back on!!
ya so just as i had given up hope of ever being back here again, i surprise myself and have decided to get active here again. Now my lack of hopes werent based on some unfortunate incident or anything that made me detest blogging or anything but frankly i had kind of lost interest in it for a while. However a little praise and slight encouragement from unexpected quarters made me come back here again, this time with a firm resolution to not give up my blog for another 3 years atleast, because reading my earlier posts i realized its such a perfect account of some of the best days of my life and what a treat it would be to read these 5-10 years after i have graduated. So with this in mind and many new ideas in my head i begin my second journey into blogging hoping it would last longer than the first.
the big shift!
Not even six months that i started blogging and i have already changed what people don’t during their entire blogging life. For those obtuse souls who haven’t realized yet as to what am i talking about and haven’t noticed the obvious change in the layout…it’s time you stop reading further for a while and steal a glance towards the URL of this blog. That’s right, i have shifted from blogger to wordpress as i was too curious to know about how can 1 blogging site be different from the other. But the change wasn’t that sudden, i tested and experimented with wordpress for a few days before deciding to shift. Here are some of the things i found better in wordpress:
1) The large number of themes in wordpress is the first thing you would notice as you begin styling your blog. The themes cover all colours of the visible spectrum and have a large variety amongst them, unlike blogger whose inbuilt themes are really dull, and its usually upto the internet to give us something better.
2) All wordpress blogs have an inbuilt hit counter which tells you the extent of popularity of your blog among others. Also it doesn’t count the number of times that you yourself visit the blog thus giving a correct estimate of visits to your blog. So now you don’t have to search the internet to get that perfect counter for your blog
3) The number of widgets for wordpress also outnumbers blogger. Even though both allow you to add 3rd party widgets but valuable time is spent in googling the widget you need for your blogger site.
4) The number of options in wordpress is also much more than blogger, though i haven’t had the time to figure them all out, but at a glance i can tell that all have useful purpose behind them
5) The ease with which wordpress opens on slower connections, moreover writing options in wordpress are much better and easier to use. Also it is easier to comment as there is no capcha in wordpress to verify your account. Experience tells me that many times capcha messes up blogger comment section and we can comment at all which is solved by wordpress.
6) The best option i liked in wordpress was that i was able to import all my blogs,comments and photos from blogger to wordpress by clicking on a single button. WordPress make the change very easy and you don’t need to worry about your previous blogs or comments being lost.
All in all, i have tried and used wordpress and found it to be better than blogger and thus decided to shift. i used wordpress for nearly a week before going ahead with it, its my personal opinion and you are free to point out any factual error in my findings. But i would advise you to try out wordpress too and give it a chance.
life’s like that!
Ohk, i don’t have anything to write really, nothing new seems to be happening anywhere for me to express myself through the black keys that are straining my fingers. I just realized that i had a blog and i have a duty towards it, which is to continuously keep feeding it my rants. Anyway since i have begun this, i better put something to it.
So this Sunday marked the end of a very long week for me, highlighted by go karts, assignments, reports, online tests and a lots of searching (google obviously). Though it started really well with the 20 laps of high speed go kart racing (which even though i paid for the 20 laps for 7 people, felt thrilling!)..it went pretty much downhill from there. It was like the karts provided the adrenaline to make it to the end of the week in sane condition, as the next couple of days went into googling everything about recession for our TRW report (don’t bother with what TRW is) followed by some serious data editing and manipulations which took up most of the time. though i did learn some new things about recession, but frankly it didn’t really fascinate me.
After some serious two days which involved lots of last minute running and convincing, we made it through the report and to the next level in the week, which was named “ES assignment” (again don’t bother what that is). It was an online assignment which we were given 2 hours to solve and it was really one of the more memorable moments in the week to see people shouting across hostels to see whose question matched with whom. That level was completed at 11:10, 10 minutes later than the time given to us, but really we (that is to say 9 people in 1 room who were doing the assignment simultaneously) had no time to really bother as the final level loomed in the distance, the CP online test (we engineers do pride ourselves in making abbreviations for everything, which only we understand), which was scheduled for sunday.
As some might be knowing, the final level for anything is the toughest and this case wasn’t different as we spent 1 hour pondering over the the greek presented to us and labelled ‘question paper’. The only silver lining in this level was perhaps that the last line stands for the majority of campus, and of course the fact that i felt most relaxed in the week after we were finally asked to switch off our monitors and hide our work behind the black screen reflecting my free face. And thus ended my week long game, testing cunning ,survival skills, hand eye coordination (??) and ya a bit of gray cell concentration in my brain too.
