I passed WOMBAT Level III

Yeah!

A day in my life

There is this recurring trend I've seen in blogland, of writing detailed accounts of random inconsequential events which happened to the author on a particular day. Not wanting to break this hallowed and sacred tradition, I am posting this blog post detailing the wonderful and utterly pointless things which took place on February 25, 2007.

7:30 - 9:00 AM
I woke up and did all the things which everybody does when they wake up ... atleast the civilized ones anyway.

9:00-10:30 AM
I had planned to attend the A/V quiz conducted as part of the "Under the Peepal Tree". I had made plans with Jayendra and Abesh, two chaps from office, to join me for the quiz. Unfortunately God/Fate/Church of God the Utterly Indifferent didn't want this wonderful union to happen. Both Jayendra and Abesh couldn't attend the quiz for various reasons. Having no enthu to attend the quiz alone, I ditched it and went off.

10:42-11:40 AM
Having nothing in particular to do, I started wandering around the KSCA stadium( where the quiz was being held ). Seeing that Visweswariah museum looked empty, I decided to pay it a visit, even though I had visited it a few days ago. That place never ceases to amaze me! The basement gallery is probably the most underrated part of the museum, you need a keen eye to figure out the beautiful mechanical and probabilistic concepts hidden in the maze of pipes and tubes there.

11:45-12:15 PM
With time on hand, how could I possibly miss going to Cubbon Park? Did all the usual things: ate cotton candy, drank soft-drinks, sat on that big rock wondering about life and the universe.

12:30-1:00 PM
Went over to Blossoms. Found an old and battered copy of The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I would like to mention that I have an extremely garrulous friend who is a big KV fan and keeps extolling the virtues of KV's creations. I decided to check out what the hoopla was all about. Stay tuned for my post regarding what I thought of the novel.

1:00-1:50 PM
Ate lunch at some arbit place. Vegetable Noodles. Not too bad, but expensive. Lousy service.

2:00-3:00 PM
Went back to KSCA to attend the Corporate quiz. The quiz was supposed to start at 2:00 PM but as usual it started only at 3:00. So we had an hour to spend with nothing much to do. Met Ravi Subramanian and Sumeet Shetty, the quizzing Gods of SAP. Ravi as usual had bought some arbit movies and a book called "Unforgettable TV Moments". Unfortunately that book contained neither the Janet Jackson incident nor Street Hawk, so we were slightly disappointed.

3:00-5:00 PM
The prelims of the Corporate quiz "Fine Answers" started. I was attending solo( my team name was "Third Rate Corporate" ). It was my kind of quiz: not many sports questions, a few bangalore questions and a question on Dogbert. I did very well by my standards, getting 13.5. The cut-off unfortunately was 16. I stayed for a few rounds of the finals, noting that the questions were similar to last time's: arbit but entertaining.

5:15-5:40 PM
On a sudden impulse, decided to visit Styx. Thought I'll practice head-banging in preparation of the Maiden concert. I was extremely disappointed to say the least. The kind of music they played was serious CRAP. The songs had less of metal in them than a chunk of wood. No wonder that majority of the people there were couples. Disgusted, I finished my stuff in some 20 minutes and was out. I'm getting a shirt printed out saying "STYX SUX" and will wear that on various occasions to warn people.

5:40-6:30 PM
Went home on an auto. Was too bored to board a BMTC bus, 'coz at that time, finding a decently empty bus is akin to finding nirvana in a strip club.

6:30-7:30 PM
Since my mum wasn't in town, I took upon the mighty task of preparing rice. My earlier attempts at this have had a few failures, so I was relieved to see that the rice was edible. Yeah! I can cook!

That was an (exciting) day in the day of the Incipient Megalomaniac. Who said only bungee-jumpers and F-22 pilots had interesting days?

EddFest : Bangalore!

Most metal aficionados would know this by now, but here it goes anyway.

Iron Maiden is visiting Bangalore on the 17th of March as part of their A Matter of Life And Death World Tour.

The concert will happen at Palace Grounds. Tickets are priced at Rs 1500/- and Rs 900/-. Tickets can be reserved online or bought at Planet M at a later date.

