New Commitment - Classy Entries.

I am blogging from a Cafe. :)

For the past one hour I was struggling with this small math problem/puzzle. Unfortunately, I couldn't get head/tail of this thing. It seems to me that there might not be any solution. This at least helps me to satisfy my pride. My dear friend who pointed me to this problem, I am thankful to you. At the same time I am sorry that I cant help you get the credit of publishing the solution :)

Today is a dull day after so many sunny bright days. As usual I got up 10:00. My friend left to a tourist spot without telling me :(. Good that she did so.. otherwise I'd have discouraged her. Later, I too packed my stuff and came to this cafe. This cafe which is 125 years old! Already 2 cappuccinos are inside me along with the Italian cookie. A completely different day. About 5-6 hours in a cafe... just for reading, solving(?) a problem, watching people and of course thinking too.

What was/am I thinking? - Why do we always want to do the right thing? Sure that it's not to satisfy anyone except self. Then what if sometimes you want to do something which is not right? How do you define right/wrong? For those issues concerning others, we can easily define this. Those things just about self..?

I think the problem roots from the fact that there are things which are not absolutes. At least knowledge is not absolute in many cases. Then how will we be able to find solutions? .. Okay forget these things here. I shall try to solve them by myself and later post the solutions when I find them out. (It should be pretty difficult) - courtesy to Vimal.

Lately a very nice thing is happening to me. A couple of people for whom I have high regards for are appreciating my writing/blogging. I am happy :)

But they are simply unaware of the fact that their comments are making me tensed. It's my fault that my pride is growing up to sky and I'd start thinking about "my readers". Quite funny - "my readers". I guess, I am not going to think about that. Should be normal.

The blog which I started with the intention of improving my English writing skills... later turned out to be a passion which reflects my mind and thoughts! A very cool transformation!

I am happy anyway. Will continue to write whatever I feel like. This "Commitment to deliver ONLY classy posts" will fade away in a couple of days/posts. (in other words, "ahankaram can't last long")

Listen to this song Ennavo Ennavo from Priyamanavale. Pay attention to the lyrics too. The same way Minsaram en meethu also. Lately these kind of songs match well with my mood. What do they say about my mood? ;)
(am I still a mallu? Don't I have any Malayalam songs to point at?)

Wanted to write some more stuff.

1. Running Windows Vista on an iMac.
2. A tribute to some special people who shaped me.

Will do later.. My dear "readers",... wait.. ;)

Signing off, Sands.

[ REFERENCE TO PUZZLE TRANSLATION ]

PS: This is the puzzle which I was trying. There are three persons. Let's call them A, B and C. You don't know them personally. All you know about them is this - "A" speaks only truth; "B" never speaks truth; and "C" randomly speaks truth.

For any question, their reply will be only "U" or "V". And one of "U" and "V" means "Yes" and the other means "No". You can ask a maximum(altogether) of three Yes/No questions to these three persons and have to find out who is who. (They know everything in the world. For example, "A" would know what would be the reply of "C" for a specific question. So you can ask one of them about the answer which could be given by another person)

More formally:
1. Three persons - True, False and Random answers respectively.
2. Only two answers - U/V - one means yes, other means no
3. Only three questions to all (not three to each)
4. Find out who is who

Come on guys, this should be an nice brain teaser. Something similar to two tribes question of which one tribe speaks only truth, the other never speaks truth. Unfortunately I started thinking in the wrong direction and can't start from scratch.
<link to the original question - explained in the most round about way>
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A Picture Post - My Office Space

Just putting some snaps of my working environment. I should say, I am very lucky to have such a good place. Here are the pictures, let them speak.


Today, my table was a little cluttered with so many books and papers; That's why I wanted to capture the image. Then thought - "Why not put in the blog?" Anyway, the seat which you are seeing in the picture is not mine. It is for the other person who would be sharing the office with me. Apparently, for the past 6 months there was no such man to share the office with.


This would be exactly what I see while sitting in my chair. The desk of a researcher - but where is the computer?.. eh? You can see the mouse though.


Yeah, here they are. My Computational Devices!! The Logitech microphone, Creative speaker set - full fledged multimedia centre too :) (?) Isn't the desktop image cool? - that's a close-up picture of a burning match-stick.


Yes, this is all of it. This is how it looks like when I am 3 feet from the door.

DISCLAIMER: I feel that you just thought "how many books and papers he's reading!!". It's true that the picture gives a picture of a hardcore-student. Unfortunately that's not completely true. Today it happened so that these many books and papers came together. NO MISINTERPRETATIONS PLEASE.

