BCCI is Hiring

News has just arrived that BCCI has put up a job opening in the Indian cricket team. Owing to the way our bowlers are getting hit, especially Ishant Sharma, the head pontif Srinavasan has made up his mind to get things in order. The job description states that every time the ball goes flying out of the park the new hire should fetch the ball and throw it back. This is specially needed because ICC has added a rule saying only 10 new balls can be taken in a match and ishant Sharma and Co have been bowling so well that at least 20 balls are lost per match and around 18 go out of shape due to the terrific force with which stupid deliveries by Indian pacemen is being hit.

When Srinavasan was asked why he doesn’t get new bowlers instead, he stated he cannot start a breeding center to get bowlers made to specification. He also hinted that the new hire might be used for ball exchange Pardhe ke peeche. Since Bhuveneshwar Kumar can only bowl with a new ball, the new hire might be used to throw in a new ball everytime he gets trashed, so now bhuvi can swing the ball throughout the match. Srinavasan has also specified a new budget allowance of 60 rs per month to get ishant a haircut, he aims to cut costs for this new expenditure by making Rohit Sharma the official Maggi cook of the team.

Speaking more about the job put up on faukri, Dhoni said he is tired of searching for the ball in the bushes after his bowlers get hit everyday all day, he is personally going to pay the player 50% of what BCCI is going to offer. The job perks as per the job listing states that, the employee will get free Pepsi and ‘Towels’ but has warned the player from wearing the towel on his pant during the match. The player will also get free tips from Srinavasan and his son in law Meyyapan on money management. We all know the route that is going to take, said Dhoni jokingly. On asking for more details, we have exclusive info that the player will get a salary based on his performance, that is the number of balls retrieved by him, on an average 5000 INR per ball retrieved. This would easily give him a per match earning of 250000 given the way Indian bowlers bowl. His Jersey number will be 420.

On asking if a female fetcher would be considered, Srini and Dhoni said that without a reason itself Ishant is fetching balls he was hit for in the stands, if there is a girl he will throw the ball there as over throws just to go fetch it with her. Lets hope that the Indian bowling learns to respect itself.

Trainfic India!

Trains have always been a source of fascination! How do they move from one track to the other without jumping out? How do so many trains travel on the same track but different directions and still manage to stay clear of going kaboom? The whole Indian railways is a world wonder, just for the sheer size and volume of the rail system! My love for trains began with the famous cutlet, there was something special in the cutlet you get in trains! I don’t know if it was because the potatoes were mashed on the floor by bare footed cooks by feet in the oily dirty pantry car or because it was fried potato and the only deep fried item other than the vada on these long journey!

   I regularly go to sabarimala, but the travel has generally been normal with no crazy ass bloggable adventures, but the one I am still on (yes I’m blogging from the kerala express enroute coimbatore) although not bat shit crazy, it’s got a few first times for me. I finished the whole pilgrimage from kottayam to Pamba by cab and then by foot to sabarimala and back to kottayam. I’m waiting at the railway station, half sleepy in this very noisy station. All I remember is that my train the one that goes from trivandrum to new Delhi.

I buy myself a copy of digit, start reading it to stay awake, it works pretty well except I’m not listening to the announcements. A train chugs into the station, u suddenly look towards to train and see the board reading Trivandrum to New Delhi and back. My train was scheduled to arrive at 2:05, the time right now was 2:05! I was surprised the train was on time in a state where well it never comes on time! I take my bags along,  my uncle follows and we realise the train is moving in the wrong direction as it came to a screeching halt. We thought the travel made us get mixed up with directions and proceeded to enter the train. In kerala I believe it is normal for reserved coaches between trivandrum and cochin to be used as passenger trains, in other words like a local train where any number of people can jump in and squeeze the life out of everyone. We got in, S9 coach check, seat numbers 65 and 66 check! Phew, but wait there was someone  on our seats already! To be honest, there were 6 people sitting on a seat that was meant for 3. Yeah, this is cool, I now have to drive out 6 people to reclaim my seats. I ask the ladies in a cool and calm manner, to get up and give us our seats as this is a reserved compartment. They go on and act like they can’t hear us, one of the guys there starts talking in Hindi asking what I want! I said in my Butler Hindi,

Yeh hamara seat hain, anghhhhhh (captain style)

My uncle by then asks someone if this is the kerala express, that guy said yes. Is it going to coimbatore? Umm, no this is going towards trivandrum! Holy shit, we were in the wrong train, actually wait right train but wrong direction! The train was already moving out of the station, and we decided to jump out. My uncle seems to have done this before and he jumps out all pro like. I go to the door and my legs freeze, I’ve never done this before! What am I supposed to do now? Like just jump and sit on my butt? Or fly away as far as I can from the train? The platform was going to end and the train was pretty fast now, I had to think quick but act faster! So I acted, yes like a fool, and jumped and landed on two legs, surprisingly I did not fall. There is a cop left next to me! I was like Erm

Peace out?

He gave me a disgusted look and asked me if I was deaf and couldn’t hear the announcements about the train! He said the following in malayalam

This is the trivandrum bound train, it is 3 hours late! Your train is at 2:05, (I was like gotcha, now what will you scold me for,  but here goes)  have you ever seen trains come on time? Fool, go and sit there, your train is 30 minutes late!

