Unsagacious or simply “a load of tosh”?

TASK: To write a blog post without using the letter 'e' even once.
OK here goes:

What a task! To finish a blog post without using an … What..? You think I’d finish that? No, I’m not that daft you know.

But frankly, “daft” is a word I conjoin with on most occasions. Instinct prompts promptly, “Stupid fits too!” (Hints from school days now as I look back) I want to quip, “Ah! Synonyms dummy!” But as a worthy ambition, I allow my soul to R.I.P and abstain from voicing it. Anyway, no point in arguing. Got work to do.

As I scratch my brain working hard to finish what is turning out as a word marathon, I admit I am struggling. “Why am I doing this?” I ask aloud in frustration. What is additionally flummoxing is that I don’t know what to jot down about. Catching up with “Stupid” now? Good. On my own though, I would opt for “daft”, it’s British variant. Not as banal. Thus, not as inciting for an obvious conclusion bound to occur soon.

Now that our topic of discussion is strongly whirling around my frivolity (and much to my discomfort might I add!), I shall forgo its straightforward citation. In fact, I’m going to talk about my most sagacious of all inclinations. It’s what I call “waiting for a spark!” or “Baby. Chill out. Don’t boil & spoil it!” What I’m actually saying is “Look. Don’t worry. It’s still 1 min away. Wait till its Planck.. thingy away.” (Planck-what? Can’t summon into mind)

Anyway, is what I'm talking about still addling you? Look for “procrastination” in a dictionary. You should find an apt summary.

And NOW I think is a smart occasion to garnish on; A day prior to D-Day of that-thing-that-brings-cold-chill-down-your-back. Do you know what D-Day is? It’s called “Doom’s-Day”. *Nod*. And what am I doing? Trying to find ridiculous synonyms (which unassumingly I would bump into in works of archaic Lit.) for straightforward words. Without fail, tomorrow is going down in my history.

“Why don’t you just start studying?” you could ask indignantly. My reply? “Chill folks! I’m waiting for that spark which will do it. And don’t worry *wink* “Doom’s day” is tomorrow not today, right! Today is about having fun..” Huh.. truth is:

“Not for long, though.“ you would say. You should, truthfully. I’m thinking I should start looking for my books now. All that dust might "cost" us (a gracious act of library!).

Anyway, now you can firmly sum up with “What a load of tosh!” And also sadly, forbidding from using a particular you-know-what hasn’t paid off. I could still accomplish compiling a ridiculously long post. *sigh* Signing off! Shucks.. I can’t put my sign. It’s got a pair of you-know-what. :) C ya all!

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Phew! It's such a relief to write with the Es now :)

On the Dark Side of Programming.

OK. Taking cue from the many advices, suggestions, talks, reprimands which finally lead to threats, I'm going to keep this one very short. Or as short as I can make it.


I love programming more than anything else in Computer Science. Today's exam was a piece of cake. Web Technologies meant I had to design web pages & work out the code in the background. There was this one topic that I wasn't pretty sure about. This piece of code, you see, has been troubling me for quite some time. To be more precise, it's the only ever single thing that I couldn't get the output for while studying. I weighed my chances & decided that of the 17C2 combinations, the probablity of getting this one was very less.


I'm not going to go into colorful metaphors here. I don't have the time. I'll cut the chase and tell you, "Yes. I got the task of executing this program I had solely left out."


Oh well. I decided to give it a good shot. After all, it's the final exam. Cannot risk not trying, could I? After much concentration and thinking I finally finished writing the code. Only to see to my horror that the output on screen isn't what it should be. I was baffled. I am, so to say, quite proud of my programming skills. Time to get into action I thought, and called out to my Professor.


"Sir, could you please once look at my code, Sir, and see if there's anything wrong with it, Sir?" I pleaded with him putting on all the charm I had = which, I concede, isn't much. (NOTE: In India, we call our Professors "Sir" and "Ma'am" and attach these at the head and tail of every sentence as a mark of respect)



"This is not the usual lab to debug your code." he said with a smile but looked into my code anyway. I took it that he obliged more out of generosity than my charm. Very charming man, my Professor.


"There is a slight fault in your logic, ma..." he finally said and walked away. If I was baffled earlier, I was flabbergasted now. I looked through the code more seriously, found a glitch (I admit, the man is pure genious), fixed it, re-ran, still error! Now, I couldn't call him back showing him the same error. And I didn't know what else to do.


