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# Despite being in the company for more than 3 months, I had spoken only to 3 or 4 people and this occasion was helpful to know the team and to know what others are doing. I also enjoyed the activities/games. I wanted to write a long write-up in my usual style and was sure I could impress and surprise everyone in the team - it has happened quite often that I am not boasting - but I could never manage time. Something or the other came up. When it comes actual life - watching movies and meeting friends and meeting dentist - I never allow my self interest - like getting praises and impressing others - to take a higher priority which was why I could never sit down to write a decent write-up. However I had jotted down some stuff which I had sent to a friend, let me reproduce that here :

From office we had been to team building… had good fun. Will try ( I’m dead tired and it takes hell lot of time to write) to write a Minutes of Meeting and if done will send it to you.
Otherwise important highlights are :
1. We built a raft and we did rafting on it. It was a quiet lake, nevertheless, I was instrumental in our team’s race winning. Proud of myself
2. I could crack few funny stuff and impressed few people.
3. Snipped [Rant]
4. Did a boring bonfire. No music. People sang and some had real good singing talents. Oriya, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil , Konkani, Bengali, Kannada & English songs were sung !
5. Got to know who are in our team. The team was only 30 but even after 3 months of joining I knew only 3 ppl in our team. It looks like the company environment problem and every other person was frustrated and they were also disappointed with this.
6. I climbed and got down a wall which was more than 10 ft high. I still don’t believe that I did that. Of course lot of support was there on both sides. Remember we were in pitch dark jungle.
7. We went on a sort of night trekking but it was just a walk. I noticed lot of people are too scared with forest and nature but I was very brave until I faced that human made 10 ft high wall.
8. I was smart in many games where I gave nice suggestions, and where I got the idea very fast, co-ordinated well etc. But in one game I did very bad.

# Looking back, if there were two things that stand out, two is less and difficult number, it should be climbing the wall. I had never climbed and never wanted to do and would never want to. But when life offers only two choices and rule out one choice, I had to agree to climb the wall. It must be my most horrific moment in my recent life. That tells what a luxurious life I lead. A good photo of me looking as if it was all over for me, would be posted soon. The second event that could stand out was building the raft and I almost single handedly winning the rafting race for my team. *&^%@ to those who made fun of my weight.

# To do: upload few pics and link to them. Especially of climbing the wall and of the rafting.

# I rarely laugh when I read the jokes and forwards. The least repeated email forward has at least been read twice earlier. The first two sentences of the jokes usually give away / remind me the end.

# Sometimes, it is different though. The following is one such joke which I thoroughly enjoyed, so much so that I was actually feeling disappointed, angry for some reason before reading this. At the end, I had forgotten that and was smiling - that means it must have been doubly good.

# Not sure if it appeals to all. That is the point with tech/geek jokes. And those who get will laugh like anything.

# Not sure why I enjoyed so much, may be it suddenly took me back to college maths.

# Or may be the flow along with my imagination ! I like this style of metaphor or animated thoughts.

# It has a tinge of philosophy though !

# Courtesy : Mail by Pk (Thnx). Would love to compliment the originator though!

# Here it is, if you like Maths, read on. Read it slow, don’t scroll down too fast.

Functions

The arrogant  exponential function e^x is strolling along the road insulting the functions he sees walking by. He scoffs at a wandering polynomial for the shortness of its Taylor series. He snickers at a passing smooth function of compact support and its glaring lack of a convergent power series about many of its points. He positively laughs as he passes |x| for being non-differentiable at the origin.

He smiles, thinking to himself, “Dang, it’s great to be e^x. I’m real analytic everywhere. I’m my own derivative. I blow up faster than anybody and shrink faster too. All the other functions suck.”

Lost in his own egomania, he collides with the constant function 3, who is running in terror in the opposite direction. “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you look where you’re going?” demands e^x. He then sees the fear in 3’s eyes and says “You look terrified!”

