Back in college, I knew this fellow called Dabhishek. What he was doing in an engineering course was beyond me, and in many ways it was beyond him too. He was very absent minded, but equally determined to get through Engineering, even though I suspect he didn’t really care so much about computer science.

The universe seemed to be conspiring against him, but he always found a way out. During the first exam, he forgot his hall ticket, during the next engineering-drawing exam, he forgot the drawing board and for the third exam he forgot to bring a pen. But each time he successfully managed to figure out a way and came out unscathed. He had real brains!

During our first year, we were studying the “C” programming language and we needed to write actual programs during our exams. But whatever he did, poor Dabhisekh just couldn’t figure out just how to write the programs. He felt safer with the theory, because you can write something… anything… in a theory exam, but when the question demanded a program, he just couldn’t figure it out. As usual, he used his genius to figure out a solution to this problem - He began memorizing programs like 8th standard poems.

if j equals getTotalRecords open bracket
x equals j multiplied by number of packet
if x equals equals boolean of prolon
return total plus x semi-colon

Dabisekh also had a backup plan to make sure he scored well in these tests. Right after the exam ended, he stopped eating, and for the whole week didn’t eat anything. By the time the prof was ready with the corrected answer sheets, he had lost 4 Kgs and looked seriously ill. This evoked great feelings of sympathy with the prof, and this sympathy was very valuable during the marks negotiations phase. He was a very very successful negotiator too. Always managed to be on the top of the class.

All the semester went fine and dandy for Dabisekh until the practical exams. This was particularly problematic, because we were expected to actually write the program live on the computer in front of the examiner, and then demonstrate its working. The day of the practical exam came, but Dabisekh didn’t seem to be nervous at all -  not even a little bit. Only one of two things could have happened - Either he had learnt all of “C” programming overnight, or, more likely, had figured out a master plan that would get him through the exam.

The exam started, and Dabisekh got his question: Write a recursive program that will calculate the factorial of a given number. Dabhisekh was sitting on the computer right next to me, and he got to work immediately. He started typing furiously, and, more shockingly, he was not just playing pac-man on the comp, but actually typing the program in! In record time, he was done, and called for the examiner to his workstation. Had he been able to figure out the program faster than anyone else?

The examiner came over and sat by his desk. Dabisekh quickly described the problem and went into a philosophical discussion of “recursion vs iteration” in the manner of a well practiced speech. After the examiner was sufficiently impressed, he ran the program and said “The program is now running and we will now enter a number into the program and it will print out the factorial. Lets pick a number to enter… some random number… maybe 5. Lets input “5″ to the program and …. volia! It prints the answer as 120, which is exactly equal to 5 factorial.”

The examiner was nodding and clearly impressed with his skillful presentation. Dabisekh thanked the examiner and picked up his belongings and left the lab, the first one to finish his program. The rest of the batch was also duly impressed.

But I just couldn’t help wonder how he had managed to get his program done so fast. I peeped over to see his program on his workstation. And there it was:

#include <stdio.h>
...
... 100 lines of code that looks like its doing something...
....
printf(”The number you entered is 5 and its factorial is = 120″);
…
… 100 more lines of code that looks like its doing something…
…

Holy Crap! He had hardcoded the input and the answer, and had cleverly managed to convince the examiner that he was entering a random number, when, in fact, the program was printing a predetermined answer! What a brilliant idea!

Dabisekh found his true calling right after college. He earned an MBA from IIM Ahemedabad and is now selling luxury Villas to unsuspecting folks in Bangalore.

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It’s time again for Aditya’s Advice Column

Q: My wife makes me go on these morning walks everyday, and it’s complete torture. I have to get up at 6:30 AM and go round and round and round, like a moth flying around in circles around a tube-light. I want to get out of this mess. What should I do?
- VK
A: I find the comparison to the moth very apt, especially because after going round-and-round-and-round the tube-light for a while, the moths eventually die. And that’s what’s going to happen to you if you don’t figure out a way of getting out of this. I have some tips that you can use to try to get out of it.

