peace...

Oh my god. more than 1000 dead in Southern India. More than 5000 all over. For all the progress and development we might have made, such events just show how ephemeral this world is. I was typing a merry xmas mail to friends when I noticed this news on the news ticker. Never heard of a earthquake in Indonesia before and of such high degree? While Indonesian officials measured it at 6.4, US measured it at 8.9 on the richter scale. This has been some year I'll say. Just five more days. That's it.

TSUNAMI HELP : AID India

Hamphi n Moon

look out people. it's a blue moon today. I saw it on my way to .. well, office (ooh poor thing). stopped mid way on the road and got banged by a car behind which got banged by another and so on but instead of shouting and screaming at each other we were just looking and looking at the moon. it's so beautiful. don't miss it but pull over first. and yeah merry christmas.

I had planned to go to Hamphi this weekend but so few people want to go to a historical place these days and I wasn't just ready for a lone trip down the memory lane. guess it'd have to wait. That's precisely the reason I am working. no regrets. and that's a lovely song by RW.

referral

do you know what the plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called ?
ever tried licking ur elbow?
another specialty of TYPEWRITER?
what is 'Syzygy'?

well, I'd say read this blog knowall
It's dead for a long time it seems but great and funny stuff.

this is how you remind me (Nickelback)

Never made it as a wise man
I couldn't cut it as a poor man stealin'
Tired of livin' like a blind man
I'm sick inside without a sense of feelin
And this is how you remind me
Of what I really am

It's not like you to say sorry
I was waiting on a different story
This time I'm mistaken
For handing you a heart worth breakin'
I've been wrong, I've been down
To the bottom of every bottle
Despite words in my head
Scream "Are we having fun yet?"
Yet?, Yet?, Yet?, no no

It's not like you didn't know that
I said I love you and I swear I still do
It must have been so bad
Cause living with me must have damn near killed you

my name anagrams to atheism

Ever been to http://www.anagramsite.com
See nature has an excellent sense of humor.
----
Dormitory: Dirty Room
Schoolmaster: The classroom
Elvis: Lives
Clint Eastwood: Old West Action
Western Union: No Wire Unsent
The Country Side: No City Dust Here
Desperation: A Rope Ends It
The Morse Code: Here Come Dots
Slot Machines: Cash Lost in'em
Conversation: Voices Rant On
Heavy Rain: Hire a Navy
Tom Cruise: So I'm Cuter
Mother-in-law: Woman Hitler
Funeral: Real Fun
Snooze Alarms: Alas! No More Z's
A Decimal Point: I'm a Dot in Place
Statue of Liberty: Built to Stay Free
Eleven plus two: Twelve plus one
Mel Gibson: Bong Smile
David Letterman: Nerd Amid Late TV
Howard Stern: Retard Shown
Debit card: Bad Credit

buk buk

while Srini is thinking about animals and Shaffy is thinking about beggars, I am thinking about thinking. it is something we are forced to do all the time. like a slave against our will. of course you may not have really ever thought about not to think about anything but think about it now. I consider the process of not thinking very sacred. because whenever I am deep in meditation (ok you don't know me but I do meditate daily. for that matter by definition to meditate is actually to think deeply and it gets confusing so I'll go by the face value of meditation, that is to chant something or read something. WAIT I am off from my original point, we'll discuss it someother time.) I disconnect from this world and go into a state of 'no state' and that's a great feeling. (don't trust me but I can certainly claim and this claim is as good as the existence of GOD. you can't prove or disprove)
on the other side I like 'force thinking'. That's what I do when I am listening to GunsNroses and music like that. I try to follow and feel each and every instrument in the song and that's hell a lot of work for the poor brain. interesting thing is if you listen to a lot of music you'll start to anticipate it. Music almost always follows a predictable path and you can certainly predict most of the time the next note in a song and that's even more work for the brain. (but most of the rock songs are unpredictable so that's where the real challenge is!) This excercise is highly refresing and gets me out of depression in a jiffy...
don't bother to think too much about all this but thanx to lewis carroll non sense is the only true sense.

long over due

In one weekend shopping I baught DVDs of all parts of LOTR, Matrix, StarWars, Harry Potter, Terminator, SpiderMan and Gone with the wind, Casablanca, cleopatra, titanic and many more. Of course I had to first of all see star wars original trilogy and it's amazing. what else can I say about them. Next few weeks are gonna be great.
and of course I changed my template thanx to blogger-template.blogspot.com for it. You ppl have a great weekend else buzz me ;)

