Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

This one's for you!

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A moment of bliss in a crazy week. At 6:42am today morning, Beethoven's 6th symphony began to boom over my computer's speakers. Bliss.

p.s. no blog entries, I promised? Rules were made to be broken.

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Tonight, I have nothing to say. Life is midway for me (is it?), halfway between one stream and another, and poor mudskipping me must force my way along until I dip back into the refreshing water. Longharddrydirtyhotashotandshitasshit, but the destination will - might? - make it all worthwhile.

Atleast, that's the hope :).

I probably won't be posting for a while. I need some time off from computers, friends, and life. See you all in a while.

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My last gratuitious web link: Artsy Fartsy. This one's nice, I promise!

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It's entitled Pseudoletter to Microsoft, but "Dan" might be a better name ...

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This, you have got to hear! It's so unbelievably campy ... !

Check out the rest of the Shatnerology website as well.

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Right here ... clicky.

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The Ballmer Remix is running right now. Say it with me: developers, developers, developers, developers!

Also, NewsBiome is undergoing some pretty radical changes. Tell me what you think, and any and all suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm going to be working on NewsBiome part time as a exam-stress strategy. Please don't post sarcastic "you, and exam stress?" comments. Please.

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Some clickies for you to enjoy:

1. My cousin brother's friend's website: Clicky
2. My cousin brother's wedding photos: Clicky
3. My cousin sister's baby's photos: Clicky

This post was posted by Unknown at 11:33 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Big midterm in T-1 hour and counting.

It's short essay questions, not MCQs.

I almost fell asleep while studying a while back. I have no alarms on, no backup - if I fall asleep, I sleep until the boss wakes me up at 6pm.

Oh, and did I mention, my soul officially belonds to my boss until the present stack of work is done?

Honestly, today is going to be one of those days "better out than in" ... :P

Wish me luck.

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Hereby do swear to give up my mobile phone after I graduate and get an apartment of some sort.

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For starters: now I can actually smell how badly my room stinks. On the good side, this means that my nose has recovered almost fully. On the bad side, well ... apparently I'm going to be very busy tomorrow night.

Another thing: my soul officially belongs to my boss, until the next installment of work is done. Oh help.

Am feeling really lousy tonight, and it isn't just the CA tomorrow. My life is really, genuinely pathetic. I'm just going to go sleep and whine about it in my dreams now. When I wake up tomorrow - if I wake up tomorrow - I'll give a damn.

(p.s. Some purty lyrics. Good night)

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Slashdot is running an article on RSS readers. Should make notes.

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Well, sometimes I am. But mostly I think that means I'm sorry for the way things are, and the way things turned out.

I'm sorry for all the wrong turns, and I'm sorry for all the right turns (because they got mis-turned by the wrong turns, and are now they are turns trapped behind the veil of the past; and you can watch them floating, but you can't touch). I'm sorry for the bits I got wrong, and for the bits I got right, too. I'm sorry for the mistakes I've made, and occasionally for the rights I've done too.

The trick is realising that regret is a part of life, and is a result of us being severely limited selfish beings: we want what's best for us. Some religions advocate that what's happening, all the time, is what's best for everyone. Me, I say: the world is at the world is. Live with it. And the faster you jettison the past, the faster you can move into the future.

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I just spent the entire afternoon playing Civ II and listening to some awesome music (after a long time, I might add) and I feel good! [n.b. "Words" just started]

Okay, okay, so I'm still sick. And my intestines are in their lowest state - ever. And my make-up CA is on the day after tomorrow. And my head still hurts, and my throat still aches.

But - well - an afternoon like the one I just had, is so absolutely worth it. [n.b. "Desert Rose" just started]. And the last few days has given me some time to sit back and think, too. Not enough time - not by half - but some time, and I guess it's the little things which matter.

Anything else? Well ... nothing's changed, not really. But within me a cycle has completed, and I've learned just a little bit more about myself. That's something.

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Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature

And no, I haven't read it, and yes, I intend to, and no, I don't know when. My head hurts. But I feel better.

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Amoxycillin, paracetamol and oxymetazoline hydrochloride, to be precise.

Let's face it, I'm a doctor's grandson - medicines are my "baya haath ka khel" [hi: left hand's game, refering to something very easy]. Still ... I have a huge problem with taking antibiotics since my jaundice attack, when the antibiotics I used to take would make me puke within fifteen minutes. Horrible, horrible, horrible disease.

