Responding to Quills' tag

The task: Name 10 of life's simple pleasures that you like the most and then pick 10 people to do the same (optional). Try to be original and creative and not use the things someone else has already used.

 Oh well, lets see if I can come up with 10. These are in random order.

1. Solving a riddle/puzzle. Ah the satisfaction of cracking one of those.
2. Talking – I could go on and on and on…
3. Traveling -  be it a slow leisure trip, or an unplanned backpack trip, I enjoy seeing new places, new terrains and new people
4. Meeting up family & friends
5. Buying electronics – absolute pleasure to get some of those.
6. Spa – Love the slow, long therapeutic/rejuvenating massages. Yeah 5 & 6 explain where all my money goes
7. Games – word games, board games, strategy games, unreal tournament [I suck at it, but the pleasure stays], ultimate Frisbee, badminton, squash, throwball. And seven tiles for old times sake.
8. Eating & sleeping – Never valued these few years ago. Now you could blackmail me for these
9. Biking – recently restored pleasure
10. Software– design & coding. Sometimes it is extreme pleasure and other times it is extreme pain.

Na, I can't think of anybody who will be happy to be tagged (or am I wrong?). Will leave this empty for now.

I figured I was really bad with directions & maps a couple of years ago. To be precise when I started my undergrad. That is precisely when I started traveling on my own.  By bad I mean not as good as an average Joe, really bad. And I think I think I know the reasons. Here’s a short, quick list

1. I am a girl
2. I am from India
3. And most importantly, May be I just never did anything on my own that required me to think in terms of directions. Or like some would say I don’t have the knack for it – hardwired or otherwise

Before the points above send out the wrong vibes, I will elaborate them to clarify what I mean.

1. In our family when I was growing up the women never went to places by themselves. They didn’t drive, navigate or work with maps. This is what the men did [when needed, if at all]. Either the father, brother, cousin, uncle or chauffer – all men. I grew up oblivious of what was north, south, east and west. Well that is only partly true. My mother followed some vaastu shastra and so the beds faced north south and the entrance was east or west I forget, etc. So when we had visitors and they asked about west/south we could immediately point it out in our house and then they could decipher which direction to face for their prayer and stuff. However, if I was driven to some place and asked to find my own way back I am sure I would have made more mistakes than anybody else in my place.
2. In India we rarely talk in terms of NSEW directions. If you ask for directions in India you will hear something like this: “Go straight, when you reach the junction take a left, then take the first right, then go straight for 2 kms and you will see a temple. Take the road behind the temple and ….When you get there you can ask somebody”. And then you would walk a little and ask somebody again for directions. This is not the case when you are walking only, it’s the same for people who are driving. In the US, I initially found it quite difficult to follow directions. If you ask for directions you are likely to hear “Go north 2 blocks, then east on <abc> St…” or “Oh, it is in the far South end along <xyz> Ave” or they will point it out in a map saying where you are and where the destination is. And ofcourse this is for people walking. If you are driving, you carry your own map/directions and if you get stuck your best bet is to stop at a gas station and maybe ask somebody in the store there. Actually, you carry a map whether you are driving/walking or riding a bike. People here grow with this around them, holding and working out maps all their life.
3. Nothing much to say here. May be it is a good thing that I didn’t become an architect or anybody who worked with directions, projection, proportion, dimensions & space. I understand better why I found my engineering drawing lessons so un-intuitive despite a lot of help from this man.

Finding your office room at Microsoft can be a challenge in the first few days. And this is from a returning employee. [I told you I am bad.] I bought a bike recently and have been biking around some of the trails around where I stay. I stay in Kirkland and didn’t realize that I had an amazing neighbourhood until I biked in a random direction last weekend feeling the breeze and the lingering fragrance of flowers after a light downpour. I saw some huge houses, i.e. small houses in huge areas, massive yards with thick blades of grass all over. It was beautiful. And I tried hard to recall the last time I was in a similar situation. Just looking around and looking up at the sky and smiling to myself. Saw a woman riding a horse [I stopped biking when I saw the horse, it was big. Yeah I was intimidated and she politely came close and said “don’t be afraid, he isn’t afraid of you, see”] and saw a huge stable a couple of miles away. Yeah, ‘huge’ is the key word.

