Gimme a Break!!!

Dasatavaram audio was out and spending some excruciating hours on sleep, got up early the next day and googled to find the link for download here only to be directed to a page with such authentication. Can anybody make out of that image above? If yes, please mail me so. Type in the letters with cat above / below? Bull shit, if they gotta restrict people from stopping download well just remove the ‘FREE’ section but with such stupid tricks it just sucks. Every attempt was like the torture the protagonist goes through in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ as they have this 1 minute counter that feels like ages. Well luckily downloading the songs in tamil was much much easier and well I will review them shortly…

Bowel Shaking Moments

Were there not moments when there came a thing that shook your foundations completely and left you befuddled for a while?

Yesterday was one of those days. Well after Paresh (our ex-mentor and one of those rare gems with abundant talent and dedication) put in place MVC architecture for our erstwhile M&E Dashboard , I never really thought there could be another way of doing it. And sometimes it was pretty hard considering I wasn't able to replicate the connection string and also wasn't able to get the classes for objects that made it easier for updating/deleting records. We were very much dependent on the source code generator that Paresh had brought along. Will link up the link in coming times :)..

Yesterday when I saw this it felt as if someone gouged a 5 shot tequila down my throat. Woah..too much to take in I tell ya. I almost jumped out of my seat reading it. If it was SO DAMN easy to establish a MVC architecture then how come it didn't cross our minds AT ALL? And well so began my R&D ** after a very very long hiatus(1 and a half month AT least) and a voluntary break from my nonsensical routine I set out my first task: Binding Images from DataBase to DataList entirely using Database operations.

And for that this seemed just the kind of appetizer I needed to set the things right. But my task wasn't as easy as I thought and after 2,3 days creating,deleting 2,3 projects from Visual Studio I wasn't yet able to get what I needed.This quest of mine surprised my RM too so much so that he goes on record saying : Asalu inta goranga nuvvu SMART ku eppudaina kastapaddava? ...Snippets like that encourages me to not to lose hope.

But the sad part of the whole saga is typed DataSet creates more problems than solutions and though it helps in making our work easier not remembering column names and checking their spellings in terms of changes in Database this is just not adaptable and I figured someother ways to do it and now the application looks sturdy.

Yet, it proved that I am still receptive to such gyaan and capable of taking in much more. .Net never ever fails to amaze me...

**- R&D is quite an interesting term coined by Julie (my ex-RM) for all the work we put in googling for something, trying it out in our applications and making sure the desired requirement is met. One such was having a Delete ImageButton in the GridView and it took me SO much time to get it done. But yes that was when I have first heard the term from her on the teleconference (we had no other way of contacting her then other than that mode) and it stuck with me and started making perfect sense. Uptil then R&D always meant to be associated with PHD's... and now it feel kinda cool to say 'it will at least 5 days for R&D'.

I presume this lingo is not universal as Mahider had a huge grin on his face hearing it from me to the reply I gave to Sunil...so listen up folks if you got something to google, something to copy paste,something to try and you want to tell your pm about it start using R&D..got it?

FPS - The Play

A Nutshell Review –
Book costs 100 bucks, ticket costs 200, travel costed 200 and top of all this another 100 for food that night – 600 in total. Was it absolutely worth it, not really. Well read on…

ENJOY THE 1-Minute Teaser

First of all I absolutely loved the book and consequently had huge expectations on how it is going to turn out as a play. It was going to be staged by none other than the troupe ‘Evam’ themselves. Maybe it was just a coincidence but it just happens that Evam’s ‘The Odd Couple’ was my first ever play and it was their play again that I am going to after a very long hiatus.
Play started little late than usual with a very unusual long somewhat boring adulating speech from an unusual person. Just when I thought enough was enough there was a startling revelation that it was 300th performance and well guess what we were also present for their 100th one. With lights out, and a while later came echoing beat of the legendary Pink Floyd’s ‘We Don’t Need No Education’ …

Woah…spell binding and the kind of opening I was just hoping for. My face flushed and had some goose bumps all over hearing that song. I controlled my irresistible desire to get up and dance. The whole point of the book was breaking the myth – all IIT ians are extremely talented bunch of guys, super whiz kids who just can’t do anything wrong in their studies or in their lives. And man that song just SUMS up the whole idea.

They had a very simple setting – one huge square platform with one step which took care of buildings, classrooms, dhaba, ice-cream parlour, insti roof (got the point?), one small desk and chair to the right (different rooms in the hostel…well a room that’s all), a bed with a cot to the right (same as the former) as you can see one such here.

