Life in Toledo

The Missing Melodies

2009-09-26T02:00:00.001-04:00

A really long day in the office, one crazy exam, another crazier assignment (whose just one problem took three people’s brains and one and half hours to complete), an impending presentation etc. etc..! As the list of things on my plate goes on and on, the one thing that is concerning me as I go off to sleep tonight is something that no one can imagine- a missing earphone!! Now you may call me crazy, but I actually am concerned about this little piece of apparatus that has been such an integral part of my life for over 4 years now. And while I caused enough heads to shake in disbelief in the department today with this fact but yeah, the ‘year’ in the last sentence was not at all a typo. The responses for the shock on the faces were not actually surprising considering that out here, their life-expectancy usually do not exceed a year (for which Apple charges an exorbitant $29!!).

Four years is a long enough time to form a connection with even something inanimate and the fact that it was part of the first birthday gift I received in my college life made me sort of emotionally attached to it. Unfortunately, the walkman that it had come with lies now in a little corner back home as the world of audio cassettes finally draws to an end. But aside from the obvious emotional attachment that I had with it, it was a marvelous product in itself. In fact, I often used it as a benchmark to test other earphones that my friends often bought. In the process often comparing and finding its worth against the best in the business. In cases where there were only subtle differences in the quality of the earphones, I had even found the perfect songs that I can use to prove my earphone’s mettle. I know, my roommate does something similar; the song that he uses is Gupt’s “Bechainiya”. For me, there were two of them- Evanescence’s “Bring me back to life” and Dil Se’s “Ae Ajnabi”. And nine times out of ten, my earphone came out trumps!!

So how did I lose it? Well like all brave soldiers, this one too went missing in action! It was actually early in the morning when I was talking to my sweetheart on Skype when I realized that I was pretty late for my office hours. So rather than keeping everything in their designated place like every other day, I dropped all of my stuff in the living room and went rushing out. When I came back in the evening, sadly for me, it was simply gone. As I grew impatient, me assisted by my roomie made a thorough search of the house but it was nowhere to be found. I finally gave up and realized that now my laptop speakers have to do some extra work. The worst thing that has been affected though is my sleep. I had been used to plugging those into my ears and turn on some soothing playlist while I slumbered into dreams. But I dare not try the same with the fragile Apple earphones (my last pair had lasted just four months!). I tried to work around this problem by using a shutdown timer and using my laptop speakers to put on some music before sleep. But alas, not every tune is music to the ears if they don’t come from the same source!

So while every black wire in the house reminds me of what I am missing, I have to try to get tired enough to fall asleep without the little fellow’s help! Well, it’s a big house that we have, so I still search for it. Hoping one day, that I will get a chance to make everyone know that it was just one of the usual mistakes of a demented mind and that my memory had been successful in turning back time and I had finally found it. Amen!

My First Award :)

2009-09-19T13:28:00.002-04:00

Its just past the afternoon on a really cold Saturday (Toledo is really getting all set for the winters now!!), and the first thing that I see on opening my laptop is that my blog has been awarded!!

Woohooo!! My first ever award :)
It was awarded to me by Urvashi , a fantastic blogger!! Thanks a lot Urvashi for the award :)
As I am not a frequent blogger, though I really love reading other people’s works, so I was pleasantly surprised on getting this award.
Rules for the award :
- List five current obsessions.
- Pass the award on to your favorite and more fabulous blogs.
- On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them.
- When you post your winners, make sure you link them as well.
- Don’t forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by leaving a comment on their blog.
My Five Current Obsessions:
1. Health Care Disparities: Its one of the primary focus of the thesis I am working on. When I had initially begin on it, it was Hypertension, the disease state that was more interesting to me but the more I read about the disparities, the more engrossed I became by this problem. I had never thought that standards of care could vary so much by race and ethnicity in such a developed country like United States. Check the AHRQ link if you want to find out more.
2. Farmville: It was another invitation among hundreds of invites that I get on Facebook everyday. But it was from someone whom I hadn’t actually seen enjoying any Facebook applications the last time that I saw her. So it was the curiosity factor that got me in but then instantly got me hooked. Having my own farm and tending to it was so much fun and addictive that it really is an obsession now. I just love cute animated characters and the pigs and ugly ducklings are really adorable characters that you get to play with. Awesome fun!!

3. Pink Floyd: I wasn’t too much into music and movies and more into physical sports till I reached adulthood. A fact that may surprise many when they look at the big collection that I posses of both of them and the absolute lack of participation in any sports whatsoever. While I caught on to music by myself it was my friends in Manipal who made me a regular movie buff. But as this fascination started late I missed out on many of the first crushes that my peers posses. My roommate on the other hand has a good taste in both which goes back to 50s and 60s sometimes!! It was he who introduced me to Pink Floyd by first playing “Comfortably Numb” on his laptop. Few months later, I have their entire discography and they are a regular on my playlist!!! Need I say more!!
4. LOST: For those who haven’t watched this awesome TV show, you really don’t know what you are missing. For the people who hate the show, left it mid-way, and who criticize it- thanks a lot for not watching , for a show of such epic proportions does not deserve an audience of minimal IQ and who love the regular saas-bahu or Gossip Girl soap operas. The fact is that even though the show isn’t on air, thousands of people as obsessed like me still discuss it everyday on various forums waiting for that grand finale in 2010. Well that may just spur you on to start watching it on curiosity alone!!

5. Numismatics: Had pretty much given up on this hobby since moving out of the country but recently have got a new theme that I am getting a chance to work on here and which has got me right back in and that theme is of possessing a collection of quarters of all the states of US. Its much harder than I thought because of the fact that I have to part with 11 of them every weekend to do my laundry!! :(
In conclusion,I would like to pass the award to a bunch of really talented bloggers that you would enjoy to check out:
Zoy
Patrick
Sathira
Let the good times begin!! :)

Fortnight of a Life

2009-09-06T13:57:00.004-04:00

There is something about falls that makes me so lazy and I end up doing things that I am not supposed to do- like not doing something. I don’t know how much sense the last statement made but that’s the way usually I am when laziness creeps up on me in this wonderful weather. Ironically, the past two weeks have been absolutely hectic cramming up on so much of course content in so less time. But the moment that I get back in the safe environs of my home I always seem to forget all the work behind although technically I should still be working on them!! It’s that time of the year when the winter is at a knocking distance and I am really eager and anxious to get the feel of snow once again. But there was something else that kept me pretty excited in the last 14 days besides my courses and other works.

It had all started at the very first day of the Fall semester. I was a bit late for the day and was rushing to get my hands on the keys to the lab in the office. I just caught the glimpse of a large blue transparent box lying behind the secretary’s chair which on first thought looked like an oversized lunch box to me. On my usual days I would have rushed out with just the thought on the back of my head to ask her about it later in the day. But as I said before, falls bring a certain amount of laziness in me and I often take my own time to complete the things that I am already delayed for. So I turned back and asked her about what it was.

“It’s my new pet” she replied.

I was a bit perplexed, I couldn’t see anything that closely resembled a pet and I was pretty sure that she had not understood that I was asking about the little blue box. But before I could ask her the follow up question she added on to her previous reply.

“A caterpillar” she said in a matter of fact tone as if it was something as normal as a dog or cat that people have!!

I peered in closer to the window and found the little multicolored tiny creature perched atop a brown stick. Satisfied and happy it lay there eating some leaves being fed to it, a lifestyle that I really envied.

“So what happens next?” I asked her.

“It’s going to form a cocoon soon and then spring out into a butterfly in the next 10-12 days” she replied

I took out my phone and snapped a quick photo of the little one and promised her to come and check on it every day. I quickly ran off to my work that was already delayed.

So began my daily ritual of checking on the progress of the little one. We tried to assign it a name but the inability to determine its gender posed a big hurdle and finally we gave up on it, letting the little one enjoy its 4 minutes of fame in anonymity!! It didn’t take long for it to form into a cocoon and that turned out to be something unexpected. I don’t know why but I always had this mental picture of a cocoon to be silky but this one was a small little green pod that was even smaller than the caterpillar in its size. After few days of inactivity I asked my secretary again regarding the timeline.

“Ten more days and we should have the butterfly out” she replied excited. I also made a quick note of the date in my calendar and set an alarm for that.

Ten days later I was right on time to witness the impending metamorphosis but unfortunately the caterpillar was taking its own sweet time to come out the comfortable pouch that it lay in. I came back the next day and it still lay there. The next day we had our very first ever Lab meeting for the semester and as usual I was late for it. I came running in to find my peer looking for me

“The secretary has been looking for you since the morning” she warned me.

As I ran in to the meeting, I made a quick stop at her desk. And there it lay when I had least expected it, the wonderful butterfly now out in its full bloom. With little white dots bordering the majestic yellowish brown wings, it simply looked magnificent. I was fidgeting to get out all the while in the two hour meeting. When I came out to witness the true beauty I realized it was also the time for the worst part- to finally let it out in its natural habitat. I hadn’t expected to feel so profoundly but the moment we let it out in the open the emotions that we were going through was indescribable. For us it had been just 14 days but we had witnessed a major part of the little ones life already and that feeling was overwhelming.

It opened out its wings in the open and moved around very weakly. It finally managed to get a stronghold on one of the branches in a small growth of small shrubs. I moved in the big mess to get a final close up in its new home. The students moving around found it amusing to see a man in formals get into the big outgrowth and some stopped to know the story and have a look too. Just five minutes in the open and then our little butterfly took a flight with its new found strength and went and sat atop the tallest tree in the campus and far from our probing eyes. The flight and its ease made the crowd watching break out into claps.

Finally both of us had to return back into the normal monotony of our lives and as we walked back talking, we agreed upon one thing- this had been one of the most wonderful 14 days of our lives!!

Mind of the Stomach!!

2009-08-11T13:29:00.002-04:00

Toledo and heat were never supposed to be synonymous but the hot weather in the last few days has made me change this opinion of mine. When I woke up yesterday morning, it was not because my body said that I have had enough sleep but because it was just so damn hot!! Even my laptop seemed to be suffering from the heat wave and just kept slowing down for no reason. In spite of all the criticism that has been labeled against it, I have always stayed a faithful advocate of Vista, but today was not going to be that day. I spent almost the entire day lazing on my bed and flirting with my sweetheart who was in a similar mood of not doing any work. By the time she went off to her sweet lands of dreams, it was close to evening but the weather was still refusing to give any respite. I had been so lazy all this while that in spite of the hot weather I had not bothered to have a cold shower. But finally I decided that the moment has come to enjoy the luxury. While I was cooking my late evening dinner, I received a call from our potential roommate for coming and having a talk with us.

