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Showing posts from 2005

The year that was

I'm wearing a rather striking shirt, one that makes me feel like a clown fooling around in a graveyard. Roving eyes latch on to me and make me too conscious of myself. Checkered in red, grey, black and maroon, I've excused myself into donning it and looking silly for two reasons. It's Friday and…more importantly, the last working day of the year. Tailored half-a-year back, I never had the courage to wear it, not until today. It's that time of the year when it's time to reflect on the events that transpired. Last year ended on the worst possible note. Dad had expired and I was numb with shock. The repercussions rippled halfway thought this year. Things were so abysmal initially that I had lost the will to live. Acrid in everything I did, I was immensely angered by time phlegmatically flowing through its cadence. It was as if Dad meant nothing to anybody. What right did people have to live the way they always had when Dad was no more? Why was much of the world still

Featured Blog

One of my posts has been showcased in the Featured Blog Entries on Sulekha Blogs . I'm embarrassed of the many typos that have crept in. I had written it in great hurry with no time to rectify the errors. I can't even edit it now!

A day in my life

I'm jolted to the awakened state by the alarm. I go thru the little chores half asleep. I wish nights would be a little longer. I find my clothes mostly crumpled and carelessly stuffed into the wardrobe. I dress for office. I open the door to the balcony and the light from outside explodes in. Noise is an annoying guest invading my room. I look at the street below. People hurry for office or college. A mother drags her twins to school. A cool breeze blows. The sun lends its golden rays to everything exposed. Today's paper lies rolled on the floor. I get back into my room. Santosh sleeps like a baby. I lug my office bag and leave. It's a virgin day but the streets are already maligned with overbearing people. I try to avoid the noise by treading along a narrow street. A housewife is busy brooming the front of her home and shoots a trail of dust into the air. Shutters are lifted, dry leaves are swept by the breeze. The street coaxes me to the main road. It's noisy and awf

Opus 104

I'm a s-l-o-w reader. As I gradually sink into Vikram Seth's picturesque novel 'An Equal Music', I get more and more curious about the fictitious characters so vividly brought into life and strewn across the plot. What makes the novel all the more delectable is its thematic revolution around music. Michael, the protagonist, is a violinist. Seth's flow of words is brilliant as it takes us deep into the lives of Michael and the peripheral characters. Since the novel is loosely strung around music, I thought of building up the right ambiance today by listening to some classical music myself while I read the book. Brahms's 2nd symphony is the first to enter the scene. Though highly regarded by musicologists, I never found it appealing...not until now. The haunting 3rd movement, though, has been an exception in its mystical melody. The 3rd symphony, as usual, fails to impress me and I at once replace it with a Schumann CD for the solo piano. The final piece from Opus

A Repeat Story

My 2nd credit card showed up. Not surprisingly, there were 2 glaring flaws. Inspite of providing the right address and sending them a copy of my mobile phone bill as proof of my residence and inspite of their executive coming home for verification, the address that was finally recorded by them shows 5th Main instead of 15th. But there's more. I was promised a Gold Card...and they sent me the Classic Card instead. I take heart in the fact that at least it's a Visa!

Steel Express

Like most bengalis living in Jamshedpur, Calcutta (now, Kolkata) was our Mecca. Our annual Haj would happen during the summer vacations. Since Jamshedpur was a hinterland of sorts with a sleepy ambiance and where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened, I eagerly looked forward to the trip. Calcutta was in stark contrast to our town. Huge, noisy, unplanned, chaotic and stunning in its complete disarray, it was a shock treatment that I was awaiting all year long. Sharing my enthusiasm was Anirban, my good friend and neighbor. We had little in common except for our zeal for the trip and, of course...trains! Trains fascinated us to the point of being an obsessive topic of discussion every evening when we met to play. We would begin our daily rendezvous by discussing our latest finds on the Indian Railways. And since his pilgrimage to the holy land during the long vacation was very much like mine, our camaraderie found a glue in Steel Express. Steel Express was the mainstay of railroad c

