I,Me,Myself

Hi, I am Rickesh T.N. For the curious among you my full name is Rickesh Thandalai Natarajan (and NOT Rickesh Tamil Nadu). The derivation of the name can be mapped to Rigveda (seriously, I have no clue beyond that). Being born in Secunderabad and brought up in 6 different places – Jammu, Pune, Vishakhapatnam, Chennai, Bangalore and a short stint (of 4 years) at Mangalore. But I prefer to associate myself with Bangalore more than with any other place. 

Obviously, my schooling was in more than one school – Kendirya Vidyalayas at Southern Command, Pune; Naval Armament Depot, Vishakhapatnam;  Heavy Vehicles Factory, Chennai;  National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore. Thanks to Indian Army that I was able to study all over India and this exposed me to varied cultures.

During my schooling I was known for being the naughtiest and most talkative pupil in the class. This meant my parents had to show their prompt presence in all Parents-Teachers Meeting, something that the parents of other kids did not have to worry about. It became more or less a practice by majority of teachers to make me sit in front desk – right below their nose.  But the talking never stopped! My most hated subjects were languages. I still remember my English teacher beat me up for scoring a centum in Math and a mere 60 in English. This continued through till the 10+2. I have never ever scored above 75% in any of the languages. 

Another incident from school which always cracks me up goes as follows:

In 9^th standard, as usual I am on the first bench and we are in the Science class. My friend (sitting next to me) comments “The water (H₂O) in that reaction that teacher wrote on the black board, is it pure water or dirty water?” Naturally, I burst out laughing. The teacher caught us both and asked what it was about? I explained and, next minute, we were out of the class!

Getting to the college part, I pursued my graduation at NITK, Surathkal, Mangalore. I was one of the few students who had come from a Biology background and taken up Information Technology.  I had no clue what C programming was and what those stdio.h, stdlib.h, etc. were. In the very first C programming lab of first year I literally had no idea what a bubble sort or a palindrome was.  Thanks to the few buddies in class somehow they taught me how to code and clear through the first year. From the second year onwards things seemed to get better because of a good friend circle. I still recall all those hostel enjoyments, birthday parties, senior-junior interactions, hostel corridor cricket, corridor Diwali, launching Diwali rockets into the blocks of seniors, Holi celebrations, and many more activities. Apart from these activities, our 3-4 months holiday span enabled me to crack into two summer projects during the 2^nd and 3^rd year holidays.  Thanks to those projects and the professors, it was a great learning and introduced me to the inter-disciplinary domain of computer vision.

During the final year I got placed in Tektronix through campus placements. In July I complete 2 years in Tektronix and all this time I have been part of the Cerify team in the Video Product Line. My major work has been in algorithms for baseband video checks. I learnt a lot in the last two years at Tek.

My hobbies are writing blogs, travelling to remote places, teaching, adventurous sports (parasailing/gliding, flying a two-seater plane) and trekking. The highest priority in my ‘bucket list’ is sky diving and scuba diving. I hope to strike out one of the two this year. In addition, I am a Facebook hater, Twitter and Quora lover.

The small world......

Earlier there was a saying like every person in the world is connected to every other person in this through just 8 people in between. For example every Indian is just less then 8 links away from US president Obama. You can take a check over it. every Indian is known by his/her local panchayat or thasildhar.The thaslidhar knows the district collector. The district collector will know the Chief Minister. The chief minister obviously will know the Prime minister and the prime minister will know  the US Prime minister. That adds a count of 4 links between you and the US president. That just doesn't end there, it can be scaled up to random US citizen or any person in this world. We are just less then 8 links away from anyone on this planet. 

In a recent survey it was found that Facebook the world renown social networking giant has reduced this gap of 8 degrees to just 4.74. That means every human is just 5 people away from every other person. That means we are more closer then ever before. But that just doesn't end there,we all will have thousands of numbers in our mobile or may be a lac also. How many of those numbers have we ever made a call or msged anytime.We all are just a msg or a phone call away. But the very notion in our heads make us feel that person is busy and may not talk to me (the usual letting down feeling) will let you down from contacting them. But there are few people who are around you who just know you well and may read your mind out well even before you say it. 

