The great ‘English’ escape!
At long last, my biggest wish has come true…. we always travel a lot during summer.. but this time its an escape to the scenic and serene city of Edinburgh 
We started on may 25, sunday on the 8am BA flight and after an uneventful flight (in which I watched The Reader and The Curious Case..) we landed at heathrow at around 7pm that day. London was beautiful from the skies, with almost all houses of the same dimensions and neatly arranged in semicircles and large patches of green everwhere. We also flew over Dubai around midday and that was again awesome from the skies.. the whole area had a lot of rectangles without even a single green speck. The coatlines were again so beautiful to look at from the top. It’s a pity I dint have my camera with me then.. my #^%&^# cell phone has no bluetooth, no slot/cable to connect to a pc and not even an expandable memory, photos just overwrite the old ones without even prompting me. Pshaw!
London airport was a bit eventful At security check, everyone had to remove boots and belts, but a few had to remove more than that I escaped with just removing my belt, but still.. 
And then we went to a coffee shop and had english tea (it tastes much worse than I one I make) for £1.x… my mother has vowed not to drink tea at any shop in England after seeing the bill 
)
The London-Edinburgh flight was again an beautiful one, we flew over land and water alternatively. Edinburgh’s airport itself is located amidst mountains and is a very green and windy city. I have just gone to a couple of markets and some walks in the neighbourhood and so far its been a peaceful city.. every house has a neat garden with beautiful flowers like we have seen at our own kodaikanal flower show..
We’ll be going to a a few castles and glens around here and then London next week.. but I think we wouldnt be able to make it to the Loch Ness… 
I’ll finally have some time and am planning to catch up on topcoder, my google reader stuff and do something for my mentor meetings at work…. ha ha, did I say I’m on vacation here?!!
cheers,
anusha.
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BE, without the bar
Had a memorable evening at MIT on Friday – it was our Graduation Day, our turn to wear that yellow robe
Preparations for a bash at convocation had begun much early Trust us witches to use even the smallest opportunity to show our gethu ) After the er, slightly disastrous comments for the ‘uniform’ we wore last march (an older post has the pic), we took some care this time to choose a better dress. We spent some time on this hunt when a few of us had gone to visit the Bangalore witches last december. Needless to say, a lot of heads turned this time too (though not many negative comments about our selection this time.. or was it that no one was interested? ). And fortunately the ‘concerned’ people forgot to discuss the weight loss challenge between chennai and blore witches )
Coming to the event, I joined the witches at MIT (after a *lite* breakfast that other witches will attest to ). We managed to escape the rehearsal session and visit their canteen. But then the main event also turned out to be such a bore that we could have safely stayed away from that hangar. We were given our certificates rather unceremoniously before the event started. Worst of all, they actually gave a printed copy of the chief guest’s address to the audience, before he event started talking.
Met a lot of folk at MIT and of course, heard a lot of gossip too.. it did go well, though I had this feeling of not having done better at college – for someone who has regularly been in the proficiency prize queue at school right from 4th standard to be nowhere near it all at college.. sniff !
=))
As an aside, I have been reading a highly interesting “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. My first book outside fiction and am enjoying it thoroughly.
cheers,
anusha
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The year that was..
Hello There !
Back after a loong time (yeah, I’ll blame that on my work as always, and not on my laziness) . It’s that time of the year (once again!) where you suddenly wake up and realise you havent done much for having so loong on this planet.. and take the same resolutions you took last year (and the year before) with gusto.
Erm.. those two lines are pretty depressing But then, 2008 has been anything but that for me.. its the year I matured (now, did I?) from a ‘college-kid’ to (ahem) professional =)) .. the year that saw the Witches in FULL form (more on that later.. it would take a bigger post to do justice to those doing 
).. and the year that has been many things to many people
A small recap of 2008, for my friends, fans and foes (he he )..