“I am!” says the panicky 3. “There’s a differential operator just around the corner. If he differentiates me, I’ll be reduced to nothing! I’ve got to get away!” With that, 3 continues to dash off.

“Stupid constant,” thinks e^x. “I’ve got nothing to fear from a differential operator. He can keep differentiating me as long as he wants, and I’ll still be there.”

So he scouts off to find the operator and gloat in his smooth glory. He rounds the corner and defiantly introduces himself to the operator.

“Hi. I’m e^x.”

 

 

“Hi. I’m d/dy.”

This is a software very close to my heart. Because this is the very type of program I wished I had or I wished I wrote/developed for my own use¹ There is a personal reason for this.

My father has, many say, the best memory and knowledge about the relatives in our entire circle of relatives that I have encountered. He not only remembers who is related to whom, his brain has, most often than not, other details like their names, their order in the children’s queue, their education, their occupation and in some cases their history of places lived. This is huge and complex data considering that he would not have met/seen them at all - for me, unless there is a face I can not associate a name to it and remember it. And when he talks with his father-in-law (my grand father) another power house of information of his generation, the observers of the conversation not only struggle to keep pace connecting the dots but gasp in awe at the knowledge present and ease with which that is recalled. Many times it has so happened that a person meeting my father for the first time would introduce himself & within minutes from my father he would be enlightened with new knowledge of his family tree and how they are related to someone else.

As for me, I struggle to recall the name and the way they are related even though I would have met them in a function just an year ago. And those I haven’t met are hardly remembered by me. Memory, visualization and ability to recall - I am average, if not bad, at all the three.
So I had this plan of making my father fill out the tree for my reference. And the best way to do it would be on computer so that it would be easy to search, distribute, add/edit contents and most importantly to visualize. I tried using freemind, a mindmapping software, but I alone doing everything would be hugely time consuming and I dropped the idea.

Now comes Geni - a super cool application - with a very easy user interface and features. Since it is a web application, now I can get my other relatives to contribute and finally realize my wish.

Geni promises to be more than just building family tree and few social-networking features are quite fun. And that makes it sort of family-networking site. There are few issues but I hope they get resolved over time. Very prompt and helpful team responds to queries. They have an option to export the content ( which might come handy if they wish to shut down or if they wish to stop free usage - I wish neither happens), printing option - both of which I have not tried out. They have even won Webware 100 awards. Some of the improvements that are almost necessary are - making it work offline with the help of google-gears or suchlike, easy merging of two people, mail-to-all email holders/ mail to those who are editing the trees, import of the tree etc

If you are interested check the site out and let me know what do you think.

And by the way, in their forums, there is a fun topic to list which celebrity are they related to and I found one related to Ralph Waldo Emerson!! Hi there! And another topic tries to find out about the biggest family tree owner and one replies 1800 and 33000 to go !! I was pleasantly surprised to know they were researching from 1990, and that many like them are interested in family tree and archiving that in software. And I had thought there would be no takers for my program and only I had such interests!

[1] I had started doing a stand alone app but what I am going to talk is revolutionary compared to my idea. I even tried to use freemindmap for family tree purpose!

Confused wrote about his own

That sunny day we were sitting in her car, behind India Gate, eating peanuts. When suddenly the mood hit me…..

and later did a meme. Was fun to read few posts, here I link’em.

Sakshi :

It was the kiss that ended my relationship with my boyfriend - And no, it was not because he was such a bad kisser and no, it was not the kiss that made me do it - well it was, except it was not his kiss. Now, before you all get the idea that I was cheating or randomly kissing other men, Let me back up and set the story up…

Sonya

We were alone. I was so nervous, I couldn’t have spelled my name at this point. He was there, I was there, and no one else was. Wow….

Born a Libran

Hero: Actually, I have never been… blissed before… I mean kissed before…

Experience: What? I dont think we are ready for that yet.

