NY and DC trip day 1

It's long that anyone posted some topics here. :(
So I thought I'll take the initiative to write something, cause my semester practically got over today. Last week I , together with a few friends went to visit New York and Washington. We rented a car on Sunday April 20th and headed to New York at around noon. In between we stopped to some place in Connecticut to have a small break and then we continued our journey to New York. We reached New Jersey at around 4 in the evening and checked in our Hotel. After an hour's rest we headed to New York. We were at Times Square at around 7pm. Times square was full of people even though it was a Sunday evening. The place near times square rocks. We park our car in the 7th avenue and amazingly we got free parking. :)
We walked around in times square watching the most colorful American city. Then we headed towards the Rockefeller centre . We had to walk 2 blocks to get there from times square. There is a beautiful garden in front of Rockefeller center and behind there are flags of all the countries which are decorated in white lights. Then it was the time to go to the top of the rock, on the roof of Rockefeller center. We had to stand in a huge queue before we entered the building. We went thorough a minor security check before we got in. There again we had to wait in a long queue before we could step in the high speed elevator to finally reach the top of the rock (well... at least to the 63rd floor. The elevator doesn't go to the top). We walked around there for a while before we finally took the escalator to reach the top. The view from there was fantastic. I would suggest whoever gets a chance to come to New York must go there during night for the view. It is worth your money and effort :)
At around 11 in the night, we were out in the streets of New York and surprisingly we found out that even New York sleeps as most of the shops were closed, but luckily the Burger King near our car was open. Then we drove to ground zero, to see the remnants of the world trade center. They are still trying to clear the area and it looks so sad. But they are planning to build a new world trade center in the same place by 2012.
Then we headed for the battery park to get a view of the Statue of Liberty at night. But it's actually too far from there to get a good picture. So we headed back to our hotel with the plan to visit Statue of Liberty and other places in New York on the next day.

To be continued...

Universal existence of Bathroom writers and the Economics behind it:-

After visiting two continents and gathering information from the friends in almost all continents, I can assert that Zealot toilet scholars exist everywhere in the world. I will concentrate towards positive part of supposedly negative thinking. People who destroy there energy in sketching graphical description of their friends, posting mobile number of number-2 type girls and many other innovative useless things can use there intellect for the welfare of mankind. I want to stress on the reach of these bathroom scholars. It's my experience, please do not take it as a satire on those intellectual thinker. In my view, it's most recently discovered place to speak out. Around 8 months back, I have seen first slogan to boycott Beijing Olympics in the toilet of Universite Paris1 Pantheonne-Sorbonne(Tobiac Campus) just below the sketch of a nude girl.

"WE WANT FREE TIBET, BOYCOTT BEIJING OLYMPICS"

Now, Everyone is well aware of the reach of this newly discovered media. The fire which is initiated inside toilet of Paris-1 made French president bold enough to boycott starting ceremony of Olympics as he was a regular user of that toilet. A lot of Shahi clinics running their Business from the toilets. As an Economist, I will appreciate bidding for the right of pasting pamphlets in Indian toilets. It will raise a good amount to maintain ill-conditioned Indian toilets. Public toilets are most widely appreciated media to speak out your feeling, which will attract common people's attention in most effective way because while peeing people suppose to be most relax(Ref. Birbal's Theorem) in this fast paced world. It's my appeal to Indian AIDS awareness society to start their campaign from Public toilet in stead of starting it with Shilpa-Richard smooching sessions. I will emphasize on the selectivity of quality of posters. For example in our ISI toilet we can display posters having some mind-blowing, revolutionary Hypothesis.......I am want to list one of them named Safdar's Hypothesis.

Safdar's Hypothesis: There exist a simple random walk in n-manifolds and stupid B. Rajeev can not understand it.

Now, people will concentrate their mind in sketching possible path and closed formulas for simple random walk in place of designing logo of BAT-BALL tournament. So, what do you think about this mind blowing idea.............

This is one of my unpublished work as an Economist.

My experiences with Statistics

My total earning from tutoring Statistics is 100 pounds now :) The topics that I have taught are:-
1) Regression
2) Hypothesis testing
3) Non - Parametric tests

I am glad that I graduated from ISI and no matter how much I have hated Statistics (and, I still do), the course-work at ISI made me learn some basics of the topic. I have the confidence to read up on stuff and manually calculate everything for my students (and I am being paid 20 pounds an hour :D And, the number of my students is rising exponentially :D :D)!

Come to think of it, who would have thought I would actually tutor Statistics and be paid for it!

Moral:- Money is a good motivation to learn Statistics :P

fuck-wit-excellente

Here is a piece of conversation between me and a batch-mate of mine. This chap has been in UK since 1993. Lets just call him X for the time being.

