Onus

I would like to start things off by quoting that I would always remember this time of my life as the most challenging one--in every conceivable aspect--and I am definitely going to learn a lot in these two months.

Today, I was thinking about all the battles ahead of me in these coming few weeks,and this actually got me feeling all lost and confused. So I am writing this post here for all my friends who are not aware of my current status and more so for myself--as a memory.

The most daunting task ahead of me is to apply to the various Universities in USA for my MS. Collecting information without anyone to counsel is proving to be a real headache. My mother offered me to hire a professional counselling service who usually charge around 15-20k for helping out students with applications. But as it occurs,I just can't convince myself to spend so much money on such things, and so I have decided to do it all by myself.

Let me sum up all the things--that i know so far-- would be needed for my applications. First, I would need to write a Statement Of Purpose (SOP), then i need to make three Letter of Recommendations (LOR), find teachers who would sign those LOR's for me , apply to the GGSIP university for issuing my original Transcripts,collect information about all the universities and various courses, shortlist around 6-7 universities and then form an adapted SOP for each of them. Then,finally fill in the real application form and mail all the documents and of course pay the fee online.

This being said, here is a list of the activities I need to do side by side the aforementioned tasks.

• Work for the Final Review of our project which is scheduled for Monday , 16th Nov 09.
• My navy letter has arrived, got to Fax those guys to change my SSB dates.
• Prepare for internal vivas of all the labs which are also starting from the same date.
• Prepare Innovations for all the labs ( there are three of them ).
• Then on Thursday--19 Nov--some company--Negro or is it Negaro-- is visiting the college for placements,so have to sit for their interview.
• Friday,internal viva of our Minor Project. Need to make a fat report and PPT for the same before the viva.
• Next, Monday External Practicals whole week.
• Then I think I would get a week to prepare for the CAT and my final exams.

This is about it I guess, and I am sure that if I have forgotten anything,I would be reminded of it in the comments. And for now,without wasting another second I would like to get down to writing my SOP.

Forever Antisocial

They teach me to behave in society, they tell me to be nice to others, they teach me to deal with people, and then, they tell me --"Be yourself".

Would someone please explain me how does it work? On one hand, I am being taught to wear a mask every time I step outside the house and on the other, I am being expected to be myself. Is it about surviving out there without losing your identity, or does it involve getting your work done even when you dislike the person you are dealing with. As much as I would hate to agree with the latter, what choice do I have considering the quixotic connotations of the former?

Even if I like someone and can't visit or meet him for certain genuine reasons, it is taken as a sign of my coldness and I am being taunted with phrases like--"So you got the time?" and "Did you forget your way?"-- when I do finally visit him. Now don't you think this behavior is actually fathering the aforementioned "coldness"? Next time even if I have the time to go and meet that person, I would think ten times before doing so,simply for the reason that I don't want to be baited again.So, it takes me to my next question, which is "Do I have to or should I do things which I can't or don't want to, just to be approved by the society?"

On the contrary, when I try to be social and talk nicely to everyone I am being termed as fake. Take for example the Sherlyn Chopra scenario in the ongoing Big Boss 3. During the first two weeks she was being herself and was joking and teasing everyone because of which she was nominated, and then during the next two weeks she was nice to everyone and tried to mix up with others, but she was nominated again,and this time for the reason that she was not being herself ,and is putting on an act.Now what does one do in such a scenario? Does it work like either you are "born social" or you are "forever antisocial"?

And finally, I would like to know what does one do when he can't reveal his anger to his object of antipathy? For example, say I did not approve the words of my teacher(or boss or friend), but I naturally can't unleash my anger on his face for the obvious reasons. Now I have got two options,either to keep that rage inside and ruin my sleep or talk it out with my friends or family--I can abuse that teacher or friend or I can justify how I was right and he was wrong--and feel palliated. Again, I opt for the latter,which takes me to my final question which is "Would you call this back-bitching or me being a double faced person?". Now, since I am being nice to that person (my teacher or boss or good friend) on their face--because I have no other choice-- and then afterwards abusing them behind their back, it does in fact fit in the definition of "back-bitching".

