Mozilla says thanks

And I am much obliged.

Today is Firefox Download Day, when Mozilla Foundation attempts to set a world record for the maximum number of downloads of a particular software within a specific time period (24 hours). They even set up a site where people signed up to pledge to download the browser. This was given wide publicity by the Internet and users from all over the world have been waiting with bated breath for the new version of Firefox (it's 3) to be uploaded on the homepage.

With more than one million pledges Mozilla looked like it needed to hire additional servers to handle the strain once Download Day kicked in. They might have made some arrangements but I don't think it was enough. People all over the internet have been complaining about how slow or unresponsive the servers have been once the clock started ticking. And folks have been hitting the servers with gusto. For, at the time of writing this post (7 pm IST) there have been 6,757,833 downloads, with approximately 3 hours for the cut off time. Rounding the figure off to 6 million in 24 hours, this means 70 downloads every second from every corner of the world. And when you consider that it is a free and open source web browser that is not backed by big money, the effort is phenomenal, and once of the best illustrations of why power of the crowds can no longer be ignored.

A big Firefox fan since its 1.5.x.x days I was more than happy to participate in this effort. I duly downloaded the executable from the site though there was nothing new in its features for me. You see, I have been using the betas and release candidates since the last two months and I have been more than pleased with the new shiny version. In recognition of my "efforts" I got this record certificate to flaunt. I don't know if the link would still stay active after D-Day, but this is where you would go if you want your certificate. Try your luck.

For folks who want to know what the brouhaha is all about here is a handy guide to Firefox 3 by the fine folks at Lifehacker, one of the best in the business of tech journalism. Read in your free time.

On a parting note, here is some fun stuff. Open a new tab and type about:mozilla. You might also try this Firefox 3 specific Easter egg - about:robots. Have fun with your new browser and rediscover the web.

UPDATE: The Firefox downloads have crossed the 8 million mark in 24 hours. Which means that after I posted there were more than 1 million downloads in 3 hours. Freakin' awesome.

Digg it, Stumble Upon it........

Are any of you users of Digg, Stumble Upon, Slashdot and such other Web 2.0 content aggregation services? Do you write a blog and feel that readers should have more options in book marking and sharing your content across these Websites ? If you are interested in driving up traffic for your site (who isn't?) bear in mind the fact that these news aggregator sites can provide a very wide exposure to your content

In case the answer is yes, to both or to either of the questions I would recommend the use of bookmark buttons, the kind which you see near the title of this post. Get it from here. You just need to open an account, choose your blogging platform and choose the type of button you want. In Blogger the process is just point and click: the button is installed as a page element. But this looks ugly and is surely going to be missed by readers who has an attention span of not more than 3 seconds. Where you preferably want is near the post headline, or in some other cases near the bottom where it is easily visible and the viewer needs a minimum amount of cursor movement to access it.

For that to happen, as I have done it here you need to dive a bit into the template code. In Blogger go to Layout > Edit HTML and select the Expand Widget Templates checkbox. Copy paste the HTML code in Word or Notepad (Notepad++, even better) and search for

div class='post-footer'

tag (replace header with footer if you want the button at the beginning of your post, which is what I have done). Save the template and you are good to go, your content accessible to billions of viewers.

It's raininggggg

Oh, at last. The rains hit Bombay the other day and I was so inspired that I just had to blog about it. Well, actually I need to keep up a good number of posts per month, which is why I am staying up at 2 in the morning and pounding the keys on a pretty insensitive keyboard!

To be precise, the pre-monsoon showers hit Bombay last Friday in the evening. Shower would be a wrong, and strong word to use. At least where I was, it was more like a light drizzle.
I was walking down from the railway tracks when I saw flashes of lightning on the horizon and the low rumble of thunder. A sound that is sometimes made by your stomach when lunch hour arrives and you are still 50 meters, or 5 minutes away from eating. What was that? Me exaggerating? Fine then, the sound is on a much larger, atmospheric scale. Jeez.

The moment the first drops of rain hit my head I ran. Ran like Julia Roberts in "The Runaway Bride". And boy, did I run? I am frankly surprised at my own stamina. No tiredness, no breathlessness. I dodged matronly ladies hurrying with their vegetable purchases, roadside vendors scurrying to get their wares under cover and legions of preteen kids treating the road like their playground. The kids seemed to go out of their way to trip me or at least make me stop. Blasted brats!!

My sprint through the crowded and dark roads enabled me to reach the apartment just as the rain gods took it in their heads to pour 7 and half bucketfuls on our collective heads. Enough to make a thirsty, grimy ,dusty city hope for succour but noth enough to fill up even a few potholes. I also had a new experience that evening-in that concrete jungle I got to smell ,for the first time in my life the rich smell of the soil when the first rains hit the ground. Funny because most of my life I have spent amongst trees and open houses where there is more earth and less concrete.

These days it rains every evening. My flatmates, bored fro the daily routine of going to their offices are sending fervent prayers for torrential rains to come and flood the roads before their offices. The ideas is to get a rain leave. They may have their wish fulfilled pretty quickly.

I ran like a hare before the first rains. Poets and romantics have very obviously different ideas as to how we should welcome the first showers. What did you guys do when you first saw the rain of the season?

The free lunches on the Internet

The Internet is all about freedom. When we go online we have come to expect everything as free, as opposed to the real world where everything comes with a price tag. Do you crib about paying the postage when you drop your letter in the red box? However I am pretty sure there will be world wide anarchy if Yahoo or Google starts debiting money from your account for every email that you send.

For people who have newly migrated to the Internet this freebie-sm seems incredible, magical or even downright suspicious. An uncle of mine,when introduced to the benefits of free email was like ,"No way this is possible. They must be costly."

"No Uncle. You don't have to pay for sending email. In fact you don't have to pay for anything. Just create an account and start sending mails".

"But what about the costs of maintaining this service? All the wiring, all the electricity, all the pretty colours? I am pretty sure that they ask your bank account or credit card number during that account creation stage"

"Relax Uncle. I have an account and I don't have a bank account By the way I think they recover their cost through advertising. And I am pretty sure they don't pay for the wiring." This was quite some years ago and I was still not very clear about the economics of the Internet. I am a little surer now!

