Maximum Entropy

First Vehicle

2009-04-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

Finally got my very first owned vehicle, a Honda Aviator. Got the dealer to deliver it near my home since I only have a learners license and have never really ridden a scooter/motorcycle for anything more than 5-10 minutes at a time :)

Well, the dealer (Kothari Wheels in Pune, look them up, they're good) was kind enough to show me how to start it, various controls (ignition, horn, lights, indicators, etc.). And when he realized that I have never seriously ridden a scooter before, he sat behind me and gave a brief 5 minute lesson around the block. I mustered up some courage and decided to take the scooter to fill up some petrol -- it had only 1/2 litre and most of it was gone since he'd ridden almost 15 km to get the scooter here. Anyway, I took the scooter out and reached the gate, only to have it stall there -- the tank was empty :(

I walked to the nearest petrol pump only to see that it was shut, walked back, walked my scooter back into parking and came back home. Now to get some petrol tomorrow and take her for a ride :)

End of the Interweb

2009-03-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

This comment on Slashdot serves as a warning to everyone who is looking to try out Internet Explorer 8. Here's what a Google search on ie8 brings up:

Don't say I didn't warn you guys ;)

And Speaking of head gear....

2009-01-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

I'm wearing a new hat now.... a Red one ;)

I joined Red Hat on 27th January. Now I can finally work on FOSS during work hours and try to make something worthwhile out of myself.

Pune seems to be a real nice city except for the public transport. I'll have to learn to ride a bike and get one myself soon. The weather's great though...

I had thought of posting a pic of my new Red Hat cap but bluetooth's not working on my new laptop (company provided :) ) yet... rest assured that it looks cool though ;)

Jobless

2009-01-24T04:54:00.000-08:00

Right now I am not tied to any employer; ended my 2 year association with TCS yesterday. It's not that it's not a good place to work; it is. But it just doesn't do FOSS. It uses FOSS, just doesn't contribute. Hence, I'm jobless for now... probably on Tuesday I'll be wearing a different cap ;)

Changes

2009-01-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

I've had virtually no internet access since I came back from FOSS.in/2008. And now that I finally have it, things are changing big time and I have virtually no time left to spend on my laptop. Some changes are due after this Republic Day (26th January). Stay tuned :)

Bare essentials

2008-10-31T22:43:00.000-07:00

A gas stove and utensils to cook, a mattress to sleep in, clothes, soap and water and...

... a laptop with internet access ;)

To and fro

2008-10-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

The four hour journey to work and back and our system performance issues at work are becoming a pain now. I started working on the facebook plugin last weekend and it's just stuck at that. Hopefully there will be some respite next week.

Or probably not...

Consulting

2008-09-20T07:46:00.000-07:00

Consulting is when four people are assigned to "Meet, Collaborate and Execute a Challenge Efficiently and Effectively" in a month; basically a job that can be mopped up by one person in two days.

The Untold Gandhi...

2008-08-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

Smriti Irani (Bahu of Saas bhi kabhi bahu...) is all set to launch a TV serial depicting the untold story of Gandhi. So we will finally get to see:

A good looking, uncannily fashionable Gandhi
Evil British officers with devillish looking smiles
British officers' wives with garish make-up and long bindis
Gandhi having a car accident and losing his memory... to become Nehru for a while?
Gandhi's Ba outliving him by several generations out of public demand

Yup, it's an untold story alright...

So much to live for...

2008-08-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

* A career, which depends as much on whims of others as on my skills...
* A marriage, in which my wife lives far away from me and I can see her only once a month...
* A fat paycheck, which vanishes the moment the next month arrives...
* Wonderful mornings, which are either gone by the time I wake up or arrive after I've reached the perennial morning of my workplace
* A Wonderful city, which is burning itself to cinders over who is Marathi, Bhaiyya, Hindu, Muslim....
* A great country, which is pulling itself into the mud, under the pretext of going back to its roots....
* Children, who will grow under the influence of the malls, cartoon network and video games, for whom freedom means pocket money and going to malls alone, instead of playing in the open spaces and maidans...

So much to live for...

Cleopatra

2008-07-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

I was having a discussion with one of my colleagues at work about Egypt and I don't recollect how but we got into this talk about Cleopatra.
He (my colleague) got into story telling mode and he told me that Cleopatra had married her younger brother to stay in power and she also killed her sister some time later in her life time so as to usurp the kingdom from her.

History and its weird tales !!!!!

The Question of Loyalty

2008-07-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

I joined the company I currently work for almost two years ago. When I joined I heard everyone around me talk about 'bearing up with' the two years and then switching jobs for a more lucrative offer. Me? No. I wanted to stay, I believed in what the company spoke of as its philosophy. I wanted to stay, be part of the family.

Almost two years now and much has changed. I'm married. I have a family. I want to give them my best as well as save for my children when they arrive. I want something for myself as well -- a job that I will always want to excel in. A challenge that I would be raring to face everyday. There's so much I want that I wonder if I'm being too demanding. I have so much as well right?

Four hours of traveling in a day, people packed like sardines in the train; every single day. A work schedule that demands more and more all the time, while I feel myself giving less and less. I can see people cheering with me, swearing at me, loving me, hating me, resenting me. It is great contribution if you work your ass off on weekends or for twenty hours a day. But at the same time it's blasphemy if you ask for compensation for it. You should not be drinking too much coffee, not even when you're trying to keep yourself awake through the night so that you can meet some of those challenging (read unrealistic) deadlines.

It's a hard question, the question of loyalty. especially hard when you're really not sure if you're being loyal to the company who's values you believe in, or to those individuals who seem to work overtime to circumvent them.

cat random_ramblings_and_frustrations > randomgod

2008-07-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

... better than polluting my tech journal with them.

