you decide that you're going to be happy from now on for the rest of your life, you will not only be happy, you will become enlightened. Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is. You don't have to learn Sanskrit or read any scriptures. You don't have to renounce the world. You just have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to mean it regardless of what happens. This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.

--Michael Singer from "The Untethered Soul"

The old Cherokee

2008-07-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 wolves.

"One is Evil. It is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

The other is God. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Economics for dummies - Part II (Petro Bucks)

2008-07-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

In my post some time back I had talked about how the people of Squanderville sold bonds to Thriftsville to support their squanders. However that is not the only option Squandervillians have. Below is an oversimplified version of the other option that a country can take. It is, what I call a dummies version of this story. Read along to know what we are headed for.

Any sane civilization with some self-respect and dignity eventually goes to war, killing its own people and leaving the survivors in suffering. It was in those times that the United States of Warriors realized that they can make some money. Warriors supplied arms and ammunitions to its allies for gold, by the time the war was over, Warriors had amassed enough gold that their currency was seen as more stable than Gold. Oil, which everybody needs began to be traded in WarBucks (Currency of Warriors) just because the currency was percieved stable. The demand for WarBucks, therefore started rising, Warriors made use of the oppurtunity and started printing WarBucks and bought stuff with them. In effect they bought stuff for free! (If you are wondering why cant everyone do this, well, read Part I. In short, if I start printing currency and start buying stuff with it, the people who have got my currency will come back to me and want to buy some other stuff with it, if I print too much of my currency there will be too much money chasing the limited amount of stuff I have and will result in things getting more expensive - Inflation. WarBucks however, were used by others to buy not stuff at home but oil elsewhere thus no inflation)

Soon everyone has loads of WarBucks that they use to buy Oil. Now the United Emirates of Oilers decide to stop trading in WarBucks and use NewBucks, suddenly the world realises that they cannot do anything with WarBucks and they want to sell the WarBucks. WarBucks fall steeply against NewBucks, Warriors do not have enough stuff to sell if the countries decide to sell WarBucks for WarStuff. Essentially Warriors can go bankrupt. What are the options they have:
1. Start producing stuff, and do that more economically than others to make it economically viable for others to buy. Which also means that the cost of labour has to go down drastically (They obviously had been squandering all along with free stuff they had been buying with WarBucks)
2. Do what they are best at doing: Go to war, thereby forcing all its allies to use WarBucks again.

Option 2 obviously sounds much more sensible, doesnt it?

Movies: Life Is Beautiful

2008-07-12T02:04:00.000-07:00

When:

This was a movie I saw with APS @ his hostel in IIT D. I saw this movie back to back with Schindler's List and Rise of the Evil both of which are also in my favorite list. Apart from the movie being just wonderful and possibly my #1 the watching of the movie itself was just wonderful and memorable.

Why:

I liked the movie because of its EXTREME simplicity. Of late I have realized that I see beauty in simplicity, the most beautiful to my mind are not the most exquisite and elaborate but the simplest. The wonderful music that plays in the background is also one of the highpoints of the movie.

What:

The movie revolves around a guy who believes that life is beautiful, through pain and despair he keeps smiling and brings hope to his loved ones and people all around him. It shows the power love has, it is love which gives him his ability to smile.

Wonderful movie... And I believe it too.. that life is beautiful... Just because there is always hope.... And love...

Kudos to open source world

2008-06-22T07:42:00.000-07:00

I have never been a windoze fan, infact I have never really left an option to sabotage the name of M$. Having said that, I use windoze on my laptop, and though I work on a remote fedora core box, I still use windoze to check my mails, to keep my appointments, to write my documents, heck I spend 90% of my computer time on windoze. Last month I decided to change all that.

Last month AT suggested Ubuntu, and boy it works, just wonderful. OpenOffice takes care of the docs, Thunderbird totally replaces outlook, it can even setup meeting requests. Firefox & VLC obviously work just as fine on Ubuntu. Gaim/Pidgin is awesome and so is liferea & Amarok. Tomboy Notes is just the right application for me. The best part of Ubuntu is the ease with which you can install stuff, windoze should really do something about it (read cheat it and name Unified Microsoft Installer or something) to install amarok all you have to do is yum install amarok. It downloads/installs/configures the app for you, awesome, isnt it?

I tried quite a few flavours before/after Ubuntu, Fedora is difficult to configure otherwise I kind of like Fedora core. Ubuntu supports all my hardware, I was impressed with the way my wireless was automatically detected & configured. Even windows takes longer to configure!!

All in all its almost a month and the only reason I log in to Windoze is to play online pool with MS as pidgin does not support Y! Games. Kudos Open Source world. Hats off to you guys.

On lending a helping hand

2008-06-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

Every now and then there are mails floating around asking the receiver to forward the mail to others as that would lead to the service provider paying up anywhere between 1 paise to 1 cent for every forward. This money in turn would help some poor soul to afford a terrible sickness. Today I got one such mail:

IIT Bombay student Anupam Biswas 5th sem. Mechanical Engg is suffering from Colukabki (caused due to excessive nabad and depression) a disease very rarely found (3 in a billion). His condition is very pathetic and the treatment is very expensive, obviously his parents are not able to afford his treatment. Orkut has agreed to pay 1 paisa after each time this message is forward. So please pass to all ur friends. please i request you to pass it to as many people as u can and lets try to save someone's life. I request please do not ignore this. It will take......

It made me wonder about a few things:
1. How naive can a person get!!! Colukabki ?????? nabad??????? Unimaginably random names.. Google is just a click away, it will take a second to know that there is NO ailment by that name.
2. What kind of people can start such sick chains! There will be many who would be forced to mistrust even a genuine mail.

