DeeKaying @ Nettle

Firstly, with great regret, I have to say that my beloved phupharji, Sudhir Kharbanda , (my father's brother-in-law) left for his heavenly abode on the 28th of December, leaving behind fond memories with his entire family, the Kharbandas and Kapoors. His Chautha was held on the 30th at Mata Ka Mandir, Near New Friends Colony, New Delhi; the 30th also marked the completion of 2 months of life without my grandmother. It was a really sad day for me. Moving on, it is holiday season and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year . I sincerely hope and wish that life in 2007 will be happier and more enjoyable than 2006 has been and may you reach (or atleast try to reach) the pinnacles of success that you have been aiming for. By the way, do have a look at those Wikipedia ariticles. Its amazing that Christmas and New Year have a different meaning for different cultures. Pratik Dhaboo , a brilliant ex student of Loyola , is the webmaster for Medha 2007 , a mechanical tech fest be...

A discussion on the divinity of Christ , a chronicle of the rough and tumble history of computers , the continuing fight between the raw talent in open source and the hype of Microsoft and a very informative blog of an open source developer ( Hacking for Christ ) are some of the things that I have been reading. Have a look.

What do you get when Microsoft sends you an e-mail on your gmail id? Ans: Google's offer to invite Microsoft to Gmail!

Which photo looks better, the coloured one or the black and white? I haven't found time to do proper photo editing in photoshop. Comments solicited!

Yippee! I just managed to finish my Maths tutorial work. Except for some sums that were swallowed or unsolved in between, one headache is over! Now on to studying for Chemistry. Forgive this blantant self congratulation but I needed to blog my happiness. Chem on the 25th....

I got so irritated by the maths tut that I didn't study all of yesterday. Instead, I watched "Sound of Music" - the hit movie of the 70s -80s (Have you heard of the song - Doe a deer, a female deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun....., its from this movie). It was a senti one and slightly old fashioned, but i enjoyed it. I'm planning to study today.

Well, this is an update on the revision in syllabus. It has now been confirmed of sorts that the entire syllabus for the first year will be revamped for the incoming batch and all the rubbish courses like engineering graphics and thermal/material sciences will be made electives. The course load will be reduced and the new batch will have 2 computer programming courses - basic programming and data structures in the first year itself. There will now exist only about 6 core courses and the remaining will have to be chosen from about 19 electives. However, these changes in syllabus and content will not be propagated to our batch. Well, the juniors always have all the fun! Not fair! End semester exams are from the 25th but the good news is that (assuming i clear the end sems), I will never have to sit in another chemistry and biotechnology lecture. :D I still have another semester of physics and 2 sems of maths to go, but this is reason enough to smile. The bad news is that my physics pr...

Well, a lot has happened over the last month in my personal life. My grandmother, Shrimati Uma Kapoor , expired on 30th October and I went to Delhi for mourning. Also, we had Thomso, our cultural fest, featuring Shibani Kashyap, Zero, a Hasya Kavi Sammelan (Thahake) and a fashion show (Vogue) October and my mom's birthday was on the 29 with professional models from NIFT, Delhi, from 26th to 29th too. I enjoyed all of these events in Thomso and participated in a salsa workshop too (with a fourth year student of a college in Kaithal - Geeta Mittal, who is now placed in IBM) but I made a mess of it as I really have 2 left feet. However, Dadima's death has left me with a feeling of loss... Having rather mixed feelings on the happenings of this last month, and also due to shortage of time, I would rather not blog about my feelings. As for the present, I am loaded with tutorials as usual but a really nice thing that is happening at the institute is that we are being asked to fill ...

Today was a day of rest and relaxation. I'll be going to UC to have its trademark Wednesday Dosas. I didn't do much today except waking up late and lazing around watching TV. I met Mishra sir in the evening and he was late for his class (a rarity I must say) so I couldn't talk to him for too long. Tank sir is out of town and he will be back on Thursday so I will meet him on Friday. I received a warm welcome from the faculty of Prerna Classes when I went over there just before classes. I met most of my ex-teachers. I'll meet my school teachers tomorrow. That's a short post detailing my activities of the day. Ah, life is bliss at home - no tension, no fikr.

