varalaru-history-of-goldfather

Dreamers, Wife, Aft and Weber

2010-02-07T15:36:00.000-08:00

The scrabble game had just begun.

We had 1D, 2R, 1S, 1E, 1M, 1A with us.
DSERMAR

There was a E in the 1st row and 13th column. Team T/V was making good words and leading us. I pitch in the idea of making the word DREAM, so that we can get the "Triple Word Score" for the word. BG, out of blue, suggests the word DREAMERS, spanning, 2 "Triple Word Score" squares. BOOOOOMM... we get 13*9 + 50 (for using all 7 letters on stick) = 167. GAME OVER.

Next game begins. It was a close game. We were trailing by 15 points towards the near end of the game. I suggest a word WIFE, that will also complete making the words AFT and WEBER. BOOOMMMM.. we get 30+ points, take the lead and win eventually..

I wish, I had the pictures of the above boards. :( It was an awesome night of scrabble.

He comes out of closet

2009-08-29T01:01:00.000-07:00

He comes out of closet

His lips painted red
Queen's smile make him dead
Carefuly moisturizing his self
He is Santa's dear elf
Today wearing a corset
He comes out of closet

-Goldfather, Bellevue
Aug 29, 2009

(I wrote this to taunt my roomie)

And Then They Came For Me By Lasantha Wickramatunga

2009-07-09T18:06:00.001-07:00

And Then They Came For Me By Lasantha Wickramatunga

Posted using ShareThis

Desi at Traffic Signal

2009-05-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Q: What is the difference between an American and Desi at a Red signal in traffic?
A: American stops at the signal to avoid an accident... Desi stops at the signal to avoid a "Ticket"

Bra and Shower curtain

2009-03-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

Question: What is the similarity between a Bra and a shower curtain?
Answer: Both can be Hookless or have Hooks :)

Mannish Joke

2009-02-19T11:12:00.001-08:00

If only "Girish" had an 'l', the list of Indian first names would have had both "Man(n)ish" and "Girlish". :)

One PJ

2008-11-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

Why didn't that gay guy like that vegetable stew?
***Because it had Lady's finger***

Take the money and run

2007-11-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

It is comedy film written, directed by Woody Allen. He also plays as the hero of the movie. This is one hilarious movie! One of the best comedy movies that I have ever watched.

SAMPLE:
Woody Allen is sentenced to 10 years prison and has to spend his time working hard in a prison camp! On the first day at the camp, the warden gives an intimidating speech about the security measures in the camp, the punishments etc. At the end of the speech he asks if there are any questions?. All the prisoners are afraid to ask any question. But Woody Allen slowly raises his hand. He has a stupid look on his face.... and starts speaking. During that 1 micro second delay, I know that he is going to ask a damn stupid question. I start thinking about different options for the question that he might come up with.. stupid questions about the food facilities, the recreation or some personal question about the Warden etc... But dear Woody Allen has the following question for the warden... "Do you think a girl should pet on the first date?"

Me ROTFL!

So, you got the class, ah?

2007-11-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

Two years back, I would have never imagined that I would make the following statement . My roommate was asking me If I want to go for a new Diwali release tamil movie. My immediate reply was "No! Sorry! I would like be at home and catch up the 8:00PM movie at TCM-Turner Classic Movies".

The movie that TCM broadcast yesterday was a French movie (with English subtitles) "The battle of Algiers". The movie was produced by one of the Algerian freedom activists and an Italian production company. It shows the terrorist and armed insurgence/Guerrilla activities of the FLN and how the french army crushes those activities. The movie doesn't have a solid background story, but it is just based on theme of the Algiers war. The screenplay and the way the movie was taken is excellent.

Nowadays, I don't look at the TV guide to see what movie is being played in TCM. I just make sure that I am there at 8:00 PM before the TV, watching the channel. They always show the classic movies of all time. I still remember the "Taxi Driver" movie (one of the first classic movies that I watched, during the beginning of this year). I was so impressed with the movie and Robert De Niro's acting. Cannot forget the angry look on DeNiro's face in the last scene of the movie, when he looks at the "low moral" crowd in the New York streets. (The next day I wanted to get as slim as De Niro in that movie and started jogging!).

Till date I have watched a lot of great movies in that channel. Recent ones being "Mr. Holland's Opus", "Bridge on river Kwai", "A matter of life and death", "The African queen", "A bucket of blood", "Elmer Gantry".... The best part is there are no commercials! and these movies make your ass stick to the seat for the whole duration of the movie!

I was speaking to Narasimha about the movies in TCM and how I would hate to watch a current desi/tamil film or even a recent hollywood film, he sarcastically responded "So, you got the class, ah?". I don't know! I once thought that "My fair lady"/"Ben Hur"/"Bridge on River Kwai"/"Lawrence of Arabia" kind of movies were boring movies and wondered how people could enjoy it? But now, I can only watch such great old movies and very few new (good) movies! Any other movie leaves me wanting for more [good movies]!!

I ran the dreammile

2007-09-23T18:50:00.000-07:00

About the dreammile...

It is a 5Km run organized as a fund raiser for Vibha. The event was on Sep 22, 2007. I covered the 5Km in 28 minutes and 32 seconds. The best timing was 17minutes. Here are some pictures from the event.

After the first Kilometer: (I am behind the lady in light green tshirt)

Near the finish line:

Thiru Collins from Karaikudi

2007-09-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

I read this in my Tamil book during my Higher secondary school. The word "Navy" in English is actually from "Navai" in Tamil, meaning "boat". Citing similar examples, the author of the essay concludes that Tamil is a very old language and many languages are influenced by Tamil.

The following is CRAP:
BEGIN CRAP
One day, Myself and my roommate were cursing the big 60 degree slope that we have to traverse to park our cars behind our house (our house is build on a platform 2 or 3 meters above the road level). After some initial cursing, I came out with the following theory.

During the days of "Silapathikaram", there was a port town called "Kaviripoompatinam". It was a thriving merchant town. At some point of time, It got destroyed by sea and the rich merchants of "Kaviripoompatinam" migrated to "Karaikudi", which is inland and away from the sea. Though they were far away from the sea, they were still afraid of the flooding of their houses and hence build their houses on raised platforms. Even today, One can see this style of architecture at Karaikudi. Since our "Ben Collins" too follows the same style of architecture, I concluded that "Ben collins" is one of the descendants of the merchants from karaikudi. His great great....great great grandfather "Ponn Kalingarayan" settled in US some centuries ago. "Ponn Kalingarayan" became "Penn Kallings" and underwent more Anglicization to reach its present form "Ben Collins".

This is my favourite:
Do you follow cricket? There is a player called "Micheal Vaughan" who plays for the English cricket team. In fact the name is "Mayil Vaghanan" (Vaghanam means vehicle. Mayil means Peacock. 'Mayil Vaghanan' is another name for Lord Muruga ). "Mayil Vaghanan" in due course of time became "Micheal Vaughan"!!!!

END CRAP

- Readers (any? if not many!!), please encourage me with your comments! Thanks!
- This happens to be my 50th post. Good for me. I feel so peaceful when I start writing crap!
- Reading my posts again, I feel that they are crappy posts (many if not most!!). But I still intend to add more to the entropy.

PNS - PNS is Not Sambar

2007-09-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

PNS is Not Sambar. It is popularly known (to a small group of people) as Pullila-Curry [Pulli (tamarind) illa curry]. Everyone (in this small group) loves Pullila-curry.

This is how you make it.
1) Boil vegetable of your choice (preferably Brinjal or drumstick or Avarakkai (Indian broad beans) with red chilli powder, turmeric and salt.
1.1) Cook toor dal.
2) Allow the water and vegetables to boil.
2.1) Add the cooked toor dal to the boiling mixture.
3) If you don't have a mixer grinder, Buy one. It is very useful. If you have got one, then proceed to the next step.
4) Add shredded coconut, 1 or 2 red chilli, black pepper, cumin seeds (jeera), few cloves of Garlic and (preferably small) Onion to the Mixer Grinder and Grind the mixture into a fine paste.
5) Add the mixture to the boiling concoction mentioned in Step 2.
6) Boil it for some more time and then leave it in medium-low flame for some more time.
7) If you have more time and you are not very hungry, add seasoning to the the curry. Even otherwise it doesn't really matter.
8) THATS IT. PNS aka Pullila-curry is ready.

PS:
1) I know! The way I have given the Recipe is sloppy! I haven't mentioned the exact amount of ingredients and the time to cook. As Penelope Cruz says (in the movie 'Woman on Top'), "Measure with your senses. In time you will develop a tactile memory for just the correct amount of ingredients"

2) After the initial review of this post, I have added 2 more steps to the recipe. These steps (1.1 and 2.1) are mandatory.

Kome on

2007-09-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

It is 'come on' with K - Federer's only expression when he hits a great shot to get himself out of trouble.

I saw the both the finals between Djokovic and Federer. The first one was at Montreal a few weeks back and the one at US open, today. Djokovic played flawless tennis to win the first final. But it will be more apt to say that Federer lost the match himself, by making a lot of unforced errors. Today, despite the shaky start, Federer managed to win the match in straight sets. He wasn't at his best form. But still managed to win. Yo! Congrats Federer!

This US open series turned out to be great from my point of view. This is the first time I watched so many matches and followed the series right from the start. I followed and watched almost all matches played by Federer in the Roger's Cup and in the US open. I was able to watch almost all the important matches in the US open. I watched Venus and Serena getting clobbered by Henin. Roddick's usual defeat by Federer. Watched James Blake, Isner, Donald 'Duck' Young getting kicked out the US open (Fuck you! US Commentators! All the Current US tennis players SUCK! Don't try to glorify them before the match and push them down when they are kicked out the grand slam). Watched Haas' five set win. Followed matches of Sahar Peer, Chakvadatze...was sad to see (16 year old) Pazek's loss against Chakvadatze (Pazek looks very much Indian - Her father is of Indian origin). Watched Djokovic's imitation of Sharapova and Nadal in the center court.........list goes on.....

"[Djokovic], it was brutal [defeat by me]. You are a wonderful player. You deserved much better than the staight set [loss against me]."
- Federer, After winning the US open final

Who else other than Federer can make such a statement against one of the finest players of tennis. As the US open media says, "Federer is the 'Tennis God' and may be the best player ever in tennis history".

condom! bindaas bol na! behan chod!

2007-08-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

It is always a nice feeling to
1) watch 2 girls fight (physically) [Because, there is a chance that they might kiss each other during fighting - Cosmo Kramer, In Seinfield]
2) To hear a girl giving gaalies!!

