Welcome to the real world!

Congratulations, graduates.Welcome to the real world, where there isn't any summer vacation and Christmas holidays start on the night of December 24th and end shortly after the wrapping paper comes off.

It is a painful course that you are about to take. The lessons come unannounced! :)
But to aid you upon your entry into the real world, a few of your predecessors have compiled some sage advice. Heed the following words well. They will do you much more good than all your homework.

IN THE REAL WORLD


Never answer an advertisement seeking a "liberal room-mate." You probably are not that liberal.
Having a drink with the boys every night after work is a bad idea. Notice that the boss doesn't do it. That's why he is the boss and they're the boys.
Buy an alarm clock that works! :P
They aren't kidding when they say, "Wash whites separately."
Never date a women whose father calls here "Princess." Chances are, she believes it.
Never date a man who still goes shopping with his mother.
Life insurance is best for married people; otherwise, the chief beneficiary is the life-insurance company.
Eat good meals. Greasy snacks take their toll.
If you don't like your job, quit. Otherwise, shut up.
If you get invited to a wedding, send a gift. Otherwise, don't expect a crowd when your turn comes!
Be nice to ordinary people. You are still one of them!
Never date someone you work with. Especially the boss.
No one sells a car because it runs too well.
At some point in your life, your family will be all you have. Treat them right.
Everyone is lonely at times. Learning to deal with it is part of growing up.
The only thing worse than asking people how much money they make is telling them how much you make.
Dirty laundry never goes away.
If you make a mess of things, admit it.

Hurry up and learn patience! :)

The urge to pass this excellent article as my own was tremendous. But, it is in fact written by Wes Smith for Reader's digest such a long time ago that the pages of the book are now yellow! The book is called, "HOW TO BE EVEN MORE SUCCESSFUL". It doesn't contain the usual boring jargon-filled motivational articles, but contains real life situations and solutions and draws conclusions from the actions of the people involved.

The people involved range from the African-American tennis champ Arthur Ashe to Dale Carnegie(How to win friends and influence people) to the original ad guru David Ogilvy to Lee Iaccoca(Ford and Chrysler are what they are today because of him).

Signing off with this excellent quote from the same book.

" I think the help that a man gets from a good wife is like nothing else in the world. And that's where our superiority over women comes in: we can have a good wife, they can't!".

Yeah, the books has a lot of witty humor! ;)

Our Accident!

Accident, Ramesh Arvind's new movie has got some really good reviews. Most newspapers said that the suspense-thriller genre was being revisited after a long time, great movie, don't miss etc etc... As u might have guessed already, I, along with my friends decided to go watch it.

The omens were bad. Holla said he wouldn't come. He said his head ached. At 10 in the morning! Hard to believe.

I was the first to reach the theater and I had about Rs.150 with me. I thought I would be able to buy 4 tickets with such an amount. But, the ticket price is Rs.40 per head! So, I had to wait for the others to arrive. After a few phone calls, Ravi and Akshith arrived, sooner than they would have :)

Ravi bought the tickets!

We paid him back of course :)

Adarsh as always was the last to arrive. We went in. Someone tripped on the steps and had a great fall! The usual banter went on until Priety Zinta gets up and has a bath in the BSNL ad. Whistles from all corners.

Next up, we see this certificate.

Name: Mr. Garagasa (18) U
etc......

Akshith is all worked up.
"Lo, Mr.Garagasa anthe".
I said, "Trailer bhaiya".

What happened next had those sitting next to/above/below us in a fit of laugher!

It was actually Mr.Garagasa!

Akshith:"THUUUUUUUU, Garagasa kan ro".

Me: "LS ticket thogonda, he should have asked".

LS: "Nangenu gotilla, nan bari ticket togonde"

Me:"Lo, bartha posters nodknod bande. Ella kade Ranjit and Gayatri antha hakidru".

Adarsh:"Lo, theaterli ellu Accident postere irlilla, neevu estu confident aagi helidralla antha nanu sumnidde!". He says this now!

