October 4, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Internet, Life, Speakers

Going Home

Well, its that time of year again, when I have to go home. BTW I’ll be at home after skipping four Diwalis in a row. Its not that I don’t love to go home or I don’t love people back there but most of it leads to embarrassing situations in one or the other way. You can’t be a free bird as you are while in IIIT. The worst thing is you can’t use the fu**ing F word and any of its variations. Here are a few common problems I face at home

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM : I can’t remember faces 🙁 Whenever I visit some relatives, I can’t recall their names. This happens in some extraordinary manner. I went to my uncle’s (Tau Ji) house and the moment I saw his son, I forgot his name. Total WTF!!! How can you forgot the name of a person who is almost like your real brother. Last time I was at home, it happened at three different locations and drove me crazy.
Music : I can’t listen to Ear-Blowing (basically at high volume) music there because of the inherent agreement to social terms and conditions.
No Internet : My home is within the boundaries of a national park. At first it sounds super awesome because you get to live really close to nature but then you don’t get high tech facilities there. Weak mobile signals and no internet is such a turn off. Still its not as big a problem as the first one 🙂
Embarrassing Questions/Comments : Every single time you go home, there will be neighbours who don’t have any sense of what you are upto and will ask the same questions or deliver their expert comments. ‘Padhai kaisi chal rahi hai?’/’Kitna kamjor ho gaya hai?’ WTF!! If it was so, I should have disappeared in four years.
Off Topic Discussions : In four years, I (or any engg grad) have lost total sense of what typically goes or discussed in a family. Now, all we remember/know is the word “BC”, ‘THE F WORD’ and tech-discussions. The discussions/talks which are treated off-topic here are considered relevant back there. And the worst part is that I don’t have a report spam option 🙁

Leaving apart the problems, I hope I’ll have a great time at home this Diwali.

PS : Last point is a bit exaggerated 😛

October 27, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Camera, Food, Fun, Life, Review

Yours truly’s birthday party / Angeethi / Barista / City Center

Well, It was my birthday on October 25th and today I threw a party. We left for Angeethi at 7:30PM. The journey was fine as the roads were not crowded due to festival season. We were in Angeethi in almost 45 minutes. Got a nice place to sit. Well, after browsing the menu we eventually discovered that there was no soup. Had to order Paneer Tikka and Hara Bhara (chu****pa) kabab which unexpectedly turned out nice. Main course was also cumsi cumsa.

Kulbir Saini Birthday Party at Angeethi

Ajay’s photos can sometimes be really unexpected.

Koi isko (Ajay) ko bhi khana dedo

Afer having dinner at Angeethi, we moved on to Barista which is on the ground floor in the same building. This was first time I was visiting Barista. I ordered something randomly and fortunately it was good. It was fun at Barista. The ambience of the place was really good (from a newbie photographer’s point of view 😛 ) and pics came out real good.

I don’t know what I was doing when somebody clicked this pic 😛

Kulbir Saini Birthday Party at Barista

After that we moved on to City Center just for browsing random stuff in crossword (a book shop in City Center). After roaming around and clicking pics in city center we moved out.

Sambhav has made these two awesome gifs from the photos we clicked in city center and barista. Hats of to his skills.

Kulbir Saini Birthday Party at City Center

Kulbir Saini Birthday Party at Barista

PS : Though its only a day left for diwali, city is not really decorated. Almost no lights 🙁 This shop which I found opposite to City Center is one of few decorated on the road no. 1.

Krsala Designer Jewellery

October 23, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

Not going home on Diwali, yet another time

Ever since I got into IIIT, I never celebrated Diwali at home. And diwali in south India is not really celebrated with much enthusiasm as compared to north India. Last year I might have gone home but the laziness factor overpowered me and I chose to stay back at IIIT. This year, I was thinking of going home.

I woke up at 7:00AM on Oct 19th to book ticket in Tatkal. But the almighty computer caught my attention and I was browsing random stuff till 7:30AM. I left for the station in a hurry and discovered a huge line for reservation. While standing in the line, I was just thinking how railways and airways completely looks like a computer network. Assuming rail tracks as wires, trains as current, stations as switches, junctions as routers, local MMTS network as VLANs, airways as wifi and people as packets who want to flow through these. The entire transportation system translates to a computer network. AC/Sleeper/General translates to different quality of services. Both of them have the same problem, they are overcrowded. Anyway I was there in the queue for 40 minutes and I could move only 8-10 feet. And a few minutes later, I realized that Tatkal quota was over. Yipeeee!!!! We have crossed the allocated bandwidth limit. Check back laterz. I got back to IIIT and successfully continued browsing after that.

I could have tried for the ticket the next day but again the laziness factor overpowered me and now I am ready to celebrate Diwali at IIIT yet another time 🙂

November 11, 2007 by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Graphics, Internet, Life, orkut

Google cum Orkut Rocks !!!

I was just killing time on IRC and was browsing some random sites. I opened my orkut account to check if somebody has written a scrap or not. The layout was as usual but there was written Happy Diwali before my email address at the top. I took my mouse to it and I just realized that it was a link to some javascript. I just clicked on it thinking that it would help me kill time easily as it would waste another 2-3 minutes browsing some more crap on orkut. But … after clicking on that link, I was presented with a brand new layout with a diwali theme. The theme was just awesome. I captured it before the feature goes away. Here is a snapshot, if you are late to check that out. Really, google does everything out of the box !!!