"Hmmm is it completely free then? I don't have to pay anything?" There was this you-are-kidding tone in his voice and he looked very hard for that data field where he would have to key in his account number when creating his email account. I think he was kind of disappointed when he didn't find any!

Since the Internet offers such a wide variety of tools for free (in rare cases they charge, but very little) it's upto us to use all of them for managing our life. One of the pioneers in offering free service is Google with everything ranging from photos, videos, web analysis tools, gadgets, maps, books and whatnot offered for free. Most of us know about or use only a minority of these features: Gmail, Picasa, YouTube, Blogger. Let me elaborate on couple of services that you can use regularly.

Google Reader: This one is a life saver for jobs like mine, where you have to read stuff from plenty of websites of all stripes. You can usually get redirected to this service by clicking on the link titled Reader which will appear on the top left of the page once you log into your google account. You can also get it by googling Google Reader. On the first try you might have to enter your password but that's about it.

"What are we supposed to do with it?". Good thing that you asked. Whenever you visit any Website look out for this orange icon either in the search bar or in the main page.

Click on this icon and you will find that all the contents of that Website added to Reader. Add as many Websites as you want and you will get the daily dose of news,photos, nonsense and fetish at one place.

Google Calendar: Did you ever forget your mum's birthday? Were there times when you got on the bus cab and remembered that you forgot to bring that discount coupon for the eatery near your office? How about forgetting to give your environmentally passionate girlfriend that card for Earth Day? Fear not, with Google Calendar there is no need to dream up last minute excuses.

Google Calendar can be accessed from the same top panel of links, or from here if you are feeling lazy. Log in and you will be presented with a calendar, the kind which is available in business planners.

The USP of GCal is its ability to talk to your phone. Depending on your service provider you can elect to receive alerts of the events in the calendar on your mobile by SMS. These alerts can be set to be received before a user specified time frame. Go to Settings and in the Mobile Setup area and validate your number. Google Calendar has saved my skin a number of times and I am a heavy user. What's cooler is that you can share your Google Calendar with other people and also send invites by Gmail.

Web apps that are free to use are a great way of organizing your life and effectively multitasking and communicating. I fully subscribe to this view but also append a note of caution: never trust your data in a single place, if it's of any importance to you. ALWAYS keep a physical backup. Multiple copies are the safest bet. Utilize the facilities of Internet but be careful not to depend on it.

I am curious as to what free apps do you use, Web based or otherwise to streamline your life and work. Fire away in the comments

Full redesign

For a long time this blog looked like a step son who was passed over by the evil step mother when the contents of her will was disclosed. Just look at the number of months between this and the last post; also look over at the archives. Notice a trend? Well, I was more enthusiastic in the earlier years (comparatively,of course. No way did I average 10 posts per month even in my best days).

Be as it were, there are quite a number of reasons for my lackluster performance. I was a bit jaded after my final semester exams last March, and what with the job hunting and all there was hardly any time or inclination to blog. Even after I got my job (and a pretty decent Net connection) there was hardly any enthusiasm, and I blogged in fits and starts. Now that I come to think of it I was simply bored by my blog design. Inspite of my articles In Digit where I repeatedly used to write how fast and easy it was to give a new look to your blog I was too lazy to do that myself.. Period. The templates in Blogger were my sticking point and I even created a Wordpress blog (it's still there) The content was exported from this blog) because Wordpress offered plenty of plug ins and beautiful templates.

However I was not ready to dump Blogger just yet. I was also not ready to give up on blogging- a big thanks to Partha, Satya, Bhupi and others who opined that I should keep blogging. But no way was I gonna write in a blog that had the default stretched denim as template. Time to move on with a complete redesign.

First was the search for a new template. I did a Google search on blogger templates and was overwhelmed with a problem of plenty. So many designs, so many choices! Sometimes I didn't like the colour, sometimes the font was the villain. I was looking for a design which would provoke a gut reaction and make me say ," This is what I want my blog to look like". After reviewing about a thousand (more or less) templates I saw this one and the reaction was "This is the ONE". Downloaded the XML file, uploaded it and I was brand new, shiny and with a crystal look. So far ,so good.

I wanted my blog to look professional which entailed adding the orange RSS icon (You can subscribe to posts using a default link, but its buried at the bottom and is simply crap). I headed over to Feedburner and created a feed. This is a point and click process and you needn't do any complex Javascript gymnastics to get this button. For a good measure I also added the option to deliver posts to email. Just click on the link on the top right corner, enter your email ID and every time the content is updated your readers get it delivered to their inbox. Sweet!

Adding search functionality is very important for any content rich website. Notice the Google search box on the top right? This can be added either the easy way by using it as page element or the hard way by copy pasting code snippet. However this feature is not available in the standard Blogger but in the Blogger in Draft. For those not in the know, this is actually Blogger's experimental service where features that are planned to be pushed out in the future are present. For all intents and purposes it is exactly the same as the parent service. The only difference that I noted is that the number and type of page elements closely resemble Google Gadgets. I selected what I wanted, viz. the search box and saved my changes.

The trickiest element in my redesign was the tag cloud. I didn't like the way Blogger's default label element displayed my tags. The tag cloud seemed prettier and more intuitive with tags that occur more frequently displayed in larger font sizes. While there are some services like ZoomClouds and TagCloud that will create a tag cloud for you just like Feedburner creates feeds I preferred to get my hands dirty with code. This was because I would have full control over the way my tags behaved and there would not be an empty space smack in the middle of my blog if the service goes offline for some reason (most of the services that I tried were down). Another reason was that if I went by the manual route I will have full control on colours, fonts, size etc of the tag cloud. After some research (actually I spent about an hour) I came upon this page which seemed to get the job done. I followed the instructions and after a fair bit of playing around with colours and font sizes got my tag cloud working. Mission accomplished.

For the moment the redesign is over. I might add some more links and other bits and pieces but the basic look and feel is locked down. I would like to ask my readers what widgets and page elements you think are invaluable for your blog. Fire away in the comments below.

