The K.K Problem

What a waste of a day was today! I was expecting to study something for the exam tomorrow and up to now have done nothing. This means I m going to get all fucked up tomorrow in the series examination.

First of all I had 3 days to study for it and fooled around for 2 days and just when I had done enough of fooling around for the 3rd day at about 2.15 in the afternoon I decided to open the book. Which was the exact timing for K.K to barge in to take his hopeless Laptop home.

What turned out to be a casual visit to take the laptop home became an ordeal to resurrect the dead laptop. The laptop a HP OmniBook 4100 just refuses to boot after the 1st phase of windows setup (for all versions of the windows). Causing me to fiddle with the laptop for about 4 hours straight.

Now another problem with the laptop was that it had a non working Floppy Drive, no CD-ROM Drive. Now this was a total disaster. With no other alternate input to this laptop it was real hard to copy the windows setup. Now data transfer to the hard disk was conducted by a USB interface with the help of a desktop computer.

Now after hours of hopeless copying and installing. K.K managed to persuade me to go to Kadu’s house to get his CD-ROM Drive. I told him this was a bad idea. But he just had to do it and it ended up in a bigger disaster. All in the name of saving some money and as they say money begets money. Trying to save some causes a bigger loss somewhere else. This is what exactly happened.

The most interesting problem here is not the laptop but K.K !! The guy is real stingy guy when I got to know him first. He refuses to spent money on the laptop to repair it. He just dosent accept the logical solution to the problem and he wants a cheaper solution. And if u are familiar with the laptop world u know things are pretty expensive around there. But then again I feel sympathy for this guy as he makes living off winning quiz competitions and does a pretty well job in that. So I know the reason why he is this stingy. He also comes from a Brahmin background from palakad. And he is a pretty hard working chap too.

Money is the root of all problems he says not having the money to maintain an expensive system like laptop was one thing he dint foresee when he was buying one that to a second hand laptop. What is worse is that he don’t have the supervisor password for this laptop making it a worthless piece of junk. But least does he know that problems of money are not big but problems of a person having shattered dreams is far painful and agonizing.

Days of Innocence

Continuing from the story of my life from where I left off……….

I did not enjoy my childhood as it should have been. My physical enjoyment wasn’t much as even a little sweating on playing outside can cause recurring throat infections. This was bad more over the summer years in the desert is a bit taxing. I remember being the only kid in the whole building who used to eat ice cream after it melted. Come on people the objective of an ice cream was that u eat it before it is melted and look at the irony in my case.

I was growing older and I became more aware of the surroundings. I began making friends. I became more aware of where i stayed, could memorize people’s names, places etc.

I came to know my names the official and nickname. The official I have mentioned before the nick can be translated into "small". I remember I used to stay in Fahaheel, Kuwait. In a building @ the 5th Floor. It was the top most floor. My father used to work in commercial bank in Kuwait. And my mother used to work as a nurse in Kuwait Oil Company (K.O.C) Hospital Division .

My friends during this time were, my neighbour Donny, who was same age of mine. We used to have little fights then. Then there were his two elder sisters who were friendlier. Then on the third floor of the building there lived another two of my closest friends Vipin and Veena we were so close I still don’t remember their actual names. All of us used to go to the ground floor @ about 5.00 pm in the evening to play. Main course entertainment being cycling. Then the next most popular thing being police and robber, hide and seek. Thinking of them gives me nostalgic sensations all over.

Mean while these frequent infections was a real fun killer. I don’t remember a lot about the world outside the Fahaheel buildings. But I do remember going outside Kuwait to India pretty occasionally.

Most of these visits were vague to me. But after one such visit to Kerala then Bombay, a good doctor in Bombay suggested a stronger version of penicillin. That could provide a better protection against the disease. Now there was a catch to this, u see the dosage of the medicine was only once a month being in form of an injection right in the butt. Believe me it was no ride in the park. The pain was piercing and u had to massage my butt with a hot water bottle before i could walk properly. The usual procedure consisted of someone fooling me to lye down in someone’s lap and then someone else poking the needle in my butt. Followed by agony, pain and crying followed by swearing, and as a conclusion giving me some sweet to calm me down.

To be continued......

Yet another Loss

Long time I couldn’t write. Depression mostly, putting on weight too. The HP incident really is taking the toll. Along with that I just found out that some of my closest friends are really spineless (Rest Is Censored). Now why do I say that u ask eh ?
Well what can I say, I expected them to support my idea or at the least consider it for that matter when we were going to take up the Main Project. But they wanted to chicken out.

Why to chicken out ? Because Obviously they all got second jobs in IBM, Deloitte and HP and why risk when u can have a secure project in VSSC. It’s all warm an cosy nothing worry they will give u everything and u just need to do some programming. We are engineers for Gods sake we are people who think, invent and innovate ideas into this world in which we live in.

The project they gave was in simple terms nothing but to acquire data from rocket launches like velocity, acceleration, tilt etc and then plot it all in real time in a graphical environment. If anybody reads this and has common sense we all know its not engineering rather its some kids programming stuff to represent acquired data graphically no innovation, no thinking, no engineering principles involved. How does one call this a main project ?

