Entropy is a logarithmic measure of the density of states: where kB = 1.38065×10−23 J K−1 is the Boltzmann constant, the summation is over all the microstates the system can be in, and the Pi are the probabilities for the system to be in the ith microstate. For almost all practical purposes though , 'DISORDER'can be taken as it's fundamental definition... Voila !
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Mumbai....Meri Jaan...
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Why Do I Quiz: Part 2
It's more out of want for a better title on what has been a trying and tribulating day...
The Hindu Young World quiz in delhi 1999...led a team from school to the event...came nowhere close to qualifying for the finals...even as the audience...couldnt know a word of what the quizmaster was hollering about...just knew that the chaps from DPS were answering left, right, centre...went home a shaken, make it terribly shaken kid...
A quiz by 'pickbrain' in college 3rd year...somehow after a miraculous prelims...make it through to the finals...after an enervating 1 hour..come back down with 5 points..1 answered question...and a devastated ego...
Another quiz called 'quiztrac' in Coimbatore...fellow college goers would recognise it to be coimbatores biggest open quiz...I rather remember it as my biggest heartbreaker..three times in a row...2004-5-6...could just sigh as was left high and dry in the prelims itself...all the bloody time...
2007: BT Acumen Finals....the euphoria was yet to set in..was actually in the east zone finals....
with the closest thing to an idol that i have...harsha bhogle hosting...walked onto stage at the IIM-C audi...before an amazing harsha and a fabulous audience............
...and went to pieces.... finished in last spot....
2008: Tata Crucible Semi-Finals: Land up in the shooutout round for a spot in the finals of Crucible...the holy grail of any campus quizzer..take three minuses and one plus.... end up in the negative at the end of the round...out ..and that too in some way....
and today...The BT acumen 2008 finals...qualified again...same IIM-C audi...Harsha was there again..the audience too...heck i even got the same spot that i had last year...
...
...
the lakes at IIM-C have a curious thing about them..little ripples come up...break up, recede...and then back up again...
I finished second to last today....after the home team had all but decimated us...once again...came home with just a bagful of bruised dreams...
My quizzing ripples too have always seemed to break-up..sooner or later...true...winning isn't everything...and i can hear a couple saying.."hey...isnt this the same guy who said he quizzed for the sake of quizzing"...sure ...still am....
but the problem with being passionate is; the fact that passion unfortunately; hates being told you're just not good enough...
but the best part of the ripples are that they just dont stop coming...to break-up maybe..but they just dont stop...not their style...
so i pack up and look towards crucible'08...another disaster in the offing perhaps..but never mind...i live to die..another day...
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Goodbye Jumbo...
Surprisingly...have never written about another lingering passion of mine ...cricket; on the blog...ever...
the tipping point though arived today 3:00 pm....
was standing outside 'south indian' as it is called...after a very very heavy curd rice meal ready to drop off on the road itself...thats when it arrived...
"score kya hua hai??" ...
"kucch tha 208 declared....aur haan....kumble's retired by the way...."
"kyya????"
"haan haan....just declared it in the morning...injured bhi to hai...."
and that was that....
not for the first time..was left speechless and shocked in the middle of a road...
drifted back to my first lingering memory of kumble...
think it was the hero cup final against west indies in 1993....
a lanky, bespectacled...rocket scientist lookalike...stormed the windies; who were demolishing teams till then..in the finals...
6/12 his final figures i still remember...amazing,astounding,magical bowling...
as eden gardens erupted in fireworks...india...and lil manoj suddenly had a brand new hero...
was in third standard at that time...remember twirling my arm over for a year after that wanting to be 'kumbleee'....
another match in 1996...against the aussies..before they were 'THE' aussies....India had fallen apart after sachins departure as usual...and a tearful lil manoj was watching crestfallen till kumble and srinath took the likes of fleming and co by the scruff of their necks and actually batted india to an improbable win...
