Dont bathe with your mobile

"Dont bathe with your mobile"

Firstly no offense to the guy who sent a mail to student@coep; obviously he has great concern for mobile users all over COEP. But this was too funny to ignore. The whole mail is filled with tips as shown under, but the weirdest tip given below is the one which says - "Dont bathe with your mobile".

I mean, seriously, who in the name of Sony Ericsson "bathes with a mobile"!

Anyways, I'll now blog more often about some gems sent on our COEP Mail, it's too irresistible. And please remember kids, as the wise man said - Dont bathe with your mobile!
Also remember, don't try and make phone calls with your soap! :D

Gold

I am 21 years old, in the past I've participated in a lot of contests, competitions, events etc. On many occasions I've won stuff like certificates, shirts, pen drives, cash awards [i love cash] and even a digi cam. But until the 27th of March 2009, I had never, ever won a Gold medal. On 26th and 27th at TRDDC, TCS' R&D wing, we had a project competition. My project came under the Systems Research Laboratory and was scheduled for demo on the 27th. The demo was complete days ago, and the PPT too was done by the 25th. But it was only on the 26th when I actually found out that there was a Gold-freaking-medal at stake, that i became serious about giving it a shot.

My friends Anshul and Poorva had already got Gold Medals on 26th for their amazing work and Shrirang, Andy and Bagga also got Bronze Medals. Their good wishes really did help my project group, so here's me thanking you all!

So there we were on the 27th, D-Day at TRDDC, on Gudi Padva. And from 1030 am till 1:15 pm we literally were giving our demo and ppt to different groups of people one after the other non-stop. It was a test of stamina, but is on such days that my ability of yapping non-stop comes to the fore.

Teachers from my school days who threatened me with the stick for talking in class, take that ;)

Anyways after the main show in front of the judges was over, which went off very well; we continued to give demos and the ppt for other groups as well. Finally at 4:30 pm we decided to pack up, since the official time was till 4 pm and we were all really exhausted.

After some TP [time pass] with other project groups and friends at TRDDC we were told to head off to the Auditorium for the Prize Distribution ceremony. Now let me tell you all one thing, no matter how well or badly one has performed in a competition, at the time of the Prize Distribution, everyone in their heart of hearts hopes that somehow they win something. It's a fact, everyone has that fantasy of their name being miraculously announced and the applause that follows.

Anyways, I loved the way the ceremony was conducted; it was a great mix of informal fun and the necessary "serious" element it should have. The medals were the really amazing bit. I was actually very impressed with the whole affair.

Once the 3rd and 2nd place awards were given, everyone was kind of tense, no COEP groups had won so far in the Systems Research category. I was also tense, though I didn't show it. I seriously wanted that Gold medal. Then came the final announcement. Our group had one the 1st prize. Mrunal and Akash were all smiles and I was laughing, laughing all the way to the podium. Even when I was given the medal I was laughing. I laughed out of various reasons, firstly coz I was really happy, secondly because my record of winning technical competitions of a serious nature remained intact, thirdly because I finally got a Gold medal and lastly I remembered all that had transpired since Third Year when groups were formed. Every single memory flashed through my mind and I laughed. I remembered those 3 nights in the last two months when i stayed up coding my brains out! I also remembered doing TP at the "katta" near TRDDC with my best friend. I remembered irritating the hell out of employees near my desk at TRDDC by talking and laughing all day with Akash and Mrunal. So many things happened at TRDDC in the past few months, the Gold Medal just went on to make them even more special memories.

I am glad things turned out the way they did. It's been an amazing experience.
The celebrations are still on, I owe quite a few people treats.

7 things I will remember about TRDDC

7 - The first night I coded like mad
6 - Watching Sachin Tendulkar bat while eating at the canteen
5 - The phone number incident
4 - The video Akash and I shot in the lawn
3 - The conversations at the katta
2 - The contest day
1 - The Gold medal

Now I'll conclude this retrospective post about my B Tech project at TRDDC. There's a lot more enjoyment left in these last few weeks of college life and this Gold medal thingy has just given me more reason to celebrate!

