NITK KNIT - The Strongest Bond There Is!

temple by the sea

2009-06-05T22:34:00.003+05:30

It was a weekend in the month of February when I was amongst five people left in the wing( I think the the rest of the gang went back home for incident).
Solitude is something I could not handle, at least until then. I strolled down to the sugarcane guy and it was a breezy evening as it always is in S'kal. The twilight was lovely, so I decided to extend my little hike up to the temple. I had been here before but usually with company and never on a non-festival,non-eve-of-exam day. I did my bit re. the prayers and came our into the place where they have the benches facing the sea. The benches were still warm(ish) from the afternoon but the breeze more than made up for it. There were more ships than usual on the horizon. The light was fading gradually as the ships lit up in the distance. The light house did its business throwing light into the sea in regular intervals. As I sat there my thoughts drifted off into this and that. Nothing profound and nothing that would make a difference to the course of the world like the kind Newton might have had when that apple fell on his head. But still they were my thoughts they kept me good company. When I finally realized it was time too push on, an hour had passed. I had enjoyed the solitude.
When I need a change of company, I know where I should be headed.

Its summer

2009-04-23T21:12:00.000+05:30

Let the blogging spree begin......

The humbling at Hampi

2009-02-15T23:08:00.008+05:30

It has been troubling my conscience that I have not made the effort to not put up this post, what with taking notes during the trip among other things. A post about a movie review on this blog owing to the sheer lack of contributions is the final nail in the coffin. I am thankful for the same to have awoken me and put out this post.

At around 8 in the night on 11th December, Thursday, I heard Sameer screaming across the corridor for someone to get water bottles along. I accused a group of people leaving this place to explore the world outside without inviting me along. On reaching Sheki's room shortly after, my hunch proved right with the guilty party leaving half an hour from then. After a short debate with myself and quickly stuffing in clothing and a bedsheet, I intruded their plans with my inclusion.

The guilty party in question here was headed by the capable expedition leader Sheki, and also included his pals Rushil, Sameer, Bala, Nishkarsh, Alankar, Mota and now, much to their helplessness, me. We set off on a bus to Hospet which was to reach the next morning. Nothing eventful happened on this trip save a traffic jam delaying our arrival by a few hours. A local bus from there took us to Hampi, already giving us a taste of its awe inspiring splendour on the way.

We successfully gatecrashed into two adjacent rooms of our choice and hired bicycles for flagging off our exploratory endeavors. The day ended with a visit to a few nearby monuments and Bala's lock going bust on him; not to mention the frustrated cursing and failed rudimentary rock-lock breaking attempts that ensued.

Thats the seven of us... Alankar below. Sheki features further below, whom we have to thank the one above for among other things

Notable Quotes

(In the context of the famous musical pillars of Hampi - Stone pillars reinforced with metal to produce musical notes when struck)

Vhora: "Talk about heavy metal music."
Bala: "This is more on the lines of alternative rock."

We woke up early the next day(Saturday) and five of us left on a trek to a nearby hill for a panoromic view of the ancient city. (For the uninitiated, Hampi was the glorious capital of the Vijayanagara Kingdom, now largely in ruins, awe inpiring nevertheless.) Atop this hill, a breathtaking sun rise awaited us. This magnificent experience of viewing the glorioius capital was complimented by a glass of steaming hot chai at the top. The view also gave us our first encourter with the sheer vastness of the city. There were ruins on every side, far as the eye could see, Palace Foundations, Market Places, Baths, Temple courtyards, Public Performance Stages to name a few. A staggering sense of realisation as to how much time and effort was needed to construct a city of such grandeur with mere rock, chisels and bare hands dawned upon me. This feeling of awe only built on us wherever we went for the next 2 days. Each of the innumerable sites situated there was a masterpiece by itself.

Lunch on the second day was had at the Goan Farm, an eatery situated across the Tungabadra river, far enough from the holiness associated with Hampi to be free to cater to non-vegetarian and alcoholic interests. The meal, rather reasonably priced, lived up to everybody's expectation but mine. Why it did not shall be made clearer in lines to follow.

