Its been an amazing experience the past two days, here's why:

BITS Pilani Goa Campus, as part of QUARK 2010 has organized a live webinar called TEDx BITS Goa. For those who are not aware of TED, its the coolest platform where ideas from all aspects of life are discussed and spread by awesome people. I could attend only a single session of the many sessions which you check out here.

Pranav Mistry with his 'Sixth sense' device, which can make your daily newspaper into the 'daily prophet' from harry potter where you can actually see the pictures in motion and that too just on your normal newspaper. You could even just make an action of clicking pictures with your fingers and the image would be automatically clicked and stored somewhere on your home PC. Integrates computing into our daily life.

Pawan Sinha, Visual Neuroscientist, has done great work in identifying relationship between blindness, visual learning and autism and his project has done wonders to several people in India. Romulus Whitaker with his conservation efforts for the king cobra and gharial, two of India's most magnificent creatures in the wild, showed how our daily lives could affect our very own survival.

The other big thing was WAVES Winter 2009 organized in a span of 7 months after the shift to semester 1 of the academic calender, has proved that 'We BITSians can make waves wherever we go' (Quoted from Anu Hassan's innaugral waves speech, more content from DoJMA).

The Sand sculpture made by the Internationally acclaimed Sand Artist, Mr. Sudarshan Patnaik based on the theme of global warming was an amazing display that enthralled one and all.


Numerous events, worshops, amzing participation from all over the country with sponsors lik Chings, Ibibo, NetCOre and the like with prizes like offers to acts in Pritish Nandy Communications productions for two, 150 hours of recording in Xion labs, delhi, acting school admit to Kishore Namit Kapoor acting school which has alumnus like Hrithik Roshan and Priyanka Chopra and judges like Vidya Balan for the Fash P, this is truly India's hottest cultural festival.

A piece of work from Arts and Deco among the numerous that dot the landscape during WAVES, a tribute to Michael Jackson.


The Legacy- BITS Pilani Goa Campus, WAVES Winter 2009 and Marco \m/. Make sure you don't miss any edition of this event!

Grooving to DJ Suketu today, KK tomorrow and Parikrama and Sea Rock on Sunday night. Not to forget the dance worshops, the prom night, mocktail, 3D photography, ambigram and other cool workshops..this is an amazing week of our live :)

Good night!

Scientists say that 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe limit for humanity. Learn more about 350 – what it means, where it came from, and how to get there. Click here


24th October, 2009 - Benaulim

Heute ist mein letzter Tag hier in Augsburg, ich möchte all jenen danken, die dazu beigetragen, dass dieses eines der besten Erfahrung, die ich je hatte.
(You guessed it right, two months here and all German I know is .......... this much!)

Kinder

I met all kinds of them here; the big, the small, the naughty, the budhas, the mowglis, cindrellas, all disney characters.... The best part was having a kindergarten right next to where I live and be defeated while playing football with them. :P

Universitat Augsburg



I spent most of my time here in amazing company of people at the software engineering department working on my organic computing project and learning plenty new stuff which I can broadly classify into layman keywords like robots, simulations, traffic, manufacturing systems, touch screen computing (Microsoft Surfaces), safety and everything else that you can connect with them. I would thank Prof Reif (Even though he had been all over the world and I met him like 2-3 times only , that was adequate) and the DAAD for the opportunity and of course Mr. Khaldy and his team for the Berlin 'towel' trip.


The university did provide a lot of glimpses into European culture as the above picture does not illustrate. I added Mexico and Turkey to the places i would go to and met people from Central Asia (China,Japan, Kazakhastan, Afghanistan,Pakistan, Iran,Palestine, Iraq, Turkey,...), Eastern Europe (Hungary, Romania, Russia,...), Africa, North America (Canada and U.S ob), North pole (Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Eskimoes,.. ) , Australia, Honululu and of course my favorite being South America (Mexico :P and maybe venezuela, Brazil, ...). Apart from the numerous Barbeque parties, the picnics, hikes and trips I learned a lot of history from all the discussions and deliberations with Mathhias, Frank, Jan-Philip, Nina, Hella, Flo, Simon, Kurt, Alwin, Andrea & Andreas, Michael,... and yeah thank you all for the amazing company!

