An expression of my ever mutating thoughts...

Catalysis of work efficiency

2009-03-29T15:14:00.001-07:00

My present work efficiency plot looks somewhat similar to an enzyme catalysis free energy plot although with a few modifications.

Note: 1. Effort required is in arbitrary units 2. * Significant difference as assessed by the Students T-test

A friend of mine mentioned that this phenomenon, apparently called ‘laziness’ is common in the season change between winter and spring. I’ve also been noticing an increase in my appetite of late. Maybe its like a bear coming out of hibernation. Still groggy and extremely hungry all the time.

Hope, Love, Despair and Verbal Diarrhea

2009-03-27T00:16:00.001-07:00

<Start>

Verbal Diarrhea and Despair

I've often been accused of being in a constant state of verbal diarrhea. Back home, I tried taking a lot of fiber in my diet, but at a point decided that it was of no use and that there are enough people in the world around me to listen to my shit. And that worked surprisingly well. I had a gang of great friends and a really cool ex-girlfriend who would put up with everything I could give them and more. I should say I did my stint in the listening business too with the above mentioned people and it was nothing to regret about. The quid pro quo was beautiful. Add that to building some nice bridges on the family side and my (verbal) bowel movements were well under control. However, after coming to a country with a population one third the size of India and probably 1% of the people around me speaking my language, I've been constipated. And all the doesn't-taste-like-cardboard 51% Fiber One, granola bars and $7.99 a basket of clementines have been of no use. I think (hopefully) that the culmination of this 6 somewhat-difficult months in the US will be in the revival of this blog as my western closet. Shit will be written here. You have been warned.

<Pause>

Why buses look like boxes? If they're so large, streamlining their design would help, wouldn’t it? And why did they change this design,

to this one

anyway? I think the earlier ones look a little more streamlined and way cooler (adding in of course, the heating and the air-conditioning). What do you think?

Getting back on track, I've been thinking a lot about home lately. And I think a lot of it has got to do with the fact that work in the lab has been light and I've had more time on my hands than I should have. People always complain about lack of time. Its not funny when you have more time on your hands than you need. Your brain goes into overdrive, and hallucinates. Not good.

Love

I've also come to realise that if you are ever with people you care about around you, make the most of it. Times change, places change, people change. And its better to to make good memories you can lean back on in times to come than be constantly worried about bad things that happened or great things that will never happen. Let go. There is more to life than a few sad moments, a few bad decisions and a few opportunities missed. This is something easier said than done, and I've been struggling very hard to come to terms with it. So maybe writing this down will help me get to it sooner. And maybe get someone reading this thinking about it.

Hope

In a time when Wall Street has come to mean greed and dishonesty, something that happened today gave me a lot of faith. I saw an ad for a pair of dumbbells from this guy on craigslist and met up with him. Since I also helped a friend move a couch she bought from him, I couldn't get my dumbbells that day. However, I paid him the money and let him know I would come back for it. And thanks to my memento/ghajini-like memory, forgot all about it. About three weeks later, today, I get an email from this guy asking me for my address so he could refund my money ‘cause I hadn't picked up my dumbbells. At first I wasn't quite sure if it really meant what it said. I started at the email about 45 seconds reading it over several times. I mean, think about it, someone you buy off craigslist returning money? Would you ever try to contact someone to return money for something that was their fault in the first place? Realistic probabilities are that probably 1 in a million people would do it. It means a lot to see that people with principles are still around. And sort of helps you hold on to your principles when the world around you seems to be crumbling down! I now have a great level of respect this guy and will never forget him in my life.

<Pause>

When the fingers of our hands develop, they are webbed at first and then the cells in between the fingers die to form what we have. In this case, since our present day fingers developed from fins, it was probably faster to evolve fingers from that rather than evolving an entirely new mechanism to design muscles, skin and the likes around the bone without any cell death. However controlled cell death is no more clearly emphasized than in the worm, C.elegans where exactly 131 cells die in every developing embryo. Destruction for creation. Ironical? Interesting food for thought, me thinks.

Image: Mouse Embryonic Foot with the digits in the process of separation. Image courtesy, Michal Maňas, Wikipedia

< End Random Thought #2>

Ending with something nice, one of the last pictures that my beloved D100 clicked before she was given a new home. And looking forward to the day my new baby (D40? D80? As of yet undecided) will arrive. I haven't fiddled much with the image except brightness and contrast. The flowers were ones I bought in an attempt to liven up my drawing room. Looking at this I think, Damn, evolution never ceases to amaze me. Ever. What about you? What comes to your mind?

