Now...wait a minute!

It’s been more than a month since my last post and I just realized that nothing worth blogging has happened to me during this entire time. Safe to say that my life sucks! So Im going to resort to the ancient, time tested trick of posting videos on your blog when you have nothing interesting to say! Believe me, the ancient Chinese have been using it forever!

When you click play you will be watching Part 4 of “When good songs happen to bad guitar players”. Like I always say...’Downsize your expectations to upsize your entertainment.”

One more thing: The flipping at the end was completely unintentional!

Try and enjoy people! It isn't as smooth as I would have liked it to be but feel free to diss or praise ;)

Thought Collage: Season 1, Episode 5

(From SouthPark)
Mr. Garrison: Let's start the day with a few new math problems -- what is five times two? Yes...Clyde?
Clyde: Twelve.
Mr. Garrison: Okay. Now let's try and get an answer from somebody who is not a complete retard.
-----------------------------------------------------
So as of now I feel a little stupid as I am in waist-deep academic shit and am in the process of the trying hard to stay afloat. That being said, don’t be fooled into thinking that I am working day in and day out......unless of course you are my advisor (in which case...I AM working day in and day out professor!)

In order to do some damage control to my dwindling readership I managed to salvage some thoughts and a simple video in the hopes that this will bring some credibility to my site-meter statistics. Please feel free to come back and reread this post as many times as you want to :P
Lets see what have we got this time...

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The World Cup: Some paragraphs
1) First of all...I am very glad the WC is over. No more guilt-filled escapades from work in the mornings and afternoons to watch the games. This just means I can attain my peace of mind again and get back to doing all the work that I’ve been avoiding and procrastinating. (All lies...Professor…all lies...don’t believe any of them)

2) Then there’s the usual stuff that I file into the category of ‘highly-subjective-and-evanescent-topics’...stuff which everyone feels like talking about from his/her POV and feels is right but after a week or two nobody gives a damn...stuff like Did Italy deserve to win?...Was Zidane’s head-butt unwarranted?...Shud Materazzi have been fined too?...so on. I am no expert in football so I won’t even bother indulging in these things...except maybe say..."Oh...the places I would have gone If I looked like Ballack :P ”!!!!

3) Finally, I see the reports everywhere as 'Italy beats France on penalty shoot outs (5-3)' and I feel like yelling...”Duuuuuuuuuuuuudes, France didn’t even get to take its final penalty...so its inaccurate to say 5-3.” I know these things don’t go on record and moreover, France wouldn’t care if it lost 5-3 or 5-4 but still, there is a certain inaccuracy in such a report and it bothers me a little!

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The Bible preacher: And how I pissed him off
Now I live in Mississippi...which is in the so called ‘Bible-belt’ of the USA. And it is not at all uncommon to sometimes find yourself trapped in a conversation with people (who I won’t be surprised to find, target unsuspecting internationals) who talk about the virtues of following Jesus etc etc. I’ve had quite a few friends who’ve been in such situations. It’s not like I want to convert or anything but I’ve always wanted to talk to these preachers only to see what they have to say and piss them off with my religious arrogance. And for some reason such an experience always eluded me...until last Friday. I was sitting on a bench outside when this middle-aged guy walked up to me and said, “I am very happy today”. I kid you not, my first thought was, “WTF...Did he have an orgy last night or what?...Even so, why does he have to show off to random people...Oh wait, I would brag about such a thing too to random people :P” But the next thing he said was “That’s cuz I have Jesus in me”.
“Bingo!”...I thought!
He then proceeded to inquire about my religion and if I believed in heaven and hell and if I wanted to feel the love of God et cetera et cetera. I listened to him carefully and started pointing out with a pragmatic line of reasoning as to why I didn’t want to do whatever he wanted me to do. His every sentence had ‘lord’ and ‘God’ in it and my every response started with “But...” and had words like ‘common sense’ and ‘sanity’. I know this makes me sound conceited but I really believe in everything I said that day. Anyway, the result of the conversation was that I successfully pissed him off.
Strike one was when at one point he called me ignorant for not knowing the right ways of God. I retaliated by calling him an extremist who lets religion control his life too much. This ticked him off a lot.
Then later, he offered to pray for a blessing for my successful graduation and I politely declined it. (I really was polite :)). To make a point or save face or whatever he asked me how I would feel if he prayed for a curse for me. I told him it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to me and he could do as he pleased. That was strike two.
Strike three was when he offered to give me his phone number in case I was interested in getting together for one of his group meetings with other students. I again politely told him that I did not want his phone number because there wasn’t the slightest chance that I would be interested in such a thing at all. At this point he simply bid me goodbye and left.

In retrospect, I now have a slight amount of ‘winner’s guilt’. Maybe there wasn’t any need to engage him in conversation in the first place if I had made up my mind to be hostile. Whatever it is, I can never fathom the need to proselytize and in my opinion it is the one of the shadiest things people can do!

---------------------------
Movie Reviews: You know you want it
I realized I really went a little overboard with my last post reviewing RHCP and all...so Ill try and compensate here with as little info as possible...

1) Superman Returns
Brandon Routh...surprisingly good.
Kevin Spacey...pretty good.
Kate Bosworth...both good and cute.
Movie...watchable once!

2) Pirates Part 2
Keira Knightley...Yummmmy!
Keira Knightley...Yummmmy!
Keira Knightley...Yummmmy!
Keira Knightley...Yummmmy!
Keira Knightley...Yummmmy!
Movie...who cares? Keira Knightley...Yummmmy!

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Fractal Collage: Cuz only blog-ninjas can pull off such stunts
-->Did you know that Debra Messing (Grace from ‘Will and Grace’) named her son Roman. Cool eh? Ok...maybe not so much but at least it’s better than some other weird ass ones!! I mean its one thing to publicly acknowledge the fact that you are a superman fan but naming your son Kal-El is taking it too far Mr.Cage. Imagine how his friends will rip him apart when he grows older.
-->Starbucks wont make my hot chocolate any hotter that their set temperature. They fear being sued apparently. So I have to make do with lukewarm chocolate probably because of some fucker who was stupid enough to not know how to sip on a hot beverage and got his tongue burnt and then decided to sue Starbucks to make a quick buck!!
--> If you think you don’t have to stop completely at the stop signs only because you are riding a slow moving bicycle then you are wrong. If a cop catches you doing it he will definitely pull up right alongside you and give a stern warning making you feel like an idiot. I just know.

