Luck by chance

How true. 

How of us really think what we're learning right now in college might be beneficial to us? Forget those who have not taken their course seriously, I am talking to those who have. How many of you are satisfied with your education?

Most of the times we end up where we don't want to. At the same time, some of the most wonderful opportunities come our way when we least expect it.

I suggest keep trying newer things. However, it's also important to let go of stuff that's not helping you in anyway. Be it stagnant projects, past memories and undesirable people.

I am all for perseverence and hard work. But what about that initial spark? The first crude idea? College can't help you there. Well, not entirely atleast...

(Image courtesy: xkcd)

Changing guard

Deriving inspiration from one of the most popular bloggers in India, Amit Varma

Todays WTF Quote is attributed to Atin. The guy has been quite an evangelist for the organisations he's been affiliated to in the last few months with his hard hitting citizen journalism and "straight from the heart" posts. Avoiding bureaucracy and not bothering with disclaimers, I suggest its about time all you people out there add him to your blogroll, trust me, you shall not regret it.

But after months of awesomeness comprising of this, this and most recently this he goes ahead and performs a low blow, a cheapshot or whatever you might call it.

It's time I became a bit more mature and started expressing myself more objectively and sensibly. It's time to grow up.

I wonder what would cause such a move. But that being said, he is a revolutionary. Little does he realize how much impact he's beginning to have on people. As I write this post, there are discussions about what is he going to write about in his next post. And amongst smaller groups he's being hailed as the next big thing (a title previously adorned by Brock Lesner ).

Here's to you sir.

Psst: My sources reveal to me that he's been stealing a substantial amount (classified) of traffic thats coming in from outside.

Encounters on Gulf Air

When you change 4 flights in eight hours crossing two time zones, things get a little freak, especially if you have had a lot of wine on board (its free right?)

While on GF130 (that's Gulf Air) from Bahrain to New Delhi, the gentleman in front of me was hardly a teetotaller, after chugging three glasses of whiskey the dude wanted another shot, just for old times sake I presume. The steward, who looked arab but sounded jamaican came forward and in his polite tone asked Jack Daniels to ease it a little bit. But our fermented soul would not go down without a fight.
If the alcohol is free then why should it ever stop flowing. Its not like I am going to harm anyone. Let me be.
Something on those lines.
Steward replied in hindi, in his thick jamaican accent, that the guy should just sleep and enjoy the high for he ain't getting another peg. What continued for the next half an hour was a one sided negotiation between the drunk man and the steward, the steward simply brushing away all possibilities of a consensus, asking the man to go to sleep. He also said that drinking a lot would only make this man reveal the true animal that was inside him(for he didn't seem to have the capacity of an irish dock worker from any angle) which would only invite the police who would be more than happy to invene to bust his sorry ass.
Finally our man just reclined back on to his chair and started murmuring some gibberish.
Just an after thought:
I wonder if airlines possess strait-jackets.

Opening Salvo

Cliches suck. Big time. Yet we use them. Like hello world. Now just many fucking times have we seen this being used? Yeah Yeah I know, its like standard procedure, something akin to saying "hello" while answering the telephone or saying "check" while testing the microphone.

Why the baseless bitching?

No reason in particular.

Sometimes don't you simply want to find reasons to get worked up about issues which are always at the back of your head, yet you didn't give them enough importance earlier for they just seemed so trivial? But come the day when your head is exploding with rage and this acts like that little magnesium ribbon you read about during your school days, which were filled with those uninteresting experiments in those tailor-made-for-prisoners style text books which were wholly printed in just one color(as bizarre as bottle green). People living in developed nations obviously cannot associate with this phenomenon. For they always had glossy hard bound text books with real pictures and multi colored illustrations. Anyone who has studied history from the India's Central Board of Secondary Education text books will bear testimony to the fact that history was indeed written in black and white. When they did finally give color illustrations a shot, it gave rise to some pretty interesting pieces of art. Like the girl in ninth standard who for the first time read about the scrotum and little love ovals which dwell in them had to suffice with a violet nut and an orange vas deferens.

Yes, I agree immense digression has taken place in the last couple of paragraphs and you should give yourself a little shag if you managed to get to this point.

Be god with ye...

What's inside my head.

As kids we always learnt that whenever some one is in trouble or is having a rough time, or basically life is treating them like a bitch, give them a helping hand and try to be understanding and caring.

But

Sometimes its just way too funny how they land themselves up in such DEEP SHIT!

As the first semester of second year comes to an end with the grand finale-comprees, one sees the gradual change that one was spoken to of. People are more casual and the pandemonium of the first year has certainly decreased. Or maybe it just a passing thought, since (was it cube who said?) Truth is just a point of view.
It's about this time that one also begins to (re)discover ones contemplative side, or is that because ones got noting better to do? As everyday passes by, one feels that one has truly discovered what one wants to do. At 13,14,15,16,17,18....I thought I had the whole world figured out.

Now I am not so sure.


Here's to a new beginning(yet again)

P.S: Did I just write the entire post using "one" instead of "I" o "Me"???

Orkut.com

A creation of Mr. Orkut Buyyokoten, a Stanford-ite and an employee of Google, which ensured that the vetti(jobless for those who aren't accustomed to the Bitsian slang) are never left jobless. It's re-united many lost friends, spread the message of many events and also ruined many lives(oh havn't you ever been addicted to it?).