I was like, whaaaattt? (the way Phil Dunphy from modern family says it), and then meekly ran to the nearest bench and sat down to a bunch of guys laughing at me. It’s cool, I now know that even if the train start and end locations are the same and it is at your platform at the scheduled time it Is not your train! This reminds me of the following

All that you hear and all that you see are false.

My uncle and I shared a good laugh, then we had some coffee and sat down for the right train to come. The train finally came, we checked it was indeed the train to get into and finally got in.

   Empty Seat? No sir, there is a freaking family tree here! My seat? Lol they said,

Are you an idiot to get into a train with a confirmed ticket and expect a seat?

They gave me and my uncle our seats but people crammed in on the remaining space and eventually squishing us too. My uncle and I could do nothing more than laugh at our situation. The guys around have been good though, no fuss, and they are not making noise either, giving me space to think clearly and blog in a moving train. The first time I’ve done that! On a positive note, I shall not be thankful for every train journey I have with a berth that is mine and only mine!

  So what did I learn today?
1) my uncle has jumped from a moving train before this
2) I am lucky i did not break my teeth when I jumped onto the platform like I was catching the golden snitch.
3) how to blog from a train

to

Apple Says ……..

Apple says, read that with the tone our teachers used when we all played Simon Says! This was a post I wrote long back when Apple maps first started drowning people, found it while sanitizing my hard drive! I don’t know how relevant it is now, but back then I had fun writing it!

 

Indian Government Bans Apple Maps

 

After months of repeated complaints from the general public about people drowning in rivers and falling of cliffs due to faulty directions from Apple Maps the government has finally decided to stop the use of the brilliantly engineered solution for killing ones near and dear to us. This has come as an early New Year gift to many, although we are yet to confirm if there was any inside pressure from a different reason for the same outcome.

The hype created over the amazing capabilities of the new version of the famous IOS and the new device capabilities back in May last year prompted the assembly to get iPhone and iPad for each and every legislative member to help them be more productive. The members were really happy with their gifts back then, as now they had a new reason for not being present at the parliament during sessions. One might wonder how this was possible? Given the bleak attendance of the members at the session, one may say they might not possibly know the route back and forth to the venue. One of the members under the promise of anonymity on paper said this to Faking News exclusively,  “One day I got up at 4:00 in the morning and got ready for the parliament session at 10:00 later that day but then I used Apple Maps and ended up in Lahore instead of the parliament”, he added that, he actually thanks Maps for its failure as he got to meet Pakistan’s home minister instead and shared a good evening with tea and biscuits.

Many incidents were reported all across India, mostly involving cars trying to climb buildings in reverse gear and people trying to play cricket on a stadium, which was a lake! The Sri Lankan cricket team, which toured India late last year was disgusted with its experience in Kolkata after the driver of the bus to the stadium used Apple Maps and ended up reaching Sourav Ganguly’s house instead where he was valiantly swinging clothes, which was later explained as Ganguly’s daily task allotted to him by his wife! After a good laugh at his plight and being eye tortured of seeing him without clothes the team left for the stadium and used Google Maps on its way instead.

One couple from Bangalore reported that their Apple Maps was the God for them as it got them together! The story behind this was quite unique, the man was searching for Satan after he had lost his job and lost his faith on god and the woman was searching for a pastime, as she was a housewife! One day the man had gotten so frustrated that he tried searching for Satan on his iPhone that he had robbed from his boss before being thrown out and it showed him to the woman’s house where they shared a moment of silence in deep eye connection and instantly fell in love. The couple had then eloped and left a note to the husband that they were going to Hyderabad and that the woman was truly sorry for leaving him. Till date the husband (from Lithuania) has been trying to get to Hyderabad using the same Apple Maps! Well we know how that search is going to end up.

What was surprising about this ban is that, this was the only software that could make our honorable prime minister speak! It used to irritate him so much; he used to swear at it all the time! Rumor has it that he once searched for “Silent Valley” on his swanky new iPhone 5 and it guided him to Voice Training Institute! Given it made the most silent people come out of their shells and VOICE out their concerns, this ban should not have been made.

 

Cheers!

Your Funny Reporter

Rich Stupidity

To be rich is achievable, to not be stupid when rich is a talent — Anonymous

These words ring the bell and horn in my mind everytime I hear it or read it! Bangalore has a lot of rich people, people with a 5 storey houses and people who have 5 different stories to explain how they became rich (the hidden truth mostly involves inheritance or bribes). Along with the number of rich people, the number of cars and ultimately the number of idiots driving cars on the road has increased 10 fold since the inception of Electronic City and ITPL [the local dumping zone for engineers in India].  From the din chik of the loud cars to the almost unheard bell of a cycle, Bangalore traffic has a lot of variety and entertainment for the daily commuter.

