Collegesick :(

long time since i last blogged. hmm.. i guess i do it every once in a while when i get too bored, or when none of my friends are online :P

so here's what's been happening lately:

• Converted my MTech at IIIT to MS by research
• Basically it means college gets to pay my tuition fees, and i get to write a thesis which, if good enough, is eligible for publication. A lot of ifs and buts, but i think i can do it if i get down to it.
• Faculty guide Prof. Kannan Srinathan, simply an awesome person. You got to listen to his lecture sometime, just to see the wide range of topics he touches upon.
• Have to find a topic soon enough, or i might get kicked out of the CSTAR lab :P
• Took up a lot of interesting courses this semester
• Computational Geometry, by Prof. Prosenjit Gupta, another mathematician i respect simply for the rigour with which he talks or writes maths.
• Topics in Information Security, by Prof. Kannan Srinathan, and in his class, believe me he was touching upon how Information Theory and Gravitational Theory are related fields!
• Artificial Neural Networks, by Prof. B. Yegnanarayana, google him up, and you will know.
• Graph Theory by Profs Kishore Kothapally and Ch. Venkaiah, just for fun :D
• Trying to get myself out from the potato couch i've been in all my life till now
• Been going to swimming classes, but that somehow isn't working out. Can't get myself to even float!
  
• Playing TT as always, and hope to improve upon, as soon as I buy my first Table Tennis bat. I'm still wondering whether to buy an Infinite or a GKI Kung-Fu, or a (sh*t. forgot the name of that company Gururaj told me about.. ). Guess I'll buy one as soon as i receive my first stipend deposit.
• Planning on going to the gym. But if you know me, you must already know my umpteen number of plans. so, I'm not getting my hopes up too high :D
• Should look into some of the topics being taught in classes
• IAC and SC models (PDP models) in ANN class
• Byzantine Agreement on Complete/Incomplete Networks with/without interaction
• K-connectivity and Bipartite components in Graph Theory
• Interval Trees, Range Trees, Segment Trees, etc in Computational Geometry
• and first of all try and attend the lab meetings!! i dunno why i'm doing MS if i'm not attending Kannan sir's lab meetings.

And oh how can i forget this? Convocation for our undergraduate college batch is going to be held pretty soon, and i'm looking forward to bunking it! :D I have my own reasons, thank you.

guess that's about it. should give you an idea of how completely bored i am now! and oh yeah if you're wondering what the title's supposed to mean, it means feeling sick of college (ala seasick, carsick), as well as longing to go back to college (ala homesick). i simply had to say it...

Random Rantings

Bored. Frustrated. Alone. what to do? update your blog!

Current Status:

Sarat Chandra Addepalli, age: 22 years.
currently pursuing Mtech, at IIIT Hyderabad.
single, and no hopes of changing that in the near future.

how uninteresting can a life get? you'll know, if you know me. Passions, interests, none. Aim in life, still not very clear. Views, thoughts and opinions on current issues: if the current is a/c, you'll die. I know. Bad joke. And that too not a very laughable one. I suck at socialising. I suck at making and keeping friendships. I suck at keeping promises. And it's a wonder how I've lived more than 20 years on this planet!

I know my life is much better than more than half the people on the earth. I know my problems are nothing compared to some of the problems others face in their everyday life. I know I'm much better off than most people. Yet, I crave for sympathy. And finding none, I pity myself. Fallen into a deep rotten pit. Along with my conscience, which mocks and jeers at me every second. I try to hit it hard, and subdue it, but that only makes the grin on its face much wider.

Enough with the pitiful self-pity. The other day, i was trying to think of an idea which involved Man, Machine, Cyborg, Robot, Conscience, Guilt, and such. And all I could think of was how complete the Matrix concept was. Somehow i can't go beyond the Matrix. It's like all possible scenarios have already been encoded in the Matrix (and the Animatrix), that one can't possibly think of a situation beyond it. But then again, that's just another way of saying I'm sorry, I'm unable to think. So how do you think, and come up with something that nobody has ever thought of before? And for those of you who have not much work to do like myself, may i suggest to you this site? Contains comics, essays, videos, anime, artwork and such addendum, some of which is very interesting, captivating even.

What is it that defines man, and differentiates it from all other species? is it thought? No. We have already proved that other creatures too are capable of thought. Is it conscience? How do we prove other animals are not self-aware? After all, they too have instincts honed over generations which help in survival. Then what is self-awareness? Simply put, I understand it as knowing that I exist. Then doesn't a dog know that it exists? How come? A dog knows when it is hungry, and it certainly knows affection. Any pet-lover will tell you that. I suppose a dog will also revolt, under extreme circumstances. Bees certainly do, when their hive is violated. So does it mean animals have a sense of belonging? A sense of what is theirs and what is to be protected? I think so, yes.

