this IS me

This is me, in pictures

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sexiest professions

me and gunjan were watching nine today show when they had a list of the sexiest professions - models, firefighters, yada yada yada.... the old shallow mentality of the ever-so-predictable human mind! rise above the stereo prototypes and THINK - you WILL find the following professions irresistable -

5. electricty meter readers
4. woolworths night shelvers
3. grass mowers (not lawn, but the one alongside the road)- especially singaporean indians :D
2. PhD students - WE ROCK !!!!!
1. call center workers - BEAT THAT, models ;-)

Season of festivals

The season of festivals started with Navratri, Halloween and then Diwali next week and of course thanksgiving and christmas. Its interesting that all of these festivals line up around the same time along with Day of the dead and some of the others.
Maya and I dressed up for Navratri and went for Dandiya one day. It was hosted by the Gujarati samaj. Maya brought a friend of hers. It was loads of fun. Anjali stayed back with Ravi. Maybe she will be able to join us next year.

Halloween was great we had been working on the costumes for two weeks. Anjali was wearing one of Maya's hand me downs from two years back. A ladybug and Maya was Princess Mononoke (a kids anime from Miyazaki of the Spirited Away fame).

Ravi made the mask out of papier mache it. Came out really neat and some friends helped out with the accessories.

There are some more pictures in this album.

We are getting ready for Diwali this week. Cleaned up some of the drawers in the kitchen. Ordered some utensils online and a friend is hosting a Diwali party.

Slowly starting our goodbyes...

As Gaurav put it very pointedly: It sucks that we're leaving Australia. Given all the different factors, however, it was the best choice we could make. That obviously doesn't mean that the decision wasn't heart wrenchingly difficult.

We have now been living in Sydney for almost exactly 3 years and it has truly become our home in that time. We've got friends, a social life, regular activities like bushwalking or geocaching and our every day life is running really smoothly. After our move back to Europe, we'll have to set everything up again. Luckily enough, we already know a couple of people in and around Tilburg - so it's not like starting completely from scratch.

The hardest part of leaving a place you call home for at least some time of your life is saying goodbye to people who are dear to your heart. You know you are going to miss them terribly (yes, I'm talking about you guys, Gaurav and Gunjan), but you still try and keep a brave face. I guess the advantage to slow long goodbyes is that you can talk about all the good times spent together, spend lots of time together and start making plans for future visits. Modern technology will definitely help us keep in touch!

But in the end it all comes down to giving each other a great big hug, trying not to cry and then walking away without looking back. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes... |sniff|

Oh well, there are still a couple of weeks to go - 12 to be precise. Let's make the most of it!

this sucks

just heard from menno and tanja that they'd be leaving australia for netherlands since menno couldn't get a suitable permanent position here. This really sucks, not just because me and Gunjan love Colwin so much, but also because Australia cannot afford to lose good academics like menno and cling on to some really really pathetic ones (without naming - you know who you are).

it was extremely depressing and haunting last evening. memories just kept coming back to the mind and all the future moments we thought we'd go enjoy with our good friends slowly start unreachable. what troubles me the most is the very idea of Thursday, camping in early summer, beaches all summer, going past barr street and realizing that there is no one to call your name and reach out for you. menno and tanja have been really good friends with no pretenses or hang-overs, great role models for us to bring up our own kids.

blessed are we with the technology through which we can still see them and colwin, with the emails, super fast posts and air travel which is always a very realistic oppurtunity to meet each other.

when they come back (if they ever do), colwin will be six and we promise we will be there at the airport to get him - whether you want us or not. 13, barr street will always be one of the fondest memories of our lives. we will miss you guys - A LOT :(((((((((

Fifth corner of the Four Corners

My name is Gunjan also.. and I'm Gaurav's sister. I live in Austin, Texas (Yee..haw...) with my two daughters Maya(4) and Anjali(2) and husband Ravi.

