My time has come. It was inevitable. Blame it on brilliance. And some on elegance too. Okay, before you think I've totally lost it, I meant that I'm (for the nth time) revelling in the beauty of old hindi songs, a la Mohd. Rafi. It is interesting that about 10 years ago I would get irritated by these things, and here I am, a total chameleon, appreciating every bit of those. Take this one for example:
Chuu lene do naazuk honthon ko
Kuch aur nahin hai jaam hai yeh
Kudrat ne jo humko baksha hai
Woh sabse haseen inaam hai yeh
Sharmaakar na yuhin kho dena rangeen jawaani ki ghadiyan
Betaab dharakte seeno ka armaan bharaa paigaam hai yeh
Acho ko bura saabit karna duniya ki puraani aadat hai
Is mai ko mubaarak cheez samajh, maana ke bahut badnaam hai yeh
Andaaz-e-guftgoo par gaur farmaaiye janaab!
Guess, growing old is accepting the past to be golden. Is it a compromise or lack of a contemporary identity? Whatever, revel in it as long as you can, who knows when you get old :)
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Punchline
I guess it's a world of punchlines. Having a punchline is as important for a meaningful existence as having an NRI dad, with earning in dollars and spending in rupees. Critically examining the following punchlines, I have decided to have one of my own.
SingingFish - It's a strange world. Fish it.
Pangea3 - The world is yours. Profit from it.
CNBC-TV18 - Profit from it.
So, here goes mine:
I am dumb. Profit from it.
I guess one way of cooking punchlines is to see what's happening with the entity, in this case - me, put it to words (5-10) and call it your punchline. So you know what's been happening to me!
Of course, the other way is to just copy it and randomly junxtaposition arbitrary words to the right and left. Of course, lots of brains go into deciding where to put the punctuation.
Talking of punchlines, Microsoft used to have Where do you want to go today? till some time ago. I wonder if discovery of Linux got them to coin this one! Legend has it that when software started coming out with the requisite "Requires Windows 98 or better", did people start using Linux. Better, ain't it? What do I know? Being naive comes naturally to me. I am dumb. Profit from it!
SingingFish - It's a strange world. Fish it.
Pangea3 - The world is yours. Profit from it.
CNBC-TV18 - Profit from it.
So, here goes mine:
I am dumb. Profit from it.
I guess one way of cooking punchlines is to see what's happening with the entity, in this case - me, put it to words (5-10) and call it your punchline. So you know what's been happening to me!
Of course, the other way is to just copy it and randomly junxtaposition arbitrary words to the right and left. Of course, lots of brains go into deciding where to put the punctuation.
Talking of punchlines, Microsoft used to have Where do you want to go today? till some time ago. I wonder if discovery of Linux got them to coin this one! Legend has it that when software started coming out with the requisite "Requires Windows 98 or better", did people start using Linux. Better, ain't it? What do I know? Being naive comes naturally to me. I am dumb. Profit from it!
Wassup?
As with all other people with an IQ of 150 or less, I am often expected to answer the very tough questions, "Wassup?", "Kya chal raha hai?", "How's the job coming along?" and so on.
Well, previous attempts at answering with a:
Well, previous attempts at answering with a:
- Bas, normal types
- Standard scene
- Nothing ya
- Kuch nahin yaar
- Nothing exciting
- Nothing to die for, Nothing to kill for
and so on not having rendered themselves as a satisfying reply, I have decided to use the following for sometime now:
I begin each day by asking myself: Abort, Retry, Ignore?
So, now you know about me. Wassup?
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Late Night Ramblings about Seeking Him
Barson mein tere naam pe khaata raha fareb
Mere Khuda kahan hai tu, apna pata to de
It seems to me that there is a very fine difference (of which I'm not fully aware) between being agnostic and being a modern day Punjabi Hindu, like me. I mean if I am to ask myself, or my parents for that matter, about The One (no, we're not talking about Neo here), not sure if we can be talking for more than a few minutes. I think I/they know more about and are more inclined to Sikhism than Hinduism. Another complaint of mine is that Hinduism is way too complex to be born in 1981 and find an easily "assimilatable" version of it. Someone help me.
Manzil na de charag na de, haunsla to de
Tinke ka hi sahi tu magar aasara to de
But at the end of the (tough) day I still seek Him. How real am I being? How real is He? Is this Identity Crisis?