So what is self-awareness? I know i exist. Doesn't an animal know that it exists? Is that even possible? Interesting tidbit: Once upon a time, it was assumed that blacks were incapable of thought, and that they were inferior to humans. That they were used as a commodity is well known, that they were thought of as a commodity is plausible. There might have even been days when people did not consider blacks as people. And now we know better. So is it possible that some time in the future we suddenly realise that even dogs are much more intelligent than they seem? Or that indeed other species have a latent ability to be self-aware? I don't know. I'm not knowledgeable in areas such as this, and I do not know what are the studies that have been done. What I do know is that gorillas have successfully been able to understand limited speech, and even communicate with humans. So does that mean the better a species is able to communicate with humans, the more intelligent that species is? Like I said, lots of questions, don't know the answers.

Anyways, I was trying to lead up to this: in my opinion, the distinguishing feature that a human has, is individuality. The faculty of independent thought. The ability to live all alone, and not be bored at the same time. The ability to come up with different ways to represent knowledge and thought, in the form of languages and sciences. The ability to feel a wide range of emotions, yet be heartless enough to see a fellow human suffer. The ability to change lives of others, even when one doesn't know them. The ability to think something, say something else, and act completely different. Deceit, treachery, malice, pride, jealousy, envy. I wouldn't know if animals have such emotions, but i sure know humans have them. And the ability to wage a concerted civil war, when they feel their rights have been infringed upon. And maybe it is only after a war that a civilisation realises its mistakes. All this is what marks a man from an animal, his boon and his doom.

What if there is a new species that is much more intelligent, capable of processing much more information, stronger and swifter, but incapable of individual thought? what if all the thinking process is done in a Queen's brain, hidden inside a highly secure hive, and all the work done by drones controlled by the Queen? Does that make the species more intelligent than us? What if the Bugs rule our world in time to come, and subjugate humans and brand us as less than them, and thus lesser arthropodizens (like blacks were branded as lesser citizens)? And what if, that new species wasn't even a biological species, but a software bug that suddenly gained consciousness on some level, and started ruling (or rather controlling) all electronics, communications and power systems? Will that still make them a species? Will we have to listen to their electronic voices or messages in order to preserve our sanity? Or worse, our freedom? (The Queen could be a super-secret mainframe hidden deep inside a mountain range, a hive, ala Dan Brown's cultist defense organisations. I know it's cheesy, but i'm only stating what could be an electronic version of a Queen bee. Or it could be something like Resident Evil's Red Queen.)

Where does all this leave us? my question is, why do we feel so superior to other species? After all, we are just another species, which shall leave enough information for later species to delve out of our fossils. For all our bickering, we will still be outlived by the cockroaches. Doesn't that make them more intelligent than us?

Travelnologue

or

Tips and suggestions on How Not to Travel

Disclaimer: No part of this following text is over exaggeration, unbelievable or impossible. All have been tried and implemented successfully, much to the dismay of the writer. Unless you want to look more like a fool than you already are, you are welcome to try these stunts. I promise you whole heartedly that none of these are dangerous or life-threatening.

Luggage:

• Give yourself atleast half an hour to decide what to pack. This simple bullet has serious consequences on your whole travel plan, as we will see.
• Do not unnecessarily overburden yourself. When you know you won't be wearing more than two pairs of clothes, do not pack three pairs. Else you won't have enough space to cram in a pair of formal shoes (why formal?) and a turkish towel.
• Remove your clothes from the last trip from the travel bag. Otherwise the bag will stink. not everybody in this world has as forgiving a nose as yours.
• Once you've decided what to pack, do not leave the actual act of packing till the last minute. This again will have serious consequences.

Tickets:

• Do not depend on your dad's credit card for tickets. Else you will be tempted to book a flight to Hawaii or some other exotic place.
• Do not depend on your dad's credit card for tickets. Else you will postpone booking tickets until the last minute.
• Do not depend on your dad's credit card for tickets. Else you will recieve only an e-ticket. Which in itself is not dangerous, but will have its own complications.
• If you are a lazy bugger like me, do with all due respect depend on your dad's credit card for tickets. It is the only way if you want to reach the venue of your interview (interview?) the next day.

