New Blog

I am not sure if anyone is still reading this blog, but I have moved to a new blog at wordpress.com

Please do comment there. :)

http://www.halfsigma.wordpress.com

The times they are a-changin'

It has been a really long time. I notice that I haven't written a single post throughout 2010. That just doesn't seem right. 2010. And what a year it was!! If sometime in the future, anyone asks me regarding the most important year of my life, the answer is unanimous. 2010 it is. It has been a year of tumultuous ups and downs. The highs, followed by immediate lows. Of things gained and lost. Of friendship made and broken. Of persevering when that feeling of uncertainty is vibrant in the air. Of sadness and tears. Of staring blankly at the ceiling. Of insomnia. The making of new me. Calm waters. Being alive. Being able to feel. The lump in the throat, kind of thing. The year of struggles. The year of doubt. The year of depression. The year of summit.

January - The month of usual Saarang depression. Of not winning. Close, yet not there yet.
February - The month of rejection. The meeting which changed it all.
March - The month of disease. The month of struggle. The month of tears. The month of joy.
April - The month of controlling my temper. Will. Won't? The month of Yippee-Ki-Yay!!
May - The month of loneliness. The making of new me. The making of new friends.
June - The month of rain. The month of self-doubt. The making of friends-turned-foes.
July - The month of standing-by. The month of Hamlet. The insanity of it all. The month which changed my view towards technology.
August - The month of self-deprecation. Lost temper. Almost. The month of physical exertion.
September - The month of luck. The month which turned everything upside down.
October - The month of extreme joy. Of Shaastra. Of loving myself. Of hating myself. Of jealousy. Of arguments. Of decline.
November - Of consolidation. Of feeling good. Of melancholy.
December - Of threats. Of broken shards. Of inactivity. Of food.

It has been a year to remember. I don't know, if it happened for good or bad, but it will still remain the most important year of my life.

I don't think anybody would get anything out of it. It is a reference for future me to remember what 2010 was like. :)

Big Brother

I am afraid. Very afraid. Recent blogposts by junta have given me jitters and well..I am afraid. Very afraid. Akila recently mentioned in her blog that the administration keeps track of students blog. Big Brother is out to get me.

Something weird is happening. All of a sudden, my blog which gets at most 10 hits per day in absence of any new posts got greater than 50 hits all on the same post. This post. Shady. Yes. Very. Now let us look at the demographics of the hits.

• 1st hit: 18:51:48 yesterday - Guwahati

Within 10 minutes, another hit from Kharagpur

• 19:05 Another from Guwahati, Assam

• 19:08 One from Dimapur, Assam

• 19:10 One from Lakhnau, UP

And now, the post is going global.

• 19:13 One from Austin, Texas

• 19:15 One from Laussane, Vaud - Never heard of this place before

And finally, it strikes home -

• 19:23 Bangalore, Karnataka (Ouch)

And then more and more and more people hit the same post, encompassing the length and breadth of India. All the way from Azhapuzha in Kerala to Amritsar in Punjab.

Here are the screen-shots. *Click to enlarge*






Shady. Very Very Shady. I think the IIT-Crusaders are behind me. Where is Cleveland?


PS: If anyone of you can please enlighten me why this is so, it will be most helpful.
PPS: T for you, if you say that overnight I have become famous.
PPPS: After 2 months of hiatus, the IITM Quiz Blog site is back on track, with new and better management under Advaith and Achyuth. Check it out at

http://www.iitmquizblog.blogspot.com

Hyderabad Nawab and other stories

I am going to die. I am a “How things work?” coordinator for Shaastra09. Right now, I am supposed to be setting questions. My co-coord is going to kill me. Right now, I am supposed to be writing an article for “The Fourth Estate”. The Editor is going to kill me. Right now, I am supposed to be setting some quiz questions for the incoming batch of freshers of my hostel. The Lit-Sec is going to kill me. Right now, I am supposed to be reading about ICA Technique. My Prof is going to kill me.

