Writing this as I wait for the boss to get ready and call me up. Yesterday was Bakrid out here and a public holiday, so today is the start of the week out here. We're heading to a client site today for on-site consultation and development.

Well, the short summary here is that the new job has been extremely satisfying so far. The hours are long, heck, we pulled out a night-out-er last Friday night, but the work is fine and, more importantly, the team is amazing - great bunch of guys, loads and loads of talent, and hard-working (and naturally, ambitious!) to the hilt. Learned quite a lot technically speaking in the past one week; suddenly feeling very confident of myself in coding big projects.

The other fun part is being a part of the industry here. Never realised this, but it's an entirely different environment out in the corporate world, compared to the stuff you get back in academia. Let's put it this way:- remember I was talking about the most evil position possible in the World's Most Evil Company? Yup, I found out how was getting hired to that job (not me of course, and personally, no regrets; I'm really not suited for that kind of thing) a cool five days before the guy himself knew about it! Guy is of course a friend of mine, and quite frankly, I didn't know that he didn't know (although my source knew that he didn't know I knew), but all the same, he seemed to be pissed off when I started gloating about having known that he got the job all along. Which, of course, seemed hilarious to me, at which point, he got even more furious. Oops. :-|

[PeeWeeMan and gokulpod, if you're reading this, you know this guy. Not many people from gokulpod's batch in SoC who graduated along with me (and haven't gone to Stanford. :-) ]

And oh, we're hiring. So, if you have experience in .net, particularly C#, (sound of boos from the /. crowd), and don't mind a career in the High Straits, then do let me know. :-) [Of course, doesn't need a mention that you'll have to expect, well, South East Asian salaries, although they are quite competitive under the current market conditions.]

Happy Chinese New Year, people; here's to renewed prosperity, success and good luck in this Year of the Monkey.

And oh, this is what you can expect this year.

[Obligatory plug-in: I'm a budding expert in Chinese calendrical traditions. Feel free to ask any questions here. :-) ]

Attached to a fluff on Microsoft-versus-MikeRoweSoft:-

But the high school student decided to fight back and his story got media attention to the extent that he was forced to shut down his Web site on Monday morning after getting about 250,000 hits. He managed to get the site back up after moving to a service provider with greater capacity.

Apparently the kid has been featured on lesser known news sources as well.

Here's a list of stuff I've been wanting to write, but haven't for some reason or another:-

a) A Landing By The Gods:- The Forgotten History of Neeli Negara, The City of Blue
The little known story of Neeli Negara, and how it grew from a trading outpost of a dying empire, to become the crossroads of the known world.

b) 19 Apostles:- Celebrating The Merry Festival of Belgthor
Will ancient runes tell us what Hindu-Arabic numerals don't?

c)Gah! The Mysterious Case of a Quasi-Similar Letter
An evening of boredom, exploration, discovery, gore, carnage and failed dreams hidden behind the voluptous contours of one of the few quasi-similar letters known to Man.

d) It Takes Five To Punch... And Millions More To Culturize
Termed as one of the most complex of their kind, Indic calendar traditions are a hodge-podge of cultural traditions, mathematical laws, astronomical truths, superstitious beliefs, computational challenges and rich mythological narratives.

Indeed, amidst its leap days, missing months, and repeated years, the Indic Calendar System holds a secret that is but known only to a few among us.

e) Culturing Movement and The Movement of Cultures
A computational exploration into evolutionary processes that shape realities, virtual or otherwise.

e1) Plugging It In:- The Matrix of Sentinentiality
How emergent is the process of crossing reality?

Question: You guys can shame me into writing these, can't you?

A bit of googling brought up this very interesting document point out where exactly each of our nations are placed in the grand scheme of things.

Discuss.

The last two JE's have been on the new job. Which is not surprising; as you can imagine, I'm pretty excited about it all. I promise that the next one won't be on this; instead, it'll be on The Sultanate of Jhumritalayya after which it'll be on The Mysterious Case of the Quasi-Similar Letter. But more on those later.

