Life in Vancouver

I had actually written an earlier post where I explained my state of joblessness since I didn't know what to do and how to do etc. This state of joblessness is slowly changing and even though I ended up looking like a total idiot, I am slowly getting the gist of things. Its nothing great, just connecting some pipes around, making some electrical connections and stuff. But for someone, who practically never screwed a bolt in his entire life and who was basically as good as a deaf, dumb and blind person in most of the labs, the entire thing made absolutely no sense in the beginning. I didnt even know how to give a 24 V connection to one of the valves( the connecting positive and negative part) and the electrical shop guy was like " Dude, Is this guy for real?"..

Anyways, after all that, I do now know how to give electrical connections and stuff. The pain now, is that all the stuff which was ordered should reach before I can do anything. Thats an other thing here, whatever stuff you need for the experiment, you yourself have to order it from somewhere. Its not like you can generally walk up to some lab or technician and ask him to get it. Even when you ask a workshop guy to make you something, he will first give you a quote and then YOU have to pay him per hour charge for the work that he does. Its almost like the workshop is business in itself and not a part of the univ. Anyways since the paying is done by the prof, it really doesn bother me, but the cost of things around here is simply atrocious. I have orderd around $2000 worth stuff by now and probably some more.

Coming back to life here, this place is like the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I mean some of the views and sceneries basically is beyond your imagination. I dont think any place in the world can be more beautiful, seriously!. Alcohol is pretty much dirt cheap here, you get 6 bottles( a pack) for just $10. Thats real good beer too. The food is great as well, each day I am eating more non-veg than what I would in a month at IIT.

In short, to wrap things up, with some more good friends around, this place will probably be the best place on earth. But then, you cant have everything!

Things I look forward to

Right now, I am sitting in my lab, totally jobless, trying to figure out how to make my life more interesting. The thing is I am jobless, not because I have nothing TO DO, its just because I dont know how to do it. The Ph.D guy who works with me, the one supposed to be my "shephard in this valley of darkness" has duly forgotten to come in the morning, leaving me pretty much clueless. So I have decided to make this list of all the things that I would like to do in my life, or all the things that I look forward to doing. The reason why I am doin this, apart from being jobless, is that these days that light at the end of the tunnel seems to be missing. I dont see myslef having that great dream or AN END, the accomplishment of which will be my karma. So here it goes, in no particular order:

2. Parachute Jumping... like what you see in the movies, jump off from a flying plane and then experience the free fall.

3. Bungee Jumping-

4. Snorkelling

5. Own and drive my very own Harley Davidson or an Yamaha SportsBike( the ones capable of topping around 300km/hr)

6. Drink the best quality scotch and a have a Cuban Cigar alongside... along with which there should be great food, preferably seafood and beef. :) ..

7.Skiing

8. Own a house by a lake, hmm.. pretty much like the one Bill Gates has in Seattle.. (:P).. it needn be tht luxurious or something.. but located in some very tranquil surroundings, still have all the modern amenities.\

9. Buy my own range of Japaneese steel Katana Swords and get trained in them

10. Own a double barrel shot gun or a hunting rifle and go hunting.

11. Have dinner at a mountain top restaurant with an amazing view .

12. Earn enough money to buy a Rolls Royce limo..and get chaffeured around in it,, just for the sake of it :)

13. Have a personal home theatre with a 50" screen and bose sound systems.. an unending collection of quality movies to boot.

14. My own collection of liquor.. Have a cupboard filled with the best quality liquor from around the world, add cigarattes and cigars along :)

15. Have enough power to correct the goddamned educational system in India. :)

hmmm.. and end things up

15. Experience true, blissful happiness again, and again and again.... endless\\\


so guess thts all.. all other wishes are pretty much derivatives of the ones above. Except for the last 2, i guess the others are within achievable limits. After the above is done, I can probably start studying for my graduate degree in philosohpy.. :D.. haha..

p.s. good company is a must in almost all of the above,, except maybe the first where only well endowed members of the opposite sex are needed!

pps// and u knw why i started from 2.. :P

intern

Well i am interning at TI,the one at chennai though. Well firstly i figured out that tech in india still has a long way to go.I was sad to discover that even at a leading company like ti,very little chip design happens,.... over here its mostly testing and verification .Not that this work isn't demanding and all but still we are way behind out american counterparts when it comes to real cutting edge work..

Anyways my work is to basically verify whether a chip works the way it ought to, the industry word would be verification,now this usually take up about 50%of the chips design cycle and needs a lot of bull work to be done and ya a bit of logic here and there but not much i must say ...in brief the work is passable not bad but nothing great either

Moving on the one thing i do like is the work environment you are free to do anything you wish they dont really care as long as you get the work assigned to you done.I can listen to music,genna surf around chat whatnot nobody really gives a damn.The irony is the place is such that you get bored after a while and you feel like work is the best possible option.The food is very decent way better than the mess food dished out to us . and also we can have unlimited amounts of refreshment like cofee chocolate boost badam etc as well. The mentors are also fairly friendly people so i guess all in all i give the work environment an 8 on 10.

Though on Friday we came to know that anna junta are gonna be joining us .If there is anyone I am afraid of its anna junta.

