narayanaswamy

05:20 pm: January 1, 2006
I tried getting as decadent as possible over the last few days. Subcontracted my daughter to my in-laws, and went on long walks (not so decadent) with Lakshmi. One was really long with a clear destination, and the second one was a search for
Rainforest. We actually walked into a restaurant hawking Karimeen. I wasn't so sure, and when we were in, I was sure. We went to Wang's Kitchen to eat our decadent delayed dinner. The next day, fought guilt at having subcontracted daughter to ageing in-laws, so I went there, after some superficial showup at work. Am back, and finished my favourite pain in the ass, submitting recommendation letters. Its over, even the minor recommendation letters for
internships. Whew!!!! As I have always, slept past the transition from December 31st to January 1st. How new can the year get? You can't even feel it change from old to new. The mould remains, the CO_2 in the the air is as strong as before. Add to it madmen exploding 1000 Wallahs at night. To me everyday is a new day, as new as a new year can get, and as old as the old year can remain. Do we celebrate the new hour, when the hands of the clock meet in greeting the new year?
No. So I am not going to ever celebrate new year. Read that as, I am not going to stay awake, I am not going to get drunk, and blow smelly "Happy new year" at other drunks, I am not going to kill by driving fast, and so many other undesirable things. Well, I will wake up and drink up my glass of filter coffee, like every other day. Surely, there is a differnce between old coffee and New Coffee.
There is a time for blogging to end and for life to start. The time is now.

03:36 pm: Reco Letters
Writing Reco letters is one of the most toughest tasks. How does one write a reco letter? Should one concentrate on the positives and gamble on the candidate not screwing up your reputations as an evaluator? Or should I emphasize on the negatives and screw around with the careers of wannabe graduate students? I have opted for the former. I try and outline exclusively the positives, and leave out any negatives that I know of the applicant. Just out of undergraduate education is the wrong time to assess shortcomings. I believe that in the right environment, each individual will rise up to any situation.
Basically, I think all students are good when they aim for something higher.
For some the past successes are representative of their potential, and for others, the past failures form fodder for future successes. But, reco writing is a tough task, a time consuming pain in the ass.

07:19 pm: Class System
Here is one event that is symbolizes relationships in the Indian ethos- Our DNS went
bonkers today and responded to a name that differed from what it was supposed to
respond to. So I sent out a info mail to all the users, including the sys-admin. One stone, two mangas (mangoes): Users know and act accordingly + Sys-admin fixes the problem.
Sure enough our nice sys-admin fixed it and then sent me an apology mail staring with
"Sorry Sir....". No blaming him. He is a sys-admin belongs to a certain class, say the
apologizing class, whereas morons like me sit in a different class, waiting for apologies,
and doling out criticisms. Unless this changes, India can never claim progress.

Otherwise today was cool. Tropical Storm 07B decided to continue its drunken walk in the
ocean and headed northeast towards the otherside of the Bay of Bengal. I ran a 8km stretch in around 42mins, not bad at all for me. I am no mean kenyan gazelle. I was destined to be a curd rice guzzling, hymn parroting, clerk. And here I am listening to Radio Mirchi in the auspicous month of Marghazhi, and trying to fix some blasted partial vertex cover algorithm,
while I blog. Not bad at all.. All that after a 8km run, not to forget.

Mahathi was pissed off when I picked her up from the creche. Lakshmi had a upset stomach, and am planning to cook chappatis for them. ok gotta go.

08:02 am: First Entry
I guess I will go to work today, as Mahathi has recovered significantly.
I need to finish some grading and then do some research. Grading and Evaluating are two of the toughest tasks that I face. Is it that I don't want to take the responsibility of evaluating, or that I feel that evaluation is
a farce? I suspect that it is the latter. I am of the opinion that evaluation by standard examinations is a farce. We should really evaluate the examination mechanism. Indian schools have a nice centralized evaluation mechanism where the set of teachers and the set of evaluators are disjoint. I wish the universities had continued that model. Mere wish, given that Indians are good at twisting systems to suit their individual needs. So much that such a large population is twisted around itself.