Anurag Jain's Blog
Wednesday, May 28, 2003

The Fall of G-214

Today, after jealously guarding my right to enjoy flith and uncleanliness for 3 full years, I had to give in to the hostel authorities' request-cum-order of getting my room painted. I was hoping that I could avoid it this year too, but I had kinda got the inkling of things to come 2 weeks back when the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon drawn on the outer side of my rooom wall was painted over. This year, our institute is going for distemper paint in hostel as against the usual limestone white-wash thing, reason being this: distemper is more durable and will require re-paint only once in 3 years as compared to every year for cheap limestone whitewash. Now, you can understand the pressure by hostel office. (But I still can't). Anyways, I am displaced from my room G-214 for tonite (temporarily in G-211) and will be able to shift back only tommorrow evening. I am writing this from computer center and I guess will sleep here only. Seriously though, if you ask me, I think they should make an amendment to constituton and make the right to enjoy uncleanliness fundamental right.

0100 hrs (1AM)
My room is ready to shift back in! Man, was that quick or wat! I m done shifting back to G-214 by 0230 hrs. Watched remaining CD of 'Wild Things' as I was planning to not sleep at all and study later, but crashed @ 0400 hrs (4AM). G-214, Sweet, G-214.
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Sunday, May 25, 2003

Posted 7:30 pm.
The weather is just SUPERB! Cool Breeze, amber sky (LITERALLY, awesome color!). Hence went out of room and flew Hari's Balsawood model plane with him at the OAT (Open Air Theatre) just now. It was quite fun! The way we crashed it so very often, we reckon its a good thing we didn't choose to become pilots!! As Hari's leaving campus soon to join the job, he gave the plane to me :)

Posted 4:30pm
Of my life partner and my driving skills

I met (another) prospective life partner today. The meeting at Casa Piccola (Koramangala) went all fine and stuff, but when I was coming back, at St Johns Medical College intersection, buncha bums ahead of me decided to hit the brakes dead. And with that happening, I rammed my scooter into the autorickshaw ahead and found myself kissing the road in a matter of nanoseconds. But I showed some amazing skills in getting up back (It was almost like a magician pulling a tough one and then expecting applause! ). This was number _ _ _ (counting..) in the series of minor accidents that I have had in last few years (road accidents, that is. My personal life itself is an accident, otherwise). Last accident I remember was at JP Nagar main road (near NIIT) where I had found myself lying on the road, looking into eyes of the dog which had just hit my scooter (No no, i woudn't hit a dog. The dog came and hit my scooter. Dunno why, though. I have been looking for that dog to ask that question 'cause he had kinda run away as soon as he saw the feeling of revenge in my eyes) . Such sweet memories also consist of a date gone sour once because of my pillion date's almost-off-the-bike-experience after I hit a road-bump at 70kmph (alrite, its a sweet memory till I hit the bump).

Apart from honing my driving skills, these accidents have also lent support to my arguments of why I should not marry. I mean, I woudn't want to unload the consequences of my driving skills (?) onto my partner, would I? Bold ones (Bold=Blonde; ones=gurls) who still have courage enough, and who can convince me to get married to themselves or their relatives, please get in touch with me asap.

Posted 4:00pm

Sharma's dastardly act (Took my clothes away).

Yesterday evening, as our floor's bathrooms were being whitewashed, I decided to goto H-Top bathroom to take a shower. As soon as I had soap on my face and stuff, I heard the sound of my clothes being taken away from above the bathroom door. Now there was nothing I could do but to stand there in birthday suit and shout choicest expletives to Sharma (Also known as Shameless Sharma), who by that time had run back to his room with clothes and was already broadcasting Novell Netware messages to Hari, Ksaha and others (which I came to know only later in the nite at mess table) about my poor plight!! After much threatening at 110 decibel, verbal violence, and a promise of beer, Sharma gave my clothes back and I could come out. I wanted to kill him right then and there, but since I still had only a towel on, better sense prevailed and I decided to give him hell later. But not before telling him that: "Girls r fine, u know, but I am not used to guys taking my clothes away". No more baths in any floor other than mine.
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Sunday, May 18, 2003

IIMB batch get-together

Last night, we had Y2K batch's (IIMB '98-'00) Bangalore get-together at my room. The usual crowd showed up: Vivek Khemani, MG(Munish Gautam), Anubhav Gera, Ajay, Sujoyjeet Mondal, Upendra. Mainly missing from action were Prasan and Deki as they are in US/Canada these days. And a major exception was Raja Roy showing up, 'cause for the last 20 months he was in the US. MG told us thats Srikanth couldn't come cause he's off to Harvard for one month, sent by ICICI Ventures. Apparently , 30 people have been sent to Harvard by ICICI Ventures. I am wondering how many employees they have anyway! I guess, with all their investments in dotcom/biotech bombing, they got nothing else to do than squandering the investor's money! Now, some further insightful observations :-) ICICI Ventures is MG's ex-ex company and Webtek, MG's ex company. Webtek, which used to send employees for a one year master's at a UK univ (Cambridge, I think ?), had to shut down shop (I am not suggesting relationship here!). MG has a reputation and expertise in making the firms he works for, shut down fast and quick. Rumor has it that MG gets paid much more from firm's competitiors than from firm, to apply his learnings at other companies and make the current one shut shop! Going by MG-and-webtek saga and his similar experiences at other firms, methinks ICICI Ventures is gonna be closing down soon. Come back for more 'insightful' industry information later :)

Went for dinner at Guru Gardens but it was too crowded, so moved to Aishwarya Parkland. Had dinner, came back to hostel. And, then we got some NEWS: Anubhav is marrying Monika! Whoa!! He did get bumps for this news, of course! (MG got bumps too for 'mere yaar ki shaadi hai' :-). We called up Monica and passed cellphone amongst ourselves with everyone of us congratulating her! That was a long call, alright!

