ext3 Blog

One Way Traffic

2006-10-05T18:05:00.000+05:30

Tomorrow, the National Academy of Sciences is celebrating its Platinum Jubilee by way of a 3 day something. I had never heard of this Academy till now - a statement not meant to cast aspersions on it, but to wonder where it had been all this while. Governmental jamborees are not uncommon here and serve to remind the fundamental sarkaar-ness of IIT from time to time (this was, after all, raised by an Act of Parliament, which is probably only next to an Act of God, or even equivalent in a secular democracy).

However, since the PM comes calling to flag it off, it means uneasiness over the sudden influx of policeman looking askance at you, a flurry of paint-this-and-paint that, people looking busy and snapping to it. Though, till now, only one half of the speedbreaker outside SOM seems to have been painted and perhaps some skillful driving by the PM's designated chauffeur will prevent the Hon. PM from noticing this little underside lapse. More seriously, we don't want any unfortunate incidents, don't we? So let's clamp down on movement for a while. Take the day off, guys.

Another reminder that we well-off types don't really want to meet our leaders - the closer they are to us, the more the inconveniences. That's why our forefathers settled in Mumbai and Pune and Nagercoil - we put the distance between them and us. And if there are going to be any mischievous elements creating naughtiness, then that's even more irritating. Go away, I say to the terrorists, we're already annoyed with the restrictions our own guys have put us under.

One flying over the...

2006-08-27T18:33:00.000+05:30

Mails, Announcements and other communications from the Hostel-12 council members always start with "Dear Inmates". I may be a linguistic bigot of some kind, because I don't like the word "inmate" applied to me. The dictionary seems to suggest "inmate" is merely a resident of a dwelling, but then this is the same language that has words such as "cleave".
(I'm a lot more suspicious than you can imagine.)

To me, "Inmate" suggests resident of a prison or asylum. I'll get one of these places one day, but right now let me revel in my minor crimes and misdemeanours in the open, sweet air. Or issue me striped uniforms and aluminium cutlery for banging against rods.

(I'm a lot more imaginative than you can suspect.)

Mull-har Quizzing

2006-08-26T10:09:00.000+05:30

Earlier, it was a long post about my two days at Malhar '06. Now for the heart-wrenching tale that shall wring blood out of rocks i.e. the quizzing events.

As recounted before, in each quizzing event, the team I was part of made it to the final, which made a trip back to 'har unavoidable. Thankfully, administrivially, the place was much more welcoming on finals day than on elims day. I had read tales that made me shiver and was hoping to experience more of the same (on the Tolstoy-ski principle that every good quiz is like another, but every bad quiz is unique - and memorable - in its own way)

The Entertainment Quiz
The first bit of surprise was the news that Harsha Bhogle was going to host the quiz. This considerably dampened my spirits because here was Harsha reducing the probability that this would turn out to be a bad quiz :-) However, since people have told me that Harsha's quizmastering is probably the best by a celebrity host, I was keen to experience this first-hand.

This perception turned out to be true. He is easily the best celeb host I have experienced. Courteous to all the quizzers (and here's where you pay attention Derek) but very audience-friendly too without needing to pander to the LCD. We had 4 IIT teams in the final with Ruparel being a slightly surprised 5th team. The questions and format were Xaviers' own.

The format was disappointing. All questions on direct, except during the specialities. With such a format, you really don't need all teams on stage during the finals! Just call us when you want to ask our directs and we'll show up, thank you. When I raised this later, Harsha defended the organisers saying passing would have taken up a lot more time, but that excuse isn't good enough I'm afraid. It's like letting each football team play against an open goal without the other team for a half and vice versa. I could easily know all the answers to the others' questions except my own and do badly. Sadness reigns. During the specialities, there was this silly option of "throwing" questions to other teams - a gimmick I detest because it's just that: a gimmick, and doesn't add much to the enjoyment of audiences or participants either.

The questions, however, turned out to be decent. At least the 1st half did. The good ones were in the rounds of movies, music and a connect round where the audio accompanying the video was different and the two had to be connected to each other. The a/v connects were pretty good, but a grouse was the fact that the answers to most questions were the names of the directors of the movie in the video (a fact we exploited in one question where we simply guessed the name of the director w/o knowing the audio part properly). Since we led from start (to finish), our specialities ended up being classical (the 2nd last team picked up jazz) in which we ended up with a net gain of zero. Their intentions in including things like classical were noble, but the questions did not stand up - people get put off by such genres precisely because we don't often ask the interesting questions.

The second half was quite obscure: questions on games, comics, football world cup (incredibly vague!). In the last specialities, we ended up with Arts which we did reasonably well (2nd last team picked up Theatre, which we actually would have got about 4 out of 5). We ended up winning fairly comfortably in a quiz not too tainted by obscure stuff and obviously hosted very well. This was not the 'har quizzing show I had been promised!

The "Major" Quiz
There is a certain inevitability in life. If you've done something long enough (I believe they call it "experience", and it euphemistically veils the scars), you can sometimes sense how things are going to turn out. That feeling was finally bought to fruition at the "Military/Political" quiz.

Now I have very little knowledge about the genre of Military trivia, but listening to a few questions over the last few years, I became somewhat cognisant of many interesting themes in that area. Shivaji and Kunal S. of the BC have been the local experts, and when Kunal did an introductory Mil quiz at the BC for the rest of us, I found it quite interesting. In complete contrast, the Malhar elims had hardly any questions on the military side. The political side was riddled with old questions and vague ones drafted in by express post from trivia websites. But would the elims feign a "camp" flavour and disappoint, a la the morning?

As soon as the quiz started (about 45 mins late), I knew we were in for quite an evening. A tale potentially to be single-toothedly told to avid grandchildren (or perhaps grand-nephews/nieces, depending on how the life-plot pans out) beside the fireplace was guaranteed to unfold. The reason for this was the fact that our lady-host launched into a "welcome one and all" (never a good sign) that re-introduced Einstein's famous quote about the 4th World War to be fought with sticks. The long opening speech involved mentions of millenial conflict (there was something wrong factually somewhere which I regret I have forgotten) and harangues on imperial hegemony and such-like (I may be wrong with the passage of time, but that's what it sounded like). We were then introduced to the rounds. It seemed like the 1st three rounds were normal (normal == mutated in the circumstances) leading to the elimination of one team, followed by a military strategy round, after which there would be more extremely prejudicial dismissals followed by ellipsis. ("ellipsis" because what was to unfold over the next couple of hours would wipe everyone's memory clean). At that time, I thought I hadn't heard the "military strategy" bit properly. Wait, wait, said my guardian devil before vanishing temporarily in a puff of hell-fire.

Mercifully, they had "passing" this time (with d&p of course). The 1st round had 4 questions (direct) for each team, in batches of two. They passed along if teams didn't answer. The 1st two sets, to Govt. Law College and St. Xaviers, were answered directly. Predictably, we (who were in the middle of the pack) did not answer any of our directs in the first phase. Symbiosis Law (Suvojit and co.) did well while I don't know what the other IIT team did. The second phase moved on the same lines. The main points of interest here were the tendency of the guy operating the presentation to occasionally show the answer before the teams could, and of the QM to forget to pass the question and give the answer herself.

Round two was crazy in its novelty. Each team picked 5 out of 7 topics (such as "assassinations", "world wars", "spies" et al) - everyone was offered the same 7 topics - and answered two questions on each. The scoring was something that Calvinball could pick up. It went something like this: you answer your directs correctly, and you get 10. If you get it wrong, another team could answer it costing you -5. If they got it wrong, they got -2 and you wouldn't lose any points. Or something of that sort. Soon, all teams realised that if you answered another teams qn on them passing, you couldn't make any points of your own. You could merely hurt them by doing so - "for the sadistic pleasure of doing so":: quote by QM (paraphrased). So this meant that for 5 teams x 5 topics x 2 questions each = 50 qns, passing had no relevance. There was no incentive for anyone to guess answers apart from the ones receiving the directs. As a result, for over 75% of the passed qns, people didn't attempt. This had the happy side-effect of speeding up the quiz, though. In the middle, there was a collective memory lapse and no one (including an increasingly befuddled-looking scorer) seemed to be sure of the points system. At the end of this round, we ended up leading the quiz by a bit, and frankly, we had no idea how. There were a bunch of out-of-a-Bela-Lugosi-film vague questions and factual errors such as referring to Tony Blair as a "Head of State" (He is "Head of Govt") and an incorrect question asking "In her film debut, Aishwarya Rai played roles based on two CMs of Tamil Nadu - name them" (Rai played just the Jayalalitha character; the other based on Janaki was played by Gowthami - I didn't complain, for a. it wasn't our direct and b. I had reached a don't-care state). There were a couple of Aussie PMs like in the elims - so funtrivia.com had some hits the previous night.

Round three was a simple 5-qn rapid-fire made weird by the choice of scoring. "you get 2 for the 1st question, 4 for the next and so on". Aye jumalakaDi gili-gili! Did it mean that the 1st question is worth 2, the 2nd 4 and so on till the last question was worth 32? Which meant you could score a max of 2+4+...+32 = 64? No, of course not. It merely meant you could score 2^n where n==no. of correct answers (of course n>0 :-)) Again, an unnecessary gimmick. (The only point of interest was that each set had a caricature of a personality made by a Malhar volunteer - commendable)

At the end of this, poor Symbi Law found themselves last. They had topped the elims, had given answers to some tough questions and still were out. I remember remarking to Suvojit that it might actually turn out to be a fortunate thing for them. I don't think I was wrong.

(Before the quiz began, we were informed that "three eminent people" would judge the strategy round, and that they would be introduced at that point, but rest assured they were "eminent people". The introductions never happened until at the end when the 2 of the judges took it upon themselves to do so, revealing that we had had a former army Colonel, a PR lady - predictably she talked a lot - while the last gent wisely stayed incognito.)

So now we had to attempt a military strategy round (since this was WW4 - we had no real major weapons, apart from quiz questions so far, I guess). There were two maps, one a grid based one with bits of topography in each square and the other a general AOE-type region with different terrains. You have to achieve an objective using a bunch of resources. You buy resources with the points you already have. You then devise a strategy to achieve the obj. Then you present your strategy and defend questions. Now, the problems were:

a. What the hell was this subjective round doing in a quiz?
b. Why were there two maps if there was such a shortage of time?
c. Was this my imagination or was it soon to turn into a business case/debate type event?
d. Why were the three slides on rules-points-map not printed and given to participants - instead we had to copy them, forget half the rules leading to some teams realising this on stage?
e. Was this designed by Dali in an over-surrealistic mood?
f. Why could we not even raise a point before the hon. judge not allowing us to speak before she could find out from the QM whether we were allowed to do so (who in turn told the judge only the judges could)?
g. Why not let teams pick resources as a part of their strategy and not announce them before, at which point hardly anyone could understand the rules?

