B.Tech NIT Calicut (01) - The Initiation

Most of us still vividly remember our first few days out here. Barring maybe a couple of exceptions, nobody had stayed in a hostel before. So, there was a lot of curiosity, apprehension as well as excitement among the 300 odd new inmates of the hostel. You could sense it in the air. It was tangible.

There was a lot of paperwork to be done before you were allotted your room. You also had to buy some essential items from the in-hostel co-operative store. 1 Kurl-on mattress (the pillow came free), 1bucket with a cover, 1 mug, 1 soap case, 2 ropes, 1 mirror, 1 broom, 1 dust-pan, 1 dust-bin, 5 hangars, 10 clips - these were the items I bought. I had purchased all toiletries beforehand.

I was quite pleased when I saw the room - it was pretty spacious and very airy. 3 parallel beds, 3 study tables with drawers, one beside each bed, and 3 cupboards. And yes, 3 metallic chairs. 3 students per room. When I entered the room, one plump stocky curly haired bespectacled boy was sitting on the middle bed with his father. Over his head, I saw a rope strung, with colourful faded boxers fluttering under the fan. The bed farthest from the door had apparently been booked too - there was a Kurl-on on it. The first bed was mine then.

We exchanged the Hi's and Hello's.... he was Maharashtrian too. We got acquainted. Started talking. His name was Amit - and he was speaking in a monotone. Reeling statistics after statistics. NITs and their rankings... which JEE rank would translate to which branch in which IIT... which AIEEE rank would get you X branch in Y NIT... what were the placements of NIT Calicut.. what were the quotas for each state... and then some more arbitrary statistics. I was speechless.

All the students didn't come at once. It was a trickle that started around a week before the commencement date, which soon become a flood a day before commencement. That day was a Sunday. I kept meeting new people and made a lot of new acquaintances. I had a little problem in the first week - it was hard to penetrate that Malayali accent. I should say those, because there were atleast 3 different accents. Non-mallus weren't the only people who had an issue with the accents. My other roomie, Koshy, confessed that in the first few days he couldn't understand the Malayam spoken by some of the other Mallus. I also had problems with the Hindi spoken by the UPites and the B-boys. The Kolkata hindi was fine, except that they used 'hum' instead of 'main'.

In the days when NIT was REC, especially in the 90s, the scenario as far as ragging was concerned was pretty bad. Apparently the first years used to be subjected to pretty brutal and humiliating stuff, and the occasional police intervention was not uncommon. To ensure safety of the first years, they were all cooped into one hostel, with a guard at the single entrance. The ragging wasn't that bad now, but the system continued. A-hostel was the fortress of the campus, that safe haven were you could roam about without worrying that some senior would come and start threatening you. You could go out only for 3 purposes - attending lectures, getting a haircut and paying your monthly hostel and mess dues.

We settled down. Formed groups. They soon got realigned along state lines as the seniors got in touch with us and started the ragging. But that's another story. Lectures were a let down. I sat on the first bench the first day. Wednesday. By Friday I was on the last bench - a backbencher... and I have remained one for the rest of my B.Tech life.

Of books, covers and faces . . .

What do you do when you have been blessed with a face that looks sleepy all the time, irrespective of how fresh your mind really is ?

Most people have a basic look which their face conforms too, when the facial muscles are relaxed. Some look like Atlas who has not been able to shrug for quite some time. Some look like walking and talking posters of Happy Dent. There are others who seem as if they are afflicted by Bell's palsy. And I have a friend who looks like an angry convict most of the time. I however, look sleepy.

I wasn't always in this category. But, I guess, over time muscles take the shape of whatever you do for the most part during the time you are awake. Since I have completed three years in engineering, I have spent a majority of the time I was not sleeping in bed sitting in class in a stupor. I have evolved. My face having realised that it would have to look sleepy for around 6 hours a day, as compared to maybe 3 hours thoughful, 2.5 hours anxious, 1.45 hours pissed,.... and so on, decided to minimise its workload. And thus, as I said before, I have evolved. Pretty fast, eh ? Had Darwin been my teacher, I would surely have scored an 'S'.

The disadvantages are apparent, but there are some advantages too. For example, warding off unwanted people who want to forcibly enter your room and waste your time. I can, very conveniently, "have just woken up.. Come in, won't you.. ", or contrarily, "be going to bed. Please come some time later.. ".

