Yeah whatever...

Stupid TA's Annoy Me

2012-01-19T17:10:00.000+05:30

TA's are our Teaching Assistants. We get about 3-4 for every course, all of them post-graduates.

And far too many of them are incredibly stupid.
I've experienced some extremely good TA's, which is why the stupid ones baffle me so much. What's their purpose? They seem to know little about the course, or about basic troubleshooting and debugging. Some of them seem to have their act together, but the moment you deviate from their well-rehearsed path, they fail.

One thing about such TA's that really irks me is how they get nervous around Linux.
One guy went around handing us .exe setups of Wireshark and told us to install it for the lab session. Okay, except that roughly half the population was running Linux. A doubt was raised, the TA said - "Some people in the other lab have run this on their Linux machines."
"Are you sure? This is a .exe file, Linux cannot install this."
"Yes, I don't know how, but they've done it. Even I know this cannot run on Linux."

If he really knew this, he'd have been slightly more curious about people installing Wireshark on their machines using the setup he handed out.
Turns out, Wireshark is available on the Ubuntu Software Centre, and that's where they got it from.

Today I ran into a problem installing MySQL on my laptop. I had spent almost 1.25 hours looking up solutions online when I finally gave up and asked a TA.
"This is Windows? Oh it's Ubuntu."
"Yes."
"Have you tried installing it on Windows?"
"No. I want to install it on Ubuntu."
"Oh. Hmm. Go online and read a tutorial."

I showed him the 15 tabs open on my browser and went back to searching for more answers since the TA was so incredibly stupid. I got it running about 15 minutes later. Cheers.

It's not just limited to utilities by the way. Last semester, in any course that required programming knowledge, the average TA was unable to debug as systematically as some of my classmates could. It was so incredibly frustrating, because it seemed like they couldn't even interpret basic error messages.

One lesson I've learnt from all this is that your classmates know about 10 times more than the average TA when it comes to tech help.

I'mma Been Baking Breads From Scratch Yo!

2012-01-08T21:36:00.001+05:30

Modern Bazar, I love thee so much.

Last to last time I went there, I found stacks of cupcake cups in More colours and patterns! So I promptly bought a stack of each type. These weren't the imported, Rs. 4 apiece cups, so you don't feel bad buying so many of them. And once you've bought so many of them, you obviously will use them up. You will spend time carefully thinking over what kind of cupcake will go with which cup and what frosting should be put on it. You will, hence, bake more cupcakes!

So this time, it was motivation in the form of buying a packet of active dry yeast.

I wanted to try out a few different recipes, so I made one basic white bread dough and divided that up for the different types of breads.

Things You Need For Basic White Bread (Courtesy: The Purple Foodie)

1.5 tbsp active dry yeast

1 3/4th cup warm milk

6 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
5 1/2 tsp sugar (eeps, I just saw: the recipe says 5 1/2 TABLEspoon sugar!)
1 egg

The ingredients above differ a bit from the recipe on that link because I didn't strictly stick to it. For example, I used active dry yeast instead of instant yeast. So follow my recipe at your peril.

Here's how I proofed the yeast:

I warmed the milk up in a cup and divided it into two. I dissolved the yeast in one and dissolved all the sugar in the other portion. Then I combined the two and let it be. After about 5 minutes, a layer of foam covered the top of the milk. I used only half of the milk to dissolve the yeast because they are mule-headed bitches. It takes a bit of patience to get it all to dissolve. The yeast then feeds on the sugar in the milk and starts producing the bubbles of carbon dioxide.

Sieve together the flour and salt and mix the egg in.

Add the milk and start kneading it until it forms a slightly sticky ball of dough. I wanted to keep my dough a little sticky so I added some water afterwards. Don't knead too hard, all it needs is a bit of love.

Cover the bowl and leave the dough in a warm place (such as inside an oven --but make sure it's turned off!) for about an hour. It should've doubled in size. I started with that ball of dough above, and by the time it was almost 45 minutes, the dough was touching the cover. The instructions said to butter the bowl you leave it in, but I had been kneading in that buttered bowl so I don't think much of that butter remained by then.

Next, you punch the dough.

It makes a little, muted whoop sound and it deflates as you push on it. Don't punch too hard, just push on the dough firmly. The general idea is, you can now use the dough in whatever you want, to make whatever shapes and rolls. Then you again leave it to rise for about 30-40 minutes before popping it into the oven. So this is where the interesting part comes.

Divide the punched dough into two. I have two fillings for each of these two halves.

*drumroll*

Bread #1: Garlic Herb Bread Twists (courtesy: The Purple Foodie)

A good sprinkling of dried herbs that come in little plastic bottles and you use in pasta

1 sachet oregano from any pizza company

2 tbsp sliced olives chopped up into teeny bits

Salt and pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

3 garlic cloves chopped up nicely

As much of Mozarella cheese as you'd like

Preheat oven at 200 degree Celsius.

In a pan, heat the olive oil and stir in the garlic, olives, salt, pepper, oregano and dry herbs until the oil begins to sizzle. Turn off the heat immediately.

Flatten the portion of punched dough into a rough rectangle with a rolling pin. Using a spatula, slather the herby galicky oil all over the surface of the dough. Then grate some cheese over it.

Fold the long edges of the rectangle towards each other so that they meet in the middle. Slice it width wise and twist each length.

Take any oil that remains and spread it over the top once.

Then you can pop it into the oven until it turns golden-brown in colour and develops a crust on top.

Bread #2: Onion Pull-Apart Rolls (Courtesy: marthastewart.com)

Salt

4 tbsp butter + 1 tbsp melted butter

2 onions (but you probably need a lot more. I'd suggest about 5 onions)

1 tbsp olives

A pinch of grated nutmeg

A pinch of grated cinnamon

First you need to caramelize the onions. That means, you melt 4 tbsp of butter in a pan and fry the onions in them until they turn golden-brown. On the site, it says it should take you about 30 minutes. Add the nutmeg, olives, cinnamon and salt. Cook for 5 minutes, then turn off the heat.

Butter the pan in which you'll be baking.

Take the punched dough and flatten it with a rolling pin. It should be a rough rectangle. Spread some melted butter all over the surface. Add the caramelized onions and roll it up into one tight roll.

Preheat the oven to 190 degree Celsius.

Slice off pinwheels and sit them in the buttered pan for about 20 minutes. Leave space between them for them to expand.

When the dough rises, you will have a pan full of fat, squat rolls sitting snug and cozily. Put it in the oven until the top turns slightly brown and becomes crusty in places.

I wasn't sure if it was done when I took it out (it was only slightly golden) so I turned it over.

Look, beautifully browned and crusty!

And it had a nice bread-y texture too. I doubt much can be seen in the photo. I took these pics with my crappy phone camera because my much beloved is khao-ing some bhav after that post I wrote on it.

The fruits of my toil. They tasted great btw. But I didn't much fancy the smell that yeast gives off once it starts fermenting. It's tolerable, but I'd like to do without it. Now I understand what Purple Foodie meant when she said instant yeast isn't as stinky as active dry.

I loved that part of bread-baking where the dough increases in size :D

Then I get to punch its daylights out!

The Love Of My Life

2011-12-27T13:28:00.001+05:30

I lost my camera yesterday.

Playing with a Galaxy Note had me so caught up in it, that I absentmindedly left the brown paper bag that I was holding (with my camera in it) on the counter and walked away.

Now here's the thing about my camera: it's bloody good.
I've never, ever seen a better digital camera than the one I own. Perhaps it's familiarity, that I know just which settings to tweak for that desired hue, focus and exposure. Perhaps it's the big lens that makes the photos come out so good (someone suggested that as a possible reason). Perhaps it's not the camera but the photographer*.

Over time, I have developed a steadier hand too, accustomed to the weight of my camera, that allows me to take far clearer photos in low light conditions than other people can take with their cameras, or even what they can take with mine.

With my camera gone, I had only my phone as a photo-taking device and its crappiness disgusted me. It worked well only in sunshine, there was no flash (not that I ever use flash, even in my camera), it cannot take macros and I just cannot have that kind of control over it that I have over my camera.
Though that article tells you that the camera does not matter, I believe that it does, to a certain extent. A photo-taking device must at least be able to Focus on objects!

The happy ending of the story is that after a few shed tears, nearly an hour of 'I hate this day, everything sucks' and walking around and around refusing to come to terms with the fact that my camera could actually be lost, I found it**.

This camera, a 4-year-old, Rs. 9000 Samsung S85, with none of the flashy features that you find nowadays in most digital cameras, not even slim enough to fit into my pocket, with a frustratingly long 5-second flash recharge time and a little on the heavier side, is the love of my life for taking such good photos for such a long time, occupying hours of my time while I experimented with it, capturing so many embarrassing photos and memories and earning me so much appreciation for some of the things I clicked with it.

I leave you with a photo I took with it yesterday.

* that's something my dad used to say whenever people marveled over his photos and asked him about the camera he used. This was before he bought his dSLR, and he used a Nikon film camera.
** we asked at the Samsung Galaxy Note stall. They said they hadn't seen any bag of that description. But little did they know that during their lunch break, I had lost that bag and the guy standing in for them had kept it safely inside. Hah. I found it. Sweet, sweet recovery.

Tis The Season For Warm Cakes

2011-12-24T20:21:00.001+05:30

You know what that is? It's a fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate cake, extra moist and extra gooey.

It's not a very good photo, but you take my word for it (you have no other option at the moment xD) that it is indeed a very good cake!

I was a little worried that a cake without baking soda/powder will not rise, so I went ahead and added a bit (about 1/2-3/4 teaspoon) and I see no reason to regret it so far. I also had to increase the time to 25 minutes. This might differ from oven to oven, so bake for the 13 minutes time that's given in the recipe and add on a few minutes as needed.

The cake is beautiful! (I'm eating it as I write)
It's just the right amount of salty, sweet and bitter chocolate goodness. Sigh.

I think I'm in chocolate heaven.

Die, child, DIE

2011-12-11T20:35:00.001+05:30

Or, as our professor said - "The parent can wait until the child has finished the task. The child comes back to the parent and says that it is done. Then, the parent kills the child."*

My last post was written in a moment of sheer frustration. Don't children get it when someone just does Not want to play with them or listen to their crap?
That said, now that my cousin has finally left, I Shall miss coming home to her and her little plans of curling up with me and watching The Big Bang Theory. It is cute when they look forward to their little time with you so much that they actually Plan it. :')

*Footnote - We did this in one of our courses last semester.

2011-12-07T22:18:00.001+05:30

Little kids are annoying.

New Desktop!

2011-11-21T16:34:00.001+05:30

I came across a tutorial for Rainmeter and well, gave in to the temptation and created that.

What did I use?

1. Wallpaper from deviantart.

2. A skin called Omnimo 4.1.

3. And a few hours of time that could otherwise have been utilised studying for the end semester exams. Gah.

Still, I have a very pretty desktop now.

It might make me use Windows more now.

The National Museum

2011-11-16T19:51:00.001+05:30

Molar and I went to the Harappa and Mohenjodaro Civilization Section and we found that nearly 5000 years ago -

Lions humped elephants (to be honest, that wasn't in the same section)

Cattle skateboarded

They had invented washers

They must have eaten a lot of meat, because there were so many toothpicks

They liked to play with lizard/rat poop

They used Enormous butt plugs

They had dildoes of various shapes and sizes

They used to carry chickens in their arms

They could make Really Tiny statues (the dog's as long as half my finger)

The museum also had a half-preserved woman, but after looking at it a few times, I started feeling really creeped out, so I didn't take a photo. Apart from that, we had a lot of fun.

I Went Somewhere Pretty

2011-11-16T19:35:00.001+05:30

Where I found...

Meandering paths and roads

Stairs that led to wooden gates sheltered by green overhangs

Little green bugs on large yellow and white flowers

Walls covered almost entirely with ivy

Churches inside schools

More ivy

Extremely colourful switches against pink walls

Leafless tress and pretty blue skies

Glass paintings in churches where the Sunday Mass was conducted in Hindi

Lazy stray dogs sleeping all day

All in all, it was a very nice weekend.

2011-11-16T18:32:00.001+05:30

A few days back, I heard rickshaw drivers outside the metro station call out to exiting kids with a "NSIT-IIIT!"*.

Finally, my college has made a name for itself.

*Those unfamiliar with rickshaw drivers: they were calling out possible destinations for the kids, places where they might possible want to go, and thus, places where the drivers will take them.
Those unfamiliar with my college: It's operating out of a transit campus that belongs to NSIT. Technically, if you just said you had to go to NSIT, that would be enough for the drivers cuz it's the same thing. NSIT's campus is IIIT's campus. But no, they said "NSIT-IIIT"! You realise the prestige that bestows on IIIT-Delhi? It means it has a separate identity (as a location) of its own!

It's a big deal, I swear.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

2011-11-02T20:27:00.000+05:30

A few weeks back I made red velvet cupcakes. The recipe's the same as earlier (yes, quantity and all. Just one minor difference - it took about 30minutes for the cupcakes to be done). Had a go at a good vanilla buttercream frosting this time.

Turned out pretty well, not as huge a disaster as last time (I am talking about the frosting, only), so everybody was happy, most of all me.

In fact, now I've given up baking cakes for the time being because the little frosted cupcakes seem so much more appealing (to me) :D

I shall leave you with a few photos.

2011-10-14T12:15:00.002+05:30

I don't like this.

Underwear Latency

2011-09-30T21:42:00.000+05:30

Underwear latency is the least number of pairs of underwear you require such that you never run out of underwear, given that you must change your underwear everyday, and your clothes get washed after every x days.

Basic Underwear latency = x + 1 (for the day that your clothes get washed)

Underwear Latency, given that you need an extra pair every n days =
if x > n : x + 1 + floor function of (x/n)
if n > x : x + 1 + floor function of (n/x)

Dear TRAI

2011-09-27T22:08:00.001+05:30

What is this that I hear? Only 100 text messages can now be sent per SIM, per day?
Why are you doing this to us, TRAI? I know you want to put an end to those pesky telemarketing messages urging me to buy devices guaranteed to make me lose 3 kilos in a week and gain 4 inches in one month. I know you despise those messages as much as me, that ask me to rush now and book flats at the latest apartment complex. I know you would like to rid me of those annoying advertisements about e-cigarettes and second-hand P4 PC's. But if this is the cost, I rather put up with a few of those messages everyday than not be able to message without keeping a track of how many messages I've sent, limited only by my message pack's expiry date, and nothing else.

The most retarded thing about this ban is that you've arrived at the limit of 100, by doing some survey from which you concluded that the average phone user has 100 contacts.

Were you ever a teenager? Were you ever a teenager in an age when phones were aplenty and messages were very, very cheap? Because despite what you might think, most of us do not send one message a day to each of our averagely-numbered contacts. No. We message a select group of friends FREQUENTLY. The group size is irrelevant when imposing a limit on the number of messages to be sent. The existing limit of 160 characters per message means that sometimes, our messages turn into 3-4 page long rants. Even if I have just 5 friends who I message say, 15 times a day, with a few of those messages being 2-page long, I cross 100.

Among the other arguments being put forward against this ban, there is this one - What if the 101st message is an emergency message?
And what if I don't want to spend Rs. 0.60 for a minute of talktime, because buying a message pack at Rs. 89 for 20,000 messages (rough estimate of the Vodafone package) is so much cheaper? I can carry out lengthy discussions through messages, which I couldn't have afforded to do if it required me to make a phone call every time.
And what if the telemarketing companies, the ones whose messages you are seeking to curb, buy many SIMs? Their problem gets solved na, but I cannot do that. I still have just one SIM, and only 100 messages that I can send in a day.

In all honesty, this last month, I sent an average of a little more than 100 messages per day only. But that means that on some days I exceeded the limit, and on a few days, I sent less than 100. A few months back though, I sent about 5000 messages in one month.
Do you still think 100 messages is that a suitable a number? I bet you're one of those people who don't know what T9 is and send messages only on festivals and other occasions suchlike. Gah. How do we expect you to understand the pain of a person who prefers to message people than call them?

Regards
Espèra

Of Windows 8 And Placements

2011-09-17T16:46:00.000+05:30

When the videos first came out, Windows 8 seemed like a desperate attempt at making a uniform OS for both PC's and tablets.
After a couple of people installed it on their laptops and I had a look for myself, I realized that I still think the same. Blargh. You suck, Windows 8.

Talking about placements now.
The whole of Facebook's Newsfeed is a-buzz with the news that 5 of our seniors got placed by a Japanese software development (?) firm, in Japan, with an annual package of Rs. 33 lakhs. Whoop-de-doo. But is Rs. 33 lakhs a good starting salary for a country like Japan?
Nevertheless, congratulations, y'all who got selected. :)
One of those Japanese guys was awfully cute. You're lucky you get to work with him!

Then there is Microsoft of course. It recently had a test/interview/GD for placement as well as internships. I don't know if the results are out yet. But everything sounds rather promising. Especially the rumours about Bell Labs.

Not very bad, for first-time placements, are these?

