Category Archives: People

Do what you love

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When was the last time someone gave you that advice? Doesn’t it sound really weird? It definitely does to me, even when I am giving it. I think most of the people who give this advice usually mean it (including me). But we generally fail to define “love” and hide away the ugly intermediate steps of figuring out, failing over and over again.

I was recently given this advice by a person who hates his job and can NOT quit it (rolls eyes). That made me think of the times I have said this one line of ultimate wisdom to my friends. I think I owe them an explanation and I should define it for future readers.

First things first, I am sorry I said that to you. Now, ”love” in this context means different things depending on your current state. For an undergrad (the category most likely getting this line from me) its somewhere between “like” and “find interesting”. For someone in a sucky job, its simply “not hate”.

One thing people usually forget is that most processes are continuous and not absolute. Like the definition of “love” above. There is always a room to try something new and frankly trying new things is the only way I know of finding my interests.

You need to have super persistence. This is somewhat contrary to the point of continuous change above and thus interpreted as another snobby line we say. In my case, what it means is that every work has its ups and downs and usually after the initial rush of feeling great about the new thing in our life, we tend to loose interest and do not get rewarded so often. This curve gets steeper as you get better at something. The key is to judge if you do not like the work or are simply bored because of the lack of reward (There may be many other reasons but I hope you take the hint) If you are simply bored you should stick a little longer (hence persistence) but with it the ability to judge one’s chances of a positive outcome is also very necessary.

I could go on and on refining the definition but finally it’ll mean “Work on yourself to know what you can be good at and can keep doing for a long time”

Birthday with mumma

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After pissing her off with my “I don’t want to socialize” thing, I got time in the evening to talk to her and we spent some good time together. She told me about the time I was born and the feelings she went through and how happy everyone was. 22 years ago about the same time, my great grandma literally danced with joy, some aunt was beating the thali with a spoon to celebrate. Then I took her to the ice-cream stall and she chose her softy and picked up random things from the memory wall. She almost took me through a ride of the day I was born she became a mother.

I obviously have no memory of the day and, as you might have noticed, no intent of celebrating the day. I was rather annoyed at her excitement for the day. Now I see why she was so excited and it makes me feel so shallow to be thinking of just myself all this while. Its the day she did a huge level up in her life.

Happy mother’s day mumma…

The slower games and Chat – EdgeWorld

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Since my last post on EdgeWorld, I have met a whole new set of people, made a lot of new friends and chat a lot more than I play. Started playing on a new sector called Aquila. The chat reminds me of my days with CS and AOE2.
I always used to chat a lot! I mean I would chat while I am not dead on a Counter Strike 5v5 match (some screws missing up there. I know right!) And in AOE, my allies would know everything I did, I mean everything (Now you know why I beat you in 1v1 and still was only 15xx :P) My seniors and friends would make fun of me and ask me to use gtalk or the new-at-that-time, Omegle.

Perhaps I am the average gamer of a very different type of a game. MMO! Chat is the heart of these games perhaps. I would have quit EdgeWorld in like 2 days if it weren’t for the chat. (It still sucks with the censoring and all but thats content for another post perhaps) Its not the gameplay or anything essentially that makes this game different from mafia wars (I am not sure if they added it now, they hadnt when I quit playing it) Its the chat! The people to be more specific.

I see this strange move  in liking from the fast paced games to the slower ones which usually stretch long enough in time to let you play with work and other things and can be played all day long too if you want to. Your progress in the game hardly gets affected by these factors. Why is it engaging then? The answer is in the weirdos and people with same feathers you meet in the game! I have made a very long term relation with most of my alliance members and some global peeps too. Its really strange because we do not know each other outside of the game and yet feel so connected and tuned at a certain level… We cant see each other or even know if the other person is real, yet we can get so attached. Which brings me to 2 lessons of my life…

  1. I was made to play MMOs only. The chat and slow paced games are a bliss for me
  2. Its never the graphics or tech or gameplay in any game, its the people!

Y U NO get a job

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Piyush, Y U NO GET A JOB

Uncle whom I haven’t met since I was 5: “This is your last year at college right?”
Me: “Nope! This year was my last year. Now I’m a free bird” (suspecting the next question already)
Uncle: “So, where have you been placed?”
Me : “Nowhere”
Uncle: in a sympathetic tone like I’ve lost an arm or something “Don’t worry beta, you’ll get one soon”
Me: “I do not want one yet”
Uncle: in an even more sympathetic tone “Its not a big deal, jobs are easy to find these days, I have a friend in XYZ co who can set you up”
I walk back into my room. Wanting to say “Grow some brains dude”. Not saying it as I know it is not yet medically possible. Or may be it is?

Is it just me or does everyone has to answer 1 such stupid question by friends, by relatives, by people whom I never knew, by someone who’s met me for the first time 2 minutes ago…

Career of an engineer in India, as the parent-generation of today sees it, comes in different packages for male candidates. For female candidates, this pretty much explains most of it.

