Back in Mordor

It is surprising how your views suddenly change in lieu of an extension. It was only the day before yesterday that I was sorting through all my stuff to figure out what to take home and what not to. Every item that I put in or put away evoked in me a memory of times past. I even started reminiscing about the courses done and the Prof.s encountered as I sorted through books. It was one of those flash back moments where the character gets all sentimental and retrospective for no reason at all and starts thinking of himself as Frodo leaving the Middle Earth after the arduous journey to destroy the ring. The moment my Prof gave me an extension for the project I was back to my non-sentimental, irritated self again. Now I feel like Frodo stuck at the top of Mount Doom, back under the power of the ring. Aaah!

Disturbed Childhood

This one is being written just for the sake of keeping the blog alive. This is the effect of a weekend that was rendered useless and boring because of the continuous downpour, incessant deadlines and a few very tough exams.

There have been countless songs written about the beauty of rain, the amorous effect of rain and even on as mundane topics as the usefulness of rain. I daresay any of these song writers were from IIT Madras. As the lingo goes, Rain is a Pain here in IITM. Let me tell you why.

Even I love the rain, but only when I don't have to wake up at 7:40 in the morning, find the clothes on line drenched, miss the bus, wade through acres of slush, get water splashed all over by a freshie on a bicycle or the CCW guy on the Luna, both of whom pretend to be very punctual, to be finally put to sleep by the Prof's droning voice. Oh yes, I only love rain when there are hot pakoda's waiting for me, only when the classes get canceled on the pretext of rain and only when I can cozy up in my bed without having to worry about any deadlines.

This was a particularly gloomy Friday afternoon, a very rare instance I must say. The rain had rendered everyone 'enthuless' for every constructive activity. So instead of going to a nice restaurant to satisfy our appetite we just went to the mess to kill it. I was walking back from the mess along with two other friends X and Y after the expectedly insipid meal. X, who nowadays has a perpetual grin on his face because of some intern he had got, remarked on the disturbed childhood he had. He paused expecting a reaction from us and upon getting none continued to elaborate more on the events that had led to his disturbed childhood.

"I always lost at cricket.", he said. The grin had now disappeared. Still not getting a favorable reaction from us, he continued.
"You see, we always divided up as two teams while playing cricket, my younger cousin and me in one team while the other had my neighbor's kid and an elder cousin. The younger cousin didn't play cricket well and so we used to lose every match. That really affected my confidence. I really had a disturbed childhood."

By the time he completed his narration of his childhood disturbances, which believe me was pretty long, we had reached our wing. In spite of my incessant complaints about the deadlines I had to meet both of them barged into my room. X made himself comfortable in my recliner and mused about his childhood while Y stretched himself out on the bed and started observing us with an uncanny concentration.

"So Boof (not my favorite nick name), why don't tell us more about yours? I am sure you would have had a disturbed childhood seeing how skewed you are." said X, much to my indignation.

I protested vehemently against the view that I was skewed but X just wouldn't give up. But I had to get them out of my room and the only way to do that was to give them what they wanted, a story about my disturbed childhood. While all this was happening Y remained silent being content with just listening and observing. It was then that I realized that he was taking notes mentally.

I probably should tell you a little more about Y. He is a Maadu, a Marvadi in other words. This should tell the people acquainted with the Maadu lore all that they need to know about Y's character. But for the benefit of people who do not possess this knowledge (I sincerely advice you to acquire it at the earliest possible) let me talk about a few important things of the lore.
1) Maadu's always observe, maybe for some personal gain or maybe just to tell a story about the event elsewhere.
2) They never truly narrate what they observe. You can be sure that at least a part of the story is either made up or modified to meet their needs.
Now that I have equipped you with some knowledge about Y let's proceed.

So it was to an expectant looking X with the grin back on his face, and to a Maadu intensely taking notes, that I narrated my story.

My dad had bought me a TV video on my 7th birthday. Those prehistoric things that you could plug into your TV and play Mario and Contra on. And now I always ate my food very slowly, so on weekdays whenever we got back from school my elder brother wouldn't let me play the video game till I ate my food. To add to this he used to play only one game, baseball, which for me was boring to play and excruciatingly painful to watch him play while I was stuck eating the much hated spinach and broccoli. By the time I finally finished my food my parents would be home and then I was thrown out of the house to go play outside when all I wanted to do was to allow my brain to rot in front of the Video game.

On the weekends all the neighborhood boys, who sole aim in life seemed to be to prevent me from playing the Video game, used to descend on our humble abode like a swarm of bees.

My mom would say, "You play it everyday. Let them play as well."

With this one statement I would be deprived of the rights to play my video and would be confined to derive vicarious pleasure while they saved the princess in Mario. So the Video game that was gifted to me was always out of my reach.

Thus I concluded my story. Y was busy memorizing every detail while X was staring at me with an even wider grin.

"Good. But not enough trauma." he said.

Not enough trauma? Dude, I was seven years old, how much trauma do you expect me to face?

