Book Meme

Meme - an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

One of my friends on LiveJournal www.livejournal.com/~demonicdiaries tagged me to do this.
So here goes

As far as I can remember, I have always been a voracious reader. When I was a kid, I used to read comics (Nagraj,Dhruv stuff) and some classics. After clearing JEE, I had a month with nothing to do. At that time I discovered English novels and did not look back. I have read anything and everything that came my way ranging from Sidney Sheldon to Ayn Rand. Now I am moving towards more serious reading like GOST, Catch 22, To Kill a Mocking Bird etc and autobiographies.

Total No. of Books I Own: hmm around 35 (my own). Not counting comics & books owned by family members

Last Book I Bought: 27 books from B'lore :)). Last One is Straight From Dell

Last Book I Read: Dude, Where is My Country by Michael Moore

Book Currently Reading: Contact by Carl Sagan

Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me:
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Without doubt, the best book I've read. Couldn't keep it down. Had to complete it in a single seating. Missed classes but who cares. The lines, the personalities, the incidents. Everything is mindboggling

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
A book about dreaming and believing & following your dreams. Philosophy with a difference

Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Books about living for urself and standing up for what u think is right. Unforgettable characters like Howard Roark, Dagny Taggart, Fransisco D' Anaconia, Hank Rearden

Love Story by Erich Segal
130 page book touching u deep inside.

Sherlock Holmes
The series that got me hooked to reading. Still the best detective reads of all times

Harry Potter Series
Preference List - IV, II, III, I, V


Noteworthy mentions :
Harry Potter Series(IV,II,III,I,V)
(Pure fun and enjoyment. Anybody, who won't want to live in that world of magic ? )
7 Habbits of Highly Effective People
Chicken Soup for the soul
Lord of the Rings
Michael Crichton books (Sphere, Timeline,Jurassic Park, The Lost World)
1984, Animal Farm
John Grisham(The Partner, The Rainmaker, The Firm)

Wish List : Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Five People You Meet in Heaven, A Beautiful Mind, Pride and Prejudice

I tag everyone who reads this to put this on their own blog.

Third feather in our cap

Firstly, let me apologize to our fans for the delay in our next composition. Instead of wasting our energies on all kinds of possibilities, we have decided to concentrate on writing 6 line poems. A 14 line poem is referred to as a sonnet and hence we had to find a name for this new genre of poetry. We decided to keep our modesty and humility aside for this one (how many times in ur life do u get to name a work on art on urself ?) and name it on ourselves. So henceforth, we will refer to our creations i.e. 6 line chat poetry as Kasper (Kaddy + Super). here goes our next creation

On a rainy day in June.

Thinking since afternoon

Seeing Joshi the baboon

Looks of a cartoon

Beware of this moroon
Has evolution happened too soon ?

Signed

Kaddy & Super

Your invaluable comments on helping us to further improve upon our skills (although as a dialogue in our fav movie goes Perfection is difficult to improve upon) are most welcome.

PS: For those of u who think we misspelled moron, it has been done on purpose to keep the rhyming scheme. Gr8 poets do it all the time. :)

Disclaimer: All characters and names in this work of art are purely fictional. Any resemblance to a person living or dead is fully coincidental. :))

Fate/Luck/Coincidences

Every man has but one destiny - The Godfather

Is the world governed by some supreme power and the everything is predecided with 'luck' being used to enforce its will ? Or actions of a person decide how his life is going to shape up? I guess everyone thinks of these questions sometimes.

People believing in the former hypothesis are sometimes referred to as fatalists i.e. people believing in fate while the believers of the latter hypothesis can be classified as atheists. Some of you might be wondering about the sudden change of mood in my blogs from comic/humor to philosophy. I will tell u the reason behind this

I prepared for JEE in Kota as a student of Bansal Classes. However, I somehow also came in touch with R K Verma Sir and Dr B V Rao, teachers of Physics & Chemistry respectively at Resonance, Bansal's rival class. Both of them are very good teachers (perhaps in the top three of their teaching field) but more importantly they are one of the best people I have met. I did not study much with Verma sir but the little time I spent with me left indelible impressions about his personality especially his modesty and simplicity.

I know this narration is getting a bit lengthy but jsut bear with me for some more time

In my I year at IITR, I came in contact with Arun Sharma. We didn't seem to have anything in common but somehow we just clicked off. We used to spend quite some time 2gether. At the end of I year, he reappeared in JEE and left Roorkee for Kharagpur and we lost contact.