Beshak mere naseeb pe rakh apna ikhtiyaar
Lekin mere naseeb kya hai bataa to de?
Who am I kidding? May be "destiny" was just misheard, the Creater actually meant "destination", such that only at the end of the journey, called Life, would one know what destiny was.
Maine yeh kab kaha ke mere haq mein ho jawab
Lekin khaamosh kyon hai tu, koi faisla to de
Will I turn rightfully religious or atheist? Will the heavens answer? Will I spend more time just as ill-informed, un-enlightened as this day? I don't know.
Screw it, its time to sleep! If I wake up, there is God. (Easy, isn't it?)
Mere Khuda kahan hai tu, apna pata to de
It seems to me that there is a very fine difference (of which I'm not fully aware) between being agnostic and being a modern day Punjabi Hindu, like me. I mean if I am to ask myself, or my parents for that matter, about The One (no, we're not talking about Neo here), not sure if we can be talking for more than a few minutes. I think I/they know more about and are more inclined to Sikhism than Hinduism. Another complaint of mine is that Hinduism is way too complex to be born in 1981 and find an easily "assimilatable" version of it. Someone help me.
Manzil na de charag na de, haunsla to de
Tinke ka hi sahi tu magar aasara to de
But at the end of the (tough) day I still seek Him. How real am I being? How real is He? Is this Identity Crisis?
Beshak mere naseeb pe rakh apna ikhtiyaar
Lekin mere naseeb kya hai bataa to de?
Who am I kidding? May be "destiny" was just misheard, the Creater actually meant "destination", such that only at the end of the journey, called Life, would one know what destiny was.
Maine yeh kab kaha ke mere haq mein ho jawab
Lekin khaamosh kyon hai tu, koi faisla to de
Will I turn rightfully religious or atheist? Will the heavens answer? Will I spend more time just as ill-informed, un-enlightened as this day? I don't know.
Screw it, its time to sleep! If I wake up, there is God. (Easy, isn't it?)
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Its a Small World!
Cliched!
No doubt, it is cliched. That said, all of us go through our share of "Oh!"s when revelation tickles the spaghetti in the brain. A very flimsy example is the circulation of the same forwards every time a new generation of (engineering) college graduates enters the naukri sponsored cyberspace (as in office wala free Internet).
So anyway, my (re)discovery of the world being a small place seems to happen everyday and often in an entirely new way. For starters, I work for a company called Pangea3, the very name leading us to believe that things are very well connected across the oceans and its a small world, as in American attorney's may get their work done from the person across the wires. The wires being undersea cables leading from NY to Mumbai!
Then on-and-off I login to orkut on days when the 'Does anyone even care whether I exist?' question chooses to bother me (of all the rest damned ever bulging population, including the sucker Arindham Chaudhari!). Anyway, relevance-to-context is that orkut lets you click on a random chick's photograph and then see how are you linked to her! It is really awesome, a great way to find out about lost friends, and be amused at finding how friends of friends or friends are your friends too. Try it! Pardon my language, I just saw on TV, the cool (khool?) people call pretty (to very pretty) girls, having rotund (to very rotund), big (to very big) portions of body as chicks, though I have never understood why. I want to be khool too!
Finally, the webapp that made me write this post. The "Oracle" developed by some khool guys at the Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia. The link is http://www.cs.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks. The webapp is no rocket science in itself, but yes, as with a zillion other webapps, it leads to some VERY interesting findings. The webapp links movie actors (btw, I've noticed that this term - actors - is used unisexually, and I approve such usage) names at imdb. So after wasting close to a couple of hours, I thought it was worth a post, this one. See how Juhi Babbar, the pretty (and rotund at right places) daughter of Raj Babbar is linked to the babaji, Al Pacino.
Juhi Babbar was in Kash... Aap Hamare Hote (2003) with Om Puri
Om Puri was in Wolf (1994) with Peter Gerety
Peter Gerety was in People I Know (2002) with Al Pacino
Interesting? Go waste a few hours. Its fun! After all, not being khool and having to spend an average of 65 years on this earth can be very boring. Thank God for the webapps!
No doubt, it is cliched. That said, all of us go through our share of "Oh!"s when revelation tickles the spaghetti in the brain. A very flimsy example is the circulation of the same forwards every time a new generation of (engineering) college graduates enters the naukri sponsored cyberspace (as in office wala free Internet).