Signing off, Sands.

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Those times are gone; But good times will come again

I miss my IIT days, my bachelor days. I should say IIT days were more productive compared to BTech days.

Those late nights with karthik, the bread omelet, the midnight teas. Arguments and debates.

Guru - the one who has influenced me a lot. The very late night conversations with him. One day it was 1:30 - 2:00 at night when we both came back from lab... we hadn't started having Internet in our rooms at that time. We met in front of the bath room. A long argument on doing a PhD - straight after college or after some industry exposure. Finally, I got convinced and later followed his advice.

Yes, that is what I am missing. To be precise, the active debates - which gave a conclusion and food for thought.

And everyone correcting my English - whenever I uttered a word which had "o".

Sanjay's sharp dialogs. It's an art you got to learn. Karthik's emotional arguments. I still remember the argument on the children of inter-state-married couple. He got so emotional for Nandita Das.

Guru and Sanjay making fun of karthik. Poor fellow, had a difficult time. I still remember the chat script - Guru was giving out his opinion about karthik - to Sanjay. Unfortunately, Guru didn't know, karthik too was on the other side.

Varun - man, what's happening with you lately? I never dared to speak in front of him. He used to criticize me for every pronunciation issues - in English and Tamil. But, I do thank you man.. a LOT. My language was "HORRIBLE" ;). It is far better now.

Dada alias Priyankar, all those late nights with him too. He was my guide before I moved to Guru's "shishyathwam". I know guru knows that I admired him a lot. I still do. I will grow to be like him someday. Spreading energy all around me.

Dinil, Ep, Samuel - the trio. The fight with EP, on GOD/no-GOD, business at Guruvayoor issues, God for weak minds. He got really angry. I still think about it and laugh. Samuel was the king of diplomacy - I hated it. I like him a lot though. Dinil.... he comes from early life.. BTech days. I'll write it some other day.

Arun, his theater.. those movies. I was never that close with him like with others. Still I know/knew he has stuff inside. Just that some different bandwidth. He still must be having one of the keys of my room lock (1041, Krishna).

How many things did I miss-out? I carefully avoided OAT, The mallu gang, and so many such things. They come in different category. The TCS gang, the Trio and Karthik - that's all that really matter.

I still remember the very first debate. Guru, Arun, Sanjay and Siddesh - we were in front of Narmada-365. They talked about Chandrayan, India Super Power, Vision 2020 etc. I was just a spectator/listener. Topics varied from the above mentioned ones to gossiping.

Yes, this is all. The constructive talks whether at Narmada, or at Krishna or at Gurunath or wherever, they were the driving force. The life giving thing. There were people who could beat me up with their arguments. Their logic, the way they put it.

After those times, I've never met anyone who could say things with that much of vision or thoughts or meaning. Same way, lately nobody is able to win me in arguing. I have to find someone like that.. to give me food for thought. When I am the winner always, what I believe continues to be right. But that's not true. It's just because I've not met people with better ideas than mine and the ability to turn me to lose.

I am waiting for such people coming to beat me up and teach me new things, to give me ideas. I know they will come or I'll hunt for them. I need some more time to get the language part ready. The basic language is enough to start with, then I can start with how I did with my minimum English knowledge.

Signing off, Sands.

PS1: Trigger for the entry - it's just 10:45 at night. I am bored. I want to talk. I just thought about those days. I sent a mail to Guru. Then I went and read AMP's blog. Still I wanted to think more about those days. I opened the box of those memories and scribbled some of them here.

PS2: I wish I could write better. If only I could write down all my feelings? Sigh!

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I love Munich

I've been wanting to post this for quite a long time. I don't think, even this post would do enough justice to my love for Munich.

My life was/is like this - I've lived 21 years straight in Kerala. Then 13 months in Chennai, 9 months in Munich, 9 months in Hyderabad and now again 10 months in Munich.

There was not even a single place where I wasn't happy. I was satisfied with anything and everything I got. I never complained about some place. Still if I praise some place, Munich comes first. Of course, I cannot compare Nellayi and Munich. Actually I find Nellayi to be the best because of that psychological thing that it's MY place. Otherwise.......?

Okay, back to my main subject here. I cant enumerate everything. Still...

Ubahn - The most comfortable and reliabele public transportation system I've ever seen. I've been to Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Prague, Brussels etc. No where I've seen such a good ubahn-system.

