I love my India

A picture is worth a thousand words, needless to say anything more now.

Its been so hot these days, I mean the ‘temperature has been high’. And as per Murphy’s law, my fan has stopped working since two-three days. Its kind of difficult to keep alive, many people who visit my room are amazed at my tolerance capacity, hehe.

Anyways, these days, as you all know, the R&D showcase thing is going on. Not that I’m very much involved in it. I wasn’t even told by anyone that I’d put up some project there. Actually, Tarun sir has his ‘Information retrieval from Video’ project, and my project is one of the extensions of it, the BTP I mean. So, I had to complete the pending work to make it functioning and ready for display. I’m not much happy about the project though, I mean the state in which it is right now. Big challenges are in the way right now, and hopefully next year, in R&D, people will be impressed. They wont react the way they do this time, the ‘blah, thats so simple and useless’ kind of look.

I HAD to put up the robotics project too, as it carried MARKS for putting up a project in R&D. But we weren’t ready. So, we decided to ‘lose marks’ instead of getting humiliated. Lets hope I don’t lose much from the perspective of grades.

Bush visiting ISB, this thing has been made so loudly audible. I mean, ISB isn’t even visible from here, its so far (I know its far, I run upto ISB often). And still, they’ve to increase security in IIIT, ask us to keep windows closed and all. I seriously wished someone should kill Bush when he is in ISB. And thank god our government didn’t make the ‘fast breeders’ also under the agreement between India and US. I read that we’ve developed expertise in processing fuel for fast breeders, which are some advanced kind of nuclear reactors, while US puts us in the ‘developing and unsafe’ category. If we had signed the agreement, it would have meant curbing all the research that went into that fast breeders and other processing stuff. Hail Manmohan!

Rest of the life is kind of fine. I’m still alive, in senses, very much stable (unlike what my friends think or believe).

Another thing we were talking about is, if you love someone, what does it mean by getting involved? Is there a way to stop somewhere in middle? I mean, when you love, its like it just goes on, keeps growing. Can you decide, okay fine, itna pyaar ho gaya, ab stop! Just because there is a risk, should people stop loving? And what does it mean by ‘loving in safe limits’? As in, a state from where you can recover if something crashes! What I think is, this kind of risk is everywhere. I mean, when a person invests somewhere, or a company makes a new software, or even when we decide to opt for a course through ISAS, there is always a risk that things go wrong and we reach a very unfavorable state. Knowing all this, when investors don’t stop, the companies don’t stop, nor do students, why will a person who loves someone stop? And what can he stop, thinking about the other person, meeting him/her or even having a relationship? Conclusion: Risk is everywhere. Just do what your heart says and be optimistic.

ACCV’06 from my point of view.

Woah! ACCV 2006, it was a roller coaster ride. It was as if we were in the dreamland. Though I didn’t know much about research in Vision, or the researchers, or even the books, but still it was fascinating. It was really enjoyable to volunteer for the event. The biggest advantage was to be able to listen to many great people, and their great theories and ideas. Though I don’t have an in depth knowledge of Vision, but still most of the ‘good’ talks had the inherent beauty of being exceptionally simple and understandable.

Another good thing that I benifitted from is the varied range of people which came into contact. Though I didn’t talk to many explicitly, but then it was nice to listen to different accents of english, their way of presenting, and even their way of approaching the problem at hand. Some of the Chinese people didn’t have great English, and it was a little difficult trying to communicate with them.

Most of the program went on smoothly, though I think that the program could have been improved. Most of the program was filled with Oral sessions. Though they contribute the maximum in distribution of knowledge, they tend to be boring and sleepy too. I think creating a more interactive environment, rather than a simple PowerPoint presentation system would have been good, though even I don’t have much clear thoughts about a more interactive and interesting alternate solution.

The Taj Krishna Hotel is nice, great architecture, nice potraits and paintings on the walls, marble floor and lots of mirrors and jhoomars around. Its very beautifully lit, has some great sofas, really polite and efficient helpers. The conference halls were big, nicely lit, with good echo-proof audio system and a good enough stage. The food at Taj was lower than our expectations, though people suggested that it is to suit the international needs. The icecream with melting chocolate was the best thing in the world one could ever have. Amazingly all toilets were western and without water!