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The video: Straight from Roman Entertainment Inc. HQs
This is a video of me (on the left playing the rhythm on acoustic) along with my friend Avinash (on the right playing the leads on the electric) trying to capture the essence of the hindi song “Kya Maloom” by this awesome Indian band called ‘Indian Ocean’. We only play the first 3 or 4 minutes…the actual song speeds up immensely after that. I strongly recommend listening to the original song. I screwed up (as usual :() in a few places but hopefully that doesn’t ruin the song much.




---------------------------
Right......I know this post does not and will not have the same magnetic effect on the blog’s readership that Mandira Bedi had on the Indian viewership when she wore ‘that’ outfit during the cricket world cup in ‘03. But hey...I don’t cross-dress and I have to try!
So until later...keep it complex! :P

Thoughts on the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ‘Stadium Arcadium’

For those who have never even heard of or don’t know much about RHCP, as a decent fan of the Chili Peppers I feel it is my responsibility to briefly educate the masses about this great band. Since these are my thoughts on RHCP I will let this post comprise of precisely those and won’t bother with statistical data like year of formation of the band and their albums and their order of releases and things like that. I don’t think such information holds any true interest to most people and moreover it is easily available for those who care.

To begin with, RHCP stands for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Now before we go on please take a moment and note that the word ‘Chili’ is spelt with only one l and not two. So it’s ‘Chili’ and not ‘Chilli’...ok? Good. In case you do make that mistake anywhere please don’t tell anyone that you learnt about RHCP from my blog :P
The Chili peppers are (were?) essentially a funk-rock band. In more than one interview that I’ve seen of them I’ve heard ‘George Clinton’ being mentioned as one of their major influences. So if you’ve heard George Clinton’s music and not RHCP’s my educated guess is you’ll find them to be similar.
The current line up consists of...
-->Anthony Kiedis: He is the lead vocals of RHCP and has been with the band since its inception. I don’t really have anything to say about his singing except that I think it’s pretty good. :)
-->Michael Balzary, better known as Flea: In my opinion he is the best bassist in the world. The bass is most bands’ music is mostly drowned out and doesn’t really add to the feel of the song. On the other hand almost every Chili Peppers song has Flea’s unmistakable, distinctly noticeable trademark sound and many a time Flea does his own bass leads and standalone grooves during concerts. I also think he is the craziest of all the band members. He is always jumping around the most and he performed Woodstock’99 completely naked for the entire show!!!!
-->John Frusciante: The greatest guitarist in the world. Yes I really think he is the greatest guitarist in action today. (Again yes...I think he is better than Hetfield too...but then again they have different styles and this discussion as always will be open-ended). Frusciante is a genius of a musician who can play the most melodious of tunes with as little notes as possible and also the funkiest of riffs. However, I am convinced that his melody prowess is greater than his funk-maestro! RHCP originally had a guitarist called Hillel Slovak and during that time John Frusciante was a very very big fan of RHCP and followed them everywhere while learning all their songs. When Slovak died of a drug overdose, Frusciante was asked to fill his shoes and was more than delighted to do so.
-->Chad Smith: RHCP’s drummer and one of my favourites. He is one of the few drummers who I feel can make very good music with as simple a kit as possible. His drumming style has a distinctive sound and style to it and definitely adds to the RHCP sound.

One thing that I really like about the band is their concerts. They are always jumping around, having fun, improvising their music all the time and jamming around quite often. It’s always fun to watch an RHCP concert. I can only imagine how will I feel when I am in one!

So anyway that’s the band in brief for you.

After being successful for a while they had taken some time out and have now released a 2 disc album called ‘Stadium Arcadium’. It has a total of 28 songs. 14 on one CD called ‘Jupiter’ and 14 on another called ‘Mars’ (some astrology funda behind it). I bought it and listened to the whole album. I am still in the process of digesting all the songs but as of now I have a pretty solid first impression.

I have mixed feelings towards Stadium Arcadium.
I absolutely love most of the songs on the album. But at the same time I couldn’t avoid feeling a little disappointed. Let me try and explain why!

As I have mentioned in a couple of posts about RHCP before, the band has two distinct styles of music. One ‘Funky’ style with songs like ‘Give it away’, ‘Walkabout’, ‘If u have to ask’ etc. and one (for ease of reference, lets call this) ‘Ballad’ (a word I've seen someone else use) style with songs like ‘Under the bridge’, ‘My friends’, ‘Soul to squeeze’ etc. When you listen to these songs, it is almost unbelievable that the same band is making these different styles of music because everything from the vocals to the guitar playing is different.

The first few albums of RHCP were hard-core funk.
Then gradually the albums started incorporating the slow, nice melodious style of songs. It worked perfectly. A perfect balance of funky songs that you could get up and jump to when u felt like it OR relax, lay back and enjoy the other beautiful melodious sounds. I think ‘Californication’ was the best in this category.
Ballads were slowly becoming a big part of RHCP’s music.

And now we have Stadium Arcadium. A double disc album with some of the best songs Ive heard.
Except there's just not enough funk!
It turned out to be a ballad overdose!
That’s where I was disappointed.

I look at the back of the CD at the song listing and I can’t think one funky song which can hold water. Make no mistake...the songs that are there are very good. The music is perfect. The songs are perfect. But they are all...NICE. Turns out RHCP being just nice leaves me unhappy!
Flea’s funky bass sound is missing in most of the songs.
The few songs that start off with funky riffs and vocals immediately mellow down when they reach the bridge or the chorus!
Anthony’s funky voice is conspicuously missing!
Almost as if, they came up with the funky sound only cuz they were expected to and had to but at the slightest opportunity they jump right back into being mellow!


As I was listening to the album I progressively went from thinking...
“Wow...that was such nice melodious lead...that’s a good song.”
.......to......
"Another awesome song...RHCP rocks...but its been a while since something’s come up that makes me want to jump...maybe it'll come in the 2nd CD”
.......to.....
“Sonofagun...enough of this melody already...I want to shout something like GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY NOW...when will that happen?”


