!ShekeTimes’ Another Sheke Story!! ---

           The only son of a corrupt political Babu had a somewhat unique khwaish! To win in an episode of a renowned quiz show hosted by India’s greatest quizmaster, Mr.Prashnottar Das that was aired in the channel “Star ++” (an open source version of Star Plus, with added functionalities). The quiz was broadcasted every Sunday at 10:00 A.M owing to its incredibly high TRP value. 

          When the politician laid it out to the quizmaster sternly that he(Prashnottar Das, the quizmaster) had only two options to choose from, which were either to make his son win an episode of the quiz or to make his son win an episode of the quiz (yes, you read it right) ,  Mr.Das confirmed that it was a no big deal and he could swimmingly make it happen, err , fake it happen.

“Its not a mammoth problem Rathoreji. I’ll ask your son the easiest of the questions and also, I’ll make sure that other 2 participants face the toughest questions and your son ‘ll emerge the winner, no doubt.”

“ No that’s not feasible. My son doesn’t even know the ACB of general knowledge, so no matter what questions you ask, however easy they’ll be, he’ll fail to answer”.

“Oh , that’s ok still. I‘ll provide him the questions prior to the show , may be a week before that, and let him collect the answer and get prepared.”

“No Dasji, you are not getting me. Even if you give him the questions, he will not be able to fetch the answers, he doesn’t know how to.”

“Oh ok. In that case, I myself will provide him with the answers. That should suffice”.

“No no Dasji, even if you give him the answers, he cannot memorize the correct question-answer pair and will mess up the show entirely.”

“So what do you want me to do? We can’t literally fake it infront of an audience and other contestants”.

“What you are going to do is up to you, but my betwa must win.That’s it. All he knows about quizzes is that participants say pass when they don’t know the answer , ha ha ha and nothing else. Yes, its very true that he has almost zero general knowledge, zero common sense and negative reasoning skill. Yet, I don’t want to disappoint him, he must win. ”, he chuckles.

 

And the quiz started. There was almost a miracle there, the show proved to be a wholesome stunner as that son of the politician literally won that episode. While the questions asked to other two participants were something of the sort, ‘Who was the fourth president of Mozanbique?’, ‘Who won the bronze in 100 m running race in 1952 Asian games’, ‘Which is the 31st movie of Shilpa Shetty?’…et cetera, the questions asked by the quizmaster to the son of the babu were these.

1. In professional Ice Hockey, what do you call the movement of the puck from one player to another ?

2. What do you call that portion of a restaurant, which is traditionally a counter or an area separating kitchen and "front of house" where dishes are expedited and made ready for delivery to diners are placed by the kitchen for collection by wait staff ?

3. By what name would you call the personal safety device used by fire-fighters entering a hazardous environment ?

4. Which island is a former community on the southern shore of Newfoundland and Labrador, whose most settlers were resettled to the communities of Hermitage-Sandyville and Harbour Breton ?

5. What was the brand name formerly used by the Bank of Ireland for ATM cards ?

.

.

.

.

.

For all of which, he confidently had answered, “PASS” ………, which was indeed the perfect legal impeccable answer ;)

 

(Answers are here for readers’ verification : Question 1 , Question 3, Question 4, Question 2,5 ).

!ShekeTimes dives into the pages of history...

!ShekeTimes this time did some research on historical rules/orders and found this astonishing fact!! Read on...

King Osmon (A.D 1388 – A.D 1450) of central Andalusia was an ambitious ruler. Always he wished to have his name inscribed over the everlasting time tablet. Albeit this, he was never up to the mark and succumbed to his foes pretty easily almost everytime that more or less left his name go unnoticed. But his sheer aim of having his name engrossed for some notable cause remained intact inspite of his low profile as a paladin. During the latter half of his career as a king, he summoned the most intelligent of his ministers and ordered to come up with something remarkable which could be hooked up to his name and be in the limelight for centuries to come. Minister Nautilus worked on this for quite sometime and knowing the fact that the king has lost his vibrancy and power to map his name to some glorious victory, he asked the king to impose a ban on smoking and to put “NO SMOKING” sign boards everywhere.

“But how does that make my name stick on ? ”, he questioned.

“ My Lord ”, said Nautilus , “ ‘NO SMOKING‘ is the ANAGRAM of ‘KING OSMON’, anagram wherein the words of one are jumbled up to form the other. And wherever the crowd sees it, they remember Thou my Lord”.

The king was over joyous and soon abolished smoking in his kingdom quoting that’s injurious to health and installed the signboard “NO SMOKING” at nearly every feasible place. It so did happen that whenever the masses saw the board, they remembered KING OSMON.

Thus goes the history of a famous ruler and a well known sentence, which is for reasons unknown, lost in the pages of time.The boards can be seen even today universally, but people hardly recall the king and the fact that’s behind it.

( PS: But renowned historians of that time like Lieoster and a few others noted that, while the general public was mostly against that law, they silently thanked God for not making the ruler’s name KING FONUC ).

!ShekeTimes -- ShekeThought -- 1

The judge of the international court of justice had three children. Two sons and a daughter. Elder son was hyper-active, the younger was moderately lazy but the daughter was comparatively the laziest. By hereditary, they all had peerless judging skills, that made them, when they grew up, a football referee, a cricket umpire and a tennis chair umpire respectively!!!