Oxymetazoline deserves particular mention, though. I can still remember the first time I took it ... how my nose just mysteriously cleared up after days of getting stuck! Oh, joy!

(Oh, and just watched a hilarious episode of Malcolm in the Middle. For those who don't know: Malcolm is a supersmart kid in a dysfunctional family. In today's, he and a bunch of geeks from school have to go to science quiz, which is intensely competitive. His teacher tries to convince him to cheat. A guy he meets tries to convince him to leave, but it turns out he was just doing that to "eliminate the competition". So what does he do? Works out how to copy all the answers - and distributes them to all the teams. Well, okay, it was a lot funnier on TV. I'm such a TV addict)

This post was posted by Unknown at 6:51 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Okay, there's some other stuff I need to update you on, but mostly: I HATE BEING SICK!!! Most of all, I hate the fact that for me, one sickness (my throat, say, or my god awful sinuses) translates into a gut-wrenching five-days-to-a-week extravaganza as my body goes into a total system collapse, and I get pretty much every single symptom known to man (I am currently suffering from a head/sinus ache, my throat hurts, my stomach bubbles, and I haven't slept all night).

And now, thanks to the University Health ppl begin closed on Saturday, I'm going to go sit for a CA for no good reason whatsoever, without knowing a thing, so that in case I can't pull off an MC on Monday, I won't get zero. And half the test is short answer questions!

There have been (like I mentioned) some good things, but they come waaaay later - once I'm in a state to begin to appreciate them.

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Before I begin: this one's for you, Yvette! (when I read it, the piano and the brilliance and the hard work, it just reminded me of you). Earlier on, he says, "I have a theory that scientists and philosophers are sublimated romanticists who channel their passions in another direction", which is also true, I think.

(And now, back to our regularly scheduled program)

Well, I don't have much to say, I'm just here because (a) I don't feel like sleeping, and (b) because somebody told me they'd like my last-to-last blog entry. Add to 'a' the fact that I'm vaguely stressed about my post-college life (which I would like to spend as an atleast reasonably well-to-do entrepreneur). Big dreams? Yeah, sure, I've got them too. Nice house. A dog. A girl I like, and who likes me back. The simple stuff.

But the simple stuff means I've got to work my ass off now, now when all my expenses are being borne by my parents (okay, that sounds mean, but seriously: I'm not becoming an all-and-out entrepreneur if it means taking money off my parents, I've been doing it for too long. But they are paying for this education, and I figure; if I can learn the important things, the things I'm really going to need in the future I'm making for myself, it's money well spent).

And seriously, this is one of those lifelong things - in the sense, that (as with certain people and places) I wouldn't mind living them for the rest of my life. Nor am I particularly ambitious when it comes to money: if it'll pay for rent, for me, for my dog, and for the computer which is the font of all the money, I'll be happy. Webdesigning - or rather, web application creation - excites me, simply because there's so much to do, so many avenues still open, and so many possibilities still floating around. Jetsam, flotsam, maybe, but it's so perfectly close to my ideal that I'd be stupid not to atleast give it a shot.

My biggest dreams in my professional life:

1. Making ends meet: if I can't fly off with my (girl?)friend on a holiday to far-away places once every year (atleast), it's not worth it.
2. A dog: A must in every home. Unlimited love, companionship and warmth, whenever needed.
3. Work from home: Easier to take care of point 2, also ... I'd love to do it (no, I'm not just being a lazy slob; renting office premises is around 400-500$/month in Singapore). If I can't work from home, I want to work somewhere where I can take point 2.

That's pretty much it, I guess. Recognition, particularly about my peers, would be nice. A girlfriend? Nice, but with the dog, I could wait awhile, until I find - well - her. Have I left out anything? Nothing important. Am I being overly hopeful? Duh - this is, after all, my best case situation. This is where I am three years from now, if everything goes spot-on perfect. Of course, nothing ever does - but that's the fun of it, isn't it? But yeah - that's the dream. That's the hope. That's the vision (atleast, right now).

And now off I go to play one of my favourite games.

