The Blog

http://abstrusegoose.com/50

Came across this comic. And, the first thought that came into my mind was, “How true!”. The next thought, “Why?”. I know a number of women, and most of them are not like that. Then why that generalization?

I have a few women friends going out with some guy whom they claim they are in love with, but have some habit which they absolutely detest and claim that they bear it just because they love that guy. And the sad part is that they sometimes (unknowingly I sincerely hope) lead other perfectly nice guys along. And, there a number of women friends I have, who knowingly lead a guy along simply because they can. And that is what ran in my mind when I thought, “How true!”.

In other stuff, my parents forwarded a slide show in the morning. I generally don’t have the time/energy to download these forwards, but for some reason I did today. The slide deck was titled friendship, and it talked about a story which I had read in countless other forwards. And the message that it reinforced was don’t wait till it is too late.For some reason, I was touched. The past few weeks have been a bit on the harder side, and I have generally been on the emotionally unstable side. But that slide deck gave me hope that things will get better. That life is full of ups and downs and we are ready to start moving towards the up again.

I have only my friends to thank who have been there with me. They don’t know how hard the last 2 to 3 months were for me, but they were there. Thanks guys! You know who you are, and without you guys it would have been infinitely harder than it has been.

Have you been in love? I think I have. And now I think I am in love again. I have no clue on how real it is. On if it is love itself. I just hope someday I will be able to open up to her, and let her know as well. You don’t know who you are, because I care about you too much to do anything that would cause me to lose you. But thank you for standing by me these last two months. Someday I will gain to courage to let you know who you are. Thank you for being there. (And asking me who she is not going to help. I am especially not going to be telling her who she is till I am confident I am ready. I just had to get it out somehow).

First trip to BIAL and blogged from there. When I compare it to the old airport, I got only word for it. WOW!

Free internet and seems to be quite fast. Hmm. /me decides to run a speed test.

WTF..

/me reruns the speed test

WOW! 1.5 mbps is just awesomely awesome. Wonder if it is because of the relative emptiness at this hour.

The new airport is quite good. I was a bit sceptical at first, but its not all that tough to make it to the airport. BMTC has these buses which drop you to the airport, and it has tied up with a couple of cab companies to give you a drop till the nearest pickup point. And if you use one of those cabs, you get a 25% discount on the bus ticket. The joke is, with the discount, my bus fare was lesser than the cab fare to drop me to the pickup point :-). (Then again, I did not get the Vayu Vajra, it was the normal non volvo bus, but it was surprisingly comfortable, but not a good place to work in, there are only 2 sets of seats which have enough space for you to open the laptop and work comfortably.)

I remember sitting for a few hours at bombay airport the last time I took a flight, and it was nice and comfortable because the airport was that good. Now, we can say that bangalore has an airport to which is comparable to those standards. I still miss the hot dogs stand (there is none at BIAL afaics, but then I have not really checked out the airport), but its still good. The one thing I feel bad about is the fact that once upon a time, the airport was just 15 mins from my house, and now to go to the airport I need to commute for about an hour on empty roads. (Esp when I could make it to the old airport in an hour in peak traffic, taking all the shortcuts I knew ;-))

For all the cribbing folks have been doing about the airport being far away from the city, I realised one thing. Bangalore needs to grow. By keeping the airport at this distance from the city, you have allowed growth to be decentralized. The city will grow around the new airport, hopefully this time it will be planned better. Let the IT parks move out, and Bangalore get a more balanced character. If there is something about Bangalore I don’t like, its just that every other person you meet is in the software industry. I recall Aanchal didi’s marriage, where almost everyone I met was in a unique profession. It gives you a chance to come to know how other things work as well. Probably why I love Bombay more than Bangalore.

In a lighter vein, I was thinking. Someone coming to Bangalore. As they land in the airport, wow! As they start coming out, they are still wowed. (Yes, the things at the new airport look organized). The highway is still decent. Soon after as they start approaching, the idea you have of Bangalore will start going down. Till you hit MG Road, which is rock bottom. Bad traffic, roads dug up, horrible traffic, horrible pollution. And to top it all, just about everyone you meet is a software dude (yep, I too belong to that category, not that I am sad about it, I love my work). This is probably a question I am going to ask folks who have come to Bangalore for the first time. How did you find the trip from the airport to the city ;-)?

/me still cannot believe the speed test results and reruns the test

Now I wish that ssh and IRC and wecm were also open on this connection Well, can’t get everything on a free connection now, can I

Signing off, as I wait for my boarding to be announced.

Finally :). Will post soon.

Will be off to goa starting from 15th. The blog is going to be unreachable since the server is going to be switched off. Will post once am back.

There are times when I just sit trying to figure out how to pass time. The last one year has changed me a lot. I have slowly lost the patience to sit and really get involved in a book. It is taking me like a month to go through a novel, (but in reality only 4 or 5 hours real reading time) and I have run out of Perry Masons (which for the record are the best mystery stories *EVER*).

TV. Ok, today’s television is a sorry excuse. The cartoons today are really horrible. What happened to the Johny Quests and Robotech and Ninja Robots and Ninku and Centurions (Yep, I loved Ace McCloud ). (At this moment, the only thing that echoes in my mind is “Where are the good ones” like in that ad that comes). What happened to Dexter’s lab. I remember that old cartoon that used to come on AXN along with Ninku which had this ghost busting female (very amply gifted if i recall correctly ). Even that was better than some of the stuff that comes. Cartoons were meant to simple and fun, but now there are starting to rival Ekta Kapoor’s stories in complexity (see Animax for more details!). And those which are not, are so mindless! (see Cartoon Network for more details). Don’t ‘The Flintstones‘ and “The Jetsons” still reside there?

