Of Helmets and Lifts
(Warning: General rant coming up)
Recently, the Tamil Nadu Govt. made wearing of helmets compulsory for all bikers in Chennai. (Of course, later, the classical dilution of rules happened with the CM announcing that women and children pillion riders are exempt from this, as if they have steel skulls). I usually don’t like the way the DMK Govt. works, but when this rule came about, I felt that for once, they have done something right.
Ironically, they never bothered to implement the rule in reality, with the CM giving statements like “The police should not harass the public over this” etc. and people generally stopped wearing their helmets after the first day. But then came a random someone who petitioned the High Court of Tamil Nadu regarding this, which in turn asked the Govt. to respond. As a result, the general order of affairs, where the public and police had an implicit understanding that helmets were rather pointless, changed and out of the blue, the police have started fining people for not wearing helmets. Yesterday, hundreds got caught (lol).
But what triggered this post is a different thought. Right from my childhood, I’ve been in the practice of asking for lifts from people on the road (mainly bikers, since cars don’t usually stop, maybe due to security concerns). I still continue to do this. This is where my dilemma came in. That’s why this occured to me. From now on, the concept of lifts will become extinct. Since you can’t foresee whether you will actually need/get lifts from (unknown) others, there is no point to carrying helmets wherever you go, and its going to become rather impossible now to take lifts now. What a pity…
Moral of the Story-cum- purpose of the post: Bikers should always carry a spare helmet just in case someone asks them for a lift. Its that simple 
Change…
Back when I was a kid,(I,m talking ten years back, for the benefit of those who dunno my age) I was taught that the only way to come up in life(and become rich, and become popular etc etc etc) was to study hard and goto a job…I.m not sure if that was the case even then, but that was what folks around me thought..and I’m sure that most of the other kids of my age were taught that too…
Contrast that with today.. Desipundit links to Amit Agarwal, who is earning his life through blogs…I’m not sure that two years back, anyone imagined blogs would come to this…Today people earn in BPO’s, by typing stuff for companies, and what not..I suppose most educated-means-most-paid doesnt work, atleast as on date.
The internet has changed lives.. none of this would have been possible but for the net..neither BPOS nor blogs..
Ok, back to point.. what started off this blog was my musing that now, education or, begin the best at what you do matters lesser than how street-smart you are..
PS : Truly my blog is becoming an example of going from bad to worse, in terms of writing
Dream Job
So, how do you know whether you like some work you are doing?
I used to think that every minute of work would be bliss…..I guess not…
During my internship at IIT Madras , I realised that I love Communications (to the uninitiated, I am not talking about interpersonal communication and that sort, I am an engineer-to-be,to those who dunno me..so this would be the crazy math-type communications which involves lot of programming-as in electronics and communications) but the work was not easy. Very often I found myself being frustrated to the limits of my patience..(good examples of this phenomenon can be found in PhD Comics).
But in spite of the frustration, I still liked what I was doing, and did not regret being there doing that, instead of,say watching X-Men.I suppose work cannot be blissful every moment, (Law of Inertia) but if you like what you did, when you look at the big picture, you should probably stick to that profession. or so i think as of today..
GRE
Very recently, I gave my GRE test..I have to say-it felt just like a lottery game….
Now hold on a second… this is not a case of sour grapes-i got 1540, and am pretty much satisfied, given that when I entered the testing centre, I was hoping to clear the 1400 mark only…
But then, Lady luck has more than a fair share in thi test.. you could say I got lucky.
Of course, I slogged..for a month, putting in hours each day, even Lady luck cannot save you if you want to do away with that part..but since the questions vary for each testtaker, it is a matter of luck
ETS may well claim that the questions are split into multiple pools of verying difficulties..but ,as I figure it, the categorisation is based on the percentile of people who have answered the question… Now, the point is that, I may be in the top 98th percentie, but not know a particular question which others below me knew..it happens..This case may have been the exception. and if singularities occur at the beginning of the test, God save you..maybe the solution is to lengthen the test duration, to even out the probabilistic effects..
But one thing has to be conceded..no one has been able to offer alternatives better than this..so far as i know..so though the test is evil..the percentage of evil is lesser than others, i suppose…
Another thing I donot understand is why ETS is bent on changing its tests every time I blink…Are they jobless? Why not just work on a test for 10 years, bring out a faultless system, and let it stay? What they are doing is something like bringing you bug fixes, requiring you to customise all other software every time you install a new bug fix..something of that sort atleast
PS: Its been a long time since I did any creative writing.. so forgive, but do mention any and all messes I’ve committed here..My view on my prose may be highly subjective..
(GRE writing doesnt count.. I got only a 5.0 and that too under the motivation-that I’d be doomed if I get great scores in the other sections and bungle the writing..
PPS: Usually people write down prep tips after writing it.. ive found these useful.. so im gonna write one lol-mostly to satisfy my own ego..
The Trouble with Blogging In spurts
I notice that many of my college people have started blogging of late. And I have a hunch it is something of a concerted effort, because most of them started almost on the same day. But I digress.
If you notice, Ive been one of those people who blog in spurts and then completely forget about their blog for a month, and then do it all over again. What i have observed is that whenever I come back to blogging, my first post is mostly a medley of some 5 topics, all of which deserve a dedicated post of their own, and as a result, the post sucks. I dint know that a post with so many topics sucks until I read a start-up blog recently, and as is characteristic, the first blog was a mix-up of a variety of topics.I suppose it feels like watching a movie in fast-forward , or reading a compressed file,maybe!
But then I suppose it is like someone bursting to tell you what happened in their lives during the intermission, and they end up pouring it all out without patience.
All These Blogger Meets: Is this the way to Go?
I have been reading about all these blogger meets in Delhi , Bombay, etc
Is it really a good idea to have bloggers meet? I think these guys are better off not meeting, on account of, most of these guys blogging are guys who are better off left alone , people who donot really gel well with many in a crowd, I dont say that this is the case with all bloggers, only a lot of them. That is precisely why they are good at blogging, come on, they need someplace to tell ppl what they think of things.
Again these guys may not be as good at real time conversations as they are at writing loads of pages in their solitary confinement. I think this is the reason for low turnouts at both these meets.
The average blogger need not necessarily be comfy with going half way around the city to meet a bunch of guys. He is better off typing his head off on his sys.
WordPress is Kewl
Just now I found the right shakunam to check out WordPress(shakunam is an intersection of the 2 sets:1)Finished studying for ongoing exams and 2) My internet is not down, which is not very often!!, and hey, don’t gawk at me like that, inspite of being in college, I DO study for exams)
My only comment is its cool.
The features its got are good ones
More specifically, the ones I liked were
1)categorisation
2) Good logical spam filtering
3) Comment moderation
And, the new template(ill write like this coz i havent figured out (still!)how to reduce the space that this thing leaves each time I hit enter),the organisation of stuff and much more stuff I have not even seen(How??, thats why i am a genius!!)
Well, blogger WAS good, but as the “Uncle” character says in Jackie Chan cartoons “Rabbiit Talismaan is goood, but Demon Wiind Is Bettaa”
WordPress is definitely a better feel, no wonder Scoble moved!!
