Hello.

Greetings from the seasonal blogger to the seasoned bloggers. I have absolutely no idea how you guys keep it up. The very thought of typing out a long post scares me away. :)

I will not be delving into any issue in this issue. I'll just write some random stuff to please the little voice in my head that tells me how wasted my life is.

Life has been rather tough these past few weeks. Another bout of the mid sems brought home the reality that exams never stop sucking. It also made us face the truth: All seniors lie.

It has been 3.5 years now and we have let ourselves be fooled into believing every year that the coming year will be the easiest. It has not been so till now. But somethings have changed. The amount we care about exams has exponentially decreased. Even the studious guys start late in the evening before the exam. I see that as a good sign. :D

Bugged as I was with our seniors blatantly lying to us about life in college, I tried to do an expose of sorts on Dcetech. It was mostly about how percentage is what decides your job and how little a part ECAs play in it.

Maybe there is some part of us that knows the truth all along. But we do a mighty skillful job of suppressing those thoughts and moving on in our ignorance. I remember my mum's incredulous remarks when I told her marks are secondary, anything above 65 is great, all you need are ECAs. She would not believe me! And I would not concede. And so it died the slow death of an argument that can be concluded only in the distant future.
Of course, now I can see how right she was and how ignorant I was.

This reminds me of something a senior and a very dear friend once told me, "Always trust blindly in your parents. You might think you are smarter and know more than them; it might even be true. But in the end you'll see: they are always right."

Anyhow, as I was saying, I gave little importance to academics. I never studied earlier than a day or two before every exam. I left half the syllabus unread at times. By God's grace I flunked just twice. :D
It was quite embarrassing, I was never a topper, but I had never flunked either. So yeah it hurt my ego and all. I dreamt of bouncing back but never did. I did however manage to score the highest in the supplementary exams. ;)

Fate is a strict teacher. I was always on the good side of 65, albeit very close to it. But one result changed it all. And here I am today with a percentage of 64.7, not allowed to sit for most of the good companies.
Well, I can't complain much. I did get a job, in fact I was the first one to land an A+ in our friend circle. The fact that Deloitte pays less than what *some* people make with their A jobs barely bothers me. :D

Anyway, this was not supposed to be a placement guide or anything. So that will be it for placements.

I have fallen into this horrible spiral of procrastination. The problem is so severe that the only time I get out of my chair in the day is for my shower and crap. So, it has become a severe problem. I have not prepared for CAT at all. Others are done with packages and are busy acing mocks while I stare at the Facebook homepage all day.

Lets hope I can turn things around. It is not a good feeling to be doing nothing.

Congratulations are in order to Anoop for landing a free trip to Geneva. The lucky bloke had to pay just Rs.8000 for the thing.

It'd be great if people can suggest something for me to write on. I would love a discussion on anything under the sun.

Wish you all good health.

Drive safe!

Achint

...and they return.

Hi!
After another rather long hiatus from writing, I return.

Reading the newspaper has become a rather painful activity these days. Everyday there is enough in it to anger me and set me off with a grimace on my face for the rest of the day. Perhaps its my failing that I allow it to anger me.

I have a rather small readership so I can risk to be somewhat esoteric. I hope you do not get offended by the views I shall put forth, and pray that you discuss with me whatever you disagree with.

We get The Times of India every morning and I usually read it as soon as I wake up. I'll put down my views about today's news.

The First Page
Kalam frisked, House furious

I wonder if we will ever see a day when our respected Parliament decides to work constructively. Passing laws is passe. Do they really have enough spare time on their hands to discuss such an exceedingly stupid incident? Spending 2 hours over why the ex-Prez was frisked at the Delhi airport makes little sense to me.
Believe me, I am quite critical of the action by the airline officials. But I believe it is unwarranted to waste so much time in the Parliament when important issues could have been addressed.

Action against the airline should be initiated. But not on the grounds that it was Kalam who was frisked. It should be on the account of their high handedness and complete disregard for the laws of this land.
Brinda Karat once again rose to our expectations by demanding an apology from Praful Patel to Kalam.
By the way, Kalam did not create a fuss or complain to the ministry. Kudos to him!