Also I’d like to add that based on some valuable suggestions , i have tried to reduce the length of my posts, though i don’t seem to have done a good job. So anyway i better wind up, its not really a great confidence booster to talk about your disastrous endeavours.
Hope you had a better week!
first of a kind!
Ohk..so i was thinking what to post on my blog after a long absence (attributed to test, fest and anything else that comes to your mind, which rhymes and can be considered a valid reason), and after ‘not really an intense’ brain storming session, i decided to post the poem that i wrote for the Creative Writing contest in my fest. This poem i wrote for the elims of the contest and it did make through to the final 6, so i am assuming i will not feel stupid after posting it. But before the poem here are the rules to which we were supposed to abide to..
I would also like to add that this poem is not inspired by any person that i can recall of and neither are these the thoughts that actually go through my mind, infact these would perhaps be the last thoughts i might think, it was just for the sake of the competition that i wrote i So hope you enjoyed and please comment whether or not you like it! Guesses for third line are also welcome!
IIT’s IIM’s follow BITS
Okay, the topic might be a little biased owing to my bitsian nature, but no one can deny the fact the two premier institutes in the country have gone the BITS way. Kapil Sibal’s new proposal makes it mandatory for students to have a an 80% board percentage, and IIM’s seem to be going online (you can read the article here), something that BITS did long ago (both of them). I wont argue about the online test system because its high time we did that, but is 80% percentage really necessary for any institute??
First of all as an IIT aspirant myself who has given both boards and JEE, i can say that even though syllabus of both boards and JEE is more or less the same, there is a huge difference in the level of the course. While boards keep to the basics of without going much into derivations and details, JEE expects us to know the in depth analysis of each topic we study. Therefore it is safe to say that a person preparing for JEE wont find it difficult to get 80% in boards because basically the concepts are the same. And if a person is good enough to clear IIT, boards should be a cakewalk for him. Moreover, mostly the board question pattern remains same every year and it is easy to predict the questions. So i don’t particularly think that keeping the 80% cut off for JEE will drastically change the quality of students getting into IIT, unless you take boards too lightly and write the exams with too much overconfidence. (which happened to a guy In my college, who scored 350 in BITSAT ,the entrance test for BITS but failed to clear the 80% cut off as he took the boards for granted and therefore had to join in the second semester. Though the fact that he couldn’t score 80% in boards doesnt make him less worthy but does make him lose a semester.)
However i do feel that the cut off criteria will certainly create unnecessary pressure on the students. Even though there was a minimum of 60% required in boards before, but that’s something that you usually get without much bother in boards. But 80% cut off will definitely be playing on the back of the minds of the aspirants. Even though i maintain that isn’t difficult to score 80% in boards, it is enough to make the students uncomfortable. They would definitely take boards more seriously and spend more time on it than they usually would. Till now, people just used to open books a day or so before the exams but now they will definitely be more watchful in boards, considering the fact that boards are now playing an important role in their dreams to crack JEE.
All in all i feel, even though it isn’t difficult for a serious JEE aspirant to score 80%in boards, it definitely does add pointless burden on the students and in the rarest of cases (as the guy in my college) costs a worthy student a seat (or a semester). Without the cut off, people can easily concentrate on their preparations for JEE which is undoubtedly more important to them than boards. Thus i prefer that cut off should be reduced to 70 or 75% as the figure 80 invariably plays with the psychology of the students and adds an additional onus of the board exams (and i speak for every institute which has this criteria, including BITS)
government austerity
Salman Khurasheed, the minister for corporate affairs in the country, recently remarked about the pay packages of CEO’s and indirectly described their high income as ‘vulgar’. For the past few months now, ministers seem to be keen on initiating an ‘austerity drive’ as the popular phrase goes. Pranab mukherjee started it with his plans of curbing government expenditure by reducing security and other benefits enjoyed by ministers and supposedly ‘driving’ tharoor out of his hotel. But is austerity, just for the sake of it justified?
Firstly coming to the point of CEO salaries, i see no point of government interfering in employee salaries there. What a company and its shareholders decide to pay their employee and CEO is entirely their business and surely they are more worried about the company than the government, so they will know how to reward their CEO appropriately. Moreover a CEO works hard to get in a position to lead a corporation and whatever he earns is well deserved and justified , as in contrast to some of the ministers enjoying free perks for just showing up once in 5 years. Also, as H P Singhania (ficci president) pointed out, lack of compensation for employee efforts led to a brain drain 15-20 years ago as more and more people found foreign offers more lucrative and beneficial. We must make sure that this isn’t repeated. Sure economic downturn has caused a lot of changes all around that requires government intervention, but this is an issue that is best handled by the firm itself.
