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Recently came across a nice strip. Can't resist to post it here.

Happy Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving is a phenomenon special to North America. Traditionally celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, Thanksgiving is a big time holiday. Americans must be blessing those who decided to have thanksgiving not on a date, but thursday, which results in a four-day weekend.

I have come to understand (thanks to FRIENDS) this is festival is considered to be a sort of family and close friends get-together thing. This is especially relevant in USesque countries where family generally stays in different ends of the country. Turkey somehow is flavour of this season. This festival brings them a chance to be together and express their gratitude for the things whatever they are thankful for, but most thankful this year would be the producers of Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire. Already started with 102 million dollars in first weekend, fourth movie in this fabulous series is expecting to continue its run for the money in thanksgiving weekend and could easily be largest block-buster of the year, surpassing all previous HP movies. Only time will tell. Anyways, Wishing you all HAPPY THANKSGIVING with a couple of nice comic strip (including my favourite PHDcomics :-) ).


Link of the day : The first thanksgiving

Hats-off Manju...

There is no dearth of career opportunities in India if you want to make a career in corruption. And you are in big trouble if you are on the other side.

It was around two years back when I came to know about Satyendra Dubey, whose efforts to stop corruption cost him his life. When his second death anniversary is approaching, I hear a good news and a bad news. Good news is that end of 15-year Laloo-raj is very much in sight and much more bad news is that one more fighter has been sacrificed in his fight.

IOC official seals petrol pump, is killed

This time it's an IIM-L alumni, Manju Nathan, an IOC official who stood up to the corruption and sealed a petrol pump and received same prize which Dubey got. I know you are making a sigh and feel pity for Manju and will forget by next week or next month, if not tomorrow, may be so would I. Is this what they deserve? Is this what they die for? This incidence took place two days ago and I didn't came to know about it through any newsagency, but a blog. They were all busy in Covering NDA win and speculating whether Chennai-ODI will be wahsed-off or not. In few days, some online petition will start and lots of us will sign it and would demand independent inquiry. Is that all we would do? They deserve much more than that. It's not only about filing petitions or give support to the person. It's about living the principles they died for. I grieve his death, but more than that I am proud of his principles and his boldness to stand upto them. Please don't start bashing politicians and start crying about corruptions everywhere and blah-blah. Better would be to strengthen belief in our own principles and live upto them no matter what. That, according to me, would be true obituary. Hats-off to you Manju. May his soul rest in peace.

It's 15th November...

Original plan was to call her up and tell her that she was lucky enough to share b'day with me and she could join me in my b'day celebrations. She could fly-in for a day or two and then get back to whatever she is doing right now, which is NOTHING!! Although overwhelmed, she denied and said she would rather celebrate it with family. ok. Have fun then!!! No points for guessing that it was indeed Sania Mirza.

Enough of sillyness!! but when it comes to birthdays, I am still like a 10 year old, who expects lots of gifts, lots of wishes, lots of phonecalls(otherwise how would you justify buying a prepaid in so hurry and sending out numbers all around) and lots of mails (well, that's all I get these days). Birthday bash started with Kicking & Screaming. To be specific, Madhav and Bharat were kicking and I was screaming. That's not fair. As soon as it struck 12, I started getting calls from multiple directions. Not only mine, but Uday's and Madhav's mobile also started ringing. I had to do multiplexing all the time, and between all these I got bumps, GPLs while I was still talking on the phone. The callers must be sympathized with me by my screaming, but our neighbour didn't. They started screaming even louder than I was. "shouting at midnight..","you are grown-ups, don't have enough sense not to shout so loud at night..","people are sleeping at this time of night.". I thought of replying, you are making more noise then we did, but was not in position to say that. Apologies did the job, but it helped me in a way and brought Bharat and Maddi to Sudden Death ;-) To my pleasure whole day phone kept ringing, messages kept pouring in. Happy enough!!

In the evening, went for dinner and then had ice-cream, but I still miss that IITKesque b'day celebrations with a big bunch of people, cake cutting-eating-decorating, CC snacks and all of it, but it was fun overall. Waiting for November 15, 2006 :-)

Link of the day : Birthday Paradox

Dilbert picks IIT.. again!!

