Last post on blogger.... Maybe...

Moving my blog to http://kunal.wordpress.com ...
Why?
Only reason - the URL I got!!
Ah! Vanity...
As Tolstoy says, “If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.”
I agree!

The one that got away

Yesterday I realized how ancient my bike is. Vidit and I are lazing along the road and suddenly a BMW zooms past! Vidit got a decent enough look, but me - thanks to my helmet and my good driving skills (I had my eyes just on the road ahead!) - I got just a glimpse of the tail-lights. Hmmm… A car worth crore bucks just goes past me and I don't even try for a second chance!! Yeah, you are right... I'd be nuts not to try. After all what’s a BMW when compared to my just-serviced-and-the-same-day-splattered-in-mud bike? I give chase, in the pukka filmi ishtyle. Oh, not so filmy! No heroines here, it was just the BMW & the bike & its two riders! I and of course the bike and Vidit slowly inched our way towards the car... The distance reduces, now the tail-lights resemble two shining one rupee coins instead of the 25 paisa coins. I pray that the traffic light is red (praying for a red traffic light means either you are following some beautiful girl or following a BMW or a Ferrari, anyways both of them leads only to heartburn)... But alas, it is quite late in the night and the traffic lights are playing i-wink-you-wink-we-all-wink... Suddenly the BMW revs up, and the one rupee coins transform to 25 paisa coins again. Ok, I take on the challenge (although none was thrown at me)... Even I accelerate or rather try to accelerate, I am already going at the max speed of my bike, a paltry 70 kmph! And slowly the BMW faded into oblivion... *boo hoo hoo* :(

Anyways I still love my bike...

Hot steaming coffee, super-fast internet, and lots of time to kill...

Well Dravid has been named the captain of the Indian Cricket Team, yet again. I just hope this time it is permanent. Dravid has been toyed around with too long. His worth is still not recognized by the BCCI. He has always been used as a stop-gap arrangement, first he was asked to keep wickets and I have lost count of the number of times he has stood in for Ganguly. Ganguly should have been booted long long back. I don't know for sure whether he is out of the team or not, but I'd love to see him out. Is aggression the only criteria for being a captain? I don't think so... The captain should lead by example, which I think Ganguly has not done in the past two years. His batting is at best medicore (that too when opposition is Bangladesh and Kenya and Zimbabwe) and he is one of the worst fielders in the world cricket.

For me, Dravid has always been a player who flourishes under pressure and when given responsibility. Somehow he reminds me of Steve Waugh, always playing when the team is in a tight situation. When he was given the added responsibility of wicket-keeper, his batting just blossomed. His drives were much more silken, his pulls much more emphatic, the glances much more cheekier and his hooks always ended up in the stands. Being a captain will only improve his batting. Naming him a captain is a good decision, but taking this decision earlier would have made this a great decision. Anyways with Ganguly playing as if he had ants in his pants, this was bound to happen sooner or later.

All the best to Dravid... Hope he gets a team without Ganguly and with Tendulkar.

How does one come up with the perfect title? I have always faced this problem on what should be the appropriate title for that specific post. I have had titles like '...' and #%*$$&#^&# and ??? and many times I have left the title field empty for want of any idea. I also seem to keep repeating the titles, I have two posts with titles like $$&#^ and two more with Future.

People have perfected the art of coming up with the perfect title. Rocky - after a careless stroll, The life goes on, What's in a Name!!, The One With the Ice Cream; and these are the most recent posts, I have not delved deeper else I would have found even better titles. Utkarsh - Kahani mein TWIST hai !!!, Heights of Creativity or Lack of it .. + Life @ Alpha center, 150-151, North Usman Road, T.Nagar, Chennai. Sreejith - No time to stand and stare, The lost blogger, The beginning of an obsession, "Kick start" life..., Deja vu , minesweeper and mangoes!, Algorithms of life.. and the list goes on. And I have not researched on titles of Paresh, SMR, Jayaram, Nirnimesh et al. I am sure these guys will have more 'good titles' to offer, but if I see any more good titles I will start suffering from inferiority complex.

How do these people come up with a great title, is beyond me. The title should be such that it speaks volumes. Either it should be a pre-cursor to what is coming or it should be so intriguing that people cannot resist it and have to read your post. A title is not just about playing with words; it is about playing with the reader's mind. It should be able to arouse interest in even the most dormant of minds. Imagine what people would do to me if I named such a post as Hierarchical File System... I would be skinned alive!