Outsourcing, Bhaiyya style

2008-02-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

The Marathi-Bhaiyya issue from my own metropolitan, middle-class viewpoint looked like a complete farce, a means to polarize Marathi votes away from the Sena and towards the MNS. Today, I had the luck to look at it from the viewpoint of a grassroots worker, a rickshawalla in Mira Road. He was far away from the "they don't learn our culture" talk that Raj Thakarey flaunts and was much closer to the issue that hit him most -- employment. Here's what he had to say (So that the comments don't sound out of context, they were made as a reaction to the State Government appealing to the fleeing workers in Nashik to come back. Also, Mira Road rickshaws follow the pre-paid fare system; no meters):

"Those bhaiyyas, they herd into the city by the dozens, stay like dogs, 7-8 in a room and earn money at our cost. One comes here and then gets 10 other relatives to dirty our state. They sell their pride for chump change, steal our jobs by agreeing to work for half the salary. A Marathi manoos would never sell his pride, he will never work in such conditions. A Marathi manoos, with his family, will never live in conditions that they do. We have our pride as well. We won't simply bear anything for work. I'm not saying we should shoo away all the bhaiyyas, just stop more from coming over."

"Among all the rickshawallas in Mira-Bhayander, most are bhaiyyas, but we make sure none of them pick up fare at our stand. They pollute our business area by taking fare from our stand for less. Wherever we charge for Rs. 20, they willingly take fare for Rs. 10. Commuters then fight with us for the fare, which is just not right".

"But, why are they able to afford taking fare for half the cost?", I asked.

"Because they're like nomads. They don't stick to a single stand like we do, and simply wander all over the place. We have stands, we belong to a place, not like them. Passengers know us. Whenever they forget anything in the rickshaw, we make sure that we return it to them the next time. Thay is why we make sure only our Marathi brothers do business from our stand, not those unreliable bhaiyyas".

So to conclude, North Indians should be shooed out of Maharashtra since they are creating competition for the locals. In other words, Raj Thakareys Marathi manoos doesn't have the spine to compete with the hard working UPites and Biharis.

Shame on us.

Divided we stand

2007-06-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

The strife for complete equality and non-discrimination will never work. The simple reason for that is that we always fall into groups and point fingers at each other. If it's not race, then it's money, gender, education, educational streams, geographical locations, age, disabilities, or even technological preferences.

If all else fails, there's always physical looks and/or skin colour.

Beautiful

2007-03-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

Absolutely beautiful sights the Kokan Kada and Taramati peak were. Their description, however superlative it may be, will still be modest. One has to see it to witness nature's art at its best. Visit, but be responsible and do not litter the place. We cleaned it up day before yesterday. 4 gunny bags full of glass, 5 gunny bags full of plastic and 3 gunny bags of paper -- enough said isn't it?

Youth for Equality

2007-01-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

The YFE sent emails to everyone on their list today, notifying that they have now entered politics to clean up the system. The email asked questions to the reader; the result is a bit predictable isn't it :)

Received: by 10.90.32.3 with HTTP; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 09:47:41 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <6e19a8cd0701210947h6267c261y3130413f884eac6@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 23:17:41 +0530
From: "Siddhesh Poyarekar" 
To: "Youth for Equality" 
Subject: Re: YFE Goes POLITICAL
In-Reply-To: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
References: 
Delivered-To: siddhesh.poyarekar@gmail.com

Hi,

To be honest, I have not been following the development of the YFE
forum for quite some time now. But since these questions came in I
thought I'd answer on my behalf since I feel that's the least I can
do.

On 1/21/07, Youth for Equality  wrote:
> Q. Don't you think that it's cruel and unjust to beat
> innocent students, throw water cannons, tear gas at
> them, and put them behind bars in order to curb their
> silent protest?

True, it is. But the issue is much larger than water cannons, tear gas
or for that matter, even reservations

> Q. Don't you think that there is a possibility that we
> are living under a dictatorship?

No we are not. We are living in a corrupt democracy. There is a very
vital difference. There is no justice in reserving seats for different
classes just as there is no justice in NOT reserving seats for
different classes.

> Q. Don't you think that the government is playing the
> game of "Divide and Rule" with its reservation
> policies?

Yes they are. No arguments about that.

> Q. Did you ever think of protesting against the
> functioning of the system in a democratic way?

Yes. But if you think protests and demonstrations are the democratic
way then please think again. There is also a very strong case for
reforms. Devote all that time that you sit and prepare slogans and
slides for this movement to educating the under-privileged and THEN
claim that there's no need to give them crutches. Only then will you
have a morally higher standpoint. Demonstrations and protests make YFE
and the Indian youth in general look very selfish.

> Q. Don't you think the current politicians are
> unfairly using public emotions for their vote bank?

Honestly, so is the YFE. That is exactly what politics is all about
and YFE is already a part
of it.

> Q. Don't you think that there is an urgent need for
> replacement of the people controlling the Indian
> system?

This is a very difficult question to answer. The Telegraph describes
YFE as follows:

"One group represents the cream of the country's youth"
(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070108/asp/atleisure/story_7233137.asp)

Honestly, I can't quite disagree with that. There's many more people
in this country than the few lakh students that forms and supports the
YFE. It is really no use if YFE is just another organization that
shouts on and on for 'equality' and doesn't do anything else.

Regards,
-- 
Siddhesh Poyarekar
http://siddhesh.tk

Truth (one-liner)

2006-12-15T00:51:00.000-08:00

Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. ..........................................So far the Universe is winning.

:)):)) rotfl................

Me, Myself and Me Again

2006-11-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

It's so great to be young. Everything seems to be about me. The world seems to revolve around me. I am destined to be the next big thing in this world. Bill Gates, you're not rich enough. Hitler, you weren't powerful enough. I'm going to beat you all!

My parents raised me? Why, they only did their duty. It was their problem after all, giving birth to me. If the odds were against them then why fool around and take responsibility for a child?

I've pretty much made myself. They gave me just food and shelter. I have made me what I am. Love? No they never gave me love! They knew I'd be a great person once I grew up. They were just investing in the golden goose that is me. Nobody loves without reason after all. In fact they've given me such a hard time! Curfews, rules, restrictions -- Oh, the suffocation!!

So when I'm here eating my lavish dinner at Oberoi, my mother can barely cook her curry. She eats it half-cooked as she can't stand for long. She doesn't like hotel food, and I can't live without it forever you know. Jacks gotta play too, or he'll be a dull boy.

