Things I am missing the most...

There is time for everything in life...and its called COLLEGE.

Today my cousin has finally got admission in a Medical college and so he'll be heading off to a hostel in a few days. He was asking me about college life and hostel experiences. Talking to him... remembering the great times I have had brought back many happy memories :)

So...

This post is dedicated to all the great friends I made at college and have made the 4 years of college an awesome memory.

This post is also dedicated to my cousins Mridul and Sujoy who are both heading off to college (and hostels) and I hope they will have even more fun than I had @ college and hostel. :)

Here is a list of some of the things that I felt I am missing about my hostel life.. (and it turned out to be a long list...)

*Pulling (Ankit)Govil's leg (THIS HAS TO TOP THE LIST :D )

(That's me, Vishal and Shashank Pandey trying to find out what Govil is up to ;) )

*AH3 260 yaani my room :D

*Govil (aka Aashiq) and his disprins (This guy ate 4 disprins at a time and when everybody refused to give him disprin's, he got them couriered from home)

*Listening to Meet Radio Balle balle.

*The time we spent in Angad's room (AH3 237) (considering the fact that he was the first one amongst us to get a lappy).

*Listening to 'Shubham ke mast wale FUNDE'. Remember the HAC theory :P

*Pandeyji (aka Shashank Pandey) ke PJ's..(Notice the 'ji' at the end of his nickname..that's the respect for his jokes)

*Pulling Abhay's leg

*Abhay's room (AH3 254),which was our common room.. Whenever any one of us came back from any class..we used to invariably stop at his room..infact sometimes he went off to attend classes and we used to remain in his room...

*It happened a couple of times that Phodu (rarely also known as Abhishek) slept off in Abhay's room and poor Abhay had to go and sleep in Phodu's room.

*Vishrut's room (AH4 234) which used to remain absolutely spotless any time of the sem.

*Meet's room (Ah3 252) with his simple rules of clothes- clean clothes on the desk, dirty clothes on the floor. keyboard and mouse of his desktop on the matress on the floor.

(Meet's room in all its glory ;) )

*Exams ke time par kabhi Pandey ke room mein, kabhi Vishal ke room mein padhai karna...aur waha Govil ka aa ke DOUBTS poochna aur phir khudd hi answer bata kar nikal jaana aur phir sabka usse gaali dena.

*Meet's room again where he taught us the OP RE, OPTI and NUMAL hours before the exam. 2-3 people on the bed and 2-3 on the floor and Shokee (Ashok Mittal) coming in between to ask the syllabus hours before the paper.

*Food and chocolates from Nimit's home (AH4 364). His room was the venue of our initial RDC meetings :)

*Hostel mein b'day aur birthday bumps, those eggs and tomatoes aur agle din ki treat :)

*Playing baddy (aka Badminton) in the hostel..

*Common room mein baith kar koi bhi Cricket match dekhna...woh continuous commentary aur woh kisi bowler ki ball par 4 ya 6 padhna aur phir usse gaaliyaan dena..

*Going to the water cooler at anytime of the day (or night) and finding Phodu in his standard Baniyan-trackpant walking in the corridor...

*Shouting BAPPUUU while coming back outside Bapu's (aka Rohan Gandhi) room (AH3 245).

*The three indications of impending exams 1) Andhraites playing cricket in the hostel, 2) Sudden improvement in weather (read cool breeze and rains) AND 3)POWER CUTS

*Sitting in the corridor during power cuts and trying to study..and when it became too dark to study..just sitting there and gossiping..

*Baarish...aur baarish ke saath woh sondhi sondhi mitti ki khushbu

*The discussions on DC on everything from averages in different courses to random bakwaas.

*Cooking Maggi at 2 in the night (and eating it too :P)..

*Walking into the corridor after that and finding Pandey, Abhay, Phodu and Meet all awake and then discussing some point for hours..

*Lazing between classes at Monginis or the stairs near the Library..

