To Mom and Dad

In a lot of ways this is not a kind of post I usually write or like writing. I am very bad at remembering important dates and honestly this is only the second or third time that I am remembering this date . Oh yes, the post is about a date and some good things about the date.

Anyways, So 10th of December is the 30th marriage anniversary of my parents. Its a friday and therefore a working day for me and as has been the case for the past 6 years I will not be at home with them this year too . I have never been a part of the celebrations and this year will be no different. Actually, I am doubtful that they even celebrate.

Like all others I too love my parents . I remember my mischiefs with them. The pranks that I used to play to make them fight each other and then slowly vanish from the scene only for them to realize that it was a prank. The teasing conversations that I used to have whenever I wanted to break any news to them. I remember the small gifts that they gave me. My mom used to take me to an ice cream parlor once every year in the summer vacations as a gift that I  passed and advanced to the next year . The tradition continued till the end of engineering. My Dad once gifted me Rs.5000 all as brand new Rs.5 coins. ( I am a numismatist, thats why). He carried that bag full of coins for nearly three hours while he was heading for home from a different town. I still have all those coins with me. There have been some difficult moments too. I remember my hands full of dad’s blood when he was hospitalized three years ago. I remember supporting my mom when she was suffering from cytica (I don’t know the spelling. Its some kind of a bone disease and she was unable to walk). It happened during one of my school exams. I remember her applying cream on my hands when I had accidently fallen in a container of hot milk. I was only 6 years old then.I have had so many such moments with them that I can clearly remember of.

Its kind of different being their son. I have gone out alone with my parents for lunch or dinner in a hotel only twice in my whole life. I have never seen a movie with them alone in a theater ever. We have never celebrated anyone’s birthday by cutting a cake. The most that I have asked my mom for a birthday gift is to cook me pyaaz fry and palak paneer. And although I am not proud of myself when I put this but I have never even given them a gift on their birthdays or anniversaries. In a way I have liked this. With all the attachment that I have with my parents it has also enabled me to detach myself from them easily. I have become fiercely independent. In fact, the only thing for which I rely on them these days is laundry

I am pretty sure that my parents will never read this. They don’t even know what a blog means neither do they know that I have one. They don’t even expect me to write about them and that too in public, and that too relatively positive . They will just continue looking upon me as their loving, unruly and stupid son

Happy Marriage Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Cheers

X

Sandy

For the heck of it

I am just feeling like writing but do not have any topic in mind. Its been a while I posted something and I want to post something just for the heck of it. I have often wondered actually of how posts turn out when there is no fix topic in mind. I have no idea how this post will come through.

Maybe I just need to start with something that is there in my mind currently. I was just seeing a movie – ‘Happy days’ , a telugu movie, for the first time. Pretty nice movie. Brought back memories of  college (minus the girlfriends part ) . Happy days indeed they were. Having said that, things are working out quite well at Oneirix Labs too. Work is amazing. The people are the best and the lectures are mind blowing. I am a bit slow to grasp them and there already have been occasional slip ups from my side. I have fumbled whenever I have been asked a tricky question. Feels like I am back in college. Feels I am a kid again. I sure need to  buckle and cogitate over the lectures more. Its been quite fun too. Lots of jokes while eating lunch. Intense discussions too at times. Went to a movie also with all the colleagues in office last week – ‘The Social Network’. Nice movie actually.

There are quite a few things I have taken up recently. Have slowly begun work on the gimple fe project that I had to stall for a few days after I joined Oneirix Labs. Been back into hacking gcc source code and working on the parser. Maybe a patch or two in a couple of days. And maybe a post on it too. There is also a small android project  that I am now a part of (self- initiated actually with a few friends). There is nothing concrete about it and therefore not much to talk about. I have started attending a few conferences too. Attended the tech weekend last week. Will be attending the upcoming html5 session too. Good to be staying updated with the latest technologies. Watching a few movies too just for a change at home.

Things it seems are shaping well. Its been an amazing year. There is only one thing that I am doing wrong currently. Its a tempting thing to do but its bad anyways. Need to get that out of the system quickly. Mental thing actually. Hope I get around it quickly. Wait…Sure I will

Oops… I see no theme in the post but mere rambling. Lots of too’s in it too. Really wrote just for the heck of it

Cheers

X

Sandy

Moments

I go to office everyday on my bicycle (Its hardly 7-8 mins from the place where I stay). Each day, the daily ride is a joyous experience.

