!ShekeTimes

My Grandma's Confusion!

2013-06-14T11:51:00.002-07:00

My Grandma's Confusion!

Left-handed Cricketers vs Right-handed Cricketers T20 playoff!

2013-05-29T00:27:00.001-07:00

Alright, at the outset, I'd like to make it clear that I do agree that IPL is an overkill. I mean, one and a half month of continuous unclassy, pompous cricket is certainly an overdose for a cricket fan (That is even if we completely ignore the spot-fixing scandal. With the scam included, IPL was a loathsome vomiting sensation). However, after the finals, I couldn't help but notice a slight void in my evenings! Cricinfo traffic plummeted, no Jumping Japang on TV (thankfully), no Gaylestorm and the serene environment of my living room was pronouncing again. But the day after the grand tournament ended or for two, there was a sense of blankness!

That's where I imagined of having a fun match two days after the finals! A match played just for the fun element of it, no real competition and a place to see all the IPL superstars of the current season playing in the same match, on the same ground!

A 'Left-handed Cricketers vs Right-handed Cricketers' T20 match! I do understand the fact that it's illogical to have a side that comprises of all right-handed or left-handed players and know that classic Test Cricket fans get browned off and are gonna breath fire at me for this! Nevertheless, this is just a concept and I'm gonna put it forward no matter what. And moreover, this is IPL and anything that entertains works!

So, now we decided we are gonna have a single T20 play-off between two teams - 'Left-handed players' vs 'Right-handed players' , two days after the finals! Well, the rules are fairly simple!

1. Every cricketer playing for the 'Right-handed Cricketers' team MUST be a Right-handed batsman! However, he CAN be a left-handed bowler but if he is, he CANNOT bowl! Similar is the case for 'Left-handed Cricketers' team. (Everyone among them MUST be a left-handed batsman and if he bowls in right-hand, he CAN'T bowl). This rule exists because of the fact that everyone might get into a situation where he MUST have to bat in an innings, but not everyone needs to bowl!

2. Every cricketer who BOWLS for 'Right-handed Cricketers' team MUST be a Right-arm bowler. Similar is the case for the other team.

Because of the these rules, some really good bowlers like Zaheer Khan and Sunil Narine fit nowhere! Zaheer Khan can't be in Left-handed squad because he bats right-handed! Right-handed squad won't pick him because he's not a great right-handed batsmen ;-)

So, the teams now! Obviously, I'm gonna pick the best performers for both the sides!

So, here are my 15 men squad and then their team!

RIGHT-HANDED SQUAD:	LEFT-HANDED SQUAD
15-men-team:	15-men-team:
Bowlers:	Bowlers:
1. Dale Steyn	1. Mitchell Johnson
2. Lasith Malinga	2. Pragyan Ojha
3. Vinay Kumar	3. Murali Karthik
4. Harbhajan Singh	4. Daniel Vettori
5. Ravichandran Ashwin	5. (Didn't have another great choice, just have to get some local uncapped player)
Allrounders	Allrounders
1. Shane Watson	1. Ravindra Jadeja
2. Dyawne Bravo	2. Irfan Pathan
3. Keiron Pollard	3. Yuvraj Singh
4. Jacques Kallis	4. (Didn't have another great choice, just have to get some local uncapped player)
Wicket-keeper:	Wicket-keeper:
1. MS Dhoni (captain)	1. Kumar Sangakkara (captain)
Batsmen:	Batsmen:
1. Virat Kohli	1. Michael Hussey
2. Rohit Sharma	2. Chris Gayle
3. Dwayne Smith	3. Suresh Raina
4. AB De villiers	4. David Warner
5. Mahela Jayawardene	5. Gautam Gambhir

'Playing 11' - teams, in batting order!

RIGHT-HANDED TEAM	LEFT-HANDED TEAM
Shane Watson	Chris Gayle
Dwayne Smith	Michael Hussey
Virat Kohli	Suresh Raina
Rohit Sharma	Kumar Sangakkara (c) (wk)
AB de Villiers	Yuvraj Singh
MS Dhoni (c) (wk)	David Warner
Keiron Pollard	Ravindra Jadeja
Harbhajan Singh	Irfan Pathan
Dale Steyn	Daniel Vettori
Vinay Kumar	Mitchell Johnson
Lasith Malinga	Pragyan Ojha

Honestly, I'm not biased (and not that I'm ambidextrous), but the Right-handed squad looks more solid! It's really because of lack of some great 'Left-arm bowlers who bat left-handed'. They're a rare species! And looking at the teams, for the spirit of the game, the match should be played on a spinning track! ;-) Suggestions on team, squad and the concept welcome :-)

Using corporate scrip to fix the problem of giving/receiving the exact change in buses

2013-04-17T03:10:00.001-07:00

Using corporate scrip to fix the problem of giving/receiving the exact change in buses:

Abstract:

This is an approach to tackle the problem of commuters and conductor of the buses alike in giving/receiving the exact change. Since the problem is mostly very evident in city buses, this essay is going to stick to the problem of rendering exact change in city buses (I’ll limit it to Bengaluru city buses, whose woes I’ve seen enough) although the problem itself has to be dealt with a broader range.

