As someone pointed out, life on campus is like an expensive holiday so far, with everyone hitting the gym, indulging in all-night Bacchanalian orgies, hook-ups, random conversations, people trying to use the power of association to remember names and what not.

I’m amazed at many things happening here, true to my ‘harithekid’ tag, and one of the most exciting things for me is the fact that the entire campus is fully wi-fi. I’d never been given a laptop at the office, and was confined to being at my desk, but with my trusty typewriter now being converted to a B-school ready powerhouse, I’m walking around all over the place, squealing with delight at the fact that I can access the internet from wherever I want to, minus wires.

I think my old-school nature is making itself significantly evident, but it is fun anyway.

In case you haven’t already figured out, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, the title of this post compresses into an acronym that is used frequently as a synonym for ‘cool’ in my quad, which comprises of three other supremely chilled out guys, with whom I’m getting along like a house on fire. Touchwood.

As inhabitants of Ground Zero (which is what our apartment is soon going to be famous all over campus if it hasn’t been already), random acronyms rule the roost. One of the rules for parties we intend to throw is to have all participants get their own Beer Or Other BevrageS.

Being big on symbolism, the first act I performed post registration as a student was to go with a few other friends and have some chilled beer (or child bear as some cute, hopefully unintentional typographical errors might display on the signage) and drink to being a student again.

A trip to the Salar Jung museum on sunday, after bunking some sessions that were organized for the class of 2010 led to my using my student ID to get a discount on the entry fees. Adults are charged INR 10 while students are charged INR 5, and even though the amount wasn’t huge, the very act of being able to weasel out of five bucks seemed like a privilege that I am thankful to have received again.

There are many things happening on campus, and the mind boggles at what one is missing, but I think that I’ve had pretty much all my friends go through this entire rigmarole a few years before me, and some of the advice and fundas they’ve given me should hold me in good stead for the year ahead.

My phone number has changed, and I’ve updated it on facebook for those who want to know. As promised in the previous, I’ll try to tone down the whole jazz, although quite frankly, there’s nothing much else that is happening in my life that is worth mentioning.

Not knowing what to do, I had previously linked my domain name to my blog, which most often than not received random traffic from search engines due to reasons I’d rather not be too proud about, for now.

I was additionally maintaining a livejournal wherein I had initially started putting in any arbit rambling that I wanted to pen down and preserve, and this sounding board then turned out to be the one that I used with greater frequency compared to my blog, which I was afraid I was going to abandon.

In the midst of maintaining a blog and a livejournal, I chanced upon a few blogs that were hosted on their own server spaces and had exclusive URLs, and this, combined with the need to customize what I spew out in writing prompted me to purchase server space and host this website on wordpress, which is what you are seeing right now. In this regard, I have to thank Aadisht and SKimpy, for their random tech support level assistance on gtalk as well as for having guided me to Madhu Menon, who provided me with the necessary server space, and deserves to be thanked as well.

Thanks also to Monkee, the cheap guy that he is, for having been the first person to subscribe to the RSS feeds of my new website, much before I could do so myself, and for some invaluable inputs and constructive criticisms that prevented me from doing some things that I realized in retrospect were stupid.

Shrenik Sadalgi, friend, colleague and photographer extraordinaire provided me with his old camera – a Canon powershot A620, which is super enough for my face, to shoot the pics that you can see in the header. Refreshing or clicking on other links will switch the header image, thanks to a php script written by Matt Mullenweg.

The wordpress forums are stud level so far as resolving issues related to everything under the sun is concerned, and it is a result of their assistance that I’ve been able to put my site in the current shape that it is in.

Clicking on the bars on top will take you to the different categories under which I’ve posted, and I will update and add new stuff to it. Currently, if your office’s internet proxy isn’t benevolent enough, you will not be able to see any media under the music category.

The primary intent of the blog is to fan my already bloated ego, and also to serve as a means of providing me with more freelance writing opportunities, the likes of which I have engaged in for a few print as well as online publications. I have managed to import and include most of my blog and LJ entries into this site, but I haven’t been able to tag and categorize all 400 (approx) of them for now, which means that you will still see that ‘uncategorized’ label on the top bar until I’ve had enough time, patience and enthusiasm to remedy it.

