KNOW MY MATES 2:
Ok in this edition let us take a peek on my buddy Sathish a.k.a Dv, theriyadhu.
If he is asked any question he first says ‘don’t know’ (theriyadu) and then comes up with an answer. That has become his habit.
How this guy started to be with us is still a mystery b’cos he doesn't copy, doesn't put proxy and doesn't do anything that a righteous college student is supposed to do. Maybe opposites attract. But still he doesn’t hate us for all that.
Often you can find him roaming in the campus. This guy loves college and never likes to return home. He sometimes starts leaving for home, reaches the entrance and then comes back into the college for no obvious reason.
He is a dreamy kind of guy and is very profound in some of his replies. For example I quote one of our conversations.

Me: what r u dreaming about da??
Dv: I am thinking what I am thinking about.
Me: what the hell does that mean da?
Dv: Dei I know I am thinking of something but I can’t remember what it is.

I advise u not to pick up an argument with him b’cos the combo of brain & brawn can drive u nuts. He is a spiritually inclined person unlike others in our group. He stands for everything that others don’t. He has never stayed away from his home for a night unless accompanied by parents (discounting our IVs).

He has a great appetite for breakfast. I actually found it out accidentally. One day he told me that he was famished as he had not had his breakfast. I asked him how he manages doing that. He said he had ONLY a glass of milk, bananas, apples and porridge, but no solid breakfast.

He is nuts about a girl from EEE in our college. He met her during the NSS camp and they both got together based on their common interest in music. The one foolish thing he did was he recorded his every experience in a diary. The diary was later exposed and everyone in the class got hold of it and went through. They both form the most studious couple in college. Their conversations are mostly confined to technical crap. Their favourite hotspot is, yeah u guessed right, the library. Latest on them is that he is teaching her matlab.(did any1 of u think of such a topic to put kadalai??) Oh I forgot to mention!!! This guy is a programming geek.

Ok enough of scorn. This guy is great company to be with. He is understanding and talks sense often. He is a teetotaler and abstains from anything dubious. However he doesn’t avoid others for being wayward.
I sincerely wish that he gets a move on with his crush.
All the best dude!!!

KNOW MY MATES 1:
In this series, get to know of my friends. I have tried to give a really complete picture abt them, but if i have missed out on anything please feel free to add them as comments.
My first post is going to be on my closest mate Gowri Shankar a.k.a. pandu, mokkai, direction(oops this list will be longer than this post). G.S is Hagrid like in appearance and can intimidate anyone in their first meeting but he really is meek and friendly. I say this cos once in second sem, when i threw him my answer paper for cross validation, he started trembling in the exam hall.
I have spent a lot of time with him trying to tide over the never ending series of exams. The night before the tests, we have spent more time in local tea stalls gulping tea than with our books.
On two wheels and a 100 cc engine I bet no one can beat him. This guy blazes the roads and gives his pillion riders a fright. However he has got an inherent problem with comprehending directions(He is still wondering why West Bengal is in East India). He has sent many first timers in our campus who seek directions, into a maze.
His cup of coffee ( he is a self confessed caffeine addict) includes engineering, laboratory and girls. He has a bad sense of humour and is exceptionally talented at cracking silly jokes. But he argues that girls like only that kind of jokes. We have never discouraged him on this part and have even laughed hard enough on his jokes to cause our tummies to squirm.
He can spend hours on the phone droning with girls, often allowing me to doze off during our so called exam preps. When there is a gathering of four or more, someone invariably starts bullying him and he ends up being the arse. However he always seems to enjoy it. He is a completely different person, when he deals with his little brother. He completely bosses over him on the pretext of teaching him maths.
He prefers tamil movies over english ones. He is crazy about Ajith and Jyothika , the most rotund filmstars. Currently he is learing japanese and is into PS2 gaming ( non racing games).
His Crushes: 1. A girl from G.I. He had allegedly proposed her and this became common knowledge during a stupid birthday party celebration.
2. One of our classmates. Too obvious to give the name and I also hate defamation suits.
3. A girl he met recently in a wedding ceremony. He had soiled his shirt in an attempt to grab the video of that marriage. Now his desktop is full of snapshots from the wedding.
Now on a serious vein, he is a great guy to be with, helpful and a hardworker. Frankly he deserves a longer list than the one above. He has got a great family. A really understanding mom(she even knows abt the GI girl) and a cool dad. I owe him a lot more than the previous movie ticket and the lost John Grisham's 'Partner'.

