WORDS ETCHED ON THE MIRROR OF TIME

Bugged

2011-11-21T18:38:00.012-05:00

I see a lot of (software) bugs. I find some, I fix some and I live with the rest (not knowing that they exist, lurking in the dark somewhere ... ready to jump at me when I least expect them). :-| Good, that was dramatic enough. I'll start my story.

I hate having unread messages in my inbox. I read email, mark items as read or I trash things that I don't need. Nothing extraordinary there. I'll add that I open my email from more than one computer and I also use email apps on my phone. Yes, yes I am being slightly prissy here (after all that is how we have to be when we deal with bugs).

I did pretty much the same things yesterday - opened a few new messages from my laptop, deleted some without opening them, marked one or more messages as read, opened a few emails from my phone and then I noticed the bug! There was one unread message which was not visible in my inbox. I call such bugs ghosts, so lets call this the gmail phantom (or the black sheep ?! Phantom this time, I'll use black sheep in some other post ;) ).

I searched my inbox, refreshed the page several times, signed out and signed back in, but nothing helped. So I slept on it :) and tried something different this morning. I searched for a tweak online and discovered something interesting. There's this nice search field that lets us search within gmail. Type "is:unread" there and hit search, voila! - you get a list of unread messages (including unread messages from the trash folder). I saw a couple of random messages that were trashed, but I found nothing from the inbox. Anyway, I marked the whole lot as read and my problem was solved.

All I know is that some list didn't get cleared correctly, how and why it happened are beyond my capacity to fathom (without any logs). When I searched for all the unread items, the phantom too came along and I killed it. I hate such bugs, you don't know where they come from but they bug you to no end. :angry frown:

There was another invisible bug that I saw a few weeks back. I couldn't become invisible on gmail chat (the Google Talk that's linked to gmail) even after I signed out of all other sessions (I was signed in on my laptop, a desktop and a phone). Apparently, this was a bug that many mobile users have faced and I tried a remedy that someone had posted in a forum. I signed out, uninstalled the app on my phone and reinstalled it. That did the trick. I don't remember clearly, but I think I was able to turn invisible after I uninstalled the app. Anyway, the end result was that I stopped using that gTalk account on my phone. Actually, life's more peaceful now.

I see similar bugs on Facebook. Sometimes notifications get lost or I see the incorrect number of likes and comments on some posts (mine / my friends'). Later, these bugs go away. But as I said, there's a whole bunch of evil bugs in this planet; love them, hate them, you just can't ignore them! Adios!

Navratri

2011-09-17T23:19:00.018-04:00

Ganesh Chathurthi (or Vinayaka Chathurthi) marks the onset of many beautiful festivals in the second half of every year. Janmashtami (or Krishna Jayanti) follows closely and then there's Navratri (or Dussehra). Deepavali is next and then there's Karthigai - the festival of lamps.

Since I grew up in Chennai, these festivals formed an integral part of my life although I did not participate much. I had been wanting to blog about Navratri for a long time. Now is the perfect time as Navratri is going to start in another ten days and celebrations would have already started in my beloved Chennai with the usual festive spirit and bustling excitement. Only school going kids would be waiting impatiently to be get their quarterly exams done with before they are let loose in the holidays. :)

Many craftsmen set up shop on North Mada Street (Mylapore) for a couple of weeks and sell dolls of Gods, Goddesses, cricket sets, the conventional chettiar family and so on. The Golu is kept in many homes for 9 days with a grandeur of colorful dolls and decorations. I too have made steps for the dolls using boxes, tables, books and host of things that are conveniently hidden beneath a silk sari or a dhoti. We had a rack too but assembling it was harder than the aforementioned approach and my mom and I chose the simpler option when we didn't want to wait for help. Here is a related post with more images.

Anyway, half the purpose of this post is fulfilled. Now I have to move on the more interesting part. The ten days turn out to be a socializing spree for many ladies. The thamboolam has to be exquisite and my mom and I have racked our brains year after year to buy Navratri goodies. The obvious choices were plastic boxes, stainless steel bowls, shloka books, purses, accessories for young girls etc. At one point, we exhausted all these options and I firmly said that we should give Rs.11 to all aunties and kids because everyone has a surplus of plasticware and utensils (and honestly I was bored of getting potentially useless gifts). My Mom liked the idea too. The experiment was mostly successful except for that one time when some lady / aunty asked "Why are you giving money?" and I tried hard to not say "Seriously, give it to me if you don't want to take it". I used to collect pens and buy plenty of notebooks and eleven rupees was a big deal to me !! Another year we gave away all the extra gifts we'd bought in the past - some for Navratri, some from my brother's thread ceremony. The problem of plenty indeed !!

There was another occasion when one of our guests was a middle-aged woman. She entertained us quite well actually. Our oft neglected veena got some attention from her that day and she chatted on for a while in contrast to many other women. All of a sudden, she asked me "How old do you think I am?". "I think you are fifty", I said. She was so shocked to hear the truth from me. "You guessed right" was all she could say. I still laugh a little wickedly when I think about my honest answer that day. Back then, I was just a girl in my bold teens. I didn't give fake compliments to anyone. These days I do that for fun sometimes or when I am forced to be diplomatic. :) See, I am still very forthright about most things. Not much has changed. :)

I'll add one more incident from my reminiscences. This one is slightly sadder. My mom and I were going to my brother's tuition teacher's home as she had invited us to her golu. I really didn't want to go but I had to tag along as my mom and I had a lot of things in our agenda that evening. I tripped and fell outside a shop close to her home just a few minutes before we went there, and my knee was hurting badly. Unfortunately, she asked me to sing and I yielded notwithstanding my pained state and amateurish singing. I suck at remembering lyrics and I chose this song on Lord Raghavendra only because I play it often and I know the verses by heart. I can't do the same vocal acrobatics as the legend Maharajapuram Santhanam but I think I got the effect right in the last stanza. With my bruised knee, I think I let out a groan with all the notes right in Aahir Bhairavi "Raaghavendra ...". I quickly finished that really hard stanza before I made any major blunder and my mom praised me generously. "I didn't know you could sing this song Vidhyaa. I don't hear you sing at home. It's such a revelation." I don't hear myself sing either. I am a backing vocalist to all the stalwarts in carnatic music in the recess of my room. The bathroom stimulates my musical vein as well but I don't like singing before strangers. :-| Anyway, that lady didn't say a word. I could see the frown on her face and I was glad to be out soon. I'll revisit this topic in a separate post. It's not just me, kids hate it when they are forced to sing. Period.

Year after year, my mom and I have returned home at nine or ten in the night with a dozen bags and sundal packets (boiled beans or lentils garnished with a traditional blend of spices for seasoning). Don't even get me started on sundal. It's nice when we make it at home and eat it or the paati downstairs (my veena teacher) gives us a packet. Otherwise, it's redundant and annoying. Particularly annoying is the fact that it is distributed only customarily and very often it doesn't reach the poor and needy. I wish someone would have the backbone to put an end to this or find a nicer way to abide by the customs of one's faith. I can so hear my mom say "Nobody said that the poor shouldn't be fed Vidhyaa. We can give them sundal as well" and me replying tiredly "What are we going to do with all of this Ma?" My dad saves the day grudgingly - "I will finish everything. God, when is this Navratri going to end!?". The problem is, everyone is right. It's so hard to get that balance. As for the rest of the stuff in the bag, the coconuts get grated and cooked eventually, the turmeric rhizomes enter some tray in the Puja, so do the betel nuts along with packets of kumkum and so on. But the betel leaves are mostly redistributed or thrown into the trash. No one eats so many leaves anyway. Still, people who sell those earn a meager income since there is a market for things that are doomed to be trashed in a few days. I would still endorse giving just kumkum and keeping it simple, but some things never change!

In all this drama, the real guests of honor get little attention, except when the haarathi is done or some ashtotram is said. I am talking about the Gods. But they are nice people. They may seem to be silent spectators, but they watch everything and bless all these families with abundance so that they can welcome them back the following year and later too with the same joyous spirit. I'll stop here. Peace !

P.S. It's a drag to search for an image and give credits to someone else. Yeah, I might be missing Navratri. I have just enough time to write a post. I'll celebrate virtually. :) Oh I almost forgot! We have an expert in our family - my aunty. Photo credits to her. It's her awesome golu from last year. Thanks Ankita, your comment helped me add a beautiful picture.

Exam rant

2011-09-16T22:44:00.010-04:00

It's weird that I am ranting now although I don't have to take these exams again. This is the story. Both the central and state governments attack the (sufficiently damaged) education system when they are bored. There was good reason to not include the class XII board exam marks in the IIT JEE scores. The board exams test one's ability to memorize formulas and solve stereotyped problems. It's really not a big deal as a student gets very comfortable to face these exams after 8 months of repeated practice, tests and revision exams. On the downside, it is easy to mismanage time when one gets caught up in board exam prep and compromises on preparing for the engineering entrance exams.

Here are some quick comments. Exams don't have to be comprehensive. What if someone can't stand optics, organic chemistry and conic sections? Perhaps there is something else that a student is extraordinarily good at (or deeply passionate about). In the war of cutoffs and ranks, many people accept whatever they get and move on. After spending 14 years in school, a student who wants to pursue engineering is mostly left clueless about his / her strengths.

Wisdom dawns late on many of us. We begin to question what the purpose of school education is only after getting out of school. It's not just in school; overall, in all walks of life, the pressure to satisfy some immediate requirement / deadlines saps one's motivation to push himself harder and think beyond the tight realms of the present. I have known some self-starters and I try to emulate them. It's easy to start anything, but really hard to keep at it. Most of us are driven by compulsion and competition. In fact, we are driven so much that we forget to start anything on our own and engage ourselves in it. There's always a truck load to explanations and excuses.

Overall, I can only say that the format of the board exams has to change. If the exams test one's "real" problem solving abilities, they would be incredibly hard and making those marks count would actually be a worthwhile effort. But if the bar is raised to improve the quality of these exams, a vast majority of students won't be pleased. Or am I wrong? I hope I am wrong this time. I am not an IIT alumnus, may be alumni out there would protest against Kapil Sibal's proposal. Sometimes it's easy to separate an individual's problems from the problems of the nation. I hope I find a way to contribute better.

Signing off ...

Invisibility

2011-08-24T23:01:00.006-04:00

The title is quite self-explanatory. I followed this as a principle religiously until a few weeks back. I am known to be invisible on google talk.

There are three kinds of people:

1. Some are online all the time but not necessarily quick or consistent in responding

2. Some are never online at business hours (on any time zone) because they are in jobs where they don't sit in front of the computer (donno if it's really true that they can't chat from their mobile phones too. Hmmm people work in steel plants and manufacturing units ... I do understand).

3. Finally there is the invisible lot. Disguise, deception or discretion ... call it whatever you want, being invisible does have a few advantages. But I have to start with a story ... and then come back to this point.

Many a time, we add people to chat lists when we interact with them often. The reason for talking frequently might expire, but people remain "friends" on google talk or whatever. That's not really bad but I have seen some things happen and it's hard to say whether someone's violating the "chat conduct code" when they do certain things.

Here's an example. I throw my invisibility cloak away for a bit, most probably because I have to start a video call / discuss something of academic importance ...and someone who hasn't spoken to me for at least a year pings me! I don't reply immediately because I am truly busy and then I send an offliner / email later. That friend chooses to not respond and I too don't retry. It's not practically possible to guarantee immediate responses to chat toasts but when someone pings to just say hi and there isn't much to talk, it's subtly understood that neither party intended to be impolite (this rule does NOT apply to my close friends, they are very much entitled to question me / accuse me if I don't reply to pings and I hope those people "know" that they are close to me. I can't mention names for the fear of good friendships changing or ending later. Likewise, I too would only "ping" some people as opposed to emailing them. It could be because I can't wait too long to get an answer, or because they reply to pings but not emails or because I have the liberty to ping them anytime! It's obvious, there's really no need to elaborate too much.)

Then there's the next scenario. People start chats without knowing how long the conversation can last. We all have heard some or all of these.

"Are you there?
Yes and no."

"What you doing?
Nothing in particular. (which means myself or the other person could have 25 tabs open and might be online for no particular reason / to just chat with any good friend who might care to ping.)

"Hi
Hi

<< awkward pause >>

some sentences

<< implicit end of conversation >> "

Nonetheless, even a "Hi" means a lot to me at times, if it comes from someone who's dear (to) but not near (me). I'd interpret the "absence of bad news" as good news, and honestly that's all I'd have wanted to know even if I talked for longer.

So many people chat with me when I am visible but they don't ping me when I don't show up online. I realized that being online does make a difference and it doesn't require any great effort on my part to stay online (as much as I can). I want to say thanks to all the people who have initiated chats whenever they saw me online, remembered to share news with me (quite saddened by some bad news and worried for someone as I type this post) or called me / messaged me / emailed me, really, thanks for not giving up on me. And sorry, there have been times when I have felt guilty for not staying in touch but took my time to deal with that guilt (mostly the ones who care ping me on their own and my guilt disappears or I realize that there's no need to feel guilty because they don't want to talk anyway. Either way, I deceive (?) myself or prefer to believe that it's a "win-win" situation for me.

P.S. I usually become very eloquent whenever some change happens in my life. A lot of changes are happening but there is one CHANGE that I want to (or rather have to) see pretty soon. Closing in the hope that that right thing will happen at the right time.

P.P.S. I'll say the truth. I test Google Talk on production. :) I wish there was / there comes a way to become invisible on a mobile device. (Yahoo Messenger has the option to "Appear Offline" to some people, but total invisibility is still a feature that I am yet to see. :) )

Adios!

A little bit of philosophy

2011-08-09T23:42:00.020-04:00

I watched the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara a few days back. There is a scene in the movie where Arjun (Hrithik) admits that he was living in a box (metaphorically of course). After a two month break, I am returning to my blog to write about "living in a box" !? Sure, you have every right to ask me why. Well ... those words stood out to me and I think I have an opinion on this statement (rather I think I might arrive at one if I go on and write). Lets see.

I say that most people live in a box of their own but that box can have other people and things in it ...

What is the "box"?

It could be a phase of life, something that is timed ... like a contract. The start and end date are known beforehand, sometimes there are unexpected twists along the way but mostly the overall outcome is predictable. My school life is a classic example - there was hardly anything to feel insecure about. Almost everything was done for me, everything was paid for ... I was taken care of completely, nourished and nestled for seventeen whole years. :) But I was still in a box, although it was a very comfortable one.

The next thing was college, where began my transition from a cocooned life to a wild phase of survival. It was tempestuous at first, but later I got my "box". Overall, the box represents a comfort zone to me. Trust me, undergrad was very peaceful. I wouldn't be wrong if I said that most of us got jobs without having to try too hard. We spent eight beautiful months in our final year with no care about what was in store ... ignorance / indifference ... whatever it was, it was truly blissful.

Grad school has been very different though. Many of us pay our accumulated debts in grad school, in addition to getting newer ones (some that can be repaid in cash and others that can't be repaid ever ... to friends, family etc.) The "box" ideology doesn't describe grad life all that well. A lot of people (including yours truly) come to the US seeking just two things -a Masters degree and a job. (Pls don't get me started on my "I don't want just a job ... it's my life, my future, my career" rant. Someday I'd be able to describe that rant funnily ... I hope). :-|

Okay, so long story short ... it's more like getting in and out of boxes (and living out of boxes!) rather than being in just one (and also believing that there is a box ... even if we don't know where it is =P ).

And this is why most chats sound like this -

"Hey hows it going?"

"Not too bad".

"Hey wassup?"

"Nothing much".

(Not just me, many of us experience conversation deadlocks with friends and when by chance, they do ping from wherever they are, what I wrote above happens ... true story! Sometimes phone calls and meet ups might break the ice though. It's still a beautiful world.)

Yup, that's pretty much it, a post on those "indescribable, non-deterministic things". I could have drawn a Finite State Machine and described this stuff using fewer words, but that would defeat the whole purpose of reasserting to myself that I can still write!

I am closing this post now. Adios!

Habituated? - Part 2

2011-06-04T22:07:00.008-04:00

Once again,I intended to write about something else but I chose to postpone it for later. The topic of this post is something very easy to describe. Here goes.

When someone goes out anywhere, it's supposedly a good practice to not ask them where they are going. Well, friends and family mostly let us know what they're up to usually, so it becomes redundant to ask anyway. Everyone is assumed to have a cellphone by default. Conversely, when a colleague says "I'll help you tomorrow with this ... / Do you need any more help today? I'll be leaving now ...", it's definitely very courteous of them to care to say that kind of a bye. On the other hand, when colleagues become buddies, the "Hi s" and "Byes" become more informal and habitual.

Until a month back, I didn't have to use a security access badge. Currently, I need my badge to get out of & get back in through almost every door in my building. Things weren't remarkably different in my old building either. The structures are identical except that I didn't need a badge there. To go to the restroom from my desk, I had to open and close 5 doors each time. Since I have done this activity at least a three hundred times now :) , I know exactly what the count is. Anyway, I found it amusing to notice the difference between office suites in Bridge Parkway & the ones I have seen in India. There are fewer glass doors here (more security?). When I am in a hurry, I use both my hands and feet to push these doors open. A lot of people let me in / out with an "after you", again another addition to the list of pleasant courtesies. Getting back on track, a small incident happened recently - my badge stopped working just before I opened the door that leads to my desk. In a moment's frenzy, I forgot that I could go out the other way and knock on the glass door to catch the guard's attention at the front desk and get a temporary badge. I just followed someone who used their badge to open the door (which is excusable as I am a "good" girl). This episode made me appreciate the access control design within the building. Someone has obviously thought about these things ... if both the doors needed badges to be opened, someone could get stranded in the worst case scenario (assuming they left their cellphone on their desk. I do that a lot, I would hate to forget my phone in the restroom or flush it accidentally!! Scary and gross! :-| )

There's a solution to the aforementioned scenario still. I got to know about it yesterday. I was at work until 11 pm last night and some of us had to stay in the telephony lab for several hours. After 8 pm, the guard who took over the shift checked on us once every hour. For the layman, it could be mildly annoying / distracting but very often there's a reason behind everything, it's always good to remember that.

I got a new badge recently, with a new photo. :) The old one was truly horrible. One of those cases where a change can happen only if the original is stolen / lost / deactivated. I know this could have been a postscript but trust me it's worth interjecting because I'm still not at the end of this post. Over a period of time, I do manage to collect a lot of material serendipitously I guess ..., I'll get started again.

There's a guard named David in my old building, a nice person in his fifties or sixties, one of the jolliest guards I have ever seen. We became friends and saying numerous "Hi s" to each other never became boring. I used to close the doors very politely initially, he was the one who motivated me to care lesser. :) But I thought about their lives later and I realized that I would probably not enjoy sitting in one place (even with a laptop and Internet connection) if the door would be opened and closed noisily every ten minutes, such a "headache" inducing thing. Apart from David, there are other guards who I know pretty well now. One of them was a "Good morning" guy (I forgot his name :) ) and the other one (Armando) has a very sweet way of saying "Goodnight, see you tomorrow". I'd positively feel happy about going home regardless of what my state of affairs were, thanks to that friendly greeting. Now I have just one badge and no "Good Morning / Good Night" buddies, no issues either way ...

Yes, this is the last paragraph. I am really winding up. After all this storytelling, only one question needs to be answered. What makes an action a habit? Not everything is necessary, the "Bye" becomes optional at times. Caring is also optional. My opening statement about not asking someone where they are going makes sense too. Like some wise soul said, there is a time and place for everything. There are ways to dismiss people too. "When will you leave?" is not a very nice question sometimes.It depends. In my opinion the best answer is "NOW" if someone wants us to leave and a return question "Any reason for asking this question?" if someone is trying to hold us back for no valid reason. With the course of time, many of us learn to understand changes that happen in our lives. Somewhere down the road, even a little whisper / frown / unexpected remark / hasty comment / unsolicited word of gossip could have / could make a world of difference. Worrying too much can make someone paranoid or excessively cynical but "proceeding with caution", is always better to avoid potentially troubled waters ahead. I am compelled to be subtle here, but I am fortunate enough to have a few readers who know me well enough to as much as gauge the flutter of an eyelid & pull me out of my prolonged pensive musings at times, I'd always close in the hope that those blessed few will find some value in my posts.

P.S. I stared at my screen for nearly an hour and decided that I won't abandon this post. It feels good to be writing again. When I unload my mind of all the routine junk and try brewing some fresh, good things do happen. "Inner peace ..." Please watch Kung Fu Panda 2 :D Adios!

Habituated? - Part 1

2011-05-15T15:00:00.006-04:00

I remember reading somewhere that all human beings are creatures of habit. Some things that people do out of tradition turn out to be good rules / principles / habits. Of course it's hard to follow something blindly. I too don't obey everything that I am told to do. I have asked questions and got some answers too. Hoping that narrating some of those stories would make an interesting read.

When I was a little girl, I have seen my Mom wake up early every morning and put the Kolam of the day outside the house. She tried to teach me too. I didn't get too motivated. However I think I was more interested in playing with the rice flour when I was a baby. I heard that I used to ask for the entire cup that she used and soon after I got it, I'd topple the thing and make palm prints and other "artistic designs" on the floor happily, with no care about cleaning up the place later. (They have a picture also.)

Anyway, Kolams are believed to bring prosperity, ward off evil spirits in addition to beautifying the entrance of the house (Rangoli is always a visual delight and some Keralites make kolams using flowers too; since I don't like flowers I won't talk about it :D). Bending down and drawing the design could be a form of exercise too (especially if the kolam has an outer radius > 20 cms). Something that caught my attention was the fact that ants and other small birds like sparrows eat the rice flour and hence these Kolams have multiple uses benefiting humans a.w.a other creatures of the planet. Powdered white stone is also used to make Kolams at times. It is thicker than rice flour and "probably" cheaper too; that thing isn't edible as far as I know. Anyway, powdered red sand diluted in water is used to give an exotic outline to Kolams that are made using a thicker paste of rice flour. I don't think ants can eat that either. The small black ants generally don't bite people. It's hard to find their colonies too. I have seen them eat the rice flour from kolams at times. The red ants probably have more options for their grub.

There's another custom that's followed in many households I know of. Before anybody leaves the house for the first time in the morning, the kolam has to be made. If someone in the first circle of relatives croaks, then the entrance is left bare for the mourning period.

Also, this subject is quite vast and my knowledge is limited. So I have to bring out the best I can in one post (and hence the image, which of course is the result of a quick Google search) :P. As I am nearing it's conclusion, I am reminded of a neighbor back home who was distinguishably creative in this art and another one who I have heard is turning out to be a stark contrast to the former. No more inside jokes. It's time to say bye, Adios!

Just talking, but a little more seriously ...

2011-05-07T23:23:00.007-04:00

For a long time I wanted to write this post, but I never did. Why? That's not so easy to answer. Writing is a mysterious thing to me, even today. If I can call myself somewhat experienced in anything, writing would probably figure in the top 5 items in the list, nevertheless, it remains to be as arcane as anything could be. In the past two months, I have asked myself several times if this blog had neared / reached it's end. Again, why? This question is not so hard to answer.

Here's why:

1. Life has changed, and I have changed (vice versa).

2. As one of my good friends pointed out, writing is all about expression. It doesn't matter what the subject is, it's the act of expressing one's thoughts that counts. So have my thoughts become so inexpressible that I don't want to write at all? Of course not, I have just lost interest in updating this blog. (I don't want to ask another why, I can already see some recursion here. Recursion's not always nice is it? (evil programmer smile)).

Now I am guilty of a very serious crime. I decided to blog about something else when I started this post, and I am not able to get that post out of me even today. What a pregnant silence ...! Anyway, the introduction was generic enough. So I'll quickly move on to the topic of my post. (I am a little drowsy with sleep and my head is hurting quite a bit, so I've perhaps got the right conditions to (figuratively) pen down what I am about to.

I saw a quote somewhere - "There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again."

I really can't bring myself to disagree with this. It's so true. I could replace the word "love" in the quote with something that's more appropriate though. It'd be more like "There's always a moment when you know that something has changed for good, whether it's with yourself, a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again."

With blogging, the epiphany happened when I realized yet another time that nobody cares. It's just another stupid blog, I have used this space to vent things out at times, I have logged some incidents here and so on. But of late, when I sit down to write about anything big / small, I am confronted by the fact that whatever I write doesn't make any difference. Not to me,not to anyone. Apart from a few courtesy comments, there's nothing in there to cherish. For those who care, there are other more private media of communication. If I have to remove myself from the focus completely, I'd be left with the sole option of writing a partly (or fully) technical / factual blog. While that would be interesting, I am not yet an expert in any area; which brings us back to square zero.

There's a vacuum here, and that is peaceful for some strange reason. As long as I continue to feel this way, the writer in my will become dormant and might even disappear. Sad but true; I still believe that I won't exhaust my reserves of creativity though. However that's another addition to my long list of uncertain things. So long, adios!

Just Talking

2011-03-05T22:36:00.008-05:00

I started watching a certain celebrity talk show in a popular Tamil channel during my school days in Chennai. I was completely disconnected from the television for a long time, but, recently I found that youtube is not a bad substitute at times.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been watching as many episodes (of this show) as I could find and something about it has provoked a chain of thoughts resulting in this post.

I have been wondering how the segments in the show actually turn out to be meaningful even for some of us(non-celebrities).

Segment 1 - Rewinding the past and summarizing things about oneself quickly

Segment 2 - Invite someone significant to the show and have them say a few words,

Segment 3 - Have some music / some other form of entertainment

Segment 4 - Have a few laughs by making a prank call

Segment 5 - On TV segment; other people talk about the celebrity

Segment 6 - Flower segment; the celebrity picks questions and answers them (this could alternately be a rapid fire round)

Segment 7 - Give the guests a chance to say sorry or thank you to whoever deserves it

Segment 8 - The guests talk about their secrets of success

At the end of the show, the stars pick up their gifts and leave. An hour well spent, that's the other (probably better) takeaway.

Without any of these segments, conversations are difficult to maintain. :) That can't be considered a bad thing. Quality doesn't always depend on the number of words exchanged (but it can depend on their frequency). :) On the other hand, once all these segments are finished ... a lot of things become redundant. Everyone has to move on. Thirdly, and most importantly, the "emotional connect" happens only with a certain level of comfort and that, is highly individualistic and non-deterministic, like most emotions are.

