M N Nambiar has passed away!

Hey folks!

It’s been a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaally long time since I posted on this blog. Partly because I was trying to prepare for my MBA entrance exams and partly because I wanted to give a long break and see how much I missed blogging.

The last two-and-a-half months have been really good. Did a lot of things, met a lot of people, learnt a lot from precious experiences in life.

These are some of the things I did/learnt-to-do.

1. Learnt how to diagnose hardware problems and isolate them to the correct hardware on my desktop. Proved to be quite useful when my RAM didn’t work and when I had to change the battery of the CPU Clock.

2. Learnt a lot about journalism, how things are done in print media, what all background work has to be done to get oneself a news story.

3. Learnt that your background made no difference when it came to competitive exams. Found a guy who studied Cartography but is far better at Quants than I am!

4. Made a quiz for the SIT.

5. Worked on a good promotional presentation for the SIT. But dropped it because Ravi Chaitanya wasn’t available for consultation!

6. Finally, I’ve learnt how to remain silent about things and/or events and stay underground for as long as required.

Now, the nice people I’ve met.

1. Vijay Prabhat Kamalakara: Vijay is an entrepreneur and runs Storytrails India. I liked his company’s base idea and met him in person. Had a good discussion. Somehow we were impressed with each other and I tried my best to help him out in whatever way I could. He’s a really nice guy. Graduated from IIM Indore, but won’t mention a word about it unless you ask him.

2. Dr Mohan Rao: He’s one of the new members we got for the SIT as a result of that TOI news item. He’s a Senior Laproscopic Consultant at Malar Hospitals. One of the most humble and youthful persons I’ve seen! Brainy, has a different perspective towards everything in life! When he’s around you hardly feel he’s part of the previous generation! He’ll know someone everywhere be it Anna University or RadioOne!

3. Shyleswari Rao: She’s Dr Mohan’s wife. I’d say they’re a perfect couple! They gel well into any crowd whatever be it’s diversity/taste. She’s a HR trainer/Consultant and specializes in Behavioral Training/Research. Both Dr Mohan and Shyleswari add so much value to our (otherwise 20s perspective) discussions and are highly approachable in times of need!

4. Kisu Kisu Geetha: KKG is such an interesting person! Of course that isn’t her name. I’ve been asked to keep her identity a secret. KKG is the name of the show she did on Suryan FM from 2004 to 2006. Now, however she’s in a plum job at the World Bank! She’s a dancer, a trained Kalari fighter, a good singer and an aspiring manager! A very very good humane as well. Didn’t know her much till I referred a job from BIG FM to her. Eventually she didn’t take it but we became good friends!

5. Neeraj Agarwal: Neeraj is the guy who I sit with (mostly) during my TIME sessions. He’s the typical happy-go-lucky North Indian that you see in Hindi movies! Very helpful, very very cheerful and sometimes scores well in tests

6. Jay Patel: Jay is the Marketing Manager at Mozilla Corp, USA. I did not contribute much to the Firefox in India community until I graduated. Once I decided to put my internet activity on hold, the only real pastime that I had was to see what people posted on Mozilla’s forums and reply accordingly. Jay gave me a very good personalized letter of appreciation and I’m very grateful to him for that! Now, he’s also extended an offer for me to become a Mozilla Campus Reps Organizer. Dunno what that means as of now. Hope it’s something exciting. Jay is a very dynamic, young, marketing manager. Much like Aneesh Nair* at WorldSpace!

7. Pramodh Kumar, Ganapathy, Shankha Basu, Tapan Malhotra: These are people I spoke to regarding applying to various institutes. Pramodh and Ganapathy study at IFMR, Shankha at SP Jain and Tapan at XLRI. I am impressed by the amount of humility these people possess. Each one has excelled in his own way but would never tell you what he has done in life so far unless you specifically ask for it.