Thoughts on spam

Have you lately looked at your spam folder? I mean not click on the links, but just look at the subject of the mails. Do you notice a trend here? I don't know about others but based on my regular observations I seem to have come to certain conclusions. Here are they:

• The contract for spam has been awarded exclusively to peddlers of meds which increase the length of male reproductive organs, sellers of motivational CDs and lottery vendors who have discovered that I have won 5,000,000 pounds.
• Spammers are sexist. They target only the male organ. Have they never heard of gender equality?
• Spammers are not getting any convincing. All the mails which I have in my inbox that were flagged as spam display unoriginal ideas and shoddy language construction

Now before I proceed this is only on the basis of my experience. There might be spams that promise a woman bigger boobs or a more pleasurable orgasm, or there might be spams which look authentic enough to make you part with your hard earned cash. I don't know. What I do know is that spammers are pumping out more and more mails than ever before, and email services are fighting a losing battle against spam.

However the main danger is, in my opinion not these spam mails, but phished sites. Strange as it may seem, I have never used Netbanking, and I will be damned if I ever do. I am too paranoid these days after seeing how people can lose their money and get their accounts hacked. Why the other day there was this incident where a Nigerian national was arrested by the police. 25 HDFC accounts were hacked and there are no details of what happened to the money in those accounts. My guess is, they were cleaned out. Makes me all the more distrustful of the Internet. I will continue banking the old way, thank you.

Rough Cut

Last Saturday, I took out my new camera for a work out. I had bought the Canon A550 for quite a bargain, and the reviews on the Net looked good- most of the sites had lots of good things to say. Now, I am an absolute rookie when it came to photography, and I don’t know what ISO and white noise is. Theory is OK, but until you know the effect of these parameters in real life situations, you would never appreciate the difference.

I left my room at 1.30 in the afternoon. The plan was to go to place named Artist colony (maybe because the land was allocated for artists), about 30 min walking distance. I heard that the scenery was good, with lots of trees and a water body. The dry weather, though put paid to my hopes and there was only a puddle at the bottom of a crater. Anyway I wanted to test my camera, and any scene is fair game.

The specs on the camera said 7.1megapixel and 4x optical zoom. It also had quite a few modes and settings which took getting used to in the beginning. For instance, I was poking about in the menu hunting for the zoom function when the zoom was supposed to be activated from a lever. A couple of long range shots went by like that, though I soon figured out things out, and it was smooth sailing after that. The mode I was shooting was initially Auto, and the shots seemed pretty good, to my untrained eye. Then I started getting cocky, going to manual mode and flipping around menu controls like I was a pro. And the results were expected: in bright sunlight those photos looked like they were shot at fading light. Oh well, I will learn.

Next stop was Mango gardens. This is a park whose level is above the road, almost like a part of a hill has been walled off. You won’t see anything from outside, but once you enter the place it seems like you have been transported to a different world. Grass lined pathways, clumps of trees, a pond in the middle with ducks doing their thing- pretty impressive. The maintenance was top notch too, and this is where the municipal corporation deserves the credit. Prefect for a photo shoot.The time of the day was afternoon, and there was an interesting play of light and shadows. The waters in the pool were miraculously still and I grabbed some mirror images before things got too splashy. The zoom feature came in handy here, as I was able to take shots of the ducks from about 10 metres away, without having to squint. My only complain is that it takes quite some time for consecutive shots, which feels icky when you are doing multiple shoots of, say, a child in a swing. The time lag makes you feel cramped. These are some of the photographs of my first session.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bhaskar04

Diwali in Haji Ali

This Diwali was my first outside Surat, and in the run-up I had expected a fair share of fireworks. At Guwahati, during those two days you could not hear yourself think- think of a war zone, or the sound effects of any war scene. The staccato of crakers, the boom of "atom bombs", the flash and clap of "rocket bombs". At Surat, this revelry was upscaled, maybe because the city was full of fat cats who had money to burn. They have to do something with 40,000 crores of diamond export.

So it was a pleasant surprise when the skies over Navi Mumbai twinkled with stars, and you could hear the nasal strains of Himmeshbhai from a respectable distance. The police was talking tough, promising to impose hefty fine and a long stay in the cooler for any poor sod caught with a burning cracker after 10.30 pm.And for once, they actually worked at making good the threat. Most folks didn't want to ruin their holiday mood, and immersed themselves in quieter activities like watching SRK's latest offering, or gorged on sweets, or played cards. And there was peace and quiet all around.

Diwali went a bit curiously for me. We were three old friends sitting around, all new to Bombay. The IIT campus, where I often go to visit my pals ,do a bit of Orkut on the side, and watch movies off the campus LAN was quiet, far too quiet for us.So we three whipped out the Mumbai Navigator, a pretty useful online tool and decided to go to Haji Ali dargah. Don't ask why we chose to go there, it seemed the nearest by train.

Haji Ali's is situated on an island just off the South Bombay coast, reachable by a 600 m long concrete causeway. At low tide, there is practically no need of the causeway, and I imagine that before the structure was built pilgrims would go to the dargah by clambering over the rocks. At high tide, the water level would probably rise by half a meter (this is a very wild guess, so don't sue me if you have information that the rise is actually .43m). The pathway was crowded, as the day being Friday was the Muslim holy day. The causeway was choc a bloc full of people, with vendors shouting out their wares and beggars, most of them maimed chanting like those rowers of old when they were rowing the ship against a strong current.

My first impressions of the place- dismal. The sea was horribly polluted- black waters, floating plastics, rotting leaves and discarded food. The whole area stank horribly, though you tend to get used to it, fast. We looked around the area , climbed out to the rocky shore and went back, barely noticing the stink. Most of the holy places which are situated in india would probably be like this. But then again , I guess a temple without a crowd would be like a body without a soul.