Just watch this video, particularly the last 10 seconds in which a babe gives gaalies! Nice dialog delivery! Loved it! watched it some 20 times, already!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS2EwTyI2U8&NR=1

Poor man's Hot Chocolate fudge

2007-08-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Why do I call it the poor man's hot chocolate fudge?
Because,
- It is cheap (only 20 to 25 Rs. as against the 45 Rs. Fudge sold at 'Corner House')
- It has groundnuts instead of cashews and badam

But WHAT THE HELL? it tastes much better than any HCF that I have ever tasted. Few minutes after buying it, the Hot chocolate melts the vanilla ice cream and forms a concoction that tastes wonderful. (the plastic container too may slightly melt at the heat of the chocolate and give a unique flavor to the concoction...Hee Hee Hee)

Where can you get the poor man's HCF?
Bangalore, Brigade road. In the stall in front of Rex Theatre.

What made me write this post?
Two days back, I got this urge to eat HCF. So I bought vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and cashews from the 'retail giant' and made some nice home made 'Fat man's HCF' and savored it. It tasted much good with a generous helping of chocolate sauce. I need to buy more sauce and cashews from the giant to finish off the left over ice cream.

multi-voice sound effect

2007-08-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

Few days back I successfully got Raaga.com working on my office linux PC. I just downloaded and installed the latest nightly build of realplayer for linux. It has the fix for supporting streaming data in realplayer for linux.

Was listening to few tamil songs on Raaga. This is what I think about a particular sound effect used nowadays. There are few songs in which the lead singing have multiple voice (hears as if 2 or 3 singers are singing extremely well in sync). It is done by some computer mixing, by which you attenuate or amplify the lead voice and then add delay to it and add it back to the original voice. At the end it looks as if 2 or 3 singers are singing at the same time. The overall effect looks (hears) very good. Infact, it is a great effect to hear than the plain 'single-voice-singing'.

Some Examples:
http://www.raaga.com/channels/tamil/movie/T0000776.html Unnai Kandane
http://www.raaga.com/channels/tamil/movie/T0000692.html Kadhal Enbathu

Making of the FAT man

2007-08-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a cool boy. Cool means just being normal and not being a weirdo. He was like any other boy of his age. He had couple of very close friends. He was in the local gunda gang of stamp collectors, bullying and blackmailing decent kids to get hold of the rare stamps from their album or striking uneven deals like exchanging just 3 American stamps for their rare stamps from Dominican republic. At the school, he liked the eagle. He spent time, betting to his friends that Eagle will turn back and look at him, whenever he gets up from his desk, or Eagle will give the EXACT same answer that he gives for the teacher's question: "What is your future aim/goal?". He sucked in all the subjects in the school except at Maths. He never cared for studies. Life was simple for him then. Playing street cricket. Chatting for hours with his friends at the junction where he and his friends part on their way back to home from school. Fighting vehemently for his right as the first born to be the one who eats the first dosa by his mother during dinner. shouting at his brother/sister because they won a game of 'rummy'.

Then something happened. He doesn't know what it is. His marks in the school started improving steadily. As months progressed, his weight increased proportionally to his marks at different courses. He did very well in the board exams. He moved away slowly from his friends circle. Started closing up. His only aim was marks, marks and marks. He didn't care about anything else. He finally ended up with an Engineering degree and a job and loads of FAT in his body. By now he is old enough and has the ability to think about the complexities of life like love, friendship, meaning of life, job satisfaction etc. Even though he has this potential to think about higher things, he still is just content with mundane things like marks/grades and feels EXTREMELY HAPPY for making an A in the course that he did this summer, as a part of his PHD program. What is that something that made him so hungry for marks and grades?

This will make a good bollywood story!

2007-07-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yes. This one...the Haneef case! crappy Australian intelligence services!

http://specials.rediff.com/news/2007/jul/27sld1.htm

Ofcourse, it should be a Emran Haashmi starrer.

Jog to fitness

2007-07-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

I restarted my 'street-jogging' today. Till 5 or 6 weeks ago I used to jog religiously for 25 minutes every evening along the 14th and the 16th street. Then I got sapped out of all my energy and stopped this routine. Then I started going to CRC and started working out. I tried working out in the evening and then in the morning. I wasn't satisfied with this new routine. I gave it a break and restarted my older jogging routine. Wow! it is a nice feeling to jog. I feel so light and healthy again.

My Million Dollar question: WHAT IS THE BEST TIME TO EXERCISE? MORNING or EVENING?

Well, I was searching an answer for this question for past 2 years. For most part of the time I was jogging in the mornings. Only in the past few months, I have been jogging in the evenings. I feel that it is better to exercise in the evenings (Well! at least for me).

- If you exercise in the morning, you will be tired for the whole day (I felt sleepy in the class/lab after the morning exercise)
- If it is in the evening, you can hit the bed early and wake up fresh in the next morning.
- Exercising in the evening means "taking bath twice in the day". Not a good option if you have perennial cold (I have this. But WHAT THE HELL? I don't care)
- Eating well is very much required when you are exercising/jogging every day. I should start balancing my diet well with the energy that I spend. (It is tough to find a good balancing point. To add to this, I have started to hate cooking! Only God can save me in this "walk on the rope" business.)
- I can try to go to the work/lab much early in the morning now. It's peaceful when there is no one around me. (PonP is a loner and a jerk....and a sadist)

Reminds me of the tamil poem by Bharatiyar.

"Kaalai yelundavudan padippu...
....................................
maalai muludum villaiyattu..."

(study in the early morning... play all the evening)

Ponniyin selvan

2007-07-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

After a long time, I read a novel in Tamil. "Ponniyin selvan" By Kalki krishnamurthy. It is a 2400 page novel. It is available at tamil.net. Since the novel is in tamil, I was able to enjoy is much more. It is a nice feeling to read something in your mother tongue (tamil, in my case). Also I read much faster in tamil. Must have completed reading this novel in record time. I recommend this book to everyone who can read tamil. I would rate this book on par with the LOTR. While reading the book you can feel that you are being transferred to the 10th century Chola dynasty. The depiction of the Caveri delta is mind blowing. It makes me sad to think about the current state of the caveri delta, which is being slowly transformed into a desert because of the political issues between the state governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Aamir Khan's blog

2007-07-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

Yo! The fact that most of my friends have stopped blogging and that some of them have made their blogs private, closed many doors in my 'reading-life'.

But for the many doors that close, a new door opens. Guess who has started to blog recently??? Aamir Khan!!

It is nice to read his blogs at http://www.lagaandvd.com/blog.php

777 vibes

2007-07-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

Yo! Turned 25 today, that too on a good date - 7/7/7. Feeling good about this nice numerical combination.

I will not forget this day, as this is my first b'day to be celebrated with my fellow student friends. In undergraduate days, my b'day used to fall during the summer vacation. So invariably I miss the cake cutting. During my days as software coolie, I had some good b'day celebrations. But this b'day is special. Thanks to Downie and Gokul.

And something else happened today. I thought that this 'something' is not possible at all. But it happened...just on the eve of my b'day. Ponnappan-10-years-or-more-from-2007, do you remember the incident in this post?

Sick "People's temple"

2007-06-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Right now, I am watching the climax of a documentary in History channel. It is about a mass suicide by a cult called "People's Temple". You can read more about this at
People's Temple - The cult
Jonestown - The location of the cult
Jim Jones - The founder

The documentary left me shaken to death. The documentary showed all (dramatized) events beginning with the establishment of the cult, the atrocities at the cult, the events that led to the mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, the very few people who escaped from death, the killing of US congressman and NBC reporters in Jonestown.

Makes me feel that all the billions of people in this world are perfectly normal, except for weirdos like Jim Jones/Hitler-kind of psychopaths.

To kill Dr. Hannibal Lecter

2007-05-31T07:40:00.000-07:00

Silence of the lambs and Hannibal were two good movies that helped me pass the mundane weekend at Holly street. Hannibal Lecter M.D, the Johns Hopkins educated cannibalistic Doctor. When I was applying to US, PAM used to say, "Namba! You are applying to Johns-Hopkins? That is where Hannibal Lecter did his M.D". Well! He is one person who is easily inspired by Hollywood movies; wanting to be a pirate, a Kung-foo master, a cannibal, a boxer, bus driver....

The movies made me to think and come up with a way for killing Hannibal, some way that is in line with Poetic Justice. Hannibal is a cannibal. He loves eating the brain of homo-sapiens. How can one turn this habit in to a deadly weapon to punish Dr. Lecter? A little bit of Biochemistry and Pathophysiology will help us come up with one such method. Have you heard about Mad cow disease? Mad cow disease aka Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is a brain disease that affects the cattle population. This disease is caused by the wrong confirmation or folding of a protein expressed in brain. When the "mad cow" is consumed by a human, the misfolded protein gets accumulated in the human brain and triggers a chain reaction to misfold the normal form of the same protein in human brain. This results in the deadly Prion Disease in humans. Death is confirmed!! And if a cannibal eats the affected brain, he too will get the disease. Now if you, some how make Hannibal Lecter eat the brain of a person affected by "Prion Disease" (cook a human brain Biryani for him! I am sure he will love it), that's it! You have signed Dr. Lecter's death sentence. Poetic Justice, isn't it?!

Bachelor of Social Service

2007-05-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

Yo! Thalaivar's movie, Sivaji: The Boss (that explains the title of this post) will be released very soon. Trailers are out - can be viewed at:
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=zFyD4M3CZYk
http://www.ibnlive. com/videos/ 41628/exclusive- first-look- rajni-in- sivaji.html
Thalaiva, All the best! I am sure that the movie will be a great entertainer and soooper-dooooper hit.

Wish I was in India, to see this movie with Parvathi-the-witch aka paru (my sis) and my mom or my friends. Even after growing up, we have the same enthu, when watching a thalaivar movie.

Reminds me of
- Gandhi Bhavan Common room - the hullaballoo created by the entire tamil population of the Bhavan (including the studious ones) when Baasha was screened on SUN TV that Diwali. Junta taking aarti of thalaivar... the scream "Baasha Baasha"... the terrorized look on the Gults' face....
- My fight with the "Innovative Multiplex" owner, because his crew gave us the "Chandramukhi" ticket for the night show, instead of the evening show...my stinging comment and the sarcastic smirk that I gave him... My fear that after the night show, his "gundas" are going to hunt me down...
- The claps and screams of Parvathi-the-witch during the first scenes of Rajni in the chandramukhi movie...