CAT

Apart from the people I’ve met in these 2.5 months, people like Sowmiya, Pavithra, Vaidehi, Ash, Arun, LVS , KKG, Akshaya, Sriram and Srinath have been very very supportive. Everytime I had a doubt or was down and out, they were always there to get me back on track. I’m very grateful to them for all that and I promise to be there with them during their tough times wherever I am and whatever I’m doing at those times! As for CAT, It hasn’t gone too well. Though I can still get thru some of my backup instis like BIMTECH, my dream instis like MICA, MDI, IMT-G are ruled out now. Of course, there are a lot more exams left and there’s a lot of stake left. Sunday is my day! It’s just a question of which Sunday it is, in the coming month!

Otherwise

I’m beginning to miss college life like anything. All that fun, frolic, entertainment, exams, culturals, vacations, results, agony, happiness! Wish I could go back in time once! Arun, Navneeth and Sudhir have gone to the US to chase their dreams and Sundar has gone to Infy. Raja is absconding and Praveen is busy staring at girls and trying to hit on them at his workplace. Life is a bit difficult when you have only Naveen to talk to!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. As for the post title, I wanted a lame excuse to continue my habit of writing a PostScript. Hence, the sad news!

* Aneesh Nair is the Marketing Manager for the southern region at WorldSpace India. People who worked with me during Rapture would remember the tough time we had convincing him into partnering with us! The guy has many cellphones and is always on the run

Orkut India!

After a very long time (~2 weeks), I signed onto Orkut today because someone had scrapped me. I didn’t need to login because almost all the time my Google cookie is active. I replied to the scrap and took a glance of my Home page when I noticed that Orkut had moved to orkut.co.in from orkut.com for India. I dunno anything about how this is gonna affect the Indian Economy. For such expert comments, we’re awaiting word from PSP.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. PSP is said to be busy in training but still I got some multi-coloured forwards from him today! Thirundhave maattaan!

Chance of a lifetime

June 13th 2008. This day will be written in World history for ages as the day that changed World Cinema. A day that only a privileged few get to witness during their lifetime.

A day that is equivalent to a miracle of nature but bears the hard work of thousands of people. A day when even the Gods would descend down on the Earth to witness the event, the spectacle, that may not even repeat itself before the end of the World at Armageddon.

The event being the release of Padmasri Kamal Haasan and K S Ravikumar’s Magnum Opus, Dasavathaaram. After 22 months of pre-production, production and post-production, the film is finally to grace theaters.

Frankly, I am not exaggerating at all. It may not be possible for another actor to successfully essay 11 roles. Definitely not in Indian Cinema. There is a remote chance that Hollywood might try to break this record.

The reservations start from Sunday, June 8th 2008. The good news is that I’m going first day surely. I will have to take someone along. Any show, any denomination Sathyam Cinemas. Anyone willing? I think I can accomodate one more person surely, maybe two if possible. Temme in the comments about your availability.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. This is not illicit selling of tickets (like my dad opined) as I’m just asking people if they can come with me. Standard ticket rates apply.

Just Coffee?!

I am sure all of you/us would have given a thought about a perfect soul-mate. It’s perfectly normal to do so. [No tealie! This ain't a post targeting you!]

The process of matrimony, like any other domestic process, has also become computerized (to an extent) now although the commitment called Life still hasn’t!

OK! OK! I’ll cut down on the abstractness!

There are popular matrimony sites like BharatMatrimony, SimplyMarry, Shaadi and all. The thing with these sites is that one needs to register for an account, has to give all account details including a photo and has to scavenge for other accounts based on tags such as caste, religion, language etc.

[I know it sounds a lot similar to what people do on Orkut! oh! PSP! We could use more gyan here!]

The problem with such services is that all your profile details are pretty much vulnerable to the outside world. I’m sure anyone would feel insecure giving out personal details on the Internet to find a life partner. There is a chance that such details are misused.

