Brief history of time: my edition

  World Peace...almost sounds like the ms. universe pageant theme...well its in pieces...and guess whos to blame...??? The idiots ran a six day war and lost and now want to irritate the winner...well bad idea...very bad idea...what the small tiny state spends on christmas shopping is the budget of the entire opposition...so there is no comparison in terms of whos the boss in terms of money...they also have good friends in the west and europe who will back them up in all manners of speaking when it comes to bossing around the pests simply because they can...speaking of because they can...there are a lot of things that can happen on this planet simply because someone wanted it that way or thought of it that way...the pests need to realize that eat me is not a good philosophy...i know...ive been there...only i was on my tour of duty... different scenario different outcome...but anyways...when you are such a small pest you need to be aware of some things before you are exterminated...t...

  Was an eventful day...for the second time in my life I went to Cooper hospital today to get my vaccine...the first time I went was when I injured myself during cricket as a kid...I reached the vaccination center...was in a queue for about ten minutes...then reached the seating area...separate zones for first dose and second dose folks...the guys kept the entry organized to the tee...when my turn arrived I was asked to meet the medical staff with my file for medicines for sugar and liver issues!...they looked through the list and sent me through to the vaccine area...less than three minutes later I had my vaccine...the attendant said I looked like someone who had already taken the vaccine :)  I assured her this was my first dose...once done I was requested to wait in the observation area...thirty minutes later I was on my way home...all in a days work...I have NEVER seen the government so organized on such a scale...there must have been at least hundreds of people lined up......

Of late i've been wondering...what happens when a lot of ships are in a small cramped up space...and something goes wrong...? The luck by chance fact that the sun moon and stars saved the day a.k.a. the high tide in the suez canal...else the ever given could have been forever unforgiven :) the tide in the south china seas are kinda similar...only here we have a ton of locked and loaded war machines waiting for a whisker of a contact to start something...i think its time the chinese realized that the whole world is suffering because of them and that all of us know of, if not having lost one of our own around us...i think it is time for a regime change in bad old chinese land...or one that gets some sense drilled into it...sooner or later the supplier of raw material in the african, european or south american areas are going to get an idea either of loss of resource or independence...and the market the free world has been pilfering (including your freedom) will be not available any m...

  Went shopping the other day...was looking for a cell phone...so at Croma I checked out the I-Phone 11 (I was too poor to even ask the price of the 12) and the One Plus 8T...both excellent phones in their own right...then the salesman showed me the Mi 10T Pro...I was in love with the camera features instantly...5G etc. was present however the cam was fantastic...108MP was enough to blow me away...after listening to the guy explain the features of all the phones...I told him i was very impressed by the Mi 10T however at this point in time i would rather not but that phone...he quickly asked..."why don't you want to buy it sir...all phones have either parts built in China or the whole phone comes from there"...I looked at him and told him politely "Every soldier counts"...he went quite silent...gently nodded and walked away...coming from a military family (both grandparents served)...I know the pain of having a young lad come home wrapped in a flag (my mama was i...

  much to everyone's relief...the so called fruit basket has to check out of that fair house...gotta thank the orange for his service as the stock markets held good as long as i thought they would and more...maybe the covid scenario was a deadly trap to many a economy...however the amerikaner money train rolled on...the other fruits now having to look for jobs...quite literally...hoping that they will be able to cover all they have done in the past four years before they leave...well perfect example of the fruit season being twenty-two million emails uncovered in the Obama era with a single click of a mouse which had been "deleted" by the dubya era...fortunately for them there were not enough people to process the emails...lol...we recorded the torture years anyways...looking forward to a sensible and straight forward change in administration along with the small fact that a LOT of damage has to be undone...lets hope for science's sake that the space force is used for...

The beginnings of the SE Linux program were "probably" buried somewhere in the backyards of the Super Secure Linux program...i'm not complaining about my download being cancelled half way through...somewhere in the long arduous journey post return from the US...i remember trying to find my park city apartment complex on google earth at IITB...losing control of the keyboard and mouse...and a "drift" into the evanston area with a small tag saying "old place"...man that was years ago...i always end up paying for someone else's mischief...anyways...lets not deviate from the topic...i was never about to intentionally invite the clan into my life...however they did say "Wtf..." on another tag on the screen :) there is a huge difference between what people see and what they know...the first two pages of my file are and will always be missing...there was never going to be a minority report...the idiots go around creating copies of us only to ...

