Laughlines

Laughter, The Best Medicine (Reader's Digest)

An older father noticed his son's Viagra tablets in the medicine cabinet. "Could I try one?" he asked.

"Sure," his son replied, "but make the most of it. Each of those pills costs ten bucks."

His dad was shocked by the price. "Don't worry," he promised. "I'll pay you back."

The next morning the son found an envelope under his breakfast plate. Inside was $110.

"Dad," he said, "that pill only cost $10."

"I know," his father said, smiling. "The ten is from me. The hundred is from your mother."

---

All In A Days Work (Reader's Digest)

Bill Gates my father is not. As church treasurer, he had two computer files labeled "St. Mary's Income" and "St. Mary's Expenditure." While copying them from a Macintosh to a PC, he had no idea the PC would automatically truncate the file names to ten characters, eliminate spaces and replace apostrophes with periods.

Now the church's income is stored in "StMary.sin" and expenses in "StMary.sex."
Contributed by Christine Thien

Believe it or not!

Those who know me well would be surprised to read this. I, myself, am amazed at how could it happen!
Believe it or not, for the first time in more than 3 years, I thought I was getting serious about a girl in my life!! Putting it in better words, I questioned myself for about 2 days whether my feelings for a girl were that of love?
The good part is that I bet no one can guess who that girl is, which makes the whole thing even more mysterious. Why and how could I?

Oh, by the way, she is not the girl from Mumbai. The girl from Mumbai is Deepa, but I hardly know her and haven't met even once. As of now, Deepa is just a good friend.

Patents slip out as India nurses data

What a shame! I read this article today and have been feeling bad about it since then.
Our country is losing so much wealth and recognition because of a handful of administrators who, I am sure, have no idea of what a patent is and, how it works.

Government officials pointed out that the objection of the HRD ministry was on account of a confusion between patent and copyright.

This is a good example of what I discussed about, with some friends day-before-yesterday: Administraors unwilling to take any step forward as they do not know what "side-effects" it might have, thus threatening their position.

Left Shift

Being a Computer Architecture freak, I am in the habit of specifying the direction of shift. More about shift in Computer Architecture can be read here, but that is not even remotely related to what I am going to blog about.

The hostel in which I stay at IIT-K, called Hall of Residence - 4, is undergoing partial renovation these days. As a part of the renovation, each room is being patched (if absolutely necessary) & white-washed, wardrobe is being upgraded and anti-mosquito meshes are being put on window panes. "Wow", I said, when I first heard about it. However, the next moment I realized I would have to empty my room for all this to happen and with only a few months left before I graduate (Yes!! I am very sure now) and leave this place, "Do I really need it? Wouldn't this be too much of a trouble?" So I decided to reduce the percentage of overhead.

Now, overhead equals the amount of extra work done as a ratio of the amount of gains. I figured out, since I cannot reduce the numerator term much, I shall have to increase the denominator to bring down the overhead. This, basically, meant that I shall spend as many days in the renovated room. On January 17th 2006, I did that. Grabbing an opportunity that had come Mangal's way, I shifted to B-309 and handed over my original room (B-313) for renovation.

So for all my fans out there, please send your fan-mail to the following address until I notify you again:
B-309, Hall of Residence - 4,
IIT Kanpur,
Kanpur - 208016.

Just a little more. I called this post 'Left Shift' because B-309 lies on the left of B-313. What is more interesting is that B-313 also lies on the left of B-309.
Can you tell me how is that possible?

Symantec versus Spybot

This is an interesting article I came across while surfing the internet. I don't want you to spend a lot of time reading that so will tell you in a nutshell what is that about.

In April 2005, Symantec's Norton Antivirus started giving warnings to its users about Spybot, an anti-spyware, and recommended them to uninstall it! Since both the involved companies are in the anti-spyware arena, it was clearly seen as a threat to its market by Spybot. By the way, that was a false positive. So Spybot took it very seriously and asked Symantec to remove the warning from their software. Symantec did not want the issue to be dragged too far, so they removed the false positive from their software and things cooled down (atleast publicly).
However, some time back Norton again started claiming that Spybot was corrupting Norton Ghost images. Spybot, angered by this, wrote to Symantec once again but as they say, "Mr. Guido Sanchidrian, product marketing manager of Symantec, appeared offended"!! Symantec said they will reply within a week with evidence but they haven't bothered to reply since then. Spybot even tried to contact other people in Symantec who 'requested' for time till the first week of the new year, but nothing has happened from that front either. Hence, the article, in which Spybot has indicated taking the case further and suing Symantec.

