Of Hawaii, and a tag

Ladies and Gentlemen: Mister Felicity – Sriram A

Ladies and Gentlemen: Mister Felicity’s sidekick – Anand V 😀

Hamana Hamana Hamana. -Who the fudge said this

Jhaad paida hote hain, bacche ugte hain. -A good friend on trees, plankton and what not.

It’s rather expensive to goto Hawaii. I was having a look the other day.

Luftansa flies from Del – Fra – LA – Honalulu. Total time of 32 hrs. Total cost 85K.

British Airways flies from Del – Lon – San Fransisco – Honalulu – Total time of 40 hrs. Total Cost 90K

China Air: Del – Taipei – Honalulu. 53K

Air France: Del – Paris – Atlanta – Honalulu: 75K.

American: Del – Chicago – Honalulu: 63K.

Thankfully these are return fares. Meaning you dont have to hitchhike from Honalulu …  Anyhoo

The hopes are up,

The spirits high

We’re planning to go

To Hawaiiii………

Moving on, Vasan tagged me. And I’m bored enough of the p trips to the bathroom since morning to fill in the tag. So here goes:

One thing you are afraid of

Insects.

Two unforgettable incidents

Getting into IIIT (I’m the fourth last chap in my batch based on AIR) and IIIT

Three books

LOTR, Hitchhiker, Harry Potter, Calvin and Hobbes …

Four beautiful women

Aishwarya Rai (deliciously stunning), Scarlett Johansen (whoop-de-doo), Monica Belucci (Ravishingly HOT) and Josie Maron (of before)

Five Fooditems

Curd, Pizza, Chaat (pani-puri and the like), Paneer, Milk Shakes, Omlettes …

Six oft used words

holy s***, damn, thoo, cha, nyaah-nyaah, hehe, hmm

Seven things awesome about me

I’m sure it’d be more fun if you chaps filled this out in the comments.

Film personalities (Eight)

Aishwarya Rai, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Ehsaan Quereshi, Al Pacino, Pink Floyd

Movies nine

Bah, Stupid question but off the top of my head, in a random order – The mask, Gladiator, Raincoat, Mulan, Braveheart, Flushed away, etc etc etc

Music ten

Comfortably Numb, Lost for words, Stairway to Heaven, Only when I sleep, Lift me up, Porcelain, Bitter sweet sympony, Barso Re, Tere Bina (I’m just typing my playlist eh :P)

List of jobless souls tagged by me:

Baba

Tipo (get him back to posting)

Sid

Vishnu

Patney

Sus

Vasan (trying to create the proverbial infinite loop :D)

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PS – Flushed away good

PS1 – Pans LAbyrinth good

PS2 – People getting admits – when’s it my turn?

PS3 – The Kanpur Expose and Manish’s MP connections coming up next.

PS4 – Sriram rocked Mr Felicity

PS5 – Someone remind me to post the Mr Felicity post

PS6 – Eklavya sucks.

PS7 – ManU v Liverpool tonite 6:15PM

PS8 – How’s about a comment eh?

PS9 – This is the end.

PS10 – There is no more

PS11 – Why are you still reading?

PS12 – Dont you get it yet?

PS13 – Holy hell !!! You are persistent

PS14 – Okay, Just one more: Kanpur Sucks.

PS15 – That’s it Folks

PS16 – I said That’s It

PS17 – Will you stop reading

PS18 – Go away, Shoo, Come back another day

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The Maggi Incident

STATUTARY WARNING: The experiments described in this post have been performed by a seasoned professional. Do not try this at home. The author of this post is not liable for any medical expenses that you might incur. Oh, and please bear with the first few paragraphs, it gets better …

First floor seemed to have some sucky food. So did ground floor. I figured, lets have maggi. The 2 minute noodles.

They seriously need to rename that. Stupid ass 2 minutes. I refuse to eat anything that takes more time to cook than eat.

Anyhoo, as I sat on the bed, watching the steam rise from the pan, I had an epiphany. Figured, lets add some zest, some spice, some tadka, some pep, some masti to the maggi.

So, the water’s getting hot, the steam rising, taking on a crimson hue from the red hot spring in the stove and I’m thinking, what can I do to make the maggi better. A quick scan of my room reveals oregano, ketchup, chilli flakes, sugar, milk and magic masala lays as the other edible items.

The last time I tried milk with some edible food item was the infamous Pasta Incident. That was last year, when Manish, Anand and I had got a couple of packets of Instant Pasta. The pasta had turned out to be decent but all the while it was cooking my room was filled with vomit smell.

