Game, Set, Match Ivanisevic

Everything about him was different. Right from his name his 2nd name his superstitions his view of the game and life, his one liners & sense of humour and ofcoz his serves. His last wimbledon win was the last full tennis match i watched. He was the only wildcard entry to win wimbledon. He once commented in a press conf. "I can go on the women's tour with this second serve.". People loved him in 2 ways. they loved him or they loved hating him.

I have spent countless hours arguing abt his serves and his game. If ever i wanted to look like someone it would be him ;)

The only news he made this year was announcing his retirement. Frankly he said after bidding a farewell "no more painkillers and no more early mornings".

People, take a bow

Way to go Prez

Why do you have this hairstyle?
The hair grows.

thats the answer from the same guy who saved the career of a hapless student when the student mailed him.

The above answer was given during a question answer session by our prez, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam with school children.
Some of his answers were practical and inspiring. Its great to see a president fuel dreams into young developing minds.

Here are a few interesting QAs:

Who will you make the next President?
YOU, and you get ready.

There is always a woman behind a successful man. Who is responsible for your success?
God Almighty.

aint he practical ;)

Please share with us any of your happy and enthralling moments.

Once I was watching some polio-affected children walking with heavy calipers (artificial limbs), which weighed around three kg.

They found these very difficult to carry. One of my friends, a doctor, asked me why we couldn’t use some of the light-weight material used in missiles for making light-weight calipers.

This was quite an idea, and our team made the light-weight calipers, weighing 300 gm, within 10 days. These were fitted to those children. They started riding bicycles, running and jumping in great joy. It made me happy.

Way to go prez

Full article is at http://ww1.mid-day.com/smd/play/2004/june/85545.htm

Working Class Hero

John Lennon said "When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years, Then they expect you to pick a career" in an amazing song called Working Class Hero. Though the song has such hard hitting lyrics this story resembles nothing described in it.

There are few days and i mean very few in my (and yours too if ur reading from ur office) life when there is absolutely no work. I mean ABSOLUTELY NO WORK.

No coding, no compiling, no design review, no designing, no code reviews, meetings, discussions, patching, delivering, commenting, testing. You report report to no1 and no1 reports to you. N O T H I N G.

And with this heavenly fact you wake up in the morning. In fact its an inspiration. You cant sleep well coz of this thought. The world looks happy and chipry. You smile and are courteous to even strangers. You dont command anything to any1, u are humble in every possible way.

You land in the office early and you dont check mails, don't check any WBS, yeah i mean its a different day, u dont want to do things which remind you of work days. (A work mail can ruin your morning you know).

Then every hour you go for social errands, smiling n greeting every1, asking abt their life and people arnd them. They feel good, they think "oh what a nice guy" .. and i say the same to myself only replacing nice with smart.

Lunch is long and heavy and so is the walk after that. Noon goes slowly, time doesnt pass, more social errands. You loiter in the canteen or in the gym. You have couple of extra coffee cups and out from nowhere comes the project manager crying out "Amit you will have to ...". (If u are sad at this point u are a working class hero).

Anyways i was kidding, the day just goes on and you suddenly say hey its the longest day in northern hemisphere, lets reach home when there is light. And with some previous experiences of Last minute work coming in ur mind, you run out of the office and enjoy rest of the day. You reach home to relive the office day.

Pothole Theorem

Theorem: Irrespective of the diameter, depth and the distance of a (smart) human from the pothole, the water displaced can be disastrous for extremely higher values of vehicle weight and lighter shades of trousers.

Potholes are the accidental human creations on a intentional creation called roads and they become polymorphic when they are filled with brown muddy rainwater. Recently we friends had been to a dinner part at goa portuguesa and i was waiting for shyam was coming to pick me up. Just meters away from the place where i was standing i saw a pothole and immediately moved to a "safe distance" .. but then something happened which made me derive the above theorem.

Anyways the dinner was as always great, the cusine at goa portuguesa is exteremly impressive and they have a menu card which is categorised by south indian states.

The cusine, Crab Papad and live music requests make this place quite unique.

