Daree

After the exams, I got a new face. Actually all credits should go to my sweet heart who wanted to know how I will look with a moustache. I thought of pleasing her with a whole beard. I am planning to keep this look as a gift to her.

My wall-mate has just shaven his head to prevent premature hairfall. We are making a great combination in the campus. People are asking why is this -ve correlation between our hairs?

While writing this post, I happened to ask google "beard and moustache" and came out with the following interesting links:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard




http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/index.html


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/....../index.html

The Deadly Gang

Enjoy this kewl creation by Siam. I helped in engineering the sound and flash creation.

Kappad Beach

God I needed a break!! C’mon, need some cool time, somewhere where I wont be reminded of what classes I have tomorrow or which case to read or when is the class etc etc. And I got what I had wanted. Maren wanted to go to a new place to eat in the afternoon. Siam asked me if I was interested and I happily joined them.

On the way, I suggested that we should go to the Kappad beach. It had been a long time since I had gone to the beach. As always, Siam was reluctant to go but we convinced him. In the city, we had a very heavy lunch. The food was too good and I ate like a hungry pig. After the filling lunch, we reached Kappad by bus.

Kappad is around 16 kms from Calicut. For the people of Calicut (Kozhikode), this pleasant stretch of rock studded beach is Kappakkadavu. To the tourist it is one of the most charming of Kerala's beaches. Here, 501 years ago, 170 men led by the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama (1460-1524) sailed in and stepped into Kerala to create a new chapter in history. Although, it is nothing compared to the beaches we have in Goa, it is perhaps the nearest place to go when you want to have a glimpse of the Arabian Sea while in Calicut. The Calicut beach for this matter is a dirty and smelly place.

Kappad is actually a village of fisherman, stretched along the coastline. During the high tide, the beach can be considered to be only 30 meters away from the sea –line while during the low tide, this increase to around 80 meters. The village stretches over a couple of kilometers. Along the coastline is an embankment of rocks. The houses are so close to the sea that one can even fish from the window if he has a long fishing rod :).

The whole afternoon, the three of us walked the stretch of sandy beach (around 2.5 kms). When we arrived, it was high tide and we were lucky enough to see a lot of activities in the place. There were many fishing boats. A few fishermen were trying there luck from the beach itself. It was nice to see how you can fish during high-tide. What these people do is that they put into the water a long stretch of nylon net (width of about ½ meters) with weights along the borders. By using a empty black jar-can, they mark the point in the water where they have laid the net. Now the high-tide brings with it all types of fishes towards the beach (please see the pictures) and these get caught in the net. After say 1 hour or so, just before the tide begins to recede, they pull out the net.

Fishing is a big industry of coastal Kerala. We spoke to Ram Babu, a local fisherman who runs a contract of buying fish from local fisherman and processing fish before transporting to Bombay for further processing before being exported. He says, everyone in this village is a fisherman. An individual earns between Rs.10 to Rs. 2000 a day from fishing. The government of Kerala has given some assistance to the local fisherman to improve the industry. They now can avail cheap loans from banks for mechanized boats.

Many of the fishing boats trawl around 100 kilometers into the ocean fishing for days together. It is a very tough job, says Ram Babu and each catch is a priced treasure. We also saw a large number of women who were cutting and packing the catch deposited by the fisherman at Ram Babu’s shed. There were two trucks waiting to deposit ice for refrigeration. Thus fishing also provides employment to a large number of villagers in Kappad.

At Kappad, there is also a resort. While we were returning from our adventure, we saw some foreigners who had come there for vacation. As the sun set, the sea became calm and the horizon became crimson. The scene was very beautiful and worth capturing. From the west, a cool evening mist was rising from the blue waters and engulfing the vast stretch of Kappad.

We were back to Calicut by 8:30 PM and so decide to have dinner at Mezbaan before going back to the campus.

For more kewl pictures from our Kappad trip, click here

The X-Effect

If you have been a regular visitor to my blog, you must have been wondering why I wasn't doing any posting, right? Several reasons:

(1) The government's temporary ban of blogspot after the Mumbai local train blasts.
(2) My mid-terms.
(3) Nothing great to write about.
(4) My experiments with boredom, and..
(5) The X-Effect.

Perhaps, the last one is a more significant reason for my not writing anything new on my blog. For the last 3 weeks, I have been watching the X-files and I have completed 48 episodes of Season 1 and Season 2.

I find the TV serial as one of the finiest I have ever watched: unbeatable plot, mind blowing idea, great acting and wonderful picturization. I love the characters Mulder and Scully and despite all their differences, the professionalism these caharacters show. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are both FBI agents. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal while Scully is not. Together, they investigate paranormal cases which takes them all the way to alien conspiracies within the US government, risking both their lives and career.The best part of X-files is the unconventional finishing where the viewer is left to think that "the truth is still out there" for him to discover.