I pedal through my housing society lane, hearing the cooing of the pigeons making my way through the narrow,desolate lane, seeing a few auto rickshaw drivers on reaching the end reading the newspaper, some still sleeping on the seat with their mouths open. It brings out my first smile of the day.

I ride through the streets seeing school going children on their bicycles yawning, kicking each others bicycles mischievously. The office going adults driving their motorbikes with a frown on their face expressing their unwillingness to go to office. Sometimes I stop at the signal. A small child in a car trying to stand upright on his feet waves at me. I wave back. He is a toddler probably only a year old. He smiles. I can see his tiny, broken teeth. I capture the moment.Brings out one more smile on my face.

I see a old man every morning in his shorts and a T-shirt having a morning walk. Sweat all over his face. Trying to walk as briskly as possible. I over pace him on my bicycle. I turn around mischievously to subtly assert my win. He does not notice me. He is occupied fully in walking. I capture the moment again. I smile once again.

Within 7-8 mins, I reach my office and each day I take the first minute in office to reminisce my 7-8 minute ride, to think about those moments. They make my day

Google Summer of Code 2010 :)

21st August 2010 : A mail in my Inbox

Hi Sandeep Soni,

We have processed the evaluation for your project named Development of GIMPLE FE with GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection.

Congratulations, from our data it seems that you have successfully passed the Final Evaluations. Please contact your mentor to discuss the results of your evaluation and to plan your goals and development plan for the rest of the program

Greetings,
The Google Open Source Programs Team

This was a moment that I waited for.  It came after almost 6 months of  good quality work (Hopefully). It was a time for jubilation and also a time to pen the experience about my participation in Google Summer of Code (GSoC). For those of you who don’t know about the GSoC, take a look at http://code.google.com/soc . As for my experience, here goes:

February 2010 – IIT Kanpur

This is not out of context but it really started from here. I had gone to Kanpur for a project competition and after the project day was over there was nothing else to be done other than roam around the campus. We roamed, and had fun. In between we sneaked in a classroom to attend a session. It was here that I came to know of GSoC  from an IIT fellow who had participated the previous year. I was amazed to see this person talking about GSoC and Open Source development so passionately. After coming out from that session there was a small voice inside me who wanted to give this a shot. I came back to Pune, researched about some ideas and then finally decided to ask about one possible idea to Diego Novillo (My mentor). We interacted a lot via emails and even before I formally applied I was in a good stead with my mentor and knew reasonably well about the goals and challenges in the project.

March-April 2010: Application Submission and Selection

I formally made an application in GSoC for doing a project for the GCC community. The application was pretty good and after the application I had to wait for the selection results. This was again a long wait. I did get selected and I remember the day I came to know of it. The results were to be announced at midnight and I had planned to go to sleep only after seeing the results. What’s the big deal in remaining awake till midnight? I don’t go to bed until midnight almost daily (Almost 2 Am as I write this). But for all the nights, I don’t know why, I dozed off at around 11 PM that night (26th April 2010). Somehow, I woke up at around 3:30 and eventually saw the result that said I was selected. I leaped in joy, danced in my room and yelled “Google” loudly. If someone had seen me at that time, I would have surely been judged to be a mad person yelling “Google” in the middle of the night.

April-May 2010 : Bonding period and OMG University Exams

I was supposed to be utilizing the bonding period in designing my project completely. But unfortunately, my University exam papers were also in the same period. It meant that I had to work extra hours on most of the days and I remember sleeping only for 4 to 5 hours during this period. I also started studying for the final exams only a week before the actual exams. Almost four subjects in close to a week. Fortunately, the exams went well and I also ended up getting good marks in my final university exam. Incidentally the final year results were also announced on 21st August.

June to August 2010: Coding period

In this period I implemented with the help of my mentor the recognizer parts of the GIMPLE FE (http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GimpleFrontEnd). I was lucky enough to have offered by the companies I was supposed to be joining, an extension in my actual date of joining so as to help me in working whole heartedly.

