A Date ?

Chapter 1: 'Mars, Venus and Jupiter?'

Chapter 2: 'A Date?'

4th May 2009
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Few moments later.

Rahul heard a different sort of sound, sort of familiar one but he couldn't recollect what it was. Amidst pain in his limbs, he could barely move, all he could hear was the same sound.

"Baar baar haan, bolo yaar haan.... ... apni jeet hoo....unki haar ho.."

He closed his eyes strongly, partly in disbelief but mostly in pain. Those movements formed wrinkles on his forehead forming shapes. He could still hear the song being played ...

"Koi ham se jeet na paave...chale chalo..bade chalo.."

Something hit him sharply on his shoulder and he was almost falling onto the floor when Madhu held him.

Madhu: "Hey dude! Your phone has been ringing, what are you dreaming about ?"

Rahul : "Actually ..." He started saying.

Madhu: "You are crazy, take the call first. Somebody called you thrice already." She smiled and playfully continued "may be your girlfriend, who knows?" She winked.

Rahul : "Uh..huh... I had one before I went to sleep?" He muttered and took the call.

Rahul was on the phone.

Rahul: Heh..Helloo..
Voice: Hello sir. Where are you? We have a match in 5 mins.
Rahul: Oh, c'mon our match is in the evening right. I'l be there in time, why do you ..."
Voice interrupted "It is evening already, sir. Please come now."
Rahul was surprised looking at the clock "Oh god, I slept for so long ... " and said "Play someone I'd substitute soon."
Voice: "Come soon."
Rahul: "See you there bye." He said and started to look around.

While Rahul was on phone, madhu wondered how cute her friend was, wearing those wrinkles on his forehead just before she had to wake him up. Then she suddenly smiled recollecting how funny Rahul was looking, sleeping with his mouth open.

Madhu: "So, who was it ?"

Rahul in a disappointing tone "My teammate, why ?"

Madhu: "No, whom were you dreaming about?" She asked mischievously as she saw him gather his things to go out.

Rahul slowed down a moment, turned in a straight face, and said "Death." He explained "The good thing about it is that I had a girlfriend in my dream. So I guess it was okay to die there ..."

Madhu: "Who was it?" She was playing hard now. "Somebody I know ?" she said and after a brief pause she continued "Its okay Rahul you can tell me ...".

Rahul: "I have a football match that starts in 2 minutes. May I leave ?"

Madhu: "Oh sure!" She replied instantaneously. "Football before anything, sports before anybody. How exactly are you planning to ... " She stopped and continued "Ah its okay, just go now."

Rahul: He knew he couldn't help the situation and he knew she was not happy and somehow he was not happy about it himself. "Okay bye." He said.

Madhu: "See you at dinner?" She said very slowly and sweetly as he was about to leave the room.

Rahul turned back and said "A Date?" he winked.

Madhu surprised but happy "Yeah, may be. If you say so." She played back and wore that 1000 candles lit smile of hers.

Rahul "We'l have to win the match today" he said as madhu sighed with displeasure, he continued saying "I have to be in a good mood for tonight, right?" He waved good bye.

Madhu smiled as she earlier thought that the idiot before her was still talking of football while discussing a date, and said "Goodbye".


Chapter 3 here.

Mars, Venus and Jupiter ?

Chapter 1: Mars, Venus and Jupiter?

"Men are from Mars, Women from Venus, and who came from Jupiter?" -- Raul

Stars were still visible, bright and shining.
A little different sight than from back home. Rahul thought. "They look wonderful don't they, these formations ?" He asked nobody in particular. He was talking about some unusual clusters of stars, constellations he hasn't seen or hadn't heard of, he thought. But he was happy to be able to see them, they were in great shape.

Peter nodded. "That is odd. I hope our cameras are taking proper pictures, I want to show this to my kids." he said.

Sarah laughed at Peter, and Nobody knows why.

Peter : "What is wrong ? Am I funny ? Is there a horn out here through my nose ?"

Sarah : Continuing the smile. "I was wondering, if you were doubting about just the camera or the whole mission?"

A brief silence.

Sarah continued. "I mean if you are not sure if a camera is working properly or not, how could we be so sure of landing on the surface of Jupiter."

Anu replied after bearing some silence. "Don't speculate on things...".

Sarah corrected "I.. I don't intend to speculate, not at all. In fact I was just amused at how Peter thought the camera might not have been working properly. Just at those thoughts..." she said. she laughed again and said "Don't worry Peter, not just your kids the whole world would see them."

Peter gave a satisfactory nod, while Anu was relieved of a major distraction. During the last 2 weeks Peter and Sarah had been fighting over everything and anything, and she had to be the one who would settle their disputes. Rahul meanwhile, as usual, wouldn't care about them and continue to gaze the night sky, looking deep into the stars and was almost lost in them.

Today, they were going to touchdown. Landing on Jupiter, their second pit stop ever since they started from earth. Their goal was to reach Saturn and collect data and perform experiments on Saturn's atmosphere and so on. Rahul wasn't in a mood of anything, he was just enjoying his view through the windows.