Facebook is becoming boring.
I need to get a life.
I need to write more.
Also, dear Java, I am not very fond of you. You suck a lot.

The Treasure Hunt archives

2011-09-11T13:12:00.002+05:30

Let me take you through the entire Treasure Hunt, okay? Okay.

Stage 1 - Crossword

Once you solve it, the light gray (blue in the file) boxes spell out your next location. You are given an option at this stage.

Stage 2 - Options

(Ignore the fact that the clue is written over and over again.)
You get to choose what you want to do.

If you choose 1, then depending on whether you are an even-numbered team or an odd-numbered team, you get this -

Stage 2, Option 1, Set 1
Stage 2, Option 1, Set 2

But in case you chose option 2, then you would be presented this -

Stage 2, Option 2, Set 1
Stage 2, Option 2, Set 2

Some teams just looked up a product online and photographed themselves with it. It was a waste of their time. We made them run out and get a photo with the real deal.

After that was taken care of, their next task was to write a little program. In hindsight, I feel we shouldn't have had that task. To have to suddenly sit and think calmly after all that running around produces a break in the momentum.

Stage 3 - Coding

Anyhow, it was mostly algorithm-intensive, rather than coding-intensive. So it would take you at most 20 minutes to complete it. Get it checked, get the next task -

Stage 4

If any of you were paying any attention, then you might have noticed that a little number accompanied all the clues. This clue was supposed to have one too - 101. A little mistake on our part. Apologies please to be accepted.

Stage 5 - Final Clue

Had you actually taken part, you would've received a photocopy of a hand-drawn map of the campus. At ten locations, there would've been X's marked. Upon visiting those locations, you would've found that at 5 of those locations, there were people standing with a sheet with a single letter. Those letters spelled out 'ASCII'. All you had to do was convert the numbers (on the clues) from ASCII to English letters and you'd have gotten a single word - Cafe. Proceed to Nescafe (marked on the map), and I would've been there, ready to take down your time and tell you if you had won.

Now tell me if that wasn't just the best treasure hunt ever?

The Best Treasure Hunt Ever.

2011-09-04T05:36:00.003+05:30

When I began to get more involved in my event, and the more OC-like work reduced, I would sometimes feel a little bit excluded from all that was happening. I would no longer be among the first ones to know when we got a new sponsor, and no longer be sitting there taking decisions on where to put up the stalls.

But now and again, some things would catch my attention, those little tiny details that make up a fest, and I would realize that that particular little detail was my idea. Names of events(some good, some pathetic), the way the certificates bear the fest's name, appropriate care that similar events do not overlap, inclusion of the college band's performance, introduction of a new kind of event - they are all little scattered things that constitute the giant two-day madness. The knowledge that the first ever technical festival of our institute bears little little marks and contains tiny tiny contributions made by me, that comforts me. The memory of those long meetings in the conference room, voting over events to include, deciding names for them, budgeting, listing potential sponsors, electing members of the other committees, reading the various drafts of the marketing brochure over and over and over again, looking out for the tiniest typos, they assure me that I did indeed have some part to play being in the Organizing Committee of the biggest event ever hosted by us.

Today was day one of the fest. But it was since last evening that it all really felt like one. There were tents in the parking lot, an entire classroom filled with desktops and wires and mouses, long queues of volunteers lining up to collect their fest tshirts, and a low rumbling in my stomach that reminded me that I had barely eaten anything all day.

The Best Treasure Hunt Ever (henceforth abbreviated to TBTHE) was slated to start at 4pm. Me and KK were the event heads. We had gathered all our volunteers by 11am and were discussing strategies for reduced waiting times for teams and enhanced crowd control. Pre-registrations had neared 90 and we were preparing ourselves for a century. KK and the volunteers proved themselves extremely useful at this stage - KK, by drawing on his experiences of treasure hunts during his one-year at BITS Pilani and the volunteers, by picking out loopholes and suggesting improvements in our strategies.

There was one thing that I have learned from participating in many events, that is very important for leaving a good impression on participants - good management goes a long way in easing woes for participants. Good management includes - being prepared for the worst, always having an exit strategy, starting on time and good quality event questions.

Last evening, we had sent out messages to all our pre-registered participants, telling everyone that we will start registrations by 3 and the event will start by 4. While I doubted anyone would actually turn up at 3, given everyone's experience with events starting late, I wanted to be prepared by 3 at any cost. And guess what? At exactly 3 pm, we started getting registrations.

Stage one was a crossword. Imagine this scene - a bit of a wind whooshing about, lovely pleasant weather at 4pm, nearly 200 people sitting in groups of threes and fours all around the parking lot, wherever they found space to rest their asses, heads bent over a crossword. 50 more had rushed up to the labs because they were allowed to use Internet. It was so incredibly peaceful, that for nearly half an hour we were fooled into taking it easy. Then suddenly when 40 minutes had passed, everyone had suddenly solved the crossword. For an hour, it was the craziest scene you had ever seen. People were madly rushing to the stall, demanding their next clue, demanding that their answers be checked, demanding that we tell them what they are supposed to understand from the clue in their hands, like their life depended upon it. In hindsight, it is rather amusing, knowing that the cause of their anguish and frustration was me and KK.

TBTHE had started at 4.15pm exactly and it ended at 6.10pm. The turnout was huge. For no other event had we received so much participation (in the first day) except perhaps in gaming. Crowd control had caused a bit of a problem, and many teams suffered due to bottlenecks. But we had tried to keep the standard of the questions reasonably high, we had stuck to our timings like Fevicol (except for starting at 4.15 instead of at 4), and we had thought of things that would help us manage the crowd (such as a time limit on the Crossword, so all teams do not get past the first stage). But the best part of all was that everybody enjoyed it - participants did (or so they had me believe), volunteers did (though me, KK and they were majorly swamped for almost an hour) and even the others from the OC team, who had come to watch TBTHE unfold, did. Much hi-fiving, congratulating, hugging and broadly smiling ensued after the event ended.

Please Spare Me The Anti-Corruption Bullshit.

2011-08-18T23:57:00.008+05:30

As each day goes by, another new status on Facebook, another message, another friend asking if we should go support the Jan Lokpal Bill (henceforth abbreviated as JLB) - it is finally getting to me.

It is disconcerting to see people around me blindly echoing the chants of "Are you against corruption? I am!", it is disconcerting to see everyone getting swept up in the anti-corruption tide and not using their mental faculties to sit for a moment and think about the implications of the JLB.

I have had a few debates with supporters of Anna Hazare and JLB and their best argument for supporting it is - Look at the work that Anna Hazare has done so far; we need to trust someone, why not him?

Let me tell you something about human integrity : it has a price.

There is no human being on earth who cannot be bought. No one. Give someone a good enough incentive, and they will jump aboard the ship of evilness in under a second. That is called the survival instinct. You have evolved into the upright, hairless, brainy human being that you are because you only did what is advantageous, not always what is right.

Tell me this - it is the final exam, and your friend needs a certain number of marks or else he will fail the course. He asks you to show him your answers. He is your good friend, he has promised to work hard and pass the other subjects on his own and you know that he will be very sour indeed, if you didn't show him your answers. Will you show him your answers?

If you answered yes, then I just quoted you your price.

Many of us don't think "helping" friends pass courses like this is a big deal. But don't tell me that what you are doing is fair to the other about-to-fail students who were unfortunate enough to not be your friends.

In a similar vein, tell me if you have ever paid a bribe to a traffic police officer.

Isn't that corruption?

Aren't you corrupt yourself?

Look, let us be clear about one thing - I am as against corruption as you are. I don't want my tax money decorating a fat politician's abodes. But at the same time, I do not think the JLB is an effective solution.

JLB intends to set up a committee that will investigate cases of corruption in the government, and the members of the committee will be chosen (freely and fairly and transparently) by the people (or some such thing).

You know something very interesting about the Indian government? It is also elected by the people, via a process that is free, fair and transparent. And look at the kinds of people we have elected! Goodness, do you really trust your judgement that much to elect others to look into your mistakes? I honestly don't. What you elected once, became corrupt. There is no guarantee that what you elect the second time round, will not become corrupt.

But perhaps the trouble is that we trust our judgement far too much. We just don't trust the judgement of the other people who voted in the corrupt politicians, who were swayed by caste and religion politics. Why, we didn't even vote because none of the candidates were worth it! But this time we will vote, we will vote in strong, pious men and women into the committee who will look into the mistakes of those other people.

Please, please, as free-thinking, rational human beings, tell me, is this what I am saying not a logically drawn conclusion? Or am I wrong? Will the committee really be corruption free themselves? Will they not abuse the power they hold over the entire government? Will it somehow, magically, eradicate corruption from India? Is it not somehow possible that we, as citizens really vote in useful politicians, instead of getting swayed by their gifts and promises?

And most importantly, is Anna Hazare really the next Gandhi? Gandhi led hunger strikes against the British government, Hazare is leading strikes against our own government, that we have voted for.

2011-08-14T16:13:00.002+05:30

I was sorting out my secret drawer, chronologically arranging letters and putting stars on the ones that I would read again and again, when I found a diary that I had made myself.

It had accounts of events that had happened to me, some rough blog posts, a few stories, and clippings and letters. I noticed that I used to write a lot better in 2008 than I write now, in 2011. And my blog posts were less of accounts of my day, and more about current affairs and interesting events. I do not find myself qualified to write about current affairs anymore, since I have given up on reading newspapers. So nowadays, I find myself writing about things that are not at all of any interest to anyone. Not even me. Or maybe only me and the people that the posts are about. :/

Ever since I have entered college, I have stopped reading books. In fact, I don't even watch tv anymore. I don't write either. Once in a while, I read things online, that are unrelated to course work, but that too is half-heartedly because I don't like reading things on a laptop screen. Either I watch a movie, or waste my time online. Sob. My attention span has also shortened considerably. I cannot concentrate on anything for too long. Even while writing this blog post, I switch windows to check if the people I am chatting with have replied, or if there is a new email in my various inboxes, or if Facebook has sent me a notification.

Blargh. I hate this. I hate my phone. I feel like throwing it at people. I hate people too. They get mad at me if I haven't called them back after their missed calls or if I haven't checked my msg inbox and replied to them. I hate a lot of people.

Esya'11 - It is Going To Be Epic

2011-08-10T23:28:00.004+05:30

Do a quick Google search for "esya iiitd".

The topmost result is of course the website for Esya. But scroll down a bit. Above a rather irrelevant result ("IIT Delhi - Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi"), there is my blog. Did you see it? There it is. On the front page of Google. And you just found it using my college name and the name of my tech fest.

We are all involved in heavily publicising about Esya. We want participants, we won't pretend we don't. And we want good participants.

Last night, when all of us started a massive Facebook publicity stunt, we inundated everyone's feeds with posts/statuses about Esya. We linked the Facebook page, we linked the website, we changed our display pictures to the Esya logo, we commented and we liked. It got viral extremely fast and Facebook was afraid that we had unleashed spam and blocked the URLs for a bit. Then we coaxed them into unblocking it and today again, we were off.

Event heads, event coordinators created individual pages for the events and once again, news of who is attending what filled the feeds. More status changes came, and more people changed their DP's. It was amazing to be there, watching this unravel in front of your eyes, watching the enthusiasm and the spirit that everyone displayed! It is overwhelming, to see everyone take part so wholeheartedly, to read everyone's enthusiastic statuses. It gives you a high - you look forward eagerly to something approaching, something huge and awesome. It is everywhere! Emails are all about the fest, people start chats to remind you to get these things done in time (about events that you are organizing), statuses even on the IIITD email chat are all about Esya, and in labs and canteens you see groups of people seriously discussing sponsorship, the website design, publicity, event management, etc.

It gives me a strange kind of pride to be in this college.

Everybody is really looking forward to the first tech fest and there are but only 22 days left. Be there - it is going to be epic.

It Is Gonna Be Epic

2011-08-09T21:16:00.004+05:30

Btw, Molar pointed out to me that I have only written 468 posts. So I have a lot to countdown to now. And he also said that at my current rate, it will take me until the end of 2012 to get to 500. In order to prove him wrong, I am going to blog more often now.

Also, just to be clear, my Blogger Dashboard claimed that there are 490+ posts, I suppose it must have been counting drafts too.

Right.

Now back to the title of the blog post.

Everybody, I present to you, the magnificent, the amazing, the absofuckinglutely leet - Esya 2011.

What is it? It is the first ever tech fest in IIIT Delhi. It will be the biggest event that we have organized, till date. Which does not seem like a big thing, but then you realise that this institute is just 3 years old.

What is so great about the fest apart from being the one to create history?

First of all, we plan to create quality standards that will remain for a long time to come. We want the name, Esya, to be synonymous with amazing quality management and events. And in keeping with the focus on research in here, we want to encourage innovation and creativity, in as many different fields of IT as possible. Many of us are involved in the execution and planning of this fest, and it is very satisfying to see the efforts bear fruit.

What in the world does the name mean??

Esya is Sanskrit for "exploration". I have not cross-checked it with someone who actually knows Sanskrit. But that is the meaning that I could find after an extensive Google.

The tagline we chose therefore is - Exploring Infinity And Beyond. And as an unofficial tagline, my vote goes to "It is gonna be epic."

Anyway, you can check out more about this tech fest at this site.

The Countdown Begins

2011-08-07T23:11:00.004+05:30

The countdown towards my 500th post, that is.

It seems odd that I have barely written 500 posts in the last 6 years of my blog's existence. It would seem that I have written more, I am not a girl of few words. But no. A little less than 500 it is.

In other news, my college website features photographs taken by me!

Here, take a look. It's only the four on this page. The rest of the photos on the site are not by me.

But it's so cool. My photographs represent our college and campus lives. Sweet.

I am fast running out of things to write about. I just realised the many, many responsibilities that I am taking on this year. Blargh.

I had an extra weird dream today. About halfway through the dream, I am back, lying on my bed, and a shadow is kneeling beside me (since my bed is very low), and brushing hair off my forehead. I get up to kiss him on the cheek for some odd reason, and as I get closer, I notice that it's a she and she's got red and black hair like me. And she is wearing clothes like me and her build is like mine too. I kiss her anyway, and she says something to me, in Hindi - her voice is so unlike mine. And just then, my friend called me. So now I have no idea who she was, why I kissed her, or why she looked like me, but didn't sound like me. :/

It was a little cool.

Of Haircuts and Flirting

2011-08-03T21:40:00.004+05:30

On Sunday I went and got my hair chopped short. Chin length, with red streaks. I wanted purple, but the hairdresser said the purple is very dark and not very visible. So he gave me red. And it's a nice deep shade of red.

People keep asking me what kind of red it is. Maroon, dark red, all sorts of shades are flung at me. I have no clue. The hairdresser suggested red, I did red.

Having posted a status on Facebook about my "fawesome" haircut, when I stepped into class on Monday, I got so many reactions. They were all just different combinations of amazement and appreciation. And everybody unanimously agreed that short hair suited me, though a few dear friends decided that it makes me look like I'm in class 9th now (from my earlier class 10th look).

Someone even said I looked hot in this hairstyle. Yes, hot. And all sorts of other nice things. Such as "really really cute" and how it "totally suits me". Koo said I look like Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction (and that I have been behaving like her too).

That's another thing.

I haven't seen Pulp Fiction yet, so I don't know how Mia Wallace behaves. But I have been flirting with people a lot. Girls, boys, whoever. It is fun. I wonder why I never did that earlier. Telling people that my pendant (in the shape of a key) is the key to my heart, darling and "Ey ladke/ladki! Chalega/chalegi kya?"-ing.

College has restarted and I am having a lot of funnn. Even though I have homework and a quiz and the first week's not yet over.

Also, we have fourth-year seniors! Sob. We never had fourth-year seniors before. And they will be the first ever batch to pass out. Those faces that we were so familiar with, for one whole year, they will soon not be there! I am going to miss them a lot.
Somehow being in a tiny college makes you closer to everyone so much more. And it is a little heart-breaking to think that those faces that we saw everyday, and everywhere, and those faces that we identified so much with, they will not be there any more. So many people who in a way constituted college for us! And for that reason, I don't like the new batch even more. It is like they have come to replace the seniors. But that isn't something they will ever be able to do.
It is like they are changing the face of the college.

Sigh.
I'm gonna be so inconsolable when this year ends.

I Shall Just Hand Myself Over To You, Shall I?

2011-07-25T16:42:00.003+05:30

I got my UID done.

I couldn't, and still can't dispel this small feeling of panic somewhere in the pits of my stomach. I was handing over every detail of mine to the government.

Or to the man at the counter, who might be a secret Pakistani spy for all I know.

Now they have my iris scans, my fingerprints (of all ten fingers, no less), my photo, my address, my phone numbers, and bank account details too. They already have my passport details.

I didn't give them my email address, so hahaha, my online identity is still somewhat my own.

Sigh. Who am I kidding? *starts using Tor*

Some months back, the Security and Privacy research group conducted a group discussion where a woman came and asked us privacy related issues. She asked us what we felt about handing over every single personal detail to the government. And we all know how prone to hacking everything is nowadays. It is scary, but I try to ignore that feeling of panic.