I'm hoping this blog will help Gaurav, Gunjan and me to know more about each other day to day lives and things that seem so trivial to mention in the long distance(kinda expensive) calls. Also give me some time to put all the zillion things I can never remember to tell on phone/email.

Which gives me a great segue to launch into Mom talk:-).

Yesterday Anjali needed a diaper change (this story has other details which I'm not too sure are appropriate for this forum). Ravi lifted her up between his arm and waist kind of like football (not soccer). She yelled and said 'Let me down. I'm a lady".

I think this one has taken after Gaurav.....

Important people

I can hardly believe it. Me? writing a blog? Today, the world has changed. I always thought that people who write blogs think they are they best and that because of that other people should read what they write. Think about it: the greatest people obviously have interesting stuff to write.

Let me emphasize, this really is not why I am writing a blog entry now. The real reason is a bit silly. I am looking for a convenient way to keep track of stuff that I do. With stuff that I do, I mainly mean work related stuff. Projects I'm working on, students I'm supervising, etc. I sometimes write down what's going on in a project and with student supervision I really try to keep track of what they are doing so I can yell at them when they haven't done what they said they were going to do.

Keeping track of what you're doing is not easy it turns out. Text files only work with text. Tables (especially when they get a bit bigger) and images are a bit hard to get in. LaTeX files are a bit better, but inconvenient, HTML may be better, but is annoying to work with manually. What's next? Wikis? Blogs?

Today I created an account on Blogger. This blog is set to private (it's about my thoughts on personal projects), so there's no need to start searching for it (if you were planning that at all). After I created this, I saw that I was already a member of a blog, which I had complete forgotten.

I'll see if blogs do what I want in my project management documentation gap. If not, perhaps I'll become one of these important people who have blogs. I'm sure everybody has been waiting for this blog entry and now they'll want more. What have I done???

potential student names to write on whiteboard

here at macquarie, we mark students for their assignments in practical sessions.
they are required to write their names on whiteboards, the practical demonstrator (demon)
calls out their names and marks them. I like to write some names on the whiteboard and see the demon yell these out in front of the laughin class :D yes, i'm bart simpson - just that i'm on the other (better) side of the table ;-)

hoosawea ner
aimamo ron (this is the best)
aimanid iat
aimawea ner
homer simpson (some demons fall for even that !!!!)
mesohor nee
yumo ron

and the list continues......

G2 numbers

a couple of months ago, Faiq reminded me of a puzzle in endgame in times of india -

find a number n such that if the last digit is moved to first digit, the value is doubled.

eg if n=1234, you move 4 to the front and n becomes 4123 but 4123 is not equal to 1234*2

i had posted one solution to the paper about 5/6 years back using rudimentary approach.

but being the super-geek-nerd phd student, i derived the root family of such numbers (8 such

numbers only) along with a proof that a concatenation of any such number n (n n n.....)

is also a member of the family. so there are infinite such numbers - proof is here :)

the sad thing was, when i contacted the global math repository people, turns out somebody

already proved this 20 years back - damn you, mathematicians :'(

eternity 2

recently, gunjan and I bought eternity 2 and having 256 pieces that need to be put together, it has 256! combinations out of which (presumably) only one is correct.

now 256! =

85781777534284265411908227168123262515778152027948561985965565037726945255
3147589377440291360451408450375885342336584306157196834693696475322289288
49742602567963733256336878644267520762679456018796886797152114330770207752
66464514647091873261008328763257028189807736717814541702505230186084953190
68138257481070252817559459476987034665712738139286205234756808218860701203
61108315209350194743710910172696826286160626366243502284094419140842461593
6000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

(this is calculated by using my math library I wrote coz I had nothing better to do - of course you realize calculations on large numbers - thousands of digits long, require alternative approach since integers and other variables can only take so much. the program is available here - *the program might still have some bugs in division but multiplication and factorial work fine)

which is a humble 507 digit long number. 10^507 approx= 2^1700.

so this problem reduces to an AES-cracking problem with key space = 1700 bits.

now cracking AES-1024 itself is "computationally infeasible" so 1700 bit would require some commitment I reckon. anyways, the puzzle would be good jigsaw to put on the wall once the solution is eventually made public :D

the puzzle has a healthy bounty of 2mn USD after which one doesn't need to work much I reckon. However, it would be nice to get the money in advance so that I can put my life on hold to solve the puzzle in the first place :D

Colwin day!