Feedback is most welcome, just leave a comment, and do subscribe to the RSS feeds of my site. This new blogging journey will be awesome!

I wholeheartedly intend to Rock you like a Haricane.

I’m still unsure of how to go work on this “about me” section, though what I do know is that I like writing more than I ever thought I could and also because it makes me happy.

End of Update

When I had initially thought of putting this post up, I was brimming with ideas and with all sorts of content that this post could house, and I was dreading the prospect of not being able to stick to a self-imposed word limit that I want to adhere to. New blog, new rules you see.

However, the problem I am facing is diametrically opposite, for I have drawn a complete blank. The issue at hand is one that is more fundamental than your average writer’s block. The usual about me description would sound like what I would say to people who asked me to tell them about myself, and the ‘tell me about yourself’ type queries are those that one faces in interviews of the boring kind.

Being in the same job for four years, I think my interviewee skills are currently as sharp as the business acumen skills of whoever decided to make Lehman Brothers a leading contender in the subprime loan sector.

I don’t want to sound like I am being interviewed. However, when you glance through this blog perfunctorily, it is going to sound like a monologue that will bore you to death. Read all the content here at your own risk.

The only way anyone can get to know a person is by spending extended time with them, and you will get to know all the irrelevant details about me that I’ve chosen to share by checking out the various posts I have.

Most of my posts are what the average guy on the street would think of and pen down, with a few things here and there that might pique your interest. Humour is an important aspect of my life in general and I try to focus on that, although that effort is usually in vain.

Check out the various links on top (home | blog | music | links | about) and see what works for you.

For all its worth it, I am awesome. And I’m quite modest about it, as the sub-title of the site would suggest.So are you, albeit to a smaller extent, for having landed up here, intentionally or otherwise. Enjoy!

It just seemed like a good idea at that time.

(The above statement has been used by many people throughout history, including those that committed the defenestrations of Prague that led to the 30-years war, those that used brandy in thermometers before switching to mercury, by Indira Gandhi during the 1975 emergency, by Abhinav Bindra’s dad after he narrated the incident of young AB shooting the balloon off the maid’s head and so on and so forth).

It is certainly not as cool as owning a domain name, and if emailed at that address, I promise to reply. Just for kicks.

If contests were reformatted to be about who consumes N items of food, regardless of time, I would stand a fighting chance. But that is beside the point.

Like I mentioned before, I love to cook, but it isn’t something I have been doing too much off-late. My culinary skills came to the fore under circumstances of extreme duress. In August 2005, after having nearly experienced death (another expansion of NED) due to a severe case of bronchopneumonia that resulted in me being holed up in bed for ten days during the festival season, I developed a strong aversion towards outside food of any kind. Although the condition that affected was more towards the pulmonary region rather than the gastric region, I was nevertheless unable to eat properly for almost ten straight days and lost a whole lot of weight.

Being skinny and underweight ever since I was about four, before which I was as fat as a miniature version of Jabba the Hut, when I say I lost a whole lot of weight, I do mean it. My cheeks were hollow and for the first time after the end of engineering college, I could once again see all my ribs.

This aversion towards eating outside food regardless of its price / quality spurred me on to learn cooking and avoid outside food altogether. The slight problem of not having a kitchen until May 2006 when I moved into an apartment with a few friends kept me from having a go with the cooking utensils, but even fate could not delay the inevitable.

My three subsequent trips abroad also honed my culinary skills to a point where I could confidently claim to all and sundry that I could cook, without cooking being considered as the ability to make maggi noodles or tea. I could cook to save my life (as I have done so on a few occasions) and I guess it was one of those thigs people tend to add on their ‘life resume’ and would, more often than not make a rather desired bullet-point on it.

I currently stay alone in a house that has a kitchen in it, but I haven’t cooked food in a really long time. I would attribute my lack of enthusiasm towards cooking to two factors – I haven’t had a significant gastronomic accident that has resulted in unpleasantness and aversion towards outside food to that great an extent (touchwood) and I spend way too much time in cooking for myself.

