SarKashtica

The art of Snoring

2011-12-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

This post takes 5 minutes and 30 seconds to read.

You have probably heard people snoring, you have probably heard people telling you tales about snoring, you might even have heard from people that you snore. You probably haven't read any research papers or blogs that do thorough analysis of snoring. The act of snoring deserves a blog post and hence I will be stealing 5 minutes of your valuable time to educate you on the science, technology and the art of snoring. This post is not recommended for girls as it contains explicit content that they might find disturbing and also children below the age of 2 as they can't read.

A lot of research has gone into why people snore. Certain religions claim that snoring is a conversation between people and god in the night during the theta wave phase of REM sleep. Science has however not been able to successfully decipher any of the redundant waveforms of snoring. Some computer scientists claim that snoring corresponds to unary characters, ie, the number of times you snore in a day corresponds to an ascii letter. So a "hello world" in snoring would involve a person snoring 104 (h), 101 (e), 108 (l), 108 (l), 111 (o), 32 (_), 119 (w), 111 (o), 114 (r), 108 (l), 100 (d) times respectively on consecutive days. Others say snorers snore on purpose to irritate others and deprive people of sleep. This can be explained by the fact that the phenomenon of snoring has never been observed in the absence of people/technology around observing ^{[citations not needed for anything as this is my blog. If you want legitimate content get your own blog]}. As this blog is pro-aliens, we are not going to pollute innocent minds with alien mind-control conspiracy theories and we conclude this section here.

Snoring could be quite irritating for people who probably share a dormitory with a snorer as, it deprives people off sleep. Snoring could be particularly more irritating if heard from a non-stranger as one can't just put a plastic bag around the person's head to prevent the noise from exiting the vicinity, in the interest of the snorer's health. Snoring according to a TIMES magazine survey and a Mashable poll, is considered one of the best ways to irritate another person, (A post on methods to estimate the irritation ability of different tasks will be up soon) ahead of slow Internet, stepping on dog poo, spam mails and corrupt politicians. Snoring these days is considered a valuable tool by trolls to achieve their interests. In fact if there is a girl who hates you to the core for something you did, you should probably ask her to sleep with you and spend the whole night snoring to get your revenge.

In contrast, several people who are used to other people snoring, have reported that they haven't been able to sleep, in the absence of this background noise. This acquired taste could be addictive, and the absence could also deprive people of sleep.

How to snore - Snoring (acc to science) is caused because of obstructions to the passage of air in the respiratory system. One could eat a lot of ice-cream and oil to get the fat deposit on the windpipes in the nose or the throat. Some people even exercise their windpipes to develop a thick muscle to do the same. In recent days one can simply get a nose-job to deposit fat in appropriate areas. Thousands of dollars have been spent by aspiring trolls on these surgeries to boost their careers. Other techniques like recording sound and playing in loop, have been used to achieve the same effect as snoring, but with less success as, the snorer doesn't get the same satisfaction that he would otherwise get.

How to wake up a person who is snoring - Loud, sudden noises work the best. Firecrackers have been shown to do wonders. The usage of firecrackers to put an end to snoring has been illustrated in this video tutorial. One can also try pepper spraying the person spraying as it is a non-lethal and harmless weapon although the victims tend to start coughing instead of snoring as an effect. All the above mentioned solutions are temporary and the best solution to this problem is to cover the enemy's head with a plastic cover. Any intentionally snoring troll is immediately put off to sleep using this technique.

Snoring which used to be considered a normal night to night activity once upon a time, is now considered an art by the artist community. Snoring shouldn't be confused with farting which happens to be a totally different "art". Beginners often confuse between the two and there are methods(like the following method invented by yours truly) to easily distinguish between the two.

[Image above shows sound waveform for a fart, there is a long and continuous waveform which dissipates with time]

[Image above shows wave form for a snore, there is a periodic and less noisy set of repeating waveforms that continue till the snoring ends]

So in summary, a snore goes like < start > Snoooree ... Snoooree ... Snoooree ... Snoooree ... < continues > and a fart goes like < start > Faaaaaaaaaaaartt ... faaart .. fart. < end > This technique has been successfully adopted by the scientific community to distinguish between the two. Other methods such as locating the origin of sound have also been used but such smelly methods are now deprecated.

All these new ideas we have currently introduced seems to question the age old theory of Intelligent design, if god was really intelligent when he designed us, he would have probably given us the ability to shut out all sound as we do with our eyes. Since we have gone through enough discussions on god on evolution in this blog, this idea is left as an exercise.

In conclusion, if you found the post to be irrelevant or disturbing, please blame the moron who snored all night depriving the author and a couple of other people of sleep for making the mistake of using the office dormitory on one unfortunate night.

If you feel snoring deserves some recognition and probably be introduced as a sport in the olympics where one could contest for being the loudest snorer, please spend a minute of your time and sign in this petition.

Technology of the Indian Institute

2011-06-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Background

The Indian Institutes of Technology are one of the best technical schools in India. They give birth to new technology and hence they are a paradice to intelligent students all over the world ^{[citation needed]}. They do allow other kinds of students too through a different system. The rest of IIT is mostly filled with technical students. IITs use a lot of technology and hence the rest of this post will talk with several examples on how IITM uses technology to make the lives of the IITians easier.

Form filling:

Lots of work in IITM happens through forms, forms are filled up to give preference for a Humanities course or to join the GYM or to submit personal details for records or to even pay the fees. IITM has revolutionised the way students approach forms with the introduction of computers.

In the olden days, students used to maually write out the fields of a form on paper and submit them. Instead of manually writing down a form, one can now instead print a form and fill it up a form and submit. This saves a lot of time involved in writing down the form details. IITM has introduced the patented concept of 'printed forms' that cuts down the student effort by around 50% as the students only have to write down the answers and not the questions as well.

Form Submission

The difficulty of going to places visiting people to get the forms submitted is well known. IITs have found an innovative walk-through for this. Students now don't have to walk all the way to the place of submission(Gymkhana office/bank/department), the students can instead, take a bus. Buses have been introduced in IITM for transportation of the students from one part to another. The buses are GPS tracked to ensure better quality of service.

With multiple floors in each department, having to get signatures from multiple people is a himalayan task. To scale the Himalayas, elevators have been set up. (disambiguation: not to confuse this with the Himalaya mess where there are no elevators)

There are occasions where one has to intimate the official in the administration block about the details like name, roll number, department height, weight, department, marital status, age, batch, department, sexuality and so on for administrative purposes. It is difficult to meet them in person as they may not be out of office or on a sabatical leave at the time you want to visit them. IITs have cleverly tackled this nightmare cleverly with the introducing emails.

One can now just send an email to an official in the academic section and find out when they are free so that he can go there at that time and give them his details.

Decentralised Storage

Individual data about the students can be easily lost in case of an accident. In case, the records are stored centrally, this could be a blunder for the student. IITM adminitration has introduced decentralised storage of data. The same details about a person are stored in multiple places and the students separately submit their details to each place as and when they are requested. Wherever one registers, (Gymkhana, HS course, Bank) and for each event he registers (Gym / Swimming), he gives his information separately.

Continuous Updates

The IITM officials poll constantly and seek student information like blood group, date of birth and parents' names every year. Any changes in the same are quickly noted and updated. Again technology in the form of OMR readers are used to note all the updates.

Right to information

The CCW office considers it a fundamental right of every IITian to know his details. A student can query his monthly expenditures and other details easily. Yet again modern technology has been used in the CCW office. To make sure only students enter the CCW office and non-students stay away, CCTV cameras monitor every person entering the CCW office. This way people who are not students cannot enter the building and find out their non-existant information. A student after a 15 minute interrogation with Mani, places his request in the CCW office and within a week the student can find out his monthly expenditure.

Thus technology has revolutionised the lives of IITians making it happier. We the students of IITM give and share, have and receive from IITM. If you liked the post and managed to get the point, please share it on your favourite social networking site.

Hell

2010-08-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

"Chennai? Never heard of it! Don't take my words for this one" -- Oscar Wilde

"Its OK to be racist once in a while as long as the environment doesn't get polluted" -- Kashyap R Purnanik

"Too many quotes spoil the blog" -- Anonymous.

Ever had the symptoms of profuse sweating, itching, weakness, fever, dizziness, headache, loss of appetite and extreme thirst? These are all the symptoms of the fact that you are in the city of Chennai. This is the land where ice-creams melt the instant they are taken out of the fridge, the land where match sticks burn by themselves when exposed to light, the land of the deep fried people, the land of Karnatik music, the land where the sun never sets (or at least its heat), the land where fish can survive out in the open because of the alimentary humidity. The following post is dedicated to my current city, the city of Chennai.

Climate:
Chennai has a tropical ever-hot climate. It has three seasons summer, winter and the rainy season. Winter is usually between November 3rd and 5th. Rainy season follows it for the rest of the month. Although usually sunny and humid in summer, the weather packs special pleasent surprises that certain people desperately long for. A sunny day suddenly turns into a rainy one, the rain lasting for the rest of the day probably ruining your holiday. Once in a while beautiful cyclones surprise you by popping up and destroying lives and property. Some times, nature makes sure your laptops stop working because of overheating. The people of Chennai seem to enjoy these surprises and take life as it comes.

