A Robot’s love – Chapter 3

3 more weeks passed while T2000 was trying to make Rosie learn the basic of phonemes and phonetics.
But unfortunately Rosie was not able to comprehend what T2000 was trying to teach her.
In the mean time, the inmates were considering the option of bringing a doctor or a software technician for T2000 to make him right.
Just like talking to their youngest grandson, they gently came and talked with him about getting help to correct his condition.
But T2000 was not able to understand the problem which was with him.
It was getting more and more irritated. The lack of sleep – neither in form of hibernation or shut down didn’t help the situation either.

Finally, out of the blue, T2000 threw off his lady love – his first love with its mightiest force. The whole of the old age home stood still for a moment. Every one stopped their gossips and looked at T2000 standing empty handed. There was a pin drop silence till the echo of the cling sound made by Rosie faded.

Then with a huge cry which none of the inmates have ever seen in their lives, T2000 flung itself on Rosie, and apologized to it in all the ways possible. The inmates of the old age home called its doctor then and there, who just laughed at listening to T2000’s story. Still they said they will come to the old age home within a week to reconfigure T2000 to a more stable state.

T2000 was in huge distress. He has hurt his lady love. He has seen one of his feelings which he has never seen before falling in love – uncontrolled rage. He was ashamed of himself. Then and there, an idea came to his mind. He has once seen a pendulum clock. The pendulum reminded him of Rosie. He thought Rosie can talk to the whole world through the clock.

Even though he has never produced or engineered anything so far in his short life, he religiously learned the art of making a pendulum clock through internet. Then came the real problem. He found out that he is not having enough components to make up a pendulum clock.

He desperately went and asked every one in the old age home to lend him some money so that he can buy components for his pendulum clock.

Even though every one know that T2000 has gone crazy, they still felt pity for its state.

Finally John or Johny as he is lovingly called, promised T2000 to help him with his pendulum clock. Even though Johny knew that the dick-dock sound in the pendulum clock is no better than a mute spoon, he kept his comments to himself.

Johny went and bought all the components required for the pendulum clock. Being a mechanical engineer by his profession, he too felt nostalgic after seeing the hardware parts and he caught the enthusiasm shared by T2000 and offered to help him in building the clock.

But T2000 flatly refused saying that he will never share his lady love with any one else!!

T2000 worked day and night tirelessly to make his pendulum clock. Not being programmed for mechanical design or its implementation, T2000 sure faced many problems.

The gear train was looking too complicated and the escape mechanism could never be put in place in its correct location. But still T2000 worked on non stop towards its objective.

The repetitive calls of the inmates fell on its deaf years and it didn’t even heed to the innumerable requests to turn off the light.

Finally after working continuously for 2 days straight, he got the whole assembly in place, and the only thing to be done is to place his beloved in the place he has allocated for the pendulum.

T2000 was too excited as well as frightened at the same time. He has put his whole heart on this clock. He wanted it to work, He didn’t want to have any failure in this project which he has held literally and figuratively close to his heart. After a few emotional minutes, T2000 finally loaded his lady love in the place allocated for the pendulum. He slowly made it swing. Rosie finally spoke to T2000 with a gently dick-dock.

Listening to the sweet sound of Rosie, T2000 slowly closed his eyes.

————————————————————————————–
THE END

A Robot’s love – Chapter 2

“It has gone mad”

“It is just a robot you see”

exclaimed the inmates of the house when T2000 broadcasted its love to the inmates of the house.
Even Donald told him that he has gone crazy.

In the mean time, T2000 named his lady love Rosie. The name occurred to him out of nowhere.

T2000 was unable to understand the latest changes in the house. Every one was encouraging T2000 to fall in love and now, they are against his own love!!

Donald took a different spoon in his hand and asked “Are you in love with this spoon?”
T2000 replied a simple and stubborn “No” because he know that the spoon in Donald’s hand is not Rosie.

