Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

What can I even post? Half my friends in the US were just told that they don’t matter enough to have control over their own bodies. They can no longer decide if and when to have kids. Just because a minority of extremists think it is their right to impose their beliefs on others. Isn’t that what we have been criticizing the Taliban about the last few decades? How is this different?

I wish I could do more but… Just know that I will be there will you all every step of the way. You matter. You have the right and authority to decide what happens to your body and decide if you want to have a child or not.

Update (25th June 2022): I know that not a lot of people will be able to take advantage of it, but if you can and want to then we will be more than happy to host you in India where abortions are legal since 1970’s and permitted up to 24 weeks (6 months) of pregnancy as of 2017 (before that it was up to 20 weeks). We stay near multiple large hospitals and will be more than happy to help you get visa’s, coordinate your visits and have you stay with us for the duration. You can email me at suramya -at- suramya -dot-com.
– Suramya

There is this group of people who constantly portray that you don’t have a ‘genuine’ interest in tech (or other fields) if you are interested in being paid well, which for the record is a bad take. The latest example of this is the following tweet which showed up in my feed recently though the original is from back in 2021.

People want to pretend that getting paid for your work is not something you should do. Sorry my dear, that is not how things work. You can be passionate about tech and still get paid well for it. I am someone who is a hardcore techie, I love technology and creating new things on computers. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get paid. As Jani put it, you can’t take your cool program (or your title) to the grocery store and use that to pick up groceries, you still need to pay for things. This means that we need to be paid for the work we are doing. This popular image of starving artists is just that an image. When you are starving you don’t code better or write better poetry or paint better pictures, it is actually the opposite. What it does mean is that while the creators are worried about food or making sure they have a roof over their head the companies are exploiting them by using their programs to make billions.

I am not saying that every developer should be paid millions but they should be paid a living wage and not have to worry about basic necessities of life. (I am using tech as an example, but the same applies across every field.

Also, so what if someone is here for the money? Are you willing to work for free? No, right? So what gives you the moral standing / authority to look down on people who want to be paid for their work? Please get off your high horse. I personally believe that if my job pays me to do something that I love doing then it is a win-win. Being miserable in life is not a good thing. I don’t think I have ever had the Monday blues or hated going in to office. Sure there have been days where I didn’t want to go in to work because I didn’t feel like it but not that I hated my life and job. This normalization of the statement that people should hate their jobs is not something that is healthy.

What do you think?

– Suramya

I posted about the new Diablo game earlier this week and how much I loved it, 3 days later I need to change my opinion. Lets start off with the good points first, the gameplay is fantastic and the controls are pretty smooth and intuitive. The skills, monsters etc are also pretty interesting and not too boring. The main issue I have with the game is that it insists on showing all the other players in the game on my screen. Here I am happily killing monsters suddenly a bunch of random strangers are all over my screen attacking the same monsters. I have never seen that in any of the MMORG games.

There are online collaborative play options to the other games but when I play in single player mode, it is just me and the monsters so that I can explore and play on my own. Diablo: Immortal doesn’t let you do that. It insists on showing you every single player who happens to be on the same section of the game as you and at times the screen gets so crowded that I couldn’t even see the monsters. It would be bad on a full monitor but it is worse on a 7 inch phone screen. To top things off there seems to be no way to turn this off and that basically makes the game unplayable for me. 🙁

I am going to keep it on my phone for a bit just in case they decide to release a patch to fix this but I am not hopeful so lets see. It that doesn’t happen then I will uninstall and go back to reading books on my phone when I have some free time.

– Suramya

Maybe it’s just me but in the past few weeks I have been getting these news snippets in my feed that show some of the reasons for which people have called off their wedding or gotten a divorce that are quite ridiculous.

Let me be clear that there are times when you can and should get out of a marriage but these are not it. For example there is this one case where the Bride refuses to marry the Groom because they didn’t arrange a photographer for the wedding

Bride refuses to marry without a Photographer

In another case, the bride refused to marry because the groom’s hand touched her neck during the exchange of garlands… I don’t even have words for this one, what did she think he was going to do after the wedding at the Honeymoon?

Apparently “When the garland was put around the bride’s neck, she suddenly threw it away and walked out of the wedding hall. She said that the groom’s hand had touched her neck. The groom’s side felt insulted by such behaviour and called the wedding off. ” I think the groom’s side took the correct decision here because with this kind of behavior who knows what she would have created a ruckus about after the marriage.