As mentioned earlier fish can survive out of water because they, just like people are always covered with a layer of sweat keeping their skin moist. Most mortals change their skin colour and darken within an year of living in Chennai, this phenomenon is called deep-frying. SPF-90 is the level of protection that is recommended by skin doctors to prevent the deep-frying.

The power consumption by cooling devices like the fan and the AC is humongous in Chennai as they are on through out the year. A lot of energy is however saved in cooking because, food materials can be directly cooked in the sun-light saving a lot of fuel.

Transportation:
The city has a lot of options for transportation like the deluxe buses, the bi-hourly train, the auto-rickshaws and the roads. The auto-rickshaw drivers are one of the most talented people in the country. They possess the unique ability of simulating the roads and the traffic in their heads to accurately pre-decide the fare of a trip. The rickshaw-meters that are almost never used for non-recreational purposes are so famous that the phrase has become an idiom. An example of its local usage being "Machcha this politician no? he is like an auto-rickshaw meter ya! Just ya totally useless only!" The buses are known for their comfort and cheap fares. The fares get cheaper a month before the election season to facilitate the easy movement of people to work for the elections.

Entertainment:
The Tamil industry is one of the biggest film industries in the world, ranked at #148 in the world. The industries are known for its hot Tamil hunks (Azagiya Tamil magans). Since there are very few girls left in the wild, there aren't many popular local actresses. The industry has managed to solve the problem by importing actresses like Shriya and Genilia to name a few. Other steps include having a male actor perform a female role. Actor Kamal Hassan has managed to do some of those roles. The Tamil film industry has produced a few awesome movies like Yarukko Yaro Stepne.

Kamal Haasan (female role)

Imported actresses


Yaruko Yaro stepne

Tourism:
Chennai is known for a lot of tourist places. It is the home of the best tourist locations. The tourist locations include the marina beach, the crocodile park, the beautiful roads and the buildings. Since the marina beach has been polluted with all types of organic wastes such as maize skin, it has currently been closed for renovation. The crocodile park has over a thousand crocodiles lying around sleeping for around 23.8 hours a day. Not much work has been done to find out whether the crocodiles are indeed living ones. Some close sources claim that some of the crocodiles are made out of clay and hence the lack of movement. These parks are supposed to be the most thrilling places in Chennai. The other tourist location that Chennai boasts of, the roads of Chennai will be encountered on the way to these parks and hence no separate plans are required. The same goes for the buildings as well. Within a days time, a tourist can explore Chennai. The list of tourist locations usually also include Mahabalipuram in it. A few other places inside Chennai can similarly be added to the list of locations. Pondichery, Ooty and Bangalore (all inside Chennai) all of which are worth visiting. Chennai is known for its beautiful people and the tourists of Chennai contribute to around 98.6% of such people.

Over all Chennai is a very nice place to live in during the days November 3rd, 4th and 5th.

No to PJs

2010-07-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

Say no to PJs! Abolish PJs! Play your part!

PJs* are a cheap source of humour from the common man trying to eliminate competition from talented comedians. What started out as just a joke is now threatening the very existence of all sorts of non-PJs. It all started in 1977 when a professor of IIT Madras from the DOMS department cracked a PJ just as a joke and people happened to laugh at it just to mock the joke. Since then PJs have started growing rapidly and today, 78% of all the jokes that are cracked are considered poor.

*(not to be confused with PH which is the measure of proton concentration in a solution on a negative log scale)

PJs are threatening the existence of other forms of Comedy such as Situational comedy, Sarcasm, Puns, Anecdotes, Dark humour, catch tales, irony, mocks, spoofs, practical jokes, dead baby jokes and so on. The governments of over 212 countries have signed a treaty to control the number of PJs cracked each day but in vain. A few organisations have been set up to revive the endangered forms of comedy. UNECRO (United Nations Endangered Comedy Revival Organisation) has been set up with Matt Groening as president to make sure the other forms of comedy don't go extinct.

You can do your part to control the rapid spreading of PJs

Protect yourself: When you know some one is about to crack a PJ, think about dying kittens and make yourself sad. This is one of the most effective forms of protections available.
Post laughter precaution: If you happen to laugh at a PJ, the best thing you can do is immediately insult the PJer to make sure he feels bad and doesn't crack more PJs.
Abstinence: The best way to handle PJs would be to abstain yourself from the need for laughter. Although difficult at first, its easy to master. Within a few years you will be an abstainee.
If you see a person cracking a PJ, go tell him about the dangers of PJs. Educate him of the rights and the wrongs. The greatest battle is the battle not fought but if he doesn't listen, he is all yours.
No matter what happens, do not laugh. Laughter may be the best medicine but laughing at a PJ could be the best medicine for the PJ as well. Laughter encourages people to crack more PJs.
Organise regular public gatherings where you can spread awareness about the negatives of PJs. You could start of in your campus or office and it can grow with time.
Scoring system: Whenever a person cracks a PJ, give him a -10. When he cracks a good joke, give him a +10. Maintain scores of each person you know in a spread sheet and keep them informed about their scores. The human tendency to improve himself will take care of the rest.
File a petition to make it illegal to crack a PJ. It would help a lot if there was a law preventing the crackage of PJs. A few petitions have been filed already, offer your support!

Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. The power is yours!

A day at the passport office. (Entire day)

2010-07-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

It all started on 19^th February ~~June~~ 1990, the day the author was officially born to his proud parents. His parents saw the cute baby and based on the skin colour immediately decided that he should go to the USA for higher studies so that he could be amongst people of the same colour. To go abroad for higher studies, the author needs to write the GRE for which he needs his passport as a primary ID. Funnily, the mess card from the 6th semester, the 12th standard library card, the Genilia D'Souza fan club membership card and even his facebook profile doesn't serve the purpose as a primary ID, all of which used to work perfectly fine everywhere else. The author had to apply for his passport and hence he writes this blog to tell the readers about the wonderful journey he took to get his passport.


Two days after the author was born

First of all the following details need to be given with proof to a passport officer before he approves your passport.

Date of birth
Current address
Educated/Uneducated
Student/Working
Smoker/Non-smoker
Alive/Dead
Terrorist/Non-terrorist

The above details have to be furnished. It may look simple to your eye at first but several complications do arise.

Usually your matriculation certificate will be good enough as a date of birth proof but if you happen to be unfortunately born to an evil mother who on purpose delayed your birth so that you are born after January 26th 1989, you will have to compulsorily furnish your birth certificate. This may also be simple but if you happen to be born to an evil father who thought you were too intelligent to stay home and made you join school a year early and also happened to change your date of birth given at your school later on, resulting in a conflict between your birth certificate and your matriculation certificate, things can get tricky.

In such cases, you may have to apply for a for a fresh issue of birth certificate making an embarrassing statement that you were born at your residence and your uneducated parents didn't know how to register your birth. All these happen only in hypothetical scenarios and no one really has to give much thought to it. The readers are however advised to make sure that their birth certificate is in English, birth certificates in any other language are considered to be that of a terrorist and immediately rejected. The author's sister has a unique hobby of changing her date of birth and she has managed to re-register herself in the office so many times that she contributes to 0.007% of the Indian population.

When the author went to the passport office to get his passport, he was asked to get his spouse's passport as an additional document for proof. The author tried explaining that he wasn't married yet and showed the officer an earlier post in this blog as a proof in vain. He had to wait for a year to turn 21 and be eligible and get a passport as proof but he decided to wait for the retarded officer to leave and he silently sneaked in to the next level.

For the address proof, you need one of the following

Electricity bill, water bill, telephone bill of a house in your name
Electricity bill, water bill, telephone bill of a house in your father's name + paternal identity proof
Bank pass book which shows at least 7 transactions in every month in the past one year.
(Clearly a person who uses a bank at least 7 times a month is unlikely to be a terrorist.) Also terrorists don't live in the same place for more than a year and this fact has been used effectively to filter out terrorists. The applications of people (like my good friend Rikin) who haven't lived in the same place for over a year are immediately rejected because they are very likely to be terrorists.

For the paternal identity proof, one has to get his and his father's DNA sampled and a DNA comparison should be made and the relation should be established. The report should be attested by a gazetted/government officer. Since government officers are not usually corrupt, they are required to approve the report. Since the author hadn't sampled his DNA yet, he had to go to the bank and make a few transactions to raise the number and then get his passbook updated.

The passport system in India has been designed to minimise the number of terrorists who get passports. The current system will soon be changed to nullify the terrorist intake percentage to 0. The modification requires a passport applicant to have a valid passport in his name in order to apply for a passport. This will ensure that only non-terrorists will get a valid passport.[Proof by induction, base case left as exercise] All the readers are urged to get a passport as soon as possible before Arjun Singh makes sure the new system is implemented.

For Tatkal applications, one of the following documents are required.

