Love insurance

Series of incidents from few months have inspired me to pen down my thoughts. The haunting thought of people and their moral values frighten me. A young charming boy agrees for arrange marriage to soothe his parents, want to palliate his pre-marital gal frnd by fighting with his wife and alleviate himself from all responsibilities by suicide. The wife also follows the same step to assuage her pain. This is not a hypothetical story but an incident which came to me like a thunder bolt. Similarly there are plenty of incidents where people find it hard to decouple themselves from their past and their acts.
Looking from the eye of an entrepreneur I see a business opportunity here. What about love insurance? Like we have kidnap and ransom insurance in countries like Mexico , Venezuela and Nigeria where such crime are common someone can think abt luv insurance in India. I have chosen India because ours is the only country where you can bet on these values. The family system is so strong in our country that it has surpassed many recessions and depressions in which the richest economies like America and Britain collapsed. I am also hurt by the current trend which is precursor of deterioration of such values. I could see that 10 years from now people will start insuring their engagements and marriage. The company has to pay the victim insured amount for their break ups. The premium would be decided on the basis of risk involved so it is obvious that engagement would be having more premium than marriage. Premium will reduce to almost half amount once you are married and will again decrease further once you are blessed with a child. No premium has to be paid after age of 50 but you would continue to be insured under it.
Huh.. I am really disappointing while writing this. Who could think of that there would be price tag of your tears and emotions? Is I am seeing apocalypse in near future? This is very hard to describe. It is ‘I’ which is creating problem. It is ‘me’ which is causing turbulence, it is ‘mine’ which is reason for all agony. Nobody cares about ‘they’ ‘them’ or ‘theirs’.

Importance of higher education in India

With recession round the corner, getting jobs is biggest nightmare in current scenario. Current slowdown has opened the pandora box and challenged the education system in India. If I could flashback period before 15-20 years ago, getting graduate degree from a college would open many new avenues for employment but now BA/BSc are far from even considered to be a degree and BE/BTech has replaced BA/BSc. There is hardly any guy who is ready to settle down for less than an engineering degree. Now this again raises the bigger question regarding employability of the candidate. Recent study says those more than 50 % of the engineers are unemployable. As per 2008 stats around 8 lakh engineers are graduating every year from approximately 2400 engineering college across the country. The irony of it all is that the engineering colleges which supposed to churn out professionals are actually getting reduced to degree vending machines producing largely good for nothing engineers.
Here is the time to seriously introspect ourselves and think about getting back the identity you lost among such large number of professional. The young Indian youth has come out of his comfort zone of mere job after graduation and started thinking for stability in future. Current recession was an eye opener which paved the way for higher education ME/MTech/MBA in India. The count of engineering graduates fighting for these courses has suddenly increased by leaps and bound. The coaching institutes have become active and one can easily see the spike in the count of students enrolling for these courses.

Hey students! What are you thinking now? It’s not about quantity but its quality which matters. We have progressed generation by generation. Our 10+2+3 education system has changed to 10+2+4 which will soon transform to 10+2+4+2, once every individual realize the power of higher education.
In the word of Aristotle “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruits are sweet”.

Algorithm and puzzles

This space is for technical purpose. It would contain few questions and their solutions (in comments). The space is for my collection and if anyone wants to leverage this collection can use it. Any doubt and suggestions are most welcome.

1. How would you calculate the square root of a number without any built in functions?

Hints: You need to consider boundary conditions. It should be able to find square root of all integers including 0.


2. To find the second max of an integer array.

Hints: It should be done in O(n) complexity.


3. You have 3 integer Arrays , say array A, array B and array C. You have to compare whether these arrays are equal, keeping in mind the following things:




• All arrays are un-sorted


• You cant sort the arrays individually before comparing them


• Use optimized algo e.g. do not compare element by element




4. You have an array A with 100 elements e.g. A[100]. It has got 60 elements in sorted order (Ascending) and 40 blank spaces.There is another array B, which has 40 elements e.g. B [40] and all of the are filled with values in sorted order (Ascending).Merge array B into array A, so that array A get its all elements filled and also gets sorted in ascending order, including new values from B. Restrictions are




• You can't use third datastrusture of any kind for temporary storage


• You can use some temporary variables


• You can use simple merger sort algo.


• Number of iterations and comparison have to be least possible.




5. Given a large array of positive integers, we want to perform a large number of queries. Each query is as follow. For an arbitrary integer A, we want to know the first integer in the array which is greater than or equal A. A log(N) algorithm for each query is sufficient for this problem.

BJP need a Bing touch

It was June 1, 2009 when a room packed by Microsoft pioneers waiting for launch of their new search (decision) engine. Being the part of this release I have seen redirect traffic going from 0 to 100 % that night and enjoyed every moment of it. The Microsoft has re-branded their LIVE search to Bing, the decision engine. The initial response is good and they are marching ahead in search arena which is undoubtedly dominant by Google. The rebranding has certainly helped them and given user a choice to Bing.

