The Life of Me

A friend of mine, Aswathi started her own blog - inspired by mine she says! Please do visit her blog. :)

First of all, I am back in Chennai and am not doing much work, though, as usual, I got loads to do....hmm.....I must surely be giving an impression of being a very responsible guy with lots of work entrusted to me! I am not - just stating this for the record - I am just lazy to do things on time and now, I have too much to do. Anyway, that is not what this post is about....I have been watching many old episodes from FRIENDS right from Season 1 to Season 9!

It always fascinated me to watch the sitcom....I remember starting on it when I was in my Ninth or Tenth standard....and the first thing that I thought of was: "Gosh! This is so good!" I mean, you have this bunch of 20-somethings (when the sitcom started) living in the Big Apple (not that I knew that was what New York was called at that time). Each had his/her own shortcomings, their insecurities and their own "crises". We can all laugh about the funny situations they landed themselves in, but there is no denying the fact that we could be any one of them...OK, I don't think I can ever be Monica - too much of a cleanliness freak!

The best thing about all six of them is that they all are in a constant state of denial as to their problems, but still in a heaven/hell of their own , depending on the circumstances. A stage which I am sure all of us are extremely familiar with! Maybe that's what made the show the big hit it is! Unfortunately, the powers that be decided to end the show after the Tenth Season, but I am sure that whoever has seen FRIENDS will always keep some part of all the six people with them for a long time - not forever, because I don't believe in "forever". Anyway, I am gonna stop here 'coz I have to run to complete some of that work I mentioned at the beginning.

Just taking a poll - Who is your favourite FRIENDS character? Mine must be...hmmm...difficult isn't it?...hmm.....Chandler!

The past two days have been totally a mixed bag of emotions for me...after i posted my last post to now, I really did have a see-saw ride (is it a ride on a see-saw??) of emotions....can't say that its been a roller-coaster - not that extreme yet!

Friday Nite: Am reading this mail from a friend from hostel who is still at campus. He tells that a Third year guy drowned at the beach the previous day. Am sad....not that I know the chap, but...well...you know.....

Saturday: My best friend's birthday...he became a Legal Major (21 yrs old) yesterday! We had a ball...knowing that this maybe the last time all our school friends can meet up liesurely....had fun and am happy!

Sunday: Going to a friend's house...on my bike...some idiot swerves right into the middle of a main road from a small bylane - something you'd not even notice if you don't know its there - at full speed! I brake...skid...fall. Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall - only mine wasn't that great! Am shaken...(so tempted to say what follows...:D) Not Stirred! Bike also OK...just a lot of scratches and a crack in the plastic...but the idiot mentioned before doesn't bother to even look back! Hyderabadi roadies are getting more careless! :(

Well, I guess I am OK now...hmm....something I thought I'd put up here....a friend told me of a conversation he had with another friend about a "funny" poem he wrote. The other guy didn't get the punch-line! I am putting down an approximate transcript of what happened:

Poet: Hey man...I just wrote a "poem"...it's funny..just listen to it & tell me what you think....
Other Guy: OK...just don't pain me much though!
Poet: Its good man....here goes....
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I am a schizophrenic
So am I!
Other Guy: What was that, B%$^*#@&? You call it a poem? And, in what way was that funny??
Poet: MORON!!! F$#^&@! B&^%*#@$! You don't have even a decent sense of humour! (Walks off!)

Sai: I found the poem funny & the conversation funnier, the way my friend told me...starred out most of the last two dialogues myself! Also, deleted most of the usual friend-friend banter that bores the shit out of everyone except the two concerned! Did anyone else find the poem funny?

PS: I would mostly not be posting until after Christmas...so MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you! Have a nice holiday....:)

So I was told very early in life, by my Science teacher way back when I was in Third standard. At that time, I was highly perplexed by what procrastination meant. She carefully explained the meaning to the class, and I was proud that a rather long word was added to my then (and now) limited vocabulary. Beyond this, I never bothered much about what the saying was saying, so to speak. As it turns out, I still am not bothered with the message even when I know the full meaning....

Why am I talking about such a mundane and commonplace thing as procrastination? The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, my online look-up guide, gives the meaning as "to put off intentionally the doing of something which has to be done." This is precisely what I am doing now, in everything in life.

Much has been said about the hustle and bustle in IIT-M as regards the annual, ritual application process to the United States of America, by Suds. This process involves, among other things, getting recommendation letters from faculty, writing creatively-misleading SOPs & then the actual couriering (is there such a verb?) of the documents required to complete the application. Now, I know I have stated a wish to put up a self-reco here; I shall get back to that later. I have successfully obtained, after a lot of dilly-dallying, all the documents required from academic sources including the transcripts, reco-letters..even finished my SOP! But, now that I have all the components ready, I am halting at the assembly stage! Excuse the wording, but being a mechanical engineer doesn't help much!

I have been sitting on the "packets" as we call them for far too long. I just have to take the prints-out of some cover letters & I am just ready for sending my applications on their way. But, as usual, I am holding back until the absolute last moment! If I don't post the materials by tomorrow, I might just miss one or two of my deadlines. This tardiness was too much for my Dad to bear, and he launched into a longish discourse on the virtues of discipline, doing one's jobs on time, etc., etc....And it all boiled down to my sleeping at seemingly "odd" hours!! This, it seems is the root of all my problems! Now, can anyone tell me how to make this connection?

About the self-reco and the short story I promised (if anyone remembers, that is!), I was just too lazy to do much about them...

Inspite of all this, I still don't get what my teacher meant when she told a bunch of third class students about procrastination way back in 1990! Another thing I've done is put up a new Commenting server...so use HaloScan for the comments. Enetation sucks!

