a brand in making...

Written on 7:09 AM by Tushar

Go through the following conversation between me and one of my friends named Person_A below for the sake of anonymity.

(17:29:20) Tushar: m going thru ur blog
(17:30:49) Person_A: Person_B has started his own blog and is asking me to promote it :D ... he's standing over my shoulder asking me to do it ... :P ... so pls see this link ...
http://Person_B.blogspot.com/
(17:31:00) Tushar: oh:P
(17:31:01) Tushar: sure
(17:31:10) Tushar: ask him to go thru my link too:D
(17:31:16) Tushar: tit for tat:|
(17:31:17) Person_A: ok done deal
(17:31:35) Person_A: man ... i feel like a dalal
(17:31:53) Tushar: =))


This is what you call brand promotion!! Do you _really_ need a degree from IIMs:)

makes sense?

Written on 4:18 AM by Tushar

Sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination...Realized this today morning!

Murphy's laws...

Written on 10:58 AM by Tushar

As I write this I am refreshing my mailbox to check whether some good news has come...It has been the same since past few days. I am a bit surprised myself with this 'unwanted' change... I know I am going to make it and that too with a bang still my skeptic mind sometimes reminds me of those dreaded Murphy's laws...

Judgement day

Written on 3:47 AM by Tushar

On Monday I had gone to my alma mater VIT as a judge for the final year project exhibition. I had ‘been there and done that’ last year as well. This time I had gone there with my colleague Batman and my delivery head who was the chief guest of the ceremony.

We reached there in time and were seated in the HOD’s cabin with my principal and my professors. One of my profs who is very talkative by nature mentioned about my ‘best outgoing student’ title then my boss patted on my back and said to my profs that he is lucky to have me in his team! It made me humble.

Projects IMHO were mediocre. I judged 6 projects and out which very few had some innovation. Most of them had no idea why they've worked on an idea that was implemented years back. In some cases even the source code is available on the net. Those who had a neat project idea had not-so-good-understanding of technological alternatives available. They were working on that idea just because their guide told them to.

Batman judged 12 projects in a day and it is a record in itself! Had a lunch with my profs and colleagues in the college canteen and everybody recalled their college days. We talked about MIT to BITS pilani. The conversation gave some ‘food’ for thought:)

VIT is going to become an autonomous institution in the next year. I wish I can give back to my alma mater in the way IITians do that is donating generously. Hope that won’t take long! There is a very famous marathi poem by Mangesh Padgaonkar…


‘Denaryane det jave
Ghenyarane ghet jave

Gheta gheta ghenyarane
Denyaryache haat ghyave!’

Amen!

Holi hai...

Written on 3:14 AM by Tushar

Holi always reminds me of my good old childhood days when I used to play with colors like anything:)...yesterday I had planned to go to a party 'Rang de' organised at pancards club.
I got up late, rushed to Pune to catch a movie 'Taxi no 9211'. It's a nice movie.John looks amazing and Nana rocks as usual! Ramesh Sippy has produced yet another feel good movie after 'Bluffmaster'. His movies are much like Hollywood flicks where you can relate to the charecters. They look real and not reel. I enjoy a movie more if I can relate to the theme of the movie and get a feeling that something like that can happen with me too!

After the movie we rushed to Pancards. Had a good time there dancing to the tunes of the DJ in the artificial rain. These parties _CANNOT_ match the fun you will have with your friends playing holi at your place. But nowadays since everybody has become busy and time is hard to find one has to search for other options to have a good time and enjoy the festival. I still remember the holi celebrated in my final year with almost 40 boys from my college. We were on
rampage and had a helluva fun:)

Rain dance soaked all the energies and we went to my office to have a shower...Yep.My office has all those facilities.It is much like Google in that respect:) After getting all neat and prim we went to Pizza hut to grab a bite of freshizzas. We chatted for almost 2 hours talked on topics ranging from movies,life, relationships to what not. Felt amazingly good to spend long hours with
friends.

My faithful reader, hope you had a good time too!

Avocation

Written on 6:23 AM by Tushar

On Friday I had gone to conduct a seminar in an engineering college (MAE, Alandi) for Calsoft. The topic was “Linux kernel module programming and debugging”. I had a few assumptions about the audience in mind and had prepared the seminar accordingly. When I went there I was shocked to see that the entire audience consisted of second year students who didn’t know what an operating system is all about. Phew… for initial half an hour I talked about what an OS is and what this seminar is going to give them. When I started off there were hardly 10 people in the class and when I finished the whole class was full! I felt great:)

After the seminar a few guys came to me and told me that the seminar was really good but I should have conducted it a little longer. I felt like a celebrity:).. A few took down my cell no and asked me whether I conduct private coaching classes :P…

Not a bad idea! Another ‘Chate’ in making :P

backups...

Written on 6:09 AM by Tushar

Today is a Sunday and m home… Those who know me will understand what’s so special about it:)

I slept a lot, watched movies, went to the library, chatted with mom and surfed the net…I was surfing for almost 4 to 5 hours. Read blogs of a few geeks who are pursuing their masters just to know what future holds for me. I must say that it wasn’t so scary. I am damn sure that I can survive!…Someone who knows me really well says that I can survive in any place m put to.