Symantec people, better start looking for other opportunities. Who knows, the manager who hired you might himself get fired before you join! :-D

The day we won the cup

This one deserves a place on every page. Got it from Nishit, although the original post is here.

June 25. 1983.

Greatest day since independence. You bet.

India won the Prudential World Cup by beating the mighty West Indies.

For all you newbies, this Australia team has got nothing on the West Indies of 83. No other team in the modern era had a bowling attack like they did - sure other teams, at various times, had Waqar & Wasim, McGrath & Gillespie & Warne, Pollock & Donald.

But the West Indies firm of Roberts & Holding & Marshall & Garner was something else--- four of the most accurate, fearsome gentlemen ever to have walked the cricket field. And all of them did it together on that day in mid summer, June 25 1983.

The batting was not too bad either.

Three of the greatest one day batsmen ever were in the West Indies team that day---------Greenidge, Haynes and Viv Richards. Backed up by the mighty hitting Clive Lloyd, the steady Larry Gomes and the artistic and athletic keeper Dujon who was the best keeper-batsman before Gilchrist.

Yet they lost the biggest game of their collective lives.

They lost to India. India, which then looked about as threatening as Bangladesh does today. Kapil was the only world class one day player in the side. Gavaskar was a liability in ODIs, the bowling attack of Binny, Madan and Sandhu would give no opponents sleepless nights and the other players - well not much could be expected from them. Or so we thought.

When the World Cup began, there was no excitement in the country. We did not care about it and you could not blame us for that.... in 2 previous editions we had beaten only East Africa (even lost to Sri Lanka before they got Test status). I remember buying the pre-World cup "Sportsweek" (now defunct) and asking my father what chances we had. (I was 7 then)

My dad nodded mournfully, "Winning the cricket World cup is as much a pipedream as winning the football one." This time however things were a bit different.

Just before the World Cup, India toured the West Indies. Needless to say, they were plastered. It was not in vain though. A 3-month tour playing against the world's best opposition was exactly the right kind of preparation going into the cup. In addition, two significant things happened on that tour.

• Mohinder Amarnath rose from the ashes to become India's leading batsman. Amarnath used to be known as a pathetic player of the short ball whose career was in jeopardy after he got hit on the head by Rodney Hogg. After a layoff, he came back a changed man. He had stood tall among the ruins in the Pakistan series (where Imran and Safraz razed our batting) and then attained legendary status on this tour to West Indies. The West Indian speed merchants peppered us with the short stuff. Gavaskar ducked. Gaekwad took it on his body. Amarnath hooked. The West Indians had never seen Indians hooking bouncers. The faster they came at Amarnath, the more vicious he hooked it. Such was his dominance on that tour that both Imran and Marshall accepted that he was the best player of pace in the world.
  
• The second significant event was that we actually won a ODI off the Windies. It was the last one - rather insignificant in terms of the series but of great significance for what was to follow. At Berbice, Gavaskar finally got into the groove of one day cricket (forgetting his 36 over 60 overs) and Kapil blasted the West Indies bowling attack. A mere blip on Windies' radar but at least we knew we could beat them.

Well not only was it possible to beat the West Indies, India made it two in two defeating them in the first match of the World Cup. And then, after a few wins and losses, it all came down to the match against Zimbabwe.

My dad had a small radio. When I turned it on, India were 15 for 4. Soon they were 17 for 5. I was deliberating whether to skip drawing school but this did it. I trooped off with my paint brush and was ensconced on the cold floor along with scores of others, drawing "still life." My mind however was anything but still.

There was the unmistakable drone of transistors coming from outside. That means people were still listening in. Soon the drone increased. More transistors/radios had come on. What could that mean ? Was India still "in the game"?

It was hot inside the room, I desperately wanted to leave but I had to wait to get picked up by Baba. And then the first sound of "chakka" (sixer) from someone next door. Soon others followed. My heart was pounding, threatening to jump out of its socket into the paint bowl. "Baba where are you? I want to go home."

Baba came, a big smile on his face. Kapil was smashing Zimbabwe all over the place - he was in a marauding mood. Going home, I caught the end of India's batting on the radio. India wrapped up the game in style with the commentators describing the fielding as brilliant. India had made the turn. Cricket would henceforth be India's national sport.

Semi-final! I knew India would lose. I was sanguine. I also thought that if I thought India was going to win, God might punish me for my hubris and defeat us. And by God, did we need godly intervention to win against England.

India bowled first. The fielding was exceptional. The runs were choked and England made their mistakes. Alan Lamb was run out by an exceptional bit of fielding, Gatting was bowled by a gem from Amarnath and Botham was castled by a brute of a delivery from Kirti Azad.