So, went to Mission Control (current location) today to meet the rest of the team and check the place out myself. Unsurprisingly, the folks there seemed a tad ashamed by the current office; it's all but a small-ish garage room in an incubation center in a local university (although, thankfully, there was air-conditioning in the room). There were four or five comps strewn around one corner, with a fax/modem/copier/printer machine to the side. There was a mini-fridge next to it that someone brought over from their dorm room, as also a couple of business-plan awards on the other side of the room. The folks seem to be into it; they were talking about entering yet another competition, only this one is in India (so, to take an international perspective, it's only for the name rather than the seed money, which isn't quite as exciting when you convert it into US Dollars). We'll apparently be shifting over to a newer, bigger (better?) office next month or the month after that.

We'll be signing the agreement sometime next week (so still keeping my fingers crossed and all that), and I'll start work on the Monday after that.

Incidentally, we were talking about passions and interests, and it turned out that some of the folks there won a recent Microsoft competition [which metlin would know all about ;-) ] by programming Mindstorms creations... which naturally led me to talk about, among other things, my Lego addiction, Escher, Lego's current financial problems, before finally talking about this c000l website with loads of neat links and an online journal called Slashdot. Which is when it came out.

Let's just say, a warm welcome to The Team to this corner of /. Haven't said anything I haven't, or wouldn't, say on your face folks, but wonderful having you here. :-)

Yup, that was quick and painless. Got the job.

The offer is for a full-time software engineer at a local start-up here; the team's pretty small (which is what I was looking for; the experience at grunt-work at large corporations wasn't exactly note-worthy) and the pay is relatively pretty good (the estimate is the offer is at least 10% more than what they're paying at Accenture's local branch and a full 50% more than Barclay's or Apple's entry-level salaries).

Three downsides so far. Note this is a startup, so there are no office-hours, only deadlines. That is to say, work could, very well, include staying over at the workplace at night and so on. I did a quick survey of current job conditions all around, and have come to the conclusion that this is actually quite normal these days all across Asia [in fact, some say it is worse in Indian companies like Bharti Telecom, which in a way, is extremely amusing for me; my recollection of work-culture in Indian organisations isn't exactly positive ;-) ] So I really can't complain about that.

The second is about the company's viability. The founders started the company only last July after their graduation and are currently doing two major projects (needing, apparently, immediate staffing). Which of course, isn't saying much about their long-term viability, although they seem to have gotten some heavy seed funding from a major source here, but hey, that's what makes working in startups so exciting. Things work best when they are on the Verge of Chaos.

The only thing I haven't been able to negotiate myself was on the start date. Ideally, I would have wanted to start from Feb 1st onwards, after perhaps a trip back home; CEO Dude on the phone sounded quite desperate for me to start on Monday itself. Told them I'll talk it over when I get to their office later in the afternoon. At the very least, I'll try to negotiate for a firm holiday date to look forward to, and then work 24/7 till then. Kinda important for me; been more than a year now since I went home to family.

But anyway, the primary reason I was interested in start-ups like this was to improve my technical skills; figured the best way to do it is to immerse myself in a high-performance team that is better capable than me. Let's see how much of that will survive.

Will be very interesting to meet the rest of the team later in the day; the way I see it, work satisfaction in programming jobs depends on how your team is.

And oh, if you're due to fly to South East Asia sometime next week for Chinese New Year, do let me know. There might be a waterfall-side party. ;-)

So I got an interview call from a local startup for the post of a software engineer. The interview was fun, actually, the folks there seemed interested in, or at least amused by, my resume (got some, ah, real weird stuff out there). They seemed pretty informal about it all, and, if I may venture a guess, positive as well. Said they'll call me up tomorrow and let me know if the job is mine or not.

Let's see.

