the year that was ... 2011

Finally, the last day of yet another year. Adieu 2011. The whole year was just so so for me. I could keep my wish of not going to office on weekends and holidays except for 2 - 3 instances. Same applies to the coming year as well. The whole year I worked a lot (a lot indeed), cribbed a lot as well. Watched a lot of movies. The list of movies can be found here. I spent a lot of time with myself.  Otherwise, the year can be just remembered as a year with innumerable number of fuel price hikes, a lot of instances of stealing my hard earned money by the government (f**king scams), and we lost many people who touched my life in one way or the other ... Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, Bhupen Hazarika, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor to name a few. Saw the impact of social networks and online media in changing the way we live lives... Egypt, Libya, Anna Hazare... I watched NH7 Weekender in Pune. Attended such a musical festival for the 1st time in my life, which I christened as "Pune's Own WoodStock". Throughout the year, I felt how office politics can make you feel frustrated and suffocated, yet I feel my disinclination to change my job. I was not very active in blogging in this year, a feeling of laziness or reluctance ? I don't know. I visited my Alma Mater after almost 6 years. Really enjoyed the 3 days in campus.  So, finally au revoir 2011, an okay year to me...

I wish 2012 be another year worth living. So, what's my new year resolution ? I f**king hate that question.

Wishing all my readers a very Happy New Year - 2012. Have a Great Year Ahead... !!!

The City's own Woodstock

Eversince I was introduced to the musical world of rock and metal, I always indulged in woolgathering about being in the Woodstock festival someday. As they call it, 3 days of Sex, Drugs and Music or just 3 days of peace & happiness. Then I got to know about NH7 Weekender in my own city from Nov 18th to 20th. Gosh... 3 days, 5 stages and 50+ bands ... catering any kinds of musical genre one can thrive for. Indeed, it was no other than a Woodstock. Watched all most all the performances in the Rock Stage, along with Soulmate and Imogen Heap in the Dewarists Stage. I wanted to see the Wolves Den, Dub Station and The Other Stage as well, but got no cycles to spare.  Felt the pain in neck due to excessive head banging even after many days after the fest. It was great to see fans in the mosh pits. And, ofcourse the young chicks in their best attires were real treats to the eye. One of the most happening weekends for me after a long time. If I am in the city next year at this time, I am bound to go to Weekender again.

Typical Day @ Work

"Hey, how's life man ?"... "Well, nothing much. Life has been caught in a vivacious circle of work and office. Days are just photo copies of the other day. As though I am carrying the copy of Monday throughout the week." ... This was a conversation between me and one of my friends 5-6 years back. I don't know about him, but for me life is still the same. "Well... Nothing Much", that's it. Apart from the work I do, for which I am paid for and my boss, there are two other entities which rules a typical day at my workplace. Two unique characters, whom God must have created when He was quite out of His mind. One of them, probably come to office just to make phone calls; all kinds of personal calls at high decibels. Clever way to save phone bills. So, I am quite abreast with the happenings in his life. When his A/C compressor goes bad, when the water tap in his toilet have a leakage, if the credit card guy put some extra charges inspite of he being a privileged customer,  so on and so forth. The noise created often compels me to listen to heavy death metals at 11 O'Clock in the morning. Another one, is quite different from this one. He is quite shrewd and very irritating. I term him as the most sadist person I have ever met in my life. He find happiness in irritating the other person with all his f**ked up comments and expressions. A person who takes his freedom of expression very seriously. He will stand by your cubicle when you are talking to your manager or any other person, where his presence is not at all wanted. He will never miss to take part in any discussion you are having. He wont hesitate to peep into your computer monitor and sometimes even wont mind to ask you "what is that", pointing to something in your computer screen. A person fully lacking in civic, moral and social etiquette. Today, it crossed all limits. He asked one of my friend, "Do I know the person with whom you are talking in the phone ?". Oh God, save me from the atrocities. Inspite of numerous feed back to both these two entities, nothing changed in the last many years. It's like clay pot, however you may try you can't change its shape. So, both of them has become a part of life at workplace, like traffic jam you encounter in the road. The only way out is to put on your headset, stroll out from your cubicle or IGNORE. The only consolation is, it's our fate. We can't choose colleagues.

The Cup of Life...

When was the last time, you did something for the first time? For me, it was just last night... India's win and I with my friends joining the mass celebration of India winning the Cricket World Cup, after 28 long years. It was a nail biting match to the second last over. When India was just 35 with 2 important wickets gone, we were like ... what the f**k !!! But, we continued watching and keeping the faith on the game and our team. After all, prayers of 1.2 billion people can't go in vain. And, we did it. We won the cup after 28 years...almost my age. We all jumped into our cars... with the tri-color in our hands and joined the city in celebrating a historic win. I never saw or participated in such a celebration, ever in my life. Danced with hundred others in the jam packed traffic... screamed and shouted "India... India..." and "Ole OLe OLe Ole... we are the champ, we are the champ" to our fullest decibels... Hugged and shaked hands with unknown people... but, we all had the same reason for the joy and the enjoyment. It was a memorable night for me and for everyone... A moment to be cherished for ever and ever... 

And as I feel the pain and sore in my throat, I feel that ...

Fortune, fame, mirror vain, gone insane 

                                             but the memory remains... 