As some of you may know, I spent the last 7 weeks at Hyderabad for my intern. I am proud to say that I managed to gain enormous amount of knowledge and the foremost among them is that Loperamide and Digene are not Lays Chips. Don't pop in more than one. 4 days!! I greeted it like a long lost friend when it finally came. *I got shit-scared* :).Now those of you into whom I have filled a gross image, I apologize. But man, why the heck do they make Digene so tasty? It comes in vanilla, strawberry, mixed fruit flavour and what not. Those guys at R&D need to do some more market research.

The second most important thing I learnt was that it is definitely and by definitely, I mean D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y not a good idea to snicker when a huge gorilla in front of you in the bus is trying to tell his wife that he would likely to clean the toilet tomorrow over the phone. Well, for those who are not familiar with Telugu, there is a huge innuendo here. Find out. I wonder how the telugu version of “Tomorrow” is going to sound.

Hyderabad, for all things was a new experience. One thing I will tell you. Hyderabad is crazy. There are many crazy things I find around. Here are some five I can think of from the top of my mind.

• “Which Victoria Secret's bra are you?” quiz on Facebook.

• Joker. Pennywise is not crazy. He is just plain creepy.

• Fans of Twilight.

• Joan Baez' song “Diamonds and Rust” which stunningly reveals that Bob Dylan is an alien who is located somewhere between the earth and Alpha- Centauri. How do you make sense of “I heard your voice a couple of light-years ago.”?

• The poisonous nature of Dihydrogen monoxide, which is responsible for at the least 90% of all the diseases in the world.

IMHO, Hyderabad measures upto this level of craziness at the least.

For example, if I take the path-integral formulation of the routes of buses operating between ECIL-X road and Secunderabad, I will find that it is the same. I can draw a nice and cozy graph but No-Enthu-Da. Till I get enthu, you can be happy with this which has been directly lifted from Abstruse Goose.

Let me explain, to make the above point clearer. ECIL-X road is a crossroad from where my place was quite close. Now in any city in India(I have been to eleven cities and stayed for more than two months in six), between any two points, there will be many buses with the same bus number. Between ECIL and Secunderabad, there are five buses which have the same route, same starting and ending points and completely different bus numbers(16A, 17H, 250 etc.). Now if that is not enough, you stand at ECIL-X road and look at all the arms of a signpost installed there. On all the arms, it says Secunderabad. The funny thing is, it is actually true!! You can go in any direction and reach Secunderabad via totally different localities. All roads lead to Rome Secunderabad.

People drive like crazy here. Not the usual Bangalore craziness but life-threatening running-over-you craziness. Seriously. Whenever I tried to cross the road, I would freeze in the middle of the road, a tightness in chest and throat, my legs suddenly feel like paper and flashes of my whole life pass right in front of my eyes. I even remembered the name of the guy who used to sit next to me in 3^rd Standard when I was studying in Gujarat.

Digressing a bit(I have no clue why), I was trying to invent new mokkais for Mokkai Club during my intern when I a double-entendre flashed through my mind. “This Vacuum Cleaner sucks”. I laughed my head off when I thought of this. Now the more I look at it, the less funny it seems.

Another incident which still quells up my anger happened to me on the 2^nd day of my stay at Secunderabad. Those who are familiar with this place may know that Secunderabad has no malls. Being a n00b to this place, I had no idea about this. There is a McDonalds restaurant near my place. I asked the waiter, “Machan, are there any malls near-by?” “Of course, saar. Secunderabad very much developed. Go straight for 3 kms. You will find a nice mall.” I walk for 3kms in the sun, huffing and puffing and finally what do I find? A bloody Reliance Fresh mart!!

One of the best things that happened to me in Hyderabad was the friendship of the company's car driver. Man!! Was he amazing!! He was 50 years old, a graduate from Osmania with a son about my age and a daughter about 3 years younger. He was total timepass!! We kept on talking and talking and talking. Whew!! He had stud-English and I asked him, why he was working as a driver. His reply, “Well, I used to drive car for the Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. He made me continue my education and I became a graduate through Distance-Education Programme. Later when the government fell, the new Congress Government sacked me from the job”. And then he gave me a wierd smile and I have no clue now whether he was serious or joking. Once he caught me staring at a girl and slapped my back and said, “Way to go, Sir!!”