AAAaaaaa raaaa laaaaa eeeeee HAHAHA wuUUUu waaAAAA

Well im not dozing on the keyboard but something i heard remixed with birds chirping this monday morning. There was some deja vu .. ummm arnd mid june, pouring rains and noises, high pitched, enthusiastic and shrilling noises !! it was a school bus passing by, Ahaa it was 14th June, the (not so) glorious day when school reopens in this part of the world. It used to be a mixed feeling then. Getting up early and homeworks used to be a pain.

But then again the joy of everything new was unmatched. I realised other than marriage, there is no other period in life where you can buy everything BRAND NEW. New books, new uniforms, shoes, socks, pens, pencils everything. Nothing is old. Not even yourself. (Atleast for the first week ;)).

"Shopping Bonanza" starts a week before. Wherever you go, you realise parents are shopping as if its the armageddon. Kids want the best, more, anything old is waste.

The smell of new books are drugs then. You start conquering the world goin thru geography books and "I SEE DEAD PEOPLE" in history books.
Brown traingular shaped paper cuts are lying everywhere as parents cover the books nicely whereas you are busy deciding which book gets the HeMan, Orko stickers and who gets the skeletor stickers. Personal care and attention is given covering the Physics Chemistry books and it dies as Maths book comein (irrespective when their chance comes ;)).
Your identity is stamped on every possible thing.

First week its all about being a good boy. You pack your bags properly. You dont forget anybook and are neatly lined up neatly in ur bag. Textbooks(read write) on one side and Notebooks (write read) on another.

Your new class and the floor are the earliest discussions with your friends. You proudly approach your classroom with your eyes firmly fixed on "STANDARD/GRADE" board. You feel on top of the word and good that you have climbed 1 definite step in life. You arnt nostalgic about your previous class/past as i am now. Nobody is discussing about their vacations but showing off their new pen, waterbag or something. Introduction to new class friends is out of question. Heck you even wave with apprehension to your old friends. You are perfectly fine the moment you see your only "best friend" (who is actually your bench partner of your previous year) . Class teacher and ur bench partner are the things you eagerly wait for. The first thing you see in your timetable are the games and club periods. You pray for an empty saturday coloumn.

And then the school takes its monotonous way and life is never the same until the next vacation or June.

And that my friend is the school life of the 80s. High Hopes and High Apprehension. No damn worry of the money which bought all the brand new things. Parents are angels taken for granted who bring everything for you on the platter and then probably go back to work, back in their own world, handling work pressures and then u see them back home enthusiatically running after you to get the homework done.

Life has some really beautiful lessons which no class or teacher will teach. Everyone learns and teaches, not neccesarily in the same order. Hope i have taken ur heart for a nice little ride.

All for one

This blog has taken the course of my 10 yr old diary ... suddenly loads of empty pages ... but ill make it up, using a typical software process documentation format.

• 
  I got a chance to travel a part of bandra worli sea link. The road looks like a mumbai pune expressway and you get to see a new view of mumbai, looks good.
  


• Anirudh's bike was stolen only to be found the next day. Three cheers to mumbai police. Sadly its now stuck forever in all paper work and formalities.
  


• Traditional day at office was a nice change.
  


• 
  More Work
  


• 
  A SKY TRAIN gets a green signal in Andheri !! Coool
  
• 
  I transfer list of friends ph. num. to my mobile by sending SMS to my mobile via Yahoo messenger ;) .. no more buying some expensive cable
  


• 
  Still more work
  


• 
  I opt out from a trek .. decide to take rest
  


• 
  Again enjoying these digestive pills called Havaban Harde. Havaban means Air Arrows ;)
  


• 
  Updated my site. added some new personal pics
  


• 
  As always didnt miss the Cover Story on Star TV. Vir Sanghvi still takes beautiful interviews. Makes himself & the celebrity guest look like a common man and talks casually abt their lives. In a recent SHANKAR, EHSAN, LOY interview i came to know that a mock Woodstock happened in borivali national park ... man i missed it coz i wasnt even born then !! but thanks to that fest, LOY met EHSAN and they sure make some good music. Btw did u know shankar mahadevan is a comp. engineer who once worked for Oracle
  


• 
  Talking about music we were listening to "Mann ki lagan" by rahat fateh ali khan, nephew of nausrat fateh ali khan(NFAK). Listening to that music in the car was just a terrific feeling. Being in the music mood i downloaded Passion by ravi shankar, NFAK and peter gabriel, NFAK sure knows how to sing pain !!
  