Having said this, i feel Pranab Mukherjee’ attempts to curb unnecessary government expenditure is well placed. Many ministers don’t require Z+ security, but are still covered by its shield. I agree security is important for political leaders, but security should be according to need and not to fulfil the minister’s desires. Besides this, controlling other perks like railway passes etc also seem to be a good move and not just because of the recession but in a stable economy also. Although if a politician wants to live flamboyantly on his own expense, its completely his decision and no one should bother about how he lives his life, as long as he isn’t spending the taxpayer’s money. All in all, i think government should think about reducing its expenditures first before bothering about company CEO’S.
does gandhigiri work??
Recently we celebrated gandhi jayanti and every news channel and newspaper had a special coverage of the gandhian principles and ideologies followed by a note saying how his ideas and methods seem to have been lost as times progressed and gandhi jayanti has become just another reason to plan a weekend. Very very few people (read no one) today i feel lives by his methods and ideas. Have we forgotten him and his ideas or are his principles simply too demanding?
I personally feel living life by the gandhian philosophy requires too much of patience. Almost everyone wants to pace things up and do stuff as quickly as possible, no one is patient enough to wait for a long time to get results. Gandhi asks people to go on doing good deeds without bothering about results, but don’t we all get frustrated when results don’t show? Sure some time or the other we might reap the benefits, but is the wait worth it? Lage raho munnabhai aesthetically showed how gandhigiri can be applied to everyday routines, but again they gave out the message that even though it might work, it requires a lot of patience. I remember when people started sending flowers instead of using violent means to protest against the delhi demolitions. But nothing happened, so after 2 days it was back to violence. People do get frustrated when nothing happens. Same with pink chuddy campaign against pramod muthalaik. Did it actually work?? Did he actually stopped following his so called “Indian tradition”? even gandhiji had to wait about 30 years to gain independence. Could it have been if a couple more like bhagat singh would have come along that the independence would have come earlier? We can never say.
Gandhiji’s principles today are just not realistic. I don’t think people bother much unless we show them that we can do damage if you don’t listen. Can we imagine going to each terrorist and preaching non violence? Will it work?? And if they resort to violence, should we sit back and go about doing gandhigiri?? Will that work? Sometimes its important to follow tit for tat principles to have your way. And frankly speaking if we can get the same results much more quickly following other methods, why shouldn’t we adopt them? Why should we wait so long to get something done?
Its not that i have a lack of respect of gandhiji or what he has done for the nation. i sincerely respect that. and neither do i deny that his ideas work. All i am saying is that i don’t think anyone is patient and selfless enough to follow his principles today.
Opinions welcome.
change is here!
ohk so back to blog after a month or so filled with excitement..but i’m not here to describe all that..i realized that people arent really going to keep checking my blog to know about my experiences..i mean come on they have theirs to boast about..so from apart from mentioning about my life experience ,i’m also gonna write about other general stuff..stuff i feel merits an opinion..and it could be anything..simply anything..so please comment on everything..good or bad…but preferably good..(just kidding, bad comments always welcome)
some of you might have noticed the change in my blog template..that’s to keep up with my idea of change..and as i was uploading the template i thought “why is this necessary?” “why is change necessary” (okay i thought about it before, not while uploading)..and i am not talking about change from 70’s t0 80’s to 90’s and generations and all…thats obvious..thats evolution. im talking about change that isnt necessary…as in things would keep on going just as well as they were without change occuring. change would just affect the usual process..in a negative or a positive way..
i mean, i changed to increase the traffic on my blog. i know people would argue that the if your content is good, it’d automatically increase traffic…but then why did godrej and videocon changed their years old logo..? even shoppers stop went for a more simple, subtle logo and shedded away with its previous flamboyant one. psycoanalysts say that by changing the logo the brands sent out a message to their customers claiming that the brand was still alive and working for better products. infact sales figures clearly showed the positive affect it had on the brands. infact if i am not wrong godrej is currently in a profit (cant confirm this).
