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

the week that was

A diary of events for my 2010 Year End Break.

18th December - 2010, Saturday

I woke up at 9:30AM today. Had bread-cheese in B'fast and finished reading almost the whole newspaper. Cooked delicious chicken curry and rice for lunch, had bath and it was almost 2:00PM, by the time I finished lunch and cleaning the utensils. Watched TV and lied down in bed for almost an hour. Checked my mails, twitter and wrote a blog post. Made a cup of tea. By 4:30PM, I went to the mall. I had to buy some clothes and other stuffs. Bought dinner from McDonalds and reached back home by around 8:30PM. Ate my dinner and started to watch a movie. The movie was too boring and finally slept at 11:00PM.

19th December - 2010, Sunday

I woke up at 8:30AM today. Had bread-jam in B'fast and read the newspaper. At around 10AM, I went to the Sunday market to buy vegetables and fish. Reached back home by around 11:30AM. Started preparing my lunch. Cooked mixed vegetables, fish fry along with rice. Had bath and it was almost 2:00PM by the time I finished my lunch and cleaned utensils. Read through the user guide of NetLogo and then tried designing the CuttingEdge poster. Prepared evening tea in between. Skipped my dinner, and watched Danny the Dog in Star Movies. Then started to watch The Langoliers, but fell asleep in midway, I guess at around 10:30PM or so.

20th December - 2010, Monday

I woke up at 8:30AM today. Had bread-butter in B'fast. I skipped reading today's newspaper. Checked my mails and did some random hitch-hiking in the web. At around 10:30AM, I started to clean my house and finished by 12:00PM. Washed clothes,had bath and heated up my lunch. I had leftover chicken curry from Saturday and heated up one frozen Paratha. By 2:00PM I finished my lunch and cleaning up the utensils. I started watching The Langoliers from the point I left last night. The movie finished at around 4:00PM. Got a cup of tea for myself. Started with the design of Cutting Edge poster and finally finished one by 8:00PM. I realized that it was not at all an eye catching one, a mediocre type. Anyways, if it gets qualified for display, I will feel that my Year End Break was a little fruitful. I Watched two movies back2back, Crank2 and The Echo and finally went to sleep at 1:30AM.

21st December - 2010, Tuesday

I woke up at 8:30AM today. Had biscuits in B'fast. I read the newspaper. Checked my mails and cleaned my vsnl.net email account. I cooked Bilahi Masor Tenga (Fish curry with Tomatoes), Aloo Palak for lunch. Finished lunch by around 1:30. Was feeling terribly sleepy and slept for an hour. Woke up at around 2:30, had bath. Sat with my laptop, did some random hitch hiking and updated some personal documents. In between made my evening tea. Ooops, it was already 6:00PM by then. I planned to cook Chole Masala and so readied all the raw materials. I had put Channa to soak in water the previous night itself. Solved some puzzles, had dinner with Chole and Paratha, followed by milk shakes and finally went to sleep at 11:00PM

22nd December - 2010, Wednesday

I woke up at 9:00AM Today. Had bread-butter in b'fast. Read the newspaper. Checked my mails.I was feeling like writing some PHP stuffs. It had been ages looking at PHP and so I thought to just have a revision and so started doing it. The whole day, I spent writing a few random scripts, and had just maggie for my lunch. Finally, I wind it up at around 5:00PM, and then had a cup of tea. I read some stuffs like algorithms and data structures. Had lunch with fish curry from Tuesday and finally slept at 11:00PM. The whole day today, I did not watch TV, didn't take a bath nor slept.

23rd December - 2010, Thursday

I woke up at 8:30AM Today. Had biscuits with tea in b'fast. Read the newspaper. Checked my mails. I started reading stuffs left from last night and felt like taking some programming tests online. I took two C programming tests and my God I felt so illiterate in C programming. It was Thursday today and as always a day for load shedding. I was up with my laptop till it died of battery. It was 12:30PM and I was feeling so hungry. I went to the nearby veggie restaurant and ate Hakka noodles. I went out of home after 4 long days of staying inside. The car was lying idle and so took it out for a drive to the petrol pump. The petrol cost was INR60.45 per liter. Life has indeed become so dearer. Returned home by around 2:00PM and was feeling terribly sleepy. Slept for an hour or so. Had dinner with Tuesday's Chole. Watched a movie named Crash and slept at 12:00AM.

