How to make a ...

I wanted to search Google about how to make a ...., well, that's a different story altogether, and was amused by the suggestions I got. Check yourself!

In my personal opinion, I guess the search suggestions reflect the shape of this decade. Internet revolution and terrorism. I must admit, the third suggestion brought a smile to my face.

Ways in which you shouldn't try to woo - Part 1

This is my first of the “love series” which I plan to write. More advanced scenarios will be found in my novel-in-working, which unfortunately is out of public eyes for the moment.
SERIES-1: Ways in which you SHOULD NOT try to “woo”. APPLICABLE FOR GUYS ONLY.
Woo: - Definition: seek as romantic partner
Other synonyms: make advances, propose, pursue, run after etc

Action: Trying to show-off your stamina by running a marathon in shorts worn over your pants, and folding up your pants under your shorts. (You think you don’t have time to change, think again!)
Result: During your run, the pants will slowly fold down and come below your shorts. You won’t be able to finish the marathon. You’ll be half way down the track trying to hold your breath, with a jersey shorts over your pants. If no one makes fun of you, well, actually there is no escape. Everyone will.

Action: Trying to join a tuition class because your “other half” is studying there.
Result: You’ll find that you aren’t the first person do so. Invariably, you will always be the dorkiest, ugliest and stupidest guy in line for her in the class. So instead of just fading away in obscurity, you’ll be butt of many jokes among the girl and her cohorts.

Action: Trying to help in her assignments by doing it yourself. You aim to get some brownie points.
Result: You’ll become the “brother she never had.” You’ll find calling her dad “uncle.” Her kid brother will call you by name. Her mom will tell you to buy cucumbers from grocery store.

Action: Dropping her off at her home after college or office. You aim to be become a routine in her life.
Result: When she actually elopes with the person of her choice, who is not you (duh!), you will find at the receiving end of questions from her parents, relatives, ex-boyfriends, and police.

Action: Seeing titanic together. You aim to get into her “inner-zone” in her heart during the mushy moments.
Result: You’ll be crying during half of the movie, and you’ll give her a chance to see what a wuss you are. Not only that, you’ll also end up being compared with Di Caprio in boyfriend quotient, even though she is no Kate Winslet. Good luck!

Action: Cursing, humiliating and bossing your kid brother in front of her to show who the boss in your home is.
Result: A tip. ALWAYS KEEP THIS IN MIND. Girls love younger brothers, either theirs or someone else’s. Her opinion of you has gone below than the dirt in her shoe.

Action: Wishing her exactly at 00:00:00.00000 on her birthday. You think it is a killer task to get into her (heart/pants whatever)
Result: Guys. Remember. She is always, and I repeat, ALWAYS expecting a call from someone other than you. So when you are the FIRST guy to call her, the reply will be “HEYY THANKS. Hey I got a call on other line. Talk to you tomorrow ok.” Invariably, the tomorrow-talk never happens until you initiate. You know what that means! Yes, you are a “nobody.”
Tip: Call her in normal time. In that way, you are sure to get some valuable talk-time, and can talk about variety of topics, such as “so who all wished you at midnight?”, “when are you cutting the cake?” etc.

Action: Bunking your exam, job interview or other life altering events to accompany her and her dog to a vet.
Result: Congrats. You’ve officially become a loser. Girls DO NOT like loser. Hence, girls do not like you. Thus proved! Man, I love syllogisms!

Action: Memorizing lame movie dialogues such as “You complete me”, and, wait for it, using them in actual proposal!
Result: Recipe for disaster. Always know that the girl will always have seen more love movies than you at any point of time. And, she will know all the dialogues by heart. She will want to hear almost like that, remember, ALMOST like that. Of course, if you try “You might complete me”, well…

Action: Proposing over a phone.
Result: HA HA HA! Guys! Sometimes we do the craziest things.

Disclaimer:

1. The above suggestions and advices are the result of real and half-baked life experiences of my friends, friends of friends, general public, imaginary people and me albeit incognito. So if any of you find yourself in the list, don’t come out the closet. If you do, then KISS MY ABS. (You would actually beg to kiss my ass when you see my abs. Anyways…)
2. Always take an advice with a pinch of sanity, as advice = ad (toward) + vice (a harmful or nasty habit or action). So you may find advices may sometimes lead you to do the action or yield the opposite result. Olrite, enough gyaan…

Okay, the next series will be for girls. I can really use some help here. So women readers (if there are any!! ), please give me something.