3. There is a VERY small part, almost an appendix in us which wants us to help other human beings, someone in need, but there is a bigger larger sense that prevails and wants most of us to chill and relax and do our work, sit in our tight loop of what we call our lives. Unless it involves sending a mail [without even thinking twice of its implications] or writing a blog about the poor, most of us just pass. And though there is a struggle inside which really wants us to do something make some change somewhere, ultimately our better sense prevails... And we pass... and that.. sadly is what I have been doing....

I am reminded of MG... [http://www.noragging.com/], amazing to see someone doing his bit to bring about a change that can effect somebody's life in his busy schedule of work... hats off to you MG....

An eventful weekend.....

2008-05-11T08:16:00.001-07:00

Lately my weekends have become very satisfying, even if it translates to staying at home and doing some household chores, reading up tech stuff or novels or chatting with friends or playing pool [online >:)] I really enjoy my weekends.... However, this, was a really nice weekend... Saturday was A's Bday.. When I reached home there were people ready to kick his ass [quite literally >:)] and by then I was already in a very jolly mood. Mostly because I nailed a work bug and a friend's bug remotely[TeamViewer rocks] >:) and also talked on phone for almost 1.5 hrs, now that's what I call productivity >:).

So A gets his ass kicked, cuts his cake with a spoon coz we have misplaced our knife since past couple of days now!! The next day we head for the lunch budday party..., nice lonngggg lunch at Pind Baluchi... followed by bowling at Shopprix... i finally managed to not only get but also give a few fundae too [which as claimed by the receiver, were useful!!!], by the time we were done with Bowling, it was already late in the evening but we nevertheless decided to go to India Gate, just to make the day complete.

Weather in Delhi is horrible, very very hot & humid so when I noticed that the wind was rather cool, the car was rather fast, the environment was rather jolly and I was rather tooo happy due to a mix of various of these factors, I could not refrain from getting out of the car to feel the wind from closer quarters; This translates to sitting out of the moving car's window. It was fun, I took a small video of myself doing the cheap trick ;). So far so good till we reach a red-light and an angry looking guy comes to the car door and order it to be opened. I look cautiously, no sooner had I opened the door than this guy grabs my collar and pulls me out of the car to all our surprise. Another well dressed gentleman grabs my arm and twists it behind me, all in the middle of the road!! And then it dawns on me, he is a police guy coming out of an Ambassador with a red light on it. "I have been watching you since past 15 mins, what was that you were doing, you guys risk such stunts and we get a bad name.. Take him to the lockup" says the better dressed man in English... I am all shocked, suddenly down from my cloud number 9.... They pull me aside as by then the light had gone green and the traffic was all held up because of us... He twists my arms harder, "I am sorry" is all I can say... "Sir its this guy's birthday, so we were generally happy... Sir I am really sorry"... he asks me what I do... And I... quite fluently and without hesitation say.. "Sir.. we are students"... "Where?".. "IIT"... "Branch".... "Electrical IV yr" his hand loosened.. "Where are you from?".. ."Sir Calcutta..." ... "Name"... "Fasihullah... Sir I am really sorry... "... " Ok... dont ever such things again...." The other guy whispers in my friend's ears.... "IIT ka hai... isliye chod diya..." my my... we get inside the car.. start moving... AgAg says "Chill... dont get tensed..." I am like... "Ok... Antakshiri.....".... And we were laughing again....

India Gate was a good idea... we played volleyball with a balloon [ooops... Balloon nahiiin AgAg ka dil...], walked in the very dirty pond, A danced to "Inhin logon ne..." It was fun... The day finally ended with a perfect dinner of quality icecream & Paranthas at EXL dhaba....
Songs.... Fight sequences [one way >:)]... Romance [Dil ke saath khelna >:)], food, leg pulling, senti, embarrasment, anger, maafeds and lots and lots of meaningless jokes at which we all laughed our hearts out.... A perfect weekend is what I would call it... Thanks everyone and happy birthday A again.....

Honeymoon in Singapore

2008-04-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

I was in Singapore this weekend. As KU said, it was a weekend honeymoon that I had been to :). The trip started off with a 2:45 mins travel time to the airport (as opposed to the normal 45 mins. Thanx to the Olympic torch going through Delhi) leaving me just in time to check in (the flight eventually had to be delayed because a majority of the passengers, turns out, got delayed for the same reason).

I reach Singapore, go to office via the Metro (Our Delhi metro really compares well with theirs) take a cab to the office (Cabs are very affordable, unlike US). By the way, I was utterly surprised to see announcements made in Tamil in the Metro. Turns out that there are so many Indians (Tamilians to be more precise) that Tamil is one of the four official languages!!. After work (by which time I am totally sleepy even after a Coke and 2 coffees), LK & AP take me out for a dinner to Boatquay, a line of eateries with all kind of food (Mostly sea-food), alongside the Singapore river. This was a totally enjoyable and unique experience and would have been much better had the weather been a little more pleasant. I ended up ordering some shrimp whose eyes were staring at me and some huge fish which I could not bring myself to eat [If it were not for the rich source of protein that fish is, I think I can stick to pure vegetarian food which tastier and more guiltfree >:)]. While we were talking I happened to mention the most disgusting food I have had, which was Sushi for breakfast (at 6 in the morning) when I was in Japan, this totally caught the attention of LK who took it as his responsibility as a Singaporean to prove that anything Japan can do, Singapore can do better. With this motive I was ordered a dessert, Durian with sticky rice. Now, Durian is a fruit which stinks so bad that it is an offense to carry it around in public!! (Which brings me to the most interesting thing about Singapore. The place, as NB puts it, is a BIG Hogward, very heavily regulated, it is an offense to chew gum in public!!!! I am sure you cant beat that!!) So I decide to eat the "fruit" (on the positive side, it is claimed to be a very nutritious food), AP warned me that the first time he ate it, he had to run to find a place to puke, so I better be ready >:). And prepared as I was (I sat right next to the river so that I could puke in that), I guess it was mainly because of the sticky rice that I didnt throw up and managed to eat it all :).

