Virag Since 1981

New Blog - The CExperience

2007-08-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

16th August, 2007

All the events and happenings during my 2 years IIMC will be posted under the following blog ...
I will retrospectively and prospectively (financial accounting terms) try to cover as much as I can from the wonderful once in a lifetime experience at IIMC.

Keep visiting the http://cexperience.blogspot.com

Nostalgic memories of Worklife

2007-06-30T23:51:00.000-07:00

19th June, 2007

15th June was my last day at offish, as I was about to embark on a academic voyage for the next two years. It was like, I was ending everything that was good and fun, in anticipation of something better. There is no guarantee that whatever becomes of the future, will be better than what I had already in my hands. But still human beings take such seemingly stupid steps. That was eczhaktly my state of mind in those days ...

My typical worklife was as follows: Go anytime to offish. Finish your work. Then one has loads of time to do TP. We used to go for movies anytime during the week. We used to play LAN games like AOE, AOM, Warcraft and CS for as along as we could. We all had no insecurity in terms of money or work. Cannot summarize the past 2 years in tonnes of literature. It was one of the best times in my life.

My exit from the company was also pleasant for me. I got praises from everyone for my work. I never believed that I was making substantial contribution to my team, but when it was the time for me to leave, I was made realized. On the personal front, I hope the friends tht I made along the journey do not forget me. I dont know how well I will be able to live upto their expectations, but one thing I am sure of is, I will have a special place for them in my heart.

7-generation meet at Talaja

2007-06-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

April 27th to May 2nd, 2007

Our family had planned a get-together. Now let me clarify by what I mean by **family**. We cherish brotherly bonds with cousins who trace back to 5 to 7 generations. We were in all 80 people gathered for doing some family ritual. According to the belief, it is established that our ancestors protect us and take care of us. They have the answers and solutions to our present-day problems. For example: If someone is facig some illness or someone's children are not getting married, they seek answers from the holy spirit. We performed a havan (ancient hindu ritual) and established the shrine for our ancestors and kul devi.

Now let me describe my hectic itinerary. I left Pune, on Saturday 28th April afternoon and reached Mumbai by 5pm. Then I had to catch a train from Bandra at 9:00 pm. We reached Baroda at around 5 am and from there we hired a cab to reach Talaja ( my native place ) by 9 am. Then we climbed the mountain and participated in a religious ritual at the peak of Talaja mountain. The ritual was called adhar abhishek. In the evening we decided to go to Palitana. So, mom, dad, bhai, bhabhi, me and my nephew all of us reached Palitana in the evening. Next day early morning we climbed the holy Palitana. Up there, we performed our usual rituals and then started descending it in the scorching heat around 12:30 pm. Without food, water and shoes it was a testing coup, but I managed it somehow. Then we went to Bhavnagar to meet bhabhi's aunt who had take diksha long ago. We had food at "Food Point, Bhavnagar" and then we reached Talaja late in the evening.

There, back at Talaja we had a family meeting where the nuances of the havan were being decided. I have been religious throughout my life, but I had never witnessed such a ritual. This ritual baffled some of the principles of Jainism. So in a way it was hard for me to believe in whatever was being done. I tried to discuss this with my father, but he also had no conclusively answer to it. There were some stories/incidences which approved of the presence of family-protectors. Also, somethings took me away from it.

On a side-note, this made me relate this all to a classic animated film, MULAN. Mulan is a chinese film which highlights the ancient Chinese family rituals and also shows how an intelligent girl saves the Chinese empire from being invaded by Mongol tribes.

A journey to Yester-years - Ganga Jamuna

2007-06-15T01:05:00.001-07:00

May 20, 2007

Lazing out on Sunday, I turned on the television-box. It was showing "Ganga Jamuna", staring Dilip Kumar and Vaijanti Mala. It was an exquisite novelty. Everything seemed to have a novel touch. Those easy and silly dance steps. The touching songs like "Nain Lad gayi hai to manva ma kasak hoibe kari", "Dhundo dhundo re sajna.." and "Do Hanso ka Joda beechad gaya re ..." etc. The obvious sets, hide-and-seek type love story and the dhishum dhishum fight sequences. The archaic cursing style like "Dayan, Bhangan, etc". I appreciated and enjoyed every bit of the movie. Once in a while going back in time really helps enliven one's thought and also generates liking towards the old-ways of doing things.

No Movie since last 2 months

2007-05-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

Can you believe it ... I havent seen a movie in a theatre since last 2 months ...
Some my new acquaintances saw my blog and immediately made some comments like
"Are you a movie bluff?" After the reviews of 300 and Namaste London, there were many good movies, but due to lack of company and work-load I dint get a chance to patronize bollywood.
However, I enjoyed some movies on television but still it feels like I missed something during the past two months.

I will break this theatre abstinence with a bang ... going for pirate of carribean ... world's end on Saturday morning at Gold Adlabs, Mariplex. All the pappirazi's be there, if you wanna catch my glimpse.

Reincarnated on Orkut

2007-05-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

With a lot of enthusiasm I am again throbbing on Orkut.Com. When I last deleted my account in October 2006, I had 336 friends and 50 fans. And now I have to start from scratch. When I see some people who have more 600 friends I wonder, how deep their relationship will be with each of them. This time round I have resolved that I will not have any "havent met" category of friends.

Keeping a lot of scraps on orkut can give one a lot of personal details abt a persons life by reading it. So, it is advisable to periodically delete your scraps. If you are too picky abt it, least you could do is save the scraps locally on ur machine. Thats what I did :). I had saved all the relevant webpages from my previous orkut account, now I dont have to rethink the testimonials that I had written, I can reuse my previous effort.

