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?

Some kinds of happiness

Some kinds of happiness

Are measured out in miles,

Driving down a highway road

With nothing much in mind.

Some tenderhearted emotions

Are measured out in waves,

Traveling from ear to ear

And spreading joyous tales.

Some ways of religion

Are measured out in heads,

Maybe in church on Sunday

Or rolling with the dead.

Some hopes of rebellion

Are measured out in lines,

A quill and parchment paper

Together with a rhyme.

Today we can stop

Words from a thinking mind

And rejoice, not realizing

The crime in the game.

*sigh*borg

The latest meme-y thing doing the interweb rounds these days is Cyborg Names. Yeah, everywhere you see stuff like Electronic Robotic Infiltration Construct (ERIC). Ofcourse they'll be the first ones with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes. (First person to guess the reference correctly gets a chocolate!)

I thought it might be interesting to have a look at a few.

To satisfy my narcissistic urges, my name goes first:


Hm. Not bad. But not good enough. I want more harm-level.
Ah! much better. IMO, if you are borg, might as well be bad-ass noh?

Baccha, it turns out, is pretty dangerous as well:
KP is some sort of nocturnal owl:

Krishna. Well I though this is a better fit for Baccha, but Cyborg Names are *always* true. So Krishna is actually:
Gidwani diagnoses destruction. Apparently.

My bro has quite a short name. So he got stuck with:
That was quite lame. So I decided to upgrade him:
Better.

But ofcourse, short names aren't always bad. My favourite one puts it rather succinctly:
I'm rather looking forward to the time when robots (we're the robots) take over the world. My only concern is whether they'll be musically literate. Till then, do keep turning :)

Chang

I know of only 1 Chinese name. Chang. There are more than a billion of them and I'm sure they're not all named the same. Yet, I know of only *one* Chinese name.

Therefore, this article is titled Chang.

Now Chang was your average Chinese punter... short, slit-eyes, smart, yellow and worked in an undergraduate research lab in some US college. Perfectly normal. Except for his yellowness.

You see, he wasn't just yellow, he was a very particular shade of yellow. So accurate was his yellowness that the following conversation was oft heard in the lab:

Student: Prof, the Sodium vapour lamp is out again!
Prof: Hm. No probs.. Get Chang to substitute.

And the student went on happily observing Newton's rings.

I would like to point out that this article is unnecessarily racist. What to do ya I've been reading and writing about Château Margaux (Premier Cru French Wine, may sell for $1200 a bottle) that I've imbibed some of that French snobbery.

I would like to say that I'm sorry to all those whose feelings I've hurt in the recent past: Chang, other Chinese and all my friends whose birthdays I've forgotten. Sorry peoples.... been under a lot of workload lately.

Anyhows. I should go and make my PPT titled "Why I Should Not Be Made Dorm Baap" or else I'll be stuck with extra responsibilities next year.

Adioses (plural of Adios)

At Sunset

I'd love to touch the sky tonight
I'd love to touch the sky
So take me in your arms
And hold me up so high

Nothing particularly special here. Just an overall nice looking peaceful sunset. Somehow I always imagine sunsets over limitless oceans and sunrises over valleys and hills.

Made on August 2, 2007.

Hair Falls Over My Face in Nightvision

Wasabi

Wasabi is essentially Japanese chatnee.

Imagine a slap - a loud resounding slap. That's what Wasabi tastes like.

Imagine taking your hand and reaching into your brain and twirling it around till you see colours and smell a faintly nuclear chilli. That's what Wasabi tastes like.

Avi got tubes of this stuff from Japan and we went around pretending it was "Japanese edible toothpaste" as we liberally handed it out to friends. Their reactions were priceless.

You should try it too.

But remember: Keep away from the eyes. Do not inhale. Do not attempt to feed to pets. If you exceed the recommended dosage (approx 1/16 teaspoon) seek medical help immediately, lest your intestines disintegrate. ;-)

Happy New Year!

Me

Hi everyone!!! Happy New Year!.. I'll tell you all about New Year's stories soon enough. But for now, I'll wish you all the fun for the new year and leave you with a pic of... just me :D

Worst Day Ever

Freakkin neverending lectures till 6 in the evening. Sprained ankle and horrible headache. Out of dispirin.

Cut finger playing guitar. Not started studying macroeconomics.

I need a life. And also a new brain that doesn't crash so often.

And it's too bloody cold.

Bah.

Nemesis

If I were a superhero, my most dreaded enemy would not be cat-who-craps-in-ur-room woman. It would also neither be moronic-youtube boy nor the plethora of daft punks that populate society trying to unleash irritatingly irritating internet memes on us everyday.

No - for these mere distractions are easy to deal with, the solutions being - lock your room, leave hurting comments so he leaves youtube forever amd cut their hands off with a blunt linoleum knife respectively.

Instead, my arch nemisis would be my formidable inability to get up after every nap. I have a zillion things to do and atleast 5 of them are interesting things. Yet I just lie there, staring at shadows on the wall.

I mean seriously. Why is it so god-damned difficult? I mean evolution. Evolution-damned difficult? Screw you "god".

Yes, back on topic - this is a sincere plea to all my readers (all 9 of you) - please, please tell me how I can get up while just loafing around completely awake but totally enthuless to actually get up - for it is robbing me of my life!