Hence, milk was out. I was in no mood for Sweet and Sour Maggi so I knocked sugar off the list. The lays I was saving for later. That left me with oregano, ketchup and chill iflakes.

An interesting Recipe

So, the water’s on, I put in the taste maker, 3 packets of oregano, two packets of chilli flakes and one packet of ketchup (NB – All are standard ingredients, available with any dominoes pizza). The colour of the water isn’t all that exciting but then I don’t care a heck of a lot for looks anyway …

Now, I’m sitting, stirring the maggi so that it doesn’t stick, looking at the crimson yellow colour of the water and wondering “This should be fun“. A bit of stirring later, I figure its done, put off the stove. Get on the bed, put on some seinfeld and get ready to enjoy my own creation.

There was a sense of pride, a sense of accomplishment. I felt vaguely elated and suprised at my new found creative culinary talents. My mind was racing – I’d call it the New and Improved Maggi. Perhaps even name it after me. There’d be endorsements, and advertisements and what not. I’d be rich even before I started working.

My reverie was interuppted by my nose telling my brain – Whoa!! I don’t think you should eat that. And then my brain went “Do not insult my cuisine bitch”. In hindsight, I will tend to remember Pink Floyd and them going – Unheeded Warnings: I thought I thought of everything.

I picked up the spoon, and I will not hesitate to add that with a sense of foreboding I took a bite out of my own creation.  There was a gamut of signals going from my tongue to my brain. The most prominent amongst these was What the FUDGE are you making me eat?. As it went down my oesophagus, I could feel every muscle there cursing, screaming and whining.The first bite hit the stomach and my stomach contracted involuntarily. Every inch of the stomach was straining to not send my creation back up the way it came.

Of course, my pride led me to think “The next bit would be better“. To the great astonishment and infinitely greater dismay of the eighty million neurons in my brain it wasn’t. In fact the next ten odd bites were exponentially worse. It was here that my common sense (a so far sleeping part of my concious) kicked in. The rest of the New and Improved Maggi was sent down the sink and I was left with a weird feeling in my stomach and a slight worry of what was going to happen in the morning.

Anyway, rationalizing, I figured I wasn’t that good at creating new items that showcased my culinary genious. However, I did realize that I am very good at creating vomit inducing cuisine and purgative items. Perhaps the new line of cuisine from Maggi would be The strong, highly effective digestive system fix. (NB – If you come up with a better name, talk to me. We can discuss some endorsements etc …).

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PS – Cybergames and ug4 mailing list seeing some activity.

PS1 – Go-A

PS2 – Civ 4 decent

PS3 – Peesu = bitch

PS4 – Tipo, Vishnu back from vacation.

The birthday post

You aren’t 21 unti your rear has been kicked so hard that you have to improvise while sleeping. -CeG <oBelIX>

Raul has very quick feet. -CeG <oBelIX>(You know who I am talking about ;p)

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Now, the above paragraph is not one of mine, for if it was then I would be an acclaimed writer. However, its pretty much a shining example of how the English language should be used and not used. Anyhoo, I am trying to work that paragraph into my SOP somehow. So far I have got squat.

Have mostly apping to do. “Apping” is the new buzzword, the term coined for applying. Sent the transcripts the other day. Also ate very nice pizza for 100 bucks.

For those of you eventually planning to write GRE and go abroad please do all this stuff very early. Try to avoid last minute thingies … they almost always lead to a lot of “Holy <choose from ****, ****, crap>”.

Am finally going to finish FarCry. Pretty good FPS. Tried ceasor 4 the other day. It sucks so much that I had to avoid taking a magnet and manually erasing it off the harddrive (and peesu wanted to try it multiplayer. lol).

COming back to the birthday, Mangla displayed some very quick thinking and agility to get the **** out of the second floor. If he can move that fast during the sports meet then he might have a shot at the 400m gold. Else finally I would have got my revenge MuHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa.

Oh and another unique thing was that Manish Jain was not kicked. For the uninformed Manish Jain is the universal default in UG4.

Placements going along. Will refrain from comment until the placement committee comments.

Halleysblog is back. The incessant emails made a difference.

Halley played warcraft (For those of you who dont believe me, I have a pic).