Upset that the groom had touched her neck the bride walks out of wedding

It’s not just the ladies, this guy decided to divorce his wife because she only knew how to cook Maggie and gave him Maggie for all three meals. Yes, it can get tiring to eat Maggie for all meals but they could have worked together to learn new dishes, get a cook or just order from outside. But the guy decided to file for divorce and it was granted…

Then we have this gem where the bride got angry at the Groom for dancing too long and getting drunk at the Baarat and decided to marry someone else.

Thankfully this wasn’t the case when our friends were getting married. The first friend’s wedding we attended we danced for so long and refused to let the groom go inside that the girl’s uncle came out and asked us to let the groom in because the muhurat (auspicious time) for the wedding was about to get over.

Weddings are supposed to be fun and games but some people take it to seriously and then you have problems like these… But, all this being said if you see red flags anytime before or after marriage and need to get out then you should do so. Please don’t fall for the Indian ‘solution’ for all problems in married life which is to have kids as that makes things worse and also makes it harder to separate later on if things don’t improve.

– Suramya

Diablo: Immortal released yesterday for the PC and Mobile simultaneously and almost immediately became #1 downloaded game in the Playstore. I have been a fan of Diablo since 2000/2001. Diablo II was the first game I bought and I have spend too many hours playing it. Then Diablo III came out and I bought it shortly after it launched and had to reinstall Windows on my laptop so that I could play it. Due to this Immortal was in my watch for queue (on twitter) and I downloaded it immediately after I saw the launch message.

Diablo: Immortal is set between Diablo II & III and from what I could tell in the little time that I played it the gameplay is almost similar to the original games. There are some new classes and changes to the spells & capabilities etc. Before getting the game I did wonder how the game would work on the phone with a fully touch interface but once I started playing it I found the controls to be pretty intuitive.

The game requires a lot of data in order to work so you need to ensure your device has plenty of free storage space available before you start playing. It has downloaded almost 2GB of data so far and a lot files more are queued in the system so that number is going to only go up.

Interestingly you can install it on your PC and phone both and seamlessly switch between the two. As long as you have connected your account to your Battle.net ID. I have been having some issues with that since the system keeps complaining that the two are in different regions but didn’t have the energy to troubleshoot. Since I can still play the game on the phone there is not much rush to fix this small issue.

Initial experience with the game is quite positive, hopefully it will stay that way. 🙂

– Suramya

Earlier today I realized that I have never been part of any fandom organizations, websites, mailing lists etc ever and this was a bit of a revelation because as those who know me can attest, I am quite passionate about a bunch of topics, comics, TV series, Books, Movies etc. So I spent some time trying to figure out why that was the case and it hit me that the reason I am not part of any of the fandom sites/mailing lists/organizations is that they are too passionate about this stuff, to the point that they make it a central part of their being.

Another problem is that they all assume that if you are part of one fandom then you would not be part of another, famous example being: Are you a Star Trek Fan or a Star Wars fan? I would get asked this question lots of times in college and I would get a very confused look back when I replied that I liked both of them. Most people do that, being a Star Trek fan (or a Star Wars fan) is not mutually exclusive and I don’t have to dislike one in order to enjoy the other. Being a fan of one series vs the other is not the core part of my identity. I have more interesting things to obsess about.

I do get annoyed when a TV series/movie/Comic I like makes changes to the core aspect of the story. For example, below is my take on Spiderman 3 and how they handled Uncle Ben’s Death:

The first major issue I have with the movie was how they made the Sandman responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. This is completely against how the comic’s and books look at that event. His death was a major point in Peter Parker’s life because he felt responsible for his death as he had let the crook that killed him get away because “It wasn’t his problem”. This guilt made him realize that “With great power comes great responsibility”. So when they made Sandman the killer they changed a basic fact of Spiderman history. I know. I know. Its just a movie, but still its jarring/annoying to those who follow the comics.

