Moments in Time

The Final Night OR Night before Finals

2011-12-14T18:48:00.000-06:00

Bryan: hello. how's the day going?

me: hello. day is going quickly. wherever it is trying to go - it is in a hurry

Bryan: very true. it's already getting dark outside!

me: i think it is running off to japan

japan must be a funner place

Bryan: only during non-radioactive waste times

well, the i guess the sun is still high in hawaii

me: shining down on thousands of limping marathonions

Bryan: hehe, *onions

me: of course. deep deep down, we are all merely onions

Midterm minus 2 hours

2011-11-03T11:08:00.001-05:00

My heart (or something in the thoracic cavity) feels like it is trying to compete with the expanding universe. Or what the universe must've felt like the few minutes before the Big Bang.

If that happens, my examination answer sheet will be a gory mess. The janitors at work will not be happy.

Parking Pains

2011-10-30T02:22:00.000-05:00

'You think this location is fine? I don't want a parking ticket.'

'Fine - one way or the other'.

'Hm?'

'The difference of an article. Either fine, or a fine.'

Midterm week foods

2011-10-30T02:15:00.002-05:00

Maggi
Oatmeal+Soymilk (Silk)
Corner Bakery Tomato and Mozzarella Sandwich (where the waiter almost said 'enjoy your honeymoon!' instead of 'enjoy your food!'
Radhika Bistro leftovers of Paneer Tikka Masala and Korma and Goat cheese samosas
White Mocha Starbucks Coffee
Blueberries (FULL of anti-oxidants)
Dirty brand Jalapeno heat chips
Waffles
Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate
Maggi
Maggic
Maggi

Irreversible Pauses

2011-10-23T11:57:00.000-05:00

I went to a wake last night for a co-worker who died at an unacceptably young age.

He was an outstanding actor and singer as well. The video of one of his songs, that he sang at somebody's retirement party was played for the audience - a funny rendition of Don McLean's 'American Pie'. As the song completed, someone said 'you can stop it now' to the person sitting closest to the screen. She hit the pause button, and I saw his frame leaning on his guitar freeze on screen.

And I knew that the video wasn't done yet - that there had to be more. And yet, isn't that what death at an early age is like? You know there's more to a life, but the power goes out, the tape gets stuck, and there's nothing you can do. And you keep wondering how the video would've ended.

Who said?

2011-10-22T01:09:00.002-05:00

...that you could only have one post per day?
...that your posts had to make any sense at all?
...that classical dynamics is useful in any shape or form?

I'm sure someone did, but there have to be better things in the world to quote people on.

Speaking of quotes, I think my favorite for the day was: "He gets annoyed when others talk whilst he's interrupting" - source - 'The Little Book of One Liners' sitting on my bookshelf that I picked from a Big Bazaar during my last trip to Bombay (Mumbai still doesn't just roll off the tongue - we're just creatures of habit - is my excuse).

A hike to a haunted mansion is on the agenda for tomorrow. Plus lots of staring at homework problems and blank pages and unanswered questions on class forums. If there's time, maybe I'll be able to review my notes and determine how to keep Euler, Lagrange, Hamilton, Goldstein, Greenwood et al straight.

I did learn a new fun word the other day - Brachistochrone. Apparently, the word comes from Greek brachistos meaning 'shortest' and chrone, meaning, of course, time. The word refers to the famous 'roller coaster problem' in which a path of fastest descent has to be determined from one point to the other.

Who said grad level aerospace classes only introduced students to knowledge, equations, and sleepless nights?

Makeover

2011-10-22T00:59:00.002-05:00

I've been on a writing hiatus for a while, and look what I've missed. Blogspot has a new look! Several in fact - I had to choose between 'Awesome.inc' and 'Ethereal' and 'Travel'. I went with one of the travel options - cool layout - although maybe an eyesore to read.

I know at some point I will start to miss my masterpiece customized layout, with the explosive mind-numbing colors that blinded the reader without warning.

Maybe it's time to grow up.

The Bachelor's Life

2010-03-14T16:13:00.002-05:00

2:00 pm - It's 2. I should get out of bed. Get something to eat.
2:10 pm - Hm. Rice? Cereal?
2:15 pm - Stomach's starting to growl. Really should get something to eat.
2:18 pm - Hmm. Rice = time+dishes. Maybe there's something in the fridge?
2:20 pm - Leftover pasta. Looks grey - but smells okay. Ooh - potato salad from a week ago. Two weeks ago? Let me look at the date - 'use before 4/01'. Perfect. Got the carbs. Now for the protein. Ah - pepperjack cheese. That's 7 gm. Bingo - protein shake!

That was easy.

Post Shutter-Island Conversation

2010-02-27T17:15:00.002-06:00

"I wonder if there is a mental institution in Pasadena"
"Yes there is - they call it Caltech."
"Right, and JPL is Ward C"
"They do a good job keeping the patients amused then. 'Sure son - go ahead and think you are driving a rover on Mars. Very good now.' "

Chocolate Dreams

2010-02-06T20:14:00.003-06:00

How rocket scientists roll..

11:07 PM
Me: Maybe I could propose an experiment to study the behavior of chocolate in outer space - what if aliens only ate chocolate? These questions are important!
Friend: Yeap, it could be an experiment on martian transfer diets. If astronauts only eat Chocolate for 7 months, what will happen?
Me: I'd volunteer!!
Friend: I'd be a reference for you
Me: Awesome
Friend: Mutiny on the space station
Me: Crazed astronaut claims chocolate stash for herself. Rest of the crew forcefully bundled into next Soyuz capsule and sent home. Public questions NASA's psychological criteria for their astronaut program
Friend: Crazed astronaut leaves Earth's orbit in search of mythical chocolate planet?
Me: the not-so-mythical chocolate planet
a much better place!
where global warming would only make things better!
imagine - you could lie down under a chocolate tree and just wait for the chocolate to melt :)
Friend: hahahaha
"where global warming would only make things better!"
quick, pollute pollute! It's not melted yet!!
polar chocolate caps?
Me: and snow = chocolate puffs!
and volcanoes that spew out molten chocolate.
I think I'd live inside a volcano

Rickety Science

2009-12-18T02:12:00.004-06:00

My date to the JPL holiday dance bailed on me because he had to fly to Houston for work.

I'd asked him to tell Houston he had a problem.

But I guess the world really only cares about Apollo-13 sized calamities.

Eye for an I

2009-12-15T18:32:00.003-06:00

What do you do when post scripts such as 'Sent from my iPhone' and 'Sent from my BlackBerry' at the end of perfectly inane emails, which could have done without those extra additions, which unfortunately make the innocent owners take on the appearance of smug endorsers, waving around their expensive phones in your face with smug sing-song 'nyah nyahs' start getting on your nerves?

You reply, innocently enough, and at the very end, tack on a 'Sent from my ePhone' or 'Sent from my PurpleBerry'.

Symbiosis

2009-10-14T06:26:00.001-05:00

Is Twitter on Facebook?

Gmail Gags

2009-09-27T16:13:00.006-05:00

Spamin' your inbox - nobody does it better than google.

Die On The Moon?
Find Die On The MoonHere For Sure Low Prices, Fast Shipping Till Gone
www.OhMyCrafts.com

UFO Evidence: Facts
Aliens & UFO: The Gray Area This is the Reality.
fourthkindencounters.blogspot.com

Space Flight?- Bella Gaia
"It Really felt like I was Back in Space" - NASA Astronaut
www.bellagaia.com

Been Chased By Zombies?
Shop Fun Unique Zombies Themed Gear For Yourself Or As Gifts!
www.CafePress.com

Single and Over 40?
Meet Older, Sincere Daters Everyone is Serious and Screened.
MatureSinglesOnly.com

Big Beautiful Woman
Full Encyclopedia Entry 1 Page of Information
BookRags.com

If I ever get around to clicking on any of those links (they're amusing enough without having to), I'll know I need help. Until then, at least I know I have a life.

A Whiff of Europe

2009-07-05T23:47:00.004-05:00

(Originally published in Nazar on July 5th, 2009)

Europe is an adult’s gingerbread house. It is made of gelato dreams and beer fantasies, made better (or worse, depending on your perspective) by movies such as A Roman Holiday and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge.

Which does not mean that Europe is not the magical land that everyone claims it to be. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Hansel and Gretel’s gingerbread house exists. Santa Claus exists. And magical Europe exists as well.

But if you go looking for the gingerbread house in a tour bus with, say, a dozen rowdy kids and a tour manager who was probably a prison guard in a past life, who lets you off at famous sights along the way such as the Eiffel Tower, the Rhine Falls, the Big Ben, for only 30 minutes at a time, sufficient time to hop off the bus, take a blurry photograph, grab a souvenir, do a power-walk through the surrounding areas, and hop back on the bus, you will hardly be described as being the happiest camper when you do reach the gingerbread house of your dreams.

Wisecracks for centuries have been raving about how it is the journey and not the destination that matters. And guess what, they’re actually right.

Over just 11 days, my tour group covered Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France, and England. I made a wish at the wishing fountain in Rome, straightened up the Leaning tower of Pisa in the characteristic tourist pose, got a view of Switzerland from its highest point, and saw the famous statue of a little kid pissing in Belgium. I visited Harry Potter’s enigmatic Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station in London, I saw a man churn out a figure of gorgeous fish from molten glass in Venice’s Murano Glass factory, and I tasted the famous Black Forest cake in Germany’s original Black Forest itself.

But my Roman Holiday was mostly spent inside the bus, looking left and then right, as our tour guide pointed out Rome’s various sights. We passed right through Zurich, while everyone screamed at the driver to stop. There was no time to climb to the top of the Leaning Tower, no time to explore the vast expanse of the Vatican church, no time to go parasailing, or gondola-riding, or to sit down and have a fancy meal on the roadside in Paris.

For most of the trip, I felt like a dog on a leash, with a master who insisted on yanking me away the minute I found something amazing to sniff at.

In conclusion, to err is human, but to buy a tour package is idiotic.

(Click here for pictures!)

Newest Feature

2009-06-20T23:38:00.002-05:00

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.

Watery Hues - and Blues

2009-06-19T23:21:00.002-05:00

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?

Homecoming Horrors

2009-06-19T05:47:00.004-05:00

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 Unanswerable Question

2009-06-15T04:59:00.004-05:00

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?

Awkward

2009-05-17T21:18:00.002-05:00

When you're having a conversation with two other people, and you actually FEEL the sparks flying between them.

New Exercise Regime

2009-05-16T21:16:00.005-05:00

Is it ironic that my sore glute muscles are kicking my butt?

Ballad of the East (to) West

2009-05-11T01:53:00.004-05:00

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.

The Speed of Wit

2009-05-09T18:03:00.004-05:00

The guy behind the check-out desk at the library smiled when he asked me what my last name was.
'Any relation to the steel tycoon?' he inquired when I told him, simultaneously sifting through a little box, trying to locate my card.
It wasn't the first time I was getting that question. Lakshmi Mittal, the bulti*-trillionaire, is famous in Cleveland, thanks to his many giant buildings littering the city, and several hundred side-road-signs with 'Mittal Steel' in huge lettering and the words 'Clean up for real' in much smaller print reminding people to save the environment.
'Of course,' I said. 'He's my father.'
The guy's eyes widened.
'Then you must be...,' he began
'Vanisha? No, I was kidding. My dad's a scientist.'
The guy laughed. 'You almost had me there. What kind of scientist?'
'He's a nuclear scientist.'
'Wow,' the guy said. 'Intense. What's his name? I might've heard of him.'
'Dr. Kalam. A.P.J Abdul Kalam. '
The guy froze while scanning the stack of DVDs I had placed in front of him.
'The President?'
'Ex-President,' I corrected him.
The guy stared at me.
'Hah,' he said at last. 'You're pulling my leg.'
'With a steel rope,' I said, laughing at last, as I collected my DVDs and put them away in my bag.
---
At least that was how I should have responded to his question. Instead, when he asked me if I was related to Mr. Lakshmi. Mittal, I laughed and said 'I wish'.

Alas, wit is undeniably the tortoise in the race of life.

*bulti=multi x 10^3

Oysters of Wisdom

2009-05-01T18:28:00.003-05:00

"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plan." - AA, friend
"Be careful of excelling at things you don't like." - JK, co-worker

Ctrl C + Ctrl V

2009-04-27T22:40:00.007-05:00

They are, undoubtedly, the most powerful keyboard shortcuts known to the human species.

Since that's all the engineering education I'm really using at work these days, I figured I could get some creativity out of this.

Experiments in Madness...

2009-04-25T20:09:00.002-05:00

...and the blog-source HTML.
I will not shut down this blog and put up the 'Under Maintainance' sign.
Simply because I don't know how to.

Over the next few hours/days/weeks, the page will most likely undergo several surgeries/mutations and turn out totally awkward and funny and not too (I hope) nauseating looking.

Dork-hood

2009-04-25T16:15:00.002-05:00

I am currently on an online apartment searching spree. My friends know that. When some of them enquired how it was going, I said that it was coming along, and that I had my excel sheet with at least 10 entries. I had columns for the apartment name, price, features, deposit/application requirements, address, contact info, distance from work, etc.

For some reason, they cracked up.

After some brainstorming, I thought I understood.

The Microwave Effect

2009-04-22T23:36:00.004-05:00

It was cold this morning.
Waiting at the bus stop, bundled up in my 3 coats and jackets, I felt my body slowly disappear.

When I sat down in the blissfully warm bus, I felt like I was defrosting.

Fixations

2009-04-21T23:50:00.003-05:00

Another thought just struck me regarding Jhumpa Lahiri.
She's like the Freud of Indian-American literature. Freud talked extensively about oral fixations, until somebody wisely pointed out the cigar he always had in his mouth. And the smartest thing he could come up with was "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".

Referring to my previous observation (April 19th), someone could just Ms. Lahiri that sometimes, a slipper is just a slipper.

Nonsense Actually

2009-04-21T21:03:00.004-05:00

So I was right. Love Actually is a slimy, cheesy, corny, worthless movie. Except for perhaps two decent scenes.