Nirvana

Yesterday's retaliatory mail seems to have done the trick. Bharathi is no longer flooding my mailbox with unwanted forwards. An excerpt from my mail: Whatever b the cost, I'm ready to bear it. It'll definitely be cheaper than hiring a guy full-time to keep flushing my mailbox of your JUMBO-sized mails! A recipient of crap-mail, Deepanjan

Some Happenings

Trivialities seldom merit dedicated posts, a fact I've often divorced. However, the cumulative effect of such events ought not be overlooked. Thus this entry. My PDA arrived last Friday. I had shopped for it via MyValueShop . However, my enthusiasm soon ebbed when I realized that the nifty little gadget had an insatiable appetite for power. The brand new Duracells were significantly drained in only a few hours of operation. At this rate, I would be spending a fortune just on replacing batteries. A very disconcerting thought. I've decided to return the product tomorrow. My passport arrived and didi informed me about it. I was surprised as my name was not on the list when I had visited Jadavpur Police Station in July, even though I had applied 2 months back. I soon had to translocate to Bangalore and eventually gave up all hopes of ever getting the coveted thing. However, out of the blue came a mail saying that I was supposed to show up at the said station for verification purpos

Just Arrived Via Courier...

...thanks to Indiatimes Shopping ! Dear Vanity Fair , I'm sorry but my patience with you has run out. You are too bulky, there are more characters in your pages than I've ever come across in real life, your language is too archaic and your period too antediluvian and alien. But there's hope. I may return to your pages some day.
Rajat has a voracious appetite for the choiciest ringtones for his mobile. Last time, it was a snoring man. Today's fad was the plaintive cry of a woman. Everyone at work looked up in utter bewilderment when his phone rang! Helps break the monotony. Erratum: Rajat informs me that it was the cry of a wolf! Well, anyone would be foxed!

The Red Umbrella

I saw Diya (my niece) the other day proudly flaunting her brand-new umbrella. Blue in color, the canopy had fanciful decorations that amply captured the imagination of the little lady. The metallic stem added to its beauty. Diya had been wanting an umbrella for long and her parents finally gave in to her constant tantrums. It was a fine morning with rain-barren clouds enveloping the sky, leaving little prospects of the Sun managing to peep through it. Obviously, an open umbrella was a misfit and had no business being there. Yet, there she was, Diya beaming with pride as she showed off her latest booty to everyone without a care in the world. I found it amusing and my mind instantly raced back in time to the halcyon years of my childhood when I too had an umbrella that meant the world to me. I mustn't have been much older than Diya. I had a second-hand umbrella today's kids wouldn't dare or care to flaunt. It was vanilla-red with a wooden stem. Though there was nothing allur

I'm attractive...

...though not in the conventional sense. The hour-long bus jaunt back home is a period when most techies feel overwhelmingly sleepy after a hard day' s work. Many would slip into a deep slumber had it not been for the pothole-ridden roads of Bangalore. My next-seater (keeps changing) joins the tribe of wannabe slumbering travelers...and invariably begins to slump towards yours truly. And since I always take the window seat, my face is stuck between the window pane and a wobbling head. I silently suffer in my entrapment with nowhere to turn. Why can't the bugger tilt towards the aisle? Today's culprit was especially intimate. I could feel the radiant heat from his head!

That's it

I seldom visit the blogs of other people because they are generally very boring and utterly lack in the quality department. However, I had tried my level best to stick to some that began with a bang and promised the world. Sad to say, most of them have failed me. The blogging phenomenon ends up hogging server space and does precious little. Perhaps its only virtue lies in keeping some hoodlums off the streets. I'll stick only to a select group of bloggers who put quality above quantity. Too bad, most bloggers don't seem to know the difference!