One of the girl had a presentation. I asked her whether she wanted to test her laptop on the projector. She couldn’t understand it for a long time. All the time what she would do is, wear a cute confused smile on her face. I was noticing her all day, as coincidentally she kept sitting in the same room which I was managing. I thought she was really lonely, and didn’t have anyone to talk to. I mean, if you had seen her, what she would do is, come to the empty conference hall and sit. Then she’d start reading the brochere for the zillionth time, close it, pack her bag, and go to the internet access room. Again pick herself up, and sit in the hall and read the brochere, or roam around wearing a really pathetic smile, not talking to anyone, just grinning. I couldn’t gather the courage to go and talk to her for long, so I asked Nirnimesh sir to help. We went to her, chatted for a little while and clicked a few photographs. She told me that she has three friends here. Her name is Yuru Pei. She is a Phd student in China. I got her air tickets confirmed from Singapore Airlines. Scheduled departure 16.01.2006 9:20 PM.

We clicked many many photographs during the session. A lot of those which I clicked with my cellphone got blurred. I am still waiting for Varhman sir to release his cameras matter. I have some really good and really precious pictures in that camera.

One of the presenters did not come to the conference. He sent a ppt with embedded audio instead. Finally, I had to go and click the mouse to play it in front of the people. I made ONE mistake only, but it was fine I guess. Prof. PJN was saying that it was the only paper presented in ACCV from IIIT. I asked him about whether we will get any opportunity like this in the future. He suggested to write a paper, and present it in one of the conferences to get such an opportunity. This conference has really infused new spirit in me to do something. Lets hope I am successful.

Before this, we had the WCVGIP, which was another conference of similar type but a smaller scale adn magnitude. It was a nice one too.

To conclude, ACCV 2006 was a successful event, and a major event this year. Thanks to all the professors who gave us this opportunity and also thanks to all the great researchers who presented such great ideas. Finally, three cheers for the volunteers,
Hip hip … Hurray!
Hip hip … Hurray!
Hip hip … Hurray!!!!

Sleepy, eh?

Its 9:54 AM now, and I’ve been awake since 5 PM. Its not a long time though, but I am thinking to recover from an inverted biological cycle. I’ve decided to sleep at 10 PM tonight, what ever happens.

Anyways, I’ve been working on the MB project, slow progress though. In the morning, when I was working seriously, I wanted to look up something on the internet…

The nameserver was unable to process the request.

Ohh, was such a disappointment. I then decided to revive all the good habits, took breakfast after.. err… 2 months maybe. Read the newspaper, good news, India’s PSLV-C3 was launched successfully in orbit yesterday. These kind of achievements make me such proud about my country. I also want to contribute in some such way one day.

I’m in a good optimistic mood today, got a call from Freak, will see if I can get the cams. 11 AM… its time to see my ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE final exam papers, oh god, I’ll flunk. Anyways, we’ll see, I’m not kind of worried about it.

Akshay Sapre, my school friend, met me online on MSN. Seems being online on MSN is doing me good. Its not a big deal to be using Windows XP, but when I work, I need to be in Linux, and MSN crashes my messenger, so I avoid it. Anyways, he’s studying law at Bhopal, graduating in 2008. He is with a lot of school friends.

Avneet Singh Bhatia (do I remember the name correctly, eh?), met him also online on MSN, he is also in Indore, will try to meet him when I return. Its not that I’ve any kind of special interest to meet these guys, but its good to see old school mates, I think.

I’ve not been doing much work at this place, not going out either. At 1 AM, I went to the canteen, to help myself with a burger and pepsi. I decided to walk to the college main gate to fetch money from the ATM machine. Its a long walk, I don’t know why the ATM machine is installed so far. Its quite lonely and quiet in college these days. The path was dimly lit, no human around, and sounds only of the wild insects sitting around the grass and trees there. Amazingly, I was not thinking anything. Rather I was narrating to myself what I would write about this incident in the blog, crazy eh? The ATM machine cabit was cold, air conditioned, hehe. Then I quickly returned to my room, it was such a mess.

Till about 3:30, I was able to arrange it somehow. Then went for a shower. I had a severe headache, I was wet in sweat, and the cold shower, ooooh, but thats okay. Didn’t damage me much. I kept on listening to songs. Bardaasht nahi kar sakta, ab door nahi reh sakta tere bin reminded me of the days with Anni, in his car, so great days were they.

Almost all day, I hardly get to see a human being. Though I don’t have much work on the PC, but there is no alternative. This is summer hoidays, and all are gone home, except a few like me. I just keep telling myself to forget the lonliness and concentrate on work. This place, my PC, internet, nothing can make me feel the way it does at home. I’m so desperate to go. Its bad that my projects will still continue, and I’d have to carry this PC to home too.

My pulsating headache is still continuing, but I’m determined to sleep at 10PM. Its almost 11 now. I’ll be getting ready to see the AI answer sheets. Hope everything is fine. My eyes are red and watery, and my back is so painful, the bed lies close by, I keep telling myself, I won’t sleep.