Thanks a lot everyone at TRDDC!

The Java Class aka The Laughing Incident

Ok, this post is a long awaited one, about the famed "Java Class" which was mostly attended by The Losers and from Comp it was just Ketan, Jai The Great and me. It was Akash's long overdue Orkut testimonial for me that triggered these fond memories. The Java class began at the end of our TY 2nd sem. It was mostly a defense mechanism for most of us, who thought ki yaar placement se pehle we gotta do some course at least. Thus began The Java Class. Now what I
remember of the Java class was most certainly the infamous LAUGHING INCIDENT; but I'll add a few details about the class for posterity.
There was this kind soul of a teacher from what i initially believed to be "Sun Java Education", but later found out she was a teacher from some STAR Classes or something. But then it wasnt that big a deal, the books we got were from Sun Java Education, so no harm done.

Now here's how the classes went about, Core Java started bang in the middle of the sem, so it couldn't be held for more than a few weeks. After that we had a break till the end of the sem. During the Core Java lectures, we [by that i mean Hasan, Sameer and Akash] used to be attentive and stuff for a fair amount of time, but once the sem ended we lost all our concentration powers.
In the holidays we were supposed to have the class, all day in our college lab. The maam used to land up at like 8 am or something, expecting our efficient college support staff to be prepared with the labs open and ready [hahaha]. She'd wait there, department locked and all. We students would walk in an hour or so late and chill. The halat was so bad that after some time, she even had to borrow laptops for connecting to the lab projector, one day the class didn't start
until someone with a laptop arrived :D
I was certain that by the end of the "Java Class", that maam would be seriously depressed!

Anyways, the classes suddenly changed hue from being a learning course to being an entertainment centre. Akash and i became good friends during the course of those days. I also met Abba [Abhinit] during the class, we soon realized we had a lot in common, a sense of humor and lukkhagiri instincts to be more precise ;)

Coming back to the point, The Losers and I would sit around, Jai couldn't stand Advanced Java for too long and left the course in true Jai style! Once the class started, for the first 20 mins we would all pretend to be attentive. Then Akash/Hasan and I would make eye contact and we'd suddenly start talking about something or the other which was always funny. Soon the class would go on and we'd keep laughing and talking.

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THE LAUGHING INCIDENT

This happened one day, towards to latter half of Advanced Java. In the afternoon, Hasan, I, Akash and Sameer [in seating order] sat in the front row and maam was teaching something about classes in advanced java. Now her slides had some really silly names for the classes, one slide had names like

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
and so on.

The next slide had names like

January
February
March...

Somehow all 4 of us found this really stupid and funny. It started with me and Akash, both masters of the "silent laugh trick". I was blessed with the ability to hide myself under the cover of the monitor kept in front me by sitting low on my chair. We laughed for 5 straight minutes, it was contagious, soon Hasan and Sameer were laughing as well. Maam was oblivious to all this energetic laughter going on right in front of her. Then we all looked at each other and gave ourselves the "ab bas kar yaar" look and we all controlled our laughter. We all now realize that January February and Monday Tuesday arent exactly the funniest things on Earth, but that day they were.

Then maam changes the slide and the next slide had the dumbest set of Java class names ever

Dog
Cat
Monkey

That was it, we all lost control and started laughing, still we managed the silent laugh; but then, Hasan, let out that shrill laugh for a brief second, the one which manages to slip out. That pushed us all over the edge, we all started laughing hysterically, full volume. The rest of the class, sitting behind us started laughing too, just for the heck of it. Akash actually got off his chair and hid under the comp table ahead of us. No one knew why we were laughing, maam was stunned. She had no clue about what just happened.

She says - "Why are u all laughing?"
"Maam, the classes are named Dog, Cat and Monkey" - was what i would've said, but i was laughing too hard to say anything.

The best moment was when we shut up for a minute, then said a brief "sorry"; then one of us again burst out laughing. Maam was so helpless that she offered us a 5 minute break - "Maam we need at least 10 mins" was our reply.