“This spoon looks similar to what you have in your hand right?”
“Might be, but I am not in love with that spoon in your hand, but with Rosie.”
“What if I mix your Rosie with 1000 of other spoons? Will you be able to find out your Rosie from the mix?”
“When I see Rosie, my heart will tell me that it is Rosie” beamed T2000.
Donald ended the conversation saying “Let God save you my child”

Similar to normal lovers, T2000 and Rosie spent hours together. Even though it was a one sided conversation, T2000 just accepted the fact that Rosie is dumb. He learned to love the negatives of Rosie. The inmates tried to reason him, cajole him and force him to come out of his infatuation which is no way realistic or sane. But T2000 just sticked on to Rosie.

Remembering his conversation with Donald about mixing up of Rosie with objects similar to her, he never ever went into hibernation again. He remained in powered on state through out the day, talking with and spending time with Rosie. The occasional glint which Rosie gave to him was good enough for him to hold on to Rosie. Even though all the spoons reflect light in the same way, he felt that only Rosie can talk with him in this way. He was totally in love with Rosie.

Sam and Leslie are a old couple in the home. They have been together for the past 62 years, and married for the past 56 years. They are one of the few people who didn’t need the services of T2000. But now, they were kind of irritated with the talk going on through out the old age home about T2000 and his new love. Even though their experience told them that all talks will come to and end and the old people will definitely find some other topic to talk about, they wanted to end the stupidity which T2000 has got himself into.
May be they were a bit concerned about T2000 too, but didn’t want to accept that fact out in the open.

So one fine morning, almost 2 weeks after T2000 has found his lady love, they went and sat next to T2000.
As usual, T2000 was holding Rosie in his hand.

“Will you introduce your lady love to us?” started Leslie.
“Sure. Rosie meet Sam and Leslie and this is my girl friend Rosie”
“Rosie is not saying hi to us!!” frowned Sam.
“No No she wants to tell hi to you two. But unfortunately Rosie can’t speak”
“She cant speak! OK then how you communicate with her?” added Sam.
“You see she smiles at me at times and I have just started teaching her how to speak.”
“She smiles at you?? Is she smiling now?” said Sam in a satirical tone.

Unfortunately for the innocent T2000, it was not able to find out the satire in Sam’s voice, even though it was programmed to find out the same.

“I will check right now” said T2000 and she turned Rosie inside out and outside in.
But as the room was quite dark, Rosie was not able to reflect any light to show the glint of her emotion.

While T2000 was trying real hard making Rosie speak, the couple gently rose from the seat while Sam added “Teach her some language which even we can understand.” and walked slowly out of the room.

Even though the old couple were walking at their regular pace, it seemed like eons for T2000. It was ashamed of himself and Rosie. He thought Rosie lacked the basic manners. No No. she has the same, but she is not able to express herself properly.

“I will definitely make her learn the simplest of the languages” promised T2000 to himself.

A Robot’s love – Chapter 1

“I am T2000, the emotional robot at your service” beamed the latest addition to the old age home.

The world has become so fast and so advanced that the present generation forgot how to show love to the older generation. They have thought that they can replace what they are not able to give by some intelligent robot, which can understand the human emotions and give out the same.

Even though with the way at which the world is going on, a piece of metal like T2000 should be obsolete within a single generation, as things like love and compassion has almost left the world.

Leaving the outer world behind, let us enter this world of old age home.
T2000 has been in the old age home for that past 1 year.
It has the ability to take any name and any personality the owner wants it to take

But unfortunately in a old age home, no body is knowledgeable enough to configure it to its optimum performance.
More over no one in the old age home cared about his performance.
The default settings seemed to be good enough for them.
They talked with the robot when they didn’t have anything else to do – which was almost always, and they found the inbuilt stories which were preloaded in the robot amusing.

As T2000 had inbuilt capacity to remember the stories which the old people told it, and recite them at the appropriate time, soon the members in the old age home forgot that T2000 is a robot and started considering it as one of them – human.

After an year, T2000 sounded to them much similar to Paul, Harry or Tom.

Still, they felt that T2000 is not as old as them, as it can move faster and smoother than any one else in the old age home. Even though it can be programmed to behave like a old person, nobody knew how to do, or in better case, nobody wanted it to behave like a old person.