• 
  Downloaded recent Aerosmith album Honkin' on Bobo .. Jazz Rocks !!
  


• 
  I missed the venus transit, didnt have any tool. But lucky are the people who got to saw this gorgeous cloudy venus transit view
  


• 
  Mom showed me an article in Lokprabha (Career Spl.) abt Rajesh Joshi and Nikhil Gupte's
  Auriga Logic, where i used to work till last year.
  
  Marathi article is here
  
  
  Also there is a v good article by rajesh which throws light on many diff things. Some tips for young entrepeneurs
  
  
  All the best guys .. hope u get more n more good business.
  
  
  am missing things @ auriga from participation in major decisions to uploading office furniture in trucks
  
  

Three One Zero Zero

Finally i bought the Nokia 3100 mobile for 6100 Rs, preferring it over 3510i. It took 1 whole day and a zerox of a PAN card and Voter Identity Card to get the SIM working. Of the choice of numbers i had, i took the one which ended with 355 as it was simpler of the lot and there is a Ferrari 355.
Coming back to the title i wonder why are these mobile numbers spelled as three one zero zero instead of three thousand one hundred or something ? Is it for standardi(z/s)ation of numbers across the world ?. All our school life we learnt india's population was touching 100 crores while in the west india was touching 1 billion.
How long before a generation starts using a standard number format.

Anyways the mobile is cool and as a true geek i RTFM and it has some cool features and a bit of phosphorescence (i love to type his word, prolly coz few words this long are spelled confidently ;)). While using the various menus i realised the much hardwork and design process done behind the scenes to make it look so easy. i have been working on Swing and its quite a challenge to get user friendly graphical screens (GUI) in the first shot.

Vacation Affair

Whenever im home alone, i am naturally expected to b extra cautious abt door locks, cooking gas, electricity and one thing i always forget watering plants. Watering skips my mind coz i dont do it everyday. But when i do realise it for the first time i feel very bad and i regularly water them. In the silent home they are the only other signs of life (creepy crawlers dont count as i hate all of them). Suddenly a close bond is built and u just feel good. The reason to feel good is either beacuse there is a sense of company or you feel a bit pampered/proud as ur sustaining life. Hopefully it should be the former one.

Talking about water, there comes a "oh-i-have-heared-this-song-but-cant-recollect-but-why-is-it-sounding-so-beautiful-now" situation. This happened last week in office when i heared BADALON SE KAAT KAR from SATYA. The song, lyrics and specially the guitar fillers are amazing. Songs like these take a backseat as other catchy/radio-friendly songs become famous. Music by SANDEEP CHOWTA and BHUPINDER's Voice is great and his background score for the film is just terrific. I recall similarly i started liking "chup ke chup ke" from Pardes and "ae ajnabi" from Dil Se months after the movie was released

Also caught up with films like Three to Tango (Matthew "chandler" Perry's timing is too good) and Catch me If You Can ... the story is great; leo, tom and steven have nothing new to show. Leo, shown as a minor reminds of this brilliant performance in an equally brilliant movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape

I end my day as i still ponder how discovery channel did research and made a docu. on hippo dung supported ecosystem ....

Enlightenment

Weekend was boring as i had to wash all my clothes, but then i said i have a FULLY automatic washing machine (FAWM). FAWM DRIES clothes too (marketing gimmick). But actually it does not. I had to dry the clothes the natural way. I knew this but now i was enlightened as my back got a tuff workout. We need better definations.

