Gang of 6...

This blog belongs to 6 ex COE students of NSIT... Though, now, we are all in separate places, studying or working, we hope to remain in touch with each other lest we forget the great time we had back in college. This blog is an attempt to achieve the same. Here's to us...!

Monday, June 30, 2008

Wordle

Here is the wordle for the blog till now. Thanks Akash for the link...!


 

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Imaginative Poetry

Today I am posting verbatim a page I had come across recently. I found it to be quite beautiful & pretty clear and accurate on the analysis part. Plus, I really loved the song; heard it after a long long time...!

At times I tend to have moods where I just keep admiring and appreciating things for hours and hours...like this song today I heard it sometime in the afternoon...being played in the neighbour’s otherwise irritating radio. Really beautiful song one with those melodious overtones...Also, though very difficult to sing perfectly but thankfully easy to sing decently well so that you don’t have to worry about molesting the song when u want to sing it aloud…The song goes like this

is mod se jaate hai, kuchh sust kadam raste
kuchh tej kadam raahe
patthar kee hawelee ko, sheeshe ke gharondo mein
tinako ke nasheman tak
is mod se jaate hai...

aandhee kee tarah udakar, ek raah gujaratee hai
sharamaatee huyee koee, kadamon se utaratee hai
in reshamee raahon me, ek raah to wo hogee
tum tak jo pahuchatee hai
is mod se jaate hai..

ek door se aatee hai,paas aake palatatee hai
ek raah akelee see, rukatee hain naa chalatee hai
ye soch ke baithhee hoo, yek raah to wo hogee
tum tak jo pahuchatee hai
is mod se jaate hai..

This song is from the movie Aandhi(remember Sanjiv kumar and some Sen)...the movies also has other nice numbers like "tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa" and “Tum aagaye ho noor aagaya hai...The music is amazing all right but what caught my appreciation today is the lyrics aspect...Beautiful lyrics by Gulzar...what makes me admire his lyrics in particular is his imagination...to me it seems like after he thinks of a particular scenario he imagines and imagines many analogies...once an analogy fits the next thing to do would be to fit other aspects of the scenario in the analogy and vice versa what i would call giving sub-analogies...like in this case the scenario "a just committed(or just married) couple wondering abut the future and expressing love and apprehension by thinking of the number of ways their relationship could go...and the analogy is 2 musafirs in journey who meet at a point and wondering abut the number routes one could take at that point....the analogy of raahein and raaste is a quite often used one in the industry but what stands out here is the way he proceeded fitting the analogy much better by giving sub-analogies

The first 3 lines lata(mangeshkar) says by taking whatever different routes until now hum is mod pe pahunche hain aur ek saath khade han..ab is mod se kuch raste aise jate hain jahan log tez chalte hain(people leading life mechanically and life goes past you) aur kuch aise raah hain jahan sust chalte hain(haste khelte going slow enjoying life with partner to the fullest)...then kishore(kumar) adds that some routes go to patthar ki haweli(signifies a strong relationship)...sheeshe ki gharondon mein(a decently strong relationship but could break by a slight turbulence)...tinkon ki nasheman tak(nasheman is basically sort of a nest tinkon ka ghosla is supposed to be very weak...so signifies a weak relationship)....and then they talk about more routes

in reshamee raahon me, ek raah to wo hogee
tum tak jo pahuchatee hai

Towards the end lata says I am in search of that path which will lead me to you ..To which kishore says

ek door se aatee hai,paas aake palatatee hai
ek raah akelee see, rukatee hain naa chalatee hai

there r routes which from far look like they r approaching me but as soon as u get closer they turn away making it impossible for u to reach me...n there is a route...where our relationship is just stagnated

PS: I just felt like sharing the meaning of this song for the underprivileged ones if ever one comes across this he could appreciate it....and not to show "studdaps"

PPS: This is my interpretation with some help from some sites and some dictionaries...so if some1 begs to differ or finds any faults anywhere please feel free to comment!

That’s all folks (with the Looney tunes muzik in the background)...will come back when something excites me again...till then adios! J

And here is the video too...

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Team outing

hey guys... posting after a long time, I think everyone has forgotten about this blog except AG :).