The problem with logical errors is that when you write the logic, you're pretty much sure it's going to work. If it doesn't, then you're left in the dark until another person walks in with a candle (I mean an idea). But who could be the Noorie in an exam hall? I looked around. If I don't come up with something sooner, I'm done for good.


So, I closed my pen with it's cap, folded the answer booklet, leaned back on my chair & I let my mind wander instead to some lovely photographs I saw last night, wondered what Ant & Dec were upto at the moment, and likewise other important stuff.


After twenty solid minutes & back to my senses later, I decided to do a more thorough debugging, did backtracking, and finally realized it was a syntax error. This conclusion didn't warm me, cause the syntax wasn't very comforting. It went something like this:

var pwd_re=/^[A-Za-z0-9!@#$%^&*()_]{6,20}$/;


Think all the special characters are hard to remember? Think again! It's numbers 1 to 0 and the next key on the keyboard. No need to remember at all. Easy. What're more bothersome are the brackets.


My error was, in fact, because of the brackets. I put ( ) instead of { }. See the difference? Look more closely (I didn't initially). And when I did see it after I came out of the exam hall, it was in that one glorious moment & with enormous contempt I used a word I shall not honor with here.


I have nothing more to say. Except a few more swear words which begin with A,B,C,D,F,G,H,W and some more I invented with the rest.


Gotta run! Another exam tomorrow!

Ooh! What a Lovely Day!

Amid

• exchanging almost 15 e-mails with Penguin Publications and tracking the whereabouts of Ant and Dec's book, an autobiography titled "Ooh! What a Lovely Pair!" (a particular someone would like to call it harassing, but I call it customer-relations)
• going to college in district buses (scrambling around and fighting for seats. Honestly I should dedicate a blog entry for that one. Very entertaining, but very tiring. Especially if you don't get a seat for the 2 hour journey)
• and cramming my head with technical information and praying it would stay there for atleast the 2 hours of an exam duration (And I write 4 a day. Woopie!)

yes, amid all this, I got a call that afternoon from the bookstore informing me the book is here waiting for me in a neat parcel. It had successfully made its journey right from South East London to Delhi to Hyderabad and now its waiting for me to take it home from the bookstore next street.

I wanted to say, like Ant did when he got his Special Recognition Award way back when he was 27 and when he least expected it & left the audience in stitches, "Is it after 9 o'clock? Shit!" (If your brain is whirring: Why did he ask if it was after 9 o'clock? Because that's when the watershed ends. And he could swear openly on live telly. Didn't you know even that, you fool? I didn't either. So I got told off on youtube when I asked)

I realized that unfortunately, the store clerk wouldn't be left in stiches, or even find it the least amusing to hear me swear. And it wasn't after 9 o'clock anyway. It was mid-afternoon with a corridor filled with four hundred people. But I swore. Slowly. After ending the call. I could've jumped from the top floor for all I cared.

For most of you.. Wait, let me rephrase that. For all of you wondering who are these brilliant people a lovely girl like me (who's very hard to please) could be an admirer of, it's these two guys: Anthony David McPartlin a.k.a ANT (left) and Declan Oliver Joseph Donnelly a.k.a DEC (right).

They're everything I always wanted to be. As a person. Nope, not an A-list celebrity doing light-entertainment on British national television. I'm more sophisticated.

No, what I should've said was more emotional and live telly is too nerve wracking. It's not my cup of tea, if you're getting my drift. I don't like being in the lime-light. Honest. Not that it hasn't got anything to do with how horrendous I am at handling it.

One thing I was bent on making very clear was that I was not an Ant & Dec fan. I was an admirer of their personality. I admired them for how down-to-earth they are and how they enjoy what they do and do what they enjoy. And they're absolutely hilarious. Lovable & cheeky were two words associated with them all the time. No matter what happened, they kept themselves going. Their awards cabinet sums them up.

Obviously, one check of the thesaurus showed fan = admirer. Oh what the heck. Who am I kidding? I've chased their autobiography from London to Hyderabad. It's the first & only single customer copy in India bought specifically for me by Penguin Publications, India. Am I proud or what? And yes. You can officially call me a fan now.

Anyway, back to business. On hearing the news, my joy knew no bounds and I was bouncing with enthusiasm and braving the sea of people to make my way to the bookstore.