What face do you have ?

Yaawn

I'm in a very bored frame of mind right now. All because it is 3.24 pm in the afternoon. To me, the afternoon is the dullest time of the day. The morning brings along with it a freshness, and that nice feeling (unless of course you have knowledge of some impending doom) about a brand new day. And of course, there's breakfast time. Similarly, noon is the next stop for the stomach. Evening's can be pretty pleasant, and to me, the night is the most exciting part, that time of the day when my brain works at its peak. Afternoons I hate the most.

Just so that I should not fall asleep, I am plodding with my fingers through this post, wondering what I should write. Well, the idea came to me to write about the songs that I like the most - songs that I can hear again and again. Songs, where the holy troika of music, voice and lyrics come together in a perfect blend. Such songs are rare creations, and a band is lucky if it is able to create such a song even once in its career.

Off the top of my head and the tip of my tongue, here goes -

Iris - Goo Goo Dolls

The Reason - Hoobastank

Imagine - John Lennon

Baba O'Riley - The Who

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

Californication - RHCP

King of Pain, Every Breath You Take - The Police

We're Not Gonna Take It - Twisted Sister

I Wanna Break Free, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Radio Ga Ga, Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

Tub Thumping - Chumba Wumba

Karma Chameleon - Boy George / Culture Club

Jump - Van Halen

American Pie - Don McLean

Summer of '69 - Bryan Adams

It's My Life, Living in Sin, You Give Love a Bad Name - Bon Jovi

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go - Wham

Safety Dance - Men Without Hats

Islands in the Stream - Dolly Parton / Kenny Rogers

Never Say Die - Cliff Richard

Stay, Just a Little Bit Longer - George & Co. ('83)

Saw Theme, POTC Theme

I'm Shipping of to Boston - Dropkick Murphy (The Departed OST)

The Godfather love theme - Speak Softly ..

Footloose - Kenny Loggins

Baby, I'd Love You to Want Me - Lobo

I Just Called to Say I Love You - Stevie Wonder

Aerials - System of a Down

Angel, It Wasn't Me - Shaggy

Livin a La Vida Loca - Ricky Martin

Hip's Don't Lie - Shakira

A Thousand Miles - Vanessa Carlton

November Rain, Sweet Child of Mine - Guns N Roses

Porcelain - Moby

Gloria - Laura Branigan

Summer Nights - John Travolta / Olivia Newton-John

Bang Your Head - Quiet Riot

Sacrifice - Elton John

Truly Madly Deeply - Savage Garden

Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen

Portable Hard Disks – mmmmwwwaahh !

Just thought of giving all you people who intend to buy large portable hard disks some advice.

You have two options.

Buy a regular SATA/ATA hard disk, and enclose it in a casing that protects it from dust and basic damage, and also attaches an IDE-to-USB convertor to the hard disk, thus adding that crucial ‘ease-of-data-transfer’ feature. This option is cheaper, and you can buy HDs of humongous capacity, and carry them around. The disadvantage is that since this HD is really a normal HD enclosed in a casing, it is not really ‘portable’. Yes, you can carry it around. But you will need an extra power source, and the chances of the HD getting corrupted over time, especially if subjected to jerks while on power, are really high. For example, at the beginning of this year, I purchased a 232 GB (standard 250 GB) Seagate SATA HD for Rs. 3900. I also purchased a Transcend casing for 1600 bucks. (This is among the higher end ones – you can get a cheaper Chinese equivalent for around 600 bucks.) Thus I got a pseudo-portable 232 GB HD for Rs. 5500. In mid-2005, I had purchased another such HD + casing, for 2900 + 700 = 3600 bucks. Such HDs are very useful for people who have access to lot of data (movies, sitcoms, music, e-books, software, etc.).

The second option, obviously, is to go for an actually portable HD (let me call it pHD), which is of the same type of the HDs used in laptops. These pHDs do not require any extra power as they source their power from the USB port. You can carry these pHDs in you pockets, thus taking all your data with you, without worrying too much about the pHD getting corrupted. Until recently, these didn’t come cheap – what with an 80 GB Toshiba pHD costing Rs. 4000+. However, just last month, a friend of mine managed to buy such a pHD of size of 120 GB at a meager (by pHD standards) Rs. 3000. How cool is that ! Ofcourse, this was in Singapore, but if you do know someone who is going there, this is what you should be telling that person to buy. This implies that two 120 Gb pHDs (= 240 Gb) will cost just Rs. 6000, a wee Rs. 500 more than Rs. 5500 I paid 4 months back for a HD of the same size which wasn’t really portable, which was as heavy as big book and which required external power.

