Hear and Dare

The last 45 days

2010-12-14T08:55:00.003-05:00

It has been a lovely last 45 days, three of of Phaedrus' and my friends got great job offers, Phaedrus and I finally moved together to upstate NY to the same city (and apartment!) after 18 years since we became friends in middle-school, and are finally fighting it out over choice of living room furniture. We might live to tell the tale yet.
In the last 45 days I also said good bye to many many friends in Durham, who helped me survive grad school, and became my extended family. Turns out Durham is colder than Albany today. So can't moan and use the line: "I miss NC weather" anytime soon, and have to admit to "I miss NC friends " instead when I am in a complaining mood. On the other hand, we've reconnected with old friends in the new place and made new ones, so it's not altogether bad.
In the last 45 days I also put my sister back on the plane to London, having met her after 2.5 years. The Lotstodo sisters had traveled to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Washington DC, The Blue Ridge mountains, New York City and of course Durham and up-state NY. Very eventful, as would be expected with 2 strong willed sisters and an "I know what is best for you"elder sister (ahem).
In the last 45 days I learnt that furniture that isn't sourced from Craig's list or the last grad student in the apartment actually costs $$, and 0% financing is a good thing while you are trying to repair your bank balance buffeted by the domestic airline industry for the last so many years (MSP, here I come!, RDU here I come!).
Phaedrus already started work....I still have a week more to go. So In the last 45 days I also learnt, that feminism or otherwise, it is great to have a guy pay for everything. He feels chivalrous, and I feel pampered. My feminist core doesn't seem to be taking much of a beating, so maybe I am not a feminist any more. In the last 45 days I also learnt that though I can cook decently if I put my mind to it (to feed the family and friends like a good wife should), I'd rather be doing something else, like putting a mean spin on a ping-pong ball or reading a book or agonizing over how ill-prepared I feel for a job that is designated "scientist". So post-grad world, umm... here I come?!

Another list of things

2010-02-16T19:54:00.003-05:00

In the past 3 months....

1. I traveled to 7 cities
2. 3 of which were with my gori (white) advisor and desi (Indian) labmate.
3. I saw a tigress in the wild from afar.
4. And got growled at by a mother bear in the wild from very near.
5. Got hurled through time and space in an open jeep down a steep cliffy road at 60 kmph.
6. Haggled over a $850 silk rug and got it down to $700 by using the argument that we would have to walk (instead of taking a chauffeur driven car) and eat only glucose biscuits (instead of paneer and the works in room service)
7. Be driven around the Ranthambore forest by a guy who my advisor christened "lovely face".
8. Stayed in a hotel room where the bathroom walls were transparent glass (why?). In case you are wondering, we found electronically controlled blinds to allow us to perform our ablutions in private.
9. Stood in a temple queue for 5 hours, to glimpse the deity for 5 seconds. No kidding. (Tirupati)
10. Met a Duke alum on the other side of the counter at the US Consulate in Mumbai, who DID NOT give me my visa in spite of chatting with me about Duke basketball.
11. Enjoyed 8 straight hours of live Indian classical music performances.
12. And another 2 to the backdrop of a historic fort.
13. Barely made it back to the States. (involved a tire blowout, mixup of airports, delayed flights, and a suspiciously shaped box on my back that was my size)

All to the refrain of "May tori tori Hindi samaajtee HOONN" (The American way of saying "I understand a little bit of Hindi")

Each of the above deserves it's own blog post, but in the meantime, feel free to wonder.

All in a Night's work

2009-11-14T12:59:00.002-05:00

Last night I did the following:

1. Helped the police in catching a murderer by tricking him into confessing.
2. Got caught in a tidal wave with a 100 other people and swam to safety to an island while taking out teabags from a cardboard box to dip in the sea. (The teabags seemed very important at the time)
3. Warded off a swarm of locust-like birds that were flying low over the sea.
4. Prevented a bunch of people from entering a painted sandcastle (more a sandhouse?) with a blue door. In actuality it was a time machine for the brain that caused you to think backwards.
5. Was pushed in a maze with multiple locked doors and multiple elevators. I found the right one to get out, to only be asked to play hopscotch on a terrace garden before I was allowed to leave. Playing hopscotch on a terrace garden is a difficult task, I tell you.
6. Learnt to hold my breath while sitting on my haunches, and sink to the bottom of a swimming pool for more than 5 minutes using a yogic technique which I am trying really hard to recall now.
7. Demonstrated some very intricate vintage embroidery techniques with big red beads and red thread. The demonstrations were held at the edge of the pool from #6 above, with short breaks when I sank down to the bottom of the pool again for practice.