On the downside, the 2-hour wait can have its our repercussions. With the bookstore just a couple of kilometers away, I suddenly had a brainwave. I think I coined that up just now. Brainwave = Brain hit with a wave of anguish and desperation. Something on lines of: "What if there's another crazy Ant and Dec fan who's spotted the book in store and bought it immediately? Obviously. the store clerk doesn't recognize me. What if he thinks I'm that person?!"

I needn't have worried. The store clerk definitely recognizes me. Plus, nobody in Hyderabad has ever heard of Ant and Dec, except when it came from me. And I mean NO ONE.

To make a story that could go painfully longer than the river Nile, or so to say, to cut the chase, I bought the book, went home and started reading it without even meaning to. I was looking at the pictures and thought what's the harm in reading the prologue and pretty soon I was on to Chapter 2.

"Well, this is the big moment I had dreamed about every single day. What am I waiting for?" And from that moment, I forgot there was something called a physical world.

In case you're wondering what the whole deal is about: thats Ant (on the left) & Dec (on the right). And the book in their hands is their autobiography, the most awaited book of the.. Well, lets just say a really long time. For me, that is.

----------------------------------------------
Finished the book a couple of hours ago and lost track of when day become night and into day again in the process.

I still can't believe I have the book in my hand. I've got all the essentials for a perfect shoot. Me, the book, a lovely dress, the right location and a perfect pose. The only thing missing is a camera. Shame. I was hoping the little lack of it wouldn't damage the significance of the occasion. It did. Just a tiny bit.

No matter though. I'm absolutely thrilled and can't believe my eyes every time I look at the book. I'm going to finish reading it again before my family realizes I've missed dinner, breakfast and lunch yet again and condemn me from further reading. Or my sister tears it apart or hides it. She used to take the mickey out of me earlier. Now that I have the book, she could be a monster.

(But she wasn't. She was a sweet little thing and left me to deal with my newest treasure. She knew it wasn't wise to cross my path at such a critical juncture. Clever.)

So, without further ado, allow me to take leave. And pardon my over-zealous and, yet again, a very lengthy post (Sorry Sagar! I'll work on it the next time). At the moment, I'm chuffed to bits! Go on. Celebrate! Atleast for me! Look, its such a lovely day. Come on, do you need a better excuse?

Have a great time.

Deepti Richa.

PS: No. I don't fancy Ant & Dec. Although I admit they are very lovable, but our relationship is very professional. Purely on a personal basis. Or a personality basis, rather. I just totally admire their persona.

The day I was outsmarted, compared to the likes of Aisha, and ousted by cats who win more concern

List of Abbreviations:

WWW = Whole Wide World

---------------------------------

The word "weird" cannot sum up today's events. "What-in-the-WWW-is-going-on-now-i-think-upside-down-is-the-right-side-up" makes for a better summary. The evening began with a flutter of tweets (not one originating from me), chirps (noisy birds outside) and burps (gas, with all the coke). Everyday, I send a piece of advice to my closest buddies in a kind of a wisdom quote. Daily dose of interesting quotes seemed to make them banal. To spice things up, therefore, I asked a question today.

"Can u do me a favor? Send me a picture of yours. I'm playing cards and I'm missing the joker." I texted my friend Sweta, just to get the better of her. Ha. I almost prided in my sense of humour inwardly.

"Hey you don't even need that. Just look into a mirror, you'll find one right there." she replied back instantly.

And I laughed. A very genuine laugh. Oh verrrry funny. With that, the number of hilarious retorts from her have now offcially been rounded to.... One. She's grown smart, I tell you.

In a span of two minutes, I got another call. "Konkana Sen reminded me of you for every instant in the movie!" Swathi, another cool friend, thundered into her microphone which, unfortunately, reached my ear-piece in equal amplitude. She was making the call during the intermission of the movie Wake up Sid. Deja vu hit me hard and I found myself thinking, "Oh boy! This ain't gonna be good."

Not so long ago, once upon a time there was once upon a day when I bunked college with my mates and all of us raced to the movie Happy Days, a real treat for college goers at the time. All was well until the character "Appu" came in. For those unaware, Appu is a spitfire, who dresses in jeans and a shirt with a "crop" style hair-cut and periodic swearing included in her very boyish slang. And to my absolute horror, every one of them was going, "Hey! She's soooooo Deepti!" One of them even went ahead and replaced my name in her phone with "Appu". I have to admit I did (mind you, I DID, I DON'T) have the slang and I do wear jeans(and look good in it), yet was no where near the hairstyle but have been sentenced to that image until I die.