Last one today, I promise

2009-04-19T21:01:00.003-05:00

So when I took the GRE, they (refers to vague authority figures that manifested themselves to me in the form of official-looking terms and conditions) made me promise that I would never-ever divulge the contents of the test to anyone. I forget what the consequences are.

What I hated about that test was ... well - more than just one thing, but I'm too lazy to go back and change the beginning of the sentence to refer to plural quantities. I hated that test. It was awful. The verbal section in particular. Being tested on words that any sane engineering student (I know none of them really are, but this is a figure of speech) would never encounter in his/her life, is completely bizarre. There was one particular word, the spelling of which fascinated me, because it didn't even make sense. It seemed to defy the logic of vowels being separated by consonants in normal English words. I thought I would do something special the day I came across it - which would probably be never.

And guess what, here it was today, in one of the Gilmore Girls episodes. Used not once, twice, thrice (yes, I insist on using that word), but at least 8 times.

Am I doubting my harsh judgement about the usefulness of the GRE? Not really. Most engineers don't come across words like that. And when we do, dictionary.com is only a click away.

Unaccustomed Earth and Other Viruses the World doesn't know about

2009-04-19T20:24:00.007-05:00

Jhumpa Lahiri. Pretty woman. No really - her picture on the back of my library copy kept me intrigued each time I shut the book, inwardly cursing her.

Actually, she's a great writer. She has poise. She has style. She looks it.

I loved the Interpreter of Maladies. I even thought the Namesake was decent, although the story had nothing to do with the name of the book, and it seemed to me like she was given an impossible deadline by her publishers to declare a name for her book, which she did, with the plot only half-formed in her head, and when she realized after 3 chapters of writing it that it was really lame, she continued writing anyway, taking the story on its rightful course, trying till the end to make the name of the book relate to the story, and failed. But it was still a good read, if I completely ignored the title. And they say what's in a name.

She has talent. But Oh My God - she's depressing.

I think I would be scared to know her as a person, knowing that she was analyzing my every move, interpreting every action as being and meaning something deeper, darker, sinister, pointing like glow-rods towards my guilt. So if I were to randomly declare that I always wear slippers, (not that I would, because that would be rather silly) she would make it seem like I was one of those girls who was trained to keep her feet clean on the cold bare floors of Indian houses, and craved the feeling of rubber against my sole even when none was required on All-American-Carpeted floors, even though the simple explanation could just be that I just wore slippers because the dogs butt-rubbed themselves all over the carpets.

Even that's all right. But really, she's running out of content. Every story reads the same now. Newly married couple from India moves to the US. They have a tough life. Then they have kids. And the kids are totally screwed up and confused ABCDs. Meanwhile, the parents think back to the lives they left behind. Their parents. Who get sick and die and/or crave their children's company, children who left them to chase fame, fortunes, and Ford-Escorts.

Okay, so I'm not pigeon-holing her. She adds variety. Sometimes, it is just one guy who moves from India (Calcutta actually) and finds an american woman and marries her. And then they have kids. And the kids are totally screwed up and confused half-ABCDs. Etc. etc.

Pain, misery, home-sickness, guilt. And that is Ms. Lahiri's range of experiences for her characters.

Somebody needs to introduce her to the AerOnion.

Belated Babblings

2009-04-19T20:11:00.003-05:00

I have been away from my blog for too long. And I intend to make up for it, by posting a gazillion posts right now while I'm in the mood, free, procrastinating actually, high on a klondike oreo-flavored ice-cream square, I'm sorry, cuboid, oh no, it really should be parallelopiped. I wonder if that is like forgetting to drink water all day and making up for it by drinking a liter before going to bed. I do it all the time. Which makes me think that it works. Whatever.

I am finally comfortable where I am. I have discovered the perfect number of pillows to keep me propped up while I lazily sit in front of the genius-box (euphemism for a laptop, take on the idiot-box for the less-literally inclined), watching episodes of Gilmore Girls, a new found addiction, random movies from the library, such as Love Actually, a movie that I'm actually giving a second chance to, trying to find out if I have become (theoretically) less cynical about the movie, because I hated it the first time, and while I have the tissue box, my water bottle, my phone, and the light switch perfectly positioned within arm's reach so I can be a non-conformist and save up my calories. Just wonderful.

I was checked in the seventh grade for run-on sentences. So nice to not have peer evaluations of your writing on your own blog. Aha!

Too bad I'd better start planning to uproot this comfortable-ity right about now.
Yippie.

New Beginnings

2009-04-14T20:20:00.002-05:00

This morning, I woke up, and I felt like something was missing. I thought - maybe, just maybe, the love was finally gone.
What a relief.

What makes things un-funny

2009-04-05T15:57:00.002-05:00

'I've lost my voice', I whispered hoarsely for the tenth time in the past hour. The coffee girl behind the counter laughed. A few hours ago, I would have laughed with her. However, pulling out my little notebook, I quickly jotted down my order and showed it to her. As I walked away, I had a distinct feeling that the whole thing was taking on the air of something quite unpleasant.
Earlier, at the pharmacy, a note about my condition made the pharmacist exclaim - 'There is NOTHING that can bring your voice back!' I'd given him a thumbs up and walked out.

I'm not usually very talkative. Unless I'm surrounded by people who are lower down on the talkative scale than I am, which leads me to talk 2-3 times more than I normally would to keep the silence and awkwardness at bay.

The flu seemed harmless at first. Modern, easily accessible medicine kept the symptoms under cover, and I functioned normally. Towards the end of the week, a tadpole in my throat was born, and quickly grew to take on its role as a full fledged working-frog. Alistair MacLean described this condition succinctly in one of his books, when the hero sounded like a toad or a frog with bronchitis.

Even though the prospect of taking flash cards to work on Monday seemed amusing at first, I don't think I can do it anymore.

What makes things less amusing? Fear. Fear of what? Death. What brings on fear? Old age.

The Idle-llic Life

2009-01-17T07:55:00.003-06:00

With the last grad school application over, and parents away, I have had too much free time, and too much free energy to boot. While singing to annoy my sister, throwing sheep, cows, and elephants at friends on facebook, and catching up with movies were fun initially, I soon made a remarkable discovery.

The idle life's not really for me.

Something stronger than superego starts eating away at my innards when I'm sitting and doing nothing. The energy I'm not using acts like a super-excited state of matter, pulsing and throwing itself at all my organs and limbs, willing them to move.

Reading helps. A little. The 3 books I'm reading right now are 'Ignited Minds' by A.P.J. Kalam, '1001 Arabian Nights' translated by Richard Burton, and 'The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night Time' by Mark Haddon. All excellent. Even though my neurons are sweating and panting their dendrons off, there was a slight problem with this activity: the sitting still part.

I decided to try something new. Something so unique that most people my age wouldn't even begin to think of it. Something that would allow me unleash my creativity and burned calories as a side effect. Finally, I hit upon the best kind of indoor exercise - cleaning.

The switch boards and switches and ceiling fans came first. Then the doors. Followed by the 50 odd bunches of artificial flowers around the house (I counted). My sister and I attacked the storeroom together. We sorted through suitcases full of clothes and papers and single, divorced socks, and bags full of bags, and random objects prized by parents for no apparent reason. We categorized items and reorganized them: Mum's clothes went in one bag, craft supplies in another, old broken electronics in yet another, and so on. I made another bag for myself - and put all the orphaned items in it. These included - a pirate patch, a set of fake nails, an old used order-form-less 3-D camera with Pepsi's baby pictures trapped in it - and my favorite... a live-mosquito trap "For the Novice Trapper. Catch them live and make your own mosquito-fur coat!".

I think we need to donate half our house to Goodwill.

Home

2009-01-06T23:02:00.000-06:00

Wow - it's 2009.

It's amazing how much happened since the toenail incident. Jumping off a bridge. The Great Waltz. The GRE. The FE. JPL. Raytheon. Lockheed. The drivers license test. Twice. Berkeley. And 5 other graduate schools. Las Vegas. Packing. Moving. A million times.

65 hours to reach home. And almost not making it. The luggage not making it at all.

I'm home now. And none of that matters anymore.

Waltzing with Band-Aids

2008-10-05T10:33:00.004-05:00

It was past midnight on Saturday when I called the nurse help-line.

'What's the problem?' a british voice finally asked me after getting the history of my illnesses from the beginning of time.
'I injured my toe-nail'.
There was a very deliberate pause.
The voice found itself at last. 'How did it happen?
It was my turn to pause. 'I stepped on myself.'

Yes, I felt silly. Silly because I was calling up the nurse on-call about a toenail. Silly because I couldn't even blame anyone, or anything (not even alcohol), for hurting myself to the extent that I couldn't even walk properly, and had a very significant limp.

I was surprised to find that toenails can wreck havoc in one's normal life. If broken, they usually get infected, or have to be surgically removed.

Fortunately, mine didn't. I was told to keep it covered with a band-aid at all times and shut up. My toenail's a fighter, and by Wednesday, I half-forgot about my limp. When my partner in my waltz class stepped on my toe (the toe) yesterday, and started apologizing profusely, I laughed it off, saying I was more in danger of inflicting damage on myself by stepping on my toes than he ever could.

I did rediscover the principle of the conservation of pain. The minute the pain in my toenails left me, my knees went on a strike. And when that ended, I mysteriously cut my thumb.

I think I'm going to single-handedly revitalize the failing US economy with my neverending band-aid purchases.

Fighting demons and dragons

2008-08-17T09:53:00.002-05:00

So - another 5 days and I'll be done with my second stint at NASA this summer. But the next few days will be far from dull - I have to write two papers, participate in a JPL-Team-X-like mission design exercise, make a final presentation, write a couple of articles, and worst of all - pack.

Is it weird that all this feels normal? Probably not - seven semesters at school have prepared me well for something like this. I complain and whine out of habit - one of my friends, after listening to my tirade said, 'So - what's new?' Another one claimed that I always made my life sound like I was fighting demons and dragons.

I think it's natural to want some drama in one's life.

City-trotter

2008-08-11T20:53:00.004-05:00

I'd never understood what falling in love with a city meant.

Lucknow was a harsh, hot city, with too many cars on the roads, too much dust in the air, not enough trees to hide the the murkiness and poverty all around, too many eyes that I learned to pretend to ignore while taking the buses to and from school. I loved it because in the sea of dirt and dust and sweat, I could usually spot a familiar face from my childhood, or have the best ice-cream for two rupees, or just think about the people I cared for most who were not very far away.

Ann Arbor was nice. When I think back though, there is little of the city that I remember - other than the trips between school and home, home and school, my first memorable snowfall, halloween, hunting for gypsy moths, puberty, the pretzels at briarwood mall, and the 'oh-hell' card game I learned.

Austin...was not the north-east. Perhaps I had dreams of the east coast with its magnificent old architecture, the smart-looking people, the cool weather - when I first came to Austin, having seen little else in all my time in the country before. I liked the little neighborhoods, but the buildings on campus were awful, and I the absence of snow and boots and heavy jackets was disappointing. It took a while - to appreciate the oddity of the place, the live music, the lethargy, the sunny weather - a nice escape from the sub-zero temperatures maintained indoors.

Cleveland was one of those cities that I wondered about - I wondered why people would decide to live here all their lives. People over 65 probably made up the bulk of the population, the city was old and windy, rated one of the poorest cities in the United States, and also one of the coldest - because of the lake effect, and no Sun for 4-5 months.

People complain too much. I remember this animal crackers comic strip - the gnu had just had a brainwave - he declared that he knew why the grass was greener on the other side - because they dyed it!

Cleveland's awesome. A visit downtown is like walking into a movie-rental place - there so much to see, all around. A string of parks surrounds the city - known as the emerald necklace. A river runs through it, called the Cuyahoga (which literally means crooked river) - which caught on fire several times in the last few decades. There are several old houses with secret quarters where sympathetic owners hid slaves prior to the civil war. The Cleveland Clinic is really an art museum or classical music paradise.

And when I go back to Austin now, I can smile while wearing summer clothes in January, enjoy the local artists performing in coffee shops, smile when a random stranger passes a compliment on the street corner.

Lucknow's become exquisite too - with the parts of it that are changing, and the parts that remain endearingly the same - the driveway, the garden, the campus gate.

Likewise, Delhi, Manipal, Allahabad, Cincinnati, Philadelphia have some special spots. They all are the same under all the layers of an onion - places that some people decided to call home, and where civilization took over.

The secret to loving anything is the impermanence of it. The secret to loving anyplace is to go away - and keep coming back.

Adventures Unlimited ...

2008-07-06T00:11:00.006-05:00

It all started with my decision of visiting friends over the 4th of July weekend. Excited that I found a cheap-ish ticket, I booked it right away, informed co-workers I would be taking a day off, and told my friends to expect my intrusion in a couple of weeks.

And I prompty forgot about it all until the day I had to leave.

Looking down from the plane, which was supposed to land in Newark, I saw a lot of tall buildings. Hmm, I thought. This place looks a lot like New York City. I saw something that looked suspiciously like the Empire State Building, and shook my head at the apparent imitation-trend engulfing the nation.

Once I landed, I called Aditi, telling her I was here. Aditi told me she was almost there to pick me up.

It took both of us some time to realize that 'here' was not exactly equal to 'there'. 'There' was what it should have been, the Newark International Airport. In my carelessness/excitement, I had booked the wrong ticket, and landed at the Laguardia Airport.

Things could have been worse than having to take a shuttle to the Newark Airport and meeting my friend and reaching her place 4 hours later (which included a back-tracking trip to locate her lost debit card). On the shuttle between NYC and Newark, I met two strangers, both from Texas, who shared random characteristics with me, and one another, and remarked on the amazement of life the whole way.

I thought the entire situation was absurdly funny. My dad, who had been keeping tabs on my travel, didn't share my views.

Philadelphia is awesome. My fourth time here was still as exciting as any other - the city is littered with astounding architectural marvels and an eclectic collection of oddities. The accidental (and entirely untentional) patriotism I displayed while spending Independence Day in the First American Capital culminated in watching the Franklin Parkway Parade, waiting in the rain for the fireworks, and eventually watching them from Aditi's enviable bay window.

Today was Atlantic City Day. We went to the beach, wrote
our names in the sand, collected shells, fed the sea-gulls Cheetos, walked in and out of Casinos, did some spontaneous shopping, and had our palms read. We also had a mini-celebration of our birthdays (just a day apart) with a no-nonsense chocolate cake (which we decorated ourselves).