Englisher Garten - The unique thing. Stretching about 10-15 kms long and 4-5 kms wide, the garden is actually a small forest. Isar flows through the garden. It's all green everywhere. Singles and couples come for walk here. (Spazieren gehen). Biking inside is a pleasant feeling. The small cascade near Odeonsplatz, the Chinese tower, the nudist (:?) area all are amazing.

MarienPlatz, Stachus, Odeonsplatz and numerous other places - Fully crowded and silent at the same time. So many varieties of people coming and going.. rushing.. lovers walking hand-in-hand, hugging, kissing. Tourists doing shopping, the large shops, Karstadt, the two-euro-shop, the fountain at Stachus which turns to be skating ground in winter. All the Doner shops from stachus to hauptbahnof.

Cinema, Readery and Video Shop - Cinema is the name of the theater where English movies come. I might have watched more movies here than I've watched in Ragam/Ramdas/Kairali/Sreelakshmi/Ayodhya/any other single theater. Readery is the second hand English books shop - the largest in Germany. Video shop with 3000+ English movies and the the friendliest macintosh-maniac shop keeper.

OlympiaZentrum - The Olympic village of 1972 Olympics. The trees with full of flowers, 100s of two-room bungalows, all the sport facilities, swimming, the Olympia-hill, the lake, the swans.. what not..

People and cleanliness - Yes, very important. Very nice helpful people who keeps every place so damn clean. I've never seen any place which is as clean as Munich. Whoever has come to Munich at least once would agree with this. Also when I say about people... all those beautiful girls with kutti dresses and tyres around their belly. Ones without tyres too are there, the plump plump old people, the cute cute kids, everyone so nice.

My University - One of the top 3 universities in Germany. The ELITE university in Germany. I don't need to tell more..

The Climate - The only thing people could say to be bad. As a matter of fact, it is not actually that bad. I am comfortable with it. It's just human nature to get bored very soon. 3 weeks of snow will get them bored. In November, it was about 3-4 degree Celsius temperature and my friends were saying it was too warm. Anyway the winter seems to have gone. The lowest recorded temperature in city is -19. Now it is about 5+ degrees.

I might have missed out many things.. Oh, anyway I cant list out everything.. it will take a loooong time.

People including I, have started changing the dressing habits. Three weeks back, I used to wear all the thermal wear, gloves, cap, shawl etc along with the heavy shoes. Two weeks back I stopped wearing cap and gloves. Last week I stopped wearing the thermal wear and started using normal shoes. Yesterday I stopped taking shawl. In another three weeks, I'll leave the sweater and jacket. Then another 2 weeks, I'll move to Bermuda instead of jeans and to normal footwear instead of shoes. Some people are a little too fast - they have already moved to Bermuda and of course micro-mini-skirts have already started displaying the white-bloodless thighs of those hefty girls.

I've become kind of expert in Munich. I know most of the places, most of the stuff. Traveling in cycle gives me the extra knowledge of all the kutti kutti streets and all. Very nice lovely city :)

Who all reached here? Please raise your hands :). Congrats and Thanks :)

Part II - An open letter to all the cryptobloggers

Actually, what is your problem? You can very well say that it's your blog and you don't care whether the blog is readable/understand-able. Fine, but still readers expect something good. After typing in the post, why don't you just change the point of view and read the whole thing again? Just try to think whether the reader would understand something of it. Again, tell me you are writing the blog for you. Bull shit! True, you might be writing for yourself, but you always have readers in your mind. Every reader and every comment gives you happiness. You do expect them to read/contemplate and comment. You keep coming and look for the comments.

As far as I can think, all my fellow bloggers are/were s/w professionals. If you cant think what would be the opinion of the end user, do you think your product will be good? Isn't it same with blogs? And the management/finance/marketing gurus, if you cant know what your readers want, how the hell are you going to do marketing? Learn to market yourself first, your blog first. Come, tell me .. it is the right of the writer to write whatever he/she wants. I don't think that person who told will come here and read this blog. Still, you know that's crap and just an argument to save your ass. Fine, enough.

To be honest, the whole blasting I did just here was triggered by a friend of mine. He used to write sensible blogs. Now his blogs are becoming cryptic. Dude, what I believe is this - "Any new reader should be able to follow the blog without having a prior knowledge of you and your thoughts". You can always argue against me... but those arguments are valid only for the "ilamaran-blog/My Soul" of yours in the private domain.

Signing off, Sands.

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