In short I am having fun. Work @ Microsoft is very exciting, I should check with my mentor before I blog about it. But I can say so much, its fun writing code after a long time and fun to do so when you believe that it will be shipping soon. The interns are well taken care of, I feel too old most of the time to join in for any of the intern socials [In the past I didn’t like people who sounded like this], a good majority are undergrads. A bunch of young, enthusiastic folk. It would have been fun to have the concept of internships when I was pursuing my bachelors, I could have used the experience. Met some Indian students, i.e students studying in India and doing their internship at Microsoft Research, Redmond, its good to see interns here all the way from India.

I am also eating a lot of Indian food and will watch Fanaa tomorrow. Yeah, its almost like being in India J

And now I need to collect some mapquest printouts, yeah need to get somewhere. These maps are not difficult to read/follow. Its like an installation read me file. I'll be fine. Also, I declare myself a beans thoran expert. Made it twice, came out just the way I remember it from Kerala.

I heard from Ank last week about the status of his asianet broadband connection. Apparently some months ago, he had connected to the asianet server, looked around and found user accounts information including password information of their users in clear text. He then logged on other accounts and checked logs to discover that the accounts were being used by  other users [other than the accountholder itself]. He then chose an account with unlimited connection and used it during the hours that apparently were not being used by the account holder. This went on for 7 months after which asianet probably realised this was happening. So they called him and asked him to pay for using the unlimted connection. The funny thing is that I had heard from a friend 1.5 yrs back about a similar incident when asianet called him up during his 1st month of bandwidth stealing to warn him. And in 1+ years they seem to have done nothing about their security. Nothing far-fetched, but how difficult is to use some standard encryption to store password hashes.

Apparently, this is public information in Ank's classroom - how to get unlimited connection when you have a limited asianet connection!

Besides asianet are there any other cable internet providers in Cochin? I heard city cable is yet to come. BSNL data one seems good but their starter package is data based rather than time based: 250/- month, upto 400 mb only.  Looks like we are still a little far from fast reliable afford-able internet connections at home in India. And secure. I hope I am not violating any *rules* by blogging this.

With the onset of spring, the weather in Bloomington is quite lively & pampering. 9.00 pm at night is like 6.00 pm in Cochin. Days are much longer, I see more people, lot of outdoor activity, children playing in parks & undergrads partying almost everyday. In the midst of all this what I like doing most is taking walks in the night after the sun has set. Last week I sat on a flight of steps and looked up at the sky and wondered why I couldn't view this from higher up. I knew then what I was missing at such a time, it was a simple terrace. And then it occured to me that I hadn't seen any house/apartment with a terrace here. Why? Don't the people here like taking a walk on the terrace?

Why do we have terraces in India? If it is for drying clothes, grains, papad etc then it makes sense why I don't see terraces here. In Rajasthan the terraces are much larger, in many old houses terraces are bigger than the house itself [i.e. multiple houses share a huge single terrace]. In the summers people sleep on the terraces. I am not sure why the terraces are so big there actually. May be coz people do fair amount of cooking and washing on the terrace?

So I added one more thing to my list of "House preferences" which is Have a terrace . If I ever get down to building a house [read as getting a house built rather than buying an already built house] then I have a long list to cater to. One more addition doesn't make a big difference.

I am a victim of Anand's *game* targets. And since its fun to fling this onto some fellow friends I decided to play along. Lets see who would I pick to write up all this stuff? Well here it comes: Sid, Maverick, TS, Joseph - I'll stop at that. If any of you don't show inclinations of blogging about this in about a week's time, I am editing your name out [Yeah, it’s a threat so you play along to be on my honour list ;)]

So here it starts:

5 people who top your sh1t list..... and why:

I changed this to 5 people/things/orgs/lists
This question forces me to be political which I do not like. However, to do justice I shall answer them

1. Floridaway dream escape - for repeatedly stealing money from my account until I was forced to close my account

2. Ann Coulter - Read http://www.idsnews.com/news/print.php?id=34257

3. Anu Malik - plagiarize and claim innovation

4. Osama Bin Laden & similar religious extremists - you know why

5. Slashdot for being full of sh1t

Close brushes with death/danger:

1. When an elephant in Rajasthan almost had me by its trunk. [My hand were wet from the close contact, it probably sneezed or something]. I was 8 and it felt like I was just reborn!

