Descartes and C Programming

"Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true and assured I have gotten either from the sense or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once." - René Descartes

I have always been moved by the nature of thought that produced the ideas of Descartes and the Cartesian coordinate. Also, I am writing C codes for the last thirteen years. I would say that I find it to be the closest of the idea of the Cartesian coordinate.

I have not yet went through one standards of the C language fully. I have found C to be intuitive and I thought know how things can be achieved with it. I have been proven wrong earlier as well. Very recently, I wrote a code similar to this and it crashed with newer GCC.

It turns out, that if I perform pointer arithmetic, I tell the compiler that it is a valid pointer and it is guaranteed to be not equal to NULL and such checks can be optimised out (or "in")!

I tried with GCC-8.3.0 and 9.3.0 with "-O3" option and the latter crashes because the while always evaluates to true.

Please refrain from suggesting "better" ways to do something. This post is contains a snippet and not the whole code and the post is about standard behaviour and not how to write better C code ;)

Just like life, it is wise to be not too trusting with C.

About Vacations

I have worked in various companies in India (two cities) after college for about seven years. Either of the cities are not my hometown or in my state and have vastly different cultures and food habits. Somehow foolishly I have not considered them my "home" when I lived there and would fly to my hometown about three/four times a year and think that I am "home". These would exhaust most of my vacation time. I cannot say for most, but many do this.

I recently started working at a University in a country which is known for its work-life balance (at least on paper). And, I started to realise that I was not quite thinking right about my vacations.

I noticed a colleague who took a month long vacation. Being a naive person I assumed that guy must have gone to some place he feels "home", or to a nice vacation place, I asked him what did he do for vacation, and he told me he was in cottage with his friend and no cellphone connection and he just was there.

It sounded strange to me. But, then I just realised, I never had a true vacation. Because, I always went to my home city or a trip to somewhere for my longer vacation. And, I would become busy with visiting relatives, making up for lost times in long distance relationships, making and sticking to the itineraries if I was visiting places, and other necessary works and no time to relax, which was supposed to be the essence of "vacation". And, I would return to my workplace feeling worse than when I left because this is not my "home" in my mind.

These thoughts made me think if it is necessary to call the place where you live, home, to actually be on a vacation and relax. I felt that some things in life, like the feeling of "home" or relationships, should be a part of your daily lives rather than needing you to always put too much effort into and take from your vacation time just to get that feeling.

What I also realised, that the very nature of work-culture situation at most of the workplaces in India numbs you from a few feelings which you can only feel if you take time to think about. But, maybe again, all these are just about my personal idea of vacation which is different for everybody.

Something About Professional Growth

I have done job search very recently and a few years back to extend the career horizons. This post is not to provide tips, but to share one realisation that I have gone through during the process.

What happened a lot of times with me is that, it seemed to me that I would be a perfect fit for a role. My interview would go well and I would be certain that the people at the other end of discussion loved me. But, then I would get a regret mail. Whereas, I would get green signal response for roles which would not match my exact past experience. I used to be flabbergasted.

But not anymore. What I realised is that when a potential employer look at your past experience, they are trying to assess you based your past achievements and determine how you take challenging situations. Most of the time they are not looking for exact matches. Of course, for very specific roles, this is not true. But, this holds good for most of the situations.

What they want most of the time is that you have a room to grow. If you are an exact fit, you would become bored quite soon, well unless you have home loans.

I believe this is a good thing. Variety and diversity always help. Maintaining diversity in anything is helpful when things start going south, and you would not realise about problematic nature of mono-culture when things are good. I personally believe even a very technical role needs certain room to grow.

Something to think about when you do not hear positively from a potential employer for a role that exactly matches your past experiences.

About fever, life and thermodynamics

  I recently had a very bad fever. One which lasted for about two weeks. The thing that do not like about fever the most is that it happens in one day but goes away gradually. So, you start feeling bad from feeling good in less than a day. But, you do not get well suddenly! You do not get the feeling of being well too quickly. That is what I do not like about fevers.


