The daggers of chilling wind have blown away the ashes. And now, the embers are stirred…
It’s a dark night. The wind howls mournfully in every corner and screams at every window. The deadly pall of gloom surrounds every life and the shadow of despair lies black upon every heart. Everywhere men are cowed by the wails of terror.
But behold!
The daggers of chilling wind have blown away the ashes. And now, the embers are stirred.
Yes, the embers are stirred. The slumbering giant rises from his sleep. Strength is I his great arms, and the fires of revolution burn bright in his eyes. Vengeance its touch, it raises its claw and shreds the blanket of despair from the minds of men. Terror flies before the terror of him, the screams of the wind of doom turns to moans begging mercy. The darkness consumed by the waves of fire heralding the leviathan, it goes back to its sleep. All that remains now is the twisted, smoldering corpse of the night-and a new beginning.
All this and more will now come to pass. Because you see…
The daggers of the chilling wind have blown away the ashes. And now, the embers are stirred.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Neural Networks
I don’t know if it’s just me, but all things I study start converging into a single monolith. If I have studied 10 different ideas then you can be absolutely that I would have found some sort of skeleton architecture into which all of them would fit more or less seamlessly. It is an obsession with me to build these structures of unified thought.
Given this, you will understand why going through IEEE transactions on Neural Networks absolutely disgusts me. Make no mistake; I think IEEE is a great organization which has done a lot to further the interests of science and technology. But what passes as research in these transactions is so inherently inimical to all that I seek and desire from study that it becomes difficult to digest.
The problem, as far as I am concerned, is that all these brilliant people from all over the world keep confusing theory with reality. Mathematical modeling of all phenomena is fine thing and it helps us gain a better understanding of systems, but only as long as you don’t start taking the m0odel for the real thing. Going through any of the IEEE documents on the subject I find a plethora of such arcane variations on such obscure schemes that I have to stop and ask myself after every 2 pages-“Ok, so what are we trying to do here?”
The avowed aim of the study of neural networks is to understand and implement systems which emulate the working of the human brain. The first few generations seem to have worked with this definition in mind. Concepts like Perceptron, Hebbian Learning, Adalines are a product of this line of thought. They correspond to an actual mapping between the real brain processes and the mathematical models being developed. With the advent of recurrent networks, however, the field has been abandoned to mathematical chaos.
When half of today’s journals are filled with description of n different kinds of Neural Network schemes, each more convoluted than the previous one and the other half with schemes to get these schemes to work in a better way, we have to enquire about the vision guiding these efforts. Have these guys ever talked to a biology student to know about the processes that they are trying to model. How is the ‘Radial basis function NN’ or the ‘Epoch based real time recurrent NN’ suppose to carry out the tasks of the brain if its makers have no idea of how things happen in the brain. What they is a lot of complicated equations which have only an incidental relation with the real entity they are trying to model.
The human is a generic machine. Although the tasks are divided among the different parts of the brain in a general sort of way (e.g. listening recall etc.), these individual parts are themselves generically structured to carry out the tasks pertaining to their domain. In the hearing part of the brain, the whole part is responsible for all the tasks given to it. This must be so because of the way we evolve. Evolution is not in parts but as a whole. Our bodies did not evolve different parts in an independent fashion to satisfy each of our requirements. Had this been so, the distinct division of brain into domains of expertise would not have occurred. What I believe happens is that first a primitive neural structure evolves, which takes on more and more complexity as more and more diverse tasks are given to it.
So in the part of our brain which handles visual acuity, there aren’t 10 different architectures to identify 10 different poses or directions of illumination. The process, I believe is more cogent and cohesive than that.
So the aim of our research should be to find generic models or principles which have their corresponding counterparts in human brain and on a firmer classification and understanding of the tasks that the brain must handle. Once this classification is done, we can undertake the modeling of the various processes.
Any mathematical models without clear biological grounding can not come under the purview of neural networks because although they use a weighted added (the neuron), the paradigm they are employing has no well defined relation with the brain. Such systems are not concepts-they are heuristics. This is not to say that they are not useful for certain tasks, but through a blind pursuit of them, we lose direction in the quest to find true AI.
Given this, you will understand why going through IEEE transactions on Neural Networks absolutely disgusts me. Make no mistake; I think IEEE is a great organization which has done a lot to further the interests of science and technology. But what passes as research in these transactions is so inherently inimical to all that I seek and desire from study that it becomes difficult to digest.
The problem, as far as I am concerned, is that all these brilliant people from all over the world keep confusing theory with reality. Mathematical modeling of all phenomena is fine thing and it helps us gain a better understanding of systems, but only as long as you don’t start taking the m0odel for the real thing. Going through any of the IEEE documents on the subject I find a plethora of such arcane variations on such obscure schemes that I have to stop and ask myself after every 2 pages-“Ok, so what are we trying to do here?”
The avowed aim of the study of neural networks is to understand and implement systems which emulate the working of the human brain. The first few generations seem to have worked with this definition in mind. Concepts like Perceptron, Hebbian Learning, Adalines are a product of this line of thought. They correspond to an actual mapping between the real brain processes and the mathematical models being developed. With the advent of recurrent networks, however, the field has been abandoned to mathematical chaos.
When half of today’s journals are filled with description of n different kinds of Neural Network schemes, each more convoluted than the previous one and the other half with schemes to get these schemes to work in a better way, we have to enquire about the vision guiding these efforts. Have these guys ever talked to a biology student to know about the processes that they are trying to model. How is the ‘Radial basis function NN’ or the ‘Epoch based real time recurrent NN’ suppose to carry out the tasks of the brain if its makers have no idea of how things happen in the brain. What they is a lot of complicated equations which have only an incidental relation with the real entity they are trying to model.
The human is a generic machine. Although the tasks are divided among the different parts of the brain in a general sort of way (e.g. listening recall etc.), these individual parts are themselves generically structured to carry out the tasks pertaining to their domain. In the hearing part of the brain, the whole part is responsible for all the tasks given to it. This must be so because of the way we evolve. Evolution is not in parts but as a whole. Our bodies did not evolve different parts in an independent fashion to satisfy each of our requirements. Had this been so, the distinct division of brain into domains of expertise would not have occurred. What I believe happens is that first a primitive neural structure evolves, which takes on more and more complexity as more and more diverse tasks are given to it.
So in the part of our brain which handles visual acuity, there aren’t 10 different architectures to identify 10 different poses or directions of illumination. The process, I believe is more cogent and cohesive than that.
So the aim of our research should be to find generic models or principles which have their corresponding counterparts in human brain and on a firmer classification and understanding of the tasks that the brain must handle. Once this classification is done, we can undertake the modeling of the various processes.
Any mathematical models without clear biological grounding can not come under the purview of neural networks because although they use a weighted added (the neuron), the paradigm they are employing has no well defined relation with the brain. Such systems are not concepts-they are heuristics. This is not to say that they are not useful for certain tasks, but through a blind pursuit of them, we lose direction in the quest to find true AI.
Where to beegin
Every end is a beginning,every beginning is an end
One follows the other,or does it lead
One within the other,or is it without
Or all of these at once manifest
A timeless dance, eternal quest
Different in name,akin they portend
Death seeking life,start seeking end
Can we really know, at what threshold we stand
At that of a first,or that of a last?
And in this unending circle, if you would like to know me;
My friend,where will you begin?
One follows the other,or does it lead
One within the other,or is it without
Or all of these at once manifest
A timeless dance, eternal quest
Different in name,akin they portend
Death seeking life,start seeking end
Can we really know, at what threshold we stand
At that of a first,or that of a last?
And in this unending circle, if you would like to know me;
My friend,where will you begin?
Aditya's 9 Lives:Ques#7
Ques#7-Where and when then does a man truly affect or is affected by an atom beyond his body?
The answer can be had from the number of times in your life you are actively, physically conscious of your body. Barring those moments, all other that you are active, you affect and are affected by ‘atoms’ beyond your body.
Considering the issue in a rather more detached manner, we can conjure a semi-dichotomous situation between the ‘man’ and the ‘body’ (the classic Bhagwadgita trip – vasansi jeerdani yatha vihay…sanyati navaani dehi). The dichotomy is only partial because the ‘man’ or the consciousness inhabits the body and is dependent on it for existence-they are different and yet the same .The sameness is what gives the perception of ownership of the ‘body’-a concept which in the long run makes no difference.
I am not seeking a mystic discourse .We must realize that the consciousness is not the body-that the ‘man’ is not the ‘body’ .Once this is established ,the question can be approached in a much more direct manner.
The answer lies in clearly stating what is the meaning of affected? If we mean ‘atoms’ in the ordinary sense of the word , then the answer is obvious-our life processes causing our body to interact with the environment blahblahblah…
If the ‘atom’ is something more, the evolution of the physical world, the course of fate, everything else (You’ll have to be a little more specific here!), then the answer would be-at every instant .All the things that we decide to do and not to do are decisions of a conscious mind which shape the world. Speaking in a technical manner-If all men be the state variables of this vast, unbelievably complex system (Yes I am studying a lot of mathematics these daysJ), then the state (a word which, interestingly in this context, means ‘condition’) of the world is determined by our outputs (i.e. decisions and actions).
What happens in this world is not determined by the sum-total of individual actions of the ‘man’. It is determined by the decision of the mind, the conscious. One mind may decide to carry out the task of building a beautiful building. Other minds may independently, or under the influence of the first mind, decide to build more such buildings. Eventually their country could become the country with the most beautiful buildings in the world. All these people could also drive a construction boom which leads their country’s economy northwards.
For more crap along these lines, read One by Richard Bach.
I think by now it is obvious by now that each of our decisions affect the ‘atoms’ in the world around us.
The body is also very important in the sense that it is ultimate tool for carrying out the instructions of the mind AND it is the conduit for all information which allows us to make any rational decision. A mind which does not receive any information to process is no mind at all. This brings us to a very important and fundamental aspect of the question under consideration. We have already seen all kinds of influences a person can have on his/her environment. The reverse is not less emphatically true.
Imagine a person who has never had any sensory perception at all-absolutely none. In that case, can there be a conception of self for that person? With no data to feed on, the mind is dead. When I see a tree, the important thing is not that I see a natural resource or beauty or anything else of that sort. The most important part of the sighting is-I see ME! I am aware of myself as a sentient being and then I am aware of things that are distinct from me and I am capable of making the distinction.
