First rule of life – Nothing is perpetual. If your parents haven’t hammered that into your head, just passing through life would’ve made that abundantly clear by now.

Last night, rewatched this amazing and at the same time disturbing CNBC special call ‘House of Cards’. It examines the time line and the reasons behind the recent credit crisis:

The biggest thing that stumped me was the part where Wall Street assumed a perpetual 6-8% growth in the housing market. Now I know that speculation/assumption is the name of the game in Wall Street, but perpetual gains??

Everything they did was based on this perpetual flow of money. Essentially they were banking on money from the infinite future as their stepping stone. How crazy is that?

Link to the video: CNBC – House of Cards

I think it’s because conflict is drama, drama is entertaining and entertainment is marketable. Finding consensus and common ground is dull! Nobody wants to watch a civilized discussion that acknowledges ambiguity and complexity. We want to see fireworks!

We want the sense of solidarity and identity that comes from having our interests narrowed and exploited by like-minded zealots! Talk show hosts, political candidates, news programs, special interest groups…they all become successful by reducing debates to the level of shouted rage. Nothing gets solved but we’re all entertained!

– Calvin

Just 6 years old and more wisdom than all of the jokers on television combined. I couldn’t have put it in better words myself.

O Wise Calvin…I salute thee!

Firstly, the movie is all about Aamir’s abs. He worked hard on getting his chiselled look, he’s dedicated to his craft, blah blah….I get it. You don’t have to drill the point in. About half way into the movie I’ve had enough of his buttonless shirts, shirt sleeves that have no practical value but showacse his biceps and the generously sprinkled oh so useless closeups of his abs. For god’s sake Asin has more clothing on her than Aamir Khan!

Which brings us to the obsession part…the guy is obsessed with the color pink and it’s shades.  Some people say pink is the new black. But even they have to admit there’s pink and then there’s “Oh my god I’m going blind” pink . I admit, bright colors on screen are necessary to add visual direction to the frame, make the characters pop etc. But this felt like the director got a great deal on pink cloth and so decided to stitch a 100 shirts for the actor with the same.

And if not pink then we can definitely use…ummmm say violet since they’re first cousins. Also by some miracle, if Aamir isn’t in pink , then someone around him definitely is. I think at some point I even spotted one of the villian’s one so many useless goons sporting a pink shirt.

By now if the visual assault of pink in this post hasn’t burnt out some cones in your retina…then you are definitely color blind. But I just wanted you to feel the same pain my eyes (and my wallet) felt when I wasted 3 hours and $10.25 of my life last night!

True, some of those moments make you wanna kill your friends or ditch them outside the bar. But can you imagine all the laughs you’ve had escorting a drunken party home? Some of the funniest memories in my life involved me being a DD.

Here’s a the top 2 funny moments in my DD career so far. For reasons of anonymity, real names have been replaced by Drunk # 1, Drunk # 2 etc -

1. Drunk # 1 starts identifying every song being played in the caras a Metallica song. They play Hotel California…he still insists it’s a Metallica song. Meanwhile a random Drunk # 2  corrects Drunk # 1 saying “Dude…that’s not Metallica. that’s Iron Maiden!”

2.  Drunk # 1 is trying to recite Barakhadi (Marathi alphabet) and forgets most of it. Drunk # 2 meanwhile is trying to correct him without realizing that he’s messing it up himself.

There are many more moments that were too funny to be described in words. So, to all out there make sure you take our turn being the DD. Not only is it a responsible thing to do but if you are lucky it’ll be the most fun you’ve had at a friends expense.

The precious few ‘I laughed so hard, I peed a little’ moments ensure that I will take on my DD duties eagerly and willingly the next time.

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!

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…

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort, and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn’t hash, then your situation’s hopeless and your system’s gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house, says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol, that’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse; then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, ‘cuz sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy in the disk, and the macro code instructions is causing unnecessary risk,then you’ll have to flash the memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM, and then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

LOL…

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.

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