2000

Speaking of viruses, anyone heard of a virus called ‘Hanson.scr’? I got this mail from home that had nothing but an attachment, and I’m sure it’s a virus. It keeps sending itself to me, and tries connecting to the Internet when I run it.

IBM has a virus hype alert site, which lists all kinds of virus hoaxes. Incidentally, some people are worried that their web pages are infected.

The gale caused all kinds of trouble to the underground trains. When I got on at Newbury Park, there was an announcement that trains would be running slow today because there were trees on the track. It wasn’t too far after that accident, and the British Rail was running slowly as it is. Looked like the underground would match it. Then there was another delay – signal confusion this time. ...

Sheer laziness kept me in bed till 9:30AM. Then I got dressed, and logged on to the computer, only to be greeted with “I’ve set the clock an hour behind, because it’s Daylight Saving Time. Check if it’s OK.” or something like that. Neat! I truly got an extra hour. I mean, I actually did something useful. So I told Ashwin (an exchange student from UCLA) that I’d gained an hour of life. ...

The gale caused all kinds of trouble to the underground trains. When I got on at Newbury Park, there was an announcement that trains would be running slow today because there were trees on the track. It wasn’t too far after that accident, and the British Rail was running slowly as it is. Looked like the underground would match it. Then there was another delay – signal confusion this time. ...

It was a rather busy week. Nothing much happened. I realized that I’d been roaming around too much, and that it was time to get to some assignments. Not that much work was done. Understandable, since most of my time was spent reading movie scripts – notably The World is Not Enough. Diwali was not at all bad, considering that most of it was spent away from home. After spending 10 hours in front of the computer, I walked home from the Ilford station, when I was greeted with a BANG! It was with pure delight that I turned around, just in time to see a rocket exploding. It took me 45 minutes to walk home that night, watching as I was all the sights in the sky. Never, even in India, have I seen such lovely firework displays. The noise was probably a BIT subdued, but I wouldn’t even be sure of that. The place even smelt like home! I did hear the comment that “Indians have to bring noise pollution even here, do they?” Sure. We make ourselves at home. We lit a lamp, and that was about it for Diwali. ...

I had a bet with Kalidas about which of our pages would get more web hits in October. Of course, October isn’t over yet, but with 12,740 on mine against 2,234, I think I have a decent chance of a pizza.

We’re doing a course on Dynamics of Strategy, and using some system dynamics software for this. Vensim and Ithink are powerful simulation tools to think about business.

Life Magazine has picked the best photos of the year. The squeamish may wish to avoid the Science section featuring the birth of Sarah. You have been warned.

Word detective traces the origins of strange words. For instance, Yahoo means an ignorant brute. Hamburgers have nothing to do with ham – they’re so called because they come from Hamburg, Germany. Beefeaters are the guards at the The Tower of London (Yeomen guards). Word detective doesn’t know why they’re called that, but I can confirm first-hand that the Yeomen guards don’t know why themselves.

I haven’t done ANY work in the last week, except play Moria. I’ve deleted it. But not before I got to Level 26, could cast a Fire Bolt spell, and slayed a few dragons.

We visited Oxford in the morning. It was a tour with the Indian YMCA. Though I slept through most of the beauty of the English country side, Oxford itself was a classic example. We went up a tower from which we could see most of Oxford. It was a small town, (about an hour-and-half from London) with lots of spires and quite an old architecture. The Oxford University is split into many colleges, Magdalen (pronounced Maud-len) being the most famous of the lot. Lewis Caroll (of Alice in Wonderland) and Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings) hailed from here. We went first to Christchurch college. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as the grass there, with the possible exception of Hampton Court Palace. From there, we took a walk along a river to Magdalen college. ...

After lazing around the whole morning, I went to the London eye this evening. The London eye is this huge giantwheel that’s probably one of the tallest structures in London. When on top, you’re supposed to be able to see all the important places in London. It was arranged by the LBS for the exchange students, but not many had turned up, since it was raining. So we got on, and despite my fear of heights, it was a nice experience. You do get to see quite a bit. The only problem was that it got over too soon, and since we didn’t have a guide, I didn’t know what most of the buildings were anyway. I did spot St. Paul’s Cathedral, which looks lovely, and another building which I’m told is a famous gay club (of which there are tonnes in London). ...

The McKinsey presentation was this evening at Lord’s. Yes, that’s the Lord’s Cricket Ground. So at 7PM, there was this huge crowd of people strolling over to the Nursery Pavillion, wondering why Lord’s had a square cricket pitch. Google and AskJeeves haven’t given me an answer yet. McKinsey’s presentation had two high points. First, it was mercifully brief. The entire presentation was for 2 or 3 minutes, and all that this partner said was, “Hey, we love LBS. You know about us. So we’re all standing here, here, and here. Come over and talk to us.” ...

I had to attend the Bain presentation today at 10AM, so I tried getting to LBS early. I started at 8:45AM. But for some reason, the train crawled on. The engineer couldn't figure out why himself. Anyway, as a result, the train was nearly half-an-hour late. Now, if the Bangalore Mail came in half-an-hour late, I'd be thankful. But here, it's gotten to the point where one makes appointments relying on the efficiency of the British Rail. Well, it's a lesson, I guess. ...

There’s a stall that sells theatre tickets for half price at Leicester Square, so I went there in the morning. It opened only at 12 noon, so rather than waiting, I just bought tickets for the balcony. 15.50 pounds didn’t seem to much. The musical was “The Phantom of the Opera”, running at Her Majesty’s Theatre. There were 6 of us, and we went to the show. That was when I realized why the tickets were so cheap. They were on the second row of the third floor. Which meant that we had to crane our necks to see anything. What made it worse was that the lady in front of me refused to sit still. But after a while, I got used to it. ...

Since 1995, I’ve been playing a game called Moria. It’s based on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It’s a text-based game, but it’s amazingly addictive.

Yes, I haven’t been updating for a while. Problem is, I’ve been doing too much and writing too little. Let’s see if I can fix some of that now. First of all, people can’t seem to tell where I’m from. This is despite the fact that I’m the only one with a moustache in the whole batch, and am therefore the one person whose name no one forgets. I mean, I lost my name card after the very first class. Yet all the Professors talk to me like long-lost friends. Anyway… ...

OK, it’s not in chronological order. So what? Some of us decided to go to The House of Mirth. Figured it might be worth watching a movie at London. May as well see what the theatres are like. Besides, Gillian Andersen would probably be worth it. (Incidentally, I learnt that it’s pronounced ‘jillian’, not ‘gillian’ with a hard ‘g’. While we’re on the subject of pronounciations, I may as well admit that I learnt ‘buffet’ rhymes with ‘ooph-hey’, ‘genre’ is pronounced ‘jaan-ra’, ‘Renoir’ is ‘Ren-wa’, ‘deluxe’ is ‘deloo’, ‘Nice’ is ’niece’, ‘rendezvous’ is ‘rondevoo’, and so on. England does teach one how to pronounce French :-) ...

A busy weekend ahead. A night of Antakshari, followed by a day at Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, an evening at The Phantom of the Opera, and to cap it off, Madame Tussauds and the London Planetarium!