Last week my team at IBM went to Manchinbele Lake near Savandurga hill for a day of adventure sports. We were around 40 people, and divided into 4 groups. My group started with Paintball fighting. This was a game for really fit people. The face masks alone made breathing a tough task, add to it some really rocky terrain, hot sun, running and hiding for what seemed like an eternity I was huffing and puffing by the end of it. But the game was fun, we were dressed up like commandos in a hollywood movie, carrying real looking guns (with paint balls instead of bullets) and trying to get the opponent. I shot a couple of guys before I ran out of paintballs and was shot myself.

While paintball was tough, after the next activity my legs were shaking. I had done Rappling earlier, but you guys know my fear of heights. While climbing down my legs were shaking so much that I was thinking that all my pics would be blurred:). And my good friend Ashok, who had earlier come down practically dancing and waving like crazy, was not helping by shouting for me to let go of the rope and wave.

Post lunch we went into the lake! Initially I was planning to do just rafting and not go in water. But plans are well just plans, after doing some rafting and seeing pretty much everyone go in water, I too jumped in. After splashing around and just drifting with the very slow current for quite a while I had almost given up on the idea swimming even with help of a life jacket. But then people in one of the rafts in the middle of the lake started flipping the raft, diving into the water etc, and all sorts of fun things. Obviously I wanted to join the fun as well, but there was no way of reaching that raft other than swimming to it. Me and another guy devised our own swimming stroke, which was essentially lie on our backs and take our arms towards our head and bring them towards our legs in a semi circular motion, moving them just below the surface of water. This way we swam to the raft, some 500 meters away, and we did it in pretty good time! Then we did some raft flips!! Boy this was fun, and a little scary at first! Essentially everyone would sit/stand on one edge of the raft and then jump backwards, the raft would invert and everyone would go under water. A couple of hours ago I was so sure that I am not going in water that I didn't even change into shorts, but well... :)


(Me on the raft just before doing some raft flips. Guy in front of me is my team lead Karthi, and the girl whose face is partially hidden behind my hand in my teammate Priyanka.)

Sunday, June 08, 2008

The Vizag trip

This is coming after almost a year, but was browsing through some pics right now and remembered that I hadn't really shared the vizag trip with many people. Hence, this post.



Now that I come to think of it, it is funny that each one of us has worked on some NLP technique or the other. It started off with John & Maddy doing their stint under Neelu. Then gauri, danny, Himanshu & I also followed them into this and our BTP came out of our work with Neeladri. And then Deepak and gauri also made something ( a synonymn finder...??) using LSA and all... Anyways, that is a huge digression.



So, Shampa sent our BTP as an entry to the ISTE National Convention of 2007 which was to be held in Rajam, some 200 kms off Vishakhapatnam. As it turned out our project did get nominated for the (pls don't laugh) Kerala Government National Award for the Best Engineering Design. We guys were definitely thrilled. After all, we had put in quite a lot of (genuine) effort into this project, but, much more importantly, we had thought of writing atleast one paper out of this project, but us being us, we never managed to do that. But here, something good was happening of its own accord, and all we had to do was to give it a little nudge. And then the words 'National' & 'Best Engineering Design' did send us in a state of frenzied excitement. So, we started our preparations. We were supposed to deliver a presentation & (possibly)a demo at the national convention that was being held at the GMR Institute of Technology, Rajam, which, as I said is a rather bucolic though very beautiful place a few hours away from Vishakhapatnam. Himanshu was unable to come for the event and unfortunately Danish caught chicken pox at the very last moment (on his birthday too..!!)







So, there we were, Gaurav and I. We boarded our flight ( a very antique looking Alliance Air behemoth ) to Vishakhapatnam, which is the nearest airport to Rajam. Non-airworthy it had looked from outside, but once we were inside our primary problem was the leg room...! It was ouch..! Cramped seats, pathetic service by the air hostesses, and useless food. But the view obviously compensated for everything..! By the time we landed at Vizag we had forgotten all about the seats and were ready to take on Vizag, explore it a bit and then head off to Rajam. Especially since Gaurav had spent much of his childhood here. But, lo & behold, what greeted us there was incessant rainfall. It was the starting of October and south India was caught amidst some really foul weather. But, insistent on enjoying our time, we tarried on nevertheless. We booked a taxi, had food and even managed to dash off (in a really torrential downpour) to a submarine that had been converted to a museum. Standing inside the submarine with the rain pounding us from all sides was really an experience that I wouldn't be forgetting in a hurry... :-) Thanx Gaurav for that one..! Well, after that we just went off to Rajam, it took us about 4 hours and that night we just went up to the rooms allocated to us, had food, made ourselves comfortable and slept.







