Archive for the 'Anu' Category

I Am Super Hungry

Published on December 3, 2011 in Anu. 1 Comment

It’s 5 in the morning. I haven’t slept yet. And then I realize that I am feeling super hungry. I need something to eat like right now!

Everything’s so quite. Everyone’s asleep. Not a sound to be heard. I did not want to wake anyone up. I find my way through the darkness to the kitchen. Switch on the lights. Look around in desperation but find nothing. Damn! I remember Pappu had cooked kheer a couple of days ago. Fingers crossed I open the refrigerator. Tons of boxes lying around and any of them could be the one containing delicious kheer for me. Patiently I open each box one by one, always replacing them in their correct place. All boxes checked but no kheer. Huh! The very thought of kheer makes me hungrier still. Cruel. God I need something to eat.

Papad is what comes to mind. Same sad story – cannot find papad to roast. There’s a bottle of Pepsi I don’t want to drink. There’s soda for squash. I remind myself that it’s hunger and not thirst that I need t get rid of.Look around once again just to find something to eat. Heck! There’s nothing in the kitchen. No ice-cream. No kheer. No fruits. I don’t want to eat the cold dinner food.

I give up. I walk back towards my bedroom. That’s when I remember that we have some snacks stacked up in the television cabinet. There it is. A packet of Haldiram’s Aloo Bhujia! Get it to my room. There’s Eagles – New Kid In Town playing. A mouthful of Haldiram. Ah! Bliss. If only Birinder Tiwana was here, he could have made a half-fried egg for me.

Well fed and watered, I am feeling sleepy now. I need to wake up for the afternoon show. Going to the movie – Dirty Picture – along with roommates. Good night!

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Mistake of the Day : rm -rf ~

Published on October 24, 2011 in Anu. 0 Comments

Kids these days huh! They never exercise caution before executing the rm -rf command. It’s gotten ingrained into their habit to use it just as commonly as ls. Careless people. And that is exactly what I did! Damn it! So here’s what happened.

I use tmux in which ` is set as the control character. So it’s pretty common for me to reach out to the ` keystroke. Now I was editing a file in vi. I wanted to save the file and move to the previous tmux screen.

:wq followed by “

Now : requires the SHIFT key be pressed. So usually you get used to having a finger over the SHIFT key. I entered the :wq command. But then somehow my fingers also pressed the SPACE and ~ keystrokes. So I ended up doing

:wq ~

Pff. Vi created a new file named ~. Bah. And then by habit, even before my brain could process anything, my fingers typed in

rm -rf ~

:D . In their defense their intention was just to delete the ~ file. But – Disaster! :’(

At this point I must mention that I was in the root directory /. Luckily enough I did not create a file named *. :D .

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I Need A Break

Published on August 17, 2011 in Anu. 0 Comments

Yeah, I definitely do. Mostly because of late all that I have done seems to be directly related to my work. I have hardly had any spare time for myself. Contrast this to FICO and I had a lot of free time earlier. I used to spend an hour almost everyday towards Project Euler problems. That is something I haven’t done in a while now. Also I have always wanted to try my hand at an Android App. I have a something that I would like to make for myself, but once again I need more time.

Yea, I definitely do need a break. This long weekend and the trip to Hyderabad could not have come at a better time. It’ll be refreshing to get away from Bangalore and have a couple of peaceful days.

Until then, I’ll just listen to the song by Scorpions – Holiday:

Let me take you far away, you’d like a holiday!

Longing for the Sun, you’re welcome, to the island without name.

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My Wishlist

Published on April 23, 2011 in Anu. 0 Comments

It’s been a long time since I updated my wish list last. I have got quite a few additions to my possessions and new items have been added to my list. First of all, let me start with what I have bought in the recent time.

My costliest purchase was the iTouch 4th generation! I simply am addicted to music. It gets me high and I needed this device to make me complete. Now I am never without my collection.

I’ve got a great electric razor in Philips Arcitec. Though it is no Braun Series 7, but it is good enough for me. I love the smooth feel after a shave :) . I also have bought myself a Royal Challengers Bangalore Reebok jersey and a Ferrari Puma polo. The RCB jersey I wore when I went to watch the RCB vs. MI match, and the Ferrari polo will come useful when I go to the Indian F1 GP later this year. Oh, and I am totally in love with the Ferrari polo. It’s a black tee-shirt, with a red stripe on the left hand front. The prancing pony is embroidered on the red stripe.

Tomorrow I will purchase Chelsea jersey, finally might I add! The new season jersey is a bore. I prefer the 2010-11 season jersey. The red collar with a tinge of white gives it a beautiful look.