Every day , thousands of people use BMTC buses to commute to various places and the most widely prevailing problem with that is the issue of giving the exact change to the bus conductor (from a passenger’s point of reference). Most of the time, people won’t have the exact change and the tariffs mostly aren’t one of those amounts of which we have a ready note in INR (Indian National Rupees). Currently, when he doesn’t have change, the conductor writes the amount he has to give back on backside of the ticket, which is to be asked for by the passenger while alighting at his stop. Works but not at all efficient. Most buses are heavily crowded all the time and is very difficult to reach out to the conductor while getting down. Many a times, the passenger just forgets or ignores it. Moreover, this abruptly makes the passenger unhappy and even the conductor is annoyed if he has to give back a change of say, Rs.7 or Rs.4, which is actually an arduous task if he really doesn’t have change. Also, during early mornings, giving back Re.1 or Rs.2 change to all passengers who give Rs.10 or Rs.20 notes can be a nightmare for the conductor. This essay proposes the introduction of a corporate scrip ( a corporation wide local currency) that can effectively solve this problem. We already have a system in BMTC buses which is quite similar to this – the daily passes, redeemable in any city bus for a day (ignore the AC buses for a moment).

Working:

Throughout this essay, this currency will be called by the name – “BMTC Rupee” abbreviated as BR. This is a centralized currency and the BMTC has the exclusive authority in regulating it. The BR is issued by BMTC and can used by the BMTC passengers in any city bus. BMTC conductors have the right to give it to passengers when they do not have the exact change. But there are a certain rules which are given below:

1. The BMTC Rupee introduction is to solve the ‘exact change’ problem when the change amount is less than Rs.10. It is NOT to solve the big amount i.e when a passenger gives Rs.100 note for a Rs.7 ticket. In this case, Rs.90 MUST be given in INR and only Rs.3 can be given in BR if there is no change.

2. At a time, a conductor can give a passenger a maximum of only 2 BR notes (or coins) of any denomination. Same way, a passenger can give a conductor a maximum of 2 BR coins/notes of any denomination at a time (i.e. per journey).

3. The BMTC Rupee comes in 4 denominations – of Rs.1 , Rs.2 , Rs.3 and Rs.6. The denominations are chosen so that all the amounts between Re.1 and Rs.9 are covered and the maximum amount a conductor or a passenger gives each other doesn’t go beyond Rs.9 (since only two BR notes/coins are allowed at a time, maximum is 6+3 =9).

4. Except in the city buses, the BMTC Rupee notes cannot be used anywhere else.

5. At the start of his day, a conductor gets an agreed upon amount of BMTC Currency (say equivalent to that of Rs.500 and in all BMTC Rupee denominations (I,2,3,6)) to which they are accountable at the end of the day. Over the course of the day, since they get it back from passengers, the assumption is that they don’t run out of it. However, if they do, they should get it again from the nearest depot. The whole idea is they should never say they don’t have change to a passenger.

Examples:

For Re.1 – BR 1

For Rs.2 – BR 2

For Rs.3 – BR 3

For Rs.4 – BR 1 + BR 3 or 2 BR 2

Etc.

How Ghajini's Sanjay Singhania manages his gmail account.

2013-03-31T02:53:00.002-07:00

I hope you all remember Sanjay Singhania (or Sanjay Ramaswamy), our beloved CEO of Air Voice mobile. And if you don't, well I'd have to say your memory is no better than his! Yes, we are talking about our own Sanjay Singhania of Hindi Ghajini movie played by Aamir Khan (or Sanjay Ramaswamy of its Tamil original version which itself was based on Memento). This is a story about engineers at Google responding to Sanjay Singhania's question on accessing his gmail account! I'm gonna stick to the Hindi version's Sanjay Singhania and Ghajini movie for I feel it was a bit more coherent than its Tamil edition.

Here's the transcript of the original email of Sanjay Singhania to the Google Accounts' Support Team! Sent to: support.gmail@googleaccounts.com

The email was sent after all the vengeance story of Sanjay-Ghajini was over!

From,

Sanjay Singhania,

Former CEO of AirVoice Mobile,

Mumbai, India.

To,

Support Team,

Accounts Access.

Subject: Need clarification about accessing my gmail account.