My next HD purchase, which won’t be until atleast 2-3 years later, is definitely going to be a large capacity pHD. I have a feeling that I might just be able to afford it then !

Posted @ 11.05 pm, July 05, 2007

The Fatal Inversion

Just now, as I was walking along the corridor outside my room, towards the bathroom area in my hostel, I saw one of those creepy-crawly insects crawling on the floor towards me. It could have gone into my room, so I raised my leg, and flicked it away with the sole of my slippers in one football-kick style swing. The insect got thrown around 2-3 metres away, and in the process landed on its back. As I passed it, I could see that it was desperately trying to turn itself, all its legs flailing wildly in the air in a futile attempt to get back on its feet. I thought nothing about it, and proceeded to go and brush my teeth. Around 15 minutes later, as I was on my way back, I saw a lot of ants on the floor surrounding that same insect. Basically, they were taking apart that insect. I don’t why, but I suddenly felt very sorry for that insect. I mean, on most other day’s, I wouldn’t have cared a rat’s hind as to what happened to it, and I would certainly have crushed it to death had it dared to enter my room. But just now, I was in a benevolent mood, feeling nothing but love for all fellow creatures, and the thought that this great creature, who otherwise was stronger than the ants, and could probably outrun, crush or eat them, had been eaten alive just because I had flipped it over onto its back, somehow made me sad. I guess it was a combination of the rainy weather, and the choral sounds I was hearing in the background which were being played by a boy practicing on his synthesizer for the Sunday choir. For want of a softer back, the life of the insect was lost ! Amen.

Posted @ 10.45 pm, July 05, 2007

Confessions of a Gluttonous Mind

I got the idea for this post when a friend of mine, who had not dined with me much, happened to glance over the amount of food I was blasting my way through. (I was bulldozing my way through a pile of Atta Parathas and Gobi Manchurian and Butter Paneer Masala - this btw, is about one-third of the menu offered at our NIT Canteen.)

A : “What ! You mean to say that you have ordered all this food and you intend to polish it all off in the next few minutes ?”
I : “Well, yes. C’mon, look at my size, I need to eat this much.”
A : “Still… tell me how many pizza slices can finish off in one sitting ?”
I : “You mean, how many pizzas, don’t you ? Let’s see, just last week, before I came to college, I was feeling hungry at around 3.30 in the afternoon. I’d had a pretty sumptuous lunch, but you know how it is with this rainy weather - makes you really hungry. So I ordered and ate all by myself two medium size pizzas. Smoking Joe’s, I think.”
A : (with dilated pupils) “!?”
I : “Anyway, the answer to your question would be, 2 x-large pizzas. Quite easily, provided the weather is right. Hot weather just kills my apetite.”
A : “!?” (Then starts laughing loudly.) “Man ! You must be spending at least 4 times as much on food as I do. Man !”

That’s probably true. Still nowadays, especially over the last year, I’ve really put tabs on my food intake. I have to – I don’t want to end up like Adnan Sami, nor do I want juvenile diabetes and a premature cardiac arrest. So, you can imagine my dietary spendings during my ‘growing-up’ years. Reminds me of that article I read which mentioned that Elvis’s daily intake of calories in the last few years before he died matched that of an adult African elephant !

I used to finish off 13 gulab jamuns in about 2 minutes flat in my mess; now I avoid gulab jamun altogether. I used to be able to eat a kilo and half of ‘bakarwadi’ in one sitting; now I don’t eat more than 10. I could finish one large packet of cashew nuts (defined as one-eighth the size of your standard pillow) and yet not need to go to the toilet the following morning; today I dare not take that risk. I have once eaten 21 slices of Brittania Cheese Slices, just like that; I shudder at that thought today.