2. On my way back from Delhi I complained of stomach pain on the train. After 3 days in train + 2 days in govindan's hospital in TVM, I moved to cosmo hospital to find out that my appendix had inflated and woud burst if it wasn’t operated immediately. The word *operation* scared me to death.

3. Drive from Jaipur to Udaipur - My family and I were travelling in a taxi on a winding route up an elevation when I was woken by the car taking sharp turns. The car had skid because of spilled oil on the road. With abyss on both sides of the road and fortunately no vehicles behind...the driver frantically turned the steering wheel all the way left and completely right a couple of times and finally stopped the car. Each such turn seemed to get the car completely out of control in the opposite direction. I am thankful to the driver for not jumping out and instead persistently trying to get the car under control. People from around came over and said we were lucky to have survived that and that that was a common accident spot.

4. When Anando pushed me in the pool. I don’t think he realised it, but I don't know to swim and am quite hydrophobic in some senses.

5 Preferable modes of suicide, in descending order:

1. On LSD, listen to trance and pass off into some kind of surrealism

2. Smoke, drink, music, sleep and stay asleep.

3. Heavy dose of sleeping pills

4. Go up on a mountain top, possibly hike, tire out, talk and try a cyanide tablet

5. Same as 4, instead of cynaide take a pistol and shoot against the temples

Kinda depressing question

5 Guilty pleasures:

1. Dragging Sid and Rosh to watch hindi movies with me in Bangalore

2. Beating up some friends [guys you know]

3. Burning the experiment and then spraying perfume in Jayshri's brother's room when we heard her grandmom walking up the stairs

4. Watching my maid kill cockroaches, millepedes and spiders

5. Writing code on linux - time spent on the cycle

1. Getting discharged from the hospital after 30+ days. I was extremely excited to go back to school. This was after 4th grade. 5th grade was much awaited: more subjects, no boys, write with pen, we would be the seniormost and so would get to boss over the junior students etc. And I hadn't been to school for over 3 months [summer break + a mnth]

2. My sisters expression when I showed her my first job offer letter. Before that I fooled her with a long story about losing the job.

3. College day at Cochin in my 2nd year

4. Survived a sky dive

5. Where I come from ... & dreams

I have to remember now and write them down, huh?

0. This blog entry [~140 LOTA comments, grrr, had to delete ash's comments - consumed too much space]

1. Feeling the bandage on me when I was conscious after my appendicitis operation and thinking "Oh my God, I am pregnant?".

2. The feeling I got as a kid everytime I saw the hippos in TVM zoo - "Oh my God, if I fall in…I am dead"

3. Working on cobol for my training at my first job

4. An email thread that I initiated to deliver a *surprise* birthday gift to a friend overseas. I had put him on the CC

5. My brother falling off his chair and crying on his 2nd birthday party. And him crying in the lunch breaks everytime he saw me during his 1st week at school.

Oh, I am bad with names

1. Fresh hot Baklava from the turkish place in Bloomington

2. some dessert stuff from painted platter in bangalore

3. Some american-russian dish with shrimps & caviar that I had at a russian family dinner.

4. Fried Calamari

5. Lamb gosht

1. Neville & Kiran [few months]

2. RAP [few weeks]

3. Short cute guy at college, forgot his name [~1 week]

4. The guy next door in my hometown where I spent a summer break. Never knew his name. [1 month]

5. RB [short span between his break up and new girl friend ;)]

Okay, that’s a tough one. I have always had strange dreams. I will pick one of my earliest dreams I can remember.