My first advice to you would be to try and convince your wife that you’re allergic to mornings. Yes, tell her that in the morning, the sun’s rays come at an angle to the earth through the atmosphere, and that increases their vitamin-D content (everyone knows that sun’s rays contain vitamin-D), and that you are allergic to Vitamin-D. You can prove this by showing your groggy, sleepy eyes in the morning, which are undoubtedly caused by the slanting rays of the sun.

Another option you can try is to deny the walk at the source - Don’t get up in the morning at all. Your wife will probably cajole you to get up, then ask you politely, then not-so-politely and then scream names of unpronounceable diseases  at you in an effort to appeal to your good sense to get up and go for a morning walk. She might also claim that it is good for health. But you must be strong and not fall for emotional blackmail like that. One requires great self control and will power to not budge even after all the screaming and yelling, but let me tell you my friend, it is all well worth it in the end. Under some extreme circumstances, you might have to face a bucket full of water, but I’ve found that in such situations, having an umbrella by the bedside usually helps.

Q: This Bangalore Airport fiasco is driving me crazy. In Bangalore, they’ve built a brand new airport 30 kms from the city, but there is no road to reach the airport - It takes 3 hours to get there. Then, they want to close down the existing airport - which is right in the middle of the city and very convenient - after the new one opens. I’ve been trying to keep it open, but these politicians and beauraucrats keep coming in the middle, and now no one knows what’s going on. What should I do?
-RK M

The problem with this whole airport fiasco is that all the involved parties are not willing to talk to each other, but they don’t mind talking about it to everyone else. So here’s what we should do. Let’s take all the politicians, airport dudes and some other dudes and put them into a room. But before going into the room, let’s give all the politicians 3 straight shots of tequila. I find that the shots help everyone think clearly. For example:

Politician before Tequila shots: “We should all endeavor to support our fellow tigers from the brink of extinction, since our national animal, which is also a part of this great nation under Gandhi…”
Politician after Tequila shots: “Lets get the tigers extinct and build an SEZ in all the forest land. The dinosaurs went extinct, and we all got used to it. Ditto with tigers.”

So, once this meeting is finished, I’m sure everyone will come to the proper conclusion - To shut down both airports and make everyone take the train. “Why?” you ask? Because Lallu Prasad promised to give the Airport CEO 12 cows and some land in Bihar in exchange for the favor!

Q: What came first, the Chicken or the Egg?
- RR

A: This profound question has troubled mankind since the beginning, but I have finally figured out the solution. The answer obviously, when you think about, is that the omelet came first.

Shocked? Yes, I was too at first, but it can be proved quite convincingly using the simple  economics of demand-supply. We all know that people demand omelets (you know, because they’re all tasty and all), and because there is a huge demand for omelets, the farmers have to supply the eggs, which are in turn supplied by the chicken themselves. Now, anyone who knows basic economics knows that demand comes before supply (no demand, no supply), we therefore arrive at this equation:

omelet -> egg -> farmer -> chicken ....[ Equation (1)]

From equation (1) above, it is quite clear that the omelet came first. We can finally mark that problem as solved!

If you’d like to ask a question in Aditya’s Advice Column, send a mail to advice@pointlesswanderings.com. Don’t worry, your identity will be kept confidential.

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Have you heard all the hype about the “Wardrobe Malfunction” at the Lakme Fashion Week? A also have a malfunctioning wardrobe, but in a very different way. I don’t have a wardrobe. Let’s just say that my wardrobe territories were invaded by certain unnamed parties in the house, and my poor, innocent clothes have been pushed out and had nowhere to go. But no worries, I’ve invented a very innovative way to manage my clothes even without a wardrobe. I call it “Aditya’s Clothes Management Algorithm”

The central device in this algorithm is the Plastic Chair. It’s the Rs. 250 Neelkamal thing. The chair is now my entire wardrobe, but as I’ve come to realize, it’s so much better (and cooler) than a dumb wooden closet. The chair is used like the “stack” data structure, and works on the principle of “good stuff in, bad stuff out”. It also has several intelligent features. Let me demonstrate how it works.