It wasn’t raining today and he seemed to be in much better health than before so I wasn’t too paranoid to face him today. Everything was smooth on his way to move in except the fact that he was a Vegetarian while me and my roommate are ardent Non-Vegs (and sometimes vociferous ones too!!). The different eating habits posed a conflicting scenario, more so because we were not even supposed to use the same utensils as the one in which the Veg. food was being cooked. While the issue remains in limbo for now, it made me think why people turn Veg. unless and until it’s their religion that prohibits them. Even various religions have distinction about what to eat if you are Non-Veg. Islam for one divides food into things that cannot be eaten (haram) and things that can be eaten (halal). Just yesterday my roommate said to me that he was going to stop eating chicken for a while. When I asked him for the reason, he replied just to practice self-control. He had a valid reason although I still think he can do the same with maybe smoking. (Requiring more self-control I guess!!) I then thought to myself why I am not a vegetarian. For one, my parents are non-veg plus I love non-veg and I really cannot imagine my appetite ever in my life saying that it has been satiated about it. But still keeping aside my obvious biases I tried to look with an open mind and try to find out why various people want you to turn veg.

One of the common themes that I found everywhere was that it was supposed to make you slim as you are cutting down on fat. A statement surely to lure all the diet conscious people, who will turn veg. but strangely will not let go of their cheese burgers! But there was no incentive for me in this statement. As said before am a vociferous eater of the meat but have yet not been able to cross the chasm of underweight. Now I know I am often labeled a genetic anomaly so I will not try to generalize this statement. The second most common reason was more related to moral rather than health. Almost all the sources that I looked at said that killing animals was inhuman and barbaric and it inflicts avoidable pain and suffering. Appropriate and justified, but why disregard the pain and suffering caused due to uprooting the plants. At least one of the sources was kind enough to admit that but then added on that as the nervous system of plants is rudimentary, the pain inflicted is much smaller when compared to animals. It also said that in cases where the plants fall off by themselves after getting old, this pain is non-existent. I was wondering then how many times the author had waited for the fruits to rot off and fall so that he could avoid causing them pain. The final reason was religious and that is something that I won’t debate. But one writing in an Ayurvedic literature caught my eye; it actually quantified the sin you are committing by eating animals. The person who handles the killing of the animal bears 70% of the sin while the person eating it bears the rest 30%. Interesting considering one of the avatars of Vishnu, the Hindu god, was a carnivore. Although it would be unfair to transfer this logic to animals but the king of the jungle will now think twice about his crown which makes him the biggest sinner!!

So in spite of trying my best, I am still remotely interested into turning veg. Much of it is a personal choice, religion and the manner of your upbringing and a combination of several such factors that orients you in one direction rather than the other. But if someone just tries to justify his change by citing the advantage of one over the other then I am not buying into it. So my next task for today is to take advantage of “Two-ledo Tuesday” offers of my favorite pizza joint and get myself two servings of chicken wings!!

Paranoia of the Swine!!

2009-08-08T15:47:00.002-04:00

swine

n. pig, hog, any of a number of omnivorous animals that have a flat disk-like snout and cloven hooves and are raised or hunted for meat; mean and contemptible person

As I opened my hazy eyes early morning after a great night of good food, bad movie and ugly drink, it felt good to know that the crazy semester had finally ended. My laptop screen was flashing at that time with breaking news and the only word that I could make out with my myopic eyes was “Swine”. I hurriedly put on my spectacles and fixated my attention on the news. The city of Mumbai had witnessed its first Swine flu death. The warnings of my mother of staying alert when the first outbreak had happened rang in my ears. My sweetheart had also warned me about staying away from eating pigs, not because I do that on a regular basis, but just because my hunger pangs are sometimes too much to resist having a pepperoni pizza!! I calmed her by reminding that it actually doesn’t transmit by eating the poor swine. In fact pigs are such harmless, gentle creatures that I cannot fathom any malice attributed to them. The fact that pigs move more rampantly about in the roads of India than out here, it was actually people out there who are more at risk of catching the flu than me!!

The thoughts of pizzas had made me hungry and I wearily shifted out of my bed. The house wore an absolutely deserted look. One of my roommates had shifted out of the house while the other was out of town. The last night’s delicious dinner still remained as delicious over the kitchen stove, so now I had the luxury of finishing them all by myself over the weekend and not cook a thing. I transferred all of my new specialty- Chicken Chilli into the refrigerator. I felt good that thankfully this wasn’t another outbreak of the bird flu that I should worry about!! I checked my calendar for the things that I had to do today. The gloomy rainy weather almost tempted me to curl back into the bed, pull on the covers and fall asleep. The calendar thankfully lay empty; it had been an awfully long time since it had. I jumped onto the comfortable couch and finished up Prince of Persia on my PSP in the next hour. I checked back on the news site. The breaking news had now turned into full-fledged news report about the death. The phone then rang and I remembered that I had to meet a potential new roommate of mine. I walked out in the rain to let him in.

“It’s like Mumbai out here” were his first words, referring to the pouring rain.

I realized then that the guy had just arrived from India, and from Mumbai. The first death that had been reported was also from Mumbai. He walked in and let out a big cough. I looked at him suspiciously and sat far apart on the other side of the couch. Every cough and every sneeze magnified my paranoia. As minutes crawled by he finally promised to move in by next Sunday. I let out a sigh of relief as he walked out of the door. (Enough time to be correctly diagnosed before he moves in!!) By this time the news channels had also started reporting how thousands had thronged into hospitals every time they had sneezed or had felt the slightest inkling of fever. Miles apart, I was also getting infected with the same. The flu was surely as much swine as the name that it actually possessed.

I once again settled back on my couch and watched the first rays of sunlight creep in through the windows. On the other side of the phone line, my sweetheart gave me sermon about how important the sunlight is for the house and one should always let it in to keep the house fresh. Just as I was about to open the windows, the sunlight had faded away and exonerated me from heeding to the advice. But as I am neither a scientist nor a PHA so I thought of only one thing that I could do about this pandemic. So as a small gesture of kinship towards my fellow humans I sided with rabbits and took on the NPA (National Pig Army) in the immortal game of S.W.I.N.E.!! :)

Scents of the Past!!

2009-06-24T21:52:00.008-04:00

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise”. This statement was used without fail by my loving father everytime he woke me up in the morning. Those were the good old days of home when my parents could control when I woke up but cut to college days, I would doze off to sleep sometimes at hours when my parents would be waking up back at home!! So no surprises that I never turned out as wealthy or wise they would have wanted :) Even now I am the type of person who never wakes up at the first ring of the alarm of the mobile. The manufacturers of the alarm created the snooze function for people like me and I never fail to utilize the great tool to the fullest. I am not going any deeper into my sleeping habits but this prelude is very significantly related to the events of the past day for me.

Just like every other day my alarm rang early morning, but unlike the usual routine of putting it to snooze, I actually got up!! I had no real reason for doing it and actually I never intended to but somehow I was up and sitting. I got up and after my morning ablutions came back to my bed and thought “Now what?!!”. If I would have woken up any other day then I would have switched on my laptop and called up my sweetheart to catch up with how her day was while letting her know about my plans for the day (thanks to the wonder of living in two separate time zones!!). But as luck would have it, she was spending her holidays back home. I might have still called her up on the phone but then I thought of giving her some peace from myself for at least few hours!! But I did switch on my laptop and checked out all the news sites trying to be wiser. I hadn’t listened to music in the mornings for long so I quickly turned it on. Absent mindedly I picked my starting song as My Chemical’s Romance “Desolation row”. Awesome song, Bob Dylan at his best and lyrics whose meaning I could never understand but surely something that you don’t expect to listen early mornings so I switched to a quieter and soother Jordin Sparks. I then had this great idea of having breakfast. Again something that I usually don’t do, relying mostly on vending machines of the college for getting me through the day. I took out a bowl full of cornflakes and milk and gobbled them up. An action that would have made my parents proud back home!! So finally I was all set for going off to the college.

I actually didn’t have to be in the office that day as it wasn’t my office hours but still I had to turn up to assist my colleague in her work. We started working and things went almost smoothly for an hour when something funny happened. I suddenly had this sudden recollection of the wonderful aroma of Masala dosa waft into my mind. Something that I surely had at a place called Shanti Sagar back in my college days in Manipal. What surprised me even more was of remembering that particular place. If I had to feel “collegesick” about food, it wasn’t a place I would expect to remember as it was one of the less frequented places by me. The more I thought about the queerness of it all the more I seemed to remember the places I did actually frequent back then!! The wonderful chicken lollipop of Dollops, the just fried egg curry of Paratha point etc. etc. started floating in my brain. I hadn’t realized how engrossed I was in it until I suddenly found my colleague just staring at me.

“What happened?” I asked her, perplexed about how could she see what was going on in my mind!!

“You just gave me the patient ID; you didn’t give me his clinical values” she said confused.

I quickly apologized to her and got back trying to concentrate on my work.

"Damn.. It's all due to getting up early today and maybe the cornflakes!!" I thought.

But then the wonderful smells of the food never really left me whole day. It actually got late in the day when we finally finished the work and by then I was really famishing, especially with all those food thoughts!!

My friend then turned up just in time to see how things were going on with the work. Glad to see him at the late hour, I suggested having an early dinner somewhere outside. I had this really good Arabic restaurant in my mind but it happened to be Tuesday and so my friend could not eat non-veg. So he suggested an Indian Restaurant instead. I always thought that the nearest Indian restaurant was in Detroit and I didn’t want to stay hungry for the hour long journey but much to my pleasant surprise there actually was one closer home. We dashed off to the place and the moment that I entered the place, all those lovely aroma of Indian food completely saturated my senses. All the wonderful memories for the food back home came rushing back as I literally dived into my food once it arrived. Both me and my friend were filled up to our necks by the time we had finished!!

As I moved out of the place, I realized the appropriateness of Voltaire’s quote of “Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.”!! I hoped that I had pushed all the wonderful scents of the past into the backburners of my mind for at least six or seven more months. Why? Well they had just cost me a fortune to satiate and as I said before, I never had been very wealthy and wise!! :) One more thing, I decided from next day to use my snooze in the mobile as always!!

Xibalba’s miseries!!

2009-06-04T10:49:00.003-04:00

The moment I began, I knew it was not going to be just another day today.

“Left..outer circle.. once.. inner circle..right..back to outer circle..repeat..repeat…left one final time!!”