This was in my 4th grade when I had probably read about man going to moon etc. In my dream I had accidentally reached some planet [or probably moon itself] and was sneaking around, probably checking out the place. I stood behind a wall and looked slowly over the edge. I saw some bald big men chanting something [I think there was fire or something similar in the center and they were sitting around. Much like a hindu puja]. I was scared I would be captured so I was trying to figure out how to get back to my ship or aircraft or whatever that got me there. My oxygen mask slid off and yet I was breathing fine. Apparently my logical explanation then was that those *alien* [I didn't know this term then] men inhaled CO₂ and exhaled O₂. :P

I take it that this refers to material possessions.

1. My laptop

2. Some of my old books, some notes and some diary stuff

3. Some letters, cards and gifts

4. Some amount of e-data - code, docs, mails, photos, scripts [not material directly]

5. ipod nano, camera

Uggh, I don't have any favorite superheros

Edit/Update: 1)Updated taggees links to point to their tag urls

How to grad students manage their time. There have been a couple of times I thought about this in my first semester and now during my second semester, I am wondering how on earth students finish their PhD in 2 years or 3 years satisfying all the credit requirements. With 4 courses and a RA I sometimes struggle to just stay afloat with all homework assignments , exams and tests. I finally decided to drop 1 course and stick to 3 courses which is the minimum requirement to meet 9 credits per semester goal. Even then, time management is a huge issue. And in the middle of the semester if somebody asks me if I have a life, my answer is definitely a NO. But there are others I see who are much more at ease. I am guessing that its about working smartly and managing time well. Most of the time you expand your work to fill your entire time [less or more].

I have a lot of respect for students who actually work their way through and finish off all their requirements, thesis and research in a matter of three years. And the super geniouses who do it in less than 3 years time. Wow, assuming that one does this after their undergrad.

In the middle of all this, I need to ensure that I do not miss out on other things like

- File my tax returns - I need to start from scratch, what to do, how to do, when to do blah blah
- Find 2 subleases for my present house for summer
- Find a new room mate, my present room mate is graduating this summer
- May be find a new apartment or re-lease this one for next fall, still solving some issues here
- Find a place to stay in Redmond. Given that I still don't have a driving license I will have to find a place that is either walkable or bike-able to office. Which reminds me, I need to get a license this summer. Then I can buy a car when I return and feel the sens of independence I have never felt before. Ha, what fun it will be to just drive away in a direction randomly and see the trees and mountains. There, I got carried away.
- Figure out dates for internship
- Sleep, eat

And to all the friends who send me emails, I will reply to them eventually. I am replying to short emails that wont take time and am marking the others for later.

Well, on the bright side, I will be in Seattle for summer - I have never seen Seattle in summer and people say that its a beautiful place to be in during summer. In fact during my interview trip, a friend rightfully said that generally summer interns see the *demo version* of Seattle, I found that quite funny. I am also excited to be on the Office Live Communicator team. Should be fun developing stuff that you know will be used by millions soon.

Will sign off before I get carried away any further.

Its spring break and I am in Seattle for interviews. This time for SDE [read as developer] internship interviews with Microsoft. I thought I would have interviews in the morning [around 9.00 am] followed by a lunch interview and then post lunch interviews. However, I went in as told at 11.00 am. Here's a brief description of my interview day:

Interview 1: 12.00 - 1.30 noon

   Questions - string functions, data structures, tree traversal, optimizing a communication scenario

Interview 2: 2.00 - 3.00pm

   Questions - synchronization problem.

Interview 3: ~30 min [didn't keep track of time]

   Questions - why managed code, sliding window algorithm for a specific scenario, finding common elements in arrays

Interview 4: ~1 hour [didn't keep track of time]

   Questions - No technical questions. Discussion on what I want to do, what the team is doing etc. 

All my interviewers asked me about the role change, reason etc. No puzzles - I don't know if that is good or bad. I am supposed to hear from MS within a week. So this is the suspense time. I will put up an entry indicating the interview results.

Also, this resulted in an addition to the wardrobe!

Disclaimer: This is my interpretation of my interview with Microsoft.