One fine day, I decided to head back home a little late and my colleague who has also been my childhood friend offered to drop me, alright I asked him to drop me! Happy? He agreed to drop me and we left for home from work at around 6:00 PM. There is this epic place called tin factory in between our respective residence and office, the jam over here demands 10 loafs of bread! It takes around 30 minutes to cross 200m. So we were stuck here, my friend promptly switches off his car owing to his green attitude which I believe every Indian needs! Having  a light conversation, it was a cool and calm evening sky and it looked beautiful. We were surrounded by vehicles in all directions, left right front back below, you name it! There was a Toyota Etios up ahead, a goods carrying auto rickshaw to the left, what was to the right is not important here. In front of that auto was an Maruti Suzuki Esteem, Silver color. Suddenly the car started moving behind, agonizingly close to the auto behind when the auto guy jammed the horn to wake up the driver of the esteem! This is a usual scene in Bangalore where there are signals in slopey areas, yes most Bangalores let the wheels roll in the wrong direction when its supposed to stand still. Generally this is what happens,

1) Car moves back

2) It comes too close and the driver of the vehicle behind jams the horn

3) The driver rolling suddenly hits the brake hard

4) Looks out of the window

5) The driver behind showers a few praises

6) The driver in front drives ahead once the traffic clears

But, here is what actually happened with the esteem and the goods auto

1) Car moves back

2) It comes too close and the auto driver jams the horn

3) The driver rolling suddenly hits the brake hard

4) Gets out of the car

5) Showers praises to the auto driver

6) Asks the auto driver if he is mad for honking when the signal is closed

7) Auto driver says you came to close

8) Car driver says there is so much distance in between (it was hardly 3 inches)

9) People around look at the driver in disgust

10) Drivers gets back into car and auto guy and people around signal that guy is mad and have a good laugh

Was the car driver trying to show his dominance because he is more rich than the auto driver? To be honest this auto driver has to be praised for his calm behavior when the lunatic was screaming! Any other auto driver, as I shall have to remind myself of incidents i’ve been part of abuse you to the extent that you feel cheap and violated! This auto guy realized something was wrong with the car driver and let go. If the car driver had hit the auto, the auto guy would have started a fight and asked for 5000 bucks for a scratch that is invisible and halted the traffic behind for at least an hour before a traffic cop would intervene.

Nevertheless, this is not a rare occurrence in a city where people are judged by their cars and not their character, everyone is in a hurry! So am I! Arrogance is not!

To finish off the post with a nice pic I found recently depicting the situation with Bangalore traffic

Bangalore Traffic!

The Green Bangalore Plan

I wrote this article and sent it to unreal times, but then i spoke to an editor there and figured it would take a while before this post might make it to the page! Given the mayor of Bangalore has promised to close up the potholes after the monsoon, I decided i’d put the post here. This post is purely for poor humor purposes and its mostly nonsense

        Recent rains and inclement weather have rendered Bangalore’s roads untenable, most of the roads have been washed away and the growing traffic is just adding to the mess. When Karnataka Chief Minister Mr Siddaramiah was asked how he was going to react in the current situation, he seemed shocked that we even questioned and complained about the bad state of the roads. This response in turn shocked all the journalists at the venue and the Chief Minister stormed out of the room in disgust.

         In an exclusive interview to Unreal Times post his fury exit from the press meet, Mr Siddaramiah seemed a cool different man, he agreed to explain his behavior and wanted to apologize for his bhavior in front of the “Dumb” news crew. When asked to explain himself, he said that The bangalore roads are in a situation which was planned 4 years ago even before he became Chief Minister. He said,  “We are actually happy on how fast we have met the goal, we expected the roads to be in this condition in 2017 only, but I guess things have been good and we are way ahead of schedule.” This was an initiative to make Bangalore green he said, the pot holes on the roads were left to grow on purpose, they can now plant trees or small colorful plants based on the size and shape of the pothole. When asked what his agenda was for the “Stock Check” he was intending to make later today he said, it was basically to count the number of plants to import from France and Germany. He added that the plant imports were necessary to give a variation from the plants we find in India. Smaller pot holes would get Boganvilla, Jasmine and other flowering plants and trees, while the large holes would get a Banyan Tree sapling or a Neem tree to increase the fresh air flow when people are stuck in traffic jams. He adds that trees are the need for the hour and he wishes to give back to Bangaloreans what they once had, peace, calm and greenery!

       He went on to say that he has also made plans for making few more potholes in the road side so that they can fill up with water and everytime a motorist goes in it, the water would splash and water the nearby potholes with plants. This he says is his own genius at work and it would remove the need for water tankers to go around the city watering the plants. He feels that he needs to keep doing different things like this to remain the most favorite eleced leader of all time in Karnataka.

      Mr Siddaramiah is attending the global ecological changes summit in Davengere next week and has confirmed that the next regions in Karnataka to undergo what he calls the “Hole and Tree” concept of rejuvenating cities in the state would be Mysore, Mangalore and Whitefiled. His agenda would be to educate the rest of the country and eventually the world to adopt this technique at the convention. Major B-Schools of India including IIM-B and IIM-A have now added “Hole and Tree” as a management expertise and are offering PGD in this field. Not everyone is happy though, following the announcement by IIM-B the Dean of the school Mr Pankaj Chandra has stepped down.

      Cities like Mumbai and Delhi are planning to try this technique in a controlled locality to see how it works out for them. This might be the last yet most powerful move by Congress to continue their regime in India. Only time would say how “Green” thier prospect is in this country.

Time Please!