After two hours of frustration of going round and round in circles, finding treasures that hardly look line one and knocking out pumas with my superbike, I had finally cracked the two puzzles that would unlock the world of Underground for me!! Extremely pleased at my effort, I hopped back on my superbike and ambled away trying to find my directions to the wondrous land that I had opened up. I even took my own sweet time and collected all the little artifacts lying around. When I finally reached my destination I found that all the brilliant fires, the larger than life snake statue, the wondrous doors to the abyss below had all disappeared. The path that lay visible from the place above had disappeared just like the island in the TV series Lost!! This all was happening to me, of course, in virtual reality, as I tried my hand at Tomb Raider: Underground, the latest installment of Lara Croft’s adventures.

So what happened next?? I ran around trying to find answer to this unintentional fresh puzzle. After spending 15 minutes of trying to find answer to the problem, I finally gave up and decided to take some help. I Googled searching for any walkthroughs for this game. You got to be a hard core gamer to realize how hurting it is for your ego when you have to look at walkthroughs for moving ahead. In fact, I rarely had looked at the in-built field assistance option available till that point of time. Back to my Google search, I finally found one such site and immediately navigated to the stage that was giving me all the trouble. I went over the exhaustively detailed narration and found that I had done exactly as expected. Still not understanding what I had done wrong, I made the final click to reach the end of walk through for that stage. It contained the answer to the puzzle (which I already had discovered!!) and written in bold was the final statement: REMEMBER, this is a TIMED event and you need to get back in time or the path to the Underground will close up and you will have to repeat the quest!!

Swearing profanities at the game makers on why they could not explain this ‘minor’ detail inside the game in even the most subtle manner possible, I got back and finished the level in the next ten minutes. I could have finished in eight maybe but the frame rate had now dropped down to near matrix like slow-mos (in spite of my 4GB worth of RAM!!). But that was it for my patience with Lara and I decided to give this game a bit of rest. I went back to my studies, finished up some assignments that were lying around for quite some time now and then got back to my laptop. The icon on my desktop tempted me to open the game that I had just only debunked. No!! I said to myself; let my hurt ego at least have rest for while. But I sorely wanted to get on with any form of gaming. I picked up the phone and called up one of my friends.

“Dude, you got some old game CDs lying around with you?”

“Splinter Cell works for you?” he replied much to my delight.

“Hell, Yess!!” I said and jumped off to his place to get the CDs.

An hour later, I was back in front of my laptop filled to the brim with excitement. I inserted in the CDs, installed the game and everything went smoothly. It wasn’t until the game menu came up that I realized that I couldn’t understand a word that was spelt out in the screen. I immediately picked up the phone and called back my friend. He didn’t seem surprised by it at all.

“Of course, you can’t understand..It’s all German!!” he replied to me coolly.

“Why the hell are you playing games in German?”

“Cuz I am German!!”

It was surely a day when mysteries got unraveled!! We fought over how I had missed knowing this trivial detail and how he should have told that to me much before. He shot back at me and said that I never told him that I was Indian but he knew that! After calling each other racists we got back to the point where it had all started- Lara pounding miseries on me at that point of time. To be fair to Lara, the game wasn’t bad at all. Who wouldn’t want to maneuver a pretty form through a wonderful underwater exploration (the very first stage!!) and then kick some butt fighting sharks. I finally took his suggestion to give the game one more try. But that was after I made him swear to me that he would never send me a German game ever again :)

The “Susan Boyle Moment”!!

2009-05-10T15:00:00.003-04:00

Before I begin to write this post down, I attached my I Phone to my speakers and turned the radio on for a simultaneous listening pleasure. The first song that came up on the local radio station was “Break the Ice” by Britney and the first line said “It’s been a while..” Indeed,it had been a while that I have written anything other than manuscripts, draft proposals, exam papers and poster bodies (and going by the talk with my Prof. yesterday it will be a while before I do anything else!!). My friend called me up last evening and said that he missed the Star Trek because the theatres were full. I burned in envy and replied that the movie I saw yesterday had been my first in the last month (and yes I saw Star Trek after I kept the receiver down!!). So finally as the Spring semester bid adieu, I have a wee bit more time to devote to activities other than the college work. I quickly scanned through all the news websites that I had barely skimmed through in the last month. One of them had a beaming Susan Boyle in her new look. It immediately brought a smile to my lips. Just like millions others I too had been enchanted by the little surprise that she had in store for us a few months back. If you are one of the few who has missed the prime example of how looks can be deceiving, just go and check out You Tube and check her video, each one of which has had millions of views. On a personal front, I too had my ‘Susan Boyle moment’ few days back!!

It was back in April, our chair had asked for volunteers for a health fair being held at St. Martin de Porres , one of the local churches. Me and few of my colleagues volunteered to be a part of it and so on a rainy Sunday we landed in this beautiful church for the health fair. I was assigned to the desk with information on how to eat healthy. It had a set of few questions and lots of information by which we meant to inform people how misinformed they are about what they eat!! As the crowd poured in, I let my Pharm D. colleague do much of the talking and joining in only when the crowd got big enough to be controlled by just one. It was during one of those times that a frail looking, barely five feet, almost 80 year old lady came up to me. I offered her a few pamphlets containing lots of valuable information. She declined and just looked around almost unimpressed. I thought she was just one of the crowd who wanted to get the signatures on the form that would show that they visited all the info desks. But I didn’t want to give up so easily, so I offered her to take one of the short quizzes we had on the stall. Again she gave me an unimpressed look but then agreed to do that. We had a bar of Snickers with us and we asked the people to guess how many calories the Snicker bar contained. The bar said 200 calories but the trick was that companies display information for just one serving while the bar serves for two- which essentially means you end up having 400 calories rather than the 200 on the label. While this knowledge had led to many “Oohs” and “Aahs” from the people who had came in before, she again had the same blank look on her face. She waited for a second, didn’t even look at the bar and answered

“The label would say 200 calories but it actually is 400 calories if you didn’t know!!” she stumped me completely with her spot on answer.

While I stood almost speechless, she looked at the flyers about how and why to reduce the salt in your diet and commented about how you don’t exactly need to reduce the salt in the diet. She suggested that you can instead of reducing the salt, just replace the same quantity with sea salt because it contains less sodium but has more magnesium salts and maintains the same taste. While I stood in awe she got her form signed and then just before she went, she leaned over to say something to me

“Hey kiddo, I am a hypertensive and diabetic since 13” she said with her toothless smile and a twinkle in her eye!!

I waved her a warm good bye and went back to my work making sure that I never ever underestimate anyone in the room ever again!! It was even more interesting to read a research article of Professor Fiske on why we underestimate or stereotype people in certain ways. His research was on how human beings respond to people of low status. If a well dressed, beautiful looking person comes to hug you, your chances of retracting are much lower than when a beggar does. He found the part of the brain that activates in the former case doesn’t activate in the latter case. It is as if that part of the brain undergoes some sort of a “neural dehumanization”. It is something that we inherited from our ancestors to make quick decisions about our surroundings. But the manner in which our society is progressing towards blurring of lines between groups, it isn’t as accurate as before for sure.

So every time when you jostle along the streets and find an old tramp sitting in the alleys with a book of theory of relativity in his hand (as I did a few days back!!), just don’t go by the assumption that he is a rickety old book seller. Who knows, he might be the next Einstein on the verge of his next big discovery!! ;) Till then we all can sit back and enjoy the wonderful sound of our old Miss Boyle’s wonderful youthful voice.

Hair Raising Tales!!

2009-03-29T22:42:00.001-04:00

All the people who read this blog would have realized by now that this is a real good platform for me to vent out my frustrations of the day and much of what I write about is just my channelized cribbing :) This week had thousand things for me to crib about:the lengthy work hours, the apparent lack of food and sleep everyday with the college work keeping me really really busy. In fact, on Saturday (yeah I was working on weekend again!!), when I was returning home at 7 30 in the evening, my professor looked at the light which was on cusp of fading out, and remarked “We are going home early today!!”. That was indeed true as we had not seen sun in any day that we had went back home in the whole week. Anyways, work(or sometimes the dearth of it!!) is something that I have lamented on often, so I would now consider it as a day to day existence rather than a discomfort. I returned back home and watched “Victory” where a Hrithik lookalike slams the world record of fastest 50 and 100 in the same season while in a comic climax, we see Praveen Kumar being present both on the pitch and in pavilion at the same time!! A really bad movie, but it is something that I talk often too. So as I drew short on things to talk about today, the inspiration of a new topic came in the form of my sweetheart’s comments on my hair.

“Your head is a jungle now!!” she laughed looking at me “Why don’t you start making a pony?!!”

Yeah, I really wanted to get a haircut this week but the lack of time and humongous work had made the trip to barber rather elusive.But I have been prodded on the same topic with few of my other friends before this. So in the hindsight, what’s actually wrong with having long hair?!! Did’nt christ had long hair? Didn’t the captain of the Indian cricket team, till some time ago, sported one? Forget the in fashion Ghajini look and go down the memory lane and remember one of the first serials that you had seen on the rickety television sets , “Mahabharata” or “Ramayana”. All the mighty heroes in them had rather long locks and I strongly suspect,you wouldn’t have to be called Billu to be a miser barber in those ages ;)!!

In fact mythology embraces this trend of long hair with much gusto and respect. Bible has Samson, who loses all his strength after losing his hair!! Greek mythology has the Apollo, the sun god, whose synonym was “Chrysocomes” or “of the golden locks”. In fact, the sun god never allowed a single graze of razor on his long hairs. King Nisus’ life and throne also depended on his long bright locks. He had to let go of both when his daughter cut them off to offer to King Minos of Crete. A piece of sun god Ra’s hair healed an otherwise incurable wound of the earth god Geb. (Just realize how some cultures bestow our entire existence to a simple lock of hair!!). In fact closer home in India, cutting one’s hair is still identified as a sign of mourning and divine identification with the dead. Even if all this reasoning fails to satisfy you, remember the king of the jungle and his rather royal mane that surrounds his face like a halo and you will realize how kingly hair is considered to be. As a mere afterthought, the main protagonist in the game which I am playing for the past few days(Prince of Persia:The Two Thrones),does posses a rather princely lock of hair!! :)

So although I may not be one of the famed warriors and just a mere mortal,but still I feel a bit better about having this difficult to manage crop growing over my head!! Not long enough to be called princely, but still I am in quite an illustrious company in this way!! Well, so what is one of my priorities for this week? Definitely getting a hair cut!! Doesn’t the Theory of Reasoned Action say that our actions are governed by not just our views but of people important to us!!:)

Of Surprises, HIV and Mosquitoes!!