That was one of the most unforgettable days of The Java Class. We still don't know why we laughed so much that day, but it was legendary. Ever mention The Java Class and that day is the first thing our minds go to.

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The Aftermath -

Hasan, Sameer and Ketan left for their respective summer Internships for a few weeks. That was when Akash and I abandoned the front rows and settled down at the far end of the lab, we just sat through laughing our heads off, joined on occasion by Abba. That was a really great way to spend the end sem holidays, and a great stress buster for the, then, upcoming Placement Week!

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Related stories -

We once used the projector to watch the Aus/SA unforgettable final. Really gr8 use of our college lab :D

Anshul, Poorva and maybe a few more people were the only ones who actually learnt anything during the Advanced Java days. One day Anshul sat next to me; Abba and Akash were there too. I wasn't aware that Anshul thought of me as a "Sajjan". So there we were, suddenly i came up with a funny non-veg joke. After the laughter settled down, Anshul said to me "Yaar, mujhe pata nahi thaa ki tu yeh sab baatein bhi karta hai". Well, Anshul learnt a lot about me then onwards and since then we have become friends too. So i ended up having a great time during those days, Akash and I literally used to come just to chill and crack jokes all day. In the end we got some Advanced Java books as well, which we may use in the future; a certificate which we got after giving a really random test, for which no one prepared and still got like 17/20 minimum. I made quite a few new and gr8 friends in the process and well I do know Advanced Java to a certain extent thanks to my BE project, so no harm done there! A great investment of time.


It was one of the most laughter filled months in our COEP life and it was truly unforgettable! Special thanks to Akash, Jai and Hasan, because of whom I joined The Java Class.


THE END

The College Mail

Our college mail is officially -

a> A spam exhibition centre

Seriously... people come up with such lame crap, that even after 2 years of having seen our college mail, one can still get surprised. People are stupid enough to sign up with Bharat Matrimony using student@coep as their email id, but they use their full name for signing up, resulting in mails being sent to student@coep saying "Dear, Shilpa XYZkar, thank you for signing up with blah blah blah"

Then we also have the endless set of links sent in mails by various people about sites and events which nobody on earth is interested in.

b> A lost and found announcement tool

This is a slightly new method of tormenting the average user of the college mail, we had people at one time saying stuff like "Lost!!! Lost!!! Lost!!! 2 GB pen drive" etc on the college domain. Now we have the other half of the irritating spectrum with people saying "I found a red colour sweat shirt" etc. It was fine upto a certain extent, but now we have at least 10 such mails per week. I'm now waiting for the circle of insanity to get completed by having mails sent saying - "Thank you, i had lost my pen drive, but i now have got it back", we may then have people sending a reply to that saying - "Dosti mein no sorry, no thank you" and then a reply to that saying "Yes you are right"... sorry, kinda lost control there. But you get the point. It's kinda crazy at times.

c> The central location where people vent their frustration against the college -

Every once in a while we get mails, mostly from anonymous senders like "coepstudentforfreedom@gmail" and then it starts off saying what all stuff sucks in COEP and how we must all "get together" to improve it. That itself is stupid enough, but then it's followed by a barrage of other people, non-anonymous, thankfully who start castigating the anonymous sender with fundas about morality and other philosophical crap. This third thing is actually kinda amusing, so I for one don't mind it as much as the other two things.

The Quest is complete

The Lord Of The Rings

It is my favorite book of all time, my favorite movie series of all time. I’ve read the book, an insane 17 times and would continue to do so once every year. Thanks to the crazy no. of times that I’ve read the book, I am capable of, at times, quoting lines from the book in real life situations. E.g. when a couple of years back there was this whole, “Sachin must retire” bullshit campaign after India lost a few matches, I wrote this blog post and quoted an LOTR favorite – “Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens”!