So man, too, is influenced by his environment. He owes his consciousness to it.
The answer can be had from the number of times in your life you are actively, physically conscious of your body. Barring those moments, all other that you are active, you affect and are affected by ‘atoms’ beyond your body.
Considering the issue in a rather more detached manner, we can conjure a semi-dichotomous situation between the ‘man’ and the ‘body’ (the classic Bhagwadgita trip – vasansi jeerdani yatha vihay…sanyati navaani dehi). The dichotomy is only partial because the ‘man’ or the consciousness inhabits the body and is dependent on it for existence-they are different and yet the same .The sameness is what gives the perception of ownership of the ‘body’-a concept which in the long run makes no difference.
I am not seeking a mystic discourse .We must realize that the consciousness is not the body-that the ‘man’ is not the ‘body’ .Once this is established ,the question can be approached in a much more direct manner.
The answer lies in clearly stating what is the meaning of affected? If we mean ‘atoms’ in the ordinary sense of the word , then the answer is obvious-our life processes causing our body to interact with the environment blahblahblah…
If the ‘atom’ is something more, the evolution of the physical world, the course of fate, everything else (You’ll have to be a little more specific here!), then the answer would be-at every instant .All the things that we decide to do and not to do are decisions of a conscious mind which shape the world. Speaking in a technical manner-If all men be the state variables of this vast, unbelievably complex system (Yes I am studying a lot of mathematics these daysJ), then the state (a word which, interestingly in this context, means ‘condition’) of the world is determined by our outputs (i.e. decisions and actions).
What happens in this world is not determined by the sum-total of individual actions of the ‘man’. It is determined by the decision of the mind, the conscious. One mind may decide to carry out the task of building a beautiful building. Other minds may independently, or under the influence of the first mind, decide to build more such buildings. Eventually their country could become the country with the most beautiful buildings in the world. All these people could also drive a construction boom which leads their country’s economy northwards.
For more crap along these lines, read One by Richard Bach.
I think by now it is obvious by now that each of our decisions affect the ‘atoms’ in the world around us.
The body is also very important in the sense that it is ultimate tool for carrying out the instructions of the mind AND it is the conduit for all information which allows us to make any rational decision. A mind which does not receive any information to process is no mind at all. This brings us to a very important and fundamental aspect of the question under consideration. We have already seen all kinds of influences a person can have on his/her environment. The reverse is not less emphatically true.
Imagine a person who has never had any sensory perception at all-absolutely none. In that case, can there be a conception of self for that person? With no data to feed on, the mind is dead. When I see a tree, the important thing is not that I see a natural resource or beauty or anything else of that sort. The most important part of the sighting is-I see ME! I am aware of myself as a sentient being and then I am aware of things that are distinct from me and I am capable of making the distinction.
So man, too, is influenced by his environment. He owes his consciousness to it.
Boredom:(
The last 15 days must surely constitute the most boring fortnight of my life. I thought that things would be so cool after placements. They are after a fashion, but the tremendous vacuity that I feel is nauseating. There is a lack of purpose, with nothing on the horizon, and nothing expected to appear there either, just a big empty void in which you can sit and brood (or sleep!) but not achieve or feel much of anything.
I have always thought of myself as a slightly irregular but a disciplined person. I might not wake up on time due to laziness, but if I had to wake up before everyone for something, then I would do it, I could do it. Even that faculty seems to be gone. After repeating trying the same for the last 5-6 days, I have failed miserably and I feel tired-tired all the damn time! And for a person who likes to feel fit, all this is extremely depressing.
The boredom stems also from the fact that almost everybody else is preparing for CAT while I am not. Although I and Adi have talked each other into believing that MBA at this stage is all ‘moh maya’ and that we want to become engineers, I sometimes wonder if I got convinced of this so easily because my preparation was sucky anyway. Were I as good as tiddi or gupta, would I give up the CAT avenue as I easily as I have done now? Would Adi?
The high points have been the documentaries that I have seen over these days. The one on Hitler was absolutely amazing. Though it gave only a somewhat superficial sketch of the man, the footage in it was awesome. So many dead, so much suffering-all for one man’s fanaticism. It reminds me of King Laman in the Wheel of Time series. In it too, were all the lands from Cairhien to Tar Valon razed due to that man’s folly and pride.
The other one was on String Theory. As an engineer I was expecting that things would get slightly more technical so that I could actually understand what they mean when they say that efforts to unite Gravitation and Electro magnetism have repeatedly failed. Some equations would have been welcome, but I guess BBC wallahs make their documentaries for absolute laymen (that I suppose is as should be). As I was watching the documentary, I found myself putting forward hypotheses like every armchair scientist does, and amazingly, every single thing I had thought turned ot to be correct. Well, as correct as things expressed without mathematics can be in the world of Physics.
Of string theory and parallel universes I have much to say, some very interesting discussions which I will put here as soon as I have t
I have always thought of myself as a slightly irregular but a disciplined person. I might not wake up on time due to laziness, but if I had to wake up before everyone for something, then I would do it, I could do it. Even that faculty seems to be gone. After repeating trying the same for the last 5-6 days, I have failed miserably and I feel tired-tired all the damn time! And for a person who likes to feel fit, all this is extremely depressing.
The boredom stems also from the fact that almost everybody else is preparing for CAT while I am not. Although I and Adi have talked each other into believing that MBA at this stage is all ‘moh maya’ and that we want to become engineers, I sometimes wonder if I got convinced of this so easily because my preparation was sucky anyway. Were I as good as tiddi or gupta, would I give up the CAT avenue as I easily as I have done now? Would Adi?
The high points have been the documentaries that I have seen over these days. The one on Hitler was absolutely amazing. Though it gave only a somewhat superficial sketch of the man, the footage in it was awesome. So many dead, so much suffering-all for one man’s fanaticism. It reminds me of King Laman in the Wheel of Time series. In it too, were all the lands from Cairhien to Tar Valon razed due to that man’s folly and pride.
The other one was on String Theory. As an engineer I was expecting that things would get slightly more technical so that I could actually understand what they mean when they say that efforts to unite Gravitation and Electro magnetism have repeatedly failed. Some equations would have been welcome, but I guess BBC wallahs make their documentaries for absolute laymen (that I suppose is as should be). As I was watching the documentary, I found myself putting forward hypotheses like every armchair scientist does, and amazingly, every single thing I had thought turned ot to be correct. Well, as correct as things expressed without mathematics can be in the world of Physics.
Of string theory and parallel universes I have much to say, some very interesting discussions which I will put here as soon as I have t
Finally,My school alumni meet works out:)
Hi All ,
How long it's been you have met Your school Buddies? How long its been u have met ur seniors/juniors of school? How long its been u have spend some quality time with ur old pals?
If the answer to the above questions is "NO", then its the time to get into action and meet
pals n buddies of yester-years to revive old memories.
We, the Students of Mother Teresa Public School,have taken an initiative of forming a registered Alumni Association of MTPS. In regard to this, We have been in touch with the Mrs Neeta jetty,Principal MTPS and she has been extremely supportive of this move. We are in process of officially registering the Alumni association and launching a website for the same.
But it will be of no fruitful use without the support of all of You,hence we have decided to formally conduct an Alumni meeting to work out all the details and receiving your feedback and valuable suggestions . Following are the details for the meeting:
Date : 28 October,2006
Time : 4 P.M.
Venue : Mother Teresa Public School,C-Block,Preet Vihar
Agenda : Registration of members for MTPS Alumni
The meet will be followed by snacks and tea party.
Since it would be practically impossible to reach out to All people,I would request each of you to send this mail to as many people as possible. There are many means available nowerdays, namely, messengers,orkut.Hi5,yahoogroups etc. The maximum participation will be of utmost Importance.
Lets get ready and bring all the alumni of MTPS under one roof. Please note that this Alumni is not for any particular batch and applies to anyone who has Studied in MTPS.
Well it did take my school ke fuckers hell of a lot of time to get here but they did reach finally,and that is what matters!
Awesome!
Taken from the novel Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse:-
We consider classical music to be the epitome and quintessence of our culture, because it is that culture’s clearest, most significant gesture and expression. In this music we possess the heritage of cultural antiquity and Christianity, a spirit of serenely cheerful and brave piety, a superbly chivalric morality. For in the final analysis, every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behaviour concentrated into a gesture. As we know, between 1500 and 1800 a wide variety of music was made; styles and means of expression were extremely variegated; but the spirit, or rather the morality, was everywhere the same. The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. The grace of a minuet by Handel or Chopin, the sensuality sublimated into delicate gesture to be found I any Italian composers or in Mozart, the tranquil, compose readiness for death in Bach- always there may be heard in these works a defiance, a death-defying intrepidity, a gallantry, and a note of superhuman laughter, of immortal gay serenity. Let the same note sound also in the whole of our lives acts and sufferings.
Rock in Delhi
By all accounts, Delhi has the hottest campus rock circuit in the whole country. I have been witness to some Fantastic performances over the last 4 years since I attended my first rock show, which was ‘Avanlanche’ in my first year (and which, by the way, counts as one of the best ever). The luster seems how seems to have vanished from the thumping, rockin’ rollin’ stadia over the last year.
Going to a rock these days means more of Punk music than ever before. Gone are all the heavyweights of heavy and extreme metal (Sledge, Myndsnare, Evergreen, Demonic Resurection…) to whom you could head bang till your head broke off, there never was never much of classic rock in the city (Delhi swears by metal-Metallica, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Megadeth…, every Tom, **** and Harry knows and loves them!) and now those messiahs of nu-metal-Joint Family are gone too.
And with these bands has gone the spark from the rock scene. Going to a rock show these days means listening to the same bands with amateur voices trying desperately to sound like big tough men and trying to make music that sounds all the same. There are a few exceptions (Superfuzz is a FUCKIN’ good band with brilliant vocals. If the 3 of the band died today, they’d still be remembered for the vocalist’s primal screams in ‘She ate my heart out’ and ‘I’m back in school again’).
And why is it that any band, claiming to be of any genre, when makes an OC, then that song is always, ALWAYS punk??