I met another guy, Yadunandan, who had just joined the company from Symbiosis, Pune. We had a long, fruitful conversation on everything under the sun. It was nice to converse with a fellow who is vehemently opposed to whatever you have to say. :) I agree with him on one thing though. The whole new breed of Engineers, MBAs etc which includes both of us are bloody self-centred bastards.

One fine evening, a guy comes to the guest house, the caretaker David had gone out to buy some vegetables and thinks that I am the caretaker and starts blasting me because I was wearing an old almost-torn baniyan. I think he was the General Manager of the company.

Almost every weekend, I visited my sister's place which was about 35kms away at the other end of the city. The roads in Hyderabad are bloody awesome. In fact there are no signals between Secunderabad and Banjara Hills, a distance of nearly 12 kms. One thing I love about Hyderabad are the roads. Extremely well maintained. Anyway, every weekend I put my sister to a torturous regime of cooking food for my bottomless pit. Bechaari....

One weekend like this, I went to Hyderabad Central. It was worse than a flea market. I saw one lady buying two huge baskets of clothes!! Are there seriously junta so rich? My sister bought me a nice T-Shirt , took me to a nice restaurant and basically pampered me which may explain the 3 kgs which I have put on during this summer. If you remember it was 12kgs last summer. :)

Every weekend, I watched a movie. Transformers and HP6 sucked, but IMAX made it bearable. IceAge3 is Gawd, Angels and Demons was Masala Max, Monsters V/s Aliens was cute and I slept through most of New York. 3D-FX was a new experience and was AWESOME!!

I read nearly 30 books in 6 weeks. I finished with great relish the whole of Asimov's “Foundation” and “Robot” series of books, polished of 3 Jeffery Archer novels, 2 books of the Bourne series, fell asleep while reading Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", compared the movie and book versions of Mario Puzo's magnum opus, crashed off while reading “The Sicilian” by the same author, loved JD Salinger's “Catcher in the Rye”, read Jerome K Jerome's “Three Men in a Boat” again, waded through Vikram Chandra's “Sacred Games” and , highfunda-ed Shashi Tharoor's “The Great Indian Novel”, and finally gave up in between while reading “God of Small Things” by Arundathi Roy.

Now, I am back at the institute, the semester has already started, promising to be hectic. How many photos have I taken in Hyderabad after pleading with mom for an hour to lend me the camera? One, of the clock in the guest house. My mom has promised me that she will never lend me her camera or iPod again.

Quotable Quotes:

Randy Pausch's childhood dream was to work at Disney Land. My childhood dream is to have infinite amounts of French Fries to feed on. But what tops it all is Joseph Joseph Che-gkgjghjd-ara Che Guevara's (aka Jojo aka Evil Muggoo) childhood dream. To quote him,

“Machan I realized my first childhood dream this summer daw. I saw the source code for an Operating System at the most basic level.”

I rest my case. He is the biggest nerd that ever lived on earth.

Tran's jokes

If you are remotely allergic to Mokkai, now is a good time to calmly close your laptop/Computer and run for your lives. The author of this blog is no way responsible for the brain hemorrhage you may get after reading this post.

KJ aka Kishore Jaganathan when not putting 9.5+ GPA, kills people with his Mokkais. What he is known for are called "Tran's Jokes", which is enough to turn any sane, calm person to a psychotic serial killer (And that's why I have become one. I last finished watching the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" all 8 seasons. If you have not got the joke in the last sentence you are requested to RUN...for the content following this has the potential to kill you)

So ladies and gentlemen, presenting here a collection of Kishore Jaganathan's "Tran's jokes"

Here is a list of things you should know, before going further
Dr. ADG and Dr. NDG are a married couple both teaching here at Elec Department at IITMadras

Dr. KV is a Power Systems Professor known for his sleep inducing but studd lectures

Dr. JK is the current HoD of Elec Department.

Dr. AC is a Bengali Prof known for his Bong accent (Enable is pronounced Enamel :D )

Dr. RKK is a comp-sci prof known for his love for Obsolete languages and paining students to code in them.