Also, last time round I got some matrimonial mails ... stating I read your profile on orkut ... liked it ... so I am looking for a person like you to marry my sister ... let me know if you are interested. So I have also resolved to reveal as less as possible on orkut. If you have some questions about me then u can ask me through contacting me ... I would let you know my passions, turn-ons, turn-offs, what will u find in my room, etc..

That gives me an idea for orkut team to mull over. Why not have complete customzied profiles for each user, as to allowing each user to have 5 different profiles visible to different category of friends - acquaintances, good friends, best friends, etc. Even now they have implmented such a thing for birth-dates. You can make your birthday visible to friends, friends-of-friends or everyone. This must be extended to all the fields, so conscious people like me can micro-manage the information they wanna give to other people.

Nonetheless, happy orkutting!!!

Dearth of industry jobs for PhD scholars in India

2007-05-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

I was shocked to know that the job prospects for PhDs from elite Indian institutes are pretty bleak. Most of them either go for a post-doctoral research program in some foreign university or join academia or research labs. People who would want to make a career in the industry have to fight hard to find an appropriate job. One such article highlights that 4 PhDs were placed in industry in the last three years.

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=151575

When we talk about BRAIN DRAIN, we should take this condition into consideration. Government should do something to create employment opportunities for highly skilled scholars, so that they do not have to flee out of their country.

Delicious Home-made Raita

2007-04-24T01:22:00.000-07:00

On food front, I am having a better time than before. When we had a maid for cooking food, the process of procuring food was very convenient. Every evening we find pre-cooked food ready to be gobbled. However the quality sucked many times. Then came a decision to get rid of the bai.

Since then we have been cooking food at home and eating outside mostly at Cafe Diamond. One fine day, Kshama had an idea of making a raita. So she bought a pack of Masti Dahi and some tomatoes and cucumber. Then she applied some magic on the ingredients and voila. I was treated with the best raita ever.

Copperchocs Strawberry Cake

2007-04-24T01:16:00.000-07:00

Spelendidly decorated Strawberry cake was delicious. We had ordered this cake to celebrate Deepesh's Happy Birthday at offish, on 23rd February, 2007.

Electronic Cheque Acceptance System

2007-04-23T23:38:00.000-07:00

I had been to HDFC Magarpatta city branch to deposit the cheque issued to me by someone. I was all set to fill in the cheque deposit slip and submit it to a specified counter. Consequently, the banker on the other side would collect the cheque, stamp the slip and return me the acknowledgement slip.

However, things did not go as I had thought. I was introduced to a machine by the security guard. It had an impressive display and the software was easy to use, especially for people who frequently use ATMs. I keyed in the account number and inserted the cheque into the designated slot. The cheque was scanned and an acknowledgement was printed. I collected the acknowledgement slip that had the scanned image of the deposited cheque and happily left the bank.

While riding the bike, I thought as to why do they require a separate machine for this task. Why cannot they extend the ATMs to accept cheques? May be the next generation ATM machines would have this facility too.

Luggage racks removed from locals

2007-04-09T01:20:00.000-07:00

This is some unknown General knowledge to me.

I travelled by western railway local train from Borivali to Dadar while returning from my recent Water Kingdom Picnic. One most striking thing that I noticed was the removal of overhead luggage racks from the EMUs of local trains that ply on the western suburbs of Mumbai. When I enquired a bit about this seemingly unusual thing to happen. It revealed that this has been done on account of 7/11 bomb blasts in Mumbai local trains that tested the city pshyche. Once the reason became known to me, I could not help but appreciate this decision. No doubt that this would add to the inconvenience of local train travellers who use it to commute with heavy luggage. But this would mean that terrorists will have a hard time finding a place to leave their bomb-laden baggages in railway compartments. This was one such bold decisions that could attract huge criticism, but nonetheless it is justified by the safety criterion.

However, no such steps have been taken in the local trains that ply on the central suburbs between CST and Karjat/Kasara. Are the authorities waiting for the terrorists attacks on central corridor before they can implement similar preventive measures on the central railway local trains?

Namaste London

2007-03-26T06:13:00.000-07:00

A good fun to watch movie. It had a sentimental topic blended with a feel-good factor and a usual happy-ending. It highlighted indo-pak unity in London. It also showed that ethnicity and pride about who you are, bites you even when you have long been away from your place of origin. That seemed true in all levels, be it language, religion or native place.

Akshay kumar rocks yet again. Katrina had a natural role to play that suited her european upbringing. Songs were good, though distracting at times. With all its shortcomings, it still becomes a light and entertaining movie.

300 men against a million ... fiction not history

2007-03-19T03:02:00.000-07:00

Watched "300" on Saturday, 17th March 2007. It was a great movie and fun to watch. It was worth every penny. One of the rave review follows:

By SANDY COHEN
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — An ancient battle. A little-known director. An R rating. No major movie stars.
These are the unlikely ingredients of the weekend's top-grossing film, 300. It earned almost $71 million, making it the best March movie opening in history.

The story line was based upon a historic battle during the 4th century BC. However, there were some controversies revolving over degradation of Persian king Xerxes. In the movie, Xerxes was shown as a self-proclaimed god and a barbarian. This might not be true, but alas history is written by the winners and not the vanquished. So I would recommend that this film be claimed as a work of fiction rather than an epic war story.

To know more about the written-form of history about the spartan culture, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta

300 is a finest example of a last stand war.