Ration card
Arms licence
OBC/SC/ST certificate
Voter's identity cardProperty documents
Pension documents
Railway cards

Since 8 out of every 10 students have a ration card and the arms licence and 7 out of every 10 students have property documents and pension documents and since 47.2% of the students belong to OBC/SC/ST, the system is considered to be very student friendly. The passport system of India has been nominated as the youth icon and will probably be a successor to Orkut which won the title a few years ago.

The author thought the job was too easy for him and could be given to some one else and took the advice of his best friend (he has many) and approached a passport agent in Gandhi Bazaar. Passport agents save a lot of time by making the applicant stand in queue for several hours in front of the passport office and saves a lot of money by making the applicant pay them a hefty sum of Rs 600/- for the sole job of filling up the application form. [Meaning disambiguation: Agents save a lot of their own time and money]

In fact, one spends so much time in the queue that he makes a lot of friends. The author's number of friends on facebook has grown by 16% after his visits to the passport office. In fact, if one isn't already stuck, he can even get a girl friend or a dozen just by being with them as a support in their time of grief at the passport office.

Once inside the passport office one will have to go through 3 levels, each level tougher than the previous one. A set of passport officers have been sorted in the order of increasing optical power and have been divided into 3 groups, one with the least vision, the one with the best vision and the rest in the other. The one with the least vision does the first round of screening and the ones with the best vision do the last round of screening essentially on the same set of documents. People with poor vision take little time to process the documents and the ones with the best vision take a lot of time actually going through your telephone bill and may even question you about people who you frequently call.

Some innovative industrial engineering principles have been used in the office to boost productivity. The number of people processing documents at each step should depend on the speed of the step and hence the speed of each step is assigned as a weight to calculate the number of people at each step and hence the slowest step has the fewest people and the fastest step has the most number of people. An adobe flex based software which runs on Internet Explorer 6 which crashes every time a photograph of a guy with his eyes closed is taken. Thus such loss of productivity is balanced by the other measures taken to boost productivity.

Some of the emerging businesses because of this system are Passport agents as mentioned earlier, Passport trauma care centres to treat people who undergo trauma after their visit to the office, Passport office Cupids who play the game of match making at the passport office and finally facebook like-pages. A few friends of the author yesterday liked "standing in the passport office for several hours and not getting a token and coming back", "trying to fill passport application, first page done .... 5 minutes later slept zzz ..." and played facebook games like "what kind of a passport are you normal/tatkal/rejected?" and "What kind of a passport rejection will you face?" and so on.

Any way by the end of the day after 12 hours of hard work, the author got his ACK at the office and only a police officer dude stands between him and his passport. The master of pain has mastered pain and managed to keep his calm all thanks to a small tune that kept running in his head.

The readers are requested to comment if they feel the pain of the author or have been pained by the author at some point of time or hates it when the author uses "the author" instead of "I".

Welcome to the Jungle - IITM survival guide

2010-06-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

This post is intended for freshers at IITM. If you are not a fresher, please do read it and also encourage freshers you know, to read this post so that it can help as many people as possible. This post is a survival guide for freshers at IIT Madras. The following are the various issues where freshers need orientation.

Rooms:
The rooms at IITM are just awesome, they are neatly tiled and well furnished. A cot, a chair, a spacious wardrobe, a computer table, book shelves completely fill up the 3.5'x5' room you get. 3.5 and 5.5 feet may seem small but the rooms are spacious as they are 14' high. The room can accommodate up to 4 people on chairs.
Watch-out:- There have been incidents where snakes have been seen at the windows of rooms. Only 68% of snake bites are fatal and hence this need not be a major concern.

Food:
The food in IITM is so awesome that it requires an entire post to describe it and hence here is the post that will answer all your queries. For people who don't like mess food, there are alternatives. The author doesn't know much about the quality of mess food these days because his lunch has mainly been in the fruit-shop consisting of water-melons.

Night-life:
The LAN gets cut at 12:00, that being the only source of your entertainment for freshers, the seniors of IITM considering their needs have arranged for an alternate way of entertainment. Every night seniors delightedly invite them to their rooms for the first few days when they miss normal life the most. Other seniors are also invited for the party. The seniors usually dance in a group or sing funny songs to entertain you. Sometimes they sing and dance at the same time for the song that freshers suggest. There are question answer rounds where seniors answer your questions. That is when you find out important things like their AIR, their room-wife and so on. Some times, educational videos involving biology, chemistry, physics etc are shown. At the end, you get to give a cute name to your senior for example instinct, duck, C-Pro, lighter, Juga, KP, monkey etc.
watch out:
Sleeping for less than 6 hours a day turns you into a zombie. Make sure you use your class-timings [refer paragraph below] wisely.

Classes:
IITM is known for its huge classrooms and some classrooms can accommodate over 1000 people at a time. Such classrooms were built because the number of students coming in are rising every year. Currently the class strength is around 200 and the freshers end up making a lot of friends in their first year.
A few courses have remote learning programs where a professor teaches 3 huge classes at the same time. The prof stays and teaches in the centre room and a video of the prof is played in two neighbouring classes. Teachers assistants however are present everywhere looking out for students who talk to each other in class. They are then dealt with seriously.
watch-out:
Catch a seat early, you may have to with a girl otherwise. How is that bad? You will know soon.
Do not talk in the class, the professors give punishments and you will be made to kneel down before everyone.
95% attendance is compulsory. This means you can skip at most one class.
Workshop:

Usually IITians end up being in big companies and they sit in their cubicles in front of a computer with a cool chair. They don't realise the value of hard-work, hence there is a workshop that students can use to realise what hard work is all about. Most of the 'professors' at the workshop take it too seriously and insist the students on writing notes, reports and manuals. By the end of the course, the student will be a qualified construction worker, painter, miner, carpenter, electrician, moulder, musician, beautician, lift-boy and of course badly injured. All the things that you will ever need in your life are taught in the workshops.
Watch-out:
Before hitting the nail, take your finger off it.
Do not make fun of the electrician in English, he does manage to understand.

Sports:
Most of the evenings are spent playing sports. Wall climbing, bungee jumping are the most famous ones at IITM. Skating (pipe and rails), wave surfing, mountain climbing are less preferred. Sports are compulsory for freshers as 2 years of IIT preparation would have made them unfit. The sports are quite safe in IITM. Very few fatalities are reported every year.

Here are something you will have to really watch out for.
Inter-hostel violence:
Some IITians are really aggressive, they go to the extent of scolding a hostel's mother even if that didn't make sense to a sane guy. Usually fights break out in the hostel zone over who gets to win Shroeter although the winner of the fight doesn't really get anything except a victim or two. Many innocent people from Ganga were slaughtered by people from Tapti after they cheated in a wall-climbing match.
Watch-out:
Carry a weapon with you always. You can convert to Sikhism, that helps. You can defend yourself with a Kripan.
Always attack first, do not defend!

Forests:
As you may know now, IITM was established illegally on forest land. There are a wide range of creatures like monkeys, black-buck, mongoose, spotted deer and of course their predators. There are just 12 tigers left in the forest now and the numbers are fast declining but since the number of students have gone up in recent years, their chances of survival have improved.
Watch-out:
Wear anti tiger masks, always travel in groups and always take an adult with you.

Girls:
The girls in IITM the most beautiful ones I have ever seen. You will enjoy your stay at IITM. In fact you will have so many options that you will start singing "Kisko pyaar karoon, kaise pyaar karoon, woh bhi hai, yeh bhi hai, tu bhi hai, haye!". Although endangered, the numbers are rising each year. Writing any further about them will probably result in an unprovoked attack and hence the author stops at this stage.
Watch-out:
The author has to watch out now, the wrath of the goddesses are about to follow him, enjoy! you are safe.

Apart from the above topics, there are a few more that are worth discussing like festivals (Shaastra, Saarang and some unknow management festival), the labs at IIT Madras, the library, Schroeter, Tech-soc, Lit-soc, Centre for Innovation, Sustainability network but the author just ran out of ink and hence won't be writing about any of the above insignificant topics.

No matter what happens, always be proud of yourself and remember, you have cleared the JEE and you now are an IITian, just like every one else there.

The great Indian Wedding

2010-05-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

"Female girl wanted. Non-smoker, non-ugly." - Joey tribbiani

"Posting one of my quotes before every article is such a cliché." - Oscar Wilde

All characters in the following article are fictitious and any resemblance to any character dead/alive/zombie are accidental and should be ignored.

Marriages are usually made in heaven, but in some places like India, they are man-made. There are many types of marriages: love marriages, forced marriages, child marriages, bought marriages, accidental marriages (like in Indian movies), same-gender marriages, inter-species marriage, multiple marriages. The following article will explore an age old paradigm of an arranged marriage, its advantages, its disadvantages and its effects on Indian heritage, Indian mentality and probably climate change.

There was once a time in India where the father of a newly born child used to buy some cotton from the merchant across and the road and pay by making a marriage deal with him. The deal would enable the babies of the two parties to get married. Being just toddlers, unable to walk, the babies had to crawl around the sacred fire thrice to complete the marriage ritual to become a couple.