By this time, I realised I was having an epochal, life-altering experience (the exact words in the message I sent Kunal when I had to express this to the outside world). My fuse had completely gone phut. However, my teammates Rahul and Tushar had their wits about themselves and concocted some chop suey. Teams presented, giant balloons of hot air could have been filled for free, found no one could remember the rules properly, points were raised and so on. I was having an uninterrupted series of Jaspal Sandhu-in-"Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro" moments.

After all this rigmarole for over an hour, my head was splitting. We were then informed that the quiz, having gobbled up all the time allotted to it, would have to be abruptly ended then. The results would not be available until the next day (shades of JBDY's "hum draupadi bhaabhi ko baad me.n bhej de.nge"). Until then, it seemed I'd need smelling salts to stay alive. I have never come any more closer to considering a switch to dope of any kind before. But we couldn't go just yet. The judges decided it was time someone introduced them, and spoke. The Army man was nice, euphemistically praising the horrendous efforts. The lady said she'd observed if teams presented as a "team" (we came in for praise for letting only one guy speak - little did she know the others were too flabbergasted to do anything else). I also had my first ever experience of what is apparently the South Bombay lingo. Both the lady and the QM liberally dispersed "you'll"s and "dears" and "sweethearts" and "darlings". Wow!

So for the first time ever in my life, I had been to a quiz where we wouldn't leave knowing who had won the quiz. Incredible. The next day we found that we had come second, the other IIT team was third and the quiz was won by Xaviers (who, if memory serves us right, were last at the beginning of the strategy round). The round had been worth 100 points. We had had a lead of about 40 at the beginning of the round and about 15 after the resource allocn. We lost by about 20 points in the end. I don't want to suggest any foul-play, but one thing is clear - we won the quizzing part of the day comfortably. The rest is mere conjecture. I felt worst for the poor scorer and bell-keeper who seemed so clued out and happy to escape the strategy round.

The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Quizzing And Quizzers
Such is the quizzing life. Based on these experiences and many before, I propose setting up the SPCQQ. It is sorely needed. Only the day when officers of the SPCQQ shall raid a quiz in progress for having violated fundamental statutes and endangering the mental capacities of poor, unsuspecting quizzers shall we really have our rights safeguarded in this country.

Feedback
While leaving, I heard requests for "genuine feedback". Since I am not in the habit of providing fake feedback (I can't guarantee certification though), here are some points for the Jhavierites:

* Each year, everyone seems to think your quizzes are bad. Even if you do not agree, you have to respect such sentiment. Personally, I think you guys do not have the experience to hold a quiz. Get someone from outside to do it. Or announce a moratorium until you amass the experience. Do yourselves a favour. I am, by all accounts, a reasonably fair critic. This is a fair criticism.

* Attend a lot of quizzes before you formally set some of your own. There are quite a few decent ones happening in Bombay, and if you're willing to travel, in Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and others.

* Read these posts: 1, 2 and 3. I won't claim these are gospel, but take whatever you feel like from them.

* Listen to your audience and participants. Their body and verbal language are trying to tell you a lot of things. Yes, you are a big fest and you may feel you are entitled to some maaz. But with great maaz comes great criticism when things hit the fan above (sorry, Uncle Ben)

* A quiz should be enjoyable by all involved. It's not a gladiatorial contest between the organisers and participants.

* Keep a quiz simple. Let your elims reflect your finals. If you want to make it into a mixed style event, make it amply clear in the beginning.

* There were requests at the end for applause for the "hard work put in designing the strategy round". Well, hard work and good intentions are no excuse for mucking up things. It helps, but not everytime. Do a half-decent quiz and I'll give you an ovation myself.

I'm really glad I won't be going back to Malhar next year. I really am. It's not that I like being caustic about such events. But you'll have left me with no option, sweethearts.

Mull-har

2006-08-20T17:37:00.000+05:30

This is a biiig post. Warning over.

Puneri quizzers have a tendency to not travel too much for quizzes. This is not because we prefer being lions at home (I could be wrong) but it's probably more to do with a more inbuilt inertia that rubs off when you live in Pune. "Why bother to travel so much when you can get a decent quiz within a 5 km radius at regular intervals?" is probably what he (and occasionally a she) would tell you, but we're too lazy to say these things (we prefer leisurely blogging about them).

Which is why, despite justified (self-)criticism of not competing much outside, it has never really bothered me that I haven't been to many of the big college fests of the country of the kind that has youth magazines salivating in their dreams. For it has been my (painful) experience that these are an unending reservoir of bad quizzing moments that no amount of "let's look at other events/people/things at a fest" can undo (our motto being: "v q i.e. v r"). And especially when is rapidly aging, these things are harder to digest.

Elims Day

But I went to Malhar '06. It was not to clutch at reminders of renewed academic flings, but merely to see for myself the much-venerable St. Xavier's college, a place which is in the same age-genarian bracket as ol' COEP. As the bus rolled through Bombay, the jokes of "stick to the wall" became louder. And believe me, it's no joke - they do tell you to stick to the wall, even when there is no wall. Soon, we were being told to not do many things. So before I tell you what I did manage to do, here's what I couldn't:

Stand outside a line (even while registering for an event)
Stand near the admin office
Stand in about 90% of the premises
Stand still (it seemed - see incident 1)
Take photographs (see incident 2)
Register for a three man event with less than 3 (see incident 3)
Keep my satchel with me during the elims
Walk bidirectionally in most passageways

As promised, the incidents:
1: In the afternoon, having found no place to rest my de-calcinated bones, the legs claimed union regulations and went on strike. On being asked to "keep moving" by a well-meaning volunteer, I could only move my arms about and ask him: "Is this fine?". Something I was soon to observe: extended volunteering seems to sap your sense of irony.

2: Ok, this was probably my mistake but my strong sense of irony in contrast to volunteers was to blame. I now like to think this is the closest I have come to being "bounced" out of anywhere. Having roamed around the place and the incessant rain driving me blue, all I could see were these signs everywhere saying "don't stand around", "no food and beverages on the stairs" and so on. Feeling increasingly like a small-time Chicago bootlegger during the Depression, I felt almost ashamed to exist as it seemed every action of mine was violating some injunction (when you're on their turf, do their implied punishments apply, I wonder?). It got to a point when I (along with two KReSIT friends) saw a bunch of Xavierites (I'll use Kunal's patent-pending "Jhavierites" appropriately w.r.t the quizzes) standing, a little aimlessly (or so it seemed to my blue-and-jaundiced eyes), near a sign saying "Do not loiter here". I controlled my by now mania-induced Joker laugh to remark to the friends that it would be a great idea to snap a photo of one of these signs. Then, with manic enthusiasm running away with the plot, it seemed an even better idea for me to pose right under that sign and be in the frame.

Which was a little bit of a mistake. I forgot all about "no cameras" at the gates also implying "no photographs". Friend says "here is a camera phone!" and there I had jumped into position. Sadly, the Xs also did some jumping and I was immediately surrounding (the sign-makers would have been happy - clearly, no one was doing any loitering now). "I'm sorry, no photographs". The mania, though ebbing, was going down with a fight. "You see the irony here, don't you", I blurted. "Irony?", said the most heavily-built of them, a touch defiantly. I wasn't too sure if he knew what I meant by "irony", but soon his features relaxed and he decided to not dispose of me in any of the potentially thirteen different ways discussed in the last Malhar Security meeting. And here I am, writing this post.

3: This, at least, finds me on the right side of common sense and quizzing ideals. At Malhar, I grew increasingly restive w.r.t the excessive checking of IDs (at least two for those part of "official contingent") and the line-standing. After having nothing to do for about 2 hours between elims, KReSIT friend and I join the queue for the Business quiz+more elims. Only to find out at the end of the FIFO that we couldn't register with two members. "For you need a maximum of three", I was told. "Aha!", said I, spotting the flaw in the argument. "We are less than three". "No, you need a minimum of three too", said she, rolling the sleeves back to reveal the ace. I remonstrated and ooh-ed and aah-ed in the name of common sense, but I was told there was not much that could be done and would I like to meet the O-somethings? (refer Kunal's guide to the Os). At first, I thought I ought to, but then I withdrew as the outcome was not in doubt. And we had been cautioned by our contingent leaders to not cause a fuss, and I didn't want to do so in an event that I wasn't even good at.

The fact that I got through the day after incidents and elims was partly to the cooling environs of the only solace that day - the St. Xavier's Library. It's a good place to roost - tidbit to remember if you are there and need a place to rest that aching head. It had an interesting poster about the Human Genome Project too.

Finally to business: the two quizzing elims I had been drafted for. The morning fixture was that of the Military/Political quiz, dubbed the "Major Quiz". (As events would unfold, one could think of a lot of phrases to insert between "Major" and "Quiz".) The elims were bad, as bad as expected. A litany of woes:

We were given 90 minutes for 40 questions and then warned there would be -ve points if we took more time.
The qs that were decent were too factual to be interesting.
Some were hilariously awful ("In what pose was George Washington often depicted in paintings") (paraphrased). A quick web search later that day revealed that some of these bad questions were lifted, word for word, from a site called "funtrivia.com" whose sections on Australian PMs must have received a lot of hits from the Malhar proxy server.

The evening was the Entertainment quiz. Interestingly, they had also clubbed Sports among Entertainment - not that I was complaining. But again, the questions were poorly framed. There was an attempt to bring in Indian f&m, and even references to Indian classical, but the choice of facts and framing: questions such as "what is the significance of the Michael Jackson song "Billie Jean" (what is significant to me could be insignificant to you) and "ornamentation i.e. the art of learning to sing impossible (paraphrased - I forget the rest)... what is it called" (the intent of the question wasn't too clear) were typical. It was a pleasure when we put pens down. Answers took a while coming, so I scooted before they appeared.

Finals Day
I didn't have to go for the 2nd Elims day thankfully. But the scheduling of the finals was rather irksome. For the finals were scheduled such that what could have been an easy set of 4 holidays was hacked down to half (for me). Malhar has a separate set of finals day a week apart, and plus they chose to go for Sunday and Monday (Monday was a working day for students, and some from IIT were severely inconvenienced) instead of a more favourable Sat-Sun, given Tuesday was 15th Aug.

The overall atmosphere was pleasantly better - security were (we get frisked) nicer than last week (when they had surveyed my Crocin tablets with the eyes of a Redneck customs official assigned to flights from Afghanistan), volunteers were almost apologetic about the one-ways and so on. The book exhibition (by small vendors - the street sale type) was a good idea. Admittedly, there didn't seem to be too many "great finds", but I did pick up a couple of books (A collection of "insults" and the book form of "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines"). There was also a film festival, but could not attend it because of the time taken by the quizzes. Was also good to see a small booth put up by students from their "Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged". The only event I saw a glimpse of was "Geetantar", where people sang words from one Hindi film song to the tune of another, and what's more, they were doing it fairly well. "Raga", the newsletter, was read - some articles were quite creative.