Recommend me for a Nobel in medicine ;)

(My old thought, just that I’m updating it in the blog now).

 

Using Sheke for a global cause ;-)

What is AIDS?
Destruction of ur White-Blood-Cells,which is ur immune system.

Now what is Blood Cancer?
Abnormal increase in the number of White-Blood-Cells!!!

Wow!! So, here lies a very good cure for Blood Cancer!!
Inject HIV to the blood cancer patient and with two deadly and bhayanak processes fighting each other inside him,he can stay happily and can stay long :) :P . Isnt it :) :P

IS (Intermediate Script): The reverse of this cant b done as ,unlike  aids, v donno the source of blood cancer :(

Please recommend me for a Nobel in medicine :P :D

RGV to direct a movie wid Preity and Shilpa: “Ditch over the Pitch”

/* No offence meant: All characters r purely imaginary and if you find any coincidence between the characters mentioned and some real life people, i can just say LOL */

After the dramatic banning and the eventual court rumblings of two of the IPL teams, one owned by old age Preity and the other by age old Shilpa, RGV is all set to direct a film on the same. Grapevine says that the film is being produced by Lalit Modi to use this as a weapon against BCCI and its bullish moves of suspending him, KXIP and RR from the lucrative league. Who has played the lead male role in the film is still a mystery, but going by the back-fence talk, it’s Yuvi, who had no job other than reading the script of this film during the recent test series. Shane Warne is supposedly making his Bollywood debut, in a guest role. Lalit Modi also mentioned of dubbing this movie into two other languages UttarPradeshi and Rajasthani, which he thinks as the languages spoken widely in states where the teams are based!!

Believable sources described that the movie is all about how Preity and Shilpa exposed. I mean, how they exposed rural cricket talents to the whole world by offering an opportunity to play in their teams. And about how Yuvi and Warne utilized what they had exposed.

Music maestro A.R.Rahman was first approached for music of the film, but he sternly declined. Then Modi contacted a number of music directors including Anu Malik, Sajed Wajid, Vishal Shekar, SEL and so forth, who all rejected the offer because flamboyant and all innovative Modi, whose creativity we all have seen in the opening and closing ceremonies of IPL, wanted a 3D music for film. We heard of him questioning, ' if video can be in 3D, why can’t be the audio?’. But when no music directors turned up, he suddenly remembered Sivamani who was often seen on the stadia when Chennai Super Kings played and gave him his first offer ever.

Meanwhile, BCCI officials said they will team up with Raj Thackerey’s Maharastra Navnirman Sena and try their best to enforce a ban on the film citing that the movie is entirely pro North Indian states (Rajasthan and Punjab) and is hence harmful to the integrity of the nation, particularly of ‘Mumbai Indians’!!

Few of the famous codes written over the generations…. (to be updated as and when)

/* Developer: MOHANDAS_K */

if(slap)

return(other_cheek);

-----------------------------------------

/* Developer: ISAAC_N */

for(;;action++)

reaction = -action;

------------------------------------------

/* Developer: ARINDHAM_C */

for(;;chicken++)

if(chicken != hatched)

count++;

------------------------------------------

/* Developer: LORD_KRISHNA*/

/* Reference Doc: ShrimadBhagavadGeeta */

malloc(current_tasks) && free(result);

------------------------------------------------

/* Developer: J_Keats */

if(thing == beautiful)

{

for(;;)

{

thing = joyous;

}

}

----------------------------------------------------

/* Developer: Canara_Bank */

//This piece of code is now obsolete

grow()

{

serve();

}

serve()

{

grow();

}

-----------------------------------------------------------

/* Developer: Adidas */

public static final String impossible = “ ”;

------------------------------------------------------------

/* Developer: Hammurabi */

if(eye)

return(eye);

if(tooth)

return(tooth);

//Objection_1: MohanDas_K

//Reviewer comments:

/* return() values like these will

eventually remove all variables */

-----------------------------------------------------------

/* Developer: Rajinikanth::Project:Baasha */

fun_speak(char* speaker, char* words)

{

int i;

char* baasha = “Rajinikanth”;

if(strcmp(speaker,baasha) == 0)

{

for(i=0;i<100;i++)

printf(“%s”,words);

}

else

printf(“%s”,words);

}

----------------------------------------------------------------

Micro-thoughts….(to be updated as and when…)

IRONY

As employees were spending too much time on Facebook, Infosys blocked it first in its network. Then it was Accenture, Mindtree and many others who blocked it. Facebook’s popularity grew so much off late that even biggies like Microsoft and Google blocked Facebook.com during the office hours. Now, the popularity of Facebook is at such heights that to avoid its employees from spending too much of their time on facebook during working hours, the website is now blocked in Facebook.Inc too.!!

FAST FOOD

Yesterday(14/06/2010) , a new hotel (kinda chat centre) got opened close to my room here in kormangala.. it was named "FAST FOOD" !!! So I was just wondering how can anyone FAST and have FOOD at the same time !!! :P

HEART’S SECRETS REVEALED

God knew two facts.

