Lonliness and Ulsoor Lake

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

Last night I was out with a friend of mine, and we ended up at Ulsoor Lake for the dirth of any better place to go to. The lake in the night is a sight to marvel given the commotion that has become synonymous with Bangalore. The Philips building in the background and the moon's reflection on the shimmering lake. The peace and the quiet. The sound of the waves, mild and sweet. You do not need to go down to Coorg to experience all this. Just drive down to Ulsoor lake :D I wish I had my camera with me...

Tranquility !!

[Suggestion: If you happen to be in the vicinity just take a drive around the lake to understand what i mean] All the gates were closed but we found a small opening and squeezed our way in. We went down to the pier that juts out into the lake, and we sat there, mesmerized by the sight. After we had recovered from the trans we started talking, mostly useless stuff that we generally talk about. And then I had another of these i am a spectator experience... I could hear her talking and her lips move but her voice failed to register in my consciousness. Anyways I got back to reality pretty soon. Had she realized that I wasn't listening to her, she would have promptly pushed me into the water... :-)

I felt really nice and peaceful after a looooooong time...

UPDATE: Taken from EnJay

"...They're sharing a drink they call loneliness,
But it's better than drinkin' alone..."

- Billy Joel, The Piano Man

H. RES. 227

109TH CONGRESS

1ST SESSION H. RES. 227

Recognizing and honoring the contributions of Indian Americans to economic innovation and society generally.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
APRIL 21, 2005
Mr. TOM DAVIS of Virginia (for himself, Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA, Mr. WILSON of South Carolina, Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN, Mr. JINDAL, Mr. MENENDEZ, Mr. LANTOS, Mr. MCNULTY, Ms. WATSON, Mr. CROWLEY, Mr. PALLONE, Mr. CANNON, Mrs. BLACKBURN, Mrs. CAPITO, Mr. CHOCOLA, Mr. ENGLISH of Pennsylvania, Mr. LEWIS of California, Mr. SWEENEY, Mr. RENZI, Mr. FRANKS of Arizona, Mr. SOUDER, Mrs. MILLER of Michigan, Ms. FOXX, Mr. WAXMAN, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. WYNN, Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California, Mr. HASTINGS of Florida, Mr. RANGEL, Mr. TURNER, Mr. HOLT, Mr. SHAYS, Mr. MORAN of Virginia, Mr. CHANDLER, Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California, Mr. COX, Mr. PORTER, Mr. NEY,
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey, Mrs. CAPPS, Mr. KNOLLENBERG, Mr. MURPHY, Mr. MCKEON, Mr. DUNCAN, Mr. GIBBONS, Mr. PEARCE, Mr. WELLER, Mrs. BONO, Mr. SHUSTER, Mr. HYDE, Mr. BONILLA, Mr. WALDEN of Oregon, Mr. FOLEY, Mr. PLATTS, and Mr. ISSA) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Government
Reform

RESOLUTION

Recognizing and honoring the contributions of Indian Americans to economic innovation and society generally.

Whereas the United States is deeply enriched by its Indian American residents;

Whereas the Indian American community and the graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in the United States have made valuable and significant contributions to society in every profession and discipline;

and

Whereas IIT graduates are highly committed and dedicated to research, innovation, and promotion of trade and international cooperation between India and the United States: Now, therefore, be it

1 Resolved, That the House of Representatives
2 (1) recognizes the valuable and significant con-
3 tributions of Indian Americans to American society;
4 (2) honors the economic innovation attributable
5 to graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology;
6 and
7 (3) urges all Americans to recognize the con-
8 tributions of Indian Americans and have a greater
9 appreciation of the role Indian Americans have
10 played in helping to advance and enrich American
11 society.

Good is the enemy of great

Thought for the day.

I want to read more of this book.

Rain...

A pic I shot in Mangalore. I love the blue tint to the pic...