And we also ran down 10 blocks to catch the train back.

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

The new issue of Nazar came out today - My humble contributions:
Not Every Dog has its Day
All's Fair in Love and...

With every issue, I continue to be amazed at the talent and dedication that a group of then-freshmen showed, and continue to maintain over time.

Get Well Poem

2008-06-27T21:21:00.007-05:00

Five years ago, my newly married cousin got really really sick. I just stumbled upon the get-well poem I wrote for him then.

The last few days, for you, must've been hell,
Even 16 km away, I can tell,
That you'd rather be sitting as was pre-decided,
In wa bar with dim lights and tolling bells,
Drinking to bhabhi's, my and your own health,
Caring a fig about health being wealth,
How does it feel, Vishal Bhaiya, to lie all day,
With an aching back and nothing to say,
Staring at different ceilings in different houses,
Dreaming of boots, shirts, or doing self analysis!
Studying the activity of spiders and their ilk,
Being force-fed pills, tablets and milk,
Periodically being resigned to four people plunging,
Your body in ice-cold water and sponging,
But all this is the darkness behind the candle,
Or to be more scientific, the penumbra mantle,
All your worries have been replaced by just one,
To get well soon, and go out in the Sun,
So how does it feel, Vishal Bhaiya, to lie all day,
And having your meals while in bed you stay,
A week-long break with nothing to do,
A nd a million people calling and asking after you,
Getting silly get-well cards like this one,
And being bombarded with good wishes, on the run,
Having somebody staying up nights for you,
If you carry on like this, you'll have a crew!
Getting so much attention, it makes me jealous,
(Don't raise your eyebrows, I've always been callous,)
Anyway, enjoy your convalescence, and take your time,
To plan out an ingenious crime,
People have done great things while they were recovering,
So why not you?? Take advantage of what's occurring!

Re-defining English

2008-06-18T19:49:00.003-05:00

Something I wrote a few years ago -

Literally:

1. GRANARY – grandmotherhood
2. TABOO – what a magician-turned-ghost would say
3. STALEMATE – boring pal
4. KILOBYTE – how a rabid dog kills
5. KIDNAP – children’s mid-afternoon siesta
6. MUTATE – become dumb
7. BROADCAST – overweight film casting crew

Realistically:

1. WEATHER-a lifesaving topic you resort to when all other conversation is failing.
2. SWIMMING POOL- a place where you can go to console yourself that others in the world are fatter than you are
3. NEWSPAPER- an accessory that helps you spy on the people sitting around you
4. EXERCISE BIKE- a piece of furniture that doubles up as a clothes hanger
5. DICTIONARY- a gigantic paper weight that sometimes encloses one’s dry-flower collection
6. LECTURE- a respectable and formalized version of a lullaby
7. VOLUNTEER- person who goes around collecting free T-shirts
8. JEANS - weight detectors (better and more reliable than weighing machines)
9. SECRET – something that everyone knows but pretends not to know
10. CELEBRITY – a person whose death makes headlines

And finally, inventing some on my own:

1. PERUSALTRAUMA – act of repeatedly counting the number of pages left to read in a particularly boring reading assignment
2. SIDDLE – move from side to side in a vain attempt to let the person in front of you pass by, only to find that he/she is doing the same
3. STUPIDITIOUS – person who believes that the next pinball game will show him his math test score
4. QUICKLEAN – act of cleaning up the house or your room five minutes before guests arrive
5. DISALBUWEL – remove personally unflattering pictures from an album
6. BRANDANCY- loyalty to a particular brand in the market
7. MASSMANIA – weighing yourself immediately after skipping a meal to see if some weight has dissipated
8. PICKACY – art of selecting the largest piece of pastry on a platter without the host or other guests noticing
9. SLAPTREATMENT – hitting the television/music deck/video-player to make it work

Chasing Centaurs and Thunderstorms

2008-06-15T21:21:00.005-05:00

So I'm back in Cleveland. The city that was established in 1796. The city with enough winding roads to put the Land of Oz to shame.

Work this time around is definitely cooler. Co-workers include some quirky and brilliant office-mates, who're rocket-scientists in the real-ist sense. Conversations range from martial arts to stock market misadventures, and going sailing during a forecasted thunderstorm in the middle of the work-day is considered to be perfectly normal. (I survived this particular expedition, and later learned that sailing that day was the stupidest thing to do, probably worthy of a Darwin award (which is awarded to people who do humanity a favor by removing themselves from the gene pool) , because a sailboat in a storm on lake Erie is like a lightning rod, and we could have been fried, and it was also Friday the Thirteenth).

Oh well.
I'm still here to report on this - and even though google services are far-reaching, I doubt that they extend to the afterlife.

I was also recently asked to gather some information on centaurs, celestial bodies that are similar to asteroids, and found mainly between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. Tracking and hunting down each one of the 119 known centaurs look up a large part of two days. But now I know something about Transneptunian Objects, electric propulsion, the Kuiper Belt, and other tidbits that I could save the world with.

Ice-skating yesterday was cool. And not just temperature-wise. At least three different people noticed my friend and me struggling during our attempt to skate backwards, and offered their advice. The best one we got was to sing while trying to skate like that.

And what do you know... it works.

The Art of Lying – Honestly

2008-05-11T12:14:00.002-05:00

Don’t get me wrong – this article does not advise you to change into a dishonest deceitful turncoat, nor does it proclaim that lying is the way out of any difficult situation. I believe honesty is still the best policy – though in a different way than our forefathers (and mothers) probably thought.

In today’s world, there can be 2 variations of the truth – the ‘whole’ truth and the ‘hole’ truth.

The ‘whole’ truth – this means just what it is supposed to mean – giving your version of the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Useful only when you are morally upright, innocent, fearless, and are dating the Hulk.

The ‘hole’ truth – this means, well, the truth with a hole. This aspect marks a slight digression from the ‘whole’ truth. Though not strictly a lie, it does represent a butchered form of the real thing. Useful while trying to wiggle out of unpleasant skirmishes, or avoiding unpleasant people. Requirements include wit, quick thinking and as always, fearlessness.

Being the ideal person includes having a tendency to maintain a balance between the mentioned kinds of truth. The examples that follow make it evident that different circumstances require the application of different tactics.

Scene 1. After finals, you bump into the class nerd, who has won every scholarship under the Sun, has a 4.5/4.0 GPA, is going to MIT for graduate school (because they begged him to), and will save the world with his Nobel prizes, Oscars, Pulitzers etc.

Nerd: “Hey – how’d you do in that class?”

Your response:
The Hole Truth – “Superb – made an A”
The Whole Truth– Well, at least in one the subjects in pre-school you did.

Comment – notice how, by leaving out some details, thus disguising the truth, you can actually ingratiate yourself. Isn’t that better than revealing that you flunked the rest of the tests, never turned in your homework, and actually had to fight with the professor to get a C?

Scene 2: Your friends are insisting to go karaoke.

The Whole Truth: You’re in no mood to go because (a) you’d rather watch the movie you recently borrowed from a friend or (b) you don’t want them to discover your abysmal knowledge of songs or (c) you suck at singing. Period.

The Hole truth: (Also known as excuses)

1) Say you’re actually more than 5000 miles away (without saying away from WHAT – you are technically more than 5000 miles away from the Moon or Antarctica etc) – and that you’d really love to join them but can’t)

2) Take a bubble bath. Then call your friends and tell them you’re somewhere in the Pacific (after all, at least one molecule from the 20 gallons of water you’re in has probably been in the Pacific at some point – thanks to the water cycle).

3) Microwave a date (the dry fruit). Then tell your friends you’d go, but you have a hot date.

Scene 3: Your parents are getting on your nerves to get married and settle down (since you have a job now).

The Whole Truth: You don’t want to. Because you’re lazy, and don’t want to look after another hapless individual. Also, you’d rather sleep in every morning, go clubbing obsessively, flirt outrageously, drink boundlessly…etc.

The Hole Truth: Cheerfully, tell them you’re gay. (The word, after all, has more than one dictionary meaning). Recommended if you revel in family scandals.

Ode to an Umbrella

2008-05-11T10:37:00.002-05:00

This one's real - I wrote it after a friend broke my umbrella and then never replaced it. Apparently this wasn't effective enough, because he still hasn't.... on the bright side, I have something to always yell at him about.

Ode to a Broken Umbrella
(2007)

Oh, how I miss thee!
Thy colorful shade,
Thy tawny haze,
That offered protection against the elements,
Burning heat, icy sleet,
Those rare snowstorms as well.

Though most may not have appreciated thy blinding beauty,
Nor admired thy serviceability,
But when I held thee in my hand,
I felt like a long lost ship that had reached land.

My foul-weather friend thee was,
When all had walked out on me,
Through dreary days, and watery ways,
Thee kept me as dry as I could be.

That fateful day,
When that fated hand swung you to and fro,
And I watched in horror as thy torso snapped,
And I mourned your demise with woe.
Thee lies buried in my corner drawer,

While I dream of happier times,
And when the clouds burst, and I am forced to,
Cower under an ugly black trash bag,
I think to myself…someday…
Someday...I will have my revenge.

My life...

2008-05-11T09:33:00.006-05:00

...as a stupid, rebellious teenager :)

IT’S MY LIFE
(2004)

The wise old woman sat back in her chair,
The sun glittered lightly on her snow-white hair.
‘It’s a big bad world,’ she said to me, ‘so remember what you’re told,
Humour the young and listen to the old.
Follow the rules, not your heart.
It maybe hard, but it’s a start.
Let your future lie in the hands of others,
They’re all your friends, or sisters and brothers.
Happiness is living in society,
So push aside thoughts of freedom and liberty.’

Lost in this labyrinth of old - world wisdom,
Rambling in the darkness under this blanket of dogmatism,
I seek my way out, out of this cage,
And walk into the waiting world’s enigmatic haze.
If living means breaking the rules, then I’m a rebel.
If society is heaven, then I’d rather live in hell.
I have my desires and my goals,
That I want to pursue, without any holds.
Choices are on my side, Time is not.
I want to reach infinity, where my destiny was forged.

I want to chase the receding horizons and rise above the clouds,
To conquer the skies and make my country proud.
To live and love and fight and die,
To surge ahead before the world goes by.
To watch the beauty, not the strife,
To fulfill my dreams, because it’s my life.

Eye-bags and MIA dogs

2008-05-04T10:52:00.004-05:00

Finals week.
Glazed eyes.
Day-dreams of sleep.

I found this poem while cleaning out my desktop (because my computer decided it had had enough after 3 years and secretly entered into a competition with a fellow computer from the stone age to see which could be slower) that I wrote spontaneously while talking to a friend a couple of summers ago during finals week. (That, by the way, is an example of the worst kind of run-on sentence, in case you're a a literary freak - like me).

...
my bed is always made,
my pillow lies alone,
i walk past it daily,
and my comforter's woe-begone

caffeine has taken over my fridge,
and orange juice is a dream,
and it's a daily excercise,
to keep the whites of my eyes clean

my eyes are always wide shut,
and every day is such a drag,
people tell me i could go grocery shopping,
with my built-in eyebags.

...

One of my dogs decided to be stupid and went missing recently. It's terrible when people (or animals) disappear like that - and you don't know if they'll ever be back, or if they moved on to another universe/time/life. It's like a movie that conks out 15 minutes before the end. And all you're left with is hope, or despair, and absolutely no clue about what to believe in.

I hope she's safe wherever she is.

The Last Day - Again

2008-05-02T05:20:00.002-05:00

And all of a sudden, ('ekdum se', as Medha would say) it's the last day of classes again - and another semester comes to an end.

In hindsight, nothing really bad happened this semester - but this period in life is one of the suckiest ever - and I think hormones should be given the boot...we'd be so much better off without them. But then if we did, who (or what) would we blame for all the troubles in life?

And thus end the seemingly endless controls-strucD-systems-compressibles homework cycles, late-nights of unstoppable laughter, stinky fencing equipment days, the reapeated-blue-screens-of-death, AerOnion madness, Nazar procrastination, the completely random outings like San Antonio, the chocolate festival, holi, penn masala, choir recitals, architechtural engineering showcases, engineering talent shows, balls, awesome pie-fests, climbing, bent-polishing, etc etc.

This semester was really really long. I'm almost glad it's over - so I can say the hardest goodbyes and get it over with.

Life's really really long. Which means it has infinite time to screw up in every possible way.

Bombay Dreams

2008-04-27T22:19:00.004-05:00

YouTube is awesome.
So is A.R.Rahman.

After years of searching for this part of the disastrous song I had to dance to in high school, I finally found it.

This song is probably high up on my friend Nivedita's and my embarrassing moments list - as part of an inter-school competition, we were on a team that had to show how it was talented in more than one way. So, I had to step out of my literary and quizzing comfort zone, and participate in acting, dancing, and other awful activities put on the face of the earth by aliens wronged during Creation. My only consolation is that none of it was filmed. And the human memory is a fickle thing, so most people have probably forgotten about it.

But it's still an awesome song.

Inspiration

2008-04-20T23:53:00.002-05:00

Negin just told me that she jumped off the Congress Bridge with some friends. I'd never even considered it...but it can be done - it has been done! Negin is my hero. Heroine. Whatever.

It will be something to brag about - and will definitely be more interesting than just watching bats fluttering uselessly around the bridge after sunset.

I have a new goal in life. :)

Return to Quirkiness

2008-04-20T14:09:00.006-05:00

20th April, 2008.

It's weird how some dates are so significant...I remember exactly what I was doing on this day 5 years ago - taking the IIT exam (and falling asleep midway through it!), and then attending my cousin's wedding in the evening. That was a wonderful day.

2 years ago, I left UT for the annual DBF trip to Wichita, Kansas. That was a fun trip - the plane we had built actually flew, and we witnessed some rather amazing crashes.

And right now, I'm hiding in a library, trying to get my work done for the week. A 10-page report, a test, and two other assignments. Life could be worse. So this isn't so bad.