Travel Plan:

• As i've said earlier, book your tickets well in advance. If you haven't, well you always have your dad's credit card. And besides, if not for us, why do our dads have credit cards :P.
• Before booking tickets online, decide first whether you want to book tickets by train or by flight. Very important. Do not confuse between trains and planes. One is a straight line, the other is a set of infinite lines. (Bad joke. what else did you expect?)
• Rule out trains if you have to reach somewhere really far within a really short time. Rule out buses with the same reasoning. And besides, why would you go by bus if you could buy flight tickets on your dad's credit card?

The actual flight:

• If you are flying, make sure you have already packed your luggage well before the time of departure. Remember, this is not a train. You cannot, i repeat cannot run after a plane.
• If you are flying, make sure you are at the airport atleast half an hour before the time of check-in. Please note: half an hour before the time of check-in, not departure.
• If in case you have made sure that you would be at the airport not later than half an hour before the time of departure, be ready for the full set of consequences:
• 1. Since you would have booked your ticket online, you will have to take a print out of your actual ticket at the booking counter.
• 2. Since you were planning to reach the airport by an auto-rickshaw, there is every chance that it will breakdown in the middle of the highway, requiring a minimum of half-an-hour of repair.
• 3.Since you planned to reach the airport only half an hour before the time of departure, there is every chance that you will miss the flight since the auto-rickshaw would have taken up the half hour for its repair.
• 4. And even if you did reach the airport just in time to catch the flight, the ticket counter might run out of pages to print out your ticket, or the boarding pass might take time.
• 5. By which time, the plane would have left, since you confused between a train and a plane. Believe me, you can't deal with infinite sets! (Prepare yourself for a string of bad jokes!)

The return:

• Do not disappoint yourself that you have missed your flight. If there are more than 12 hours between now and the time you have to report at the venue of interview, (ah! so we were planning to go to an interview!) there is every possibility of finding a permutation-combination of flights that will take you to your city of destination. Simple. Dad's card, book tickets.
• When you are booking tickets online, and you see before you a range of flights and travel plans, might as well book the most convinient one. Hoping that might save you some time.

The actual actual flight:

• Armed with the experience of already missing one flight, you will resolve yourself never to miss another flight in your whole life. And since this being the most immediate flight, you will not miss it. I guarantee you. (In case you still missed your flight, now being the second time consecutively, can i use your frequent flyer's discount the next time?)
• Always be polite with the flight attendants. The poor buggers, as it is they have to live with those plastic faces. Makes it easier if they see so many more plastic faces around them.
• Do not expect to see beautiful air hostesses on Indian air networks. You have been brainwashed to believe air hostesses are beautiful. It is in your own interest to get rid of that misconception.
• When you have nothing to do on the flight, do not play with the buttons overhead. I agree it is a lot of fun to see flight attendants running around just to realise it was a mistake, but you will not believe how they can wreck your life. As it is, there is enough tension in your life. (You are going to an interview remember?)
• Even Domestic airports have arrival and departure areas different. Get that through your thick head. It is not the railways, where you wait on a platform for the next connecting train.
• If you have to switch flights, make sure that you wait in a lounge where there is a TV available. Waiting for three hours in the middle of the night is not an easy thing, and you need more company than a sea of uninterested faces and a silly Su-Do-Ku.
• Do not watch the TV, especially if it is an interesting match like the one between England and Sweden. I agree 89th minute equalisers are rare to come by, but so are Boeing-737's that would take you to HYD within two hours. you might just get caught up in one forgetting the other.
• Remember, there is a possibility of a TV even after the security clearance. Do not believe that the waiting lounge outside is your only hope, and delay your security check unduly.
• Hutch/Airtel cellphone recharge kiosks do not recharge Reliance cellphones (Duh!), although all are of similar Samsung make and model. There is a difference between similar and same. Infact, Hutch Samsung rechargers might just discharge a Reliance Samsung phone.

The second actual flight:

• As i've said before, do not expect to see beautiful air hostesses on Indian air networks, especially when you're travelling the second part of the journey by the same airways by which you've travelled the first part of your journey. They don't change air hostesses overnight. (Who am i kidding? they do. infact they change air hostesses every flight. what i am talking about is that they can't make them beautiful overnight. like i said, expect the unexpected. bad jokes.)
• Atleast mix and match airways for a better chance at getting beautiful air hostesses. (Aw god! Diablo's coming after me!! help!!)
• If and when you are solving the lame-ass puzzles in the local newspaper they give you for free on the flight, do not switch on your reading lights when the cabin lights are off. All the reading lights achieve is to make you out as a centre of attention, and if you already have the quasi-serious absent-minded-prof look that i seem to have, you have every chance of being pounced upon by an equally hopeless looking flight attendant bloke. Worse still, they are so unobtrusive, that when a hand reaches out suddenly and says "Thou art mine" (read "That one's nine") you are forced to second guess the nature of flight attendants in general. I mean i truly wouldn't have minded if it was a female (i'd have been startled, true, but wouldn't have minded. me a gentleman afterall, with a heart after the finer essences in life.)
• When you have reached your destination city safely, and while you still have time before the interview, do not sleep! First have a bath, get done with your daily ablutions, and shave for god's sake! Mark my words: after a whole night of hectic travelling and wasting your cell balance calling up ppl while on roaming, you are bound to be tired and bedraggled. It will show in the interview. Atleast have a decent shave while you have time. And as expected out of me, i slept.