For god’s sake can somebody make a straight heavy metal song!!!
All said and done, all this applies mostly to the ‘free’ rock shows (hehe…See I’m an Indian-soooo cheap!). In pubs and clubs where it costs RS.250 to enter and which I have never done till date, the master still reign. The pioneers and flag bearers of Indian rock-like Parikrama, Hundred Octane, Vishnu et all still rock the city with their grrreat music.
In light of all this I am eternally indebted to Yamaha for sponsoring the rock show at Pragati Maidan last Saturday which brought together Superfuzz, Them Clones, Half Step Down, Zero and PDV for a wild night of groove music. If Delhi applied, it would probably win the guiness for the single largest Mosh pit in the world (All thanks to Pin Drop Violence and their growling vocals-The performance wasn’t very good, but when Delhi realizes that extreme metal is on, no matter what the quality-it goes insane.)
So I sit and wait, wait for my first salary, when I would be able to go to see one of these guys perform. Maybe I’ll head bang my brains out.
Going to a rock these days means more of Punk music than ever before. Gone are all the heavyweights of heavy and extreme metal (Sledge, Myndsnare, Evergreen, Demonic Resurection…) to whom you could head bang till your head broke off, there never was never much of classic rock in the city (Delhi swears by metal-Metallica, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Megadeth…, every Tom, **** and Harry knows and loves them!) and now those messiahs of nu-metal-Joint Family are gone too.
And with these bands has gone the spark from the rock scene. Going to a rock show these days means listening to the same bands with amateur voices trying desperately to sound like big tough men and trying to make music that sounds all the same. There are a few exceptions (Superfuzz is a FUCKIN’ good band with brilliant vocals. If the 3 of the band died today, they’d still be remembered for the vocalist’s primal screams in ‘She ate my heart out’ and ‘I’m back in school again’).
And why is it that any band, claiming to be of any genre, when makes an OC, then that song is always, ALWAYS punk??
For god’s sake can somebody make a straight heavy metal song!!!All said and done, all this applies mostly to the ‘free’ rock shows (hehe…See I’m an Indian-soooo cheap!). In pubs and clubs where it costs RS.250 to enter and which I have never done till date, the master still reign. The pioneers and flag bearers of Indian rock-like Parikrama, Hundred Octane, Vishnu et all still rock the city with their grrreat music.
In light of all this I am eternally indebted to Yamaha for sponsoring the rock show at Pragati Maidan last Saturday which brought together Superfuzz, Them Clones, Half Step Down, Zero and PDV for a wild night of groove music. If Delhi applied, it would probably win the guiness for the single largest Mosh pit in the world (All thanks to Pin Drop Violence and their growling vocals-The performance wasn’t very good, but when Delhi realizes that extreme metal is on, no matter what the quality-it goes insane.)
So I sit and wait, wait for my first salary, when I would be able to go to see one of these guys perform. Maybe I’ll head bang my brains out.
Morality,Ethics and God part-2
I derive great pleasure in throwing spanners in my friends’ faiths. I myself am a confirmed atheist (an agnostic at best-I can’t seem to decide between the two, but I definitely do not have much truck with god.) and always it is my fervent desire to see if any of my friends can give me reason enough to pause and reconsider my beliefs. I enjoy discussions with Shankar on this topic coz he truly tries to find logical arguments rather than continue saying-“Try to feel it” as many of the other fools do.
So here I will try to give another of the arguments that occurred to me for refuting the existence of god and putting morality in his place.
I regard moral principles to be absolutes. They are not constructs of somebody’s fancy but rather the requirements of man’s existence as man and not some primitive beast. They should be followed not because we belong to some religion, or follow a certain spiritual leader, but because following them allows us to avail the full scope of our faculties in the most productive manner. In part-1 of this, I have shown how this applies to honesty. Similar arguments can be found for other moral precepts.
Now we come to the crux of the matter. If we believe that moral principles are, in fact, an end in themselves, that they must be adhered to for purely pragmatic and not mystical reasons, then does that not eliminate the role of God from our whole moral edifice? If we must be honest for honesty’s own sake rather than to escape the retribution of the almighty, then what exactly do we need the almighty for? And looking at the whole issue in this light, does it not seem more likely that god is just a concept dreamt up to keep men from deviating from what is moral and just, like demons devised by parents to get children to eat their food or to go to bed.
As far as I understand, god has the following 3 roles:-
1. Origin of life.
2. Maintenance of life.
3. Book-keeping of sins and appropriation of punishment for the same.
Most of us, I hope, agree that origin of life is a matter of science and not religion. The reasons for origin of life on earth may be obscure, but they are definitely not supernatural.
The last two I now club into one and hold morality responsible for both. If moral laws are broken, it is a sin and the retribution is immediate in terms of reduction in chances of survival. Inner peace and conscientiousness all stem from this basic belief in some essential moral laws and not a god.
Hence, we see that we can easily remove god from the whole picture and put science and morality in his place. Doing so also removes some other ‘irrational’ beliefs like rebirth, heaven and hell. If we violate our moral code, then what the world becomes is hell. There is no punishment in an after-life. The retribution is then and there in that same life and that is the extent of Karma (which incidentally is more consistent with the original meaning of the word-‘karm’ from Sanskrit meaning action).
One thing that becomes essential in such a scenario is to correctly distinguish between moral principles and religious dictats. e.g Honesty is a moral principle, while not eating beef is merely a religious injunction ( I can see no reason why one animal should be more holy than the others). Thus while we decide on the moral code that we must follow, it is essential that we carefully sift the dogmatic from the rational and discard the former.
So here I will try to give another of the arguments that occurred to me for refuting the existence of god and putting morality in his place.
I regard moral principles to be absolutes. They are not constructs of somebody’s fancy but rather the requirements of man’s existence as man and not some primitive beast. They should be followed not because we belong to some religion, or follow a certain spiritual leader, but because following them allows us to avail the full scope of our faculties in the most productive manner. In part-1 of this, I have shown how this applies to honesty. Similar arguments can be found for other moral precepts.
Now we come to the crux of the matter. If we believe that moral principles are, in fact, an end in themselves, that they must be adhered to for purely pragmatic and not mystical reasons, then does that not eliminate the role of God from our whole moral edifice? If we must be honest for honesty’s own sake rather than to escape the retribution of the almighty, then what exactly do we need the almighty for? And looking at the whole issue in this light, does it not seem more likely that god is just a concept dreamt up to keep men from deviating from what is moral and just, like demons devised by parents to get children to eat their food or to go to bed.
As far as I understand, god has the following 3 roles:-
1. Origin of life.
2. Maintenance of life.
3. Book-keeping of sins and appropriation of punishment for the same.
Most of us, I hope, agree that origin of life is a matter of science and not religion. The reasons for origin of life on earth may be obscure, but they are definitely not supernatural.
The last two I now club into one and hold morality responsible for both. If moral laws are broken, it is a sin and the retribution is immediate in terms of reduction in chances of survival. Inner peace and conscientiousness all stem from this basic belief in some essential moral laws and not a god.
Hence, we see that we can easily remove god from the whole picture and put science and morality in his place. Doing so also removes some other ‘irrational’ beliefs like rebirth, heaven and hell. If we violate our moral code, then what the world becomes is hell. There is no punishment in an after-life. The retribution is then and there in that same life and that is the extent of Karma (which incidentally is more consistent with the original meaning of the word-‘karm’ from Sanskrit meaning action).
One thing that becomes essential in such a scenario is to correctly distinguish between moral principles and religious dictats. e.g Honesty is a moral principle, while not eating beef is merely a religious injunction ( I can see no reason why one animal should be more holy than the others). Thus while we decide on the moral code that we must follow, it is essential that we carefully sift the dogmatic from the rational and discard the former.
Morality,Ethics and God part-1
I have been planning to write this piece for a long time now but it needed some thought and I haven’t had either time or conducive company in the whole summer break and merely no time in the month of August. Both seem to be in ample supply now and so, here goes.
This concerns that famous question- ‘Is there a god’. This also concerns the nature of our moral precepts and our own attitude towards morality in general. And if you are still reading on then I will assume that you have time and patience enough and will allow me to build my case. All arguments are, of course, welcome in the comments section of the blog.
Sometime ago I was reading ‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaarder. The book gives a basic introduction to all the famous and some not so famous schools of philosophy. I, being an almost complete Objectivist, was trying to measure how each of these schools matched against my beliefs. It was then that I got this idea of conducting a survey. So I shot off messages to a lot of my friends, asking a rather simple question-‘Why is it bad to lie?’. The responses were, to say the least, interesting.
First I had to assure each of them that I had not gone crazy and seriously wanted an answer. All the answers I received can be grouped into 3 broad groups:-
1. We must not lie to our friends, it doesn’t matter what we say to strangers.
2. Any lie is permissible, as long as the aims are ‘selfless’.
3. One lie causes us to lie more and more to cover it up. So we shouldn’t lie.
These answers are all very curious because none of them recognizes truthfulness, honesty etc. as a moral absolute, an end in themselves. They all imply that we must not lie because people can find out, and leave enough loopholes to wriggle around the guilt of lying easily enough. I want to examine all these answers individually.
To all those who gave the first answer, I asked- why? Most replied- “Because your friend might be hurt if he/she found out”. Again I asked- “What if it could somehow be ensured that he would never find out”. Most amusingly none answered this query. Note that the answer is not an answer. It never answers why lying is bad. It merely tries to divide the world into two groups of people- those you can lie to and those you can’t. How this division comes about is not explained. If you had a fight with one of your current friends, then it would magically become okay to lie to him/her.
It sounds like some weird kind of loyalty but it isn’t. It’s a façade built to convince yourself that you are a moral person while you are not. It is this answer which is coming back to us whenever a shopkeeper lies to us and cheats us, whenever an acquaintance doesn’t keep a promise (he thinks you are not ‘friend enough’ and who are you to argue with that). This ‘Moral Nepotism’ will be defended by its proponents as pragmatic behavior (“I am no saint-everyone does it! Why take a burden of guilt for people you do not even know?”), but I beg to differ.