I saw the movie, disliked the changes, posted about it and then went on with my life. Compare this to the reaction of “Fan’s” who reacted badly to the recent changes in the Star Wars movie, or the Ghostbusters Reboot or Doctor Who casting/Story changes etc etc etc etc. For some people it seems to be a life or death decision that the story being shown is just as how they remember it as a child. I mean how sad is that? Yeah, I have a lot of childhood memories about watching cartoons or movies and they give me great joy, but there were other great parts about my childhood and if a story is changed a bit then it doesn’t really “ruin my childhood” because guess what; your childhood is over. You are an adult and if the only thing that gives you joy is watching the same stuff that you saw as a kid then let me introduce you to this fascinating thing called recordings, which will allow you to watch the same things again an again without any changes. 🙂 Stories change over the years and stuff that was acceptable a few years ago is not acceptable now due to change in the social/political climate. Or do you still think that we need to worry about Romans and Barbarians? It is good to read / watch stories that take you outside your comfort-zone, as they will teach you new things.

This is not to diss the people who love the stories, dress up as characters in the story or write fan-fic in the same world. I know for a majority of fans it is a way to celebrate the story and share their joy with others and I love that. I do on the other hand, have a problem with the people who act like jerks online, send death threats to actors in the stories, pedantically butt in all over the place trying to gate keep by insisting that you can’t be a ‘fan’ unless you can name the gobdly-goop of the blahdy-blah correctly while standing on one foot. There are so many cases where people are harassed in conventions and asked to constantly prove ‘their worth’ by reciting useless facts about something that has no connection to real life, especially by men trying to exclude women.

This obsession that people demand as a requirement for being a fan is not something I like, so I sub-consciously didn’t join any of these fandom’s. There are so many things to read and so many things to watch why would I want to keep re-reading/rewatching the same thing when there are some many new stories to consume? (That isn’t to say that I don’t love rewatching/rereading my favorites once in a while but still…)

A few weeks ago, Will Wheaton had a guest appearance in Star Trek: Picard. It was a surprising cameo and meant as a laugh/shout out to fans became another reason for ‘fans’ to be really abusive to Will. In Star Trek: Next Generation, his character was not much liked as it came across as a know-it-all annoying brat. However, that was the character in the show, it doesn’t reflect who the actor was/is and the actor playing a character doesn’t have the same personality as the character. I would think that this is common sense but it is not and the amount of verbal/written abuse Will has suffered through the years for his role is not right.

The fandom has now become so toxic that it is expected for actors & directors to receive vitriol, death threats if the ‘fans’ disagree with the casting or the story choices. The most recent example is the casting of Moses Ingram in Obi-Wan Kenobi which has aired just 2 episodes so far but the hate has gotten to the point that ‘Star Wars’ actor Ewan McGregor had to record a message defending his co-star Moses Ingram from racist trolls. The same nonsense is happening over at the Dr Who fandom, Marvel Fandom etc etc. It is like if anyone not white and not male is given any meaningful role in the industry the white fans loose their minds and go nuts. Guess what, the same series that you think have now become woke, have always been that way and even if they didn’t, there is more to the world than the ‘White Man as savior’ stories. Most of the world gets along fine without the white man interfering.

The writers of a show/book/whatever don’t owe you anything. No one can create something that will be a universal hit, someone will always dislike even the most popular things. If you don’t like something, stop watching it. Anne Wheaton put it best while commenting on the discussion about the TV show:

It is fine that you like something, but it doesn’t mean that nothing different should be done with the story just because you like it. Or that things should only be done a particular way or have only show one aspect of society or one way of telling stories. Remember as the Vulcan belief states: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” (The Vulcan belief that beauty, growth, progress — all result from the union of the unlike). I have been reading books by authors who are not traditional white, male authors from the western world and their stories are some of the best I have read in a while.

There is a whole world out there, don’t be so scared that you are unable to enjoy it.

– Suramya

Folks, when you are applying for a job please don’t address the cover letter as “Dear Mr./Ms. Human Resource,” it sounds really weird and ridiculous, in fact it sounds like you are addressing the application to a commodity instead of a person. If you don’t know the name of the person, then try to find it out. Else, just say Hello and start the cover letter instead of doing this.

Also, the application and resume should be in English even if the company you are applying at is looking for an applicant in a different location where English is not the dominant language. Your resume just might land at the desk of an expat who would reject the application without further ado if they can’t read it.

And please, do not. I repeat do not, flirt with the HR rep you are talking to. It is creepy and LinkedIn is not a dating service. If you can’t act professionally when you are supposed to be putting your best foot forward why would anyone hire you? It would mean that you will do the same thing once hired and the company could be risking a sexual harassment complaint. Jani gets this all the time and it is annoying. Just because a girl is talking to you doesn’t mean they want to go on a date with you. Be professional. (If you don’t know what that is, then look it up).

– Suramya