The Interview:

• Venue: Gachibowli, IIIT, Hyderabad. Somehow it never fails to remind me of the SuperBowl. I mean like i keep imagining that the Hi-Tech City with its rounded laced facade is in fact a huge bowl of cereal, like the ones they show on a Cap'n Crunch box. Lack of sleep does that to you. Hallucinations i mean.
• When you don't know how to reach a place, rely on planes. When it is out of reach of planes, rely on auto-rickshaws. But do remember, you cannot use your daddy's card with the auto wallahs. Did i forget? you should have come armed with money to your neck. Else thou art doomed, my brother.
• So armed with money, and relying on autos, go from point A (being your temporary abode of accomodation) to point B (being your interview venue) while preparing to pay point 1 K (meaning it takes 100 bucks! from Taj Krishna Dn to Gachibowli on auto, even via Mehdipatnam.) But remember, all this is in good faith. For thou wilt have reached thine Holy Grail in time, if all went well and you had change to pay the autowallah. Nobody has change so early in the morning (i'm talking about like 8:30 - 9:00 AM). Another valuable nugget of wisdom.

Brrr.......hufffff........Brrrrr........hufffff.......

". . . "

Huh? what? where? huh huh.. uh .. brrr.... huffff... brrr... hufff....

"Sarat Chandra Addepalli"

Somebody called me? was it you? no? oh well.. i musta been dreaming... back to my snoring...

"SARAT CHANDRA ADDEPALLI"

woah!!! dude, quit shouting already.... Here I am in my cousin's formals (oh yeah! formals of course!) since i packed three different pairs of clothes that I didn't need, and since I don't have the clothes that i'd need, and lemme get some sleep for i have travelled late all through last night without sleep, and nothing for company except SuDoKu and a stoopid crossword i couldnt make head or tail of. Give the guy a break! i mean...

Wish you could say that to your interview panel! But as fate would have it, i was dragged out of a seemingly drugged sleep into the depths of a desperate drama. (notice the effort i'm putting in, just to craft an alliteration. If you haven't already divined, this is not for your reading pleasure. this is for my writing pleasure. so please... :P) the actual interview. what was i asked? what did i answer? aw c'mon dude. we both have better things to do than discuss the details of a dead dodo. (redundancy. dodos are already extinct, so it is enough to say dodo instead of a dead dodo. redundancy is a tool that i think a language gives so that ppl like me can write worthless shit that ppl like you will read.)

The means of communication:

• Hmm.. Guess i've already mentioned beware of airport recharge kiosks. maybe something there must have tampered something inside the simply unimaginable work of engineering that is my cell phone. Reliance Samsung CDMA phone, the world's slimmest CDMA phone is not slim without a price. The battery. With a very great tendency to discharge quite fast, especially when rapidly changing service areas, as is the case when travelling long distance, do not expect this particular species of phone to last your journey (even if it is not even 24 hours continuous) with only full charge at the outset. it needs more. it is a monster. and a necessary one at that. We'll see later why necessary.
• Again, the Reliance Mobile network, proud to be one of the fastest growing cellular networks, is not without its share of drawbacks. For a cellular network that is hailed as one of the most technologically efficient and forward, i think it is a thing of shame that one cannot recharge the talktime balance when in roaming!! (recharge vouchers from AP are not valid for a cellphone registered with Gujarat, and there are only so many e-recharge centres).
• Always carry along with you extra talktime recharge vouchers. They are of sublime importance. And do not look for them just before you board a flight in the night, coz that's the time shops generally shut themselves down.
• Be warned that if you are in Hyd, with a Reliance cell phone on roaming, and no recharge card, you are in for a lot of trouble. As you go from Somajiguda Post Office to Panjagutta Police Station, you will not find even one RIM prepaid shop which will sell talktime recharge vouchers.
• In times of such trouble, there is only one thing one can do. Bow to the almighty King! And thy shalt rise renewed. And recharged.