January -
Its been a ‘buggy’ year for me and the bugs began in Jan with Kurukshetra =)) ‘Spot the Bug’ is , well, the thing that laid a strong foundation for the witches in our class [ I wonder how many hate mails I'll get after this post )] To be brief, we ‘participated’ in the debugging event of Kurukushetra, while our college was the host.. ‘participated’ not for ourselves, but to ’spice’ up things a bit for our class. Well, well, what a success it was ) I’ll put up the pics too, later
And we, team Chocolat (in programming circle – Aruna, Shanmuapriya and I) , got to visit IIT Karaghpur for an overnight programming contest – What fun it was! Surely, there cant be many places colder than that one! We had wrapped ourselves in a couple of tee shirts over our salwars, one or blankets, socks and mufflers. We took a pic of that ‘get-up’ but thats sure to put any horror movie to shame, so that wont appear in this blog
Most of all.. that thing called ‘fyp’.. That was the only plague in those wonderful last few months of college life We had our first review in Jan.. and not surprisingly we had to redo it! well, you do have to pay at sometime if you spend all your time in canteen / coffee shop and call that ‘working for fyp’ )
February -
Techofes ! Stayed overnight at hostel for a few days..only the scond time in college, after my first year. Though we were punished with ‘Bheema’ the events after we returned to hostel more than made up for that!! You’ll never know how a simple ‘truth-or-dare’ game would reveal soooo much! of course, that was beacause one of the participants in the game went overboard with their honesty!! )
Feb 2k8 also saw the Witches hunt for the one salwar that all of us would buy a piece of.. More of that in march!
March -
Isn’t a pic worth a thousand words – here’s the big thing we did in march -
Witches in a witchy gear
and then, the final internal review of our fyp came and went ) Its still a surprise to us on how we were given B in fyp )
April -
Interviewed with Amazon! Had a WONDERFUL birthday bash at Ascendas (it was on the day of amzn written, you know!) And yeah, we wore that witches dress for some exam ) Exams went well, as usual.. had to think so much to cook up some sensible stuff that I dint complete all the questions in many exams )
May -
Month of treats.. And the external review for fyp =)) What a tragedy comedy it was!! After college (I had no feelings at all then.. of leaving college.. that took some time to sink in!) it was the annual trip to sri rangam and then preps for joining amazon ) , followed by joining on may 26.
June -
July -
August -
September -
October -
November-
December -
Yeah, you got it – Life has been dreary, dull, boring, what not? December was a bit ok.. We witches met at Bangalore.. (which, If I take my resolutions seriously, stop being lazy, etc, would soon be a blog post) Had a wonderful weekend there.. Followed by our first glimpse of corporate Christmas celebrations.
A Witchy retreat !
Here’s to a physically active (:D), successful and cheerful 2009!
Cheers
Filed under: College, general/musings | 4 Comments
Life ….. !
Dog’s Life. Hate it. I hate it very much. I am looking forward to the day I’ll retire from this job.
And now, onto the brighter side of things..
Just cant believe that its been around 95 days since i joined amazon.com.. time just flies. Come to think of it, havent learnt much (yet!) .. maybe we spend too much time on TT and vetti chat!
Only one line of technical stuff – Ruby seems to be a much better language than python..!! Been using that for tasks that could be done with the CL itself ) ( Ok, maybe I am not yet proficient in them )
The ‘Bangalore witches’ seem to be having the time of their lives (%$%$# !! *#$*^!!) from staying in the same house, cooking their own meals (though their experiments at kitchen doesn’t seem to have produced anything even ordinary yet!), city-(sight?)-seeing on weekends and first day shows of movies!!
Saw LOTR only a coupla weekes back and promptly bought ‘The Silmarillion’ at LandMark last weekend.. along with Tell No One and Twilight (yes, that novel many think is gonna beat Potter). Read Tell.., yet to read the others..!
Nothing more to add.. though I always wonder on weekends on how that week had passed and what I had done besides staring at a flat screen for about 10 hrs a day, I get a fat pay and life would probably start rocking once I start managing time efficiently.
Hoping to find some time atleast in the coming weeks to write a meaningful post or atleast a lengthier post (like Birth of the Consortium, Feb 2008)
Cheers
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oN CloUd nInE !!
hello world\n
Adieu Ceg ! -Stepped out of that wonderful college life some weeks back.. and got to see the Red Building in all its majesty bearing the blue ‘College of Engineering Guindy’ !! and what wouldn’t I we give to go back and – sit under tat dept tree (infested though it is – i have the experience of catching an allergy).. a cup o’ smoodles with someone with a lot of gossip .. sitting in beloved class 110 and working for project ..
an endless list, I’d better move on to other things.