One night, I am just loitering in landmark in Forum (A mall in B'lore) and am stunned to see Verma sir standing just outside the shop. It had been 3 years since I had seen him and I had to be sure. But once I was sure, I had to go up to him and talk to him. Needless to say, he didn't remember me but still it felt good to just be able to talk to him even if for a few minutes.

Yesterday, i.e. Sunday I am just relaxing in my room reading a novel and there is a call from an unknown no. I pick it up (free incoming) and a voice from there says "May I speak with Supriy Shah". I was not used to being talked to like this on phone and replied "Yeah, Supriy here". And the voice says "This is Arun, I m doing my training in IISc Bangalore. Can we meet ?" The feeling cannot be put down in words but we ended up meeting each other and started up right after where we left 2 yrs earlier.

After these two examples,back to the original question. Fatalists will say Makhtub:It's written while atheists will say that all this was just coincidence. This is the real difference between fatalists and atheists other than their beliefs, isn't it ?

So let's have a discussion on this. I am not exactly a fatalist but I trust that there is something beyond normal human understanding that plays a pivotal role in outcome of the events. Some might call it luck, others might call it coincidence but I guess everyone believes that life cannot be defined totally using Mathematical equations or principles of Physics. Let's hear ur side too !

Bond Gets Shock of His Life

For the uninitiated, we at IIT Roorkee have nick names for almost everyone. These nick names might be twisted names, describing certain aspect of the personality or may be just random e.g. Tarun Bansal being named Bond.
Yestrday, Bond tried to act like Bond by coming online on YM but being invisible. I can't imagine the shock he had when I sent him an IM. He started like "How did you know I was here". I told him intution but he didn't buy that. He kept asking and I kept deflecting the question. Finally, I had to tell him, how I did it? The solution was so absurdly simple that he must have been kicking himself as he lost a treat over it. :))
On another note, I completed Veronika decides to Die by Paulo Coelho. Its a very good book and almost as good as The Alchemist. I shall be putting up its review soon. After this, I have started Dude, Where is my country by Michael Moore. Its another of Moore's satire on George Bush's presidency with chapters named like "How to stop Terrorism ? Stop Being a Terrorist".
Bangalore having a very good market of second hand books has spoiled me. I plan to get few CEO books as well as some books I've wanted for as long as I can remember e.g. Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.

Completion of III weeks at B'lore

Well, another weekend comes up. This weekend, Ankit was going to be in Bangalore and stay with us.
On Saturday (we have a half day)we are working in the office. There is no electricity since morning but the UPS was standing up. We leave for lunch, come back and voila! the UPS backup is out. So no electricity and we ppl in the office start chatting while we wait for electricity. Swapped stories about college life, music interests, movies etc. There was no electricity till 3.30 and we left.
Back home, I continued reading Executive Orders by Tom Clancy. Its the biggest book I've ever read at 1358 pages and I shall be putting up its review on
http://superpassions.blogspot.com
Baveja arrived in the evening and we all went to MG Road to loiter around. There were a total of 5 of us and we had fun. Afterwords we came back and all 5 stayed in our room only. At night, we played cards till 4 am and went to sleep.
Sunday morning, we woke up at 12 noon, got ready by 1.30 and went for lunch. After lunch, went to Raghav's room because he has a TV and DVD player. Watched Munnabhai MBBS before leaving for The Forum to catch Mr & Mrs Smith show at 7.30 pm
Mr & Mrs Smith is easily one of the worst English movies I've seen. Except Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, there is nothing in the movie. Absurd storyline, lame direction and everything against it. So give it a skip unless u are a diehard Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie fan. Afterwords, ate at Pizza Hut and everyone went back their ways except Ankit & Sumit who stayed with us. Ankit will be with us till Wednesday and Sumit didn't want to go back so late as he lives at another corner of Bangalore. At night, watched Dil Chahta Hai on Ankit's laptop and went to sleep. Unfortunately, I ended up sleeping on the floor for past two days in a row. I managed to get my hands on Dude, Where is my country by Michael Moore. Will post the review of this book as soon as I complete it on the same blog that has been mentioned above.

PS: Bad news. Came to know that Bong was diagnosed with viral fever and typhoid. So he's been hospitalized in Hyderabad. Hope he gets well soon.

Poetry with a Message

Here it comes. After a day of rest, the creative juices are back. With extremely good weather in Indore & Bangalore (cool, rainy) me and Kaddy get back together to pen the second chat poetry of our lives
Our first poem was just an expression of our feelings at that moment of time i.e. it was spontaneous. Now we are writing with a plan. So here goes the starting para of our latest poem

It is raining outside

Let us go for a ride

Or wanna have fun inside

I promise I'll always abide

What u wanna do, u decide

Signed

Super & Kaddy

The poetry is not yet complete. Once we complete it, we'll come out with a title and also what it means and stuff. This is just to satisfy the appetite of our legions of fans, who wait with abated breath for our work.

