More Tsunami videos

More videos, this time they are really graphic, with people running and screaming and getting sucked into the water. I don't recommend watching them.

Some videos in http://www.kaopeh.com/
http://politiken.dk/media/wvx/3537.WVX This is streaming video, will open in Windows Media player. You can see the details in this one, the height of the waves, they are really huge.

First set; don't know whether they still work or not. Again the caveat, links good till gone.

Killer Tsunami?

Over 68 000 dead in 9 countries and still counting. 5 500 in mainland India and 7000 in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Such senseless and needless loss of precious human lives. The videos of the tsunami and some more of previous tsunamis on the internet show one common thread which killed people in all these - people too close to the shore. In India too, something was common in all the places where death was huge - huts and villages too close to the shore line and many a times on the beaches itself.

While I can't talk about places like Cuddalore and Nagapattinam, I have seen Chennai upclose and can definitely say that the huge loss of lives in Chennai would have been probably avoided if the shanties have been forcibly removed from Marina beach and along Elliots beach by the corporation guys. While I regret the needless death of so many people, they were squatting in a place they shouldn't have been in the first place. Whenever there was a 'drive' to remove 'encroachments', some politician or the other intervenes on behalf of the 'oppressed poor' and try to stop this 'cosmetic' 'beautification plan'. Even social workers protested against this to 'protect the downtrodden' and 'protect their livelihoods'.

The huge beach would've considerably reduced the impact of the waves. If experts are to be believed, the energy of the waves was largely dissipated by the time they crossed the main road. Had those huts been constructed beyond the mainroad leaving the beach clear, they would've probably escaped with loss of just their possessions.

Even in places like Velachery, Kolathur and Ambattur, people fill up the rain catchment areas with dirt from construction going in the city and build dense settlements, sold by a government agency! Whenever the rainfall is heavy, these places are inundated under a few feet of water and they blame the government for everything.

During monsoons, the huts built on the banks of River Cooum and River Adyar are washed away, the people complain and build the huts back after the water drains. When the corporation tries to remove these encroachments, they protest a lot, pelt the police with stones and the party in the opposition comes to their support even if they tried to do the same thing when they were occupying the treasury benches. One year Stalin tries to remove encroachments and Jayalalitha decries the 'high handedness' of Karunanidhi. The next year, the roles are reversed and Karunanidhi talks about the arrogance of 'that lady' Jayalalitha.

I've lived in Mumbai and I've seen 'shanties' constructed along the shore after clearing the mangroves that act as a natural barrier against such incidents. They are stubbornly putting themselves in the path of danger and they are encouraged by those politicians just because they will get a block of votes.

Who are the people affected? Women and children. Entire villages washed away, a whole generation of children lost forever (at least a third of the victims this season were children). Maybe the 'social workers' do have a point, what good does it make when these people are forcibly removed without an alternative site to live in? Even if they move away, a new wave of people move in here! Maybe life is cheap in a populous country like India.

The 'officials' are saying that this is the first Tsunami to hit India, while this is the third time since 1885 (or some closeby year) with the last one being in 1945. After incidents like the Bhuj earthquake and the fire tragedy in Kumbakonam everything is just a knee jerk reaction. Builders are back to pushing the unsafe houses they constructed, crowded classrooms operating in unsafe schoolhouses, while politicians try to build their power base rather than working for the people that elected them - the ruling party punishing constituencies that did not vote for them.

May the souls of the dead rest in peace and let the people and politicians wake up atleast now! The environmentalists and safety-conscious people are not our enemies, they say this for our own good.

Tsunami Videos

I see from the log that many people are searching for the Tsunami videos. You might get them here (subject to availability, or something like that). They are the BBC reports on day 0. If you are looking for more graphic videos, check the next blog. I find these giddy enough.

9 MB Divx Video - http://files.headru.sh/files/asian_earthquake.divx

105 MB Divx Video - http://files.headru.sh/files/asian_earthquake_long.divx

4 MB Real Media Video - http://www.dn.se/content/1/c6/35/94/87/wavw_patong.rm

A long shot, but if anyone downloading these files know more, please post them in the comments section or email to manoj.ka_AT_gmail.com please.

Photos by someone in (Madras) Chennai and Karaikal, Pondicherry
http://community.webshots.com/album/237352518uVPRZY?118
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/instantnetaccess/my_photos

Thanks to the dude in Chennai who sent these links.

Tsunami in Chennai

I thought yesterday that the tremors in Chennai were just tremors caused by an earthquake somewhere else. I was totally unaware of the extent of the tsunami that followed.



This single photo talks about the enormous power of the tsunami! A big car parked on a bench some 750 meters away from the sea. The people affected mostly seems to be fishermen going on about their business, people taking their morning walk on the beach and poor people living on the beach. A friend says, in Elliots beach down Marina beach, the beach itself saved houses across the road but in Marina beach, people on the beach were swept into the sea. It is a known fact that the politicians want these people to stay there to be their 'vote banks', so anything done by the civic authorities to move these people away are resisted. Now, since this has happened, will people wake up to this risk? Such senseless loss of lives.



This is how the 2 kilometre long, 750 metres wide beach looked like.

Earthquake

It was around 0700 hrs IST, when my friend in New York told me about an eartquake in my native town, Chennai. He had just got over the phone from his panicked father that they felt some tremors there. Just before he said I received a wakeup message from my friend back home. Unusual, as he is never awake so early. Then I searched the internet for earthquake and saw that there was an earthquake north of Sumatra Island. Wow, the last tremor in Chennai was caused by Bhuj earthquake a few years back. I called my aunt and said they never felt a thing but my mom and uncle had called her. I called that dude in Chennai about the earthquake and it was like how excited a bunch of kids are when they are waken up suddenly.

After coming back from the class I saw the NY dude sending me a link, Yahoo news one, for the cause of the tremor. It seems the quake in Sumatra had caused tsunamis and killed over 160 people in Sri Lanka. AFP, in its usual glory had wrongly reported that Chennai was the capital of Andhra Pradesh state.

My mom later called me to tell that the sea water had entered Chennai (extent not known) and they were watching the TV. I remember the last tremor. We all had ran out of our homes and foolishly stood in the narrow street between two apartment buildings. It was a long fiesta all night, the kids staying up all night and the elders catching up.

One dude in the city that was the 2nd capital of India says they too felt the tremors and he slept through it!

Lest we forget, or don't know, exactly 1 year before, there was an earthquake in Bam, Iran. Maybe this was an anniversary earthquake.

Christmas Cakes

It is nice to have someone who celebrates Christmas religiously. OK, bad joke but you get christmas cakes. Then some celebrate just for fun. Like the one we had here the previous night. One dude dressed as Santa Claus (No padding, all natural) and giving away gifts to all. Then there were the cakes, sponsored by the insti's cultural committee. Christmas tree, christmas games, christmas cakes, and a coffee mug for all, alongwith chocolates. Then in the day, cakes from the hillbillies. Form a posse and run to those rooms which have cakes ('strictly First Come First Served.') Brought back memories of the Anglo-Indian family across my home celebrating christmas and new year. They will start a couple of weeks before, having running lights and stars and a real christmas tree with a shiny star on top. We will all get the creamiest cakes and the sweetest of sweets and mint-candies. Then we all grew up, they moved away to a country where it snows and these stopped. Moreover, the reality of the course coming to an end seems to be catching up here. We have been having parties every week and too much of celebrations. Must be hard, after spending close to 2 years cooped up here.

Also, downloaded a lot of Ali G videos, the pilot episode and one another episode of 'Joey'. Not bad! Just like 'Friends', this too is a series of jokes strung together, but just one guy holding it all. Let's see how long this goes. A junior hillbilly said he has all the episodes of "That 70s show'; must get it before his class leave for their holidays.

Anna University going retro?

Recently the CEO of bazee.com was arrested because an IIT Kharagpur tried to sell (with limited success) a pornography clip of two school kids. That is a classic case of the law being an ass. Why else would serial sex offenders and rapists and murderers would be given 'protection' by the law itself and a poor guy be arrested, for co-operating with the law.

Now, my alma mater, Anna University, has banned camera-phones within the campus. The reason given is 'it invades the privacy, can be used to blackmail people'. I suggest, go ahead and ban cameras too as they can be used for the same purposes!

Following this 'DPS School Scandal', it is said that many colleges in 'progressive' Mumbai have banned couples of the same-sex even traveling together in a bike! It reminds me of my 'co-educational' school days when we had a school full of Syrian Catholic teachers who would to the sky if they saw a 'boy talking with a girl', inside or outside the school and segregated the class into boys and girls, with wide space between the 'boys row' and the 'girls row'. There were teachers who would 'blackmark' a boy because he 'talked with a girl' and give him hell of a time, even reporting to the 'headmaster' and get him trashed.

For some, college was supposed to be a major step away from this 'segregation' and freedom. Friends who joined 'reputed engineering colleges' like SRM, Sathyabama, etc were pushed a step backward. This, from an email forward I received, summarises everything parents supported in the name of 'discipline' and 'character': No casual dresses, only black shoes, no interaction between boys and girls, no cutting classes, seperation of boys and girls not just inside the campus but in the college bus also (extended to the bus-stop). My friends who studied in Sathyabama have also told about the attenders/peons being 'rewarded' for reporting such incidents to the 'management'. My cousin has told about how every record note-book has to have the same cover and class-notes were to be made (in college?).