It is supposed to be a forum for healthy interaction. It has all these communities based upon people's interests, which one can join. One can read and contribute(if he has joined) to the topics in each community.

There are all types of communities, and I mean ALL types. You got communites on popular and not-so-popular TV shows, movies, personalities, brands and also stuff like "The Pope should break dance" and "Bitch make me a sandwich" which is about guys telling girls to STFU make them a sandwich".

Coming to these communities. When you join any of these communities on orkut, you are demonstrating your affiliation with them. Rationally speaking, it would be expected that since you've joined these communites you should take part in the proceedings.
Yet we see that people join the communities and remain "dormant" for extended periods of time, sometimes even indefinitely.
Many a times, joining communites becomes an obsession. You just want to join more and more communities. You know you've really lost it when you join the community called "I have joined too many communities" . And then to top it off, you also have the community "Orkut Rehab".

Now for the ultimate question. What goes on in these communities?
One would expect that the community would be brimming with meaningfull discussions on the topics associated with the community. Enthusiastic members chipping in with their valuable opinions on the issues posted in the community forums.
Lets take the example "Gladiator", the community dedicated to the Oscar Winning Ridley Scott beauty. A quick glance at the forum will introduce you to the following topics:
#Give only one word for MAXIMUS
#let us make Gladiator the number one rated movie of all time
#Want to be my friendzzzzz
Out of the 200 topics in the community only 2-3 have received replies in double figures.

In another community "Internet Addicts", one of the posts read "How many hours do you spend on the internet?"
The active members of the community enthusiastically answered in succession
"atmost 2 hrs..Or sometimes 3 to 4 hrs.There was a time when I spend almost 8hrs. continous for 3 days"

"hmm.. so i m really addicted :D
12-16 hrs daily.. :)"

Almost all communities that have a substantial number of people are flooded with irrelevant games. In one of these games the last person to post wins(does that explain the smirk on my face), in others you have to answer a queston with a question. I am not against these games, do what ever you want out of your free will, but keep a separate platform for this will you? I'm sure having posts such as "Will you go out with the person above you?" in a "Aspiring Cricket Writers" community is quite relevant ;)

Also observed is a phenomenon that in every community there are a number of posts in foreign languages such as portuguese and spanish. So in an IIT-JEE aspirants community you find stuff like "FOTOS DO FLAGRA DA CICARELLI NA PRAIA"

To witness this phenomenon just create a community open to all and dont assign any moderators and voila!

I admit that for a while I too was mesmerised by Orkut and in this frenzy joined many communities aimlessly. Before I knew it, there were 356 communities on my profile. I figured out that if I spend a minimum of 2 minutes on every community every week, I'd end up spending 1/30*356, thats nearly 12 hours.
Now out of these 356 I hardly checked out 50-60 communites (even if once in a bluemoon) and actively participated in less than 15.

It is also observed that regardless of the number of people that are in a community, the active population is limited to a very small fraction. The vast majority(like me), just join the community and then forget about it. And this vast majority makes up those huge 6 digit numbers.

I am right now in the process of un-joining all those communities(about 98% of the origianl number), though I must admit its going to take a long time.

-Rishabh Kaul

I am suffering from what most of you refer to as a writer’s block. The earlier sentence was thus framed because I have never suffered from a writer’s block before, or if not that, then for a very long time at the least. I use the word “suffered”, as though it’s some sort of disease because it is. It a really pathetic feeling to have when you have the drive, but you lack the what’s that again? Yeah, that’s how it is. I don’t even know what’s missing.

Generally what happens when one suffers from this terrible disease is that one cannot bring one’s self to write anything that remotely makes sense to the target audience(if there is one intended) and neither to ones own self(which is actually bad). This is usually because one is devoid of any ideas in one’s cerebrum, which I believe is the main controller in our brain (something like the brain of the brain)

This is what generally happens.

Sometimes what happens is this:
Your brain gets overloaded and you don’t know what to do. By overload, I’m referring to all those ideas that are jam-packed in your brain. And yes everyone has ideas.
Now when you feel like writing something, and get the pen to paper or your finger tips to the surface of the keyboard(which ever suits you), in your brain there is a volley of random ideas each of which is quite unique and would make for an excellent write-up, story, play-you name it.
The initiative for your writing something is generally a central theme, a rough mental picture of what you are going to write, and then gradually you build up on this skeleton until something concrete comes up. And finally you polish that and voila!
Now this train of ideas in your head clashes with your central theme. Before you start to build up on this central theme you are confronted by a few thousand other ideas and you feel like including all of them somehow in this write-up of yours.

What you do then is erase whatever you have written up till then and start over.

By now you would have guessed that this is a case of infinite recursion.

Okay,perhaps not infinite.

Lagey Raho Munna BhAI
V for Vendetta
Forrest Gump
The Shawshank Redemption
Saw 1
Saw 2
Lost in Translation
The Italian Job
Euro Trip
Lucky Number Slevin
3 of these I wasnt seeing for the first time.
Apart from this numerous episodes of South Park, Scrubs and Clips that are objectionable to society(need I mention more?)

This pretty much sums it up. The last 3 days have been entertaining afterall.