But the quizzes were what I was there for, and well, the tales of them shouldn't disappoint. Coming soon.

HAYL-4

2006-08-10T11:12:00.000+05:30

* The immediate post 1st-stage period of protracted procrastination is winding down. A longer and more detailed study is imminent. Of how I seem to put off things, I mean. (Oops, that was not particularly discreet, I think). Perhaps I should research the different facets of procrastination.

* More academically, I'm reading a little about network models that characterise The Small World Phenomenon. A fortuitous procurement of Duncan Watts' book on the subject from BCL, Pune a couple of months ago is turning out to be useful.

* There are officially no animals left in the skies. They followed cats and dogs in the slipstream of the downpour over Mumbai and Pune, in some kind of Noah-like exodus. I missed the last Mumbai edition (in late June and early July this year) by being at Pune, but this time I can sit in the lab and feel very fortunate that I don't have to travel. Except for the minor annoyance having to walk all the way to H-12, it's not too bad, There is no real comparison to the woes of the commuting and living-in-sub-standard-homes population of the city.

* The recent increase in walking recalls Observation 2 in an earlier post. The pace of walking is distinctly more leisurely than the new crop of students here.

* Omkara was watched again, this time in Huma Adlabs, Kanjur Marg. No self-respecting multiplex would have countenanced such lack of clientele (word is that the previous avatar of Huma was that of a rather shady samajh-rahe-ho-naa? type theatre and it's only getting rid of that image slowly). Also, being a m'plex, they charge m'plex prices. OTOH, you are assured of tickets 99% of the time.

* Convocation Day tomorrow at IIT-B, i.e. a chance to put on slightly funny and "authentic" indigenous dress material. The Chief Guest this time is economist-ex bureaucreat-Dy. Chairman Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, which is a good choice, especially given last time's choice was maananiya Arjun Singh. I'm guessing there won't be the same extent of restrictions unlike last time.

* I went to St. Xavier's fest "Malhar" for the elims just to see the premises of the famous institution. Experiences were experienced and bloggable experiences at that. Will wait for until the finals on Sunday to make that possibly vitriolic post. To record views on the elims of the quiz before the outcome (on Sunday) can be held against me: the elims were badly done. Lots more to follow.

* Jatin finds a shelf with books on movies in the IIT-B Central Library. It opens my eyes a little - I realise I have not really explored the library stock much for fiction, films, sports etc. (the science collection is good, esp. old copies of Scientific American and Nature editions are to be found). Within 5 minutes of getting to the clearly unpopular section (yippee!), I find "All About H.Hatterr" by G.V.Desani that came well-recommended, but equally well out of stock. The rest of today's quick sweep are:
Ravan and Eddie" by Kiran Nagarkar, "Scorcese on Scorcese" (based on a set of interviews with the ace filmmaker) and a biography of Francis Ford Coppola by Peter Cowie. From having exhausted my small stockpile of books and no impending visit to Pune for until half a week to replenish, I now feel as I have hit a sufficient lode of gold.

KReSIT Alumni Day

2006-07-26T09:12:00.000+05:30

KReSIT's "IT Association" (ITA) is organizing an informal Alumni gathering, on Saturday, August 12, 2006. Details for the event:

Date: - August 12, 2006 (Saturday)
Time: - 6:00PM onwards
Venue: - KReSIT, IIT Bombay
RSVP: - B. Karthik (Alumni Secretary): karthik [at] it [dot] iitb [dot] ac [dot] in
Webpage: KReSIT Alumni Page

Those KReSIT alumni reading this are requested to pass on the message to their batchmates, seniors and juniors.

HAYL-3

2006-07-23T21:01:00.000+05:30

* IIT-B is no rural municipality that struggles to provide many of the urban comforts to its denizens. Which is why the atrocious street lighting is hard to believe. The orange lamps are old and dull, and only on one side of the main throughway. That is if they haven't conked off or are plain unavailable, leaving several patches bathed in light that barely escaped a black hole.

Given the sloping roads, the "wild"-life (esp. during the monsoons) and the profusion of cyclists like us who ride without lamps, I wonder why the situation is the same as it must have been close to 50 years ago.

* While on the topic, I must say that one more aspect of IIT-B that disappoints me big time is the fact that while the campus is vast and green, it hardly looks the most impressive aesthetically speaking. I am envious of the university campuses abroad (I may have been seduced by the zealous marketing machinery of these univs but as of now I'm taking their website pictures at face value) who seem to have very good looking buildings and carefully snipped landscapes. At IIT-B, the buildings are usually of the worst RCC-government type. Closer home, places like IIM-A and ISB look attractive (disclaimer: 2nd hand pictures seen). Pune University also had this vast sprawling out-of-control look to its landscape, but at least its buildings had the old stonework (not that that is everthing - you should come to COEP).

IIT-B is purely functional at many places.

* 'tis the time for change. A change of guard. People have unofficially graduated. People (and seemingly bright ones at that) are coming in. We move a rung up the benefits ladder, which means changes in labs to occupy the more coveted (read "private") of nooks. More than privacy, I wanted to be in a bigger lab this time; the last one was a little too cramped on all sides.

* The direct admissions to KReSIT this time have proved to be a bad decision, IMO - seeing that about 25% of those candidates who were offered admissions have not turned up. Some have left for the more renowned (virtual) portals of the CSE department. It is safe to guess that many of these "direct admissions", because of their high percentiles in the qualifying exam, would have had more than one offer to juggle with. I know so many people who were close to the criteria for admission, were very keen to do a post-grad this year and have missed out. Life is not kind. It is very unfortunate how much fortune dictates the little pathways ahead.

* The move to H-12 was completed last week. The "lake-side" view being much coveted, there were a lot of strategising to get one of those A-wing rooms. I do have a A-wing room facing the lake, but I didn't really care for it much, because I don't spend a lot of time in the room anyway. One can step out to a nearby balcony to see the sights. However, I'm v. happy to have a great view of the open sky. Each passing year, it gets harder and harder to do so. At home, the view has been obscured by buildings taking over real estate on the front and the trees at the back. I wouldn't be able to see the Hale-Bopp comet today as I did about 9 years ago from one of the balconies. It's great to lie back and see the canvas-like sky as the day ends.

Of PThesis and others

2006-07-15T15:30:00.000+05:30

* The M.Tech thesis work here at I.I.T (must be a IIT-wide phenomenon, I guess) is presented in stages. (The 1st stage is a literature survey due very soon.). All this talk of stages makes it sound like a terminal disease.

George added to this by saying it should then be called "PThesis"! (refer list of diseases starting with "P" or rewind to Pyaremohan Ilahabadi asking puujya jjijjaajji about phthisis and pneumonia in "Chupke Chupke".)

* The trick about writing anything long, as I have always painfully felt, is to not stop writing.

* This is the first Saturday in many weeks that I'm in the campus instead of home. I am rather notorious in these parts for taking off for home on the slightest available opportunity. So much so that, I have to only lift my satchel for people to conclude I'm going to warm a seat on a bus between Bombay and Pune.

Some of this has been justified, no doubt. My excuse is that there is still a lot to do at home - library books and DVDs to borrow, read/watch and return, quizzing to participate, while still being able to keep the essential wheels of work turning. This weekend, it's a genuine case of there being higher priority work here.

Still, this should do my sullied image a surf-excel-makeover. Temporarily.

HAYL-2

2006-07-14T17:12:00.000+05:30

* What do you say to a biped that houses a bunch of XX chromosomes and an accompanying keeper of XY chromosomes who turn up 40 minutes late for an appointment inconveniencing 5 other people, do not even once call up to convince us of their impending arrival and ultimately do not even bother to apologise or acknowledge at any level their starring role in this tardiness?

"How can you be so irresponsible"¹ comes to mind, as Suchak saab said to Sadhu Agashe (getting that brilliantly accusatory lilt is tough, but I could have managed it on the occasion).

I must have spent many months worth of time waiting for such nutcases. My conversion to misanthropy is further justified. I wish I could be more rude.

* Yesterday was a colossal waste of time and mental energy, some of it self-inflicted. Above bipeds didn't help the situation. Worse, rank amateurs giving me philosophies on one of the very few subjects I know a lot about i.e. conducting quizzes. Couldn't stop myself getting into an argument - seniority goes for a toss. I don't tell you how to set up telescopes, you don't tell me how to conduct a quiz. Maaz tar maaz.

* Given the imminent move to H12, the internal pedometer is all set to record a 25% more increase in kms covered. I couldn't believe the H12 mess actually has "boiled-only" meal available too! The rooms have Spartek tiles too. They're miTTi-me.n-milaa-oing (apologies for Hinglish) the name of hostels all over.

* We had astrologers predicting Italy would win in an Italy-France World Cup final. If only they could have used all that "power" to predicting bad fortune for the 5.54 from Churchgate.

* Some of the things happening around me in the last couple of days have left me emotionally staggered, despite they not affecting me directly. I feel quite unhappy for a bunch of people. I wonder if I would have had the stomach to face such things if they happened to me. Not v. pleasant. There's a limit to how much you can empathise - it can never be total. The living bear the guilt when the dead are gone.

1: From "Ab Tak Chappan"

Hum and yeh logs

2006-07-12T16:38:00.000+05:30

* I was supposed to be out yesterday to dinner with S, his wife & GS, but didn't because of the blasts. Plus the fact that areas affected by the blasts were liberally sprinkled with relatives. Only could find out today that all seems well with them as well - the delay due to an unprecedented (for me) jamming of the phone network

* I have not been too close to such calamities before: when disturbances happened in Bombay 13-14 years ago, I was in Madras and relocated to Bombay only about a year later. And when Madras erupted during MGR's death, I was in Pune, only to leave for Madras a few months later. I hope I'm not the follower of bad news, some sort of local apocalyptic acolyte who lives in safety. I have not even been in a curfew situation, thanks to the nature of the places I have lived my life. But all that is changing

* Report writing continues. The urge to write seems to be creeping back slowly

* Local relocations seem to be the order of the week, for lab desk changes and hostel changes are imminent. Hostel 12 especially is a 3-star suite compared to the clearly infra-dig H-4. But then I thought about it a little and figured that with my notoriously frequent Pune trips and time spent at lab, it's not going to be as much about the ambience of a room (for I lack the infrastructure - on purpose - to work from my hostel room) as about the food. But then the hostel is at the other end of the universe

* Like during the 26th July incident last year, I'm in such a calm and seemingly unaffected environment amidst all the volcanic eruptions outside, that it is hard to believe I'm in the same city. I wonder if all this shelter is necessarily a good thing. Am I incensed enough (should I be be more?), or am I too asympathetically detached?

