Just do it..

Security hole?

2011-07-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

Paradigm shifts in conducting attacks (terrorist or otherwise) to thwart the security measures in place, is not something new. Remember the story of the Trojan Horse used to destroy the city of Troy?

I'm a strong believer in conspiracy theories and am paranoid in terms of security measures (largely due to my profession). That probably explains the prophecy I'm about to make.

The "broken towing operation" of the 'cargo container vessel' Wisdom was not an accident.

Some ordinary as well as interesting 'available' information about Wisdom:
1. In its 26 year lifecycle, Wisdom's name has changed 14 times.
2. The real beneficiary owner of Wisdom is still unknown.
3. Wisdom's International Maritime Organisation (IMO) number has been 8417558 throughout it's life.

Unwanted elements have already entered the city of Mumbai via Juhu. Terrorist activities cannot be ruled out.

I'm hoping that my prophecy doesn't turn out to be true. Does it matter that I have 32 teeth?

Falling short of adjectives..

2008-10-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

1000 hrs IST. It was a live 'telecast'. Pallavi and I were all ears and looking intently at the screen. The radiologist took a while to adjust the zoom level and setup an appropriate viewing angle. After 60 odd seconds, tears welled up in my eyes. Tears of joy, of course.

We were viewing the sonogram of our fetus, aged approximately 13 weeks. At that age, we could clearly see a very cute little nose and small lips. The head was about half the length of the fetus body size. This changes as the baby grows, we were told. As the radiologist moved the transducer (probe), we could see the remainder of the fetus. And as I saw the cardiac activity (heart beats), my heart skipped a beat. The heartbeat rate was visibly fast, approximated at 168 bpm! Almost twice than the average adult heartbeat rate. And then we focussed on the petite fingers - oh so sweet :)

I was trying to store as much of the video as I could in my permanent storage, since we wouldn't be able to lay our hands on the film (neither the video nor any image).

Putting very simply, it's one of the best things that has happened to me.

2008-10-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

Got a Compaq Presario C797VU today. Installed Fedora Core 9 (Sulphur). Installation was a breeze, everything was just fine till I realised that configuring the onboard wireless device wasn't going to be easy.

Read up a lot of forums, did a lot of jazz, played around with the system, and what you need to do is the following:

1) Identify current kernelversion, identify exact wireless card model
# uname -r
# lspci | grep Atheros
2) Download package kernel-devel matching current kernelversion [kernel-devel-$(uname -r).rpm] using rpmfind.net (do not use yum install!)
3) Install package kernel-devel downloaded from rpmfind.net
# rpm -ivh kernel-devel-$(uname -r).rpm
4) Download madwifi drivers (latest stable version) from madwifi.org
5) Build madwifi drivers [assume drivers are downloaded to ./madwifi directory]
# cd madwifi
# make
# make install
# modprobe ath_pci
# modprobe ath_hal
6) Confirm that system recognises your wireless device
# iwconfig | egrep 'ath|wifi'
You're ath0 device is the one you're concerned with.
7) Configure your wireless device settings using GUI or any suitable way
8) You're done!

Just do it!

For reference sake, tech specs:

Laptop: NB Compaq Presario C700 series
Model: C797VU
CPU: intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2 Ghz (2 MB L2 Cache)
FSB: 667 Mhz
RAM: 2 GB DDR-II (1 GB default, I ordered an additional 1 GB)
Wireless: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

committing a crime on behalf of bhajji..

2008-01-07T04:49:00.000-08:00

sequence of events (sydney test, india versus australia, day 5, jan 06 2008)

bhajji pats brett lee on his bum for some reason.
brett lee doesnt care, symonds gets agitated (ever tried patting someone on their bum while a monkey is watching?)

symonds walks up to bhajji.
symonds: "what did you just do? dont you know how to play cricket?"
bhajji: "shut-up oye."

symonds: "any punjabi knows how to play cricket."
bhajji: "oye chup oye. teri maa ki.."

symonds: "hang on, did you just say 'monkey'?"
bhajji: "shit man. sachin paaji!"

(symonds approaches umpire mark benson while bhajji calls sachin and expresses fear that symonds understands punjabi.)

sachin: "well.. why, what happened?"
bhajji: "maine symonds nu kahaan teri 'maa ki..' usko samaj mein aa gaya sachin paaji, gaya umpire ke paas. kya karun?"

sachin: "oye dont worry oye, he thought you called him a 'monkey'!"
bhajji: (smiles) "haan phir theek hain.."

mark benson: (covering his mouth fearing lip readers) "harbhajan, symonds says you just called him a 'monkey'. is that true?"
bhajji: (heaving a sigh of relief): "yes, yes. just a 'monkey'. nothing else"

mark benson: "i will be complaining against you to the match referee."
bhajji: "oye sachin paaji!"

and eventually, the 3 match ban is handed over to bhajji!

Download your favourite Youtube/Google videos..

2007-03-19T03:20:00.000-07:00

Always wanted to download those YouTube/Google videos? Here's how you can do that without the help of any application that requires installation:

1. Go to youtube / google videos site.
2. Search your favorite video.
3. Copy the main URL (from browser URL window) of the video.
4. Go to http://www.vixy.net
5. Paste the copied URL into the URL input box on the site.
6. Select your favorite video format (avi, 3gp etc).
7. Click on 'Start'.
This will convert your video from .flv format (used by youtube)
to the format you have chosen and will provide you a link
to the converted file.
8. Click on the link to download the video

The formats also include the iPod video format! That means iPod users like me dont have to process them through another round of conversion! Yippee..

Porok - The XBOX 360 Commercial..

2006-12-03T04:48:00.000-08:00

XBOX 360 was launched quite sometime back, and in India, the first commercial that was aired, was in my opinion, an advertising masterpiece. At least for its time, it certainly was. The advertisement has nothing nerdy in it, no technical jargon; in fact nothing fancy about it.

The entire advertisement is setup in a village. All through the advertisement, you'll see and hear people talking about 'Porok', which is a sport played in rural India, wherein one has to take the stance of a fighter cock, and butt the opponent out of the circle in order to win the game. As the advertisement moves on, they've shown how 'Porok' becomes popular in a village, the noteworthy point being the rate at which its popularity soars.

The advertisement creators thought that 'Porok' was so weird and wonderful that they took this sport and blew it out of proportion (as you'll see in the advertisement) to denote the power of gaming.

Another interesting thing is that the language spoken by the villagers is a mix of a variety of Indian native languages, which kept me guessing for a long time. Many friends made a lot of claims - none of them turned out to be true. We eliminated a lot of languages that we knew ourselves, but India, having a considerable number of states, each of which has its own language, makes it difficult to say which is the one being spoken. The subtitles do the job though of conveying the meaning of whatever gibberish one can hear in the background.

The advertisement ends with the tagline "game on", which is the XBOX 360 tagline, and the last line spoken before the tagline, actually translates to "Porok afternoon cock horn, eunuch inside big bangle insect".

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertisement details and credits
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product:

XBOX

Title:

Porok

Agency:

MTV India

Creatives:

Cyrus Oshidar (Executive Creative Director)

K. M. Ayappa (Copywriter)

Mahendra Bhatula (Copywriter)

Hiren Kapadia (Agency Producer)

Director(s):

Mahendra Bhatula

K. M. Ayappa

Prod. Co:

MTV India

Country:

India

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

game on!

Not even insane!

2006-11-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

Little Susie was playing with Little Marla. Suddenly Little Marla started to laugh at Little Susie who began to sing very loudly. Listening at Little Susie sing, Little Marla came towards her, slapped her hard till Little Susie cried. And then Little Marla laughed and went home. Little Susan who was watching all this from her park bench, suddenly fell off and died. It was then that Little Susie ate the candy which transformed her into a frog. And she couldn't have been anything else but a frog. That is the only thing that happened on Good Friday.

Illiteration..

2006-11-20T22:11:00.000-08:00

Constant consonant cannot
Create casual coherency
Clicking camera causes
Content characterisation
Confessedly?

Caesar ceased conquering
Citizens crucified Christ
Could Cartman confuse Counsellor
Can coupled consonants
Correspond?

Cut crap - catch cocaine
Code company - cease illiteration.

A hole in the list..

2006-11-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

No more 034097. It'll stay as a hole in the list now, forever. A number that I was identified by, for over 4 years. And now is the time I'm looking out for anything but a cliche. A subject line that does NOT match any of the following: "Goodbye", "Adieu", "So long", "So long, and thanks for all the fish", "Moving on", "Time to move on". There might be some cliches that I would have missed, I'll add them later as an update to this post. But I need suggestions - please keep them coming.

Falling short of words
I finally resign
In the midst of a cliche

ISIS followed by net backup
Time to seek
Reach out to Product Horizons

Selling your stock is wise
As the rise is always seen
One day later

VERITAS VOS LIBERABIT (the truth shall set you free)

30th October 2002 - 06th December 2006

Tere baap ka naukar hoon kya

2006-11-15T21:07:00.000-08:00

In a fit of anger he said "Uske baap ka naukar hoon kya, jo is tarah se utha ke laaye" (literally translates to: "Do they think I'm his father's servant to drag me this way"). The chap in question was a Volvo bus driver, uttering this sentence at an unearthly hour of 3:50 am. Some fine train reaches before time, some bus has been arranged for picking up the ones who just arrived by the train, some bus driver needs to be woken up from his sleep to do the necessary. A series of phone calls -> from the travel company co-ordinator -> to the bus arranger -> to the local in-charge do the job of triggering this event.

Think of the job the local in-charge has to do: He faces immense pressure from the bus arranger to get the driver and other necessary people in action to get things rolling. He needs to maintain some good rapport with the driver and these fellas such that they heed to whatever he is saying (although they know their bread depends on their actions). But it is worth noting how their entire network operates. There seems to be a bus yard (or many of them) where a huge number of buses would be ready to run, just a phone call away. One phone call starts their day - poor chaps - no mercy you'd think.

Thinking again, that's how the entire world operates. A software engineer earning a million rupees would also be uttering precisely something of the sort: "Does this manager think I'm available for free when he asks me to work on a Saturday". Or replace the Saturday with 'overtime'. That's the task that makes managers the bas**rds that they are. Poor bas**rds.

And to answer the question: "Haan, tu uske baap ka naukar hai re.." (Literally translates to: "Yes, you are his father's servant").

The Trees They Grow High..

2006-09-12T00:59:00.000-07:00

A song by Pentangle that finally forced me to get out of my blogging slumber. The lyrics of this song (The Trees They Grow High) are beautiful, albeit the music is fundamentally awesome. It's a 60's style song, a melody country number..

-------- The Trees They Grow High --------
The trees they grow high,
the leaves they do grow green
Many is the time my true love I've seen
Many an hour I have watched him all alone
He's young, but he's daily growing

Father, dear father,
you've done me great wrong
You have married me to a boy who is too young
I'm twice twelve and he is but fourteen
He's young, but he's daily growing

Daughter, dear daughter,
I've done you no wrong
I have married you to a great lord's son
He'll be a man to you when I am dead and gone
He's young, but he's daily growing

Father, dear father, if you see fit
We'll send my love to college for another year yet
I'll tie blue ribbons all around his head
To let the ladies know that he's married
One day I was looking o'er my father's castle wall
I spied all the boys aplaying at the ball
My own true love was the flower of them all
He's young, but he's daily growing

At the age of fourteen, he was a married man
At the age of fifteen, the father of a son
At the age of sixteen, his grave it was green
And death had put an end to his growing

I'll make my love a shroud
With every stitch I put in it,
the tears they will pour down
With every stitch I put in it,
how the tears will flow
Cruel fate has put an end to his growing
-------- The Trees They Grow High --------

And yes, now that I've posted, there are a huge lot of things that I have to post. The gates have opened again.

Wit in action..

2006-07-18T01:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I have this addiction of reading fortune cookies for hours. And I do not even know if I have stated this before on the blog, so readers, if you have heard from me about fortune cookies before, do pardon me. Anyhow, yesterday I landed on some cookies that I would want to be on record. And as arrogant as this might sound, I really do not expect you to find them to be worthy of anything - these ones are purely for me to keep reading over and over and over again and keep smiling. If you do so too, cool enough!

Here goes:

--- snip ---
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
--- snip ---

--- snip ---
When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple of asterisked sentences:

It weighs less than 8 pounds.*
And costs less than $1,300.**

In tiny type were these "fuller explanations":

* Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out? Well, all this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you might not be able to figure this out for yourself.

** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if you really want to. Or less.
-- Forbes
--- snip ---

--- snip ---
No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of the author.
-- Chris Shaw
--- snip ---

--- snip ---
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #1
A guinea pig is not from Guinea but a rodent from South America.
A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle.
A giant panda bear is really a member of the racoon family.
A black panther is really a leopard that has a solid black coat rather then a spotted one.
Peanuts are not really nuts. The majority of nuts grow on trees while peanuts grow underground. They are classified as a legume -- part of the pea family.
A cucumber is not a vegetable but a fruit.
--- snip ---

--- snip ---
There's a thrill in store for all for we're about to toast
The corporation that we represent.
We're here to cheer each pioneer and also proudly boast,
Of that man of men our sterling president
The name of T.J. Watson means
A courage none can stem
And we feel honored to be here to toast the IBM.
-- Ever Onward, from the 1940 IBM Songbook
--- snip ---

--- snip ---
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM

If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your contribution of a pithy fortunes, clean or obscene? We cannot continue without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week. Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
--- snip ---

--- snip ---
An airplane pilot got engaged to two very pretty women at the same time. One was named Edith; the other named Kate. They met, discovered they had the same fiancee, and told him. "Get out of our lives you rascal. We'll teach you that you can't have your Kate and Edith too."
--- snip ---

--- snip ---
Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
-- Groucho Marx
--- snip ---

These made me stop looking for more :)

--- snip ---
* Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
* Stop searching forever. Happiness is unattainable.
--- snip ---

Zidane: I tried to use my head but-t..

2006-07-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

The name is Zidane, Zinedine Zidane.

DISCLAIMER: I too am a true admirer of Zidane's footballing skills. What he has done in the past 12 years for international football cannot be overshadowed by whatever happened in the 111th minute of the Italy vs France final match on 9th July 2006. Well, but neither does his stature permit his (re)action in the final against Italy. In fact, FIFA should soon be handing out an interesting 'penalty' to Zidane. Let's wait and watch till he enjoys the consolation - the 'golden ball' award. After all, if he couldn't bring home the World Cup for France, then..

Zinedine YZ (Yazid Zidane) indeed behaved like one. Don't worry if you did not understand what the previous statement meant, it's exclusively for those who understand Marathi well. While a lot has been and will be said about the (in)famous red card incident, this post just focusses on "what mattered" and "what did not matter" because of Zizou's head butt.

Horacio Elizondo, the match referee, would consider himself lucky. I mean, it's the second consecutive knockout match in this World Cup where he has handed out a red card (the previous one ended up in Wayne Rooney being sent out in the Quarter Finals against Portugal). It's the first time in FIFA World Cup history that someone has stood in as a referee in the opening match as well as the final match! Elizondo also awarded a horrendous penalty kick in the 7th minute of the final match, and the one who scored that penalty (our old Zizou), was told to leave the ground in the 111th minute. Well well, statisticians please note!

And as I promised, here is what matters and what doesn't (because of Zizou's head-butting):

5 things that matter:

Zidane wasn't even allowed to show his face at the 2006 World Cup presentation ceremony, despite being the French team's captain (Barthez wore the captain's arm band at the presentation)
Zidane rued what he did only seconds later - the momentary reaction to whatever was exchanged between him and Materazzi, followed with Zidane leaving the ground in tears
Zidane would surely feel frustrated everytime he recalls this incident, for the rest of his life, because he has no more role to play in international football
There would be immense pressure on Zidane (as well as the Italian Marco Materazzi) to disclose the exact words that were exchanged between the two
The same people who have hailed Zidane to super stardom will most certainly recall this incident everytime when they talk about Zidane

5 things that DO NOT matter:

Given the fact that only 9 minutes of play on the field was left, it made no difference whatsoever to the French team to have been playing with 10 men against Italy's 11
Zidane not being one of the penalty takers in the shoot out that ensued 9 minutes after him (Zidane) being sent off
Zidane wouldn't have to worry about being banned for any number of matches in the future, he is (supposedly) retiring anyways
Whatever sum of money he would have to pay as fine wouldn't make a wee bit of difference to the bank balance of someone like Zidane
Reading this post :-)

Argentina will wait till 2010 to lift the trophy. Are you wondering how Argentina came into the picture out of the blue? Of course, out of the (dark) blue!

Bush hid the facts

2006-06-23T02:37:00.000-07:00

One of my friend tells me "Hey check this out" on your Windows XP/2000/2003 PC.

a. Open Notepad
b. Type in "Bush hid the facts"
c. Save it
d. Reopen the saved file

You'll find the result to be an interesting one.

Well it was, it indeed was. The 'notepad' application showed me "楂汬映摥琠敨朠慯獴" instead of "Bush hid the facts". First thought: Controversy theory? In under a second, another thought: Bullshit.

Couldn't help but to resort to google. And the answer was good enough. The entire thing seems interesting to me, its yet another of those easter eggs I feel, but one site says its a "bug" in notepad. Related to ANSI/Unicode. Aw cmon, gimme a break.

Try "Bill fed the goats" or "zzzz zzz zzz zzzzz" or "this app can break" if you haven't checked out the link above. Another friend of mine pointed to this Misrocoft employee's blog site, saying that the data coming from a Misrocoft employee has more to it than external people commenting on it. Well, go ahead and read this if you're interested.

I'm back and I'll be back..

2006-06-13T05:42:00.000-07:00

so folk, apologies for not being active on this space for quite some time. i was on vacation from may 15 through june 05. had been on a trek to Mt. Everest Camp III as you might recall one of the previous posts. well, to say the least, it was an unbelievably fantastic trek, and you can read the details here (more are being posted).

so, i'm back in one piece, no problems faced, and i'll be back to post more on this space as usual. till then, take care and enjoy!

Bloggers beware: You're liable!

2006-05-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

Found this posted on the rediff.com website:

Bloggers beware: You're liable!

This very topic was one point of discussion between Manjit and I the other day. As much as I refused to believe him, this turns out to be true! Albeit the Indian government waking up and realising the potential impact of blogging would take quite some time (you might want to count in years), this is something that at least has a legal bearing. I seemed to be living in a different world altogether.

My readers should not feel too surprised if suddenly disappear and someone starts writing posts much like I do under some pseudonym that I will not reveal here. I do not want to control what I write, ever (hic - this could land me into trouble, so note that the statement before this parenthesis is just a joke).

Take care bloggers. Let's protect our blogosphere from unwanted policing..

seeking sponsors for my Mount Everest Camp III trek

2006-04-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

to all readers:

i'll be trekking to Mount Everest Camp III (North Face) in the May of this year (2 to 3 weeks from now). this trek is the highest possible trek per se in the world. let me make it clear, i am not attempting a summit bid, i would be going upto 3 quarters of the way up Mount Everest.

we'd be approaching Mount Everest from the North Face as mentioned above, which means the trek would be in the mystical land named Tibet. the highlight of the trek is that we would be attempting to reach an altitude of 6340 metres above sea level (21000 feet). having been to Mount Everest Base Camp (South Face) in November 2004 has helped increase the confidence level multi-fold.

given the current unrest in Nepal, we will have to travel to Tibet directly, which has added to our woes of planning and cost estimates. the total trek expense per head has reached to the tune of 150,000 Indian Rupees per person. the expenses include travelling to and fro, paying for the Tibetan Tourism Permit for entering the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), paying for services of the Sherpa staff we would be hiring (to carry our camping gear and cooking equipment for the expedition).

we have put in a lot of efforts for this trek, and we do not want to let this chance slip. if anyone reading this can help us get sponsorships from any institute or likewise, even if it is part of what we need, we would be obliged. luckily enough, we are not travelling with any group, we (a group of 3 friends) are going by ourselves, so we would ensure that our sponsors are well covered. i would be maintaining an individual blog where i offer to put up the advertisements of the sponsors, and we also plan to hold a press conference before embarking where we shall ensure that they get enough mileage.

any helping hand would be more than welcome!

rambling on reservation for education in premier institutes like IIT in India..

2006-04-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Merit. Everything to be based on merit. Easier said than done I'll say. I'd like to make a statement starting with an example.

I witnessed a very unexpected admission process to a course that's unique to the city Pune, named MCS (Masters in Computer Science). I'm speaking about the academic year 2000 - 2001. Doing this course from any college beyond certain premier colleges was not of any major importance, since all that mattered was placement in the software industry at the end of the course. Software companies did not bother to target colleges beyond the set of premier ones. Number of seats for that course (MCS) per college during that academic year: 40. Number of premier colleges offering MCS in Pune: 3. Total number of seats that the "cream" eyed: 40 * 3 = 120.

Reservations for backward categories, all put together: 50%. The number hit 50% (earlier used to be 48%) because 2% reservation was added for a quota named SBC (Specially Backward Classes). And that particular academic year, an interesting reservation was added. Reservation for girl students. Percentage: 50% of remaining seats after the reservations for backward classes was applied (25% overall). Which meant that male students belonging to OPEN category, had 10 seats available per premier institute, 30 in all. Total number of such male candidates: Well over 1000.

The government came up with this "reservation for girl students" for the engineering and related branch (that covered the B.E. degree and courses like B.Sc, BCS [Bachelors in Computer Science], MCS [Masters in Computer Science]). The reason the goverment gave at that time was that they wanted to encourage girl students to take up engineering courses since the observation was that hardly any girl students were taking up engineering courses (beyond Computer Science). There was such a huge protest against this, that the government was forced to drop this rule after 2 academic batches "suffering" due to it.

While the government had intentions that were good enough, the way they implemented them were certainly not correct. In this case, when we speak of reservations in premier institutes, a vast majority of us would be against reservation system. And some of those from this vast majority would belong to the backward caste as well. What distinguishes those who take any stand then? Their caste? Their thinking? Their ideals? You might end up choosing at least one of the above. But it is not that. It is how successful you are at "this instant" in time. If you are doing pretty well at this point in time, you have all the options to take either side. Ever wondered what happens to those who do not even come close to being asked this question? Who never got that opportunity?

I get extremely weird remarks from well-to-do people about beggars seen at signals. One such remark is "Why do these people beg? They should rather seek work somewhere and make a living". Do not take a potshot at the above statement. I have used it as a metaphor, let me make it very clear.

It makes absolute sense to have the reservation system in place. Being from the open category, I feel no hesitation in saying this. People see a decision being made and make statements for or against it. Look at what is the bigger problem. Its the population explosion that has lead to all this, and will lead to further issues over time in countries like India. You have billions of people to feed, to educate, you have infrastructure to educate only thousands, how the hell is the system going to survive in the first place? And those are ultimately in the race for getting educated, face the problems majorly owing to money. But the solution is not to give scholarships to those who are poor. Those here on this thread should do statistical analysis of who is poor. The majority of them happen to be backward castes. The backward castes have their rich brethren too, but limited. They can never be compared in ratio to the rich people from open category. Till the ratio comes to a somewhat comparable level, there better be reservation. You'll often find the politicians in India exploiting the time period at which such issues are raised. I won't consider that here though.

I have an extremist stand for countries like India. There is a genealogy project going on in some university on this Earth (most probably in Europe or US). All Indians should submit their blood samples to that project, and only those with the better* gene should be allowed to live. All others should be put to death (I personally dont mind if it includes myself given the fact that I am making this statement).

* better gene: a gene pattern that would have maximum positives. In other words, least negatives. That way, those contributing to gene pool degradation will be eliminated.

sms rape and evolution..

2006-04-10T05:03:00.000-07:00

wait. do not yet give up. this post has no illicit content whatsoever. or maybe it has. illicit is relative. everything is. anyhow, if you are reading this, focus, if at all you can, we are discussing a grave issue here.

do any of these sound familiar:
"to vote for your favourite breed of dog send an SMS 'my-fav-mutt-is-' followed by the breed of your dog to 7575 or let the dog bark after you dial in the number 1904 4242 2500 05."

"if you think bipasha basu should accept john abraham's 'package' deal of playing with his you-know-what while eating a roshogulla simultaneously, send an SMS 'mouthful' to 8888."

"whether india should give a chance of introducing more youngsters as 12th men in the remaining matches of the ODI series, send SMS 'young-dozenth' to 672455."

"those dimwits who dream of participating in who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire indian version, send SMS 'dreamer' to 646 if you are a retail subscriber, or send 'greedy' to 123 if you are a hcuth subscriber."

"model carol gracias was involved in a wardrobe malfunction fiasco at the lakme fashion week. to let us know whether someone else should also have been involved, SMS the name of the model to 457835."

