Ajju

Click the image below for a REAL debate and some hot Big B goodness:

My blog is now at http://kiddo.active.ws. This is my final blog move, I promise:) http://kiddo.rediffblogs.com also redirects to this blog and any other URLs that I may have given you, all lead to the same blog. So meet me there!

Just back from the smoky mountains. Forests, mountains, streams....my kinda place :) The fact that I was with 3 people who just gelled inspite of the fact that they were only acquaintances before added to the pleasure ofcourse. IChildhood friendships have their own charm which, before today, I found uncomparable. But now I see that friendship between mature adults has its own bright points....more on this later. A 4 hour drive from Atlanta in a rented chevy classic, the smokies are 'da place' ! Again more on this with photos in the new gallery courtesy Har coming up!

Today was spent sleeping, resting the tired legs (A 6 hour trek does that to you!) and watching TV. And dear self, you really need to buy a car...just the freedom that wheels give you is worth the money. So cut the stingyness and buy some wheels baby :P

And I recommend Sinfest.

A reversal of roles

B today - taking on the mantle, inspiring, clearing the fog, showing the direction

A badly needed infusion of optimism from the ex-pessimist déesse

I am 21, I am still in college, there are people who go into the industry and realize they know nothing

There are people who shift to orthogonal or disconnected careers in middle ages

Start from the alphabet

And I have a few strengths of my own

To never lose sight of the goal, to never let the enthusiasm flag, to act

such is the need of the hour, so it shall be done

amen and many hugs to the déesse

Could there BE anyone better :)

Deja Vu...and not quite....but I've been here before.

5th std...a cat lived on the loft in our dining room. How it found the place we'll never know...what we did know that it was one smartass kitty
It knew how to open the window with its paws and open the fridge door and spill the milk container and lap away to glory :)
We started locking the fridge then and we would have locked the window but the kitty had a kitten
Then for some reason kitty decided to leave .... the kitten was all alone for one whole day and then the next morning we decided we needed to do something
so we brought it down from the loft and put it in a shoe box lined with cotton, named it billu and gave it some milk
Sketchpen on shoe box "Billu's Box"
it wouldnt drink first...then it had a little later....we got an old baby bottle out of somewhere and gave it a few drops more
But then in the morning, billu had left ... gone to billu heaven.... we'll never know why his mom left him ....
I cried a lot and then we took billu near the rail tracks and buried him a pit
and i cried a lot on the way back
I remember thinking Billu wouldnt find peace even in death if someone dug him up coz the pit was smelling
Odd thing to think
But then for years every time I walked by the spot, I swear I could smell flowers...though there were none
Yep, I was a little cynical too but what to do...thats how it was...I went back once twice thrice and I could
maybe it was just my kid brain


Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.
And it makes me wonder.


Points in time...attached by a hazy line ....now give me perspective

On monday...
The moon was a beautiful ivory crescent over the dark silhouette of a huge tree
like those vikram baital stories
I find the scene more serene than scary
taking a walk at 1 am in my neighborhood is considered dangerous
Sure enough I found a dark slinky character ambling down the road towards me
Now its not often that such characters approach me...usually I approach them and they scurry away
Came up to me with a curious look in the eyes
and then started rubbing against my feet :)
It was a kitty :)

To cut a long story short,
Billu 2 followed me home .... with little prodding
first she sat near the door and I gave her some milk
It lapped some up and then I invited her inside and she came in
Roomie A was sleeping, B was out and C was not in town
So kitty ambled in, sniffed all the corners and explored the whole house and then came into my room
She seemed really friendly and clean too
and then as i typed on the compu she came and started rubbing against my feet again
and then peeked onto the chair by standing up on its two paws
So I took her on the chair
She even understood"no" when she tried to get onto the keyboard

I sent a mail onto the comp sci mailing list
and got 25 replies by morning telling me not to feed her milk
milk in large quantities is not good for cat who'd have thought
Morning I went to the humane society who claim to be "a no kill shelter" meaning they dont put animals to sleep
bah
They only adopt "adoptable" animals
translates to animals who dont get anxious with other animals around and act pretty when someone comes to adopt them
they put them in small cages in a large room :(
how can u expect a 5 month kitten to be put in a room with 25 other cats and not be scared
"if it fights and becomes unhappy then we might have to euthanize it"
well two hoots, so i brought her back home
And I dont have a car, so they said it would be inhumane to carry billu in my hands
she might run away and get under a car
so they scared me and i got a box with lota holes and put billu in to carry her home
idiots, the poor thing got scared by the box and kept clawing at it, bruised her paw
then J replied, J has a big cat and a big dog and J had some cat food and medicine
so off we went t J's place billu n I
and on the way billu decided she had had enough and ran away to hide on someone porch :) :p :)
So I'd to climb onto someones porch and 1 hour and a police patrol stopping to ask me whatever I was doing climbing onto someones porch in broad daylight later, an irritated billu was back in my arms

J's cat is big n fat and has 2 inches long beyoooooootiful fur
and J's dog is big and keeps panting like he's just come back from a 10 mile run
and they are both friendly but billu had never met another dog and a cat together so she got scared
then we gave her some food and treats and i took some food and treats home for her

Over night 3 ppl wanted to adopt her
S mailed saying she has 33 cats back home
33 cats!
Finally Billu went to A
I wish I could have kept Billu
but with a quarter of a house, half a room and room mates with 'allergies', no car and not much money thats a lil hard
A will take care of her
She might not even call her billu
but atleast billu has a home

There’s a feeling I get
When I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.