When the tooth fairy called

Ever since I was a kid I dreaded going to the dentist.In fact you have got to be a hard core macho to pay to get your teeth yanked out.99% of my readers will agree to this statement.The 1% fall in the category of BASE jumpers,stunt motorcyclists,snowboarders,skydivers and such other intrepid souls.Personally speaking,most of my teeth fell out naturally.Others were not so lucky.The horror stories were always told by the victims' mothers,aunts and sundry relatives.Come to think of it,I have never heard any kid telling me how much s/he was in pain . Maybe immediately after they get their tooth out they are engaged in clutching their jaws and bawling to high heavens to hold a meaningful conversation.And after the pain has passed they are too busy demonstrating how they could spit out differently through the gap to talk to you.Then again,they have other weighty matters on their minds.Kids are complex beasts,if you ask me.

I feel I am digressing,however.About a couple of months back I was suddenly suffering from excruciating pain in my left molar.I could not eat cold or hot,could not chew with that teeth without waves of pain shooting through the nerves.My symptoms were indicative of an infected root and would require root canal treatment-this was the judgement pronounced by the in-house pundits at the hostel.And that was going to blow a large hole in the pocket,somewhere in the range of 4000 bucks.And for a fellow who has a weekly budget of 200 bucks,that's a lot of dough.I was sadly thinking what I could have bought with that much-a 80GB hard disk , 256 MB memory stick
....you get my drift.Now some sadistic dentist would drill my teeth,inflict torture which would rival the inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition and on top of that,get paid for his "services" by me.Whoever said it ain't a fair world,I would say never words more truly spoken.

Like a man going to the sacrificial altar I was sitting in a sort of contraption ,with a light bulb shining into my face, the dentist tsktsking as she peered into my cavity while a drill was whirring away like mad.I was freaking, and if I had not my reputation to maintain as a strapping young lad I would have hightailed from that place as if the devil was behind me.But that blasted ego held me in place.After minutes which felt like hours to me,she pronounced the judgement.Turned out that it was not as bad as I had feared.No root canal,but a minor filling would apparently do the trick.
"Doc,would there be pain?"I asked her.

With a smile half bordering on amusement and half bordering on exasperation she said,"Don't you worry about pain.I will fix you up properly."And she did that.For once,the dentist was not bullshitting.There was no pain,and to sweeten the deal she charged me 100 bucks for the filling and 200 bucks for cleaning .I was thinking maybe I could still get hold of that 80 GB of digital real estate.

But is life ever simple ?No.Things have a bad habit of screwing you up.In my case a blister was the death of me,or more specifically my molar.One fine morning ten days back a blister appeared below it.No pain,but I rather liked the dentist and felt there was no harm in paying a casual visit.As they say,prevention is better than cure.This time I was more confident in climbing into the chair.She switched the light in,and after fiddling pronounced,"There seems to be some sort of infection and would require root canal at the minimum.If it has spread you could also loose your tooth."

This hit me right between my eyes,to say the least.I mean this was the stuff my worst nightmares were made of!!I am not a sissy but I don't get my kicks off by experiencing pain and most certainly,blood loss in this case.Just for the sake of treatment she gave me a few anti inflammatory drugs but two days later when I trooped back there was no change in swelling.So the grinder had to come out.I strapped myself in,so to speak and got two shots of local anaesthetic.The needles pinched but otherwise it was ok.When my left side had swollen up sufficiently to look like I had been socked in a bar brawl , I was hauled back and told to open my mouth and face my destiny.It was payback time,for all the days when I did not brush,floss or mouthwash after a meal.And payback,as they say is a bitch.

I was expecting a pliers of some sort.Because when I use the expression yank,I had the image of a nail being pulled out of a wooden board.But dental methods must have advanced more than language .Because I saw a sort of miniature lever,of the first class with the fulcrum as the root and resistance the molar.And she applied all of her womanly strength until I could feel the bite of pain through my numb jaws and the scrunch of the root as it separated from the jawline. According to the expert I had developed an extra root which was responsible for the swelling.As if it was supposed to make me feel special!!With the blood flowing like water from a broken water main,cotton was stuffed and the first wad promptly turned red and got fully soaked.The second wad was able to stem the flow.With strict instructions not to spit out come what may,I left the office .But like a moron,I spat out mouthfuls of blood after about an hour,feeling like a vampire.With the blood flow nowhere near stopping I had to go to the doc again where I was promptly reprimanded for my flagrant disobedience and told to move around with an ice pack.Some pills helped to stem the flow of blood,swallowing also helped but the life saver was definitely those humble blocks of ice which I popped into my mouth.It felt weird,comfortably numb like in the Pink Floyd song.But this numbness was due to cold and loss of blood.Felt interesting,though I did not hallucinate.After two hours or so,the blood flow and pain went away.But I took no more chances.And so for the first time in my life went to bed with two dozen bananas and 250 grams of grapes.Quite filling ,I must say.

Apart from spitting weirdly until I got the hang of it,it felt same.The gap in my back feels like a lost friend.Moral of the story..All ye sinners take care of your fangs,or ye will suffer unto yourself pain that thou won't wish upon thine worst enemies.Amen

Boulevard of Joggin' Dreams

About four years ago I landed in my college,SVNIT.The rooms were cramped,the food just enough for survival and the classes and professors dull.But one thing I will not bitch about is the state of its connecting roads.For a guy who has had to trudge through mud every rainy day of his life,walking on a black topped road without getting a single clod of mud in rainy season was something novel.So I began thinking,why not take advantage of this.I mean I was badly out of shape and short winded.Seemed jogging on these all weather roads would be the easiest and fastest way of getting back to shape.You only had to get a pair of running shoes,wake up in the morning and bingo!All excess flab out.

Seemed too easy.Its always like this-good intentions but not enough follow up action.You see this sort of thing all around .I knew there would be a catch,there always is.Here the catch was the waking up part.It was too difficult to get out of bed and slog like some grunt on say ,a chilly morning.After all,why take the trouble-the voice with the prongs and the forked tail was saying.The voice with the halo,drowned out was down and out.And so while I did not get any fatter,I certainly did not get fitter.One day it was cold,another day plain lazy ,still another day was night outs.But the end result was same.Except for some sporadic mornings when struck by guilt I would half heartedly crawl out of the bed and go through the motions of stretching my legs,running a few metres until I would gasp for breath like a fish out of the water and convince myself that next time would be better.But there was no next time,and the jinx was never broken.