Its our most awaited day of the week again! Woo hoo!

I am looking forward to learning to play soccer from Colwin. He tried really hard to teach me on Monday but was very disappointed that I can't play like Govosh :)

Back from hell

Recently, one of my very good friends, Daniel, recovered from a brain surgery. It was a month back that he was told by doctors he had a type of brain tumor at a time he was living alone in Sydney, his family being in Indonesia and Melbourne. I can only imagine the emotions he would have gone through. Just the thought of which scares me. The surgery was a success and he is back doing what he likes, studying math (ewe!!) and teaching programming and algorithms.
I wish him all the best and pray that no one else goes through the hell he and his family has been through.

Blogging

It just occurred to me that Blogging really is a good way to allow people a peek into your life (you choose what they see which leaves you in control) and to make new contacts. So far, I have mainly been a "consumer" of blogs and I have really come to rely on the blogs of certain people close to my heart to know what's happening in their life.

Actually, coming to think of it: I only look at this blog and my sister's blog on a regular basis :) You can check out her two blogs here and here in case you're interested. Sidsel is not a very good email-writer, so I get most of my information on what's going on in Denmark from her blogs.

Funny in a way that something as impersonal as a blog (impersonal in the sense that you don't write it for a specific purpose but for a general audience) can allow personal relationships to survive.

I quickly read the Wikipedia entry on blogs and learned a couple of new facts about blogging I hadn't heard or thought of before: the history of blogging, the different types of blogging, but also people getting fired or threatened because of a blog. Let's hope that doesn't happen to any of us!

Looks like Friday is good for philosophical thoughts...

Rain

It is the first warm spring day we have had in Sydney in weeks. I walked out of the office and there was a storm brewing and for the first time here, I could smell the rain! If I had to pick my favourite smell, it would have to be the smell of the first monsoon shower in India.

I don't know if its the fact that all my friends are now all over the world and its been ages since we have had a chance to hang out together and have fun, but I would give anything for a humid June afternoon in Indore right now.

The beautiful smell would hit us before the actual shower and we would know that it was raining somewhere close. At that point, everyone ran out of their houses to get ready to get wet. What I miss most is rolling up our pants and going to the school sports field to splash around in the mud :D And then, after a few hours, we came back home to warm showers, clean clothes and piping hot bhajiya and chai.

Here is a picture, not of a June afternoon, but an early morning, at the bypass road in Indore. Gaurav gets the credit of introducing us to the its-beautiful-weather-lets-got-to-bypass concept. Here is a picture that all of us claim was the best time of our lives. Gaurav is the photographer and so not present in the actual picture. To this day, when we write to each other or when any of us are in Indore, a trip here is a customary, followed by an email to say it just isn't the same if everyone isn't around :)

Fabindia (and other Indian experiences)

Menno just got back from his trip to India (Gaurav and Gunjan's hometown of Indore to be more specific) and he brought back some really nice shirts for the whole family - all from Fabindia. They also make great beadspreads, table cloths, and a lot more you can imagine in beautiful vibrant colours and prints. We also got a beautiful Shiva sculpture as a present (I'll try and post a picture here soon, promise) and it looks great next to our Ganesha (a wedding gift from Menno's brother and his girlfriend). It looks like our household is becoming more and more "indianised" :)

an excellent upbringing

We were talking about Colwin at dinner last night (as we often do) and radhika mentioned tanja's post. We (gunjan and I) strongly commend tanja and menno (not necessarily in that order) for the excellent upbringing of Colwin. He's a smart kid, happy to be around people, who enjoys his games, sports, and his stories, and communicates clearly of what he needs. i reckon tanja and menno should write a manual for parents :-)

and yes, Colwin is growing up wayyy too fast. seems like yesterday that I saw him in the department corridor; sleeping in the pram when he was 3 month old and later met him at the christmas 2005 party and he was 5 months...... and now he teaches me something every thursday - how to sing/ why not to eat the ping pong ball/ where to tickle gunjan/ and how to kick a ball......