New additions to my list include a mobile phone. At present I have a Sony Xperia X1. It’s an outdated handset and I want to get rid of it. Since I already have an iTouch, I am not too keen on an iPhone, however advanced and cool might it be. I am more inclined towards an Android smart phone. But Android is in the initial stages and I would rather want to wait before making a hasty decision and spending 40K. I want to wait till a phone gets my heart racing and makes it an impulsive decision to buy it.

Another gadget I would like to possess is a Kindle. A colleague of mine has one. I quite liked the look of it. At a first glance you couldn’t say if it was a digital surface or a plain paper with text on it. And for a person like me, who has once again discovered his love for reading, it’s a boon.

I have given up on the laptop. I still do miss Ubuntu dearly, but I have learnt to ignore it. I have taught myself to be content with the windows laptop my company has provided me.

I have now been working for two years and have saved enough money to buy a car, taking very little loan. Also I have gotten quite bored of my bike. But I am not in any hurry to get a car. That can wait. However, I can firmly state that I shall not be buying any other bike. My next vehicle will definitely be a car.

I can’t think of anything more right now. Shall update later!

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Have I Stopped Believing?

Published on December 25, 2010 in Anu. 0 Comments

This is something I want to discuss with my grandfather. But he is in Varanasi and I in Bangalore. Of late, my visits to Varanasi have become too few. And he is too old and has difficulty hearing through a mobile. So I will write down here what I want him to know about my conflicts.

I follow no religion and believe in no god. I do not know Pagan properly, but if it is what I think I understand then I would like to call myself a Pagan instead. This is something I need to ask my grandfather. So here I am, a person who does not believe in any divine power. I have had quite a lot of discussions with people who challenge my stance. But I do not budge. I do not want to believe in God and am not going to change my stance.

Not long ago, I was not like this. There was a gradual change in my attitude towards god. At a very young age I would read Ramayan and pray to god. That was a time I was influenced by the society and people around me and let me tell you, being brought up in India, it is not easy to escape the notion of existence of god. I remember visiting a Hanuman temple every Tuesday with my grandfather to listen to priests chant Hanuman Chalisa. I would visit temples of Durga and all with my grandmother.

Then came the adolescence stage when I would question everything in the name of science. I would tell people that even the Church had been questioned. I became agnostic. It was at this time that my grandfather insisted that I read the book Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse. The book made little sense to me and my attitude remained the same.

A few years later and I became an Atheist that I am now. I have my own set of rules and guidelines that I strictly follow. They govern my actions and are what make up my principles shaping up my personality. I am happy and at peace with myself.

Yet sometimes, there are these moments of doubt. They stem from a basic conflict in my guidelines. On one hand I have convinced myself that there is no god to look up to. And on the other hand I have decided to try and have an open mind towards all opinions. Being open minded doesn’t mean I accept them. It only implies that I am tolerant towards the opinions of other people. And it is the latter that has given birth to the doubt.

Let me go back to the book by Hermann Hesse that I have mentioned above. In the book, the author tells us a story of a queer trip he decided to take. It was a group of people wanting to travel east to discover some divine power. Every member had a personal reason for making this trip. Throughout the journey, the group would break up to fulfill their quests. They would always manage to regroup and continue the journey. On one such personal trips, our author and a small group of people had doubts regarding the journey. Simply put, they lost their faith but decided continue the journey none the less. However, much they tried but could not find the group. They assumed that the group had disbanded and deserted the quest. They went back to their home. A few years later, the author was in India and he accidentally came across a member of the group. He happened to be the president of the group. He told the author that the rest of the group, the ones who still had faith, continued the journey and found whatever they had joined the quest to find. It was just the author who had deserted the journey.

Now this story makes more sense to me. It forces me to question whether I have lost that path because I stopped believing. Am I an Atheist only because I wanted to be, instead of it being a logical decision? And this doubt was reinforced by a book by Paulo Coelho – The Witch of Portobello. I now wonder whether I should be more open in my beliefs and be an agnostic once again?

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I Hate Stingy People

Published on November 11, 2010 in Anu. 1 Comment

Sometimes it drives me nuts to see how stingy a person can get. It irritates me more when people earning 50′s of thousands, clearly enough to allow them a luxurious life while having no dependents, refuse to dish out a few extra bucks. I have always maintained that a person who becomes a slave to his money will never be able to spend it freely. I hope my friends understand it as well!

I have come across only 2 people who were ever ready to spend 500 for a burger – Atit Parikh and Gaurav Bubna. I spent the first couple of months in Bangalore with them and we would go out almost every night. Those were good days. I miss them now.