Sunday morning was at Sentosa Island, a nice place to hang around and the evening was at the airport back to India. There was a wonderful cable-car journey to the Island, Dolphin show, Underwater world where you walk through a tunnel and all kinds of fish HUGE & tiny swim by you..

It would be a gross injustice to the blog if I did not mention that I misread my flight departure time as 2:30 in the day (actually 2:30 AM) and missed it and very luckily got an evening flight at a very nominal charge. I guess my trips are never fun without at least one goofup to make it look fuzzy enough..

Of Maatra Bhuumi, Motherland

2008-04-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

This weekend I saw Munich, I was really touched to see these people fighting for land, a never ending futile war. Below is a particular dialog that really made me stop and think, it is between Avner, an Israeli-born Mossad agent of German descent and Ali, an Arab who is fighting to get back Gaza from Israel, which he thinks of as his mother

Avner: You'll never get the land back.

Ali: You'll all die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine. We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.

Avner: You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them... and thinks you are animals.

Ali: But then the world will see how they've made us into animals. They'll start to ask questions about the conditions in our cages.

Avner: You are Arabs. There are lots of places for Arabs. Tell me something, Ali. Do you really miss your father's olive trees? Do you honestly think you have to get back all that...that nothing? That chalky soil and stone huts. Is that what you really want for your children?

Ali: It absolutely is. It will take a hundred years, but we'll win. We want to be nations. Home is everything.

I really found it weird, it is not a melodramatic speech, people all over fight for land, closer home, Kashmiris want to get away from India, there are fights from completely barren useless piece of land all because it is what they call "home". The way we are born and brought up, we really look at this piece of land as ours, and I am sure if there is a need tomorrow most of us would be ready to kill or die for this. Weird, but true. And while I was thinking about this, I see this video, believe me, I could actually feel the emotions within, goosebumps is too mild to express. Watch it, its a 2 min clip really worth watching if you are an Indian.

My First recording

2008-04-06T01:49:00.000-07:00

To strive to seek and not to yield....

Some things we do might not be very valuable from most of the point of views, in fact it might be totally worthless or sometimes plain simple wastage of time, yet there are things which makes me happy. It keeps re-inforcing the adage that my Maths teacher once said... "A Man can do what a man has done... ".. Running a marathon or learning guitar (without enrolling for a guitar class >:))

Anyways, so this is my first recording, definitely not very good and dumb windoze would not allow me to record more than 60 secs worth of data (on the brighter side, you can claim to have sat through my entire performance without getting very bored >:)).

Enjoy...
Please feel free to comment :)

[Special thanks to my roommates PK & G for bearing up with me as I did my nightly riyaaz] >:)

And yes.. .my voice sucks >:)

Open your eyes

2008-03-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

My boss recently forwarded this video to me. It really is an eye-opener, though it applies to US mainly, whose monetary policies, things that really effect US, the way they live, the food they eat is all governed not by the govt. people elect but by some unelected un-accountable body that can make its decissions autonomously.

Though talking about US, I was forced to think how much are we aware of our financial system, its accountability to us, the people of India. Its time we open our eyes to the facts and stand up for our own good.

Top 5 things that has changed the world in the past 50 years

2008-02-23T08:05:00.000-08:00

Besides the obvious food for the body, lunch time for me is the time the mind gets food too. Almost everyday we find a new topic to talk about sometimes philosophical, sometimes technical and sometimes purely random. Yesterday MG generally asks as to what would be the top 5 things in the past 50 years that have changed the way we live. The obvious answers were:
1. ICs [Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed a patent for a "Solid Circuit" made of germanium on February 6, 1959.]
2. Internet
3. Mobile phones

Well... Since we couldnt think of anything else that was as dramatic, I put the question forth for you to answer. :)

The ethics and the Sutta

2008-02-23T00:34:00.000-08:00

The other day over the lunch Mallaya bidding for IPL players came up; and with Mallaya came his wealth, the way he made money, MG said was unethical, the reason being he was selling alchohol. This basically set the mood for the day's afternoon debate :) which I found entertaining enough to blog about. The topic then formally was, "Should the goverment interfere in the operations of cigerattes/daru companies?". Interestingly I was against the topic... [Interesting because I am a non-smoking tee-totaller :) Infact the only selfish reason I have to be against the motion is that I own ITC(Indian Tobacco Company) stocks ;)]

Anyways, in brief the best points for/against the motion were:
Against :- It hampers the freewill of an individual, we are born with the right to choose for ourselves
For :- If all were to have their freewill then there should be no legal system, let people steal/rape/kill
Against :- Stealing/Rape/Murder affects somebody else's freedom Govt is doing right in protecting it. Drunk driving should be banned because it can cause an accident leading to somebody's death. We accept that drinking is bad because the chances that a drunk person would do something he would regret or cause others harm is much higher then when he is sober but so is a person in anger. The point we are trying to make is, what the Govt CAN do and SHOULD do is to educate people about the ill-effects of Alcohol and Cigerettes instead of trying to stop them from doing it.
For :- Society as a whole takes a course over time, the Govt's role is to shape the course, if alcohol is not available much lesser number of people will drink and consequently they will contribute positively in the society's direction ahead.
Against :- People who dont know what is good or bad for them or who cant control their actions knowing something is not good for them are not the kinds who will take the society anywhere.
For :- [By far the best argument :)] The govt has social responsibilities towards people. It has to ensure that everybody gets proper health treatment/facilities, now drinkers/smokers being worse off than non-smokers and non-drinkers take more money to mantain [>:)] hence economically, for the good of the larger population, the govt should stop the people from being high-mantainence [Credit goes to BS for the wonderful argument]

As you might have noticed that since I was arguing against the motion, the post is biased towards my viewpoint :)

Thoughts?