  Thinking about it, what I realise is that this is of course true in every aspect of life. If we let everything to be on their own device, things will become more and more chaotic and it takes quite some effort to make things orderly. That too, will happen gradually.


  We had a chemistry teacher in our school, who tried teaching us about thermodynamics, entropy and chaos. Well, he mostly wasted his and our times. But, he said something that is still in my head. He said that, life is thermodynamically unfavourable process. So, it takes effort to keep life going. I think it is true for all the aspects of life in general. It needs just one infection to get you a fever, one small disagreement to break off a relationship, one small mistake to let go of an opportunity of a lifetime.


  There is one quote often attributed to famous Indian statistician P. C. Mahalanobis. I am not sure about its authenticity, but it says, disease is contagious, health is not. It takes very little effort to go towards disorderliness, but a lot to keep it as you want something to be.

Identify, Recognise, Remember and Value

  We all remember the candy that was refused by our moms. I used to be very angry and annoyed with these instants. I used to wonder why exactly she was refusing to let me have a candy. As a kid, I wondered if she was having candies behind me and not letting me have some of them.

  After I grew up a bit, I understood I only remembered the times she refused and not the times when she allowed me to have some candies. I understood that she was doing this for my own god. She was stopping me from having candies more than certain limit as having many of them might not be good. I also understood that she did bar me from many activities beyond a certain limit as it might have had the some bad effect on me.

  Then my age increased some more. I found that some people in my life is actually barring me from doing certain things. For those who don't personally know me, I am a bit slow in noticing and understanding everything. I thought they were being selfish and trying to not let me have fun in my life. And many times, not always, I went on doing those things they asked me not to do.

  Most often what happened is that I somehow either felt bad, got hurt, or had materialistic loss; not always of course. I thought about it. I understood that there are few people in my life who want the very best for me. As they are not me, they can observe and understand my life objectively which is very hard for me to do as my life is my own. Of course, they understood me only that much, till the point I allowed them.

  I believe all of us have that set of few people in their lives those who want the very best for them. We need to identify and remember them. We need to understand their words from a futuristic point of view keeping in mind they want only good for you. We need not always refuse the ideas which may cause not to have immediate material/emotional displeasure. We need to value these people's opinion. And in a world like this, which is mostly selfish, we need to value these people too.

Crossroad In The Way Of Understanding People

In life you come across many crossroads. They are of many categories. They will make you think and decide about the issues. But what if the crossroads are coming in the process of the decision making itself.

I always try to find answers, rather explanations, to everything that is happening around me. It always irritates me not to have the explanations. Sometimes I even pay a very big price to obtain knowledge about something that is concerning me and consider as my gain even though in general notion it does not seem so.

So, it is of no wonder that I always try to get the explanations of any given situation or anything that is happening to me.

No matter how hard you try, you end up expecting in every sphere of life. As of now, without practice of meditation or something similar, one is bound to have lost control of your desires. So in our lifestyles, expectations are mostly inevitable. But what are the consequences?

You expect something. That means there is usually 50% of chance that you will not get that. Also, expectations are supposed to be fulfilled by a person  who is NOT you.

What if you expect something, and then it does not happen. Then a situation comes where you cannot have that something and now the people, whom you thought would fulfil your expectation when there was a chance, starts saying how they want to fulfil them and cannot do now only because the current situation does not give them any chance. When just maybe two days ago situation was such and they just ignored it.

It also may happen that there might be a chance that such situation might come again. First they make sure that the situation does not happen. Then they will say had it been that way, they could have done this and that.

All I want to say that I am now growing up. Although it is very late, but I am happy that I know tomorrow when I shall be going to bed, I will be more mature than today. I learnt many things about life in very harsh ways as I was late. So I am going to believe whatever I understand instead of what I am told. Because only your thinking process and views will remain with you till the end. Anyway, people believe whatever they want to believe. This also is my observation. So as a part of growing up, I shall also go by this rule.

