Fauja Singh : 89 :: Dhruv Chandras : ?

Too many vows made... only a few of them kept.

I will run a half marathon in two years and a marathon three years from now. I state so publicly so that I may be held accountable.

BT Acumen 2008

The north-zone round of BT Acumen 08 got over today. IIFT put up a decent show. We won the debate and came third in the quiz.

Praveen and I were representing IIFT in the quiz. We fell short of the first place by a margin of 10 points (at 55, we were just one correct question away). We got off to a slow start and tho' we caught up later on, the initial gap made a difference in the end. I thought all teams were good, and as such, it was a well fought quiz. IIML and FMS were tied at 65, and finally IIML went thru because FMS hit the buzzer and missed.

Sad, considering that we had done quite well for ourselves in the prelims. Sadder still, coz had we won we would have made a clean sweep, and also had the chance to accompany Anchal and Rahul to Bombay for the National Finals. (Anchal had already reached the national finals last year with Arka, who was the winner the year before that. Let's hope he keeps the tradition alive.)

After we lost, my same-name loomie scrapped me this today...

ecclesiastes 9:11
"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all."

Incidentally

Popular School Legends

I suppose every school has some teacher who makes absent minded mistakes leading to funny sentences. These funny sentences are quoted around and soon other funny sentences are also attributed to the concerned teacher. This is how school legends are made, and we get a huge list of extremely funny sentences apparently originating from this famous leader, when in fact, only one or two might actually be his/hers.

We had a teacher in school who used to teach us drawing, and sometimes Hindi as well. This is how the legend went.

Once while she was taking attendence, she ordered, "Absent boys raise your hands !". Another time, while teaching geometric shapes, she shouted, "Now draw a straight circle !" On a particularly stuffy day, when we students had forgotten to open the windows, she announced, "Boys, you should not be sitting in such conditions. Open the air and let the windows come in !". Then while telling us about her family, "I have two daughters, and both are girls !". I know for fact that she had only one child, and that too a son. (I had once met them at the railway station, a couple of years after I passed out from school, and we had chatted for some time.)

A little while ago I mentioned a few of these witticisms to my room-mate, and he claimed that his school too had a teacher to whom some of the very same quotes were attributed. He had one priceless gem to the above list. "Children, the scooter is under standing the tree !".

I will end this post with the only quote of this teacher which I have heard first hand. She was a pretty lenient teacher, but she used to loath squabbling children, and used to make such students go and stand outside the class. At least once in every class she used utter her trademark utterance, namely, "If any complaint and both will get punishment !".

I passed my B.Tech

Yeah, that's right. The S8 results have come out, and I am officially an engineer. I am now Dhruv Chandras, B.Tech, CSE. Ha !

CSE stands for Computer Science and Engineering. B.Tech for Bachelor of Technology - a more fundoo sounding version of your regular BE. Instead of being plain engineers, we are now technocrats. A few years later, we will have B.Inno and B.Entre degrees.. (For innovators and entrepreneurs..)

I don't know why so many people today do engineering.

Actually, I do.

You see, it is a very respectable degree to have. From the earliest times, engineers were respected for their logical brains and innovative capabilities. They were the people who actually made things that you and me used. Houses, cars, appliances, etc. In my grand-dad's era, an engineering degree was sufficient to make one's way to the top of the organisation. (Well, it was sufficient for him !)

Also, for someone from a middle class background, it fills some solid bricks in the wall of your resume.

In 4 years, you learn stuff that you would probably never ever use again in your life. I want to do an MBA. Most engineers want to do an MBA. And even those who pursue MS degrees rarely end up applying what they learnt for 6 years. But then, the BE/BTech is the stepping stone to that coveted MS / MBA degree, which in turn is a gateway to lucrative career options, mainly in the upper echelons of management. If you look at all the management schools today, they are clogged with engineers. (Mind you, the directors of all these b-schools have tried to remedy this to diversify the intake, and they have tried hard. Short of setting quotas, they have done everything else. The percentage of engineers in the batch has remained unchanged ! Shows how many desperate engineers are out there trying make their BE/BTech worthwhile by capping it off with an MBA !)

I remember my school days. If you were among the top 10, then medicine or engineering was THE way for you. At least that's what you were told. If you were even decently good at studies, you were pushed into engineering. Most 10th standard board merit rankers used to take PCMB (i.e. Physics, Chemistry, Maths And Biology). Why - I asked a friend who had come in the SSC Top 50. To keep my options open, he said. Meaning, medicine ya engineering. He ended up an engineer, or to be more precise, a technocrat. I remember how shocked everyone was when one of our school toppers, Rahul Daga, choose to do commerce. He was very focussed though, and ended up topping his insti.

So, from the learning and application point of view, it is a totally useless degree to have. And most "engineers" will agree with me. But, as I said before, from the overall perspective, it is a pretty good, and SAFE degree to have. Besides the aforementioned points of a) being respectable b) being a good resume-filler c) being a passport to a good life, the BE/BTech degree has some more good things to offer.

For example, the 4 years of my B.Tech life provided me with innumerable opportunities for personality development, expansion of the mind and exposure to various people, cultures and situations. It gave time to think and to find out what I wanted to do in life. It toughened me up and gave me a chance to be more independent. Without doubt, I learnt a lot of stuff (mostly non-academic!!).

Thus the degree has been a great 'filler'. However, I would like to add that a large chunk of the benefits I mentioned in the previous para were possible only due to living a hostel life in a strange land, with students representing practically every part of India.

If, before you select your under-grad course, you know exactly what you want to do, then pursue that in a very specific way. Don't waste your time doing engineering. If however, you don't know what you want to do, or want to give yourself more time, then pursue an engineering degree by all means. However, do try to do it from an IIT/NIT/any other prestigious univ with a vibrant hostel life. It makes all the difference in the world.

What started out on a satirical note became a little preachy-sermonish in between, and ended on a slightly senti note ! The joyride/ordeal of B.Tech is over. Amen. Anyway, expect a lot more posts revolving around the B.Tech theme in the next few weeks. I have a lot of ideas... !

! Re@!!y |-|@te t|-|0$e !@#$%^&*

I hate it when these people change their names on orkut, either to some silly sentence, or to hacker font. It's impossible to search for such guys when you want to scrap them, and it's very tough to find out who they are if they scrap you.

It certainly Wofs

Every now and then, I come across some really good site.. which I madly go through for a couple of days. The latest is itwofs.com.

I love bollywood music, both old and new. Ever since I heard Mama Mia, and then heard Mil Gaya, Hum Ko Saathi Mil Gaya, and realised that it was a straight rip off, I have always been curious to know how many more of our tunes are copies.

Itwofs.com, pronounced as "I two Ef Es", (Inspirations for Indian Film Songs), is a site dedicated to not only digging up such keede, but also providing the .rm clips of both versions. See for yourselves how haraamkhor our music directors are, is their motto.

Do go through it.

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.