*Meal times par apne hi corridor se hi zor se "VISHAAAAAAAAL" chilla kar Vishal ko uske room se khane ke liye bulana..

*Mess mein baith kar logon ki mast taang kheechna..

*Shaam mein Basktball Court ke peeche wali road par walk karna..

*The classes in LT.. and ST ( aka Sagar Thakur) and (Purnoor Singh) Sodhi making up songs...(Harshvarshan) Mohta taking down notes..and Meet and Sagar cracking jokes..

* Workshop course (for obvious reasons :P)

*Electronic Lab ki woh masti aur EMEC lab ka woh terror..(shirt tucked in, wear shoes and not floaters, with diagrams drawn with scale and compass..)

*Woh single digits mein number..and then calculating how much below the average did we fall..and then thanking God for relative grading...

*Those movies in the Audi and the 'nautanki' that we used to do during those movies..

*Sitting on the stairs of the Audi during Zephyr aur Waves right in front of the participants and then "encouraging" them..taking panga with other hostels...and pulling the legs of participants from other colleges..

*The T20 World Cup in the Audi after an exam...the rush of adrenaline and emotions...the last shot by Misbah Ul Haq, thinking that we lost the match, and then the catch and the celebrations breaking out afterwards..

*The Dj nights for any occasion and RDC (Rejected Dancer's Club) opening the dance floor. Nimit, Purnoor, Puneet, Vishrut, Vishal, Angad, Meet, Abhay, Anurag, Shubham and all the others who have made for some awesome Dj nites...

*Raat ko VGH par jaa kar baithna..aur waha baith kar Panjim ki lights dekhna aur gappe maarna..

*Sitting outside Shop Co after dinner ..

*GOD MADE MAN, WE MAKE THEM HANDSOME the quote on barber shop, the place where every time you go...you’ll come out with a weird haircut.

*B Wing ke bahar baith kar Kashi Dairy ke paranthe khana :)

*The 40 hours of train journey from Goa to Delhi (and the other way round too)..and the thousands of incidents that happened during those 40 hours

(The view from 2379/80 H. Nizamuddin- Vasco Goa Express)

PS: It's late at night and I can't remember more, though things can be appended to the list if I remember any more things.

Remember Kargil?

Well, it has been 10 years since Indian Army recaptured the areas captured by Pakistani intruders and instead of celebrating our victory in Kargil, our politicians are busy downplaying the importance of the 1999 war in which over 500 of our bravest soldiers laid down their lives.

Two Congress leaders expressed to the press that Kargil wasn't something that was worth celebrating. Congress MP Rashid Alvi said he saw no reason to celebrate the Kargil victory. "Kargil isn't a thing to be celebrated. The war was fought within our territory. We didn't even come to know when the Pakistani army crossed over and built bunkers inside our territory."

Former minister of state for home Sri Prakash Jaiswal couldn't even remember when the Kargil war was fought and won. Asked about Vijay Diwas, he wanted to know when the day was celebrated.

All this when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took time out to take part in the 220th anniversary of the Bastille Day in Paris. But neither he nor any senior government official has time to participate in the 10th anniversary of the victory over Pakistan in Kargil.

Doesn't this attitude show that it does not matter to the country if our soldiers lay down their lives. Doesn't it demoralize our soldiers that we do not take pride in the sacrifices they make. why would anybody join the defence forces if no body is bothered even if he dies for the country??

I came across these ad's for the Veer Jawan Fund.





The agency which created the campaign wasn’t one of the big agencies in India. It was a small Delhi based agency.The ad was created with true bleary-eyed emotion. Some of the team members come from army backgrounds and understand not only the trauma undergone by the loved ones of war martyrs, but also the callous attitudes of successive governments towards them.

I'll include this poem which was also a part of the campaign.

He loves Hindi songs.
Just like you.
He hates injections.
Just like you
He cried each time Amitabh died.
Just like you.
He’s been in love once or twice.
Just like you.
He’ll bleed if you cut him.
Just like you.
He’s happiest at home.
Just like you.
He loves the smell of rain on sun scorched earth.
Just like you.
He cheered India at old Trafford.
Just like you.
He dreams for his children.
Just like you.
He’s gone to die for a stranger.
And that stranger is you.