1. Its impossible to forget any of your loved ones throughout your life.

2. An average person will fail three times in love in his/her lifetime….

That’s the sole reason behind Him putting four chambers in everyone’s heart :)

CWG Fuss

Yesterday(24/09/2010), all of a sudden, these thoughts started appearing....
Do I have the right to criticize CWG when,
1. I myself used to finish reading for my exams just 1 or 2 minutes before it started. (Many a times, din't even finish)
And with my parents' money, I was shattering their hopes with that act....
2. I myself would still be coding and fixing and testing even on the date of product delivery.
3. I myself clean my room once in a bluemoon, maybe till I feel its mine.
4. I myself find it difficult and stammer to provide the breakup if at all my dad asks,"How you spent the month's salary?".
No, I don't think I have. Do you??

ROMANCE

One of my friends here was very happy when he read that French is called Romance language,as he is learning it. Then he saw that even Spanish was called Romance language! And then Italian too !! Later we came to know that languages derived from Roman are referred as Romance languages !!!!

SCRIPT FUN

While writing a small application, i did a small mistake in naming the checkboxes of the script. The results were so terrific and crazy!! "Relationship status" field showed "Male" and "Female" while in the "SEX" field, it displayed "Single", "Open" and "Its Complicated"

AS IMAGINED BY ME

I thank all those beautiful girls, who increased my customer base, by ditching their boyfriends.

-- DR || VIJAY MALLYA

 

HUMANITY

If someone says “HUMANITY IS ABOVE ALL”, do Animal-Right Activists oppose??

 

Difference between Rancho n Chatur ;)

Question: Name any phenomenon where wind energy gets converted into sound energy.

Chatur: In Lancashire boilers,this happens when the outer pressure of the inner cylinder is greater than 3 pascal and whistle’s threshold is lesser than that.

Rancho: One phenomenon is sometimes when you fart.

 

One simple doubt:

Why gtalk maps "Red" color to "Busy" , "Green" color to "Active" and "Saffron" color to "Idle"??

Does that mean "China" is busy ( in supporting our foes) , "Pakistan" is active (executing terror plans) but "India" is idle , doing nothing against it ??

Silence is Golden !!

         Lemme tell u a story. An experience , u can call, coz only after that incident did we realize “Silence is sometimes truly golden”!
When I was in Paris, I reported to a person called ‘Mr.X’(let it confidential atleast till I’m in this company), who was one of the most respected of the French managers, which reputation, he had earned primarily because of his two qualities; was always to the point while answering something (infact anything) and was really an open book. What he spoke was exactly what he had in him.

         This being the case, once we (myself and 2 others) were having our lunch with Mr.X. We had brought our ‘self-made’ chitrannas and pulyogres while he was enjoying his usual food, the beef and some legumes. As we dint find any better topic to chew with the food, we tried pulling his legs as we asked him directly, why French people weren’t yet familiar with spoken English, even though it was indeed, the global language??

         Yes, French people hardly speak English. They don’t know it infact. Even today, grandpas and grandmas insist that their children should learn only French. For French, setted, hadded, telled , planned..all are fine. (Yes, planned is fine for us also). I can say may be fifty percent of the population know English, not more than that.
So we were eagerly waiting for the justification our one point manager was about to give. But then, what he said made us reconsider our intentions of mocking him after that.

          “ You know English as you were under British. We weren’t, so we don’t ” .

Fall

Story line of the poem:  A fearsome champion wrestler , when he is ninety, recalls conquests and accomplishments of his youth and now, when he has lost all the charm and power, wonders who is the actual wrestler…

Fall

I crushed and crunched my foe
In the ring, like a king;
Blood was so hot then, that could melt the wounds.

I was ever the winner,
Head to head - neck to neck
And a few of my routs?
Oh, my conquests did it deck.

I was the fire, whom none would dare,
I was the very true nightmare.
And my turbulent triumphant attire?
It was just not a light affair.

Now I'm ninety
Or I believe so, for my memory now’s so weak
Eyes phobic even to light, and ears shut tight.

Biceps that once lifted the heavy logs
Now just fall lazy
And now when I’m prescribed
I see this world‘s sucking crazy

If I turn back
To repeat the words,
I wonder,
Who's the real wrestler?
Is that me or this eternal time??????

Will this idea work?? ;)

Now again as it’s time for a few serendipitous guys to make some real money (which includes even Big-B), I just thought of trying my luck too. Everyone is aware of KBC that is running in its 4th season now and at this stage, my chance of getting over there is very close to nil, I know. But laterally, I just thought of a ladder which utilises the “Phone a Friend lifeline” and might fetch me some money. Here’s how it works: Suppose I make a website, say “registerhereforkbc.com” where the users who get the prospect of being in ‘fastest-fingers-first’ can register themselves to “earn” a “RESPONSIBLE” friend who ASSURES them of their money. We will give a pseudo-friend to them, whose name may vary from “rakesh gupta” to “manivannan”, and a cell-number, different for different users but all of whom directly ring in our cabin !! Two/three of us will have numerous search engines opened up to type the query as the contestant reads out the question(Yes, I agree, this requires a quality expertise).

The Deal:

The rule is simple. If the contestant finishes reading the question and 4 options within 13 seconds, further responsibility will be TOTALLY OURS. If we provide him the right answer, all we demand is 25% of the money ‘WHAT HE EARNS FROM THAT PARTICULAR QUESTION’, which means the amount allotted for that question minus the amount allotted for its previous question. Eg: If he calls us for Rs.5 crore question and we give him the right answer, then he pays us 25% of 4 crores, because the value of that particular question is 4 crores(5 crores minus 1 crore, the value of its previous question).