Then India came into bat. Also went out the lights. Power cut! or what we used to call "load shedding".

I have this problem. Whenever I get tense, I start shivering. So here in the month of June, on a hot Kolkata night with all power off, I was shaking. With tension. You see, I had maneuvered myself into a lose-lose situation. Long before Azhar and Jadeja, I had bet against my own team. I had a running bet with an uncle---if India makes it to the finals, I will treat him to a "Rajbhoga". Which cost Re 1 in those days. Something I was not willing to give up since it constituted about 20% of my "personal stash".

I wanted India to win. Desperately. And I also wanted to avoid losing my Re 1.

Yashpal Sharma flicks Bob Willis for a six. Sandeep Patil hammers Allot. The power comes back on for us to see Yashpal Sharma getting dismissed. But no further hiccups and Kapil races back to the pavilion after the winning run as he is engulfed by the teeming population.

I lose my Re 1. Which, I refuse to pay when uncle asks for it.

Then June 25 dawns. No more bets. No more debts. India vs West Indies.

Sunil Gavaskar. 5 feet and a few. Joel Garner. 7 feet and a few. Garner hustles in and hurls them from sky high and Sunny is all at sea. He is soon taken out of his misery. So are we.

Srikkanth, on the other hand, looks cool and composed. Well as cool and composed as he can look. Roberts is hooked over fine leg for six and then Sri gets on one knee and creams him through cover. Shot of the match. Twitches his nose, walks towards square leg. And then gets beaten by a beauty from Marshall and is trapped in front.

Amarnath has dropped anchor. Runs are difficult to come by. Holding goes wide of the crease, angles one in. Amarnath plays down the wrong line and his stumps go cartwheeling. My heart sinks.

With runs not coming, Yashpal Sharma loses the plot and gifts his wicket to the innocuous off spin of Larry Gomes. Kapil also holes out to deep square leg attempting a mighty heave. Then Doordarshan loses feed. Damn.

Back to the radio. Azad and Binny are blown away. India's tail fights back. But my heart has turned to cinder. I knew India was going to lose but at least a fight was expected. This was abject surrender.

Everything is going according to their script. Their script. I almost feel like crying.

Power is back on for the Windies chase. Only good news, Llyod has pulled a hamstring. Fat chance of Lloyd batting though. Richards is enough.183 is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And then it happens. Pure magic.

Gordon Greenidge, one of the world's most technically correct batsman is at the crease. Sandhu runs in and bowled a seemingly innocuous outswinger. 183 to get...60 overs. Plenty of time. So Greenidge reads the outswinger and shoulders arms to let it go.

Nothing wrong in that. But the ball is charmed---- the collective will of so many Indians makes it change its line. Late.... very late it swings in ever so slightly and clips Greenidge's off stump.

Greenidge stands there with his bat raised---incomprehending, incredulous. Sandhu is rushing towards keeper Kirmani clenching his fist. India has drawn blood.

The Man comes in. Chewing gum, twirling bat, utter disdain for the opposition. Madan Lal is dismissed from his presence with a swipe to square leg. Binny (India's version of JLo---if you have seen him you know what I mean) is thrashed through cover. And then Doordarshan loses transmission again.

"A good thing" my mother says. It is torture watching India lose. Now we can all go back to our respective lives.

But the radio is on. My dad mutters to himself---"Richards has got to go".

However it is Haynes who goes, unable to keep a drive down off Madan Lal. The wrong guy....the wrong guy....we need Richards.

The fall of Haynes has no effect on the Man. Richards is no mood to step off the center stage----determined to finish off the match himself and repeat his murderous innings against England in the 1979 World Cup. Runs flow from his bat with precise inevitability.

" He is out. Gone."

The commentary drowns out amidst the thunderous applause. It's true. Viv IS out and Madan has scalped him. Richard's overconfidence has done him in. He bludgeons Madan Lal uppishly and Kapil Dev, runs back and takes the most significant catch in Indian cricketing history. Crowd goes silent and then the Indians erupt.

But we all saw that later. For now, we are simply jumping up and down with joy. We are in with a chance.

Clive Llyod is not being able to play his normal flowing game and Gomes has gone into a shell.
Binny takes out Larry Gomes with a late moving outswinger.

And then "Big Cat" Lloyd, strung by a hamstring, plays a nothing shot and is skinned by Kapil at cover.

I run around the room in the unquestioning glee of childhood...........we have won, we have won. My father tells me to calm down...............half of the side still remains. But yes, we are in with a chance.