At the end of the day, there are few celebrities in each of our lives. They walk with us all the time (metaphorically) and we take them for granted at times, like many other things that we forget to feel thankful for. Whatever I say, I end up coming back to that square which has contentment written on it. It's a very big word in my dictionary. Perhaps this post too was meant to be like a cup of coffee. It has brewed, relish it if you can. (This is such a literary extravaganza from someone who doesn't drink coffee at all.)

P.S. I tried to do something very carefully while writing this post. If I say what it is, I'd be ruining everything. If you understood what that is and you care to get back to me about that, your response would be much appreciated. Thanks, adios!

The "Low" Profile

2011-02-04T01:25:00.005-05:00

The old blogger in me was dying ... now she is dead. RIP.

Nevertheless, a new avatar has risen, a more complicated one ... but oh well, it's a change still. So here goes ...

I have switched to a "low" profile. Yes, this means a lot of things. Apart from feeling low (which I'm trying to change), I have lost interest in a lot of things, and talking tops the list. So this "low" profile just means that I have chosen to be silent and invisible - which is so unlike the other half of my personality.

There are some advantages to maintaining a low profile -

I don't have to give away information for free. With a sudden spurt of enthusiasm, I decided to stop sharing my blogposts for a while. My Facebook wall is pretty much blank and my online presence is of no consequence to most people I know.

I don't have to waste time over "friends" who are not friends. Beyond a point, people start ignoring each other on Facebook. By not posting anything, I have minimized so much unnecessary traffic. I stare at the feeds everyday ... most of them are meaningless. I "like" the rest ... a click says a thousand words at times.

I don't have to carry the burden of trying to maintain relationships that don't exist. That old Chinese proverb suddenly makes so much sense to me. If I let go completely, I know who / what will come back to me. I too don't want to hold on /cling to anything / anyone.

People can't comment on me or criticize things that I say ... I'd hardly be saying anything (unless I'm required to speak). I won't care if anyone criticizes that.

There'd be an aura of mystery about me, hopefully. I'd like that. :)

I get a lot of time to detach myself and think. I'd like to believe that I am redefining myself.

Finally a loaded question does come up. With such reluctance to acknowledge and share my emotions, talk about myself or things that are happening in my life, and with no interest in delivering speeches, sermons and philosophy on my blog ... how will this blog survive? I still have a reserve, I hope to keep writing. :) After all, that's what makes me complete. Adios!

Facing (the) music

2011-02-03T00:49:00.012-05:00

I'm finding the post the hardest to write! I started it on Feb 3 (over two months ago) and left it at the title, restarted it today and did too many careless Ctrl+ Zs wiping out a decent draft and now I am fed up of my own stupidity! This post has to go up on my blog today. Good ... so far so good!

So what inspired this post? If I'd have a make a finite list I'd state

1. My Mom and of course everyone else in my family who have a passion to sing

2. My veena teacher Mrs.Kamala Ramasubramanian (whom I have disappointed heavily)

3. A lot of people in the film music industry

4. Sangeetha vidwans and vidushis from the classical school of music

5. Various artists from other genres of music who's tracks I occasionally listen to

6. A host of reality shows that have become an arena for people to showcase their "musical talent".

Different people would define music in different ways. One such definition that stood out to me was Bombay Jayashri stating in a concert that music is her religion. She said that whatever one does the most becomes their religion. She was forthright enough to answer a distorted question with this remark; I was impressed. :)

To me, music is a friend, a soul mate. There are times when I need something that can strike a chord with me. Whenever I want that kind of company, I choose, listen and enjoy. When I don't want it, silence becomes music and everything else becomes noise.

Coming back to item #6 in the list, I am compelled to ask a question. Are these reality shows really creative?

I don't want to take a stand right away. Let me reason out a bit.

Before I analyze further, I have to quote Bombay Jayashri again. In the same concert I mentioned earlier, she had also said that the purpose of music is to provide entertainment (she did talk about other purposes ...). Anyway, do all these super / top singer programs do justice to their purpose? Overall they might but IMHO, they could do better.

At times, the judges entertain the viewers more than the performers. I agree that the media has to cater to audience with varied taste, participants have to sing popular numbers to make the jury's job easy (also because everyone who takes part should be given a fair chance). All said and done, it gets boring beyond a point. There is too much repetition which undermines (and at worst,destroys) the little novelty that the contestants and organizers might have introduced. Perhaps they can include a segment or two to encourage fresh compositions / rare renderings.

Until then, I'll keep fast forwarding and skipping through episodes deceiving myself that I am listening to music, while killing time by enjoying the unwholesome entertainment that these shows provide. Thankfully, I get my kind of music elsewhere. :)

P.S. I am great fan of Chinmayi Sripada. I follow her blog too (and her Mom's as well). She is more than just a super singer!

Did I forget Shreya Ghoshal?! She too rose to fame through one of these TV shows. I am not an unreasonable critic am I? Adios! ;)

TMITLT

2011-01-23T23:15:00.002-05:00

I am happy to make one of my favorite acronyms the title of this post.

Truly, there's too much information and too little time (and a lot of vacant space in my head.)

Time ... it's funny to describe how time progresses. In the past 1 1/2 years, I have devised the concept of an "ideal day". What is ideal for me is probably not ideal for a lot of other people. When I was in Florida, even weekdays were ideal days but that life was not ideal. Too complicated?

Let me explain. An ideal day is a day in which I have no work, no compulsion to talk to anybody and I don't have to go out either. I am my own master! (Don't ask me what I do on such days.)

I don't know how long my independence will last, but I am making the most of it now. For the first time, the advice "live life to the fullest" has some meaning in my life too.

Let the id(ea)l(e)ness continue. :)

Voicing Out

2011-01-18T01:18:00.005-05:00

Dialing toll free numbers for customer service has become a routine affair now. When I dial, 9 / 10 times, I'd just want to talk to an operator, but alas, the process is a lot more complicated than it should be.

So they start like this, "Please listen carefully as the menu options have changed". At times, it's frustrating to think that the system is actually so retarded. Of course, the menu options don't change every minute! If we're smart and we've familiarized ourselves with the number sequence to navigate the menu, and overcome all the painstaking steps where we'd have to enter the account number,phone number associated with the account / debit or credit card number and a gazillion other things, we'd eventually reach the step where we'd hear the message "All our operators are currently busy. Please hold while we transfer you to the next available operator". Yes, we have to wait for many things to happen in life, at times even for biological processes to happen as expected.

Anyway, after all the pointless processing which includes hearing jarring waiting tones and getting all the more displeased, the operator would finally say hello and ask us to repeat the whole story and if need be transfer the call to whatever department should attend to the issue and (try to) troubleshoot or say something smart to close the case. Everyone knows the story so far. Nothing new to it.

I have just a few questions. If the data is so precious, why can't technology evolve to help the pained customer by making them wait a little lesser? Why doesn't the menu begin with a direct question - "Do you want to talk to an operator or not?" If the issue could be resolved over the Internet, the customer wouldn't call at all.

Sometimes, the redundancy of voice prompts amuse me. If someone doesn't pick up my call and I'd want to leave a message, I can do it without hearing the long litany of instructions that I have already heard a 100 times. Why can't there be a beep and just a simple greeting "Voice Message Please?". I deleted my extended absence greeting and thought of recording something very clever, couldn't do it today, but I am still tempted to make a bold statement with my voice message very soon.

After all the grumbling, I still benefit from these systems. I need them for everything, including customer service for my phone, Internet and to call maintenance to fix my toilet for crying out loud!

May be someday, these things won't be so boring as they are now. So long ... Adios!

Twists and Turns - The Happier Part

2011-01-12T01:43:00.003-05:00

My shoelaces are fine. All my jars open properly. I don't have meddle with my keyring for a long time to come. No pain ... no gain, they say. Very true, sometimes.

Wanted to say a lot of other things, but they seem to be better off left unsaid.

Goodnight.

Twists and Turns

2011-01-01T12:49:00.005-05:00

A few weeks back, I couldn't find the time and energy to sit down peacefully and update my blog. Things are slightly better now.I treasure every minute I get.

It's amazing how time gets spent so easily when we don't realize it and it seems like time has stopped when we are forced to do something / painfully stuck with something.

I was packing and cleaning crazily a few days back, and there were moments of complete desperation and utter frustration which eventually passed. I told myself that I'd blog about those moments and have a laugh after that mad spree ended ... so here I am.

How hard is it to pull out keys from a keyring? Probably not hard at all! Believe it or not ... I spent nearly half an hour or more (which seemed like eternity!) figuring out the trick to accomplish this simple task! Arrgh! Luckily, my uncle spared me the trouble yesterday. I had to insert just one key to get the whole trauma over with. I am quite the spoiled brat.

Shoe laces!! Don't even get me started on this.
I bought a very expensive pair of shoes from Oaks Mall a few weeks before I left Gainesville. The shoes are great. Black and white Nike, awesome look, great feel ... but the annoying thing was that the laces kept getting untied. I was irritated beyond description in words. Solution - I removed those pathetic shoelaces and replaced them with a nicer set from my old shoes. I thought I'd go mad trying to make both sides of each shoelace equally long when I struggled with the crisscross mess I had made in the holes. I hope the laces don't come off when I walk to work tomorrow.

Lids not opening - This has happened many times with metal lids on glass jars. I have learned to use brute strength and shout / scream to open lids of pickle jars & other bottles.

Absence of computing power - This is definitely the greatest agony. Most of my time is spent in staring at a screen, preferably a screen > 10" wide. It's SO very excruciating when I don't have my 2nd oxygen. I want to die before my laptop when I grow old. What a way to die! :) Err ... scratch that ... I wanna live with my laptops for now.

Perhaps, these exhausting things give one the patience to endure other consequential things in life. I don't know. I don't wanna to feel grown up at the moment and I don't really enjoy talking like one.
Anyway ... that's all I have time for tonight. Will come back with more soon. Adios!

People and Places - Miami

2010-12-23T10:54:00.006-05:00

If bitter fights, disturbed sleep in an over-priced room at the Hilton, an hour at South Beach and seven hours on a couch in an airport lounge make a trip, I've had all the fun a person would want to have at this much hyped place.

I had a very crappy trip. It could have been a lot worse, but thanks to divine providence, I had a few moments to cherish. This post is for those moments alone, and nothing else.

It's one thing to stare at the water and another thing to step into it. I chose to do the former, but I was pushed into the water unexpectedly. After so many years, I was a child at the beach once again. I played alone but that didn't make the activity any less pleasurable.

Rode a cab with a particularly nice driver. His name is Eduardo Soto. He engaged my friends in small talk, leaving me to daydream in peace. :) I ate two slices of toasted bread for $5. I can't stop myself from smirking when I remember his surprised remarks - "Five dollars for breakfast at South Beach, that's unbelievable! If you were at a hotel, you'd have paid 20 dollars" Breakfast, yeah right! (It's normal for a vegetarian to complain. My chocolate truffle cost $8. I was too exhausted to tell him that.)

Somebody named Bridget gave us free tickets on the 8 20 pm flight to GNV after we missed the one we had to board at 11 15 am. Calling her an angel would be an understatement. She was the saving grace of the day.

I boarded my return flight in time and immediately fell asleep. Felt neither the take off, nor the landing. Best thing to do on a plane. I've not slept so beautifully on any other flight. There couldn't be a happier ending to that miserable journey. I am not being sarcastic here.

Miami .... I wish I go there again, and come back with better memories to share. Adios!

Don't ask, just give

2010-11-18T20:42:00.015-05:00

I have made more than three contributions to different individuals / organizations raising funds for some cause that means a lot to them and / or others in the past month. Funny thing is, I feel nothing. I don't feel good, I don't feel bad. I remember (the) beggars who I couldn't/ can't tolerate. I just pull out whatever change I can find if the sight of a child begging for food irritates me. I know that most of the money is not going into good hands. After all, it's a mean world. People make children beg on the streets. I have refused to give money to a lot of beggars. I have given money at other times when I was just in a different mood. I am not an angel, I am just another human being. I particularly hate it when someone touches me when they are asking for money. I am not going to eradicate beggary. I just hate it. I have been told that a certain beggar was a familiar sight when I was a little girl. I used to look out the window and see her beg. She was just another normal entity in the society to me. Today, I keep hoping that I don't have to run into any beggar when I step out of home. That's one half of the story.

Here's part of the other half. Legend goes that brahmins had to take alms to fill their stomachs once upon a time. I don't know, I wasn't there then. But I have some sentiment for a certain story of Adi Shankara. It's nice to tell stories, I'll make this one short. Adi Shankara went to a poor woman's house for alms, she gave him the single gooseberry that she'd saved for herself as she had nothing else to eat that day. Adi Shankara was overwhelmed with gratitude and he composed the Kanakadhara Stotram in that fervor. Golden gooseberries rained on the woman's house. (That part is kinda hard to visualize actually.) What did the woman do with those seriously? The legend about the "Akshaya Patram" in the Mahabharat seems more convincing sometimes. But where did that thing go after that? People won't be hungry if that was there. So that story is also not so believable now. :-| Anyway, I play the Kanakadhara Stotram often. M.S.Subbulakshmi sings it so sincerely. Unlike the "Akshaya Patram" that disappeared mysteriously, there is some reward for listening to / saying this Stotram. Whoever listens to it will never be poor, they say. I don't want to argue like this now - "So, if I arrange for all the beggars in the street to listen to that prayer everyday, will they all become rich?!" No, of course not. Terms and conditions apply. Even a fool would know that. :) But I'll not be poor, because I am special. (I'd not be poor even if I don't play that thing at all, but I like that song, so I'll play it. I am not listening to it because I want to be rich. (But I want to be rich.))

That's enough digression already. People are impatiently wondering when this post will end. I know! I was talking about people who raise funds for humanity, charity, whatever. There are too many of them. They face a lot of difficulties. It's not easy to sustain any non-profit organization. Each one of those needs some loyal contributors at least. They (the organizations) need to be seen, they need to be heard and they do a lot (even sing and dance) to make people give money. Unfortunately, I don't feel anything when someone asks me directly or indirectly to donate for any such cause. I give whatever I can and there ends the matter. But something else has changed. Every time I open my closet, I know how many clothes I have. One great man decided to not wear a shirt until every man (and woman) in this world had a shirt (or some equivalent female clothing) to wear. He'd be roaming shirtless even today. Sigh! (There are two very personal shirt / t-shirt stories which can't be shared in this post. I am smiling wide thinking about those.) CHANGE! CHANGE! Yes, I have been following a minimalistic lifestyle. (It's still extravagant with numerous trips to Dunkin Donuts and TCBY. ;-) ) I try to not buy things that I don't need. (Some convenient exceptions have been made, still. I am not a bad person, I do stick to my principles.) I would not buy gold for the rest of my life. Every time I look at the cost of anything fancy, I equate it to the number of meals that someone can eat with that much money. I am not far from earning, but when I do, I know that I'll give money to a certain place where they feed a lot of people. I'll do that because I'd give with feeling, not like a machine. I want to do that.

One last word. I haven't explained the title of my post. I just wanted to say that we needn't question each other on how generous we are or who we are being kind to. Such adjectives are unnecessary. Even "good" is too big an adjective and in a world where anything can be made optional, who am I to talk about responsibilities? I'll finish this post, I think I'll be understood. Adios!

Writer's Block?

2010-11-18T19:52:00.003-05:00

I stare at my screen wondering why I am not writing although there are so many topics on my mind that I can write about effortlessly. Am I not writing because I am not enthusiastic to share my thoughts with anyone? May be, may not be. I'd like to believe that I have changed for the better perhaps and that is being manifested by my extended silence on this blog. My last post was an attempt to question myself - "Why do I blog?". It was a decent attempt but I am not satisfied with my answers now. So, I want to reanalyze, for what joy I don't know but I am typing uninterrupted after a long time, so let this go on. Even I am curious to see what this post will turn into.

What are the top 5 things that bloggers usually share?

Knowledge

Experiences

Emotions

Opinions

Facts

I wouldn't consider myself an expert in anything today, so, 1 is off my list. 2 was on my list all these days, however there seems to be a sudden change recently. It's probably the result of withdrawing from Facebook notes. 3 is complicated,lets pass that. 4 is a tough one again. Unless I want someone to know my take on something, why would I bother to write about it? Nobody likes loudspeakers, neither do I. That leaves us with 5. Google's doing a great job in that area. I might pitch in someday. =P

Am I cleverly justifying my obvious reticence? Or am I feeling bad that I have become quieter than usual? I wonder. However at the end of this half-productive post I have just decided to stop questioning myself and unload my thoughts. It's my space, I should be the last person questioning me. :-|

Comeback - Part II

2010-10-24T05:00:00.010-04:00

If there's nothing new to talk about, it doesn't hurt to set the stage for some old-fashioned banter. I am not going to try any tricks, lets see what comes out of this.A slight change of mind here actually.I'll argue with myself,I don't remember doing that on my blog ever before.

"Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few".

What is my motivation behind blogging?
I do it because I like doing it.

Am I saying anything through my blog?
Not this one at least.That kind of writing is outside this blog. I do write, but this is something else.

What got me started?
I found something to write about and I liked the look of it on a blog.

How regular am I?
I've been quite active in the past 18 months. There were some sporadic posts before that.

Do I see a pattern in my posts?
Yes, I let patterns form if I like what's coming. I don't want my blog to be cluttered with documentaries, emotional let outs, philosophy, opinion, personal chronicles or anything that'd be boring to write about / read (I'm the first reader, my first critic - I try to be a harsh one at that).

What is the point of each post then?
Let me answer this question indirectly.I don't blog secretively, and it would make no difference to me if nobody read my posts. The social media we have today gives me versatile options to share posts / links to posts. I have an audience. It feels good.

Counter - Hardly 50 people read each post.

That's not my problem. I don't read 50 blogs either.

Good lead. Do I follow any blogs?
Yes. Technical as well as non-technical ones. Blogging's like love at first sight. Apart from friends' blogs which I follow informally, I can say this strongly for any other blog. After you scroll down a few posts, you catch a glimpse of the blogger's personality. If they're regular and you like their writing style, there's a good chance that you'd end up following the blog. I've stumbled upon blogs ... I might want to read more in the future.

Hmmm ... writing is an art.Not all people who learn music become professional singers.It takes a lot of skill to present something to the masses.Not everyone might want to showcase their talent or sell it!! However, the feel of a good piece of writing stays the same, regardless of where it comes from - it's totally subjective. The closest analogy I can think of is cooking. Writing a good post gives me as much satisfaction as eating a good meal does. It's actually a better feeling sometimes, because my posts are more permanent than perishable food. :) Fortunately, with both cooking and writing, I prefer to be more than just a mere consumer, and hence that fancy line about saying so little to so few doesn't apply to me ... or to any blogger who shares this feeling.

Verdict given, I can sleep in peace. Adios!

Comeback - Part I

2010-10-11T00:06:00.006-04:00

I had been away from my blog for a couple of weeks. The reason's simple; my life slipped into a pattern, that's it. As we are approaching mid-October, I am going through a small transitory phase this week. Another spell will pass, and then another one, and finally this semester too will come to an end in the middle of December. No surprises there, nothing. Here is where the average reader would think that I am ranting. Actually I am not. With particular reference to this post, I encourage people to read between the lines as much as possible, it is after all a skill that I overuse. :)

Anyway, this post is about a very deep topic. Let it be. :)

I am lucky to be acquainted with a few people who don't mind having long conversations with me and vice versa. In one such discussion, I told a friend that a certain quote by Michealangelo disturbed me. This is the one - "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Witty as he is, my friend responded with another quote - "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them".

Both these quotes talk about aims / goals. I was whining yesterday that I have never had a BIG goal in life so far. I actually have only one aim, and I keep fulfilling it somehow. I want to do what I like, that's all I want in life seriously, and believe it or not, I have never been stuck with anything that didn't interest me till date. I am not saying that I have never been under the compulsion to do things that I didn't like. There were many such circumstances indeed. In fact, the better part of my undergraduate education got spent in devising ways to get a C or some better grade in several exams, just to ensure that I didn't have to repeat courses that I didn't like. The panacea to most desultory phases seems to be the thought "This too shall pass".It's one of those axioms that don't get proven wrong. The world is a nicer place, thanks to these things. :)

Let me ask you two questions. Are you doing what you like? Are you liking what you do? The last time I asked someone this, they told me that these are loaded questions. Quite smartly, I am not going to waste your time trying to answer your questions. Somebody has already answered it well, and I am just going to borrow a few lines from his speech.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something; your gut,destiny,life,karma ... whatever ... because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference."

Thank you Steve Jobs!Every night when I go to bed, I know that I have connected some dots, because I do look backwards. For someone who's trying to "have faith", your speech is a lifetime's treasure. Thank you.

More than just a book review: Memoirs of a Geisha

2010-09-24T00:53:00.003-04:00

"Memoirs of a Geisha is a book of nuances and vivid metaphor, of memorable characters rendered with humor and pathos. And though the story is rich with detail and a vast knowledge of history, it is the transparent, seductive voice of Sayuri that the reader remembers."

Yes, there are reviews online, of which the one here is particularly interesting, and that's where the above quote is from. But wait, if this is all I had to say, I wouldn't be writing this post!

So, here's my story. I picked up this book from Library West for the lack of better over an year ago. I tried my best to persevere with it, but my efforts were of no avail. Finally, I abandoned the book and left it unopened for several months! The novel's slow-paced, painfully verbose and extremely demanding on one's patience. Not even a tenth of the 434 pages have happy narratives and the first half of the book only talks about one turn of fate after another. Nonetheless, Memoirs of a Geisha is a complicated love story although neither the narrator (Sayuri) nor the reader feels anything deeper than desire for the better part of the book. On the brighter side though,there are good character sketches, unusually beautiful descriptions of complex emotions and subtle comparisons which enliven the reader like a whisk of some exotic maiougi (folding fan). The movie was hence better received I suppose (I am downloading it as I write).

There's a certain paragraph in the novel where Sayuri talks about throwing little objects into the Kamo river in the hope that they might reach the place she wants them to. That part of the book is a personal favorite; truly unforgettable. I didn't feel wasted after I put down the book and I was lost so much in it the next morning that I dreamed all the way to campus while on the bus and I needed an extra jolt to get out when the stop had come; conclusive proof that there's substance in the book, definitely worth a read! Sayonara!

Let Loose

2010-09-16T01:45:00.007-04:00

Four weeks have passed since I left India and returned to Gainesville for a brand new semester and yet, I hadn't written a single post which had any "life" in it (pun intended). Interestingly enough, there has in fact been a post titled Life!, which I wrote just before term started and even that is a distant haze now. I don't think that post glorifies life although it might give the impression of exalted writing. Life is something else, certainly something bigger than the bleary snapshot I presented in my earlier post. Many people told me that one would remember college life so differently after it ends and I didn't give much thought to what they said, but I found out later that I relived / am reliving certain moments with a fondness that I had never construed before. They were very right, I am not so enlightened.

I didn't want to write about how I am missing those who aren't with me in Gainesville this year, or about how I thought that some good things had come to an end. Silence helps sometimes. I am still wondering why I am writing this post when it's past two in the night, I am barely awake and I could just postpone it for later or abandon the whole thought as it is.

I can think of a number of reasons -
I have been lucky to know three people who had incomparable zest for life,
I am often remembered by my friends and vice versa,
I like to create happiness serendipitously, and share it deliberately :P
and so on, so forth ... blah blah blah :P

These are reasons which hold true always, albeit times changing, however immediate motivation probably came from today because

I woke up fresh after a disturbed sleep last night,
Missed the bus which I always miss by a few seconds once again,
ran to another bus stop because I didn't want to be late for my presentation,

Walked on the narrowest stretch of the cemented path by the grass all the way from where it began till the very end without losing my balance,
Fell asleep for the better part of the afternoon, like a baby, :)

Got a lot of good free advice; one of which was about enjoying life,
Ate four filling meals, without having to cook today,
loved our new microwave oven and loved sitting on the kitchen counter of a certain apartment where I freeload often :P,

Fell for an absolutely lame prank and took color printouts of free Jamba Juice coupons and discovered the most seductive chocolate drink I've had in the United States till date!

Solved a bit of my homework,
Missed the bus which I so desperately caught in the morning because I wanted to sit on the bench for a breath of fresh air, and walked home without a frown for a change,

Laughed loudly for no particular reason,
Spoke to someone who I respect greatly,
Took out the trash at 2 am because cleanliness matters so much to me :-|,

and last but not the least, decided to redeem the blogger in me, for all those ordinary things that make life extraordinary and finished this post with a sense of great achievement !! :)

That's all for tonight folks!

Adios!

Grad Student Diaries:Entry 2 - Technology

2010-08-30T21:03:00.014-04:00

I was catching up with friends over the phone yesterday and somebody mentioned that the "Hi" I said sounded just like the "Hi" I had on my earlier voicemail. Many people didn't like the way I said "Hi this is Vidhyaa's voicemail, please leave a message". So, I decided to play with my phone since I had some leisure time yesterday and recording, playing and deleting messages reminded me of a voice application that I had worked on recently.

Most often, automated voice services are built on an XML + Voice XML platform over a web server. I have a decent picture here actually. (I haven't done a good job of resizing it, my bad, so please click on it if you want to.) It's self-explanatory. :) Until the launch, none of us in the team thought anything about it was cool. Testing was a pain because we had to go through the same drudgery over and over again. Write code, test, find bugs, fix bugs, test, change, write code again, change, redesign, change ... and finally everything was up and running.

Testing a voice service is exactly as cumbersome and growing the XML tree physically and doing a Depth First Search on it hundreds of times relentlessly. We actually had number sequences written on paper for each test case because we didn't have the patience to dial the number and get directions from the prompts each time. And who said phone calls are free?

Database design was my favorite part, partly because I picked up a few tricks on SQL Server and that was the only area in which I had more experience than my teammates. :) I'd have been a complete loser without those guys. They taught me a lot very patiently. I needed that.

I firmly believe that the right learning environment can make any formidable task a manageable exercise, and Ankita's words are there to back me up all the time. "Nobody learns everything in their mother's womb. It's alright to start from scratch sometimes". I am well aware of the fact that most of what I said is redundant to those who write less and work more, however, I hope that this post wasn't a bad read to you guys too. I think it'd be a good idea to leave you all with some food for thought. "Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology". Anyone wants to disagree? I'll salute John Tudor for saying this and publish my post. That's all folks. Adios!