Hard Pressed

We all have our handicaps, don't we? Well, mine isn't exotic or seriously debilitating but stunting nevertheless. One of the frequent chores that bug me is the ritual of ironing my trousers. Really, this is a job way too menial for my genius. My flirtation with the iron began during the school days, although jogging my memory doesn't help in recalling when I was pressed into this demeaning job. I guess it was my mom who made me do the unthinkable, ironing my school pants. We had an ancient iron the weight of a shot-put and even lifting it was a Herculean task. Anyway, someone had to do the job and it might as well be me. I actually developed a temporary stoop after the ordeal was over. It was, quite literally, a back-breaking experience. The second press I had an affair with was newer and lighter, much to my relief. Kaushik, my roommate in Pune, was the proud owner of this little device that made life a lot easier than it otherwise would have been. Romancing the feather-wei
My first credit card has arrived. It's a Mastercard from Standard Chartered Bank. I had insisted on getting a Visa card and they had promised to comply, but...
Blogging held the promise of making a Milton out of every moron...and too many of them fell for it. The quality of most blogs is appalling. I often get the feeling my own posts are adding to the litter.
I thought I was wearing my blue jeans. I realised they were the black ones instead only when I reached office!

The Tree Blog

If trees could blog day in and day out about their daily experiences without repetition, what would they write? Since my daily routine is very monotonous and stripped of spectacular events, my dilemma is very much the same. At least the tree could write about the dogs that would come up to it & do their business against the trunk. Not that I would yearn for canines having a similar affinity for me! Now let me tell you about my daily routine. I set my mobile to wake me up at 6:45 in the morning. I go through the early morning chores while cursing the night for being so short and the corporate world for its preposterous belittling of my creative genius. I leave home at 7:40 and tread my way to the bus-stop, an activity that consumes 11-12 minutes. The company shuttle arrives, I board, take the window seat and wait for the potholed roads of Bangalore to thoroughly rattle the bus...& in the process awaken me completely for work. The trip takes 45 minutes. I reach office, keep swipi

The making of a cheating maestro

Well, the little peeks would happen way too often...and they really don't qualify for cheating, but the first time I cheated in school to an extent that would put even Lalu to shame was when I was a 7th grader. The UN was conducting a short study course on its history, structure, constituent bodies, et al. We were given a booklet that contained all the pertinent information that we were supposed to mug up in about a week's time. Being completely indifferent to academia, I conveniently gave it a miss. However, when the big exam day came, I was shocked to learn that unlike me, most of my peers had taken an active interest in the course and had actually studied very diligently! I didn't want to end up on the wrong side of the scoreline. Too late, I was helpless! Now some guys had opted out of the course at the very outset. My partner belonged to this rarefied tribe. Lucky me! The exam began and there I was, answer paper on table, pen in hand, an empty head and nothing to write

Bagpack/Backpack

I don't know how it is in the rest of the world; but in India, school children are burdened with oversized bags. You can't help feeling sorry for the little ones having to lug heavy backpacks each morning to school and then back home after dispersal. I couldn't escape this ritual either. Packing the bag for the next day was a particularly tedious task, and dad helped me during the early days. Actually, he did it all by himself! Then came the dreaded day when he refused to go through the chore as he was busy teaching didi something. The task of packing my bag all by my own looked infinitely intimidating. However, a man's got to do what a man's got to do! So I braved the challenge ahead and emptied my bag. Out came the school prospectus among other books. The back cover contained my time-table. Dad used to arrange book according to their subject, refer the time-table and simply inserts the relevant books into my bag. A foolproof method, I must acknowledge. I

Microsoft Live Mail Beta

My elation was boundless when I finally got an invitation from the Microsoft guys to try out their Live Mail. However, I was soon to be disappointed. On clicking the link, I learnt that the service is not available to Indians yet. Why does Microsoft treat Indians like dirt? We had to stick to a paltry 2mb of Hotmail space when most of the world had been upgraded to 250mb. Does demographic segregation really help Microsoft?

Ganguli Bagan, Diya-Didi & Sebastian

In a dilemma

I had originally planned to buy the Nokia Wireless Keyboard. However, now that I've got some semblance of the price (which happens to be above Rs.6k), I'm not ready for the leap. Even desktops are now available for under Rs.10k.
I could write an entire book on the events that took place the previous week. Now, if only my memory didn't fail me yet again! Folks, you must have realized by now that I suffer from an impoverished memory...something that has bugged me since early childhood. In fact, I decided to blog to preserve the memories that would otherwise fail me. So what could have been a comprehensive narration...will never be.