Now we are cursing Doordarshan. Doordarshan obliges by restoring live feed.

Bacchus is scratchy. Dujon looks solid but watchful.

Srikkanth hits the stumps on a direct throw. The Indians go up in appeal. The umpire does not oblige. Srikkanth runs around like his pants are on fire.

My mother opines that it is better luck when there is no live feed. Maybe she wants us to just have our food but there is logic in what she says. As long as I was watching the game on TV, India kept losing wickets. When the feed went off, India's batting fought back. And now also just after the feed is back on, things have stalemated.

Sandhu comes back in and bowls one wide of off stump. Bacchus is no Richards but tries to be. He swings hard hoping to send the ball screaming to the fence. It takes the edge and Kirmani dives full tilt to his right and brings off a blinder.

India's problems have always been in getting rid of the tail. How many times has it happened that we get rid of the main players and then the fringe guys come and bite us on our bum?

Marshall, who was a fairly decent bat, digs in. Dujon works the ball away into the gaps. No more of the frenetic, disdainful heave-ho of the top batters------Dujon and Marshall have gone over to Plan B. The Indian fielding is tight, Binny beats Marshall all ends up. But the edges are not coming.

Kapil is striding like a wounded tiger----the team is pumped up.

I am shaking like crazy. Please let us not lose this from this state....please God.

God answers. Mohinder Amarnath is called into bowl. He lopes in, the only bowler in the world who decelerates as he comes to the bowling crease. A loosener, gently going down off. Dujon takes an exaggerated front foot movement and seeing the line of the ball raises his bat.

And as he raises it, the ball miraculously takes the inside edge of his bat, comes back, bounces once in front of the stumps and hits it !

Dujon slaps the ground in digust and I am airborne with joy.

Amarnath is not done. He induces Marshall's edge and Gavaskar clutches onto the ball for dear life.

Kapil brings himself back on. A lot of overs still left. This is a gamble.

Andy Roberts. Shuffling across he is pinned to the crease by a Kapil inswinger. The finger goes up. Kapil is growling now and the Indians are all over the place.

Andy Roberts wends his way back accompanied by a fat white man who keeps on lecturing him. It is still a wonder to me why he did not smack the guy then and there.

Garner and Holding hold on. They are not scoring runs but they are not getting out either.

Amarnath bowls. Holding launches into a wild swipe. It misses, strikes him a bit high on the pad. Who cares? The umpire's finger is up, Holding looks dejected. Amarnath has already gotten hold of a stump.

The Indian contingent is rushing onto the ground. The TV flashes " India has won the World Cup". Kapil is smiling from ear to ear.

The Goliath has fallen. David has won the World Cup.

Many years have passed by since then.

I have since become an atheist. I don't know what to believe or trust any more.

But there is one thing I do believe in and that is in miracles.

Because I saw one myself. On June 25, 1983.

Calvin and Hobbes today

War of the Worlds

"What a shot!" I said to myself, that would do anyone proud of himself.

Date: January 7, 2005 (Saturday)
Time: 0245 hours
Venue: B-313, Hall-4, IIT Kanpur (i.e. my room in IIT-K hostel)
Event: War of the Worlds!

Here are the details:
I returned to my room at about 2:40 AM from the department, and was looking for ward to read something to sleep. After getting into my pyjamas, I got into the bed but suddenly I realized I had company, actually too many uninivted guests, and they were not Homo Sapiens. My room was full of little creatures that thrive on our blood, the mosquitoes (that link is for *******, hehe).

My first reaction was to light my Mortein Mosquito Coil (MMC), but for some reason I was feeling pissed-off and decided to take on the battle, with MMC acting as my assistant. So I sat up in my bed, with a slipper in my right hand and kept my left hand free to get a good swing of the right arm. The war had been declared, and I along with me assistant, went on a rampage.

My killing mechanism was unconventional. Instead of squishing them between the surface of my slipper and another plain surface, I was hitting them HARD with my slipper. Due to a blow that hard, they would fall down on the floor (or the table in some cases) and would die after sometime. By adopting this method, I made sure that there was no blood around and my room remained clean of all the bloody stains ;-)

After sometime I realized that the enemy's strength had come down to very low numbers, but I had started to enjoy the war so I got up and stood on my bed. This increased the volume I could cover, and therefore resulted in some more killings. After a while, I noticed that all the enemies left alive by now had clinged to the ceiling of the room or to other parts of the room where I could not reach. So I thought and thought and came up with an idea. Now remember, it is December and it is very cold in Kanpur right now. This, however, did not stop me from switching on the fan (what an idea!) for about a minute. The move worked very well, and I got some 8-10 more frags. Looked around the room and found only very few enemies left, wandering around looking for a place to hide from me. I let them go, for them to narrate the tale to others from their species so that I do not have any invasions in future :-)) All this took just over 30 minutes and by 3:20 AM, I was back in my bed reading a book and almost ready to go for sleep after a long battle!

