The Jan Lok Pal

Things I like about the movement:

a) It has brought people out of their indifferent lives to at least SAY something about politics.
b) It's always better to have more people getting involved in politics.
c) Intentions to 'make the country better' are commendable.
d) Anna Hazare's determination at this age - Respect.

Things I don't like about the movement:

a) Fasting unto death: I remember the time when I was five or six and my parents refused to buy me some board game. That was the last time I threatened to fast unto death. I am amazed at the no of people who believe that it is a type of non violence. No type of suicide attempt is - and all this sets a bad example. I hope it is not followed by some crazy loon going "Hey, vote for this anti-corruptive leader or I'll die fasting"

b) I guess most people who turned up on the streets are probably literate. It would be awesome if they vote as well. Then, they wouldn't have to worry about not letting the Govt handle everything and give a share of the  ruling power to the public. Doesn't this defeat the very purpose of electing a Government? Here's a fun fact: YOU elected it. YOU decided that voting for one of the two major parties alone would "keep balance" in the state / country. Remember that when you vote in four days.

c) Whatever I like to believe, the hard fact is this - Once this ordeal is over, people will happily go back to their own lives (not saying they shouldn't). Not sure how many are going to follow up and this could end up being as misused as any other law we have. On the other hand, if it does work...even in pieces, I'd be extremely happy.

If only all these people would come out and rally against poor choice of CM/PM/President, poor quality of ration items because of illegal hoarding, high levels of corruption in each and every govt and private organisations etc etc... If only they don't accept those things as a 'way of life'...

d) "Why don't you go out and rally people for all those 'everyday' things?", you might think. That's because solutions are far more difficult for those problems and I keep thinking about them all the time. Let me know if you come up with anything... and it's silly to rally / advertise etc without any point of action.

In any case, if I go around shouting, say, "Stop bribing Traffic Cops and RTOs" or if I sit in front of a ration shop with a "Stop passing stones as rice and sand as sugar" banner, will you join me?

South Park

Though I'd heard much about this series and have seen Eric Cartman's pic as the profile picture of many a people on Facebook and before that, Orkut, here's one thing I didn't know till I started watching that online.

That show is the very definition of genius.

I am just watching Season 4 now, but to take topics that most people would find offensive to even mention in public, make a show mocking (not mentioning... MOCKING) it and making people laugh at it is pure guts and genius.

And yes, I agree. Eric Cartman rules. "Screw you guys, I'm going to Mumbai."

The Mobile phone

Flashback, in Eastman Colour:
Location: A Big Classroom, Coimbatore Institute of Technology
Year: 2007

A guy is bored to sleep in the last row of the class, while even in that state, he keeps messaging... The three thoughts in his head at that moment: "Damn, useless class...", "The mobile phone is the best invention of the 20th century. Wireless magic." and "(in four-pieces-style) 100 free messages per day... Not enough..."

Then, a mortein smokeless coil keeps rotating on screen (clockwise, of course (get it?)) till you are brought back to the present.

Present day:
The fan in that room is disturbed by the strong breeze coming in through the window. Even the big moving shadow of that fan on the wall doesn't distract that guy from his thoughts.

He looks at his phone in disbelief. His bank has stopped sending him the 'daily-balance-in-his-account' message. That was the last difference between his phone and an alarm clock.

His Nokia 2690... it is but an alarm clock now.

Macro macro

Macro Macro, looming right
In the morning... Oh the fright!
What immortal hand or eye
Could score in that fearful quiz-ze-ry?

In what distant deeps or biz.
Lay the answers of thine quiz?
On what wings dare I aspire?
What the hell, dare C's the higher?

And what boulder & what dart,
Could you throw right at my heart?
And just when my heart began to beat...
Another quiz? Friggin' neat.

What the answer? what the chain,
In what furnace was my brain?
What the concepts? what dread graphs
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars looked down on their peers
Who watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the book make thee?

Macro Macro, looming right

In the morning... Oh the fright!

What immortal hand or eye

Could score in that fearful quizzery?

-
A variant of 'The Tiger' by William Blake.

Crazy day. Really crazy day.

Ok, So I got up to news of two friends getting injured - one of them actually woke me up.

I learnt what crying from your heart means - that was the dream I was in before I woke up - and I am very sure I'll never forget that. Like ever.

I got a personal worst score in the macroeconomics test I so proudly blogged about. Gawd I am scared of it now.

I woke up once again... this time in the library with a book about movies in hand - I know. I don't remember taking that book from the shelves. Also, I went to the library twice in one day - most people don't go there even once. Got several leads on a project I am working on.