Its been 23 years now...well...nuthin more to say on this. Babs has a lot to say about motherhood & being parents in general..so I suggest you read her blog. I am bad at writing senti stuff...

Anyways, I would have named this post "This, That and Something Else". That's because, I wanted to write about three things.

This: India has won a test in Australia, after a gap of 22 years....thanx to Dravid & Laxman. Being a Hyderabadi, and a proud one at that, I am really happy and excited about Laxman's performance. This match also proves that Dravid is the best & the most reliable match-winner we have on the cricket team. Sachin Fans, please excuse me. I would like it if India were to win this series, but then I also don't want Steve Waugh to retire with a series defeat...dilemmas in life.....*sigh*

That: Saddam has been captured. I have already mentioned this previously, but after reading Babs' post, I began thinking about how anti-climactical it all was in the end. I mean, I never expected to see Saddam in such a dishevelled state! And, they say that DNA tests have confirmed that it is Saddam indeed. Who conducts the tests? Who got the original samples? If someone could get DNA samples of Saddam from Baghdad, they could have killed him then itself, couldn't they? Well...too many things going through my head now. But I am wondering which country Uncle Sam will be targeting now?

Something: Zenedine Zidane has been named the FIFA Footballer of the Year 2003. I am really happy for the midfield magician. But, being the Arsenal fan that I am, I would have loved it if Thierry Henry won it! But then, I guess the consolation is that most national team coaches feel that Henry is better than Ronaldo...

Else: This was not to be a separate section, but I just read a coupla nice one-liners...so I thought of putting them up....

There are 10 types of people in this world - those who understand binary, and those who don't!

If a mosquito bit you 8 times, did it Byte you?

PS: It turned out that I wrote about four things...the li'l surprises in life....:P I am working on the story and the self-reco..so watch this space....and, please....any suggestions for a new comments server?

Interesting story...obviously a forward...

On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "A person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide." The fact that Mr Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr Opus. When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B." When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her.

Therefore the killing of Mr Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, if the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

(A true story from Associated Press, Reported by Kurt Westervelt)

PS: Saddam Hussein has been captured finally. I am strongly of the view that the war on Iraq was highly unjustified until now. At least now, Uncle Sam has been able to catch one of their "Most-Wanted" people and the world is rid of a dictator. But I hope the US forces won't leave Iraq now..they need to rebuild it...well...just felt like writing this...

PPS: I am at home and as promised, I was about to put up something better than just a forward. But this was nice and I put it up...was reading a lot of short stories lately and am thinking of puttin up one in my next post..but its still hazy in my brain..so I'd be needing some time. In the meantime, taking Suds' lead, I am going to put up something related to the 'app-scene' (applying to MS in the US) at IIT Madras....mostly a self-reco....& where are the comments? I am planning to change my comments server....any suggestions???

I read an interesting piece in The Hindu about something called Google bombs.

Try searching for the keywords "miserable failure" on Google and the first result you see is President Bush's official biography from the White House!! This is despite the fact that those two words are not in the biography at all! Such results where the keywords bear no direct relation to the website in question are called Google Bombs. This particular bomb was started by a fellow blogger, George Johnston who first linked the bio in his blog to the words. He then asked others to join him in the bombing and, not surprisingly, some have indeed done so.

Google bombing occurs because of the way Google tracks web pages and asociates them to key words. If enough Web pages link a certain Web page to a phrase, the Google search engine will start to associate that page with the phrase - even if, as in the case of Bush's official biography, the phrase does not occur on the destination Web site. And it doesn't even take large numbers to pull off this prank - in Bush's case, of more than 800 pages that linked to Bush's official bio, only 32 actually linked it to the words!

I guess enough gyaan for now. It is amazing in how many ways the World Wide Web can be used. From the days of bloody revolutions to peaceful protests, we in the Computer Age keep evolving a really peaceful, legitimate and completely democratic forms of protest at the same time evoking some laughs. I am going to link the words to the site myself...three cheers to Google!!

PS: I thank The Hindu, The New York Times, BBC News for the inputs I got about Google Bombing and also the names and figures quoted above.

Words of the Day: Miserable Failure....:D

I hadn't planned to post anything today when I came online. I just thought that I'd catch up on all the other bloggers' works. I must say that it has been quite a handful, rather eye-ful, if I may. It is good to be back reading some really good stuff, something which I feel I am not able to or maybe just not inclined to do right now. It is always interesting to read all the various topics that all of us write about, but it rather hits you in the face if you read all this after a loooong time.....I have read about sick humour, letting go, cousins and love, funny quotes, happy days, unanswered dilemmas on love, family ties, and what not! I must and will write something soon...I know that I have been saying that for a month now, and I frankly am not too sure who, if any, is still visiting my blog - Sitemeter assures me that some are still dropping by sometimes. I am just tied down with a lot of stuff to do before I go home. That's this weekend, and I shall surel post something nice as soon as I reach home. So, if anyone visits this site before Saturday, please visit again by Sunday morning...this time, I am sure not to disappoint you.

Word of the Day: Bathetic - extremely commonplace or trite; characterized by insincere or overdone pathos : excessively sentimental.

Well, at last all my exams are over! Actually they were over by Tuesday, but I was stuck up in some other work which made it almost impossible for me to write anything. Not that I am putting anything much now; just posting to remind people that I am still alive and kicking.

I don't know how my exams went off, but I am sure that I am passing in all my courses. And then, there was the CAT paper. I still don't know what to feel about the paper getting leaked. Initially I thought that it was better for me since I did not think I cleared the cut-offs. BUt, as it turns out, it seems that I barely scraped through and I am now very pained at the fact that I have to sit through the test once again. Well, all I can do is pray that I do better this time round...

Anyway, I gotta run now...am going to keep updating as soon as possible...