27 November 2007

Digicam Explosion => Too much documentation ?

A question in CAT 2007.


From the given options, choose the sentence that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way

Nevertheless, photographs still retain some of magical allure that the earliest daguerreotypes inspired. As objects, our photographs have changed; they have become physically flimsier as they have become more technologically sophisticated. Daguerre produced pictures on copper plates; today many of our photographs never become tangible things, but instead remain filed away on computers and cameras, part of the digital ether that envelops the modern world. At the same time, our practice for the creation of images has also eroded. Children today are used to being tracked from birth by digital cameras and video recorders and they expect to see the results of their poses and performances instantly. The space between life as it is being lived and life as it is being displayed shrinks to mere a second.

Options:
  1. Yet, despite these technical developments, photographs still remain powerful because they are reminders of the people and things we care about.
  2. Images, after all, are surrogates carried into battle by a soldier or by a traveller on holiday.
  3. Photographs, be they digital or traditional, exist to remind us of the absent, the beloved, and the dead.
  4. In the new era of the digital image, the images also have a greater potential for fostering falsehood and trickery, perpetuating fictions that seem so real we cannot tell the difference.
  5. Anyway, human nature being what it is, little time has passed after photography's invention became means of living life through images.



For the above question (1) is the right option. Relax, I reproduced this question not to discuss english usage in CAT, instead to discuss about advent of digital cameras in our everyday life.

Recently a post Overly Documented Childhoods in desicritic(dot)org says "when I compare that number with the pictures that kids have today, its mind-boggling. Our two nephews are 6.5 and 3.5 years old today, and we've seen and clicked hundreds of snaps of them since the time they were born. A recent 5 day vacation yielded over 400 snaps and its safe to say that they were there in about 75% of them".

I can very much relate to this statement, since I have taken pictures of my two and half year old niece right from the moment she was out of her mother's womb.

My niece Shivani: most photographed person in our family

Not only childhoods, even every trek/trip is getting documented like anything. When we go in group, every 4 out 5 people will have cameras from compact digicams to SLRs. As a results there will be aggregate collection of 3-4 GBs snaps at the end of every trip. Earlier(4-5 years back), first task after a trip was a give the negatives for development, now it is to upload the snaps in online photo albums. Before that we have filter out 90% of snaps, which are taken either for timepass or for 'trial and error'. But, sometimes these timepass snap comes out really well.



Have a look at this snap of my recent Shravanabelagola trip. I took the snap while being shot by two SLR guys. Both are unaware that I am also clicking :)

One more funny snap in 'Bangalore Weekend Shoots' community of flickr. The picture captures a aritisan being shot seven photography enthusiasts. This is one of my favorite snaps in flickr.

To put in a nutshell, I subscribe to the opinion which is correct answer choice of CAT question. Even though, there is a kind of photography(digicam to be precise) explosion in our society, a few snaps turn to be priceless. What do you say ?

19 November 2007

A yearly festival indeed !


The enthu for writing CAT this year was injected into me when I read a hilarious post CAT and I by Aditya PK. According to him 'The CAT is like a yearly festival'. I was able relate to this post because I had appeared for CAT in 2003, 2005 and 2006. The performance in 2005 was my best till date. I would have got a call in case I had done sufficiently well in verbal. The results of 2005 made me too much paranoid about verbal. With extra concentration on verbal I screwed the entire paper in 2006.

Leaving all this failures behind me, I decided the given best shot in 2007. Thanks to this saying, my persistence continued


"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
-Benjamin Franklin


For the sake of preparing I sacrificed many Trekking/Trips. Even I had to devote less time for blogging. I didn’t post in Bangalore Metblogs for 2 months.

The preparation was ok types nothing serious actually, mock results in beginning resulted in 'meter off'. But I persisted, as per learnings of previous attempts it’s the mindset which matters in CAT.

While writing mocks, I just had a glance at Date of Births(3-4 years younger than me) of people sitting around me. It made me think 'Am I too old to study in a B-school'. Later, the announcement of admission procedure by IIMB rekindled my hopes. As per the procedure maximum weightage is given to a candidate with a work experience of 3 years.

