Dwarika trip

We had a one day tip to Dwarika last Sunday.
It all began with a few people rooting strongly for Dwarika over my preferred destinations , Diu or Gir forests.My arguments fell on deaf ears as most people wanted to write off a few sins before they committed more of them.

The level to which it was uncharacteristic of me can be summed up in my father's response when I informed him that i was going to Dwarika. He asked me if I was feeling alright!!! Though I am not an atheist , but neither am I of the most religious kind.

Anyway , we decided to leave early in the morning at 6 30 (!) to beat the rush and to make sure that we dont miss "Bet Dwarika" , which has its doors shut by 12 noon.I somehow managed to up in time , courtesy some generous sunlight directed at my face.

After some light breakfast , it was time for an agonising wait for the cabs to arrive.The stupid drivers dint arrive atleast an hour later, and that too after one of us showed them the way to our place.

It was a Tata Qualis.8 of us fit into it peacefully(6 from IITM and 2 from IITG)as we were about to leave a guy from kgp also joined us as they were not able to fit into on car. The car for the girls hadnt reached their place either, so we showed the way.One of my friends managed to make a good impression by doing so(which i hope for him, will be rewarded suitably) all this while the kgp guy was stifling and gasping for breath, for he was surrounded by loud M guys who could make fun of anything conceivable if they wanted to.

This person joined other kgp guys at the first opportunity he had to do so.Meanwhile we continued on our journey into deep philosophical meanings of stopped windmills and wide roads.

Our driver , sensing our mood, tried to race with the Innova that girls had boarded.What ensued was a display of clever road tricks of "pass and bypass".

As we had started off late, we could only visit the main Dwarika temple before the curtains were drawn. After that we were a bit hungry so we sneaked into a restaurant, only to find that the humble place did not have the capability to serve a large group such as ours.(we were a group of 28 people totally). So we waited albeit a bit less patiently for our turn.

From there on , we went to "Gopi ji ka mandir". I am not sure how it fits into mythology.(As far as I know , Krishna Ji spent his childhood and adolescence in Mathura and not in Dwarika.He was the ruler here.)But all the same they still have a gopi ghat here.
There also was a floating stone kept.The more curious among us tried to analyse the reasons for this.Finally they reached a conclusion that it was fabricated as a cut was faintly visible.















Then we went on to take a steamer to the island where "Bet Dwarika" was situated.It was an amazing experience with the steamer dancing to the tunes of the sea, wavering as if to say hello to the winds that passed by.We did a cost benefit analysis of the owners in the case the steamer drowns.And found that even in an unlikely high probability of 1% failure rate, it is still profitable for the owner to continue his business.

After we got down, we took this amazing ride in whats called a "Jugaru"(Hindi for makeshift) here.This has the engine of a bike(Rajdoot, I guess) and it drives an ingenious light weight wagon.

Then we visited the temple and from there on we went to a beach.This beach ,our driver claimed was good enough to do scuba diving, and we laughed at his boastfulness.But once we saw it , we knew he wasnt off by miles. Awesome was the first word I uttered after being spellbound for a couple of moments.We had great fun at the beach. I have been to many beaches, and this one was the best till date.

PS - Bet as in "Bet Dwarika" does not derive its name from the English usage of the word. Rather its to do with Beta - son in Hindi. The priest tried to tell us the enormous importance of the temple , but it was all lost on me.

Internship

For the uninformed , I am doing my interns at Jamnagar , Gujrat - Reliance.
Here I am , sitting at the site of the "World's Largest grassroots refinery" , and I am supposed to marvel its vastness.But I cant help but scorn at it.

Its too big to remain efficient, The people here are too frustrated at the way of life to concentrate on the work.At the more down-to-earth places, one does not get the exposure to the rigorous method of obtaining an entry pass, but not Jamnagar. One stays in line for atleast a couple of hours while the people supposed to be doing the job discuss in gujju about the weather.During this period , your endurance levels are continuesly tested.Only the mighty soldiers who can endure pressure(pushes) from all sides finally get to get the retinal scanning done.This is after submitting the finger impressions.I cant make out why they need finger impressions when they already have the retinal image.May be its to detect in the event of loss of both the eyes.(I know most of you will be surprised at me being so crass , but after the orderal , I was pushed to such a state of mind)

To this base , add a layer of stiffling hours of inactivity in a room and you have the perfect receipe to hate a workplace.

Thankfully everything is not so ridiculous at this place , the mentors dont mind helping you out , even though they hold very senior positions.Atleast they sublet one to a young guy who both understands our tendencies , and our helps us like a friend.