P.S. Don't wear contact lenses when you go for the UID.

Of Baking and Musicals

2011-07-23T17:48:00.005+05:30

I baked a lot during these summer vacations. Nearly 37 hours worth of it.

The last thing I made - red velvet cookies, well I don't have photos of them. I intended to decorate them real pretty, make them pose for half an hour or until I got my perfect shot using this camera which really needs servicing now (or just get me a new camera, pretty please?). But I never got around to doing it.

The first day, I didn't find them all that velvety. A few days later, I did. Yum.

My friends thought they looked like hash cookies though. Because I had to use a generous amount of flour to make the dough un-wet. Turns out, it is supposed to be wet. Blah.

I also made soufflé one more time. This time, I beat the eggs quietly into submission and my soufflés stood tall and proud (though some amount of shrinkage was still visible).

Next on my list to try - lemon soufflé and meringue.

I put together all the photographs that I had taken into two very fine collages.

Eeps. I hope the text isn't too tiny to read.

Sweet memories. :')

Among other things, I wrote a song yesterday. I love eeet. And tempted as I am to write it down for you, the words are meaningless without the tune. So pliss to be patient until I record the song.

It's the third in a series of very insulting songs, so Molar suggested that we make a musical out of it. These three songs are all written by me (with help from Molar), but we also have a fourth song, for which we had a rap video envisioned. That one was Molar's brainchild. We will put all these four together and make a musical.

I am excited.

Week 8 : Lemon and Chocolate Cake

2011-07-11T20:36:00.005+05:30

To be honest, the lemon cake wasn't very lemony. So it actually turned out to be a slightly marbled vanilla and chocolate cake.

I had invited Molar to come over and bake stuff together. Two more friends turned up, but they were mostly there to eat and occasionally poke fun at Molar's baking skills.

The recipes used were - Lemon-drenched lemon cake, Awesome chocolate cake.

So what we did was, we made batter for both the cakes, made one lemon and chocolate cake, and two others - only lemon cake and only chocolate cake. Between the three of us and the vegetarian friend of mine who had turned up, the chocolate cake (which was eggless) was almost finished in a matter of minutes. The lemon cake survived enough for Molar to take some home and for my family to eat some. Molar said his mother and sister forbid him to touch any of the cake that he brought home for them. Not because it was poisoned, or due to weight issues, but because they wanted to eat it all. Yes, it was that good.

The slightly-marbled cake was then gifted to our friend whose birthday it was the next day.

Here are the liberties we took with the recipe -

1. To make the combined cake, we first put the chocolate cake batter and baked it for about 30 minutes. When the top was done, we added the lemon cake batter over it and this time we baked it until it was thoroughly done.

2. Instead of butter, I used ghee in both batters (is that a word? O.o)

3. The recipe for the lemon pound cake asked for 15 tablespoons of butter. The thought of adding so much ghee made me squeamish, so I just put in about 5 tablespoonfuls. It didn't turn out too bad. Like I said, people loved it.

4. I ended up adding nearly 3 teaspoons of vinegar and baking powder in the chocolate cake. That was definitely a mistake. Stick to two at most. Otherwise the vinegar's taste comes through in the cake.

I was curious to see if the cake would be red - due to the cocoa + vinegar combination which is a staple of red velvet cake. But somehow, no, I didn't see any redness.

Total time taken - (excluding the banter, the music, the pizzas, the pillow-fighting) 5 hrs.

Another DIY!

2011-07-10T16:08:00.003+05:30

I have this big box in which I dump things I don't need. Such as tiny bottles of perfume, broken bracelets, friendship bands and other things which I just don't wear.

Yesterday I decided to sort it out and maybe throw away the things I don't need.

Well, I happened to find a few chain-link bracelets. Now, ever since I made a pendant out of dried out glass paint (it was a disaster, let me tell you. The paint didn't harden completely and one day that I hung it up, I found a pool of glass paint at the bottom and a glass paint column instead of the pendant.), I had been looking for chains to put pendants in - preferably long chains.

See the many, many shiny stars?

I decided to remove the hanging charms from the bracelets and link them together. Two of the bracelets had charms that were either too many to remove or involved unchaining the entire bracelet, so I let them be. And tada*, I got two necklaces! :D

And they look so good together!

* What does 'tada' mean anyway? Oh wait, it's an onomatopoeic word for the sound of fanfare.

G+

2011-07-02T14:43:00.003+05:30

What I like about Google+ :

1. The UI is beautiful. A few things might be awkward to figure out for someone who is used to Facebook, such as how do you personally message a person? There is no concept of 'Wall'-ing.
The answer is - you post a message, then you select a person, to whom alone the message will be visible. Yes, it seems like a round-about way of doing things when you are used to Facebook. But honestly, every new social network comes with its own differences.

2. The focus seems to be on creating separate circles and posting content separately according to which of those circles will be interested in that content. This can also be done on Facebook, but somehow no one ever wanted to restrict access, because everyone was aiming for more Likes, more Comments. By restricting access, you would be reducing the number of Likes/Comments. Moreover, everyone just became too used to hitting Enter without having to think beforehand who gets to see the content.

So G+ seems more sophisticated than bombarding everyone with every insignificant piece of news about your life.

3. It is less cluttered than Facebook. That is partly due to only a few people being part of G+, and partly due to the lack of third-party apps/games. There's none of the groups/pages/fan pages confusion. Just circles.

4. It is less noisy too. No ads (yet). No poke alerts (I fail to see what was so entertaining about poking). No "Sponsored Stories".

5. Molar says the bug-reporting system is great and easy-t0-use. I haven't tried it myself, but his account makes me want to find bugs!

6. Gtalk within G+! And even after you've refreshed the page, the chat doesn't go away.

7. You get notifications even while you're in Gmail. You can check it right there and if it's a new comment on a thread, you can even reply to it right there too. Without having to open another tab for G+. You can even view videos inside that little pull-out.

The main thing I like about it is that it is clean and neat. We shall have to see how much of that it retains as it gets more and more populated. I hope it keeps the crowd out, those who are too used to Facebook to switch. *prays fervently*

That said, the +1 button is a shitty replacement for the Like button.

Week 7.5 : Caramel Chocolate Mousse

2011-06-26T23:01:00.004+05:30

And we have done week 7.5!

I have realized that when I have tasks scheduled, I actually achieve more, even if it seems like the day is packed. I have yet another research paper on my hands at the moment though - about Grimm's Conjecture (Check it out, it is an interesting result in number theory) and I haven't yet understood 20% of the paper.

The mousse-making was initiated by two things -

1. A recipe lying in the Bookmarks section of my browser

2. Looking at a photo of some mousse that my friends in Mumbai ate and were teasing everyone about.

I know that I had made mousse once earlier. But to be honest, it was complete jugaad (ice cream replacing cream and gelatin replacing the effort of whipping the ice cream). So I wanted to make a proper mousse and I wanted to make it different from the same old chocolate mousse. So I made caramel and chocolate mousse :D

Observant readers must have noticed the huge role chocolate plays in all my recipes. What can I say, chocolate is always good.

Suggested garnishing - Sprinkles (they suggested it themselves and initially I was reluctant, but then they made me relent) and chocolate curls.

Right now, as I taste my own creation, I can't help but feel satisfied that it turned out so good! The first taste that hits you is of dark chocolate, and then you can taste the caramel in the after-taste. And the consistency is nice and soft, but firm enough to bite into.

Also, mousse isn't technically baking. But what the hell, it's delicious.

My first bowl of creamy caramel! *sniff*

And I made caramel for the first time in my life! The recipe has photos with every step, so you can see for yourself if you're doing it correctly. I was infatuated with the caramel that I'd made and it took me some minutes of admiring it before I moved onto the tedious task of whipping cream.

Softly peaky cream and chocolate + caramel whirls.

Total time taken - 3 hours

Week 7 : Leftover Chocolate Frosting Pop Tarts

2011-06-25T15:53:00.004+05:30

We have gone from week 5 to week 7, because I didn't do anything last week. Partially due to laziness and partially due to being busy with all kinds of things. However, I cannot recall what kept me so busy. I know what kept me so busy this week though. The most eventful of them was Tuesday, when it was summer solstice up here in the North Hemisphere.

We went to Jantar Mantar, performed a heavily improvised street play (because we didn't have time to rehearse), wore kurtas and jeans when the weather called for shorts and loose airy sleeveless clothes and blew on a vuvuzela until everyone got frustrated with us.

Fun times.

Anyway. So I have had some chocolate frosting left over from the cake that I made on 10th June. I figured that since it's chocolate and butter and I'm storing it in the fridge anyway, it wouldn't spoil. And it didn't spoil. Which is why I was not in a hurry to use it up. But I was looking for a recipe where I could use it. And I found this one - Nutella Pop Tarts.

Pictured : Only one, because I ate the pop tarts before I could take a photo.

It looked easy-peasy and yummy. And it was! A few things though :

1. Use powdered sugar when you make the pie dough. I didn't. I knew I should have. Forgive me readers, but I was in a bit of a hurry. And powdered sugar means either you buy it, or you powder it. I don't have powdered sugar lying around, so I have to powder it. But, as I said, I was lazy, in a hurry, etc etc.

2. I used the leftover chocolate frosting instead of Nutella. Because the whole purpose was to use up the frosting. I'd like to try it with Nutella once and taste the difference.

3. I was a bit doubtful about the egg wash. I've never tried it and I didn't want an omelette on my pop tarts. Here's the thing - Don't hesitate! You get a nice golden glaze, no omelette. And it looks shiiiiny.

4. I think mine might have been a little under-done (even though I baked it for nearly 30 minutes). That, or the dough wasn't made well.

5. Make sure you seal the edges well or the chocolate leaks.

But in the end, it was edible, it is yummy, it has chocolate and it is sweet.

Total time taken - 3 hours (the whole refrigerating between each step is a killer when you are in a hurry)

Dreams

2011-06-21T23:14:00.001+05:30

It all started with coming across my best friend's blog and reading it again. I didn't read the entire thing, but now I miss her and her vivid dreams terrify me.

It's not just her dreams though. There were a couple more posts that made me feel slightly sick.

I always knew about her dreams and some of them were quite horrific when she told me about them. But I forgot about her dreams. And now I read of them again.

*shudder*

The difference between her vivid dreams and my vivid dreams is that whereas both of our dreams have an insane amount of violence, in my dreams, I mostly deal with the violence matter-of-factedly. Friend with a foot missing, dreams of running away from someone, being pursued, teacher getting kidnapped, friend getting shot in the head, an encounter with men with guns and knives.

Sometimes they aren't even dreams. They are just thoughts that I can't get rid of.

And sometimes the feelings from the dreams spill out into reality. I remember this one morning when I woke up crying and I was in my hostel room. I felt so alone. I wanted a hug. I wanted mommy. But there was no one there. There was only dawn breaking outside and the shrill cries of peacocks and a closed door and the absence of Roomie in the bed next to me.

We Are Going to do an Instructable

2011-06-14T19:36:00.004+05:30

I am reusing things that didn't have any use left in them, to make stuff that have a few different uses. A fridge magnet, a fancy name plate, a badge to put on your bag maybe.

I made a few of them for my friends a year and a half ago. Then I just got bored.

Until today!

I rediscovered glass paints and set down to making one of these. And since I took the photos after I had finished, you won't find any in-process photos, but with a moderate amount of gray matter, you can figure out what to do. Plus I will tell you, of course.

First you need badges like these. Not necessarily Exun badges, but these ones have a special advantage.

These badges have plastic discs behind them which can easily come apart.

Then you must take the disk off and remove the paper from the front of the badge. You should now have in your hand, a plain metal disc.

Next you will want a bottle of glass paint. You can use a single colour, or two colours that go well together, like light blue and dark blue or red and orange.

You will also need a paintbrush.

You can buy the glass paint sets, but I prefer loose bottles because these ones have thinner paint and the sets have thick paint that doesn't flow down. But the disadvantage with the paint set is that if you are using two colours, they will not mix well together and you will not be able to use a brush without leaving stroke marks.

You will want to cover the disc using the paint now. I use glass paint instead of water or oil because glass paint is translucent and allows the metallicness to show through the paint. It looks good.

Next you need one of these. If you buy the glass paint set, they include a tube in the box. But if you buy loose bottles like I do, you will have to buy a tube separately.

The Fine Liner is used to draw. You can draw shapes and then fill in the glass paint in (just like you would with your drawings when you were five), or you can use it to draw on the paint background.

I made this.

You can make other patterns, or just write something on it. It could be a fancy name badge too.

Now you can put a magnet on this if you want.

Then you can use it to stick to other metallic surfaces, such as the fridge maybe.

Or you can put the plastic disc back (use glue if you need to), and use it as a badge.

Week 5 : Chocolate Fudge Cake

2011-06-11T23:41:00.005+05:30

Ever since I started baking, I have had two very big realizations -
1. The best part of baking is feeding other people.
2. Sprinkles make everything crunchy and beautiful.

You see, once I am done with the baking, all I want to do is admire what has been produced. Especially if there's sprinkles on top. And just as much as I love it, I want others to love it too. There is a theory which says that everyone wants their loved ones to love each other. I read that somewhere.
That theory does not really apply here since I would want even my hated ones to love what I make. I am not sure why I mentioned the theory in the first place.
But anyway, the point is, I take more delight in feeding others than feeding myself. So far, no one has been food poisoned and most people wish they could have second helpings. A few have been inspired and one has struck a deal with me (he feeds me when he does his Italian cooking course, I feed him now).

Lately, not having had anyone to feed, I looked up people's birthdays and badgered them into letting me bake a cake for them. Just done that with two people actually. One ignored my offer, one's birthday was today.

(I will finish with the second part here, inside brackets, where it will be snug and warm - Sprinkles make everything beautiful. I have used them on cakes, cookies and have begun using them with ice cream too.)

Rainbow Dust

Today was TKOTK's birthday and I made Chocolate Fudge Cake for her.

I made the block-print gift tag too. :)

I won't post the recipe separately, as I barely made any changes to it. Just a couple of things -
1. I baked for about 1 hour 10 minutes or so. The cake was still a little underdone in the middle. I chose to let it stay that way, in order to preserve some moisture.
2. I took a sieve and some coffee and rubbed the coffee against the sieve, which sort of acted like a grater. I put this coffee over the final layer of frosting. It played two roles. It made the frosting seem even more chocolaty, and it muted the saltiness of the salty butter used for the buttercream frosting. This time, even though my my frosting still doesn't look like what is shown on Nigella's recipe, it was a lot better than the last time.

You can spy coffee grains on the surface if you look closely.

The batter that the recipe produces is enough to make two cakes. So I made one for home and one for TKOTK. Everyone loves it! :D
Within 15 hours of making the cake, there was only a third of it left. Now I will just keep admiring the remainder of my cake for a week or two.

See how happy she is with my cake?

Total time taken - 4.5 hours (which is not that much when you consider the buttercream and the fact that I had to make Two cakes!)

Week 4 : Chocolate Mousse

2011-06-05T23:34:00.004+05:30

I made a soufflé some time back (which sadly collapsed and I haven't tried to make any again) and this time, I thought I'd try to make a mousse! It was supposed to be eggless at the insistence of my vegetarian friend, so I used gelatin instead. But then I saw that the gelatin was non-vegetarian too, so he never got any of it.

It pained him a lot.

I ate gleefully.

Also, I have discovered this food blog which literally cheered me up one day, when I had posted on Facebook that I have a foul mood indeed. But whenever I would think of Joy, I would visualize Julie from the movie Julie and Julia. That would not do. Faces are important. So I went to the Facebook page for Joy the Baker and acquainted myself with her face. Now whenever I will think about her and read her blog, I will hopefully visualize the correct face.

Coming back to the eggless mousse.

I wanted to use this recipe. It looked nice and simple. No complicated ingredients (I don't like complicated ingredients; they are hard to find).

But there was no cream and I just had to make it that night.

Ingredients

One cup of vanilla ice cream

A little butter

Half a cup of dark chocolate

1 tsp gelatin

Method

1. The first thing you do is melt the chocolate with the butter, over a pan of boiling water. You should never melt chocolate directly over a flame because chocolate gets burnt.

2. Let the ice ream melt. Then whip it up well.

3. The ice cream is going to be cold and the chocolate is going to be hot, so you can wait till they are both at room temperature, or you can start adding the chocolate to the ice cream in teaspoons. With every addition, mix it up, really well so that the chocolate doesn't find time to solidify.

4. Melt the gelatin and add it to the mixture.

5. Refrigerate overnight.

I added the gelatin because I wasn't sure if using ice cream instead of regular cream was a wise idea and whether the mixture would hold without freezing. Maybe you could try without the gelatin and let me know! :)

The vanilla made it taste like chocolate ice cream, so that was a little disappointing. But the consistency of the mousse, all soft and creamy and firm was really, really good.