Edit: On reading my own blog, (yes, thats how desperate and jobless I am) I had the thought that readig left-aligned text is less boring than reading justified text. And so on the command of Alignis, the Egyptian God of text alignments (my first thought was Textis, but then it was too close to Testes which sounds more Greek than Egyptian and as of now Im more partial to Egyptian Gods.) this post has been realigned.

Drifting to newer shores

2008-07-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

Im halfway there.
To where everybody goes.
People with a million dreams and zero dollars
and people with a million dollars and zero dreams.
To the land of the Big Apple, a Big Mac and a Supersized Coke.

Every man has his own perceptions of it. I would hate to be prejudiced but I'm afraid I already am. Caught inbetween a slew of thoughts, torn between the thoughts of being a global citizen and love for the motherland. I wonder where my heart really is. Is it wiser to make a living doing what you love? Or love what you do for a living? Ah, that eternal question.

But right now, im loving the travel. Feeling great about making new acquaintances and renewing old ones. Feeling good about getting to see the rest of the world. Atleast for that, I'm sure, I will love this opportunity to go to the US.

Time brings maturity they say. I sure hope it will!!

Bath, United Kingdom.

Heights of Procrastination

2008-02-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

This has got to be the heights. Feeling I was procrastinating too much, I bought this book called 'Eat that Frog!' a couple of months ago. I havent gone past the first page till today.

I cant believe I actually updated my blog! Yay.

Whats on my mind: Aristotle had such an amazing brain.
Whats on my desk: Scott Gilbert, Developmental Biology, Eighth Edition.

Yazhisai

2007-11-02T04:31:00.000-07:00

Counting down the hours to go before my GRE Subject test, I'm trying to process close to 2 million gigabits of information in between 1 billion neurons in my brain( I use only one percent of my brain and dont ask me how I calculated that ) . The thoughts can be classified into roughly 10,000 different categories. However it seems to me that 70% of those thoughts ought to be categorized (on the basis of relevance to my current situation) as '100% junk'. Why am I writing a blog of all the things in the world then?!

1. To unfocus on the 'junk' and focus on the 30%
2. To tell myself to get my rear end moving!!

One song that can always pacify me to bring me to ground state everytime

"Thunbam nergayil yazhedutthu nee..
Inbam serka maataaya? Emakku inbam serka maattaaya?"

Cricket, a nation and a half naked fakir

2007-09-27T12:36:00.000-07:00

Everyones out with a post on the world cup and India's amazing triumph. A lot of positives and negatives on the win out there on the net. so here is my two cents ( and maybe more ) on that and a related thing that I thought of.

Witnessing the crazy things that people do when we win ( or lose ), the aggression that people show, out on the streets, in the cricket stands, the 'mob phenomenon' is truly a fearful thing. Its sheer potential to get what it wants, the uncontrolled power that it exudes, feeding on everything and everyone on its path, encompassing all and destroying anything that tries to stop or control it. It makes me wonder, if a cause such as cricket can set a nation ablaze, how much emotion would there have been in the fight for freedom? How many millions would have come forward, daggers drawn, ready to put forth their lives so that the country may breathe free again? If a thousand people in a cricket stand can cause such things as stampedes, how much could millions do? How long would it have taken the guns and cannons notwithstanding, to raze down the British, to wipe them clean off the face of our motherland?

If one man, a single human soul, has turned a whole nation from breathing fires of war and revolt to protest in silence for freedom, whatever may his faults be, he is truly a mahatma. It is not so much as the loss of life that he prevented , but his ways that changed the mind, body and soul of a nation from war to peace. I think we owe it to him if the rest of the world sees us today as a country which despite being one of the most populated, is also one of the most peaceful and tolerant in matters of foreign relations.

It may sound strange to link two things so far apart, but on reflecting, there aren't enough superlatives for me to describe the job that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did. I salute you.

Weathered Lives

2007-09-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

Photo details same as the one below except for the absence of any alterations to the image.