Fresh after one of my readings of the book series, I end up having a hangover of the old English style which JRR Tolkien has used in the books. There was this one instance when I irritated the hell out of a teacher in 12^th standard when she asked me some shit formula in Chem II which I had no idea about, so I said, “To this question… the answer… I know not”. She got so freaked out, she just asked me to sit down and carried on.

Anyways, I have to thank my brother’s friend PL Kashyap, it was he who introduced me to The Lord Of The Rings. Since then I’ve gone on to having finished all of Tolkien’s works. But I would say one thing, my fanatic love for this “trilogy” [Tolkien buffs will point out that it wasn’t a trilogy, but what the hell, I’ll call it a trilogy for simplicity], has its roots in the fantastic movie series directed by Peter Jackson. Each movie was a masterpiece of acting, direction, dialogues, action, drama, and exceptionally awesome special effects. The journey of The Ring-bearer and The Fellowship from Rivendell to Mordor has been shown so brilliantly that one can safely say that if Tolkien were to have directed this movie, he’d have made it exactly the same.

Other fantasy books off late which have been made into movies haven’t had the same success as The Lord Of The Rings, maybe because the creators of the movies aren’t exactly fans of the books. That explains why the Harry Potter movies haven’t been regarded as good enough movie versions of some great books. The Eragon book series isn’t exactly the greatest series to have been written, but the movie was definitely one of the worst movies to have been made. The kind of effort that must’ve gone into making LOTR as a movie series can only be imagined, but apart from the exceptionally good music score, or special effects; the one thing that sets LOTR apart is the amazing ensemble cast [which was acknowledged by an Oscar]. The casting and acting has been more than perfect. Gandalf played by Sir Ian Mckellen was according to me one of the best books-to-screen depictions of any fantasy character.

I am writing this post, fresh after completing my quest of watching all 3 extended DVD versions of the movies, consecutively. I had wanted to do this for a long time, and finally managed it in the fag end of my B Tech days. Another awesome memory to add to my engineering days.

Thank you, JRR Tolkien, Peter Jackson and unknown dude who burned the DVD’s for me!

For those who haven’t yet watched this masterpiece of film making, here are a few snapshots which may make you want to see it immediately.

Bhor Bhayi and Laaga Chunari Mein Daag

I'm not exactly an expert on Indian classical music, sadly, I'm quite the opposite. But this song from Delhi 6, called Bhor Bhayi reminded me of an amazing classical number called Laga Chunari Mein Daag. I heard that song a year ago and it totally blew me away, insanely awesome.
I somehow haven't had the time to hear classical music, but what little I have heard has made me promise myself that I'll definitely take out time in the future to hear a lot more of it.

Meanwhile check out the song I mentioned above, the last half of the song is mind blowing. I don't know how many of you will actually like it, but I love this track. Manna Dey, I salute thee.
Once again I salute A R Rahman for using such an old and forgotten track in Delhi 6, I also noticed how even Shreya Ghoshal struggles at a few notes in the song to match Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan.

Anyways, just thought of posting this to remind me in the future to come good on my promise; lest I forget.

Dil Gira Dafatan Lyrics - Delhi 6

Dil Gira Dafatan from the album Delhi 6, is my favorite song of the year so far. Prasoon Joshi has penned some amazing lyrics for this track. A R Rahman has filled this song with mesmerizing melody that only he is capable of creating. There are some songs which are made for the charts and then there are songs made for the heart. This one is a soul stirring song that is a must-hear.

Dil Gira Dafatan Lyrics

Dil mera dil mera dil mera
Dil mera…aaaaaaaaaaaaa
Dil mera dil mera…

Dil gira kahin par dafatan,
Dil gira kahin par dafatan,
Jaane magar yeh nayan,
Teri khamosh zulfon ki gehraaiyaan hai jahan,
Dil mera uljha hua hai wahin kho gaya,
Tu magar hai bekhabar, hai bekhabar,
Dil gira kahin par dafatan,
Kyu gunj rahi hai dhadkan,
Jaane magar yeh nayan..

