Thought Overflow

Life and I more than occasionally share a hate-hate relationship. I’ve often said that life is a female dog. Really, though, it’s a roller-coaster ride with a crazed loon on drugs at the controls. Every once in a while, life surprises you by sending you a hell of a day, and I mean that in the good way. Today has been just one of those days.

I woke up at 11:45 AM, despite having resolved last night to wake up at 9 or so. I spent majority of the day playing Football Manager 2010. Lunch in the mess was distinctly average, but the real fun began in the evening. Today was COWBAXI Day (Cowbelt Association of XLRI, a group of students from the cow-belt region of India — states like Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, MP, etc.). They organised some traditional snacks like litti, and masala chai. It was delicious! They then organised a few cultural programmes that consisted of a couple of fun games and a couple of dance performances by the students.

And then, there was dinner.

There’s a reason I’ve put that line in its own paragraph. The dinner, I think, was the highlight of the night. It was incredibly delicious. Despite having gorged on two ghee-laden littis, I managed to eat a fairly heavy dinner. The number of dishes was not very high (in comparison to some of the other committees’ dinners), but each and every item tasted heavenly, and I guess a simple menu was clearly the way to go. It also helped that COWBAXI has the highest number of members among all regional committees, since their service was also spectacular. After dinner, we were treated to a small skit, a satire on the Mahabharata and on some of our professors here at XLRI. The amount of creativity, humour and wit that went into it were obvious and I thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

And then, to end the day, I came back to my room to read (and watch the last few minutes) of Manchester United’s 3-1 victory over Arsenal.

What a day!

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A couple of days back, I wrote about the annoyances of being a writer. I highlighted the frustration of not capturing an idea while you can and then losing out on a chance to write something breath-taking. But like everything in life, it has a flip-side. Being able to write well is something I’m extremely thankful for.

Why?

For one thing, it gives me the ability to express myself clearly. I’ve had people tell me how lucky I am because I can articulate my thoughts so well. It’s true. I think I do have an advantage when it comes to written communication.

But writing to me is about a lot more than communication. It’s an outlet of creativity, it’s a passion that excites me, a reason to celebrate life, to view the world in all its beauty and all its flaws and be able to visualize it in other ways. It’s amazing to be able to see everyday occurrences and make stories about them that make them special and immortalize them in the pages of a book.

Every once in a while, I write something, fiction or otherwise, that makes me … happy, to put it succinctly. It may not be perfect for others, but to me, it feels like every word, every symbol of punctuation has fallen into place like a jigsaw puzzle. And when I read it after I’m done writing it…that, my friends, is the joy of being a writer.

PS: Yes, I know the jigsaw puzzle metaphor is terribly clichéd and overused now. I will try to avoid using it for a while in future posts!

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I like to call myself a writer because I write. I blog, and I’ve written a few short stories too. I’ve got ideas for novels and series of short stories, but I haven’t started on them yet. I’ve decided a number of times to just take the plunge and write whatever comes into my head, to not hesitate for fear of being mediocre. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting to act on that decision.

Every now and then, though, when my mind is busy being free, it generates an idea or phrase, a sentence framed so naturally beautifully that it would be a travesty not to write it down immediately and put it up for the world to admire…for me to admire. I dwell on it, enjoy its existence and, far too many times, do nothing and watch it fade away.

A couple of days later, I’m sitting in class trying to find that sentence, that idea, but it’s already gone back into hiding somewhere in the rainforests of my memories.

Damn it, idea, come back to me!

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Last year, towards the end of September, there was a huge media spotlight on a special week — The Joy of Giving Week. It was celebrated from September 27 – October 3, 2009, and consisted of various events aimed at raising cash, food and clothes for the under-privileged. It was quite grand and XLRI played a huge role in bringing it to Jamshedpur. The students of XLRI had organised nukkad nataks, bike rallies and clothes collection, among other things. In fact, even the faculty participated by taking out a car rally. For more details, check out Jamshedpur Joyfest.

Now, there’s a chance to contribute again. Give India, the foundation behind the Joy of Giving Week, is in the race to win $ 1 Million by Chase Foundation in a competition on Facebook, and it needs votes. This money will be used for child education, and will apparently be enough to send about 40,000 children to school for one year.