Mentally ill raped girl can have baby: SC

A 20 year old mentally challenged girl is allowed to have a baby. The decision by the SC not only shocks me but makes me wonder if the honorable SC looks at the future ramifications of its decisions. The girl has been judged to have a mental age of 7-9 years. I ask you how can a 7-9 year old girl handle an infant?
Are we going to turn a complete blind eye to the child's right to a good life?
The National Trust for Mentally Retarded has pledged lifelong care for the mother and the child. Perhaps I was too quick in believing that the child might not be cared for, but tell me how would the child feel about his life when he turns 18? He was conceived via an inhuman act and sentenced to a life with a mother who can hardly provide him the care and love a child deserves. I will only venture a guess towards the efficiency of the Trust in looking after the duo.
Apparently the ruling went in favour of the mother because of her right to motherhood and because she desperately wanted the child. How can the SC give up all rationale and sentence the poor child to a deficient life?
I sincerely hope all works out well for the mother and her child. May God bless them both.

Page 5
In-laws arrested in Deepika case...

Sometimes I wonder what makes seemingly normal people do such barbaric acts of hatred? A 28 year old mother of one burnt alive for dowry. Why cant these spineless bastards go out and earn some money themselves? Why do they resort to torturing a person and at times even killing?
Is there any hope for justice or will this case also drift into oblivion?

The lack of initiative shown by the police in following up on this case shows how desensitized our police force has become.

I hope some justice is served in this case and the accused be awarded the strictest possible punishment if proven guilty.

Page 13
Chicken Halal?

This was a rather refreshing read in the article. Although I sure hope the writer would read this post, but I doubt it'll ever happen.
The dear fellow was traveling from Bangkok to Delhi on an Air India flight. He started off by explaining how he was accompanied by 8 sardarjis and went on to illuminate us all to the fact that he was in no way trying to make fun of sardarjis (He could have called them Sikhs if he really intended not to make fun of them, but then again he had to get his feelings through while still adhering to the newspaper policies).

He went on the describe how they drank a lot and were quite noisy and how he was not affected by it because he was from Delhi. Then he introduced us to a Muslim gentleman sitting infront of him.
With all the introductions covered and half the article length finished he started narrating what happened.

On the second round of drinks, my mother asked for tomato juice and got half a glass. I asked her why, she said they had just run out. The Muslim gent, too, was denied his request for tomato juice. No, we are all out! Take a Pepsi, thats what you had before, said the air-hostess . What we found strange was that two passengers down sat a White man who also requested tomato juice. Much to our surprise, the hostess reached down and out came a full carton. Our jaws dropped as she served the man politely.
Veg or Non-Veg Our Muslim friend who was so rudely denied a tomato juice had to make a decision between chicken and paneer. Chicken halal he asked. The same air-hostess who had refused him his juice then did something which I could not simply tut-tut at, overlook or ignore. Chicken halal Voh kuch savaal hota hai kya You should say Chicken halal hai Vhat am I meant to know vhat that means Chicken halal Chicken halal Kya pooch rahey ho She did not stop there. You need to say Chicken halal hai Chicken halal hai By this time, her voice was raised and she was looking around for approval. Of course, the first to jump to her aid were my good friends, the Sardarjis, who nodded and supported her. This little incident went on for a good three minutes by which time the last five rows of the airplane had joined in. Kya matlab hai Chicken halal Hahaha. Bolna bhi nahi aata. Hahaha! Eventually, after the air-hostess had enjoyed her audience, she said, Haan, halal hai, yeh leh! and rudely handed over the non-veg meal to the man in front. By this point, I was furious. All the poor man was doing was making sure that the meal was something that he could eat. My mother sensed my mood and nudged me to stay quiet. She knows that if I ever witness any kind of discrimination, I jump in and get involved. I have lived all over the world and have faced discrimination from Whites, Blacks, Asians, Arabs, you name it. To get back, the food was upon us and everything seemed to have died down until I heard one member of the group yell, This is Indian Airlines, not Muslim Airlines!

