Trip to Damdama

So I've been asked to join up a group of fellow colleagues for a 2 day 'teamwork building and corporate bonding' exercise,
at a private resort called Waterbanks at Damdama lake, near Sohna. Got picked up near home, and traveling in 2 Toyota Qualises, the dozen or so of us reached the venue after a 45 minute ride (for me).
The resort itself was an island in the middle of the lake, reachable by motor boat. It was fun gliding over the water to the place. It was designed with a village style ambience, with small 2 bedroom huts, kept away from each other and having great views of the whole area.
Scenic beauty was not what we were there for, however. After being served lemonade in traditional kulhars (earthern cups,which surprisingly, were glazed, since usually they aren't), we had to get down to brass tacks, literally. The guy in charge of the trip, our office admin head, turned out to be the outdoorsy type, with a background in adventure sports. We started off on a commando style obstacle course, beginning with training nets. Being tall has its advantages, so I made like a spider ambling across the web towards its helpless prey, and reached the other side in no time.
Next up was having to play python and squeeze through a bunch of drums.
There is a repressed lunatic in each of us. He or she comes to the fore at odd times. I swear it was him that made me volunteer to go first across the 'Burma bridge'-a rickety affair of planks and rope strung across a make believe gorge (that was just 8 feet deep, by the way). Once I'd figured out that the edges of the planks were the safest places to step on, it was easy.
Breakfast was served under a huge open air hall, surmounted by a thatched roof. Tea, as all other beverages, was again served in their special glazed kulhars. After loading up on heavily buttered parathas and toast, we were all set for the next phase.
This was-swinging across a 'valley' on a rope, wearing a harness with a pulley attached to your middle. Before I realized it, I was the one to go first. The guy in charge, a short stocky man in his forties, who looked like he scrambled up mountain peaks to amuse himself, brought out a harness for me to get into.
Heroes are those who plunge headfirst into the unknown, or known dangers. They might also be called lunatics. What do you say to those who do the same, only ass first?
Hanging from a pulley, with the G forces squeezing the harness, one has to pull oneself along the rope, wearing gloves whose texture is like sandpaper. Slowly the cheering of the other people faded away, as I reached dead center, then finally fetched up on the other side. Others didn't fare too badly either.
Someone dropped her shoe into the valley, and it looked kinda sad, sitting there at the bottom, till one of the staff went down to fetch it for her.
Next up was, scaling an artificial wall, to simulate rock climbing. This was something I couldn't do-the grips and handholds were way too small to support me.
The evening brought on more surprises. Jackals howled in the distance, attracted no doubt by the good smells emanating from the kitchen.
Post dinner, was a simulated(!) commando operation. I'd hoped it would be like a Quake 3/UT style 'capture the flag' or 'assault'-but turned out quite tame. A bit of sneaking around, and the game was over before it had begun.
Sleeping at night was an adventure in itself...a room that doesn't lock itself, for starters. The chicks were spooked at the prospect of becoming hors d'oeuvres of the vulpine kind, and we had to show them how to secure the doors. Best of all...toilets that haven't seen running water in ages!
Lying down at night-that was when the pain began. One's arm feels like it's on fire-hurting like hell at the slightest movement. This is what comes when mouse potato tries to become commando beefcake overnight.
The morrow brought on 'combat tactics', which yours truly had to be excused from on account of cramps. Next up was the rock climbing adventure.

We had to again go by boat, this time round the island to another rocky area. The way up was littered with loose rocks, and finally, we were there-a large rock face with our instructor and his assistant, a cheerful North-eastern boy (who later said he was from Manipur). Apparently we were to climb up the rock from the side, and rappel our way down. Despite the blazing sun, a strong wind blowing constantly kept us all cool. Turn by turn, everyone had a go at the rock.
Except moi. I climbed to the top, admired the view, and then the groan in my joints told me I was in no shape to try out further stunts. Unless I wanted to prove that acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 ms-2. And leave a gaping crater besides.
Lying in the shade, in the big common hut, with the birds chirping and a lovely breeze-is a divine experience. Any hopes of mobile blogging were dashed, cos though network was available, GPRS was not. So I whiled away the time playing Tetris and enjoying the peace and quiet.
It's great to get away from the noise and bustle of the city, with just the breeze and chirping birds for background music.
A final photosession overlooking the lake would capture the trip for posterity.
Another motorboat ride across the lake-watching other tourists gliding by in two paddleboats that were shaped like a giant swan and a Viking longboat.
I'm yet to recover from the body aches from the trip, but on the whole it was quite enjoyable.

The moving hand..having stopped, moves on..

I found Live Journal to be better than this place, so I've decided to go there: Lock, stock and two smoking barrels!