This last week has been uplifting. I feel like I passed through a storm and came out bruised, but very much alive. And just taking a step back from things really does help you see so much better - help arrives just when you least expect it - and life puts on its unpredictability-hat again. It's just better that way.

I attended the UT chorus recital for the first time on Friday. It was amazing.... Johnny was brilliant. 'Moondance' is currently my favorite song now (which changes every other day anyway). It was interesting watching the performers....it was like looking at a group handpicked for a movie - there was diversity in size, shape, hairstyles, expressions. One singer fiercefully reminded of Edgar Allen Poe - I'm not sure why. I've never even seen pictures of that author.

Some observations:
-All the clocks in my room still show different times. One of my roommates decided I was indulging in psychological trickery... she's probably right.
-My mom, according to my sister, has taken to sleeping with her glasses on. I remember how, a few years ago, my excuse for doing that was that 'my glasses help me see my dreams better'.
-At my roommate's birthday dinner the other day, I found that shooting tortilla chip-crumbs at people through drinking straws is the most fun thing ever.

Discovery

2008-04-13T03:16:00.000-05:00

I made a discovery today...

I really don't like the American language.

Numb

2008-04-12T00:29:00.005-05:00

Sitting down at the end of a long day, and thinking about everything that happened today, I am beginning to wonder...

When did I stop caring?
When was the last time I was really, truly, ecstatically happy?
Why do some people matter so much?
Why do the ones that should ... don't?
What happened?
Why are distances so long?
Why are the good times so short?
What was I thinking?

I wish I could have gone kite-flying.

A Flicker of Happiness

2008-04-04T01:20:00.003-05:00

Have you ever seen someone's face light up when they saw you? Like literally - light up.

I think I noticed that for the first time today. I never thought I could make someone's day like that.

It felt good.

Chocolate-chip - cookie-dough - ice-cream - induced- midnight-ramblings

2008-03-30T01:43:00.009-05:00

-Jashan on Friday was frickin' awesome. The performances were great, the crowd was great, the stalls were amazing. And I just couldn't shut up. I think I did 3 days worth of talking in those 2.5 hours. I wish I could do that more often.

-I saw two Albino squirrels today....one at the Capitol and the other outside the Aerospace building. I wonder if seeing another one neutralizes the good luck the sight of the first is supposed to bring. I definitely hope not.

-Watched 21 a few hours ago. Good movie. Great soundtrack. Also found that discussing a movie with a bunch* of guys is the most useless activity ever. Don't do it. Just say no. Etc etc.

-'Soul meets body' is currently the best song in the world.

-'Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things' is probably the most interesting book that I've read in a long time...and shall leave unfinished. I guess I didn't realize that sometimes things can get really bad. Intriguing compilation though.

-Oh jeez - I have less than 4 hours of sleeping time left. Have to wake up before 6 for some involuntary volunteering. Fun times. :)

*'bunch' is the keyword here

Victory

2008-03-26T21:38:00.005-05:00

Today shall go down in history as the day the author of this blog was victorious. She overcame her hurdles, bulldozed over the competition, crossed the highest mountains and swam across the deepest lakes, defeated Time, shunned the world... etc etc.

Not really. But once I graduate, I'll do all that too.

I actually completed that elusive bouldering route that I'd been struggling with for the past 2 months. With no takes! For all you non-rock-climbers (I pity your miserable existence - you are missing out on the joy and happiness that scaling a wall can provide), it means completing a route in one go, without falling).

The past two weeks have been full of disappointments. So much so that I'm tired of them, am ready to give up and move on. That's why these small things matter so much - if I hadn't been sulking for the past few days, I'd never have been as proud of today's little achievement.

The Joy of Aerospacelessness

2008-03-22T19:14:00.004-05:00

Today was one of those days when I decided that it was a good thing that I had such a crazy schedule this semester.

After sleeping from 6pm yesterday till about 7:35 am today (with a 2-hour break in between around midnight - when I woke up for dinner/breakfast, called home and then promptly went back to sleep again), I was in a good mood when I went to volunteer today at Hornsby Bend with a group of surprisingly awake and alert engineers. Not knowing what to expect, I was surprised when we ended up at the biosolids and water treatment facility, and learned quite a lot about waste management in Austin. It's amazing what they do - using simple methods, they recycle most of the waste from the city - using digesters, ponds, aeration tanks etc. The coolest (albeit freakiest) thing I learned was that if you fell into an aeration tank, you went straight to the bottom, since it's full of air bubbles, and died. A loong Nazar meeting followed, which was fun - it had more than it's share of light moments. I did stupidly declare that I had a relatively light week coming up - neglecting to mention that included, in reality, the work for a month compressed into a single week.

Holi is being celebrated on campus tomorrow - which is one thing I can look forward to. Not being at home for Holi sucks. Missing Papa's birthday today sucks even more. :(

But at least I get to look like a colorful whacko tomorrow. :)

Neuron Malfunction

2008-03-15T16:32:00.001-05:00

I feel like I'm in a movie . . . in which I'm the villain.

Breathe in

2008-03-15T12:32:00.004-05:00

...is what I have to keep telling myself at moments like these, when the pile of work in front of me is so tall, that I can't even face it (I stopped growing a long time ago).

Percentage wise, I think I've covered 10% of my total work-load, all the way till Friday. Woohoo.

I try to look at the big picture when one of these anxiety attacks is playing hide-and-seek with me. All these grades probably won't matter in the long run. I already have a job offer, will be able to get into grad school if I wanted, or volunteer in Africa or India if I felt like, or if ALL else failed....just get married and do nothing (the questionable privilege of being a girl).

I'm not serious about that last part...but I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the world won't come to an end. Which is what I told my sister countless times during our many conversations on the eve of her examinations, when she was on the verge of freaking out.

I think freaking out runs in the family.

Knowing that all this doesn't matter doesn't help. Taking things easy has plunged my grades in the past, so maybe part of it is superstition. Nimisha's Law #4 .... The more you freak out, the better you perform.

A couple of days ago, there was some added stress due to the same thieves previously mentioned (the hospital and book people) - with the hospital people having a blast sending me even more bills, and then making it difficult to pay by not sending all the information, and then sending the bills to the collection agency. (I'm not sure what that agency does exactly, but it sounds evil). When I complained to my dad (I seem to do that a lot - complain - it's probably a good thing I can never become someone's dad), he told me to fight those people if they tried to charge a fine, and to stop being scared and annoyed at them.

Somehow, the not being scared part hit home. Why fear a bunch of mortals... who're probably having trouble walking straight on a Friday night, or keeping cavities out of their mouths? It's easy to associate faces with bills...and voices on the phone with people.

But school work is abstract. And I'm terrified of inanimate numbers and words on paper or computer screen. And future consequences.

62 days left for the semester to end. I keep wondering why I reduce life to a series of countdowns. Counting down to the summer, or spring break, or the next visit home, or graduation.

Something tells me it's wrong. Just like forcing knowledge down my cognitive throat.
But I keep doing it anyway.

Pi Day

2008-03-14T20:52:00.004-05:00

March 14th is a very happening day. Besides being the day that Einstein, Dennis the Menace, and my friend Saumya were born on, it's also Pi-Day.

One of those Nerd holidays people come up with, to fill up their boring calendars with all sorts of not-so- special occasions (eg. Pancake Day, No-Pants Day, Valentine's Day etc).

Anyway - nerds all over the world supposedly celebrate this day in many ways - making pies tops the list, holding pi-memorizing contests, and yelling 'Happy Pi Day' at 1:59:26.

Yesterday, with nothing more exciting to do than studying for my compressibles test, I decided to give memorizing pi a shot. To see what the fuss was about. A few minutes later, I already had 50 digits after the decimal down - which made me realize that it's not really that hard.

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

I think the last time I did something crazy along these lines was 6 years ago, when my best friend Medha and I decided to learn the entire periodic table. I think we stopped before element 50.

Or maybe it was 5 years ago, when I decided to memorize the license plate numbers of every vehicle in my neighborhood. That actually caught on - and soon, all the kids in the neighborhood were doing that.

In any case, I have a bad feeling all those numbers are taking up precious thinking space in my head.

My Sister

2008-03-13T08:14:00.002-05:00

My parents called this morning to tell me that my sister had finally crossed the first frontier in her quest to become a doctor. She's officially Dr. Tulika Mittal, M.B.B.S - the first doctor in the family. And this was after weeks of non-stop, panicked phone calls from her, with her whining about how horribly she had performed on her exams, and how many more semesters she would have to repeat, and how she would never ever become a doctor.

It feels strange to realize that we're already here, at this point in time, 4.5 years later. We all knew Tulika would become a doctor the day she got into med school - she's not the kind of person who would drop out or lose interest. But hearing the statement of finality... 'your sister's a doctor now' has a different ring to it. Makes me proud. So proud.

Of course, she has a long way to go. A year-long internship, another few years of residency...and even after that, she'll be 'practicing' for the rest of her life - as the common joke goes. But I suppose saving lives, having fancy labcoats, and cool stethoscopes makes it all worth it in the end.

The Most Roundabout Conversation in the History of Roundabout Conversations

2008-03-09T21:48:00.003-05:00

What boredom and procrastination can lead to....

Ammar: weddings are over-rated
me: hell no

me: others' weddings are fun. your own never is.

Ammar: haha

Ammar: I dunno .. weddings are intellectually depressing ..

Sent at 8:30 PM on Sunday

me: EXACTLY

that's why they're awesome

Ammar: huh .. I assure u .. we are talking about two different kinds of depressing !

Sent at 8:33 PM on Sunday

me: really

Ammar: I assume so

me: what do you mean - intellectually depressing?

Ammar: when I go to weddings .. I think a lot .. the kinda thinking tht ends up with me kind of depressed by the end of the night ..

me: ahh

Ammar: that said .. that does happen in weddings tht I am attending rather IN it ..

me: well - you shouldn't be thinking

Ammar: I try tht all tht time

but apparently I have to use it sometimes

me: next time you go a wedding...i want you to follow these steps...

1. spend a LOT of time dressing up

2. go there - talk to everyone.

even the 2 year olds

3. keep an eye on the food

4. eat a LOT

5. keep an ear on the music

6. dance a LOT

and between all that - you won't even have TIME to think

dancing will nullify the eating...so you don't gain any weight either

Sent at 8:45 PM on Sunday

Ammar: 6. I don't dance ..
5. rarely do they play something I am willing to pierce my ears-drums for.
4,3. not all weddings have food, let alone good food.
2. talking to everyone is the problem .. talking to 2 yr old kids is the only way I coulda survived any wedding.
1. dressing a suit takes up a specific amount of time .. regardless of the intentions.

Sent at 8:47 PM on Sunday

me: 1. dressing up is not always supposed to have intentions or ulterior motives - it can be reflective of the mood you're in

2. weddings have plenty of kids - go track them all down

3. critique the food then... take on the role of that bloke in rattatoile (or however that's spelt)

4. see above

5. music's not always great - i agree - but it's a joyous occassion. and the music can be something to laugh at. if not, sing your own music

6. don't be absurd. " i don't always dance is acceptable" - your version of it isn't

Sent at 8:51 PM on Sunday

Ammar: 6. Last time I danced, I was 6 yrs old.
5. It's very hard to laugh at music, let alone singing my own, when it's so loud tht you can barely hear your own thoughts.
4. Eating not good food does not bring joy. It's rather a torturous thing.

Sent at 8:54 PM on Sunday

Ammar: 3.Criticizing food is usually a negative activity which doesn't help our purpose here.
2. I admitted to ur kids point!!!
1. There is only one way to put the pants and the suit on. Other than that, it's more looking at the mirror ensuring of details. Which in men's case is that is the tie straight or not!

Sent at 8:56 PM on Sunday

me: 1. you should add checking to make sure your best friends aren't wearing the same thing you are.
2. right. kids are your saviors.
3. sample the food. mix and match. throw it at kids. start a food fight. whatever!
4. eat your good food before you leave then - and then spend the evening thinking up excuses for refusing to eat any over there!
5. it's easy to laugh at music. better still, buy some swahili music and bribe the music people to play that.
6. you need to get into your 6-year-old mindset again.

Sent at 9:02 PM on Sunday

Ammar: u know we can go like this forever?

me: i take it you give up

Sent at 9:07 PM on Sunday

Ammar: oh no u didn't!

Sent at 9:08 PM on Sunday

Ammar: 6. It takes about 3 Mountain dews to get me back to 6 years old mindset. An amount that leads to complete fatness, which requires three times as much time in the gym, which is not a feasible life style, since I am still an engineer.
5. what the hell is swahili!

me: 5. google it!

Ammar: 4. Centuries of Arabic cultures and traditions has produced an infinite amount of excuses.

me: 6. not an engineer for long...and besides, nobody's getting married before you graduate! and become a non-engineer forever!

4. problem solved!

Sent at 9:12 PM on Sunday

Ammar: 3. Since I became 15, culture and society expects me to behave as an adult. Which does not involve throwing food.
2. Kids are awesome ..
1. Why the hell he buys what I buy! I bought it first ..

Sent at 9:13 PM on Sunday

me: 3 you... an adult...BAH

2 . animals are better

1. that's what friends are good for

Sent at 9:15 PM on Sunday

Ammar: 1. They can be good for other things.
2. When I get my Macaw one day, iA, I will try and take it with me to a wedding.
3. Yes .. I am legally an adult.

Sent at 9:17 PM on Sunday

Ammar: 4. which problem?
5. Swahili what... u do recognize I am not indian!
6. Engineering is a way of life.

me: 6. a way which you will NO longer be entitled to!

Ammar: don't u have a hw to take care of ..

me: 5. it's african i believe

4. the problem to do with excuses

Ammar: 6. I will have the right to it as much as u do .. we both have the same degree!

me: 3. that's just an excuse not to participate in something fun

6. no you won't

6' - because i said so

2. your macaw will do more talking than you

2' train it to think too

1. yes - friends are good for more things than that - primarily - putting useless thoughts in your head - and words in your mouth

Ammar: 2. My macaw is cool. I can already see it .. I am gonna toilet train him too.
1. and never ending arguments

me: 1. and finishing your food!

