I happened to watch ‘The Social Network’ today. Yes, I’m a little late, I know. Better late than never, they say.

I didn’t realize it first, but this movie was my first flick in 2010.

Boy, what a movie it was!

Now, now, before you presume things, I’m not reviewing the movie. (I’m quite famous  notorious for my reviews these days. )The movie deserves nothing less than ‘awesome’, (quoting Barney). If you’re looking for a review, take my word, it’s awesome. Even for a non-computer geek. The movie spews awesomeness, hats off to David Fincher for the brilliant way he has laid out the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

I can safely say that ‘Social Network’ was the best thing that has happened to me in 2011.

Movies go a long way in  influencing you. They plant an idea in your head (la ‘Inception’) and take you to another realm, another world. And they inspire you to such great extent that you’re blown away. The social network had such an impact on me. It made me realize that even a college student can go on to be a billionaire. It gave me an insight on the power of ideas, how they can spiritedly bloom within your mind… And how, forced into action, they could work wonders with your life. It was a much-needed wake-up-call for me. Yes, I was sleeping. And this movie woke me up, with a rude shock!

Now that the movie has set my ball rolling, I’m getting back to the drawing board. It’s high time I started working towards the realization of my goals.

Oh, btw, Happy New Year, folks! And do watch ‘The Social Network’, if you haven’t.

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"Everything is hostile. The whole place is now a cage, a zoo.
Now this move by the authority is more psychological."

"Where do you see the "technical excellence" that we are supposed to be
receiving here."

"If Smokey gets a fleeting glance at it or has a gut instinct that
something’s not right about your chaddie, you are obliged to strip and
prove your innocence/crime."

Before you glance at the above lines condescendingly, brace yourself.

*Mild-Drumroll*

There’s a hot new blogger in the block. Or rather, on the prowl. He (uh, I can’t conclusively say if it’s a ‘he’, but for sake of convenience, I allow myself to be sued by womens’ lib groups) blogs from an undisclosed location, apparently within the environs of a certain ‘Model Engineering College’ at Kochi (one of the best engineering colleges in the state, for that matter). And there’s a hell lot of caged emotion and angst involved, seemingly for valid reasons.

*Exalted Drumroll*

Behold, ladies an gentlemen, make way for FakeMECian – a home grown blogger from the bustling ‘metro’ of Cochin, Kerala. And he’s no mean deal; he’s a razor sharp tongue and a style that’d even put Adiga to shame. And he’s the guts to put out some gross injustices going on in his educational institution, under an anonymous garb, nonetheless.

*Drumroll concludes*.

Visit the FakeMECian at – http://fakemecian.blogspot.com/

Ostensibly, FakeMECian has taken inspiration from this celebrity counterpart – FakeIPLPlayer. His blog talks about the numerous flaws and foibles going around in his college, which he tries to uncover in a light hearted manner. So, we have exquisite (and insanely-funny) narrations about a (supposedly) unruly Principal of the institution whose hobby is to confiscate mobile phones and laptops and make students live in hell. He reads messages from confiscated phones, and causes immense problems to the students, who are towards the end of it, screwed. Plus, many student-unfriendly and academically discouraging policies are being dissed in a lighter vein.

Having bogged down by these and many such instances, a strict gag-order in-place within the campus, FakeMECian decided to take the law unto his arms and harnessed the power of the Internet to protest against the atrocities.

And he’s hit jackpot.

His blog posts average 30 comments within a couple of days’ of publishing. The first and the most famous post – “Laptop Ban” – has around 122 comments (when this post was being written), and that too within a week of being published. The blog already has 84 followers. And if the comments are to be believed, many of the incidents narrated by the MECian are true. Students, alumni and faculty have posted there comments in the blog posts – most supportive of the MECian, and others pledging concrete action.

Apparently, the Principal found about the blog and conducted an en-masse raid in the Men’s hostel of the college – but in vein. MECian is still continuing his covert operations in full form. And his gang of supporters is growing.

There’s a possiblity that MECian is just another miscreant hell-bent on creating a ruckus: but there’s every reason to believe that the possiblity is baseless. There’s an entire community of students and alumni vouching for the FakeMECian, who’s now being vocally praised as a champion within the college campus. If the allegations raised by the MECian are true, the success of his plan of action is quite guaranteed – the world will come to know of  what’s happening within the college premises and hopefully, corrective action will be taken soon.

Allow me to conclude with a quote by the blogger – and don’t forget to visit the blog and feast yourself with all the juicy details!

