Gaza Pullout

The ongoing evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza has been officially said to be complete. The cartoon by Keshav in Hindu sums up situation quite well. There have been soldiers consoling soldiers, soldiers consoling the people, people consoling each other. It makes me wonder how strong must these Jewish people be, that they move out of the land which they believe is rightly theirs and which they have earned after being homeless for such a long time. I wonder what would be the case if the country were India and an Indian Govt had made such a decision.

The first thing that would have happened is that the opposition party and the local party present would have called a series of bandh and hartal thereby granting the license for the baser elements of society to indulge in their vandal tendencies; conduct competitions on who would break the most number of windows, who would be the fastest to set a vehicle on fire and go about destroying the local shops and public services and utilities. After they have been give enough time for all this, the police gets into the picture and invariably there would be a police-locals confrontation with casualties on both sides. Then there would have been the usual political oneupmanship and drama and what not and.....and finally the strip gets cleared. Welcome to the largest democracy in the world !!!

The Jewish people are an interesting race and I some how like them, although I don't know any Jew. Theirs have been an eternal struggle to establish their place in this world. They have constantly faced ridicule and hatred throughout history, but they still survive. They fought for the land which they believed was rightly theirs and even won it. And now they have relinquished a part of that land for peace. It is a gesture of some significance for I believe that they expect to be "paid" in full for this token of peace.

Whether this helps them achieve a "hard earned" respite from violence has to be seen....I hope they do.....

Escapism...

After my last post I was wondering what is it that I like in films. Then while reading some other article I got. Its films which portray escapism that arrests my attention.

Film artistes are lucky...

Film makers are lucky in that, they have a visual medium to vent their furstrations and anger and what is more even get money in return :( !!

Yesterday saw Bharat Chandran I.P.S. Its a complete masala film and one without songs (thankfully!). The protagonist takes on the entire political establishment in Kerala and makes sure that every politician he meets recieves a mouthful (need I say why I like the film so much....:) ).

The anger he feels against society in general and the very much existing politician-criminal nexus, can be related to by a lot of persons in Kerala.

Lot of film makers have taken this subject up and do bring out beautiful movies. What is really refereshing here, is that each person brings out the subject in his own distinct (and refreshing) manner. A few directors even make a mockery of the entire system by carefully crafting scenarios and scenes which are a direct take on the establishment. Its very creative and quite a pleasant watch.

In all this one should not forget the mimicry artists. These guys, impersonate the political characters so well that the common person relates more to them than the actual persons and trust me half the time its difficult to tell them apart. This should give you an indication of how competent the politicians are.

I have seen the proceedings of the Kerala Legislative assembly a few times and needless to say it is indeed very comic and indeed, very "creative". The way the politicians express their views and opinions are more appropriate to a drama stage rather than an Assembly.

That we have to live under the rules and laws bought into effect by these morons is really unfortunate !!

Politics sucks and politicians stink....

Politics must be the only legal illegal job available. I dont understand what motivate one to become a politician other than for perks that is available to one and of course the potential for third party "perks" !! Guess this must be the major draw here.

I wonder what motivates these old men to keep living on and on (Karunakarna in Kerala comes to mind!). Dont they ever feel like having a breather from all the mud slinging that goes around ?? Dont they ever feel like retiring ? Maybe they really like this "fast life" or they are power hungry parasites !! Well whatever, I really hope that I never have to interact with a Political "Leader". Of course we dont have any real leaders anymore, rather only populist cannibals.

There has been some cross border firing with Bangladesh now. India should be the only country in the world with an uneasy relationship with all of its neighbours :( !! One probable reason is that Indians are perceived to be a soft lot. And I guess, Indians have given lot of indications to that effect. They always have this tendency to let other people walk over them, whatever be the field, sports, politics... I guess its something inbuilt in the Indian psyche....

The firing from across the borders by Banglaadesh is another indication. That this was a country we once helped regain its freedom does hurt. That we have to take this lying down to diffuse the situation is adding salt to the wounds. Sometimes you just dont want to know is happening around you and just carry on with your life.

Being a mental retard would indeed be blessing sometimes....

In a new abode.....

Shifted in with Bejoy two days, officially that is...I was anyway staying with him for the past two weeks. So now shifting in officially with him means I have got to split the rent :( !! Well all good things have their own price ;) !

We have started cooking over here and ok its fun to begin with...but certainly going to tax you if you have to do it day in and day out.. Suddenly I understand why mothers, or to be more specific housewives get mad for teeny weeny things during morning and afternoon...I have to hand it to mother for having done this for so long and in between , find time for washing, cleaning and being my hindi tutor...Phew !!