My birthday

2008-02-21T20:46:00.000-08:00

Birthdays are so very weird.... It seems so childish to celebrate one. Though I never have a lot of expectations that I would get a whole lot of wishes but still, somehow it brings joy when someone calls to wish a genuine wish... This time around there were only a few wishes but almost everyone of those was a genuine wish...

I had my first birthday cake.... [With my name on it] Got FLOWERS !!! [From an Aunt!!!!].... A replacement gift [Definition: A gift given with the intention of replacing an older gift which may have been tattered due to continuous use :)].. Books [My... I do give out the ghissu vibes!!]... And friends calling at 12 their local time [Globalization!!!]

All in all it was a nice day and I felt great to have friends caring for me. Little drops of water make a mighty ocean... Little gestures... make us so happy... A few years down the line... when we look back... what we remember are those small moments of joys that someone brought to us... And the moments of joy that we could bring to someone.... And as MS would say, people come and people go... What remains is the footprint they leave in our lives.....

Vodafone wants me to be a cricket geek

2007-12-27T01:46:00.000-08:00

"Please.. One last chance... If it doesnt work out, I will personally call you up... " says an honest sounding female on the Vodafone customer service. It is pretty difficult to get me worked up, this was one of those difficult times :). I say "OK.. But this would be the last... The next time I call.. I would not be listening to anything but the way.. and I will make sure that this is fixed and a few people screwed even if it translates to taking a week long off from work".. and I hang up.

It was some two weeks back that I had called the Vodafone customer care to find out about something and after talking to the customer care representative, I SMSd a feedback to the Vodafone when instead of the regular reply I get back a message stating that I have been subscribed and that it will take 24 hrs for "it" to be activated. I called the customer care again to find out what "it" was and how to de-activate whatever it was, to know that it was some cricket info!!!!!!!!!

Now, I have never been a great fan of cricket (or for that matter any sport). I ask the guy to take my request to de-activate the service. Turns out that it would not be possible, the service has to be un-subscribed by the user, he tells me the process which was.. "SMS DCT CKT to 56789". I thank him and promptly send the SMS, reply "Invalid response code".... I am like... WHAT?? Even an embedded device would throw up a more meaningful message. Calling the customer care again tells me that I cannot de-activate it till it is activated. So I will have to wait till the evening. I am like OK..

Evening... "Invalid response code".... Customer Care... "Oo sorry... please SMS DCT CKT99 to 56789" OK.... "Invalid response code"... Customer Care... "Oo sorry... please SMS DCT CKT to 567889"... This was a great difference over the previous attempts.... I got back a message which went like... "Thanks... To activate Caller tunes ACT CT... For Shaer-o-Shaeri ACT SS.. For Jokes ACT JK.... blah blah blah blah... " I was like... Ok... done... By the way... What the hell makes Vodafone think that I have a lot of time to get Jokes and stuff on my phone... Anyways.... So I am having my dinner... ting-tong-ting.... SMS... I read it... Ganguly hits a six... blah blah blah... uuooo its not fixed yet.... Customer Care... by this time I am pissed... I tell the person that I am not able to de-activate it.... sir it has to be de-activated at your end... we cannot do that... please SMS CKT99 to 1111.... Obviously with no help... I had started keeping my phone mute.. everyone in the office found it funny.... I get SMS not only of the international cricket... there are SMSs of local cricket some chunnu team playing munnu team sorts... there are jokes running around the office about my phone... somebody would say... "So whats up with basketball these days..." then someone woud say... "Ask Fasih... He might be getting a few updates here and there about those" somebody else would chip in... "No... Vodafone is busy teaching him cricket... One sport at a time"

Finally I get a call from the Vodafone guys on what my problem was.... he talks to me and tells me that it would be addressed soon. I get an SMS a while later, "Issue addressed. Sorry for the inconvenience caused" I heave a breathe of relief, unmute my phone, get to my seat... ting-tong-ting... I take the phone.... Bombay rapids meet bengal tigers (or some such animals) today... This time I am totally pissed.... My ex-boss pitied me and narrated a similar torture to which all he did was to call them up and ask them how to escalate the issue. I decided to do that...

This lady takes the call... "Sir, why do you want to de-activate the serivice" I never liked cricket... Now I hate it because of Vodafone... Is that a reason enough? Or did she want something in writing too? Thinking back I might have been a bit rude... But the escalating stint really fixed it. She said I had to send.... "I am not going to do a SINGLE thing... do you get it? Just tell me how to escalate this..." That was it... She asked for a last chance... Which I grudgingly granted (Guess because I had already shouted so much...) And I have not got an SMS from them till now... except for the "Your bill dated 15-Dec-07 has been dispatched...." a while back which triggered me to write this account... :)

Hey there Delilah

2007-12-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

PG tells me about this song that she has been listening to lately, "Hey there Delilah". I ask my office folks if they have the song and a few others that I had been looking for since a past few days. Nobody seems to have these [Either I have an obscure taste or the office folks >:) ]. However, one of the more philanthropic types came to my seat to tell me about this site eSnips.com which she claimed has about every song that I might be interested in listening to. Soon enough I found that to be true, it really has a good collection of Hindi as well as English songs.