Sipiyon ke honth se,
Moti chalak rahe hain,
Gazlon ki sohabat mein,
Geet bhi behek rahi hai,
Samunder lehron ki lehron ki,
Chadar odh ke so raha hai,
Par mein jaagu, ek khumari,
Ek nasha sa, ek nasha sa ho raha hai,
Tu magar hai bekhabar, hai bekhabar..
Dil gira kahin par dafatan,
Kyu gunj rahi hai dhadkan,
Jaane magar yeh nayan,
Khushbu mein lipte mausam,
Teri khamosh zulfon ki gehraaiyaan hai jahan,
Dil mera uljha hua hai wahin kho gaya,
Tu magar hai bekhabar, hai bekhabar,
Dil gira kahin par dafatan..


Movie: Delhi-6 (2009)
Music Director: A R Rahman
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi

One hopes that this is just the start of another great A R Rahman year.

Reco Letter

Right now there's this phase of life where a lot of my friends are collecting letters of recommendations from a lot of places, while they are individuals who are big achievers and highly skilled people, what if a guy/girl who has done nothing of significance in his/her life wants a letter of recommendation. What if he/she was a nightmare of a student? This is a sample Letter of Recommendation of such a person.

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To whom it may concern,

It is my immense pleasure to recommend Patrick Henry Jr. for your post-graduate program for the next coming academic year. Patrick outweighs every other student in his class and the fact that he still manages to travel by public transport is very impressive.

I came to know him in the autumn of 2005 while teaching his class. Both in class and outside he made a very strong impression. During the course of studies his partner's grades were very good and even though he sat next to him in every exam and still managed to get exceptionally low marks in those exams, I can certify that he is honest and definitely never cheated in any test.
He never took up any extra curricular activities, thus showing that he knew his limitations and excelled within them.
He has the ability to gather around him a team of peers who ensure that no matter how less an effort he puts in, he always completes his assignments on time and when he cannot he displays his profound ability to impress upon professors that time is a relative quantity and whether he gave his assignment on time or a few days late, it didn't matter as long as he eventually did complete it.
He is a very respectful student and always is a positive influence on his peers, he has the ability to see positives in everything and he is a very happy person, since he keeps laughing during most lectures. His antics during lectures always ensures a healthy attendance of students.

I would love it if he continued his higher education at your institute and not mine. You will be the happiest man alive when he walks out of the gates of your institute after he completes his higher studies, I assure you.

Sincerely,

David Flabbergaster

HOD Electical Engineering Dept

ICU Institute of Engineering

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Dev D Movie Review

Just one word – Fabulous!
I finally saw this movie on Sunday and thank God I waited to watch it in a theatre. One of the best Hindi movies I have seen. Anurag Kashyap and Amit Trivedi – take a bow!

Yes, there are those who didn’t like it, but I liked it and that’s all that counts. I don’t care who gave it 5 stars and who gave it 1 star; a movie like this is beyond ratings.
I really wish people would decide what kind of a movie they expect before they step into the theatre, that’s where I believe most people end up not liking movies. What one gets in Dev D, is some great acting, great direction and above all great… great music and lots of it, there’s little else that you can ask for.
What I liked about the movie was that even though you know it’s a Devdas remake, you still are surprised with the total angle change and twists in the story. I for one loved the role of Chanda, seriously well etched out. Paro was also fine, but the best acting performance was by Abhay Deol, from whom one now can just start expecting great performances and nothing less. I had also seen “Oye Lucky Lucky Oye!” a few weeks back and he did brilliantly in that too. While the movie is a serious one it has some great humor in it, the “Sattu” scene at the start, Emosanal Attyachar [Brass Band version] with those two hilarious singers and a host of other moments in the movie. The entire movie is intelligent and is entertaining. Some people have complained about the songs and stuff, but I didn’t really have an issue since I loved the album [which has been on my playlist since the last month] and the handling of the scenes, especially between Chanda and Dev is superb.
Chanda, played by Kalki is a revelation; her entire story arc starting from the MMS scandal to the last scene is amazing. One was really pleased the see the way the whole MMS issue was handled in a completely non-sleazy way in the film. One can only imagine what the directors of the 90’s and 80’s would’ve done with that kind of subject matter! I don’t know what people were saying when they complained about Chanda’s accent, she’s not playing a Bharatiya nari types as it is.
The strength of the movie lies in the depth the female characters are given. While it is true that in most Bollywood movies, female characters are just eye candy; Anurag Kashyap gives us Chanda who is not only eye candy, but also has a huge role to play in the movie itself. Even Paro did a great job in the movie.
What I was also glad to see was that the theatre had quite a decent crowd, even though the movie is relatively old now.
Now the music, enough has already been said about how awesome it is, but I think it’s necessary to mention how well it has been used in the movie. By far one of the best soundtracks to come out of the Hindi movie industry!
To finish this review, which is mostly a recommendation for this movie – one hopes that the Anurag Kashyaps of Bollywood prevail over the mindless trash made by the Nikhil Advanis and Aneez Bazmees of this world.