By the way, for all those who think that I was being cruel, I should mention that I gave the enemies a chance to escape before declaring the war by switching off the tubelight and opening the door of my room for them to escape into the corridor. After around 2 minutes, I closed the door and rest is history.

CAT - 2005

"This time again, I got up in the morning feeling fresh and good. Took my time doing morning chores i.e. the rest-room part, followed by brushing teeth (and taking a nap during that time), followed by a visit to the bathroom, followed by a good heavy breakfast and finally left my home with my dad (he had some work in a place nearby) for the centre of the exam I was appearing for.. CAT."
The day described above is 20th November 2005, and there I was in my hometown Delhi, in a school waiting for the invigilator to distribute the exam sheets. People around me looked so anxious and terrified (because the D-day had finally arrived!) about the whole event and I could easily identify myself as the only soul enjoying the whole process :-)

One look around the room and I figured out the I was sitting in the column with maximum number of girls (we are talkig about Delhi girls, wow!!), N-1 to be precise (N being the number of seats in that column) and I was the only male candidate in that column. Other columns had lesser number of females :-)) Now you would think that this was a great situation for me to be in, but alas it was the worst place to be in. I could not look at any of them!! What a waste of time it would be to sit here, I thought.

A little later, the whistle was blown and I opened my exam-sheet to take a look at the couple of sheets that had cost me (1100+434+16+some more=) 1550+ bucks and I knew it had all gone down the drain. Anyway, managed to do some of it pretty well and felt really good when the whistle indicating the end of time was blown. Thank God, the ordeal had ended as it was taking too much out of me. Another look around the room (the invigilator was still collecting the sheets) and I found that people were emotionally too attached to the answer-sheet and were not willing to let go of it easily. I laughed at them and then at myself, the fool i.e. me sitting there in that room, who had turned up to write the exam without any preparation at all, in the midst of people who had worked day-in and day-out to do well on this day. I did not stand any chance against them, so why was I there? The answer came from within, "C'mon dude it is just 1550 bucks. You get to appreciate the beauty of Delhi girls atleast!! :-P" and that cooled me down because trust me, Delhi girls are the hottest lot I have ever seen. See it to believe it!

Just to mention, it was a brilliant co-incidence that I had the same centre for CAT last time I had written it (back in 2003) and that time I was with my college pals. So while climbing down the stairs, I went through all those memories, all the fun we had together, all the hanging out and suddenly I realized I had got much more for those 1550 bucks, than I ever expected. For the next 30 minutes or so, I kept thinking about two things:

1. The time I had spent with my friends in Delhi over the last 5 years.
   
2. How do I reach Akshardham? (Why Akshardham? Forget it!)

Let's leave all that there (except the hot Delhi girls).. that's the end of flashback part :-P

Anyway, today while discussing with Kaushik about the CAT scores (he had also written it), I proposed a bet that whosoever scores better in CAT has to pay for the other's coffee at Nescafe hoping to win a coffee. He accepted the bet and I got a strong sense of achievement, after all I had won myself a coffee. Luck, however, betrayed me. As we found out later, I had actually scored more than him (which is a big-big achievement, he is our dictionary.com) and therefore I had to pay for his coffee (although Dhiru payed to for it because I had run out of money and the ATM wasn't working). According to the IIM Kolkata website, I have got a percentile of 98.44. What a joke!

(This result has ensured that I'll waste some more money few years later to go through all this again..)

Happy New Year - 2006

Let me start by wishing you a very Happy New Year. Let's hope the coming year brings everything you wanted all this while and brings me the best of everything I always wanted :-p

Anyway, I was talking to Kaushik during our new year celebrations about the importance of the day in our lives..

• Does it really carry any significance at all in our lives?
  
• Does it change our life or is it just another day in the calendar?

For me, it is just another day, another year. So why was I celebrating? I did not celebrate the coming of the new year; rather I celebrated another evening with some of my good friends, frinds I would be parting with sometime soon.

What does it mean to you? Think hard.

---

Oh by the way, we had a great time while celebrating. Would be sharing some of those moments in pic form very soon. Okay tell me one thing, do I already sound nostalgic?