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:19 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

1. First of all: I am now officially sick. My head hurts like hell, and my throat is sore. Already have plans to go to the library later, get a nice good book, go to NUH, get something unspeakably delicious and juicy to eat, then lie back in bed like a good little boy and read read read until I fall asleep (which means I have to start reading at ten or something, cos buddy, I don't last that long).
2. NUS is selling Macromedia Studio MX for 65 SGD. Wow, that's cheap. Am seriously considering buying it, and am downloading demo copies. Me, I get a much bigger kick coming up with something like that, but maybe this will help/refine stuff up/be an asset if I do go into making independant websites (unlikely, but let's see). 65$ is only slightly pricier than a textbook, and I haven't bought one in two semesters. Let's see!
3. Finished off all my travel details, bookings, etc. Ticket in hand - feels good. Not in a "yay I'm going home" sorta way, just in a "phew don't have to bother any more" kind of way.

Rather insightful post on Slashdot today, on music and how it affects people. Particularly relevant to someone like me: who runs his life on the music other people can't hear ... the soundrack of life, I like that phrase.

Okay, me headed NUH-wards. Ta ta.

This post was posted by Unknown at 6:40 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Like most things in my life, drinking, sex, and other vices, I tend to do stuff in binges.

That got me thinking. I've always thought of myself as someone who gets extremely excited about something, and then pursues it with everything he has until something more interesting comes along. Well, maybe not with everything. Also, lately, I've been forcing myself to not give up on stuff which doesn't excite me, or rather, to try and keep the excitement ... ah, offtrack. Never mind.

Back to binging. Do I binge? Do I binge on life? It's hard for me to say, even if I look at myself honestly (which I rarely do, not when I know that a lot of my friends are reading, and plus, this is English - this is the form, the shape, the sentence, the verb structures and noun declinations that I hide behind on a regular basis, so the inner me doesn't get out). Maybe I am a binger. I wouldn't want to be - if I'm going to become self-employed to any extent whatsoever, I need to be able to push a project until it's done, in all its magnificent glory, sheer elegance, et cetera, ad nauseum. But ... if I am a binger, what's there to be done about it? Can I really stop? Maybe I just have to be careful what I binge on - PHP Perl websites observing exercise dreams good, girls hearts overanalysing computers and acting like a geek bad. Eh.

On the "overanalysing" issue, am trying to phase out overanalysing and replacing it with overobserving - trying to be as observant about things as possible, as deductive etc. etc., but without ... well, as far as I know, my whole problem with overanalysing issues was that when I did overanalyse things, earlier, I would generally skew my analysis towards whatever I wanted. Now, I'm trying to be more balanced about it: more observing, less analysing, that's my motto. Try and watch out for what's going on rather than figuring it out as an additional step. I can see a coupla big problems with this immediately, so I'll just think of it as a vague statement of my exact, present state - subject to immediate, irretrievable chance, whenever I want to - and leave it at that.

I'm in a writey mood because I have a midterm tomorrow and I need to study. Well - I could just go back to my room and try and sleep, and study in the morning (it's only 00:19, still tons of time). There's a lot to understand and stuff. Mostly, I'm just here cos it's colder here. Mostly, I'm writing a lot because I haven't really spoken to anyone about the kind of stuff going around in my head recently - well, simply because I'm not allowed to. It's as simple as that, and no, it's not driving me nuts or anything. Sometimes there are somethings which are best kept to yourself (so why am I railing on about it here? Well, I think of this as my personal brainstormroom. If you guys have any questions, you can ask, but I may not answer - probably not answer, if I've *said* I don't want to talk about it).

So, where are we: binging, analysing, want to talk. Check. Well, okay, in retrospect, it probably isn't a smart idea for me to talk about any of that stuff here, so I'll hush up. It's just that ... if you want things to happen in your life, you have to make them happen. Lately, nothing much has been happening in my life, and it's sad. Well, the very very little which has been happening, hasn't been so good. But the good bits are few, far between, and getting crushed up amongst the very few bad bits and the many, many, many bits of sheer nothingness. I'm not talking workwise or anything - that way, lots is happening, lots will happen. I mean emotionally. I'm an emotional person, and unless my emotional muscles are being tweaked, I'm not a happy boy. And right now, emotional muscles ... are getting pulled bad, sometimes, good, rarely, and getting no exercise whatsoever - a hell of a lot.

(The author would like to thank those of you with the sheer bravado to make it this far, and would like to reward you with a quote from (maybe? probably not) Sigmund Freud: "Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar")

Yeah, so: emotional muscles not getting exercise. So how? Well, I don't know. I'm not sure if it's time limitations, people limitations or just sheer inertia. Argh, I don't know. I suppose I can't go through life getting emotionally pulled and twisted one way or another, can I? Or can I? Maybe I can if I can trust the twister :) ... any other suggestions, guys?

