It was a Wednesday afternoon. The sun was beating down on my brow and I squinted to see the ugliness just meters ahead. I watched in amazement as a garbage truck drove whirred and poofed more crap into its surroundings than it had cleaned. I don’t have to elaborate; the picture should show you the sorry state of affairs that was. I don’t think any city with public facilities as good as this, deserves to be called a metropolis.

All I can say is it is through no fault of theirs that innocent lives are being held for ransom in Chhatisgarh; a state that has put bureaucratic machinery into place to ensure an even more equal and socialist governance. I don’t think the Maoists’ actions are any longer in keeping with the ethos they lay claim to. The center should really take some strong steps to curb this violence meted out to citizens, soldiers, doctors, engineers and other officers, who brave it all in the name of our country against a cause gone berserk.

Pune, which is growing rapidly has an abysmal public transport system. There is absence of buses between certain parts of the city and the rickshaws are having a ball in this “almost monopoly”. Plans for metro rail projects keep being introduced only to hit the wall in some sort of bureaucratic infinite loop.

What beats me is how does providing individual radio cabs solve problems like rape? Passenger safety would be ensured more effectively if there are multiple passengers in the vehicle. This is possible in buses or metro rails rather than in cabs or rickshaws that are mostly on private hire. But it is possible that a passenger in a cab will be taken advantage of, especially at odd hours where there are few patrol vehicles and almost no people on the streets.

On the other hand, there is the infrastructure problem. Roads in Pune are hardly enough for the current population of vehicles. Adding cabs to that would only worsen the traffic situation. It is immensely frustrating that the government has hardly given a thought to improving the public transport and is already drawing up plans to increase the pressure on the current infrastructure.

The plan to launch radio cabs stinks more of a money making strategy lobbied for by the cash rich cab companies trying to make a foray into a city that has long resisted them, than of a scheme to find a genuine solution to the rising insecurity among commuters. I hope someone among the powers-that-be wakes up and scrutinizes this move.

But after I sent it I got a response that was exactly what I had expected but the opposite of what I had hoped for. So doubting my own action I asked another lady friend, who agreed that what I did was right but the choice of taking the advice rested with the girl at the receiving end. Then our talks moved towards why people (not just women) make regretful choices. And we spoke about how nice people always end up cursing the world for their problems and wuss out when we have to be manipulative to get what we want. “You’re just a nice guy, Anup. You wouldn’t understand why and how people do these things. Nice guys just finish last.”

I don’t know when my lips moved and I said, “Nice guys don’t finish last. They just suffer less at the hand of their conscience when their whole life flashes before their eyes.”

Imagine a life where one gets what one wants by running all sorts of Machiavellian schemes. Great job, active social life, a long list of women/men to satisfy ones fantasies, every possible luxury on earth … the works. But when the reaper comes around what does one actually feel? Nobody’s ever lived to tell that tale, but if one were to believe in the existence of conscience, I’m sure the only feeling one would feel is pain; pain ridden with guilt. What would be worse is knowing that one has no time left for penance. I thought about this and came clean with this person. And I instantly felt lighter. Not only inside my brain which was working in overdrive but in my heart which was pounding at twice the speed throughout the period I had kept the information to myself. She may think I did it to set the record straight between us. I hope she finds for herself why I meant to convey her the information. Rather I hope she never has to go through the ordeal to find out for herself.

In sum I’d only say “Nice guys don’t finish last. They outlast.”

Here’s the original where I shamelessly lifted it from.

20 easy steps to get GTA 4 running on your PC:

Step 1: ”Tut” loudly as you are forced to agree to be part of the Rockstar Social Club; a Gamespy type program that must be installed before you can install the game.

Step 2. Wait for it to validate your DVD. Begin to install the game. It comes on 2 DVDs, taking up 16GB’s of space.

Step 3: Growl loudly when asked to make a Microsoft Live account. If you haven’t done so, be prepared for an arduous task in itself. Begin to cry.

Step 4: Wipe tears of frustration from eyes. Unclench jaw. Finish installing the game.

Step 5: Start crying again when you realise you must now make a Rockstar Social Club account. Do so while chanting a mantra of harsh words (language choice is optional).

Step 6: Go to email account to find validation code. See no email. Break something within arms reach.

Step 7: Ask website to resubmit code. Eventually find it in the junk folder. Consider offering Satan your soul to end the pain. Click validation link.

Step 8: Choose whether to assign your Xbox, Play Station or PC Microsoft Live account to the Rockstar Social Club. Plot assassination of Microsoft Live creator. Choose account.

Step 9: Attempt to sign into account as requested. Check watch: it’s dinner time… but didn’t you just eat breakfast?

Step 10: Finally finish creating Rockstar Social Club account. Sigh with wary relief. Start Social Club program.

Step 11: Speak in tongues as the program updates. Make a pot plant spontaneously combust.

Step 12: Rejoice as a big splash page with the word “Play!” appears. Click it with tired optimism.

