Sudipta's Life

We were returning from a movie last night. We were generally ambling across the parking lot with the light rail station in sight, and discussing the movie, cutting jokes, etc when we spotted our train from a distance. It was pretty late and the frequency of trains was very little at this hour, so I started to run for it. "Oh leave it... we can't make it", one of them said. I replied, "Lets give it a shot at least", and dashed for the train. I vaguely heard some mumbling from them, something like "too far" or "no time" or something. But I paid no heed --- I was already sprinting and assumed that they will follow. I was surprised on the way, however. Two of the three others go to the gym regularly, and I started going with them only recently. Also, I'm not a great sprinter, and add to that the broken foot I've got --- I definitely am not the fastest person around. And yet, I was leading them in the chase. "Well, maybe I had a head

Came across this one here: http://www.edulix.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41705 Do click and enjoy! :)

One of my friends recently returned from an onsite trip from the US to her home in India. As expected, she went home with twice the amount of luggage, carrying gifts for all and sundry. They were duly given out, bringing smiles on the faces of people who got the 'Umreeka se gift'. My friend was happy until she overheard one conversation where an old uncle of hers was commenting (in private) to his wife that my friend had probably bought the gifts in India itself. "See this Made in China stamp here? You can buy these things nowadays in any mall around here!". To say the least, she was very disappointed as she told me about this. My first reaction was, "Don't get anything for that old bugger from now on. In fact, rub the salt in and get gifts for everyone but that hag". But then I began to wonder why he had such a judgement. Perhaps the reason was that he had never seen the way foreign goods have flooded American markets here. Almost all clothes are made i

You get to hear the sound of mom's voice from the very first second of your morning... imagine not being forced to wake up to a wailing alarm clock and hear your mom calling you instead. You don't have to cook, clean or do the laundry. Warm, fresh chapatis appear magically on your plate during meals, refills and second helpings come unasked for. People will always find that you've thinned and take up the challenge to stuff you enough for the next six months. You clothes get magically selected for washing, cleaned, dried, neatly folded and ironed if necessary, and then they appear in the closet. You don't need to worry over what will be cooked, and whether it will be available on time. People actually bother to come and tell you to come and eat breakfast. In fact, they will even drag you to have your food. You get to haggle over the price of vegetables in the market, mentally calculating how much you saved when you bring down the price of a cabbage from 0.2 $ to $0.1 . Y

The student had almost dropped her jaws to the floor when she asked that. "Oh yes, arranged marriages are one hundred percent a reality in India and most of the Indian subcontinent, I think" --- I had said. I was having the conversation with a Romanian girl from my research group while we had gone for an outing after our semester was over. And she seemed scandalized. I had to clarify my statement... "Well, the point is, an arranged marriage is an option for every young man or woman in India if they don't find a partner themselves". We had been discussing a lot of issues that afternoon. Stereotypes such as "Asian/Indian men are shy" or "Indian women don't cheat" and many such things. It was quite interesting, sitting in a group that had one person from India, one from Romania, one Chinese one Bulgarian and one American student, and discussing these issues. From a larger or a global perspective, it was really interesting to find that the co

I'm posting this as a blatant copy and paste from here: http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~ubasu/iitk/jokes/desi-romeo.html But worth the read... every single bit. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% THE DESI ROMEOS GUIDE-BOOK %%%% %%%% By Prem!(prem@prem.lbl.gov) %%%% with contributions by ACReddy (aceman@netcom.com). %%%% %%%%(PHYLUM: Desi,GENUS: Romeonensis) %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Since the annual induction of new recruits into s.c.i. is under way, let me start the ball rolling on the touchy topic of the intrepid romeo's courtship ritual... I would love to say that any resemblance to people living or married is a coincidence,but unfortunately that isn't really the case.It has been my misfortune to come across despos who fit at least one description very well.Some of the descriptions here are based on the outrageous opinions expressed by our dudes in private in an all-male environmen

By far, the most common keywords that redirect people to this blog relate to GRE and/or GATE, MTech admissions. Which is a good thing, since they find useful things here (hopefully). Also, the second most prolific keywords that lead here are my name. Yes, every time you search for that and come here, I know about you --- it is not exactly such covert sneaking up here, you know! But, amusingly enough, some people land here looking for 'special' things, we shall say, and I intend to answer your queries here as best as I can. Unfortunately, the stock of weird keyword searches is not as long as the ones here or here , so you will get specialized attention. 1. Bengali smell armpit --- Now, why on earth you were looking for the exact smell of Bengali armpits, I'm not sure. Maybe you need some lactatives or purgatives, maybe your mornings are not as 'yellow' as you would want them to be. Or maybe you're frustrated enough with the sample smell of armpits from all over

Ladies and gentlemen, here are the pics from the hiking and trekking trips of last weekend to the Sequoia National Park, as promised . I'd let the pictures speak for themselves. Our initial journey started off with our the car speeding through yellow grassy fields like these: Soon enough, we were in the mountains, when the roads changed completely into winding and steep turns such as these, while some melted into the wilderness, like these. Oh, did I forget to tell you about the breathtaking views we saw? During our trip, we saw the largest tree on the planet. Don't miss the man standing at the foot of the tree in the pic above. And then we also walked and trekked through snow while we climbed from 7500 ft to 11,000 ft over sea level. Yeah, we climbed all the way to the top of one of these . We watched deer from this close , saw waterfalls like this and spent a lot of time sightseeing. Oh, what captured my imagination were a few private cabins built along the mountains -

For those of you who haven't "heard" about it, go and visit this page on wikipedia, on holophony . Once you've finished reading the short paragraph describing it, go and visit the last link, the virtual barbershop. The file is 6.2 MB (yeah, quite big by dial-up standards), but believe me it will be worth every single second you spend downloading it. Go and hear it... yes, now! Don't forget your headphones!! Imagine when that technology enters games. Imagine playing CounterStrike or Doom with that technology, when you can literally hear the beast breathe a few inches away. Imagine, newer amusement parks and horror mansions built with sound emitters of this sort. Imagine being able to record the sound your near and dear ones for a full hour on this, and then listening later. Imagine playing Nascar or NFS with this. Be aware, be afraid and be wonderstruck. Welcome to technology!

We went trekking and hiking to the Yosemite park and the Sequoia national parks over the last two weekends. I will be putting up a post or two with the photos and description of the magic soon --- right now I'm just trying to organize the photos and all. For now, let me describe to you an evening by the campfire at the Sequoia national park which we spent this weekend. The trek that day had been about 5 mile long each way. Steep and narrow roads like these had exhausted some of us, and it was getting darker every minute. The temperature was predicted to drop to -6 degrees Centigrade, and so the fire was necessary very soon. I took up the charge. Yes, I specialize in starting fires, and besides like being in control of situations. :) Soon, firewood was gathered, savagely cut into pieces, charcoals were lit and we had a fire blooming. And with the creeping cold, sprouting fire, warmth of buddies... beers weren't too far behind. Out came a box full of 8% alcohol Steel Reserve, and