‘Current Off’ Day
Three hours without electricity. And in a furnace like Chennai you cannot survive without the ceiling fans. What possible excuse could they have for a three hour power cut in a metropolitan city? Do you still think that India will become a super power in a few years? Stop deluding yourself.
From 3.30 PM to 6.30 PM I sweated it out, entertaining myself by reading the book about tanks that I bought recently. Already we have to take two baths a day in this horrible weather and with no power I might as well sit in the bathroom all day immersed in a large tub of water.
The title of this post was inspired by Ganesh.
Category: Chennai City
April 20th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Just 3 Hours? And you think thats bad?! Consider yourself lucky - I have been through worse.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:42 am
We’ve had similar days of course. This was just today. And Chennai’s weather is really uncomfortable.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:27 am
At least it made you take bath after some decades
April 20th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Chennai is one of the best maintained city electricity wise. Just because there was no power for a few hours, don’t sulk. And TN by far is the best state when it comes to electricity distribution and efficiency.
You haven’t been to North India.
Oh and also, things will get worse. This is what happens when people have no regard for Global warming.
April 20th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Well, there was that huge power failure in New York a long time ago. It was funny to read how those people found it so hard to adapt. I guess they had to deal with the cold too, poor people.
I didn’t have power this morning for a short period (couple of hours) and some time in the night. But it’s okay. That’s what battery powered machines are for
April 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Karthik, why did you bring global warming into this? Don’t talk like Maniraj.
Chennai having fewer power cuts than Northern India is nothing to be happy about. There should be no power cuts. Period.
George, what about the people who aren’t filthy rich like you?
April 20th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Well, at the time the power was off I wasn’t anywhere near the battery powered machines I was talking about, so it doesn’t really matter.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
You should either be rich or have a minister in your locality. They prove useful in such situations.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:58 pm
We have close to constant sunshine during the day. Now, if every rooftop in the city is covered with solar panels we’ll be solving the energy crisis and (since the topic has been brought up) decreasing the speed of global warming.
It’s going to be expensive to manufacture and purchase? Mass production will make things cheaper, perhaps.
April 21st, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Ouch, this summer’s that bad, eh? =S
April 21st, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Today part of East Tambaram suffered a full day power cut, your 3 hour power cut can in no way be compared with this. It’s India after all, you can’t sizzle over this.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 am
You might have gone to beach da. They will simply tell that they did for service maintenance
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 am
@Marc,
It’s not irrelevant at all. You are talking to an Electrical engineer see. We’d know things.
If you want I could mail you equations to prove they are related. (I am sure George can play interpreter if you don’t understand it.
)
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
Even if Marc survives without ceiling fan, how he’ll be without his computer for 3 hrs?
Using back-ups? ?
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Ha ha, very funny Karthik. George wouldn’t know an electrical engineering equation if it introduced itself to him. He’ll get it interpreted all right. Interpreted, like what those Imams do to the Quran.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Arun, we do have some big shot nearby which is why we don’t suffer from as many power cuts.
Vinny, people will steal the panels and use them as roofing for their huts.
Anusha, isn’t every summer this bad?
Joel, villages can’t expect uninterrupted power.
Hari, my backup is a book.
Karthik, I have no problem with understanding electrical engineering equations since I’ll simply ignore them.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Last I remember Bikram had solar power for his house. It didn’t cover much, but it was worthwhile.
East Tambaram is what one would call a suburb. That’s where my college is, and I do remember having a power cut on the last day of my exams. But my hall had electricity, other people weren’t so fortunate. Dude, it has a 9-platform station, it’s anything but a village.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
@George,
I was merely suggesting that Marc has problems with mathematical equations
and you being a mathematician (you can call yourself that ? ) should be able to help. 
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
I don’t think I can call myself that, I only have a B. Sc. in Math. I’ll help all right, it’s just that he won’t be better off in the end
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I simply don’t care enough about Mathematics, considering that I won’t use most of what I ‘learnt’ in real life.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Funny, I’d think a Computer Science course would be full of mathematics. In fact, any Computer Science course not full of mathematics is simply not a Computer Science course.
Of course you won’t use it in real life, the rest of us will use it to make the lives of the whole of society safer, easier, more comfortable.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
You can use almost any skill ‘to make the lives of the whole of society safer, easier, more comfortable’. In fact, you can do that without knowing any skill at all.
I don’t need anything more than a basic understanding of Math to be a computer engineer.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Certainly, Marc. Mathematics making life easier doesn’t preclude other things from making life easier. That isn’t much of a leap of logic.
Yes, but that’s computer engineering, not computer science. Computer Science is loaded, and I mean loaded, with Maths.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
And almost everyone who learns your mathematics loaded computer science will earn money off it. Helping society would be the last thing on their minds and might only occur as a side effect of them earning money.
The point is that I don’t need the math I learn in my course so I don’t care about it.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:21 am
What the…? How did you conflate the two comments in such a crazy way? You’re not logical at all!
Of course, possibly because your course sucks. If you managed to get a degree in Computer Science without knowing any Maths, that’s very bad.
April 25th, 2008 at 1:55 am
You’re the one who went off on a tangent, talking about the good to society and all.
Thousands of people get this degree each year without knowing anything, let alone math. Ask any engineering student and they will confirm this fact.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Come on, this isn’t digg. You knew I was being facetious.
Yeah, their course sucks too.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
@Marc,
As me I won’t confirm it. I am an engineering student. I’ll say just the opposite. Math is wonderful.
Also, what is your definition of a Computer Engineer and what exactly do you think you will do once you are a computer engineer ? Play games on the office Lan and Blog ?
April 26th, 2008 at 1:43 am
You are hereby exempted from all my references to ‘collegemates’ and ‘people in AIHT’. We call you The Champ for a reason.
Here’s another interesting question: What will you do as a computer engineer (having studied electronics and electrical engineering)?
The nature of the job is that you will not know what exact you are going to do. It might be anything from mainframes to web applications. I’m going to be doing whatever the employer wants me to do, for which nothing I learnt in college will help.
April 26th, 2008 at 11:28 am
The one year I’ll spend programming (hopefully) as a software engineer will come in handy in learning industry practices and stuff. Later on, it should be useful when I do anything worthwhile. If it’s a matter of capacity that you are talking about, then I can contribute just as much and perhaps more.
The employer gave you a list of things to study before joining which you thought is useless as well.
You’ll be cribbing once you are in Infy as well.
I hope it’s still not about how 4 years of college didn’t allow you to study.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
You are not taking the job primarily to learn industry practices or anything. This is only an advantage of this job (and pretty much any other job). Why don’t you admit it? You are doing it for the money, to recover the huge amount you spent on the course. You don’t want to remain unemployed for any amount of time since that would mean time spent not earning any money. You yourself have said as much.
Our future employer gave us a list of things that we should know about, yes. When did I say it was useless? I said I could completely ignore it since most of it was in the CSE syllabus already and I know the concepts. It is mainly for people from streams other than CSE so you’d better look at it.
I won’t be cribbing there since they’ll be paying me to do work and narrow minded people cannot enforce their outdated concepts in any way. For the last time, what you ‘learnt’ in college will not be useful to you at work. Except if you are a lecturer in an engineering college in Tamilnadu.