I had just come across this site called SirfCoffee. It’s a very interesting idea. All you have to do is register just like on any other site. The advantage here is that you don’t have a ‘public’ profile like in other services. Instead, the service provider maintains your profile privately and handpicks people who might suit you by carefully reading through your profile. This way your privacy is also maintained and the chances of you getting a perfect-match are more. It doesn’t stop there. The service provider also arranges for a coffee date between the two people. But, you have to take it from there on.

I liked the idea instantly. But then, this cannot be scaled up to a large extent as it wouldn’t be possible to hand-process applications beyond a certain number of applicants. You can find more details on the service including a good explanation of the various phases of the service on the website.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I didn’t go searching for my soul-mate. Vijay just tweeted the URL and I casually visited thinking it was another version of the Open Coffee Club.

Opera spoils the show!

Never ever use Opera to sign into wordpress and write a post! Opera screws up the post aligning big time! I had a personal taste of it today, some 20 mins ago. The previous post was first aligned as if word-wrap was turned off!

I logged onto wordpress from Firefox and pretended to edit the post and saved it. Then everything became fine.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I’m told that Opera is a perfect browser. It passes ACID test 2 and all! I couldn’t help laughing out loud!

There it goes!

I was quite happy that my computer was running pretty fine for a long time. There was literally no noticeable problem! No crashes, no viruses, no partitions missing, nothing! One fine morning, I wake up early and download all that I can till the 8 AM IST free-download-time set by BSNL.

I go to sleep at 8 only to be woken up by my dad 30 minutes later. He tells me that the computer isn’t ‘working’. To him, ‘not-working’ means only one thing. To me, it always means a dozen things. Even a small tilt of the power plug can mean ‘not-working’ for him. I was hoping that it was one of those petty problems so that I can pretend that there’s something gravely wrong with the computer and claim to have ‘repaired’ it.

[Well, that's how I impress the people most of the time]

This time, however, it wasn’t that simple! Windows refused to boot! I had downloaded movies and everything some 30 mins back and it seemed fine.

30 mins later, pop! there it goes! Now, I need to find a Windows XP CD and try to reinstall it.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. Luckily I have Linux! Special thanks to this guy for that!

Y-U-C-K!

I am sure most of you wouldn’t be in a comfortable position if you had to co-exist with reptiles in your house. I’m not comfortable as well. In addition to this already-existing discomfort, a recent incident has pushed the tolerance levels further down to an all-time low! I just thought I’ll write about it here. Being the noble guy that I am, I don’t want such an incident happening to any of you.

I was searching for this book called ”Made in Japan”. It’s about Akio Morita, the founder of Sony. I couldn’t find it in my living room. I had to go into my bedroom to retrieve it. There was no light switched on in that bedroom. I, unsuspectingly, switched on the tubelight and as usual would take ages to light up. I took a couple of steps forward and felt something unusual rubbing against my right foot thumb. I just nudged it a bit thinking it was some random thing inside the room. Suddenly, the light went on and I saw a lizard running across the room from my direction to that opposite of me. I was shell shocked! I ran into the bathroom and washed my feet and hands with any kind of cleaning liquid that was inside (except the cleaning acid types). Man! It was a terrible experience!

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. If at all you feel something strange next to your feet, don’t ever nudge it!

You’re a marketing expert!

Yes! I mean it! Most of us don’t know the fact that there are a lot of complex management activities in our day-to-day life itself. This is partly due to a lot of us not being aware of the flashy management jargon. We don’t know clearly as to what marketing/sales could mean and therefore, we don’t know we’re good at it. I ask you to give a deep thought into the things mentioned below. I thought of these things while I had to put on my eye drops and ’sleep’ down on the floor in my living room.

1) You market yourself a lot when you want something from your mom or dad, especially when you’ve done nothing great but are ‘going to’ do something swashbuckling!