[ Two babies, getting ready for the ritual ]

In the time of kings, a king would summon a random set of people found on the road and organise a competition (wrestling, archery, wall climbing, rhyme recitation, lemon and spoon to name a few) and the princess of the land would be forcibly married off to the winner of the competition, a guy she just met. The kings in those days found high correlations between successful genes and victory in say, an air guitaring competition. In fact Sita was made to marry Rama after he won an archery competition. (source Tinkle)

[ Lemon and spoon competition for a person who probably swings both ways ]

In the author's father time, the author's father realised he was engaged only when a few of his friends called him up to congratulate him on getting engaged. His father then wrote a letter the following week informing him that his engagement had been conducted.

That was all in the past, things have changed a lot in the 21st century. The face of an arranged marriage has totally changed. The selection process now starts off when the parents of a girl and those of a boy go on a date. If there is a successful conversation between the two pairs, the selection goes to its next phase. In the next phase the parents go to a priest and seek his consent for the marriage. The priest then uses the birthdays of the two and analyses the positions of the sun, the moon and the stars at the time of birth and uses a few rules to decide whether the marriage can happen or not.

Here are some of the rules that are used

If a person is born in prime numbered months, he is a demon. If a person is born in a month number which is a fibonocci number, he is a human. In other cases, the person is a god.
A human boy can't marry a god girl, a demon boy can't marry a human girl, a human boy cannot marry a tiger and finally a god boy can't marry any girl.
If the couple can still marry, they go on to the next round.
The group of stars that are brightest, directly opposite to the sun on the date of birth of the boy and the girl are selected and the pattern is analysed.
There are 12 such patterns: goat, bull, crab, lion, fish, scorpion, chair, computer, nuclear reactor, merry-go-round, university campus, face with acne.
Common rules are now applied like lion eats goat, scorpion stings crab, bull eats table, bull gores goat, computer sits on a chair, fish doesn't know how to use a computer, nuclear reactor is not in the university campus and a face with acne beats everything.
If the guy's pattern beats the girl's pattern, they are into the next round.
Every digit in the girls birthday is now added up, same goes for the boy. They are fed as inputs to a random number generator as a seed. The random number modulo 36 is calculated. if the value is more than 18, they are made for each other. In the olden days, the random number generation was done manually, these days there are numerous softwares available in the market for the job.
Some times there is an extra round conducted in case of certain girls. If the girl did not get a sufficient score in the previous rounds, she is given extra tasks before being eligible to marry. Say for example marrying a tree. This is very common and happens even in royal families.

Now that the major obstacle to a marriage has been dealt with, the parents of the guy and the girl can go on and get engaged and become a couple-couple. After the engagement, its finalised that the boy and the girl will get married. This is when the boy and the girl get to know about each other and get the licence to chat.

Even in an arranged marriage, the symptoms of love start appearing within a fortnight of the arrangement of marriage. The boy and the girl start calling each other names like 'cutie', 'sweetie', 'meetie', 'jaanu' and so on to show affection. They spend hours video chatting, stealing away considerable amount of bandwidth which could be effectively utilised by another connection in the house probably by a sibling to download ebooks, ACM-papers and other educational content. They keep contacting each other every few hours at work and at home. When they don't get a reply and a time out is detected, they get angry/tense and sometimes even end up beating up their sibling, who by the way is very likely a nice guy who doesn't make fun of the situation. They make each other smile all the time and sometimes actually laugh. These according to experts are symptoms of love.

Arranged marriages are better than love marriages because

one doesn't have to fall in love with some one and realise that the person is a married mother of two and even has a pet dog by the name Tommie. The unnecessary depression that is undergone, the amount of time that is wasted in recovery from the madness all alone, the additions of arbitrary girls to the friends list in one's facebook/twitter accounts to console oneself, can all be easily avoided in case of an arranged marriage because statistics show that in 96% of the cases, the bride is unmarried and in 99.97% of the cases the bride is not yet a mother.
One doesn't have to pack his luggage in a hurry, run away from home with the girl he loves, get married and start living in a hotel room where he unpacks his luggage to realise that he hasn't brought any of his underwear. The girl may probably get furious if she realises that her husband has been wearing the same underwear for over a week. Any attempts in explaining the similar system people follow in college campuses where clothes are changed once a fortnight will probably end the marriage in just 7 days.
One doesn't have to fall in love with a girl whose face is as white as snow to only realise on the night after the marriage that its just the face that's as white as snow. Speaking of which, there is not much an arranged marriage can do about it but the author felt that bringing it up was important.

The author interviewed a cricket players who has been through both arranged and love marriages and asked him about his views on marriage in India for which he had the following to say.

"Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, Alla ko shukr hai mera doosri Shaadhi huvi. My first marriage was love. I chat with the girl online, she show me pictures, I love her pictures. I ask her photo real? she said yes. 2 saal baad, Internet relay chat pe hamaari Shaadi huvi. Maine ek SMS bhi bejha tha 'Nikah Nikah Nikah' bolke. Shaadhi ke baad I find girl is not look good, I not love her any more. Love marriage is like cricket, one team is play well and win and other team is loose. Arrange marriage is not like that, is me toh dono family ek hota hai. In this case two nations becomes one. All of the people in my land love Sanya a lot and creates a website called sanyaBhabhi.com in love for her."

THIS POST IS MEANT FOR FUN ONLY, MOST PARTS OF IT ARE NOT SERIOUS. PLEASE COMMENT IF YOU LIKED THE POST.

Lan cuts at IITM

2010-05-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Since IIT-JEE results will be out soon and the admissions will begin eventually, the author has decided to revamp his wall and share his two cents of information about the IITs and IITM in specific with a selfish motive of increasing the hit rate for this page. To the people who are new to this place, a quick introduction. The author is a Computer Science student at IITM in his final year who strives hard to maintain this blog to provide reliable information to the innocent students trying to learn about the new world (IITM) they are trying to enter.

This post is about one of the policies that the administration of IITM has introduced to maximise productivity of the engineers that they manufacture. The LAN-cut law was passed in 2009 by the senate of IITM and was signed by Mani A, the chairman of CCW. According to the law, the institute LAN should be made dis-functional in IITM at the stroke of mid-night and should be switched on at two in the afternoon on all weekends. Why did Mani introduce such an arbitrary law in IITM? We will try to find out in this post.

Sustainability:
The SNet group of IITM is a student initiative established in June, 2009. According to the site, the immediate task was to save power as this would be appealing to everyone on campus in IITM. A survey and study followed in order to understand the power consumption pattern of the IITM campus. It was found that the peak hour of Internet usage was between 12:00AM and 1:00 AM. Students of IITM are used to completing their home works in that period of time and hence they download their e-books during that hour. The senate of IITM thought it would be a great save of some precious calories by cutting of LAN during that period and hence with no further thought, passed the above mentioned bill. Since some evil students have managed to crack the system and have obtained access to get Internet after 12:00 AM, the IITM senate now plans to cut off the power supply to the rooms as well. This will be implemented next summer according to some reliable sources. The mid-night canteen Olive-Kittchen as it is called now will change its timings to use the day light and will now be renamed 'mid-day express'.

Productivity:
The IITM DOMS made an in depth method study and work measurement on the students and came up with a remarkable discovery that 6 to 7 hours of sleep could boost examination results by around 2%. This was only next to nutritious-tasty food (24%), on the list of things that could boost productivity in IITM. The senate of IITM flipped a coin and chose to make the students sleep between 12:00 AM and 7:00 AM instead of the other alternative. This they planned to achieve by cutting off the IITM LAN.

Piracy:
Piracy is a major issue in the IITM LAN. The policy makers decided to decrease piracy by 20% by introducing LAN cuts in IITM. By cutting off the LAN at 12:00 AM, the administration of IITM has managed to cut the number of movie downloads by around 20% and hence has taken its step to fight piracy. Since students of IITM prefer to watch movies when they are fresh, i.e just after downloading, it is very unlikely that a student downloads a movie at 11:00 PM and watches it at 2:00 AM as the movie would have lost its freshness by then.

Gaming:
The students of IITM love to play games during End-semester examination and end up missing their end-semester examinations. In fact, there have been over 5 such documented cases of students missing exams in IITM in the past decade, which is around 1 every 2 years. To top that, a student from the humanities department of IITM, wrote a paper in which he said he felt that students are more likely to miss an exam because of gaming than because of a night-out studying. Two of the members in the senate being from the humanities department of IITM, liked the excellent vocabulary used in the paper and decided to veto on LAN cuts.

Chatting:
The Sting-team of IITM conducted raids in some hostels in IITM by breaking into the students rooms, to find out what the students had been up to and wrote a report on their findings. Although one of the people in the Sting-team of IITM who tried to raid the Sharavathi hostel, was mauled to death by angry girls, they managed to get information about the rest of hostels in IITM. According to the report on IITM, 86% of the students had signed into Google talk gadget in Gmail and 23% of them had chatted with a person of the opposite gender at least once that week. This finding about IITM hurt the religious sentiments of some of the people in Tamil Nadu where two people of the opposite gender speak to each other only after they are married. This was also one of the reasons why IIT has a 95% reservation for boys.