The program ended on 16th August. I consider it one of the high points of my academic career so far and gives me immense satisfaction. It gave me a chance to interact with a lot of people, develop something of my own and also earn some money (Which I am trying to use in a good way). I am happy I did it.

Cheers

X

Sandy

Update on Gimple FE

Its been a while that I have not added anything to this category. So its a good time that I give a short update on it here (I don’t know who actually reads my stuff here and that too if its GCC specific). Anyways, currently the work on Gimple FE is going on in full swing. We have started a separate branch to ease the development process. The latest source can be found on the svn repository by doing a checkout as  svn co svn://gcc.gnu.org/svn/gcc/branches/gimple-front-end

Currently, its into the recognizing stage of basic gimple tuples and the extended type tuples. More on it can be found on http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GimpleFrontEnd . I tend to keep the wiki page more updated than my blog.  Sorry, for it being so cluttered. I will be making it more readable soon (Hopefully ).

GSoC is about to get over (I am eager to add a post on my experience in GSoC soon) but I am going to continue my work on this front end. Maybe it will be added in the trunk for the 4.7 release (Fingers crossed).

Cheers

X

Sandy

A New World!!

Its been a while that I have not written anything, although there has been plenty to write about. I have been so busy in doing my work that have hardly got any time.  In this post I am writing about a good thing that happened to me. However, I forbid myself from using any names in this post.

I got an offer to work in the company I always wanted to , just today. I was planning to have a shot at it for almost an year. One good day, I heard they were willing to include a few in their mix. I knew instantly that this was my shot. I applied, appeared for their interviews, waited patiently for each of their calls, prepared hard for each of their interviews etc. In all, one thing led to another and just today I got lucky. In a few days I will join them. To work, to learn and to explore. I hope I make the most of it.

In the past few days almost all of my friends joined their respective companies while I waited patiently to have a crack at this opportunity. Well, actually, I waited really to bide more time to work on a challenging project that I am doing currently and had requested a late joining to the other companies which offered me. But while doing that I missed the bandwagon of all my friends who joined their respective companies during this time. So as much as I was enjoying doing my project work I was also slightly frustrated at not having been part of all this action. In a few days time, when I join, I will finally not feel left out.

A few days earlier a good friend asked me how I was doing in my new world, assuming since I was out of college that I was working in some company. I did not have an answer since I had not joined then. In a few days I’ll be joining. I don’t know how I’ ll fare there. Would it be as joyous as the ride so far? Don’t know. Eager to find out. And as that friend put it, I am getting ready to enter in a ….NEW WORLD !!!

Cheers

X

Sandy

One last Cheer!!

The final fortnight of my college life and it slowly is dawning on me that I will miss this place. Yes, for the last four years it has been my home, been a place of mixed emotions, been a place of my minuscule bag of achievements and more than anything else been a place where I have found true friends for the rest of my life. I was an uncertain teenager the day I entered PICT. Now, the experience of being in this college has given me the courage to face the world.

Its funny how it all started for me. I always wanted to be an Economics graduate or a Chartered Accountant while I grew up. Unfortunately, my parents forced me to consider science as an option. The hidden agenda, I knew though, was to force me to follow the lines of my brother and be a doctor. I did yield to take Science as an option but I was not made for being a doctor. Much to the despair of my parents, I considered only engineering as a viable option. Slowly but surely though, my love for engineering grew and I followed passionately, like many others in this world, to become an engineer.

It was not hunky dory right from the start. I yearned for getting admissions in COEP Pune in the Computers course but fell just a few marks short (4 to be precise).I did secure admissions in COEP mechanical course but neither the college nor the course really made me happy. Like a ray of hope I got admissions in an equally good college in Pune, PICT. (Actually, as far as I am concerned, for Computers, it is way better) And thus the wheel was set in motion for a fantastic ride in the last four years.