Akshith: "Enro madodu eega".

Me:"In enu, lets watch this thing".

LS: "Satya in love thara aaghodre?".

No one listed to wat he said. We were all busy doing different things. Akshith asks the person sitting in front of us " Idu accident alwa?" (Pun intended :) ) He replies,"Illa, Mr.Garagasa".

LS asks the same to the person sitting next to him. He says" Ivattu shukravara, film change!"
Adarsh is fiddling with his mobile(he always does that when he is worked up) and i am actually trying to watch the movie!

The first 20 minutes were actually good. Some idiot kept shouting "Bheja Fry remakeu, scene to scene...." Another person sitting next to Ravi was laughing as though this was the comedy movie of the year! Have to admit though, some parts of the movie were really hilarious!

Then started this "sakkat ಕುಯ್ತನೆ" thing. We actually got bored.

During the Intermission

Akshith: "Lo, hogana banni. Saku! Thumba peteelu".

Me:"Dud kot aaythalla, nodabidona".

Akshith:"Photo tegyana? Accident badlu Garagasa nodid aaythu antha hakobahudu. LS digicam tegi".

LS has this should-I or should-I-not look on his face.

Adarsh: "Mobile alle tegithini bido".

We also get the good news that it'll be a mass bunk in the afternoon!

Akshith and Adarsh click a lot of pics.

"Shuru aaythu".

Someone:"Avn hendthi bandlu. Evnu Mandakini anthane...he he he"! (Something to do with the movie....this show people could second guess what would happen. I have such movies)

We get busy with the movie again.

As expected, the ending was quite senti and LS had these waterlogged eyes which Akshith made sure he would show to anyone who cared to look at anything but the movie.

The biggest joke of course was when, after the movie, Adarsh said," Ninne nanu Holla band kelkond hodvi. Garagasa anthane heldru.Accident Ranjitli matra".
He says this now. Again! :)

No title! :P

I got the date of joining mail from the company i am placed in today. The jargon in the mail was quite a put-off, but it's now confirmed that I will be yet another software engineer in an already 'busting-at-the-seams' Bangalore, come mid July.

I might as well add "Stereotype software engineer" to my about me! :P

A Page 1 story on TIMES OF INDIA (Bangalore Edition) some days ago claimed that all freshmen recruits would have to wait for three months to one year before they could join the company which recruited them. The reason of course was the sub-prime crisis, slowdown, blah!

Now, this led to a lot of problems. It got uncles, aunts, relatives and other well wishers excited. It didn't help when a friend told my mother that Infy DOJ is somewhere in December. My father thought I would spend three months in front of the PS2! How I wish I could do that! :)

Everyone wanted to know when i would be joining.
They just wouldn't take 'I don't know' as an answer!

"Why don't you send a mail to the HR" said one aunt.

Another said, "Ask that senior who works there".


Well, I somehow managed to stay away from their pestering for some time. Now that I've got this mail, it'll be very interesting to see how they react!

Obscura/Libre open source fest

Obscura/Libre( i couldn't figure out the name of the fest as the organizers had used both the names!!) fest went unnoticed! I believe the organizers could have done better, especially with the publicity campaign. Nevertheless, i had a great time. :)

There were some very good events related to open source and a fine game design contest to boot for the coding aficionados. I won both the Open Source Quiz and the Linuz Quiz. Adarsh, for a change, was a reliable team mate! :) (Aashith, for some reason chose not to attend) . Adarsh won the Cryptix event with some help from me. :)

Here i post some of the questions that were asked:

Google's headquarters. (Sitter)
Logo's of various open source companies.
Expand GIMP, GRUB, GNOME...standard questions. Wiki for the answers.
Expand BOFH: Bastard operator from hell (I believe i was the only one who got this! Wiki for more details :) )
A question on the Alien package manager etc....

Ravi LS was disappointed for not having won any event. He had some 'covering' issues! :)

There were lots of talks, by Google, Mozilla etc. I didn't attend them. I don't attend talks. They are boring.

That's it. :)