Freshly washed clothes are dumped placed on top of the chair as they arrive. They originally come in neatly folded form, but they quickly attain their natural crumpled state once in the chair. Clothes that I’ve worn also go to the top of the stack (instead of going to the washing room, but it has some advantages as I’ll explain later), but in their natural crumpled form. The advantage of this scheme is that it creates a quickly retrievable, random-access “wardrobe” of clothes. When I need new clothes to wear in the morning, I put my hand into the pile of clothes and grab a pant and a shirt that will approximately go together. This mix-and-match way of choosing clothes creates a new style for me everyday, and I suspect that this is the exact same algorithm famous fashion divas like Madonna and Rakhi Sawant  to look all stylish and hip.

But the real genius of this scheme is how clothes automatically go for washing. It involves complicated mathematics and higher-level 3-dimensional calculus, but basically, the clothes that need washing gradually collect dust over time, and become heavy (you know, with the additional dust and all) and bubble-down to the bottom of the stack and eventually fall off the chair. At this point, the maid picks up clothes from the floor and they are dispatched to wash. Note that this scheme requires absolutely no manual intervention (a good sign that the scheme works very well) and that’s why it’s my favorite.

This scheme offers so many advantages - Automatic wash detection, high utilization of space, random access and the opportunity for high-fashion (through mix-and-match, remember?) I highly recommend it!

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Something very interesting happened to me today. I got up at 5:15 AM in the morning! I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking - “Hey Aditya, What are you doing up at midnight?“. That’s a good question, but there were some unavoidable circumstances. But getting up at 5:15 was very educational for me, because I made some very interesting discoveries.

Firstly, I found out that breakfast doesn’t just magically appear on the dining table, like the newspaper does at our doorstep every morning. It turns out that the wife actually gets up and COOKS breakfast in the morning. That is pretty disappointing for me, because after paying so much for a dining table, I would have thought “magically appearing breakfast” was a feature of the thing.

I also made another shocking discovery - Did you know that sunrise is just like sunset, except in reverse? Yes, it turns out that the sun indeed does rise in the east, and doesn’t just go up in the sky like a light bulb. I’d heard about this dawn thing earlier, but it’s good to confirm these things yourself, especially with all the scams like Global Warming going around. I also figured out why vaastu says that your bedroom windows shouldn’t face east - It’s so that the sun’s rays don’t disturb you in the morning.

I’ll admit that I’ve not thought much about the mystery of how the milk comes to the house every morning. I always wondered how the cow could climb up the 9 stories to our house. But it turns out that the milk is actually DELIVERED by the milkman in the morning in packets, which has been extracted from cows beforehand. Wow! What cool technology, no?

Lastly, I figured out a disappointing truth. No matter what the time in Bangalore, there’s always traffic on its roads. But getting up early and seeing the dawn was a good educational experience for me - Just like my trip to Las Vegas was.

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I went to see the Bangalore Open the other day. It was my first time watching a tennis match live, and it was pretty exciting at first. Then, I (predictably) started getting bored. I mean, how much can you watch 2 people hitting the same ball over and over and over again?

Anyway, as I was sitting in the stadium, I began to notice some other things. The 4000-capacity stadium at Bangalore’s KSLTA was nearly full. It seems bored software engineers will pay good money for any kind of entertainment. Lots of people had approached the match like a movie - They were ready with their popcorns and little kids that couldn’t stop crying.

This scene you’ll see a lot in Bangalore - Young softies wanting to impress their parents (and parents-in-laws) with their newly earned wealth, taking them to watch “high-presteige” events like the Bangalore Open Tennis Semi-finals matches. Except, the parents have no idea what this sophisticated sport is all about, they just came here because their children wanted to bring them, and are now bored out of their skulls, looking here and there to see what they are expected to be doing.

