Karthik’s Log

If you laughed at my photo on sunset, here’s more to laugh at. Sometime last month, I came back from Coimbatore at around 04:30 AM and to my dismay found that I had a mound of clothes that I was supposed to wash like only a month back. (That’s exaggerating it a bit) So I was stuffing my clothes in the washing machine, when I saw the sun starting to appear. It was hard to resist taking a couple of snaps.

The photos are separated by approximately 20 minutes. My bloody bedroom faces the east and the sunlight wakes me up every morning. Darn!! I would rather, my bedroom faced west.

DLF IPL

There was lot of drama recently over the IPL being shifted to South Africa. So it got me thinking why did they shift the IPL to South Africa after all ? I know we heard the official version being “Elections in India”. But hey, you know what ? There is elections going on in south Africa as well. I agree the two are not equitable, but then you’d think there would be some concern about South Africa having elections as well.

Probably, it might be the brush Sri Lankan players had with terrorists when they toured Pakistan. So maybe they thought best not to have matches in the sub-continent. But do you know what I think ? I think it’s to do with the drama we had last time over. Yes, with the cheerleaders. Now with IPL being shifted to South Africa, they don’t seem to have any problems in those quarters. It’s just a conspiracy theory really, but then makes sense doesn’t it. Now they can cheer the players (and the viewers) all they want without facing the threat of being put behind bars.

Well, I figured I don’t have all that much time to write these days, and you know what they say about a ‘picture being worth a thousand words’. So I’ll be posting a few pictures once in a while. Well, I can’t claim to be a photography buff or even an enthusiast. I don’t even have a decent camera with me. All I have is the 3.2 MP camera in my Sony Ericsson phone. But I put it to pretty good use.

Here’s “sunset” from my previous office I used to be in:

Sunset as seen from my office

If you look closely, you should be able to see my reflection in the glass. But, then why would you want to do that. If only I had a better camera, I could have posted a picture of the place where river meets sea. Worth the view I tell you

If that title made little or no sense to you, it’s actually fine. It didn’t make sense to me either. It should probably have been “Bajaj Looking at Success through Commercial Transformation”   I know it sounds that way, but it’s not a press release on how Bajaj (auto) is going to expand in the current Indian market or anything on those lines either. It has absolutely nothing to do with Tata Nano.

If you have watched a little television of late, and are not the kind that has remote in one hand and potato chips (could even be pizza) in another, and keeps switching channels whenever commercials pop up, then you should have seen the new Bajaj DTSi commercial. Keeping in line with their earlier commercials like Pulsar Mania , they have come up with an advertisement that is truly stunning. However, I kept wondering how these guys used the Transformers concept. I don’t really know if the advertisement firm that came up with this ad got some kind of a permission with Hashbro, but if they didn’t, then I’d say its stealing an idea really. But who knows, maybe they did, or maybe it’s not any violation after all. I wouldn’t know the legalities. All said and done, the ad rocks.

Here’s the video:

According to the person who posted the video on youtube, it is created by Leo Burnett India & directed by Tarsem. Leo Burnett’s site is pretty cool in itself. Worth checking out.

P.S: If you haven’t seen the ad, I suggest you do. If you have seen the ad and still don’t get what transformation I am talking about, you should seriously consider watching this movie.

I was traveling home this evening by bus, pretty preoccupied with lots of things. Like the four Breezers I had last night at a dinner party, , how much more I could have stomached (without looking for a loo), the upcoming appraisals I have, what I should do over the weekend, what I should have for dinner. I am having all these thoughts swirling in my head when this guy in the bus is trying to sell me something. At first I barely notice, but then he inches closer and closer, and though I am not looking in his direction, I get this feeling he is heading towards me. I am still lost in thought, thinking ‘damn, I only wish I could leave earlier’ and ‘man, why do I end up working till 10 in the night everyday’.

Now, this guy is really close. He is like one seat away, and he is looking at me and uttering something in Kannada, which I obviously don’t understand. I still don’t pay much attention to him, and instead am thinking ‘the nerve on hawkers these days, they don’t ever give up do they’. I am this close to yelling at this guy that I don’t want whatever it is that he is trying to sell me, but then realise that he is wearing a Khaki shirt, and is clutching a few bills in one of his hands, delicately balancing himself with the other while the bus sways and jumps over speedbreakers which the driver anyway thinks is to test the warranty on the suspension. He looks annoyed now. Finally I pay enough attention to him and just about in time (before he beat me black and blue), manage to say “Ondu Jyothi’, pay him 5 bucks and get back the ticket.

We got a few new macs at office some days back and I was expecting to get one. Turns out there were quite a few people who managed to pull some strings or they thought I don’t deserve the new mac. (They would be right on that count.) But man, I wouldn’t mind one bit to get these macs as long as I don’t have to pay for them. I am not really a big mac fan, but then you got to give it to them, they have some wonderful features built in. (even if you have to pay through your nose.) I am sure you can buy some other brand running Windows that would match and probably even exceed the mac’s performance and looks,  and still be cheaper but then you need to computer literate. That’s where the mac’s have an advantage. For someone who has a lot of money and doesn’t have time enough to sit and compare specs and then decide which desktop to go ahead and buy, Apple gives you the mac.