but change is not always positive. look at microsoft. they first launched xp which was one of the most brilliant products ever by microsoft. they were thriving on that when they came up with vista, and the trouble began. it turned out to be one of the most disastrous products for mirosoft. so a product which they launched to compete against the growing popularity of linux kinda backfired. and now to rectify that mistake,MS is now launching win 7 which looks promising but like other MS products, its too early to say. Infact, it just came to my mind, the MS-google rivalry. google launching an OS and microsoft coming up with a search engine…its all about competition though ultimately benefitting us. but both are venturing into new fields and dimensions. i suppose thats how growth occurs. can you imagine tata’s ambanis’s so successful if they had stuck with one line of products? No, because someone someday would eventually come up with something better.
a person’s interest in anything wears out soon. if we dont change to keep them interested in us, we end up doomed. maybe doomed is a strong word but you get the idea. take the example of social networking sites. orkut created a rage..almost everyone from kids to teachers joined orkut..and it was going great until facebook came along and ruined things for orkut. facebook gave a whole new world to discover for the users. and now its twitter which forces people to sum up in 140 words….facebook still stayed in the race because of the quizzes and new games that they launched but orkut refused to change and the outcome is quite clear. orkut went down as quicky as it came up.infact in times such as the present recesiion it becomes all the more important to change to deal with change in economy and even with respect to environment. We need to change to prevent greater changes happening later.
i request you to scroll up and see the title of my post..ringing any bells?? exactly! barrack obama! his entire election campaign centred around the single word ‘change’. needless to say it worked for him and today he enjoys the most powerful post in the world. i believe change in everything is very necessary to keep yourself in competition on, to keep up in the race, to keep up in life. and to deal with change occuring elsewhere is equally necessary, “who moved my cheese” was a great book i read about dealing with change and its consequences.
comments are welcome
the week that was!!
Right so my first blog from college…after a long and quite eventful vactions at home…i am back at my college..more experienced and more armed..and as seniors this time which meant we’ll be having nervous wierdos (read ‘fuchas’) hovering around campus with a fear of looking around other people and we could walk around campus with an air of authority..but all that later..
So i finally enter goa…and look forward to entering my campus…i see some familiar faces already…and so finally i enter my hostel and i see my neighbour waving at me..and i respond by calling him to help pick my luggage…and during the usualties of wassup and kaisa hai and all…i finally reach my room…i open it expecting to find a neat and tidy room waiting to be burdened under the heaps of dirt to be developed over the period of time….but as you might have guessed things dont always turn up the way we want them to…what instead greeted me was a very strong smell which my friend attributed to fungus…ohk..thats a shocker…i didn’t expect such a warm welcome…its rainy season here so usually fungus does tend to creep in here…but i didn’t anticipate dealing with it on the 1st day back…but seems i had to.! As two more of my friends joined me to compare their fungus with my own…and i found out almost every person had uninvited guests to attend to…infact turned out i had relatively suffered much less damage…just a couple of shirts and a bed sheet and the pillow…! With the cleaning process over we set out to observe any changes in the campus…!
The first thing that catched our eye was that the campus was definitely greener…lots of grass and trees seem to have growed in our absence…and in the distance we also spotted a couple of windmills…which on digging further we found had been planted by the government..! many solar panels had also been installed so the campus is definitely going the green way!! Moreover our shopping centre had a new contractor…though most of it remained kinda the same still looked better…much the rest remained the same. One thing that coudnt have been ignored were the parents with their ‘wards’ the newly admitted..all nervous,excited and tensed…reminded me of my first day really! Thus ignoring them for now..we made our way to monginis..and enjoyed a little snack before coming back and chatting with new arrivals (at our hostel)..and thus went into the night..which gave us a chance to try out one of the new messes….though disappointment awaited us…much of the food was pretty much the same..but our first 15 days were in the other mess so perhaps that would be better..! and thus the day ended with almost all exhausted and sleeping early!
The next day was pretty much boring with most of it going to the registration process…with not much to do the remaining day or the other two days being paralysed by the rain we had to spent most of it indoor…talking about our vacations….our classes started from Monday and for the 1st time in 3 semesters i had a great timetableto boast about…with a adequate breaks and classes….so the week passed by normally….without much incident….a couple of interactions with beloved juniors bit ya..thats about it…! As the rains became less…it was decided to explore the city…we decided to going to fort aguada..followed by dinner…thus we booked a tavera and went to the fort…it as kinda ok…but still another item checked on the checklist….it was really hot and humid and we went there in the peak afternoon so by the time we came back all our heads were spinning like anything and went to bed early and time passed as usually as it does!!