Until something snapped suddenly a few days ago.I did not know where the push came from,but I guess the realisation that those roads would no longer be a part of my life after 4 months was the trigger.I also had a neighbor who was trying to get up in the morning for the last three years .So we worked out a nice scheme.This guy had a sister who was an early bird.So she would give him a missed call,he would wake up and then wake me up.The first morning,as usual,I panted for breath after the usual 100 meters.But thinking enough was enough,and also the thing that my neighbor was with me,I pushed ahead.We had to think of dream up many incentives to keep going.One trick was to promise to rest once after crossing a tree.Or if there was a chick ahead jogging,I would say to myself old boy,have a look at her arse from close up and we will stop this running.Of course,after I had a good look there would be another arse some distance ahead and there was the need for an expert comparison. Basically I was able to persuade myself until the leg muscles plainly threatened to crumble under me.There would be cramps and aches the whole day,but frankly there were no thoughts of turning back.
We continued for three days until there was no need for promises of anatomical appraisal to keep going ahead.Once or twice old habits threatened to kick in,but I was able to sufficienly shame myself to put on my shoes.And once that was done,I would have looked silly if I did not run.So the trick is to get out of bed and wear the shoes without thinking.No more pain now,and only a little panting .I feel fine,just fine.And another advantage-I am not missing early morning classes or breakfasts.Though I still sleep late.Now if only something could be done to remedy that.

Back from sabbatical

Am back into blogosphere after a pretty long time.What with exams and submissions and things like that these days have seen my adrenaline levels soar to record highs.But the storm has passed over,and all is calm on the study front now.I have a feeling of deja vu,but I am tempted to hold forth on the various stages of exam preparation before a typical engineering end semester exam.Make a few modifications and I wager that the same thing,same techniques are applicable for other professional courses.

Take my case.Our average semester length is about 4 months....never mind the dictionary definition of six months.The first three months are one of the most relaxed ones you could dream for.Sure there are practicals to do,reports and submissions to be made ,but what the heck.We just keep pushing these things with a will-do-it-tomorrow-there-is-enough-time attitude.And when the third month is almost ending notices start appearing in college and departmental notice boards.Dates of exams and opening of new semester start getting released while the teachers get into their element,fixing dates for final submissions and practical examinations.And then ,like the beginning of a bad dream,we realize the amount of time which we had whiled away.And I don't know about others but at these times I really would have loved to get my hands on a time machine and turn the clock back.But having said that,all we can do is to do it the long ,hard way.And so starts the crazy days when one master copy of assingments and programs make the rounds of the entire hostel .One of the bes examples of I scratch your back,you scratch mine.Days and nights become kaleidoscopic bars of black and white during the run up to D-Day.And the best part is that,the majority of the people are totally clueless about the syllabus.So when looking at the past questions the only thought that comes into our minds -we are doomed.However ,with the gradual unearthing of the topics and syllabus,the flower of hope shows its face in the barren snow filled terrain of despair (I know that this sounds horribly cliched,but studying operating systems and Unix and computer networks have blunted my linguistic skills.Will have to wait for some time before the systems are up and running).

Anyway,with the practicals and submissions over,the real exam starts.Typically in most colleges these exams have no gaps in between.For example,we had five exams in five days.And let me tell you ,that was no walk in the park.With our sins of wasting the whole semester coming back and haunting us,the typical situation before each exam was discovering newer and newer questions with no answers.I mean when I were in school the routine was that you revised before exams.Here you saw new topics two hours before an exam.Another thing which I suspect my schoolmasters wouldn't approve of.But as most of the people are in the same jam,I guess that evens out everybody's odds. And the body art part is ,of course always there,along with tiny chits up the sleeves.And no sir,I an saying this not metaphorically,but literally.And since we,as a generation are more savvy than our parents when it comes to, gadgets some use cellphones to write down formulae and stuff.But that is another story altogether.

All's well that ends well,as they say.And in our case too,usually the story has a happy ending,except in some cases where the paper setter was in a particularly foul mood while setting the questions.Then even God will wash His hands off you.And no amount of chits can save you from flunking.Most of us,except the superstars have been through this at least once.But I digress.The moment the last exam is over,you feel as light as a dove.You feel no grudge in wasting 200 bucks watching a stupid flick in a multiplex when you knew before hand you would be suckered.The therauupatic value of watching a movie in a theatre is great,believe me.It means that you are completely relaxed .And it is much cheaper than getting your mind analyzed by a Freud spouting pshrink.And of course for folks living far from home,end of exams means boarding a train or a bus and going home to meet the family and eating homecooked meals.Grrrrr...,sorry that was my tummy.Goes about growling like a grizzly whenever home food is mentioned.Can't blame him,it has been almost 5 months.

I will be back soon.May the force be with you

Deluge-III

Epilogue

Got tickets to Guwahati via Delhi.The tickets were confirmed, thank God .We were to leave that very night.Spent the entire day killing time.As to finances I had left with only 350 bucks.Four or five of us each took a loan of 1000 bucks from the father of our friend.I realized a Murphy’s axiom,namely when you need a thing you won’t find it.I had two bank accounts,each with their own ATM cards.But both of them had messed up and I had applied for duplicates.So ATMs everywhere,but not a card to withdraw with!

After a good dinner on drumsticks,boarded the train and settled down for the night.This traveling was a new experience as between five of us we had only a little bag.Talk about traveling light.