* The stories of how some changed compartments to escape the bombings (or worse, vice versa) and such like will pour through. What reasons will be ascribed to such twists in fortune?

* People are graduating all around me as I write. Must be a fulfilling feeling. Did they accomplish most, if not all, that they had hoped to in these two years?

* "O Saathi Re", "Jag Jaa", "BiiDii/Sasurrii", "Laaka.D" - worth writing about soon

* I have to take part in a Science quiz organised by ISRO and produced by UTV. I fear questions on the scientific explanations of everyday occurences will dominate, and so I have no real expectations of it. Hopefully DD will show it in some afternoon slot on DD Bharati and so even the 100-odd people who might have watched it will be denied access. I had intentions of taking a shot at preparation, but realise I'm not that really inclined. Let me out - I'm more of a useless trivia kind! The prizes are laptops for the winner, which is even more indication that with my usual hex of not winning anything that offers anything pricey as prizes, I should make a swift and painless exit

Convergence 2006

2006-03-14T10:04:00.000+05:30

Damn! forgot to mention this earlier...

My department organises an annual workshop and this year's, the research focus is on Databases. It's titled New Frontiers in Database Research this year and looking at the lineup, it promises to be an excellent weekend.

All the details at this link.

Turn, turn, turn

2006-02-28T16:09:00.000+05:30

* Seeing faculty members ride a bicycle is an interesting feeling. The thing about cycles is that it seems to make human even the most intimidating of personas. I wonder if those who apply to faculty position in those departments here with a "faculty bicycle parking stand" feel the pressure to think about their pedal-worthiness among all the technical mumbo-jumbo?

* I have a theory: you can detect what a student is doing here looking at how they walk. The average MTech first year student seems to be in a hurry, the final year student has a spring in his step but without needing to feel desperate about it. As for the Research Scholar (i.e. PhD student), she's sauntering at an easy pace.

* JR's first academic observation: Exams are meant to give the professor the opportunity to indulge in his deplorable tendency to ask you the set of things you don't know, however small the set may be.

* JR's second academic observation: If a professor says something is trivial or obvious, it's highly likely it won't be.

* Miss Erable seems to have become a constant companion over the last week or so. Every little lapse or mis-step seems to have come back to haunt me. Observation one above has pretty much ruled my life in the last year. I do 95% and 5% shows up. Over the last one year, I have to make just one tiny mistake and it ends up affecting the result - think of all the quizzes (the real ones, not the academic ones) in this period. I need to commit to the web, the great failure post that's been hovering around in the cranium for the last 6 months.

* I've missed all the interesting lectures around campus in the last two months.

* Wednesdays are Rasna days at lunch. It's been a while since I had Rasna that regularly. Mostly because we'd forget to buy and make Rasna because we stopped twigging that it was the Rasna season. Earlier, you knew it was time when you were sitting bored at home and deprived of being able to complain about school. Rasna making (the silver packet, the little squat bottle, the litres of water, the sugar) was partly to divert your febrile mind. It signalled the summer vacation.
Now that I populate un-vacatable age-groups, one cubicled day is the same as another.

* I seemed to have convinced a couple of kittens in my hostel mess hall that my slippers are two large black mice (or equivalent). They give them a lot of dirty looks and thankfully still lack the courage to launch an attack.

Frustration Destination

2006-01-31T18:49:00.000+05:30

The idiocy of it all. Sucked back into that what I had hoped to escape. Detracting from all the other interesting things. Time runs out and I don't care. The intensity of my reaction surprises me. Angers me. I can't beat it back. What an utter and complete waste of time! Hacks, not hackers. Pitiable clipping of fragments of undecipherable code with no comprehension. Silly, pointless. Low tolerance for the drudgery. Unable to make a fist of it when the mind isn't in it. Poor attitude?

And then people and their grandiose "opinions". I refuse to be convinced by them. My cynicism is overwhelming. Forced to do all this mind-numbing exercises that would nauseate boredom itself. Motivation's resigned and gone seeking better pastures. This time carrots of marks won't even do.

Sem 2 nuggets

2006-01-17T11:58:00.000+05:30

* Two and a half weeks into semester 2. The good days when you can wander into all the courses (some of them very good) and make up your minds as to what you want to do this time (like the joke about Hell's publicity department, several courses seem very appealing, but it's only till much deeper into the course do the mundane parts bite you).

* Institute Elective time, so I picked "Applied Economics". "Introduction to Indian Astronomy" caught a lot of eyeballs because of its course title, More surprise was in form of the instructor who is unconventionally dressed in a "kudumi" and "veshTii" and is the archetypal "Tamil vaadhyaar". I'm impressed by his resolve to be a non-conformist and non-traditional (if traditional == current culture)

* The other two theory courses are going to be "Distributed Computing" and "Web Mining". I'm dreading the maths (as usual) in the latter, but the contents have been good so far

* What I'm not impressed by is having to do a compulsory Systems Lab course where the aim is to build a product and apply all the S/w Engg principles etc. Nice idea in theory, but I don't fancy the current structure where they propose to divide the class in two groups and get them to compete against each other in building the same product. All we need to do is to fly in Donald Trump and we can then begin shooting "The Apprentice" here. I'm loath to do all that kind of dev. work again and would have preferred to pick up a course on Functional Programming (which I hopefully can do next year). I'm always nervous about large project groups and prefer smaller & cohesive groups. Am hoping they will change things around a little.

IISC Terror Attack

2005-12-29T08:57:00.000+05:30

Link thanks to Tejaswi

Was shocked to hear about the terrorist attack at IISc. We have had checks and rumours at IIT-B for a long while, and personally, I was a little blasé about whether our top institutions would really be the target. But now it's happened and as Tejaswi says on our internal newsgroup, it's closer than we think. I hope the people injured get better - this is just too bad.

Mood Indigo 2005

2005-12-26T08:30:00.000+05:30

An attempt at running an almost-live update of happenings here at Mood Indigo 2005.

Day 4 - 29 Dec - Wed

* 7:00 pm:
- Kunal and I won the General & World quizzes. The quality of questions was quite good, but the "jeopardy" rounds got more and more complex as the day wore on :-) Their "powerplay" round was interesting. Manic buzzing in the World Quiz (mainly a movies - including Hindi! - plus general stuff), so still fail to understand the USP of the World Quiz.
- I had to put in (Kunal, hope you read this) more effort to collect the prizes than taking part, I think. 1.5 hours in a small but immobile queue brought back COEPian memories.
- Missing Livewire and the rock shows beyond because I'm totally knackered with all the walking over the last 3.5 days. The hacking through red tape was the last straw. I wouldn't have been able to take in 3 hours of all sorts of rock, I'm afraid.
- Other events seen: Last moments of Hindi JAM. The biggest surprises were at the a capella competition. Among the many participants was a team from COEP, much to our amazement. #2 was that they chose to sing the Tamil song Please Sir from the film Boys, which was a capella even in the film, so a good choice. Then the 3 non-Tamilians in that team didn't goof up the pronounciation, which was terrific. They didn't win, but did give us something to cheer about momentarily.

Update (Had meant to add their names): Karthik Sridhar, Ajil, Nishant and Sanchali.

It's back home tomorrow and the last 3 days of the semester break. If there are no further updates, think of this as the end of the series.

* 9:00 am: World & General quiz finals today. Mood I wraps up as well.

Day 3 - 28 Dec - Wed

* Curtains:
- saw a couple of One Act Plays. Hardcore Hindi in them. The one we didn't like (too abstruse, overdone IMHO etc) won!
- Went to Creative Writing. Couldn't make much of the theme, so made some "creative" leaps. No hopes in this one.
- Caught the final moments of English JAM (the others saw all of it). Participants were getting "stoned" by paper missiles from the audience (with the blessing of the JAM master). Manic jamming as usual.
- Gen Quiz elims were not too bad; We're in the finals for this as well making it three in a row. Hopefully the results will change for the better.
- Was taken to the "Shaan" show despite inner rumblings (of the soulful kind) to the contrary. Some female was belting out recent pop numbers (none of them of my liking :-) ) - some kind of precursor to the main show. Had an invite by some of the BC gang for dinner at Hiranandani, so went there eventually. That, the post-prandial stroll and Mocha wrote (expectedly) another chapter in the BCQC Excellent Bogus Anecdotes collection. Quite a late night (for me).

* 10:00 am : Not much to do in the morning. General Quiz elims in the evening. Classical dance and music finals plus a Canadian Jazz Band also on radar. In all likelihood, skipping the splendour of Shantanu "Shaan" Mukherjee in the evening. Sarika, Gaurav and Satyen to be expected on premises.

Day 2 - 27 Dec - Tue

* Half-time whistle :
- Caught a glimpse of the classical instrumental competition - some very talented people around. IMHO, this section has always been consistent in its quality.
- Took part in the English Wordgames with Arnab. Good fun with words after such a long time. Sadly, we didn't make it (were rushed for the evening's pronite too, but perhaps wouldn't have made it - still got some good ones). Again makes me wish there was some place I could get more of these.
- Evening's proshow started with Pt. Shivkumar Sharma (santoor), Pt. Bhavani Shankar (pakhaawaj) and Pt. Vijay Ghate. He played Raags Yaman and Kedar and they pulled out their bag of tricks for the crowd. The second part was more of a fusion ensemble with Pt. Vishwamohan Bhatt (Mohan Veena), Pt. Ronu Majumdar (flutes), Atul Raninga (keyboard) and Mukul Dongre (drums). I've always wanted to see the mohan veena live in action and as expected, came away spellbound. They played some nice pieces, mostly of the energetic variety and ended with Vaishnava Janato and Jana Gana Mana. Expectedly, crowd was far lesser than the earlier day and annoyingly restive. Sparked the usual discussions about classical forms of music, what people think is Cool" et al. The good thing was that most of us sitting there, irrespective of our levels of prior knowledge and inclinations, were keen on broadening our sound-horizons via these maestros.
- Some interesting "comments" were heard esp. when Bhatt liked Mood I to Woodstock :-) . Also heard (a new BC nugget): Malvino (thanks Siddharth :-) ), Ben Franklin and positivity.

* 3:00 pm :
Ent quiz results: Symbiosis Law won 1st spot, Dani & Kunal T won 2nd spot. We came fourth.