I have been away from the blogging for quite sometime. Last week was quite busy with family due to Diwali and it was wonderful Diwali. (That would be next thing on the blog :-) )

I decided to start again with some light and heartwarming. IITs are back to Dilbert once again. Last time it made Big news when Scott Adams had all praise for IITs, with a character called Asok who is IIT graduate. Here is the latest one, which appeared on 31st October :

The Thesis

Today was getting bored,and was surfing and saw the link of PhD comics on Puneet's blog. Had heard of it but didn't read it much, so thought of giving a shot and started reading from the start and man.. it rocks!!! well, I am not a PhD but atleast was a masters' student and can relate very much to it. Here is just an example through movie. Which one did you ask? What else can it be apart from THE ONE.Go through it...

Movin'

It's official now. I am leaving Symantec Software and would be joining Read-Ink Technologies, Bangalore by the end of next week.

Tomorrow will be my last day here at company. Moving too fast eh? I joined just two months back and already packing my bags. When I was finally done with my thesis work at IITK, I didn't have much time to think about as to what I want to do with my career, and just to be on safe side, I opted for Veritas Software (now Symantec). Two months over here gave me some time to think and finally became firm in my plans for PhD and so decided to move to Read-ink, experience of which can help me in apping. Read-Ink basically works in Handwriting Recognition technology, which is very much related to my field of interest (Machine Learning, Image Processing). It took me a bit long to consolidate my faith in myself and my vision, but finally I did it. In the words of Neo,I've made my choice. :-) so that probably would explain my early shift.

Two months here at Pune was fun. Pune is really a good city and makes me feel like home especially after living at Kanpur for two years. Not only city, but around the city there are lots of places to just roam about. Experience was enriched by friends over here Gopal, Somu, Shaji, Shweta, Dolly, my cousin Romil (and his room mates, those kids are fun to be with) and for short time Naishadh too. At Veritas too, these two months were full of fun and Frolic. Sunil's support made me comfortable. My team mates Madan, Nitin, Naval were fun to be with. How can I not mention my cabin-mate Suresh, whose interest made me too move into Stock Market :-) Abhay, Pooja, Girish, Bhaskar, Sachin, Sameer, Peeyush, Shubhangi, Ishwar to mention few more whom I befriended in so little time. Although I wished to work more for Frolic and be a large part of it, I couldn't. Still it was fun to be with Frolic members Yogesh, Suchitra, Rolly, Nitin, Nikhil, Nikita, Amol. During training period at Veritas somebody had mentioned to me Your first job is like your first girlfriend. In future, you may get better, but you'd never forget the first one. So true!!

Was that just a weekend?

Sometimes you do so many things together that you forget that you did it in small time of two days? That was precisely the case with this weekend.

This weekend went out to a picnic courtesy Veritas. umm.. Where to start? Let's start where we started. It was not so hard to convince Gopal, who was enjoying his well-earned weekend sleep, to drop me at Parihar Chowk for the bus. Left Pune at 8. Things were going on as boring as this post on my blog is right now. Inspite of nice Pune-Mumbai express highway we were travelling on City roads as driver hadn't filled up the fuel tank and worst part of it is Pune Roads. It's talk of the town these days. Potholes everywhere and add to it traffic. and I was like Oh God! Why am I here? It would have been much better if I had been to Ahmedabad to bid adieu to my dear friend Jay, but things changed once we entered the express highway. When you are on way from Mumbai to Pune or the other way, travelling itself is a great pleasure. Throughout the highway, it's like you are in altogether a different world, especially in monsoon, where you are surrounded by green mountains and clouds and add to glory it was raining too when we were on our away and my agony?? just like that.. it's gone, nobody has ever seen since then :-)

We reached Rishi Garden Resort which is around 100 km from Pune. And we were ready to rock!! Swimming Pools, Water resorts have some magical effect on me :-) It was long back at IITK when I used to plunge swimming pool, but adrenaline started pumping when I saw water rides and swimming pool and wasted no time before diving. It was total fun and frolic to enjoy after such a long time, albeit I had one regret that couldn't dance long in rain dancing as had to move for lunch and then to Alibag, a nearby beach. In the afternoon we were ready to move to Alibag.