Went to Srirangam and like the past 2 years visited as many temples as possible.. jus love that place and Lord Ranganatha!! And with all their blessigns, joined amazon.com on May 26 2008 .. Gonna ‘Work Hard, Have Fun and Make History’
Thats one reason I’m on cloud 9! the other – pics from one-day trip to hyderabad :
-
- Whoooosh!!
And Thats it, Folks!
The end (of this post)
Cheers
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In search of…
….someone’s house somewhere on this planet!! (yeah, this planet only )
back after a loong time.. plenty of things to talk about..!!
1. college has ended. I dint feel anything special about last day, last exam, etc.. dunno why?!! slam books are making rounds, but the feeling hasn’t sunk in yet.
2. next phase of life begins on may 26
3. we are bidding adieu to the necessary evil called fyp on monday, may 12, when our external review ends. #:-S
4. what was i in search of, today? or rather we.. Molly and I.. well, here goes.
so i had this crush on Y. Y this, Y that, Y all the time.
and finally i learned where Y lived.
what better thing to do in hols, than to go in search of that place, that street and that house?
I had been thinking about this for sometime, when along came Molly. For AI project. A deal was stuck – i’ll do AI with you.. we’ll go for a walk in this area!! We decided to do that not-so-stupid (or is it?) thing today. We went to Barista for lunch – supposedly my treat for job, but she ended up paying as much as me
And yes, this post is more about Barista and less about Y Y will kill me if Y finds out about this post. Even otherwise Barista takes precedence .
We went to this hangout after college today. And spent a good ten minutes waiting for someone to take our orders, before we realised it is a ’self-service’ center. Ha ha. Going through the list of drinks, i urged Molly tat it was my treat and she should get herself a good drink. I have the bills with me.. Molly had a “Barista Balst” while I chose a “Barista Cookie Crunch”. The latter order made him look up ad say: “I’m warning you. Its a strong drink. We use tubed-ice (tats what i heard). I’m telling you because customers should not complain later”. I wasn’t going to stop for tat, so we went ahead and ordered it.
Yuucckkk. Only the cookies on top of the drink were eatable. The drink was ^#$^%#. Be warned, dont try that drink ever. After finishing half of it, i was wondering how Molly drank without complaining. Cos i dint realise only mine was this bad. And when we excahged the drinks, Molly almost spat it out. She is of the opinion its an alcoholic drink and that is what the man at counter was trying to convey. And yessss, being the good girl i am i dint touch that drink after that. we decided to get something solid to eat, to come out of that taste of coffee for her and ’strongly alcoholic? drink’ for me. ‘Coffee and Almond Cake’ for her and ‘Chocolate Excess’ for me. Pics below!
Feast ur eyes!!
After chatting about nothing in particular for a while, we decided to hunt this landamrk X near which Y’s house is supposed to be. And X was very near this barista. Only we dint know where exactly Y lived. I knew where Y’s father worked but asking about that company’s quarters only brought blank stares in return. (Later did i learn that that company dint have a quarters as such. ‘What we find becomes quarters’ Y said. Good )
and Molly was more interested in seeing who this crush is, so she wudnt give up after that. We decided to turn back again and search on the other side of X. When Molly’s slipper decided to prevent us from going any further. sigh!! even after an operation with a safety pin, the slipper wouldnt hold, so we just had to hire an auto and go home.
and we haven’t give up on this quest. as yet. we’ll go back and find out where Y lives. even if its the last thing we do.
and Y (:x) if u r reading this.. unna pathi illa ithu unnai pathi lam ezhuthuvena, public a? blog la lam? chumma.. ithu vera yara pathiyo!!
non disclosure agreement (placement season la) : keep this secret to urself… shhhhhh!! thanks
Filed under: Personal | 11 Comments
Beach escapade
[ An account of the wonderful (at least according to me) trip by 32 AB batchers to Mahabalipuram... ]
The background – my classmates had gone for a customary industrial visit in aug 2006 (i found a convenient reason to stay at home with my good old computer! ) and had enjoyed it thoroughly. Another IV was planned for the final year but there were no signs of it taking off.. so it came down to an one day trip to somewhere, sometime in april. Now this somewhere-sometime plan did take off and we were all informed just 2 days before the trip. Anyways, we witches are eager as always for an outing and in my case, more than other things, it was another-escapade-from-this-horrible-fyp Need say more?