Courtesy
A visit to Mocha: It was a plan come true after almost 1 year. When the office was near to the place, we planned several times but none materialised. Finally, had to change the company (no, not the meaning that strikes first) and it finally worked out.

We went around 10 to the place. The place was simply very different than the ones I usually frequent. It was all laid back, albeit with posh people - mostly teenagers and some foreigners. It almost looked like a lazy bar but was vibrant with colours and energy (not a measurable description, but explanation given on request).

There were two kinds of locations available. One in the outside garden-like-setup, where a family crowd or a formal get-together could hang out. The bushes all around and with unconventional seating arrangement - stone benches, wooden benches, a swing, bamboo (betta) chairs. A closed hut like structures (like in Dhaba) or an open umbrella (like in juice corners) were also available. There were other forms of seats like auto rickshaw’s , car’s put around a table on one end. (Rangashankara had lot of such items) A small stream of water flowing added to the look of a setting in nature. Colourful lights around was a plus along with the natural wind. Due to the fear of mosquitoes we instead went inside.

There it was more of a typical hukka joint. The red curtains, the dress of waiters and the dark place looked like a setting in a Mahal. The seating here was casual - one could either sit on mattresses on the floor or one could use the more formal chairs. A big group of teenagers sat on each other and occupied half the space that otherwise was required. They had roaring fun but they quit gracefully after their time (which was quite less considering we were there for more time). Along with the lack of light (intentional), the place was quite smoky - one thing I did not enjoy- which could have been avoided with better ventilation (or some other technique). A nice soft music was being played (both outside and inside) which was non-intrusive and added to the overall ambiance.

We had a flavoured one and man didn’t it taste good! I was new to it but the fragrance remained with me even days after.

And “the kick” eluded me, as always. (I guess it wasn’t supposed to kick in the first place).

Thanks AB for a memorable evening (and few additions to this report!)

I have been thinking about the blogs getting orphaned after the owner’s death. Am sure, readers do not have any type of personal contact with most of the bloggers they read. So they would not come to know about any sad happening. They might keep checking on the site or the empty feed might remain in the reader. Sad.

In our embedded systems, we have a concept called “Watch Dog timer“.

A watchdog timer is a computer hardware timing device that triggers a system reset if the main program, due to some fault condition, such as a hang, neglects to regularly service the watchdog (writing a “service pulse” to it, also referred to as “petting the dog”).

Unfortunately, there is no way to reset the human life. However I found an analogy to this in Wordpress and a variation of this concept would let me achieve what I want - To announce my death to my blog readers.

It works like this. Wordpress has “post timestamp” feature, where if you set the time in future and publish the post, the post automatically gets posted at that time. So I can do a post called

“Hello Readers, I think I have left on a journey to heaven. Unless there is internet access from there, it is unlikely that this blog is going to be updated Be good. Cya soon “

or anything you would want to tell your blog readers. And set the date to say a week or a month in future depending on how frequently (for sure) you are going to access your blog. So, like watchdog servicing, before that time, pet this timer - change the time to next interval and publish. In the unlikely event of your death, after the interval, you would be announcing the news of your death in an unique way. Blog can thus serve a purpose even after your death.

There are few risks :
1. If the server is down and you can not re-schedule the time and server wakes up. Then you would be getting to hear condolences and reactions to your death !
2. If you estimate/usually access the site within a normal time frame but unfortunately if you could not do it.

PS: I expected to get dugg for this wise idea, alas.

Some creative soul at work. Enjoyable and danceable.
Hear Titanic Indian remix here:

Goa Year End Bash

New year eve was spent in Goa. A sincere attempt to record the happenings for historical records is being done now (after a month of the tour)! To go to the Goa like the DCH way, mostly with those whom the DCH was watched was a wish since long. No one knows how many times it was planned/discussed only to be dropped later. This time the plan was executed without any hassles.