IPL:
The IPL chairman Lalit Modi wrote a secret letter to the dean of IITM where he expressed his interest to donate large sums of money if the students are forcefully made to watch IPL matches in the common room. Since You Tube streaming of IPL matches hadn't been introduced yet in 2009, the dean of IITM decided to cut off the LAN according to sources.

Manual labour:
There are rumours according to which, the IITM LAN goes through a single gateway where a person manually holds two pieces of wire together to keep them connected. Since he feels sleepy after 12:00 AM, the LAN at IITM has no option but to go down. The person holding the wires does not sleep on Saturdays and Sundays and that explains the curfew holding only on weekdays in IITM. Once in a while, the person at IITM feels itchy and scratches himself and during this period of time, he lets the wire go for a minute. This explains the frequent connection and disconnection of the Internet at IITM during the day time. The police academy in IITM is trying to teach the person to manually sniff packets that contain dirty things and dis-allow such packets to flow. Since people in Chennai sleep early in general, no person has been found who can replace this person at IITM. If you think you can handle the job, you are welcome at IITM.

Nehru's goal:
The dean on the 50th year anniversary of IITM remembered one of the founders of IITM and the goals that he had in mind while establishing IITM. He interpreted one of the quotes he made as "At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, IITM shall sleep as well." and hence possibly decided to cut LAN at IITM at 12:00 AM. Source - Advait Alai (my friend)

Overheating of server:
The temperature in Chennai is 44 degrees Celsius in the morning and drops to a very low value of 36 degrees Celsius in the night at IITM. Despite the night temperature being that low, the servers at IITM cannot handle these temperatures and hence have to be turned off in the night at 12:00 AM where studious students of IITM need it the most.

The author went and met Mani A and asked him why the LAN was cut in IITM. "Who are you, what do you want? Show me your ID card? Who are you?" Mani said for over 15 minutes. Finally on giving a clear explanation, he said "see, 20 years ago, no LAN. Why are you wanting LAN now?"

Now that we know the causes of LAN cuts in IITM, here are some of the effects.

The temperature of the IITM has decreased by 1 Kelvin because of the decrease in the electricity consumption.
There has been an overall increase in the number of students in the class room. The Probability and Random Processes class had an average of over 208 people in it as opposed to about 172 the previous year. Although critics say the increase in the student intake is the reason for the same, the dean of IITM has rubbished the claims and suspended the critic for making such criticism.
The performance of students has gone up by 2% as suggested by the DOMS IITM and a huge party was organised to celebrate it in April 2010.
The number of cases of pre-marital chatting in IITM has come down. The number will be brought down further by the administration by creating a separate campus for female students outside of IITM.
The number of visits by students to the library after mid-night has increased on average. Again critics claim the students visit the library for pre-marital meetings and again the dean of IITM has silenced the critics by debarring them.

Whatever the reasons might be, the students of IITM are at a loss because of the inefficient utilisation of Bandwidth which otherwise would have been effectively utilised as the screen-shot below clearly shows.

[DC++ in IITM Courtesy Mohammed Puli Iqbal]

3 months of Object oriented programming

2009-07-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

list kashyap::myToBuyList ()
{
list myList;

myList->addItems
(
myBed = new bed(this->room()),
new pillows (this->room()->myBed()),
new wallPics (this->room()->wall()),
new coolers (this->Laptop()),
new stickers (this->Laptop()),
new books (this, bookName::dataBase, bookName::AI, bookName::programmingParadigms),
new chair (myRoom, chair::looks | chair::comfort),
new beanBag (this->room()),
new amplifier (this->guitar()),
new fruitsContract (this->friends(ArunKJ))
);

m_cashRequired = getCost(myList->getCost());

this->dad()->borrowCash(m_cashRequired);

return list;
}

Hostel nites

2009-04-14T04:22:00.000-07:00

"" ---- Oscar wilde

This is a continuation from my previous article. Well Duh!

One of the other hostels that I visited was JAM. The theme there was 'confusion'. At the entrance they had put up some dried grass, suggesting a barn yard theme. Inside, it was banyan tree themed. Then there was a crematory theme at the side. Then there was this pink coloured entrance drink. All the tube lights were wrapped with pink paper suggesting a hello kitty theme as I had predicted. The arbitrary sounds of woman shrieking at the top of her voice and zombies moaning at the bottom of his voice, that they had kept playing at the entrance did not match any of the other themes. Confusion it was! People weren't sure who was in charge of organizing the hostel night. There was a great confusion over who was in power. It was one among the literary secretary, the general secretary, the warden, and the Army. The hostel warden finally showed that he was all-powerful, by throwing a mango up in the air, in analogy with firing of a gun-shot, and marked the beginning of the hostel night.

Jam nite of 2009 will forever be known as the great ice-cream disaster. The jolly-olly man lost his patience and started shouting around at innocent civilians when asked for ice-cream. People criticised him for his actions, little thinking that he had family and children too. They needed all the boxes of ice-cream he was trying to save. The ice-cream part of the hostel night suggested the Thirupathi theme. The queue started all the way from the central library.

Then there was Pamba night. Pamba hostel was so small that they could not have caterers to prepare food. They did have a couple of waiters to serve food instead. There were room services and all the people had to enjoy Pamba night sitting in their rooms. The food was brought from SAC and served. Eventually they were all out of the Cheetos packets, the Bourbon biscuits and the five-star chocolates. Lots of people left the hostel hungry and headed out to Godav and Sarayu which offered a promising dinner. There was no theme. There was just a banner they had put up at the entrance of the hostel saying "This is Pamba night Please Note: our theme is 'Dark night' ".

The song M.Tech chali M.S chali was played in the hostel, indicating the departure of the old people. In the Music room of Pamba they held their cultural events. Some amateur bands practised some songs. CCW stall operator turned chairman Money and Model turned actor Idly gave their speeches. Money, the president of the region called staff occupied hostel-zone (POK) gave a speech that went something like "Who are you? Who are you guys? What do you want? Who are you? Why have you brought me here? Show me your ID cards. Who are you? Approach me through the cultural secretaries for things like these. What do you guys want..."

After that there was Sharaav night, it was held in a theatre because The Taj, where they live does not have space for over 20 people and they did not want it to get dirty. Yours arbitrarily had also been invited by a friend along with a few other members of the geek squad. The theatre was Jam packed, with more number of guys turning up than girls. The dean made a great observation that all the boys had unusually dressed up well. They were clean and neat, and the smell of the rotting dead deer around them had totally vanished. It is estimated that 10,000 liters of AXE deodorant was used up on that day.

As usual there were a lot of uninvited monkeys that turned up. This time they were after the ice-cream. Some of them took away whole boxes of ice-cream to their caves and burrows not caring about the high calorific content in them.

After the grand feast there was a guided trip to The Taj in the Amazon. On any ordinary night / day, even monkeys aren't allowed to enter The Taj. There are sniper operators at the terrace with 'shoot monkeys on sight' orders (to prevent monkeys to enter from the top) and since most monkeys don't have ID cards, they can't enter from the front either. This is the only night in the calendar where males are allowed in the hotel. Even the T.T room has only broken balls in it.

The Amazon women who lived in The Grand Taj had over 50 people working there, for the maintenance of their hotel. An emergency meeting is called every time a stain is seen of a wall. The Taj had an unusually large number of mirrors or probably the theme was china-town and mirrors were some how linked to ceramics. Another parallel is that they had been put there to cover the stains on the wall. Either way, one could see herself self every-where. Whenever a batch passes out of Tapti, the pass-outs plant a tree. There is a rumour that the Amazon women passing out, fit a mirror on the wall instead.

In the so-called quadrangle which is as big as a single room in any boys hostel, the Amazon women had organised a Juke-box. The same songs played in the other hostels were played here too. A few profs and a few wives danced there. The RGs had also been put up there. There were a few uninvited bachelors waiting outside the hotel, waiting for a miracle to happen. Nothing happened.

This was a great week, Alak and Ganga left. Lots of unnecessary criticism still left.

Mu ha ha haaa ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
--- Oscar Wilde

Ye olde Hostel Knight

2009-04-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

What was the question again?
-Oscar wilde

After being told by a number of people that my previous post sucked, I've finally removed it. This post is about my hostel night which was yesterday. About the title, when some freshie girl was told the name of the latest bat-man movie that was going to be aired in the Open Air Theater, she replied saying "omg! Do they screen such movies in public?"

A hostel night is basically a night where arbitrary people from their hostels go to a hostel in search of food and shelter and to listen to the song 'Gasolene'. That is how I would describe it, other people have other views. It also involves socialising like guys inviting girls over to their hostels. For strategic people like Barney ( My computer science friend from my hostel), a hostel nite involves calling one guy from each hostel so that you get called back. For some, this is the only time of the year where they get to visit Sharav, well for the lucky ones :( :'( sob!