Ammar: 6. so u said .. I been running now .. I am quick ..

me: 2. good luck with that

6. no you aren't

Ammar: 2. thanks ... thas my retirement plan

me: 2. invest in it. IRA has some great money-stealing deals

Ammar: 6. well .. I gots car ..

me: 6. huh?

Ammar: 6. I am quick ... legs not enuff .. I gots car

me: 6. where does being quick come in?

Ammar: 6. u said so .. so what .. I am quick runner ..

me: 6. nah - i'll beat you any day

Ammar: 6. fo shoo

me: 6. fosho is right

Ammar: how is ur hw going?

BAM. Back to reality.

Penn Masala

2008-03-01T23:19:00.005-06:00

So I had my first semi-real journalism experience today. I volunteered to go to the Penn Masala (first indian a cappella group - they're pretty famous) show at the Union and cover it for Nazar.

Actual notes from the event.

7:40 pm Running into people I haven't seen in years. It's nice to see they still exist. And don't have piercings all over their faces or shaved eyebrows yet.

7:50 pm The show was supposed to start at 7:30. Damn Indian Standard Time.

8:00 pm I give up. Get systems engineering notes out of bag and start reading. Girl next to me gives me a funny look.

8:15 pm FINALLY - they're here. Only 45 minutes late. Wow - they're early.
No - really.

8:20 pm They're all guys. Hmmm.

9:00 pm Wow. Wow wow.

9:10 pm The crowd's going wild about one of the singers -his hair's really really big. And he has this hunchy style of singing. Reminds me of Sanjaya. Quite possibly, I'm not the only one thinking that.

9:40 pm Encore. Hurray!

Actual boring review - minus the madness.

Simple Pleasures

2008-03-01T17:31:00.004-06:00

I got my fourth Explore UT shirt today. Two years ago, I'd never dreamed that I would get sick of free t-shirts...but I think I was wrong.

Explore UT was as big as ever: people were milling around all the buildings on campus, there were games, and information booths, free balloons, candy, educational models, thousands of volunteers, happy kids, patient parents, robots, make-your-own-airplanes, $5 meals in Kinsolving, liquid nitrogen ice-cream, and probably enough activities to keep any individual busy for the rest of his/her life.

This time, I was helping TBP with its trebuchet event - they were throwing water balloons at kids. The kids were going wild, and happily screaming and trying to catch the balloons. It was quite a sight - I was highly amused. Kids are crazy.

Cute too - from a distance. One kid was trying to get the trebuchet thrower to throw a balloon at the ENS building - which over a 100 feet away. He said he'd give him $10 if he managed that. Another kid - who was barely 8 - tried to buy some water balloons from the balloon-fillers. He said he had $80. Another one asked if she could be launched from the trebuchet. The most persistent one was trying to steal the balloons as we filled them up - he tried ambush attacks, sneaking up on us, begging, pouting etc. After his seventh attempt, I decided that he'd make a great lobbyist when he grew up.

A man walking behind us commented on how kids really knew how to enjoy the simple pleasures in life.

When I got back to the WRW, I ran into Odin. He said that he was beginning to appreciate more and more what Explore UT did for kids.

I agree.

**Honorary Mention**
Ammar was great. He did, in fact, lose his voice for that trebuchet...and definitely had more fun than all the kids put together. The rest of us were going about our own business; loading the trebuchet, getting the balloons ready, but I was amazed to see how one person could make such a huge difference...the kid- crowd was three times as large when Ammar was in charge. He was yelling and cheering - and making the kids do the same. I suppose the parents are either really really thankful to him for tiring their kids for the evening, or really mad at him for making the kids lose their voices, in turn.

"Be the change you want to see in the world"

2008-02-29T23:54:00.006-06:00

I just found one of my favorite songs on youtube "Vaishnav Janato Tene Kahiyeji"... apparently, it used to be one of Gandhi's favorites too.

I don't understand the lyrics - they're in Gujrati- but my understanding is that the song talks about the best kind of qualities in a man, the kind of qualities that bring him closer to being God-like. But the music is phenomenal. The kind that finds its way straight to your heart. A totally bizarre comparison would be to the the Beatles' 'Let it be' - which has the same soothing effect on me when I'm troubled or sad.

I actually survived this week. Came out battered and bruised, but still standing. And with a will to be in better shape next time.

Had to sacrifice climbing today for a TBP event. But at least it was worth it. I'm glad I made the decision to pledge - otherwise, I'd have slowly stagnated in my own little thankless world.

While I was talking to Aditi today, she said something remarkable...that sometimes, when she talks to other people about important matters, she learns so much about how much change every individual is capable of making in the world. And that she pities the people we could have become, but didn't.

I'm realizing that now - this semester is like a new awakening...and it's nice to go back to being un-lazy and a little more hard-working. I think my brain atrophied in Cincinnati . . . and there's definitely something missing in life when learning stops. I'm beginning to understand what the whole deal with the quest for knowledge is.

And just being conscious of who I am, what I can do, and what I've become - is an encouraging thought. I think I'm really hard on myself most of the time. Things could have been so much worse.

2:49 am

2008-02-26T02:40:00.002-06:00

I definitely had my most embarrassing moment today. The only consolation is that there was only one eyewitness. :-/

My thirst for knowledge is back apparently. After... hm... 2 long years.

Week-ness

2008-02-24T17:17:00.003-06:00

Summary of last week:

-Achieved 91.67% of previously mentioned climbing route. Progress is slow. And painful. But at least it’s progress.

-Bombed Struc D test. Made silly mistakes which, if they had been punishable by law, would’ve kept me in prison for life, simultaneously sentencing me to relentless beatings, torture, and starvation.

-“Celebrated” the birth of the Aeronion with friends on the 20^th of February, by going to Amy’s. The gathering was great, but the cause wasn’t given the attention it deserved; I suppose some things are better enjoyed alone. Like Dairy Milk chocolate.

-Watched ‘Across the Universe’ – a musical with Beatles' songs. It was better than awesome. It’s amazing how some songs can affect you in ways only living things can... they can break your heart, make you smile, cry, or fall in love.

-Actually got some school work done on a Friday night. For which I definitely deserve an Oscar. Or a Nobel Prize. (I always thought their categories were ridiculously limited). Slept early. Woke up with the usual Saturday-morning headache.

-Accompanied friends to San Antonio – the trip didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped, but at least I got some really interesting history lessons out of it during the car-ride back, and got to catch up with an old friend on the phone when I decided to be anti-social and abandoned friends who were dancing to terrible music in a club called the Mad Dog. I had a genuine case of Dancer’s Block.

-Culinary catastrophe this afternoon again. I think my luck oscillates between good food and bad; and the saying ‘better luck NEXT time’ may actually apply.

Cooking and callouses

2008-02-15T23:06:00.004-06:00

Thursday's compressibles test was a fiasco. Taking (and bombing) a test after 8.5 months isn't good for anybody's health.

Rock-climbing yesterday was marvellous. I'm finally getting callouses on my fingers - always a good sign. And the goodness is starting to show - I finished 75% of a route I'd been struggling with for the past couple of weeks. There's a group of rock-climbers that's always present whenever I go - they sound like physics grad students - and usually have lots of interesting conversations about their professors, post-doc-ing, their papers, girls etc - the standard guy-talk.
They were discussing pick-up lines yesterday. Two of their favorites were:
1. Are you a parking ticket? Because you have 'Fine' written all over you!
2. Are you tired? Because you've been running around in my mind all day!

Despite knowing that they were overused and obviously the kind that would never work, I laughed (my sense of humor going haywire probably had something to do with hanging horizontally 9 feet in the air).

Another achievement: I made dal yesterday (for the 2nd time in my life - the first time was an expected calamity) - which amazingly tasted fine. The rice wasn't bad either. All in all, I had the best meal in a long long time (since I returned to Austin in any case). I'm beginning to realize that cooking is a trial-and-luck-and-what-kind-of-a-mood-you're-in process. I still don't have a recipe for anything - I just add and subtract ingredients at random.

Got a chance to listen to live music last night at La Tazza Fresca - it was awesome. The singer had a good voice that carried, although he sang some rather forgettable songs (except the one at the very end). I think I need to go to more live music events.

Nazar, according to statistics, is doing really well. Yay. I just wish I had more time. And more ideas. And no struc D test breathing down my neck.

At least I have my callouses to cheer me up.

An Engineer's Rant - Part I, Vol I, Section I

2008-02-13T00:18:00.005-06:00

I'm surprised I haven't done this before.

I think they need to re-write the US News: Top Colleges magazine, or similar prospective student manuals. (I realize, from all my wonderful writing/communication classes, that 'they' is a vague pronoun reference, but I don't really care in my present state of mind). Events such as 'introduce a girl to engineering day' or 'You @UT' need to be changed, to include a real-world section of 'what it's really like'. Sleep deprivation and anxiety attacks need to be part of the student job description. Zoning out during lectures, staring for hours at homework that only pretends it is in english, but is really in hebrew and latin and alien-tongue, and making optimistic plans of finishing work and failing over and over again, and being optimistic again, should also be added. And then, I will say that life for engineering students is fairly unfair.

Test on Thursday, three assignments due in the next 33 hours, only 27% of which I have completed so far, a brand-new article for Nazar due on Saturday, painful paperwork to get about $1000 plus of my money back from thieves masquerading as health and bookstore companies due soon, and a structurally-sound death by dynamics test on Tuesday. So MUCH to look forward to. (If engineers were to ever make their own ice-cream line, "Death by Dynamics" should definitely be a flavor. I think it will be swirly and red and brown -possibly a combination of cherry and chocolate. Urgh. )

Reality bytes

2008-02-10T09:06:00.000-06:00

I've always prided myself on being a realist.

But what do you do when reality starts playing tricks on you? What do you do??

Weekend musings

2008-02-09T21:02:00.000-06:00

Late night homework session. Hurrah.

Went to a "chocolate festival" at Central Market today. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a gimmick of the worst kind - the sampling was limited to 5 booths. Bah. On the bright side though, I got to visit (and drag Sang and Ammar to) my favorite tree in Austin. I should probably give it a name. I think I'll call it ... The Tree.

While standing in line at Central Market, Ammar and I started explaining the concept of Indian Standard Time to Sang. The geograpic significance, and the fact that being punctual in that part of the world is not only a sin, but it is actually stupid. The guy behind us, who looked like the typical Austinite - the kind that 'keep Austin weird' - was listening in, and after I was done explaining, leaned in, and said "I play chess with a guy from Delhi sometimes...the next time I see him, I'll tell him that. If I lose, I'll say..'The game doesn't start for another hour!' "

Udit's farewell/post-graduation gift was 'Quidditch Through the Ages'. Sleep deprivation prevented me from borrowing it from him before he left. I'll probably regret that for the rest of my life.

Difficult times draw near...I can almost smell the stress. I think my sister, who is taking the mother of all medical school finals right now, is radiating stress waves from the other side of the world.

Nazar - A South Asian Perspective

2008-02-05T07:46:00.000-06:00

So the Nazar team came through and published the 2nd edition of its online newsletter last night. It's probably quite impressive.
I take that back - it's probably very impressive. (I say 'probably' because I have yet to find the time to read it)

My contribution: this Book Review

Ah - well. Not my best work, but it's a start. All I can say is that serious writing is harder than waking up at 6 in the morning.

I'm glad all the time spent on this book morphed into something else - I started reading this book when I was 15, finished when I was 22.

Back to the Beginning

2008-01-29T18:02:00.000-06:00

Why is it so hard to write when you really want to?

Sometimes I wonder - what if time had no units? What if time was just a way to think of the last time you were truly happy, or having the time of your life, or in pain, terrible pain, or with someone who dotes on you, or sad for no reason at all, or proud of yourself? Then, instead of saying that 45 days have passed between my last post and this one, I would say - eons have passed since then. My time in Cincinnati came to an end, I returned to Austin, revisited people from another time, went home - felt the magic and the temptation to never return, and then started a new semester in school again.

The night before I left Austin for India, Udit, Manik and I sat in Manik's room, with a depressed this-is-it attitude. The reason - Smartass Udit's fault for graduating in 3.5 years. Finally, after several semesters, Udit's ICA-fanaticism melted away, as did Manik's string of unfortunate relationships, and my overflowing schedule of activities and meetings disappeared with a poof. Several semesters of minimal contact faded - and we realized one of those cliche truths of life - that friendship is truly beautiful at times. That many years later, while flipping through an album (an electronic one, of course), we'd let ourselves be the victims of nostalgia.

This semester has mostly started with good things. Good classes, funny professors, wonderful living quarters etc. I use 'mostly' because I can't neglect the other things that aren't as great....my cooking for instance, the loads of homework and reading, and writer's block at the worst time - THE release. Other than that, I can't complain too much.

Over the break, I caught up on reading and movies - "Taare Zameen Par" was amazing - currently at the top of my list of favorite movies. The soundtrack, animation, direction, casting, cinematography were all perfect - Aamir Khan and Darsheel Safari - the main actors - were wow. 'The Inheritance of Loss' by Kiran Desai was an interesting, but rather heavy, and quite depressing, read. I liked it anyway. 'A thousand splendid suns' was good, but probably not anywhere in my list of top 10 books.

I should start on homework.
Should would could...
That's it - I'm out of excuses.

More Flight pain

2007-12-15T00:51:00.000-06:00

Cincinnati Airport: 12:46 pm

The madness is almost coming to an end. Strangely detached. A little sad. Should have tipped the cab driver more.

Wondering about all the other people traveling to Austin. From Cincinnati? Why? What are the odds? The only explanation is that there are way too many people in the world right now.

My luggage wasn’t overweight. Or was the check-in guy just nice/tired/frustrated?

Stomach feels empty. Cookies in bag not tempting at all. All sorts of chemicals churning around in bloodstream. Mind in a blitz.

Airport staff is requesting passengers to Laguardia to volunteer to give up their seats – for a compensation of $400. Glad I don’t have that chance. It would be tempting, but I’d have to pass it up.

Boarding should have started at 12:40 pm. It is currently 12:54 pm.

Great. Estimated departure time is now 1:30 pm. More time to write my work report.

All right cookies – you win.

***

210 calories later…

Hurray – boarding begins.

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

I couldn't even stay up for take-off. Damn you Vicodin.

On her hallucinations...

