An Unusual Birthday

In my all recallable memory, this birthday would be the most unusual one. Here I am, not too far away from where I was born, but in a different country. Dubai, UAE. Not a truly exciting name for people (and a month ago I was like them) who have little knowledge of Middle East cultural diversity and openness.

Celebrating an International birthday raised its own peculiar issues. Family and near ones called up and the wishes were racing against the international call tariffs. Some friends reported online that they are finding my number unreachable. It was then that I told them of my journey across borders and hopefully abated their anger against my telecom service provider. A friend started conversing with me at 23:00 IST only to realize later that I am behind by 1:30 hrs. After hearing a couple of yawns from her, I accepted the wishes at 00:30 IST (23:00 local time for me) and requested her to go to sleep. I guess, my birthday would have be crossing over Afghanistan at that moment.

[ smiles :) ]

A significant change (or drop) in the number of wishes I would have accumulated came from a very simple and single act - I had removed my Birthday date from my Orkut profile almost a week ago. With all due credits to the hugely successful birthday reminder services out there, it proves beyond doubt that Orkut has become an indispensible tool for sustaining the friendships and medium of contact for lot of young people in India (and Brazil).

Disclaimer: The above conclusion is under the assumption that many 'friends' would have scrapped me birthday wishes had my Birthday reminder been visible on their homepages. As I am in a good mood, I will want to keep that assumption.

[ smiles :), again! ]

And the last candle on the cake (its my birthday and I don't want to use the phrase "last nail in the coffin") was that today is Sunday and many people generally stay away from online presence. This is however another revealing insight, if I have read it right. People go to work and prefer online socializing during office hours but do not indulge in it on weekends which should ideally be their "free time"! I am happy today. So my assumption is that many people were doing lot of fun outdoor activities this particular weekend and thus shunned online socializing for one day.

[ smiles :) ….duh!! ]

Now a brief round up of this so-uneventful-that-it-became-eventful day.

UAE has Friday and Saturday off. So while Sunday is off in India, it was a working day here. My birthday dress today was a white starched crisp shirt, formal trousers and a matching dark-grey chequered tie (no, not like the F1 flag). It couldn't have been more exciting.

[ smiles :)…. stop it now !@$#$%^!@].

The office has only 4 people staffed in it and all carry a copy of the key to main door. Summer Interns don't have that luxury. I reached early to office, all bright and shiny (remember the "white starched crisp shirt"?) But everybody else was on an 'extended weekend mood'. So, I was outside office, without key and without luck. Pantry area beckoned me and I waited there for an hour or so before one divine figure arrived. 'The gates of heaven' opened for me. The person had failed his driving test and was not exactly in what would comprise a jubilant mood. I preferred to steer clear from him (wish he had steered clear from his driving test obstacles). After staring at my empty inbox, non-descript scrapbook and un-ringing (both for SMS as well as calls) mobile phone for some time; I decided to read about how Nazis never lost the World War II and are hiding in secret bases in Antarctica. Wonder how they celebrate birthdays there?

[ :)… ok, have it your way!]

Gracefully, there was another Summer Intern from IIMK who kept me company during the day. He was receiving and making more phone calls than me. He had to go to Saudi Arabia and his travel plans and Visa were in disarray. He seemed to be having a more exciting time than me, at least in some sense. After lot of yawning and stretching, I made it evident to him that I am thoroughly bored and want to go out some place. With his Saudi dreams taking off from the Dubai airport tarmac, we visited a shopping mall to look at randomly beautiful European ladies. (the "randomly" adjective can go both with "beautiful" as well as "European"). We came across a multiplex and ended up watching "Shoot out at Lokhandwaala". Lots of blood, abuses, high-adrenalin action sequences, and pumping music - a perfect setting for a birthday evening.

[gotchya, you were going to smile :).. right? No?]

Now I am back in hotel room. The Dubai skyline is visible from the 5th floor wall-size windows. Its 00:20 AM, 28th May local time. Somewhere in Africa, it will still be 27th May. Happy B'day to me, with love, from Africa.

[smiles :).... genuinely]

The Annual Cat Festival

The actual content of this post is a two-liner. Hence, I will build up the crescendo to it by giving random analogies. Searching a thesaurus for such activity will turn up the following result(s): "faff", "globe", "gyan".

Pushkar (Rajasthan, India) has a unique distinction of holding an annual camel festival. A look towards the horizon encompasses scores of brightly-colored turbans bobbing up-and-down on what looks like a misty sea (but is actually dust). The bovine animals are inspected and then selected by buyers. After finding the right fit of profile, the man and the beast walk away into the setting sun. Sigh!

A similar and immensely popular annual festival is also organized in much more urban settings. The annual CAT festival. Its a booming business and every year sees a healthy growth in number of participants. Some are regulars, some are novices. Its a happy mix. The run-up to the actual event is well rehearsed and 'Mock'ed out to such a precision that it would make a trapeze artist wish for wearing eye-pieces fitted with LCD displays showing real-time calculation of projectile motions. Olympics motto says "Cittius, Altius, Fortius" (faster, higher, stronger). CAT festival motto says "faster, accurate-r, easier and guess intelligent-lier".

