A grand wedding

That was definitely a grandiose wedding. I had gone with complete preparation*. The ambience was perfect, bearers in clean outfit. I believed that the stage was set to end my dieting regime.

Ah the damn cold, I had picked it up from my friend, posed a threat to the gala time that stood ahead of me. Man proposes and god exposes errr I guess he disposes.I wouldn’t let go of a chance so easily, there it was the chicken soup – the ultimate curator of cold. Whichever butcher spread the rumour, human cold seems to be the prime threat to a chicken’s life.

I was roaming about in the darkness (darkness is referred to as ‘pleasing’ ambience in star hotels) to select a proper side dish for my naan. I never believed that ‘J’ could be placed next to ‘X’ or a ‘Z’ in an English word, well only until I browsed through the menu cards that were so majestically displayed. One of them was christened “bangala dumpa koora” which reminded me of a Zambian president. It looked shiny, slippery and semi curdled. It tasted great except that it was a trifle too sweet.

On successful completion of many rounds each with generous helpings of my new found side-dish, I decided to call it quits with a dessert.

The side-dish had a unique characteristic in that it was served even for a dessert!
Oh my goodness!! It took me some time to realise that those curious glances were not meant to be an appreciation for my fashionable clothes.

*Preparation: 2 chapathis in the morning, 2 for lunch and none for dinner from a week prior to the wedding.

Fathering a Babe...

Dads are generally good. They provide us food, clothing, comfort (am writing with a glossy eye). They are the breadwinners of the family. However, they act in the weirdest possible manner when they father a CHICK.

I have had many encounters with such Dads. They interrogate the caller thoroughly before letting it pass to their beloved daughter. In computer terminology they are analogous to FIREWALLS. Although we have mastered the ways of hacking through them they can get annoying at times. There are different types of Dads:

#1. THE NAGGING CHARACTER

Me: Can I talk to XYZ uncle?
Dad Of Chick: Who’s calling?
Me: vikram
DOC: Are you her classmate?
Me: Yes. Infact bench mates for four years.
DOC: hmm..So where are you from?
Me: T.nagar
Doc: What’s your dad?
Me: Working for a private firm.
Doc: Oh I C. So you were the one who came for her b’day party two days back?
Me: No. Haven’t been to your house before.
Doc: oh. She is busy right now. I’ll ask her to give you a call later.
click

#2 The always NO character

time: 8:30 am
Me: Can I talk to XYZ uncle?
Doc: She’s sleeping. Hasn’t gotten up yet.
click

time: 12o clock afternoon
Me: Can I talk to her uncle?
Doc: She’s still sleeping. I guess she’s feeling too tierd.
click

time: 7:30 pm
Me: Can I talk to her atleast now uncle?
Doc: Oh! You should have called her early. She’s gone to bed you see.
Me: Do you have a caller Id at home?
Doc: No. She wasn’t actually feeling alright and I advised her to go to bed.
Me: and with whom?
click

Honesty may be the best policy but…

Do Miss. Universe contestants come from other planets in spaceships? I thought the organizers had done justice to the name when priyanka chopra was selected as the beauty queen. But to my dismay, I found out that she hails somewhere from India.
Before deviating any further from the crux of the issue, here are a few guidelines to win the Miss universe pageant.
1.Never say the truth.
2.Be as impractical as possible.
3.Make them believe you’ll be one among the masses.

For example, when the judge asks you to imagine your house on fire. Inside the burning house are trapped your three month old child and a mother Teresa’s photo. Which one would you save first?
A rational, practical and a sensible person would save the child, but to win the miss universe title you must feel (and feel strongly) that mother Teresa’s photo is more important than the child (although Mother Teresa herself, if alive, would not approve of it).

Let me pose another situation now. Don’t look down. No cheating.

You’re jogging on a lonely highway (god knows why) and you find your 3 month-old peeping into a manhole. The same instant you find a cockroach crossing the road, you find a speeding truck down the lane. Whom will you save first?
Congratulations, if you wanted to save the cockroach. You’re on the right path to becoming the Miss.Universe. Well, if you’re a man, you still hold a chance. You might have some minor problems with the swimsuit round.

Can you forward my Resume?