:) A hostel night generally involves a theme, except the hostels for the elderly (Krishna, Cauvery ... ) where they are too lazy to think of a theme; and some hostels like Pamba, where they don't have enough man-power to think of a theme. Some hostels like Brahmaputra don't have a hostel nite at all! They consider it an inauspicious activity. Legend has it that in the Brahmaputra hostel nite of 1933, monkeys invaded their hostel and borrowed all the food that had been prepared for the night, and eventually died eating human food. Sindhu doesn't have a hostel night because people there are too old to stay awake during the night, they have a hostel day instead during Yugadi where they serve food from a local Mutt ( Matha in Kannada). Mahanadi tried organising one but no catarers were ready to cater just 13 people. Mandakini is flooded through out the year so they don't get lucky either. They organise their hostel nites in Taramani, the guest house.

Back to the theme, the theme of our hostel nite was boats. Half of the 2nd year naval-arc junta are found in Tapti and hence 'boats' was chosen as the theme. Decoration included having a huge picture of a boat in front of the hostel, a part of it had to be eventually torn to let people in, although the monkeys could enter from the top. Inside the hostel you could find the picture of a steering wheel stuck in the noticeboard, just like its stuck in a real ship. There was a picture of a zombie at the front, which was intended to scare people. There were empty bottles hanging from above just like they show in the movies. The hostel also had the red-carpet, found in the modern fishing boats.

After entering the hostel, one would feel as if he is in a real boat, with caterers dressed like boatsmen, one leg shorter than the other, with parrots on their shoulders. Food was kept in barrels and served with swords. There were lots of chairs arranged, just like in a boat. A ramp had also been setup, where people sang and danced. Captain Jack sparrow was made to walk the ramp and sing a song from 'life in a metro' at knife-point. He cried and cried and people cheered. Of course, there was some excellent food from the 'excellent' mess. Since the day was auspicious, we had to pay thrice the usual amount for the food.

Then there were RGs that had been put up. In Tapti they were so early that they got drenched in rain the previous night. They were then dried in the washing-machine drier on that day. They finally brought it at around 10:00 IST and hung in our garden for drying. Not all of the RGs dried in time. 1 of them couldn't make it.

At the end all boatsmen did what all they do best, and ended up waking in a hangover the next day.

The hostel nite was quite good. Our hostel nite affairs sec, Muvva had done a great job. The 60 lacks we spent was all worth it. 15 lacks out of the 60 were spent on the ambiance.

Old glass bottles that were hanging at the veranda 1 lakh rupees.
The Pink coloured paper that covered the tubelight there - 50 thousand rupees.
Pieces of thermocoal for the steering wheel / zombie - 3 lakh rupees.
The picture of the boat at the hostel entrance - 7 lakh
The tailor who was hired to cut a part of the picture - 30 thousand
Pirate masks, parrots, barrels, swords, captain-Jack-sparrow - rest of the money
The bamboo stick and the dirty old black cloth meant to look like sails stuck outside the hostel - priceless

There are some things that money could not buy. For everything else they have the hostel general budget.

On the next episode of the Hostel Knight, we will give you a review of Jam, the theme is expected to be one among hello kitty and the teletubbies. We will find out only tomorrow.

Oh hostel nitaa? Appadiya? Naa kuda varuve!
Rajaanie Konth

The taste of IIT

2008-12-02T05:20:00.000-08:00

"There are only two types of people in this world, one which has read this blog and the other which is going to read this blog." -- Adhiraj Alai

IIT is a prestigious institute, the place where almost all IITians are from. It is known for the leaders it manufactures, the brainy raw materials it take in and the useful workaholics it sends out to conquer the world. We all know about IITs and the IITM, but what people in general don't know is about the food in IIT. That is the purpose of my blog, to show the unlucky people who did not manage to get in that there is at least one thing they are better off at. This post is dedicated to all the people who've attempted to lose their lives in vain) after getting a taste of the food at IITM.

IIT has 6 main places where people find food-
Guru
Bassera
Tiffanys
CCD
Campus Cafe
SAC (students activity centre)
Mess

First of all Gurunath patisseries. According to 1931 census, it is known that more number of people go for guru for grub than to Thirupati for grub. Guru in some contexts represent the whole of IITM. Eg. It is a centre for bio-diversity; So many different species of living organisms can be found in one small area. Cats, dogs, deer, man ... you name it, you will find it grazing there. It is also reported that 2 million species of insects are found it that 30 x 50 sq feet of land. Species which include the puff chasing mad-fly and the fevicol ad-fly [The red beetle like insect which are self symbiotes {two insects stick to each other no matter where they go and hence fevicol}]. Due to the introduction of the pesto-flash, the number of insect species has come down from 2 million to million down 50% and hence the total number of species are down from 2,000,0004 to 1,000,004.

Guru is one of the wealthiest stalls ever. Hot veg puffs (or weggi puff as the owner likes to call it) get sold like hot cakes there. If one goes at 6:30 or later, he/she will find that the menu has only Veg puff and egg puff other than chats, speaking about which, one can hear "SAAAAR token numbar FIFty NAYAN" at least a hunded times a day in the chat counter***. The chat counter also sells Maggi. Recently a Pizza company joined the chat stall and now they sell miniature Pizzas. The side effect of that is that they now sell Maggi 30 minutes or free noodles instead of the more popular '2 minutes noodles'.

Guru also sells American sweet corn. A combination of Indian corn, Indian Masala, Indian land and an Indian salesman gives rise to American sweet corn. This is so because its obviously an American innovation of using Aluminium foil as an insulator for heat replacing the traditional corn skin which is a revolution in the corn industry. The stall is called Grills and steam. The founders of this empire were Bill Grills and Sweety pie (both American), that explains the origin of the terms "sweet" corn and "Grills" and steam.

You can find Ice-tea at the heart of IIT in the coffee stall. The guy who operates the thing doesn't speak. (I couldn't think of anything funny, so I put a fact instead.)

Coming to Bassera the midnight express, it is a place where food doesn't come in the order it is placed in. The place was once filled with people, lots of them and was called Quark Minar instead, now its Bassera. The Administration challenged the Pizza guys in Gurunath and reduced it to 29 minutes and 59 seconds or less and hence this barren grazing field, the home of all nocturnal IITians is called the midnight express.

Tiffanys: I remember, Just yesterday, the prizes were just like a baby and now its all grown up, brings tears in my eyes. The administration wanted to call it 'Tiffanys express' but then realised self mockery was not always good and later deleted the latter part of the name. One particular item I like here is the cup of horlicks where they add a little milk to a cup full of horlicks. Two boards have been put up there saying 'We deliver quality' and 'Self service' which send mixed messages to their customers. They also have a board put up outside saying "Table cleaners wanted". This is probably an attempt to open the waitressing industry options to IITians

CCD stands for Cafe Coffee day. Every day hundreds of IITians who are categorised under 'rich' come here to change their category. They offer a variety of coffee like cold, hot, with sugar without sugar, drinkable, eatable, with ice cream, without ice cream, affordable, unaffordable, Indian beans, Javan beans, with coffee, without coffee etc.. They offer other items too like samples of cookies worth 10 bucks which you pay for, Mint for 3 bucks a piece, water from the lake for 10 bucks a liter.

Campus Cafe: cant really complain here except, it can be called the campus restaurant instead.

SAC: The students activities centre not to be confused with students amenities centre at Guru or the students activities centre which ain't got no food, is one of the places where most of the people meet half their daily energy requirements. It has been calculated that SAC and Guru together contribute to 25% of the total ecological foot-print of India. Every year freshies who are unaware are honored with the pride of being a sac vol and then he is trapped for an entire year gradually realizing he has a lab test on the day of the sac-vol treat.

Mess: The mess is one place where the Darwinian law of natural selection doesn't hold good. RR mess hardly has any biological off-springs and yet is not extinct after a number of generations! The Aloo crap-fry that is prepared Monday Wednesday Thursday afternoon has no takers, yet not yet extinct. The friday evening M1 menu consists of Banana, bread, blood n balls (They call it veg-Manchurian). Blood n balls has no takers, still alive.

In the mornings we have Idly Vada (Monday), pulses,vegetables and masala (Tuesday), Dosa (Wednesday), Maggi (obvious), Kesaribath and bonda(Friday). what is served on Saturday and Sunday mornings is still a mystery to me and my sources of reliable information.

Other than the regular food there are a few occasional surprises like centipede, cockroach, staple pins, needles, frog-legs, human fingers, mixie blade and so on.

There are 4 categories under which these messes come under.

1 HMK and HMC for the old and elderly.

2 Excellent mess[XM] for the unlucky*.

3 Himalaya mess for normal people.

4 SGR for people who can have enough patience to wait for the food to come with Pure-vegetarian brand as an incentive

*Result obtained by putting the two following observations together XM << SGR <<; normal food

1. One of the many girls from the computer science department of my batch who prefers anonymity stated "SGR was much better compared to Excellent mess."
2. One of the x-freshies who tried to rag the seniors stated "SGR totally sucks. We have to wait for at least a fifteen minutes in the morning for tasteless food."