Llook at this llovely llimerick

(e)LLeven LLovely LLamas LLicking LLuscious LLollipops
Okay, so it isn't a limerick. But it just popped into my head this morning on the way to work.
What was I smoking when I came up with this you wonder?
After effects of last night's 2000 dB headphone blast session, one of the songs being Pale 3's 'In my head'.
What have I achieved since 1 am? Episode 3 of Cowboy Bebop! Boy, talk about anime obsession...
Now that's something to look forward to when I go home in the evening.

Headbanging and driving up the wall...of sanity

Sometime ago, I discovered a hidden appetite for the whole heavy metal/techno thing...you know, wailing high pitched guitar that would give a bat a monster headache, thumping, cardiac fibrillation inducing bass, and best of all...a sultry female lead instead of the mandatory 'I've-stepped-on-a-thumbtack' level of screaming that usually accompanies such numbers. The band I'm talking about is Kidney Thieves, an industrial rock/heavy metal band, whose vocalist, Free Dominguez (that's her name) totally rulez.
The tracks I liked best are 'Zerospace', 'Black bullet' and 'Before i'm dead'
I recently got a set of large headphones, the kind that let you enjoy a nice cerebral haemorrhage without being interrupted by mundane things like thermonuclear explosions.
Now it's Zion...the techno track that the savages..er, humans in the 'real' world jive to in anticipation of the locust swarm of squiddies that's about to attack them in 'Matrix Reloaded'

The one other thing that I truly enjoy is being a road warrior...as much as I can in my geriatric Zen (Suzuki 0.8 L compact front wheel drive, for the uninititated). Ph3aR mE when I'm driving this grandma around 10 pm however...I've made her climax in ways she couldn't dream of (now don't quote me out of context :-) )
Usually my favorite driving position is with any of the following blasting out of the already worn out speakers : Prodigy, U2, Enigma (MCMxC a.D) and Robert Miles. (Princess of Light is great to drive to.)

A lot of amateur music in non MP3 formats is great..check out the mod archive. Look out for IsoToxin by Necros...the track was used in one of the maps of the original Unreal Tournament.

If I could only get Kidney Thieves on cassettes....I'll probably be unable to see traffic signals properly on account of the red shift.
Einstein would be proud. Schumi, dream on ;-)

"It's just one of those days..." (Limp Bizkit)

Woke up today with a mother of a hangover, and i don't even drink. That's what happens when you sit up late night watching Cowboy Bebop when it's just been downloaded. Then again, it was worth it, I liked it, nice anime. Plan to get the rest of the episodes too.
A lame attempt at catching up on sleep in the car (it's nice being driven to work) , and most of the day spent in unravelling the mysteries of the LDAP protocol (sounds super geeky right? Relatively speaking, it is)

Didn't have much success though...wading through stuff like dn=somename,ou=someothername when the blood in your caffeine supply...i mean the other way round... is low.
And the coffee here sucks. When someone is accustomed to fresh south indian coffee...a crappy Nescafe dispenser that serves boiled saccharined water masquerading as the real stuff does little justice.

Fresh mango juice on a hot day is your friend! Especially when it's got yummy raisins and other tasty bits on the top.

Computers and common sense

To quote from the site that this post is about: "It's a baffling phenomenon that in today's society an individual, who might in other circumstances be considered smart and wise, can sit down in front of a computer screen and instantly lose every last shred of common sense he ever possessed."
The site here is about all sorts of stupid questions and incidents involving computers, including the famous one about the guy who thought his CDROM tray was a cup holder. Here lies the paradox-In the beginning, computers were enormous machines that cost millions of dollars and required a PhD to operate. Even in the eighties, the non Macintosh world (which is quite large) was stuck on a clunky command line interface, (read DOS) which was anything but friendly. A lay person had to memorize cryptic commands to do even simple stuff. The 90's ushered in Windows, which has come a long way since then-from 3.1 to 95, 98 and now XP. Today's PC is vastly superior and much more friendly and intuitive to use than what was there earlier.
Yet people crap out the moment they have to use something.
The icon based interface was supposed to be intuitive. Infact, the whole point of a GUI system is you can easily explore menus, just SEE what all is possible. Here's an example-if I want to put a picture, or a hyperlink in a Word document-what do I do? Theres an 'Insert..' menu at the top-where logically i would go if i wanted to insert SOMETHING. Once I open it, I specify what. Does it require such an exertion of mental muscle to do this? But it happens all the time-people sit and expect their computer will do everything for them. They will, someday, but as of now, a little intellect on the users part is whats required.