But on the same note I know this also, that I will not stop believing in people. That is the last thing one should do. But what you will believe about them is choice that left to you by the Matrix.. :P
I will take the crossroads that suits me. I guess that is what everybody does.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I am a very big fan of Dr. House. He sometimes says "you can't always get what you want." I too believed that, until very recently. As you cannot get what you want immediately, this might seem true for some time. Some of my experiences made me think in other ways.


I saw this documentary "Law of Attraction" (not the movie) almost three years ago. It says right attitude of having something already accomplished which is not accomplished yet, will actually help you to reach that destination. Of course it sounds absurd at first. But I believed that positive attitude is much better than a negative one.


Also in a conversation around two and a half years back, a good friend asked me if at the back of my mind I was still interested in physics or not. I was not doing well with my studies. It made me think that whatever idea you dump on the back of your mind, you consciously may forget it. But it stays there and has effects on all your future actions. They can as well be analysed and understood nicely from that point of view.


Observations show that apparently strong dams built on rivers are required regular maintenance, even though the calculated shock that can absorbed without any damage is more than the actual force the river exerts for a given amount of time. Similarly, it may be inferred shows that if you continuously let something stay at the back of your head, it affects your action in achieving or fulfilling those ideas.


That is why I realised that whatever you want, make sure you want it in the long run. Because if it is not, you might not actually like it when you get it. But nothing can be done then as everybody would know what you were up to all these times and all the situations created were already very strong to not let go off the thing you wanted all these years due to your actions. So, I think it would be wise to take time to decide wisely what you really want instead of not liking it much later. Be careful what you wish for, it might come true.

Human Nature: As I Found It

As I am trying to live my life rather than merely existing as mentioned in many great people's quotes, I keep coming across many astonishing revelations about human nature. Since our interactions and involvements are mostly with other humans, this continues to intrigue me.


I had a habit of reading classic novels and short stories and also old English poems (mostly of romantic age). My father being a English literature student, I had relatively easier access to these classics. I read many such works at, one can say, an unprepared age. Some of them, if I am lucky enough to find a correlation with something in real life struck me very hard. Some of them did not.


I somehow always restrained myself from learning about human nature through human interactions as most of the time I used to find this action inseparable from judging people by their actions. Well, until very recently. I realised that probably it is necessary for living comfortably, for not getting hurt again and again.


So, now that I have decided to start learning from first hand human interactions, I started realising that almost all words in them have a significance. So, I may realise something new today, but when I think about it, it is very much normal to the world already.


One of the lessons that recently I learnt about human nature is that people will do whatever they feel important anyway and find and excuse to not do whatever they feel is not important. This is true every time. No matter what your relation is with that person, be it your parents, best friend, teacher, that special someone or even your admirer. It does not matter what prejudice you have about them or what you may would like them to do. And no matter how much important you think something is, if another human does not think it is, my experience says, better expect them to do the opposite. Less disappointment for you.


But in the end, it's all good I think. Life, after all is just a ride. People with different point of view will keep coming and neither you it's worth the effort to avoid them, and not you should. I think enjoying the ride is all that matters.

Truth, Knowledge and Realisations

I always felt this unquenchable thirst for knowledge. About everything. I always wanted to know the truth. What exactly is going on behind the scene, everywhere, what is the impact of my words or deeds; how exactly it is affecting the world. As I grew up with a mentality like this, mostly I remain truthful to people (with a few exceptions of not telling my parents about going out with a girl or that I failed in my last geography exams). And, somehow in turn expecting the people to be truthful to me too. I always appreciated if they let me know what exactly they think of me and if some problem arises I preferred talking about it point blank.

