Ping !

Ok, so I decided to break my 'Bloggers block' again.. Loong time no see, everyone :).. There's been lotsa stuff keeping me away from blogger, but one of the main culprits is - u guessed it.. right here..
Here's how Gtalk changed my life in the past one year.. You'll know you've fallen prey to the Gtalk-olism, like me, when :


1. U get up in the morning after yesterday's late night chat, and the first thing that comes into your mind is "Oh, I gotta sign in !..."

2. Ever heard of the phenomena of 'phantom rings' ? Those mobile vibrations u imagine in ur pocket, even though its not ringing.. yea, that was once upon a time..

Well now its 'Phantom Pings'.. U imagine you heard that ever-inviting gtalk 'ping' sound even though its never there.. Yea, I even hear it in between songs and normal conversations :) ..

3. Your latest hobby is collecting cool Gtalk Status messages.. and building a collection of profile pics to put up too :) ..

4. You g-chat for hours with people whom you never even spoke to in school or college.. and they keep saying "Its a wonder I never knew you well back then..".. :)

5. You come to know about incidents in your hometown/country/other places even before your own folks back in India hear of it..

6. When you're 'invisible', it means 'busy' to ppl.. when you're 'busy', it means 'available', and when you're 'available', all you hear is a bunch of 'ping' sounds every 2 seconds :)

7. While multi-chatting, You are used to multiple emotions at once - you cry in one chat window, press tab and laugh in the next chat window, press tab and get serious in the next one..

8. In real life, you tend to say 'Lol' and 'Rofl' and forget to really laugh sometimes :).. (To be frank, I use np, ty, k and all the other crap too)

9. When you enter lab, you prefer to ping your labmates 'GM' instead of going around saying Goodmorning yourself..

10. You tend to make short forms for every single usage u use more than 2 times a day..

11. You update ur status messages on a minute-by-minute basis.. using 'brb', '@Lab', '@Room', 'out for tea', 'out for lunch', 'sleeping'.. etc.. (yea my gchat buddies wud know :) )

12. Ppl prefer to chat to you on gchat than in real life !

13. When ppl ping u on gtalk and dont find you, they worry that something has happened to you ! :)..


Hmm.. like i saw on a status msg sometime ago, PHD seems to have given me a P(ermanent) H(ead) D(amage) by now :)

Getting 'High' in S(w)ingapore..

Lately, weekend timepasses have become addiction for us.. Part of life.. No, probably the only things in life..

Few weeks ago we went to Clarke Quay, probably the entertainment hub of Singapore. There was an adventure sport : an 'Extreme Swing' that everyone was waiting to get 'high' on. 5 of us were taken in a seat-cage taken to extreme heights, and then released downwards.. Yea no more description - the video is here..



Yours truly was the 'pilot' of the swing.. meaning I was the guy seated in the swing, who would pull a lever that releases the swing downwards. Yea, like the 'lives' of 5 lay in my own hands (chuckle and grin)

So.. You can hear the countdown initially while we're up there.. 15..14...13.. till 3, 2, 1..

Then the 4 losers with me looked at me, expecting me to release at 0.. (I esp remember Naren's face :P ).. and then I say "Now, its MY suspense.."..

And while they're thinking about it.. in the split second, yours truly releases the lever :).. (You can see the gap between 'Zero' and swing release in the video)

Later on we went on exploring other venues to get high again :)

Blogger Stereotypes ?

Was ROFL after reading RC Balajee's (aka Red carrot Jalebee's) post on Blog titles. It was then that it reminded me of another discussion I'd with Venky about blogger stereotypes.

- This may be too much generalization, but it struck me how quite a number of Bloggers are into Free and Open Source Software. Dont think I need examples : about half my blogroll is testimony to this.

Attempted explanation :Maybe FOSS enthusiasts are generally ones who spend quite some time on the internet, and hence invariably end up on the blogosphere too (! ?)




- Then there's the connection between people who blog, and are also into Freelance photography at the same time.

Attempted explanation : No surprises. The freelancers are bound to post up their photos simply because they find no better way to publicise it :).





- This one must be the weirdest. There are a number of Bloggers out there who Run. Yea, run - marathons, half marathons, awareness runs, social runs, jogging, the type. (Run for fun? :) ) You can find quite a number of bloggers posting that they're going for so and so run next week.

And for the love of blogger, I cannot even attempt a reason for this correlation :)




[ I'm still gearing up for 4-80 run next week.. but I assure you.. the decision for this run had nothing to do with observation 3 :).. it's just going to be an experiment as part of my, er, Underwater Acoustics research :P .. ]

A Run for the Fun..

One fine day, a bunch of guys and girls here at NTU became health conscious and started jogging, gymming and swimming (and eating ;-) ) on a regular basis..

That fine day was about a month ago.. Now, we're going to put it to the test :) .. A mini-run race.. 8 km and 27 stories..

Some people run to make a difference.. spread a message.. make a stand.. or simply for health reasons. We're a bunch of 8-10 amateur runners.. So, our aim is more about surviving the distance than winning the 300 bucks :) ..

The 4 - 80 challenge : http://www2.ntu.edu.sg/ENewsreader/Announcement/4-80+Challenge.htm?wbc_purpose=Basic

Yours truly has been attempting the treadmill for some days now with no hopes of reaching the 8 km mark anytime soon :)

The time-less VS The jobless

The other day I got into a usual bout of work-cursing and cribbing over chat with a friend. I then realized he was out of a job, and in quite the opposite situation as me. So, well, we had a 'discussion', (probably a competition :-) ) to prove who was worse off. But after I was done with the chat, I was convinced that in these economically desperate times, it is much better to be in my situation than his.. ie.. - more work to do is probably better than no work to do :).

A comparison of the lives of the time-less guy VS the jobless guy

- Timeless guy : Wakes up in the morning, thinking "Oh, I wish I could sleep more.. but no.. this cursed work reckons me.. When do I get to sleep as much as I want, ever ?.."

Jobless guy : Gets up.. realizes he has no reason to wake up.. nothing to do.. but feels wasted going back to sleep.. so what to do ?


- Timeless guy : Has not enough time to complete work, socialise, take care of health, etc. 24 hours just isnt enough in a day.

Jobless guy : 24 hours is too much time in a day ! Wish I had something to do in these 24 hours... Wish life could go faster than this..


- Timeless guy : Always thinking about changing career track.. looking for new job.. change of field.. grass is always greener on the other (company's) side :)..

Jobless guy : Worried about never even having a career at all.. Believe me.. some grass(job) is better than no grass(job) at all..


I seriously pity the jobless. They end up losing self-confidence. Then hope. Worries about future life are constantly hitting them. And since they have too much time, worrying takes up a major part of life for them sometimes. Atleast the timeless ones dont have much time to even worry !

If, by some cruel twist of fate, you find yourself among the jobless, please find something productive to do.. (sorry, I really cant think of anything else to say). And if you're timeless, well, be happy you have a job atleast :) ..


(PS : Ppl, I have NOT been snoozzzing away on blogger :).. looks like it was a bit of 'bloggers block' that hit me.. hopefully im back on a posting spree now :) )