Pertinent Observations

something seems to be wrong with me nowadays. my blogging quefrency seems to have been decimated. and the stuff i churn out is also not the kind i can call “good”. in general, creativity seems to have disappeared from my life.

pretty disturbing trend, i must say. wonder whatz happened to me.

the other day i started writing a post on why my BTech project is not fraud. then i realized i hadn’t been able to explain the technical stuff too well. Cancelled the post. then there were a couple of other posts i wanted to put but cancelled.

anyways, have you ever faced a situation where you’ve been offered job A while you covet job B? And you have to decide about job A before you sit for B’s interview? well, as part of my project, i proved that there is no algorithm/heuristic to get you out of such sticky situations. profound right? and the examiners said it was the worst project report they’d ever read!

My Samsung X600 was declared dead yesterday. I had taken it to the service center for what I thought was a routine battery change. However, it turned out that there was considerable water-logging in the phone and the circuits were FUBAR. The guy at the service center said that nothing can be done to save it.

The phone was “born” on the 7th of August 2004 when I won it for winning a quiz. The people at BBC World had organized this “launch quiz” as a build up to the impending University Challenge TV Quiz Show (in the very first episode of that quiz, we got mothered by IITM). Anyways, in this launch quiz, one team from Bangalore was to take on SPCE, the defending champions of the University Challenge.

We had maxed the prelims and qualified and then beaten SPCE in a nail-biting finish. Got this phone as booty. I now had a camera phone! I could peacefully put off my plans for buying a digi-cam! And the phone, too, was used liberally. Probably everyone in Section C of batch 2004-06 of IIMB was caught napping in class by this phone. It was also used to take many an incriminating photograph.

Tragedy, however, struck at Shivasamudram (bluff) where we went for our class picnic a few days after the phone was born. We had crossed the Cauvery on foot to reach an island in the middle of the river. The view of the falls from this island was simply breathtaking, with a rainbow to add color to the waterfall. Mine was the only camera to have reached the island (most people had left their cameras behind fearing damage and the one other normal camera which had tried to cross the river had drowned and gotten damaged).

Then, on the way back, shit happened. The level of water in the Cauvery had inexplicably risen since the time we’d crossed to the island. What was knee-high water earlier, was now waist high. The phone was in my jeans pocket and took the brunt of the water. It fell unconscious. Thankfully, it regained consciousness later after a day in the sun. However what I didn’t know was that irreversible damage had been caused to its health by this illness.

By the time the phone fell silent around June this year, I had somehow started hating it (it was tough to SMS from it; sometimes I couldn’t hear clearly; It was very fragile and would break open every time it fell; The ringtone was irritating). I borrowed my dad’s unused Nokia 3310 and consigned the samsung to the cupboard. Yeah, I did miss it when I wanted to take snaps, but that was about it. It had slipped away from my life as easily and effortlessly as it had come in.

The phone came out of the cupboard a couple of days ago when my mom asked me to get it repaired so that she could use it. And then, as luck would have it, it was declared “dead on arrival”. DOA these people call it.

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May its soul rust in peace.

Wanted to write this for a long time, but never found the patience. On the first day of my just-concluded vacation, I went around town with a couple of congresspeople. Both of them belong to “political dynasties”, with their fathers having being MLAs or MPs. The entire “session” threw up a number of insights. And before going around with them, I had told them that I used to be a member of the RSS and hence might not share their political views.

I’ll cut the story and just put the insights here:

– Understandably they couldn’t fathom why people are so opposed to dynastic politics. In fact, one of them went to the extent of saying that in this day and age, politicians have to be “born” and not “made”!!

– The land reforms act has led to corruption in politics! Apparently, earlier, politicians had enuff land holdings that they didn’t need to make any money from politics. Now after the act, the land is not enough to sustain the politician and his family and he thus looks to make money from politics!

– They also couldn’t understand how sonia gandhi can be a foreigner! And true congresspersons they were, they worshipped sonia. “She slogged her ass off for the last election and definitely deserved to be prime minister” (in response to my “why did you guys have to have that much of a drama in parliament? manmohan is any day better than sonia. i think everyone watching it on TV was hoping sonia wouldn’t become PM”).

= They were also not ready to believe that people don’t like sonia

– They didn’t mind bitching about other congresspeople. They were pretty open about their dislike for a few congresspeople and just hoped that they weren’t on the record!

– Taking this forward, they also bitched about some of their allies, notably the RJD! The feeling I got was that the congress is actually happy that Lalu lost in Bihar.

– They believed that playing the secular card would easily get them the minority votes (at least in Karnataka)

Many more insights were there but this is all i remember now, 3 weeks down the line.

Went to watch this new Kannada movie called “Rama Shama Bhama” with family the other day. Was my uncle’s birthday so he treated. It was a maajorly hyped movie. Ramesh’s directorial debut. Also starring Kamalahaasan. ToI gave it a **** rating. Majorly hyped on Udaya TV and ETV Kannada.

Turned out to be a direct rip-off of Biwi No. 1 (which I heard is itself a ripoff of some tam movie). Down to the last PJ! Anyways, here’s a mapping of the starcast. I don’t think i need to tell the story.

