And it happens again. One of the biggest terrorist attack rocks not just the city or the nation but the whole world. I cannot exactly put my feelings in words. On one side, I am deeply shaken with what has happened. I feel sorry for people who lost their beloved ones in the attacks. But there is also that hidden relief that my people are unhurt. Every one I know from the city is safe. And that still makes me smile in all this chaos. You can't really avoid being selfish even at worst times like these.
The loss of life is but just one evil consequence of the attack. There are many worse which are not evident yet. As I write this sitting here, I still cannot stop worrying about my family. An unknown fear is slowly taking over me. I am not sure whether I will think of going to Marine drive, the next time I go to India. I am scared of going to my home.
Not only the city but the whole nation is going through tough times. Share market is closed. I read that many tourists have called of their plans to travel to India. England is calling off their tour (And I think they are justified, for once). And Australians are canceling their games. This only is a hint of other indirect consequences, this whole thing is responsible for.
To be frank, bomb blast is something I have got used to(?) hearing about. With bomb blasts, its kind of straight and easy. The bomb is planted. Time is set and Kaboom ! Its all over. But what has happened today is virtually a battle, a war. As I understand, the fighting is going on as I type this. People are taken hostages. Army has taken over some of the operation. WTF This is Bombay, not Baghdad. What has become of my beloved city. And the worst thing is all I can manage to do it write this mostly useless, shitty blog just to vent my frustration,anger and fear.
I have no idea what I have written. Whether it makes sense or not. Thoughts are just coming flying out of my mind. But I had to write this. This is not for me, not for you. This for my city, my home, Mumbai, meri jaan.
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Monday, 24 November 2008
6 Facts about me
SEV recently tagged me. Although in my opinion, tagging is utterly useless and a total wastage of bandwidth, I liked the idea of writing few things about myself. It's something I believe I am better at. So here are six random things about myself.
1) I am an arrogant, cynical, male chauvinist (I know people who will vouch for that). And I like it that way.
2) Ironically, I am also a very nice person (the SAME set of people will vouch for this).
3) In my opinion, out of 6 billion people on earth, 5.9 billion are living a pointless life. And if we kill these 5.9 billion, lives of rest 0.1 billion will become (mostly) pointless. As a corollary, I am still searching for purpose in my life (hence the blog name).
4) At night I think about things I should be least bothered about and then wonder why am I an insomniac.
5) My hidden dream is drive Dodge Viper Convertible at its top speed, jump over a cliff and do the Vin Diesel's XXX Chevy Corvette stunt.
6) I am a total atheist and no, I do not think I am god.
P.S.
After writing this, I just realized one possible use of tagging. Tagging creates hyper links between pages. If through transitivity you get connected to some bigshot, page-rank of you blog will go up. Which in turn will increase probability of your blog being shown in any of the google searches. If you have "Ads by Google" then this means you have greater chance of making money without earning it. So SEV, you may have just increased your odds for earning some money.
P.P.S. Despite my proposition above I am still not going to tag anyone. I am sorry SEV. You are free to tag someone else :-)
1) I am an arrogant, cynical, male chauvinist (I know people who will vouch for that). And I like it that way.
2) Ironically, I am also a very nice person (the SAME set of people will vouch for this).
3) In my opinion, out of 6 billion people on earth, 5.9 billion are living a pointless life. And if we kill these 5.9 billion, lives of rest 0.1 billion will become (mostly) pointless. As a corollary, I am still searching for purpose in my life (hence the blog name).
4) At night I think about things I should be least bothered about and then wonder why am I an insomniac.
5) My hidden dream is drive Dodge Viper Convertible at its top speed, jump over a cliff and do the Vin Diesel's XXX Chevy Corvette stunt.
6) I am a total atheist and no, I do not think I am god.
P.S.
After writing this, I just realized one possible use of tagging. Tagging creates hyper links between pages. If through transitivity you get connected to some bigshot, page-rank of you blog will go up. Which in turn will increase probability of your blog being shown in any of the google searches. If you have "Ads by Google" then this means you have greater chance of making money without earning it. So SEV, you may have just increased your odds for earning some money.
P.P.S. Despite my proposition above I am still not going to tag anyone. I am sorry SEV. You are free to tag someone else :-)
Friday, 21 November 2008
Passing the parcel
I am going to do an experiment when I get some free time this weekend. I am posting this in advance just to see if someone has done it already and know what happens in the situation...
Most email clients do allow forwarding email to another email id. Here is a plan to cause Denial of Service (DoS) without having to do anything "illegal". I have two email ids say A and B. I configure A to forward all email to B and I configure B to configure all email to A. Now what happens when the next email comes in ?