Roaming the city:

• When in Rome, act like a Roman. Meaning the moment you ask a Hyderabadi auto wallah "enta?" (meaning "how much?" for the fare; one should keep in mind tariff meters still work in Hyd, not like in Vizag where you got to haggle) he will inevitably conclude that you are not from the city, and will take you for a ride. Both literally and metaphorically. So be prepared to be looted, if you have not the wits to act like a Roman in Rome.
• Like i said, i'm a gentle man with a heart after the finer things in life. So i go to these mega crowd pulling shopping malls that lie in the centre of the city. Not to shop, dimwit. I'm a guy, not a girl. And eat overly priced pizzas that are just melting with cheese. You've got to admit it. the finer things in life are never cheap. They cost around Rs.150 for two.
• When you are planning to leave in the evening, do not plan to watch a movie too. It is just fatal. I didn't. And so i missed my only chance of watching Krrish in Imax print :( .

The return journey:

• Coming from a middle class family, and already having booked two airline tkts because of missing one, doesnt exactly guarantee that you will return by a plane again. In case you haven't planned your return even before you depart, you are pretty much in the same situation as I was two days before. Options left: only one. Bus. Unless of course you're willing to wait until you'd find a reserved ticket on a train back. But then it'd just be an extended unjustified holiday on my part, that too while absconding work at the college. So i booked Bus tickets.
• If you don't plan your return journey carefully, you might have to travel around 1300 kms by bus. And since you've already wasted thousands, your conscience is always in your face, and you can't buy tkts in comfy Volvo buses or a/c coaches.
  
• And since this requires more than 24 hours of travel by bus, it is near humanly impossible to travel non-stop. And besides, no bus service provides continuous shuttle from Hyd to Abad. So you have to go via Pune. And watcha gonna do in Pune for a whole day? Options open:
  
• You could plan to walk and go sight seeing. Bad option ofcourse, coz incase you forgot, you are travelling the night by bus, and will have to the next night also, and you might need all the energy you're gonna get.
• You could plan to rent a room and get some sleep, but only if you have a heart of stone. I mean if missing a flight and booking two instead of one isn't already enough, renting a room for a half-day would be the best way to melt your dad's plastic, and your conscience too.
• Or you could just call up one of your good friends in Pune who is staying in a bachelor accomodation, and beg him to let you stay over for the day. While you're at it, might as well ask him where to get down in Pune. Don't forget this important tidbit. (Like you've already noticed, i simply can't resist saying "it can have serious consequences", but i do mean it!)
  
• When you do board the bus, do not forget to tell the driver or his assistant to wake you up the next morning when your stop approaches. Coz unless you've developed a very keen biological alarm, or infact you're actually carrying one, you will in all probability sleep through till the bus, which was headed for pune, infact crosses pune to go god knows where!
• Do not depend on your cell phone for an alarm, especially if it is of the model and make i've already mentioned, which has a very short lived battery time, especially when you're travelling long distances. Can't stress this fact enough. Coz in hope of saving battery, you might be tempted to switch it off during the overnight bus travel, thus depriving yourself of the sole alarm service. Or you might decide to let the cell phone be switched on, hoping it will wake you up the next morning, in which case it will (i guarantee you) get discharged, thus again depriving you of your alarm service. So, Do not depend on your cell phone for an alarm.
• Do not be surprised and get alarmed, when you wake up the next morning, to realise you missed your destination. All you need to do, is to shell out ubeleivably extraordinary amounts of dough to yet another autowallah to let him get you from wherever the hell you landed up to the place you actually want to go. Might as well take an auto, seeing as you really are stupid enough that you can't get down from a bus right! (springs to my mind the infinite profundity of meaning articulated as follows by Bullet Tooth Tony: "Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity" ).
• Infact, if you do miss your stop on the bus journey, congratulate yourself, coz now you would have learnt a valuable lesson in life: always inform the driver to wake you up at your stop the next day. Armed with this knowledge, (armed, yes, coz knowledge is power) you would do very well to swear never to miss your stop in a bus ever again, especially if the next bus journey would be that very night (remember? you've still got to get to A'bad! Just so sad that this never-ending journey from hell isn't finished yet!).
• So when you finally get to your friend's place, thank your stars that you did infact reach where you set out to, with all of your luggage. (Oh did i forget to mention? PLEASE do check your luggage every time you get on or off a means of travel! there is always a chance you will forget something, seeing as you are stupid enough to attempt such an incredibly incredulous journey in the first place).
• Bus journey scheduled for the night again? "yes". Do you have your tickets? "no". Then what are you doing? "mmm.. ??". Oh my god, do you still need somebody to tell you to buy your tickets on time? even after all this? Don't worry dude, i'm just like you. Been there, done that. Li'l piece of advice. Buy your tickets. So i did, and was pleasantly surprised that tickets were still available, even to A'bad, even just 6 hours before departure, even for a bus that departs at 4:00 in the afternoon in the scorching heat.
• Time to kill till 4:00? Take my advice. Sleep it off at your friend's. Yeah right! easier said than done, so you might be tempted to spend some time at an internet cafe, just coz you're bored. Fine go ahead. Be warned though, of chatting, coz you might miss your next means of transport, while you're chatting. Especially if you're chatting with a very special person in your life. (Doesn't really matter if you've never met that person, or even if that person doesn't live in the same continent either, coz if that person's really important, you might just be tempted to cancel the bus journey just to stay chatting).
• Again, to reiterate, a plane is not a train, and a bus is not a plane. If you plan to arrive at the bus station half an hour before the bus is scheduled to depart, you might find yourself waiting for a whole hour. (Yes, i can do math, the extra half hour's for the time it takes for an average indian "hi-tec" bus to actually start!). You can plan to arrive even just 10 minutes before departure. But in all probability, armed with all your experiences of missing modes of travel, you will arrive at the bus station a full half an hour before departure. Don't say i didn't warn you! Like i said, a bus is not a plane.
• Also, armed with your experiences with a cell phone, you would have already recharged your phone at your friend's. Yet, you should resist the temptation to leave your phone switched on for the bus travel, coz there's only so much you can resist, and soon you might find yourself smsing the above said important person (coz unless you already missed this bus too, you must have abruptly finished your online chat conversation abruptly to arrive at the bus station earlier than was necessary). And believe me, even sms's do cost, especially when you're on roaming, and that too on a Reliance mobile network! Notwithstanding that it's an international sms in the first place! (Another not-so-important fact: Reliance group of companies was started by a banya. If you have not the heart to deal with and sift through the seamingly endless varieties of talktime services and offers, you might infact be being shortchanged!)