After we got to Delhi we freshened up and decided to explore what we can. Had heard about the Metro and wanted to see what the fuss was all about .Along with two others spend half the day in the Metro. I could have never believed that such a thing could ever exist in India. Spotlessly clean walls and platforms ,central airconditioning.CCTV cameras. And the trains!. Just like whispering death, if you were stupid enough to stand on the tracks. If you did not look at the faces you would have difficulty believing you were in India.And on my travels I came face to face with the dichotomy between India and Bharat.The Chandni Chowk station is like all other stations.You come up to the ground on an escalator,go a few steps,turn a corner and almost run smack into an old Gurdwara.The order and cleanliness of the Metro station was replaced by chaos and filth.A narrow alley three feet wide opened out into the crowded main market which has been there since the days of Akbar and Jehangir.Goes on to show how much we have to improve.Anyway that is another topic.Also was threatened by a policemen for drinking beer in public.Thankfully the matter remained there and we completed the drink in peace

The rest of the journey was quite prosaic and mundane.We caught the connecting train at Delhi and reached home about 32 hours later.And stepped out of the train into a place stricked by drought.Such an irony,I did not know whether to laugh or to cry.Seems the Gods above have not lost their sense of humor... (Concluded)

Deluge-II

0812 hours

The 9th of Sept dawned bright and clear. Just a rhetorical statement as the sunup would not be at this hour. A thumping on the door woke me up. Opened the door, stepped out and …..opened my mouth in amazement. The whole compound was flooded. The water level was about a foot. And another thing attracted my attention.Ants,thousands of them of at least a dozen species were evacuating their nests. That place would have been a naturalist’s delight. Even to my untrained computer engineer’s eyes, I could identify at least 50 species of insects ranging from slugs to earthworms to grasshoppers.

After a quick breakfast the evacuation started with gusto.Clothes,computer ,went up.All the other odds and ends,even my wristwatch and mobile went into my trunk.This last bit I was to regret later .I made atleast a dozen trips to the higher floors and wading through progressively increasing water levels.I got bitten about four times by red ants.Almost stepped on a wiggling snake when I was taking the monitor up and could not see where I was going.And I think I made a discovery that day.Saw maybe four or five hybrids of snakes and lizards.They move like snakes but have four sets of legs like lizards. Color black and as long as 8 inches. I like to think of them as some sort of missing link. But that is probably a load of hooey. And what made the task more hazardous was that if you brushed the walls there was a danger of something plunging in their stinger. Thankfully nothing serious happened.Tne books and other things I left in the loft of my room. Don’t know where I got the strength but single handedly carried up my hold all and trunk, each weighing about 20 kilos to the first floor. I think my technique, which I call the coolie lift did the trick !!You see I spend my spare time at railway platforms watching coolies carry impossibly heavy loads. They don’t have the strength of a Bhim.

This whole op lasted about 3 hours.Meanwhile the mess was shifted to the first floor and the news brought some relief.The terrace was the favorite haunt now and there was no dry patch to be seen.900000 cusecs of water had been released from the dam and that night was full moon.So due to high tide in the sea this extra water would inundate more areas and the SMC were warning us about the water level being up 20 feet in some areas through sms.This freaked us out and we could forsee our future in a refugee camp.Some folks who lived nearby ,aleady braving the thigh deep water decided to leave while it was possible.But we lived 3000 km away.

1230 hours

The lunch bell rang and that was the sweetest music to our ears.Long lines snaked to the serving area and man oh man, did I ever get to eat so tasty food.It was only daal,dry fried mashed potatoes and steaming rice,but felt like manna from heaven to us.Predictably nobody bitched about the food.This restored our moods considerably and we looked at things with a more rosier view.I started reading ”Is Paris Burning?’

1400 hours

An outcry drew my attention outside.Asked one of the fellas what the hell was it.Turned out that the front gate was chest deep and Surat station was about to be flooded.The only hope was to go by the back gate where the waters were thigh up and make our way to a little station 15 minutes from Surat.Any train could be the last train as water could inundate tracks suddenly.Decided to abandon the sinking ship,as it were.I grabbed a tee and a pair of shorts.Could not even wear my watch or take the cell.On a wing and a prayer we set out,with no final idea as to our destination.

We struggled and trudged through swirling waters and eddies which threatened to sweep us off our feet.Finally reached the station and after some discussions decided to go Baroda.The situation there was better.Reached Baroda about three hours later in a general coach.A friend’s empty house was to be our digs for the night.Washed and scrubbed as if my life ….err skin depended on it .Dinner was at another friend’s place where it was decided that the best place would be home sweet home. Slept quite soundly .It really had been a long day. (End of part II)

Deluge-I

Prologue
For a very long time whenever somebody asked me how was life I would just shrug, make a sour face and mutter, “Same shit, different day”. Not anymore, however. During the past month many lifetime experiences were squeezed into a space of few days and now I can never complain of dullness. Let me take you back to one month. The day was Monday; the date 7th.Microsoft was to come to our college for campus. And since Microsoft being what it was, banners and festoons fluttered gaily. Those who were eligible to sit in the written had butterflies in their stomach. The rest, including me were just curious observers. All day long, disquieting rumors of water being released from the Ukai dam on Tapti reached our ears. Some low lying areas of the city were also rumored to be under water. But nobody gave much credence to them and certainly nobody thought that the situation would deteriorate. Sure it was raining but for a whole month, there were only three days of sun. But the penny really dropped when the execs could not travel from their hotel 1 km away to our campus due to water. That was when alarm bells started to ring and practically the whole campus flocked to the gates to see how high the waters had risen.


2000 hours
  

The situation looked alarming, but somehow not out of control. The main road from the gates was built on higher ground and the low-lying areas on both sides were inundated. The road looked like a causeway. The lights were out but there were plenty of flashes. Apparently many folks considered it to be a good photo opportunity and were posing for photographs standing ankle deep in water. If only they had known what was to come later, they would not waste their batteries and saved more juice for the coming days.Even though the water level was pretty low where we were standing, what was disconcerting was how the waters advanced millimeter by millimeter with nothing to stop them in the march ahead. The waters seemed to take as much notice of us as an elephant would take of a grasshopper in its way. The water level swiftly became a topic of debate. Many felt that the boys’ hostels would be under water that very night. The girls’ hostel was already in danger. I personally thought that no way was my ground floor room going to be flooded that night. Heck, it might never get flooded. You can never tell. Finding that matters were out of our hands we returned to our dark rooms.