In case we fail to answer him (failing refers to both ‘not able to answer’ and ‘answering wrongly’), we will provide him the FULL amount allotted FOR THAT PARTICULAR QUESTION again. ( Question’s allotted value minus that of the previous question). This point will orient the contestants towards calling us, as all they need to do is finish narrating the question in 13 secs, and they will SURELY get the money, either from KBC or from us.

And suppose he/she FAILS to narrate the question in 13 seconds, profits will be absolutely on our side, as he/she still has to pay us the 25% of the value if we provide right answer but we do NOT provide anything as compensation if we are wrong or if we cannot answer. ( A casino rule, ‘Restriction is the key’ ).

I tried out a number of questions that are actually asked in KBC’s previous episodes (of all seasons) and found that none of them could harm us. There was hardly any “NON-GOOGLABLE” question, and if the contestant finishes narrating us the question within 13 seconds, ( a figure which I have arrived at after several trials and pseudo narration attempts), then our search engine assemblage (which is google + mamma + cuil + yahoo + bing + ixquick + Wiki ofcourse ), each of which has its own specialities, needs only 2 seconds maximum to show the result. Rest of the time should be utilized in analyzing the responses and communicating the answer to the contestant!!!

PS: Thank You for reading the above crap!! :)

DevLock Inc. (Part 1)

Mr. Brahma, the principal software architect at DevLock Inc seemed anxious as he briskly walked into the 6^th floor Meeting Room 3 of the Vaikunta campus to head the tech leads’ meeting. The tech leads Mr. Narada, Mr. Indra , Mr. Kuber and many other heavy-brains had already assembled and were sure that Brahma was about to elucidate the new product which the DevLock Inc had premeditated to work on.

“The rumours have come true guys. I just had a management level meeting with delivery leads, Mr. Vishnu and Mr. Shiva and the chitchat is coming up. The company has decided to launch its first-of-it’s-kind product. A species with a ‘BRAIN’!!!” , Brahma’s underway explaining.

“But, that we already have right? Except our basic versions like Amoeba and such, almost all others do have BRAIN chipped in them. So what’s the point?” , the first objection came from Mr.Yama, the chief Garbage Collector of DevLock Inc. It was his accountability to take care of worn out products, put new souls into them and relaunch into the market.

“No this a bit dissimilar from all those. We are for the very first time furnishing Artificial Intelligence into them. They could ‘THINK’. They could even ‘THINK’ about us. “

“What does that term ‘THINK’ mean?” ,asked an all keyed up Ganesh. Ganesh and his brother Karthik were two of the most respected individuals at DevLock. They were also the sons of Mr.Shiva, the manager at DevLock’s Kailasa campus.

“Well, ‘THINK’ is something where the product itself will be able to deal with a variety of topics in viable ways. For instance, the product can by itself search for the charger, what we have coined ‘FOOD’ and can even grab it from other products. That makes my life easier, as I no longer have to proffer all the details on their labels, technically, on products’ ‘FOREHEADS’ “, Brahma answered.

“Won’t that cause chaos among themselves? “, held out Mr.Ram, who was considered as the most idealistic person in whole of the company. He was honest, candid and unimaginably sincere. If someone sought a true success, it was his footsteps were what had to be pursued, whispered a famous quote at DevLock. Mr.Hanuman, the talented senior software engineer reported to Ram. Ram could be contacted at ram.dashrath@DevLock.com

“Yes it would. Upto some extent. Infact, upto considerable extent. But I have come up with a radical design for that. That some of the products themselves would monitor all others and endeavour to keep the entropy at it’s minimum. But if it still sustains, we would have to interfere. Ideally, Mr.Yama has to. That I ll explain a little later”, explained Brahma.

“This looks very obscure. I mean, since those monitoring-products can also, what you said, ‘THINK’, it would rather become ineffectual to monitor those objects in-turn. Isn’t that so? And furthermore, will all the products ‘THINK’ alike? If no, what triggers them to do so? A trap-door algorithm embedded in them? “ , asked the smartest worker of the bunch, Mr.Krishna aka Mr.Krishh, who was himself an incredible coder and was even able to handle any hard-hitting tasks alone. Some of the very knowledgeable senior-software engineers like Mr.Dharam Roy, Mr. Bhim Sen, Mr. Paarth and a few others directly report to Mr. Krishh. He also authored an exceptional technical reference doc, named Shrimadbhagavadgeeta, which is, of late, released as open source doc and a copy of that could be obtained from him at krishna.vasudeva@DevLock.com