I'm over you

You have been the love of my life. I was so insanely mad in love with you even before Emma Watson, even before Manchester United. I cannot remember a day passing by without seeing you, without hearing you. You have been there during my happiest of days, as well as the saddest of them lot. No matter how sad I am, just a glimpse of you was enough to put my mind at peace. Because of you, I have made so many friends who were all admirers of you.
But it breaks my heart to say that for the past few weeks, in fact months, I haven’t been feeling the same. I told to myself that it was just a passing phase in our relationship, but as the days grew so did the gap. I cannot feel the emotional attachment that we had before. It seems like there is some kind of space between us, which is so big. One of the reasons could be that when I have grown in years and maturity, you have not managed to do so. You sure cultivated new things, but they pale in comparison with what you had before. We just are not on the same wavelength anymore. You seem to like different things. And looks like you have had new folks in your life too nowadays. Fair enough, who am I to complain now anyway.
I think it is only fair enough for me to say that we have to part ways now. There is no point in seeing you anymore, when there is no love. I am not the kind of guy who tears up your posters, or who burns the memorabilia. I will keep them with me, safe and sound. After all, we shared just a magical bond once. And I am sure that any girl who enters into my life hereafter would understand my love for you.
And I am not going to lie. I am not going to miss you. But thanks so much for all the memories. Bye bye cartoons!

Summer of 09 – At Kodaikannal

I’ll start with a corrigendum for the last blog. Trip to Munnar is not the best trip ever so far. My recent escapade to Kodaikannal with my partners in crime is THE BEST trip so far. We all, sans Zaheer who had one of his MBA exams on the weekends, started on July 3^rd from Chennai Egmore station. Unlike last time, we all had our tickets booked, even for the late comer Vijaykumar albeit in a different compartment. The train journey was incident free, which is a first for us!

We reached kodaikannal high road station around 6:30 in the morning, 1 hr late than the normal arrival time. Then we spent lot of time contemplating the best service to reach kodai town. After a small breakfast, we decided the best and economic way was to travel by bus, which we did on 8:45 A.M. Till we reached Kodai town around 12 PM, I don’t remember much. One thing I forgot to mention; this is one of the best ever planned trip we were on. Train tickets, room booking, cab booking etc were all planned in advance. And for the first time, everything was spot on like clockwork. After getting to the rooms and a quickly refreshing, we went on to local site seeing. IMO kodaikannal is much better than Ooty. Some of the places we visited were Guna caves system, pine forest, some lake and so many other places. We came back, had a hearty dinner and then some tv and then sleep.

The second day had a lot in store for us. Amazing day and amazing time!

We rounded the day off with a nice cycle ride around the lake. Cycling after ages!!! Brought back our school memories. None of our trips seem to end without a customary trek, and so there we were on the third day. A very long arduous and hot trek on perumal hills system, the highest hill system in Kodaikannal. Unlike last time, we packed lotta fruits, a LOT of fruits and climbed and climbed and climbed and …climbed. Around 2 PM when we were all feeling pinch in our stomachs, we decided to climb down. We reached the foot around 3:30 PM and found some place to have lunch around 4 PM. We rested a while in our room, and by 8:00 PM, we started to Kodaikannal hight road station. After having dinner at the same place where we had our first meal of the trip, we all boarded the train back to Chennai. This is pretty much a dumbed down version of many things we did during the trip. Actually only this much is left after all the censors. Rest everything is *bleep*, *bleep* and more *bleep*!

Munnar!!!

