Recent Books

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

― Mark Twain

Reading was one of my favorite hobbies after cricket of course. Though after coming to IIT , I seemed to have lost that touch for reading. But in the past year, I have managed to get back to reading more and more books and this blog is about some of those books that I have read.

1. Wheel Of Time ( 13 books ): This was my first entry into the genre of "epic fantasy" novels. Especially with such a huge number of characters. My longest read till then was Harry Porter or say Jeffery Archer. They had novels, but none of them ran on a scale as this one. This has more than 30 different characters at each time running around in different parts of the world. It was both disorienting and interesting at the same time. It was a good read and got me hooked so much that it took me only about 4 months ( note a heavy semester included ) to finish all the 13 books. For people who have read a lot of novels and would like to try something different, this is certainly a good start. Plus if you start now , you just might be able to finish the books before the last one comes out :). Then you'll understand all the hype surrounding Ran , Perrin , Mat , Aes Sedai etc . I have my fingers crossed waiting for the last one to come out.

 

2. A Song of Ice and Fire ( 5 books ): Once I was done with Wheel of Time, I wasn't sure which book to start. But then, I heard from some people that this was an interesting read. Having watched the first two seasons and being interested in Politics, I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be a good read. The explicit and the slight vulgar descriptions aside, its an excellent read about how dirty and bloody politics can get and how people can do anything for power. Though it weird, power comes at a cost. And to be "in" power, you need support of your allies, who at any turn can back-stab you. Who exactly has power in this case? Irrespective of the question, it's one hell of a read. The only problem being, only 5 books of the 7 planned have been released. And considering that the fifth took almost 6 years to finish and released in 2011, I don't have any hopes of seeing the 6th book anytime soon. But if you are looking for something to read, and you can bear the gory details and vulgar details , it's one of the books to read.

Yes , Epic Fantasy has become my latest craze thanks to people around me who seem to be reading a lot of it. It gives you a lot to discuss :). 

3. Mans Search For Meaning - In contrast to the ones above, this was something that I started by recommendation from Quora. A book by Victor Frankl , a survivor of the holocaust, this book is about how concentration camps were and the effects they had on people. It's a very heavy read and it just saddens you to read the plight of the people in those camps. Before I read this book, I was an admirer of Hitler , his personality , his skills as an orator , his patriotism and the way he handled Germany after coming to power. But all it took was one book to change that. This book makes you feel about some of the things that you have or have taken for granted in life. I have stopped complaining about small things now that I have read this book and realized how much  I am lucky. One of the main lines from the books that stuck me was :

I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible night-mare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.

It was this line that just stuck me as heart-wrenching. It quite summed up the entire book and stuck a chord with me.

Those were some of the books that I have read in the recent past. A few books that I have started off, but havent come to a conclusion are 

1. Losing My Virginity ( Richard Branson ) - I have  finished about half of this book and believe me when I tell you, you should read it!! It is a must read for anyone who is ever going to enter into the world of business. It's both entertaining and enlightening at the same time.
2. The Diamond Cutter - Another book that has been lying around for quite a while now but never got around to reading it yet.
3. Frankenstein ( Mary Shelly ) - At the start of this semester, I decided to give a classic a try. Just to see if I could bear reading a classic and whether I had the guts to finish it. It was more a challenge than a time-pass. And that's when I realized ...

or

Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.”
―  Mark Twain

Adios 

Eventful events

I have been planning to post but haven't been able to come up with something even remotely interesting to write about. But now I have some events happening over the past week. Some of the things have been interesting while some have been crazy.

Sleeping on the Rooftop :)

 One of the things on my TODO lists in Institute, I finally managed to tick it off the list. It was one hell of an experience :P. In fact, this was the first time I felt slightly chilly in Chennai. We went up at around 3 in the morning and stayed there till Sunrise, the first Sunrise that we did watch in all the planning done over 4 years. And believe me, it was worth it. The feeling as you sat there watching the sun rise and you sitting there basking in the glory of it with nothing but nature all around, was a sight to behold. Some of the pics taken from the roof-top :

View at 4 in morning

Panoramic View during SunRise

This was the good part. Now comes the scary part which involves the Monster Monkey incident.