The best thing about Pune is that there are lots of places to roam around in vicinity. While going to Alibag, we were moving along through different mountains and just after some time we were at beach!! That was pretty cool ;-) Alibag is not glamorous beach as Juhu or Nariman Point is, but that's the good thing actually. Not many people come here and thus no pollution, no crowd. It was wonderful evening. We had a walk, played football. Someone said that A man becomes philosopher when he goes to sea. True! Atleast for me, many-a-times, I just feel like sitting on the beach and keep thinking. I start putting facts in balance sheet of my life. Anyways, it didn't end there, we had been told that the fort of Shivaji (visible at the horizon of the sea in pic) can be reached just on the foot at the time of low tide. It didn't look probable as it was more than a kilometer away from shore, but again god helps those who help themselves :-) so four brave men started their journey and believe me although it looked very far water never raised above our waist. And we celebrated our triumph to the fort. Soon many other followed. We visited canons and temples over there and not to forget all our stupid Mangal Pandey acts over there.

The night and next day morning was all-filled up with games. Housie, Ad Mad Show, Treasure hunts and what not... BTW, no luck for me as I didn't win in any game until next day morning Naval's Ballon blowing, my puzzle solving did the trick and we won the first prize in the team event.. yeah!!! and won a nightlamp enabled clock with alarm ;-)

We had planned a trek in early morning to the fort (visible in the pic) and Karnala bird Sanctuary , but we were advised not to move early because of very dense forest and high probability of snakes. so we moved after lunch, but only 6 of us as rest of us decided to stay and resort only. It was yet another joyful patch of our trip, although we couldn't make it to the top of the mountain due to time constraints, but atleast we moved up quite a lot and guess what!! we also got full mobile coverage over there, which was not at resort ;-) and came back. Yet another daring act by few brave men (and yes a woman :-) ). back to base and a photograph session courtesy our photographer Nitin.

During this trip I had some strokes. Strokes of dance. Unsufficient time for rain dance, DJ arranged by another group during first night, and garba arranged by Gujarati group who arrived there Sunday afternoon, all added to my desire to dance and that was finally fulfilled when we started disc in the bus itself, this time courtesy Girish. Dumb charades and Antakshari followed soon. Speaking in 7th standard student way, masti masti mein Pune kab aa gaya pata hi nahi chala!!! Yeh trip mein zindagi bhar nahi bhuloonga. It was indeed a memorable trip! During trip I couldn't carry camera as I didn't have one. Some memories are best kept in hearts than in photographs (or probably that's other way to say Damn!! I should've taken a cam with me.)

PS:- "someone" might notice that there is no solo photograph of mine this one. Don't ask me who that is. He knows I am pointing at him.

The tech commandments

BTW, 11th one was "Thou Shalt not check your email every 5 minutes" :P

Ganpati Bappa Moriya

The best thing about staying in different part of country is that you gotta see the best of all. Well, Kanpur is an exception, because there is no such thing as "best thing in Kanpur" ;-) Anyway, after coming here I got to see best of two places.

Last month, I had been to Mumbai and luckily landed up there at Janmashtami itself. Who doesn't know about towering matkis at this Govinda festival in Mumbai and I got chance to see that too. On the road just opposite to our house, they had placed a matki and it was so much fun to see they finally broke the matki. They did it in first shot!!! Dadar area is said to have highest matki which takes 7-8 layers of human pyramid to reach, but couldn't be there.

Now this week I am at Pune at the time of Ganesh Chaturthi. It's said that Maharastra has best Ganpati festival in India and Pune has best Ganpati festival in Maharastra. In our gully itself we have 6 ganpatis !!!!! Mind well, it's just a gully with not more than 150-200 metres. Concept of Sarvajanik Ganpati was given by Lokmanya Tilak until then people used to celebrate Ganpati in their household only, which people still do. but Sarvajanik Ganpati has taken a big leap since then. Yesterday we decided to go to have darshan of Dagdu Sheth Ganpati, which is quite famous all over Pune and Maharastra. Due to our foolishness and ignorance about the area, we walked a lot but that was all worth it. Pune indeed is Ganpati Capital of India. :-) I remembered my good old days when I as a child used to go to have darshan of all sorts of Ganpatis at Baroda. A friend with me was getting bored initially and was giving all sort of philosophy (such as ganpati is ganpati, ek ke darshan karo yaa dus ke bas shraddha honi chahiye types), but I was not in mood to listen and thoroughly enjoyed my visit. Ganpati Bappa... Moriya...

