An_anonymous_blog

Back to blogging

2005-07-19T19:55:00.000-04:00

The last one month has been crazy... the number of posts I'm putting up is showing an exponential fall. Hmmmm... why's that? Let me analyze that...

1) For one, its been a busy one month or so since I came back from flo... work, paper writing/publishing, etc seem to be taking up my time

2) I used to write when I got bored.. now I call up ms y. (Check out the previous post to find out more about ms y)

3) The initial novelty of blogging has kind of worn out.

I seriously have to pull my blog-socks up and write now. Blogging definitely is fun.

An interesting trip

2005-07-02T10:56:00.000-04:00

Hmmm... after a whale of a time in florida, its back to blogging. I'd gone there with a couple of close high school friends. Swimming in the beaches of florida is a whole lot of fun, trust me. You got to try it sometime.

Well, something very interesting happened on this trip. There's this high school classmate of mine whom I've known well for years (let me call her ms y), and during the trip, sparks started flying between us. I've always respected her cos' she's very smart, is a nice person and is great to talk to, but had not looked at her that way till we spent 4-5 days together on the trip. Although we've been talking two-three times a week for almost a year now, we've spent little time physically with each other (mainly cos' she's in california and I'm in georgia, which is the other end of the country).

Well, I told her that I found her very attractive, do you want to carry it forward and find out if we're meant for each other? After a certain amount of thought and a lot of questions and answers, Ms Y said yes.

I have gone out with other girls before, but my initial feeling is that Ms Y is different. I know my parents would love her if I do introduce her to them someday; hopefully things will go that far. The good part about being close friends with someone before actually dating her is that you know an awful lot about her and you're comfortable with her and so on; so there's a very good chance of things working out for good.

I also told Ms Y about my blog, and she's been bugging me for the address. I haven't given it to her yet, and don't plan to do so! Now, let me get back to work.

A scene from a new indian movie

2005-06-21T22:52:00.000-04:00

There was this new hindi movie I saw, called 'Bunty aur Babli', where the protagonist argues with his dad who wants him to become a railway ticket collector. The protagonist says he sees no point doing something which a zillion other people do, and where he will never make a name for himself.

If I were to look at myself when I am 70 years old, I do wish I were doing something different from what the rest of the world does. I cannot imagine the horror of knowing that you're another one of 100 billion people who just exist in society without having done something special in their lives.

Speaking my mind

2005-06-20T04:31:00.000-04:00

Its the middle of the night, just felt like working a little bit. Am taking a break now...

I like speaking my mind. But its often got me into trouble.

For example, in meetings of our research group, a lab-mate presents a new idea. I ask him if its practical and I find problems with the idea (if there are any to be found). And people don't like it.

If I keep quiet about the problem his idea has, he'll just publish it in some conference, where someone will find the mistake and say this guy doesn't know his stuff. Worse still, people may get misled by the paper. When you really love something, you kind of get passionate about it. And if you see someone else fooling around and not doing things the way it should be done, it kind of bugs you.

There are many people I know who don't love their work (designing chips), and its kind of weird seeing them fool around. They spend exactly 8 hours at work, and just wait to pack up at the end of the day. They don't work in the weekends, cos' they are not paid to do so. I believe you need to love something to be good at it, and these guys do shoddy work, and it bugs me no end to see crap like this published in conferences.

Back to sweet-talk, this phenomenon is something you see often in the US. You got to watch you say and say things which you know the other person would like to hear. For example, every morning, I hear people asking each other how yesterday was (even though they don't care), they ask you how you are as if they really care (and they don't even wait for a reply)... In the beginning, it used to bug me; I was thinking its hypocrisy. I've now got used to it, I suppose, cos' it bothers me less and less.

I'm writing stuff that's getting too personal, I guess. Its rather uncomfortable knowing that someone you know is reading your thoughts and knowing about you. I've decided not to tell anyone else this blog is mine, and keep my identity a secret. A person or two knows who I am, guess I'll have to live with it.

2005-06-19T19:01:00.000-04:00

My little cousin...

That's my little cousin in the pic up there. Isn't he cute? :-)

He's just started talking, and its a whole lot of fun talking stuff with him!! I'll be spending time with him in florida when I go there this week.

I'm spending too much time blogging now. Work is going to pick up, and my blogging volume's going to reduce dramatically, I would think. Besides, the initial novelty of blogging is wearing off.

Do appearences matter?

2005-06-19T18:28:00.000-04:00

I see people around me caring so much about their appearence. I don't understand why.

(eg 1) My lab-mate, a black American guy, is someone I consider intelligent. But why does he own 40 pairs of shoes and wear a shoe color which matches with his shirt and pant? Even his socks and cap have to match with his shirt of the day.