2007-12-12T11:28:00.000-06:00

I think this is the closest I've ever come to wishing that I had never been born.

Pain swallows the ego.

I'm starting to sound like John Milton.

Wrighter's Block

2007-12-05T23:06:00.000-06:00

The advantage of going for almost two months without posting (besides basking in the joy of being lazy) is that there is so much to talk about.

White water rafting was great. A little over-hyped, like skydiving, but fun nevertheless. The sad part is that the moments that I enjoyed most during rafting had nothing to do with being in the raft. At one point my guide let me jump off an 18 foot high cliff, and sometime later, let me ride a class I rapid on my back. Other than that, hiking along an actual trail, and making several thousand detours which included exploring mines and caves, walking down the sides of waterfalls, climbing walls and abandoned wooden structures was exciting, as was camping outdoors in 30 degree (F) weather.

Rock-climbing got a lot better. I progressed from a 5.6 to a 5.10 difficulty level, and actually completed a bouldering route. Tennis got shoved into the closet (quite literally) with the arrival of the winter season. The gym in our apartment complex was closed because of renovations (aargh), the trees burst into rainbow colors all around the city, Mana and I went disk-golfing (a hippie sport) for the first time in our lives (thank you Bryan), painted an orphanage, and impulsively decided to go skiing this weekend.

After spending all summer in a coffee shop and a library, this change was rather nice.

My cubicle-mate, Brian, is a blast. Although a diligent and intelligent worker, he always has time to share the funniest and most interesting stories, so that when I am not working, I’m laughing. We decided to improvise our cubicle…following the unintentional legacy of the window-guy [see previous post]. We added a mailbox (thanks to Charlotte’s genius art-and-craft skills), a Welcome mat, a Christmas tree (with office supplies as ornaments), and are in the process of adding curtains to the existing window, and installing another window behind Brian’s computer, which will show a winter scene. Our co-workers and Manager were highly amused.

Thanksgiving was glorious. My mom flew in to stay with me for 3 weeks, my dad came down from Syracuse; I got the chance to spend quality time with my parents for the first time in ages. I was relaxed and happy; and at my creative best despite limited sleep (Ammar and I put together the 3rd AO over Thanksgiving). Ammar actually said that he would make an amendment to the AO Constitution – to have a yearly fund to fly my parents in for a ‘super duper AO’. And super-duper it was.

Halloween was another memorable day. Mana and I dressed up as a magical portrait from Harry Potter, using a huge wooden frame, which I actually carried around when I went trick-or-treating. The candy I got made up for my tired arms.

I suppose I should mention work too. I saw the Black Hawk, the Airbus A380 (a large and freakishly quiet airplane with a GE engine – the GP 7200), the GE 90 (a larger-than-an-elephant engine), and gave the worst presentation of my life. However, things got a lot better after that – keeping with the ‘you don’t know how good you’re doing until you know how bad it can get’ philosophy (thanks Ammar).

We finally fulfilled Mana’s dream of going to Chicago – a total of 10 coops landed in the Windy City for the coldest weekend in November. In between crawling under the jelly-bean (‘the Cloud – Gate’), running up and over bridges, climbing everything in sight that was higher than a foot, hanging off tree-branches, holding chicken-fighting tournaments in our hotel room at 3 in the morning, having a chicken-fighting ‘battle-royale’ in the center of Millennium Park (surrounded by the perplexed looks from amused on-lookers), racing inflatable horses, squeezing 8 people in a single hotel room, learning how to whistle through a grass-blade - I barely had time to realize that I might never see these awesome people ever again, or that I was in the middle of having the time of my life.

When pigs fly..

2007-10-07T06:48:00.000-05:00

So far, I have discovered that probably the most interesting thing about Cincinnati is its Flying Pigs.

Which does not mean that I have anything against the city. Flying Pigs are cool. Flying pigs are rare - and let's face it - ridiculously funny too.

Back in the 19th century, Cincinnati was an integral part of the pig trade, and had the unofficial nickname 'Porkopolis'. Now, several statues of flying pigs litter the city - statues that were auctioned off and decorated differently, so that each one is unique. I saw my first one at the airport itself the day I landed in Cincinnati.

It's been fun being in a new city, in a new apartment, at a new work-place, but who said having fun was always easy? Getting furniture for our unfurnished apartment proved to be a challenge, especially during the first few days when Mana and I were still car-less, stranded in the city with a public transportation system from Hell. We quickly became fans of furniture of the inflatable variety, and others that need to be assembled with screws and infinite patience. Our TV stand is made of six blocks of styrofoam, and our first shower curtain was made out of two trashbags. Now we have replaced it with a fancier one with penguins on it.

But we seem to have lost interest in the whole concept of real furniture.

I work in a cubicle in the basement. And my cubicle has a window. The story is that some employee requested an office with a window. Since his placement was in a cubicle, and even worse, the basement, he was told outright that his request could not be granted. Undeterred, he decided to make his own. He printed out a picture of the branch of a tree on 6 regular sized A4 sheets, and thumbtacked them together on the bulletin board behind his monitor. On the side is a hand-written note of 'Let us never forget the Sun'. Good advice. The world should be thankful for engineers' sense of humor.

Speaking of our sense of humor, the second issue of the AO was released to thunderous reviews on September 10. It was probably one of those rare moments that made me wish I was back in school this semester, just so I could bask in the glory of our success. We even made it to Dr. Mark's Wall of Fame, as Ammar put it. Some students over in the Journalism school at UT, inspired by our newsletter, created their own - which they call The Yellow Journalist. So now, we have earned bragging rights for being the paragon, the magnum opus, the originals - the founders of a very untraditional tradition.

The Renaissance Festival, which I went to yesterday, is a keeper of untraditional traditions as well. Some of the shows were hilarious, the actors' 14th century costumes cool inspite of the 91 degree weather, the little stores and stalls priceless. A ministrel group that I particularly liked had the best drinking song ever:

So put some more guiness in us,
It's a sin if it's not guiness I say,
So buy me some guiness, and pour it right in us,
It might, just help us to get through the day

Between ice-skating, indoor rock-climbing, raging at apartment management for converting the tennis court into a helipad, white-water rafting, long conversations with the people who matter most, creativity, waiting impatiently for the trees to get on with autumn, a general sense of well-being ... I wonder if Mana and I will ever get around to buying furniture.

Probably when pigs fly.

Ranting and Renting

2007-08-21T17:08:00.000-05:00

My other umbrella broke the other day. I think I'm going to blame it on Udit again, and kill him.
I recently finished reading a soppy story 'Dear John' by Nicholas Sparks about love and sacrifice, which did nothing to reinforce my belief in either. I picked up the book thinking I might like it more than Sparks' movies, but I ended up wasting endless hours and very few tears. Books like those just make me angry. A story that could've been wonderfully told in a page and half, was stretched over 278 unbearably long pages.

I've begun to think I might have anger management problems. Either that, or I could make heck of much better author than Nicholas Sparks.

On the other hand, I had much better luck with 'Freedom at Midnight' and 'No Man's Land'. And so far, pretty good luck with 'Snow falling on Cedars'.

I came to to the library today to return the last book and the last movie, vowing not to rent any more movies, because I need to go through my 10-book high pile in my apartment first, but I was powerless against the wall of movies there. My laptop DVD player has bailed out on me already.

I've been learning quite a bit about space-missions etc over the past few weeks. Everything from astronaut exercising constraints and equipments, to an account about the hows and whys of all the major disasters in the space era.

I made another list of goals the other day... and frankly, it scares me.
- Get a private pilot's license
- Get a scuba-diving license
- Get a sky-diving license
- Get a driver's license

To top all that off, I'm already fighting a temptation to get a haircut.

Cleveland

2007-07-14T10:52:00.001-05:00

To say that my last two weeks, first in Ann Arbor, MI, and then in Cleveland, OH, have been eventful would be lying. Saying that my stay has been uneventful would be a lie too.

That's me - always in the middle.

It was nice being in Ann Arbor again. I didn't remember much from 10 years ago, but I stayed with some awesome family friends, had my all-time favorite pretzels at Briarwood Mall, drove past my old middle school, Tappan, and went kayaking on the Huron River. I also watched movies at the rate of 1/day, and slept an average of 10-11 hours daily.

I was also glad I escaped the thunderstorms and the cold, danky weather in Texas just in time. I never thought I could enjoy un-overcast skies, but the sunshine in Michigan was perfect.

Cleveland - Cleveland - Cleveland.
The city is not a pedestrian's best friend. Especially a pedestrian who walks without a map.

I think I could write a thesis on the Art of Getting Lost in Cleveland.

On my first day at work, I stood on the wrong side of the street, and took the wrong bus. By the time I found my way to the right stop, and taken the right bus to the next stop, I'd already missed the transfer bus. Fortunately I still made it to work in time. On my way back that day, I made the same mistake, at a different intersection. I reached my place after 8pm - 3 hours after I'd started. The buses have been nicer to me since then, and most of the bus drivers recognize me now. One of them, who'd been driving the unfortunate bus that I was on for 1.5 hours my first day, saw me yesterday, and announced gleefully - "I see you're not getting lost anymore!"

I still get lost everytime I go running. The streets in Cleveland are wickedly tricky. You think you're walking in a rectangle, when in fact, you're walking in a hexagon, an octagon, or a triangle. You may be walking down some street A, and pass another street B. A couple of blocks down, you'll see the same street B again. Last week, I was nowhere being close to where I started, and was wandering around in the dark. It was just after sunset. Fortunately for me, my friend Ankita - in Austin -called, and then looked up my location on Google Maps. She then guided me home.

It was the story of the week. I am so thankful for technology. And google. And friends who call me while taking a break from their dull lab reports.

Work's been good so far. Eye-opening and rather cool. The NASA Glenn Research Center is not the most glamorous place in the world, but people do a fair amount of good work there. I met some people who have been at that center for 40 years. It's a staggering thought, because I'll probably have retired in 40 years, from work or life. I share my office with my mentor and another co-worker. The last corner in the room is the snack-shack, stocked with ginger ale and root beer and diet sunkist (hooray!), and a 4 lb-box of twizzlers. Life couldn't get any better.

I'm starting to get the hang of apartment living too. Renting a room in an apartment with two crazy dogs and their sweet owner is not a bad deal. Cooking has been interesting, but I'll have to document that later. My cooking hasn't killed me yet - so that's definitely a good sign.

FlightPain

2007-06-29T01:00:00.000-05:00

1:25pm - Austin Time
2:25pm – Detroit Time
12:25pm – Denver Time

Flying is weird. I still think humans weren’t really ever meant to fly. I’d like to quote Douglas Adams here: “The knack to flying lies in throwing yourself at the ground and missing”. Planes are just about as reliable as that.

Yesterday, I was supposed to fly out from Austin to Detroit. I wanted to start at 2.00pm, and I did. But of course, everything went wrong. There was an accident on I-35 that slowed down traffic terribly; the check-in lines were super long; I was fined for my luggage being overweight; and I was “randomly selected” for extra special screening.

I like how things in the US are disguised so expertly...absolutely nasty meat is covered in all sorts of sauces, salad is rabbit food without the dressing, you see signs such as ‘Want to have an exciting career as a State Trooper? Apply here!’ everywhere, all the time. The attendant behind the desk looked at me, smiled, and said ‘You’ve been selected for extra screening!’ as he handed me my boarding pass. He might have been saying ‘You’ve been selected as the winner of our $40000000000 award!’

It was already 10 minutes past my boarding time, but I went through the rigorous screening process. They scanned my luggage, and asked me to go and stand between glass partitions (which were possibly bullet-proof). Finally, a security-officer approached me and went into a diatribe of airline safety policies, and telling me exactly what she was about to do. She struck me as a Don’t-mess-with-me-‘coz-I’m-so-professional kind of person, although the way she delivered her speech reminded me forcefully of Shakespeare. ‘Are there any sensitive or injured parts of your body that I need to made aware of?’ she said at last.

I looked at her and shrugged. ‘I’m ticklish’.

I’m sure she was laughing when she patted me down.

The rest of the procedure was uninteresting. I sat in a relatively comfortable seat, looking bored, while they went through my bags. I was annoyed; they were, after all, unpacking my carefully over-stuffed bags, bags that I had to almost sit on so that I could zip them. Afterwards, when they were done, they cunningly left certain items outside my bags, so that I could wrestle with the closing ceremony again. Bah.

When I got to my gate, the flight had been cancelled.

I got another ticket for today, which I didn’t mind. I got my fine-money back; I discovered that I could take a full-extra suitcase with me; I cooked something real for myself for the first time in my life; and I watched ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ again.

My friend Ammar, the biggest airplane-buff to be found in a radius of 7 miles, asked me if I needed a ride to the airport, because he loves driving, loves watching cars at the airport, loves the airport, and loves watching planes flying over the highways that lead to the airport. I figured he preferred doing a good deed over studying hopelessly for a pending exam. I also figured I’d be doing him a favor if I asked him for a ride.

Today, I was ‘randomly selected’ for a special screening again. This time, I was ready. While they went through my bags, I read. It would have been extra-fun if I had been reading ‘The Inscrutable Americans’.

On my flight, a little 2-year-old kid sitting in the seat behind me screamed and kicked at my seat the whole way. I got back at him by falling asleep. While de-boarding, a passenger pointedly remarked (so that everybody on the plane heard him), ‘what a well-behaved kid!’

I got a really cool picture of clouds on my flight from Denver to Detroit (Shown above). It was the sort of picture that reminded me of the very first sentence that introduced me to similes and metaphors…"the clouds were marshmallows in the sky".

More of this and that

2007-06-22T01:23:00.001-05:00

So Negin and I went on another ridiculously long walk yesterday. Our destination: the bats on Congress Bridge.

We waited for them. And then they appeared. We had to move down towards the Barton Springs side of the bridge to see them clearly. As we looked down at them, we remained silent.

Finally, I spoke.
'That's it?'
We saw a swarm of oversized brown fluttery things, flying under the bridge in vicious circles, swirling and swimming in the air. The sight was mesmerizing, but not what I'd expected.
'What did you expect?' I asked Negin.
'I thought I'd see a swarm of 1.5 million bats leaving the bridge and rising up into the sky,' Negin said. Beside us, we heard a five-year-old say the exact thing to his father.

