I know what I did last summer!

Well, I did it; not coz it was the right thing to do, but it was mandatory for all the inmates of the reform school they call institute of technology! Identified as ‘Practical Training’, I rather like to call it, ‘Summer Internship’.

So there I was, 180 kms north east of Bombay, in a ceramic manufacturing firm at Nasik (although officially called Nashik, I’d rather give the h a miss). The primary reason I was there was I had not have the will power to spam a thousand profs across the globe and beg’em to take me in! Hence I picked this company where my mate T.M.P had decided to go ( I had no other choice after kareena’s and my plan to get trained at goa was practically snatched out of our hands). So, with a heavy back pack and a light heart, I set on the journey for 8 weeks in a picturesque land, 569 m above sea (effectively Bombay) with T.M.P on my side.

If you’d look up for this holy city at wikipedia, you’ll find such soothing words, “…..The "Wine Capital of India", or the "Grape City", as it is popularly known, the city is located in the Western Ghats, on the western edge of the Deccan peninsula on the banks of the Godavari River. The city is known for its picturesque surroundings and pleasant climate.”

So there we were, in a pleasant and picturesque land. And as we stepped out of our rickshaw, we witnessed company campus, with northern and eastern boundaries lined with towering asoka trees, which elevated and heightened our spirits. A huge lush green lawn greeted us from the western side behind the company’s main building. We were guided to our guest house rooms on the southern side of the grounds ( don’t get fooled by my misguided sense of direction, it’s not that big a campus). I’d rather skip the graphical introduction of our rooms and move on to the next 8 weeks.

Next day, 14^th of may, we were handed over to the R&D head of the co., Mr.Bhat, who was very cordial, enthused and confused to us. After getting familiar with the wierd IIT system (and 2 weird IITians too) he let us loose in the co. library, just to buy some time to figure out what was to be done with us. We were then escorted to the technical director and the managing director, who were siblings too. It’s a family owned co. with different branches of the co. running into the family tree.

So the library was destined to be our sanctorum for the next 56 days (except the Saturdays, which were weekly offs as the government had imposed a power cut in lieu of the subsidised electicity they so generously provide!).

We passed the first week in a thorough literature survey of the possible projects we could undertake. In this pursuit we rummaged through the 6 cupboards which constituted the library, with the help of a meticulous catalogue which ironically just listed the missing books yet to be found. It was rather ammusing for the books to go into hiding partially due to the fact that nobody ever made access to the library during our stay. Anyways, the first Sunday brought the much needed computer and our research was simplified manifolds.

But rest of our worries still held the castle, that is how to kill time after six. With the much awaited tube not showing up, I buried myself into the inimitable fables of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. After stuffing myself with pattice and pastry at the closest heaven( given the kind of meals we were consuming, the bakery was no less than heaven!), I would delve into the impeccable and majestic stories of Wodehouse, the greatest humorist of last century! I was intrigued by his wizardry so much that I had to scrape a thousand bucks for a Jeeves omnibus(sniff)! But it was worth it (as I’ve rummaged through it and taken the ride on the ‘omni bus’ twice since then). Then there was Vikram Seth’s much acclaimed ‘An Equal Music’, which I found quite unequal to Wodehouse, albeit being writers of different genres and generations, but somehow Seth couldn’t take me through the joy ride as P.G.W. During this period of forced abstinence from the outside world, I was also able to flip through a long pending novel, acquiring dust at my home liby, Hemingway’s ‘A Farewell to Arms’, which left me completely famished and rejuvenated for more of Wodehouse at the same time. Yeah, there’s something about fiction that sucks out all my energy and imagination, which I anyhow possess in miniscule amounts!

So, two very eventfully unhappening weeks had whizzed past and we already had begun our countdown back to our base (at least T.M.P had by setting a weekly countdown which would go on at every Friday evening!). But I can’t thank my stars and lady luck enough that the following weeks didn’t prove to be the same drudgery as the initial ones; prominent reasons being, we picked the projects of our choice, idiot box showed up and so did another idiot- Spidy! So life got picked up where I had left it at Bombay. I was more than happy to catch wimbledon action amidst work and not to mention after it too!

So, the hell started freezing over and we overtook the DTA lab. On second thoughts, only T.M.P did. I was a happy camper squandering in the liby while my ceramic powder was being grinded and milled, meanwhile T.M.P would synthesize nanopowder chemically in the lab (yeah, I’m shrewd!). So, it was then that I started playing scrabble online and improve upon my rating before the ‘foren’ junta would appear online, after which it was lengthy discussions on why Boda’s failing in Italy on his ultimate mission or Ballu’s misdemeanours or rather Viju’s misadventures! (And yeah, Kauwa was pestering all the time in the background).

Despite all this fun, we had already declared tea-time the best part of our stay at the wine capital. During the initial weeks, a cuppa tea was the only factor that kept us going! So, if you ask us, It was Babban bhaiya, our tea angel, who was the dearest of all.

Concluding part to be posted in near future, may be next summer!

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

one of the best i've classified!