But don’t believe me. Go and check out the foundation’s page on the Chase Community page. You may have to install the application, but it’s not really a big deal, is it? Do it now! Here’s the link:

http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/338730

I’ve voted, and every vote counts. I hope this post makes a difference.

Thank you for 2 minutes of your time.

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• Go climb a terrace somewhere, when it’s dark, and look up at the sky and scream my lungs out at the sky, just for fun, just to know that I can. Then I want to lie under the stars, on a comfortable mattress, listening to music, turned off from life and everything else.
• Not be here, not be anywhere.
• Escape from life, but I know that it’s not possible…it’s not allowed. Life is life.
• Be random, like this post.
• Be free, like my thoughts.
• Be creative, like I used to be.
• Write a story, a post, something beautiful, something close to perfection but with just that little bit of imperfection that it drives me on to write something even more beautiful.
• Spend a few intimate moments with my music and myself.

Here we are, hamsters in a cage, running on our wheels, running hard and never getting anywhere.

Run, hamster, run.

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Prince of Persia has been one of those games I’ve been waiting to play since I saw the trailers and watched the video review on Gamespot. Actually, it’s been a game I’ve been waiting eagerly to play since I heard of it as a successor to the Sands of Time trilogy I’ve written about so many times. It’s hard not to get excited about a new Prince of Persia game, especially if you loved the previous trilogy as much as I did. I realize this review is really late, considering the game was released in December, 2008.

For most of this review, I’m going to compare aspects of Prince of Persia with The Sands of Time game released in 2003. This is primarily because The Sands of Time has, for me, defined what Prince of Persia is all about, or should be all about. However, I will also try to judge this game on its own merits, seeing as how it’s a completely new project not based on The Sands of Time trilogy.

Let’s start off with the basics—the story. It’s a simple enough plot. The unnamed ‘Prince’ is a common tomb-raider, a thief, who loses his donkey with a full load of treasure in a desert storm. Out of nowhere, a running Elika stumbles into his path, and the story begins. Elika is a Princess whose father has let loose Ahriman, an evil God bent on releasing corruption and darkness onto the world. It’s up to Elika, with the Prince’s help of course, to contain Ahriman and save the world. The problem is that the finer details of the plot just don’t tie up, and there is an inherent inconsistency in the story and the characters that attempt to tie it up. For instance, the Prince is portrayed as generally self-centred, mistrusting and a bit of a loner who would not go out of his way to help others. Yet, for some reason, he embarks on this long, treacherous journey with a mysterious lady with magical powers. It leaves me questioning why he would do anything for her. There’s also no major development in the relationship that the characters share, and the attachment the Prince develops for Elika towards the end of the game seems contrived, somehow. The story, when compared with The Sands of Time, leaves a bit to be desired. It doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and the ending doesn’t quite leave you wanting more. A perfect ending to a game should leave you wanting more and yet somehow satisfied in revelling in the glory of the game. This is a feeling I’ve felt at the end of most of the truly great games, but not here.

The story, however, is just one small part of a game. Gameplay is a lot more important, of course. Prince of Persia’s gameplay can be very roughly divided into categories—platforming and combat. The platforming is solid and aesthetically pleasing. The Prince is more acrobatic than ever before and many new moves have been introduced, such as the ability to crawl on ceilings. The controls are simple and very forgiving, making the game easier than I would have imagined. There are barely any timed sequences like there were in the previous games, which takes away a fair amount of challenge from the game. Combat is interesting and fights are always against a single opponent only. This makes battles intense and generally quite long-lasting. It may take a while to get accustomed to the combat, but once you do, it’s fun to watch the Prince pull together complex combos in tandem with Elika, whose attacks are controlled by the player as well. However, because the fights are generally quite similar, it leads to the possibility of players developing a strong preference for a certain combo or two, which can make combat sequences seem remarkably repetitive and mundane. Also, the Prince never dies, never in combat and never while platforming. For every mistimed jump or overshot ledge, Elika saves you. Everytime a foe is about to deliver a fatal blow during combat, Elika saves you. Combine this aspect with the not very challenging platforming, and you have a game that, in my opinion, is far too easy. While it’s fine to have a game that embraces new players, I would have liked a bit more of a challenge. A few deaths before finishing the game would have been welcome too.

