Apathy

After living for almost a year in Downtown LA any crime that occurs leaves me unfazed. After personally witnessing shooters running berserk in front of my house and fending off a personal attack on myself I have developed a rather cynical view of human nature. Working for the police has just further strengthened the view. It's quite astonishing, just a few months ago sounds of sirens and helicopters used to leave me with mixed emotions of shock, fear and uneasiness. Now all these sounds seem to have faded into the background, though they seem to sound even more often nowadays. Today I had a few relatives visiting me and they were showing visible signs of uneasiness as I was taking them to the restaurant. They seemed quite surprised by my nonchalant air especially when they saw one of the officers arresting a man who was peddling drugs. They were even more shocked when I casually waved hello to the officer and continued on my way. It's hard to believe that I have become so indifferent and I didn't seem to be aware of it either until faced with such reactions from relative newcomers to the area. 

Chars AU-Bees

It's been a long break from my blog, but I am back and I intend to keep writing away. Now that my life has again settled down to an indentifiable rhythm its time that I picked up the threads that I left hanging.

My Masters on the whole has been a great learning experience, its not been fun but its been a great eye opener so no complaints on that front.

Summer is soon approaching and the internship hunt has intensified to the maximum. With the terrible economy,tempers are short and depression seems to be sweeping across. Its entirely worth mentioning when someone tries to introduce a lighter side to this process.

Here's a mail I received on April 1st.

Hello Suramya,

We had our team review your resume and we believe that you might be a potential candidate for our Software Developer position in our Character and Natural Language Processing division. Chars AU - Bees is a product and services company which mostly deals with products which cater to word processing tools and incorporating a certain level of automation and intelligence in this area which we believe will be profitable and an area of research and development in the forthcoming years. Its an Australian based company and we have our branch offices in Florida and Maryland, USA. 

Currently we are a start up company of about 100 employees and our current products mainly integrate withing well known software packages. We do not publicize our company since our work mainly involves research and development and we believe in recruiting the best talent for this purpose. For this very reason we do not have a public domain on the internet and our recruits are mostly through referrals from OEMs to which we supply our products to. Please feel free to contact me if you wish to know more about our company and the services we provide.

Me or one of our System engineers here will give you a call later during the day to schedule a quick 15 minutes phone interview where we intend to understand your professional goals and your traits which could benefit our organization. We at Chars AU - Bees believe in presence of mind and impromptu responses which shows a trait to handle any unexpected situation and hence the immediate interview process. 

We're hoping that you will prove yourself to be fit for our organization this evening and we have continued interaction for our mutual benefit. 

Warm Regards,
Allan Donald
System Architect,
Chars AU-Bees

I admit I was taken in by this for sometime, until I spotted the Chars AU-Bees. Hats off for ingenuity at the same time,it clearly admitted it was a prank if one choose to dwell on the name.

Sadly the author of this mischief was not appreciated and received a lot of flak from various victims of this gag.

Tsk Tsk, some people have no sense of humor.

On the other hand, I must mention a reply to this mail.

Hello Mr. Allan Donald (Chars AU Bees) ,

I appreciate the offer, but at onset let me make a few things clear.

There is not a shred of doubt about my caliber and/or my value to your organization. The question here is the implications andserviceableness of your organization for me. Since you were benovalent enough to hand me an invitation to contact you for further information, this is what I propose.

Since you do not publicize your company and obtain the information on potential employees via referral, I would want you to send across, a comprehensive list of your OEMs. There will be a screening process, where my team will decide, which of these OEMs have a distinction of being spoken to, if any. In the next stage we will conduct interviews with the shortlist-ed OEMs, if any, to evaluate if there is any worth in providing your company, an esteemed opportunity of having an interview with me.

 "IF" on rarity of occasion you do pass the test, we shall schedule a formal meeting, lunch - for which, do not worry I will pay, as I know the crunch a start-up faces, and at the completion of which I will conclude on your stature and assess if you earned your merit to have me as an employee.

I like to give, ample opportunity to prepare before I reckon if I could actually be handled by the employers, hence the pre-planned and formal interview process.

I am sincerely hoping that you and your organization will prove to be fit for my expectations, and we have continued interaction for your benefit more than mine, you have a lot to learn from me. 

Good Luck!
Neha Ravikumar

On the way to becoming a nerd

I'm finally enjoying studying :), I used to think Computer Science was nothing but a huge chore until I started my Masters. The treatment the subject gets under the professors here, the connections to how it can be used in real world applications and the fact that it is not treated as some abstract entity from which you have to memorize entire chunks of the textbook is amazing. After finishing my undergraduate I feel that I have not studied anything in those four years and it was all a haze of loafing around and spending time with friends. Now I am all set to start delving into my subject, and I hope I am good at it. Testing times ahead!!!!

End of an Era

Finally an engineer :)

culturazzi

Recently was reading through a friend's blog when I came across culturazzi, a blog that is devoted entirely to arts, literature and music. They contain reviews on all subjects ranging from african literature to ethopian music. The wealth of subjects dealt with is really bewildering and one must appreciate the efforts taken by the team to keep its readers informed on a wide range of subjects. I'm adding this to my list of blogs one must read.

hallelujah

After three month of waiting desperately for an admit, I finally got it. I'm so glad :) I finally can get back to normal without worrying anymore. My apologies to my blog for neglecting it for so long.