2) When you wave out in a cricket stadium, you try to do something more unique than the guy next to you so that the cameras notice you and you become instantly famous. Although the fame lasts for not more than a minute, you get the thrill and that seems to be worth the effort.

3) You go down to your teacher and ask for more marks. I agree that in a lot of the cases, or in fact in most cases, there is little marketing. But, I know a few people who get marks because they market themselves well (especially a few females whose names I can’t mention here).

4) This is not a very compelling form of marketing. But, you do sell yourself when you even try for employment. Ask Arun, Sundar or myself. We’ve got our own stories to tell about the Infosys personal interview.

There could be more scenarios that didn’t come to my mind while writing this post. If I can get hold of some more exemplary scenarios, I’ll update this post or write a new post.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. If you have noticed a few scenarios, do tell me in the comments section.

4 year symposium

I had gone to college today and met Arun there. He had somehow collected my Course Completion Certificate from the college and was waiting to give it to me before he left. I took a moment to look at it. It looks a little worse than a typical Anna-University-affiliated-college technical symposium participation certificate. It has some out-of-fashion text and worse than that, it’s written and given on request. If I go and ask for my name they’ll write my name and branch and give it off. If I go after 2 days, I can get one more and after 2 days, one more and so on!

The bottom line is that the college has tried to watermark it’s name in about font size 8-9 about 50 times within one A4 sheet itself! Man! They could’ve tried one large watermark that says the abbreviations alone! In fact, people are even telling me that the watermark isn’t actually made on the sheet but is printed with the text! That’s sick! Hope it ain’t that way!

In any case, the college has certified that I have completed a 4 year mammoth course by giving me a sub standard symposium participation certificate!

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I don’t mean to say my college sucks. If you happen to interpret it that way, you’re welcome! That’s not wrong either!

Then and Now,

I was just thinking of a few random things while taking bath today morning and the idea for this post came to my mind. I had a lot of misconceptions while I was in school. All of them have been rectified by the experiences of college life. I just thought I’ll write on a few weird ones here.

Then: Any female with fair complexion is considered hot.

Now: There’s a lot more than that!

 

Then: An invite came from some University of Phoenix in the US of A. I was proud that some American university had invited me to join some course.

Now: Not even the worst of dunces would go there.

 

Then: I was proud that the opening page of MSN said “welcome, Prashanth” I was  like “They recognize me! I must be great”

Now: It’s only because of a stupid cookie!

 

Then: Getting a job in an IT company in India requires one to be of exceptional academic background and possess extra-ordinary skills of negotiation and technical prowess.

Now: Most of that is bullshit! I’m placed and I have none of these!

 

Then: All fellows who go to IITM are absolute geeks and think of nothing but research and academics.

Now: Aaha! Tiffany’s and Cafe Coffee Day! So that’s where most people went!

 

Many more to come in this list.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I’ll update this post when something pops up appropriately. So keep checking back this post if you want to see more of these.

A Comedy of Errors!

I got pissed off with the lack of entertainment during the day in the month of May. The evenings are taken care of by the Indian Premier League. The daytime is, however, a suicidal bore! I decided to download some recent old Tamil movies and watch them and learn how to write reviews and how to judge films. I also decided to start off by downloading Billa 2007. I got hold of a torrent from seedpeer and started downloading. Given that I’m on BSNL limited plan, I download only form 2 AM to 8 AM everyday. The download goes well from 2 AM to about 7 AM. Suddenly something happens and my download speed comes down to below 1kbps. There was a funny thing that I noticed here. On the first day, I had put the file for download only at around 6 40 AM IST. As usual it started off at 50kbps and then almost zeroed down at 7 AM IST. Here’s the funny part. The upload rate alone continued to be  above 65kbps for the entire session.  And, there were about 20 seeds and 1 PEER! I had only downloaded some 59MB! How can my torrent keep uploading the 59MB at a greater speed for a longer duration to only ONE SEED?

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I hope to be able to download Sivaji DVD RIP next.

