Aliases

I was reading a friend’s blog just now. He, unlike me, signs his blog with his real name.

Suddenly, this question came to my mind. Why do I always use an alias whenever I am trying to do something new? When I log on to DC++, I have an alias. I have email accounts in other names. I never play online games in my own name and try to keep changing my name sometimes just to remain anonymous. The articles I have written for a magazine, I have written under a pseudonym. And then there is my blog. I am surely not Thor. Why do I use these names? Suddenly, for a terrifying moment, I had no answer.

Then slowly I remembered why. Remember the quote I had mentioned in my first blog?

“Basic Instincts, Social Life
Paradoxes Side by Side”

That’s why. In all these years of my life, I have got really very few chances to behave the way I want to. All the other times, I have to behave so as to not insult anyone. I am not myself at these times. I feel so bloody artificial, like I have just applied 2 coats of paint to my face as make-up and it is dripping off my face. Hence the aliases. So that no one realizes that the one behind the alias is me. So that I can be me without having to bother about what others are gonna say or think. Being frank has already put me in hot water on a lot of occasions. Just want to stay dry and happy now.

I actually don’t care about what others are gonna say or think. But my behavior towards others will decide how they interact with my other friends and family. I don’t want others to get into trouble coz of me. Bonds bonds bonds. Never free of them.

Shit, still haven’t slept. Am fkd tomorrow. What a sad life…

OMG!!! Infected!!!

Yesterday, something interesting happened.

I was surfing when suddenly Mozilla tells me that it has updated and wanted me to restart. I cancelled it and thought that I would restart later. Imagine my surprise when after a couple of minutes, a dialog box appears and it tells me that “I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE…” and Mozilla closes. I try to open it again and it refuses to open, displaying the same message. I try to uninstall Mozilla from the control panel and even there the same message comes. I try to open the folder where Firefox was installed and then again the same message comes. I had downloaded the latest version of Firefox a couple of days ago but couldn’t find it. I had an older version which I tried to reinstall but again, the virus pissed me off.

So I get frustrated and then I use a shredder to shred the folder where Firefox was installed. Thankfully I could shred.

I called up Annan an asked him what to do. He asked me to search in Google the error message. I did that and the first link (I think) led to a guys blog which gave me the solution. I had to end the scvhost local service and there was some folder in C: (hidden, obviously) that I had to delete. I did so and voila, virus gone!!!

Alas, later I realized that I did not have to delete or uninstall Firefox. All I had to do was delete that folder and then I could have continued using Firefox. The first thing that I did was download the latest version of Firefox and install it and get all the great add-ons that came with Firefox. So now, you can say that my Mozilla Firefox is better than ever.

Have a boring class tomorrow on Management. This class is one of the most boring ones that I have ever attended. And the worst part is that there are 2 consecutive classes on a SATURDAY MORNING!!! $%#$#@@*&!. What a way to ruin a beautiful Saturday. Well….got to try and go to sleep…nite.

Goodbye iTunes….

I had downloaded a disk defragmenter from the net and was using it like once a day or so. Unfortunately after I started using this thing, something started happening to some of my songs. They won’t play in iTunes no matter what I did. This really hit me because one of those non playing albums was Voyageur by ENIGMA. So I did some tinkering and at the end of that tinkering, somehow succeeded in deleting the whole of my song collection. After the initial moments of shock, I checked in the Recycle Bin and to my relief found that all my songs were there. I had forgotten of I had used Shift delete or simple delete. Anyways my relief again turned into shock and despair when I realized that all the songs had been recovered except the English songs. But luckily, only 2 days ago, Ankesh had copied my entire English song collection because his song collection sucked. So I got that back from him. Again to my shock I found that he had deleted some of my ENIGMA Songs. This was really bad. But then I remembered that Parate was also an ENIGMA fan and had copied my entire ENIGMA collection. So I got that from him. Then in a moment of frustration, I uninstalled iTunes (coz it had started the whole trouble by not playing ENIGMA in the first place). Now I am a satisfied user of Winamp which I play even when I am playing games coz of the low resource usage of Winamp.

Today at the IC, there was a fight between 2 guys over some comment one of them made on the other’s girlfriend. It ended up in pushing, shoving and some juicy expletives before the crowd separated them. As usual, I stayed away from the whole thing. No, not because ii am a coward and wanted to wash my hands off the whole thing. Because I believe that if they are so willing and so stupid to fight over some really petty issue, maybe they should be left to it. As Getafix says in an Asterix comic, “Let them stew in their own juice. It brings out the flavor.”

The net is finally back. After 2 days of not checking my mail, I saw that I had 26 spam messages. While this may be low for others, it is frustratingly high for me.

Am on an editing spree in Wikipedia. It is fun!!!

Fell in love with a song called “Hunter” by Dido. Brilliant song…..

The Past Few Days….

The past few days have been fun. Fun means I get to watch movies and play games and sleep throughout the morning and laze around. Now that the placement for my class is over, everyone is more relaxed. The ones who got placed are definitely relaxed and the ones who didn’t get placed have accepted the fact, are out of their despair and are looking forward to the next opportunity that comes.