The second reply is the vilest contortion of morality garbed as a moral statement. Why should the aims be selfless? Who decides this selflessness? It allows us to lie and then to hide it behind some or the other veneer of selflessness. I could go on and on but I will stop because just thinking about this makes me want to throw up, and then slap the person who gave this answer. Unfortunately, the person is one of my closest and oldest friends.
The third POV, which I call ‘Lazy Morality’ can be held to be the closest to my own beliefs. Whenever we lie, we are deviating from fact, from reality and the more we lie the further we must lie to cover the previous lies. Thus we deviate further and further from reality. But here we come up against a blank wall. Further from reality…so what? Why is deviation from reality bad? And that, of course, is the original question. So we don’t really have an answer. But in my opinion, we are tantalizingly close, whether or not my friends who gave this answer realized it.
Which brings me, at last, to my own opinion on this subject. Why should we not lie? It certainly is expedient, and in our daily lives, often necessary.
In my opinion, honesty is an Objective requirement of human survival. In as much as man is a social being, and must live in a society in order to survive in the kind of living conditions that we are living in today. This kind of life would not be possible if every man was a free operator and functioned according to his whim or fancy.
Lying is bad because our every action aimed at survival in today’s society is depended on an unspoken understanding that certain other individuals will do certain other tasks and deliver on certain promises. Job agreements, business contracts etc. are all forms of these promises. Were lying as acceptable as honesty, then it would be quite acceptable to not pay an employee after a month of work, to renege on a deadline for a projects, an infinite such instances where either a man’s word or his signature on a piece of paper count for millions of rupees or years of trust. If all this were acceptable then the only way to survive would be to do everything by your own hands and all semblance of society would vanish like a fart in the wind.
Now I hope the patient reader can see why the third answer was so close to my reasons for honesty. The further from reality, the further from survival, and if that is not reason enough to stop lying, nothing is.
This concerns that famous question- ‘Is there a god’. This also concerns the nature of our moral precepts and our own attitude towards morality in general. And if you are still reading on then I will assume that you have time and patience enough and will allow me to build my case. All arguments are, of course, welcome in the comments section of the blog.
Sometime ago I was reading ‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaarder. The book gives a basic introduction to all the famous and some not so famous schools of philosophy. I, being an almost complete Objectivist, was trying to measure how each of these schools matched against my beliefs. It was then that I got this idea of conducting a survey. So I shot off messages to a lot of my friends, asking a rather simple question-‘Why is it bad to lie?’. The responses were, to say the least, interesting.
First I had to assure each of them that I had not gone crazy and seriously wanted an answer. All the answers I received can be grouped into 3 broad groups:-
1. We must not lie to our friends, it doesn’t matter what we say to strangers.
2. Any lie is permissible, as long as the aims are ‘selfless’.
3. One lie causes us to lie more and more to cover it up. So we shouldn’t lie.
These answers are all very curious because none of them recognizes truthfulness, honesty etc. as a moral absolute, an end in themselves. They all imply that we must not lie because people can find out, and leave enough loopholes to wriggle around the guilt of lying easily enough. I want to examine all these answers individually.
To all those who gave the first answer, I asked- why? Most replied- “Because your friend might be hurt if he/she found out”. Again I asked- “What if it could somehow be ensured that he would never find out”. Most amusingly none answered this query. Note that the answer is not an answer. It never answers why lying is bad. It merely tries to divide the world into two groups of people- those you can lie to and those you can’t. How this division comes about is not explained. If you had a fight with one of your current friends, then it would magically become okay to lie to him/her.
It sounds like some weird kind of loyalty but it isn’t. It’s a façade built to convince yourself that you are a moral person while you are not. It is this answer which is coming back to us whenever a shopkeeper lies to us and cheats us, whenever an acquaintance doesn’t keep a promise (he thinks you are not ‘friend enough’ and who are you to argue with that). This ‘Moral Nepotism’ will be defended by its proponents as pragmatic behavior (“I am no saint-everyone does it! Why take a burden of guilt for people you do not even know?”), but I beg to differ.
The second reply is the vilest contortion of morality garbed as a moral statement. Why should the aims be selfless? Who decides this selflessness? It allows us to lie and then to hide it behind some or the other veneer of selflessness. I could go on and on but I will stop because just thinking about this makes me want to throw up, and then slap the person who gave this answer. Unfortunately, the person is one of my closest and oldest friends.
The third POV, which I call ‘Lazy Morality’ can be held to be the closest to my own beliefs. Whenever we lie, we are deviating from fact, from reality and the more we lie the further we must lie to cover the previous lies. Thus we deviate further and further from reality. But here we come up against a blank wall. Further from reality…so what? Why is deviation from reality bad? And that, of course, is the original question. So we don’t really have an answer. But in my opinion, we are tantalizingly close, whether or not my friends who gave this answer realized it.
Which brings me, at last, to my own opinion on this subject. Why should we not lie? It certainly is expedient, and in our daily lives, often necessary.
In my opinion, honesty is an Objective requirement of human survival. In as much as man is a social being, and must live in a society in order to survive in the kind of living conditions that we are living in today. This kind of life would not be possible if every man was a free operator and functioned according to his whim or fancy.
Lying is bad because our every action aimed at survival in today’s society is depended on an unspoken understanding that certain other individuals will do certain other tasks and deliver on certain promises. Job agreements, business contracts etc. are all forms of these promises. Were lying as acceptable as honesty, then it would be quite acceptable to not pay an employee after a month of work, to renege on a deadline for a projects, an infinite such instances where either a man’s word or his signature on a piece of paper count for millions of rupees or years of trust. If all this were acceptable then the only way to survive would be to do everything by your own hands and all semblance of society would vanish like a fart in the wind.
Now I hope the patient reader can see why the third answer was so close to my reasons for honesty. The further from reality, the further from survival, and if that is not reason enough to stop lying, nothing is.
D.E.Shaw nailed!
I love this blog .I think it is lucky for me-cruel but lucky. It makes me look stupid but gets me what I want. Whatever I moan about not having in this blog, I usually get it soon after making the entry and have to come back and make an entry about eating my words. It happened with ‘Internship and Internet’ entry, and now it happened with ‘The Future’. I was just moaning about not having a high paying job, and considering possible courses of action for the future, when BAM! A huge job just jumped down my throat.
On Sept.5 ’06, I was recruited by DE Shaw and Co. for a ridiculous sum of around 9 lpa, thereby becoming one of the most highly paid guys I my class at roughly the end of our main placement season.
The run-up didn’t look very promising. Almost everyone was looking forward to this company very eagerly (for the salary alone, I think. Nobody had much idea the profile-not that it would have mattered anyway. For 9 lpa, I’d have cleaned toilets!) and I do not count myself anywhere even close to the college’s smarter people. IBM-ISL junta was still going to be allowed to sit and when that gang includes the likes of Bharat Garg, Shruti Tewari and Sandeep Singh and with the company self confessedly out to take only the ‘extraordinary geniuses’(I’ve been called that, but each time the speaker has been excessively drunk), I wouldn’t have bet on myself. The only reason I had a semblance of hope was because I had been told that the company laid a lot of stress on a strong CV, and on that count I am confident to beat most guys of our college. And because for some weird reason, I’d been consistently clearing writtens which had a strong Aptitude component (CAT quant style questions), when some of the worthier CAT aspirants of my class had failed (e.g. The Inductis Test. Rishabh Gupta flunked it and I got through.).
The written comprised of three sections:
1. Aptitude section (20 questions in 30 minutes)
2. Tech Section (30 questions in 25 minutes)
3. Programming section (1 algorithm in 15 minutes).
I wasn’t happy with my performance in the aptitude part, so for the first time in the placement season- I craned my neck and copied 2 questions off Sandy’s answer sheet and then 2 more off my neighbour’s , fervently hoping them to be correct. The Tech section too had me stumped until I decided to attempt questions in the reverse order, which turned out to be a good decision and I was able to do 36 questions out of 50 in the objective part of the paper.
The Algorithm part was easy and I think everybody was able to do that program. Then it was off to the canteen for lunch and waiting for the result.
When I received the sms telling me that I had an Interview call, I can say that I was surprised. Jasleen , Bhuvnesh and Khurana also had been selected.
I was the first person to be interviewed (This seems to be a lucky charm- for Flex too I was the first person in the Interviews.). A panel of 2 awaited me in the Green Room. They began by asking me to introduce myself which I did. After that the grilling began:
Interviewer-1:Tell me about this Online Counseling Software of yours.
Me: *Ramble On*
Interviewer-2:This Workflow Automation Project that you have done, how many levels does it have and what is the backend?
Me:* Ramble On*
I-2: Do you know DB?
Me: Sir 3 points on a scale of 5 for me.
I-1: So tell me what is Normalization?
Me: *I hadn’t studied DB at all so start telling him what I remember from doing my projects*
I-2: No. Take an example and then explain.
Me: I took a bad example without realizing it and soon they had my normalization procedure tied I knots and looking more useless than Maru’s running shoes.
I-2: Ok. What are your fav subjects?
Me: Sir C, DS, OS...
I-1: What is a b+ tree?
Me: Told him.
I-1: Why do we use it?
Me: Sir so that if we want elements sequentially we can get them straightaway without having tom traverse the tree.
I-1: Why would we want to do that?
Me: *Scratch my head and look stupid*
I-2: Where does memory for a linked list come from?
Me: Heap.
I-2: Why?
Me: *I dunno why man-ask Ritchie!!!* Sir ‘coz heap has these automatic garbage collection mechanisms so that we can’t over-allocate memory at runtime.
I-2: And stack doesn’t have these mechanisms?
Me: no sir*Or does It???*
I-2: Local variables are on the stack right?
Me:*I you say so*Yes Sir.
I-2: Then if I have to access an element at the bottom of the stack, then areall the elements above it popped and pushed everytime?
Me: no sir.
I-2: Then why is called a stack?
Me:$#%^@%^@%
I-2: Tell me about storage classes?
Me: Sir I haven’t a clue about what you are talking.
I-2: WHAAAAT? You’ve never heard about extern, static…
Me: Ohh yessir yessir.Then I told him whatever I knew.
I-2: If I have a static global variable in one file, ca I use it as extern in another file?
Me: Yes. (It turns out you can’t)
I-2: Are you sure?
Me: yessir.