Some of us may be engineers, doctors, PhD students, MBA students or bankers, we may have hit the "quarter-century" mark, but we will always remain rajni-fans.

What a confused soul...

2007-05-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

... am I!! Someone asks me "Do you eat meat?", I answer, "I am brought up as a vegetarian, but I eat non-veg". Someone says "How you are brought up is not important. Do you eat non-veg or not?". I say "Yes".

Yes! Someone is right. I am a non-veggie. That's the truth. Who cares about whether I was brought up as a veggie or non veggie. I think every time I say "Brought up veggie.. but now a non-veggie", it sounds like I am just trying to show myself as an iconoclast but still proud of my origins. Yuck! how contradictory! What a confused soul, am I!! But that is me!

The country was going to pot

2007-05-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

"....That was the day on which taxes were raised and tax thresholds simultaneously lowered; my father, Ahmed Sinai, flung down the Times of India with a violent gesture and glared around him with red eyes I knew he only wore in his tempers. "It's like going to the bathroom!" he exploded, cryptically; egg toast tea shuddered in the blast of his wrath. "You raise your shirt and lower your trousers! Wife, this government is going to the bathroom all over us!" And my mother, Amina Sinai, blushing pink through the black, "Janum, the children, please,", but he had stomped off, leaving me with a clear understanding of what people meant when they said the country was going to pot. ....."

- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, 1980

When I read this I was ROTFL. I completed reading this novel at midnight, yesterday. This is a novel about the life of Saleem Sinai who was born on the same day and time as that of India; Midnight of 15th August 1947. As you read the novel you will find out that the happenings in Saleem Sinai's life mirrors the post Independence happenings in India. Beautiful narration which intertwines the birth, growth and life of Saleem to that of the independent India and its confusions as a newly independent nation, the wars with Pakistan, the independence of Bangladesh, the Kashmir issue, the language riots, the emergency period, the birth and death of communism in India, the remnants of the Anglepoise etc. Some of the obvious lines that can be drawn between the narration/story line to that of the history of India are;

***Spoiler***
- Saleem Sinai is actually the son of Lord Methwold and the wife of an Indian Street singer. India, the diamond in the crown of British empire too is in some sense a child of the England.
- The Thousand and one midnight children, who were born at the same time as the mother India. They had unique talents (one can fly, one can create gold from iron, one is a great warrior, one can change himself/herself into herself/himself etc etc). These indicate the immense potential that the new country named India had.
- The M.C.C - Midnight Children's conference, that happened due to the telepathic powers of Saleem Sinai, the eldest of the Midnight Children. The conference was often chaotic. The members talked about communism, individualism, capitalism, socialism, filial duty etc etc. This indicates the confusion of the "Young" India in choosing it's ideologies.
- Saleem's Aunt Alia loved Ahmed Sinai, who in turn married Alia's sister Mumtaz. In course of time, Alia migrated to Pakistan and Sinai family stayed in Bombay. Later when the Sinais visited Alia, Alia's vengeful feeling was so overflowing that Saleem could sense it. This feeling of Alia finally led to death of herself and the Sinai family. Here, I think Rushdie personifies Kashmir, India and Pakistan as Ahmed Sinai, Mumtaz (Amina) Sinai and Alia. Pakistan's interest in Kashmir and Alia's love for Ahmed!!
- Jamila Sinai or the brass monkey or Jamila Singer, sister of Saleem Sinai, migrated to Pakistan. After hearing what happened to Saleem Sinai in the War against Bangladesh, she disappeared in to the confines of a Karachi nunnery. This may be a personification of the Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

THE LIST GOES ON. There are few parts of the narration for which i couldn't come up with a suitable link to that of the Indian History. One Example is the Widow's hostel in Varanasi. Basically this book was written in 1980, 2 years before I was even born. So some minute details didn't make any sense to me. On the other hand, I was able to enjoy "Ground beneath her feet" thoroughly (because it was based on more recent happenings of the world). But I would still say, "Midnight's Children" Rocks!!! It is an Awesome read!! It kindles your imagination!! A very different book/writing style! It deserves to be the "Booker of the Booker's" (Well! This is my gut feeling, as I haven't read the other Booker's that competed with "Midnight's Children").

I have checkout "Satanic Verses" from the library! This book is banned in India. So I would never have read it if I hadn't come to US. I want to find out why there is much Hullabaloo about this book.

My Home page

2007-05-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

I got the following idea from Gopi (Gopi is Dee O Gee - DOG, DOG manne Kuttha) who was my manager at Tejas Networks. (The DOG phrase is the one that he uses often when he reviews the team members' code and finds out a memory leak or design issue or any other potential bugs (Well, with "Gopi" replaced by the team member's name)). Gopi is a big software enthusiast.

With the ubiquity of the Internet, a common individual accesses a large number of websites in his/her daily life. Normally the person types in the first few words of the website address and the browser does the job of completing the address. Gopi wanted to make this still easier and designed/wrote a html code that displays the hypertext references of the website name (the underlined blue words). He set this html code as his home page, so that every time the browser opens with this particular page with easy hypertext references. Whenever he wants to find the bugs assigned to a person or check the company mail etc, he just opens the browser and clicks the appropriate link. That's it. Yaah! clicking is more easier than typing the first few words, scrolling to select the correct website address and then pressing the ENTER key.

But Gopi's home page was colourless and boring and was Linux-types. I wanted to wanted to make it mac-types. Instead of the mundane hypertext references, I decided to use images as hypertext references. For Eg. I used the Google mail, yahoo mail, facebook images and the user (me!) can click the Gmail image to open the Google mail etc etc. I have attached a screenshot from my laptop.

(Click on the image to see a higher resolution one)

This home page is better looking and easier to use than that of Gopi's. I have attached a zip file that contains the source code and the images that I used to create the above page. Click here to download...

Yakkai Thiri

2007-05-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was listening to the "fana" song by ARRahman. Fana, a beautiful urdu word, which means mukti or complete destruction of physical being that results in confluence with spiritual being aka Nirvana. The song reminded me of something funny that happened 2 years back.

The tamil version of the "fana" song has the following lyrics.

"yaakkai thiri kaadhal sudar anbae
jeevan nadhi kaadhal kadal nenjae"

which can be translated to English as

"The body is a wick and love is the flame! my love!
life is a river and love is ocean! my sweetheart!"

Nice verse. Has profound meaning both in platonic and non platonic sense :)

The music of the song is an amazing score by ARRahman. When the music is so good, it is common for people to pay less attention to the lyrics. PAM boy made the exact mistake with this song. The word yakkai in Tamil means "body". He substituted yakkai with another word (well, to be precise 2 words) Yaar kai. He sings

"yaar kai thiri kaadhal sudar anbae
jeevan nadhi kaadhal kadal nenjae"

upon translation this is what it means

"Whose hand is the wick that flames love! my love!
life is a river and love is ocean! my sweetheart!"

man!!! what a murder! When the mistake was pointed out, he tried to justify saying that "It means that in sex, which lover's hands acts as a wick heating up sex that is fueled by love". Bakwaas matth kar, yaar! (Did you notice the increased proliferation of urdu words in my posts, like the ghee fried raisins and cashews in kheer (aah! another urdu/hindi word :). Hmm! But what's the use! ))

After a lot of hard work from our side, PAM boy sings the correct lyrics, nowadays.

Yo! I am a biologist now

2007-05-08T19:42:00.000-07:00

After a semester of hard work, I finally made an "A" in the pathophysiology course. Thanks to the Almighty! This grade has boosted my confidence and now I can feel that I am at the right program (Interdisciplinary bio engineering) and at the right school (Georgia Tech, ranks 2nd in BME just a rank lesser than Johns-hopkins).

I used to hate biology till a year back. Long ago, I was moving to a state board school for my 11th grade. Though I had excellent marks in my 10th grade, I was admitted to physics-chem-math-bio (my second choice) stream at St.Xaviers, Tuticorin, because I was lazy and late in getting the admissions form. I attended the biology classes for a month or so. I was so pissed off with biology, that I wanted a immediate switch to physics-chem-math-computerScience stream. I stuck a deal with the Physical Trainer, who told me that if I join the basket ball team (I was 6'1" tall), he will help me to switch to the computerScience stream. I gladly agreed and the switch was complete. "Screw biology! F*** biology! Biology, I win over you!", I thought that time. (I ditched basket ball after 2 months of training. ;) still couldn't forget the look on that PT's face, when I told that I am quitting the training. "Screw basketball! F*** any form of exercise! I like being lazy!", I thought.)

Hmm! life keeps changing. After 3 years of S/W engineer job, I was desperate to join grad school and enter the dreamland, US of America. Before the whole application process started, I often used to hear bits-and-pieces of information about an emerging field called bio-instrumentation which is slowly becoming a hot field. This teeny-weeny info was good enough for me to make the important decision namely applying to the grad schools for the Bio-engineering programs. I applied to top schools like Johns-hopkins, georgia tech etc. I got rejects from all the BME departments except the one at georgia tech (which even gave me an assistantship). I got into almost all the ECE departments (without assistantship) to which I applied. Well, going to a school without assistantship was out of question to me. On the other hand, I was the biggest Biology-hater one can ever come across. However, It wasn't a tough decision. "Georgia Tech gives me an assistantship (I loooooooove money)..I will go to georgia tech.. Then I will see how I can tackle the Bio-hatredness".

I joined tech's interdisciplinary bio-engineering PhD program, last fall (2006). As a part of the interdisciplinary bio-engineering program, we are supposed to do 3 biology courses, 3 engineering courses, 1 math course and electives. But, 3 years of coding, had rusted my brain. In my first semester, I got screwed in the courses (especially the biochemistry course). The idea of studying for grade and studying the biology courses, screwed my morale, which in turn screwed my GPA. While choosing the PhD advisor too, I was very choosy. I didn't want to join a lab that does hi-fi bio research like protein modeling or bone research or cell biology research. I was very lucky to get into the lab of Dr. Tannenbaum. He is cool. works in medical image processing (less medical and more image processing :)). After the first semester screw-up, my confidence was all time low. I didn't know if I was good enough to be in the PhD program. To feel better, I had to do well in biology courses (just to justify myself that bio-engineering is "my field") and to boost my GPA (to get the feeling that I am still capable of repeating my undergraduate "magic"). The "A" in the pathophysiology course has definitely helped me in this. Now I can confidently take further steps in the PhD life. I CAN DO IT! I CAN DO IT WELL!

Lady or the Tigress

2007-05-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

This post may sound funny to most of the people reading it (PAM, Kesri! if you read this post, you will find few things that will help you to make fun of me the next time we meet). But WHAT THE HELL? I will still publish this post and look stupid!