As you would imagine, I am very exhausted. This weekend shall be spent relaxing after last night's adventures.

And the Mouse said to the Tiger

2009-10-16T13:14:00.002-05:00

"Run! Else I am going to bite the back of your hind leg, and you know can't even reach me there."

So the Tiger ran away.

Moral: Valid logic can get you out of scrapes.

Pumping iron

2009-10-13T22:38:00.002-05:00

The weight training class I joined this semester is, to use an overused sophomoric word, awesome.
We been throwing medicine balls, doing pull-ups, bench presses, free weights, squats with bands around our legs and uncountable crunches sitting on a Swiss ball. In the words of my instructor, "You are much stronger than you think you are. " Indeed.

Not to mention that we have been told to groan if we need to when lifting weights. Now I see.

The biography of a rag, a scrap piece of silicon, and a holey pocket

2009-09-20T21:19:00.006-05:00

It is enlightening when I discover traits that I used to tease my mother about are the same set of traits that I cannot seem to shake off from myself anymore.

The basic philosphy carries in from my grandmother who told this little parable in Marathi, which roughly goes like this:
My mother had a sari which she wore for many years. When it became a little too worn to be worn, then she cut it up into two, and used them as light sun-curtains for two windows in the bedroom. When the curtains became a bit faded, she took them off, and used them as hair-drying towels, as they were soft cotton. When they got a little threadbare, they became dish-rags. The dish-rags turned into a floor mop, and finally when only strips of stringy cloth remained, they got thrown into the ragpicker's bag.

As is to be expected, the little story when told in its original colloquial Marathi, sounds much better than this dry version.

This is not as much of frugality as about innovation. Of finding multiple uses for a single item before its life is considered to have ended. Not use once and throw. But, use, reuse, use, reuse, recycle, use, reuse. My grandma and mom were using environmentally sustainable practices much before it was the new in-thing to do.

At least a fraction of it got retained into my generation. In the unavoidably resource-intensive field of semiconductor fabrication, I grin to myself when I use a single cleanroom wipe through a 6 hour process, use smaller pieces of silicon saving the scrap pieces for other dummy/test runs, reuse pieces when I can, and wonder what the heck is wrong with me since this is not even coming out of my pocket. Which reminds me, that I have a hole in this pocket I need to fix before I get too lazy and just go out and buy a new pair of jeans instead.

Books = $2.50, Enjoyment = priceless.

2009-09-19T23:38:00.005-05:00

Reader's Digest's The Last Two Million Years : $1
Rodale's No-Fail Flower Garden: $1
Steinbeck's The Short Reign of Pippin IV: $0.50

Okay, so it is not like I found a rare book, and will make a million off it later, but there is nothing like spending only $2.50 on three books, and the pleasant anticipation of spending many quiet hours reading history and gawking over photographs of man-made artifacts of the last two millenia, contemplating new approaches towards sowing the perfect flower bed (once I have that perfect house!), and chuckling at the sad state of affairs M. Pippin finds himself in.

Life is good with a book in hand.

What were you doing on September 11, 2001?

2009-09-11T07:48:00.002-05:00

The morning the political landscape and our lives in the US changed, I was getting ready to go to school. Driving from my house to my classmate's who was carpooling with me, I turned on the radio to my favorite music channel, 100.7, The River, I think...or was it NPR? No music. Two radio hosts were talking about a major attack on the WTC in New York. "The jet plane got flown into the twin towers, and while were thinking it was an accident, a second plane has hit the towers. This seems to be a terrorist attack." Picked up my friend and told her something major was up in New York.

School: Dr. H's VLSI design class. She started the class with saying, "I hope you are aware of the ghastly terrorist attack that has occurred in New York this morning. Please pray for the victims."