The old man stands next to me in the train pleading, knees shivering, for a place to sit for a while. Why should I? I did all the hard work jumping into the running train. Buzz off old man!

What are you saying? I'll never be so weak and helpless! Even if I do, I'm sure my children will take care of me. I've invested so much in them after all...

Sids comin back soon...

2006-11-04T07:45:00.000-08:00

Very Very soon....me counting days since a month now....
BRACE urself PPL :D:D:D

ok zaada ho gaya :P
but me very happy :):):)

Responsible Independence

2006-08-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

Today is one of the biggest days in the history of India. Today is the day that we got our Freedom. But what does it really mean for us? What definition of freedom do we go by? What do we know about our Founding Fathers? What do we feel about the Independence Movement that bore fruit 59 years ago? Why do you love Gandhi? More importantly, why do you hate Gandhi?

For the younger generation, us, the British Raj is only what the books tell us. Some tell us that it's exaggerated and others tell us that it's all true. Some tell us about the "glory days of the British Raj" when everything was in order unlike now. Others speak of the struggle they had to go through during those difficult times. It is naturally very difficult to relate to it; the Freedom Movement.

There is nothing wrong if you cannot relate to the Independence struggle, the various movements that went in parallel signifying equal contributions of many different minds. But inability to take a stand on the correct approach to attain Freedom does not invalidate Freedom itself. So we need to understand Freedom and acknowledge those who fought for it in those days.

We haven't been part of the Freedom Struggle so we don't know what our fathers fought for. Hence, we don't fully understand Freedom. We would like to enjoy the freedom that comes with Freedom, but we do not even wish to understand the responsibilities that come with it. This failure to understand Freedom invalidates any "respect" we may show to our Founding fathers, for we don't really respect the gift that they have given us.

We talk of our freedom to spit on the roads. We talk of our equal rights to education when backward class quotas are introduced. We lambast our government for every concievable thing. The BMC doesn't clean the drains. Why do you litter them? Why do you throw plastic garbage into drains? We are free to do whatever we want, you do your work!

Freedom comes with a price; we have to give others Freedom to do as they wish as well. And Democracy comes with a responsibility. We need to contribute actively to be able to retain our democracy. We, as citizens of an Independent, Democratic nation, are governors of our nation too. That doesn't only mean that we vote our leaders into power. It means that we do some little things right ourselves and actively participate in the nations development, not just our own.

No one expects us all to run for MLA/MP/CM/PM; that would infact be a bit of a disaster. No one expects us to be social workers/activists either. We simply need to do our duties as citizens. We must refrain from throwing garbage, paper, plastic on the roads. We must refrain from spitting all over the roads. We need to empathise with the socially and economically unfortunate, understand if any special provisions are given to them and if possible, contribute. We need to contribute towards making India a superpower and not just expect the leaders we have "worked so hard to elect", to do all the work inspite of us. Let us not simply say that "We pay taxes, now you work". It's like parents giving money to the child and telling her to go do whatever she wants; the child needs love, care and attention too.

Let us salute our Freedom Fighters today by assuming our responsibilities as Indian Citizens.

Diya is now in Pune

2006-08-14T21:54:00.000-07:00

Diya is now in Pune for her ABAP training. Needless to say that I'm missing her a lot.

A Nation of Mazdoors (Yet another random rant)

2006-07-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

I recently saw a show on Discovery Channel which showed how Jakarta plans to build a massive tunnel under the city to counter floods. Yes, it was an amazing project; well worth a look for our good ol' Mumbai as well the moment we're done feeding the sarkari babus. But another thing crossed my attention. A major number of labourers in the project were Indians.

One would imagine that burly Australians/Americans/Africans would form the majority of the strength-intensive workforce. But that was not the case. It was the thin but firmly built Indians that did the "donkey work", quite literally. And I wondered to myself; we are excellent servants to everyone.

But then one instance does not prove such a general statement. So off we go, trying to fit this view of India into the people of India, the workers of India. And was it a dificult journey? No, not quite.

From the day we got independence to this day today, Indians all over the country have always wanted one thing; to go abroad. It does not matter where, they just want to go to "vilaayat" to earn money. What do we want to do to earn money? Doesn't matter. We'll be servants the in the West but whenever we come back to India we will be respected as "vilaayati babus".

The Patels and Singhs ran off to England and have little shops there. Their most notable acheivements there? Infiltrating friends and relatives in the country so that they too can start their little grocery store there. Similarly we dominate in the cabbie jobs in the US, we have colonized New Zealand and are doing the same now to Australia, not as anyone's masters but as workers.

But that is not what prompted me to write this. None of these people claim to be gifted in anything else other than what they have achieved. What prompted me is the Indian view of itself as an "IT Superpower".

We Indians have a thriving IT services business. Based on this business we claim to be the (emerging) IT Superpower of the world. But do we really master IT? Or are we simply slaves of the West?

The major projects handled by even the topmost Indian IT service companies are of maintenance/support nature. This means that the innovation is already done, now we have to troubleshoot and maintain systems. We have to handle angry calls from our Western (Eastern in case of the Japanese) masters and sometimes, bear racial slur as well. We do not answer back because we're decent Gandhians who will offer our other cheek when slapped. And yeah, we need the money to feed ourselves.

The rest of the projects are majorly standard systems on an enterprise scale, e.g. a Payroll system for a company. Wait lets call it an Employee Remuneration Resolution System. Wait, no, lets shorten it to ERRS. Now THAT sounds innovative doesn't it? It doesn't? Then how about Resource Approval and Payroll Enabler? Sounds heavy right? How about we shorten it to... oh wait...

Indian IT firms do not want to innovate in technology. Long story short, if they decide to innovate they would have to be a little bit more expensive to their Western masters and those masters will simply go to their competitors.

So the IT firms are to blame for not utilizing the "Brilliant IT Brains of India". Are they?