I attended the patho-physiology class with Tigress. The cutest, leanest, prettiest tigress I have ever seen in my 24 years of existence in this world. The first time I saw her in the class, she looked like a under-weight girl (at the end of this semester, she looks like the prettiest lady, I have ever seen). I thought she was a ABCD, but she turned out to be a Paki-Paki-Pardesi (Sigh! So cruel is the partition of the Indian subcontinent). After 1 or 2 lectures, I got introduced to her. "Tigress" is not a very apt name for such a cute girl, I thought! 2 months rolled. In the mean time, I was ogling her cute photo in facebook and was dreaming. That's when bloody bugger students from Johns-Hopkins started writing on her wall, congratulating her and asking her to accept the offer. I got a little Myocardial Infarction seeing such messages. I start cribbing to Downie, "Bugger, Tigress is going to johns-hopkins..sad, yaar!". Then I start doing some detective work. I find out that "Tigress" has started a new facebook group called "Hopkins Hotties", and joined a new group called "People of Hopkins second floor".. Me to Downie "Rae Babu! look at this! Tigress has joined a new group".. Downie says "Hopkins may be a hostel at GeorgiaTech".. Without much frantic search, we confirm that there is a Ladies' living center at Tech that is called "Hopkins".

OOOh! that was a relief! there was at least some hope left! Days roll by. Every time I checkout Tigress' facebook profile, some bugger or babe congratulates her for getting in to hopkins. Me thinks "Give up, guys! She is just going to Hopkins living center". Two weeks back, I thought that Tigress returned my looks at last. Now, this is a quiet tigress... a good student who comes to class, listens and leaves...doesn't talk to anyone..so quiet and peaceful!. After I thought that my looks were returned and after getting some push from Downie, I started a conversation with her.

Me: Hey [tigress], how are you?
Tigress: Hi! I am fine! How are you?
Me: Good! Your presentation to the class was real good! It made a lot of sense to me, because I have read about it before [Learn PonP! Learn! You are a loser, PonP!!!!!]
Tigress: Ohh [long pass] [smile] thanks
Me: (collecting my casestudy marks from Downie)...sigh! Atlast!
Downie: Atlast!!!
Me: Atlast, we got 10/10 in the last case study report (We both knew what we were talking about)
Me:...[talk]
Tigress:....[talk]
Me: Hey Did you decide on your advisor?
Tigress: Actually this is my last semester here. I am joining Johns-Hopkins..I did my undergrad here, started applying to other univs and got in to JohnsHopkins!!!!
Me: (If I am not wrong, I could hear a proximal artery exploding in my heart and a distal vein popping open in my head).. oh! Hopkins! that is a great school!....Ahem! My lab is in this building...I guess I should go..see you later..Bye
Tigress: Bye

That evening I went home and ate a lot of food to overcome my depression (It confirmed a fact that I read in "God of small things".. people eat a lot when they are sad). Then I recovered from love sickness in a day or two. Still I ogle her and look at her facebook profile pics (may be she gets a mail every time when i checkout her pics (only 4 in number. Just 4 pics is enough to show to the cyber world what a pretty thing she is)). Today she started a new group called "[some paki guy' name] HOTPICS-XXX"... I am her staunch follower.. So I checked out this group. She had tagged a lot of photos of this paki guy. The following are some of the captions that she and her roommate wrote for the tagged photos.
..[paki guy's name] is so hot
..Our kids are going to have great legs like his
..only a guy so hot can separate 2 close friends like us
.............................
.............................

Nice! Good to see the quiet tigress having fun!

Not long ago, She and Roomate started a group called "wallas" group.. people with surnames like "doodhwalla" "Jilebiwalla" etc are welcome to join this facebook group. Well, she is not a "walla"..but her roommate is some"walla". Guess who is the admin of this group? "Tigress Roommatewalla".

What????? What happened to me??? Lot of people will think that the above things are crazy or even boring. but I really enjoyed her facebook nautankis. may be because, I like her very much... Good to see the funnier Tigress! Tigress! You are so quiet.. sweet looking... got the cutest face... you are so lean that you can float... Tigress! Wish you the best for your grad studies at Hopkins! I will miss seeing you! But facebook will come to my rescue!

Jono-Gono-Mono and Palanisamy

2007-04-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

Poor Narayana Murthy! He got in to a big trouble by saying that "Infosys Administration didn't play a lingual version of the Indian national anthem, because it may embarrass the foreign nationals at the infosys' Mysore campus", " the foreign nationals should not be made to sing the Indian anthem" etc. There are different versions of Narayana Murthy's statement that are hovering in the Internet. I don't know the exact statement made by him. In fact, I cannot imagine that the above statements were made by such a great thinker who has conquered great heights in the world IT industry.

Assuming that the above italicised statements are true, here are some counter arguments.
- An Indian will not be embarrassed when he is in Germany and hears the "Das Lied der Deutschen" at an all hands meeting at the headquarters of Siemens corporation!
- An Indian will not be expected to sing the German Anthem in the above scenario.
The supposed statement of Mr. Murthy looks so irrational, that I cannot believe that it was the foreign nationals that was his main concern, when he ordered the lingual version of the Indian Anthem to be not sung during the visit of President Kalam to the Mysore campus of Infosys.

Mr. Murthy is known for his high levels of Professionalism and Ethics. You can imagine him to be a very professional individual who likes to make the people around him very comfortable in his presence, speaking in a language that is commonly understood by everyone in the group, explaining the background of the discussion to a listener who just joined his discussion in a party etc etc. (I know that I am speaking for Narayana Murthy. I have never met him personally. But I had the pleasure of watching his interviews/talks on television and other ceremonies. The "highly ethical professional" is the image that comes to my mind immediately, when I think about Narayana Murthy). I wish that such an individual may have got some other (subconscious) reason for not playing the lingual version of the Anthem and the reason that he gave to the media was just an impulsive mistake made by him.

"Jono-Gono-Mono" is the Indian national anthem. It is written in Bengali, which is not the national language of India. My Bengali friend at BITS, Pilani, once asked me to sing the national anthem for him. I started singing "jana gana mana"... boy! he started laughing in an insulting way! That was very embarrassing. He then sang the anthem in the proper Bengali way which was very different from what is taught in the schools all over India (other than Bengal)! I was feeling very bad that I wasn't even able to sing the National Anthem properly. Whenever, I hear the anthem I get pumped up. I even tried to understand the words of the anthem (I don't remember the meaning now!).

Now, Imagine Thiru. Palanisamy, a common Tamilian who is working as an accountant in Madurai Municipal Corporation office, singing/hearing the national Anthem. He has no idea about "Obhisheks and Bijoylokshmis" of the Bengal, neither does he know anything about the nuances of Bengali language. To be honest, the Bengali words (except for proper nouns like Punjab/Sindh/Gujarat/Dravida etc) doesn't make any sense to him. And this is how he will sing the National Anthem.

chana kana mana athi nayaka cheya kay....
paratha pakkavai thatha
pansa pasinthu kusarathu maratha.....
thiravida utukala panga

(Yes! Thiru. Palanisamy will murder (and is murdering) our beloved National Anthem. The main reason is because there are no "Ja", "ga", "ha", "bha", "Dha" consonants in Tamil language. Though these consonants are required for the proper pronunciation of popular language like English, an average literate tamilian falters when it comes to the usage of these consonants when speaking Hindi)

Instead of letting the National Anthem (in Bengali) be murdered in the mouths of palanisamies, it is better to play a musical rendition of the National Anthem. Music transcends the language. The musical "Jono Gono Mono" will instill the same spirit of nationalism and will prevent the murder of the Bongali language.

I sincerely hope that Mr. Murthy had a reason that is similar to the one discussed above, but just blurted out the wrong words before the stupid media.

Problem of solution

2007-04-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

"In this lecture, I will Introduce the problem to you. The problem is no solution exists."
- Post Doctor Chung Ming Ling,
( Lecture on Neuro pathology - Pathophysiology lecture series)

Spoof:
"You better listen to these first few words of my lecture. Because, from this moment on, the rest of the lecture will not make any sense to you."
- Lesser Downie
(Listener - Pathophysiology lecture series)

Mal-Wart

2007-04-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

Mal-Wart sucks... sucks big time.

Last night, myself, Raju, Aru, Badri, Shyam were dining together. Raju brings up the topic of Mal-Wart (to divert our attention from the crusade between raju and the rest-of-the-table). He says that Badri too hates mal-wart. Well, I hate anything purchased from mal-wart because, that anything is stale, if it is a food and that anything becomes nothing, if it is anything other than food. The cheap mal-wart burned-chips on sale, the wax polished mal-wart apple that is a sweet home for worms, the chinese made umbrella that concaves when used to keep out the downpour on a stormy day, the mal-wart cycle that creeks and tries to break the gear when used uphill (thank god! that cycle got stolen. I prefer it stolen than meeting with an accident while riding it), the heater that blew off after the first-night.... the list is big.

Well, Badri has a different reason. His reason is more sociological. According to him mal-wart exploits its employees.. is the only fortune company that doesn't pay medical insurance for its employees... encourages/doesn't oppose the child labour in its partner factories in china/india etc. These are good enough reasons to boycott mal-wart. For example, I myself wouldn't be comfortable eating at any restaurant employing child labour. And 3 or 4 of mal-wart family members are among the top 20 billionares (according to forbes magazine). If the family members were listed together, the family might as well be the richest family, surpassing Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. But still they don't pay the basic requirements for their employees. Badri says ".. This is an example of exploitation at all levels.. starting from the manufacturing countries till the consumers (fuck! my heater doesn't work)..."

Fuck Mal-Wart!!! Mal-wart is a big retail giant that apart from toilet paper, also sells groceries, tools, clothes, stale meat, TV, Electronics, guitars, shoes and crap.

Downie's facebook

2007-04-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

Today morning I get a call from Downie, who sounds very tensed and embarassed. He says "man, something bad happened" and explains.