Dear engineers at Google,

I'm Sanjay Singhania, former CEO of AirVoice, a Mumbai based telecom company. I have to tell you that I suffer from Anterograde amnesia, commonly referred as 'Short Term Memory Loss' due to which I can't create new memories that can last for more than 15 minutes, although I do remember old ones. With this background, I want to tell you that I now want to create a new gmail account for my personal use, which is actually going to be my first gmail account. I also got to mention that I do NOT have any other email address to provide as an alternate email for I always used my official id to which I don't have access now as I no longer work for AirVoice. Now, your "Password Policies" clearly mention that I should NOT write down or share my password anywhere or with anyone. But since I can't remember my password for more than 15 minutes, I fear I will not be able to access my own account again! I can write down my email address as it is public but do not know what how to access it without my password. I can say "Remember Me" but it's not a great option either. For security reasons, I often delete my cookies and cache. So can't have a forever-session of gmail. I could as well give my mobile number and ask to send a new password every time but I keep travelling globally and do not stick to one number. And even to change my mobile number when I'm using a different sim card, I got to first log-in but I wouldn't know the password! Moreover, even if I stay in one place, I can't possibly recover my gmail account at all if I lose my sim card for some reason some day! So, choosing mobile as the primary password-recovery mode is not a recommended way either. I request you to help me out of this fix!

Regards,

Sanjay Singhania.

To his surprise, Sanjay did get a response from Google!

Dear Sanjay Singhania,

Thank you for your mail. We appreciate the fact that you respect our Password Policies. Since we understand your medical condition, our engineers have figured out a workaround for your problem. This is what we need you to do to access your account every time. This workaround is based on the assumption that you DO REMEMBER your old memories as you mentioned in your mail.

Step 1. Create a new gmail account: Provide any valid password at this time. You need NOT have to remember this.

Step 2: Once the mail is created, go to 'Security' from the Gear and choose 'Password and Recovery Options'.

Step 3: Click on "Edit" in the Security Question to set choose your question. Now this is where our assumption that you can remember old things about your life comes into picture. Pick from the list such a question which is somehow related to your old life and to which you remember the answer. Please note that you should NOT WRITE YOUR OWN QUESTION as we do NOT mention what question you have written while recovering the password if its your own question. You will not be able to remember your question as well.

For example, you should probably be able to answer questions like "What was your first phone number" or "What was the name of your first teacher" etc. Choose one of those which you think others do not likely know the answer to and answer it. Please understand that this is NOT the foolproof way because the answer to the security question you have chosen is not something that ONLY you know. To make the answer more obscure, please choose the answer in a way that only YOU would know it. For instance, if you choose the question - "What is the name of your best friend from childhood?", answer it using his nickname (which mostly only you or just a couple of other close friends know) or a combination of his full name and nickname so a hacker who has figured out you are using this approach to manage your email doesn't know how you have answered it even if he/she goes to your school and locality, finds out who your best childhood friend was and tries to answer it (Highly unlikely, but not impossible). This way, you can create a pseudo-password of sorts! Use your best judgement while answering.

Step 4:

Every time when you want to login, say "Forgot Password" and answer this security question that you've chosen and create a new password for one-time login again! (Of course, you need NOT have to remember this new password at all). Hope this solves your problem.

Indeed, you will never remember that you have to use this technique. And of course, we do NOT condone you taking a print-out of this email and stick it to your wall. However, logically also, it's possible for you to go to the "Forgot Password" link the next time you log-in. This is how it is! You write your email id on your wall and may be a small note beside it saying "created very recently". Now you look at the id and the message and try to login but don't know the password. There are two things you can probably do that time. First, since you KNOW you can never remember the password, you give up logging-in. (You don't keep thinking forever for the password because you know you can't remember it). Second, since you notice the "created very recently" message and since you know your medical condition doesn't allow you to remember the password, you understand there must be some way to get into it otherwise you wouldn't have created it in the first place very recently! You try the recovery options!

Regards,

Google Accounts Recovery Team!

Reportedly, Sanjay Singhania is using this tactic to access his gmail account. Good luck hackers :-) .

How managers don’t compare but compare!

2013-02-02T11:56:00.004-08:00

“Sir, how are these two guys?”, asks an HR to Nolan, the manager of the data analysis team.

“You want me to compare them against one another?!!”

“Yes sir. That’s what I want. For the appraisal stuff that’s coming up for your team real soon”.

“But I don’t believe in comparing people”.

“I’m afraid you got to do it now, without believing maybe. Please sir, John and Bob, in order”.

“Look, comparing these two employees John and Bob isn’t fair. Two apples should be compared. Not an apple and a….tamarind. Sorry I can't”.

"Okay sir, thanks for the comparison".

Acquiring more resources!

2013-01-30T02:26:00.000-08:00

Divisional Manager of a software firm interviewing a candidate for the post of an Associate Manager:

D.M: On a scale of 0 to 10, how do you rate yourself at acquiring more resources for a project? Integer answer only, no fractions. And don’t say 10 out of 10; I won’t buy that.

Candidate: Well, you should give me more than just 3 points to choose from. Just 0, 1 and 10 don’t make a great range!

D.M: Oh! Ahaa. Using binary? Okay, between 0 and 100?

Candidate: Well, I’m back to decimals. I’ll rate myself at 99.

D.M: You’re hired.

Extra bits:

On a scale of 0 to 10, how do you rate your self-confidence?