Good Times

Yeah, weekends in Feb have been great so far, especially weekends with some relation to St. Vincent’s. First was the amazing/random/weird/awesome time at school a couple of Saturdays back, followed by what happened on Sunday. I finally saw Dev D, with Akash and Srinivas; we all unanimously liked the movie, but to different degrees, I loved it. We had a great time during the movie as is the case each time a bunch of Vincentians go for a flick together, we either totally screw the movie and laugh over it or totally enjoy it if its good. This time it was the latter.
Then came the best part of the day, Vedo, Robert and Karl joined us after the movie and then we had non-stop narrations of hilarious incidents, I’m pretty sure we didn’t even finish 10% of all the incidents we all had in the past 4 years, but even then it was enough to spend an afternoon.
There’s something about your schoolmates that’s special and the nature of the friendship only gets better in time. A few of us may have met after 4 years, but it was almost like we had met yesterday. Some things don’t change that much, and thankfully they never will.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I had been waiting for this flick to "release on DVD" [read as - come out with a good torrent] for the past 6 months and finally I got the movie with me today morning and after watching it all I can say is - it was really good. Once again I propose my theory of liking a movie as much as one wants to like it, so if you read this and "get the DVD" and don't like it, it's not my fault.
It's a simplistic story - all about the events that transpire on one night, between the 2 protagonists, Nick and Norah. Nick is the sole hetero/straight member of a gay band called The Jerk-Offs; who hasn't recovered from a break up with his girlfriend Tris; so he calls her up and leaves all loserish messages on her answering machine along with sending her mix CD's in the hopes of winning her back. Tris is least interested in him and had been cheating on him during their relationship.
Norah is this rich kid who tries to lead as normal a life as possible and is always with her best friend Caroline [who gets drunk at parties and needs Norah to save her]. Norah, played by Kat Dennings is perfectly cast along with Michael Cera who plays Nick.

The rest of the story is a breezy set of events that transpire along the night when Nick and Norah start the night, separately hunting for the location where this band called "Where's Fluffy? " is going to perform.

The one liner's in the movie are really smart and funny. The situations are pretty fresh and worth watching. Michael Cera has been part of Superbad, my most favorite comedy of the 2000's and then he added Juno [which was a decent movie] to his list and he does himself no harm with Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Kat Dennings too has done a fabulous job. The whole movie is a light on the head but not stupid flick and I for one enjoyed it a lot and will urge [read as force] my friends to watch it.

If you have seen the above movies and liked any of them, I suggest you watch this flick which is supported well by a pretty decent soundtrack as well.

3.5/5 stars for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Happy Violent Times Day

I won't go into the cultural aspect of whether Valentine's Day is good or bad... that's for each of us to decide for ourselves. But somehow it seems that this time of the year some people get a license to be violent en mass. The news channels show these losers on screen thrashing people and yet they never get arrested. If this trend continues, we might as well rename it Violent Times Day, a day for violent people to go out on the streets and thrash people!

Sad to see such trends in our "non-violent" country.