The man who HAD lakhs of devotees world wide has done what even a nefarious criminal would fear to do.

Middle men have always been (and will continue to be) a headache to the society. Consider this for an example, a farmer (with his high interest loans) toils in his field and produces food grain which is conveniently bought by these middle men for a low price and sold in the market at exorbitant rates. These unscrupulous elements enjoy an unpropotional profit for their ‘work’, while the farmers continue to commit suicide due to poverty.
If you thought this was applicable only to the illiterate farmers, you are totally wrong. These middle-men are present, unfortunately, in all fields including Spirituality. Unless we realize the fact that there can be no one between us and the God, such rascals would continue to thrive.

This article, however, is not intended to put humanity on to the right track but was written for a more practical cause of publishing my resume. Since the top post now lies vacant I wish to offer my services to the mutt.

My Resume
Name: Sri Sri vikramananda.
Age: Old enough to hold this post.
Young enough to have female disciples.

(S)EXperience: 1. Worked in other ashrams and aware of all the ‘spiritual practises’.

2. Attended a certified course in the P.C sarkar’s school of magic and can vomit lingams, produce ashes, create fire etc.

Achievements: 1.A crowd following of more than 1 lakh (70% being women).
2. Working on a permanent solution to the Ayodhya issue (why not?).
3. Contacts with the top most rowdy gangs in the country.
4. Links with other fundamentalist groups which can declare a bandh when am arrested.

References:

1. Sri Premananda.
2. Sri kalki Bagwan.
3. Chandra Swami.
Can you kindly forward my resume?

Kudos to Wodehouse

I just finished reading (11:50 pm) Thank You jeeves and I wanted to post a comment before I get over the hangover. Simply a great read.

[And this is some creative work from me…]

Scene: Sir Bertram Wooster’s cottage, London.
Characters: Bertie, Jeeves.

Bertie: What do you think of Pauline, jeeves?
Jeeves: Of that miss, sir, I appreciate her pulchritude.
Bertie: You mean she is a woman who is a …
Jeeves: une bonne elle, as you’d like to call her, sir.
Bertie: yes. You have a good vocabulary Jeeves.
Jeeves: Thank you, sir, for a gratifying comment.
Bertie: I wish I could take her out for a long vacation, jeeves. But the fuel prices are discouraging me.
Jeeves: It is pitiable indeed, sir.
Bertie: Out of the top of your head, tell me reason for an alarming increase in the rates.
Jeeves: According to me, sir, the government has shown callous indifference to the situation. This misdemeanor has only invited an irascible response from the public. My suggestion, sir, would be to stop the practice of examination in schools.
Bertie: I simply cannot understand this suggestion of yours, jeeves. You’ve gone cuckoo!
Jeeves: The students of these educational institutions, according to a general consensus, burn their midnight oil on the day before the exam. Considering the number of such students who wastefully burn the fuel, it would not require a person of high cognizance to suggest a plan to circumnavigate the problem.
Bertie: you are right as always, jeeves.
Jeeves: I consider the service to your lordship in high esteem, sir. Shall I bring your tea now?
Bertie: Right ho!

Reel VS Real Life.

I have always wondered whether the reel life had any relevance to the real one. No one ever fights half a dozen men and emerges, leave alone victorious, alive!! Films are definitely a gross exaggeration of the real life but they undoubtedly reflect the culture, mindset and the mentality of the people.

For example, we know the American culture (if there exists one) through their Cinema. We know Americans as good entrepreneurs, business minded, adventurous etc through the movies we see.

The Indian Filmdom has the dual responsibility of churning out good entertainers and also to explain to the rest of the world, the essence of Indian culture.

I had the ‘privilege’ of watching one of Vijaykanth’s movies in which he lights a cigarette with his own blood.

Message Intended: He is a powerful man with powerful blood (enough to light a cigarette). This high voltage blood flows through his body.

In the next scene, he touches his moustache which sends a man flying away.
Hidden Message: I give up. May be he wants to convey to the audience that his moustache has magical powers (that’s only my guess).

What sort of a message will this convey about the people of Tamilnadu (in general INDIA)? Won’t these movies show us as fools who believe in such rotten portrayal of larger-than life characters? Do the foreigners have a biased opinion about our mental abilities before they meet us first time?