ESPIONAGE

From times immemorial spying has been an important ingredient of war. Artifice and deception have been employed to win battles emphasizing that ‘All is fair in love and war’. From the Trojan horse in Troy to our own Rama while assisting Sugreevan, unfair means have been employed. Even in today’s increasingly shrinking world, having information about one’s enemies is as important as it was eons ago. Though the modus operandi might have changed, spying is still an important strategic weapon in a county’s arsenal. Different countries have their own intelligence agencies that carry out these covert tasks. These agencies even have a counter intelligence department to weed out itself of turncoats.

First let us get acquainted with some espionage parlance. ‘ELINT’ stands for electronic intelligence sometimes also called signals intelligence or ‘SIGNINT’. ‘HUMINT’ stands for human intelligence. Any spy in unfriendly territory is called an ‘agent’ or ‘asset’. Documents are classified as ‘Eyes only’ meaning they cannot be copied and ‘Ears only’ meaning it is too sensitive even to be written down. ‘Dead drop’ is a place where an agent can drop some material to pass onto the agency. It can be any place that is not suspicious like under a loose slab in a cemetery or in a deserted house. And the drop can be intimated to the agency by some innocuous chalk mark in some other pre agreed place or some obituary ad in the newspaper. When an agent is ‘neutralized’, it means he has been exposed and promptly executed. A ‘wet job’ means one which involves bloody duels. A ‘dry job’ means losing one’s tail(eyes following).

Spying is a job full of risks and uncertainties. Exposed agents are executed even without a courtroom trial. An eligible spy is one who has a sociable nature and can pass on as a local in his area of operation. There are two ways in which spies can be recruited. One way is by finding an eligible person, briefing him and then sending him into hostile territory under cover as some innocent tourist or businessman. The second way is to recruit a person already working in the enemy regime in some influential position. Usually such people have three reasons to turn traitors. The first reason can be money. Or secondly they can turn traitors due to sheer frustration on their own rulers. The third motive is the most bizarre one and any agency’s nightmare. The traitors may be psychopaths who do not show any clear motive and the agency has to risk itself in believing such data sources. Recruiting spies to work for another country has become a major HR exercise and the recruiters look for some discontentment in their potential interviewees.

Espionage involves cutting edge technology. Planting bugs and cams, tapping telephone lines and satellite reconnaissance are some of the fruitions of technology. For example the Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle of the U.S can fly at a height of 36,000 feet and carry on both reconnaissance and attacking roles. It has powerful cameras including IR imaging (for lowlight and night vision) and synthetic aperture radar( for haze or fog removal). It carries hellfire missiles and can do a 24 hour sortie fully loaded. The commands for navigation and combat are transmitted by a control station miles away over a C band Line Of Sight data link or through Ku band when LOS is not possible. Such advanced military expertise help in reducing casualties for the side employing it and it tilts the balance in their favor. Even with such tools, there can be no substitute for HUMINT.

Now let us take a look at a few intelligence agencies around the world and their past activities. Uncle Sam’s is the CIA(Central Investigative Agency). The CIA shot into prominence because of its activities during the cold war. Among their many missions, one of them having repercussions even now was the recruitment of Islam radicals to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The recruits had one Osama Bin Laden. The CIA provided them with weapons and training to stop the Reds. Most of the CIA operations were Soviet centric. The equivalent Soviet agency was the KGB, no longer in existence because of its involvement in the attempted coup to overthrow the Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in 1992. The KGB relied more on HUMINT than SIGNINT. It had moles(agents) operating in CIA and MI-5(Brits intelligence).

The most notorious of the intelligence agencies is the Israeli Mossad. It has been alleged to be involved in many kidnappings, assassinations and passport forgery. One famous incident involving the Mossad is the audio surveillance of Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech denouncing Stalin. The Mossad which had obtained the audio by some means from a politburo meeting handed it over to the CIA. One another interesting event involving Mossad was the assassination of Gerald Vincent Bull, a Canadian engineer. He was a pioneer in rocket technology and was involved in building mammoth guns that could fire rockets into very high altitudes with much less expense compared to conventional technology. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein decided to use this technology to launch missiles with nuclear warheads during the Kuwaiti invasion. He tricked Bull to work with the Iraqi satellite program. The supergun constructed then was called Project Babylon and was deceptively hidden within a hill to avoid US spy planes and satellites. While Bull was working on the new nose cones for higher reentry speeds and temperatures, he was shot dead. Although Mossad has publicly taken credit for this operation, the hand of CIA is suspected because Bull had blackmailed CIA to give him a Presidential pardon and also money to keep mum about the CIA’s illegal activities which he was aware of. In spite of his death, Saddam completed project Babylon. However because of a traitor within the Rais(as Saddam is respectfully called) circle, the location of the gun was given to CIA, which readily pulverized it.