He was adamant and said that it was not disturbing enough. This hurt my sentiments. My suffering wasn't disturbing enough for you? X and Y got up to leave. I stopped them. Yes, I initially wanted them out of my room but now I wouldn't let them go without proving to them and making them believe that I had a more disturbing childhood than them. No one messes with my childhood. How dare they ridicule my trauma.

It was with a hurt pride that I started on my second story.

This was in my sixth class. I loved reading books. Ya, clichéd, I know. But nevertheless I really liked reading books in my school days. So I used to borrow books a lot of books from the library. After some days, for reasons unknown, the librarian refused to lend me books. She had imposed a restriction that I borrow no more than one book a week. As a result I used to borrow a book every Monday, finish by Wednesday and spend the rest of the week in boredom and in search of books to read.

To add to this after sometime my parents came to the conclusion that I was only ever reading novels/ comics and hardly ever touching my notebooks and textbooks. They decided that the way to rectify this was to restrict my reading of novels. This way even when I could finally lay my hands on a book I wouldn't be allowed to read it without interruptions from my parents and my brother who never lost a chance to snatch the book from me. I probably would have been a young Guy de Maupassant by now if not for all this trauma.

This time they truly were impressed. Both of them expressed consent that I had the most disturbed childhood of the three. We sat in silence ruminating about our childhood troubles and slowly came to conclusion that all of us have had a disturbed childhood. We were roused out of this reverie by the sudden recollection of the ever looming deadlines.

So all of us proceeded to go work to meet the deadlines.

X ended up watching Peeping Tom in his room, the Maadu was heard narrating this story to a group of people, of course with a lot of condiments added in, while I switched on my comp and started writing this.

A rant about Engineering Physics - 1 (the mild version)

I was genuinely interested in Physics or at least what I thought was physics before joining Engineering Physics at IIT Madras. That was the reason why despite having an AIR of 846 (with which I could have gotten better, sorry let me rephrase, more sought after branches) I decided to take Engineering Physics, B.Tech. Was this a mistake?

There were a lot of raised eyebrows at home when I decided to take EP, but what was more surprising was that there were more raised eyebrows at IIT Madras than at home. I thought that students at IIT are so passionate about what they do that they don't care which branch they are in and all that matters to them is their interest (When I told Mithun this a few days ago he laughed and said, "Dude, no matter where you go we are still human."). I was wrong. In the first few days I realized or rather was told that EP isn't exactly about Physics (the 11th, 12th JEE one, the interesting type) but more about Math (Quantum Mechanics only sounds interesting and intuitive when you don't get too deeply into it). The only way out of this, I was told, was to put a Branch Change or even a branch slide and somehow get out it. I thought, "These are the people who run away from their interests because the path is tough, noobs." So now after Three years of EP do I still feel the same?

No, I don't I wouldn't be writing this otherwise. In the second year I started to realize that Physics (as was taught here) wasn't what I wanted. It seemed more Math to me than the intuitive subject I used to like. Well of course it was foolish of me to expect it to remain as it was in 11th and 12th. At first I thought it was because I wasn't putting enough fight, then I realized that I didn't have enough enthusiasm and zeal for the subject to put fight. So I started looking for other things which I might like.

It’s a well known fact that EP students do a lot of courses in the Electrical Engineering Department. The Digital Signal Processing courses seemed interesting and those seemed to me the only sensible courses I was doing at that time, the rest being Physics courses which I didn't have a feel for. At the end of the second year I decided to do an intern related to DSP and see if I truly like it. It ended up being an intern with a bit of Image processing and a lot of Math thrown in. I ended up publishing a paper at the end of it though, and I had the Mathematical Physics course I did to thank for it (to a certain extent). So I decided to give Physics another try.

So in my 5th semester I did a few Physics courses, and in 6th semester took Quantum Mechanics 2 as a department elective when I could have taken some course in Electrical Engineering. I am glad I did that course because after that I was sure that that was not something I wanted to do. So I haven't taken a single Physics course after that and won't take one in the next semester, which will be my last.

Well, in the semester I was struggling with Quantum Mechanics 2 I was also doing a course on Advanced DSP and System Identification. Turned out I was decently good at them and that I liked them. So the following summer I chose an Internship with a DSP company (ITTIAM) over an Internship in BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre). I enjoyed the intern quite a bit, and this added with the fact that the company gave me a PPO (Pre-Placement Offer) made me like DSP a lot. So much that I am thinking of 'apping' in it.

So here’s the confusion. Do I like DSP just because I was better at it than I was at Physics? (Absolutely speaking I am not as good at it as the other 'studs') How do I know that I won't lose interest in it when I take an MS, as I did with Physics? What do I call myself after I pass out? An Electrical Engineer? Or A Physicist? Or An Engineering Physicist (I have rarely ever used Physics for Engineering, both the subjects were almost mutually exclusive)? Is this because of EP or would my situation have been the same even if I had taken some other branch?