He also has different clothes for different seasons. Spring brings out the grey shirts, and in summer off they go into the closet.

"Why does he put so much interest in his appearence? Aren't there better things for a person to think about? He's doing a PhD; shouldn't he be more worried about how he improves himself intellectually?" - This is a question I've asked myself many times.

(eg 2) Coloring hair is now a craze in the United States. There is this indian girl I know, who colors her hair differently every day in a week. Why? Does she think guys find her more attractive cos' she looks better? Although, in general, this is true; most intelligent guys I know care more about how intelligent a girl is and how well they get along with her more than how she looks.

The guys I know who care about a woman's appearence are not normally people I would rate as being in the top 10% of IQs I've seen.

There are numerous other things I can think of, which show how much people I know care about how they look. Why do they do it?

(1) Is it because they think a better dressed, better turned out guy/girl can attract a person of the opposite sex? Even if they don't dress well with this intention, does Sigmund Freud play a role?

(2) Or do they just feel good being turned out well?

I don't know the answer to these questions.

Steve Jobs

2005-06-19T08:43:00.000-04:00

One guy I like is Steve Jobs. The founder of Apple, along with Steve Wozniak (Woz), Jobs is one of the pioneers of silicon valley. The Apple II is easily the first great PC that was made. Jobs was the guy who came up with the idea of the mouse, color monitors for PCs... (the list just goes on)

Among the companies Jobs started are Apple (at the age of 21! Stupid me is 22 with nothing to show for the years I've lived), Pixar (the biggest animation company in the world, it shot to prominence with Toy Story, and since then has made Monsters, Inc, The Incredibles, etc) and NeXT (from which Windows was copied).

Steve Jobs (incidentally a college dropout) was recently called to give the graduation ceremony in Stanford. Find the text of his talk below. Its really interesting, as all of Steve Jobs' talks go.

"

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
*
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says*

*This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple
Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.*

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the
finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be
told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I
want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just
three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why
did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed
college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She
felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so
everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his
wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that
they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a
call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do
you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out
that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never
graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers.
She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would
someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that
was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents'
savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't
see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no
idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending
all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to
drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the
time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The
minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't
interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor
in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food
with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one
good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I
stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be
priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction
in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every
drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and
didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy
class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif
typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter
combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful,
historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I
found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But
ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all
came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first
computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single
course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or
proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its
likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped
out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal
computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it
was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.
But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them
looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect
in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life,
karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all
the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started
Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years
Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion
company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation -
the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got
fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew
we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me,
and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the
future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did,
our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly
out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was
devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the
previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as
it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried
to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I
even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began
to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had
not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And
so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was
the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less
sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods
of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company
named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my
wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature
film, *Toy Story*, and is now the most successful animation studio in the
world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to
Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's
current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from
Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm
convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I
did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as
it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life,
and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great
work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you
haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the
heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it
just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you
find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each
day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made
an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in
the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my
life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the
answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change
something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment
or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only
what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best
way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are
already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the
morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know
what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of
cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than
three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in
order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell
your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them
in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so
that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your
goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy,
where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my
intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the
tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they
viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it
turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with
surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I
get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to
you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely
intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die
to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever
escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the
single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the
old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too
long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry
to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be
trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's
thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner
voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called *The Whole Earth
Catalog*, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a
fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought
it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before
personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with
typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in
paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and
overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of *The Whole Earth Catalog*,
and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the
mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a
photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find
yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the
words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they
signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for
myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.
"

A view from our balcony

2005-06-18T12:42:00.000-04:00

A view from the balcony of our old house

We shifted our house recently. One thing about the new house is that it points away from downtown, so the great view we used to get from our old house (above) is now unfortunately gone...

Inventions

2005-06-17T23:01:00.000-04:00

The first silicon transistor

God, I have no work to do... it sucks and its so damn boring. Need to come up with some new ideas now... its been ages since I wrote my previous patent. Hmmmm... this needs some serious inspiration.

Let me compile a list of the most important patents/inventions in the history of electronic chips.

1947 - The mother of all inventions, the transistor, was invented
Shockley, bardeen and brattain did the honors

1958 - Gordon Gould invents the laser.
Jack Kilby (TI) and Bob Noyce (Intel) invent the integrated circuit

1968 - RAM invented by Rob Dennard

1971 - Microprocessor invented by Faggin, Hoff and Mazor.

This list makes interesting reading. Nothing really great and new's been invented since 1971. As most people involved with chip design would know, we face huge problems with designing better chips at this point in time. The present generation (us) seriously needs to start thinking and coming up with new ideas.