2009-03-17T00:39:00.002-04:00

Waking up in the morning today, things felt pretty unreal to me. My watch read 8:30 a.m., a time that I had never seen in the 5 days when I woke up only in the early afternoons. But still I managed to push myself out of the bed and get ready in time. The first day of being back after the spring break had fare amount of surprises in store. The surprise started with the lovely weather that we happened to have today. For the first time in roughly 3 or maybe 4 months, I was going to the college with no headgear on!! The warm sunshine and the soft breeze made me instantly drop the idea of taking a bus and instead I chose to walk to enjoy the lovely weather. Hopefully this weather will continue so that the winter jacket also goes off soon!! The second surprise was definitely a pleasant one as we got back our graded papers for a subject that I fear the most and in which I unexpectedly fared well :) But still long way to go in this semester yet and fortunes can swing faster than Sehwag’s bat out here!! The moment that I got back from the first class of the day, I realized that the assignment for one of my courses was due this week while all this while I had been thinking that it was due in the next week. But I surprised myself even more by almost finishing almost half of the task in the next few hours.

The final class for the day had country presentations by two of our colleagues. One of the country that was covered was South Africa. I for one did not know that South Africa had actually 3 capitals!! I don’t why I always thought that it just had two. For someone who prided himself on his general knowledge (once!!!), that was some bit of info. Thankfully, even one of my friend (whom I consider fairly knowledgeable too ;)!!) came up shorts when I tested his knowledge regarding this. So, that gave me quite a relief that I was not so ignorant after all!! The other surprising thing related to South Africa was its life expectancy, which was quite low at 48 years!! I always thought SA to be one of the better off countries in Africa but this clearly was not the case. Contrast this with India which has an almost equivalent median age (25.1 for India), but a far superior life expectancy of 60-65 years. Now, that’s why we have always been referred to as survivors!! The primary cause for this low life expectancy is something that originated from and plagues almost the entire African continent- HIV/AIDS. Another staggering statistic that I came across today was that 3 percent of Washington residents are living with HIV and AIDS. Now 3 percent might seem like a low number but in HIV parlance, one percent is considered severe epidemic. The statistic is comparable to some parts of Uganda and Kenya!! Surprising, considering how much money and work has been put into by philanthropic organizations from America in Africa to try and curb the epidemic, while something similar has been afflicting their own capital.

Recently, I also came across one of the researches that was funded by Bill Gates where scientists had managed to create a laser gun targeted towards, hold your breath, mosquitoes!! It has been built in such a way that it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of the mosquitoes’ wings which then triggers a laser beam. The laser beam burns down the mosquitoes’ wings while the carcass remains. Even for someone who has cursed more mosquitoes than humans in four years of college life in Manipal- that seemed cruel!! But why would you want to spend so much time and money on such trivial a thing, no matter how annoying it is. Killing a mosquito is something that requires no more than a flick of the hand, just ask my ex-roommate for that ;)

I finally reached home and surprisingly fell asleep. After waking up, I had this real urge to watch Friends, but I was left disappointed as I don’t have the 16^th and 17^th episodes of the Season 10 and I don’t want to jump straight to the grand finale (Can somebody help plzzz?!!). The final surprise for the day was also a good one when I got the news via mail that one of our classes for tomorrow has been cancelled!! :) I really wanted to get into the bed early so that my day starts early tomorrow but somehow my body is refusing to get off its habit of sleeping late and so no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get sleep(and this post ensued!!). But I guess, sleep or not I will have to get back inside the sheets and try not to be dreamy eyed all day tomorrow. Maybe I should try singing lullaby’s to myself for once ;)

Working Holidays !!

2009-03-11T22:05:00.005-04:00

The winter finally seems to be clawing itself out of Toledo while spring has been creeping in slowly. With the sparse but sure greenery and the animal and human life that it brings with it, spring is sure a joy to behold. But alas, the snow which I had really grown fond cannot be seen anymore. Along with this change of weather comes the time of holidays as we finally got our much deserved spring break. In one of the warm afternoons of a holiday day I got a call from one of my dear friends,

“Dude, haven’t been blogging lately!!” he quipped to me “No time for you in the spring break also?!!” he added, as this had been my excuse almost every time that he had asked me the same question before.

“Give me a call after few hours” I said to him “I am in college right now finishing some work.”

“What the f*#-!!” my friends usual calmness and decency suddenly went flying out of the window as I spoke those words!!

So the bottom line was that while everyone was having fun on the spring break, I was still working 9 to 5 in the college just like my normal days. But for once I was not complaining, the reason being at least I have something to do now rather than just sit and cool my heels off!!

Cut to Friday midnight when I had my draft proposal to finish. I worked the whole day to prepare it from scratch. Completed it, edited it and then reedited it again and again, knowing fairly well that no matter how much corrections that I do, the paper will still come back with fiery red marks on them. The moment that I finished the draft and clicked the button that dispatched the mail on its destination, I lay back and closed my eyes. Now what??? Having been so used to working on edge of deadlines, without food and sleep, that absence of work creates an undeniable vacuum. It’s like preparing for several months on climbing the Everest, planning everything down to the slightest detail. The work takes so much time and effort that when you actually reach the peak, you just don’t know what to do!! :)

But I had some sort of ‘contingency planning’ for this situation of mine. A neat stack of movies that had lay in wait for my viewing pleasure for long!! I went about the task in such a meticulous manner that I ended up almost finishing the entire playlist for the spring break on the weekend itself (5 movies in two days!!).These experiences ranged from simply mind blowing (Changeling) to annoyingly boring (Paul Bart:Mall Cop) to surprisingly good (13B) to unexpectedly sweet (Twilight) to satisfyingly unsatisfying(Frost/Nixon) . In between I also managed to watch the true genius in its pristine (Sachin Tendulkar of course!!). So by the time Sunday drew to a close, I had exhausted on my list of options to do in the next 7 days. Now, I actually had a bunch of stuff to do, all of them relate to my academic work. But what’s the fun of doing them if they are not done just before the deadline!! To aggravate the situation, my sweetheart has her sessional exams going on (only someone from Manipal can understand the graveness of those words!!). As she is the only one with whom I never fall short of topics to talk, the holidays looked to be even more boring.

So come Monday, I was back in the college early in the morning for work. It was supposed to be just a one-off affair but the fire alarm rang out as we approached the end of the day. So the one-off affair had to be extended to the second day. Completely soaked and drenched in rain I walked into the lab the next day. The moment that I opened the bag to bring my stuff out, I found the umbrella that I had been trying to find for long and which would have prevented me from being in the hapless state that I was then. If only the rain, by some miracle had colors to them, then I would have looked just like one of the many Holi fanatics in the crowd (one of the few festivals that I do not miss here!!). Second day led to realization that work in our department has a domino effect, hit one down and you face a tumult that requires a herculean effort to meet. So I had to roll in for another day at the labs on Wednesday in a state of shambles and without sleep. I might have actually looked as bad as I was feeling because the first question that my professor asked on entering the lab was “Are you OK?”!! Ok, I sure was, when the day’s work ended. The rainy weather had given way to some pleasant sunshine, but along with it were some really strong winds. So struggling to keep my footing I managed to get back home after picking a bunch of books from the library to keep me company for the next few days.

With the dearth of time before the working days begin, this semester my holidays are also going to be on a deadline :) So here I lay on a Wednesday night with a coke in my hand, a delightful Taylor Swift (the latest addition on my playlist) playing on my newly acquired speakers while I go back to social networking, check out new stuffs on the net and sit back looking for some new movie that I can watch and happily procrastinate to my satisfaction. As someone rightly said “I have had a holiday, and I’d like to take it up professionally” :)

Valentine’s Day Musings!!

2009-02-15T03:10:00.005-05:00

The season of love cometh again!! And as with all other special occasions in the last 6 months, I have to spend this one alone too :( But in the midst all the chaos that surrounds everything in our department, all of us did manage to have some good time as we left for the break. To celebrate Valentine's Day, my wonderful colleague brought us some real delicious home cooked cookies which were much better than the costliest ones that you will find in the market!! While we helped ourselves to those mouth watering delights, she asked me whether we celebrate Valentine’s Day in India or not. Her question left me with a feeling akin to what a Physics major will feel if Newton happened to ask him whether he knows anything about gravity?!! But the reality is that we have embraced the western culture so much and so quickly that we have not perhaps given them the time to realize that. Although it would have been much more fun to explain it to her the furor that this day has been creating back home, but I just left her with the knowledge that it indeed is celebrated quite extensively in India. Well 'almost extensively' I must say with the protests reaching new heights back home.

But what are they protesting for? They say that this day destroys Indian culture. For a moment even if I happen to agree with their flawed logic, shouldn't they also provide the answer to the question of what else they do to preserve the 'culture' for rest 364 days of the year? Spreading their brand of hooliganism for the interests of the political parties they are affiliated to is what they do. I wonder how many of them in those organizations are even educated enough to know what does the term culture mean.

Even among the educated I found many not supporting the celebration of this day. "You don't need any day to celebrate love", they say. Fine, so why do you celebrate the gods for just a specific day. If you are celebrating Durga Puja, aren't you remembering the goddess for just a day (or maybe a week in this case), but what about the rest of the year. Doesn't your logic apply in this case too? I remember a dear friend of mine interrupting me rather harshly once when I was describing a story in the Greek mythology to my other friends. "Why do you keep muttering about this Greek nonsense and not our own mythologies” was what he said while he led us to a Chinese restaurant. Well, I may be an agnostic but I know a whole lot more of the Hindu mythology than some of my friends and colleagues who idol worship 7 days a week do (a fact that surprised me immensely in my college days). And no one has the right to stop me from knowing about other cultures or religions. Similarly, if we find that there is no festival or day that allows us to express our love, I find it nothing wrong if we find it in a different culture and assimilate it. Quoting Mahatma Gandhi,"No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive”.

While I was going through my early morning (afternoon on these weekends though!!) ritual of browsing through news online, I came across an eye-catching article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Titled “Why Valentine’s day sucks” it gave just four reasons, but they made a whole lot more sense than what the combined IQ of the members of the fundamentalist organizations in India can ever come up with. I unwillingly agreed with three and found the fourth funny!! In fact when I got up, I got the ready example to support the first reason “It brainwashes you into spending money”. As we talked, my dearest love expressed her worry about the extra spending that her roommate had to do just because of this day ;) But ironically, the same article had a quote by Psychologist and Relationships Australia vice-president, Anne Hollonds saying “The way that you do that, you don't need to spend a lot of money, in fact you don't need to spend any money."!!