Not wanting to have another month without a blog, I have decided to write about the long pending subject of my trip to Munnar. It was one of THE most memorable trips I have been to so far. Awesome place, awesome friends. We started on April 30th from Chennai to Madurai (you may ask why we went there to go to Munnar, the truth is I have no idea). Everything was on adventure. Ours was waiting list in 60s when we booked and at the time of journey (Thursday 2 PM), it came to waiting list 10s. No grace marks here, so we had to get into unreserved. After two stops, we moved to ES, and slowly found ourselves with seats to spare. It was a long arduous journey, especially when there are no chicks around. We reached Madurai, settled ourselves in a nice hotel (by nice I mean it had TV) for the night. Oh I totally forgot, the dinner was exquisite! Nothing can beat Madurai food.
After a short (crappy) photo session in the morning and a great breakfast we started off to Munnar by bus. The bus journey was great, really fantastic UNTIL it reached Tamilnadu-Kerala border. After that the hair pin bends just came like T-Pain’s singles, and by the time we reached Munnar, we weren’t sure if our brain was still working.
We spent the whole of the Friday night trying to find a room in Munnar, which we did finally. After our dinner, we went on a short but wonderful trek to a nearby hill. I have never seen so many fireflies together so far!

Saturday was the day of the trip. We started off in the morning in a share auto, yes SHARE AUTO towards Lockehart gap. On the way, there was a very very beautiful tea estate. Just check out the pics! The trek to the top of the Lockehart gap was one of the most beautiful thing I have done so far. After reaching the peak and to look down, wow!...just WOW!
We came down, went back in share auto, went to a hotel, fought with the hoteliers, went to another hotel and had dinner, as usual.
The whole of Sunday was taken by the trip from Munnar to Theni, and then in waiting for the 7 P.M government bus to Chennai. Oh by the way, if you drop at Theni sometime, do EAT! The food is amazing there!
If I could phrase the entire bus journey from Theni to Dindugal, the next morning I wasn’t sure if my organs were in the right place. If you think that was bad, Harish had to change 6 bus to reach B’lore from Theni.
Enjoy the pics. Till the next blog, Adios.

Purani Jeans

Thanks to Good Friday, I have got an extended weekend from Friday to Sunday. I decided to make the best use of Friday by hearing to all my favorite songs from the past. I was hearing to Rang de Basanti which brought my fond TCS memories. Suddenly I wish I could rewind three years of my life and get back to January 2006 where I had some of the best days of life. So analytical I have become nowadays that I decided to take this thought a step further and think about 10 things I most miss in my life now. These are the things I cannot have now for various reasons. I have already said about my TCS training life, so here is the rest of the list. They have just been put in random order as it occurred in my mind.
Till my tenth grade, I spend almost all of my days at my maternal grand dad’s place. That home was really awesome with 11-12 tenants, all of them having kids of my age. The terrace was flanked by others’ from all the four sides so it was easy to gather the neighbors and have a gala time, all the time! My school used to get over at 2:15 A.M.; I will come home, eat my lunch hurriedly and then scoot to the terrace to play cricket with almost 10-12 kids. This happened every day, from 6th grade till 10th grade. I was very good at studies (then…he he) so my parents let me have my way. Really miss this now! Plus, how can I afford to go to the terrace nowadays; it has become darn hot!
I miss my school! Almost all of my closest friends have been my buddies since school days. I spent my entire schooling at Gill Adarsh, right from kinder garden till my 12th grade. That’s 14 years of my life! Have many many many fond memories in there. My first “first rank”, the sports meets, the slap from SV (Gill Adarsh folks know whom I am talking about), the lovely teachers who really cared about us, the white and blue uniform, the blue house belt and many more. Gosh, how I wish I could have just one day of my school days back. I wish I could have this one return to innocence.
Madhuri Dixit! What an actress!! What a grace. My first crush from the tinsel town! Given the fact that my second crush was Emma Watson, you can imagine how hard it has been for the sexy ladies to fill in her shoes. The movie industry is yet to find a suitable replacement for her. Miss you Madhuri!!
Backstreet boys! Really, I ain’t joking. Back street boys’ songs were my entry into coolness during my pre-teen school days. I was a style statement just to have “everybodyyyaaaa” on our lips. They were also the first English band/song/group I listened to. My school buddies will tell you that I made them never forget the “I want it that way” from the Millennium. Miss the 90’s pop! the bboys, boy zone, nsync, bryan adams, take that, five, 98 degrees, aqua, britney, 911..so many of them!
The good old cartoon network! This will be my daily dose of cartoons every day before. 6:30 A.M. The perils of Penelope 7:00 A.M: Dexter Laboratory 7:30 A.M Tom and Jerry show 8:00 Power puff girls. I will go to school at 8:30. Our school prayers start at 7:50, so I will be outside the gate till it gets over. Late comers gets spanking with wooden scales from the P.D masters (after 11th grade it became push-up’s as our sweet princi felt it was inappropriate to hit grown up boys) And at 6:00 PM: Jonny Bravo, 6:30: the Sylvester and Tweety mysteries and at 7:00 P.M, the Dexter Lab rerun. The channel has become so sucky now with all nonsensical stuff. There were some kick ass animated series before. The things that immediately come to mind are the batman: the animated series, Johnny Quest, captain planet etc. Ben 10 is ok now, but the quality has stooped to abysmal levels.
The Kick I got from online chat. Like most of the pre-teen people, I too got bitten by the internet bug. It was a style statement to have an e-mail address. The one who had a chat friend was the hero! Every day I used to chat, it cost some cool 50 bucks for one hour then. French tuition fees, physics tuition fees, chemistry tuition fees and whatever money we could gather were pooled so that we can afford to live this “lavish life style.” Balaji and Ashwath were my partners in crime. This mania continued till my second year in college. Most of the relationships were pretty much use and throw types, but some of them have stuck with me till now. After 2 years, I got onto yahoo chat last week, and my latest online “friend” is a “Sania” from Malaysia.
The cycle ride to school :)
The good ol’ video game. I have a 62k laptop now with 2GB RAM, 256MB Nvidia gforce 8600MGT graphics card with direct 10x enabled. But whatever games I play with it, the fun was nothing compared to the enjoyment I had with the Mario game in the console. Spent hours and days and weeks before that darn thing.
Adarsh Vidyalaya. The answer to all-boys Gill Adarsh school. Our arch nemesis. The lady devils. The beauties. The brains. The angels in skirts. Whatever you call them, they made our school days so memorable! The kick is gone now. Thank God for that, coz if it weren’t, it would be really creepy.
I hated my college. I really do. Ever since the first day I landed there, all I was expecting was for the last day to come. But the journey to college was the best thing ever. I used to commute by train. There are some 13-15 colleges in the same route, so all the trains from 6:50 A.M till 8:00 A.M from central station will be packed with college students. Had lotta great ideas, had lotta fights, had lotta burns and well, had a great time!
Wow! You know, when I finished writing this list, I feel really rejuvenated. What a journey it has been! Really awesome!! If you are reading this post, do put the things you miss the most now in the comments section. A word of advice from my experience; cherish your memories, but don’t try to live it again. Move forward with life for there are so many realms to conquer and make new memories, good memories.