The trip – The bus trip does deserve a mention – they brought to light the photographer in Karthika and my camera was in the limelight for some time!! Wat a pic!! Beats all the ‘thirutu’ pics we had taken in icpc s / abacus
We went to the lighthouse first. Whew! we girls are no mountain goats and we had a tough time climbing and sliding down those slopes. Weren’t the guys helping you out, you might ask.. no, as always And after this trekking exercise we went to the famed “Pancha Pandava Rathas” area. Photo sessions were on in full swing in the area. After many requests and threats, some ( not all, “Mind It!” ) ppl consented for a group photo and the result is here:
Grr. Horns on my head. x(
Lunch was good, the only time we spent under a roof. And the best part of the trip came after this. I thought we were going boating in muthukadu (at least that was part of the plan) but then, the bus simply stopped somewhere along the road, and there it was – the beach, a short walk through a “savuku thoppu” to the deserted stretch of sand.
We spent the usual half hour in the water with Maha staying on dry land as always. The boys had brought balls and bats and playing cards (yes, cards on the beach – tats AB batch guys for you ) . There were seven girls – 5 witches (madam greenie aka aruna had gone to Google Blore! ^:)^ ) and 2 angels (angels + witches = ab batch girls, and we are very much united, thank you!! ). we started with a game of dodge ball (reminded me of my ncc camp ).
Pics: Game in progress !
[ Photography : Mahalakshmi ]
We then had the time of our lives playing throw ball, lock and key It was nice to play these games after a long time.. the last time most of us had played was at school. And then it was time to drag Maha into the water.. she overcame her fear within seconds and started wading deeper in to the water, while we had to pull her back!! )
Not to mention the dance ’step’ and ‘music’ we learnt from hostellers and did a jig on the beach. And the ‘train’ we formed and ran around our very own treasurer of csea!! )
After beach it was a walk in to the village nearby in search of water. We started by around 6 and were back at the college by 7 p.m.
And the very next day, everyone was asking for that photo!! That sure was one of the highlights of the day..
My last trip with classmates was way back in 1998 to the same place – mahabalipuram. Had the same amount of fun this time too, especially playing those games on the beach!!
And yes, a special note of thanks to arun, from witches and angels alike, for staying back all the time to see if the girls are safe.
So when is the next trip? We want the ball this time too!!
cheers
anusha
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2008 is here..
.. and i hope atleast this year categories other than ‘general / musings’ get filled!! [:d]
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ICPC @ Amritapuri
A (not so) great end to our acm contests – The 32nd ACM ICPC at Amrita Institute, Amritapuri, Kerala, 2007.
Since we dint have the foresight to book tickets in advance during this sabarimala season, we had to go to Trichy, and from there to Ernakulam and (again) from there to Kayankulam by bus. But then the scenic campus and the (very) friendly volunteers more than made up for it. I could write a whole page on how well they did their job, how helpful they were and so on.
Coming to the contests, we did well in the first practise contest (as always) and sort of ok with second one. But the main contest was a tragedy – a tragic end to our stint with icpc. After 2 probs in the first half hour we were second place behind xtc++. But then , even after another 4.5hrs, when the contest ended, we had only 2 probs to our credit and ended up in 16th place – our worst in icpc. We felt the problem set was biased toward geometry. Tien-Ren-Chen and his ‘Colorful Bee’ of NTU came in first with CMI in second place.
My junior Vijay from MIT has blogged about his experiences here.
Some highlights -
Accomodation was not good. We had to walk a loong way to the ladies hostel which was with Amma’s Ashram, across the othe side of a backwater. And our room was on fifth floor in a building without lifts. And mineral water in bottles for boys? No such luck here, we had to walk down 2 floors to fillup our own bottles.
The food wasnt that good and the quantity was also not enough. And after five flights of stairs, I was hungry all the time.