IT’s over!

We buy three newspapers at home everyday and a few more on Sundays alone. Out of the regulars is The Economic Times. I was prompted to read an article on the IT sector in India by my dad and it has proved to be quite an eye opener. You can read it here. It presents a slightly shocking picture. IT majors have stepped down the aggression with respect to recruitments. It is expected that campus recruitment can go down by as much as 15-20% from current levels. This is generally attributed to two main factors, the hike in value of the Rupee and the Sub-Prime economic breakdown in the US.

The hike in the value of the Rupee is due to several reasons. Exports in all sectors (actually, most of the important sectors) from India have gone up in this FY. Of course, it is also attributed to the weak economic situation in the US that is pulling the value of the Dollar down.

The Sub Prime breakdown is a very interesting one. The story starts with the September 11 attacks and the IT recession in the US then. The Government had no way to improve the economy because everyone was apprehensive about spending every dime from the pocket. It’s pretty obvious that only a positive cash flow can improve an economy. So, the Government decided to do something that it considered ingenious then. Now, however, it’s feeling the pinch. ‘Prime’ is generally something with paramount importance and quality. Sub-Prime is something that is not of paramount quality. Hence, ‘Prime’ loans are loans given to people with good financial soundness. Sub-Prime loans are loans given to people without proper collateral and repayment capabilities. The Government decided to give loans to all kinds of people from all facets of society to encourage them to shop and spend and thereby improve the economic situation of the country by creating a positive cash flow all round. This was where the Government got carried away and even instructed private banks to give loans to every Tom, Dick and Harry around! The problem here, again, is that the private banks in turn borrowed from top banks from all over the World (for loans that might never be repaid). Banks like ICICI had to write off a part of this money in their results QoQ. All this made sure that the Dollar doesn’t go up in value at all. The Government of US has to find a suitable way/ways to plug the loans and re-direct the US from it’s path towards economic insolvency.

As a direct result of these factors, the margin of profit for the IT majors has gone down. They wouldn’t increase their bill to the clients because of the fear that the contract might get shifted to other alternate firms from growing markets all over Asia. Thinner margins, lower reserves, high employee base. This is something that no company would love to encounter.

If you’re planning to look at IT in India as a career option, I strongly advice you to keep yourself up-to-date with trends in IT and remain competitive and aggressive throughout your career. Otherwise, chances are that you might get chucked out at any time.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I would say that the healthy lifetime of the Indian IT industry would be another 5-8 years maximum after which it’s certain downslide would begin.

the gen next idea

I have this habit of talking to my dad about something or the other at nights. Not a very long conversation, not more than an hour. It was during one of these conversations that he was telling me how his friends’ children thought their generation was competent and their previous (my dad’s generation) was terribly incompetent. He said that most kids my age thought high of themselves and low of their parents in the career and competence sense of it. The fact is that these people rarely realize the importance of a factor called ‘growth rate’. When one has decided to make a comparison with the past, one has to look at the opportunities that prevailed then and those that prevail today. There will always be a clear difference in this factor. I have to agree that this factor is conveniently neglected to blow achievements and accolades out of proportion. Also, the ego that people have these days has simply shielded them from looking at a factor as important as this. It’s not right to look at the bottom line and decide in these kinds of issues. This is not like writing a book review or a gadget review. It’s an issue of performance of an individual and I personally think that it deserves a deeper look into it. I don’t know how I came to this stand but I don’t intend to change it. So, all you ‘Gen Next’ fellows, please don’t think you’ve moved mountains. These days mountains come with roller skates making it easier for you whereas for your dad they came double riveted to the ground.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. My Infosys job, itself, is supposed to pay me more than what my dad got at 40. This doesn’t mean he’s an incompetent dunce and I’m a genius! Never! Never ever!