Of many interesting dreams, i saw one where no one else than BIG B (** Link says is doin 13 pictures this year !!!!) had come as a sales person. He showed me a cool fashion utility. He had customisable hair. He just pulled his hair out, shortened its length, arranged them, caurled them, changed colors, mixed them, made beckham designs. COOOL !! *thinks abt patents*

Another dream i saw i had a an umbrella which could be converted to a bike. I always think why did i dream this. I think the silly BATA HARRY POTTER ADV is the root cause.

In Short:
I met a certain friend miss X after a long longg time.

I saw a cool docu abt Hong Kong Int Airport, the 2nd man made structure visible from space. Man they now make pre fabriacated underwater tunnels like pipes.

Saw Beautiful Mind and meet the parents again

I went to shop for mobile only to return empty handed again. I take eternity to buy electronic gadgets. But im buying nokia 3250, the cheapest color display mobile. Cam mobile looks too useless and costly.

** As always im still completely amazed at IMDB's database.

In the still of the night ...

Being home alone, i had to carry operation dinner out and as always my old adda buddies Anirudh and Shyam joined in. After a nice prawn masala and rice we went back to enjoy the still of the night. A stone bench under a rain tree and right behind a bus stop was a perfect spot. Parked Fiero and Bullet had almost disappeared in the darkness as we talked about anirudh's goa trip and about future (read marriage). Shyam as always talked about his only love (read mercedes). I said its a long time since we had a vacation and planned about planning a vacation ;). For an hour we talked abt old stuff the old days. Its beautful talking when there is no one on the road, its silent, all rain tree leaves are sleeping and its just us talking at 1 in the morning.

Tale of 2 cities and 2 trains

"2951 Dn Mumbai Delhi Rajdhani Express platform number teen par se char baj ke pach pan minute par ravane hone ki sambhavna (!!) hai" ... cried the electronically recorded voice from a loudspeaker which was fighting with other acoustic waves of a huge TV crying out that sonia had declined to be the PM. People of all shapes and sizes and all the possible shapes & sizes a body (while lying down) could make were watching the TV. Its always been fabulous observing people on these railway terminals, gathered for a moment; destined to part forever.

The other exiting part was to get up close and personal with rajdhani express, the one time pride of biggest employer in the world, indian railways. And there she came like a lady in red, slowly. The new bogies made me feel that yes this is one great looking train you can find in india .. perfect from outside .. until i went inside. it was a complete disappointment. The door was narrower than normal, so was the gangway, the door didnt open fully, . some lights were not working. the only god thing was that it had soft cushion tiers, reading light, working AC and really clean. But it missed the smell and dead silence of a normal non AC train. the voices inside them are loud and it is so dead that u dont feel this thing will ever move. This is the essence of starting a train journey in india.

Anyways as the train left everyone including the guard and pantry guys eye locked to see if some one would wave them a goodbye. just anyone. for a sec they wanted to be connected with someone.

The train had left the platform.

With hours to kill i went to do some photography shopping in town (VT/CST and Churchgate). They still fascinate me because everything good and famous and historical is just 5 to 10 mins apart. There are lots of open spaces, the famous zebra crossing which defines mumbai's lifestyle. Those historical buildings, their architecture, the lion statues, the weathercock. The old british style buildings, the buzz, the hurry. I looked like a newcomer as i gazed and relived those places.
Peeking inside the GPO (General Post Office) was creepy. The unpainted walls, the darkness, the lifelessness depicted perfectly how i use snail mail today. Things have changed big time for my kind of generation.

Roaming here are there i caught some never before seen things like a coin seller bragging a huge 50RS coin from 1970s, people cleaning a garbage truck, a money change machine and women at railway ticket counters. It was all new to me as it had been long since i wandered in the heart of mumbai.

As i went back to catch my train i had to wade in a huge crowd which had gathered around the huge TV watching the various MP's trying to coax sonia to become the PM. Sonia had made life rough bowling her "doosra". Polictics and Cricket remained the greatest pastimes of ordinary indians.

Then came the other pastime, the local train journey. As expected there was entertainment as a drunkard entered and started narrating his "movie script". "AAp hamare GODi mein hai" was his film title. As always the tired but tolerant passengers had a good time teasing the poor fellow.