Dr. SP and Dr. N are two pseudo twins of Analog Circuits Course known for their hifunda-ness if that's a word.

Dr. TTN, though I haven't met him is considered the guru of Mokkai-Putting.

1. ADG and NDG have a daughter 1 . She was their lovely child and they wanted to give her whatever she wanted in life. She asks her parents for a transistor. They misinterpreted the statement, and their next daughter was named *Tran*.
2. Tran was a really nice girl, whoever saw her was really impressed with her. KV decides to adopt her and after N fight, succeeds. He then said, "*Tran's former* parents were ADG and NDG".
3. Tran was very intelligent, she cracked JEE and was now an IITian. JK was very impressed with her and after N*N fight, adopts her. He was walking in the corridor and Anjan sees him on the way. He said, "Hey Zagdees Wassup". And after that when Jagadeesh went to his room, he saw a letter which said that he is the new HoD of the dept. He thinks Zagdees is numerologically very lucky and hence changes his name to Zagdees officially. Tran cups properly at insti. It was app time. Tran still managed to get MIT. How?
   MIT couldn't ignore *Z.Tran's form*
4. Tran dies suddenly due to a racial attack in MIT :D RKK was asked to write something for the epitaph. He wrote:
   "*For Tran*, with love"
5. Investigations were going on to find out why Tran died. It happened that Zagdees was too wierd a name, so he changed his name back to Jagadeesh. So now she becomes jTran, which is purely imaginary and hence she died.
6. People with toothaches always went to Tran instead of going to a clinic directly, and waited for her instruction before doing so. Why?
   So that they would have a "Tran send dental" experience.
7. Continuing the story.....Everybody stopped talking to Jagadeesh as he was a killer. He takes attendance in class and nobody responds. He tried hard, but nobody spoke to him. So he decided to stop the course, but he wanted the students to speak to him once atleast. So he conducted an end sem immediately. The question is simple, he ll draw a diagram on the board and if students draw it on paper, they get S else they CUP. He drew something and stood in front of it so that students cant see it. His strat was that they ll ask him to move aside. But nobody said anything and everyone drew it exactly on paper. How?
   He was *Tran's parent*.
8. Tran's sister became an underworld don and everyone was afraid of her. Which is the best place to hide from her? Mountains. Because Transistors are afraid of avalanche effect.
9. Tran's sister Kidnaps Nagendra. She calls up Shanthi Pavan and asks for 1 crore ransom if he wants Nagi back. How does Shanthi save Nagi?
   He goes to Tran's sister's house and connects 220V to the gate. Effectively he has shorted Gate and source, so the transistor is dead.
10. (This is my favourite) Tran's sister wanted to become ideal. So she married and gave birth to a son. She fed him a lot. The funda: As Transistor's BETA increases, Transistor is more and more ideal.
11. If Tran acts in Hollywood movies, it'll be a dream come true for stockbrokers. They love *Tran's actions*
12. Tran was pained in life. Her sister was putting even more pain. She was acting as a *Tran's Impedance Amplifier*
13. Tran wanted to take a picture of her. So she went to a studio. Though the studio chap put N fight, the images were appearing 90 degrees rotated. Why?
    *Tran's pose *rotated the image.
14. Because of some heavy traffic, Tran couldn't attend a German class on time. The prof said: Auf Wiederhesen (whatever's the correct word for that), Tran entered the room then. All students in class said Good Bye. Why?
    The prof said: *Tran's late*
15. (Akarsh's Contribution) Tran's husband loved geared automobiles. He always used to encourage Tran to join army, and after she joined the armed forces, he always used to go along with her an all expeditions, however unsafe. Why?
    Because he loved transmission.
16. (Akarsh's Contribution) Tran's relative worked in Canara Bank and he was posted in one of the worst possible places in India. Every time he visited Tran, he would always try to get into her room and steal her coats from the wardrobe. Why?
    He wanted to badly get transfer. (Tran's fur)

Hope you are still living!! Comments and addition are Welcome!!