11.

On a scale of 2 to 11, how do you rate your knowledge on prime numbers?

On a scale of a to b, how do you rate your algebraic skills?

b – {(b-a)/10}

On a scale of 0 to 10, how do you rate your rating ability?

??!!

What if ??

2013-01-24T09:40:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer: I know I’m writing about a grave subject and I intend to make no fun of anyone. I’m totally for the severe punishment of people who commit such crimes. I’m not trying to dilute the gravity of this issue.

Well, with all those wretched and vile comments from ministers and god-men suggesting the girl should have called the molesters “Bhaiyya” and pleaded, I don’t think considering another “probably fair” option in this regard is heinous. Let’s imagine that a lone girl is attacked by a sturdy guy with sinewy arms during the dangerous after 6 PM hours in some crowded part of Delhi. The girl is well educated and knows, despite the shouts of equality among the genders and everything, that she can’t fight a six foot tall guy whose biceps resemble those of one of those wrestlers she had seen on her younger brother’s deck of wrestling cards. She has no hope and she can’t escape the adversity! Her yelling falls on deaf ears and her appeal for help never gets acknowledged. As a last hope, she tells the guy, puffed, “I have AIDS… I have AIDS..”. Keeps screaming that repeatedly! (When in reality, she doesn’t actually have the infection).

Case 1 – The Best Case: The guy is a rich, educated (or partly educated) son of a corrupt politician/businessman! Thinks:

“What!! I know she might be lying! But what if it’s true? I can get a thousand girls for what I am, so this isn’t worth the risk! I’d be a fool if I’d do it and then get infected! I can escape police and law but not this microscopic thing of shit”.
Hesitatingly leaves the place.

Case 2 – The Worst Case: The guy starts guffawing and says:

“No worries. I have AIDS too”!!

Case 3 – The guy is uneducated and doesn’t know what the effects of AIDS are. Or the guy is blinded by the momentary provocation for pleasure and doesn’t care about its aftereffects at all.

No change in the result.

There’s a 33% chance of returning home safely, 33% chance of returning home raped and 33% chance of returning home raped and infected!

And I’m not trying to assert anything with this.

Smile Out Silently - SOS :)

2013-01-18T06:21:00.001-08:00

ASS (American Statistical Society) has stated based on a recent poll result that only 0.0037% of times we say LOL do we actually laugh out loud. ASS suggests that instead of using this hyped element, it’s better we stick to reality and use “SOS” – ‘Smile Out Silently’. But after all, it’s upto the young obstinate internet addicts to approve of this since they deal the best when it comes to suggestions arising out of the ASS.

Blackboard Wiper

2013-01-05T12:29:00.003-08:00

So last month, I got an idea, it was a mediocre one.

It popped up when I was in a training here.

The trainer had a lot of things to write on the small board we had and I observed him rubbing the board over n over again to make room for the new stuff.

It was like he spent 20% of the time rubbing the board!

So I thought of this “Duster-Wiper” thing! The way we have water wipers on windshield of 4 wheelers, why can’t we have a “Board-Wiper” for blackboards (and whiteboards)? (But unlike windshield wipers that run repeatedly, this runs just once per button press).

They have the regular (but longer) dusters at their wiping-end and on press of a button that’s beside the board, the wipers take that semi-circular arc path and rub the board!

However, to rub the board completely, we need 3 such wipers working in sync.

They can be installed mainly in universities n schools as well as in the training/meeting rooms of corporate offices! It’s pretty inexpensive as it just needs a small electrically powered motor!

It’s not a game changer I know, but probably it would look ‘cool’ having this with the blackboards (and whiteboards).

Missed Calls and the Mysterious Ring!

2012-12-23T10:40:00.001-08:00

For my friends who ask me why I give them missed-calls and cut after their phone rings for exactly three times, here's the answer:

One ring to notify all, one ring to give time,

One ring more before I cut, and this’s nothing more than a rhyme!

Prerequisite

2012-12-17T08:23:00.000-08:00

Me: Sir, I had applied for the Artificial Intelligence course at your university, but didn’t get a seat. Was wondering if the course demanded any prerequisite?!

MIT Computer Science Admissions Head: Well, that course does have a prerequisite, which is missing in your application.

Me: Really? Which is that prerequisite that’s missing in my application and needed for Artificial Intelligence?

Him: Natural intelligence.

There.. I proposed a girl...

2012-12-14T23:41:00.001-08:00

Shash, short for Shashank, was a geek in true sense. As a graduate student at MIT, he had all the traits of a typical nerd – he used Linux without a graphical interface, executed java programs from command line, spent his weekends playing Massively-Multiplayer-Games and BBT was his favorite sitcom. In fact, he claimed his nickname Shash is not actually an abridged version of his birth name ‘Shashank’ but rather it was supposed to be short for ‘Secured Hash’ algorithm (popularly referred as SHA) which implied he was difficult to understand!