“Vendetta?? No way. We are either too lazy or too busy to take action against such atrocities even if it questioned our own Privacy. We got assignments and home works to do. So lets get back to our “busy” life and do nothing about it.”

A.M.D.G.

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It’s been 13 days, and Tata Jagriti Yatra is only getting better by the day, or more euphemistically, by the hour. But no, it wasn’t all hunky dory. And, the yatra is not exactly a joyride. 350 of us wake up each day to the myriad challenges of yatra, with a mind-boggling challenge cropping up each day to greet us. Time, (and poor internet connectivity) prevents me from blogging elaborately about all thirteen days, as I’d promised in the previous post. Allow me to provide you with a glimpse of what actually transpires each day.

• The train – it’s something in itself. Adapting a train as a residence for 400-odd young people is one daunting exercise in logistics, if you didn’t know. There are separate male and female compartments with two AC chair cars for conference sessions. There are even separate bathrooms (bogies have been converted to bathrooms through some very innovative methods which are beyond the purview of this blog post ).
• We’ve the most unique morning alarm system to wake us all up each day. It’s the ‘Tata jagriti geet’ – an endearing song penned by Prasoon Joshi, which doubles up as the anthem of the yatra. The song is played as loudly as possible in the makeshift speakers, and we reluctantly open up, sleep still lingering in our eyes from the late night discussions (ahem!).
• Each day is about visits and/or interactions. We’ve already covered some 4000 kilometers into the country, and the journey is hardly half way through. We’d go visiting ‘role models’ (people/enterprises) who’re entrepreneurs themselves and have made a difference among the people around them, uplifting and empowering them.
• Too much baggage, too little space, and you’re bound to lose something. Being a habitually-careless person, it was a daily affair for me. Losing stuff that is. Something or other belonging to me would go missing each day. It was unnerving, so to speak. When you badly need an item, you wouldn’t be able to place it. Else, it’d be lying around exactly in front of your eyes.
• For a long long time, I was living with the misconception that I was good at networking. A couple of days into the yatra and I realized how wrong I actually was.  Day 13, and I still have more than half the yatris to acquaint with!
• Self realization was the biggest merit of this yatra. This realization was a blitzkrieg of sorts, it stung into my psyche, and made a striking impact in my mind and soul, the level of impact increasing progressively by the day. Today I stand transformed, a new soul, a recharged mind.

That will do for today.

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Another makeover!

No reasons, this time. The old template was good enough, apart from being mind-numbingly crimson-red. I always wanted to go clean, white and pure. Like the erstwhile template of my blogger blog. A couple of hours of toil, and bingo!

Notable Additions:

• The image gallery
• Better commenting
• Improved index page.
• Better navigation.
• Advanced and more accurate search results.

The work’s not all over. I’m in the process of coding up a twitter gadget. There seem to be a few chinks with the one I made, so will have to keep trying for better results.

So, how did you like the new look of ‘I chose the red pill’?

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Those of you who’ve been visiting this blog for the past week might’ve noticed a sharp increase in my posting frequency – to be more precise, I’ve been blogging, daily for the past four days, straight!

CC Credits: dead_squid

Not because I’m jobless, actually I’m everything but jobless! I’ve got lab exams right now – yet, I took some time out of my busy schedule and blogged. Not because I’m neglecting studies or anything – I’ve made a landmark decision about my life.

For a while now, I was going through a Quarter Life crisis – which is at its peak, right now. For everything I did, for everywhere I turned, some problem or other would pounce upon me, like a vicious and hungry tigress attacking its prey. I’ve become masochistic about life’s problems – I’ve almost begun to enjoy, while basking in this multitude of issues posed by life. By now, I’ve been embroiled in (almost) all sorts of problems a teenager could get himself into- oops forgot, I ceased to exist as a teen as I turned 20 a year back!

And amid all this, I made an amazing self-discovery, I found my true love, my calling!

You guessed that right, I’ve chosen the red pill again – My sojourn from dreams to reality has got a whole new meaning now, that I’m a PRO-blogger!

Those of you who know me personally and bother to read my tags might’ve already got the hint not-so-long-ago. But for others, I’m just making it official. And don’t get ideas about the ‘PRO’ prefix – no, I’m not professional yet, I haven’t made HUGE amounts of money like Amit Aggarwal, I haven’t even made a single authoritative post, like Arun. Yet, I have my moments of fame. I did take a session on blogging at FOSSMeet, NIT Calicut, on invitation! I’m unofficially the CTO of a budding Quiz Blog, and I’ve even hosted a quiz to boot!