Last stand is a loose military term used to describe a body of troops holding a defensive position in the face of overwhelming odds. The defensive force usually takes very heavy casualties and on occasion is completely destroyed.

A list of last stand encounters can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_stand
I was amazed to read the history of few of such encounters. Hope you also enjoy the same.

Black Fridays of the World

2007-02-13T23:59:00.000-08:00

14th Feb, 2007

After watching Black Friday movie, I tried wiking the term, and I was amazed to find a lot of Black Fridays across the globe. Hope you find it interesting too.

Black Friday may refer to the following historical events:

Black Friday (1869), the Fisk-Gould Scandal (24 Sep), a financial crisis in the United States
Black Friday (1881), the Eyemouth Disaster (14 Oct), in which 189 Scottish fishermen lost their lives in a European windstorm
Black Friday (1887), hanging of four people which are connected directly or indirectly with the rally of Haymarket Riot at 11 Nov
Black Friday (1889), the Johnstown Flood (31 May), a flood that killed over 2,200 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Black Friday (1910), a campaign outside the British House of Commons (18 Nov) of the Women's Social and Political Union the Conciliation Bill failed
Black Friday (1919), the Battle of George Square (31 Jan), a riot stemming from industrial unrest in Glasgow, Scotland
Black Friday (1921), the announcement of British transport union leaders (15 Apr) not to call for strike action against wage reductions for miners
Black Friday (1929), the notorious stock-market crash that occurred in late October 1929
Black Friday (1939), a day of devastating fires in Australia (13 Jan)
Black Friday (1944), a disastrous attack by the Canadian Black Watch (13 Oct) near Woensdrecht during The Battle of the Scheldt
Black Friday (1945), an air battle over Sunnfjord (9 Feb), the largest air battle over Norway
Black Friday (1945), Hollywood Black Friday (5 Oct), a riot at the Warner Bros. studios stemming from a Confederation of Studio Unions (CSU) strike leading to the eventual breakup of the CSU
Black Friday (1959), the cancellation of the CF-105 Avro Arrow project (20 Feb) by Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker leading to the lay off of 30,000 workers
Black Friday (1978), a massacre of protesters in Iran (8 Sep)
Black Friday (1982), the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War
Black Friday (1987), (31 Jul), the day an hour-long F4 category tornado ran through the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Black Friday (1993), bomb blasts in Bombay (now Mumbai), India
Black Friday (2004), a crackdown in Maldives, Malé (13 Aug) on a peaceful protesters

Black Friday may also refer to:

Any Friday which falls on the 13th of a month
Good Friday or God Friday, the Friday preceding Easter
Black Friday (shopping), the day after Thanksgiving Day in the United States, the first shopping day of the Christmas season and one of the busiest shopping days of the year
The last Friday before Christmas in the United Kingdom, a day when widespread anti-social behavior due to public alcohol consumption is expected to occur, and police are given additional powers to combat it citation needed
Black Friday (1940 film), a science-fiction/horror film starring Boris Karloff, Stanley Ridges, and Bela Lugosi
Black Friday (2005 film), a Hindi film on the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, directed by Anurag Kashyap
"Black Friday", a song by Grinspoon
"Black Friday", a song by Steely Dan from Katy Lied
"Black Friday", a song by Megadeth
"Black Friday Rule", a title of a song by Flogging Molly
"Black Friday", the nickname for game 3 of the 1977 NLCS baseball championships. Philadelphia Phillies fans gave the nickname because the Phillies blew an early lead against the Los Angeles Dodgers and a controversial call was made during the game
"Black Friday", the title of a poem written by Dennis Rader, the BTK killer

To view the updated list of Black Fridays .. click here

As a matter of fact, when search for black days, you would get a list for black monday, black tuesday .... black sunday. But black friday has the most numerous list of all the 7 days of the week.

Black Friday - Mumbai bomb blast revelations

2007-02-13T22:26:00.000-08:00

14th Feb, 2007

Yesterday night I had been to watch BLACK FRIDAY, a hindi movie on Bombay Blasts of 12th March, 1993. The director Anurag Kashyap has done a commendable job in presenting an unbiased description of all the devastating incidents that occured during that period. I am compelled to rate this film over others like Farenheit 9/11, Oscar winning Crash, Munich, etc.

The movie tries to touch all the aspects of the psyche of people involved in the whole incident.
1. The conspirators and their motives
2. The people who executed the plan and their families
3. The police
4. The role of Pakistani Intelligence Agency ISI and Rashtriya Swayamsevak sangh RSS
5. The innocent people who suffered due to the investigation

However, the film doesnt highlight the sufferings of the victims whose realtives were killed/injured in the blasts. It also did not give much footage to the role of media and I appreciate that. This was about the film. Watch the film to know the facts.

The film was so gripping that the audience was spellbound and astonished by the details of the whole chapter. I was shocked and ashamed of my ignorance of this whole incident. You ask me why? Here is my set of reasons: I have been born and brought up in Mumbai and I have always lived in and around mumbai through the past quarter century. I was in Mumbai when the riots happened. I was in Mumbai when the blasts shocked the city.... Still, I knew nothing about the whole incident, apart from the headlines that were served to me in my bed with the morning tea. My age must be 11 years then. I am thankful to the makers of this film and author S. Hussain Zaidi for exposing this unknown truth to the youth of India. I would even like to see an inclusion of these incidents in history textbooks of 8th grade. This film was completed in 2005, however due to a stay order by court this film was not released till 2007. The final verdict of the bomb blast case paved the way for the relaese of this film.