Ultimately, I ended up a little disappointed.

But of course this means nothing...like I said I do like the album anyway and will keep listening to it.
If I come up with anything more OR if I find that I missed something I will let you all know.
I don’t want to point out some of the good songs cuz then itll only raise your expectations and we all know what happens then! :)
All I am saying is do buy the album and listen. Who knows...if you don’t care about things like blood, sugar, sex and magik you might have no difficulty in loving this! :P

Until later...

(Music of ‘Suck my Kiss’ in the background fading away)

By Toutatis, these Romans are lazy!

I’m back people.
Where was I?
I was abducted by aliens...that’s why I couldn’t blog.
What...you don’t believe me. You want the truth?

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

Because I have breakfast 300 yards for 4000 other graduate students who are trained to work harder than me and publish more than me so don’t for one second think that you can come down here, flash your graph and make me nervous!

Hehe...:D

Anyway so there’s this incredibly crappy newspaper that circulates on my campus. Well yes, it is a student publication and one might say how much can one expect from a student publication but that’s just a sad excuse. It’s almost as if all the shit in the sewers crawls out in the morning (right after it’s freshly put there, of course) and finds its way to the printing press and arranges itself on plain white sheets in the form of letters and words and a few ads here and there and by the time you flush and shower and get dressed and get to your workstation its right there waiting for you to start giving out its stink! Yes the newspaper stinks that much. I have absolutely no personal vendetta towards anyone associated with it. In fact I have to admit for the lack of wide variety of entertainment sources I read this every freaking day! NEVERTHELESS it sucks!

And I read an extremely disturbing article in it a couple of days ago.
It was so disturbing that it shook me right of my blogging stupor and prompted me to share it with everyone. It went something like this...

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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Several self-avowed pedophiles founded a political party in the Netherlands and plan to endorse broadcasting pornographic material on daytime television and showing children as young as 12 to feature in porn films.
The Charity, Freedom and Diversity party said on Wednesday that its central campaign platform will be lowering the age of consent in the Netherlands from 16 to 12.
“Forbidding children from sex only make them more curious”, party president Martijn Uittenbogaard told The Associated Press. Uittenbogaard said his new party had supporters from ‘all corners of the country’ but acknowledged that the launch had been marked by poor attendance. Reports said that the launch in the city of Leiden was only attended by people from the media.
--------------

WHAT THE QUADRUPLE FUCK?

Its not the fact that such perverts and disgusting people exist that bothers me. I had come to terms with that long ago. What beats the shit out of my senses is that these people think its perfectly ok to
1) come out in the society and declare that they are pedophiles
2) form a freaking POLITICAL PARTY with an agenda to lower the age of consent for sex...which essentially boils down to the fact that they want to ‘molest’ younger and younger children and are quite unhappy that they can’t go about doing it because of some law!
3) try and disguise this whole thing with an excuse as unbelievable stupid as the remark made by its party president and claim that they have support from "all corners of the country"

I understand that the Netherlands is probably the most broad-minded (for the lack of a better word that I can think of) society in today’s world but this is really the limit! I guess what really bothers me about this whole thing is that how can they let such people get away with such audacity? Moreover, if nothing’s done, doesn’t it set a bad precedent! This sucks so much that our campus newspaper seems to be not so high on the sucks-big-time-scale.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The world as we know it has taken one step down the morality ladder! If this keeps up, we are f-ed for sure!

So it talks…but does it dance?

Hello.
We, at Roman Entertainment Inc. welcome you once again.
As our loyal customers are very well aware, we have always provided you with various forms of entertainment. Be it anecdotes, guitar playing or funny/useless pictures, we have always strived to provide you, our consumer with the best of material. And now we have a new product. Normally other companies waste no time in sweet-talking their new product. We, on the other hand believe that you are the best judge. All we ask you to do is check out this new shit, bitches (and also watch out for the guy in the red tee.)
We sincerely hope you enjoy it. Remember,
We mix our business with your pleasure.

Under the Bridge...the greatest song in the world!

Golu has a small post on RHCP’s forthcoming album Stadium Arcadium. There is a little discussion in the comments about their new song.

This triggered me. I wanted to write a post on the musical monster that is RHCP. Something about how, when broadly categorized their songs fall into 2 groups. One ‘Funky’ group with songs like ‘Give it away’, ‘Walkabout’, ‘If u have to ask’ etc. and one ‘Plain beautiful music’ group with songs like ‘Under the bridge’, ‘My friends’, ‘Soul to squeeze’ etc. And also delve into why I like their new song and how when ‘Stadium Arcadium’ releases Ill own a copy of it faster than you can say ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’.

But then I lost enthu and time!
So I give you two things instead.

--> A long forgotten post about RHCP and the song Under the Bridge.

--> A Video of my guitar:
Like I’ve mentioned in the info to this video, this is the first in a forth-coming series that I shall be calling “When good songs happen to bad guitar players”. I'd hate to raise people's expectations and then have them come crashing down. So let me mention that Im not very good. And no...this is not a case of pretentious modesty where I say "Oh I play a little guitar...but Im not very good" and then pick up a guitar and belt out Hendrix licks like they were nothing. It's all for fun so it doesn't have to be great!



I missed some notes...I know. Think of it as my signature style.
That's right...missing notes and muting chords...that's me baby! YEAH! :P

Sam Etaro…the triathlete!

This is my story.
A story that is inspiring in its stark brutality.
A story about courage and swimming.
A story about sacrifice and biking.
A story about suffering and running.
A story about survival...definitely not of the fittest.
A story about a man who catches up with his destiny.
A story about how I survived my first triathlon.
This is my story.