Downie is a mega-star hailing from Hyderabad. We joined the grad school, last fall (2006). Those who walk by the Whitaker building corridor at 9:30 AM on tuesdays/thursdays would never have missed seeing him. For it is the time when myself and Downie are done with the sleepy lecture of the pathophsiology class and start chatting in the corridor about mundane things like the subject of that day's lecture, marks that we scored in the class assignments, the final project for the course that our two member team is supposed to do etc and much more important things like who was sleeping the class?, Why the guys from a certain lab had attitude problem?, how that particular ADCDC(hick) doesn't look like a desi?, Arguing about the last name of ABCDC(hick) 'R'?, about Who is attractive - ABCDC(hick) S or ABCDC(hick) R? etc etc. Downie is fresh out of undergrad and his androgens have not yet reached a steady state. He gets hyper active, every time he sees ABCDC(hick) S or ABCDC(hick) R. Shamelessly, he prods me to look at them everytime they pass the Whitaker's corridor, our favorite after-the-class-hang-out spot. He says "look at the mangoes and guavas... Ayyo! baabu!!!!". I say "Adangu macchi. cool chey ra!!" (cool down! dude).

This is how Downie's stray into the facebook fantasy started. Didn't I mention about the final project for the pathophysiology course? Almost near the end of the project deadline, I ask Downie, 'man, let me know if I need to do anything for the project?'. Downie replies 'Don't worry man. I will take care of everything. Just chill out. I will come to your home today and we can discuss it.' We assembled at my house, as promised. In the past three months, we have become wise and knew that promises made in whitaker corridor (read 'heaven') among the ABCDC(hicks) (read 'BME angels') should never be broken. Downie talks some gibberish about some revolution in 64 slice Computed Tomography and about some professor whom he met regarding the data collection for the project. He gives some paper to me and asks me to go through it. I, after reading all the page numbers in that thin-report, give it back to him, in the same way as how Salman Rushdie would hand back an autographed copy of "Midnight's Children" to a fan. It has been five minutes since our project meeting started. Both of us were happy with the way the meeting went and the progress of the project. FULL STOP.

Then we started discussing about more important topics. Downie is a die hard fan of "Nagaarjuna". He shows-off the latest hits of "Hydollywood" in youtube.. movies of some new hero who is supposed to be the next chirru.. hot "Hydollywood" actresses... talks about Nagachaitanya, Nagaarjuna's son. We talk about how Namitha has become more and more voluptuous after her entry into "Kollywood" and I show him a youtube of a Namitha starring "Arjuna! Arjuna! Ambu vide Arjuna!" (Arjun! Arjun! Shoot an arrow on me!) Hot song from a kollywood movie. This must have reminded Downie about ABCDC(hick) "R" for obvious reason! He was hyper ventillating! We spend some quality time discussing about the latest "Hydollywood" happenings. However, Too much "Gult" videos and Too less "Tamil" videos, makes Pon-P a dull man. Downie senses it and changes the topic to "facebook".

Facebook? what the hell is it?, you may ask. My answer (Assuming that you know about orkut), If orkut is a desi chick(???!!!), then facebook is a ABCDC(hick). If orkut is mickey mouse and flowers in the profile photos, facebook is swim suits and hug-and-kiss-a-boyfriend in the photos. Given the tapories we are, myself and Downie have registered to the facebook long time back. Downie claims that he visits ABCDC(hick) S's profile every now and then. But neither of us have visited our new heartthrob ABCDC(hick) R's profile. We started searching for ABCDC(hick) R's profile. Downie was the lead pilot of the mission control. Bloody bugger was never able to find R's profile. During the flight, we come across the profiles of ABCDC(hick) B, ABCDC(hick) HS, ABCDC(hick) SB etc etc. We enjoyed the journey for a long time, not caring to reach the destination. After some quality time spent enjoying the scenery of 'S'pura, 'B'pura, 'SB'pura, We started to feel the void in us, which only the 'mystic river' of 'R'pura can fill. Downie gets frantic. I suggest to him, as a good co-pilot that he should checkout ABCDC(hick) S's friend-list. I was pretty sure that the people of fine caliber like ABCDC(hick) 'S' and ABCDC(hick) 'R' would definitely be in the same friend's circle. Well, I knew that for sure. I once was sitting next to 'S' and 'R' in the undergraduate computer lab and was over hearing their conversation.
'R': blah blah
'S': (giggle)
'R': did you fill that form?
'S': I did...
'R': I am filling it now... name... 'R'... Department....'BME'... undergrad... country?....country??? (she was thinking for a while)
'S': ('S' comes to the rescue of 'R')... ofcourse US of America..
'R': yes, US of A-M-E-R-I-C-A
me thinks, bloody ABCDC(hicks)!!!!

haah! where did I stop? yes! hunt for the facebook profile of 'R'. Having strong faith in my over-hearing abilities, I was 100% sure that 'R' must be in the friend's list of 'S'. Downie follows the direction that I pointed and reaches our holy grail... the profile of 'R'. Tapori had added an extra 'a' in R's name while searching. That's why we never arrived at the destination sooner. But all is fair in love, war and profile hunting. Now, you guys should know that the 'facebook' is a popular US site that never puts a limit on the number of uploaded photos and we are talking about 'R' and 'S' who have some 800 even photos in their profiles. We had a herculean task. Common guys! 800 photos of 'R'! Lets say, we spend 10 secs in digesting each and evey group/party photo (40% of total), 20 secs for each of her close-up photos(40%) with her pot-bellied boy friend and 1 minute for each solo snap with the swim suits(20%)... you guys do the math!!! But Downie and I have a never-say-die attitude in such matters. The photos along with our whacky comments!! rolling on the floor and laughing at each other's mean comment about the pot bellied boy friend! Downie's comments about mangoes and guavas!! LIFE IS GOOD!

Now, Downie must have just stopped with that. Instead, he goes around and spreads the word to the entire "Gult" community here. This caused an increase in the bandwidth usage around the university. All this time, we thought that our profile-leching was anonymous. But sadly, today, Downie gets a mail from facebook saying that some dude has checked out his profile. Oh! my god! that means leching wasn't anonymous! SO WHAT?, you may say. Think about the 100 or so virile guys leching a profile in a single day and 'Downie' being the first one. Downie gets paranoid. He calls his accomplice immediately to discuss his concern. I had to sooth this kid, saying that "Director of BME has more important things to attend in life and will never mind his(Downie's) leching of a BME undergrad ABCDC(hick). Cool ra, Babu!!".

Do pretty girls pass gas?

2007-03-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

Look at how the Mythbusters bust this myth.

Recently they worked on a myth "about the death of a person in a closed room, which was supposed to be due breathing of poisonous gases like Hydrogen Sulphide etc present in the flatulence." I think the myth was confirmed. After this they must have worked on the "Pretty-girl-flatulence-myth". But this will not be aired in the discovery channel. Looks like this myth got edited out. But it is available in Google videos. Watch it! Funny!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-498687635091206486

Chimerical reality

2007-03-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

According to the oriental gurus, "Thinking is one main reason that leads to unhappiness", "Philosophers are the unhappiest people on earth, because they keep reasoning (involves thinking) out every aspect of life", "A Spiritualist mocks at the thought process going on in the mind of his followers" etc etc. Here is an incident from Buddha's life. Disciples are in a room, waiting for Buddha to deliver a sermon. Buddha enters the room with a bunch of beautiful lotus flowers. He goes directly to the diaz and takes a seat there. There is silence in the room and people are waiting for Buddha to speak. In the silence, People are constantly wondering about why Buddha has brought the lotus to the sermon? and what is he going to talk about the lotus? etc. Suddenly, there is a loud laugh in the room. The disciple who laughed was very much amused to see Buddha with the flower and let out the laugh. He was not at all bothered by any questions about why Buddha was carrying the flower. Buddha got up, walked straight to the disciple and presented him with the flowers and walked away from the sermon.

According to Osho, Thinking should be done only when it is required. For example, there is no need for thinking when someone is eating or driving or jogging. This is a very RIGID condition. Let me dilute it a little to make it practical. Let us take the example of walking. When walking, instead of just shutting of the thinking process, let us say that thinking must just be focussed on obeying the traffic rules and adapting to the surrounding, to ensure the safety. But if the mind wanders and you start thinking about "What will happen, if I die an accident? Who will take care of my family? etc etc", the person will become more and more unhappy. Thinking leads to imagination. Imagination deviates from reality. Deviation from reality can make you happy ("I am the king of the world") or sad("what happens to my family, if I die?"). But neither of it gives you peace of mind (bliss or satisfaction). Yes, It is absolutely impossible for most of the people to be free of any thought. But controlling the "thought", can definitely lead to improved "Peace of mind". Only a Buddha can be completely free of thought or vice versa (only a person completely free of thought becomes a Buddha).

When Buddha gave the flowers to the Laughing disciple, wasn't he thinking for a while to make the decision of giving the flowers to him? May be or May not be (I don't know. If I knew the answer, I might be a Buddha myself). But one thing is sure. Siddhartha had to go through a lot of thinking to attain Nirvana and become a Buddha. "Zen and the art of M.C maintenance" echoes the same theory. The author says that as you get closer and closer to the peak ("Nirvana"), the journey becomes slower and slower (more questions crop up).

Well, In the above passages I have presented my understanding of "Thought". My conclusion is "If the "Thought" is controlled, it may give better satisfaction to life". Is Nirvana (complete "thoughtlessness") acheivable by Human beings? I THINK SO. Are the so called thinkers, unhappier? Yes, I am unhappier, most of the time.

Can imagination be soothing in reality? Yes. I had a dream yesterday. I had a death experience in my dream. Surprisingly, unlike all other "dream", I think I was able to experience this "death" experience more vividly (physically!?). In the dream, I was taken as a prisoner (I don't the reason for my imprisonment). I was sentenced to death. My execution was carried out by some radiation gun. First, everything was normal. Then there was pain. The pain started increasing exponentially. It flowed like current from all parts of my body toward my head. Then the pain started receding. I couldn't feel the existence of my stomach. The inexistence or numbness started to spread to other parts of my body. Slowly I felt that i was loosing all my body parts. It seemed that my head was the only part of my body. Suddenly, everything went off. I dreamt about being in my home to see a coffin. They take the coffin away to cremate it. I went to my mother and asked "Were you able to see my body? or was there only ashes in the coffin?" (I started shedding tears when I asked this question to her. I think there was a physical shiver when I asked this question). My mom replies "We got your charred body. Everything is going to be ok. Rest now".

The dream was so vivid that, I thought there was some actual fire or something like that. After the dream, When I got up in the morning, I was very happy to see that I was alive and nothing has happened to me. The morning after a really bad dream is always good. You wake up to find that things are fine and start the life as if it is a new birth. (Yesterday was a very cold day. I must have slept off with the comforter covering my face. The oxygen level inside the comforter must have gone really really low, suffocating me. This suffocation must have triggered the dream. Nonetheless, the experience was very vivid. It felt very real!!!!)