As always this year too there was a nice build up for this yearly festival. There was sufficient coverage in media(programmes such as Bell the CAT) and it kept me reminding of the D-Day(Nov 18th). For the preparation, I didn't took any major leaves from my work, except a day before the exam. I just followed the tips given in tenaday.co.in and went to the exam with a positive frame of mind and made sure not to repeat the mistakes of 2006.

After finishing the exam I came back to home and slept for 3 hours flat. In evening, I crosschecked my answers with answer key of TIME institute. According to the analysis, I will be clearing cut offs in the all the sections but may fall short overall aggregate cut off. Now, only thing I can do is to be optimistic and hope for the best! Whatever happens, this will be my last serious attempt of CAT ... there are so many better, interesting stuffs to do in life.

08 November 2007

Om Shanti Om: Paid preview at Urvashi


Today morning, I had been to Lalbagh for jogging, after that just went to see what's happening at Urvashi. My eyes were lit up, when I saw that there is paid preview of Om Shanti Om(OSO) at 6 pm & 9.45 pm. Even though, Ajay Simha had booked in advance for saturday matinee, I couldn't resist myself seeing buying ticket for the paid preview. Seeing movie without reading any review is a different experience, that too before official 'First Day First Show'.

image courtesy - indiafm

The movie is one of the most awaited of 2007, there was a nice build up, courtesy marketing of SRK & team. A few months back when I came to know that the movie is about reincarnation I though of giving first preference to Saawariya. But the marketing of OSO changed my opinion gradually.

Actually, there is no USP in the movie, that's because there are so many ‘selling points’, nothing stands out as 'unique'
  • Beauteous Deepika Padukone: there was a deafening roar in the theater when she made her first appearance on the screen. Her presence in a frame adds more value to the same.
  • SRK's six pack: It has became of so much obsession that there was a cover story on ‘six pack’ in India Today recently.
  • Mother of all item numbers: also known as 'many items, one song'. Very rarely one can observe 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' 30+ times in a theatre within a span of five minutes. Also the song is part of the screenplay.

  • In addition other than many plusses in the movie
  • Crisp editing by Shishir Kundher. Well, the movie is of 18 reels, you definitely won’t feel it's so long.
  • Music by Vishal Shekhar. all songs (sung by different singers) are very different.


  • Many stuffs are derived from several Bollywood movies
    - SRK saving Deepika while shooting a 'fire sequence', similar to Sunil Dutt saving Nargis in Mother India.
    - The revenge+reincarnation plot of Karz ( also Karan-Arjun).
    - Kiron Kher in second half reminded me of Rakhee in Karan Arjun.

    But missed out some stereotypes:
    - मैं तुम्हारे बच्चे की माँ बनने वाली हू, one of the most famous,common one liner was missing. But the english translation of this 'I mean, I am pregnant' was there.
    - Shiv Ji: How can one forget 'shiv ji' of film city who had divine presence in many movies.

    The sequences which can be termed as highlights
    - Entry of Shanti-Priya[Deepika].
    - Om Prakash(a junior artist) enacting as Om Swaminathan (a South-Indian superstar). The pseudo shooting of Tamil movie is very hilarious, especially delivery of lines 'Yenna Rascala'.
    - Filmfare awards sequence. The announcement of nominations for best actor is the most funniest part.
    - Lunch between Om Kapoor[SRK] and Mukesh Mehra.
    - Auditions in second half for a female actor.

    Performance wise everyone has done well, but the major surprise factor is Arjun Rampal. He was enacted role of Mukesh Mehra, a cunning producer convincingly.

    So many positives, no negatives ?. To be frank there are not many negatives but major thing (in simple words) the movie is 'it's old wine is new bottle'. But who cares, the movie it is an out and out entertainer, in others words पैसा वसूल. All credit goes to packaging skills of Farah Khan.

    What other's say:

  • CNN-IBN, Masand' Verdict: A swell song-and-dance drama that's 'sensationally senseless', go watch it and prepare to come back beaming.
  • Indiafm: The Review - Om Shanti Om
  • Passion for Cinema - Om Shanti Om : Reincarnating Manmohan Desai! - a film of the industry, for the industry and by the industry

  • PS: I have deliberately kept this post short. Since the movie is yet to release officially, I don’t want reveal the plot details. Will be updating the details gradually.