Getting started: During my college years I developed a love for long distance running. Considering that I wasn’t exactly super athletic in school I was never any good at it. Maybe that’s the reason why I have such a strong liking towards it. The sheer challenge of overcoming mental and physical fatigue was (and still is) no mean task for me and the ‘runner’s euphoria’ at the end justifies all the pain you go through. And naturally after meeting 'Ro Thorpe' my next fascination was with a triathlon. I see a triathlon as the ultimate test of mental and physical strength, in that particular order. So I was obviously very kicked when about a month ago I saw a poster calling for participants in a “Sprint Triathlon” to be held at Olemiss. I signed up the next day and even convinced two of my friends to do this with me.
I researched a bit about the triathlon and what I found I must admit was a little disappointing. You see, somehow I expected this to be quite a challenging triathlon, something substantial and reasonably well-respected. Turned out that they called this a “Sprint Triathlon” for a good reason. Here’s a simple chart to give you a good idea about the level of difficulty!
Ok...maybe calling this ‘rubber-man’ is a little presumptuous considering that this was my first time and I wasn’t even sure if I could finish this without dying en route. Still, I just wanted as big a jumpstart as possible!
Nevertheless we (me and my 2 friends) trained well and trained hard. I went off all fancy food stuffs and stuck to a healthy diet. During the training I figured running was not going to be too much of a problem. I was used to running (I like the way I sound as if I’m a champion runner :D, the actual fact couldn’t be further away from that) and biking is something that I had done a lot as a kid. So I simply borrowed my friend’s mountain bike for the race and I started biking a lot to get my legs used to the feeling. But swimming was going to be my slowest time and also the most tiring. Since triathlons always follow the order of swim, bike and run I didn’t want to tire myself out completely right after my swim. Hence I decided to just fine tune my (already quite slow) pace and not really put in a mammoth effort during the swim. One month passed by pretty quickly and the D-day arrived!

Race-Day: The three of us arrived early morning and started getting ready for the race. The swim was going to be in the indoor swimming pool and the transition area was right outside the building. After setting up the bike ready for transition we wished each other good luck and went and stood in line for the race to begin. Since this wasn’t open water all the participants couldn’t start at once and were staggered at intervals of 10 seconds based on your serial numbers. For your viewing pleasure and better understanding I made a diagram of the situation in the swimming pool (Click on an image to enlarge it).
I do admit it is a bit of exaggeration but it captures the essence of the moment there. I simply wasn’t fast enough. Somehow I finished the swimming part and ran outside to my bike. My transition was fairly quick as I had decided to bike and run with my wet shorts and only had to put on a tee and shoes. I took off towards the course and right after I began I saw the guy with serial number 2 coming back towards the transition to start his run! Now if this perplexes you allow me to explain this situation: Like I had mentioned...we were staggered by 10 seconds according to our serial numbers. I was number 106. So I started the race about 17.5 minutes after the number 2 guy. And I noticed he had taken about 5 minutes to finish his swim part. I, on the other hand (as I found out later) had taken more than 11 minutes. So in the time I waited for my turn to start the race and finish swimming this guy had finished the swim and bike parts!!! That’s how much I sucked! :(
So anyway, nothing extraordinary happened on the bike route. It was fairly straight with some ups and downs. Not too hard, not too easy. One of my friends was way ahead of me and the other friend was a little behind me. To say my biking sucked big time too isn’t an overstatement. People who started the swim after me were now passing me on their bikes. This kind off bummed me out a bit but I just kept pushing myself and going. About 50 minutes later I finished the to and fro part of the bike ride and went back to the same transition area to start my run. Here I saw a lot of guys standing around with a bored look on their faces, waiting for the race to end as they had already finished it. I swore to myself that someday I was going to be one of them...someday!
Running immediately after 10 miles of biking makes your legs feel a little wobbly. But I knew that if anything, the run was my strongest area and I had to make the best of it. In all fairness I did pretty good. I passed about 6 people on the run and finished all 3 miles of it in about 28 mins. I finished the race between my two friends but there was no denying the fact that I hadn’t done a great job. A lot of people had already finished and I didn’t expect my position to be very good! Still, I was pleased because there was a point during the training when I was sure I was going to end up last!
My other friend also finished race soon after me and the three of us just hung around waiting for the results...and they were as I had expected them!
PS: I always register under my pseudonym ‘Rohit Sammeta’! ;)

The Aftermath: It would be no exaggeration to say I am extremely proud of taking part in a triathlon and have awarded myself the bragging rights for this for the next 100 years :D Notwithstanding a little headache that troubled me over the greater part of yesterday (the race day) it feels great to know that my body can take this soft-bashing!

There’s only one place to go from here. I know it’s not going to be easy. And the way is paved with loads of difficulties. But I can see it from this distance. Call me ridiculous, call me insane but I hope someday Ill be able to do THE IRON MAN!

And then...that’s gonna be one heck of a story!
Until later folks!
Sam Etaro
(Fledgling Triathlete...Future Iron-Man (hopefully))

Thought Collage: Parte Cuatro

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Year 2015
The absence of lights except for the solitary lamp cast ominous shadows everywhere in the room. Sitting in a dark corner with his knees drawn up to his chest the man waited for the nightly rounds to end. The sound of the baton hitting the steel doors far away entered the room faintly. It gradually increased in intensity and startled the man who was lost in his thoughts when the guard struck on his door. He held his breathe for a few seconds and let it go only when he heard the sound again. This time slightly less louder. And gradually it faded away into the dark silence. This was an everyday experience ever since he was institutionalized for his addiction. He was doing his best to cure himself but the battle was getting tougher and tougher. He couldn't take it anymore and caved in. He had used all his contacts and resources to obtain the contraband. And tonight he was going to treat himself to the joy that he was deprived of for the past 6 months. Listening intently to make sure all was quiet he slowly reached down below his bed and pulled out the Dell Inspiron laptop that wasn’t supposed to be there and switched it on. Once it was booted up he connected to the wireless LAN that was prevalent throughout the building and logged into the network with the stolen user id and password. A few anxious moments were rewarded with the site of Google homepage loading up and he let out a stifled chuckle of merriment. Wasting no time he went to the address bar and proceeded to type in www.rohitsammeta.blogsp..... and that was when the door was thrown open with a frightening thud and bright lights filled the room in an instant. His startled and angry eyes saw his doctor followed by 5 huge men run into the room and reaching for him and the laptop. Desperately clutching onto it he shouted in vain. The laptop was snatched away from him and he was easily overpowered. Amidst shouts of “Nooooooo…” the doctor gave him a large sedative shot that gradually quietened him and eventually put him to sleep. Shaking his head the doc looked at his chart. 6 months into treatment for a severe case of blog addiction and he still hadn’t shown any remarkable improvement. His wasn’t the first such case. They were doing everything they could in their power but without any results. A shadow of gloom set in as the room plunged into darkness once again. All they could do was hope.
------------