Till my next post, Adios! Perhaps I will come up with a list of things that I am glad for going out of my life ;)

India Jones and the holy grail (of noodles)

Pepere peeee. Pepepepepepe peeee. For the 50th post anniversary, 21st century Ox presents the first India Jones’ adventure.
0200 hours. Chennai, Tamilnadu.
The sudden sound of rock solo alarm put Jones out of his sleep. He was still not sure about his mission. He has never attempted like this before. He gave a long hard thought about it and decided it had to be done. For the sake of riazinity. He packed his back pack with a pair of dress for change, men’s essentials, a torch, towels and lot of money. With nothing to eat, he drank some water, and without making a noise, he moved down to start his bike. The engine roared, driving away the dogs and waking the platform warmers. He then picked up his fellow trekker and started for koyembedu for the rendezvous. He parked his bike in C.M.B.T and hopped in a car to head to Nagalapuaram, Andhra. It was a pleasant drive. In his job, he always knew that there is always a lull before the storm. This day is going to be no different.
0810 hours. Nagala, Andhra.
A voice inside in his head kept on saying, “travel light.” Oh wait, that was Peter, Captain CTC. So, Jones left majority of the stuff in backpack, save the torch, in the car itself. It mission such as these, it is imperative to stay under cover. He thought of fixing a mole onto his cheek. But not wanting to look like a dufus, he decided to go with a cap and a pair of sun glasses. Sleek move Jones, sleek.

After the group photo sessions, Jones started off to conquer the first hill. The trial was full of dense bushes and thorns. After 15 minute walk, the bush cleared and he was able to see the hill. It didn’t look ominous at first, but looks can be deceptive. After another 30 minute of walking and climbing, Jones arrived at the first rest point, a natural water bed. It was a beautiful sight with mountain water making a cute cascade out of the hill. Others freshened up themselves by dipping into water, swimming and diving. Initially Jones decided to stay dry, but with no anti-incense serum, he was running out of options. The water was treacherous. In five steps, he slipped 8 times. After a crane dip, he dragged himself out of the water. Mission accomplished. “Move ON.” That was Peter. Mission not-yet-accomplished.