And as a first step towards my goal, I’m goanna start blogging, daily.

A huge thank you, to all my readers/commenters who’ve been with me through thick and thin, commenting even in the worst of posts and lifting my feeble morale. A hug and a kiss to all of you!!

If you find visiting everyday a tad hard,you may  get updates hot-delivered to your mailbox!

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Here are 15 short (and hopefully sweet) tips for you if blogging is in your blood. Even if it isn’t, no worries.  ‘Coz, anyone can blog! Keep these 15 simple points in your mind and you can excel in the blogosphere – trust me!

1. Work on your language – well-presented is half done!
2. Write relevant content, don’t beat around the bush.
3. Re-read what you’ve written, and make as many edits as you need.
4. Pep your post with great images – CC Licensed ones are the best.
5. NEVER copy content from other blogs!
6. Consider blogging as a passion, and great posts will come.
7. Add a personal touch to your posts – readers are the biggest voyeurs!
8. Don’t blog just for money, it’ll eventually ruin your blog!
9. If you’re not that good with english, write in your regional language.
10. The more you blog, the better. 10 posts a month is optimum!
11. Cut down on swear words, filters will cut down your blog’s reach.
12. Try to add an element of humour to whatever you write.
13. Don’t focus too much on your theme. Content is always king!
14. Simplify your posts such that even a layman can get what you say.
15. Blog and comment responsibly – even  you can make a difference!

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If you haven’t been following the news, there’s been  back-to-back (supposedly racist) attacks on at least six Asians (Indians)  in Australia. One person (a 25 year old student named Shravan Kumar) suffered serious (almost fatal) injuries and is still in critical condition. The media has had its field day, voicing venomous rhetoric on the spate of racist attacks. There’s been a flurry of protests, globally. 18 Indians were arrested after one such protest (for no reason, apparently) and later let out, in Australia. The incident has reached spectacular proportions with  Amitabh ‘Big B’ Bachchan rejecting a doctorate degree conferred on him by Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in protest.

CC credits: ThinkVegan

A few thoughts in this regard:

• In India, millions of people were/are slaughtered (not just beaten up, but hacked into pieces) just because they belonged to a particular religion/caste/sect or because they spoke a particular language. News items about foreign nationals getting attacked/molested abound by the day. Such a nation, which can’t even handle its internal woes has no right to protest about half a dozen of  its citizens getting flogged abroad!
• People who go outside the nation to pursue higher education – I do not blame them. Our education facilities are abysmal to say the least. But they should keep the fact in mind that there’s no reason cribbing after being hit by drunk/unruly/racist people. They should’ve thought about the consequences.
• Australia, is more pluralist a nation than India, and if you check the stats, the incidents of violence is far lower than the same in India! Calling Australia (and other foreign nations where NRIs live, for that matter) ‘racist’ without any sound reason, whatsoever, is sheer madness! Any country would give preference to its own citizens rather than foreigners – it’s natural. Cribbing over policies by foreign nations that support its citizens and condemning their ‘discriminatory’ laws is childish!
• The media has a staunch hand in beating the issue out of proportion. Far from showing solidarity with the hapless victims, it has commercialized the whole issue, spewing meaningless debates, in a relentless quest for eye-ball space and ad-revenue! I’m reminded of the quote by media-baron Rupert Murdoch (which incidentally, is featured in the bond movie – ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’): “There’s no news, like bad news.”
• Why bother to leave your motherland for a distant land in search of ‘better prospects’? Given all the resources of our nation, it’s not so hard to find success here. All one needs is some will-power to fight the anomalies of the system that bog you down and to cut the red tape!

All said, Racism is a reality – an ugly truth that refuses to go away despite all the anti-apartheid-struggles and tryst-to-destiny’s. Xenophobia and racism – meaningless mutual hatred, will exist as long as man remains to be a social animal. However stringent the laws become, however brainwashed people get, in the back of their mind, many citizens, if not all,  will always be xenophobic. The only way to tackle racism is to stay back in your own nation, swear by it and to work for it!

Still, is it so hard to realize that despite minor bodily, soci0-economic differences, a subsaharan tribal is a carbon copy of Hon. Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd?

The last ink drop:

Check out this series of racism tests – an ingenious way to check if you’re racist or not!

