Back to Muscat

Long, long time again.....well anyways let's forget abt the time that has paassed and cut to the present......i'm in muscat now......on a 2 week study leave.......my 7th sem finals are comin up on the 5th of jan and i'll reach back at my hostel on the 4th afternoon.......so tht's my latest status......i have been sitting idle for the last couple of days tryin to put up a studious image in front of my parents.......there are so many things that i found world's apart here in oman .......i mean when we come back here after a long time we really know what we have been missing ......or even what we've been gaining...........well so keep checking this space for the next few weeks to get the latest of my 'Muscat Diary'.

The first thing i noticed even before the airplane landed was the total chaos on the roads......3-4 years back Muscat was known for its beautiful, well-kept, congestion-free roads....but now the picture is completely changed.......nearly every single omani above the age of 20 owns a vehicle and almost every expat earning more than Rial Omani 100 (which is the basic pay for all employees above labourers and unskilled workers) also are entitled to a company vehicle......the easy availability of car loans and the throwaway prices during ramadan and mouth-watering deals due to the disgustingly cut-throat competition between the car dealers have made vehicle ownership much more easier and less complicated than even walking.......and all this totals into terribly congested roads and utter chaos .....even on the expressways...........but it sure is a veritable feast for the car-lover.

My flat is onthe third floor overlooking the highway that leads from the international airport to the heart of the city and continues to the Muscat Palace. The palace is located in a place similar to the marine drive in mumbai or cochin......and on the way there is a beautiful beach, a couple of 5 star hotels and a 6 star hotel........along with the houses of the who's who of oman and the gulf region........and ontop of that our building is directly opposite to the Sheraton hotel......so in short 1 in 5 cars that pass below my building will be a super-luxury sports car or a gold-plated rolls........or cars of the same breed..............and man thnx a gazillion to the hour-long traffic jams i can feast my eyes on all my semi-dream vehicles........and sometimes i get twice lucky coz some of those sexy cars also contain totally-ouuta-the-world babes ......man u shud see some of them.....especially the arab chicks.......they r HOT !!!

The average omani youngster has buckets of cash at home and a passion for muscle and noise.....so his favorite cars are the ford mustang, chevrolet camaro and the hummer h2 and h3........man th ehummer h3 is a huge hit here.......the roads r fillin with them. Okay more from here later, gotta run!

CAT,MAT……..WHAT?????

STATUTORY WARNING : This article is for the strictly non-intellectual, moderately ambitious and most importantly extremely lazy under-graduate students who aren't interested in doing a technical job and for those who can't work their lazy asses out of their engineering courses but aspire to boss around other people who are way smarter than them (sounds like you ?? Well it definitely sounds like me).

How many of you guys are writing the CAT,MAT,GMAT….and the other management examinations ??

Well in case totally ignorant people are reading this then for your kind information :

- MAT 06 first batch exams are over and the second MAT 06 is on the 3rd of September , last date for sending the application forms is 12th August 06 (in case you didn't know MAT exams are held twice a year, I didn’t know that !!!!)

- CAT 06 exams are on the 19th of November 06

- MAT 07 will be held in the months of may and september 07.

- For details of GMAT and the other exams that I probably have never heard of, you may pay a visit to the internet or your resident education counsellor.

Well those of you who know me might be wondering when I started thinking and planning about the future….and that too collecting info on these exams…well people you didn't believe me when I said I was topper did you ( check the previous post " long long time… " )??

No I'm serious…..it's long past time for us to decide what we want to do with our future (I know, I know that 99.9999% of my friends, most of whom are the intellectual type might have already got placed in one of the big MNC's and might already be planning which university their grand-children would study in, but as I said this article was meant only for the smart last-minute types like me….). I have been really late in getting myself upto the task, but better late than never as they say.

Joining engineering was a great idea but I can't even imagine a future in a pure white lab, working my ass off worrying about the Q-point of the second electron level of the thermoelectric equilibrium of monostable multivibrators, or designing the appropriate cut-off for the zener diode to be used in the 3rd emitter-follower stage of the impedance matched fixed frequency active filter enabled tunable oscillator or for that matter even the simple task of debugging the MPLAB program of the PIC 16F873X and 80196 microprocessor based meridian indicator…. (frankly I have a really cool imagination, but THIS is beyond my scope...) .

I'm serious …. I don't want to be soldering capacitors and resistors onto PCB's till the day my hair starts greying and growing thin. Oh yeah before any wiseguy says it, I really don’t think I have the capability or time to invent or discover something new and become world famous and filthy rich.