Running around and trying to catch the other guy, I had been trying to catch him for the last 10 minutes! He just kept running around the tree, the other kids sitting on the ground for lunch and evaded me. Finally I tricked him into making a wrong decision and finally got next to him and he said

Time please

and put his hand on top of his head! Drat, now I had to chase someone else! School was a lot of fun especially during lunch break, we used to eat real quick and run around in the dusty playground sometimes unintentionally kicking up mud that landed on someone’s tiffin box. It was all fun except when you were IT and had to catch people to well not be IT!

I’ve been a believer of being on time every time, exceptions include getting back home and coming down for dinner on time! I’ve always made sure that when I am meeting up with one person or a bunch of friends I’d never have to make them wait for me. Well that obsession has led to a situation where I’d never have to NOT wait for my gang to arrive. Not only friends, but this is the same at work too, people hardly honor being on time with respect. On the big picture, we Indians can consider ourselves of just doing what time standard we follow, IST better known as Indian Stretchable Time. Movies or lunches, parties or brunches the only thing common in all of them is the people coming in late.

Not too long ago, i had won 2 passes to an EDM concert in Bangalore, I took along a friend of mine who is a metal head [Don’t abuse me yet, he actually likes EDM now! ]. The concert was to begin at 11 AM, and given my idea of being on time we left early and the bloody traffic was missing! We reached a full 30 minutes ahead of schedule! We waited until 11, went towards the entry gate only to be sent back! Seriously? Finally we roamed around the barren land, found a huge palatial house, just to kill time we also asked the security guard who the house belongs to and details like how many people lived there! The guard actually gave us all the info, afterall he sits alone all day and finally someone spoke to him, he was quite happy to give us the information! We then headed back to the concert ground and at 12 30 they let us in! Empty ground, Pepsi atom how much worse could life get! The Dj’s had begun to spin their magic and slowly the crowd grew. It was almost like Bangalore knew this would not start on time! I had a good feeling about that too, but well just wanted to be on time!

Garuda mall, Inox, how do I count the number of hours i’ve waited here for my friends to arrive! I am running out of memory in my head to count any more, we did not have credit cards or debit cards back then and had to buy tickets from the counter on the day of the movie. Those were simpler times, things changed after 2011. Tickets were 100 bucks on weekends, queues were huge, everyone bought tickets at the venue. For a 10 AM movie, I used to reach by 9:30 and stand in the queue that opens at 9:45, my friends who were supposed to be there by 9:30 somehow managed to think 2 minutes after 9:30 is 9:55. Everytime I call them,

2 minutes macha, I’m at the parking lot

2 minutes macha, I’m at the signal opposite the mall

2 minutes macha, I’m almost outisde the mall

The 2 minutes in mars would finally end after I bought the ticket, at times it makes me wonder if they took advantage of me! Those thoughts got quashed when we met out for lunch or a movie for which we had pre booked the tickets, they still came late! 2 minutes has always been a variable constant, yes a variable constant. It depends on the weather, his time reading capabilities, his neighbours and the other people on the road going late to their destination. People have tried using statistics to build a predictive model to predict a persons arrival based on the mentioned factors but then they realised they missed out another factor, randomness of the person itself! They threw away their ideas and let life go on. Inox at Garuda decided to help people like me and they have put a bench outside to sit and wait for the fashionably lazy ones!

This once happened to me, I have this friend of mine, typical conversations with her when she is late are like this

Me: Its 15 minutes past the time you were supposed to be here

Friend: Yeah? I thought I said I would reach 30 minutes from now? Din’t I?

Me: Nope, you sent me a message saying 9

Friend: Oh yeah? Sorry, I might have typed it by mistake

Over time i’ve gotten so used to this, I just take a book along or download stuff to read on my phone and then leave home! Wait there peacefully reading whatever i’ve got with me. There were days when I used to get irritated by this, but now I think i’d miss not waiting for people if they started coming on time!

How we read time!

To be In?dian

I wanted to write about what I am currently writing from quite some time, but never really got to it because i was always in a pissed off mood when I remember I have to write this! Writing when angry is never recommended, you might end up sounding like Rahul (You know who I’m referring to!), when angry it is better to be like Mohan Singh (Again you know who!). I digress. What does the title to this post mean? I did not put in too much thought into it, I created this title when I first started to think about this sometime in June 2013. Now when I look at it, I feel like a genius, hold on I think the feeling is gone already. I am listening to Alesso as I write this, head bobbing and fingers typing pan pan pan pan paaan paaaan pan pan pan pan paaaaan.

I have started visiting a lot of new places off late to try out burgers and sandwiches apart from the usual places I frequented the last 5 years, yes the clown shop was one of them, McD is just a huge disappointment now, the latest scam of theirs are the masala balls. Refrain from thinking outside the bun in this case! Please I beg of you! I know how to put the thoughts in your head, now that I am wearing with pride the mission accomplished badge let me explain the story of the masala balls. I go to the store, I saw the ad for them and they looked quite big and tasty, so I ordered a plate of 6. When they finally arrived they were smaller than the brains of the polians of our country. Where am I heading with this post? Anyway that was the end of me wanting to visit McD, Subway has its own story to tell, the troll store has non vegetarian subs as the sub of the day whenever I decide to go get myself a nice sub for dinner. The bad timing and well screw you Subway I’m not coming there either. My friends have been telling me about awesome places in Bangalore that serve delicious American and European cuisines, one of them being Ice and Spice on St Marks Road.

