Welcome New Year 2009

At 7:00 p.m. on 31st Dec, 2008 I started looking at my options for celebrating the New Year's eve. I had the options of sit out in a crib with my friends and look at them as they go drunk and start acting all emotional and funny (read nincompoopish). Then suddenly through the lands of the originality the idea of a long time with friends came to my mind. I approached the second musketeer (anirudh) to bounce my idea off him and he kindda liked and we searched the mightly Google to find that a drive to Warangal would fit the bill. We were still contemplating who will out third partner in crime be and then the third musketeer appeared (nitin). Although this one was already a little drowsy and on asking why were his energy level so low came the utter surprise, "I am saving it for the night."

Anyhow after completing an important task in office, I was all ready to leave. We packed our bags and off we went from the office. First we dropped bags at anirudh's and then bought some pastries and Kaushik caved into his sweet tooth and bought a bunch of pastries. After all this initial commotion, we were finally off. Next came the part where we needed to refuel our car with gas and air. The tragedy was that there was no help at the air filling place and we had not clue how to do it. For the first time a task as simple as that was looking impossible. The air pressure in the tyres was only going down, no matter how hard we pushed the nozzel into it.

I told you we tried very hard, Kaushik was on all fours to get it done but little did we know that there is a small knob that needs to pushed to let the air pipe send out the air out of the nozzle. Finally we gave up on that fuel station and reached another one, where the air fueling person told us about it and all three of us had that "AHA" moment.

We were finally ready to leave for the drive. Anirudh took the the wheel and we were cruising our way to the Warangal. Once we were out of Hyderabad, the roads were amazingly smooth. The trucks were a bit of trouble in the night, since it was a two lane highway and the trucks were often straying on our side. Ultimately we reached there. What hit us suddenly was that we had not planned what we were gonna do when we reached Warangal. And then we got hooked on to A's blackberry which showed us lake Bhadrakali and then temple by it's side. We reached the temple at about 3 am and came to know that it does not open till 5 in the morning. We decided to take a stroll there and there were loud vedic enchanting going on in one other temple. The mandir finally opened at 5 a.m. and we were actually ushered in by a priest since we had been waiting for a while. They were quite surprised to see 3 young men waiting in the temple compound at 4 in the morning. Anyhow, the temple "Bhadrakli" is a very famous temple there and despite the fact that we had not planned before hand, we had actually landed in the right place, cha-ching.

Following the temple visit, I took the wheel and man was it fun to drive in the morning hours, with the wind cool and the road void of any traffic. Mid-way I had to take a leak and I stopped the car by a paddy farm and that was where Anirudh went trigger happy with his High Dynamic Range photograpy. Also, when we started back, he requested the wheel back since it seemed so much fun to be driving in the day rather than the night. I sat behind and slept. I woke up almost when we had reached our houses. We said our greetings for the day and went to sleep in our houses. I think I slept for more than 5 hours.

Foodie and Reader at Delhi

I was out roaming for the whole day in Delhi today. I went to Khan Market, Cannaught place with two of my friends. Well they were not present at the same time but in shifts. 

First I got a scolding for not reaching khan market at time. I was late in leaving home and then I got lost due to the inundation of connecting roads at the India Gate. Man !! that place is some confusion but a fun confusion. I went around the 5 km circle twice and then ultimately found Shahjahan road board put in one shy corner which is so hard to perceive. Some times I wonder why they actually put those road signs is such awkward positions where one can't even see them. Are they testing your memory or are they trying to see how good are you at averting an accident while you are trying to search for the right exit to take while you are driving in the maddening traffic. For me it was fun since I am one of those crazy drivers who has fun just pissing off people on the road for no reason :D (with a twinkle in the eye). Please pardon me the digression of describing the general nuances. Anyway, i reached the road and saw the divine sign pointing towards Khan Market. I took the turn and there it is. Yeah don't think I am going to point to the market. There was a road diversion in the middle with no clue how to get the market. You must be wondering that I have been in Delhi for so long that I must have checked out KM by now but I confess that I haven't and this was my maiden trip to the WHOLY place (yeah pun intended here by all means). Anyway I felt like I skipped a beat while asking for KM. I thought that the person would beat me up for knowing where KM is. Anyway he directed me to the place and I was surprised that there is a FREE PARKING there. Yeah and it is managed too, with all the perks of a paid parking (read with the tone here, please !!!). I parked there and then met my friend who was scared that she might miss her flight. Anyway I had the awesomest Waffles at The American Dining place and I preached my naive friend about American Breakfast and LOL that she is a vegetarian so we ordered Waffles with Chocolate syrup (no Maple syrup, buhu buhu) on my recommendation. And they were the greatest waffles I have had in India. Anyway as we caught up on the things we have missed recently (recently here means 1 week, my friend ufff ... phone conversations) she became paranoid about her flight. She had a chauffeur driven car to take her to the Airport. And we left the amazing breakfast place and I bid her good bye at her ride. 

And then starts my second interesting part of the day. After getting lost at Pandara road once and then missing Ashoka road, I stumbled upon Cannaught Place, the place I love the most after home and college in Delhi. On a friends recommendation I went to Oxford Bookstore in The Statesman building and by jove was I impressed by the place and the location. Nice view, some very nice people sitting around sipping coffee and pondering over new releases and politics (well I am consciously missing out the chatty people who were thinking that they are in a dating paradise and were drooling on the cheeky comments which I swear would have filled an olympic sized pool). I had been in search of Jack Welch's book: Winning for a while. But here is the twist, I got Winning: The Answers : Confronting 74 of the toughest questions in Business today. And I thought well this isn't what I was looking for and I asked a shop representative for the book. He told me that the other title is also available somewhere in the store and he will have to look for it. I kinda lost him in the store and I got down to reading the one that I had in my hand. Suddenly after 5 minutes that person taps my shoulder and he hands me the book. This came as a pleasant surprise seeing how customer service is in such places and that is why I recommend this place highly. 

