CYOP-II : The one about the Indo-pak series

For those who do not know, this is the second instalment of the Create Your Own Post series. Lack of proper ideas and stifled creativity added to the recent spate of exams has forced me to release the sequel for this post.

When you are in love, you start looking at things around you in a different light.. so have I. No no.. I have not fallen in love.. I am done with my mid-semester exams, without breaking much sweat! But the feeling is pretty much the same :D I guess the effort that was put in the preparations, will be quite evident from the results. :-s But I hope to savour this post-exam-pre-results phase as long as it lasts. I had 3 exams and the prominent ones were Bio-informatics and.. yes, you guessed it right, Software Engineering. Talking about Bio-informatics and SE is like talking about the constant pi- quite irrational but very important. But in the greater interest of the mankind which is known to possess considerably lower levels of tolerance, I'll refrain from talking about my exams.

Now that I am done with my exams, the time has come for me to fulfil my destiny.. the time is ripe now to accomplish the most important mission of every Martian.. Yes.. the time has come to clean my room :( jeez.. I am never able to motivate myself, when it comes to cleaning my room. I wonder whether these spiders in my room are of japanese origin.. No no they dont look like animes.. they are just too industrious for my liking.. They keep building these cobwebs that gives this antique and spooky look to my room. The last time around when I actually cleaned my room completely, I wrote a post on it. That was pretty loong back by Earth standards. So anyone who is interested in cleaning my room, please send me your tenders. I am ready with the contract here. *waves the contract alluringly*



Handsome rewards await for anyone who can achieve this seemingly impossible task. Yes, you guessed it right. A free trip to my home planet Mars and a life-long stay in one of the best oxygen-free resorts in Mars. If you really insist, I can arrange for a return ticket as well although it wont be necessary.. Trust me..

Moving on, India won the series against Pakistan quite convincingly. A margin of 4-1 in a 5 match series is quite a resounding win. Especially after having lost the test series and the first one dayer, to come back with such alacrity and ferociousness catching the Pakistanis off-guard, was just sensational. Winning 4 back-to-back ODIs chasing,with the much hyped Pakistani bowling attack being carted to all parts of the ground was an eye-candy to many an Indian. So now India is one short of the all-time record for the most successive wins while chasing.. 14. Hopefully we pull it off comfortably against England, although the English can prove to be quite a handful with their young outfit.

And this is the optimist signing off from Karachi but before leaving, I would like to leave you with some memorable quotes from the series, all coming from Inzamam (thanku J)

Rameez: So Inzy, disappointed with your performance today?
Inzy: Bismilla-e-rehman-e-rahim. Thank you allah. Ya the indian batsman is play very good today. We is try very hard but is not win the game.

Rameez: Any words for Dhoni?
Inzy: Ya dhoni is play very well. He is hit his shot very hard in our gaps. In start, we is protect our gaps very well. The grass is also thick.. But dhoni is split our gaps with his bat.

Rameez: Another ordinary bowling performance?
Inzy: Ya our balls is loose. The bowler is went for many run. Asif is bowled well. Also, after some shots the ball is out of shape. Umpire is not give another ball.. It is tough to play with one ball.

Rameez: Dropped catches.. did that prove costly?
Inzy: Ya the ball is not stick to our hands. We is practice a lot sticking our bat in our hands.. but now we is more practice sticking balls in our hands.

Rameez: Any plans for the next match?
Inzy: Ya India is on top but we is try to bounce on our back. Insha allah we is play better.

Rameez: All the best Inzy.
Inzy: Thank is you.

Quote of the day: For the linguistically challenged, I cant help it :( Got this as an SMS.

kuchh baatein bhooli hui, kuchh pal beete hue, har galti ka ek naya bahana,
aur phir sabke nazar mei aana, exams ki poori raat jaagna,
phir bhi sawal dekhkar sar khujlana, mauka mile to class bunk karna,
phir dosto ke saath chai peena, har pal ek naya sapna, aaj jo tuta phir bhi apna,
phir na ayenge yeh college ke din yaad rakhna,
to in palo ko jee bhar jeena aur phir yaad kar muskurana

How true! :)

P.S: The pi quote is a modified version of Lisa Hoffman's similar quote on marriage. The coming week seems to be quite hectic. Will be starting some serious CAT preparation soon.

