Floating Bed

It has almost been a fantasy to own a floating bed. Not sure why! Dont think it will feel any different, but just the fact that it would be floating would be kool :)

Floating beds can be created in different ways, you can embed one end of the bed into the wall suspend the other end with metal cords onto the ceiling. This would give a feeling of a floating bed - almost.

However, i came across a floating bed, which is truly floating. Like you can see in the image, it is suspended by a magnetic field, and from what i hear, it costs a tiny sum of 1.2 Million euros :P
If any of you are gifting me this, please let me know, cos i will have to get all the other things at my place in plastic, apparently the magnetic field does not allow you to use any metal objects in the vicinity of the bed!

You can read more details at http://www.universearchitecture.com/
Click on "Floating bed"

Hitler does not like compulsory attendance!

Outside IITs, most people carry an impression that iitians are maggus and nerds, wear tee shirts which were sponsored by a company visiting campus and slippers which were flicked. While the latter two might be correct, the first is perhaps not. Very few people know about the creative genius which is present in all IITs in abundance.

Check out the video above to find out more! Inspired by many such videos on YouTube. The clip has been taken from the movie 'Downfall(Der Untergang)' - made by a bunch of iitians!

I will complaint

Real life incidence, during an interview today.

Me - You are the manager of a hotel. The city has been hit by swine flu affecting your business. What would be your action plan?

Candidate - Umm...yeah...You see...swine flu is not a good thing. To begin with, i will "put" a complaint.

Me - Eh? Can you repeat that please?

Candidate - ......a...aa....i will put a complaint against the flu..then....

He did say something after wards, but i was doing my best efforts not to laugh, hence couldnt follow the rest of the gems!

Ps - pinching yourself, however hard, does NOT help control laughter! And yeah, i really want to find out who the candidate wanted to complain to!

Ladies Finger!

Ankur - Cant speak right now. I have to cut vegetables, ladies finger to be precise

Me - Eh? Be a man!

Ankur - My wife gave me an option

Me - ?

Ankur - Either i cut Ladies finger or she will cut gent's finger!

Oops!

The Garden of Eden (her version) - Please read the post below first!

Eve chats with God. "Lord, I have a problem."

"What's the problem, Eve?"

"I know that you created me and provided this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals, as well as that hilarious comedic snake, but I'm just not happy."

"And why is that Eve?"

"Lord, I am lonely, and I'm sick to death of apples."

"Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for you."

"Man? What is that Lord?"

"A flawed creature, with many bad traits. He'll lie, cheat and be vain; all in all, he'll give you a hard time. But he'll be bigger, faster and will like to hunt and kill things. I'll create him in such a way that he will satisfy your physical needs. He will be witless and will revel in childish things like fighting and hitting a ball about. He won't be as smart as you, so he will also need your advice to think properly."

"Sounds great," says Eve, with ironically raised eyebrows, "but what's the catch Lord?"

"Well ...you can have him on one condition."

"And what's that Lord?"

"As I said he'll be proud, arrogant and self-admiring.....so you'll have to let him believe that I made him first. And it will have to be our little secret........ you know, woman to woman."

The Garden of Eden

One day, after a near eternity in the Garden of Eden, Adam calls out to God, 'Lord, I have a problem.'

'What's the problem, Adam?', God replies.

'Lord, I know you created me and have provided for me and surrounded me with this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals, but I'm just not happy'

'Why is that, Adam?', comes the reply from the heavens.

'Lord, I know you created this place for me, with all this lovely food and all of the beautiful animals, but I am lonely.'

'Well Adam, in that case I have the perfect solution. I shall create a 'woman' for you.'

'What's a 'woman', Lord?'

'This 'woman' will be the most intelligent, sensitive, caring, and beautiful creature I have ever created. She will be so intelligent that she can figure out what you want before you want it. She will be so sensitive and caring that she will know your every mood and how to make you happy. Her beauty will rival that of the heavens and earth. She will unquestioningly care for your every need and desire. She will be the perfect companion for you.', replies the heavenly voice.

'Sounds great.'

'She will be, but this is going to cost you, Adam.'

'How much will this 'woman' cost me Lord?', Adam replies.

'She'll cost you your right arm, your right leg, an eye and an ear.'

Adam ponders this for some time, with a look of deep thought and concern on his face. Finally Adam says to God, 'Ehhh, what can I get for a rib?'

The rest, as they say, is history.

Music Therapy

We all have experienced the healing, calming & relaxing benefits which music can have on us. Experiments have proven that plants grow better, children learn faster when they listen to soothing music.

I have been playing some Indian classical music and other forms of relaxing music while going to sleep. Put on music at a low volume for around 30-40 minutes and go to sleep. I think it has been fantastic. I particularly have observed the following -

1. The time which it takes to go to lie down and actually fall asleep is far more pleasant
2. I get deeper sleep
3. Has been relatively easier to get up in the morning :) [keyword - relatively!]

I would strongly recommend try it for yourself and incase you do, do leave a comment. Times Music has some beautiful cd's (Destress, Relax etc). The instrumental music available at the divine shop of Art of Living is also very effective.