Happy with the discovery, I come back home and spend the next few hours in finding the songs I had been looking for since ages now. Make a playlist, all set to go... But... the playlist wont play... !!!! Googling around seemed futile after killing a lot of time.. I guessed that it was time to do some scripting :) Skip the dinner and now I have this script which downloads the songs in the playlist :) Thought it might be of some use to someone out there.

esnips-playlist-save
******************


#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -lt 3 ]
then
   echo "Usage: $0   "
   exit 1
fi

EMAIL="$1"
PASSWD="$2"
PLAYLIST="$3"

ESNIPS='http://www.esnips.com'
LOGIN_URL=$ESNIPS'/UserSignInAction.ns?action=signin'
PLAYLIST_ID=`echo $PLAYLIST | sed 's/.*\///g'`
PLAYLIST_URL=$ESNIPS'/plxml/'$PLAYLIST_ID


# Log in to the server.
rm -f cookies.txt
echo "Logging in to eSnips"
wget --keep-session-cookies --save-cookies cookies.txt \
    --post-data "ns_EventTarget=&ns_EventArgument=&referrer=&rememberMe=off&email=$EMAIL&password=$PASSWD" \
    --output-document 'junk.html' \
    -q \
    -p $LOGIN_URL

# Now grab the page or pages we care about.
echo "Loading the playlist"
wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
    --output-document 'playlist.xml' \
    -q \
    -p $PLAYLIST_URL

# Get the commands for downloading the files
mkdir -p downloads
xsltproc --nodtdattr esnips.xslt playlist.xml | grep -v "

cat esnips.xslt
**************

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
   <xsl:template match="/playlist/trackList">
       <xsl:for-each select="track">
echo "Downloading <xsl:value-of select="title"/>";ext=`wget -O '<xsl:value-of select="title"/>' --load-cookies cookies.txt <xsl:value-of select="location"/> <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> 2>&1| grep audio | sed 's/.*audio\///;s/]//'`;mv '</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="title"/>' downloads/'<xsl:value-of select="title"/>'.$ext
</xsl:for-each>
   </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I am impressed with myself... As I usually am..

Economics for dummies - Part I (Interest Rates)

2007-12-03T05:17:00.000-08:00

Of the many articles I read trying to understand the meaning of various terms and their correlation, I found the article by Warren Buffet most illustrative and useful. What follows is an inspiration from the same.

In a world far far away are a bunch of people, living on islands. We start by looking at two of these islands, Squanderville and Thriftsville, the prime occupation of both the islands is farming and mining. Thrifts are hardworking people who believe in postponing life for later [;)] and work very hard ending up in producing more food than they need, Squanders on the other hand work just enough to eat what they produce and spend the rest of the time playing golf. Thrifts figure this out and start selling their surplus food to Squanders who are more than willing to buy it and save time to play more golf. Now the problem is that the Squanders trade in Squander-bucks which Thrifts cannot use in Thriftsville, they have to buy something in Squanderville to make use of the money. They start off by buying bonds issued by Squander-guv. Bond is a promise that the issuer will pay back the money with some interest later. Everyone is happy. Is it?

Lets look at Thrifts again. Thrifts are getting richer, they export more and import less (this is called a trade surplus). Now since they are getting richer, it means that there is more money in the market chasing the same amount of goods. This makes the commodities more expensive (as there is more demand and supply is the same), there is an inflation. The guv. figures that if this is to continue things will become too expensive and not all the people will be able to buy stuff. So what the guv. does is, it sucks out excess money from the market. There are a few ways to do it:

Raise the interest rates

Simple, aint it, people fall for it and tend to deposit more money in the banks as they are getting more returns in the form of interest

Sell the guv. bonds

This translates to buying the money

Increase the bank deposit ratio

Mandates the banks to store more money with the Central bank thereby making it more difficult for banks to lend out money.

Lets take a look at Squanderville now, squanders are happy playing golf, they have no motive to work harder [;)] Now the guv. wants them to work more so that the country makes money. What it does is, it makes money cheap, i.e. it makes the squanders money more easily so that they can make some good use of it. The squanders realize that this is a good opportunity to make money, they borrow money from the bank and start doing business with it. On the way they create more employment, the mines which were once too expensive to explore are now worth it as they now have easy cash that can be used to dig mines. The guv. by decreasing the rates has thus stimulated the economy. However as a side effect, the squander-bucks have become cheaper. This means that to manufacture some stuff in Squanderville has become cheaper than to import it from Thriftsville. Squanderville exporters now have an economic edge over other islands. A falling currency is better for exporters and bad for importers. Well, at least that's what it looks like.

Economics for dummies - Introduction

2007-12-03T05:05:00.000-08:00

I have always been fascinated with my uncle who claims ( and I totally believe it ) that over years he has squeezed the stock market to make money from it. He is a CA by profession and I once I took it for granted given his education background and I thought it best to stay away from it. However last year my company's finance advisor initiated me to investments and I have been hooked ever since.

I guess it is because of my educational background as an engineer (who, as Scott Adams rightly points out, are infected with finding out hwo things work :)

that I got really curious how the whole thing works. After a lot of Googling, I collected a few things, and I thought it might be of interest to someone on a similiar conquest :)

Please note that what follows is EXTREMELY rudimentary view of the system, and from the eyes of someone who is still in the quest of the complete picture. I would be more than happy if you could spot and point out any inaccuracies.

