Friends, Cards and Kasper

I realized one fact of life about a year ago. I feel closer to my friends from school days than most of my friends from either Kota or Roorkee. Let me clarify this statement in the subsequent paragraphs

I spent my whole school life in the same school. That means I spent 14 yrs in the same institution. In my school days, I was a lot different from what I am now in almost all things e.g my thinking, my hobbies, my perceptions to name a few. Things started to change when I went to Kota to prepare for JEE leaving the security of home. After that, I ended up in Roorkee for my studies. Throughout the course of my studies, I made friends and continue to do this even now.

Most of my friends from school remained in Indore and developed a different kind of personality. This resulted in a difference of attitude towards things, different interests, different perceptions etc. For example, most of my friends are not soccer or F1 fans, almost none of them listen to rock music, read a lot or surf the net. However, my friends from Roorkee and Kota share my interests, perceptions etc. Logically speaking, my comfort level with my friends from Roorkee & Kota should be higher than the one I share with my friends from school.

However, as I mentioned I still feel more comfortable around friends from school. The peculiar thing is that I don't differentiate between friends i.e. all my friends mean the same to me.
I don't know abt opinion of other ppl on this matter. Plz share ur opinion on this & also the reason behind it.

About the second part of the title. On Tues night, eight of us decided to meet at a friend's place for 3 or 4 hrs. The get together started a bit late at 10 pm. What is the best way to pass time when friends are 2gether ? Cards. We brought out the cards and started to play Flash

At 1:30 AM, we packed up and decided to leave. But my family forbid me to travel at so late an hour and so did families of most the friends too. Hence, we ended up playing cards for the whole night :D. It ended at 7:30 AM in the morning. To sum it up, it was a gr8 way to get to meet the friends and spend time with them (Although, I am pretty much sure that my family shall disagree with me)

Finally, to all the fans of our Kaspers. Now that I am in Indore, I get to surf the net late at night and my FG, Kaddy does that in the daytime. We don't get to chat enough to prepare a Kasper. Sensing ur disappointment, we decided to meet in person to compose the next masterpiece. However, we found that its not possible to compose a Kasper in person. We couldn't do it inspite of our best efforts ! Guess Chat Poetry can be done only thru messenger.

We apologize for letting you down. Once our colleges start, we won't be able to do so even more. Hence, our next Kasper could be delayed by a year. But we'll be back. We promise. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the programmers of Yahoo Messenger without whom, Kaspers wouldn't have been possible.

Indore Diary

It has been a week since I have been in Indore. If I would have landed up straight at Roorkee from Bangalore, the culture shock might have been a little too much to bear. Indore is serving as a middle ground to ease the shock.
Our last night in Bangalore was the most awesome night of the stay. Office guys took us out for dinner and we had a blast. That was when I found out that 3 ppl from our office belonged to a Rock Band. One was bass guitarist, one vocals and one lead guitarist. I am so glad that we went to Bangalore instead of trying to remain at home.
Life at home has been decent at best. Firstly, my friends had seen all the movies and so I was left with no company for movies. Also, most of my friends have graduated now and were trying for admissions in respective PG courses with no time to spare. Soccer season has not yet started and so no matches.
But all is not that bleak. I get to spend time with my family, I get gr8 food and can fight with my younger bro.
After a week of lethargy, I finally got to see Sarkar. It’s a pretty good movie. In case any of you are interested, I will review it pretty soon on Literature & Movies blog (Link in my blog roll).
I got to see a F1 race 2day after a loooong time. McLaren have truly overtaken Ferrari as the leaders of F1. I know that Renault & Alonso are leading McLaren and Kimi but still I have a feeling that this year is McLaren’s year. Alonso has won 5 races this year. In the past two races, Kimi was punished by 10 positions in qualifying but still finished on the podium. In one race, there was some problem with Kimi’s tyres and he had to retire when he was leading Alonso by a comfortable margin. Add to this the fact that McLaren were favourite to win the US Grand Prix and it is clear that it is fate which is against Kimi.
Anyways, 2day the winner was Montoya. Since I started following F1, I have maintained that Montoya is one of the best drivers on the circuit but has never been able to do justice to his talent. 2day he proved his talent by leading Alonso for most of the race. Hope he continues in the same form.
I know this has been a pretty arbit post with me jumping between topics. Its more of a diary entry than a blog. Hope u ppl don’t mind.

Au Revoir Bangalore

First Impression is the Last Impression

This has never been true in my case. Hence I don't judge people based on first impressions. But I made this mistake with Bangalore
I criticized Bangalore in one of my posts. I was new to place, a bit apprehensive and didn't know neplace to get good North Indian food. Add to this the chronic traffic jams and one ways, I concluded Bangalore was overhyped.
But Bangalore grows on you. Give it time and the only one place in India where u would like to settle permanently is Bangalore.
With time (6 weeks to be precise), I have fallen in love with this city. The positives that this city has far outweighs the negatives.
Firstly,the people.Everyone I met in Bangalore can be described in one word, cool. The office guys (Vidyuth, Sandeep, Jayanth, Ravi, Akshay, Aashray, Keshav, Joel and anybody I might have missed) with whom I could discuss movies, rock music, books,soccer, F1 and computer games (obviously) as easily as with my friends top the list. The young crowd means there is an informal atmosphere everywhere ( Ever worn a GnR/Cobain T-shirt to office ?).
Imagine spending summers under covers with fan turned off. That's Bangalore for you in summers. With temperature hovering around the 25 degree mark in May-June, u always feel fresh and full of enthusiasm & energy.
The only negative that Bangalore has is traffic. Jams are a usual occurance and every other road is a One Way. One ways should be renamed as Bangalores.
So what did I gain from Bangalore. Lots of things, namely
1. Got to know lots of gr8 people
2. Met people I had not met for 2 yrs or more (Rahul, Bhawani, Arun, RK Verma Sir)
3. Made my first e-mail pal
4. Developed the new hobby of Blogging :D
5. Got back in touch with school friends through chatting
6. Bought 35 books (My family is gonna be mad at me)
7. Discovered a FG (Fellow Genius)
8. Me & my FG invented and developed the latest genre of poetry, Kasper (my crowning achievement from this place)
and ofcourse I learnt game development (which was the primary reason for me coming here).
All this Bangalore experience would have been a waste without two people - Joshi & Raghav.
Joshi was with me in all the experiences. I can't thank him enough for that. He also woke me in the morning for office ;) or else... Thanks Joshi for everything
Raghav, well if he wasn't there, me and Joshi might have been the only two ppl and would have gone tired of each other :D.

Time to sign off from Bangalore and go back to IIT R for the last step of that journey. Au Revoir Bangalore. The new title of my Blog is as relevant to IIT R as it is for Bangalore

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. :))