In my experience, the people who complain the most about computers hanging or being unable to 'understand' computers, who think you're some sort of super guru because you know how to set the default font for sending mail in Outlook Express-are the ones who either severely lack common sense, or whose brain short circuits the moment they see a computer.
Conversely, there are others I know, who by themselves would not call themselves as techies or geeks, but who are at least comfortable with computers to know how to get by. They would not know enough to say, troubleshoot faulty hardware, or edit the registry, but can get by with day to day stuff: creating shortcuts for working efficiently, or knowing about skins to customize winamp, etc.
Since I get called to help with computer problems-I can see the difference: The 'high common sense' category of people only call me if it's really something they can't figure out: file associations gone bad, or viruses and so on. And once I teach them how to fix the problem, they manage to do it by themselves in future.
That's another characteristic: willingness to learn. Agreed, not everyone has the time or inclination to figure out stuff-but is it so hard to remember the edict "Thou shall not open unsolicited email attachments" and "Thou shall not use (insert name of common adware/spyware program here) " ?

There's another thing: error messages. If you want technical support-the least you can do is take down whatever error messages crop up. Assuming the language you understand is English, why do people act paralyzed and terror stricken whenever their computer shows them an error message? Whenever I ask them what the hell popped up, the stock reply is 'some error message' or 'I didn't read it'
One cannot solve computer problems, especially over the phone, by using clairvoyance.

To this end, I've created a set of ten commandments for using windows.
Wish more people would follow these.

What is it that makes some people tick? Why do I wish that the ticking for some people could be attributed to a stopwatch wired to a stick of dynamite taped to their backside? It's funny how many people love being told what they are like, or being 'mind read'. Perhaps it's this mania for observation that drives reality TV and similar stuff. An old way, but still effective, of getting to know people-read up on topics like astrology, body language, handwriting recognition and use these skills during conversations.
One needn't be absolutely accurate in these predictions, even a general remark about someone being 'like a Virgo' elicits immediate interest.
Apart from the social angle, what I enjoy about these things is the sense of power it bestows. Mao Zedong once said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Beats spanish fly anyway.
In India, we appear to have a cultural fascination with soothsayers and the future. All 'arranged' Indian marriages occur only after that great ritual of 'horrorscope matching' , which often results in more post nuptial horrors than anything else.
Some of our politicians , even famous generals of the past, have never proceeded on any important mission without checking the alignment of stars, or setting an 'auspicious time'.
Crystal ball gazing therefore, comes as a natural interest for us.
So where was I? Yes-making people tick. Yeah. Tell em what they want to hear and they'll listen for hours.
Actually, come to think of it, if you get to be good at it, it can also help hazard a guess about how people will react, or behave. So, by that token, not all Leos you meet would be haughty, nor all Geminis two faced, but it pays to keep that at the back of one's mind...
(Leos and Geminis reading this post, no offence)

Note to self: Late afternoon on a full stomach isn't a good time for blogging.

I've always been a complete fan of the Matrix movies. To atone for the sin of not having seen the first two movies when they hit theatres, I went on opening day to watch Revolutions. Over the five years since the first release, I've felt myself change towards the phenomenon in stages-first, complete bewilderment at the first movie-it took me 2 more viewings on a badly scratched VCD before I 'got' it. While people have nitpicked on the first being the best of the lot, and Revolutions the worst, with reloaded falling in between, to me, all the three movies fit together as in a jigsaw puzzle, along with the Animatrix stories (To be precise, The Second Renaissance, The Kid and Final Flight of the Osiris)-to present an open ended picture of the entire saga.
I have seen the Matrix evolve into a complete subculture, embracing elements of all kinds of philosophy, from Judeo-christian and hindu references to the cyberpunk and anime sub genres. The Matrix phenomenon to me, excels in the multiplicity of metaphors that one can derive from it. Infact, that would be the core strength of the series,
(BEGIN SPOILER ALERT!)
even the endleaves you pondering whether Neo will resurrect, or the truce will last.(END SPOILER ALERT!)

Ultimately, the series offers the greatest form of escapism that ever could be. Picture Thomas Anderson, aka Neo, in his desk job as programmer at 'a respectable software company' called MetaCortex-another Dilbert stuck in a warren of cubicles, living out his parallel life online, where he can transcend the drudgery of his existence. One phone call on a Nokia 7110 that gets FedExed to him instantly changes his life beyond comprehension: his former colleagues could not in their wildest dreams imagine his being the one, much less know about the matrix.
At one level, each person wants some sort of release, some sort of escape from routine, to 'a world where there are no rules'.
A place where your 'residual self image' is sufficient to overcome all physical and mental barriers.
Notice how Neo's skills evolve through the three movies: the slow realization of his powers when he resurrects at the end of the first movie, to the confidence with which he addresses the machina when telling it that he alone can counter Smith in exchange for peace...
Perhaps that's the hidden message here (my interpretation of the metaphor)-you truly can be all you can be if you only try. Sure, dodging bullets may not be possible, but one has to be confident of oneself and shatter the glass wall (matrix cocoon?) that limits us.

(hehe..and rise into the waiting arms of a squiddy bot)