The inspiration and the push behind this post to be written right now  are the events that took place when I finally managed to go there one fine day, actually wait the day was fine until I ended up watching ‘The Conjuring ‘ ! That stupid insanely spooky movie still gives me the chills! Why on earth would a ghost come and clap next to someone? Just why? The place was full as usual I was told and we had to wait for ’15 minutes’, yes it was IST (Indian Stretchable Time) after 30 minutes of 15 minutes I still hadn’t got a table and I continued to wait. While waiting there was this one thing, a guy I who looked like he had swallowed a concrete ball as big as the biggest pumpkin you have seen, and grown round around it. He was driving a swift, comes in front of the restaurant, the music in his car was loud and heads around started bobbing to the

Din chik din chik din chik din chik

The bass was out of the charts! This din chik concrete fool puts his head out and all of us almost died laughing at his style! He had a pair of expensive sunglasses that were put to shame by his weird mud colored hair and I repeat concrete round figure, more was the follow, he shouts to a nearby civilian police

Oye, parking here idhiyia ? [Is there parking here, in a condescending tone]

The civilian police guy gets offended by the tone and we felt bad for him too, he answers

Watchman thara idhina noodakke? Loafer [Do I look like a watchman to you? In a very disgusted way ]

The ‘Dude’ then tries park his car between two other cars, the car behind him was an Audi and the one in front a Merc E Class, and I am being honest here, his parking skills were worse than mine! He left the car in between the two cars alright but parallel to them, let me explain!

——Merc—–                                                —Audi—

-The idiots Swift-

Gets out after this, his friend who seemed slightly more civil than this fool helped him park and then they light a Cig each and start staring at the amused people around and quickly get away. While this was happening, a couple not Indian for sure mostly European came to the restaurant and asked for a table. The owner of this store has the habit of staying at the restaurant and looking over the business I guess. The guy who was in charge of seating promptly noted down the names of one of them to put them in the ‘Queue’ to get them a seat. From what I understood all this while is that the ‘Queue’ was a FIFO [First In First out] implementation, I was going to be proven wrong in a short while after that. One of the tables got free, and immediately the owner asked the couple to take the table! I was like

Yen saare, foreign nodudre cycle gap alle lorry bit bidthira? [If you see foreigners in a small gap for a cycle you will drive a lorry?]

I went to question him for this, but i  got a table before I could get to him so I left the matter at that, but ever since I’ve had this irritation and urge to question this kind of behavior in our country! Why is this happening? As Indians are we not important to other Indians? If not more at least equally important as tourists? FIFO was implemented more in favor of Foreigners In First Out rather than FIFO!

I have been to three other countries, albeit two of them were just changes of airports or aeroplanes but nowhere did I get any preferential treatment! I was not mistreated either. Just saying, why don’t we learn to respect people of our own country too? It was also surprising to see the other people just watching this and not wanting to do anything about it! Another depressing incident was when there was an American who visited our Indian office, all his meetings were fixed by an Indian who was in charge of well scheduling meetings for anyone who came from other development centers, all the meetings were scheduled in such a way that it was convenient with his timings but not a single confirmation asked from us if we were ok with the timings!  I saw people who generally come to the office in the afternoons, at office as early as 8:30 on that day! The person who was visiting was at no fault at all, it was all the work of someone who is one among us! Even when I have calls with people from other countries, and if we schedule it ourselves we always reach on a compromise that is neither too late or too early for both parties! That my friend is being professional, not a** licking and making things comfortable for just the outsider! Make them feel welcomed by treating them like one among us rather than one above us! Wait isn’t that a great line? I am just going to quote myself,

Welcoming people is to treat them like one among us, not one above us!

Sounds like a winner? Alright I liked it, its cool if you think its ok! Because I welcome you, you see what I did there? 😉

The title “To be In?Dian” seems to be a question rather than a title! Something each one of us need to ask when we see differential treatment. I tried not to make this sound like an assault at people, or people we ought to welcome but more of something that we need to think of! These are my thoughts, let me know what you feel?

A Real Gaming Machine?

A personal computer at home is something that came in pretty late in my life considering I wanted to be a software engineer since 6th grade, I got the first computer at home when I was in 8th I guess but it was password protected and got full access only when I was in 11th or maybe 12th I don’t remember! My friend Harish once told me dude join Orkut, I was like sorry what? He explained the concept of orkut and I was like cool, but my mind questioned why would people do that when they met at school anyway? Neverthless having a computer to use at home and the first broadband connection that used to fly at 512kbps made me join Orkut and then rest is history! I had an assembled computer bought from a local vendor for approximately 50000 INR, it had a generous 10 GB hard disk, pretty good considering the norm was 3GB back then! An intel P3 processor coupled with a paltry 256MB RAM. I was so happy I had the fastest computer, I had no idea what those numbers meant but given the fact that I pressed buttons and things changed on the screen made me feel out of the world!