In the first year, I had to acclimatize with this place.New place, new things, new friends. Fortunately, I made a lot of friends and the transition came quite easily to me. I remember some very special moments from the first year. The dangerous bus (PMT) rides that I had to take each day to reach college (Most of the time while I was IN the bus, I was actually hanging OUTSIDE it, holding the door ), the bicycle rides that I had to take to reach my tuitions in the morning at 6′ O clock, the puzzles that I, along with my friends, solved each day (We solved them right when the professor took the class), the rollicking fun in the workshop, the first PL, the first Night Out for studying, that one whole night that me and my friends talked about ghosts (Till 7 in the morning!!), the first University paper, the goosebumps at the time the results were out etc etc. It simply was the most splendid year. (I should probably be saving the superlatives for the subsequent paragraphs because the years that followed were not too different in terms of experience)

In the second year, I moved into my current place near the college. I made newer friends since a lot of my friends from the previous year were from the electronics department and we could not meet much. There were moments that year too. Purchased my Computer, played a lot of computer games , the worst exams of my life (DELD paper=44 marks. I sucked in the paper) in the first semester , the best university exam in the second sem (Can’t ever forget the practical exams of Microprocessors and interfacing techniques in which the external examiner asked for a copy of my program that he wanted to keep with him). However, it was also the year when two nasty incidents took place. One, when my house was burgled and the thief got away with my Cellphone and wallet while I was sleeping. Never was I able to know who did that. The other was just when my second semester exams were about to end when my Dad was hospitalized for a severe Diabetic ailment and had to undergo a serious operation. Overall, this was a tough year and it taught me a lot of lessons about facing tough situations in real life, lessons which no professor can teach in any college.

The third year was again full of amazing moments. Got selected to work for the Amdocs Innovation lab, the fun we all had in the lab, created my own project and got some money for it, went to rural schools to teach poor kids about ‘Internet’, played FIFA each day of PL on LAN with my friends and had bets on it(I was good to start with when none of my friends played well but they soon got the better of me as they learned it).

The fourth year was perhaps the most eventful of them all.A topsy turvy ride all the way. Felt disappointed at losing out in sponsorships, had the worst result in GRE, had too many problems with my B.E project all the way but alongwith that there were some good moments too. Was one amongst four to have offered the highest pay package in campus placements,savoured the amazing ride from Pune to Goa with my friends when we went for a project competition (12 friends in one compartment playing a round of Judgement that lasted for 2 hours), the walks on the beach, the nights I played Judgement with my friends (I was the one who taught my friends the game and it became a big source of fun for all of us) won the first prize in BITS Goa and was asked by the judge to give a lecture to his students on GCC internals, got afterwards an offer to work in Pune in a reputed company.

PICT has been one hell of an experience!!

One of my favourite books says that for any moment in life there is a song that captures that moment. I always felt a song from Green day called Good Riddance (one of my favourites) very apt for college life. Here goes:

Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.

Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.

So make the best of this test
and don’t ask why.

It’s not a question
but a lesson learned in time.

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs
and still frames in your mind.

Hang it on a shelf
In good health and good time.

Tattoos of memories
and dead skin on trial.

For what it’s worth,
it was worth all the while.

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

The last four years have gone like a wind only to leave the sweet fragrance it bought along to be imbued in my senses and memories etched in my mind forever. Its been a fun filled four years and now there is the time for one last cheer. Aawaaaz konacha…PICTcha!!!!!

Cheers

X

Sandy

LTO in GCC

GCC, with its current release (4.5) has added a very important feature to the compiler, that of Link time optimization (LTO). This feature enables GCC to perform global optimizations on many object files at the time of linking. This has made possible for efficient inter procedural analysis (IPA) and whole program analysis (WPA).

Internally LTO is done in GCC by invoking the LTO front end. The LTO front end is concerned with writing and reading GIMPLE in an object file. GIMPLE is the IL (Intermediate language) used by GCC for all the optimizations. Basically what the LTO FE does is to Pickle and Unpickle (Used in Compiler lexicon in a similar sense as Marshalling and Unmarshalling in RPC procedures) and then continue with the rest of the compilation pipeline.

Currently, the LTO FE is in heavy development. I am currently working on building a GIMPLE FE which will use much the same infrastructure that is provided by LTO FE and will have the ability to convert bytestream GIMPLE into textual GIMPLE and parse it. In the coming days, as I get started with the project, I will file posts under this category the updates of the project.