The new place is quite roomy and new and much better than the dump I was staying in. The owner of the dump though was quite a nice person.. The ironies of this world, they never will cease.

I lend to a bank :)........

I came across this definition of an account at

A bank is a business that is based almost entirely on financial transactions. In addition to acting as a lender for loans and mortgages, banks act as a borrower in a special type of loan called an account. The lender is known as a customer and gives unspecified amounts of money to the bank for unspecified amounts of time. The bank agrees to repay any amount in the account at any time and will pay
small amounts of interest on the amount of money that the customer leaves in the account for a certain period of time. In addition, the bank guarantees that the money will not be stolen while it is in the account, and will reimburse the customer if it is. In return, the bank gets to use the money for other financial transactions as long as they hold it.

Now that is a novel thought :)... I mean come on your lending money to ICICI or Citibank. And isnt it ironic, that its the worlds richest people who borrows from a bank :).......

Rain.....

There has been many romantic notions about getting wet in the rain throughout the world. But no where else has it been embodied in such a wide variety of colors, shapes and emotion than in our films.

Be it a lustful encounter, a romantic duet, a sorrowful parting or an electrifying first meeting rain is a "natural actor" to give the scene an appropriate color!!

But frankly for me its a nuisance, especially when you have to wash your own clothes and you dont have good water in your house to take a bath.

Chennai is one place where rain is a "Natural Villain". It just has to rain for 5 minutes for the roads to be awash with muck from the open garbage cans (if any) and open sewer :( !! Worst in Chennai you cant even pray for no rains cause, as that is the only source of water for the millions of people over here. Funny why none of the bright brains in Chennai never thought of the sea a source of water. Desalination plants are quite common in the world now and certainly Chennai could use that as a cure for its water shortage.

But then bright ideas are never associated with politicians and bureaucrats.....

War of the Worlds

Went and saw war of the worlds yesterday and it was dissapointing. Guess Spielberg goofed up on whether he wanted to portray the aliens or on the hero or maybe he made a casting blunder in tom cruise. Although histrionics wise Tom Cruise was good, but some how he didnt gel in with the movie.
Maybe Spielberg had to compromise on somethings while he made the movie or some other problems, but the only thing is this is certainly not one of his better movies and he has made some good ones at that !! I had seen one of his earlier movies Duel and trust me that is some movie.

There is an interesting comment by the narrator at the end of the movie(WoW)

"..man has earned his right to live on planet earth at the cost of millions of lives spent in acquiring immunity to all the diseases and viruses that has been in existence on earth for a long time...."

And at the end of it all what does man do ??? He goes and finds love with (of all creatures) a monkey and relinquishes his right to live on this planet and this, for a feeling of bliss(??????) no longer than the snapping of a twig....

God sometimes, you wish you were a woman :( !!!!!

GreenPeace

There is regular greenpeace gang at the landmark on nungambakkam. They cornered me once made me a subscriber...well I intended to join anyway but I guess they would have been demotivated if I acquiesced too easily :) !
So I have started receiving their newsletter and while going through it was wondering, how extreme these people must be. I mean the people who are active campaigners with GreenPease. They must be either completely committed, sincere with a truckload of guts or completely callous.. there is no other way anyone can be a part of that community !!!

My onsite thingy is driving me bonkers..its like I dont exist for my company at all. If I had some stron moral principles in me I would have quit and joined another company...but the lure of dollars is not easy to just brush aside... Been hoping things would get settled one way or another but till now nothing has happened.. have tried calling the MATC people and as usual they dont pick up their phones :-/ !!

Hmmm.. maybe I should start a "whineyard" or something could help me :) !!

An Accident

Guess this was overdue for a long time now....Although its my first real accident....unsurprisingly I have no sense of acheivement, meaning I guess I should not be repeating this milestone :).

I have played down the accident quite bit to myself and others too. But I know that I was very lucky. Very lucky to have worn my helmet, very lukcy to have gone at a sedate pace(60-70), very lucky to have noted beforehand that the guy in front was trying to stop, very lucky to have noticed the dumbass cop running into the middle of the road from nowhere.... Yes I have very lucky !!

I distinctly remember feeling dizzy after banging my head with the helmet on the road and my sight all going fuzzy...i could only see outlines of people and that too a very poor outline... i was scared that i was loosing my sight.. but thankful.. i was just dazed.. If I had not worn my helmet, I really wonder whether I would have been alive or not !!