Going into class 12 things changed, I became a regular on the chip forums and an avid chip reader, learnt a lot about hardware and what goes well with what and it was only a matter of time before I made my dad rob a bank to fund for my next PC. This time I chose what processor to get, which hard disk to get but that was it. The guy at the shop got out some cheap motherboard, a stupid cabinet that was probably a bird prison before this, absolutely no ventilation and a stock PSU! The system could run Warcraft 3 and that was all I wanted back then! It was back to feeling all powerful, then i started actually reading about other components of the computer that were reviewed on Chip. I realised a PSU was really important and ventilation had to be setup in such a way that there is no turbulenece. How a GPU can shift load away from a CPU and so on. Shocked at how stupid I was when all i stressed upon was the processor last time I tried asking Dad for a new computer within a year and the obvious happened, I was turned down! Then my master stroke came at the end of first year of BTech, I convinced him I needed a laptop for my college course [partly true]. Got a Dell Studio 15, they had the option to customize the hardware and I did so, got a Core2duo 3.2 Ghz with 4 GB RAM and patiently explained to the lady on the phone from the Dell center that to use the 4GB I would like a 64 bit OS and not a 32 bit OS. Back then 3.3 GB and 4 GB sounded way apart in terms of RAM, I faked  my knowledge and finally got a good deal on a custom custom Studio 15 with a plum purple lid. Happy days were to follow until I dropped my laptop during an overseas trip and the left angle broke, I did not feel happy with it just because I was bored with it! I had started earning from my internship of 4th year by then and easily got permission to get myself a MacBook Pro 13.3, and that is one system I still use 2 years down now and am completely happy with it, I had to take only what they gave and trust me I could never imagine that kind of hardware performing so well! Nevertheless since the 2 year limit had been breached my hands started itching again and now I have more insight into PC hardware and well want to get the killer rig which can smoke through anything I throw at it without constipating like my previous systems none of which had a dedicated GPU.

With a decent salary now, it took me around a day to convince at home that it was a good idea to have a working PC and the fact that my brothers laptop [yeah my old studio 15] was failing one organ at a time supported the claim. I had been planning the current upgrade for at least 4 months and researching on what was the latest and what was a gamers paradise. I had been out of touch ever since I started working. My brother and I researched and finally came up with a decent rig that could handle Crysis 3 at medium setting at a decent frame rate.

Intel Core i5 3470K

ASUS Gtx650 Ti

Corsair 500W PSU (Yes I was ready to spend 5000 for a power supply)

AsRock H77 extreme 3 motherboard

RipJaws 8 GB RAM

Asked a few friends who have good gaming units to review it and one Mr Bhargav and my dear brother almost at the sametime suggested going for a Gtx660 fabricated by MSI, the TwinFrozr model! It costed a whopping 22000 INR in India and way out of my budget but once I saw the performance difference I was fixated on getting a Gtx660 at any cost! By unfortuantely budget constraints led me to take a hit on the other components, until I called the shop owner on SP Road and he said the gtx660 was only 11 grands and I went to the store the very next day only to realise he told me that price by mistake! Heartbroken I was still in no mood to give up. Told him the only reason I was there in front of him was because of what he said over the phone! He gave me a good price finally and then I chose component by component, made a few compromises on the motherboard and processor to accomodate the GPU and the forgotten component from the configuration mentioned above, yes a HDD!  I was under the impression that my old HDD was an IDE device and since the new motherboard supported only SATA, I had to get a new one. Settled with a non overclockable CPU and since I would not buy a new GPU soon, a non SLI capable motherboard. Went for the compartively inferior B75 chipset inplace of the H77 or the Z77 chipset.

Intel Core i5 3470 3.2 Ghz with turbo boost with a mas multiplier of 36

ASUS B75 LE Motherboard

ASUS Gtx660 OC (Yay!)

Seasonic 620W S II 2 PSU

RipJaws 8 Gig RAM

Seagate 1TB

My older cabinet had been changed once in between because of electricity leakage issues and ram getting displaced due to the box vibrating under load, it was a roomy Circle cabinet, had good inlet and outlet perofrated walls. Got all the components home and the nervousness made me sweat like crazy, it was the first computer with a GPU that I was going to fix! I had opened up my box multiple times earlier to change one part at a time, but never the whole config! Sat down on the floor with my brother and opened up the existing cabinet, it looked simple. Then I opened the PSU box and holy mother of lord it had so many cables! I couldnt not imagine that going in there! It just had too many cables.  I decided i’ll map the current connection to the new connection and put it in, simple eh? Nope absolutely not, everything looked different here! Everything! Took a leap of faith and removed the old hardware and fixed the new components in one by one. The moment I had to fix the monster GPU in, i was unsure if it would fit in, but thank god for standards followed by manufacturers it just sat in perfectly. The click that said the GPU was in place bought a smile to my face, the first since I got home with the components. Now the big moment of truth, the power cabling had to be done! It was scary, one wrong move could burn up the place. I tried matching pins to the board and powered up a few, some were risks I took, when I found a matching socket for a cable from the PSU I just shoved it in. Finally everything was done! It was time to power up the device, I did it and to see the UEFI boot screen was heart warming, first time on UEFI coming from an age old BIOS. I tried opening the CD drive to pop in a live Ubuntu disc only to realise my old hard disk was indeed SATA but my CD drive was IDE! No disc reader, finally made a bootable Windows 8 pen drive and shove it in and got it up! Then came the next blocker, I did not have the key to install it, searched on the internet to land up on a small hack to avoid putting in the key during the installation procedure (legal copy, which would expire if not activated with a key). All setup, had to download drivers form the internet since the disc drive was not working.