The Indian intelligence agency is called RAW(Research & Analysis Wing). It works under the PM and the parliament does not know about its operations. It has a budget of more than 2000 crore rupees. The main focus of RAW is on China and Pakistan. Among its notable operations is its support of Bangladeshi freedom fighters with arms and training and also the LTTE for a while with some of the tigers being on its payroll.

The Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan has in the past had joint operations with CIA involving the Middle East. Also it is an open secret that ISI harbors terrorist operations in the Kashmir Valley.

Spying, as an art of war is going to be immortal and in the future will dictate many decisions to be made. Spying skills from lock picking to ELINT are going to be used not only in Bond movies, but in real life situations. Any advanced strategy game (PS2 or Xbox) cannot give you the thrills that a spy experiences during his missions.

oops too late to post it now
its a summary of year 2005 wrote it b4 but forgot to post
so here it is

KALEIDOSCOPE

“A look back at 2005. Views ranging from cricket to our campus”

2005 had quiet a morose beginning. The aftermath of the tsunami is still fresh in our minds. To add to the woes a killer quake and devastating hurricanes rocked terra firma. Indian metros like Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore have received unprecedented rainfall. Chennai is still reeling under the impact of a spate of cyclones. Unlike the U.S where hurricanes were given feminine names like ‘Katrina’ and ‘Rita’, their Indian contemporaries were given non feminine names and surprisingly the only cyclone that was given a female name ‘Mala’ just turned her back and blew away into the sea.

J.K.Rowling came out with her sixth book, ‘Harry Potter and the half blood prince’. The book has increased the frenzy further, leaving much to be completed in the final book. The movie version of the fourth book Goblet of fire has found a breath of fresh air under a U.K production banner. Rupert Grint playing Ron now has become a potential candidate to play Hagrid and Emma Watson playing Hermione is becoming prettier by the sequel.

Terry Schiavo after being kept alive for 15 years has been administered euthanasia which resulted after an intense court battle between her husband and parents. No wonder the Americans have such high life expectancy. Even a terminally ill person can hold out for fifteen years!!

The concept of an ideal man has changed from a metrosexual (e.g Beckham) to an ubersexual (e.g Gere). However my ideal man is A.P.J and I am still wondering to which category he belongs.

The IIM’s have once again flummoxed test takers in 2005 proving that they are numero uno. The paper had mostly bouncers(2 marks) and a few full tosses but no sitters. People taking CAT this year, just be cautious because many of the 2005 test takers are planning to hit back.

India has become globalised in the true sense. Mallika Sherawat starred with Jackie Chan in ‘The Myth’ and Aish has got a dozen English offers under her belt. Most of the runaway hits in tamil have been adaptations of western novels and movies proving that western stories are selling like hot cakes in a locally flavoured version. E.g Anniyan(‘Tell me your dreams’- Sidney Sheldon), Gazini(‘Memento’) and the big B starrer Ek ajanbi(‘Man on fire’).

One year has passed by without reversal of the CAS(Conditional Access System) as promised by politicians. Chennai has been the lone metro where the experiment has clicked(or has it?). Surprisingly this harsh measure has not met any resistance. This may be due to the pathbreaking success of mega serials with very high TRP’s(to be read as Tear Rating Points).

Khushboo has landed herself in the midst of a maelstrom with her comments on virginity. Now I feel may be this is the right time for her to float a political party like our Captain. We all have a special place for all our Amma’s. So who knows where she might end up.

Indian cricket has had a ……umm interesting year. Sachin has conquered another milestone. New find Dhoni has enthralled millions with his charismatic slogging. The secret of his energy is good old natural milk(not boost). Saurav has had a forgettable year. The apparent Pawar shift(or power) in BCCI has cost him his captaincy as well as a place in the team.

Laloo has atlast been ousted from Bihar after a 15 year long stint. But don’t worry, you won’t miss his witticisms as he is still our railway minister. Eleven innocent MP’s have been caught for doing their job or what they presume it to be. They have been exposed by cobraspot.com accepting money to ask questions in parliament. They have been left high and dry by their respective parties because none of the names figured are big shots.

Our new V.C has stood up to instill some decency and morality in us by certain measures. The speed limit in our campus has been risen to 20Kmph after much deliberations.

Hutch has changed its color from orange to pink though retaining the pug. I’m still wondering why…………

I think this quite sums up 2005 for you. Hope we will have 2006 as exciting as 2005.