caterpilar lady

walking on a beautiful sunday morning on a lazy road with lush green parks full of heavily dewed grass my eyes noticed a pretty young lady where pretty has nothing to do with young.
As usual I was contemplating various introductory sentences when suddenly heavens started to sing and dance. wait, no. it's her talking to me. yes certainly she is talking to me...
'don't step on that; it's a caterpilar'
that's all and she was gone. even before I could tell her that roaming around stepping on caterpilars wasn't exactly my business. even before I could ask for a hand to keep the above mentioned species in a safe place. actually even before I could spot the tiny piece of life so seemingly close to the damsel in distress.
Yes there was no caterpilar there, none whatsoever. May be it vanished on my sight or may be my sight needed mending. May be a bigger caterpilar ate it. May be the pretty young lady just wanted to talk to me. Nah, she won't make a dash then. But she was morning walking and pretty young ladies' morning walking is quite a running for the stressed out overworked er of an engineer like me.So I turned around to see where she was but she was nowhere. This gave me quite a shock. Someone had a eraser. I mean first a well sighted and likened caterpilar disappears and then probably it's sole admirer? Someone was erasing things from my sight. But everything else seem to stay on.
'Are you alright, you haven't moved an inch it seems from my last round?'
okay, I can atleast hear her. No wait she is behind me so I made another turn and yes, she was very much there.
'I saw no caterpilar around!' I complained.
'well then it obviously didn't depend on me campaigning for 'step off caterpilars!'
...

In the zone.

I don't have much (in fact any) experience in group discussion (you see, I couldn't call it GD). I participated once during my third year of engineering in the course called 'report writing'. I made a 'B' due to my terrific (yeah I am quite proud of it.) performance in it. There was a lil issue that a certain Miss De (from the audience (you see how popular I used to be (in fact the class was full at that time))) raised after the GD. She pointed out that I kept calling shooting screening. oh, excuse me, I didn't mention the topic which was about the controversy surrounding the movie 'water' which was planned to be shot at the ghats of varanasi. I kept saying that the director (I think it was deepa mehta) should not be allowed to screen it when all the time I meant to shoot it. I got royally screwed because of this. I could never state my point of view to the teacher as the hour got over immediately after it and I never cared to go and explain it
to the instructor.

Quite a background to support the galactic mistake on SRK's part. The point is in a general discussion a mistake is not a mistake if the group fails to point it out. If you are able to convince the group even when you are wrong, the mistake is shared by the entire group. In my case no one in the seven or eight people strong group realized the fallacy and they all seemed to auto-replace screen with shoot just like I was doing it unconsciously. So in the end the points should be cut from everyone's account. (You owe me Rs24000 Missi as I missed out a place
in the top 10 for the next two sems due to the 'B') Now back to SRK, if you watched the interview you'd've realized how easily he got out of the embarrassing situation Karan had put him in. It doesn't matter whether galaxy is a sub or super set of Universe because SRK made a point and
everyone present agreed. <- that, btw, I'm not sure is a period or a point.

SRK

I love SRK's interviews.
Recently in coffee with Karan on *world
Q: what would you say to a die hard Aamir Khan fan
SRK: Guys you got an icon you can't look up to.
Q: what would you say to a die hard Salman Khan fan
SRK: God Bless You.
Q: SRK is the best actor in India
SRK: in world
Q: Kajol
SRK: is the best acress in the universe.
Q: Then what would you say to Joohi,Madhuri..
SRK: that there are more galaxies.

And a very sweet comment
To have a child is to let a part of your heart walk outside.

hellow orld

Hi Everyone. Look Alive! I'm back. A lot has happenned since I last blogged. Bush won for one.I must be the only one in my herd who supported him just because he keeps the world intersting. We lost to Aussies for another and that's again so wonderful. I wonder how many defeats before this nation can get disillusioned with this game. Suhail got sick of blogging and initially I was thinking of putting a post saying 'NO POSTS UNTIL...' but then realized the contradiction in posting a 'no post'. Anyway...

So I was home on Diwali. Went to visit a friend in a nearby village and was so excited as it's been soooo long since I last visited a real village. The weather in Rajasthan is lovely. The roads are great and kittu's new bike is such a beauty. Lush green fields (yes, they very much exist in Rajasthan, it's not all desert. At least in my part eastern Rajasthan) and kettles and huts and lil hills and 'gulabi dhoop' and deep-like-hell wells and 'there is no tomorrow' kids in dirty school uniforms playing 'kanche' (marbles) (I love this sport. Don't know why it's so unpopular among parents. This was probably the only sport I was good in.:)) ). baazare ki roti with makkhan. Tea in a long bronze glass. Yeah lassi is not that popular here but tea for sure is. I remember when I was home last June. There was some problem with the water-pipes so our plumber was toiling on the roof top in the hot rajasthani sun. Pitying him I asked him if he'll like some cool mango shake or something and he replied 'TEA'. That's my home. Sweet home.

Back here Blore is it's usual pathetic self. stalemate over hindi movies still going on. I say why don't they just ban them and release their wonderful kannada movies dubbed in Hindi or English so that we get a chance to appreciate their hard work. Going by the kannada movie posters I wonder how can ppl watch them. Wipro has already opened it's new centre in W.Bengal. I hope other companies take a hint and move out of this sick place and leave kannadigas in peace and poverty.

testing testing

This is the crystal mall in Jaipur and my first photo blog and also the first photo I downloaded from my phone!!!

roslin

less than three days. this is a personal record for me but I guess the credit goes to Dan Brown for writing such wondeful puzzles. I didn't like 'the da vinci code' as a novel, yes but the treasure hunts were marvelous. It's been on the NY Times' best seller list for 84 weeks and priced at $24.95 there and I got it for Rs100. How sinful. Lucky I am not a member of Opus Dei...