Another shameful aspect of the incident was the time-delay and inefficiency of Indian government to pass judgement over the whole case. It took 13 years to entangle a very simple case. If such facts were known within 6 months of the blast, how could the Indian judiciary explain such a long delay? At the end of the movie there were a few statements:

Bombay bomb blast was the longest criminal case in Indian judiciary
Out of 122 convicted, 100 were found guilty
Tiger Memon, Dawood Ibrahim and 26 others are still absconding

How could Indian government be negligent of this issue. How could a damned criminal like Tiger Memon still roam free somewhere in Pakistan or Dubai. I consider this as a utter failure of Indian foreign relations and diplomacy. Is Dawood Ibrahim more powerful than Indian democracy. If we link it to the Saddam-US analogy, we can consider that Dawood is more powerful and influential than Saddam and even US because India is a bigger democracy than US.

More info on the movie at IMDB

My trip to Roopkund

2007-01-04T02:55:00.000-08:00

The adventurers … Anant, Chaitanya, Imran, Navin, Raman, Rajukumar, Srinivas (Vasu), Tushar and Virag

We were in all 9 people … Two of them were gonna come from Bangalore and they were destined to join us at Hazrat Nizammudin station at Delhi … and they indeed reached well before we did. 7 of us boarded the train from Pune a day earlier than our Bangalore crew.

The race to catch the train .. and the journey begins ..

We had a booking from Pune to Delhi in Karnataka Sampark Kranti Express. The train was scheduled to depart from pune station at 3:10 pm. But we all were in Magarpatta city till 2:30 and my, anant’s and navin’s luggage was at our home, which is on the way to station. So we all were in a panic mode. We somehow managed to reach the station on time and catch the train.

On the way out of Pune, we saw the BHEL project, Magarpatta city, town of Loni and so on. There were a lot of sugarcane farms on the way and we had some fun discussions on these farms . Then we did our usual timepass by playing cards and singing random songs. Our train was designated to stop at a few stations on the way – Bhusawal, Bhopal, Jhansi. However, it did stop at a lot of stations due to signal clearance problems. On the first day, we all slept somewhere after Manmad. Next morning, Vatsalya’s dad was gonna come at Bhopal and collect the parcel that we were carrying to be dropped at Bhopal. In return, we were expecting a lot of grub. And we were overwhelmed by the delicious sweets and namkeens that vatsalya’s father had given us. After doing usual timepass on the way we reached Jhansi, where Navin’s mom was gonna come. But for some reason we weren’t able to meet her. Navin’s health was bad and he was likely to drop the plans and go home. But he did survive that temptation for good. Then the train did not stop at Agra and it did not stop at Mathura, so we were deprived of famous pedas and pethas. Finally we reached Hazrat Nizammudin station at around 5:15 pm. We joined forces with Raman and Vasu from Bangalore. This was the first time I met Vasu and I thought that he was a very silent kind of guy … and even worse than Raman with respect to communicating in Hindi ;). We lingered in the waiting room with our very heavy luggage for sometime thinking what to do next. We were supposed to catch a train to Haldwani at 11:00pm, so we had roughly around 5 hours to grasp as much of Delhi as we can.

To be continued later .........

House husbands

2007-01-04T02:50:00.000-08:00

With the recent experiences that I had with some career-oriented, new-generation, at-par-with-men kind of females, I thought of a new term – House husbands. If this term is not already patented, I would like to file one for it. Not that I am being sexist or mocking the so-called “aaj ki nari”. I feel that it is very essential that society starts accepting this idea. In today’s scenario, the most affected are the children, who do not get proper attention from either of their parents.

So far, men were considered to be responsible for earning money and upbringing of the children. But when mothers also tend to become career-oriented and run after their professional achievements, upbringing of children gets adversely affected. Also, one can read a number of articles on loss of fertility in career-oriented women. This is quite natural, the women who bear the burden of lot of stress and tensions of office work, cannot cope up with added responsibility of having babies. It has so happened that the most basic responsibility of woman has now become an extra-curricular activity. Though I might sound a bit more critical towards women who give more importance to their work than their personal life, but this should roughly depict the problem that we are facing. If this trend continues then in a long run, I see western culture invading our cultural values. For example, children are asked to leave home as soon as they are 18 or 20 years.

Instead, I have got a better idea. In couples, where the female partners are more capable as compared to their husbands, husbands should assume the role of house-husbands. There is no harm in doing this. In essence, children should be getting proper care from either of their parents. Nowadays, anyways house chores are done by maids and cooks. So men will just have to be home managers. The only hurdle is the social acceptance and the traditional saying “Men are superior to women”. However, I still feel that this would work out fine. Especially, if successful women start having such a criteria while selecting an appropriate groom. I am sure they would find someone suiting their requirements.

Mood Indigo 2006

2007-01-04T02:07:00.000-08:00

Had been to Mood Indigo 2006. I was always in awe of this social fest, one of the best in India. I have been attending this event regularly since 4 years.

Even after 2 years of passing out of IIT Bombay, I had quite a few friends here ... Roshan, Sobhan, Hemant, Aniruddha, Biswarup, Appu, Manshri, ..... mostly research scholars :). Sobhan was awarded a highly coveted PHd award. Here are the deatils.

Sobhan Babu (Research Scholar, CSE Department) has been selected for the $2,500 IBM Outstanding Ph.D. award for 2006, given by IBM India Research Lab, New Delhi. His thesis is on "Degree Conditions for Subgraphs". Congratulations, Sobhan.