With each episode, I seem to be starting to believe that paranormality is an existing phenomena and where human knowledge of normality ends within the boundaries of the present theories of science, paranormality begins. In the X-files, most of the paranormal phenomena have been reasoned as "unnatural" distortion of natural science and beyond human comprehension. My believe is that since human knowledge is limited by the rigid boundaries of scientific reasoning, it won't be a wise decision to deny anything from occuring which our scienctific knowledge cannot reason.

Whatsoever, the X-files is a great show to watch and enjoy. And if you are of the inquisitive types and enjoy reading science-fiction and detective stories, you will have several reasons of enjoying the episodes, besides just getting to know about various paranormal phenoman.

I am now about to catch up with Season 3 episodes.

Google Reveals

Some of my great Google Earth views of IIM K campus are given below. Also see the latest statellite images of my alma mater IIT Guwahati and my home town. I precisely located my home in Guwahati on Google Earth. The views are stunning. Have fun :)

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IIM K
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IIT G
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My Home
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The First IIM K Party

The first IIM K Party was on 2nd (Sunday). Although I wasn't partying that day because of the Brazil-France match, it was a great beginning. I just stole a bottle of beer and watched the match. Catch the glimpse of the great moments below :)

Zidane's Exit and Our Draw :)

The loss of my favourite worldcup finalist team was very sad. But the most hurting part was played by my favourite star Zinedine Zidane. His unreasonable touch of fury over an abuse by the Italian defender Marco Materazzi which he replied by a violent head-butt on the Italian's chest for which he was shown the red-card. I could not belive my eyes that a professional and revered star of the game could do so. Zinedine Zidane hurt not only his team, but the sport of soccer itself.

But as the media says, the former Real Madrid star's moment of madness may have been provoked by Materazzi calling his sister a prostitute (read the story here), there could have been other ways to deal with such remarks. Zidane should have controlled his anger at this last minute of international football career of his life, that too in the worldcup finals. Some of the media says that the voilent action of Zidane should not be a surprise looking at the background he has come from (read more here). But a great player like him should know how to control his fury. It was to be his last act as a professional player and, with the French missing his prowess in the ensuing penalty shootout, Italy went on to claim the World Cup title.

Many of my friends, including myself, belive that Zidane was also driven by the frustration of the header miss in the second half. No one can deny that it could have been one of the most fantastic goal. But the Italians were more lucky. I still remember the cry of frustration by Zidane after his header was saved by the Italian goalkeeper Buffon.

But despite all, Zidane is really a talent to acknowlege for, and one of the best players that footabll has ever produced. This believe is equally shared by Pele who had earlier voted Zidane as his best. And I am happy that Zidane has been presented the Golden Balls...he deserves it (read more here). But whatsoever, his exit from international football will never be a happy ending.

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The inter-hostel football match kicked off yesterday. The first match was between Hostel D and Hostel A. Hostel A has the best players in their team. They have Debu and Sudip, who are enough to bring down any team alone. My team (hostel D) have more juniors in the team and we really don't know who plays good and who doesn't. So siam and I had some difficulty to form a good team. Although most of the work has been done by Siam and Jigme, I was nominated the "Kaptan" of the team.

The match was okay. We played well and scored the first goal, which went of the boots of Siam. But a simple defense folly help Hostal A get the equalizer 10 minutes before the final whistle. We had some advantage over Hostel A's team in the sense that Sudip, their main striker was hurt and not in form. Under relaxed rules where off-side was removed as the ground was very small, Debu and Sudip was strategically the main ingredients for A. However, the equalizer was just a lucky break for them and cannot be said a work of talent.












The match referee was a novice PGP10 guy who volunteered. But this fellow does not seem to have good hold over the rules. He made many wrong decisions for which both sides lost many good opputunities to score. I hope the referee in the next match when we play is someone better. We have our lesson from this first match. The next match is tomorrow against F. I am sure we will win this game.

IIM Darshan

I hope you will like these photographs taken during last weekend by Siam and myself. The pictures shows you our beautiful IIM Kozhikode campus, so rightly called "God's Own Campus". It is monsoon this end and rains almost everyday. And when it rains, IIMK is no less then the heaven on earth.

The only sad thing in these pictures is that there appears a blot due to a "stupid" cystal on the lens cover of my camera which I am not able to remove. How my camera developed this disease is yet another sad story. Anyways, enjoy the shots :)

See and download more campus pictures here.