The bad part is I couldn't shop this weekend and now I'll have just one day before flying home. How bitsian.

da vinci after all

Hey I read first 28 chapters in one sitting last nite and gave up only because my eyes were paining badly. So far quite an interesting novel but the way Brown has written it I wasn't sure what part was a fact and what part was a fiction. There is another book which claims most of it is fiction. Read davincihoax
anyway who cares. Also got swades(h) and what a wonderful music. Right now I am loving 'yu hun challa chal".

kuchh apne apne lagte ho

Came across this poem tum-mujhko-acchay-lagtay-ho on Shaffy's blog and somehow I am still smiling on this line 'kuchh apne apne lagte ho.'

anyway it's another three day weekend here in Bangalore due to 'kannada rajyotsava' and I'm again in the office madly finishing everything that might delay my home trip and it's really amazing how efficient I become at such times as things which otherwise might take days to solve, get done in hours.

heard 'yun hi challa chal mahi' from swadesh on MTV and now I have to have it. The instruments in this song remind of 'shabba shabba' from 'daud'

knock knock knock

Thanx to Tinu I got a chance to listen to the original 'knock knock knockin on heaven's door' by bob dylon. Out of the three versions (another two are by Guns and Roses and Avril Lavigne) I think Avril's is the best. May be coz female voice is best suited for the 'Sound of Appeal' (the funda originates from the great pt Pradeep whos 'e mere watan ke logon' sung by Lata is so popular.) and because she's done a good job.

pppassion

never take a break from guitar. I can't believe it that I played for lil more than an hour and my fingers almost started to bleed. and now I can't play for some time. it must have been more than 4 months since I last touched it...

anyway so I went to planetM (there is no better place on earth) and found aerosmith's cd with a mouth organ key-chain. how cool. and it plays too, both of them. I just can't get the key chain to open so that I can put it to a regular use as well.
Also got Rahman's all time hit tamil songs. Lovely collection. mukkala-muquabla and chinni chinni asai in tamil are superb.
They were palying 'mujhe tumse muhabbat hai' and it sounded so good that I had to pick 'tumsa nahi dekha'. Saw 'yuva' at the same place and was surprized to realize that I didn't have it so far (how dare!) so there I had my week's dose. I am really endulging myself these days.
Bangalore weather is great this sunday afternoon and biking is so much fun on otherwise so overcrowded roads. that's why I go to MG only on sunday afternoons. this time I also took a stroll on mg road and I was surprized to see all the footpath book vendors surrounded by people. all of them. book reading is catching up here it seems. pity though that people prefer to buy the pirated ones.(I prefer too)

dashahara

it's a long weekend and since I'm going home on Diwali I have to stay on here to finish things asap. meanwhile earlier I had decided to read the da vinci code but Suka's bad review of the book makes it less probable for now. Instead I am gonna guitar all this weekend. nok nok nokin on hvns door.

gud i gud by

yukk. either I am too complicated or too stupid or the world is too stupid or too complicated else how cud i goof up the same situation all three times while trying to do the right thing. whatever I'm giving up. Good By Mr Anderson.

code rain

Hey I'm going to read the da vinci code since so many ppl are talking about it. Got it from dutta. thanx dude.
and god is watching me, every move. I stepped into lift today after making sure there was no rain in sight and when I come out of the office building, lo, it's raining. So i'm back and blogging and leaving junk comments everywhere.

B&P

Saw Bride and Prejudice luckily almost at the same time as everyone else in the country since the seven week ban on non kannada movies have been lifted. Lovely movie and very entertaining specially if you have some cool friends to crack jokes ;)
The hindi songs in english and the english songs in hindi were way cool. But Ash all the time looked out of place. You could either watch her or the movie :)

Can't play Hitman-2.the CD's locked inside Mittaal's room. Damn you cypher.Instead went back to Diabolo-II and smashed all the creatures with Natash the sorceror!!!
tomorrow is Monday, lorry here I come.

call of duty

Wow. For the first time I finished a game without any help. Actually second time. forgetting diabolo-II. really cool game. you fight from running car and lorry, control a tank, clean up as sniper and normal maar-dhadi. graphics are amazing.
now I'll move on to hitman-2.

veer-zaara's music is super cool. The jagjeet-lata duet is wonderful and so is hussain brother's Quwwali. most other songs are great too.like 'hum to bhai jaise hain vaise rahenge' by Lata. Such an energetic song and after a long time Lata has tried some playback singing (it looked like Priety's) so her voice sounds even better.
but in general I am no more liking new hind film music. kind of looks like I've become gen-yester (thanx(?) snix for pointing this out) man I'm getting older. wait a minute. I liked tumsa nahi dekha. specially mujhe tumse mohabbat hai. though it belongs to my list of songs that could have been better. the second line 'e sanam mujhase poocho' should have been sung by a male lead all the time. and the 'oye oye' in the song is JUNK.

lover's story

just meet her once and you'll be able to decide.

it's not that simple. what if I realize that I don't like her..

well then you say bye bye and go on your way.simple.

no. I told you she once loved me..