Grad Student Diaries:Entry 1 - Life

2010-08-30T15:31:00.011-04:00

It has been over a year since I became a grad student. This is probably the last year in a long continuous stretch of student life. I am happy and sad. Every year had at least 40 happy holidays till now. I have experimented with schedules to the fullest extent possible. I have worked round the clock and not worked at all. At the present moment too, I am my own master (and slave) and I wouldn't be wrong if I said that whatever I do / want to do is unquestionable. That's life. :) This is the happy part. The sad part is pretty obvious. :chuckles: Nobody knows what the future holds. For a long time I did not know what I want / wanted. I knew what I did not want and there was always a way to avoid getting what I would not want / like. Fortunately and otherwise, life becomes a little complex when we know our wants and passions well and we chase after them. I've got a lot of advice and encouragement from people. I like my Mom's advice the best. It's just one word "BELIEVE". :) Of course, it's a known fact that I always ask "But how ...?" when she says this and I get back to her with an accomplished list later and tell her that she was right as usual and she just "knew". I don't know. :wide smile: I'm glad she does. The world would be a much darker place if nobody knew.

I got to know that one of my seniors called Masters a "humbling experience". I am saying my thanks to her here. I couldn't have found a better phrase. While I agree with her views completely, I also feel that gaining confidence has been my greatest challenge for the past 2-3 years. I repeat the following lines to myself / others often. A person doesn't gain confidence overnight. Frankly speaking, this process is time sensitive and often influenced by the growth rate of one's learning curve. I could actually plot a confidence curve for myself. There I go, I've actually drawn that curve. This is a good curve actually, an interesting shape for life. I don't know where I am in this curve at present. LOL However, there's another curve, the "uncertainty curve" and I know where I stand in that curve. :) Since curves are too complicated to deal with at times (It takes time to analyze gradients and stuff), I decided to use a more intuitive metric. That is called ... the "stress level".
Arthur Hailey decided to rate road traffic density on a scale of ten in his novel Wheels. I got inspired. I try to have ten point scales for many things in life. But at the present moment, a 4 point scale suits my requirements better. After all, universities have a special liking for the 4 point scale. So my stress levels could be - Low, Not bad, Bad and Horrible. :) You got the drift, I don't want to bore myself with this for too long.Anyway, I'd need point / line graphs for stress statistics. When I am not writing, I might be doing this, you'd never know. :) Writing is not my full-time activity friends. :)

Blogging was simple once upon a time. I'd write just about anything and four people would like the post on Facebook and I'd sleep with the satisfaction of having earned my respect for the day. That doesn't work anymore. I have began to critique myself. Now it's actually hard to meet my own standards, but nonetheless a more interesting pursuit than pleasing others. :) Hmmm, alright ... it's time to wind up. :) I introduced a "Gainesville" label on my blog last year. It has been fun organizing posts that way and I thought I could improvise since people never miss out on my "Gainesville" posts. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the very lame and overrated "Grad Student Diaries" series. I predict a chain of posts in the next couple of weeks. I'd get busy after that and come back with something lamer. Happy reading folks!

Adios!:)

(Dis)Connected v 2.0

2010-08-22T23:54:00.008-04:00

I seem to be very good at meandering through topics these days.It's one of those annoying habits that arises from wanting to process and present too much information in too short a time.More often than not, extended silence / prolonged discussions throw a few insights into identifying matters that are significant enough to be brought up in a good conversation.

There is this hackneyed quote that most of us would have come across a hundred times.
"Great people talk about ideas, the average talk about things and small people talk about other people".

Is this a practical saying? Do we really talk about ideas to those people we talk to often? :) I find that I talk a lot about myself.I try my best to digress to other things before I enter the sorry state where I'd be bored of talking about myself.So, I can modify that statement."Great people talk about ideas, the average talk about things and small people talk about other people, and all people talk about themselves".This sounds nicer. :) And oh, it's probably more risky than sinful to talk about other people. I will not scatter too many ideas in this post. I'll come back with another post that delves into my last statement.

So, what makes a good conversation?
Prepared speeches,
programmed responses,
a self-imposed economy of words,
respect for the listener,
empathy,
topic discretion,
clarity of thoughts/ideas/words/speech, i.o.w, a good command over the language,
responsiveness,
patience,
and last but not the least, a good measure of pleasant humor

These are the ten best ingredients that I can think off the top of my head. People add these elements in proportions solely decided by subjective preferences / considerations.This sentence sounds professional in an uncool way.Anyway,I'll let it stay for the lack of better.

This post should have a fitting conclusion and with all due respect, I would like to make a few questions, the beginning and end of this note."What did all these paragraphs lead to? What was the point I was trying to make?"

Here's my answer.It is very difficult to have lengthy discussions with interconnected threads of conversation. Sometimes, chats lay out bits of huge topics which when reassembled later make sense like a jigsaw puzzle does.Even so,it is not always necessary / justified to expect anyone to take that extra effort to comprehend whatever they had heard.Hence, it is imperative to make many points in every discussion and make one final point that turns even gibberish into something meaningful.That should be an interesting exercise for an occasional chatterbox.Let's see how that goes.

So long ... sayonara!

J U M P

2010-08-13T18:45:00.004-04:00

This is a fun post because I am writing about something that I like. :)

Location 1: Chennai,Gopalapuram 1st Street: It was love at first sight. The sidewalk is clean and there are gaps in front of gates because vehicular stunts are not advisable on a generally busy road. I never miss an opportunity to walk on this road. I was crossing this entire stretch with my kid cousins and I inspired them to do what I usually do when I am there. "Can you walk from end to end without getting off the pavement? Can you take that leap of faith? Can you manage a few long jumps?". Hurrah! I succeeded in training my cousin well enough to reach the long jump finals and also managed to make a few policemen laugh and jokingly disapprove what we were doing in public.

Location 2: Staircase with 8 steps.
Me:"I can climb down looking backwards and jump 5 steps. You are taller, do something flashier".
I don't have to tell you that my protege descended gaily and had a safe landing.

Location 3: Parapet wall, 4 - 4 1/2 feet high.
Me: "It's always nice to sit on these. A little push ... and I am there. Yoo hoo!"
My comrades always follow suit immediately.

Location 4: Ledge / sunshade
Me:"Hey,this is rather high. Are you sure I can climb down after I finish my business here?"
M: "Just do it. You can rest your feet on the wall, balance yourself while holding me and jump on the motor easily."
I made a speech on the sunshade. I felt like a celebrity when I waved at everyone from there. (They were staring at me for understandable reasons.)

Location 5: Kitchen counter.
Me: "The food tastes better when I sit here and eat it."
Whoever is putting up with me: "You're incorrigible. Eat up".

Location 6: Any bed
Who hasn't jumped on any mattress even once? :P I like that bounce. :P

Location 7: Random birthday party
Here's the code: Kick one at a time, jump all at once. :)

One last word : Why should you stand still when you can jump? :P

Half Open Book

2010-08-13T15:15:00.006-04:00

Social networking is a big topic to discuss. I am not the first to blog about this. Vivek's post and Swapna's post were excellent precedents that left me thinking about Facebook privacy for a long time. This post is a small sneak peek into several windows for discussion.

It's hard to write a rulebook for using any technology, and this rule holds true for social networking websites as well. Every person has some degree of independence to decide what's private on a public portal. The obvious questions that come into the picture when any content is shared online are - "Who is this piece of information intended for? Who all can see it? What are the risks in making it visible to more people than necessary?". An intelligent user would organize friends, customize settings to suit his / her needs and climb those virtual "walls" with prudence and mutual respect for everyone's "shared privacy".

Quoting Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.". Indeed, that social norm evolved with time along with the commonly perceived notion of online trust. A few bizarre incidents occasionally remind everyone that they have to be cautious, but hardly anyone gets scared to the extent that they delete their account and run away from social networking websites.

Online social networks give that extra impetus to be well informed and stay in touch with at least a few friends regularly, particularly because they are constantly being seen and heard on posts, notes, photos, comments etc. All of that information does not go unnoticed and nobody wants to miss anything of importance. The small working compromise here is that all the exchanges resemble blurred projections on a half open book. That's something that we all wouldn't mind living with because we are not restricted from using other channels to communicate when those projections don't suffice. I'd conclude on that note,return to my other open tabs and leave you to tell me how like this post wherever you see it.

Adios!

Bullseye (Part II)

2010-07-30T15:26:00.010-04:00

Let me start this story with another anecdote.

I was sitting in an auto rickshaw and the driver started a conversation which I am transliterating to English.

Driver - Do you know Tamil?

Me - Yes!

Driver - I thought you were a North Indian.

Which place are you from?

Me - This place, Chennai.

Where are you from?

Driver - Theni, Do you know where it is?

Me - I do, it's near Madurai.

Driver - Are you a brahmin?

Me - Yes I am. (Lets not delve into this answer. On a different note, a yes / no to this question from me wouldn't have made much difference anyway. )

End of discussion. I didn't want to know "what" he was. My ancestors created Varnashrama Dharma, and the consequent identities. I have nothing to do with it. :)

What would we end up with if we dissected these "identities" to finer and finer granularities?

Here's my hypothesis.

Let's say I start with person X and apply a classification algorithm to get X's race, nationality, caste, sub-caste, family ... etc. etc. What would I finally end up with? Either X or (more wisely) nothing. :)

I am well aware of the endless North vs. South fight. I am not a part of it and I don't want to be. That said, I also want to accept that I'd not restrain myself from citing experiences on my blog and making context-specific observations. For every example I give, I also share a counterexample. I do not publish a post if I cannot find two contrasting facets to any debatable topic.After months / years of nourishment, some ideas pass that ultimate fitness test and find their way to my blog.I discovered that my last post turned out to be an exploding bombshell rather than a thought provoking read.I did not take sides or offend anybody but if anything was taken otherwise, I apologize and I'll write better / clearer posts in the future.

It makes sense to associate labels with people for the purpose of identification. Passports, State IDs, College IDs ... the list is long! Some details become redundant / insignificant in many situations when there's no good reason to discriminate between people or magnify differences that exist for reasons whatsoever.My cursor pauses here.Was anything left unsaid ...? I wonder.

After much thought, I realized that I have a monotonous parser running inside my head for the English language. I have improvised it to understand more than just grammar, but it's an inimical beast to many who are happy without it. However, experimenting with it will continue to be a perennial source of amusement and I'll indulge myself.

I rest my case. Adios!

Bullseye

2010-07-29T20:54:00.011-04:00

I had attempted to write (a similar post) a few years back but I chose to be subtle in that one. There's no need to be cryptic now. This needn't be another "cute" post. Enough said ... I would like to share a few anecdotes to start with, I don't know what this post would turn into after that!

2005, my first week in Ranchi -
X - "Are you a South Indian?"
X turns to B - "Isn't it difficult for you two to talk to each other?"
B - "Why? We talk in English!"

I had fumed so many times when I had felt that I lost all my identity there to those two words - "South Indian"! Well, there's nothing inferior about it but I didn't need to be constantly reminded of the fact that I was a south Indian in a place that's not south India. Anger gradually turned to indifference and later to understanding. People were curious, and I had an overdose of everything initially!
I remember asking her what "गाल" meant at a time when I should have known the equivalent word in not just English but Japanese as well! She said "You don't know even this?", and smiled at my frank response "I don't! That's exactly why I am asking you! Tell me now!".

The reverse scenario is equally ridiculous. I see North Indians here who can't jump that imaginary fence yet and feel home in Chennai. And there are these conversations between people in English, when English is a "foreign" language to both parties. " Where do you put up?" "I did not got that package." "I had went to the movie!" And of course, I've heard things like "All the childrens should maintain silence", "the plural of loaf is loafs just as the plural of leaf is leafs". Neither would learn, it's incredible India! We won't do away with Indian English, it's just so Desi and cool! (? really?!)

Then there are these idiots haunting the streets of Chennai. They come asking "Hindi maloom hai?" and spin a yarn about how they've lost all their money and say "behan samajh ke madad karo". I shake my head and walk away these days!

I have to talk about someone interesting before I close this post. Thomas was driving the Runways shuttle I took from Gainesville to JAX this May. He asked P who was seeing me off "Are you gonna miss her?" and the latter jokingly(?) answered "No! I am very happy that she's leaving". I think he knew that I was parting with a friend. He asked me nicely "Do you want to go and kick him one last time?". I knew what he meant. :)There were four passengers including myself on the bus and Thomas knew enough about India to engage us in a hilarious conversation about ABCDs (he knew the acronym!) who eat hamburgers and listen to American rap music. :) He said "phir milenge" to me after we reached our destination. I was visibly impressed!

I wanted to write about differences, language divides and other potential barriers when I started this post. I wanted to be angry, and voice my resentment without inhibition. I hate to admit it but I am still a "nice" person. I have chosen to ignore whatever I don't like, or laugh about it whenever I want to. Everyone can find their way, I don't really care.

P.S. I have not outgrown the habit of thinking one thing and saying the opposite. I wasn't thinking much when I wrote this post. There was only one thought initially. B would have liked this post. She had always enjoyed being quoted in my posts. I want to end it here. Adios!

One thousand things.

2010-07-18T15:30:00.003-04:00

I must confess. Extraordinary thoughts cross my mind when I least expect them.
A few minutes back, I was lying down, letting my mind wander, fighting sleep for the fun of it ... and I remembered something - the 1000 rupees note my grandmother gave me last week. Yes, yes, it was indeed my biggest harvest in many months! A 1000 rupee note - the highest ever denomination a person can get out of a single Indian currency note! What an achievement! Now this may sound silly but having a 1000 rupee note in my purse feels different from having 1000 rupees as 100 rupee notes or two 500 rupee notes. I have been preserving that note for a week and I like it all the more now.
It's probably the first time such a treasurable thing entered my purse, and I am cherishing its presence in several ways.

I am spending by the thousands at present, but every time I open my purse to take money out I see this 1000 rupee note, safe and secure, and I feel rich. It's a strange feeling I know!

I often hear people talk of "hard earned money". I haven't earned a single penny till date, so I don't know what "hard earned money" really is, but I have got somebody's "hard earned money". Mwahahahaha! :) I didn't see it coming and it just came to me because I am special. What a wonderful feeling. Mwahahahaha! :)

How would life be if I woke up every morning and found a 1000 rupee note in my purse?
If I was given the option of choosing such a life, would I say yes?

...

I would! But I'd probably have to find ways to earn the other thousands I'd need.
That shouldn't be too bad. Or may be, I can make it happen. What if I earn enough someday and save 31000 rupees, have it withdrawn as 31 1000 rupee notes, and have somebody insert one note per day into my wallet? Frankly speaking, this is the best ambition I've got in a long time. :)

Well, I'll wind up and sleep in the warmth of 1000s of rupees / dollars.

So long ... Adios! :)

Travel Diaries - Srirangam, Trichy

2010-07-11T12:06:00.013-04:00

A majestic Gopuram , people with an everlasting passion for music and literature, narrow winding roads, a small railway station with two platforms, a river that once had water (Cauvery), and a nice bridge over what's left of it; that's the town of Srirangam.

Trichy has changed a good deal unlike Srirangam. I like it that way actually.

There's something nice about revisiting certain places over and over again. Be it the temple, or the Rock Fort, or St.Joseph's church (which I usually see through the window of some bus), the aura of these towns is always homely and welcoming.

This post would be incomplete if I don't talk about my friends. One of them is a busy person although he appears to be reclining on a five headed serpent to catch up on lost sleep. He doesn't like to be disturbed too much, but people don't understand. They have endless demands which they expect him to fulfill. It's not easy to see him and there are supposedly pious people in his sanctorium who multitask between chanting mantras and driving people out of the sacred sanctum. I ignore them, I have a feeling my friend doesn't get bothered either. Things are better in my other friend's place. It's kind of obvious given the fact that he stays on top of a hill and reminds of a cartoon elephant with a sandal face pack. :) I try to meet both my friends during every trip, I've been lucky this time too.

That's the end of this post. There's probably more to come. Adios!

This and That ... (Part III)

2010-07-08T13:39:00.003-04:00

This post will partly answer some of the questions I had asked in the first post of the "This and That ..." series.

I was at Marina beach yesterday with a friend. We bought icecream from a guy with a Kwality Walls cart. The guy reminded us to throw the wrappers in the trash can. I was happy to see another like minded soul. I had to walk a bit to find a dumpster but that's not a big deal. The Marina is a lot cleaner than before. There's a new attraction every time I go back. There was a "Beach Exonora" for the Thuvanmiyur beach thirteen years ago. A couple of people from the surrounding residential areas volunteered to pick up all the trash lying around and took care to keep the beach clean. There is no such organization at present but the beach is not too dirty.

Before contracts were given to Onyx and Neel Metal Fanalca, there were garbage dumps in just about any arbitrary place. Things have improved, and I hope for them to get better with time.

While walking past the Tidel Park,I saw a couple of people carrying black balloons which had CO2 written on them. They were from Greenpeace. It feels good to know that people care.

What can I do to make a change? I only do the least I can, which is "being good" (read throwing trash in trash cans, giving stuff away for recycling etc.)

I wish everyone had as much sense as the icecream vendor. May be there 3 such people in a crowd of ten. (or am I mistaken?)

I hope to return someday with a better answer.

Opinions are welcome. Let's talk more later. See ya!

This and That ... (Part II)

2010-07-07T13:22:00.004-04:00

Chennai /India vs. Gainesville / the United States.

Here's another take.

It costs 50 Rupees (or lesser) to alter a pair of trousers in Chennai.
In the United States, they'd charge an arm and a leg.
I had to bring trousers home and get them fixed because alteration charges exceeded the cost of two new pairs of trousers in the United States.

@ Chennai - A person has more than one convenient option to commute from one place to another if he / she doesn't own / drive a car. Public transport doesn't have reduced service during the weekends. Buses are frequent on all days (and nights).

If you fall ill on some unlucky day, you can walk into any clinic or buy medicines from any pharmacy. Medical insurance is something that's used "if" need be.

A decent Indian meal in the States would cost at least five dollars. 4 people can eat a tastier meal for less than 4 dollars in India.

Ironwalas will iron even 100 clothes for you in Chennai if you ask them to.
(I don't want to compare costs again. Comparisons can't be made on the same scale. But there is an ironwala in every street corner. I have to press my clothes sometimes in the States, it's a drag.)

Oh, and the housemaid! I haven't washed any cooking vessels in Chennai. For various reasons, we don't use our dishwasher in Gainesville. I hate doing the dishes, it's boring! I have to be a maid and cook at times (the former for myself and the latter for others as well, since the closest way to reach a person's heart is through his stomach. :) ) I like our maid in Chennai, she does everything!! Wonder woman seriously!

I can lie down on the floor and stretch myself to my heart's content. Carpets don't give me the same satisfaction.

There are so many temples! I get to say Hi to God more often. (mostly from the outside :P )

And last but not the least, Marina beach!
Fresh air and good company brighten even the darkest of days!

I am a Chennai girl! I love it! :)

I'm home in the Gator Nation! I love that too. :)

Stay tuned for more! Adios!

This and that ...

2010-07-03T15:59:00.003-04:00

The human mind is conditioned to draw comparisons.

I'm seeing Chennai with different eyes now and I can't help it. I have many examples to cite, I'll share a select few.

There is a general lack of space everywhere. And conversely, too many people wherever I go. It's has always been like that, but I am fussy about it only now. At best, I'd spend some time discussing the causes and effects of India's population explosion with somebody. I get back to the grind after that. That demands no extra effort from me and there are better things to do than cry and complain.

I'm more squeamish about dirty and unclean places now. I have to ride on share autos and buses at times. As always I scowl when the person sitting beside me is a woman wearing a sticky sweaty salwar / sari made of some sleazy synthetic fabric. And I get angrier when they don't throw the wilted jasmine flowers on their hair and generate litter wherever they go. (Men are no better at times, 90% of them need either a bath or a mouth freshener or a deodorant or all of the above!)

There is a constant flux of spit, snot, $%!#, p@@%, puke, trash & plastic almost everywhere in the world! And we talk endlessly of a cleaner and greener earth! Nice try folks, we are all self-conceited! Let's keep deceiving ourselves!

Biological constraints force me to enter certain disgusting places at times.
I enter a state of misery and almost go to the verge of screaming "Where are the dry bathrooms? Where is the toilet paper? Where are the paper towels? What kind of creatures use these restrooms? Why does the mug look like ... ... "

In most places, there is no concept of line / queue. If by chance there is one, people don't respect it as they should and shout over others' shoulders. I had to ask somebody to wait because he was interrupting the lady behind the counter from attending to me and I was getting irritated.(I don't know why I was not rude to him, I saved myself the trouble of unleashing my wrath; that matters to me). On another occasion, a lady who came late and missed her driving class wanted to get her's done before mine and she didn't feel the need to even ask me if she could do that. I am glad that I didn't let her take me for a ride. (pun intended).

Who said cleanliness is second to godliness? He / she is seriously wrong!
And the person who said "To err is human, and to forgive is divine" isn't right either. I don't want to forgive many things, and I don't think any divinity would result out of being stupid and cheap or encouraging such sick behavior!

P.S. This is not an angry post. I don't see the unpleasant side too much ...
I stay away from it as much as I can,
but it's there all around me,
and for once I wanted to do more than just walk past it contemptuously.

Oh, that's all for now. It's has been such a drag! See you later!

(De)Coding v2.0

2010-06-30T12:15:00.016-04:00

I wrote (De)Coding last November, which was followed by (De)Grading and Metadata .

A friend's status message intrigued me.

"Theory is what should work, but doesn't work all the time,
practice is what works even when you don't know why it does;
programmers are good at both theory and practice".

(Here's the correct quote, well, it's rather pessimistic! :-/ -

"Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work.

Practice is when something works, but you don't know why.

Programmers combine theory and practice:
Nothing works and they don't know why. " )

Except for those stereotyped programs which come with copy-paste logic, there's always something tricky about at least one crucial line of code in almost every program. And such subtle things can't be looked up from books. Quite predictably, that's precisely what I like and dislike about programming at the same time. (If I have enough brains to get past all the bugs, then everything should work in 5 minutes, if I can be patient with something for more than 5 minutes, then I am probably dumb and I am wasting my time in front of the console. I shudder to know the truth. :-| )

People have troubleshooted for me, I have made random guesses and fixed code, I have sat with my head in my arms when I was unable to figure out what the hell was going wrong ... and got equally dumbfounded when some arbitrary modification set things right.

I still don't know how some ridiculously bizarre queries have actually worked, how "clean and build" removes a host of annoying exceptions, what on earth is the whole mystery about TomCat and why it's unfriendly for no reason at times. Damn it, it's crazy ... and thanks to some drastic unconventional experiments, so am I ...

Here's a little tete-a-tete from a laid back kid ... , for you and for all the things that wake her up at times.

So long ...

Adios!

100.

2010-06-24T09:59:00.007-04:00

I saw this quote engraved on a plaque outside Criser Hall last month - "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing maketh a complete man".It was this to the best of my memory, but if I got it wrong, it must have been a very similar quote "Reading maketh a full man, speaking a ready man, and writing maketh a complete man". After googling for a bit, I traced a version of the quote which says "writing maketh an exact man" to Sir Francis Bacon.

Here is an excerpt from his essay "Of Studies" which I like very much.
"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not." Nice and self-explanatory isn't it? The whole essay is really short, but absolutely brilliant, I encourage you to read it.

When I look back at the posts I have written so far, I am indeed amazed at the volume of content that I have published over the last two years (my blog has been existent since 2006, but I became a serious (and fun) blogger only after my third year in BIT Mesra =_= ). People have "liked" my notes on Facebook, discussed them with me, spurred me to write more, and made me very happy by acknowledging that it is definitely possible to share more than just opinions and experiences through little pieces of writing.

By writing, I am speaking my mind out and you are reading it. :) I'd like to believe that Sir Bacon would be pleased to read this.

To him, and to everyone who has found my posts worth reading (and vice versa),
Thank you very much.

So much for pit stopping at a small milestone. I'll be back with renewed vigor very soon. So long ...

Adios! :)

Innocent but Guilty

2010-06-15T10:46:00.000-04:00

"Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse."

On a rainy day, when I was really impatient to get back home from Publix, I ran to the busstop knowing fully well that the bus would probably leave before I made it as the traffic light had turned green. I didn't miss the bus because the wheelchair lift had been lowered for somebody who got inside the bus before I did, and I was shamelessly grateful for my good fortune that day.

I raced against time to catch a bus, another bus and a flight last Tuesday, and I lost my grip when I heard a familiar beep as the bus stopped at Frazier Rogers Hall and blurted out to my friend "do we have a wheelchair to boot!?" with no idea of what I was saying, or how loud I was. I felt horrible when I noticed that the lady who got in with her walking stick heard me and even worse when I wanted to walk up to her and apologize but was paralyzed by some inexplicable force.

This post is not to say sorry. I don't need forgivance to free myself from regretting what I had done. I know that I did something truly culpable because I was innocent, and reckless. I could have cursed the bad timing inside and kept a straight face ... but would that be something that I could feel less guilty about? I don't think so! It doesn't work that way on my scales of justice. I might run into her another time ... on the same route ... on the same bus ... by another quirk of fate / destiny. I hope I have the courage to tell her what has been left unsaid if that ever happens.

So long ... Adios!

Shelter

2010-06-13T01:04:00.004-04:00

Watching the rain drench the earth from the safe recess of a little hut.

Things Happen (Part II)

2010-05-29T22:29:00.007-04:00

There is a popular notion that people come into our lives for either a reason / a season / for a lifetime. I keep thinking about this, and I get the feeling that I don't agree with that idea completely; I want to find out why, and this post is going to help me do that. While it's extremely easy to let my thoughts flow wordlessly, it's inconceivably hard to find the right words to express them at times. This is going to be a tough one, let me see how articulate I am tonight.

Here's how it goes for me.

Life itself has a reason (I'd prefer to believe that there is at least one, even if I don't bother to find out), it has its seasons ... and there are many lives in one's own life as such. I can call my childhood my first life, my teenage the second, my college life the third, my present life the fourth ... and who knows, a few years down the line I might just increment the figures and say "There I go, it's a new life once again".

It's actually pretty amusing to think about those things that don't change. Some things don't change by individual choice. I can list some out for myself:
my preferences for food,clothes, music and books won't change much over time.
My habits won't change, because I like being myself. :) I hope to be an avid blogger in the future too. We are entering a slightly different zone now. The things that are important to me now, will hopefully be important to me in the future too. Blogging and cooking are not just important to me, they are my creative outlets. I don't want to give up doing either, that would be depressing. :-|

So much for the first category of things that don't change ...

Sometimes four words protect the good things from changing. The four words are pretty obvious ...