Ain’t referring to Douglas Adams’ classic. This one’s for real. A team of scientists have devised a project which calls internet users to help astrophysicists classify a few of the innumerable galaxies for’em. The team admits that the project titled, ‘Galaxy Zoo’, is inspired, amongst a few, by successful NASA project, ‘Stardust@home’, which invited the public to help sort through the dust grains obtained from a mission to a comet.
They are luring in people by stating, “…One advantage is that you get to see parts of space that have never been seen before. These images were taken by a robotic telescope and processed automatically, so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will be one that no human has seen before.”
So, enough said??...Start hitchhiking; I’ve already cleared the test, thank you! But seems like won’t be able to meet Zaphod Beeblerox. I got stuck first due to some runtime error and now the image of the galaxy won’t load. Talk about rotten luck!
Can you guess how many galaxies I’m gonna classify??
42! (wink)

www.galaxyzoo.org

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6289474.stm

Apple of my i

I say, BBC’s longest running radio show Desert Island Discs (which also holds the Guinness world record) is outdated, at least it’s concept is! Not withstanding and overlooking the advent of Sony’s walkman and CDman, this newest technological gem casts a retro shadow over the show.
I am talking about the new apple of my eye, iPod! Apple’s and Job’s latest heart -throbbing device which has swept a lousy techno geek like me off his feet!
It’s the first inseparable possession of mine (after the glamorous first grade computer text book which I wouldn’t let go).
Master of a mammoth memory of 30 Gb, it’s exactly 3/4th of my home p.c.’s disk space, yet not even 1/100th of its size. Music on the go! Joe satriani all the time! What more can I ask for? (other than a Joe Satch signatured elec.guitar, an Enzo Ferrari, a chartered plane of my own…. oops!)
I mean I’m pretty much satisfied with my laid back life right now. So even if I am a castaway on this BBC’s desert island, I don’t have to pick 8 of my favourite records( and with audio books on the pod, I don’t even have to bother about my favourite books on the deserted island!)…..I got’em all on the apple of my i!

P.S.: Given my iPod, I don’t even have to bother to pick an inanimate luxury too! Man, how compact this device is!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs.shtml

View d'ensemble

It’s a wonderland up there; yeah! If it’s a cloudy morning, with white cotton balls of clouds everywhere…you wouldn’t know if you are 30,000 feet above the tallest human being or the tallest constructed monument.( could have said Everest but I don’t wanna do the math!) It’s like flying in a euphoric dream (at least I felt it; my fellow passengers were either engaged with their gastric juices functionality or rummaging through stale airline magazines). How can you not go gaga over such scenic beauty, that too, somewhere in the sky. How can one not feel the anxiety upon having the closest encounter with the gigantic colony of white and grey clouds in mushroom and what not shapes! I could have classified’em into stratus and cumulus for a keen listener and observer had there been someone forcing his nose through the window as I practically was doing.
For me it was like a tour through an automobile factory, where I can get a close look how the machine is made from scratch. Clouds of varied shapes and sizes, with sunlight filtering through the lighter ones was a soul-gripping sight. But the chart topper was a sight I can never forget. With sun shining directly in front of me, I could see the lithosphere below me. But in a distant land down south, I could distinctly see clouds showering and getting relieved! In a nutshell, I was witnessing sun, land, clouds and rain simultaneously thousands of feet above and going at about 200 meters per second- 20 times faster than the fastest man (19.58 to be precise) and 1500 times the highest pole vault jumper!(1489.573 to be exact) This made me realize the importance of a digital camera at hand.
I was so up close, I could sense the condensed water droplets sticking together to give rise to the weird shapes. I wanted to measure their density, reflectivity and various other physical properties; I had a craving to conduct all the scientific experiments so that I could unravel everything about cloud formation. But alas! I ain’t a nephologist.
They were the best one and half hours I’ve ever spent anywhere (a 90 minutes formula one grand prix comes pretty close!). Better than a lousy tour through a museum or a planetarium. I had hummed all the way Bryan Adams, “…we can watch the world go by, up on cloud number nine.”
I was literally on the cloud number nine!

Adios King Henry...

Pires came and went; so did Bergkamp, Reyes and Anelka. But no other exit will mar the Gunners as Henry’s. Come Tevez, Anelka or not, they don’t have enough payload to lift Arsenal as Henry and Wenger have done since the last decade. Henry’s no. 14 jersey was almost a replay of Cruyff’s for Barca.
“..Henry, you have a legacy to carry on. You are the Cruyff in another era, the new No 14, in a newer time, one with newer demands. But the football remains the same.” But it won’t be the same for the Gunners again. Arsenal was synonymous with Thierry Henry and Arsene Wenger. With Henry gone and Wenger set to leave a year hence, the Gunners’ arsenal is as good as expired and rotten; at least seemingly so.
How the experience of Hleb, Gilberto and Lehmann and young blood of Van P., Fabregas and Walcott bring the spark back at Emirates will be interesting to see!

To be or not to be.....a writer?

Why do I grab a pen and spill my thoughts over a withered white paper (a techno geek would hit his keyboard as my case is)? Is it because I like to play with literary tools like the oddly placed alliteration in the opening line? Or is it that I want to impress junta with the resemblance of Bill Bryson’s style of writing with that of mine (no, it’s not the other way round!)? Or does it really make some xyz hormones ooze out of my cells and make me feel satisfied? Whatever it is, I already feel elated over the usage of my skimpy scanty vocabulary (another alliteration, mind you), which is by the way quite a feat for an amnesiac as my own bad self!....can never remember the write (ahem, ‘right’…. well, I’m a homonym dyslexic too!) word when I want to utter any….my normally bright mind abnormally goes black when I am about to spark and set the scene on fire so as to say! Perhaps that’s the reason I am enthused over writing…I can always wait for the suitable figure of speech to appear! I can always use the second thoughts which they say are always correct (or is it the first thought? I am never too sure!)