0920 hours.
Jones followed the rest of Peter’s entourage in search of the next water bed. An obstacle on the way: a small vertical hill. Jones broke into a sweat. He hasn’t done that before, heck not even imagined it. He first climbed over a little rock formation, moved into the middle and then moved horizontally for about 6-8 yards and then the final descent over a 90 degree angle. He decided to pat his back for the achievement. Oh what the hell, he can’t move his hand over his shoulder. Occupational hazards.
After a looooooooong walk amidst rocks, thorns, bushes and heavy breathing, the group stopped for lunch. Maggi. Jones would have preferred a buffet lunch with unlimited appalams. But a skilled adventurer got to make use of the best of the available resources. After four servings, his appetite has somewhat subdued. Not wanting to perform nature call out in nature later, he half heartedly refused the fifth serving. After lunch, Peter gave us two ultimatums: go back, or climb the hill to see the water source and then go back. Jones decided to go democratic and asked the opinion of his body organs. The verdict was unanimous. “STAY you jackass.“

1420 hours.
Jones and a small group of people decided to go back to the base camp. His numb legs made many mistakes initially and he had to fall down three to four times. He may have, but his spirit didn’t. With new found determination (of going home! Mummy!!!!), he took calm and steady steps towards the second pool. We he thought he was moving faster than ever, Peter and rest of the group passed by after finishing their ascent. So much for moving fast!
1710 hours.
Jones was at the first pool. He looked down at people who were climbing down the hill. “Climb down??” he thought. “You got to be kidding me!” After failing to find inspiration to climb down, he decided to use his last resort, his secret weapon. “Just beat it…just beat it.” Singing it within his mind, he climbed till half way when he didn’t know how to move further. “Just beat…aah screw it…”, and he called up Dinesh who was down. “Can you help me?” Dinesh came up and give the places where to find notches to keep the feet. With his directions, Jones steadily moved again. For the last hurdle, he had to jump barefoot in knee deep water full of rocks. He did. That he wasn’t able to walk properly for 2 days after that is a whole different story.

2100 hours.
Jones was in the car, trying to sleep. But he was too tired to sleep. He just wanted to go home and take a bubble bath. Wait, he doesn’t have a tub in his home. Ah well, I think he just wants to dip his legs into hot water. But that was not to be for another 1 hour, as he and the rest of the gang had to wait for Peter who had gone on reconnaissance. No man left behind. The cars started after everyone had come back. On the way, they all stopped for a quick meal. It was not no quick in the end as people started to order omlette, half boil, full-boiled, cran, fish, chicken and kingfisher :D. Jones and his fellow trekker got out at C.M.B.T and then after dropping the trekker, he went to his sweet home.
0200 hours.
Jones tried to look back at his day. Oh wait, what was it? Ah, sleep. Thinking can wait. As usual.
---------------------------------THE END-----------------------------------------
Starring (in the order of appearance)
India Jones – Me
And others as others.

Lift Karade

Sometimes...well many times I wonder "WHATS UP WITH PEOPLE!!!!." Why you may ask, and let me tell you.
My desk is in the 8th floor of my office building, and being a lazy bum (and a sane person), I use lift to reach to my floor. There are 6 lifts on the ground floor, all neatly maintained and robust (thanks CBRE!).
There is a button at the front for you to press to make the lift come to your floor. A nice small square button with an arrow emboldened in an appropriate direction. Once you press that button, it lightens up until the lift reaches your floor. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out in more than couple of attempts, unless you are a Jonny Bravo, a Joey Tribiani or a Micheal Kelso.
I know people, who have been coming here for months, if not years, keep pressing the button again and again even though the lift button is on, and knowing this concept. And I wonder "WHATS UP WITH PEOPLE!!!!"
May be it is the sheer expectation of a miracle, that if they press the button hard enough for many times, the lift could skip the intermediate floors and come immediately when summoned. Or it could be the arrogance of those people, who want to have everything when they want at any cost. Or it could just be the sheer frustration in the morning where they have to go for a job which they really don't like and which really doesn't pay well. Or it could be some urgent pressing matter which could not wait even for a second (urinal comes to my mind, there is none on the ground floor). Or they could be just dumb.
I am no saint, for I have found myself a few times pressing the button again and again. When I do that, I consciously try to find why I did that. What made me to do that? And this insight has helped me to understand many of my problems swiftly, and of late I find myself not doing this nonsensical stuff.
May be you can find some soul-searching tool at your workplace too. Till then, slog it out!