"Let's keep in touch."

A lot has been said. It's time to conclude. Where did I begin? "People come into our lives for either a reason / a season / a lifetime".

This is not the best way to put it.
Reasons come, and hence people come.
Seasons come, and hence associations happen.
The cause and effect can't be wrongly stated. I wouldn't like that.

(I was actually trying to assert that the reasons and seasons will keep coming ... and that motivates people to connect with each other, few associations happen without a predefined reason, and last through the seasons and evolve further to stand the test of distance and time. But even reasons and seasons can lead to such lasting relationships! I find it nicer to accept that times change, that simplifies a lot of things. :) )

What about the third clause? People who come into our lives for a lifetime ...
I can't say the same thing here also. Closing this post without saying anything would be a terrible insult. I shouldn't do that. :-|

The true answer to this question would be the perfect definition for life. Although that is out of the scope of my blog, I have to answer that question at least partially to complete my post.

If there is nobody who would be a part of one's life for all time to come (literally or metaphorically), there would be something ... but I am not sure if that something would be "life".

Some imprints that people leave last a lifetime; and that can of course, be a good thing. Life isn't a blank canvas, thanks to those.

I'd be wasting words if I type any further. I'm pretty satisfied with what became of this post. It'll be another thing that will stay good for a lifetime.

So long ...

Adios!

Things happen ...

2010-05-26T22:18:00.008-04:00

This post is inspired from one of my favorite novels - "Of Human Bondage".
There is a particular scene in the book where Philip and Norah break up for good.
The words exchanged between them are so profound that I want to include an excerpt from the book, unaltered, before I proceed any further.

"Why did you write me such a horrid letter, you naughty boy? If I'd taken it seriously, it would have made me perfectly wretched."

"It was meant seriously", he answered gravely.

"Don't be so silly. I lost my temper the other day, and I wrote and apologised. You weren't satisfied, so I've come here to apologise again. After all you are own master and I have no claims upon you. I don't want you to do anything you don't want to."

She got up from the chair in which she was sitting and went towards him impulsively, with outstretched hands".

"Let's make friends again Philip. I'm so sorry if I offended you".

He could not prevent her from taking his hands but he could not look at her.

"I'm afraid it's too late", he said.

She let herself down on the floor by his side and clasped his knees.

"Philip, don't be silly. I'm quick tempered too and I can understand that I hurt you, but it's so stupid to sulk over it. What's the good of making us both unhappy? It's been so jolly, our friendship." She passed her fingers slowly over his hand. "I love you, Philip."

He got up, disengaging himself from her, and went to the other side of the room.

"I'm awfully sorry. I can't do anything. The whole thing's over."

"D'you mean to say you don't love me anymore?"

"I'm afraid so."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm skipping a few lines. Here comes the interesting part.

"Of course I knew you never loved me as much as I loved you", she moaned.

"I'm afraid that's always the case", he said. "There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I want to elaborate on that statement a bit. I firmly believe that I haven't understood this "love" thing fully, I try to; sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, that doesn't matter anyway. More often than not, there are two sides in any relationship (I am using the word relationship in its broader and more generic context here.) I have been on the giving side as well as the accepting side ... not because I had to, but because I wanted to, may be this is true of you too. I would love to hear other opinions, they make good discussions happen. :)

There is no science about how / why I care when I do and vice versa, but there is some sense in the way I give or take things in general, and that is probably because I have given much thought to certain things and I make an effort to ensure that I'd not say / do anything that I'd regret later. Once again, this is an open topic. I can't go on about this, it is a matter of individual choice, and people may choose to not talk about it. The same thing gets varying measures of importance from different people. I have spent a good deal of time in blogging about this now, because it matters to me. It's probably good that it does, at least I'd like to believe so.

I want to talk about my "thin line" analogy here.
I like to imagine that there is a thin line that makes all the difference. Suppose there is a scenario where crossing the line symbolizes a change that can't be undone, and the change can be for the better or for the worse, depending on the circumstances. How do I know where the thin line is? How far will I advance, and how quickly will I know if I drew the line and somebody tried to overstep the boundary?

The greatest piece of advice that I received from my mother pretty much came to this. She told me to set my thresholds carefully, and stretch them even more carefully. It's not always easy to resist the desire to defy the limits, but sometimes barriers are there for a reason, and sometimes it's worth respecting their presence at least until we know the reason for their existence. Now the nettled reader may be tempted to ask, "How does this all relate to Somerset Maugham?" I will not test anyone's patience further. I'll summarize with pleasure. :)

Should everything be taken to the point where it is so explicit that there is one who loves and one who lets himself be loved? Should there always be a giver and an acceptor, a source and a sink? Is such intensity always desirable / comfortable? In the book, Norah and Philip were in love with each other. If Norah knew that she loved Philip more than he loved her, and yet she wanted to hold on, was the thing between them really love? Later in the book, Maugham answers the question, and it's not hard to guess that he answered with a no. Philip finds love eventually, and the spontaneity of the mutual affection between him and his true love is pleasing to read, though a little fairytale like. :) I found that I fell in love with the book, I can't read the entire 1241 pages all over again, but I reread the parts that I like, it's always refreshing. Here's to human bondage, which is more than just a book ...!

Adios! :)

Growing up ...

2010-05-25T02:09:00.005-04:00

Technically I am the big sister of the kids gang, but I am probably the crankiest brat of the lot, and oh yes, the most rebellious too (that goes without saying I guess)

Anyway, I really missed having older siblings / cousins. Frankly speaking, I still do.
Cousins can become friends but not vice versa.

Age is never a barrier for good things. The kids didn't wait for me to hug them or cuddle with them, they just taught me how it's done without any reservations. :) They didn't expect me to call them out to play, but considered me a plaything / playmate instead. :) They didn't need me to make them happy, they showed me what happiness is by making me join them in their wild, uncontrolled laughter. They came to me, and they still do. It makes me feel alive.

I made two new friends recently. There were children in my apartment the weekend before last. The little girl began to talk to me even before I started thinking about ways to befriend her. And her brother, aged 2, made me understand a new language; signs of communication included running and jumping among other things. :)

Solving Math, shopping for little things, eating together, evening walks, movies, nighttime stories, pranks, plans, bus rides ... the list is endless, thanks to my cousins!

They are more mature and responsible than I am, of late. It makes me happy. They are sometimes the most patient listeners I've ever had! They don't interrupt me when I am talking, and they are among the few people in this world who let me finish whatever I want to say.

I gave some advice to the champs today, friendly guidance basically. I was told that they were all smiles after they talked to me. That made my day! I'm growing up once again. It feels good, and all good things don't come to an end, some things only get better with time. I'll close this post on that cheerful note. Adios!

Hit or Miss!!

2010-05-19T02:28:00.008-04:00

Many things in life have only two possible outcomes - success / failure.
And sometimes, there is no mathematical formula to determine the probability of success. Well, it's pretty easy to determine when success won't occur ... but it's a lot harder to find out when it will. And to make things more complex ... there are multiple events, none of which comes with a guarantee of success. There is no straightforward algorithm to make out whether or not an event will occur, and even if it is given that one of the many similar events will happen, there is no way to find out how and when it will happen. Given these conditions, one has to build a success pyramid. You are in the game as long as you keep moving from wherever you are to the next higher level, and sometimes you won't know beforehand whether you actually have enough bricks / input to make that pyramid. The most horrible state occurs when your dream structure is complete except for that one last pyramid that makes a world of difference. And when you find out that your attempt failed, you are too shaken to interpret how/why it did; you don't know whether you had that critical piece with you and you dropped it on the floor or you never had it from the very beginning. Worse still, sometimes you don't even know whether the imperfect result actually accounted for anything worthwhile and the only way to find out is to start a new game ... and play by the rules, all over again, with the sole hope that in the whole process, somewhere, somehow you have learned the tricks to make your efforts count. And there isn't infinite time ... and you need your pyramid, and nobody said there won't be size constraints. Sounds like a multi-dimensional hill climbing problem, though it really isn't. (more details here ) There is no notion of optimality here, well, I should rephrase, even if there is an optimal strategy, it's subtle. There is some fuzziness about the inputs, but the output has to be one clear thing - the perfect result!!

I have played this game before ... and I am not a master, I have built pyramids, but always known that there was something superior to my outputs. And when I ran out of time and held something successful in my hands, I felt neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, because I have always had to make choices where I could either have my successes with me and stop or take a chance and challenge myself to surpass my previous results. Stopping is a choice, but quitting never is ... because when one game finishes / is terminated, a new one will begin ...
There is one last part that should not be forgotten ... successes are cumulative ... the pyramids can't get smaller with time, stasis is okay under certain conditions though. It's an interesting game, and the rules aren't as inscrutable as they may seem.

A perfect real-world analog to this is bowling. I have gone to the bowling alley twice so far. I did not even know I had some sense of judgment the first time I played ... I made the same mistake several times. The second time was tonight. I blushed a good deal when the assistant said "such a tiny wrist" when he tied my wrist band. I learned a few lessons today, things that I did not know the last time I played. There are three elements to a good shot - hold, aim and power.

A good shot is anything that knocks down more than 5 pins, I set my standards there. Hold is easy to take care of. It's not too hard to figure out how to grab the ball. Aiming is okay too, with some training and practice ... it happens effortlessly. I realized that I aim properly when I know where I am standing. And that matters a lot, especially in the second try (if the first wasn't a strike). Power is something that comes from within. I have not bothered to make my hands strong, I'm sure I can improve a lot if I spend more time in the alley. (may be alone someday :) )

I did not have a single strike the last time ... I think I had 4 tonight. The beauty of the game is that I play wanting every shot to be a strike. That doesn't happen to anyone easily, strike / spare are both equally good for that perfect ten, and I still have a long way to go. I could manage to make almost every turn fetch me more than 6 or 7 points. My score was 99 once ... and the funny part was, I didn't even know that I was so close to making a century.

I was the last to play in our team tonight, and my last shot was a strike. At time out, none of us had played that full game but that last strike felt like a war victory, a conquest, a perfect termination ... I don't even remember my score now, but I liked the way things ended ... and strangely, the whole hit / miss logic seems insignificant now, because I have a very big pyramid with me ... something that can't be traded for anything better, because it is my personal experience ... and even if I have a better one, I will still cherish this one with the same fondness and passion any day.

And on that triumphant note, I end this post. Adios!

Author Review.

2010-05-14T23:46:00.004-04:00

Well, it should have been a book review because I just finished reading "The Client" a few hours back, but this post will receive too many rotten tomatoes if I fill it with spoilers, so it's going to be an author review. :)

I have read three books written by John Grisham so far. I read "The Firm' first, and then "Rainmaker" and you all know what the third one was. :)

Most authors have a typical style of writing which becomes clearly distinguishable after one reads two books of the same kind. And then it becomes easy to identify the narration, the character portrayal, the interweaving of events that thicken the plot etc. with the author. All these put together define the author's signature and in the language of Computer Science, most authors just practice polymorphism. They keep overriding their own methods of writing. Let me run on the geeky track for a while longer.

Here is a high level description of a stereotyped John Grisham novel.

Grisham usually opens his story with an uncommon situation / crime in Memphis, Tennessee and introduces the reader to several anticipated and / or unexpected twists gradually. He likes to describe his lead characters with lot of focus on their actions and reactions. The courtroom scenes are seldom undramatic. I have forgotten names but never the character traits, and this alone is enough to make him an author to remember. Somewhere around the 200th page, the story seems to reach a standstill, usually because of an overdose of some law and it's complexities. Now this phenomenon is a classic example of the "impatient reader syndrome". When I read a J.G. novel, I know very well that the book is fun only because it is fat and complicated. I wouldn't enjoy the book if I can see through the plot and when it comes to his books, the partial predictability of his writing makes the novel 'un-put-down-able' after the thirtieth chapter or so. And when you finally put the book down, you know it was a satisfying read. :)

Another thing that deserves mention is J.G.'s skill to add several elements to his story with subtle moderation, most commonly, it would be somebody's unhappy past / marriage which would be of relevance in some part of the story ... or it would just be an attractive woman, who's contribution, though not significant would suffice to please the average male reader. :)

Last but not the least, the ending would be unconventional ... though somebody will always run / hide. Oh am I saying too much? Summing it all up, John Grisham is a master chef, watching him cook is such a delight that one would forget to care about how the dish actually tastes.

Thanks J.G., your books have been my best company for many days. :)

Adios!

Aloha! (Part II)

2010-05-11T18:59:00.006-04:00

May 1st was the commencement for Spring 2010 graduates in UF. All my friends were smartly dressed in their graduation robes and I was only too happy to be around, take their pictures, watch them walk across the stage, shake hands with the guest of honor and come back in such high spirits, beaming in pride, feeling triumphant, with their faces betraying unbridled excitement (which, needless to say, was absolutely contagious). Everyone was in their celebratory best and all the typical activities followed suit. It's almost as if people had a unified checklist of things that they wanted to do on their day of accomplishment. (I have done this before ... in BIT Mesra, during my last semester.)It's going to be fun writing this post, I'll try my best to make it a fun read as well.

Here's the checklist:

Item # 1 - Photos!
Thanks to digital cameras, people have the luxury of clicking 1000s of pictures. Photos here, photos there, photos with friends, photos in front of buildings ...there's no stopping people when they indulge themselves in an uncontrolled photo spree. :-| Last year I spent a good deal of time in collecting photos from each friend, sorting them, putting them in folders and viewing them over and over again with some childish zeal. And then one day, I pressed shift-delete to delete some useless stuff without realizing that all my pictures were getting deleted with the unwanted junk. I felt horrible about it. There were some very special pics in there. I tried asking my friends to send me some of those again, it never happened. When both the pics and those friends were gone, never to return, I desperately downloaded every pic of them that I could find on Facebook, and I would never repeat my mistake of shift-deleting anything. I still wonder, do we need 100 pics of our friends to remember them? How often do we even look at their photos? Does it matter? Photos are important to me too ... but I'd rather have one picture of a friend and talk to him / her thousands of times after we part ways than have a thousand photographs, lose touch and end up not talking to that friend ever again. Of course, people can choose to do things differently. I don't mind posing for photos over and over again, albeit the fact that I might not get to see those pictures even once. It doesn't really matter. The whole thing is pointless to me anyway because I ensure that I click at least a few pictures with my camera. On the other hand, it makes me very happy when people share photos on Picasa / Facebook; it's always good when people show that they care. :)

Item #2 - Throwing the graduation hats up in the air.
I would probably do it too, I don't know. This activity is one that truly deserves an exclusive footage, live, on photographs, on video ... on every form of media possible. A brilliant gesture of exuberance! My friends have always been extraordinary; they demonstrated their superhuman abilities yet again that day by tossing a hat high up in the air, trapping it on a branch of a tree and then playing a "Who dares wins" with water bottles, stones and a variety of other things to bring the hat down eventually. I couldn't expect anything lesser from those guys.

Item #3 - Hogging food.
Post-celebrations ideally begins with (perhaps overrated) gourmet cuisine. I don't want to be too descriptive about this. It reminds of Dosa, (sniff), I can't go on.

Item #4 - Clubbing (as can be interpreted in the language of slang ;) )
Not my specialty ... but human beings find this a fun and pleasurable activity. No comments there. I have been to a club once, I'd pick lying down on my bed with my laptop over dancing in a disco any day, but that's just me anyway ...

Item #5 - Now this is a variable.
Some people get sloshed, others crash, while some others chat all night ...
I just included this in the list because item #5 is always there, whatever it is.

(A friend actually had the whole checklist as his Facebook status. I was amused to see it; it took me 10 days to make time to write this post.)

So much for the narration. My best memory of the commencement was the UF song. It was good to have the lyrics displayed on the huge screen for everyone to follow. I don't interpret shrill voices (sometimes called opera) too well.

Here are the lyrics ... I like this song a lot, it brings all the vivid imagery to life, may be I like it a bit more than everyone else because I have more taste for poetry than for opera. I will close the post with the song. Adios!

"Florida, our Alma Mater
Thy glorious name we praise
All thy loyal sons and daughters
A joyous song shall raise
Where palm and pine are blowing.
Where southern seas are flowing
Shine forth thy noble; Gothic walls
Thy lovely vineclad halls'
Neath the Orange and Blue victorious
our love shall never fail
There's no other name so glorious
All hail, Florida, hail."

Aloha! (Part I )

2010-05-08T19:35:00.004-04:00

I am not a great cook. In fact, I am not always passionate about cooking either. But there is something very satisfying about cooking for people who are important to us. It is always a lot more fun and enjoyable than cooking for oneself. I had been very busy this spring. I did not host dinners at home, I didn't cook for my friends, but I was nourished and looked after, even when I didn't know that I needed it.

And when the semester ended, there was little time to waste. I was caught up with something or the other all the time, but I knew I had to seize my opportunity in the few days that I got with my friends before they moved out of Gainesville.

When I want to do something, I do it ... no matter what. Read on ...

Apr 30 was the first time I made a dish for more than 15 people. I never knew my cooking skills could actually scale to that extent. I have fond memories of that day; it's not easy to share those thoughts ... but I will try my best.

I thought I might get help in picking up groceries that day. So, I waited till evening for company. Eventually, when the clock struck nine, I knew I had to walk to Publix and shop on my own. Thunder was rumbling at that hour. And I set out, with my eco-friendly bags and a friend's umbrella for company. I managed to make correct estimates of how much I needed to buy and fortunately, the quantity was not something that I couldn't carry. A woman has to lift her grocery bags - my strong principle. I felt a light rain when I walked out of Publix. Waiting for a bit seemed like a good idea. I walked to the bus stop when I saw the rain recede and then I called up another friend of mine to track the bus. If I wanted to take the bus, the wait would have been longer than the time it takes to walk back home. So, I pushed the button to cross the road and then something happened. It began to rain so hard that I had to run back for shelter. Well, all of a sudden the situation changed from bad to worse because I couldn't see anything ahead and I was balancing myself, my stuff, the umbrella and trying to walk back to the store with some inexplicable conviction that I was doing the right thing.

When I finally made it, a couple of people at the entrance began to cheer for me and they all crowded around me. I felt like a stupid, wet kid and began to get uneasy because I attracted so much attention. Those people were really concerned. They told me that they saw my umbrella struggling against the downpour and they began to fear that I wouldn't reach till there, well, they were probably right in assuming the worst. And then somebody said that they were going to drop me home, they wouldn't let anyone go back all alone in that rain ... and I tried to accept the offer politely. Within minutes, they picked up my bags, made me comfortable in their car and made me feel alright without any explicit gestures of reassurance. And then I told them that I had to go back and cook for my friends. We had a friendly chat, and soon we reached my place. And this is what happened ...

"I am Vidhyaa by the way, thank you so much ..."
One of those guys - "Mark ..." (I think I heard Mark)
"Thank you so much! You guys are my heroes for the day".
Person # 2 - "Ha ha, just good Samaritans actually. Go, get dry ..."

A hot shower fixed everything and I finished everything in time. Even the can opener cooperated. :) I think everyone liked the dish. The containers were empty when I found them and cleaned them at my friends' place yesterday.

I debated with myself about publishing this post. I couldn't write anything else because I felt I was ignoring something which was far more than consequential. And now, I've successfully written it all out ... it's here, on the mirror of time. I'll let myself be lazy again. So long ...

Adios!

Desperate Times (Part II)

2010-05-05T05:06:00.006-04:00

I happened to go to India Bazaar with my friends today and guess what I did? I got a pack of Top Ramen for free. :) We opened it to check if it had the Masala mix inside, and yes, it did!!

I will fight for my Ramen always! Mwahahahaha!

Desperate Times ...

2010-04-30T07:42:00.005-04:00

I had to eat food last night and I was too tired to cook. So I went to India Bazaar and bought a pack of Top Ramen among other things. I was very eager to eat noodles for dinner. I had begun to heat the water even before I unpacked the contents. Only when I opened the pack did I discover that there was no masala / garnish mix in it.
I was not in a mood to throw that thing away. So I opened the cupboard where we have our stock of Masalas in the hope of adding Garam Masala to the plain noodles. Rasam powder was the first thing that was within my reach. My dinner was ruined anyway, so I decided to add rasam powder to the thing that was getting cooked on the stove. Thankfully, adding the new ingredient did not cause any offensive odor or render an unsightly appearance to the Flop-Ramen.

I put my food on my favorite plate and tasted it. It was almost tasteless. It couldn't be more perfect. I have not had the time to cook / eat like usual for the past few weeks. I don't even feel hungry. Food that has no distinct taste is the easiest thing to eat. After a few spoons, I realized that I was getting bored of eating it. So I added some tomato pickle to it and finished whatever was there on my plate.

It's probably the right time for my breakfast. I don't know what I'd eat, but whatever it is, it's not going to be another plate of Flop-Ramen.
Adios!

Metadata

2010-04-22T08:55:00.003-04:00

I have finished one course of this semester already. The course is Database Management Systems. Technically, it is only a course. I had paid $1665 for the three credits I have earned from this course. Yes, it is only a course, one of the ten that I'd need to complete to graduate from this place. And it is over, for good. I should be happy. But am I? I wonder ...

I am writing this post to find my answer. Perhaps I'd know how I feel after I publish this post. I want that enlightenment, I'll get started.

DBMS began in 2003 for me, in Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School, Adyar, Chennai.
And I was under the tutelage of Mrs.Usha Vishwanathan back then. Those were the days of Oracle 9i; the computer lab in school had 8i and I loved it. It was love at first sight, first touch, first table ... and so on. We were the first class to study Informatics Practices in CBSE's new syllabus. I spent 2 years learning Oracle and VB. I loved application programming so much that I chose to become a Computer Engineer, such was the impact of those two things on my life. Anyway ...

DBMS came back again in my fourth semester in BIT Mesra. I was a little disappointed with the course because there seemed to be one tested grade-fetching trick and that was ensuring that no answer fell short of two pages. Part of me was willing to deliver anything that satisfied the levels of mediocrity expected by the system while the other part rebelled constantly and refused to yield. So I got a B+ in the theory course and an Ex in the practicals. (I think I hold a record in the DBMS lab, I had finished my exam before the lecturer asked whether we had doubts in any of the questions.) I was happy.

In one of my campus interviews at BIT Mesra, I was asked to illustrate normalization with examples. I did that and I was asked nothing else. I walked out of the interview room dazed and dizzied because I was asked just one question. A few hours later I came to know that I got that job. I was happy.

This semester, the Spring of 2010, I took the course in UF because I felt I'd like Design Theory more than Database Implementation. To my surprise, I liked everything in the course, including Relational Algebra and Calculus. But design theory was special. I chose to learn it on my own. I relinquished all course material that came from my instructor. I gave up on books and Googled and learned each topic like mad. I did not want to be taught, I wanted to learn. Sometimes I am unstoppable. Design theory is beautiful. There are simple algorithms; blackboxes for any problem that can be an input to the seemingly foolproof procedure. I enjoyed playing around with the limitations of normalization, I engrossed myself in its eccentricities. The night before the exam, I knew I had become smart enough to normalize anything that I'd see the next day. It felt good. (I proved myself right, that feels good too.)

When there is a course, there is a syllabus and when there is a syllabus, there are all kinds of topics. Somebody decided to include Database Application Programming in the topics for the exam. It was a very good idea, Java is a neat programming language and anything in JDBC can be understood to be either a class or an object or a method. What could be better? Problem is, I had programmed in JDBC 4 years back, and I could always look up anything I wanted. I did not learn JDBC from books, I learned it by writing code. And I don't remember anything now because I have not practiced in a long time. Frankly speaking, it doesn't matter because I know that it'd take me half a day to get back in shape. I did not get even that much time before the exam. And I lost 10 points in the exam because I could not do what the rest of my class did - memorize.

Well that's one side of the story, we had to learn procedures, cursors and triggers too. Those were things that I had learned way back in school and it took me less than an hour to refresh my cache and I felt happy to work with things that I liked. I could have copied answers and finished things faster. Well, I didn't. Even that feels good.

I would get another B+ ... what does the grade mean? I don't know. I thought I'd know how I feel after I publish this post. I wanted to mail Dr.Schneider and tell him that the exam would make more sense if there were MCQs. Now I don't want to do that. I don't feel anything now. I am going back to sleep. :) Adios!

Breaking the Ice.

2010-04-13T17:35:00.005-04:00

I have been quieter than usual. This state is neither a masked loquaciousness nor a blatant display of reticence. I am an observer alright, but at times, I am so lost in my observations of the world around me that I forget to notice what is happening to myself. I am a strong believer of the "Stop, Think, Decide and Act" principle. Unfortunately, I fail to practice this golden rule sometimes.

Impulsiveness, fleeting emotions, suppressed rage, exhaustion, wishes, yearnings, cravings and a motley of other feelings confuse me and turn my world upside down at times. The result is fairly intuitive in this case. I say /do things mindlessly, tactlessly, mechanically, unenthusiastically and so on.

I have been trying something new. I do what I like when I am not under the pressure to do anything immediately. After every submission and exam, I take a few hours off. Sometimes I spend that time socially, at other times I let myself be ...

Four hours have passed since I turned in my last homework for a certain course. I know what I had done to finish each thing on time. Honestly, I liked solving my last two homework(s). Sometimes it feels good to know that I can think, that I still enjoy losing myself in work, that one sleepless night actually doesn't make me miserable. That's one side of the story. There is this other side of me, which likes doing just one thing - sleeping undisturbed for 10 hours a day (that side shows up in the weekends, the weekends have been good thankfully!). So, here I am, liking everything for a change, (mysteriously), and I like the way I am now.

Anyway, since I have said so much, I might as well go on a little further. It seems to me that everybody's current context has a very big impact on them. A few weeks back, I saw what a big botheration it was to keep brooding over certain things. Fortunately, my natural state does not like anything unwieldy persisting in my mind. So, I wiped the slate clean, flushed every annoying thing out and let blankness and randomness take over. And now, my thoughts have converged at something, and that something is what you are reading here. Apparently whatever I have blogged out in these fifteen minutes is something of great significance to me (hopefully to you too), I had actually slipped out of my daydreaming mode to type all this. :) So long ...
Adios!

(Dis)connected ...

2010-03-31T01:09:00.005-04:00

Who is somebody who cares for you but doesn't walk ten steps to you to tell you that they do?

Who is somebody who cares for you but is over a thousand miles away from you in space and time?

Who is somebody you don't have to run up to because they are already there, there because they want to walk with you ...

Who am I when I am that somebody? I am neither asking for answers ... nor giving any ...