Lost love

2007-03-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

The spring has arrived. Beautiful bright colored flowers are blossoming along the road pavement and in gardens. Sound of chirping Cuckoos and Vireos is music to the ears that got used to the cacophony of automobiles in Atlanta. The sweet scent in the mild spring breeze reminds me of you. I have fallen in love with you soon after I started my life as a student in the United States. Do you remember the wonderful time that we had together for the past seven months?

I have known you, for a long time. Those days, I never liked you. But many of my friends liked you and used to talk about you always and compare you with other people like you. To be frank, I thought that those guys were a little preposterous. But once we got introduced a year back, I started to realize, how wonderful you were. I still remember our first meeting. It was in a pub/dance floor in Bangalore. Do you remember that, honey? I was all frustrated and was getting in to a bottoms-up beer competition with my friends. You were there staring at me. I still don't know what you thought about me that day. The Rum-with-cola that I had, made me high, but still, I vaguely remember talking to you that day. Then we started meeting occasionally in the office parties and then outside office. I am sure that you wouldn't have forgotten the "Rand De Basanti" movie. It was the first time I kissed you, sweet lips. You were like an angel in heaven. After the movie, I didn't want to have dinner that night. I wanted that sweet sensation in my lips for the whole night and for ever.

When I came to US, I had a strange feeling that it was not over yet. You proved that I was right. Last few months, we have hanged out together a lot. My heart throbs every time, I see you in different beautiful flimsy dresses. You look great in them. Your dressing sense in US is amazing (that doesn't mean that it wasn't good in India). All these months, we have met everyday and talked and talked at student center. Is there a place in student center where we haven't been yet? Do you know that we have been in the pizza hut there for more than hundred times. I used to feel so happy to just keep looking at you in the ferst restaurant, where we go often. I know, I can never ever stop staring at you.

You know that I am a socially challenged person. But when I am with you in any party, you have given me amazing self confidence. You make me feel that I am not alone and you are always there to love me and take care of me. But the other day, I got mad at you. I don't know why? Perhaps because I saw you with another guy in the party. I got mad and drunk a lot of alcohol that night in the party. Boy! How can I forget the look that you gave me. I am sorry to have ignored it, otherwise I would have never puked and spoiled the party. Sometimes, I feel that you are always right!!

Hey, do you remember the first time I took you to my home? Throughout the dinner, my roommate was staring at you. When I told him "Damn you, Stop looking at her. She is mine", I could feel the happiness in you. When I embraced you, I could feel your pulse getting higher and higher. That night was wonderful, wasn't it? I had you to my heart's content. You filled every inch of me with joy. It was much better than our first kiss.

You have shared the ups and downs of my life in the past few months with me. You have been more than a friend to me. I will always remember the great time that we had. I know that things didn't work out that well between us. The problem was entirely with me and my obsession with the patho-physiology class and my desire to not die obese. Coke, you are wonderful and sweet. But I will never have you again.

Target Swimming

2007-02-24T15:29:00.000-08:00

Myself and PAM boy learned to swim in Sep/Oct 2005. It used to be a terrible winter-onset. But we used to wake up at 4:00 AM in the morning and go on to attend the swimming classes between 5:00 to 6:00 AM. PAM was a better swimmer. He was less afraid of the depth and had very good stamina. I was a bad swimmer.

But I continued my swimming even after oct, 2005 (PAM boy got lazy and stopped) and used to go to the pool every weekend. (Still my swimming improved only a little. Though my techniques got better, the biggest constraint was the fear of depth).

Now, Jogging schedule is in place. I will definitely be jogging, everyday of the months to come. Now, I want to start the weekend swimming too. This time I want to get rid of my fear and become a much better swimmer. First task - Should inquire about the pool timings in the Campus recreation center (CRC) of Geogia Tech.

PS: Did you know? The CRC (formerly Georgia Tech Aquatic center) hosted the swimming events of the 1996 summer Olympic games.

Jogging again

2007-02-24T15:01:00.000-08:00

Yo! I started jogging again.

Yesterday, when I was returning back to home from the lab, I saw my lab mate, Shawn, jogging near my neighborhood. He and a few other labmates jog everyday in the evening starting from the BME department. Seeing Shawn jogging, I got the enthu back. When I got back home, I immediately went for a jog. I took a rectangular route with my home located in the length of the rectangle. It took around 6 & 1/2 minutes to jog in this route.

Today I jogged again, in the evening. This time, I took a route with greater breadth-wise distance. Planning to gradually increase the distance.

Few changes between the jogging that I am doing now and the one I did in Bangalore
1) Now I am jogging in the evening. I think this is better, because it is still a cold and lazy morning.
2) No music. The Nokia headphones are just not staying in the ear socket. They keep falling and distracting me. But the jogging is still fun without the music.
3) This time I am jogging on concrete sideways. In Bangalore, I was used to jog in the mud/sand path in Oxford school's play ground. I have heard that jogging on a road/concrete path increases the strain in the knees. Just hoping that nothing bad happens to my knees.

Yes, I am feeling more refreshed and light.

Where is the plaque?

2007-02-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

It has been a month or two since I started working on the segmentation of the arteries from the cardiac CT images. This project has been in the lab for two generations of students (I am the third generation). The first student worked on the vessel extraction. The second generation student worked on the center line extraction and the area calculation of the extracted vessel. My mission is to analyze the roughness along the vessel walls.

There are a calcium deposits or cholestrol deposits etc that add roughness to the vessels (arteries) in the heart. The arteries supply oxygen to the heart muscle, so that the heart can do the pumping job properly. When calcium/cholestrol etc get deposited, the blood supply is cut off , resulting in myocardial infarction (heart attack). My mission is to use the image processing techniques to find out the deposits.

After two months, I am pretty much comfortable with identifying the arteries (manually). But now it is time to go one step further - to be able to identify the deposits too, visually. When everytime, the doctor with whom I interact with for the project, says "look at the left anterior artery, there is a soft plaque there"... I say "hmmm yaah, I can see it.."... But honestly it is a "King and the new robe" story.

If I am able to visually say the location of the plaque, I can try to develop algorithm for extracting its location. Looks like mission impossible. :( But I will keep trying.

and yes, next time you see me, bring your CT images... I can look at it and tell whether you have a healthy heart or not. :)

PS: Did you know? Saying "someone has a big heart!" is not actually a compliment. Big heart means more "Tension" on the heart walls. This means more oxygen usage to produce the same amount of blood pressure (this is almost a constant for any healthy individual) as a smaller heart.

The holy city of Mecca

2007-02-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

There is a Pakistani girl, who is doing "Basic Pathophysiology" course with me . Her name is Nimra. I, the curious one, waned to know the meaning of her name and sarted googling for it. The search, as usual carried me away to read the Wikipedia articles. I had always been interested in the Islam religion and it's history. I spent an entire day reading about Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon him), the mecca, the Kaaba, the medina, Hijra, Haj, the first caliphs, the shia beliefs etc.

According to the Islam, "Allah is the only God" and "Muhammad is the last prophet". The Quran says that a muslim should pray by facing the "Kaaba" which was supposed to have been built by Abraham and his son. The Kaaba is in the Holy mosque in mecca. Mecca and Medina are forbidden for non-muslims. Hence, I wanted to see the site using google maps. I got some good pictures of Mecca and Kaaba and would like to share it in this blog.

You can see the white marble floors of the holy mosque in mecca.

There is a lot of settlement to the left of this mosque, but there is no settlement to the right. This is because the right side has hills.

The Holy mosque.
The central cube structure is the "kaaba". The edges of "Kaaba" roughly face the 4 directions.
The semi circular walls just next to "Kaaba" are not clearly seen. Between these walls and the "Kaaba" lies the remains of Abraham's son and Abraham's second wife.

Wikipedia Kaaba link

PS:
1) There is a lot of argument about the direction of "kaaba" from the places that are on the other side of the earth. Look at Quibla for more details

2) "The Gypsy, the Jew and El Islam (1898)" By Sir Richard Burton is an account of his travel to Mecca disguised as Arab. Should get hold of this book someday.

3) Did you know? In 1979, there was a terrorist attack on "The Holy mosque". Read more..

PPS: Well! By the end of the day, I got back to my original mission, to find out what Nimra means. Nimra means "Tigress" in Arabic.

Typhoid - an infectious disease

2007-02-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, I had to submit a case study on bioengineering in infectious diseases, as a part of the course on "Basic Pathophysiology". The moment I heard about the theme of this case study, I made up my mind to base this report on Typhoid. "Why so?", you may ask. Well, It is a long story.

On Jan 2003, the Dinghy-Dinghies (the wing fraternity) started our internship at different companies in bangalore. We were are flocked in "Vemee Sadana", Ulsoor, Bangalore. The six months of internship was fun there. Myself, CB and Sundi were put up in the same room. It was world cup time and CB had brought a small TV to watch it. The entire gang used to hang out in our room and watch the games, day and night. Sundi had his slow Pentium computer in our room. Well! all the individuals(especially Y-Axis) made full use of this slow PC... you know what I mean :).

Those were great times. Got the first taste of the Pizza hut then...MG road was very close. we used to catch up with a movie, used to eat the "POOR-MAN'S HOT CHOCOLATE FUDGE" near the rex theatre... ogle the beautiful Bangalore girls...

All fun was over by the end of May. The gang was splitting..Veva was moving to US for higher studies..CB to Hyderabad...Sundi was planning to move with his parents...RL was looking for better job-offers...Y-axis was still growing (Today, he has completed his MBA and is working at ICICI bank)...Mumu was planning to stay with his Mama.. Myself and PAM were left behind in Bangalore.

To make things worse for me, I got infected by some high fever, in May. Initially, the doctors to whom I initially went to, thought that it some viral fever and gave some usual pink tablets. Every evening the fever got worse. I used to take the medicines and the next morning, I wake up healthy... but as the day progresses the fever slowly increases. By the time I get back to "Vemee's" I used to be dead-beat. To add to this misery, I had'nt got any job offer from National Instruments (the company where I was doing internship) and didn't get the offer letter or joining date from infosys (my job from campus interviews). And My parents and brother were away on a month long trip to North India and I didn't want to tell about this to them and ruin their trip. My sister was in a hostel doing her engineering. Didn't want to bother her too.