This photo was clicked completely by accident. I was moving my mobile camera around, looking for something to shoot when I just placed it against the door and this great shot just showed up! :)

Multiple emails revelation

2007-09-08T02:32:00.000-07:00

The thing about having multiple email accounts - more time to sit at the computer aimlessly at work :)

Random photo - Commercial Street Bangalore

2007-09-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

Where: Commercial Street, Bangalore
Mods: Watercolor Effect - Microsoft Picture Editor
Camera: Dopod 2MP Mobile Camera

getting older

2007-09-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

Shit! Im getting older. Enjoy it while it lasts. Hope to write an optimistic post on youth or the lack of it later.

Illusions

2007-04-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Painting on the wall... or is it?

Where: On the way back from the Esplanade theatre

How: Same camera as prev post.

Exocytosed thoughts

2007-03-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

The organizational level of your hard disk is a direct indicator of the level of confusion in your mind.

Shutterbug Update

2007-03-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

When: 29/30th March 2006

Where: Aloha Changi, Singapore

Why: Was there for a lab retreat

What: Views from the beach / boardwalks

How: Sony DSC-T9 , Windows Picture Manager for change in Colour/Hue/Saturation

Note: I havent been able to think of suitable titles for these images... Do comment of you come up with something. :) Will be grateful.

Thought for yesterday - 2

2007-03-25T09:52:00.001-07:00

The more you shirk, the more you shrink.

Cricket 101 it is...

2007-03-23T19:19:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, I did not watch India being slaughtered by Murali. Hats off the Lankan team.

Its kind of hard to imagine Bermuda beating Bangladesh at this point, but then unpredictability is what cricket is all about. I sincerely feel Bangladesh deserve to go to the Super 8's. And after their forgettable performance yesterday, India deserve to get back home to the nets and practice. Or maybe not. Maybe they need to get back home and take their minds off the game for a few months. Wait till the ghosts that will haunt them disappear. They probably should stop appearing in commercials for a while, for it will only fuel the burning bellies of the Indian cricket fan and may cause broken television sets. As for the billions of dollars lost by commercial sponsors, don't you know that putting all your eggs in one basket is dangerous?

Hard luck boys. You tried, but failed. But tomorrow is a new day , and brings new hope!
And oh, boys, don't worry about effigies being burnt, but worry if your family will be safe. Because this country is such. Anything can happen. Get some extra security. Maybe the government will extend the NSG Commando force provided to them for the world cup. Keep your windows closed. Venture out incognito only. Better yet, take off to Switzerland.

More importantly, this is not the end of the road.. Well maybe for some, but the game will go on. Chalta hai. 2011 is not too far off.

For God's sakes, its just a game!!

2007-03-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

I couldn't bear to watch anymore. We were going down. Digging our own grave. Getting ready to pack our bags. And still why do I hope? Well, because I'm an Indian of course!

What am I writing about something that is happening thousands of miles away at 3AM? Well what else could it be? The cricket match between India and Sri Lanka .... That I am not a cricket fanatic who has Sachin's statistics or the Indian cricket team's history on my fingertips could seem a little out of the ordinary. But like every other Indian I would want the Indians to win the World cup... It seems a distant dream as of now, and with every passing wicket, a dream fading into thin air...

Cricket has been hyped by the media to crazy heights. That a national news channel makes the match its headline news seems really nuts.... to me at least. All it does it put more pressure on the players. Being disappointed when your team loses is one thing. Expressing it in words is okay... But burning effigies and attacking homes is quite another thing. Whats with the people of this country? Dont we have better jobs to do? I think its a vicious circle and the media has a big part to play in it . ( Some may say I'm just attacking the media for the heck of it. But staying outside India, the media is your only connection to what's happening at home and you tend to become more of a news junkie that you were. I check the websites of CNN-IBN, Times Now, NDTV and The Hindu at least thrice a day! ) But the fact is that these channels turn their limelight on whatever they can grab for the moment. That's the only way they can keep their viewers and their ratings. So it conveniently becomes a way to become famous on national television to sell kidneys to attend the world cup. This in turn galvanizes the channels into another frenzy of coverage... And the circle is never broken.

I think whats really needed at this point is to realise that cricket is just a game. Its meant to be enjoyed . Not politicised, commercialised, raped on national television for its failures. Its definitely not worth losing lives over.

Anand Vasu of cricinfo points out here that what the team needs to understand that its not about what others think of them , but what they do on the field that matters. And that for while, they should think of it as just a game between bat and ball and do what they do best and do it for the country and more importantly, enjoy doing it. The players seem to be appearing on TV more on commercials than on the field. To me it seems that they have stopped loving their game . That they have begun seeing it as a stressful job to just play in the team. With a billion expectations resting on their shoulders, its not hard to imagine why.