Why I love Linux

It's been a month since I am here and for a month I have been working on Win2K at my office. Haven't seen Linux in loooong time. Missing it, especially today.

Today I needed to do some scripting in Windows, for some personal work. Due to inefficiency in finding some advanced features for wget and in the presence any good download manager, I needed to shift towards this scripting. Oh God, What an unfortunate soul. Need to work in windows and that too with scripting. After coming to real world (read industry) I started loving linux more, you know why? because here you can't use pirated softwares any more and this is not IITK, where you just switch on your DC++ and download any bloody software within seconds. Thought, Let's take a dive and at unfortunate moment started scripting.

Now, I needed to make a FOR loop. After trying out different keywords found out following command

FOR %%e IN (1 2 3 4 5 6) DO ...

Now why would you need to type two '%' to mark a variable?? Anyways, this command will run for six time take value from 1 to 6. Now what would you do if you need to run loop for say 100 times are you going to write (1 2 3 ... 100). Well, you have to, I couldn't find any other technique. So thought let's try some another technique, something similar to while loop, implement using notorious GOTO. Now the question was how to set a variable and use it. tried out various combination

i=100
%i=100
%%i=100
...

Neither worked and suddenly remembered good old days where somehow I studied AUTOEXEC.BAT and they used something like SET for setting a variable. %$@@#$%%@$#. What the hell? why to type something extra as SET, I bet even Bill Gates won't be able to tell you that. Don't lose the spirit, go ahead. I thought. Now, came the next ultimate question, how to increment a variable? again combinations...

i=%i+1
i=%%i+1
%%i=%i%+1
...

Again, no luck. There exists something like INCR in dos, but for some reason that won't work in Win2K, so here is where I am stuck up. No clue to get out of this. Don't think I didn't Google for any of this stuff. After hard work on Google, I am pouring out my frustration here. Should get back to search now I guess. God bless me!!

Recent breakthrough : Finally managed to find out the way to increment a variable. it goes

SET /A i += 1

Now don't ask me why to put extra /A for doing so, in one other achievement, I found out that IF syntax would be like

IF NOT "i"="100"

but I am still unaware about use of < or > in IF, because if I use those, it says unexpected end of statement or something like that. Let it be whatsoever it is, I am done with my job. After I was done with my download thing, I am enjoying the geeky strips I downloaded and sharing one which is very pertinent with this one.

Google Talk

Big G has struck again and this time it's Instant Messenger Service. After rounds of rumours and denials, it's finally there and it's called, Google Talk. Agent Kujan was right. "Rumour is not a rumour that doesn't die" :-)

As Google's trademark, it's just beta as of now. Official google client is available only for windows, but as it supports jabber protocol you can use iChat for MAC and Gaim for linux. As of now, it doesn't have many features. Only basic text chatting and voice chatting, not even emoticons and no audibles, nicknames... NOTHING. Owing to which client is very light and easy to use. It has raised lots of criticism for Google, because when Google launches something, people expect it to be out-of-the-box thing. Take for example, Gmail, which forced email market leaders like Yahoo! and hotmail to increase the mailbox size. Similarly, Google Earth. Where in the case of GTalk, there is nothing new, infact much less than state-of-the-art IM services.

BUT, look at it from this point of view. Google is just trying to add a dimension to its Google Universe. It's a universe. A universe where user can avail all the facilities and don't have to switch between providers. (Much more coming up, rumours say that Google is also coming up with Paypal like system) Everything in just one login and one account, so this is just another dimension, which doesn't deny the scope of lots of development before official release. Imagine the future (I bet it won't be too far) where in all you need to do is just say few words and Google will do rest of the job for you. One point I noticed especially is the voice chat GTalk provides. Quality of voice is really good and is almost real time. First day feedback has been satisfactory as per my survey goes (Launched before less than 24 hours could be the reason, which results in lesser initial traffic as compared to Y! or MSN, but just wait-and-watch). The buzz is also that Google may extend voice chat to phone lines. Yes, you would be actually able to make a call to landline phones through GTalk. BTW, it's official announcement has not been done yet on Google Blog, which may solve lots of puzzles and may reveal some of the Google's plan for improvement in GTalk. Hold your breaths till then...