    02 November 2007

    Landmark Quiz 2007, Bangalore


    The fourth edition of Bangalore Landmark Open Quiz took place on Nov 1st at Chowdaiah Memorial Hall. I didn't really bothered to attend last three editions. After reading about this quiz in many blogs, I decided to participate this year with Ski and Shreesh as teammates.



    The quiz was hosted by India's renowned quiz-master Derek O'Brien. First there was preliminary round of 40 questions, followed by final round between 8 teams. The questions in prelims were easy generally with many sitters and a few bouncers. The question were from wide range of topics from History, Entertainment to Astrology.

    We made many silly mistakes in the prelims. Initially we thought that we might miss cut off by a few points because of the mistakes. Later seeing the teams in the hall(many Pantas wearing IIMB T-shirt, jackets), we realized that we have very slim chances of qualifying and have to become audience in the final round. Since it was a open quiz there were many teams with members of different age group. These kind of team have more chances of qualifying as their range of knowledge will be vast. One of such team was 'WWW' with Mother, Son & Niece as members.

    As expected we were way below cut off 28. Highest score was 32 by QED (last year's champions). Incidentally five out of eight finalist had scored 28. 'WWW' also qualified with 28 points.

    Final round had many tough questions and needed lot of work out for answering. There neck to neck fight between QED and WWW. In the end QED emerged winners by answering handsomely final 3 rounds. The Cinderella slippers - squirrel feather was a superb answer under pressure.

    Winners- QED

    The Quizzer of the Year award went to captain of 'WWW', Sushila Kamath. I guess she might be a school teacher. One has to appreciate her enthusiasm. The confidence in which she answered the reason for increase in pencil sales was simply amazing.

    Quizzer of the year

    To conclude, this was my first experience of a open quiz, looking forward to attend more such quizzes in future. It's was a free entertainment and Derek O'Brien brought the house down with his spontaneity and one liners. On the stage, he tried to pull legs of team 'Thigh in the air' also nicknamed 'Crows' on the spot. Ultimately, the same team made a stunning comeback to finish 3rdended and also won the prize of most popular team.

    Ski was not very enthusiastic to attend this quiz as he had better business to do in Mysore, but today morning he messaged me "Man thanks for talking me to the quiz. It was really worth it :)"

    Please find the questions of the quiz below. Some questions I have just mentioned keywords, not phrased because I don't know the complete question. Please let me know in case you know the same.

    QUESTIONS

    Prelims:

    1. Ivan Nigli, MLA of Karnataka is elected from which constituency ? NOMINATED, REPRESENTS ANGLO INDIAN COMMUNITY
    2. Pascal Cotte's 240 megapixel camera revealed facial hairs on the face of which women? - MONA LISA.
    3. Fictional school.
    4. Max Yung Sur
    5. 1803 - Luke Howard - Curl of hair - locks of hair - Whats is the term used for curls of hair
    6. which country in the world is largest producer of fashion diamonds , less than half a caret? INDIA
    7. He rejected names Vasudeva and Jehangir for his screen name? DILIP KUMAR
    8. Under the name congressmen - Rajiv Gandhi - The Great Suicide? who said he was did not much about the assassination? - PV NARASIMHA RAO
    9. Olympic : Honey, Seawater, Olive oil, Clothes - athletes in ancient Greek wore which one of these apart from sand on their body in Olympics? - OLIVE OIL
    10. Library book - within my power - Hogwarts
    11. Visual Clip - Egyptian god - RAMSEY
    12. Cylindrical Caps which chefs wear - TOQUE
    13. Common between Nafisa Ali, Milind Soman - SWIMMING
    14. Visual Clip - Citation by President - BHARAT RATNA
    15. Visual Clip - Director - ANURAG KASHYAP
    16. Soups - Mohingar and Khow suey - which neighbouring country ? BURMA
    17. Married most times ? - Larry King, Salman rushdie, henry VII, Oprah Winfrey - LARRY KING.
    18. Who sent Tagore on his 81st birth day this note - "FOUR SOCK NOT, MAY YOU FINISH FIVE "? MAHATMA GANDHI
    19. Which Akbar's Court Navratna was mudered by Bir Singh Deo on the orders of prince Salim: ABUL FAZAL
    20. Dance form - embracing couple - polite society - WALTZ
    21. Which Indian state capital means "land which never floods" in Marathi.? PANAJI
    22. Hulidan, Dsaudan, Pidan are forms of chinese? EGGS
    23. Which Asian was officiating as match referee most number of times ? RANJAN MADHUGALE
    24. 1950 Angela Dhinlay - actress - uncredited : Marlyn Manroe
    25. Floating Pontoon Bridge in India - HOWRAH BRIDGE
    26. Connect i> aviator ... ii> Edible chinnesse goosberry - KIWI
    27. 3 songs: common - DEV ANAND.
    28. 3 songs one was of celine dione: common - CANADA.
    29. Audio from movie "Hum lajawab hai", identify male voices - SRK and Aryan
    30.
    31. Playright - published - posthumously - SIR WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
    32. Confluence of Tropic of Cancer and Longitude - UJJAIN
    33. which famous book closes with a line " ... " ? TALE OF TWO CITIES
    34. Gnagflow Trazom - 250th birth anniversary.
    35. something something. MLA from Edlabad 4 times - PRATIBHA PATIL
    36. Geta Kinni ... socks
    37. Sir Winston Churchill said "Uneducated person Should read a book of ......" ? - QUOTES
    38. Star - Center of all planets, who is a son of Manu- DHRUV
    39. what are bloks ? - BLOG on BOOKS
    40. On which country's flag Golden Eagle is present? - EGYPT

