Stupidly lonely

Time and again, you feel yourself standing at the crossroads, feeling absolutely clueless. You haven't been betrayed by anyone, nobody has broken your heart, there's no romantic angle in the most distant of horizons and your social life is as normal as it has ever been. Yet, there's this sinking feeling threatening to break you down into bits and devour you completely. Lucky Ali's "anjaani raahon mein" and other similar songs start making more sense now and you start flipping through decade old song collection to excavate out songs of similar mood.

Despite being a mid 80s born I refuse to accept it as a mid life crisis and I dismiss the "get married" suggestion equally strongly. No health problems, no angry girlfriend, no sexually transmitted disease.. NOTHING! Probably this is the point when you feel like writing might help you out, as it has traditionally been an outlet to your feelings. A quick self examination on the mental level tells me that I'm of a sound mental condition and have plenty on my plate to even think about doing something non productive. But then, there are times when you end up doing the most unlikeliest of things at the most unexpected time. Its past midnight now and tomorrow I'm supposed to deliver a presentation, thoroughly read a case study which would enable me don the devil's hat and grill the presenters, complete a long pending article and carry on with the "fundamental analysis" tutorial that I started studying few hours ago. But here I am - making a long pending addition to my blog. Any apparent solution for this helpless situation (or can someone please state the problem for me)? May be talking to an old friend would help, but I already did that half a day today on our whatsapp group!

Oh, human nature, when'll we be able to completely decipher you?

Plenty on my plate - Loving the chaotic life!

Having completed two semesters of MBA, its that time of the year when everyone goes in different directions for internships. Internships mean different things to different people. Having been through the grind during my engineering I have realized that you can either choose to be completely ignorant to it and do it for formality's sake (and regret later) or you can show over-enthusiasm and bug your mentors to the point of irritating them. To be honest, I never believed there's so much to be done that you spent 10 hours in office for two months to get the best out of it.

The way I chose to look at it is, know your project well, get in touch with the right people who'd tell you the why and how of your project but then, keep some of that enthusiasm in reserve and spend it for other things in life. For me, its a 2 month period where you have time to explore what interests you, figure out what would differentiate you from the rest of the pack two months down the line and do stuff that you have never done in the past but always wanted to do, due to whatever reason.

I got myself admitted to swimming sessions even before I started my internship. There's a new found interest in data analytics which has urged me to explore the area. There's an opportunity to rekindle that ethical hacker inside me who got into a few college websites all those years ago and of course, read!

There are a few things that I've been lazy to do in the past. To cite an example, there was Adhaar card registration going on right inside my office building in August 2012, when my parents were there in Hyderabad and I took them around the Infosys campus. I still can't believe that the Adhaar officials had set up their enrollment centre in our office for about two months and I never bothered walking up to them! Now that everyone around me has got their cards, I finally went to my IDBI Bank branch today in Malviya Nagar and got myself enrolled. I also got my DL address changed and the next job on the agenda is to get my Andhra registered bike re-registered here in Delhi, for which I was asked to produce about 12 documents!

My freelance writing career is going on well, with the latest of my projects coming in the area that I love, i.e. network security. There's this Project X that I've been wanting to work on for ages but for various reasons (mainly laziness) it keeps getting postponed. There are a couple of examinations to be taken by mid July and yes, Cricket is going on!

I've been through this phase earlier and I'm sure I'll handle things just fine, like I have done in the past. Wish me luck!

Chess after 15 months!

The sports fest of college, Aarohan 2013, gave me an opportunity to flex my brain muscles once again, more than an year after I represented Infosys Hyderabad in January 2012 and finished the tourney as the player of the tournament. I had my reservations initially as there was no prize to be won this time around unlike the last time but then decided to give it a go as it's come to a point where intra college prizes have failed to matter. In a 32 player event it was a knock out format and I won all five of my games to win the title.Attaching a snapshot from the layer stages of the game for reference. Happy :)

P.s: trying blogger app for the first time from my nexus and it looks good.

Nexus 4 in my hands: Go to hell you arrogant, overcharging online dealers!

About 3 and a half days after unwrapping its packet, I can safely believe that the courier packet that I opened on the 16th of March was indeed for real. After a 3 - month long, useless wait for the device to be launched in India and after seeing one deadline after the other go by on saholic.com, the thing my convinced me about LG's reluctance to officially launch LG E960 to India was the fact that it launched Optimus G here for over 30k, which was an obvious indication that they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot by launching a similar spec phone for two-thirds the price.

The real hunt started in the first week of March and a friend in the US obliged by ordering it for me in the Play Store there. The next problem was to get it shipped to India, as Google doesn't ship its products out of the country. I started with an intensive search for it and at last, I stumbled upon the way that the online dealers like firangibhai and those on ebay are using to sell the same product at a premium. I couldn't believe that even after paying a double digit percentage of the phone's cost for shipping, I easily saved a considerable amount for the 16GB version. It's not a bad business idea, I tell you, but that is a thought for some other day. If you look at the entire thing rationally, it would suggest my craziness levels, as after all, I've just paid for a phone and got it. But then, getting it imported from thousands of miles away, expecting it to reach me with no damage at all and risking a substantial five figure amount was a first for me and I'm glad that it came off well. It gives me the guts to try out even more Google products in the future, if India continues to be ignored by them.

The most expensive handset bought by me till date has not disappointed me at all since its arrival. There is lots of technical stuff written about it on the internet so I won't get into that. However, what would make you take notice is the speed with which it operates. Add to it the seemingly unending 2GB RAM that allows you to add as many apps as you want, and you have just about the perfect phone. You'll never know what a "pure android experience" means unless you try it out. I got a first hand account of the software upgrades when I connected the phone to my home's wi-fi network. It shipped with Jelly Bean 4.1 and as soon as it got connected to the internet, it prompted for an upgrade to 4.2.2 and it finished up in no time at all. Compare it to the other Android manufacturers, with whom you have to wait for them to release the upgrades which typically runs into months. Samsung has even been notorious enough not to release an upgrade at all for Indian devices.

The battery did worry me a bit but once you turn on the power saver mode and switch off those needless, battery consuming screensavers(Google wants to call it Daydream) it would be sufficient to last one full day of office, which is what smartphones do these days. All in all, a much better choice than that cheap looking, plasticky Samsung Galaxy S3 or Grand. I HOPE the next Nexus devices(expected to be announced in May) comes to India at an equivalent price and put the overpriced iDevices in place.