So anyway, my (re)discovery of the world being a small place seems to happen everyday and often in an entirely new way. For starters, I work for a company called Pangea3, the very name leading us to believe that things are very well connected across the oceans and its a small world, as in American attorney's may get their work done from the person across the wires. The wires being undersea cables leading from NY to Mumbai!
Then on-and-off I login to orkut on days when the 'Does anyone even care whether I exist?' question chooses to bother me (of all the rest damned ever bulging population, including the sucker Arindham Chaudhari!). Anyway, relevance-to-context is that orkut lets you click on a random chick's photograph and then see how are you linked to her! It is really awesome, a great way to find out about lost friends, and be amused at finding how friends of friends or friends are your friends too. Try it! Pardon my language, I just saw on TV, the cool (khool?) people call pretty (to very pretty) girls, having rotund (to very rotund), big (to very big) portions of body as chicks, though I have never understood why. I want to be khool too!
Finally, the webapp that made me write this post. The "Oracle" developed by some khool guys at the Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia. The link is http://www.cs.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks. The webapp is no rocket science in itself, but yes, as with a zillion other webapps, it leads to some VERY interesting findings. The webapp links movie actors (btw, I've noticed that this term - actors - is used unisexually, and I approve such usage) names at imdb. So after wasting close to a couple of hours, I thought it was worth a post, this one. See how Juhi Babbar, the pretty (and rotund at right places) daughter of Raj Babbar is linked to the babaji, Al Pacino.
Juhi Babbar was in Kash... Aap Hamare Hote (2003) with Om Puri
Om Puri was in Wolf (1994) with Peter Gerety
Peter Gerety was in People I Know (2002) with Al Pacino
Interesting? Go waste a few hours. Its fun! After all, not being khool and having to spend an average of 65 years on this earth can be very boring. Thank God for the webapps!
Friday, October 21, 2005
Being 'Touchy and Feely'
Another email!
Interesting! My reply to the person who sent me this mail (a girl) was this:
So what do you think about the engineers now?
Did the illustrative proof below lead to an influence in the probability of a change in the way you look at the engineers, and do you think the description below is a necessary and/or sufficient matter to swing your tendencies of treating engineers as equal beings? ;-)
Gosh! Being nerdy comes naturally to me! But swear to God, the one that I love, I love that one more than I possibly can. Heck, now that's a very "un-engineer" statement. How can you exceed 100%? The answer my friend, is being 'touchy feely'!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: FW: "Can engineers be 'Touchy feely'?" (femina article on engineers by ChetanBhagat)
Can engineers be 'Touchy feely'?
Can engineers be 'Touchy feely'? Apparently they can... says author Chetan Bhagat
I remember the incident - I was in a restaurant, and one girl in our group was especially charming. So I, like any other male, tried to put on a wooing act. You know the routine, a nanosecond extra eye contact, a few more nods to whatever she says, and attempts to throw in those one-liners which you know you wouldn't if she weren't there. And it seemed to be working. She leaned forward when she spoke to me, and every now and again, we'd have a small conversation of our own, separate from our group. She laughed at my approach with the fork and knife, and I teased her about her hair band, which had little teddy bears. Yes, we were flirting. A while later, she asked me the question - what did I study? I said engineering, without any particular meaning attached to it.
And then like a cold metal rail, she went stiff. My jokes weren't funny any more. Her eyes wandered to everyone else. What was it? Why? Why? Why? Two days later, I still couldn't get over my great start that had dissipated listlessly upon mentioning my education. Engineer? What was wrong with that? My mom had wanted me to become one since I was five! I had to call her. 'So what happened to you that day, hot and cold, missie?' And then she said, trying to be nice, 'Well, it's just that I am skeptical about engineers as friends. I don't know, they can be, you know, very logical and everything... not very touchy feely'.