yeah that's what you think.she never told you.

do you have to hear it to believe it?

ok,so what if she loved you once?

well now so much time has passed. after all this time she might have struggled hard to erase me from her memories, you know. Now I just can't walk in her life say hi and then when it has all come back to her, I say bye bye. No it'll be so cruel on her.

boy, you do care so much about her. you for sure love her.

you just don't get it. It's her memories that I love. For all you know she might be totally new person now. In your memories everything is rosy but not in life. it's serious.

hmmm. let's face it. you met A a long time ago. liked her a lot but then you were too busy to have anything to do with love. she thought you didn't like her. you went your way and she on hers.now you are all alone and she's moved to the same town. you want to decide if you should go and meet her to see if you like her but you are afraid to break her heart a second time.

that's what the situation is.

You are a joker. You are being over cautious. why don't you call her.

of course I did you dumbo. We chatted nicely and when I asked her what's her plan tomorrow she told me that she was going out with her friends.

what? You already asked her out.

Yeah, I kind of did. That's when I realized that she might not want to see me for the fear of the old love.

love and fear don't go together.'jab pyaar kiya to darna kya...'

that's only in movies. this is life and it's real and you suck as a friend.

whyeeeeeee?

you haven't given me any advice so far.

I'm helping you in considering all facts.

sorry...facts ko goli maro. what should I do? I just can't decide.

just meet her once and you'll be able to decide.

ZOO

there is a kitten in my kitchen. dunno where it came from. probably it's the birthplace. but last night I woke up with a start. There was so much light in my room. That's coz it was 6:30 AM. But I had thoght that I had just slept as I crashed at around 2 AM after fighting Germans, stealing their lorry and shooting their bombers, all in the wonderful game Call of Duty (Thanks Thakur for the amazing game..) So what caused me to leap out of the slumber was loud screams. real loud screams. but I didn't get off my bed as I couldn't. but the screams continued... I started to figure out who was screaming and then came to a conclusion that it's a cat. Then I started to wonder why should it be screaming and came to a conclusion that it must have gotten stuck somewhere and is asking for help. Then I started to think of the possible locations outside my room where one cat can get stuck and came to a conclusion that it must be the sink of my kitchen.(it's always full of utensils.. barrrh). Then came the toughest decisions of them all. TO getup and help (what help? I was rather scared.. it might bite me..) So I finally got up and searched around for a tool. What do you need to help a cat out of a stinky sink apart from a mask? If the cat is really intelligent then it won't need anything so it's not so I needed something that could hold on to it yet be far away from my body. Of course there was no such thing available in my room. Meanwhile the screams were driving me crazy so I took a cloth hanger (WHAT A CHOICE) and started on my adventure. The screams were coming from the kitchen but stopped as soon as I opened the gate of my room which has a characteristic sound and when I reached the kitchen I realised that all my preparations were useless as no cat was stuck in no sink. There was a big cat and a small cat (the kitten whom I saw for the first time) and the big cat was scaring the small one. I don't know who was making the sound. None of them moved when they saw me and I threw the hanger towards the bigger one in one very 'calvin-ian' shot. Then I made all sorts of sounds and danced all sorts of dances but none of them moved. That made me real thirsty and I went back to my room to get my water bottle and when I returned there was no sign of any of them. I picked the hanger put it back in it's place and went back to sleep.

I don't know if I was dreaming. but when I got up again ( or the first time) I saw a real colorful frog in the kitchen...

GOD

Came across this post thought-in-my-head

Interesting what all people think about god. There was once a very good article in BBC about god's existence. I searched for the link but can't find it. Luckily I have it as a mail and the arguments go like this

God or no god is the question.
from bbc.co.uk
==================================

The Argument from Design
This argument is very easy to follow:
The universe is such a beautiful and orderly thing
that it must have been designed.
Only God could have designed it.
Therefore since the universe exists, God must
exist.

But the atheist replies:
Actually the universe is not particularly beautiful
and orderly.
And even if it was, why should there be a designer?
And modern science shows that most of the natural
things we think of as designed are just the products
of processes like evolution.
So sorry, but I'm not convinced.

The "Ontological" Argument
Another argument that's easy to follow:
We think of God as a perfect being.
If God didn't exist he wouldn't be perfect.
God is perfect, therefore God exists.
But the Atheist replies:
Most atheists think this argument is so feeble they
don't bother dealing with it.
Professional philosophers usually reject it on the
grounds that existence is not a property of beings.

The First Cause Argument
Another argument that everyone can understand:
Everything that happens has a cause.
Therefore the universe must have had a cause.
That cause must have been God.
Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist
in order to have caused it to exist.
The atheist replies:
Then what caused God? (And what caused the cause of
God, and so on.)
And if God didn't need a cause, then maybe the
universe didn't need a cause either.
If God was already perfect before he created the
universe, why did he create it? How did it benefit
him? Why would he bother?
And if the universe was caused, perhaps something
other than God caused it?
Sorry, but I'm still not convinced.


The Argument from Evil
The existence of evil in the world is a problem for
those who believe that God is wholly good, and can do
anything, because the existence of evil seems inconsistent with the
existence of such a God.