It's 7* in the morning, I am browsing away to glory on my computer unaware of the fact that the door has not been bolted. In walks the beast, not a care in the world, positions itself on the bed and starts searching for food in my room. And I am right in front of it , not sure whether to shout my lungs out, attack it or just drop down dead. For a whole of 2 minutes ( felt more like an hour at that time ), I just stood there as all my comments on how people should not be afraid of these monsters kept running in my head. Finally he decided that there was nothing to get from the room and left the room. I have never reacted faster in my life. And once I knew he could not come back in, I gave him a piece of my mind, though comfortably from inside the room now.

Phew !! It's not the first time that this has happened but every other time the monkey looked scared. This one gave shit that I was sitting right in front of it and it took it's time searching my room for food. Never ever leave your door open for them to come in.

In addition, there was trips to BBQ,Pizza Republic, Hot Pot China among other things but then those keep going on. I'll finish this post with a thought that came to me while I was watching the "Vision Group C-Phi in collaboration with Shaastra" demo. What's the difference between Shaastra** and Saarang***. Shaastra is where you dance with a virtual girl while Saarang is where you might have a chance of dancing with a real girl :p.

And latest news just in, our team got selected for ACM ICPC . Hard work does payoff < full sarcasm intended >. That would be a new post someday :).


* 7 am - Timing changed to make me look normal.
** Shaastra
*** Saarang
( free publicity )

Indian Mentality

India's is going through a turmoil presently . From the 2G Scam to CoalGate, the price rise to the Olympics debacle ( post written before the T20 World Cup with the hope that it will not make it to this list ) , this country has seen it all in the past 3 years . I am not sure what to call this period - "the age of the inexperienced corrupts" or "the age of the active snooping media" !! Whatever it may be called , shouldn't we be protesting against this ?

If No , then you can sit back in your chairs and let the country go down the path it has chosen for itself. If YES , what and how should the protest be ?

I have the utmost respect for Civil Society lead by Team Anna . After all, they have been trying to keep this fight going for the "modern educated" Indians who want everything handed to them on a platter. But then, is this form of protest right . To quote a friend, without the sweet talk : " I am a staunch believer  that what Anna and his team is doing is right but corruption is essential for our living." Which brings us to the main point of this post. Is revolution successful when the policies change or is it successful when the people of the country change their mentality?

We Indians tend to blame anything and everything on the Government . Be it water shortage ( do I hear the tap on in the nearby kitchen !! ) , Saving the Environment ( when was the last time you stopped yourself from throwing / spitting on the path ) , Food Shortage ( the last time you threw away food saying it was pathetic !! ) or anything else for that matter . No one really sits down to wonder what can he/she could do for the situation . Some people do and believe me , they are more interested in finding a solution or at least a temporary one rather than bickering over one.


Corruption today has become a part and parcel of everyday life . Do we think for a moment that just agitating against the government would bring down corruption . In a country where Moral Science as a subject is laughed at , where "moral lectures" are mocked , corruption thrives right under a picture frame of  Gandhi , one of the greatest advocators of honesty . Aren't we hypocrites that we respectfully call him Mahatma but don't follow his teachings. For true change to take place , it has to come from the heart . From the hearts of the common man, not from those of the few persons who are a part of the Civil Society . Revolution of this magnitude starts from the common man . Using people in position for favors or bribing to get your work done has to be made morally wrong . Note the importance of it being morally wrong versus legally wrong .


This post came out of a stupid dream that i had a few days back and its been nagging me ever since . We don't think twice before breaking the law just to suit our convenience , then they should have equal right to break the law . Yes their "faults" will be greater because they are in a position of power .  The possibility of being caught is equally high . So how are we any different from them ?  In short , our mentality should change . As Indians, known all over the world as corrupt , its our duty to change that image and that can only be done by a determined mind .

Let the mind win over the greedy or lazy heart .

Days Of Our Lives

Before the start, read this blog assuming Joey in mind and that he has written it.There would be the intended meanings in a lot of places ;).

The plebians from the all incommensurable planet ( read Electrical Department ) conjectured to persevere on a peregrination to Wonderla. So it came to be that on the 2nd of June, that we homo-sapiens cinch to go on this trip which would be so giving and receiving that the overall giving and receiving of fun would make our whole fun receiving and giving and sharing really exciting. And with all the giving and receiving and sharing, we would all enjoy the weekend.( Adoption Letter incident for the people who dont remember )

You know, it's bloody hard to right something like this !! This is the only time I have used the Thesaurus so much :P.

