FIITJEE KVPY selections list

Opening my Old Passport

So, how it all started?? Well, rummaging through my things, what do i come across?? An old 320 GB WD Passport (external HDD).

So does it work?? NO i checked it... It doesn't... now what???  Of course pry it open... How?? just use some force. (If u don't have nails, a screwdriver can help)

This is how it looks after opening the first "coating" of packaging



 And after prying open the metal case as well ===>>>

So now what next??

Pull out the stupid USB controller that has got fried up. (Ya i'm sure it's the initio chip only... the disk is ok i know)





Now comes the better part of the "adventure"... pull out a few wires from your PC... I love red, so i pulled out a red cord. U can pull out blue out too if u find blue wires inside. And connect your hdd to those cords... ... So what have you done???!!!! Any idea???? You just increased your storage space by 320 GB!!!!! Wow!!! ok ok calm down... it's temporary... and that too you are now not yet sure if it works.... When u boot up, the drive will vibrate. Don't get surprised and pleeeease don drop the drive frm ur hand out of panic.

OK.... So it worked...(see I told you earler that it would).... now surprise, surprise... it contained relli relli relli important and confidential data in it???? Can u imagine it??? Important data rotting in a corrupt passport??? Ok so I did the backup of it... now out for the "dirty" part of the adventure... Lets have a closer look at the disk b4 we begin






Now guess what next??? take a screw driver??? (if u can't find one then u are screwed). And then... well... wot then??? jus un-screw each and every screw on the drive's body.... Yes yes yes I know it's crazy... but that's the fun damnit.

This is sumwhat lyk the drives own "motherboard"... all the controller chips and all... Before you end up snapping it into two halves , screw it back up.









Now let's open the other side of the drive to see "andar kya hai" (u see those multitude of srews strewn on my matress??? well... if u loose a single one, u are screwed once again)

Now lemme have a close, relli close, look at the "andar ki baat"

 You see my finger prints on it?? well... wen u open ur own drive, pls don smudge it wid ur prints... mine one was fried so i afforded to touch it.... if u touch urs, then it'll be gone forever.

Amazing na??? the intricate details??? the minuscule read/write head, the motor.... jus mindblowing technology.

Now b4 u fall in luv wid ur stripped down hdd, please drape it in its clothes back again.



Thank you.
Happy (un)screwing.
Championswimmer.

Talking Pointlessly

 The speech (sic) that i'm going to "deliver" at in front of a bunch of jokers (better knows as "my class")

A very good morning to one and all. You all know who I am, so introductions are irrelevant, and at this moment there is only one “respected person” among us, so let me skip the formalities for now and instead get to the topic as fast as I can. Time is precious after all, and I don’t like wasting time. But before I actually introduce you people to the topic on which I am going to speak on, let me narrate you an interesting story here.

I have been to number of interviews till date, and let me tell you, I’m usually not very nervous before interviews. It is just a bunch of people who throw questions at me, and if I know the answer to the question I give the answer, and if I don’t then I say it. So far so good. Easy as anything. I’ve never been afraid of answering questions. But on one occasion, I did face an interview that really knocked the wind  out of me. As soon as I went in for the interview, the request from the interviewing bench was “Please tell us something about yourself”. I had not really expected something like this but somehow I managed to hide my discomfort and introduced myself. Then they said, “Well, you must have prepared for this interview, you must know quite a lot of things. And of course you have been selected for this interview because of your vast knowledge only. So please make light about the things that you know.” With dropped jaw, open mouth and a blank face, my expression must have been a sight to see because they were compelled to say, “Please don’t fret, just tell us a few things that you know. You have got 5 minutes. Speak whatever you want to.” Now, I’m not going into the details of what happened thereafter. All I can tell you is that, yes, I did manage to survive those tormenting 5 minutes. To make a long story short, that day I realised the hard way, how excruciating a situation it is when you are asked to speak on “anything you wish to”. Believe me, it’s so easy to write or speak on a given topic, but once you are given the responsibility of choosing the topic itself, you find you are in troubled waters.