Met Sobhan at his room Hostel-1 Room No. 234. This room has an interesting lineage of its occupants. Bharat Adsul, who did his BTech, MTech and PhD from IIT Bombay was staying in that room for almost an eternity. He was a student at IIT Bombay for about 10 years. Bharat had also received this highly acclaimed 'outstanding PhD award'. After he finished his PhD, that room was occupied by Mr. Virag Shah, who stayed there for close to about 5 months. After Virag (that's me) moved to Hostel 12 for the luxuries of this material world, sage-like Sobhan Babu got that divine room. So, in a way, because I made way for Sobhan to move to this holy room, he was able to achieve this success. Hence, I have a significant contribution to Sobhan's award. After submitting the thesis, Sobhan is planning to take a 4 month tour of India, where he will be going from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. He is not bothered about his placement or what he wants to do after his PhD. Even Bharat is joining as Associate Professor at IIT Bombay, Mathematics Department for a very nominal salary that would be less than any of the Software Engineers working for Multinational companies. Hats off to this young minds, who are really instrumental in shaping India's future.

Now, let us move on to the fun part. I attended the Fusion and Sufi Night. Fusion night was boring for the initial part were they were trying to mix various instruments like table, guitar, sitar, etc. But when the performers started playing Hindi film song music with their traditional instruments, the crowd was in complete awe of their artistical genius. Especially, playing the string instruments using only one hand and creating high quality music was an awesome display of their acumen.

After this, we had the Kailash Kher with his group 'Kailasa' on stage. Kailash Kher started with a few of his famous songs like, 'Mangal Mangal', 'Diwani', etc. But the crew was too much bothered about the sound quality and lights and other chores. Soon they lost the hold on crowd and we left the show in between. Then Sobhan treated me with braed butter and bournvita at the H1 canteen. After that I rejoined Tejal and Roshan for the Shadow show. The shadow show at the convocation hall was amazing. After that someone played piano for the audience and soon crowd started to leave the hall, because the combination of slow piano music with tabla in the background was not very appealing, nor it was entertaining.

When I reached Hostel 12, Hemant was there at the gate. Not to welcome me ... we met by chance. Then we went to the H12 canteen and I had a plain dosa with a non-jain chatni. Then, Hemant took me to his cozy room and we had a great time ... just kidding. Hemant was quite excited about the whole MBA thing. He had a lot of things to talk about since I could relate to the campus life at IIT Bombay. Everything about hostel, sleeping during lectures, placements, problems due to 10pm deadline of visiting girls in Hostel, etc. I also briefly relived my campus life during that conversation.

Then Roshan came back and we both went to his room. Hemant had antakshari finals the other day, so we all slept at 3am. In the morning, I went to Convo Hall to cheer Hemant. The whole event was ridiculously techy and lengthy, but that is what one can expect out of IITB geeks. Hemant tried very hard to overcome the opponents, but managed to get the second place. The event took more than 1hr 30 minutes. I was late to reach home and got good scolding from mother :).

To conclude, I had a great time at Mood Indigo 2006. One advice to all the people, if you are in Mumbai during 25-29 Dec, then make sure to attend Mood Indigo. If you have a partner, then make sure you get them along with you. I guarantee you a quality time or else your money back ....

Fanaa movie review

2006-05-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

Friday 26th

We were 15 people and 14 tickets were bought on Thursday. I landed in Mumbai on Thursday eve so my ticket was booked later. Somehow the RAdlabs people sold out my ticket. So we had no option but to squeeze 15 in 14 chairs, which we successfully managed ;)
Turn ons:
1. Kajol looks gorgeous
2. AAmir Kajol chemistry rocks on screen
3. Good music
4. Gripping story and great camera work
5. Shayari fans would love the dialogues and the dialogue delivery
6. Moral of the story: Life is a choice. Choosing the better (behetar) ofthe two right paths and choosing the more righteous (munasib) of two wrong pathsdecides the way one's life goes about. (This is the last dialogue; it will soundbetter in urdu)
7. Moral 2: Jo pyaar ke chakkar mein fasa, woh mara

Turn offs:
1. Pace is slow
2. Too many coincidences makes it far away from reality
3. Predictable story
4. Aamir's age shows up

More information on the movie at IMDB

Deadly bike accident: Helmet saves 2

2006-05-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 23rd

It was a usual day. I got up early went to swimming and then a bit of jogging.We left for office at around 11:30 and Anant was driving as per his turn.As we approached Magarpatta city, there was one cyclewala who was riding merrily on the extreme left side of the road and anant was driving steadily at 60 Kmph. Suddenly the cycle rider realized that he missed the right turn on a divider-separated road. He took a very sharp turn, leaving absolutely no chance for the bike driver to avoid the collision. Thus, accident happened.

We were lucky that we both were wearing helmets. Anant slid with the bike for quite some distance. From the marks on his helmets,it seemed that his side face and the right ear were intact thanks to the helmet. Inspite of helmet protection he suffered minor bleeding through mouth. He had injuries on the shoulder. I was thrown at the other side of the divider and I could not recollect my line of flight. I can only tell that as soon as I realized something happened, I was lying completely on my back on the other side of the road. No prominent marks on the helmet. But there was a very bad injury on both the legs. On one leg there was no bleeding but it wore the direct impact on the sheen bone. The skin on the right leg was peeled off mebbe upto 5-6 layers, not sure though.

As soon as I saw up there was a truck coming from the opposite direction at about 50 meters from me. It must have stopped after seeing my spectacular stunt. I was able to get up by myself and I slapped the cycle rider. He was a kid of around 16 years. He was bleeding at 2 places on his face. He immediately said sorry. He was desperately trying to reassemble his ransacked cycle. So he asked me to help out. His innocence was very touching. I gathered myself and reached the side of the road.