Because I don’t want any of you to become someone like the man in 2015 I have decided to cut short my work in the day and make this posting. Haha what a bunch of BS, you say? Ok then! The real reason being that the time had come for me to give out another installment of Thought Collage (and for the one to go to the temple of the king!) Did I just see you do a little dance of joy there? Huh?
So anyway...here's the outcome:

First place: Being the super magnanimous dude that I am I very magnanimously volunteered to be a judge for a magnanimous children’s science fair (ok...that last magnanimous wasn’t necessary, but it's one of my favourite words. But only second to ‘gobbledygook’. Unfortunately I never get to use gobbledygook. Until now!). The kids taking part in this science fair were from grades 3 to 9. Since I neither have scruffy hair nor currently hold a job at a patent office I thought it would be a cool contradictory thing to volunteer as a physics judge. I had a great time judging, watching the kids come up with some really smart things and me trying to explain a few physics fundamentals to them ;). Although I must concede that my efforts to explain the Maxwell’s equations to the 4th grades might not have been entirely successful. They surely must have thought “Man...that’s a whole lot of gobbledygook!” :D
Seriously though, my biggest problem was that I could not remember how much I knew in my 3rd grade. In other words, I didn’t know the benchmark of knowledge for each grade. And thus there was no way I knew if a kid was smarter than average or dumber. All I did was some relative grading and made sure whatever I tried to explain wasn’t...gobbledygook!

Second Place: Last Monday some of you might have partied, drank Bacardi and not given a fu*k. That works perfectly because it was a day commemorating a logistically significant event of my life...its beginning. And the coolest of all cool things that was given to me (in a large-scale effort to improve my personality) was this. A song by my good friend Zubin! The only reason this little bit of info is here is because I wanted everyone to appreciate the large quantities of talent in this guy and of course a little ‘Thanks Zubin’ from my side! :)

Here are the annotated lyrics:

He was a horny kid
But a journalist (Re: Sam Etaro)
He tried to get laid
A story we all know

He went up the hill
With a Bihari Jill (Re: A story that I'd rather not disclose :))
But he came back down
With a sad look in his face

But jokes apart
He’s a good man at heart
And that’s why I sing
On FFF's behalf

Happy bday Ro
Happy bday Ro
Memories of 265 (Re: My room no. in my hostel)
Will never go

Happy birthday Ro
Happy birthday Ro
Memories of 265
Will never go

The circle of friends (Re: My super stud theory about why I failed to...)
The extended btp (...finish my BTP on time!)
The edp
We never did do

Happy birthday Ro
Happy birthday Ro
Memories of 265
Will never go

Ok...enuff senti...PAIN, BLOOD, CARNAGE, KILL, SEEK and DESTROY!!!!
Haaa...I feel all manly now. :P

Third place : And finally, to wrap things up let me just say that after years and years of using other people’s guitars I finally went ahead and got myself one...a beautiful acoustic epiphone. I wish I was good enough to bless you all with the sweet sound of music that is my guitar playing. But we all wish for a lot of things and everything doesn’t come true! So for the time being this pic shud do the trick!

That’s all for now! I hope this fix should keep you going for a while!
Gobbledygook everybody!

Engineerspotting

Choose life.
Choose a lucrative job.
Choose a proper career.
Choose a fucking big television
Choose a fancy sports car, bought directly from a showroom and not from a second hand dealer.
Choose good health, proper food, and dental insurance.
Choose to have a girlfriend.
Choose a party life on weekends.
Choose to have clothes other than the one pair of jeans and the free tees that fill your wardrobe.
Choose to be an all star.
Choose to be a rock star.
Choose to travel the world and not be stuck in one place for over a year.
Choose to face the real fucking world.
Choose your future.
Choose life.

But why would I want to do a thing like that?

Disclaimer: I stole the picture from Duh and the text from the worst toilet in Scotland. Cuz living like this...its a full time business!

Of ice and men!

Everyone must have heard the phrase “curiosity killed the cat”. I have too. And I have wondered many times about the origins of the story. I mean, there has got to be a story behind it right? Cuz, why a cat? Why not some other animal? Why not a dinosaur? That would have fit quite nicely.
“There are no dinosaurs anymore man. I wonder what happened”
“They were too damn curious for their own good and that got them killed. Stupid things. It’s sad that curiosity killed the dinosaur.”
“Yo dude...that’s some deep shit man. Write that down. We have to pass such wisdom to our kids and stuff”

That’s a likely ancient conversation that would have made things easier…don’t you think? But no! It’s the cat that got in for no reason!
Why not even the hero of all proverbs Jack...who happened to be so popular at the time the oldies were making the proverbs/poems. He is almost everywhere. So why isn’t it “curiosity killed Jack”? Maybe he was losing his touch with the ladies of the proverb committee by then. Maybe Jill was getting all possessive!!!!

Ok...I digress.

But you have to admit that it is quite ironic I am not curious enough to find out about the origins of an expression about curiosity. Any way what I really wanted to talk about are the winter Olympics. That’s a nasty jump from one train of thought to another. Yes...doesn't get any better! :D

A couple of weeks back one out of every 3 articles in any newspaper (I’m talking about online editions!) was about 'Torino 2006'. Being the totally-cut-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world-I’m-happy-in-my-little-cubicle dude that I am I didn’t bother to find out what was all the hype about. But soon the ‘Torino’ fever was everywhere and I couldn’t ignore it. I was worried that it was a new strain of avian flu that would compromise my daily diet of chicken nuggets. I formed the resolve to educate myself about this possible danger. My curiosity was quipped. I shouted out loud and asked my friend if it sounded like a ‘meow’. His startled NO was good enough to confirm I was no cat and there was no risk of dying. And then by the power of Greyskull and Google I entered the world of winter Olympics...

...that happened to be quite fascinating...

...except, I was wondering if I am the only guy who thinks some of the games are downright hilarious, boring and/or quite silly! Grab your warm winter clothing and follow me into a not-so-detailed and completely biased and stupid look at some of the winter games that demand close attention.