Each person i meet is a like a book...some open...some closed...some half read...some in need of writing...just a tweak here and a pinch there...i wonder if i should start life all over again...given all that i have learnt in this grid...only knowing time will not give me back those twenty odd years...all my life iv'e been compared to friends and family...in some cases even random folks i never knew...i never knew back then why things were that way...only thing i knew was than i felt bad about being the gold standard among all relatives and family till about my 12th grade...then i stopped studying in all sense of academics as i got tired of others being compared...all in all four years of engineering college were at the mercy of the angels...no wonder the first class...i realized at the alumni meet twenty years later that they still remember me by name...but that's a story for another day...a brief stint at rolla didn't change much in terms of concentrating on academic...

The one guy who never sleeps...never complains...never retreats in the face of peril...and who "un"-fortunately watches over me and has been watching for a while...being in my part of town is one thing...being under my very nose and thinking i would not know is yet another illusion...sorry neighbor, no pun intended...life has been very kind to me...for most of us who do not understand duty or have never been on bandobast for 48 hours straight because the replacements were not arriving on time...or have been never fed two straight meals by the very state machinery that promised them a bright future when they applied for the force...for those wearing nikes, rebooks and addidas shoes having no idea of what it is to wear a leather shoe for years with a torn sock and skin grazing the leather only to come off and desensitize the foot...for those who have a wonderful appraisal cycle every year and a bonus that would make the farmer feel aware of his below poverty line life but ...

The sad part about the relief packages being handed out is that the idiots who were protesting against the creation of ID's for NPR (which is the census for those who don't know) and bank accounts during demonetization...have no way of receiving these funds directly as they are not in the system because of their own stupidity...and i'll bet the one layer above these idiots will make a ton because these idiots don't exist on paper or well don't want to exist...and then they will blame everyone from the PM down to the last "bhakt" or so to say...instead of taking advantage of the many programs written out for helping their kind...they will "resist" in the name of religion, sex, caste etc. and then when the monster comes around the corner a.k.a. corona, they are the first to ask for entitlements and roll-outs...this is precisely why the database needs to be populated with the proper information...or well one place in multiple databases so that ...

If dad was around...i know for sure that he would have given his last breath to protect his patients from this or any worse pandemic...let us hope that in this huge populace we find those angels looking over us in their medical gear...iv'e known dad to come home and go to his room in tears after losing a patient...and iv'e seen him go back to work the next day saying he had some to take care of...iv'e also lost him to back to back heart attacks over very poor information dealt by some very irresponsible idiots...you can run around for now...but when the time comes...one should prepared for the same logic to be shoved down the throats of their families...mom and sis in the balcony clapping out for the paramedic staff as i type this [the 5pm thing]...i just hope in the years to come there is a financial sanity in the fees for prospective medical students...one cannot ask them for crores of rupees in fees and then expect that they will work for low wages with the poor fol...

Someone once said "despite the best efforts, you refuse to die"...been a while...i keep thinking of all the events around me...i wonder if God allowed it just so i could study and learn how the code flows all within in this human context...i know that there are "stars" out there that can see through my eyes and listen through my ears...don't know where they got this "tech"...i have always believed that the mind readers have been a very gullible bunch [that chicken and rooster story is going to be so very short lived]...downside is over the past twenty years after returning from the US...i could have been real high in the establishment...karla@tinker tailor soldier spy comes to mind...but is there a point of allowing them to get information from my eyes and ears...iv'e tried my best to keep my silence...and iv'e tried my best to stay away from all approaches...don't know if mother India will excuse my "laziness"...i know i wo...

The queen of all she surveys...i've got one proud cat...she will hunt anything that moves in the house...and of course all that doesn't move too...she will sharpen her claws on the sofa...or my badminton racket cover...and then sleep on it like she conquered something and it was a major achievement...here is one pic of her hunting a beetle...pretty big one i'd say given her size...sometimes i wonder...for all that nature has given us i see plot after plot sold around the house...folks tearing down the trees to build a tower...and then wondering where the rain has gone...why the weather is "changing"...there used to be one house in this zone in the early 70's...today there are more than 40000 cell phone users in the area...and they complain about the heat...there is only one root cause...we are the virus that's going to end up killing us along with every other species on this lovely planet...something tells me its a bit late and she's waking up to ...