The Pandora box opener- Mr.Akash Chopra

This blog is dedicated to the most incompetent, shameless (fill in with your favorite adjective) opener that India has ever produced, Mr. Akash Chopra. I doubt if his total score crossed 20 in all the 4 innings he played against Australia.

Had Mr. Akash been an Australian, with his severely limited talent, he might not have found a place in his school team. I wonder if he was taught in his academy that hitting the ball to the man in the second slip would fetch him quick runs.

He could consider changing his name to Akash chopra b Mcgrath, since that’s what the score card shows most of the times. At least that would save him from the ignominy of answering the press. There can be no second thoughts about his batting ‘abilities’. This blog is intended to reason out his inclusion into the team.

[Situation: The men in blue need one more man to fill the 11 member squad.]

Ganguly: We need another man now, Right now!! The match is about to start in 10 minutes.

John Wright: That’s impossible. We don’t have any reserve men.

G: We can’t play with 10 men can we?

JW: No. The article 213 section (II) of cricket doesn’t permit it.

G: Let’s go for a stroll. It’s noisy here and I can’t think.

[Outside the chinnaswamy stadium]

G: Hey you fool!! Can’t you cross roads properly? The red truck missed you by whiskers.

Mr. X: Oops!! It must be my lucky day. Sir, I am colour-blind. I can’t see anything red.

G (to himself): This is my man. If he can’t spot a big RED truck think of the cricket ball!! He would definitely score less than me and I would be spared of criticism.

JW: I know what’s going on your mind Mr. Ganguly I am strictly against it.

G: Keep quite Mr. Wright. Young man, you’re playing for India. What’s your name by the way?

Mr. X (in a state of shock): Akash Chopra.

Congratulations to the INDIAN team for winning the final test match. Incidentally it came after dropping the hero of this post.

Bureaucracy starts from our colleges.

My computer service man fears orders from any college. He narrated the "Bureaucracy" that he once suffered at the hands of the college staff.

An order for 50 computers was placed by the computer science dept of a VEL known college. The money would only be paid after getting those squiggly signatures from the lab attendant, Lab in charge, HOD, Director and then the Chairman.

The lab attendant would only sign if all the manuals (papers) for all the 50 monitors, processors etc are given (in spite of the fact that all 50 computers are of same configuration). Even if one of them is missing they'd have to get a color Xerox of the manual papers. This process usually takes about 2 days...

The HOD (even if the seller is Intel/IBM) “feels" that the computers are not up to his expectations. He would also drill in the fact that only after his signing, the papers would move to the next desk. He imposes his authority only for free mouse-pads, free software and other freebies to be installed at his home. It almost takes a week to get the sign from the HOD since he is often found "busy" in meetings and other "important" things.


The computer vendor would get the ultimate shock of his life only after the chairman "thinks" (an oxymoron how can chairmen of colleges think?) that the money involved is too much for 50 computers. The chairman (most of them are from a 'lesser said the better' backgrounds) would get reminded of bargaining with a vegetable vendor, quote prices that will increase the number of BP patients by one.

We can very well extend these Bureaucratic ways to the top level brass that runs our country. It’s now evident as to why it takes 10 years to buy a few fighter planes for our Air force which in fact clamors for new weaponry.

Unless we mend our ways at the lower levels, reaching an “Investor friendly market” will have to continue remaining in quotations.

A Challenge to Newtonian Physics

[Prologue]

The weighing machine constantly reminds me of the burden I cause to mother earth. The needle remains oblivious to the amount of hard work I put in my treadmill. Something must be wrong somewhere…
One fine day while I was sipping my coffee the reason struck me like a lightning, the following is the charge I transferred to the paper.

[Prologue ends]


Proof

Velocity = distance/time

Acceleration = dv/dt (change in velocity) ----- (I)

F = m . a ----- (II)

Force = mass x acceleration

Work done = F. d -----(III)



Since I run at a constant speed of 10 kmph on my treadmill,
Velocity = 10 kmph
Acceleration = 0 m/s2 (change in velocity =0) -----(IV)

Sub (IV) in (II)

F = 0 N ------(V)

Sub (V) in (III)

Work done = 0



Inference : I end up doing no work running. Blame it on bloody physics

My bro in california man...

