Things of a random nature…

Saw this interesting/funny post on Jay’s blog. I haven’t been tagged by anyone cos I haven’t blogged in 2 years…it’s all my fault and my fault only. This will be held against me in a court of law for sure. Anyhooo…here are 7 weird/ random things about me.

1. My family calls me ‘kothi kai’(translation: monkey hands). Thats cos I always keep fiddling with objects in my hand…twirling a pen, throwing and catching my cell etc.

2. I absolutely dislike soda in any form or kind….no coke, pepsi, montain dew for me!

3. Once, I won the 2nd prize in a running race…even though I distinctly remember finishing 7th out of 8 participants. Guess the others were disqualified

4. I’ve had a black eye (like the one’s you see in cartoons) without even getting into a fight.

5. I absolutely suck at every conceviable form of sport. (As can be derived from pts 3 & 4).

6. I absolutely need music in my ears when I need to concentrate.

7. Someday, I would like to drive into the sunset and never come back.

Thanks Jay…for getting me restarted on my blog!

Filed under: Personal

Some guys are too much…

Peter Shih is a very good friend of mine. He’s originally from Taiwan but has been in USA since the age of 6. Met him in the Algorithms class…one helluva brain this guy has! Give him any problem anywere and he’ll come up with at least 2 different solutions to the problem.

No wonder then, that he is the Chief Strategist for the UMR Solar Car Team which placed 4th recently in the recently held solar car race. He led from the front in the $200,000 project to build the solar car…designing power optimization algorithms, weather prediction stuff, et all. The guy spent days and nights holed out in the team garage chipping away at the computer, making the car better. The guy has no qualms about learning stuff which are in no way related to Electrical Engineering (he’a an M.S. student in EE) so long as it makes the car run better.

He loves Indian “curry”…well for him everything is curry of some form or the other The last time I went to his place we had excellent pasta! And played on his XBox for hours

He’ll be back on monday from the race. Will call him over for some spicy rasam!

That’s John Chaloupek….my team leader at CTEL. Well, team leader less and friend more. He’s the kinda guy they tell you about on TV when talking about the computer revolution. Long hair (usually in a pony tail), long goatee and always wears black !! Black shirt, black trousers, socks, shoes, hat, bag….heck even his umbrella is black

Is one of the best programmers I’ve seen and an extreme caffeine addict. In fact he was the main force behind getting a coffee machine up and running in CTEL. Also works for Dr. T, and has been in the university for 2.5 years now and going strong towards completing 3. Poor John….gets screwed royally by Dr. T in his research.

All that apart, the guy has an amazing sense of humor and most often than not our weekly project meetings turn into a laughing frenzy! Met him in the algorithms class as well and he was usually the one sitting with a blank look on his face just like me Converted any and all of Peter’s algorithms into C++ just for the heck of it. Is originally from Czechoslovakia but he too moved here at the age of 6.

Hope he gets started on his thesis soon…

Filed under: Personal

Wanna go home………soon!

Life for the last few weeks has been pretty down! My routine – up…lab…lunch…lab…chat…still in lab….down! And invariably the up is just 3 hours away from the down time There were times when I didn’t even see my roomies for a few days! The only social contact are with the bunch of guys in my lab…who are busy with their own work anyways. There’s a joke going around that my biological clock runs on Indian time…well it’s sorta true

I finished one year away from home this July and all of a sudden I’m begining to miss it a lot! It gets worse when a bunch of newbies arrive on campus all hyper to be in Uncle Sam’s land. They are standing there talking about home and friends and the local dhaba. It get’s so frustrating…feel like welding their mouths shut. But then, even I must’ve been a “hyper-diaper” (That’s what I call all the newbies) when i came in.
But, I’m the senior now and that has it’s own perks. Like asking the guy to handover all homemade food to us! And then devouring it in a jiffy.

I just absolutely need to get back home to India…real fast….@warp speed even. Have a lot of catching up to do! India, here I come…soon, sometime.

Filed under: Personal

3 posts old and already taking a break…

I’m just 3 posts old and yes…I’m taking a break. No personal reasons, just going to freak out in Florida for a few days. Be back in some time

Will see a freakin beach after 10 months…mannnn how I miss the beaches of Bombay.

Filed under: Personal

Who am I?

