Where's the snooze button?? (5 things - Week 48)

I've been back on the wheel for a whole week now. Having schedules to meet, stuff to brush up on, meeting new people, getting up at a fixed time in the morning, etc etc. You could call these the chores of an average individual, and it is nothing but that. But after enjoying the forbidden pleasures of indulging in absolute laziness, having to jump back on the wheel showed the expected glitches of moaning from yours truly. Hence the cliche, "Where's the snooze button?".

Somewhere in the past week, I heard something that I really liked. "Living in this world is like trying to force yourself to run up a escalator. You are successful as long as you keep running. But the second you stop to celebrate your triumph, you are knocked back on your arse. So, keep moving forward."

Don't get me wrong, I've not suddenly started supporting the rat race, or that, I'm against it. My personal opinion on all subjects, let it be the current topic of rat race, politics, religion or homosexuality is the same - "To each his own." But I'm always against people trying to enforce their opinion on you. You can make a case for your viewpoint in a sane, logical manner, and I'll be all ears for it. I'll hear it out, I'll think over it and if I find your points to be genuine, I'll support you.

But if you try to forcefully convert me to achieve some personal glory, then please don't blame me if I turn a deaf ear to what you say. And if you think that this whole rant is because I'm sick of all these sms forwards/ whatsapp messages/ emails related to the impending Lok Sabha elections, then I won't say that you are wrong.

And in case you were wondering where my loyalties lie, if I had to press a button on the voting machine, I would prefer it to be for the "NONE OF THE ABOVE" option.

RANT OVER.

And we shall get back to the task of this post. The "5 things" for this week is now coming your way.

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1. Recursive Acronym

The expansion of the acronym GNU is [Gnu is] Not Unix.

Simple right, but also extremely intriguing in its concept. Anything recursive has always captured my imagination. From the time I had to write loops in computer programming, I took immense pleasure to sent the artificial intelligence into a fit by writing infinite loops. And when I heard of this concept, the first thing, okay the second thing that came to my mind was posting it here for you. The first thing was to check if there are more like it. There is.

2. "Is there a mall at Kazhakootam?"

One of the punch lines this week. And it came from a classmate at the CDAC course, Rachit. He's from Delhi, and by the looks of the Technopark campus, where we have our classes, he expected the surrounding area to have at least a mall, where the techies can go off to have some fun. Thursday being a holiday, he wanted to get around the place as well as do some shopping. And it was for this purpose that he called me on Thursday morning and asked me the above.

My first reaction was to laugh at the preposterous nature of the question (since Trivandrum is still waiting for its first official mall, there being many mall-like buildings). But later, I was apologetic for the lack of a mall in my favorite city, and offered to help him around the main shopping areas in the city. He is yet to take me up on that offer, though that might be due to the fact that he will have to travel almost 10+ km to reach here.

3. Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

Interesting because I've seen it happen on many a forum. The said Nazi name calling might be in its pure form, or in some derived form like Grammar Nazi. Talking about derived forms of Nazi, for the Seinfeld fans out there, hope you remember this guy.

Soup Nazi !!!

Anyways, we can all be safe in the knowledge that Godwin's Law doesn't apply to this site. There has to be a discussion for that probability meter to start working.

4. Man and Machine - Power Extreme.

Sorry. That was due to the good old Centurions catch phrase.

What I intended to convey with my poorly constructed excuse of a heading was that not only have I started gaining weight after coming back home, but some similar improvements have been noticeable in my machine, the Avenger. The bike, which used to give about 35-38 km per litre of petrol I pour in it, had been pushing that number upwards of 40 ever since I got here. And after the past week, when I had to travel about 30km of the NH 47 every day, this has been found to reach 47.34* kmpl. The * is to indicate that the measurements are still ongoing.

If I were a person interested in statistics, I would have told you that this was a 29.69% increase on the previous average. But I'm not, so I'll not. Anyways, it's good for me in this period of enforced austerity.

5. Inside out

I came to know about a discovery that a friend of mine has made recently. He claims that he has found a way to increase the life of the undergarments that he uses. If you can't put the last sentence and the point topic together to get what he meant, you are one lucky ***.

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Well, that's it for this week.

You all have a great weekend.

'til next week.