As an afternote, you might be pleasantly surprised yours truly did infact land the interview (much to his surprise) and is currently pursuing yet another two years of so-called technical "study" in the field of Computer Sciences. At IIIT Hyderabad, Gachibowli. (And yes, they do serve you cereal for breakfast here! hehe!). That only goes to show the exceptional brilliance that is me, or as is more proper, lack of it here at IIIT!

10th June 2006

a memorable day. something happened that slightly changed two lives, seven seas apart. something happened, that changed the whole world. something beautiful.

have you ever found yourself wondering how come you are so absolutely happy, and why is the world so rosy? as i sit here in the high castle with the world at my fingertips, i can't but help smiling smugly! i did something that i've never thought possible. i came to believe in something that i've never thought possible. and now i think 'possible' 'impossible' are but labels that we've given things ourselves. all thanks to a soul i've never seen.

yogattaa... i'm happy! :)

Digital Denial

As i sit here postponing my most urgent tasks so that i can sit here and do nothing, i can't but help thinking that the one thing i'll miss the most after graduating from this college will be its LAN. Around 3 to 4 TeraBytes of the most diverse media one can find to waste time on, is not something to be taken lightly. All genres of all digital media: be it movies, be it anime, music, e-books, TV series, games, whatever you want, we have it here. Or atleast we can, in theory. From the most sentimental, heart-rending to the most grotesque, gut-wrenching. From the most completely illogical and hilariously funny to the most genuinely involving and mysterious. Oscar winners, Grammy winners, Raspberry winners, Top 100, Bottom 100... you get the point.

Millions of megabytes of mind-numbing media. To waste time on, to ponder on, to pass judgement on. Or just lose yourself in. Imagine yourself waking up early one morning just to check whether this great movie you put up for download has finished yet or not. Or falling in love with this "simply too good to be true" music score. Or banging your head against the table so hard after you've read an e-book. None of these things is an exaggeration. I have seen this happen. In an age and place where we can't yet teleport to our most favourite country, we still have all the tv series or all the software that releases there... pirated. That, is again, a different issue. If one were to restrict all media on the lan to be strictly copyrighted versions, maybe there'd be total anarchy. Not so much because we have to pay for those things as much as because we just won't have that much media for so many people to gorge on. They'd become zombies, with pcs that don't have anything to show.