So did I spend money on this Valentine’s Day? Thanks to the wonder called Google talk, I actually didn’t!! When I was done with all the talks with my sweetheart, I watched “Australia”. And just maybe due to the valentine spirit, I happened to enjoy it although all my friends had found it boring!! My next choice of movie was rather offbeat for the day of love as I watched the horror flick “The Ring”, a movie that didn’t scare me but surely bored me to death!! The weather also changed rather dramatically today, and some soft snowfall made the atmosphere rather lovely all day long. In fact, it is snowing as I finish writing this blog. So thankfully, the day finishes with one of the few things that I love in this place miles away from home- Snow!!

Joys of Tears!!

2009-02-05T20:27:00.004-05:00

It was just few year back that there raged a big debate in the tennis fraternity. Who was the greatest of them all: Sampras or Federer? Both of them had a similar style of play. While Roger would may have fared better than Sampras in his overall style but there was no way that he could(and I believe that never will) generate the kind of serve that Sampras had. Remember the Wimbledon 1999 final when Sampras was mauling one of the best returners the game has ever seen- Andre Agassi. For one game, Agassi seemed to have got an antidote to those perfect serves. The score line read 0-40 in Agassi’s favor. The game ultimately ended with Sampras winning the next five points with first serves!! He didn’t get the nickname “Pistol Pete” just by chance. Even when the chips were down and with age catching up, those were the feats that you could only think Sampras being capable of.

When he finally retired he never would have thought that his 14 grand slam record would be in danger within a decade of his leaving. But Roger Federer’s ascent to the top was phenomenal and till 2007 he had an aura of invincibility that was undeniable. Cut to 2009, just a year has passed since those comparisons had been debated. A year when a Spaniard who was considered capable of winning only on clay, has not only shred that invincibility aura apart but has also dethroned the king from his undeniable citadel-Wimbledon. There are no more debates between Sampras and Federer, there is another question on everyone’s lips: Is he even better than Rafael Nadal?

I have been a big fan of Nadal since his incipient days. And as much a fan that I was of Nadal, I had an equal measure of hatred for Federer. Much of that was for personal reasons than for any doubt of his talent. From the very first major that he won, he was compared with Sampras. I considered it unfair to someone who has just a small time in circuit to be compared to one of my idols who had proven his worth for ages. Later when he started proving his mettle, the bigger reason for my dislike was Federer’s utter domination of the game. Now it may be glee for you if you are a big Federer fan, but the lack of quality opponents made the sport boring. There is a reason for which I will hold Sampras’ 14 grand slams higher than Federer, even if and when he will manage to go past him. The list of people Sampras defeated to get to that tally will look like a Who’s Who of tennis: Agassi, Courier, Ivanesevic, Becker, Rafter, when they were all in their primes. Check the list of 13 wins of Federer and the only persons of prominence will be an ageing Agassi and a young inexperienced Nadal while minnows like Baghdatis, Gonzalez dot the other half of the radar.

There is no doubt that Federer is a player of true class but his rise in the tennis world was at a time that was very favorable for him to get those majors. And that is the reason that his current debacles become more significant. The problem that Federer faces at this time of his career is that his game is not actually in decline. Its just that his opponents have moved a notch up. No longer you will see Nadal chasing down balls and hitting everything with brutality, the scorching volleys will be peppered with gentle backhand slices just suited for the moment. And the manner in which has changed his game to suit all the surfaces shows his level of dedication. Federer on the other hand has to not only find answers to defeat Nadal on clay but to keep him on bay at all fronts.

The statement that Federer made after being demolished by Nadal at the French Open gives the true picture. He said that “he had to take the risks” which didn’t come through. That’s the state of things in the tennis world now. Federer is the one taking the risks, the one changing the game while all Nadal has to do is sit back and go along with his (which he has been doing for almost 12 months now). It’s just the beginning of the year and Federer may well turn things around. But to my friend who called me sadistic when I rejoiced at Federer’s tears, the happiness was for the ending of the dominance of Federer that was leaving tears in the eyes of tennis fans. So sit back, who knows you may just have the last laugh..!!

Romanticisms with Snow!!

2009-01-28T20:41:00.003-05:00

Doesn’t the famous phrase say “lull before the storm”. But as with other unusual things in my life, the lull comes after the storm (well not literally though)!! The last two weeks have been unarguably the busiest two weeks of my life. But very ironically, the day that finally you manage to catch some breath is the day that Toledo witnesses its first snow storm!!

When I woke up in the morning, I was planning my usual walk to the college. My roommate was up but had not gone to the college. That was a bit of surprise as he tends to be gone by the time I wake up (mind you, I am still an early riser!!). I just took a quick glance out of the window and I knew why. The snowfall which may have started in the night was almost incessant. The cars parked outside our building were barely visible, enveloped in a thick blanket of snow. Almost immediately I gave up the idea of walking to the college and decided instead go by the bus. Now that’s an event that is very unusual in my normal routine. People ask me why I always walk to the college , even in the snow. The walking really becomes difficult and no amount of protective gear is enough to prevent the cold from seeping through the tiniest of spaces.Now I may not like the walk but I love everything that comes along with it. The sheer beauty of snow can be witnessed not on muddy, car wheel imprinted roads where the buses take you but in the open fields, the bare expanses. And that’s what my long walk offers aplenty!!

But in spite of all my love for snow, there was no way that I was going to walk to the college today. As I moved out of the building, the very first sight was shocking. The path that leads out of our apartment couldn’t be seen .The focus and the background had been humbled by the snow to one cohesive single mass, sans any boundaries!! I managed to make my way across to the bus stop and stood feet deep in snow waiting for the bus to arrive. As any signs of bus still remained elusive after the standard time, the atmosphere at the bus stop amongst everyone was all of hope that the classes have been cancelled. But with just ten minutes of delay, the bus arrived laying all our dreams quashed. So began my second bus ride ever in my duration of stay in Toledo. Unlike the last one, this was not at all pleasant. Stepping inside the warmer environs, all the ice on my winter jacket turned to water and soon I was soaked like a dog!!

I loved it when the first words that our professor said after entering the class today was “I really wish that the future presidents of UT are aware of the decisions that they are making.” And very aptly the class in which this sarcastic remark on the failure to declare today a holiday was uttered, was a class on Marketing & Management!! And thus, in the background of storm, started my usual grueling routine of work. But thankfully the workload turned out to be less compared to other days. As I said before, this is just the lull after the storm!! (And who knows, it may just precede another one). But for now I will catch my breath and enjoy my “Quantum of Solace”. Amongst other things that I did after the storm stopped in the afternoon was walk in about 8 inches of snow to get near an iron figure of a horse, so that I could have a snap with it!! Standing with my feet trenched in the snow and almost endangering frostbite, there was just one thing in my mind. Despite the slippery walkways, bone chilling cold, layers of uncomfortable clothing, terribly sluggish mobility - I Love Snow!!

And if you happen to fall in the category of those who are mortally petrified at just the thought of snow, be solaced by this Earl Wilson quote-“Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.”!! J

"DEAD"lines!!

2009-01-19T13:56:00.009-05:00

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

- Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD)

It surely doesn’t take a philosopher to make a statement like that, but in no way it takes away from the sheer validity of the statement. The end of the holidays marked the beginning of the Spring semester. In spite of the few dry runs I made to the college to get into the mood for the semester they evidently did not prepare me for what I was going to face. As a result, the end of the first week left me much more drained and exhausted than maybe the entire fall semester.

The sheer workload in this week was amazing. I had to give a small 15 minutes presentation on this Wednesday. For my last seminar of 30 minutes, I had spent more than a week to come up with a well rounded presentation. Using the same time frame, it required a minimum 3 days of work to get something worthwhile on the board, but what was the deadline for this one- just one day!!! So I slogged the entire day to get things in place. After managing to get the slides and the content in the manner that I wanted, I simply wanted to rest. The moment that I returned from the college, I had the inclination to fall down on the bed and never wake up. Thankfully, the day also coincided with my sweetheart’s return to her own college after the break. So finally, I had someone with whom I could just go on and on about how exhausting and how frustrating this first week has been so far. It’s amazing how she manages to listen (sometimes just after waking up in the morning!!) to my non-stop blabbering till I have all that out of my system. This time too, I felt much better both at the fact that she was back and that I had finally got the day’s frustration out. We then chatted for some more time before I got back to work. Still I have had too much of day’s work, so I left the mock run and the conclusion pending for the next day. I guessed that I should be able to manage about 4 hours of time the next day to prepare, which I felt would be enough.

Cut to next day, as if to go along with the already sombre mood, the mercury dropped to -28 degrees, giving a fair hint of how the day will turn out to be!! I opened my laptop after an 8 to 10 class (which I almost slept through),to begin on the afternoon presentation. I had not got through the review of first few slides that I got a call to begin work on data sorting for a project. The workload was about 3 hours and the deadline was.....2 in the afternoon!! I was frankly speechless but still tried to finish it as quickly as possible. At 1:30 after lot of toiling, I decided to call it quits to work on my presentation. I went back and had just sat for 5 more minutes when the call came that the class starts from 2:30 and not now so I cannot take leave from work L

Finally, leaving everything to fate and with just 5 minutes for a mock run I went in. I was thinking of quickly browsing through my stuff while my peers gave their presentation (3 of us were scheduled for the day). Considering the way things were going, it was no surprise that I was called first!! I fumbled a bit, went a bit overtime but in the end it actually did not go very bad. After all the nerve-wracking times it can only be called an anti-climax.

So the start of a new week beckons. Thankfully got a holiday today as I worked for over 8 hours on the weekends too (and that’s something that I am not used too!!). Hopefully, the grind has at least left me expecting for the worst from now on. The solace of starting the week from tomorrow is that with me there will be another one starting on his long turmoil. And surely Obama has greater problems to handle than me.At least for now!!

A Tale of Two Movies

2009-01-08T23:14:00.004-05:00

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. -Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903

I couldn’t have agreed more with this Samuel Butler quote than ever before as my New Year got off to a rousing start with me falling sick. Thankfully our official holidays are still going on so I can take some time out to rest and therefore am completely in the same state that Samuel Butler wanted me to be. But the kickoff of the next semester is not very far off so currently I am sort of getting into that mode with few trips to the college. I had a real tough time though yesterday in the snow storm and the fact that I am still quite well and no sign of fever means that my body is perhaps back in shape again to face the next week’s wrath!! But aside from that I am also pretty glad that this break is coming to an end as it was pretty much boring and all I did was sleep and watch several movies. If the boredom was not enough, the New Year was not too good for movie watching experience also. I started the New Year by watching two movies with high expectations and was pretty disappointed when both of them turned out to be terrible let downs.