As I became involved in this world more and more, I went through many realisations, mostly cyclic. Nevertheless, I still was eager to know what was always going on behind the scene. I always believed truly that the truth can and shall set me free, free from this vicious cycles of realisations. It always gave me the opportunity to come out of an incident and look into the matter objectively, needless to say which helped me every time even if there was no apparent problem.

But as I became somewhat more involved with the people of this world, I came to realise that it may not be always wise to dig to depth to bring out the truth. The very reason that you have to dig deeply, is also the reason of the violence once the truth comes out and somehow suddenly it did not matter anymore to anybody except yourself. To be very frank, what I have realised, people will behave in whatever way they want to behave, no matter what they told you before and in the process of knowing the truth you also come across the "falseness" of their words. Somehow it made me feel that the truth may only matter to a few people and for the rest, is whatever make them feel better.

In this process, I also came to know that I may not like the truth. But that never told upon my strong desire of making the truth come out. What did was my own action also along with others' participation after I made the truth come out from them. Though I heard this many times that it certainly is not wise to know the truth every time, I am not sure about the credibility of the words. Even when I realise that the truth may make things worse, may make me feel worse, I still have this of desire in my mind, like a splinter, to know the truth.

“There is no friend as loyal as a book” ― Ernest Hemingway

I started liking books since my childhood, same for most of the people I guess. I used to read them over and over and so never ran out of books to read. This compelled my mother to hide the books during my exam time as I used to perform poorly. I remember sometimes I could discover where she hid them and its feeling was similar to climbing a tough peak.

Then I grew up (my age increased). I started finding my hiding place inside them. To be very frank, I am a dull human being. I sometimes fail to tune with the outside world. So, for my peace of mind I learnt to turn to them whenever I feel lonely. It never disappointed me.

I came to college. I became exposed to many aspects of life which I did not know of. I became aware of incompleteness of life and the necessity of it. And I dived deeper into the so-called ocean of life.

At first I couldn't enjoy. I thought its because I was learning how to swim.

Many days went by. Few moments of joy, some heart-breaking and a lot of indifference happened to me. And now towards the end of my college, as I am trying to evaluate what I was doing in this ocean, I realised that what I learnt is simply how to dance at the small waves and avoiding the larger ones. What it felt to me was something similar to a subject, student of which can either perform as a general graduate or can teach that subject to produce similar students.

Now once again, I looked back at the books. Whenever I felt lack of fulfilment from the 'real' world, I turned back to it. To my joy, I found when almost everything has changed in my life, these fellows are still loyal to me, rather in the time of need its usefulness is more felt and it becomes irreplaceable.

I would like to think that, one of my favourites, Wordsworth has written the poem thinking about the books instead of the daffodils. They only truly have given me the "bliss of solitude."

That's Too Easy You See...

I sometimes wondered about and became astonished with an observation. I felt that every time in a relatively difficult situations, I am performing better. I tried to find the reason by myself as it seems counter-intuitive. I also have heard some explanations from the others. The explanations that I heard are mostly like this that, the people who find difficult situations advantageous are usually unable to solve simpler problems and that is why their performances drop when simpler situations demands a quick solutions. As one can see that this explanation itself is also against our normal thinking since it violates the very paradigm of easy and tough.

I thought of another explanation of this situation which essentially emphasises on the very basic difference between the natures of simpler and relatively tougher problems. It also is connected to the idea of time.

I was playing this game "Mahjong" in my computer, as I sometimes do in a lazy morning. I switched from an easy map to the toughest map. Well it didn't surprise me that much, I mean the result. It took me less time than the best time I scored in the easiest. I was playing the toughest for the first time. And then it clicked my mind.

I asked myself what is the difference that is benefiting me in some way. And then it also taught me something about myself. What I felt that the essential difference that distinguishes between an easy situation with a tougher one is that most of the time is the number of solutions a situation comes with. What defines a tough situation, is usually it presents itself with one possibility or maybe a few but very much less compared to an easy one.