{Cut to a different thought process}

Some years ago the Tier II cities in India gave way a social phenomenon which can truly be accredited to technological uplift of our nation. The proud mother, whose daughter is of marriageable age, would wear the most cordial smile and answer this when asked what her daughter is currently doing with her time - "She is doing a Computer Course". Guys were generally exempted from this Q&A session. However, the going has now become tough for the Tier-II-city-hometown-engineers-working-as-software-professionals-in-Tier-I-cities guys. What is the answer of their Moms to the above question? It is, "He is participating in the CAT festival".

{Why this random post?}

The CAT 2006 results were announced on 29th April, 2007 after loads of politics and delays. Anyways. I was going through the Orkut scrapbook of a friend who is an Electrical Engineer from IIT Madras with 3 years of work-ex (as of today). One of the scrap on 18th May, 2007 reads, "Tu is baar CAT de raha hai kya?" (Are you writing CAT this time?)

"... is baar..."!!!???? Hardly 3 weeks have passed to the results declaration and the conversation is centered around planning for next CAT. Is there any thought process at all which goes in the heads of the majority of people who write CAT every year? Again and again? Or is there actually a similarity with the bovine existence and walking into the setting sun which makes me muse about the annual CAT festival?

Analyze(*this);

For more than 2 and a half years, this blog had been using webstats service to track the incoming user activity. Its high time now to move on.

The template has been adorned with a neat javascript tag enabling Google Analytics (Thanks to this post by Andy Wibbles for a step-by-step guide). Will dabble into this toy and babble back here.

Mumbai, it zips

Mumbai - the city of opportunities, the tinsel town, the (once-upon-a-time) gateway to India. To all the Mumbaikars out there - Pardon me for stopping at just three adjectives to describe your city; I can't even make a decent attempt at that in this limited space.

Despite never having visited Mumabi earlier, I could rattle off a score of names, which are landmarks and sub-urbs of this bustling city, thanks to Bollywood. Images of local trains, BEST bus service and Marine Drive become synonymous with Mumbai. Against this backdrop, I will describe a event which lasted all for a 30 second duration but hit hard to make an unforgettable first-hand impression of the city on me.

I was travelling from Worli to Church Gate on the BEST bus (route no. 83). The event occurred around a place called Charni Road. It is the third station on the Western Line of Bombay Local train, from Church Gate. One can get down here to begin a nearly 2-2.5 km walk on Marine Drive to reach Nariman Point.

Picture it this way. Imagine a two-way road and 2 railway tracks parallel to each other. The road is on the left and tracks are on the right. Let's number left lane of the road is R1 and right lane as R2. The track adjacent to R2 is labeled T1 and the rightmost track is labeled T2. When viewed from top, the picture is:

R1 | R2 # T1 T2

I was sitting in the bus which was waiting in R1 at a red light. Coincidentally, a local train was also waiting (outside platform) on T1 because the line ahead might not have been clear. My bus and the train were heading in the same direction.

My bus then got its signal. Simultaneously, the train also got its "GO" signal. The two machines sped up. The bus, with its silent environs and tinkling bell; the train, with human bodies hanging out defying center of mass theories. In the lane R2, the cars and buses started zipping past my eyes, going against the direction of R1. And in T2, another local train started rumbling opposite to T1.

That moment, somehow, was special. There were 4 causeways in which "life" was racing. Two going together, two going against them. And each working like clockwork precision. Never interfering in each other's movement.

A feeling which had been growing in me suddenly surfaced in clear consciousness. I was awed by the speed with which Mumbai city moves. The huge sea of population carried on different currents and each gliding against the other; without friction, without hassles.

Mumbai, you humbled me in that one moment.

Packing a 64kB punch

Demoscenes literally pack a punch. In 64kB, they display an amazing array of graphics combined with awesome music. The first of such demoscenes to come my way was a video called "Heaven 7" in 2001. I did not know back then that it is a demoscene; but it did capture my imagination.

Later, I found that it was an award winning entry at the "Mekka & Symposium" demoparty 2000. The developers (Picard group) extracted last ounce of the hardware's power through efficient coding and ingenuous tricks. A description of the same will be worth reading for those inclined towards programming. Also to be noted is that each participating group acknowledges others towards the end of the demo.

The "Mekka & Symposium" evolved into a new avatar, "Breakpoint" in 2003. It got huge sponsorships from ATI in subsequent years (before ATI was acquired by AMD) and became the largest demoscene party to be held annually. The awards are given in many categories because of the diversity of platforms on which demoscenes are being made make it difficult to compare their technical efficiency on a common benchmark. I particularly liked the winning entry for 64k intro in PC category at Breakpoint 2005 - Binary Flow.