I cried a little
lot less than 5th std
Billu 2 is going to have a long happy life

And then I thought
that perspective
about how I had thought very little
how life has made me a tad impersonal
When I was a kid, I took every moment in, processed it emotionally and you could see the results on my face
I cried a lot
I felt every moment and I felt life as a whole
Now I have become a little unfeeling on a moment to moment basis
So often, I just go through the motions
work / do till I am tired
then go to sleep

I seek meaning in the whole when it lies as much in the parts
in each moment
in every time billu went to sleep near my feet
in every time billu became moody and pretended to bite me

Life lies in the moments not in the years.

And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter

Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.
And it makes me wonder.

January 11, 2007

It has been four days since my last bath and I really cant bear it any more. I am not a fan of baths, having been a graduate student once. But then there is only so long that a man can stay sane with the ickiest thing that mother nature produces stuck to his skin - blood. If however I share this knowledge with the man making the smoke rings that seem to be rising from my feet, he will raise his head, take his cigarette out of his mouth and give me a dirty look. Extremists I have found, treasure their reveries more than the great thinkers of our society. But its not politeness that is keeping me down and quiet. First there is the small matter of the M16A3 - an assault rifle once commonly used by American and Israeli forces - with a full 20 round magazine that my cohabitant in this dank cave likes to wield. And in the unlikely scenario that he decides to let me get up, I will find a neat hole in my heart from a sniper bullet before my eyes can take in the expansive view of the White Mountains that the ridge offers. The 'Kafirs' try not to spare any extremists in these parts knowing that they will not get any useful information out of them. More importantly they know the general area that we are in. Which is why it makes no sense that Abdul is smoking. But I barely know the guy and he says he has a plan to get out of here alive. So I keep my trap shut and slip into my own reverie in this cold suffocating cave that barely fits two people.

Here's to going back to a place called home
To writing for love
To being a teacher
To being a problem solver who can make a difference
To being the best at these
and above all
To love in all the ways that I have dreamt of

400 MHz Intel XScale processor and 128 MB of memory comes standard - thats what I had in my desktop an year ago!
It records with a built in microphone, has built in wireless internet access and 16 bit stereo sound
I can use it to read novels and papers wherever I please
Or listen to music
Or watch a movie
It costs 300 bucks for another 75 bucks I can make it store 50 songs extra and make the battery last an extra 3.5 hours
And it looks this cool:



Problem is, I can replace its most essential features (scheduling and reading) with my pocket paper notebook and printouts of whatever papers I want to read or a novel

Its not like I am going to read more than one paper or novel a day while not at home!

Damn these gadgets....why do they tempt me so much!

Someday someway
together we will be baby
I will take and you will take your time
We'll wait for our fate
cos' nobody owns us baby
We can shake we can shake the rock

"But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.'' Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has not yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

growing up is gaining the ability to recognize the various shades of grey in life, and to deal with them without giving in to the adolescent temptation of declaring them to be white or black posthaste.....yet leveraging the illusion that with some things in life there is only black or white, as long as humanly possible, to maintain one's moral integrity

Today, Google declared it is going public. Here are a few quotes from "Letter from founders: An owners manual for Google's shareholders"....reasons why Google is the best company ever...reasons why I want to work for them one day


As a private company, we have concentrated on the long term, and this has served us well. As a public company, we will do the same. In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to “make their quarter.” In Warren Buffett’s words, “We won’t ‘smooth’ quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you.”

Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.

And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1% of Google’s equity and profits in some form. We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.


The entire letter

“There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'why me?' and 'what if?' when you look back, see the braches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions."

"All this time we got the fable of sleeping beauty wrong. The prince doesn’t kiss her to wake her up. No one who has slept for a hundred years is likely to wake up. It was the other way around. He kisses her to wake himself up, from the nightmare that has brought him there."

"I was compelled to give [him] his gun back, one bullet at a time.”



For the first time, I regret the fact that I can't play 3d games !

I wasnt sure I was doing the right thing spending 3 months on learning things I do not know and the RA when everyone else is doing an internship. But my alternative is to be like K - and pretend I know stuff I dont - I dont think spending a summer doing that at any company in the world is going to be a good experience at any level. So fuckit, I give myself 3 months. I know I will be a better man for it in the end [End Dramatic Monologue ;)]



[Or maybe not]
talent to hai par practise nahi karte beta. Aur follow through and execution me bahot maar khate ho !
[Ok end it now!]

bye :)

Exam in a few hours and I am doing timepass. This is becoming a routine - studying at the last moment - and I D O N T L I K E I T :(

Well anyhoo, here's a guy with an idea that I've thought of carrying out myself often. He is a student at NYU and being that NYU is another one of these crazy universities that charges like 40,000 dollars per year for fees, this fellow with two jobs couldnt gather enough money to pay for housing. So, he stays in the library :) Libraries at all univs (including mine) are open 24 hours a day for 6 days a week and 18 on Friday (atleast mine works like that) - so you can just sleep there. So he showers in the gym and keeps his clothes in a locker and sleeps and lives in the library. Cool na :)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/homeless_at_nyu/


I am wondering if I should start living in my office from May, seeing how I spend more on food every month than most people back home earn every year....saving up 300 bucks might not hurt ( Its true...dont ask :( )


But then looking at the sensitive ass that I am - I highly doubt I could lead a happy life in my office - for one I definitely wouldnt get to make tea whenever I wanted.

Shit man, I wish I was more disciplined and that I would study before the last day

(Insert Soleil's post on procastinating as a student here)

T shirt design for K - my new friend who fancies himself a pirate superhero..... So that he can dress up as one ever so often :P

This summer I am going to find a book or website on all famous bands right from the 60s, then download their songs, find the ones I like, downlod all their songs and build a propah collection.



yeah, i am pretentious like that :)

"Last night I shot an elephant in my Pajamas and how he got in my pajamas I'll never know." --Groucho Marx

I dont think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul......Derek Walcott