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  • Anything yaar!!

    Another trip.. another get together.. another blog!! From where the title has been flicked will be clearer in a bit.. the most relevant thing about it is that unlike other times when I’ve been to Hyd, there were no set plans made this time. We did things as and when we felt like it.. just about anything yaar!!

    Anyways, to get to it.. I reached Hyd early morn and buzzed Sudeep and Thax.. who took their own sweet time getting to that “Paradise” place (Like lakdi ka pul usually, this time around, this drop-off point became the “we pass it every one hour place”… we kept going around it all the time!!) the bus had dropped me off. They came, I sat in the car after the hugs and we were off.

    The first stop was Prasad’s where we wanted to get tickets for Woh Lamhe.. Goyal had said he wanted to watch it.. 2 reasons.. coz the review was good and coz he likes Kangana.. I suspect the ordering of those reasons was reversed though ;).. there weren’t any night shows, so we picked up tickets for 3:30 pm. We headed off to the airport after that for Goyal’s scheduled arrival but his plane decided to go around in circles for a bit. We didn’t wanna spend 120 bucks on the high-priced-as-usual airport parking and so we ended up in a bylane. The time here was spent mostly watching the tight security at a nearby ICICI bank building stopping anyone and everyone from entering. We also went for a small walk during which Sudeep commented, “gaon jaisi smell aa rahi hai”.. Thax interjected, “yeh gobar ki smell hai”.. we sheepishly smiled, us 3 nalaayak-city-waalas and turned about :)..

    We had a discussion on whether we should leave this dude and push off.. all our points were in favour except for one vetoing factor.. he was getting sweets!! Thax tried calling Goyal (for the 17th time) and actually got through now. Goyal’s plane had just landed and we drove into the airport to pick him up. On reaching the terminal, we found that we were much faster than the slow, ambling, lazy-assed Goyal (I’ll be killed for this adjective-filled description!!).. we obviously still didn’t wanna park (things don’t change in 15 min!), we went about for a round again.. 5 min later, we returned and he still hadn’t gotten out of the terminal (see the description above).. but this we decided to stop in one of the outlanes (not the parking lot, mind you!).. after a search for Accenture/HSBC billboards and a stare from a passing police van, Goyal finally reached.

    For obvious reasons, we were more interested in the dodha and the laddoos.. Goyal made some phone calls to meet some junta and Sudeep ended up fixing his plans for him. Can you please also add confused to the list of Goyal adjectives.. coz he really was at this point. Which is probably why we later found out that this particular phone call person (if you ever get to this blog, you’ll know who you are!!) was more interested in meeting the “shayad maine life mein thodi jaldi kar di” Sudeep ;). If I may add here, we’ve also found out that Sudeep is major eye-candy for all the babes in his CAT class in Hyd (oh wait, that’s an oxymoron.. there are no babes in Hyd.. the only good looking women are up on the billboards!!).. This was the first time any of us had flown IndiGo, so we wanted Goyal’s feedback on how the airline was.. “The air hostesses are quite pretty” (He’s a smart (ok ok, you can add that to the adjective list too) chap, comes to the point quickly ;)).. in particular, he liked one named Madonna.. he didn’t quite explain what he liked though.. the name.. or the name-tag!

    Let me take a diversion here.. coz there are a few things to point out.. first of all, Ankit, you’ll be very sad to know that the revered Stanza billboard no longer exists.. in Sudeep’s words.. “dekhte sab the khareedta koi nahi tha”.. the second thing is that I haven’t even made it past a couple of hours of the trip yet.. this is gonna be one long blog.. and finally, one of the pleasures of writing a blog is that you get to trip everyone else without a chheeta on your own kurta ((Mu-wa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (The evil laugh!)) Remind me to turn off commenting on this blog once done!!)