I braced myself. Well, first things first then. "Is Konkana Sen a tomboy in the movie..?" I blurted out before Swathi could continue.

"Wha.. No. Why?!" she asked totally taken by surprise. Hmm. Trickey question. I didn't want to let the poor soul know. She would laugh so hard there might just be the chance of her dying with asphyxiation. She didn't deserve dying so young, I decided and left it at that.

But I was sure it wasn't going to be a delightful comparision though. "Did you just say Konkana Sen reminds you of me?" I enquired. I wanted her to confirm with herself first. Hopefully, she would change her mind on second thoughts.

"Yes." she said firmly, crushing all my hopes.

Warier still, I asked, "Is this supposed to be a compliment?"

"Yes! It's a huge compliment!" she retorted quite annoyed now. "Konkana Sen's character Aisha reminds me totally of you every second!" she continued and plunged into an in-depth dicussion over the character of Aisha, how strong and motivated she was, with an enthused spirit etc for the next two tongue-tied minutes. Overall, I must admit, she gave me a totally overwhelming picture. I wanted to say, "Hey, listen!This is Deepti. Are you sure you wanted to call me? Look, I'll stay on the line, why don't you check once again?"

But words failed me. I mumbled instead, "Uhh.. Yeah. Uhh.. hmmm.. Eyiii.. Okayii.. Aah.. Ya. That's it." in one whole breath. She kept rumbling, and I kept mumbling. Basically, I wasn't listening. This was too huge a compliment. And I had gone numb.

A second (and returning to my senses) later, "Umm.. Really?! Err..Thanks." Still numb.

Instantly, I promised her, "If just one other person thinks like that Swathi, I'll do whatever you want. Even come to the UK with you!"

"I'm your friend. I know you very well. Not many know you." she replied.

Which inexplicably translated in my head into "There is not one other person on the face of this planet who is going to remember you while watching the movie, darling. You are dreaming too large. Soaring too high. You'd better get down here before you burst or you might just land on your butt." Ouch!

Very quickly, I steered the conversation into less troubling waters and after half an hour and a couple of SMSes later, the conversation was entering dangerous waters again. I became more inclined to change the subject and when I realized that at one point of time we had reached the end of a particular topic, I wasted no time in pursuing a more pressing one.

"I'm making manchuria." I declared in a very bold SMS. I hadn't started yet but was very curious to find out how she'd feel about it.

She took it well at first. "Oh nice. How does it taste?" she began. Her tone suddenly grew to apparent disgust and then into apprehension. "Eww. Is it edible?" was the next part of her message. Seemingly, she must've remembered my culinary skills midway. I took the cue.

"I haven't started yet. But yeah, I think it might be edible. For the cats atleast." I replied.

"You're a junglee billi.." she summed me up. I realized this wasn't going where I wanted it to. Thinking I had better explain I said, "There are two kittens and a cat in my house. We feed them usually, so if we can't eat in the house, atleast the cats can." "I hope." I added as an afterthought.

"Oh. Be careful. What if it upsets their stomach? It won't be good, you know." she said growing anxious and concerned for the cats more than for me.

"I'll keep that in mind. And I am going to reply to you after I and the cats have had a very sumptuous manchuria filled meal." I told myself but didn't bother to send it via text.

Two hours later though, I sent her a reply. "Unfortunately for us and the cats Swathi, the manchuria is not edible."

There was no reply but I strongly suspect she wanted to say, "Oh! How very fortunate." but was tactful enough to not actually say it. Or maybe, she collapsed with asphyxiation.

A journey of the Soul: To be or not to be.. A twittering e-bird.

Needless to say, it all began with a mail from Twitter after many months of dormancy since I opened the account.

"Susan Boyle is now following your tweets on Twitter."

Waaaaaaaaaaa.........?!!! THE Susan Boyle?! I wanted to say, "What in the ruddy hell...?!" but it seemed quite inappropriate for a blog. So I settled down to "What in the Whole Wide World (to be referred to as WWW in the future) does following your tweets mean?!"

"What kind of social-networking site makes Stalking legal ?!", I seethed with anger. "And that too, from Susan Boyle?!" (It wasn't really her, I later realized to my utter horror and dismay :( Susan Boyle on my tail.. Boy! What a Dream I Dreamed).

I wanted to get to the bottom of this.

And so, I re-directed the question to my very-knowledgeable and higly reliable source, Sagar. I found him online, and decided on the spot its better now than later. How do I start, I wondered.

