DTH with recording facility - Yaaaaay!!!!

I had thought of writing quite a bit today, but this broadband is seriously screwing my plans :( I ended up watching Youtube videos instead of writing. I haven't enjoyed the simple pleasure of watching them at home before. So its a brand new experience. I remember my friends kept sending me Youtube links and I would be like, "ummm! My net is damn slow, I'll check it out at office". Well now, "Bring it on baby!! :)"

Work was pretty "blyaah" today. The Model/View thingy was still screwing with me but then just towards the end I found out a way to do what I wanted to do though the process isn't very elegant. In the longer run, I need to learn how to subclass the Abstract classes to get the funda working. I think I'll put up a tutorial once I get done. There isn't a good tutorial on the net to do it. Damn pathetic! Good tutorials can save a lot of time for a lot of people.

Its been quite sometime now since I got the Tata Sky+ but I think it was one of our best investments. Fortunately, my friend Kartik had come down from the US then and he had a similar TV recording box. He sort of enlightened me and showed me how it actually saves time and entertains. He said, "Look buddy, you love watching TV but you don't get the time. The only time you watch TV is probably while you eat or after you come back from office. I am sure you must not be watching more than an hour per day. And you will notice that during this time, you will never see anything worthwhile. You keep flipping channels and end up watching nothing. Get this system, set your timings and record the stuff you wanna watch. Watch it during the small window you get to watch TV."

It was one of the "Ahaaa!" moments :) We got it immediately and soon discovered many more positive points about it. I could record all the FRIENDS episodes and watch them over and over again. Record movies on weekdays and watch them on weekends. In fact, now even if I have the time I record the movie and start watching it an hour after it actually starts. That way, I watch the recorded version and fast forward those gazillion useless advertisements. Super time effective! Specially when you are psychotic enough to pack your schedule so bad that you don't get a breather all day, a TV recorder system really helps you push it up a notch and yet lets you watch your favourite serials and de-stress :)

So if you don't already have one, and you are a die hard TV fan, get it, specially with the World Cup just a few days away :)

Disclaimer: No DTH service is paying me any commission for this, specially Tata Sky. So you can get anyone of them and this is not an advertisement :P

Its raining Megabits :)

My MTNL broadband is finally here! After suffering forever with a pathetic excuse of a broadband connection, I finally have something which makes me feel happy :) The first thing I did after coming home from work was get online and check the speed ( skipped gym :P ) at one of the speed-test sites. And what did I discover? I have a 2 Mbps connection :D The joy is short lived because they will soon realize that I should be actually getting 320 kbps for the Unlimited plan that I opted for and they will cap my bandwidth.Another problem that I have noticed is that the connection is extremely unstable. The link keeps going down :( Hopefully it'll stabilize in a few days.

So in my excitement, I opened up a torrent site and decided to download something. After looking at the screen for a couple of minutes, it struck me that there was really nothing that I wanted to download :P Super anti-climax! Went and downloaded a couple of salsa videos. And then again stared at the screen for another 5 minutes and then a dialogue came to my mind, "You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it." I wanted broadband and now that I had it, didn't know what to do with it :D The Dark Knight really had some awesome dialogues. God knows what prompted Ledger to kill himself though, after such an amazing performance.

QT4 is a pain in the ass! Seriously! I felt like tearing my hair off with it's Model/View programming concepts. Sounds very cool and intelligent but implementing it is suicidal. All I did the whole day was get more and more confused and ended up sub-classing god knows how many QT classes x-(

The rains are finally here! It has been coming and going for the past few days but today it appears as if its here to stay :) I am sort of happy because it'll bring some respite from the heat but then again I am not the biggest fan of the rains. Though many of my friends would give their right arm to get wet in the rain and also take this opportunity to call me a loser :) Today in spite of the fact that we both contemplated rain, Suman and myself reached office without umbrellas. And as expected it started raining while we were waiting for the bus in the evening. Thankfully there was a cobbler shop where we could stand for a while and the rain subdued. Was lucky the first day but I think its better we don't take a chance tomorrow.