I cant bear to watch the match. Even on cricinfo it seems painful...

But me being an optimist , I believe in taking away the best from any situation...

Situation 1 : India Wins : Well and good.. we progress, holding on to the thin threads of hope that we have and maybe even make it to the semis ( Lets go one step at a time fellas. Semis first and then maybe, just maybe the finals..)

Situation 2: India Loses ( ouch!! even typing that out sounds bad! ):

The Nation : The media goes beserk again. India's loss becomes front page news, ousting our most favourite pastime of politics. Speculations run amok. People lose faith in the team ( for a while. And then another victory against Bermuda and were back to hoping that we will win the next ten world cups in the current form )

The 'boys' : Pack the bags. Head back home. Let the losses to sink in. Get back to their homes and families and take some time off live the non-cricketing lives. And then do what every army does. Rebuild. Cricket 101. Back to the basics. Most of what went wrong is in the mind. They should get back to the basics and begin to enjoy what they do. Complacency can be a cruel teacher.

All it takes....

2007-03-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

Sometimes, all it takes for a drastic change in a life is a single event, a single conversation, a single positive result in an experiment that has been failing for months, a single brilliant idea .....

Why am I saying this? Well, I am waiting for that single event. It may not mean much for anybody else. But to me , it means moving away from a long period of low motivation levels and seeing some positivity... Maybe its within me and I only have to see it. Maybe it is already happening...

Well, tomorrow is a new day and brings new hope! :)

Waiting....

2007-03-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

Waiting for freedom... 1947

Still waiting for freedom... 2007

These pictures were taken sometime in February 2007 in Singapore when I was waiting for the bus to return home

Camera: Sony DSC T9

Note on the Camera: Doesn't usually take a great shot, and I had to make several tries before I got these two. I feel something needs to be improved in this picture. But still, its the only one I have now, and so I love it for all its flaws . :)

Thought for yesterday

2007-03-17T03:32:00.001-07:00

The more gadgets you use,
the more disconnected you feel without them.

A poem I wrote...

2007-03-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem when I was kind of in a depressed state.. well im out of it now and actually thought it was worth putting up.. as i always say, extremes of emotion bring out your creativity better than anything else!!

Frozen

Frozen in time I remain, Confined in nothingness
Getting slowly consumed by the vaccum of deceit,
Into a void, which has a cloak of
Truth and Purity on the outside and
Decadence and Self-indulgence on the inside.
The choices to a different world
Lay in front of me, and yet I cannot choose
For your first love is always hard to let go,
It pains me to speak of her thus,
But she once promised to emancipate me
from this world of chicanery,
Alas, I realised
her world is made of people too.

Written on 15th March

The things I want to do

2007-03-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

Ive created a kind of a wishlist for the things I want to do right at this moment. Here it goes.

Play strategy games for hours on end
Go running until i fall over
Stand at the tip of a cliff and shout until my voice goes hoarse
Take a decision
Go back to college and sit in class one more time
Go back home and hug my mom
Get a hug from my dad
Eat loads of french fries and waffles and yet not grow fat
Take a long drive on a lonely road
Go to a lonely tea shop on a mountain and enjoi a garam chai
Drive a ferrari on the autobahn
Learn to play the guitar like santana in one minute

event update

2007-01-27T08:19:00.000-08:00

i actually went kayaking today! more on that in the next post...

All good things reduce in size...

2007-01-27T08:04:00.000-08:00

Today, after quite a long time, I had the opportunity to eat Pringles. For the unfamiliar, Pringles is a brand of potato chips which tastes absolutely out of the world...And horror of horrors! The diameter ( if you could call it that , because the chip is oval in shape and slightly curved) has actually reduced since I had eaten it last, which was quite some time ago... The texture of the chip had also changed, being much smoother when compared to the earlier one which had quite a rough terrain ... Of the two, the sadder issue is that the size has reduced... why do all my favourite stuff reduce in size?

What other stuff has had this fate condemned to it , you may ask...quite a few actually! take the once quintessential part of a middle class chennaite's life , the Saravana Bhavan idli or dosa for example.. Im sure all chennaites ( and people all around the world where HSB branches are) will agree with me... The size of these items has been steadily decreasing while the price has been increasing ... even counting for India's present inflation rate... it became completely unacceptable to me to eat a dosa which was a few years back, priced at 10 Rs to eat it at 18 now! and when your dosa actually arrives, its about the size of the average chapatti!