1998..at the kotla...on a dirt bowl of a track...much to a slightly older lil manoj's sadistic pleasure..batsman after batsman had absolutely no answer to jumbo's doosras,teesras and 'etc'ras that were coming at them....remember cursing aloud when the 10th pakistani batsman skied up the ball in somebody elses over fearing that his perfect 10 would not arrive....
thankfully...even the gods didnt want it that way...only the 2nd person ever to take a perfect 10 in the history of cricket...wow....just wow...
was not following a series in the carribean where India were getting slaughtered...a friend in college mentioned one fine day..."kumble's got guts dude...damn..you should have seen him yesterday..." confused...started to the nearest cyber cafe...remember my first reaction on seeing that pic of his bowling replete with strapped jaw..."shit...holy shit" courage thy name is kumble...
and strangely...the most recent memory comes from a quiz question.... "who scored the only century for India in england last season....??" ... before i could get my rusty brain on track... another team burst out on the buzzer excitedly... "Kumble!!!" ...
"whoa?? well....yeah..actually...kumble!! wow!"
Jumbo's cricketing heroics would require a separate blog per se...and these stray reflections are more of my personal memories...in a cricketing world replete with bully's, overtly macho and overtly competitive 'super-stars', holier than thou attitude throwers...Jumbo was always a revelation....fiercely competitive...a tiger on the field...and yet always the perfect gentleman off it...
"he cant spin..." , "no variation" "medium-pacer" "indian pitches only" and many many other things...said the critics...and toady a report card that says 500+test wickets...India's highest wicket taker...and that too by quite a number...
for over a decade when India's bowling languished..Jumbo valiantly toiled for that elusive breakthrough...on flat pancakes of tracks...in killing conditions India's lone bowling hope....jumbo...walked on...without complaining...he spun on...
the old guard is changing....Dada first....now Jumbo...and there are quite a few fledgings right in place...yet....yet....
stray idiots will rejoice that "the oldies gone..he was no good anyways..." cynics will say.. "was a paper tiger...harbhajan has always been better" ..and tearful goodbyes like this one shall also be penned down...
the fledglings shall take over the ball...and the advent of 'captain courageous' dhoni will finally be complete...
and yet...amidst all of this...valiantly...silently...manfully...and as ever..humbly....kumble shall declare his innings over...
a legend walked off a cricket field for the last time today....a legend...
was not shedding tears (that is reserved for the damned day the lil master will decide to hang up his boots), but with an absolutely heavy heart walked off home...
cos a little part of me, a bit of 'lil manoj' had also walked off into the sunset...
Friday, October 10, 2008
She is...
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Not The City I Grew Up In...
Saturday, March 8, 2008
RAP just got wonderful....
special thanks to 'the cool guy with long hair' for getting me to this song :)
in all honesty...didnt have a lot of respect for rappers and music of the same ilk...
this one song's made me a believer...simple, from the heart yet downright profound...
wonderful...
Friday, February 22, 2008
MOZHI.....
note :the following is a personalized translation of a few lines from
song :katrin mozhiye
movie :mozhi (2007)
lyricist :vairamuthu
"The language of the wind ? is it sound or music ?
The language of the flowers ? is it it’s colour or its smell?
The language of the sea ? in its foam or in the waves ??
Learn to feel the language of nature…
The language of men will become irrelevant
Sense the language of the heart…
The need for the language of men will cease to exist…"
The video link of the song on you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcNkQQTnqHs
Saturday, February 9, 2008
yikes! communication skills.....
of late..have found out that am smack in the middle of a write/talk crisis...
there's a strange doubt gnawing away at my innards; that i cant seem to be able to consistently and coherently string whatever i think into whatever i want to say/ or write for that matter....
smack in the middle of a presentation the other day..i discovered that i was fumbling,bumbling,tumbling...basically struggling as badly for words as yuvraj in australia...
but rarely have i been a mumbling wreck....
My writing; on the other hand has been painful...trying to string up my sentences is sometimes akin to a dinosaur trying out civil niceties...
mu blog posts too...are rather painfully cobbled together in fact!
like a true MBA(rite!), have done some postmortem(!) on this particular issue and identified a particular bottleneck(what absolute rubbish jargon)....
a few attempts at humor have fallen terribly flat over these few trimesters....
a few jabs that i thought would elicit some sympathetic grins if not enthusiastic guffaws have on the other hand led to frosty..Steve bucknorish glares...
here again..dont exactly have a reputation for leaving the audience in splits whenever i open my mouth but nor am i the proverbial mirthless man..but still most of my classmates can give bustor keaton a run for their money in 'stone facedness' ...
and my 'failed jokes' list is rather unfortunately burgeoning...
hmm...maybe this post too would probably land up in the 'worst blog posts of the year'
being compiled somewhere by the CIA....