The last week has been interesting. The more time you spend with some person, the more you get to know them, and sometimes this is not that good. Anyway classes have restarted after the placement rush. But even then the labs have not kicked off yet.

I am thinking, I haven’t been to town since this semester started! Guess it is because I have the town so much. There is nothing to do in the town and even then, every visit to the town can easily finish off 100 bucks or so without you having done anything worth doing. Dirty, hot, dusty, crowded etc are some of the tame adjectives in my mind rite now.

Am listening to the soundtrack of “Prince of Persia Warrior Within”. It’s brilliant. The music actually captures the whole essence of the game. It’s Arabic predominantly (which suits the Persian theme) and because the only thing to do in the game is fight, there is some Heavy Metal mixed with the Arabic. Very interesting music indeed! Great rhythm, great beats and great music put into a brilliant game (in fact I would rate this as one of the best I have ever played in the Action genre) . What more can you ask for?

Lately I have started listening to a lot of Game Soundtracks. They are helluva lot more interesting than most of the other garbage music out there. Some of the Game soundtracks I have are from the following games:

1. Max PayneMax Payne: The Fall of Max Payne
2. Tomb Raider : Legend
3. Tomb Raider
4. Age of Mythology
5. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
6. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

All of them have been downloaded from http://gh.ffshrine.org/soundtracks/view-all. Very interesting website. Aside from game soundtracks, they also have Anime Soundtracks and lots of other stuff…

Friendships

There is a problem when you get emotionally attached. I am not talking about getting attached with the opposite sex. That is a different thing altogether. I am talking about friendships. The ones that are deep and very personal. When you have a gang of friends with whom you are very well attached, with whom you are so attached that you can show off your true colours before them, you can speak any crap you want and think any thoughts you like, it is indeed a rare friendship. But then with this friendship comes a price.

Now let’s say you have another set of friends. Not as close as the previous set but close enough. Of course you don’t show your true self in front of them. Instead, you have to have a mask on your face all the time. You can’t be yourself but then there is no emotional attachment. They don’t presume that they have a right on you. They can’t teach you manners or tell you what to do what not to do. They can’t tell you what is right or wrong. It is an easy friendship in which everyone minds only their own business. So this has its own obvious advantages. And frankly, from my experience, being the kind of person I am, I would prefer the second kind.

By nature I am a very frank person. Anything I think, I say it out. This has landed me many hot places and I had to actually tone down my frankness. This being the case, I am sick of getting hurt because of my frankness simply because till now, I have met few people who actually mean what they say or actually say what they mean. I would rather be not emotionally attached and fine rather than emotionally attached and hurt.

Night – My Favourite part of the Day

There are some colours that I love seeing the world in. In some of my dreams, the world takes an overcast look. The skies are all dark, there is very little sunlight and it is all dark with a sort of blue hue. Just love imagining the world in that light. Everything is so stark and so clear. There are no exaggerations, no loopholes, no unexplained occurrence. Everything is so brilliantly simple and logical.

When do I see the world this way? Back home, in the monsoons at twilight. With rain falling all around and the sun all but shining. Thinking about it, I actually don’t like the mornings. Not only the mornings actually, the whole day. My time begins at night. Sunset actually. The sun going down in all is splendor and leaving the earth in a state of stark reality. There is no light. Only the naked night. Then after sunset, the twilight. I don’t know why, but twilight is very special for me. Maybe because it tells us that night is coming and it is time to face it. Or maybe because it looks beautiful. Either way, what follows twilight, beats it hands down.

Night. My favourite part of the day. When everything is so quiet, so dark and so much more peaceful. No hurries, no worries. Like an ocean of calm. A time when u can actually sit and think instead of running around doing stuff just because that is your daily routine.

Right now, I am looking out of my window. There are lights in the streets. I think of the people around me. The people who are sleeping in their homes now. Right now, they are the closest man gets to being dead. They are asleep. Whereas I am alive. The night is my time. The roads are quiet. The houses are quiet. The people are quiet. The animals are quiet (well, most of them anyway). The air is cold, it is comforting. The offices that were bustling with activity just a few hours ago are quiet as the grave now. And in this time of the dead, I wake. I am alive now, I think my best now. I act my best now, I am fully in control of what I am. Far away from the madding crowds, far away from those responsibilities. Totally calm and peaceful. There are no complications, no duties, no twists or turns, no obligations, no one to answer to, no one to take care of. No one but yourself. The only one alive.

Outside, the wind blows. The leaves rustle in answer. The clouds dissolve into rain. The rain cools the earth. Nature is regenerating from all the abuses and strains of the day, from all the rape she has suffered from our hands only to suffer them all again, the next day.

But then what is going to happen to us when day comes? I have to wake up, attend classes with my friends. The Politician has to rule the nation. The housewife has to clean up the home and cook food. The employee has to meet his boss’s deadlines and the boss in his turn has to make deadlines. The watchman has to guard and the teacher has to teach. The doctor has to treat. The child has to be mischievous and give his parents a headache. All this makes up a day. All this, from sunrise to sunset. So boring, isn’t it?