The argument goes like this:
Most religions say that God is completely good,
knows everything, and is all-powerful.
But the world is full of wickedness and bad things
keep happening.
This can only happen if...
God is either unwilling to prevent evil, in
which case he is not good
or
God doesn't know about evil, in which case he
does not know everything
or
God can't prevent evil, in which case he is not
all powerful.
or
Some combination of the above
And so there is no being that is completely good,
knows everything, and is all powerful.
And so, there is no God.

Theologians and philosophers have provided various
answers to this argument. They all agree that it
should be taken very
seriously, and that responding to it gives useful
insights into the nature of God, evil, and belief.

Believers usually respond by saying that God has good
reasons for not preventing evil.

"God" is Meaningless
Some philosophers think that religious language
doesn't mean anything at all, and therefore that
there's no point in asking
whether God exists.

They would say that a sentence like "In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth" is neither true
or false, it's
meaningless; in the same way that "colourless green
ideas sleep furiously" is meaningless.

Logical Positivism, or Verificationism
Logical Positivists argued that a sentence was
meaningless if it wasn't either true or false, and
they said that a sentence would
only be true or false if

a.If it could be tested by an "experiment",

OR
b.If it was true by definition.

A more accurate version of this idea can be found
here

Since you couldn't verify the existence of God by any
sort of "sense experience", and it wasn't true by
definition (eg in the
way "a triangle has 3 sides" is true), the logical
positivists argued that it was pointless asking the
question since it could not be
answered true or false.

These particular philosophers didn't only say that
religious talk was meaningless, they thought that much
of
philosophical discussion, metaphysics for example,
was meaningless too.

This philosophical theory is no longer popular, and
attention has returned to the issues of what "God"
means and whether
"God" exists.



Note for philosophers

This is how one prominent philosopher put it:

"We say that a sentence is factually significant to
any given person, if and only if, he knows how to
verify the
proposition which it purports to express-that is,
if he knows what observations would lead him, under
certain
conditions, to accept the proposition as being
true, or reject is as being false." A. J. Ayer.

Ayer actually preferred a weaker version of the
theory, because since no empirical proof could be
totally conclusive , almost
every statement about the world would have to be
regarded as meaningless.

"A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the
strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth
could be conclusively
established in experience. But it is verifiable, in
the weak sense, if it is possible for experience to
render it probable."

And this led Ayer to dispose of the God question
rather brusquely:

"...There can be no way of proving that the
existence of a god...is even probable.

For if the existence of such a god were probable,
then the proposition that he existed would be an
empirical
hypothesis. And in that case it would be possible
to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses,
certain
experiential propositions which were not deducible
from those other hypotheses alone.
But in fact this is not possible...For to say that
"God Exists" is to make a metaphysical utterance which
cannot be
either true or false."



Psychological Explanations of Religon
Psychologists have long been fascinated by religion as
something that exists in all societies.
They ask whether "religion" is actually a name given
to various psychological drives, rather than a
response to the existence
of God or gods.
Such a belief is clearly atheistic.

Religion, to the common man, is a "system of
doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains
to him the
riddles of this world with enviable completeness,
and, on the other, assures him that a careful
Providence will watch
over his life and will compensate him in a future
existence for any frustrations he suffers here."
Freud, Civilization and its Discontents

Religion comes from Emotions
Human beings believe in God because they want:

A father figure to protect them from this
frightening world.

Someone who gives their lives meaning and purpose.

Something that stops death being "the end".

To believe that they are an important part of the
universe, and that some component of the universe
(God) cares for and
respects them.

These beliefs are strongly held because they enable
human beings to cope with some of their most basic
fears.

Even if this is true (which it probably is) this
doesn't mean that God doesn't exist, but merely that
we are psychologically
likely to believe in God whether or not he exists.

Atheists argue that since religion is just a
psychological fantasy, human beings should abandon it
so that they can grow to
respond appropriately to deal with the world as it is.

Freud
Sigmund Freud tackled religion in great detail and had
several ideas about it.

One of his theories was that religion stems from the
individual's experience of having being a helpless
baby totally dependent
on its parents. The infant sees its parents as
all-powerful beings who show it great love and satisfy
all its needs. This
experience is almost identical to the way human beings
portray their relationship with God.

Freud also suggested that childhood experiences caused
people to have very complex feelings about their
parents and
themselves, and religion and religious rituals provide
a respectable mechanism for working these out.

Freud also described religion as a mass-delusion that
reshaped reality to provide a certainty of happiness
and a protection
from suffering.

the week and the week end

why we love complications I often wonder. Sometimes answers are so simple that even though we know them we don't believe we have them. That's what happened to a problem I was debugging whole of yesterday but couldn't find a reason. Decided to give up, go home and crash. This morning when I relooked at the problem I realized what a silly mistake I was making and trying out wonderful solutions.... reminds me of LOTR where Gandalf was trying to open a passwd protected gate on which written was 'speak friend enter'. The passwd was friend but Gandalf tried out all sorts of things....

Call of Duty rocks! Quite a mixture of action,strategy and control. I loved the fight from a running car and lorry scenes, very original for a game...