DREAM CATCHING(UP)

I am not sure if I have had dreamed about anything for such a long time other than thinking about studying abroad. Five years, and it is still burning inside. Those who know me, and have followed my blog for the past few years would understand what I am saying. Well, you can’t say owning Manchester United Football Club to be a dream; it is more of a fantasy.

I gave GMAT on August 2008 to kick of pursuit of becoming an MBA graduate. With an average score of 680/6, I had to put all my effort on projecting my application through my essays. Fast forward to February 2009, I have an admission offer from one of the premier institutes in USA. There is only one catch though; I need $110,000! Almost everyone I know keep telling the same thing; “it is not worth it.” Perhaps, they don’t understand what this means to me. This is not just an MBA. This is my dream personified. This is the source of my belief, which proves to me again and again that I can capable of realizing my dream through hard work and dedication. I may not be born with a golden spoon, but I hell can make one of my own!

Never expected this day to come sooner; or perhaps has it come a bit late? I always had taken my finances for granted, living everyday on its merit, and with almost no savings. But even if I become a miser from today, there is no way I will be able to garner that much amount in a year. Heck! That is the amount I dream of having in my bank balance when I retire.

Now I am left to ponder my next steps in life. May sound cheesy folks, but I really feel a sense of accomplishment! If I can alter Pierre de Coubertine’s Olympic mantra for a poor student’s dream, “Studying does not matter; getting admission is a big deal in itself.” HELL YEAH!

Movie By Chance

It was a nice cozy Monday evening when men were men and the sky was blue (bluish grey actually! Damn you pollution). I thought enough was enough and decided to grab a movie which was long due. (I haven’t seen a movie in a week. Now that’s bad!). Since the news papers were “slumdog millionaring” about Zoya Akhtar’s “Luck By Chance” movie, I decided to check that out.
To start with, well, we missed the first half hour of the movie. Which means, we missed Aamir Khan’s cameo, and one of my favorite songs of the movie, “Yeh Zindaghi bhi…” Even then, it wasn’t hard to pick up the story line. The story revolves around two protagonists: Farhan and Konkana Sen, who try many things to gain a foot-hold in bollywood. And it is about how their paths collide and diverge. I must give credit to Zoya, it is very rare to find a meaty role for the heroine nowadays where bollywood is making mindless movies such as CC2C.
Hrithik Roshan is at his charming best, giving a memorable performance as the super star Zafar Khan. When you see him, you may even fail to recognize whether he is playing his character or himself. Never thought I would say this, but I guess Sanjay Kapoor could act too!! Of course, how could I fail to mention Isha, the ice cream girl, Sharwani. She looks gorgeous!!!
Of all the people who had made guest appearances in this movie (and trust me, there are loads, including Manish Malhotra and Karan Johar), Shah Rukh Khan remains in your mind forever. His dialogues with Farhan epitomizes what the whole movie is all about, “when you have everything, don’t forget those who were with you when you were nothing.” So true SRK, so damn true!!!
Even though the story is not hard to understand, it is how the story flows which keeps you engrossed. It is not hard to reflect the emotions and feelings which the characters go through; they are very realistic. Although, I feel that the movie is a tad lengthy, a movie connoisseur might tell that the extra scenes are required to provide a concrete screenplay and to establish the characters. I do not want to reveal all the details here; just go to the theatre and watch it. It is worth a try, and trust me, it you had seen CC2C, you might even recommend this move for an Oscar.
It would be wrong if don’t comment about the fantastic music of Shankar, Ehsan and Loy. Even though you may feel like having a “Rock On!!” aftertaste, the songs are excellent nevertheless. I simply can’t get “Pyaar ki Dastaan” out of my head!!


