Monday, October 24, 2005

Addi's Engagement

Aditya Kulkarni aka Addi. We got thru engineering college together. He now works for a startup that builds high computing scalable computers with parallel processing, that they have positioned as a replacement for costly supercomputers. He was part of my gang of few friends that I would hang out with. The good thing about him is that he talks a lot and enjoys it when ppl pull his leg. Exam time he would call me up, "Ally... How much have you completed!!!". I would lie and tell him that I am nearly done, then he would get all hyper and stuff,"Gawd... Mera kya hoga... I'm gonna get real low marks this time"... sob sob etc etc.... However he would always manage to be amongst the top in the class. And then we also had Apurva Jadhav aka AJ who is a master at a lot of things, one being pulling Addi's leg. People say that AJ reaches his prime in leg pulling when Addi is around. We have a lot of stories.

So Addi was gonna get engaged and some of us from bangalore were heading towards Pune over the weekend. I was to travel with Ashu by train and on the way back AJ was to join us back by flight. The train journey was comfortable. Ashu gave me company. There were some vendors who were selling bottled water. The wrapper claimed it had 300% more oxygen. Yeah H2O4. H2O2 is hydrogen peroxide which is used especially as an oxidizing and bleaching agent and as an antiseptic. H2O3 is a shorthand for maleic anhydride which is toxic. H2O4 is the shorthand for oxalic acid. Yikes!!!!

Anyways we chatted with some ppl whose children are also engineers. These days everyone wants to get into engineering :-) At night they realised that the chains to support the bedrest for the middle berth were not of equal length. I then suggested that they twist one of the chains till the lengths are similar and it worked. They smiled and were like,"hmmmm... you're an engineer". Well I've said before that engineering is all about solving problems. All you gotta do is think. Sometimes think different. If you are a computer science engineer then its not about knowing languages like C, C++, Java etc. Its more about logic and applying that logic in a systematic manner. I remeber on another journey there were some ppl who had put a click lock on the zips of one of their bag. The bag had a double zip which was bonded by the lock and the key was left inside the bag. They tried to fit their finger into the bag by pulling the zips as far apart as possible but it gave them just about 1 inch of space. Above that the bag was filled to capacity. Then they started discussing how they should break the lock. The path of the zips formed 3 sides of a rectangle. So I moved the zips to one of the corners. Juggled the stuff inside a bit to make some space and then tried to make the sides parallel to each other. I then moved the zips (still bonded by the click lock) along the parallel tracks, away from the corner. Now your full hand could be put inside, infact you could put in two hands. They found the key and smiled and were like,"hmmmm... engineer right".

Arrived in Pune sometime around 3-4ish and headed to the place where we were to meet Addi. AJ was in mumbai on some work and was coming along with Gaurav. Met Addi's dad who is also high on the list of ppl that enjoy pulling Addi's leg. His sister also enjoys it. I mean everyone does it. His fiancee Richa has also started enjoying it. We rested a bit and then it was engagement time. Addi was to receive a sherwani from his inlaws which he was to change into. Clicked some snaps of him changing :-) to get the before and after effect. A lot of his other friends turned up in the room and on the way out someone left the key inside and shut the door. Afterwards when we realised it we had to start a background process to retrieve the key as the hotel ppl didn't have a spare???? One of the bell boys jumped in from some window from behind and finally opened the door.

Meanwhile Addi was upto his stunts on stage. His inlaws gave him some laddoos and he was putting the full thing in. Had to get him water to make it all go down. Caught the moment on camera :-) After the ring ceremony the pujari told him to give a laddoo to Richa. Don't know what he heard but he ended up eating the laddoo himself :-) The ceremony went off well. I was entertained. Caught up with a lot of friends.

The next day we moved into Addi's flat. For a bachelor it is set up very well. I must say I was impressed. AJ has bought a flat in the same complex which overlooks Agakhan palace. In the afternoon we ate some good maharasthran food. I stuffed myself. When we were back I decided to climb to the topmost point of the building and get a panoramic view of Pune. Richa joined us for dinner, where she revealed what all Addi had told her about his hobbies. Said that he claims that photography is one of his hobbies and that he showed her a snap of a monkey. There was a lot of poking after that :-) Back at Addi's place the discussion continued till the wee hours of the morning... Slept around 4:30 types.

1 comment:

Chipper said...

What is a laddoo? (Sorry, I get a bit confused at times...) ;-)