We started off on an early Saturday morning with everyone making their way to various bus-stops all around Bangalore. And from there, the entire battalion of 25 people made their way to Wonderla. And with all the fun-fare at each place, finally with the help of Nitish's map ( full pun intended ) , we reached the place. Once there it was chaos. You know, people should be doing something about this population problem. There were hundred's of them out there just waiting to go in. I agree  it's a Saturday , it was a weekend , there were holidays going on …....... ohh ohh ok I get it now why there were so many people.

Anyway, once we made it inside it was decided that we would get wet first. Then have lunch and then move on to the dry rides. And so we made our way to the pool. Some of the rides were legendary. And with all the bickering and battering among the group, the process of sharing and receiving fun was going on pretty smoothly. Infact so smoothly that at some point, the sharing and giving and receiving made us forget the time. Finally at around 3 we had our lunch and moved on the dry rides. And that was when Nitish decided that he was more into receiving fun than giving and sharing. So he decides to make the whole giving and receiving and sharing part his job.

As such the slides do look intimidating. But when you have Nitish around, you just can't stop laughing. Unlike Chandler who makes funny jokes, Nitish is a natural. Dude Seriously!! Have you ever heard of a person who decided's to get into a ride and then chants to get off it ;). Yes, that's his style :p. But at the end of the day, most of the slides were extreme fun. We managed to make our way back to the rooms tired and worn out completely. You can understand the exhaustion from the fact that people slept while walking back from the place :P. But not before the food was eaten.

Turns out the weekend fun was not over yet. Next day, we decided to go to a movie . But , damn Bangalorites. It was a Sunday and we could not get tickets for any of the movies that we wanted to see. So we ended up playing poker for the afternoon. Finally, we decided to go Bowling. No guesses on who won. I won !!  And just when you thought that we would end the day there, we managed to get tickets for a movie that I don't even think I would like to mention. It's a secret .. it was Snow White and the Huntsman. There I said it !! Well, and hence it came to be that on a Sunday evening we were sitting in the theatre watching Kristen Stewart have all those amazing emotions . Yes believe it or not, you got to watch the movie just for her facial expressions. The only time they made sense was when Snow White was supposed to be unconscious. With the movie's storyline being taken from Lord of the Rings, Harry Porter , Snow White fairy tale and few other places the movie was more of a comedy than anything else. I would recommened watching the movie just for the expressions though.

And with that, ended the weekend. It was one of the most amazing weekends in the near past that I can think of. 

PS : As a friend's enthusiast remember the episode where Joey and Phebe are outside Monica and Chandler's apartment and they dont have keys to the room and want to open it. Well we are in a similar situation here. Stuck outside our room with the door being jammed. That was the inspiration behind this post :P.

A "Re"Start

The Prequel

The date was 3rd May, 2012. It was a nice and hot ( you think I would say pleasant, but remember we are talking of Chennai !!) and everyone was thinking Holidays, Summer and lots of other "fun" stuff. What were we doing?? Thinking of our "Vision project". And while everyone was leaving, we were locked in the lab the whole night trying to figure out how to finish the damn thing. Gunna came in at 12 in the night and helped finish the whole thing ^{[citation needed]} . Finally, after a lot of effort,we managed to show our project to the Professor. If you want to know how it turned out, try sitting in front of a person who is completely involved in chatting ( I cant think of any other reason why someone would keep looking at the screen all the time !! ) and then explain to him in detail,your project.That's how we finished our presentation.With that ended the 6th semester . For all the readers thinking what's the big deal , ITS A DAMN BIG DEAL when all you have done for the last month is sit and do projects. 

A Realization

It was with great enthusiasm, no I did not say interaction ( it did come back to haunt me ) I picked up "Computer Vision" as my self study elective for the 6th semester. And as time has proved again and again, I pick up the best courses to make my life a PIA*. The first 3 weeks were a bliss. It seemed like the prof had forgotten the whole course and we were glad to enjoy the calm before the storm. Then came the "BOOK" as its called in the vision circles. I have never seen a "better" book in my life. Every paragraph of the book was worth its weight in papers. Every damn paragraph was living hell. Finally with the project getting over, I made a promise to myself - 

"I, Vaibhav Agarwal , solemn promise myself that I would take extreme precautions to make sure that Computer Vision do not form a part of my life ever again. In this direction, I am getting rid of the book that was given to me and also swear to never talk of images or even think of editing them".