But whatever Iam just glad to be ok at the moment... My elbow is still recovering from the laceration whis are a bit deep and its healing.. i banged my chest on a post too and thats paining too...:) !! And most of all I was lucky that Solo, Jai and Arul where there to help me out.. Especially Solo... have a lot to thank him for...

Dont want to repeat this incident, although I can say that Iam not exactly responsible for the accident...But what I do know was that I was not concentrating enough while riding....

Cant even think of what would have been the case if there was pillion with me. Hmm..well maybe I wouldnt have had an accident. For one thing i wouldnt have been going even at that sedate pace, it would have been slower and I wouldnt have let my mind wander either :) !!

Lessons learnt : always wear a helmet and dont day dream when doing a group ride !!!!

C development

Have to start study on the way a C development project works or how the design is to be accomplished. I have a client interview for next week and have to see how things go... I am trying to get some good resource for this but was not able to generate a good enough search query.. maybe somebodys blogs will give the info I require.
Joined British Counicl Library as a temp member.. but there are not enough Technical books over here.. so am in a fix.. but I guess I should be able to manage someway or the other here.. at the least the rooms are pleasant to read over here...
Wonder whether I would be able to use books from outside over here...Have to ask and hope that they do allow it...

Stephen King.........

Had heard a lot about Stephen King before.. but stayed away from him because I though that he was a horror specialist... but later on I got introduced to him in a different light through Swetha.. She lend me "The Green Mile" and he is a beautiful writer.. Two days back took "Hearts In Atlantis" and suddenly I am hooked.. have to find another good book of his soon (not horror of course)...
He is one of those writers who is able to express what you feel.. there are not many who can do that.. I have read Tagore and he does it I guess, but since his works get translated from Bengal to English I guess Iam getting an abridged version of his works !!
I have asked Swetha to suggest another Stephen King book.. She suggested IT.. Well i better not be a horror one.. else she is the one who is going to get nightmares....and ... gulp.. me too :( !!

Onsite....

Been released from my previous project and now desperately in search of an onsite project to boost my meagre financial reserves...
Anyway wishing is all fine... the problem is that u have to get around the maze and labrynth... that matc creates around u to reach there... these guys must be the incarnation of those designers and planners who revel in creating mystic passages and notorious labrynths from where there is no return.. unles the creator deigns to think that the victim is in much need of help and succour... well maybe this is a part of growing up in an organization... trust me i just dont want to grow up :) !!

All at sea.....

My study schedule went a bit awry. Perl was pushed aside and started ahead with C. I didn't update the blog, because a friend had created a forum to post any doubts queries or success stories. Its still in nascent state (me being the highest contributor should be proof enough of that)

There is a lot of things in C that I had not studied in depth during, college, which is again an indication of the college I was in. This is not a way out for me, for if I was dedicated, I guess I would have done all these things by myself !! What I ultimately mean to say is that I should have decided which college to attend and worked for that. Unfortunately, I cannot go back to that, so I guess now I must chose my company carefully !!

I have started with C++. Currently I'am just reading upon the OOPs concepts and trying to gel it into my mindset. Structural programming seems a bit foriegn once you start reading upon OOPs. The simplicity of the concept behind OOPs is quite staggering. I mean come on.... its like duplicating what you "think unconciously", when u see the world in general. And the way the whole concept has been implemented in C++ is also quite clean and well, I seem to understand it ; ) !!

Started in a small way with Heavy Metal. It comes with sharing the bay with Abhishek !!! Hearing him talk about Maiden, Judas Priest e.t.c, just made me feel like giving it a shot. He started me of with Jose Satriani, and though its hard rock, it certainly is quite good !! Lets see where this leads to :) !! Hmmm...........

The new year is here....

Perl has suddenly taken a back seat for some time and Iam just doing C now !! Wonder whether this is a good practice !!

Am going through recursion now. And its cool, How a simple line does the work of 3 or 4 lines doing iterative procedures !! Its an elegant way of looping.

The new year has come, but unfortunately, it was preceded by a calamity of proportions not dreamed of !! When nature is angry, I guess there is nothing anyone can do about it !! but allow it to rage itself out !! Just stay out of the way. I cannot think of the destruction some families would have faced ! How they would have had to start there life all together again !! Cant imagine the studetns who would have to start there life all together again, and worse those who would have to change there entire life !
Kids who do not understand what is happening ? I hope to lord that something good is done for them and they will have a good chance to continue from where there were so cruelly cut off !!