That one place on earth where one can go and feel at home @IITB...research assistants over the years have been exposed to cool technology in their early years thanks to ready-to-work-with boards like the arduino, raspberry pi etc...this was only a dream when we were working there 20 years ago...the cost of the ECU was so high that we were told explicitly "one at a time" in terms of usage so that only if the first board goes bad was the second one handed over to us for work :)...today they no longer have fixed wing mini aircraft limiting their research...drone apps are killing the market and the guys at the aerospace department are at the front line of research projects...sometimes i wonder if coming back home from the US was the best thing i could do...if i hadn't, i would not have got to walk the path i did for sure...most people who are in the US for the past 20 odd years have made a killing in terms of salary...however i think that mother India gave me the chance ...

So i wanted to know what an "alumni meet" looks like...22 years down the line i walked the halls of the new building for TSEC with renewed intent...loads of memories while i took that walk...we have truly moved ahead in life (batch of 98)...so far ahead that we have almost forgotten who it was that gave us that stepping stone for where we are today...in spite of the limited access to books, simple electronic boards etc. that can be programmed for pretty much anything within limits, we still had a good time back then...i remember sangy for his math, milan for his ieee antics, sachin for his programming, sunil for his tie, guru for his chat channel etc...i never forgot the limited lab equipment, paychecks etc. the teachers had [and maybe still do!]...however we turned out OK...out of 26 people of our batch that i used to have a bit of a conversation with, 24 went to the US for further studies...i'm still in almost "daily" touch with about ten folks thanks ...

It was that time of the year again...a superbly organized Versova fish festival...always have tried to be a first day first show kind of guy for this festival...having been friends with Sachin [the prince of Versova as i affectionately call him] since God knows back when has had its own plus points...i get to eat the best of fish...and they cook it in front of you...and sometimes i get away with "murder" on the cost of food too...Sachin's family has been kind enough to tolerate me over the years and i guess that's what friendship is all about...i post here a snap of the slice of fish that took me 15 mins to finish...it was almost 2 times the size of my palm...until next year...by the sea...a silent reminder of all the torture she takes from us as mankind...and a cold reminder of what can happen when she loses her cool a.k.a. here i am walking like a hurricane :)

Meeting up with kaki, pallu tai and her kids after 20 years...!

May the new year bring you all that you need, want and desire while destiny is watching up close :) Problem with being under a microscope is that even the smallest thing appears to be a big "issue"...lets hope that this new year is progressive and full of positive change for all of you...from my side in a little bit...signing off 2019...signing in 2020. :) still learning to take a photo or two with the DSLR...this was in the garden today with rather shaky hands...! :) To making new friends...to hopefully "settling down"...to learning a few new tools...to try my hand at the cam a bit more...to a few new lenses and most of all hopefully a gym membership that i will actually use for once in my life so that my hands don't shake while handling the cam :) To all the usual suspects in my life and the whole lot of you who left an impression on my life in the past year...even if we exchanged one email or hello in the whole year...wishing you all a happy and ...

L to R: Milan, Ashish, Sachin, Suril, Alok That time of the year when the firang's visit...lecture us on not being late for dinner...and arrive 30 mins after the decided time :) It was a cool time with the usual suspects...keep visiting dudes.

L to R: Sachin, Javed, Asim, Geogy, Ashish, Danny, Shehzad and Fehmi Christmas morning breakfast treat from me to the boys...happy belated birthday!

CAA and NRC...hot topics today for those who didn't bother to read the draft...either one...!!!  The problem with these scholarly types is that their scholarship extends only until the edge of their sphere of influence...which is the BIGGEST problem today...people en-mass are so carried away by the words of the so called enlightened...i mean in this matrix people management is this biggest challenge...but to manage these dummies takes special ability...on one side we have everyone from the PMO to the shahi imaam making a direct statement that no Indian needs to worry about their citizenship...and on the other hand we have paid goons who have nothing better to do than sit breaking stuff all night and day...the sad part is in the middle of all this anti-govt protest the law and order is turning to dust due to the illiterate opposition goons who have no idea of the concept that they are supposedly protesting against...there were days when electronic media in any form was consid...

So it happens that the grid of communications technology coupled with pollution is cooking this planet and NOT ONE communications company is willing to make public the data on how much the cellular and other wireless communication companies are heating up the atmosphere...we know for sure that there are many other forms of pollutants...but i believe that the strongest pollutant is the continuously radiating cell towers, satellites and cell phones...this planet does not have the balls to shut down cellular communications because its a virus fed to the humankind and they are all infected...if you are a smart kid Greta...take on the communications companies...because i know you cannot take on the space based radar of the military giants...someday i hope you realize that i will be long gone after this post...but you may still have an inkling of a chance of being that catalyst to save the planet...maybe the Arctic space based radar for SAC or NORAD wont give you the heat maps over time fo...