Right now I am still searching for an apt title for this post, I have dismissed "What's in a Title!!" (that’s plain rip-off from Rocky's titles), "The lost title" (hah another rip-off, sorry Sreejith), "Of titles and titles" (hmmm, this also seems to be copied... oh! why did I not have such a good copying form during my exams!), "In search of a title" (seems like a name for some crappy soap), "Elite title" (play with words and also an AoC hangover), "The art of writing titles" (Yawn!!!) ... Hah I give up! Again this post will be without title, suggestions for an apt title are most welcome. I'll choose the best title and edit my post and keep that title and... and... say thanks to the one who suggested the title!

In quest of a title!

Oneiro

Is there any logic behind dreams? What do dreams signify? Do dreams depict what I want the most? Or are they just related to my day-to-day happenings? How do I interpret my dreams?

For me dreams have been a combination of logic less, pertaining to my day-to-day happenings and sometimes it has been what I want the most. Two days back, I dreamed I am buying a house, a very nice house for just 4 lacs (this is one of the wild dreams people dream about where they get a palace at dirt-cheap price). But the weird part was that I calculated the amount I'd have to pay every month for the next 2 years, down to the second decimal point! When I woke up and checked my calculation, it was perfect! No mistakes... I researched a bit about dreams and found this
"As such, our dreams should be able to give us useful insights into how to solve problems. In this theory, a recurring dream is an example of an unsolved problem."
This is just one of the many theories I came across, but it definitely explains why I used to solve Crosswords in my dream, or how come I solved a nasty Physics question from Irodov in my sleep which had bugged me for 3-4 days. But this theory still does not explain why I bought a house in my dream...

Another theory is "wish fulfillment" given by Sigmund Freud. This still does not explain why I bought a house, although it explains the dream I had last night... And then there is another line of thought, according to which "we dream to forget". Nah, I don't like this theory. Some of my dreams have been anything but forgettable.

Also I came across Lucid Dreaming, which is being aware in a dream that one is dreaming. There are techniques to induce this, including severe sleep deprivation. I had experienced this once, I realized I was dreaming and I woke up. That act was anything but lucid, if people can fly in their lucid dreams, I could also have done something. Anyways I missed that, and I am not depriving myself of my precious sleep just to experience some silly dream.

Enough of dreams, I am off to my favorite time pass - Day Dreaming, it is so much better then normal dreams, at least I know the logic!

Cluttered thoughts

I took Paresh's advice and tried to put up a post about all the things that came into my mind in the last 2-3 minutes. The result:

December, shock, work, project, AAI, strike, sensex, money, cricket, gmail, blogroll, message, investment, JSP, Java, future, post, payday, cricinfo, firefox, friends, afraid, tensed, worried, rain, results, home, bike

Hmmm, I sure am confused!

Hyderabad still rocks...

In Raipur I drive in my subconscious. I start from place-X, need to go to place-Y, and I reach there without even thinking about the road I have to take, the shortcut through the alley, I avoid the potholes without even looking at them, I slow down automatically at the speed-breaker, I don't have to look in all directions at once... It has happened many times, that I reach my destination and then I realize Oh! Yeah, I drove till here. I have had countless daydreams while driving there.

Earlier in Hyderabad, when I did not know the roads etc, I had to remember the roads; I had to lookout for potholes and speed-breakers. But after driving in Hyderabad for so long a time, even traversing through Hyderabad had become a part of the subconscious. But now, it seems there has been an explosion of vehicles in Hyderabad or because I am a part of the rush hour now, I feel that way. Earlier the journey used to be from one place to another, now it is from one traffic-jam to another. But still when there is less traffic, I get into the cruise mode and let my subconscious take over.

This weekend, for two days I drove in Bangalore. Leave aside the subconscious, even when fully conscious, it is a nightmare driving there. You have to look ahead, look to the right, look to the left, look in the right rear-view mirror, and look in the left rear-view mirror and that too all at the same time. If there is a gap of about 6 inches between your bike and the vehicle ahead, the army of vehicles behind you sound off war - they keep on honking until that distance has reduced to 6 mm. A small gap appears in the traffic and even the bus starts creeping into it.. And I saw a strange kind of bus at Bangalore. Two buses connected together through a rubber tube kind of thing (similar to two railway coaches joined together). Each of the part of that weird bus has a mind of its own. The second part seems to move on its own accord, irrespective of the first part.

But the good thing about the Bangalore traffic is that, it restored my respect for the Hyderabad traffic. I thought that traffic in Hyderabad could not get any worse, now I know. Traffic in Hyderabad is good!

September 27th, 7:25 pm