I have enough material to write another post about the ironic and hilarious things existing at this place, so wait till I again have enthu to blog again .Till then subh ratri , sabbakhair ,fir milte hain isi jagah pe kuch din baad .

PS - (This summary of the internship has been written after the completion ) The experience on the whole was very good - did some good work, made new friends, saw how a huge industry operates & most importantly saw how its business model works.

What is rare?

I was in this class on communication systems sometime back , and while describing how mobile companies decide on the capacity of each link , Our professor mentioned "What is rare?".(these companies go by some expectation probability of calls arriving in a certain duration-they want at the maximum only one call to be set up in that duration so that it an be analyzed using Poisson distributions.)

I was lost at this question.Do we really know what is rare?
IITians are rare - at my college ,everyone is an IITian.
Its rare to see a monkey operating the tap at the basin as well as a human-I see it almost everyday!!!
Its rare for me to spot a female(of the Homosapien species) - But I know for sure that almost half the population in this world is theirs.

So our perception of rarity depends on the context.More specifically , it depends on the past registered data.We forget things too!! But somehow , we tend to remember odd or i should rather say rare events.That is because we subconsciously check the newly acquired data with the ones previously registered ones.If we see a connect , it reinforces both the data.But something totally out of the ordinary ,something that has not been registered in the past say 2 592 000 frames (one month, assuming one frame per second) will b3 registered with a flag!!! -And now I bet most of you noticed the '3' which replaced the 'e' but not the 125 of its prior instances on this post.

The illusion of rarity is also used to create value for a certain product which inherently does not have any value ,Eg - diamond.These are mostly of ornamental use and dont satisfy any of the owner's needs except that of possession of something not commonplace.Come to think of it , those De Beers guys must have had the greatest marketing guru decide their policy.

So ultimately I think everything is rare and nothing is.One just needs to "look at things in proper prospective"(Like the secretaries in the series "Yes Minister" would say).

Food-ological

I am generally ready to accompany people if they want to eat out.
Since the beginning of this semester, I have decided to explore the different places to eat in Chennai.The staple food here is so depressing(that served in the mess) that initially I had thought that Chennai wont have any proper eat-out at fair prices.

Alas, I was wrong .And I couldnt be happier for being proved wrong!! Tonight we had been to Dawat, Me and another friend of mine.What wonderful meal !!! Awesome is an understatement.

Dawat is one of those no frills restaurants.Small place, no flashy signboard and food cooked outside.I guess it would have developed to its present state through a street stall.
We had to wait for some 20 minutes before we got a chance to get in , as there was a rush.But once we were in , the order was delivered in no time , and from there on , it was a feast for the taste buds.


After eating enough to fill our stomachs for an entire day , the bill turned out to be Rs 330 only!
Man this is a place to go , If you are a non-vegetarian .

A few recommendations if you are going there- do try out "reshmi kabab" and "mutton angara".

Random thoughts

First things first - Holi Hai !!! I wish all of you, a joyful and colorful Holi.

Quizzes are almost over , and I am back to one of those phases when my thoughts develop a philosophical overtones (and foodological too !!).

The below mentioned thoughts tried to occupy the same space-time coordinates as my brain .So these had to enter it.The list is in the order of me recollecting them.


Everyone lives for a fixed number of steps from start to end.
The step size is equal to the capability of the individual * his or her lifetime /No of steps.
I postulate that the no of steps would be fixed to 7 , for it the only number that all religions hold sacred.And since these claim to be a link to God, I think , 7 will be "THE CHOSEN ONE".
A person who works hard will go on increasing his capability.so when i mentioned capability in step size, i meant the instantaneous capability.


These cute things with yellow tops and long legs drive me crazy.
No You pervert, I wasnt referring to one of those hot females u hear all to often but get to see equally rare.
I was in fact thinking about capacitors . Those little things that come with long legs and a yellow top never function as we want them to , and then the circuit doesnt function properly , and then we break our head over it repeatedly.Though as a matter of fact , capacitors work better that some of the other components we use, like ICs .You will have absolutely no clue if an IC is working fine until you get the desired response. If it does behave properly, IC is fine.Else it could be a million of reasons u dint get the desired output, of which IC cupping is one.