24th December - 2010, Friday

I woke up at 8:30 AM Today. Had Bread-Cheese in B'fast. Read almost the whole newspaper and it was 10:30 by then. Checked my mails and tried reading some stuffs. By 11:30, I started cooking my lunch. I cooked fish curry with cauliflower-potato and finished my lunch by around 1:30PM. I just lied down in bed listening to music, made a cup of tea in between and spent the entire afternoon. I went out to buy stuffs, bought mutton for X'Mas eve dinner all with myself. Had yummy roasted mutton with Paratha and finally went to sleep by 11:00PM.

25th December - 2010, Saturday

I woke up at 8:30 AM Today. Had Biscuits and Tea in B'fast. Read newspaper. Checked my mails and random surf of the net, and oops its already 11:30AM. I don't plan to eat lunch today so relieved from cooking for the time. Booked a ticket for The Tourist at 6:45PM Today. Read through stuffs and had Maggie in between. Slept for an hour so and woke up at 3:30PM. Watched random programmes in TV, had my evening Tea in between. It was 5:30PM and I had to get ready for the movie. Watched The Tourist in ESquare, okay sort of movie and returned home by 9:00PM. I cooked rice, and had it with fish curry from yesterday and finally slept by around 11:00PM.

26th December - 2010, Sunday

Today is the last day of my Year End Break.

I woke up at 8:30AM Today. Had Biscuits & Tea in B'fast. Read almost the whole Sunday Times and took a English Vocabulary test. It was 11:00 AM by then and I had to clean my house. It was almost 12:30PM by the time I cleaned the house and had bath. I had to cook my lunch. Cooked chicken curry and finished lunch by around 2:30PM. I was already so tired and so took a nap for an hour or so. I read through some stuffs and had my evening Tea in between. Was reading and watching TV. I was not planning to eat any heavy stuffs for dinner, ate just bread-butter. Slept by around 11:00PM.

           So, it was a quiet and solo vacation of 9 days ... all with myself. I don't know if I made it large, but it was a nice time spent with myself.

P.S: This post has a lot of grammatical mistakes mainly tense related.

Season's Greetings

Yet Another Year End Break

So, finally its almost the end of 2010 and my Year End Break starts this morning. I plan to spend my holidays in my own ways, all with myself and all alone. Its good spend sometime far away from Outlook mails, far from the daily routine. Sleep, cook, watch TV, surf net, music ... that's what I am going to do anyways. Today is the 1st day of the holidays, but I am already sad that these holidays will also finish soon without even realizing it.

Say No To Fire Crackers

Don't You Advocate for Car Pooling ?

Don't You Say Against Usage of Tissue Papers ?

Don't You Ask for Banning Plastic Bags ?

Don't You Discuss "Going Green !!!" ?

!!! STOP BEING A HYPOCRITE !!!

... IT'S TIME TO SAY YOU REALLY CARE ...

-- THIS DIWALI --

-- SAY NO TO FIRECRACKERS --

LEAVE THE TYPICAL CHALTA HAIN INDIAN MENTALITY

DIWALI COME ONCE IN A YEAR

but,

SO2 FUCK THE ATMOSPHERE FOREVER

The Joy of Buying

I enjoy shopping a lot; let it be buying clothes, technical books. But a few days back, I enjoyed buying something different. I bought a Twitter app called Gravity for my Symbian phone. Its an amazing piece of software, with a great UI in just $10. Actually, this is the first software I have bought. Most of the softwares for my personal computing needs are accomplished with free softwares. Firefox, YM, Gtalk, Skype, VLC, FileZilla, WinSCP, NotePad++, DevC++. The operating system is from OEM and office suite is under my employer's volume license. And since I work in a security company, the antivirus is from free for employee offer. On the Linux side, everything is just free. I rely on Save As PDF in MS Office for making PDF files or sometimes even do a online conversion where the content of my doc is not confidential. So, never actually felt the need of buying software. So, buying Gravity was a great feel good experience. It supports Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and a few others, but I bought it mainly for Twitter. I would highly recommend Gravity who is a Twitter user and want to use it in his mobile phone.

Good Night ... Sweet Dreams

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. 