My opinion: Good movie, very much needed at this time of the hour. You can relax, and enjoy the movie without uttering “what the f$%k, how’s that possible!”

My moment of the movie: There would be a scene where Rishi Kapoor will go about asking all the leading actors such as Abhishek, Vivek Oberoi, Akshay Khanna etc to act in his movie. There was this girl behind me who was going, “wowwwwww Abhishekkkkkkkk wowwwwwww Viveekkkkkkkkkkkk wowwwwwww.” Man…chooooo kuteeeeee!!!!!!! She came with her parents, so that ended there :(

Saarang 2009!!! Where were you?

 
Were you at IIT M for this saarang? Dun tell me you weren't there, because you missed a great time of fun and frolick (or frocks!?? I am not sure :D)
I had absolutely no idea to be at saarang because of my extra-tight schedule at office (Deadlines deadlines!!). But no, my fairy godmother had different ideas altogether. I made Zaheer (the one at the right extreme) to go to IIT to atleast even try to get one ticket for the Sonu Niigaam (yeah, numerology!! et tu sonu?!) and Benny Dayal show on 23rd Jan. He wasn't able to get one, so he told me he decided to come to home! wtf!! I can't give up just like that! We have been visiting saarag for the past 4 years, and I am definitely not gonna miss Sonu's show! Anyway, I told him that I am almost there, and we could go back once I come to IIT.
Meanwhile, Ramkumar (2nd from left) along with his friend Madahavan(next to him) also came to IIT on Zaheer's request. So there were we, four guys longing to get into the OAT to catch a glipse of the rocking atmosphere. As luck would have it, there were few guys who decided to sell their tickets as they were already an hour late. But they were selling 300rs ticket at 400! After some hard-ball bargaining from Zaheer and Ram, we found ourselves with four tickets for just 200rs a piece! Do I even have to tell what happened after that! Btw, we look really subdued in the picture, that was AFTER all the rocks and rolls!!!
Btw, can you guess who I am???

Windows 7!!!! damn you!!

My new laptop was working jussstttt fine until I gave a thought about it working "just fine." Then the Murphy's law came into force. An overview, mine is a dell 1520 inspiron 2007 vintage (cost me 62k!!! with all the upgrades) with a fantastic configuration and a cool insurance cover. I was told that if anything were to happen to my sweet lappy, I can get it replaced! Yeah baby! replaced! Anyway, that insurance cover was for only one year, so it got lapsed last December.
I was caught in the buzz of Windows 7 beta testing, and I decided to give it a try. A little overview, my laptop came with installed windows. However, I am a fan of Ubuntu, so I got Ubuntu installed with a dual-boot option. Little I knew at that time, any kind of installation change will break the master boot record of Dell.
All I did was mount the Windows 7 cd, and my whole boot record got corrupted! Like a deer caught in the headlights( a line I picked from the serial "XIII", one of my favo comic book story of all time!!), I tried to fix it, but in the end I just made it worse.
I had to do a fresh install of my OS!! I was feeling damn pissed about that as I had my machine really customized. However, I was sane enough to put all the data in a separate partition, and also to have periodical back-ups on DVD drive. So all i had to do was reinstall the OS, reinstall the drivers, update OS definitions (easily the most irritating part!) and regenerate links! And tada!...I got my laptop back!!

So guys, some lessons from my experience

1. Any kind of repartitioning the hard drive(s), dual-OS, manual changes to boot records will erase the factory shipped MBR of dell. This means that you cannot press ctrl+11 and expect to have your factory shipped image of your computer restored.


2. Windows 7 doesn't recognize many drivers! You have to run it in vista compatability mode, or sometimes even at XP compatability mode.


3. If you are doing a fresh install on the same hardrive or even in a different hard drive, and you want all the dell's factory settings restored take a look at the following links.
   
   To restore dell's media center partition:
   
   
   • Dell Support
   
   
   
   • Anything related to dell, excellent source! was very helpful
   
   
   
   

Drop in a comment if you need any specific answers! And yeah, don't forget to read the dell's manual and its EULA so that you don't complain about it later :)

p.s: Currently I am using only XP as my OS. I have installed virtualbox from sun, and inside virtual box, I got my Ubuntu running. Try virtualbox sometime, it is awesome! Enough of all that dual-boot nonsense!