Flock web browser

I’ve been a Firefox aficionado for a very long time. Sagaro, quite recently, recommended that I try the Flock Social Web Browser. I did try it only because he recommended it and now I’m quite impressed. It is built on Firefox (doesn’t require Firefox to be installed though). It has a lot lot of useful features like GMail auto sign on, Twitter tweet updates, Blog updater, Flickr/Picasa tools. These things come in very handy for most of the time I spend online. I recommend that you go ahead and try Flock as well. I’m sure you’ll like it.

Yours Skeptically,
uleadin

P.S. I didn’t want to stay on Firefox 3 Beta. As such, Firefox has a lot of memory leaks. Beta is too dangerous for my ailing computer. Flock has happened just in time.

The transition of the uleadin

I have come to know that it is not very much possible to tweak wordpress blogs hosted on wordpress servers. So, since I want to learn some SEO, I have decided to move this blog out of the wordpress servers and host it in my own web space. In this regard, I want to know of some reliable web space providers and, if possible, some tariff also. Even if you can give me a rough idea about the whole thing it’s pretty much enough. If everything works out, I’ll move to my own space before June 1st 2008.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. The fact that this blog hasn’t been crawled by Google yet is a secret. Keep it to yourself.

The ambitions of the uleadin!

Looking back into the past, I realized that there were so many professions I wanted to take up. I was thinking of all that today morning and decided that I write on some significant dream careers I had in mind.

PhD:

This was a career that I was looking at before passing first standard. My dad always wanted to do a PhD but couldn’t because of many reasons that I don’t want to mention here. He wanted to realize his dream with my help and brain washed me to take up a PhD. Of course, neither of us were serious about it. He knew it too!

Chartered Accountant:

This career option was largely inspired by my uncles. Three of my four (maternal) uncles are Chartered Accountants. Srinath is also aspiring to become one because his father (my eldest maternal uncle) is a CA. This was partly due to my mother’s brainwashing also. She must’ve wanted her son to stick to the family lineage.

Teacher:

This was one of my own ideas. I once wondered how wonderful it would be to bash all the kids around you and be the big boss. Later did I realize that my teacher dreams were for this and not for my passion for teaching!

Pilot:

This dream was inspired by my fraternal uncle (chittappa) who wanted me to fly high for some reason I still don’t know. However, he did not brainwash me and this dream quickly escaped from my thoughts.

Professional Keyboard Player/ Music Director:

This was a mad dream I had while learning to play on the Keyboard. I know it’s very funny but then I was in class 5 or 6 then. So, I had no idea as to how difficult it was to become a Music Director. The dream vanished pretty soon (before Class 7). But the passion for Keyboard playing stayed on till class 10.

Central Excise/Income Tax Department of the Union Government:

This was a result of me watching all those tamil films which show nothing but corruption in Govt offices. I was astonished at how rapidly people made a fortune to do the jobs they were already paid to do! I was prepared to take bribes and live a King’s life. This greatly upset my dad as he had thought he had brought me up with a lot of ethics injected into my mind. He did do that! I was the one who went mad for money. Later I realized how wrong I was about taking a bribe.

Web Designer:

This was another ambitious career I wanted to take up. I was starting to learn HTML and other markup languages whilst in class 11. I was thrilled by the whole idea that I could design web pages and all. Now I can very much realize that it is not so difficult, but at that time I thought it was super cool!

Software Engineer:

This was the time I had to study Visual Basic in class 12 and VB fascinated me a lot. For the first time, I was creating applications that were running on windows. My Software! I thought it would be super enjoyable to do this forever. This was one of my longest ambitions and I had it till I entered 4th semester in college.

Equity Analyst:

This was a result of me beginning to follow the SENSEX and NIFTY. I was really excited that I could make a fortune sitting at home by buying the right stock and selling it at the right time. I wondered if I could do this forever. Moreover, I came to know from my dad that I could do this for someone else as well and make more money if I became an Equity Analyst. Somehow, this ambition didn’t stay for long too.