I-1: Ok. Do initialized and un-initialized variables lie in the same segment in C?
Me: yes sir (No they don’t)
I-1: Where do you see yourself 5 years down the line?
Me: don’t know sir.
I-1: Whaat?
Me: Sir right now all I want is a good techie job. 5 years later who knows if I might get interested in management, or interested in some specific and end up doing MS in that field, or remain interested in earning piles of money and stay in the Industry.
I-1: Ok what about 1-2 years down the line?
Me: I see myself in a technical job where I have a responsible position and I have a bigger picture view of the aims and objectives of my team’s and my own efforts.
I-1: What kind of work at DE Shaw would interest you?
Me: sir work on the vast distributed system you mentioned in your PPT or work which allowed me to play with information.
I-1: Elaborate please.
Me: For example you have people in all corners of the world who want stock market data from all over the world in real time. So I’d be interested in designing systems which collect this info process the gathered info into a form which is more intuitively useful for every specific request and to render the processed info compatible to platforms ranging from desktops to mobile phones.
I-1: Ohkay…Write me program to reverses a string.
Me: I do it using two pointers.
I-1: *pokes enough holes hole in the program so that it sinks to the bottom without a fight* Ok thank you, we will get back to you by about 9 in the evening.
Me:*Bhago!!!!*Thank you sir.
After I came out and discussed the questions, I realized I had screwed up every question that could possibly have been screwed. With not much hope remaining, I went to DC with Adi to have a fruit beer at Bercos and a couple of burgers at McDonald’s.Back at the flat, I started watching ‘Swades’ for the second time (A really good film, dunno why I had ignored it till now). Around 9:30 I got a call from Budhrani telling me that I had been selected. I don’t remember my heart beating so loudly without physical effort ever before. I ran over to the Audi but the post-selection photo session and all the congratulatory speeches etc. were already and I caught The Shaw team coming down the stairs. I met them and they were all smiles and congratulations. I told I-1 and I-2 that I thought they had killed me in the interview and that I had left for a movie. I-1 told he had done the exact same thing after his own Shaw interview!
There were hugs and high fives and demands and promises of treats all around. I called up my home and as expected, everyone was totally ecstatic (I later learnt that my mother didn’t sleep that night!)Then I had a call from my teacher (it being teacher’s day) and she too was extremely happy at the coincidence. The flatties were all intending to go to my home and demand a huge sum of money from my parents for a party.
Now I can’t walk 100 meters without someone asking for a treat!!! Relatives I didn’t know I had have been calling to say proud I’ve made them. The best part is that now I can shove my half hearted CAT preps up IMS’ ass. No need for solving FLTs, Quant section tests….AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! Relief. But I can’t help but feel this strange kind of vacuum within me, a lack of purpose. There is nothing to do now but wait for the mid-sems to come and devastate me, coz no-one has any clue of the syllabus, and half the teachers have already decided to fail most of us. And I do not feel like preparing anyway. Most of the junta has taken up the CAT challenge in all earnestness again. That too is gone for me.
So what else is there for a man to do? Sit around, watch highly rated movies (Akiro Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ sucks, by the way!) and write too long blog entries like this one here.
And btw, since I mentioned at the beginning of this entry that I got whatever I moaned about not having at this blog, let’s try that one more time:
BOOHOOHOO! I don’t have a girlfriend!
On Sept.5 ’06, I was recruited by DE Shaw and Co. for a ridiculous sum of around 9 lpa, thereby becoming one of the most highly paid guys I my class at roughly the end of our main placement season.
The run-up didn’t look very promising. Almost everyone was looking forward to this company very eagerly (for the salary alone, I think. Nobody had much idea the profile-not that it would have mattered anyway. For 9 lpa, I’d have cleaned toilets!) and I do not count myself anywhere even close to the college’s smarter people. IBM-ISL junta was still going to be allowed to sit and when that gang includes the likes of Bharat Garg, Shruti Tewari and Sandeep Singh and with the company self confessedly out to take only the ‘extraordinary geniuses’(I’ve been called that, but each time the speaker has been excessively drunk), I wouldn’t have bet on myself. The only reason I had a semblance of hope was because I had been told that the company laid a lot of stress on a strong CV, and on that count I am confident to beat most guys of our college. And because for some weird reason, I’d been consistently clearing writtens which had a strong Aptitude component (CAT quant style questions), when some of the worthier CAT aspirants of my class had failed (e.g. The Inductis Test. Rishabh Gupta flunked it and I got through.).
The written comprised of three sections:
1. Aptitude section (20 questions in 30 minutes)
2. Tech Section (30 questions in 25 minutes)
3. Programming section (1 algorithm in 15 minutes).
I wasn’t happy with my performance in the aptitude part, so for the first time in the placement season- I craned my neck and copied 2 questions off Sandy’s answer sheet and then 2 more off my neighbour’s , fervently hoping them to be correct. The Tech section too had me stumped until I decided to attempt questions in the reverse order, which turned out to be a good decision and I was able to do 36 questions out of 50 in the objective part of the paper.
The Algorithm part was easy and I think everybody was able to do that program. Then it was off to the canteen for lunch and waiting for the result.
When I received the sms telling me that I had an Interview call, I can say that I was surprised. Jasleen , Bhuvnesh and Khurana also had been selected.
I was the first person to be interviewed (This seems to be a lucky charm- for Flex too I was the first person in the Interviews.). A panel of 2 awaited me in the Green Room. They began by asking me to introduce myself which I did. After that the grilling began:
Interviewer-1:Tell me about this Online Counseling Software of yours.
Me: *Ramble On*
Interviewer-2:This Workflow Automation Project that you have done, how many levels does it have and what is the backend?
Me:* Ramble On*
I-2: Do you know DB?
Me: Sir 3 points on a scale of 5 for me.
I-1: So tell me what is Normalization?
Me: *I hadn’t studied DB at all so start telling him what I remember from doing my projects*
I-2: No. Take an example and then explain.
Me: I took a bad example without realizing it and soon they had my normalization procedure tied I knots and looking more useless than Maru’s running shoes.
I-2: Ok. What are your fav subjects?
Me: Sir C, DS, OS...
I-1: What is a b+ tree?
Me: Told him.
I-1: Why do we use it?
Me: Sir so that if we want elements sequentially we can get them straightaway without having tom traverse the tree.
I-1: Why would we want to do that?
Me: *Scratch my head and look stupid*
I-2: Where does memory for a linked list come from?
Me: Heap.
I-2: Why?
Me: *I dunno why man-ask Ritchie!!!* Sir ‘coz heap has these automatic garbage collection mechanisms so that we can’t over-allocate memory at runtime.
I-2: And stack doesn’t have these mechanisms?
Me: no sir*Or does It???*
I-2: Local variables are on the stack right?
Me:*I you say so*Yes Sir.
I-2: Then if I have to access an element at the bottom of the stack, then areall the elements above it popped and pushed everytime?
Me: no sir.
I-2: Then why is called a stack?
Me:$#%^@%^@%
I-2: Tell me about storage classes?
Me: Sir I haven’t a clue about what you are talking.
I-2: WHAAAAT? You’ve never heard about extern, static…
Me: Ohh yessir yessir.Then I told him whatever I knew.
I-2: If I have a static global variable in one file, ca I use it as extern in another file?
Me: Yes. (It turns out you can’t)
I-2: Are you sure?
Me: yessir.
I-1: Ok. Do initialized and un-initialized variables lie in the same segment in C?
Me: yes sir (No they don’t)
I-1: Where do you see yourself 5 years down the line?
Me: don’t know sir.
I-1: Whaat?
Me: Sir right now all I want is a good techie job. 5 years later who knows if I might get interested in management, or interested in some specific and end up doing MS in that field, or remain interested in earning piles of money and stay in the Industry.
I-1: Ok what about 1-2 years down the line?
Me: I see myself in a technical job where I have a responsible position and I have a bigger picture view of the aims and objectives of my team’s and my own efforts.
I-1: What kind of work at DE Shaw would interest you?
Me: sir work on the vast distributed system you mentioned in your PPT or work which allowed me to play with information.
I-1: Elaborate please.
Me: For example you have people in all corners of the world who want stock market data from all over the world in real time. So I’d be interested in designing systems which collect this info process the gathered info into a form which is more intuitively useful for every specific request and to render the processed info compatible to platforms ranging from desktops to mobile phones.
I-1: Ohkay…Write me program to reverses a string.
Me: I do it using two pointers.
I-1: *pokes enough holes hole in the program so that it sinks to the bottom without a fight* Ok thank you, we will get back to you by about 9 in the evening.
Me:*Bhago!!!!*Thank you sir.
After I came out and discussed the questions, I realized I had screwed up every question that could possibly have been screwed. With not much hope remaining, I went to DC with Adi to have a fruit beer at Bercos and a couple of burgers at McDonald’s.Back at the flat, I started watching ‘Swades’ for the second time (A really good film, dunno why I had ignored it till now). Around 9:30 I got a call from Budhrani telling me that I had been selected. I don’t remember my heart beating so loudly without physical effort ever before. I ran over to the Audi but the post-selection photo session and all the congratulatory speeches etc. were already and I caught The Shaw team coming down the stairs. I met them and they were all smiles and congratulations. I told I-1 and I-2 that I thought they had killed me in the interview and that I had left for a movie. I-1 told he had done the exact same thing after his own Shaw interview!
There were hugs and high fives and demands and promises of treats all around. I called up my home and as expected, everyone was totally ecstatic (I later learnt that my mother didn’t sleep that night!)Then I had a call from my teacher (it being teacher’s day) and she too was extremely happy at the coincidence. The flatties were all intending to go to my home and demand a huge sum of money from my parents for a party.
Now I can’t walk 100 meters without someone asking for a treat!!! Relatives I didn’t know I had have been calling to say proud I’ve made them. The best part is that now I can shove my half hearted CAT preps up IMS’ ass. No need for solving FLTs, Quant section tests….AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! Relief. But I can’t help but feel this strange kind of vacuum within me, a lack of purpose. There is nothing to do now but wait for the mid-sems to come and devastate me, coz no-one has any clue of the syllabus, and half the teachers have already decided to fail most of us. And I do not feel like preparing anyway. Most of the junta has taken up the CAT challenge in all earnestness again. That too is gone for me.