Cute eh? How he's so righteous and blah...blah...blah

I am Sikh and a rather proud one at that, all I ask you is: Why the hell were we served such a lengthy description of those 8 silly Sikhs? They did not say anything derogatory according to his own account. The last five rows had also joined in. Some guy had shouted something stupid about Muslim Airlines. The white guy had got the juice.
Then why did our dear Mr. Right launch the two paragraphed rhetoric about the 8 Sikhs?
They had nothing to do with the incident. It just goes on to show how biases have a habit of creeping in.
Let me be clear, I do not in any manner condone what they were doing. Their actions were highly uncivil and I agree a lot of Sikhs act in a similar manner. What I did not like was the unnecessary references to them and the fact that he called them Sardarjis.

I would in the same breath laude the gentleman for his secular views and join in criticising the attitude of the flyers.
Indians really do not have the right to blame the whites of racism when they subject others to the same.

The post has gotten too long already and this is where I stop for today.
I wanted to write a bit more about certain issues but deemed them to be too controversial to be touched without proper thought going into the construction of the posts.
Mostly I wanted to write about the Kanwarias, it does merit a full post in my opinion!
Will be back soon.
Thanks for reading through this!

Achint

Cycle Rickshaw v/s Auto Rickshaw

Hi! Another long pause... shit I must get out of this habit...

Anyways a lot has been up with my life, my last post came at the beginning of the semester and this one comes as it fades into the twilight of retrospection. Well not really, its still not over. So yeah the latest buzz first:

Prac on 10th gets cancelled as some big shot from Alstom plans to land his ass in DCE...

Better still it gets rescheduled to the 10th of December... postponed by a month!

Okay that's all that's coming to me right now... Heck! What do you expect a week before the exams. I have to be crazy to be posting this in the first place, I am not supposed to have time for all this.

Anyways we had an awesome discussion a couple of hours back, on how cycle rickshaws can be phased out slowly...At least that's what it started out as...

Well what I suggested was, they be replaced by auto rickshaws. As for the people pulling the cycle ones, better incentives can be pulled on for autos so they can move to them. In any case they'll be earning more than they were before. Mangal raised the argument that no auto driver would be ready to cover the short distances that are the forte of the cycle rickshaws. Well my argument to that is that the fare of an auto works as follows:

Starting Fare: Rs. 10

Subsequent Fare/km: Rs. 4.5

The little section of my brain which tries to handle arithmetic tells me that short frequent trips are much more profitable for the driver than long ones. Okay for people who are still not convinced (this includes you as well Scipio):

20Km as a straight drive would end up costing: Rs.100/-

20Km covered as short stints of 2Km each would amount to: Rs.190/-

90% more than a long stint. Now why would an auto driver not settle for that? The usual excuse of not getting a 'sawaari' at your destination also falls on its face.

After this the never-conceding Mangal argued that there are not enough lanes on the road for so many autos. Duh! I guess autos arent all that bigger than cycle rickshaws. In any case with all the cycle rickshaws gone, most of haphazardness on road would also be gone. Plus our roads would be safer sans them. I guess almost 30% accidents could be avoided if rickshaw pullers had any semblance of road sense.

Anyways coming back to the point, what would be needed to implement this is a structured manner of phasing cycle rickshaws out... Attractive incentives for buying autos... Regulation of autos to prevent the largely prevalent problem of overcharging...

Anoop raised a rather logical point about the increase in fuel consumption... If only bajaj could come up with a 100 Kmpl engine for auto rickshaws!

All in all this was the discussion, as is quite obvious its still not closed... You are requested to add your views...

Ciao!

'xgubr

Blog-o-mania

I have been off the blogging scene for a while now, and some interesting events have sort of brought me back. I bet anyone would be slightly unnerved when 5 people everyday inform him about their advent into the blogosphere. I guess in India whenever celebs start doing something, the general public rarely fails to copy them immediately. What with all the Bachhans and the Khans blogging their way into controversies, my comrades wouldnt want to be left behind would they?

So here we have every dunce in the world trying for front page glory by blogging about every sort of bull-crap they can come up with. Infact some of them are so atrocious, they are worse than child porn!

It all started out with the King of 'morons', Ravi Manoram blasting his way into the virtual world, armed with 7 posts and 70 advertisements. The charming fellow came to our college's student portal www.dcetech.com querying as to why his blog wasnt figuring on Google. Well you couldnt expect a blog which wouldnt even manage 4 hits in the whole year to figure on Google's search results, but would he listen!