The boatwater ride saw us being (literally) ragged by a third year boy from Erode – Jeeva. “Oru tamil paatu padungalaen.. fourth years a? Neenga podatha aatama.. “. Oora vittu ooru vanthu..
Volunteers were just great. They did everything with such enthusiasm, much better than last year’s event.
We wanted to come in the top five very badly. We did manage to come, but stayed there for only a few hours..
P.S. Mit Vijay was loitering around (among other superb costumes) in his TCCC 07 T shirt. I havent got it yet .. x(
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ACM ICPC
i cant seem to be able to blog regularly, but will make it up now with two (mostly) meaningless post!! Coming up is an account of our trip to IIT Kanpur.. to participate in the 2007 ACM ICPC Kanpur Site .
The online contest was held on Sept 22 or so. We looked at problems from the previous year and decided tat only a miracle would get us there. But one of the problems was about our beloved ABO blood group from twelfth standard (zoology portion) !! [ The problem is a 2007 world finals problem by name 'Consanguine Calculations' ]. As always, we manged to goof it up.. we were the first to submit from our college (by 10.30 or so). We had given up by about twelve o’clock when mit vijay asked us if we had handled the file input part correctly.. Drat! Changed the code and submitted at around 12.20.. The worst (or maybe the best) part was that they did only offline evaluation of code.. no status, no information about whether you got acc, nothing…!!
What followed was a tense two days ( not to mention one of the costliest xerox of our college life) .. we had little hopes of getting through when aruna found out it was a WF problem and our code gave WA!! Our talk had shifted to amrita icpc when results came and we were in!! Not only tat, 4 teams from our coll got through.. 8 girls and 4 boys!! We were a bit apprehensive at first, but what fun it turned out to be
It was a 2 night 1 day journey to Kanpur and the train was late (something that happens everytime with that route, we’re told). We had come to enjoy the trip, no doubt.. but we were more than lucky.. IITK’s cultural fest Antaragni was going on at around the same time and what a place it was. The college came to life only at night.. A complete show with so many food stalls ( we came back every night for the aloo chat!! slurpppppp!! ), a Salsa workshop, a nice stage (our banners do not come anwyhere near theirs) and to top it all, no stupid dress regulations.. what more could anyone ask for? Other stalls worth mentioning – Kanchan’s accessories.. it made Jhillmill’s prices look like a bargain; dart game – vinisha was the only one to give it a try; candy shop – shanmu bought something for 50 or so rupees and we decided our 50p orange mittai taste better!! :p
Then came the inauguration (with sumptuous snacks – the biggest gulab jamun i saw in my life, dhokla, kachori, something like the ‘kunukku’ they make at home and there must have been some more items i have forgotten) and the pratise contest. We are always lucky in practise contests.. we submitted the prblem as soon as they enabled the judge.. Everyone must have noticed the first team – Chocolat – tats us!! :d
We had the contest dinner that night and again what variety ( for the tongue as well as the eyes )!! what wouldn’t i give to get a double demotion and go to second year now?! sigh..
And at last the D Day.. we had no idea about how to solve the previous years’ priblems and were only looking at not coming out too soon. But looking the questions, most of them were as simple as 2006 amrita’s icpc. Thre was one on fibonacci numbers, one for which i used bfs, one about a chess board and one problem similar to the Play on Words problem at SOPJ and some other easy ones (i remember only these two). We solved 4 of these on first attempts, 1 took two attempts and we had no idea about the other two – problems A and B. We later learnt problem B was about maximal matching. Just like last year, we were continuously moving downwards in our ranking – we ended up 12th overall and 1st from our college. That was good enough – this was our second contest; but thinking of the previous years problems, i dont think i can complain.
The best part was that they called every team onto the stage to get their certificates – something that amrita dint do last year (one person distributed it to a crowd amidst much confusion after the function!!) Guess where we went after the function..? yes for our final ‘aloo chat’. Antaragni was ending that night.