6 Hours and 1GB later the machine is up and running! In all glory it burns through the all the games I’ve put to it, Crysis 3 testing will happen soon! The feeling that I have right now is just amazing, my first high performace PC built by my brother and me with no external help!

My First Blind Date – TOEFL

TOEFL, the last exam in between me and applying for masters in colleges in the USA! A sudden burst of adrenaline sometime in October, 2012 made me write this, most probably the fact that I was away from home and the thought of going in an aeroplane that pushed me towards this decision. Went online and tried to get a date in Bangalore for the month of Decemeber but nope, all the IT babu and babuas kids are going to Amreeeka and writing TOEFL in the completely trafficked [you know which vowel has to be replaced] city of Bengaluru [I am aware that it sounds like a vegetable gone bad]. So date chosen was 8th of December and location Hyderabad, back then the $1 was 54 something INR and I think I ended up paying close to 9000 [translates to JP Miles, for free flights since my dad was so happy I was writing TOEFL he decided to pay for it].

2 months to go for the test, absolutely no worry! I am going to studying 30 days before exam and it is going to be all cool. 1 month before exam, hmm ok so I must start studying at least 15 days before exam. 15 days before exam, its getting closer, maybe this weekend I should just sit and study and maybe revise during office throughout next week. Weekend comes by and I am like oh oh, but hey wait I don’t have a book so I can’t study! Even if I did order one it would get delivered after 2 days so that is next week, let me just study through the week. The week went by, usual office work and finally friday arrived and where was I? At a Microsoft party at Novotel, Hyderabad Airport! Not kidding, I partied all evening and went home at 2 AM and slept, thankfully I rememberd to keep the alarm for 6 AM the next day. The exam center was pretty far and I had to leave by 6:30 AM else I would be late. It did not strike me even once that I had absolutely not prepared for the exam and was going to dive head first into something unknown to me!

Got up on time, left on time and reached well ahead of time, 2 hours early to be honest. Why? Well I have this habit of miscalculating time,  yes it is a habit as I do it on purpose so that i’m not late for something important. It was a small dingy building and I was shell shocked when I saw a well air conditioned office inside, that was the exam hall! There were 3 chairs and I took one, after about 45 minutes another guy came and we started talking and he said he studied only for 4 hours the previous day and no other preparation. In a way I was relieved that it was only 4 hours between one other test taker and me, I don’t know how that would affect my performance but going by standard indian laws of thought processing it seemed alright. After all the verification was done, they took mugshots of us and led us into our respective places in the exam hall.

The exam center for sure picked up all the systems for 10 bucks per kilogram from the local old newspaper agent! They were so old and mostly broken and the monitors were a shade of brown, originally white I guess when new a 100 years ago. We all did the basic login and checking the hardware like keyboard [sticky keys was a physical phenomenon not software], mouse [I am sure more than one mouse slept on this] and the headset [sorry what? I can’t hear you]. The exam was to begin in 10 minutes.

 Let me pause to give a brief history of my exam skills

1) The first one to leave exam hall since grade 1

2) Worst handwriting in class

3) I was/am more worried about time taken than quality of answers

4) My answers were known for their brevity [at least that is what I thought], in my teachers words emptyness

5) My physics teacher always asked my Dad which flight I was running off to catch

6) This carried on through college and GRE

7) On an average I slept for 90 minutes in every 180 minute exam

 

Statistics (3 hours exams)

Fastest:  C++ Programming [1st year BTech] -> 45 minutes

Slowest: Mathematics [11th Standard] -> 170 minutes

 

My works were never related to my speed of writing or not writing, I used to be bottom 50% in school and surprisingly top 50% in college.

 

Back to the TOEFL exam in hand, what might already be a lost cause, the exam begins and I breeze through my first section, suddenly I hear a voice, its loud and its a girls voice. Everyone around me was calm, was I the only one hearing it? Is this place haunted? I just got up and saw in the direction of the sound to see some girl talking at the top of her “sweet melodic” my foot voice. I was wondering what was happening, then decided maybe its some problem she has and continued with my test, over time more and more people started talking and I felt zombies were overtaking them and now I am going to get killed. All of them were chanting the same sentences about some school where education was taking a toll, I am unable to recall! I was at the edge of my seat, section 2 was just over. I was completely unaware of what was happening, was I able to read the mind voice of people? Or is this the apocalypse coming 14 days in advance? I clicked on the next section button on the screen and figured why people were talking, ok in writing it seems lame but back then for someone who had no idea about TOEFL it was creepy! I just had a private laugh and started talking just like everyone else around me, but I was conscious of being loud and kept my voice low only to figure out that unless you speak loud the system is not going to record anything! So I screamed, wailed at the top of my voice and got done with the section.

