Yesterday evening I went to the final day of this year's "Kadalekai parishe" (festival of groundnuts). I make it a point to visit it if I am free during the time. There were more shops. There was more variety of nuts. There were more crowds. There were more food stalls. But there were fewer crowds at the big bull temple.
My personal preference was the half fried nuts, though my friends took raw nuts to munch on. The restaurant "Halli thindi" had opened a set of food stalls with a variety of dishes. Some specials were the "Mangalore buns" and "Davangere mensinkai bajji" (Chilli bajji). It was not just mouth watering but also eye watering. But I find things really missing in these festivals are drinking water and the loos.
We took the 5 Rs entry ticket to avoid the not so long queue and go straight in front of the amazing big bull. The decorations were splendid. I spoke to the ticket vendor who happened to a friend of a friend of mine. He has won the tender for ticket vending. He can charge whatever he wants, but he fixed it at 5 bucks. He said that on Monday he had a good collection and the entire business was a profit :-).
After sitting on the stone slabs for sometime and discussing politics, shares etc…we bid goodbye to this year's fest. Wait for another "Karthika Somavara" (last Monday of the month of karthika in hindu calendar) for the fest.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Cribbing of a loser
Yesterday we did not finish in top 3. It was sad. We knew that we would not finish in the top as soon as the demo was done. The judges somehow seemed to have no interest in our presentation.
Why dint we win?
• 3 of the 5 judges were HR related managers…How will they know the technicality of AI or BI?
• 1 of the 5 judges went out for a leak just before the presentation started. Still we were asked to start. He was a techie and would have understood our concept.
• We had added some features especially for demo purposes. When we showed that the speakers did not talk about the importance of that features.
• The UI was very simple, unlike the jazzy stuff shown by others. Packaging is more important than the product itself.
Huh...we lost.
Why dint we win?
• 3 of the 5 judges were HR related managers…How will they know the technicality of AI or BI?
• 1 of the 5 judges went out for a leak just before the presentation started. Still we were asked to start. He was a techie and would have understood our concept.
• We had added some features especially for demo purposes. When we showed that the speakers did not talk about the importance of that features.
• The UI was very simple, unlike the jazzy stuff shown by others. Packaging is more important than the product itself.
Huh...we lost.
Monday, December 06, 2004
Death of a goal scorer
I saw the death of Cristiano live on DD sports yesterday. Such a big tragedy. The idiot goalie should be banned for life. I read that Cristiano was the top scorer in the Indian league last year. A tragic end.
The facilities are really of a great concern. The commentator told that the footballer was breathing when he was taken to the ambulance. I heard in the morning news that the ambulance did not have a oxygen cylinder. Why the hell do they call it ambulance! Common sense would say that take him to the nearest hospital when there is no oxygen. And Mallya hospital was right opposite to the Kanteerava stadium. But the stupids took him to HOSMAT in the busy traffic of Bangalore. The persons involved should be charged of murder. If the govt tries to protect, then no major sports event should be alloted to Karnataka. They should be made to pay thru their nose. Just fuck them.
The facilities are really of a great concern. The commentator told that the footballer was breathing when he was taken to the ambulance. I heard in the morning news that the ambulance did not have a oxygen cylinder. Why the hell do they call it ambulance! Common sense would say that take him to the nearest hospital when there is no oxygen. And Mallya hospital was right opposite to the Kanteerava stadium. But the stupids took him to HOSMAT in the busy traffic of Bangalore. The persons involved should be charged of murder. If the govt tries to protect, then no major sports event should be alloted to Karnataka. They should be made to pay thru their nose. Just fuck them.
KnowBots
After a long time I did a night out at office. The work was not the usual project work. It was a inventive work. Work on AI! Yes, Artificial Intelligence in combination with Business Intelligence. The occasion was a code competition. There were 17 teams and we are in the top 5. The top 3 will be rewarded. But to know if we the "KNOWBOTS" are in the top 3, we would have to wait till evening. A real anxious wait.
Now the details…
Friday afternoon we started the installation of some new tools. As expected we faced lots of problems and the problems just increased as there was no expertise on the tools in India. ISD calls to Germany dint give any positive results. Google was of no use. Hopes were started fading as the daylight started to fade. By 9pm, it was decided to scrap the original concept and work on a alternative. A couple of us continued to work on the problems. Finally we decided to call our American office which developed the tool. I used crib about the time difference. For the first time the time difference turned out to be an advantage. 30 mins of net meeting and phone call solved all our problems and our project was back on track. Satisfied with the work we took a fag break and watched some juicy scenes from the Hindi movie Girlfriends. Welcomes break indeed ;-).
Morning was again tense as we started integrating the modules. It was smooth. By 1 in the afternoon, the atmosphere was cool in the prj team. At 5 the demo was to happen in front of a highly knowledgeable panel of judges. At 4:45 Murphy's Law took over. Reports failed to come up. A last minute code change was the culprit. At 4:50 we get a call that the presentation has been postponed to 6:45 as one of the judges could not turn up. We just couldn’t help believing in LUCK. By 6 everything was up again. The demo went smooth and the by the time the results were told at 10:30 in the night half the team was in bed in some part of Bangalore. SMSs flew around in jubilation. Today we need to demo again in front of the whole company.
Waiting for the final outcome.
Now the details…
Friday afternoon we started the installation of some new tools. As expected we faced lots of problems and the problems just increased as there was no expertise on the tools in India. ISD calls to Germany dint give any positive results. Google was of no use. Hopes were started fading as the daylight started to fade. By 9pm, it was decided to scrap the original concept and work on a alternative. A couple of us continued to work on the problems. Finally we decided to call our American office which developed the tool. I used crib about the time difference. For the first time the time difference turned out to be an advantage. 30 mins of net meeting and phone call solved all our problems and our project was back on track. Satisfied with the work we took a fag break and watched some juicy scenes from the Hindi movie Girlfriends. Welcomes break indeed ;-).
Morning was again tense as we started integrating the modules. It was smooth. By 1 in the afternoon, the atmosphere was cool in the prj team. At 5 the demo was to happen in front of a highly knowledgeable panel of judges. At 4:45 Murphy's Law took over. Reports failed to come up. A last minute code change was the culprit. At 4:50 we get a call that the presentation has been postponed to 6:45 as one of the judges could not turn up. We just couldn’t help believing in LUCK. By 6 everything was up again. The demo went smooth and the by the time the results were told at 10:30 in the night half the team was in bed in some part of Bangalore. SMSs flew around in jubilation. Today we need to demo again in front of the whole company.
Waiting for the final outcome.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Actually seen
After reading the Chain Snatched blog, my friend sent me what he has seen. Just wanted to share it.
"Something similar to this happened about 4.5 years just in front of my house at about 9.30 pm.
In this case the lady was lucky - the chain was broken but got stuck in the saree and the pendant was recovered from the road."
"Something similar to this happened about 4.5 years just in front of my house at about 9.30 pm.
In this case the lady was lucky - the chain was broken but got stuck in the saree and the pendant was recovered from the road."
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Top ten words of 2004
The Merriam-Webster has announced the most famous words of 2004.
The number one word is blog.
The list of words are as follows.
The number one word is blog.
The list of words are as follows.
- Blog
- incumbent
- electoral
- insurgent
- hurricane
- cicada
- peloton
- partisan
- sovereignty
- defenestration
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