So what else is there for a man to do? Sit around, watch highly rated movies (Akiro Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ sucks, by the way!) and write too long blog entries like this one here.
And btw, since I mentioned at the beginning of this entry that I got whatever I moaned about not having at this blog, let’s try that one more time:
BOOHOOHOO! I don’t have a girlfriend!
The Future
With the placement season almost out of the way(and before you start asking for a treat, no,I havent got a bumper paycheck ), its time to ponder about the future.
Pondering is something al NSITians seem to be brilliant at!I saw it when some C grade companies refused to allow MPA to sit for their tests. You'd think that the kind of haalat the MPA guys were in w.r.t. jobs, there would be a bout of intense slogging from them for the remaining jobs-but no.What followd was a bout of Pondering.MPA pondering as to what to do now, how to 'make their voice heard' *ROTFL*, 'Who th f*** adviced me to do MPA' and 'ab hamaara kya hoga'; All the other branches pondering what MPA should do now, how MPA should make its voice heard(again *ROTFL*), 'who the hell advice them to do MPA', and 'ab inka kya hoga'!!!!!Really NSIT needs no reason to indulge in pondering and nonstp BCD.
But comng bak to the point,these are my options:
1.Landing DE Shaw(humph...fat chance-considering that IBM-ISL is still B-cat and tiddi is still elegible(for those who don't know-tiddi is bharat garg.he is also the guy cursed to clear all writtens and gloriously fail in almost every interview.Also, he is in IBM-ISL).With the rest of my class high IQ waali junta making noises about giving the written at all costs,his option is pretty much outta the window.But still...writing options like this makes it appear that i have a lot of options.
2.Crack CAT.*HAHAHAHAHAHA* Wit scores so low you cant see them from ground level, this seems a tall order, esp. with guys cracking 70 in mocks in which I yield 36 .If I am not among the top 7-8 CAT aspirants in my class, then it is very difficult to beat guys from all over the country.AndDI section ne to solve hone ki rakhi hi nahin hai! Besides I find I have no motivation for it. Every day I find myself more amenable to coding than to solvingquant questions. Tech is exciting,challenging and a damn sight moer interesting than interpreting huge masses of no.s.Beside not every highly paid person in this world is an MBA.
However, there is always this feeling of havibg made a commitment to at least the written part of the MBA admission procedure, and if it can be managed with a reasonable amount of hard work,I intend to do it.This way, I dont feel all disapointed that I auseless,cant compete with any no. of people,AND it prevents my parents from killing me(anybody can fail in the interviews right???)
3.Join Flex.This seems to be the most likely. A pity they aren't paying nearly enough.But I suppose that will come with time.
So, fingers crossed...lets see what happens.DE Shaw on the campus on Sept 5.
), its time to ponder about the future.Pondering is something al NSITians seem to be brilliant at!I saw it when some C grade companies refused to allow MPA to sit for their tests. You'd think that the kind of haalat the MPA guys were in w.r.t. jobs, there would be a bout of intense slogging from them for the remaining jobs-but no.What followd was a bout of Pondering.MPA pondering as to what to do now, how to 'make their voice heard' *ROTFL*, 'Who th f*** adviced me to do MPA' and 'ab hamaara kya hoga'; All the other branches pondering what MPA should do now, how MPA should make its voice heard(again *ROTFL*), 'who the hell advice them to do MPA', and 'ab inka kya hoga'!!!!!Really NSIT needs no reason to indulge in pondering and nonstp BCD.
But comng bak to the point,these are my options:
1.Landing DE Shaw(humph...fat chance-considering that IBM-ISL is still B-cat and tiddi is still elegible(for those who don't know-tiddi is bharat garg.he is also the guy cursed to clear all writtens and gloriously fail in almost every interview.Also, he is in IBM-ISL).With the rest of my class high IQ waali junta making noises about giving the written at all costs,his option is pretty much outta the window.But still...writing options like this makes it appear that i have a lot of options.
2.Crack CAT.*HAHAHAHAHAHA* Wit scores so low you cant see them from ground level, this seems a tall order, esp. with guys cracking 70 in mocks in which I yield 36
.If I am not among the top 7-8 CAT aspirants in my class, then it is very difficult to beat guys from all over the country.AndDI section ne to solve hone ki rakhi hi nahin hai! Besides I find I have no motivation for it. Every day I find myself more amenable to coding than to solvingquant questions. Tech is exciting,challenging and a damn sight moer interesting than interpreting huge masses of no.s.Beside not every highly paid person in this world is an MBA.However, there is always this feeling of havibg made a commitment to at least the written part of the MBA admission procedure, and if it can be managed with a reasonable amount of hard work,I intend to do it.This way, I dont feel all disapointed that I auseless,cant compete with any no. of people,AND it prevents my parents from killing me(anybody can fail in the interviews right???)
3.Join Flex.This seems to be the most likely. A pity they aren't paying nearly enough.But I suppose that will come with time.
So, fingers crossed...lets see what happens.DE Shaw on the campus on Sept 5.
Flextronics!
On the 4th of August,I have ,for the first time in my life, become empployed and am now an official Flextronics guy.YAhoooo!!!(or rather FLEXTRONICS!!!, yahoo is coming to the campus tomorrow).
The process of joining the hallowed ranks of India's ubiquitous IT force came about as a 3 step thing:
Step-1: A written test.
Step-2: Tech Interview.
Step-3: HR Interview.
The written test was seni retarded(Even those who could not clear it agreed to that).With 7 sections comprising of English, Quant, Attention to detail(the stupidest of them all), C, section on Data Structures OS and Algo, A section on retention, E-mail writing(yes,amazing what companies can test you on!),It was a mad scramble to the finish line.
I had fine tuning several strategies for cheating in the paper but all of the plaaning came to naught.The evil invigilators removed evryone around me beyond whispering range and I ws left to fend for myself in the big game of employment seeeking.
Yours truly wrapped up the English paper in less than 4 min, got slightly harassed by the quant paper, and generally tumbled through the rest of the section. There was barely a time to pause as the papers of the previous sectoin were taken away as soon as the next section was given.The only real pause I took was while deciding on how to masquerade as a cable operator writing an email to an irate customer.
This whole examination procedure was followed by several hours of waiting(I didn't really think about the result, some of my friends were on the brink of breakdown).The result was finally declared around midnight and 2/3rd of my flat ended up qualifying for thhe interview but the other 1/3rd was heartbroken.
Interviews began at 9:00 a.m. the next morning.I was among the first batch of 5 interviewees.The panel consisted of A mousy looking female and a guy who seemed to be amused at nothing at all.
Amused guy:Hi kislay,please tell us about yourself?
Me: *I ain't expecting this in the tech interviews idiots* Eh..I'm a student of NSIT-IT..eh...I am a hardworking guy and generally like to get on with problems and solve them...eh...But I tend to get a little unrealistic at times and put too much pressure on myself...eh....I've done a lot of web dev work and am fascinated by technology in all its forms.
Mousy woman:Ok thats a good intro(REALLYYYY!!!!)Wjat are your main subjects?
Me: MA'am DS OS and Algo.
What followed was a 10-15 min long series of questions that I answered and bluffed my way through.Then I found myself waiting for(eternally it seemed) for my HR interview.Got quite irritating, especially with Aditya muttering feverishly about how much we could have been studying for the Microsoft test.The only respiite came from Mr. Anil Dhawan,Product Manager,Microsoft.An excellent speaker, he provided a most interesting take on all iissues from his own life to piracy and software industry.
Finally my name was called for the HR interview.I was escorted to the interview table bya reasonably pretty HR female and I was beginning to think-"huh not bad at all!"
Female in red tee: So kislay-where did you do your internship?
Me: m'am I did it at iMediablitz Solutions,an internet marketing company.
F.I.R.D: Do you think working in teams is better or working alone?
Me: Ma'am I think working in small teams is the best as they have the most cohesion and are, inn my opinion the most productive.
F.I.R.D.: Have you ever worked in a team?
Me: Yes,as a part of the NSITLOUNGE web team(followed by a tirade about lounge)
F.I.R.D.: Ok you have mentioned here that like reading philosophy and economics.What did you read most recently?
Me: ma'am I just finished Sophie's world and have started ' The age of reason'.
F.I.R.D.: Why Flex?
Me: I want to work in a company which is doing new and exciting work.I believe Flex is doing that .So..(this is just the gist of it.I rambled on for 5 min)
FIRD: any problems with working outside delhi?
Me: none.
FIRD: Ok kislay.Thanks for your time.
I knew I would get the job then.And that is exactly what happened about6 hours later when the final results were announced.
You'd think it'd have meant a great deal---you now--a first job.But it didn't.Both I and Mangla took one look at the results mailed to us, confirmed our names ,and went right on studying for microsoft and a fatter paycheck.
Human beings are greedy creatures.
The process of joining the hallowed ranks of India's ubiquitous IT force came about as a 3 step thing:
Step-1: A written test.
Step-2: Tech Interview.
Step-3: HR Interview.
The written test was seni retarded(Even those who could not clear it agreed to that).With 7 sections comprising of English, Quant, Attention to detail(the stupidest of them all), C, section on Data Structures OS and Algo, A section on retention, E-mail writing(yes,amazing what companies can test you on!),It was a mad scramble to the finish line.
I had fine tuning several strategies for cheating in the paper but all of the plaaning came to naught.The evil invigilators removed evryone around me beyond whispering range and I ws left to fend for myself in the big game of employment seeeking.
Yours truly wrapped up the English paper in less than 4 min, got slightly harassed by the quant paper, and generally tumbled through the rest of the section. There was barely a time to pause as the papers of the previous sectoin were taken away as soon as the next section was given.The only real pause I took was while deciding on how to masquerade as a cable operator writing an email to an irate customer.
This whole examination procedure was followed by several hours of waiting(I didn't really think about the result, some of my friends were on the brink of breakdown).The result was finally declared around midnight and 2/3rd of my flat ended up qualifying for thhe interview but the other 1/3rd was heartbroken.
Interviews began at 9:00 a.m. the next morning.I was among the first batch of 5 interviewees.The panel consisted of A mousy looking female and a guy who seemed to be amused at nothing at all.