But I'm mysteriously blocked for ideas now, and I have just about two hours only to send a birthday greeting to my dad! :@

So, as you all know, I've now graduated from university in three and a half years and am staying off-campus now. Most of you also know that I live on a beautiful tropical island, and that, while I didn't grow up here, I did co-incidentally spend the last three and a half years here and have mostly grown to like it (although I have no illusions on where home really is; it isn't here). While I'm familiar with most parts of the island, there are many areas which are knew to me, and, as such, wouldn't mind exploring it further, if only to get my geo-sense right.

I started with the nearby tropical forest. Trekked into it, as a matter of fact.

Now, as urban human agglomerations go, this tropical island is one heck of a place to be. Not that it's exciting or swinging, like other Australo-Asian megalopolises are (or more precisely, not as exciting or swinging), just that, it is waay different from anything you've seen so far. This is of course, entirely anecdotal, and perhaps, only dimunitively insightful, but I've always had a certain sense of cities; usually find my way even through crowded, chaotic cities with this spider-sense. Disturbingly for me, that has been failing for me lately, and it is this apparent failure that I've been trying to correct lately.

Why does my geo-sense fail on this island? Well, for starts, the structure of the city is entirely topsy-turvy:- the suburbs are in the middle of the city. Downtown, in contrast, is on the southern edge of the city, bordering the Great Sea, while the industrial wastelands lie to the north, and further to the west. The west has other interesting areas as well of course, more on that later, but for now, this is fairly enough to get a basic picture of where I live.

I live in the Suburbs. Middle of the Island. North of Downtown. Near the Forest. On its western edge, actually.

Coming up next... the Forest and the many historical secrets it holds.

A dated, but interesting piece on Norman Borlaug, the agricultural scientist who, along with other luminaries of his generation, helped India (and indeed, the US) overcome its (their) food scarcity.

The article seems to suggest that Norman Borlaug is forgotten; of course he isn't, even today, he's considered a hero in the agricultural scientists' community in India. I should know; met him once in a function at my mom's research institute, after which I quoted his speech liberally in my school report on Indian agriculture. ;-)

I might mention he is revered in other circles as well; if I'm not wrong, the IT(ES) company, Satyam for instance he was the chief guest at the opening ceremony at their Software Technology Center campus.

(The title is a pun on a quote from his speech then; he said something on reaching for the stars, for, even if it's only to be covered in stardust)

BBC and other news sites are reporting on the new blogging sensation in this part of the world:- King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.

The site, as it goes, is one of the strangest blogging sites you'll ever see; most entries are written in French (Cambodia, like Vietnam and Laos, was under French colonial rule, but you knew that already) and then scanned. In fact, all of them seemed to be mostly scribbled in with little concern for the printed lines of what appears to be a notebook; there's everything from what he had for dinner the previous day, to annotations to published articles, to even some (select?) personal correspondence.

And oh, in case you were interested, his office uses Outlook, although he himself prefers to read his emails printed.

The King also apparently has an interest in making films, but doesn't allow that to take away time from him that he could spend in devoting himself to "State affairs and to the service of [his] country and [his] people."

Particularly, films like Apsara ('Apsara' means 'divine enchantress' in Sanskrit, and there's a whole body of literature devoted to studying their occurence in the mythistories of South and South East Asia), featuring, well, his own daughter, the Royal Princess Bopha Devi, that shows,

"modern day Cambodia with its beautiful capital, its excellent road system, the cleanliness which surround us, a rule in the Cambodia of the 50's and 60's and, lastly, our army which may be small but is disciplined, well organized, with an Air Force, an armored corps and a modern artillery, sufficient to protect our national independence and our territorial integrity"

through classical Khmer ballet.

A statement that, I must assert, seems chillingly naive in hindsight. For, it was only a year later that Cambodia saw the beginning of one of the bloodiest insurgencies in modern history. Dare I say, the bloodiest.

We had earlier discussed responsible journalism by what I then called as India's favourite washrag.

Now we're back at it:- we now explore why , within the two opening sentences of one of its weekly columns, Outlook has once again demonstrated why journalists need to take lessons in history, and economics, that even (unemployed, just graduated) CS grads know about:- in 1948, QoL metrics in Singapore, like S. Korea, were equivalent to that of sub-Saharan Africa then.

