Hit/Miss - No wait Spams..!!

Looks like my blog hasnt been receiving much hits of-late (in a way its good to see my friends still having the patience to read this crap..!!), nevertheless, to entice the others, I have come up with an initiative to churn out my fortune with all those who read my blog. Rings a bell, ofcourse, its the same program, on the paths of the computer genius, Mr.Gates, who had first launched this program by sending out mails to all the folks around the world. And I am still wondering that even after 8 years of this program, he still has all the fortune intact, and infact increasing. Alright the argument in my case is the word 'fortune', but I can start up with small values, say 0.005 cent for every hit. :P

Anyways coming back to the topic, I cant believe that people still fall for this and keep forwarding those craps. I remember the first time when I got the mail, I was in 11th. It was quite unbelievable, but the true testimonies or the so-called true testimonies where people specifically mentioned cash to the precise value of 2 place after decimals, was not easy to ignore. Naivety took over me and I forwarded the mail to all of my friends, strangers, random email ids, however, it did strike me that I did not have a bank account then, so where will the cash go, if it ever comes. But then another friend of mine, amazing encourager, clarified me on Mr.Gates' repute ,of the ability to find anyone's personal identity and details, and yep, I walked out of the internet center gleefully, expecting to hear some kind of cash arrival announcement from my father, only in vain. Nowadays, we have similar mails in quite a lot of categories, involving Canada Lottery Organizations, Lucky email ids, etc along with people's names and digital signatures (gimme a break..!!). In a way one can take some kinda humor from these ones. The worst ones are some of these religious oriented mails, where you are bound to send them to your friends, else you'll undergo a year of bad luck. Anyways, I just got this out today, after receiving yet another mail of Microsoft, sharing its fortune, just had a few moments' laugh and SPAM..!!!

Whispers..!!

These days I end up spending major part of the day in the library. Now this post is not to brag about this, coz I know its tough for people to comprehend me spending the time in there. Its just that, the library has so much to offer in terms of silence, focus (you got that right..!!!), surrounding, getting out of the dormitory, beautiful eye-candies, ahem, I meant eye-refreshments and ofcourse, my part of studying :). Needless to say, its a library,so your voice cannot raise above a certain db level. So whenever we feel a requirement for a discussion, we do it in whispers. At a certain point, we end up discussing so many stuffs, that we get habituated to these whispers. So on a certain day, the same happened, and I decided to take break. After a moments time, I see Bhuvan walking towards me, and whispering something, there was still some distance to cover, so I couldnt understand anything. Here is the conversation. Bhuvan had received some stuffs of mine from India and :

ALL IN WHISPERS

Bhuvan: Machan, am unable to open the box which has the stuffs.
Me: WTH, you dunno the number or what?
Bhuvan: Ayyo, no machan, its just not opening and I dont want to damage the box.
Me: So I cannot get the stuff today right, damn..!!

TTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN - Eureka - BULB GLOWS..!!!


In a quite loud voice now,

Me: Machan, why did we whisper, just now..!!!

And what followed was 5 minutes of uncontrollable laughter,  yep we were outside the library premises.

I guess we just gave a topic, for research, for the neuro-informatic guys..!!
P.S.

This is way unrelated to this post, but I cant miss out on this. While writing this post, I happen to notice a mosquito here (in one and half years), yep thats right a mosquito and looks like am still pretty good at killing them. THWWWWWAACCCCCKKKKKKKK and it was on the carpet..!!!

Almost Conspired...!!!

Quite a lackluster month of September, marking the end of the summers and start of the winters, set the mood of depression quite soon, making me wonder how am I going to stand the next 7 months. The initial few weeks of snow and an India trip seem to be the only prescription for me. Oh, did I mention India trip, yyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeehooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..!! Ok, thats enough for the initial excitation, hasn't been helping me much for studies. Yeah I know, my examinations are quite redundant now, with most of my posts talking only about them. Actually one cant blame me, as the exam times are definitely interesting ones, with all the emotions doing a disco within.

Talking about exams, with 2 more to go before making the India trip, I took almost the entire first half of September to relax, not for a specific reason,as the same old enemy/friend Mr.Procrastination made his appearance, filling me up with guilt, on these days. And it always so happens that the first day after this so called hiatus, I find it highly conspired to keep me from studying, else how would one describe this.

So yesterday, I finally wake up, with quite a euphoria to start solving the problems, early in the morning. However, I whiled away my time till the afternoon, and I don't want to think about the details now. Nevertheless, as goes the saying "its never too late..!!" (I'd kill the person now, who laid this down..!!), I took a stance at 3pm to get started to the Library and so I did. The entire enthu was crushed like a candy stolen from a kid, when I found that I had left the solutions at my dorm. But the decision was made and I came back to collect my solutions and by the time I reached the Library it was already 5pm. However, the universe still wanted to play with me. How does one solve without having the questionnaire, I asked to myself. So I took another trip to a friend's place, to collect the same. At that time, I don't exactly know what struck me but I started watching 'Mahabharat' at his place (Possibly trying to find the early traces of science and solutions in our age old history. The only related solution which I could think of and is quite close is, "is prashna ka uttar to mein bhi nahin de saktha". The history or rather wikipedia says, the first instance of time travel has happened in Mahabharat..!!!). So after squandering another 2 hours, I was still determined to make the day constructive and so I did. I went back to the library, by then it was 7 30pm, but thankfully all the ammunition was available this time. Hence I made the day constructive by solving two full problems, which didnt even fill up half of the workout sheet. But still at the end of the day, I was happy enough that I did a start.

