The War Of Words

Blogging is no fun ...

... when you know that you are being read.

Counter-intuitive?

Of millionaires, gods and rock stars

Quote of the day.

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

Said Tyler Durden, in the Fight Club (wiki, imdb).

I talked about few dates here (6th June, 9th June and 4th July). As luck would have it, they have moved. I dont know for good or for bad. But they have moved.

The new date is August 1, 2009. Fingers crossed.

is hungry ...

for more.

@Saurabh is back

@Saurabh is back.

For the uninitiated, twitter suspended my account last week. I am now told that it was because the link on my account was compromised. I did everything to get it back. Wrote to them, made blogposts, spoke to experts, updated FB, asked for help.

And few people heard. They came forward and helped.

Starting with Zishaan, Rajesh and Rina who helped me understand the problem to all the people who tweeted and re-tweeted. This is going to be a long list. I did not know I had so many friends. AaruC, dhempe, FagunB, umeshg, sharadaprasad, GauravSaha, krist0ph3r, SLotH13, Raj_S, fossiloflife, danishctc, aritra_m, Gagan, prolificd, anaggh, sahnigagan, sakthidharan, saaket, Netra, iMBA, KapilJoshi, nakulshenoy, Sampad, mtaram, deepakravindran, punkpolkadots, b50, thinkerwrites. I hope I did not miss a name.

Thank you guys. You rock. And this is my followfriday list come friday :)

P.S.: I missed twitter while my account was gone. :|

@Saurabh finds friends on Twitter

After my Twitter account was suspended due to "strange activity" (which Zishaan, Rajesh and Rina helped me track to a malicious attack on my website), I have been trying to get the twitter account back. I wrote to twitter help, made this blogpost, posted messages on Facebook and asked for help from my online friends.

And it came.

Thanks to AaruC, dhempe, FagunB, umeshg, sharadaprasad, GauravSaha, krist0ph3r, SLotH13, Raj_S, fossiloflife, danishctc, aritra_m for their tweets and retweets. You guys rock.

This is what they did. Only thing that remains to be seen is if I get my account back. Anyone else wants to tweet? re-tweet?

@Saurabh is suspended

Twitter. How can I live without it for a single day. Action, inaction, attention, ignorance, work, play, meetups, tweetups, its everywhere.

I went to Delhi and when I came back after about 4 days, I discovered that my twitter account @Saurabh has been suspended. Their support page says that they suspend an account if

Impersonation: You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others
Privacy: You may not publish or post other people's private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.
Violence and Threats: You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.
Copyright: We will respond to clear and complete notices of alleged copyright infringement. Our copyright procedures are set forth in the Terms of Service.
Unlawful Use: You may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or for promotion of illegal activities.

I have been using twitter since 2007 and have about 1400+ followers and 8730 updates. As far as I can remember I have NOT impersonated anyone, breached privacy, threatened anyone, violated copyright or used it for unlawful purposes. Wonder why is twitter showering me with all the attention after two years of use?

Mails to twitter support remain unanswered as I write this blog post (I did get an automated response telling me things that I already know). My previous experience with twitter support has been really great (when I changed my handle from @s4ur4bh to @Saurabh). Wondering what is taking so long this time.

I really want my account back. And I dont know how to do it. May be a tweet to @biz, @ev and @twitter asking them to reconsider? Any volunteers for the same? Or any other tips maybe?

UPDATE (2009Jun 30)
Zishaan pointed that my website SaurabhGarg.com is reported as unsafe by Google. And may be that is what is causing Twitter to block my website. I logged into my twitter account and it DID point my website as "[ unsafe link ]".

For the moment I have changed the url to point to this blog. Hope this would help expedite the process of removing suspension.

And this brings me to another problem. How do I fix my website? Twitter is important but SaurabhGarg.com is more important!! It cant be marked as a site "that may harm your computer". More help?

The New Black ...

... is Yellow.

Delhi Trip - June 2009

Came back from Delhi last night, took a Go Air flight. Thank fully they have changed their dress code. They no longer wear those black denims and black tees. The ride was bumpy. For some time I thought I was in a train. But anyways, any trip to Delhi is fun and hectic. I stay in one of the remote corners of the city and it takes me forever to reach any other place. Would have easily spent 6 hours everyday on commuting. Not that roads are choked and all, just that distances are bit too much. No wonder I want to stay in a smallish city/town.

Today is PD's birthday (similarity with her blog URLs is purely coincidental). Happy Birthday PD. You have been an awesome friend. Wish I could spend more time with you.

So many things happened over the past week. Michael Jackson passed away. Nandan Nilekani left Infosys to take care of the ambitious NID project. And there are some not-so-consequential things that I would want to keep a note of.

Attended Sandy's wedding. Took elaborate notes. Might upload them on the blog sometime.
My twitter account (@Saurabh) and sgElectra's twitter account (@sgElectra) got suspended. I have no clue why would they do it.
Met Kunal. Scrapped some ideas for Cyntax. Thought of few new ones. We are back to square one now.
Met Vanita and Girish. I know them from MDI JFK. Had interesting discussions. More than discussions, I was confessing and they were being guiding light. Both had differenet opinions to the same problem and both of them merit a thought.
Sonali sent this couplet "Anjam-e gulistan kya hoga ... Har shaakh pey ullu baithe hain". I think its very pertinent and apt. Especially in the times we live in. Ayone knows the origin?
Neo thinks that hes now a vegetable.
I missed the Mensa AGM and an oppurtunity to meet up with other members. I am being lazy in sending my documents and all.

What else?

I am Mohan Bhargava

Every little kid is often asked - who is your hero. Answer vary from their dads to Supermans to Shaktimaans to Sachin Tendulkars to Mahatama Gandhis to Bhagat Singhs and what nots. If someone asked me when I was a kid, I wouldnt have known the right answer. I dont know what a hero is. And definately not what "my hero" is.

Ask me now. I know who my hero is. I know what "my hero" means. My hero is Mohan Bhargava. And yet not many would have heard about him. He is the protagonist in the movie Swades (website, wiki, imdb, movie on youtube).

Right now I am sad. For more than one reasons. One of them being my inability to do anything for my country. One might argue why such and alieginece to the land where I was born. And why just a country? Not a continent? Or not a state. I wish I had answers. All I have right now are pangs. Guilty pangs.

I want to be "foolishly romantic".

Mood: Depresed.
Listening to: A R Rahman's Vande Mataram and Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera (youtube)

Update: After I posted this, I have had three people telling me that they want to do the same and they have no clue how to go about it. Now the question is, what can we do about this.

The Nidhi Kapoor Story