Snickers seem to have less nuts than they used to, Lays chips DEFINITELY don't have as many chips in their 'nitrogen sealed' packs as they used to.. now 75% of the pack is nitrogen.. they probably should put 'FREE! 30% more nitrogen inside!' on it.

tsk tsk.. I actually thought of writing to Pringles , to the email id that is usually given on the boxes that say " we have manufactured this product to the best of standards... if you have any complaints please email us at... " , and further proceeded to humor my thought to see how far it would go. I actually thought how nice it would be if my email actually made it to eh top brass and they decided to increase the size of the chip and it would be one of those 'wow that's cool' stories that come on the news :P ! But then the cruelty of reality brought me back on ground, an with another sigh, I popped a small stack of pringles into my mouth, and walked away munching..

PS / Disclaimer: All names of products in this post/blog are purely imaginative and any similarity whatsoever with any product on the market is purely coincidental.

2007-01-26T09:07:00.000-08:00

Some people told me that extremes of emotion make you want to write... Extremes of anger, sadness, joy, desperation, boredom...

Today was a day of extremes... It started off on a sour note when I went to the lab an hour late... Because I didn't wake up earlier...I started to work again after two days of taking a break ... Because none of my experiments were working and I thought taking some time off might help me think better.. or maybe i just needed to freak out...

so today i went thro with a few changes to my existing protocol after some vigorous searching through the internet...full of hope, optimism and positivity.... but God had other plans for me in store... the experiment failed again... and it has been close to a month... i was fed up.. lost.. desperate.. dejected and downtrodden...

i racked my brains hard to think what the problem could be.. And came up with zilch.. And so as the day dragged on.. Coffee break.. chit chat... lunch.. browse aimlessly... Coffee break again.. browse more aimlessly ( dont ask me what the difference between aimless and more aimless is.. that probably is the most aimless question....)... And then it so happened that Vignesh, my senior had booked tickets for a cultural program by the students of NUS... Frankly, given my state of mind, i wasnt quite looking forward to it...

So thats the bad half of the day...The better half will come tomorrow / in my next post , which hopefully should be sometime soon.. Its 1 AM here and my biological clock hasn't seen this time for quite a while..

adios

....no title available.

2006-10-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

First of all I need a faster internet connection. 112kbps is way too slow.

Answers to yesterdays questions.

Ok. Im too lazy to write. Maybe some other day.

Gnite.

Revival

2006-10-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

Poring through a maze of ubiquitins, pappiloma viruses and carcinomas, I feel the urge to write. An urge to express my thoughts. And I remember.. somewhere in my subconcious..that I once had a blog. And I put two posts on it.

Mission Revive the Blog..
Hurdle :I forgot the damn password. Look again inside my brain. Try to make those weary neurons connect. Fire them up. And voila! Le pass est ici.

I shall use this blog as I see fit. To express anger. Sadness.Joy. Depression. Elation. Thought.

Im all alone. My pot of emotions is overflowing. I feel sick of college. Tests coming up in two days. I want to get out. Go on a holiday. Forget the rest of the world. Enjoy existence.

Im feeling nostalgic. My last few days in college. Good friends are hard to come by. Leaving college is going to be such a difficult thing. I have to face the big big world. So many people have helped me through this journey. How do I thank them all?

Im feeling desperate. Undergraduate life is almost over. My application proces for a PhD is maybe in a mess. I dont know which places to apply to. Will I get through a good univ? Are my acads enough? Will I make it somewhere? Be someone other than a nonentity?

I hate myself. Because im so absent-minded. Because I'm so indecisive. Because that makes people think of me as an irresponsible irreparable idiot. How do I explain that im so absent minded that I forget to remember to bring back my bag from college every day? Whats wrong with my memory? Will takin memory-plus help me? Why cant I 'compartmentalize' my thoughts as my mom calls it? Why is my brain whirring all the time about so many things in parallel that I forget to think bout whats happening now?

When will I find the answers? Maybe time will tell.

Im feeling sleepy. I have had a bad attack to sinusitis today. And I havent done one small bit of useful reading. (Again I hate myself for the almost ingenous ways I find to waste time). So I decide that sleeping now and waking up early in the morning tomorrow is the best way out

Good Night.