Ok, let’s get back to what I was saying. Oh yes, the topic on which I’m going to speak today. You know I actually just remembered another interesting incident. Two years back, I, along with another 50 odd friends, some of them sitting right I front of me, participated in Youth Parliament Competition. In the national level competition, the guest of honour was a former Minister of Parliamentary Affairs. I’m not able to recall his name right now, but he told us about an interesting thing. He said that an important art that needs to be mastered by all legislators, may it be parliamentarians or members of state legislatures, is to answer questions without actually answering them. You all must have seen the proceedings of our parliament on Lok Sabha TV or some news channel. If you might have noticed, during the question hour, some very important questions of national importance are put forward by the opposition members. But when the minister stands up to answer it, it is just a garbage speech. After scathing comments on the government by the opposition, it is never possible for the minister to give a ‘to-the-point’ replies. In fact most questions raised in the parliament are such that the government might embarrass itself if it even tries to honestly answer what has been asked. So the best option out is to take the whole parliament, the national media, and the common man for a roller coaster ride by just beating around the bush and not even getting near to what actually has been asked. It actually works. If you can speak pointlessly, going on and on for more than an hour, you end up boring the listeners so much that they don’t care to notice that you actually didn’t say what you were supposed to say. Even on talk shows and debates on news channels, the high profile guests very deftly waste the whole news hour without giving the viewers any food for thought. But you all are well versed with these dramatics so I’m not wasting any more time describing it to you.

Now see, again I went off the hook, rambling on and on, completely forgetting that I’ve not even told you on what topic I’m going to speak today. Let me tell you, right from the day Ma’am mentioned about this speaking test, I was wondering about two things. Firstly, who on earth got this idea of speaking test in the first place. CBSE comes up with loads of bright ideas, but this seemed to be the least appreciable idea to me. Secondly, since the speaking test afterall has to take place, I was wondering on what topic I’m going to speak on. I had to keep in mind that I have to cover at least 2 minutes to ensure that I get enough marks in this, but speaking continuously for 2 minutes is not child’s play, and that’s why I was honestly a bit worried. And the bigger problem was the problem of plenty. I just couldn’t fix my mind on any particular topic to speak on. (In fact I was pondering over the choice of topic even late into yesterday night.)

So what I end up doing is giving this speech to you which I’d neither intended to nor I’d prepared for. And well, I actually didn’t have any topic in mind at all when I started speaking. But I think it would be very appropriate if say the topic of my speech is “The art of wasting time by talking pointlessly”. And what I have been doing for the last couple of minutes was nothing but giving you a practical example of it. Now since I have already covered much more than 2 minutes, I can safely assume the required marks are in my bag, and I do not need to continue wasting time anymore. There are many more of you who, I’d not say are eager to come over and speak, but whom ma’am would be very eager to listen to. So let me conclude here with a small piece of advice to all my friends – Speaking to masses is an art in itself, but wasting time by talking irrelevant things is actually a specialisation of that art, something that anyone aspiring to be a good speaker must master.

Fwd: Editor, Delhi

http://www.champswim.co.cc

go visit

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arnav Gupta <championswimmer@gmail.com>
Date: 1 December 2010 18:47
Subject: Editor, Delhi
To: mytimesmyvoice@timesgroup.com

Please save the precious 'Ratnas' !

Regarding Ambika Pandit's "Ratna gets help…"(Dec 1), firstly I convey thanks to TOI to give it front-page status. It is not, as we all know, an incident extraordinaire. It happens every day, and just as I sit writing this, another Ratna might be sitting hapless in another corner of the city. For the past few months the front page has remain overpopulated with CWG, Adarsh, 2G etc. But I believe that scams will continue and they will hardly ever make any difference to our daily lives, let alone Ratna's because she probably doesn't even know, and neither requires to, the full form of 2G and CVC. Rather more articles like this should come up on front page to occasionally give the much required harsh jolt to our conscience which has already turned stone cold. That article I believe was not to attract the attention of authorities but of the average citizen. Next time you see another Ratna, please don't turn away, but instead take a step to turn Delhi into a city that does care for women.