To sum it up then, I understand these questions might not have definitive answers and the answers to some might depend on the specific situation involved. Nonetheless, feel free to leave your opinions in the comments section.

Taboos : A Rational Outlook

Have you ever found yourself in a situation over dinner or otherwise,when you are watching your favorite hollywood flick with family and viola,the channel changes?, reason?,an inappropriate or vulgar scene hidden under some feeble excuse by your father like "I have to watch news" or "Let me just check the score".I am sure the answer is yes for most of us. We might be over 18 now, but apparently,it has got little to do with age.
According to the 2002 edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica", taboos are "the prohibition of an action or the use of an object based on ritualistic distinctions of them either as being sacred and consecrated or as being dangerous, unclean, and accursed".Generally they are taken for granted,seldom does one try to quibble over them. Some of these taboos are barred by law,to quote some general examples,homicide,homosexuality(in many countries),incest;while almost all are forbidden by our culture, morals and tradition. Amongst all this,some natural questions that spring up in our minds are : "Why do they exist at the first place?","Who made these taboos?","how did they originate?".We are curious,aint we?,this is because no one really gives us a reason for their existence,we learn about them as we grow,some make sense,some not,they are just there and we have to live with them.So,lets try to look at them from a more rational perspective.
As it turns out,most of the taboos we are dealing with are supported by sound scientific arguments.
Incest
It is the ethical and legal prohibition to have sexual relations with a related person or to marry him or her - even if the individuals involved are consenting and fully informed adults.Now,how did this originate?, i mean it wasn't obvious to us as kids, or was it?.One theory, proposed by Havelock Ellis suggests that this taboo expresses a psychological revulsion that people naturally experience at the thought of incest. Most anthropologists reject this explanation, since incest does in fact occur. Another theory is that the awareness about this taboo will lower the incidence of congenital birth defects caused by inbreeding(mating of genetically close individuals).So perhaps our ancestors realized this fact and forcefully prevented such acts during their times,and this very practice over the generations became what is today known as the incest taboo.
Food Taboos
There are many sections of society where individuals refrain from having non vegetarian diet.According to them it is against their religion to do so, but why ? a possible reason might be the merciless killing of animals from whom meat is produced, or maybe at the time such thoughts were originating among a specific clan, there was scarcity of animals or they were needed for some other purpose like milk etc.
Moral Relativism : The Bitter Truth
It refers to the fact that ethical or moral propositions do not reflect the universal truth, but instead makes claims relative to social,cultural or personal circumstances.Hence although some taboos can be traced back to their universal scientific roots,others are born purely under certain set of social and cultural state of affairs.They exist because they work,because they provide effective solutions to intricate social dilemmas.Moreover,they tend to disappear when no longer useful.For example incest might be tolerated in a world with limited possibilities for procreation, or in a hypothetical situation,suicide maybe encouraged in a society suffering from over-population and scarcity of resources.
None of such taboos refect the objective truth,none can be claimed to be universal.They are merely convinient conventions,workable principles,and regulatory mechanisms - nothing more.

Majority of the social taboos existing in our society today are useless and outdated,instead they create problems.So i urge you to think,weigh and analyze your options carefully rather than blindly accepting anything.

Killing Multiple Birds With A Single Shot

Recently , i have taken up reading newspaper ( actullay was forced too , ahh lets not get into that).
International pressure seems to be easing on Pakistan , as powerful nations are trying to get India and Pak to patch up :) , something which they have been doing continously over the years.
Now , if we actually try to look at the scenario from a broader perspective and give it some real thought , things instantly start falling into pieces. Consider this :-

Suppose this mumbai attack was a joint venture of 'ISI + Taliaban' , now lets analyse their achievements from this SINGLE attack.

1) Ruined India's tourism , economy , list is endless , everyone knows about it.

2) Successfully instilled fear in the minds of people worlwide.

3) Although Pak has been fighting taliban rebels along their western border , but internally they seem to be working with them at some level , and now that Pak has an excuse to remove their armies from the western frontier and station them at eastern border , Taliban has a free rein in the west.