Quote of the day :- A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Link of the day :- So who cares about pennies huh?

Jugaad

I learned this word during my stay at Kanpur, only to realize that I was Jugaading all along my life although I didn't know the word ;-) Jugaad is formally defined as follows:

Jugaad n. An improvised or jury-rigged solution; inventiveness, ingenuity, cleverness.

well, this formal definition is too small to define the actualy depth and greatness of the word. It'd be impossible to visualize anything running smoothly without this powerful Jugaad. Starting from the national government to Laxman's common man won't survivie in India without this Jugaad. Mind you, Jugaad is not to be taken in the negative sense. Jugaad is an essential part of every thing which needs to run on time. Today read an interesting article about (link) fabulous Mumbai suburban railway network, lifeline of mumbai. Scheduling and management of suburban railway can be best exercise in contraint satisfaction for hardcore mathematician and practially it really has been nightmare to theoretically come up with the solution, where a train arrives every 3 minutes on all the stations between Churchgate and Virar, the tracks run for 60 kilometres. Over 3.1 million people use 1,007 services on this network every day to get to their places of work and back home. That translates to 50,000 people for every kilometre, making it the densest suburban rail network anywhere in the world. But since 80 years (1925-2005) this is running perfect without glitches, owing to omnipotent JUGAAD. Here is Google's tribute to Jugaad :

• Definition : Jugaad
  
• Management by Jugaad
  
• Jugaad... the new buzz word
  

Parineeta

Bollywood these days is experimenting with all sorts of techniques. One of them is trying to recreate magic of old work. After success of Devdas with Grand sets and wonderful music, now it's Parineeta. No this is not going to be another review of movie, but what made me come here is the music of the movie. Managed to watch movie last month and must say I liked and it was treated well with maintaining proper backdrop of '60s.

I heard this album first time when I was working on my thesis report at 3 am and it really moved me. I could feel the music deep within my soul. Only few albums/tracks have managed this. Again, today I am sitting in my office and it's 8-15 in the evening and it's time to leave, but after long time I have managed headphones and can't hold myself back from completing this whole sound track second time before I leave for home. (Anyway, I haven't got anything to do when I reach home ;-) )

Album starts with Piyu Bole by Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal. I feel this song is dear to more after I watched the movie, because the chemistry between Saif and Vidya Balan is very well depicted in the video and song seems natural and not forced in the movie. Kasto Mazza includes superb use of the sound of a chugging locomotive like some '60-'70 movie.

Soona Mann Ka Aangan is the paragon of the album. Sonu Nigam manages to fetch millions accolades from me for this one. He managed to put in all the dard required and wonderfully accompanied by my favourite new age singer Shreya Ghoshal.

Kaisi Paheli Zindgani by Sunidhi is on the lines of dil ko hazaar baar of Murder, but once again consistent with backdrop of the movie. Raat hamari toh is melodious solo by Chitra. Dhinak Dhinak Dha is nasty song and typical wedding song. OK types.

Album ends with title track, Sonu Nigam-Shreya Ghoshal duet Hui Main Parineeta. A romantic and sensual song to fit wedding of Shekhar and Lolita. Both Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal are going up and up in my favourite singers. Cheers for both of them.

PS:- You can listen songs on Raaga.com Here is the link.

Pune says welcome Nishit...

Away from blog for a long time, and back to blog now...well, almost...