First Chapo in B'lore

Finally, we managed to get hold of a senior in Bangalore. That too, Mr Amit Aggarwal. The big fish of the batch of 2003-04. We caught him one day in Forum, called him up the next day and party was finalized.

So yesterday, we met at 7 pm in Forum. While waiting for Amit sir to show up, I ran into R K Verma Sir, proprietor Resonance and one of my teachers in Kota while preparing for JEE. He didn't remember me (I expected that) but still it felt nice to meet him and talk to him after so many years. Finally Amit sir showed up and we four (me, Joshi, Raghav and Sir) went to MG Road for dinner.

There we decided to go for Chinese food and went to Three Quarters Chinese. Once again, B'lore traffic played havoc and it took us half an hour and many rounds of the area to find a place to park our car.Three Quarters Chinese is similar to an ethical Chinese restaurant with Indian staff but the whole menu had weird Chinese names for various dishes e.g. Chap Choi Tobanjan (Combo of Vegetables in Hot Garlic Sauce), Chun Quin (Veg Spring Rolls). Atleast they had given the names/description in English or we all would have been stumped.

The food was good but the bill amount must be astronomical. We all felt a little guilty but there was nothing we could have done at that point of time. Thankfully, Amit Sir is leaving B'lore till 28th so this will give us time to get this over this and be ready for him when he returns.

Our First Chat Poetry

For those, who have been following my blog would have guessed that I belong the category of ppl who like to have their share of fun while working. So 2day in the evening, Kaddy and I were chatting. Firstly we teased Joshi and then Kaddy went for a coffee. After that, we compiled a poem on coffee on YM (Bet this is one use of Yahoo Messenger even the creators won't have thought off) So here it is, Supriy & Kaddy's first chat poem. Hope this is one of many

Free Coffee By My Side

Cannot keep my happiness inside

That coffee machine is my pride

Dreading the arrival of my guide

This addiction is the starting point of my slide

Always wash clothes with detergent Tide, Tide, Tide

Signed

Super & Kaddy

Some of you might think that this is junk or waste of time. But maybe after 20 years this poem will sell as the first poem written by Super & Kaddy, the greatest English poet duo of Modern Era. and certainly the first to herald the coming of a new genre of English Poetry - Chat Poetry

Amen

Mohan's Birthday

Monday, 6 June was Abhishek Mohan's birthday. Me and Joshi called him up in the morning to wish him and he invited us to Pizza Hut (MG Road) for dinner and afterwards to movie, D. We agreed happily to this. We didn't know what we were getting into.

Reached Pizza Hut at 7.45 pm and had to wait for 15 minutes for the Ti ppl to show up (Mohan, Nema, Manu, Shilpaand a guy from IITD whose name I forgot to ask). That with us four - me, Joshi, m/c and Raghav made it 9 ppl. Ppl started to go berserk whild ordering and Mohan clarified that he won't pay more than 600 bucks. We agreed to this (why I don't know) and ordered as if we were starving.

In the end, Mohan ended up paying 700 bucks and each of the other ppl ended up paying, hold ur breath 75 bucks each. This is more than what me and Joshi spend in Pizza Hut if we go there by ourself. To rub salt in the wound, we could not go and see D as we were already delayed.

Moral of the Story :- Never go to Mohan's chapo in Pizza Hut and if u go, try and keep ppl under control while ordering

The Reason Gerrard shud stay at Anfield

This is a post I came across in a Forum on ESPNStar on why Gerrard shud stay. gr8 Post