As a result of my tendency to eat so much, I’ve been through some mentionable experiences over the years. Here’s a sampling :

* Quite a few times when I go to restaurants, the smart waiter, after taking down my/our order, automatically prepares the table for another guest. (For e.g., by turning the glass at some empty seat and pouring water in it.)

* I’ve had a fight with the guys of every mess and canteen in my college campus over the amount of puris I was eating, and on the amount of bhaji I should be getting per puri.

* My mother rarely had to clear up any food to put in the fridge throughout my school and junior college years – Non-veg dishes, dal, chapattis – I used to finish them all off the way a hungry pack of wolves would tear through a juicy moose in the snowy expanses of Alaska.

* There was a period during my school years where I don’t remember not having a stomachache after any meal I had liked.

* I was the favourite friend-of-their-son of all the mothers of my school friends. Whenever there was a birthday party, while the others used to be more interested in playing games, I used to focus all my energies on the food. Actions speak louder than words, and all these mothers used to be delighted that, finally, someone was appreciating their culinary skills ! And how !

* Once, a cousin sister of mine, knowing no doubt how much I loved eating, offered to give me a ‘treat’ in McDonald’s. (This was in those days when McDonald’s had just come to India, and going there was still an occasion.) My mother, who was standing nearby enquired of her as to the monetary size of the treat she had in mind. When she said, “100 – 200 bucks”, my mother burst out laughing.

* Whenever my mother used to get anything in the house that was tasty and edible, I used to finish it off in a couple days. She used to hide such food in various places, but I had become such an expert at ferreting out food, that I actually could find the correct tin by just picking it up. If it felt heavier than the day before, voila ! My trademark has always been that I finish off all the edible contents in the tins, and leave behind only the empty plastic / paper bag – much like the robbers who put a signature on every crime they commit. This way my mom didn’t have to spend too much time wondering where all the food she had just got, had vanished. A side effect of this has been that until recently, I’ve been the source of great embarrassment at home, whenever guests used to pay an impromptu visit. My mom would be like, ‘Okay, I’ve got this and this and that to give to them.’ She would then offer something to them, and they would acquiesce, and she would open the concerned jar and take out the plastic bag with a flourish, only to find it empty ! No problems, she would say, I’ve something else hidden there – ofcourse I’d been there too ! So on, until, well, you know !

Posted @ 11 pm, July 03, 2007

A Romantic Manifestation – By Randy Ian

Today evening I had gone to the campus canteen with some friends of mine. We dictated our order to the curly-haired rabbit-toothed ‘cheyta’ sitting at the cash counter who scribbled out something on square yellow pieces of paper in handwriting not dissimilar to that of most doctors I’ve gone to. We then handed our coupons to the black-googles wearing ‘cheyta’ behind the food counter, and went and sat at some table.

It so happened that the girl-friend of one of these friends of mine was also with him, and she was about to go back home for a few days. So, both of them were pretty sentimental and in a “cho-chweet” mood. You know how it is with couples whose ages are around 20-21 years.

She : ‘Okay, I’m gooiinngg…’.
He (after a long sigh) : ‘Hmmm. I feel like coming with you…’.
She giggles and pokes him.
She : ‘Then come naa…’.
He holds her hand and looks at her with a sad smile, ‘I wish.’.
They both play with their hands and fingers, at the same time swinging their hands, as if they are playing in some sort of a creative competition of producing different types of handshakes. Then she says, now in serious final sort of way, ‘Okay haan, now bye.’
Now he says, all serious too, ‘Baaye.’

By this point however, I was staring intently, with great concentration, at onion and chilli pieces in my Gobi Manchurian (a very popular dish in Kerala, introduced here by one the earliest of the throngs of Nepalis working all over Kerala, and a dish which now bears no resemblance whatsoever to either Gobi or Manchurian), and chomping on the morsel in my mouth with a regular rhythm !

Posted @ 10 pm, July 03, 2007

Lacuna Kyon

I've not written a post for quite some time by my usual standards. There are quite a few reasons for this - I was down for about a week with a sickening and resilient viral infection; I had no convenient internet access for some time since I wasn't at home; I was caught up in some important activities. Now, as I sit here, in the lab in my college, I do not have anything to write. And even if I did, I am not in the mood and I do not have the time. I suppose, a few days later when I do get the mood, the time, the energy and the right sort of idea to add another post, I shall delete this post. Till then this will have to do.