"to let us know your opinion on whether any cricketing captain should be sued for using the azharuddin patented sentence 'the-boys-played-well', do send an SMS 'royalty' to 4444."

the reason i spiced up the above examples is that a person like me doesn't give a damn to any of the above as much as the non-spiced up counterparts of the above examples. but i'm still put through all the above through one medium or the other. most of which cannot be turned off, for the basic reason that you never know which new medium they will hit you by, and when. Television, Radio, Service Providers of variety of services, newspapers, the list goes on..

the future as i see it:
cell phone evolution will result into one cell phone having multiple typing pads. and to cope with them, human evolution would lead into humans having fingerlets spawning from fingers on the hand. legs would soon be vestigial organs. more the number of SMS-es you send, more fingerlets you will have. i guess hrithik roshan would be considered the Adam of such a gene pool. procreation via SMS-es would be the next in-thing.

solution: strike the problem at its root. chop off your fingers instantaneously. i just did.

UG and more bullshit..

2006-04-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

people go seeking gurus in life or somehow gurus happen to them. blind as these people are, the words and actions of the guru is what they follow. i tried my level best to refrain from passing judgement whatsoever here. but i couldn't stop myself from writing this.

if the belief system of these people is what they go by i.e. what drives them, what they follow and what happens to be their trust or faith, then they are too fragile. these very people are seen guru-hopping, based on how a certain guru can impress them. that's all they know. and that's what breeds this world of gurus. you never know whom to trust.

there is one such person who i happen to know of. not personally, but through a friend who had some video clips of this person. he never portrays himself as a guru, in fact is a much touted anti-guru fellow, doesn't wear robes nor does he have thousands attending his 'lectures'. his name is U G Krishnamurti, popularly known as UG. here is something more to read about him, and i suggest you read for yourself before evaluating my comments in this post about him. You can also browse this site for some more stuff about UG.

he does nothing publicly, all his beliefs are discussed about at either when some people go to his house or when he goes to someone's house. much the same way it happens with any other person on this earth. so what makes him so popular you'd ask? it is his dialogue delivery, which leaves people stumped. so whatever (bullshit) he would be giving, most of those who hear appear mesmerised. its but natural that such people who bear the capacity of getting 'mesmerised', will pay rapt attention when someone makes statements that will shake their belief system.

check out his audio or video tapes if you are interested in hearing how this anti-guru cusses well known gurus, thinkers like J Krishnamurthy (with whom he isn't related in any possible way). figure out for yourself? bullshit..

this article intentionally not posted..

2006-04-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

as i was writing this, i realised that this is just a series of thoughts and not something worth posting anywhere, especially on any blog. and the reason why i wrote this line is to remind myself that i must NOT accidentally post it.

the one and only thing i do at work is _____. well i prefer not to write it here because if you get to read this and happen to tell this to my manager, then i'll be doomed. and therefore you know what that word was.

one of my favourite pastimes is reading fortune cookies. and since linux has a game that keeps spewing out fortune cookies, i love linux. in most distros of linux, given the fact that you have installed games, you should get fortune cookies on typing "/usr/games/fortune". consider yourselves very unlucky if you don't find them on your system. i might be able to arrange them for you somehow, but do not depend on me. somehow lay your hands on them. worth all they are.

cookies for today:
-----------------------

"Wharbat darbid yarbou sarbay?"

"It's been a business doing pleasure with you."

"How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on."

"If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture."

"You must dine in our cafeteria. You can eat dirt cheap there!!!!"

the end of the internet is finally here..

2006-03-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

THIS is it. end of the internet, that is.

High Hopes

2006-03-25T04:16:00.000-08:00

Sorry my dear blog, I couldn't pay much attention to you in the past few days. Manjit reminded me that I was disregarding my blog by not posting at a good frequency. He has been instrumental in making me spawn this one in the first place!

Reasons I hate to give, and there weren't any. But I have spawned 2 more blogs, and that makes me happy.

The first of those two is in a joint venture with Atul, my school mate, to re-live the golden memories of my school days. We are trying to get as many friends as possible to contribute, and orkut has helped a lot in tracking down many of them. These public communities do help I must say!

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river

Forever and ever
--
Pink Floyd, High Hopes [The Division Bell, 1994]

As for the second new blog (third overall), I'll announce it once it is ready for publishing. It's under construction. All details about it, later. It's going to be one of my most valued possessions!

Giving back to the community..

2006-03-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

This train of thought has been running in my head for quite a few days now. Thought of keying it in. It is about giving back to the community what one takes from it.

Let me start with giving the abstract some concrete shape. I am speaking about information here. Factual information derived from measurement or research, to be specific. Being a software engineer, I tend to hunt for almost all factual information I need, on the Internet. Not that I believe that all one finds on the Internet is authentic, but to a large amount, it serves the purpose.

I can say this about most of the software engineers I see around me (not only in my company, but many I know in other companies too). To an extent including myself as well. We search for information, feel mighty pleased when we are able to track down what we are looking for, and swear if we are not able to get the desired information. Let us discuss on poor searching skills at some other time. Another post would be devoted to that cause.

Now the crux of the discussion. Till its limited to searching information, well and good. It's like availing of oxygen. Done obviously, without realising. How many of us are active on public news groups or mailing lists to read what others might be searching for? How many of us try and post answers or give useful leads for queries that we can solve? How many of us end up cracking a hard problem and bother to post their finding on some forum to keep the solution available for others? Ask the above questions to yourself.

Factual information could consist of technical information, travel routes, workarounds for blockers, photographs/images, the list goes on.. All that you need to search at any point in time classifies under factual information.

Let's play our part in keeping the infosystem (information ecosystem) alive. Enough relying on others. And stop cribbing about why information about things in India is not so well represented on the web. You have a role to play in the failure too.

naram garam gana..

2006-03-16T04:49:00.000-08:00

Once Makhaya Ntini (the South African medium pace bowler) and I were going for dinner in the beautiful city of Johannesburg in South Africa.

People obviously recognized Ntini, and were curious about who I was. Someone asked me "Who are you and where are you two going?"

I replied in one sentence. "i & ntini kida khane". Part 2 of the question obviously got answered. Part 1 - Thoughts jumbled?

The title of this post might probably be helpful if you are still going "huh?". Hehe.

Suprafantabulously megamagical..

2006-03-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

It will take ages for such a match to happen again. We might not even witness one. On second thoughts, that's not the point at all.

What ODI cricket has seen today, was bowlers from both sides - Australia and South Africa - literally get raped. Australia amasses 434/4, surpassing the previous highest set by Sri Lanka (398). Sri Lanka had scored that against a measly Kenyan side.

Statisticians would be all scratching their heads and maybe they ought to work on probabilities of when would there be a match again where 87 boundaries and 26 sixes would be hit in a single match. And filling the newspapers and websites with umpteen broken records.

And when 872 runs are scored on a single day.. technically speaking, it does not matter who wins. But South Africa made that statement also look meaningless!! Someone beats you to what can be called as death, although not in the literal sense. Then you are given a chance to try your level best. And you, fight with such vigour that you kill the opponent! I've seen that happening in movies. Never in real life.

South Africa beat Australia by 1 wicket, 1 ball to spare, in the final of an all-important series. And this is called a comprehensive victory in my terminology - they did not let Australia run away with the record of maximum runs scored in an innings. The highest run scorer from Australia (Ponting, 164) was outplayed by a South African (Gibbs, 175). The worst bowler from South Africa ended up being better than the worst Australian. Lets see till when the highest ODI total record is broken next. And I do not want to end up being one of the statisticians anymore :)

Wat-a-match! The highlights of the match would be taking almost as much time as the entire match. So going through the repeat telecast is worth it. As many times as you want. Those who were lucky enough to watch it live, feel great to have lived in this era..

The winning team (South Africa) who carved out the impossible:

symbolic logic

2006-03-08T01:58:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER:
This post is intended for the exclusive use by the person(s) mentioned as recipient(s). This post (its contents) contain confidential information and/or may contain information protected by intellectual property rights or others rights. This post does not constitute any commitment from Symnatek Corporation, Inc. or its subsidiaries except when expressly agreed in a written agreement between the intended recipient and Symantek Corporation, Inc. or its subsidiaries. If you read this post by mistake, please forget what you have read and notify the writer about the fact that you have forgotten what you had read. Destroy all nerves that lead to the cell in your brain that had stored data in this post. You may not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print or copy this post or any part of it if you are not the intended recipient. By the way, you are not the intended recipient anyways.

If you are reading this paragraph, welcome. I had too much of new policies, new handbooks, new services, new decisions, new leaders and yellow colour coming my way since over a year now. This has resulted in development of some symbolic logic. Here is what symbolic logic means:

symbolic logic, n:
Any logical system that abstracts the form of statements away from their content in order to establish abstract criteria of consistency and validity.

Nike's symbolic logic definitions:

SYMCemetery: place where software engineers get buried (especially looking at the ticker)
SYMchronous object: anything yellow in colour
SYMple: apparently easy things to finish at symantek
SYMpathy: yet another healing technique
SYMpathetic: pathetic (or unbearable) things at symantek e.g. policies
SYMphony: a cheater at symantek
SYMptom: sign of a symantek employee's visibility [will to stay at symantek] dipping
SYMran: any girl working for symantek who had to run on the railway station to catch a train (does DDLJ remind you of something?)
SYMbol: a yellow ball
SYMbiosis: guidelines at symantek about teamwork
SYMpathetic SYMonds: a person feeling pathetic about working on a Monday for a company named symantek

you are most welcome to suggest more SYMple definitions..

The Buddha

2006-03-02T22:29:00.000-08:00

The Buddha taught that life was dissatisfactory because of craving. Note that I've used the term "The Buddha" here. The historical Buddha is one member of the spiritual lineage of Buddhas, which is thought to extend beyond history into the past and into the indefinite future.

Gautama Buddha was a spiritual teacher, born in what is now known as Nepal. A lot of Buddhism came my way because of my escapades with nature. The term Buddha is derived from the verbal root "budh", meaning "to awaken" or "to be enlightened", and "to comprehend".

Wikipedia defines Buddha as follows:
"A Buddha is a human being who has, through his or her own efforts and wisdom, awoken to the Truth (Dharma) behind appearance, having abandoned and overcome greed, hatred and delusion; attained liberation (moksa) from all suffering (a state of bliss and inner peace called Nibbana), and who possesses far reaching wisdom into the nature of sentient existence. In the sense of ‘one who knows’, the word Buddha is closely related to the word buddhi, a faculty of mind that may be translated as ‘intuitive discernment’. It is through the operation of this faculty that one is able to awaken and recover one’s own innate Buddhahood."

Siddhartha Gautama was not the first or the last Buddha.

mood: poetry

2006-02-28T23:08:00.000-08:00

writing for the heck of it is what you might find below. but well, if one insists on writing in some specific format as opposed to conventional prose, then weird ideas start flowing. an example is the poem below. even i don't know where it stemmed from, but why analyse?

there was a noun
it used to frown
if you asked it why
it used to cry

with time it got archaic
no one looked at it
and so it played a trick
used a li'l amount of wit

it changed itself to slang
became an instant hit
if you dont guess - dang :(
else proudly say i did it !!

Lost In Time..

2006-02-23T06:23:00.000-08:00

so strange how fast time can fly
after that intimacy
we can't even look each other in the eye..

now you stand here at the altar
as i wonder
do you think it's going to falter..

the tree by the river is still so young
can't even reach
you're so far flung..

who'll tell you i'm still so numb
as you ponder over
standing by my tomb..

now as I lie peaceful at last
i wonder how
time has sailed so fast...

Inzamam by name, aloo by shape..

2006-02-20T10:47:00.000-08:00

Most cricketers who are not comfortable in conversing in English go prepared for some standard questions that are asked from them when commentators chat with them during the awards ceremony.

Inzamam was once asked a different question after Pakistan won the match for which he was not prepared. He always had a standard response to the first question but this time..

Tony Greig: "So Inzy, that's fantastic, your wife is pregnant for the second time!"

Inzamam: "As-salam walequm. Bismillah ur-Rehman nir-Rahim. All credit goes to the boys everyone worked hard for it especially Afridi it was tight situation when he went in without his strokes it not have been possible.He was pulling the good balls also Bob Woolmer keeping close watch on progress and giving instructions.It's all team effort which pulled us out of big hole. Inshallah, we all will work together as team put in big effort and deliver good result all the time."

I found this on the Internet, and I was immediately about to carve out my interview with Inzy. Surely someone would have done this before, I thought. Goes without saying I was right there. Check this out. Nothing gross there, gets slapstick at times, but a worthwhile read..

The long pursuit..