Saw 'tumsa nahi dekha'. Lovely movie. Actually I wasn't expecting much from the movie but it turned out to be quite a funny one.

I finally shaved and oiled my hair and got rid of the gft look I've been wearing whole week.Why? I'm going home on Diwali after all. First time since I got a job that's more than two years now. ye ye aaiyesha... Had lil verbal fight with a chuuby old man who broke the queue for the plane tickets.. I hate it when ppl do it...
Then feeling rather happy (it's been ages since I got angry with anyone) I headed for planet-m to treat myself with some cool cds. Ended up buyin Dido (White Flag is such a lovely song. I had first heard it while in the US last year and all this time could never find it here.. finally got it.. one more to go though... still looking for 'miss independant' by kelly clarkson) and '37 #1s of all times'. Lots of cool songs in that one..Time to rok-n-rol.

gigs

we are gigs! every stinky s/w engineer is a gig according to the grand old lady of whitefield and she has a point. gigs can spend 25 bucks for a glass of pepsi. gigs can talk about what goes on in the streets of LA but won't know where is Magadi road and whether it is pronounced maagadi or magaadi. for them all the dances are the same (what? there are levels in BharatNatyam? Isn't it the one where you wear a mask?) I was bestowed this knightship when I visited A&P along with Pala who wanted to prove that life is not all that boring and lesser mortals are rather enjoying it. We went to whitefields where he's purchased a new land where construction is a far dream and development is a miraz. Only thing great about it was the serenity surrounding the place. I couldn't believe such place could exist in the deadly-madly-sadly blore. There was also a cool lake nearby. Then we went to see A&P (reminds me of AVP...) As usual the moment I saw P I knew I'd seen her somewhere and that I'd never be able to recall. (later Pala told me she indeed resembled one of our batchmates in pilani) Here was when we hit her majesty who when asked if A was home went and informed him that some obscure gigs have come to see you. Anyway I was instantly shocked to see such a cool house. Two dogs, one cat, two kittens, one dog house, tons of mud around, a very beautiful garden, two ancient motorbikes, one half constructed house with real old wooden gates of less than five feet height, tons of old teak wood lying around, one fully constructed house minus a door and what not. A showed as around explaining why there is no plastering required and why there is hole in the walls and how the windows will work without any frame and why the house will stay put inspite of missing pillars and a hole in the roof. I had very serious doubts about the whole scheme but as it was my first visit I decided to not criticize resulting in me appearing a non speaking entity and A&P trusting me to be a shy guy and hoping that next time I'll speak a lot (poor devils) All in all quite an experience knowing how people gather stuff around to keep themselves busy.
Well after all this gyana (why in the world is it spelt gnana?) we went to see 'king of bollywood' in the multiplex. Good time pass and great waste of money.

gone for a toss hair

what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you wakeup at 12:30 hrs on a sunday afternoon? normally it's food for me but today I was thinking about my hair. AD on lunch on friday enlightned me about this pressing business though his reason was rather social services. He thinks we should get our hair done every fortnight to help the poor barbers!!! either case I had to get it done today so headed for the nearest barber instead of to the one I usually go which is a bit farther. This nearer one is aptly named 'men's beauty saloon' . Once I landed there the first available barber (really I rather find it awkward often to decide among many whom to talk to, they all seem equally busy and uninterested...) handed me a piece of paper on which written was 7. I liked the number but not the waiting time which was to be 45 minutes. Knowing the fact that I could make it to the usual one in another 10 mins I decided to leave immediate. Once there, the fat, one rather amused at my state, told me to wait for some 10 mins. There I found an old edition of cosmop. Now to think of it, it might have been a recent edition. I never looked at the date but felt assured it was old as it was torn, silly really. One interesting article was how to save money on your wedding! Giving excerpts from it might be breach of copyright (just kidding..) but the sharp (moustache) one called me when I had rather started to seriously ponder over some of the ideas (get your friend who are good cooks to cook! get ur designer dress done by budding designers who are negotiable..) that it might be good to befriend some of designers or cooks!!!
The barber was rather happy to see my long hair. He asked me what I wanted and I told him what I wanted. I never care for a hair style. But this guy was probably waiting for a free sample. He told me he could give me a John Abraham hair style and I said I can't spend time to care for it. Then he said yesterday was Gandhi's B'day and I said thanks but just short will do. At the precise moment someone said gone for a toss! I quite liked the word for my hair style! the gone for a toss hair style... the funda is this particular barber's idea of short is quite short...
so here I am with my gone for a toss hairstyle.

gandhi

hey it's Mahatma Gandhi's B'Day today. People worship him. People hate him. That's why I like him.
In my younger days I too used to hate him. Accusing him of murder of all those who died in the many movements organized by him. I thought we could win our freedom by an armed rebellion like Americans. Now though I think we won it in the best way possible. Satyagrah appealed to people like no other philosophy could. Without mass involvement gaining freedom would have remained a dream. It was simply not feasible to arm everyone and put up a fight against the mighty British Empire. The only person who could partially succeed in it was of course Subhash Chandra Bose. A great leader. But he was simply allied to the wrong poeple. Sometimes I imagine if Japan/Germany had imerged as winners in WWII. We'd've thrown Britons out and Japs in. We'd be fighting another freedom struggle.
SO all in all putting up an armed fight against UK was not possible without any external help and as I said it'd have been like getting one dictator in place of another. Therefore we were lucky to have found a leader like Gandhi to show us the right way at the right time.