Imagine a city filled with these!

Notable Quotes

Bala: "Eiffel tower is shit compared to this place."

(At the marketplace which was a brothel in its day)
Sheki-: "This is the place where they sold human whores!"

(On the trek, pointing to traps between huge rocky boulders)
Your's truly: "If you fall into one of these, you will die for life."

The third day saw us checking out of our accommodation and proceeding like the other two days on more exploratory quests. By now we had realised that it was absolutely impossible to finish an exhaustive visit to this place in just 3 days. The third day was somewhat of a finger in the eye in comparison to the other two because of the crowds that a festival had drawn in. Something interesting that I have not mentioned so far was Nishkarsh's encounter with a blood brother who was delighted to see his brethren in a land so faraway. This turned into instant displeasure of equal magnitude when he realised that Nishkarsh was on the search for something (..ahem) outlandish. (Grass doesn't grow too well in the deserts of Rajasthan)

Captain Sheki in his element

Notable Quotes

Sheki- "For every book in Deccan there is a library in Lucknow."

We then proceeded to catch a bus to Hospet from where we had a booking to Surathkal (or so we thought). The bus mentioned above happened to be extraordinarily crowded. Rushil got into a scuffle with some local thug resulting in his giving up of his seat and Sameer's, the latter's whose was beside two white chicks. (I also failed to mention the huge number of foreign tourists that visit Hampi whom Alankar was very optimistic on getting lucky with)

Finally, when it looked like our saga was coming to an end, we realised our tickets at Hospet were wrongly booked. Our only alternative was a Grameena Saarike (Village headman's) transport bus, 2 hours later. This is where my problem with an aforementioned lunch got rather out of hand. The mashed potatoes that I had had that day, had had my stomach in all sorts of trouble by then. (...a tribute to the .... had had had had had..... sentence, whose discussion had had Bala pissed). The journey took us a few kilometres into the middle of nowhere, where it looked like it was coming to a dastardly end (for me because my upset stomach needed emptying real bad!). Luckily (and miraculously might I add), we managed to get back on course with an empty bus but for us. Our fellow passengers, who were rather numerous before the little problem had lost hope and sought other means of travel. In the nick of time, we reached the Hubli bus station where I sought salvation at a public toilet which was bad, but not something the seventh hostel block toilets hadn't prepared me for. (Hail the unexpected merits of those mind, bowel numbing experiences)

We reached college early the next (Monday) and life presumed as before save the eternal etching of this fabulous trip's memories in our minds, after expressing our sincere gratitude to our captain, Sheki.

Conclusive notable quote

(After clicking 656 photos through the trip)
Sheki: I am tired of clicking photos.

Pride and Glory

2009-01-31T03:46:00.002+05:30

ok... a li'l introduction on what would at least in some way revive this blog...

it's been pretty much dead for sometime now... so, what i suggest is instead of putting up other stuff, people are encouraged to put up movie reviews... i know, it is not something you would have the patience to do... but give it a shot...

i thought this might be good because very often i see quite a few of us asking around which movie would be a good watch and which ones are not worth... so this...

Pride and Glory(2008)

Edward Norton

Collin Farrel

Lake Bell ( the female from first season of Boston Legal)

Jon Voight

this is a story of a Family dedicated to the NYPD... pop - a high ranking cop... one son is a detective, the other the head of a precinct... son-in-law cop under the head-precinct son...

although the whole family is in law enforcement... it's not a family drama... its not a conventional good cop-bad cop movie either...

its like the story writer got confused as to which one of the two story lines he wanted to pick... and it ended up becoming this movie...

only thing i could get in the whole movie was the " WE PROTECT OUR OWN" - the sole motto of the police when they get in a tight spot!

not a movie that you would want to waste your time on, if you don't have it...

considering it was a Ed Norton - Colin Farrel movie... it was a disappointment!