Crazy Little Thing called Love ... Part I

In this post, I am going to make fun of that wonderful human emotion called Love. I know that my post will cause a lot of anger and turmoil, eventually triggering World War III and causing the extinction of humankind, but being the insensitive jerk that I am, I'll post it anyway.

Love was invented in 392 BC by a poor Roman farmer called Cupidicus Moronus. The fact that he was named Cupidicus Moronus has no relevance to this story. In fact, the story would remain the same if his name was Brad Pitt or Loganathan Venkateshulu Kuppuswamy Iyyer. Actually, lets call him Loganathan Venkateshulu Kuppuswamy Iyyer, to make him more appealing to our Indian readers. Especially Tam Brams. Especially that one Tam Bram who is sure to read this nonsense post and laugh.

Before 392 BC, life was simple for a male human being. His interaction with the female members of the species was limited to two phrases: 'I'm hungry' and 'I'm horny'. This simple and straightforward strategy had worked well for centuries, helped by the occasional use of the club to convince reluctant women. Unfortunately, by 392 BC, the effectiveness of this strategy was rapidly declining. After centuries of subservience, women were increasingly reluctant to serve men any longer. Modern historians attribute this change in behavior to the rise in postmodernistic existential right-winged trends in the early-late roman feminist philosophy. I believe that women just got tired of being clubbed on the head.

In February 392 BC, women openly rebelled. Which essentially meant that they stopped cooking, and started shopping. That was a very serious problem for the men of those days, who barely could eat their own food, let alone cook it. Several men of course, scorned at the idea that men couldn't cook. If a woman could do it, they said, so can we. Needless to say, these men were totally, horribly wrong.

Anyway, after a few dozen men had died in domestic disasters, the men of the world finally decided that women were indespensible and a truce with them was the only possible way out of this mess. Women, unsurprisingly, were not so keen to patch up with men. After all, they had suffered under the hands of men, and were quite enjoying the freedom they now had.

(A few of my more astute readers would be asking see how all this has anything to do with Loganathan Venkateshulu Kuppuswamy Iyyer inventing Love. Bear with me here.)

Desperate times call for desperate measures, the men decided. The men formed a delegation and approached Alexander The Great,( yes, the same chap who had conquered 2.8% of Earth yet called himself "Ruler of the World" ) for a solution of this problem. Unfortunately being gay, he was the most unsuitable man to woo women. Not that he didn't try of course, but women were just not his thing.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for men ... it got worse. When Barcelona beat Spain in the Italian Serie A, what began as a friendly headbutting contest soon turned into a bloody global war. Then that unfortunate mixup at the hunting club left thousands of men dead.

The end result of all this was that when Loganathan Venkateshulu Kuppuswamy Iyyer woke up on that cold morning of February 13, 392 BC, he was, literally, the last man on earth.

(To be continued....)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

On the 21st of December, I was randomly browsing, when I chanced upon a news post on http://mugglenet.com saying that the door in the secret section of http://jkrowling.com can be opened. This really piqued my interest, because that door usually opens to reveal something significant. And I was not disappointed. A few clicks and a hangman puzzle later, the title of the seventh Harry Potter book was revealed: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

An interesting tit bit about the release date of the title. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, we hear parts of a prophecy during the fight in the Hall of Prophecy: "...at the solstice will come a new... and none will come after...". December 21 is the Winter Solstice. And since this is the last book, "none will come after". Coincidence? I don't think so.

Everybody has their own theories about the title. Here is mine. In this context, "Hallows" is a noun and "Deathly" is an adjective. One possible interpretation is that the title talks about "Hallows" which are deathly, i.e. caused by death.

What does hallow mean then? The POD defines "hallow" as a verb meaning "to make holy; to revere or respect". That doesn't make much sense when applied to the title. But I came across another definition of Hallows in http://www.mystical-www.co.uk/arthuriana2z/h.htm :

Hallows

The Hallows across most legends are seen to represent the royal regalia carried by the King, or the objects sought by someone such as a 'Grail Quester' in both ancient and modern stories.

This makes perfect sense if you replace "Hallow" with "Horcrux". Since the horcruxes are objects belonging to the founders( almost royalty in the wizarding world ), and Harry is seeking these objects, it all fits in. But why give a new name to something which already has a name?