1) First the Biathlon. I had heard of this before I actually looked it up and at that time somehow the first thing that came to my mind was a game involving long-distance skiing (u know...it’s a winter sport and it’s a something-thon) and maybe snow-boarding OR simply running in the snow (which is like a 1000 times harder than lot of other sports) OR something like that. I was half right...the first part is long-distance skiing but after that you shoot rifles! How arbitrary is that! Skiing and marksmanship...it feels so weird to have them both as one sport. The official winter Olympics site talks about this as an evolution of how people in olden days used to ski and hunt as a method of survival. At first that made a little sense to me but then I figured that more people used to run and hunt? Why isn’t that in the summer Olympics (or is it?). A little desperate for winter sports, aren’t we? ;)
I’m sure in the book of biathlon rules there is a little line somewhere that goes......you cannot win the event by shooting your competitors and eliminating them...

2) Here’s Bobsleigh: This sport seems reasonably exciting. Although I really see this as a more professional way of sliding down a water slide in a rubber tube. But that’s not all...take a look at the picture and imagine a nice big white ambassador car in the place of the sleigh and 4 Indian men in place of the sportsmen pushing it. Don’t u think if only we had snow in India we would totally kick ass in this competition. Our men would be quick and strong in getting it moving and would reach 0-topspeeds in a jiffy and also be very comfortable in the cramped up seating arrangement of the sleigh. We would have kicked so much ass it’s not even funny!

3) Pardon me if I am being uncouth and ignorant but Curling is by far the silliest of all Olympic sports. Not to mention boring. Although I must admit I’ve never seen a game myself ever. I am just speculating that it will be boring. Cuz how much excitement can you really expect in a sport where u throw a disc in a really funny/graceful way (almost as if to say...I know this sucks but at least u guys get to see how flexible and smooth I am on ice) and his team-mates run ahead of it sweeping the ice! When did man lose the imagination to come up with new sports that he had to incorporate 'skillful sweeping' as an essential ingredient? Sweeping for Gods sake!
What next? Another biathlon with rock-climbers having to scale buildings upto a certain floor and quickly wash all the windows there and come down! Silly stuff :D

Hmmm...actually that’s all!
If anyone knows about how the curious cat died please let me know.
Until then...keep it cool!
Yeah...that was abrupt. I know...I so suck at handling trains of thoughts!

A quick jog down memory lane...and what do I find?

Last night I just couldn’t fall asleep. I was simply lying in bed with all kinds of thoughts in my head. And for some strange reason I started recalling things from my years gone by. Think about it and you’ll realize that everything we remember is in the form of a time window which is etched in our minds. We rarely remember entire events…just a few memorable moments. Moments making up some event that was in some way significant enough to alter our surroundings and our self. So much so, they’ve remained in our heads almost permanently. These memories, I feel come with the complete set. Sounds, colours, the people present and the environment...everything that you can associate with them.

And last night I had a stream of such memories continuously flowing through my head.

I remembered the time when I was an 8 year old in school and saw a girl being bitten by a dog. I can still recall the two deep teeth marks on her arm that were making her scream hysterically. A bunch of us had simply formed a semi-circle around her and were practically doing nothing but stare. I remember feeling nauseous thinking about it later and spitting out my éclairs that I was chewing on at that time.

I remembered the time of my first operation in my 4th standard to remove an infection from my leg. How the doctor managed to put me under anesthesia by asking me if I had ever blown balloons at a birthday party. My proud 'yes' was met with a smile and he promptly covered me with the anesthesia inducing mask and asked me to ‘blow a balloon’! The interesting thing is that this is the only thing that I can remember from my entire operation experience.

I remembered the time as a kid when I was coming back home from school in an auto and was riding in the front. I had fallen asleep only to fall off the moving auto, badly injuring myself in the process. I can still recall the vision of the moving road approaching me with alarming speed as I fell towards it and can distinctly remember the screeching sound of car wheels stopping behind me once I had completed my glorious fall. (Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night all sweaty and scared: P)

...and so on and so forth. You get the idea right?
So then I started wondering if I could figure out what was my oldest memory amongst all these. Which one of these was filled on the very first page?

And I think I have found an answer. I can be reasonably sure about this being my first memory because of the house that my family was living then. I have no other memory from that house and this was the house that I was brought into when I was born. I was a little startled to realize that my very first memory was that of the death of my paternal grandfather. I always had this array of thoughts in my head but never realized that this particular one was my first memory.
I was 2 years old and I can recall visions of my grandfather’s dead body lying in the living room and relatives pouring into our house to pay their last respects. He had died of a lung disease and his chest was swollen! I remember my grandmother crying on the bed and her sisters trying to console her. Again, I just can’t seem to recollect my parents being around!

The funny thing is that thinking about these memories consciously and writing about them seems to have scrambled everything up inside my head! They just dont seem all that coherent anymore!
Complex, the ways of human mind seem to be.
Unravel we must, this mystery.

I really don’t mean to freak anyone out.
I just felt like sharing.
Nothing deep.
Thats all!

I am Jack’s desire for the perfect lover.

On a certain auspicious day when all the planets were arranged in a spectacular way I was tagged by Kate to list 8 qualities of my perfect lover. But before I put them out there for all to see I thought it befitting to say something about this. And I am willing to bet my left testicle that a lot of those who read this are going to think of me as a big A-hole.

I am not really a fan of memes. Or at least I’ve never come across one which was interesting to me (except the 55-word story one). I can hear the words ‘sour-grapes’ screaming in your head but you only have my words to believe when I say I couldn’t care less. As a blog-ninja ( :D...ok...sorry) I have traveled reasonably far and wide in the blog world and have come across many memes and formed an honorable opinion about them. So IMHO, while some memes happen to be plain boring which hold absolutely no interest to any reader whosoever (eg/: The google image search result, n-th line from some m-th post) many others happen to make an attempt to bring out the blogger’s personality traits (eg/: Fav books, Fav movies, Weird habits etc) which from my point of view are boring too.

This can possibly mean two things:
1) Almost everyone who posts memes fails to make them across my threshold of being interesting (possibly because I put my thresholds right opposite to where I keep my chances of having a threesome with Angelina Jolie and Sienna Miller) OR
2) I am a totally unsophisticated person who isn’t even half as intellectual as a majority of the rest of the world is in order to appreciate their interests.