An average student passing out of BE/BTech/MSc/MCA does not know the basics of computer science. He/She has cleared his/her exams by cramming the words their teacher had dictated in class. They don't care if a Unix console looked black or a program is compiled or interpreted. They just want a high paying job; they'll do whatever it takes, even learn belly dancing while balancing a laptop on their chest.

We never think twice before we claim to be one of the most intelligent races on the face of this earth. What do we have to prove that? We have writings of sages, our culture, our arts and our vedic mathematics, science, astronomy, yoga, etc. In other words, everything that we are proud is more than a few thousand years old. So where are the current achievements that make us so invincibly intelligent?

Our IITs, RECs, Medical Schools, etc. are said to be overflowing with brilliant talent. But most of our IIT/REC brainiacs invariably decide to do a Management course and take up a white collar job. All engineers who can afford it will go abroad for higher studies and stay there. What's left for "innovation" are the "rest" while the "best" head westwards for the dollars/euros/pounds. So we serve; that's what the people left behind are good for in the end.

A post on Slashdot described India as a potential "worker pool". so thats what we are, a big pool of servants for the West. Are we?

Then again, I'll be joining this worker pool soon.

Freedom of Speech Prevails, it's freedom of using our intelligence we lack

2006-07-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

Blogger, TypePad and Geocities have been blocked across my country. An Indian is not allowed to read views put forward by various people across the globe, views put forward by their own countrymen, information that could change lives, the only media that stood tall when phone lines went down across my city, Mumbai.

Many have cried out that our freedom of speech and expression have been violated. I did too initially. But look closer at a very minor technicality, especially in case of blogger.com. A blogger can post articles on to his blog. So he is being allowed to speak up, express himself. The only catch is that nobody is allowed to hear them.

When our constitution was designed, every citizen was given a few fundamental rights; Freedom of Speech, Expression and Movement. The basic tenet of democracy is that while one may disagree with a view, he/she has no right whatsoever to silence the opposition and refuse his/her right to speech and expression. This is an aspect of our democracy that has always been disturbing. If someone talks against a popular opinion, he/she is crucified, stones thrown at their homes, effigies burnt, bandhs called. Such blatant violation of one's rights, one's integrity goes unnoticed time and again.

Finally, there is one basic freedom and right that we, who call ourselves one of the most intelligent nations in the world, still haven't been given. The freedom of using our own intelligence. India, the State has time and again taken the onus on itself to "protect" its people from the evils of information in all forms. They want to have control over what we view, read or listen to as they do not trust our maturity and choice.

Too much corruption in our society, too many lords violating the innocent under the pretext of tradition and social justice, too many eggheads ruling and quarelling over the State. It's time for someone to stand up and be counted. Will you, the common but intelligent citizen of India, stand up?

Will I, another common citizen of India, stand up and be counted?

Land of dreams or Land of Despair....

2006-07-12T02:57:00.000-07:00

Floods, serial blasts...the daily turmoil of a Mumbaikar is not enough that such dastardly acts keep occurring at regular intervals.

Close to 500 crores for flood relief and amendments simply buoy up the politicians' bank balances. Need anything be said more about the dreadful state of the financial capital of the country.
Well a lot has been said about the 'courage' of the Mumbaikars but please will someone take note of what is happening around and do something about it and stop patting our backs...what we are doing is simply our means of survival. Our only accomplishment is the tremendous kinship - the feeling that we ought to be of some help to our fellow citizens in a crisis like this (or should I make it plural)
News is out that the police were suspecting incidents like these to occur...no questions asked why no one bothered before. It would be stupid to ask, wouldn’t it?

The Task Force is today busy concentrating on the protection for the leaders of the political parties..well they r having a free campaign of sorts for their respective parties as well....everyone has something to gain here isn’t it? Only if they could resolve differences and come together to do something worthwhile…
Almost every alternate year mumbai has seen a minimum of 1 blast since the communal riots in the 90s, is the report.
This time 7 blasts, in a matter of 11 minutes across major stations on the western line killing many, injuring many more. 189 (the known stats) lives lost and many manyyyyyy injured for life not to mention the psychological damages to people and of course the financial damages to the economy as well...is the price we have to pay for I don’t know what.

Mumbai , once not long ago touted as the place where dreams take the face of reality today has no buyers. People are looking to move out. Very soon,this place will be bereft of the "brave" crowd. The educated youth are flying abroad or are left at the peril of the power games going on in every arena in India. Politics and politicians are set out to ruin.

For the immense love of this city that I was brought up in I stand here with no clue as to what to do ........
And before I end this emotional outburst it would help if people could think "human" first and then "religion".

The Story of Floods and 12 Feet Tall Men

2006-07-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

Mumbai has been lashed by heavy rains - yet again. The story is the same as it was ever since I took interest in this world 20 years ago. We've had knee deep/waist deep water in some areas, trains have halted, air traffic disturbed and some homes flooded.

For those who have been in Mumbai for a very short time, this happens atleast once every year in Mumbai. And yet, this year was different compared to all those years.

What was different you ask? It was the Mumbaikar for one. Another very different thing has been the overzealous press, which has inspired the title of this post.

26th July 2005 changed the way many Mumbaikars looked at rains. I was one of the luckier ones who had the comfort of my company bus and managed to reach home by 2 AM in the night. The rest did not reach home from work till the next day. They battled for their very lives, fighting the angry waters in the most unimaginable places; highways, railway stations, roads they travelled everyday. Many lost the weary battle. Others live through it, shuddering at the sight of a bucket of water for days after.

Such was the damage that one day caused this brave and sometimes cruel city. The Mumbaikars who once readily waded through knee deep water to meet their deadlines now sit at home at the very sight of heavy rains. The first day of rains were welcome by all, as they brought relief from the sveltering heat. The rains continued to the next day and the cool comforting winds and showers took the face of fear in the minds of these people.

There was another reaction to the July floods last year. The rest of the country woke up to the fact that people live here in Mumbai. The long standing image of Mumbaikars being insensitive and invincible suddenly received a major setback as the country saw live images in the news of Mumbaikars struggling through the waters trying to save their own and their fellow citizens' lives. The Mumbai rains which regularly stop the city a couple of days every year suddenly came into the faces of the Indian news fraternity and the country.

