De Slumber

One moment you think you are wake, fighting the war, running the race. And then another, you feel you are back to square one. Continual bouts of effort do not guarantee anything. But then, they give you more hope. A slim ray of light which promises to increase as you tear down the barrier set up by the mind. And then the ever elusive brightness, hopefully before the final calm. Stanford is offering open courses for the layman and above to learn. This is a great opportunity for the uninitiated but enthusiastic people to fight their way through problems in science by gaining knowledge. As the logo of my school Kendriya Vidyalaya said, Knowledge destroys darkness. Load the cannons!!! oh! a link for one of the numerous courses: http://pgm-class.org find the rest at the footer of that page

Quick or Dead

That is all there is to it. The see-do-get cycle is truth. You see X, X might or might not be tangible. You do Y so that you get X, f(Y)=X. And then, look for another X to do and so on. Once you stop looking for the novel variables, it really does not mean that you lose. You either do or you dont. Either ways you live. If you do, you live perhaps a little happier. If you dont, you wont. Simple? I guess holds for a lot. There is this online stanford course on AI and ML, keeps me busy all the week when I am not trying to get stuff working on my android or not ofeezing.

swhyd

Life is not like guitar hero where you get to know before hand which string to pluck. You take steps, baby steps, sometimes go ahead. sometimes lateral, like a crab. You know not what is right. But, you attempt to keep moving, to see if you can reach a spot which makes you go like...wow!!!! The first week of September was a refreshingly new experience for me. It was the first start up weekend at hyderabad at ISB. The amazing campus and the towering architecture is bound to leave on mesmerized. Thanks to Kalyan in the first place, followed by the ever-persisting Pallav, we finally took the leap into ISB. We started by tagging ourselves with the colors provided for the different roles you could play. Developor, Designer, Business man and Jack of all trades. I took the developer color and moved to the food corner to stuff myself for a long night. The event started with an informative opening by Pankaj on the essence of the startup weekend and how one should go about pitching his idea. I was not really sure if I was going to head an idea as all I was interested was in coding a product soon. As discussed earlier in the day, Pallav pitched his plan for the Flat Finder followed by an app to measure the delta brightness after using a fairness cream. It seems people actually liked that idea. Few good ideas I felt were timeline based articles, easy 'restaurant-ing' through smart phones, the TV guide among others. People pitched and then took their places along the edge of the auditorium and we eventually had our own team. Pallav, me and Avinash. We came up with a basic framework that we planned to implement over the weekend to kick start our product. I started the development overnight and got to integrating with google maps API to show a map given a set of basic points(available houses). 4 hours of sleep later, I resumed work or attempted to, back in the auditorium, setting up the IDE and getting ready to resume android dev. It took forever to get everything set up and finally by 5pm I was back to where I stopped last night at home. With help from mentor Chaitanya and his developer, we had a simple php page with a save on click on map and by the night simple functionality of seeing added houses was completed. Leaving for the day at ~4?, took to the bed for another 5 hours and came back to resume work. With help from Chidambar, I finally got the map route shown although not using kml for the time being. Integrating with the Gmap API for android and using the Gmaps app, we could show a route between two houses. With this basic wireframe ready, we were planning to showcase the next step as a prototype. However, all hell broke loose when the resolution of the online presentation which was made impressively, could not match to the projector and we(read Pallav) ended up presenting without a presentation, just vocally. I guess that just left everything disappointing. I slipped out early to reach home, tired lost and sad. But still, determined to resume work and have a working prototype to showcase another day. If only I had the help of more developers, we could have everything functional in ~10 days. And so, I dream.

Withdrawal symptoms

I got up early today and decided to go on a long jog. Running down the road, I wanted to go to the other side. Also, not matter how much, I searched I could not find my rearview mirror to check if there is someone coming from behind.

The noisy ladies on the corner deserve a loud honk to tone them down. Arrghh!!

The group of old men are blocking my path, if only I could accelerate further!!

Kinetic dearest, never leave me static.

Arguments

The importance of arguments had little or no importance for me. Now, when stuck in situations I see my suicide move clearly when I refuse to talk, bargain, apologize or even argue. I believe that in a fast paced world, it is essential to throw in an opinion on everything when required, the lack of which stops progress. Amartya Sen's book is quite amusing, talking about the argumentative nature of us Indians. Something I failed to see, something lots of people are skilled with.