I m so much dishonored by their approach. Even to my surprise even the most brilliant in the group just gave in. I feel like a samurai who has lost a battle a long battle that he had fought and In this shame of defeat a samurai takes his life.

But the battle is not over yet I may be down but not yet dead. I have survived other battles during my days and lost many but will keep fighting until I die whether I lose or win is no longer a point in this battle. After even the closest of my friends abandoned me in the middle of the battlefield I feel that my enemies those forces who cause the chain of events in my life are better to be called friends now.

One more day that has to be forgotten

Before I continue my story, I would like to say on the monday of this week was my seminar. If i were in the audience seeing myself, trust me I would have slept off. A typical Technical Seminar lasts about 10 to 20 min maximium of 30 minutes. Now comes that joke what seemed like 15 minutes to me was approximately 1 hr! Damn why dint anyone warn me, or was it that everyone just slept off. I dont think so GOD can answer that, probably "GOD" was asleep too :-)). After all being a |053|2 is a tough job especially when doin it full time.

Anyway the topic of the seminar was "The CELL Microprocessor", well its a highly advanced microprocessor designed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. Its pretty interesting and it motivated me when I wasnt a complete |053|2 yet. And let me tell u it wasnt smooth, my presentation did have a couple of videos and just when I was about to start I realized there were no WMP10 codecs in the system. Damn I hate that now I went back to the hostel and then took the WMP10 and returned by this time most of the audience realized, that there may not me any more seminar all were happy but when I returned u could see a very gloomy faces (or at lest that’s what it seemed to me).

O.K then the presentation began; I put myself in an audience chair and saw myself come in front of the crowd to present. I could see that the people around me was getting restless and wanted me to get over with it. And then he began, it was pretty unusual to hear him in this loud voice. After a not so bad neither good start by criticism abt the bad experiences with microprocessors in the past he said he will try not be like that.

Then the blabbering started he kept on going, my god we were hungry and this guy was hogging it all up. There were a couple of videos within the presentation. I could see that no one was paying any attention wat so ever to this blabber stuff. The only persons listening to this was some geeks @ the front. Then wat seemed like hours, it ended. Quite surprisingly there were a couple of questions asked by some from the audience and he stood there answering that, wat made it even more interesting was the fact that our sir who was judging the seminar dint have any questions, most probably he was hungry and wanted to get over all of this just quickly.

One "Name" to rule them all (out)

Oh yes u got to be named @ some point in ur life. After all people use that as a reference to u. Well its been some time since I have begun to realise the surroundings around me. And my parents were thinking abt wat to call me for the rest of my life. Not to say the fair share of nick names I have got by all the people visiting me regularly. But it was time it got an official name. The "name" that I was going to be known by my friends, my peers and the name that I was going to be used for official purposes.

After a lot of thinking my parents named me what can be literally translated to "Happy" in English. But then they must have been happy as I was the first child in the family. But then again "Happy" is only a word nothin more than a word. It was the only "Happy" thing in my life for a long time to come.

I was a weekling prone to regular attacks of acute tonsillitis. Now those were pretty painful. Accompanied by many other related ailments. I couldnt be exposed to cold or heat. Regular sickness caused weekly antibiotcs followed by another 2 weeks free from sickness. But then again the cycle repeated.

Believe me its not easy trying to live with this kind of sickness.

To be continued......

The Birth of a |053|2

How does it feel to know u are a parasite even before the day u are born ? Well face the truth we all were (and some of us continue to be). Let me define what a parasite is for further clarification

"A parasite is an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of that host. The biological interaction between the host and the parasite is called parasitism. Parasitism is a type of symbiosis, by one definition, although another definition of symbiosis excludes parasitism, since it requires that the host benefit from the interaction as well as the parasite."

We are created in a human body (the host) and continue to feast on that body's resources until the day we are born. We form a symbiotic relationship. It is an inevitable fact that we were all born parasites. But not all are born "|053|2", this is pretty much the case with me. I was a born "|053|2", rumors say that after my symbiotic relationship ended @ 15.25 Kuwait Time February 25th 1984 (One thing is for sure that the whole of Kuwait was celebrating, Oh no no, it wasnt me but its just that my bithday coincided with their national day) and I couldnt handle it. It is said that they put me in an "incubator" for about a week. Well I was too young to remember the exact nature of events that took place back then.

One thing was sure I am not the guy who was designed to face the real world. And so the "|053|2" who is the highlight of this blog comes to life.

Why create a Blog ?

A good question even for a |053|2. Well desperate times calls for desperate measures and this is one of those measures. Losing is a part of life, just as winning but it does have a profound effect on an indivudial when Losing dominates over winning. As u read my blog u will get a clearer picture y I say this. But for the time being I create this blog as a back up for myself just in case I get an amnesia (due to the unlucky course of events goin on in my life :-) ) and want to see the path I have taken in my life.