Separation is a cruel thing, in whatever form it may come ...

I find myself in the company of seven or eight friends, each of us lost somewhere in our own world ... yet sharing something without even intending to do so.

And there are those other times, when I am talking to someone who has no clue about what's happening at my end, and yet we talk, and share, because the bonds once forged when we were not apart give us the courage to face the days that pass, the days that lie ahead ...
Those bonds make us understand separation and yet not feel it ... those bonds only get stronger with time ...

When words fail ... verses take over ... I'll let my fingers type what my mind's speaking ...

All around as far as I can see,
up above but not too far away,
down the river,
over the bridge,
behind the clouds and
beyond the mountains,
there exist people ...
people who are just an arm's length away from me ...

Adios!

What's on your mind?

2010-03-22T06:11:00.010-04:00

Schedules and circumstances had kept me away from posting notes on Facebook.
I want some entertainment. Let's roll ...
I haven't had enough leisure time to keep track of the "most recent" posts in Facebook but I check people's status updates once in a while. Here are my findings ... brace yourselves!

Category 1 - Food statuses.
Cookies, Cakes, Idlis, Dosas, Biryani, Butter Chicken, Potlucks, Photos, Buffets, Dinners and Desserts!!
Inference - People like to tell their friends that they hog food whenever they get the chance.

Category 2 - Roommate Complaints.
Welcome to the world! It's almost always a love-hate relationship with roommates. I actually laugh at some of these statuses. Yes, I know it's not easy to share food, I know it's not easy to live with trash! But that's life. :) People can actually get creative when they post these statuses, keep them coming folks! I don't discourage this at all!

Category 3 - Whining about coursework.
Where do I begin?? Well ... I don't want to be critical here but I'd never spam other people's walls with my rantings about homework, projects and exams. There's no point in grumbling about it, might as well grin and bear with it! Nevertheless, I don't mind these statuses, they kind of show me that my friends are having a happy life too and they are sharing their happiness with me. :)

Category 4 - Attempts at comedy.
People post things which are supposed to be funny. Sometimes they are so unfunny that I laugh out loud when I look at those pathetic jokes. Good jokes are bad and vice versa! What the hell, I like them all! :)

Category 5 - The Drunk (Wo)Men's Corner.
Inference - Many people live on bread and beer. :)

Category 6 - Song lyrics.
I would encourage these people to post videos of them singing those songs too (or better yet, singing and dancing)! I am also human and it's only natural that I crave for variety at times!

Category 7 - Wishes and thank yous for wishes.
Yeah, the general spam, ... Facebook's full of it!

Category 8 - News + Sports News.
I like! I am following the IPL on Facebook right now!

Category 9 - People telling what's going on in their lives.
(I am talking about the not-so-mundane things.)
If this category weren't there, I'd probably not even care to check what my friends post on Facebook!

Category 10 - Quotes.
These are okay too. :) They add to the diversity, if not more! :)

Category 11 - Advice!
Somebody says "I want to buy a new phone / laptop", ... and then half the people in their friends list become advice babas. :)

Category 12 - General Grievances.
Some angry soul venting out pent up frustration about all the garbage that is spewed out on their profile in the form of notifications, quiz results, updates and the like. Pretty much anything that's not a happy status falls into this bucket. :)

I guess I have exhausted the list. I'll end this post here!

(P.S. I think I'll post a new status when I find Category 13. I have willfully chosen this as a research problem. :) )

See you later folks!

Filtering Out

2010-03-14T15:39:00.009-04:00

I woke up just a while ago and I am blogging this. Guess that says a lot about this post.

I've been sharing walls with people since 2005. Here are some excerpts.

2005-2006 - On the other side of the wall, there was a balcony and Airtel had a bad network in Ranchi back then.
I had been forced to hear all sorts of things from
"Hulllloooo sunai de raha hai kya?"
"I love you ... I love you ..." (more mushy stuff, I can't bring myself to type).
"Haan Mama mein thik hoon ... ... ..."
Everyone lost their privacy ... and I had nowhere to run, thanks to the in-time.

2006-2008 - A was my neighbor in H-9. We became chummy but our tastes in music didn't match. A had some really powerful speakers too. I never told her that she was being too loud because I knew that it wouldn't help. I could have made her turn her volume down but there were 80 others who lived / frequented that part of the hostel and they all did one obvious thing unfailingly. I couldn't wage a war; I had to live with it, and I did.

2008-2009 - M was my neighbor. M did not have speakers thankfully and there was a certain pattern to her activities. I could predict when her friends would come over to her room and the chatter did not bother me too much. That was the most peaceful year of hostel life.

2009 - Current - I live in a small room in a not so big apartment.

Over the past five years,I've learned to live with thin walls, learned to accept the fact that many people like to play one song over and over again until they eventually decide to give up (get sick of it?) and hear another song 200 times. (I couldn't keep count!)

I counter noise with more noise, when I am not able to run away. Nonetheless, I have never had the courage play anything at max volume on my laptop, people actually call the cops in this country. :)

Anyway ... I still can't figure out why I wrote this post, but I know I did it for good reason and though I don't feel it, I know I am a little happy about what I have done and I'll publish it on that note. Cheers!

Resonance

2010-03-13T02:38:00.005-05:00

What is success? What is failure?
What is happiness and what is sorrow?
What is everything and what is nothing?
What is good and what is bad?
What is true and what isn't?
What is love? What is hatred?
What is permanent and what is transitory?

I often enter a certain state where all of these questions and some more flash before me and I have one answer to them all ...
"It doesn't matter what they are."

I ask myself - "Then what matters to you Vidhyaa?"

And I know I can answer that.
Many things matter to me; some by choice and some otherwise.
I do so many things because I have to do them. I have no feeling for what I do. I think I do ... but I don't. And it feels good to not feel anything. It feels good to live like a robot sometimes, letting every thought pass me by, doing things like I am programmed to do them, waking up to an alarm ... or just waking up, having an attitude that can be either absolute dedication or complete detachment or better yet, an attitude that has no name ... I just have that attitude. Period.

Sometimes when there are too many things to think about, I let myself slip into this state. I think about everything and yet I think about nothing. I shut my eyes and I let go ... for as long as I can let myself be. And then I wake up and pick up what I left when I come out of that dark empty world which has just me (it's a safe and peaceful place, believe it or not!) and I enter the real world, I am a robot once again.

Adios!

Day 7.

2010-03-10T00:31:00.010-05:00

Behold dear friends, you are about to hear the most riveting tale of my life!
The alarm buzzed at 7 15 am and I was utterly confused. I peeled my eyes open and stared blankly at my cellphone. It showed 7:15am Mar 7, Sunday. Preposterous! Why on earth would I set an alarm for 7 15 am on a Sunday morning!? And then I came to my senses. I was going to go to Sea World, Orlando .

There were 15 of us and three Zip Cars. Road trips are always fun. In our case, it was (approximately) a 2 hour drive from Gainesville to Orlando. I was enjoying myself on the backseat of the car, no responsibilities or in other words "Less tension, no work; no work, less tension". LOL.

If you already clicked on the link and saw what all Sea World has, you'd probably be wondering what I'd have done in a place that's a theme park + marine-life based zoological park. I'll not disappoint you. Initially, I was myself. :)I did not risk a ride on Manta . It was too scary and I did not want to end up fainting and creating a scene in the amusement park.

I touched Sting Rays in that part of Sea World which has been designed to mimic Key West . Sting Rays are actually pretty dumb you know, but I liked them. :D

I loved every bit of the dolphin show and the feat with the killer whales at Shamu's Happy Harbor. It's one thing to see these things on Discovery / Nat Geo and another thing to see them right before your eyes. There was something very child-like about the way these aquatic giants played and jumped around in the water. In fact, I'd have got water splashed all over me if we had sat in the front rows / the soak zone. It was very cute to see the dolphins and whales open their mouths wide to get fed. The penguins in the Antarctic zone were a delight to watch. I caught some nice snaps of those.

So much for the fauna ...

Now comes the most exciting part of the story. There was a certain ride that I dared to venture. It is the floorless roller coaster " Kraken ". I did not see it fully before I climbed into it. Before Kraken unleashed itself, I asked P to get me out of the thing after the ride was over (precautionary measure :-|). I can't help but laugh when I think about how he said "It's going to be over before you know it". I remember somebody telling me this before the doc gave me flu shots when I was a kid. (There is much debate on whether I am a mature child or an immature adult. Let us leave that discussion to the intellectuals and get on with the story!). Yeah ... so I fastened the straps, braced myself and the ride began like any roller coaster ride does. I love the uphill climb! Then something happened and my jaws split wide open. I had no clue what loop I was in ... but I swear to God I didn't close my eyes! I screamed my lungs out (LOL), that was the most natural and logical thing to do. At one point the sky was right overhead and at times I thought the roller coaster was plunging down at breakneck speed (well it really was, I discovered that later :-| ). And then suddenly the beast slowed down and I asked incredulously - "Is it over? Is it really over?". I thought that I was going to be subjugated to enduring the ordeal over and over again. How naive! Well, I was tenderly and safely pulled out of my seat and voila! everything was just fine! I did not even feel a bit uncomfortable! (may be a little bit, but my head did not feel weird). In fact, I went on another wet ride after that! :D

The whales' show was the last thing that we saw.
I was a li'l sad that we couldn't check out the Sky Tower but that's not a big deal, my pass is good for a year. :)

Later that night ...
"I took the Kraken!!"
"That surely deserves a hug. Well done, my child!" :D

I took the Kraken! Life changing experience people, I took the Kraken! :)

See ya!! :)

Day 6.

2010-03-10T00:13:00.003-05:00

Day 6, as you can see, was a Saturday. It was the 6th of March. I went to a potluck for the first time in Gainesville that night (We had one for Pongal at our place and I did more eating than cooking at that time also). There was so much food to choose from, so many dishes laid out before me! I ate a good deal though I was not hungry. Okay, I'll be honest with you all; I ate a lot because my friends had cooked the food, and more than anything that made the menu extremely delectable. :)
I was in a very cranky mood though. That story can't be blogged but it was one of the most unforgettable days of my life. Big plans had been made for the following day. I will talk about Day 7 in my next post. Adios!

6 days and 7 nights.

2010-03-09T19:45:00.000-05:00

Last week was crazy. Monday was the wrongest start to begin with. Waking up at 7 30 after what was not even 2 hours of undisturbed sleep was inconceivably hard and I had seriously not considered the possibility of going to class only to find out that the lecture had got cancelled in the last minute. I had already begun to feel pretty sore after this fiasco and the deadlines that followed only aggravated the overdrive. I think I reached my limit on Wednesday, my eyes begun to hurt real bad and my mammoth efforts to cram turned out to be futile. I haven’t got back my exam yet. I am comfortably numb. I don’t know if I have lost my chances of getting an A, I don’t want to know now. I’ll probably start worrying about it sometime before the final exam.

Sometimes hunger and sleep hit me simultaneously, and sometimes hunger wins. Thursday evening was one of those times. I was so frustrated and so hungry that I cooked and ate without a care about how much food I was hogging in one go. And then I totally forgot about food till the next day. There was a homework to take care of. Sometimes it feels right to bend the rules and get things over with, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not that I climbed on my moral high horse this time and decided to do what was ideally correct. I did not like the idea of scrambling on all fours for 2.5 % of my grade. I have never liked doing that, but sometimes we do things that we don’t like. This time I just decided that I wouldn’t do what I did not want to. Yeah, it’s that inner voice alright. It was rather strong that night. I had enough spunk to do something of my own accord and doing that made me feel free; it made me feel happy. I’ll learn my lesson, may be the hard way, but I know I’ll learn something and for some strange reason that matters a lot to me today. Anyway … I was physically present in some office in Weil Hall and mentally existent on some elevated plane … totally detached from the context of reality, completely devoid of any earthly feeling or sensation when a sudden jolt ended my flight and brought me back to level ground; I was feeling giddy. It was funny when it happened and I still find it funny. It took me a minute to remember what and when I had eaten last, how I did not feel hungry for 17-18 hours, why I had skipped breakfast, what time of the day it was and how fatigue had taken over and killed both hunger and thirst and left me in that bizarre state. I walked into Gator Corner hoping I could grab a Gatorade and push off; well, that place has a lunch buffet. I have always known that, but it did not strike me at that moment. I ate a cup of icecream, a slice of cake and a plate of fries – all of which seemed equally tasty / tasteless to my palette; honestly I couldn’t tell. The Gatorade tasted good as usual though. And then I had to walk to another office in Grinter Hall, which isn’t too far from where I was. While walking past the Hub, I realized that my feet felt weird. Pain is a mysterious thing. I was too exhausted to even feel that fully. I knew that my feet were killing me, but I was too preoccupied to do anything about it. I let it pass and I think it did. I finally returned home in one piece. My Spring break had begun, and I cooked that evening too (for my friends) and it looked like I had outdone myself that day!

The best part of the day came at 2 30 am when I locked my room, turned out the lights and played something on Youtube. I don’t remember what it was, but I can tell you that the track was 4 minutes and 47 seconds long. After that everything came to a standstill and I opened my eyes 9 hours later when I woke up from a perfect dreamless sleep.

(To be continued …)

Spacing out ...

2010-03-02T22:37:00.005-05:00

I have been in a foul mood for quite sometime now, well, I like to sulk my way out of things sometimes ... that's just me ...

Too many external factors ruined my mood this time and to worsen it, I had to talk to somebody about one of the "causes". Sometimes bad things reach a certain tipping point beyond which they can't get worse and precisely at that stage, things just zap back to normal.

Well, our hero of the day told me that I live in a room as opposed to many others living in a house. That remark did not really evoke any instant response. I think I was too hungry and exhausted to react. Then I came home and grubbed, and while I was washing my hands after dinner, I suddenly remembered what he said. I live in a room!
And I began to laugh at the blatant truth in that statement.

I think I have had a room to myself ever since I was small. I can't be more thankful for the peace and quiet that a roof, four walls and a securely locked door bring to my life. There have been occasions when I have had to share my space, and trust me, it was always weird. I have a laptop, a decent Internet connection, two teddy bears, a cat and a tiger for company, perfect soul mates! I need nothing more ... nothing less. I would live the rest of my life like this, if I had the power to make that choice! I wake up everyday in my lair ... a quiet dark room, every day begins and ends in the same safe little place. I love it! I like it when nobody's near me when I wake up and I go to sleep in the stillness of my cozy little room. I guess I feel very sheltered and comfortable in my private sanctuary. And I recharge my reserves of energy by letting myself be left alone. I have always been dreamy, sometimes there's no telling how far I can drift away in those sacred moments of silent contemplation. I can't imagine this changing ever ... it's just so perfect!

I do have a life outside my room, but I accept it myself ... I "live" in a room!
Adios!

May it be ...

2010-02-21T23:21:00.010-05:00

To Ankita Mohanty ...

Somebody in Hostel 9 had a poster stuck on their door which had the following words -
"Don't talk about your problems to anyone; 60% don't care and the other 40% are happy".

I don't completely agree with that statement. I do talk to some people when I have problems. A more mathematically sound assertion would be something like "x% of the people care, y% are happy and z% don't care" where,in most cases, x < y < z
(please correct me if I am wrong). :)

Whatever ... that's one way to look at things ...
Here's another, it's not my own but I'll use it here and then share some of my views as well ...

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do?"

"I don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"

...... "To shrug" ......

Sometimes when I feel that I am bent low with a very oppressive load, I try to think straight, I try to get a grip over myself and figure out ways to solve my problems. That works ... though not always. Ayn Rand's approach is idealistic ... can we always shrug? I wonder ...

Here's the hybrid approach that combines the best of both worlds.

...

...

...

If you are stuck, first shrug,then think through the situation,... and get out of it!

Mwahahahaha!

I know you all thought I was going to write something long and ponderous! :wide grin:
Incidentally my Guru told our class that the best research is usually something that gives the simplest solution! Sadly though,I have to show my smartness elsewhere for grades, glory and God! And I am running off right now to attend to more pressing demands. See you later ...

Adios!

Stand up ... and ... fight!

2010-02-21T20:17:00.006-05:00

Many of you probably read my previous post. I did not like the way it began and I do not like the way it ended; I do not like that post at all ... my blog is not a place for me to cry ... but sometimes, just tears aren't enough to cry one's grief out ... and I'll forgive myself for that post.

A week has passed ... and I am finally able to compose my thoughts and talk like my usual self once again. First off, thanks to everyone who gave me their hand to hold ... and their shoulder to lean on (literally / figuratively). Asking for support and getting it is one thing, not saying a word out and yet getting all the help in the world is another ...

I'm lucky, very very lucky. It feels good to know that I am cared for ..., no man is an island ... neither am I ...

Three people endured a lot on my account, and it feels right to write out what I want them (and you all) to know here ...

For Pradeep ...
No words man ... Nothing can measure up to what he gave and what he took ... Let's leave this here ... seriously, this is one of those things that's beyond expression in words ...

For Animesh ...
Two words from him were enough ... I'll give him back five now ...
"Animesh, now I too understand ..."

For Nadu ...
I'll quote him here ... "Dekh Vidhyaa, there's something in you that wants to overcome the pain, there is something in you that wants to fight it ..., and it's only a question of how fast you are going to make yourself stand up and fight ..."
Yes ... I know, you'll know more as you read this post further ... and yes, I'm living life with thrice the intensity now ... there is no room for excuses, no room for explanations, no room for regrets ...

Sometimes in life, you can let yourself say ... "I tried my best ... but things didn't work in my favor ..." but what I'd rather say now and later is ... "Some things were okay, some weren't ... but I did my best, I really did ..."
I hope I live up to my own glorified statements!

What I am fighting today is a lump in my throat ... it returns, I don't know why ... but it does ... and I refuse to yield and cry. I have cried enough, I have lost and found myself once more in life, learned to face yet another tragic loss ... and deal with it in my own way. At the end of the day, it all comes down to one thing ... and that's ... "growing up" ...
There's a part of me that will never change, but there's another part that has the potential to grow up, be brave and get answers to virtually any question that I may ask ... I'll conclude with my faith in the latter ...

Adios!

Forever ... and ... for always ...

2010-02-14T10:35:00.004-05:00

I am crying because I am a child still
I am crying because somebody did something terrible to my best friends and ...
the silent comprehension of that thing that I'm unable to describe ... makes me cry
I am crying because life has shown me in a very bitter way that a perfect picture can be torn apart ... and the seven best people I know from BIT have been reduced to five now ...

I'm crying because I remember one thing after another now ... I remember how I first met them ... Shilpa and Sindhu ... I am crying because I remember how until now they represented all good things about friendship to me ... and I do not want to think about them differently hence forth ...
I am crying because I want to remember Lohri ... and being their DJ year after year ...
I am crying because I want to remember how they have dragged me out of my room in my night clothes and taught me to laugh about stupid things and dance ...
I am crying because they have been there for me, time after time ... through one exam and the other ... because we shared our As and Bs and Cs among other things ...
I am crying because they sat with me on the table and laughed with me about how bad the food was ... and taught me how to gulp it down, when I did not even know to eat ...

I am crying because I only want to remember how I loved walking down the lobby past F-015, F-016 and F-017 because the doors were always open for me and I got the sweetest smiles from them whenever they were there with me ...
I am crying because they stood by me even when I did not ask them to, and they cared for me ... and they shared their lives with me ... until now ...

I am crying because I was tagged on a special note with the words ...
"When you walk away, I count the steps that you take
Do you see how much I NEED YOU RIGHT NOW??!!

When you're gone
The pieces of my heart are MISSING YOU
When you're gone
The face I came to know is MISSING TOO
When you're gone
The words I need to hear to always get me through the day and make it OKAY..
I MISS YOU...

I've never felt this way before..
Everything that I do REMINDS ME OF YOU..."

and I did not feel the need to say thanks to my friend ... because I knew she was going to be there always ... and I still want to believe that ...

I am crying because I promised them that I will meet them again ... and somebody destroyed everything ...

I am crying because this post is late ... I was busy and I could not publish it earlier and tell them how I felt ...
but this is what I wanted to write ...
"Ajeeb zindagi hai yeh ... kuch rishte hote hain jin ka koi naam hai hota ...
aur tum aur mein hamesha ... hamesha ... saath hi rahenge ..."

I miss you Shilpa, I miss you Sindhu ... you'll always be my best friends, forever ... and ... for always ...

Five Minutes ...

2010-02-05T12:32:00.006-05:00

I have been busy before ... but this phase has had no precedents seriously! There were some hectic weeks last semester; this time, all hell just broke loose about a week back and I don't see myself getting a breather for the next two weeks. Let's not talk about what will happen after that ... I'll spare you the horror until the nightmare actually turns into reality, and then I'd just blog about it. If you are an ardent follower of my blog, do look forward to a special release on Apr 1. :) My teammates and I were making a schedule to plan our project work and set timelines for things we have to submit. I realized that what's not there in the calendar is actually more scary than all the deadlines and milestones that I have filled it with.

I started this semester with a cold cache. Now I am in the warm cache state, I'll reach the steady state next week and I hope I don't burn out the week after that!(Borrowed the jargon from something called Mobility Assisted Information Diffusion. The actual scheme has a cold cache state and a steady state, nice protocol ... unfortunately, I have not reached that soft sweet spot in life after which there's only a steady state. May be someday, I'd find some stability in my life in different contexts and plot a few graphs and come up with a set of metrics to understand "life". And then I'll publish my findings (here, of course! :P LOL))

I had actually wanted to write a post about time management. But my time management skills were so rusty back then that writing about it would not have happened even if I tried. This post is not about time management but it's hopefully on something more forceful than that.

Five minutes ...
a small fraction of the time I have wasted so far,
Five minutes ...
pass me by if I am doing something I like,
Five minutes ...
I gain sometimes when I believe my watch,
Five minutes ...
the extra time I wish had in almost every exam ...,
Five minutes ...
a misty haze in a long hot shower,
Five minutes ...,
of timeless tales and big mysteries we can uncover.

Five minutes ...
I cry for when I can take no more,
Five minutes ...
spent in talking to someone who's dear to me,
Five minutes ...,
as friendship,care,love,goodness and humanity,
Five minutes ...
in the oceans of thoughts, dreams and memories that make life beautiful to me

Five minutes for myself and five minutes for you
five minutes for those things that stand good and true ...
Five minutes ...
to convince myself that I am fine,
and five minutes ...
I have taken to compose this little thing that's all mine.

Adios!

The (Un)Questionables.

2010-01-30T03:39:00.013-05:00

Sometimes the good things in life can be a drag. For instance, cooking good food. Nevertheless, "some of the best things in life are edible". (Quoting one of my icons here, his name is Garfield - orange-brown cat who is probably more enlightened than the Buddha himself. :-|)

It's okay if some good things come to an end, because sometimes when things are too good, we can't get enough of them! Somewhere, somehow, some things have to be stopped. If you don't understand, google gluttony or indulgence or ardor. I'd rather not go on about this, it's a rather ponderous topic. I don't have the time to elaborate on this right now.

Sometimes it's good to have survived the worst of times to acknowledge and cherish the good things we have with us. The word here is gratitude - but for what? I don't know!, the best I can think of is that I am thankful for the fact that I can keep myself happy; no matter what (or so I believe). But who am I thankful to? I don't know! May be I owe my thanks to everyone and everything that has made me what I am today. But is this really something that I need to feel gratified for? I don't know! I am certainly grateful to the people who have done me good. But I owe something to those people who made / make my life miserable. Both categories of people make me strong (the ones who do me good and the ones who don't), but in different ways! And I know that some lessons in life have to be learned the hard way. It's okay! Yes, I know that I feel a sense of gratitude for those things that make me tougher and wiser, but I don't know if I feel the same for people who tried to push me down that dark depressing bottomless pit who's presence I am well aware of. I don't want to know what I feel for those things/people who are no longer a part of my life, but nonetheless I can never forget that they once mattered to me. They are statistics now, figures of the dead past. But they have left their mark in my life ... in their own subtle ways.

Lastly, I found myself reacting very intensely to all those things that either make me very happy or push me to the limits of sorrow. But in my quiet contemplations, I realized that neither of the above make life really. There are some peaceful constants in life; little things that make life big to me. I can name a few, but I don't consider this post to be a discussion of my life; rather it is a piece of writing to appreciate the infinite ways in which these things called "experiences" add meaning to everyone's lives as a whole. We may brood,laugh,cry,reflect,forget,remember,regret,rejoice - do whatever we may want, but at the end of it all, only our life experiences define us, refine us and then redefine us and so on, so forth. (Sounds cliched? I don't blame you, all this was mundane and inconsequential to me too ..., until now). But life goes on in different paces, sometimes we wish we could fast-forward some phases in life; some we wish, pass slowly, beautifully ... like feathers tossed by the wind, sometimes we wish we could pause certain moments in life and hold on to them, sometimes we wish we could erase certain things from memory ... but when everything seems to be beyond our grasp, life makes us pause, turn around and look back at where we are, where we have come from and how far we have come; and this post, is to those ever illuminating epiphanies! Adios!

तोह सुर बने हमारा ...

2010-01-26T20:09:00.020-05:00

Everyone's talking about it - the remake / remix of the much loved national integration song "Mile Sur Mera Tumhara", yeah, Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara more than strikes a chord. It's new, invigorating and impelling, as the majority would say,and yes, I do agree; it has made me write this post.

Some logistics before I let my thoughts flow.
First off, here's the video for your viewing pleasure:

And here is the list of celebrities featured in the video in the order of their appearance:
A.R.Rahman (with the Continuum Finger Keyboard),Amitabh Bachchan,Shankar Ehsan Loy,Anushka Shankar(and her Sitar),Vikram,Surya,Shreya Goshal,Aishwarya Rai Bachchan,Abhishek Bachchan,Mahesh Babu,Pt.Shiv Kumar Sharma & Rahul Sharma (playing the Santoor),Designer Rohit Bal,Gurdass Mann,Juhi Chawla,Zakir Hussein with brother Fazal & Taufiq Qureshi(with the Tablas),Prasenjit,Shaan,Rituparna Sengupta,Bhupen Hazarika,Shilpa Shetty,Salman Khan with some ermmm challenged kids,Ustad Rashid Khan,Sivamani(and the Drums),
L Subramaniam with Kavita Krishnamurthy & kids (Wielding their violins),Deepika Padukone ,Priyanka Chopra,Sand sculptor Sudarshan Patnaik,Ustad Amjad Ali Khan with Amaan & Ayaan Ali Khan(Taming the Sarod),Yesudas with son Vijay Yesudas,Mammooty,Parthiv Gohil,Atul Kulkarni & Sonali Kulkarni,Louis Banks with his son,Shobhana with Shamiak Davar,Aamir Khan,Sonu Nigam,Shahid Kapoor,Ranbir Kapoor,
Shahrukh Khan,Karan Johar,Abhinav Bindra, Vijender Singh,Sushil Kumar - Olympic medalist,Baichung Bhutia,Mary Kom & Saina Nehwal,P.Gopichand.