My thghts my prayers.....and a good part of my luck to them......

Been whiling away the time...: (

Had a break in my study plan !! Been whiling away the time actually. One thing is the work Iam being asked to do is bugging. Not sense in working on! But then you just cant survive on air :( (Unfortunately !!) !!


Have to start on with regular expressions in perl. And have to catch up on the Unix reading that I was doing also !
maybe will start up with it. Ever felt like becoming invisible and seeing how people do their work for 30 odd years and still find the motivation to continue. It cannot be just financial security !! Maybe I should talk to some factory workers and find out what keeps them goin ? :)

Unix Programming Environment !

Been laid low by that obnoxious thing called viral fever. If only happiness was a virus :( !!

Anway one good thing about being laid low, was that i could read up "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kerninghan and Pike. And this is a must read book, the excercises are meant to really oil your grey cells.

Finished 3 and half chapters in two days :) !! A few good things that I learnt :
: directories are files, and the content of these files are the files and directories that are present under it. More than just the contents, it also contains the i-name or inode of the files. So remember that pesky link number for each file when we do a ls -l. Well that link is the link from the directory to the file !!

: using shell builtins are always faster than commands. For e.g. shift, cp doesnt change the owner and permissions of the output file.
|| is much more faster than the corresponding if condition.

: awk and sed are coooool, but its gonna take an awfully long time for me to learn these "tools"

Well others I dont remember that well. But some of the shell programs are cool and very suprising in terms of simplicity. You need a particular mindset to do these things ! And i seriosly lack that mindset I guess !!

Will keep updating this page. I have perl to catch up on now.

ciao !!

Bullet Club Meeting, Perl e.t.c...

My plans for continuing with Perl did not work out today ! Sriram had come down in the morning and went to meet him. Then was roaming arnd till evening. Then went for the bullet club meeting and ultimately got back here.
Did a bit of hashes today and left it at that. Maybe will start it out tomorrow.
Want to do a bit of C now.

As for languages that can be used for creating CGI applications: C, C++ and JAVA, plus many more.. So why perl ? maybe i will know as i move on. The obvious answer is that perl is a scripting language ! hmm.. or maybe i am yet inexperienced and havent seen an instance of extreme data processing required by a web page. I guess the more apt reason would be the later ;)...

Anyway enough for today then....

Perl and CGI....

Yesterday was spent in learning the ropes of perl cgi. Once you start learning something and then look back at the times you were wondering what all this greek and gibberish were, u suddenly feel foolish :) !! But dont get me wrong its a great feeling.

CGI standards is actually one of the outdated standards that is present. There are others like JSP's, .NET e.t.c which are more faster and powerful.
The whole setup on CGI can be envisaged as a controller which allows users to communicate with the server. What users see is an html page. This is the interface for them to talk to the server. The users will input some data through the form (html page). This data is then grouped as key-value pairs and sent to the server. The CGI standard has got certain environment values through which these key and values can read and processed. The back end processing is done by Perl. (And Iam assuming that this is possible with other languages also. Which languages ? I do not know now, but maybe I will have something to update with tomorrow !)
Supposes there are 100 users accessing that form, then for CGI, there will be that many instances !! (Yes !!) Consider the same scenario in case of JSP. In this case, there will still be only one instance, which timeshares the info provided by the user with the server !!

In spite of this why do peopel still use CGI ? Iam not sure. Maybe its the compatibility with languages like Perl. Or maybe It was because of legacy considerations !! Maybe I should look into that and see if anything interesting comes up or not .

Perl ! Why didnt I do this before....

Iam about to be released from my present project. As per plans that were proposed when I joined the project, I should have been released last december!! Finaly a year later, I am to be released around middle of January,2005 (touchwood!!).
Till now I have never been interested in going onsite or anything, but in TCS and as per the latest promotion policy, the only way you are going to make some money is to go onsite and so that s what Iam trying to do.
My resume has been sent to one project based in Australia. It has got a perl requirement. My knowledge in Perl is okay. Have started to brush it up from today. Not sure whether the assignment will materialise or not, but whaterver I alwasy wanted to learn Perl ;) !

I have three basic reasons behind blogging. Become a competent bullet owner, a good photographer and a linux guru !! At the moment Iam nowhere near there. And Iam really anxious to see where I would end up a year from now !!
Hopefully this blog would be a black and white proof of what I wil be by then :D

ciao !!!