            But as a matter of fact everyone around you and people you are less acquainted with, have a good side and a bad side. If we tend to see the good side only always. We will never know  him or her completely ever. As people never show up their bad side during their first few visits and meetings.There is a saying "world's closest relationships have fought more battles among themselves then with their enemies". We don't have to look for any other example anywhere else. Few of us reading this will be having siblings with whom we were born, there has not been a single day when you have not fought with them, the more the siblings have fought the closer they are. Believe it or not, its a fact, a day without them makes you miss that day. But people at times have never got this may be cause they were never born with someone. Which will not make them value those fights with someone as a matter of getting close to them. They tend to miss a person only when they are totally gone or where thrown away by them because of a simple misunderstanding Or they will never miss that someone ever. Whether it was for good or for not. Only time will let them know or will not ever. 

        To know someone completely it is near impossible to do it in this lifetime. If you like something in them just see that. Don't try to find faults in them, the list would go on and on. The same is applicable to you as well ,No one is perfect neither you nor them. People are like the way they are because of what they had gone through in their past and how they grew up and various other environmental factors. So to be with someone always like them for what they are and not for what they are not. The more you expect from someone the more you are seeking yourself into disappointment. 

interpersonal interaction VS the new age Virtual interaction

The new age of information technology might have brought two people living in 2 different continents separated by  millions of kilometers together. But has it actually replaced the age old method of meeting someone you like, your best friends or anyone.?? To be precise it can never replace the direct face-2-face meetings and roaming together. Talking bullshit over and over. Cracking PJ's after PJ's. All those can never be got in a virtual call or skype or any form of new age tech based meetings. There is always a sense that you miss something.
There will be few who would negotiate that, the phone calls,msgs would bring the actual personality out.
But how can you know someone unless you meet them and talk.
The inter-personnel interaction always brings the best of two people and makes them understand better.
Best friends who have been together always tend to meet atleast once a week speak for 3-5 hrs roam around.
Though they tend to have all the gadgets,but still will always prefer to meet and interact.
We all might spend ages/hours/may be years spending time on texting,calling,chatting online. But to know the actual personnel the best way would be do meet and talk. That is when there are few things are noticed and few unknown things are known helps in understanding the person better.

So get out our couch and go get meeting your loved one. If you need someone and you truly mean it, you got to make a move and make them realize that they actually mean something to you. Get out of the comfort-zone and meet your loved ones and enjoy their presence.

Bottom-Line: Actual presence is always way way better then a virtual one.

Follow up...

As the fat content in the body of every living human increases so does the laziness in him/her . It doesn't make your body lazy but also makes your off stricken top floor as well.
We all remember when we were young, how we use to pester our parents, teachers, uncles and aunts to get something done for us faster and easier. where has all that need and urgency and being pushy go.??

Now days we just let go things easily. Say for example. when you your friend for a small help. he promises he'll do it. but may be due to his busy schedule he might have forgotten it. That doesn't mean he doesn't want to do it. and you go bitching about him at his back. That's not the way, instead you could just remind him about it and leave it. nothing will go wrong if you do so.
That's the reason why Americans are so successful then we Indians though our initialization, ideas are awesome in fact way better then them but we loose the thrust after a while and loose interest later. And they take it up and finish it and take the credits as well.

The  sole reason behind it is we don't follow up things as we used to do. This might be cause off  someone's distraction, bad past, a complete switched off mood. But whatever may it be. There shouldn't any reason for loosing out on things which you initiate.
Beg,borrow, walk, run, fly get the task done somehow.
Its your headache and you have the sole responsibility for it.

in the amidst of musical delights

As the world around get busier and busier we tend to get lost out of not being notified or not getting recognised. During then the one thing what keeps you going and not feel the loneliness must be the one small little thing which happens to be in 60% of all urban citizens. Well u got it now.!!!  It's the small innocent tiny winy thing called the music player.Whatever the situation, whether you are low or flying high. The right music at the right time makes you enjoy the situation whether it is screwing you or making you go gaga.