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Vrrraaamm…Vroooomm…Chhhiiiiiiiiinnnn…Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Published on September 15, 2010 in Anu. 0 Comments

Damn it! Not again! I need to get my front brakes fixed. This is the second time they have caused an accident.

A week has gone by now and my wounds have almost healed. Fortunately there’s not much damage in the bike. The leg guard has bent in and the gear pedal caved in. Other than that there are just small scratches. So instead of dwelling on the accident and researching the causes let’s rather take away whatever positives we can from it.

  • For one, I will be a pretty safe driver for at least the next few months (my last accident was more than 10 months ago). Pain is no friend of mine and I hate to be forced to to confined to staying in bed when not at home under the care of mom.
  • Secondly, I have got a shot of TT on the 6th of September, 2010. I do not need to get another shot till at least 2013 :) . That’s a big relief.
  • I’ll finally buy a new pair of jeans to replace the torn old ones.
  • Luckily I wasn’t wearing a t-shirt that day.
  • My biking gloves were almost in tatters. Now I will have to buy a new pair.
  • I’ll get my bike serviced.

The only negative was the nurse cleaning my wound. He was chatting up his female colleague and cared the least for my pain. In fact, I think he was trying to inflict more pain to impress her, poking the tweezers at my wound trying to remove any piece of dead skin he could find, however small it be.

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My Attempts At Speed Cubing

Published on September 3, 2010 in Anu. 0 Comments

This is an old video of mine when I was in my final year of engineering. My brother had just taught me the basic algorithm to solve the Rubik’s cube. The time recorded was some 59 seconds on a Funskool cube. I have a better cube now, I do not have the time to learn better methods and get faster. Sad!

My brother though has made a lot of progress. He clocks within 30 seconds and can also solve blind-folded.

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Tra-la-la-laa

Published on March 23, 2010 in Anu. 0 Comments

On my way back from work this evening, I was stuck in traffic on the Inner Ring Road. It was then that I heard a humming and distinct singing. Looking around for the source, I realised that it was the guy riding on a bike beside me singing some gult songs. And he made no efforts to keep the volume down.

I might have initially scoffed at the guy. But once the traffic got moving, I gave singing a try. Anyone who has heard me sing, with some background music, will testify that it’s a torture. Caring little for anyone listening to me, I started to sing loudly while riding the bike.

And I must accept, it was quite a pleasant feeling. It felt good. I am going to do this every day from now on. :D

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My First Bike Accident – Claustrophobia

Published on March 13, 2010 in Anu. 0 Comments

This occurred a long long time ago. It was before Dussera of 2009. Yet I still remember that moment quite vividly. We were riding from Bangalore to Ooty, almost 300kms long stretch. Having started in morning at around 9, it had become evening when we entered the Madhumalai forest. Immediately after the forest we would get to the steep hairpin bends and reach Ooty.

The accident occurred in the Madhumalai forest. To go to Ooty you need to take a left at a point inside the Bandipur National Park. Immediately after taking the left turn, the road narrowed. I was driving and my brother was the pillion rider. He immediately pointed out that perhaps I was going fast for such a narrow road which had low visibility at corners and turns. I ignored his opinion – something I rue till this day.

It was at a blind turn. The road turned sharply right and I had no way of knowing what was coming towards me from the other side. I turned right to see a Sumo come right towards me. I panicked and tried to steer my bike away from the Sumo’s path. But being a narrow I ran out of road width and skid at the edge where the ground was at a lower level to the road. Instantly the bike tilted to my right and I could not control it. Both of us skid along with the bike.

My first reaction was to check if my brother was harmed. Bike mattered the least to me then.  And how glad was I to know that he was unharmed. Luckily, both of us had escaped with minor bruises. Had it been any major accident, help would have been tough to get.

The more I think of that day, the more I become sure of the reason I think caused the accident. Ridiculous or stupid it might sound, but the reason is that I am claustrophobic. I panicked because I ran out of space, and it scared me. This was the only reason why I lost control of my bike while driving at a modest speed of 40 kmph. All my analysis and logic interpretation of the situation points to that only one possible answer.

My being claustrophobic was pointed out by Rohit Mahapatra. I have tested this theory for correctness.   And I am sad to accept that I am actually claustrophobic. I am always reluctant of squeezing my way through two SUV’s or larger vehicles. I feel uncomfortable when I enter the lift of small apartments, the ones having very little space inside the lift. I sleep with my head towards the corridor when traveling in a train.

But now that I have accepted that I am claustrophobic, I try to be more careful while driving. However, I would like to solve this problem from root. I would like to get rid of my claustrophobia. I know it’s just psychological. And if it is something wrong with my brain, I would like to train to think it otherwise. So here’s a realistic mission for myself – get rid of my claustrophobia.

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