I dont remember what anant did immediately after the accident, but he brought the bike to the side of the road. After I analyzed his condition I approached the cycle boy and advised him to go to the doctor. He asked for money. I immediately refused and then came back to anant again. He said he was fine.Then a local came and checked for our fractured bones and advised us to get away from the site b4 the locals come.

We went to Vatsalya's place, which is located near the office, washed our wounds with dettol. I had a quick bath, dorned myself with the same torn trouser and dirty shirt and went to office. I was already feeling nauseaous and suddenly my left leg started swelling like hell. I applied ice to it and some people advised me to get it checked up. I immediately rushed to orthopedic's hospital and then home. Luckily it was not a fracture but some blood clot under the bone lining. Had to take a tetanus injection. However, I was suffering from body pain on shoulder and back for three days and I also suffered from temperature, mebbe due to the body pain.
After I narrated the incident to my mother, she was of the opinion thatI should have given some money to the cycle kid. I felt guilty of not doing that. But somehow the instincts at that moment did not urge me to do what was right. Anant had done well not to directly hit the kid and instead hit the front tyre. One thing I learnt, bike riding is not safe. Even if you are a very careful driver anyone can hit you whenever they feel like.

beat_the_heat@pune.com

2006-05-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

Visited this place Diamond waterpark at Lohgaon. It was the best possible outing tobeat the heat in Pune. Check it out. Details later. Photos to be uploaded soon

Biometric security in ATMs

2006-05-11T23:49:00.000-07:00

From my previous post about SBI ATM story, you might be well aware that I am in awe of rural ppal using this relatively new technology in a whole-hearted fashion. Though we were quite behind the world in propagating this tech-blessing to our countrymen, we can surely catch upto them in no time.

As early as 1999, the developed countries started using the biometric security solutions in their ATMs. It is high time that we also follow the suit. To start with, we could recommend/compel the banks to augment their ATMs with finger print authentication systems.

I discussed this idea with few of my friends. The immediate refutation that displayed the resistance to change mentality was:

1. My ATM card is being used by my parents. So once this system is in place they wont be able to use my ATM card.

Many recent robbery events like extorting out the ATM pins and withdrawing money from ATM, a boy using his father's credit card password to make fradulent transactions worth some lakhs, etc has sounded the alarm. This necessitates that we consider the banking transactions as something sacred and take preventive measures by stopping people from accessing each others account.

2. The next argument was humorous but still realistic. The robbers might cut the thumbs of people and then withdraw money from their accounts.

Of course, no security in the system is safe from rubber-hose attacks, but we could make the life of criminals as hard as possible.

3. Movies like Charlie's Angels, Being cyrus, etc. show that it is very easy to fool the finger print recongnition system.

But when finger print recognition is combined with existing pin-password system, it would provide enhanced security as compared to the current state.

4. The cost factor.

Given that ATM machines cost somewhere around 3000$, cost of additional 200$ is acceptable by all means. There would be reluctance from banks to avoid this additional cost. But nonetheless it is an investment. Moreover, if a certain bank can provide this facility, it could make it a top advertising agenda to allure more customers. In essence, competitive advantage can be achieved by being the first one to introduce biometric security in ATMs. The rest of the banks will soon follow.

Indian banking sector is booming and with widespread use of technology in day-to-day activities, security is becoming a serious concern to the systems. The banking softwares are buring examples of real-time, robust and fault tolerant systems. They cannot afford even a minute downtime or loss of data.

I was quite impressed by the net safe payment methods, where the internet transactions can be done without disclosing the credit card information to the seller. The concept is simple, a temporary one-time card information is generated for doing a internet payment. The credit card payment gateway temporarily recognizes this information which cannot be re-used. Many such simple but efficient protocols are soon to emerge. It is just the matter time that ppal start believing in the widespread use of technology to their advantage.

More information about finger print authentication gadgets used in ATMs can be obtained from
http://www.axistech.com/indexWelcome.asp?size=1024
http://onclick.blogs.com/biometrics/2005/03/japan_banks_to_.html

IT meet May-06

2006-05-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I am sure many of you are gonna read this.

The idea of reunion started with some casual scrapping on Cheenu's orkut profile. It was long pending and we wanted to make it grand. So there were mails, IMs and phone calls carrying the message of this event. I still remember that we (with habib and cheenu) had an hour long yahoo conference to decide MOnday as the auspicious day. Let me not bore you with organizational details ... and get on to the interesting stuff.

It was decided to meet on Monday, 1st May 2006 at 5:15pm at Matunga station. People started gathering since 5:05 and till 5:30, we were already 6 ... Nisha, Habib, Cheenu, Swapnil, Ambokar and me. Most people looked as they were 2 years before with a few exceptions like Sumit and Swapnil. It was as if Swap had done load shedding on Sumit. We all then strolled down to Ruia college chatting about all the things in the world. In no time I had kept my promise by revealing all the interesting surprises that I had in my box.

In mid-conversations, there were mentions of different people and where they were and what they were doing and when are they getting married and ..... so on. Everyone was so enthused to know how their colleagues are doing. Then there was substantial addition to the mob with blessings from Kate, Shumit and Aniruddha. 9 of us then decided to move on to Cafe Coffee Day and have a grab. We walked through 5 gardens and lanes across VJTI having a lot of fun together.