Came down to the student commons after class. The small place was very very crowded, with gray haired faculty, freckled freshmen...the whole lot. All looking up at the wall mounted television sets replaying the disaster. The room was, and continued to be very quiet, as the actual magnitude of the attack became clearer.

Went to my lab, and my labmate SD was trying to reach his mom on her cell phone. She went to work every morning taking the subway that passes underneath the WTC. We all sat and brooded and worried, while he kept trying to call her every 10 minutes or so. He didn't get through to her till the evening. She was safe but had walked most of the day to get back home after the subway and other public transport grinded to a halt.

How panic can spread, is evident by all the phone calls my parents in India fielded from concerned friends, asking if I was alright. Heck, I am in the midwest, and even they knew that. But they panicked with all the phone calls and kept trying to call me all day not getting through till the evening as well.

Gas prices hit the roof (went above $2) that night, we came up with strategies for car pooling.
The next day the city mayor ordered gas pump owners to keep prices under control, and we went back to our convenient single-car-occupant selves again.

I made history today

2009-09-03T13:51:00.006-05:00

That was easy.

Help! Neverending days of Summer!

2009-08-29T07:32:00.002-05:00

A plan to watch a historic outdoor 70th anniversary screening of Gone with the Wind got washed out with the thunderstorms, so we ended up watching "500 days of Summer" at Carolina Theater. I wish that had got washed out with a late summer thunderstorm too.

Here is how the story goes:

Boy meets girl.
Girl has different expectations of relationship.
Boy has different expectations of relationship.
But he makes out with her anyway because he is in Love. And for any Bollywood fans out there, there is even a group song and dance sequence with an animated cartoon birdie perched on Boy's shoulder. He has a Spring in his step, because he fell for Summer!

Girl says I told you so and gets married to someone else.
Boy keeps moping.
And moping.
And moping.
And moping.
And moping.
And thinks about all the oh-so-cute things (playing pretend house in Ikea?!) they did when they were together.
And then he mopes again.
And thinks again about all the oh-so-cute things they did when they were together.
And mopes.
And mopes.
And...zzzzz.
Oh sorry, I need to finish this neverending story, don't I?
One day he meets Girl again, and has the aha moment (he wasn't THE ONE!).
The End.

Friday, Friday at the FIP.

2009-08-28T15:58:00.005-05:00

My favorite part of Friday is going to the breakfasts that are held by the Fitzpatrick Institute of Photonics (FIP, for short), of which our research group is a part.

Now, graduate researchers are a breed that are to be read, not to be seen. Who knew, or would believe, that our department for example, had more grad students than undergrads? They are hidden away in labs, offices and cleanrooms and such. But come Friday, two very diligent grad students put together a lovely spread of coffee, muffins, biscuits and fruits in the atrium, and magically, there is a crowd. Of grad students. And post doctoral researchers. And a few professors (who can get over themselves!).

Sure, some folks just come grab the grub and head back wordlessly straight to their offices. I have seen some students, and even a postdoc who pile up five plates of food, make three trips back and forth from their office, making arrangements for lunch, dinner and then breakfast for Saturday, without a word to the people around them. Then there is the other lot who don't even step out of their offices. The very thought of possible socializing seems to paralyze them and chain them to their desks.

As for the rest, the saner of the lot, for the ones who come and hang out, the atmosphere is light, the conversation refreshingly rambling. Sometimes a technical poster is displayed for discussion. It may just be an excuse for giving an academic sheen to a social get-together, but it is well worth it. And there are discussions. Once, we came up with a detailed outline for a technical poster to describe the etching of a macro-cavity in pulverized silicon dioxide (dig a hole in the sand, you bozo!)

45 minutes later, the place is empty, but it is a lovely start to the weekend.

"In recognition of

2009-08-23T19:36:00.005-05:00

Lotstodo GradStudent's invaluable service to the community of American and world scientists by making lasers that
1. Saved the world
2. Made clean water available to all
3. Ended all hunger and poverty
4. Turned all 6.779 billion inhabitants into happy world-citizens
5. And most importantly, elevated the status of the lowly grad student to one of the mighty Atlas' who did not shrug ,

I, Barack Hussain Obama, President of the United States of America, by the powers vested in me by the constitution of the United States of America, confer upon Lotstodo GradStudent honorary citizenship of this country."