“You should enjoy your life to the fullest when you still have time” sighed Donald, the oldest person in the home after the demise of his best friend Pauline.
“I don’t know what you are doing in a old age home, with half rotten bodies. Your life is out there in open.”
“But I like to be with you guys” interrupted T2000.

“I know I can walk out any time I want and have fun and come back. But I think it is more fun to be with you guys than being there in the open” added T2000.

“What have you seen in your life? Have you been outside the country? have you learned a new language which you have no idea of? have you seen a new culture and wondered the complexities and beauties associated with it?”

“I might not have done any of it. But still I am like a bee in the middle of a flower garden. Why should it ever try to go out of it? It knows that its life is in there and that is what it wants through out its life.”

“Have you ever been in love?” asked Donald completely out of sync of what they were talking.

Even though T2000 has a good processing speed, it was stumped at this sudden question.

It can understand what love is. But in its default program, it has never been in love.
After some consideration, “I don’t think so” was its timid reply.

“You don’t think so? it should be either a simple yes or a simple no.”

“Then I don’t think I have been in love ever in my life” replied T2000.

For the first time in its comparatively long life in the old age home, T2000 was feeling a bit uneasy.

Normally, they talk about the love life of the inmates, but never about itself. May be they were under the consideration that as T2000 is a robot, it could not have got a love life.

But alas!! Donald has forgotten that T2000 is a robot. Even though almost every one has forgotten the same fact, Donald has almost taken this off from the back of his mind.

At an age when not having an Alzheimer is considered to be an abnormal event, Donald forgetting that T2000 is a robot should not have been unusual.

“You should go out and get some girl for yourself” beamed Donald.
“Fall in love, raise a family, work for them though out your life, only to end up in a place where your family is sure to come only once you die.”
T2000 knew that this is how Donald wants to end his argument. Some how in a melancholic tone. So it quietly rose from the chair in which it was sitting till them and was moving without a motive in the long corridors of the old age home.

It was not able to process the new information Donald has given it to him as it normally processes the information.

The romantic part of its code was still not enabled and it found it hard to correlate the things which Donald said just now.

The only result which it got from the web and wiki was strong affection and attraction, and through out the web, he was not able to find a definition which was sharp and crisp in a way it could consume.

As it has found out that if you have a strong sexual attraction and attachment, then you are in love, it tried to work on that. But unfortunately, being a robot, and being set to its defaults, it didn’t know how a sexual attraction will be, lest strong sexual attraction. It already had attachment to all the inmates in the house. So attachment was not new for it. Shiny skin, sleek body and beautiful face were all attributed to the physical attraction.

Unable to correlate his inputs properly, and half in self exhaustion from over heating of its components, it found the object of its desire – a silver tea spoon right in the side of the corridor, possibly dropped by one of the absent minded inmates.

But unfortunately, that tiny little silver spoon was able to satisfy all the qualities T2000 was searching for. It was shiny and was sleek. Some how the T2000’s program found the spoon very attractive. It has seen spoons before, but it also know that love comes in an instance and you can never know when it occurs to you.

So slowly, the T2000 bent down and took the spoon in its hands. It hugged it softly till time immemorial.

Here I come

You can see lot of people having their status as California, here I come, or Ooty, here I come, or even Blog world, here I come.

In fact, even in my first blog post, I have boasted that “World, here I come”.
reflecting back and thinking about it, I can’t help myself wonder, what the hell these retards think about themselves? (Including myself )

I think “here I come” phrase comes out of superiority complex of some kind.
They think that particular location definitely misses something if their holy presence is not there.

Other than “home, here I come”, I dont think here I come can match in any other location. ‘cos other than your home sweet home, I am sure the world will go on as it has for the past 4 billion years.

So my fellow internet users, please refrain from using “here I come” ever in your life. If you are going somewhere, please keep your status message as “Going to California” or “Will leave to California in 2 days” .

PS: This post is directed towards one of my friend

Air travel

I know. I know.. Lot many people have written their posts about the same topic.
Well with this post, I too join the group of bloggers who have written a post about how they used to love Aeroplanes and how they hate it now.