Kolkata

Tulu Mashi, Dida, Pinki, Chumki, Didi

Rohit shifts to his new place tonight...while I leave for Kolkata via Guwahati Express. Things will change when I'm back. I'll have to do some speed reading on HTML, Javascript, XML...well, the list goes on. I also intend to join French classes in January. The only thing I won't enjoy: ABAP! Another change will be the shift from desktop blogging to moblogging. I'm finding no time to blog from my office desktop...and I intend to buy a personal desktop not before 2007 begins. I just hope the Nokia keyboard isn't to expensive. Any idea about the price? Adieu, dear readers! Will hope to catch up with u folks on the 5th of December.

An apology to Sittu

The flurry of recent activities made me completely forget that I was supposed to inform you about my trip to Kolkata. I leave tomorrow and will be back on the 4th. My leave of a fortnight was cut short on account of the demands of work. My blog will remain dormant during this period.
Monsoon seems to be the perennial flavor of the Bangalorean airs. It's raining for the past few days...and, needless to say, the roads look intimidating once again. I'm sure even the Jovian terrain is more hospitable!

Riya

I'm dying to get a Riya account. Google is rumored to be in talks to buy it. I think the acquisition of the nifty product founded by Munjal Shah would be fantastic.
I'm running out of time for my blog. Any suggestions? I'm contemplating buying the Nokia wireless keyboard to blog via my mobile.

News Aggregators

Are news aggregators that big a deal? While Bloglines & Google Reader are the best web-based aggregators, I'm not entirely convinced too many people would find reason in using them heavily. Using bookmarks that directly lead to the web-page would be far easier minus the pains.
Human ingenuity hits a peak when there is a scarcity of water. I guess that's what makes Bangaloreans such skillful and clever people. Though I'm used to water scarcity by now, the situation becomes so desperate sometimes that we have to invent desperate measures. I had seen how Prateek & Sittu would brush their teeth without water (!) or wash clothes with only a limited amount. Innovation at its exemplary best. The situation in JP Nagar is no better. We cooked chicken with no supply of water and had to use whatever little we had in stock. Adding to our misery was Santosh's improvident way of expending water, as if he owned the Indian Ocean!

Thieves @ Work

Who doesn't like a holiday? Didi (sister) & I were no exceptions...especially since it endowed us with the opportunity to raid every nook & corner of our house for edibles. No matter how well-fed we were, we would be perennially hungry! Afternoons would be the best time for us to go on the hunting expedition. Siesta-time for Mom obviously granted us with ample opportunities to hone our skills. Didi would be the mastermind in engineering the plot to raid our house. She would devise schemes that left no stone unturned in probing every inch of every room in our quest for anything ready-to-eat that would ultimately and up in our tummies. Mom was well aware of our dark deeds. After all, you couldn't really blame evaporation for the rapidly depleting stock of cookies bought only a couple of days ago! She devised her in-house techniques of deception that would make our hunting that much difficult...though we always proved more than equal to the task at hand. If she had gradu

The Cricket Match

Bangalore hosts the second cricket match tomorrow in the ongoing series between India & South Africa. Manilal is contemplating buying some tickets...although the chances of tickets being available so late in this cricket-crazed country look very bleak. Only once had I had the opportunity of watching an international cricket match in a stadium. The match was between India & England, the venue being The Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Buada & I were so excited on our way to the venue. India got to bat first and put on a decent score. But the Englishmen were equal to the task and thrashed our bowlers. Like many spectators, we were annoyed by our amateurish performance and decided to vacate as the match was destined to be lost, we thought. By the time we reached home, there was a stark reversal of fate. We won! I curse myself for missing out on the events that led todramatic change.

Trials & Tribulations

Santosh had cleared the first selection round (written) of an IT firm and faces the acid test (HR & GD) today. He has been busy honing his verbal skills by reading one of the Businessworld magazines I had bought a few weeks ago! Never have I seem such diligence in him in reading this particular magazine. Well, I wish him all the best!