Rockvale Academy

Was a pretty active sunday. Got to work on my website for a while. Spent the evening with a friend. So pretty happy with the weekend :) Well I have put up part of the front page for testing purpose. You can check it out and send your comments to me. Here's the link :

http://www.shubhayu.com/main.html

I have got to write about Kalimpong today. I have been chatting with one of my friends from there all day and I just kept remembering things from back then. If you have read my previous posts, you'll get a feel about how strongly I feel about the place. Everyday there, was a memory. I studied in 2 schools there during the 7 years I stayed there, did 1st - 3rd standard in Benjamin Garden's School and 4th - 7th in Rockvale Academy. My days in Benjamin Garden's were very scary particularly because of a certain teacher. I used to be so shit scared of her, that it wasn't funny! She beat the crap out of me! But now that I am older, I realize that if she wouldn't have disciplined me the way she did I would have probably turned into an A-class monkey (not that I wasn't one). After class 3, I shifted to Rockvale Academy. Things were way better since then. The sad part though was that I couldn't stay with my mom anymore as she had to go and live with Dad in Melli, Sikkim (who had fallen sick because he wasn't taking care of himself). So I shifted to Tapoban and started living there as a PG. After the first year, I think I was part of the family. Now its become my hideaway. I think it'll be very easy locating me if I ever vanish. I would definitely be found there.

This was my school. Though when I was there, before I left, the top floor of the main building was just being built, there was no building in the back. And the building to the right had only one floor. I had made some really good friends there, a few with who I am still in touch regularly while a few through Facebook. Now since directions are a little different when you live in the hills, I'll try and explain. Our house was at a place which was higher than our school, ie, in terms of terrace farming, the school was at a lower terrace than my house. The great part about living in the mountains is you can overtake cars and reach the destination before it. All you have to do is just follow one of the mud-paths and run downhill while the car would take the main road and loop all over the world to reach there. So every morning I used to follow one of these mud-paths (called "chor bato" in Nepali), cross a water spring (called "jhora"), run down lots of terrace farms (where mostly maize was grown) and finally reach school. But the thing is what comes down must go up :P and that was the difficult part :D

But my days at Rockvale was super. I had really good teachers, my favourite being Ghising sir who was our english teacher. He was also our music teacher. Used to be at awe by the way he played the keyboards and guitar. Looked a lot like John Lennon :) But I think he had a drinking problem. Felt really bad when I heard that he had come to school after consuming alcohol and was relieved from his post. Fortunately I wasn't there to see that but I still look up to him. Ashok sir was another teacher who really encouraged me to take part in quizzes and literary activities. I still remember how Adhikari sir taught us about protoplasm. Super gross it was!

I hated taking exams but I used to love it when the results came out. I used to mostly stand first in my section except I think once in class 6 or 7, second semester, I came second. Man! I got scolded so bad! Stuck to coming first since then. I don't know where I stood overall though in the class. We had 3 sections. Worst was during the final exams which were held around November. It was so freaking cold then! I had to literally rub my hands to warm them up cause I just couldn't write inspite of knowing the answers. Pathetic! Not a pretty sight when you can't control the rate at which you are thinking and writing. :)

That was the time when I entered the "I Hate Girls" phase. I think all guys go through this phase. Atleast I have heard a lot of guys say that they have been through such a phase where in girls seem like icky things who should be kept under lock and key. Ironically, this was also the time when I had my first crush! Such conflicting feelings! I mean I see some other girl and I am like, "Leave me, I am going to kill her!" and I saw her and I would be like, "Haaaawwww! agali-bogeli-sawqwe-blingabogo-boo!" Ya I know, it didn't make sense then either. I would be usually tongue-tied and my ears would go red. I was so bloody smitten by her :D Super confused I used to be as to what was happening. Unfortunately didn't have anyone to explain me what it was all about. So I just kept it to myself and moved on. I think I was more intelligent then! Hehehehe!