But the crowd was largely well behaved. They made the “Oooohhhhh”s and the “Aaaaahhhhhh”s noises right when they were expected to. But it was obvious that for several people in the crowd, it was their first time watching a tennis match. This one uncle sitting in front of us got confused with who he was supporting in the middle of the game. The Williams sisters were playing each other, and this uncle forgot which one is which. He’d cheer for one of them, then boo the same one right the next point, and then go back to cheering the other one for a while and then switch again. After some time, he got thoroughly confused, and asked his wife which one he was rooting for.

It seems other people in the crowd also had the same problem. At one point, a group of college kids was yelling “Come on Williams!” after every point, ostensibly to get the cameraman’s attention. This got annoying after a while, and to make things worse, this kid from the group got up, and screamed again at the top of his lungs

“COME ON WILLIAMS!!!”

Someone from the opposite side of the stadium shouted back:

“WHICH ONE???”

The audience roared with laughter, but this kid was quick witted, for he yelled back

“THE ONE WITH THE BLUE SKIRT!”"

The match was interesting at first, with the Williams sisters fighting for each point. But what struck me most was, man, can that Serena Williams scream. The whole stadium reverberated with her spectacular display of high-pitched vocal skills. The only thing more powerful were her shots. I mean what does she eat?

But as the match dragged on, it got really tiring to see the sisters fight for every single point. Every single game was going into a deuce and then 2-3 advantages before the game was won. I mean, these sisters have been playing for so long, you’d expect them to have some kind of understanding on how to share the prize money and let one win, but Noooooooooo, they kept fighting for every single point. The final set even went into tie breaker, at which point the whole crowd started cheering whoever was leading, just so that the match would get over soon.

In the end, Serena Williams did beat her sister, and the whole crowd was like “phew… thank god THAT got over”, for it was 11:00 PM when the match finally got over. Just before she left, Serena smashed an autographed tennis ball into the crowd, which unfortunately fell just a few feet short of me and some 8-year old kid grabbed it. That stupid kid will now keep the ball in his room, locked forever, instead of selling it on e-bay like I would have done and making some quick money!

When will the kids learn the real value of things?

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I was out sick for most of this week, and it was pretty bad, and I couldn’t get to work. I don’t like to miss office because it’s a lot of fun (and the food at google ROCKS!) but this was not the case back when I was in school.

I absolutely hated going to school, and I’d try to exploit every single opportunity to bunk school. This one time, I think it was during the ‘96 Cricket World cup, I absolutely had to watch the India-Australia match. It was a Tuesday, and I couldn’t believe that our Principal hadn’t given the day off to watch the match. I mean, India vs Australia in a world cup! How often does that happen?!? I hated the Principal.

i figured that the Principal must be an alien, because he showed absolutely no interest in Cricket. After much cursing, I also concluded that the the Cricket gods would curse the Principal and send him to Cricket hell - where he’d have to bat without any pads or guards. That would teach him. But that, however, was not going to get me out of school, so I decided to do the next best thing - Pretend to be sick and bunk school.

My plan was to moan and yell and scream until mom bought that I were sick. So the next day, I woke up groaning. I held my tummy and pretended to be in great pain.

Me: “Aawwwww… My tummy hurts.”

I’ll bet my Mom’s kid-alarm went off, and she immediately suspected that I was pulling some stunt.

Mom: “Now what happened?”
Me: “I don’t know… My tummy hurts. I might not be able to go to school today.”
Mom: “Why? Is there a match on TV today?”
Me: “No Mom! Really! My stomach hurts. I really want to go to school to learn and become a better person, but if I’m not feeling well, what can I do? Don’t you believe me? You don’t trust YOUR OWN SON?!?”

I suspected that my mom had figured out my plan by now, but she couldn’t come out and accuse me because then I’d end up throwing a fit of fake crying, and that would definitely put me out of school for the day. So, it seems, she tried out a new strategy.

Mom: “All right. I believe you. Let me give you some medicine and you’ll feel just fine. You’d better get dressed because you’re going to feel just fine before 8:15.”