0030 hours


The first and second floor guys had a normal night. But for the ground floor ones, it was a like no other. With two other guys I went out to monitor the water. To our shock the waters had advanced about 50 feet from last. And since water everywhere had the same level. The situation was damn grim. The main flow divided into two and executing a pincer movement around the main building two streams –one from the library side and another from the direction of hostel office joined in front of electrical engineering department.

0315 hours


On another routine check. Feeling like a flood control department man monitoring the level of a river in spate and checking whether the red line is touched. The areas around canteen were under less than 6 inches of water and the mech department could only be reached with wet feet. The labs of mech and civil departments were now threatened. Same could be forecasted for the library and the computer center. In fact, were it not for a higher road between our hostel and the canteen and the absence of a culvert, waters would have long ago entered the hostel compound. Met  a couple of guards who just told us that waters had entered into the ground floor of girls’ hostel and they had just returned from the director’s residence and shifted him lock ,stock and barrel to the first floor. We decided in the light of things that was a good policy as we had computers and even a drop could ruin the things. But could not do much as there was pitch darkness in our rooms.

0500 hours


Woke up from fitful slumber to find the grass outside the balcony sopping wet and the skies dry. This freaked me out and I banged on my neighbor’s door .He agreed that we had better start packing up. Though sometimes I used to look askance at my trunk it was my best friend today and all odds and ends went into it. Hoisted the trunk on the chair, disconnected the pc and tried to grab some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day……. (End of part I)

Grand slam(s)

For the past few days have put a lot of strain on my nerves.you see the thing is that we are leaving college and many good friends are unlikely to see each other’s faces in entire life.So this is the last moment to savor friendships.And savoring friendship is done here by writing slam books.

And this is where I am at a strain.For the past few day I have filled at least 20 odd slam book.Now writing a slam book is different from writing answers in an exam.You have t pour your heart and soul into the job.And if you donot wite perfectly,there is a feeling of a job half  done.These things remain forever and I want my work t olook and last good.

Writing them has forced me to examine a lot of feelings and reminisce a lot of memories.Hostel life was completely differently from that of home and we had tons of fun.All that went into the slam book.So nowadays I am walking about in a sort of haze where events from the past years with faces that you will probably,definitely never again see makes a jerk like me want to become sentimental.And guess what , I did.Let my emotions flow as they say you don’t keep anything bottled up if you want good health.Feeling much better now.

Exam musings and body art

I am back after a long time.No,it is not writer's block that kept me on the hold.It was the scourge of every student's life.Yes ,no prizes for guessing -exams.

Why is that we students hate exams. It only involves writing down the answers to some questions. Surely breaking your legs or getting a nasty bump on the head is worse than writing from memory.But many people disagree,including yours truly.And as our system goes empirical evidence suggest that the the questions to be asked in the upcoming exams can be guessed pretty accurately by looking up previous question papers

And after knowing all of this,we quake in our boots, our stomachs turn somersaults and palms become sweaty!! And for many others breathing becomes more ragged. Classic smptoms of a heart attack. Don't think I am making this up. You may no longer have to sit in an exam hall but look back to those times and a involuntary shiver will run up your spine.

I have been thinking all about this since exams were over and I guess that knowing what is coming sometimes makes things more fearsome than they actually are.Fear sort of overhypes things.It is just like if we ever had to go to a village many of us city bred types would insist on drinking from mineral water bottles rather than drink the water which comes out of the village well though it does nothing to the villagers.So coming back to our original topic exams put the fear of god in us.And however much you prepare you always feel inadequate.

And at this crucial moment that part of your inner voice with the pitchfork and the pointed tail steps in. We put that good voice with the halo out of our heads and stuff it with a pillow so that it can't disturb us when we invoke our dark side and temporarily become Dr Faust.And invoking the dark side involves rituals which you have guessed by now.We prepare chits in which is written almost in microscopic letters,write on our arms and legs answers to the most likely question asked and wear full sleeved shirts to cover up the body art.Dressed to kill...err to cheat.

And how do we reconcile all this with our good selves when we release it from uhder the pillow where it has been gasping for breath. We murmer hurried protestations, swear on our favorite cricketer's head and the father,son and the holy ghost and on the whole 330 milliion gods of the Hindu pantheon that this will be the last time.

And after six months we again reach out for that pillow. And put it to dual use for the night before the big day.

A full meal sure is peaceful

I am satisfied. It was like a torrential shower flooded a place reeling from drought. In my case it was the clampdown on eating meat. Due to the bird flu scare chicken, virtually the one non veg item we ate was off our menu. So it was a welcome change when there was a plan to cook some mutton. Three kilograms between 8 guys. The chef was naturally Suman who has gladly done this job since our first year. And as usual there was nothing to beat the taste. You could have missed it and said that you were eating it at home, except that we had to adopt some pretty unconventional measures owing to the shortage of space, utensils and fuel. That said the meal was a great success and everyone had more than enough. to sweeten the deal, each of us had one rosgolla and gulabjamun each-two types of sweets favorite with the Assamese.We even had shared between us a full bottle of cold drink and heartily drank it ,pretending that it was red wine- with due apologies to sommeliers and gourmands. My stomach is full, that is what it matters. I can sleep in peace-kapdaa and maakan I already have. Mutton took care of the roti part.

The week that was

Could not write for long for a variety of reasons, one being that the net connection was screwed up to my room and I don’t like to write my blog anywhere else.Okay,okay pretty lame excuse but I have got to offer one. Now to business. Since I was offline and unable to pen-in this case type, my thoughts only two events have stuck out .One was Holi, the festival of colors and another was a farewell party

Holi is always a cause for fun, but not so much if you are not sharing close living space with others, like in a block of flats. So while I was at home we just smeared a little powder other, wished each other and bathed the colors out. Now let me describe a typical Holi day at our hostel. After breakfast, bands of roving revelers, armed with drums and colors would tour each hostel. To the thunderous beat, colors would be smeared, .most of them grease based which take a thorough rubbing to get rid off. But that is only the beginning. Buckets of water are brought from the bathroom and indiscriminately splashed. Soon the corridor floor resembles a confusion of colors, along with faces, hair and t-shirts. With most of the colors finished and water splashing over the next phase is stripping. This starts with somebody pulling at his neighbor’s sleeve along the seams until the water soaked threads give way. The aim is not to just ruin one sleeve, but to rip the whole garment to pieces. Once this starts, a domino effect kicks in and soon there is no one with a whole shirt or tee on his back. But there are no frowns, only smiles and a lot of wishing and backslapping. After this most of the people head of to one of the hostels that is hosting a common mud fest and come back all muddied. Personally I skip this part. This time I also happened to be in a royal jam. I did not have soap and all the shops were closed. Here I was running around with all the hues of spectrum on my skin and head and face and stuck without any means of getting a decent bath.Thankfully, I managed a spare piece finally.