The musicians of this freaking world are one hell lot of people. They know what is apt for which person and at which time. From floyd when you are on cloud 9 or don mcclean when you are falling head over heels over the opposite sex. They just know what to do when. I would say let go all this grammy, filmfare and blah blah awards, where the celebrities just walk around showing off their well spanked asses around, instead the tribute to all the musicians have to be rewritten. They are the best, they speak the common man's heart out, the bewilderedness,the anger, the anxiety.

Go with what you need and you will be delighted when you could express it without a fuzz.

The feeling of Loneliness.!! A Final yr syndrome???

As my footsteps were slowly drifting towards the end of an splendid journey of lifetime which i had on-boarded 3yrs back. To become the so called "ENGINEER" like just an another fish in the ocean which is already choking with them.

Let me get back to the topic now. As we landed in this so called "Final Yr".. People all around me were just focused on one thing, yeah the obvious thing. Placements... Fine.. In a college of our standards every person is way better and has an obvious hidden talent to acquire a job. Leaving that apart too.

Here comes the next hurdle. People who have got the job, the next thing that comes to any "NORMAL" human being would be to settle in life. The person just thinks in a way like to where should I seek next for a support my life.!!! Yeah the obvious thing, a life partner.. The person just tries to look for a relationship and find an appropriate land to sow his seeds of his future. If the person is successful enough.!! Its never an issue but prone to of vulnerability still.!! If the whole thing goes of the track and the person tries to do all sort of stupid things. That's when everything goes wrong.!!

The sole reason behind all this is the giving the sensation of a loneliness and insecurity of what will happen to me next; who is there for me stuffs.!! If we were to backtrack the issue into its roots, its easy to point out that the number of hours a person stays idle the more his brain tends to think about the insecurity about its future. More the idle time, more the vulnerability.
The whole reason for this increase in the idle time for a person is his lack of involvement into his acades; his financial security has a fine ground now..!! The issue can be targeted on the institution as well, the more they keep the students idle they tend to drift off easily or is it completely person based.!! well..!! Noone can be blamed for it. Obviously the University plays a role in it though..!

I'm here to express my ideas.!! more you are idle more your brain seek for attention, more it seeks for attention, more desperation to get into a relationship.!! The strength of the a relationship doesn't depend on the human's desperation and inappropriate needs.!!

Fine.. That's all for now..!!

CONCLUSION: Brain is CUNNING, UNRELIABLE, INEFFICIENT, Highly vulnerable and prone to external calamities of the human being.!!

finale of Mid-sems

As the days were passing by, I had just forgotten that there was something called the Mid-Sems are fast approaching. By the time to strap on get going with studies to prevent any backlogs. It was late and It was the day of midsems.

Day1: "Remember" Its been more then 3months since I've touched the pen and written a full page at a stretch. But it was an unlucky day, Had to do it. As I started the answer there was only one Question in my head, "Do I actually Know the answer of this Question??" And Convincing myself, "Who cares dude, Just write..".
And that's when it all began. I was writing an exam with Zero preparation, oh god what an experience.
After finishing one sheet of page, I Just tried to go through what I had just written. The handwriting was so horrible that it was completely illegitimate by myself, not that it was great before. It was readable. But this time it was unbearable to myself, its been more then 3months since I touched the pen and wrote so much at once.

Day2: Was that much of a difference. To my surprise almost 60% of the class people had left in a matter of 50mins. I was sitting and wondering "what is happening??"
1. Is the paper so easy that everyone has completed so fast and are leaving??
2. Or the paper so dumb that answers were damn simple and people were really fast in completing it.
To my surprise, I realised that no one in the whole batch actually cared what they wrote in the paper. Everybody had one thing in their in mind. "When can I get out of this hell..."
So that explains my confusion in the hall.


As being in the final year. These are the part and parcel of life which you can do only now, as its all "relative" irrespective of what your interests are, when Noone else cares about it, why should you alone.
Just sit back and have fun.

ricky