At CCD, we made a ruckus with ferocious laughters and jokes from our college days. Then there was the usual photo session with gals giving their best looks. To tell you the truth Nisha and Cheenu were looking gorgeous ;). Soon I realized that only 9 people had gathered from our original lot of 50. Thanks to a birthday celebration by a group of teenaged girls who were much noisier than our mob. The birthday girl was looking like an angel, I am cursing myself for not taking a pic. We did our best to make them feel our presence by passing expensive comments and imitating them whenever we can.

The earlier realization gave me an idea to commemorate the whole lot. So we started jotting down the names of everyone and that too roll-number wise. Eventually we barely managed to recollect all the names. We were sure we could do this because all the memories came alive whenever you thought of someone. The most difficult names were easily recollected but the obvious ones like Shravan, who was going to come for the meet, was in the last few to surface on the list. By the way, we must have tried to call Shravan atleast 500 times that day. But god knows where he had been. Probing further we found out that he was on a date with some cool gal at Thane. At this juncture, we missed Chantoch very badly ... for obvious reasons.

As soon as we finished with the list, the guest of honour joined us. It was none other than Ms. Khyati Mehta soon to be Mrs. Khyati Doshi. Everybody was awestruck to see Khyati in a transformed look. I even saw Sumit talking seriously with someone --- U guessed it? he was taking fitness tips from Khyati. She also brought the photograph of Mr. Pritul Doshi. Ya, not to forget to mention the important personality who had accompanied her: Mittal. It had been a week since I saw her :(.

Soon we checked out from CCD and the early-sleepers started saying farewell to all of us. Nisha, Shumit, Khyati and Mittal departed from the flock. The remaining people were already hungry and started looking for a good place to eat. We had to select between classic and garnish. Since both of them were crowded, we selected one thru FCFS. At Garnish, people started their selection by discussing about varied eating habits across india. Then there were some good cool fundaes about stock markets by our Finance Director, Cheenu. Some people were planning to order sabji-roti. But the infectious Pav Bhaji ruled. Sumit has ordered a plain pav bhaji but soon gave in to the temptation and ordered a cheese pav bhaji. In all between 7 people we ordered, 5 cheese pavbhajis and 1 plain pavbhaji.

After the PavBhajis we decided to hogg ice-creams. Since we all were feeling nostalgic for the lack of presence of Santosh, we went to Dimple ice-creams. The AC wasnt working so we came out of the parlour before everybody cud get in. On the way to naturals sumit revealed two stories. I remember that one of those was about Santosh's bookay to Dimple by his friend. We all enjoyed ice-cream at naturals, followed by a pan. Then we all departed, with pleasant memories of the well-spent evening.

In the local train, I was with Swapnil and Kate, where I did chance-pe-dance and distributed general life fundaes to the mortals. This was all about the happenings of the meet ... the feeling part of this occasion is yet to come ... signing out for time being.

Love,
Virag

P.S. If you feel like writing about this blog, then do click on the comments link and leave your valuable thoughts

Search for "alcohol" on google ..

2006-04-12T05:50:00.000-07:00

This is interesting ... When one searches for "ALCOHOL" on google, the first link is that of Alcohol 120%, a virtual CD software.

To a con man, this might look like a very absurd result. This particular case motivates the need for "context-sensitive web searches".

Amazing barber

2006-04-11T01:04:00.000-07:00

5th April, 2006

As I decided to have a haircut with a difference. I went to a shabby barber shop on the side of the Solapur Highway at Fatima Nagar. The barber was wearing a torn banyan and was working on his sole customer. I thought I would be next, but then he said that someone was coming and if he comes he would take him and I wud have to wait. I decided that if that person comes I would go to some other barber shop. neways this place wasnt cool at all.

The person came and I started to move out. But the barber gave a very needy look and said that I must come back. The look appealed to me and I waited. When I came in barber was wearing an ironed shirt. I had to wait till he finished shaving the other person. Then I asked him to trim my hair. He did that with atmost care, stopping when I coughed, asking whether I am comfortable when I moved a little. It was very clear that he wanted to impress me. Also, I was sure that people like me were not frequent visitors at this place. He called me "Sir", which embarrased me and I asked him not to call me that. He gave me the cliched reasoning of customer-barber relationship has no bound to age. So I started a conversation with him. He revealed that he was in the profession since last 40 years. Some 12 years back the whole of Fatima Nagar wasnt there. There were farms instead. His baraber shop was a small 50 square feet room which had a similar room adjacent to it, where his family lived. He had a young son around 14 years (I guess) and an old looking wife. He revealed that he was already 54. While he was working on me, he had some guests and he had to hurry. But he made them wait and completely his job faithfully. After he had finished he gave me massage which was really great.
All-in-all I was touched by his hospitality and customer-friendliness to the core.

Breaking the routine ... meeting people

2006-04-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

5th April, 2006

I was kind of bored of the routine life. So I decided to complete some work and then roam around the Pune roads to peep into the city life. Daily I get to see some 10 faces and talk to not more than 5 people. But this day was different, I was roaming in an unknown territory, asking for directions to people. The place where I wanted to reach was clear but the path was not. This is not true for my life. I can see many clear paths that could lead to different goals, but I do not know where I want to go :(. Senti-stuff apart, I was really feeling very light and happy, meeting people. I must have talked to more than 25 people, I gave lift to 3 people who made a mutually benefitting travel with me.

As the day dawned I decided to get back to my nest. So I decided to have a hair cut. This time I wanted it to be different. I went to a very shady looking barber shop. The barber experience was also great ... see the next blog.

To summarize I had a great refreshing day when I got to peep into the city life and forget about the monotonous routine which has no glamour in it.