When I was a kid, I, like any other kid in India, used to run out of their home, or stop playing cricket if we are already outside, and raise our heads to have a look at the mighty aeroplanes cruising through the sky. While we were kids, we even had our industrial visit to an aerodrum, and we were awed to see that big monster from a distance. Almost each and every kid opened their mouth with wonder when they saw the aeroplane taking off from the runway. We followed the silver stream of mist, which was left as a trail for jet flights, and flying in an aeroplane or atleast touching it was definitely one of the wish each and every kid had at that time.

Personally, I was pretty awed when I took the flight for the first time. I was on the phone, constantly updating my mom how the interiors of the plane looked, and after landing, called her again to brief my experiences of my first flight. It was such a roller coaster ride.

After 3-4 flights, the jerk given during take off and the impact of landing stopped amusing me. Watching large buildings transform from large buildings to kid’s toys too didn’t entertained me any further. I stopped telling my mom how the world looks from a plane, and other than a small short call telling her that I have reached safely and that the pilot has not screwed up with the landing, I didn’t elaborate on anything else.

Now with 25+ flights under my belt (whew), I hate the waiting time in the airport and I hate the fake smile provided by the hot air hostess. I hate the same old rehearsals done by the air hostess and I hate the horrible food they provide in the middle of nowhere. The small cramped seats, missed baggage, security checkup too didn’t help me either. The thing which I hate the most in the air travel is the fellow passengers.

It is really easy to start a conversation with a fellow passenger, provided you are in a train. But in a flight, most of the guys will be indifferent. Indian girls normally show some attitude. In a flight, the attitude gets multiplied with the altitude.

Still there are some good things with air travel.

The sunrise and sunset which you see from some 10km above the sea level is still exciting. The view of the hills when you take a flight from Kolkata to Guwahati is still enticing. The sea line which you can see when you come take the Kolkata-chennai route is still beautiful. You get to talk with some CEOs and general managers of big companies only if you are taking a flight.

So as a whole, even if you hate air travel, it has become indispensable part of our lives. Travel to UK or US is a matter of hours than weeks because of air travel. You get to have a glimpse of the fake world (fake smiles, fake good food, fake courtesy and fake people) when you travel by a plane.

So do travel by plane if you get a chance

Repeatu

Has it ever happened to you that you will listen to the same song again again, some times even for the whole day, and the very next day, you will be so irritated with the song that you might even delete that song from your iPod!!

You might not delete the song from your iPod per se, because you might not be having an iPod in first place . Even if you are having an iPod, you might not do anything dramatic, but end up yelling at any one who is listening to the same song to turn that thing off.

Not just about songs, even food items could come into the same category. You might be dying to eat halwa that you might finish off a whole kg of it, and end up taking an oath, never to touch halwa ever again in your life.

This can apply to sports, games,travel, movies, books and what not?

You might not be bored in a single day, but may be in a week or a month.

Why do we overdo/overuse stuff till we get bored of it?
Why can’t we just tell ourselves that OK, this is enough for today, we will save it for tommorow?
Why do we have this compulsion to get/do everything right here right now?

If you guys have got answers to any of the above questions, please do tell me.
‘cos I am in the same group, who have been bitten by this compulsion bug.

PS: I don’t have an iPod .
For those who didn’t understand the title, it is taken from a lyrics of Rajini’s Chandramukhi.

The king of pop is dead

Finally the king of pop is dead.

Wow!! what a career. His transformation from the coolest guy whom every one wanted to imitate to the butt of all jokes is really mind blowing.

He must have seen it all. From being a child prodigy to a pop sensation and then to almost being bankrupt! He has been called as a girl, a guy and a pedophile. He showed the world how plastic surgery could ruin your life and that you should be happy with what you have.

He taught the world to run away, instead of to stand and fight (Beat it). Even though he transformed himself from black to white, he shouted to the whole world that It don’t matter if you are black or white. He even made some revolutionary songs, singing “All I want to say that they don’t really care about us”. His single Billy Jean topped the charts for record number of weeks.

He taught us moon walk, and the whole world wanted to dance like him.

He definitely entertained the audience through out the world. Through his music, or through his controversies.

Even though he is king of pop, he has lived a rock star’s life.

I bid adieu with respect, the one and only king of pop – Michael Joseph Jackson. May your soul rest in peace.