Oh well. At least we saw the bats.

Afterwards, our hunger led us to Wendy's. As the cashier returned my change, I looked at the quarter I got back, and commented on how I always tried to collect the 50 quarters for each of the different states, but failed because I ended up using the quarters for laundry.
Behind us, a guy started laughing.
'I'm sorry,' he said, turning red, as we looked at him. 'I didn't mean to overhear you, but I know what that's like.'

This morning, Negin freaked out when she found out her father's old high-school friend had decided to visit her. The apartment was a mess. We started cleaning up frantically, and shared stories about how we'd made people wait outside before while we threw everything into the closet or under the bed. 2 hours later, the apartment was barely presentable. 4 hours later, she called me, whining about how here dad's friend had called her, met her outside the apartment gates, and left, saying he was too busy to come inside.
It reminded me of dressing up for a party, and not going anywhere. Tragic.

Later, I had another long 58 minute long counseling session with my parents, who were ready to make the house look like the Jerry Springer show. It was almost fun, because I got to end the conversation with an admonishment of 'behave yourselves!'. :)

My latest favorite hangout is the Epoch, a weird 24 hour place with good coffee and mostly-good music. And a crazy waitress who is constantly swearing at her co-worker.

I've been taking drivers license practice tests all evening. People tell me that I'm worrying more than I should be: the test is mostly common sense. But as they say, common sense is uncommon in common people. I'm very common.
They also say the test is easy. But they also said ME 210 was easy. Screw them.

I need to go back and write my promised ode to YouTube. I found this old song I'd danced to when I was in 6th grade, at this annual school show where I also acted in a sixth-grade version of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'.

I was proud of that play, because I was the director, script-writer, and protagonist. My classmates and I did a hell of a good job practicing our lines and getting the costumes ready. On the final day, however, I realized that there were certain details we had forgotten to iron out. The disposal of 'dead bodies' for instance.

As the girls died one by one, they just got up and ran off the stage, to the amusement of the audience. I was annoyed; it was my show, and they were ruining it. However, when I finally died in the final scene (I was Macbeth), I waited for somebody to drag me off the stage. As it turned out, all the other actors had somehow ended up on the right side of the stage, whereas I was on the left side. (There was no backstage). Only one girl remained on the left side. She was also one of the smallest cast-members. She tried her best to drag me out of sight, but she was at least 20 lbs lighter than I was, and in the end, I just got up and ran off the stage.
The school called Macbeth a 'comedy of errors' for a long time after that.

I related the story to Negin, and she said she remembered acting in one play in elementary school. She was a tree.

Escape

2007-06-16T21:45:00.000-05:00

My aunt died 3 days ago.

She was in her forties, and left behind a husband, 4 kids, and a new daughter-in-law. Her death was a shock to everyone - even though she weighed about 200 lbs more than was good for her, and had been confined to her bed for over 4 years.

Even though I rarely saw her, she'd been a big part of my childhood - she was generous, liked by everybody, and put everybody else's comfort before her own. She was a wonderful parent - and made sure her kids grew up to be respectful and hardworking.

It's strange that I haven't mourned her death as much as I would have expected myself to. I suppose physical distance does that to you.

I wonder if dealing with death becomes easier as you grow older. Or if age just makes things worse. I feel desensitized right now, but I know things would have been different if I had been in the same house as the rest of her family members, wading through a flood of memories.

When I was 10, my grandmother passed away. I had been inconsolable. My cousin and I used to fight over whose house our grandmother would live in, and I still have fond memories of her, despite a very vivid memory of her calling me 'bedhab' - which meant 'disobedient brat'.

It's hard to imagine how things change while we're away; it seems that we expect people and places to remain the same, even though we ourselves change. Nothing seems real to me right now: I can only try to remember the times that I spent with my aunt, little things that I wish I had listened more closely to, the wasted moments when I chose to go out and do insignificant things when I could have pleased her by spending a little more time with her. When I picture my next visit home, I reach a dead-end ... a place of such infinite sadness that I don't want to go there. I make a U-turn and go back to laughing with my friends, or reading a book.

The book I was reading recently, 'Waiting for Daisy', explained the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi: life, like the cherry blossom, is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.

It makes sense...but wisdom about the inevitability of life and death does not help.
At all.

A Foray into the World of Arranged Marriages

2007-06-15T12:42:00.001-05:00

Sadly, my mom has, once again, started broaching the subject of marriage.

"So - have you found anyone yet?" she asked yesterday.
"I'm not looking. So what did you cook today?" I said.

I think Indian parents start thinking about their kids' weddings the day they (the kids) are born - nay, conceived. 'Bride and Prejudice', though overly exaggerated, with a terrible soundtrack, still has an element of truth in it. The presence of well-wishing relatives doesn't help. As soon as they see two single youngsters, apparently eligible, the benevolent, bored, dormant match-maker in them surfaces.

Almost the youngest in the family, I know it's not my turn yet, and won't be for another five years- but my mother likes taking revenge for the Hellish times I made her go through while I was a teenager.

"You know, you should talk to that boy I was telling you about - he's so nice and respectful. I can give you his contact information."

"If you do that, I swear I'll send him a rakhi."

Raksha Bandhan is a Hindu festival which uses a rakhi, a fancy thread that is a symbol of the bond between a brother and a sister. Traditionally, a sister ties the thread on her brother's wrist every year, indirectly asking for protection. . . And money.

In India, cousins are considered to be like brothers and sisters. Since I don't have any real brothers, I landed in my cousins' houses every year. They never stopped complaining about this festival, and how unfair it is to the male pocket. Tradition, however, is tradition.

The rakhi is also a seldom-talked-about secret weapon that the Indian woman weilds. By tying the rakhi around a male friend's wrist, the girl is implying that she thinks of the friend as a brother. The dreams of several people I know have thus been ruined by a piece of thread.

"A rakhi doesn't mean anything," my mom replied loftily. Oh yes it does. "Besides, that would be a very stupid thing to do."

"If you like him so much," I seethed, "YOU marry him."

My dad, who was listening in, started laughing. My mom, even though I couldn't see her (over 9000 miles of wireless connection), probably gave him one of her you-aren't-exactly-helping-here stares. She dropped the subject of that particular boy, hiding her panic well. She probably figured that a rakhi would be a suicidal move.

"What about the boys in your college?" she persisted.
"They're all Gujratis," I said, inventing wildly. Gujratis are people from the state of Gujrat - they're cool, and awesome, and have nothing wrong with them, but a senseless excuse is still an excuse. My sister, two years older than me, claims all the guys in her school are Biharis (from the state of Bihar). Which is almost the Indian-equivalent of saying that all guys are red-necks. I know that's her defending herself from all potential matches.

My mother sighed, and gave up. She'll be back in action soon.
I know she means well. But the whole situation is, quite frankly, rather laughable.

A Batty Adventure

2007-06-11T08:17:00.000-05:00

Fact: If you live in a particular city, there is a 95% probability that you've not been to its tourist attractions. (The 5% is to account for all the enthusiastic fanatics out there). And yes, there probably is uncertainty also.

Source: Me

I would've called it Nimisha's Theory # who know's what, but the truth is that the above really is a fact, not a theory.

Yesterday, my friend Negin and I decided to go for a walk after dinner to digest the excellent thai food we'd had (she, apparently, didn't agree with the excellence of the food). In any case, we started walking, walked around the Capitol, and somehow ended up at the Congress Bridge again. The railing on the left side couldn't be seen because of all the people waiting to see the bats come out from under the bridge.

Every spring, about 1.5 million bats (the Mexican Free-Tails) migrate from Mexico and settle down in the crevices under the Congress Bridge. They go out to hunt every night, and are seen all summer, well into August. One of my friends, who was a guide on one of the tour-boats on Town Lake last summer, told me that the bat babies (called pups) are born during the summer. It's kinda funny how Mexican bats like their young to be American citizens. Heh.

The former public-nightmare was soon turned into a tourist-attraction...bats supposedly eat tonnes (thousands or millions of them) of insects every night. Every evening, around sunset, the bats come out in hoards, which is (supposedly) quite a sight.

I know all about it, but have never seen it happen. Yesterday seemed to be the day I would get that chance.

Negin and I found a spot at the railing, and waited. We waited for 45 minutes. We talked about things ranging from dog-vision to the phase diagram of water. But the bats didn't come out.

While standing there, resting against the railing, my hands felt strangely empty.

"We need to use some bait to get the bats to come out," I finally said.
"How?" Negin said.
"By using a fishing rod. And attaching a dead insect at its end. We could probably call that 'batting'. "
Negin and I looked at each other. And then we started laughing, and couldn't stop for a long time.

We left. And of course, true to Murphy's word, the bats came out soon after. We heard them while crossing 7th street. I guess the batting will have to wait till next time.

May 13-June 8 : A summary

2007-06-08T19:24:00.000-05:00

I am still amazed at how quickly things (and people) change. My situation has changed drastically since last month. In between that last post and now, I pulled off the following stunts:

I stayed up for 84 hours (with a total of 3 hours in nap-time) between May 13th and May 16th, went to Houston (after 2.5 years), visited two of my friends there, went to Burnet for Leadershape, made 38 new friends in a week, did 350 crunches with Chioma, discovered my purpose in life, and how terribly awful the real world is.

I also walked from Far West back to UT campus (I was walking for 3.5 hours - that's about 12 miles), and made my friend/ex-roommate walk with me. I had several other walking adventures - down to 4th street and back, to Town Lake and back, to this random park on Lamar and back...

I talked myself into pretending that I would get my drivers license in 2 weeks - it's the 3rd week now, and I'm still on the 4th page of the Texas Drivers' Manual Study Guide.

I went to the Six-Flags Amusement Park in San Antonio with some friends - and rode real roller coasters after 9 long years (not counting one measely ride over spring break). The last time I had been on a roller coaster had been in April, 1998 - on the Space Mountain Ride at Disneyworld.

I also attended a class. That I wasn't registered for. Just for fun. And because I didn't know what to do with myself that particular day. And I took notes. I would say that I paid attention to 97% of what the professor said - which is some sort of a record. My belief in Tom Sawyer's (Mark Twain's, for that matter) theory about work and play is reinforced. It stated: "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
I didn't go back because of other chores I had - apartment hunting etc., and now catching up with everything would qualify as work, so I think I'll let the class go.

I went to the Coop, and had a terrible time deciding what to spend my rebate money on - An awesome Magnetic Dartboard, or a book called 'An Illustrated Guide to Aerodynamics' - a book recommended by Dr.Hans Mark (the legendary professor of the Aerospace Department at UT) during my Freshman year. My friends Mana and Ankita continued to give me harassed looks throughout my decision-making process, and I had almost made up my mind to pay from my own pocket in order to get both things - when we ran into an old friend who had dropped out of Aerospace Engineering the previous year. She said she would just give the book to me.

I discovered how bad I was at Dart-throwing that night.

I played Badminton after months and months - and have been playing almost daily. I broke my watch while playing racquetball with a squash ball in a small court with 3 other people. I also picked up 3 books, and am reading all 3 of them - 'The Golden Gate' by Vikram Seth (A novel in verse), 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown, 'Waiting for Daisy' by Peggy Orenstein.

I'm now waiting for a letter, and a phone-call. And then, I might go home.

:)

Give it up...

2007-05-13T01:34:00.001-05:00

This is a particularly awful moment.

The propulsion final today was a disaster. Which made me realize that the word 'fail' is ingrained in 'final'. It was such a pain taking the test, that I have, temporarily, lost all interest in continuing with Aerospace Engineering. The interest will, of course, revive after a good night's sleep. Once I clear my bed of the millions of papers - all propulsion-related.

I thought of having a propulsion-paperwork-burning ceremony - but I'm not sure if that'll be a good idea, since a lot of people will want to save all that stuff for next semester, in case a repetition is in the cards...

I want to give-up. No, you don't, my super-ego tells me. My superego is my mom. A few years ago, when we were both having our poem writing/publishing marathon, she was churning out poems like 'Try Try Again', or 'I Can' - while I wrote something like this:

GIVE UP!

Are you facing one of those days,
When the sky is black and the clouds are grey?
When the world around you is moving ahead,
Leaving you behind, alone in your dread?

If you put in your best and failed,
If you’re the victim, whose dreams have been nailed,
Don’t curse your luck or wish you were dead,
“Just Give Up”, as somebody rightly said.

Just Give Up, it’s not so hard,
Your confidence, at least, will not be scarred,
Don’t think that you will lose your glory,
You can still be a Winner in your life’s story.

Courage, they say, is holding on,
Fighting in the darkness, till it is dawn.
But it takes courage to let go too,
And stand outside that ambitious queue.

If the tunnel is dark and you see no light,
If the battle you’re in is not going right,
Give up and go against the tide,
Break the rules, and hop off the ride.

Because he who fights and runs away,
Lives to fight another day.

I got the last two lines from an Alistair MacLean book. 'The Dark Crusader' I think. Although they say it's one of those stock phrases.
This poem didn't make my mom very happy.

For some odd reason though - I don't feel that bad. I suppose I'm more used to doing badly on tests than I was two years ago. All I know right now is that the world hasn't come to an end, I'm still fit, my family and friends are all okay, and I still have internet access, facebook, and youtube.

I have been amusing myself by watching old Aamir Khan coca-cola advertisements. I just decided that it would be awesome to meet that guy - he truly is my favorite actor. He can pull off any role - a tour guide, a Japanese tourist, a Bengali father, a Punjabi farmer, a crook, an English millionaire - anything.

That said, I feel the need to talk about the many virtues of youtube. I've been able to watch all the old songs I used to wait for forever to be telecast on TV while I was groing up. Maybe I'll write an ode for youtube someday. Right now, I really should get started on my two projects.

Fun fun. I can't wait for the next AerOnion.

The Fall of Murphy

2007-05-11T07:07:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr. Murphy,

I cannot say that I admire you - I never will. Your law is quite possibly the most awful, though insightful, ever propounded. I hate you with my heart and soul, and if you had anything to do with the inner workings of this law, I will personally come after you - invent a time machine if it comes to that, and kill you. I plan to learn how to shoot very soon; in fact, I may be going to a shooting range on Monday, and I'm perfecting my Taekwondo kicks as we speak.

I was all set to go home this summer, and work in the Fall, but yesterday I got a phone call that changed it all. It may turn out for the best, but I will not give up on the chance to complain while I can.

Today is the day that I shall do the impossible. After my plans for yesterday exploded into iotas of nothingness, and I bombed an exam, slept through an appointment, slept for, as it happened, ten hours straight, I still plan to do the impossible.

And prove you wrong.

Sincerely,
Your Nemesis

"Compliments"

2007-05-08T00:44:00.000-05:00

Over the past few days, I've had many things said to me. Some of the statements stand out, especially because there's such a fine line between them being compliments ... or insults.

'She's hot. Hotter than Hell.' - A resident's friend said about me.

'I see your health has improved.' - My TA from last summer, when he saw me after 6 months or so.

'You're such a dingbat. I love you. ' - A co-worker/friend.

Sigh.

GIGO

2007-05-04T02:19:00.000-05:00

Recent Statistics:

Number of hours of sleep in the last 4 days: 12
Number of all nighters pulled: 2.5
Number of hours spent in the LRC - Aerospace Building: 45
Number of hours spend in the LRC - Electrical Engineering Building: 20
Number of meals skipped: 8
My diet today:
13 chips ahoy cookies, 2 special K cereal bars, 2 sliced of pizza, french fries, a frosty, and a cheeseburger minus the meat.

It seems to me that my semester-long nutrition plan just went down the Mariana Trench today. Especially since I can feel the 7600 free calories floating around inside me. Urgh.

The only consolation is that this new diet can be blamed entirely on my ridiculous curriculum and the outrageous number of assignments due. The sugar and sodium are stress foods, comfort foods, on-the-go-because-there-isn't-enough-time-to-sit-down-and-have-a-proper-meal-foods... and lots of other words that are not synonymous with 'healthy'. Even though the whole point of this exercise is to get my work done. And learn. And get good grades. And not let my GPA skydive. And understand concepts.

However, I am inevitably reminded of one of the first acronyms I learnt in my first computer-science class in school: GIGO

Garbage In Garbage Out

I wonder if it applies.

Knowing my luck...probably.

Tomorrow's the last day of school. Wow. It'll be another 8 months or so before I will be in class again. Perhaps I'll appreciate school more by then.

I'm glad the AerOnion happened - the pipe/AIM dream that's a wonderfully colorful and funny newsletter on my table now - thank you Ammar. (And Steven and Mays)

It's 2:39am - I have a Measurements Lab report to finish, a Flight Dynamics Program to read, understand, and write about, a semester-long research project to complete and write about, a Taekwondo test to take - before 9 pm tomorrow...and then I can go camping!

Only to come back and study for the remaining finals.

Bums on the drag ... I feel ya'.

heal the world - michael jackson

2007-04-24T22:30:00.001-05:00

I feel this song...

Unreality

2007-04-22T03:35:00.001-05:00

A sequel to the 'I hate...' rant I posted on my friend Malvika's blog a month ago.

Some things are hateful. Like overcooked broccoli. Tedious lab reports. Homesickness. Unrequited love.

But a lot of things aren't.

Walking down the street today I realized,
How beautiful life can be,
With a cool breeze, and a cloudy sky,
And no troubles (as far as my myopic eyes could see).

My hair was blowing behind me,
My clothes hung loose on me,
I felt invisible, and strangely content,
I had no responsibilities, and nobody to please.

The green in the trees,
Was just the right shade of green,
The blueness of the sky,
Was clear and pure and free.

People around me were smiling,
Their faces glowing in the fading light,
Talking excitedly about,
The shooting stars to be seen tonight.

My feet carried me on,
The world was just so right,
I felt fit, and I felt fine,
While reality stayed out of sight.

My inspirations always come at the wrong times. I should be sleeping right now, and paying off my sleep-debt that I've been in for several years now.

More goals

2007-04-20T20:35:00.000-05:00

My friends at lunch today were recounting some of the best fights they'd been in (yep - the guys were doing the talking). Sometimes, I wish I had grown up around a brother. In my childhood, the only fights I had were with my very docile sister - who took all my blows. And stopped me from getting into trouble with the neighborhood kids. At times, I think that I owe her my life.

In any case, after listening to my friends' adventures, I decided to add this to my list of short-term goals.

8. Get into at least one fight. Or beat the hell out of someone (who deserves it).

Another one, I've been thinking of is the one below

9. Grow my hair out. And donate it.

This will probably be more challenging - especially if I do go back to India this summer - the land of cheap (and very tempting) haircuts.

This and That

2007-04-19T21:33:00.000-05:00

I liked yesterday for it's randomness. On my way back from my PED class, I decided to not take the bus back, and started walking. I walked past a couple of people playing badminton. Of course, I had to stop. Turned out that there was a challenge out to beat a champion called J Pal, from India. And even though it was 1:25pm, and I had to be at a meeting at 2pm, and shower and eat before that, I jumped in. They let me go first.

I lost. Badly. I blame the wind and the sun, (and you, for Tasmin Archer's sake). Even indooors, I guess I would have lost, but may have been able to put up a better fight.
Badminton's awesome though.

Later that evening, as I was about to leave the WRW for dinner, I bumped into a friend who told me about an AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics - I typed that out to see if I could account for all the A's) meeting - where they had free pizza. I did an about turn and followed him.

The speaker, Ken Griffin, was rather good, and quirky, and some of the things he talked about were directly related to my research. He discussed Aeroelasticity and the x-53 design. At one point he said, 'The blended wing body transport plane just looks like a pregnant B2'. Another time, he said, 'You think you're ready for a roll, and you have all the sensors and actuators in the right places, but out there, the wing's actually laughing at you'. Also, I ended up sitting right next to another ice-eater. Which was heartwarming.

I took my fitness test today. It wasn't bad at all, although after the aerobic fitness section, I was ready to drink up a swimming pool. I got a score at the end: on a scale from below 30 to above 41, where anything below a 30 was terrible, and anything above a 41 was excellent, I scored a 40, which I'm happy about. But then, taekwondo practice today gave me two bruised knuckles, which I'm not happy about at all. I got back at the stupid board by cracking it in two with a front snap-kick.

Looks like a long night. Flight dynamics homework, flight dynamics lab, measurements lab, and research. And rounds on 20 floors - since I'm on call right now.

Strangely enough, I feel like I'm going to miss these days in a few years.

2007-04-18T22:45:00.001-05:00

Agitated.
I think I need to go running.

Midnight Inspirations

2007-04-17T23:42:00.000-05:00

Needless to say, I came up with the theory below during one of my classes - and propagating it didn't exactly have the desired effect on my audience. Eh - I still think it's cool.

aloofalien: so - check this out

aloofalien: i was thinking...

aloofalien: they always talk about love triangles, right?

aloofalien: but even around me, sometimes, i see more..

aloofalien: i see quadrangles forming - even hexagons

aloofalien: does that make sense?

aloofalien: and if you think about vector addition, you realize that all the vectors add up -

aloofalien: but in the end, only 2 vectors connect.

aloofalien: so - a whole lot of vectors in between are just stuck in the middle, and only 2 actually find each other in the end.

aloofalien: dude - that's like the most awesome theory ever!

hermes0730: brb

I can always count on my best friends to encourage me with their enthusiastic responses. Thanks adi ;)

I have a lot more to say on friendship.

I found out recently that the object of my affection wasn't exactly available. When I whined about that to one of my friends, he said, 'Want me to beat up the guy?' Another one offered to take care of the other girl - she said she had 'contacts' who had multiple talents.

I had to do my best to stop both of them from being carried away by their violent dispositions. I said I might need their services - in the future - just not yet.

Friends are awesome.

I'm glad that I don't feel any resentment towards this guy. He's still amazing, and has had nothing but a positive influence on me. I was sad yesterday, but today I felt free, and happy.

I still decided to put together a flowchart titled 'How to lose a guy in 10 days' - for future reference...mine and others'. I'll figure out a way to upload it later.

It's 3:14am, and I have a 9 am class.
Damn.

2007-04-16T01:08:00.000-05:00

I realized today that ego isn't necessarily a bad thing...it's a good defence mechanism.

Parenting my parents

2007-04-15T00:18:00.001-05:00

I was talking to my mom last night. She was rather upset. And whiny.

The maid, apparently, had accidentally broken one of my mom's expensive Ganesh figurines.
"Rs 350 - down the drain," my mom said. Even though she was more than 9000 miles away, I could almost see the froth buiding up around her mouth.

More than the loss, however, my mom was upset at how lightly my dad had treated the episode.
He'd shrugged and said, "what can we do?"

My mom would have liked my dad a lot better if he had taken control of the situation, supported her, and chastised the maid. That, quite obviously, did not happen; and what ensued was a fight.

"He just sits around all day - busy with his students, or his laptop, or the newspaper," my mom continued. And then she called him many things, which I will not mention here.

I listened patiently. Because that's what I do. One of my friends called me a sponge once, because I soak up others' worries, insecurities, complaints, sorrows... I don't know why. I just do. I could understand how my mom felt - I'm a lot like her -I like attention, and expect some care and love from the people around me. But I could understand how my dad felt too - since I have a lot of him in me. A broken figurine was hardly something to cry about.

And then I talked. I consoled her. I convinced her that dad, and the rest of us, were totally in awe of her, and often told our friends stories about how strong she was, and how she could do so many things we were all scared of doing. For example, one summer, when the mango tree in our backyard was loaded with mangoes, monkeys were showing up daily to have their share. And driving my dog, Pepsi, mad while she barked her head off at them. Finally, my mom decided she'd had enough, and started waving a stick at them (the monkeys). The monkeys snarled,
and deliberately broke off a branch and threw it down at Pepsi. Pepsi escaped, but her barks got shriller.
The monkeys didn't come back - at least not that year.

Another time, when my mom realized we had a mice-problem in the storage room (these problems are pretty common in India), she decided to chase the mice away. She pulled out the suitcases and opened them, and my dad and my sister and I helped her. A minute later my sister screamed - she'd just unzipped a bag and witnessed a family of mice sitting inside it.

My dad, my sister and I bolted. My mom gave us a resentful look, and then proceeded to pick up the bag and step outside the house. She released the mice in the park across the street.

Anyway, coming back to the main story - after my mom heard me tell her these things, she said in a tense voice, angry but reluctantly pleased - 'You're such a diplomat. Defending your dad and pacifying me at the same time."

After that, I had a talk with my dad. I told him that he had to start spending some more time at home. And taking mom out more. And coming up with new ways/ideas to have fun. Like trying a new recipe. Or playing cards with her. I said I'd check on them every week. And that they'd better be prepared for cross-questioning.

Needless to say, I felt like I was 77 years old.

Life. And Love.

2007-04-10T22:42:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, I wonder about life. And love. And everything in between.

I distinctly remember complaining to my sister-in-law, about how all songs just talked about love, broken hearts, and yearning. Bhabhi, newly married, and far wiser than I was at the time, simply said, ‘it’s because love is such a universal thing…you’ll understand it some day’.

I’m not sure if the day has arrived yet, but I think I do understand things more than I did five years ago. I understand what it is like to love your family, I mean – really, and truly love your family, and the feeling that there are people in this world who love you so much that they would do anything for you. Looking back, I think I understand how my parents felt as they watched me grow, and how they feel now that I’ve left home, and all the millions of ways in which I misunderstood them. For example, I didn’t realize until the day I left home that my mother loved me. After three days of non-stop arguments, and constant declarations that she was so glad to see me leave, she burst into tears when I gave her a reluctant hug at the airport. Two minutes made me see the truth that I had been blind to for 19 years.

I think I understand how I will feel when I have kids, and grow old, and think back to days when I was young. In fact, I’m already doing it. I wish sometimes that I could rewind the clocks and grow up again, this time as a much better daughter. Sometimes, I realize that I am turning into my mother, but the thought does not terrify me the way it used to. I suppose that is the beginning of wisdom.

I think I understand why people continue to live in the Sahara Desert, or the Polar Ice Caps, or in bug-infested rain-forests. Home is home, and nothing can change that. The tse-tse fly cannot; and neither can the worst weather phenomenon. It all boils down to love – love for the land, the people, and the familiarity of everything.

W. Somerset Maugham, oh so truly said, ‘Love is only a dirty trick played on us to ensure continuation of the species.’ I’d like to add to that. Love also ensures a uniform geographical distribution of the human population. And balance in the world.

It’s such a beautiful trick though.

Elegy for Flight Dynamics Lab

2007-04-09T00:52:00.000-05:00

I'm sick of flight dynamics lab reports.

In fact, right now, my hatred for these reports is almost competing with my hatred for measurements. I could write an elegy for flight dynamics - only I won't, not yet anyway, because that would mean spending even MORE time on a one-hour class.

I was discussing the awesomeness of disclaimers with a friend today. If only they'd allow them on tests...I have my disclaimer for my propulsion test in 9 days ready...."Please be aware that this test does not reflect the full potential nor brain capacity of the student being tested. This exam is being taken under high levels of stress, and lack of sleep caused by ridiculous amounts of homework assigned in other classes. The student is also extremely excited at the prospect of school ending in 29 days (at the time of this test). Therefore, this test is pretty useless if you think about it."

I'm ready to sleep. And finish my lab report in the morning before my Manic Monday begins (with 5 classes, staff meeting, taekwondo practice). But of course - I'm wide awake now.

Maybe I should go back to flight d-ing...
Nah.

Here's the elegy in any case...

Flight Dynamics, flight dynamics,
O when will you die?
I hate you with all my heart,
Trust me, that ain't a lie,
I hate writing the stupid abstract,
And making it so concise,
Although the results section,
Is probably your biggest vice.
I agree - the objectives are all right,
The procedure's every better,
But as soon as I start the discussion,
I stumble into a huge crater.
I never make recommendations,
And my appendices are almost blank,
I hate commenting on results,
And making withdrawals from my logic-bank.
Typing in equations is the worst,
It's so painful I want to cry,
So if you don't go away soon,
I'll bury you before you die.

Venting is good.

If we had a three-hour class in venting, I'd make an A. For sure.