 How difficult can it get . All I had to do was never get involved with Vision and just not think of Image editing, which I was never interested in anyway.

Fate

Just when I thought that it would not be very hard, my intern starts. Obviously there was excitement as we stepped into the exciting domain of free snacks, cool-drinks, chocolate shake [ Piyush - \m/ if you ever read this ] , Badam Milk , Espresso . Yes, this is how we define our office :p . Turned out our mentor was out for the first two days. So you can imagine the team's sadness on the turn of affairs . We had no other choice but to spend most of our free time in the canteen .They say nothing in permanent, but come on . I never thought the happiness would be so short-lived. Along comes one of our managers and decides to spoil my day. He starts off with a small overview of our work. 

No prizes for guessing the field of the work. For the first 5 minutes, all I did was stare at the board remembering the agony of the past few months . In the few moments, it all flashed past my eyes making me look like a gorilla gaping at him. Now completely bewildered, I managed to sit through the presentation lost in all the glory of Vision and how it would be haunting my life for the next 3 months. In 5 minutes I had gone from :) to ........... ?? Can't even think of an appropriate smiley for it . But luckily with a little help from the team, and the topic being actually interesting I managed to get some sort of interest back and its been a good week so far at Adobe.

The office being awesome ( Did I say it already ?? ). With all the stuff that's been going on , I can't believe its just been a week but it's been a really nice week . More details on the PG front , the more interesting part sometime later ;). It's been a hell a lot of fun with new friends and all the juntae from all the IIT's . More on the inter-IIT points and the various traditions in the next post.

 Cheers

*PIA - Come up with whacky substitutions
* This post is dedicated to people who can never ever stop talking :). Their hobby in life is to bore people to sleep with their talk.

The Ugly Truth

Caution : Just as the IIT Tips are getting popular on FB ( havent seen them yet !! See them here ) , this post is a small insight into the not seen face of IIT politics . If you believe that the people coming here are geeks , well you shouldn't read this page and continue living in your dream world.

As I said in my last post , January is really an awesome time to be in the campus . But as January comes to an end , there is something really important going on which captures the interest of the entire campus . No , it's nothing to do with technology . It's the elections for various posts !! Wait , did you just say , Big Deal !! Well , you better get your facts right . At this time , the campus can be renamed the Indian Institute of Politics . 

You might be wondering why exactly are people so interested in standing for such posts . It has nothing to do with having a good resume per se . It's a lot more significant . After all , what are the three most important things in institute ? Image , image and image . It's how popular you are that defines you and everyone wants to be famous . And how do you get famous , well , you got to be a major part of Shaastra , Saarang and local administration of day to day affairs ( No one said you need to do anything .. you just have to be a big part of it ).

And so starts the political campaigning . People having secret meetings , all the groupism and all the horse trading . Yes , you read that right !! Well , I know no one here has cash enough to buy the other party . So what instead , there are promises made about the next year's positions in Shaastra and Saarang . All sorts of things are promised . It's a fight to the teeth and everyone is trying to get every single vote possible . Phone Bills are not cared for as the contestants ( and more than that .. the Godfather's behind them ) , make sure that everyone is personally called and "advised" to vote for them . 

Come the day of elections , you can see people standing outside booths in small groups asking people to vote / not vote based on the election stratergy !! Everyone is busy trying to swing a few votes . A small example : last year , a single person managed to play his trump card and get a change of 150 votes and disrupted the calculations of every other player , thus wiping the field . 

And once selected , there is something called the F*** list that is created to make sure that all the anti-supporters do not get any posts next year . This is the face of insti politics and that my friends is the ugly truth !!

PS : The movie is worth a watch .

The even sem honeymoon

Consider the scenario .. You have just spent the last one month lying around doing nothing . You had a timetable which went something like this :  Sleep , Eat , Sleep , Eat , Sleep ...  and if ever you get time in between that , well there are always enough Movies and TV shows to fill in the gap ;) . And now after one whole month of lazying around you are back in college . Talk of a holiday .. but wait was this enough .. Obviously Not !!