songs you should have heard and loved

There are some great songs which are not very popular. Here are a few I like

1. Deewana dil deewana : from Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na starring SRK (and Deepak Tizori) 
2. Pyar Gazab Ki Cheej Hai Jise Ho Jaye Bus Ho Jaye : Amazing song from Ek Hi Raasta, featuring Ajay Devgan. Really good lyrics. I'll publish them in a separate post.
3. Hulla Gulla : From Bombay. Not as popular as humma-humma and other songs from this movie. ARR made some good experiments like using a child's cry as an instrument. Great rhythem.
4. Premika ne pyar se : From Hum Se Hai Muquabla. The tamil version is much better as the lyrics fit prefectly to the tune. Hindi lyrics are lame. But the music is great. Specially one tune in this song which is played on I don't know what instrument but it sounds straight from heaven. You will know what I am talking about once ou listen to this song.
5. Only you : Another ARR classic. It's from the mega hit Vandemaataram Album. ARR sang this one on Rendezvous with Simi Garewal.I loved it anyway.(I wonder why I am ending up listing down ARR songs)
6. Aa gaya hun paas tere : How many songs you remember after hearing them just once? This is one of them. There was once a serial played on DD called 'stone boy'. This song featured in that. I don't know why but I could never forget this song after that...

fav songs

I'm in a good mood today. May be because I talked to my good-ol friends. May be because the long to-do list at work is almost done. May be because I'm feeling healthy again after going down with fever last weekend. May be because I have new games to play. May be because everyone else seem to be in a good mood (they played 'e mere watan ke logon' today on radio.  You never get to hear these songs apart from the two days).. well whatever reason. Good time to list down my favourite hindi romantic songs.

1. humko sirf tumse pyaar hai : it's my all time fav. The guitar in the beginning is so soothing. The lyrics and music is perfect and the video is amazingly fresh. 
2. tujhe dekha to ye jana sanam : actually I just love the title tune which really is played in the middle of 'ho gaya hai tujhko to pyar sajana'. It could have been a much better song if the 'antara' wasn't so hurried up type.
3. jadoo teri nazar : I call it the mad cry of a mad heart. A great song to lift up your spirits to get what you want against all odds. The guitar is too good! I learnt how to play guitar so that I could play this tune!!!
4. deewana dil deewana : lesser known song from kabhi haan kabhi na. everything is great in this song but the voices are not as intense as in the above mentioned ones.
5. humko humi se chura lo : lata's voice haunts you for a long time once you hear this song. The violin is a high point of this song specially the lata-violin duet!

That's the top five for me. Don't know if I missed something but these came out first of all!!!

change in the time zone

hmc..due to the recent change in my time zone settings (now it correctly reflects IST) my latest blogs are appearing below the older ones...

goopt

somebody remixed 'gupt gupt' also. I can't believe that it's possible but there it is. In the cafeteria while having my favorite pastry and coffee radio city played it. Actually J told me that the remix came soon after the original was released, once upon a time. I think Viju Shah must have used every instrument there is in this song and yet the remixer found something more to add to it.
Humans have no limit!

email blogging!

Hey just wanna check how it works. Sounds like a cool idea to be able to
blog via mail. will it look different? Hope no one finds out...

weak-end?

Bangalore weather is like Indian cricket team. Suddenly it got cold this weekend and I am down with fever. My throat was in so much pain last night that inspite of being totally exhausted I could not sleep. Normally in those times my mind also starts getting a song in endless loop but thankfully not yesterday!! Today feeling lil better I gotup to go out and lo, it was raining again.damn it. I decided to sip in a cup of tea to kill time as there was no power as well. Then came to company and had good lot chat with the usual crowd here raising my spirits! I always feel good after giving a lot of junk fundas to ppl specially when both parties agree that it's junk but go on with the argument nevertheless.
No more home food for me as my mum decided to go back to Jaipur after getting terribly bored here as was busy busy busy whole month. No wonder we are having work-life balance excercises!!!
Saw resident evil2 and hollywood can be competetive to bollywood sometimes.

holly marry commbs!!! (that's what I say when I am at loss of words due to something ( and this sudden cry of mine keeps changing quite frequently. some of my 'wordless cries' have been as small as 'ishq' to as long as 'ek plate men char laddu to char plate men kitane laddooo'.)) Anyway why I felt compelled to cry out was the realization that it's been more than a fortnight since I last wrote anything. I've been so busy these days and so life's been so much fun. Interestingly enough I found enough time to read out LOTR!!! Now I really appreciate the work Peter Jacson has done in making the movies. I like all the deviations that he took from the novel as they made the movies so much more fun.
hmc once more. it's 7 already! I must finish the work and go home.

let the war begin

Yesterday Russian school siege ended in hundreds of deaths. It was so disturbing... Sometimes I think we have got too much used to peace. May be we should all just go back to old times when there were heroes and ladies. Every man was going to war and every woman was waiting. When I look at history I see that it's full of wars. That way it's more peaceful. Those who can fight go out and fight and those who can't stay home and wait. That way innocent children don't have to die unprepared. These days we think it's all nice and peaceful and you never know when a blast might hit your city. I wonder how people still think that it is something that happens to others and not to us.I think we have given peace enough chance...it's time to fight...it's time for war...what am I thinking..boy it certainly is disturbing.