A brief visit to the rocks by the beach yesterday...the image is a bit touched up in the blue plane. :) Some flowers in the garden...unedited :) classic macro :) unedited...! My room...when the roof is removed :)

Some say the definition of a developed nation is where the rich use public transportation...well in that gray zone of comfort while travelling we have changed from a 2x2 Asiad 25 years ago to the new Volvo's and Scania's in today's times...how automotive tech has changed...the 2x2's still chug along on the expressway but the power of the new machines like the Volvo's is unmatchable...its a good machine and i have seen them make themselves useful over the past 13 years of Mumbai-Pune travel...as luck would have it i always have managed to retain my seat number four at the Sunday 4:30 bus for the better part of thirteen years...the journey is always entertaining when there is a talkative person next to you...anyways...the Shivneri service has been very kind to me over the years...most of the staff at Dadar don't know me by name but they are aware of me as a familiar face...I have never found government transport to be as efficient, well maintained and clean ...

The "sarkaari naukri" definition in a good light...just saw "Mission Mangal"...both failure and success shown in good light...only the impact is not probably 1:1 in terms of that feeling when a critical system goes bust...having a 450 crore rocket go to smoke is much much more than the raising of ones hair on the skin of the neck...fortunately the mission to mangal has gone very well...there are a few things that are at times purely funny and probably not allowed in the context of mission monitoring [rebooting a system through a power cycle]...this is like saying we'll reboot an jumbo aircraft in mid air and everything will just normally come back up since its "supposed to" :) [at least i hope that's not how things work...!!!] or well even the praying for the autonomous guidance system to work :) in reality these systems are tested, software simulated, re-tested as hardware in loop and tested some more just to avoid a failure scenario...this ...

There seems to be a lot of encouragement behind the dudes at IITM creating the "Shakti" chip...during my conversation with my guide at IITB i learnt that there was a similar attempt to create a chip at IITB...take a bow creators of "Ajit" (seen here)...we were generally talking about the interface for the Navic chips as compared to the US GPS system when i asked why we weren't building drones with a light Linux interface using the Shakti chips where we'd need a barebones PWM, UART, I2C and SPI and maybe CAN interface... unfortunately this interface requirement was already shared with the "Ajit" guys and guess what...there was no response to the request even though the departments are still 50 meters away from each other to date...!!! Even today if ten Aero grads sit and just think of apps for drones with the guys from Elecs there is no end to the applications of drone tech that can take off...not that im being partial to IITB (as it was always...

Even the gardens are precision cut at IITB :) This is the one place i can go even when i'm really low in life...it brings new life in these aged bones just to interact with the kids who will be the future of this country long after i'm in the stars...! Time to come up with a drone based on a simplified version of the Shakti chip and a bare bones ported Linux version :) Not sure that the Navics are available...but this would be a truly huge scale verification of the GPS concept put up by India...i mean even if the other countries dont use it, the chaps could sell millions of drones and the system could self correct itself if the proper feedback channel was provided into great precision.

Was sooooo hoping that this mission would work out and we'd be there on the moon but alas fate seems to have intervened...the mission objective was sadly half achieved...the guys and gals at ISRO would have really liked to have had a lander on the surface...no issues...the processes are strong enough to contain what we missed this time around... that we will return and there will be a flag on the surface is a given ...all said and done...the space cowboys gave it everything...lets hope for a stronger tomorrow...always keeping in mind that the powers to be will not allow us to leave this ball until we clean up our act here...and mother nature is slowly "waking up" to the fact that mankind has screwed up way too much. Of all the stars in the sky i think i have always had a special place in my heart for the moon...some thing makes me believe that i belong home...i got silver in the moon and the stars...gold in the morning sun...well tried ISRO...you guys de...

In remembrance of this idiot who lost the one he thought was a genuinely nice gal...broken arrow :( As maleen rightly pointed out in your case you dummy you should have been point...broken comm :( And as it goes with all frigging weddings...everyone except the two getting hitched were deciders :( And they say the strongest of us all do not cry...its just that no one stops to ask if we are ok...ever...!:( Package received...thanks...dumb thing is that people think returning a saree or losing some deposit on a hall is all too important in a process of bringing two families together at a stage where the rings have been bought...some times adults behave like children...i was hoping that the children would behave as adults...!!! anyways...ill be around....you know where to find me on the internet or well as they say "you know where i live" :) If trust is not love i don't know what is...!!! And i don't want the world to see me...coz i do...

