adarsh bhat’s blog

If you are a fresh grad looking for a job, here is some(!) advice you can do without.

I came across this write up by the “Head First” folks – Brain death by dull cubicle.

The commonly held belief that neurons are not regenerated has been challenged. Check out especially the weird conclusions people have drawn out of the article in the trackback’ed links. Let me add mine: Here’s reason to drink!

For a while I’ve been contemplating about which one of the many AJAX libraries is better. This site seems to do a review of javascript libraries for the purpose, including the new UI library from Yahoo!.

Microsoft has officially christened Office “12″

2007 Microsoft Office.

Not sure why it is not Microsoft Office 2007 as one would expect.

Press Material

We finally did the much postponed tech talk on the wiki today. Thanks to a crooked means adopted by Narsing, we got a great turn out for the talk.

Following that we had another one of our sessions on spirituality today at the office. We usually have these on Friday evenings between 6 and 7 in the evening. This is the third such session. In the first session, we had a general introduction by Narsing. Following that, we had a session on the teachings of Kabir. Narsing’s wife sang some very beautiful poems by Kabir. The topic of this session was chanting.

There are a bunch of folks in our office who chant the vedas every day for half an hour in the morning. Although I’ve been much curious about this, I had never attended one of these sessions myself. At the beginning of today’s session this group chanted some verses from the old hindu works – rig veda, aranyaka and upanishads. It had a strange calming effect on me.

Following that, Rehan Lateefi (our new program manager) played some recorded chants from the Quran and followed it up with some explanation on those verses and on the principles of Islam in general. He also made some good observations on the misinterpretations done by the so called jehadis.

Another good session. Looking forward to more.

This is a sequel to Amit’s Wedding – 1

Anjan and I had learnt our lesson. We reached the reception only at 8:15 pm. It turned out to be a good time to reach there.

A lot more people from college had turned up compared to the morning’s affair. Achyuth, Vishnu, Ravi, Sachin (who happens to work for the HiFI), Shishir, Ramajaya, Aditi, Chaitra, Sahana, Abhishek were the additions to the morning’s group. (Sorry if I left anyone out).

The recepttion was much grander and a lot more lavish. The hall looked especially beautiful when fully lit up. There were a thousand plus people. Needless to say, the best part was that we finally got to see the bride. Amit was moving his head a little bit, but he was still quite frozen – that is quite understandable given what he’s had to go through.

Dinner was arranged downstairs as a buffet as is usually the trend these days. I was delighted at that since I could choose whatever I wanted rather than have someone force me to eat sweets just to give company to my just as unwilling neighbour. There were elaborate courses of food of different styles – north indian, marwari, south indian – you name it. I picked a lot of bland stuff to it, and ate very less. But as a guest I felt it necessary to criticise the food. So I complained about that there was no ice cream. “What kind of a wedding is this where there is no ice cream.” Vishnu swore that he saw someone eating a cup of ice cream and endlessly searched the hall looking for its source. But unfortunately he could find none.

After sitting around for a while, we decided to leave. It was about 10:30 pm. We stepped out of the hall. Pratik was really excited about the beautiful decorations and took multiple photographs of himself against the good background. After we stepped out of the hall, there were more surprises waiting for us. There was more food!! The very kind we were looking for – ice cream, fruits and ice golas. Pratik and I settled for the golas – kaala khatta – and it was quite a battle we had to fight with pesky kids to get to the gola wallah. He really was the star of the show.

I have some pictures of the event, but Pratik hasn’t sent them to me yet. Perhaps when I get them I’ll spruce up this page with pictures and let you know.

It was great meeting old friends. Achyuth has reduced much, and so has Vishnu. Shishir hasn’t changed at all. Everyone felt that I had grown plumper – which is not good at all. Lazy me!!

The baraat was supposed to start at 10 am near Basavanagudi. Initially I thought of making it to the starting point of the baraat, but then changed my mind and went straight to the wedding hall at Basaveshwar Nagar with Anjan. We reached there at 11 hoping they would reach soon. Yeah, I know you’re all smiling now. We waited and waited and waited. What a surprise – they had even started doing the hall decorations.

Pratik was with us, and we decided to go to near by stores to decide what to buy him for a gift. We were back after an hour or so. The baraat was finally there – complete with horses and cattle.

The high point of the whole cermony was of course the way Amit looked. He was all decked up – which is good. But what made it bad was that he knew that he looked good and did a great deal to continue looking good. For instance, he just refused to move his head even by an inch. It was as if the horse was moving his body but his head was still at the same place. And he had a static plastic smile on his face that refused to change in dimension. Anjan thought it was like the man on VGP beach at Chennai.

We shaked our butts a little bit and went in to the hall. The reception was great – fruit juice, dry fruits, sweets. Just to set the expectation right: you should know that weddings are only about eating.

After bumming around for a while, we went downstairs for the elaborate lunch. We were a little late, because of which perhaps we missed the silver plates and tumblers. But that didn’t make the food any less sweet. I really mean it. There were so many sweets that Anjan was wondering where the main course was. He was waiting to see the familiar grains of rice. Eventually he had to ask for it.

After lunch we were in such a state that we could do only one thing at once – either breathe or stand. We decided to sit down outside the hall, and our discussion soon drifted to good old DoorDarshan and its commercials.

Amidst all this heated debate we didn’t realize when all the guests had emptied the hall. Pratik kept warning us that we’d better stick with the flock, but then I was too lazy to stand up. And Anjan ofcourse was busy discussing Nirma ads and Mallika Sherawat.

After another half hour we realized that there was no one around. We got suspicious since workers were carrying beds out from the hall and loading them into vans. The Nancy Drew in Pratik eventually woke up, and he asked around; he was told that the actual wedding was taking place at Ram Mandir at Rajajinagar. Imagine our surprise!! Here we were – waiting for the dulhan – and the dulha himself had disappeared!!

This is what happens when you gate crash into weddings. Looking at the pithy invitation that we were given we should have understood that we should have gone only to the reception.

Great! So we had been to Amit’s wedding and we still haven’t seen the bride. AWESOME.

Anjan and I got fed up and came back to Anjan’s house. Pratik went on to Ram Mandir and was there until 6.

Now for the reception. That perhaps means we will finally get to see the bride. And more food, of course. I can only identify with Anjan’s thought: He bhagwaan… mujhe sweeet se bachaana

Continued in Amit’s wedding – 2

That’s right. The less often you blog, the better the chances that I would read your posts. My Bloglines tree is so overloaded that I dare to click on only those blogs which have less than five unread entries. Forget the 200s.