So my nearly obvious choice was to think about MBA….but I realized very late that I won't be getting anywhere near my dreams with just an MBA….that the MBA should come from a very reputed institution even if I just want to be a team leader at Gill Bates founded Microtough Inc. The giant companies won't even consider you if you aren't from the top 20 B-schools. And for getting there, there's only one way, and that way is the long, tedious, curving, pot-hole ridden and highly traffic polluted MAT and CAT examinations (an estimated 2 lakh+ students are writing CAT this year….from which only 2000 will get to the B-schools, from which only 1200 students will get the honour to rub shoulders with the world's greatest management gurus at the IIM's).

Hey these exams are not beyond the scope of anyone. It's easy, ok maybe that's not the way to put it…. It's not all that tough….if we try I'm sure we can make it. Actually I had got so nail-bitingly nervous about my future prospects that I paid a visit to an astrologer, he checked out my birth time and did several other calculations and came to the conclusion that I should start working immediately after my B.Tech or else I'll find it very difficult to find a suitable employer and might spend the rest of my life doing the family business or staying unemployed….but he said that if I get into a really good college for my higher studies (he must have meant the IIM's) then after my Masters, my 'Rajayogam' (period of life where we enjoy fame, fortune, and all the other good things and don't have any disappointments at all) will begin. So people, pray for me….and if anybody's got anybody who can pull strings at the IIM's or those who are placed in good firms and are in a position to recommend me to their companies, please let me know coz if I neither get a job or admission to the IIM's then I'm doomed …. On second thoughts soldering capacitors and resistors doesn't seem to be such a bad idea after all.

(P.S. - hey people that link called 'comments' is not kept there for beauty…. give me a feedback on what YOU think about my blog)

Long, long time.......

I was on a long vacation and didn't take my laptop, PDA , Blackberry and other gadgets along........i really needed the break.......first of all , i was getting crazy with this engineering bullshit of a syllabus......all the guys in my university were cursing me for getting the Gold medal for breaking all the records in the fifth semester examination results and seeting an all-time high.....and then the calls from the companies began.....Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and all the bloody dot.com and software companies in the world were ringin me and begging and cursin and threatening.......first i didnt take them so seriously............ but when Bill Gates turned up at my doorstep, i decided to RUN...........i could cope with the anger and irritating behaviour of the nerds and the company honcho's but the girls ????......what could i do about them ????? so many were ready to sleep with the hostel warden in order to get an entry into my room........1 or 2 girls were ok, but a crowd of a thousand babes outside by bathroom trying to break in is impossible........i was living a life like a damn intelligent, extremely handsome & lovable and very very smart white lab mouse..........constantly under a million eyeballs..........the pressure to satisfy everyone was just too much ..........so i had to leave it all .....my engineering texts & books, the call letters & HR phone calls, and the gorgeous girls.......i really needed this break.........so i just threw away my mobile and my laptop and took the next flight to my dad's private island at Malibu...............and thank god that to reach there you have to fly at least 2 hrs from the nearest airport, and cross a lagoon infested with the deathly-poisonous blue spotted crocodile, and the lethal Kaka flies (f*ck, they are as big as a big cow !@#!!!) and other natural security elements........and if i didnt have the Israeli-made Anti-aircraft missile system and state-of-the-art-security and defence system i would have been done for.......thanks to all these i was safe............now after the long siesta, i'm back.......back with a
BANG !@#!!! and how...............



.........So keep reading this page for the latest updates, gossips, exclusive interviews, exclusive photographs and scoop news of the most happening personality of the 21st century......yeah, you guessed it......its' none other than me ;-)

Romance....

It's funny how sometimes some small emotions can change a person's entire outlook on life.One of my friends (name withheld for technical reasons....let's call him 'Tom') was a guy who had a serious problem with his self-confidence and didn't know how to deal with his emotional problems. He didnt know what he wanted to do in life.....had no particular interests.......in short had no aim and ambition, so he had no motivation to do anything, simply bcoz he didnt want or expect or aim for anything. He himself began having a feeling that he was a loser and good-for-nothing. He also had a few unique characteristics .....like being extremely slow..........and his disobedient ugly mess of what he called hair was infamous all around the campus.Let me be fair, this guy has a few obscure talents like he's damn good at maths and is a pro at Vedic Mathematics, and ....er....uhmmm......yeah i guess thts abt it......maybe he's got some other hidden talents thats not yet discovered....well forget abt his talents, what i meant to say is that he was totally under an illusion that he was a "good-for-nothing" guy (maybe i exaggerated that a bit) when in fact with a little bit of self-confidence and motivation he could have become a hero (i think this i exaggerated too much).