Firefox IS Out of the Box

2007-12-02T06:48:00.000-08:00

Computers have come a long way from the text based consoles but we are still a long way from the smart machines which would understand what we are trying to do as opposed to having to explain what exactly we want to do with it. Recently I noticed Firefox doing something really awesome, to get to a site you don't need to remember obscure names just type in what you remember about the site, Firefox will take you there!!!!!
Well.. This is no exaggeration... try it out yourself.. To get to the Times Of India website you dont have to remember http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/, just type in times of india in the address bar, press enter.. and there you go... Now it is obvious it is doing a smart search behind the scenes and also obvious is the fact that Google is helping it out big time, turns out that it is doing a "I am feeling Lucky" on Google however, the fact that really surprised me was that if the string in the address bar is not a very good search string... For e.g. Entering "india strategy" does not take you to indiastrategy.com instead takes you to the Google search page for india strategy!!!! Now that is what I call Out of the Box thinking >:)

What a wonderful world

2007-12-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

I once used to be an optimist, a hard core optimist who found a bright side to everything and a silver lining surrounding the darkest and largest of clouds... I found the world so beautiful... With time however I realized that not all is as rosy, there is a lot of pain around us... And as NB once very rightly said... ignorance is bliss and with knowledge comes the pain and the bitter truths... and as GB keeps saying that everything changes... and that the world is not as rosy as I think it is... it was almost like I had started believing that pain outshines joy when PG sent me this song... this was a song that I have practically asked everyone who knows me about... I still dont know where I heard it.. the one I heard was in Hindi... And it went like... "Socha ye dil... kaisa sundar ye jahaan..." And here is PG sending the original English song (and I owe her a BIGG treat for this)... The world is indeed beautiful...

Sacrificing the gift

2007-12-02T04:34:00.000-08:00

Every now and then one hears various views about how to live, one hears about success and failures, about love and pain, of friends and foes. One of the most common beliefs is that one should know what one wants to do in life. I find that very difficult to grasp, I find it difficult to believe that we can find what we want to do in life, the way I see it is, life is like a series of events some of which effect us and some don't; our responsibility is to do the best we can of that passing moment, of the immensely large number of things that we are capable of doing every moment pick the one thing that we like to do.. Do it with all the passion and love... not as one more thing that has to be done... It is only when we find that true love can we say that we have "used" that moment and fulfilled our duty.... Recently I read this Chinese proverb somewhere "If you are not putting in your best... You are sacrificing the Gift"...

Lets not sacrifice the gift...

And miles to go before I sleep

2007-11-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

The D-Day was finally approaching, it was almost a year back when I was amazed at NB running for 4.5 km on a treadmill and I could see myself running a km with a great difficulty. It was then that I decided that I would also do a 5km stretch in half an hour. It was a matter of months that I could reach it and another couple of weeks that I realized that I should do something more, a marathon seemed like the thing that was challenging enough.

Here comes Vodafone Delhi Half Marathon, just a week after the month of Ramzan. It looked very unfair for people fasting during the month, it would be difficult to keep up with the training schedules. But I had been waiting for this since almost half a year now and couldn't just let it go. I was in a good shape, my best timings had peaked at 11kms in 57 mins just a week before Ramzan. My practice schedules were now shifted to the evening, start at 6:40 PM, right after the breakfast at 6:20 PM after a few dates (which by the way, I realized a great source of instant energy) and evening prayers.

Last 12 days of Ramzan, I went home in Kolkata, this was again not helping in my schedules as I could not run much back at home. I come back to Noida on Monday and decide to come up to speed as soon as I physically could. The very Monday I come back I do a 12 km in a dismal 1 hr 20 mins. As impatience would have it, I forgot all the basic rules of running, dont exceed 10% of your previous week's total; Take one day rests between two long runs; In the haste, I decided to run everyday till the coming week, and the following week run only on Monday as the Sunday following was the D-Day. This turned out to be expensive decision, the last run up to the Marathon, I sprained my ankle!!

On Friday we had an office party in which I danced a bit (too much, should I add!) . My dance form basically involves a lot of jumping. With the sprain in my ankle only a little noticeable, by Saturday morning I was limping. Someone advised a crepe bandage and someone else advised a complete rest. Saturday evening it the pain was a little better than the morning. I had to go get the running bib and the timing chip on the Saturday evening. The timing chip, by the way, is an extremely cool use of technology. For a security deposit of a 1000 bucks you get a small RFID
chip which you tie on your foot while running. There are strips on the running track that not only make sure that you have actually crossed the milestone but also track your timings at various points in the race which are later presented to you in the form of a timing certificate. The chip is also used to identify your race photographs which you can buy later(The race-photography itself is pretty interesting, there are cameras around these timing strips, they take your pics as you pass by them and an image identification is done on the basis of your bib-no and timing chip). Anyways, I had to reach Ansal's Plaza in Delhi to collect the timing chip (which by the way was a full-fledged expo, complete with live entertainment to stalls of Sports and health-food companies); On the way back, as luck would have it, the bike slipped on a polished floor!! The speed was slow and the I had a helmet on, but the fall was enough to slightly injure my right knee!!!

View Larger Map
Less than 12 hrs for the event to start, there was no turning back. At 6:00 next morning, a banana, a few dates a liter of water and a broad smile on the face, I start for Delhi. The race started from the Gate 1 of Nehru park with a lot of commotion. There were elite runners, people who are famous for running and record holders; Celebrity runners, mostly movie stars, models like Milind Soman (He actually ran the complete race, at least I crossed him at 8-10 km mark), Sports-Stars like Rahul Dravid, Actress like Priyanka Chopra (who I dont think ran at all) and even Villians like Gulshan Grover added to the fun; Politicos Shivraj Patil, Sheila Dikshit (who also flagged off the run), Suresh Kalmadi, Navin Jindal; And obviously the super star... Me..

We march.

For our lands, for our families, for our freedom.

We march.

For honor's sake, for duty's sake, for glory's sake, we march.

We march.

The run was really fun, the first 5 km was relaxed, without a stop and without water overtaking as many as I could. There were residents waiting on the roads to cheer us up which brought up the energy levels. With every group of people cheering and hooting I ran at my top speed for a km at a stretch. There were water/glucose supplies all along the way. Most volunteers really looked eager to help. After the fifth km mark when I took my first water bottle, I noticed the volunteer offering water was really happy when I grabbed the bottle from his hand.. shouted a thanks to him he shouted back a real loud "Keep it up" to me... Interesting how we all work...