But it seems that this visibility has done more harm than good today. The rains in the past few days (going on as I write) have brought out a very desperate side of the news channels, each one trying to top the other trying to paint a grimmer and grimmer picture of the situation, all to get viewership. Yesterday a leading news channel showed waterlogged areas in Andheri, Mumbai claiming that there was no way traffic could continue in that area. The water was barely ankle deep. Agreed that it is still a worry, but there is no way that ankle deep water could cause any harm to cars and buses.

The best news cut, which led me to write this happened a little over half hour ago today. A News reporter described (and showed ofcourse, for the added effect) a grim situation in Goregaon where the water was "6 to 7 feet high" and was about "waist deep".

OMGWTF!!! We actually have 12 feet tall men in India!

This kind of news coverage induces two things in two different kinds of people. One section of the population goes into absolute hysteria, scared of the wrath the rain gods are incurring upon us Mumbaikars. There's the other who assumes that the press reports simply cry wolf all the time to get viewership and go headlong into some very dangerous situations.

And finally, if the sensationalist reporters were not enough, major news channels have come up with the concept of a citizen journalist. This is a good initiative on the face of it, an attempt to make the citizen more aware and involved. I saw an amazing shot of the Mumbai floods as sent by one such "citizen journalist". It was a 8-10 second long clip of which 1-2 seconds showed cars and buses struggling through knee deep waters. The rest of the clip focussed on the posterior of a young woman wading through thse waters. Great journalism; lets have more of those ;-)

So in the end we have a corrupt government, an otherwise insensitive populace and a sensationalist press. And we want to be called one of the greatest democracies in the world.

crib...crib...rant :D

2006-06-21T03:16:00.000-07:00

pehle to very intelligent ppl long ago said....whats in a name??? so hmm or anything else should hardly matter..... and waise bhi this post was an afterthought to your post so hmmm....
chup yaar...u get the point naa tat ho ya that ...........kitkita

hailaa

2006-06-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

bohot saara likh diya
never mind......... now i dont wanna waste this post for nothing........so gyaan coming up
1 interesting bit of info tat i came across
i generally pick randomn words and look for their origin or proper meanings
i found out about "namaste" and found it very interesting..so here goes :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namaste

hmmm

2006-06-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

Everything is going towards the wrong direction be it career prospects for students, reservations, politics, or something as fundamental to human existence as education.

Something my dad told me when I was very young got etched on my brain (which is gonna be passed on to my next generations as well J ) -- If you study to remember, you will forget, but, If you study to understand alongwith the curiosity to know, you will remember.

Education if attained in the manner it is supposed to, could free the individual … heard of “The educated are free”. Learning, knowledge gives one an immense sense of power that no one ever can take away from you. But beware a mind could store a million facts and still remain uneducated. ‘The purpose of education is to replace empty minds with open ones’ they say and how true!

We are shut up in schools and colleges for fifteen years (minimum), and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education. The onus is on our shoulders how we figure out what to do with it.

Classrooms simply focus on the best child in class and not bringing out the best in every child – the brutal mistake. Ruins the fun of knowledge gaining in itself.

We are led by a simple funda : hard work brings reward, so we pursue higher education because it brings success. If the pursuit of scientific-technical disciplines ensures success, so be it - is the argument. Profession is hardly a matter of likes/dislikes rather it is the return on investment that maters. Well, in a culture where success is measured by one’s material possessions, and where personal fulfillment often takes the back seat, one is likely to pursue the type of education that assures the greatest return on the investment.

The phenomenal growth in the Information Technology sector, also gave rise to the demand for MBAs. Every other person was an MBA whether they had any vocation or not. The motivation for a doctor in his/her career path , in the healing powers of medicine, is a lot lesser than the affluence and prestige the profession brings along with it. An e.g. that I strongly quote in this regard is the refusal of the doctors to look into the condition of a patient who breathed his last during the anti-reservation strikes. Having said this, I m not in any way ignoring the frustrations behind the meritorious doctors, whose merit was at stake but the life of a fellow human being lost in bargain was not really worth it, or have we lost all sense of value?

Education is gained by struggling to live, it is to be able to respect point of views starkly different from our own, most importantly to listen, to be patient and to spread love. Every day teaches you something, every person has something to tell, to teach. The fundamentals are lost somewhere in the race against each other. A human is lot better equipped when he works together we seem to forget.

Well the competition is killing but then worse still is when teenagers commit suicide because heir lifestyle is not as extravagant as their mates are. What are they thinking when they do such things. Too much of emphasis on how fashionable they are, how they speak, their lingo, their style statements all scream for their poor frame of minds. (ok I m cribbing now :P)

Well I have always believed that the Vedic Literature is all-encompassing and has solutions for everything. One such solution that I see is revival of the “GURUKUL” tradition of schooling. The ideal solution would be picking the ideologies of the tradition and implementing using the technologies and facilities available now. Knowledge should be free to be able to avail all.

For an intro - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurukul

http://www.yogamag.net/archives/2002/2mar02/tradit2.shtml

Teaching as a profession has lost all its value, the importance attached to an individual imparting knowledge is lost and down in the dumps. The only people who end up as teachers are those who haven’t been able to make a mark anywhere else. There are a few gems of teachers still left…if only the right people helped in shaping the country for the future there would be better students. And yes most importantly, if you read through all of this ..thank your teacher J

P.S: another imp issue is leadership. There are always too many people talking at the same time in this country. Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a slick tongue. It is not "making friends” and “influencing people"—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. Leadership is action oriented towards service – a matter of the heart and mind.

Lack of proper leaders is what is driving the nations youth to better pastures (what normal mortals call BRAINDRAIN)

Now you know what the next post is gonna b :D

I end it just like I started (very pessimistic I must say :P) everything is going in the wrong direction…. But I will try and do my bit to improve the current state of affairsJ

The war of percentages

2006-06-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

Student life in India seems to be ruled by one thing; percentages. Ofcourse, that is if you don't consider the lousy teachers, overcrowded classrooms, "question banks", etc.