The Green Sidewalk

I always hated studies. Still do. But early on I learnt an ingenious way of giving those endless hours of poring over dull books the miss. I simply had to accompany Dad to the market! Since it usually happened during my study-time, taking a break was the most convenient way out. Dad would only be too glad to have me by his side, as he & I could endlessly talk about a wide range of issues. Those trips to the market had another hidden agenda: I loved reading magazines and going to the bazaar with Dad surely meant I could emotionally blackmail him into buying me another one...even though the previous issue was still unread. Well, I didn't have to try too hard and Dad would invariably relent after a little convincing. However, what I remember most about those trips to the bazaar is the walk back home. Ours was a narrow but tranquil lane with grass sidewalks on both sides. Jamshedpur being a hilly town, the lane was rather steep and running downwards was sheer joy. On reacing the te

Me, Friends and Forum

Hawking's cosmological riff (click here)

It's nice to see even Cnet dedicating a part of its tech-space to Dr.Hawking. I recall having attended a lecture once in Fergusson College, Pune by a cosmologist who had done his PhD with Dr.Hawking. The lecture revolved around Time and Gravity. We listened to him in rapt attention in the amphitheatre. He had a great sense of humour and ended by saying," I hope to see you in the future...or the past! " We erupted with a roar of laughter and applause. I fail to recall his name.
Willis Conover It's a shame that bloggers hardly know him ! Even Wikipedia had no article on him until I wrote one.

SAP/ABAP Motivation

A combination of some/all of the following factors could be motivation enough for me to put my heart in SAP/ABAP for a year: Winning the Nobel Prize for ABAP coding, 2006. Aishwarya Rai/ Heather Graham marrying me. Osama bin Laden reading Bhagavad Gita and converting to Christianity. All the world's mosquitoes & cockroaches going extinct. Microsoft embracing Linux/Open Source and offering to nurture the operating system.

Ah, Beethoven!

It must be over a month since I began experimenting with listening to sounds that most people call music. Well, non-classical is not necessarily all that bad. But I'll never convert to this grade of mass-appealing sounds. I'm listening to the finale from Beethoven 's Pastoral Symphony over Yahoo! Music...and I now realize what I've been missing for the past month or so!

A testimony via Sulekha by one of my readers

(I've edited the grammatical flaws) Hello Deepanjan, It was fun reading both your columns.You have an art to make your topic interesting. Not bad. Have fun..and good luck for futher topics. Wish u well. HazelEyes (BTW, I've forgotten my Sulekha id & can't contact my 'hazeleyed' admirer!) (...Nope! There was a problem with the Sulekha web servers!)

The Phone Call

I had called up Mrs.Nileema Raddi in the morning but she had gone out. So I called her up again at 9pm. Among many things we discussed was Shrirang bhaiya's wedding in Nayantara just before it was to be demolished. I also broke the sad news of Suchismita's sad demise, something that left aunty thunderstruck. Uncle is in New Delhi to visit his relatives. It was nice to hear from aunty after a long time. A little later (9:50pm) came a call for Santosh from his nondescript native place. The gibberish from the other end made me disconnect the first time. The second time was a more concerted effort and after getting a semblance of what was desired, I handed my phone to Santosh. He talked to his heart's content for half-and-hour, enough to drain my cell!
Yahoo! Cricket score ticker is a beauty
Live audio cricket commentary via cyberspace

Searching for someone

I remember hearing a song by someone in a movie with Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves as the protagonists. Charlize is a free-spirited girl who is terminally-ill while Keanu is an ambitious lawyer who is captivated by Charlize's ways. The most memorable thing about the movie, though, was the song. I tried to ferret some information about the song yesterday, and its unknown singer. Searched for Charlize Theron via Wikipedia . Browsed through her filmography and zeroed in on Sweet November (2001), which rung a bell. I didn't remember the name of the movie and hoped this was the one. Clicked on Sweet November . The plot confirmed my doubt! This was indeed the movie I was looking for. Searched for Sweet November via Yahoo! Music. Managed to find the original motion picture soundtrack. Clicked on the link . Found the list of tracks. There were 13. Now which one was I looking for? Visited Amazon and searched for Sweet November . Gotcha! The list of tracks, however, gave no info

A different bus

I go back home by the company bus. My usual bus didn't show up yesterday, only to be substituted by a new one. I wasn't aware of the change. What's more, 'BUS No-31' was written nowhere on the windshield of the replacement. So how was I to know that the swanky bus stalled right in front of me was my bus? I came to know of the switch only after the bus had left! Having no alternative, I walked in the rain back home. Bangalore roads being what they are, my trousers (yeah, the same bee harbouring ones) & shoes were heavily soiled by the time I reach abode.