My first watch was Ghajini, a remake of a Tamil Memento inspired flick. I have been a big fan of Aamir Khan,the actor but post-Lagaan,have never been a big fan of his movies(barring Rang De Basanti of course!!).Although I have found not a single person who agreed with me but I still state that Dil Chahta Hai had a too trashy a second half to be considered a good movie. Mangal Pandey and Fanaa are well not even worth mentioning. Taare Zameen Par was a movie made with a good heart but was surely not a great filmmaking. But still with so much buzz about the movie and everyone saying that it has great action and total commercial Bollywood movie, I was all excited about it. 30 minutes into the movie and I knew how terribly wrong I was. Except for Aamir, almost the entire cast seemed to be filled with a bunch of amateurs. The action was like watching a B-grade Sunny Deol movie and the direction was something that would have left Christopher Nolan in tears. The two things that made this movie watchable was some splendid chemistry between Aamir-Asin and some funky tunes from Rehman. All in all,it was 3 hours down the drain for me.

Transporter 3 was a movie that I never expected to go wrong. A brainless action flick with Jason Statham should rarely be given a miss. Just few weeks back I had watched Death Race, there was absolutely nothing in the movie except some senseless car bashing and explosions but you nevertheless love it because that’s just what you want!! And that’s the reason Transporter 3 was such a big disappointment. Not only were the explosions and the crazy action just few and far between but the romantic angle with the ugliest actress possible just dampened the New Year fun for me. After Crank, it was the only Jason Statham movie that managed to disappoint me and it’s timing could not have been worse.

Drawing comparisons between Ghajini and Transporter 3 is really interesting. While Aamir is taking revenge for his girlfriend's death, Jason Statham’s character is out to save his girlfriend from death. They both are helped by fellow confidantes who actually become real help only in the second half of both the movies. Both the characters are restricted in their actions by some handicaps. While it’s anti-reterograde amnesia in Aamir’s case, it’s a wrist bound device in Jason’s case which prevents him from going any farther than 75 feet from the car that he is driving without him being blown into smithereens. In fact, in the climax of both the movies, their handicaps prevent them from killing the main baddie inspite of him standing in front of them. They both fight dozens of henchmen before reaching the end. But while Aamir needs to explode into rage with all his eyes and ears puffing anger, Statham goes about to do the same thing in a cool calculated killing machine manner (watch him down an 8 feet giant with a flurry of 13 punches in 8 seconds and you will know what I mean!!). And the biggest similarity between them is that they are both terribly boring and waste of time. So In case any of you have still not watched it then just give it a miss without an apology!!

With just 3 more days left for the holidays to end I have few more movies to catch up on but with my experience of bad movies continuing even after the two movies (though I must say that Bridge to Terabethia and Revolutionary Road were both pretty good but too gloomy to be enjoyed in this holiday spirit),I am very much tempted not to and instead give that time to play some games, learn some software or write my much delayed manuscript!! As Sam Ewing once said “There's no thief like a bad movie.” But in my bankrupt state there is nothing more to lose than just “precious” time so maybe I would give the talkies another chance to redeem themselves!!

Adieu 2008!!!

2008-12-31T16:12:00.004-05:00

The last day of the year 2008 finally arrives. Now this day is supposed to be the day of celebrations, making merry and having lots of fun. Rather unexpectedly, this day also turned out to be the day when the heating of your apartment breaks down while the mercury is expected to drop to -11!!

I woke up very early in the morning when my roommate was readying himself to go out on a skiing trip. He was all dressed up in heavy attire to brave the elements. I looked at him and thought to myself-why am I not dressed all like that as it is freaking cold in here?!! In the meantime as I my conscious self put away its blanket of sleep,I realized that I am inside my house and not in an Icelandic glacier trying to ski across its flat plain, then why the hell was I feeling cold??

“It’s so cold...” I just begin my sentence as I got up.

“The heater stopped working last night” my roommate answered the question for me even before I could finish my question.

“Whatttt..??” I exclaimed absolutely flabbergasted at the timing of this calamity!! It was as I said before, the last day of the year. It was supposed to be the day of joy and happiness. The day to recap about all the good things that happened in the year 2008. The only thing that I was recapping now was the fact that I landed in a country where it’s freezing cold and the temperature drops down to sub-zero and sometimes when you just require it the most-the heater blows out!!

“OK, don’t panic” I said to myself. The reason that I was the most worried person in the whole house was because both my roommate were going out for the day so fortunately for them, this thing was of no worry. I tried playing a bit with the thermostat, put it on and off a few times but nothing seemed to work. The office opened only at 9 in the morning so the only thing that I could do till then was to pity myself and get all the warm clothes out!!

I settled back inside my blanket and it felt really cold. Just then I had this real bright idea springing into my mind. I had a sleeping bag with me, why was I worrying so much!! I quickly slipped inside the narrow environs of my sleeping bag and in no time it was as comfortable as a Joey in its mother’s pouch!! I actually got a wee bit more comfortable and overslept and woke up a 12 in the noon. A time by which the whole thing was supposed to be back all in order.

My other roommate was up by then too and he had some other bad news in store for me.

“The wash basin is clogged with junk” he said as he got ready to move out on his trip “you might as well brush in the tub!!”

Now doesn’t the New Year come with its fair share of surprises!! We quickly flipped through the bills to find the telephone number of the office. There was no way that they were going to respond to this situation this quick and the fact that It was the last day of the work for them it was even more difficult to assemble things together. Finally three old men appeared trying to put an end to our misery. One of them did nothing to hide the fact that the work hours were coming to an end for him and this work was nothing but a nuisance that was preventing him from starting his holiday. Thankfully, the other two were very helpful. They managed to solve all the bathroom troubles but even their combined effort could not make the heater to work.

The old man who looked the most sympathetic thankfully stayed overtime and arranged three strange looking but effective radiators for us. He was quite relieved to know that there was just me in the home today as he would have to arrange for more of those. He still left three of them and even managed to find some fuses in case one of those blew off. Trying to comfort me, he said that he bought one of those recently and they had been very effective for his family. His concern was really praiseworthy and I told him that I will do fine and he need not worry and bid him farewell with a smile. Whenever I pass through a children’s school on my way to the college I always come across a sign that they have placed up. It reads “Few warm words can get you through this cold winter”. Isn’t it so true that not mere words but actions of other beings towards you can also change your somber mood (or sometimes the other way around!!)

So here I lie on the final day of the year waiting for the clock to tick over and usher in the New Year. My friends and family are already celebrating it back in India. Once again I have nothing to do so I will sit back and listen to some soothing music, finish a season of Friends (saw the whole season 9 in 3 days flat!!), cook some nice food, see a movie after which I will settle back with a Coke in hand and then will wait for the time to strike midnight (as you all know, a second late today!!).

Wishing everyone a very HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!! J

Christmas Day!!

2008-12-25T17:49:00.004-05:00

Its Christmas Day!!! Well, it's not exactly as exciting out here as I am writing it out to be although I really loved the decorations of one of the houses in the neighbourhood. The way that it glowed in the night was simply magnificent and I could not help but take a snap.But other than that,far away from home and without any real friends and family the holidays are a real bore out here.But still while everyone else was asleep in my apartment last night,I sat waiting for Santa to turn up and give me some gifts but considering I had no socks to leave in the gifts and the fact that I am not exactly a kid,so he promptly gave this poor house a miss!! I tried several things to get the time to pass. I tried writing some codes of SAS, a statistical software that I am trying to learn, but soon gave up on that finding it too complicated. Then I tried playing some games on my laptop. I was in the final showdown of NFS Undercover which I was finding very difficult to complete the other day. I was sure that it would take atleast another hour of my time and leave me exhausted enough to fall to sleep but surprisingly I managed to finish the game in the first try itself (and they say that miracles don't happen in christmas any more!!). That left me again with some time on hand, finding no other worthwhile thing to do I cooked myself few sandwiches and settled back on my bed with a Coke which had Santa gracing its cover. It was then I thought that since I had nothing else to do why not just try to find out what this Ho Ho Ho(my love for puns always continues!!)is all about. OK, everyone knows that this is the day that Jesus was born and the custom of the gifts probably started because of the three wisemen, the magi who brought gifts for the little Jesus, but was that all?? Here was what I found out!!
Christmas actually stands for “mass on Christ's day” and the word is probably derived from the Germanic jōl or the Anglo-Saxon geōl, which referred to the feast of the winter solstice. It may be difficult to believe but in the first two centuries the celebration of christmas was looked down upon because of the belief that saints and martyrs should be honoured on the days of their martyrdom—their true “birthdays,” rather than their actual birthdays. How did December 25 come about to be as the day that Jesus was born? Again, very surprisingly, the bible has no mention of this at all and this date was identified by Sextus Julius Africanus only in 221.One widespread explanation of the origin of this date is that December 25 was the Christianizing of the dies solis invicti nati (“day of the birth of the unconquered sun”), a popular holiday in the Roman Empire that celebrated the winter solstice as a symbol of the resurgence of the sun, the casting away of winter and the heralding of the rebirth of spring and summer. A second view suggests that December 25 became the date of Jesus' birth by a priori reasoning that identified the spring equinox as the date of the creation of the world and the fourth day of creation, when the light was created, as the day of Jesus' conception (i.e., March 25). December 25, nine months later!!While finding all this information really left me overwhelmed and drained but I just managed to find another interesting tidbit about Santa Claus just before I slept. The actual image that we associate with Santa came into being as early as 1931 by illustrator Haddon Sundblum who designed it for the Coca Cola campaigns!!
So as one of the most boring christmas comes to an end for me with the long boring week ahead I still can say that this christmas did leave me 'enlightened'!! ( I really am turning into some form of master of puns these days! )

Snow"FALL"!!

2008-12-19T01:49:00.008-05:00

So I am finally at the end of a very eventful semester and thankfully I managed to pull off the last exam that I had today, although frankly speaking I had not expected to!! Anyways, Toledo has been really beautiful in the past few days thanks to a wonderful snow shower that happened a few days before. With almost all the city enveloped in white, it may seem a tad monotonous and not really scenic but with christmas around the corner, white surely is the colour of the season!! But as we are all aware no matter how soothing some things may look for the eyes, but in the end, looks may really be deceiving!!