In case we don't know, or we forgot, Sathyabama was built by the greatest liquor barons of all times, Jeppiar (said to be the biggest rowdy for beloved MGR). I am afraid Anna University will turn into just another Sathyabama or SRM. This, in addition to the dilution of brand value by, what the public understands as, 'making all engineering colleges part of Anna University'. But hey, we are the 'largest Technical university in the World', bullshit!

I Irked someone, it seems!

Time: ~11:30 pm, venue: Mess
We were a small bunch of guys sitting outside the mess and talking about projects and how they were done. One junior hillbilly was saying that they got an assignment involving field visits with only 7 days to complete. He said that they should have told atleast a month in advance on with such a short time only googling will do. I jokingly referred to this guy, who was with me in that aaspathiri assignment, the presentation of which I missed because of some allergic reaction, and asked him to tell how he did his part. Immediately he 'clarified' that only another person had done copy-paste work and he did everything by himself. The topic jumped to another, almost directly. End of the matter, right? NO!

Time: ~2:30 am, venue: My room
Yes, after a deliberation of more than 3 hours, this guy comes to my room, agitated and almost yells at me, "what did you do for the project? You did nothing!"
Half asleep, at first I was confused, 'what the hell is this guy talking about?' "What?"
"Why are you telling others that I did only copy-paste work?"
"C'mon man, just a joke!"
"Joke? Have some seriousness about this. I am going to tell to drop your name from the group" and then he rushes to that guy's room. (Another group formed for another subject this term)
I went back to sleep, and after some time wandered off to the mess.

Oh yeah, look at this too.

And, I finally made a backup of all the advertisements and music videos I had in my hard-disk. This clears about 5 GB now so I can start Kazaa again and download movies.

Information is power

I was talking to this guy when he stopped outside this another guy's room and told him to send him an ebook by a famous author. I had found it with a lot of difficulty, spending too much time googling and browsing bulletin boards. So, I wanted to know where he found it out so that it won't be difficult for me next time. When I asked him where he downloaded it, he said it was a secret and asked me why I wanted to know. He said that why I was 'so curious' and it was 'not good'.

Cut back to a few months before when he was a 'supplier' to the hostel of a famous sitcom. He was very restrictive about whom he shared it to and when. The load on his comp could get too much when given open access and this was understandable. I said him to give me access atleast when he was sleeping or off to the class, but he denied every request. Well, the reason of his comp slowing down when given access to more than a handful of people was reasonable and there being a lengthy 'waiting list' was also equitable. After waiting for a couple of months, I got bored and quit bothering him.

Coming back, he did not tell me where he downloaded it. But many guys have told me where they get pretty interesting stuff and they were not even close to me! But they weren't, you know, management students.

Why did he do this? Maybe to have that 'competitive advantage', where he has information which others don't have. In economics, it is said that 'incomplete information' gives advantage to either the seller or the buyer (or something like that, I mostly slept through the economic courses.) If everybody has the information this advantage disappear, doesn't it? My father says, unsolicited advice (or information) has no value, it just annoys others. But what if you don't give something even if asked for? Even if you tell only when asked, if you tell everything, you are a sucker. But, where do you draw the line when you tell and when you don't?

Knowledge is power, rather Information is power. Don't ask don't tell is old adage, Don't tell if you don't gain anything is in.

This guy might not be a psycho, but something related: Psycho-Bosses.

The internet is really sloooow today. Molasses moves faster than this, even an ant swimming in molasses would be faster; struggling for over 2 hours trying to post this *fuming*.

The meaning of is is

This thing has been bothering me for a while. While others can give the meaning of English words I know, no one could give me what the meaning of 'is' is. Whomever I asked the question, they first tried to recall what the meaning was and after floundering for some time, they quickly pronounced me crazy! After some time on the internet, I came reference.com which defined 'is' as 'Third person singular present indicative of be.'

This dilemma was said to be leveraged on by Bill Clinton during his trial. Some say he was the first, but this lady says not so.

There is even a philosophy course at UTexas Austin, that ponders over the meaning of 'is'.

Now, who will answer the question, which came first - The chicken or the egg?

So, for the last few days I've jumped into the field searching for jobs. Only only a few months left for graduation and I MUST have a job before I leave this place. So far, no luck :(

Either the companies reject me based on my resume or marks or both, or I screw up in the group discussion part.

Mug

Anyone who has seen the movie 'Office Space' will have noticed Lumbergh walking around and managing with a mug in his hand.



Guess what we were given on the first day, along with books and stationery items? Yeah, a mug, with the insti logo on it. Training to become Lumberghs, eh? We were not given any staplers, let along Red Swingline Staplers. Where do they expect us to find a Milton here?

Pride or Vanity?

I am very reluctant to touch old smelly stuff, but I have to rant somewhere before I receive some more . Over the last five years, coinciding with the increased usage of email in India, some wellmeaning but clueless friends keep on forwarding a couple of emails to me to make feel 'proud' of the achievements of India. If there is anyone reading this, go read those letters first and then come back read my responses.

The first letter gives all those utterly useless crap *ahem* 'trivia'

Can't believe those guys are still falling for that fake email circulating as 'recent study.' It is one thing to be proud of our country but fallacies is not a good sign. This is not to discredit all the things India has achieved.

At the peak of Nalanda University, the world was limited to Japan on the East, and the meditteranean Roman Empire on the west. South was limited to Ceylon and possible Maldives and/or Madagascar. North of India, China was the only region known, not even our closest ally Russia was known at that time. Also remember that 'India' existed only as thousands of small warring kingdoms, so close to 90% of the 10000+ students would have been from within the subcontinent (@ an average of 10 students per country). People would have definitely come from far west and far east to take advantage of the excellent university, just like desi students fly to the western countries and down under.

Sanskrit is indeed the mother of all Modern European languages.

When they say Sanskrit is the most suitable for computers, they talk about the grammar (constructs) and them alone, not the script or vocabulary or stuff like that.

Indians have not invaded a country in 1000 years because they were not a single country then but thousands of kingdoms and a few republics (Yes, the oldest republic is from the sub-continent, that too in lawless Bihar.) It is false to say that 'Indians' never invaded another country. There were thousands of kingdoms were effectively thousands of nations and they were busy, what's the word here?, umm yeah, INVADING EACH OTHER. Ok, if we don't considering 'brothers' fighting as invasion of other countries, it is still false. Cholas were frequently invading and plundering Ceylon, and the Chola Navy invaded some Indonesian islands (Sumatra, I think) and spread Hinduism (and to some extent) Buddhism in S.E. Asia (though Buddhism is more popular there than Hinduism).

Proclaiming "Days are not far off when we Indians, whether in India or otherwise, will be a dominant force to reckon with if not already…. " is just vacant, empty, jingoistic rhetorics, like the rooster shouting from the top of a haystack. Mere feel-good words like these won't help achieve this, only actions.

The second is about India having found the largest diamonds in the world and became the richest country in the world

Jeeesus, what a load of crap! Alot of people had their heartiest laugh in their lifetime because of these guys. Isn't it enough that we have a very bad image outside? Do we need to appear so desperate to show our 'superiority' over the whiteys? The World Bank paying India in instalments? Why hasn't the the USA invaded us yet? The funny part is, I am still receiving this kind of bull. Friends realised this once explained, but some India-based mailing lists still transmit pooh like this.

The third and another funny one is that of a 12th standard student disproving Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

In short, there is no Dr. Massimo Martelli, President of IAP. There is no IQ-meter at the American Embassy in Delhi, There was no Prof. Carl Uppsala, Chairman of the Nobel sub-committee for physics reported in the Times of India. And I am still waiting for that Operating System superior to Microsoft Windows. An Indian scientist disproved Stephen Hawking about that black hole theory he had, but was disgraced first by his Indian colleagues and was kicked into oblivion.

I thought this craze ended by 2002, but it has been almost 2 years here and I am still receiving such 'be-proud-of-yourself' emails. Thankfully, they are making only quarterly appearances nowadays. I think the Indian companies themselves are sending them during their quarterly report time to divert attention from their pathetic performances by making the shareholders 'feel proud.'

Dreams

I have the freakiest of stuff happening in the last few days. Today I was sleeping in the class, heavily, when I felt myself being awake, but could not move any of my limbs. I see the prof walking to and fro in front of me and I hear the stuff he was saying. I try asking my neighbour to wake me up, but only a whisper comes out which is not heared by anyone else. I hear him whisper something to me, but don't know what. I feel my eyelids are half-shut and I open my eyes wide, as wide as possible so that I atleast sleep with my eyes open and the prof could think I am awake. Suddenly, I woke up properly and weird, what the prof said in my sleep and what he is saying now are continuous and his walk is along the same path - from the computer in front of me to the OHP on my right. My eyes hurt very bad as soon as I woke up.

This happened a few weeks earlier also. That time, I was awake (dreamt?) and felt my neck unable to support my head and the heavy head is just flopping about. People do say that my head jerks about a lot when I sleep in the class. I woke up with a very painful neck. Atlast, my dreams are getting as weird as me.
Also, I missed the party here yesterday because I was sleeping very early, after a 38 hours of staying awake. The report about the health care centre project is due in a couple of days. Some heavy firefighting to commence from tomorrow.

