Minutes of the Meeting

i had an important meeting today. i have been shifted internally to another project. "optimal re-allocation of in-house resources". fuck MBA in general and project managers (jargon toting man-eaters) in specific! saala aadmi se commodity bana diya!

this was an important meeting as i was to be introduced to the rest of the team members and assigned work for the rest of the week. the meeting lasted all of 1 hour. presented here are the minutes of the meeting in 15 min chunks.


1. i wrote down my name. i was supposed to tell it to everyone later on. then i heard someone mention MQ processing inside of a very long and completely meaningless sentence. so that went down too. and the rest is the result of my very fruitful imagination.

i thought a little bit of charming rusticity would help elicit a meaningful response to the useless chit chat that was going on around me.

the MQ just got stuck inside.


2. this was in response to a "bekaar hai" scribbled on the other indian colleagues notebook. the scribble beneath it just followed of its own accord.

i think its meant to depict the aimless wandering that the entire meeting, and the discussions therein, were headed off to.

i have serious misgivings about this corporate entity called Meeting from now on. its a perfect example of machiavellianism of the top order.


3. aah this is a good one. there was this lady sitting diagonally opposite to me on the left side. so this is basically a view of her right side. this left feels right!

she looked in her mid-30's. beautiful full auburn hair, high cheekbones, slanting nose, pink lips, long curly eyelashes. sigh! she sounded exactly like a gum toting husker from alabama. my dream gal :)


4. aha! last but not the least... actually definitely not the least. this is my favorite one.

at this point the meeting had almost reached a crescendo of garish voices all combed together into a fine symphony that would have put beethoven to shame. if irritation wanted a perfect pitch and frequency for a sound wave, the meeting had it.

thats when i snapped. something went "floop" inside me. notice the different expressions on these robotic faces. benign, troubled, angry and just plain naughty (from left to right). its amazing how, by varying the angle of the eyebrows and the length and distention of the arms, one can bring about a complete change in perception of emotion. we humans are solidly entrenched in evolution eh? and no way out. (ok that was completely out of context. but i thought up this line and it sounded so cool to me that i had to put it in here)

which reminds me, i am currently reading "how to survive a robot uprising" by daniel h. wilson. its an amusing faux survival guide on... you guessed it, how to survive a robot uprising. but the point where it departs from fantasy is that it uses real world scenarios to lay out its tips and tricks. it does not use any fantastical examples which are outside of current research's reach. its fun to read if you are a robotic enthusiast. How To Survive a Robot Uprising : Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion check it out!

thats it for now folks. may the forks be with you!

30th Street Station, Philadelphia

in memory of the men and women of the pennsylvania railroad who laid down their lives for our country 1941-1945

 

work-ed up about this

Wilkommen zu QVC

 

Interesting Pic #1

Seen at the NorthWest Terminal at the Detroit Airport. Scary?

seen on trucks in India

for some strange reason i felt like putting down the slogans seen behind merry truckers in India. some of them are insanely funny, others inanely philosophical, and yet others utterly romantique. some are absolute trash. and the atrocious spellings are rarely hard to miss. but love em or hate em, you can't avoid noticing them.

here is a list of some that i remember. i would really appreciate if others can chip in with the ones they remember

1. main toh noo hi chaloongi.

2. buri nazar waale tera mooh kaala

3. aaj jalandhar kal phagwaade, aaja mere naal, le chaloon nadi ke kinaare

4. ok tata horan please

5. use dippar at night

6. raju ki nakhrewaali

7. chammak chhallo zara dheere chalo

8. diriver doosre kone mein baitha hai

9. dekho, magar pyaar se

10. balvinder te satender di gaddi

11. jagah milne par saide di jaayegi

12. abbe kahan bhaaga jaa raha hai

13. qismat apni, khudai uski

14. chal di ban than ke

15. gussa dikhayega, mooh ke bal paayega

16. jai mata di

17. ...

thats all i can remember for now. cant seem to remember the really long one's. these one liners have stayed with me from my countless trips shuttling between meerut-delhi in roadways buses. i would invariably end up chuckling to myself. another very useful past-time used to be creating arbitrary formula's from vehicle registration numbers. for eg. UP 15B 8421: 8/4 = 2/1
i would allow myself sin, cos, tan, log (to any base), exponent, and other standard mathematical notation. it was fun if you couldnt change the ordering of the numbers. 9363: log (base 3) 9 = 6/3
i know a simpler version exists, but i liked making it complex. but thats just me. :)

try it all you dragging-your-ass-through-public-transportation people out there. it sure was fun for me.

cheers!

20 somethings

Apurv has tagged me. Some of the things I would have written are already on Apurv's list, so that robs me of some of my material. But whatever is left, here goes:

20. I am a very passionate person; a multitude of them in my life.

19. I love talking. Plain and simple. Sometimes I can talk for hours on end. More specifically, I love to talk about myself.