I read around 2-3 odd chapters and my friend, lets call him KK called me up that had reached and I set out on foot to meet him. I was on phone and he met me by kicking me in the a**. Awkward I know, I donno why he does that with most of his friends, I will take it up with him. Stupid *((&^$%#$@$#@     :D. Anyway, we set out for a food place and he whizzed us around looking for Sagar Ratna. As soon as I entered I got reminded of all that south indian food and I got reminded of a Ghetto southy restaurant in Hyd and I had to bail out. Then we decided to go to Legend of Connaught. And did I like it, hell yeah. There was Lebanese food there with one of the best hummus and cheese that I have had in a long time. We licked our fingers together with veg kebabs ( I know how lame, these vegetarians I tell you :)). We flushed our food down with Mint and Lemon iced teas. Then we decided to split and roam around in CP.

I can't write anymore but I can say that although I had a pretty tight schedule today, I felt relaxed after a long time.

Owe it to myself

I owe this post to myself and my soul which feels elated at this momemt. At 3 am in the morning sitting warm and snug in my blanket in the chilly night of Delhi where my laptop battery is about to run out and I am too lazy to plug it into the wall, I can't help but recall the incidences of the whole day.

I woke up at 11 am although I wanted wake up at 10 since I wanted to prepare for the big even in the evening. Anyway I did my morning prayers, got out of bed and walked to the washroom. Nothing felt out of the place. I did not feel that this could be biggest day of my life which could present me with the biggest opportunity of my life. I went to bath and then when I came back to my study table I was looking at all the questions that I had prepared and I started flipping around the key points and the notes that I had created. There was a strange anxiety rumblimg around in my stomach but I tried to be brave for myself. I had lunch sitting in the warm sunlight in cool winters and felt relaxed. And again I came back to my study table to start the daily grind I have been following for the big moment in the evening today. Again the never ending points and summaries, my speaking style, articulation language and I don't what all was going through my head.

And suddenly i looked at the watch and it was 6 and well what do you know, there was Satte Pe Satta playing on the TV. I watched some parts of it and shared a hearty laugh wuth my grandfather in the living room. Before I knew it Dad was home and it was 7 p.m. Dad gave me the needed advices and I got back to looking at my notes. It is 7:25  pm and there is still 5 minutes to go and suddenly the phone rings. 

Wow !! I think this is it, this is the moment which is going to decide my lifes direction, what I'll do and how I'll do it. I pick up the phone and a conforing voice on the other side greets me really well. It was so warm that I suddenly felt all my apprehensions dying away. And I was welcomed with a 'Good Evening' ( which was very nice of them btw). And the first points pops off. I get down to the details and soon before I knew it, we went into details of PG Woodhouse, Jeeves, Wooster and the portuguese guy at the pool. Then we discussed about gliders. At some time during this conversation, I also dicsucced that India is marred with poverty and that corruption is the main cause for it. I accepted that we were actually the ones who were vehmently promoting the corruption and something should be done about it. I explained that I want to minimize the exploitation on the grass root level by consolidating the commodity market. The discussion ended up with my future plans and before I knew I was saying 'Noooo !' to the comment that our time is over.

This was a dream that I had seen so many times that I would finally have the chance to live this moment. I did not realize that it was go by so fast and that I would enjoy it so much. There is one thing that I can say - "It was definitely an experience worth working for and worth fighting for."

This is me signing off till I have more to say.

pssstt... if you know what I am talking about here then you know that I am talking about THE PLACE here.

Technology in the future

What if human body parts were totally detachable. In the sense that one persons brain could be used to operate on his body parts locally or it could be used to operate the body parts of another human over a network equally seamlessly. We could have surgeons sitting in a hot shot hospital operating on a patient in a remote village by the help of a sattelite connection. That would be amazing.

All that needs to be done is to be able to intercept the signals from parts of brain to different part of the body and then wire them over a network, say internet to the same organ of the other person's body. 

The negative part I see about the above is that it will stipulate another kind of colonism over bodies. In the most extreme sense, one "bad" person would be able to take on control over other person's body and make him do all that he himself does not want to be caught doing. One would never know who to expect the soul of the person to be. He himself or someone controlling his brain. 

I think the above seems far fetched. But it was worth documenting it.

Extending this thought, what if we could have a robot or technology so advanced that the brain of a person could be used to control the most detailed motions of a robotic body. Again there is a lot of neo-colonism possible through such an architecture but looking at the bright side, a lot of dangerous and complicated maneouvers would be a breeze. Of course, in the beginning these would be so expensive that they would be used only for dangerous explorations. But it won't be long before they would catch on and someone in "You know where :)" would make a cheap replica which would work for 1 year as against an expensive one which would work for years altogether.

I guess I am just writing out my technology fantasies but going by Moore's law of exponential progress in technology, I wouldn't be terribly amazed if someone combines the world of cognition with robotics.

Freebase Parallax: A new way to browse and explore data from David Huynh on Vimeo.

Building a cart

Location : Mountain View, California 

Event : Google organised the yearly picnic for mountain view employees

Incentive : Build your own cart with your own tools and yeah of all the people they gave me a drill, in my own hand :D

Hallelujah for Cart of team 10
The conspirators : Shwetabh (yeah me :D), and other googlers.

Some more art work on the cart ( How original, eh ... :D )

Where the hell is Matt

I was strolling through the Internet like a zombie and toppled on this amazing video. The author seems to be making the point that despite all the cultural and regional differences the basic human traits such as a hearty laugh, a clumsy dance prevent us from going into the state of obliviousness.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.