kinshuk sunilit aint no, dessert if therez no caek

OSScamps are organized on the lines of bar camps and serves as a dais for Tech professionals, geeks and geeks-to-be to discuss, debate, comment and share their knowledge through demos, presentations and interactions among the campers. It’s an endeavor to gather and collaborate on open source technologies and tools.

The OSScamp Pantnagar community, initiated at OSScamp Delhi September 2008, has announced their maiden unconferece at Pantnagar (Nainital) area. The unconference is scheduled for January 31st – February 1st 2009 in the scenic views of  GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, at the Department of Computer Engineering, College of Technology.

For more details:
event:  osscamp.in/event/osscamp-pantnagar-february-2009
talks: osscamp.in/category/talk-camp/osscamp-pantnagar-february-2009
regsiter: osscamp.in/node/103/signup

The first thing to do is to call back home and tell them I am hale and hearty in Bangalore. I do so. Next, I walk out of the airport. There is a line of EasyCabs and I take one. I need to go to the Indian Institute of Science. Which Indian Institute of Science? There are many in Bangalore! Thankfully, I had read the ICCBN guidelines for reaching the venue. See, I don’t know much about Bangalore. The place is called Indian Institute of Science and is also known as Tata Institute. Its near Yeshwanthpur. Oh That One! The taxi speeds away.

The journey was kinda comfortable. The driver is Prasanna, who is a friendly guy. He is a local, lives with his family, earns a salary of 8K as an EasyCabs driver, has no girlfriend and loves to hang out with friends.

By the way, Hills are called Betta in Kannada compared to Malaya in Tamil. You say Solpe Solpe Kannada Paratha for ‘I understand a little Kannada’ as opposed to Kunjum Kunjum Tamil Terio for the same about Tamil. The scripts are very different and yet the languages are claimed to be very similar having originated from the Dravidian family. For one: the word to show respect or to refer to as an elder brother in both languages is Anna.

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Two Years. Seven Hundred and Thirty One days. Seventeen Thousand Five Hundred and Twenty Hours. Over. The End.

I, today, stand at that juncture in one’s life whence one phase ends and a new one begins. Ancient Indian System divides the life of any individual into four phases: Brahmacharya (Student phase; implies Discipline), Grihasthashrama (living in the material world), Vanprastha (Retired from responsibilities) and Sanyasa (renunciation), each lasting a period of twenty five years. A students life ought to be that of self-discipline and a guided effort towards learning – Brahmacharya. It is this phase that I cross now and enter into the material world. Soon, I’d start working. Life will be so different then.

But, before I start running the rat race I want to take a pause. Stop and pen down my thoughts here. So that when I grow older, I can always return here and remind myself how I used to be as a student. More particularly the two years that were GBO.
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I had only heard about the abysmal quality of the Idea Customer Care but on 8th I managed to experience it first hand. It so happened that I had finally discovered Nokia Maps and how to use it on my N73M and a friend’s N95. So on 8th, after my End Term Semester Exam of the day, Jitender (the friend), Myself and a few other friends (Varun and Manish) sat together to try out the Nokia Maps. So began the ordeal:

First, I tried installing Nokia Maps on Jitender’s laptop but it needed Microsoft .NET Framework 3. Hence couldn’t install it on the Laptop. Thus, I first downloaded .NET Framework 3, installed it, then installed Nokia Maps, and then downloaded the India Map and the English (UK) Language Files. Presto! Now Jitender could use the map of Delhi in quite a detail and search around for places. However, he couldn’t use the Navigation feature since, it needed GPS. Looking around the Nokia Maps web, I found that N95 comes with A-GPS which uses GPRS to co-ordinate GPS data with the satellite and is a very speedy process using very less data. Awed, started our quest to activate GPRS for Jitender’s phone which is an Idea Number.

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Please Note: This is straight from an internal email communiqué… pending for edits and censorship… Apply Consideration…

[...]

What was a very exciting match (though turned, sorta, one sided midway the second innings) Team GBO showed a dedicated and professional behaviour on field. Let me capture the moments for the people who missed the match.

After the toss, Team GBO’s captain Sir Shree Lalit Gupta chose to bat first. The right tone for the whole match was set by the GBO openers – Lalit Gupta and Karan Sharma, who played a brilliant knock and built a strong opening partnership of about 124 runs in 13 overs. Lalit was the first wicket to fall with an individual score of 49 (rather unfortunate to miss out a half century) including 2 sixes and about 7-8 boundaries. The opening partnership was filled with a barrage of boundaries and sixes by both Lalit and Karan who were joyfully hugged by our dear Gupta ji after every shot (somehow the security guards were amiss ).

The next to follow was Karan Sharma who hit a brilliant knock of 70 runs (1×6s, abt 11×4s). With only three overs to go the following batsmen went for pinch hitting with Varun Paaji, Nitin ji, Gupta ji and our best bowler Sandeep.

With a total of 154 in 16 overs, Team GBO set a formidable score for their opponents. The target was high but not unattainable.

With the beginning of the second innings, two of the opposition’s good batsmen came to bat one of which was a famous Kushal, famous for hitting centuries in such inter/intra – college matches. The first over by Sandeep (famous as GBO’s Goli Bowler throughout SRCC, for his fast paced, tight bowling) conceded only 4 runs and brought the opposition to the reality of what Team GBO really is. The next over by our dearest Negi Sir destroyed the very foundations of our opponents by his tight bowling. The famous Kushal was caught out by Sandeep on one of Negi ji’s beautiful delivery for a lowly single digit score. Sandeep continued to pound the opposition batsmen with the bowling he is famous for. It was Negi ji who struck again, bowling out the next batsmen, again on a single digit score. Fear was only one emotion the opposition felt.

The new batsmen Karthik was again a famed SRCC cricket player, who held the reins of the opposition batting. Together for the third wicket they scored a parternship of about 50 runs and the total score was about 80 when our Gupta ji struck with vengeance and our dear Doga Paaji (aka Varun) caught a splendid catch on the mid-wicket with sharp reflexes. In between we saw some really nice fielding from our youthful and agile Negiji and Raghu.. (Come on, Raghu! )..

After that the opposition innings crumpled. The next batsmen was run out by Lalit through a timely pass by Karan Gupta in an Abhish Negi over. All in all the opposition needed to score 54 runs from 3 overs to win all due to some dedicated bowling by Sandeep, Abhish, Karan Sharma, Gupta, Manish and Nitin. Then our Nitin bhai and Doga Paaji bowled two good overs and the opposition needed to score another 38 overs from a single over. Already having won the match the over was shared by two budding , talented bowlers – Monish Paaji and Myself. After scoring a boundary of my ball, the match ended on cue with Team GBO registering a thrilling win over their rivals with them falling short by 34 runs.

What followed was a scene of euphoric celebration where Team GBO huddled and bounced, pranced around, screamed and yelled, showered Coca Cola (desi champagne ) on each other.

All Hail The Champs!

[...]

The Winning Team:

(from left-to-right, back-to-front)

Karan Gupta (White Overalls), Lalit Gupta, Varun Jaisia (Black Jersey), Sandeep Kharab,

Kinshuk Sunil (Myself with Stump in hand), Nitin Gautam (White/Blue T Shirt), Raghunandan Saraf (Orange Tee), Abhish Negi (Green Tee), Manish Kumar (White Overalls),

Mohnish (Sprawled), Karan Sharma (Team India Tee)