Or, on the other hand, they could make themselves useful. Like go out and play sports for a change. Or even read! No this is not wishful thinking. Try cutting out a student from his pc, and see what happens. He wont be able to bear it for a week. But after that, he'll realize there are other things which are actually much more useful. Like going to the lab and getting in touch with people and what's going on. Or go to the canteen and get some fresh air. Play some sports. Even library for that matter is not out of the question. Atleast he'll be OUT OF THE FRIKKIN ROOM!!! Which is asking a lot out of pc-addicts right now. Like me. The moment i get a pc, what do i do? Login to Orkut. Of all the most lowly, desperate-attempt-to-get-attention tactics, i login to Orkut. And logout within 5 minutes, just to login three or four more times in the day. Why? because i don't want to do anything else. Because this was fun. Because this doesn't need you to do any work. Because this is an easy way to waste time, without having to think on what to waste. Because this way, i don't need to think about the most pressing issues in my life. Because i can live in denial peacefully. Which I'm guessing is the situation with most people in the hostel. Bear in mind, i'm not being judgemental or evangelist. I'm just stating what's with people these days.

And the digital media is just as good a place as any to live in denial. Somehow, this scares me. What did we set out to do, and what did we become? Even a failure is not as bad as one who totally denies that he didn't win. Or that he didn't try in the first place. And the reasoning behind this is that "because i didn't try, you can't really say i lost". That is really sad.

Is it just me? or is it really that there's sadness everywhere? Maybe it's the graduation blues, maybe its the project deadlines. Or is it just that everyone's so dissatisfied with what they've done/didn't do that they've become just sad shells of once energetic and colourful lifes? Or am i plain turning paranoid? I don't know. Another thing i don't know is why i post so many questions on my blog as opposed to answers to some of the things.

Try an interesting question: Ten years from now, looking at a person, will you be able to tell whether you've seen that person in college, as opposed to say recalling whether you've seen a particular movie in college? I know i'll remember more movies than people. Atleast whether i've seen a movie as opposed to whether i've seen a person. Fine, go ahead and judge me. Not like i care. But just be sure you're not like me either.

Is attaching feelings and memories with digital media really justified? I mean a pen or a gift somebody gave you, I can understand. You have feelings for it. But digital media? That which can be erased with a click of a mouse? Is it worth attaching so many feelings and memories? I know people who still can't get over the games they've played, or songs they've listened to once upon a time. Is that wrong? again, i don't know.

Seven - Saath - Sept - Sieben - Edu

Use this, and you'll find more words to fit into the header. as for me, well you get the point. Basically too lazy to do anything other than blogging and orkutting. and chatting. and oh ofcourse finding the most crappiest of all titles for my posts. oh and yeah, did i mention blogging?

too much time on your hands and too li'l motivation to work for your btp does that to you. anyways, here goes nothing:::

Seven things i'd like to do before dying:
1) Para gliding (I believe i can fly.. anyone?)
2) Kiss a girl. Seriously what's all the hype about... hafta find out...
3) Become my own multi-billion dollar self made man. Richard Branson-esque. (nobody said anything against wishful thinking..)
4) finish my BTP
5) own my own private jet
6) Become more original so that i don't need to think about how to fill up seven stupid things...
7) Have a li'l chat with Sam Chat and say "Hey, no hard feelings eh!"

Things that I can do:
1) Convince my btp partner anytime that i'll start work from tomorrow! (hehe.. no wonder!)
2) Go and play TT to my heart's content after i've convinced my partner! (bechara.. yeh padhega to bahut roega)
3) Think irrationally about irrational things. Like why are orkut testimonials the cause for virility.
4) span a whole vector space from a basis set. (That was just to confuse you guys. I have no idea.)
5) relate formulas and equations with anything. just for kicks.
6) waste more and more time on blogger thinking about what to fill in. these cliched items included.
7) Sit and do nothing all day.

Things that I can't do:
1) find enough motivation to do any kind of work.
2) keep a straight face when the other person's annoying me.
3) stop myself from laughing at my own stoopid jokes.
4) Coding. naah, not for me.
5) courtesy talk. the hey hows' it going doesn't seem to come naturally to me. atleast not sincerely anyway.
6) overcome my fears about change.
7) appreciate art. why? why do ppl pay millions of dollars for a random collection of geometric figures in different colours. that too on canvas as old as your grandpa's grandma.

Things I say:
1) Mammaaa....
2) Tu To .....
3) Kya bakwaas hain!@??
4) Sexy, man!
5) Nah-iiice....
6) bilkul Sahi hain.
7) kya haal hain?

Things I'd like to see in girls:
1) Quite obvious, no clarifications required.
2) sense of humour. or atleast laugh at my jokes even if you don't understand. and don't laugh when it's not a joke. srsly. that bugs me a lot more!
3) open-mindedness. atleast listen to the other's viewpoint before judging.
4) clear sense of propriety, as in what's crossing the line, and what's not.
5) intelligence. not too much, not too less. hate it either way.
6) aptitude to try out anything new.
7) a beautiful face to look at.