Google Baba ki jai

Remember I had blogged about the keywords that people used to come to my blog (which I had found out thanks to Google Analytics).

So now that I have got time to study the Analytics application, I dug in deeper as to how much information does Google get when you use Google search or any other Google service or even arrive on any site that uses the analytics.

And I have to admit…I am amazed by the amount of things that Google knows about you, your network and even your computer.

This is the basic dashboard for the Analytics. It gives you basic information like the entire traffic to your site for the previous month, the number of visits, time on site, location from where traffic has arrived on your site and a pie chart showing what percentage of traffic came directly, came via a search engine or came via a referral site, for e.g. someone else’s blog. And it also gives the pages that people landed on.

Each section also has a ‘View report’ button which allows you to see a detailed report. The first report is for VISITOR OVERVIEW

This is the page that appears when you click the view report.

The page gives details like the number of visits, the absolutely unique visitors, the time on sit, bounce rate etc. It even gives a technical profile and tells one about the browser the visitor was using, what kind of internet connection was he using.

The right hand side shows the visitor segmentation based on the Visitor profile-language, network location or even some user defined parameters. It can even classify traffic based on the browser profile which would include the browser being used, the OS, the screen colour (16bit colour or 32 bit colour), screen resolutions, java support and even whether flash was installed on the browsers or not.

This screenshot for the flash version shows that 507 visits in the last month used 21 different versions of flash. :O

The network location gives the networks that people were using when they came to my blog. 108 different networks for 507 visits.

Next is the TRAFFIC SOURCES tab which opens up a window which list outs the sources via which people came to my blog- the top was direct traffic, while Google was a far second. Other blogs too came in the traffic sources.

For all the visitors who came via any search engine, analytics also lists out the keywords of the search. The keywords include assignments on dsp, disprin cnf, vishrut meaning, google baba, IC 814 hijack, delhi+mussoorie+yamunanagar+route, where does aziz premji live, further study after bits dlpd degree…

So if Google can release this much information to users, then I can very well imagine what they do not release. Just imagine the amount of information they can extract from a single search that one does using Google search…

Na kisi ki aankh ka nuur huun..

This is a poem by Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal ruler. I heard the para which I have put in bold, and found the rest of the poem. Quite a soulful poem.

Na kisi ki aankh ka nuur huun

na kisi ki aankh ka nuur huun, na kisi ke dil ka qaraar huun.
na kisi ke kaam an aa sake, main vo ek musht-e-ghubaar huun.

( I am not the light of anyone’s eyes,
Not a harbinger of peace to someone’s heart,
Not of any use to any one,
But just a handful of dust.)

main nahin huun naghma-e-jaan fizaa; koi sun ke mujh ko karega kya?
main bare biruug ki huun sada, kisi dil jale ki pukaar huun.

( I am not a life-giving verse,
No use to someone who listens to me.
I am a cry in the wilderness,
A call of a heart gone on flames.)

mera rang rup bigar gayaa, mera yaar mujh se bichar gayaa,
jo chaman khizaan se ujar gayaa, main usi ki fasl-e-bahaar huun.

( My colors of self-image are now gone,
My beloved from me is now stranded away.
The garden which the spring turned into wilderness,
I am the spring harvest of that garden now.)

na to main kisi ka habiib huun, na to main kisi ka raqiib huun, jo bigar gayaa vo nasiib huun, jo ujar gayaa vo dayaar huun.

( I am lover of no one,
I am rival of no one,
I am the fate of my ruins,
I am the river of a wilderness.)

pae faatihaa koi aae kyuun, koi chaar phuul chirhaae kyuun?
zafar, ashk koi bahaae kyun, ke main bekasi ka mazaar huun.