The sting operation

There was a guy in school named Subroto Giri, who, we all agreed, was the world's most accident prone person. All the world's ill luck would strike him first before affecting others. We sympathized with him, though we couldn't help occasionally taking a dig at the poor guy. I guess Murphy's law of averages has finally caught up with me. It's now my turn to be the butt of the jokes of my acquaintances. I went to HDFC Bank to sort 2 issues. One was sorted, the other had to wait. It was during my trudge back to my office that I made the mistake of putting my left hand into a hip pocket. Unknown to me, a bee had conveniently lodged itself there. No sooner had I made the intrusion than the bee stung me! My thumb, to be more precise. It felt like my thumb had been amputated. I did the obvious and withdrew my hand with a jerk, not knowing what had hit me. Getting a semblance of what had just happened, I realized to my consternation that the sucker could still be 'in

The price for lethargy

I hate washing clothes. It's way too menial for a genius like me. Beethoven composed 9 symphonies, Shakespeare scribbled 37 plays, Darwin came up with the Origin of Species, Einstein contrived The General Theory of Relativity...and here I am washing clothes. What a sheer waste of my talent! I'm sure I could come up with something equally monumental if civilization gave me enough time to apply my fertile mind on higher thoughts. Well, my loss is the world's loss! Well, yesterday being a holiday, I finally set about washing some of my dirty clothes by dumping them into a bucket and adding washing powder and water. It was 10am. They were supposed to soak for 2hrs at the most. They ended up soaking for 13hrs instead. Actually, I kept procrastinating till I could no longer avoid it. One of the garments (a green colored T-shirt) decided to seek revenge for my apathy. It bled its color, thereby dyeing a formal shirt which I normally wear to the office. What a reprisal! I tried in

Linux PCs: Customer service or lip service?

The above Cnet News article evoked some fervent comments from the readers. My own comments were dabbled with and the fallout was rather interesting. Click on the title above to read the original article. My comments appear at the bottom. Please bear in mind that I'm not technically adroit in Linux. Exaggerations in my comments are there for all to see!

Hotmail Replacement?

It may be high time I bid adieu to my beloved Hotmail accounts. Microsoft is planning a contienental shift with its web-embracing Live initiative. I guess Kahuna will eventually replace Hotmail...or become the next major Hotmail upgrade. To know more about Kahuna, click on the title of this post. Hurry, the link could be dead soon!
I would have loved to Audioblog if we had a local number. I hope the day isn't far. Speech-to-Text would also be great and the Blogger folks are working at it. Hurry up, guys! A genius (yours truly) is waiting to make himself heard in cyberspace!

The Guards Are Down

It came as a complete surprise to me today when I discovered that Yahoo! Groups was accessible via our office desktops. I've added a Flickr badge to my blog. This ostensibly goes against my view of keeping blogs ultra-spartan. Well, some flowery stuff wouldn't hurt!

The WTC Makeshift Substitute

The blue beams stand testimony to religious flaws. Like it or hate it, you can't attenuate the hold religion still has on us. Proof enough that we have a long way to go before we vanquish our inhibitions!

Some friends from BIT

I've cruelly stolen these photos from Saurabh's and Vivek's Flickr pages. I hope they won't sue me for the infringement!
Proof that there is perfection in the universe!
Kaushik had called last week saying he was scheduled to come to Bangalore on Saturday (29th) and leave for Chennai the day after. He was to put up at my place. However, he never showed up. I guess the recent floods in these two cities put him off.