4) Everyone knows Military is immensely powerful in Pakistan , democratic government being a recent addon. Now with talk of Pakistan army fully capable of responding to india's threats , and their vowing to safeguard national interests and protect the people of Pakistan , has made pak citizens think that MILITARY is their ultimate saviour ,therby weakning the roots of democracy, which is what ISI wants.

Now just imagine , if all this was really a part of the initial PLAN . Lord , dear Lord , it leaves me totally speechless. The kind of planning , at such a level ,being executed to perfection and this degree of foresight .
I wonder if they had used such innovative brains in a constructive manner , who knows we might as well have found a way to live on the SUN.

A great example of "Killing multiple birds with a single shot".

DBMS VIVA

At last , an interesting viva !

I would like to remember it as one of the rare viva's when hideous Maggu was cornered by a teacher.

FROM LEFT , Maggu , me , Ballu , Mnm.

It all started with a simple ACID question ( yes the law of attraction does work) , which was precisely what i had studied just before the viva. Unfortunately, the question was for Maggu who luckily messed it up by saying 'I' in ACID for "INTEGRITY" (lawl). But the teacher was no less crafty , he knowingly agreed with maggu and passed on the question to mnm who was wondering what integrity was (more lawls). Then Mr.ballu came into picture

Ballu : "Sir , integrity woh hota hai , jab do transaction saath chalti hain , both sir jab both , jab sir dono ko pata nahin hota , sir aapas main independent....."

Sir : "This is integrity ? huh ? Accha tell me what is isolation"

Gotcha ballu [:P] , ballu was bewildered until he realized the 'I' was for Isolation not Integrity.Some more genreal questions towards me , which i skillfully answered. Then ballu was asked again , what does he know in DBMS ,to which ballu promptly replied "Sir , serilizability , wait-die , wound-die ". So there was a question "What are serial shedules?" , exhilirated by the question ballu started firing out some gibberish in Hin-glish,but alas to his dismay he could't make the teacher understand his point.

Then came the conceptual questions ,
SIR : "Accha , who was saying he knows normalization ".
ME : "Sir , I said ".
Sir : "Good , ok make a table which is on 1st normal form but not
in second normal form. All of you".
( piece of cake huh ? )

I started thinking of a nice real time example , possibly banking , but then i realized i didnt have whole day , so i showed him simple A, B, C, D thing and illustrated my point via functional dependencies.Then maggu was inquired about his answer, ok first lemme give you an idea as to what he had done on paper. There was this bullshit employee table , with some flamboyant attributes like emp_id , emp_name and so on.
( In a disgustingly gruesome British accent )
Maggu : "Sir, I have made this employee table , in this i have an
employee name,an employee id , an ".
Sir : "I can see that , come to the point ".
Maggu : "Sir, in this we will have to decompose this into 3 tables,
because this is not "
Sir : "Decompose ki baat to baad main hai , i just asked you to
make a table which is not in 2 normal but is in 1 normal
form"

Then Maggu was like sir ye sir woh (lawl).Then mnm was asked to show what he had done , again some baseless explanation , i think he was confused between Partial dependency and Transitive dependency.Nonetheless i cleared up his doubts later [:P].Then came the turn of ballu, same ol' 'Sir ismain aise , usmain waise ' crap.
Next question write an SQL query to delete a colomn from a table if it is actually possible to do so. Setting aside some minor confusions , this was the only question answered almost correctly by all.Hmmm, let me see ,I can remember one last question and it indeed was the last one.It was to write a query to display the names of all teachers who were in the same deptt as 'Alka Mam' ( i was wondering y the external chose the name alka huh? kya chakkar hai huh? [:P] ) and obviously alka's name shouldnt be displayed. All of them except mnm (who doesnt believe in letting his expressions come out to the face) were taken back, completely abashed by the question.I have never practised SQL as such but nonetheless i was able to produce a correct query.After seeing ballu's query, teacher was partially irritated and asked him to find his mistake himself. Mnm gave him a total chu***a query which started with a 'select * ' when he only asked us to give teacher name and contained some more irrelevant stuff.So mnm was banged a little over this ,Maggu finally did something partially right but he had absolutely no idea watsoever as to how one could possibly hide alka's name from the displayed list.