  Come January , you see the college life in full blossom . After all , why not ? You just had a whole month of the best holiday possible and there is no work at hand right now. In addition , there are a hell lot of things that you would look forward to in January :

1. Australian Open takes up half of January . It's a necessity to watch all these matches, after all you have to win the next argument in the wing on Tennis . And all those arguments on who is the best player of today as if it wasn't any more obvious ( FEDERER it is !! ) ;).
2. Alongside comes the Indian tour of Australia . Well, every year they do tend to produce some quality cricket at this point of time and there is no way in hell that you can miss that . Luckily this year , the team has made adequate arrangements to make sure we have enough of that time for ourselves ;).
3. The EPL and the La-Liga have just restarted . We need to make sure that our favourite teams have to stay on top of the league . If not , that would mean losing face :( . Not possible . 
4. Closer home , SAARANG . Yes , I know we dont do much in the cultural festival of IIT MADRAS ( publicity anyone ? ) , but then we still cant really study during that time , can we ?
5. In addition , all the TV serials that have now become backlogs for the one month that we did not watch them !! It is very important to stay abreast with what's happening in the world , isint it ?
6. Not to mention all the activities in the wing and all the sports that we would also play during the free time !!

Well , so you see . This is the best time of your college life . And just when you thought , life could not get any better , you have a small burden on your heads . Wait , is it a  small burden . No , the Quizzes are on the head and then you start cursing . What did I do for 1 whole month !! Why could I not have studied something in that time . Nothing can be done now . All you can do is throw up your hands and go watch Djokovic play Murray in the second quaterfinal ;) .

Cheers

PS : Do add stuff that you do in the even semester , in the comments .

Technological Advancements in the Technological Institues

  We are currently in that phase of civilization where anything seems to be possible . The ideas are flowing free and fast . Everyone around seems to have a new idea to make our life easier . What else would explain things like USB Fridge and Smart Windows ... some amazing ideas !! Who would have thought 10 years ago , that we would have the world in our hands using the smart phones . But wait , just when you start thinking that maybe you are in a world that is now being revolutionized by technology , the most technological institutes seem to remind you of the truth.

It's been 3 years since I have been at this place , and still I am amazed with the technological advancements of the institute . We have a net on campus , which at best , works at a speed of 4Kbps . Sure that might be our fault , but then the DNS servers crashing every weekend is certainly nothing to brag about . OK , maybe this was not so much in the hands of the Administration . So what do they do , come up with better ways to show us that they do not believe in technology .

Some examples:

1. When all the students were registered , we were supposed to give 2 or more photographs during the registration . Acceptable since they would need them for identification . Now 3 years later , when the mess cards are made , we are asked again for our photographs . I mean , are you joking . Cant you just scan out the pictures and use them instead of asking us to get pictures again and again. But who's complaining.
2. The institute Gymkhana office is the "adda" as you would call it of the biggest problem in the institute . Every semester , people from all walks of life leave their differences aside to fight the person issuing the cards to make sure that they get some sort of permission to play . And the process to get a card is not very simple . You need to have a Master's degree to understand which of the queues to stand in to get a form , then come to realise you need a photo copy of the ID card that the institute has a record of , a queue to pay the bill and finally another queue to get the card attested . Phew , atleast I am bored of the word queue already !! And this in an institute which holds a position as one of the premier institutes of the country . But who's complaining.
3. Add / Drop Courses : This time , there was suddenly a change of heart from the Acadamics department . I really do not know whether it was a devish plan to make the whole process more complicated or to just make sure that the students were made to run around . Well apparently they decided that Add / Drop Courses would be done online only this time . But the point they forgot to consider was " The Net does not seem to work " . People working on GPRS , screw you . Not everyone has a GPRS and it resulted in a lot of confusion . There is still a lot of confusion and no one is really sure of what is going on . Maybe some day we would have a system in place which makes the transition much more easier. But till that day comes , who's complaining

Well , if I continue complaining then I dont think that this blog would be sufficient . So lets get to the point . Why does this seem to happen . Not because we do not have the aptitude to maintain the appropriate technology , but because the people involved presently according to me are not so much interested in using technology to get the job done . They believe in the age old method of doing things manually and this is resulting in upteem problems for everyone . The scenario seems to be changing slowly but then it still might take a while to change the picture . Meanwhile , we can just hope that things like these get resolved at the earliest and we use technology in an appropriate way to make life in insti more comfortable .

PS : For people inside the institute , you would be suprised to know that there is a way to access the pictures that you submitted at the time of registration in the institute . For some reason , everyone can view the pictures . If you want to view the pictures , click on this . Another example of admin not knowing much about the website that has been created !!.