"Where is your brother in theUS?" seems to be standard question that confronts the siblings of the american brothers and sisters back here.I have found it really difficult to cope up with these half-wit, crazy middle-aged uncles and aunties.

I somehow sabotage my anger and answer them polietly "Well..he is in california" and pat comes the next question "What is he doing?" .."my son is near by...how long is it from philedelphia?"

Next time someone wants to know about the whereabouts of my brother i swear to god to answer in the following way..

"hey...i dont know where is now..it must be morning there, so he must be in his toilet and you wanted to know what he's doing? well shitting ofcourse!!"

Wordsworth in the making II

I am starting to love myself. I am definitely a wordsworth in the making. I donot want to waste the time of the reader..here we go

LOVE

Love is the driving force,
that leaves you with many woes. 2

Deep love certainly penetrates
But i prefer the surface ;) 4

The difference is indeed confusing,
between love and love making 6

Love marriage is happy ofcourse,
what follows ultimately is divorce. 8

This thing ne'er takes you up
buddy enjoy your GINGER LEMON POP! 10

courtesy - Web technology exam 8/10/04

Wordsworth in the making I

One of the most uninteresting things in the world, next only to listening to your girlfriend, is sitting idle in the exam hall. I had this 'enchanting' experience during my model exams and ended up writting (if you'll let me call it) a POEM

BOREDOM

Life is hell!!
when you sit in exam hall. 2

It's better to be screwed
than to sit bored. 4

There cannot be a sorry man
like our friend Vikraman 6

on whose epitaph shall
the follwing be written 8

"Another casuality of boredom"

courtesy - Professional ethics exam 7/10/04

We are poor at marketing.

"Bahut achcha pradharshan yuvraj se" and from the bathroom i thought yuvraj must have saved yet another single. I was wrong. It was an extrodinary catch taken at point to dismiss the "wildrat" Moin khan, who has the reputation of digging burrows in the hopes of the opposition. Yuvy with his belligerent performances has won many matches for us, such an electrifying moment can never be downplayed like that.

In fact the commentator was coughing right into his Mic that i had to sit a few yards away from the screen. At times i even believed that it was an extension of the glycodin ad.

Had it been Tony greig he must have said "oh boy what a catch was that. This young man is surely the new face of indian fielding.The indians are up again the pakis are trembling..." well that certainly would've raised the spirits of many indians. Isn't it the responsibility of the commentators to add spice to the match? since all of us(viewers) have accepted that watching is more fun than playing a game.

Apart from a few exceptions like Harsha bogle and Ravi shastri the indians have never been able to reach world class commentry.

XPee

Microsoft seems adamant at continuing with its legacy of replacing one piece of shit
with an other. At times they have the guts to add "XPerience" tag to it.

I didn't want to be left alone in the race of installing new OS's and hence got lured;a distant relative of Adam you see,and ended up paying the penality for it very much like my great grandfather.


XP has new improved features
1. No blue screens; they are replaced by gray ones(message boxes).
2. Intutive messages; "LSA shell script error at module !@#$@#"
3. Bug reporting feature; You can either "send" or "dont send" the errors,either way you waste time.
4. Highly stable; the machine stays the user runs off.

This,probably,is microsoft's idea of a person using Windows XP

Once i figured out that my face bore no resemblance to the pic i switched back to my earlier OS.Life was atleast moving at snail's pace when i had my win-98 working.

and... if you're looked down for possessing a primitive OS.

1. stretch your hand.
2. fold your fist.
3. Open the third finger.

The day of the Jackal

Very few novels are devoid of loopholes; some of them have potholes in them.
This one by Fredrick Forsyth must be one of his masterpieces, am yet to read Fourth protocol.

I couldn’t put the book down; it was an awesome read. I, however, would’ve preferred a different ending, had the Jackal not been…NO I want you to read it.

Forsyth reinstated the prestige of crime novels after being cruelly taken for a ride by a few others (remember Agatha’s Miss.Marple versions?)
From an engineering point of view, as the page number increases the excitement in the novel grows exponentially.

