Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Reflections

View from the cafeteria of my new office which is located in 9th floor. Quite a view to spend breaks between work, isn't it? You could see the shadow of me clicking the photograph in the reflection. Also, the logos of Pepsi on the vending machine makes it to the reflections.


In the picture above, on the right is a lake still frozen despite the temperatures being a little more than 0 Centigrade these days. Below is a picture with complete aerial view of the frozen lake.


Reflecting up on today, all I could remember is Indian cricket team winning against their Pakistani counterpart. Moments of joy!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Those moments


Your experience reflects mine. This is precisely the reason why I stay away from meeting newly married couples. Because eventually they will be made to tell their story. And their story reminded me of mine when Ajith and Prerna were telling how they met at a common friend's house on the day of Holi last year.

As they were telling their story, I could not help but take a ride to the past. This was three years ago. It was about six weeks since I met Samhita for the first time in the park during my morning run. The spirit of holi was in the air to the full extent, I could already find patches of colours in the park while I was waiting for her as I would every day. Gaudy purple and dark green. Pink and orange. I pictured in my mind how the park would look colourful and muddy the next day - the holi day. There were these three girls jogging in the park, and I was staring at them absent-mindedly when Samhita came. Narrowing her eyes yet smiling with them she said "I know what you were doing!" when I was about to give her some reason. I was always good at giving reasons, and she was always good at ignoring them. We slipped into a discussion as we started running. On politics, on music, on philosophy, on little nothings. And like any other day we had our share of arguments and disapprovals and were at peace by the time we finished our run. I loved to see her angry, and made sure to get an opportunity everyday. We said our byes for the day.

Holi Colour Cloud, Source: here
As she was walking away, I slowly followed behind her with a handful of gulaal. There was a momentary hesitation as I was not sure how she would react but I had decided to smear pink colour on her face. I was so unsure about what I was doing and I could hear my heart thumping loud. Worried she would turn around listening to that sound, I went ahead quickly. I could feel her soft cheek as I smeared the colour and my heart only thumped louder. For a moment, I wondered if she used Ponds face cream as her soft cheek reminded me of the googly woogly woosh commercial. I could see the anger in her eyes as she turned around. Infact she was very angry and quick to respond. She took the remaining colour powder from my hand and smeared on my face with a cunning smile, and said "So, are we ready for tomorrow?". That smile, I could hear saying to myself I know that smile and a broad smile spread across my face too. Its the moment that make you believe everything cannot be more perfect in the world.

The next morning, we had more company in the park. It was a larger crowd, enthusiastic and colourful. I could feel the spirit of holi in the air. And there she was, ravishing in white kurti and pajamas as she walked into the park. Armed completely with colours and a couple of pichkaris, its a complete contrast from her usual casual pony tail. Her hair was oiled and carefully bunned. She looked different yet elegant, her face glowing in that morning sunlight due to the obvious layer of cream. I was awestruck and froze like a statue looking at her until my vision was blurred due to the colour powder she threw at me as she came closer. As the yellow colour settled, there she was standing right in front of me sporting a cheerful childlike grin. The grin you see on a children's happy faces when their parents boast about the naughty things they do. After a little while I could not believe myself that the original colour of Samhita's dress was white. I could not recall how time passed by while playing with colours in the park that day. You do not observe and analyze when you are at one of the best moments in your life. You just live them and you are seized by those moments that make you forget the world around. And, may be I tried to live the moment with Samhita that day while playing holi!

Even today, it is memories like these which bring a smile on my face even in the times of distress. For our memories are the only wonderland from which no one can ever stop us ruling it.



P.S. Another attempt to continue the story further. Happy Holi everyone!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Like the Dislike button

Have you ever observed the "like" to "dislike" percentage on youtube videos? For most of the popular videos with huge number of hits, the general trend is the ratio of dislike to like is about 0.1. And if a video isn't a worthy one, the ratio only increases. Earlier the videos on Youtube were rated based on a 5 star scale. I wonder how this effects the way videos are perceived by viewers when they see a particular number of likes and dislikes.

The "Dislike" button, do you like it?
This also makes me wonder about what would happen if Facebook is to introduce "dislike" button. It would only make us realise how much crap we end up posting on Facebook through status messages and etc. And also, Facebook has been smart so far in not introducing Dislike button, and this way everyone feels that no one dislikes what they have to rant on a daily basis! What do you think about this?

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Change

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton Season 2 edition 18; the eighteenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

I hate change
But my bus driver insisted,
And so did my vending machine!

Its a sad life.

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Snow covered car

Snow cover on Toyota Camry 2011 over night. Have encountered worse than this though! Waiting for the summer now.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Gmail's weekend data loss

Image Source: www.worcester.org 
Few months ago I wrote about our increasing dependence on Internet here: How dependent are you on Internet?. Despite the instances of data losses from internet giants being a possibility, one such instance is the recent loss of Gmail data effecting about 0.02% of its users, I am still one of those who relies on my email servers as backup for my conversations and documents exchanged via emails. In this recent Gmail incident, the bug effected all the multiple copies of the users' data Google stores in its servers. As of now Gmail team is still unable to recover the lost data completely, as the App Status page still continues to show the scary yellow wrench. 

Data loss sucks! I know it first hand since I lost years of work sometime back when a friend mistakenly formatted my hard disk. Ever since I was a little careful in making multiple copies of data. Now that buying Tera Bytes of space has become cheaper, taking data backups should not be as costly as it was earlier.

Do you also rely on your email servers and other Internet options to store your data? What precautions do you take to secure your data and prevent its loss?