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Sunday, May 11, 2003

HBTI Alumni get-together

We started HBTI alumni movement yesterday (10th may, 2003) by organizing a Bangalore chapter meet. Recently some recent batches' graduates had gotten in touch with me through my website and finally their efforts, contacts (and my emailing :) resulted in a (first-ever?) Bangalore HBTI alumni meet!! We chose Wimpy's at Brigade road over IIMB as venue cause IIMB would have been too far for some people. I had emailed to some 34 people and 17 people showed up. Not bad! Most of the alumni were from 2000, 2001,2002 batches. The group had a fruitful discussion about how to take the alumni momentum forward and also how to interface with the alma mater and help it. Planning to do it three contact levels: 1) Alumni 2) Current Students 3) Faculty. Lets see how it goes :)

Here's to HBTI!
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Monday, May 05, 2003

New HDD, total capacity 140GB: P2P, here I come.

I installed another hard disk (Seagate - Barracuda, 80 GB ) today. I had to, of course, remove my zip drive for that 'cause my system doesn't have that many IDE power sources available.. Now my compu has 3 hard disks (20, 40 & 80 GB) totaling to 140GB :) This new hard disk, I had to buy due to ever increasing music volume on my current hard disks. Presently, I have 36 GB of music and I can see it increasing upto 80GB in very near future. The only sad part about my new hard disk is that my system's (P-III 600 MHz) mother board (810E) would not support a third hard disk of 80GB single partition, so I had to partition it in two 40GBs drives. Now, thats not what I wanted 'cause I wanna keep my whole nicely categorized music under a single directory structure! Will see if I can manage to upgrade my BIOS to support the new 80GB hard disk without any partitions. (Update 9th May: I could make a single partition of 80GB and my system is supporting it! My dream come true!!)
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Sunday, May 04, 2003

Went to Shankara today again. It was for a Bharatnatyam performance by Radhika Chaitanya. Radhika is a software professional working with Deutsche Software Limited (DSL) and, at the same time, an accomplished classical dancer who's trained under a reputed guru, and performed in a number of places, including the US and UK. The performance was quite good especially because before every piece, there was an explanation of the moves.

Met Rashme again. Also met Puneeta's family today. I think Kirti Reddy was there too talking to Puneeta but am not sure. In any case, I have never seen her movie (seen her pics only in newspapers), so I wouldn't recognize her for sure. But I think it was her only (Puneeta did address her as Kirti). But then, as Phoebe said in Friends- Potato, Potaato!!

Came back. Had dinner at Guru Gardens, came back to room, uploaded some music for an Amercian DJ friend (Mickey & Sylvia's music. He wants to remix them this summer!) and here I am blogging away!!
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Saturday, May 03, 2003

With friends surrounded , The nights of wonder....

Last night, Vivek (just graduated PGP2 and working with HP Labs) was quite in a mood and insisted on going to Guru Gardens. So Guru Gardens did we go! The heavenly liquids flowed freely, and with it, the spirits soared high and light. And, even though its not a happy song, I am always reminded of Pink Flyod's High Hopes (my favorite number actually) on such evenings:

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There's a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we've been so many times

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river
Forever and ever...


Coming back by 2230 hrs, we started an impromptu party outside my room which was later joined by other guys (summer trainees from other institutes) staying here. Sachin (IIML) picked many a neat Amitabh numbers from my playlist and it was fun all the way till 0100 hrs at which time we decided to sleep. But, I did take a shower before I went for sleep!!

Just now had my lunch at Tasty Bites, J P Nagar. It used to very good but I didn't like the food so much today.
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Thursday, May 01, 2003

Went to the jamming session by the World Music Band ESPERANTO in concert at SHANKARA Kanakpura Road (beyond Khodays).

ESPERANTO are :
Geetha Navale on Veena and Bass
Gopal Navale on Guitar and lead Vocals
Michael Sorenson on Blues Harp
Nataraj on the Percussion

Gopal's voice is quite soulful and has that rough kinda quality that lends out-of-world character to it. Had a nice dinner in the restaurant while listening to the band. Got to have a nice chat about the philosophy and objective of the place and jamming session with classical dancer and Shankara owner Rashme Hegde Gopi. She has a tough job: To promote the place & the Shankara Foundaion, and to reach out to more and more people. Btw, Rashme also owns Rudraksha on Kanakpura road! Now, I've been to Rudraksha earlier number of times for IIMB executice programmes and conferences evenings but had never a chance to meet Rashme. Shankara Foundation is named after Rashme's father. Foundation can be contacted at 8435133. Also met Rashme's friend and Shankara volunteer Puneeta. She's a nice person with roots in bombay and definitely has a Bombay attitude!! Later, got to talk to Geetha Navale from Esperanto band. She's very gracious, as artistes usually are :)

The session was, as rightly put in the invite, a concert "where Rabindranath Tagore meets John Lenon, Tyagaraja meets Oasis...". It was fantastic.
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