Musings on time

Somehow you don't realize how quickly time passes until you have a child. I mean - just look at Colwin in this picture. Doesn't he look all grown up? And he's only/already 2! (Well, 2 and a bit by now :)



Well, maybe it's just mums who have the feeling that the days and weeks rush by and all of a sudden you look around and you see a much older version of your child than what you last remembered.

Hmm, or maybe I'm just getting old?! No, please don't answer that one :)

started writing my thesis

yay !!! i started writing my thesis and i'm loving it (not writing but the fact that i have already written quite a lot and now i just need to organize most of it). you'd be amazed how efficient can continuous thesis writing can be - if you don't have experiments to do/ papers to read/ just feeling lazy, just write a page or two for your thesis (review/ experimental results/ introduction, etc) and it's going to make life a lot easier for you when it comes to wrap up time :-)

palak paneer (spinach with cottage cheese)

hey!

a lot of people (ok, a few people ....... fine, one person, one time) asked me how i got into cooking - it was when my mom had a boutique and sometimes me and my sister cooked for her. i was confined to chopping and cutting and laying out the plates - an apprentice you might say. i used to cook maggi noodles sometimes with veggies. I still remember the first dish i cooked from A-Z was for my parents - malai kofta and that is one of the best feelings I've ever had. it is considered to be a rather complex dish, especially for a beginner like me. i used to have 2/3 signature dishes in the beginning - rajma (red kidney beans) recipe of mankad aunty, alu and gobhi parathe (potato and cauliflower stuffed naans) and the recipe over here - palak paneer. i was watching khaana khazana (cookery show) one afternoon after i came from college and the chef - sanjeev kapoor was making this amazingly tempting, simple and foolproof dish, and i thought i might have a go at it.

I didn't know how to make everyday food till quite late, it was only when I went to Bangkok for 3 months to be with my Dad in 2004 that I started cooking healthy everyday food. anyways, here's one of my early specialties - palak paneer

ingredients (for 4 average people) -

1. spinach - leaves weight 400gms
2. paneer - 300 gms
3. onion - 200 gms
4. tomato - 100 gms (1 big tomato)
5. cumin - 1 teaspoon
6. crushed ginger - 1 tablespoon
7. crushed garlic - 1 tablespoon
8. bay leaves - 2 big leaves
9. cinnamon - 1 stick
10. star aniseed - 2 whole
11. milk - 125 ml
12. chilli powder - 1 teaspoon
13. coriander powder - 3 teaspoon
14. turmeric powder - 1 teaspoon
15. canola/ vegetable/ sunflower/ groundnut oil - 50 ml
16. thickened cream as a topping - optional

********* (for all future indian recipes, generally chilli-coriander-turmeric - in alphabetical order goes in the ratio 1:3:1)
remove stems from spinach, boil water, put the spinach leaves in and leave for 2-3 mins - turn the heat off and let the leaves stay there for 5 mins.

take the leaves out immediately and leave them in COLD water for a couple of mins (helps to retain the shiny greeen color)- put them in a blender with 50 ml milk (if needed) and blend. empty into a bowl. throw in the another 50 ml milk and run the blender again - it is going to rescue the spinach stuck to walls of the blender and you won't waste spinach (I really hate when i have to wash the blender with spinach remaining on the sides). put this in the bowl as well - and mix together.

dice tomatoes and onions fine.

heat oil in a deep pan and when hot, add cumin seeds, cinnamon stick and bay leaves.

