You must be thinking I have lost my marbles. That’s true. I lost all my marbles when I was eight years old. - Vinny
Vinny (Vinayak) writes good blog entries. I like them because it’s like reading my own work. Pessimistic, abusive and annoyed at the shit people do… that’s the style I can identify with. Sometimes his posts are almost exactly what I would have posted, except he got to it first. Like this one, about cartoons.
I know Vinny through Krish Raghav who in turn met him at Vis Comm prep classes at Loyola in 2004. Since then we’ve kept in touch through forums (initially) and then messenger. He’s also pretty good at Photoshop (DeviantArt profile page) so I occasionally ask him for design help and comments.
Worth mentioning is the fact that Ragha carried a huge stack of newspapers and magazines weighing about 20 kilos all by himself from his house to the old newspapers mart - a distance of 100 metres. This is nothing to someone like Ragha who once pushed a MTC bus all the way to his school in Mandaveli (from Adyar) since the driver forgot to fill diesel.
A few days ago my computer stopped booting up. The CPU fans were running and the lights were working but there was no hard disk activity and there was no display on the monitor. I set up my dad’s laptop to work with Ragha’s friend’s wireless modem as a temporary measure but playing CS was hard and the posture I had to sit in to use the laptop was not very comfortable.
Finally took the CPU to Ragha, our local hardware dealer and after some fiddling around he determined that the AGP card wasn’t working.
Vinod has posted another set of questions and these are my answers to some of the tough questions. I know they’re all correct so don’t bother to contradict me.
5. The _______, first awarded in 1981, were created by John Wilson in 1980, intended to counterpoint the Academy Awards by dishonoring the worst acting, screen writing, song writing, directing, and films that the film industry had to offer. It usually takes the form of a raspberry spray-painted gold and mounted on a plastic base.
Filmfare Best Movie Award (Tamil)
6. X was educated at Mitra Institution School (Calcutta), Presidency College and then the University of Calcutta. He also attended Cambridge University and has been awarded an honorary fellowship of Jesus College. He was called to the bar in England and was a litigating barrister at the Calcutta High Court before joining active politics. The father of X was the president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, an organization that championed Hindu causes and a forerunner of today’s BJP. Later he left Hindu Mahasabha to join left politics and was elected to the Parliament with CPI (M) support. Who is X?
Xavier, my friend from school.
7. The kingdom of Lowrel is attacked and burned by Belzed’s evil troops of monsters. In the attack, the king and the queen are slain, and their only child, princess Silphee is kidnapped. The king’s guards were all killed, except for the powerful knight, Macren. He and his younger brother, Thonolan, an aspiring martial artist, take off on a long journey to defeat Belzed. They start their long struggle in the witches’ forest outside the kingdom of Lowrel. As the fight against the evil forces of Belzed commences, Macren is slain by a skeleton soldier. With his dying breath, he pleads Thonolan to use his great kicking powers to stop Belzed and his forces of evil and rescue the princess, Silphee. I am talking about a video game here. Tell me the name of the game (There is a clue in the question and its very easy)
Running and catching
8. ________ is a baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from 12–16 metres (40–50 ft) and weigh approximately 36,000 kilograms (79,000 lb). The _________ has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is an acrobatic animal, often breaching and slapping the water. Males produce a complex whale song, which lasts for 10 to 20 minutes and is repeated for hours at a time. (The question is not good but you know the answer!)
Namitha
If you want to attempt the quiz, see his post here.
Hey people, if anyone wants computer hardware at really good rates, be aware that Ragha has a shop in Ritchie Street. The shop is called Revathi Infosystems and it is well known in that area for selling all kinds of illegal goods.
If you want a laptop or a iPhone, Ragha will direct you to some rich buggers who own these things so that you can steal it from them. He also maintains a huge collection of pirated software and he has a lot of special offers. If you bring him one genuine software disk he will take it and give you five pirated copies.
He is also looking for some part time workers. He will pay you a good salary to hack into matrimonial sites and steal photos which he will then sell to people like Arun, Adithya and Sachan. Anyone interested?
In the interest of public safety we are creating awareness about this menace to humanity called Ragha.
This evil creature also goes by The Ragha, Raghavsr, Raghavendra, Mattamaana Paiya, Free Killer and many such inexplicable names. He is known to automatically take ownership of everything that comes within a 5 kilometre radius of him and for selling things that belong to other people. Other special powers include the ability to affect electronics by his mere presence and changing his voice over the phone to fool people into revealing sensitive information.
Even after many warning people refuse to take this threat seriously. We give you this information in the hope that you will have a few milliseconds warning before you get screwed by Ragha. There is more information on Adithya’s blog. Be careful. Always be alert.
Unfortunately there is currently no means of protection against Ragha.
First I went to Indian Overseas Bank to open a Savings Bank account. But by the time I got there it was closing time for the bank and they told me to come the day after. At 4 PM in the damn afternoon. Ah screw them!
Then I went with George to buy him a microSD card for his new phone. And then later burnt a copy of CS CZ for him.
After that it was off to Ragha’s place to confront Arun and ask him where the hell my DVDs were. They had a lot of comics on them.
Later I burnt a copy of CS CZ for Adithya and Ragha and hopefully they’ll come to play today too.
I still have to go to Xavier’s place and give him a copy as well as pick up the rest of the Stargate seasons from him. I’ll have to do that tomorrow. No time today.
Another night and another round of CS. Vinod left early claiming that his system was lagging but we had a feeling that he didn’t like the extreme level of difficulty that we’ve started playing at with those expert bots in Aztec.