38 hours plus

I woke up yesterday moring around 7 o'clock and am still awake now, at 9.30 pm. I have got accustomed to it now. I did not sleep even in the class today; morning 3 hours and evening 3 hours, till 8.15 pm. I felt nauseauted slightly sitting in the class today, watching two other guys make the presentation (nauseated due to lack of sleep, not watching them.) First, I realised that the changes of 15% was in one presentation only, the other had been changed more than 70%. They had to do it as I had just vomited down the case facts in a presentation and asked them to fit one of the three models; they did for all three models. Today morning, I thought I would be presenting a significant part of the presentations when one guy took it completely and the other guy did not want me to present the second one too; reluctantly he let me do a couple of slides. When I completed my part, I could've taken advantage and rambled on further, but stupidly, I let him do it. Anyway, what is done is done and whatever bubbles bubbles up.(I just had to say that *grin*)

Entrepreneurship

Yesterday the classes on entrepreneurship started. The prof is a well known for strategy/entrepreneurship. While every prof has ditched Enron and other kind for their unethical practices, this guy actually supports them. He says they were just taking advantage of the regulatory institutions that were not market-based, that is growing as fast as the industry. While it was all built upon a hype and lies, they attracted talented engineers for the pay and for the illusion of 'value addition' and other management buzzwords. So, he says, they were the best entrepreneurial companies at that time.

He also said something about GE, how the company was growing only at 3-4% and were not adding any value to the stockholder and hence, Jack Welch was correct in laying off some tens of thousands of people. For the sake of the stockholders and the economy, it was a 'sacrifice' to be made and not all were affected, many got jobs in other companies while some perished, as is natural in a capitalistic structure and is a side-effect the country had chosen. Did they get jobs at the same level as before? I think most of them were underemployed. Isn't it waste?, a drag on the economy?. Call me a commie but to raise the returns a few stockholders, was it really necessary to axe all of them at one go? (well, many chops were required). As he truly pointed out, some deadwood will be eliminated in capitalism, but we are talking about people here, not just the employees but families dependent on that employee, children waiting to get into college, sick family members, etc etc. I read a lot of articles about how the top managers got a golden-parachute but the low-end workers and many engineers were kicked out with a soiled boot!

That things aside, we have a case to present today. I had one bad experience previously and did not want to get affected a second time. Another case of 'Murphy's Law', not going to talk about it. I just offered to summarise the readings and the case in two presentations and it turned out it was the whole exercise itself. The other two guys relieved me and started to refine and clean up the presentation. No offense to the people who worked, but they must have changed about 15% of what I had done. Whatever they may say, even if one word is changed in a presentation you did, it hurts! Is it possessiveness or ego? This is not the complete stuff, someone has to present it tomorrow. The last few presentations I made, it was not so bad, this too must go the same way. I can't keep on depending on the team mates to present everytime and me just standing idle. Couldn't sleep tonight after having stayed up till 2 pm and having 2 cups of tea. I just hope I don't sleep in the class tomorrow.

Murphy's Law

Internet is one place which spreads all kinds of nutty theories. One such theory is the so-called Murphy's Law. Some USAF guy called Murphy told about someone that 'whatever can be done wrong, he will do it wrong' and it evolved into this law usually stated as 'whatever can go wrong will go wrong'. Whatever may be the form, I truly believe in it. A few things happened today that galvanised my belief in this theory. I will skip the first few things, which are serious, and jump directly to the hilarious thing.

The invention of email is one of the most popular things by which you can do silly stuff, for instance, online flame wars, sending critical stuff outside the company, and some gaffes like forwarding potentially inflammatory stuff to the upper management, etc.

This one guy is very popular here. There was a commotion outside the room where I was doing a group assignment with two other guys, someone told me that this pop-guy 'accidentally' forwarded one email to someone who was till last year the alpha dude of the pack. The email in question: that humorous stuff, story about how a certain slur, rhyming with 'pluck yew', originated during the Battle of Agincourt. People were advising him about how to 'recall' that email. I am sure many must have done something like that. I have done a similar act when I sent the answers to a quiz to the list instead of sending it to the quiz creator and got few angry emails in return, again through the list. Now children reading this, be aware of such mistakes and reduce the already high risk in our lives. The returns to such things are always negative.

Beginning of the End

Slept like a baby last night, after being a nocturnal animal for the last one week, to get the rhythm of day-night back. The day started depressingly, a feeling of nothing more left and something has come to an end. All the web searches threw something retrospective, and the happy 60s, like a bunch of ABBA videos, psychedelic songs, about the TV show Oshin, etc and the good old days of the dotcom boom, when software techies ruled. However, a visit to the top of the hill drove away all such thoughts.

I have now been waiting three days for the post-office to deliver a very important piece of paper, the bank cheque for paying the fees for this term. ETA was Saturday and I have not got it till now. The guy 'incharge' of the senior hillbillies is not friendly either, considering he is there to 'help' us. I think the single most powerful weapon he has is the ability to set the timetable (as he says).

Me: Sir, I haven't received my DD yet, what should I do?
He: Haven't you given an application?
Me: (I was thinking, what application??) No...
He: The penalty is 1000 per day, you know that?
Me: (cursing the postal department) Yeah sir...
He: Write an application.
Me: What should I put in it?
He: I don't know.

3rd guy who was there came to my help, a smooth talker, who told him to give me a letter someone had written before which were lying just by his side but he said there was nothing. The 3rd guy took it anyway and gave it to me. Just one line, 'kindly permit me to proceed with the process'. Well, all done, came back to room, huffing and puffing. I found out that some 8 kilograms that I had lost over 2.5 months through minimal eating and no exercise had come back with 3 friends over Diwali, Ramzan and the holidays, just about 10 days.

In about 2.5 months, this trouble free student life will come to an end, along with the 24 hour high speed internet. Worries like getting a job and later, if I am lucky, the job itself, will consume all my time then. This is the beginning of the end (of my course).

Eating Out & Lunch-time bets

One of my friends here and I went to eat out this afternoon. Today was one of those days made just for driving around, cruising on the highway flanked on both sides by farms. It reminded me of the vacations I spent in my native village. We went to a restaurant about 13 kilometres from here, and returned with full stomachs; 1 Mutton Briyani, Naan, Kalimirch murgi(blackpepper chicken) and 1 Chicken briyani! We were so stuffed we did not want to leave that seat. Later we went for some shopping, just some basic stuff like soap, bodyspray, topical cream, oil etc. This guy was one of the most indecisive. You won't find many such managers around. He took an hour deciding to buy a file and came back emptyhanded. "Should I do this? or that? Ok, I will do this", later he changes his mind to do That.

Some of the good stuff were made as bets over a lunch, like 'around the world in 80 days', the webcam, etc. Now this, the largest digital panoramic picture, a gigapixel picture, by some engineers in The Netherlands. We had such discussions even in Dilbert College back home. The verdict of the majority would be always 'Why this unnecessary work?' or 'it is impossible', unless it was a project week and some come up with some good ideas. Some guys do come up with useful things, like this English to Tamil converter this guy called 'Kuchi' made or the nifty hydraulic robot my seniors made, or the battery powered car my cousin made when she just joined medical college.

The Dutch team used already available technologies, although it had to upgrade them to be able to handle the high-resolution image.

These guys, in the Netherlands, had to 'upgrade' many of their stuff. Leaves them with even more cool stuff, huh? Now, they are going to 'upgrade' even further!

Following the success of this project, and with promises of help from others, the TNO team is considering creating a full 360-degree panoramic view of another Dutch city, with even higher resolution.

Maybe it is a European thing, doing things unnecessary and making all people crave for it. This guy thinks Indian engineers are content with writing code and not so much for innovation.

This vacation is coming to a close. In 2 days it will be back to the grinding wheel. I also have to worry about my placements now.

I eat my words when I said earlier this vacation sucks. This is one of the best - nothing but eating and sleeping all day with browsing the internet all night. When you have the whole night left to yourself, you discover many things; I saw a blog (long discontinued) by someone from my Alma Mater (Anna University). http://sree_lakshmi.blogspot.com Anyone know her? It was nice reading about assessments, Techofes,RCC, RCC annex, AVRC and stuff like coming late to class because some idiot is visiting Raj Bhavan and traffic gets held up.

Germans are top dogs of engineering, really, http://www.recorderrace.org People make vehicles out of their (old?) cassette players and race them! They are not made by engineers, but mostly by ordinary people!! It is said that India has the largest engineering talent pool, but why don't we have something like this?

Free Press

After the internet, ask people for money for anything they can get for free, a blackmarket bigger than the original will quickly come up. Put something across free access and an easier path will open up, just like water just flows around obstacles. A lot of times, I have been received links for newspaper articles by email only to find out that a 'registration' is required. The registration itself is not bad, but telling it is just an irritant and it takes the precious few minutes that I have of internet time. If you are going to let me view them for free, why not just let them free, instead of bringing up a 'login' page? I have registered in so many news sites that it is very difficult to keep track of all logins and passwords, unless they are all the same. To overcome this and to prevent any new registration, there is this nifty website called bugmenot.com

Many kind souls have 'donated' login/password combinations for many sites, including the ones I frequent, like nytimes.com, latimes.com, etc. The main page says '38125 sites liberated', 'tell everybody you know'. I have given a few too.

One question though, will the passwords be safe? The internet being filled with lowlifes, will they let the passwords remain?

USA Military Aid to Pakistan

Before and during the US Presidential Elections, all the right-wing buck futters all supported Bush saying that he is better for India than a democratic president. They said, a republican president will support only India and will put pressure on Pakistan to stop infiltration. That will never happen. Not only was Pakistan made its major non-NATO ally, it is now being rewarded with US$ 1.3 Billion including 8 P-3C Orion aeroplanes. They have also asked for 2000 TOW-2A missiles, and 6 Phalanx systems for their warships and they will definitely get it, along with the F16 jets pending. So, can we expect terrorism to increase in the Kashmir Valley? or will it be a big war?

Joshua Kucera wrote it all so well.

Bill Clinton (a democrat) only raised his eyebrows against pakistan during the Kargil War, but Richard Nixon (a republican) was ready to send the US 7th Fleet to help Pakistan during the 1971 war. Yeah, republicans always liked India.

Easter Egg

There is this nice software called YBook from spacejock.com which enables reading html and text files like paperback books. When you open a file in it, it shows the current process it is doing, like, 'removing html tags', 'converting tabs'. One of the status messages is 'Pondering the meaning of life'. You can see it when you open a sufficiently big file. Does it qualify as an easter egg?

This Sucks

It is just the first day of the vacations and it already sucks. Woke
up late at 11 am, 2 pm and 5 pm. Everytime I found that I had missed
breakfast or lunch. Had I decided to go home instead of staying back,
food would have been prepared and kept on the kitchen counter. Or, I
could go to Pizza hut or Marrybrown or some other nice place, or
atleast to my aunt's place for variety. I am lonely here and going to
sleep hungry (boohoo). Must take advantage of all the free time and do
something fruitful.

Pranks

College life is filled with pranks and pranks made it all fun. In the hostel, when there is a power outage, some guys form a train going from room to room making lot of noise and waking up everybody. Sometimes, they draw moustaches and goatees to guys in deep sleep.

The senior hillbillies don't play pranks a lot, seems they are a mature lot. But the noob hillbillies are pranksters. They send messages to everyone in the network talking something or the other. Sometimes they knock on someone's door and run away.

One of the guys, let us call him "jackfruitboy", is the butt of some jokes which you thought ended in school itself. His neighbours would paste a post-it on his door whenever they pass by, writing things like "I © <Arbit girl's name>", or "I am watching porn, don't disturb" or such silly things. Instead of pasting a "kick me" sign on his back, it is on the door.

Last Vacations

So, the vacations started for the last time for the senior hillbillies. Most of them are going and I was supposed to be one of them. But, I had to cancel my trip at the last minute because of some 'changes' in the timetable coming from the top of the hill. They were changing our TTs like there was no tomorrow, announcing scheduling of evening classes late in the afternoon, playing ping-pong with our exam schedules, etc etc. Term ending dates fluctuated wildly, originally it was 20th which was changed to 19th then again to 20th. Some hillbillies had to change their plans atleast twice.

I got fed up and finally cancelled my ticket, so I will be spending the vacation here. With 3/4ths of the class not here, the internet is going to be real fast - they rectified the internet troubles I talked about a few days back. I have decided to utilise this time to brush up what I learnt after coming here and download all the stuff I have always wanted to - the complete Calvin and Hobbes collection. The flipside is that my block will be almost deserted and it will be scary.

The scheduling was such that many had only one class a day and some had a 'vacation' for a couple of weeks. The last few weeks were crammed with classes while we were free most of the term and some subjects are being pushed into the next term. In fact, the first two weeks of the final term are supposed to be the most crammed in the history of term-beginnings. Yesterday and today were very tiring for me, in particular. Yesterday was an end of the term exam, one internal quiz, one presentation and two classes. Today were two end-term exams and one class. I was so tired that I dozed off for 15 minutes in the middle of a 2 hour exam. This was unusal; I usually sleep only in the classes while managing to stay awake for the exams.

And it is also official that my two cells are now property of some guy in another PHB School. He assured me that he will return my cells to someone before leaving but did not keep up his words. Kicking my hind starts tomorrow and will continue all day.

Managerial Accounting

During the first term, this is how accounting looks to engineers. Some go on to master it while some (like me) have recurrent nightmares even after that stuff is long gone. They said accounting is just numbers. But double and triple integrations coupled with triple partial differentiation and approximate methods seem so simple compared to 'just numbers'. This might give an idea of how the cases, problems and the exams looked to me
Question: Count the number of dots in the figure below.

IT Infrastructure

The last few days (or weeks or months, depending on how your memory is) are really irritating me. It is the IT infrastructure on the manager mill on the hill. Before we joined here, we were told that we had very highspeed internet connection 24x7, complete with telephone connections in every room. When we arrived here, we did not have any of the wires in place. After the students here (god bless them!)literally fought tooth and nail to get the basic wiring (only the local network) in place, that too after months of stonewalling by the powers that be. A few months later, we fought again for our internet connection. At first it was veeeery unstable, connection dropping (even between switches) at the drop of a hat. A small battle again, and we got some improved internet connection.

Then, we changed ISPs because of 'some reasons'. This time, we were promised the full 2mpbs (as promised in the brochures) but what we got was (according to reliable sources) only 1mbps, shared by more than 240 computers. Things went on well for a few months. That is, till a few months back when the new bunch got hold of p2p clients and then the speed went down. The student-IS guys said they disabled p2p for good; but now they seem to have come back and the pages are literally crawling. My pages get downloaded at a speed between .3kbps to 2kbps. Moreover, the connection drops every other minute. Basically we are back to square 1.

My neighbour has put his yahoo messenger to connect automatically and every second minute, I can here the 'twoossh' sound of YM connecting and proclaiming 'You have x new messages'. Thankfully, most of the guys have disabled that noise.

I could not get past the blogger login page for over 2 hours now (publishing through email, good thing those good guys at PyraLabs thought of this). I have typed orkut.com in another window and after 45 minutes, it still is not opening. Hotmail too has not opened (after login) for over 30 minutes now. *smoking out of my ears*. I am wondering whether this post will reach blogger or not.

Update After 30 minutes: The post has reached blogger after 30 minutes and I am trying to remove all the line breaks my email client put in. It feels like I am back at home on my PII 400MHz, with a slow dialup internt connection. I have cancelled my trip back home based upon only this internet connection. Let us hope things get better in a week when more than 3/4ths of my class will be at home.

Kolam

Today was good. Started by waking up very very late, special diwali food in the afternoon, a kolam (or rangoli as they call it here) competition, diwali fireworks ending with special diwali dinner.

My friend and I teamed up to take part in a rangoli competition. We chose a simple-looking design from i-kolam.com. Everything looks simple on paper. We rushed to the hall and saw that 5 other people had already started their's about 45 minutes ago. We had very little white powder to start with though there were a lot of coloured powders. While we went for a traditional Tamil kolam, the others had chosed rangoli, where you draw the otline first and then fill it up with coloured powder. So, our's looked very bland in comparison. This was the final result. The picture was supposed to be symmetrical; it is for the most part, except for the colours.



Later, fireworks started. Some guys said that they paid close to half a lakh this term alone and this was their chance to get their money's worth. Two and a half hours later, a few thousands of rupees ('s worth of crackers) had gone up in smoke. The fireworks in the sky were spectacular, though.

Idli Vada Sambar

Last night the tam gang here went out for some real food - idli, vada, sambar etc etc. Wherever Tamils go, they all have this one restaurant named 'Woodlands', like the one on Cathedral Road. We all planned to start at 6.15 but some could leave only very late due to difficulty in arranging transport as this place is far away from humanity. If there is one thing I hate about this city, it is the roads (same all over India). More potholes than craters on the moon. I feel that whoever is riding a bike or driving it, should wear a cup. That is one reason why I prefer staying within the campus.

Yesterday was diwali eve, so there were a lot of fireworks shops lining the roads from here to there. We could see the Indian concept of synergy throughout - fireworks shops on both sides of the road, naked flame lamps before the shops, kids and adults alike playing with fireworks alongside. Miraculously there was no mishap.

Woodlands - we get some of the best dishes in that place - idlis like in hotels back home, thick coconut chutney, crispy vadas and dosas dipped in smooth sambar. One dish, cheese dosa, was amazing stuff! We all had our stomachs full. The road we took back was a smooth highway connecting one Taj with another. If the previous government did something good, it was laying some of the best roads this country has ever seen. The bike ride was like knife cutting through butter.

Since I hadn't slept in over 32 hours that day, I hit the sack within a few hours of coming back and did not wake up till a couple of hours ago when three or four IMs were waiting for me saying that Kanchi shankaracharya was arrested and a few more sending me the same link - http://www.sorryeverybody.com. Apparently, half of USA is sorry that Bush has been reelected and they would try to rectify the mistake in 2008. Let us hope that the world is still there in 2008. What I could see from this election was that USA wants only a Dick (Cheney) and a Bush (GWB ) coming together, not two Johns (Kerry and Edwards). How homophobic . More emails about Arafat being dead at 75. Now that he is dead, the Israelis would not have any more trouble taking care of those 'terrorists'.

India and Technology

You might have heared of chain letters, chain emails and chain faxes, even chain IMs. Have you heared of chain SMSs? I received one today! from this number 0044782563. Which country? Likely the UK going by 0044. It goes (in Hindi)

Lakshmi mataji ki kripa aap pe hamesha bani rahe, Msg ko 5 logo ko bhejiya aur paiye Lakshmiji ka vardaan. Na bhejne par bura ho sakta ha. Jai Lakshmi mata!

It means:

Let Mother Lakshmi's blessings always be upon you, send (this) message to 5 people and be blessed with her blessings. If you don't send bad things will happen. Ave Mother Lakshmi!

Is this what they call adaptation of a foreign technology to local conditions? Before email came to India, we used to receive (sometimes we still do) a lot of such post cards and photocopied letters after 'xerox' centres sprung up all over the place. When my school got a fax machine, the number got spammed by such faxes. I still get many emails in a week from some 'well-meaning' friends. Superstitious engineers, go figure! Now, this has started. Viva India, Viva Indians, Viva Indigenisation.