    Also.. the roads in Hyd are really screwed up right now.. Though Thax says, “har saal aisa hota hai monsoon mein and har saal ban jaati hai”.. the Civil engineer in me rightreously asks, “Why don’t they fix it such that monsoon has no effect?!!”.. The Comps engineer smirks and asks, “Reeaaalllyyy??!!! Why don’t you help them with it??” That shuts the Civil engineer up and the Comps engineer goes back to wondering what he should do about the kickass salary some people seem to be getting in Hyd!!

    Anyways, let’s get back.. we now drove over to (Sudeep and Thax)’s place (with a stopover at a place where the rest of us had juice without ice and Sudeep had ice without juice!).. Hi-hello with Varun happened.. and after about an hour of laccha, Goyal headed out to meet junta while we decided we’ll write CDs.. (every trip has it’s own music and it’s own songs!!) 2 audio CDs were compiled.. one Hindi and one English.. and then the time came for naming ceremony.. My “kya title daaloon” query was duly answered by Sudeep’s “anything yaar”.. and so we have it.. 2 CDs compiled on 30 September 2006.. called “Anything Yaar”.. as apt a title as there ever has been!!

    We had plans to go out for lunch.. but we were too lazy to get up and bathe until it was too late.. so we ordered in Pizzas.. Thax was pretty sure we won’t be able to finish ‘em but we did. And then a quick plan was made to buy speakers for Sudeep’s comp (it also needs more songs dude!!).. we headed for this place called Computer Market, which is on Park Lane, behind MG Road (Quite a search happened for it.. as can perhaps be guessed by the detail with which I remember the location!!).. anyways, it was totally worth it.. coz Sudeep got himself this really SEXY Altec Lansing sound system.. totally cool.. and absolutely brilliant for blasting music 😀

    Quite the driving happened after that.. and we reached for movie just in time. Goyal wasn’t there yet (he came in about 20 min into the movie) and so we entered the hall without him. The movie is decent though all of us agreed the end spelled out too much. And we’d really have liked it to be more subtle.. By the end of it, we had quite a few names for lead actress.. Kangana Oh-The-Eyes, Kangana I-Don’t-Like-Pants, Kangana Weird-Accent and KPS Thakur (yeah right!!!!) are a few examples :))

    The next one hour was spent blasting Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hai at full volume in the car.. all of us agree that Hindi movie music is moving up in this world.. and we ended up at Eat Street. We wanted to take a fast boat ride (the weather at this point was awesome.. very windy and chindi-chindi bearish once in a while) but things got screwed as they were only allowing 3 people per boat. So we went to this rooftop seating area and put lachha. The period here was marked in particular by flying menu sheets!! Thax warned us that the food is very crappy.. so we just ordered a paav-bhaji and a masala dosa to be shared between all of us.. and it ended up being awesome!! Which was very symbolic of Thax’s opinions the whole of this trip. Whenever he told us that the parking lot was on the left, it ended up being on the right. Even the law of averages fails when it comes to Thax!!

    We had an are-we-or-are-we-not-hungry discussion after that and ended up at Ohri’s for chaat. The dahi-vadas and aaloo-tikkis we ordered were absolutely awesome and we had our stomach full. We also met Mehul in the meanwhile and convince Fundoo to come over with us to our place for the night. He carried his laptop along and we spent sometime watching his IIM pics and videos. As we were scrolling through the videos, the “Sutta” tune was heard. We were all obviously very curious to see if some dude actually sang it on stage. So we rewinded to figure it out.. Well, he did.. but all the X-rated stuff had been replaced with “na-na-na-na-na”.. 🙂

    Least Count followed (with beer in hand for Goyal and me).. though we didn’t play much thanks to Sudeep’s “I was just taking risks”.. a show of Hyderabadi Nawabs movie followed and I fell asleep some 10 min into it. The big contribution as far as the movie is concerned, is the word “mastan” which has entered all of our vocabs.. the last 2 letters phonetically resemble “wahan” and not “mahan”.. Hindi becomes a phunny language when written in English 😀