So this one day office leave after 8 whole months went perfectly as after a long time i felt like another common man living another common life.

Veterans Shinning ...

2 Veterans have given me tremors in the last 2 days, the bearable tremor is the rise of "6 feet under" Congress ... the ground shaking termor was when dad showed me the new branded jeans he had brought ... not only he debuts in buying one, he spend enuf that i could have got him 2. im ashamed to an extent. He already has shown interest in my branded shoes (read washed, cleaned and tested). Dad is all set to look "Corporate-manager-on-a-vacation" in his coming trip.

Coming back to the other tremor, it was nice to see vajpayee's "... but India won" speech, this man deserves my respect. one of the Few good men. Talked all about the good things which india went through. Great attitude. We need more people like him.

Also it was nice to see the ever cool Rahul Gandhi wishing all the best for Vajpayee, shaking hands with the media people and apologising for being a pain. Man this person should be in PR. No doubt everyone is looking him as a future political biggie.

Also i noticed a minor stat in my office: more people interested in polictics than cricket.

This also reminds me of my engineering days where everyone scored well in exams. today seems to be that day for congress.



I think its time i start DLogging: logging my dreams; Yest i had one where poisonous species of reptiles were mutated to bite and make the other species non poisonous .. hmmmmm

Thats it for now while i tease my mom with "Sonia" is going to be .... while another proud son & mom rejoice, relive and contemplate their long long political saga .....

I hope india really wins ....

Microsoft bolt works perfectly with microsoft nut

this aint about elections (though i would love to talk abt how cyber naidu was hacked) , its abt some basic rights in the internet world which is going to affect everyone who is reading this sooner or later. Seems india has decided to take on the goliath Apple (wish yashodhan was online to tell me wots happening inside apple) by releasing a software which makes u listen to iTunes (iTunes is for Apple what mp3 is for well .. everyone) on any OS.

Where india comes here is that the software required to do this is currently available ONLY on servers located in India. They are back again after they took down the sw when apple sent them a legal a month back.

Those who are still with me here and still are confused what the heck im talking abt here is the rundown in nice "Navneet 21 question answer set" format

1. SW Giants for their own business interests have started introducing DRM in their software which works in hand with their hardware.
2. purpose of DRM is to lock users .... in car language: Tyre type abc will only fit with CAR TYPE xyz and nothing else ... or microsoft nut will only work with microsoft bolt .... u buy 1 u get locked in the other
3. Noble , freedom loving people continously try to anti-DRM such stuff so that they become univeral and compatible.

Still confused ?? then u deserve a F (Imagine ur under 14 and its 30th April)

Hazaar Fuc**d

My bro was interested to know the first 2 words of the novel English August

In a blink on an eye u finally see the rain

A day since i claimed the sultry mumbai and it started raining arnd midnight .. so i have finally put on some clothes ... it was a cool day ... released my module of our project .. wondered about the long list to movies i have to catch up on .. namely meenaxi, maqbool, chameli, passion of yesu krist .. couple of mohan kapoor movies ... my next month's vacation will be decided this week ... have my fingers crossed ... and as my diary this blog seems to get boring .. so i better halt

So so hot !!

Finally i can associate myself with something happening at Lakme India Fashon Week ... am dwelling in bare necessary clothes .. last 3 days in mumbai have never been so hot and sultry and draining.

can exactly tell u the last date when mumbai got so hot ... i just need to get my hands on that table fan bill. But i can assure you it was around 10 years back.

Which also reminds me of Madna and the only novel i have read in the last decade. First 2 words in the novel are enuf to keep you hooked all the way...

Another one bites the dust...

Another one bites the dust ... have decided to start logging ... err blogging (sorry for the weekday coding reminiscences). This is almost ten years since i started maintaining a diary. But in a year the stint was over as laziness won again.

I was not goin to start blogging till i got a good voice to text software. But finally looking at my bro's blog i have given in.
so stay tuned err logged ..