X:- So, you are from India?
Me:- Yup [smile]!
X:- I like India.
Me:- Oh! Cool! Have you been there?
X:- Nope. Not yet.
[Pause]
X:- There are lots of Maharajas in India, no? Maharajas and Princes?
ME:- Not any more. That was before independence.
X:- [Pause] [Ponder] Do you have elephants in India?
Me:- Yeah. Loads.
X:- You guys use it as a taxi, right?
Me:- (!!??!?) errr... NO!
X:- [puzzled disbelief] But, I saw it in James Bond movie!
Me:- Thats a Goddamn movie mate! We have the same Taxis as you guys do.
X:- Oh [slightly disappointed]! Do you have snakes in India?
Me:- Yeah. In jungles.
X:- But, there are a lot of them in cities, no? They can come like-this-like-this [makes a slithering movement with hands] to the cities. And, they bite!!!
Me:- Dude! How often do you get to see snakes on the streets of London?
X:- Never seen 'em.
Me:- Precisely! Snakes hardly come to the city.
X:- But this is UK! And, THAT is India.
Me:- Oh yeah?
[I must say, I was getting amused by this guy's hopeless general knowledge. I had no idea that such exhibits managed to survive this world for 23 years and come to LSE as well]
[Awkward silence for a minute]
X:- Do you have loads of crocodiles in India?
Me:- Dude! Now you are pushing it.
X:- No! I want to go to India and swim in Ganges but I am scared of crocodiles.

I ran out of patience by then and told him I will see him later in class.

Another chick. She is British-Bangladeshi. She loves wearing loads of kajal so that she could look like Bipasha Basu (who, as she puts it, is a Bengal-tigress). Exhibit B here has also joined a facebook group titled Bangladeshi doesn't mean Bengali-Muslim, you dumb bitch!!! (note the extra exclamation marks). Fair enough. She is probably disappointed with other people's ignorance.

BUT,

she thinks that all Indians who have come to UK for the first time are "Fresh From Oven". And, everytime she looks at a male Indian postgrad or first year Indian undergrad (even those who were born and brought up in Malaysia/Australia/NZ/Hongkong) she gets a totally romantic feeling of them being village-boys. The other day she casually enquired whether the brands like Vogue and Nike existed in India. After being told that they pretty much do, she said, "But, in India, everyone is so poor!!! How do they manage?"

Well... yup. LSE is quite an interesting place to meet people.

Mission:- How to make ISI better?

An evil plan, I say! Here is an outline (Kindly drop-in your suggestions) :-
1) I make loads of money.
2) Mathew and Sid also make loads of money. So do others who wish to move to jobs.
3) 10 years down the line, pool in cash and start a separate institute. Same entrance procedure. Start with only undergrad.
4) Provide better salary to lecturers. And, MUCH BETTER stipends to students.
5) Offer more flexibility to students in choosing their specialization viz pure/app maths, comp sc, stat, physics.
6) Arrange for them to receive excellent tutoring from other colleges as well , if needed.
7) Work along CMI lines and have an industry sponsored comp sc and applied maths departments (which will also ensure students have places to consider once they finish undergrad)
8) Use our contacts and encourage students to take up internships and gain work-experience.
9) Again pulling strings to place students with the best of the firms here or abroad (By that time, we probably be in a decent position in some firm ourselves - maybe partners :P)
10) It will be hard to implement it for first couple of years but once people start getting placed, the rest will fall in place. The entire motive is to provide a suitable environment to both - the ones who wish to be researchers and the once who wish to move to industry. And, a very suitable one as well!
11) I believe that our batch-mates/seniors/juniors/their contacts would be willing to join the place for we will ensure an environment conducive to fruitful research :)
11) But then we put money in it! What do we get out of it? :) It will be a totally dumb-ass move not to have a way to make more cash out of our cash. I have a plan. Somewhat. But not a good idea to put it on the blog.

So yeah! Thats a sort-of vague plan. I am sure, things will change over time. We will be able to improve on it. Maybe change a few things here and there. But this is the basic skeleton. And, I am not being altruistic. Its just a way to give students a better platform AND make money for ourselves.

3 incentives to visit Chicago!

Hey Guys I give you three reasons to visit my place.
1) Food cooked by me.
2) Awesome tandoori dishes at Gareeb Nawaz starting from $3 a plate.
3) Cricket in a Basketball court.

The last point is reason enough to come here. We actually played this week and it's soooo fun. Occasionally there were some deranged people asking us when we would be over so they can play "Basketball". But it's fun to show them that for once their court is being used for a better reason! Huh.

Perfect Set!

With the joining of Tunna, every single* BMath 04 - 07 student is now on the team of contributors to the blog. Now, all we need to do is start writing :P

Dada, kammo, Pranav:- Europe news please!
Mayank:- क्या कर रहा है बे ?
Deepak:- Stat news etc?
Deepro:- Yo bro!
Tunna:- किधर हो? ISI - D? Post stuff!
Miyan:- Opinion on quantum-mechanics-chicks in US? Hmm?

Hoping to see more posts!
Cheers!
Shivam

* - technically!

Terry Pratchett diagnosed with Alzheimer's

Click here for a report.

In response, The man said:-
"I Aten't Dead Yet!"
"I shall very soon be on medication that in theory should blow some of the cobwebs away and I hope my typing speed and accuracy will improve. Meanwhile, we are in contact with various organization and researchers and keeping in touch with developments in the field, which is something of a Cinderella compared with other major illnesses."

Terry added a few extra dimension to humour and fantasy. Hail Pratchett!

Few More Generic photos!!!

Chepokda @jap restaurant.












Our Tunnada®.

Unmaad - fashion show

During Unmaad ( refer previous post by me ) I was doing a sponsored round in the fashion show where we had to walk around with L.G. phones....very gay yes...but one of my friends managed a halfway decent photograph.

However I want to keep on record that I still think my best ever snap is the one with the towels and bucket. hehe