The difference between Americans and Europeans ?

I have come across this difference many times. Not first-hand, certainly, but in many books and articles. P. G. Wodehouse has made innumerable allusions to this great difference, often with great humorous effect. (The funniest example would be the scarab collecting American in Something Fresh.) Many writers, (e.g. Grisham) whose stuff I have read, have commented upon this. An uncle of mine who has had the opportunity to interact with people from both these regions has also mentioned this difference.

And today, in an article on Fortune.com, Jean-Marie Eveillard, a French who has work in the US for the major part of career, has been quoted as saying

"... Shortly after I retired, a friend of mine who's in the business said to me, "Ah, well now you'll have plenty of time to run your own portfolio." I told him no. I kept my money in my funds - or what used to be my funds - because it would not have shown great confidence in Charles if I had taken my money off the table.

Also, one thing about Americans - something I think is very positive - is there's this idea that God did not put us on this earth to do nothing. No matter your age. Whereas Europeans believe that once you retire, there is nothing wrong with doing nothing.

I was reading the financial newspapers, I helped teach a course on value investing at Columbia Business School, but otherwise I did not have a very active retirement."

Sartorial Gaucherie

Recently, a friend of mine, who doesn't quite maintain a certain minimum standard in wearing decent clothes, told me, quite sheepishly ofcourse, about a very amusing incident. It seems he was standing in some shop waiting for the shopkeeper to hand over to him the items he had ordered. A lady entering the shop was deceived by his appearance into thinking that he was the shopkeeper's assistant boy. She apparently stood in front of him and was staring at him, expecting him to ask her 'Memsaab, kya chaahiye ?". My dear friend was oblivious to this, and was staring somewhere into deep space, one hand on his hips, the other drumming the latest tune of some Tamil film. Ofcourse, the lady mistook his idyllic behaviour for dereliction of duty and, much to his surprise, poked him in his side, near the ribs, and snapped, "Ja, mere liye woh Fair and Lovely ka cream leke aa."

Something like that happened with me too, many years ago. Now, I am not overly fastidious as far as clothes go, but I do enjoy wearing good clothes. I may not be fashionable, but the clothes I wear outside home aren't that bad either. But there was a time when I was young, when I wasn't the slightest bothered as to what I was wearing or how my hair clumped over my head. In fact, I was anti-fashion. (Ofcourse, my hair has almost always been in a frowzled state, and though now I care how it looks like, it still is.)

I was spending my summer vacations with my grandparents, and had just arrived there the previous day. They live in a building that has three lifts - the centre one is for residents and their guests, and the two lifts on either side of this lift are for the working class people. I don't quite care for this differentiation, and back then, certainly didn't. My grandmother sent me to buy some grocery items. I checked which lift was closest to my floor, and since the third one (the working class one) was the nearest, I pressed the button for that lift. When I came back from the shopping, I saw that that all the lifts were on the ground floor. So I naturally started walking towards the centre lift.

This was me. A cheap polythene bag in my hand, containing an assortment of vegetables - dhaniya, tamaatar, onion and the like. Rubber slippers on my foot. A very shabby and old pair of shorts, and an equally shabby, and moreover stained T-shirt. There were a few holes in it too - it was one of my old favourites and its material had become soft over the years. Hence, inspite of the holes, I used to wear it, especially on hot, humid afternoons such as those of Bombay in May. And the hair. Oh, that wild sweaty dishevelled shock of hair, that has scared off so many potential caresses from loving aunts, soiled many pillow-cases and made barbers wonder whether they should borrow those grass-cutters from the nearby gardener.

Well, I was told to take the other lift. "Main yahaan rehta hoon.", said I, and walked into the centre lift, wondering whether the liftman had gone nuts. The liftman had no option but to operate the lift. He did give me some peculiar stares though.

And that was that.

More kudos Google's way

Yesterday I used Google Notebook (http://www.google.com/notebook) for the first time - and I'm very happy with it. It is an excellent piece of software, and very useful too, especially for a person like me who reads a majority of his articles online and likes to store the better ones. There are some bugs that need to be sorted out with, in the word editing section. However, they are very trivial bugs, so they did not pose much of a problem in the end as I found out a way around them. (And tell me about a word processor that does not give problems when you directly copy a highlighted amalgam of text, script and pictures from a webpage.. MS Word surely does !)