You are addicted to..

A few days back, a very old friend of mine, called me and we were having a nice chat, reminiscing about our school days, when he happened to ask my daily schedule. Now as most of you must be knowing how jobless and honest I am, he was obviously shocked when I told him my schedule. He added that I was addicted to the internet and like any other normal earthling, my immediate reaction was a long NO. (Ok not very long, but longer than the normal NO) But then a probe was launched which led to intense contemplation and finally I have come up with some substantial results. Thought it might be useful to you guys also... Self-assessment, they say. Ok, so here we go now..


You are addicted to the internet if..

• You get up early in the morning at 3 am to go to the bathroom, but decide to check your mails first. After half an hour, when you are done checking you mails, chatting with your equally insomniac pals, and adding some more items to your download queue in DC++ (which you might accidentally stumble upon a year later and delete it wondering why you downloaded it in the first place) you suddenly remember that you had got up to pee. So you accomplish your mission and on your return browse the net for one more hour and at a very early, healthy 5:30 am go back to bed, satisfied.
• You see or hear something funny and you start screaming "LOL LOL" or in some cases "ROFL ROFL" instead of actually laughing out loud. Another instance is when you are on the phone and say "BRB".
• You cannot recognise your own hadwriting. You want to type your assignments rather than write it. Easier to distribute it as well :D You type only in lowercase.. even your assignments. In fact, you no longer type with proper punctuation, capitolization or complete sentences.
• You would rather open cricinfo.com and watch ball-by-ball commentary than actually go to the TV lounge and watch the match. Especially when a wicket falls, the screams from the TV lounge drives you crazy, and you end up pressing the refresh button umpteen number of times just to see how the wicket fell.
• You have misplaced your room lock and you have this sudden urge to press Ctrl+F and search for it.
• To you, multi-tasking is nothing but chatting with 3 people simultaneously while checking the scores on cricinfo and keeping an eye on the yahoo mail alert. Not to mention the countless number of times you type nfrm and pine -i in your putty login.
• You are too lazy to write a diary and instead start a personal blog which soon becomes public. Of course you do become lazier and do not update your blog. Reason? Bloggers block.
• You beg your friend next door to get an account so that you can "keep in touch". And once he gets one, you buzz him quite frequently only to ask him if he's ready to eat dinner, or come to the cafeteria.
• You get up in the morning and go online before you actually start brushing your teeth.
• The only jokes you recieve are from e-mail.
• You start using smilies in your snail mail as well. In fact you have ever written a pen-and-paper letter to someone and found it absolutely _impossible_ to do without smilies. Then you realise how smilies (most of which are bald :|) are soo important in expressing your own emotions.
• You decide to go to the loo and suddenly remember that you had forgotten to change your status message. And so you come back and change your status message to "Off to pee. BRB" and make it just in time to the loo. (Or sometimes you are not soo lucky.. tsk tsk)
• You end your sentences with... three or more periods.....
• You do the craziest of the things which you wouldn't do under normal circumstances, when your internet connection is down. Like studying!! or even going to bed at 11:00!! Thinking of these very things gives me the goosebumps... maann!
  
• You forgot how to operate your own TV remote control.. :(
• You blog about symptoms indicating your addiction to the internet.
  
• You sat around for 2 or more minutes trying to think of something witty (or dumb) "You might be addicted to internet if.. " joke to add to this list.
• You understand all the jokes in this post. If so, my dear friend you are completely addicted to the internet and you better take a vacation to a place with no electricity and no phone lines. No no, you cannot buy a laptop and a cellular modem.

If you can think of any other instances which indicate internet addiction, please do write them in the comments section. You can also mention your favourite among the above mentioned ones. All brickbats are welcome as well :-s But make sure that you dont go overboard.

Quote of the day:

A clever person solves a problem...

A wise person avoids it.

--Albert Einstein.