Total time taken - approximately 1 hour

A Ginormous Post About My College

2011-06-02T23:33:00.005+05:30

Readers of my blog would know - I do not usually mention details of my life on this blog. I use a pseudonym, I don’t mention my college/school name anywhere, my location, or even my age (at least, I try not to).*

I intend to make an exception in this blog post and talk about my college. But let us lay down a few ground rules** here -
1. There will be new readers swarming to my blog, looking for information about the relatively new, the relatively unheard of Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, or as everyone calls it, IIIT-D. My intention isn’t to attract new readers. I just want to provide a student’s perspective on this relatively unknown college because information promotes awareness and knowing more about IIIT-D is just going to help the applicants take a more informed decision when it comes to choosing their college.***

2. Just my blog alone isn’t good enough to make a decision of course. But any information helps, right? I learnt that when I was looking wildly through the World Wide Web, looking for a scrap of information about this college from a student’s perspective. I found this very helpful.

3. Don’t ask me about my name or roll number or CGPA. I don’t want to be waylaid by shrieking juniors proclaiming their love for me/my blog. Neither do I want to be ambushed by shrieking juniors telling me how they joined the college only on the basis of my blog post and now regret doing so.

4. Don’t arrange to meet me in college (that makes it sounds like a blind date) or expect me to recognize you (I am bad with faces/names).

5. Do not ask me about books to prepare from for the entrance exam. I neither recommend studying for an aptitude test, nor would I be able to help, because I never used any.

6. My views are limited to the student life of B.Tech students. And they are my personal views and observations. (A few points were suggested by Molar though, so he shares my opinions too).

You know what is annoying? When people read “IIIT-D” (pronounced: IIIT Delhi) and confuse it with “IIT Delhi”. As if that extra vertical line is just a bloody typo. Then, when you expand it for them, they hear the first word and say, “Aaah, Indraprastha University!” as if having a single same word in the name makes them equivalent.
True students of IIIT Delhi express a strong disgust at being associated with a University that everyone universally acknowledges to be not-very-good. If you are one of those people who have got admission in a college in IPU as well as in IIIT Delhi, and are debating over recognition versus quality, I will suggest you go for quality (IIIT Delhi).****

Anyway, so the point of this post is to tell prospective students what to expect and what to not expect from this college.

What to Expect:
1. AC classrooms and labs!
After one semester, I began wondering how we used to survive summers in school with only a few fans.

2. A lot of computer science.
You don’t have physics and chemistry at all. And in your first semester, you just have a very logical branch of mathematics - Discrete Mathematics. Seriously, consider other colleges if you don’t have an interest in computer science. You are going to do nothing but that as the semesters get progressively harder and you get busier.

3. A better sex ratio than some places.
I have heard of a ratio of 2:70 in some mechanical engineering batches. In the 2010 batch, 25% of the class was female.
Guys, don’t interpret that to mean that you will get a lot of attention from the girls. And girls, you probably will get a lot attention from the guys.

4. Approachable faculty and seniors.
Seniors are called by their names, even if they are 2 years older than you. Even the Ph.D students. You may attach a ‘didi’ or ‘bhaiya’ if you wish. Eventually, you will have become good enough friends with them to drop that.
As for professors, they put up certain office hours during which anyone can drop in without a prior appointment. However, everyone continues to drop in regardless of what time it is, as long as the professor is inside his/her office.
And this includes the Director, btw.

5. A significant rise in your geek quotient.
You will be required to carry out command-line operations in Linux. Don’t worry, you will be taught the basics. But seriously, if by the end of the first semester you cannot write a simple 5-line shell script, you are only going to end up ridiculing yourself. So those who treat Linux as nothing but an alternative to Windows, you will need to face reality.
If you are currently the kind of person who chooses a laptop based on the processor speed, colour and price, by the end of your first semester you will be able to minutely compare almost Every laptop model (except arguably the graphics processing part. You will do more of that in your second semester).
And rather importantly - if you are the kind of person who considers all this cool, IIIT Delhi is precisely the place to study in.
Statutory Warning - even if you find all this cool, your friends/boyfriends/girlfriends might not. They might get sick of you talking about geeky stuff that is cool for you and they might start to frustrate you due to their lack of knowledge about things that will soon become second-nature to you.

6. Lack of time for extra-curricular pursuits/socialising outside of IIIT.
The trouble is, IIIT Delhi is located in the middle of nowhere. A few people live here, but most people travel from all over Delhi. No clubs, upscale restaurants, discos, or malls are anywhere near the campus (the NSIT campus). And the average commute-time is 1 hour for those who don’t live in Dwarka. You may well be encouraged to pursue extra-curricular activities, but you will soon find that you have no time for them. Or for your school friends. Except on weekends.

7. Breakups
By extrapolation of the previous point, you can figure out that even your boyfriends/girlfriends will be slightly annoyed with you for not spending enough time with them. A lot of people in my batch had a break up in the first year itself. And a few others started dating (whether a senior or someone from the same batch itself). I am not saying that the cause of the break ups were just this, there might be other complications, but a lack of time certainly does not help, does it?

8. Complete support from the college.
No red-tape to navigate through, here. Thankfully.
Students who take up the initiative to organise something can expect some support, financial and otherwise. You can suggest books for the library to acquire, organise a blood donation campaign, an adventure trip in the summer holidays or purchase new equipment for the music room (guitars and amps!!). Most importantly, the things that I have pointed out, they were all done by first year students (2010 batch).

9. GAMING!
A sort of a staple in most tech colleges, we also have our fair share of gaming here. What’s more, even girls are enthusiastic gamers.

10. An upcoming tech fest.
Well. Not many details there, but yes we are going to have some festival, for the first time in the history of our college!

11. Plenty of income and work/research opportunities.
You can be system administrators (even in your first year), work with professors and help in their research during the summer (right after completing your first year) and there are of course, summer internships and participating in research surveys and studies, which also earn you a little bit of money.

What Not to Expect
1. Free classes.
Professors don’t take attendance (except for maybe one or two) so you are free to bunk classes, but if you don’t like bunking, don’t hope for many free classes. Even when the professors go out of town, they exchange classes. So X will take Y’s class while Y is out of town. Then when Y is back, s/he will take X’s class.
If you are looking for rampant absenteeism among the teachers, I will suggest you go to IPU.

2. Cultural fests
This is not to say that there isn’t any opportunity for extra-curriculars, it just means that you won’t have a cultural fest and dance troupes participating in inter-college competitions etc. You do have a decent college band though. And you are encouraged to participate as long as your grades are balanced. I mean, you have cricket, pool, table tennis and football tournaments but only at an intra-college level. A few students and some members of the faculty trained together and participated in the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon too.

3. Ragging.
During my first year, I was neither ragged, nor did I hear of anyone getting ragged. Seniors don’t even ask for the introductions that are customary in other colleges. I have heard of some boys’ hostel activities though, which nobody classifies as ragging because it is usually intra-batch.

4. A no-drinking policy.
Alright, don’t rejoice so much.
The thing about our college is that it recognizes students as being adults and treats them such. They expect that we drink responsibly, and they won’t have to meddle much. There are a few other governing bodies however. NSIT rules don’t let you have much freedom in drinking around the campus, so don’t expect alcohol-fuelled parties at midnight.

5. Space
Space comes at a premium in the NSIT campus. Since around 400 students are occupying just two floors of a building, you can often feel cramped and claustrophobic. Thankfully, the NSIT campus provides many places to roam around in. However, it has been noticed, that despite all that everyone tends to stay inside. Might be because of the free internet + AC + pool + table tennis + just about sufficient canteen*****.

6. Hostel accommodation unless you are from outside Delhi
It isn’t that Delhiites don’t get to stay in hostels, they indeed do. But you shouldn’t expect to find room, that’s all. As stated above, space comes at a premium. You can look forward to getting a hostel life once we shift to the new campus though. Currently, the boys' share a hostel with other NSITians, and the girls get flats in the staff quarters' colonies.

7. Old, graying, boring professors
Okay I admit, some of the professors Are very boring, and a few Are graying too, but on the whole, the faculty is a very young one. All of them have many research papers/projects to their names (you just have to Google to find out) and all of them have Ph.D's. I used to think that that was a given, but apparently it isn't in many Indian colleges. A majority of them undertake internships/research projects in the summer, but even otherwise, they are always ready to help you gain more knowledge. Go to them with doubts or an eagerness to learn more about their subject, they will be equally enthusiastic to help you out. I have done both, so I know.

Then, as the college website will tell you, our professors come from some of the best institutes all over the world - IIT's, NUS (Singapore), CMU, ISI (Kolkata), Univ of North Carolina, Ohio, South Florida, West Virginia etc.

There’s a rather interesting procedure in IIIT Delhi and I am not sure if this exists in other colleges, but we get to tell the teachers how they are, in the form of course feedback. We can give them suggestions to teach better and tell them how they performed in that particular semester.

* Despite that, I am to understand that a large portion of the readership that my blog enjoys, knows me.
** Some of them aren’t rules.
*** Yes, I am a very noble person. I have always felt that I should be knighted.
**** This is for future students of course. The entrance exam hasn’t been conducted yet.

***** Yeah, they somehow managed to make space for an entire canteen. Don't expect a lot though.

A Collage of Earrings

2011-05-31T17:20:00.002+05:30

Inspired by kay and meaning to make a collage like this for a long time, I finally did something creative and productive.

1. Butterfly earrings - One of my favourites and too old for me to remember anything else about it

2. Heart earrings - A gift, I think.

3. Red thread earrings - Rs. 25, Janakpuri District Center

4. Pink and Blue earrings - one of my many hand-made mismatched earrings. I got these beads from a very old friendship band. My best friend has a similar pair too.

5. Batman earrings - gift from Gleam Eye Boy, Janakpuri District Center.

6. Blue earrings - Rs. 100ish, Shoppers' Stop

Blogging Instead of Baking

2011-05-30T23:07:00.005+05:30

Wander Lust

Swagger

Seven Deadly Sins

What's Left of the Flag

Those are songs by an Irish-American band called Flogging Molly. The name sounds like a wife-beating husband, I know. I have been listening to all these songs on a loop all day today.

I have been baking and blogging about it, but not blogging much by itself. I should, right? I will.

***

"It's magical!"

"I know, I think so too."

"Everything is coming together for you, finally. It's like playing Tetris, and all the blocks fit in nicely together."

"Hmm."

"I hope they continue to fall like that."

***

I like my laptop charger light.

Week 3 : Assorted Cookies

2011-05-26T00:01:00.000+05:30

Yay! Cookies! I made five different types yesterday and they are all really awesome and I am SO happy. I put up a photo of a plateful of the most photogenic ones on Facebook and it has been making everyone drool ever since.

Recipes are in order -

I got the recipes from Food Network's 50 Holiday Cookie Recipes + Instructables.

What you must do is make a basic dough first.

Basic Dough Recipe:

Ingredients

2 and a half cups flour (maida)

One cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

3 egg yolks

About 3-4 tbs of ghee/butter

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

Method

1. Cream the fat and sugar first. Then add the yolks one by one.

2. Sieve together the salt, baking powder and flour.

3. Add the dry stuff to the yolk+fat+sugar mixture, little by little. Make sure the previous batch gets well mixed before adding the next.

4. Tada!

Now, according to how much dough you want to allocate to experimentation, divide the dough into little balls.

Added Stuff

Ingredients

Lemon zest of 1 lemon (I chose those really heavenly large lemons. The ones without much juice but a very strong flavour)

Cocoa powder

Chocolate chips (alternatively, buy a slab of dark chocolate and chop it into pieces once it is soft)

Grated cinnamon + 2 cloves

Powdered sugar

Cinnamon and lemon zest

Method

1. Cinnamon Cookies

Knead into the dough the cinnamon powder and a little bit of cocoa powder to add some colour. Divide into cookies and bake for 20-30 minutes (until light brown) at 200 degrees celsius.

2. Lemon Zest Cookies

Mix the lemon zest and powdered sugar to obtain some kind of a lemon sugar.

Roll dough into it and refrigerate for 10 minutes. Then chop off 1/2-inch thick slices from the rolls, use more lemon sugar to dust the cookies and bake as above.

3. Dual Color Cookies

You could simply follow the Instructable, but if you want a 4.5-line recipe, I will write it down anyhow.

Make two equal portions of dough. Into one, knead in cocoa powder. Make sure you knead in lots and lots, because mine looked very dark brown, but after cooking, lightened a lot. Into the other, knead in some lemon zest if you wish or keep it plain. Flatten it to 1/2-inch thickness and lay the chocolate layer on top. Start rolling both together till you get a cylinder. Refrigerate for some time, slice and bake as above.

4. Chocolate Chip Cookies

Make balls of dough, refrigerate for some time, then push some chocolate chips into each ball. Flatten the balls into cookie-shapes and bake as above.

5. Plain Chocolate Cookies

This one is quite simple. Knead in lots and lots of cocoa powder, refrigerate for some time, roll it out and either use a cookie cutter or make the cookies by hand. Then bake as above.

1. Heart-shaped ones

2. Ones with green swirls

3. Swirly light brown dark brown ones

4. Hah. The ones with rocks on top.

5. Diamond shaped ones.

Decoration

Ingredients

Powdered Sugar

1 egg yolk

A teeny bit lemon zest for flavour

Food colouring

Sprinkles

Gems/Nuts (I didn't use)

Method

Given method is for the base icing only. Add food colouring as you wish to get different shades.

1. Beat in sugar to the egg yolks. Beware, one egg yolk requires a Lot of sugar.

2. Keep mixing it in until you get the desired consistency

3. I used milk packets (the Mother Dairy kinds) for icing. Stick the icing into a corner and cut a hole. Tada!

Total time taken - SIX HOURS (five is for the preparation and one hour is for recipe research)

Week 2 : Orange Cheesecake

2011-05-25T21:55:00.003+05:30

I am late in posting this one, it was made last Sunday. It was quite a disaster. I think I over-cooked it. Blaargh.

But it was edible. There's still 2 pieces in the fridge, in case anyone wants some :)

Ingredients

Crust:

* 7-8 cream crackers finely ground

* 1 stick unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

* 300 g cheese spread, softened

* 2 eggs

* 1 cup sugar

* 1 orange, zested

* 1 dash vanilla extract

Method :

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.

2. Either use a springform pan, or if you don't have one, take a normal baking pan and put a sheet of aluminium on it so that some of it folds out of the pan and can be later unfolded and used to lift the cheesecake out.

3. Butter the sides of the pan (or the aluminium sheet)

4. Mix the crust ingredients until it is evenly moist and put a layer of it on the base of the pan. Use hands or the bottom of something flat and heavy to pat down the crumbs and make a uniform layer.

5. Leave it in the fridge while you make the filling.

6. Beat the cream cheese to make sure it is free of lumps. Add the eggs one by one and beat them in.

7. Add sugar, zest and vanilla to the mixture and beat until creamy.

8. Pour batter into the prepared pan and pop into the oven till it is done (I do it at 180 degrees). It should jiggle when you shake it, so make sure it isn't overcooked.

9. Cool it for 30 minutes then refrigerate overnight (or until it is set). Mix the marmalade with a little bit of orange squash to make a paste and pour it on the surface of the cake.

10. Let that set for sometime, in the fridge. Then lift out the cheesecake using the aluminium foil.

Well, there you go. It is done.

I overcooked mine and cracks appeared on the surface after baking. The marmalade covered it up, but for the next cheesecake, I must try and avoid them.

Another thing to take care of is the salt content in the cheese spread. My grandmother found the cake a tad too salty. I am not of a discerning palate (that means I am taste-blind. Or taste-deaf.), so these minor imbalances go by unnoticed. At the time of making the batter though, I did find the cheese spread rather salty. So if you want to avoid it, try a cream cheese substitute such as curd.

Cheesecake saying cheese.

Total time taken - 4 hours

Week 1.5 : Chocolate Soufflé

2011-05-15T21:42:00.005+05:30

I used a Food Network recipe (here it is) with minor alterations.

1. Instead of "ramekins", I used a ceramic cup (and a Borosil dish), after I found out that ramekins are nothing but ceramic serving dishes.
2. I found out that 8 ounces makes 140 grams. I used approximately 130 grams of dark chocolate.
3. There is a little ambiguity about how much sugar is needed. I used 1/4th cup. But since that turned out to be a little less, I will now suggest that you use 1/3rd.
4. Instead of 7 eggs, I used 6. And in fact, the reason I used this recipe was because it didn't throw away the egg yolks. In a few other recipes, I found that they used flour or 3 egg yolks and 6 egg whites.

The fluffiness in the soufflé is due to the well beaten egg whites. Beat them well. Very, very well. Then bake everything at the end for about 25-30 minutes at 180 degree Celsius.

And you might end up with something like this :

Just make sure it doesn't collapse after cooling the way mine did :(

Total time taken - about 2.5 hours. That includes time spent looking at many, many recipes and especially the awfully long time that it took for me to beat the eggs.

Week 1 : Red Velvet Cake Anyone?

2011-05-13T17:17:00.000+05:30

I used Eve's recipe, because she had included alternatives to cake flour and buttermilk. As it turned out, I used many more substitutes. Such as using

1. Brown vinegar for white vinegar because I found that we were out of white

vinegar.