Truth

Truth cannot be known, it can only be experienced, and untruth cannot be experienced, it can only be known.

- Sri Sri in Ashtavakra Geeta

I love being a Desi!

Ganapati Bappa, Morayya!

It is Ganapati time again! :) The one thing which i completely love about Ganapati is the spirit of the festival! The day when Ganapati is brought to the mandap - the way the devotees dance has always been one of the most enjoyable moments of my life! The typical music of "dhinka chika, dhinka chika, dhinka chika" with all the band baaja is mesmerising to me. I remember once going for an exam, and somewhere in between the Ganapati music started with the dhinka chika. My hands almost instantly went up as a reflex to start dancin :), only to realise i was in an examination hall :P

Ganapati, made me realise, how much of a desi i am and how i love being a complete desi, and possibly can never imagine being out of the country for a long (read more than a couple of months) period of time. I am listing some of the things, which i absolutely love about my country...

1. Food - Idiappams, dhokla, daal baati, daal makhani, bengali sweets, puran poli! Wow! What a variety! i think one can have one completely new dish every day, and go on for atleast an year!

2. Spirituality & Indian Philosophy - I genuinely believed, one has to be blessed to be born in India - for its spirituality. Just by being in India, a lot of learnings happen naturally, the philosophy of Advaita (Propounded by Adi Shankaracharya) is one of the simplest and yet the deepest philosophy to have ever been. Modern science, is still struggling to come up with a unified theory.

3. Leg in torn (the phate mein taang adaana) - As indians, we love to poke our noses everywhere :) Ok, this might strictly not be something i love, but yeah, it is amusing at the least.

Three interesting Indian traits (or so i think) -

1. Every body is a doctor - Sneeze once, and you will have advice pouring from all over the country. All of us seem to know that perfect remedy for a cold, cough, fever, acidity, headache and at times even cancer!

2. Negotiation is my birth right - needs no explanation!

3. We love plastic- We wrap everything, remotes, mobile phones..and yeah..we dont throw away the plastic which we get from the supermarkets, we store them carefully in another plastic :)

There are many more desi things which i like, and Indian traits which come to my mind, however, i thought i should leave it to the readers to add some more! (assuming, there ARE some readers!). Also helps me follow the consultants three point rule, so incase some partner at a consulting firm reads my blog, it would definitely act in my favour!

Send in your mark sheets

Mahesh aka Mnb has been stuck in Mumbai for more than a month now, which is not a bad thing for any of us, given that we manage to make him treat us, almost everytime we meet :) Btw, he is one dude, who can talk about what "al dente" preparation of pasta means to his "narcolepsic" condition post lunch in client meetings! He once also made a statement about JATC in bandra - "For a restaurant which celebrates the spirit of americana, its a shame not to have hash brown potatoes". You get the point :)

He is in the process of moving to London, via Mumbai and was earlier in the US. He always has a strange and interesting set of experiences to share - about almost everything in life!

Here is the latest one -

Mnb - "Those dudes in the Visa office, wanted a scan of all my mark sheets"
Me - ?
Mnb - " I sent them"
Me - ?
Mnb - "They called back to say they wanted a scan of both sides of the mark sheets"
Me - ?
Mnb - "My mark sheet is blank on the other side! I sent them scans of blank pages, and they were happy to process it further!"
Me - :)

Given, that he has regular stories like the above to share with us, i hope to add more here!

Ps - need to learn how to insert hyperlinks

What is obvious, might not be correct!

Given below is a repost from Seth Godin's blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/). In case you havent read his book on Permission Marketing, and you are interested in marketing and new ways of marketing, i would recommend the book. His blog also makes an interesting read, and if you are an entrepreneur, you will find how practical some of his suggestions are.

From Seth's blog -

A simple quiz for those who enjoy puzzles:Let's say your goal is to reduce gasoline consumption.

And let's say there are only two kinds of cars in the world. Half of them are Suburbans that get 10 miles to the gallon and half are Priuses that get 50.

If we assume that all the cars drive the same number of miles, which would be a better investment:Get new tires for all the Suburbans and increase their mileage a bit to 13 miles per gallon.Replace all the Priuses and rewire them to get 100 miles per gallon (doubling their average!)

Trick question aside, the answer is the first one. (In fact, it's more than twice as good a move).

Incase, you are confused, do the math and check for yourself.

Bubba at the Revival!

Bubba goes to the revival and listens to the preacher. After a while, the preacher asks anyone with needs to come forward and be prayed over.

Bubba gets in line and when it's his turn the preacher says, "Bubba, what you want me to pray about? "

Bubba says, "Preacher, I need you to pray for my hearing."

So the preacher puts one finger in Bubba's ear and the other hand on top of his head and prays a while. After a few minutes, he removes his hands and says, "Bubba, how's your hearing now?"

Bubba says, "I don't know preacher, it's not until next Wednesday."