As a lifetime AC Milan fan, with a Liverpool supporting girlfriend, I would like to give you my view on Steven Gerrard and his future at Liverpool. Steven Gerrard: 24 years old, Liverpool captain, from Merseyside, a homegrown talent. Now, I believe most of you reading have played football when kids (some of you are probably still playing now, like me, in those cold Sunday mornings, in some local amateur league, sorting out the nets, the money for the ref, bringing home muddy boots for the missus' delight...). We all started in the same fashion and so did Mr Gerrard: in the streets and in the school playgrounds, with jumpers for goalposts, spending hours arguing wether the ball was or wasn't gone over a bar that wasn't there to begin with. Preferring a game of football with your mates to anything else that there was in life. And if we weren't playing football... we would be watching it. Whether you were a striker or a defender, whether you were good or bad, whether you were you or you were Steven Gerrard the dream was one for all of us: TO WEAR THE LIVERPOOL SHIRT AND THE CAPTAIN'S ARMBAND AT ANFIELD IN FRONT OF THE KOP You can change that to AC Milan and the San Siro if for me. I am sure every single one of you had that dream of putting on the Red shirt and the armband. Some of you probably still do! Well, so did Steven Gerrard. This is why as a neutral I can not understand nor tolerate the fact that the guy is even thinking of a career outside Liverpool! Can you? Being captain of your own team at the age of 24, playing Champions League football ... is that not enough? If Gerrard was to stay he almost certainly will be Liverpool captain for another 10 years. He will almost certainly win trophies in the next 10 years. He will be Liverpool greatest player during his nearly 20 years with the club's first team. He will be a legend. He will probably be remembered as the best Liverpool player ever. He will be what Franco Baresi has been to Milan. Does anyone know what Baresi did in the early eighties? Here's what has happened: At 14 Baresi joins Milan after Inter (where is older brother was playing) rejected him, how foolish of them! He makes his debut very young and in 1979 wins the title with Milan. A couple of years later Milan gets relegated from Serie A to Serie B. The club is in a mess having being involved in match fixing and the club's owner ran away. The club was in total crisis, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel was impossible. A few weeks later city's rival Inter make an offer for Baresi and Baresi's partner in the middle of the defence Collovati. Straight away Collovati joins Inter. A then very young Baresi (21-22) is made captain of a falling giant. He's regarded by most as the best young talent of his generation and the 1982 World Cup is around the corner. Staying with Milan playing in Serie B would probably jeopardise his chances of going to the World Cup. Joining Inter would mean playing alongside his brother and enjoying the race for title every season at a club flushed with money. Collovati had no doubt in his mind that the right choice was to join Inter. But what did Baresi do? The similarity with the Steven Gerrard's situation was so big I had to write this article. Liverpool are nowhere near as bad as AC Milan was in the early eighties. What should Steven Gerrard do? What did Franco Baresi do? I am sure most of you know what Baresi did but I'll tell you anyway: HE STAYED AT MILAN! He played for them in Serie B. He was so good he was picked for the World Cup squad anyway. Milan won the Serie B league and came straight up only to go down again one season later. More offers came in for Baresi. Did he regret his original choice? Did he join Inter, Juve? Did he? Of course he didn't. He played for Milan in Serie B again. That's what I call a man! In the following years with Milan he won promotion and then went on to win the European Cup three times (now better known as Champions League), he won the Intercontinental Cup twice, the European Super Cup 3 times, the Italian League 5 times (to add to the win in 1979), and played a total of 5 European Cup Finals. He became for every Milan fan 'Il Capitano' (The Captain, capital T and capital C). When he retired from football in 1997 the club not only organised a match for him in the San Siro where 85,000 paying supporters saw him and the Milan players play the likes of Maradona, Romario, Careca, Koeman, Mattheus but also the jersey with the number 6, the number he worn for so many years, was retired as well. No more Milan players will ever wear the number 6 (this week has been announced that the same will happen with Paolo Maldini's number 3 when he retires). Thinking forward should Gerrard commit himself to Liverpool for life? I can not see why he shouldn't be able to experience the same glory and all time legendary status. It all goes back to that one dream we had when we were playing in the streets. The day that dream ends football will end with it. I wish Steven Gerrard will realize this. By the way: how many of you knew who Collovati was? To Milan fans he's a traitor, that's all, who left the club in their hour of need. I have to wash my mouth every time I say his name. Baresi in contrast is an immortal.

Overhyped Bangalore

Now that I have been in Bangalore for 10 days, it allows me to have a more objective look at the city. Is bangalore really what it is claimed to be ? Indian silicon valley. The fifth metro etc. The place where everybody wants to work.
I don't agree with these analysis. Yeah Bangalore is fun but there are only so many times you can go to Forum, roam on MG Road or Brigade Road. What else to do ?
Firstly, the plus points. The weather is gr8. Enthusiasm and informal work culture are surely a positive thing and the crowd and eateries too.
But the traffic is pathetic. I mean I have seen more traffic jams here in 10 days than in the last 10 years of my life. To cover 2 kms from office to home at 7 pm takes 45 min. Moreover, electricity problems. Whenerver, it rains electricity is cut off and we are left in the darkness. Is this what an international city is ? I don't think so
My analysis might be wrong. After coming from a place like Roorkee and hearing so much about B'lore, I might have been expecting a lot. But in this case, I got less than I expected