Haddi / Mohit / Giddu

We herby introduce to you a creature, known to some as “Haddi” and to others as “Giddu”: A monster of epic-hairy proportions whose prime objective in life is to become King and Tyrant of the World. To this end, he cracks jokes that may leave you doubting your sanity. An inhabitant of a rather messy cave, known only as Room 19, he wards off evil spirits by hanging a freshly extracted bone outside his door.

His upper body and lower body seem to want to move in different directions. Thus, his appearance closely resembles the cute, cuddly Kung-Fu panda. Exactly so, he thinks that he radiates awesomeness but in reality only cleans dishes, mainly to cook Maggi in. He is extremely lazy and befits the title “Fat Slob”. Any random sample of his day will have him sitting in the exact same position in front of his computer.



He is apt to doing really silly things at times (See pic (above) for typical example). For one, he chatters incessantly in Japanese, merely repeating the 3 phrases that he knows over and over again. This, he picked up from watching strange episodes of Anime cartoons (and the occasional Hentai). He loves cats and dogs in general and all animals in particular. He gives them names and calls out to them when he passes by. It is hypothesized that the endless amounts of dog crap found daily in D10 is a byproduct of his animal-love.

Haddi is impossible to wake up at any time of day, and especially so in the mornings. He got to classes on time thanks completely to his next door neighbor, our beloved dorm baap, Gilli. But, even the ever-placid Gilli could not take Haddi’s incessant cribbing any more and indeed did run away to Europe to escape this, the “jokes” and all the waking-up. With Gilli out of the picture, Haddi took one step towards his plans of total and complete world domination:

$sudo Dorm_Baap



To add to his positions of irresponsibility, he pestered his first year group-mate Chaman (Name changed to protect identity), to become creatives head and then proceeded to singlehandedly delay all Confluence activity. He pretends to be a marketing Guru and is (quote, from his CV) “An active member of Niche”.

So there we have it: our very own lovable geek, Giddu. All said and done, when he gets down to work, he does radiate awesomeness. His PPO from Value Partners is testament to that. His sense of humor is top-notch and his spontaneity completely blew the competition away, giving him the title of Mr. Chaos. We wish you the best of luck in your days ahead and hope that all your voyeuristic dreams come true.

Physics = Awesome!

Wickedly cool stuff! I'd be working towards a Ph.D in physics had we had some experiments like this in our undergraduate labs!

Too late I guess.

Battle, Bloodshed, Combat, Conflict, ...

Okay people.

It's time for a full-on war to prevent a D grade in CF. Bring it on.

Uh.. can someone teach me CF while I'm at it? :-/

Snowboard Person

Snowboard Person

Made with black and white spray paint and sheets of cardboard. The vertical line is an artifact from the joining process since the whole painting did not fit into the scanner.

Hang on to your Fantasy

Made using only spray paint cans.

The painting on top is my first attempt at spray paint art. The second one is an improvement of the same imagined scene. The scene itself is inspired from a youtube video that Shashi had sent me a few weeks back.

These are made on A2 sized paper with 4 colours (black, red, yellow and white). I've made some more, but I still have to scan them. They look much better in real though: the colours are far more vibrant.

Etiquette WIN

So here I was, waiting in line to buy food at a local fast-food place just off campus, waiting nonchalantly for the gal in front of me finished purchasing, thinking of all the yummy foody things I was gonna buy in just a minute. Suddenly, as she finished, some uncle fellow sidesteps the line and shoots his hand out to the cashier, effectively cutting the line.

I mean, how horrible. I was standing there, I was next in line. It's my god-damned turn. Who the hell is he to cut in front of me?

Now this is just plain bugging. Why do people (particularly in India) have no etiquette whatsoever? That queue exists for a *reason*. Ever tried boarding a bus? It's a free-for-all in most places. But IMO the most irritating experience is someone skipping a queue forcefully. It happens a lot more here in Ahmedabad than in Mumbai.

So, I was pissed with this guy.

But what am I to do? Nothing in my upbringing taught me how to deal with it when someone cuts the line in front of you. I mean, 3rd order quantum differential equations I can handle, but this? What do I do?

Not this time. As this douchebag started speaking to the cashier to place his order, aloud (to my friend): I said, "You know what I hate? I hate people who skip lines like they are above such measly things like waiting. I think they're nothing more than mere scumbag earthworms who deserve to be stomped into the ground."

My friend sounded a loud resounding "I agree" and this guy, obviously hearing all this, looks back and stares at me (us?). We stare back and with a slight confrontational-nod, I say, "What? You heard me." in a matter-of-fact way.

With that the guy, visibly embarrased, leaves his cash on the counter and walks out in a huff. I don't know what he was thinking, infact I care not what he thinks. This was an EPIN WIN! :D

We had a good laugh about it later. Serves him right. Scumbag.

PS: I made up bit about the 3rd order quantum differential equations: I don't even know if such things exist.

PPS: Well actually, I'm quite sure they exist, but I still made it up that I can handle them: In truth I haven't a clue. It was just for emphasis ;)

Curio Shoppé

Mangaldas ni Haveli, Old Ahmedabad

There's the city and then there's the old city – a story true for almost every Indian town. The new city has flat streets and paved roads with houses on the sides. It is manufactured.

The old city has meandering pathways and shaded streets, barely wide enough for a scooter. Buzzing with activity is often a marketplace. As our "guide", a professor from AMA said, "The roads resemble an outdoor room, a meeting place for all to gather."

The old city has buildings which would truly look out of place in any modern suburb. As we ate ice-creams from the first Vadilal store, purchased curios from market vendors and sampled the roadside food, fruit markets and aamras included, I couldn't help but draw a parallel to Mumbai's Colaba Causeway: The old city has character. A certain way about it that makes it qaint and perfect at the same time.

The picture above is of the inside of Mangaldas ni Haveli. Once the dwelling of a family, it is now a curio shop and a café. It's an HDR composite of 5 pictures taken with a Sony 7.0 megapixel compact camera.

Some of the component photographs are:

Trippy

Pictures from the Bhandardara trip...

View from outside the cottage

My bro and I at the tiny island

Boats after sunset

It was pitch dark (or atleast quite dark) and the above picture, using a 3 second exposure, was taken by hand: only 2 of the 15 odd were steady enough to see the boats.

HDR Photo from inside a temple

HDR photos are normally taken with fancy digi-SLRs and tripods. I made this using only a Canon hand held camera and no tripod :-) This one is a composite of 5 images at various exposure levels.

What do you think of the HDR?