God has his own ways of punishing men

I went to my native place, on the outskirts of chennai, to attend a family function. Nanganallur is one of the few places where the apartment culture hasn’t caught up. The serene surroundings, coconut trees and the independent houses make a rendezvous with Mother Nature quite possible. The place is also famous for its temples; the 32-feet anchaneya idol attracts people from north as well. One gets the feeling of travelling back in time to the 1980s.

Well it was here that three women in their mid thirties wanted me to accompany them to all the temples. Although born into a Brahmin family I hadn’t visited a temple in 2 years. Only when I undress and discover a white thread hanging around my shoulders do I realise of my rich heritage. Unable to churn out an immediate excuse I agreed to go with them.

Not wanting to go inside the temple I wanted to wait outside but I was defeated. Dragging a 20 year old guy inside the temple couldn’t have been difficult for the trio for they have the credit of taming three men who are much older to men. I mean their husbands.

My order, once inside the temple, was to go around each sannidhanam eight times; there were 7 in all. While I was completing my laps hurriedly I pitied Schumacher for his profession. Going around a closed circuit isn’t certainly interesting! But at least he’s paid for it and drives with breathtaking speeds. Speed at least thrills even if it kills. I noticed the idol of anchaneya looking mockingly at me without any consideration for a soul which had just completed 7X8 =56 laps.

Well I remember now, I hadn’t gone for my jogging session in the morning and made my friend wait for a long time. God certainly has his own ways of punishing men!

Desires unfulfilled.

“Thair sadham Inga” (Curd rice here please), that was the third futile attempt I made to devour my favourite dish to finish my feast with a bang. It however had the same effect as the tehelka issue on India; falling on deaf ears.

It’s definitely an advantage to be the son of the GM of a premier company. I get to attend a lot of ostentatious weddings. The two aspects that make a wedding hit are the females the food. I was satisfied with the former while it was the latter that I suffered with.

The dining halls with dense A/c had many ‘service’ men in professional outfits. It takes a lot of guts to ask one of them for an extra serving; for you’re not sure which one of them is the service guy. You certainly don’t want to end up asking the bridegroom for some extra ‘kurma’. Despite this I raised my guts to ask for my favourite curd rice (slurp! How much I love it). I only succeeded in sending each of them a little further apart every time.

After a while when I looked at my plantain It showed no signs of food being ever placed on it. The guy who sat next to me must have decided that I was a glutton; for he never once looked in my direction.

The most important aspect of servicing is in fact servicing and nothing else. I wished to go back to the time when the bare-chested Brahmins served food; every one got to eat well without feeling shy. While I was lost in my thoughts I heard someone shouting “thair sadham Inga”.

I woke up to wash my hands with a smile on my face.

The sorry state of Indian Hockey

The midfielders of the past who could collect and pass on to the strikers while on the move were indeed responsible for the eight olympic gold medals that we gloat about.

It now becomes progressively more embarrassing, especially as an Indian, to note the successive failures of the once powerful team. The team, which once remained a nightmare, runs the risk of being termed mere pushovers. Insipid passes, unnecessary shots at the post (which have as much chance as my grand mom winning a marathon) are responsible for this debilitated image in the global front.

This article, however, is not aimed to take a dig at the abilities of the former powerhouse of the game. It’s about a more serious aspect- their attitude. The Indian hockey team seems to have grasped a lot of ideas from Indian politics. They have mastered the art of pacifying the angry supporters by a heart attack drama, which is so heavily used in the political front. Deepak thakur's admission into the ICU after the loss to New Zealand is certainly an act of cowardice.

They should have been brave enough to accept the ignominy and should have refrained from such low-level acts. The situation now looks fairly simple; Mr. Sunil Dutt will opine "The most important thing in Olympics is not winning, but participating". The issue will be hushed over and will soon be lost in the eternal gloom that surrounds our Indian sporting fraternity.

How many marks did your culture score?

Be it Western,Indian or one of those archaic middle-east cultures, its worthiness is gauged purely based on its perfomance.The idea of evaluating one based on materialistic achievements such as the number of nobel prizes won, olympic medals bagged might not appear sane. A few might argue that a culture has nothing to do with the perfomance of an individual,such people understand neither culture nor perfomance.