At IITB we get to meet and be supervised by a lot of government officials...it was a bright sunny day on commencement and graduation that we had the better luck of having the PM visit for the function...we observed that they rushed through the various exhibits in zip time and left for their next appointment...while on campus he tried to understand every single topic shown to him with interest...of course a lot was dependent on the people doing the explaining...as the highest government official in this country i think it is base line irritating when people dig into him and call him names...folks dont understand that the very nature of a leader is the virtue of his advisers and his team...without them no leader can function and no government can survive the rigors of day to day work with such a huge populace...his stint as CM three times has shown that the transformation of Gujrat is miraculous and we wish that the same would happen to every corner of India...I dont know much be...

On that fateful day in May we got news that a MiG-21 from Jamnagar air base had crashed and that the pilot's body had been so badly burnt that there was no way to identify it...the pilot it was said stayed in his cockpit trying to avoid the village below could'nt eject at the time that would have saved his life...they don't allow pilots to carry anything besides their tags...routine mission they said...close to the border they said...poor boy never even got the chance to be brought home so that his mom could say bye to him...his father had to go to Jamnagar AFB to complete the last rites...lived up to the finest traditions of the IAF they said...in time the family got rid of his clothes, the trunk, his bike... only thing that remained was the flag folded and his wings...those wings i still keep in my wallet to date...grandma cried and cried until she could cry no more...no way to console her...and just like that the tiger was gone...his friends and the entire Lohegaon ...

@Transformers...its just dusty old books she said...in my library @this matrix...everyone is a book...a book that has been partly read...one that will rewrite itself a bit for the future...i've tried being at peace with myself for over twenty years now...so much difficulty in controlling my mind...but at the end i managed to find a way to ignore the junk in my head...sad part is that the junk never goes away...the system tends to shove your life in front of you irrespective of age, sex, situation...some times we learn sometimes we don't...and the reason we don't learn is often that we don't readily relate that the same situation occurred many years ago...and we had reacted differently but we don't remember...in the process of being able to control up to a point the thought process i've learnt that there are at times so many needles at play in our existential framework each trying to control a voice in the head, a pin in the fingers...it is difficult to be ...

The skills of a satellite "hit" squad are entirely dependent on how fast you can traverse the stack...it is not every day that 3-D holographic interferometry becomes essential as you need to study which bird was used for what...!!! When I was in the US we had a guy come over form one of these defence majors to explain how satellite to submarine communication used to be done in the "old" days and how it has modernised over the years. While discussing the topic at hand he said they used to use the lasers to paint a pretty big area on the sea surface to communicate with the sub because they did not know the location of the damn thing...while this use to eventually solve the problem as the sub would reply if it was in the painted zone...it raised a huge big problem for the submarine as it would create huge big shadow on the sea floor giving away the subs position...!!! When i was at school it used to bother me that we used to loose a lot of pilots in the ...

I once almost asked someone who retired as a very high government official if he had seen "taare zameen par"...but then i realized maybe he and team never looked for the Taare on this untouched zameen...! Sometimes its not very useful to print in the newspaper that the government is looking for kids with special abilities...very few parents want their kids subjected to being lab rats for some agency that "does not exist".  There may however be an idea to gather this information...the stars are always watching and charlie visits in the clipper ships quite often to ensure that the little kiddo is all right...i seriously dont know how many taare there are walking this hallowed ground...however every taara has a signature and a purpose...as i told my friend in Rolla once upon a time...if you go looking for optical signatures...you might see the sky light up like never before...these kids are protected like no one else...this coming from the boy who troubled the am...

There used to be a time when we used to have to consider Milan's food preferences while meeting up for lunch or dinner...that was until Sangy turned Vegan...!!! Interesting times with the two cartoons who still seem hell bent on me having me meet someone for what is their definition of a "good time"...!!! Sangy boy is now Biz Dev Mgr with a huge american firm...Milan has his own huge non-american firm :)

The flag...an entity that demands a lot of attention...an entity that demands and dictates a way of life...for us Indians it is a reflection of who we are...it is also a representation of the freedom we enjoy...this freedom that comes at great cost however...many a cop and many a soldier has died for a better tomorrow for us...the payback is very poor though even in today's times...we sometimes ta ke for granted the air we breathe because it has been 4 generations since we achieved freedom and few really relate to the great strife that got us there...there will be a day when we will look within and be forced to rise to the occasion as the challenge will come around the corner...lets hope that day is far away...have a happy Independence Day