Celebrity Crushes:
1) Angelina Jolie
2) Liv Tyler
3) Elisha Cuthbert
4) Anna Nicole Smith (I know, I know, but then, well, you know.... ;P)
5) Emma Bunton
6) Arti Chabria
7) Sonali Bendre

Tags:
1) Mrinal
2) Raj
3) Rahul P
4) Riddhi
5) Ranadhir
6) Rahul Bhaskar
7) Mohan

yeyyeyyy!! succesfully wasted yet another 2-odd hours and even added a post to my blog! :P

Coupla things i'm feeling right now

Mad
Bad
Sad

and before this blog gets any more mind numbing than it already is, lemme make it even drier by talking math. For those of you who just turn their faces away at the sound of "math", well here's something for you. Turn your face away :P

This was something i've been meaning to post since a while.. The other day i was just thinking about something, was probably watching a movie. So then it suddenly strikes me, how similar most plots look like, if you abstract out the minor details. Lemme try and explain. I'm assuming you know what are transitive relations. if A -> B, and B -> C, then A -> C, iff -> is a transitive relation.

Now think of cause effect relations. If A caused B and B caused C, then in effect A caused C. Same goes for effect, since if A caused B, then B is an effect of A. So cause-effect relations are transitive. My first assumption. I suppose it is provable, but i'm assuming it right now.

So what do we have till now? We assumed Cause - Effect relations are transitive. Which i personally think is a harmless assumption.

By now most readers would have already redirected away from this page, but if you still wanna waste time, and still want to see where this is going, best of luck! read on, 0 courageous net-surfer!

Coming to movies, lets talk about plots. I do not proclaim to be an ardent movie-goer. Nor do i understand the art and intricacies of movie-making. But from the few movies that i have seen, what i can garner is this. That plots are basically events that happen to certain characters. Be it murder, be it alien abduction, or simply an everyday Joe getting a promotion at his workplace. or buying a burger for that matter. You always have characters and you always have things happening to them. That's what a movie is about right? (Coming to think of it, can there be movies without players/actors/characters? Even documentaries for that matter have certain characters whom they showcase. Be it the panda or downtrodden cultures. As i said, i'm no pundit on movies, ask Maruti Koppola for more info on that. tee hee i just cudn't resist taking that dig at you :P) So we have plots, and plots have characters, and events happening to these characters. An intelligent/intricate plot is one where seeming disconnected events are weaved into a fine seamless web of happening. Seems like i'm talking mostly about mystery movies. But i support my statement by saying even in comedy movies, events still happen to characters, only here these events are funny. Same goes for thrillers/horrors. Now where is this all going?? what am i writing?? if you haven't already guessed, a li'l more patience, and i think you'll see it.

What i want to say is this. That movie plots could be quantified and analysed using a math basis. Call it Movie-Calculus if you like. A plot can be said to be a network of cause-effect relations, where the elements of this network are the events in the plot. For example, Jim Carrey getting a promotion is an event in Fun with Dick and Jane. This event, say A, causes his wife to quit her job, event B. Continuing this way, there probably could be an evaluation mechanism somewhere to say whether a certain plot is better or worse than a certain other. Or maybe this mechanism can be customised to the viewers choice. Coz sometimes, as intelligent as i might be, i just don't seem to get some movies, like this. Anyways. Coming back to the point, can this be done? seems quite possible to me. I'm not, i repeat not trying to quantify emotions. impossible to say movie X is funnier than movie Y. But what might be possible is to say whether X has a stronger plot than Y, or whether lose strings are tied. That is when a mystery is solved. Like in The Face on the Wall, a short story by EV Lucas, the plot is gripping, complete, and ends when the narrator stops the narration. But the final clincher is not the story, but the end note that the narrator leaves us with.

Now supposing something like this does turn up. Something which quantifies and defies the very nature of an experience like movie-going. Would it be ethical? I mean, if something like this did come up, then imagine yourself sitting at a movie theatre, analysing the movie frame by frame, and saying to yourself Oh so A->B, and C->D, but A->D. So does B->C? is that really what we want? or will it help us screen out the hundreds and hundreds of movies that these *ollywoods keep making day in and day out? so that the really good ones can be watched and enjoyed. Does it mean that Art forms can be "Scientified"? or that science is superior to art? or does the infeasibility of such a thing reiterate the age-old dichotomy, the one between science and art? lotsa questions.. think about em and comment me :P