PS: KJ, take a bow man!! Tran's jokes are bloody awesome!!

Why IIT Profs are God

Disclaimer: After publishing this story, many people have accused me of 'kulting' an old SMS joke. I have no clue about the authenticity of this story other than what Sagar or rather Sagar's Chacha or someone claims. This is the first time I have heard this 'joke', old or not, I know not.

There are times when I have cursed all the Profs here at IIT, the latest being when I lost an A grade in a course because of 2 marks.(70 was the cut-off. I had scored 68) But, believe it or not, there are times I have to bow down to them and say, "Machan, you are God da..."

Sagar Dewan, also sometimes known as Mugger Mugwan, Bugger Bhagwan and also Muggu-Won-Kenobi recollected this story when his Chacha or some-one was at IIT-Kanpur(He reckons it was the 1996 Batch). After hearing this story, I am proud that I am finally at IIT.

A day before Quiz, some students went out, got completely drunk and wasted and came back at about 3 in the morning. Needless to say they peacefully slept off through the quiz and all of them woke up around noon. Being, quite brilliant at deception and lying(After all, IIT's make you that) they created an alibi where they had to attend a friend's funeral and on their way back their car got punctured. They had to wait for the entire night, before they could get a lift and had reached the institute only by noon.

The Prof was very understanding and told them that he will give the make-up exam the next day and told them that they will be seated in different rooms as there will be no one, who can take the time-off to invigilate. Next day, these guys mug hard and go to the Quiz. The Quiz paper read


1) (2 marks) What is your name?
2) (98 marks) Which tyre of the car was punctured?


Amazing, isn't it?

*Whew* I will survive

You know there are times when you curse the world around you, curse your professors, fantasize about explosions triggering in the Staff Quarters of IIT, why even curse the poor old monkey grinning at you sitting on the bathroom partition while watching you take a shower.

Such a time was last semester. Now that I look back, I feel that I could have done much better, could have tried much harder, but what the heck? When you have E.Mech for 3 hours a day, even Tina Fey is irritable... The past. A toast to the future. A hope that the next semester will be more peaceful.

***********

You know the most irritating thing that can ever happen is that, you love a subject, understand every concept and still score below class-average. Aaaaargghhhhh....That was Networks and Systems for me. Amazing professor. Dr. Devendra Jalihal. I think, I have even published an article by him in this blog(If you remember on the Warden Quiz). Funny, in his own way, extremely friendly and jovial. Still, getting below class-average sucks...

************

I had my final Math-Course this semester. Not that I am not going to do any math-based course in the future, but I guess this will be my final course in Math Department itself. I had taken up "Complex Analysis". Beautiful Course!! The professor, though slightly immersed in his own world and too soft, was very good and especially the last few classes were God-Level. The most ironic part were my marks. 6/20 and 11/20. If only, I had less credits this semester, so that I could have concentrated more on this course.....

***********

It is amazing how hi-funda everything becomes when you incorporate G(r)eek symbols into your run of the mill formulas.
aJ=a*b*E+a*c*dE/dt definitely sounds less hi-funda than

Mu-naught into J= mu-naught into sigma into E plus mu-naught into epsilon-naught dE/dt

You get the point, I guess....
*************

One of the courses I had this semester was Fiction. I don't know why, but automatically when a book is *prescribed* in the syllabus, I just can't read it. Normally, a 600 page novel would have taken me about 8 hours of reading in a single sitting and once I get hold of a story book, I just have to finish it. In fact, I was so addicted to novels, that my mom hid my entire collection, during JEE days. I am slightly surprised I didn't read the prescribed novel (Incidentally it was 'Great Expectations') till the last moment. I wrote an entire 1000 word essay on what makes it a great novel, without even having read a single word from the book(In my desperation, I saw the movie available on LAN to get the gist of the story).