    The next morning, I was woken up by a phone call from Ankit.. the most interesting part of the call occurred when he asked Thax whether he wanted anything from the US. The quick reply back was “Victoria’s Secret” =)).. I’ve no idea what he’d do with that but the rest of us just settled for catalogs!! We went off to Dundigal after that.. it was an eventful drive, with one truck almost killing us and us almost killing a truck driver :D.. but it was soon forgotten as Aunty served us a brilliant lunch.. we had lots of cake.. Schumi won an action packed race.. it was a very satisfying afternoon. Uncle took us on a round of the Airforce academy, we clicked pics of MIG 25s and SAMs and other whatnot.. very very cool!!!

    As we headed out of Dundigal, we had no idea what to do next.. following the anything yaar philosophy, we decided to go for a show of Fast & Furious – III.. there was some time to kill before that, so we thought we’d pay a visit for the Birla temple. After major honking in the parking lot, we began our Birla centric expedition in the Science museum first. It was quite bad, especially when compared to the gem we have at Pilani :D.. the journey from the parking lot here to the museum was highlighted by the major honking as well (some shouting too this time!!).. and finally we ended up at the temple. Beautifully made, the temple was very neat.. and quick tour that we took was totally worth it!! To the movie now, and it was very crappy.. the drifting was cool initially but when we realized that the movie had nothing other than the drifting, it seemed stupid!!

    Dinner happened post the movie at “Our Place”.. a joint treat Sudeep and Thax that Sudeep conned Thax into ;).. the ambience of excellent. We somehow ended up at a crappy corner table.. Goyal and I were still ok with it, but Sudeep and Thax weren’t.. I also have to mention here that Goyal definitely doesn’t deserve the wingman position.. my cry of 12 o’ clock was met by a “Huh? Whoa? What?!!”.. we did end up changing our table however.. the food was very good, especially the daal.. though the service was crazy and the waiters a little eccentric!! Though Sudeep said that they were better than most places, so I’m just wondering if Hyd has lower standards or something..

    We hit a pub near our house post dinner.. dhik-chak music but the DJ was mixing well.. and there was a Sachin masterpiece on ESPN.. we just got in a pitcher of beer that Goyal and I piled on.. we spent about an hour and a half there.. and then headed home.. we never reached there as Oracle beckoned.. we went straight to the games room.. I was all for a BITS (Beer In The System) vs Non-BITS doubles match but Thax wasn’t in the mood for TT. So the other 3 of us alternated in singles matches.. I won both my matches (beat Sudeep more by fluke though) and both of us took sometime figuring out Goyal’s funky serve.. but in the end, Goyal was down a 0 – 2 score.. not that it mattered, Thax beat all of us at pool (I can hear lots of “yeah right”s!!!).. we headed out, took a drive around the tech city and reached home.. in the next 15 min, Thax and Sudeep had crashed.. Goyal and I dug into the couple of beer bottles we had left over from yesterday.. TV, lachha and beer.. at about 3, we both too slept off.

    The next morning was a very lazy one.. characteristically us!! Sudeep’s b’day treat had to happen at lunch and venue had been pre-decided. Though we got lost on our way there, the usual parking-was-to-the-left-when-Thax-had-said-right happened.. but we finally did reach the place. The start was bad as they served the crappiest hot and sour soup I’ve ever had.. but the veg kabab was really good.. and everything after that was pretty nice too. They added some sort of rose flavour to the lassi but that too wasn’t like the now-famous Mirinda experience!!

    We decided to spend the next few hours bowling. The first game was very keely contested.. the pendulum spun everywhich way.. and it came down to the final shot. Needing 8 of the last frame to overtake Sudeep, I scored a spare and won it :D.. as addictive as bowling is, we decided we wanted to play again. This time I was on fire (if I may say so myself ;)).. two strikes in the 2nd and 3rd frames gave me a comfortable lead.. Sudeep was particularly unlucky in this one, he bowled 3 gutter balls after all 3 of his spares.. I ended up with my all-time high score of 134.. this was a good sports weekend for me 😀

    (Thank you Wikipedia for all the bowling terminology!!)