Wha....the....? After all the nightmares I have been having (heck, I am a graduate student, I am supposed to have nightmares!)...this dream was a refreshing change.

Addendum: So am I desperately looking to get American citizenship? Nope. Nope. It was only a weird dream, refreshing only because of its content, not that the outcome is a citizenship!

And so, what is YOUR name?

2009-08-23T18:06:00.006-05:00

What would you do if a guy in a muscle shirt , with a most elaborately shaved pattern of scrolls and curls on his chin and sideburns, comes to you with a swaggering gait, points to the top button of his slightly frayed jeans peeping through a heavily ornate belt buckle, and say: "Look here, look here. What is your name?"

Scream for help?
Slap the man?
Pretend to be deaf and dumb and walk on?
Run in the opposite direction?

Looking at my (I imagine) ashen face, he turned and looked around, pointed to some string wound around a basket, and repeated: "Look here, look here. What is your name? Spanish?"

Aahaa, THREAD. This man, who just walked into this fabric store, only needs to buy some sewing thread.

Green is the new green

2009-08-17T14:06:00.003-05:00

I was reading up a little about green laser diodes thanks to a news article that came through a professional discussion group, and lo and behold, I just find that Photonics Spotlight (check blog link on right) talking about the same topic.

Seems like periodically, there is a synergy of ideas regarding both fundamental science and applications, a convergence of efforts, a maturing of technology, and one then has the next "surge" in the field.

Of course, for the uninitiated, here green laser diodes refer to the color of light emitted, rather than the environmental aspect of it. But we know that semiconductor based lighting sources are head and shoulders above incandescents and CFLs in efficiency, so they indeed are green.

Groan

2009-08-06T22:30:00.002-05:00

Why do some men have to grunt and groan at 92 decibels doing their bench presses?
And then walk around strutting their stuff?

2 bench presses followed by a half-hour strut through the weight room.
That don't impress me much.

At my desk, in my chair, hello computer!

2009-08-06T18:02:00.005-05:00

Just like Phaedrus fears water, I fear computer simulations. I don't hate it, I just fear it.

And competing with that are the following fears:
1. Fear of feeling unproductive, aka, I haven't made a real device in the cleanroom in the last 4 weeks.
2. Fear of not having real data by testing a real device.
3. Fear of not being able to get anything useful out of the simulations in a short amount of time.
4. Fear of disappointing the Big Boss by not being able to get anything useful out of the simulations in a short amount of time.
5. Fear of not comprehending why the heck these simulations seem to behave the way they do.

I am happy to report that I have temporarily overcome some of these fears and have been tied to my desk and chair for 8-10 hours a day like millions of people who earn their bread by staring at a computer screen, and rediscovered a few things:
1. Ha, I don't have to necessarily wear long trousers to protect my legs, because I am not going to the clean room. It sure makes a variation in my daily (imaginary) fashion statement. I remember last year, when I was going through a similar simulatory phase at least 3 colleagues who I do not talk to on a regular basis stopped to ask me why I was wearing a skirt (!!).
2. Suddenly, numerous people seem to complement me on my "new" hairstyle, aka "not tied up and pressed flat against the scalp like Princess Leah". Courtesy, the same as above.
3. Telecommute, aka the joy of working wearing your PJs. Unfortunately, PJs are also very conducive to plopping on the bed and going off to sleep in the middle of the day when you are frustrated with the (non) results of your computer simulation.

How are the simulations going, you may ask? Uh, I'll let you know after I have napped a bit.