So I woke up pretty late today after having spent almost the whole night trying to get all the weird accounting concepts down my throat. Just like yesterday, I had to walk all the way to the college in the thick snow. But unlike yesterday, much of the paths had been cleared off the snow for the convenience of the people. I had heard about the danger of falling in snow from almost eveyone when the snow had not begin and I really thought that they had been making mountain out of a molehill!! So when I walked in the snow, I really felt good looking at the wonderful picturesque look that almost everything seemed to bear. I especially like the cute little squirrels that hop around in the snow leaving tiny little paw marks and watching them during these times is a sure delight!! I think the term "leaving footprints in the sands of time" should be changed to"..in the snow of time"; if nothing else atleast they won't be blown away as easily by the wind! With all these weird thoughts in my mind and the new album of Nickelback playing in my ears,I walked towards my destination. I slipped once or twice as I usually walk fast and I thought I was getting late too. Everytime I recovered easily and everytime the same thought crept into my mind-people must be really moron to fall in the snow. While I had not even finished my thought that I felt stepping on a seemingly invisible sheet of ice and before I know I was down on my all fours, I tried to cushion my fall and in doing so my hands went fist deep into the snow filling the gloves completely with little flakes :( Nickelback had just at that moment begin crooning to their new song, S.E.X-a 'slippery' topic (ironically!!). I quickly got up, walked a few steps as if nothing had happened and trying to make it appear as if the fall was all a part of the grand scheme of things!! It was then that I gave a quick glance back and heaved a sigh of relief seeing that there had been no witnesses to this 'fall to humility' of mine. So in the end, it was actually not so unlucky day for me after all!!

While returning after giving a satisfying exam and with the same Nickelback album blaring into my ears I again slipped more than once. But these times I made sure that I take every step with utmost care,walked slow and ultimately bowing completely to mother nature's cold(pun intended!!) fury!! It would be not an iota wrong to say in my case that-once 'snowed' twice shy :)

ADAPTATION

2008-12-14T20:33:00.001-05:00

Another weekend coming to an end and for the first time I actually managed to study a bit!! With the exam week staring me in the face motivation was really not a factor this time. Amongst other things I also managed to finally watch Quantam of Solace and frankly considered it a sheer waste of time. If only they stopped aping the Bourne movies,maybe they would have done a better job. Anyways, those are not the reasons that I am writing this blog and the title would surely give ample evidence of what I am about to talk.

I woke up at my usual holiday time of 12 in the noon (when will I actually mean good morning when I wake up on the weekends?!!). My nice senior had called me up for lunch today at 1 so I immediatly got ready eager to be punctual as always (at least where the primary concern is food!!). In the rush I forgot to wear the normal heavy winter clothes that I wear and just pulled on my snow jacket. It was only when I was halfway down to their home that I realised my goof up and was frankly surprised that I was still finding the weather so pleasent. I took out my newly acquired I Phone and checked the temperature and saw that it was 5 degree celsius!!

I then remembered the days when I was in Manipal;in the midst of scorching heat spells, whenever the mercury used to drop to below 20s, I always ended up curled on my bed, shivering. Cut to now,and I was feeling so pleasent at 5 degrees!! Now, 5 degrees may seem cold(and it actually is!!), but having been used to walking in almost regular -3s and -4s and sometimes -8 which feels like -19,this was certaily a drastic change, which fortunately was on a brightside!! Well, now I can say with certainity that I have adapted to the place :)

While I was boasting about my seemingly easy adaptaion to the weather (so far!!)to a friend of mine, he warned me of something else. A "reverse adaptation" problems when I go back to India and then find even the smallest increase in the temperature!! Well, decent point to ponder upon :)

Imitation: A Flattery?

2008-12-05T20:50:00.007-05:00

Its Friday and for once I actually have time to relax and no other work. When the temperature outside is -8 degrees, its a feeling that you long to have always!! So coming back from work I was having a chat with my friend and we had a long talk about ebay(its a site that I really love!!) and the moment that I got off the phone I had a real longing to go online and check if there is anything exciting for me to buy. During my random searches I came across an obvious fake for Motorola C650. "C650 fake!! But why??!!!" was the thought that came instantly in my mind.While I see several IPhone and N95 fakes they make complete sense to me. They are top of the class products and something that every manufacturer would love to imitate if given a free hand. But C650, isn't that a phone that simply said, SUCKS!! Why the hell would you want to bring a fake out in the market for something that does not sell much even when it is original!! When Charles Caleb Colton coined the term "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" in 1820 he would have never thought that he would see this day :)
My reference to IPhone reminds me of an anecdote that would be worth mentioning in this context. Apple has been known to dish out some really path breaking products and almost everything that they have produced have been best sellers. One of them was the Apple IPods that became a rage and gave rise to several cheap imitations in the market. Ironically one of the first advertising campaigns that Apple ran for the IPods was plagued by several "imitation" complains. The ad was said to resemble an earlier campaign run by Lugz shoes,both commercials show shadowlike silhouettes posed against stylized urban settings, which are rendered in red, orange, yellow and black. In the Apple spot, titled "Detroit," the silhouette is Eminem; in the Lugz spot, titled "Arrow," it is an anonymous young man wearing Lugz boots. The ad agency for Apple later described it as "regrettable and surprising" while saying that it may have been influenced by it and thus paying a "flattering" backhanded compliment to the original admakers!! Whenever someone imitated me in my college days then I loved saying this famous statement to them, but after the C650 episode I better watch out. While it may always be true-Imitation may not always be the sincerest form of flattery!!

Fun being "Undercover"!!

2008-11-28T22:32:00.001-05:00

The reason this post is going to sound so much like a game review is because after a long time I am actually playing a game that has instantly gripped my attention!! NFS Undercover- finally I managed to get hold of it and have been playing it almost all day;if not for this game, my boring thanksgiving break would have been even more boring!!

I have been a big NFS fan since its very incipient days and with every new series they have managed to hold everyone's attention. The fun I had in playing NFS Underground with my friends in the hostel was just unparalleled :) Then came NFS:Most Wanted, the game which I feel really revolutionised the genre. Running from cops and effectively using the pursuit breakers on them gave you one of the best highs a gamer can ever want, add to that the beautiful graphics and the really awesome cars and of course (sadly very underused) Josie Maran and Most Wanted was the best that you could get.

Then came, NFS Pro street and NFS Carbon, both of which I feel did the same to NFS what Spiderman 3 did to the Spiderman franchise. So I was pretty skeptic when I picked up Undercover but I was in for a pleasant surprise.

Undercover takes off with some loose story about nailing a gang of drug dealers who incidentally belong to car racing gang. Your job is to go undercover in the racing world,slowly building your way up the ladder while trying to find the criminal elements. The boss who guides you all the while is played by Maggie Q who sadly is restricted to stay in the office and give you instructions on her laptop. When Undercover starts you straightaway notice its uncanny similarity to Pro Street and I said "No,not again!!". The controls are tacky and the car drifts at the slight touch of the button. I was cursing the EA Sports guys for coming up with the stupid car!! But soon you realize that while you are winning races you are also gaining the control of the car. The suspension improves, the tuning becomes better and by the time the first big race arrives you will have the controls and the car behaving just the normal NFS style.

This game bears much more resemblence to MostWanted than the past releases. The normal Sprint,Circuit and Tollbooth modes have not been altered and same for the police chases in the Escape and Cost to State challenges. Some really cool new entries are the Highway chase where you have to stay in front of your challenger by the end of the race and with the camera being at the front hood, its tough to master. Then there are challenges which involve staying in lead for a certain amount of time with frredom of choosing your own path. The other exciting challenge is where you steal a car from the shop and have to deliver it to the required location with minimum damage and no cops on your back. This one was the toughest that I faced today.

The graphics of Undercover is awesome and great on my 4GB RAM. The whole atmosphere is cool blue just like MostWanted,which had a reddish orange hue to it all the time. The game physics is almost the same but with some good improvements. The car flies off in a very believable manner when you hit them at high speeds. One of the flawed physics in this game but very good makeover is regarding the pursuit breakers. While MostWanted used real time physics to simulate the pursuit breakers, making the wrongly timed uses futile, Undercover ensures that the cop cars fall under every pursuit breaker that you use. I remember using a Water tank as the pursuit breaker in MostWanted and the damn thing had ended up falling on my car due to slow speed!! I tried doing the same thing in this game but the gameplay moved me forward while a whole ton of steel came crashing down on the cops..wasn't that satisfying !!:)

All in all,one of the best titles out of the NFS stable for a long time and I hope to keep myself busy the rest of the holidays!! :)

GROUP INFLUENCE

2008-11-23T16:03:00.000-05:00

It was just an idyllic day for me. Having vanquished virtually every opponent on an online game and losing to only those whom i felt really deserved it, I was feeling on top of the world. To complement that, there came the call from my girlfriend after seeing off all our friends. I was very excited to see all the photos of the convocation which I eagerly followed and sorely missed :( It was real fun watching the same old faces doing not-so-same funny things :) While I had real fun watching them, I was most surprised to hear the comment :

"Why are you getting irritated?"

"WHAT??" Irritation was an emotion that was the last thing on my mind at that moment.

"Yes you are, you are acting different today" came the second comment.

Yeah, I was just being happy. An emotion that life in Toledo rarely allows me.

"No way, do I look irritated?" I said confident the smile that I was beaming was the best that I had for quite long.

"This is your smile that is when you are irritated"

"Whattt??" I was all at sea on how to explain things now. I tried to laugh everything off and the fact that the photos were really funny allowed me to do that with ease!!

"See, now you are trying to hide your irritation by laughing it off" came the angry retort.

Well, if I was not irritated before, I sure was now and I promptly displayed that by logging off from my webcam.

So was I really irritated? No, and I can say that with 100% confidence. so what was the reason for the most surprising and unexpected of the comments?

I tried hard to think and the only reason I could think was "Group Influence". something that allows you to stereotype someone with ease. Maybe mutual animosity could have played a factor in that too.

"Group Influence" has been one of the terms that psychologists and sociologists have long studied. They have several terms associated with them. The one that I have seen most prevalent is "Social Facilitation" where there is strengthening of dominant responses in presence of others. There is another form of this which is referred to as "Deindividuation". In this type, the the individual gains the identity of the group whereas losing his/her own self. For eg. If 4 out of 6 people in the group are vegeterian then the group is more likely to have vegeterian meals together.

There are also instances of something that is referred to as Mass Psychogenic Illness in which symptoms are passed from person to person among people who are visible to one another. Quoting from an APS article "Mass psychogenic illness is an extreme example of the more general phenomenon of contagious behavior: the unconscious transmission of actions or emotions from one individual to another. The contagious quality of mood and emotion has been perhaps the most widely studied of all the different forms of contagion. People are extremely good at picking up on other people's emotions — both negative and positive — without consciously trying."