After finishing a good meal , You know what is heaven.
Food is the basic reason for everything a human does.No one can work hard if one does not get proper food.In fact until you know what good food tastes like , you will not know what you are missing .Like after coming to IIT , I roamed around nearby and then decided that one doesnt get very good food in Chennai . So I was kind of ok eating at mess.But 3 years and numerous treats hence, I realize that one indeed gets good food at this place, One just need to know about the right restaurant .Since we are physically close to Besant Nagar area , I definitely know that you can get good food at fair price at at least two places there.One is Dawat - a small shop specializing in non -veg items. and other is Eden - a veg restaurant.Both being mind blowing !!! Any one in Chennai , who hasnt visited any of these places, you have missed something.

Noise - Switching worlds

From now on the simplicity associated with Noise will be gone for ever for me ;( .Now Noise has to be AGW.

Till now noise was just some random signal and ways to deal with could have been equally random (with finite mean and non causal, time dependent variance) ;) .
Samples in the past have varied from plugging cotton into ears ,banging the neighbor's door and threatening him with dire consequences , to , orienting the bed in such position that one gets the least amount of noise(though it left no room for me to walk in my room !) and trying to increase the frequency of (mechanical) sound waves so that they don't remain in the audible range.

Though the most effective method has been to get accustomed to it.(If you can't do away with it, then learn to live with it).Fortunately I had a wealth of test cases -Voice of a teacher has a couple of properties similar to noise.

It is completely unintelligible.
You don't 'want' to listen to it but end up doing so.

So, putting to good use the 8 to 5 schedule of our college, I finally managed to perfect the technique to be able to fall asleep amidst any amount of noise.

You see, noise was once so tamable, so simple.

But engineers are fond of taking the simplest of things and doing a threadbare analysis such that at the end of it, it remains 'interesting' only for the modeling complexity it presents. So today it was noise's turn to switch worlds- from the simple to the cryptic.

Now noise has a flat power density spectrum. Now it distributed in a Gaussian(in this link read the stuff written about Laplace) fashion. Now it is 'white'. Now it has something to do with the bandwidth of the device. Now it needs careful impedance matching to recognize its presence.

I tried my best not to fall for the temptation of listening to BR when he was dealing with modeling of noise. But as everyone in the elec department knows, you just can't NOT listen when BR is in full flow. He sometimes reminds me of Sachin in Sarjah.If he is in mood and gets set, then you are in for a treat.

Jobless to the hilt

Right now I feel terribly jobless.
So much so that i even contemplated mugging.The fact that this thought crossed my mind (with so much time to go before the quizzes) has filled me with guilt.And somehow I am not finding any interesting reads on the net too(which by the way, I have been continuously from 3rd semester itself).
Generally when I am so bored , I resort to solving some problems off net on logic and number theory.Not that i know much of number theory, but it keeps me interested. Else there is always xkcd.But sadly I did not find it interesting either.

One of my friends suggested quantum computing.He is reading it and finds it very fascinating.But I don't seem to have enthusiasm to read anything right now.I think i will do a re-run of the best episodes of sitcoms.But I don't feel like doing it too.

I think I should do some work on modeling of data.I recently read some cool stuff on modeling of extreme events.But don't exactly know how is it to be done.So taking it 'light' for the moment.

Sunday ho ya Monday , Roz hoga Monday

Now that I am back on blogosphere, I would rather write some quick stuff until it gets lost in (pun intended)the mundane stuff at college(eg Saarang , wing Treats ,Sitcoms) and the exciting stuff (classes all through the day, Currents and Voltages all over the place, Equipments that don't respond,TAs who get the ckt diagram wrong).


Tomorrow is a Sunday.A day of the week when its an off day for most of the humans on earth.But, we are doomed to attend classes on Sunday. And its not because of some sudden rush that the teachers/students felt to teach/learn .

Its because a group of politicians will visit IIT Madras and try to access the institute.But why do they want to see the students in class?Do they really think they can make any sense out of Multipath signal transmission , or profiles of Fluid dynamics or Analog circuits?

If they so , they really are a very optimistic group.

Anyway , the decision has been made and we will have Monday on both Sunday and Monday.

Rediscovered

I, as has become a common habit for me, forgot about this blog completely until a friend of mine searched for "Ankit Ashok". This blog of mine was most probably created during the time I was head over heels in love with Linux and Gaim.
But now we have drifted apart (sounds like breaking a relationship,doesn't it?).
By the way , it reminds me of one of the best break up lines I ever heard - "I am so involved with GNU that the idea, that either you or me should have exclusive rights to the other, is revolting."
Perfect breakup line, isn't it?

I dont like watching Fedrer lose , especially after India winning a wonderful game.
so here i am blogging my time out.