Right from our first exams in school (remember the red and blue lines pages?) we are expected to be first in our class regardless of whether we really can do it. A second ranker is ridiculed by his parents; they want him to work harder, and harder, and harder. And harder still, till the day that they see their beloved child hanging by the neck from the ceiling fan.

While what I say is jarring, it's a very disturbing trend. It's not a new thing, people have committed suicide due exam stress before. But it has become more and more frequent as years pass. Every year we see a new benchmark set for the students to follow. You see little 12-15 year olds studying a whopping 12 hours a day to mug up every word, every punctuation mark in every book. Their aim is simple; get as many marks as possible. Who cares if they understand a word of what they're reading. What matters is that they remember all the junk. So cram we will.

What does a child study for 12 hours? If one actually has to understand what is given in the books, it will most definitely not take 12 hours a day of an entire year. The parents are proud though. They rarely understand that their child is burning up inside. While they mean well; they want their child to be successful after all; they succumb to their inner wishes to see their child as a doctor/engineer even if he/she doesn't have the aptitude for it.

The situation of colleges in India is not too great either. Junior college seats in Delhi University (as I saw today on CNN-IBN) fill up at 85% on an average for each and every stream in all the decent colleges. Engineering colleges in Mumbai fill up at staggering 94% marks. A friend had to struggle for a seat in Mumbai with 91.67% marks. If someone can't feel secure at 92% marks then what's the worth of studying all that much?

And once we finish college we look for a job. And there we have a 60% cutoff for marks in graduate exams for most of the top/mid-tier companies. These same companies make obscene presentations talking about how they have excellent methods to recognize talent and how Indian education is ineffective in the larger scheme of things. But when it comes to evaluation they cannot trust their own entrance examinations to be able to screen the talented individuals from the rest.

Whats more, even the screening tests for companies have become a major marks market today. We have many sites like Chetana Jobs, Freshers World, etc. that have massive repositories of past questions that candidates can cram up and go vomit out.

Finally, Medicine and Engineering are not the only professions in the world. There's always pure sciences (dying these days due to engineering), law, politics, journalism, sports, arts (fine arts, acting, singing, dancing, etc), agriculture, business, social services, defence services, teaching and much more. Almost every person fits into atleast one of all of these skills.

I am not a number, I'm a free man
- from the song 'Prisoner', Iron Maiden

Reservation Issue: How much does merit count?

2006-05-29T00:24:00.000-07:00

There was a beautiful article in the Sunday Times of India by Mr Swaminath S Anklesaria Aiyar titled "Do I have any Merit?" (Page 12, Sunday Times of India, 28th May, 2006). I tried to search for it online, but I guess TOINS has not published an e-version of it. Here is the view that he has placed in :

Youngsters (namely, us) keep saying that they work hard to get good marks and are then denied admission to top colleges because of somebody with low marks but a caste certificate. "We are sorry that his forefathers faced discrimination, but I didn't discriminate against anybody, so why penalize me?" is the question.

On this basis youngsters oppose caste based reservations. They are not consoled by the increase in seats either; they want those seats too to be filled by "merit". An "Equality based Society" is what they want.

The writer then goes on to say that their notion of fairness is incorrect. He says that rewarding students with the highest marks benefits people born in the right families and not the most intelligent or meritorious. He then goes on to explain how he himself has been a beneficiary of this unjust "Merit" system.

The writer talks about his academic success and later, professional success as editor of financial dailies such as "Financial Express" and "The Economic Times". He explains that he rose completely on his merit, topping in his school and college all along.

He later also gave an IQ test in which he score an IQ percentile of 97% (3% of the population is more intelligent than him). Now, of the population of 1.1 billion in India, 400 million forms the workforce. 3% of 400 million comes to 12 million people. Hence, he observes that in a truly meritorious society, 12 million people should have a higher position in the workforce than him.

He then explains that India has at most 2 million top managers and professionals. Hence the 12 million super-intelligent people cannot be accounted for in this "truly meritorious" system. Many of these are labourers or hawkers.

These people do not have access to good education or economic opportunities because they were born into the wrong family. Meanwhile the more fortunate (like the writer, and myself) dominate the society on the spurious claim that they are the most meritorious. He says that we get the good marks because we have educated parents, best books and went to the best schools and colleges. Others far more meritorious are rotting without education or opportunity in the slums and villages of India.

Hence he says that no person has the right to claim that reservations are displacing merit.

The writer then observes that job reservations are politically popular but do not address the problem head on. Reservations are utilized only by the few lakh students from the creamy layer of backward castes. The actual targets are still being missed and lost into the streets, villages and slums of India.

The writer then lambasts the current schooling system, which has been tottering under the corrupt powers that be. Teacher absenteeism and wastage of educational funds into worthless schemes ensure that most children get little or no learnings from their schools.

Finally, he observes that there is a need to experiment with new, fairer educational systems. He suggests one such system which will run quality schools with 80% reservations for lower castes and tribals. The Delhi Public school can provide technical assistance as it has successfully created a chain of high quality schools in India and abroad.

He goes further, saying that within five years, we can create 2 quality schools in every district and then in the next five years two quality schools in every tehsil headquarters and give out scholarships to the needy.

I had a discussion on this article with my sister and she recounted the plight of many NGOs trying to impart education in villages. Most parents do not want to educate their children; they want them to go to work. So the NGOs actually have to keep food to try and tempt the students to come to school for the food.

Such is the plight of our country at this moment. We as the creamy layer of the lower castes and the upper castes dissociate ourselves from this harsh reality and imagine that India is "Shining" since our pockets are getting heavier.

We, the middle class are the most educated workforce in this nation and yet at the same time we transcend all limits of ignorance by choosing to note only which of our stocks have gone up/down and how are we going to earn even more money to realize our dream of becoming the next Ambani/Narayan Murthi/Bill Gates. We chase the American dream, we become citizens of foriegn countries and call those countries as our lands; all this after we get the best out of our own nation, our own people.