Pelcgbtencul

For those of who you are wondering about what the title is, it is a Caesar’s cipher of 13 also popularly known as rot13. For those of you who are wondering about what caesar cipher and rot13 mean, well, it is like the building blocks for steganography. Ok, don’t kill me yet. This post of mine and probably the next one or two posts will discuss cryptography – “the practise and study of encryption and decryption - encoding data so that it can only be decoded by specific individuals”
(Source: http://www.definethat.com/define/265.htm)

Caesar’s cipher is the most basic form of creating a crypt, which involves substitution of one alphabet by another, moved by a specified number of places. So you can replace a by b, b by c and so on to create a caesar cipher of 1. The title of this post is the word “cryptography” in caesar cipher of 13, also popularly known as rot13 (rot13 is available online at www.rot13.com). Rot13 has this special property that if you apply it twice consecutively, it reveals the original word (there being 26 alphabets in the English language)

I always thought a Caesar cipher is quite secure. However, it is actually very simple to decode. A frequency analysis for english articles reveals that the alphabet “a” occurs 8.2% times, b occurs 1.5% times and so on. If you have a sufficiently large amount of the crypt (probably collected over a period of time), you can conduct frequency analysis and easily decode the script. Also the presence of vowels and words like “a”, “an”, “the”, “and” help break the code faster.

So to reduce the vulnerability of caser cipher, what would be required is that the frequency analysis should not reveal any results – this can be achieved by substituting a given alphabet by not just one but several alphabets. This would mean, “a” could be substitute by “b” at one place, “k” at another and “y” at yet another place. This can be achieved by using something called a “Vvtarer Fdhner”

Will discuss the workings of a Vvtarer Fdhner in the next post!

Ps - this is a repost from an earlier blog, i had started writing and had exactly 2 posts! so please not to expect a follow up post on this!

Gmail can lead to pregnancy! and how!

I discovered from an article in tech crunch about gmail ids and posted it on FB as a status message. How it quickly degenerated from a techie discussion to a long list of pjs is no surprise, given all respondents were iitians! Find below the actual message and the responses!

Anurag: Did you know gmail doesnt recognise "." in email ids? anuragkedia@gmail.com and anurag.kedia@gmail.com are the same!

Kashyap: i am told, it's a feature, not a bug. and i thought they were missing the point "." :-)about an hour ago

Anurag: :) i read they are also "+"ing value to mail ids! like "." u can insert "+" anywhere in the mail id, virtually creating n number of mail ids from one actual mail id! it surely is intriguing for me!

Aashish: U can't add "+" anywhere.. just at the end. Good feature to keep track of spam! or who you gave your email ID to..:)

Sorabh: Kashyap ... you must have been so tempted to make that pj happen! :)

Anurag: @Sorabh, kashyap is fair and hence he is concerned bout missing the point, if he had been "fairer" he would have been even more concerned about missing a period!

Sorabh: Kedia, Kashyap: What are you guys drinking? Need to complete the cause-effect equation

Kashyap: damn, that's the best one i've heard in a while, period! the pj is so potent that i might just miss my period and replace it with a bang!

Anurag: Kashyap, r u gonna drink coke (2 respond to topi) after the bang?
i am so glad to not have any polite company as a part of this supposedly techie message!

Sorabh: This thread's so pregnant with pj's now ... "missing periods" just confirms that!

Ashish: @Kedia - after jane austen i think you are the first to use the term "polite company"
@kashyap - missing your period was followed by the bang, now thats 180 degrees to real life

Anurag: Ashish, dint know Tarzan's surname was austen! the only austen i have known so far is the one with a lot of power!

Time & Beyond

Saw Harry Potter and the half blood prince yesterday with Jugnu (why, a tall, dark & handsome guy like him would get nicknamed as jugnu is an interesting story for some other time!). Some of the concepts are really fascinating - i had read the book long back, and had very faint memories of what i had read.

There is a sand clock at a professor's place where the speed of time is not the same! He says the time slows down when the conversation is simulating. Wow! What an interesting way of representation of time!

The concept of time has always fascinated me. With newer interpretations of time emerging! Guruji gives a beautiful explanation of how meditation happens. Thoughts occur to us with a gap - however small. But they dont overlap. In meditation, the gap between the thoughts increases, and in samadhi, the gap increases to an extent that there are no thoughts at all!

So what is time for you? When does it move fast and when does it move slow? Can time actually move fast or slow or is it only the experience which makes the difference (ok, i know mr einstein's theories, but they are mere words and formulas for me, i dont appreciate them really)? Can time stop? Is time the same for different organisms? I remember reading in a scripture that the one second of Lord Brahma is actually several thousand years of human beings, and hence for Brahma the cycle of the universe getting born and getting destroyed is actually very short!

Another interesting aspect is, is time unidimensional or multi dimensional? I remember Guruji saying time is cyclical, but that still does not answer whether its unidimensional or multi dimensional! And is it cyclical only at a macro level or a micro level? Macro level example could be life starting on planet, getting destroyed and getting born again. Micro level could be if the events within a civilization also repeat!

Physicists often refer to the space time continuum. Wonder how exactly are they related, or they actually completely different?!

Only time will answer the above questions, i guess.

Time out for now!