It was a teribble time with very high physical, emotional and mental stress. If it was not for the Dinghies and Aruna-Aunty family (she ran a mess near vemee's), I wouldn't have coped up with the situation. It had been some 15 days of high fever and nothing was curing. It was then, the Uncle from the mess took me to a doctor friend of his. The doctor immediately diagnosed that it could be Typhoid and the blood results proved it. Three weeks earlier, I had made a trip to Tuticorin. I had to eat in road side hotels. Looks like I got infected then. I had to take antibiotics for 3 days and that's it. Things started improving. I was fit and healthy once again. Few days later, I got a job offer from National Instruments. When my Parents got home from their trip, they found the infosys offer letter waiting for me at my home in Tuticorin. I decided to take up the NI offer. Myself and PAM decided to be roommates. By mid June, 2003, the internship for the entire gang ended successfuly.

TYPHOID:
When I knew that I had typhoid, I used to search the internet to know about the symptoms and my survival chances. But I never got to know about the biology behind it. The case study gave me an excellent oppurtunity to know more about this diesease. Let me try to present my case study it in a way that makes more sense to every one.

Causing Bacteria: Salmonella Typhi
Bacteria characteristics: Has a toxin within its cell wall. When this bacteria is affected by human immune system, the toxin is out and causes more virulance. It also had a protein called Invasin which helps it to survive against the human immune system.
Pathophysiology: Affects the intestine and the parts of digestive system
Symptoms: High fever, Pain, skin rashes, large liver, diarrhea, may lead to death, if untreated.
Medicines: Antibiotics like ampicillin, chloramphenicol, streptomycin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and ciprofloxacin etc. These drugs affect the baterial cell wall or its protein sysnthesis or its DNA replication and results in the death of the bacteria.
Current challenges: The Bacteria has mutated and is resistant to the commonly used drugs. My case study focused on the study of the mutations and the bioengineering methods used for the new drug development.

Wisdom

2007-02-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

Last semester I did a course on "Fourier Techniques and Signal Analysis" taught by Dr. Erik I Verriest. The following is from the his introductory notes for the course:

".........The objective of this course is therefore to strive for a creative knowledge of the necessary tools. Creative knowledge transcends rote memorization and the ability of solving “plug-and-chug” problems. It involves also a clear and full understanding of the phenomena and the techniques. However, one should also try to push further to a third stage, and excite the creativity of the student. This means that a more holographic knowledge of the material will be aimed for, not only in solving problems, but occasionally also in detecting and identifying potential problems. It requires the ability to synthesize. The next stage of knowledge, wisdom, comes with experience and age in most cases."

Fingerstyle guitar

2007-02-09T20:53:00.002-08:00

I liked the following video very much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzAFVMzTg_E

Just try it.

Polymerase chain reaction

2007-02-09T19:14:00.000-08:00

Polymerase chain reaction is a typical example to illustrate the power of biotechnology/bio-engineering and why it is going to be the hottest field in the next few decades.

Today I was looking at the Court TV and they were showing a clip on how the polymerase chain reaction [PCR] was used to identify the criminal. This technology was invented by a Georgia Tech alumni, who went on to win the the Nobel prize for this invention. The PCR is used to amplify the amount of the DNA present in forensic samples.

For Example, let us say that there was a drop of criminal's sweat left on the crime scene. The normal genetic analysis cannot be directly performed on it, because the concentration of the DNA in the sample is very low. This low concentration can be amplified in a polymerase chain reactor.

Principle:
- Double stranded nature of the DNA. The nucleic acid in one strand attached to its complementary nucleic acid in the other strand
- polymerases are biomolecules that play vital role in DNA replication during cell division. The DNA replication is semi conservative in nature ie. the daughter cells have one of the parent strands.

Working:
- the low concentration DNA strand is heated to separate the 2 strands.
- the strands are treated with the polymerases along with the A T G C nucleic acids
- The polymerase start the replication and new DNA strands are formed.
- the DNA sample is heated again to separate the newly formed DNA
- the above 3 steps are repeated till sufficient quantity of DNA is obtained.

The DNA rich sample, can be now used for different genetic analysis.

I remember my first biotechnology seminar given by the department chair. Quoting him "50 years from now, your son will be saying that 'people were so dumb, 50 years back, that they were cutting down the rain forests to make paper'. Because in future you will have biotechnology methods to make paper out of bacterial cultures. Even though currently bio-engineering is now mainly used to address the issues in the health care, there is a lot of scope for it in the future".

I accept that Biotechnology is going to be the technology of this century, the same way as how electronics and computer science was, the previous century.

Globe trekker

2007-01-27T11:23:00.000-08:00

Everyone likes to travel around the world and visit places, learn about the place and to know how different or how exciting the life in that new place is. (I have a minor crib here, I see lots of people interested in just visiting a place and taking "patel snaps" of the place, instead of enjoying it and living the life of that place. I definitely can vouch that if people switched off their camera, the trip will be much more enjoyable)

There is a wonderful broadcast called "Globe Trekker" in the Discovery Travel and Living channel in India. There are a number of hosts who travel all around the world, capturing and explaining the life in those unvisited parts, for the pleasure of the viewers. There are a number of characteristics that I like about this program.

1) The selection and presentation of the locations that pretty much symbolize the way of life in that part of the country. They choose very exotic spots and cover every inch of detail including the finer ones like cuisine, entertainment, music, art, festivals etc

2) The presenters are damn good and are funny and love what they are doing. (my favorite ones are the cute Christina Chang, Justine Shapiro and Ian Wright.) I still remember the Oktober fest episode, in which Justine serves beer to a table, a guy at the table grabs her butt and she goes crazy on the air

3) The title music is inspiring.

4) Last but not the least, you really get to know about lots of places that you will never visit in your life.

More details can be found at this link - globetrekkertv

Elfenland

2007-01-25T21:48:00.000-08:00

Today we (lab mates) played a board game called the Elfenland, at the lab.

This is a strategy game. A maximum of 6 players can play this game. The board is like a map with paths connecting 20 points. The paths are through different terrains like mountains/plains/desert/forest/river etc. Each point has 6 coins of different colour. Hence there are 20 coins of 6 colours on the board. Each player is assigned a colour and the mission of the game is to collect as many out of the 20 coins of the same colour assigned to you, the player.

There are small squares to represent the mode of transport (like cart/raft/dragon/pig/unicorn etc). Each player has to place the corresponding mode of transport in the path that he likes to take, while collecting the coins. There are cards that act like tickets for each mode of transport. For examples there are card that can be used to travel on cart, cards for traveling on raft or dragon etc.

In each round, the players has to pick say "x" number of squares(mode of transport) and "y" number of cards(like tickets). The player strategically places the squares on path on which he would like to travel. This goes on in a round-robin fashion till every one is done with the placing of squares (only one square can be placed per path. There are 20 destinations. each are connected by sparsely by say "n" (say 50) paths). At the end of the round, the players use their cards to travel along the path using the mode of transport placed on the path and collect the coins from the destination that they hit.

For Eg. Say "dragon" is placed on a path over "desert", the player will have to use "2" dragon cards to travel over the path. If the player need to travel over mountains using unicorn, he should use "1" unicorn card. If he doesn't have the card, he cannot travel on the path. If he has them, he travels to the destination and collects his coin. A player can travel using the mode of transport placed by other players.

We played this game during the lunch time. Good game! I finished up as one of the winners (collected 16 out of my 20 coins).

Concurrent Versions System

2007-01-24T13:01:00.000-08:00

Today myself and Steve set up the CVS repository for the lab. Till date the lab members were using their local home directory for saving their program.

Recently, I am at the receiving end of the Knowledge transfer from a fellow lab-mate who will be graduating very soon. I found it daunting to keep up with the code, like copying it from her home directory to a local server and then to mine and keeping track of the changes. I desperately wanted to set up a source code control for this purpose. As usual my lazy mind thought that this is going to be tough job and didn't budge. But suddently I recollected what gopi (manager at Tejas) used to say to me. "JUST DO IT MAN! JUST DO IT! IF YOU DO IT TODAY, IT CAN BE PEACEFULLY USED IN THE FUTURE.... OTHERWISE YOU WILL ALWAYS LIVE AMONG THE CRAP, INSTEAD OF CLEANING IT"... He used to say this everytime when I felt lazy to do the "code cleaning/augmenting job/cool automation for an otherwise dull job" that he had suggested.

So today morning, I started looking for how to set a CVS server. It is very simple.
- use "cvs -d init"
that's it. repository is created.

I tried creating it in my local machine and was successful. Even tried out some basic cvs operations. I informed this to Steve and he created the repository in the main server. All the job was done in less than 1 hour. I have even started using CVS, As I am typing this blog all the code that was written by me is checked in.

If I had been lazy to install CVS now, then I would have been using the same old shit method through out my PhD life. Now that I have set up the basic CVS, I can peacefully code the rest of my research work, for the next 3 years. Thanks Gopi!!!!

Anamikan

2007-01-23T09:47:00.000-08:00

What's that again?"
Me: It is Pon/nap/pan Aru/mu/ga/nai/nar.
Oh, How do you pronounce your last name?
Me: It is pronounced as Aru-mu-ga-nai-nar
Wow, longest surname I have ever heared.
Me: Yaah! its my Dad's name. In the region where I come from, we use dad's name as the surname.

I am tired of the above conversation - everytime I introduce myself or get introduced to some body.

My first name too sucks! When I pronounce it in the authentic tamil way, people never get it (because of the stress on the "nn" and "pp" sound. So I have to pronounce it as ponapan. I always felt that I am carrying my grandfather's name (I am named after him) and my father's name and not my name. [Sometimes I do admire the linguistic beauty of my first name. It is made of only 2 consonants ('p' (ip) and 'n'(in)) and 2 vowels ('a' and 'o') ]

It would have been cooler if carried my community name "pillai" as a surname and my dad's name as a (rarely-used-only-for-document-purpose) middle name. But in Tamil Nadu, it is discouraged to have the community name as the surname . The reason is that such names kinder casteist feelings. But I found Tamil Nadu to be one of the most casteist place in India. People might have taken the caste titles away from their name, but not from their way of life. Intercaste marriages are very rare in Tamil Nadu. It should have been the otherway. People should take the caste prejudice from their social life and not just their name (infact taking it out of the name doesn't matter to me at all).

Case study 1

2007-01-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

This semester, I am taking a course on Systems Pathophysiology. Major evaluation components for this course are a set of 6 case study and final project presentation.

I was one of the presenters for the first case study. The major theme of this case study was Cardio Vascular Diseases (CVD) , tissue Engineering. The students can choose any specific area in the major theme and have to write down the case study. Being a guy with the electrical engineering background, I chose to present on Atherosclerosis (blockage of the coronary artery by deposits of Cholestrol) and the imaging techniques available to analyse the extent of the artery blockage.