Ya, life was simpler than. I had to worry about homework, exams, scheme ways to have fun and yet not get in trouble, worry about all the pears, guavas and plums that needed to be plucked before someone else took them, worry about how to convince my parents to let me keep the puppy I randomly picked from the street, find out ways so that I didn't have to go to school, avoid taking my bi-weekly baths (ya I used to have a bath twice a week cause it was so bloody cold). People should make a machine where you could go back in time for a day once a year. I think it would sell pretty well :)

All in the game

Its really difficult to write on saturdays and sundays. Partially because I have comparatively a lot more variety of experiences and interactions. Weekdays are mostly dedicated to work and then you can just think about a certain thing and write. But not so on weekends. There are like a million thoughts teeming in my head. I think I really need to learn how to meditate, calm myself and streamline my thoughts.

Human emotions really amaze me because of the level of complexities. And out of all that, the one which is the most complicated I think, is love. I think initially, when humans were planning out words for emotions, love (its a little funny because I am not equipped to say the set of emotions that I am thinking about under the category love) baffled them. So they just wrapped them all in to a single word "Love". What do you feel for your parents? Love. Why do you want to give away your life for this person? Love. Why do you miss your siblings? Love! You must treat everyone with Love. Its crazy!! Get different words for all these different feelings!

That doesn't end the complication or the misery. Love can suddenly become obsession where you lose track of the whole thing. Let us say you like a girl (I am using a girl cause it'll help me explain it better). Now you start getting feelings for her which is very different from the way you feel about others. I am not sure about this but I think I might be. Hear me out. Let us say what you are feeling is love. Now under this situation, you start to think of ways to make her happy. Now it may happen that the poor soul has no idea whatsoever and even if she does, she tells you that she has no similar intentions. But then you realize that your feelings never had a pre-condition. You felt the way you felt without anybody's permission or approval. That I think is unconditional love. Where in there isn't a prior condition for you to start loving someone. Now if the girl feels the same for you then nothing like it. But the pickle is what if she doesn't? There are a number of ways that things can move ahead.

1. You can continue to love her unconditionally but never let her know that. Never do anything that your partner would appreciate in a relationship but not if you are not in one. Just make sure she isn't uncomfortable. Because you would ideally want her to be happy cause you love her. But the question arises. What about you? What about your feelings? Isn't it human to feel negative when you don't get the same response? It is. And if such a thing happens, get out! Simple reason being that this sacred unconditional love that you had for her will suddenly be parched with negativity, lies and conditions. It'll make this beautiful thing very ugly and you would be the one responsible for it.

2. You can try and be her friend. But are you strong enough for that? Can you convert your feelings to something platonic? Will you be able to see her with another person? Someone else getting all the things that you craved day and night for? Are you God? Are you? I think it's possible only if you no longer love her or you have managed to cut those hands off that grab your heart and pull it making it feel heavy and you, breathless. This is very difficult and probably the best end to the failed love story. But its difficult for us mere mortals. It takes a lot of time or if you meet someone who can make you feel the same for her again. But then its difficult to meet someone when you don't want to meet someone. (I am not at all talking about a rebound. Its a lame attempt which just leads to a lot more people getting hurt)

3. Or you just get obsessed with her. You cannot take a "no" for an answer. You see yourself like those movie heroes where the girl gets "pataoed" because of the guys excessive force of emotions (i don't know how else to put it :P ) You start messaging her 50 messages a day. Mail her 10 times. Call her maybe 58 times. Try and stop her on the road. Basically make her life a living hell. She thinks about you all the time but cringes at the thought of you. You make her feel angry, scared and helpless which leads her to fall sick, spiral into depression. How do you justify your acts to yourself? Do you think she'll ever want to be with you? How foolish can you be to think that? How does this scenario end? I don't know. But if something is not done then things can turn extremely nasty.