All these before he met a girl, with whom he almost had a love at first sight! She was an Indian but going with her complexion, one could easily mistake her for a Caucasian. A gorgeous, amiable girl with dark and deep eyes pretty much explains how she was. A cryptology lover, he code-named her “Florida” (for reasons unknown) and started on his “Mission Florida” that aimed at successfully proposing her! It took him a while to get close to her, three months to be precise, by which time he held he was equipped to propose her! Well those three months had given him enough familiarity about the kind of girl she was, her loves and distastes, her favorites and ‘yucks’ and all he now required was an imposing way to propose her! He understood she was a geek too, which was vouched by her hotshot job as a Satellite-Station programmer in one of the leading aerospace corporations of the world. He being a geek couldn’t come up with anything that’s not Geekish!

In his own words, this is how Shash finally proposed.

Before I reached that stage, I made sure I had enough freedom to use her personal laptop! Fortunately, she used Windows 7. One fine day when she wasn’t around, I renamed the ‘Recycle Bin’ to ‘Tere Bin’. Hindi ‘tere bin’ this is, without you. Next time, when we were about to watch a movie on her PC, I deliberately deleted it and asked her to restore from the Recycle Bin pretending the deletion was by mistake! When she was looking hard for ‘Recycle Bin’ on the desktop but didn’t seem to find it and suddenly located the ‘Tere Bin’ icon, there I delivered the epic dialogue ;)

I looked into her eyes and gazing at my own reflection,

“Tere Bin, this is how my life would be, full of scrap, unwanted and deletable items!”

Whether she accepted the proposal making his Mission Florida a grand success or rejected him is for the readers to imagine.

Love At First Hearing - Part 1

2012-12-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

It was another disconsolate late Sunday evening, that part of the week any techie has an aversion towards. I was just sitting indolently on my couch when my mobile phone rang. I habitually assign particular ringtones to my favorite people that let me decide if I could stay back where I was or should go out of the room before picking the call. This was a generic tone, which meant it was from an unknown caller. I numbly reached out to my mobile in the pocket and answered.

Caller was a lady, her voice so mellifluous that her dulcet words, though far too generic to infer anything, made me like it at once. I’d say it was ‘love at first hearing’, for the lack of a better phrase. That makes me reckon why we don’t have a parallel locution for ‘love at first sight’ for voice, that’s equally imposing! Anyway, a few of my really knowledgeable friends vouched we really don’t have a better phrase than ‘love at first hearing’ which makes me go ahead with the same. Anyway, the voice. She had hardly spoken a few words but I was totally engrossed. ‘Hold on’, alerted my brain, ‘she could still be one of those HDFC bank agents selling their credit card to you. They would be well trained with their intonations.’ No, this can’t be one of the business oriented calls that we often listen to, forcibly. It had warmth, it was adorable, and it sounded like it cared for me! It reminded me of my mom, deeply, and I’m sorry I have to alter the course of the story.

“What were you upto, Anoop”, asked the imperceptible lady from the other end of the line. It wasn’t an enquiring tone; it carried an air of love implicitly.

What! Why should I tell anyone what I was upto! It’s something privy to me, although the answer would have been really unadorned had I replied aptly.

“How does that matter?” I sounded a bit harsh and would have been more so if the voice wasn’t that sweet.

“It does. To me, to you”.

“May I know who’s this?”, I put everything plainly.

“You know me. I have nurtured you when you were a kid. Unfortunate, you don’t remember anything of it.”

“Really? I thought my mother never hired a nurse or had anyone doing midwifery. Really sorry, but I don’t remember you. But glad you called me. Remind me who you are.”

“That’s been my fate. People whom I care for so much don’t remember me. More disappointing thing being they add to my already deteriorating health. Just called to tell you that I’m growing weak every day. I need you. I need everyone who benefited from me to come back and save me. I can’t bare this anymore.”

What was going on there?? The whole thing appeared hazy and I was baffled to the core. Neither could I make out whom I was talking to nor could I figure out how to talk to a saddened soul.

“I really don’t know who you are, but can make out you are in some sort of pain. Without actually stretching this thing, let me know how I can help you.”

“Everything you do affects me. Every minute ignorant move you make takes a toll on me.”

I cut her short, “No hold on, and tell me your exact problem. I’ll try my best to resolve it.”

“You know my problems. You just don’t care.”

“I don’t know who you are at the very outset, leave alone being aware of your problems”, I was really exacting this time.

“Looks like I’m making you uncomfortable. Will talk to you some other day.”

“No, wait, that wasn’t my intension.” But she cut the line.

I called back to no response. The number looked strange too and the Skype or the TrueCaller directory had no clue about it.

And that whole night, I was deeply riveted contemplating the strange thing that had occurred that evening. It was so much disconcerting, if not anything else. Yet, her voice, her intonation and the deep love it carried had captivated me. As I said earlier, it was love at first hearing.