2006-02-20T08:09:00.000-08:00

2005, the year I will remember mainly as the long hair year. Dshud said I should be growing long hair and both of us went into this not-to-have-a-haircut mode. Fair enough for her, I thought, as a girl she must have been used to it - maintaining long hair, that is. I signed up nevertheless.

All guys who have sported long hair will concur with me here. There are 2 phases, which if a guy can survive, then there is no stopping from sporting long hair. But those 2 phases are very crucial. The first phase is when the hair grow to a stage when they are more than overgrown, but not fit to be called as 'long hair'. A time when a truckload of unsolicited advice comes your way. 'I do not think long hair will suit you', 'Do you really think you want to do this?', 'Sheesh, go have a hair cut' and the likes will haunt you.

A few days later, you need to trim your hair which are now haphazard in shape. Once they are levelled, they would look better once the length of the hair is worth being called 'long'. But before one reaches this milestone, there is another overgrown-but-not-really-long stage. Another round of unsolicited advice. And those who fall weak here, generally never pursue this further. But those who wade their way past this stage, and go on to the stage where they feel satisfied with the length of hair, the high is awesome.

I did grow my hair long, and for some strange reasons, having a digital camera at hand, I never took pictures of how I looked then. I managed to pick out a few photos taken by my ever-so-good friends a couple of months before I finally had a.. yes, haircut.

About to sleep at Rajgad. I manage to carve out a smile for an enthusiastic Tejas Mulay.

Having breakfast on the Rajgad trek. The hair aren't tamed at all, as can be seen obviously. Gives prominence to the hair.

Peacefully enjoying at the nedha at Rajgad. Few forts in Sahyadri have this nedha, about which I'll write sometime later.

Not fully awake as yet.. Nothing like trekking in the rainy season, especially in the Sahyadri mountain range. Lush greenery, and I can go on..

Hookah @ Shisha Cafe.. A different angle, something that suits the look, eh?

26

2006-02-16T19:23:00.000-08:00

Coincidentally, it's post number 26 on this blog. And I turned 26 too, sharing my birthday with Galileo Galilei. The grand Aquarian date being February 15. Well, Chandrika loves to pick up choiciest of words to wish on birthdays, and this time there was no particular change in her style. Goes she: "So how does it feel to be on the other side of the quarter?". Nicely put. Laterally speaking, it feels good to be on the other side of the quarter. Literally speaking, well..

Batch mates are getting married, a considerable number of juniors have tied the knot too. Discussions on this topic are gaining major priority in the friend circle. With parents, the casual push is always there, but they know me. Not part of my active thought process at all.

It was Shruti Kothari's birthday on Feb 16, and we're just a day apart. Same year coincidentally. It was nice of Kaveeta and Shruti to come to Kiva yesterday, especially on her (Shruti's) birthday. We had to wait for quite some time till Coming Back to Life was played by the DJ who did not want to interrupt the tempo. Well, Shruti had to wait for a while, since that psychedelic number (our favourite) is one of the last few to be played, signalling the end of the day.

Despite her workload, Meenal managed to carve out some time and made it to Kiva as well. I felt very sad since I could not spend time with her as Shruti chose another table, and being her birthday, I spent quite some time with her. I do owe an apology to Manjit, Nikhil, Gautam, Vaibhavi, Darshana, Khushboo and Kaivalya for being away from them for quite some time on the day where I played host. Coincidences happen, and they continue to..

Footprints in the code base of NetBackup..

2006-02-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

Lives of great programmers all remind us
We can make our code sublime
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints in the (source) code bases of softwares..

Yes, that should have reminded you of 'A Psalm of Life' by H.W.Longfellow. I'm A.P.Shortfellow here. Longfellow used to write, maybe for a living as well. I (aka Shortfellow) too write for a living, but my scope is restricted. I write English in a syntactical format, and what I write, along with what several hundred people like me write, is fed to some tool, which churns out what the world calls software.

After working for more than 4 years in the software industry, I find myself in the position of a software developer (politically correct term: Software Engineer). Recently I decided to move out of a team. The current team I work for, is part of a world class product named NetBackup.

Today happens to be a milestone in my working career. It's the first time that I have checked in code in the NetBackup source code base. Leaving one's own footprint in the source code base of such world class products makes one feel good.

And so long as I like my work, nothing beats it. Every other activity is fuelled by achievements at work, and assures that life's not a drag. So Feb 13th also becomes an important date now. Feb 14th is celebrated by most of the world. Feb 15th - Galileo and I.

Good times.

Given up alcohol consumption effective 3rd Feb 2006

2006-02-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

Karnatak High School Reunion: The Se7en Pals

2006-02-08T00:57:00.000-08:00

February 07, 2006. By around 2045 IST, seven people meet. A decade ago, in 1995, these folk had completed their schooling from an institute by the name Karnatak High School (KHS). Another decade ago, around 1985, some of them had begun their education from here. Some joined later. Nevertheless, today was the day when these chaps (yours truly included) decided to meet and get nostalgic.

Atul Nulkar, who presently resides in Colorado, is back home after 3 long years. Among other plans, he has a wish to catch up with school folk, an idea that he triggers off well before he leaves US for Pune. Not many respond. Naturally, not many were expected. After calling up those who could possibly make it, the quorum of 7 includes:

1. Atul Nulkar (from Pune, presently in Colorado)
2. Ashish Joshi (Pune)
3. Shantanu Gogate (Pune)*
4. Aaswad Kulkarni (Pune)
5. Sarika Joshi (Pune)
6. Adarsh Padmanabhan (Pune)
7. Aniket Anikhindi (Pune)

* used to attend Morning Shift in KHS, all others Afternoon Shift.

Gitanjali was about to attend but was unwell :( and Madhura was suddenly uncontactable for 2 odd days. Pritam Paithankar had deadline problems, Mithun Wali had to work through the night. Rahul Deshpande had, as usual, some singing to do (He's a big shot in Pune by now). That's about those who could probably have made it, but missed it anyways.

Folk in the image below (LtoR):
Atul Nulkar, Ashish Joshi, Shantanu Gogate

The initial meeting place was Hotel Vaishali. Sarika had postponed the meeting time from 2000 hrs to 2030 hrs. We decided to have dinner at Hotel Surya, a pretty close by place. And we walked down to realise that Hotel Surya was demolished and a new building had been erected there. After Sarika arrived, people made a fuss about where to go next (these things never stop I guess). We ultimately managed to finalise on Bamboo House.

People were not really interested in food or anything else, getting nostalgic was the idea and so it happened. With the irritating waiter around, we had to ensure that we would give the hotel enough business for occupying a table during prime time. Kingfisher Strong for some, soup for some. And recollecting the (g)old events, idiosyncrasies of teachers as well as pals, h(z)eroic deeds etcetera were recalled.

Some prominent memories:

* Chinmay Pawaskar was remembered for reading batlaakar (Hindi for telling) as balaatkar (Hindi for rape) thrice in a row in a Hindi class.

* In a Marathi class, the teacher wanted students to tell words ending with khor. Ashish Joshi was ready with darodekhor (Marathi for dacoits) but before he could say it, someone else mentioned that. And when he had to say his word, he promptly said haramkhor (Marathi for rascal). The teacher got furious, but then Ashish was happy that his turn was over.

* Confession books (slam books) were confiscated for reasons still unknown to us. There used to be a "dated till..." value to be filled by everyone who filled confession books. Rohan Pandhare had, in his style, written "dated till Datta Madam stops scolding". And Datta Madam read out the very same thing in class, leaving us all in splits.

* Most of the guys recollected that Tejaswini Patwardhan was popular as a Madhuri Dixit look alike.

* Ravindra Kulkarni was remembered for his powerful cricketing shots and bowling, Prasenjit Pathak for his typical ways.

* Rajendra Joshi, the Physical Training (PT) as well as Marathi teacher, was recollected for his erratic ways. He had once thrown a duster at me, I ducked and Kranti was hit on her forehead. Arvind Paranjape, the Drawing teacher was recollected too since he used to beat up kids who did not do their homework. Gauri Chavan ma'am was remembered mainly because she was such a babe.

* My typicality of blinking eyes was recollected, and Chandrika Kulkarni madam thought that I was having convulsions when I blinked eyes in the way I used to. She advised that I should go home, and I promptly did (taking advantage of the situation :) ). And this was in class 3 :-D

The reunion also had an intro session - everybody just gave a brief up on the previous decade - basically after completing school.

Folks in the image above (LtoR):
Atul Nulkar, Ashish Joshi, Shantanu Gogate, Aaswad Kulkarni, Sarika Joshi, Adarsh Padmanabhan.

Sarika started getting fussy about a cat who was moving around the table. She supposedly hates cats, quote unquote "I can live with a cat around as long as she sits in peace and lets me live in peace". What on earth was that roaming cat going to do to someone like Sarika? The cat would have to be utterly crazy. In the process, Sarika managed to irritate most of us, leaving her chair many times, mentioning it googol times that she can't stand a cat. She was lucky to be amongst a set of tolerant people ;-)

We decided to have paan at Portico on JM Road. Adarsh did not spare a single chance of clicking photographs, and it made sense too, after all, having a digital camera with capacity enough to click hundreds of photographs, if one doesn't, then it's a waste of a camera. I can't possibly put in all 30-odd images here..

Pals since Junior KG (LtoR): Aniket Anikhindi, Ashish Joshi

Da boys..(LtoR): Atul Nulkar, Ashish Joshi, Shantanu Gogate,
Adarsh Padmanabhan, Aaswad Kulkarni, Aniket Anikhindi.

Memories, memories and more memories.. Let's hope we have more crowd for the next reunion.

Google knows me! Get your blog in Google's radar

2006-01-31T03:35:00.000-08:00

These days you cannot not know Google.

---------------------------------- snip ----------------------------------
About Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG)

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
---------------------------------- snip ----------------------------------

And this place where I ramble along, my blog, now comes under Google's radar!

Google for "aniket anikhindi" and you'll find the URL of this blog on the first page of results. This way, one can ensure that on searching for some specific words (called keywords) like a name for example, would result in Google managing to hit your blog.

How to achieve this:

o Edit your blog's template
o Search for the html tag "$BlogPageTitle$"
o Just below this tag, paste the four lines below:

META NAME="Description" CONTENT="brief description of your blog"
META NAME="Title" CONTENT="title of your blog"
meta name="robots" content="index,follow"
META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="comma, separated, keywords"

o In the four lines above, the italicised text is supposed to be replaced by what is indicated by the text.
o Line number 3 above should be copied verbatim (note that there is no italicised text there).
o Enclose each of the 4 lines above in angular parentheses (they are supposed to be html tags when you put them in the blog template).
o Once you edit your template and add these lines as mentioned above, and save it, it will take a maximum of 3 weeks for Google to be able to list your blog on searching for desired keywords.

Other popular search engines like Yahoo! would also be able to search for your blog after you add the above html code in your template. But these days the term 'search engine' has been deprecated. The shorter and compact name is 'google'.

If you know what "All Hands" meetings mean

2006-01-24T07:50:00.000-08:00

Well, they call them "All Hands" meetings. Whose hands? Why all when the maximum can be 2? Well, when you work in a firm where hands happen to be the only external part of body being used, the above term starts making some sense. Let me shape it.

One fine day some management guru took a potion and decided to coin a term for a meeting he would have with all people directly reporting to him, and their direct reports, and theirs.. till the leaf of the tree was reached. Such a meeting would be called an "All Hands" meeting. To my horror, all those above me (poor leaf node) in the management chain drank that potion, ultimately resulting in me having to attend a lot of those meetings. An empty mind is a writer's trash can. I composed a song once. It requested me yesterday to attain immortality. That's how it found it's way here... (Sing aloud)

Title: Can I go $^@# myself??
Result of extreme boredom at one particular "All Hands" Meeting

It was yet another one of those
I had no option so I chose
To be there and get hit
By some sophisticated bullshit

CHORUS:
Someone get me outta here [real fast]
I dont certainly belong here
Dont you feel like asking yourself..
Can I please go $^@# myself??

I was just looking around
Found all fools on the same ground
Some dozing some worth slapping
In their seats nodding to the yapping

[CHORUS] * 1

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh
Dont you really feel like a fool?
You would rather be at home and drool
Yes, they were all there, right up to the CEO
All thinking it was something real "YO"

[CHORUS] * 2

Can I please go $^@# myself??
fade away...

The lyrics are ready, I'm planning to compose the music myself too. Anyone ready to lend their voice?

Tag, I'm it

2006-01-20T12:19:00.000-08:00

Tag, I'm it...