L-a-ir-a-il-a

Ever since I remember I have been in love with the liril girl(s). Yeah way back when I was a kid, stumbling to school. I remeber how I used to sit glued to the television to get a glimpse of the swimsuit clad gal swinging away to glory ;) BLISSSSSS !!! I think it was Karen something who was the first liril gal. And I kept falling in love with each of them, over and over again *blushes*. Tho I really did not like Priety Zinta in particular. In one of the commercials they had this girl who played basketball and then took a shower under the waterfall to get fresh... Ahem.... That was NICE, SHE was nice :D

[Sidenote: In the early 70s a market research agency found out that housewives had typical ’needs of fantasizing’ (now we are talking *grins*). The first liril ad was a masterpiece of its own calibre, a product of Alyque Padamsee’s imagination. It was shot in Kodaikanal at a waterfall a little beyond Guna caves.The moment of liberation that Liril provided was well accepted by the women of India and not only the ad became popular; Liril became premium soap overnight.]

Though they have moved away from the waterfall the love affair still continues. Alas Tara Sharma... I saw that god forsaken movie Om.. just for her ;;) And yeah the girl in the orange flavored liril ad happens to be my sister's friend. What a pity, I dont date kiddos :)) *case of calling the grapes sour*

And I totally dig the new female in the new ad. She r0x0r, BIGTIME !!! *goes starry eyed*

la...lala la la... lalalala... la la la

Adobe and Macromedia...

Had been really piled up with work, so was not able to post...

Anyways the reason I found this so funny was, there were people at Adobe, mind you really senior people who were with the company for 15-20 years who wouldn't see eye to eye with Macromedia. Most of this was centered around SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), lot of people did lot of work at Adobe and all of it got shelved because the management did not see any point in persuing it. Macromedia had a great install base and another SVG app would not be accepted in the market. (On a sidenot, all of postscript and PDF is mostly vector graphics, the fonts and the lines etc...) So this merger comes as a big surprise. Macromedia was supposed to be one of the few companies who would have given Adobe some competition. And I see macromedia as a very open company, quite unlike Adobe. How do things turn out, we'll have to wait and watch.

But I really think it would be a good merger, if the management doesnt kill macromedia. Adobe has a history of killing products it bought, Pagemaker, Framemaker etc... I hope they havent acquired MACR just to kill it. I see MACR as a company with a lot of josh. Hope Adobe dosent sap away all that...

LOL !!!

Adobe acquires Macromedia

LOL !!!! I cant stop lauffing =))

Bangalore and the rains...

Today was one of those perfect days...

Submitted my proposal on multi-point...*blah* so no more work on that front. I need to start working on some other project, so was reading some papers on that. Whole lot of music, some dumb papers and coffee. BLISS ;-) *the thing with reading papers is that people around u think you are doing some high tech stuff, while most of the time u might actually be dreaming abt the zexy babe you met last night... LOL !!!*

Then I decided to go out for a walk, had to grab a couple of magzines. Picked up another totally useless bum liek me who goes by the name of swaroop... Walked down to K.C.Das. There is this amazing magazine store there. They have a really good collection of books. Ahem, as swaroop rightly pointed out they DO have playboy and stuff.

(Note to self: Check out the collection when I visit there next. *Evil Grin*)

Bought couple of photography mags and then walked into K.C.Das for some nice grub.

It started raining when we decided to come back. Ah how I love walks in the rain :D Got completely drenched while coming back, and right now I am shivering... But "walks in the rain" r0x0r !!!!

EPiC

WTF ???

What am I doin in office at this hour??

Trying to solve the Multi point correspondance problem =))

LOL !!!

the front

the back

Sony patents brain controller

"Sony has been awarded a patent for a technology that could conjure up smells, tastes and other sensations in the brains of movie-goers. Specifically, the patent (US Patent 6,729,337) covers "a method for generating sensory data onto the human neural cortex". - the register

I for one am really really scared.

On the face of it this technology seems very benine, but the far reaching implications of such a method are really monstrous. Firstly the human brain is unexplored territory, neuroscientists have just started charting the vast expanse of our brain. There is a LOT that has yet to be learned. How you such a technology affect our overtly complicated minds/brain? I do not think someone can ascertain the answer. Forget humans, its not even known for simple inscets like the fly. Are we willing to take a chance here?