I am perfectly willing to accept any of the above two as the hard-core undeniable fact.

So yeah, I don’t really enjoy reading memes.
But that doesn’t mean I am going to be an uppity arse about it (just a normal one is good enuff I guess!). I am perfectly willing to play along, all the more because I know there are many things I find to be mind-bogglingly fun to do but others might think they befit the behaviour of person with a room temperature IQ (measured in Celsius that too!!)
The universe tends towards a balance you see.

Thus...
If I were Romeo, my Juliet would be...
If I were Majnoo, my Laila would be...
If I were Anakin, my Padme would be...
If I were King Kong, my Naomi Watts would be...
If I were Golu, my Jenna Jameson would be...

...some one with the following qualities:

Qualities listed are neither permanent nor in any particular order. Depending on the vagaries of my mood, the position of Pluto (the dog) and the size of Ashlee Simpson’s breasts I can rearrange them or even discard/replace them (the qualities I mean :P).

1) She should be totally totally smokin hot. I know I am not Adonis personified or anything even remotely like that but I wouldn’t believe anyone who didn’t wish for a really hot lover irrespective of their own hotness rating. And as long as I am jotting down qualities of my perfect lover, what’s wrong in hoping for the best eh?

2) She should have a bunch of equally hot or hotter friends and she shouldn’t have any feelings of jealousy when I practice my moves on them.

3) She should worship Metallica. I am willing to bend this rule so that one could replace the word ‘worship’ with ‘love’ or (incase she over-qualifies regarding point 1) even ‘really like’. But nothing below that!

4) When I say, “Honey...guess what I brought home today! A leather strap and some handcuffs” she should have a naughty twinkle in her eye and must drag me towards our bedroom immediately. She must NOT look like Marlon Brando and say “The horror, the horror” and run away. In other words, she must be open to experimentation.

5) In particular she must also be willing to [The Google Blogspot Administrators team has decided to censor these particular lines in order to protect the innocence of the kids who might accidentally wander to this blog and read this post. Rohit Sammeta...you have a filthy and pathetic mind and we hope you rot in hell! And yes...we are watching...BITCH! ]

6) She should not be a crazed religious person. I don’t care which religion she practices...as long as she knows there is only one God...ME.

7) And just because I want to stress on this I shall reiterate...she has to be smokin hot! On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the corpse from ‘Corpse Bride’ and 10 being Sienna Miller, she has to be a 10! Cuz I’d really like to go out with you Sienna...that Jude dude is a total fucking jerk. Go out with me and Ill never cheat on you with our nanny...maybe others but not with our nanny...I swear!

8) And finally, in case we decide to get married she should be open-minded enough to pay me a large dowry.

Phew...I finally did it! It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I really hope there is someone out there who fits these qualities (with the liberty of not qualifying for either one of the points 1 and 7). If that someone is reading this, know that I am the perfect guy for you. Make haste and get in touch with me.
And I will give you those things, you thought unreal.
The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal.

See how hot Sienna is...someone find her for me!

What's up?

I had written a post a couple of days ago. And it was something inspired from my own life that I had converted into a silly story. Why silly?...well because I am not exactly the emperor of creativedom. (Yes, I know I am a blog-ninja, but that doesn’t really help. Blog-ninjas only protect their honour, maybe fight spam and then take coffee breaks when they are bored...not produce works of Shakespeare...because you should know that blog-ninjas are not a million monkeys put in a room either). So yes...like I was saying...I’m the contemporary Casanova and I know a thing or two about using chocolate...no wait...that wasn’t what I was saying...but that’s true too. So yes...like I was saying before I cleverly inserted a stupid joke...the post turned out to be quite silly and under the influence of a powerful truth potion (the kind that Bill shoots ‘the bride’ with)* I would admit it was a little girly girly. Well…I should have expected that because it was about a gorgeous girl. And gorgeous girls make me weak in my knees**. And as much as I would like to weave a story where I am a devastatingly handsome man who sweeps her off her feet by optimizing her MATLAB code with the use of vectors instead of nested loops, with some awesome car chases and evil overlords dying at my hands added in for good measure...I’m sure you all would find that a little unbelievable. So I wrote a simpler story...and it turned to be a little sappy. And being a blog-ninja*** my blog-sense immediately picked up trials of its sappiness and I verified this fact from a friend of mine. It was put up for about 10 minutes on my blog after which I promptly (but silently...just like a deadly killer) struck with my sword and destroyed it. Of course it still is lying somewhere on my computer. And I just might post it at a later time...maybe even in its original form. But that’s for the future.

So yeah...I deprived you all a chance to make fun of me.

BUT for now, ninja-code**** dictates that I should say something that is apropos to the post title. So let me tell you about this undergrad in my department. He has this most peculiar habit that I am about to explain. But before we go there take a quick look at this conversation...

Person1: “Hey man...what’s up?”
Person2: “Nothing much...what’s up with you?”
Person1: “Nothing grr8...just catching up on some work.”
Person2: “Cool...me too...alright then. I’ll see you later.”
Person1: “Yeah cool...cya later dude.”

Does this conversation strike as being out of the ordinary, weird, inappropriate or lacking in honesty to anyone out there? I certainly don’t think so and in fact I have similar conversations with almost everyone I am acquainted with.

Except when it involves our protagonist.

This guy literally considers the meaning of the words “What’s up?” and eagerly launches into a nice lecture about what is on his mind right then and what he plans to do in the next few hours. And this has happened so many times and it continues to happen.

A few examples (NOTE: These conversations are not doctored):

Example 1:
Me (casually walking past him): “Hey man...What’s up?”
Him: “Oh...I was just here trying to learn this new software that I need to use for this project in that so and so course. But I’ve been having a few problems...I'll keep working on this for a while and hopefully will figure them out.”
Me: “...hmmm...ok...good luck”

Example 2:
Me: “Hey Pat*****, how’s it going?”
Him: “Pretty good...pretty good...thanks...I finally got my senior design project to work so that was cool. And now I have to make sure I do well in my tests so I can manage a good GPA this semester...lets see how that goes.”
Me: “ haah...good...alright then”

And I feel bad now because I have started exploiting the situation. When I am in a hurry I don’t say Hi to him cuz that would slow me down severely. In other times when I feel like having a little fun I go up to him and say “Hey Pat, Just what exactly is going on man...its been a while” and while he sincerely starts telling me the story of his life I sometimes bite my lip to avoid succumbing to the urge of smiling.
One of the many reasons why I am such a dork!
So yeah...that’s all.
It’s time to go now.