P.S1: Have my multi-robotics presentation tomorrow :-ss. 5 groups made their presentations on tuesday amd some of them spoke in a very funny accent, pronouncing robots as Roberts and flaw as fllah(as in blah)
P.S2: Even the SE presentations were very funny, although they weren't intended to be. Had an all-girls group presenting with someone renaming them as the "Charlie's Angels" group. Lots of cat calls and screeches.. so finally I am doing something in SE class other than dozing off :D
P.S3: Some of the symptoms mentioned above in the post apply only to the IIITians.
PS4: I just realised that this was my 50th post. Cool, right? :D So if you guys dont mind, tell me the post which you did not like among all the posts (or hated the most.. yeah the worst post, or posts). And if that is not tiring enough, you can always do me a favour by mentioning your favourite post.. yeah the best among the worst.. :D

*Updated on 17th Feb*

It's really frustrating when..

You compose a post.. especially a tag post.. for an hour and when you are almost done, a window creeps up from nowhere and tells you that Mozilla firefox is not responding. The worst part is when you press the End Now button by mistake, only to find all your hard work disappear in an instant.. just like that! poof!! Its really frustrating.. grrr..

Quote of the day:

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

- Rich Kulaweic

P.S: This post was composed in firefox :| And the tag has been postponed indefinitely Ms. Teal. Sorry bout tht.

Where's your will to be weird? Jim Morrison

Yup.. Cheesy tagged me.. So now, I am supposed to come up with 5 weird things about myself. FIVE!! And I was given a deadline.. Tuesdays SE class. But because of intense peer pressure imposed by some of my fellow martians and other earthlings who want to stay anonymous, I have been forced to do the tag early. And to make matters worse, I have come up with only 3 points so far. Lets just hope that I'm able to come up with 5 by the end of this post.

• As highlighted in one of my earlier posts, (or post) I am an insomniac. I suffer from irregular sleeping habits. Now that is not weird, but the longest I have been without sleep is 48 hours. And sometimes, I compensate for it by sleeping for 10 hours everyday in the next week. There have been days when I sleep for only 4 hours a day and stay fresh. But on the flip side, there have been days when in spite of sleeping for 9 hours, I feel sleepy. But I am not the one to be blamed here, its the SE and the compilers class. In fact, doctors have been suggesting their insomniac patients to attend these lectures given by "world-class" faculty along with other fellow insomniacs hailing from IIIT. And believe me, it works! It wont be long before, we start getting ads in the teleshoppe suggesting the above mentioned remedy. Early Bird Prizes? First 50 callers get exclusive VIP seats in the front benches.. How exciting!!

• I talk to myself a lot. I was a born chatterbox. But there have been times, when I felt that I was better off being alone, and that is when I cultivated this art of talking to myself. It helps a lot, especially during exams, and also during tense carrom or CS matches. It helps in motivating oneself. It also helps during those lonely nights when the WLAN is in its prime sucking form and one tends to miss their family, friends, Television sets, Yahoo messenger, DC++ etc. But the only problem is one must never get addicted to it. There have been times when I have received huge stares from old people while I am busy walking on the streets, talking to myself. As if I were insane or something!
  
  

• I think a lot. Now, that is not weird at all. Seriously. And one of the reasons why I spend sooo much time thinking is my inability to listen to some very, very interesting lectures, given again by the same "world-class" faculty. The weird part comes now. My brain works differently(Yes, it DOES work) and sometimes I surprise myself with the totally unexpected answers that I get to some weird questions. Theres lot of weird and non-weird stuff swimming in this peanut-sized brain of mine. The less talked about the weird stuff, the better. Among the various non-weird stuff I think, some of them are..

1. What if India wins the world cup? (Cricket obvi.. now winning the football WC will come under the weird thoughts category)
   
2. What if Shahrukh Khan is not gay? What if he is just a little weird?
3. What if Mallika Sherawat were to act as Anarkali in Mughal-E-Azam? Akbar would fall for Anarkali, or maybe even Salim wont fall for her.. A topic best left to be thought during the Bio-informatics class..
4. What if this guy were to turn an optimist?
   