Landed here in Pune, two days back. It was wonderful scene from window of my plane and made me feel that stay here is gonna be wonderful and added to it just started raining making the atmosphere cool... reached the office and whole day went in formality stuff. Filled up some forms and became employee of Veritas now Symantec and reached to friend's house. Well, this was just starting. "Real" life began then. It was raining through out the day and the rain continued, when we reach the flat basement was already in the water and water level was rising and lo! no electricity (which is not restored even after 3 days, may be because of water in the basement, it has been switched off intensionally and hope to get it restored when I go back home in the evening). Water was upto knee-level. Next day I was supposed to report to my office in IT Park - A, which is just walking distance and building 'A' is closed and we have holiday \:D/, albeit we enjoyed wonderful breafast in other office at IT Park -B :-) As reviews have come, best thing about Veritas is its FOOD :D and I agree after having a lunch and a breakfast. so, me and Gopal went around for some shopping and after roaming around when we reached home road was blocked due to water!!!! and we had to take another route to reach home and after seeing water level there, we were sure that we won't be able to come out until the water drys out, but had to take the plunge and this time water was waist high. Worries didn't end there. Took bread-butter and bananas for dinner and not to add the darkness.

Well, God has already warned us now. My dear son, your days are different now. Gone are the days when you had no power-cut, 24 hour water supply and nice drainage system. you are in REAL world now. Accepted my lord. We enjoyed all the "candle-light talks" and "daily bread". No complaints my lord.

Today began on good note. When my eyes opened at 0600 hrs in the morning and opened the windows. All the water was gone and for the first time after arriving here I saw the actual terrain around the building. Went for a morning walk and finally saw sunlight in 3 days. Phew... and back to office now, hopefully today I'll get my cabin and will get all the things done. Till then good bye. Well, lot more things to come on my blog from my one week mini vacation, but till then Adios...

Road Trip

It's rather unusual for me to have post on blog for consecutive days :) but, here I am after yesterday's wonderful trip.

After submitting thesis and having done some of the formality stuff, I was thinking of starting making presentation, but just then these guys came up with proposal of going to canal. Ah!! my long chersihed dream. Since last year or so, I had thought that I would go to this canal nearby, but plan never materialised, but when they asked me, I didn't hesitate for a second and that was just the beginning of a beautiful road trip.

We (me, Sheetesh, Rawat, Ritesh) chose the road behind the Hall-7. Oh yaa, forgot to mention we were on our bicycles, well and biking in that terrain was no less adventurous then tour de france. up-and-downs, right-and-left and not to mention all of them just kachcha roads. That turned out to be the best start of the trip. Going through such a rough patch, was kind of biking I was doing after a long time. Makes you feel like no you still have that dare spirit inside, you are not rotten after sitting in airconditioned office and keep looking at stupid computer screen all the time. :)

Soon, we reached the canal and a tree fallen on the road, automatically decided our returning point, as it was already getting darker and it would be difficult we don't return from there itself, but it was the best place we could have stopped at. The trunk of the fallen tree was extending to canal itself, so added a bit fun to stay over there and doing all the childish masti. Sitting on trunk thinking we have done such a dare act, wetting legs in the flowing water, splashing water over one another. and yes not to forget, our photo-session all along the trip. When Sheetesh is with you, don't need to worry about documenting your trip. We clicked some nice photographs over there. These photographs in blog are clickable.

On the return trip, we decided to choose another route, which will be touching GT Road and eventually to IITK. And all along the road, it was like a typical village, such as in a Yash Chopra movie ;). Lush green fields on both the sides all-along till your eyes can see. Yesterday nature too was in aesthetic mood and we got to see some beautiful colors in the sky and yet again, we didn't miss to click it. Took so many photographs there too. Unfortunately, Sheetesh missed to recharge his camera and we soon ran out of battery, so our photography session had to end there itself, but the fun didn't end there. Road trip continued and after long paddling got to see the road again. and this time it was Lance Armstrong act for us. On the highways, we enjoyed some fast biking. It was also dinner time and we decided to stop on dhaba on the way. Bijji da dhaba is what it was called. Well particularly not dhaba but modernized dhaba. We were suspicious about the kind of food, we'd get. But somehow this tour was meant to be great and the dinner to didn't disappoint us and food was much better than what we get in CR (our Campus Restaurant). well, it was a treat from my side owing to my thesis submission :D. On the way back, when we thought we were not far, it took us really long to reach back to IITK, but in the end all of it was worth it. We did atleast 15 km of bicycling yesterday!! and my long cherished dream was a reality thanks to these guys.