First there were chain letters. Then there were chain emails. And now, this. In the name of being a good sport:

Four Jobs I've Had
1. Being Agony Uncle
2. Being a Professor
3. Irritating mom
4. Installing VRTSob

Four Movies To Watch Repeatedly
1. Fight Club
2. Terminator II: Judgement Day
3. Memento
4. Into Thin Air

Four Cities of Residence
1. Pune, India
2. Kano, Nigeria
3. Manali, India
4. Mumbai, India

Four Favorite TV Shows
1. SouthPark
2. The Great Indian Comedy Show
3. Late Night - Conan O' Brien
4. The Great Indian Laughter Challenge

Four Vacation Destinations
1. Everest Region, Nepal
2. Himachal Pradesh, North India
3. Goa
4. Sahyadris, Maharashtra

Four Web Sites I Visit Daily
1. Gmail
2. Manjit's blog
3. Nikhil's blog
4. orkut

Four Favorite Foods
1. Chicken Biryani @ Blue Nile
2. Pithla Bhakri @ Sinhagad
3. Steak Burger @ Burger King
4. Aloo Paratha @ Home

Four Places I'd Rather Be Right Now
1. Dhak chi Bahiri Rock Face
2. KonkanKada, Harishchandragad
3. Baga Beach, Goa
4. Everest Base Camp

Four Bloggers who have to answer this else a Yamaha will be called an Ahamay. Or weird looking insects will be devoured by everyone in the next year.
1. Nikhil
2. Atul Gore
3. Atul Nulkar
4. Manjit

Hehe, one is already covered ;) Secured a link of my chain already.

Coincidence.. repitition.. mystery - fun and embarassment

2006-01-20T07:33:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER: This has happened in real life, and resemblance to any character, living or dead, is not at all happenstance. Story is completely real, even though it might seem surreal to some of you. I am not responsible for that. Some names have been changed to honour privacy, that's about it. And now let me continue :)

My name is not changed. In first person singular, its "I" :) In third person it's "Aniket".

THE GENESIS OF CONFUSIONS. (Sunday) My home:
Situation: Monsoons, Sunday afternoon, 1500 hours. I am sleeping. Cell phone rings. I wake up, caller's number looks familiar though recalling right away results in a failure. Green button in action, receiver next to my ear.

I: Hello?
Mr. Kumar: Aniket, this is Mr. Kumar, Dilip's dad.
(Dilip is my pal, so I need to be alert while answering)
I: Yes tell me.
Mr. Kumar: Aniket, actually Dilip was supposed to send you regular updates via email. What did he say in the email you received? You had told me that Dilip had mailed you. It's been a while since I have heard from him.
I: Well.. err.. Mr. Kumar, you see, what I will do is get in touch with you tomorrow. It so happens that I did not check my email in 2 days.
Mr. Kumar: Okay Aniket, call me back and let me know.
I: Sure. Hangs up.

I am totally clueless about what is happening. Reason being I hadn't talked to Dilip for weeks now. Neither with his dad. So which email are we talking about? I thought like sleeping again, but when a friend's dad calls you, the least you should do is gather correct information and reply back. I start punching in numbers furiously, those who I and Dilip know in common, are called up. The first thing I ask is about Dilip's whereabouts and if he is in good shape. None of the common friends happens to know about any ill happenings per se. So far so good.

ONE DAY LATER (Monday). My office:
Emails shot off to more people whom I know in common with Dilip. Numerous offline messages sent to Dilip on Yahoo! messenger. By evening, I am waiting in desperation for Dilip's response. Progress so far: One friend tells me he is currently in the United States. And I get frustrated. Dilip's parents expect a feedback from me, and Dilip hasn't even told me where to look for. End of Monday, no response from Dilip. I call up Mr. Kumar twice, can't get through. I don't try further.

SIX DAYS LATER (Saturday) My home:
By now, Dilip has responded to my offline messages, conveying me that he is the United States, coated with an apology. Dilip doesn't know of my telecon with his dad as yet. Saturday evening - raining heavily. Cell phone rings, Mr. Kumar calling. The number is not stored yet, but the digits were etched in my memory.

I: Hello?
Mr. Kumar: Aniket.. this is Mr. Kumar. So..
(I cut him short)
I: Yes Mr. Kumar, I actually had a word with Dilip. He is..
(Mr. Kumar cuts me short)
Mr. Kumar: Yes, how is he?
I: He is doing fine. He said he will keep sending regular updates.
Mr. Kumar: Yes yes, you had told me. So did you get the batteries? More importantly, last time you'd said that the other one would be cost effective. Can you get the one you think is better? Please try and get them tomorrow. I'll be waiting. Hangs up.

I could not make head or tail of what Mr. Kumar said. I wanted to say "huh?" but then I couldn't. After all, I could be at fault here. Simply because I did not ask Dilip what all I was supposed to do in his absence. Please note, the previous sentence was in full sarcasm. You can expect Dilip to forget the most important of things and shrug it off saying "Oops". Hall of shame.

ONE DAY LATER (Sunday) My home:
It's pouring heavily. 1030 am, I clearly recall. Sitting in my balcony, I was lazing. Cell phone rings. Yes, you guessed it right.

I: Yes Mr. Kumar?
Mr. Kumar: When are you coming over Aniket?
I: Err.. well.. how about noon? Or maybe in an hour's time if it is urgent?
Mr. Kumar: Ya. I'll be waiting.
I: Okay. Hangs up.
I carelessly forgot. Time is 1600. As you would have guessed, the cell phone rings.

I: I am..
(cut short)
Mr. Kumar: Aniket, it is raining heavily right now. It is okay if you cannot make it now. Maybe next Sunday. And thanks for the information you gave about Dilip from his email as well as resolving the cost issue of the batteries. Get the one that costs lesser as we discussed.
I: Well, okay!
Mr. Kumar: Ya. Hangs up.

Goes without saying that I am extremely perplexed at what's happening. I am being told that I gave some information. I was also finding it a bit weird that I discussed something about the lesser cost. The cost issue was indeed brought up in the previous conversation, but then there was no conclusion. Everything seems to be in place except me finally giving those batteries. I did not give it a thought, simply went ahead and got 4 AA Duracell batteries. Next time he'd call me, I would immediately go to Dilip's place and hand them over.

TWO DAYS LATER (Tuesday) My office:
Cell phone rings (Can we abbreviate this to CPR? Next time onwards).

I: Yes Mr. Kumar!
Mr. Kumar: Hey Aniket, thanks for the batteries. It's good that you got them right away. Thanks!
I: Wha...
(cut short)
Mr. Kumar: Hangs up.

Good adjectives to describe my state at this point: Bewildered, flummoxed, awestruck.

FEW DAYS LATER. I continue to be in the same state mentioned above. No transition. I chat with Dilip on Yahoo!. As I state the facts, he goes into splits and uses up all emoticons Yahoo! has to offer to express extreme amusement. Plot thickens for me, his amusement makes me think laterally - was this all a cooked up plan between dad and son to fool a friend or something? Seems difficult given the level of familiarity I had with his dad. Dilip reveals it finally. A thing that was very basic. Which I had forgotten, but owing to it the fun part extended over a period of time. And the coincidences made it further funny for all of us. Except for Mr. Kumar, who was seemingly a bit embarassed about the whole thing. Reasons:

o There was another Aniket in the picture (Aniket Aryamane)
o Cell phone name sorting technology. Dilip, before embarking to the US, had added my number to his dad's contact list. In alphabetical order, I started preceding Aniket Aryamane since I was listed as "Aniket (EBC)" - note the parentheses.
o The tasks to be done and Dilip's whereabouts were being asked to me
o Aniket Aryamane was doing all the tasks expected by Mr. Kumar, and sending over the info, on a daily basis
o I was getting updates (the why's how's and thanks too) on my cell

And it all finally ended. I bashed up Dilip (using words of course). He continued to laugh eternally. Our friends did too.

My state transition diagram:
Cool (before things happened) -> Tense (Dilip's whereabouts not known) -> Anxious (what to get, when to do tasks, which ones to start with!) -> Bewildered (me not doing anything and receiving thanks from time to time) -> Normalcy Restored (after Aniket Aryamane's facts were brought to light).

Further interesting facts:
o I am yet to meet Aniket Aryamane in person, the one who was responsible for my bewildered state
o I am yet to speak with Mr. Kumar after all that happened (both of us are equally embarassed about how we reacted to things)
o LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST: I still have the 4 AA batteries for Dilip :D

When are you collecting them from me Dilip?

Everest footages

2006-01-19T02:30:00.000-08:00

Some URLs tend to get lost.. Such posts help in reviving them.

Footage clips at 5 important places on Southridge Route - Khumbu IceFall (19,000 ft), Camp II (21,300 ft), Lhotse Face (24,500 ft), Camp IV (26,000 ft), Everest Summit (29,035 ft)
Surving Everest - 50th Anniversary Everest Expedition

Footages on the SouthCol route, with animated route tracking of Lukla - EBC, EBC - Camp1, Camp1 - Camp2, Camp2 - Camp3, Camp3 - Camp4, Camp4 - Summit.
Interactive climb of Everest - Discovery Channel

More to follow as and when I get them...

India at war: Who goes in 1 down..

2006-01-16T05:15:00.000-08:00

By the time India reaches 350, with Sehwag having hit the second fastest double ton and Dravid having opened the openings and complementing him with a watchful ton, the temperature in the Indian dressing room suddenly swells up. Reason: Many cricket players notice their kits are missing. A discussion ensues. Laxman, Sachin, Pathan are already padded up. Ganguly gets surprised, looks at Pathan. Curtains raise.

ganguly : sachin, what's the matter?
tendulkar : matter? nothing dada.. why are you not watching the match?
ganguly : i saw agarkar carrying 2 kits in a very funny way.
laxman : sachin, you were saying something about front foot defence?
tendulkar : arre, i said "front foot offence" done by dada..

kumble walks in with harbhajan. kumble tosses a coin, calls head, harbhajan appears pleased when the result is a tail.

harbhajan : hehe, i won. can i go now?
kumble : i don't think so. you need to wait this time too.
harbhajan : this is cheating.
kumble : i've bowled 5.3 overs more than you, and have taken 2 wickets as compared to your 0.

ganguly : harbhajan, tell me what's going on here.
harbhajan : dada.. i cannot lie to you. please ask kumble. (harbhajan walks out).
ganguly : what's up anil?
kumble : we were deciding who goes in next because both captain and vice captain are not here.

tendulkar : aaila, laxman, look who's talking.
kumble : sachin, you've scored your 35th already. it's time i went 1 down. bhajji just agreed.
laxman : don't you all see the score card? rahul clearly told i was to go in 1 down.
sachin : aaila plane.. (all of them look skywards, sachin swaps his name with laxman on the electronic scoreboard)
laxman : (looks at scoreboard, appears awed) sachin this is cheating. i'll wait till you come to hyderabad (walks out).

pathan : dada.. do you think your new stance is going to help you? why don't you watch me score a ton first and then play?
ganguly : if the code of conduct was not in place, i would have hit you with my bengali bat.
pathan : you have a bat too? i thought you were taken in to complement inzamam's running.
ganguly : sachin, do you think this is the right treatment i deserve?
tendulkar : aaila, in 32 overs pathan bowled only 2 no balls. you bowled 3 in 6 overs saurav.
ganguly : (eats roshogulla) umm.. (walks out).

tendulkar : (winks at pathan. they exchange a hi5). your 2 down position is fixed irfan.
pathan : thanks sachin bhai (walks out).
tendulkar : (rearranges centre guard, bends a bit and gets up). aaila, time to call dravid back.

meanwhile, agarkar has sold the kits of dhoni and yuvraj to inzamam and salman butt respectively.

kumble : sachin, dravid is from karnataka and i dont think he would favour a mumbai player against me.
tendulkar : it takes visa power anil. if i don't back dravid, kiran more and greg chappell will send a long email.
kumble : but you gave away 18 runs in just 2 overs.
tendulkar : main kaun hoon? main kahan hoon? [who am i? where am i?]
kumble : yes, till you recover, i will pad up and go out to bat.
tendulkar : do you want me to vote against you during the selection session?
kumble : sachin, you are a batsman, not a selector. let us ask chappell.
tendulkar : aaila, so you think seniority comes with no pros?

75 overs of the Indian Innings have been bowled, Sehwag mercilessly reaches 247. India reaches a staggering 403/0. Light is offered to Dravid and Sehwag.

dravid : time for snacks viru.
sehwag : captain, don't you want to see me make a 300 today itself?
dravid : (speaks in english, and too fast at that. viru can't understand)
sehwag : ma ne kaha hai 300 banana (mom has told to score 300)
dravid : no i dont want bananas. chalo [let's go] (sehwag follows).