If anyone has contacts in MIT please do tell … I’d like to go there ;p

Ciao

technorati tags:birthday, life

ACT – A Conspiracy Theory

There is a fine difference between unemployment and joblessness. -Vishnu Modi

Boredom is overrated. -CeG<oBelIX>

Good things to give to me this birthday / christmas / <you really dont need an occasion for giving> : a PS3, a WII, an XBOX etc … -CeG <oBelIX>

I have never been a fan of conspiracy theories. Of course, the fact that I could not think any did not help much. Anyhoo, I came up with my first conspiracy theory. It’s not exactly what I would call original. Actually, its not even in the same zip code as original.

I used to watch a lot of cricket at home. Hence, there is still a piquant interest in the blessed game. My conspiracy theory is simple: Someone was match fixing. Now we will see a dramatic set of Indian victories culminating in India winning the series. The fact that Rahul Dravid falls sick so comfortably only means that he found out about it and refused to be a part of it. (I know the theory has many loose ends but lemme have my two bits of joy).

So, when you see the crowd thin at the television on an India SA match
day, well before time is up it means that we are in big big shit. It also means that my magnum opus of Conspiracy Theories is in big shit too. However, I am still trundling through these last few waking moments under the hope that HB Singh will win it for us. (and save my theory). (If someone tells me that he is not playing then …)

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PS – Fauji accuses me of copyright violation. How evil is that.

PS1 – Booshi kicks too hard

PS2 – TOEFL soon. Life not rocking.

PS3 – It is a rumour that we loose to the non-IIITians in dota.

PS4 – Tipo is already working on Honours Project 2. Someone please kick him.

PS5 – I want my own satellite so that I can access the net a lot faster

PS6 – Did you know: Overrated means make too high an estimate of. Underrated means make too low an estimate of.

PS7 – Baba’s last few posts were awesome. Halley’s last post was also very good. I am, of course, trying to maintain the average here. (pun intended). If you did not get the pun then you are Anand Vasudev.

PS8 – There were more PS’s in my head. They have gone out for a walk now. They will be back later.

PS9 – The last PS was initially PS3.

technorati tags:BC, General, Cricket, Conspiracy

A job well done

There is infinite joy in doing a mundane job to perfection. -CeG<oBelIX>

Good Joke. -<DTA>Zaknaf3in

Okay, this post is a little late (oh and the begininning is slightly philosophical). At home, I was reasonably jobless. Dad was going out on a trip so he needed something let us say an object about 3 feet long, two feet wide and two and a half feet high. [More clues as to the identity of the object follow].Of course the dimensions are probabilistic which imply that they are subject to change depending on your perception of a foot.

Since I am the **engineer** of the family, I was entrusted the task of packing the damn thing so that it wouldn’t tear (Another Clue). If I had been a couple of years younger, I’d have said IIT prep or something and made my sister do it. However, since my sister is kinda busy, and I have become a responsible young chap I decided to approach the challenge head on.

The first problem was the lack of equipment. There was no box measuring 3 feet long, 2 feet wide and 2.5 feet high. The stupid thing would not directly fit in a suitcase or attachi. I couldn’t even saw it in half or something like that. (Another Clue). So, I had to improvise.

To cut a long story short, summarize two hours of work in a sentence, I first wrapped it in newspaper. Then put a layer of a new hybrid material BubblePlasticPolyThene around it. (BubblePlasticPolyThene – is the material made when you run out of Plastic Polythene and use bubblewrap …). All of this was held in place with Cello-Tape.

Anyway, the point of the whole story is that it was fun. And I was happy after finishing the packing. I was even happier when my Mom said that I could get a job at a Mover’s company (This does not in anyway imply that I am going to get a job at a Mover’s company. Anyone asking for a treat on this account will be lynched – unless they are bigger and stronger than me). Thus the saying – There is infinite joy in doing a mundane job to perfection. This does not in anyway imply that you keep doing mundane jobs perfectly. You’d probably get bored out of your skull with all the joy ;p.

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PS – The next post on the living hell of watching Kasauti Zindagi Ki

PS1 – More posts coming up …

PS2 – Best of luck for Catters.

PS3 – This is the end

If you are bored ….

The difference between xams and xmas is just one letter. -CeG <oBelIX>

Two blog posts in a day. That has got to be some kind of a record. Especially after a huge while of inactivity. So, the point here is what do I write. Given the lack of material, and the lack of ideas I pretty much have nothing funny, humourous, innovative, thought provoking to say.

However, this post does have its merits. During exam times, especially when people are preparing I like to have something fun to do.

