For Thinking

For thinking.

A year is 365 days because the earth takes that many days to complete one full revolution around the sun.
A month is 30 days because the moon takes that many days to complete one cycle of waxing and waning.
A day is 24 hours long because thats the time earth takes complete a rotation about its axis.

What about week? Why is a week 7 days long? Is there any natural reason for that?

For Bible believing creationists, its simple. God created the earth in 6 days and rested the 7th and that completes the creation.

Any other viable reason?

MotherBoard Diaries

BSOD, an acronym that's given me a lot of head ache ever since I knew about it. For those who aren't familiar with this, it means blue screen of death, a blue screen that is generated by windows due to some error. The system has to be restarted to use again.

BSOD has plagued my system at home for as long as 4 months. 4 months of frequent blue screen while trying to use a computer can freak any sane soul out. So the least said about me the better! From my part the best that I could do was to turn the desktop background colour to deep blue same as the colour of BSOD just to acclimatize myself to sudden bsod attacks.

Long story short, the repairing started with a HDD change, it then moved on to a full system service and format, a RAM change until finally the technician was driven crazy. Ultimately the motherboard was opened and worked upon and my relation with BSOD was unceremoniously cut off. BSOD attacked my system once again but left it unscathed.

PS: My relationship with BSOD rekindled at work when multiple systems were attacked by BSOD. All I could do was G-R-I-N seeing colleagues struggling with it.  

Allahabad Ride

Allahabad, the Kumbh Nagari, is an interesting city. One gets to experience a lot of things he wouldn't have had gone through all his life.

Tempo rides in Allahabad takes a lot of determination, sweat, energy, and even teaches you patience. The two seats facing each other is packed with 4 pupil each side and the driver refuses to start the vehicle unless all 8 possible seats are filled. But the driver keeps things interesting with the tracks he plays in the CD player he has fitted in the vehicle with skewed shape. The songs ranges from bhojpuri dj mix to gangnam style to even Avicii's levels!

I've read about public ear cleaners of Mumbai and road side dentists of Varanasi. The road-side hair cutting and shaving facility in Allahabad in comparision is much less strange. It is as common a sight as people spitting chewed tobacco in staircase corners of government buildings. But the real surprise is when you spot guys asking the 'saloonist' to shave their armpits.
The first thing that went through my mind seeing this: "Shaey, should have taken the camera"

Traveler vs Tourist

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” - G.K. Chesterton

The difference between a traveler and a tourist is something I hadn't noticed until recently when I embarked on a 'travel' to Munnar with Jyothi. It was then I realized that one becomes a traveler when he plans for a Ernakulam visit and ends up in Munnar. The traveler sees what he sees but the tourist see what he has come to see, is the lesson I learned after the trip.

My journey was to begin from Trichur, my hometown, with the plan to visit the recently opened much hyped LuLu mall in Ernakulam. That's when Jyothi, who was in Ernakulam calls me up with the Munnar idea. Within no time, we meet in Edapally and take a bus to Adimali because we didn't want to wait for a Munnar bus (traveler's instinct). On our way, a car rammed onto the bus and we changed to a Munnar bound bus. Munnar welcomed us with some heavy rain which set the mood for the rest of our trip. It indulges our olfactory system with supreme odors of high quality coffee and tea. But a call to a friend is all we needed to  decide that TopStation, some 35kms from Munnar, would be our destination.
Took a slow jeep ride to the TopStation. The top station is not a tourist destination, so all the top station can boast of is just a small tea shop and a old guy's house. We rented a room in his house complex for the night. Enjoying the nature is best when there is minimum human exploitation around and that's exactly what top station offered. Sound sleep too.
Early next morning we walked back till Yellapatty some 7kms before deciding to take the jeep ride back to Munnar. Thus ended the trip that made me a traveller! Travelling is all about doing whatever you think you can.

          

English Vinglish

One of the techniques used for memorization is association. Recently when Fernando Alonso won the European Grand Prix, the first thing that came to my mind was a friend of mine who is a die-hard Alonso fan. I had associated Alonso to my friend to help memorizing about Alonso.
I then found out that its the same with English words as well. Most of the english words I know, I can relate that word to something or some incident. Here are some interesting ones.