18. A lot of people think they know me. The truth is they know a lot about me, not "me".

17. I am a consummate charmer. I've charmed my way through many a sticky situations.

16. I am a control freak. Just for my own life though.

15. Sometimes I can show this innate capacity for cruelty; and revel in it.

14. For me, detachment is permanent; so is disillusionment.

13. I am a total gadgets freak.

12. I have an uncanny capability for tolerance. My friends list spans people of all categories; rich, poor, snobs, sods, pseudo's, intellectuals, et al.

11. I am a strict believer in the inherent goodness of Homo Sapiens.

10. I love helping people. Sometimes I will go out of my way to do something for a complete stranger. It just feels nice. And I dont like the acknowledgement of such help afterwards.

9. I am highly opinionated; sometimes I will shove them opinions in your face.

8. I am a case of extreme procrastination. I dont think its a habit; more like a way of life.

7. 8 has led me to ignore a lot of my passions in life. I am slowly picking up where I left off.

6. I think coming to America was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

5. I don't think I want to remain in IT for more than 4 years from now.

4. I am a very moody person.

3. Sometimes I will be influenced by peer pressure, or a need to fit in with a crowd. I have to consciously bring myself back to yoodle-do!

2. I tend to get carried away with my emotions sometimes; and I seriously need anger management.

1. I lurve eating.

There it is. I don't have anyone else to pass on this tag to. Cheers!

live on 2 legs

just thought i'd like to record my travel iternary for yesterday. why? it was so damned long thats why! so here goes:

1. woke up 4:29 am in Avenil, NJ
2. reached Metropark, NJ at 5:00 am.
3. idled for 55 mins.
4. caught the train from Metropark to Trenton, NJ at 5:55 am.
5. switched trains at Trenton at 6:45 am to get to Philadelphia, PA.
6. reached 30th Street Station, Philadelphia at 7:30 am
7. took the cab to West Chester, PA (encountered a bitchy cab driver who didn't know where the hell we were going or how to get there. had to travel using my general sense of direction. thats why i am still quite shocked at how i managed to reach my apartment)
8. reached West Chester at 8:30 am.
9. packed my bags and took a shower.
9. caught the 9:15 am bus (SEPTA 104) to 69th Street Terminal in Philadelphia.
10. reached 69th Street Terminal at 10:00 am.
11. took a cab from 69th Street Terminal to Philadelphia International Airport.
12. reached the Airport at 11:00 am.
13. took 30 mins to check in my bag, and 15 mins after that for security check. (long queues. the processes by themselves took just 5-10 mins. raises a pertinent question)
14. waited at the airport for my flight for another 45 mins.
15. caught my flight out to Detroit, MI at 12:30 pm. (one old guy on the flight was highly amusing. he had glasses as thick as the Hubble telescope. he would take them off and bury his nose, quite literally, to read. everytime i looked at him do that, i couldn't help but smile)
16. this is the point where i start losing my sense of time. reached Detroit sometime.
17. had to change my gate of departure.
18. caught my flight out to Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX at 3:30 pm. (at one point the plane was flying over a perfect carpet of clouds. it was breathtaking)
19. reached Dallas/Ft. Worth at 5:50 pm (i think)
20. my flight to Lubbock, TX wasn't confirmed so had to check out my baggage.
21. went to Terminal A to check with American Airlines if they had a flight out to Lubbock. ticket: $982.00. the expression on my face: priceless.
22. went to Terminal E to check with Continental and NorthWest. -ditto-
23. took a cab to the Dallas Lovefield airport to check with SouthWest.
24. purchased a standby ticket.
25. took 45 mins to go through the security check-in. (i was "marked" for extra security checks. got frisked by a burly swarthy female, who could easily have picked me up and broken me in 2 if she so desired. of course she didn't)
26. got to my gate of departure and found a halloween decked counter, empty. perhaps that was the joke they were trying to pull. served by ghosts. "you can't see us and we can't serve you. have a safe flight."
27. waited and waited and waited. and after an onerous amount of waiting, i finally got my ticket confirmed and took the 9:15 pm filght out to Lubbock.
28. reached Lubbock at 10:10 pm.
29. met Rishu (my ex-roommate) who drove me home.
30. diverted to get some food and called up my friends over here.
31. went to their place to catch a bit of the India Vs Sri Lanka match.
32. came back home at 2:30 am.
33. called up home and talked for a bit.
34. kicked off to sleep finally at 4:30 am.

i feel great today. how much energy can one person really pack into this tiny frail body! a big thanx to all those people who kept me amused on each of these stopovers. you people rock!