I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about her. As it became increasingly difficult for me to forget the incident and the voice even after days, I made a resolution – I’ll find her and solve her problem. After all, she sounded just like my mother. Doesn’t matter how grave is your situation, your mother’s loving voice always soothes you, gives you confidence and you just love it. And now she was in some sort of confusion and was unsure. I decided I’d solve it.

I called my mom and narrated the whole incident only to find out that I didn’t have any nurse any time in my childhood. But I swear I was not hallucinating that time.

Tracing the lady turned out being incredibly difficult and all my knowledge of Sherlock Holmes’ Science of Deduction wasn’t helpful either.

Days passed by and I got gelled with my routinely task of algorithm writing, but deep inside, the voice sporadically made its impression. Never before had I thought that someone’s voice can be so impactful. It never seemed like waning. Although appeared specious on a cursory look, I’d soon find that to be pithy. Such was the warmth it had, the love. Love, at first hearing it was. As I pondered over whatever she had said, I somehow gradually got the feeling that I must really be knowing her and that I owe her something for she had nourished me before I reached the age of reason.

Almost six months later, when her voice had slightly faded in my mind and just about the time I had given up all my hopes of finding her, I read a newspaper article about....

-------- Will be continued in the next episode ;) -------

A Free PJish Advice to American Taxi Drivers ;)

2012-12-10T01:54:00.003-08:00

There’s this concept of giving ‘tips’ to taxi drivers in US. It’s unwritten but mandatory. They even ask for a fixed percentage of the cab-fare as their ‘tip’.

A lot of taxi drivers accuse that Indian and Pakistani passengers never tip them

(which is just what they allege and not necessarily true).

So I gave a taxi driver (who was an Indian too) a free advice.

That when Indian or Pakistani passengers get into the taxi, play Bollywood songs. Play Akshay Kumar’s songs in particular. Play ‘Tip Tip Barsaa Paani’ repeatedly till they exit. It might remind them of the tip they’re supposed to pay.

And for this tip that I gave him, he actually waived my 'tip' off.

WC

2012-12-08T23:04:00.000-08:00

Well, that was my first ever foreign trip within an onsite travel – SWEETzerland, it was. We four of us - me, my manager and his wife, and an architect finally decided to temporarily come out of the entrenched mode shedding our parsimonies as we headed to the mesmerizing town of Lucerne in the scenic Switzerland. I remind you again, that was my first trip abroad and I hardly knew Swiss etiquettes and their way of life. In fact, I was quite new to the cosmopolitan culture itself and the European colloquialism was well way beyond my comprehension.

Coming back to the point, Lucerne was a spellbinding beauty, with serene lakes everywhere and the ambiance so pristine. The pure water in the natural water bodies, the pollution free atmosphere, and white cloudy sky - everything made it look trancelike. We visited most of its tourist attractions and at last, all of us leisurely parked ourselves on a park bench outside a hill-restaurant when the architect I said of earlier left to buy a bottle of water. The manager and his wife left too and told they were going to the water closet nearby. Honestly, I did not know what a water closet was. I thought it must be yet another one of those gazillion attractions in Lucerne that’s somehow related to water, like a water theme park or a water spring. After all, that’s what Lucerne was renowned for, lakes and river streams and tourism based on it.

When the architect returned, I told him, so candidly: “Come fast, there’s something called water closet nearby. Sounds like a nice place to visit, we better be visiting it before leaving to Zurich. I’m so excited to see the water closet!!”

And that architect had the laughter of his lifetime and I stood palely with a stupid smile on my face!

PS: In case you don’t know what a water closet is either, I’m glad I was not the only one :)

I was roving around barefooted!

2012-12-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

I’ll tell you frankly, I hate wearing shoes. I’m too indolent to cope up with all the trivial tasks that walking with pride wearing a pair of shoes demands. To have a pair of shoes in wearable condition, a pair of socks that doesn’t smell – preferably of a color that suits the shoe, tying the lace till its aglet and all these to immure your innocent feet? Are you kidding me? Of course, the British, from whom we derived the shoe culture, had a reason. Their place was terribly cold for upper class people to wear shoes while those in the lower economic class that worked mainly in the heavy industries, of which most had a pyrogenic environment during the industrial revolution had to also worry about their safety. They had a reason. Athletes wear it, they have a reason. For heaven’s sake, I work with computers, stay in a city that never takes the mercury down till zero and I have no idea why I should wear shoes, unless of course it’s one of those days when we have plans of hanging out in the nearby Skybar that mandates its largely urban clientele to wear shoes for it’s a dance-friendly ambience.