    We got Sudeep’s cake from Deli 9.. it was abso-f-ing-lutely rocking!! These guys have a cook who had made dinner.. had that while watching Mummy – 2 and India Blue vs India Red.. cake cutting happened.. some face-putai and the usual.. and it was time for me to leave.. these guys dropped me off and the journey to the bus pickup point was the only time that the “shotgun” call was vetoed by the driver (i.e. Sudeep). Goyal had called it and Sudeep said he didn’t want him up there. This followed a particularly interesting argument between them on a previous occasion where Goyal started doing too much sideseat driving and Sudeep got irritated.. Following Goyal’s gyaan speech, I wanted to quote Shakespeare and his “It is a good divine who follows his own instruction. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow mine oen teaching” but decided to refrain. Sitting in the backseat, Thax and I exchanged grins and then Thax cheekily passed on the water bottle to them both 😀

    Anyways, the time to leave had arrived.. the Raj Travels bus was punctual.. and I was off.. stuff must have happened after, Sudeep/Goyal/Thax.. maybe one of you can add a comment to this post..

    Till next time.. seeya!!

  • Beauty, In Slow-Mo

    It seems to be a season of retirement for my favourite players. First Agassi, then Schumacher, and now Riquelme. Anyways, here is a small tribute to the greatest midfielder of our times.

    I must confess right at the start that I have an extremely soft spot for Argentine players. Right from Maradona and Batistuta to Messi and Crespo, I have been a huge Argentinean fan and I was heartbroken after their exit from the ‘06 FIFA World Cup.

    Some people play the game like they have just 45 minutes rather than 90. Riquelme, however, plays as if there are 180 instead. As Arsène Wenger said, “He’s always able to slow the game down, and wait for a weak moment to kill you“. He is so different from his contemporaries that football once again seems like the beautiful game when he plays.

    His speed of thought, ball possession and his creative vision is what sets him apart from the pack. A master at juggling the ball, he outfoxes the defense with such ease that it induces a sense of serenity in his game. When the Argentine is at work, a certain degree of romanticism fills the game, and you are transported back to an era when the game was played for pleasure than winning alone. I always hear people say that Sachin is a great player since he makes the game look so easy. I now believe that the same is true for all sports. Riquelme, with his supreme control of the ball and a vision that sees all, does exactly that.

    Born in a poor family of 10, he was spotted early by Boca Juniors (same as that of legendary Maradona and Batistuta) in 1995 and stayed there till 2001. In 2002 he shifted to Barcelona and could not adapt himself to the European style of play. His performance and confidence took and nosedive. In 2003 he was loaned to Villareal. Back in midst of Latin American players (like captain Sorin) he blossomed again. The playmaker was back and helped improve Villareal’s fortune in both the La Liga and the UEFA Champions League through the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons.

    He announced his retirement on September 13, 2006, at a young age of 28, a decision that shocked many who expected him to take over from Sorin. I hope he reconsiders his decision. I hope he does not retire. I hope that the game is not robbed of the beauty. I hope to see Riquelme play again.

    As Argentina legend Jorge Valdano describes Riquelme: “If we have to travel from point A to point B most of us would take the six-lane highway and get there as quickly as possible. Riquelme would choose the winding mountain road, the beautiful scenic route which takes him six hours instead of two.”

    PS: Also posted on Pavilion Seat and Desicritics.

  • Patents 2.0?

    Only recently the USPTO suggested a peer review mechanism to ensure that bad patents are minimized. Wikipatents, launched on August 28th, aims to contribute to “the US patent system by commenting on issued patents and, soon, pending patent applications.” This comes on the heels of the IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard backed Community Patent Review plan of the New York Law School scheduled for a debut early next year.