 

Rabindranath Tagore

To crib or not to crib ?

"Crib" - I could never find a meaning of this word in the context of my usage. I crib a lot i.e I complain a lot without doing anything about to tackle my complaints by myself. I was wondering if there is an English word to describe such a behavior. Indeed, I crib a lot. I crib about the potholes ridden roads, shitty traffic, unethical way of driving in the road. I even crib about my work, salary, designation and even about people around me. While some of the cribs, I think are not in my control but a majority of the others are either utter nonsenses or it needs a lot of actions on my part. I think sometimes that I should not crib, but I get confused when I hear people saying that you don't get anything if you don't crib, specially in the corporate world. In the other world, ruled by corrupt bureaucrats and government officials, the art of cribbing has no place. In corporates, whether you need a raise in your perks or need a trip abroad or anything you desire to have, you have to crib. And, over the time, I feel, I am slowly entering in the labyrinth of cribbing. Sometimes I crib, ya I do a lot. I have seen the effectiveness of cribbing on other peoples. When I see a crib getting answered in the way one wanted, I get confused whether its a positive side of cribbing or is it a mediocrity of those who answer the cribs. One thing I feel, you crib most when you keep comparing yourself with others and it probably happens due to lack of self recognition or self confidence. But, then you crib that you did not get the right opportunity to recognize your true potential.One crib brings another crib. This way, the process of cribbing continues in a recursive manner, until the mind overflows (Stack Overflow!).

I still try to find the answer of to crib or not to crib ?

P.S : I don't know if "Crib" is the right spelling for the word I was trying to write about. I could not find it in any of the dictionary.

a lot like avatar

I was late in watching James Cameron's Avatar. While most people watched it last December, I watched it just a few days back when the special edition is re-released. Great movie... amazing effects but could have been a bit shorter as my eyes got strained wearing the 3D glasses for 3 long hrs. I don't know about other people but I took away not the special effects of the movie but a feeling about the happenings around me, which is a lot like Avatar. The Maoist problem in India. I know bloodshed can never be justified, but there is a limit to which exploitation remain tolerated. I would myself had not tolerated if someone take away my home, my land in the name of refineries, mining or any other shits. I am not at all trying to justify the killings of the innocent people and security personnels, but our lawmakers should try to solve the problem rather than trying to suppress it. Similar was the case in North East, and the problem still remains. And there are people like Anil Agarwal of Vedanta, who in his blind aspiration of becoming the richest Indian is playing the role of Parker in India's Avatar...

A Missing Feeling...

I hate this feeling. The feeling that from tomorrow we wont be working together, we wont be eating together, we wont be sharing jokes. As I was bidding farewell to my friend, I had all these thoughts running through my mind and I felt sad, very sad. While I feel happy as my friend is moving on in life, but I know from tomorrow life at the workplace will be altogether a different one. A vacant feeling will engulf it. But, the memories will be cherished forever. With a promise to remain in touch always...

The Ultimate Gift

The Gift of Work : You know, you do any work like you just did… you can do anything.

The Gift of Money: The charge card company declined the charge. That's impossible. I don't have a credit limit. Just run it through again. It's always our practice to run it through again, but they declined.

The Gift of Friends: I need a friend.You expect this friendship to continue? I plan on knowing Jason for the rest of my life.

The Gift of Learning: Do you truly know how to learn? Villagers wait for books. You bring them new books. They are waiting for you to pick up old books. Exchange. Library.

The Gift of Problems: Well, you don't begin to live until you've lost everything. Heck, I've lost everything three or four times. It's the perfect place to start.

The Gift of Family: And Emily, she's the best decision I ever made. What's gonna happen to my mom? I really don't hate her, you know.

The Gift of Laughter: –Salud. –Salud –Salud 

The Gift of Dreams: You need to be free, free to dream. You need to come up with a dream, then act on it. And honestly, I don't know if I have my own dream. But I do know I can help others fulfill theirs.

The Gift of Giving: She owes $1,600 in back rent. So, apparently… someone came by and covered my back rent.

The Gift of a Day: What would your dream be? My dream? My dream was a perfect day. And I'm just finishing it.

The Gift of Love: I love you, Son. – I love you too.

Courtesy: The Ultimate Gift