• You can’t watch a movie because a movie will take a few hours. And at the end of the movie there’d be this feeling that you wasted waay too much time.
• You can’t watch a show like OTH or something because there is nothign new to watch
• You can’t go and play CS / Dota because no one will come to lab
• Playing in the lab means going to the lab and mostly you dont feel like that
• Sleeping also takes up way too much time.
• Very few people online for chatting purposes

The ideal thing to do is to read a blog post. The problem with this is that there are very few people who blog during exams. Studious chaps like T.Prashant dont write. Ultra studious chaps “whose blogs would be fun to post insulting comments on” like Manish Jain have posted only one post. The Chennai Chaps like Wooster, Anand, and Bobo-RAM do not blog. The fun to read bloggers like Gokul and VVHB have been hibernating for a while now. Amd one daily dose of VBH philosophy is more than enough. Of course, Mythalez has resorted to beautiful poems instead of accounts of life in the UK. (I dont like poetry a lot …). So, this post is sort of to make up for all that is missing.

The second most ideal thing to do is waste time on orkut. Generally exam and holiday time is when I am most active on orkut. Sometimes even posting 3-4 scraps in a day. (to the same person).

I just saw the vertical scroll bar. And I was worried about having nothign to write. And I can see some PS’s as well. Wow …

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PS – they are knocking off Saddam Hussein

PS1 – Manish Jain is playing NFSC … A new era has dawned

PS2 – This is the end

technorati tags:BC

ARP

Going to class is not a solution to boredom. -CeG <oBelIX>

Before you start getting all geeky on me, ARP has nothing to do with the Address Resolution Protocol. It basically stands for A Random Post. Kind of seems to be the in thing nowadays given VBH and Running Man Electrified’s blogs.

But, Fear Not. There will be exiguously many smileys in the post. (One of the advantages of learning GRE is that you know the meanings of a lot of words). The usage may be horrendously off but then you got to take a chance.

I gave one of the worst presentations in Cognitive Science. I figured, that with 14 slides, I’d have a heck of a lot to say. So, I would probably take a lot of time. Therefore, I spoke faster than a hampster on speed. Frankly, even I had no idea that I could speak that fast. The only good thing was the conclusion of the first section.

I figure some of you remember Raul. From the post on random conversations on yahoo. Anyhoo, his presentation once again proved that he is pretty much the king, queen and jack of smooth talking. I figure that even Wooster would have a hard time beating him.

Oh, and I almost forgot the customary jibe at VBH. He has complained of being alone early in the mornings with nothing to do. (Not much we can do there). Of course, I took the liberty of estimating just how many smileys are there in a VBH post. And guess what – there is approximately one smiley in 0.83 paragraphs. (Yes, it comes from actual Math). The method used for computing this was to find the differential of the co-efficient of textual identity with respect to the rate of change of the lengths of paragraphs and then integrate it over all his blog posts in a complex quasi dimensional dynamic pseudo random bivariant space.

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PS – I do not wish to flame anyone :muhahahaha:

PS1 – Thank you for not smoking is nice

PS2 – Monica Belluci stars in Asterix Obelix and Cleopatra

PS3 – OTH is nice

PS4 – Herores pretty much sucks

PS5 – DF rocks … Join DF do iBC.

PS6 – Football matches under way.

PS7 – Have done little work this week. Plan to remedy that tonight and tomorrow.

PS8 – I ate breakfast today. 6 Dosas. Hooray.

PS9 – Turned out to be a reasonable enough post.

PS10 – Peesu lost his last two games as Naga Siren

technorati tags:Random, Humour

The maiming and mutilation of the malignant bottle green moth

The 19th of September, a bad day for bottle green moths and a very good one for the sadistic son of a whatchamacallit who programmed the GRE testing software.

The day before GRE – Monday

On Sunday, 2 days before GRE, I had done virtually nothing productive. The low point of the day had been loosing like crap to Yaar. The high point being Didier Drogba’s goal against Liverpool. Anyway, I had a lot of words in my head. It was like close your eyes and there’d be words (I wish I could draw).

Anyway, Manish incessantly large amount of studying had pretty much everyone on their nerves. Besides he had been getting consistently high scores. Very high scores. And do not take this in any negative connotation, when I say very, what I actually mean is very very very high scores.(Yes. This is indeed the last jibe at Manish wrt GRE).