Maybe I just need to get out more ... I don't know ... right now, it just doesn't seem worth the effort, but it does look like the only way out of this quandary, so ...

(It just had to happen: after over a year of vacillerating, Gaurav has to decide between being social and unsocial - again. He's done this before, and the result has been the same: he'd like to get back into his safe, secure I-barely-know-anyone hideyhole and watch the world go by, but now he's peeked out, he's seen the Big Time, and baby, the hole's too damn small now. He'll just have to come to terms with the big ol' world, same as everyone else, and hope for the best).

I think I'm done for the night - well, more tired than out of things to talk about, believe me, but I need some sleep or this midterm is going bye-bye.

(Other things I can do: river swimming, find me some nice conversation, lie around in a hotel or be assimilated).

This post was posted by Unknown at 11:49 pm | 1 comments | Post a Comment

... I want a laptop just like this one.

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If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be Frank Warner's Foundations of Differentiable Manifolds and Lie Groups. I give a clear, detailed, and careful development of the basic facts on manifold theory and Lie Groups. I include differentiable manifolds, tensors and differentiable forms. Lie groups and homogenous spaces, integration on manifolds, and in addition provide a proof of the de Rham theorem via sheaf cohomology theory, and develop the local theory of elliptic operators culminating in a proof of the Hodge theorem. Those interested in any of the diverse areas of mathematics requiring the notion of a differentiable manifold will find me extremely useful. Which Springer GTM would you be? The Springer GTM Test

Which doesn't say much - not to me, anyway :P.

This post was posted by Unknown at 5:43 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

No, for real, this time. I've just realised it. If I can stay up until 4am, working on something as blindingly unimportant as a webpage, on a Saturday early morning, then I am - in fact - officially doomed. It's sad, it's pathetic, it's evil.

It's also very, very fun :).

Oh, and I skipped exercise tonight as well. My bad :(. Will get back into it tomorrow, unless I take up the free ticket to the KE bash, but I doubt it, really. Not like I'm going to have much fun or anything - ermmm, I guess, anyway. Should I? Shouldn't I? I'll probably be debating this until late tomorrow night, but that's alright too, isn't it? ;)

Sometimes, it's just beautiful to feel so ... so ... young ...

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The world can be such a frightening place. It always scares me, sectarian violence. You-and-me-are-different violence (possibly, because I feel as different from everybody else as possible; so if it's really you-and-me-are-different, then that should be my brain-guts-blood scattered across a dirty road in Pakistan). It's so senseless and hurtful. I can understand the kind of rage that would drive someone to kill, sort of; but I'm thinking jealousy, I'm thinking anger, I'm thinking frustration, I'm thinking hate. This - killing because they're different, this I don't get. At all. At all at all. Thank god there is still some precious beauty in the world.

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Life? I don't know, I can't say. I've spent all of today morning since I got up lying around on my soft mattress, just sort-of letting everything go, and it feels good. Now about to go bathe and then head off for another exhausting day of running around like an insane maniac, but that's another story.

Well, among other things, I've been wondering *what* I need a girlfriend for (assuming, of course, that I actually do need a girlfriend) and ... well, okay, I'm not going to share my thoughts here out in the open and stuff, but I'm having some ideas. They'll take some time to crystallize and come out, but it's better than what I started with, so that's interesting. But then again, it's linked up with a lot of other stuff that's happening in my life, so there's no saying when it, a part, or everything might change all-of-a-sudden and wash all my thoughts away ... but then, that's even more interesting, right?

Had a bit of a burn out yesterday; thankfully, I still have friends I can call and chat with randomly :). It's such a relief sometimes ... but I'm the kinda person who's always very nervous about my friends, just sort of worried that they'll melt away one night and ... and ... and ... then again, I'm the kind of person stupid enough to worry about something like this, and not do anything about it, like make and keep a wide group of friends or something.

Now is also the most removed I've been from ... the situation ... since ever. Since a year and a half back. Which is, let me be honest here, scary. Scary in a diffused, out-of-sense scary. In a what's-going-to-happen-next! kind of scary. Ah well. The only way onward is forward, so ...

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Check this out!

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