The Prince of Persia series is also known for incorporating a number of puzzles into the game. While this game continues that tradition, I personally felt that the difficulty level of the puzzles was also not too high, since I could solve most of the puzzles in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. And when I say “most of the puzzles”, it may sound like there’re a lot, but really, there aren’t too many. The boss battles, which were quite innovative and challenging in the last POP game (The Two Thrones), are not quite as innovative here. They consist of the same kind of combat that you would have been engaged in throughout the game, so there’s barely anything special about them. Each boss battle is broken into parts, probably to give the player a bit of relief to break up what could end up being very long fights, but each part is identical, unlike the boss battles from TTT that required platforming and timed silent kills to emerge victorious.

The music and ambient sounds of the game are not bad, but not spectacular either. The theme fits in very well and the atmosphere during the menus is a tribute to Elika, who steals the spotlight for majority of the game. In fact, it feels like this game is more of Elika’s story and the Prince just happens to be a side-kick. The voice acting for Elika is great, but the same can’t be said for the Prince, who speaks in a very thick American accent and happens to pass comments that are occasionally not very witty, and very frequently, typical of smartass American quips. It’s clichéd and gets old pretty fast.

However, let not my negative comments deter you from playing this game. If you are a fan of the Prince of Persia series or even if you just want to play a good platforming game, then you shouldn’t miss out on this game. The graphics and atmosphere are magical and fun to behold. The Prince’s movements and animation are smooth, and Elika is brilliant, proving to be a wonderful companion, always available for support but not once getting in your way. The Prince of Persia is a game that somewhat falls short of the promise showed during the trailers, but it’s still a pretty good game nonetheless. Go play!

Rating: 8/10

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I have 2 things to blog about today. I watched ‘3 Idiots’ last night, and I finished the 2008 video-game, ‘Prince of Persia’ as well. I intend to do reviews of both, in separate posts. As ‘3 Idiots’ is the latest topic on everyone’s lips, I’ll start with that.

Since I’m a weirdo who likes doing things differently, I’ll start with the bottom-line. It’s a good movie, with good acting and direction, with good amounts of humour thrown in—a movie that everyone should watch at least once. However, if one raises the question about how effective it is at getting its message across, then answer is not very favourable.
Yes, the movie does teach stubborn parents the importance of letting their children follow their hearts. It does create a little bit of awareness that careers other than engineering and medicine do exist. But it does nothing new. This message has been being shoved down our throats in newspaper editorials and important speeches. Who has it affected? Those with an open mind continue to keep an open mind, and those with closed minds continue to listen to the speeches, read the editorials, watch the movies, nod their heads solemnly in agreement, and when the time comes, they gently continue to push their children either into the engineering or medical herd.

There’s not much I can write about the movie without giving away the plot, and I think the movie would be far more enjoyable if I leave the story-telling to the director. Simply put, it’s a movie about education…not so much about life in a premier engineering college, instead more about the education system of our countr. Rest assured there is a good enough basic plot that ties the movie together, and enough suspense to keep your mind occupied at the intermission.

The acting is top-notch, as is to be expected from an Aamir Khan starrer. I am a big fan of the way his guy approaches his movies. Apparently having lost bundles of fat and muscle to fit the look of a student, Aamir does a stellar job as an engineering student. There are very subtle things that caught my eye—his style of walking, for example. It’s typical of the way a carefree engineering student would walk, hands in his pockets, swinging his legs slightly in that energetic manner that accompanies youth. Unfortunately, Aamir’s character (Rancho) is given so much of air-time, and is portrayed so charismatically by the prolific actor, that the entire movie seems less like one with a message, and more like one made to glorify that one particular character. Madhavan and Sharman Joshi do a fine job as well and their look matches those of engineering students quite well too. Kareena Kapoor has a minor role to play, but she does a good enough job without creating a fuss. Oh, and lest I forget, Boman Irani is, as usual, fabulous as the crazed, hyper-competitive dean of the college.

Since I’ve already written the bottom-line, I’ll end this ‘impromptu’ with a simple advice…go watch this movie. It’s good, but don’t be drawn in by the hype, and don’t go with great expectations, for these might come in the way of your enjoying the movie. Go watch the movie, and look out for the review of the 2008 video-game Prince of Persia, coming up shortly.

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At one point of time, I used to have Google Adsense ads on my blog. I kept them until I got to my $100 payout and then I took them off. Why?