I saw a very cool movie that ended a while back, wondering about the looming macro end term in parallel and if I'd pass that subject. Just when I thought I couldn't score any less.

Heard the news that a friend of mine got placed at a different b-school, and that another one got a new job.

Laughed at myself for the thousand plus nth time for joining this college school. And oh, there are like a forty dead honey-bees in the corridor outside my door.

Like a wise man once said, 'This is the best of times, this is the worst of times'.

Game Theory in Macroeconomics?

I am curious.

Today, I attended a quiz in Macroeconomics... There were ten multiple choice questions, 5 questions that required very short answers and a graph to draw. I, of course, didn't prepare one bit for the exam...as usual.

I set out like solving a Hindu Crossword. For example, there were two questions with similar options.

If A = B, then C or D
If A = 1- B, then C or D

Picked same answer for both in the sense that one of them would be right. The person who corrects it would be obviously confused... 'how could even the dunderhead-est student possibly think that both questions could have the same answer?' ...but that's game theory for them right there. I was somehow trying to get that one mark, one way or the other :)

Even when I worked out what each word in the question paper meant (big bang theory helped. seriously.) and worked out what the answer could be (in vain, of course), it took me about 30 minutes to complete everything - yet, I was the third or fourth student to leave the room.

If one didn't know anything, that's the maximum effort one could have put in the exam hall - 40 minutes (giving 10 more minutes for slow readers). On the other hand, if one knew everything, he would have left in ten minutes or so. So, leaving out the people who give up and leave immediately, the majority of the batch should have left the exam hall between 10 and 40 minutes. But they didn't. They stayed on.

Oh, I never understand these humans.

Yea Ok

I truly and deeply hate it when there are a gazillion things to do to get a useless degree and you don't want to do any of them. Not one. And the best part is, no other college is any better. Some are far worse off.

Some things I don't like and MBA has:
a) PPTs (presentations)
b) Cases
c) More or less pointless assignments (I think SMBDP assignments would be useful...but I don't understand that stuff)
d) Mandatory attendances
e) Lectures after which I know I learnt nothing
f) People who like all of the above
g) People who don't trust others
h) Closed book Exams
i) Awfully high importance to placements and grades
j) There's nothing here about anything I wanted to learn. All the good stuff, I can do only outside the course hours and stuff (brilliant talks, real projects). This course is about making money. Urm, maybe I took the wrong course and have no right to blame anyone. Whatever.
k) ...and oh, add to it frikkin' lectures at 8 frikkin' AM.

Some things I like and MBA has:
a) Urm..... DC?
b) Not opening a book and still be able to lurch along.
c) Some fun people

Some things I wish MBA had:
a) Any level of focus on real issues. So much so that a prof used to kid, "If I hear anyone tell me 'but in real life', that's all..."
b) Anything that's fun to learn. No, I am not talking about movie making and stuff. Even with interesting subjects, the academic procedures around them make them hell.
c) Want to go out there, change something and say 'See, I did this.'

So people, when you ask 'hey how's college?' and I say 'yea ok', don't push it any further :)

Phoebe: What's with all this negativity?

Nitrodamus: Oh cut the crap already.

Chandler: Can this get any more boring?

The Laws of Laziness

Aswin's laws of laziness consist of three metaphysical laws that form the basis for classical laziness. They describe the relationship between the forces acting on a body and its resistance to those forces.

First law - The Law of Inertia: 
Every lazy person remains in a state of rest with a uniform motion of thought, unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force, like a slap. This means that in the absence of a non-zero net force, the center of mass of a body continues to remain at rest, and the thought process moves at a constant speed, usually zero (blank thoughts) or negligible (eg. a distant, repeating-once-in-ten-seconds 'thud'ding noise).


Second law - The Laziness Quotient: 
Laziness m subject to a net force F undergoes an acceleration a that has the same direction as the force and a magnitude that is directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the laziness, i.e., F = ma.

This clearly shows that no force can affect the masters of laziness whose laziness quotients are beyond any force known to man. Hence the acceleration (to snap out of the lazy world and do some real work) that is developed due to the force will always be negligible. Attaining this stage is called 'Godliness' (you know, those old movies where sages keep praying to the Gods and it takes 20 years for the God to appear in front of them?)

Third law - The Law of Potential: 
"The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are unequal and usually opposite."

This is an extension to the third law of motion that Newton came up with centuries ago and fills in the gap that made it imperfect. He said that whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body, if not lazy (filling the gap), exerts a force −F on the first body. F  (action) and −F (reaction) are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

However, in the event of one of the actors being lazy, he need not react with a force equal to -F. He ignores. He forgives. He stays... and the kinetic energy exerted upon him (F) will be converted into potential energy and be stored for future requirements as a kind of fat. This is why you hear people say, "This guy has potential. Sad he's not using it."