Amused guy:Hi kislay,please tell us about yourself?
Me: *I ain't expecting this in the tech interviews idiots* Eh..I'm a student of NSIT-IT..eh...I am a hardworking guy and generally like to get on with problems and solve them...eh...But I tend to get a little unrealistic at times and put too much pressure on myself...eh....I've done a lot of web dev work and am fascinated by technology in all its forms.
Mousy woman:Ok thats a good intro(REALLYYYY!!!!)Wjat are your main subjects?
Me: MA'am DS OS and Algo.
What followed was a 10-15 min long series of questions that I answered and bluffed my way through.Then I found myself waiting for(eternally it seemed) for my HR interview.Got quite irritating, especially with Aditya muttering feverishly about how much we could have been studying for the Microsoft test.The only respiite came from Mr. Anil Dhawan,Product Manager,Microsoft.An excellent speaker, he provided a most interesting take on all iissues from his own life to piracy and software industry.
Finally my name was called for the HR interview.I was escorted to the interview table bya reasonably pretty HR female and I was beginning to think-"huh not bad at all!"
Female in red tee: So kislay-where did you do your internship?
Me: m'am I did it at iMediablitz Solutions,an internet marketing company.
F.I.R.D: Do you think working in teams is better or working alone?
Me: Ma'am I think working in small teams is the best as they have the most cohesion and are, inn my opinion the most productive.
F.I.R.D.: Have you ever worked in a team?
Me: Yes,as a part of the NSITLOUNGE web team(followed by a tirade about lounge)
F.I.R.D.: Ok you have mentioned here that like reading philosophy and economics.What did you read most recently?
Me: ma'am I just finished Sophie's world and have started ' The age of reason'.
F.I.R.D.: Why Flex?
Me: I want to work in a company which is doing new and exciting work.I believe Flex is doing that .So..(this is just the gist of it.I rambled on for 5 min)
FIRD: any problems with working outside delhi?
Me: none.
FIRD: Ok kislay.Thanks for your time.
I knew I would get the job then.And that is exactly what happened about6 hours later when the final results were announced.
You'd think it'd have meant a great deal---you now--a first job.But it didn't.Both I and Mangla took one look at the results mailed to us, confirmed our names ,and went right on studying for microsoft and a fatter paycheck.
Human beings are greedy creatures.
Life in the placement season
As I sit here in my flat,trying to ignore the beautiful weather outside and trying to get weary and bored mind to focus on the endless trivialities of what pointers can empowers us mere humans to do, I can't but ponder over the two much puzzled over conundrums:
1) Pointers are a contraption allowing us to program very fast computers to do impossible tasks even faster
However, that is immaterial to me if all this haste to perform some task doesnt give me the time to wander outside in the pleasant breeze.Agar free time hi na mile to kaam jaldi karne se kya faayda?But no.I must sit here and go through 6 books (all as heavy as I am ),and to top it all,dream up ways to do things faster than the ways given in the books.Maybe the matrix wasn't so imaginary,maybe it wasn't just a good movie.This mad search for algorithms is my own matrix--and I am hopelessly trapped of my own volition.
2) Just why on earth is the weather so nice just when I have to study my ass off and cant go running over to Priya and watch Pirates of the Carribean:Dead Man's Chest when every other human being alive has seen it.It never fails.You plan an outing and the sun starts blazing like it will never set.
THese musing aren't totaly arbitrary.They are the most well exhibited symptoms of is known as placement fever.Every year the phenomenon repeats itself in most engg. colleges all across India.It is almost amusing.People you never heard with anything but gaalis on their tongue suddenly start talking in english, people who never used the computer except for playing games and watching porn can be seen discussing time complexities of algorithms, for once CAT is a bad word all over the campus, people who aren't half qualified to become engineer's peons are suddenly discusssing the jobs they will and will not accept!!!
Speculation is rife about companies,offers and packages, Bhatia sir is the most sought after man on the campus( he is that always vaise to),rawat struts about like a peacock in his harem, squeaking commands to anyone who'll listen-and people do listen!!
Rumours and misinformation are common currency.The funniest episodes are when people start discussing how to tackle interviews.The greetings between friends suddenly changes from 'hi' to 'decribe yourself in one word' or 'tell me about yourself'.More than half the advice thrown about is garbage,and the other half is worse.One of my seniors told me that some of his friends called him up and asked:"Yaar,koi weakness bataa de" lol.
And always, behind the curtains, is the incesstant ghisai. The toppers have already gone through their books so many times that the books are about half their original weight(it isnt called ghisai for nothing you see!)And where there is ghisai, there is, of course, the pleasant weather, which brings us back to my original conundrum.
Let no one doubt the cyclicity of life.
I like this
This is taken from the orkut profile of Mr. Aakanksh Vashishth,who was 3 years my senior in school and has been a profound influece in my life-one of the first men to introduce me to the art of asking questions.
न पुण्यं न पापं न सौख्यं न दुःखं न मन्त्रो न तीर्थो न वेदा न यग्य ।
अहं भोजनं नैव बोज्यं न भोक्ता चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥
Sin or merit can never touch me, Joy and sorrow can't contaminate me;
I know no mantra, I have no sacred pilgrimage to make,
I know no scripture, nor have I anything to gain through rituals;
I am neither the experiencer (subject), nor the experienced (object), nor the experiencing;
I am Shiva the all pervading happiness, Yes, I am indeed, I am definitely Shiva.
न मे द्वेषरागौ न मे लोभमोहौ मदो नैव मे नैव मात्सर्यभावः ।
न धर्मो न चार्थो न कामो न मोक्षः चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥
I've no likes or dislikes, Nor I've covetousness or greed,
Nor I've arrogance nor any competition with anyone;
I don't even need the four 'Purposes of Life' (Dharm, Arth, Kaam, Moksh);
I am Shiva the all pervading happiness, Yes, I am indeed, I am definitely Shiva.
न मे मृत्युशंका न मे जातिभेदः पिता नैव माता नैव न जन्मः ।
न बन्धुर्न मित्रं गुरुर्नैव शिष्यः चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥
I've no death, no caste or creed distiction;
I've neither father nor mother; infact I am never even born!
I've no kith or kin, I've no teacher, nor am I a disciple;
I am Shiva the all pervading happiness, Yes, I am indeed, I am definitely Shiva.
Dunno whether I agree fully or not,but sounds good.
Aakanksh is,btw, into Computer Graphicss.Find some of his work here.
न पुण्यं न पापं न सौख्यं न दुःखं न मन्त्रो न तीर्थो न वेदा न यग्य ।
अहं भोजनं नैव बोज्यं न भोक्ता चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥
Sin or merit can never touch me, Joy and sorrow can't contaminate me;
I know no mantra, I have no sacred pilgrimage to make,
I know no scripture, nor have I anything to gain through rituals;
I am neither the experiencer (subject), nor the experienced (object), nor the experiencing;
I am Shiva the all pervading happiness, Yes, I am indeed, I am definitely Shiva.
न मे द्वेषरागौ न मे लोभमोहौ मदो नैव मे नैव मात्सर्यभावः ।
न धर्मो न चार्थो न कामो न मोक्षः चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥
I've no likes or dislikes, Nor I've covetousness or greed,
Nor I've arrogance nor any competition with anyone;
I don't even need the four 'Purposes of Life' (Dharm, Arth, Kaam, Moksh);
I am Shiva the all pervading happiness, Yes, I am indeed, I am definitely Shiva.
न मे मृत्युशंका न मे जातिभेदः पिता नैव माता नैव न जन्मः ।
न बन्धुर्न मित्रं गुरुर्नैव शिष्यः चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥
I've no death, no caste or creed distiction;
I've neither father nor mother; infact I am never even born!
I've no kith or kin, I've no teacher, nor am I a disciple;
I am Shiva the all pervading happiness, Yes, I am indeed, I am definitely Shiva.
Dunno whether I agree fully or not,but sounds good.
Aakanksh is,btw, into Computer Graphicss.Find some of his work here.
Technologically Aware or Technically Competent
I've been pondering this issue for well about an year or two now.Not actively of course,but every once in a while someone says something that gets me on the topic again.What is better-To be technologically aware or to be Technically competent.
The dichotomy of course does not work all the time and in quite a few people we see the coming together of both these things.But more often,we find that a person who is more competent technically(e.g great in academics...) is technologically unaware or worse still, indifferent.I know plenty of good C programmers who know next to nothing about what is going on in the world of technology,what the new avenues are and so on.On the other hand,my circle of acquaintances also abounds with those cant tell their structs from their classes but know the computer inside out and are generally very well informed about technical stuff.Don't need to look very far,the BH abounds with them.
And I just cant stop wondering which is better:To know how to code at the expense of awareness(In which case you don't know what to do with your expertise) or to be aware(in which there isn't much you can with that info).
Another thing I find interesting is that those who are aware come across as more cocky and confident as against the competent ones,who seem to be much more cautious about what they know and are forever willing to acknowledge the awrae one as their better.
The thing is-Coding skils can be acquired later on when you are actually into the worksphere whereas awareness cant.But at this stage of our careers,it seems obvious to me that competence is more relevant.
The dilemma remains...
The dichotomy of course does not work all the time and in quite a few people we see the coming together of both these things.But more often,we find that a person who is more competent technically(e.g great in academics...) is technologically unaware or worse still, indifferent.I know plenty of good C programmers who know next to nothing about what is going on in the world of technology,what the new avenues are and so on.On the other hand,my circle of acquaintances also abounds with those cant tell their structs from their classes but know the computer inside out and are generally very well informed about technical stuff.Don't need to look very far,the BH abounds with them.
And I just cant stop wondering which is better:To know how to code at the expense of awareness(In which case you don't know what to do with your expertise) or to be aware(in which there isn't much you can with that info).
Another thing I find interesting is that those who are aware come across as more cocky and confident as against the competent ones,who seem to be much more cautious about what they know and are forever willing to acknowledge the awrae one as their better.
The thing is-Coding skils can be acquired later on when you are actually into the worksphere whereas awareness cant.But at this stage of our careers,it seems obvious to me that competence is more relevant.
The dilemma remains...
Upto my eyeball...and sinking fast
Well,its eating my words time. I have this opinion of myself as person as not very lucky and a person channel to god is scrambled with static.