(Fast-forwarding the boring part... ;-) ) The next morning we went for our registeration, rehearsed our presentation, and gave it to a panel of 3 jurists in the evening. By the time everything was over, we were exhausted. Then we just roamed about the beautiful campus and marveled at everything that was so peculiarly south Indian. The trees, the food, the way everybody seemed to practically live off sambar-chawal or dahi-chawal and ate it the way I always prefer too, with their bare hands... Yummy..!! But the most astonishing thing we came across at that college was the immense amount of control that was exercised over the college students. These poor guys still have to wear uniforms..!! Their shoes were checked every morning and the defaulters were punished. This is college for God's sake...! I am no supporter of school uniforms and seeing this state of affairs in a college was really disheartening. All over the country, the girls hostels are usually locked up after around 9 at night. And well that is reasonable considering the kind of society we live in. But, here even the boys hostel was locked down after 8:30...! Strange.. very very strange..! Despite all this, our hosts did really make a big effort to make us feel comfortable. And I don't know why, but I got the feeling that they were somewhat intimidated by the fact that we had come all the way from Delhi and that too, by air..!







Nevertheless, rested and nourished and with the presentation done and over with, we had only two things on our mind. Firstly & obviously, whether we would get the first prize (which we did, eventually....! :-) ). And secondly, we had come to hear about the really bad weather at Vishakhapatnam, due to which all the flights to & from there were being canceled. And we had a flight to catch from Vishakhapatnam bound for Hyderabad, from where we were to catch our flight back to Delhi. And if the flights from Vizag were being canceled then we were almost certain to miss our second flight from Hyderabad. And seeing that the ISTE biggies (who had come from Delhi) were worried about the exact same thing, we decided to take a bus to Hyderabad at the earliest and catch our flight from there.







So that is what we did. We went from Rajam to Vizag by bus, and along the way witnessed some astonishing natural beauty, the likes of which I have rarely ever seen in my life...! What a pity that my camera (actually a friend's cam) was deep inside my bag, which I couldn't possibly unpack there. Well, then from Vizag, we took a bus to Hyderabad. On reaching Hyderabad, we went over to Gaurav's masi's place. They had a pair of immensely loveable Chihuahuas. After fooling with them to our heart;s content, we moved on to a whirlwind tour of Hyderabad ( we had only two hours before we had to rush off to catch our flight to Delhi). So we saw the Hussain Sagar lake, the Salar Jung Museum (regrettably, we couldn't find the Nizam's jewels. Would have loved to catch a glimpse of those...!!), and managed to catch a glance of the Char Minar from a little distance too... We could have gotten closer but we were caught in a traffic jam in what the cab driver explained to us to be the Chandni Chowk of Hyderabad. Disappointed, we gave up and turned back to the airport but not before we got some famous Hyderabad Biryani packed for us for the flight back home. Once on the flight, there really wasn't much to be done. We had some biryani, talked a bit, and fell asleep, and before we knew it, we were back home...!



It was a very interesting trip indeed, the most planned one I had ever gone on for sure, and as it turned out, was the most haphazard one indeed. And yeah, we later came to know that the flight from Vizag to Hyderabad, which we had thought would be cancelled, was the only flight that had taken off..!! So much for all our planning...!!

Monday, June 02, 2008

Kal Ho Na Ho..

Har Ghadi Badal Raha Hai Roop Zindagi
Chaav Hai Kahhi Hai Dhoop Zidnagi
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Ghadi Badal Raha Hai Roop Zindagi
Chaav Hai Kahhi Hai Dhoop Zidnagi
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho

Chaahe Jo Tumhe Poore Dil Se
Milta Hai Woh Mushkil Se
Aisa Jo Koi Kahin Hai
Bas Vahi Sabse Hasin Hai
Us Haath Ko Tum Thaam Lo
Woh Meherbaan Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho

Palko Ke Leke Saaye
Paas Koi Jo Aaye
Lakh Sambhalo Paagal Dil Ko
Dil Dhadke Hi Jaaye
Par Sochlo Is Pal Hai Jo
Woh Dastan Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho


Just felt like putting up the lyrics of this song, for no apparent reason. Kind of fits my mood right now (again for no apparent reason) :)

Catch ya later..!!