In the afternoon we had to eat out. But we had to walk a long way before getting an auto. Stuffing me with chicken, bird flu is hanged, along with mutton and prawn I ratcheted up an individual bill of record 191 bucks. It took all my willpower to drag myself to my room.

Another out of turn event was the farewell. This is an annual event organized by the student of each state to bid goodbye to their respective seniors leaving college. Gujarat being a dry state these gatherings take place on the beaches of Daman which is prohibition free .So the upshot is that everybody drinks .And some seriously passed out guys also give vent to their emotions by a sob or two .Lots of hugging and consoling takes place at the end of the day, with many admitting to their worst kept secrets. Heavy duty nostalgia kicks in on part of the seniors and reminiscences are all over the place, with every body promising not to forget one another. Some chaps get too drunk to eat while others vomit everything they have eaten under the influence of alcohol. Quite a waste of good food and drink is what I say. Speaking of myself I am no drinker. But this time I went over the limit, drinking everything except whisky and, of course, champagne!!!Surprisingly the cocktail in my belly made me hungrier and I did best what I do with good food-attack it with gusto. We hung around the beach till the burning sun sank below the horizon and got back to college by about midnight. A quick cold bath which meant some calisthenics under the gushing faucet and I was ready for bed. Zzzzzzzzz…!!!

Bank account blues

What is the least amount you ever have had in your bank, assuming that you have one. Rs 100?.Rs 20? Rs 10? If you are shocked at practically accused of being a pauper, you need not fret. Turns out that there is someone even below your level in the liquidity chain. And that worthy is yours truly. Before you begin to ask as to why I have bestowed this honor, even if dubious, on myself I have an iron clad reason. That is the ATM receipt of my transaction which said that my account balance was, hold your breath, Rs 0.06.Which means that on 25th day of the the first month of the year of our Lord 2006 I had precisely 6 paise, which might have been of some use to me had I been living a century ago.That is why I consider that day to be historic. But God, I can live without more such momentous events, if it pleases you. As an ordinary mortal, I just won’t be able to take the strain.

Thankfully God in heaven, for once seemed to answer my prayers and through my parents have kept my fiscal condition out of the woods. And for that I kneel down and pray from the depths of my heart, soul, mind, cockles and practically any organ you can think of. Amen

P.S Oh and by the way I am thinking of preserving that receipt so that people won’t think that I am spouting codswallop.Will be a good thing to show to my grandchildren on a rainy night when everybody have told their share of ghost stories. But the way I see things are heading I don’t much fancy their understanding what the hell paisa is that grandpa is babbling about

D.I.Y. barbering !

I will ask you a very simple question-is it possible to cut your own hair. Apparently it is aesthetically impossible, as a certain Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi discovered to his dismay. Miffed by the refusal of a white barber in SA, he took a pair of scissors to his hair and tried to give them a trimming. As he writes, though he had fairly succeeded in the front, the rear looked as though they were chewed through by rats. Of course he soon went bald and matters rested there.

Now you might be wondering what relation does these events which occurred over a century ago have with me.Plenty.Let me give you a background. Like Gandhi I was losing my hair. And feeling a bit insecure when all my friends make it a fashion statement to keep shoulder length hair. Among the many myths related to hair one is that shaving your head stimulates growth. Even though I am a skeptic I gave it a shot .Went and shaved off my head and on top of that also acquired a French cut. Reaching my digs I was surprised when many of my long locked companions complimented my new looks. One of them even said that the bear would be okay but it was a shame I could not keep my bald look without frequent visits to a barber. Of course the idea is financially unsustainable. He ended with a wisecrack that it would have been nice if I could shave my head myself and save expenses.

Now that set me thinking. Why can’t I do it just because others don’t? After 4 days when the fuzz appeared on the head I figured that now was the time to test my hypothesis. I lathered up my fuzzy head just like hoe you do before shaving and applied the razor. A sweep through the foam and my scalp was glistening. A few careful strokes and the front part was nice and tidy. Now came the back. Feeling by touch I managed to scrape away much but was sure that I had left out patches and could feel myself like how the father of the nation felt when he was squinting before his own shaving mirror. Finally with the help of a chap I completed the finishing touches. Of course I nicked myself number of places, but as they say, the experience was worth it. Shaving, in the ordinary sense of the term was a breeze. When I sprayed after shave the head seemed to be on fire. This was about one and a half month ago. With practice nowadays I can almost shave my head, front, back and the sides almost eyes closed. And thankfully no more nicks.

Seeing me perpetually bald made me face the same question –how many times do I go for a shave? And when I reply with a straight face that it was my own handiwork and it had been months people refuse to believe until somebody who has seen me doing it has corroborated the story. And I have been getting a lot of comments on the look-ranging from looking like a baddie in the movies to an x -rated star. Some even ventured to say it looked sexy, though I don’t believe much of it. But the only reason I have kept a bald head is that it feels damn comfortable. Try it for yourself. It feels like you have a weather vane on top of your head. And the wind is cool. I don’t think I will ever go back to being normal. Being bald sits just fine with me. Oops! Haven’t shaved for 5 days.Okay, first thing in the morning I am gonna lather myself up.

P.S Just as I promised yesterday I lathered up and got a nice head and cheek shave and am as good as new.Another 20 bucks out of the hands of the trimmers.