The trick of finding the solution is hence also differs. When one wants to solve an easy problem, they try to find a solution or if more sincere the most appropriate solution which fits the situation. But in the other case, one tries to find "the" solution.

I find the first situation tougher. Its more like engineering to science. One has to note that I am referring easy and tough in its conventional sense. The second case demands the solution and does not requires to consider the situation since anyway, solution is exclusive. Maybe the idea is to simplified. But it taught me that most of the time I give up after finding an answer. While it works with the second situation relatively well, it does very badly with the first ones since challenge most of the time is to find the most appropriate answer in the least amount of time.

It also told upon my performance during the placement session which I had at my college in this December. The only three times I cleared the first round of the aptitude tests was they gave fewer problems which requires quite a large amount of thinking and time given to solve them was much more than that is given during the other kinds of question sets which requires solving many relatively simpler problems in a very less amount of time.

I believe a person should be balanced in both ways. Otherwise they must find a suitable job and situation which exploits their better quality which is almost always impossible as there are plenty of unavoidable situations life comes with. So, all the best!!

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

I have a friend who once told me that his friends don't think that he has the best personality in the whole world. Rather they appreciate his ways to see life and perhaps also the differences with theirs. There maybe something more to it, but nothing less. I also seemed to understand it, but not quite realised its depth.

I think people become your friend because they just like to be around you. Now beware, one should not confuse friends with walk-mate, class-mate or liquor-mate etc. So friends appreciate that you may be different from them and yet can remain friends. If somebody becomes your friend just because they like one or two qualities of yours, well it might continue to seem as a friendship even for a lifetime and it might not matter anyway, personaly I think its not ideal. Though I sometimes felt friendship is an overrated concept, I think its all because of those xyz-mates. I guess its very tough to find a friend because everybody is busy with their lives and most of them don't give a crap about yours unless it has something to do with theirs. We may not be able to find it. This is just as probable as doing a job which has nothing to do with one's best skills throughout their lives. It may happen. Life is not fair.

I think a friend should be like that feeling which tells you that finish this work and then you can go to him. They won't seem distant. You don't have to ask, they will tell you what was happening with them when you were not around; and you are listening to them because you want to and also not because after they finish you get to talk. And they too are more than willing to know about you. And most importantly it won't seem like a formality. It will happen naturally. Well as far I understand, this is an abstract concept and these are my visualisation. And I don't think there is any right or wrong in this. You go on in your own way. If you are lucky enough, you don't get to suffer for all your wrong doings or unfortunate enough you have to. Everything is coincidence. We cannot ascribe earthly events related to our lives to more important phenomena. Life, rather time, just go on.

A simple quote from long ago,

उत्सवे ब्यासने चैब दुर्भिक्षे राष्ट्रबिप्लाबे।

राजद्वारे श्मशाने च यस्तिष्ठति स वान्धब।।

John 8:32 "...and the truth will set you free."

Sometimes you make me feel like I was damn wrong
So wrong that I don't even qualify to be with you
Sometimes you make me find, to my utter dismay that I was right
How do I know which one is in the realm of reality
I don't know, surrounded so much by the virtual reality
Where people have headaches just to send a real letter
Everything is parted from the other and made to stay at their domain
I don't know whether it is prohibited
To just want the truth
Unpolished, without any doping of impurity
I want the truth
Just the truth and nothing else, trust me
without the package of make-belief

As I heard that the Bible says that the truth shall set you free. Like most other sayings, it came to my skull as some vestigial words, until when I actually realised, at least to a little extent, what it actually means to be free. As Tolkien once said "all that is gold does not glitter", though in life we want the shiny stuffs, sometimes it is required to come in touch of purity in its true sense. To cleanse our systems flooded with pretentious thoughts and inputs (both from within and outside) every single day and moment.

What i want to say is more or less like this-

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, German poet, novelist and dramatist

Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so you apologise for truth.
-Benjamin Disraeli, British politician and author