Weather.com now not only gives you an hour-by-hour weather forecast of upto 10 days, allergy updates and pollen levels in your area, and information on ski resorts and holiday hotspots, but also tells you about mosquito levels.
How useful, especially if you are in India.
Or France.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Watery Hues - and Blues
Movie: Khuda Ke Liye
Song: Neer Bharan Kaise Jaaon
Verdict: Who'd have thought complaining about getting water from the river could sound so beautiful?
Song: Neer Bharan Kaise Jaaon
Verdict: Who'd have thought complaining about getting water from the river could sound so beautiful?
Homecoming Horrors
So how does it feel to be back home after you’ve spent the major chunk of five years out in the wild jungles of the real world, making discoveries like (1) you do not, and neither do your parents, undergo simultaneous combustion if you stay out of the house past 8:30pm, (2) not all the swimming pools in the world have green water, and (3) not all the trips you plan with friends are doomed.
The houses are just the same ,crying to be whitewashed. The bougainvillea lining the main road are just as neatly pruned as ever (because some politician or the other was recently dragged here to attend an event). The pool is still living up to its reputation as your friendly neighborhood pond (complete with algae and roaches). The campus at large is this close to taking over the Lucknow zoo (we already have beehives, monkeys, cows, dogs, cats, peacocks, neel-guys, snakes, and other wildlife of the shy-er variety).
The snakes are all right. What is really unsettling is the sea of new faces, the kids running around whom you don’t recognize, and then you see the parents and you don’t recognize them either. When a ten-year-old bumps into you in the pool, she excuses herself with a muttered ‘Sorry Aunty!’ The 3-foot younger brother of a neighbor is a towering giant of 6 feet now. Someone waves to you, and you wave a shaky, uncertain hand back, clueless as to who the other person was.
No - what's worse is when you're walking your dog in the morning, and wave when you see that one uncle, some kid's father, now with grey hair and a matching beard, walking to work. He raises that same shaky, uncertain hand when he sees you.
The houses are just the same ,crying to be whitewashed. The bougainvillea lining the main road are just as neatly pruned as ever (because some politician or the other was recently dragged here to attend an event). The pool is still living up to its reputation as your friendly neighborhood pond (complete with algae and roaches). The campus at large is this close to taking over the Lucknow zoo (we already have beehives, monkeys, cows, dogs, cats, peacocks, neel-guys, snakes, and other wildlife of the shy-er variety).
The snakes are all right. What is really unsettling is the sea of new faces, the kids running around whom you don’t recognize, and then you see the parents and you don’t recognize them either. When a ten-year-old bumps into you in the pool, she excuses herself with a muttered ‘Sorry Aunty!’ The 3-foot younger brother of a neighbor is a towering giant of 6 feet now. Someone waves to you, and you wave a shaky, uncertain hand back, clueless as to who the other person was.
No - what's worse is when you're walking your dog in the morning, and wave when you see that one uncle, some kid's father, now with grey hair and a matching beard, walking to work. He raises that same shaky, uncertain hand when he sees you.
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Unanswerable Question
People have asked me many times why I decided to be an Aerospace Engineer (glamorous term: Rocket Scientist).
There are so many questions you just don't know the answers to. But to survive, to make progress, you're supposed to come up with those answers, and repeat them until you start believing them.
The official college application answer is usually: "Even when I was a child, I loved taking things apart and seeing how they worked. I always knew I was destined to be an engineer." Yes, genius, but how does the Aerospace aspect come in? And why not become a mechanic?
The job-interview answer is usually: "I have always been fascinated by space missions." Boring, but it normally works.
The unofficial one classmate to another answer is: "My high school advisor was after my life to pick something, so I just chose the first major listed alphabetically in the college application."
The nerdy exchange usually involves Star Wars. Or Star Trek.
For the longest time, I had assumed I would never know what my inspiration was - and this became the unanswerable question. Perhaps it was the hype surrounding the NASA Mars Exploration vehicles when I was in high school. Or the Columbia Accident. Or something someone said about how great it must be to become a rocket scientist.
This afternoon, in the spirit of whiling away time, I sat down at the familiar ancient computer desk in the house, and started a game of 3-D Pinball. Ever since we acquired a computer (our first was in 1996 - and I was one of three kids in my class who had one), I had become obsessed with the game (the other two - Solitaire, and Minesweeper weren't as great). It was the game I played in secret when I should have been studying for my board exams, the game in which I competed against my own high scores, the game that I thought predicted my SAT scores even before I'd taken the tests.
As I started my space cadet training, ran through re-entry and launch missions, accumulated hyperspace bonuses, opened wormholes and gravity wells, destroyed xenographs, and repelled aliens, I suddenly knew the answer.
Who would've thought?
There are so many questions you just don't know the answers to. But to survive, to make progress, you're supposed to come up with those answers, and repeat them until you start believing them.
The official college application answer is usually: "Even when I was a child, I loved taking things apart and seeing how they worked. I always knew I was destined to be an engineer." Yes, genius, but how does the Aerospace aspect come in? And why not become a mechanic?
The job-interview answer is usually: "I have always been fascinated by space missions." Boring, but it normally works.
The unofficial one classmate to another answer is: "My high school advisor was after my life to pick something, so I just chose the first major listed alphabetically in the college application."
The nerdy exchange usually involves Star Wars. Or Star Trek.
For the longest time, I had assumed I would never know what my inspiration was - and this became the unanswerable question. Perhaps it was the hype surrounding the NASA Mars Exploration vehicles when I was in high school. Or the Columbia Accident. Or something someone said about how great it must be to become a rocket scientist.