This law is sometimes referred to as the action-but-no-reaction law, with F called the "action" and the rarely encountered strange look on the lazy guy's face called the "reaction". The action and the reaction are usually not simultaneous and is separated by a delay proportional to the aforementioned laziness quotient..

The three laws of Aswin were first compiled by Sir "I-suck" Aswin in his work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Athica (yet to be published. He was too lazy to find a publisher), dedicated to Athica's, the store in IIMB that understands his laziness quotient by ensuring room delivery of simple stuff like water bottles that he could anyway get by walking 100 metres from his room to the nearest water doctor.

Also, Aswin used these laws to explain and investigate the motion of many physical objects and systems. For example, he showed that these laws of laziness, combined with his own extension to Newton's law of universal gravitation (for another day, people), explains the several flaws in Kepler's laws of planetary motion... and also why Planets move like a bum, so slowly that we don't even notice it.

PS: No offence to Newton or his laws (ideally, open this in another window and compare them). Also, the 'He' used in the paragraph does not mean it is applicable to guys alone. Lazy to use he/she bla bla stuff. 

IPL 3 Finals

The Location : Mumbai - Office

There I was, watching the finals, in a room full of really crazy Mumbai fans...as the solitary supporter of the Chennai Super Kings. The others were okay with all my ‘YaY’s and running around when Dhoni had hit those God-like sixes to take us into the semi-finals (whatay match!), but they weren’t going to tolerate any of that against Mumbai and/or Sachin. Strictly speaking, only a fool would shout against Sachin anywhere in India.

So then, CSK had done a really good job and there I was, sitting coolly in a corner of the room smiling just enough to irritate the others in the room. They were looking at the screen, hoping for a miracle when Pollard walked in.

55 runs in three overs with Bollinger getting ready to bowl...

I was confident, but I was slightly scared. They still had Rayudu and Pollard at the crease.  That over went for 22 runs - 4,6,2,4,0,6 – wham bham pow! The world was suddenly beginning to rotate faster than usual and there were celebrations all over the room, with people jumping all around the place going ‘Pollard! Pollard!’ I was staring at my laptop screen just so people didn’t know I was scared. Still tried to keep that smile on my face, but was nearly sure I might be crying at the end of this. Of course, we did lose in 2008 after I’d started celebrating our victory.

‘This isn’t happening’, I kept telling myself.

Albie Morkel stepped in to bowl...One of the more expensive guys in our line up. People started celebrating in Mumbai. Crazy thoughts kept running in my head. ‘20 runs off him and we’d be buried well under the ground’...‘Why did Murali have to finish his four already? Damn, damn, damn’...well, that was the general idea. While Rayudu took two deliveries to get one run, Pollard started the proceedings with a boundary.

Then came the dot ball. 

The crowd on and off the screen were still rooting for Pollard and I was hoping for another dot ball. 5 off 4 deliveries was awesome at this stage. Run out! Run out! Rayudu walked back. Pollard would have had to know magic to win it from there, but of course, people believed that he did. 

And then, he got out. 27 off the last over : No Pollard : ‘Bowling’-er stepping up : Mua ha ha !

I was walking across the room with that smug smile that usually irritated people...no jumping in joy, running around or anything that would get me beaten up. Bollinger finished it quite easily and people were still staring at the screen in disbelief.

Oh yea, baby, We had won.

PS: Wrote this long back but had not posted it anywhere for reasons I can't remember.

Totalement en mer.

Dreams...

They show you your own emotions.
Fear, Hope, Anger, Pride, Envy and most of all, Love.
Sadistic that you're shown what you lost...
even after you'd managed to find it.

So these dreams - they make the real world
your personal hell, mostly.
Or heaven perhaps... if you ain't me.

You used to think that dreams can but help you.
Like they could tell you things in advance!
So that the hurdles won't be out of the blue
and you might, after all, stand a chance.

...but wait, you couldn't have been all that right
coz' life, with all its bloody might,
ran you down with out so much of a shrug.

Perhaps, those days, it was on some drug.

She was but the central theme
around whom the dreams revolved...
around whom your world evolved.

and then, because of your belief in fate
that love is destined to succeed,
or simply because your tongue tied itself
and fingers typed zilch when she was involved,
She was there no more.

Oh, like she even knew what was going on.
She knew zilch and would only know zilch
about your love, devotion, adoration and worship...
about your world and how she is everything to it
...its very soul.