“ You are right Mr.Krissh. There’s a bundle of problems involved in it. So have we decided to resolute this as a long term project. Any guesses as to how long? You can’t imagine, it’s a 350 ‘God-days’ work. And in products’ timeline it will come upto some 3 and a half million years. I’m also glad to inform that Mr. Goutham Buddha is going to enjoy an onsite opportunity somewhere at the end of a stable phase, not right now though. As far as the first versions are considered, they will be backward compatible with our previous release, the ‘APE’. In addition to the hardware plug-ins what ‘APEs’ carry, these new ‘HUMANs’ will have more product-life, will be more energetic, but above all those , they can ‘THINK’. The outer hair covering is reduced, outer body is lustred with some pigment and are not equipped with the ‘TAIL’ what ‘APEs’ enjoyed. This is actually an effort to keep these ‘HUMANS’ away from lucrative ‘tree’ markets, which is ruled by our ‘APE’. Mr.Vishnu wishes to have ‘APE’ get the edge in ‘tree’ economy zones. Infact, these new products don’t have any mobility and portability features apart from their ‘LIMBS’. They are deprived of ‘WINGS’ and a streamlined outer shape is denied too. Some among our newest product ‘HUMANs’ will carry a ‘HEART’ and many would not!! Why many don’t, I don’t know. It appears to be the law of nature. But none can have more than one ‘HEART’, and even if they bear, other products can’t make out they do. Ok, back to portability issues and mobility features, they are provided with two ‘LIMBS’. Trust me, I’m going to design their ‘BRAIN’ in such a way that they can prevail over all these subjections they have. But it will take time, it can’t come at once. And you won’t believe, we will also release a ‘dedicated’ HUMAN product somewhere in the later phase of this project, just to explain other ‘HUMAN’ products that they can gradually change themselves, can ‘THINK’ better and can use more that constituent they need and can even throw away some parts which they may not call for, at that juncture of time. We even have named this ‘dedicated HUMAN product’. It will be sent with the label ‘darwin’. “

“What’s a dedicated product?”, Mr.Venkatesh cut short Brahma’s sophisticated detailing. Mr.Venkatesh (venkatesh.tirupati@DevLock.com) apparently held a lion’s share in the roaring revenues as he directly got customer royalty in crores. He was infact the richest in earning customer royalties, after pasting Mr.Jesus Christ of the Vatican-Tech Corporation recently!

“Well, a “Dedicated Product” is one which is explicitly created to pull off some specific task. As of now, we have charted 3 ‘Dedicated Products’, one this Darwin, another labelled as ‘nelson’, which will have a very imperative task to do infact.

“ What’s that crucial undertaking nelson is built for?”, questioned Mrs.Sharda.

“ I was just about to let you all know that. There’s been a serious dearth of the pigment what we have planned to deliver on the products’ outer hardware. So, some of the products will have more pigments, some not as much of. Eventually, this might cause serious complexes among products owing to it’s dependency on their BRAIN design. If that arises, ‘nelson’ will carry pre-biased specifications and will be launched in the troubled market to bring it to customary state.”

“ But the third case is an interesting one. Mr.Vishnu, after reviewing my design of BRAIN opined that these products may start using one more or multiple layers of covering over what we assemble as their outer wrap, technically SKIN. So, at some leg of the project phase, we will launch a product labelled ‘Mallika’, to explain other products that their own made outer wrappings are not really necessary. “

“ These are not the only dedicated releases, if I should be blunt, I acknowledge we will have hundreds of them, to correct hundreds of bugs that would arise in the code what we write. So more logical our codes are, lesser shall the count of dedicated products we might have to launch. So, without much ado, lets straight away get into the details pertaining to the software architecture of the brain.”, Brahma finally commenced his harangue.

“ I can broadly divide the design into two, a ‘structural’ and the other ‘behavioural’. Structural is simple, behavioural is beyond my horizon.

-------------------------------------To be continued in next part--------------------------------

Ponting blames Bollywood for his anti-Indian attitude !

In what can be described as a totally shocking and ridiculous statement, Ponting, after his team’s whitewash in the latest test series against India, has mentioned that Bollywood is responsible for his anti-Indian attitude. When the awestruck press-reporters asked him if he cared to elaborate, Mr.Ponting began recalling all those instances which carved inside him an anti-Indian idol.

“My parents were big fans of Bollywood movies”, he began, “till that day,when out of the blue they became very angry and were disappointed about a hugely anticipated movie. My parents watched the much expected movie “DON”, but were utterly upset when they found out that it was not about DON BRADMAN and there was not even a mentioning of Sir.DON BRAMAN in the entire movie!! They were frenzied.They even stopped watching Bollywood movies. Such was the popularity of Don Bradman in that era. But I kept watching B-Town movies even after that, till that day when I watched another blockbuster movie “Border”, only to find out that it had completely neglected “Allan Border” in the entire movie. I was furious and the incident was shocking. But the only soothing that came my way then was that someone told me they are remaking the earlier movie DON. I thought finally Indians realized their mistake and watched that new DON with high hopes and expectations. No, you people cheated us yet again. Don Bradman Sir never appeared in that either, not even in a cameo. That was disastrous. As to add up to the frustrations, recently I heard from a friend of mine in Sydney, who is studying Indian culture, that there was a movie in Bollywood called “Hussey_na Maan Jayegi”. When I asked him what the hell did that mean, he explained that it translated to something like ‘Hussey never agrees’ and also explained that Hussey was treated as a female! I don’t know which Hussey they meant David or Michael, but seriously, I could not sustain this at all, simply could not, at any cost. All these made me feel malice towards Bollywood and bear a grudge against Indian culture”

The Great Migration!!

