Saturday, January 26, 2008

idle thinking, they say leads to some weird stuff....
let's just say, i was idle for a long time!!!!

Friday, January 25, 2008

the track goes forever on.....
my college railway station- that oasis for stranded students!!!

Thursday, January 24, 2008

TECHNOLOGY TANTRUMS

technology sometimes gets on your nerves... count the number of times when you wanted anything electronic in nature to work for you. Now count the number of times, it didn't work for you, and you'll know what the clear winner is.... The number of times, a meeting has been postponed or canceled because the overhead projector has stopped working, or a laptop refused to get switched on even if threatened with permanent disfigurement, or if the power simply goes phut with the UPS in repair to boot. If you ever want to know how it feels to be happy and frustrated at the same time, walk into any of these boardroom meetings with a technology fiasco. i suppose the only other place you'll ever get to see these completely contradicting emotions are in the exam hall when you know you studied the answer, but simply cant remember it because you are too busy concentrating on the hot girl in front of you. I suppose even that is a kind of technology malfunction, because the brain is supposed to be the most complex machine in the universe. in such an eventuality, i suppose computer pundits would term it to be 'memory loss due to system overload'......

The funny part is these infernal contraptions from hell seem to have a weird knack for taking virtual holidays when you need their services. the 'user' becomes the 'usee' while the device is in a self imposed state of nirvana. it makes me wonder if whoever built these machines ever thought of putting in an emergency button. all you had to do is press it and voila! the thing fires up no matter whatever the hell it is doing.... sometimes i feel these booby trapped timeless time bombs have a life and bidding of their own. very like our government 'servants'. all they do is make us run around in circles giving everyone involved a migraine of the severest kind.

but this pointless vendetta of machine versus man does not end with routine junk like computers and calculators. they may happen in the most unlikely places. Imagine if the lady in the railway station announcing the arrival and departure of the trains starts announcing something very odd- like a "the bangalore to mysore train has just arrived on platform number $%#&". that'll make all the passengers run around like headless chickens hunting for platform number $%#&, and in the process halting at platform number !!!!!! and platform number &&&&& to see if it is actually $%#&.

but the actual wondrous part is that these messiahs of mechanical malnutrition start working at the weirdest provocations. consider a computer A with user B. Computer A decides that it has had enough with the typing tyranny of user B. so, it conveniently puts an error message:" the drive C:\windows is not able to start because of secondary hard drive failure with ATAPI adapter and PATAKI program". So user B goes to the nearest cyber cafe(which by the way is suffering from frequent bouts of crashing) and downloads the instructions to set right his uncooperative undertaker. he painstakingly follows the instructions to the letter and sees the message:"the drive C:\windows is STILL not able to start because of secondary hard drive failure with ATAPI adapter and PATAKI program". user B gets mad and does what all humans are very good at- aim one good kick at his arrogant adversary and presto! the computer is back on track! very like those pesky kids who had inflated egos!

in retrospect, all i have to say is that these contraptions behave a lot like government contraceptives. They may either work, or they may not. And a few days down the line,you may land up with something totally unexpected. and now, my monitor screen is flickering and wire wizards may perhaps feel that the thingamajig is not properly configured to suit the watchamacallit and needs a new whodunit. but as for me, i know for a fact that my computer does not like me banging on its keyboard like this......

Error: User temporarily electrocuted to prevent further lowering of dignity and status of said machine. please click on following link to get electrocuted if you DO NOT agree with afore mentioned system.
CHEERS TO A NEW WORLD!!!!

I'm back...



Hey'all!! long time no see eh? Well i've veen a bit busy lately. Good news is that I've cleared all my exams. Bad news is that term started already. Had holidays for just 12 days. As all you people might have guessed by now, i could not make the trip to Trivandrum, we simply could NOT break the jinx :(
I did take a trip though; i went to Mangalore and visited my grandparents and aunts there after 2 years!.. Hey, why dont i tell you people all about it? Brace for a long read folks, here goes...
Day 1:
Technically, it began when i was fast asleep in the bus:P It's a 6 to 7 hours journey from here to mangalore. The bus started from here at 10 30 PM and I had reserved a good window side seat up front. Its a good thing really because the some parts of the road is so bad that it can break the unsuspecting passenger's back...
I did bang my head against the window glass many times in my sleep though. It can get very cold out there in the middle of the night, and trust me, you do NOT want to be sitting in front or behind a moron who wants the window open! When i pushed back my seat, my face would be level with the window of the guy behind me. Unfortunately, that person would open the window a bit. That blast of cold air on my face would give me nightmares of hell actually freezing over!
Minutes after i made clucking noises and shut the window, i'd find it opened again and the nightmares continued...
{thats whn i decided it was time for drastic measures and so i latched the window, puled the curtain over the latch and slept on it, so he wudnt reach the latch. Resourceful bugga aint i? ;) }
I woke up again {yea it actually worked, i could sleep}, when it was around 4 30 AM, half an hour away from Mangalore. My grandparents' house{ referred to as "my house" here on } is about 40 Km from Mangalore, a small-ish town called Mudabidri. Connecting buses are availablr from two different places on the way to mangalore. One at Mangalore itself, which will mean an extra journey of 40 minutes, or at a place called B.C road. Thats nearer but at 4 45 in the morning, i'd have to sit out till maybe 6!
So i decided to go all the way to Mangalore itself. I got off in Mangalore at a place called Jyoti, finding a lone stray dog who didnt seem to notice me and the chill of the coastal early morning. A nervous wait for about 15 minutes followed and one astonishingly nearly-full bus turned up. Thats the longest you may have to wait for a bus from anywhere to anywhere else around here. The conductor was very friendly and stylish!... 22 rupees took me to Mudabidri, at full speed, with a glorious sunrise thrown in.
I've made this journey many many times before, but this time it was different. For the very first time, mom was home and I was alone. Also for the very first time, i had a cell phone with me, so i spent a good part of the time hunting for network, and texting people and troubling them. Oh I also managed to wake up Ranjani,about whom you will hear a lot in this series, for something i wanted her to do. It was around 7 30 AM when i came to Mudabidri bus stand. Its another bus from here to the deviation on the highway to my house. The bus 'stop' is a fire station 15 minutes from the bus stand{4 bucks}. When i got off the bus, my blood froze...
Gone was the small forest trail like road that i had to take for about a kilometre into the wilderness to reach home. Nowhere, also, was the ramshackle hut that served as 'convience' store. Instead there was a neatly tarred road , and a decent looking shop. The lush greenery on either side of the road was unmistakable, so i set off through the road