Tomorrow is RakshaBandhan and due to the change in my company's location I haven't yet got rakhee's sent by Didi last week..gah. Yesterday we lost our medal hopes in Olympics...and work here in the company seems to drag forever.. one of the days when you can't believe it's you in the mirror...

wear a helmet

I recently found a good reason to wear a helmet while riding my bike. Apparently it gives you bathroom surround sound! So now I can hear myself loud and clear when I am singing while driving and I don't have to bother even when traffic is halted. Amazing if you care. Another more obvious advantage is that you don't run a risk of swallowing unwanted elements abound in Bangalore air specially in the night when all sort of insects are on a lookout.
BTW the reason I started to wear a helmet in the first place was due to the upcoming rule in my company which enforces all bikers to wear it. think we should start calling it mother company :))

on fast track

Lack of sleep is not as painful as lack of food. Today I am fasting and though I'd been fasting once a week for more than year before giving up and this new twice a month fast for eight months now, I can't say that I'm used to it. Every time I fast it's an all new feeling. It's much easier now as my mom cooks stuff that can be stuffed even on fasts (it's complicated... what you can eat what you can not on a fast). But earlier I had to survive only on fruit Juice and sweets. Not so yummy when you can't eat anything else. Now I get to eat potato-hulwa and kuttu-ke-aate-ki-khichadi and of course fruits.One thing that surprized me more than anything after I started to fast was that after a day of fast I really no more feel hungry. I mean I feel weak, too weak but not hungry.
That explained why the fasts are normally broken by fruit juices etc and not some heavy stuff.

zombie

After a long time I put four night outs in a row this week and now I am quite enjoying the zombie state my mind has gone into. A couple more nightouts and you won't know if you are awake or still dreaming :) Most fantastic things happen to people in this state like once I went to the bathroom with toothbrush in one hand and shaving cream in the other! This was when I was fighting a B in mac-sol.

Well this reminds me of my days in BITS which unlike most of you I hated and hardly ever I try to think about them. But I realised today that deepdown I love it. This enlightenment came to me when I saw that almost all of my online identity is fd97103 including my mails,blogs etc. but still BITS made me sick of studies which I so much enjoyed in my school days!

rain and more rain

It seems I am not the only one having troubles due to rains. Indian cricket team is also facing a defeat without a fight due to non stop rains in Holland. I on the other hand got drenched every day last week as rains were so regular like it used to be in Singapore.I mean it might still be that way in Singapore but I don't know. When I was there it certainly was the case. So due to this double bath everyday I started to come late in night but it wasn't because of rains only. My headless boss has taken it into his head to debug some nasty problem and made me and all the other team members to stay late, till 2 AM to be precise and the trend continued over the weekend as well and today seems to offer no change. But while our rtl folks are dumping out the new netlist for me I thought it was time to write my next blog...

Working late night wasn't the only disappointing thing this weekend.All of out medal hopes also went for a toss. I was one of the unfortunate ones to sit and watch the lee-hash bronze battle which kept on going like the trozan war... and then the doping controversies and hocky wash out and what not. Why do we play? Everyone should follow me and just code...It seems that's what we do anyway!

Read JRR's the hobbit which is the prelude to the lord of the rings. It made me respect the food apart from all the things :) and now I always feel a lot more hungry than I earlier used to. Never know when you'll get the chance again :) Missed out on an opportunity to meet Sheetal due to the god damn debug...Now I think I know why most people don't like me :)

Third time lucky

It's not inspiring at all to be inspired to write blogs by suka who in my opinion could've been the next PGW but for BITS and the bits
of management in his genes. Why I say that is because his blogs make a good reading and my lil
ol mind'll ask me to do something better which my good ol brain knows is impossible so my lovely face looses most of it's shine but
nevertheless I have taken it in my head to make sure I atleast publish the first blog which in itself should have been the third by now
but for the solaris machine and netscape browser. I was in the middle of a sizzling description of alex campbel about whom you shall
never know now, most probably as I might decide to disclose it sometimes later, when bang I got a mail from my cousin asking me to go to
a website which won't open in netscape browser and infact it killed my browser altogether, taking along all the happy memories of my stay
in the US. Second time I decided not to open anything until I finish the blog and once again when I was almost through out came a good
hindi word in my mind which I had to put in italics,that's again because mr kassim does it that way else I'd've written the whole blog
in maatrbhasha! So I tried hitting ctrl+i as suggested in the help and guess what my whole writing was gone. just like that. So this time
I am using my trusted text editor to pen down my thoughts and here I am ready with my first ever blog.
Cheers and lots of love.