Thesis submitted \:D/

Whew...!!! long awaited moment finally came. I submitted my thesis today and will be defending on July 23, 2005, Saturday. :D

Feels like a relief. Although I am yet to make presentation and prepare for defence etc, but certainly it's a welcome change. Well, today I thought of something while I was all day busy for finalizing the thesis after changes, getting it printed, getting it photocopied, submitting to DOAA, then giving copies to my guide and the examiners. When I went to DOAA office for submitting my contingency form, the guy over there said, "aap computer waale kitne bhi software bana len, abhi bhi paper work to hai hi... aur aage 10 saalon tak rahega." He made me thinking while I was going here and there to get my work done. He was very right. In the age of computers and automation, atleast as far as India is concerned, it takes lots of paper work. e.g. we get to do NO-DUES in order to obtain provisional degree certificate and would you believe it takes 18 signatures from all the places over IITK and that includes NCC, Central workshop, Glass blowing factory, Students' Gymkhana cultural office, the places where I've not been a single time in my stay of two years, and still need to get NO-DUES done from there. As sepultura says "Paper work... bloody paper work!!" and ironically all-of-these, all of the efforts of two years for a single paper, albeit laminated :), the degree certificate. Anyways, on the positive side, automation scenario is changing fast at IITK. Registeration and related stuff in every semester has been automated since quite a long time and I heard that this tiring no-dues procedure is also under automation. Well, hope it hits the road soon and next year people won't have to roam around whole IITK in order to get it done!!

Diverged to somewhere else from where I started..:P. Anyways, we had real cool trip today, when we (me, Sheetesh, Rawat and Ritesh) went to a canal nearby. Story will soon be blogged with photographs :) , but right now get to go to sleep and start making slides from tomm. Adieu.

DUS : Funniest thriller of the year...

Well, these days movies seems to rule my blog, but watched many movies in last some days. And this unexhaustive list contains some very good movies like Raincoat, Sarkar, Hitchcock's Notorious, Guns off Navarone, Al Pacino's Scent of a woman, but here I am going to talk about something for people like me who think that standard of bollywood movies is improving and someday we'll be at par with hollywood.

... few Priyadarshan movies are yet to be released in this year, but I bet you won't find any of them funnier than this creation of Anubhav Sinha. We were laughing like anything when we came out of hall after watching "Thriller" DUS.

so here is a plot. wait a minute... was there anything like plot? probably there was. Few brave men from ATC(Anti Terrorist Cell, cool isn't it?)decide to save a big jeopardy which they even don't know about except that it was going to happen on 10th May, but these are brave soldiers. Now IMDb tells me that Naa Tum Jaano Naa Hum and Ab Ke Baras were released on 10th May, but probably more dangerous disaster exist in world, so they are searching for it. After some furious action and some "relay bombing" (as Suniel Shetty can't directly throw grenade, he would pass on that to Zayed and eventually Zayed on flying bike would throw that into car and before grenade could explode lo! Zayed is standing beside Jr. AB and Shetty inorder to give that high-profile action movie look). Well they have found some clues and caught a man who helps them in searching the villian Jamaal or Jambal or Jamval or something like that... and when finally so called Jamaal is killed Sanjay Dutt tells them that man who pointed them to Jamaal he himself was Jamaal. Shut up you all morons if you said that this is copied from 'Usual Suspects'. Our intelligent ATC chief Dutt Jr. finds out that disaster is going to happen at stadium. Now at the climax, they found out where bomb is and AB Jr. is on plane with disastrous C-4. Only way he could save Canada is that he jumps along with plane and his love Esha Deol, wait but somebody said she was traitor, but she has to die anyway. and then starts eternal dilemma. Whether Abhishek should die and save people or He should leave Canada to God. Everbody forces him to leave the plane, but he is "true soldier" and saves Canada. May his soul rest in peace.

I strongly recommend that everyone should see last 15 minutes of this movie (if you manage to survive till that point). No matter what will happen to that bomb, but Zayed tries to convince Abhishek that not only himself but both should take care of Dia Mirza. Sanjay Dutt is into tears and doesn't care to stop Jamaal who is not running away, but waiting for elevator to come. Sunil Shetty is shouting.. "fenk do bam, mar jaane do logon ko.. kud jaao Shashank..." Director will teach you geography which you've never learnt. He'll enlighten you that AIIMS flyover is situated near some sea or something. I bet you didn't know that.