Think, dumbo, think. Else you're going to be just another also-ran who did what a zillion other people in the world do.

An interesting flight

2005-06-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

This incident really happened. :)

Like I mentioned before on the blog, I went to india last month. So, there I was, waiting to board the flight at new york, when this really beautiful indian girl meanders into the boarding area. Like most guys would on seeing a cute girl like this, I started rubbing my eyes, and after telling myself I was behaving like a stupid teenager, went back to my novel.

The flight to paris was empty, and apparently the girl got bored or something, she suddenly came upto me and started talking. I was like: hell man, you broke up 10 months back and haven't seen anyone else afterwards, let's see if this girl is intelligent as well as good looking. At least its a good way to spend the 36 hours of the flight.

So we started talking, blah blah blah, and that later went on to flirting. This went on for some time, and then there was a six hour break at paris before going to madras.

BTW, an interesting aside... one really funny thing happened... that girl's name was malavika. I asked her if she had a nickname, and she was like, call me maal. All my friends call me that. I burst out laughing. She was like: why're you laughing? I asked her if she knew hindi. And she was like: "no, I don't... I later found out from a friend of mine after the nickname was kept what maal really meant."

So where was I? Break in paris.

It was 8 in the morning... we had breakfast together, and were hanging out at the airport. The paris airport is easily one of the best ones I've ever seen... and I've seen quite a few airports. Its got beautiful stores, and the french do everything with great class. So we went around all those nice great stores, still flirting n all.

I asked her to join me for lunch, and we had lunch, tried some great french wine... and were talking an awful lot of senti by now. Then, it was time for the flight to chennai, which was 18 more hours of talking, flirting, blah blah blah.

Just before landing at the madras airport, I was wondering if I should get her phone number. She was a nice girl, and was great fun to talk with, even though she wasn't intellectually the most intelligent girl I've seen. She found me interesting, I think... at least looking at the way she was talking.

So I asked her why she was going to madras and where she stayed n all... she points towards her ring finger, and says her marriage is on june 24th, and that's why she's going to india. She says the marriage is at so-and-so marriage hall, why don't I come?

I was thinking: Oh.. god... all this wasted effort!!! :-) And I paid those conniving french chefs for your lunch!!! Of course, I couldn't say this to her... and I was like:

WOW, that's great news.. congratulations!!! You must be all excited now, aren't you?

She was like: oh, yeah, marriage is a bit scary but I don't know, hopefully it'll work out.

Me thinking again: God, you're going to be married next month, why did you flirt with poor me?? Some kind of last attempt at flirting before getting married?

So this was how I landed in india. I really shouldn't be talking about this incident, because I made a big fool of myself. But hey, nobody knows who I am, and this story is funny.

(Actually, I've been telling my friends about this story too... we've been having a good laugh. This whole story sounds so much like a scene from hum tum)

Workoholism to joblessness

2005-06-17T00:06:00.000-04:00

My last post was on workoholism. This one's on the opposite: joblessness.

I am between projects right now. And am leaving for florida for a week with some old school classmates on monday. Don't want to start work before then, cos' the break from work would be a pain.

So what do I do to kill the next 3-4 days?

Maybe I'll read a few novels. There's this frederick forsyth book which I took from my college library called the avenger. I know I've read it once before, but have forgotten the story. Talking about the library, the first book I borrowed from the library after coming to the US was Satanic Verses. That particular book was banned in india and I was itching to get hold of it for ages, just to find out what it was about.

The Satanic Verses got all kinds of attention in india, what with the fatwa on Rushdie n all. Besides, religion is one thing that's always captivated me. Me being a rationalist, its always been difficult for me to kind of understand the philosophy of praying to idols, breaking coconuts in temples n god knows what else, falling at the feet of people like jayendra saraswati who charges 20 k if he visits somebody's house, etc.

Talking about books which antagonized religion, there's the da Vinci code which says jesus was married to mary magdalene (whom many church figures are supposed to have branded a prostitute)... recently, there are dozens of books/treatises which have been written saying what's written in the da Vinci code are true/false.

Religion largely goes on faith. If someone believes in it, the faith really helps him out, I think. For people like me who don't believe anything without reason, the faith which acts as a source of moral support isn't there. Thus far, I have got by just fine without it. Will it work in the future? I don't know.

Accents

2005-06-15T15:43:00.000-04:00

We were having a research group meeting today. My indian roommate (I don't want to take any names - let me call him ABCD - no pun intended :) - he's not a ABCD anyway) wanted to mention something. I haven't heard him speak in public before, and was really really surprised when I heard heavily rolled rrrrrrs coming out of his mouth.

Why do indian people put on accents? Do they want to blend into american society better/faster?