There's always another door..!!!

One of the few things I have picked up after coming to Germany is to watch sitcoms. The best thing about them are, the humour and those silent verses in between, which strike you hard, and which end up being the string within your reach, just when you feel like falling off the cliff.
The latest among these sitcoms has been "Two and a Half Men" about two brothers, one of them single and the other a divorcee, with a son (hence the title).

One of the most common thoughts which hits me is "what am I doing? is this really what I wanted to do?" In most cases there's just a compromise and I end up finding a reason to satisfy myself as to what I am doing is what I actually wanted, by some relevance miles apart.

One of the characters in the sitcom goes this way:

Allen: "Neither of us are doing what we wanted to do, but you know what, we could have been doing much worse..!!!"

And here I get my answer.

Cards not in game..!!!

With an eventfully low and a negative week, so far, it seems that things just wont get any better. Right from waking up to baffling dreams (read---> A Dreary Dream..!!!) and pissed off moods for no reason, to things working up in a weird way, "my cards, certainly, are not in the game". And if there is way where all this could have got better, food, seems to have got even worse.

Right from the day I landed here, there has been a special list of the worst dinners of mine (in my cooking..!!). Why the worst, keep a count, you ask? Well the good ones mesmerize you so much, that you would just forget the count (Alright, exaggeration? accepted..!! but for me yes it does act that way..!!). I am happy to see that the list of worst dinners is not long, however, the x-factor here is its got only worse, the scale's got lower every time I have one. And yep, as guessed, this post is just one of those.

So of-late, as I have been returning quite late from the university (yep, I do work at times.!! :P), there has been a drastic fall in the cooking, as I guess, one could imagine the cheers of coming back at 9pm after slacking my ass at the lab and entering into kitchen and starting to chop onions. Well, as there were no critical moments, I was able to manage with bread (Bread zindabad..!! vaazhga..!!). Most of my friends would call me a hypocrite for cajoling about bread, as I usually consider it to be a "patients' food", but again critical scenarios here. So bread and a certain side-dish (thanks to a friend's dinner party, lest which my condition would ve been miserable..!! :)) would be my usual dinner. But everything doesnt last long, and as always it always strikes when its late. So after finishing off the work today, shopping was there on the list and I have no idea what struck me (it was rainy day with thundershowers, probably a minuscule thunderbolt..!! ), probably the idea of saving time for cooking, I got the 3-minutes thai noodle, similar to our maggi 2-minutes one, as I never liked them, and still dont. And whats more, I got 3 packets, not one (I know, I should ve been their brand ambassadors..!!). With all eagerness, I started making it and the moment spices fell, the aroma, ahem, or rather stench, difficult to decide, gave me an indication of a disastrous venture. It was only minutes after which I confirmed the inevitable, for the noodles or whatever, had a lot of similarities to the worst of rice porridges which would look and smell good and taste even better. However, I was pretty hungry enough to gulp it and tired to think about cooking something else. With one packet over and two more to go, I can only count the days for my next worst dinner, hope for the converse never ends though..!!!:).

A Dreary Dream..!! sigh..!!!

If one asks me, I'd say dreams are always in some relevance to the current situation of person's mind and so I searched for some kind of relevance in mine, today morning, only pissing me off more, when I already woke up to such a bamboozled dream. However, the dream has got every inch of bollywood in it, action, comedy, romance, etc, in all a thoroughly entertaining one.

The situation is, in Germany, with an Indian kinda location, (Ok, you need to realise that its a dream, so it spans beyond the boundaries of the countries...!!), is a small house, which has a big haunted house in its backdrop. In way its connected to the small house. The movie is a horror movie.

The actors, some 12 people, including me (its hard to accept it, but still its a dream..!! :D), everyone pretty novice and quite unknown. And so the movie begins, where I act as one of the strangers who comes and stays with a family of 11 people, who ve recently moved into this new house connected with the old haunted house. Apparently, it was some kinda ancestral property for the family. The rest is quite predictable, as the night falls, we start hearing strange noise across the house and one by one the 11 people keep walking towards the noise and half of them disappear and the other half manage to escape. So far am still stuck inside the house, when, a twist appears.

Amongst the "so-called" appearing ghost, I manage to figure a few normal humans, and get a bit baffled at the situation. So I try eaves dropping and come to realise the fact that the entire movie shoot was a big conspiracy and it was just means to kidnap people for the creation of a Utopia, by some military organization and somehow I become witness to the scene where the other half who had disappeared were killed by them as they refused to join the organization. However, I manage to escape the scene.