At the 6th km I felt the pain both in my knee and the ankle, I was thinking of slowing down a bit when I saw this very old guy, probably in his late 60s or early 70s going steady. I decided to slow down when he slows down. We ran together for the next 2 kms. Without a stop, and without any more water... and then I had to slow down after the 8th km for the old guy was really not planning on reducing speed leave alone stopping or taking water !!!

It was around this time that the first runner (foreigner) had started coming back from the other end. We all clapped... Then a bunch of more guys (foreigners)... We were like... Where are our guys? Then we see a group of Indians... We all cheered very loudly for them.... and I got my new dose of energy to run for another 2 kms till I saw the old man again... Running comfortably at the same old speed >:) Amazing...

We had finished half the distance... I met Kuldip (my mentor in the last company) on the way... and we ran together till the end... I took more breaks as my ankle would complain every now and then and so would the knee... But overall it was not bad.. I could cross the finishing line at 490th position in the Open Male Category finishing the race in 2:04:12 hrs. A very long wait for the certificate and an extreme pang of sudden hunger and an absolutely unsupportive ankle and knee (I shouldn't be blaming them... At least they carried me through the race >:)) were not really pleasant but the joy of crossing the finishing line made up for it all.....

And though I still have miles to go before I can sleep... But for that day... I came with the medal around my neck I came back home.... and slept the whole day long...

Race day photographs till I order them

On watching movies

2007-09-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

Yesternight I was trying to watch this movie when I realised that the subtitle is way out of sync. I tried to use VLC's Subtitles advanced setting but turns out that it is unable to sync it. I tried hunting for a few more subtitles track but after finding two of them I realised that both of them were identical, I am sure that there would be many souls out there who dont have easy net access or there are many movies with not many different subtitles track. Being a geek that I am, at 1:00 in the night I decided it is time to do something permanent :) and I came up with this script that syncs up the subtitles track for me. It takes 4 inputs, a time (T1) towards the start of the movie and the corresponding time (t1) in the subtitles file [If you didnt know, subtitles file can be edited (.srt)] when the same dialog is being played and two similiar times towards the end of the movie.

Run the script like this:
awk -f lipsync.awk Subtitles.srt > ModifiedSubtitles.srt

Play the movie with the new file.

The script: [Save it as lipsync.awk]
# --------------------------------------- Start of lipsync.awk
#
# Author: Fasihullah Askiri
#
# Movie: ----T1---------------------------------------T2---
# File: --t1---------------------------------t2--
#
# T1 - T2
# -------
# t1 - t2
#

BEGIN {
T1 = 745
t1 = 721

T2 = 7530
t2 = 7227

scale = (T1 - T2) / (t1 - t2)
delaySec = T2 - t2 * scale
# print "Scale: " scale
# print "DelaySec: " delaySec
}

{ processed = 0 }

function formatTime (timeInSecs)
{
hr = int (timeInSecs/3600)
min = int (timeInSecs/60) - hr * 60
sec = int (timeInSecs) - min * 60 - hr * 3600
msecs = int (1000 * (timeInSecs - int (timeInSecs)))
return hr ":" min ":" sec "," msecs
}

function getTimeInSecs (str)
{
split (str, time, ":")
split (time [3], timeLast, ",")
return time [1] * 3600 + time [2] * 60 + timeLast [1] + timeLast [2] / 1000
}

/ --> / {
newStartTime = formatTime(getTimeInSecs($1) * scale + delaySec)
newEndTime = formatTime(getTimeInSecs($3) * scale + delaySec)
print newStartTime, $2, newEndTime
processed = 1
}

!processed {
print $0
}

# --------------------------------------- End of lipsync.awk

I assume that you have a unix based system or a cygwin on your windoze or at least a running version of awk on windoze

Hope it helps

My love

2007-08-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

The first computer I worked on was a VT100 terminal attached to a central server in the sacred server room which we could only look at from outside. We had a slot of not more than an hour to work on it. This was at my campus 7 years back. Computers really have changed a lot, and so have the interfaces and the softwares that we interact with. But a few things will never change at least for me. Top of the list I guess is Vi. I am a Vi fan. Three years of working in the industry and four years at the campus, I found Vi incredibly powerful and easy.

Some time back NB was talking about this cool dood friend of his who used to do everything imaginable in Emacs; right from writing, debugging source code to checking his mails. He said he had done a plugin which could rip out the attachment off a multi-part mail and save it to a directory which he could go look into. Emacs I believe has a lot of popularity and fan following so I thought I would give it a shot. For a month I "tried" religiously to use emacs for editing it is a good editor, but it does not beat Vi. It might be my love for Vi which hides the goodness of Emacs ;) but the fact remains that to do Emacs you really have to press a bit too many keys. One of my favourite "shortcuts" was "CTRL-x a i g" inverse-add-global-abrev [Ok Ok.... It is a pretty fancy feature... If you want to use it you have sacrifice a little bit... On the plus side you will get more flexible fingers >:)] Anyways, after a month I gave up... I am back to Vi now...

Stone Age Debugging

2007-08-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

How do you debug a reasonably complex system without tools like a debugger, core dumps or even a console access!!! I am talking about a system with no printf's, no gdb, no persistent filesystem to dump a core on crash.

I work on an embedded system, TI C62x DSPs on an Motorola MPC board. Few weeks back I was debugging a problem that caused the DSPs to crash every 18-20 hours. We dont have JTag to peek into the DSPs, all we have is a shared memory based debugging mechanism in which DSPs keep updating a location with the code trace and in case of a problem with the DSP, it jumps to HALT and the Controller detects it with a heartbeat mechanism after which it tries to access this shared memory via the DSP's HPI, gets the data, and dumps it to a file.