I've already made separate notebooks for all the distinct verticals I could think of - I thought that would be better idea as compared to make similar sections under one notebook. If you don't get what I'm saying, just give Google Notebook a try, it is definitely worth it. While scanning through some info on Notebook just now at Wikipedia, I found out that Micrsoft has had a somewhat similar product in its stable for quite some years now called Microsoft OneNote or some such thing. I think it is time they started offering some stuff free and online, otherwise they are going to lose many a valuable customer.

While on this topic of Microsoft, Google, open-source, piracy etc, I would like to make a mention of an article written by a friend of mine, which I thought was very good. Take a look at it. I too have some stuff to contribute on this topic, but I think I shall write it in another post.

Overheard

Location : Outside a shop called Jack's where we used hang out during a break in our coaching classes.

Faiz : "D, dude, you are like a barometer."
D : "Why man ?"
Faiz : "Because a barometer has vacuum at the top."
Burn ! Laughter for 10 minutes.

Explanatory Note 1 : D was our favourite bakra. Initials used to protect identity.

Explanatory Note 2 : It is possible that this joke might have crossed paths with the reader. However, I assure you that the joke was cracked originally on the spur of the moment by the aforementioned Faiz.

Wireless

I love things that are wireless. By wireless, I mean absolutely without wires, not just wi-fi. I believe in the literal meaning of wi-fi - wireless fidelity - loyalty to that which is without wires. And fidelity towards wireless need not be restricted to snazzy electronic gadgets - it can be applied to almost any gadget or machine.

The arrival of mobile phones, satellite communication techniques, technologies like GPRS, CDMA, 3G etc. are slowly but surely negating the need for having wired telephone and internet access. Sure, wired communication is still safer, cheaper, faster and more reliable for the general public. Sure, all internet traffic travels through gargantuan and serpentine layers of undersea cabling and a worldwide network of telephone cables. Sure, Relcom purchased Flag Telecom and recently finished laying cables across the length and breadth of India. In my opinion, however, wireless is the proverbial 'lambi race ka ghoda', the technology of the future which will render wires obsolete within the next few decades.

I dream of a world in which all voice and data communication takes place only through the wireless medium.

Today, an ever increasing number of people own personal computers. Organisations invest heavily in a lot of computer hardware - PCs, network routers, storage and backup media, etc. All these are connected with wires. The standard desktop PC is a huge mess of interweaving wires - the daily jhaad-poos-waali-bai's worst nightmare. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, printer, scanner, webcam - all have to be connected to the CPU. There are inter-speaker wires for those 5.1's and 7.1's. The iPod has to be connected with a wire as also the mobile phone. Add to that all the power cables and internet cables. It's a mad, mad world. But nowadays, wireless mice and keyboards are becoming cheaper, and hence, more popular. The other components still use wires only, but this is set to change with bluetooth and other such short-distance high-datarate technologies being invented, perfected and mass distributed. Laptops are also being used by many more people, and a laptop is one of the strongest proponents of the wireless world.

I dream of a world in which laptops and slim wifi-communicating-component-based desktops become commonplace, and all communication with PnP devices is wireless.

Some years back, these people we knew, had purchased a flat in the outskirts of Pune. Since the area was in the purlieu of city, the municipal corporation wasn't supplying water to that area. The society had to make do with a couple of borewells dug up near. However, this water contained salts and other minerals, which made it non-potable. Hence, they had to purchase those 20 liter plastic cartons of water. Later, however, they came across this machine in an ad, which converted the water vapour in the air into drinking water. The manufacturers guaranteed atleast 20 liters of water a day. I do not know whether they actually purchased the 'aquator', but it lent high-octane fuel to my imagination - it created the possibility of elimination of water pipes from our lives. In the same way, a device could be created that would 'vaporize' all the used and unclean water, or better still purify it immediately for reuse.

I dream of a world in which there are no ugly waterpipes disfiguring our homes and bathrooms, and where the atmosphere itself is a conduit for all the water that we need.