Thanks to Jayasree’s cousin, we visited Rave 3, a mall at Kanpur.. the only place worth visiting, they said. And you woudnt believe what 8 naughty girls did. The counters for the cine halls were right there at the entrance (our luck!) and the very first poster we set our eyes on was that of the super hit bollywood movie of 2007, anurag kashyap’s “No Smoking”. Aruna and Jayasree started jumping at the sight of him (Am i missing anybody’s name here? They were single handedly resposnible for dragging us to **THAT** movie, right?). So we halted right at the counters – 2 were jumping around, trying to convince others; 4 were thrilled at the prospect of going to a movie – Jeevitha, Jayalakshmi, Vinisha and I- I was going with people my age after a long time, so i was one of the first to join them; Pavithra was reluctant to come – she was only for sight seeing. But the most important reason we went was this Shanmuga priya. (Heard that the people who were really responsible for this mishap are still getting pothu mathu from other hostellers.. that gives me some pleasure ).
So that was it – a fitting end to our memorable trip – a movie with a title that attracts girls (**ahem**). I am still wondering what the movie tried to say. The Bipasha Basu song at the end of the movie was the only relevation. We were in a theatre with only 6 other people and this was only the 4th day from the movie’s realease. That movie took all our time, we had to gulp down a domino’s pizza (they would let me order a black olive topping, boo hoo!) and rush back to the hostel to check out. After a tasteeee cutlet at the railway mess, we boarded the lucknow express to home sweet home.
The train journey was the usual stuff – cards (Ass, Pick two, er and other names.. i forgot), thattai, biscuits (those hostellers would let us have a bourbon biscuit, ), oranges and apples (yo could tell those apart, they were equally bad). This train was no better, though it seemed to be running all the time, it was 3 hours late. Our own Chennai central at 13:30 hrs. We were back.
Our culinary experiments did not stop with the train (ground nut chutney, yuck!! ) or IIT. We had lunch at Saravana Bhavan before bidding each other adieu.
What we did at Kanpur – in chronological order:
Wed, 24th Oct – boarded Raptisagar Express at Chennai Central. It is the worst train i have travelled in, so far.
Day 1 at IITk – Fri, 26th Oct
Till 4.00 pm – Our fears that we would have to stay on platform from 8.30 am (the trains actual arrival time) till 3.00pm (when they would start providing accomodation) were not realised. The train was late, we reached the campus at 3.00pm only.
4.00 pm – Accomodation at Visitor’s Hostel. Heaven on Earth. A five star hotel would lose. Two per room. I am afrain of ghosts, but now i had to put up with a second one – my room mate. [:((]
6.00 – 8.00 pm – Our first visit to Antaragni 2007. Our first aloo chat.
8.00 pm – Dinner at boys mess. There was a brinjal-stuffed-with-tomato something, a roasted potato delicacy, some red syrup that only aruna claimed to be a soup while others thought differently [:d].
Day 2 -Sat, 27th Oct
Morning – Missed mess breakfast. Had to eat left over manchurian rice at Anatargni site. The inauguration, snacks & tea, contest environment and rules.
1.00 – 4.00 pm – Practise contest. We came first!! [bah, some consolation that]
6.00 – 8.00 pm – We have come back, Antaragni. Aloo chat ( with dahi for some and sans it for others ;D). I think i took videos of ‘clothes at IITk’ (thats a better way putting it!).
8.00 pm – Contest Dinner. Plenty of Google t shirts, dunno where they are being sold.
Day 3 – Sun 28th Oct
10.00 am – 2.00 pm – 32nd ACM ICPC. Came 12th. Ranklist is here.
6.00 pm – Prize distribution. NITT’s KIllAll were the winners.
Think we went to Antaragni after this. Not sure, will have to wait till someone reads it and tells me.
Day 4 – Mon 29th Oct
Till 4.00pm – Unforgettable. I’ll never see a movie for its hero. And i will definitely not come if shanmu is choosing the movie. No smoking.. bah. The scurity at the theatre asked us as we came out if we liked the movie!!
7.00pm – Lucknow Express to chennai.
30 Oct - journey by train. Groundnut chutney, yuck yuck.
31 Oct - Home sweet home.
and what did i bring back from Kanpur?
a…aa….aatishooo!! excusez-moi, i am back in chennai.. but with common cold.
cheers,
anusha
Filed under: general/musings | 9 Comments
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