2. Drinking chocolate instead of cocoa because well, no cocoa as well. Since drinking chocolate and such contain sugar, a logical thing to do would be to reduce sugar you add otherwise. But for the most part, I find that it doesn't make that much of a difference. I mean, I'm not very picky about sweetness.

3. Unpowdered sugar for powdered. This in the cake batter makes no difference because the sugar gets all melted in the end and distributes itself well.

4. Ghee or malai instead of butter. Though this time I used butter, I usually don't.

At the end, I got a rather runny batter and I was afraid that I messed up something somewhere. I crossed my fingers and stuck it in the microwave anyway.

From the taste of the batter, it tasted like most cake batters, so there was a sign that at least the end result will be edible. And it was, though a tad dry. Sigh.

Moreover, on Eve's blog, she says that you need to bake it for about 20-30 minutes. No temperature was specified either there, or on the site The Joy of Baking where the original recipe was from. So I put it at 180 degrees Celsius and that took me nearly 50-60 minutes.

Where a disaster occurred was with the icing. Buttercream, I have no idea what that is. Nor do I know how to cream butter and sugar. I just mixed them into a soft kind of mixture and stuck it on top of the cake. The butter however, was salted. So the icing tastes slightly salty. I don't mind it personally, but I am aware that that is not how icing should taste.

In the end, the whole process, including preparing the batter, powdering the sugar for the icing and making the icing took me almost 2 hours. I leave you with some photographs. It seems like the colour is the only thing that I have got right.

Espèra's Ultimate Bake Off

2011-05-10T22:50:00.003+05:30

We are required by the college to do some "Self Growth Activity" for a total of 2 credits. You can either do the 2 credits together, or split them into two activities of 1 credit each. And this needs to be completed anytime during the 4 years.

I decided I will do baking for one credit, this summer.
And not baking as in making the odd cake or biscuit. I'm looking at trying my hand on a series of stuff that I've never tried before.
I decided on baking because I like eating bakery products, though I am quite a fussy eater (No cakes with nuts or dried fruit, nothing which is banana flavoured and I harbour an aversion towards fruits in general). So far I have decided that I will attempt cheesecakes twice (the last time I didn't pay any attention to the unit of temperature and baked my cake at 250 C whereas it actually required 300 F) and will hopefully be able to produce something edible, a red velvet cake, chocolate mousse and fondant.

That makes five items. I need to do at least 10, but preferably 12.
Readers, this is where you make yourselves handy; kindly put forth your suggestions.
I am looking at one item a week. I need to maintain a log and since blogs are nothing but web logs, readers, you can look forward to some really drool worthy photographs at the very least. Wish me luck.

It is also time for my metabolism to prove its worth. I do not want to start the new semester being overweight.
Yes, I will be the major consumer; I am baking for myself, selfish, self-centered bitch that I am.

2011-05-08T17:48:00.004+05:30

You know what would be a really screwed up tagline for a condom company?
"Pehle istemaal karo; fir vishwaas karo."

2011-05-06T11:34:00.002+05:30

It's the big news nowadays and I thought I will write something about it. But as usual I have been procrastinating, preferring to play Split Second instead.

Yesterday I finally found time to read all about it.
How they found out his location, how they killed him, how Obama was watching his nemesis die, live.

I don't know, my views on the whole episode are a little mixed. It's not that I think that he shouldn't have been killed, I just don't see why everybody is cheering like terrorism itself has been eradicated from the earth. The only thing that's really good that has come out of this is that we know where Pakistan's loyalty lies.

How It Fell Apart

2011-04-28T00:57:00.003+05:30

The little cracks on the surface had started appearing. Time does that to you. Time was the glue that fell short.

How long can cracks stay there without anyone noticing them? Not very long, in this case. It took perhaps a week or two for everyone to notice them.

Then one day it just burst and nobody was interested in mending it back when they still could have. It was irreparable, they said. There was no use, no point, nothing to be gained.

They didn't even try. Not even once. Now of course, it is beyond repair.

They still lie there, the pieces.
Little shards as sharp as knives.

Watch where you go, okay?

2011-04-24T23:03:00.002+05:30

There is some relation between exam time and blossoming extra-curricular creativity/interest that needs to be studied.

I turned to reading some of my older blog posts today and found that I used to write so much better earlier. So I plan to start writing more often now :)

I leave you with a photograph I took some days back, during a musical evening in college.

Free Food

2011-04-21T21:58:00.004+05:30

Our college is full of free food seekers. Mention "Refreshments will be provided" and hordes will turn up clamouring for food, no matter what the event in question is. From blood donation to attending talks and seminars, and volunteering help for workshops, "free food" really gets everyone's attention.

Our college also feeds this nearly insatiable appetite for free food.
It celebrates every little occasion with a "get-together". That is our official college euphemism for "there will be free food". Member of faculty going away? Why we must assemble and give her a farewell and of course there will be coke and chips and samosas for everyone. Semester coming to an end without a grand showcase of our newly acquired electric guitar and amps? Why we must assemble on the roof and have a musical evening with many impromptu performances and some well rehearsed ones. And of course there will be refreshments. Diwali a few days later? Why we must do a little puja near the canteen and of course there will be some food to go around. Indo-US workshop for three days? Why of course all volunteers will be fed for the entire duration. That was how I had an awesome college-sponsored meal of chicken stroganoff and shahi paneer and an array of awesome soups while we all checked out the hot, new, Brazilian intern. I should mention for the sake of my conscience though, that I did not volunteer, I just gate-crashed.

The latest one was greatest one.
It was in the name of science and research and free food. When the Delhi School of Economics recently conducted a survey involving some food item of some brand (that was all that was mentioned in the email) and compensation for our time, hordes of students turned up. "Free food" was what everyone dreamt of. Not all could be accommodated however, but those like me who got to participate were treated to dark chocolate from two brands and were also paid to do so.

Good times, good times.

Update : Ah HA. It is a universal phenomenon, I see. Manx sent me the link.

Your Geek Horoscope For The Next 12 Months

2011-04-12T14:55:00.006+05:30

Not to steal credit, there were 2 more people who worked on this with me.

This was written for our college magazine (we worked on it as a super secret project that aroused the curiosity of everyone who did not get to read it :P), so there are references that only a student of my college will understand. But nevertheless, read it, and I hope you like it.

Sagittarius: Nov 23 - Dec 21
Lucky Hideout : The NSIT Library
Lucky OS : Windows 2.0

Pressure from relatives to solve their tech-related woes will add to your insanity. But some relief is expected when you find love with a bot that you found on a chat site. Orange is a colour to stay away from this semester. Especially if that is the colour of your pants.

Capricorn: Dec 22 - Jan 21
Lucky colour : #87CEEB
Lucky Drink : Iced Tea

Sitting at Nescafe, trying to stare down passing NSIT-ians bodes you ill. This is not a good year for this activity. Even your lucky drink will not be able to protect you from herds of charging NSIT-ians. But you can wear silicon for better semi-conductivity.

Aquarius: Jan 22 - Feb 19
Lucky Programming Language : Perl
Lucky Pastime : Attending ACM Meetings

ACM meetings will prove to be a spiritual balm for your assignment-ravaged soul. You will find yourself wishing for coffee vending machines during all-nighters in the lab. Be forewarned though; putting too many hours into studying will only enhance your reputation of being a nerd.

Pisces: Feb 20 - Mar 20
Lucky Binary Number : 00101010
Lucky Comfort Food : Lip Chip ("Taste ka TIGHT slap")

You will install Linux wrongly this week. And then post about it on the SM blog. Wearing pen drive jewellery will reduce your love life woes. But in case you don’t have a love life, wearing a bunny suit to class has a slight possibility of helping you get one.

Aries: May 21 - Apr 20
Lucky Lab : IP Lab
Lucky Anime Series : Inuyasha

You will suddenly discover, one fine day in November, the futility of taking notes in class. Right before the finals. And the Moodle server will thwart all your attempts to download the course material by remaining down until the end sems are over. Beware of Capricorns. Their pwnage isn’t restricted to FPS games.

Taurus: Apr 21 - May 20
Lucky Logic Gate : XNOR
Lucky Hair Color : Dabur Amla Kesh Kala

You will find out that you have short-term memory loss during an important quiz. You will be unable to remember anything that you stayed up last night, studying. You may be tempted to tattoo information Ghajini-style, but we advise you against it as it will only result in a cheating case being registered against you.

Gemini: May 21 - Jun 21
Lucky Song : Cloud Number 9 (by Bryan Adams)
Lucky Webcomic : Abstruse Goose

Early next August, you will overcome your fear of heights and start taking an active interest in cloud-computing. It will give you a high that will keep you on cloud nine for quite a few days.
Under influence of the moon’s cosmic rays, you will develop tendencies to procrastinate. Something you had been putting off for many weeks.

Cancer: Jun 22 - Jul 22
Lucky Screensaver : BSOD
Lucky Antivirus: AVG Free 9.0

During the winter break, your computer will come down with a virus. It is advisable to not feed it chicken soup in an attempt to nurse it back to health. If you try to find Schrodinger’s cat, you will, and you will not. Nightmares of Skynet taking over the world will haunt you, night after night.

Leo: Jul 23 - Aug 23
Lucky Parity: Odd
Lucky Firewall: Cyberoam

We foresee a segmentation fault ruining your grade. You can attempt to prevent that by singing “Hakuna Matata” 12 minutes, 3 seconds before the lunch break, every Tuesday. We cannot guarantee results, however. You will feel that your current internet service provider doesn’t do enough to satisfy your broadband needs. Fair usage policies will be the bane of your existence.

Virgo: Aug 24 - Sep 23
Lucky Charm : Samosas from Jeeto
Lucky Time-Wasting Website : StumbleUpon

Stay away from trojan horses, they do not bode well for you this semester. Playing pool with TT balls can cause your computer hard drive to crash. On the other hand, it could be due to eating golgappe on the streets. Stay away from both. Especially if you do not know how to back-up your favourite movies.

Libra: Sep 24 - Oct 23
Lucky Restaurant : The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Lucky Sorting Algorithm : Selection Sort

You will discover the awesomeness of xkcd. Going through its archives will cause you sleepless nights and dark circles. Wear a CD everyday to protect against the evil forces out there. Its shininess will blind any evil eye that is looking in your direction.

Scorpio: Oct 24 - Nov 22
Lucky Reptile : Python
Lucky Semester : 5th

Dreams of mass bunks will haunt you all year. Dreams that will never be realized. And if you are visited by Shinigami Ryuk in your dreams, it is a sure sign that you really need to listen to your mother and stop watching Death Note. Reading slashdot will increase your knowledge of all things tech, but reading Facebook Wall posts will only make you more retarded.

Of Hepatitis and Jealousy

2011-04-10T14:31:00.003+05:30

Around the middle of March, I got the weirdest set of symptoms I had ever experienced. For 3-4 days, I felt feverish. Thankfully those days the workload was not Very heavy, because just sitting and standing, and generally being up and about was wearing me down. I would long to go to sleep every night, and I would dread getting up and going to classes every morning.

Then that was replaced by a dull pain near my diaphragm. If I sneezed, coughed, hopped about, yawned, or even breathed a little deeply, it hurt. And when I laughed, I went, "Hahahahahaha. Shit. Ow ow ow. SHUT UP ALL OF YOU!"

I survived two full days of that, while a third set of problems began - complete loss of appetite and nausea. I forced myself to eat at least one meal a day, and immediately felt nauseous. After stubbornly refusing to go home, because there was just too much work and too many important classes that could not be missed, I finally went home because it came to a point where I could not eat Anything without throwing up and was surviving solely on liquids (it isn't as bad as it sounds :D). Also because my friends noticed that my eyes were taking on a yellowish tinge.

And so, I had hepatitis.

The wonderful thing is, I hadn't been home for even Two days, before all of these symptoms started disappearing and within a week, I was longing to go back to college. The even more wonderful thing is, I recovered fully in two and a half weeks, while the doctor said that a minimum of 3-6 weeks is the usual recovery period. My faith in my fabulously bad-ass immune system had thus been restored.

Now the yet more wonderfullest news was that, despite having a tiny appetite for only about a week and a half and then stuffing myself like crazy for the next week while I was stuck at home with nothing much to do (except watch movies and do the Python Challenge), I lost a lot of weight. Which has been the cause of a huge amount of jealousy among a lot of people :D

In fact, I have even been asked for tips to get hepatitis. Yes, indeed, I have.

But then I have an incredibly bad-ass immune system. My friend's father was bed-ridden for 5 months when he got hepatitis.

This has also restored my faith in the fact that good things just seem to happen to me.

Of Programming and Research Papers

2011-04-09T14:05:00.003+05:30

While trying to write a few lines of assembly code from scratch, I came across a research paper that claimed that people can be sorted into the categories of those who can program and those who cannot, before they even take a programming course.

It is a very nicely written paper, rather entertaining to read unlike what you usually expect from research papers. I haven't yet read the whole thing, but I secretly believed that such a distinction existed, for a long time.

I have seen people in school, doing programming and I have seen people in college taking programming courses. Since my college admission took place last year on the basis of a science background and an aptitude test, many of my batchmates had never typed a single line of code in their lives. That was in the first semester.

Roomie was one of them. She struggled to code. To her, everything seemed hopeless because on one hand, I breezed through most of the programming without little or no studying, and she studied and studied and practiced and practiced and still barely passed her courses. The happy ending of the story is that she managed to pick up her grades by the end of the semester, but when it comes to programming, she still has to struggle.

I would re-assure her by telling her that I have been programming for years and years, and am used to breaking down a problem into loops and functions and can hence code without much difficulty. I would tell her that her mind is still stuck in the IIT-JEE mode of deducing answers, so it will take her time to get used to thinking like a programmer.

But when you think of it, I learnt programming in school, along with a few hundred other kids. I never programmed an iota more than them and in most cases, did quite a bit less in fact. How many of them have learnt to think like a programmer? Sadly, not many. Despite the same educational background.

I hope the paper sheds some light on why this distinction appears, because my observations haven't provided me with an explanation. It is just a curious observation, that is all.

A Needle In The Haystack

2011-03-21T19:23:00.003+05:30

I got inspired by Myst's story and wrote one of my own. It's a 2 am piece of work, when I was too awake to fall asleep. It feels good to finally write something Complete. :)

I spotted my best friend in the crowd.
She’s here alone?
Yes, that was a little unlikely.
I thought I’d give her a bit of a surprise. Say hi or something. Maybe find out who she was with. But so far, I hadn’t been able to catch up with her. The crowd wasn’t helping, of course. It was difficult keeping her in sight.

I thought back to the day we had met.
She had walked into class, all shiny-haired and smiles and pretty clothes. Half the class had fallen in love with her in the first week.
We became friends on the first day itself. I think it was because she liked my hair.
“I like your hair.” That’s the first thing she said to me.
“I like yours.”
Hers was black, mine was red.

And I nearly tripped over a toddler.
Fuck. Not good, not good.
The kid somehow steadied itself, looked at me, and waved one salivy fist. I ran away before it could start bawling.
Okay, she’s looking at some earrings. Let’s hope she stays there till I get to her.

I think it was a month when I finally realized that I had fallen in love with her too.
She had this way of making everything better. Everything.
God save you if you ever pissed her off however. She became a supercranky bitch. It is unfortunate because I really have a problem apologizing. Even if it is my fault. I sulk and sulk and blame everyone else.
And two days back, we had a little argument.

Okay, so it wasn’t that little.

She was paying for some earrings she had bought.
Her yellow t-shirt had visible patches of sweat. I could see that her face was shiny with sweat too.
Today was not a good day to be outdoors.
But she still had that smile that made the shopkeepers want to keep bargaining, just so that they could have her at their shops longer. The same smile that had made half the class fall in love with her.
I realized I was smiling too.

“Hi. Whatchya buying?”
“Earrings. Here, look.”
She handed me the little package of earrings. I opened it to find two pairs of tiny, dangling AK-47s.
“Hah. Nice buy.”
“I know. They are so cute.”
The fight had been forgotten.

We went to the nearby Barista.
She said she had someone I might be interested in meeting.
We were sipping our cold coffees when a guy came over.
“Ladies. What. Is. Up?”
He was kind of tall. I’d guess about 5’ 10”.
She got up, jumpy and smiley. From her smile, it seemed like this was who she thought I’d be interested in meeting.
“This,” she linked her arm with his and said to me, “is my boyfriend. And she, is my best friend in the world.”
I choked a little on my coffee.
“You have a boyfriend? Since when?”
“Since yesterday.”
She was smiling so much. Why was she smiling so much? I wished she would stop smiling.
“And you told me nothing about him?”
“Come on. I’m telling you now.”
“You wouldn’t have told me if I hadn’t met you here today.”
“Of course I would have! Why are you getting so upset?”

Why was I getting upset?
I didn’t know myself.
I wiped my suddenly-very-sweaty palms on my skirt.
I had risen from the table and my feet were taking me towards the nearest exit. And as I walked away from my best friend and her new boyfriend, I tried to tell myself that it would’ve never worked out anyway.