Should students be forced to choose a specific branch when they are joining college? Shouldn’t they be allowed to do the courses you are interested in and then be awarded a degree based on them? There are Branch changes and Branch slides for people who want to do them but we know that not everyone gets to do them. Even there you have to choose a branch at the end of your first semester and by then you wouldn’t even have known what your current branch is like. So I guess ‘General Engineering’, which Prof.Bhaskar Ramamurthy once briefly mentioned in class in some other context, might the best way out of this.

The Warden.

The warden meets with 23 new prisoners when they arrive. He tells them, "You may meet today and plan a strategy. But after today, you will be in isolated cells and will have no communication with one another.

"In the prison is a switch room, which contains two light switches labeled 1 and 2, each of which can be in either up or the down position. I am not telling you their present positions. The switches are not connected to anything.

"After today, from time to time whenever I feel so inclined, I will select one prisoner at random and escort him to the switch room. This prisoner will select one of the two switches and reverse its position. He must flip one switch when he visits the switch room, and may only flip one of the switches. Then he'll be led back to his cell.

"No one else will be allowed to alter the switches until I lead the next prisoner into the switch room. I'm going to choose prisoners at random. I may choose the same guy three times in a row, or I may jump around and come back. I will not touch the switches, if I wanted you dead you would already be dead.

"Given enough time, everyone will eventually visit the switch room the same number of times as everyone else. At any time, anyone may declare to me, 'We have all visited the switch room.'

"If it is true, then you will all be set free. If it is false, and somebody has not yet visited the switch room, you will all die horribly. You will be carefully monitored, and any attempt to break any of these rules will result in instant death to all of you"

What is the strategy they come up with so that they can be free?

Check out this site for more puzzles.

A simple puzzle

There are 100 coins. 80 with heads upwards and 2o with tails upwards. You are blindfolded and you can't see which coin is what. The coins are arranged randomly. You can flip each coin as many times as you want.

You have to separate the coins into two groups such that each group has equal number of tails. How will you do it?

The groups need not have equal number of coins and remember you can't see.

PUZZLE: Found this on a website. How many prisoners can you save?

Before we begin, Akshay you already know this, so don't answer.

In a land far far away there is a sadist and he happened to be the jailer of a prison. There are 20 peasants arrested on false charges and going to be executed tomorrow. The jailer, the sadist he is, decides to give a glimmer of hope to the prisoners to torture them further.

The jailer tells the prisoners that all them will be made to stand in a row, and a hat will be put on the heads of each of them. It will either be RED or BLACK. Each guy can see the hats of all those in front him. Then they will be asked to guess the color of the hat on their head, if they answer correctly they will be free to go, otherwise they will be shot. The peasants have until tomorrow to come up with a plan/algorithm such that the maximum number of them can be saved.

How many can you save?

Hint: The optimal method can save 19 

Ksha's exploits: Finale

The guide keeps pestering us to hire him. I am waiting for others to get here. The guide tells me that we should go up before the police, who he says keep doing rounds, get there or else they will send us back. This gets me a little edgy.

Meanwhile Ksha is getting all senti and mushy. He complains that nothing has ever gone right in his life and its always been unfair to him. I try to tell him that thats how life is. Like a Negros left bum, as one our friends put it, its neither fair nor is it right. He says he has always been unselfish and now he wants to become selfish. He says that our wing is so unsupportive and we should learn from the Mandak wing, surprisingly Nafeef backs Ksha up in these drunk ravings of his.

Bhartha and others finally get there and we somehow convince Ksha to move his ass. We slowly make it to the top, the five of us( Me, Bhartha, Ksha, Nafeef and Neah) trailing a lot behind the others. We keep taking frequent breaks. Ksha shows surprising stamina in "almost" keeping up with us even though he is totally out. ( Applaud for him here).

We are resting at a place not far from the peak, Bhartha is smoking for the first time, and loving it, he tastes rum and prefers Cigarettes over it. Nafeef is trying to act high. Then Ksha gets a call from Noyita.

All of Noyita's lines (where ever i put them) are a conjecture.

" Hey...."

.......

"How can I not answer your call? I will always answer your call..."

........

" I know, I will miss you tooo..."

.....

" I am here with my friends. They will take care of me. Guys tell here that you will take care of me." At this I have to shout," Ya we will take care of him."

..........

" All the people I love in this world are here. My frinds are anyway here and you I am speaking to on the phone. "

..............

" I love you. You know that right?' , says Ksha.

" Really Aksh?" Noyita.

" How can I not? You have a good holiday in the Andaman. I will miss you." Ksha.

...........

" No you hang up." Ksha.

" Nooooo you hang up." Ksha.

This goes on for some 5 times.

" Look my friends are waiting for me. You have to hang up."

By this point all us, Neah included are trying very hard to control our laughter and are getting irritated at the same time.

" Dude, someone take his phone and cut it da. Its already been tondy minutes.", says Nafeef.

 Me and Bhartha volunteer to cut the call for Ksha but he refuses.

Thankfully Noyita finally cuts the call and we proceed to the top. A lot more happened on the trip but they will not be mentioned here because of their harrowing nature. Thats all folks.