As Immy said and I quote "Ahhhhh! mess food! (long pause), when was the last time I had that?", people hardly eat at the mess and still end up paying for things that they don't eat which is worse than diabetic people paying for sugar-free sweet corn or sugar-free sugarcane juice.

There is a rumour that the utensils are washed in the lake near by. That explains most of the problems that come up regarding utensils. The taste-health war is on hold at the mess because neither of them is given preference. The explanation the mess administration food gives is "Look on the bright side, The Himalaya building is so beautiful that is a plus point."

The first of the all the above observations (Anti Darwinian result) can be explained using the algorithm that god himself has designed. This mess allocation system abolishes bribery and corruption because the mess administration don't have to pay anything to get their job done.

The algorithm is as follows.

Enum mess [CR = 1, RR, SK, SGR, HMK, HMC ,XM]

step 0: for all people do-
step1: Input 1st choice for the mess.
step2 : Input 2nd choice for the mess.
step3 : Goto step 7
step4 : Goto step 10
step5 : Input 3rd choice for the mess.
step6 : Input 4th choice for the mess.
step8 : Calculate the grievances of the previous months.
step9 : calculate the priority of the particular person.
step10 : go to step 0

step11: for people in decreasing priority do-
step12 : mess[person] = random(7) + 1

This algorithm takes in 4 choices for the mess. I was very lucky to get the 5th option. (5th option is shared among all the messes that I could not give as a choice.)

The working staff in the mess can be compared to the deer in IITM. As soon as a pack of deer hear a footstep they get all worried and a rush of adrenalin in their haemo-lymph is observed. Similarly, the test for the milk-quality is just started by the mess secretary and all the exited anxious mess staff huddle up and start discussing their future plans. Surprisingly, the only complaints that are ever received are Mixie is too noisy or floor is wet or Utensils weren't fully dry.

In Himalaya mess itself there are stalls called the CSU stalls where one can buy lots of junk food which provide you with excess energy for the excess work you do. One can also find a variety of fruits being sold like apple, sweet-lime, guava, custard apple, Apple, Mosambi, guavaa, custard apple, Big lime, pomaceous, Malus pumila, etc the list grows on.

That is about it for the mess and IITian food. Hope you had a hearty meal.

ID120

2008-08-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

This is my first non philosophical post. Its going to be a short one too. It doesn't need any disclaimer. The readers are free to think that the characters in the play are indeed real and not fictional. If you don´t see any resemblance with any character alive, you deserve to suffer too! Stop bunking all classes!

A few days ago there were a lot of protests going on against the 50% reservation for the faculty in the IITs.
I was against the joke too, I mean how can a guy who is less than a PhD come and teach in a centre for academic excellence, the temple of learning, the treasure-house of knowledge, the forest of bliss, sattara-ab (similar to Punjab), the land of the Gurunath patisseries, the IITM where even the monkeys belong to the 100+ IQ level and use technology for the benefit of monkey-kind?

After hours and hours of reflection in class, the doubt was finally answered. Teaching in the IITM isn't really tough! In fact being a faculty is a piece of egg-less cake. Thanks to the new method of teaching where people handle simple jobs efficiently and make sure students LEARN things in pleasurable way.

This new way of teaching is called ID which stands for something "I Donno".
There are many ID courses. for eg 110 and 120.

I will be considering ID 120 as an example to show that any body can be hired to teach. Its not only famous for its superb teaching method but also because of its interesting content (The birds and the bees).

The course hires 15 people from the faculty. The following are the various posts available for the faculty.

4 + 4 + 4 guards cum attendance sheet passers - There are 4 people in CRC 101, 4 at CRC 103 and 4 at CRC 102.
Their job is to stop every one from entering the Classrooms after 5 minutes of commencement of classes. Accuracy of time is not important and hence the job is simple. They will also have to pass on attendance sheets from bench to bench and they ll have to keep an eye on the sheet and ensure that every one signs only once. Now that is the tricky part and hence requires patience determination and perseverance and other things but not a PhD.

1 laptop guy. 1 at CRC 102.
He is the techie, his job is to handle the complicated tasks associated with Laptops. Not every one can handle this. You have to be faster than a 5th grader. Our PH102 prof had very poor skills and he couldn't do it. The basic task is to press either the down-arrow key or the button `next´ in the pdf-reader or the space-bar button. The complexity lies in the fact that the Laptop dude is right at the front and he should be able to handle stage fright but he doesn't need a PhD

1 Camera guy.
He is involved in the complex task of tracking the main guy (refer next paragraph), who some times moves from place to place. He should have good hand-eye co-ordination but a PhD is not required. He is not considered a faculty member but I thought it would be fun to have a faculty member take up the job.

1 Patrol Officer.
His job is to move around and try to find people using cellphones. He should have good line of sight (360 degrees). He usually carries a sack with him which probably has pepper spray and stolen mobiles. He moves around in search of all the mobiles that are being used. If he finds any, he puts it in his bag. He also searches for people who listen to the lecture putting their heads on the desk and having their eyes shut (which he considers a crime). He is the vice-captain of the team and his job isn't easy, he has to patrol the place so that no body gets distracted. A difficult job often well handled.

1 Main guy (Reader).
He is the main guy of the team. He is the captain. His job is to read every thing that is being previewed on the slides. The reason why his job is important is because he has to read the slides exactly as it is. He has to modulate his voice in such a way that people reading the slides don't get distracted.

This he manages to do by reading in a peculiar way. His pitch is very low and his entire sentence is in the same frequency(No modulation) which not all 5th graders can achieve (only around 95% can). His lines go smooth and uninterrupted because 2/3rds of the class strength don't get to see him directly. By far his job is the toughest. This job is a very demanding one and often there are shifts because one guy cannot handle the job for a long time. The duration for which one particular Main guy in in charge is between 1 and 2 weeks. After that a different guy comes in and takes over.

Thus this elite squad of 15 members manage to teach children NEW INTERESTING things. For us IITians who have cleared JEE securing 1,3 and 6 marks in JEE Maths, Physics and Chemistry respectively, this is all we deserve!

Moral of the story: I m jobless, so are you!

New-Darwinism : The new evolutionary theory

2008-07-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Mutual-funds are subjected to market risks. Please read my blog carefully before commenting.

Warning: The following is a work of fiction. No part of it has been copied from any other work or any written/typed matter whatsoever. This is a warning because if you believe this has been copied from somewhere or if you suspect, thou shall be hanged! Any resemblance with any other post or with reality itself is totally co-incidental.

For copied works, culted Jokes and other arbit stuff visit Arjun Bharadwaj's blog!

Sarkashm starts here-

Prerequisites - PH640 - Nuclear Physics 2050 , CY458 The return of the Quantum mechanics.
oh ya also watch Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na (Genilia's in it)!

The earth as a place we see it today is a wonderful place filled with flora and fauna unique to every piece of it. That makes us all wonder, where did all of this come from? Has it been here for ever? What was it like before? What do these fossils tell us? Will Sachin Tendulkar make a good come back? Even if he does how will that have anything to do with this blog?

I bring to you the answers to these questions above.
I have conducted a day long research lasting from yesterday 5:00 PM to today 7:00 AM and have come to a conclusion that creationism theory cannot be correct. Most of the religious heads don't agree to this statement above. The rational and the intelligent people do not accept the creationism theory.

I have managed to come up with a theory that is fine with everyone (Aam Aadmi included). I call it the New-Darwinism theory. The theory which suggests human like creativity in evolution.

Consider the earth as the system, the surroundings as the surroundings and the universe as universe. Now there is one god for every planet and hence one for earth. He takes care of every one. There is only one god but there are 234,342,526,346,346,324,379 demigods.(source unknown and unwanted) they live in the heavens. the heavens are at an altitude of 36 km from the surface of the earth, in fact there are three heavens and they keep watch of the earth.(Philosophy ends here)

The God sends his demigod to the earth once in every hundred years for their project work and they scan the entire world of all the organisms and report the problems faced by them. At the end of that particular year, god comes down to earth and makes small modifications in the structure of the animals making their life easier. That is how organisms evolve. The principle of god wins the votes of religious people and the principle of evolution wins intelligent people.(No offense)

There are more phenomenon to be explained here. The phenomenon which indirectly suggests the existence of a human like mind behind the creation.

Evolution is a slow and an ever lasting process - So is our nation's progress, the reason: corruption! corruption among the demigods/government officials. Infact the corruption is much better than it was before. All god could make from 4 billion to 1billion years """BC""" was a silly jelly-fish that had only two types of tissues, 1 for propulsion and the other for offence.

Humans despite millions of years of evolution aren't immune to disease or other invisible predators -So is Windows, reason: god is perfect.
Certain creatures that had well established power in the ecosystem are now extinct - So are letters (emails have replaced them), test cricket(money has replaced it) and Prakrit language (Kannada rocks!)

Evolution has brought about changes that are impossible to think of - Well who would have thought that a monkey would change and over the years go to outer space or invent the Internet or master the DNA. Reason: God is great! Similarly Chinese have built the Great wall of China that even today no government can think of!
Humans were no where in the picture and has suddenly managed to take over the world - So as in the case of Windows. Cockroaches (penguins) will take over soon.