1. Ads were not always pretty.
2. Depending on the content, unwanted ads could pop-up.
3. I used to log on every day to my Adsense account and see if I had made any money that day or that week, and many disappointing weeks went by when I made just a few measly cents a week.
4. I realized that the content of my site was more important to me. The content and the design. Ads and pure design could not go hand in hand.

I’ve never really regretted my decision to take off ads, although I admit I have been tempted to put them back on. I don’t know, I just might in the future. But ultimately, what satisfies me is the fact that I know I am not blogging for ads. I am blogging because I like to write and I am writing what I want without being concerned about what keywords I’m using or what my Page Rank is or whether my site is efficiently optimized for search engines. And that is what gives me freedom and pleasure in blogging.

Today, I came across a software that goes against everything that blogging means to me.

Behold WP Robot!

What does it do? I quote:

WP Robot is a powerful and easy to use autoblog plugin for Wordpress weblogs allowing you to turn your blog on complete auto-pilot and drip-feed it with fresh content in intervals you specify. And the best part: The posts created will be targeted to any keyword you enter and any topic you could ever think of!

Basically, you enter one keyword and turn on “auto-pilot” and you have a blog full of content. Then you place your ads and sit back while the money pours in. Blogging, as we know it, is going to get transformed into a hideous web of commercialisation. All gas and no substance.

Disgusting. If this software (or others like it) succeeds, and if people start using it on a massive scale, imagine the situation. Every time you search for information on something, you’ll end up going to a blog that’s made by a robot, purely to attract page views and make money.

If this is the future of the internet, then the internet is going to hell.

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My sister has recently stopped accepting my standard “nm” (nothing much/not much) to her “wots up?” when we chat. She’s forced me into actually saying what really is up. If you really think about it, a lot of times, “What’s up?” is a lot more than an easy way to start a conversation with someone. When you can’t really figure out what specific thing to talk about, it’s a lot easier to say “What’s up?” and wait for the other person to come up with a topic that’s comfortable and interesting to them.

While on the topic, “How’s life?” can be a lot more loaded than it appears. I was chatting with someone today, and there were plenty of questions I wanted to ask her about life…how’s she coping with studies, how’s she coping with some other stuff. The problem is that I’d rather not ask these things right away, they can be a little sticky to talk about. So it becomes much easier to ask a simple “How’s life?” and hope that it comes up somehow, or that it becomes easier to read between the lines of how the person replies to that question.

Anyway, that’s all I have for you today. Just something to think about when someone asks you what’s up, or how life is.

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Anybody who has ever claimed to be a fan of the beautiful game called football will admit, either willingly or grudgingly, that Thierry Henry is one of the modern legends of the game. Having built a reputation for being a prolific, clinical and amazingly gifted striker at Arsenal FC (England), Henry has had a wonderful career playing for FC Barcelona (Spain) and the French national team, and he is still going strong. Everybody loves him, and many regard him as a modern god of the game.

On November 18, 2009, in the World Cup Qualifier between France and the Republic of Ireland, 70,000 spectators saw Thierry Henry deliberately touching the ball with his hand and passing it to team-mate William Gallas to score the goal that would send France into the World Cup, and Ireland to the lowest rungs of despair. The Irish were the underdogs here, but they had fought bravely through the two legs of the qualifier and had deserved to go through, had it not been for the hand that fate played.

I was speaking about this incident with a friend of mine (Ishan), and while we agreed that Henry had in one moment fallen from his golden pedestal and had forever condemned himself to be labelled a cheat, he told me something that had me thinking all this while. Put yourself in his shoes…the stakes were so high, what would you have done? It’s understandable that he did what he did.

Is it, really?

Here comes the problem. We hold our heroes up high and glorify them because we want to be like them. We think they’re perfect, or close to perfect. We try to emulate them and celebrate their successes as our own. But when they falter, why do we forgive them?

Because we put ourselves in their shoes, and we lose the courage to live up to our ideals. We forgive our heroes, because if they can do something wrong, then it’s ok if we do something wrong too. We dislike disliking ourselves for the things we do wrong. If we can forgive those we adore, then we can forgive ourselves much easier. STOP forgiving! Stop being afraid to hate yourself for a bit. I understand that nobody’s perfect, but should we not try to get there, somehow?

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