The second factor in question is a result of the fact that I view cooking as a labour of love, and I spend time in cutting vegetables correctly so that they are of even size and are uniform, garnishing the food and generally working on making it look good before I dig in mercilessly and clean up the entire plate.

When I do end up cooking, the quantity I prepare sometimes exceeds the amount I could eat in one sitting as a result of which I spend about two hours polishing off what I’ve made. Add that to about an hour / hour and a half spent in making the food and what I now have is the clock striking 2300 hours by the time I am done eating, assuming I started preparation at 2000 hours.

Also, there’s vessels to be washed and the kitchen to be cleaned thereafter, which I end up doing myself because I am too lazy to hire a maid who’d show up and would require me to be home in the evening or be awake in the morning at a certain time, and I see myself as being above such encumbrances. I’m also too lazy to hire a cook for the same reasons. I might also be cheap, but that has been a congenital condition of mine which, somehow has nothing to do with anything concerning food.

But my craving for home cooked food has only increased over the years, and in order to cater to my needs, I have come up with the idea of cook buddy (or cook buddies, rather).

If there is a family that lives within walking distance of my house and would be willing to host me on two days of the week for having dinner at their place, I’d be willing to pay good money for it. This is in line with my being too lazy to cook unless ample motivation is provided, and would sort out considerations of proximity to my residence as well as provide me with good food in return.

I don’t ask that the family in question serve me food that is gourmet-level. I merely ask that on two days in a week, the said family or bunch of people that live together make an extra portion of whatever they’re cooking and have me over to consume it. If the food is simple, vegetarian and is home-prepared, it would fit the bill appropriately.

In return, I would be willing to be a temporary member of the family until such time that the food gets over and then leave and go home until the next time that I was scheduled to visit them. This would mean that I would be courteous, polite, I’d pass the salt when asked for and refrain from breaking wind at the table and not make unsolicited comments about anything that is wrong with them, if at all.

There are plenty of people out there who want to cook but have the disinclination to do so due to a multitude of factors. Their living situation also prevents them from eating home cooked food every single day at their place of residence as a result of which they end up eating random food outside, which is cooked without the most important ingredient that goes into making good food – love.

At the risk of sounding immodest like I always do, I would also consider myself as interesting enough company for the family to look forward to having me over on the stipulated days. They’d of course be given the opportunity to interview me and meet me before zeroing in on a prospective match for their cutlery and their dining table, but I’d be ok for that as well, as would hundreds of other people in my predicament.

I believe that the west has a similar concept in place for fulfilling the carnal needs of a person, and that rhymes with cook buddy. We are, as a society not as immoral or polygamous and hence we’d rather keep things G-rated and just roceed onward with the search for the right cook-buddy.

An off-shoot of said idea would be to invite people over to one’s place after having cooked for them, but I’d rather not propose it because I don’t like too many people coming over to my house. The ones who are welcomed with open arms at any time know who they are.

Let me illustrate this with a particular example that I was witness to the other day. This took place on a weekday morning at a busy traffic intersection on the ring road in Bangalore, when some buffoon chose to use his helmet to protect his left elbow instead of protecting his head.

Combined with the almost-reverential protection given to his elbow was the fact that he didn’t know enough math to discern that he was speeding at a place where he should’ve ideally breaked and waited for the red light to turn green.

Hence our man, let’s call him Raju, was guilty of two offences – jumping a red light and protecting his left elbow instead of his head with a helmet. What happened when he chose to move instead of wait is something that was predictable. He rammed into someone who was travelling in the purpendicular direction and hurt his hand, because the helmet got in the way.

I saw the whole thing happen, and I couldn’t help but grin at the fact that Raju was being a dumbass who deserved what he got. I don’t think it is bad Karma to laugh at someone who is being an idiot and breaking the rules. I’d consider it to be priceless entertainment instead and I must say that I look forward to many such instances in the future.

Te same applies for all the morons who travel the wrong way in a one way to save a few paise, instead of going further ahead along the road and taking a U-turn to get to their destination. Skimpy and I once had a discussion and he pointed out the following logic to me made a pertinent observation, which I wish was something that people could come up with intuitively instead of putting themselves through such peril.