Diwali

Diwali is the festival of lights. It comes from the words Deepa and Avali meaning 'row of lights'. Year after year my school essays on Diwali would start the same way, as mandated by the English teacher. I would write similar essays everytime and have red circles around the same words every year; just around the words Diwali, Deepa and Avali, starting from the title itself. I still don't know why I got these words wrong. Till class 9 or so, I loved diwali; one day when you eat loads of sweets streaming into your house from the neighbourhood, and do nothing but play with firecrackers starting 10 days before till the big day. At some point of time, I realised that Diwali meant nothing but air pollution, noise pollution and littering of the streets; literally millions of rupees going up in smoke in just one day. Also, this industry is the biggest in India which employs child labour without the government being able to do anything. I realised this and stopped buying, bursting crackers or even getting them as gifts.

Chennai was very dry during the year and for a couple of weeks it would rain, for the monsoon and the cyclone. Diwali was one of the few holidays that experienced rain. Every year the neighbourhood kids would get up early in the morning for bursting crackers and just when sun comes up, it would rain heavily and we all would run home crying. We would always ask why it rains only during diwali and not on the other days. Nowadays it doesn't rain even during diwali in Chennai. It was also the season for new clothes. Since my birthday used to come at the same week as Diwali (now there is atleast a three week gap), it was a bummer when I could wear new clothes on two days and only one would get noticed.

Diwali is in 2 days and it rained very heavily for about 15 minutes today here, bringing back memories. Wishing you all a very happy and safe diwali. Just remember this, each cracker you are playing with was made by a 12 year old kid who is being held in bondage and is not allowed to go to school, even if the parents are willing. I don't know how the fireworks units in Sivakasi export to the EU and USA employing children.

Bad Airtel

Airtel has started sucking big time for the last 4 or 5 months. It all started when I came back from my summer training and found out that I could not send text messages for a long time. Complaints did not seem to make it work. Then I got spammed with 'advertisements' from Airtel, advertising the local newspaper/television channel. A month ago, I forgot to renew my connection (a prepaid one) and they promptly cut me off from receiving or sending messages or calls. But the spam did not stop. Over a period of 3 weeks when I did not recharge, they sent me just 2 remainders to renew my connection but around 5-6 spam messages per day. This was even when I could not receive any messages from my friends. And today, I put my phone in silence mode and found out that in 2 hours, the spam from Airtel had completely filled my inbox which can hold only 12 messages. I know this is a small thing. I have the option of changing my SP to another one or Reliance. But this seems to be only in this place, I don't have any problem in my hometown while the first SP doesn't provide service there. Second, I don't want to change this number. Or, I could change over to Reliance, but I don't want to do business with crooks. Some of my friends have regretted getting a Reliance connection in the first place, while some regret changing over from Airtel/Orange/Aircel/whatever to Reliance.

Headbanging and hind kicking

I want to kick myself tonight for two reasons. Reason one was yesterday and reason two today. First, I lent my rechargeable cells to some visitors on the hill who asked it just for one snap and I 'generously' (stupid!) told them they could have it for some more time. After that, I could not trace the guy to whom I gave it. Repeated requests did not get them back to me. What if they had left already? (Dear Lord!!) Next, tonight I went to this 'rock show'. It was one of those fusion bands with hippies in it; where they 'fuse' Indian and Western music forms; though, what they did was use those western instruments to play Indian music. The music was typically Indian, lot of boom-boom-boom, dum-dum-dum and lots of vocals, with very less of other instruments/sounds. They mostly did music inspired from Indian whatever, and some on radical thoughts. Those radical sounds was like listening to GWBush rapping. They did not sound like a rock-band, in a rock show, but it takes real talent on part of the audience to convert everything into headbanging stuff. That's not the point anyway. The second reason comes here, I spent both my remaining sets of cells clicking unwanted pictures, of the band. Yeah, photos of hippies in the noughts. Later, when there were interesting stuff, like a bonfire and a dance party, I had no power left in my camera. (Images of flowing skirts, stuffs bouncing all over the place, lost forever) There is another reasons for the cells running out, however. It was the overenthusiastic but idiotic gang of around 15 that insist on seeing every photo; if it takes x units to take one photo, it takes 2x units for them to look at what I had taken. That means, if I can take 200 photos using one set, I can now take only around 70.

Partayyy

This is that time of the month again, when the hillbillies go wild and do the boogie-woogie. One could observe Newton's (all the three) laws in practice. The drill never seems to change. Muzac starts just before midnight, alcohol starts flowing sometime after that, the floor is empty for a while, some slightly drunk boys jump into the floor, people shaking their hips in the side with a glass of alcohol or plain coke, some more jump in, a few girls start and then return to their bases, more boys, most of the girls are dancing now, one or two people dance comparatively great, 2 hours into midnight and the crowd thins as the drinks run out and the hill people lose steam. Some dance on till the wee hours while the rest return to their rooms. The same routine everytime, like a clockwork. Even the playlist sounds the same party after party. Last year was bad, after listening to the same songs in the same order, one could exactly predict what song would come next. Today, the playlist was mostly different and new faces in the crowd - visitors on the hill.

Now starts the real fun; the sound effects that reach my room. At around 2am, I can hear some guys retching in the toilets. First only one, then one more, then one more; they all vomit in unison, like a choir, or the frogs near a pond. I could hear one while I am typing this. Well then, all's well that ends well. Except for some: Life's a bitch, then you die.

Madras, Nalla Madras

Woke up this morning leisurely, knowing that there are four days of hypo-activity lined up in front of me. The cool morning looked very pretty today. Also, a few of my friends are coming to this normally sleepy place which will be buzzing with activity and a rockshow till sunday evening. I dragged myself to the mess, ugh, wannabe burgers and yellow coloured omlettes! To be different, I had bun and tea, Madras style.

I was thinking for a week, whether to go home for this (last) vacation, or not; I could spend 10 days with very high speed internet with half the population away or spend less than a week (4 days for travel, 2 days each way) with family and my cousin's baby boy and about a 1000 bucks to go there. Well, I could get internet at home, if not at high speed, but the baby won't be a baby for a long time. So, I decided to go home.

Another thing this morning was the amount of email from friends in the USA complaining about the election of Bush for a second time. They feel it is because of the lazy voters. My favourite was the one which started "It's official, the people in this country are going to hell in a hand basket." They all feel because Bush is re-elected, the end of time as we know is near. One said, "I don't know which group is more foolish......the assholes that voted for that clown again, or the assholes that sat on their worthless asses and didn't vote. I don't give a fuck what happens to people anymore. If something catastophic does happen, it will be well deserved." I am not including other emails because of the high amount of vitriolic words (in both senses) in it.

I don't know why these guys are so angry about Bush; whether Bush comes back (he is), or Kerry was coming (he isn't), I think the world IS a doomed place, so long as the unilateral policies of USA works. How can they think Kerry would be a better president for the world? He too, like Bush, would act only in the interest of the American people (maybe not all, but atleast their party people). Raman aandaalum, Ravanan aandaalum...

L'Hôpital and expiry dates

This is one of those 'giving back to the society' things. We were supposed to do one consultancy-like work free of cost to anyone in and around the hill asks us for help. This is all done by one of the passive-aggressive profs. We, a group of 3/4ths of a dozen were assigned to help a health-care and covalesence centre which I will refer to as 'En Aaspathiri'. We were supposed to visit the place and suggest improvements.

When we visited the place for the first time, it looked so similar to a major railway station in India - chaos reigned the place, benches were covered with human doodoo; wherever there was a corner, the public had marked their territory through tobacco spit and/or human weewee. The patients were the affected lot. They were generally those people who cannot afford to go to other health-care centres which were costlier but much cleaner and efficient than this place. Patients were lying around everywhere, in the corridor, outside the centre, generally anywhere shade was available.

The patients' relatives were made to run all over the place by the 'courteous' people you would call 'wardboys' (whose wives I would call aunty). According to insider sources, this place reeks of apathy, corruption and insubordination, but runs quite well. Even today I saw a poor woman, wearing a well worn saree, tiny sticks for ear-rings and nose-ring, crying to a social work coordinator about how she was conned off of 100 bucks by a tout, which will be two days' salary for her husband. Me and another guy personally spent 25 minutes trying to pay a bill of around Rs. 100 while the guys behind the counter (including one woman) started fighting verbally with a patient's relative who was standing to pay the bill. The battle was in only one counter but the other three cashiers too jumped in to support their colleague; the power of unions. There were union posters/bills stuck over all the 'information' boards in the centre. If management guys could be disoriented by the layout and the lack of information boards, imagine the plight of the mostly illiterate poor patrons.

Outside, a few pigs were running all over the place. When I pointed this out to some guy, he just said as a matter of fact that they were the 'cleaners' of the place, and they do wonderful work keeping the place clean, even though they might appear dirty. If they keep the place clean, then it is ok to spread enchepalitis and other diseases!

When were assigned to this (using an industry term) 'project'. understood at first that we have to improve this almost-charity centre and make it compete it with the non-public centres. However, there was a small confusion in this. I do not know what exactly happened, but again, according to insider sources, we were told by EA chief that we were supposed to improve the quality and its image only and not to become a competition to the non-public centres. We tried to do according to the now required objectives. The prof thought we were trying to do some gol-mal and HIS till-now-passive aggressiveness reared its head and we were summoned for a meeting through email.

Some of us were in a 3 hour class when the email came and only a couple went to see HIM. When HE was explained about our absence and the class, HE is reported to have quipped that 'even this was very important.'

We were very enthusiastic about this 'project' before we started. The morale was high as we were assigned on a mission to clean up this dinosaur. Once we saw the place, we understood that this could not be done in 6 days spread over half as many fortnights. One guy in my 'team' remarked that 'even a company like McKinsey would take atleast 6 months to do this project.' Well, I think he was off the mark by another 6 months.