Oh-kay ... hope that wasn't a lot of scrolling. Anyway ... there was a reason for listing out these people in my post. I've been hearing a lot of opinions about the choice of celebrities and their appearance in the video. There are evidently quite a few complaints about Sachin and the other cricket Gods not being showcased. And people aren't too happy about Sania Mirza, Kamal Haasan and Rajnikanth being left out of the show. And a couple of other complaints too ... but this will do for a sample. My opinion will come later in this post.

Another common remark is that the new one doesn't have the feel of the original and that the original is much better. Okay, point noted; and I consent to offer an opinion. ;-)

The third response that deserves a mention here is the fact that people find the song to be too long. Fine, I will talk about that too. Alright!

Now that we have heard everyone's take at Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, we will embark to hear Vidhyaa's take at it ... (unplugged!!) :)

Mid and late 1988 and afterward - I have heard and reheard this song on Doordarshan and several other channels and recently, on YouTube whenever I wanted to feel good about India as a country and as my country of origin.
Here's the Wiki link for the trivia lover - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_Sur_Mera_Tumhara
The original song has no parallel in history - it is a classic. It evokes something inside each listener and hence it's special.

After hearing Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara for the first time, I thought it was a major let down. Then I heard it again, with a more open mind; and I realized that there are a lot of things that I like about the song (I am saying "song", not video. I want you all to remember that). Let's talk about the song. It has almost all the essential elements for a great song. What I like in particular is the instrumental medley that this version has - it starts with the continuum finger keyboard and then takes the listener away in the enchanting notes of the Sitar,the Santoor and the Violin.Ustad Zakir Hussain leaves you speechless with his out-of-the-world command of seven or eight Tablas. And then Shiva Mani comes in with the drums and leaves the audience awestruck and breathless in wonder. After his scintillating performance, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and company melt one's heart with their extremely brilliant rendering of Raag Bhairavi on the Sarod. Yes, this song has Raag Bhairavi at its best. I am completely sold!
All is well ... alright ... but where is the Veena? (the original version had a Veena medley that's unforgettable) and where is the Bansuri? (I miss its soul touching notes in both versions :-|) and where is Dr.Bala Murali Krishna?? Vikram and Surya are great, so is Shahid Kapoor ... but everyone doesn't have to sing!! Worse still, Sharukh Khan and a few others strangle the cat vehemently while Shaan and the real singers sing a withheld line or two. Sad ... and #Fail. Throw out all the unwanted frills and the orange clad scantily clothed extras in Shobana's part, the video becomes a little more acceptable. Chuck out all the cacophony in the name of remix and put back some more of authentic "music" in it, this attempt qualifies for a song. And finally,replace all the buildings,pillars and posts with some more vivid scenery, you get some colors of "India".

But try as you may, you'd still not get a certain feel because Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara is about the talent, about the youth, about progress, about the actors and the stars and the Demi-Gods all alike, about Salman Khan doing something cute for a change and Aamir Khan showing off (not overtly, nonetheless ...), about a forty different people doing whatever they can in sixteen long minutes to make you feel good about India ... and not about "beautiful India or incredible India" as your mind's eye sees it. And it fails ... because there are too many unconnected things interspersed improperly, because at the end of it you remember only what each person did and what you liked, because they don't come together (literally and figuratively as they did in the old song), because nothing is in consonance with what your heart wants to feel, because a beautiful picture is mottled with a thousand colors of mediocrity and if that is what they have to show you, as a picture of your motherland - you don't like it! You have already seen a better one before. ... I am not discouraging the attempt, but they could have spared a good song, they could have changed everything, even the lyrics; if doing something new is what they wanted to do.

I say it again ...
I saw Punjab,Sind,Gujarat,Maharashtra,Bengal,Andhra,Karnataka,Kerala,Tamilnadu, the North East, Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and all the rest of it in this song,and I liked everything that I saw; but I wanted to see something else,I wanted to see India!I don't know how many of you can relate to this statement. I tried being impartial, I actually rated this song on a fair and unique scale that I devised and gave it an 8.71 / 10, but I rated the whole effort as a song; not as "Mile Sur Mera Tumhara" because "Ek baar sur mile the" ... "aur is baar, sur ban rahe hain par sur mil nahi rahe hain".

Boys vs. Girls - A Computer Engineer's Perspective!

2010-01-18T03:12:00.009-05:00

There are a hundred other things you could do than read what follows ... You could walk backwards, stand upside down or even google "multicolored underwear" and so on ... If you think reading what I am about to publish is more important than the multiple options that I have and haven't placed before you, be my guest! I'd be honored ... :)

This post is going to make a lot of my guy friends happy. Feminists ... and female chauvinists, please, please for God's sake do NOT read this post!

Hmmm ... Where do I begin??
...
Okay ... I'll just blog this out in style ... Here goes ...
My Comp.sci friends might understand this post better. :)

Statement #1 - Women care more about cleanliness than men do.
Well, the combined metric that corresponds to the probability of a person being a woman and a person being clean has a high value indeed. But unfortunately, the conditional probability that a person is clean given that she is a woman is comparatively low.
Guys ... shut up and wait! I am being so unbiased that I am actually taking pains to apply data mining principles to disprove common social dogmas! Yes ... after this path-breaking analysis of rule support and confidence, we hereby conclude that women are not necessarily cleaner than men. Being messy is a human trait. :-|

Statement #2 - Men are better at reading maps than women, but far worse at following them.
The downside here is that the first part of the statement is not easy to prove. However what we can use to our advantage is the fact that it is just as hard (if not harder) to disprove the same statement!!
Try asking this question to your friends. "How do I get from place A to place B?" The number of females who actually look up the route on Google maps is unlikely to exceed the number of males who do the same. I was playing around with Google maps a couple of days back. I wanted to trace a route that I had followed umpteen number of times five years back. I did not remember the names of the roads, but I remembered the important landmarks. And voila, that is all you need to get a logically coherent map from your source to the destination. Just plug them in and press the go button! Works like a charm! Many of my girl friends would say it is a waste of time. One can always ask for directions on the way; but that is not the point that I am trying to drive home here. The whole focus is on using maps! How many women do ...? I wanted to acquire that skill and tried hard to make myself learn. I am not sure many girls care too much about it ...

Let us now go to the second part of the statement. How many times has a girl friend of yours told you that she knows where she is going, refused to ask for directions and landed you in the middle of nowhere? Girls hate getting lost. Guys wouldn't mind. :)They'd prefer to fail before they ask for directions. Whatever is proud about that ... I wonder.

Statement # 3 - Guys are better computer geeks than girls.
I asked my friend how to install a software last week. I got a self-composed step - by -step instruction manual mailed back to me in response to my query! Now that's rather surprising given the fact that there are James Bonds out there in the world who burn the manual before they do anything else. (Remember Q's attempts to make Bond return those super cars?) Hmmm ... I don't read user manuals either. :)
Anyway ... I asked another friend of mine how to download journal papers from the UF Libraries through remote access. I got a powerpoint presentation with snapshots of each step to illustrate the whole process! The guy made it in less then ten minutes! No girl who walk the extra mile for these things! Even I wouldn't. Oh wait, no guy would send back such detailed instructions to another guy either! That would be so __!! :-P These guys weren't trying to tell me that I am dumb! They knew they had to answer my question ... and they just gave me their best answers.
(For those of you who did not like my being subtle, hear me out!! I have not met even ten girls who are fit to be called computer geeks. It's disconcerting! I want to be one first ... I'd hate to know that we girls are outnumbered!)

Statement #4 - Guys eat more than girls.
True in most cases; much to my liking actually. :) But there are exceptions. All the chauvinists out there, have you seen girls eat icecream? We can put you guys to shame!! Once again friends, it is always a question of proportions. A question of proportions ... (pun intended! :wink:)

Statement #5 - More guys than girls would think that this post is pointless.
How many girls write good blogs? How many girls read good blogs ... and how many guys do the aforementioned and also give / write good comments?!? These questions are for you to answer ...

P.S. If you cared enough to think, then this post is not pointless. But if you thought this post was lame ... hold it! You should have followed a certain suggestion that I put up in the beginning of the post! You're probably a dumb@$$. Sorry this post wasn't meant for you! :P

Adios everyone! :P :P

Word Wars!!

2010-01-13T01:29:00.018-05:00

Some of my friends are grammar freaks, others formatting freaks while I, on the other hand, am a big vocabulary,punctuation and pronunciation freak. Don't ask me how and when it started, but saying things right has always been an obsession and even now, I know I have a lot more to learn. When I was in second grade, my parents got me a big fat Oxford Dictionary which, as many of you might know, has a very elaborate set of pronunciation symbols for vowel sounds and consonant sounds and combinations thereof. I racked my brains to crack that complex code and slept with the dictionary by my side ever since. :)

Over time, I discovered that there were two broad variants of pronunciation and added two more dictionaries to my bedside reading corner - the Cambridge Dictionary for American English and the Cambridge International Dictionary. There were days when I read three Hardy Boys' novels or three or more crime thrillers non-stop. My mother had tried in vain to confiscate the books and hide them away to put me to sleep and later on,she let me have my way as I had locked myself in the bathroom to finish those "un-put-down-able" books overnight and got caught in the act a couple of times too. I used to be so crazy back then. I had to look up every new word and it was hard to find a comfortable seating position in our home bathroom and accommodate my dictionary in that meager space without desecrating it too much.
For the record, the last book that was forcefully seized from my hands was "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" a few years ago and I am proud to tell you all that I managed to take it back and read till 6 am to finish it!

Getting back to our hot topic of the day, an expansive vocabulary is certainly something any word wizard would want to flaunt. :)My worst failure till date is forgetting a certain extremely uncommon word that I stumbled upon while reading "Catch 22". I am going to read that book again to find that elusive word. And then I'll post it proudly on my blog. :)Sadly, I don't get much time for books these days and I am still slow-paced although I spend the better part of my spare time in reading whatever I can lay my hands on. I have actually planned a no-movie semester. I think I'll achieve that easily unless someone deliberately asks me out to ruin my plans. But that is not even a remote possibility (chuckle).

The word that inspired this post is one of the long-standing controversies in the history of computer jargon. It is "tuple". I pronounce it "tyoople" as my school teacher called it either "tuh-ple" or "tyoople" and I like the latter better. There is another prounciation "too-ple". Prof.Schneider says "too-ple" at times. I have heard a couple of other pronunciations too - "tupple" or "tuppal" in Ranchi and "tuh-pull" in some places in Tamilnadu. Let's take a poll actually. How many for "tuh-ple"? Anyone for "too-ple" or "tyoo-ple"? Extra points if you knew all the three variants! LOL! My blood boils when people use incorrect pronunciations and refuse to learn how to say things right. I don't know why it psyches me up so much! Anyway, I found this link interesting. You may want to check it out too.

Finally, I confess being unable to take a stand and follow a consistent pronunciation code. Studying in the States gives me the freedom to use American pronunciations as and when I like but I find it odd to use those pronunciations when I talk to my Indian friends here. I don't have a false accent or anything but I can talk the so-called American English quite confidently, and to a large extent, the differences are more prominent in the sounds of the vowels and some consonants in many words (last, pass, half, route, believe, hard, anti, semi, often, suggestion and so on and so forth). Anyone can talk without having to try too hard. To be honest, I choose whatever pronunciation I like, whatever makes me happy! :)

P.S. It takes a lot of self-restraint to not laugh when my roomy says "Oh, you deed ...?", when she actually is sayin "Oh, you did...". You still didn't get the joke? Then you don't know nothin! I'll stop here, even humor has its limits and I don't want to overstep my boundaries. :) Adios!

In Retrospect ... (Part 2)

2010-01-09T19:50:00.007-05:00

Ranchi, once again!It's strange how we remember the past in the most unexpected ways. Here are some reminisces.

Whenever I take a shower and the water isn't as hot as I'd like it to be, I remember Ranchi! Ranchi and Gainesville have almost the same kind of winter. This year Gainesville's colder than usual but otherwise ... 5-15 degree celsius are temperatures that I am well accustomed to. And ... I hate cold baths. I had masterminded many sneaky strategies to have hot showers even when 1 out of 6 lobbies had a working water heater. It's not too hard to figure out, I used to be either the first or the last to bathe. :)And I had to lift / drag those 20 liter (or was it more?) buckets to the nearest acceptably unclean bathroom. (More laughter). I don't remember the last time I saw a red / a blue colored plastic bucket. Even the water doesn't feel so cold now ...

Despite the fact that I endured a lot of filth and stench in Ranchi, I should show some respect for a certain poor lady who removed all the soil from the bathrooms and restrooms in Hostel 9. Sometimes she brought her children along. One was a toddler and the other barely two years old. I always felt a prick whenever I saw her swab the place with her baby tied to her back. Worse still was the sight of a young girl taking over her shifts and doing the same arduous job. It hurts to know that BIT hasn't put a stop to certain highly condemnable things.

Food was a big issue there, at least for me. Most of what they served in the mess were either unpalatable and/or made me sick. I had scrounged for four years on all sorts of things, initially with a frown and later quite happily. I was well fed in my final year, thanks to T n P. But I could get a plate of hot parathas or a 70 cm dosa without too much trouble over there. That is not even a distant reality here. Sigh! This memory shouldn't go unmentioned. Just after I reached home after my finishing my final semester, my mom brought me a bowl of rice with steaming hot rasam and freshly cooked beans and I was choked after the first spoon itself and choked further when she asked me if I liked it. It was too much. I had eaten food at home after six months. That was the longest back then and I was too overwhelmed to do anything more than just nod in acknowledgment. My dad is a great cook too, I like his Sambar a lot among other things.Hmmm ... separations have only become longer with time and sentiments have changed too ... but I always remember Mom when I cook, and I remember her all the more when I make rice and rasam. Her rasam and rice was my standard lunch for more than 10 years in school and will always remain my ultimate favorite. Well, my mom feeding me that dish is heaven beyond description in words. It makes me happy to write about that in my blog. :) Almost as happy as eating the real dish. :)

I can't close this post without talking about Bajrang Bali. Literally every street in Ranchi has a temple for him. That made me feel like Bajrang Bali was there with me wherever I went and it's a feeling that I'll cherish forever and for always. Particularly, the Hanuman Mandir in Lalpur Chowk and another one in a narrow lane five minutes from there are very special to me. My feet automatically stopped in front of those temples whenever I passed by them. This post can go on if I don't stop myself here and something tells me I'll revisit Ranchi very soon. ;-) Until then ... Adios!

In Retrospect ... (Part 1)

2010-01-09T18:34:00.005-05:00

I was mentally reviewing my blog as I have a lot of ideas for posts now but very little time to spare. Well, some of you may wonder how this is possible when the "real coursework" for the semester hasn't even begun yet. The answer is rather simple. I have lecture at 8 30 am every other day ... and I think that is enforcing some discipline on my extremely recalcitrant sleep cycle. I think I was asleep at 2 am last night. That is a major achievement ... and better yet, once again I have the luxury of waking up as I please on four days of the week. Yes ... I'll treasure it while it lasts. :)

I am afraid this one might be a long post, but let me try to say all that I want to in the fewest possible words and give you all a better reading experience. I had blogged out a couple of posts in my first 6-8 weeks in Gainesville. I am glad I did because it feels good to read some of the stuff I wrote back then and laugh about how much has changed ever since.

I totally love the refrigerator and the microwave oven now. In fact, I kept becoming progressively lazier about cooking and doing the dishes as time went by ... and I have scaled new heights now. Sometimes there really isn't time and at other times, even if I am free, cooking is the last thing I feel like doing. If it's just the usual "something simple that I can get away with", I try to cook and clear the sink in half an hour and hope that the food lasts long and my friends like it even if they have to join me when I "Heat and Eat". Well, there is a fine line here folks. I would cook very passionately whenever I invite someone over for dinner or someone drops by to ask after me and so on. Don't jump to conclusions too soon ... I have not lost my forte or anything.

I complained quite a bit about picking up groceries for the house. Ha ha ... me walking back home with grocery bags is an impossible event today. I have devised ingenious schemes to fit that activity into my schedule in such a way that no lesser effort can potentially be expended to accomplish the same (unless somebody does everything and stacks up all the stuff in my kitchen and voila! - even that happens every once in a while! :-P What are roommates for? :D )

I had whined now and then about not being treated alright. Hmmm ... for the most part, I do get along fine and I've noticed that everyone has reasons to be grumpy sometimes. So, I will not bother myself with too much thought about the occasional high tide. :-|

Finally, I had blogged about my academic pressures twice or thrice and then later on I refrained from talking about the nightmares that I survived. I had some close calls, some disappointments and a lot of gains to my credit. I have been lucky to receive some "expert advice" from friends and seniors around. The best part is that most of it came for free, I did not even have to ask. :)Here's one that I often remember - "Learn it for the knowledge, not the romance." I am slowly beginning to understand and I know there is a certain something that's still alive; grades, assignments and exams notwithstanding. And every time I enjoy learning something, that thing shows up and makes me happy. I choose not to name it as it's too sacred to be termed anything commonplace. Hmmm ... here's to the memorable milestones in a meaningful journey! So long ... Adios!

2009 - 2010 : The Journey!

2010-01-04T23:32:00.015-05:00

This post is actually inspired by Vivek's post - 2009: The Trip

2009 had three parts to it.
Part 1 : BIT Mesra
Part 2 : Home, Chennai!!
Part 3 : Gainesville.

I think I have filled my blog with a good number of posts about Part 1 and Part 2, but I can revisit Part 3 ... as I am living that life now!

Gainesville ...
North Central Florida mein ek chota sa shehar. Mera pyaara Gainesville!
Allow me to digress a little before I pour my heart out about Gainesville. :-P
I went to Naperville, Illinois for two weeks and I realized I liked Gainesville way better! As a place, Gainesville's this laid back and yet refreshingly bustling college-town. Naperville had a different atmosphere. I could say it had a more residential atmosphere; I didn't see flocks of grad students there. And there was a lot of snow, which was very interesting for a week ... but then it was too white and monotonous after that. What I liked the most about Naperville are my folks and the happy time I had with them. And I can aptly say that they made my vacation more ... "colorful"! ;-)

But downtown Chicago was just too awesome! I have seen pictures before ... however, I was awestruck the moment I caught my first glimpse of this amazing place! I can't say I saw much of it but I saw the million Christmas lights in Michigan Avenue and a few other interesting things. Chicago's magnificent skyline is something I'd never forget. I remember seeing the Willis (earlier Sears) Tower and the John Hancock Center building. Apart from that my uncle drove past Lake Michigan, the Ferris Wheel, Lincoln Park Zoo and the Chicago River among other places and I stared out of the window with wide-eyed amusement. Even in its chilly winter, one can feel the power, one can feel the heat. :) There's this aura about the place that fascinates any tourist and allures them to come back once again. I don't know when I'll visit Chicago next, but whenever that is ... I hope I roam around day and night and satisfy all the cravings of my soul. :)

So much for the Windy City. Let me get back to Gainesville. There may be other awesome places in the States but Gainesville's really where I feel home right now. I slept like a baby during my flight from MCO to Chicago Midway last month and hence wasted my window seat. But I was determined to stare out of the window for the better part of my return flight. As we touched the skies, I could see frozen lakes, winding roads and snow-covered roofs. A while later, the view changed from the white landscape of Illinois to concrete roads, flyovers and other brown and gray sights (cloud-gray included) ... interrupted briefly by the occasional dull green of the predominant vegetation. After that the captain made an announcement when we entered Georgia and I strained my eyes to catch a good view whenever I could. I didn't need to be told we were in the Sunshine State a few minutes later. I felt overjoyed to see the dark green terrain below me. Its green and blue totally surpassed the dull gray and brown of the other places we crossed. Florida is my symbol of beauty and life today. I gave a contented smile as I reveled in my first proper aerial view of my present home state in the United States of America. :) Nothing could beat getting back to the Swamp! :)

There's more to why I can call Gainesville and only Gainesville home at the moment. My home, my dreams, my passions, my UF friends etc. are all here. And my soul's in ineffable peace in the warmth and company of the latter. I planned to do nothing, but my friends planned better and welcomed me back. :)I had talked about my hostel life and friendships in BIT at great length. I did all that after I left BIT. I blog more actively now and now is the time to etch my life at Gainesville. Here's the first of many sensational posts for 2010! Adios!

The Unquestionables. :)

2009-12-25T10:47:00.006-05:00

Hmmm ... I thought I'll have a special release for Christmas. Here it is!! Read on ...

You can make me share, but you can't make me care.

A song can come from the heart, a song can touch the soul but a poem is someone's soul itself.

Conversation can be free but silence is priceless.

Who invented the phrase "true love"? If it isn't true then how is it love? (One of the many reasons why I find this "love" thing complicated.)

Early to bed and early to rise makes a woman grumpy, unhappy and completely unwise!

Sometimes doing nothing is an accomplishment in itself.

That's enough originality for a day!! I'll be back! Adios!

Benumbed.

2009-12-18T01:52:00.004-05:00

Sometimes life decides to take its course, you are dragged into the current and you get swept away. You fight, you get overpowered, you concede and (grudgingly) you go with the flow. Well, this is true if you are my type. It's not too bad to be the other type either. There are people who like to go with the flow. I have always been a rebel and sometimes I just don't know when to give up ...

There's a bigger reason to why I ended up being like this. I have always wanted the power to choose, the power to decide what I want and I like to believe that I have the courage to fight for those things (if need be) and attain them. Somehow, the idea of bringing myself down to the extent of having just one option for everything and picking that sole choice seems extremely uninteresting to me. They say beggars can't be choosers. I cannot imagine myself being submissive and grovelling and grabbing whatever should drop into my outstretched arms. It's sickening to think of that, it totally doesn't agree with my spirit of life.

Many a time, I have found myself being faced with the problem of choosing between two options. Option A usually appeals to the heart while option B is what my head says is right. And half the unrest in my life today can be attributed to the fact that I selected option B unwaveringly and rejected option A. (over and over again!).

And as I said earlier, I have waded into turbulent waters, tried to swim my way out and wound up being tossed ashore pitilessly; only to pick myself up and rock my boat in there again.

Sometimes my endless fight
with this invisible enemy
seems to be my only true pursuit;
a constant that I want to change,
a barrier that I want to break,
only to assert that I am free,
that I am the master of my destiny,
and to have that and more,
I might happily beckon my rival,
let ourselves try to destroy each other,
till I've won or I know I've had enough,
should it please me to do so.

And that to me, is the greatest exaltation of life.

(I am not Ayn Rand, I'm no philosopher, I am just being myself!)

Anyway ...

I am reminded of Prof.Dumbledore's words to Harry Potter ... "It's not our gifts that define us ... it's our choices". How profoundly insightful! I haven't really tried to define myself yet, hopefully someday I will and perhaps that day I'd publish a better conclusion to this post. Until then ... here's one more post to my growing list of wisecracks. Cheers!:)

Still Unforgotten ...

2009-12-05T16:10:00.003-05:00

And it burned, a lone fire,
flames dancing to the notes
of an old forgotten song,
and it held closer and closer still,
whispering a silent promise to stay
as the night was long.

Yet it died with
such damning haste,
a cold memory left
of a warm embrace ;
had nothing to give
and nothing to take,
just a flickering blur
in its final wake.

It returned, from a distance unfathomable,
a wayward wind ever unstoppable,
and departed again
to another unknown land
sweeping them leaves down
to the still wet sand.

A numb soul it was,
beaten, broken and torn,
in exhaustion and despair,
it trudged so forlorn

But it burned, with undying desire,
for hope it was, that lone night’s fire,
yes it burned, never to die out,
and thus ended the tale
none could ever forget about.

An Alternate Take.

2009-11-27T12:55:00.005-05:00

The praises should have come first ... but better late than never.
Here's what makes shopping in the US a lesser exhausting experience as opposed to India.

I like the fact that we don't have to deposit our bags outside the store and carry a stupid token around. Some shops in India give multiple tokens ... now, that is a real(said with a long 'a')drag.

It is a relief to have bags for wet umbrellas.I don't remember seeing much of those back home.

Shopping is a "Do it yourself" thing. All the multi-storeyed structures in T Nagar and Pondy Bazaar can learn a few lessons from here.

When you are done, you proceed to checkout ... just once. Thanks to an insanely large population, some places in India have been forced to have 1 counter for billing, one for payment, one for delivery and if all this wasn't enough ... you can go to the other end of the place to collect your bags after you have dug out all the dirty sodden scraps of cardboard (tokens) from your pockets / wallet and pull your vehicle out from a cramped up godforsaken parking lot and suffer countless traffic jams and fill your lungs with smelly polluted air before you finally give up and call it a day.

I love being a small town girl ... Gainesville rocks! Cheers!

The Real Drag

2009-11-21T20:06:00.013-05:00

I had gone to Walmart yesterday. As I am a very sluggish lazy bum, Walmarting is always quite an excursion. In one of my earlier posts , I had been rather critical about a few shopping places in Chennai. (For those don't already know, the highlighted text is a hyperlink. Click to read. :)) This post is for Walmart. :)

Wait a minute, this post is not about just any Walmart in the States. This is an exclusive for the Walmart in Butler Plaza,Gainesville. It has only one level but it's pretty much the biggest store I have seen in Gainesville (heard there's a bigger Super Walmart but torpid and laid back as I am, I might probably never set foot on that side of town, so let's forget about it for the moment).

Yeah, every visit to Walmart is an excursion. I have not been there too many times actually, especially because it usually it takes at least an hour to go there, shop and come back. It's just too huge.
-->So why can't they have a map or something that can make it easier for people to find their way around?
There are so many aisles and sections; so many of them! And I know all the sections now ... but I don't have a dynamic routing algorithm or a spanning tree or all pairs shortest path algorithm to take me around Walmart in the minimum possible running (walking ;-)) time and ... when I can't help it I have a CART with me! And yeah, the cute sign boards that hang from the ceiling aren't a great help. They are rather superfluous.