Why do girls get more hits?

Have you ever noticed how the number of profile comments in your Orkut or Facebook profile increases when ever a girl posts some pics of her in the internet and hardly a few comment anything in your profile even after uploading hundreds of pics?

If you haven’t noticed, you are now not one of the lucky few who are blind to this worldwide phoenomina.

This is not just with Orkut profile, but with You-Tube, Blogspot, WordPress, you name it, girls dominance is there. I am feeling as if the social networking is over run by girls.

The girl can have a really stupid post like “I am not feeling well today. Feeling real pissed off”

and you can see some 10 comments for the same post from well wishers asking what is going wrong with them in their life.

But I am sure even if a guy posts a post like “I am feeling like a total loser”, the general public will let him enjoy the latest feeling which he has got and would not even bother to cheer him up.

Why are people so biased?

Why can a girl just blog her boring life as in Compulsive Confessor, but go on to become very famous in the virtual world, and even go on to become an author, but a guy, who is talking about serious things, will not even be touched upon, for example Thermal Noise. A guy has to be unbelievably creative to get the same number of blog hits as that of a girl.

Not just in the blog world. Look at tennis.

Nobody even cares about the number of doubles grandslams Mahesh Bhupati and Leandar Paes win, but they laud Sania Mirza when she advances to second round in Wimbledon! They dont worry about Saina Nehwal winning Indonesian grand prix, and that is another matter.

I think the crux of the problem with the male mentality of going after the beauty of the fairer sex. That explains the whole stuff.

Chak de Pakistan

Well finally, our friendly foe has won the world cup.

From being called as retards by an author in TOI from the beginning of the world cup, they have gone forward to win the world cup. Spectacular turn around indeed.

So with my full heart, I congratulate them on this spectacular win.

They are the team who badly wanted to win the world cup. They were being pressured from all sides. Both from inside and out, democratic and military, Social and economical.

Lets just hope that this world cup victory brings them at least short term happiness to the minds of the people of Pakistan.

PS: There is many similarities between the movie and the performance of Pakistan in T-20.  In the movie, India was convincingly beaten by Australia, whom they meet again in the final. In T-20, Pakistan was convincingly beaten by Srilanka whom they meet again in the final.

yesterday was my lucky day

Do you know which day you will consider as the worst day in your life?

The day where you think that you will not do any thing, but end up doing countless tasks right from the morning till the EOD (End Of Day).

You would have thought that EOD will come at 5:30 pm, but infact, you will end up having an EOD sometime after 9 PM.

Yesterday was one of those days. Murphy was playing with me through out the day.

A tester found bug in my application which was running properly for a long time.

When I thought the worst is over, I had to attend a teleconference with my higher ups, who give me requirements. As usual, there was some misconception, and the higher up ended blasting me. Again after explaining him that in reality sun rises in the east, he let me go.

In the mean time, 5 guys in our freshers team got together and they planned to give us treat for their birthdays which happened some 1 month back. Thinking of having a good time over the treat and empty their pockets as far as possible, I went to the restaurant where they gave the treat.

But to my dismay, I found out that there was no Chicken kabab available. How can I say that I attended a treat without having chicken kabab!!! If atleast I have got grilled chicken, things would have been OK. But even that was not available.

After all these setbacks, I just wanted to go home and sleep, and there comes the rain. It rained cats and dogs continuously for atleast 3 hours. After sending off the girls and the younger members of the team in autos, as no cab driver was ready to come out in this monstrous rain, I came out to take my bike, when it was still raining heavily.

Only then I realized that yesterday was not that bad after all.

I learned to be calm and push my point.
I got to get drenched in rain.

And even I remembered the song “Singing in the rain” and I was dancing in the middle of the road at 11 PM with rain falling heavily all around me.

With that exotic mood, I took my bike and was riding happily towards my house in utter darkness, when two cycle walas tried to hit my bike through their foolishness.

After cruising away safely from those retards, I realized Murphy is still against me.

So with utter care which I have never shown ever in my life so far, I reached home, and slept the happiest sleep I have had for a long time.

So yeah yesterday was my lucky day. I have done enough stuff to write a post about it