Midsems and ODIs

The two are so similar in many ways. This similarity is masked to the ordinary eye. But the trained eye of a lukkha fourthie can discern the numerous resemblances perfectly. For the time being I will restrict myself to describing mugging styles. I will describe only the cricket part. The analogies with mugging shud be evident, more or less.

The Aussie style

Key word: Professionalism.
Description: Prepartion begins way before the actual thing starts. Night before the big day is spent having a good sleep. Present at the venue well in time. All accessories required are taken in plenty. Three pieces of willow - the usual one, the graphite reinforced one, the lucky one. Similarly for other equipment. No favours done to competitors while on the field. If anyone is found chucking, the umpires, the ICC and John Howard are promptly informed. Aim is not just to win final but to screw the opponents real bad.
Analogous Mugging Group: The top DRs.

The Windies Style

Key Word: God's grace.
Description: Preparation? Whats that supposed to mean. Night before the big day is spent hoping for a fluke victory or a respectable defeat. While on the field, biggest hope is that opponents screw up. Aims are moderate...usually to cross league stage. Any help from opponents is most welcome. After defeat people to curse are coach, captain, West Indies Cricket Board.
Analogous Mugging Group: Junta who can mug but simply wont. And end up last in class.

The Proteas Style (or South African style)

Key Word: Rotten luck.
Description: Preparation as good as Aussies. Research as much as Aussies do. Play as well as Aussies. But miss out on crucial things like overs left, runs needed and thus screw up in the big game.
Analogous Mugging Group: The ones who wanna creep into the top DRs but just cant seem to. Something always goes wrong.

Indian Ishtyle

Key Word: Uncertainty

Description: Preparation starts once reports come in that everyone else has started practice. Night before big day is spent sleeping. Just like every other night before that. There is nothing u can do in one day, that cudnt do for so many days. Will win matches from extremely tough situations ; if necessary by slogging in the end. But will screw up matches begging to be won. And such matches happen to be greater in number. Will always screw up final, as a rule. Will never consider Australians as opponents. They are a different league. Will start afresh with really high hopes. And then the cycle repeats.

Analogous Mugging Group: Meeee:D ...And others like me.

I am sure I can find more and better analogies. Some guy rightly said u can relate nething in the world to nething else. The ones who believe the analogy, will believe it anyway. The ones who dont, will not, irrespective of how well u present it.

thanda matlab Coca Cola

I've been drinking cola in the gallons, since a month. Blame it on the job treats. And its not like i can help it. Consider this...
You are on a boat with your entire class. The music is top notch. There's dance and booze everywhere. In short, its a bacardi ad come alive. You do not drink alcohol. What do u do? You end up drinking cola instead. So why should that worry anyone, you might ask. I wasnt worried either, till recently. And then one day wikipedia scared the living hell outta me.

"...regular soft drink users have a lower intake of calcium (which can contribute to osteoporosis), magnesium, ascorbic acid, riboflavin, and vitamin...".

That I am actually jobless enough to look up coca-cola on wikipedia is a totally different issue and is material for another blog entry. Now I am not sure of the exact consequences of missing ne of this nutrient stuff. But i am missing something and that cant be very nice. And to add to all this, the only tests which ever gave coke a clean chit with respect to acidity levels were apparently conducted by an organisation which took a grant of $1m from Coke to conduct educational research.
Anyway, on that particular treat i figured a way out. I began gulping down cartons and more cartons of Amul Masti, aka good old butter milk. Yeah, I am sure it sounds stupid. But what do u know. You arent the one losing all the magnesium, calcium and any other stuff that is not meant to be lost. Now to make sure that Amul masti is on the menu for every treat. Else its gonna be more and more of that godawful cola down my throat.

I had tea with a nobel laureate \:D/

This actually happened some 2 weeks ago, but it just had to go on my new blog. You dont get to meet a nobel laureate every other day.
David Gross, who won the physics nobel in 2004, was in IITB to give a talk.
After the talk, we were given a chance to meet him, the entire huge crowd that is. So there i was, sipping tea and waiting for my chance, with hardly any hopes of meeting him amidst all that crowd around him. And after about 20 minutes, when i looked up again, i did a double take! There was no one around him while he was filling his cup of tea.They were all waiting for him to come back. Should i dash across the lawn to meet him?
It is usually advisable to think before making important decisions in a social gathering. So i decided not to think at all and walked straight upto him. I talked to him for some 10 minutes about all kinds of things. Mostly about physics and in particular about IITs.
U cant tell why it feels nice talking to a nobel laureate. It just does. The fact that he's done something which thousands of other brainy people couldnt do is reason enough to enjoy the conversation. And it always helps if u happen to be interested in the field he is working on.
And that was that. I had tea with a nobel laureate! And every now and then, when i have absolutely nothing to do or think about, i keep saying that to myself.

adaptor woes

I suck at using adaptors. I blow them up left, right and center. It never takes more than a month usually. And this is irrespective of the gadget, incase u thought that was the problem. And it isnt the place either. It never mattered whether i was at home or in my room in the hostel. I've even stopped counting how many, because it hurts. So recently when I annihilated another one (which i use for the speakers on my pc), I decided this has gone far enuf.

Finally, i sat down to think if i was doing something wrong (something i shud've done much earlier). Was i not adjusting the voltage right? Not possible. Only 2 out of all those zillion adapters had a provision for multiple voltage. So all i ever had to do was plug the damn things in. How wrong could i have gotten doing that? Or is it the way i use these gadgets? Do i leave them on for too long? Definitely not more than my friends do.

The analysis wasn't getting anywhere. I decided to get a little professional. I checked up how these things work and what makes them go up in smoke usually. That's when i discovered that they are also referred to as 'wall warts'. Now, I did know that all adapters come with a rating and its not very nice to let them function at voltages or current very different form the rated ones. What i did not know was that there is no standard for rating AC adapters. When a particular adapter is listed as, say, 12 V, 1 A max, there's a good chance the output will average 12 V when outputting 1 A but what it does at lower currents is not known. In fact, lightly loaded, the output voltage may be more than double its nameplate rating! I can't thank my stars enuf for keeping my speakers safe!

So, it seems that manufacutrers test their adapters mainly for the equipment that they are supposed to be used with.

Now that was the problem. After blowing up the first adapter of my speakers, i started plugging in every other adapter i found with the same rating. Turns out that this is not a very good practice.

So there. Now I do have a vague idea of why I dont have adapter friendly hands, but i still have no clue as to what i can do about it.