On the day before GRE, I had pretty much decided that I would not study too much. I wrote a few practice tests. Was reasonably happy at the fact that if I got the score that I’d been averaging I’d be pretty happy (I just reread the sentence. WTF. Yeah, read the last sentence again). Anyhoo, all things aside did nothing much the whole day. Other than

FIFA – Wherein yaar was hammered 3-0 by yours truly. 10 minutes after a sordid, moribund first half, Van Nistelrooy scored. A brilliant through pass by Louis Saha found him unmarked just outside the Real Madrid goal. And he took a stunning shot straight into the top right corner. Rooney then added insult to injury by scoring from a similar position just 10 minutes later. And Real Madrid could not quite cope with that. The icing on the cake was Nistelrooy slotting in a penalty in the 80th minute when a Real Madrid defender committed an atrocious challenge in the box.

IHQ – InterHouse Quiz. After three years, me, fauji and arun made it to the finals. Not that we had tried any time. Each year, whenever the IHQ competition mail would come, we would sedulously go and write the prelims. This time we qualified. Of course, I used to be a way better quizzer before I came here (all the computers have sollied my brain). Anyhoo, It started off badly by GS picking us number 6, just after Supreeth’s team. Cutting a long story short we surprisingly got 3rd place … surprisingly because we made a few careless errors towards the end.

The night before GRE

The plan had been to play dota after quiz. However, due to it being pretty late, I figured I’d go to sleep. That is when “the maiming and mutilation of the malignant bottle green moth” took place. Well, not a moth in so many words, it was a caterpillar. I have no idea about its malignanceishness (yeah yeah, blogger’s licence). However, it was definately mutilated and it was definately bottle green.

Now, before you get any weird ideas that lead to me being a mutilator of bottle green moths let me explain. I do not like any insects (I use the word like in the strongest sense of the word dislike). So, I figured, the fastest way to kill it would be to drop the spare SMPS that’s lying around. (For those of you who are wondering why I have spare SMPS’s lying around there are a couple of posts that say so). I picked up the SMPS, took aim and missed hit. Well, not so much as missed as the stupid thing moving at the last second and me hitting the bottom half of it.

Anyhoo, it was not a pretty sight. Now my room had the guts of a dead insect, broken pieces of mirror, a ton of dirt, reddish brown shoes, a heap of unwashed clothes all lying on the floor.

I went to sleep. Could not exactly goto sleep. My heartbeat was 120ish. (I just counted 120 beats. Could not see the time because the lights were out and I was trying to sleep). For the first time, before an exam, I felt scared. I also felt underprepared. I also felt overconfident. Then the logician and rationalist in me went what the ****? You cant feel all that at the same time you jack***. Its a contradiction in terms.

While this tete-a-tete or me-vs-me was going on, time was flying by.  By the time I fell asleep it must have been two.

The day of GRE

This is for another post.

The day after GRE

Well, today I woke up with one thing in mind. Have fun. Oh and clean the room. So now, I sit in a nice clean room, no idea about what I should think about my GRE scores. Also, I am wondering whether VBH is going to immolate himself by stepping into a burning pyre or putting kerosene and setting it alight. I mean, I gotta figure out whether I need a bucket of water of a bucket of sand before going and telling him the score. (Yeah, I aint putting the score up here ).

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PS – holy hell, how did I write such a long post?

PS1 – Flock is nice for writing posts

PS2 – Must do BTP

PS3 – Must play all new games on LAN

PS4 – Hopefully WLAN better with new room arrangement.

PS5 – Next post definately Wooster and the Weird Wacky Woohoos

technorati tags:GRE, BC

the internet

This post is a complete fabrication. No portion of this post is true. It is intended in best of humour.

What if you were the sysadmin? And you were asked to explain why the internet was so slow. Here are some responses …
Response 1

Since we have a wireless connection, the actual throughput depends on the weather.

Response 2

Since we have a wireless connection, mobile phone signals interfere with it. So, if everyone was to stop using mobile phones we would get better speeds.

Response 3

We have implemented a dynamic load balancing algorithm at the proxy server. Any IP that is not using the internet gets priority. We are going to publish this in a reputed journal. And then you all can kiss our asses.

Response 4

Its not the problem with our internet connection. Its just that the particular site that you want to open is being DOS’d at that time

Response 5

Its the ISP

Response 6

We are running a warez / pr0n site. We are going to be floating in $$$$. So long jackasses.

Response 7

Read BOFH. Your life is way better than that.

Response 8

MUHAHAHAHAHAHA

Response 9
Because we also like to use the internet. At full speed

Response 10

MUHAHAHAHAHAHA
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PS – If anyone has a smart ass comment please do comment 😀

PS1 – This post was inspired by siddarth ravi M

PS2 – I have not studied for a day.

PS3 – If someone can implement Ranta’s idea it’d rock.