During the project today, I smelled the stench of death for the first time. Have you ever had a rat caught in your cupboard and had died there? Imagine ten such rats packed in a biscuit jar. It was either the smell of death or the guy was really really sick. He (what is the past-tense of he?) was laid on a stretcher in the middle of a very narrow corridor.

I had only seen a handful of deaths in my entire life; starting with the college guy upstairs who fell down two storeys and did not survive, the lady opposite our house who 'bathed in fire' after a fight with her husband who tried to save her; he too did not survive to see the second day; my neighbour's father (my friend's grandpa), my own grandpa, my brother's best friend's father. I had seen quite a few accidents too, and many 'terminations' on television. Today's incident bought back all these memories.

What were different about today were the smell and the fact that even though he was surrounded by his family and friends, they were simply chatting and one laughed too. Did I miss something there?

Birthday Boy

This is how birthdays are normally celebrated, as your parents taught: Print invitations for all your friends and send them out, arrange for cake, food and drinks. Friends trickle in with presents, and you happily cut the cake while friends and family sing happy birthday.

This is the case here, in WKIPHB: When the clock strikes 12 (00 00hrs), the kid is dragged out of his room, ink, eggs, coffee, tea, cool drinks, soapy water, etc are poured on him. four people carry him by his limbs while others take turns in kicking his bum. This is called birthday-bums. Cake is cut, food and cooldrinks on the kid, everybody disperse happily. See? that is not so bad.

In addition, this kid's birthday was celebrated thus by these people who are supposed to be his friends: in addition to the above procedure, neem oil was procured specially for him. If you didn't know, neem oil is the stinkiest vegetable/plant oil extract out there. Women in rural South of Tamil Nadu use neem oil everyday. When you are unfortunate enough to be in a bus there, your olfactory senses will be overwhelmed by this smell, over and above the smell of karuvaadu, kozhi or suruttu/beedi (sun-dried fish, chicken or cigar/bidi.)

After fierce resistance, the neem oil was wasted on the ground. But a few drops still were upon him. when he playfully smeared the cake leftover, some oil accidently went into the mouths of the senior guys. A few of them became furious and wanted to take revenge upon whoever bought that bloody oil.

One instance: dirty chappal was immersed in water and poured on the chief instigator.
Other instances: detergent, shaving cream, liquid soap, etc were mixed in water and poured on the other guys.

In a Well Known Engineering College in India close to a race-track, this happens, among some circles: There are water tanks in bathrooms for filling up with water to be used in the toilets. An hour or so before midnight, the tank is filled to the brim with water, mixed with a generous amount of fountain pen ink, eggs and whatever liquid they could lay their hands on, and (hold your breath), that yellow coloured liquid that you do naturally (when someone does it when sleeping, it is called bedwetting). The kid is then dunked inside the tank, and his bum plastered.

Some of my college friends might disagree with this, but they were all decent guys and might not have seen this part. I have seen, my seniors, my super seniors have talked about it. even my uncle, who lived in the same cell err, hostel block as I did and his friends have said the same stories. Even my juniors 2 years younger told the same story. It is like a tradition. My birthdays were never celebrated in the hostels.

Can you corrolate with this?

Booth Capturing: India vs USA

Booth Capturing, Indian style:

Modus Operandi: Goons belonging to one party rush into the voting booth, kick out the legitimate voters; sometimes in collusion with the election officials, sometimes kicking them out too; punch in votes for their party candidate, stuff the ballot box, go away.
Result: death of voters ranges from 0 to a few dozens, wide news coverage, that party's candidate gains overwhelmingly from that booth, sometimes re-polling ordered

Booth Capturing, American style:

Modus Operandi: Get a company sympathetic to your party (always Republican party?) to make the software and/or hardware for the election and rig the voting machines such that whomever the voters vote for, only Bush/Cheny gets the vote.

Result: no deaths, minimal news coverage, that party's candidate wins, re-counting ordered, Supreme Court of USA declares GWBush won.

This has been reported even in http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/travis.asp As always, the people at snopes.com have avoided boycott by Republican internet users, by downplaying and advising the voters to be cautious.

With inputs from friends in the USA, and the internet.

Weekend

My weekend is shot. Originally I had nothing scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. I had planned to rest nursing a very painful left shoulder and arm for the last two days. I could barely sit in the class today. A Mid-day email from the office comes informing me that three classes tomorrow and two classes the day after. Four classes from a tech-savvy prof who wants to submit a case analysis before every class, by email. The last two days, though tight, were very interesting. This marketing/advertising guy likes teaching and was telling some of his experiences in the class. One story made me sit upright.

He was talking about brand personality and such stuff. He said that one very famous retail chain, while professing superior customer relationship management, had misspelled his name in over 30 letters they sent him. He compared this to his experience with the English Cricket Board; they had actually kept track of him watching a few cricket matches during the World Cup in England and informed him about upcoming events there.

Coincidentally, the same story was told by atleast one other marketing/advertising guy who also like teaching (or was it a marketing/advertising professor?), with another company and the same ECB. Maybe this was mere coincidence and they both had indeed had similar experiences, considering the propensity of marketing guys to travel far and wide.

Dawn

This is my first attempt at photography, especially sceneries. My friend had given me his digital camera and I am practicing shots with it. Yesterday I woke up too early and was roaming in the terrace when the dawning sky captivated me. I ran down, brought camera and took about 5 shots of the sky. I like this one. Doesn't it look like found in a professional site? :D



Thanks to this great site called imageshack.us, I can host as much photos as I want, without bothering about the bandwidth or server space.

Report & presentation

A small 2 page report takes me almost 2 hours to complete... am I working too slow? The break up is 1 hour of data 'collection' (too much distraction at this point), 30 - 45 minutes of tap-tap-tap in MS Word (lot of 'thinking' involved in this place), and 10 - 15 minutes of copy-paste-format from MS Word to MS Powerpoint. Now, what background do I put is the next important question! All done, not very bad. Now, for the printouts. Climb up one flight, walk a few metres, there you are...

Damn, the printer won't take paper automatically from the bulk tray, have to feed manually or direct it for each print job. Backlogs of prints given upto 2 hours back has to be cleared first... They know you have to be there to print it, why do you even bother to give a print job? Most of these jobs won't be collected even after a month. Yeah, someone like me would finish them all and find out the paper has run out *just* before mine is started. Ok, load the tray, select tray, work done. Happy days are here again.

Vacation over

The week long 'vacation' I have been enjoying ends today and I have a very busy 2 days; classes from 9 am to 7.30 pm tomorrow and the day after. These are the busiest 2 days ever. Oh, and my win2k machine has been running for over 10 1/2 hours days now. A record for myself! The last process has a PID 44280 and this browser 43888. System idle time 215 hrs and 38 minutes + seconds (whew).
Correction 28/10/4: 10.5 _days_, not hours :)

Britcoms Rule!

I love British comedy programmes. The current bunch of American comedies, if you may call them so, are pathetic. Even the much heralded Seinfeld, and Friends, are nothing when compared to Benny Hill. Only Whose Line Is It Anyway is funny, though it is copied from the British version. Even then, the people who were loads funny in the British version are not as funny here. Britcoms are not like the slapstick variety of humour contained in Friends or Seinfeld.

The first comedy I ever loved was Carry On England. From then, I have made it a point to sit before the TV whenever a Carry On movie was aired. The whole series of 'Carry On' movies was phenomenal. Then there was 'mind your language', a brilliant piece if I have ever seen one. I had heard about Monty Python in college, and did not get a chance to see it till a few months back. I was bowled over by the genius of that group. Life of Brian is undoubtedly their best work, followed by the Quest For Holy Grail. I laughed my ass off at ‘Romanes Eunt Domus’ and ‘Bigus Dickus’. As soon as the movie ended, I started my quest for Monty Python Skits. They are fabulous, even though the ending of their skits are corny. Even 'Allo 'Allo was amusing, way funnier than Friends. I still laugh at the Benny Hill Chase at the end of his programs, funny as hell!

Then suddenly something happened to british comedy? They are a pale shadow of what they were 2 decades back. The current shows like The Office are funny but pale in comparison to ‘Only Fools And Horses’.

Some of the britcoms have been copied to Hindi, like Yes Minister (later Yes Prime Minister), and Mind Your Language. But a part of that comedy thing is lost in the translation. The TV channels here don't air britcoms but thanks to kazaa, and the kind souls who grab the videos and post them on the net, I can include a steady supply of humour. Ali G and his hilarious alter-ego Borat show what quite witty too.
http://britcoms.com/ is a good place to visit to know about britcoms. Blessed are those who share their videos or has forgotten to password protect their directories. Yeah, Britcoms Rule!!!

Mobile Phones and Libraries

What can you say of idiots who use mobile phones in libraries? I was sitting in the library today when this guy suddenly called his friend over his mobile and started speaking aloud. With his gruff voice, it was like using a jackhammer near a hospital. He carried on his conversation for about 5 minutes, cackling and cracking jokes to his friend on the other side. The phone too, had its voice level too high. I could hear both sides of the conversation, not that I wanted to. A place full of "Silence Please" signs and not even one was visible to him?

Mail delivery failed

Mail delivery failed: returning message to senderThis message was created automatically by mail delivery software

I used to see this kind of emails coming to my work account every day, around 10 on an average at its peak. It also had an attachment, with a doc.pif extension. My IS dept guys used to tell me it was some kind of virus in the mailserver, trying to send emails as me. Today, I received one such email on Gmail, the first for me. Is it virus in Gmail server? or spoofing going on somewhere else? Maybe even Gmail is vulnerable, after all!