Fair enough it must be by now; I wear slippers wherever possible and did the same when I was going to Dubai from San Francisco. Unfortunately, those sandals were new and pretty delicate and they never seemed to match my walking speed. They reached their saturation when I was coming down hurriedly on an escalator and the right one got cut and was instantly rendered useless. I was left with the left one and because it wasn’t aesthetically right to just walk on with the left one when the right one wasn’t right anymore, I threw away both. And there I was, awkwardly and gawkily walking inside San Francisco International Airport shoving away the embarrassing stare of a lot of people. I wanted someone to console me, to say it was really okay to walk barefooted in an airport. And the soothing did come as I recalled that legendary dialogue from The Shawshank Redemption where the Voice of God (in case you are ignorant, Morgan Freeman it is) says – “I mean seriously, how often do you really look at a man’s shoes” (I really hope you read that in Morgan Freeman’s voice)! That’s all I wanted that moment. I got the briskness back and jostled towards the boarding place only to be stopped by an Emirates flight crew.

“Sir, I would suggest that you wear your shoes. For your own safely, we can’t let you in barefoot”.

“I’m sorry but my sandals got cut on the way and I don’t have a spare pair. Never mind about my safety, I can take care of myself”.

“I understand, but I can’t go beyond the rules. I can’t really let you in without footwear.”

What the heck, I thought, my foot my wish! The argument went on for a while and he never seemed to ease his likening for the rulebook! Finally, he succumbed to my ticket that said I was a frequent traveller and asked me to contact the on-flight manager inside the flight and let me in. An airhostess (well, a flight attendant for a euphemism fan, a glorified waitress for an exaggerator) led me in to the on-flight manager, who did not know the context.

“Yes sir, how can I help you?”, with all synthetic politeness he asked me.

The air hostess, who didn’t know the complete context either, told I was travelling without footwear.

“Oh no sir”, he told, “You can’t do that. We can’t let you in like this.”

I did not want to repeat the whole tale to this new guy again only to listen to the same old ‘sorry sir, but we cannot’. I had cooked up my plan already.

I just told a simple reason that solved the problem for me in a jiffy.

“I’m not wearing it for religious reasons”, said I in the solemnest accent I could have ever achieved.

He gazed into my eyes for a second, kept a thoughtful hand on his French beard and said

“Oh okay. Get in sir. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

Nobel Prize in all fields!

2012-11-28T01:21:00.000-08:00

The other day I was wondering if there can be a scenario where one person wins Nobel in all fields for ONE interconnected task!

Imagine, someone does a research on human stem cells and synthesizes a chemical out of it and then does molecular realignment using diffraction techniques which serendipitously makes that chemical an easy fuel which can run automobiles. This affects the world economy as the Arab nations lose their monopoly over oil and he writes a thriller novel, of 5 volumes where he describes the malicious effects his synthesis had brought in the Arab world and elaborates various tactics, which include the advanced concepts of Macro-Economics about how it could be tackled. And since oil loses its value, it indirectly stops the war that's going on between various set of nations for oil reserves!

And there he's awarded Nobel in Phy6, Chemis3, Bio log(y) [Or medicine], Economics, Literature and Peace!!!

Drop your scenarios in comments :)

'The Green Mile' Experiment !!

2012-11-26T00:10:00.001-08:00

An experiment to bolster creativity, supposedly!

Let me come straight to the point. This weekend, I did a bizarre experiment that primarily aimed at strengthening the right hemisphere of my brain, the concierge of creativity and the processor of spatial, perceptual and intuitive information. The tryout was unassuming and so much fun!

The experiment demands you to pick a movie of your choice which you haven't watched, whose plot you aren’t aware of, whose cast you don't know either and best if you have no clue on what kind movie it is.

I chose 'The Green Mile'. (Yes, please go ahead and call me a retard for not having watched it till then)

All I knew about the movie was that it was critically well received upon release and Tom Hanks played a major role in it. The healthier part was its name is so convoluted that it doesn't give out anything about the movie genre.

Then, I started playing the movie and began watching it without the video. Turned the monitor off, lied down on my cot and listened to only the dialogues and the background score, imagining my own stuff that would correlate and make some sense with the ongoing audio-scene! I tried to reconstruct the sets through the background score, imagined my own characters based on their voice and intonation, and knitted an own story based on what I heard all along.

And then watched the movie to see how close I was!

Damn, nowhere in the vicinity of the actual plot was mine!!! :D

Nevertheless, it was fun and a gratifying brain exercise which I’ll indeed repeat with a different movie.

That's why girls shouldn't reject stupid fellows...

2012-11-22T09:02:00.001-08:00

(On phone)

“Hey buddy. I want to ask you something”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“I got to know that you know this guy named Rakesh Mehra very well.”

“Rakesh? Oh yes. I do.”

“That’s cool. We’ve got a marriage proposal from his family for my sister. I just wanted to know your opinion on him.”

“Oh! He’s a stupid fellow.”

“Really? That’s your first remark? Sad news for us. But thanks for this honest opinion about your friend dude. Means a lot.”

(Cuts the call immediately)

“Hey. Hold on. Hold on. He’s a “STUPID Fellow”. He has completed ‘Post-Doctoral Fellowship’ from Stuttgart University in Pidenberg, Germany. That’s STU-Pid. He’s a STU-Pid Fellow.

Oronym!