Swashbuckling : I still vividly remember that day when Shahid Afridi demolished India at Kanpur and the next day's local daily 'Patrika' faithfully reported the incident when this word attracted me. The 15 year old me decided to flash the word in school which was warmly received by my friends and was made a sensation by one of my more eloquent friend at the school assembly.

Obnoxious : The Hayden-Bhajji incident during the infamous 2007 Down Under visit.

Meander : Class 9 Geography, Sulekha ma'm explaining the course of Ganges

Shimmy : Renee Zellweger's interview in Reader's Digest had a picture of her dancing and the caption read: Zellweger shimmies down the ramp in 'Chicago'

Counterpane : This is a word my younger sister taught me, and the ego in me couldn't bear the fact that she had outdone me. Thus I remembered the word though recently when I asked her, she had forgotten the word and the incident. (SheldonCooper Grin)

Complacency : Learned this word on that unusual day at church when I wasn't sleeping during the sermon.

Hex : I remember this word coz this landed me in the staff room after one of my classmates mistook the word for another similar sounding word while I was shouting it in the class. I was shouting out of excitement in the word's resemblance with 'sex'.

That Moment of Indiscretion

The giant leap that Neil Armstrong took somewhere sometime has been described has one of the most influential and inspirational act that changed the whole course of mankind. Leaps have been in news ever since right from Silas'(Who's this?) dwarf leaps in his backyard to Yelena Isinbayeva's pole-vault leaps.Yes, leaps have come a long way before I decided to take that fateful leap.

Boarded on the NorthEast express, I had known right from the beginning that it doesn't have a stop at Naini Jn(the nearest station to my home, I had reservation up to the next station from which I'll have to take an auto back). So I had figured out that I will have to get off the train when it stops for signal somewhere near Naini. As the train passed through places that started looking familiar to me, I got my backpack and moved on to the door. Just then the train stopped. Now I had to decide whether to get off or wait to make sure this is the right place. By the time I could make a decision-given as lazy as I am my brain has to deal with a great amount of inertia- the train started honking and moving again. So I waited to see a platform approaching. And lo, its Naini.

Now(to my amusement later) my decision taking abilities had warmed up and was ready. So, I decided in a split second to jump off the train to the platform, thinking of all those days back in Kerala where I used to jump off  near the overhead bridge just to avoid all the walking through the platform. And it turned out that all my velocity gauging capabilities had gone in for a short hibernation after the 'nice and pleasant' Biharian summer day I spent in the train.
After the leap came the fall, and with the fall came the skin peel. And the explanation I came up with at home was a simple statement. "No pain, No gain" 

Supposed IIT visit

Here was a I, a mediocre engineering student with no real enthusiasm towards studies or innovation an average engineer is required to have, standing a chance to visit an IIT, the undoubted holy grail for a prospective engineer. The fact that it was IIT Guwahati, a relatively new one in the remotest of places in India, never dampened my spirits. But with all the furor about how the IIT standards would be compromised with a combined entrance exams, I had added reasons to be excited to get a first hand experience of the so called 'high standards'. With all excitement, geared up was I for an almighty entry when Indian Railways decided to play spoilsport. The NorthEast Frontier Railway is definitely not the best railway zone I have traveled in, in my extensive travelling career (huge lol), but in my long career ranging from the highs of Himalayas to the lows of Keralean backwater treats have I never faced such a situation when a train abruptly decided to take a halt, a rather long halt, which in the end amounted up to almost 7hrs.

Yes SEVEN freaking hours it was. Swearing at the coming-soon monsoon for being late was the only respite in the once lonely but now bubbling AlipurDuar Junction other than wishing to borrow the genes of those women in Thar desert who walk kilometers for water or even their whole nervous system. Wonder how do they cope! So stuck in a station in a bogie with a broken ac and bad ventilation, it was a 127 hour like 7 hour ordeal.
In short, with AlipurDuar Junction all my pre-trip excitement waned. BUT it was in that very same station that I had that proud moment when I put my 2 year old niece to sleep on my shoulder for the first time or was it that she decided to sleep there after weighing all other options in the station. Anyway, I was so over the moon that I ran through the platform to find that elusive i-cream guy and bought one for her twin sister!
PROUD UNCLE that i am! And so, the supposed grand IIT visit turned out to be just another holiday trip with a twist in the tail which will make way for another post.