"I dont like this twitter much ", I began predictably.

"I love twitter!", he replied. I sat up on my chair.

"Why? What's so interesting about it?" I wanted to know.

"I am following some people who have really interesting tweets. Shashi Tharoor, Barkha Dutt, Amit Verma.. I'm following them." he answered.

"And how do u know they're the real ones?" I demanded.

"They are. Atleast these are." he responded. Oh very well, thank you. I just have to rely on the face value of these profiles and their tweets. And what's with the noun "tweets"? Birds tweet. People, unfortunately, don't. Why not call them "chirps" then?

"Check out some Bollywood stars. You can google Bollywood stars on twitter, maybe u can find some news article on them." he advised. These, I'm afraid, are the last people whose lives least interest me. So, I decided to ignore that piece of suggestion.

But it did give me an idea. There are certain people I'm certainly very interested in. Like Ant and Dec, my idols. I poked around, and found their twitter profiles. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be fascinated by twitter much either.

"There! Drop this nonsense now and get on with your life. This is just e-loafing. A complete waste of time!" the wiser me admonished my not so wise self.

But one look at my friend's tweets made me change my perception completely. Come to think of it, I always wanted to find out information and latest technology from the WWW (Whole Wide World, remember?) and tell it what I know or think, and the funny side of everything.

"Yes yes. Show-off. Only you don't know any sort of information on any kind of technology. And you certainly don't see the funny side of that-many-things. The only things you can see are in the field view of a key-hole!", the not-so-wiser me made a wise-crack.

And so began a hot debate on whether to start "twitter"ing or not between the Wise Me (WM) and the Not-so-very-Wise-Me (NWM).

WM: Maybe. But I could start now. You know, with productive friends, Twitter could be highly productive.

NWM: Ah! The words "Twitter" and "productive" don't go much together, my friend. According to Wikipedia, most of Twitter's content, making up to 40% of tweets is "pointless babble".

WM: Well, doesn't that means the rest 60%, which is also the majority, is NOT pointless babble then?

NWM: Uh. Well, yes, one could argue that. Tell me, what exactly is this twitter?

WM: Well, it's a social networking site where people tweet each other.

NWM: And why would you want to "tweet", considering that you are very-abled homo-sapien?

WM: Well, unlike you, there are many people out there who have very interesting things to say. And it would be fun getting to know what exactly people think. It's also a chance to show the WWW (Whole Wide World, in case you forgot) how interesting you are. Do you know we can talk to celebs one-on-one here, and not feel inferior about it?

NWM: Well, first of all, as interesting as I might be, why should I let the world know what I think? I like to keep my thoughts and actions to myself, thank you.

WM: Because if they are interesting the others would like to know. As similar as you like finding out interesting stuff from other people.

NWM: Agreed. But why would I want to talk to celebrities? And, how can I be sure if the tweets are from the authentic celebs?

WM: Does it matter? Celebrities or not, they share the same planet with you and they very much appreciate anything interesting or informative.

NWM: Duh!! Haven't you heard of Lindsay Lohan? Paris Hilton?!

WM: OK. What are the odds of you coming across Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton?

NWM: Uhmm.. Next to a hundred million, I think.

WM: I rest my case.

NWM: Alright, but what are YOU going to do on twitter? You're neither interesting nor informative.

WM: Well, I think the use of Twitter will change all that.

NWM: I think it'll change you into a complete nonsensical-senselessly time wasting-egotistical-irksome-prat!

WM: And.. How different is that from now?

NWM: Yeah. True. Not much. But why would you want to make that public? (Hmm.. A wise question. Like they say, even a stopped clock is right twice in a day)

WM: Well, If the world thinks that way, so be it. I am who I am. N I ain' changin me self for 'ny one.

NWM: Don't you think you'll waste a lot of time on it and become one of the 40% pointless babblers? Or worse, what if you get addicted? (That's 2 in a row! Time to get stupid, again)

WM: Yeah. You're right. I trust you'll keep a check on me.

NWM: Yes. As I must.

WM: So, should we start "twitter"ing then?

NWM: Only if you promise me you'll remember you're not a bird. (There! Oh.. you're sooo not wise)

WM: I promise. That was smart though, thinking of the troubles i could get into using Twitter. You're a wise chick.

NWM: Yes. I am indeed.

Wait, now that's got me confused. Which one of me is wiser?