after half a minute, throw in onion, crushed ginger and garlic - (it's important to let the dry spices release flavours for about 30 secs because once you put the onion, ginger and garlic, the oil cools down and then the cumin flavor is not spread which is a waste of spice). stir occasionally and cook o medium high until onions and brown - but not burnt.

mix chilli, coriander and turmeric powders in a small bowl with about the remaining 25 ml milk and mix well - add to the onions and cook for 20 secs. then add the diced tomato and cook for 2 mins. you don't want the tomato to become mushy and soggy buy just become soft. add the spinach and milk paste and salt - turn down heat to 4 o'clock position (refer to lamb curry recipe to find out what that is) and cook for a about 5 mins - stirring occasionally.

while it is being cooked - get the diced paneer, heat a frying pan at medium high and spray oil in it. also spray oil on the paneer cubes. put the paneer on the heated pan and fry for 2 minutes tossing and turning in between. the idea is to get a nice light brown color to the paneer.

add this paneer to the spinach-onion-tomato mix that has been cooked for 5 mins now (heat is still at 4:00) and cook for another 3 mins. empty in a serving dish. whisk 2-3 tablespoons of thickened cream in a small bowl and swirl around on top of the dish. serve with rice/ naan/ roti/ bread.

p.s. it's a good dish to have on the table with a second meat based dish. complements the other dish (like lamb curry) nicely. bon appetite! peace.

lamb/goat curry recipe

A few people have asked me the recipe for lamb curry and here it is - ingredients (for feeding 4 average people)

marinade -

1. 600gm diced lamb (1.5inch x 1.5 inch pieces are best suited) or 1kg goat meat with bones - HAMKA butcher in auburn arcade sells SOOOOOOOPER meat (thanks to michelle's parents for introducing me to the place!). address: 10/75-77 Auburn Road, Auburn 2144, Phone 97492421 - also try their minced lamb with harbs)
2. 200gm thick yoghurt
3. 1 teaspoon turmeric
4. 1 teaspoon indian meat masala (brands - badshah/ everest/ mdh)
5. 1 tablespoon ginger paste
6. 1 tablespoon garlic paste
7. 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
8. 1 tablespoon olive oil
9. 2 tablespoon lemon juice

mix all these together and keep in in the fridge for 12-24 hours - yes, that long :(

ingredients for curry -

1. 500gm onions - chopped decently fine (about size of your nails)
2. 250gm tomatoes
3. 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
4. 4 bay leaves
5. 6-10 cardamom
6. 6-10 cloves
7. 1 teaspoon whole black pepper
8. small piece of cinnamon
9. 300ml thickened cream
10. 3 tablespoon coriander powder
11. 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
12. 1 tablespoon chilli powder for indian hot
    OR
13. 1 teaspoon chilli powder for medium hot
14. crushed ginger 1 tablespoon
15. crushed garlic 5 cloves
16. oil (any except olive) 75 ml
17. salt - to taste (i recommend 1 teaspoon)
18. 1 teaspoon garam masala (from indian store)
19. coriander to garnish

heat oil in a deep pan - throw ingredients 3-8 in it when hot (if you don't have some of the ingredients no. 3-8, don't worry). after exactly 8.673276 seconds,
throw in onion, crushed ginger garlic and turn heat to medium-high, cook until onion turns brown (keep stirring ocasionally). this should take 15 mins.

mix corainder powder, chilli, turmeric in a bowl with 50 ml water so that it forms a liquidy paste. throw in this paste when onion is brown. stir constantly for about 15-20secs so that it doesn't stick to the base or burn and add diced tomatoes. cook for about 15 mins till the whole thing thickens.