Had barely written the last entry in the blog when was given a solid project-developing an extension for firefox that would pack quite a lot of punch.I reckoned it'd be exciting to get to learn some new stuff..but this shit is just a little too much for me.
It so happens that quite a lot of the functionality that I am required to implement in this toolbar of mine has not been implemented by ANYONE in the world(or so it would seem when google threw up no relevant results).I approached the official development forums of both Firefox/Mozilla and the Developer's group dor the overlib library in Javascript but neither has any clue on what to do about my little problem.
So now I am stuck with a toolbar,A full fledged XML parser in javascript, an AJAX module and an RSS ticker with no clue of how to put toigether the damn things
The deadline is on Friday...I've been working fever pitch but to no avail.The ignominy of failure seems inevitable
I have this opinion of myself as person as not very lucky and a person channel to god is scrambled with static.Had barely written the last entry in the blog when was given a solid project-developing an extension for firefox that would pack quite a lot of punch.I reckoned it'd be exciting to get to learn some new stuff..but this shit is just a little too much for me.
It so happens that quite a lot of the functionality that I am required to implement in this toolbar of mine has not been implemented by ANYONE in the world(or so it would seem when google threw up no relevant results).I approached the official development forums of both Firefox/Mozilla and the Developer's group dor the overlib library in Javascript but neither has any clue on what to do about my little problem.
So now I am stuck with a toolbar,A full fledged XML parser in javascript, an AJAX module and an RSS ticker with no clue of how to put toigether the damn things
The deadline is on Friday...I've been working fever pitch but to no avail.The ignominy of failure seems inevitable
On Intership and Internet
Vacations have started and I find myself sitting in a royal throne(devoid of backrest) in the offices of iMediaBlitz Solutions in Gurgaon.This honour is given to me in the capacity as an intern in the 40 head strong IITian initiated startup. As I recall the numerous days and nights spend worrying about how to land an internship which would give me a chance to actually learn something over these 2 months,I can almost laugh,and not pleasantly.
Its been 7 days here and I have learnt how to surf the net to keep yourself busy while actually accomplishing anything.Given the task of finding a script that would allow my employers to put up a classifieds site, I spent the first 2 days assiduously scouring the lanes and bylanes of the internet for such a tool. At the end of those two days, however my task was done and I reportted my recommendations to the owners.
Since then they seem to have forgotten that I exist.As I sit here in my cubicle listening to everyone else go about the business of S/W development,I cant help but feel a bitter taste in my mouth.There's people in the world who are going around doing the process of thinking, learning,growing and here I am stuck in this land where I am the intern who knows the most about Web Development and I am the one who has had no real work to for the last week.
Absolutely Disgusting.
And commuting to this place takes bloody ages,as a consequence of which any sort of studying has been put on an indefinite hold.
On the bright side, having the internet all to myself has good effect.I have some ideas which I have been considering for some time but couldn't pursue for one reason or the other.Now I have unlimited access to the biggest repository of information on the earth and today onwards I hope to put it to good use.
Its a pity they wouldn't let me download movies here
Its been 7 days here and I have learnt how to surf the net to keep yourself busy while actually accomplishing anything.Given the task of finding a script that would allow my employers to put up a classifieds site, I spent the first 2 days assiduously scouring the lanes and bylanes of the internet for such a tool. At the end of those two days, however my task was done and I reportted my recommendations to the owners.
Since then they seem to have forgotten that I exist.As I sit here in my cubicle listening to everyone else go about the business of S/W development,I cant help but feel a bitter taste in my mouth.There's people in the world who are going around doing the process of thinking, learning,growing and here I am stuck in this land where I am the intern who knows the most about Web Development and I am the one who has had no real work to for the last week.
Absolutely Disgusting.
And commuting to this place takes bloody ages,as a consequence of which any sort of studying has been put on an indefinite hold.
On the bright side, having the internet all to myself has good effect.I have some ideas which I have been considering for some time but couldn't pursue for one reason or the other.Now I have unlimited access to the biggest repository of information on the earth and today onwards I hope to put it to good use.
Its a pity they wouldn't let me download movies here
Kamaal ka Week
The lord our father in his heavenly seat must have decided that it had now been enough time since I saw the break of dawn,that time which is not of the day nor is it of the night,when the first rays of warm sunlight suffuses the night's chill. So strongly perhaps that it was time he himself did something about it.
Ergo the whole damn week has been one of negligible sleep and sunrise darshan-not something I am overly fond of!
The sms started it all.The harbinger of the news that google was on the campus looking for worthy young men and women to train.Considering myself to be fulfilling all criteria of 'worthiness',I decided to go and see what the whole brouhaha was all about.The catch-the show was 8 a.m. in the morn.So I forced myself to wake up at 4:30 in the morning (I live at the other end of the civilized world you see.).My thrice cursed informer failed to inform me that Google was to take only 3 from all over India,knowing which I'd have paid more attention to my slumbers.Hona kya tha-Kat gaya!No rest,no sleep And no goddamn internship either.
And after that-CV making running,around for internship info-WHAT THIS??!!!
Terribly tired,man.And thoroughly confused as to why evrything that happens at NSIT has to be so chaotic and haphazard.
Ergo the whole damn week has been one of negligible sleep and sunrise darshan-not something I am overly fond of!
The sms started it all.The harbinger of the news that google was on the campus looking for worthy young men and women to train.Considering myself to be fulfilling all criteria of 'worthiness',I decided to go and see what the whole brouhaha was all about.The catch-the show was 8 a.m. in the morn.So I forced myself to wake up at 4:30 in the morning
(I live at the other end of the civilized world you see.).My thrice cursed informer failed to inform me that Google was to take only 3 from all over India,knowing which I'd have paid more attention to my slumbers.Hona kya tha-Kat gaya!No rest,no sleep And no goddamn internship either.And after that-CV making running,around for internship info-WHAT THIS??!!!
Terribly tired,man.And thoroughly confused as to why evrything that happens at NSIT has to be so chaotic and haphazard.
I hate IE
I hate Internet Explorer.
I just sat for about 20 minutes in this blessed cyber cafe wrirting a huge long post in the forums and WHAM,Mr.IE has to encounter a problem and shut down.Brilliant!!!
Well this MBA coaching seems to me to be a greater fraud than the IIT coaching thing is.The CL people seem to have given a 10% scholarship to every laggard who managed to crawl to his exam center.And the nerve of them to call me up and say that I was getting that scholarship because I was among the top 50.
They can wait for me all they want.I ain't falling for a Rs.2500 bait.I will probably sue them for something like ILLEGAL EGO INFLATION.
थोड़ी सी 'The Alchemist' पढी.Its a tiny book but seems to be taking an eternity to finish.I dunno but each sentetnce seems to be loaded with a dozen meanings and interpretations.Paulo coelho बहुत घुमा फिरा के बात कर्ता है साला,मुझे तो headache ही हो गया पढने में.
I just sat for about 20 minutes in this blessed cyber cafe wrirting a huge long post in the forums and WHAM,Mr.IE has to encounter a problem and shut down.Brilliant!!!
Well this MBA coaching seems to me to be a greater fraud than the IIT coaching thing is.The CL people seem to have given a 10% scholarship to every laggard who managed to crawl to his exam center.And the nerve of them to call me up and say that I was getting that scholarship because I was among the top 50.
They can wait for me all they want.I ain't falling for a Rs.2500 bait.I will probably sue them for something like ILLEGAL EGO INFLATION.
थोड़ी सी 'The Alchemist' पढी.Its a tiny book but seems to be taking an eternity to finish.I dunno but each sentetnce seems to be loaded with a dozen meanings and interpretations.Paulo coelho बहुत घुमा फिरा के बात कर्ता है साला,मुझे तो headache ही हो गया पढने में.
What its all about
In the year of their lord 2005,The Random Ranch was inaugarated by ringlord on August the 9th.
Note:No effort has been made by the author to tamper with his frame of mind while penning(keyboarding???) any of what follows,so that the words are truly about 'ME,MYself,and My Expressions'.Plagiarise at your will and leisure!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Thanks are due to all my friends who introduced me to what is now a full fledged movement of random and antshant ideas and utterances that I am pretty sure has marked me for life and has inevitably ,knowingly or unknowingly contributed to what I am.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Hi.I am Kislay Verma of IT-5th sem(as of now,will try to change that every 6 months,hopefully).I am known as ringlord on the LOUNGE forums.My hobbies incude listenng to all sorts of good music ad reading all sorts of books.I love playing the guitar (that doesn't translate intome being good at it.On my good days I am just short of pathetic,But I likes it
)
FOREWORD:
In keeping with the style in which i have started this my humble attempt at the mighty art of blogging,whatever follows will just be like looking into the book that my life is(for all that itis worth).The ideas are not organised and most often there is no point to them.They just are,senseless maybe but very the essence of my being and my world.Emerging,sometimes from the efforts of conscious cerebration and sometimes from the meaningless meandering of the river of randomness,here they are .And maybe you can make something out of them .Most of the times,I can't.
Note:No effort has been made by the author to tamper with his frame of mind while penning(keyboarding???) any of what follows,so that the words are truly about 'ME,MYself,and My Expressions'.Plagiarise at your will and leisure!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Thanks are due to all my friends who introduced me to what is now a full fledged movement of random and antshant ideas and utterances that I am pretty sure has marked me for life and has inevitably ,knowingly or unknowingly contributed to what I am.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Hi.I am Kislay Verma of IT-5th sem(as of now,will try to change that every 6 months,hopefully).I am known as ringlord on the LOUNGE forums.My hobbies incude listenng to all sorts of good music ad reading all sorts of books.I love playing the guitar (that doesn't translate intome being good at it.On my good days I am just short of pathetic,But I likes it
)FOREWORD:
In keeping with the style in which i have started this my humble attempt at the mighty art of blogging,whatever follows will just be like looking into the book that my life is(for all that itis worth).The ideas are not organised and most often there is no point to them.They just are,senseless maybe but very the essence of my being and my world.Emerging,sometimes from the efforts of conscious cerebration and sometimes from the meaningless meandering of the river of randomness,here they are .And maybe you can make something out of them .Most of the times,I can't.
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