Reports

A not-so-shabby report of 4-5 pages takes me 2 hrs to complete...

Non-veg

A respectable person from a respectable institute writing in a respectable newspaper, can he be wrong? I had earlier written about evangelical vegetarians preventing me from eating meat. They said I was in the minority, even said by Maneka Gandhi, the militant vegetarian. But this guy here contradicts it. He writes,

Contrary to popular belief, India is not a predominantly vegetarian country. But a quarter of the population is reckoned, based on census data, to be vegetarian. ... 21per cent of Tamil Nadu, ... are veggies. While part of this vegetarianism is economic, a more compelling force is ethical and even religious.

Boy, I was hanging out with the wrong crowd! Maybe that would explain the abundance of high-class non-veg restaurants while there are only a few like Saravana Bhavan. Even that doesn't come close to the ambience of Anjappar or Nachiappar.

He goes on to say that certain influences around 500-300 BC changed most of our food habits. He says we are not eating most of what we were eating till just about that period. Apparently, my ancestors' diet included many exotic things which they later discontinued. Imagine, what if that certain influencing factor was not present - our menu would be something like the Malaysians or the Thais, if not Chinese, Korean or Japanese.

Solomon Grundy

This was my favourite song when I was about 2 years old. It still is one of my top fifty songs. This songs fleets across my memory sometimes and brings thoughts of good times... Carefree days, all day nothing but playing, friends at the creche, no worries whatsoever - *sigh* those where the days

     Solomon Grundy,
     Born on a Monday,
     Christened on Tuesday,
     Married on Wednesday,
     Took ill on Thursday,
     Worse on Friday,
     Died on Saturday,
     Buried on Sunday.
     That was the end
     Of Solomon Grundy.

Wild Cat

Once upon a time, there was a wildlife photographer who used to travel around the world to shoot ferocious wild animals with his camera. It was a dangerous profession. His work took him to work all over the plains of Africa, the dense and thick jungles of India, and the rainforests of South America. It was a life filled with perils.

One day, he did not return home from one such hunt in Africa. They found his body lying in a field with a terrified look fixated on his face, like he has seen something terrible, or horrifying, or both. His cold hands closely gripped his camera with a steely grip. They took it home and developed the photo. They were all horrified by the last photo the wild cat hunter had shot - a ferocious wild cat pouncing on him.

This is what they found...



*big grin*

Google Toolbar?

Google has come up with its new desktop search tool, and some of my friends have installed. It is an interesting tool from Google. Google says it is a very efficient and useful tool http://desktop.Google.com/about.html. But I am not sure about the safety of my privacy in this case. How will I know that Google or anyone else will not know about what I have in my comp? With almost a third of Google's employees being ex-employees of American government institutions like NSA, among others, is Google just another facade for the American spying agencies? And what the hell does this found in a Google job ad mean? - 'Must have current government top security clearance (TS/SI).'

Google's privacy policy states that 'Google collects limited non-personally identifying information your browser makes available whenever you visit a website. This log information includes your internet protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your query and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. We use this information to operate, develop and improve our services.' but, these are the only information that are needed to identify me and all my details. From my IP address and the date and time, you can trace me back to my ISP, and from there, to my house, through my account number or whatever. Given the recent incident when some servers in Europe where confiscated by the American detective agency, it won't be difficult for them to get the info from my ISP in India if some idiot there thinks I am against the American government or someone else!

As I said, Google might be just a facade for the American spies, who trick the users into divulging their surfing patterns voluntarily instead of the government mining the information directly. Just like SETI@home pools together the desktop computers to do some computations, the netizens are pooled together and donate their net usage habits and patterns to the government directly.

Google defines spyware as 'spyware is software that reports on your activities or gathers personal information about you and sends it via the internet to third parties without your knowledge or consent.' but we must keep in mind that it is not exactly spying if it is done by the government or by the American government in this case. In this case it is called intelligence and is essential for such crap as safety, sovereignty etc. One of my friends in USA is so paranoid about government eavesdropping on people, especially aliens and the new patriot act that he now refuses to discuss online anything that might be misconstrued as subversive activities or that might be held against him. Another one of my friend’s colleagues (or friends, or acquaintances) was held for a long time by the immigration people in America, just for being a Muslim in New York. It doesn't matter if he is a highly qualified medicine man who would be worshipped back in Pakistan.

Fluffy, Destroyer of Worlds

This undeniably is one of my top ten favourite photos. If I ever have a dog, it will be like this.

Ethnic Tamils

Contrary to what you see on Hindi movies like 'Padosan', or what White-skinned tourists' testimonials are, Tamils as a collective are neither meek nor friendly. Tamils are possessive, feudal, clannish and arrogant, though not as much as another South Indian group, which I am afraid to name here. They also have a well-developed martial tradition, which waned during the British occupation. Still, Tamils and other South Indian collectives were preferred to be shipped over to other places for their manual labour skills.

This might be true to some extent, usually during peacetime. But it is an altogether different story otherwise. A few centuries ago, they were seen as one of the most brutal and ruthless tribes to have ever encountered. The Pallavas, and later the Cholas, often invaded their neighbours at the drop of a hat. The Cholas went as far as building a belligerent Navy, the first in India. The spread of Hinduism in South East Asian countries is mainly due to the conquest of the Chola Navy.

It is said that 'the ruthless Chola conquest was apparently no different from the conduct of Mahmud of Ghazni at Somnath. The Kulavamsa says that the capital Anuradhapura, which sported many Buddhist viharas, was 'utterly destroyed in every way by the Chola army.' Not only were the viharas decimated, but the holy stupas in them were torn apart in search of treasure. Historians say that the imperial Cholas have left their mark not only on the coronation rituals of the Royal house of Thailand but that the fear of their military power has been inscribed in the etymology of the word Tamin in the Thai language. (the word 'Tamin' in Thai denotes both violence and the Tamil ethnic group). Modern day Tamils? LTTE, Veerappan, 'Auto' Shankar, the gangsters and the policemen of Tamil Nadu But, I am digressing.

Unless you belong to the ingroup, your life will not be easy. In short, Tamils are not the meek and sweet guys as seen by others. The modern times have taken some sting out of them, and the law of the land has blunted the barbs to some extent.

Why am I writing this? I have to encounter them and deal with them on a regular basis, in the form of bus drivers and conductors, auto drivers, shopkeepers, et al. If you are considered an 'outsider', expect to be ridiculed, threatened, and god forbid, expect further. Since autodrivers and friends are the only contact with foreigners and other state guys when they come to Chennai, they see the friendly friend and his family, and the obnoxious autodriver, and conclude this is limited to the autodrivers.

I realised this whole ingroup-outgroup thing even among my close friends this summer. Usually Tamil friends send some insulting text messages between themselves. For the summer, I had a different mobile number. When I sent one such message to a family friend back home (the message was a mosquito bite compared to the messages that are usually sent), I got a very rude set of words in reply , words that would make a sailor blush. I realised, I had not given my new number to this guy . I identified myself and I was back in the game . This also works in government offices and other places. You have a friend there, the bribes are reduced, and the works speed up.

More about those bloody autodrivers later.

Teaching with movies

Engineering was all about classrooms and seminars. MBA is a little different. We are more different. Our insti is among the few where movies are used as a teaching aid. Before I came here, a movie was just time-pass, to be watched with friends, etc, etc. You can learn theory and history through books. If it is made in the form of a move, it is better. Subtract a little bit of reality and add some spice there, it is even better. I watched a few movies for the Business Ethics class, and I just watched the movie Wall Street, recommended by a finance prof. I did not take that class, still that did not stop me from watching it and trying to learn from it.

The words of the successful man:
The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of it's forms - greed for life, for money, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed - you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you (Gordon Gecko)

The words of a man not so successful:
Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss. (Lou Mannheim)

The words of a honest hardworking man who wears the same old jacket everywhere:
I don't go to bed with no whore, and I don't wake up with no whore. That's how I live with myself. What about you? (Carl Fox)

What you choose depends on what you are.

More to think about, from the mouth of Gordon Gecko:

Ever wonder why fund managers can't beat the S&P 500? 'Cause they're sheep, and sheep get slaughtered.
Not bad for a City College boy. I bought my way in, now all these Ivy league schmucks are sucking my kneecaps.

Guilt

When I got my first month's stipend/salary this summer, I went with my friends to Planet Yumm on 13th Main Road. There is a small number of huts just behind it. Whenever I go that way, I see the glass walls of the building, the fancy cars parked by it, and the naked kids from the huts playing by the cars. I see the same in Mumbai, near my father's house. Whenever I go to McD or Pizza Hut, I see the same kids peering through the windows inside where the rich kids indulge themselves with all kinds of goodies, getting a happy meal with a toy to add to their already huge collection of toys. Everytime I feel the same way, bad about myself. Looking at them, and looking at myself, spending way too much than I would need. This time, I was only spending what I righteously earned with my hardwork. What if I spend it on myself? I should not feel guilty, right? Why should I feel guilty for these kids? The same thoughts occur when I am playing with my cousin's toddler. I see him playing with his toys, I see the iron wallah's son outside playing with a plastic toy discarded by someone like my nephew. The same sickening feeling. Should I even worry at all? I am confused. What's worrying is, I can't lamely convince myself about it like I do for children working in my insti mess.

Random Thoughts 1

Kicking dogs may be fun, but it's exhausting and I've got a life to get on with.