However, the problem we have is, if the DSP crashes, i.e. if it DOES NOT do a halt instead badly screws up and reboots, the Controller goes for a toss eventually causing the whole system to reset; which is where the problem starts.

First 3 days I tried to fix the MPC reset. On a little digging, the MPC reset was found to be due to the following sequence of events:
- DSP has a problem
- DSP resets
- MPC misses a heartbeat from the ailing DSP
- MPC tries to read the shared memory for the logs [Thinking that DSP has halted]
- The DSP handles are no more valid as it is reset
- MPC crashes, bringing down the whole system

Day1:
Aim: DSP resets by jumping to c_int00, override the ISR to loop infinitely [or HALT]

Approach:

Find address of c_int00 from map file
When DSP is loaded, overwrite the address with JMP HLT code [RTFM for asm or write while (1), compile, check asm]

Result: Day wasted, DSP still resets, looks like the code I wrote was wrong [no way for me to figure out] or the screwup is worse than I thought

Day2:
Aim: MPC crashes because it is trying to read using an invalid handle, get a new handle before reading

Approach: On DSP failure

Close the DSPs
Get new handle
DONT download the code to the DSP
Open HPI
Read from the shared location

Result: I get something, but it looks like it is corrupted, but MPC does not crash at least. But still nowhere.

Day3:

Aim: Look for the rootcause, DSP is resetting probably because there is a stack overflow, arrest that

Approach: In the main task that runs every 20 msecs, check if the stack usage is going beyond 80 %, if so, HALT

Result: None, half the day wasted

Aim: There is a buffer overflow, arrest that

Approach: Put a "gaurd band" near all major buffers, every 20 msecs cycle, check if there is something being written to it. i.e. lets say there is buffer char caImportantBuffer [100];
Modifiy that to: char caImportantBuffer [100 + GAURD_BAND];
memset (caImportantBuffer + 100, 0x1234, GAURD_BAND);

Every 20 msecs, check if the last GAURD_BAND bytes have changed, if they have, HALT.

Result: ONE bug found, but the problem still remains. Big achievement, but miles to go before I sleep

To be continued......

On getting drunk

2007-08-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

Ok... To set the expectations right.... I dont drink... A teetotaler.... NEVER have I touched daaru (That is what I call everything.... From Desi tharra to Breezers (Fondly referred to as Juice) to Tequila Shots) in my life and never do I intend to.... that said..... I do get drunk..... by induction.... Initially everyone (including me) thought that I was trying to act drunk in a drunk company and later I realized that I totally enjoy the drunk parties... as much as anyone drunk dead would.. Comes in pretty handy.... You can get all the high that a drunk would get and you would not do anything silly that you may regret later...

So today in our office party today we were all drunk and we talked about all sort of things... from Marriages... to College Blues...

One of the more interesting topics that we talked about was about arranged vs. love marriages and that every guy tries at least once to find love but not every time does one get love... or people take "Mature decisions" not to go with what the heart tells them... the question was... will you be a loser if you take such a decision.... maybe yes or maybe not.... Before we could find out we realized the high came down... nerves were being touched.... so instead of finding answer to that we instead discussed the more interesting topic about not looking for love.... just flings instead... And back to being happy.....

But I being not drunk drunk... was forced to think of the more important question.... how many times do we let go off the more important things... the more painful things... how many times do we put aside a more meaningful question.... turning ourselves away from what we know matters to something that makes no difference... just avoiding... running away.... from life..... Living.....

Miles to go before I sleep

2007-07-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

It is almost a year now that I started going to the gym... I started maybe just because I found it new... but with time I realized that I simply like running... And then I see NB [The geek sitting Next to me] running 4.5 km one day.... back then I could hardly run 1.5 km... I decided to run 5 km without stopping... at the best speed I could....

It took months before I reached anywhere close.... People came and people left.... I continued... NB got married..... No more working out for him.... And finally...... last Friday... I ran 6km... in 28 mins.... Coming to think of it... it is not a great feat or anything that I should be very proud of... But for me somehow it symbolizes doing what I once thought was impossible.....

Time and again I am reminded of Mr. Sur... My maths/chemistry teacher in Class X who once said that I should get a 99% in Maths..... A man can do what a man has done... is how he put it....

Running a marathon is all I dream of now..... Miles to go before I sleep.... And many promises to keep... and miles to go before I sleep.....

Living a moment

2007-07-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

Today I was talking with an office colleague, when this topic came up:
If you were given a choice right now, to go back in the past, without the knowledge that you have lived it once and without any knowledge of anything that has happened, would you take it?

Now, there are points to note about this. Had it been with the knowledge of the fact that you know you have lived this and what you are going to see the next day, it is a naïveté idea. You could go buy shares of google, you could do Hotmail before Sabir did and many more such things. However, knowing that you wont have the knowledge makes it a much different and difficult choice to make.

While we were talking, our MD comes into the conversation, and we ask him the same question, in almost a split second he gives an answer: "I will....". Knowing that he doesnt have the knowledge of the life he lived... Now we were surprised... His logic.... simple... and yet profound.... "Being where I am... at this age... I am thrilled to know that I get to make a journey again... so what if I take the same path... reach the same place where I am today... or take a different path... and be a beggar on the streets.... its the journey... that I find worth the risk... "

I guess age changes the perspective....

As for me... I wouldnt take it.... not now... and not in my foreseeable future... unless I am allowed to retain not the knowledge or the information... but just the wisdom that we gain by living through different experiences... the wisdom that might help me to make choices different from what I did then.... And I think I would take it even if it came for a hefty price.... And even as I say this... his words come back to me... maybe it really doesnt matter... maybe to take the journey again is really worth the risk....