    A Web 2.0 website, complete with AJAX and Digg options, Wikipatents, provides you with entire patent data in HTML/PDF format and allows a registered user to write a title and abstract in a layman’s language. It also allows users to vote on cited references, add comments to existing ones and add new references. A new concept here is the market review which allows a user to estimate parameters like marketing and licensing potential of a patent.

    While I am supportive of the entire exercise, I have my doubts about the efficacy of the system. First of all patents hardly ever directly impact the public and it is mostly big companies (holders of huge IP portfolio themselves) who are nowadays being sued left, right and center by the so-called patent trolls that are more worried about bad patents. I mean IBM and Microsoft themselves hold patent portfolios greater than many countries. I find no reason for people to sympathize with them.

    Second, patent laws are so unclear and confusing that not many people know about them. Outside the patent attorneys I think hardly anyone would know their priority dates from filing dates.

    Third, it is very difficult to gather relevant prior art without a very good understanding of the technology domain and access to proper patent and non-patent databases.

    And lastly, relevant prior art is not easily available and finding it requires a lot of man hours and huge effort, else the patent examiners would have found them. Further, patent valuation is a largely inexact science at the best and requires huge amount of experience and prior research to arrive at any value for a patent.

    So while it would be nice to get a community review of a patent, I for one would take any information provided with a pinch of salt, or combinations thereof.

    PS: Also posted on Desicritics here.

  • Desicritics, F1 and MS

    I am now a part of Desicritics.org and will henceforth be cross posting sports related posts there. My first post on the Sunday Moza F1 race is up there. Check it out.

    Also this is the first post using the MS Live Writer. Hope this works 🙂

  • Dehradun Trip

    Friday night – Office party. Bansal majorly drunk. Me drunk. Sleep at 2AM.

    Saturday morning – I wake at 4AM. Take bath. Try waking Bansal. Bansal says, “Wake up Modi.” Woke Modi up. Try waking Bansal. Bansal says, “Call the driver.” Called the driver. He says he would be there in half and hour. Wake up Bansal. Bansal says, “Uffo!!” and wakes up after I constantly perster him. It is raining like crazy. But we start from home at 5. Pick up Modi and some shawls. Pick up the gift from office. So final start from Gurgaon, henceforth GGN, is at 5:30AM. Neways Delhi has crappy slow traffic due to heavy rains. And we start getting delayed. But since the car was Innova Bansal was asleep and me too. Modi was not complaining.

    Bansal wakes up and is immediately hungry. Further he says he will only have Pakoras (and repeated that every time he woke up for a bit) since it is raining and in the while that we find a restaurant he says he will make do with a kilo of Amroods. Finally stop at one of those restaurants at Reliance Petrol Pumps. Great restaurant. Decently priced and Modi was happy since he got Gudang Garam (some brand of cigs you don’t get in GGN). This is around 10. Then I call up Parul to find out there plans. She says they are about to start for DDN from Saharanpur and we though we would get straight to DDN. Meanwhile, it is still raining like crazy. We are all cold in the cab. The road is filled with broken trees and we keep getting delayed. Finally reach DDN at 2. I needed to buy a pair of sandals to go with the kurta so we do that. Then have some famous Kulfi-falooda. Call up Pinki’s home to find out where we could rest for a while and head off to the guest house (it is just opposite the Vidhansabha, which hardly looks like one).

    After resting me and Modi are hungry and all three head off to DDN marketplace to eat. Stop at Yo!China and have some food. And then come back to the guesthouse. Meanwhile, Parul, Shammi, Munal, Raheem, Vasutaa, Rahul Singh, Subhangi and one more female were at the guest house. So come back and start chatting etc. was arnd 6 when someone from the family came and told us to start getting ready. We let the girls do that first. Meanwhile we go get our stuff ironed. Come back. Girls still dressing (expected). We chat for some more time and get ready too. Then Pratyush and few juniors (including Neharika) arrive from Pilani. Then go to the wedding place (celebration gardens). Starts to drizzle lightly after the baarat comes in and we hope that it stops, which it does. We all go meet Pinki after the varmaala thing. That is when the snap was taken. Then the non GGN people start dancing. Me and Bansal and Modi stay off due to sore backs and necks.