As the excitement grows, India have already made 456/0. Kamran Akmal (the wicket keeper) comes to bowl, with Pakistan choosing to not have a wicket keeper. Akmal strikes on the first ball. Dravid dances down the wicket, slips down, hurts himself. Akmal runs fast, fetches the ball, and gets the bails off. Umpire rules Dravid out, choosing to decide the mode of dismissal later.

Now the excitement in the Indian dressing room has reached its limit. Sachin Tendulkar is padded up, and is ready to step out. He is walking down the steps in the pavilion. Another padded up person is walking just behind him. Sachin does not sense him. Just as Sachin is about to enter the ground, the tall person says "aaila plane". Sachin looks skywards. People think that's because of his usual habit of getting used to the light. The person who was padded up takes advantage of the fact, enters the ground before Sachin. And that person has donned the Indian outfit, so Sachin is forced to retreat, by rule.

Fierce as ever, he takes a wild stance in the dressing room and yells out for Chappell. The rest of the team comes out of nowhere and they start laughing. Sachin, perplexed, looks at the score board. Greg has gone in 1 down!! The rest of the team shouts in unison "aaila, plane". Curtains.

Chicken first or egg first?

2006-01-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

Yeah right.

In the dictionary, chicken first. For breakfast, egg first. And more importantly, in the question above, chicken first! In a race, eggs cannot move by themselves, and if they at all can, then more often than not the it'll be chicken first.

Chicken first or egg first? How do I read that question? Fine, let me be illogical enough and understand that question - after all, I am supposed to be smart enough to read your context, correct?

Let's solve this one by the elimination technique. And let's try and apply only science, no 'creationist' theories like "God made chicken first".

By evolution theory, a chicken (or any species for that matter) would have resulted as a matter of mutation (genetics), which would have taken place over a large period of time. Therefore, the question cannot be solved by evolution theory since the principle of speciation says that evolution does not occur in units, but is a slow transition. Therefore neither the chicken came first nor the egg. Evolution theory failed to answer this. Let's proceed on.

This should make us go back and look at the problem once again. Chicken first or egg first. Hmm.. A chicken egg right? Which means question to be framed is "Chicken first or chicken egg first?". To lay a chicken egg, a chicken should exist. And for a chicken to exist, a chicken egg should exist. Recursions, if not handled carefully, result in corrupting systems. Computers as well as human.

One valid logical solution to this problem is that chickens do not exist. Case rested.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

2006-01-13T08:34:00.000-08:00

Today is the correct day and date to post this. That should tell you what the subject line means. If not, go here.

After joining my new team (changing teams in the same workplace), it's taken me close to 2 months to send out an email to the whole team. How very contrary to my personality. Now that did not happen because of any problem, but I decided to play wait and watch this time around. In the earlier team, the spotlight was on me from the day I entered. After more than 3 years in the same company, I prefer to see how this team behaves. Won't be long till I behave like myself.

Coming back, I've sent out the first explanation sort of thing of the work that I have put in till now. And this team does not have an alias (strange!), so I just sent it out to a list to whom the team manager sends out the weekly conference call email. I don't even know if I was to involve all those folk, but then that's how I improve my communication - by initiating a dialogue if the other party does not.

So I'm all set folk. Friday the 13th is the date I've sent out my first email. Am I afraid? Naah. Am I worried? Nope. Am I thinking about it? Umm.. It's done, thought, and wrote it here. Now I have to rush for Subhadeep's bachelor's party. People will be frustrated because of my delay, but this work got postponed because I was out of office yesterday.

It just shows that I do not care about dates and I probably could have come over on Saturday to send over that all-important-first-email. Balls to urban legends and folklore who hype about Paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Colgate Quiz

2006-01-13T05:29:00.000-08:00

Today Aatish suggested that I should be having images in my posts too. I told him that I concurred, except that I was lazy. So let me shed some lazyness. And start with a quiz, I don't really give a damn if it sounds cheap - who is giving me points here anyways?

Opening a new tab/window and referring to popular search engines highlights your impotence (no, not that one).

So here goes...

Q1. What are the features of the following version of the Colgate toothpaste (see image below)?

A1. 'Soothes', 'Builds increasing protection against shocks of pain', 'Provides long term relief with regular use'.

If you are already getting the drift, good enough. I encourage everyone to continue in the same potent form (I knew you'd wanted to get done with this fast ;) )

Q2. Why is Colgate more advanced than Durex?

A2. For the extremely uninitiated ones and the ones who might have somehow missed out on this, go get a life.

Because it's there

2006-01-12T04:28:00.000-08:00

Speaking of trekking and mountaineering, there have been instances when people and friends have asked me why I love trekking so much. I do so for my reasons - it's an activity that helps one to be in the 'present'. Your mind wanders, and you could find yourself hurtling down and badly injured. Trekking gives me a sense of achievement and peace.

Till 1945 or so North Face (in Tibet) was the only route to summit Everest - Top Of The World. Nepal had not opened her gates to foreigners, which meant attempting a South Face summit was out of question. Comparitively, summitting via South Face is easier, clearly indicated by the data at hand (including route maps, statistics etcetera).

And there was this mountaineer named George Leigh Mallory, who was about to set foot for conquering Mt. Everest. Dated back in 1923-24. Being a task that was never achieved, making such an attempt certainly seemed hazardous. In an interview with The New York Times, Mallory was asked: "Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?". He replied what now is a world famous quote: "Because it's there!"

Those words inspired one Robert W. Service, and he has quoted it in his poem Dauntless Quest. I'm pulling out the first verse of the poem where the quote lies:

Why seek to scale Mount Everest,
Queen of the air?
Why strive to crown that cruel crest
And deathward dare?
Said Mallory of dauntless quest:
"Because it's there."

George Leigh Mallory teamed up with Andrew Irvine on the fatal 1924 expedition to Everest. They never returned, and 75 years later, on May 2 1999, George Leigh Mallory's body was found on the slopes of Everest. Because he never returned back, the entire mountaineering community has been debating till date whether Mallory could have been the first person to summit Everest. More so because all evidences of the 1999 expedition led by Eric Simonson point to his death occuring while descending Everest.

Though I would not like to drive the discussion as to whether he was able to summit Everest or not, being a core trekker and an aspiring mountaineer, I salute his efforts.

A bunch of people have formed something called as a Mars Society, and they explain on their home page as to why humans should be sent to Mars: 'Because it's there', with due credits to Mallory. Hehe :)

Midnight mayhem

2006-01-11T12:44:00.000-08:00

0215. Am ensuring that the exception handling code is being written correctly. Damn, you need a break, don't you? Hadn't really caught up on the blogs of friends as of late. Read Nikhil's latest post, and almost all that Darshana had written. Art is embedded within that female.

From Nikhil's blog, leapt on to Goti's blog and read a coupla articles there. He is supposed to be in India any moment now. Let's see if we can do any trek(s) together. Trek freak meeting another trek freak after all. Another good blog was Raghu's blog.

Had a chat with Manjit today. And Googled too. To learn how to get my blog listed on a Google search for "Aniket Anikhindi" or few keywords that I am interested in. Have done the required html coding. Manjit says Google takes 2 odd weeks to register. Also registered my blog on blogwise. They are going to take 27 days to process my request.

Have tuned in to some Hindi songs of yesteryear. No, not Kishore Kumar. With 'new' songs bombarding you at a frequency that would put neutrons in a nuclear fission at shame, 'Shahar Ki Ladki' and 'Rang Rang Mere Rang Rang Mein' very well are yesteryear songs.

0233. Work beckons. Will I am done with TransporterLocal.cpp, TransporterRemote.cpp, and was about to finish long back, till I realised that I'd missed out on CompressionMgr.cpp. Enough for you guys right?

Forgot to mention - I have developed cold today, and its getting worse by the hour. Reason unknown. Dabur Chywanprash dose is on daily, but the immunity system could not handle some newer virus. And yes, SYMC had hit $19.9401 today.

Arrogance is strength - Jon Krakauer versus Anatoli Boukreev

2006-01-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Anup casually pointed me to an article on the death of the legendary climber Anatoli Boukreev. After returning from our Everest Base Camp trek in 2004, we have never needed a reason to get started on mountaineering related discussions. Anup, Vinod and I, the EBC 2004 gang, have exchanged gigantic volumes of text on these discussions. Today's topic started with Anatoli Boukreev's death, and then about what a legend he was.

A little about 'supplementary oxygen':
More than 95% of those who do mountaineering (excluding people like Sherpas who reside in mountains), make use of supplementary oxygen while climbing at high altitudes. At about 5356 metres above sea level, the oxygen content in air is reduced by half as compared to that at sea level. And we are barely at Mount Everest Base Camp now. 50% of normal oxygen intake. 8850 metres ASL, oxygen content in air is reduced to a third of what is found at sea level. That's top-of-the-world, 33% of normal oxygen. Oxygen canisters come into picture at roughly 7500 metres to ensure that the climber does not suffer from hypoxia. Climbers have often reported of hallucinations at extreme altitudes too.

Getting back to Anatoli Boukreev. And Jon Krakauer. And arrogance. Well, reams of pages, several hundred sites, audio versions, videos and movies have been dedicated to the 1996 Everest tragedy. From there sprung the much publicised book Into Thin Air penned by Jon Krakauer, the representative of the 'Outside' magazine. Jon Krakauer summitted Everest, and so did Anatoli Boukreev, on that particular 10th of May. It was the behaviour of Anatoli on that day that Jon attempts to refute, and Anatoli defends. This is worth a read, and for mountain lovers, following the links is just another wonderful thing.

In a nutshell, the issue goes thus:
Facts: Jon Krakauer is a climber, on his maiden Everest attempt, client of an expedition led by an experienced Rob Hall. Anatoli Boukreev is a genius climber, playing guide of an expedition led by another experienced person Scott Fischer. Both expeditions chose May 10, 1996 as their summit day, along side a few other expeditions. Being a guide, Anatoli Boukreev (a) decided to climb down the summit ahead of his clients and (b) chose to summit without supplementary oxygen. Jon strongly objected to both these points (in his book) and later expressed in print that he found Anatoli arrogant for not accepting what he thought were mistakes. Readers might also be interested in reading the correspondence about clarifications from Jon Krakauer about the Everest Revelations in his book Into Thin Air.

On a side note, I must say I am damn impressed by the climbing resume of Anatoli Boukreev. You must not miss it. It takes that type of a resume to be really arrogant, and say 'balls to you'.

The impulsive trip to Mumbai

2006-01-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

You know, they are really random, and that is what makes things even more interesting. I am speaking about impulses, and the exhilaration that results after one follows those impulses. Here is a description about an impulse trip I went on, on the 2nd day of the year of 2006.

On the evening of the 1st day of 2006, I'd been to Nikhil's place and from there we went on to watch a movie I'd watched just the day before. Midway through, Nikhil did not feel like watching it through till the end, so we both left. After spending enough time dining at Hotel Pride, we were on our way home. That's when I suddenly asked Nikhil if he was interested in going to Sinhagad. He said he was never averse to the concept of following random impulses, and so we headed on. Note the time: 0130 hours.

Enroute Sinhagad, there is a beautiful lake, the Khadakvasla lake, and Nikhil suggested we stop there instead of going all the way up to Sinhagad. It was beautiful there, a chilly starry night, the sound of water lapping, and we puffing on Marlboro Lights. In the excitement of the surroundings there, I got yet another impulse. I asked Nikhil if he'd mind going to Mumbai (Bombay). Without batting an eyelid, Nikhil called up Faizaan, our friend who stays at Colaba. 0230 hours. We told him we would reach his place by 0530 hours, which was the time he generally gets up everyday.

We finished the cigarettes we were smoking, and sat in the car, me on the wheel. In no time we were on the Pune - Mumbai Expressway, with the likes of Bob Marley, Bob Seger, Enya, Neil Diamond and Elliot Smith giving us company. At such times I really feel that having one's own vehicle becomes such an enabler (if such a word were to exist). But that's hardly something I want to write about. We had an interesting discussion on the philosophy of Vedanta (self-realization). Not something that I would really mention in this post, maybe in some other post, but it certainly was intriguing enought to keep both of us awake during the night drive. Cruising at an unbroken 80 kmph all through, we were in Mumbai at the exact hour we had committed. No hassles in finding our way to Faizaan's place.