Someday, there has to be a showdown between the D&P guys and IR guys - a fight to the finish. Why would you use a 18th century system in the 21st century? Why would you have arbit connects? Why would you have such skewed specialities? Call me old-fashioned, but my sense of culture was offended (call this fox and sour grapes too :-), but then I did say I wasn't an English Entertainment sort of person). There were some good questions, but I was all too bugged by hyena-ical giggles punctuating the proceedings and stupid scoring systems to appreciate them to the extent they should. This was very much like the intra-entertainment quiz I had the fortune to participate. What I'm mainly irritated by was that such quizzes hardly give the non-specialists a fair chance. Will terminate this thread before it descends into all those things that we hold dear and which have already found fair mention on the quiz blog. BTW, any elims that let us top was not fairly reflective of the finals ;-)

We're in the World Quiz finals, but let's see how that pans out - more indigestion pills may be called for.

One more time: what's with the laughter?

* 8:00 am : I met Arnold and Salil outside my hostel wing at 7 am. Which means that the poor guys have been travelling early morning and look like it. Got a short synopsis of their unhappy travel tale, the longer version awaits. But they are finally here now.

Main h/l for the day: World quiz elims, Ent quiz finals, Classical fusion at the pronites.

Day 1 - 26 Dec - Mon

* End of day's play :

- Kunal T + Dani, Kunal S + me made it to the Ent Finals (later on Tues). Symbi Law are the 3rd Pune team.
- Dani scored points (actual points) in the English JAM. Could see why Kunal T finds JAM so irritating - perfect example of participants unnecessarily jamming yesterday. Waste of energy. I have seen some better ones before (the MICA one was good).
- Kunal FC was in Eng Debate's Written Elims. Wanted to record the "written"-ness of it all.
- An excellent performance by a fusion group called Simha consisting of Harold Fernandes (guitars), Prasad Ruparel (guitars + ghaTam) and Shyamala Sajnani (not sure of name, don't have their publicity material with me) (she was on the veeNaa). They played a range of Western and Indian classical, blues, rock and finally a good melange (they had support on the pakhaawaj and bass guitar) to finish things. Highlight for me was the blues on the veeNaa - wow!
- I stumbled upon COEP's Street Play effort - pretty decent (saw some of the nascent practice on Saturday - wasn't that good then). Alumni will be pleased to know that the content seems to have changed finally :-), but the structure is pretty much the same. They need to work on their voices though, IMHO,
- Abhishek and co saw some of the short films screened though the rest of us missed most of the ones shown yesterday. Apparently, they were not too bad.
- Indian Ocean were mindblowing. Thanks to some idiotic PAF performance preceding them (completely pointless show - Firodiya style mix of artistic threads - hopeless in their dialogue delivery, story was meandering, the props were expensively wasteful etc. etc. making me wish I had a mix to choose from the arsenal and provide a much required massacre Why this painful digression? Because they finished 30 mins late and due to the 10 pm deadline...) Indian Ocean had only 1h 15 mins to play.

For the record, they played: Ba.nde, Kya Maloom, Leaving Home, Jhini, Hille Le, Ma Rewa, Kandisa and Ba.nde (again).

What amazes me was how much music they got out of their guitars (electric mainly), tabla set with interesting percussions and drumkit. Good sound mixing and production. A couple of offbeat instruments too. Fab.

* 2:00 pm : Liked the Ent Quiz elims - some workable ones (of which we got some good ones), missed a couple of easy ones - in short, a good experience. A more telling testimonial was from the BC gang who came here last time: they said it was much better this year. Hopefully, they're not saving up the stinkers for the finals.

Our team name for this quiz: "Moo Die!" - Deadly Bovine Assassination Squad

Note for the absent BC junta: Dani was found getting distracted (by you know what) too often for Kunal T's liking :-)

* 10:00 am : After much dilly-dallying, I decided to forego the "Pot Pourri" elims (as the name suggests, event has a set of mixed items) this time. The last time we were here, Hirak, Sujay and I made it to the final on the back of a smashing performance in the quizzing-style heavy elims only to trip over what is informally known as the "Mouthing" incident (sorry, cannot make public here - meet in person). Harish would fondly remember the audience view :-). Suffice to say that we weren't that hot at Dumb^2 C, Pictionary et al, and the charge died away.

So the morning for me will kick off with the Ent Elims for which I hope to ride on the shoulders of that great, young, french-bearded Libertarian hope, Kunal S (hopefully not too much like Sindbad and the Old Man of the Sea)

* 8:30 am : So it's MI time. Main highlights for the day personally will be the Indian Ocean performance and the elims to the Entertainment Quiz (at which I will be as good as at doing a triple somersault). Some minor items of interest dot the schedule as well, more on them if I happen to drop by.

This time it's personal

2005-12-09T20:32:00.000+05:30

I'm breaking a long held convention of not talking about my birthday on my blogs, but this blog was meant to take the weight of such vachan-cessations. So here goes.

This time's birthday was obviously different as it was the first (that I can remember)to be spent outside home. Which leads us to the obvious inference of the traditional ife-on-campus thrills being applied. The mob gathered 5 mins before the a.m. bell strikes and proceeded to politely exercise their feet. I got a free facial soon after (not before managing to eat my part of the bakery produce). And 15 mins later since some of those who had been keen to put foot to gluteus m had missed out, an encore was sought and obtained. It's been a long while since I've been "bumped", so I actually enjoyed it all.

Coming to the more existential thoughts that a birthday is supposed to trigger (as opposed to blowing it up with TNT), the last few years, I've preferred to look upon it as a personal new year at best. Quiet contemplation perhaps is in order and my wish is for it to pass off peacefully (as if it was an anniversary of the worst kind, we have many of them - I wish if anyone thinks of it that way). I try and not make any concessions for the day if I can help it. This time it gave me a reasonable excuse whenever I was slacking for the exam on the day after - it's a very useful weapon for structured procrastination. More opportunities for not looking at the books was provided by my habit of replying to all greetings if I can help it. Strangely enough, the hostel mess even had "paayasam" that day.

Google Analytics

2005-11-15T08:13:00.000+05:30

Information officially revealed here - it's a web statistics thing.

Anecdotal evidence

2005-11-11T17:33:00.000+05:30

Gaim over
It turns out that Gaim (I'm using the version on Debian) is a suction pump (or a vacuum cleaner depending on how you want to put it). For it can allow you to add a user id with no real existence and IM that person. Presumably I was connected to some IM black hole.

For several days now, my attempts to contact a friend on an id have been futile and faced with lack of response, I remember thinking: "How rude!" :-). It turns out I had mistakenly edited the id but without any complaint from Gaim, I was blissfully shouting into an hole with a dead-end. It only struck me yesterday that I should check resulting in discovery.

Social networks cause social tensions. {Disclaimer: I haven't checked if this problem has been fixed at Gaim - I don't want to bash it - it's quite decent actually.}

The vaaTi-ka story
It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon yesterday and I've just plonked myself on the lab mattress for a quick catnap (cause: earlier excesses) when Mayank and Naval decide to go for lunch. Tummy growls over circadian rhythms, so I decide to join them. We go to the slightly shady (according to me - my first time there) Uphar near the Y-Gate where there is no printed menu and everything is verbal (germane to this post).

MisaL paav and a thaaLi are ordered for a group lunch. While that is in progress, we wonder if we should get something more. Which is when we hear a waiter-voice :

"Daal (garbled)BaaTi(/garbled)"

It sounded a little like "roTii", so we listen again for more. This time it is:

"Daal (more clearly)BaaTi(/more clearly)"

Now I have heard a bit about this "daal baaTi" thing but haven't been able to taste it yet. Our current location seemed a very unlikely place for such dishes, but since we didn't ask for the menu, who knows? maybe we missed it. So one order goes out for it.

We're still wrapping up the thaaLi when the waiter comes over and drops a small cup of daal on the plate and mumbles something (the chronic problem), which also sounded like "Daal BaaTi". It takes quite a few clock ticks for it to sink in. Both my non-Maharashtrian friends were clearly stumped. It was a classic homophone - this was what we call a "Daal VaaTi" here ("VaaTi" : "kaTori").

That provided us enough laughs for the rest of the day.

One down

2005-11-10T11:29:00.000+05:30

Mobile Computing project passed off peacefully - I made it through my first major "night out" (not the kind that gets covered in an NDTV late night show) - 4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period - not bad at all - all that Punt Formation practice under no lights at nights is helping. Nice little presentation bit by Roshan saw us sidestep oily waters.

Next stop: OOT termpaper.

In a non sequitur, have noticed that editing these blog posts involves a request to "google-analytics.com" (not sure of the url - noticed it off the browser taskbar). Googling yielded little, but this speculative article. Wonder what bubbles.

Tea Time

2005-11-10T03:01:00.000+05:30

Only it's 3 late in the night, not post the meridian.

There are days like these when I shrug off the ignominy of being a sort of an temporal albino among the students of engineering by putting in the late night big effort. My "saner" habits of packing it in at an upper of 12 am here (10 pm normally) and punching in next day at 8ish am have variously evoked interest, incredulity and even the odd tinge of derision. But these occasions can be used to prove them that I can do it, only I wish not to.

{Since it is 3 am and this is my /dev/null blog anyway, permit me to ramble on.} The immediate cause for keeping the moon company is to put together a project with very little time permitting. We will not probe as to why it was not done earlier - such questions are never asked in the unsigned contract of academic life. There is a certain dangerous edge to proceedings as it is still not very clear whether the plane will take off the ground in 6 hours time. Guerilla coding at its most thrilling with some byte-induced adrenalin. Spades hack at the mass of spaghetti and sprays attempt to disinfect all the success routes just enough to keep at bay the too-close-to-the-surface-to-ignore mass of creepy-crawlies. Had there been a software engineering inspector, he'd have run out of tickets by now.

So does this teach young and impressionable grad students a certain bravado and recklessness when it comes to shaping up functionality? Perhaps. Does it also leave them with more than a sneering contempt for a more organised and yes, saner approach to construction. Perhaps. I just want to finish it and get some sleep, old pal - got another deadline later tonight.

Diwali break

2005-11-05T13:32:00.000+05:30

* They should outlaw 7 day breaks (it could easily have been a 9 day break, but you want to crucify me?). Outlaw because you spend the 1st 2 days legally enjoying it, the next 2 days go in weighing the possibilities of squeezing more legality out of the break and promising the big effort in the next 3 days (assignments/projects/books/vanquishing aliens). Then a day in ruing how much time was lost over the last 4 days and on the last day, a firm desire to cling on as such a day will not come back again.

Strange to say this, but I was actually missing the work, the fun and the atmosphere by the end.

* Diwali is essentially when you ought to celebrate the greeting-card-steroided-Mother's Day. Major effort by moms all round the place to get the sweets and savouries in place. How they have the stamina is beyond me.