You dream only about her these days, I gather.
Hours and hours and hours of her smiling face.
Ta vie, mon ami, elle est totalement en mer...
Totalement en mer.

Ha, but life's cruel in a crazy way, coz
You, hereafter, can only dream about her!
...and dreams, despite being your personal hell
are your only sources of respite.

Ironic.

Status Check

Around May last year, I was kind of happy but stressed out. I wasn't the greatest writer I knew. Even that guy Tharoor wrote better, they said. I was not sure where I was heading. I thought I needed a vacation, badly. Went ahead and took one.

Six months into the vacation, I realise it's neither relieved any amount of stress nor has it lived up to the hefty price tag. The tour operators kinda hyped it up, the %@$#*s. They've even got a feedback form to be filled tomorrow where they'll know what I think of their arrangements. They're calling it 'mid-term' and I've been filling a whole lot of them for a while now... but I don't see any kind of action based on the feedback, you know.

Ah whatever. What matters is now. I can't think of a better way to spend today. Just drinkin chocolate and watchin sitcoms and movies. 

Oh, and one thing, Mr.God. I hope the world ends by April 2012... coz' I don't even want to think what lies ahead of that.

That will be all.

Finding my feet again?

I sure hope so!

CSK: How we doin'?

My most recent writeup on Holdingwilley...about Team CSK for IPL 4.

Link: http://www.holdingwilley.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1475

We will win, no matter what. Well, of course it will be difficult this time... MI's stronger than ever and it's not just MI we should be worried about.

What the heck, we've beaten every team out there before. We will do it again :)

Crumble, Tumble, Rumble, Grumble

The world crumbles. I can hear it.

Will it lead to a whole new world?
Will that world be good?
Will the new crumble too
or will it stand its ground?

Will it be a political change
or will it be a mindset change?
Will it be a change of plans
or will we stare ahead with nothing in hand?
Will the new world be full of good
or will the baddies win the game?

Will this crumbling lead us anywhere
or is this that math e thing that never leads to zero?
Wait... is anything crumbling at all
or are we just hearing noises?

Bah, let it all be. Why bother?
I have a class at six o clock.
Good night, mes amis.
I go back to my dreams.

All noise and no action

I am amazed by the high quantities of Congress and BJP bashing on my wall... I don't see why many of you get angry about 2G, Adarsh or CWG and vent it out on FB...

I don't understand why today's Magazine carries articles on these and more of our 'democracy' issues.

After all, like a wise man once said, we, as a society, have only got the Government we SO deserve.

Games CEOs play

This is regarding a piece by the same title in the day's Bangalore Mirror (Sun, Dec 19, 2010).

Seems that a CEO plays Table Tennis to gain "perseverance and patience", another plays Snakes & ladders to understand that "the only person that can make you quit is you" and to top it all, a CEO of a marketing company feels "cycling helps him set targets and go after them".

As far as I knew, one played a sport to either have some fun or make it big professionally, in which case, you inch towards perfection (I guess, even this is only about fun... You tend to do some things for life because you love those things, yes?).

When you want to 'learn' stuff from every darn thing you do... I can only offer you my heartiest condolences.

Ah, I am a reductionist these days. Pity.

Meet Cruyell Corfin

Lights all around! This was an occasion... The Survivor Series! Thousands cheering.

TING.

Announcer: "Round 3. Survivor Series. Corfin vs Aswin."

Urm... this could get difficult now...

Corfin was the boxing champ from America, and he'd busted innumerable people before I met him for the championship. 19 people were knocked out in his last season and many others barely crawled out of the ring.

Corfin smiled, and I knew from the look in his eyes that he was just waiting for the referee to back out so that he could launch at me. This bloody round would go on for 1 hour 15 minutes!

Round 1 was pretty much one-sided. I should admit I was taken by surprise. I expected this guy to be no better than his cousin from Italy and champion there, Freaky Finac. I won against him pretty easily despite the hype, and I must thank my coach for that, and expected to break Corfin's nose in the first round. Within a minute in Round 1 this time, I knew I was lost. Had a punch on my left ear that floored me and missed a tooth soon afterwards. Managed to score 8 miserable points against his 50.

The referee backed out. As expected, he went for a right hand swing to my ear. Ha, you can't knock me cold with that every single time, Cruyell Corfin! I ducked out just in time and was looking for his next move. His defences were strong; so, I had to understand his attacks and find a weakness there...

Round 2 was slightly better, as in, I could walk at the end of it and my world wasn't spinning around me. It was still a below average performance from me, largely because my coach here was right plain dumb. With all my experience, I managed to block most of his attempts and even hit him on the face once. At the end of it, I knew I needed a different coach for runtime help and asked the awesome PCN to analyse the game so far. Got a few techniques and was running through them in my mind...