Coming to transport i now am the proud owner of a tvs moped about ten years old i believe.Going to work on it just way too much fun.The moped is one of the arbitest thing i have come across.The other day it wont just start; we kicked and kicked for about fifteen mins and the stupid things engine wont even give a soft purr.Frustrated we take it to a mechanic and viola one kick from and the thing just sprang to life.we were like DUDE!!!! .We did the same thing.But then the six year old kid (our mechanic :P )put us some fundaes and we were also able start it ... the rest of the journey was smooth sailing.The other thing about the moped it has basically zuk pickup.seriously zuk pickup.It goes at about 10 kmph for about 30 secs before it starts moving.So the next morning the thing just kept dying down after starting or wont go above 10 kmph.but once it crossed the 10 kmph barrier it behaved brilliantly .now here we are heading towards adyar bridge at decent speed but suddenly we see traffic in front and are forced to stop. Now we try our level best to make it climb but the moped just would keep dying down.The traffic passing by had a good laugh at our expense .so we had to get off and push it to the top off the bridge and then somehow magically all its problems just vanished..it started behaving perfectly except the usual low pickup off course ...
The other briliant thing about the moped is its top speed uphill is 40 and downhill is 60 .My vandi is just too unique.i hope it lasts the next two years
:)
just waiting for a pic to be shared by someone it basically defines elec at iitm .Its just a total crack .till then adios...

mallu music

brilliant thats all i can say , for the past one hour on this hot sunday afternoon been listening to old mallu songs. Was cleaning my drives cause i wanted to install a few games and stuff and lo and behold i found this wonderful collection of mallu songs that i had handpicked quite a while ago.I put fight to get a few of the lyrics and also put them up on mini lyrics.Signing of with lyrics of this brilliant song,my mom used to sing this to me very often when i was small :)
aayiram kannumai
kaathirunnu ninne njan
ennil ninnum paraganoru
painkkilli malar thaenkkilli

manju veenatharinjilla
veyil vannu poyatharinjilla(2)
omane nee varum
nee varum naalu irunnu njan
vannu nee vannu ninnu nee enthe janmasabhalyamae

A burst of sanity.. please ATTEMPT to read it fully..

" i am not varun's alter ego who took over him 3 years ago and left him 10 days back, only to come back and take over him again, to type this post out for him, in this hour of strenous and stressful activity resulting in value addition for humanity, and increasing the entropy of the universe at the same time, all the while keeping the total enthalpy a constant, by the use of regular breathing and periodic ejaculation of body fluids, which may or may not contain life producing susbstances, at a speed/velocity which is significantly times smaller than the velocity of light and thus conforming to which ,the universe/multiverse as a whole is prevented from neither exploding and thus causing the second big bang nor contracting and thus causing the much predicted but still not confirmed BIG CRUNCH, which on happening, will feed the ego of many a scientists who are now looked upon in the same wavelength as monkeys with AIDS and rabies combined, but still it wont do them any good, as they along with all other living/non living beings will be fucking dead/destroyed by then, though the universally accepted phantom brain or soul shall be pretty damn pleased and shall never try to haunt any mansion again, although such a thing shall become an impossibility owing to the neutronic nature of particulate matter after the big crunch, realzing upon which i have decided to write this blog and share this ground breaking, enlightening, earth shattering, spine busting, nerve crunching information with the world as a whole and thus attempt to enlighten it so as to cleanse it of ignorance, idioticity, stupidness and the resulting MADNESS, upon which I might have contracted the very same thing which I was trying to remove!.. Ironic, isnt it??? "

Revenge of the Sith

Yeah//. the title says it all... i just saw the Star Wars Epsiode 3- Revenge of the Sith for probably the 20th time. Yet, it still manages to stir up my emotions in a way films rarely can. Dont get me wrong here,, i'm not some space adventure buff or a fan of some weird shit like that. The movie is far from being just an adventure or a fanatsy. The galactic order of things, the inter galactic battles, the wonderful scenaries and graphics, all of them just provide the background. Its the characters that truly capture your imagination. How Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi, turns to a Sith. The reasons behind each and every one of his actions are so logical and one can truly empathize with him. I think the character of Anakin aka Darth Vader is one of the most complex characters of all time in english cinema. You can almost feel his anger and his emotions( at least i could :P). Hats off to Geroge Lucas!.. It really requires a trilogy to develop a character as complex as that of Anakin, and he has done that to just about perfection.

Feeling Good . :)

Normally, the night after the exams are a huge let down, in the sense that you keep expecting that night for the entire week and finally when it comes, you realize that its just an other ordinary night. All the big plans somehow gets ruined and fucked up and you end up spending your time either sleeping or watching some stupid movie. But yesterday night was different. We actually did go out, have some truly great food and finally washed things down with a cracker of milk shake at mochas., and all of this thanks to the grand dad of our wing, DP! Not the best of nights, coz the junta lost enthu by the time we reached mochas, still one thts worth blogging about. :)..

Also I recieved a certificate today morning. One for donating blood. It was something that I did out of arbit enthu some 6 months back and now I am getting a certificate for it. Dunno why, but even that made me feel good. Like I had done finally something that was worhtwhile and useful . This makes me wonder whether all that fart Ayush was putting about social service making you feel good inside and all the crap is actually true!. Maybe it is, and I should remember not to have a prejudiced attitude towards such things from now on.

Anyways, second last day of my stay in IIT as third year and probably my last post as one. So clap-a-doodle-do coz ze fourth year beckons moi!!!... :D