His scandalous use of idioms coupled with his revolting grammar was good enough to give anyone a stitch in the side!

But the icing on the cake was the punch line for the blog 'This blog will change your life, because then you would want to'. The only thing i wanted after reading that was a 'hand'.

Anyways, some of the puritans on dcetech gave him some snippets of advice, which he promptly declared as bullshit. I guess that was reason enough to start taking him apart.

But i guess most of us gave it up as a futile attempt, the linguistics monster was as dead set against us as he was against punctuating. The arguements drew to an abysmal close with him declaring all of us nincompoops at english and declaring he wont post anymore. Sadly he has kept his promise till now :(.

It was awesome fun kicking some raw monkey ass though... ;)

Anyways enough of about Lundram, I did find some nice stuff as well. Saksham's attempt at blogging was quite commendable, I am sure he'll reach an elevated level of randomness soon. Medhavin's blog was really very nice, he has to be one of the most regular bloggers i have ever seen. Plus he writes straight from the heart (you know the sort of emo shit girls die for?). In any case his posts were written with an ingenuity i have not found often, kudos to him. I'll draw my post to a close, I have much to say but i'll save that for the following posts.

Adios!
'XGUBR

Wired v/s Creationism

Wired’s take on creationists…simply hilarious!

This has been a huge year for intelligent design research. We took a look back at some of the most important breakthroughs. Until recently, Wired has been too hard on the proponents of creationism. To rectify that, our science desk has hired a full staff of religious zealots. Here is their first story:

10. T. rex ate coconuts, according to experts at the Creation Museum, our favorite predatory dinosaur would have fit right in at Whole Foods.

9. The Earth is only six thousand years oldCarbon-13 and potassium argon dating are myths created by the devil to cast doubt on the existence of God.

8. Stem Cells are evilCuring terrible diseases is not worth the trouble of sacrificing some abandoned eggs from the deep freeze at a fertility clinic.

7. NASCAR is the official sport of the spiritually enlightenedSome forms of entertainment were meant for the pure of heart.

6. Guns were created by God to kill deerIt is our responsibility as humans to encroach on their habitats by building track homes and then blow the sweet crap out of them so that they don't starve to death in the winter.

5. Liberals are evilEven though most of the truly bizarre sex scandals have involved republicans, and democrats prefer to have affairs with women of legal age, left-wing politicians are morally more morally bankrupt than their conservative counterparts.

4. Civil Liberties are for sissiesUnder the benevolent Bush II theocracy, we don't need privacy. Like the Pope, he is in direct contact with God, so we can feel secure knowing that every one of his decisions will be fair.

3. President Bush can look directly into our souls. Bush II looked directly the soul of Russian President Vladimir Putin and saw that he is a good man!

2. Iraq had ties to Al-Qaeda, was enriching Uranium, and all that jazz. By bombing Iraq back into the stone age, then occupying it, we have protected our country from terrorism. Who cares if we destroyed our economy while in the process? Dubai is certainly not complaining.

1. Evolution is a myth. Just ask Ben Stein, evil academics suppress any luminary who dares to question the mounds of evidence that life evolved gradually. Get your facts straight. It took seven days to make the earth.

A Human Aspiration

Simple transgressions reveal,
if you are pure or if you are not,
Unseen actions can unveil,
if you are naive and are besot.

Fickle ideas can impress,
if you are timid and are not bold,
Uncertain winds can aggress,
if you refrain from the fold.

Inane visions can inspire,
if you can see, beyond the wall,
Placid voices will retire,
if you can think, and do not fall.

I want to see,
only how far I go,
and still be me,
I want to know
only what I can do,
against the flow,
I want to be,
only till death, but,
not, only be.

I want to run,
Just look in front,
and be the one,
I want to fly,
just spread my wings,
and soar up high,
I want to live,
Just close my eyes, but,
not, just live.

In every heart on God's Green Earth,
there burns a silent fire,
there's no exception to this rule,
Its just Human to Aspire.

Hey!

Hi!

The previous posts were copied from my last blog. Thanks for taking the time out to read my blog.

ciao!