It’s not more than 2 years ago, when the only website that our browser was accustomed to launch was Orkut.com. Wishing friends on their birthdays, scrapping, laughing over the comments on our photos, communities we never missed to enter into (including Orkut-Figure-Finders ;) ) had almost become indispensible parcels of our BE life. I’ve even witnessed crazy acts by many of my friends who were using some JavaScript code and a community to boost their friend count! And some orkutizens had even developed a strange hobby “Testiphilia” (don’t mistake ;) ), asking their friends to write a testimonial in return to a testimonial again! Hundreds of profiles I had seen were overloaded with this kind of business testimonials that often looked like, “Oh! this is one testimonial I should have written a long back”, “ Hmmm…How can I describe this person in 1024 characters? “ (why? Was his character so blunt and complicated? ;)) , “ Hmmm, He’s very very friendly and damn cool guy “, (ya he should be, coz he had agreed to write a similar testimonial to this writer! ) and many such crazy lines. And people started to showcase their personalities by simply joining various communities spread throughout! Some people I know even had tried to pretend about their images through the communities they were into, as in , joining communities like “Java Guru”, “ C/C++ Masters “, “Code Hackers”, “ Solving Greatest Puzzles”, portraying themselves as one among what the community name described! I do know one guy who was in windows all through, had not even worked in Linux for even a day, joining “Linux Masters”, essentially, thats what Orkut did, it rendered a pseudo-personality that you not are. When I saw him joining that community, it really appeared odd to me, seemed like a ‘silent movie’ winning the “Best Dialogues” award !! And when it never required an invitation to join, fake profiles started emerging, where you befriend some random Brazilian chicks- sending them requests and messages using Google translator, navigate through odd communities, basically, the real you!! I recollect Orkut once had disabled copy and save-as options from photos, probably unknowing that there’s a Print-Screen button for all of us!! And at some juncture, orkut provided options to link YouTube videos, and the rest - is hiStory (and herStory!).Soon,people without an Orkut account were in minority among netizens!

Gone are those days. Gone. The period of “Great Migration” started which marked the downfall of orkut empire, atleast in India, which was a strong orkut hold. It’s been more than 4 months now when I last logged into Orkut. Opinion is not just mine, but of acclaimed Alexa rankings, in which Orkut dipped steeply and was listed way outside top 50, while the cause, another giant FB, silently rose to 2nd spot staying just behind Google. Why the Great Migration, is no mysterious. FB claims of having stricter securities and stringent privacy policies, which is just a management answer and not a technical one. Because if it was, that’s a no big deal for Orkut and its parent, the giant Google to provide sufficient security to the profiles. The major thing that paved the way and drove the great migration seems to be the apps! FB hosts millions of applications and which is counting, unlike Orkut that got exposed to this very lately. One experimental guy among your 300 orkut friends suddenly joined FB and started using “Make my cartoon”, “Whats my Italian name”, “How many Gfs do you have” and suddenly you screamed ‘I too wanna’ and Orkut was just too lame for them then. He started sending virtual kisses and gifts and you yelled, I’m still just “Comment”ing. He one day became a friend of a local heroine (who already had 4,387 unknown friends) and you said, enough is enough, lets jump into FB. Moreover, buddies who went to states either to work or pursuing their higher education immediately started using FB, which is THE site in US and we felt, is he a little above us, by using FB???

But the initial phase of migration was not so swift, as the customs and habits were a bit different between them. The one Orkutizen who entered FB for the first time screamed, “Where’s the scrapbook and where do I write”! Like a person shifting from Indian to European commode asking where’s the bucket! It took a bit of time to get accustomed to “Wall” and to divide one “Scrapbook” into two “Wall” and “Private Message” section! But time-passing looked a bit easier and comfortable with FB, given numerous apps to play with, millions of sentimental and slightly mental friendship-love quote links that you just share and get some dozen “likes”(if you are a girl), and innumerable pages to like and forget. To add, FB gave an advanced “Friend Finder” and “You may be knowing” options that made the life of all those who were in Friend-count mission, easy. All the same, girls enjoy the same popularity they used to have in Orkut. They look at the calendar and update their status message “Today is Thursday, so tomorrow gonna be Friday” and get some 15 comments, “Oh you are so intelligent!”, “So, whats the weekend plans”, “Hey you using Windows?” , “ You leaving early today then?” along with some 25 likes.

Implications?? Orkut changed itself to a new improved Orkut with themes and posters, that just made it more intricate to use!! Nonetheless, FB also is adding various alterations and enhancements and integrates third party apps that will duly increase its popularity among coders and users alike. Its been rightly said that in software companies, managers can survive just with Outlook (or Lotus) and S.Es, just with FB. The acronym FBI is slowly, but steadily loosing its firm in common man’s terms as being for “Federal Bureau of Investigation” and settling more for “FaceBook Inc”.

The Thoda/Thodi incident!!

The Thoda/Thodi incident!! (Not to be confused with Choura Chouri incident !!)

Hindi has always been a nightmare for me, just like it is ,for a majority of South Indians who either kick off speaking or speeding up their Hindi when it’s really considered obligatory, as in when you get into the corporate world or when you catch a northie girlfriend (or a southie girlfriend who is fluent in Hindi ;-) ) or if u r staying in a pg where all your out-of-state roommates speak shuddh Hindi and giggle at u when you wake up and say ‘subah ho gaya’ , they mockingly rectify it, saying ‘subah hogayi ,maamu’ . At least for me, my memoirs linked with Hindi are disgustingly embarrassing and so have I laid a foundation for a ‘Five Year Plan’ , titled ‘Operation PremChand’, that aims at accomplishing the following three objectives within 6 years from now.

