The rains are here!

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

As you run out into the street, droplets of rain lashing at you from every direction, you just can't help the smile that forms. You can't get rid of that innocent blissful grin on your face, even though you know it makes you look even stupider (if that was ever possible). You forget for a moment what you learnt was possible, and start to leap to a plane that is above everything. Petty comparisons, differences of opinions, little insecurities all vanish for a moment from your conscious thought, as you give up your hold on your body to those little wet needles that tingle you everywhere. You wish you could fly higher, so that no tree would be able to block the rain. You wish you could fly higher, so that you can see the thunder cloud much closer, and play with the lightning. You settle for something equally pleasing and equally stimulating, a walk in the rain. You think of all your friends who are missing out on these little joys in life, and pray for them. You think of all your friends elsewhere, who would be out dancing in the rain too, and wish that you were with them. You think of how rare it is to see the sun up and shining bright, when it is raining hard on your face. And then you search for the ever-elusive rainbow. And the pot-o'-gold at the end of the rainbow.

And when the rain leaves you alone, and the sun glaringly points this out to you, all you do is bask in the knowledge and hope that all is well with the world.

Theory

What is a bit? Where did the notion of a bit come from? To understand such essential concepts one should truly understand Shannon's Information Theory. What is to be understood, is that a bit is nothing but a measure of information. Weight (mass?) is measured in kilograms, length in metres, and information (data?) in bits. The minimum amount of information that can exist is a bit. A bit contains information about a certain flag, as to in which of these states it lies: TRUE (1, high, on) or FALSE (0,low, off). How is this information sufficient enough to do anything with it? Because we already know what that flag was intended for. We only needed to store the current state of the flag, and hence the bit.

Notice, that a flag can exist in only one of two states, T or F. Nothing intermediary. This is the basis of Binary Logic, Binary arithmetic and etc.. Arithmetic to the base 2. Why do we use only base 2 arithmetic? If we could store states 0, 1, 2, ... 9 in a "dit" (a decimal bit), we would obviously need a lot less number of dits to store the same information than the number of bits. So why is the number 2 sacred? Why does every computer use Binary logic instead of Decimal logic? The answer to that lies in material sciences. We have transistors that can work in between two electrical levels. Each of these electrical levels (, , VDD/VCC, etc.. ) can represent only one state, so there can be only two states represented by the transistor. And besides, arithmetic that can be done with any base can also be done with base 2. In other words, Decimal logic, is no more powerful (in terms of calculational possibilities) than Binary Logic. Hence the whole idea of Flip-Flops, etc.

Why am i talking about bits and pieces? What is the whole picture here? Basically i wanted to talk about "Qubits". Quantum Theoretic equivalents, of the Information theoretic bit. When we said any dits or other-its are as powerful as bits, why are we talking about these qubits? coz they come under a wholly different category. A qubit can exist in infinitely many states!

eh? what does that mean?

Think of an electron. It has spin angular momentum, according to our highschool physics text books, of either or . Let us represent the spin with say 0 and spin with 1. These states are mutually exclusive, in that no electron can exist in both these states at once. But what is interesting, and what is not taught in high school text books, is that an electron can exist in a combination of these two states! But hey! Didn't we learn that spin angular momentum of an electron was only either ? Now what's this about combination of states? Ahha. There in, lies the secret of the principle of Superposition.

What is not apparent at the first glance, is that outcomes of an experiment may not indeed tell you everything about the state of the system before the experiment. What I'm trying to say, is that we (meaning most computer scientists and almost all engineers) are so used to the black box approach, that we assume we know everything about a system and the states it might have been in, once we know the inputs and outputs through that black box. Maybe, this is not true in the Quantum world. Or is it? I really don't know. What I do know, is that we can never really say that an electron was in such a place in such a time (remember? Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?). When you can't even say that, or the direction in which it is spinning, how can we say whether it had a positive or a negative spin angular momentum? What in fact happens, or is theorized to happen, is that electrons might be spinning in a mixed state. Meaning they have a little of and a little of spin. But the moment we try to measure which of these it has, the state "collapses" to either one of them. Imagine a vector , which is neither completely a real number, nor completely a non-real number. But the moment you take a projection of this vector along one of the axes, the vector "collapses" to its component along that axis. This is how I understood what happens, when an experiment is done. The state of the system collapses to the observed state. But there is a difference to be noted, which might be the difference between a classical system and a quantum system. In the case of the vector, we knew a priori the axis that we were going to project the vector upon. This is not the case with a quantum experiment. You do indeed observe either a or a spin only for an electron, but you can never tell which value the result of the experiment will be. So essentially, an electron before measuring its spin angular momentum is in a state that is neither of the observable states, but in fact, a mixture of both and a lot more. Which is what I mean when I say a qubit exists in infinitely many states!


Now having said all of this, I still am not really sure whether what I've written is anywhere even remotely near to the physical/mathematical/scientific reality that I proclaim to study! (What is it that I proclaim to study? Please... )

Is it really true? LaTeX??

Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there? let's try this for instance:



This just adds a whole new dimension to my blogging! :D let's see if this works out now, after publishing....


OK, it works after publishing toO! but why don't LaTeX equations on other blogs show up? Anyway, interested people might find out more (instructions, prerequisites, etc..) from here, all credit due to this person.

Rings, Cycles, and Circles.

Lost
Desperation
Confusion
Hope
Resolve
Ambition
Success
Complacence
Lust
Failure
Lost
Desperation
.
.
.

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!