Gowtham wasn’t there. He had an exam tomorrow. Gokul, Narayanan, Ram Prasad Arun (Narayanan’s friend) and Harikumar were all missing.
So it was up to the rest of us to form the other team. Bharath, Ganesh, Kishore, Hariharan (Vinod’s friend) and me were the Terrorist team and four expert bots were the Counter-Terrorists. As usual we got our asses kicked. Bullets were flying everywhere, mostly at us from the bots. It was mayhem.
The reason we play with these extremely difficult bots is that when you somehow you finally defeat them against great odds with skill or just luck it means something. You feel like cheering out loud. There is a real sense of accomplishment. This doesn’t happen when you play against moronic normal bots.
Plus it’s really funny to get massacred by the bots. We are hiding somewhere or the other waiting for them and they come around back and wipe us out. And we’re can curse at them all we want. It’s not like they have feelings.
Plus some three of us have figured out voice chat and it helps to issue warnings and just chat. Using the keyboard for chat is a pain.
Tomorrow I hope Vinod and Gowtham will join us for a proper battle with those damned bots.
It was time for the annual cultural event at Madras Christian College (MCC). This times the bloody exams were over so I could make it to the last day for the rock show. I got a ride with George in the morning and we reached the place at 10.30 AM. The rest of the afternoon was spent mostly sitting around watching 90 Seconds, JAM and Shipwreck. I missed The LBG playing in the Western Music finals though. Damn!
When we went to get some lunch I spotted this sign. (All photos taken with my cell phone.)
(’Frice’, anyone?)
At about 3.30 PM the rock show started and I prepared myself for a few hours of deafening noise. Usually the sound setup for rock shows in Chennai suck and they make heavy songs sound crappy. This is mostly because no one bothers to get proper quality speakers or proper sound technicians. Last year at MCC the sound wasn’t so great but this year they had done a good job. I don’t like music very loud so I managed to find a sweet spot between the right and left speaker stacks so that it was just right.
Boomerang, one of the bands they had invited from the North-East (India, of course) was really really good. I thought that they sounded like Rage Against The Machine as soon as they started playing and sure enough, they played some RATM covers too. I was shocked when they started playing Bulls on Parade and was sure they’d screw it up. But they carried it off beautifully, with the guitarist even running his hand across the fretboard (is that a name for that?) to make those scratch-like sounds. Watch the video of RATM’s Bulls on Parade here to understand what I’m saying.
(Boomerang on stage)
They also sang a song in their native language and though I didn’t understand a word of it, it was good and the North Easterners loved it. George arrived in time to catch the last few songs. I noticed that as usual he was dressed like a Zap pro.
(Zap Pros wear sandals and socks.)
It was really sunny that particular day and the stage was open to air. The bands had to sweat it out on stage until it was sunset. Later on I was talking to ‘Boom’, the lead singer for Boomerang and he mentioned that it was very sunny. Get them some shade next time, you MCC buggers. And the audience too.
(Western Music finals)
Speaking of the audience, there were a lot of ruffians roaming around. Some of them were yelling made up lyrics and some assholes were shouting ‘Tamil paatu paadra!’ (Sing Tamil songs!) Why do these fuckers turn up anyway? I find it hard to believe they bought tickets (that cost Rs. 80 each). Annoying bastards.
Thankfully they all left when Thermal And A Quarter came up on stage. Since TAAQ was played softer music the porrikis had nothing to jump/dance/shout to and went back to whatever sewers they crawled out from. In fact, a lot of people left the area near the stage (which is usually packed when bands that play heavy music are on). What a load of tone deaf people.
(TAAQ playing and no one’s listening)
TAAQ played their soft rock and it was easy to listen to. Since it wasn’t as demanding on the speakers it sounded really good even close to the speakers. They had two guitarists and one drummer and they managed quite well. The two guitarists also did a considerable amount of singing too.
At the end of one of their songs they suddenly switched to the last part of Stairway To Heaven and got the audience to sing along. Before another song, the lead guitarist told us that the song was about someone who had ruled us and who was round. Since the song started with “I see your greedy eyes…” we thought it was Jaya but then the lyrics also mentioned greedy eyes behind sun glasses so it could have been Karunanidhi too (which would have been uncalled for). TAAQ also had an interesting variation of Wonder Wall and it was decent.
(TAAQ on stage)
The fireworks began while TAAQ was still playing and went on for some ten minutes. It was rockets only and was cool initially but got annoying later on since TAAQ was still playing.
(Fireworks at the end)
We planned to leave when the concert ended at about 7 PM but after a series of delays we ended up on the Velachery bypass road at 11 PM negotiating traffic jams caused by especially huge heavy vehicles. I ended up at home only after 1 AM, but not before scaring George with my L337 driving skills.
(By the way, I shall be using 400 pixels wide thumbnails from now in all my posts. Click on the images to get the larger version. Find out how to change the default thumbnail size for WordPress here.)
All images and videos in this post are mine. If you want to use them elsewhere make sure to insert a link to http://marcvz.net/blog next to the image and leave a comment in this post.
Vinod and Bala are coming over tomorrow to my place in the morning to talk about our project. Hopefully we’ll figure out what to do about it but mostly we’ll just end up wasting time and getting nothing done.
We have to go to college on the 12th of this month for the 0th review, which is when we declare what our project is going to be, where we would be doing it and how it would work. Since we have none of those things ready and I don’t think most of my classmates do, we are in for a fun time.
(There is a clue in the question and its very easy)