The other possible interpretation is that "Deathly Hallows" is the name of a place.

Bye for now. Expect more HP&TDH related posts.

Interesting C program

just try this c program:

#include <stdio.h>
double m[]= {7709179928849219.0, 771};
int main(){
 m[1]-- ? m[0]*=2 , main(): printf(m);
}

source: Kawigi.

An OGRE called AGRE

Finally finished with my Advanced Graduate Record Examination(AGRE), the specialized version of GRE. I was completely unprepared for the exam, and the only revision I had done was a cursory glance at the model paper. Therefore I was pleasantly surprized by the paper, which turned out be quite easy. That is no gaurantee, of course, that I'll get a good score; There are a million possible ways in which I might have goofed up. But I was happy with my performance, because I solved quite a few questions on logic alone, without knowing or remembering something.

That is the last exam I take this year(Phew!). Now comes the tedious and boring part of creating the application packets and mailing them. My bank balance is sure to take a phenomenal hit this month.

Anyway, after the apping process is done, I will be relatively free for the next few months. I promise to post more often( as I have promised many times in the past :) ).

Bye for now,

Arbit Post...

A certain friend of mine and me were discussing (and cussing) about the state of affairs, when we stumbled upon the fact that we both found sidin very funny. That got me thinking; If only I had a blog, I'd be famous and have lots of chicks drooling over my posts.

It took me three days to remember that I already had a blog, which I hadn’t updated in 2 years. Well, so much for spontaneous thinking.

What makes a blog tick? What is that one element, that one ingredient in the literary recipe of a successful blog which turns ordinary dough into a gourmet's delight?

The answer is: humor. I like funny blogs; if fact, those are the only ones I like. And I'm not alone when I say that funny blogs get a large number of hits. Nothing alleviates the routine boredom at work than reading a vinodg or sidin post.

By now, my slow-but-persistent mind had figured out the important equation: funny post == popular blog == lots of drooling chicks. So now how do I write a funny post? Simple, do what every author since Shakespeare had done: plagiarize.

Stealing is an art. Sorry, that’s not correct: stealing without getting caught is an art. Now, that was a problem, because my knowledge of art is abysmally low. I once mistook the Mona Lisa for the poster of the movie "Kalasipalya". But I was not to be deterred by some small thing like utter incompetence.

So begins the blog saga of the Tall King who, like the viking Erik Hender Klassen Punddig Oesterd Bjorgun, set out on doing something where there is 0.00009% of success. Watch out for funny, irreverent, stupid, malicious and plain old naughty posts. And try to guess where I stole them from, if you're clever.

And now for something completely different, a nice picture of Laetitia Casta:

Chronicles of Chennai: The Voyage of the Crazy Quizzers

Whats common to The Trojan War , 9 SAP Labs Employees in Chennai and a bookstore which claims to be one of India's biggest bookstore chains?The answer is: Odyssey. What follows is a (slightly dramatized) ( hyped-up )( completely fictional ) account of what happened during the Odyssey Quiz 2006.

The day of 26th January dawned upon us. To an unsuspecting eye, the morning of 26th was quite similar to the morning of the 24th, a little chillier maybe. But that day was the day when the brave knights of the Priory of SAP, donned their armour and set out on a quest, the quest for the Quizzing Glory.

There were 9 of us, 3 teams of 3. The first, and by far the strongest was the team Immaculate Misconception( Ravi Subramanian, P Rajesh and Vinay Shenoy ). Then we had the Dude, Where's My Answer?( Ila Gore, Jayendra Bisnik, Rohit Jaiswal ). Last but not the least FAQ: Frequently Attending Quizzes( Abhishek Ramanathan, Pranav K Wankawala, Priyananda Shenoy ).

The morning started in a hectic fashion, with Vinay and Ila racing against time on an auto and made it with about 30 seconds to spare. The train we booked was the Shatabdi Express, known for its punctuality. Once the train started, things got smoother. Ravi, Vinay and me had seats together, and soon we fell into a deep and spiritual discussion about the nature of reality and the quintessential contradiction of existence … or maybe we just cribbed about the lack of females in the compartment, I don’t remember.