Had planned to go for white water rafting at Dandeli on the next weekend. Had talked to foliage outdoors for arrangements, had dropped mails to my friends. Somehow I lost the interest and dint pursue the matter any further. Have a backup plan ready though:)…Next weekend I will be going for a moon light trek… I had been to one such trek to Rajmachi last year during the same period . After walking all night long we were all drained. In the afternoon when we started the return journey it was really hot and we were praying to the rain gods and all of a sudden miraculously ….it rained!…Hope something like that happens this time too!

Tonight I wanted to take my parents to a movie but dad had to go to Bombay for some office work and the plan was cancelled:(…then all of a sudden Sam called up. Tomorrow is my friend Saudamini’s b’day who got married few months back. Tonight we are going to her place to decorate the whole place and give her a pleasant surprise:)…More about this later, as I gotta go:)

Yeh dosti...

Written on 10:31 AM by Tushar

This is a story about one of my friends.

We were the closest pals during my engineering days. I used to spend hours at his place studying [Sounds funny? Believe me that’s the truth]. We watched movies together, roamed in Pune for long hours and most importantly dreamed about life.

We had lot of things in common. We wanted to make it big… He was a wizard when it came to programming. He was crazy about that thing and I used to wonder how can anybody spend so much on books [Actually I still do]. I must say, to a certain degree, this guy made me aware of my own capabilities.

After finishing engineering we started our career in the same company. Things didn’t work out well with him and he quit his job and worked somewhere else. That was when I lost contact with him. Later that year he left for further studies to The Netherlands. We never had a formal fight but there was something which kept us away from each other. I didn’t even go to wish him luck for his future when he was flying.

The reason for this post is… today I met his father. He was absolutely delighted to see me. Most importantly he was very concerned about what happened between us. He was very happy to know that I too have got an admission to the same university as his son. He kept talking for almost an hour about his son and recalled the memories of good times.

Now I am feeling horrible about myself. I could have taken the initiative to break the ice.

Better late than never.. I want to tell him that I AM SORRY.

Water Kingdom

Written on 5:56 AM by Tushar



I am back after a yet another refreshing weekend. This time the venue of the
outing was Water Kingdom at Bombay.This is the best waterpark around as far as I
know.I had gone with my teammates at Calsoft including my manager.

We had hired a 14 seater and left at 730 on Sunday morning. The
journey was amazing and I shot a lot of videos of our 'antakshari'. You
encounter lots of tunnels on the expressway which look amazing in the yellow
lights and some of them are so long that the length of the video in which I have
shot the jorney through the tunnel is 2 minutes! We took 5 hours (!) to reach
the destination as the driver of the vehicle was a jerk and din't know roads
well and we wasted lot of time in figuring out which way to go. The park was
flooded with people which was assumed as it was a Sunday. We dint waste much
time in getting the lockers, changing clothes and getting showers. In less than
half an hour we entered the first point which was the dance floor!

The place had a ROCKING DJ and we danced our hearts out.Before moving ahead to
the next ride everybody was telling each other that we HAVE to visit the dance
floor again! There was a loooooong line for the next slide.We waited for almost
an hour till our turn came. While we were standing in the queue we discovered
that we had "Johny" in our group:P (Will the real Johny please stand up?). After
doing rafting in the (artificial) river we did some petpuja and ate a bucketful
of Maggie.

We spent most of our time playing on the slides 'gushing machine' and 'hamunga
kowabunga':D...The 'black dragon' in my opinion is the best slide which makes
you feel that you are falling in a black hole! We had a great time in the wave
pool where we taught each other a lesson or two in swimming:).As the night
started falling we ran to the dance floor. I had the best time of the entire
trip here dancing in the rain to those rocking tunes.

As a promotional move we were granted an entry in the esselworld. The whole
place was lit with lights and it was an amazing sight. I shot a very nice video of the
same. Wish I could upload it here:(...Soon we headed back to our den. During the
return journey we clicked lots of really funny pictures. As there was no light
inside the vehicle and my cam has a series of flash before taking the actual
snap everybody was finding it very difficult to keep the eyes open while
taking the snap.Riyaz was the worst of all. I had to click his snap 7 times before he
managed to keep the eyes open:D...We were pretty tired due to the day long
dangamasti and Riyaz was killing us with his 'Saas bahu stories :animal
version'!It was a very memorable picnic!...Click here for the snaps.

Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman!

Written on 4:31 AM by Tushar



"There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave
you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough.
Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it.Feynman
was a magician."
- Hans Bethe, Nobel laureate.

I read this amazing amazing book called "Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman!".
Feynaman got Nobel prize for his work in theoratical physics. In the book he has
narrated witty anecdotes during his stay at MIT,Princeton,Cornell and Caltech.
I thoroughly enjoyed the way he describes GREAT things he had done in a very
humble way. Great read!

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