The hindi movie channels are starting to come up with some gems though, with some great movies. These older movies are classics. You tend to see them in new light. But then you have also have your fair share of crappy new hindi movies. Something good comes once in a while (and coincidentally, it always has Katrina in a starring role. sigh!). Sadly those are few and far in between.

This is the time when the music channels come to the rescue. Channel V is not counted as a music channel. It has too many “reality” shows. MTV is fast starting to go in that category. (yeah, i notice Mia is missing these days, so I no longer like that channel). This is where the saving grace comes in. 9XM. I love that channel. Bheegi billi always talking about his sob story (incidentally he is almost always done in by a pretty girl, which is so sad) or the awesome PJs of chotte and bade. Lovely channel. My current favourite.

Then there is the internet. Google Reader. That has to be the best thing to come out of Google since search. Why? Shared feeds. Some of the stuff you get that way is just amazing. The next thing that is good is the LKML, you get to see some great flamefests there once in a while :-). Also, there is just so much stuff there to read!

/me sleeps for sometime, cooks and eats dinner, and sits back trying to figure out what he wrote till then, and then just decides to change the flow

The one major disadvantage that Bangalore has is that it has too few places to hang out, so anywhere and everywhere is so crowded over the weekend. Spending 300 bucks on a movie ticket, esp when most of the movies that come out these days don’t even entertain you for half an hour seems like a colossal waste. Especially when you need to book your tickets on Wednesday to get a chance to see the movie! Its much better to go roam about, see something else, or spend time with my adorable cousins.

I guess, its high time I found a new pastime. Let’s see, things to be done

3. Sleep a lot more

4. And maybe a trip to NIMHANS to get some of my “friends” admitted

[OK, this is a really horrible ending, and I have no clue on how to end this one, so I will just end it and spare myself the torture. One of the bad days]

… at Love Story 2050.

1. When you go to buy tickets for a movie (about an hour before the movie) and you are the first ones to buy it, that should be hint enough for you *NOT* to buy the tickets.

*SPOILER* (cough! spoilers? the whole damn thing was spoilt) *ALERT*

2. If you see a girl catching a butterfly, and then you also catch that same butterfly, then you are going to fall in love with each other, and that butterfly will help you, even 42 yrs in the future, it will be alive to help you find your lover who has incidentally been reborn and looks exactly the same.

3. If you cannot solve an equation, get a pair of lovers into your top secret lab and mess around with your equations. They will get you your solution.

4. Learn to sing and dance. That will allow you to get the (butterfly) girl in love with you with just one song, even in a different birth. Remember, one song guarantee otherwise you get to keep the butterfly and the song.

5. How to choose the time and place to travel into so that you find your *dead* lover? Have them only enter it into the time machine hours before they decide to conk off.

6. Physics is inconsequential. Doesn’t matter that to go ahead in time, your speed needs to start tending to c, which starts requiring energy tending to infinity. Doesn’t matter that “closed timelike curves” are believed to be impossible in nature unless a new theory comes up. Oh hang on, its called “Love Story 2050″.

7. A human (esp one in love) is stronger than a robot. And he can kick ass, esp with a 440V, 32 AMP switch (and this is in 2050 :-/ )

8. In the future you will have Darth Vader like evil warlords who have Goku’s powers.

9. Oh, oh, the best one. The time machine is locked in the new “timezone” for a limited period of time. Now if the time traveller does not return back with the time machine at the end of this period of time, he will instantaneously age. OK, this has to be the best fusion of how to break Physics and Biology collectively.

10. It is possible to fall in a free fall at earth at an acceleration less than g. This leads us to the fact that it is possible to arrest your swinging motion in the direction of the earth and midway through the swing, return in the opposite direction. Yes, its complicated, let me see if a figure can help. OK, too hard to make ascii art. Just ask me in person and I will describe it. Or maybe Nikhil can give a better description in the comments.

Ten lessons I can remember immediately. Probably more, but I seem to be forgetting them. Mainly because Nikhil accurately captures the movie in his status, “Love Snore-y 2050″.

This movie though does manage one thing, it managed to shut me and nikhil up during the movie. Its been the first time that we have been unable to comment on a movie.

This probably has to be the biggest joke ever. First George Bush blames the Indians for the world food crisis. It seems we eat too much. Quite amazing, considering that the average American eats the same as 2 or 3 Indians. It seems that George Bush believes that only the western world can enjoy benefits of a higher standard of living.

And  now, the World Bank decides that India is to blame for the world food crisis as it has banned export of food. While this is a better excuse than George Bush’s explanation, it still is quite derogatory. India’s first duty is to her citizens and not to the rest of the world. Once her citizens are fed, only then can she think about exporting extra food.

Sometimes these arguments also make no sense!

This week we have Prasanna in Bangalore. He is one of the top topcoders from India. With his great record, Shalin and I took a treat out of him. We were out at hypnos, where we saw this group of three girls sitting.

Now for some background. Prasanna is a multi tasking expert. He manages some n girls at one time. And we wanted to see him in action.

The stage was set. Three girls, no guys around, and Prasanna’s up to challenge. Suddenly, he gets his chance, two of the girls come out, and the third one is alone. Sadly for him, she was the least cutest of the group. Anyway, here is what happened,

Prasanna walks away. Seems familiar.

But I have to hand it to him. He stuck to his word, made a move, and both Shalin and I were left speechless. Unlike the last time when I found it insanely funny, this made me gain new respect for the dude. Prasanna, way to go!

UPDATE: Hmmm. I have just woken up now, and am feeling hungover. The funny thing is that we did *NOT* drink anything. /me wonders what happened!

*drumrolls*

And, introducing the scheduler Don, Peter Zijlstra