And my interest in all kinds of Flora and Fauna, animals and birds helped me gather knowledge like which animal is responsible for the maximum number of deaths in Germany.


Nein, it wasn't that mean looking creature, but rather the cute looking Hippo!

The very efficient and exorbitant transport system constituting the trams, S-bahns( Surface trains) and U-bahns (Underground metros), buses that are long enough to be mistaken for trains and the Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo (which the entire world knows about and they come from here!), Toyotas and Suzuki's and people being impressed by the Nano and yet guzzling gears on their sedans on the AutoBahn @240km/hr with ease. The bicycle friendly roads with streets and signals especially meant for riding bicycles and the routes along the rapids which are used for the Kayaking World Championships constructed during the Munich Olympics 1972.


The Food which I still am not able to name but was amazingly delicious, the desserts and chocolates and icecreams and the Turkish food I discovered just recently and not to forget the Italian Pizza's which were cheaper than bananas and water made sure I got my daily bread and butter: milch brot and chocolate cream to be precise. I also had my fair share of cooking and burning my taste buds with the chilli powder and garam masala added to camouflage the taste of the food.(Mayonnaise and Sauce too helped :P)

There are too many things here to thank, the friends on gtalk, facebook and orkut who stood by me in all those times of 'imboredandineedyoutoentertainmesomehow!'.India is famous and for plenty of reasons as you can see from the city gallery shop above.However what came as a bigger surprise is below:



Well i had met people who had been to Goa and loved it and rest who were curious about its beaches and spirituality (!?). Well I love Goa for my own reasons but nevertheless I had people who shared common objectives here too. That's some globalization!

..and yeah not to forget the costliest smses I had to send for both silly and sweet reasons.Thanks :)

So Danke Schön, Auf Wiedersehen.

Chao

See you in Goa :)

Pratik Mandrekar

This should help you while away some time while you yawn..

Hello, reader! I am a young boy from the United States, and like most other American children such as me, it seems there is nothing I enjoy more than lazing about from morning until night, eating sweets, and wantonly disrespecting the wishes of my elders.

But I am beginning to realize that my behavior—and the behavior of all typical American young people like me—is in every way unacceptable. What is more, my lack of obedience goes completely unchecked, since my parents, teachers, and government authorities will do nothing to stop it.

Sleep, eating, and Mickey Mouse. That's what I like best. Most days, when I am not gorging myself on cheese hamburgers or wasting my time collecting baseballs, I tend to speak to adults as if they were my schoolmates or mere common insects, instead of figures to be feared and respected. Did you know the amount of effort I put forth in my daily life is not even one-tenth that of children my age in other countries?

Continue reading here

Politics

Nation Descends Into Chaos As Throat Infection Throws Off Obama's Cadence

July 14, 2009

WASHINGTON—Looting, fires, and mass rioting swept across the nation today when a mild throat infection threw off President Barack Obama's normally reassuring and confident speech cadence, sources in every major city reported.

"My fellow [cough] Americans, please [cough] remain calm," Obama said during a nationally televised emergency address to the nation that caused the Dow Jones to plunge 50 points with every cough, sniffle, or wheeze. "Now is not the time for [cough]…everything's [cough]. Stop it."

Without the president's fluid, almost poetic tone to reassure them, the American people have abandoned all semblance of law and order and descended into a nationwide panic, burning buildings to the ground, disobeying police, and relinquishing all hope for the future.

Read more here

and some more crap here :

Grandfather Disrespected In Own Home

AKRON, OH—Though he is wise, benevolent, and the eldest male member of his family, grandfather Jerry Morgenthau, 74, was shown a degree of filial piety more fitting a dog or pig Tuesday when younger relatives disrespected him in his own home.

Reports indicate the retired steelworker and patriarch—who, unlike his insolent offspring, has cultivated great virtue in his time upon this earth—was ignored and patronized by his son's family throughout their brief visit.

Morgenthau's own firstborn child displayed unforgivable disobedience by smiling and nodding while dismissing his father's expert counsel on matters ranging from home maintenance to the best methods for attaining low-cost airfare to Florida.

"Okay, Dad," said Derek Morgenthau, who should be harshly chided for failing to glorify his ancestors.

P.S. - That's all that I could do today 'coz i had to put this up for someone even though I have been busy doing stuff..

chao