Assume that you save 10 paise petrol while going the wrong way, and that you face a 1% risk of injuring yourself. Consequently, the value of your life is INR 10. If these people have such a small value for their life, should those that don’t break the rules bother much about them?

The traffic rule breakers in Bangalore should have their own section in the Darwin Awards, so that they can go ahead, and literally knock themselves out. For good.

Things like these usually happen only on reality TV shows, with an element of stage-managing, but in this case people are washing their dirty linen in public and making a big deal about it, while the rest of the world watches in glee not so much at the fact that its two heavy-weights that are slugging it out in a verbal battle, but more so because it provides a temporary distraction from the things that otherwise occupy top priority in mind.

While I don’t want to name names, I have no qualms in providing link to aforesaid verbal battle. Needless to say, it is between one of the most recognized Indian bands south of the Vindhyas, having had the distinction of opening for Megadeth and Machine Head this year and the founding father of the annual Independence Rock festival.

Of course, this ‘fight’ has taken place across various social networking platforms, but no place like the RSJ forums to put it all together. For further drama, click here.

I am currently listening to ‘Ettam Pattu’ which has a distinctive RHCP-ish feel to it, but then gets transformed into something else altogether as the song progresses.

I heard from my friend Prasad just a while ago that Anand Raj is not in the country, and hence their DJ / turntable Tony John will be at the helm of the vocals instead. Their myspace page also doesn’t mention Anand in it. Funny.

Edit: Turns out, Benjamin has left the band. So much for being up to date on the music scene. I think I should retire.

Well, nevertheless, Avial will be performing live at the Palace Grounds in Bangalore on 24th August 2008 as part of the Independence Rock’s Bangalore finale. I hope to be there, time and circumstances permitting.

If you think they’re your cup of tea (stew, rather), check them out. For more information, visit – http://www.independencerock.in

PS – Yours truly is in the process of writing a review for Avial’s music on Gigpad. Links will be provided, watch this space.

Its true that being in the IT industry for so long ensures that one embraces jargon or learns to abhor it from the very core of her / his existence, and falling in the latter category, I am no exception either. This subject is definitely material for another post, in due time.

Nevertheless, work-life balance is something some of my BSchool buddies have also used in order to convey the balance between academics and extra curricular activities.

Now, the very essence of the term and its subsequent usage denotes that it is an oxymoron, which thus implies that work and life are two different mutually exclusive entities. Hence, applying the regular tenets of logic would lead one to conclude that if you have a life, you can’t work and vice versa, which is why both of them need to be balanced out.

The implications are that work is not a part of your life, and this in turn makes even those who are ‘meh’ about their work to end up despising it merely because they now see it as something necessary but invasive.

I think the Indian IT industry is seeing a trend where the new poster boys are those that are able to juggle multiple things aside from work in their daily lives. It is a far cry from the times of old when the guy who’d spend ages in front of his comp working away was considered as a model employee.

Personally, I think the entire hoopla around the said term is stupid. If you can’t make time for something, it isn’t important enough.

This was particularly more so on the office bus commute, where one is unable to read books or newspapers because trying to do so will definitely damage one’s eyesight (since the jerky movements on the bus would require the eyes to continuously keep changing focus), and listening to music is the only option given the fact that the outside ‘scenery’ is something that one has been privy to ad nauseum.

However, I have recently come up with a new way of kicking commute’s butt and this method has two possible outcomes, both of which are win-win, should you choose to take it up. Of course, this method assumes that you are not the one in the driver’s seat, in which case, such a move is ill-advised.

On the bus, close your eyes and visualise the entire route as you keep travelling along it and get acquainted with the noises, the wait times at traffic signals as well as the bumps and miscellaneous intentional and unintentional speed breakers so that when you do end up opening your eyes and finding yourself at a place that you’d expected, you will laud yourself at having been able to discern correctly your location based on movement rather than on sight.

The other thing that might happen to you is that you end up falling asleep in the process, which is also not such a bad thing. The important thing is to keep your eyes closed, in order for this to take effect.

Sure, your prediction skills don’t really amount to much on a city bus where the bus conductor keeps shouting out the name of the next stop that the bus is approaching, but in the circumstances that you would manage to make it work, it is a really super way of killing time.