The Cart! The Walmart carts are so big! There were no carts in the usual place yesterday and other shoppers were quite pissed too. There are narrow passages and manual doors where there should be automatic doors and automatic doors where either type wouldn't have made much of a difference. A nice lady pulled out my cart for me; someone always proffers to do it for me. Lucky! And the nice lady's elementary school going son held the door open for us. Again, lucky!

I went round and round Walmart in circles yesterday looking for a laundry bag or someone who could tell me where the stock was shelved. After circling that part of the store for the third time, I found a store guy. And his reply was "If you are looking for a laundry bag, we don't have any. They're probably going to shipped in tonight's truck or they should be there tomorrow". All I could do was look at him with a slightly sad face and say "Ohhh that's why I couldn't find any when I searched".
--> Can't these people leave a note or something somewhere?
It happens often. This is the second time something that I wanted was not there in Walmart. Jeez!

Another irritating thing about the cart is that there is always room enough for just one cart in the individual sections and we have to keep making way for others or saying "Excuse me" to negotiate the cart. Annoying! And yeah, the Americans never get tired of saying it, even if they know that they can easily pass through the available space without inconveniencing another person. So the same courtesy is expected of us. Why do I have to say "Excuse me" even when there's no need for me to be excused? Ah, I so hate all these redundant displays of politeness! Jharkhand was better. "Side do or thoda side deejiye" is actually not that rude a thing to say!

Anyway, let's get back to the cart. After I came out of Walmart, I had to go to Publix and my cart had to go till the cart drop off place that's closest to Publix. And there are two ways to do that. One is to drag the cart on the road ... the whole wide road, and get stares; or drag it on the passage that leads to Publix and open manual doors at the same time. I chose the latter. I can't tell you how much I love doing that. Words fail me ... (insert mean stare and arrogant smirk).

A person, who looked like he is ten years older than my dad, was arranging over 50 carts at the end of the walkway. My heart went out to him ... what an arduous job! I silently waited with my cart because the cart would have slid down the slope otherwise. He came with a smile and said he'll take it from there. His smile told me how much he appreciated the fact that I waited. I too gave him a knowing smile and went on ahead.

But Publix ... Publix's a good place. They have both carts and baskets. I love the Publix baskets! A full Publix basket is the weight my shoulders can carry without complaints. And this measure makes shopping a pleasure. :) (Laughing at my own rhyme). Nice finish once again. (chuckles). Ciao!

(De)Grading?

2009-11-17T20:37:00.008-05:00

I usually have enough self-restraint to shut myself up before an exam. But I am so compelled to write this post that not writing it will only drive me nuts.

2nd Grade - I cried uncontrollably on the night before my Math exam because I did not solve every problem in the textbook. I needed my mom to tell me that I knew how to solve any problem, even something that was not there in that textbook. I was so naive back then.

I remember a certain day that is engraved in bold letters in the annals of my history. It was the 30th of October, 2003. I had appeared for the Regional Level Mathematics Olympiad on that day. I did not make it to the National Level Olympiad, but the fact that I wanted to write that exam notwithstanding a certain medical condition means a lot to me now. I "wanted" to write an exam!!

Before BIT Mesra, every exam was the same ... I was a machine once upon a time. And I am not trying to be funny here. I have had all kinds of exams since my first day in BIT Mesra and yet I feel queasy about exams even now. Experience isn't the best teacher; sometimes, nothing is.

Back then, in BIT, there were some good things about exams. If the course was dumped on you and you couldn't stand it, you could just scrape through with a C and not a soul on earth would ever ask you why. And if you really liked a course, but the exam was unfair, you could get your usual B and still be happy. If your CGPA were to be short of distinction by 0.05, nobody would give a !rak. It was a peaceful life over there.

Come UF and everything turns upside down! A friend of a friend once remarked that everyone in UF is either equal to me or better than I am. I did not like the tone of that statement. I still don't like it. I don't want to know whether I am as good / mediocre or as awesome as anyone else is. I can set my own benchmarks. It's my life and I like being free to do whatever I want to do with it. Or if I want to sound too straight-laced, I can make a thousand voices echo in my ear, reminding me that I take exams because I have the spunk to pay over a thousand dollars per course to show the world that I am an engineer worth my salt. Is anybody out here spending so much to show the world that they are average? You don't want to hear what I might want to say if you choose to disagree with me.

In an exam, your brain may think left and your hand may go right and vice versa. Those who understand Binary Search Tree based data structures would know exactly what I am talking about. It happens to the best of people. Some of the answers may seem like the work of an absolute dunce while others could demonstrate a stroke of genius. An individual is not contained in an A or an A minus something. We constantly update and overwrite our cerebral caches before and after exams. It is a grueling thing to do. Nobody is an empty vessel after an exam. And for people like me, the real wisdom sinks in only after surviving an exam. :)

While the grouch in me is screaming in my ear to end this nonsense talk, a little voice still persists to be heard. And this post will stand testimony to the fact that I have decided to take some time off and hear what it wants to say. Adios!

The blast ;-)

2009-11-13T00:29:00.020-05:00

What I thought -> A few calls and wishes.
And what I got -> Wishes in Skype,Gmail,Facebook, over the phone and in person for 24 continuous hours.

What I thought - I'd get smiles, handshakes and demands for treats.
And what I got - Two huge cakes,surprise parties,cards and presents.
First thanks to my roomy and friends.

What I thought- I'd have a quiet dinner and a quieter night.
And what I got- A face pack of chocolate icecream cake and an atrocity of the same on my hair. Thanks to Pradeep and Rajiv.

Expected - A birthday.
and got --> A blast!!

:) :) Thanks for making my day everyone.

(De)Coding.

2009-11-10T03:22:00.013-05:00

I had got a project in Advanced Data Structures a few weeks back.The nightmare finally ended yesterday.
I am blogging out some of my insights in this post.

1.Only pros can write the algorithm in their head and jump into coding.
Even God might want to sit down with pen and paper and figure things out sometimes.

2.Some people can become coding gurus overnight. I am not in that league but I have got saved by such geniuses.

3.It is not a bad idea to revise library functions once in a while. There is a library only to make life easier.

4.You cannot think like another person. Sometimes you may not be able to think at all. And until you crack the logic of whatever is your problem statement, you're nowhere near writing correct code.

5.Errors are bad, exceptions worse and debugging is the worst thing you can be stuck with.

6.When you have done everything right, your IDE may get screwed up.Softwares are not reliable, they don't even offer a "best effort" type of service; it's all your best efforts. Sigh! That is why there is something called the worst case scenario analysis.And if you are douche and you don't have a save point, you can make life miserable for yourself. I am talking from experience here. Ctrl + Z can't solve everything!

7.It is not bad to accept your flaws. And you can't let problems get the better of you.If you want to improve, then shut up and keep coding. Or if you want to take the other route, take the plunge only when there's no easier way out. I am still contemplating my options. :-|

8.I once thought software engineering is just big talk and mundane stuff. I take that back. A program is just the tip of this iceberg. Anybody can see a program work and say "What do I care? This is just some random junk code. I can't be bothered to understand this." And worse still, somebody may use a software that may have been designed with a lot of pain and say "This thing sucks. I don't want it."

9.Hundreds of thousands of people build new projects everyday. I still sit back and watch anime if I am bored. I have a long way to go.

10.It is not always a good idea to weigh your efforts against your results. What fetches less than 1% of the gpa today can fetch 3 million someday in the future. Life's for the optimists. Pessimists can go die! They are killing themselves every living minute anyway.

Last but not the least, most geeks talk less and work more.
That's kind of uncool. I don't want to be that kind of a geek. I may not be a coding champ today, but, man I write a blog! Nice finish isn't it?
..............................................................................
Session Terminated. Thanks for your patience. ;-)
..............................................................................

I did it!

2009-11-10T00:54:00.007-05:00

I was in Fat Lady's bus twice today. I couldn't miss the chance. I asked her if I could know her name on the way back. :) I think she said it's Arlene. She too asked me my name. These days I pronounce my name "Vid-ya" if the Americans don't understand Vidhyaa. :) A friendly handshake, a nice smile and "a have a good one and a safe one" from her made my day. Okay, add a Happy Meal to that.(Mac D style)
This is a good Monday ... all's well that ends well. :)
Yeah and you too have a good one and a safe one. ;-)

The least I can give

2009-10-31T21:34:00.011-04:00

This is long overdue. In cliched terms - "Better late than never". I got inspired into typing it at the soonest moment after reading Maathangi's post.
I have been away from home for quite some time now and I am composed enough to tackle homesickness and the like. That doesn't mean I don't think about home at all. I do think about my family and Chennai very passionately; most often, not with tears but with smiles. Ever since I decided to update my blog regularly, my parents have been reading every post that I publish and I have noted that they are often the first people to read my blog. My blog is now an active mode of communication with my folks and this makes me happy.

Here are a few things, that were left unsaid and a few other things that I can't bring my self to say. I vehemently cursed all the people who dumped useless advice on me before I left Chennai in August. My parents were forced to underplay their part. There was just too much going on at that time. I don't remember them telling me anything in particular. They just trust me ... and that means a lot to me.

Invariably whenever I am too tired to stay awake and yet too restless to sleep, I end up thinking about Mom and almost always, I forget about everything else and fall asleep instantly.

When I am hungry and I have to cook something quickly, I imagine that the food would taste just like what she'd make for me. And in my opinion, that is the only reason why my cooking tastes good to me, and that perhaps is the only thing that taught me how to cook.

When I feel things aren't going my way and I find myself being drawn into hopeless spells of frustration, I remember her "I'll pray for you" and then everything seems to be just fine. I don't know to pray, I'm glad she does.

I don't understand how a person can be so filled with thoughts about their children all the time as my father is. He would not hesitate to go to any lengths to keep us happy and sometimes it is overwhelming to think that such an attachment is actually real. I can't find the right words to go on about this. I am not good at writing about this stuff. :)

And here is the part that is the hardest to write about. I could go on for weeks without talking to my grandparents and my aunt and cousins ... but one unstoppable pang that tells me how much I miss them is enough to make my cry like a kid. And this is not going to change ... I just can't grow out of it. :)

And with friends, as Animesh said, "It only gets better with time". I'm lucky, very very lucky. It took me more than 18 yrs to find my best friends and it was totally worth the wait. :)

Maathangi had blogged a bit about how a month's experiences in foreign land made her realize the importance of not compromising on one's values all the more. It got me thinking. Values ... do I have any? As a matter of fact, I find that I am unable to look at myself in isolation and answer this question. No matter how many times I ask myself, the same picture flashes in my mind - a picture of all the people who believe in me; a picture of what they think I am ... and I know I want to be that person. That's it. I remember my roots, and that immediately tells me where my strength lies and I am at peace with myself. And that says it all, I am only smiling and wondering how to conclude. :) May be I needn't bother ... here's a toast to all the good things. Cheers!

Beyond barriers

2009-10-30T22:45:00.007-04:00

My previous post described the grayer shades of my experiences so far. There is a brighter side, which is far more interesting to write about.

There are several nice bus drivers in Gainesville. I would like to write about two of them here. I still haven't got a chance to ask them their names, so we'll make do with descriptions in this post.

I got into a bus serving route 12 on a dull, boring and disconcerting Monday morning and the driver who always wears coolers and has a stylish French moustache welcomed me in. He drives pretty fast and I like him for that. That day, one Asian guy got in and the poor guy was having his Monday blues. He had neither his ID, nor any cash on him. He had a credit card and he told the driver that he forgot his ID. Our driver sahib looked at him and said "We don't accept credit cards, checks or money orders." And after a pause that seemed like eternity, he added "Don't forget your ID next time".

Another time, I was sitting on one of the front seats when I heard him ask an athletic looking guy "You play baseball?" Driver sahib then said "I played for the Yankees" and we all wowed him. Then he surprised us all with a small confession and a smile - "I was the water boy". We all laughed with him. :)
I have been seeing driver sahib quite often lately and he says a "Hi" to me these days. I like it! (chuckles).

There is another driver, she is this huge woman with a friendly voice. She likes to say "Hello Hello Hello Hello!!!" when people enter the bus and she says a "Thank you!" to every person who shows their ID. I have never had an opportunity to ride a bus driven by a female driver in India, there are many in Gainesville and "Fat Lady" is really awesome. (I am calling her "Fat Lady" in a very friendly way, actually I did not know that she's so big she is until I saw her standing).

There's one more friend I have. He's Paul and he works for Toshiba. I have talked to him twice when I called up Toshiba Customer Care and he's an anime freak like me too. :) I really did not expect customer service + friendship from Toshiba, it's indeed a pleasant surprise. My only complaint is that there are no backpacks that fit their Qosmio laptops perfectly. Even so, I managed to find the best fit from Best Buy. (lol, my humor is going from bad to worse!)

These are samples only, I wish I get to update my blog with many more happy anecdotes. :)

Locking Horns.

2009-10-26T20:30:00.015-04:00

If I am disappointing some of you by making this post fall under the "My Emotions" category instead of "My Wisecracks", I apologize. @Viv - You know this story. I already told you most of what is there in this post.

(This is not a premeditated post. In fact, I am drafting this post with very fresh thoughts inside my head.)

In the States, there are different ways to express one's so-called scornful emotions - anger, frustration, disappointment, disdain, disapproval, so on and so forth. Yelling, sarcasm, rebukes, repertoires, arguments and abusing are not really popular here (I am neutral about this, I really don't care what the form of expression is, what matters to me is only "my expression" of what I feel).

Technique #1: Euphemism.
"You may ask ..." can actually mean "This is not my dept, I don't give a damn about whether you know your way around here or not. I am not paid to answer people who are lost. I am a busy @$%&*!#. Get lost!". Drumming one's fingers while answering someone and trying to keep a serious face without the usual practiced smile often accentuates this tone. I am also an expert at doing this now and trust me, it works only in the States. Indians are better equipped with greater reserves of both patience and persistence. It is a different ball game in India. I will come to that later.

Technique #2: Not giving your customer enough breathing time (forget talking time!)
I had gone to a post-office in West University Avenue last Monday to send two money orders by "first class mail with signature verification". Now this mail service is supposedly offered by USPS, my uncle vouched for that and I was otherwise clueless about it. It was a Monday afternoon, Mondays are tough on everybody and good manners are often locked in the toilet (sorry, couldn't resist the temptation to use this childish phrase).

I had not planned to send money orders, why I had to send them is another long story, so I did not have an envelope that could fit two money orders. (There was no customer help desk.) Common sense told me that I'd have to walk around the entire post-office, searching to see if there are envelopes up for grabs. I found none, so I just joined the line and awaited my turn. The post offices in Gainesville close by 4 pm, I was there half an hour before closing time and it should be noted that I was not the last customer.
Me: Hello, I would like to send a first class mail with signature verification.

Postal employee -a gentleman who looked like he was old enough to have grandchildren:
We don't have no first class mail service.(double negatives are considered correct!)
You can send certified mail, that is the cheapest.

Me:Would I be able to track it online?

Him:Yes ...
I shift my eyes to the pile of stuff in front of me and before I open my mouth and speak he quips a "You figure it out!" at me.

Me:(With a measured tone of graveness in my voice) I need an envelope that can fit two money orders, and stamps, if the envelope needs any. (He really did not make me want to say "please").

He got back with an envelope and I, by force of habit began to write the "From" in the bottom left corner of the envelope. This only pissed him off more but he was not a bad guy. He told me that the scanner scans bottom up and reads the receiver's zip-code first, so the "From" has to go to the top left. And when I was done writing the addresses and I put the stuff in and paused for a fraction of a second wondering whether to dig into my bag and pull out my glue-stick, he prompted me again with a supercilious click - "You lick it! That's how we do it in the United States!". And I gave him a look that said "Oh you freaks, you feel superior even about this!" I'll leave it at that because the rest of the story is not beyond your imagination.

Technique #3: The Stare
There are times when I am right and somebody needs to be put in their right place. In my apartment, the (kitchen) sink is the source of many problems. Sigh! I won't whine here. So let's get on with the story. Somehow, I can see right through people when they try to cover up for something. For those of you who don't already know, I am rather straightforward, I don't mind open confrontations when I want answers and I don't spare anyone who takes me for a fool. So, all the suppressed American histrionics fail miserably when my cold, hard and most menacing scowl penetrates the offender. And the adversary is rendered speechless after a few ruthlessly acerbic remarks penetrate their thick skull. Ah well, everyone has their ego and my defeated opponent often tries to save face with a futile attempt to justify their mistake. (A sorry might have earned some mercy at least). This is when I decide not to hold back even a bit and fume in such a way that I have the last word. Unless otherwise stated, the person who gets the last word is the winner. :-)
(I don't mind nourishing my ego; nothing can stop that. (arrogant smirk))

A self-respecting individual certainly doesn't like it when everything around is "all talk and nothing".That is why even literature seconds the fact that "Actions speak louder than words". Amen to that.

A glimpse of my world

2009-10-20T15:26:00.008-04:00

I promised you all that I am going to venture into a different kind of writing and here I am, with my first post of this kind. Do read ahead.

I am a Computer Engineer (actually still in the making) but yes, I write this as a Computer Engineer, I guess I have qualified myself to do that, so let's jump into our discussion without further ado.

I have had the good fortune of being able to talk about computers to people of different ages and varying levels of knowledge and each of these interactions was mutually enlightening. Time and space constraints permit me to write about just one such experience in this post.

Not too long ago, I was talking to A, who is in middle school and he was curious to know what Computer Science is all about. His stint with computers has been an interesting one because he has tried LOGO,the Microsoft Office Suite,several Internet applications (email included) and played over 30 computer games. A is smarter than the average 12 year old and hence I asked him "What do you need to define everything in this world?". A did not see this coming and he gave a very impressive answer, he said he'd need the Internet. And I, being the tenacious woman that I am caught that answer and asked him what he'd need to define the Internet. And we continued to do this for some time, until A decided that he wanted to call it quits. And then I gave him my answer - "If I want to define everything in this world, I'd need zeros and ones. I am going to spend the better part of my life trying to make 0s and 1s out of seemingly complex things and it's actually a fun thing to do". Thankfully, this made sense to A and he wanted to know how that can be done. So I sat him down and taught him a bit of binary arithmetic, with a lot of illustrations and unconventional explanations, but he got the hang of it.

I could teach A only because I had a tough time coping up with the sudden change from base 10 to base 2 and it took me a really long time to understand what a left-shift is and what a right-shift is. And trust me, the way we understand things is not something that can be written in textbooks. After all independent thinking is the one thing that makes the human brain superior to any super computer.

Moving on, abstraction is one of those things that never ceases to amuse me. I really feel stupefied when I think that innovating techniques that would only let people care lesser about what they are doing with a computer is actually a very involved branch of science. How many people know what a registry is? I did not know what a cookie really is until recently. Technology is a very unique thing, you don't need to know much to feel close to it. But technology is the last mile of a very long journey. Science is really lost on most of us but nonetheless "the geek shall inherit the earth".

P.S. Thanks for taking your time to read this. This is my 50th post. Cheers!

Moving on

2009-10-16T14:58:00.007-04:00

I had been thinking of moving away from blogging for a while. I began to get the feeling that my posts are getting drier and more pointless with time. I had almost made my decision but I chose to reconsider. I took a walk outside in the rain and unfailingly, it did me some good. I remember somebody's words now ... "And it's only after the toughest tests of time that the best things choose to happen".

I prefer to believe this. Let my blog survive the test then. I do have plans to shift into a different kind of blogging. I hope my enthusiasm stays undiminished until then.

"Words Etched on the Mirror of Time has touched 49 posts and is still kicking".
Thanks for keeping me going folks. Stay tuned.

Wake up Vid

2009-10-11T09:21:00.016-04:00

If the title led you to think that this post has something to do with the much talked about movie "Wake up Sid" or that it's even remotely related to either of these posts - Shreck's post or Viv's post
NO, this is a wacky post, that's it. So read on.

What was the title again? "Wake up ... 'Vid' ". Yeah it's once again about Me. :-P
I have been doing some very crazy things lately and it's nice when craziness has a funny element in it (makes good blogging material among other things). My coursework has made me deranged to the point of staying awake for more than 24 hours at a stretch during exams and submissions. There is just no easy way out sometimes and I have decided to blog about my desperate attempts to fight sleep.

1.Wednesday morning 9 45 am - I'd been awake since the previous afternoon. There was a class at 10 40 am and the assignment that I had just finished could be turned in there. My eyes were begging me to let them close their shutters but I had to go. I splashed water over and over again on my eyes until I drove out the urge to sleep.

2.Wednesday afternoon, in the bus - I vaguely remember hearing two blond chicks talking about people falling asleep in the bus. I was catnapping in the right corner seat of the last row (sometimes my favorite seat).

3.Thursday afternoon - There was a class at 5 10 and I badly wanted to sleep at 4 35.
I had no time to think. I just bolted out of the door. (Running away from the bed and sleep).

4.Last twenty minutes of the lecture - I did everything possible to stop myself from dozing off in class. When my usual tactics were of no avail, I just dug my nails into my neck to keep myself awake.

5.On my way back home, I sat on the hot seat (my favorite seat can be really cool or burning hot, depending upon the state of the ventilating shaft above it) and winced inwardly as the scalding heat made sleep impossible (can you sleep when your @$$ is on fire? ) and kept me in my senses till my stop came.

6.Right now, I have been awake for about 17 hours straight and I am glad that my 48th post is going to be published in a minute. (Let's make way for 50, 50, shout and say hurray. This is my parody of the title song of a famous kids' cartoon on Pogo named Noddy).

Had enough? Don't worry, I will torment you no more. I will press the "Publish Post" button right now. See you around folks!

Not spinning the same old yarn :-|

2009-10-05T04:11:00.000-04:00

I had let my thoughts wander awhile yesterday and I noticed something that's rather terrifying. I figured in everything that I thought about, wholly or in part. I was always there. I realized that even when I am thinking about completely arbitrary things my thoughts converge at a point that connects me to the subject in my mind and the thought zaps when this dawns on me.

Then I indulged myself a little more. I have several sinks and spaces to let my thoughts out; this blog being one of the most carefully maintained ones; and I brought my blog under the magnifying glass with which I was studying things and whoa! - shocking discovery!

I am going to publish my 50th post soon and 48 posts (including this one) featured me (in nice ways of course :-)); but that doesn't change the fact that this blog and I are symbiotically sustaining each other. (Is that taking things too far? I don't think so).

Fortunately, whatever crossed my mind was more than just random ravings and is certainly worthy of a post in this blog. Judging by the way life has been treating me so far, it is plausible that I am motivated enough to write only about things that I experience directly. I paint my canvas with only those shades that appeal to me. And it's not a bad thing because whatever qualifies to enter my blog is apparently something that stayed after sieving out more than a hundred other things of lesser importance.

Last but not the least, there are two observations that should not go unmentioned.

1.)If you have ever tried to pay attention to your thoughts without potentially disturbing their course, we'd probably concur on what I am about to say. Whenever I want to concentrate on something, I pull my reins and listen to the thoughts that take shape inside me and unfailingly that one minute of silence defines me, speaks to me more clearly than a thousand unified voices can, and teaches me things that I can't get from anywhere else. May be that is what speaking the language of silence is all about.

2.)It's not true that meditation is a conscious activity.I thought people like me are light years away from such stuff but I have been proven wrong. I guess this discussion is getting rather ponderous (may be because my eyes are getting heavier by the minute (with sleep)) but I will wind up with this. I thought I am always the force behind all that happens to me but I reconsidered my opinion and now my perception of the driver and the driven has changed slightly. I don't understand religion(s) and God(s) much but I can aver that there are things in this world that are beyond my control, like my thoughts, (things that control me in a good way) and somehow in a strange way, I feel there is that mysterious God element in those things that appear to be unfathomably distant and yet incredibly close at the same time. Is God a he/ a she/ an it / all of the above? Or God just yet another powerful image that a person's mind can create? There could be many images then.I don't know, it doesn't matter.

(P.S. I am being very abstract here folks, I am very sober and if any of this was incomprehensible it is not because what I have written about is junk, it is because I am not always good at putting my thoughts in words.)

Au revoir.

Homework on Homework :-)

2009-09-26T04:56:00.001-04:00

To Suhitha, but for her this post would have been a sob story. :-)

13 days, i.o.w 312 hours is the time that I got to solve my first assignment.
312 hours seems like a long time. Here's what I think happened.

First 24 hours - I warmed my bottom over the assignment.

Within the next 120 hours, I had solved half of it.

Then 96 hours passed like 96 minutes.

I had to multitask and submit another assignment after this point.

24 hours before the deadline, I had solved everything except one question.

12 hours before the deadline, I was stuck.

10 hours before timeout - I got saved by my friend's phone call.

I have had sweet talks, I have been told that I am loved and cared for, I have got hugs and kisses BUT in all these months, the thing that made me the happiest was a cleverly crafted piece of pseudo code (dictated to me over the phone). We all know UF's Honor Code, don't we? ;-)

With 8 hours to go, I began testing the solution because I was just as obsessed with it as I had been with the problem. I had to see it work, I had to convince myself. My mind would not rest until I solved it to the very end. When I get so much involved in something, everything else becomes insignificant. The urgency of the current moment, the impending submission, my fatigued body, hunger, thirst, sleep ... everything is blurred by my single point of focus.

Yes, and since this happened last night, I was in a trance at 5 am with solutions scribbled on several sheets of paper and
I don't know how my brain gave directions to make my hand write,
I don't know how I was awake until 7 am,
I don't know why I could not sleep even when I was beyond exhausted,
I don't know what made me sleep (I remember thinking about my mother),
I don't know how I woke up 4 hours later.

I woke up with a start. Once again, I was possessed. I did not even care to brush. My study material was all around me. I had 45 minutes before class began and nearly 4 hours until the actual last minute to turn the assignment in and a bottle of Gatorade to sustain me till I got back home.

I hid myself in the silent study floor of the library for 30 minutes after class and it was done. Yoo hoo!

If you have read my previous post, you'd know that I am unstoppable on Fridays.
With nothing appalling looming over the weekend, a pleasant evening and pleasurable company loosened me up. And I managed to avert disaster in my late night cooking. Staying awake at 6 15 am like a mad freak is fine, even if it is just to finish this post, only because, it's Friday night. Thank God, It's Friday!

T.G.I.F.

2009-09-26T04:43:00.000-04:00

Well, honestly, Friday evenings are the best. I can't get enough of them.
You get this feeling of being liberated on Fridays. The whole world around becomes a happier place. And what's better is the fact that Fridays come before two very awesome days Saturdays and Sundays. (I don't want to get started on what comes after Sunday; that is not a pleasant topic to discuss).