This afternoon, in the spirit of whiling away time, I sat down at the familiar ancient computer desk in the house, and started a game of 3-D Pinball. Ever since we acquired a computer (our first was in 1996 - and I was one of three kids in my class who had one), I had become obsessed with the game (the other two - Solitaire, and Minesweeper weren't as great). It was the game I played in secret when I should have been studying for my board exams, the game in which I competed against my own high scores, the game that I thought predicted my SAT scores even before I'd taken the tests.
As I started my space cadet training, ran through re-entry and launch missions, accumulated hyperspace bonuses, opened wormholes and gravity wells, destroyed xenographs, and repelled aliens, I suddenly knew the answer.
Who would've thought?
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Awkward
When you're having a conversation with two other people, and you actually FEEL the sparks flying between them.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Ballad of the East (to) West
Cleveland --> Chicago
I couldn’t stop staring at the air hostess’ legs.
They fascinated me, like other very unfascinating things, because of how plastic they looked. I felt I was looking at the lower quarter of a 5’11” Barbie.
On my way to my next terminal, I passed
1. A replica of the Abraham Lincoln statue in D.C. (note: the original was built by Daniel Chester French – a useless fact I will remember for the rest of my life)
2. A lego replica of the statue of liberty – the only difference (besides the size and location) being that the torch was replaced by a windmill. Very funny Chicago.
3. Overhead piping of colored lights which looked like the Las Vegas airport on depressants. A calming sight nevertheless.
4. Famous Ex-Olympian Chicago residents welcoming people, over the PA system, to Chicago, the new hopeful of the 2016 Olympics.
5. Announcements advising people on how to minimize the spread of germs, carefully avoiding the words ‘swine’ and ‘flu’.
Chicago --> LA
I couldn't figure out at first if the person sitting next to me on the flight was a man or a woman. The 'person' had a lot of curly blond hair, was really tall and big, and was wearing a pantsuit. (I gave up predicting someone's gender based on their hair after the first day of my freshman orientation at UT, when the woman with beautiful long blond hair sitting in front of me turned out to be a man with a mustache and a matching beard.) After a few minutes, I heard the person speak, and found that she was a she.
I tried to sleep through the rest of the unbearably long flight (4.5 hours - the longest non-stop flight I've taken from one city to another in the US).
Just before we landed, I watched the sunset over the mountains. The mountains were beautiful - breathtakingly beautiful - there was the blue sky, with a lower crimson layer, and the mountains, and then the rest of LA. It was as if an expert artist had started painting this picture at the top, in a dream-like state, and concluded the remaining part of the painting (where the human influence began) after a fight with his wife.
The drive back to the hotel was quite eventful. Sans a GPS device (the rental agency had run out), I stumbled through the traffic, going way below the speed limit, making several annoying-last-minute lane changes, running a red light accidentally at an intersection I mistook as a continuation of the streets, having a cop honk at me, having several other drivers almost run me over, ending up in Hollywood, and finally reached the hotel, only to find at the entrance that it had a slightly different name than the one I was looking for. Great. I walked up to the receptionist and confessed, and she smiled brightly, saying - no, this is it.
I never thought I'd miss public transportation so much.
I couldn’t stop staring at the air hostess’ legs.
They fascinated me, like other very unfascinating things, because of how plastic they looked. I felt I was looking at the lower quarter of a 5’11” Barbie.
On my way to my next terminal, I passed
1. A replica of the Abraham Lincoln statue in D.C. (note: the original was built by Daniel Chester French – a useless fact I will remember for the rest of my life)
2. A lego replica of the statue of liberty – the only difference (besides the size and location) being that the torch was replaced by a windmill. Very funny Chicago.
3. Overhead piping of colored lights which looked like the Las Vegas airport on depressants. A calming sight nevertheless.
4. Famous Ex-Olympian Chicago residents welcoming people, over the PA system, to Chicago, the new hopeful of the 2016 Olympics.
5. Announcements advising people on how to minimize the spread of germs, carefully avoiding the words ‘swine’ and ‘flu’.
Chicago --> LA
I couldn't figure out at first if the person sitting next to me on the flight was a man or a woman. The 'person' had a lot of curly blond hair, was really tall and big, and was wearing a pantsuit. (I gave up predicting someone's gender based on their hair after the first day of my freshman orientation at UT, when the woman with beautiful long blond hair sitting in front of me turned out to be a man with a mustache and a matching beard.) After a few minutes, I heard the person speak, and found that she was a she.
I tried to sleep through the rest of the unbearably long flight (4.5 hours - the longest non-stop flight I've taken from one city to another in the US).
Just before we landed, I watched the sunset over the mountains. The mountains were beautiful - breathtakingly beautiful - there was the blue sky, with a lower crimson layer, and the mountains, and then the rest of LA. It was as if an expert artist had started painting this picture at the top, in a dream-like state, and concluded the remaining part of the painting (where the human influence began) after a fight with his wife.
The drive back to the hotel was quite eventful. Sans a GPS device (the rental agency had run out), I stumbled through the traffic, going way below the speed limit, making several annoying-last-minute lane changes, running a red light accidentally at an intersection I mistook as a continuation of the streets, having a cop honk at me, having several other drivers almost run me over, ending up in Hollywood, and finally reached the hotel, only to find at the entrance that it had a slightly different name than the one I was looking for. Great. I walked up to the receptionist and confessed, and she smiled brightly, saying - no, this is it.
I never thought I'd miss public transportation so much.
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