Consider a different scenario. In addition to email forwarding gmail also allow sending email using a different email id (if u have valid credentials ofc). Now Both A and B use C to send email. That way any email coming out of them would actually claime to be coming from C. If we configure them as in case I, is there any way for them to detect the loop ?. I am sure protocol engineers must have done something to avoid this. But still this is worth experimenting. If you know how these scenarios are handled please let me know. It may save me some time (or drive me in devising a different plan)
Most email clients do allow forwarding email to another email id. Here is a plan to cause Denial of Service (DoS) without having to do anything "illegal". I have two email ids say A and B. I configure A to forward all email to B and I configure B to configure all email to A. Now what happens when the next email comes in ?
Consider a different scenario. In addition to email forwarding gmail also allow sending email using a different email id (if u have valid credentials ofc). Now Both A and B use C to send email. That way any email coming out of them would actually claime to be coming from C. If we configure them as in case I, is there any way for them to detect the loop ?. I am sure protocol engineers must have done something to avoid this. But still this is worth experimenting. If you know how these scenarios are handled please let me know. It may save me some time (or drive me in devising a different plan)
Monday, 17 November 2008
Another fit of boredom
It's one of those days when you don't feel like doing anything. For no apparent reason everything around me is looking dull. Outside, the snow is drizzling adding to the melancholy of my mind. I want to take my car and drive till the road ends. I am lost in myself.
Friday, 7 November 2008
Obama won... so what?
I am posting on this blog after 1 and a half months. One reason for that is I was busy. But the more important thing is that I have found more important things to do in life rather than blogging pointlessly.
As I look around, I see the euphoric feeling in everyone around because of the sweeping victory of President-elect of United States Barack Obama. The thing that surprises me the most is that even a lot of foreigners including Indians are celebrating his victory. Yes, I too believe he is the better one among the two. And I can understand that people may feel good about what happened on 4th of November. But I find it hard to comprehend the crazy celebration by Resident as well as Non-resident Indians. I don't remember anyone celebrating even when Dr. Kalam became Indian president or when Manmohan Singh became PM.
What I wonder and keep wondering is that at the end of the day as a "resident alien" in United States, how (much) does it matter to me ? Unemployment is on the rise. Considering the fact that Obama too is against out sourcing and he has a economic crisis to manage, there is very good chance that he will make outsourcing more difficult. That means lesser jobs and lesser money in India.
He may try his best to bring the economy back on track but no matter what he does, it's going to take time. You can't just wave a magic wand to fix things like this. Yes policies do affect economy but usually there are a lot of other factors that may play a role in what happens in future.
All this makes me wonder if at all I should be celebrating or not. If we are just talking about a black man being a president, then India is well ahead of US. We already had a female president, a female prime minister and a president from a caste previously considered as "Dalit". And no one ever bothered to cheer that (definitely not to this extent).
I don't want to sound like a cynic (which I know I am), neither do I want to take credit away from Obama and friends. But if you expect me to go out and do a victory dance... I am sorry... to most part I do not care.
As I look around, I see the euphoric feeling in everyone around because of the sweeping victory of President-elect of United States Barack Obama. The thing that surprises me the most is that even a lot of foreigners including Indians are celebrating his victory. Yes, I too believe he is the better one among the two. And I can understand that people may feel good about what happened on 4th of November. But I find it hard to comprehend the crazy celebration by Resident as well as Non-resident Indians. I don't remember anyone celebrating even when Dr. Kalam became Indian president or when Manmohan Singh became PM.
What I wonder and keep wondering is that at the end of the day as a "resident alien" in United States, how (much) does it matter to me ? Unemployment is on the rise. Considering the fact that Obama too is against out sourcing and he has a economic crisis to manage, there is very good chance that he will make outsourcing more difficult. That means lesser jobs and lesser money in India.
He may try his best to bring the economy back on track but no matter what he does, it's going to take time. You can't just wave a magic wand to fix things like this. Yes policies do affect economy but usually there are a lot of other factors that may play a role in what happens in future.
All this makes me wonder if at all I should be celebrating or not. If we are just talking about a black man being a president, then India is well ahead of US. We already had a female president, a female prime minister and a president from a caste previously considered as "Dalit". And no one ever bothered to cheer that (definitely not to this extent).
I don't want to sound like a cynic (which I know I am), neither do I want to take credit away from Obama and friends. But if you expect me to go out and do a victory dance... I am sorry... to most part I do not care.
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