Arnav Gupta,

NEW DELHI

City never sleeps

The gleaming red glow, engulfs the town

Some wake up with a smile, some with a frown

A clockwork is set going, a day starts rolling

Telephones start ringing, alarm bells start tolling.

The ever busy city comes back to life… 

You can once again hear the ever pestering wife,

Schoolchildren on road, running helter-skelter,

The homeless beggar looking for a shelter…

School bells ring, followed by the office gong,

The car-horns start blowing like a rhythm less song.

Traffic signals are blinking – red light, green light,

The sun is at its peak, it’s shining ever bright.

Now the city slows down, half a day has gone,

Yet very little worthwhile has been done.

It’s time for lunch boxes to come out the bags,

And everywhere around you hear political gags.

Schools are now closing; you can hear the bells again,

The children now return: the white shirts have mud stain.

Shopkeepers now count, if they made gain or loss.

Employees are flattering and praising their boss.

As the diminishing sun goes lower and lower,

For offices and firms, it’s now ‘time over’.

The roads once again fill up with cars,

In the semi dark sky we see traces of stars.

It’s hard to breathe the polluted air,

But we make do with it, we hardlycare.

People have started rushing out to shopping malls,

The crowd has started pouring into restaurant halls.

The day ends for some, for some it’s just begun,

As if the moonrise is like the rise of the sun.

Darkness blankets the town, now it’s moon’s kingdom. . .

The nightlife of the city has a newfound freedom.

Some sleep at night, some during day,

But the city never sleeps – be it January or May.

The clockwork of the city goes on and on . . .

From dawn to dusk, then again dusk to dawn.

MOTHER

She’s the epitome of love,
She defines sacrifice...
She cares for others first,
She’s always free of vice.

She’ll be there for you,
When you need her most,
She’ll find you out,
When you’re totally lost...

Mother’s divine...
She’s never selfish.
She’s always there,
To grant our each wish.

She cares for one,
She cares for all.
Before her eyes,
No one is big or small.

She gives new life,
She’s the creator supreme...
She’s greater than god,
To us it seems!!!

She has always been,
More than the sum of her parts,
And she’ll always remain,
In the depths of our hearts.

Mother! We salute you,
We all admire thee...
None comes before you,
We all do agree... 

Friend or Foe???

When I get a hug from mother,
It’s the envy of my brother.

And yet when the boy next door
Picks up a fight with me,
I can always be sure
Of brother’s support, you see.

Is it then not an irony that
My neighbour and I,
Are on the same side of the net
In the inter-school tennis tie???

(The earlier day the fight we had;
We both have forgotten – I’m glad)

Who is a friend, who is the foe…
I don’t know, I don’t know.

Region and religion, they can divide or unite.
Mix and match them, you get a cultural delight.

The Punjabi just can’t stand the Madrasi,
He’d prefer to drown him in a tub of lassi
“Bengali!!!” remarks the Gujju, making a face,
“Such people don’t suit my taste.”

But when an Indian meets another on a faraway land,
It definitely calls for a celebration, grand.

Who hails from which state,
Neither they care, nor does it matter,
Watching India play cricket,
Sharing pakodas on a platter.

Who is a friend? Who is the foe?
I don’t know, I don’t know . . .

When the neighbouring country suffers,
Anyone hardly bothers.
But for emigrants to the west,
Fellow subcontinentals are like brothers.

Who is a friend? Who is the foe?
After so many years, I still don’t know.

Some are staunch patriots,
Some are dirty racists,
Some support communal harmony,
Some are plain fascists.

But wherever, whenever, for whatever we stand,
We always desert someone to shake a new hand.

Be it the world war,
Or just a game of ball,
You have to take one side,
You can’t be friends with all.

Why does a new friendship
Come at the cost of another???
Why can’t all of us
Be friends with each other???

Who is the friend and who is the foe?
The answer I bet no one will ever know!!!

Aberrations in Abbreviations

Just the other day we were being taught about ‘note-making’ at school. And we were instructed by  our teacher to use “at least four to five abbreviations” in our notes. It so turned out that when I finished making my notes, I realised that they did not contain a single abbreviation in them (and that is because I do not have a penchant of shortening words when I’m doing any school related work). Since it occurred to me just before submitting the copy, I found myself hurriedly scratching off words like programme, experience and positive and replacing them with prog., exp., and +ve. Then of course I had to make that little box in the footnote area listing all the abbreviations used and their full forms. Whoa!!! So much more work just for the sake of dropping 4-5 letters from a few words!!!

Technically speaking, there actually happens to be four ways in which words can be shortened; abbreviations – in which the last part of the word is dropped off, contraction – where the middle part is dropped off, initialisation – which the name itself suggests what it is, and acronyms – which is like initialisation only but the shortened word itself is pronounced like a new word.

Some examples would make it clear : -

Saint ==> St. (contraction)

Phone number ==> Ph. No. (abbreviation)

Do it yourself ==> DIY (initialisation)

As soon as possible ==> asap (acronym)  {asap is pronounced as a single word}

More recently with the advent of sms-lingo (or chat-lingo or twitter-lingo), a new type of word shortening, popularly known as de-voweling, has evolved, in which words like properly and contact are written as prprly and cntct respectively.

But all said and done, the most popular form of word shortening these days is “phonetic shortening” where the word is shortened in such a way that the pronunciation remains similar to the original word. Like, awesome becomes ‘osum’ and right happens to be ‘ryt’.

Moving away from the technical aspects, I often wonder (especially when I receive dramatically shortened SMS and emails), what good does it serve? Does it really reduce time and effort and enhance simplicity, as the advocators argue? Or does it, at the detractors put it, simply reduces the writer’s efforts at cost of doubling the readers’ troubles?

Though I rarely stick my neck out and take sides in such debates (since I myself use shortened words very generously in my mails and text messages), I must say I often find myself agreeing more with the detractors than the advocators.

Like just last Sunday, my cousin happened to go to ‘CCD’. I had to ask to expand it as I could not think of any place called CCD. Being the techno-geek that I am, the only way I could expand CCD was – Charged Coupled Device (digital camera stuff). I had no idea that he meant to say Café Coffee Day instead. Similarly if you live in Delhi you’ll know that CP is Connaught Place and DC is District Centre, initials which more commonly refer to other general things like DC = Direct Current. And did you know that students studying in St. Marks School and Mother Mary School have a craze of sending too many SMS and MMS. (pun intended).

By the way have you come across the term ‘pj’? The fact that it stands for poor joke (or pakau joke as some say it) came to my knowledge only a couple of months back. I’ve seen this term here and there many times but it never occurred to me to check out its full form. I always somehow linked ‘pj’ to pyjamas (maybe because you wear sleepover parties are called pj-parties). But when that day my friend requested me to send some teacher-student pj’s over SMS, I was compelled to search on Google what pj actually means. And lo and behold – Wikipedia said that pj might actually refer to pyjama!!!! But that was not what I was looking for. Next I came across petajoule and picojoule. But neither pyjamas nor joules can be sent over sms, so I went on sifting through some more results when I finally got it ------> pj=poor joke. {WHAM!!!} it was like Tendulkar swinging his bat right on my face. Poor joke????!!!! In the name of god, people need to initialise such words too????

[psst.... all the while I was doing this research on pj over Google I was also wondering about the other  “_J” terms, i.e. VJ=video jockey, DJ=disc jockey, RJ=radio jockey etc etc.... And I was trying to figure out if PJ might have a similar expansion. And I was also wondering why nobody mentions HJ=horse jockey]

There are many people out there (especially English teachers who check exam copies) whose worlds have been turned topsy-turvy by the sudden influx of abbreviations; a word that itself is abbreviated to abv., abrv., abrrev., or abrvⁿ. And if you by chance write the ‘v’ as an ‘r’ then it becomes abbrⁿ. Which I guess stands for aberration (something that happens when people shorten words too much)

Anyways I need to apologise to my readers for  being a thoroughbred hypocrite though, because even while I was busy ‘lampooning and slamming the practice of word shortening’ (read – ‘writing this article’), I received a text message “hey buddy! Hw r u?” And quite shamelessly I replied “gr8 here!! U say. Wassup? Ne plans of goin to DC 2day?”