Also I had to keep up the appointment with Goa I had made that I would re-visit it in another 3 years or so. Unfortunately no other takers of the oath could join me as they are in US

The planning started almost from November 1st week. As usual these days, most of the discussion happened over mail, starting from the kick-off to sign-off. Even if we were planning 2 months in advance, the accommodation was a big question mark, luckily sorted out by a high-profile contact Skv had The leaves were the easiest part (for me as usual and I guess it was easy for others too.)

Mode of transport was zeroed in on Car basically to emulate DCH. (Thank Farhan, he did not choose a helicopter !). With our own car (Skv’s actually), the next big concern was over the route to be taken to reach Goa and the places to be visited en-route.

Looking up on net gave us few suggestions and more confusions. Few alternatives were discussed:

1. bangalore to dharwad and then to panaji via londa

2. Try taking the Toll Road which starts just before Hubli Town and then take the Karwar Route (u need to take a left at one of the interchanges) which is smooth as silk and awesome scenery next to you as u drive

3. The recommended route is via Tumkur, Davanagere, Hubli, karwar and Margao. Around 580 km. Best road

4.Bangalore - Tumkur - Chirtradurga - Harihar - Hubli - Karwar - Madgoan - Panaji - Goa -Total distance 680 km

1 was decided at the nth minute due to the apparent advantages it had over others (shorter distance was the compelling factor I guess). So on 29th morning we started at around 6:30 AM and most of the day was spent in traveling. Various matters were discussed including Karnataka’s politics, songs, movies, girls, respect, culture, perception, cricket, videos etc and the highlight being Dhoom 2 (also thanks to Cineblitz’s pun on the movie which made the laughs explode).

The road was so bad b/n Dharwad and Goa and there were absolutely no road at many places and this was, after all, NH4A! Once we crossed Karnataka-Goa border, the road was good. The roads on Karnataka are heavily damaged and completely unmotorable (Skv kept one eye on the road and the other on the fuel indicator…no peterol bunk for a long stretch …we were getting prepared to push the car thru the road in the dark night!)
At around 9:45 we made to the rooms near Meeramir beach in Panaji. We inaugurated our beach visit program then and there by going to Miramir beach and staying till 12:30

30th:

We had planned to go to the dolphin’s show which is possible only on Saturday and Tuesdays. We had to get ready by 8:00 for the dolphin show and we woke up at 9. So thus dolphins missed to see 4 amazing characters that had come all the way from Bangalore. Breakfast was had and we were beginning to see the hospitality from the servers in hotels in goa, more about that later. Other highlight was the curd worth rs 40.

Our next interest was in Casino on the cruise. It is a whole night package with dinner and we just barged in and ordered the tickets. The experienced receptionist that she was, asked whether we knew the prices. We left from there, a 3k special price for only these 5 days was unaffordable, the normal prices for other days of the year being as low as 1300.

We then immediately booked for the night cruise (and mistake we later realized that we should have booked for evening one.)

Thus with 2 plans flopped, we next went to Aguada fort (around 12). Sk’s camera got life from here after. It’s a different topic that we started addressing him by 12x by 4x (zoom of his camera). Next stop was at Candolin beach. We went on para-sailing and jet skiing (again, on the lines of DCH). Para-sailing was one wonderful-memorable experience. Now I have got little courage to do the sky diving! If I were not to hold and pull the ropes, I could have enjoyed it even more. I had felt, even if every other thing does not happen as planned, this one sport has made the tour paisa-vasool.

The car key along with autocop, which too played water sports in Skv’s pockets, had by now become wet and could not communicate to the car that we were the rightful owner of the car. Since autocop could not be turned off, once the door was opened, the alarm started to shout. We had to cut the wire of the alarm speaker by opening the front bonet.

We then tried to book for the 31st night disco, but the mambos and titos was a bit costly and anyways we were told pre-booking is not necessary. On the way back from here we saw the remains of a very tragic accident - scorpio after hitting tree which was on the wrong side reduced to its half, car which was on the opposite direction probably got hit by the scorpio reduced to its 3/4th, and a man laid on ground with face fully covered with blood. We were not able to comprehend the way the accident might have happened too.