Well, well, well… I took this test online called the ‘Cattel 16 Factor Test’. The link was sent by a friend and the email promised me the most accurate picture of my personality ever. Yaa..right! Anyways, I gave it a try and here are the results -

Cattell’s 16 Factor Test Results Warmth |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Intellect |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||| 46% Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||||| 54% Liveliness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Dutifulness |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 90% Social Assertiveness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Sensitivity |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 86% Paranoia ||||||||||||||||||||| 62% Abstractness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Introversion |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 90% Anxiety |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Openmindedness ||||||||||||||| 50% Independence |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 86% Perfectionism |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Tension ||||||||| 30%

So, I am emotionally unstable, an extreme introvert, as dutiful as a dog….mannnnn why did I even bother to take the test. It’s such a load of crap X-(

There are lots of such tests available all over the internet. But seriously, can you tell all about me just by looking at how I’ve answered a set of pre-defined questions? I mean who answers these set of questions accurately? At least I didn’t. Yeah, maybe 70% of them were accurately answered (after pondering for a lengthy 0.78 seconds) but the others…click, click,click,done.

Ask someone to rate his negative traits on a scale of 1-5 and I’m damn sure it won’t go above a 3, even if he actually is the devil himself. On the other hand, ask him to rate his good side and I’m sure it won’t be below a 3. So, the final result would most definitely be biased towards the positive side of one’s personality. After all, I wouldn’t want you to know that I’m a disaster waiting to happen

Now let’s look at it from the tester’s point of view -
If by some miraculous way, some test does highlight your negative traits in your face, do you think you’d take that test again? Or, recommend it to your friends? You’d be embarrassed to let them know your results. And heaven forbid if the same test shows your friend out to be the reincarnation of Gandhiji himself So, in simple logic…give people results they feel happy about, would like to talk about. They will then copy the link into their chain of emails and shoot it of to new ‘victims’. Perfect marketing strategy huh?

Now, not only did the test give me crappy results, it also made me give up half an hour of my TV time to write this blog! But, I guess my 90% dutifulness rating compelled me to warn you people about what a load of bull these tests are.

Filed under: Personal

Southie woes

First of all, I’m a southie myself. Well, southie in a ‘can speak my mother tongue’ kinda way. Other than that single thread of southie-ism, I’m as lost down south as Jay is right now. In fact I’m considered an outcast by my cousins and south-indian friends, a MBCS – Mumbai Born Confused Southie

I may be confused, but I absolutely need to get a few things clarified and a few questions that need to be answered. So, here goes…

1. Where Exactly is South India?
Ask someone from Delhi and he would say – anything below Madhya Pradesh. To the extremities of my knowledge, South India is basically anything located below the state of Maharashtra. On this point, I think I have the correct answer.


2. Why don’t people down south learn Hindi?
Hindi is the national language of India. We have a national language so that someone from Srinagar can talk to a person form Kannyakumari. How can you expect someone to communicate his price for 1.5 kgs of tomatoes in Tamil if his only idea of Tamil is ‘andu gundu’ ??

And talking of andu gundu….

3. Southie + Southie = high speed andu gundu. Why?
Take a room full of people who speak only english and hindi. Put two southies into the group and 2 minutes later all you can hear, in high speed is –
‘cheppu cheppu’ if they happen to be Telugu
‘machhi yenna solray nee’ if they are Tamilians
‘magane yenu helta iddiyo’ if they are from Karnataka
‘Yenda Mone’ if they are Keralites

When will they learn that the other 10 people in the room don’t know a word of what they are talking? Tell them this and they will probably shoot you on the spot. It’s not difficult not to talk in your native tongue when no one around you understands it. It makes the others uncomfortable and terribly pissed off. Talk in your native tongue…but not always!!!

4. Autorickshaws have a Meter built into them for a reason!
Instead of fighting with me for 20 minutes over 10 rupees, the stupid rickshaw driver can run by the meter, ferry 3 differnet passengers and make 5 times the money in the same time. When will the poor soouthie rickshaw drivers get this into their heads?

I’m sure all the true southies who read this post will be waiting to get their hands on me. I’m a southie too albeit a confused one…but I need answers It’s high time someone cleared my doubts!

Filed under: Personal

Snapshot 1.0

Whew…it’s done! Complete! Over! Finished!

I maybe like a ‘bit’ in a 100 zettabyte hard drive, but after months and months of procrastinating, I now have my own blog. Not that anyone really cares, but yeah…I’m here people.

I am a Computer Science major. So, when a Psychology major walked up to me and said “I’ve been blogging for 2 years now”, somewhere in my brain a bunch of neurons screamed “Wake up Jackass! She’s a psychology major. You’re the Ctrl+Alt+Del guy, and you don’t even have a blog”. That was it…I had to, just had to get my own blog.

Better late than never they say. I maybe late on the blogging scene…but hey, at least I won’t be never.

Filed under: Personal