    eevryone.jpg

    Uske baad khana. Then chat some more. Then Pinki was sitting alone, just before pheras. So we go chat with her. I am properly introduced to her husband. He says “Hi, I am amit.”. I say, “Weel, You can call me Goyal”. Meanwhile, we keep calling Tarun, Bansal and lot of heads turn at that.

    Parul has a train at 4:30 and Munal a flight at 12. So we decided earlier that we would start early. We start from DDN at arnd 3:15, just before the pheras began. Parul majorly upset about losing her hairband. And cribs a lot. Neways we start. Me and Parul on backseat. And us knowing the history of Modi and Munal decide to give them some privacy on middle seat. Bansal up front. Cab mein office ke funny incidents ki baatein hoti rahi till most fell asleep. Sometime around 6 Bansal wants to get some sleep and I change places. Everyone still asleep. We get to Delhi at around 9:30. Munal and Pari are hungry. We have a crappy breakfast at some Rameshwars chain restaurant in SouthEx. Then head to Airport to drop off Munal. Wahan baith ke gappe maari. Parul by now was majorly upset about the hair band (seriously is it such a big deal?? would Nadal crib as much??) and was not laughing even at great jokes.

    Munal ko arnd 12:15 see off maarke we head to C’Not Place (now Rajiv Chowk). Wahan after a lot of fight we find Barista. I order a nice Peach ice tea and a donut, Bansal a choclate temptation (and complains about too much chocolate!! I mean what was he thinking, he even had it from Parul before ordering) and a cold coffee. Pari wanted to have beer but had to settle for some coffee instead. Parul, who was treating, had some coffee and chocolate temptation. After that we go on a hairband hunt. Entire C’Not and entire Palika Bazaar chan maara. Usko ek “decent” hairband nahi mila. Thak haar ke we head back to the cab and drop Parul at the station at 3:15 I guess.

    We then head back home and sleep immediately. Wake up. Watch Agassi lose (what a crappy day) and go off to sleep again.

    Overall trip acchi thi lekin I wish it was less hectic.

    Update: Paritosh was offended by the post (as you can see in the comments) and this is to inform that the author had no malicious intent whatsoever and whatever has been said was just innocent leg pulling stuff.

    What I forgot to mention was that both Pari and Bansal were extremely pissed off at the entire fruitless exercise of roaming around in C’Not. Bansal because he did not understand what was so great about Barista that we were so desperate about locating it. Pari because we overlooked a number of restaurants/bars that were advertising the facts that Happy Hours were on and beer in such heat was a thought that would have cheered him.

    Also he (Pari) wanted me to mention the gala time we had at Palika Bazaar. Now for those who haven’t been to Palika in a long time, it has changed. While it still does stock foreign goods of questionable origin it also stock a few more stuff. Most noticeable are gaming devices and CDs/DVDs. Now the CDs/DVDs are of multiple types. CDs with games. CDs with movies. And CDs of a more exotic variety. While on an ordinary day I would not have noticed them, since I was walking around with Parul, the fact that shop keepers were calling me out to have a look at the more interesting stuff was, well, kind of awkward. Though I was walking aage aage with Parul, Bansal and Pari were left behind and Pari informs me that the same shopkeepers were very sure that Bansal would be definitely interested in their goods. Most interesting was a shop that had a poster of Maa Saraswati on the bottom half of its couter and CDs/DVDs named with various combinations of “Jawani, Dewani, Kamsin, Pyaasi, Hasina, Padosan” etc.

    While this is true, a lot of shops also advertised the pirated versions of movies like Capote, Crash, and many more Oscar winners/nominations. I should check out the stuff they have sometime.