1. To become a fluent Hindi speaker. (Again, not to be confused with LokSabha speaker or lavish Bose speaker)

2. To make sure that I achieve what I have said in the first objective just above.

3. And to make sure that I realize the second and third points.

Having had a clear-cut roadmap of what I was required to do, I embarked my 6 year epic journey last month and so far, it’s been so worse! I mean, I truly marvel how those who are fluent in Hindi deal with those gender things so off the cuff! I have inquired a lot of people, but yet haven’t been able to hit upon a better breakdown than , ‘by practice’. Oh my God! A clear analogy with the situation of a new joinee to a software company that hasn’t believed in documentation. My ex-roommate, who is a native of Allahabad, that day was very enthusiastic and wholehearted in explaining me how to differentiate between genders.

“Look AD, I will tell you a simple formula. You just follow them and see how effortless it is. All words ending with ‘i’ as in GHADI, NADI and so forth are all Streeling”, he declared and I thought he had given me the much needed breakthrough with that proclamation.

“Wow, cool… All? “ , I asked excitedly .

“All of them, as far as I know”, he defended.”I haven’t come across any ‘i’ ending pulling shabd. Cant u make out man, that it sounds awfully jarred when those words become pulling?”.

“Ok.. Then, is this correct? Aadmi chal rahi hai???” , I countered sarcastically.

“Aah, listen Anoop. Everything will have exceptions and Hindi is not an exception”, he said and bunged his lectures.

Whatever, I adopted that formula and draw on that even now and 90% of the times, it has worked. :)

Subsequently, I came across numerous such situations where I could not surmise if it should be ka/ki or tha/thi . In the views of psychiatrist Dr.Hannibal Lecter of ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ fame, this particular bare state of mind where it attempts to deduce the gender of a genderless entity, is termed “KAKI-THATHI agendero syndrome“, for which practice is the only remedy.

My struggling with that syndrome was still ongoing when I had another embarrassing encounter, this time, a more intricate one with a more complex phrase.

Me and my mentor Shalini were analyzing a critical bug in a module, putting traces after traces and keeping our eyes wide open in front of the monitor screen. I was not knowing those processes that accurately then and hence she was doing the major tasks as I used to sit beside her and watch the tremendous pace with which her fingers hit the keys of that keyboard. Even today, I am of the opinion that if someone presents her a piano, she will surely bring out, either the best heavy-death-metal-rock-song tune or the keys of the piano themselves.

Having said these, one evening when we were working on that, she looked a bit annoyed and said “Output thodi aa rahi hain”.

I could not presume what was the maamla.

After a few minutes, she recompiled and re-ran and cryid again, “ Yeh output thodi aa rahi hai” !

This time I could not hold out. I humbly asked her, “yeh output thodi thodi kyun aa rahi hain, ek saat kyun nahin aati??”.

With all apprehensions and tensions and deadlines nested in her mind, she could not feel the air of innocence in my question and gave a strict impulsive reply which was something like this:

“What’s this Anoop? Don’t you know these are atomic state-machines and semaphores are bound to them?.. You should understand these basics Anoop, else you cant get the system level understanding. When an atomic change happens, a listener class opens up automatically and gets destroyed only when the thread dies, haven’t I told you?”.

“My God”, I thought, what had I asked?? I had just converted what she had told in an assertive sentence into an interrogative sentence. I was scared and never spoke that evening again.

Last week when we were having our evening snacks in office, I casually narrated that incident to another colleague here and exemplified Shalini saying how people become short tempered and start speaking something disparate and non-sense when they are under pressure. All of a sudden, she started laughing hard and certified that my Hindi is inconceivably poor and hopeless!

Only when she told the reason did I come to know about the weird and wonderful, yet mysterious behavior of the word “thodi” in Hindi!!!

“My dear boy, thodi means less, that’s true. But ‘Output thodi aa rahi hain’ means no output”, she elaborated. “This is very much in practice. Like, when I want to say, something is told by her and not me, I say , ‘ Maine thodi boli, usne boli’ “.

Oh my holy God, a twist. A twist that seemed a twist only to me! Not even in my craziest of the dreams had I imagined that a word called ‘thodi’ enclosed ‘utni badi’ connotations!! I opine that the best example for an object oriented language is not java or cpp, but Hindi. I mean, seriously, what was it if not polymorphism? :P

That day, I came to know how Hindi hides in itself, scores of such fantasies! I could relate this Thoda-thodi incident to the colonial Chaura-Chouri incident wherein the British controlled police mistook an Indian mob for extremists and opened fire, while the mob had mistaken that Indian police force for british officers with arms!

I truly had never thought that one day Hindi will challenge my technical (in)abilities about semaphores!!