To suggest that Singapore, S. Korea, or by extension, Sri Lanka, had a high standard of living in 1948, and then to suggest that Sri Lanka was, or is, unique in "having literacy rates and healthcare levels comparable to the West" is to completely ignore the real lessons on trade and development from a place closer home, Kerala (and indeed, to take a counter-example, Burma).

Which is not to defend Bhandaranaike's insipid socialist policies (or, to be sure, the alleged communist society that Kerala has; it isn't, btw, more on that later) of course, just to point out an error blatant enough to make me wring my hands in anger.

WHEREAS we all are cricket fanatics out here and are desperate for updates on cricket scores,

WHEREAS ESPN/Star Sports have so far refused to show the uninterrupted, live broadcast of international cricket matches for the said cricket fanatics,

WHEREAS Internet-based cricket scorecards such as Cricinfo and Rediff crash at the most critical of cricketing moments,

WHEREAS XML is naturally teh rox0r when it comes to Internet technologies,

AND WHEREAS we all are also geeks out here and look to solve problems facing us,

LET IT BE RESOLVED that we shalt explore the use of technologies we know, primarily XML, in generating a creative solution,

LET IT BE FURTHER RESOLVED that this is but an attempt at fun and is low priority,

ALSO, Shriya is hot.

For all you cricket-lovers out there:- AMAZING match going on at the MCG. Aussies off to a flying start, before Agarkar strikes with two wickets in consecutive balls, and is now down to 89/4. The two teams seem to have picked up their strands just where they left off last Monday.

Live audio feed available here. Scores updated here.

Perhaps this is a good place to muse on the intelligence of a sports channel management that broadcasts cricket to Afghanistan and Nigeria while ignoring the even-more cricket-crazy junta (that's In-glish for 'public'; from Hindi 'janata' == 'public') in South East Asia.

Oh, dare I mention the irony of them broadcasting to the world FROM Singapore?

Update: Australia all out for 288 (scorecard). Not bad at all, methinks; India did well to restrict them to that. Let's see how the Indian innings plays out.

Update 2: Sachin and Sehwag picking up the momentum. RRR creeping up to 6.29. Hmmm.

Update 3: Ind 134/1 at 25 overs. RRR slightly down to 6.19, but the wickets are in hand, so I'd say the game is evenly poised at this stage.

Update 3.1: Sachin OUT. One handed catch by Ponting. Ufff.

Update 4: Exciting last ten overs here. 75 runs in 60 balls. Ganguly and Yuvraj on strike. Can India make it?

Update 5: Singles coming through.

Update 4.1: SIX by Yuvraj. Ooooooooh.

Update 4.2: Ind 238/4. Yuvraj 18* and Ganguly 70* on strike. Required: 51 off 42 balls.

Update 4.3: Ind 246/4 (44). FOUR by Ganguly. Required: 40 off 34 balls.

[Announcement: Will be working on an XML-ish scorecard updater over the weekend. Interested, leave a message here]

Update 4.4: Yuvraj OUT! Ind 257/5 (45). Forget the nails, I've almost bitten even my fingers almost off.

Update 4.5: Ganguly RUN OUT! Tension's building out there at MCG. Is this the beginning of the end? Can a debutant deliver a win for India?

Update 4.6: 31 runs off 23 balls. Here's what CricInfo wrote about the Ganguly run out:-

ganguly wants the single bangar not awake ganguly has to go back bowler turns around and throws down the stumps ganguly in the dressing room by the time the tv umpire gives him out

Update 4.7: TWO dot balls. India's tail exposed horridly.

Update 4.8: Agarkar CAUGHT. Arright folks, this is the end. So close, yet so far.

Update 4.9: Ah the pleasures of having a debutant out there in a high-intensity situation. Another wicket. Insert discussion on tails here.

Update 4.10: 23 in 10 balls. Yeah.