I'll take a moment here to describe where Faizaan stays and that the area he resides in, can itself be a reason to go to Mumbai. In the plush locality of Colaba, Faizaan stays in an apartment which has something like 31 odd stories. Bang next to the grand Taj President Hotel, his apartment looks like a royale one, and from his 10th floor house, what one gets to see is nothing short of 'auussome' (say this aloud to understand what it means). I have been spending close to 2 months of every single year of my childhood in this fabulous city called Mumbai, and that's what draws me to there, all I need is some small reason. An impulse is anyways good enough a reason :)

We went to Faizaan's place, and 0530 hours is the time when he goes around for a walk/jog/run. Nikhil looked ready to accompany him, but I said I needed to catch some sleep. Twas mandatory that I did it. Faizaan played some pieces on his nylon string (classical) guitar. He had to complete writing some sheet music as part of his homework too. Nikhil and Faizaan have taken a fancy towards classical guitaring these days. The music served as a catalyst in putting me to sleep (being frank enough, I was not in a position to admire it then, moreover, I did not know how much I could appreciate it).

3 hours of sleep followed, with Nikhil following suit once I made the decision. Sure was a funny thing to reach Mumbai and sleep without really enjoying the time. But being very frank, sleep is something I cannot avoid, and we had to drive back soon given the fact that Faizaan could not take a day off from work. I had already made my mind that I would be taking a day off from work, Nikhil was contemplating his chances (a futile exercise). We woke up at 1000 hours, and as soon as we left Faizaan's house, the accident prone Nikhil managed to kick a dustbin down the staircase. He offered to clear the mess, but after the sweeper denied twice over, Nikhil left it at that. We then proceeded for a quick breakfast in an Irani eatery (Hotel Persian). Nikhil's second fumble resulted in almost all the pepper from the pepper container being dropped on his omlette. He had the guts to put it back in the container, but I believe it was a fit act for a "Grade III Restaurant" as per the rating of Mumbai Municipal Corporation. Not that the place was too bad, but I hope you get the point.

We then dropped Faizaan at Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus [CST] (formerly Victoria Terminus [VT]), from where he was going to take a train to his workplace. Bang opposite the station, there was this music shop called "Planet M", from where Nikhil wanted to buy some music. It took us half an hour to search for a parking spot, firstly because all adjoining lanes in that place had police stations and the press office of Times of India. Secondly, I was being a bit too skeptic in parking at some odd place because on my previous trip to Mumbai, my car was towed away. We finally managed to squeeze in the car in a pay-and-park place, in a sort of risky manner. We then drank coconut juice, and proceeded on to "Planet M" after having a couple of smokes. Nikhil did end up buying quite some music - Eric Clapton, R.E.M etc, though he was not too pleased with the stock. Neither was I.

After ruling out the wishes of me shopping for old coins in the Fort Area and Nikhil ruling out his wish for buying a cell phone, we were set on our way back. I took the wheel again, given that I was amply awake. This time, we took a long-ish route to get out of Mumbai, because I missed to take a turn. It proved to be a boon in disguise and we managed to evade the Chembur traffic bottleneck. This time Eric Clapton and R.E.M gave us company, credit to the music bought by Nikhil. I was trying to keep up with an Optra Chevrolet on the Expressway, and at least managed to keep it in close distance, but that meant my average speed was over 120 kmph. We reached Pune in less than 2 hours! Before exiting Mumbai, the direction boards were showing "Goa"... No, we did not really go Goa, but you know what I thought!

We had no formal lunch as such, so we ended up going at Hotel Sun n Sand. After all, we had to end in a grand way what we had started in a grand way, from Hotel Pride the previous night. Another reason was that it was past 0330 hours, which was past the lunch time of all hotels. Only a 5-star hotel would offer us some food at that hour. An interesting discussion with a stranger was the highlight of the lunch at Hotel Sun n Sand.

The stranger was from the elder generation (past 60 on the first look). Sitting on the table next to us, that person initiated the unsolicited dialogue. He mentioned that he was from Agra, and was interested in knowing places in Pune that were entertaining as such. There were questions from our side as to what was he particularly interested in. We questioned, he answered in monosyllables (with a smile on his face that seemed to hide something). Spirituality? No. Historical places? No. Forts or such things? No. Amusement parks sorts? No. After we ran out of options, Nikhil finally asked in the most sarcastic tone - "Women?". Old man now felt at peace. After 5/6 shots, Nikhil managed to hit bulls eye. Old man described how money did not matter to him, and how he had seen sites on the Internet that lured people and the likes. Disgusted, Nikhil told him to approach a rickshaw (a three seater public transport vehicle commonly seen in India) and go to Budhwar Peth, the red light area in Pune. We did not really deliberate much on this later, and decided to finally return home after 19 hours of leaving home the previous night.

I dropped Nikhil home, parked the car, and before knowing what the time was, retired to bed, to wake up 15 hours later! All sleep cycles completed in one shot, I was ready to greet the working week. Long live random impulses!

This movie defines "cult classic" - Fight Club

2006-01-01T03:25:00.000-08:00

I would be the zillionth writer quoting this, or may be zillion times zillion. But you know, that's why there have been the zillion ones before this, and in all probabilities will be more.

This is how wikipedia defines 'cult classic':
"A cult classic is a cultural artifact (e.g. a movie or TV show) or group of works (e.g. songs by a certain band) that may not achieve widespread mainstream popularity but does attract a cult following, i.e. devoted, even fanatical, attention from a select group".

Well, for those who have not seen this movie, I would still say you are very lucky. I'd advise you to read Chuck Palahniuk's novel (Fight Club) on which this movie is based. If you are not interested in reading, never mind, see the movie. It is equally well made. There are umpteen things I could quote about this movie, but I do not want to. As a start point, refer to Fight Club's IMDb page.

There is enough trivia that you can find about this movie on the Internet that can satisfy you for a lifetime. The more I read the more I find. And the same is true of the movie. The more number of times you see the more you find.

Forgive me, Tyler, for violating rule 1 and 2 of Fight Club. Here are the 8 golden rules of Fight Club:

#1 - The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

#2 - The second rule of Fight Club is, you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.

#3 - If someone says stop, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over.

#4 - Two guys to a fight.

#5 - One fight at a time.

#6 - No shirts, no shoes.

#7 - Fights will go on as long as they have to.

#8 - If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.

Happy reading, happy watching. At the end of this, I am tending to realise that I have blogged this more for myself than for anyone else ;)

Rantings on celebration, and my 2006 eve..

2005-12-31T22:48:00.000-08:00

NOTE: The blogger.com server seems to be located in Western Samoa.

To start with, wishing all readers a happy and successful new year 2006. Ah, the number keeps on increasing, and every year I realise I spend the new year's eve in a radically different way. This year was no different as far as the change was concerned! Yet another chance to chew the management cud 'Change is the only constant'. Aw cmon.

I remember greeting 2005 by staying at home, mainly because I felt like staying at home then, and to add to it I had my cousin and his wife who'd come down from Uncle Sam's land. It was fun greeting 2005 with them.

This year, I was sort of bored. Initially had plans of partying hard at Goa, and all seemed set. Then there were reasons for not being able to make it. As for partying, I'd enjoyed a wonderful Christmas eve party with Kaveeta (my new friend from the Caferati Writer's Forum). Partying all seemed to be the same old thing - underdressed girls having fun away from the city, over-intoxicated folk trying their level best to control themselves, super skimpily clad girls trying desperately to hunt for a corner for you know what, blaring music thats more often than not pathetic, useless food, and all of the above for a heavy sum that I now think I'd rather save for my treks :D

In the past week or so, songs of a particular movie were seeming sorta good to me. Nothing great, but better than the grind mill types. Called up Prajuctaa, and she seemed interested in the idea too, since she wanted to watch the movie as well. Enough reason - we went for a 2230 show. Oops, I did not mention the name as yet eh - its bluffmaster starring Abhishek Bacchan, Priyanka Chopra, Ritesh Deshmukh and Nana Patekar. Worth a watch I'd most certainly say.

The movie carried on, good songs, Abhishek and Priyanka acting well, and the interval was at 2355 hours. A good place to greet the new year I felt. In the interval, I and Prajuctaa shared one end each of the earphone, and enjoyed watching SouthPark on my iPod. We didn't even realise when the clock struck 0000, and thankfully the crowd didn't make any hoopla about it either. The movie ended a while later, and we couldn't resist listening to songs of bluffmaster, they were very nice. Once again the iPod came into use, and we listened to couple of songs before reaching MH-12 CD-4046 (my car).

For over an hour after the movie, we were chatting next to my apartments, in what was a chilly cold for Prajuctaa (who luckily had a jacket to wear). It never seemed to be cold to me somehow [I had no alcohol]. We bid the final goodbye at 0200 hours, and I tucked myself to cozyness. Its been just 2 hours since I've woken up, haven't brushed as yet, was watching TV. No one at home, and in under 2 hours I've got to meet some friends. Anyone betting whether I would be able to take a bath before I leave? [I'd taken a bath at 2130 hours on 31st Dec]. Darshana?

Bloggers - Life has just become easy/simple!

2005-12-31T22:07:00.000-08:00

Blogger mates,

For those of you who use Firefox as your browser, here is some good news. There is a new plugin that works with Firefox 1.5 which is called performancing. Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox.

You have an option to set up accounts with various popular blogging services, including Blogger.com, WordPress.com, LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, Typepad.com, and any of your custom blogging services too! Once this is done, all you need to do anytime you want to blog, is type F8 or press the pencil icon that sits at the bottom right of the Firefox window, to bring up the blog editor within Firefox itself.

This is especially cool because this becomes a one-stop editor, or in technical terms a unified interface (Manjit is this correct :p) to many blogging service providers from one place. Those of you who have subscribed to more than one blogging services will find this pretty useful.

Before I forget, let me say that I heard about this from Manjit's blog but not all of you know who he is. So I thought it would be good to spread the word around (about performancing, you nerds).

The Katraj - Sinhagad trek, 2003

2005-12-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

"Where there is a hill, there better be a way!" would be an apt way to describe this trek in a one-liner. Factors like scorching heat, long distance, strenous route, were all won over by enthusiasm and sheer will power. After an exciting and challenging 'Dhak chi Bahiri' trek, VxTrekkers (VERITAS Adventure Unlimited Trekking Gang) set their next target as Sinhagad, to be approached from the Katraj side. This was to be the last summer trek of 2003.

The Sinhagad fort stands about 25 kms from Pune and is one of the important Maratha forts having a colourful history linked with it. The fort was formerly known as Kondhana, its literal translation is the "Fortress of the Lion". In 1670 Shivaji's General, Tanaji Malusare, led a force of men who scaled the steep hillside in the dark and defeated the unprepared forces of Bijapur. There are monuments at the spot where Tanaji died, and also at the place where he lost his left hand before his death. There is also a historic bungalow up there, where Gandhiji met the freedom fighter, Tilak, in 1915.

The aim of this trek was not solely to climb the fort Sinhagad, but to enjoy the trek en route. We first travelled to the Katraj tunnel top in a bus that we boarded from Swargate. The group was a mixed bag of VxTrekking regulars as well as newbies. It was fun though, there were quite a few enthusiasts present.

We got atop the first small hillock and were able to see the path that we had to cover. Or thats what we thought. A couple of hillocks more and we had to cover a slightly tricky way. We had to cover a hillock by walking along its edge where there was no proper path to walk along. People somehow managed to get through there, and then another drama followed. While walking along the mountain edge, we had a couple of people sliding along the way, luckily to be saved by fellow mates. It was an interesting part that we covered, and a short break followed before we moved ahead.

Time was slipping by quite fast. To put it in other words, we were not maintaining the required pace. No one was exactly sure as to how much was left ahead, since after crossing every hillock, Sinhagad appeared equally far. Apparently, there were just a couple of hills to cross before we would hit the base of Sinhagad fort. As we progressed, there was a huge gap that was created amongst certain of us. Some of us managed to descend the next hill pretty fast, and got atop the one after it, while some others were trailing on the previous descent. A common trend observed when a large group goes for a trek.

It was already getting dark, and we all were now atop a hill from where Sinhagad top was clearly visible. And a bit closer this time. Ostensibly again, there was only one hill that stood between us and Sinhagad. We waited for all to regroup, and got all set to cover the "last" hill in the way. Now that we had covered so many hills, rather than follow the same trend of descend - ascend, we decided to walk around the next hill to reach the other side. It would be a trifle longer, but less tiring, as it seemed to the genius who suggested it and the others who followed suit.