That was when i ran out of network... @#$^&%%#@#%^
Not that i minded too much, because, while i was walking through the path, i was actually going back in time, back to those yearly visits as a kid, dreaming of the freshly fried, home grown cashewnuts that would be waitinf for me at home. Those compounds,the run down mansions, those huge trees on the path that i used to rest against, all seemed to just float by. One left turn took me towards the graceful, but now dis used bore well where i spent most of my summers playing with my cousin. A little further was home... sweet home, blue against the greenery that surrounded. I ran the last few steps towards the gate... And then,finally, there in the distance, standing tall at the door was grampa. Two, sorry, 3 and a half years after i had last seen him, i was expecting something else... I realised i was rooted to the spot and we just stared and stared. After what seemed like minutes, i waved. He waved back, smiling, a smile that exuded dollops of the pent up love for his only city-bred grandson, whom he got to see very rarely.
I walked up to him slowly, did something i never expected from me, bent over and touched feet. It came from the heart i tell you, that was when i truly realised the powerful feeling felt when the very first person touched the feet of someone he revered. I expereienced fully the love for the man, who has weathered all kinds of storms, rising more strongly and shining brighter than ever before...
Grandma was there by then too, and i touched her feet, to hear about how i had bcome so thin. Amazingly, she hadnt aged one bit from the last time i had seen her. The happiness i saw on their faces made me forget the long journey and everything else that i had encountered the days before.
It was plain and simple;
I was home at last
{more to come...}
btw, Happy birthday Sandeep Shekar, beloved bro...

Friday, January 4, 2008

All is well...



Happy New Year all you people...
Well, we start off this year with me i see. The last post of the year before scared me for a moment, and people, let me make it clear, Aishwarya didnt have herself in mind when she wrote that {phew}
My last piece, had the perfect results, every single person who I had referred to reacted to it and many exactly how i had expected them to.
On a more darker, Maddy, Prateek and I seem to have a jinx on our hands. As most people who read the blog know, Madhav lives in Trivandrum, and Prateek is there now for training. I'll be on holidays so, we thought we can meet up, that is I take a trip to Trivandrum. But then, my viva voce is yet to take place and the date's set for 10th , but it can be postponed without warning, just like it happened last time. So i doubt if i can make it. As far as prateek says, he's free only on weekends and Maddy, the exam slayer has an exam in Cochin on 13th. My classes start on 21st. Period
Its been tough writing these exams, whoa! I'm not used to writing 5 essays of 12 friggin marks each in three hours. My fingers are always screaming for mercy by the end of those exams.
What with all the texting and typing I've been doing, I'd say they should let us use our computers to answer the questions from the next exams, maybe invoke a rule in the university that was inserted in the rulebook by the maniacal son of the rule-setter when he was not looking, under the name "generetion gap" or something. Wishful thinking.
Theres some rewiring of the local telephone lines, so at present my "broadband" speeds are barely more than dial-up ones. It takes forever just to post a darn scrap.
This new years was one of the nicer ones I've had in recent times. I was home alone and my best friends called up at 2 in the morning. I was standing on the balcony of my house, he was standing outside his hostel, both of us were shivering and laughing and talking about girls! All the ones we've encountered when we were back at school... Those stories are another post! :P
I've fallen in love with loonet toons all over again. BEEP BEEP! and ANDALE ANDALE ARIBBA!!!
People noticing my Orkut profile nowadays will know! Exams get the best and the most moronical parts that you never knew existed out of you!
Exam times are when you catch up on lost sleep, talk to the friend of yours whom you wanted to contact since a long time, figure out and complete that game you had given up on, and other very suddenly-not-so-boring-anymore acivites...
Well thats that for now, I dont like this kitchen knife next to my cartoid artery and the killer voice of this lady who calls herself my mother asking me to get back to my books anymore than you people do
~bye~
Oh one last thing. Imagine you are in my situation now. You've got 15 bucks to spend. Will you go out and eat Dahi Puri or rent a DVD?
Comment your answer and I'll tell you what kind of person you are...