Quite a few people must have read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. In that, the leading hero, John Galt, invents a motor that is able to generate electricity / power from air. It is certainly a very fantastic claim. But, having seen the great leaps taken in technology over the past decade and a half, one cannot discount outright the possibility of such an invention taking place some years down the line. And if the invention is exactly the way it is described in the book, producing energy from thin air and yet not polluting it a bit, then it would solve 90% of the world's problems - think fuel shortage, oil and gas wars, related inflation, environmental problems and global warming. But, my focus is not on that. I look at the beauty of it - no horrendous transmission lines dotting the horizon. No ugly tangled masses of wires near your house. Clean standalone devices. No wires to trip over.

I dream of a world in which there are no messy wires spoiling the beauty of compact devices.

Some things that I wish for, especially those in the previous paragraph are way too far-fetched. However, the other things that are mentioned are very much feasible - and have already been implemented somewhere or the other. I really can envisage something like this happening in my house. Imagine your music system, your laptop / cool wireless compact lcd-screen desktop, your portable music player and your mobile seamlessly connected through wireless medium, offering an unimagineable fluidity as far as your data is concerned.

I dream on . . .


Disclaimer : This post has been written on the spur of the moment and without any research. So, some claims might be very far-fetched and some closer to reality than can be imagined.

Gadgets I'd like to own

I am an out-and-out gadget freak. Just seeing a new gadget can make my day. Owning a new device keeps me happy for months. If someone even touches any gadget I own, I become restless. I hate lending my gadgets - though ofcourse, nowadays I have consciously decided to become generous, because I don't like to borrow something and then not lend in return. Still, I am very particular as to who I lend my gadgets to.

As a student, who has not yet settled down on his own, I feel these are the gadgets I would like to own to feel complete from a luxury point of view - a laptop, a mobile, a flash memory mp3 player, a portable media player, a satellite radio set, a digital camera, a handycam, a good set of portable speakers and good set of headphones. Ofcourse, this is all fantasy - I don't quite have the money to own any of these gadgets !

Laptop - A Sony Viao or an Apple iMac would the most preferred. The high-end Dell or HP laptops would be good to, but I have a great attraction towards products from the stables of Sony and Apple. Since I'm in India, buying an iMac would be like buying a car that works perfectly, but only on 5% of the roads. So, Viao it is. I would love to buy that model which supports Blu-ray disc-writing - and I would like my laptop to be a powerhouse of sorts - high RAM, a humongous hard-disk and a fast dual-core processor.

Mobile - Again, the iPhone is ruled out as of now. So, I would either opt for a Nokia N series mobile in the 90+ series or the Moto Razr 2.

Mp3 player - I would like to own two mp3 players. The iPod nano and the Sony exercise walkman player, both with flash memories of 4 or 8 GB.

PMP - Without doubt, the COWON A2. A friend of mine has it, and using it is a delightful experience.

Satellite Radio - There's not much choice in India, so Worldspace it is.

Camera - The most expensive Cybershot offered by Sony.

Handycam - A digital hard-disk based handycam from Sony again.

Speaker Set - Any speakers from either Creative, Bang & Olufson or Bose.

Headphones - Since Bose has been advertising their headphones so much, Bose it is.


Aaah ! Just thinking about these gadgets has released a flood of endorphins and other happiness and exhilaration inducing chemicals in my body . . .

A wise saying in Marathi

For the past half an hour or so, I've been trying to figure out how to publish a post using the Devnagiri lipi, but my wetware is slipping, so I am forced to write it in English. Readers familiar with Marathi will, however, surely be able to understand it - and appreciate the wisdom behind it !

"Zo pahiley naak dharee,
Toch aahe paadkaree"

Translated, it means, whoever clamps his nose first in disgust at the foul smell of a possible fart, is the culprit who has let lose the noxious gases from his flatulent abdomen.

I do not expect a person unfamiliar with Marathi to find this very funny, but if you understand Marathi well and yet do not find this funny at all, then please forgive me. As a weak excuse, I would like to quote David Ogilvy, who, in one of his books has made this very memorable remark - "From my father I inherited two things - smoking a pipe and a scatological sense of humour."

My father certainly does not smoke a pipe, and neither do I, but as relatives and friends will vouch for in all earnest, I have certainly inherited a very morbid and scatalogical sense of humour from my father !

Update - For some arbitrary reason, today (Sunday, April 06, 2008), I figured out how to do it . . . here is the Marathi version

जो पहिले नाक धरी,
तोच आहे पाद्करी ||