Some cool features:

• 8 core processor (how do you like that ?) (2 Quad core Nehalem processors)
• 8GB RAM
• 1TB Hard Disk

Only, the lowest configuration will set you back by some 2500 $ ( 1.5 lakh Indian Rupees), without a display mind you. I tried personalising the configuration and the price came to 18,000 $ Whoa!!! That’s more money than I can Imagine. 9 Lakh rupees ? That’s going straight in my Birthday wishlist. (At least now people will have an excuse why you didn’t get me whats on my wish list. )

I work on a shitty old mac in office.( seen below)

I used to have this mac before, but then they took it away from me.

I also get to work from an old MacBook Pro from home at times. As I said, not so bad as long as you don’t have to pay for it and don’t want to run games on it either.

I actually got bored of my old theme. It’s been there forever and ever. While options are limited in wordpress.com compared to say Blogspot (take a look here) or if you actually have WordPress installed on your own domain, it does give you quite a few options for free. And I am not all that creative with themes either. (Ya , I know you are thinking ‘not like you are creative with content either.’ ) This theme looked simple and nice. Feedback as always is welcome.

One of these days I am thinking of my own self hosted blog. For now though, this is more than enough.

Only this other day I was sitting at a bank office (in no official capacity. I( hold an account there and was just chatting over a cup of free tea.) near my office explaining to some of the employees there that internet banking was really safe and phishing is not such a big deal. If you know of phishing and know how to avoid it, you won’t fall into the trap. I am sure they didn’t really agree with me. And now I know why.

Hardly two days after the event, I click on an Orkut link on a computer that is used by quite a few people. I did not even think to check the link. I enter my username password, and nothing happens. The same page appears. It was wee hours of the morning. So instead of getting pissed of that the page did not load or getting curious, I just go to sleep. (My company works me till 3 AM constantly. I doubt if you can get curious or furious at such an hour even with a couple of shots of caffeine.)

The next morning, I am at a meeting in my office when my elder brother, calls me up. Ah, that feeling when everyone from your manager to the clown sitting next to you looks at you like you committed a grave offense. I simply cut the call, put my phone on silent and carry on with the meeting. After the meeting, I call up my brother and to my shock, find that my Orkut account has been hacked!! Whoa!! And what’s more, they have erased my profile, and posted some obscenities there replete with pictures matching the theme. Since  I would not have net access for I don’t know how many days and the last place I wanted to go to reclaim my account was a cyber cafe, I asked my bro to do something about it. And sure enough, he reclaimed the account. Thank God for that.

Moral of the story: Always be on the watch out. Never let your guard down.

P.S: Now, you know why I am faceless on Orkut.

Have you ever been annoyed and pissed off by

a nincompoop higher up you’re really against? I have.

I just hate his gut and want to get this real straight.

(Ok, that came out real bad.) If you are a working individual, and are working in the IT industry (yeah industry), then you definitely have a higher-up who just annoys you so much you really want to inflict some damage on him/her. However, since I cannot do that without either being kicked out or being kicked out, all I can do is vent it out on my blog.

Do you have a higher-up (I say higher up, because every company has its own terminology all of which sound equally funny. Module Leader, Group Leader, Program Analyst) who is so pathetic at English, that it makes you feel bad that you were even allocated to the same project ? On top of that when there is a mis-communication  and he/she says “Try to get what I am saying, ok?” , it just drives you up the wall. So, here’s an imaginary chat between my module leader and me, over internal communicator:

Me: Hey X, I need to go out for a bit. I should be back soon in 15-20 minutes.

X: were u going…. ??? (typical of people who think its cool to type with multiple punctuations)

Me: I just need to go to the bank.

X: oh. y ? (notice again how such people like typing y and sound cool and all that)

(I actually want to yell, on personal business. Do you mind ? But then I think of something better.)

Me: I am just going for a heist.

X: okie….just mk sure u cm bk in 1/2 hour.

Me: Thanks. Ill be back soon.

Ha! gotcha!! You should actually try something like this. I remember writing “colic” this once in my leave letter just for the kicks and my class teacher didn’t ask me a single question after that. I guess I even got away with skipping a test.

This is one of my long time and favorite interests. Every time I see a public board or a notice, that someone has screwed up, or has something funny, I simply have to draw attention to it. This is a photo I shot in MORE Super Market (I don’t know how these shops qualify as Super Markets).

Magazine

(Click on the pic the enlarge)

A picture is worth a thousand words. Enough said. Oh in case you don’t get it, you need to look closely at the yellow colored notice on the far left of the magazine rack.