Worst part was seeing a police constable thrash a woman in Haryana, yeah man... way to go... hail your sadist culture where you use force on a woman! Then we had a case in MP where a bunch of cultural thugs mistook a brother-sister pair on the roads as "lovers" and thrashed the guy until they were told that the guy was her brother! So apparently on 14th Feb, if you're seen with a girl, she better be your sister - or else...

Then we had cases in Maharashtra of couples being "married" on the streets, with a bunch of sadists clapping away to glory as a sobbing girl garlands her "husband". Insanity seems to prevail in the country on such days.

And then a lot has been written about this topic already and I don't want to be repetitive, but this is no way to treat your countrymen.

One rarely gets to hear of some boy harassing a girl on such days , but we always hear of the people who want to prevent the damage to Indian culture, harassing people. It is a mockery of the law and order, the cop thrashing a woman just proves what kinds of people are out on the streets to protect the innocent. Frustrated losers should not decide what Indian culture is.

Anyways blogging about it also doesn't help much, but then at least making your point of view known is a start. Hopefully power will go to sensible people in this country... someday!

Are those real or fake?

Are those real or fake?

A common query in the minds of guys who look at super endowed models or actresses etc. But now no more will this be a question simply in the minds of guys! And we can all thank the phenomenon called "hair transplant" for this.

Hair transplant is the male answer to the female cosmetic enhancement procedure called "implants". In the coming years when a 35+ man walks the streets with his hand running through thick, flowing black hair; women will have all the right to wonder - "Real or fake?"

Its a viral process, very strong rumors suggest that Sallu got it done a couple of years back, Arun Lal then tormented us with his newly reclaimed hairline, now Harsha Bhogle has taken the plunge. And rumor has it that in the next few weeks Sehwag of all the people in the world will unleash his... well... hair!

It's sad to see such famous baldies shed their trademark head shine, but I guess the day Fair and Handsome got accepted, it was a matter of time that men dropped gyms in favor of cosmetic enhancements!

Only time will tell whether this is a passing phase or whether "mardo vaali cream" types of people will prevail. Till then I'm praying that baldness stays away!

Dig Out Your Soul

"Wassup" is the usual question asked on Gtalk and other places - Along with the usual reply of "Nothing Much", this is what I'm upto - Listening to the album by Oasis called Dig Out Your Soul. It has some classic Oasis tracks, and the one's which I like in particular are -

Bag It Up - Listen to the last 1 minute of the song, awesome stuff.

The Shock Of The Lightning - Nice Song

I'm Outta Time - Simply my most favorite track of the album, great lyrics and a haunting feel to the whole song makes it a song worthy of remembrance.

1. Bag It Up
2. The Turning
3. Waiting for the Rapture
4. The Shock of the Lightning
5. I'm Outta Time
6. (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady
7. Falling Down
8. To Be Where There's Life
9. Ain't Got Nothin
10. The Nature of Reality
11. Soldier On

Four stars out of five for this one.

A beautiful day and those pockets of pure joy

I had a great day today, filled with memorable moments and times that I will cherish for life. I also went to my school after 4 long years... yes, it's been that long since I walked on the school ground, sat on my favorite bench, took guard in front of the tree which we used as the "stumps" for playing cricket, sat near the Gulati Hall, saw some of my favorite school teachers and swore I'd go next as soon as I am done with engineering. It's like an elixir for the soul, visiting places which have only and only got happy memories, people who genuinely like you, people who are proud of you and to get to do all that in the company of someone who is your best friend, is as good as it gets. I had a great day today... St. Vincent's is the best school ever!
It's days like these that make you capable of facing all the hurdles of life, because there are these pockets of pure joy that still exist.

To use a Lord of the Rings reference, places like these are like Lothlorien. You can always come there, weary... tired and leave rejuvenated and full of life. Or you can go there just for the heck of it and remember the never ending set of stories that took place out there. I do have a few more pockets of joy; places which can make my day and now, after today's amazing experience I will go to those pockets more often.