Some may even say "It's not my fault that those people do not have the facilities", "Survival of the fittest", etc. While all that is partly true (in a very cold, insensitive way), there is a concept of empathy, understanding and feeling the pain of others, a will to work for the betterment of our society, our very own people. We seem to have lost that in our pursuit of personal wealth and satisfaction.

Finally, I must clarify, I am not in favour of reservations as the best solution towards restoring the social balance. I just feel very sad that we as citizens of India do not understand, or worse, consider the pain of the majority of our fellow citizens.

Bloggers - The return

2006-05-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, we're going to start burning some bandwidth on this blog again ;-)

Our blog has gone unnoticed by us for some time now mainly due to our project traineeship. Now that exams are over and done with, we're back B<)

Diya is trying out new themes right now as I post this, so be ready for a new look.

And I think I'll stop writing as if I'm talking to someone; pretty sure no one's listening ;-)

Oh yeah, and Happy Anniversary sweetheart :) Its been 1 and half year together, 1.5 very happy years :)

i m back

2006-05-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

n what a day 2 b back :">
happy anniversary sid :"> >:D< very happy 1 yr 6 months 2 me n wish u had d same :)

TAGGED

2005-10-05T07:37:00.000-07:00

Tagged by akki

Seven things I wanna do before I die

1. Buy/Build an Airlines.
2. Go to Badrinath for a trek
3. Complete my classical dancing training.
4. Learn to play violin.
5. Bungee jump :D:D
6. Make/build/buy something to pass on to my kids.
7. Figure out what i wanna pass down my kids :P

Seven things I can do

1. Watch tv/movies.
2. I can cheer people up .
3. Make tea/coffee.
4. I can dance kinda ok-ok.
5. I read a lot.
6. I am a good listener anyone can talk to me ,about anything with no fear of what will i think etc.
7. Learn about something new.

Seven things I say the most

1. Flip
2. Hey bhagwaaaaaaaan
3. Ab kya?
4. liar liar pants on fire :))
5. Oye
6. Aiyye (This... coz i m a mallu:P)
7. Arrerreee

Seven things I cant do

1. Stay sad for long.
2. Stay without talking to sid for long........ thr is a limit after which i get impatient
3. Cant cook that well but then very soon i m gonna be mastering it so.....
4. I cant tolerate ppl cry coz I myself am very cranky n the most funny part is I start crying even if i c some1 else cry :P
5. I can never be melodramatic :)) about anything.
6. I can never manage accounts :((
7. I m not very open about wat I feel.....I wud rather keep things to myself

Seven things that attract me about opposite sex

1. INTELLIGENCE (well ppl dont matter 2 me till i have spoken to them n the first thing that strikes is how fast they think)
2. The way they carry themselves(includes looks too :D)
3. Etiquettes (I go gaga over true gentlemen :D)
4. Height
5. Humor
6. Voice
7. might find this weird but i feel a prominent collar bone looks awesome

Seven celebrity crushes

1. ABHISHEK BACCHANNNNNNN
2. Amitabh Bacchan
3. Ajay Devgan
4. Milind Soman
5. Russell Crowe
6. Brendan Fresar
7. Al Pacino

Seven people I wanna tag

1. Rhushikesh Pandit
2. Vaishakhi Sawant
3. Keyur Kachadia
4. Manish Khanduri :">
5. Swapneel Malpekar
6. Suchi
7. Isha

oye ppl

2005-06-30T02:37:00.000-07:00

I have started with my project training with Air India and I am having fun. Work here generally happens at snails pace but me and project partner have quite impressed our team leader :D
I am having fun and OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ya
its my engagement on the 3rd of july and just 2 dayssss 2 go
so ppl busy now will blog after a week
keep bloggin n tc

OMG

2005-06-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

That was one hell of a long post :-P

Creator? or Random Infinity?

2005-06-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

This is a response to the earlier post, which, I believe, is a response to my first post.

if there is always an answer, there will equally be a question that follows and it can go on forever.

Yes. That is what infinity is all about. Its about going on forever. We have a solution to understanding infinity. We approximate a pattern based on our limited knowledge. The problem occurs when we take that approximate solution as an absolute solution and make inferences based on it. Infinity is well proven. The concept of infinite space, infinite numbers, infinite numbers between any two numbers, etc. So what is the problem with accepting infinity? Just because it may probably disprove the existence of a beginning to the universe?

2 categories of things – created and non-created things

What we call created is very relative. What we mean by created is actually just conversion from one state to another. Creation of a Human being -- gradual transformation of organic matter into a life form. So in actually nothing is created. Ofcourse, matter can be created, but lets tackle it at a later stage.

Time is just another dimension we add, just like length, width etc. Then time is a created thing too

Yes, time is conceptual and relative, just like space metrics (distance, temperature, weight, etc). It helps us to measure things in our life that we hold dear. Time helps us measure our lives -- our lives are the most precious thing that we have. But then that doesnt mean that time is a "created" "thing". For one, time as an idea may be created, but its existence is not, if we put the metric in place then it has no absolute origin. That is why we say that time has no beginning. The very simple argument to it is that if time started at t=0 then what was before that? So its all relative. It is also not a "thing". It is an idea, a metric. It helps us measure our life's progress. As we progressed as intellectual beings we put this and many such basic metrics together to make complex metrics like speed, acceleration, etc.

Matter is another factor which is not eternal and hence must be created

Yes, matter can be created, but then the fact that matter can be created gives new meaning to the concept of "nothing" as well. When matter is created from "nothing", it also results in creation of anti-matter. So "nothing" has also got some significant properties. Also, for matter and anti-matter to separate, there has to be some source of energy. Some debate that this energy is God. But then again, Who created that energy? A possible explanation (my personal viewpoint actually, not a soundly proven explanation) is that it could be another viscious cycle in which matter-anti-matter get created and come together to anhillate each other repeatedly every large interval in time. The energy source is the anhillation and the resultant anhillation could be the source for the fission of more matter/anti-matter. Though slightly far-fetched, it atleast doesn't bank on the remote possibility of a "super human being" who just sat there all this while and then finally got bored of sitting alone and decided to make the universe to play with.