* Each year, it seems that the amount of crackers being burst in Pune (based on a sample of my neighbourhood) keeps coming down. I do the nominal sparkler only. Having never really had the bomb-mania (except for some varieties), I lost interest a decade ago. So I quite like what Abhishek has been upto.

* My window to IIT-B lingo before getting here was via Satyen ("khaach"), Parikshit "Pari" Samant ("dayaa") and Anupam ("kyaa fart hai"). Standard argot like "give up", and "pain maaranaa" seeped in easy, but I found myself saying "dayaa" at the last BCQC session (without anyone really noticing) inadvertently. I still have mixed feelings about that word, but I think I will be "dayaa max"-ing soon. From there it's a step to Vinod Khanna land and "daya-van-der-hoogenband".

* Last Sunday, Nik showed me another undocumented Pune eatery feature called "Janasevaa" (which is probably well known to all Laxmi Road denizens, but was out of my radar). A spicier version of "saabudaanaa khichaDii" was had followed by "khama.nga kaakaDii" (which I have had before, but not under this name). Earlier, he showed me the "Vaagzai" area behind Parvati. Tells me that there is so much I don't know about the city (and given my memento-esque memory in these matters, I'd forget anyway). Nikhil, if you read this, visit SIGFOOD which was started by Shantanu - there's a lot you could contribute to there.

We didn't start it

2005-10-27T16:40:00.000+05:30

Apparently, the AC unit did - no human intervention required

{You know you are a blogger when after power has been restored and you've checked your email, your secondary instinct is to blog about the day's little big event}

Prologue
We'll be having a "fire drill" on Thursday at 3 pm, went the email. Please don't panic, just stay in your seats.

Irony
It's 11:00 a.m. and I'm just returning from a quick trip to the hostel (these days, I'm here from 8:00 a.m.). Having met Prajakta on the way, we're in the elevator when the fire alarm goes off.

"Is that the fire drill? Could be. But wasn't that in the afternoon? Can't remember. It could even be the real thing, you never know :-)". Usually it never is the real thing.

As you have probably guessed, this time it was.

An A/C unit burnt down in the lab adjacent to mine and apparently had flames doing a jing-bang scaring the hell out of the occupants. They rushed about getting the nearest fire extinguishers but the hitch was: none of us knew how to use them.

Soon help arrived - the fire remained localised and spraying began. It wasn't very organised, but it was fairly effective. The news, which till now was a 2nd floor thing, had now spread to the other areas of the large KReSIT building, on the wings of the dense black smoke that had begun to billow.

It was then that we thought about the sleepers.

There are a few people who sleep in the labs after a nocturnal work effort. I knew there was no one sleeping in my lab and cast my mind to the only other lab which would still have the dozers. Consequently, we wondered where Tejaswi and Jatin were. No responses to calling them on their cell phones pretty much meant they were still blissfully in the Land of Nod. and perhaps the smoke had transmogrified into a theatrical special effect in their panavision dreams. Ashish and others rushed in to wake them. By now, the smoke was thick and visibility was in the nether regions of the measure. They emerged half-sleep, with the T-man under the impression that this was a rather enthusiastic and realistic dress rehearsal of sorts. It could have been worse than all that :-) It was a feeling most KReSITians had shared - the irony of the fire breaking out the same day as the planned & sanitised drill was not missed.

Damage
The smoke had now enveloped the atrium, so we unhurriedly left the building and milled around waiting to see what would happen next. The tales of "where were you when" had already begun to hit the radiowaves - like how some weren't ready to cut short their meeting for some lowly event like this and a prof.'s priceless "it hasn't reached the door (to his office) yet, has it?" and got on with work. Very Brit-like :-)

The security guys and the firefighters got things under control - fortunately, the fire had not spread to other parts and was soon brought under control, so a lot of appreciation for those guys. The damage was not very much - the AC unit had melted like some hot fondue, and there was a thick layer of soot & dust all over, including adjacent labs like that of mine. More importantly, no one seemed to be hurt so that was a blessing. It took a couple of hours for some quick cleaning and reorg, and things were back to normal (or close to it) after that. It could have been worse, but we were in good cheers that it hadn't been.

{Minor personal damage: the diyaa i had bought from charity on Monday lay broken on the floor - someone in their legitimate haste to open windows in the lab must have inadvertently knocked it down.}

And later
This is the part you want to fix, right? After one horse has bolted, you do want to put the additional padlock on the stable doors. In a lot of places, including here, fire alarms go off so frequently as part of testing that our ears just don't accord it any respect any more. The next steps are obvious: we need to learn how to use firefighting equipment around the place, learn how to evacuate, how to administer basic first aid and perhaps take a closer look at all the AC circuits again, for apparently this isn't the first time this has happened with those units.

And no more mails asking us not to do anything when the alarm goes off, even and especially if it's only a drill.

Core Dump - 3

2005-10-25T17:23:00.000+05:30

* Finally all those quiz preps done (As noted here, the word "quiz" is used in its nicer sense) and delivered over the weekend. Interesting trip - now I know something about the innards of a B-school. There is a difference between B-schoolers and tech types that I see (atleast w.r.t Pune & Bombay). I don't know if they have been filtered in so, or if they become that way (former, I think), but they're definitely more outgoing, outspoken and perhaps even confident - whether justifiably or not, is different. Another obsvn: most people there were very "metro-urban". Unless all these differences are based on some unnecessary parameters of what constitutes "sophistication" and upper-class behaviour.

* I liked the MICA newsletter etc - wonder if I'd have the time to set something up here online - a weekly & unofficial rag. I remember the days of the "Sleepy Support" blog 2 years ago. 'twas fun.

* (I'm procrastinating here in the course of my blogging: can't make head or tails of an assignment that I should be reading about. Weep, weep.)

* Was pleased to finish 2nd in the Lone Wolf at MICA - had thought my faculties had gone blunt over the last year and didn't if I'd measure upto some of the more regular leading lights of the Bangalore-Madras quizzing corridor. Sneaked into the last 8 (had done badly at the elims - missed sitters - what is wrong with me?) as a lucky loser after Anand was forced to leave to catch his train. Got a couple of good ones via the euphoric "worked-out" route which explains the injection of happiness. Tied with Samanth for 2nd place, so not a bad result at all.

* Goof up in OOT test today - as I said to Harish, since then I've been chasing myself around the room with a broom. Cancelled the correct answer :(. Why-Ow-Why?

* More reports of snakes on campus. Follows warnings of snakes in MICA. Perhaps it is all a warning that I must try and learn Python after promising I'd do that for 4 years. (Please let it not be a sign about ASP)

* Blogger should put in the "auto-save" feature of GMail into their "create posts" too.

* Songs playing: Roja, Thiruda Thiruda, Boys. Usual suspects pretty much. New addition: Morning Raga after I read Ravi (Quiz-Blogger who won my quiz). "Maathii malayadhwaja" by Sudha Raghunathan is outstanding, with very well done orchestration. As Nakul said, mixed bag of songs working as a "101 to Carnatic music", but will take such gems. Have stopped listening to "Water" until CD is available so that better quality sound can be heard.

* The refrain goes around bowlers in dressing rooms: he seems to be back. After a couple of false starts, finally the beginning of the Rahul Dravid era?

* There has been a little nip tending towards a bite in the air at nights and early morning. IITians - play "jaago mohan pyaare" as your alarm and breathe in the cool air, fellows.

A-know-stic

2005-10-17T22:32:00.000+05:30

The trouble with considering oneself as "Agnostic" is that it's hard to make a wholehearted prayer in situations when all you can do is close your eyes, swing the bat and hope to make contact - and hit it a long way. For the other side that isn't quite a believer will scathingly remind you of your preferred state of dilemma and dilute the appeal.

You hop around waiting for a bolt of luck to strike you, but you're in the queue, sir.

Disregard Please

2005-10-14T18:02:00.000+05:30

The week is over and back to life nahi.n hai laDDuu!

Atleast Adam Gilchrist's back to form.

Times to ponder

2005-10-12T21:35:00.000+05:30

Last couple of years, I spent a lot of time thinking. Just thinking. It got a little scary at times, sometimes in a "Zen and the art of MM" way (not in depth, but in terms of the extremes that Phadreus touches). An experiment I tried was to try and tire myself out with movies, books et al (work didn't make it) so as to prevent the overwhelming contemplative thrusts.

It didn't always work out that way. But here, they make us do so much work in the 1st sem, that it is sometimes a relief that I don't have the time to waste with an inward locus. This week has been different from the others, and the reflective ways have been reborn. But some of it has been positive stuff.

'Tis is the yearning we need to control. It's hard. We yearn for these crutches, these outward back-pats. The pain is mental so when it is supplanted by the pain of lack of sleep and associated physical complaints, it is pushed aside.

{note to self: where is this post going? :-)}

Resurfacing

2005-10-12T21:16:00.000+05:30

* I spent the morning of the holiday (Dassehra) making a small "Ravana" out of scrap paper. Need to get someone to click a snap of it before we dispose it (as we are apparently supposed to).

* Did some updating of the home page. Continues to have a in-progress look, but have put in some more stuff and have reused my other blog's template for the layout.

* This week's been light, so it could well be the eye of the cyclone. Does one enjoy while it lasts or does one work hard so that the future is more comfortable? The classic grasshopper-ant story.

* A bad cold. A very bad cold. Having had so much experience with the pests over the course of my life means that atleast I know how to take care of myself and dip into the experience store. Lots of warm water and tea/coffee when possible. Not in the mood for heavier food, but had some dosas at this place outside the campus guided by Naval, who is quite the dependable foodie.

* I feel like staying in the dept. a lot - find it very lonely back at the hostel. The hostel's become a bit of a bed-and-breakfast lodge.

* It is well-known that I'm an early-to-bed-and-rise type, but I pushed my IIT record to 3:00 am last night. I have done nighters before, and even 24-hours w/o sleep, but mornings are my thing. The problem is - lots of stuff happens at night when so many people are awake, and it miffs me that I end up missing them. Roshan says I am lucky to be able to stick to a decent sleep schedule and be up early. I agree, but sometimes the soul prefers more human contact too.

* Some of the IIT mornings have been spectacular - mist all around makes walking/cycling past the green fields quite pleasant. But all this is wasted on the IIT owls.

* No doubt: I have been overeating for about 2 years. I realised that last year, and have been experimenting with less and less with a view to finding an optimum. I found that out during the course of the last 8 months. Here, I'm beginning to under eat, but on most times, I have got away with it. How long will that last? More evidence that these things go about in cycles.

* I have been doing Post mortems on my sad performance in the mid-sems of 2 weeks ago. Goofed up even on the easier bits, which is infuriating. But then, personal history seems to indicate me being a rather slow starter in newer situations, so I'm hoping it'll get better as times go by.