2012-11-20T22:51:00.003-08:00

Somewhere in France:

Girl1: Wow, who’s that?? (pointing to a handsome guy)

Girl2: He? Bruce.

Girl1: Oh I see. What does he do?

Girl2: He brews.

Girl1: Ah. What does he speak?

Girl2: Hebrew.

Girl1: Umm. Where does he stay?

Girl2: Heeb Rue. (Rue is street in French)

Apple Inc Dominates Camera Market in a Parallel Universe!

2012-11-16T05:19:00.002-08:00

In one of the infinite parallel universes, AppleCams and LinuxCams were the two firms that pioneered the research on analog cameras. When they both simultaneously started working on it independently, the cost of building one camera and that of the reel they needed was so high that each of them could only afford to take one single picture with the cameras they built! Given this pitiable plight, they both decided to take that one picture of each other’s camera!

While LinuxCams mostly concentrated on internal mechanism, performance and features of the camera neglecting the aesthetics, AppleCams prioritized look and feel and outer aesthetics over the rest. And when they finally both built their cameras and took one picture of each other’s camera, LinuxCams, which had the better mechanism took a splendid, impeccably clear picture of the AppleCams’ camera. To add to that, AppleCams had an impressive, glistening outer body and an overall photogenic appearance.

Then it was AppleCams’ turn to click the LinuxCams’ camera. AppleCams sucked in its performance and quality against LinuxCams and took a rather blurred, hazy and dark picture of LinuxCams’ camera. Moreover, since AppleCams did not give much importance to features, they lacked picture-quality-enhancement suite to boost the quality of the image taken. To add to the burns, LinuxCams had never given any importance to their camera’s look and feel or its appearance.

The two pictures taken, one of AppleCams’ camera that looked majestic and extremely impressive in the picture and the other, pale and unimposing LinuxCams’ camera, were presented to the public! 90% of the world that ‘wowed’ at AppleCams’ camera instantly pre-ordered it.

The Weirdest Debate Competition!

2012-11-15T00:19:00.002-08:00

Because 'The American Debate Council', who had organized a nationwide debate for grad students chose a topic that was so intellectually stimulating as well as seemed like one of those that appeared to influence the overall result, an elite panel of judges had to be selected.

The participants, to whom the topic was revealed just on spot, evidently looked baffled. It was indeed tough. After all, which side would you choose if the topic is “Neglecting the case that they can be equal, participants who choose to argue against the topic in a typical debate competition generally have better chances of winning”.

Participants who agreed, argued for those who went against the topic in a typical debate while those who thought it wasn't the case and advocated against, argued for the people who argued for the topic.

A UI Designer Wishes Everyone Happy Diwali

2012-11-11T09:30:00.001-08:00

A UI Designer Wishes Everyone Happy Diwali this way:
#India

Genetic Researcher who postponed removing the procrastination gene!

2012-11-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

Genetic Research Scientist to his wife: You know I’ve finally identified the gene that encourages procrastination mentality in individuals!

His wife: Wow. That’s so cool. Why don’t you just remove that gene from the chromosome?

Him: Yeah, I should. I probably will take up that task next week ;)

Two weeks later:

Her: Did you start working on removing the procrastination gene?

Him: With my Research Assistant Stacy, I completed it, in fact. It was successful on me.

Her: [In an angry, rebuffing tone] Really? Why then did you not tell me? You forgot me totally with that Stacy around, didn’t you?

Him: [In a consoling intonation] Oh honey! How can forget you? I just thought I would inform you later.

Her: [Furious] Oh really?! After a successful experimentation?

Him: !!!???!!!

Logitech Launches Unique ‘Zynga Mouse’ that Clicks 10 times per Click:

2012-11-03T06:41:00.001-07:00

Social gaming giant Zynga might be having its stock price at an abysmal level, but the company still maintains a fervent fan base, particularly in its classic cow-clicking games on the browser - FarmVille, CityVille and recently their sequels. Based on this fact, Logitech, the firm that’s renowned for manufacturing computer keyboard, mouse and other accessories is betting on these cow clicking games with their new mouse that’s designed especially for gamers who play Zynga ville games. Games like Farmville, Cityville , Fishville and many others involve a lot of mouse clicking by their players. In fact, mouse clicking makes up for more than three fourth of what players do while playing such games. With this in mind, Logitech has announced its new mouse, fondly christened “Click Less, Play More”, although the brand name is “Repeated-Click Mouse”, which typically clicks ten times per one user click! While this figure can be configured, Logitech designers firmly believe 10 is the optimum number for most ville genre games of Zynga. Users generally keep clicking on their fields and cities to grow food, water the plants, construct houses and a variety of such tasks that involve a lot of mouse clicks.

“Our specially designed mouse”, says Logitech VP Michael Rivett, “will allow gamers to click less and play more by offering them multiple clicks, typically 10, for each of their clicks.”

While it remains to be seen how players respond to this new feature of the mouse, the dwindling gamer base of Zynga might still expect a slender redemption.