Good food, fresh air, fun, friends and Fridays are my top 5 for the weekends.

(Shopping,the laundry,homework(s),cooking and friends are the real 5 :-P )

Thank God! It's Friday. Even 4 45 am is included in my Friday, although it's technically Saturday.

I'll be right back, when I say this I mean I am going to end this post with this sentence and start blogging the next one right away. :-)

And when the going gets tough ...

2009-09-16T22:21:00.001-04:00

What happens when
my roommates don't clean the dirt bag in the dryer and I, with my super sensitive sinus have to clean both before and after I use the dryer?
even when my local profile gets corrupted, being very loyal to me, my laptop still lets me use the Internet? :-)
amidst sleepless nights, assignment solving and a dozen other preoccupations, I never come to know that there is something called a UF Webmail service and I have an email account there?

I end up paying heavily for my ignorance. After a long time, I had engaged in intense cerebration over an academic topic, thanks to my Advanced Data Structures assignment and when I get so involved in something, the world turns upside down. I have lost track of when and how I go to sleep. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are the days in which I need an alarm to wake up. And on the other four days of the week, I have my way. :-)

And today, I found that an unprecedented sequence of shocks and surprises got thrown at me. I don't know if I got more than 2 hours of sleep last night but I know that I woke up without a fuss when the alarm sounded at 9 40 am. I expected a normal day ahead, 50 minute lecture - 50 minute break - 50 minute lecture and home.
The first event was peaceful and good. The second was the worst spell of the day and the third was a striking contrast to the other two.

In my 50 minute break, I discovered that the library had sent recall notices of a book that was with me to my UF Webmail and I, like a stupid idiot had been checking my profile in their Website all along. Damn all the distributed servers that don't care to be consistent. I am now in an additional debt of $40. It was my mistake and I learn things the hard way sometimes.

But hang on, I am not a klutz all the time. Everybody makes mistakes and my grad adviser had not checked my profile and somehow my records were wrongly entered. I think I was rather calm when I saw "MS Non-Thesis - dropped and Doctor of Philosophy - enrolled" in my graduate information page. I sat through the next lecture, which was ADS, summoned the courage to discuss my doubts at length with Dr.Sahni and actually smiled afterwards because he did not find any of my questions stupid. :)

And hungry and tired as I was, more tired than hungry I think, I perked myself up and went four floors up to bring the incorrect entries to the notice of my grad adviser, (who I caught just before he left for a meeting). Yeah count that as silver lining #3 and that left me with just 3 things to finish before calling it a day. I set my UF Webmail to make all my mails get forwarded to my gmail account.I had to buy stamps and send a letter home. The sticker-like envelopes and stamps in the US have fascinated me since childhood. :-) And then I had to rush home, pick up the book and return it to the library.

So far, so good. It was nearly 5 30 pm when I reached the bus stop and I waited for Route 12 to take me home. For certain specific reasons, I have stopped riding bus route 35. I have observed so many people who ride the bus. They are all exhausted after classes and sometimes my friends don't even realize that I am waving at them. I guess I look as tired as them, if not more. And today, after an awfully long day I found myself falling asleep in the bus itself :). But that's cool, I'm so familiar with the route now that I can shake myself awake at every important stop. And after getting back home, I slept.

I like my "Oh whatever" attitude a lot. I save my emotions for things that are more worthwhile. And that's why you'll never find any post here that's depressing.
Cheers to that!

When everything is a such a ... drag

2009-09-12T16:43:00.001-04:00

People who know the real me are well aware of how lazy I can become.
I am scaling new heights. Actually this is a very peculiar phenomenon.
I am known to resist any form of activity. A typical sight is me on my bed, with two pillows and my arm for a headrest and my laptop and/or a book for company. Sleep is like a sustained release drug on me. Being incorrigibly nocturnal, I end up staying awake for no particular reason and I begin to get hungry. I don't have to tell you that it's too much trouble for me to walk to the fridge and get some grub.

So I roll to my side and laugh wryly when I imagine calling for room service and getting some fries and ice cream. Oh well, it's either self service or no service. I can't help myself by getting any grumpier. May be my bed should have had an eject button or something. Actually I have another better idea. The kitchen is on the other side of the wall. A 4 * 4 square tunnel like opening would have been perfect. If I am getting one for the kitchen then perhaps I can have a carousal to the bathroom. But even that won't suffice because nature has made ablutions very complex for human beings. (Dry chuckle). I stop here for decency's sake.

Coming back to where I was, I usually try to sleep my hunger off. But it doesn't work sometimes and I have to drag myself into the kitchen and do so much work just to appease my hunger. I'd groan both before and after, that's just about how sluggish and spoiled I am. Last night, after all this drama, I crashed in the morning and had nightmares of going to college in my favorite light blue colored pajamas (it has snowman designs all over it). I was dazed in disbelief ... "Is this what I really am?" What can I say, reality is always hard to accept. You may wonder why I bothered myself with writing this post. It's simple, I wanted you all to know that there are very few things that I do without compulsion. Writing my blog is one of those things. Nothing more to it than that.

The world beyond the stars and stripes

2009-09-07T22:37:00.000-04:00

Sometimes when I happen to chat a little with my American acquaintances, they get curious about India and ask me funny questions.
Some of the questions go like

"Do all Indians know English?"
Ans:"Do you know that India has outdone all the English speaking nations? It's not the US, not Great Britain,not Australia, but India, which has the maximum number of people who are fluent in English! We are the second most populous country and we're still growing!"

"Is Walmart there in India too?"

"Don't Indian girls get married young (like in their 12th or 13th year)?
That's what the media says.

"Your parents have their own apartment but they don't have a car?
How do you guys survive?"

"Isn't it like really hot in India? Then how do Indians manage to eat so much spicy food?"

Classic examples of being cut off from the world outside of the US.

I too had/have questions. Some of them would make an interesting read.

Me: "Don't shops sell thin-skinned oranges here?"
Ans: "I once remember watching an episode in Ripley's Believe it or not that said it's difficult to transport tender oranges and hence shops just don't sell them".
Me:"Do you know that we get some of the juiciest oranges in India?"

Me:"You can get maximum 65 pages photocopied for 1 dollar?"
Ans:"Yeah, pretty cheap isn't it?"
Me:"Yeah right ... You have no idea what cheap is baby".

Me:"Why do most pens here have round tips?
Do these guys even know what fast writing is?"
Answer from an Asian friend: "Sharpie is just about the only pen that is sharp".
Me:"India probably manufactures the maximum number of sharp tipped pens worldwide.
And they are cheap."

For those who think India is cheap, yes!!!, damn right it is; but for the right reasons.

And those who think that the US is unfriendly territory, Stop, rethink,the US is the largest producer and consumer of frozen Indian food; from Roti to Rasam. And once again, the Indians mint and melt all the dollars.

Is liye kehte hain bhai log, "Mera Bharat Mahan".

Chain Reaction Cont'd

2009-09-03T23:10:00.000-04:00

Before laziness conquers me, let my get this drafted and posted nicely.
Weekend's round the corner and it entices me to remember my Ranchi weekends now.
The BIT buses made very few trips to Ranchi on Saturdays and Sundays. And I think Nithin gave me company most of the time. We never grew tired of our meaningless squabbles, bets, idiosyncrasies and pointless arguments.

And it was on one such afternoon that we decided that we were totally going to watch "Fast & Furious 4".We knew that there was a matinee show at the Miniplex and we made it just in time to catch the 11 am bus and it took the rickety old bus nearly an hour to get us to Ranchi.

And I was ravenous as usual. I wolfed down a dosa, and half of his Idlis as unexpectedly even the Sambar was good at Hasty Tasty. I hogged like a carefree brat while Nithin stared at his watch every 30th second. And I was just not willing to finish quickly, I had to order a milkshake and drain the last drop of it down my throat. So after a bumpy ride on a rickshaw followed by more running, hustling and bustling, we reached Miniplex to watch the 2 30 show.

Nithin: "Fast and furious ki dhai bhaje wali show ke liye do tickets chahiye".
Clerk: "Fast and Furious nahi , yeh Raftaar ka Junoon hai."

And yes, we felt like rolling madly on the ground in disappointment.
But we were determined jackasses; we paid 130 rupees for each ticket to watch Fast and Furious dubbed in Hindi. I could write a book about our crazy adventures.
And perhaps that's why I ended up blogging about him when I wanted to blog about Ranchi.

Here's to Nithin -
the friend who I almost lost,
the one person who endured the most from me,
(even on the last day of college!)
the guy who taught me what friendship is,
a friend who will amuse me to no end.

If I could relive the past,
I'd certainly want a bowl of Rasam Idli,
a bowl of Sambar Idli, a plate of 70 cm Dosa
and Nithin on the other side of the table;
literally and metaphorically in 7th Heaven.

Nithin, I bow to thee!

Chain Reaction

2009-09-02T00:02:00.000-04:00

This one is for Animesh, our very favorite BIT idol.

I thought that my ties with Ranchi have been severed as I have moved away and I never imagined blogging again about Ranchi. But I am making a comeback, thanks to Animesh.

It's always easy to confess the truth. Some things have a lasting impact on our lives and hence the memories stay evergreen, forever. And evidently, Ranchi is one of those things that affected me very deeply. Not a day passes by without reminiscing about my Alma mater or picturing Ranchi inside my mind. I will describe some of those vivid recollections here.

I remember the constant chatter of my wing mates and my futile attempts to drown out the noise by digging my face into my pillow.

It was a customary ritual for every girl to check herself out on the lobby mirror outside my room. No mirror compares to that "Mirror on the Wall". That one made every girl look pretty. Well, a long mirror and a few slanting rays of the sun can make almost anybody's skin glow. And every girl made sure that she had donned all the right accessories before stepping out to PMC or wherever.

I still get an arrogant smirk on my face when I think about the crazy lines at the mess on the days when samosas were served and my stubbornness to neither wait nor eat at the mess.

And with a heavy heart I recall how I used to have all my clothes washed by my Mausi and hung on the clothes lines outside my room until they were fresh and dry. Oh, the dhoban was a life saver. She'd iron out even the creases in my handkerchiefs if I asked her to. And now, I have to worry about lint deposits in the dryer. (Big sulk).

I think I bought and ate the maximum number of "Cream Delites" from the little shop near the canteen. Monginis should have made me their brand ambassador. Those small cupcakes were my staple food for 3 years.

As I walk down that memory lane, it dawns on me that I was a figure of importance there. Somehow, in a unique way, everybody had their place in BIT. Everyone was institutionalized; in a positive sense of the word. Not very surprisingly, a few lines from one of my favorite songs strike me in connection to all that I have been saying -

Hua Hai Pehli Baar, Hota Hai Ek Baar
Phir Na Hoga....Yeh Dubaara...

Couldn't have written something so beautiful myself. (I mean in Hindi. :-) )
Yeah ... this post will surely initiate a chain of posts. I hope I come back with more soon.

Nothing but the truth

2009-08-29T22:47:00.000-04:00

To a very dear friend, Syd, who prompted me to write this post.

Do you think a grad student's life is easy?
Do you know what a grad student's life is? I'm sure you do, to a certain extent, but I'll try to shed some light on the rigors of a Masters student's life.

A friend of mine who has finished two years of her Ph.D program once told me this
"Grad students are almost the poorest sections of the society". Rent, books and groceries are enough to drain anybody's bank balance.
I am not joking, one in ten thousand students may have earned a full scholarship and a fewer students (Masters students) get stipends that cover their living expenses. And if such a person is really smart, they might manage to save some money every month.

Else, everyone is in the same boat and it's actually reassuring to think that I am among 100,000 others who go through the same ordeals in life.
Here are a few snippets to walk you through our world ... Welcome aboard!

When you are nobody in a very big world, you are not afraid of anything.
Almost always, nobody will question you and even if they do, you wouldn't be afraid to answer back.

I have seen kids walk on the road with laundry bags.There's nothing awkward about it. My apartment has a washer and a dryer but there are kids living in dorms and they have to get by too. I know very well that doing the laundry can be a drag. And ironing wrinkled clothes is worse. So often, people just don't press their clothes if they can get away with it. Fashion is the last thing on a grad student's mind.

And a car is a luxury that most students can't afford. I thought I was such a loser to be carrying five shopping bags in the afternoon heat a few days back. But this is an ineluctable part of life for everyone who starts from scratch in a new apartment.
I saw a group of American guys suffer the same fate this evening and they were worse off because for some inarguable reason, weekends are sacred in the US. The bus service stops after 6 pm. And for understandable reasons, everyone shops in the weekends. My roomy and I had to repeat the exercise today. The famous cartoon image of a person collapsing on the ground with two Xs replacing their eyes flashed through my mind. I laughed to myself and trudged along the rest of the route. I was reminded of how I used to sympathize with delivery boys and workers brought gas cylinders to our house. I was probably carrying so much weight today and I had plans of going to the gym regularly. It's a paradox ... when I have 3000 calories of food in various bags and I am probably burning as much to bring it all home and get that nourishment. Time and space constraints forbid me from going into the details of how arduous cooking and cleaning can be.

Publix is a strange place, it's as if some kind of voodoo strikes everyone when they enter Publix. Take my word for it; nobody walks out with less than three bags. I'll try to defy this rule in the future. Let me try my luck.

Now we move on to lectures. My college is very considerate. We have 50 minute lectures and 5-10 minutes breaks between lectures. Certain universities like to harass students with 3 hour lectures. I feel sorry for those guys. They'd be dying to get out of classes. Well, if the prof is an expert researcher and a bad orator, it's quite a task to stay awake and pay attention. Especially for people like me who are very good at drifting away in daydreams, 50 minutes is an interminably long duration of ruthless confinement. But 50 minutes is not even half of the time I end up spending with the lecture videos. There's no escape right, put everything off for the last minute, then "Somebody is going to get hurt real bad".

Prof.Liu is a great person. I admire his frank comments, lucid explanations and friendly attitude. He teaches more than just Distributed Multimedia Systems.
This is a true story that he told us in our last lecture:

Microsoft wanted to Internet Explorer to win against Netscape.
Initially IE was a pathetic browser. They gave it away for free, to promote it among the Netscape users and gain a greater market share. That too didn't prove to be very successful so they worked harder and brought out IE 2.0 which still sucked big time. Then they decided to adopt some unprecedented techniques to make their engineers deliver their best.
Two months before the deadline, they arranged for snacks to be brought to the desks.

A month later, they refurnished their workplace to accommodate couches and recliners
as they were happy when their people extended their working hours and performed better.

Their next move was to install laundry units inside their complex and when even that wasn't enough, they literally closed the doors.

IE won but not for long. Nobody was happy in the end, neither the people who sweated their blood for Microsoft, nor the target users. Many designers from Microsoft decided to call it quits. Obviously those engineers were graduate students once. They certainly did not want such a life. They'd have expected the phase that succeeded college to be better and happier. They too must have lived the American dream and drowned in depression when they were robbed off all their freedom and peace and were driven like slaves.
That's why Firefox and the other Open Source browsers gained more patronage and are still going strong. Microsoft is a world leader in many realms of technology but times are changing and they too will change with time, for the better, of course.

To cut a long story short, I will write out something that Syd and I learned from our experiences. This is supposed to be HR strategy. If somebody feels that they are not liking the way things are going, then they should list out what they like and what they don't. And once that's done, if they fight for their priorities, they'll reach the heights that they aspired to scale. And I conclude now in the hope that I live up to these principles. Au revoir.

You know you are doing good when

2009-08-26T21:24:00.000-04:00

1.You sleep for 2 1/2 hours BUT you wake up just in time to make yourself presentable, run out of your apartment and see the bus rev its engine to start from your favorite stop BUT you are smart; you run ahead and catch the bus at its next stop.

2.You find a nice place to sit in the classroom and your professor walks in wearing shorts and sandals, makes you enjoy his lecture and lets you off without giving any homework. Of course, who wouldn't love to have the best subject taught by someone with a great voice and an awesome accent? Hope Prof.Helmy doesn't have to go out of town, I like waking up at 8 30, ONLY if it is to attend his classes.

3.An army woman sees you have your brunch, (a pudding pulled out of Snack Pack), asks you where you got it from and says "SMART GIRL" in front of so many people when you tell her that you brought it with you.

4.The girls who you like badly want to be friends with you. :-)

5.The printer in the CISE lab is all yours when you need it the most.

6.You run into a senior and she says "Good job" after evaluating your game plan for the next 2 years. (With 2 courses that don't have final exams, there will enough time to manage a healthy eat-sleep-play-study cycle this term).

7.You see the same bus again, run for it, get inside at your usual stop and the driver gives you a wide grin. (Why won't he when he knows you ran for his bus in the morning too?)

8.You come back home, you are hopelessly tired and you want to have cereal for lunch-dinner BUT you find a hot meal on the stove. God bless my roommate.

9.Everything is quiet when you want to have a little nap.

10.One of your roommates (a Floridian inside out) walks into your room with a "Hi! I didn't see you all day" .

11.You know that your best friends would ping you whenever they see you online.

12.Your family and friends wait for new posts on your blog and ask "Is everything alright?" if you have been too lazy and not blogged for a week or so.

13.You have only evening lectures on two days of the week.

14.Your roomy says that the regular Indian non-stick tava is "unique, never seen anything like it before" and asks you if they sell such stuff in the States.

15.Youtube has almost everything to keep you happy.

16.You know that you are up, alive and kicking. All the way, all the time.

This is only the beginning, wait for more folks! Adios!

My expedition

2009-08-19T19:58:00.000-04:00

Until monotony sets in, everyday is a brand new adventure. I got into a bus, asked a.w.a figured out where my stop is, navigated through several corridors, with some occasional gentleman (read uncle) proffering help and reached my first destination - Wachovia. Don't laugh, it is the name of my campus bank. Contrary to many commercial banks in India, the banks here are very customer friendly. There are no passbooks, no entries, no long waits and you actually don't sulk about going to the bank.
After I finished my business at the bank, I opened the Campus Map and found my way through the myriads of alleys and buildings in UF. Who said girls can't read maps?
I'm confident that you know which finger to show them. Anyway I am more comfortable getting lost alone with a map than making mistakes while guessing directions with a friend in Gainesville. (without a compass, one's sense of direction is not always trusty).

I had made a small blunder this evening. I walked away from my usual bus stop and wandered into a part of the campus that I had not explored (read grazed) before.
Nonetheless I am delighted I took that road as I found Library West - the most amazing library that I've ever seen. The racks move when you push buttons; I had certainly not imagined that.The books are impeccably cataloged and meticulously arranged. Each shelf is numbered, no book is out of place and within each shelf the books are kept very neatly; in the increasing order of their unique identifiers. I wanted a copy of "The Rainmaker" by John Grisham. After I looked up the online catalog, all I had to do was find the rack and grab my book. Only then I noticed that all the novels by John Grisham were on the same shelf and I jumped in joy and took a copy of "The Client".
Since the library maintains an alphabetical sub-ordering within each aisle, it took me no effort to locate a copy of "The Memoirs of Geisha" that was staring at my face.
And what's more pleasing is the fact that one ID, my Gator ID works as a free bus pass, a library check out card, ,a debit card and almost as a state ID within Florida. Oh, last but not the least, each book can be issued for a period of 8 weeks and can also be renewed online subsequently and the desk assistants give you carry bags after you have got your books checked out. What a library!

The buses here have ramps that slide down when someone with a physical disability / injury wants to get inside with their scooter. The drivers do the needful to make life easy for such people. I have seen a lot of people on scooters. There is not even a trace of self-pity on their faces. One day in Walmart, a woman had asked me to open a door for her. Apparently, she had tried her best to do it herself and had turned her scooter 180 degrees to look for someone who could help. She wanted to go to the restroom. Life's tough for many people, but they hold their heads high and face it bravely. People are independent here, perhaps by choice / by fate but it's inspiring. I sign off on that note. Adios!

Macrowave

2009-08-13T15:34:00.000-04:00

I hate the microwave oven now.
The refrigerator is second on the list.

But I like to cook food. Cooking means preparing food from scratch. Not defreezing or heating or opening cans. But it is impossible to perform the above mentioned activity when the nearest date to own a kitchen is ten whole days away. Hence frozen corn tortilla base, cheese, butter, vegetables - cut and packed, milk, yoghurt (yeah they all have to be kept in the fridge :-X ) are some of my options. But refrigeration is only the lesser evil. The microwave is the real criminal. People store cooked rice in the fridge and reheat it umpteen times and live on such food for days on end. Yuck!

Even so, there are still ways to deceive this sick stale system. Sugarfree puddings, cupcakes, bread and cereal turn out to be real life savers. And if all this still doesn't suffice, there is Gatorade - originally invented in UF. As I am about to conclude, there is one little thing that needs special mention - The UF CISE Dept's Fall '09 orientation. The organizers have taken care to order meat-free pizzas. A very sweet gesture indeed. Starvation is an item that has been deleted from the Indian menu. A toast to India Bazaar, Walmart, Publix, Gatorade and UF for that!

Little drops of Joy

2009-08-12T17:05:00.001-04:00

And to think Coca Cola stole that line for their soda.

It's such a delight when it rains and even more ecstatic when the showers hit the warm earth when you want them to. The whole landscape becomes greener and happier. I am not much of a nature admirer but I love the rain; who doesn't?

I don't drink but I know that the rain elevates me to the heights of intoxication when I am soaking wet. I do end up feeling very refreshed. The cold drops do give goosebumps, sensually stimulating huh?

There have been many precedents already; people who have quoted a walk in the rain, a song in the rain and so many other pleasurable activities in the rain. I don't know if I'll do anything like that ... but here's my little contribution. A post in my blog for the rain.

Sneak Peek

2009-08-09T22:45:00.000-04:00

Author's note - This blog is not changing into a personal diary. Some posts are just taking a different form. I still try my best to live up to my blogging ethics. I hope my harsh critics enjoy the (temporary) transformation.

I did some amusing stuff today. I had to walk to a coin laundry place to get quarters for 3 dollars and then do my laundry in the common laundry room of this complex. I was reminded of Jeniffer Aniston / Rachael in Friends when I realized that it was going to be my first time washing and drying my clothes in the US all by myself. Interestingly enough, a character like David Schwimmer / Ross appeared out of the blue and thanks to him, I could do something shady and here goes my story. I was flaunting my brother's well worn t-shirt that said "Chennai is famous for Idli, Vada, Marina Beach and me" and I was about to insert a quarter into the dryer when Mr.You Know Who (an Indian only) told me that he was done and I could use the same dryer as his quarter was good for one more cycle. And voila, it really was! I used the trick for the second cycle and I dried all my clothes for free. Awesome! Now that's the Indian brain.

I was up to some audacious mischief later in the evening. My hosts had gone out to Walmart and the kitchen was at my disposal. In particular, the fridge was all mine. I totally raided it. I ate a good deal of their yogurt a.k.a curd and I am brimming in self-congratulation. And as if that wasn't enough, they brought back icecream for me. Now that's life. I'm loving this. It's time to recharge for another brand new day. Nighty night folks.

Sights and Sounds at Gainesville

2009-08-08T23:25:00.000-04:00

I saw two armadillos on the lawn this evening. They didn't come too close to me. It was like National Geographic going live. I hope to see alligators and turtles inside UF soon.

Sunshine State

2009-08-07T21:47:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd blog out my first impressions of Florida.Internet and sleep are both luxuries that I am barely able to enjoy at the moment and hence this post is going to be written in a very concise style.

I don't know when the sun rises here but sunset never happens before 8 pm.
It's terribly hot and everyone here has a tan. I don't want to turn any browner than I already am, God save me! Headache is an immediate side effect if one steps out in the heat of the day. Well, I like shorter days and longer nights but that is not how nature designed this place.

Gainesville is a quaint university town.The small town atmosphere makes me feel at home here. There seem to be as many Indians here as other kinds of people and that makes me feel like I am not really outside my home country.

Almost everyone here is courteous and says a lot of "Please, Thank you and Sorry". It's easy to communicate with them. Okay, almost easy.
I went to Chipotle - a Mexican diner here and something funny happened.
They have very few veggie dishes and I ordered rice with black beans and salsa with toppings. I wanted the salsa in the corner of my bowl, not over my gravy. I told exactly the same thing to the guy who was serving the food and he didn't really understand. He knew "on the side" and he gave the corn to me in a separate cup, which was a good thing. He is a smart guy. When I wanted a second helping of sour cream, I took my tray over to the counter because I thought he would give it to me in my bowl (as he did for the first serving) but he packed it in a small container instead. I liked that. Oh by the way, salsa means a lot of things in Mexican. You may Google it. Mexican cuisine is awesome. My friends have different tastes though.

One more thing puzzles me. I am never called Vidhyaa unless I give my consent to be called by my own name. My consent! Like my name is a treasure that shouldn't be robbed. Oh, people pronounce my name correctly when I tell them that the d and h together sound like the t and h in then / there. Is there any word in the English language with a 'd' followed by a 'h' like the syllable in my name? If you happen to know, I'd much appreciate being enlightened. I am often called "'baby" by women who about as old as I am and "love" by older women. I am addressed as "the lovely lady over there" by men when they are not informal or worse still "Ma'am" by both men and women. I like to think of myself as a girl. My friends like to call me "the kid". I wish someone calls me girl / kiddo sometime. Baby is nice though. I like the African Americans for their style of talking. Yeah baby, I totally like it!

And last but not the least, the bathtub in my hosts' place doesn't have a plug. It has a shower though. Let your imagine run wild and have a laugh. I am laughing about it too. :-)

That's all for tonight, I'll be back with more for sure. Stay tuned.

Time Out

2009-08-03T15:39:00.000-04:00

I'm blogging from India tonight, I'll keep blogging from my new residence until I come back.I have had a good vacation, thanks to my family and friends. Nevertheless, the air is thick with a mist of uncertainty. It will lift off, in time. Apart from other things, I can feel myself trembling in excitement. This is supposed to be an hour of mixed emotions and I don't really disagree.

I had some expectations, hence some disappointments. Some people aren't very happy with me either. Nobody is to be blamed for that, not myself, not anyone who is a part of my life.

A quote from Paulo Coelho's Zahir voices my thoughts very aptly - "Freedom continues to be the thing I prize most in this world ... I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile,even when that smile is dimmed by tears."

My thoughts lead me to another poem, a very famous poem indeed. It almost depicts my life. With all due respect, I dare to make a little change to it. I hope Robert Frost enjoys this from heaven.

ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a smile
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference