Daily Blogs!

I’m just back from a three-month-long exchange programme (STEP) from ESC Toulouse in France. And I was fortunate enough to roam most of Europe, barring the eastern fringe. So what if it was more like city-hopping and living like the nomads – there’re great many stories to tell! So presenting for your reading pleasure, “The Dummy’s Guide to Getting Ripped-Off in Europe!” (*)

• Lose your baggage. Lose your baggage with currency in it. Lose your baggage with currency and irreplaceable EURail pass. Lose your baggage with currency, irreplaceable EURail pass and laptop. Lose our baggage with currency, irreplaceable EURail pass, laptop AND passport. Possibly even spend the night in jail as you were drunk, drugged and crossing the border when this happened.
• Get your loaded EURO Travel Card stolen from the front pack of your jacket that you were wearing in the night train; discovering this early in the morning, but not reporting the theft to either the bank or the police only to have the entire card cleaned off by the thief by the time you report it in the night – because hey, sightseeing comes first!
• Give a 100 Euro note to the waitress as tip. Because she was hot. And you have no concept of spreading out your expenses over the entire duration of the trip.
• Give four 50 cent coins to the well-dressed lady request “change” for 2 Euro, when all she was really doing was begging. And realizing what just happened after she has made-off with your “change” and the original 2 Euro. Repeat twice.
• Nice suited businessman driving a decent mid-sized car asking you for directions. You have a map. You show him the way. Said businessman is happy, decides to give you a tee-shirt as a present. “Hey, whatever man! You are awesome!” Business man is an Italian fashion designed based out of Paris, on a business trip to Rome. Small talk about how Italian fashion is hot back home. He decides that you need more presents – gives you a nice leather jacket that supposedly costs 1000 Euro. Even warns you not to sell it. Because it is a present, after all. And now that you have so many presents, he gently asks if you would like to give him some hard cash to buy some gasoline, as he gambled all his money away last night at the casino! I mean, he’s practically giving you 1000 Euro merchandise for only a 100 Euro. Alright, you don’t have that much? Well, maybe 50 Euro? No? Damn you tourists! Give me my presents back!
• Travel by train to a country where the EURail pass is not valid. Despite knowing this in advance. Pay the hefty fine. Maybe buy a ticket on-board after paying the fine. Or just bribe the ticket controller!
• Buy a lot of souvenirs in the best looking shop that says it is running a 50% off sale. Only to discover later that the store next door is selling the same souvenir at half the price – before the discount!
• Pay 100 Euro donation for the development of street children to a random guy on the street carrying a pad and a faded letter identifying him as the competent authority for collecting said donation. Or maybe for the cause of the blind and the deaf. Or maybe for AIDS awareness? What? You have no heart? This for a good cause!
• Give your passport to the friendly policeman on the deserted street without checking for any ID. Then give 400 Euro to said “policeman” to get your passport back!
• Book train tickets and make hostel reservations, but don’t travel. Alright, book non-refundable train tickets and one-night charges for cancellation hostel reservation, but don’t travel.

And many many more! When you send me one million Euro for the unabridged full version book. 90% discount on orders received within one minute of your reading this post. Come on, pay up. I know you want to!

(*) = Many of these stories are real. Of course, I was fortunate enough that none of them happened to me. Well except for the very last one. Don’t ask!

I am currently in Toulouse, at the ESC Toulouse Business School for an exchange term, studying International Business. Due to these sudden developments, the classes, new environment, parties, new people, the consequent touring in and around France (and Europe) and the sudden bombardment of Prachett’s Discworld series, I seem to have even lesser time than usual; thus the lack of updates on the blog. Sometimes, I wonder if the Daily part of it even makes any sense.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of pictures (by lot, I mean 4000+ at last count, and rising) here.

Also, two of my “thought pieces” have been put up on Strat.in:

• Windows 7 – Make or Break for Microsoft?
• An Overview of Online Privacy and Security (With a Focus on Google)

Other than that, things are sailing smooth, more or less. I’ll try to squeeze in updates as and when they possible. Feel free to check out my homepage, and follow me on various social networking tools.

Oh and, high speeds trains are fun.

The problem with him was that he was an always regret boy. He regretted everything to the extent that he couldn’t enjoy anything anymore. The only real thing stopping him from depression was that he’d regret that as well. And that people expected him to not be depressed. But this always-regret psychology had ever-lasting repercussions on all that he did.

He was not sure when he started behaving this way. Was it because of some unaddressed insecurity? Or was it that he was not capable of rational thought – putting down the pros and cons and deciding on the basis of the maximization of pros? He ran the same arguments in his head, over and over again, and yet again, till his head metaphorically exploded, probably giving him an aneurysm.

He spent much of his time regretting, instead of constructive investments in studies, partying and the other usual things that people of his age did. He was more efficient, while not intelligent or street-smart in the strictest sense, he was capable of manipulating the environment to his liking without really being manipulative; this was a fortunate thing, because it meant that he actually did and achieved above-average in life.

But if he didn’t regret, and for once trusted his decisions, without second-guessing, stood up for them and just let the iterative (and often wrong, but that didn’t matter, everyone thinks wrong, most of the time) thinking machine in his head let go, he probably would have been a completely different person. Possibly more successful, and infinitely happier.

—-

I wanted to put in some examples, but it just became too sad.

I own a Dell Latitude XT (yeah, it’s a really cool covertible tablet, and yes, it cost a nuclear bomb). In a class today, I depressed the stylus in its housing to release the stylus and sort of misjudged the rebound, whereby the stylus flew from it’s housing and landed on the ground, a good three feet below. Now, this has happened before, but I don’t know if it was the angle or what, but the stylus buttons have stopped working. They won’t get pressed, and so I have no right click and erase functionality any more. (Dell should consider a redesign to prevent this from happening in the first place.)

So, after the class, I call up Dell Support (because for some weird reason their chat isn’t working, and email takes ages) and had to wait for all of six minutes before my call was answered by someone who was noting down people’s details so that the real tech guys can call them later (an arrangement as they were experiencing a large volume of calls at the moment; still better than dropping my call – am looking at you, Nokia).

15 minutes later I get a call, and I tell the chap truthfully that the stylus fell and it won’t work anymore; needs replacement. He takes a minute to figure out if they can replace it, and probably misunderstood me thinking that the screen was broken. Clarified. He said that he’ll get back in an hours time after checking inventories.

2 hours later, the local service provider from Kolkata calls: “Sir, we have received a call from Dell. Your part is here, but because there’s a bandh in Kolkata, we cannot deliver it to you tomorrow.”

“It’s here? Already? How is that even possible? No problem, send it across on Saturday then.”

“Thank you sir, for understanding [as if i had a choice]. Please return the defective piece to the technician.”

“Sure.”

Now that’s some service! Kudos, Dell.

I don’t know how Dell does it, because this isn’t a standard part, and I’m sure you don’t just have them lying around everywhere, given that there must be single digit XT machines in the country! Pretty cool.

—-

Also 1: You get what you pay for. I paid some 12k extra for the ProSupport and Dell Complete Care for 3 years. But totally worth it.

Also 2: No, I don’t get paid for this, but I wish I did.

—-

UPDATE: Received the stylus today. The retail price is Rs.1744.62/- Of course, the warranty meant I didn’t have to pay for it. The delivery guy from Dell said that they had the stylus in stock, which is why they were able to get it in such short a time. Even if they didn’t have it, they’ve got in within a day. So I can now erase and right click!

They also took the broken stylus away, as part of their policy. I understand that they refurbish it and reuse, which is cool. Also used to study what went wrong and thus improve the product.

The fun thing is that the stylus came in a relatively BIG carton box, and had the usual add-ons of nibs and the princer to pull nibs out, and the teether, all of which was packed in a nice plastic case which was loaded on a foam package which in turn was in the BIG carton. Funny to see something so small come off that big a package. Such waste!

The foam packaging is actually “Sealed Air” Instapak. It has toll free numbers on it for return and disposal locations, including a cell number for India. These custom packs are designed with requirements in mind, so lesser material is required. The polyurathane foam is covered with a polyehtylene film that can be resued as a carton filler or disposed off with ordinary waste. The packaging material can also be processed in municipal waste-to-energy facilities. It also compresses to 10% of its original volume in a landfill, complying with international legislation restricting the presence of heavy metals. It will not degrade to pollute air or groundwater. It also conforms to 94/62/EC = European Packaging Directive, and will be accepted by third-party collection organizations in Germany and throughout Europe.

All of the above is detailed on the packaging itself.

I finished reading the book quite some weeks back now, and here are the remaining quotes:

• The burden of happiness can only be relived by the balm of suffering.
• Real suffering is measured by what’s taken away from us.
• People always hurt us with their trust.
• A man must love his bear.
• She always told the truth, even when she was lying.
• Wealth and power were measured by the privacy that only money could buy and the solitude that only power could demand and enforce.
• I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it.
• Yes, what is it, Tariq? I’d asked him irritably. Oh, I’m sorry, he’d replied. Do you want to be lonely?
• A kings is a bad enemy, a worse friend and a fatal family relation.
• Some of the worst wrongs were caused by people trying to change things.
• Like everyone else in the world who smokes, I wanted to die as much as I wanted to live.
• The devil is in the details.
• She was beautiful, and she was just naive enough, just sanguine enough to stop sympathy slipping into pity.
• Silence is the tortured man’s revenge.
• You’re fucked. Your life is over.
• Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey.
• Fear dries a man’s mouth, and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.
• Every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved.
• The only victory that really counts in prison is survival.
• Cruelty is a kind of cowardice.
• Despotism despises nothing so much as righteousness in its victims.
• Evil is the root of all money.
• A secret isn’t a secret, unless keeping it hurts.
• If you make your heart into a weapon, you always end up using it on yourself.
• You don’t inform on people, not for any reason.
• It is possible to do the wrong things for the right reasons.
• We can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.
• Happiness is a myth; it was invented to make us buy things.
• They were unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in appearance. They were also intelligent, honest, and unconditionally loyal to one another.
• If I’d been a different man, a better man, I would’ve cried. And who knows, it might’ve made the difference.
• The moment was lost.
• Such is life.
• A man has to respect himself before he can respect anyone else.
• Can one act of genius allow us to forgive the hundred flaws and failures that bring it into being?
• She had to become a widow for life, before she was even married.
• There is nothing so depressing as good advice.
• We never feel or express any one emotion without feeling something of its opposite.
• I think I love him, in a kind of insane way, but I don’t trust him. Is that a horrible thing to say about the guy you stay with?
• Every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret.
• Danger was one of the lances I used to kill the dragon of stress.
• We were red-lining our lives.
• Fighing to save a life is a better and more enduring reason than fighting to end one.
• The fully mature man or woman has about two seconds left to live.
• You can never tell what people have inside them until you start taking it away, one hope at a time.
• If we envy someone for the right reasons, we’re half way to wisdom.
• Personality and personal identity are in some ways like co-ordinates on the street map drawn by our intersecting relationships.
• Fate gives us all three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives.
• We lived out a life together in that kiss: we lived and loved and grew old together, and we died.
• Sometimes the worst thing you can do to a woman is to love her.
• The nothing that it gives you, the unfeeling emptiness it gives you, is sometimes all and everything you want. (it = herion)
• But I hadn’t asked the right question. I hadn’t asked about her. I’d asked about him.
• A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.
• The end mirrors the beginning.
• One of the agonising truths for a battle media is that you pray as hard and almost as often for men to die as you pray for them to live.
• The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open.
• Negative space.
• It’s bad, loving someone you can’t forgive. It’s not as bad as loving someone you can’t have.
• Fate always gives you two choices: the one you should take, and the one you do.
• The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads.
• The wheel had turned through one full revolution.
• There is no man, and no place, without war.
• Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.
• No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.

Of course the standard disclaimer applies: Quotes are fair use and the original right of the author is asserted.

I started reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts during the last days of my summers in Mumbai. A snippet worth sharing:

She loved the guy. She did it for him. She would’ve done anything for him. Some women are like that. Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independece. After a while you start throwing people out — your friends, everyone you used to know. And it’s still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take you down with it.

Few one-liners:

Civilization is defined with what we forbid, more than what we permit.

Never let anyone know what you are thinking. Corollary: Always know what others think of you.

Hypocrisy is just another form of cruelty.

Truth is a bully that we all pretend to like.

If you have to ask the question, you have no right to the answer.

Sometimes, you need to surrender before you win.

The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance is that it works so well.

Unfortunately, I came back to Kolkata for my second year, and didn’t carry the book with me. It’s still half read, so hoping to get hold of a copy from the library, and of course, hoping to get time to read it.

—–

Klaatu barada nikto

• My house will have directional and focused lighting
• Woofers are one of the best additions to entertainment systems
• Toilets need air conditioning; some of the best ideas hit you when you’re in the potty
• Mango Mousse is delighfully yummy
• Month-long salad diets are sustainable, and makes one appreciate other food
• It is easy to forget email subscriptions if they are auto-labeled and auto-archived
• The last one and a half years have been something
• 1.33 GHz is enough processing horsepower
• People are generally nice
• Webcomics are a perfectly useless but addictive waste of time
• Zoning out is healthy; not caring too, but only so much before it hits you back
• I’ll be 25 soon; that’s adult even by Middle Earth standards
• Too much happiness makes justifying existance difficult
• Lot of folks in the first- or second-degree of separation are getting married
• Bullet point lists are stupid, but hey, I’m an MBA in the making
• Business runs on common sense, everything else is simply fraud
• I have no clue why a donkey’s hee-haw is called braying
• New Zealand has 45 million sheep, and only 4 million people
• There are suspenders available for men’s “balls”, kind-of like a bra, when it becomes too painful to carry them around just like that; seriously though, it’s a medical aid
• Fluid motion still amazes me
• I will someday become the member of the Long Now Foundation
• Euthanasia should be legal
• The Butterfly Effect really exists; more so, because it’s a really small world
• The primary lighting in a room should be the left-most button on the switchboard
• Orange-brown-red-yellow are okay as corporate colours
• Wednesday is statistically the day when I read the most
• Thinking “think of something” does not help in thinking about anything
• Always have objectives at the back of the mind; but be human
• Our brains are rather good justification engines; helps us sleep well at night
• There was no particular motivation for this random post; I just wanted to write one-liners and did not want to abuse twitter and facebook
• Coldplay works only on certain moods
• Paul Oakenfold is still the best music to sleep to when travelling
• I still love PopCorn as a food
• I have been sleeping for over eight hours every single night; I still don’t have enough dreams
• Friend says that I do have dreams; I don’t make an effort to remember them; Maybe this is a more serious problem
• My memory sucks
• I think I think in English
• I will end this post when it exceeds 500 words
• My infrastructure upgradation policy: Shut down the city, and build whatever it is to be built in one week
• Sparrows bathing in the mud are relaxing to watch
• I like the Emma Watsonish model of the Ponds Dreamflower Talc ad that has the Gum Sum Gum Pu Chuk score from Bombay
• Numbers I remember: 61, 189, 303, 461, 3038, 3696909, 8936394, B123306
• The WYSIWYG editor in WordPress does not count numbers as words; now that I’ve written this, it seems logical
• I have a psychometric assessment tomorrow, for the entire day
• 500: Done