* Lots of angst-in-pangst above, I know. But this blog was meant to take all this too.

* Thinking quite a bit about Gaurav and his predicaments and the larger lessons for bloggers like me. Right now, I just want to leave him alone to figure out all his future moves. I think he'd be cramped a bit now.

Silencio!

2005-09-16T09:30:00.000+05:30

Convocation Day today at IIT Bombay. Extra security measures have been pumped in for the Minister Arjun Singh will be in attendance. I suppose the only security he needs even in these troubled times is from indignant students affected by the change in the IIT entrance examination format.

Another aspect to such convocation functions is that I expect the speeches to be all dull and dreary with "maanaaniya"s and "honourables" and "mahaamahim"s (but then we're not in UP, so make up a MaraaThii equivalent) with mementos to "respected guests on dias who spared their kiimati waqt" and so on - all stuff from canned bureaucratic templates. We hear of ceremonies in univs abroad crackling with graduation day speeches from people ranging from Conan O' Brien to Steve Jobs, and I wish speakers here would either cultivate some focus and content in their speeches or that organisers wouldn't feel the need to kow-tow to the sarkaar and get some more inspirational speakers.

Till then it's zzz tv.

Lossy compression

2005-09-15T21:48:00.000+05:30

Naval observed that a few people (including self) have shed kilos (average: 2) in the last 9 weeks. Pertinent observation, considering my diet (won't reveal it here for fear of it making it way back home in Pune and receiving agitated calls daily in reaction). Further, he observed that KReSIT could now even advertise a la other fitness centres like VLCC about the amazing effects of their programme.

The suggested copy for the ad was: "If you're intelligent or fat, you'll do well here".

I have a sneaky feeling that all this cutting of the flab has a lot to do with the FLAB cutting us.

Lull-a-bite

2005-09-15T21:06:00.000+05:30

Ironic that the most calm part of the sem so far has been lead in to the mid-semester. Here we are finally, leafing through the books, something I thought I'd be doing for most part of the last 9 weeks. Not so, with all the (what I have come to call) "guerilla coding" (as opposed to "mercenary coding" - that happened earlier, of course).

Eye of cyclone it will probably be, for the portents and common wisdom here indicate that the ride will get rough, matey, so don't get used to feeling the pain recede...

Bummer

2005-09-15T20:54:00.000+05:30

This guy copped the most spectacular birthday bumps (earlier tonight) I have ever seen in my life. As Tejaswi remarked, it was quite a circus.

A few key features:

* Ani, anticipating outbursts of cyclonic proportions, wore about 3-4 layers of trousers/shorts to keep raging legs out. Didn't work as people sussed that out early and stripped him back to everyday norms (which is *normal*, in case you're wondering, having not met the protagonist)

* It was being billed as an epochal event for about 1.5 days and the "festivities" began 5 mins to midnight

* I have truly seen "The Mob" in operation

* Ani inflicted some amount of damage by his counter-lashes - man, did he kick out

* I have some idea as to what those unfortunates who spit out chewing gum in Singapore must feel like when the judge orders them to bend over.

* It reminded me of Billy Bunter, whose trouser-seats were never too far away from the kicks of the rest of the Remove.

GaNeshaa!

2005-09-09T13:38:00.000+05:30

[Click to Enlarge]

Last Wednesday, came back from lunch to see a large portly pachyderm being given shape to. Shrugging off all the time-tentacles of a lab assignment, joined in, trying hard to not wreck anything (having no experience with the ra.ngoli powders before and lent in a little hand). The above stretch was part of it (I'm the white body, the black one being Tejaswi). Was fun.

More pics at this location [Credits: photos - Sunny's camera and Prajakta's webspace]

Core Dump - 2

2005-09-07T11:24:00.000+05:30

* Triple whammy dhuum-dhaDaakaa last Friday: three tests (I prefer calling them tests so as to not mix 'em up with the more friendlier connotation of the word "quiz"). Two were of a "surprise" nature, but the only thing I did right that day was to correctly anticipate them (reasons: they were overdue | psychology of prof involved etc.). But no marks for such keen eyes. Didn't do me any good.

* For some reason, Trilogy, as part of their pre-placement jamboree, put on a show (dinner at a nearby big place) for First Years as well last Friday. Wonder what they stand to gain by that? They're paying well, have some sort of a "reputation" which would guarantee people aiming to join them etc. Am a little puzzled at their being so eager to engage First Year MTechs/Third Year BTechs

* Since there have been a thousand syndromes to cover the entire spectrum of human psychological behaviour and from what I have been misled to believe, you can use that to effect in places like the US, I wonder if there is any to cover lack of concentration? I could use one of those. If medically sanctioned, I could say - ah, I'd have done well but for my inherent, genetic lack of concentration syndrome.

* Bicycles are clearly the silent killers on campus.

* Until August, I had seen an average of 6 films per month in 2005. In August? Just one. Sad, sad. sad.

* Among the many nice things about going home on weekends is the wonderfully exhilarating drive down some of the large Mumbai roads and ultimately the Expressway early in the mornings.

* Have finally discovered a food haunt that suits me - the H2 canteen serves some great food (paraaThaas and Chinese sampled so far, good shakes) at affordable rates, not too spicy and best part, (so far) with no next-morning-gastro-intestinal-traumas. My roommate and I keep inventing indifferent excuses to skip dinner at the hostel (like "we have to finish this assignment tonight") and catch a bite on the way to our hostel.

Don't Panic

2005-08-25T15:03:00.000+05:30

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins is my current companion at breakfast/lunch/dinner {whenever I can help it}. But this ain't about the book. This is about an extract that I chanced upon [the relevant chapter is also available online here]

The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened. It isn't as difficult as the mathematical priesthood sometimes pretends. Whenever I feel intimidated, I always remember Silvanus Thompson's dictum in Calculus Made Easy: 'What one fool can do, another can'.

I have been always a little math-o-phobic. I have tried to analyse this many times, and it's come down to one of the two: conveniently blaming it on some of the tartars that taught the subject when I was in school, or to me having no natural ability in that area.

On reflection, it is the former. For on the two occasions that I had wonderful teachers, I did rather well. It is quite psychological, this aversion. It keeps coming back in waves. And it has been compounded by lack of good teachers during undergraduate studies. They totally squeezed it of all juice replacing it by a worthless and sodden pulp.

I have some friends who share this feeling, and funnily, we're engg. graduates - the kind who should be using maths as a friendly toolkit. I still have to learn how to do that.

[I would like here to go back to the subject of school maths teachers and recall one who was living proof that Aunt Agathas do exist in real life. I would not be surprised, much like Bertie, that the afore-mentioned lady "eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon".]

So when I'm going to have my next chronic attack of "the numbers", I'm going to think of dear old Silvanus Thompson and to try not to be outdoors on full moon days.

Deferred Execution

2005-08-20T19:10:00.000+05:30

They've gone and extended the deadline on this assignment by two days. So just when I was gearing up the ajits [ego note: see how clever I am with the puns] to put in the gargantuan effort I can just dream of on windy nights [due to other constraints, could only start it this morning] to try and finish in time for Monday early morning. Even the sleep cycles were coming around nicely.

And then they take the wind out of our sails. A perceptible anti-whoosh is heard swirling around. People stir and their minds awaken to the possibility. Going home (for locals), a celebratory dinner and movies clamour for top rankings.

The fall of the blade has been pushed only by a little, but like it happens in those innocent-to-be-hanged movies, we live for these moments. Short-term greedy approaches zindaabaad.

Little revolutions

2005-08-20T17:39:00.000+05:30

They say that once you learnt to, you never forget to ride a bicyle ever again in your life.

Today was my turn to find out. Having sold off my bicycle (stupid decision) about 6 years ago (possibly anticipating the anti-cycle city that Pune was to turn into), I haven't bicycled ever since. So I was understandably a little worried as to how the legs would take this change in lifestyle.

It was pouring zoological specimens when I went to ("The Red and White Cycle") shop to buy one. I was therefore spared the humiliation of falling off the seat in front of the local Tour-de-France suppliers. Out of sight and the rain and in the cycle parking in the basement, I jumped on and promptly wobbled. Worst fears were taking tangible shapes.

The plan was chucked in favour of doing it on the road at a rain-less time. Which arrived and I was on it out for a spin, and voila! there we were pedalling.

Slightly liberating feeling. The legs have had it easy for a while. The time has come for them to turn into galley slaves.

SPIC MACAY-1

2005-08-18T21:03:00.000+05:30

This was the first non-academic event [not counting the Communications Skills class I have to take mandatorily] I went for. Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia played as part of a SPIC MACAY "Lecture-demo". A short 1 hour programme with the maestro playing along with the excellent-as-usual tabalchi Vijay Ghate, another flautist whose name I forget, and on the tanpuraa, Puneet (whose name I don't forget because the announcer forgot to and Panditji quite indignantly pointed that out (and generally gave the organisers some tough moments) :-) )

A three piece act, opening with Bhiimpalaashri ("a late afternoon/evening" raaga) followed by one whose raaga I didn't know, but was the highlight of the day, especially with a friendly duel between the flute and the tabalaa and ending with a mellifluous version of "Om jai jagadiisha hare".

Now I'm quite musically illiterate so sometimes I can't quite appreciate the beauty/difficulty of certain sections - perhaps I would if I had a reference point or could compare it to lesser artistes and see what difference the master makes. But in many places, you can see the extraordinary skill in an absolute fashion - there were several such moments even in the vignettes presented today. I hadn't seen anyone play the flute one-handed and once only hovering over the lower holes before.

Q1: is he a left-handed player [he certainly held the flute with it pointing towards the left]
Q2: (slightly vague) the other flautist had a smoother sound while Pt. Chaurasia had a slightly woody, textured sound. Is that simply a property of the flute and by design or was it not the usual?

The only disappointing aspect was despite its billing as one, there was hardly any "lecturing". I was hoping to learn a bit more by way of explanations in some of the interesting/subtle points, but that didn't happen. So it remained more of a musical experience than a educative one.

Little Core dump - 1

2005-08-17T21:32:00.000+05:30

* I like the LPG buses that ply in the campus here [as most know, any such cheap transport is invariably called a "Tam-Tam" or "Tuk-Tuk", here it's the former]. They are pretty quiet and don't seem to be polluting the hell out of our lungs. At 3 bucks from src to dest, good.

* We were treated to an impromptu singing performance by some random "aaji" in the bus today. It was her first time on such a bus and she broke into song about that and how the driver was going past hillocks and spiced with commentary on his speeds. From her words (marathi verse, so I could comprehend), it seemed spontaneous, so that was quite mini/major-spectacular.

* Academic office comps have Linux on them. So does the PC in the security office at KReSIT (on which he plays a variety of simple PC games). I hope they find the interfaces good. Not sure if they had operated Windows before and whether there was resistance to the move.