Well, there are few saving graces for movie. 'Dus Bahane' and 'Deedar de' are treat to hear. Pankaj Kapoor proves that he is definitely one of the frontline actors and AB Jr. proves himself again after Sarkar. and yes, how can I forget Shilpa Shetty and her stunts (a la Trinity) and one must not forget the guy, whosoever it is,who made the trailer(download) and posters (see the one in my blog, doesn't make you believe that this one is definitely going to be different) and made people believe that this is movie worth watching, so go and watch in theatres. arre bhaiyo, suno, agar movie dekho to upper/stall mein dekhana aur mazaa aayega...

Raincoat

And the monsoon continues. Last weekend I decided to give a shot to this movie. Rather it was raining outside and I couldn't resist myself for seeing this movie *again*.

Yes, I had seen this movie way back in December when Punet was on his trip to India. That was bizzarre. In the theatre, we did everything but watch the movie. I found it too slow and boring. Then after sometime I came across O Henry's Gift of the Magi, from which this movie was inspired. And I realised that Raincoat had something which I missed and since then I had decided to give it one more watch. With the help of a guy, I managed to download DVDRip of the movie from net. and finally rainy season did it and I watched the movie again. and here is my word : AWESOME!!! I was completely into the movie this time. It took me by real surprise that how could I have ignored such a wonderful movie and that too in theatre. I regret that probably I spoiled mood for Shalin, who probably liked the movie at that time.

Manoj/Manu(Ajay Devgan) is in Calcutta, looking for some money from friends so that he can start his business and decides to meet his childhood love Neerja/Neeru(Aishwarya Rai), who is happily married to some rich guy in Calcutta. Movie is about just one afternoon they share with each other and pretend to be happy in their respective lives. Movie is quite subtle. All-of-us... All-of-us wear a raincoat all the time to hide ourselves from one thing or the other. We are afraid, we are concious and as Rituparno Ghosh puts it, we are PLAYERS. Protagonists Ajay Devgan and Aishwarya Rai are credited as Players in the title. If you really are into the movie it makes you ponder. It was more of emotional affair for me than philosophical one.

Movie excels in every department. Direction, Cinematography, Acting. Aishwarya Rai proved that she can do much better than just glamorous roles. Ajay Devgan has now definitely established as a versatile actor and this movie just strengthens his stand. Annu Kapoor and Mauli Ganguly excel in their cameo. Director is succesful in keeping the environment dark and gloomy as was needed. full marks to Rituparno Ghosh and all I can say is I am more than happy to see this movie again. Puneet, are you listening? :-)

PS:- For Gujarati readers, Jay Vasavada(Gujarat Samachar) had written a beautiful article for movie Raincoat in his weekly column Spectrometer. Worth reading. you can access it from here.

PPS:- Crossposted at InFiCa, where I am.. ahem.. critic now.

Sisterhood of travelling pants...

Yesterday after getting bored doing coding. I, finally decided to see this movie.

Somehow I had this feeling that it won't disappoint me and it didn't. The movie is about 4 girls Lena, Tibby, Carmen, Bridget, who haven't left each other since they were born. They're best friends, but one summer they had to seperate, so they decide to rotate among themselves a pair of jeans which magically fits them all. Then starts the summer. Each of them goes in different directions with different goals, with different emotions and share all these with one another.

Let me tell you, this is not just another teen movie. I mean, it's more subtle than any teen movie I've seen. Although people say the movie is much different from Ann Brasher's book, from which movie is made, but who cares as long as it's enjoyable. This one depicts emotions properly in emotional way rather than sentimental. The Narrator, Carmen, in the end says "It would be easy to say that pants changed everything this summer, but looking back now, I feel that our lives changed because they had to. and real magic of pants was in bearing witness to all of these and somehow holding us together, when it felt like nothing would be the same again."

Yaa, at some points it's like a typical hindi movie thing, but worth giving a try. Do give it a shot in your free time.