mere funde

… after a brief hiatus. I have been away for almost a month, mostly due to increased work load. But I am firmly and surely back again. I recount below some of the more interesting things that have happened over the past month.

1. BarCamp Delhi 4 was attended. It was my first BarCamp and a very nice experience at that. It was held at the Amity Incubator in Noida, and they were excellent hosts with brilliant WiFi and lunch. Met a lot of interesting people. The event was low on tech and more on networking I was slightly disappointed. I personally delivered a talk on “Software and IP” and Akshat one on “Folksonomies”. After the camp clicked a couple of snaps at the India Gate and got caught in hail and rain. Thankfully the lappie and the cam were unaffected. Photos here.

2. The Quiz at office was won. The Bong (Aditya Chakrobarty) and me - named as “Two Bongs or Not” - defeated three other teams by a huge margin and got ourselves coupouns for Landmark worth a grand each. Luck played a huge part, but I am not complaining.

3. Gurgaon experienced a week of “Awesome Mausum” - I phrase I can claim to have invented. Rain pounded and the temperatures fell so low that the fans were switched off! In the middle of May - who would have thunk!

Fell in love with Poets of The Fall - Carnival of Rust. Other than that I have been twittering quite a lot. You can follow me here.

A quiz, sent by Sandeepan (ex-BITSian) yesterday, had a connect for Don McLean with American Pie and Vincent Van Gogh. While I figured outthe Vincent connect, Ojas knew the American Pie one.

But February made me shiver,
With every paper I’d deliver,
Bad news on the doorstep…
I couldn’t take one more step.
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside,
The day the music died.

McLean was a paperboy in his youth, and the incident is about the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. Since all three were so prominent at the time, the day came to be known as “The Day The Music Died“. Holly’s recent (widowed) bride, Maria Elena, was pregnant when the crash took place; she had a miscarriage shortly afterward.

The lines were also used by Time in December 1980, on the death of John Lennon. The song has many more references to both political and musical events during the life of Don McLean. You can read more about it here.

Also came across two new songs yesterday. Linger - Cranberries and I Can’t Tell You Why - Eagles. The latter has beautiful lyrics and below are my favourite lines from the song.

Nothing’s wrong as far as I can see
We make it harder than it has to be
and I can’t tell you why

Please do not blame me. This is the title the PR dept came up with for an intra-company quiz contest.

The elims were held yesterday. 30 questions (provided at the end), 30 minutes, 25 teams and 5 finalists to be chosen. The elims was fun and I hope a sign of things to come. Prepared by Rohan, a very interesting set of typical (though pretty easy ones) quiz questions. Anyways, the good news is that Ojas and me qualified (we were the last ones ;)). Yet another point ot note was that 5 out of the 10 finalists (5 teams) were BITSians. Sandeepan (’96, ELAS, BoB finalist), Ram (’98, HDC), Chaitanya (’98, PCr), Ojas (’01, Soundz), and yours truly.

The finals are slated for Monday Tuesday, and I hope to have loads of fun then.

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