I will try, in the posts under this category, to add some documentation about the LTO FE which can be helpful for any future (and existing) volunteer like me.

Cheers

X

Sandy

Expectations

Well, the word in the title has always been the most scariest for me.Whenever I hear it, demons start appearing before my eyes, the ground underneath by feet starts to move away.Hands tremble,the body shivers and the mind goes numb. Most frightening.

I have found it, rather funnily, that I have always underperformed whenever there are more expectations from me.My best has always come when nobody expected anything from me.”Surprise, Surprise!!! Look who Did it?”. Yeah..that would be me. Perhaps, it has got to do a little bit about the way I think about myself, always wanting to be the underdog and not a favourite.

So here I am, when someone expects me to come out with flying colours in any exam, I have inevitably failed (My GRE debacle is at the back of my mind when I write this). As a sportsmen when someone expected me to be the one who will guide my team to victory, I have flinched (I remember a match where my team needed 3 runs to win from 4 balls and I could not get them) And the one person in this whole world who really expected me to be a doctor than an engineer, I failed him too (Well that was my Dad).

It has also been the other way around.Things that I have expected have also not been a reality for me.There have been so many things that I have longed for but not all have been met with. So When I really expected and yearned to be part of a really cool company, I miserably failed.(ThoughtWorks) When I expected MI to win the IPL this year, that was not the case to be. (There could have been a better example in this place but this is just too fresh in my mind).Whenever I have yearned something good to happen to me either it has not happened or it has just not happened the way I would have liked it to happen.

Ah…for once I hope a few things happen to me as per my expectations and that I can live up to others’ expectations too.

Till then, I don’t know what really to expect.But living always in the hope that the maxim expect the unexpected will come true for me.

Cheers

X

Sandy

PS: In the first paragraph, I was just exaggerating a tad .I usually dont get frightened (OMG…my keyboard is making strange noises in the middle of the night )

PPS: Somehow I also expect people to remark about this post with “WTH is this?” comments.It will only be an irony if that does not happen

UPDATE: For a change, in less than 24 hours from writing this post a very good thing that I longed for happened to me.I really wanted that to happen.It was somewhat expected.Most Happy

I Wonder

Solitary :

I have always dreamed to go very high, I wonder why.

To have wings that can make me fly, I wonder why.

To prove everyone that the limit is not the sky, I wonder why.

Never have I wanted to do this alone,  but instead with an ally, I wonder why.

Someone who can make my life as sweet as an apple pie,I wonder why.

Or sometimes just lend me the shoulder to fall back upon and simply cry,I wonder why.

But I have never had the courage to find such an Eye, I wonder why.

I know its my hesitancy, Oh I am so shy, I wonder why.

I know I can’t hide it, but I wish I could lie, I wonder why.

If there is some hope for me, an ordinary guy,

I wish I can find someone before I say my goodbye,

Work together and live all the dreams thereby,

And just for once, stop wondering Why.

cheers

X

Sandy

PS:  These words just came naturally to my lips some days ago. And I wonder why

Light Peak

Hmm..have not had a technology related post since some time. Won’t be bad If i write one now

If the title of the post has had you stumped, let me tell you it is meant to be that way. The title is the name of a recently being developed technology at Intel.As I hear it, its actually its code name.

Light Peak is a technology that enables memory transfers using an optical cable, that can give transfer speeds of close to 10GBps. By memory transfers it means you can connect any electronic device (say an ipod)and get those kind of speeds.

This technology is supposed to be the next big thing and is expected to surpass USB 3.0. Fingers crossed on that.

The other most exciting thing about the technology is it is supposedly able to merge a lot of existing protocols together and come out with a common protocol for all the communication on any device. Thats interesting.

This technology is currently being developed and some more information can be found on their official site at:

http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm

Btw, there is also some speculation that Apple is going to ship its newer macbooks with this technology somewhere late this year.

Take a look at some other links too:

http://ctovision.com/2010/03/more-on-light-peak-very-high-data-rate-from-the-grid-to-your-computer/

http://www.lightpeakinfo.com/

I hope all this succeeds

cheers

X

Sandy

Finally…Some relief :)

Hi,

The last few days were the most torturous for almost everyone in my college. Probably not so much to the first year and second year students, but definitely for the rest of them. It was the time of our main technical festival…INC 2010.