Good News

Two good news yesterday; one from my homestate and one from my hometown. The first news: Veerappan killed. That slippery rat was killed atlast by the TN police. He was caught as early as 1986 but was let out after bribing the police and/or the local politicians. The impact of letting him out was not realised at that time. In the next 18 years, he went on to kill many more, innocents, honest police officers, anyone trying be on the right side of the law. Will the ghosts of the dead officers and people forgive those who were responsible? He is so famous that one of the 6 pages of India in rotten.com is about Veerappan.

The second news is that it rained heavily in Chennai. The cricket test was washed out that day. This was a disappointment to many but not for the residents. It has been a tradition that whenever there is a test match there, it should rain. Maybe, conduct a whole series there every year and we would have less of water troubles.

India rennt

"The game lasts 90 minutes. That's a fact. Everything else is just theory." - Run Lola Run (1999). What if we were colonialised by the French, Danish, Portugese or Dutch instead of the British?

Had the French succeeded,
»India wouldn't have been as big, the states would be independent, like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam
»Even if we were like today, Pondicherry would be the capital of L'Inde
»French would be the lingua franca
»Uprising against the French occupation would have brought the USA to save us from Communism, à la Vietnam

Had the Danish been the rulers,
»Tranquebar would've been the capital. Hard to say, they were poor colonizers.

Had the Dutch conquered us
»We would be called the Indische and Travancore our capital city
»We would be speaking a mutant of Dutch and Malayalam
»Apartheid, enough said

Portugese?
»Quarter of the men would be named Jésus
»Bombay the capital
»We would be falar portugese
»Outsiders would think Hispanics are the native population while the native population would be decimated by ¾ths and the rest relegated to the ghettos like in the Latin American countries

The only advantage in all these? No Pakistan to fight with us.

I Luv Garfield

If I were a cat, I would look like Garfield.

Why Al Qaeda is not from India

1. We are always late, we would have missed all 4 flights.
2. Pretty girls on the plane would distract us.
3. We would talk loudly and bring attention to ourselves.
4. With food and drinks on the plane, we would forget why we're there.
5. We talk with our hands, therefore we would have to put our weapons down.
6. We would ALL want to fly the plane.
7. We would argue and start a fight in the plane.
8. We can't keep a secret, we would have told everyone a week before doing it.
9. We would have put our country's flag on the windshield.
10. We would all have fallen over each other to be in the photograph being taken by one of the hostages.

Metrosexual

Why some guys suddenly became 'metrosexual', a scoop story.

This man is at work one day when he notices that his male co-worker is wearing an earring.
This man knows his co-worker to be a normally conservative fellow andis curious about his sudden change in "fashion sense."
"Yo, Bob, I didn't know you were into earrings."
"Oh, yeah, sure," says Bob sheepishly.
"Really? How long have you been wearing one?"
"Ever since my wife found it in our bed!"

Is Google going the Yahoo way?

• Yahoo was started as a Stanford project, so was Google
• Yahoo started as a search engine, so did Google
• Yahoo came just after the dotcom craze, the boom, and Y2K worries started while Google came just before the dotcom craze, the boom and Y2K worries started ending.
• Geeks swore by Yahoo, geeks swear by Google
• Yahoo stocks were a huge success. C'est la même for Google
• Yahoo acquired geocities, Google acquired blogger
• Yahoo acquired egroups, Google acquired usenet archives
• Egroups is Yahoo groups, usenet archives is now Google groups
• File attachments are not stored anymore, ditto here
• Yahoo mail's storage space of 10 MB was one of the highest at that time until Lycos etc were started; Gmail's 1 GB space was the highest until Rediffmail etc increased theirs
• Yahoo cobranded search engine for websites, Google cobranded search engine for websites
• Yahoo has Yahoo personals, Google has orkut [yes, I know orkut is not the same as Yahoo personals, but the concept is the same, right?]
• Yahoo has webrank, Google has pagerank
• Yahoo has paid links; Google has ‘ads by gooooogle’
• Yahoo stopped working with cookies turned off; Google is doing the same thing now
• Yahoo toolbar, Google toolbar
• Yahoo news, Google news
• Yahoo mail, Gmail
• Yahoo mobile, Google wireless
• Yahoo.co.in etc, Google.co.in etc
• Yahoo shop, Froogle
• Yahoo photos, Picassa (I know, not the same, but the concept...)
• Yahoo became bloated, Google is still expanding
• People started hating Yahoo after it became big; people have just started for Google (google-watch.org)
• Yahoo IPO, Google IPO

These are just the similarities and Google's features are (currently) way better than Yahoo's but everybody likes an underdog and child is the father of man. Google too may become what Yahoo is now, and something else may take its place. Remember IE vs. Netscape? Then it was IE vs. Opera and now it is IE vs. Mozilla. Every pair adds some features to itself and reach their critical mass after which they both near-collapse. One has the power to stay afloat while the other sinks and a fledgling takes it place.

Slimes of India

This country was fortunate enough to have such newspapers as The Hindu, The Indian Express (the old one, not the new one), Deccan Herald, to name a few. This country is also unfortunate to have such newspapers as Times of India and Mid-day.

Suman Kumar has blogged about TOI, so has Jivha. My friends who shifted to Bombay are happy though, they do not have to buy glossy magazines to get pictures of semi-naked women and read about their escapades. They just buy ToI, and log on to its website/blog where some 'articles' look like they were lifted straight out of The Penthouse Diaries. India doesn't have a tablod like The Sun? No man, we have ToI. It has shown more areola than an adoloscent's wet-dream.

There used to be a time when Americans said 'I buy Playboy for the articles'. Now many Indians are saying the same: 'I buy ToI for the articles'. Read what Pradyuman Maheshwari has to say about it.

Trying to break into Chennai with such a newspaper woule be like selling George W Bush to the Arabs or John Kerry to the Republicans, or Mu. Karunanidhi to Jayalalithaa. Not so long ago, ToI caught Jaya Madam, the CM of TN, to publish a book from ToI stables to gain a foothold in the Hindu (the newspaper) dominated Chennai. Jaya Madam wanted ToI to act as a counter-balance to what she says a 'Hostile Media loaded with personal vendetta against a self-made woman' that is The Hindu and The New Indian Express. Maybe more on this in a later post. Nothing has transpired still and The Hindu still rules supreme. The day ToI becomes the leading publisher in Chennai like it says, 'in Mumbai Pune Delhi Calcutta...', Hell would have frozen over. Moreover the pretty lineup sounds like a copy of 'Singapore, Malaysia, Ceylon, Thailand aagiya naadugalil prasithi pettra Gopal Palpodi'. It means, 'Gopal Toothpowder, Famous in [the country list].'

250 in one day

Yippee!!! yesterday my blog registered 250 hits on 14th October 2004. Some came here after the brouhaha created yesterday. Thanks to all those who emailed their support to me and bollocks to the guy(s) who wrote those obnoxious comments. As I always say, 'No publicity is negative publicity'. Am I the Maddox of this place, or what?

Hatred

Some guys seem to think I must be a loser for keeping this blog and talk to all ye faithful readers (anyone, please?) Some of the most vocal guys seem to think that since I attacked them personally in this blog, they have to write comments for every article that I have written so far. The anonymity provided by the internet and anonymous comments allowed seem to be very favourable for him (or them) so that he is(or they are) saying things that they would not have dared to say it (oh boy, more trouble heading my way). I have taken down the comments section just because of him (or them). He says (or they say) I seem to have a lot of time writing this blog because he seems (or they seem) to have a lot of time reading all the entries in my blog. BTW, I had a surge of visitors for this place (not exactly unique visits) and touched a new high of 215+, still climbing and pushing my blog ratings so high. Thank You, my friends, for that. I am happy to have provided another reason for your existence. Also, the name of the poster has also been changed to duffer to appease the gods that may be. Peace, man!

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche is a genius. He is widely misunderstood as a misogynist and a racist. His masterwork piece was 'Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches)', a collection of aphorisms mainly concerned with human psychology. In this he says wordly truths that will hold their ground even if sun rises in the west. I know, sun rises in the west in some planets and this is all too referential. In these planets, then it becomes 'even if sun rises in the east'. But, the frame of reference should be and always will be the earth. In his book, he says,

Presence of witnesses. One is twice as happy to dive after a man who has fallen into the water if people are present who do not dare to.

The friend's secret. There will be but few people who, when at a loss for topics of conversation, will not reveal the more secret affairs of their friends.

Joy in old age. The thinker or artist whose better self has fled into his works feels an almost malicious joy when he sees his body and spirit slowly broken into and destroyed by time; it is as if he were in a corner, watching a thief at work on his safe, all the while knowing that it is empty and that all his treasures have been rescued.

The infuriating thing about an individual way of life. People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.

The right profession. Men seldom endure a profession if they do not believe or persuade themselves that it is basically more important than all others. Women do the same with their lovers.

Boredom. Many people, especially women, do not experience boredom, because they have never learned to work properly.

According to rotten.com, from where the above is lifted, 'Indeed, Sigmund Freud often marveled how Nietzsche's hunches and insights behaved in synchronous agreement with the laborious results of academic psychoanalysis.'

I especially like the one about the individual way of life. Many people when they get to know about my lifestyle try to 'help me'. I have been persisted by some people who want me to introduce me to 'God and his ways' and try to show me 'the path to salvation'. Some say that to succeed as a manager, I need to 'drink socially' and 'smoke casually' so that I am not left out of hallway meetings and party chats. Thanks to handkerchief and grape juice, I don't think this might be a problem.