SBI ATM story

2006-04-11T00:37:00.000-07:00

5th April, 2006

I was in need of some 200 bucks which I needed to pay at the RTO office located at Khadki. I had never been to khadki before. But I was sure that there would be some ATM in the vicinity. I had ATM cards for my accounts with SBI, BOB and HDFC. So I started my quest for ATM hunting. I first went to a UTI ATM. It was unfortunately short of cash. Then I scourged the whole area running around for ATMs, I found 5 SBI ATMs and 2 UTI ATMs. But I wasnt able to get money from any of them. This was due to the SBI bank employee strike. Finally I got to an ICICI bank ATM and removed cash through by BOB card, which cost me Rs.55 for cross-bank transaction.

This was an unfortunate incident that might have happened to many people who were running arond like me during those strike prone days. But this reveals that Indian people are also benefitting from the use of latest technology. Rural people have also started relying upon ATMs for their cash needs. This would work in favour of SBI bank which has the most ATMs in the non-urban areas. Also, I noticed this cool feature in SBI ATM at Koregaon park, it had ATM locator which showed all the SBI ATMs across India. I was impressed.

3 ways to handle other people

2006-04-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

There are 3 classes of people with regards to commenting on the actions of other people:
Class 1 (Ideal) : They show tolerance to the way different people think and respect the freedom of expression. They try to put themselves into other persons shoes and try to understand the circumstances and other factors that are instrumental into influencing one's thoughts. They are also ready to change their opinion if they are convinced by the other person's point of view.
Class 2 (Indifferent) : They are indifferent to what others do and just do whataver they feel like. More or less they are harmless creatures, but they have a very stereotyped manner and a predictable behaviour, since they do not tend to adapt themselves to the environment.
Class 3 (Adamant) : They insist on enforcing their thinking on people around them. Whatever they think is always right and they closed to other people's opinion.

I partially believed in this classification. But IMO most people have a blend of more than one of the above classes. People assume different roles and so they adopt different behaviour under different circumstances. These circumstances are driven by fear. Fear of losing something, fear of looking stupid in front of loved ones, etc. When a person is asked to be an arbiter in a dispute in which he has nothing to gain, he would behave according to class 1.

In short, humans are designed to be erroneous in nature. In fact the unpredictable behaviour of humans is one of the factors which differentiate them from machines or rather monkeys. But I believe monkeys are not as stupid as they are portrayed in folk tales. After all History is always written by winners ... More on this in the next blog.

IITB Nostalgia

2006-04-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

It's already been 8 months since we all departed from our hostels and almost got lost in the daily chores. But time and again we do get opportunities to meet up and cherish those sweet memories. These memories really prove to be a great asset when u feel down and require some reason to cheer up.

Nitina landed from Bangalore. Nitinlko, Vibhav, Arumay, Aniruddha, Biswarup, Shubro were already there in Mumbai. The recipe wasnt complete without me and anant, we jumped in Indrayani express on Friday evening to reach HN for the memorable Friday evening. We made a racas at Mochas by singing C grade songs from Hindi films .... after catching up with everyone's life. It was a perfect bachelors party with an exception that there was no groom.

Then there was usual night out ... but the morning was special. The same old maddu aunty served us dosas and vadas to quench our hunger. Next we all went to the jetty at mid-powai, where we saw heavenly beauty in mid-summer and that too in the middle of a crowded metroplois like Mumbai. I repeated my same old dialog, more than 80% of mumbaikars cannot imagine that such fantastic and picturesque beauty exists amidst the concrete jungle. There was mist all over the powai lake. The jetty is a special place where one is surrounded by the lake from three sides. One can see fisherman in their hand-rowed boats trying to catch fish, mebbe. Coconut trees emerged out of the clouds in bunches of 4s and 5s from a couple of places in the lake. If we delete the buildings from the horizon, we would be at Nakki lake of Mt. Abu or at Kerala lagoons, mebbe (I havent been there, yet).

Before we reached this place, there was already a couple indulging into intimate acts at the jetty. They were initially shocked by our unsolicited arrival, but soon they felt at ease after they sort of confirmed that we are not their acquaintances. The couple must be young students, most probably from first year or so. Neways this reminded me that, how I always wished to have a girl friend with whom I could have spent intimate moments in company of natural beauty. How I always wished to show to my friends that IITB is the most beautiful place on this whole earth. But only the lucky ones get their love.

All in all I enjoyed being back at this place again. In fact, when I was staying near to it for around 2 yrs, I never took conscious effort to get up early and witness this miracle everyday. Only when a thing is gone, humans appreciate it's true worth. But most times it is too late when one realizes this. In this particular case, it is not gone yet. Before pollution engulfs this beautiful lake IITB authorities must take some good care of it. And assuming that they will I cud still join this place for further studies. Bcos I believe, there are a lot of avenues to be explored and lot of secrets to be revealed.

Understanding the blogging concept

2005-02-19T05:24:00.001-08:00

I started blogging recently. But I have a lot of unanswered questions:

Why should I blog? Rather what should I write in blogs?
Am i writing for my sake or for people's sake?
Should I read mt blogs frequently or should I just blurt out stuff and forget it forever?

Reading this one might think I am a kind of indecisive. But mebbe it's true in the initial stages.
In my initial attempts to answering these questions I came across certain other blogs. It was simple just type in "do's and dont's of blogging" in Google and there you are. You can read loads of articles about succesful blogging. I would like to cite a few good ones here

Awaiting Enlightenment from the veterans bloggers.

Know about me ;)

2005-02-16T07:43:00.000-08:00

My Geocities Website