How i wish i could have been a Bollywood heroine....a 'Bachaaaaoooooo'....
is her panacea to anything that happens to her.....
my plea's would probably elicit laughter (dont tell me even they wouldn't!)....
bujd jkcjnfjn dhfj ytrueoe vvchddh...
sigh :(
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Why do i quiz ??
surprisingly, over the past two days....for no fault of mine... have come under a bit of fire
and got into mini 'situations' of sorts where the practicality of 'quizzing's'
been questioned and my passion for it ridiculed....
it of course put me into backtrack mode...
1992 : a winters night in delhi watchng a quiz show, whose name i cant remember... on tv with mom and dad.quite clueless to everythng being asked..but still watching the way the participants seemed so excited...
a question about a man who helps a lion in the wild and the lion helps him in retun when he's thrown to him to be eaten crops up...
dad says androcles and the lion...i suddenly remember a biblical story from assembly time in school a week back...'dad..it's david..i know..they taught me in school"
"david's the answer" says the host and a surprised yet pleased as punch mom and dad turn to me and say...
"good stuff...young man"......
something warm fuzzes up inside....something puts up it's head deep inside and says...
"hey...i knew that....yeah...i did...WOW"
1994 : The Maggi quiz being held in school...
the kid gets through the prelims in class thanks to a generous amount of questions on countries and their capitals...which were the only things he knew!
finals: who won the world cup football tournament in 1986??
teachers murmur: naah..thats too tuff for a 4 th class kid....
the kid remembers a poster his brother has in his sportstar collection....
a triumphant team grinning over the world cup...
argentina he barely whispers..the QM and the audience is taken aback...
that something inside puts up it's head again...
"hey... i knew that...wow...."
1998 : a inter school french quiz...or rather an english quiz about france...held in the premises of the old enemy....dps rkp...
he's been taken along as he's supposedly one of the decent quizzers in school....plus the fact that
he's the only quizzer who knows french helps...
he tags along with the quizzing heavyweights...
and stays dormant for a better portion of the quiz...
a question pops up in the middle...
"what was started by the magazine l'auto in the year blah blah..."
amidst frantic consultation with his seniors...he hits upon it...
he remembers reading about it in readers digest.....
he squeaks out "it's that cycle race the tour de france"
newfound respect in the eyes of his legendary team leader...
"good job, kid " he says....
that little fuzzy thing perks up again....
"yeah..it silently whoops....yes..."
cut to a quiz in first year at CIT...
he's been pretty much inactive in college till then....
gets dragged to a quiz event...
"what was so special about the oscars given in the year blah blah..."
the others try out all possible guesses .."world wars, refused oscars" everythings given as an answer and refused....
he fidgets at the back of the auditorium...a magazine called 'target' comes to mind...
he was 10 then...oscar trivia...it was...that issue...
"got it...wood...the oscars then were made of wood..yeah"
an appreciative bunch of seasoned quizzers turn back to see him....
the thing inside lets out an indian war cry again....woohoo....
well...that thing..that one moment of joy of stretching out one's limited grey cells to extend itself to new places...that one example of mental aerobics...
one moment 0f silent joy...ecstacy...ones own version of something sachin might feel everytime he hits those sweet,exquisite cover drives...and his own fuzzy little self inside exclames "wow..picture perfect.."
of course, am not exactly the tendulkar of indian quizzing, and my quizzing career is still relatively in it's nascent stages...but something me and every other die hard quizzer will vouch for is that it's akin to a addiction...
trivia,questions,riddles, history...haunt you and your existence day in and day out...and your happiest hours are when you discover that some distant nephew of x went to y and z and x created a company w which gave it's name to y ..or you know..some monstrously complex thing of the same ilk...of course..it might notmake any sense whatever to some people and may seem a downright waste of time but hey...so are most of the worlds hobbies if you wanna see it that way....
it's all for that thing within you that crops up every now and then ...
and says.."hey..u know that?!..u really do?? "
"quizzito ergo sum" as the blog of anothr quizophile puts it....
i quiz therefore i am....
cheers :)