Firstly the groundwork, I have never been a big fan of INC. For the last four years I have always had a strange feeling of loneliness during this part of the academic year. The festival to me is just not complete enough. I have never liked the judging at INC, I bet a lot of my colleagues and past PICTians will surely disagree with me (I bet they will all tell me to stop being a cry baby since I did not win a prize). Although I must say that a lot of highly qualified judges do review a lot of projects and offer a lot of suggestions for improvement in all aspects, I have never really liked the perspective with which the projects are reviewed. (Some are exceptions) Any ways, since I don’t have any better suggestion and neither would my opinion count a lot, I will better stop right now about this.

Personally the B.E project has been a mixture of emotions for me.Firstly, If someone asks me about the B.E project, I will have to tell that its probably the worst project that I did. Not that I don’t believe in the idea (maybe I think it might be a bit incomplete) but I am absolutely critical about its implementation. Before starting it out, there were a lot of things that I promised myself to do but over the course of time I failed to achieve my goals.Yeah I did win a few competitions here and there but overall the project always left me unsatisfied. The team dynamics and its functioning also often left me wondering if I had done everything right in this regard.Frankly, I think a lot of my decisions that I took over a year ago backfired.

But there are also a few positives that have come from the B.E project. Since my project was related to compilers, now I have at least found a love for something that is quite challenging and also know a little bit more about GCC than the rest of the people here. It has helped me to fall in love with open source and the way it all works especially the way GCC’s community works and I cherish the wonderful interactions that I have had with the folks in the community and with my mentors. Hopefully in the future I will be able to contribute to GCC in a meaningful manner.

For the B.E project we still have some time before we officially complete it but I doubt myself If I will be able to find the motivation and the time to take it forward and significantly improve it. Hopefully I do.

About INC 2010, If any of the third year students do read this, I must congratulate them all for organizing the event in the best possible manner.It was a decently well organized event and, as was the case with us, I think you must also have experienced a lot of sleepless nights during the event.A good job by all of those who were involved.

Finally…A lot relieved now.

cheers

X

Sandy

Nearing the End

Back again for the weekly update on the state of the B.E project. Did quite some work in the last week to complete the simulation. Here are the details:

The Parser file and the grammar

Was trying to automate the detection of IF statement by writing a parser similar to the one written in GCC albeit with the tool yacc. After partially completing it I delegated the job to my other partner.

The Snapshots creation

After being able to complete the work of creating the DEFS and USES chains, I was also partly successful in creating versions of variables which are required as part of inducing concurrency. Although still not complete, the logic used is pretty simple. Here is the outline of the steps that are followed:

• Each statement in the IF_BLOCK/ELSE_BLOCK is splitted into lvalues and rvalues.
• Further the DEF and USE chain of each referenced variable  in both the blocks is created.
• Knowing these DEFS and USES, the versions can be propagated throughout the tree (Both the blocks can be stored in the form of a tree)till a new DEF of the variable is not reached.

From here on the source code is modified to include the versions.The source code thus alters to one in which the dependency amongst variables is removed.

The Final Part

Now what remains is to handle the runtime function call of the resolver function. Once that is over I can be assured of testing the outcome of the tests.It has taken quite some time to reach this stage.

Finally, as the project is drawing to a close, I have came to the realization how taxing it was to go through the grind. Also the project festival, INC , is around the corners. So the next few days will be even more taxing. There is a lot to be said about the project , not concerning the technical details of the project but some other aspects,  but that I guess can wait untill INC concludes .

Good old days :)

Had a wonderful chat yesterday with a friend. I have not met him even once for the past 6 years so the chat was a nice way to remember the school days.We shared a special friendship .Mostly because of CRICKET.

I was a pretty good player in school and used to play backyard cricket with him.His father was a IAS officer and they had a quarter with a big backyard. Only the two of us mostly used to play but we used to put in hours together. We had an unusual competition amongst ourselves with the following rules:

1. 3 overs a side. Plastic ball match. If someone hits in the neighbour’s backyard he is declared out.Rest was normal cricket.