I had to make a presentation on a book, I had read. I chose to give a presentation on 'Watchmen'. We(Mesa, Rajat and Shape) put fight for about 2 days and the presentation turned out to be amazing. Kudos to Shape to make it such god-awesome. But, you see the professors don't like creativity...Presentations on age-old classics like LOTR, Jekyll and Hyde, Animal Farm etc.(Not, that they were bad or anything) got way better grades than something-hatke like 'Watchmen'. I feel that, this is the problem with India. Unless, some wierdo from the West says, it is good they just can't accept it. To even say that Carnatic music is stud, we look to the west for their nod of approval. We know Ravishankar only because he became recognized in the west. Why the hoopla surrounding AR Rahman increased many-fold when he got an Oscar? Oscar ceremony is viewed by way less junta compared to Filmfare Awards. Anyway back to the point....

Another weird thing about me is that, I just don't know how much to write when they say something like "Write in 100 words." I wrote about one and a half page on "Slave Trade" and then counted and realized that I had written close to 250 words.

It has been such a long time since I wrote essay-type questions. You see, I did all my schooling in state-board schools, barring two years in Gujarat and writing so much has been quite an alien thing. I was supposed to write three 1000 word essays on 'Great Expectations', 'Roots' and 'Purple Hibiscus'.

0900 to 1000: Whoo...I rock, I rave...I can write da machi!!! Yippee-Ki-Yay..
1000 to 1030: Okay, take it slow, you still have lots of time...
1030 to 1100: Ooh my hand, Ouch...Man, good I took up B.Tech instead of any arts program.
1100 to 1115: Last Exam Machi...4 credits, don't screw it up...It can make or break your CGPA.
1115 to 1130: Ouch, Ouch, Ouch, Ouch...Wish I had a Pain Reliever...
1130 to 1145: Why was I born?
11:45 to 1200: Kolle Nannannnaaaaa.... *

I still wonder how the MA students can write so much, so fast... Bloody unbelievable.

* Translates to "Kill me, Woman" a Kannada Song, infamous for its *senti*
PS: I am never going to take an English course again.

***********

"Main Kaun Hoon? Yeh Kya Hain?"

What people think whenever there was an E.Mech class. I still have no clue,how an Alternator works. Stator, Rotor, Motor....Aaargghhhhh....This is going to be my major....Double Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhh....

PS: I am going to major in Power Systems thanks to my bad JEE rank.

***********

I watched the least number of movies this semester. Hardly more than ten movies. But, I followed House, How I met your Mother, 30 Rock and The Big Bang Theory.

House, I feel has achieved new levels of stupidity and the zing which was present in the earlier episodes is missing. It has kind of become more soap-opera saas-bahu serial. How I met your Mother has been quite disappointing this season, but TBBT and 30 Rock are just amazing!!

***********

Apparently one of the top Engineering Colleges in Bangalore has started giving out cards to students for misbehaving. Yes, mild offence is a Green Card, Repeated Offence is an Yellow Card and More-Repeated Offence and you will be given a Red Card. And you know what earns you a Green Card? Wearing a round-necked T-Shirt!! Girls are supposed to wear only Salwaar Kameez... Colouring your hair or not getting a hair-cut gets you an Yellow Card... Not obeying the watchman, may get you suspended!! Separate stairs for Boys and Girls, No talking in the line... What are we? 2nd standard kids?

Does this environment in any way breed creativity? Not a chance....Sheep, more Sheep....This actually reminds me of the starting sequence of "Modern Times". If you haven't watched this classic, go watch it. Amazing Movie!!

Next year, we will be having 18% OBC reservation. You know the Aesop Fables right? Apparently, there was an Exam and both the Tortoise and Rabbit took it. The cut-off was 85%. The Hare got 84% and the Tortoise got 80%, but still the Tortoise got a seat. You know why?



You remember, when we were in 1st standard, the tortoise beat the hare in a race. So, Sports Quota!!

Such is the pathetic level of higher education, which the country has descended to.


***********

Anyway, coming back to my life, I am currently at Chennai working under two professors, one from BioTech Department and another from Elec Department in EEG Signal Processing... It is taking up most of my time... After a month or so, I will be leaving for my intern at Hyderabad. Apparently, it is in this area called Cherlapally,famous for it's Central Jail. The internship says that Accommodation will be provided. I will leave it to the readers to guess where I may be "accommodated".

So, adios till the next post.