It being an adaptation, I don’t want to go more into the story. If you are looking for one you can find it in my review of the book. The casting was excellently done including profs. Prof. Veera looks uber cool maybe because he was the only young prof out there. Of the whole lot I thought Ryan and Alok were like the perfect jigsaw pieces.

For some reason as the scenes were played out one after other I was co-relating more with the book anticipating the next scene with certain urgency. It was great to see some liberties that the author took and not adapting it literally. Especially the scene where they break up (a la Sid-Akash tussle minus the discussion of the how-why of such relationship) it was freaking hilarious to see Hari replying back with F*** off when Ryan flushed with pride to see Hari stay back ‘You made the right choice Hari’. And there were few more such hilarious scenes.

Well frankly I don’t have anything much to say. It is harder for reviewing something that you know could have been done better or for something you are much more familiar beforehand. I didn’t like it as much as the book and the unnecessary clapping between the scenes was irritating to say the least. I am happy at least I have made Ranjit enjoy the beauty of theater and he loved every part of it.

'Five Point Someone' - A Book Review

IIT or IIM no big deal. Everywhere students are students and the pranks they do are universal. And most importantly there are STUDENTS like US.

It was only two days ago read I read the book (in four hours flat actually) 'Five Point Someone' By Chetan Bhagat. The only reason why I took up the book is because so many people said it's similar to the movie 'Dil Chahta Hai' which is my favorite.

It's exactly that. You have three guys Ryan, Hari and Alok (Akash, Sameer, Sid....) who get ino the prestigious institution in India , IIT -Delhi. Ryan is very creative, highly intelligent and with that naturally comes arrogant attitude. Hari is the one who narrates the entire history of them. He is fickle minded. It takes no more than some juicy talk to influence him. And the most important of all the characters whom you might have seen from your intermediate to this year- Alok. He is very studious, poor, and fat. He loves food. The story starts with how these three guys get to know each other through one of the most dreaded things in the first year's life, you guessed it, ragging. From then on you will get to know each character in depth with absolutely superb narrative. Ryan keeps bickering about the IIT system and there are quite a few instances where you would ask yourself “What is the big deal about IIT then? ". While Alok being highly sensitive, poor with no friends dislikes him somewhat but all the same follows him. Hari, though throughout the book says he is unbiased, always flows with Ryan. It boils down finally to a stage which they never could have imagined.

Well, if it were to be only this then man I wouldn't have touched the book with a pole long stick, there is this small story interwoven with the small plot, between Neha and Hari which gives the afterlife to the book. The interesting part about this book is at no point of time you feel bored or hackneyed or dragging. Everything goes with a breakneck speed especially ' The longest day of my life' (how ironic eh?) series. It is because the characters are so similar with the everyday life, you are sure to enjoy it especially if you are a backbencher.

Basically this is my first novel with Indian author, the classroom activities, the professor's, mugging up, ragging, bunking so on so forth are so familiar with what we do. So go ahead and read it if you reallly want to know 'what not to do at IIT' or if you are feeling disappointed for not getting into one ( you might feel happy after reading this..).

This book is recommended to everyone.

(Brought to you from Yossarain Archives...)

*** M*i*n*d*B*l*o*w*i*n*g ***

!!!!That's Me...yohooo...that's me!!!!!

(Left To Right)
Me: That's Me.. as in M-E me...
Hari: Gullible precoucious little kid
Nikhil Mohan a.k.a (Nikmo) : Hmmm...naa..I don't have proper words to describe him.

It's not everytime you see a pic and think "woah...Is that really Me?". Well...this is one such pic. Taken at beach house near Pudicherry (pondicherry FYI). Frankly never once I feel I look good in snaps and you know it's quiet difficult to get the pose right and man to make the matters worse I ain't got no photogenic face / muscular body to speak of. And SO this snap is much much special for me in this context. Wow in the words of Geet "Mein mere best fan hoon" ...

Apart from this there is one other snap taken by Ms.Talkative and that was great too... After taking that snap here goes what she said:

"Nee life lo intakante best photo radanukunta...Nee pelli chupulaku pettu pakka flat aipotharu..."

(This must be your best snap in your whole god damn life. Rishta pukka ho jayega ye phot dikhane se)

I can't find it now but when I do I will update it. It's been hellava time since I updated...

!!!Keep Watching This space for more!!!!