    Finals:

    Round-1
    1. Before stamps how were postage rate determined ? CANDLING METHOD - If the candle light passes through the envelop it costs less otherwise more
    2. Film with 9 scientific errors ....
    3. Describe "Muffin Top" ? Protuding Roll of Fat when one wears low jeans.
    4. Rome Gladiator how did they ordered death ? Thumbs Up
    5. Which cricket played only 2 matches in 1983 Cricket world cup and both of them(only) India lost -> Dilip Vengsarkar.
    6. Acoording 2005-06 census which country has maximum number of Tigers - USA
    7. Oswald Maleno - short 12 minute film - screened Dec 1986 -> Rabindranath Tagore
    8. What are Arasuram, Gandharva, .... -> 8 types of Marriages

    Round -2: Picture &Audio
    1. Pic+Audio, Douglas Adams
    2. Ping Pong - Enrique Iglecias song is called "ping pong"
    3. Visual : Zidane + Mira Nair and a lady next to her -> directing Little Zezu (nick name of Zenidiane Zidane)
    4. Connection: Rand Currency, Person Ayn Rand
    5. Visual: Mali Timbaktu
    6. Stamp - Paquebot -> Sent by ship
    7. visual: two guys in front of Taj Mahal; Darryl Harper and Simon Taufel
    8. Visual: Title of the book - Jungle book.

    Round-3
    1. Purpose of Trackgandhi dot com ? To tracks Indian Currency Notes.
    2. Jarasana v/s Krishna ? why ? - Kamsa's wives approached Jarasandha
    3. Only film raj kapoor and dilip kumar acted together ? Andaaz
    4. Thomas Alva Edison, Louis Armstrong, Lyla Ritchie ? Hello
    5. What do you mean by Medial Capitals ?
    6. Which is the most Commenest bird in the world ? Chicken
    7. what's common between La paz, Bolivia. ---, Nepal, Salado Chile Ragon, Angel falls (venenzuala) -> All are highest in respective categories.
    8. Brown Bear hiebernates for 6 months in natural conditions, but in captivity does not hiebernate ? -> Because of scarcity of food during winter/

    Round-4
    1. Audio of Queen, Elton John ... Connect -> John Lenon
    2. Shakil O Neil
    3. A Qawali song- was part of cassette of which movie - Sholey
    4.
    5. Audio : Two Songs - 'Neel Gagan Se Chale Dharati ka Pyaar Dhale' & '-" : SAME RAGA
    6. Audio of Chameli ki Shadi, Saawariya .. connect - Anil Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor

    Buzzer Round +7, -5
    1. Where do you find ..... ? Jantar Mantar
    2. Lawyer Defended who defended Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1916 - Md. Ali Jinnah
    3. types of Stamps - fiscal, commemorative, ....
    4. Middle East city 3 hill ranges and lava -> Medina
    5. T20 batsman time limit to come to crease - 90 seconds
    6. Since 1731, 51 men and 1 woman have crossed this ? - Door of 10 Downing Street.
    7. Something related to Helen Keller ...
    8. why there was 700 percent rise pencil sales in England 2005-2006?? For solving Sudoku

    Visual Round
    1. What does Maiya Maiya mean in Arabic (song from GURU, Malika Sherawat)-> water
    2. Visual -> Dancers doing some weird dance : Choreographing Penguin dance sequence in happy feet.
    3. Flags; Army Silk, Navy Woolen,
    4. 2 words, 10th anniversary, one is blamestorming . which is the other one ? muggle
    5. Video Clip from film Zanzeer picturised on some actors(not the leads). Who is the actor ? Gulshan Bawra.
    6. which famous fictional accessory was made out of squirrel fur ? Cinderella's slippers

    Last Round-2teams
    1. which book has 5894 hymns, always placed on cushion ... -> Guru Granth Sahib
    2. Who was musician at India's first Independence Day ceremony at Lal Quila -. Ustab Bismillah Khan
    3. Indian 2 rupee coin is of shape hendecagon - how many sides does it have? 11 sides
    4. In which country couples are wished by prime minister for 50th anniversary and by Queen for 60th anniversary -> Australia.


    01 November 2007

    Fest @ our office


    Like Phooljhadi last year this year also we had a similar cultural fest with a different name. As there was no build up to the event there was very less enthusiasm among the employees. Some employees in order to protest about some policies decided not to participate.

    Our AAG group(Ski, Shreesh, GG & me), decided to be broadminded and participated in the events which we were sure of winning.

    Day-1: Monday, 29th Oct
    There was a skit competition. Last year we could have easily won this competition if we had practice a bit. This we had time to practice but were short of manpower. Pioneers of last year Naveen, Seena and Raghu had left the company. So our first task was to find enthusiastic people in our floor. No one agreed to join. So we four decided to go ahead and participate.

    We went to campus at 4 pm and found out that there were some people participating in pot painting and face painting but no one had registered for the skit. Actually the skit competition this time was different. The participants will be given a bag of goodies and were supposed to make the goodies part of the skit. For convenience sake we had already prepared a generic plot so that any object can be fit as part of the script. Because of this complication no one really came forward to partcipate. To add to our misfortune there were no audience too. Finally at 6 pm the competition was canceled. Our practice went in vain. Understanding our situation Suzane(organizer) promised to give us a slot on Dance Competition day.

    Day-2: Tuesday, 30th Oct
    Unlike last year this year Dumd Charades(DC), picitionary and quiz were combined into a single combo event 'Tease your Grey Cells Contest'. We just scrapped thru the prelims to enter final round. The initial part of final round was general quiz with audio and video round. After quizzing round were in third position. The last two round were DC and pictionary. We were delighted when quizmaster announced that these two rounds will have highest weightage. To be on safer side Ski did the miming in both rounds. we have cracked the clues 'The silver hurry on' and 'The star fight is over' in DC and pictionary respectively. Others teams could not crack with one or two exceptions. We emerged as winners of the competition. Our obsession with DC and pictionary paid off once again.

    After quiz contest there was singing competition. Ravi and Sudhir participated in it. Ravi was second runner up in the contest.

    Day-3: Wednesday, 31st Oct
    As promised by Suzanne we were given a ten minutes slot after Dance Competition. We got Ravi and Pradeep into our team. Before leaving to campus we rehearsed the skit once and fine tuned the script with minor changes here and there. The first event of the day was dance competition. We could not enjoy it much as we were excited about our skit. The skit came our very well, more importantly audience enjoyed it. It very difficult to describe it in words. Have a look at embedded youtube video below.






    After the skit there was a DJ night, he played many Bollywood Remix numbers. All of us danced and danced to the maximum.

    To conclude, we made the most out of the three days fest. We felt more satisfied as we were able to make more than 100 people laugh with the skit.