Nothing cannot form anything.

As mentioned somewhere above, "nothing" can form matter and anti-matter.

We know the universe is a created thing

Actually, we don't. We just speculate a path of evolution. Some believe in creationism (Adam-Eve story) while others believe in Darwin. Some believe that God placed everything and it has all remained as is while others believe in a Big Bang theory where everything started with an explosion, assuming that nothing existed before that -- an oversimplification of a very intricate and non-trivial problem.

something that is non-created must exist beyond time itself

Nothing exists beyond time. Time is relative. So anything "beyond" time is also within the bounds of time, and hence not "beyond" time. It sounds crazy, but its just that time has NO bounds. It only has a reference frame.

We would then expect that non-created thing to never change because, being outside time, it is the same at its beginning, its middle, and its end

Change is inevitable. Everything changes. Nothing remains stable. Everything is subject to a stimulus. If not then it is not present in the frame of reference at all and hence cannot affect anything in it either.

consistent with the way we see the universe ordered

What is more interesting to see is not wether or not God exists, but when it is that humans started worshipping the Gods. We don't see any other animals worshipping God. Other animals routinely kill for food as well as pleasure. They don't worship. They have sex whenever they want, with whoever they want. They are completely selfish in existence. So how did the concept of God develop? What did it begin as?

A confusing blog I guess

Not at all. Infact it is very clear in all its aspects. It highlights the beliefs and reasons for their existence and at the same time, makes a very fair balance by providing some non-conventional arguments against them too.

And finally, I ask the question again -- If God made the Universe then who made God? And if it is easy to believe that God existed forver then why is it difficult to believe that the Universe existed forever?

Creator....God ?????

2005-06-14T05:32:00.000-07:00

The complexity of life and the order in the universe show us that human and the universe could not just exist and maintain themselves without a creator.

This creator we term GOD.

To me, then, it means God is a self-existent eternal being. I understand that the question "who created God" seems meaningless because if there is always an answer, there will equally be a question that follows and it can go on forever.

Speaking of questions, another question with reference to what I have already said is - "If the complexity of design in the universe argues for a creator, then how can God, who is more complex, not be created?"

Now lets point at 2 categories of things – created and non-created things.

When things are created we understand the processes that caused their formation in the first place and we also know that left to themselves they will decade, deteriorate to something less. And the most upsetting discovery in science – The universe running down to nothing (The Big Bang theory etc)

What cannot be done is trace back the beginning of non-created things ;such things are not constrained by time.

Time is just another dimension we add, just like length, width etc. Then time is a created thing too. Matter is another factor which is not eternal and hence must be created.

So something that is non-created must exist beyond time itself. We would then expect that non-created thing to never change because, being outside time, it is the same at its beginning, its middle, and its end. Now it is only logical to ask that if the universe is created, and left to itself it will run down, then who put it together in the first place? Isn’t it ?

If the universe is a thing, and it is a created thing, then it had to come from something else. Nothing cannot form anything.

So, if the created thing must come from something else, then it must come from something that exists prior to it. If we look at all the created things as a whole, they must come from a non-created thing. That is the only logical option open to us!

Now to summarize - We know the universe is a created thing. We know that it must come from something else. We know that some type of non-created thing must exist in order to have created things exist. We also know that this non-created thing must be unchanging and outside of time. That is a lot. What we haven't done is label that non-created thing. We call that which is non-created, that which fashioned our existence, "God". We would expect, then, for that non-created thing to be more complex and more intelligent than the thing He created. It is logical, and it is consistent with the way we see the universe ordered.

The problem here is that many people have a mistaken concept of God. If we conceive of God as physical, ‘like-man’ being, the question of God’s origin is valid.

And now another doubt that boggles my mind if we assume that God has always been there why cant we simply assume that the universe has always been there ?

A confusing blog I guess ………….

But all I can do is think ……. And think some more ……..

I'm back. Finally

2005-06-02T12:57:00.001-07:00

Alright. I'm finally back where I belong. Took a bit of a break from my computer after my exams to relax my eyes.

And boy did I come back! I built XFce4 from source today and wowww!!! This desktop really flies!!! Really amazing speed and smoothness. Its probably not as feature-rich as the Gnomes and KDEs, but its got everything that you will need. If there's something missing then you can import that functionality from a gnome app. And it will just run, without any lag. Its really worth a try: http://www.xfce.org.

I got so excited with the speed of XFce that I decided to build firefox from source too, to make it *fly*. The tarball was 32 MB. It decompressed to almost 300 MB. And when I built it, it took me almost 2:30 hours (I left it alone after 2:30 hours, so it may have even gone to 3-4 hours) on my celeron (500MHz, 192 Megs RAM), took up 1 GB of disk space, leaving only 100 MB free, and as a grand finale, exited with an error. So that was it. clear. rm -rf mozilla.

Tomorrow I may try out Gaim. Infact I might try looking into the sources of Gaim. I tried to in XFce; tinkered with the source a bit. I'll try to be a bit more serious about it with Gaim and try to understand it better.

holidays

2005-05-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

exams r over.....now until results no more breakdowns.....just need a break 4rm everythin............

me here

2005-05-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

hey m thru
finalllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
:D

My sweetheart will arrive shortly

2005-05-13T07:10:00.000-07:00

My sweetheart will be joining this blog soon. And we'll blog happily ever after.

The Title needs explaining

2005-05-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

Nothing much really. It just questions the reality of a God, reality of the control He has in our life. Are we that important that he would think about us? Why does God only think about humans? Why do Gods look like humans? Or talk like humans?

Everything around us is a very intricate pattern. So intricate that to a finite view it is random. The pattern is a series of actions and reactions. So who started the action? God? So He started the chain by creating the Universe? So who created Him?

There's so many "Gods". So many forms. All those forms so conflicting in nature that it questions their existence altogether at times.

So finally the question remains, what are we living for, the Random Divine, the randomly chosen God, or the Divine Randomness, the chaos, that we worship day in and day out.