He studied in this all-boys school , so girls were a huge weakness for him. He used to literally stammer and stutter when speakin to girls and even the most ugliest girl(i mean it) looked like a babe to him.Then out of the blue came a girl 2 years his junior, she was a friend from another life.They both were good friends from long back but had lost contact over the years. They started smsing each other a couple of weeks back and before he knew it, Tom was in love (just as expected). But he felt that she wouldn't like him (just like how all the other girls responded to him).This girl turned out to be different though, it seems that she had a crush on him for years, and before Tom could digest the whole thing, they went on a date.


After the date and all, Tom's a totally new man, this is the first time I'm seeing a person's entire behaviour getting changed (and that too for the better) within so short a time due to a single reason like this. Tom's now oozing with self-confidence, he's all smiles these days, and has become much much more active,smart and talkative.The biggest improvement is that he now takes only half the time to respond compared to the earlier days as a bachelor.I know this guys for nearly 3 years and this is the first time he's started cracking jokes(they still have a very low standard, in fact let's not call them jokes, let's just call them nearly-funny-sentences).He's now begun to feel complete and equal with his peers. Its almost like in those Tamil movies. Or to be more precise it's like in the song "Kuch to Hua hai...." in the movie "Kal Ho Na Ho", the picturisation of that song describes Tom's emotions perfectly.

I used to think that romance and sincere love were for school days (in college romance has either no meaning or a totally different meaning, which is synonymous with 'sex').I feel so happy for this guy, and if theres anybody out there in this big wide world craving for love, then just go ahead and say it. Theres no harm if a few others also improve the way Tom has. Best of luck with ur love affairs people.......but i just love the care-free bachelor life, and i seriously don't want to improve ..........

American Pie 4 : Band Camp - Movie Review

The american pie series have always been slapstick hilarious and they all portray a very realistic picturisation of high school life. Yeah it's true that all of us won't connect to all thats shown in these movies , coz the high schools in the US are worlds different from those in Oman or India. But there are many small and big things that we can relate to our high school and college life.

AP4 :Band Camp is an extremely rib-tickling concoction of teen naughtiness and romance. The central character is Matt Stifler (played by Tad Hilgenbrinck) whose the younger bro of the famous pain-in-the-ass "Stiffmeister" Steve Stifler of the ealier american pie movies.Stifler Junior is no less naughty and everybody hates him without an exception.

Matt Stifler does a prank on the senior bandeez ("bandeez" is the term used for the geeky kids who form the school band) and things go awry and finally stifler Jr. is caught red-handed and naked backstage. He's sent to the counselor who's a weirdo and call himself "Scherminator". The Counselor decides to punish Matt by sending him to an annual camp of the Bandeez. Matt goes totally wild , but he can't do anything about it, he's consoled by the fact that he can get to really verify whether bandeez are actually horny or not. So buys a crate of spy cams and goes to Band Camp.
Matt looks totally out of place at Band Camp and he rubs everyone the other way, all the kids from his school pissed with him and he also manages to pick up fights with the defending champions. In the process his band (The East Great Falls High School band) loses 5 points for his unruly behaviour. Then he surprises everybody by winning back those points by playing the bagpipe. His school bandeez accept him into their group and he becomes very close to the leader of the bandeez , a female with whom his bro had a brief sexual encounter somewhere back in 9th grade.

All the while Stifler Jr.'s busy planting spycams all around the girls dorms and we get to see some very interesting footage. His acting and mannerisms are very cool and we actually begin to like this prankster, the way he always gets both his feet into his mouth is superb. On the way, he transforms his nerdy room-mate into his partner in crime. Stifler Jr. brings about a lot of difference to the bandeez. He helps his roomie get a girlfriend, brings about a lot of fun and enjoyment into the other bandeez and connects with Elyse (the band leader played by Arielle Kebbel). Soon he and Elyse get romantic and things are going perfectly, when his girlfriends drop in at Band Camp. These girls are the cheerleaders of Matt's school and are considered the "cool babes". They poke a lot of fun at Matt when they see him at Band Camp , that too wearing the junior's cap and t-shirt and all. Matt explains to them that he's here only for making a voyeur video and shows them his very own "Bandeez gone wild !! " video, but unfortunately Elyse comes by and she sees her own bathing video. She gets totally blown apart and everybody once again hates Matt Stifler.His final prank at Band Camp gets backfired and instead of the defending champions getting sick, his school bandeez literally spill their guts in front of the judges and guests. That way, East Great Falls lose their Championship and Elyse's dreams of getting a sponsored seat at a music institute gets shattered.