Well I guess that was it, a mixture of all the above terms that was responsible for me being labelled "irritated"!! Well i am still being labelled one while I write this so let me see how long will this last. Well the duration is something that I might study :)

WAVES of NOSTALGIA…

2008-11-19T23:42:00.001-05:00

Doesn't it happens sometimes that you are driving in a vehicle towards your destination, your complete concentration on completing the job that you are assigned to do, absolutely unaware of the things that are around you. Then out of nowhere comes a break that makes you look up for just one fleeting second out of the window, you know that the glance would be momentary, but the view enchants you so much that you cannot help but keep on looking, wanting to stay in that moment. But then again, you also know that you have to move on again while the only remnants of that view being the smile that it manages to leave on your face. That was how things unfolded for me today. And it was nothing more than a phone call that managed to do that, a call that I happen to place every single day. But today was something different…

Nov 22 is our convocation. An event, that till my last months in Manipal, I thought that I will never miss!! I always used to imagine that it would be just me remaining there, while all my friends go off to further their career pursuits. The first reason being the fact that I am the laziest bum on the planet earth right now!! I have this weird habit of doing almost everything at the very last possible minute, at that point I did not even aim for much. The second being, I loved the discipline of Manipal, where rules were strictly followed..where you had to be there for 75% of the classes..where bunking classes were an exception and not the rule!! Since the school days I had always been the person who lived by the rules, never bunked my classes, took every notes for every lecture and I loved the fact that Manipal allowed me to actually carry out the same things as before. But what I had never expected to happen to me were my friends!!

While in school days, my friends used to be very much my types, the strict discipline freaks (me being the biggest!!). But out here, it was entirely the opposite. One never spoke, the other never stopped speaking while the third lived by the rule that there are no rules :)!! I was perhaps the most different from all the three or as they said, sometimes I pretended to be!! Maybe I did or maybe it was just my unconscious self. But I managed to do some of the craziest things that I have done in my life thanks to them. Things that I had never thought that I will do, things that are so "un-Gautam":) I may have never admitted it openly, and whenever I did, no one actually believed it, but seriously I loved every single moment with them. It was a joyride that gave me guilty pleasure-I would never go out at 5 in the morning after sleeping at 4, but when I actually did that, I loved it!! So much happened during the 4 years and so fast that you could not even blink.

But just as in life, things were not always rosy. I don't know how or when it happened but we just begin to grow apart..it was just the formal way of talking, the walking away with the not so casual smiles, little actions that indicate that things are not the same. The worst thing was that it was not until the very last moments there that I came to know why. It was the lowest ebb of my life when I came to know what all they thought about me. I was angry, upset and all the negative emotions that I can think of. I never wanted to talk with them ever. But slowly when all the anger flows away, then you realize that it just not them but also me who never tried to find out why that was happening, it was me who let thing drift and never tried to clarify things. When you look into the mirror, you will just see your reflection and never know what's happening behind that and it was true for both the sides.

And then today I got to hear those same voices again, and emanating from the same place that they always did. That's when the vehicle stopped for me and the view outside was of the wonderful time that we had together. I don't know how much they care or feel for me, or are the last few years just flipped over pages in the book of life. My only solace is in a statement my friend oft used to say "if you stay long, then you will fall in love with even a dog!!" and that's why I hope that any of the love still remains. But then, think of the dog too, who even though you may not realize has so much fallen in love with you too!!

So tomorrow will be another day and my life would move back into its regular monotonous pattern but I am really happy for the wave of nostalgia that swept over me today. An emotion that someone only close to you can bring. And that's the reason when I look back, I can feel lucky to have known them, to have whatever moments of happiness that we had together and I can say without any doubt that I loved them and still love and wish them well from the core of my heart. And I cannot help but quote one of my most favorite poems by Tennyson:

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather in the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

Gender Bias contd..:)

2008-11-17T19:32:00.000-05:00

Inspite of all the negative criticism that I got for my last piece of blog on the gender bias,I could not help but take this issue further after a really intellectually stimulating session that I had with one of the faculty candidates,who was here for her interview today. Although this time, I am not writing about the "dumbness", but rather just a different viewpoint that they have.Incidentally,she is from my alma mater and with her extensive knowledge, I would sure like to see her as a faculty next year!!

Coming back to our focus- during the session where all the grad students get to meet her, I asked her about the research interests that she has. Among the ones that she listed was the growing importance of the MTM programs and how the pharmacists are unwilling to take the baton in their hands for the fear of stepping onto the physician's shoes. The other reason that she talked about was how pharmacists have been doing counselling for ages,so they don't feel like charging the patient for it. Well personally I completely agree with what the Joker says in The Dark Knight "If you are really good at something, never do it for free".So I told her that the only thing that can really give a boost to the MTMs are proper reimbursement for the pharmacists for their services offered and maybe a little more professional business-like model to their approach. To this she agreed and replied that it merely was not the reimbursement that is a issue. Citing a very true statistic, she said that earlier the pharmacy profession used to be male-dominated but with the turn of the century,we have a seen a lot more woman entering into the profession. This has led to a lack of proper packaging and selling of the services that are offered by us. That is because woman are not able market aggresively as they(and quoting her verbatim) "lack the enterpreneur spirit".

Now people may counter that by saying that one of the most successful leaders in business today is Indira Nooyi, a woman. No doubt about that,but coming from such an experienced and highly educated person, and the fact that she herself is a woman, the reasoning carries enough weight. Thankfully, this time I am quoting someone or else I feared being labelled a MCP..;)

First snowfall in Toledo!!

2008-11-15T20:07:00.000-05:00

Finally after such a long wait I finally got to see the first snowfall of my life today !!:) It was around 1 30 pm that it all started. The first few minutes there were just small flakes that frankly did not even look like snow but rather few large droplets of rain. When they fell to the ground they quickly melted to water and I thought that was how it was going to remain the whole time. Makes one remind so much of the real life, when you are on the top and successful, often you tend to be so cold emotionally that you don't feel anything and it is the fall from above, the coming"down to earth" ,that finally shakes you out of the cocoon and makes you feel everything, melts you and allows you to cry.
Well not giving much time for my heavy philosophy,my wishes were fulfilled when when the snow started falling in the form of real snowflakes. The sight was purely amazing and in fact was almost heavenly when the earth started being enveloped with the thin sheet of snow. Although everyone knows that the snow is going to be really annoying very soon but the excitement of the first snow was visible everywhere, people were out on the window watching it fall, cute children were out screaming with happiness. The whole excitement was so infectious that I rushed out of my home in and started taking video of the whole proceedings. But my enthusiasm was literally dampened and also the fact that I was in my bare minimums and feeling really cold made me rush inside as quickly as I had come. So I returned back to the comfort of my home and watched it instead with my girlfriend sharing the view through the webcam.
A really happy coincidence was the delivery of the snow jacket that I had ordered and which had been delayed all this while. For a moment I was really tempted to wear that and rush out into the cold!! Well maybe next time :)

Gender bias

2008-11-13T19:20:00.000-05:00

"Have you pharmacology girls ever tried to find out why are girls so dumb?" I asked casually to my gilrlfriend just in the course of my normal bantering with her. Going on with the topic that we were fighting over, she immediately defended by saying that girls are more considerate and pretend to be dumb in front of the boys so that they can feel good!! Fending off her silly(pun intended!!) reply I said " Tell me how many girls are there in IIT(the gold standard for brains!!)?" pat came the reply "OK, maybe the boys outnumber the girls in IITs but they outnumber them in the medical exams". For a moment the idea seemed good enough but then that was a statistic that surely defended my line of thought "Yeah, they sure do that, but isn't medical exams more of a memory tests rather than a test of intelligence?" After that our conversation drifted into the normal territories of tete-e-tete that two lovers share and the really exciting issue of gender difference that was at the forefront gained a backseat!!
It was only later in the day that the topic again came to the forefront for me, I was practising for the group presentation for tomorrow with my group members when one of them , a girl, suddenly decided to change something on the slides. She went back to the screen and just looked at it blankly while we told her what to do. Here was a girl, whom I consider fairly intelligent and certainly quite proficient in computers, but just displaying a moment of sure idiocicy when all she needed to do was to press the'escape'!!
Proficiency with computers is something that I have generally seen lacking in girls. But it's not merely computers, but in other filelds and situations where I have seen girls fumble over the simplest things.Its not that they are not brainy but the concept of simple flow of logic just seems so alien to them sometime. I am in no way discriminating cuz I have seen some girls brainier than the most erudite guy that I have met, but its just an observation that I have noted all my life and continue to see regardless of geographical boundaries!!
What's the reason for that?? Well, I frankly I have no clue. One main reason for that being, whenever I try to delve into this topic with any girl and the moment that I start getting the upper hand and getting closer to finding the solution, they end up giving me the most charming smiles that derail the mightiest of my train of thoughts!! How do they do that?? well,who cares for that when you are just so pleased to be at the recieving end !!:)

Haircut!!!

2008-11-12T15:36:00.000-05:00

Never in my life has a haircut been such an amazing experience as I had today!! It was already late in the noon and I was pretty tired after the long day's work so I was thinking twice before getting the much needed haircut done (I haven't had a haircut for the last 5 months so they really are a mess right now!!). But I finally managed to push myself and get inside the university salon. The barber was a huge arab with an accent that sure resembled Zohan ;) He was talking something about Obama with an American guy when I walked in. I started reading the newspaper while he continued rambling about the political campaign about how hot he finds Palin to be!! :) For a moment I really had an urge to join in the conversation but he was so lost in himself that I dare not intervene. Finally, when my turn came, he asked with his burly accent" so what type of haircut do you want?" I answered something about getting it down to 20%. He didn't seem to understand me and said "That's way too short!" I was sure confused at that moment when he cleared it up for me "So you want me to leave just 20% while take off 80%?"!! I had to reply frantically that "No way!!". All he did was grumble and replied "Your instructions are not clear my friend, I will overcharge you." and then he began with a continuing low rumbling sound coming from his belly which he thought was his singing :) It was seriously fun when he began chatting about life in college, I said that it was all crazy for me and he said that he is glad that it's all crazy for me and not for him as he is too old for that and how the school has blown out the fuses of my brain while his were still functioning!! And to top it all he continued that having a blown fuse is better because he has to think a lot with his brain and that bothers him!! While he was going on with his lengthy diatribe, he kept popping in the quote that he will overcharge me for unclear instructions.. finally when he finished I thought he really did a good job while giving the funniest ten minutes that I had for a long time..I ended up paying him an extra dollor of tip that I had earlier planned to give!! all in all my first haircutting experience in US sure left me in splits :)

My first blog!!

2008-11-11T23:14:00.001-05:00

So here comes the time when I finally get the chance to introduce myself to the world of blogging. Never thought that I would actually get a chance to begin something like this, but guess, the prevailing boredom has finally made it possible for me to do this!! :) Its already late in the night while I write this so I guess my very first post will have to be a really short and sweet one. well, don't they say "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."!!