Step 13: Bash head against keyboard repeatedly after seeing message stating “Please install the new Windows Live Update”. Feel the beginnings of an ulcer forming.

Step 14: 22MB later, install update. Rock back in forth in your chair while attempting the “Play” button again.

Step 15: It works! Hooray! ….right? WRONG. Activate the game again by entering the code on your manual. Wait for it to suspiciously validate you. Feel slightly violated when it finally gives you the OK and starts the game.

Step 16: Begin to worry when black screen lasts 5 minutes. Alt + tab a few times. Remove fingernails from fingers due to over ambitious biting.

Step 17: Menu words! At last! Proceed to graphics options.

Step 18: Consider hiring Chuck Norris to roundhouse kick Rockstar when they tell you “You can not set the graphics higher as your system lacks resources” when you not only have enough resources, the benchmark test runs crystal smooth.

Step 19: Sigh, write it off as a bug. Begin game. Hooray! GTA IV at last!

Step 20: Game crashes to desktop.

For starters, I go from holding the cell-phone to my ear till the sweat begins to block the speaker, to speaking to a real live face in one particular case. It’s quite a relief if you know what I mean

Next, comes the legalisation of homosexuality in India. Straight as I may be I do believe that people should not be slapped with charges for expressing their love for someone. Regardless of sexual orientation. And especially if it is mutual. A big win not only for India’s LGBT crowd but also for the fight against AIDS for same sex couples can now approach health officers and doctors without fear of censure or even worse legal action. Kudos to Mr. Ramadoss for setting things in motion during his tenure and to those incumbent for seeing the bill through.

The third news, surprisingly, comes from the Times of India website. A railway travel ticket examiner has made it to IIM-C. Although there may have been such cases in the past it makes me happy to see that people are leaving behind the conventional Indian mindset of “sticking to a line”. The TTE may return to the railways at the end of his course, but if even 100 people get inspired by him and leave the comfort of their familiar field to pursue something, it will be a great achievement for modern India. With the education reforms in the frying pan at the moment, this would be a good precedent for Kapil Sibal to convince his colleagues.

Mr. Prime Minister. Time to visit the RayBan showroom. For if things keep improving this fast, the future looks so bright, you gonna need shades!

’nuff said.

The story goes somewhat like this. Nadya wanted a large family since when she was playing “House” with her imaginary friend. But we all know that a make believe hump can’t lead to a bump on her tummy. So she waited till she grew up and marched right into a clinic and got herself knocked up. So far the story is alright. After all, what is wrong with a woman deciding to be a single mother? So she had a total of 6 babies initially. And just when the kids thought they could take on Momzilla at ice hockey, she decides to up the ante. This time she drafted 8  more formula guzzlers to the platoon.  This time all of them decided to bust the bunker together and she had octuplets. And then just like the banks, decided that she had lied to herself way too much about her ability to buy clothes and nappies for 14 babies and declared bankruptcy.

Now she went out and found herself a publicist who put up heart-warming pictures of her kids on a website full of pastel shades and pictures with fuzzy edges making it look “awww cho cute”. Hell the vulture even managed to wrestle out the adjective “Jolie-lipped” for her client, so that people will see her in the same light as the multi-millionaire actress who can basically run a small country. And then among all the gay color and props on the homepage is a DONATE link. The woman is actually asking people to help her feed her family 14 + 1.

I just want to know what made the bitch have 14 kids in the first place if she couldn’t support even 1? She has no job, no money and 14 + 1 mouths to feed. How in fuck’s name did the doctor even go ahead with the IV? And twice? At the same clinic? And the same donor? Plus, if she had the money for the artificial insemination, why does she need money from other people now?

This woman is a drain on society and a horrible, horrible role model for young women. What kind of an example is she setting by being so irresponsible as to giving birth to 14 children without even having the necessary means to support herself? Why should someone else pick up the tab for this woman’s stupidity and most of all selfishness?

And here’s something that takes the cake. Nadya Suleman wants to be a counselor. You’re kidding me, right?

Scenario:

You user wireless/wired network to conenct to your company network. Suddenly one day you are asked to travel and you take the laptop with you. While traveling you find that any application you open takes at least 1 or 2 minutes to spawn. You are stumped. You log on to the network and find that nobody has had this problem. You disable Compiz and desktop effects but still no improvement.

Solution:

Open /etc/hosts in your favorite editor.

sudo vim /etc/hosts

The 1st two lines read

127.0.0.1 <hostname>

127.0.0.1 <hostname>.<domainname>

Change the second line to

127.0.0.1 <hostname>

And voila you’re good to go

And what’s better, unlike, Winblows you don’t have to restart

Reason:

The way Ubuntu is built I think it tries to reach the network to check the existance of your username everytime a command is executed. Even if you’re running some application from the GUI it means a command is spawning the application in the background console. To verify this, even before you make the above changes, fire up a terminal and try spawning an application. After some time you’ll notice a “username not found” kind of error and then the application starts. This means the OS tried to search for the username on the network and upon failing finally launches the app. But this removal of domainname should fix the problem.