All in all, it was pleasent amusing experience atlest for me , or maybe i am used to seeing the comical view of every other situation i deal with and i am contented not with the fact that mine went alright but because Maggu's went bad.

Dasvidaniya :)

Movie Review : Quantum Of Solace ( James Bond )

Yesterday late in the night i decided i had had enough of wasting time , so i thought of utilizing my precious time by watching a movie. Trust me i have watched every single hindi movie that has been released during the past 8 to 10 weeks , so i was undoubtedley in mood for something non-desi. Unfortunately, I had only two unwatched hollywood flicks on my system , 'The mummy something' and 'Quantum of solace' , latter being my obvious choice.

So, I sat down under my 'rajai' with a packet of 'hide n seek' on my ultra 'luxurious' chair.First 15 or so minutes of the movie were full-on action , bam here n a dhish there ! , but i was patient and held my nerve hoping against hope that sometime soon i will understand as to what was going on. Finally some peace , but not for long , fighting again , a chase , and suddenly Bond was in some diffrent country , more killings , another chase , a car blown up , some talking ( god knows about what ) , more chases , several boats blown up . This was pretty much the first half of the movie , all i could gather was that i had seen an actress which resembles the ravishing French beauty 'Audrey Tautou' of the Da vinci fame, yes she was also in the NFS carbon thingy.
Second half more or less acted like a bed time story for me , until there was actually a bed scene which waked me up a bit. This time there was this new girl , i don't know her name but she was pretty hot too.Action continued , senseless parties and aimless chasing ,baseless arguments ,enough material to send me or anyone for that matter into a semi-concious state. I felt i was watching the "Matrix Revolutions" without watching the "The Matrix" . All in all , i do recognise who the real villain was , i do recognise the two actresses but both had familiar faces , rsembling Audrey , but apart fromt this God and the makers only know, what the movie was all about.
I hope somebody who has or will watch the movie , will want to help me pinpoint what exactly i missed.

"A Must Watch"
IMDB : 7.1

My Perceptions And I

In memory of those , who were mercilessly murdered during the Mumbai siege.

As the majority of the country , I also followed the complete Mumbai Saga. Everyone knows what happened, everyone knows why it happened and i am dead sure many of us will agree , such things will continue to happen. We are all blaming someone or the other , and trust me there is no end to this blame game.


Today i was watching same ol' Times Now ( only sensible channel in my opinion ) , the operation was already over , and they were interviewing all those involved including politicians and NSG commandos. I couldn't help but notice Mr. Deshmukh ( CM Maharashtra ) and one of his ministers addressing the press and giving their speech in Marathi. I was shocked , i mean this is supposed to be a national tragedy , the whole country is watching and you are giving interviews in Marathi which majority can't even understand.

What should one infer from this ? What is he trying to convey by intentionally doing this ? Why doesnt anyone ask him to speak in the national language , so everyone can understand him ?

These were some of the questions that came to my mind , especially after hearing things about united India , India is one and so on. And above all noone is noticing ( don't tell me that he doesnt know Hindi ) .

Another point i noted was the communication skills of our so called NSG commandos . Undoubtedly , I respect them from the core of my heart and salute their bravery, but still what i saw and heard was completely diffrent from what i had imagined. I was expecting them to be educated people but when i saw them answering questions , the way they were responding was a clear indication of the kind of education they had received. I mean, they are commandos for god's sake , one expects them to be diffrent from normal policemen or normal armymen. I still dont understand how the authuroties teach them to use high tech equipment ,or handle pressure situations when they dont seem to have the requisite amount of education.
I am sorry but i couldnt help comparing them with the US commandos and all. Indian authorities may as well consider training monkeys to be commandos .
Once again , this is just the way i percieved things , no dirrespect watsoever meant to anyone or anyone's feelings.
Jai Hind