The Ritam Shock

Chanced upon Ritam's site . Going thru his contact page gave me the shock of my life! Could it really be his photo? Curiosity got the better of me and I quizzed him via email. Pat came the reply, "Yes!"
After a break of 5 days, I'm back in the office. I've been busy downloading all sorts of programs (mostly crap) for my mobile. Most of them are, however, not free. I've downloaded some nice themes as I was getting tired of the default vanilla one.

A Sedate Diwali

Yesterday was Diwali and needless to say, we were all agog. Not me, as I'm still in mourning for my Dad, as this was my first Diwali after Dad's demise. I couldn't help recalling how, as a child, Didi & I used to have a whale of a time during the festival of lights. Dad would buy fire crackers, phuljhari, charkha, dori and some improvisations the market would come up with each year. Didi & I would diligently expose all our fireworks to the Sun during the afternoons. We would partition our fiery properties so as to avoid disputes when the big day came! The big day would finally come. Lighting the crackers was great fun and the little sibling rivalry that had been brewing over the past few days would finally subside and camaraderie would kick in. We would pool our crackers together and light them in unison. Sharing was more fun! Being the more timid of the two, I was slightly subdued as compared to the other folks, so Didi was on the driver's seat. I was and still
Mantu, Anand & Mani @ ease in Bangalore!

A mood swing

I was feeling on top of the world only a few days back, thanks to some prospect of change. Now, everything seems lost and I'm in a gloom. It's terrible when hopes are dashed.

Forum & Home

Rediscovering Chess

I bought a Nokia phone a few months back and got into downloading games for it only recently. I hit upon an absolutely fantastic Chess game for Symbian phones. It's called ChessGenius and I've spent sleepless nights playing against it on my mobile. I've won only 2, keeping the competition (read 'opponent') at the simplest level. There's no guessing what'll happen if ChessGenius plays in a stronger mode! After all, I'm as good at it as a Sumo wrestler may be at figure-skating! It's a dream game for me and I'm thoroughly enjoying playing against my newfound opponent.

My One Night Stands

Yours truly has had his share of what most people deem the ultimate luxury: one night stands. But before your juices begin to flow, dear erudite reader, let me forewarn you that all my 'bedmates' were just inanimate objects! It's about those times when the world hadn't gone digital. Times were simpler and I was only a kid. Dad would go to the bazaar every evening; and each time he came back, I would spring into action and probe his shopping bag for anything that might catch my fancy. Books & Magazines were my favorite...and there was generally enough of a steady supply of them to keep me happy. When they were not to be found after a probe, I would be happy to make do with any other thing, including fruits, vegetables, electric torches, buckets...the list is endless. Accommodating the newly bought 'object' by my side during bedtime was seldom an issue. My parents had learnt by observing me over the years that I was abnormal beyond repair & thus never trie

Anish Asokan, The Great

Anish has been pressing me to writing something about him...so here I go. There are some people who stand apart from the crowd. Beethoven, Einstein, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, yours truly, etc have all been specially endowed people. Now Anish obviously doesn't belong to our league, but that doesn't mean he is not gifted. Anish has a way with people and people related issues. This became apparent during our early days of acquaintance. Any problem and Anish would be using his skills to navigate us out of it. Soon we got so used to him that we would be paralyzed without his presence. So we informally promoted him to our in-house HR Rep! I asked him to pursue an MBA with specialization in HR. He has been contemplating it ever since. The other thing nice about him is that he never loses his temper or patience. We pester him with all sorts of requests, both reasonable and unreasonable, and he never declines to help. What's more, like me, he too is an occupant of the nascent blogo

Some Firsts

Sittu & Prateek finally came to my place, although they couldn't have done so without our mobiles. Thanks to them, my data cable was finally put to some use like transferring files from the computer to my mobile and vice-versa. The pair of earphones that came with my mobile were also used for the first time.

Accenture & Forum

Yahoo! Podcasts

Yahoo!, on Thursday, announced its entry into podcasting with the beta release of Yahoo! Podcasts. Yahoo! Bangalore had been the brain behind this new product with entire product development happening out of Bangalore Software Development Centre.