Drained...

Heck, I haven't been able to update my blog (to the dismay of thousands of my readers) and worse I haven't been able to read anything much. I blame it all on my job, you feel so drained after getting back home that all you feel like doing is sleep, or in my case flip aimlessly through channels on TV. Maybe I'm not meant to be working, after spending so many years (20 yrs) in school.

However, I plan to change all that. I went and bought a couple of books recently using the money I make. I bought Crime and Punishment to educate myself (and also because on the cover it said it was one of the most readable classics). I also bought Adverbs by Daniel Handler (the author of A Series of Unfortunate Events) because I found what was written on the back cover funny.

Adverbs is a collection of episodes happening to different people that are loosely linked together. But it wasn't a funny book as I expected after reading the back cover. It's a more serious book, where each chapter is based more or less on a single emotion. However, though beautifully written, I felt that the author gave more importance to the style of writing, rather than content.

Crabs ALIVE!!!

Its been a while since I posted something on the blog. I have been too busy/lazy in the past few weeks. Also it was too horribly hot in Chennai to think, let alone sit up and write something. Now I'm back home and it's raining almost everyday. I also find that I'm not expected to do anything around here and the rain stops me from doing anything anyway. So I find I have no real excuse not to update my blog that all you thousands of virtual (in the true sense of the word) readers cant live without.

So anyway let me get to my story. This is a true story and so a lot of the characters are alive but a few have been cooked and eaten. What happened was that a few days back, mom asked the fishmonger to bring fresh crabs. When they arrived they were a little too fresh, a little too alive and jumpy. They started running all over the place with us chasing them. In the end we caught all except the one that went and hid itself in the drain. It's been there ever since and only come out at night. I wonder what it eats and what life in a drain is like. I guess it must be better than getting cooked and eaten. Life in strange like that, one moment you are complaining about how dirty the sea is and the next you are living happily in the drain.

Books, movies and the weather

I have finally completed A Clash of Kings, book 2 of the A Song of Ice and Fire series and can now hopefully move on in life (it was very hard to put down such an un-put-down-able book and do other things). A very strange thing about the book is that the author doesn't seem to show any qualms in killing off well developed characters. While I was reading the book, I began noticing some changes. I never used to notice such things as hot food or warm clothes, but as I read more about sleeping in the open and eating dried meat, I began appreciating things more. Maybe I should stop reading fiction and spend more time on news and things that are actually happening!

I also watched a very interesting movie called Brick recently. It is a teen-druggie-school-mob-detective story, but what was interesting about it was the don't care attitude of the main character, even when he is beaten near death, he just seems to get up and says the first thing that comes to his mind. That and the strange camera work and the overcast-about-to-rain sky when it can get really windy and interesting. That is the weather I like the best, just before the rain when the sky is overcast and it gets very windy. I remember imagining as if we were on a ship caught in a storm and running around on the terrace of the house when it gets like that. Maybe that's the real reason I liked the movie.

Free offline dictionary for mobile phones

I have a Sony Ericsson k750i phone, but the sad thing is that unlike Nokia phones I can't install freely available software on it (*.sis). I have been searching for a dictionary I can use on my phone for some time now, but since I can only use java programs I couldn't find one anywhere.

So I finally got a small dictionary, the Barron's GRE wordlist (available here), and wrote my own dictionary program. It is not very elegantly written since I don't know how to use j2me very well, but it works and serves my purpose.

If anyone is interested in trying out my free offline dictionary, it is available here: Wordy.jar(279kb). Just copy the .jar file to your mobile phone (should be java enabled).

I guess I have wasted enough time already. Got to get back to my actual work.

The Kite Runner

I have seen this book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni, in book stores and road side book sellers for a long time now, but never bothered to take a second look. Finally two weeks back I got myself involved in digitizing one of our hostel libraries (the list of books is now online and can be accessed here), and was surprised to come across some very interesting books and The Kite Runner was among them.

The book is about Afghanistan and is written in the first person. It talks about the life in Afghanistan from the monarchy before the soviet invasion to the present situation, and also about how the rest of the world reacts to all this. I was so engrossed by the book, the way it was written and the haunting images it throws up, that I began believing all of it, taking all this to be autobiographical. I was so relieved later to find out that this is indeed fiction. This is apparently, according to wikipedia, the first English novel written by an afghan, but the events in the book could very well have been true.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!

But really what is there to feel happy about? I mean, we are in 2007 now and still we don't have teleportation or invisibility or colonies on other planets or even talking refrigerators! It is so sad that science is so far behind science fiction.

But we do have youtube and blogs and the diet coke+mentos experiment to entertain us. So I guess there are things to be happy about.