Post lunch we went to play Frisbee at Miramar beach.

There wasn’t much fun in the cruise, we just enjoyed the ride, talk and gossips.

The already eventful day hasn’t yet seen the end. We wanted to go to the ingos night bazaar shopping. On the way, we were royally misguided by a girl, with a mischievious smile! The smile gave away about it, but not till we had already gone in wrong direction for some time. On the way to shopping, the traffic moved as slowly as it could, and we barely made a km after 20 minutes or so. A brilliant idea struct to park the car in a near by place which though made us walk for 2 kms, saved us nearly an hour or more. The entire 2-3 km stretch were cars.

Ingos was expected to be the bazaar where electronics articles among other things were sold at a throwaway price.We didn’t go to Ingos, did not notice the name and entered the first bazaar available. The shopping stalls was not any special – usual tour articles with exaggerated prices – mainly to suit/target $people and ladies. We bought shades here.

31st:

We slept at around 2 AM and the day started late, as usual. We started with the visit to DCH fort. Its fort chepora but now widely known as DCH fort itself. During my earlier visit, we had climbed this from Vagator beach and this time we first went to the fort by the other direction.

Next stop was at vagator beach. Photos. Beach. Fun.

We then had a very relishing food (@garden valley restaurant). Here the soup was served at the end and Lassi at the beginning, but the food was very good. Had a time like the old times’ visits to Dhabas.

While many events we wanted to emulate from DCH happened quite easily, an unexpected oppurtunity arose when we saw a train coming in full speed and before it crossed the overhead bridge we wanted to go through it. Train was fast and in same style, we encouraged the man on steering. The car speeded up and won the race and huge enjoyment resulted. It happened so fast that the whole scene – we saw the train, we recognized the oppurtunity, the race was a close call- was unbelievable and breath-holding and one of my favorite moments of the tour.

We went to Anjuna beach in the evening and here the sunset was seen. On the way to the beach, a drug deal happening very casually was witnessed. Photos were taken in the beach, enjoyment of playing in the beach happened.

Till now the plan to spend the night, “the night of 31st dec”, was not made and I was all prepared for any happening/un-happening and disappointment. Thanks to our host, we got passes for the “Scintilla 2007″. We had seen the venue when we tried booking for the casino and luckily it was very near to our stay. Anywhere farther would have proved unpleasant with the traffic involved that day.

Scintilla was just perfect for our varied tastes. We had a relishing menu; fire-dance, troupe dance, live music (all the way flown from Dubai it seems, it was intolerable to say the least and were stopped soon enough) was performed, DJ’s music and an irritating announcer were present. Many people danced and enjoyed the time – particularly a girl in red, a small kid, that kid’s parents, an old man and his young son/grandson danced very well. The merry happened till around 2 Am after which we went and had coffee.

1st:

The day started almost at afternoon. We went to Baga beach and slept on the beach (for a change, this time I did not sleep on the sand but rested on the cot.). Bk and I bought some gift articles here. We then paid a courtesy visit to Calungunte beach which was as crowded as the railway station and we did not even go till water.

We then went to a bakery and after delayed orders and mistakes in the bill (we were charged less than we consumed), he was cool enough to dismiss the error in the bill saying “Jaane do”.

After little rest we shopped for liquor and cashewnuts.

We then had a good dinner at Delhi Durbar amidst interesting discussions.

2nd:

While the bags were put back to the car, we expected someone to announce his stay back in goa to do “makki-paling” with Christine. Luckily no such incident happened

This day was spent in traveling but with better route now it was a pleasant experience.

We somehow escaped Goa border police but Karnataka police took bribe for carrying liquor.

Various matters were discussed including remembering dialogues of DCH, NRI lobby in US, influence of Indians in west, the usage of cars in US, China’s rates for services

Around 10 PM we reached back home.