---to be continued in the next line

Some animals have organs which are totally useless created just for the expression of creativity for eg the antlers of a Thompson's Gazelle is totally useless and hence I consider it to be the signature of the person who upgraded it! A similar example is found in the Simpsons notice the MG on Homer's image
Elephants/mammoths don't seem to have evolved from any other living creature and they are believed to have an aquatic past. They seem to have been suddenly created out of nowhere --- clear indication of human like creativity for eg the origin of the word 'quiz' is unknown or may be the word appeared out of no where.(well I needed more points to support the theory and added this as one)

Conclusions:
None.

Computer center on one certain day

2008-06-11T04:59:00.000-07:00

In winter 1994, I met a little girl (refer photo on the right) on a night train journey. I was very bored and since I was just 5 years old I liked stories. The little girl offered to tell me a story on conditions that I put the story in my second post. At first I hesitated because I did not know what a blog or a post was back then but anyway I asked her what the story was about anyway.

She told me that it was about 6 people in a computer center set in one day, she said it was the day,the day they received an email, an email from God. (some Greek god probably)

All but one of them considered it as spam and deleted the email. The next day they died of small-pox but only one of them stood patient among them all, he read it with faith or out of joblessness and he survived (survival of the fittest). It happened that god offered to meet him and answer all his questions as in an interview.

Thus I return the favour of the little girl and publish my second post.

Warning: The following post contains Adult content. So if you are 18- please grow up quickly or change your birthday like me.
Warning:The following post offers religious enlightenment. If you aren't ready yet, go watch teletubbies or something.

One day at a computer center.

It was summer, one particular year. It was very hot outside and these cheap Air conditioners probably made in China had broken down for the 7 th time that week. Good news: I and my 5 friends are playing our role in preventing global warming by having our A.Cs turned off . Bad news: we were sweating like hell and I was feeling dizzy. Sleeping on my job is not a nice option with Hari Sadu as my boss.

It was supposed to be a coffee break but the only coffee available was hot coffee and who would drink that? So me and my friends were passing the time checking the mail during the coffee break. Mary, was one of my colleagues. Her father had five children Nana, Nene, Nini, Nono, and of course Nunu (whose nick name was Mary). They were my colleagues, they had been working here before I did. I am not punctual.

I was scrolling through my mail although I did not read any. I found one particular mail with an interesting Topic, a topic that could change my life for ever. It read "Your best friend Sammy has sent you a gift. Click below to find out more" and then there was an emotionally blackmailing statement saying click yes to accept the gift and no if you don't consider Sammy(name changed) as your friend.

I didn't want to hurt my dear friend Sammy who ever he was so I clicked on the link but Kaspersky internet settings wouldn't allow me to do so. How dare a silly software stop me from accepting a gift from my unknown best friend. At that time I was really feeling the heat. I couldn't bear it. I felt drowsy but I continued any way. I killed the stupid anti-virus software from the system and went to the link again. I was really tired so I did not read any thing that followed that and I clicked on some download button in the link.

Suddenly God appeared in my computer and he offered me a chance to ask any question I liked. What a wish he granted. I could now solve all the mysteries of the world like what women really expect when they say "Do I look fat in this dress?" or what company recruiters expect when they ask "Why do you want to work for this company" or what my pet dog Shah Rukh expects when it says" Bow wow wow bow bow wow arrrrr ar ar, munyadaar munyadaar munyadaar" and so on. I had the opportunity to get to be the king of the world.

he next minute I am with god, god sitting on a sofa. He asked me to start off with the question asking. This is the actual conversation that I had with god.

Kash: Welcome god, Its an honor for me to chat with you and get all my questions answered.
god: God bless you son. Its my pleasure to be here with you and you can call me Mr G in short

Kash: So god put intro!

god: My nick is god so is my name. I live in the center of the universe. I have magical powers. I can control the entire universe.

Kash: That is it??
god: Affirmative.

Kash:So god what does it feel like to be god???
God:hmmmm....... well it has its ups and downs. I have the power to do whatever I want like I can invoke a volcano or something and I can have fun by like watching sitcoms whenever I want, how many ever times I want. I can meet any actor/actress I want personally but
Its hard work I've got responsibility.
I am the Father of the world. you must know how tough it is to achieve that.

kash: Yeah!

god: I am talking about the soul creating machine that I have to use to create souls and send them to the various parts of the universe. The buttons don't press themselves you know!

kash: So how did you manage to turn out to be what you are today?

god: It wasn't easy I had to work hard for over 45 hrs a week for 2 years but there have been other demigods who have worked for 5 years in vein. Some make repeated attempts and fail.
I ove it all to Brainvita, the nuclear energy drink. The best drink there is. Brainvita is the secret of my energy.

kash: Ok, enough ads already! Only about 10,000 people read my blog.
Any way Mr G can you tell me about your network of gods.

God: ah yes! There are plenty of gods and they all help me as my subordinates to reign this universe. I have appointed 1 god for each planet. That is the secret of my success. That is how I manage to rule your planet flawlessly, everything is so perfect in your planet according to these reports that I've received. I should be a great pleasure to live there isn't it?
Kash: Ya, ya every thing is just perfect in here.
God: Not a single complaint received from any individual from your planet.
Kash: Thats so cool!

So god, tell us more about yourself. Are you an atheist or a theist?
God: A very good question son. No question is dumb.
hmmmm...... well I have only one motto that says 'You can not make progress if you don't believe in yourself' I hope that clearly answers the question.
Kash: Atheist it is then!

--We will be right after these commercials--
--The question of the day for today is " Who is Mr.G's most favorite fictional character?" The answer to this right after the break--

5 minutes later

--Welcome back folks! and now the answer to the question of the day. We will ask god himself--

Kash: God can you please tell us who your favorite fictional character is

god: well I believe in only two mottoes.
One about that progress thingie and the second one that says 'Have selfrespect, self admiration and love yourself more than any any one else in the world'.

Kash: Woah! I never knew that we had so much in common.

god: you mean you are also a selfish self centered maniac?

kash: Lets not get carried away! I was talking about having you as the favourite fictional character.

god: Oh rite!

Kash: OK more questions for you god, did it really take you a week to make this entire universe and bring man on it?

god: Thats outrageous! One week?
Thats total nonsense!
It took only a few minutes for me to come up with the planning, research and execution of my master-piece but.....
..... I wanted to make something really special, the most beautiful creation ever to be created. Something that would make all other creations cover their faces in shame. Something perfect, beautiful having a huge load to self --weight tolerating ratio, and I thought and thought and finally created a woman!

kash: why did you change plans suddenly god?
why didn't you complete your perfect creation and why did you create a woman instead.

god: Machcha! Lost enthu da!!

Kash: Is there any way by which I can be god for a day?
You know in movies they show people turning into CMs for a day!
If you can be a CM, why not god??

god: that my son only god knows!

kash: Huh? Whatever! can you tell me one really interesting thing about your administration?

god: yes, I have only one motto in life. 'If you close a door, open a window', for example, when there is a natural calamity like the Tsunami, thats the closing of the door and I open the window by having other people send in relief to the victims and they cancel out.

kash: Awesome! god I always used to curse you when such a thing happens, now I know the truth. How kind of you!

OK Mr.G now its time for the next round, The rapid fire round.
So are you ready god.

god: I sure am!

-- The Rapid Fire round --

K: who is your favorite actor.
g: Bill Clinton. He is so realistic. especially the tinkle in his eyes.
k: Sun, earth or moon, what do you like best.
G: The moon!
k: you are racist too! Great!
Any way next question I've forgotten my password and I am not able to blog
Do you know what my password is?
G: next question
K: If you were to be reborn, If you could have one thing, you dont have, what would you want to be and why?
G: I would like to be reborn as HRD minister for India
they have a lot of power!

K: OK god who is your favorite fictional character.
G: well I have only one motto, ' If you close a door, create a window!'
I hope that answers your question!

Where Mr.G do you see yourself in 10 years from now?

G: OK let me think, a second to me is like a year to you, a year to me is like 10000 years to me, so 10 years to me is like 10 seconds to me. Math is so confusing, I give up!

K: what do you have to say about the rumors about your crush on Genilia D'souza
G: thats nonsense
in fact she likes me,

K: Sure! OK what according to you is the difference between heaven and hell?

G: they are both five star hotels where you live like kings where you can get what ever you want, but only one of them is sponsored by me. In the other one you pay for your stay!

-- End of the Rapid Fire Round --

K: OK god we are almost at the end of our show.
Do you have any personal message for the jobless people who are reading this?

G: Yes I do. Science and technology you see is only an illusion, please don't fall for its lies. Have faith in me and you will live well.
You will also win a free life (dead) time stay at the heaven.
And you my boy, if you have any requests, make them now!

K: well it has been my lifetime dream ever since you offered to meet me, to see your super-powers in action.

G: granted son! Tomorrow a 1000 more people will be born in Chennai!
So see ya son, God bless ya, bye! miss me!