The chronicles of Koramangala !! Part-1:

This is a work of ‘TRUE FICTION’:

Astrology has been an integral part of my life, from the very day I entered this planet unwillingly (yes, I’m a descendant of Caesar) to this date! My mother, aunt, grandma and a few other feminine characters of my family believe in astrology to the core of it and do seek out the suggestion of our “Family Astrologer” ahead of performing any major alterations!! So when I was about to move to Bengaluru for work, his counsel was predictably sought and that was the one damn thing which made me end up in this posh, modish exorbitant koramangala locality that is situated in the liver of this city (yes, it’s a bit far-off from the heart of the city!!). For he is the one who flagged dismissively that I bore “MANGALA DOSHAM” ( curse of planet Mangala) and in order to trounce it , I be required to reside either in “nelaMANGALA” or in “koraMANGALA” only!! I thought it was coherent to settle in liver of the city rather than in nelaMANGALA, the foot of the city and thus, I wrecked up here!! Thank God I dint have the curse of Lord Raama, for then he would have commanded me to hang about in C.V.Raaman Nagar!!

Just like Kaashi lies on the banks of Ganga and Shimoga on Tunga , Koramangala lies on the banks of … the city’s biggest and the nastiest gutter! This gargantuan open-ventilated trench that surges towards Indiranagara , Domlur and quite a few other ‘Paalyas’ and ‘Sandraas’ before uniting with the main drainage, appears even more appalling than its counterpart of the illustrious Slumdog Millionaire’s Dhaaravi slum!! Regardless of this ,Koramangala has been trendy enough to catch the real estate boom, ornamented itself with some of the best in the town arcades, in which list come the celebrated Forum mall, Raheja Arcade, NGV , Lifestyle Oasis and numerous spencers and spars and big-bazaars and needless to cite, an ample number of software companies have also surfaced. The ‘SHOPPING MALLS’ , btw, have become a sensational hit among both boys and girls, for , if girls go there for SHOPPING, boys go there for MAALS ;)!!

Well, if that facet gave you about koramangala, the notion of a spoilt neighborhood, hold on for a moment!! Because even in streets where realty rates have touched skies, there are a lot of temples too, which are so heavily teeming all the time that it makes you feel if these many people have guilt-conscience! Whatever, it’s truly a good sign that we are not yet ripped off from our cultural roots en masse. Similar to shopping malls, few spacious patrician temples also somehow have become a thing of thumbs-up among both boys and girls.

This is how I can portray koramangala to you.. I don’t really know which smiley I’ve to put after the line, “I stay in koramangala” , :) or :( . Maybe this is more germane “:-)=$$$$$$“ , implying that you can be happy here and get high on iff you have enough dollars in every part of you!

Having given an epigrammatic foreword about the place I stay, let me start narrating some colorful as well as some pathetic experiences I had here since my arrival, one by one, with the first among them, in this very post!

——- “ The Badam Milk Split Up “——

Let me be a bit frank this time, in saying that I’m not a spendthrift. Haven’t spent too much on any particular thing which I deem unworthy or if it seems to me as a dead-investment. Nonetheless, I should concede that koramangala has been triumphant in changing this demeanor of mine to a considerable extent. Yes, the place is a pretty penny where a film in Forum on weekends won’t come for less than 300, 400 bucks, a masala dosa for not less than 40, and a house for monthly rent at … better I keep it to myself. All I can say is that in a very near future, you will not be able to declare a variable like this:

int monthly_house_rent_koramangala ;

GCC will throw an out of bound error! You will be needing a long int.

But during my initial days here, I was oblivious of all these facts and figures and never carried more that Rs.100 with me many a times while going out! One scorching day, when sun was so harsh that no ponds cream could put up with, I was returning to my room from Forum, felt very thirsty and wished to have a glass of cold badam milk in some hotel nearby. I pierced into a heavily crowded token system hotel, with great difficulty , pushed my hands near the token counter amidst other tens of hands which craved for dosas and idlis and a varied selection of other items. I handed him an unsullied 50 Rs note and asked for cold badam milk. He, in next to no time, put the money in the drawer, tore the receipt, gave me the token and moved to another customer with the same pace.

I thought, in the rush of the next customer he should have forgotten to render me the change and waited for 2-3 minutes to ask him when he finds some air to breath in. When the crowd never seemed to lessen, I decided to raise him for my change somehow in that swarm itself, and looked at the receipt to know how much he had owed me. Well, u should have already anticipated by now, that to my dismay, the receipt threw a curve at me as it showed that a glass of cold badam milk was tagged at 50 Rs!!!! God, where have you put me in, I thought. Nevertheless, I soothed myself saying that I was going to drink the costliest badam milk of my lifetime and perceptibly expected a really luscious n a flavorsome cup of it. But when I had the first sip, from that medium sized cup what he had offered, I felt that to be no better than the 8 Rp badam milk that we used to enjoy in the corner shop besides our hostel in Mysore!! Regrettably, I was in koramangala then and if I did a hasty micro-economical analysis of the badam milk cost split up, I would have found that hardly Rs.3 had gone on milk, Re.1 on Badam and sugar, 1 for refrigeration and the rest 45 was on the grounds that I had that in a place which is beset with young software engineers and well-heeled, born to the purple businessmen who think that reserve bank prints INR only in 3 denominations, of 1000, 500 and occasionally 100 !!

Whatsoever, although at times this gives the intuition of being a good course, as it a causative for the decentralization of wealth, in contrast, as they say, has really an alarming influence on the recklessly escalating cost-of-living in koramangala. I feel it’s high time we realize this and kick the ballistics before it’s too late!