Another thing that has a even bigger repurcussion is the fact that it allows someone else to enter you mind, create sensations and change your feeling. Who knows whether such a technology would be used against someone. Make you buy stuff you dont want to. It would be the ultimate propaganda machine. Goverments can use it to strike panic amongst the citizens of the enemy state. Remeber 1984. Much much worse than that.

Then comes the question of accountability. If you have a mind changing machine like this and if it instructs you to commit a crime who is responsible for it? How do they figure out who brainwashed you? Wouldn't this lead to complete anarchy?

How would you like others toying around with your mind. Feeding impulses and feeling into them without your conscious agreement. I definitely wouldn't. Would you?

Welcome to the "BRAVE NEW WORLD"

Nightmare II

for those who missed the first part

One night, back in 1995, this dream reocurred after a long time. And I distinctly remeber it till this day.

I am standing on that very bridge, the same hum drum all around me. A very light breeze prevailed which I think was calming me down. I was no longer scared of my surrounding. Somehow I felt all this confidence well up in me. Well it wasn't exactly confidence, I really can't put a word to it, but I felt nice. Just the kind of feeling you when you have when you think you can achieve anything you want, but you are kind of disinterested in doing anything :))

Then I started walking. On that precarious girder !!! And I am really scared of heights. I kept walking, without even looking where I was stepping. Walking just for the sake of it, with no destination in mind. Like walking in the rain.

After walking for sometime I reached the end of the bridge where it intersected with a huge road. I have something with roads and its was one of the neatest I have ever seen.

But what struck me first was not the road itself but the view on the other side of the road. After the road was a sheer drop to a valley. There was a lush green hill that encompassed the valley, the greenest you would ever see. A sparkling river meandered through the base of the valley. Shimmering as if made of silver. And then there was the setting sun, adding to the aura of the entire scene. The setting rays of the sun bathed the vista in an orangish glow, so soothing and relaxing to the eyes. The valley was littered with small hutments with red tiled roofs. It seemed as if a story by Hans Christian Anderson had come to life. I sat down mesmerised by the landscape, losing track of the world around me.

I do not remeber how long this state of blissful forgetfullness lasted (well I am not supposed to...?? right ;) ) I was woken up from this slumber by someone giving me a hard shove. When I turned around I saw a whole lot of my friends waiting in a car. So away I went with them...

And what a ride it was.

We started climbing a mountain and the road went in circles around the peak...

more latez ( i am too bored to write further =)) LOL !! )

The corridor of K. How I miss them :'-(

An evening in Aalborg

ROFL !!!

Nightmare update would come later, if I find time in the day *sighs*

On a light note:

From
Concrete Mathematics - Donald E. Knuth

"The ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate all need for intelligent thought"

Q. Prove Lagrange's identity.
Note in the margin - "Its hard to prove the identity of someone who's been dead for 175 years"

As funny as C&H :D Highly recommended !!!!

Drink Anyone ;)

Now that I have broken up with my girl I think this would do me some good. I just need someone to carry this baby for me from Princeton to Bangalore... :-?

Nightmare

I used to have this recurrent nightmare when I was a kid...

I am standing on a metallic girder and all I can see is dirty murky water down below me. It spans as far as my eyes can see. Its a sheer drop to the ocean, just nothingness seperating me from the emrace of the water. One imbalanced step and I would be diddled away by the unfathomable expanse of the sea. I used to feel so small and helpless. And so SCARED !!!

They my focus would shift and I would realize I was standing on a bridge. There is a rucus of vehicles, cars, buses, trams all zooming away. Comfortably, with ease. I seemed to be the only one ill at ease on this pricarious bridge. And surprisingly none of them even touched me. Like I was made up of smoke, untouchable, fleeting.

I was like a little kid surrounded by this metallic bridge, endless expanse of the sea and a world that didn't seem to take notice. Intimidating, VERY intimidating.

I was too scared to move, so I remained rooted at the place. All the din around me driving crazy and when I couldn't take it any longer I would wake up in a pool of sweat.

First time I remember seeing this dream was back in the first standard. At least that how far my memories goes back to. And I kept having this recurrent nightmare till the 9th standard. Sometimes it would be sporadic but at other it would wake me up every night.

And then one day all this changed...