Random Stuff

#1
Spotted an article by Pankaj Jalote (Professor, CSE, IIT Kanpur) in The Economic Times (Delhi Edition, Monday, November 07, 2005) on Page 11 (sorry, no online version available). The articles entitles "The Research Edge" and the teaser text is "A PhD degree is structured around three core skill sets, preparing candidates to be competent researchers. Pankaj Jalore examines..."

#2
Read the first two paragraphs of the prologue of One Night @ The Call Center (ON@TCC). This guy knows how to tell a story and surely knows how to immediately bond with the reader. How many of us have looked up the reservation charts to check out the females travelling in the compartment! And the book is priced at just Rs 95! Who would go for the pirated version with crappy printing and the self-destructing book binding when the original is just a hundred bucks (c'mon - that's cheaper than your average pizza out there!)

I didn't read Five Point Someone, but I'll surely read ON@TCC! The fellow's got me hooked. Btw, Dubey is in the drawing room lapping it up before he catches his flight in another two hours! Pure masaala story telling!

#3
Happy Belated Diwali! I guess I'd hop into the "Happy Diwali Bandwagon" too, what, with the 30+ mass mailed "Happy Diwali Spam" (thanks to Orkut) in my inbox!

Diwali was fun, with lots of kaaju ki barfi, eating out, and meeting up with friends. I'm sure I've gained atleast three more kilos with the incessant eating that I've been upto during the past one week!

On the D-day, I got bored after lighting exactly one chikkarginni, two chatais, two anaars (btw - they call if 'flower pot' in English - wtf!), and a couple of bombs! And the rest of the time I was wondering what the fuck made it so interesting when I was a kid! And btw - these were last year's left over crackers, and they're still left over!

Had a small reunion of school friends at Cafe Coffee Day from where we moved on to my place for an improptu daaroo party :-D It was fun meeting up with old friends and discussing school bhasad and reliving past crushes ;-)

Gotta sleep now...