flock

browsers are old hat. there has been no significant enhancement in the browser experience since the ancient days of NCSA Mosaic (read up on the history of Mosaic here). browsers have basically evolved to model themselves around the data that is being streamed to users. going from basic text to images to multimedia. today a browser can let you view/interact with dynamic content, but not much more. the browser itself acts just as a window to the world (wide web).

all this is about to change with a new browser on the block. Flock. the internet paradigm is slowly shifting towards communal activities. orkut, hi5, friendster, blogging, flickr, et al being strong cases in point. Flock is based on the mozilla/firefox codebase and extends it to allow accessing some of these communal services from "inside" the browser. some of the services that it provides is, communal favorites (share your favorite links with other people using the "StumbleUpon" toolbar and "del.icio.us"), access multiple blog services from inside the browser, upload/access flickr photo services, et al. i use the StumbleUpon feature quite regularly now. you can rate the websites you stumbleupon for others to see. and you can select what subject matter Stumbleupon will spew at you. it's pretty neat; check it out.

so here is your chance to test a "developer preview" of the new flock browser. please be warned that this is an early, pre-release, version of the browser. use it with extreme prejudice. it is not meant as a replacement for your regular browser... yet.

Step 1: Open this link in your current browser: http://www.flock.com/developer/download/preview/

Step 2: Most people should select/download the Windows version. If you know better, or are the owner of an exotic/alternative operating system, go ahead and knock yourself out.

For a list of 13 things you can do with flock: http://www.flock.com/fiveways/togetstarted/13.php

laters. and may the forks be with you.

strange days

strange days are upon me. to quote another dialogue from a movie, "life has taken a turn for the surreal". here is a mail i wrote to a friend, lets call her N, recently. presented here is an excerpt.

"...my recent attitude towards girls. its almost bordering on the pathological N. these days i just dont find myself being attracted to a girl. i mean on an emotional/intellectual level. and no i am not turning gay either. bordering on a misogynist is more like it. i hate women their scheming conniving ways. their fake attitude of being a girl. they are so immersed in being a girl that they forget all about being a person. they lie, they bitch, they flounce, they pout, they flutter, act mysterious, and generally act all icky and foolishly self-assured (of nothing). do they really think that men will bow down to their every whim and fancy and treat them like a china doll? are all women like that? i know very few who arent. ps: this aint an anti-feminist or pro-male propoganda. just seeking a peaceful and simple co-existence.

i dont know where its stemming from, or why it exists. i have started consolidating my circle of friends to just a few people now. i call it my "Periodical Pruning of Tangential Associates" program. but i guess deep down i think its a disturbing trend. i am not usually a person consumed with such pathological hate for anyone. let alone an entire group of people. i'd been thinking about it, so i thought i'd mention it.

... a side point; its something i've noticed recently. ever see a poor man wrestling with inner demons? i havent. too many external ones to get a chance to reflect upon the self. which gives rise to some interesting questions. does a poor man, in his act (or non-act) of not reflecting upon the self, lose the inner demons? if so, is every poor man inherently a good person? if not, whither demons? where is their manifestation? dont tell me about the crime statistics which shows that poor people form a major chunk of criminals. two things to that: organized crime originates amongst the rich ones. it takes birth there and germinates with the lower echelons of society. and petty crime amongst the poor is just a reaction, a natural one, of an underpriviliged spark of life in an inherently disinterested and uncaring world. what we are talking about is... such things as... are we alone in this world? what is my purpose? who am i? am i a bad person? what constitutes a bad/good person? and other such philosophical/psychological goobledegook, the answers to which, constitutes and consumes our inner selves.

my point is a very simple one to this long argument. do we really need to think about all this to be able to lead a better life? or to be better people? do we really need the answers? or more importantly, do we really need the questions? i think these questions, philosophies, et al are products of an idle mind on a boring sunday afternoon. the prerogative of the rich in contemporary times. inventions perhaps? maybe i am being too simplistic in my point of view. but believe me, that surely is deliberate. a simple, uncluttered, complexity free, existence for a change. i want to get out of the vicious loop of analyzing the how's, why's, where's, et al. of everything around me in life. at least for a while. a break. i just want to feel and to react. i want to engage (not indulge) my senses in feeling the world around me and to react to it as naturally as possible.

i must say your writings have made me solidify my thoughts. whatever i have written is what came to me naturally, on reading it. i apologize if it sounds preachy. i dont know what my intention was when i began writing this mail. i just think we need to pay more attention to the life that is happening around us, rather than the perception of it thats living inside us..."

hmm... thats all for now.

TV(iew) Archive

Google has just put up a copy of the "Archive of American Television"'s collection of videotaped interviews with TV legends. It's a first person view of the history, creative and business aspects of TV programming in the US.

Go forth and couch-potatofy!

Here is the Google Video link

Vidi