Song of the tour : Tere Bin by Atif Aslam (Any guesses why?  ) and DCH song.

Some of the assorted recordings:

• We had funny incidents with restaurants many times. The waiters were generally very fast.
  • First time we had to wait a long time for the bill and when we said we were in hurry, he immediately started to clean our unfinished plates !
  • In another place, we were looking around and guessing what might be available to eat. One confirmed thali as many were having it and other guessed pavbhaji too as it was getting prepared in the entrance. Once the waiter came to our place, for formality we asked what was avaiable. He said Thali, Paavbhaji and stopped after that. We were expecting more items. He was not ready to take any orders that took more time and since we had discussed these two (we guess he heard us), he had to tell these two but then stopped immediately. The hotel was so crowded that by the time 2 of us washed our hands and returned the seats were occupied. We went out and waited for the other 2 people. When they too came out, we could have easily left, without paying the bill. The good guys that we are, we called the waiter and asked him bill, he saw us interrogatively and the question was a brilliant-n-innocent one liner “Koun Dega?”. We were so tempted to point at the other 4 ppl who had occupied our seats and leave from there !!
  • Again during breakfast, the sauce plate was taken away even while we were left with Buns. So when we said “By the time we say D in done, they would have picked up the plates”. Just then, right when we were saying that, right exactly when we said D, waiter appearing from nowhere had picked up another plate right under our nose. The timing was so unbelievably perfect that, we could not resist bursting into loudest laughter. (Causing confusion to them, who cares. In an unknown place we don’t mind the tag of mad guys too !)
  • In the bakery the other day, we waited so much to initially place the order and then to pay the bill. The only person in the coutner was taking orders, packing things, taking bill and was very busy with 2 heavy orders. He was not bothered to even look at us. But we were very reluctant to pay the bill (the good guys that we are), and waited impatiently. Finally when the bill was made, we had to give some amoung for correct change. When we told we didn’t have the change, he said “jaane do jaane do” He had missed out on one item that we had bought. We pointed it out and took pains to make him understand he should be paid more, again he said with such indifference “jaane do jaane do” I guess he just wanted us out of the bakery!
• Other Strange people whose memory put smile on our faces :
  • On a night while driving we asked for directions to a traffic constable who was in half sleep, standing, and probably drunk. He opened his eyes with effort and showed us the direction, and the eyes were almost wanting to shut down again and we asked another direction. An irritated person “Ek bar bola na…seede jao”.
  • On the way to bazaar, we asked a person for direction. He said pointing to the roadside repair(in english) in full enthusiasm “5 years. from 5 years this is a construction site.” He was drunk too.
  • A gang of girls and boys were standing in the intersection of the road that was heavily crowded on one way. We asked her for direction towards the shopping bazaar, she so confidently pointed to the side where traffic was free, and we happily cruised along. With confidence she had given a mischievious smile too. On reconfirming with another person we realized that we were going the wrong way and if we had taken the right direction at the intersection we could have saved a km or more (equivalent to 30 or more minutes in that heavy traffic).
    I was so very impressed with such different, dream sleep-walking people, that I wished greatly to ask local on-goers for directions to Australia via road in all seriousness. Some sanity (or probably the esteem company I kept) stopped me from doing that.

As much as I wanted to embed photos, this writing itself has taken a large amount of time. I will leave with the link. Here
Some links :
We stayed here
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061121000833AAPXEtu
http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/maharashtra/maharashtratourist.htm
http://www.nivalink.com/goa/goabreaks.html
http://www.spjimr.org/alumni/creativecorner.asp
http://maps.live.com/?v=2&rtp=pos.k4tty9qfytpx_Bangalore~pos.kkftj9q4jb2k_Panaji
http://www.bsmotoring.com/bsm/wcms/en/home/roads/Goa-Bangalore-060927.html;jsessionid=527CD53A31E84ECDE3E0712FBCF7DA90