Ah! Smart move. The medicine in question tasted worse than karela juice with raw tamarind, and there was no way I was going to stuff that thing down my throat. I’d have to admit that I was feeling better to avoid the medicine, and that meant I’d have to go to school. Interesting move. But 8:15 was when the school bus came, and that was the cut-off for going to school. If I managed to get past that deadline, I’d get to bunk school! Just as I was figuring out what to do next, mom literally dragged me out of bed and thew me into the bathroom to get ready. I’m dilly dallying as much as I can, but it is clearly not working! It’s 8:10 and I’m fully dressed! This calls for drastic action!

Me: “AaaieieoeoooaaaaAAAAAAAAAAOOWWWWWWW!”
Mom: “Now what happened?”
Me: “My left hand hurts. Owwwww!!! I can’t put my tie, and without my tie, I can’t go to school!”
Mom: “Come here, let me tighten it around your neck.”

I just remembered that my tummy was originally supposed to be paining and I still haven’t gotten the medicine.

Me: “My tummy is ALSO still hurting, by the way.”
Mom: “Allright, let me get the medicine for you.”

Oops, bad move. I hadn’t thought this through. Mom was using the bitter-than-hell medicine as an offensive weapon. Time to change tactics.

Me: “Mom… There’s a phone call for you!”
Mom (from inside): “What? Who? When did it ring?”
Me: “It’s Aunt Bobby from USA! Come quickly quickly!”

Just as mom comes in running, I point her to the other bedroom that has the phone. She’s forgotten then medicine in the first bedroom. It’s now 8:13.

Where is the Damn Bus? How is it that the bus is always early when I’m not ready to go, and I have to run with shoes in my hands to not miss the bus, but now that I’m waiting for the bus, the driver’s probably stopped for tea. Damn Damn. I can hear Mom saying “hello” to a non-existent phone call.

I run into the first bedroom and see that Mom has already taken the the medicine bottle out. I have to hide it. That’s the only way to escape it. I take the bottle cap and put the lid back on it, and roll the bottle under the bed. Bad move. The cap is obviously too loose and the medicine starts to spill out while the bottle is rolling under the bed. Crap! I’ll have to invent some story about the medicine bottle later. I hear mom coming out, so I rush out.

Mom: “There was no one on the phone!”
Me: “Ooww… It must have aaahhhh… gotten cut. You should aaiieeee… call her back”
Mom: “I’ll do that later. Let me first give you the medicine first. You’ll definitely feel better then.”
Me: “Oooowww…. Yeah, good idea.”

I have to send mom off to another bedroom because I can hear the school bus coming. Just as Mom goes inside the first room, I rush out to tell the driver to go away.

Me: “Go! I’m not coming. Go go go…”
Driver: “What’s wrong?”
Me: “Nothing. I’m not feeling well. Go now. Go Go!”
Driver: “You don’t seem ill. Have you asked your mom?”
Me: “Of course, do you think I’d play tricks? She asked me to tell you to go away. NOW GO!”
Driver: “Well… OK…”

And thankfully the driver goes away. 8:17. A few more minutes and it’ll be too late for mom to put me in a rickshaw too. This is looking very good.

Mom screams from the inside saying she can’t find the medicine bottle, and asks if I had anything to do with it. I tell her that she took the medicine bottle with her to the phone. She goes from one bedroom to the other looking for it. That should stall her for a while.

Mom: “Why isn’t your school bus here?”
Me: “Oh, he was here, and he asked for you. He waited for like 15 minutes and then he left!”
Mom: “Why didn’t you tell me?!?”
Me: “You were talking on the phone to Bobby Aunty”
Mom: “THERE WAS NO ONE ON THE PHONE!”
Me: “Really? It must have gotten cut!”
Mom: “Arrggghh… What am I going to do with you?”

8:22. I’m well beyond the safe zone now.

Me: “I’m starting to feel a little better now! I think I’ll watch TV.”
Mom: “I’m going to look after you REALLY GOOD today.”

I got to stay home and watch the match. Mom yelled at me intermitenly through the day, but it was well worth it.

Happy times.

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Hey everyone,

I’m not feeling too good this week, so there’ll be no more blog posts till Saturday. If you’re looking for something to read, check out my other blog about the IPL - The Unofficial IPL Blog

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