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CC Credits: rochakchauhan

Are u ready, sit down,
Let me tell you a lil story,
’bout 2 cool cats,
yeah, BubLee aur Babli,
comin’ at an angle,
that they hotter than the rest,
when ya look at them,
them do pass the test.

Don’ t look back,
He’ s comin’ into attack,
He’ s takin’ it side by side,
He’ s takin’ it front to back,
He’ s takin’ it all around the world,
Never, never will he stop this
BubLee

Deja vu? No I didn’t plagiarize these lines from the “Are you ready” song from Bunty Aur Babli, but Fake IPL Player did. The hottest new kid in the blogosphere, Fake IPL Player is a self-proclaimed ‘Kolkata Knight Rider‘ who is determined to provide an inside scoop into the goings on of IPL. And he’s not doing a bad job, really!

The blog http://fakeiplplayer.blogpost.com/ is in fact a great read. The dude has an acerbic sense of humour and goes on kicking quite a lot of ass! We have inventive names for the players, including a Phoren baba, Kishen Kanhaiyya, Mr. Batlivala, Big Sister, Sheikh of Tweak, Little Monster,  and Prince Charles of Patiala. There are brutally unkind references to the ‘megalomaniac star owner’ of Kolkata Knight Riders, Shah Rukh Khan. Our IPL guy goes on to name him ‘Baadshah Di!d0′! The guy looks like one pissed dude!!

There are no clues whatsoever as to who this Fake IPL Player actually is. I don’t think it’s a publicity stunt by the team, for, no team would ever want to sling mud on itself… Poor ol’ SRK (and his sexuality) is bashed up bigtime in here, as a matter of fact! Our blogger, who began on a humble note, now seems to be to bask in the wine of his popularity and often refers to himself as the ‘Lord of the ring’.

But frankly,  I don’t think the guy’s an insider. I feel it’s some third party blogger who gets some scoop from some IPL player. Or perhaps, the stuff written in the blog could be sheer bullshit!  Did anyone notice the disclaimer about the content being fake on the bottom of that blog? I think it’s pretty much true. Btw, FakeIPL now has over 2100 followers, and the latest post has a staggering 1400+ comments! Whoa!

Anyways, the blog drives home one point. Blogging is here to stay, and it is one among the biggest ways to express yourself.
Three cheers to the IPL Blogger!

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I’ve always been enamoured by the term, ever since I saw it discreetly mentioned in a Nokia N series ad. No, I’m not talking about the famed mobile blogging application these guys package with Series 60 Nokia phones! But this post is about the literal implications of the phrase: “Life blog”. Yeah, what would it be like, when your entire life is an unending blog, complete with categories, tags, permalinks, images and videos. Wacky interpretation? Not really. For ‘pro-bloggers’ like me, cest la vie!

As I wake up every morning and rush to my PC to switch off downloads, the thought that drives me would be: “What would be my next blog post?” As I bathe, as I brush my teeth, as I pee and shit, as I breakfast, while I walk to college, this thought bothers me, in the back of my mind, stinging me like a bee. Bogged down by good ol’ writer’s block, poor souls like us need some fresh air to get great ideas for posts, and until that idea clicks in, life would be hell!

That’s when this concept of a Life Blog hit my head. Why not make an entire life a blog post. I could post on the fly, in my mind. I don’t need any content management system in my mind’s blog! So, as I spend my day doing different stuff, a part of me simultaneously composes a blog post (literally!). It narrates everything I see, do, listen and talk in third person. It’s not streaming video from the eye, it’s plain text – pepped with images. As the day gets over and I retire to my bedroom, the blog post would almost be complete. Before I sleep, I read through the published draft. The day would flash before me, and I’d sleep, content and satisfied.

My Life

Now you know why I prefer personal posts, over reviews and tech post. All I need to do is to copy-paste from my ‘life blog’! Of course, I’d have to type that out with my hands, but yeah, for someone with 75 WPM typing speed, that’s cakewalk.

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Some of us Trivandrum bloggers met Shashi Tharoor yesterday (Tuesday, 31st March) at his residence in Pipinmoodu, Thiruvananthapuram. The meeting was organized by Kenney and had over ten of us, namely Akhil, Sanil, Chandrettan, Zaheer and others attending. The extremely busy M.P. candidate from the city spared a few moments for us and answered a couple of questions from us. Meeting the man was a great experience by its own right, and we once again avowed our votes for him.

Image Courtesy: Akhil

For more pics of the meet, check out this wonderful post by Akhil

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