At 11:00, the train wound its way into a cavernous lair of gargantuan proportions, called the Chennai Railway station.(This was the first time the author had visited the jewel of the South, the bustling city of Chennai, so you must forgive his exuberance here). From there, we caught a bus ( yes, a real chennai local bus! ) to the spot that is sacred to every bookworm, Landmark.

Many a joyous minutes we spent there, surrounded by tonnes of books, CDs and other useless stuff. Ravi added to his already HUGE collection of movie vcd/dvd by buying 20+ movies. The author himself couldn't resist the temptation, and satiated himself by buying a couple of books and one game ( Far Cry: What a game ! ).

Driven by hunger, we then proceeded to a restaurant whose name I don’t remember, and gorged ourselves. Lunch was a fun-filled affair, admist much leg pulling and teasing. Andre Agassi seemed to be the hot topic of discussion, for reasons I wont mention here ;).

After Lunch we landed up at the gates of the Chennai Music Academy, which was the venue of our interrogation … er, I mean quiz. Much to my dismay, the place was already crowded, chock full of guys who looked like they quizzed for a living. D'Oh! There's Arul Mani. There's Avinash Mudaliar! These guys had been quizzing for a zillion years now, and probably Knew half of wikipedia by heart.

After much squeezing, shoving and rude gestures, we finally made it into the auditorium. (Queue? Wake up, people … this is India ). There we were treated to half an hour of pointless Music. At last the quiz began. The quizmaster was a doctor( a pediatrician, a fact that would come in handy for one of the questions later ). Standard Prelims format: 30 questions, 30 minutes.

Our team did a decent performance( by our standards ). We got 12, out of 30. Ila and co did a bit better: 14. But the stud team obviously did very well, getting 21. After a delay of 15 minutes, the quiz master started announcing the finalists: Arul Mani and co … Avinash Mudaliar and co … Ravi Subramanian and co … Hooray! They had qualified! They defeated teams like QED( last years winners ) to qualify for the finals, out of over 850 teams !!! This was surely a feat to remember!

They started out well, and were at position 2 at the end of the first two rounds. Arul Mani, the omniscient God of Bangalore quizzing, decided to entertain the audience by answering every question with "Ozone Layer Depletion", until the quizmaster gave him a Rs 250/- coupon to shut up.

All good things come to an end; it was unfortunate that this good thing came to an end after the second round. IM then lost their momentum and ended up in the last place. The winners were some kids from Hyderabad( I might be wrong ). After that intial silly show, Arul Mani gave us ample demonstrations of why he is the God of quizzing by cracking every question to finish second.

After the quiz was over, Ravi and co slowly came back to ground after that unforgettable experience. We had dinner at Kabul, paid for by the benevolent Rajesh P( Way to go, Uncle! ).

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience. I hope to repeat this next year as well. I urge All quizzers out there to attend such quizzes in the future. Winning is not important, but the experience we get is priceless.

This is amazing

Move your mouse here, if you want to attain true nirvana

Suicide

If I ever commit suicide, This is the song I'll use as my suicide note

Life it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free

Things not what they used to be
Missing one inside of me
Deathly lost, this can't be real
Cannot stand this hell I feel
Emptiness is filling me
To the point of agony
Growing darkness taking dawn
I was me, but now he's gone

No one but me can save myself, but it's too late
Now I can't think, think why I should even try

Yesterday seems as though it never existed
Death Greets me warm, now I will just say goodbye 

[Metallica: Fade To Black]

First Post

Been thinking about Death recently. The Finality of it. The sheer power of death, destroying what life had taken years to create, in an instant. Death is the only constant in life, an unescapable vortex into which we are drawn, without pause, without fail.

The faint blaze of the candle of my life,

slowly dying like a fire in a pouring rain.

No sparks of hope inside,

no shooting stars on my sky.

On broken wings, no flying height...



Another night, another demise,

Cadaverous wind blowing cold as ice...

I`ll let the wind blow out the light

cuz its gets more painful every time i die.



Out of strenght to fight.

I cannot take another night.

I cannot take it no more.

Lust of light slips through my fingers

like blood on my arms.

Black candle wax has buried me...



Another night, another demise,

Cadaverous wind blowing cold as ice...

I`ll let the wind blow out the light

cuz its gets more painful every time i die.



[Children of Bodom:Every Time I die]