Event Manager:

I was involved with culturals in college and this made me think if there was a lucrative career in Event Management. It was only later that I realized that there were too many other things wr.t Event Management. Moreover, I couldn’t find any internship opportunities in Event Management. This made me half-heartedly forsake Event Management as a career.

The fact is that this list is not exhaustive. I am stopping it here so that this doesn’t become too long a post for you guys to read! There are a lot more ambitions that uleadin has/had in mind.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. Sundar, I’m looking for some innovative comments from you this time.

SEO. Anyone?

I’ve been largely fascinated by SEO (Search Engine Optimization) lately and am learning about it from various sources. I’ll be trying to toy around with this blog until I become a decent SEO guy. In fact, as of now, I don’t even know if it is possible to toy around with this blog using SEO. Let’s see. As of now this page comes sixth in Google. It’ll be nice if I can bring it onto second or third place.

Yours Skeptically,
uleadin

P.S. As of now, Amazon ranks first in Google for these keywords. Hope to beat ‘em too!

UPDATE: I saw only now (2 mins after posting this article) that this blog ranks third. I’m clueless as to how. Any explanations?

ScribeFire

It’s pretty much boring logging onto wordpress manually each time to post on this blog. So, I just dug the Internet for a desktop tool for posting into a blog and I found this FireFox Extension very attractive. I’m typing this post from the ScribeFire extension for FireFox. It’s got a good interface I must say. A lot better than the GNU Blog Posting tool. I recommend that all of you give ScribeFire a try. I seem to like it a lot, atleast as of now.

Yours Skeptically,
uleadin

P.S. This is not a sponsored review. I just felt like testing ScribeFire and came up with this post

The story of the uleadin

There have been a lot of people who have questioned me as to why something as meaningless and wierd as uleadin was chosen to be associated with me. There have been innumerable instances when uleadin would not be read as you-lead-in but as ulleaahdeen giving me a lot of discomfort. People would instanty feel that I was,apparently, obsessed with 5th century arabian names!

Frankly, this has happened too too too many times. I decided to write a post on the origin of uleadin and how it became my handle on the Internet and that it has nothing to do with 5th century Arabia!

There was a time when I had a dialup connection (ok, I had it till last year, so what? ) and I was studying in school. Back then, if you googled your name/handle and got results within the first page you were considered super cool. I googled my name and got a million results and nothing relating to me was within the first 15 pages. I didn’t waste time on looking beyond 15 pages. I decided I wanted a handle. Somehow, I came about choosing prazmataz as my handle then. I can understand it is supremely pathetic and that’s why I decided to change it a year later.  I was in 10th when I was tired of this prazmataz thing. I read a review about some ulead photo studio thingie. I knew ulead wouldn’t be available for sure. I tried uleadin and it clicked. I signed up for uleadin [at] yahoo [dot] com. That was the first time I used uleadin as my handle.

I was happy that it was more unique than prazmataz then as it returned no english results on google. That did it. From then on, I have used uleadin in each and every login option available. All my logins are uleadin till date.

The fact that my name returned a lot of irrelevant results and that uleadin returned no english results was the prime reason that made me choose uleadin as my handle and made me move from using my name everywhere to using my handle everywhere. I would also recommend that all of you use a handle as it makes your internet identity more unique.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

The Final Showdown!

Hi folks.

—-May-3-2008—-

I study in a college affiliated to Asia’s Largest Technical University. The problem with my college or rather my department in college is that it’s composed of the most bold and scholarly collection of people that one can find in a single place. They are born to win. They never say die.

In every semester from the fifth semester end onwards, there is a ritual where we select The Elective from a list of electives. This time, however, the folks in my department were bored of ‘handling’ the traditional ‘easy’ electives and decided to get adventurous. Well, That’s what I believe is the reason behind them choosing something as abstract and out-of-this-world as Soft Computing as an elective. The boldness with which they took this decision made me feel I can conquer the World single-handedly!