As a result of taking this 'shortcut', we came to realise after some time that we had reached a dead-end. Backtracking would be too far-fetched an idea, so we decided to get atop the hill along the slope with a comparitively higher incline and amidst bushes. It was really a risky thing to do: We knew by sense of direction that we were heading in the correct way, but there were two fears that I had at this point - a) We could reach another dead-end from where backtracking would be the only option, and b) there could be another small valley that we might have to cover before reaching the hill top. I took the chance, told the gang to wait till I went ahead and checked if the way we were going to take was correct. Five minutes later, the entire gang was treading along the mountain side. There were dense bushes as mentioned before. At one point, there was a steep route that seemingly led to the mountain top, though it was slippery, covered with gravel. We managed to get over it, with the way being guided by torches. After a 10 minute steep climb, we had finally hit the correct path again! It gave a tremendous sense of relief to all.

It was a mixed feeling after some time. We had hit correct path, only to realise that there was yet another hill that we had to cross. And by now, everyone realised that there could very well be some more as well, as we were deceived for the umpteenth time now. But willpower to reach destination again pumped up some energy into all of us, and we started our journey again. We were way past the scheduled time, but we had no better option than to carry on. After getting past another couple of hills we were clearly seeing Sinhagad road on either side of the hill on which we were (one was the road that comes from Pune, the other was the one that joins from Khed Shivapur).

We knew that we were there, but the estimated time to go on after this, would be another couple of hours to reach our final destination - the MTDC resort atop Sinhagad fort. And it was past midnight now. Given the physical and mental condition of the group, it was a unanimous decision to halt right then and there. And that was atop a hill, with some bushes around, in chilly weather. Though it was summer, nights happen to be quite cold, and it is especially too windy on open regions - like the hill we were on. We were badly in need of fuel (read food), and having it past midnight after going through normally unimaginable circumstances, was quite an experience. That's part of the trekking experience though, a common thing that generally happens when trekkers happen to lose their way at odd hours.

A chilly night's stay in which very few of us actually were able to "sleep", we proceeded on to cover the part that we missed out last night. There was hardly anything left to cover, but given the amount of trekking that we'd done last night, we probably were short on the psychological front to cover the remaining part, rather than the physical energy required. Anyhow, once we reached the Sinhagad Road, reaching which 15 minutes of what looked like 2 hours the previous night, we were lucky enough to get a jeep that took us atop Sinhagad fort. After refreshing and refuelling, we "completed" the trek in the true sense of the term, by climbing down Sinhagad on foot! It was fun altogether, a nice experience - that was a real test of strength and character I would say. Sahyadri treks are indeed great ones, but Katraj - Sinhagad has its own charm.

Jai Bhavani, Jai Shivaji !!!

The visa interview and fuss levels

2005-12-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

On a day like Monday, I wouldn't have asked for more. A 3+ hour drive from Pune (my home city), Mumbai is the place I've always loved to go right since I've been a kid. Mumbai aka Bombay, the financial capital of India is arguably the single most important city of country. A sweet little break from work - to go appear for a Business Visa interview at the American Consulate in Mumbai sounded like the perfect reason :)

Two others from my work place were accompanying me as well, for their respective visa interviews. I, being the standard calm self, had just begun enjoying the "working-weekday-break" when I sensed that one of my two fellow companions possessed a noticably high fuss-level (explained below). That is where I realised I was going to enjoy more.

With every event, there is an associated "fuss level" as I put it. A "fuss level" is an index that expresses increase in panic level when the event approaches. To put it in other words, it expresses a person's inability to stay calm as he/she gets close to the event. Common examples of events are examination days, job interviews, dates and this event that I was witnessing for the first time personally - a visa interview.

I was far too careless by my own standards, since I was just believing that nothing much could go wrong. And if it did, it really made no big difference to me (besides having a "visa rejected" stamp). More often than not, such an attitude can help one to keep the 'fuss level' down, grounded to zero in fact. As they say, it takes all types to make the world.

In this case, I was not carrying the most important documents that the consulate would have asked me to produce, and I was busy thinking about something else. And then I was suggested to try some stunts if possible to get the documents and be 'psychologically' safe. While I was travelling, I rang up a person from the Finance Department of our company. I asked him to email me my salary slips for the past 3 months. Two hours to go before I would be called in for the interview, and we were in Mumbai, right at the American Visa Consulate Office. And diagonally opposite the office, I saw a branch office of IDBI, with whom I bank. What a coincidence! I walked in and got my bank statements for the previous 6 months. And after hunting around for a cyber cafe, which was a stone's throw away, I got printouts of my salary slips. Lo and behold, I had all documents ready!

Then came the time to stand in the queue outside the office to wait for your turn. The favourite pastime, as you would have guessed (or maybe not) was to derive pleasure by watching the different 'fuss levels' people have. And what concepts people have.. Half the dudes were wearing their best formal shirts and trousers, a neat tie on, and donning a great suit. That's probably the only other occassion when they would wear such a dress, the most important being their own wedding. I was in casuals, which could pass of as formals. Only one dude was wearing 'home clothes' - a visibly not ironed T-shirt, a pair of general trousers, and chappals. This was another extreme - which to me made complete sense, but he drew the attention of almost all those who donned their coolest formals. He got a visa, so did I and most probably the ones who donned the suits too. Did I mention that the consulate didn't even care about a single document in my case?

A matter of 30 seconds did the trick - an experience of 4 years in the industry, 3+ with a very well known MNC, a super casual approach, a looong yawn while answering the consulate officer (result of getting up early to reach early to satisfy someone's fuss level). And dudes, that gave me a 10 year multiple entry B1/B2 class entry into Uncle Sam's land. With company sponsorship. A day off, the first of the week. Get me more reasons my lord!

Unforced errors

2005-12-04T03:59:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, during my childhood, when I used to watch tennis I used to wonder what the term 'unforced error' meant. For me, error meant some mistake made by that person while playing his game. Even the definition of the word error seemed to favour my viewpoint. An error is a result of bad judgement, as clear as that. I learnt with time that some such errors made by a player are not attributed to his bad judgement per se, but more so because of factors not in his control.

On a Sunday afternoon, following my train of thoughts, I saw some 'forced errors' and some 'unforced errors' that brought about a considerable change in me. I did not want to lose this thought process.

Choosing one's profession and being dedicated to it, is something that is a very important part of one's life. Lack of a sense of fulfillment on the professional front has adverse effects on the non-professional front too. This part is pretty obvious. I'm going to talk about a lack of balance between the profession and personal fronts which disrupted several things.

I had never taken to writing very seriously, but whenever I felt like penning down something, I used to express myself. While managing my profession, I got a chance to write things like cricket match reviews and travelogues. The initial enthusiasm was there, but over time (not even a year later), I did not manage to put in as much volume as I used to. That zeal was fast dying and I was totally lacking control. A match losing unforced error I would say.

Another couple of years down the line, I think I am slowly but surely picking up myself. I had just some samples that a group of friends went through and have urged me to carry on. Many team members have been suggesting me to take on writing seriously.

I have many assignments.. The first and foremost looks like taking to completion the travelogue (mini book) of my Mount Everest Base Camp trek in 2004. I better do that soon, since I have planned another trek to the same place in 2006. I don't want a mix of 2 travelogues :) And then there are those cricket match reviews, waiting to be written, and the old ones to be archived. My poems ought to find their way here too. Let's just see how much I can do, let this be a personal goal for me targetted end Q1 2006.

Cheers!

Lip service

2005-12-02T06:48:00.000-08:00

Behaviour (n.)
A manner of acting or controlling yourself.

So which all places do you visit each day? On a routine working day, I tend to be at two places, three at the most. I start from home, I go to office, and before returning back, I would probably meet friends and make merry at some arbitrary place. Your home (if you have one) is the place where no rules per se govern you. Of course there are couple of things here and there, but let's use the nice mathematical habit of starting with assumptions. When you step out, you start losing that freedom of being an animal, at least to an extent. This is where the behaviour that I am going to say something about, would come in picture.

Society is not something that is made or has been unique to mankind. There are a variety of species that have exhibited ways of how their society exists and how they commonly behave. But this brain that humans possess and claim highest intellect amongst all living species, is something that has pushed up a 'policy' upon every 'sane' individual to be hypocritical. Absurd, eh?

Societies of different nations reflect different behavioural patterns amongst the elements of society. Barring the deviations, all are more or less revolving around the hypocrisy principle. But then what new is being said here? The best part is that you have pretty surely got the drift but will continue on. Reason? To see how you fit in the model. Go on, it's good to go on such trips from time to time.

Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja Aaja Aaja (IND Patent 5,774,367,534-JIM filed)

2005-04-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

To all fans and fanatics,

I have filed yet another patent! I am happy to announce that I have filed IND Patent 5,774,367,534-JIM today and would keep you posted as soon as it gets registered on my name. Meanwhile, here are the details. Trust me, I bear a sense of pride while delivering this original stuff in this world of imitation originals.

Requirements: Knowledge about Sir Mithun Chakraborty (to a smaller extent also works). An idea of who that Yudhishtir dude was, and that Mahabharata has nothing to do with a huge plate of brinjal burnt-and-smashed vegetable.

The patent thesis header goes thus. The entire thesis will be published later:

"If you have to call anyone (not on the telephone, but someone who is at an audible distance) in a SECURE mode, then you might end up using a typical language that might arouse suspicion. Especially for the FBI guys. You are free to use any proper noun or code word at the risk of it can be cracked down. You may not be able to give a strong enough reason, that too on the electric chair. And if you are a person who has NOT been associated to diplomacy, then consider yourself a total goner. By using the simple fact stated in Paragraph 2 (that follows shortly) you can simply run scot free if someone questions your possibly hideous intentions by saying that you were merely enjoying a song. And even for those hardcore "I will speak truth; die on a lie" type people, they can always resort to a "Narova Kunjarova" approach by being in the clear saying "I was wishing I could have '$JIMMY' here". $JIMMY is an environment variable that represents the Jimmy in question. [For all those who are bewildered by "Narova Kunjarova" refer chapter 2342394823 section 435823 of the Hindu Mythological mega bumper size novel named Mahabharata].

The essence is, just say 'Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy' a la Parvati Khan [this should have reminded you of the musical blockbuster Disco Dancer movie]. If you don’t know the movie, say ALAS loudly till I can hear you in real pain, and the following theory might just go bummer. (High probability is that it anyways will). By the way, the theory is all about a person being able to call another one in a SECURE way yet openly, by a totally defendable and not-so-seemingly-easy-to-crack method. By saying "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy". What follows in the song is not what this thesis explains. This thesis purely explains the absolute advantages of such practices.

Coming back to what would happen after a "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy" call: The person will immediately be compelled to respond by coming over to the place where you are. Let us take the following cases which might just strike your head to disprove this theory of mine. Or in other words, these are the premises which take care of proving my absolutely novel brainchild:

A. What is the ultimate aim of getting this done?

Crude response:
"ROTFL, if you arent buying this already, get ready for a ride!"

Sense response:
"In the ultimate betterment of humankind, for using that lump of mass (BRAIN) stuck up in a strong bony exoskeleton called SKULL"

Drunk response:
"Hee huh (ala Keshto Mukherjee)..."

B. What if the person is a non-Indian, and does not know what that "Jimmy.." means?

Crude response:
"Who cares? We'd rather say "e bhau, excuse me!" "

Sense response:
"Patent is OF an Indian origin, BY and Indian, FOR the Indians!!"

Drunk response:
"Duh.. Wasabi?"

C. What statistical survey drives this point home?

Crude response:
"Boo. Only one in a million help procreate, so whats this?"

Sense response:
" n C 2 such calls for interaction between two people will bring out enough of singing talent, pleasure and irritation at the same time. The magnitude of this can have the potential to bear even a nuclear blast, making humans better in terms of resilience than cockroaches. Survival of the fittest, eh?"

Drunk response:
"2 + 2 = 5 for very large values of 2"

D. What are the benefits and discrepancies of this theory for all of us?

Crude response:
"Aw! Get these 4 mark questions off me. Police - Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy fast"

Sense response:
"Pros: This kicks ass! Cons: You'll get one odd 'Screw you guys, I'm going home'"

Drunk response: "Waiter, 1 pitcher repeat"

For your pleasure, I have the song that motivated me to file IND Patent 5,774,367,534-JIM, which you can find at:
http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/movie/H000608.html

Cheers,
aNIKEt

P.S : Responses Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy! The short of the story is that next time you hear me saying "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy" please realise that you cut the distance between us such that we can have what people can say a 'personal' discussion.