5th sem

2008-11-22T16:35:00.001+05:30

the mudurf*@!^ng college should, in very sheki-like manner - f$#@ itself 2-3 times....

i hope the 6th sem never starts....

2008-07-12T22:06:00.002+05:30

Reached. Settled. Fee payment is too painful a procedure. First dota game beginning! Welcome to third year all :)

2008-07-07T15:58:00.000+05:30

Homesick already. Boo hoo!!

WoW, A Revolution!

2008-07-01T22:38:00.005+05:30

We've heard a lot about DOTA, haven't we? The game everyone spends hours at, trying to "impale" the proverbial monster/hero or "hook" the cat to oblivion.
What we haven't heard of is another game of epic "shag" potential. WoW is the ultimate noob heaven. Here is a game where how good you are has no bearing on your thinking, hand-eye coordination or decision making abilities. What a heaven-sent! A dim-witted, hare-brained buffon (ahem... peACE can name someone here?) can beat Hanni/Datta/Adi given sufficient time. (and Xp - the elixir of WoW life) Why bother honing your thinking ability? All you need is infinte patience and the inhuman power to fight boredom at every level. This is what a typical WoW game looks like:
1) Find some poor creature of lower level than oneself.
2) Kill poor creature, making sure to strip its body bare of any useful items. Stringy wolf meat anyone?
3) Find more poor creatures and repeat steps 1,2 ad infinitum...
4) Find still more poor creatures and repeat step 3 (by extension, steps 1,2)
5) Occasionally, find some being much higher in level than you and beg him to give you some "quest" to take your mind of the incessant boredom
6) Perform "quest" that invariably involves steps 1,2,3 and 4 to be repeated several excruciating times over.
7) Gain ONE precious level of experience. Congratulations, you've got 2^1024 levels to go. See you on the other side of infinity.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention how NITK has adapted WoW. We keep one computer as the server. This computer contains ALL the data - Individual player's levels, quests etc. The whole nine yards. Every once in a while, the computer crashes. Hence the server has to be reset. Poof! There goes your hard work and 10000 crit kills. You've just been demoted from level 60 (It took literally months to reach - the higher levels take exponentially longer to cross) to level 1. All your hours spent wondering where to find your next quest from or how to enhance damage by 50 points, down the electronic drain. If by some miracle the computer behaves itself, the game's ruling "committee" decide to reset the servers anyway. Me thinks someone spent WoW time in class (trying desperately to reach 75%) instead of being dutifully glued to their monitors. How dare he? The shame! Luckily the "committee" understood the person's problems and decided to give him another chance. Phew! They just saved his life.
Silly me. I almost forgot to mention the inspiration for this article. A group of WoW addicts are heading back to college almost 48 hours early to, guess what? Play WoW. They intend to be at least 20 levels above the rest of the riff-raff before classes start. A lead to last? I doubt it. The server will crash anyway.

hEArD iT tHrOuGh tHe GrApE vInE

2008-06-24T19:02:00.004+05:30

A few days into the fourth semester, the ceiling fan in my room was spinning so slow you could have put your hand through it, and if I can remember correctly, some nutcase actually did so. The sultry Suratkal air does not permit people tolerating fans running at a half revolution/second. With the intention of getting it fixed I headed towards the hostel office, flinching because of the putrid smell of unwashed toilets and skipping every few yards to avoid stepping on dog poop. I walked into the hostel office in a sleeveless t-shirt and shorts to protect my modesty. The lady did at the office counter looked at my attire and then at my face. I was explaining to her, in Kannada, the situation re. the broken fan and was half way through it when she pointed at register lying on a table not very far away. Having done so she went back to whatever these hostel workers did to earn a living. Guys who don’t dress up for the occasion of lodging complaints didn’t interest her much. The register that she had pointed to was a complaint book of sorts. At least I gathered as much from its contents. Tube light not working, shelf not fixed blah blah blah. I wrote my complaint in bold hoping that this would speed up the process which it didn’t. A couple of days had passed and there was no trace of an electrician. It was then that (bastard) Prashanth told me that he had the electrician’s number and all I had to do was call him. And call him I did. In marched the electrician a couple of hours later. Problem solved.