So with all that we are again back to square one, that is to the question – whether aberration, oops sorry, abbreviation, should be used everywhere. Imo (in my opinion), it strictly depends on the context. I hardly ever write text messages without various shortened words, and I don’t expect anyone to spell out all the words properly when sending me messages, but of course while writing an examination or a blog entry, such irresponsible snipping and cutting of words is strictly prohibited.

Btw (by the way) you use abbreviations or not is solely up to you, but do take care that you do not increase hassles for the person for whom it is intended. (Now for example you tell me a joke and I reply hax3, you would remain confused until I explain that hax3 is “ha ha ha”) It’s nothing unnatural to for people to try to reduce their effort of writing a piece, but while doing that often the reader suffers, which is very unfortunate.

hav a nyc day,

c u soon...

The magician of Malgudi talks again

The man, although not anymore among us, continues to enthral and moreover entertain the people of India as well as abroad alike. R K Narayan is someone who loves playing with his characters, and so he does once again with Talkative Man. The moment you delve into this book, and if you have read any of Narayan’s novels before, you’ll feel you are once again in familiar territory. The same Malgudi, the most famous fictional city of India. Although the characters are new, you somehow know them, relate to them, and feel more close to them than your next door neighbour. That is the charm of the magician of Malgudi.

There are novels, there are novellas, and there are short stories. But this one comes somewhere in between. R K Narayan himself reveals the secret of 116 pages in his postscript - He had started of very enthusiastically on his project called “Novel no. 14” but it unfortunately came to an end at the 116^th page only. Still in such a short space only he gives much more substance than most authors do in a full sized novel. He himself confesses that he does not like rambling on and on and instead keeps on trimming his draft every time he goes through it. And finally what he does bring out to us is pure feast for mind.

“The call me Talkative Man” – the abrupt introduction characteristic to Narayan is there. (Not only Narayan but most English authors from south-India have this habit. You often read the whole story without coming to know the name of the narrator. It is mentioned only once in this book and a careless reader may even miss it). The Talkative Man in this book, financial expert Margayya of The Financial Expert, the Tiger in Tiger for Malgudi or the sign painter Raman, they are one and the same – each time coming up with a different name and a different story. (Sometimes we are left wondering whether it’s Narayan himself).

The storyline is not one from which you can expect multiple climaxes, twists and turns, or supreme thrill. It will not take you for a roller coaster ride, but very steadily takes us through an interesting story. The book has it’s own pace, with each and every sentence bringing something new to the narrative. Ofcourse, at times the unexpected happens, but in general it is a very very believable story. (That is what Narayan is known for)

Once again, Narayan is faithful to Malgudi and stays right as the heart of the town on Kabir Street – where TM lives. TM (short for Talkative Man), is not too talkative, but is a charming narrator. The story he narrates is about “Dr Rann of the double N” in his words. Rann, whom you may want to call the antagonist, is an interesting creation by Narayan, coming from Timbuctoo – another fictional town. Although, he says he’s on a UN Project on “futurology”, he’s more interested in seducing the librarians granddaughter. That’s when out of the blue lands an imposing woman, in khaki shirt and jeans, at the Malgudi railway station and claims herself to be the wife of Rann. She also accuses Rann of being a philandering lady killer…..

So is Dr. Rann really from Timbuctoo? Is the woman saying the truth? What does TM discover about Rann?? Go grab a copy of TALKATIVE MAN to find out. Although don’t expect too much substance and excitement form a book primarily meant for lighter reading. Just let go of yourself and get immersed into Narayan’s ever evolving town –Malgudi.