Extra-Large-Indian-dream – B.tech in IIT/BITS, MBA in IIMs/any foreign univ (might be shitty as hell) or 12l+ p.a pay package
If you are on that track, you are golden. You are going to be sold in some 20-40 lakhs (may be crores if you are a south Indian) of dowry. You are the dream of every kid in your town/society.

Large-Indian-dream – B.tech in NITs and MBA in non-IIMs or just B.tech from IITs or a job with 8-12l p.a. pay package
If you are on this track, you are somewhere in the may-be-brilliant area. You can definitely sell for 2-10 lakhs. Kids will be in your awe till they get into their Higher secondary (11th and 12th), and then start thinking of you as a looser till they’ve screwed up their entrance exams and are getting into the management-quota or some state college.

Regular-Indian-dream – B.tech in non-NITs and an MBA or just B.tech from NITs or 5-10l p.a. pay package
You have little chance of doing anything in your life. You may sell for a lakh or two. May be just a motor bike in the dowry. Kids wont care about you, may be keep you as the one thing they do not want to become.

Regular-Indian-nightmare – B.tech from non-NITs and no MBA with a mass-recruit job
You will whine about your job(s) till your dying breath. Love marriage is a necessity for you… At least the Orissa government helps there with the 33% womens quota. (do not get me started with the name change to O-D-I-S-H-A)
From here on, kids wont know you exist. Your reference will only be brought up to scare them into mugging hard

Large-Indian-nightmare – Looking for a job
People will walk over you. You will be sympathized with. Some will try to fix up a job for you with their “acquaintances” in a company. The ones with a job will look like they are avoiding you while always denying it…

Extra-Large-Indian-nightmare – Not passed all papers and not looking for a job
Well, I define this category…

If you are feeling sorry for me right now, and are thinking of ways to help me out, I’m going to shove something up yours… DO NOT even try to do that to me.

You rank a college by the placement it offers, not by the education, teachers, research etc. You all knew they are a shit load of crap almost everywhere, didn’t you? Yet you pushed me into getting in a college and adding an Er. to my name. Or were you too ignorant? F*ck you guys, I’m never falling for that trap again. NEVER EVER again. Last I checked, its over a century since the Industrial revolution, can you please move on from that thinking now? Don’t even care to Google if you didn’t get the last sentence. Its too deep for the nut-brain of yours. Then there are those who get traumatized because of my having no job and can not believe it. Seriously? After all the blatant lies from your local MLA/MP and the religious delusions you carry around (and push on me), you find THIS hard to believe?

The truth is, I am trying to sort myself out. Do not go rolling your eyes, I wont even care to explain what and why because you can not wrap your head around the fact that someone might not want a job and people can take time to think of things they like and choose to do that for the rest of their lives and feel happy all the way…

</rant>

Edge World

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After the GSoC end term, I took a little break from coding to chill out for a while and reset myself for diving back in. Ankit got me hooked into a flash game on google plus called “Edge World”. I wasn’t very optimistic about it after having tried a few games on facebook, but it turned out to be pretty decent game when compared to the games I had played previously. Its more or less an asynchronous MMORTS (I might go as far as calling it an asynchronous and over stretched in time version of starcraft perhaps). I know the “asynchronous” and “real time” are contradictory but that is the best way to describe it. I made a little alliance in the game and as with everything else involving human beings, learnt a lot from it. MMOs form a very strong base of real human connection. This is probably the most engaging feature in these games. The game itself was not too engaging with time and frankly starts to get dull and rather irritating with the increasing build times for everything. you literally have to wait for days for stuff to build in your base increasing with every level. But the social connection we made in the alliance/guild/clan was really awesome. I met with amazing new people and learnt a great deal about how people think/react in situations they are new to. Over all I felt the collective happy feeling that Jane McGonigal terms as “being part of something epic”. I think I’ll have a better understanding of things if I attempt to make a site for a lot of human interactions perhaps. I would suggest that you should try this game and if you get into “Procyon” sector, join our alliance. Its called “POW” :D

Fall of blog posts and rise of code commits

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Seriously regretting the idea to take up the challenge in the first place. It seems I enjoy the mundane tasks more than doing normal sharing etc. I am coding almost 12-15 hours a day now and surprisingly feeling very very happy about it. When looking at larger-than-life people, we do not realize why they are what they are. They are not putting in any efforts to be what they are. I was trying to do something that I think would be fun, its not. Figuring out one good thing to share a day is really difficult…
Makes me wonder why people keep sharing tons of stuff on social networks? May be its more spontaneous with the share what you are doing but its not very different from your blog in many ways. Posting when everyone else is doing and because everyone else is doing it is the monkey-see, monkey-do behaviour…
And guess what else I realized, I do not like doing it at all! Look at your own feed, stream whatever, read what you posted and try to think of it as someone else’s profile. As if you just bumped into someone else’s account and are reading all this on his/her account. Ruling out the possibility that some “power user” of social networking is reading this, there is a good chance you will not like your own feed one bit. I did it and thought, “Doesn’t this guy have a life?“. So as the whole purpose of taking up the challenge is not getting solved here, I’ll move back to something I am enjoying right now. Coding like hell! :)