4. You could just cut off all connections, bear the pain, seed some negativity and hatred for her and try to get her out of your mind. Very difficult, specially when you can't find anything to hate about her, specially if she has never done anything wrong, never tried to take advantage of your feelings for her. Then its just plain will power. You may have to convince yourself a lot but this will probably get you over her. I don't know whether the fire ever is put out this way. Something tell me its just a forceful way to put it out which basically just turns dormant and in time will come back again to confuse you and make you suffer.

There maybe more scenarios, I don't know. But it's all in the game of love. I don't think a lot of though went into defining love. It just makes humans a confused lot. Confusing a bunch of feelings as love, getting hurt, hurting others, making a mess of the whole thing.

TP = Taar Paar

Our college had a few awesome rituals and customs. These were customs passed on from generation to generation (I mean from one batch to the other). "Taar Paar" was one of the first things that our seniors taught us. It was for surviving in the college for the coming four years.

Our college, though worthless, had professors who were extremely paranoid about attendance. Apart from a rare few the others were disastrous. Could seriously screw anyone's enthusiasm for education. Only those who have passed out of my college knows what an achievement it was. (Not to mention that it was under the extremely, uhmmm, how should I put it? awesome university... The Great Mumbai University) I can already see a smile on all those tortured souls who have graduated out of MU :) Peace brothers! Peace! We have been there! Done that!

Alright so back to my story. We, the hostelites of RSCOE, solemnly swear that we are upto no good :), Yup! That was the basic funda. Our college had strict rules about getting back inside the campus. I think the deadline was 7 or something. Don't recall it now. And the guards used to make a huge hue and cry if students came in late, take their ID Cards, complain, and god knows what. Dumasses! Anyways, it didn't suit the students and so they found a way out. It was worse for students who used to come to Bombay on weekends for coaching classes. They generally returned on sunday nights. And if they left without the college's permission, then they would not be let in. The funny thing was that the college would not allow students to come back on weekends even though it was an attempt at trying out ways to pass out and graduate. Of course that didn't stop anyone from leaving the campus at their own will :P

During one of our ragging (oops, introductory sessions) nights, our seniors introduced us to the concept of TP.

"Abey! TP kya hota hai pata hai?"
"Haan bhaiyya! Time Pass"
"Ch!@#y@ hai kya? Time Pass! Abey gadhe yahan Time Pass ke liye TP karna padta hai. TP ka matlab hai Taar Paar. Campus ka Taar Paar karoge to hi kuch kar paoge. Jitni jaldi ho sake seekh lena"
"Theek hai bhaiyya! Kal hi seekh lenge"

Thus we were introduced to the idea of TP. One of our batch-mates who had come earlier and now was a professional TP guy, showed us the route to freedom. A section of the route fell in direct view of the guards, though they used to be generally quite far away. During the day, that was a tricky part. Usually what students did was slip out with the day scholars and return the TP way in the night. But there were emergencies when we needed to leave college during college hours and that too was an issue :( So TP was inevitable.

So we needed to pass that area within a flash of a second, somewhat similar to the cartoons where the sly fox slips from behind tree to tree to reach the hen coop. After that we had to pass through some pretty disgusting areas, with certain areas covered with extremely questionable material. I think I'll skip the Quantitative Analysis of it. We just tried not to step on it.

And then there was a wall with barbed wire on the top. We had to slip between that. Pretty difficult in the beginning but then we got used to it. The adrenaline rush was just awesome! :) Towards the end, there were guys who had literally stopped using the main gate. They TPed, even when we had authorized timeout. :D The authorities obviously knew that something fishy was going on, but never really was able to catch anyone (not in my knowledge). At times when the number of luggages were large, we had accomplices in the hostel, who would throw them out from the windows, once we were out. Getting in with a lot of luggage was a little more difficult. Care had to be taken to make sure that we were not caught between the main road and the point of entry.