This got me thinking about how our college was very much like a miniature India. Indian bureaucracy, I think would be a better phrase. You guys understand what I’m saying right? How many of you have made an entry into the Holy complaint book only to realize a week later that it’s probably being used as toilet paper in times of water shortage? This reminds me of something. The water shortage in 7^thblock is the stuff horror stories are made of. You wake up on a bright sunny morning, having had a rather heavy dinner at Bittu’s or Kalash and your stomach feels a little iffy. You gather you toiletries and head off in the direction of the stench only to realize the bloody taps only release water in droplets. No choice but to hike to the ground floor Gult wing, first block or even worse, the open spaces. How many times did we complain to the warden? Innumerable is the right answer. This guy was quite the Neta I tell you. Did anybody else observe that the only time there was water in the 7^th block tank was when he paid his weekly visits? I’m sure just before heading off for his rounds in the block he’d give the NITK water department a ring and say “Hey, swami, I’m heading to 7^th block to catch those suckers boozing or relaxing on the terrace. While I’m there ensure continuous water supply. Just to rub it in their faces.”

I’m sure, at some point during your stay here,you’ve gone to the mess with a grumbling stomach only to find an infinitely large queue. To add to your misery, some %$^&* in front lets his friend join in and that guy does the same for his friend and so on. Twenty minutes later, when you finally get to the end of the line,what awaits you is garbage being doled out in the name of food. Frustration mounts. You want to tear your hair out, or may be someone else’s. Doesn’t all this ring a bell? Bad roads, bad power supply, bad water supply, bad queues, bad everything. We’ll be facing the same problems when we get out of college.

NITK mirrors India and Indian-ness quite accurately. Yeah we do face a few problems. It’s just that I have learnt to laugh at it and accept it as a part and parcel of studying here, the same way an Indian citizen would shrug his shoulder’s and drive his way through a pot-hole ridden highway as if it was more than he could bargain for. If you find me complaining endlessly about the food, weather, the clubs and everything associated with the college, it’s mostly because I enjoy doing so! When someone says anything against my beloved alma mater, you can be rest assured I’ll be out with brick bats in one hand and the issue of India Today which ranked our college eighth in the other! God bless their souls.I mean the India Today writers.

P.S. The title has no relation to the blog. Its a song by CC Revival that I really like.

Education and Crime...

2008-06-23T00:43:00.002+05:30

All and sundry must have come across the quote on a fellow mate's t-shirt which read- " I was born INTELLIGENT, but EDUCATION ruined me "

The Times LIFE this sunday carried this article on how more and more educated people are commiting crimes.The figures were vaguely something like from 8-9% to 11-12% of the total, if i got it right. Although you may want to exclaim that's like a very miniscule increase by all standards. But considering the fact that india is such a huge country the 3-4% increase spells a huge number of people.

It's said that lot of it was due to pent up anger and an instant of maddening rage. The cases quoted - the Arushi Talwar and the Neeraj Grover murder cases. The first case has a dentist father involved, the next one has a naval guy who was a topper in his batch and an upcoming actress butcherin the body to 300 pieces.

It also mentioned that the range of age in which most people in this category fall was 18-30 and in mumbai it was more like 18-21. The point that i'm trying
to make here is that this, i suppose, is the most trying age - as in everybody is under pressure to make decisions around this time which will affect their
lives for the next 20-30 years(in most cases). Now that's a helluva lotta pressure because you have not encountered such an important phase in your life.

And then to add to all that there is the expectation from the society(that is the people around you) which you have to keep up and meet. Although a few might
want to believe that it should not have any significance, but deep down i guess it really does - whether directly or indirectly. You cannot discount the fact
that in the back of everybody's mind there remains an imprint of at least what your parents expect of you, in the most basic terms.

Now all this competition and everything mentioned above is something people of earlier generations were not facing, at least, not of the same magnitude.
This is bound to drive people on the edge and keep them there for long enough to build up to a society in which the aforementioned incidents are becoming
more frequent and becoming of a much more brutal nature.

