I have no clue!

It’s so odd that sometimes you know what you want to do in life, but you have no clue as to what is going on. I have heard people say “I have no clue”, about so many things in life. Sometimes it means I don’t know; Sometimes it means I don’t want to talk about it; Sometimes it means I’m not sure; And almost never does it mean that I have no clue about the whole thing.

However issues don’t happen when people say these things, issues happen when people take the wrong meanings of “I have no clue”. Recently I was witness to a few, rather interesting incidents of mistaken meanings of “I have no clue”. Almost like someone assuming the other person said I love you and getting all happy, just to realize that the other person said “I have no clue”. Lol. That would be really funny though. Lol.

Anyhow, after seeing the few interesting incidents that I say, I have been trying to think of what is the safest to assume meaning of “I have no clue.” I figured that the simplest way to deal with such a situation, when someone tells you, “I have no clue”, is to assume that you, yourself have no clue of what the person is saying, and just start asking questions! That ways, the other person comes out with something or the other, and slowly you will start having some clue, and hopefully so will the other person!

Greener Grass On The Other Side

Another busy day in the library.. well more like around the library.. coz we aren’t really up to working past the barriers after the previous experiences. It was past 10pm and we were finishing up some work on an important presentation and report. We were all outside the library café, and before the barriers, next to the computers, in the comfy seating area.

I saw that some people, who had probably just finished their assignment, were opening up wine and stuff. Pretty soon we got Chinese take out food to have in the library as well, but it got me to think of the days back in the US when we used to order pizza, right to our engineering labs and work late into the nights.

Just then I started to think about the difference in education patterns in India, the US and the UK. Long back I used to think that the US has four year degrees, the UK has three year degrees and India has both, so it follows like a dual education pattern. Soon I realized that the differences are tremendous.

The US, more often than not has a practical approach. In some courses there is some level of writing skills, referencing, etc. involved, but largely depending on what you study, the courses are practical enough in their respective fields to be able to give you a good insight into things and a good time as well.

The UK on the other hand is a bit crazy. They make you write. And write some more. They will ask you to write essays – no matter what course you take. Whether its accounting and finance which has nothing but numbers, or an engineering course or a management course, they will make you write. Yes, there are good things too, but one cannot deny the nature of the degrees in India being a bit too.. umm.. unrealistic.. I guess.. I don’t have words for it…. YET.

The Indian system is a bit different. I used to curse it a lot in the beginning but now that I think about it I don’t think it’s that bad. They make you memorize everything in almost any course in India. However, over the last decade or so many courses have had very realistic touches to them, the amount of memorizing has reduced and the amount of “understanding” needed has increased. All this, with a practical touch definitely makes the Indian education system good.

Studying in the US though, was one of the best experiences of my life. The UK has had its fun times too, and crazy moments too. Funny thing is that people in all the three countries like education patterns in at least one of the other two countries!

- Me & Artemis on a class day when we made the prof teach in the garden!

Library - Guest Entry

A very busy day at the University of Southampton, led us into the library. Rahul and I have been here for almost a year now and never traveled so far into the depths of the library. A brilliant guy from our class who seems to be a permanent resident of the library saw us there and asked us, “You don’t come here often do you?”, we looked at him and thought, is it that obvious!!! What were we doing wrong?

Anyhow, we told him that his was our first time and he found it really funny. I dint know what to say. Eventually, we found a spot in the really busy building, which is really, really huge by the way. We thought not many people would be going in there, but were rather surprised. Anyhow, when we found a spot, after looking around firstly, for the hot girls around, and secondly for empty seats, we realized that we were not able to access the university’s wireless network in the library. Just the two of us.

We went back to our friend and asked him if he knew why. He said he did not and that his and everyone known, their networks were working great. We waited a few minutes and decided to get up and go. This was the time we got the worse looks ever. People saw us and went like, who the heck are these people. Apparently, it is expected that you come to the library in the morning and stay through the night! They looked at us like we were crazy.

Anyhow, we were so convinced that the library doesn’t want us that we decided to do a test. We tried the internet in the café shop, in the management building, in some other buildings, and even in the garden. Worked great. In the library after stepping in we have a library café and some comfy seating arrangements and some computers. After those are the barriers to pass which we must swipe our cards. Past the barriers are the book shelves and many discussion rooms, and stuff. And past all of that are the scary people. Now, here’s the interesting part. Our internet connections were working great, but the minute we passed the barriers it would just not respond! AND – Just for the two of us! It’s like they did not want us. Talk about discrimination.

Oh, and did I mention that when we were walking away from the weird looks of the people to get our of the scary zone, we were lost. In like a maze. It took us like a few whole minutes for us to find our way out!

- Me, Ai & Dorrie.. One of the few productive library days ;)

Choices In Life

The other day while watching Harry Potter (can’t remember which of the 4 movies), Dumbledore said that, it’s not what we can do, it’s our choices in life that make us what we are. Hmmmm.. Now that’s something to think about – given the fact that today we live our lives our way – i.e. – making the choice of what we want and how we want it.

If you decide to quit a well paying job in New York with a big company and move the lets say the UK, and work for a small start-up type company in say, London, with the hope that someday you will make it really big, and then you decide to move to India and start a business there, would you be making the right choice? It’s crazy to even think about life in ways that make you jump from one end of the world to another, but then again – it’s a choice we make. Just one thing we can never know – is a particular choice made by us, the right choice?

Some say that the heart is on the left but it’s always right. The others say that decisions taken by the heart will be absolutely baseless and dependant on nothing concrete and hence take decisions only by thinking, analyzing and evaluation your options. Once again a choice to make – go with the heart or with the mind?

What if you meet someone or find something and you feel that your heart and mind both support it? Woha. That may not really happen that often, and that’s why I’m not gonna let it go!

My New Machine

I always derived a unique kick from electronics. Weather it was an all functional personal assistant, or a new NAZ| storage device or even a very techie looking watch. It had been a while since I got myself a new toy - A new gadget that would keep me cheerful and my life happy. One day after work, when I got home I realized that the laptop I was using was a work machine and that my personal laptop had crashed a few weeks ago (was an old one by now). That’s it. I could get myself a new laptop and justify the cost to myself.

So I bought a dual core 2ghz Centrino processor, with 2gig of RAM @866 mhz, 4MB L2 cache, 120 gig 7200rpm harddrive, integrated hi res webcam, cd/dvd burner, SD card and flash memory reader, wi-fi, Bluetooth support, all the other standard stuff, on a 12 inch screen, really light machine with a 9-cell lithium-ion battery to last me my long journeys. Ah, it feels good just talking about it.

Now I spend most of my time on my new machine. Hopefully this means Ill get more work done or at the very least get the stuff I wanted to get done, online!

- A sample image of the machine, but mine is Oh So Much Better ;)