Certified crazy

Happy Birthday Garfield!

http://xkcd.com/433/

It all started one day when Akshay blogged about how he wanted to make a positive change in his life by starting to wake up early each day. I have tried a lot of different alarm clocks, and various ringtones (including a shrieking voice) and radio that goes off early at 6 am, but none seemed to work for me. Its not that this has been an issue since ages – I used to get up by 5:00 am and reach the station before 6 am a few years ago. But somehow, I got myself into the habit of sleeping at 2am/3am and waking up at 8/9/10 am.

So when he asked if anybody was game, I jumped in.

Akshay, his friend Anil and I took up the challenge of waking up at 5:30 every day for the one month that followed, in a very interesting way. It was decided to document the whole experiment on a wiki. Hence, was born 30each. One of the challenges that we decided upon was to capture 30 sunrises. I however, did not capture any. That needs a different post.

In the course of the days that followed, I realized I got up not because I had to, but because I wanted to beat the others at the proto-call. As days passed, not counting the days I slept late because I couldn’t help it, I realized reading before I hit the bed helped. I made sure I switched the laptop off by 11, and would be drowsy by the time it was midnight.

Although the month of May was a very hectic one with a lot of positive developments on the personal side (yes, this being one), I still managed to miss only 11 days, that too, because: one, no day was an exception, (as per my own rules set during the start of the experiment), two, a lot of days were spent on things which shall be blogged later, and three, a lot of Partying happened in this Month – especially night outs with cousins. So, all in all, it is a big Yay!!

During these days, my reading activity shot up. I completed reading A thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Maximum City by Suketu Mehta and Why Men don’t listen and women can’t read maps by Barbara and Allan Pease. I am reading Chetan Bhagat’s 3 Mistakes of my Life these days.

It is June already, but last I checked, the wiki looks like it will keep getting updates from the three of us.

Location: a mattress at cousin’s place. We are all playing cards ruthlessly. Someone tries to cheat, others bully him. Suchi tries to cheat, and shows sanchi her thumb.

Sanchi: Cheating karti rehti hai, luchhi hai tu luchhi.

Suchi: Main luchhi nahi, Suchhi hoon..

And then follows another round of cards thrown up in the air and 7 kids (or grown ups trying to be kids) running around the house, up and down the staircase, throwing pillows and towels and bedsheets around.

I finally know what a bee sting feels like!

“Can I walk in for an interview tomorrow?”

Yes, you can, but you may not.

A new word that I came across today:

SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Fscked Up.

P.S. I think I need to re-read the jargon.

You better watch out, you better not shout,
You better not cry, I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.
Heeeeeeeee’s making a list, and checking it twice,
He’s gonna find out who’s naughty and nice,
Santa Claus is coming to town!

I had been singing these lines over and over again all over the place. In the elevator, on the way to the canteen, while climbing the stairs, etc. I wonder what were people thinking when they came across one such idiot?

First it was Megha, then Milind, and now  the kde guy Pradeepto. This lad got married recently. And know what? He was signed in on IRC all day.

It would have been fun if his away message would have read: “afk – marrying”

My congratulations to the couple.

So, foss.in/2007 is over.

It was fun, mostly with all that hanging around and fooling around in the stalls and expo areas. Plenty of swag – badges, stickers, CDs, caps, mugs, pens and ofcourse t-shirts (some got umbrellas too), lots of new people to meet, hellos and how ares with old ones, some awesomely amazing food  (courtesy ramkrishna) and friggin’ cold Bangalore.

Some highlights from the trip were the freedesktop sessions, lightning talks (well, I did not know potatoes in an omlette tasted so good), those hilarious jokes at the dining table every day, puliogare rice, an awesome linuxchix.org.in BoF, kushal’s weird way of clicking photos, the konqueror party, hogging sessions at food street, full halls, OLPC opening contests,  the-laptop-with-maximum-stickers contest, arguments at BoFs and ofcourse rusty’s finale. As always, foss.in organizing team and the volunteers did a great job. Flickr is flooded with photos.

And ofcourse there are all those stupid and witty jokes that hit you when you’re surrounded by a bunch of geeks. We’ll keep a summary of them for later.