Ramesh = Salman Khan
Urvashi = Karisma Kapoor (the fat urvashi looked more believable as the sati-savitri wife than Karisma did. only thing is there wasn’t room for “jungle hai aadhi raat hai”)
Kamal = Anil Kapoor
Sob Queen Shruti = Tabu
Daisy Bopanna = Sushmita Sen

Performances are good all round. Daisy Bopanna is HOT. Looks much hotter than she does in Bangalore Times pics. And of course, Kamal and Ramesh were superb as expected.

And it’s really awkward seeing a movie sandwiched between parents. Especially when there are some non-veg jokes in the script. And the last 3 movies i’ve watched with parents are Kannada “comedies” with loads of non-veg jokes!!

Dear Santa… Dear Santa, This year I’ve been busy! In June I put money in ‘s expired parking meter (14 points). Last Thursday and I donated clothes to the needy (11 points). In August I stole ‘s purse (-30 points). Last Friday I caught a purse-snatcher who stole ‘s purse (30 points). In April I helped across the street (6 points). Overall, I’ve been nice (31 points). For Christmas I deserve a red Radio-Flyer wagon! Sincerely, skthewimp

Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

started making my resume yesterday… after making a couple of pages of rough bullet-points i decided to have a “projects” section in my resume. made a rough listing of all projects and course term-papers i’d done. here it goes…

?Projects
o Btech project ? online algorithms ? total fraud.
o Online advertising project at IBM ? interesting stuff but total fraud work
?Course projects
o MO, ME, finac ? not worth mentioning
o Marketing ? bad job
o MPPO ? bad job
o Strat ? cant? talk too much about the project
o RMD ? fraudmax
o M&A/MBFI ? study of the Indian banking industry/valuation of HDFC Bank
o CCS ? fraud
o Econometrics ? minimum needs of poor ? one of the better projects
o Soc Ent ? didn?t put enuff enthu
o Data structures ? did decent work. Not relevant here
o Programming Languages ? fraud
o Networks ? interesting project; but too little work
o Compilers ? good project, freerode big time
o AI ? too simple
o DBMS ? freerode
o Software Engg ? didn?t do good job
o Memory based AI ? fraud
o CSD ? good stuff. Not relevant

Finally decided to eliminate the entire section!!

started making my resume yesterday… after making a couple of pages of rough bullet-points i decided to have a “projects” section in my resume. made a rough listing of all projects and course term-papers i’d done. here it goes…

?Projects
o Btech project ? online algorithms ? total fraud.
o Online advertising project at IBM ? interesting stuff but total fraud work
?Course projects
o MO, ME, finac ? not worth mentioning
o Marketing ? bad job
o MPPO ? bad job
o Strat ? cant? talk too much about the project
o RMD ? fraudmax
o M&A/MBFI ? study of the Indian banking industry/valuation of HDFC Bank
o CCS ? fraud
o Econometrics ? minimum needs of poor ? one of the better projects
o Soc Ent ? didn?t put enuff enthu
o Data structures ? did decent work. Not relevant here
o Programming Languages ? fraud
o Networks ? interesting project; but too little work
o Compilers ? good project, freerode big time
o AI ? too simple
o DBMS ? freerode
o Software Engg ? didn?t do good job
o Memory based AI ? fraud
o CSD ? good stuff. Not relevant

Finally decided to eliminate the entire section!!

Unlike what all of you might think, all is not well with me. Having some major ?domestic? problems, essentially differences in opinion with parents. After a minor (IMHO) faux pas earlier this morning, mom hasn?t stopped ranting about how I?ve brought shame to the whole family and stuff. And how there can be no one in the world worse than me, etc.

My parents seem to have this amazing knack of never letting my confidence run high. Whenever I seem to gain in confidence, they seem to come up with something and pick flaws (yeah, for a long time now they?ve been good at that) and stuff. Sometimes can be totally pissing off.

Currently, as things stand, I might just end up doing something untoward to myself. In such a case, I just want to say that I hold no one responsible.

for the second time in less than a month, i’ve gone into terrible depression. started from a seemingly innocuous statement from my parents. now feeling so damn low i might just about do anything…

wonder why things have become so woresht…

to update, i’ve kinda enjoyed my hols. first day went with a couple of congresspeople on some campaign trail. threw up some interesting insights. those people simply couldn’t fathom how sonia is a foreigner! and lots of similar stuff..

then i’ve been going on long walks around south bangalore every evening. and just observed. and enjoyed life around. only thing i missed has been a good camera. which reminds me, i want to buy a digicam. budget 10k. recommendations please.

not doing much else actually. oh yeah, i’ve started doign Su-do-ku. quite engrossing i must say. and a lot of these “celebrities” have said in the ToI that “i was so bad at numbers. but sudoku is so wonderful i’m quite good at it”. sudoku is a logic game. numbers are just incidental. you might as well replace 1 to 9 with a to i or alpha to whatever…

started making my finals resume… realized that it has a huge hole – projects. most projects i’ve done have been total fraud. have no papers of note either. but for that i seem to have a pretty “good” resume.

nothing much else. as i was tossing and turning in bed, i kinda made a mental note as to what all i should write in this. stuff like why i’m depressed and stuff. no i feel it’s not worth it so chuck it.

and yeah, i’m still bloody depressed.