Sodium Channels

2011-03-19T21:00:00.003+05:30

When I was younger and studied things like Biology, a term that very frequently came up was semi-permeable membrane.
You know, you'd be drawing cells and along would come that thin spidery line of a cell membrane, in all its semi-permeable glory. Well, I used to wonder what made it semi-permeable. And in my imagination, it would be like a sieve. Like filter paper, even.

And going through Wikipedia, I finally found out the big secret. As the title of this post suggests, it is a sodium channel, with the specific part that interested me - impermeability to non-sodium ions.

It was interesting.

What's In A Name? Part 10

2011-03-04T22:22:00.004+05:30

As it turns out, branding.

So while designing* the very first tech fest of our college, the issue of naming it came up. We got a few suggestions.

1. TechLeet
2. LeetCon (like Comic Con or DefCon)
3. Esya (which means Exploration, but we have yet to verify that because we still don't know which language that name is in.)

So. Votes are welcome, nay, demanded.

*designing sounds cooler than organizing.

2011-03-01T12:02:00.003+05:30

Men and prepubescent girls and boys. You may have seen adverts of particular brands on television that assure you that using those particular brands will guarantee you a "happy period" and that you might even jump and perform random acts of acrobatics if you so wish. They might lead you to believe, mistakenly, I must add, that you might, after the use of those brands, go running about and leaping and prancing and generally be extremely energetic and joyful and jubilant and alive.

But, ladies and gentlemen, in order to allow truth to prevail, I am forced to introduce you to reality.
*trumpets*
There is no such thing as a "happy period".

You can have a "less painful period" or a "mild period" or a "less grumpy period", but happy should never be used to describe a process as evil as periods. That itself is purely evil. To mock the millions of women like that, who suffer from extreme PMS and cramps. Tch, tch. Evil evil evil.

The Physics Of Energy Conservation

2011-02-16T21:29:00.004+05:30

N: i m boreddd :|

Me: go jerk off.

N: cant jerk off the whole day, can i?

A: x(

You really thought we need to hear that?

N: yep.

A: fwap fwap fwap.

Me: don't you get tired?

A: fwap fwap fwap.

Me: it is supposed to be EXHAUSTING.

A: it is.

Me: conserve your energy to heal your bones, bitch.

why is it exhausting waise?

how does it make sense?

A: it just is, we don't know why.

N: Espèra, u are extra weird today

Me: where does the energy go?

energy transfer n shit.

OMG.

I figured it out.

A: maybe making so many extra sperms to compensate for the ones lost requires lots of energy.

Me: the sperms sap your energy

and use it to SWIM!

A: :D

N: :P

Me: fucking awesome physics.
N: Fawsics.

Till I See You Again

2011-02-06T17:25:00.005+05:30

The winters are going away.

I want the weather of two weeks back. When the nights were cold enough to cuddle up in my fluffly quilt, and there was a wind that produced shivers while a pleasantly warm sun simultaneously beat down on you. When I could lie on the grass, under the bare sun and not feel my natural body oils sizzling. When we would look for sunny patches and avoid the shadows. When you still wore sweaters, but didn't need gloves or caps. When socks felt comforting and coming back to the flat at the end of the day was a happy prospect. When you used blowers, but at a low setting and sat in front of it after a bath or any external physical contact with water. When the normal room temperature of the water was nice and cold, but still drinkable.
When the freezing tap water while washing your face in the morning woke you up very well. When hot milk, coffee or soup felt welcome and didn't make you sweat after consumption. I want that season back.

Give me my jeans worn for days in a row and unwaxed legs and electric kettle survival and colourful muffler days back. Even the gloomy skies and mid-winter sprinkles and hours spent staring into the blower, feeling your skin slowly dry, yet not having the will to get away from the hot air will do. Give me my cold, my warm glasses and freezing tap waters and dish-washing back. And my cycling-warmth and midnight-chills and shivers. And thick Ladakhi socks and rainbow gloves and careless dressing. And bi-weekly baths and immersion-rod-hunting. And my familiar smell that comes from wearing the same clothes for days and not bathing daily. And the fog and the mist. And the ghostly vapors rising from open drains. And seeing your own breath and holding arms.

Give me my winter back?

Itty Bitty Little Kitty

2011-01-29T19:41:00.002+05:30

There is another kitten, jet black and silky. Looks like a miniature black panther. But the day I had my camera, I didn't find it. So you will have to make do with one.

They are our mess kittens. I think every mess has its own part-domesticated, part-stray animal. These ones however, don't go inside the mess. They scamper about in the sun outside, and when they have had enough, pile up on each other and sleep in one corner of the hostel lounge sofa. Cute, they are.

We briefly considered adopting one, because whenever the mess workers saw us with the kittens, they told us to take them away. But we dropped that plan as the prospect of coming home to kitty poop on the bed was not a particularly endearing prospect.

Awesomeness

2011-01-23T16:17:00.005+05:30

So there are two Awesomes that I've learnt to make. One is Awesome Coffee. And the other is Awesome Salad. Yes, with initcap.

Awesome Coffee is thanks to Roomie. It consists of beating sugar and coffee and water till it becomes light and fluffy. And you put it in really, really hot milk and stir once or twice. I don't have photos of it, but I do have photos of some of the stuff I put in the Awesome Salad.

That has tomatoes, some weird round radishes and broccoli.

That is avocado. Used it once, didn't find it that great.

That is chopped up bell peppers with avocado. Bell peppers, I like very much.

You see, part of the Awesomeness lies in the creaminess minus Any use of cream whatsoever. For the salad, you use dahi. Curd. And some mustard, orange marmalade, pepper, olive oil and a bit of milk. And then you mix all the vegetables you would like to add, along with some boiled pasta. Awesome Salad. :)

"What is the Upper Bound on your clumsiness?"

2011-01-18T14:22:00.002+05:30

*Someone's laptops falls in the middle of a class*

Entire class - "Ohhh!"
Someone - "Big Oh!"
Someone Else - "Little Oh!"

You know, I never did find out what the "O" stands for.

"After the string theory, we present to you ..."

2011-01-18T14:20:00.001+05:30

"We have come up with a dildo theory", said my friend to me. "According to it, all matter is made up of tiny vibrating dildos."

Ethnic Makeovers

2011-01-02T16:27:00.002+05:30

So I read this article in Cracked - 5 Celebrity Careers Launched by Ethnic Makeovers - and that made me think that the greatest ethnic makeover ever was probably that of Jesus Christ.

The most popular images of Jesus show him as a tall, white man with blue eyes, a narrow nose and long hair. He has distinctly Caucasian features.
But those who have ever given it any thought would know that that is not how Semites look. And well Jesus? He was a Semite too. He lived in the Middle East and probably had dark skin and black hair. And he probably wasn't all that tall either.

Closer to the truth would be this image of Jesus which Richard Neave has tried to recreate based on what men looked like in that region and in that era.

Five Reasons

2010-12-29T19:36:00.005+05:30

Wow. I have 24 votes in that ancient poll of mine and 42 followers stalking my ~~every move~~ blog.

Five Reasons to Dread Going Back to Hostel
1. Baths
Well before the vacations started and the temperature plunged southwards, I dreaded taking baths in the hostel. Then, the immersion rod went and short-circuited itself.
A new immersion rod can always be bought, that's not a problem.
But as I said, since then, the temperature has plunged southwards. I barely have the courage to take a bath now, when I can have the luxury of warm showers, I doubt I will want to bathe then, when between mug of hot water poured down me, there will a cold draft of air to greet my wet skin.
In short, deo usage will be pretty high.

2. Mess
I'm talking about the mess where we get food. Which is in the girls' hostel. Which is pretty much as far apart from the boys' hostel as it can get. Next to which is our accommodation. Next to the boys' hostel, not the girls' hostel. Irony of ironies.
Anyway. So when it's morning, as well as when it's night, it gets damn cold. That's a well established meteorological fact. And cold winds blow. Also, it is extra cold due to the large tracts of land with nothing but wild plant growth.
I am afraid I will have to go without dinners/breakfasts when the cold makes me feel too lazy.

3. Waking Up
At home, I get up at 11, snuggle back down because I don't feel like facing the cold and eventually get up at 12.
In college, classes can begin from 8.

4. Food
The food in the mess isn't too bad. On some days, it is really really appetizing. But when you know the schedule of the food by heart and choose to skip the lauki, yellow dal and baingan days, only eating the good meals, it can get a little monotonous after a few months. Which is still not that bad.
But I will miss my daily half-boiled egg and homemade soups. And no one will bake cakes.

5. General In-campus Commute
Not that things are really far away, but returning to the hostel at 2-3 am, after spending all evening (and part of the night, except for the hike to the mess for dinner) in college will not be something I'll look forward to when it is dark, cold, windy and foggy.
Also, riding my cycle under such conditions will be a bitch. It already was when December was just starting.

Five Reasons to Look Forward to Going Back to Hostel
1. Staying Out Till Whenever
I don't know about you, but unless I'm staying over at someone's house for the night, I can't stay out till whenever I want.

2. Room
No one to tell me to clean up my room. Ever.
I can continue the dump stuff on bed, shift stuff to chair during sleep time, dump stuff back on bed cycle till my chair can't hold stuff any longer. And other types of general dirt? If it's gets in our way, we shove it outside the room. Yes, we do clean our room occasionally. But there's no one to tell us to. So that's awesome.

3. Paint
I intend to make use of some poster paints to do something to the ugly hostel walls.

4. Food
I have freedom to eat what I want, and most importantly, to eat however much I want. There isn't anyone checking the amount I've eaten, counting the missed meals, annoying me when I'm doing something else, telling me to come and eat.

5. Television
No television in the flat. Which might sound unfortunate, but it actually saves me hours and hours.

Effect of Abortion on Indian Crime

2010-12-20T21:54:00.004+05:30

Readers of Freakonomics would know about the role that legalizing abortion in USA had to play in reducing crime rates. (And by clicking on that link and reading the page there, you will find out too.)

Later when I found out that in India, abortion isn't legal yet, I thought that probably legalizing abortion isn't gonna help in India anyway.
And those of you who though it is indeed legal in India : it is, but only if it is absolutely necessary to abort the fetus for medical reasons. You can't just go up to a government hospital and demand that you get an abortion for free because you are pregnant and still in your teens. For that, there are the private clinics. Which also cater to requests to find out the gender of the fetus.

I want abortion to be legalized (without any restrictions) because I do not believe that until born, the fetus is worthy of being considered a separate entity (yeah, I really don't think much of fetuses). But I understand that making abortion freely available will increase sex-selective abortions.
Proponents of freely available abortions say that it is better to nip a fetus in the bud, if its parents (that's about how much regard I have for fetuses - I'm calling it 'it') feel that they will not be able to raise it properly, or that it will feel disadvantaged, unloved, unhugged etc.
(Here, I find myself wondering if this same logic condones female foeticide since a girl born to parents who wished to abort her will be unwanted, same as the other to-be-aborted kids)

When I was looking for something online to support my theory that legalizing abortion won't reduce crimes in India muchly, the keywords "legalizing abortion", "crime rates" and "India" led me only to articles of two types : "Abortion is a crime. It should not be legalized." or, "Legalizing abortion in India will increase female-foeticide, which is a crime."
Now I think that all that ties in perfectly with my theory.

You see, legalizing abortion will benefit two classes of people - those who specifically don't want girls and those who don't want children at all.
Those who don't want girls will use free abortion to fuck up India's already skewed sex ratio. That is going to lead to an increase in crimes against women. Moreover, it might increase (or have no effect at all), on other types of crimes because well, young men are more likely to be criminals. This is not to say that women aren't at all, it's just that there are less female criminals.
And those who really don't want any children are already paying visits to their friendly neighbourhood private clinic. You could say that free abortion will make this facility available to women of lower economic classes too. But there are, apparently, home made remedies to induce miscarriage (to say nothing of those 72-hour pills. That is also abortion, isn't it? Unless it isn't called abortion if it is done within 72 hours of conception..)

Then you have those who REALLY don't need children. I am talking of the poor couples who tote around 7-8 children at a time, severely (financially) crippled by the demands of so many persons. Now here is the thing - abortion can't be a magic cure-all operation. If you can't afford having children, don't conceive them. Abortion, free or not, can't be used to terminate all 8 of the unwanted children. I'm sure by the time you're having your third consecutive pregnancy terminated, the doctor will secretly perform a hysterectomy on you.
For such women, even if abortion were free, I would think that free contraception would benefit them a lot more.

Well, this is just a theory.
Economists, get cracking and prove it!

How To Find Out If You're a Zombie

2010-12-14T00:53:00.004+05:30

1. Do you find that you lack a pulse?
2. Indeed do you find that you lack all possible signs of vitality?
3. When you make a public appearance, do people run away from you, screaming?
4. Do all your attempts at drenching yourself in expensive perfumes still leave you stinking of rotting flesh?
5. Look at yourself. Do you have bite marks, visible bones, peeling skin and damaged body parts?
6. Do you get sudden, inexplicable cravings for human brain?
7. Do you find that you sorely lack fluency in speech or grace in movement?
8. Is your vocabulary limited to a single word ("brains") ?
9. Are you perpetually hungry?
10. Do you hunt for food with a single-minded focus and determination that you have achieved - and this is important- without meditation or pranayam?
11. Are emotions lost on you?
12. Do the ladies (or, alternatively, the men) seem to have lost their charm?
13. Are some of your innards tumbling out in a tad too disturbing a manner?

If your answer is a yes to any more than 3 of these questions, kindly shoot yourself in the head as soon as possible, there is a high likelihood of your being a zombie.

Suicidal Idiots

2010-11-24T23:56:00.002+05:30

I ran over a caterpillar today. I feel a little guilty.
I always watch out for those slow idiots, but today, well, I didn't notice it till it was too late. Sigh.

Two days ago, a squirrel had had a narrow escape. Once again because the pea-brained, handicapped-in-the-survival-instincts-department creature had decided to cross the road just 2 inches away from the wheel of my cycle.

Which makes me think, isn't suicide somewhat against basic animal instinct?
Isn't every species, in the end, concerned first with survival and then the propagation of their own race? That makes suicide against basic survival instincts. And homosexuality contradicts the need to propagate your own race.

7 kmph * 3 hours

2010-11-22T14:21:00.007+05:30

7 kmph = my average speed
3 hours = the duration for which I ran.

On Sunday. A day before our final exams began.

My parents were a tad nervous.
There would be crowds. Would I get lost somewhere?
I wouldn't have my phone. How would they contact me if they needed to?
It would be terribly cold and I was wearing shorts and a tshirt. There would be EXAMS the next day, what if I caught a cold?
It was 21 freaking kilometres. What if I got injured?

I wasn't as nervous as them. The only thing that worried me was that I wouldn't find the other 2 classmates (Molar and CR) or the teachers who were also taking part (and are faster than us. ;)). Also that the most I'd ever run was 15kms, during one of our training runs around the campus.

As it happened, I found Molar and CR and the teachers and they overtook us and left us behind like they always do. As it happened, once the sun shone properly, it didn't feel too cold. I didn't even have to use the portable toilets that the organisers of the Delhi Half Marathon had set up (after the first time that I used one, the prospect of having to use something similar again kind of scared me). I even managed to finish the entire 21kms, hobbling and running and walking in the end.

Now, the highlights of the day :

1. Disturbing Sight #1:
While waiting in a queue, for entry inside the "Holding Area", I observed three things.
- That there were many hot guys around.
- That men, and not only the Indian ones, were freely peeing against whatever wall they could find.
- That when a guy wearing really tight tights, the kinds that professional bicyclists wear, goes to pee, you don't want to see his front profile afterwards.

2. "Estimated Final Distance : 19 kilometres"
CR had borrowed his namesake's phone, HTC Wildfire and it had an app that he used to calculate our speed. The weird bit is that instead of displaying the distance it estimated that we would cover in 3 hours, it spoke it out loud.
Even when it was in CR's pocket..
.. causing Molar to say, "Something in your pants is talking to you!"

3. The Non-Existent Gay Pride Parade
CR (upon seeing participants of the Great Delhi Run wearing colourful wigs) : "Is there some gay pride parade also going on?"
I wonder if he wanted to take part.

4. Atul
There was a guy whose tshirt had Atul written on it. Everytime we saw him, we yelled "Come on, Atul!"
After each time, Atul's smile got noticeably more tired.
Near the end stretch, CR suddenly became very determined to cross the Finish line before Atul did.

5. Lucozade
We had "Energy Stations" where you got bottles of Lucozade Sport.
When our extremities started swelling, I came up with a pseudo-theory that said that since Lucozade is isotonic and mixes with blood better, it causes water retention.
(No, I don't honestly think it was the culprit. But it does contain caffeine. )

6. The Winners
When we were nearing 5 kms, we saw athletes already on the return track, having covered nearly 16kms in 45 minutes! After about 10 minutes came the first Indian and he got a huge cheer from everyone (including a "Jai Ma Bharat!!" from Molar).

7. The Best Stretch
Running (or walking, which is what we mostly did) on Rajpath was by far the best stretch in the whole route.
By that time, the sun had come out, and it felt pleasant warm. The road sloped downwards slightly and there was a whole horde of runners. And rising out of the vanishing mist was the India Gate and Rashtrapati Bhavan at each end of the road.

There probably were more things I don't remember.
There always are.
But from the windy cold start to the morning, to the end where we could barely stand on our feet, it was really really awesome. :D

The Festival of Sound

2010-11-06T01:07:00.002+05:30

What assails your senses most on Diwali are the sounds.
Then, after a while, the smoke.

The excitement of the festival had worn off many years ago. Sure it killed the mosquitoes, and sure the city looked really pretty. But the city looked pretty on Diwali eve too. And the mosquitoes? Well there's always Odomos. On Diwali eve, I didn't have to live in fear of losing my hearing too. As if we haven't already read about the damage our prolonged usage of earphones is causing our ears.

For a festival, I know I sound rather un-festive. But I do not want to grumble more, because I've already grumbled enough in my previous posts on Diwali.

Then And Now

2010-10-27T15:34:00.003+05:30

Then:
"Kya yaar. I wanted Linux, and it booted in Ubuntu."

Now:
"My registry isn't working. It just isn't!"
"Oh shuttup. My CMOS battery is ruined!"

Eradicating n00bness. - Our unofficial college motto.

O.o

2010-10-26T22:36:00.003+05:30

1 boy who can't put on contact lenses + 1 girl who can + 3 people ready with suggestions + no mirror = midnight party in the girls' loo.

Lost Privacy

2010-10-26T22:23:00.002+05:30

Half my college knows about my blog now. Tch tch. I do not like it one bit. It makes it so much harder to talk about them. Or about anything, really.
I could shift my blog to another location. But then I'll lose all the anonymous people who read it. Dilemma, dilemma. And that's not even the only thing that is going wrong. But you know what? Being busy is a great way to take your mind off things.

Okay, that's it. Time to go back to being busy again.

Yet Another Extremely Lame Blog Post

2010-09-26T12:26:00.003+05:30

I had been planning to write for nearly a week now. When I finally found time to, I forgot what I had to write. Something to do with programming and how, if monkeys with a typewriter can write Shakespeare, then I can definitely write them programs.
Except I don't know in which context I thought of that.

Last week, I adopted Molar and N Singh, as my Mom and Dad. They have taken to portraying those roles with such seriousness, that they find it quite creepy themselves.
Just so you know, they are both boys.

I feel like writing a short story. I haven't read anything beyond online articles, FB wall posts/comments, blog posts, chats and textbooks in months. And I haven't written anything other than FB wall posts, chats, homeworks, assignments etc either. And the Top Secret Project of course. Co-written with my adopted parents. It will be put up here as soon as its Secretness ceases.
And do you know? I've not watched TV in months too. I don't miss it much.

And so ends Yet Another Extremely Lame Blog Post. Will be back with a story next time. Same blog, same URL. ;)

P.S. I saw an eaglet! In my campus! And a family of peacocks! And their little pea-chicks! They were crossing the road. The tiny ones were half hopping, half flying all over the place while their parents led them sedately across the road. And the eaglet? It flew right across me, swooping down low, while I was on my cycle. It looked like an eagle but it was tiiiiiny. Like maybe one handspan wide. So I concluded that it must be an eaglet.

Happenings

2010-09-12T17:38:00.007+05:30

During Friday's Communication Skills, we discussed Group Discussions to bits. Such as what to wear. Including, yes, shoes. Girls, it's closed-toe pumps and boys, it's baroques. Oh and did you know, the way you enter the GD room can get you rejected?

We had a visit from Gleam Eye Boy a few days back. He met Roomie, and Guitar Guy and N Singh. And then he showed me how whatever he draws on his phone looks like an S.

Don't tell him his photo's on my blog. He doesn't like photos.

My college is home to many species of life, including thumbnail-sized frogs. And peacocks. And big, bright green grasshoppers that have sex in one of the toilets. And also strange striped mosquitoes. The first time one bit me, I was too excited to kill it. I'd never seen striped mosquitoes before. I was later enlightened that they might be the ones spreading dengue. I didn't catch dengue however.

^ Friday evening view of the sky outside the Madhu Vihar DTC bus depot, where the bus had dumped its passengers and gone for a fill of petrol.

A favourite past-time, when stuck in boring classes is sticking notices on unsuspecting front-benchers. This same guy once had "For Advertising in This Space, please Contact - 99193028843" on his back.

And for more info on what Naughty America is, please use your right to Google.

Of Hostels and Friends

2010-09-01T22:04:00.007+05:30

Reader beware : Post might be too long for your taste.

Even before September began, there were a few good news (newses?)
First of all, I was allocated a hostel. Then, I got full marks in the toughest subject in our course and I don't think more than maybe, 5 people got that. :D
(Okay look, I'm bragging, I know. But come on! It was awesome when I found out. :D)
Doing that assignment was a lot of fun. Before I begin to sound like a nerd, I liked doing it because I got to know a lot of people through the course of that assignment. And I gave a really nice interpretation for an expression ("Let x be a guy and y be a girl. P(x) is, a guy is horny and Q(x) is, he has sex.") but that sadly didn't fit, so I had to stick to explaining it using primes and odd and even numbers. Sigh.
But yes, it made DM suddenly a lot more interesting as we tried to morph that interpretation into one that did fit. :P

And now we come to the hostel part.
You see, we don't actually live in the hostel. We live in a flat, in the staff quarters, due to lack of space in the hostel. So, it's got the best parts of living in a hostel and that of living in a PG.
No warden means we can saunter in after 12 midnight, enjoying the night breeze (and the sound of crickets) and the cool air, after an hour or two of sitting online in the lab. It also means that we can bring our friends in, irrespective of their gender.
And it means that we have a little kitchen and a big drawing room that is unoccupied (at least currently) and hence, it isn't as cramped as a regular hostel room tends to be.

On the other hand, being inside the campus implies commuting problems are reduced to walking a few hundred metres to the mess. It also means that we can saunter around inside the campus.
And of course, the canteen is always accessible. So is the computer lab with the AC and a TT and a pool table.

Yes, it is going awesomely.
Though we do have to adjust to the loud cries of the peacocks and birds early in the morning, and the large grasshoppers and mosquitoes outside at night. And using an Indian-style toilet. It is more hygienic especially when you're going to share it with others, but I tend to lose my balance when I've been sitting there for some time.

I've made quite a few friends here by now. It will still take some time for me to be able to tell them whatever I want though. For now, we take over a table outside the Nescafe joint and make loud, useless jokes and false allegations about each other. Oh and, keep making plans to eat golgappe that haven't materialized so far. The plans I mean, not the golgappe.
There's my roomie, let's call her (predictably) Roomie.
Then there's Jalpari, the funnyman. Very, very witty. Watching him duel words with someone else (especially Nikkon) can be very entertaining.
There's Molar, the guy with the greatest sense of humour I've seen in this batch so far.
There's N Singh (N'Sync ;)) who's a shy little giant. And a total geek (the types who love xkcd and programming and anime). But he can play the guitar really well. So it's no wonder that this girl (will come up with a good name later) fell hard for him. Things got a little uncomfortable, I don't know who came out worse.
Nikkon and Shrey are both from the same school, and both live near the college. While Shrey is the tiny girl who looks rather frail, Nikkon isn't really. Oh and she has awesome hair.
Sometimes VC tags along, the most annoying person I've ever had the misfortune to meet. Lately, Utz has come up with a series of jokes (theme : collisions) about the contrast in our weights.

And that makes up the more interesting people. :)

Just For The Record

2010-08-25T19:02:00.002+05:30

Time for a new poll!

So just to keep a record of the results of the last one, I'm writing a post -

Have you ever mentally stripped down a person of the same sex?

Yes - 9 votes (42%)
No - 8 votes (38%)
Partially, not all the way - 4 votes (19%)

Assuming that my blog doesn't have a very high homosexual readership, I can perhaps conclude that stripping down people of the same sex doesn't necessarily make you homosexual. :P
Somebody said/wrote that homosexuality doesn't have absolute values of 1 and 0, but is like a range. That theory makes sense if you consider bisexuality.
Okay, I don't really know what my point was/is. :|

Eavesdropping

2010-08-25T18:47:00.003+05:30

Today, there was a very talkative (and somewhat annoyed) lady sitting behind me in the bus.
Her side of the conversation went somewhat like this -
"What is this? She hardly ever comes to visit us, she could barely come for an hour on Rakhi to meet her brother and still they kept calling and saying send Priya back, send Priya back, send Priya back! She comes for one hour in the whole year and they're asking her to come back.
Hmm. I understand, I understand that the children's studies are important, yes, yes, they're very important, but what is this? She can't even come visit us properly for one hour without them calling and asking her to come back?
She always puts her in-laws first. And I thought that was a good thing. She has never said a single bad word against them. No complaints, not a single bad word. No I mean, sometimes it slips out na. Whenever I've asked her, she has always said it's fine, for her, in-laws are number one! But she can't even visit us? This is not done beta."

The conversation ended with the woman coaxing the person on the other side of the phone (presumably Priya's husband) to eat a proper breakfast before leaving because biscuits and namkeen isn't a fit breakfast and what hurry, office is only 2 minutes away.

Entertaining, that conversation was. :D
By the way, did you know that bus journeys on Rakhi day is free for all women (except on the AC buses) ?

A Little Bit of Economics

2010-08-21T21:29:00.002+05:30

You know how society is divided into "classes"? The basis for such a division, I think, is economics. Who earns more and who earns less. Socio-economic.
When caste used to be a major identifying factor (and sometimes, even today, it is in some places) your caste and your economic status was linked. Now when such barriers have been broken down, only your paycheck matters.
A higher paycheck implies that you might be willing to pay twice the actual cost of the same item of clothing, if it comes with a well-known brand. It implies that you'll have a bigger house, in a posher neighbourhood, a larger car, maybe even multiple cars. Your furnishings will be more expensive and your lifestyle will require more money to maintain it.
But when you enter the kitchen, the vegetables will be bought from the same shop your driver/gardener/domestic help also frequents; the milk will come from the same Mother Dairy packet; the water will be from the same source (with differences in the purifying system used).
And nobody will be willing to pay twice the actual price for that.
Once in a while you'll eat in a better restaurant, buy more processed/packaged foods, you'll frequent more fast food places, buy some imported ingredients for that very special meal and own more advanced kitchen appliances. But when you eat your daily ghar ka khana, it will be the same across the majority of the economic classes.

Of Naked Men and Playing the Guitar

2010-08-12T21:05:00.004+05:30

Two days ago, I was at the bus stop, when I heard a gang of some schoolboys laugh at someone. I turned around and saw a man sitting on the footpath, his back towards me. That's when I realized that he's not wearing any clothes. I thought he was a kid and wondered why, since he wasn't exactly of the size at the corresponding age of which you can be naked on the streets.

About five minutes later I saw him trying to board a bus, before being told to get off. You don't want to be in the closed crowded quarters of a bus with a naked man, do you? Also, he wasn't carrying anything so I doubt he had much money on himself.
At that point, I realized that he's a full grown man. A full grown ADULT man. With a BEARD. And I also realized that I should try to avoid looking at him much. Whatever I saw while his back was towards me told me that I wouldn't want to face him. Sharing a bus stop with a stark naked man isn't comforting under the best of situations.
I considered walking to the next one. But no one else seemed muchly perturbed. People were amused, somewhat disgusted too, but no one seemed to be running away from him. So I stayed. In the next few minutes, as he walked by me and tried to board 2-3 more buses, I got a very good view of his hairy nether regions. Between wishing that my bus hurried up, I also began wishing that Naked Guy didn't try to board my bus. Just the fact that he had passed by within 5 inches of me was freaking me out.

In some time my bus came and he didn't try to board it. :)
And I never saw Naked Guy ever again. I wonder why he was naked though. Was he mentally disbalanced? if so, I'd expect him to react at what the schoolboys were saying, but he hadn't. Had he been mugged and stripped off his clothes? Was it some kind of a social experiment? Had someone played a cruel joke on him? And I also wonder what happened to him..

About guitars, well, tomorrow is our Freshers' except that it's not called that, it's just an excuse for everyone in our institute to party. I'm playing the guitar for one song. I can therefore play Woh Lamhe rather well now :D

Non-Vegetarians Unite.

2010-08-07T15:13:00.001+05:30

Yesterday during Communication Skills, a girl gave a *long, rambling presentation about Vegetarianism. Now you see, I don't have anything against vegetarians. Whatever their reasons for not eating meat is fine by me. I do not try to make them eat it and I do not look down upon them for not eating it.

Sadly the vegetarians, it seems, cannot extend the same favour to the non-vegetarians. Especially the ones who say it is because eating animals is just cruel.

I am not a voracious carnivore in the sense that I don't eat vegetables at all or that I must have some animal part during every meal or else I'm not satisfied or even every day. But I am non-vegetarian.

But it isn't as if I'm killing endangered animals or buying snakeskin bags and real mink coats or elephants' tusk jewellery or something. I am, to put it very very nicely, helping control chicken population and simultaneously fulfilling my dietary needs. Killing two birds with one stone, pardon the pun.
So when that girl said "You will not eat humans, then why animals? Do you think animals are less important than humans?" it really annoyed me, all that moral high ground bullshit. Indeed I do not! It is just that I cannot eat humans. It is going to be scientifically stupid. Have you heard of omnivores eating other omnivores or carnivores? They don't because of a simple scientific rule whose name I forget but the essence of which is, the higher up the food chain you go, the less nutritious is eating that member of the food chain. So it is only in situations of utter starvation that you hear of humans eating other humans.

And how are vegetarians any more pious? Isn't that girl indirectly killing plants? Does she consider plant life lower than animal life just because animals can express their feelings?

Moreover, humans are built omnivores. They are supposed to eat both vegetables and meat. But just because we can get all our vitamins and minerals from being vegetarian, it is a viable option**. That doesn't however mean that eating meat is unethical or immoral and that vegetarians can look down their noses at us and go on crapping about how absolutely cruel we are to continue eating what we we are naturally programmed to eat.

*It wasn't a debate sadly. We had to point out speaking technique mistakes, not logical errors.
**It is yet another matter that it is much much easier to get protein, vit B12 and omega-3 fatty acids from a non-vegetarian diet.

Stupidity Isn't Extinct

2010-07-30T22:02:00.003+05:30

A few weeks back, I was looking for a newspaper when my eyes read "Jamwal", "Nisha" and a few other words on the front page of Delhi Times. I had gone through the paper earlier, but that article hadn't caught my interest then.
But those words. They were the names of the main characters in one of Jeffrey Archer's stories (the last one in the book Thereby Hangs a Tale) and I read the article then to figure out how much of that story was true.
What I read was this.
And I didn't feel an ounce of sympathy for their recently departed family member.
Honestly, would you "decide to examine the cause with the muzzle pointing towards you" when you have a pistol in your hand that is misfiring?
(If your answer to that question was 'yes', then I advice you to remove your stupidity genes from the gene pool.)
(And I'll overlook the fact that his brother committed an act of stupidity too - he "jumped into a swimming pool without realizing that the water had been drained out" - thereby proving that stupidity does run in your blood. I mean, honestly, you should be able to differentiate between water and air!)

License Plates

2010-07-30T21:50:00.003+05:30

There is a blue-green coloured Royal Enfield motorbike in the parking of my building.
The curious thing about its license plates is that -
1. They're of a white board sort of material and the number has been hand-written using a marker. Indeed, in the second photo, the number has partially rubbed off.
2. The numbers on both the plates of the same motorbike are different!

"... 0336"

"... 0337"!

Of Tiredness and Travelling

2010-07-30T21:25:00.004+05:30

These days, I wake up around 6.30am. Today I had the luxury of waking up at 7.45am however. But yes, mostly I wake up approximately 6hrs before I usually do. I manage about 15 more minutes of eye-rest time during the one hour bus ride to the college. 15 minutes only, because I stare outside the window a lot.
Then come back and fall heavily on the bed. The last Saturday was spent in catching up on sleep. I slept in the morning, I slept in the afternoon and I slept at night too of course

I don't mind the bus journeys however. They are nice and comfortable and most of the time I wait for one that has an AC, so that my one hour is spent very nicely listening to songs and staring outside the windows.
It gives me ample people-watching opportunities too.
For example, there is a man who I've seen almost thrice now, in the same bus, who's quite recognizable because he's very short.

The other day I was forced to take a non-low-floor bus (which means by default that it didn't have AC) and there was a man sitting in front of me who was calling someone. Phone call over, he sits sideways, so that when I'm looking straight, I sort of face him.
Then he starts playing music on his phone speaker. Which is okay I believe, but it was deafeningly loud. But he? Oh he had to stick the phone down his collar to listen to the music clearly. As if it's not bad enough that he's playing a song that sounded weirdly like a Hindi version of a song by Akon, he began to sing too. He shut up after some time, so that's okay too.
But then when my bus stop was nearing, I started looking out for it. Except that he was blocking my view and he somehow decided that I was most certainly checking him out. He stared at me and stared at me and I could see his stare from the corner of my eye.