Back at school, Stifler Jr.'s back with his old buddies, the bandeez ignore him completely and stifler feels bad about whatever he did. he deletes the spy videos and tries to make up with the bandeez, they trick Elyse by saying tht she got a sposorship at the institute she wanted to get one in and when she goes there all decked up , she finds out that her scholarship letter was a beautifully executed fake and she knows that only Matt Stifler hates her so much to do something like this. but suddenly outside the institute, her banbd starts playing the music Elyse composed with Matt in the lead playing the Bagpipes. The Director of the Institute gets blown away and immediately hands Elyse the scholarship.Elyse once again falls in love with Matt Stifler and they live happily ever after......... yeah its not much of a movie but it's fun to watch and gets u all nostalgic about our school days. The movie didnt even have a theatrical release, it was a direct DVD release movie. If u have got the time and wanna have some fun then go ahead and watch this movie......it's definitely worth a watch.

Rating : ***

Zinda - Movie Review

 I am a huge fan of the Sanjay Gupta-Mahesh Manjrekar-Sanjay Dutt team. Their movies may not make sense, usually they end up being stupid movies. Their movies start superbly, are shot stylishly, and their technical team is one of the best. Their movies action scenes are superb, cinematography is comparable to the best of hollywood , but their only and major problem is that they start shooting with an incomplete script. So their climaxes always end up being rushed and dont fit in with the rest of the movie. It was this way with Musafir and it's the same with Zinda.

The movie is all about the kidnapping of Sanjay Dutt (a successful guy called 'Bala'jeet), his 14 years with his captors, and his revenge.The movie is entirely located in Bangkok.Bala has a wife (Celina Jaitley) who is also pregnant,so everybody's really happy, suddenly Bala disappears. He's put in a cell for 14 years, no torture and all, in fact he isn't even allowed to die. After 14 years Bala is released and he's given cool clothes, and some cash. Bala meets up with a cabbie called Jenny(the 'sexy' Lara Dutta),and she drives him around to all the eateries in and around Bangkok.I forgot to mention that Bala was served Breaded Pork for the 14 years in his cell, so he's trying to find out who cooked those breaded pork for him for those last 14 years. These scenes are shot very well and till here the script is very tight and promising, so is the music ('Strings' with their 'Yeh hai meri Kahaani..'). The 14 years spent in captivation is also shown well, the passage of time marked by the television set in the room ( yeah, Bala was living in luxury).The movie is terribly violent, close-ups of stitching of skin, drilling people, plucking teeth with hammers and all.

Then suddenly John Abraham (Rohit Chopra), comes forward, he's the guy who's responsible for kidnapping and holding Bala captive. He tells Bala to find out why. But Bala is too busy taking the clothes off Jenny. Movie's really well taken till here. But then comes the suspense, why Rohit held Bala for so long .... long back, really long back,when Bala was still in his School shorts, and when Rohit was sucking his thumb, Bala lied to his friends that he had sex with Rohit's 14-year old elder sis.Rohit's sis becomes the butt of all jokes at school and finally she commits suicide. Rohit grows up, becomes a big business tycoon, kidnaps Bala , Takes care of Bala's kid (a daughter) and kills Nisha, Bala's wife. He waits till Bala's daughter becomes 14-years old , the same age when his elder sis died. Then he releases Bala , and puts his daughter on sale at the famous Bangkok Flesh market. Bala doesn't have any friends anymore and can't do anything, so he kills Rohit, comes back to his old house, and starts sobbing there, and surprise of surprises .... Bala's daughter is there , all fine and happy. It's the worst possible ending anyone could give to a movie so well taken till the first half. sad, thats all i can say. anyways worth a watch

RATING : **1/2

Hello World! My First post....

Man i really got inspired to blog by a close friend of mine who is an avid blogger herself. i just paid a visit to her blog (link removed due to privacy concerns) and I was blown away. She had coaxed and cajoled me into starting my own blog and i was like " no way, i am no good at this..", Then i came to know that a closer friend of mine also blogs and i checked out his blog too (link removed due to privacy concerns) and then I knew that I had to start blogging.

....and so here is my first blog. well since i am very punctual and regular, you can expect my blog to be regularly updated. did i forget to mention that i am also not at all honest ???

well more about my life later....my 5th sem unviersity exams are going on and I gotta get studying for it.