This should ideally give fodder for thought to the leaders in our country who are responsible for the education system that india so proudly boasts about.
And i suppose even we, as students and, facing the above have to consider and ponder on this issue. Because we are not exactly untouched by the mentioned phenomena.

regards
poi

P.S. u must forgive me for spoiling the fun and jovial nature of the other posts!

New (Academic) Year Resolutions

2008-06-21T13:07:00.011+05:30

OK, this might be overstepping the line a bit but we thought we'd put down a list of resolutions for everyone.

Gulati:
Stop worrying, gripe less, talk without using words/phrases no one has ever heard of. (I'll let the comments add to this) Forget about IEEE injustice. It's just another regular back-stab. Plenty of those going around. Shall not display my immense expertise in lightning behaviour.

Heda:
Stop this obsessive, compulsive behaviour over Sharon, love BD more, look for other people to satisfy me, learn how to be IEEE con so that everyone doesn't laugh at me in final year.

BD:
Stop belting Heda, he may just be the one. Patent "shaaaata-thu" - It's being used way to often.
Watch out for new attendance rules - 85 %. Shaata.

Rushil:
I've got to focus. There is only one person for me. Come on, spell it out - maybe I'll remember it better: A. D. I. T. I. = Aditi. Foreigners are not going to be around anymore. There is only one person for me. There is only one person for me.....

Sameer:
No repeat of last year. No mooning over one person. There are plenty of fish in the sea. I've just got to catch one sucker. Just one.

Sheki:
Calm down. I don't have to show everyone that I'm the best. They should already know it by now :D

peACE:
MATLAB is not the be-all and end-all. There's more to life than Image Processing.

Vicky:
Gotta find the cheapest connection to Mysore. Need to save more if clandestine trips are to continue. Also need a better cellphone battery.

Ponky:
Forgive Gulati for beltings received in summer. Top class, show N.V. who's boss. Gossip with greater accuracy. I'm the KING. Yo!

EnViCi: I will not be bastard. I will not be bastard. No wait, I will be a bigger bastard.

Adi: I shall not message, its time I moved a level upwards. And yes, I shall no longer deny my Chinese roots. My country is finally going to make me proud at the Olympics. Also, grow lengthwise and NOT breadth-wise!
.
.
.
Well, We've run out of decent resolutions. Feel free to add some if you like.

Disclaimer: This post has been as such, APPROVED by ALL blog members. Yes, that right. You've got to belt us all :)

Bala is always after Sheki

2008-06-20T10:31:00.003+05:30

Now Now, before Sheki plans to beat us all up [or even better take us out for drinks!], I humbly request him to read this.
Sri G Balaji. [applause in the back ground]

Don't let his I-like-lollypop looks deceive you, for this guy has a monster hidden inside him. A monster which no human can emulate. A monster which every human would love to be around with. A monster which sometimes is so confused, it might act like a little girl. A monster which is still considered a legend by those who have not seen it.

Like every super hero, this monster [its a good one by the way, like king-kong only smaller and less hairy] needs something to bring it to life. Like spider-man needed the spider to bite him. This monster needs alcohol to fuel his form. The bad part is alcohol is expensive. The good part is Bala doesn't need more than 1.2*e-15 gm/ml to bring the monster out.

From being absolutely scientific [talking about benzene rings being sexy] to absurdly insane[No,I will not say it Bala].
The monster has been most commonly seen during or after exams, but we could not confirm these reports because the witnesses were in a 'monstrous' mood themselves.

It is impossible to tell the monster from normal humans in photographic evidences provided. There have been videos in the past with the monster in its full glory talking strangely into a 'mic' and speaking about 'EG Exams' funny, the monster has a nerdy side too.

Those who have not seen it continue their toil for the ultimate treasure hunt, The search for the 'High'-to-saurous.

[I'm sure many comments, slippers and other things will follow, this is purely for fun please, nobody take it to heart]