Culture to a large extent is responsible for modelling an individual's charachter,for its the culture that either permits one to chase the wild dreams or to look out for a secure clerical job.

I beg the reader for some retrospection. Has anyone in your neighbourhood won an olympic medal? a nobel prize? F1 racing? or any other commendable achievement that would've made the other nations to look up at us?

The status of a third world nation is not an excuse(infact we are not a third world country anymore). We certainly dont hail from the deep jungles of congo either. Our country offers good infrastructure such as the IITs. Why then do we fail miserably when it comes to producing results? Much of the reason can be attributed to our culture.

We are a bunch of frogs that live deep inside a well. When one of it wants to jump out and break free the others pull it down, in the name of 'concern'. We are happy to croack eternally.Yes. I am referring to our social structure. Our ambitions and actions dont escape prying eyes of our neighbours. Those inquisitive souls armoured with questions put down our fantasies, even before the seed has started to bud.

"Bungee jumping? Can you make a career out of it? No one will be ready to give their daughter for a bungee jumper." and that leaves us with those two obvious choices -Doctor or an engineer.

Those who believe that our culture has a lot of love and affection to offer others must necessarily understand the difference between pure love and mean selfishness.To use one's influence to get a job for near n dear is not love. Our country would'nt have been a corrupt nation had we showed love to our fellow country men. This leaves us successptible for a forgein invasion even in this era.

Baring a few practises, I strongly feel, Our culture should find the nearest dustbin.

Genetic Algorithms-are here to stay

"Everything that can be invented has already been invented" was the famous quote of a scientist named Albert Michaelson in 1894. It was quoted long before some of the powerful inventions of mankind such as atomic bomb,aeroplanes.

Mankind has therefore never been left to feel complascent of its achievements.Time and again a new discovery revolutionises the world and creates a completely new environment for the people to live in.

The mechanical problem solvers,later came to be known as computers, were thought to be a mere science fiction until john von neuman laid down his architecture for a practical computer.It was the turn of the Transistors, in the early 60s, to revolutionise the computing world.The screeching,gigantic mechanical devices were scaled down to 'compact' ones to fit into a room. contemporary inventions in the field of electronics have further helped to diminish their size.

The computers of today have shrunk the world into a single entity,a global village.Information exchange,Email,file sharing would have remained one of those Michael Chriton thingies but for the Internet. Evidently such complex services require complex algorithms that strive to reduce the computing time to a minimum.

The computing problems can be broadly divided into two categories -P(polynomial complexity) and the NP(Non-polynomial complexity). The former class has specific algorithms to solve them efficiently while the conventional algorithms suffer with the latter. One such NP problem is the Travelling Sales Man (TSP) problem which has a time complexity of O(2^n), ie for every addition of a city the complexity of the problem doubles.

It is to tackle such problems that we need a more intelligent approach. An approach that's totally different,since the conventional algorithms have accepted a sullen defeat. A revolutionary concept to combat problems stated above is the Genetic Algorithms(GA).

GA differs from its conventional counterpart in a lot of ways. The solution offered by the GA is unpredictable. Most of the times,however,it gifts its users with an incredibly good solution. Having made the reader come upto this, the author feels a sense of responsibility to bestow him/her with some of his (mis)interpretations of the concept.

A baby baring a few basic instincts,such as sucking the mother's milk(takes a lot of concentration to adhere to the topic),is born naive. It however learns as it grows older. Its intelligence therefore increases with time. GA adpots a similar approach.

The solutions produced in the first generation are quite unacceptable while the one's produced by the later generations are better.Generation 1 therefore consists only of a set of random solutions. One among this is chosen depending on how well it satisfies the fitness function.

Fitness function hence is responsible to select one out of the many samples in a generation. It embodies the concept of Charles Darwin's theory - "survival of the fittest". Once the fitness function is properly defined, the programmer can sit back to watch the program grow intelligent!

After a sample is picked by the above mentioned function, it is subjected to Cross-over and Mutation to give rise to the next generation which is more "intelligent" and adapted to its environment.It is evident that as the number of generations increases the solution obtained gets bettered.

The author feels confident of the immense potential of the GA, atleast until the project work is over, they have certainly come here to stay,more importantly revolutionise.