The final section was writing an essay, I thought I was done with writing stuff in words I mugged up for GRE, nope it was back to bite me! My body clock said I had been sitting here for 3 hours, the exam is 3 or 4 hours I guess and I panicked, wrote the last section in exactly 10 minutes and galloped out. On my way out I saw I was the only one outside the test room! Everyone else was still seated, 1hr 30 minutes, TOEFL done. I was not at all happy with how I had done the exam, I just walked out into the surprisingly mild Hyderabad winter took a bus home and slept the whole day and then think about the exam on sunday and got back to work on Monday. Results came, i had done well, but I did not use the score, I am still sitting at my work desk in India and writing my blog.

IT Drudgery

Its been around 20 months since I put myself on sale in the Indian IT Market, thankfully enough I have found myself an employer over time. Mechanical, boring, routine are the 3 best and probably the only words that can describe my life right now and I trust more than 80% of the industry would agree theirs is the same! Get up in the morning, take a bath maybe rush to work, open Facebook, Gmail, Quora, Twitter and a bunch of other non work related websites! Then the dreadful team meeting comes up and remember you have no update to give from last week and you sit up and code random stuff and send it for code review and then during the meeting you go

Its done, i’ve sent it for code review

only to get back a 100 odd comments, well what else did you expect when you coded up a full feature in a few hours! At the end all we had to accomplish was, meeting gone by well 😉

Meetings are like the biggest pains in the lower back region of your body! You just find that perfect tune that lets you forget you are in office before your Office Communicator goes

Ting Ting, you have a damn meeting to discuss something unnecessary!

I always prefer sitting on the floor in meeting rooms, it gives you enough space to do some nice reading online while looking all engrossed in work that is critically important to the company. Funny story, once I was doing this and my manager had asked me to take notes from the meeting, and I was reading tech crunch! Half way through my manager says something, I did not bother, he calls my name and says

Blah blah needs to reply to this blah email

I nodded my head like an idiot and then he is like,

Write it down maybe?

That is when it struck me that I was the notes boy for the day and well managed to cover it well! The guy sitting next to me knew what happened and let out a low laugh. Meeting over and I had to send a mail with the particulars, thankfully I remembered a few random things here and there and sent out a mail. I had missed out 3 items though, my manager was kind enough to fill me on and resend the mail! Thankfully none of the organizations i’ve worked at have any dress code, thank god for that else i’d be unemployed right now! How does one wear formals to work? Unless its a suit, then i would wear it, but a well pressed shirt with a formal pant all tucked in, really? Wearing crumpled tee and shorts to work has got to be the best attire! Funnily and thankfully my manager at my previous company also came in shorts. Matching matching only!

Like computers continously requiring power, i was always hungry at work! Had so much junk food all the time, and that ladies and gentlemen is the proud sponsor of my Kungfu Panda tummy minus all the strength! Pizza has got to be the most ordered poison at work and the dominos outlets in India lose half their time delievering free pizzas because we think time is the most important commodity when it comes to free pizza and the least important factor when it comes to delivering projects. 6:00 AM and 2:00 PM are 5 minutes apart in our arcane time calculations!

Gym, ring a bell? Or just reminds you of a huge bill you paid for umm, sorry what? Yeah, gym I believe! Regularly i’d go they said, i’ll forget the name of the gym they never said! Its just so hard to hit the gym after 12+ hours of office work in front of the system and then going home to spend anytime left of the day on DoTA! Where do we fit the going part of the gym to our schedule? I must admit once I worked at this place that had a gym at campus, actually 3 gyms, not that it matters, I did go to the gym regulalry for 3 weeks and then I used that place only for my showers when I did feel the need for it (yeah, living away from home, the only bathrooms I found clean were the office ones early in the morning). The only sports and outdoor activity I get now is the one that is shown on TV as I eat my fatty meals.

The one good thing I do have to mention about the IT institution is the last week of the month! First 4 days spent in continuously checking the bank account to see some magical numbers and finally the D-Day when the salary comes! That one night goes in planning how awesome the coming month is going to be and making plans on how to spend the money at movies, bowling, pubbing only to realise in 2 days that its back to reality and something called Monday exists and then its a race againt time for 4 mondays to rush past to get the next salary. Life becomes an elliptical trainer, its almost the same always but the salary week feels a bit different and its the same different every month, does that even make sense?

I wish to pull down the “For Hire” symbol above my head down before I hit mid life crisis or 30 which ever is earlier, bleh who am I kidding! Monthly salary is an addiction one can never let go off! If one does manage to do that, he wont have the internet he is using right now to read this post! How long is this going to go on for? Now that the rant is over, I shall get back to work! Everyday is a new day that helps me forget the previous day! Oh wait a minute, one more day before weekend! Awesome, this weekend is going to be legendary, I’m going to party and paint  the town red, at least my head thinks that is the plan! Although I am positive I am going to be in bed the whole weekend watching some nonsense movie and maybe a game or two on the PS3.

To make things a little more different I am writing this blog, actually I had forgotten I had a blog until 1100 INR was charged against my credit card by wordpress and I was like sorry what? It was the auto renew poilicy in effect and what threw me off was that the charge has been $18 for the last 3 years with no change but I have moved on to pay more every year! Started at 790 to 900 and currently at 1100! Its the last week before salary, I’m sure you understand the worried looks I have!