(...back to present moment.)

(SWING!) Duck, duck, duck! (WHIZZ!) Whew, that was close! (SWOOSH!) Ha ha, Corfin, you missed! That shot was waaay off target! Wait, where's your other ha... (BAM!) *Birds chirping* I think I just swallowed a tooth. Damn.

Where am I? Oh yeah, here he comes. Ha, he's going for the practice scenario repeat! This could be my lucky day! Come on, Corfin... ZAP! Got him, ha! Wait, he's got more up his sleeve. Block, (ZAP!), Block you useless hand (ZAP! WHAM! BANG! THUD!), Block (POW!) Block (WHAM!) Block (ZING!) Help (BANG! THUD! WHAM!) The round's (KERPOW!) over, darnit! (BOOM!) Hit (CRUNCH!) the (OUCH!) bell!

TING.

Phew...

Another round in his favour. I've to knock him out clean in the fourth and final round to get through...but the question remains... HOW!?

*To be continued*

Friends

Things I learnt in the past 24 hours :

...that I still harbour hopes on the non-single part of life.
...that I love wasting time, just to prove a point.
...that I need to buy a (good) camera soon.
...that I need to hit the gym soon (Nitrodamus: You knew this all along, Aswin.)
...that I am scared of anything I don't understand.
...that I am more valuable than I ever thought I was.
...that I place others' lives above my own... probably not everyone's, but most of them, yeah.
...that I can never get bored of reading Agatha Christie's books, how many ever times I read them.
...that I place honesty above trivial things like lives and love.

 and that I place friendship above honesty and most other things.

In the next 12 hours:

...that I am not the beacon of truth I thought I was.
...that I lie when needed.

My life is not about me

This is a beautiful but sad world...
Sad because people are about themselves,
The self, the family and friends...
But I am not about myself and that seems wrong,
because people find me disturbingly different.

I find it hard to eat at big hotels
Or participate in treats and parties
When millions can't afford a grain of rice.
I don't like to buy suits and ties
Or new dresses for every passing festival,
When there are people who can't afford clothes.
I can't ignore the people on the road.
I can't stand to see people shoo off the strays
From their food, from their selves.

My mind revolts against me if I ignore all that, but
The haves, in general, they find the situation okay.
I think they are vaccinated against empathy.
Please tell me where to get one myself
I badly need it to live up to your expectations.

Some argue that tis the fate of the poor...
That they're too lazy to work for themselves.
The haves convince themselves that the poor can die hence.
The farmers die, the hungry die, the nameless die
and no one seems to even care about it.

I am not about myself, try to understand me.
I am not about myself and I'm sure I am right,
but the world around me finds it impractical.

It's not that I don't want to lead a comfortable life, heck I do!
I just want to take everyone else with me.
I don't see any point in 'progress', ye World
when you can stay nonchalant about deaths!
There's no difference between us and the Nazis
If we can coolly brush it off and stay selfish.

Yes, call me crazy and go on, world.
How else can you convince yourself?

There is an angry young person in all of us

There is a quiet, simple listener 

Who masquerades as me.

While the crazy angry young man,

who, by the way, is really me

is bound inside for good.

Chains, steel, vacuum and hell...

they keep him imprisoned - But

at times, defying all that,

He breaks free from the mental shell.

I hate to think of those times

When I've let myself be;

I've razed down attitudes and ambitions

to the very ground without a thought.

I've kept that just but angry guy

Under chains for quite some time,

To those who seem to throw him a bone,

I've stopped talking altogether, I tell you.

I want the angry young man to leave me alone, 

but he wouldn't go until the world improves, 

Till the world hails those who are happy with

getting their needs, their dreams and love.

Till the world rejects hate, greed and mindlessness.

The day's world, however, eggs him on;

Coz 'tis all about stomping on others' dreams

Hurting people at their own whim 

and calling it Attitude.

Looking down upon the satisfied, 

terming it lack of 'Ambition', 

When fun is to hurt another, and 

Undermining their dreams and one's own.

I know this is a terrible trend, 

but people don't think so.

They praise attitudes and ambitions and all things vile,

Even if they themselves are torn down by them.

I don't understand why there are so many lies,

So much of greed, so much mistrust.

So much of value for money and time,

God's new ploy after Babel, perhaps.

I want the angry young man to leave me alone.

I even plead to him once in a while.

"The world is good", I argue with him,

He just laughs at me.

PS: Intentional damage to rules and order could be seen throughout the length of this post.