The structure of presentation was as follows
- gave a brief overview of the heart and the coronary arteries
- talked about the causes of atherosclerosis and the progression of the same in the vessels
- treatements available for atherosclerosis
- functioning of CT scan
- image processing techniques for obtaining the calcium score (amount of calcium deposit in the heart)
- future of cardiac imaging - like the analysis of the plaque content

Lessons learned:
- High level of adrenaline when making a public presentation. Should learn to reduce it.
- bad time management. Tried to give a lot of detail in the specified time (10 mins)
- Good bottom to top approach (Started from the basics)
- Wasn't bothered by the people who were yawning during the lecture. Good and bad . :)
- Didn't mind the cute girl (with the indian subcontinental features) laughing at me, at certain points during the presentation.

uncertainty principle, relativiy, zen and the motorcycle

2007-01-19T13:06:00.000-08:00

Two of the major developments in the 20th century physics are the Uncertainty principle and the theory of relativity.

According to uncertainty principle, there is a limit to the accuracy of any measurable quantity.
For Example, (in physics) a sub atomic particle's momentum and position cannot be measured accurately at the same time instant.
(in electrical engineering), the time resolution and frequency resolution of a signal cannot be accurately determined at a given instant.

In the theory of relativity, Einstein was able to relate the space and time and time dimension was no longer independent from space. But the randomness of the Uncertainty principle made Einstein to make his famous quote, 'God does not play dice'. For which Bohr replied "Don't tell god what to do."

Can't both randomness and certainty coexist? Let us say these is a uniform random noise in a domain. If we know the distribution, can't we tell that how many noise values of one level exists? we definitely can. Doesn't this mean that there is a some certainty in the randomness.

Also can something that is bounded by uncertainty at one level, be more predictable at the next higher level or vice versa? A very naive example, It may rain with some certainity today in the winter season. But this season willl definitely be cold.

Ayn rand says that philosophy is the super set of science. A philosopher is a scientist. Can't we apply the Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance principles to physics?

Looks like the honey-moon is over

2007-01-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

today I had a meeting with my advisor and 2 doctors from the emory school of medicine. We are working on a collabration project in medical imaging.

In the meeting, I came to know that there is another group that is working on the same project and we are in a pressure to get the results much ahead of our rivals, so that we can be the owners of the technology. This means that within the next 2 months, I will have to get a near final result and should be able to submit the work for a popular conference and journal.

It is going to be a daunting task. should have to put in a lot of effort for that and sacrifice a lot of pleasure :( Lemme see how it turns out!!!!

the wiki wiki world

2007-01-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

On the internet, there are 2 websites that I cannot live without.
1) wikipedia
2) google

I recently read an article about wikipedia in the IEEE spectrum (dec 2006). Basically wiki has redefined the term truth ("truth by consensus"). According to the 'spectrum', there was a talk show person, who appealed to the audience to bombard wiki with the "false-truth" that "the number of african elephants had increased in the last 6 months".

But the wiki "monitors" have succeeded in preventing this from getting in to wiki and for that matter any such false truth. hats off to them, for maintaining the wiki standards. It is a tough job to keep a non-profit organisation like wiki in such good standard. Good job, guys!

A small fact! If I search for an article in wiki, it is generally slow. But If I use google to search for the same wiki article, google gives the link much faster!!! So in addition to the normal search, I use google as a gateway to wiki. works for me!

wiki had this post about a tamil movie. inspired me to change my blog name!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varalaru_-_The_Story_of_the_Godfather

Jogging

2007-01-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

It has been six months. since I stopped jogging. Used to jog regularly everyday, when I was working in Bangalore. I must accept that jogging is one of the best ways to start a day.

Listening to the latest hindi songs in Radio City Bangalore and jogging!! Wow! cannot forget that experience. After the jog, the body is completely energised and ready to face the mundane day-to-day sedantry life. Even in the winter (Bangalore's winter is quite cold. average dawn temperature can be less than 10 C), I used to get up before 6:30 and never missed the jogging routine.

Thinking of how bangalore contributed to the jogging practice, I can list the following reason;

1) Bangalore has lots of parks and jog spots in every locality. These parks are always bustling with health conscious people.

2) The pleasant climate that makes jogging a good experience (man, I used to jog in chennai when I stayed there for a month. You basically sweat a lot and get easily dehydrated and stinky)

After travelling to Atlanta for the grad studies, the jogging came to a halt. Mainly because, I didn't have jogging shoes. Now, I will be getting my shoes and with the music player in my mobile, I am planning to restart jogging. The winter here is much colder than the one in Bangalore. But "WHAT THE HELL?", I am going to start getting up early from next week and jog the extra weight out of me. :)

Passion

2006-11-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

AMR wrote......

Hi,

I have been thinking...
What must a man do to find out what his true passion is...what truly rings a bell deep inside...what gives goospimples at the end of that day...? Is there something which we can tell them to give them hints on how to go about hoping to achieve this task of slightly high order?

Your thoughts on this will be appreciated.

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

To start with, "This passion is definitely a real world thing" , otherwise you can never achieve your passion.

There is a good amount of chance that you have already done this (either in your real life or imagination or dream) [eventhough it was in your imagination/ dream, it doesn't make it unreal]. You will just have to "realise" this thing that you have done.

Most often it turns out that one passion induces the other. Hence people are passionate about different things in different order. for eg, i like eating.... but i need a lot of things to keep this passion alive, like finding out ways to make money to pay the bill. so I turn passionate about engineering and start studying it.

But after all, one cannot pusue the passion 24/7. I get bored of my primary passion, the mind wanders to enjoy the pleasure of "you-know-what- all-young- guys-want' .

Mathematically modelling, the plot of all real "verbs" vs "passion" turns out to be a "sinc" funtion [(sin pi*x)/(pi*x) ]. The negative values mean that, you hate doing that "verb". Eg. I hate exercising.

The above is just a two dimensional representation. A three dimensional visualisation is possible by considering "varying degree" of verbs. For Eg: passion for eating italian food, passion for eating arabic food.

Ofcourse there is a time dimension too....so basically the passions change with time (otherwise you will nolonger be passionate about it (you will get bored).

1) Life goes on with the seach for "passion". Some think that they found it...some keep searching for it. At the time of death, one realises that "the most passionate thing that he was going after" is "The Life". "Living/Life is the passion of not just humans, but all the living organisms varying from bacteria/palnkton to lion/dinosaur) [After all we share the same genetic code :)]

2) What you are doing right now is what you are passionate about. So stop searching for it There is no use, BECAUSE YOU ALREADY KNOW IT. Otherwise, it is like searching a book all over the place, when you are holding it in your hand.

Pittsburg Venkatachalapathy Temple

2006-07-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

Inspiration?
This temple was made famous by Maniratnam and sujata in the movie "Yuva". Siddarth says to Thrisha "I love you....(blah blah)....want to...(blah blah)........we will go to US. have lotsaa kids. Visit Pittsburg Venkatachalapahy Temple....(DONT CARE)....."

Stala purana by:
Myself, RL, Pam and Kesri at Noroanha's house were wondering, "what the hell is the stala purana of this 'Pittsburg temple'?". After reading all the religious texts and what-not, we found out a convincing stala purana for this temple.

Did you Know?
Pittsburg is in the United States of America. But by the divine grace, this pittsburg is related to the B.T.M Layout, Bangalore. Stupified? Want to find out how? God Agni Bagawan has the answer. Oh Curious mind! Read On.

Not so long ago...
After the great war with Ravana, Rama returned to his base camp in Tamil Nadu (Rameswaram). Rama is tired after the war. He wants to drink some panaka made of clear water and sends the great Agni Bagawan to fetch water from the Glaciers of Greenland (Needless to say that Rama was bored of the water from Gangotri). Agni's god-foe Vayu's son is Veer Hanuman. Hanuman is the left hand of Rama. For a long time Agni has been ogling for this coveted position.

Agni wanted to impress Rama and bring the water as soon as possible. He knew that Hanuman too will try to do some shortcut tricks to win Rama's favor. [Infact, Hanuman did succeed in his trick. He brought the waters of Cauveri to Rama and Rama was satisfied with this. This is how River cauveri flows through tamilnadu (well no more :(. Patil, Devegowda and S M Krishna stopped it)]

Agni was speeding towards greenland. Hanuman's Father Vayu wants to stop him from doing so. So he storms Agni. In this storm, a piece of Agni fell in the 10th Cross, B T M layout (near Pongal restaurant), Bangalore. Agni too is a powerful God. He makes haste and escapes from Vayu's attack. His initial plan was to fly over frankfurt-London-Atlantic-and reach Greenland. But because of the Low pressure created by Vayu, he is diverted to USA.

Who said Columbus discovered USA? It was Vayu who discovered USA. He discovered USA 1000 years before Columbus. Otherwise how would have Red indians reached US? Infact Agni "Fathered and Mothered" the Red Indians. Yes, Agni is the father and mother of Red indians. Proof??? Agni is Hot. When something is Hot, it turns red. Now is it clear why and How the red Indians are "Red" and "Indians"?

Agni is a Hermophrodite(both male and female). This is how he was able to produce the Yankees "single handedly" (why Am I laughing???????????). When he was in this cycle of reproduction, a part of fire from the female part of his body, fell in PittsBurg. (The Fire that fell in BTM layout bangalore was from the male part of Agni).

Now isn't it very clear. One God. Fire from this God fell in 2 parts of the Globe. Isn't this enough. The rishis in india build a temple called "Narayana Swamy Temple" in BTM layout Bangalore ("Naran" means Man). The Yankees in Pittsburg build a pentacle shapped building at pittsburg. (According to Dan Brown, Pentacle is a ancient symbol of Pagan religion and represents feminine gender). Later in 1900s or so, an Indian politician called Advani reached this place and found out that this is the place where Agni fell and demolished the ancient pentacle and BUILD THE PITTSBURG VENKATACHALAPATHY TEMPLE. ("Ven" means white and symbolises the feminine gender). Even today the Yankees around the world are a part of a secret society that funds this temple. Recently Britney Spears too visited this temple.

Since Agni was on tour to fetch water for Rama, both the temples were built as Vishmu temples and not as Shiva temples. And yes, Agni brought the water from greenland to South India. But Rama had returned to Ayodya...... [Infact this is related to how the southWest and NorthEast monsoons occur. More on that Later :)]

Couples who havent yet been blessed with children come to BTM narayana swamy temple. According to shastras, if they visit the pittsburg venkatachalapathy temple within 7 days of their visit to Narayanswamy temple, they will be blessed with kids. Such is the power of our Hermophrodite God(dess) Agni.