• Now, if you think I am weird- wait till you meet my invisible friend. He is a pessimist, who thinks he is a realist. He is a rebel, who wants to defy all norms, who wants to be an atheist and sometimes ends up as an agnostic, who wants to stand up for morals, who wants to live his life on the edge (or maybe 50m from the edge.. but it still IS the edge), who never wants to compromise, who some times loses hope very easily and some times, never gives up. In short he is a bundle of contradictions. Sometimes I hate him, sometimes I look upto him, sometimes I tolerate him and sometimes I run away from him. But he has been with me for the past 3 years, as a friend, as a guiding angel, as a scheming devil, as a philosopher and what not. In fact most of the internal conflicts that take place in my mind, are usually resolved or sometimes compromised with his help. I dont know whether everyone goes through the same thing. But I, for one find it truly weird.

• And finally, the last point. This is an assortment of some of my qualities, which you might not find weird. But I am just fed up of thinking weird things about myself. Its tough you know.. thinking.. I can sleep while standing, thanks to the side-effects of travelling in jam-packed Mumbai local trains. I have a huge, humungous appetite although my lanky, wiry frame might suggest otherwise. Sometimes I laugh out loud for the most silliest of the jokes. I dont know why. Not that they are very funny, but they are just childish and too unexpected. Its like you are expecting something very funny, witty and wicked, and when instead, you get something very innocent, puerile and childish, I just crack up. Strange [-(. And the best thing about being weird is that people trust you. No one really trusts a sane person, do they?? :D

Now comes the best part.. *rubs his hands in glee* I would like to tag extra people just in case. Am I wicked or what!! >:)

1. Aran
2. Affy
3. Halley
4. I.V
5. LOAT
6. Mythalez
7. Rebel
8. Sam
9. Michael Jackson
10. George Bush (He is dumb and not weird.. I knowww)

And the quote for the day is..

There's a razor thin line between sanity and insanity, sometimes you don't even know you've crossed it, until the voices start talking. Even if the voices are not real, they do have some good ideas.

P.S: Note that no Shahrukh's or Mallika's fans were harmed during the making of this post. Also I would like to dedicate this post to my late moustache.. Sorry Mr.Veerappan and Mr. Laden. I have let you down. *mourns*

*Post updated again on Monday morning*

The return...

Before you guys write my epitaph, let me announce my return from the dead >:)

*Keeps his hand on the Bhagvad Gita*

• I swear that I would never again scurry from the blogworld, the way I did.

• I will try posting at least one post every week. (I am being optimistic here)

• I shall always try not to sleep in the SE or the Bio-informatics class. The word here is try. Point to be noted milord.

*takes his hand off the holy book*

Now that I am done with the oath-taking ceremony proposed by the better half in me (yes, the one that thinks) I would like to confirm all your worst fears. Yes, I am back. I hope to blog more often from now onwards.. hopefully *fingers crossed* And one may ask why I decided to stay away from blogging for this long. I actually needed to get some of my priorities right. I was wasting way too much of my time on thinking what to blog. I needed to come up for air. I was enveloped in this surreal world, where everything was going just too fine for my liking. I was losing touch of reality. Living on pretence and false hope might not seem so bad, but it is.. once you have your brush with pure, bitter truth. Mine was more than a mere brush.. hehe.. Good for me though.

I was ignoring some of my problems comfortably, pretending that they were small and didn't require my immediate attention, until the day dawned when I discovered that I was way behind my peers in the rat race or should I say the CAT race. So had to do a lot of catching up, and I guess I have done quite well, juggling CAT, CS, some projects and mainly, the felicity. It was one helluva month and for a change, it felt good to come and fall in your bed, tired and drained of all energy.

Now that it is over, I hope to blog more fervently and more frequently.. touchwood :)

And now for the quote of the day.. (it feels good to write one again :) )

"A psychiatrist is a man who goes to a strip club and watches the audience"

P.S: Yes, cheesy I'll finish your tag soon. And the same goes for you too, Trinity. Come on people, gimme a break :P.. And hopefully, I come up with better posts in the future else this so-called return might after all prove to be a damp squib :D Also this post was composed during the Bio-informatics class held yesterday.