—-January-February-2008—-

Apparently, the staff who decided to handle the subject had to learn it well before teaching us but conveniently skipped the teaching-us part of it. This isn’t new to me and my batchmates as we have experienced this behaviour from our staff earlier also. The fact is that until this time they chose earthly subjects and didn’t teach anything and we could always manage somehow. This time they have gone overboard BIG time.

So, given the fact that I am working really hard to complete my project well ahead of time, I conveniently choose to study Soft Computing when I am done with the Project. Very disastrous move indeed. Being the daredevil that I am, I have taken this decision with ease!

—-April-22-2008—-

The project is over and there I am with no mood to study anything! 2 days pass by….

—-April-25-2008—-

I realize that it’s high time to start studying Mobile Computing (the first exam). Try as hard as I might, nothing gets into my head. Proceeding very slowly from one unit to another. I finally drag myself towards completion. Me saying to myself “You passed VP! Can’t you pass this exam? Come on!”

—-April-29-2008—-

11 PM IST:

Arun : Machaa….will we pass tomorrow?

Me: @#&%&^%#@!!

—-April-30-2008—-

The exam is at 2 PM IST.

Arun (at 1 PM IST): Machaa….will we pass today?

Me: @#&%&^%#@!!

3 PM IST:

I turn to look at Navneeth and Raja who write their exam in my hall. Both of them thoroughly petrified at the sight of the questions in the paper. Me saying to myself “Don’t worry da…nobody knows anything…it’s not only you.”

5 PM IST:

Arun :Machaa….will we pass today?

Me, Raja, Navneeth & Naveen : @#&%&^%#@!!

—-April-30-2008—-

7 PM IST:

Me sitting down to read through Soft Computing for the first time. Nothing understandable.

Me (to shopkeeper at 8 PM IST): Anna, Soft Computing local author books irukkaa?

Shopkeeper : Soft?

Me : Computing

Shopkeeper hands me the local author book for Software Engineering.

Me saying to myself “@%$#^@$$#@!!”

—-May-1-2008—-

Me struggling with Soft Computing. Using swear words against several people whose names better not be mentioned here. Bro overhears one of the words and christens me a racist slur!

—-May-2-2008—-

Me revising only half of each unit! [I know it's terrible but that's what I could manage this time!]

1 55 PM IST:

Arun :Machaa….will we pass today?

Me, Raja, Navneeth : hahahahaha!!

Naveen : ….nokia….scooty pep…..swift….r****i….

Me, Raja, Navneeth, Arun : ??

5 PM IST:

Paper is easy though we’re still unsure of passing. AU’s correction scheme is that way!

8 PM IST:

Me watching CSK Vs DD IPL Encounter!

10 PM IST:

Starting Software Quality Management. Sleeping off at 1 AM IST.

—-May-3-2008—-

12 PM IST:

Me sitting in the stone bench in college.

Sundar : Management Responsibility, Quality Systems, Contract Revision,….,…

Me trying to revise (the little stuff I know) as many times as I can.

1 30 PM IST:

Sundar : Management Responsibility, Quality Systems, Contract Revision,….,…

Me : Ada paavi!

2 PM IST:

Sundar: 124 anyone?

Angry stares from everyone around. [124 is our college's room number for the Gents' Toilet]

Sundar : OK. You guys aren’t competent enough!

5 PM IST:

All folks are ecstatic not about doing the exam well but that it is over!

7 PM IST:

Me completing this post and publishing it.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

[Change is Here - Part 2 will come up later. Just felt like posting this.]

First tryst with WordPress

Hi peeps!

I have finally signed up for a blog on WordPress and hence this page has come into existence. I am, however, under a personal committment not to blog until exams are over. I’ll continue with this blog, post my exams. Until then, this will redirect to my group blog. Be Right Back. Ciao!

Yours Skeptically,
uleadin