On the other hand, aren't they putting themselves at a disadvantage by not being themselves? Just to get an analogy with an indian situation: suppose you're tamil and you're in hyderabad... and you can't speak telugu. You'd prefer to bargain with an autowallah in tamil than in telugu, right?

But then, one thing that I've definitely noticed is that even though other indians in my circle think my roomie is being stupid to put on an accent, I find he's got many more american friends than the rest of us guys. Doesn't look like there's one correct answer to this question of putting on accents.

Genius

2005-06-14T12:17:00.000-04:00

Willim Shockley (Seated) with Walther Brattain and John Bardeen, who shared his Nobel Prize in 1956

I've seen many brilliant people... I have never idolized any of them, although I do have a healthy respect for their intellect.

Bill Shockley is one guy I really look up to, however, and consider a genius. My PhD advisor knew Shockley well when he was alive, and tells me that no one has ever impressed him with his intellect as much as Bill Shockley did. And when my advisor, who himself is considered a demi-god in electronics circles says that, you sit up and listen.

For those who don't know who Bill Shockley is, he is the guy who invented the transistor. And he's known to most people who design chips as one of the greatest intellects of this century. The list of things he invented makes your jaw drop! He made electronics possible.

I wonder if we'll see such genius again in this generation. Will we again see someone inventing something like the transistor which changes all our lives? I don't really know.

One area which could potentially be as path-breaking is silicon photonics. The basic idea is this:

The optical fibers you hear about and which made long-distance telecommunication possible are great for long distances, but are not a good idea for short distances cos' of the high cost of their lasers and detectors. (You need a laser and a detector to encode and decode info from the fiber) The cost of these optical components is high cos' they're made of compound semiconductor devices like GaAs, which are really tough to manufacture. If you make these components out of silicon, which you make normal chips out of, you can use optics even for short distances due to the low cost, which makes possible applications like connecting an optical fiber to your computer and then logging onto an internet connection.

Bottom line: You can download a movie in 10 seconds! Voice over IP becomes a cakewalk, cos' of the high bandwidth offered by optics.

That's why I believe Silicon photonics is going to be the next big thing to hit our lives, after electronics and computers. The only problem is that silicon doesn't emit light well, but when man wants to do something really badly, he always does it. I do believe silicon photonics will one day be possible. Intel is pumping an obscene amount of money into silicon photonics research.

I'm trying to put a snap of bill shockley on this post. Its the first time I'm using the photo post option, so it should be interesting to see if it works without any hitches.

Back to the USA

2005-06-09T07:53:00.000-04:00

Back I come to the United States. After such a short visit to india, I find myself comparing India and the US.

In terms of how people spend their spare time, things are way different between these two places. India follows cricket, football, formula 1 and tennis while Americans follow american football, baseball and basketball. One of the things about india is that whenever you're bored, you just go to the lending library next door and bring some interesting books back to read. Not so in the united states. These guys prefer sitcoms, tv and outdoor sports. And of course, pubs and discos.

One thing though is that americans have much better social skills than us indians. There is a lot I'm learning out here about people skills.

We're shifting our apartment today. Lots of donkey work to be done, like moving cupboards, tables and so on. Whew!

Two days in Bangalore

2005-05-29T11:50:00.000-04:00

My trip to India is nearing its last week before I return to the US of A. My old undergrad classmate and I came to Bangalore a couple of days back. My reaction was:

WOW. THIS PLACE SURE HAS CHANGED!

The last time I'd been to Bangalore was three years back. I've heard about Silicon Valley when it was booming; Bangalore seems to be going thro' the same phase now. My old classmates talk in terms of tens of lakhs after finishing their undergrad two years back! Jobs abound, people change jobs like they change clothes...

All the American companies who've been laying off workers in the States are actually expanding here in India. There seem to be ample opportunities for starting a company in Bangalore. A few years down the line, let's see...

Along with the astronomical salaries and the money come other things: a culture which thrives on regular booze and drugs. Some of the teenagers I see here seem to be fooling around much more than we guys used to (a few years back). Makes me feel quite old.

Why do I want an anonymous blog?

2005-05-26T02:02:00.000-04:00

The idea of blogging definitely is interesting, because I like to write, but it has a downside. I don't like the idea of people around me knowing what exactly I think.

I've seen many blogs and the feeling often hits me:

Showing everyone your personal thoughts and experiences is difficult, isn't it?

Well, there's a simple solution to that. Don't let people who read your blog know who you are! Of course, the number of people who read your blog then reduces quite a bit, cos' I can't ask my friends to check it out, but then, it would be interesting to see if anyone actually reads my blog without knowing who I am.

Let's see how this blog thing goes. It should be interesting.