Now, I dont remember what happens, I guess I opened my eyes and slept off again, coz when the dream restarted, I was in front of the same house, walking towards it.

Continuing, so as I walk towards the same house, I see that it is protected by a dog and as I am about step on the stairs, a man appears out of the wind, asking me to move sideways, where I can find someone for help. However, since I knew the haunted house so well now and also knowing fact that it is not haunted anymore, I take a detour and go inside the house, to find that one of the 11 people was still stuck inside and so we group together and moved into the small house, which was protected by the dog (the ancestral house and the small house were connected internally). There the one person left out, fills me up with the big conspiracy which involved a lot of "big" people. We only begin to realise that we were safe when the dog and the man start running towards the door of the house. They still did not know that we were inside, however, the dog's smelling ability would reveal that soon and since the man could teleport, he could easily get in the house, so we had to run and somehow we managed to do that. At moment we were joined by a third person, who I have no idea about, but its a dream again.

So we manage to come out of the zone and reach a place from where we could catch any train. So as I had mentioned earlier that the dream spans boundaries, we successfully catch a train on the run, in India (dont ask how I got there..!!!), where we are captured by a group making adult films with underage people (yes, I am underage in this dream..!!). However, one of us somehow manages to get down from the train at Jaipur, while the other two (me and the other one) reach the destination, called sugarbowl (Not Cuba..!! ). When I reach the place, I recognize the place as being close to Jamshedpur, so the other guy and I make a run for it and before any more adventure could unfold, I thought that I'd had enough for a night's dream, and opened my eyes, getting up to the most baffled reaction ever in my life, so far. phew..!!

Somethings are never right..!!!

Friday, July 17 2009, 13 30 hrs(Present day):

Harish: Machan, something is not right..!!
Bhuvan : ??
Harish : Its quite unusual for us to sit so cool, before the final test of anything and the fact that our simulation results were good, almost a week back, does not comply with our usual race against time and ass on fire theory.
Bhuvan : Thats true alright. Lets see, who knows times might actually change.
Harish : I just hope the world doesn't come to a halt.

Back in time:

Well just a quick recap, for easy understanding, there was this project lab called VHDL, a Hardware Descriptive Language, also deciphered as Very Hard Descriptive Language, which we decided to take, just to appease ourselves on pursuing another challenge through Masters. Some might call it ass-cholesterol, like taking an easier option out when available might have been safer, however, we do get these aberrant impulse to learn at times and so we registered. VHDL, a fairly new subject to me, meant most of the work load fell on the scapegoat, Bhuvan's shoulders', due to his early experience :D. Nevertheless, we managed to pull it off well ahead of time, or atleast thats what we thought. The project, to design a bicycle computer, well actually speedometer, I still wonder the motive behind the name computer, sounded quite easy and quite apparently was otherwise.

Thanks to a combined-group-effort of 5 teams (total people in the lab 11, split into 5 teams), the deadline got extended by 2 weeks. However, the notable point here was, a week before the deadline, today, our team's (Bhuvan-me) results were quite good. Everything was perfect, or atleast we thought so and half an hour before the final test, this eery feeling resulted in the above mentioned conversation. The fact still remains that our simulation results are still good, however, the hardware test uses a different simulator (#%$%^#$@#$%$^..!!!).

Friday, July 17 2009 17 45 hrs (For the final seasoning of Red chilli powder on the wounds..!!!):

I get a call at 11 30 today morning from the lab. Another team, comprising of two more people, needed my help in sorting out one of their modules for the output, which I gleefully accept to and reach the lab by noon and somehow we manage to get the required output. At that point a thought goes through my mind, that it is usually us in this position, nevertheless brushing it off, we continue being confident with our design. Now I donot need to mention the next few scenes, nevertheless, just for legibility, yes their hardware test was successful, which we were happy about, as the seasoning hasn't started yet. However, those guys were really good, as they stayed back after their test to help us sort out our problems. Now, the seasoning started like this:

X: Ok dude, guess we'l take off.
Harish: Sure man, thanks for whatever you suggested so far.
X: No problem. However, you could use our module, incase your output doesnt work out..!!
Harish (Bhuvan would have noticed the hot air blowing from my ears..!!): Suuuurrreee man, thanks..!!

I donot blame the guy, coz his gesture was too good, but one just cannot compromise with the human's ego (mine in this case..!!). The rest is history.

Friday, July 17 2009 18 45 hrs (Back to present..!!):

Bhuvan: Hey machan, chuck the face..!! we are out of the lab..!!
Harish: yep, we still got a week. Good, chalo, the world is functioning normally.
Bhuvan: he he, yeah..!!
Harish: Most people fail to realize that we saved the world from doom..!!

Moral : Murphys theory : If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop ---> HENCE PROVED..!!!