And so I sleep, late in the night, early in the morning. I sleep, after I enjoy the best of the times. I sleep so that I wake up again, to yet another one of those mundane repetitive days. Still, I wake up, knowing that there is another night coming.

ON DEMAND BUSINESS : Placed in IBM

         Seems like I am hirable after all!!! I have been placed in IBM India Private Limited. Very interesting. Considering that there were people who had prepared for this company the whole of the summer vacations and failed to make it. And here I am, one whose preparation was limited to studying some number series questions the day before the written exam.

How the day began:

I am sleeping very contentedly and then Amma calls. She asks me how TCS was. Then I groggily look at the time in my phone and it shows 9:40 AM. Slowly it dawns on me that the PPT (Pre Placement Talk) started at 8:30 AM and the written was immediately after it. So I tell Amma that I will call her later and then run to the bathroom with all my equipment and my toothbrush. Finish bathing and brushing in a record <5 min and then dress up and run to my college and I made it to the auditorium at 9:53. Luckily, the written test hadn’t started yet. Talk about a great beginning.

The written had 3 stages: one Matrix based set (13 min), one number series set (20 Qns, 4 min) and one aptitude set (12 Qns, 15 min). at the end of this, there was an essay to be written. Topic was “Outsourcing in India”. Having visited Bangalore and Hyderabad many times, I have seen the effects of outsourcing up close. This, coupled with the fact that my number series went really bad (8 Qns solved out of 20) got me into a frenzy and I actually wrote so much that I had to ask for an extra sheet to complete the conclusion of the essay.

Next thing I know, I am in my hostel, waiting in my room for the result when Arun comes running to me and he said that they were asking for me and I was to report to room 203 IMMEDIATELY. In 10 minutes, I am there and the lady there is shouting at me, “What do you think this is, a party that you can join any time you want?” etc etc etc. Then I am sent to another room with 14 other people for the Group Discussion. The topic was “Is Primary Education more important than Higher Education”. I got 2 chances to speak in between and totally presented everything I had in my head. Then there was the conclusion and I got another solid 3 minutes to talk.

Fast Forward 1 hour and I have been selected for the interview. Interview panel consisted of 2 people. One man kept peppering me with technical Qns (mainly C++ and OOP) and the other man actually asked me biology!!! (What is a Golgi body, what is mitochondria, what is ATP, how does it store energy and where is the energy obtained from…)and then some other petty Qns. And then the interview was over. Results came out at 10:30 in the night and me and some of my friends were waiting for the results and then I WAS SELECTED!!! Though I was not as happy as the rest of the placed candidates were, I still jumped and shouted with them…

Why should I be that happy, since I have my biggest hurdle coming up (getting into an American university)?

Me vs Emma Watson (And guess who wins!!!)

Today I was rejected by TCS. TCS is Tata Consultancy Services. They are on a mass recruiting phase and have recruited around 400-500 students from my college in the last 2 years alone. TCS is considered the company that anyone can get into. And I didn’t make it.

As hard as I tried not to become sad, I failed. Sure, I had a very cool outward demeanor and behaved as if TCS as shit anyway, but inside, it hurt that I was not considered good enough for TCS when I KNOW that I am good. So I come back to my room, a little despondent and sad and look at my laptop screen. Now I had recently got some pictures of the Harry Potter Crew (the 3 lead actors) in which Emma Watson looks just absolutely stunning. STUNNING. So stunning that I actually stared at her for half an hour when I first got the picture. So when I saw Miss Watson, I am thinking, “Look at her, no worries about anything. Younger than me and already a multi-millionaire. Bet she has no worries like the ones I have now and leads a fairy tale life. “

Half an hour later, my head cools and I start thinking straight again. Then I realize that I was an asshole ion thinking that Miss Watson has no worries at all. After all, she is the heartthrob of millions rite? So she has to take extra good care of her body. She has to be worried about her appearance every single waking hour whereas the only time I have been really worried about my appearance was today, at the interview because I know that formal dress never suits me and I look like a duck out of water.

Miss Watson has to be careful about what she eats everyday because a small bit of change in her figure and her looks are affected. As for me, despite all the food I gorge, I have been unable to increase my weight above 55 kg for the past 5 years. This is around 15 kg underweight I think. I have never been weight conscious. Why should I, when it seems that no matter what I do, I just don’t gain weight? Happy me!!!

Miss Watson has to be careful about whom she is seen with in public. Any small problem, and the paparazzi goes into bloodlust. She has to eat at the ‘right’ kind of places, talk with the ‘right’ kind of people and should be wearing only designer fashion clothing. I, on the other hand, can go out with anyone anywhere and the worst that will happen is that my friends make fun of me for a week. I can go to the cheapest of the cheap hotels or the star hotels (if I have cash) without any big problem. Shit, my jeans are always dirty and are always more than a month late to the washing machine or the launderer.

So, for the first time in my life, I have learnt that even celebs lead a hard life. Although their hard life is a liiitttle different from our kind of hard life…still something is similar there right? The world is magical after all…..