A special rule for me: Don’t ball a bouncer to me.

2. Every match is a part of a series of 5 matches each.

3. Every such series in turn is a part of a grand series (series of series) of 3. Initially we had decided to have 3 but later on increased to 5, 7 and finally 11.So if i count correctly, we played close to 50 matches amongst ourselves. And used to play only about a couple of matches every week so that we keep the suspense going for a long time.This must have taken us a year to complete.Phew!

Proud to say I won all of them. As far as I remember I had won it fair and square as 5-4 with one drawn series. We only played 10 .Since I was pretty much sure I would not loose even in the case he won. We increased the limit from 3 to 5 to 7 to 11 because I won them successively each time.

Poor Tausif(Yeah..That’s his name).

Whenever anyone of us won a series we had our own way of celebrating.

Tausif, If i remember correctly, used to take a ride on his bicycle and instigate me by shouting “JUST BRING IT” imitating his favourite WWE superstar THE ROCK.

When I won , which I did a plenty of times , I used to draw a heart on the ground and sleep on it, just like Gustavo Kuerton did when he won the French Open three times, praising myself as a worthy winner.That really used to put him off.

Our celebrations used to be so wild that the looser always used to get incensed. I liked it even more If I could put Tossy (I used to call him that sometimes) on the mat and harass him with my sarcastic comments every time he lost.

In between we played a few test matches . I guess he won most of them. Some triangular series with a common friend. I never let him win that though. Besides Cricket we played a bit of Soccer , some computer games, hide and seek (probably…don’t quite remember).

Ah…those were really the most beautiful days from school. It was fun. No responsibilities, nobody holding our head forcing us to study. All we cared about was to play and talk. Everyday.The entire day. Wish they never ended. Sadly they have but their sweet memories still remain.

cheers

X

Sandy

Quotes

Recently, I was reading my profile on facebook just to see how much of it is public. Was actually trying to configure the settings when I started editing the quotes section. After completing the quotes section I thought I might actually write a post about it.

So here are the few ones I have liked the most.My top five picks.

“Cogito, Ergo sum”

Coined by Rene Descartes, the greek philosopher,when  translated from Latin to English it simply means: “I think, therefore I am”. The best one that I have ever heard. I like most of the quotes for their hidden, implied meanings  and this one had them all.Philosophical, scientific, spiritual etc. Just think about it once and it will make itself clearer. Think again and it will become obscure again.

“Oh lord, my GOD, Is there no help for the widow’s son?”

Quoted by Hiram Abif when he was about to be slained. With uplifted hands came his ultimate cry of pain, anguish.pleading someone to help. The freemasons have used this as a plain distress call.When this quote is said by any mason, it simply means “Help me” and is a  call that is supposed to be understood by other fellow masons only. I read about this quote in Dan Brown’s novel “The lost symbol”.

“Stay hungry,Stay Foolish!”

I know that there is a book of that name too. But this quote was present on the backpage of final edition ‘The whole earth catalog’. It was created by Steward Brand and is  regarded by many as an amazing collection of good stuff in the yesteryears when internet was not even established. I heard this first in Steve Jobs convocation ceremony speech at Stanford and has inspired me since then. I just wish this is true for me throughout my life. Yes. “Stay hungry, stay foolish”

“At first they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win”

Quoted by Mahatma Gandhi, I guess it is highly significant in anyone’s life. The power of convincing others is an important gift but it requires a lot of patience at times to make others convinced. This quote is written at RED-HAT’s pune office in the entrance hallway. I find it really apt in open source communities, where convincing others that you have got something good is an hard task than doing it. One of my friends actually summed the essence a lot better: ‘No matter how many obstacles that come the way, the ridicule that might come the way, if you are on the right track sticking to the task  bears fruit’

“Nothing Is Impossible if you try but eventually if you still feel so then maybe you have not tried hard enough”

I dont quite know who quoted this or if it was quoted anyways. I don’t even remember how I heard of it the first time. But its a nice thought.Maybe a cliche but it speaks for itself.

All these years I have really liked these quotes.They have been inspiring, historical, mysterious etc. I am fond of thinking about all of them.

Cheers

X

Sandy