add cream and cook for another 15 mins - the oil will (or atleast should) separate at this stage.
add the marinaded lamb and garam masala, turn the heat high, stir intermitently for 5 mins. cover the pan with a lid (it's actually best to use a pressure cooker - picture below)

and cook for 35 mins on low heat (i call it the 3 o'clock position because the knob points to the hours hand at 3:00)

don't open ASAP - let it stay for 10 mins - open and garnish with chopped coriander leaves - serve with rice/ naan/ bread/ pizza base - whatever you like (ok, not pizza base)

c++

as a tutor in macquarie university for c++, i come across hundreds of students, 10% of them much better than me, 10% better, 70% to whom i relate, and 10% who need work on their thinking attitude first and then on the syntax.

c++ is not just programming - it's putting into a syntactical form your solution to the problem. so whenever you are going about a problem - write the solution on paper - each and every step, then start coding it - any line of solution you have problem encoding, think about it - what are the ways in which you can solve it - most of the time a combination of arrays, loops, conditions, structures/ classes, functions and some good and nice old-fashioned logic will do the trick.

as an example - try and solve this one - display a ten digit input (example 1234567890) in LED display format (the way numbers are displayed in calculators, well, atleast the old ones)

once you finish the solution, think - and then think some more and optimize your solution - how can you reduce the size of code, the number of variables, the time taken, etc.

best of luck.

i hate cars (well, not exactly)

i was just watching this ad which depicts a flashy car as a necessity rather than a luxury item.
all this marketing that surrounds us, not only for automobiles, but electronics, furniture, is creating a parallel world in our brains where leading a simple life is seen as a sign of being a loser. i don't say that don't buy a car - but one, a functional one, which is enough to take you from your 2 bedroom house to your 4 sq. mtr. cubicle. buy a tele which is pleasent enough to watch without hurting your eyes. buy furniture on which you can place your rear rather than one which is just gonna sit there itself. a functional life is what we are missing, and cars are at the front of it. numerous problems relate to the car craze - you want a 3 ltr. jeep cherokee which guzzles up a litre of petrol every 5/6 kms. you can drive this distance in 3 mins on a decent highway (legally). now fill a 1 ltr. bottle with water and try to empty it in 3 mins - this is how fast your 4-wheeler drinks petrol. i say, instead go for a "smart" car or a hybrid car which will give you 18 kms (thrice that of cherokee for the mathematically challenged). maybe if people aren't so emotionally attached to their automobiles, companies will back off, governments will actually be ruled by people and not corporations, wars avoided and thousands of life spared - now if that ain't a reason enough to live modestly, nothing is.....

sports

i am crazy, in general, and specially for sports. if it was upto me, saturday would be reserved for sports ONLY. i love the excitement of competing physically and putting in 110% to reach for that one ball or shuttle. i play almost all games but for table tennis - haven't got a chance to try it out much - played it a couple of times but couldn't control the light ping pong ball. but thanks to colwin, i might get into it soon. well, that reminds me of COLWIN















he's menno (works in the same dept. as me) and tanja's kid - extremely sweet and nice kid. me and gunjan love him a lot and you can say we are more of his friends than his parents'. he's 2 now and growing up really quick. amazing to see how kids change so fast.

about me

named gaurav by parents on 25th Nov. 1980, I was raised in Indore, India as a typical Indian kid - was quite average (say B+) in studies in school (St. Paul) - under average in sports (B-) and pathetic in music, etc. Did play some guitar by myself but never seriously. But I think people heard me playing quite seriously and must be thinking "is this also music :(" did my undergrad from IIPS India, Masters in Computing from NUS, Singapore and came to Sydney in early 2005 with Gunjan, my wife. It was in undergrad that we got together, we've known each other for 9 years, been together since almost 6 years now, married for almost 3 :)

In sydney, I am pursuing Ph.D. degree from Computing department, Macquarie University, tutoring in the same department and lecturing ISYS123 in SIBT. More info is on my university home page.

why the name "qpmz"

my blog's title is four corners coz i started out with the ambition that i'd cover all the things i am interested in here - which is highly unlikely :( anyways - "qpmz" are the four corner characters on a standard keyboard moving in a clockwise direction - hence the name "qpmz" (yes, NERD!)