At last an aunt

This little fellow in a santa suit is my very first nephew going by the name Akhil Vikas Chandra. As a doting aunt I should have put up his photos long ago but thanks to my internet connection which was not working as mentioned so kindly by 154, who sneaked a post into my blog while I was busy with my exams(again!!), its taken me some time to feature him in my blog. I'm looking forward to spoiling him in march when he flies down for a visit. That photo below shows him in traditional garb.

8 random facts

I seem to be making a lot of comebacks, I'm blaming my sporadic attempts at blogging at sheer exhaustion. My gre, college work and a wedding have left me no time to even sit near my computer and hammer away. Now that I have a little time I thought I'd start with Moi's tag, in case it remained a draft like radha's restaurant tag. Sorry radha :(.Here goes,



1. I live and thrive on books, I have to read a book before I sleep else I fail to fall asleep no matter how tired I am. An attempt by me to give up reading for a month to practise self denial failed its objective within the first day due to severe irritation and the pleading of suffering family and friends to pick a book.

2. I'm mortally scared of cats and dogs but cockroaches, lizards and other inhabitants of kingdom creepy and crawly don't bother me.

3. I'm steeped in superstitions and I am not ashamed of it.

4.I've been in love with Akshaye Khanna for a grand total of 10 years. Sadly the affair seems to be in danger of being filed under the cases of unrequited love.

5. When I was five, I swallowed a 10 paise coin and was not a penny worse for it, pardon the pun.

6. My attempts at curbing my road rage include singing aloud with the song playing on the radio.

7. I always check beneath my bed for monsters before sleeping.

8. I'm obsessed with old foreign films and TV series.

The reclining buddha

My blog seems to have taken on a preponderance of Buddha but I'm just going in chronological order of all the places that I have visited. The reclining Buddha is housed in a Buddhist temple. When the Thai people die, their bodies are kept in the temple for a day,months or even years depending upon their affluence. The nobles and the kings have stupa's made for their tombs. The reclining buddha is around 40 meters long and I forgot how high it is, I'm thinking somewhere around 15 to 17 metres. Its made out of cement and gold plated, but its more awe inspiring than the golden buddha. The walls of the room in which the buddha lies is completely covered with murals, each one reciting some fact about buddha's life. These are some of the shots I managed to get.

The feet and the eyes of the reclining buddha is made of mother of pearl work. Below is a photo of the intricate work. I'm apologising right now for the slip shoddy camera work, but I'm no expert like moi or ash and it was the first time I was struggling with a digital camera. I'm afraid I didn't make better use of my resources.

This is a picture of one of the stone guards outside the temple.

The Golden Buddha

I'm back after a long hiatus onto the blogging scene. The blame rest on the shoulders of my Internet service providers who had cut me off for more than three weeks. For the next few weeks my blog is going to run a series on my far east trip. The very first place on my itinerary was Thailand and I absolutely love the country. One of the greatest tourist attractions in Thailand is the golden Buddha. Made of 550 ton of solid gold this statue was camouflaged with cement during the war with the Burmese. In recent years while carting it to Bangkok the crane that was lifting it, dropped it and uncovered the Buddha in solid gold. All I can is lucky was the man who dropped the Buddha, he must have become a national hero.

Its a dogs world after all

This is julie mahalingashetty. I've been invited to her birthday party on the 19th. Its her first birthday and she is very excited about it. Well I've always been a trifle scared of dogs, but I just can't help loving this one. She's the only one who has her very own profile on orkut. It can be seen here. The only fly in the ointment seems to be the birthday gift. Hmmm what do you give a one year old dog who's currently on the heat as her kooky owner terms it. Maybe a jangle to attract the dog next door?

A tangled web we weave

I am done with my examinating :) :) :). There is no greater bliss than penning down the last word on your last paper and knowing that you can come home and sleep for as long as you wish. During my exams I had occasion to notice the straits some of my fellow students employed in order to engage in a little dishonesty giving them a slight unfair advantage over their contemporaries. Since there is an inspection squad that arrives everyday and decides to do a body search of all the male students its not wise to store chits of papers on your self. An enterprising student made sure he arrived early, took his answer booklet, scribbled all the formulas written on a cheat sheet onto the rough page of his booklet and under my stunned gaze proceeded to eat his cheat sheet, managing to gulp it down with an air of concern. And i thought goats had no sense of taste!!!!!!! Another student decided to go one step further, he came to the hall with his pockets stuffed with chits but without taking a bath or washing his clothes. The squad member who moved close to check his pockets, beat a hasty retreat and none dared to check his activities from that day forth. Such were the comic reliefs in my hectic two weeks.

Marriage Madness

Scenario: The girl is struggling with a saree that she is forced to wear. She walks up clutching a tray full of cups brimming over with coffee, trips over the carpet launches the tray's contents into the lap of the prospective groom. A could be happy ever after which never will be. Now the question is, who is the villain of the piece. The saree or the carpet?

Daddy Long Legs

Today being father's day, I'm going to share this humurous poem that I shared with my father today. Somehow my father relishes humour more than sentiment.

Father William by Lewis Carroll

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"

This is more or less how many father and I interact, other than the fact that he never offered me any violence. And yes my endearment for him has always been "old man", seems impertinent, but papa loves it.

Below is a family photo that I love, taken when I was somewhere around one or two.

Currently me :(

This is what I am doing currently

This is what I would actually like to do