[BTW, if you don't know what a "core dump" is, read the Wikipedia entry. I don't use the term in the usual symptom-of-error/frustration sense. "core" essentially refers to when computer memory was essentially magnetic cores, so this is more of a "memory dump" to blogpage (sad funda alert flag goes up)]

Lingua Split

2005-08-09T13:25:00.000+05:30

[From a very unscientific, empirical set of observations made over the last few weeks at IIT-B]

The split of languages here that I've heard cumulatively in various places in IIT-B (leaving out Hindi and English) include Marathi, Bengali and Malayalam (especially among staffers). But the winning tongue is Telugu - I don't know how come there are so many Andhra guys in IIT-B. But I guess this is in keeping with the general trend in the top academic institutes in India. That community must be the most academic minded one in India.

There are few Tamilians, but not that many. Come to think of it, haven't heard a single phone of Gujarati yet.

[There are a couple of other "how come there are so many Andhraites in this place" observations I'm saving up for another blog :-)]

[Update]
Heard my first Gujju words - loud and clear as usual :-)

Courses/Choruses/Coarses

2005-08-08T21:30:00.000+05:30

[The title is nothing more than a seemingly ongoing exercise in homophones like the title on this blog, but don't read too much into it :-) ]

For those friends who're interested in the gruesome details of what courses I'm taking here, a small précis:

* Foundation Lab: Mandatory Lab work

* Foundations of IT-2: Mandatory course (mainly to do with Probability/Stats). This has been an area in which I have been particularly weak in the past, so I was hoping to catch up and take those giant steps, but the immediate forecast on that front doesn't immediately show "fair weather" for several reasons that I shall remain quiescent about at the moment and reveal all when the time is ripe for the picking :-)

And on to the Electives:
* Mobile Computing: Aim here is to learn a bit about this area that I had a brief peek into while at work in a Telecom project.

* Introduction to Data Mining: I seem to have got it into my head long back that I was interested in text & data mining - just one of those things. Here's my chance to find out.

* Object Oriented Techniques: I wasn't planning to go in for this, but decided to stay back after attending the first few "test" lectures, mainly because I liked how the prof. went about it and because I found myself responding to the content.

Now, those who know how things function here will notice that I have not taken any courses from the CSE Dept here, especially the Algorithms or Databases (by Sudarshan of the book fame) - these are the feted courses here. This decision was mainly because I'm not much of a theory guy and do want to sink my teeth into the areas I want to test the waters in. I was keen on taking Soumen Chakraborty's Statistical Foundations of Machine Learning, but I found the course contents and treatment quite formidable. Plus my prob/stats sucks right now.

Tejaswi (from the senior batch, whose advice I've been seeking on matters related, and who essentially has a great deal to say, in general :-) ) would be disappointed, for his theory holds that you take courses based on the profs. and experience the best of what IIT has to offer here, at the risk of bad grades. The "bad grades" sign is fine with me - it's just that I don't want to spend time in a class that I ultimately don't enjoy. That said, I find I'm slightly less adventurous than most :-) though I can quote a couple of small gutsy items on the CV, but perhaps they're not enough :-). My reluctance to go back to theory finds me settling for these courses ultimately. Perhaps I'll seek more foreign pastures next time. Right now, I'll take it as easy as I'm allowed to.

Time out

2005-08-08T21:22:00.000+05:30

Probably the reason behind the undercurrents of unease at spending a higher proportion at time hunched over a machine (and keyboard still on lap, I might remind - waiting for newer quarters to be built) is that I have probably tasted the other goodies of life (note: "goodies" according to me, not some Hashshashin vision of material pleasures :-), more innocent pleasures like watching a lot of movies, British serials on DVD, books, sports-viewing, blogging, BCQC et al. Haven't been doing much of it in the last three weeks, and don't expect to do much of it in the future.

Which is a pity of course - I would have liked to summon all these influences together (perhaps it is still possible, just need to figure it out) here. Also was hoping to attend events by SPICMACAY and the lot. Yet to materialise still. Will find out soon enough, I guess.

A small resolution to blog a few lines every other day - let's see how that works out. Hard to push oneself even for 15 mins.

Extended silence spurts and a musical return

2005-08-08T21:06:00.000+05:30

Didn't intend to stay away from the e-pages, but got my first taste of the half-marathon that seems to be the Foundation Lab assignments. Though, as I mentioned in that post, I appreciate the idea of the shell as a toolbox, but I somehow don't see why it has to be so intense [I spent almost all my spare time alst week on it], so I fear I'm in a "do-phase" rather than a "think-phase". I was hoping for more time to do the latter in this MTech programme, and have still to completely figure out how to do this. I'm not disillusioned (yet?) but slightly disappointed.

An analogy I have is: imagine a class of budding writers, different students having ambitions of being fiction writers, biographers, tech writers, essayists etc. They all have a basic level of writing ability. They want to explore various aspects of different writing styles and also want to learn the techniques of the craft. They also don't mind learning how to type, to do shorthand, to be calligraphists, to typeset, about fonts etc. But what if it totally overwhelms the learning/thinking aspect?

I rushed off home this weekend, so I spent a lot of time thinking about these things [no power at home for some local reasons of cable faults, so not much else to do while you're keeping anopheles carriers at bay]. I figured out that I was spending a disproportionately high amount of time on the lab, so I did a small timetable schedule exercise (the ones that look spectacular on paper but never seem to get implemented in real life). Let's see how well that goes.

Coming back to the title of this post, a small tidbit I learnt in my Mobile Computing class - that the mobile handset actually introduces a "comfort noise" when users are silent. This to reassure the listener at the other end that the line is alive. A good example of the small engineering details that add up to the success of many things around us.

And the musical return is because I finally have headphones and music/audio (imported from home) and hence can sink into it when the head heats up.

Sunday rain

2005-07-31T16:16:00.000+05:30

It's been raining heavily since the morning with the occasional breather. I feel extremely disinclined to do any housekeeping stuff, and have pushed them on to the conscience of a tomorrow. I'm back at the lab, partly out of a sense of escaping the slightly claustrophobic. I realised many days ago that I like large/bright areas, so that there is the potential of moving about and stretching my legs. The hostel room and its near environs repel these ideas, so I'm better off making several 12-min walks. I have got some more done, but it worries me that I have not started studying for my data mining quiz this week. I've to start load balancing soon.

On a more cheerful note, a note on my designated machine: we're allowed to name our desk PCs with a label of our choice, so after some consideration, I went in for "mycroft". The allusion is to the fictional character, the brother of Sherlock Holmes.

I'm fascinated by this fellow because in some ways he is a character after my own heart. If one is the best at anything but is too lazy to go about doing the things that drumbeat this superiority to the world, it would suffice that the person the world thinks is the greatest acknowledges you as the best. Sherlock thinks Mycroft is even brainier than himself and what greater compliment do you need? :-). Mycroft H whiles away his time between being "the govt" and in the quiet confines of the Diogenes club. All this appeals to the sloth in me.
*
The bad news is that one of my wet and pushed-to-the-limit socks have start to reek badly.

Monkeys begin to type

2005-07-30T22:34:00.000+05:30

Assignment one of the slightly tyrannical (or so it seemed to be historically) Foundation Lab is out here, so all of us are off typing, searching, reading and scratching.

The questions are essentially on gnu/linux shell programming and range from the slightly easy to the "hmm... that's interesting". I have done some amount of shell programming a while back, so it's a bit easier than some others who have to start from scratch. The good thing about unix/linux shell stuff is that it is somewhat like plugging lego blocks together, so it can get quite interesting while being quite useful. I liked something that the prof (Om Damani) said in his first short session: "I tell people that in some sense, the job of computer engineers is to make themselves redundant i.e. be replaced by automation". Shell programming does take the boredom out of mundane tasks, but takes a while to get the innards right.

A very good explanation of this toolbox design philosophy of Unix can be found in Eric S. Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming (a book that, sadly, I've only half-read).

[Addendum]
I've already had a very long day - Assuming I sleep by 12:00, I'd have had 6 hours of sleep this day. Most people in this line prefer late nights to early mornings; I'm the opposite. But when additional stuff has to be scheduled, it happens later at night, like today. Sometimes I skip them. Today wasn't one of those days. So tonight will be the first instance of me walking the 12 mins worth of distance to the hostel with the dark, anti-lighted throughfares of the campus. No detours for me, only the straight roads. And let sleeping panthers lie!

FIR

2005-07-30T15:46:00.000+05:30

I had sent this out to some friends. Since I'm already behind time, I'll save days and post this wrap-up of the first week.

The story so far:
* Reached here on Monday. There had been several cautionary letters about the non-availability of accomodation, but this was not so - got a hostel room on touching down. Only catch was that for the moment I have to share it with someone (and the dimensions of the room are meant only for 1). The silver lining here is that I know the other person sharing the room (from PSPL & KReSIT), so that's better than teaming up with a stranger. We are told that in a few weeks, some of the old fossils still in residence will leave and that might open up a chance of having a room to only one person. Both of us didn't move in immediately; i only moved over last night, having stayed with relatives so far. I have already bought my 1st item - a mattress.

* Orientation began on Tuesday and continued till Wed. Met most of the students/profs/PhDs etc. Liked the interactions and the work culture. Have to figure out what courses to pick etc. Still a job in progress. More details on that later.

* Have walked miles and miles yet. Have to get a bicycle next week. Am still "immobile" here as am yet to figure out which svc/handset to choose in the conditions here.

* The whole net access thing didn't happen until this evening due to a whole lot of reasons, one of which is that there is a space crunch here due to the fact that some of the comp sci dept labs & faculty have temporarily moved here as their dept building is undergoing renovation, and also because this is a big batch, far > that last time. So end result is that i'm in a slightly inconvenient workspace (we all have our own m/cs & work areas) and am typing all this with the keyboard on my lap. As with the room, hopefully this will get sorted out soon.

* Don't have the essential "luxuries" such as headphones yet; will need to get them here.

* Some more speeches today as part of the larger IIT-B orientation for PG students. Plus a lot^lot of heavy rain in the later half of this week.

* Canteen food is ok, and let's see when I begin to crib abt it. There is a lot of amul butter and omelettes and bread, so for now, I'm pleased.

ext3 blog

2005-07-29T18:46:00.000+05:30

Up and running, a week late, a slash-dev-slash-null for the potentially torturous/epiphanic/give-up route for the next couple of years (if I last). This will be a very everyday weepy blog, unlike my other, more column like slate, so follow at your own discretion.

BTW, if you haven't made the connection, "ext3" because it is a journaling filesystem (journal? get it?)

(This is going to be the nature of puns on these pages, so suffer!)