After being so close to this release along with keeping hawk eye on this 2009 election I was trying to create some analogy with my sane brain. The election was so well poised that 3rd front also dreamed for PM seat. The election which was marching towards hung parliament and none of them was near to majority ended with Congress forming govt quite comfortably. The Congress has not really gained the seats but their rival parties have lost them. The left has always being bottleneck to liberated thinking and BJP revolved around their old ideologies which caused them their seats. If we closely look at key blunder made by BJP then I could think of Varun Gandhi Pilibhit case, excessive attacking on Manmohan singh and Hindutva agenda. They have never decoupled themselves from Varun Gandhi so called doctored tape (I just read a news 30 min ago that forensic has given report that Varun’s hate speech CD was not doctored) where as Congress has revoked seat from Jagdish Tytler after opposition from Sikh community. The country which was badly hit by terrorism played safe by keeping BJP hard line agenda at bay. The BJP major vote bank was Indian middle class (as they were never able to penetrate villages) so called intellectual class which sideline themselves from hard line politics in period of global terrorism. BJP need to revisit their ideologies. They are still seen as bunch of extreme politicians painted by saffron brush. Though they are trying hard to fade this color but they are unable to disown it completely. The internal turmoil has popped up in recent BJP executive meeting held to post mortem the recent debacle in Lok sabha election. It clearly indicates that there is rift in party which needs to be sorted out. The country does need a strong and stable opposition which will impose few checks and measures on running government. BJP do need a man like Vajpayee to reunite and revive them. They have to brainstorm and derive more secular and liberal solution in this tough time. They need a sort of rebranding to get rid of their long imposed image of Hindu Party towards a party which keeps development as first priority.

C-103

This was the apartment number where we use to stay. The reason for keeping it as title is to give it a filmy effect (after 13B). It was Muddu , Baba and me who rented it and started living into it and Sandy Surg moved in later. Journey begins with lots of party and masti. Each day was fun whether it is stingy act of Baba, muddu’s PJ , surg chating n cricket mania or sandy’s langadi tang :-) (I hardly do anything because I never had enough time ). When Muddu and Sandy left they were replaced by ABHI and Uppi, the casino guys. I enjoyed their anti apartheid behavior because they like the black color of jack as much as their brown skin.

Only three morons (me, ABHI and BABA) were left to njoy its final days. The only thing which tickled me was impeccable dostana of ABHI and BABA which was far stronger than Jay-Veeru Jodi. The baba left for India and it was ABHI and me left to carry/shift the debris left by these living legends of C103. With each passing day the thought of cleaning and shifting haunted me. Every spot on the carpet and each stain reduces the $ count in my account but it was divide by N concept, which relieved me.
The D day arrived when we need to start our shifting. Our situation was like the Somalia and Zimbabwe whose internal system was so ruined that we survived on food supplies of most generous being PU and KB. It was the determination of ABHI which worked in such time of crisis. We remembered each living legend in this scavenging task, whether it is brand new vest of muddu which brighten the cook top or sandy jeans which helped to clean basin. It was the surg towel which wiped the kitchen floor and who could forget BABA’s contribution in cleaning bathroom floor.

Finally it was the combined effort of all the previous residents that we were able to prepare a revived C103.The journey ended on Sunday night at 4 am when whole apt was given a new look. The cleaning ended with brief photo session which will remind us of our effort. The move out charges, which were presumed to some high 3 digit number was brought down to 2 digits.

Kudos to living legends of C103.

[This post is meant for HCL's Bellevue/Redmond resident only]

Big Fight

The pub assault in Mangalore has raised many doubts in my minds. The moral policing done by extremist grps are questionable. Let me start this way…

It was yr 2001 when I joined the college as a hosteller and it was thought of ragging that haunted me and nothing else. Being an alien in the city I had no option but to opt for hostel as that would be the best place I could think of. Ragging was a known concept to me. I heard a lot abt it during my coaching but SGSITS is the safest place for fresher’s as far as ragging was concerned. There was always an explicit condemnation of ragging and implicit support. When you are at receiver end you condemn it and support it to some extent (condition apply) from other side of table. You will always find the extremist supporter of it as they will always revive the wave of ragging and no one can change their dogmatic thinking.

Similar analogy I can draw in these gory acts going on in the name of moral policing. Whether it is Valentine day mayhem or pub assault, such acts are condemned widely across the country but the convicted were never prosecuted and the implicit support never stopped.
Ragging was the noble concept which lost its sheen over a period on time. So question that remain unanswered are, whether ragging is good if done within the purview of students interest? Is there any sanity in this pub assault? Has pub culture affected the vulnerable section of society?

Good bye 2008.....Welcome 2009

So one more year passed and u r marching towards ur graveyards. If someone ask me if I again want to live my life which I lived 5 years back then my answer would be ‘NO’ , because with each passing year I learnt a lot and each grey hair brings lots of experience to me. I can’t afford to waste all my rich value earning and I don’t regret the life I lived.
2008 passed by with lots of memories. This year I would regards as one of the most eventful year in my life. Some of the incident will have everlasting affect on me.
The year was best for Indian sport starting from Cricket (T20,IPL,Clinching Test Series) , Olympics (Abhinav Bindra and Boxing)and then chess (Vishy) all where memorable and unique achievements.
The most horrifying memories are plummeting stock market, Inflation, Global recession and worst of all terror attacks in financial capital of India, Mumbai.
Every New Year brings some hope and most of the sane brains on this mother Earth try to give deep thinking to their acts, introspect and plan for the future. Now it is high time for some serious resolutions and my resolution for Year 2009 goes here.

1.Take social responsibility at par with ur personal responsibility. Next time when I travel in train/bus or visit places I will be more vigilant.
2.Finance the education of one girl child.
3.Continue to save energy as much as possible.
4.Do not waste food.
5.Keep up reading habit.
6.Avoid casual attitude toward money.
7.Do not let these resolutions to turn into humbug resolutions.

[Vote on left panel.]