Selling your soul

A simple procedure to get someone to sell his/her soul:

1. Place the individual in front of a decision problem
2. Keep interest+insecurities+doubts+uncertainties on one side
3. Keep assurance+something routine+a fat wallet on the other side

In most cases, the outcome is very predictable. (but s/he may still end up feeling crappy without the soul)

The Old Man And The Sea

I've been worrying about too many things recently so I decided I should take my mind off things by doing some light reading. So I borrowed the Old Man and the Sea from a friend and it looked like a very small and easy book. IT WAS ANYTHING BUT EASY AND LIGHT. I really wonder whether I was in the right mindset to appreciate the whole book, but I did like it and learned some interesting things. Like for example

'Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.'
'I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland'
'Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago'

I realise now how close I was to fearing the Reds and the White Sox.

Building your vocabulary

Well, there are two ways of going about it – the long & easy way and the quick & hard way, but sadly no quick & easy way. The first method may take years but involving nothing, but reading whatever you like. This is a very relaxed and reliable way of improving your vocabulary, you learn new words very slowly but you can be sure that you will not forget them. But if you are preparing for competitive exams like GRE this is an impractical way of doing things. That’s where the second method becomes essential – mugging up a humongous wordlist. It is a very tedious process and involves a lot of hard work, but you do get quick but unreliable results. So that is what I have been trying to do the past week, trying to cram in the Barons wordlist. But as wordlists go, the Barons is not bad, I mean the example sentences do contain a kind of wry humor. It’s almost like watching a Woody Allen movie – very intellectual, taxing and mildly humorous.

Things ain't what they were...

A friend was telling me the other day, that he was wasting all his time watching Dragonballs. DRAGONBALLS!! Of all things! And it got me thinking of today's cartoons, and how they have become the mindless talking heads and the excessively 'cute n cuddly' creatures. Look at POKEMON, I cant make any sense of it, but all the kids are obsessed with it. There is some kind of card game too. Oh, how I miss Topcat and Bugs Bunny. Those were real cool cartoons. I even like Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack which are somewhat recent and Simpsons of course (I think it is for grownups). I guess I'm just getting old, but the friend I talked about is older than me :)

The Wisdom of Age

It’s been a nice week, with the new students coming and I being able to delude them into considering me as a wise senior. It is always nice to meet new people; with all their enthusiasm and exuberance. And succeed in getting them to look up to you (wish it would stay that way). I think this year I will extend all my help in making the new students feel right at home, especially the girls and there are quite a few this time.

Also, today I watched some random tamil movie which had Bhavana in it. It made me an instant fan of her. I guess it takes a tamil movie to make a mallu actress appealing. After the movie me and my friend went for a coffee and ended up talking about school, life, love, girls and almost everything under the sun till 1:00 am. 'Twas time well spent (especially when I have one month left for GRE).

The lesser of two evils

Disclaimer: This post was written when in a non-serious mood. The author would like to state that he does not support terrorism in any way and that he thinks it an unforgivable crime. He would also like to apologize if anyone finds the comments mentioned here offending

Terrorism is bad. It kills a lot of people.

But then again, trains are also bad. They also kill a lot of people. In a year, I am sure that trains kill more people than do terrorists.

So when terrorists attack trains, it is like when Godzilla meets King Kong. Also as in these gore fests, it is always the innocent bystanders who suffer the most.

Cube Life

I live in a cube – 343 – 7³ – that’s my room number. But you can’t complain about the room, it really is a cube (as promised). The walls are at perfect right angles with the floor and the ceiling, and of exact dimensions too. There is just enough space for a bed, two chairs - one for hanging my dirty laundry and the other for draping my towel on (I sit,lie and sleep on my bed), a table and a shelf for my books. Just perfect for your average cubeite. Makes you wish you had some cardboard boxes to decorate the room with, then it would be really picturesque

?!!

In 'A Tale of Two Cities', Mr. Dickens (or Charles but never Mr. Charles) writes,

... I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly.

This is the first time I have come across a usage of 'disinterested love'. I have heard of disinterested opinion and a disinterested judge but never its usage with love. I don't even know whether it is a nice thing to tell someone, still I like it a lot!

The Bookstore

Over the ages, the bookstore has always played a central role in shaping the human society. The place has a certain charm about it. Really when you stop to think about it, you realize that all human activities have been, are and will be associated with the bookstore. A place of desire (when you see a book that you really want) and wonder (when you see its price). But the bookstore also has a soul, only you may have to search for it. Take yesterday for example, I went to this great bookstore (quite near the college too), and saw ‘Of Human Bondage’ which I’ve always wanted to read. When I looked at the price I was literally shocked - Rs. 508. Hmmm… how can I ever square it off with my conscience? But I was in luck yesterday, I found a low cost edition of the same book (after a lot of (soul?) searching) for Rs. 120 which I can explain to my conscience. So that’s my story - the soul of a bookstore.

hmmm... maybe I should go out more often and go some place other than a bookstore or a library.

ps. I haven’t started the book yet. Been reading ‘Tale of Two Cities’, my first ‘Dickens’. Still, better late than never.