And so I end this remarkably bad post.
Oh well. I'm tired.

Ze New-ness

2010-07-24T22:51:00.004+05:30

We had two days of Orientation. With a capital O.

Because, you know, it looks Important that way.

Our college is tiny. It's so tiny, it has 226 students (including M.Tech kids, or matkas and the Ph.D. people though I don't know if it includes the matkas and Ph.Ds who joined this year) and our batch alone has 100 kids. The importance of that number is that it's very easy to quote figures in terms of percentages. If four kids fail, your failure rate is 4%! You see?

And the college is also very new. So new in fact, that its own campus is still in the post-foundation-laying stage and it has to share campus space of another college. So there we are, approx 226 students (or more), in two floors of one building. It's not bad though. We have a pool table which the host college apparently doesn't have.

And my courses!

The most popular course seems to be Systems Management because the instructor uttered the magical words of "Facebook applications" and "hacking" which are among the other stuff (lab classes will apparently involve fiddling about with old and discarded computers) we'll learn to do. Then there is Discrete Mathematics and Introduction to Programming where we will learn python and Digital Circuits. I'm not very sure what Digital Circuits will involve, but the instructor hopes that we would be able to make mobile phones. Hmm.

Other than that, ours is supposed to be one of the very few institutes in India where you can get internships after the first year itself. :)

In Search of The Ideal Book-Reading Posture

2010-07-11T15:56:00.003+05:30

I have been reading a lot of books lately, finishing off one book every day. What with all the time spent reading, I have come to realize that reading books is very very uncomfortable. Some or the other part of your body starts aching after some time and you have to keep changing your posture. Below are the five postures I employ when reading a book.

1. Sitting Upright
Posture - Sit on a bed, cross your legs, keep the book down and read. Alternatively, sit on a chair and use a table to keep the book on, but I prefer the first one.
Pros - It's nice and easy and you don't specifically need a bed for it, it could be on the floor or a chair too.
Cons - After some time, your back begins to hunch so that your head is vertically on top of the book, thereby resulting in back and neck ache.

2. Lying Sideways on the Bed
Posture - In this, you're lying on the bed, on your side and you're using both hands to hold the book.
Pros - Quite comfortable, when you want to just lie.
Cons - If you're lying on the left side and you're reading the left side of the book, it either strains your arms because you have to hold up the book, or else it strains your eyes because the book is at an awkward angle then.

3. Lying On Your Back
Posture - Lie on a bed, on your back and keep the book in an upright position on your chest or a little above it.
Pros - Same as above.
Cons - Same as above. You either have to hold the book a little higher, or your head is at a bad angle, with your chin nearly touching your chest.

4. Propping Up on Elbows
(a) Both Elbows
Posture - Lie on your stomach and prop yourself on both elbows, using the hands to hold the book.
Pros - It's a very good posture, hurting neither your back or your neck and you're lying and your head is at a good distance from the book.
Cons - After some time, your elbows hurt.

(b) One Elbow Only
Posture - Lie on one side, using the elbow of that side to prop you up. Use both hands to hold the book. Usually, if you're right-handed, you'll be propping yourself on the left elbow.
Pros - Same as above.
Cons - Same as above.

5. On Your Chin
Posture - Look for a low bed. Lie down on it on your stomach, but with your head sticking out of the bed. Place the book on the floor and your arms straight down. Adjust angle of head and place chin at the very edge of the bed to hold your head in place.
Pros - No need to hold book or yourself. You only require hands when you need to turn the pages, unless there's some moving air around. Everything's got a support.
Cons - Your chin hurts after some time.

I need a big fluffy armchair where you curl up with a book resting on your legs, but even that will have its share of cons. And reading on tables never works for me. Any suggestions?

What's In A Name? Part 9

2010-07-09T17:51:00.004+05:30

You know how, when you're part of a big Indian family, you have relatives? Like many, many relatives? People you have no idea how they're related to you? And how it's always a problem figuring out how to address them? Well there are four women in my extended family, who someone thought should be called - Sugar, Honey, Sweetheart and Darling - by me.

They are four fully-grown, gray-haired and aging women we're talking about, two whole generations above me.
And I am supposed to address them using names that makes it sound like I'm hitting on them.
I don't know whose genius idea this was.

"Darling" is someone I know much more closely than the others and I've been using that name since before I even knew what it meant, and it sounds more like "Dal-ling" so it isn't so much of a problem. But the others, I rarely meet and even when I do, I avoid talking to them at all costs because I have no idea what to call them. What if they don't remember that that's what their appointed names are? What if they do remember, but the others around them don't? What if they're so used to being called something else (because they have to have another name, right?) that they don't respond to me when I use that name? And even worse, someone ELSE does? Maybe it's some kind of an inside joke in my family and they're just waiting for me to use these names and then they'll have a big excuse to laugh?

The nightmarish possibilities are endless.

And you know what? I think there's also a fifth one called "Dear".

Paint, Music, Books and a Poll

2010-07-06T15:48:00.005+05:30

I have never been very good with applying nailpolish. Right now too, the dark blue nailpaint on my left hand finger nails are all over the skin. My logic is, it doesn't matter, just cover the nails. The paint on the skin will wash off in some time anyway.

Also, I am trying to re-learn how to play the guitar. So I'm in the process of developing guitar fingers. It is only day two. I had even forgotten chords and chord combinations. But no worries, it will all come back.

I have been reading too.
1. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen by Dyan Sheldon - I think its eponymous movie has a much better ending.
2. Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine - Its first chapter made me think I've picked up a children's story book about a broken family. But by the time I read the second and third chapters, it wasn't so bad. Somewhat like Jacqueline Wilson's books, but not intended for as young a readership. It's ending was quite Hindi-movie-style complete with the pyaar ki nishaani and it may seem a little impractical, but in the book, it sort of fits.
3. This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen - It is a love story, but it is so incredibly not like the typical love stories, that you really have to read it!
4. And Thereby Hangs a Tale by Jeffrey Archer - I haven't read many of Jeffrey Archer's books because they are just too long and way too full of head-spinning twists. Or maybe I think so because I was a lot younger when I read one of his books. This book is a collection of short stories that take care of both the problems. They are simple, clean and short, making you guess every time what the twist in the tale might be and almost never giving it away prematurely.

Oh and do take part in the poll. I'm not sure what I'm trying to conclude from it, maybe I'm just simply curious.

Opinions

2010-06-28T12:11:00.002+05:30

I was waiting after a test, waiting for my parents to pick me up. There were 2 big men on either side of me and the one closest to me was reeking of paan and cigarette smoke.

After 2 minutes, he starts talking.
His daughter was also giving the test and he was waiting for her, he said. Okay.
Some queries about the test and my previous performances later, he suggests - "Why don't you take up a B.Sc. course and sit for the engineering entrance exams again after that?"

It was so ridiculous, I wished I had laughed in his face and walked off.

I do not understand the penchant for giving advice that people have. Especially when they have no clue about the topic at hand. :/

Tracing Phone Numbers

2010-06-20T13:51:00.004+05:30

It was annoying to see that little ad from my mobile phone service provider on the screen telling me that for only Rs. 3, they will kindly trace a phone number for me. Was I supposed to feel blessed? That now for -3 from my balance, I can find out the origins of mysterious phone numbers!

Maybe I would've found it a little cooler if it weren't for the fact that much before this service was being provided, I had successfully traced a phone number within India to its service provider and state of origin {I had to. A strange guy who apparently knew my name (because he referred to it in his messages sometimes) would message me without telling me anything about himself. He tried to convince me to "make friendship" with him, overlooking the minor fact that I didn't even know his goddamn name. Still don't actually. So I traced his number to try and see if he was anyone I knew. He wasn't, btw.}

So if you want to save yourself those precious 3 rupees (which is quite a lot in terms of talktime value. Depending upon your tariff plan, you can talk for 1.5hrs with it too. :) ) but still get a phone number number traced, first is the trusted Wikipedia. And if you don't generally like big tables and plenty of numbers, here's this website.

Posted in Public Interest. :D

2010-06-17T16:25:00.004+05:30

After watching 10 minutes of an incredibly bad movie on the TV a few days back - Love Story 2050 - I came to the conclusion that if there Has to be a censor board, rather than censoring smoking/nudity/politically incorrect terms/gaaliyaan it ought to censor bad movies, bad dialogues, bad acting, bad pink furry desperately-trying-to-be-cute robotic teddy bears, Harman Baweja, bad plastic toy robots, bad imagination as to how India will be 40 years later and bad special effects.

And honestly Priyanka Chopra has some issues signing for films. Except for Don 2, Dostana and Fashion, I cannot recall any decent, watch-able movies that she acted in. On the other hand, I can recall Pyaar Impossible, Love Story 2050, What's Your Rashee? and even Krishh which range from unwatchable (Love Story 2050) to just about bearable (Krishh).

Feeeeefa-ah!

2010-06-12T21:56:00.002+05:30

"Lol* look at him! He's so agitated."

"No he looks totally constipated."

"Or maybe he's sexually frustrated." :P

* I actually use "Lol" in regular conversations. :|

Random Bits

2010-06-09T15:10:00.004+05:30

Such as, what does the "H" in "Jesus H. Christ" stands for.

And, the 13th zodiac sign, Ophiuchus. That changes a lot of people's zodiac sign.

And this blog is where I first read about the 13th zodiac sign.

2010-06-09T15:00:00.002+05:30

A few days ago, when I entered the swimming pool changing room, a mother was drying her little daughter with a towel. The kid had long-ish hair till her shoulders n was totally naked, but the strategic placement of the towel concealed everything. Not that I was peeking you know, but still.

And then the towel came off.

And I saw a DICK!

I was, honestly, pretty freaked out. Little boys do change in the women's changing room because they have their mothers with them, but this one .. I thought it was a girl!

Turns out it was a little Sardar boy.

2010-05-31T02:24:00.002+05:30

When I daydream, I can never decide whether I want to live in the hills or by a beach.

You see, if I lived by the beach, I wouldn't be able to keep a little St. Bernard's pup for myself. Unless that beach was somewhere in Norway or Iceland and honestly, I'd like a beach I could lie around on. And on the other hand the hills not only provide me my type of cold snowy climate, but its also very good for keeping a furry dog.

Sigh.

The Good And The Bad

2010-05-31T02:09:00.002+05:30

Well there's a lot of Bad. Usually I only think about the Good. Cuz it's easy to lose your head over the Bad. But somehow this one last month, the Good just didn't seem to exist.

From time to time I did have some bits of Goodness. Like reading a book about a man's amputated leg and feeling my legs and feeling Good that they are where they belong. Or plunging into the swimming pool after a few days of not stepping out of the house and feeling so Floaty! Or tickling Gleam Eye Boy because he had my cellphone and he wasn't giving it back. Or going to my friend's house who I hadn't seen in Ages.

Generally though, the Bad dominated in its own evil ways.

It would hug me and put me to sleep and come in my dreams and wake me up and dance before me and drown me and tickle me and feed me itself and poke me and point itself out everywhere and make its presence felt every second.

Another of life's dilemmas I face often is the question - should you be happy with what you have or should you be ambitious and keep striving for more? Because I very easily become happy with my lot and that does lead to complacency and whatnot but in the end isn't being happy more important?

Experiments With A Discarded Pair of Contact Lenses

2010-05-25T18:03:00.007+05:30

What Happens If You Dry Them Out

The box of contact lenses informed me that it is 59% water. So if I dried it out as much as I can, it would become roughly 40% of its original size. And hard.

Observations : I should've measured the diameter if I had to be thorough. But oh well. On your left is a dried out piece of silicon hydrogel and on your right is the hydrogel, hydrated.

What Happens If You Put Them In Fountain Pen Ink

They become blue. Predictable actually.

Observations : But then if you dry them, then put them into the solution, they get these crinkles around the edges, the number of which decreases as time passes.

See?

What Happens If You Put Them In Food Colouring

They turn the colour of the colouring, in my case, green.

Pretty, huh?

Conclusions - I was extremely vella.

Suggested experiments welcome. :)

Of Spotted Stuff and Bad English

2010-05-22T20:41:00.006+05:30

So today while parents checked out curtains in the home furnishing portion of a big store, me and my brother roamed around and came across these things/signs :

The white lettering on that box of hair straighteners reads: "DO NOT TURN INTO BATHROOM." Transfiguration : +10 ;)

The photo sucks because it was taken using a not-so-good phone camera.

Those containers look nothing like "seat storage" containers! Not that I would know, I don't store seats in containers.

Me brother and I tried on that definitely helmet-esque looking metal cage-thing. I cannot figure out why anyone would ever need such metal cage-things in their kitchens.

You would Have to be Obsessed to want Disney carpets (ODC ;) )

But then, we saw this ...

My first reaction? "Wtf!"

"Sleeping with Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus" just took on a whole new meaning.

A major part of this store's clientele seems to be Disney obsessed freaks, but a "Disney STOOL Collection"? Shitty indeed.

Overheard At The Swimming Pool

2010-05-14T17:36:00.000+05:30

Coach - And your time is, how much is 25 - 9?
Kid #1 - 24!
Coach - Is that what you're learning in school nowadays?
Kid #2 - HAHA! Sir, he thinks 25-9 is 24! Haha! Gadhe, it's FOURTEEN! Haha, he doesn't know anything!
Kid #3 - Uh. It's 16.

2010-05-09T13:08:00.001+05:30

"And remember how we planned to put salt in someone's bag and then frame them for using cocaine?"

Why Shouldn't We Cheat?

2010-05-02T15:50:00.000+05:30

So the topic of cheating on somebody came up.
They thought I'm the person less likely to cheat on somebody I'm in a relationship with because, as they put it, "who'd do it with you?" -.-

But eventually we came to the dynamics of cheating. The reasons for straying but not being able to let go of one person; not being faithful in a relationship; and also, the reasons for not cheating on someone.

I know that you cannot really compare the two, but if you can have 2 friends without one hating for not being "faithful" to her/him, why can't you have two partners? The thing is, I know I wouldn't be able to cheat on somebody but perhaps it is only because my head says two-timing is bad. In certain societies people have multiple wives. Of course, the whole love thing may not be very relevant there.

Then I put myself on the other side, and imagine how it would be if my boyfriend two-timed me. I'd feel jealous I guess. But then isn't jealousy considered a bad thing?
It's this feeling of another person encroaching on your territory, but why is that feeling not relevant with, say, your best friend? Is the difference only because of platonic and non-platonic love? You're forgiven if you love someone more than me if I only love you platonically, but not otherwise. Why? It doesn't make sense to me.

I read this article which didn't explain it very well, but okay, it said that cheating isn't good because it hurts your loved ones. That is a good enough reason not to cheat, but it doesn't explain why you get hurt at all in such a situation.
There's 17 reasons to cheat, but it still treats cheating as a bad thing, that can be justified in these 17 ways.

A Little Bit Of Information You Could Have Lived Your Life Without Knowing

2010-04-29T02:27:00.000+05:30

You know when you go to Google and search for 'manhoos', the first result is my blog.

A Little Bit of PDA

2010-04-29T02:18:00.000+05:30

You know my blog posts have crossed the 400 mark? It takes simple math to understand that that's less than 100 posts for them to reach the 500 mark!
And after long deliberation and frequently going back on my decision, I decided to write about Gleam Eye Boy. Whether I actually end up writing about him remains to be seen. I mean, you would have to read to the end of this post to know that. Or else, just till the bit where I start off. Or the bit where I go back on my decision again and don't write about him.

I'm not really making a lot of progress, am I?

Well let's see. When I first met him, I didn't really like him. He seemed over-friendly. The type that makes you suspicious of the other person's intentions. The type that makes you feel all conscious and hence makes you dislike them for making you all conscious of yourself because then you naturally say stupider things than usual and stammer a bit more.

And as it so happens, I was amazingly apprehensive of ever entering into a relationship until I actually did. Because I didn't like how they ended up. Relationships seemed like being given the choice between going without food or going without water. But then along Gleam Eye Boy and I realized that what happens in the end happens because that seems to be the best option at that time and until you're actually at the end, you shouldn't be thinking about it (to be honest, I had realized the first bit myself). And well he taught me other things too, such as what velocity of efflux is and how to express log to the base x square in terms of log to the base x, but that's not really life changing. But it was important, okay?

What surprises me though, is that usually, around most people, I'm a very controlled person (in the sense that I watch what I say or do) but not so much in front of Gleam Eye Boy and he still tolerates me well enough. For such an impatient person, he's patient enough with me. Or not. *shrug*

So I'm going to end the post here. It seems like a forced post. Oh well. I watch what I write as well. :D

But you know, I don't believe in the opposites attract theory. Whatever brings me and Gleam Eye Boy close aren't the differences. But wait, differences and opposites are 2 different things. Like hard and spongy are different, but not necessarily opposite. Or chocolate cream biscuits and chocolate chip biscuits.
But generally our different opinions tend to be opposite. :P
Which doesn't make him attractive at all, it just makes me furious.