Anu looked at the clock, 1 hr and 12 minutes, before scheduled landing at Jupiter. Suddenly there were some sounds, as if something hit their craft. Everybody except Rahul was puzzled. Then again there were more noises. Craft suddenly fell a few metres down in its flight path, or so they felt, but it was steady again now.

Peter screamed "We are sighting high turbulence ahead, and I would request everybody to get back to your stations please. Now!"
Rahul wasn't listening. He was happy at the sight he was watching. It was beautiful but he could also see a little disturbing images ahead which he ignored.

Anu came over and pulled him "Are you crazy, come over here." and she pulled him to his station and was buckling him up when another craft movement was observed as the craft slid in vacuum somehow, and she fell on him.

He smiled and said "Get to your station. I'l help myself."

They were trained to not panic in situations like these. But real life was so different from training, Anu thought.

Everybody except Rahul panicked for few moments; There were more thugs and thunders, small items were being thrown here and there.

Rahul and Anu looked into each others eyes. They were at peace, almost as if they knew this was their last chance and they shouldn't ruin the opportunity.

Meanwhile, more disturbance due to turbulence; they both looked deeper into each others eyes.

Rahul: "I love you sweetheart." He said throwing a kiss through air.

Anu: "I know ..." came reply while she returned him his gesture of love.

Both smiled at each other, and at their fate. They didn't want to close their eyes, but they were slowly closing amidst screaming noises. He was hardly able to see or sense anything now, everything was very bright and there were sounds, more sounds out aloud.

Chapter 2 here

Monthly Review ?

When I started this blog I was determined to continue writing continuously unless something drastically leads to discontinue. I however without any major reason have stopped writing three things (in no particular order):

• Blog Content
• Short Stories
• Thesis

So to avoid disappointment of not updating my blog for 40 days I give briefly what I have been doing.

July 20-30th
Nothing major. Creating the poster of the ACL-IJCNLP 2009.
Tweaking my thesis here and there: added one page on 21st and compiled on 22nd July. This was the last time I compiled my thesis, I haven't added a word after that.


August 1-10th
The Awe of ACL-IJCNLP.
1 week of Research, Travel, Fun.
Time spent with Vasu sir, Prashant and Umangi would be remembered forever.
Prank played by Vasu sir; I'd remember that, for next time I need to take revenge. :D (I really thoroughly enjoyed the moment.)
Bungy Jumping in an artificial setting. Oh, and there's a video of the same where we really got freaked out and look silly. :P (I will add the video soon if I get others' permission)
10Kms of Walk daily along the sides of 'clark quay', merlion, and so on. The beauty of esplanade or the complexity of the culture.
The night saffari
Little India, Mustafa Complex
The China Town (Unfortunately, we had been there for just 15 minutes. We know we missed out on a great town, we were already feeling that this was the place to be.
After coming back to hostel tired from endless walks: those seemingly endless phone calls I made. I cherished them even better.

ACL-IJCNLP was fabulous. Some talks were really well presented. My poster was a place where not many people flocked but those who came spent real time on. It went on as it was expected to be: Some agreed, some discussed, some debated against. Met some new people there: notably Annie Louis, PhD student working with Ani Nenkova at UPenn.

Summarization+NLG workshop was really really good. Some part of the afternoon session was a little dull but I think Robert Dale pulled out a great show putting together Regina Barzilay, Donia Scott, Kathy McKeown and Edward Hovy against each other on a well crafted topic of interest to both Summarization and NLG communities. Thanks Robert, Anja and Sebatian. :-)

Thanks to Girish we were able to see as much as we could in the time we had, especially with those tired legs we couldn't have gone anywhere else, anyway.
The hostel we stayed, Footprints hostel, needs a special mention. I heard somebody crib about backpacker's venues just before we were leaving, I was wondering why, and I still do.
I think it was the environment at Footprints that really relaxed us and get us ready for the next day. Everynight after coming to hostel we met new people from different parts of the world, it is always fun. :-)

Prashant would say the best part of the trip would be the food, and I wouldn't disagree. I had tasted dishes from around 8 different countries while Prashant had his hands on 11-12 dishes. From Japanese, chinese, Taiwanese, Philippines, Korean, Indonasian, malay, and so on..


August 10-28
Soon after I landed at the Airport in hyderabad, I was driving back home. Little did I realize that I had left my poster back at the airport. What caused that is a little difficult to imagine? Coming back home perhaps, or may be after 8 hrs wait at Mumbai Airport I couldn't manage a second more to pickup my poster, may be.

2 days after the trip, I went to my hometown. I must tell you that I haven't been to my hometown for 11 years. :-(
It was a nice trip, feel sort of nostalgic describing things, so I would defer the post for later if I can.

The present really, is a tough thing to think about. What have I been doing for the last 10 days ?
I have been working a little seriously yet at a slow pace on TAC AESOP task.
Since then I have been working on small things that I had earlier thought would work for this task. Again, like the Update Summarization task, I might not be able to get the best evaluation system ready but at least it would be a nice dry run for participating in future TACs.

Mostly based on AESOP task but largely due to curiosity towards summarization evaluation, I have initiated some joint work with Suman Yelati and Ravi Kiran. Hopefully we would be doing well. :)


And I hope to start writing again, soon. :-)