And in conclusion I would like to thank my parents, my friends and Pat for making life fun for me and also a certain blogger from whom I shamelessly stole the idea of the starred-references but am too chicken to admit openly.


* If you don’t know what I’m talking about…leave a comment and I will promptly point a finger at you and laugh and take great pride in the fact that I can recall lines from this particular movie better than you.

** It’s a disease called ‘beingaguyosis’

*** I’m kind of overdoing the whole blog ninja thing…right?

****I know, I know...but I can’t help it!

***** His name really isn’t Pat...but I bet you didn’t care. And I promise this will be the last starred reference.

Thought Collage/Part 3 (Homegoing edition...with special bonus feature)

Now as most of you who are nice (and jobless) enough to read this blog regularly would remember I have had 2 parts of “Random Thoughts” before. It is my honourable intention to make this part 3. However before I move on, the honour code of blog-ninjas that I strictly live my life by has required me to change the title of these posts to “Thought Collage”. Cuz you see when I hit upon the idea of making a post comprising of many different ideas, none of which had enough juice in them to be squeezed into a decent post, amongst many things I was quite pleased with myself. And after many many brain things in my head I decided to name it “Random Thoughts”. The blog-ninja in me was quite pleased and took a honourable bow. But then something happened that was about to compromise my ninja honour. Being extremely nice and even more extremely jobless (not to mention the honour code) I myself wander around the net reading many many blogs. And during the course of my journey I found that there were many others who not only jotted down random thoughts like I did but also chose to call them by the same name as mine. Some even went as far as naming their blogs that. This disturbed me deeply. Why...one might ask. As an answer I quote one of the many honour codes that we blog ninjas live by...

It is imperative for a blog-ninja to protect his creativity at all times and in case he finds himself in a situation where his creativity is comprised due to...,...,external replication,...or all of the above the blog-ninja must immediately do his utmost to restore his lost honour.

Of course, I was deeply disturbed. Fortunately the training I’ve had has prepared me to face such situations with courage. And in order to restore my lost honour I renamed my “Random Thoughts” as “Thought Collage”. I know, it isn’t exactly super-ohmygodRo-you are a fucking genius-creative...but still my lost honour I hope to reinstate.

And so here we go...

1. There is absolutely nothing worse than traveling 36-40 hrs from one side of the earth to the other in cramped up seats in airplanes spending 3-4 hours in layovers wandering about like an idiot in other airports only to find your baggage delayed/missing at the end of it all. I hate long-distance plane journeys...in fact even short distance plane journeys suck! The seats suck! The fucking pretzels suck! Everything sucks!
This can even be made into some kind of torture. You need to extract some information from some hard-ass secret agent, put him on a plane in economy class going from the US to India with at least 4 layovers with neither a window nor an aisle seat on any leg of the journey. Very soon he’ll be begging you to put him out of his misery. I can’t wait for teleportation to become a common thing!

2. Sri Lankan airlines airhostesses are hot! This was the only mitigating factor during my torture sessions traveling to and from home. I have a rudimentary theory that all the hot women from Tamil Nadu must have thought “Aaah...fuck this...we are too hot for this place...lets swim across to Sri Lankan and join their airlines”. And before you even think about mentioning the fact that they are hot as a requirement for being an airhostess, trust me that is so not the case anywhere!
I must add that my good luck could purely have been the result of some good deed I must have done in some previous birth and there is a possibility that you might be disappointed if you go solely upon my words! That said and done, let me reiterate “Sri Lankan airlines airhostesses are hot!”

3. Golu is getting married next summer...i.e in 2007.

4. Driving in the US makes you a sissy! Everyone is organized and no one tries to throw themselves in the path of your vehicle and later pick a fight with you. My dad had come to pick me up from the airport and while driving back home it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was freaking out like hell! There were many times when I just wanted to make him stop the car and lecture him about how to drive safer. Its going to be quite an interesting challenge to get used to traffic in India again!!!

5. I loved suffering from jetlag. You see...a normal person, when he suffers from jetlag ends up sleeping most of the day and lays awake at nights cuz his normal working times have been reversed. But I on the other hand am used to working late at nights and sleeping in the day anyway. So when I went home I was going to bed at 10pm and waking up at 6 am like a good boy. (On a somewhat related note, I never understood why would something like this make someone wealthy...I think it was just a cheap trick by the moral makers to lure young minds by tempting them with money.) Anyway now that I’m back it was the same story even here. Early to work at 8 am and go back home in the evenings...just like everyone other sane person. Unfortunately, just like ‘Buffy the vampire slayer’, my athletic build in my youth and the other good things in life even this wont last long and I can already feel my old habits slowly crawling back into my system.

6. Movie/Music update: If you still haven’t listened to “Right here right now” from ‘Bluffmaster’ you are working waaay too hard. This song has one of the catchiest beats I’ve listened to in quite sometime. Catch it!
“Munich” is ok. The movie serves the purpose of inspiring people to research everything about the 1972 massacre and the history behind it...but that’s about it. Maybe that was the only point of the movie. Plus it’s got some very weird sex scenes in it. And weird in a “mess-with-your-mind” way and not “look-at-this-baseball-bat-I-bet-you-cant-...” way.
Watch it to form an opinion.

7. In case you thought I am kidding about Golu getting married in the summer of 2007...Im not!

8. And now for the final bonus feature...here’s a pic that golu used to convince the half-gult/half-tam girl to be wedded to him.
These were his own words when the pic was taken, “Ro...check out this cool pic. Look at my cool cap and the cool goatee. And that incredibly sexy yet innocent look that I have. Top that with the fact that I am an IIT graduate doing his PhD in America and standing against the Manhattan skyline...I mean, who can resist me?”.
Well, it sure worked dear Dheeraj. I couldn’t be happier for you. :)
And I’m telling you guys...I’m not kidding! 2007 it is.

Woks...that’s it for now.
Blog-ninja code dictates I get back to work to protect my honour with my advisor. And so I am gone!