It was a fun activity :) More like infiltrating enemy camps and then escaping to freedom after the mission was over :)

Walk On

The whole day passed in a sort of a daze today. I was pretty zonked. Whole body's still aching, extremely sleepy and a little fatigued. So I plan to sleep early today. Get at least 6 hours of sleep. Want to end the friday energetically :)

I am trying yet again to use Netbeans. This is my third attempt at it and something tells me that this time it'll work out. QT4 needs to be controlled too. It's quite different from QT3 and has a steep learning curve. I should have made the shift long back. Anyways, better later than never :P

Really not in a state to write much of significance. I am reading up on what I wrote yesterday and most of the places seem to point to one thing. Think positive. What you think will manifest. Think hurt, negative, sorrow and it'll manifest. Think happy, success, health, love and it'll manifest too. So I am gonna try the positive thing. I have gotto keep walking because there is a greater cause, a higher destination.

Here's a song by U2 called Walk On. It eggs me ahead every time I hear it, reminds me what its all about and all that I'll leave behind.

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage that you can bring...
And love is not the easy thing...
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it
No they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on...
Stay safe tonight

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

Walk on, walk on
What you've got they can't deny it
Can't sell it, or buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Home... hard to know what it is if you've never had one
Home... I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
That's where the heart is

and I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Leave it behind
You got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you feel
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress-up
All that you scheme...

Who's the freak now?

Ever since my spiritual self developed years back, I started questioning religion and existence of God, yet I always believed in a super power, a power which I failed to comprehend. This was mostly because there were many things that my knowledge of science couldn't explain. I have always had a rational look towards life but I have learnt one thing in my life and that knowledge comes from everywhere, everyone and everything. I try not to be so rigid in my thinking that I wouldn't see the truth even if it hit me on my head. I have a lot of weird ideas about different aspects of life which have no valid proof but that doesn't mean that I discard them from my head. Maybe someday I'll be able to prove them, until that day I think most would either consider me a fool or a freak :)

Fortunately I have managed to disregard this to quite a large extent. I believe in the concept of "My Life, My Ideas, My Belief" or in short "My LIB". Makes sense actually. Its more like my private library and it contains books that I like and I would want to have. If you like them, borrow them, if you don't, then don't. I may listen to your review of the books that I have, even your opinion. I might mull them over but don't think I'll throw away my books because you thought it went over your head or you didn't understand them.

What made me believe in the idea that something bigger is happening which I am unaware of or am unable to see, is the fact that there are many incidences in life which seem very mysterious. Usually people attribute such things to co-incidences, luck or intuition. I find it a little illogical or rather a little difficult to stomach. Why should it be that someday when I have this urge from within to hear an old song from childhood that I haven't heard in more than 5 years, suddenly appears on TV. How is it that I crave for a particular flavour of ice-cream and I suddenly get an invitation for dinner and the same flavoured ice-cream is served as dessert? Why is it that a thought about some old friend with whom I am out of touch comes on a day and that very same day I bump in to him in a mall? Coincidences? Who knows?

"Illusion" has repeatedly appeared in my head in different contexts over and over in different phases in my life. It was the name that came to me when I thought as a child that I would like to have a company of mine. It had that element of magic in it. I have come across it in various forms. The movie "The Illusionist" portrayed my belief of what a man can achieve or do when in love and then I finally got hold of the book "Illusions" by Richard Bach. It gave me a lot of answers, I don't know if they are true but I think they have an element of truth in them. It contained a lot of experiences and ideas that had inherently developed in my head. Going through the book just helped me gather my thoughts and try and apply what has been said in the book. A lot of it doesn't make sense and seem impossible. But for now, I am working on the part that I did understand.

The second thing that I have started noticing for the past few months is the number 11:11. I just randomly look at a watch and its 11:11 or a similar repeated number, eg 3:33, 5:55, 12:12 etc. But mostly its 11:11. And it appears in a lot of other places. Any of the machines that I use in the gym with a digital timer. In the beginning, I used to find it amusing but now it has become a little freaky. I recently did a google about it and was amazed to see that there are a lot of people who have experienced this, that I am not alone :) I am still reading about it. I plan to put up stuff about it soon, once I have read enough.

The path of self discovery is a difficult one, but its an exciting one. Everyone should take time out from life to do it. You just might be surprised to know how awesome you are and how unique :)