(Why should anyone sing a requiem?
Why should anyone place four flowers on my tomb?
Zafar asks: why should anyone shed tears,
As I’m buried helplessly in a vault underground.)

~ Bahadur Shah Zafar

First rains of Monsoon 2009:Delhi

Here are some pics that I clicked day before when the first rains of this season at Delhi.. (They aren't fantastic like the ones taken by Angad, but they'll do ;) )

(That's how it looked..)

(Small kids enjoying the rain too.)

(Even the plants on our balcony seem to be enjoying the rains :) )

Would you be happier??

Heard this song after a long time today...and the lyrics are pretty good too.. :)

Would you be happier- The Corrs

Have you ever wonder where the story ends, and how it all began, I do (I do, I do, I do, I do)
Did you ever dream you were the movie star with popcorn in your hand, I did (I did, I did, I did)
Do you ever think you're someone else inside, when no one understands you are (you are)
And wanna disappear inside a dream but never wanna wake, wake uuuuuup
Then you stumble on tomorrow, and trip over today

(Chorus)
Would you be happier if you were someone together
Would the sun shine brighter if you played a bigger part
Would you be wonderful if it wasn't for the weather
You're gonna be just fine (gonna be just fine)

Are you not afraid to tell your story now, when everyone is done it's too late (too late, too late)
Was everything you've ever said or done not the way you planned, mistaaaake
So you promised that tomorrow, be different than today

(Chorus)
Would you be happier if you were someone together
Would the sun shine brighter if you played a bigger part
Would you be wonderful if it wasn't for the weather
You're gonna be just fine
I think you're gonna be just fine
You're gonna be just fine
So don't worry baby

You're racing for tomorrow, not finished with today

Would you be happier if you were someone together
Would the sun shine brighter if you played a bigger part
Would you be wonderful if it wasn't for the weather
I think you're gonna be just fine

Would we be happier if we were someone together
Would the sun shine brighter if we played a bigger part
Would we be wonderful if it wasn't for the weather
I think we're gonna be just fine
I think you're gonna be just fine

Don't worry baby
Gonna be just fine
Don't worry honey
Gonna be just fine
Don't worry baby
Gonna be just fiiiiine

Random thoughts

Just some random thoughts passing through my mind right now...

Thought #1
Just finished with a memorable trip to Lucknow... met Ankur and Shreya..and remembered those times @ BPGC. awesome lunch at Shreya's place and my first treat for becoming an engineer to both of them at Moti Mahal @ Sahara Ganj Lucknow. :)

Thought #2
Driving a two wheeler in Lucknow is SAFER than driving in Delhi. I always believed that traffic in Lucknow is a lot worse than Delhi, and it might be with no body following any traffic rules, but driving with Ankur on a two wheeler, I realized that drivers there were more tolerant than Delhi ones...

Thought #3
My cousin is giving his medical entrance exams these days and its common discussion about the very limited seats for general students, the donations for seats etc. Recently he had given the exam for MAHATMA GANDHI INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES, WARDHA.What was uncommon about the exam for this college was that there was a seperate paper for Gandhian thoughts apart from the normal PCB paper. AND, the PCB paper would only be evaluated if the candidate score over 40% or something in the paper about MK Gandhi, and all the people and places associated with him. Now my question is that if you don't know about MK Gandhi, are you NOT good enough to be a doctor????

Thought #4
All these surveys about Engineering colleges etc and the fuss being made about them. Don't we all know how these surveys are done?

Thought#5
Why does MTNL net pack up when you need it most...I have been sitting foe hours waiting for the net to get connected to be able to post this entry and this thought has been added as a result of my frustration.

Yesterday I booked a complaint with the MTNL call centre that my net was not working.
Today, the exchange guy called came and checked if the ADSL light was coming on. Since it was, but no sites were opening, he told me that he will tell another guy to checkup and change some settings. Till last edited, I am still waiting for that second guy to come.(but the net is working on it's own :|)

Thought#6
The weather has been cloudy but...When is it gonna rain??