On the other front, the damp days and comfortable nights have stopped my progress in various efforts. I would love to get back to my running schedule: finishing my physio sessions and college and finding time. Life appears to move slow and one feels one is in control, but taking life by the horns requires the right argument with yourself :p

The new being

Right, so I have picked up something new that I hope to pick up well. Being proactive. Jumping into the thick of things before the blink of an eye and driving at the pace of a formula one guy, I will still attempt to keep myself from over/under steering.

The last one month has been a huge change for me. After school, I have let myself be tagged up finally. Nearly uniformed too. It has been voluntary at some level, not completely though. I believe I am one of the last specimens from the batch of my b.techs to have started working finally. And then its like there is hot oil poured from all directions after they blind you for the moment. I guess life ends by the time, you can see. How do you move fast? Use other senses and keep going or lose the battle. I, finally, acknowledge, the persistence, the patience, the optimism and the character of people who have been working. Working since time I cannot imagine before. Working for a future, they set for their next generation and saving for their health, their children, education and life. Sharing takes a different meaning. People share food, fun and meaningless talk. The distant dreams, perhaps forgotten, perhaps kept in a closet. In this cluster of running rats, I attempt to fit in finally, not wondering whether it is too late, but wondering if there is an empty tunnel left to be discovered.

People

You cannot miss people, not in Hyderabad. They are just everywhere. The streets are filled with vehicles, the movies with the crowds, the restaurants with the epicureans, and of course our life. People are just too hard to miss and just to easy otherwise. The fine line that keeps one satisfied where the communication is considered ideal, yet the stroke of ego is not played is the prime cat-fight.

It is very interesting to see people behave in situations adverse to them. A conductor in a bus today, cut a ticket of six rupees to a gentleman whose destination, according to himself, was just five rupees. Enraged, he requested the conductor in his own tone to give him back the rupee. The conductor nodded, all the while slowly traversing towards the front, till he eventually, hid himself in the thick crowd of females who would detest men to walk into "their territory". The dejected man waited for long enough. The conductor strode back to the end of the bus with unusual ferocity and frantically shouted for people to buy tickets as a checking could follow. Our man again requested him the same. The conductor replied with "The pride on your nose and your face shows. Crying for three rupees!!!Hmmph".And he went on with the pride thing for a while until the other man discovered that "the conductor's brain slipped into his feet". After a long voice with gradually raising voices, the conductor relented but not without a final rapid exchange of language best described entertaining for the onlooker.


The onlooker looks on as people take their strides, their prides and their brides and coast along the moving tides.

The last mile

The rain was lashing hard. The dark clouds refused to withdraw, it seemed, forever. Walking in the dark, lost and drenched, he knew not what to do. Yet he refused to yield. Yield to forces beyond comprehension which at moments seem might enough to engulf oneself. He would walk towards a better day, he knew it. The belief kept leading him ahead.

He could see the shining sun deep inside himself. A splendid rainbow covering the horizon and swaying leaves across the well-kept path. A thin-stream of water trickled from a nearby hill. Sheep flocked to the end of the farm towards the last patch of green grass while the shepherd helped himself to a smoke. The servant-maid rushed out shooing the cat and scowling at the shepherd-dog which seemed to be immune to the abuse.

A faint smile rose from within. The picture was now complete. The determination reinforced, he was keen to start afresh. Rising from the depths of his inner beliefs, he grew strong again. This time, he wanted it more than before. The shine in his half-closed eyes betrayed a strength unseen before. He watched himself stand up and walk away with that strength. Walk away towards the glorious life that appeared to wait somewhere near. The life that called him from within. He saw himself leaving the place and leaving the wretchedness.

He rose another time. This time he knew it. He had to make that one last effort, the one step from a dream to a reality. Every limb refused to acknowledge his call. After what seemed like forever, he could muster courage to move. Slowly but steadily, he understood how he could move. He already knew from deep inside where he was to move.

He finally reached his dream. It was unfair, the effort, the time and the power it had squeezed out of him. But, he could see the shepherd running towards him now. The dog noticed something and started barking. The servant-maid started to run with a glass of water. He knew he had made it. Crossing the waters of doom and continuing the journey, the hardest part.

Horticulture Time

Spending time at home finally made me realize that I had to improve the greenery all round me.
these sites seem helpful:
ebay.in
indianmaali.com
indamseeds.com

Do add to the list, if you know anything.
Waiting for seeds to arrive and soon thrive.