Not touchy-feely. Now what the heck did that mean? Well, she obviously did not mean it literally, since girls don't really suggest that sort of stuff, certainly not in the first meeting across the table. I guessed it was something to do with feelings, sort of having an emotional side. The stereotype being, the nerdy guy who sees relationships like laws of physics, to whom love is just a bunch of chemicals going crazy in your brain, and getting to know a person means obtaining their bio-data. It's time to set the record straight. It's true that a lot of what engineers study (and they end up studying quite a lot), has to do with formulaes, laws and numbers. No matter how hard we try, some of the vocabulary we read all day gets into our language. So when my mother said, 'Are you getting married next year or not?' I was liable to say, 'Well, at this moment in time, the probability is relatively low,' and felt it was completely normal to say it. And when my sister went sari shopping and couldn't explain the shade she wanted, I told the shopkeeper the percentages of pink, orange and red in the sari. Yet, ladies, I don't think we're bad at relationships, love and getting to know people. We too, can be touchy-feely, as that is part of our education as well. The reason for this is that most engineering students live in the ultimate educator - boy's hostels. Now, let me explain how this plays into this 'touchy-feely' thing. Relationships. Imagine eating, sleeping, brushing your teeth, bathing (ok rarely this one) and partying with the same people all the time. So, when you are kicking that bathroom door down for the tenth time, or when you stand in line for 'gulab-jamuns' in the mess, and when you are done with the vodka bottle and sharing all your secrets, you know it is good practice. Yes, hostels maketh the man. So, next time you are in a flirtatious situation with the techno types, go on, flirt a bit more. Of course, I am biased towards my kind, but if you find the conversation turning too geeky, just ask them, 'So, what were your hostel days like?' and chances are, you'll see a heart behind the calculator. Coming back to my missie, I thought of what would make me win her over. Flowers... too cheesy. Music... don't know her taste (nor trust mine). Teddy bears... don't even go there. Desperate for some good lines, I just turned it right back at her. 'Yes, I know what you are saying about engineers. The thing is, unless people with depth like you start hanging out with us, we won't get any better. Can you meet me some time for some touchy/feely... oops, I mean coffee/tea?' She giggled. When they giggle, you have won. Hence proved.
----ends----Interesting! My reply to the person who sent me this mail (a girl) was this:
So what do you think about the engineers now?
Did the illustrative proof below lead to an influence in the probability of a change in the way you look at the engineers, and do you think the description below is a necessary and/or sufficient matter to swing your tendencies of treating engineers as equal beings? ;-)
Gosh! Being nerdy comes naturally to me! But swear to God, the one that I love, I love that one more than I possibly can. Heck, now that's a very "un-engineer" statement. How can you exceed 100%? The answer my friend, is being 'touchy feely'!
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Proud to be Indian, relax oye!
The following email came screaming for a reply. What could I do!
-----Original Message-----
AN Indian discovered that nobody can create a folder
anywhere named as "con" in any drive
This is something pretty cool...and unbelievable... At Microsoft the
whole
Team, including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this happened!
Try it out yourself..
--------- Reply---------
"Hmm Please record my name also, as I claim that you can't make a folder with the name "PRN"!
Alright, now coming to the logic behind this (I am surprised who asked Bill Gates and the whole MS team!): There were certain "reserved names" in the underlying OS, that time called DOS - Disk Operating System.
CON was the reserved name for CONsole (i.e. a display system) PRN was the reserved name for PRiNter (i.e. a printer).
These reserved names were used to output to display system, such as a monitor, and a printer respectively.
So to be "backward compatible" such names are disallowed even today. There are more such names.
My sympathy for Bill Gates."
Are we, Indians, really suffering from such an identity crisis? Bah!
And that also brings me to my theory that with each new "batch" of people inducted into the cyberworld, there is an increase in the per capita spam/forwards. More on this later.
By the way who was that Indian? :)
-----Original Message-----
AN Indian discovered that nobody can create a folder
anywhere named as "con" in any drive
This is something pretty cool...and unbelievable... At Microsoft the
whole
Team, including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this happened!
Try it out yourself..
--------- Reply---------
"Hmm Please record my name also, as I claim that you can't make a folder with the name "PRN"!
Alright, now coming to the logic behind this (I am surprised who asked Bill Gates and the whole MS team!): There were certain "reserved names" in the underlying OS, that time called DOS - Disk Operating System.
CON was the reserved name for CONsole (i.e. a display system) PRN was the reserved name for PRiNter (i.e. a printer).
These reserved names were used to output to display system, such as a monitor, and a printer respectively.
So to be "backward compatible" such names are disallowed even today. There are more such names.
My sympathy for Bill Gates."
Are we, Indians, really suffering from such an identity crisis? Bah!
And that also brings me to my theory that with each new "batch" of people inducted into the cyberworld, there is an increase in the per capita spam/forwards. More on this later.
By the way who was that Indian? :)
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