Ok, I'm back in Jamshedpur. To echo the opinions of hostelers all over the world - "There is nothing like home cooked food." I went to a party tonight on the occasion of Vijaya Dashami and I had fun there. I was dead tired after my train trip and a restless night as I wasn't sure of the time of arrival of Neelanchal at TATA. I took Tipu out for a walk after 2 months (God, was he delighted at seeing me after such a long time) and got caught in the rain and came back drenched and dirty. But does anyone really care about that. Don't know and don't care. I just have to write or type - however you see it. Coming back to the point, Soumya got impatient at being made to wait for so long for the next move in our chess series. Just for the record, the current status of the match is - 1. c4 e5 2. e4 c5 3. d3 Nc6 4. Nc3 ... But I'm too tired to think up of any suitable reply. Any help would be welcome. Just comment on this post and constructive and destructive criti...

Ok. I'm already starting to behave like a bad blogger. I haven't come to the comp centre for nearly a week now and I seriously need to regularize this. Well, I met Gopal online today and he has reiterated that he is going to Harvard on a 125% scholarship to study "Economics and International Affairs" on an integrated doctoral programme with a non-degree granting programme in Energy at MIT (I might have jumbled the terminologies a little bit but you get the idea) without finishing his boards in India as a graduation is not a criterion for admission into Harvard. Oh, and he recently had a meeting with the director of IIT Delhi and his book on energy independence has just been listed on Amazon . I met Rutwik online too. Tarush, Rutwik and Karan are planning a day off from college. I hope they enjoy themselves and have some decent Indian food after the continental stuff they have been eating for the past month (They are only about an hour away from each other by train i...

I'm sitting in Delhi right now after having an anticlimax saturday. I started out with high hopes of having a fun day but a series of bad timings robbed the day of its flavour. I woke up at 8 today and got ready after breakfast by 11 or so. I then hitched a ride with Nonika, my cousin, to Nehru Place where I did some shopping and then came back with 4 chicken rolls. I called up Aku didi, who'll be joining Google sometime next month in HR and obviously demanded a treat from her. She said she would be home in GK by 4 and she was there by 3:15! We thought that we had a good chance of watching a movie but we got delayed in our departure to Saket and we decided to wait a little longer and watch Bas Ek Pal in PVR Spice but we delayed too much and we lost our chance to get a ticket there too and we ended up playing pool at Tayaji's place. There the lights went off and we returned home by 8:30 :( Anyways, another 1/2 day is left and I feel like sleeping so that's it for today. ...

Well, I got into an accident just after I posted my last blog entry. A scooterist, tearing down the main thoroughfare failed to brake and banged into me. Although nothing happened by the grace of God, I did realize that my life was precious and could be snatched away from me by a small mistake. Well, enough of senti stuff... I had another chat about E-Biz with Ashutosh. This new fangled concept of network marketing does not appeal very much to me. Also, I'm worried about the legal ramifications. As of now, I don't think I will join. Soumya and me are currently playing a long distance chess match over e-mail. He's playing the "English Open" to confuse me as usual, but beware Soumya, I have played with plenty of good opponents here and I just might have improved a bit... Tutorials and Practicals just keep on coming throughout the week. I just finished 2 tutorial sheets for today last night by 1 am and I am on my way to the 3rd. Test papers for the mid sem exams...

Ok. Now onto business. Sushreet is going to Sri Lanka for the international stage of a computer competition. Congrats to Loyola! Also, Loyola has won Abacus for the sixth year in a row. Well, there is some pride to be felt for training the juniors pretty well (although I won't take full credit ;) Today was an ok day in college with plenty of homework waiting for me. Results of mid semesters are coming out one by one. I got 17 + 4 = 21 in a maths test of 25 + 10 = 35 marks. See! I can add! Tutorials are left and Library books have to be returned (not that I read most of them anyways, but they were some source of help.) That reminds me - There are NO good fiction books in the library. What do these IIT R people think - engineers can't read fiction? Anyways, that's all for today. I'll try and update this tomorrow. Atleast I can make it a diary of my college life....

Ok people. I've finally chosen the template, twiddled with the font colours and uploaded the images and am ready to go! I welcome myself to the online publishing world! (I hope no one reading this blog will feel that I have lost my senses entirely, though I believe I might do so not too long in the future.) Hmmm, I think this is enough for the first post.