Awkwardly Homophonic

Homophones are usually defined as words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of how they are spelled. While the presence of homophonic words in any language must have decreased the size of a language phonetically, but to a user it might some time create awkward situations. A few days ago, I fell to the pray of such a word... "come". The homophone of this word is never expected to be uttered in any casual conversations. But, in one way or the other, my pronunciation or expression had put me in a very very gawky situation and I struggled hard to justify myself that I never meant the other word. And, I curse the linguists who must have put such a pathetic homophones to such a common word in English language. Later, the situation reminded me of the effective communication courses taught during the training programs of my previous employer. The lady instructor while teaching us about correct way expressing and pronunciating, had explicitly put forwarded the example of homophone of "come" and told us to be very careful while interacting with clients. I never found the usefulness of those lessons until recently.
             While discussing about this with my friends, we thought that it will be nice to devise an algorithm in Natural Language Processing, which can detect such anomalies. I somehow think that, one heuristic way of detecting whether a person meant the common word or its homophone will be to make use of past history of the person about usage of words in his daily life w.r.t to the context. And, as the usage gets detected, count for each such words gets incremented. Now, if a tolerance limit of say 10 is set, then when usage of the homophone exceeds the tolerance limit, the system will detect that indeed the person meant the homophone, instead of the common word. For example, as I see myself, I never use such homophones in social gatherings, so my count was initially zero. So, when my count reaches 10, the natural language processor will detect that I indeed meant the homophone of "come". Again, the algorithm can make usage of weightage for each such homophones. So, in gist, making usage of historical data we can put some anticipation about what the person actually meant.

Assorted Lines

posting after a really long time. Infact, not a single post in February and its almost March end. Life is okay.. good .. so so type. Nothing special, like always. In between, I attended a friend's wedding. It was nice. Work life is going just like that. I still wonder that I am doing the same damn work for the last six years and still haven't lost the urge of continue doing it. In all these years, two things have remained constant. Me and the nature of the work. Other wise everything has changed. People working with me, culture .. everything. Had two nice bashes in last some days. It was fun. Also, quarter end team lunches. I filled up my stomach till the brim and had no space for dinner. Watching a few of the cricket matches these days. It was good to see team India winning against Australia. The temperature is soaring and I hate it. I broke my vow of not going to office on weekends for the sake of some so called urgent work and got adequately punished by the invisible forces of nature for it. 900 bucks went missing from my wallet.. that too in the workplace. Sounds shitty.. but true. I realized that over the last 2-3 years I have gone almost invisible My friends asks me what's the matter; I say I have gone antisocial in all these years. Finding bliss in solitude. One such friend called me up a few days back. We were talking after almost 1.5 years. It was funny to hear him saying that he thought that either I must have relocated abroad or must have become a "gay". Hmmm... anyways, nothing more to write as such. 

Hachiko

This evening I watched a movie named Hachiko: A Dog's Story on HBO, starring Richard Gere. The plot of the movie is based on the true story of a professor's dog in Japan, who waited for 9 years in a railway station till death, for the reappearance of its deceased master. The movie was so touching, that it made me cry.A must watch for any dog lovers. As a honor to the loyalty of the dog and its invincible bond with its owner, a bronze statue can be seen in the same railway station, Tokyo's Shibuya Station. I sometimes curse my lifestyle for not being able to keep a pet

More Info:

The Movie
The Dog

Spot The Flaw

A friend of mine, who is a very keen observer of day to day things, pointed out a flaw in the recent Coca Cola Ad featuring Imran Khan and Marcela Rodrigues. As shown in the advertisement, Marcela is reacting to the actions of the shadow without even looking at the shadow. A Great Flaw indeed. Have a look:

random thoughts

Probably the 1st post of the New Year. I have indeed lost my habit of blogging. May be, re-tweeting has come in the way of writing long blog posts. Anyways, nothing new about this year as already 3 weeks have passed. Life is going fine. Little busy at work, and ofcourse life has been expensive over the time. One of my friend tweeted a few days back, for the 1st time in India need, comfort and luxury are being sold at the same time, at the same price. Onion, Petrol and Beer... all at INR65. Recently, recruiter from a leading software company contacted me for some open and challenging positions with them. I replied saying that I am not currently prepared enough to appear for technical interviews with them. I was aware about the difficulty level of interviews with them and knew that, it can well result in a disheartening experience. I was quite amazed to hear her reply. She wanted me to appear for it as my resume was lying idle in their database for a long time :-). Quite funny. I and one of my friends have a theory that people usually get a big belly after getting married. We were correct in our theory once again. One of our colleagues was married recently and he has put on a big belly in less than 2 months. May be we should file a patent for our theory. I like this part of the year, not because the weather is cool, but because most of my favorite brands give upto 50% discount in reduction sales. But a trouser costing INR 2799 and having a 30% discount don't make sense. I have resolution this year. I won't go to office on weekends and free food at office shouldn't entice me either. I have a pact with a friend of mine. He will kick my butt the following Monday, if I come to office on the weekend. Lemme see, till when I can save my derrière.

Movies Watched in 2010

I watched around 120 movies of different languages in the Year - 2010.
Here in the List.

Happy New Year - 2011

Wishing A Very Happy, Prosperous & Joyous New Year 2011