"Back" up

2009-08-02T10:25:00.003-05:00

Piyali is in UK right now, and too much of sightseeing = back pain and sciatica, and extreme pain during any change in movement: standing up, turning, walking. I have seen her living with daily excruciating back pain for the past 15 years. The diagnoses have been many: slipped disc, osteoperosis, and a crazy number of others. Tractions, exercising, vitamin D injections, and what not, seem to have no effect. The primary treatment other than surgery for her seems to be exercise to keep the back flexible and reduce weight, but how does one do that if one can hardly stand? Lower back pain is one of the most common ailments out there, and the number of therapies that are present are mindboggling. But equally suspicious are the rates of success, the side effects, the temporary nature of the treatments in some cases.
Recently, I came across a unique back pain website, which seems to clear up at least some of the myths around back pain. While I am not yet sure what will work for Piyali, at least I have a better idea of what will not work. For example, I had no idea that chiropractic school was such a huge sham. Not that I have ever been to a chiropractor (we don't really have an equivalent of this in India), but the extent to which many of them are ill-trained and ill-equipped is scary.
On the other hand, I am hoping to see more about the efficacy of ozone discectomy in a future post , which interestingly, is available in India but still not in the States.
Maybe some form of discectomy or an epidural that would allow pain relief for a few months for her to get started with an exercise regimen maybe in order. Kal, my friend who is a physical therapist suggested this. Wierd, but I don't know why no doctor till now has suggested that, and it seems like a really good idea.
So currently I am on a mission to find out more and hopefully, help Piyali work with a doctor in a more informed way when she gets back to India.

Ironically, the way I keep my back in shape is by doing the yoga exercises Piyali taught me. Since she is an artist, I have nice figure drawings for each of the asanas, so I don't forget how they are done. And she can't do them because she is in too much of pain.

Plants

2009-07-20T02:50:00.002-05:00

Are uncontrolled experiments. Too many unknown variables (Water, soil, drainage, nutrients, pot size, insects, temperature, species, mood...! ) in too complex a system composed of too many parts and too many materials and chemicals (it is a Plant).

It is comforting that I have better control in the clean room. Known, controlled variables of humidity, temperature (and you name it) in a simple system, heck, a simple element (silicon!) or compound (Gallium Arsenide).

But if my plant starts dying, I can look up the Internet for tips to further try to manage this complex system. If the device I make dies, I scratch my head. And scratch my head. Gardeners across the world are smarter than this PhD student.

'Lazy' days of summer

2009-07-13T21:45:00.006-05:00

Summer goes too fast, and when Phaedrus is in town, the speedometer breaks.
Last week we did the following, in the stated chronological order:
Work, visit friends for dinner, work, watch Ice Age : Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 3D.
Work, visit the Eno River Festival and get our caricatures drawn, work.
Work, go to an American Dance Festival concert and watch a drag performance of Beyonce's All the Single Ladies, played an hour of Table Tennis.
Work, listen to the Army Jazz band on Corcoran Street, visit a Hindu temple and unexpectedly attend a Satyanarayan Puja, watch Howards End (quite a jump from pious Hindu godly thoughts).
Work, go to the mall and buy supplies from Target for a weekend-out-of-town trip, work.
Work (and finally get experimental results and submit a grant proposal....in two separate unrelated events), experience the Duke Immersive Virtual Enviroment cube, go to Target to finish shopping, go to Dain's Place with friends.
Drive to the Outer Banks, mull over the genius of the Wright brothers, beach around, watch "The Lost Colony", an outdoor drama in its 72nd year, wonder how many lakhs/crores of rupees would be needed to start and run an outdoor theater in India.
Climb up the shifting sand dunes of the Jockey's Ridge State park (is it the beach, or is it a desert?), climb up the 268 steps to the top of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse (and NOT pant, Hurray!), go the the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum (the museum is pretending hard to not be a Graveyard.) Take the ferry to Ocracoke, beach around.
Go parasailing at 1200 feet (that was it?), watch a Kite Flying festival, drive back from the Outerbanks, eat substandard garlicky Indo-Chinese food for the umpteenth time (we never learn), watch a crappy Bollywood movie while burping out garlicky burps.

Pass out.

Very Difficult

2009-05-06T23:32:00.001-05:00

To believe in the inherent good in people.
Aren't some just born evil?

Light

2009-05-06T23:28:00.002-05:00

...at the end of my laser converted into bits, captured, stored, backed-up, plotted, graphed and printed out. It works. It works.

A silver, or in this case, infrared lining, to a dark cloud is always a good thing.

More Excuses

2009-05-06T23:26:00.001-05:00

It's raining cats, dogs and thunderstorms, and I already got drenched once.
So, biking will have to wait for sunnier days.

No excuses left

2009-04-26T17:37:00.002-05:00

The cat's eye is installed
The rear reflector is now set.
The batteries are charged.
Tire pressure seems right.
The ambient temperature is conveniently 76 degrees.
The sun makes me squint just the right amount.

No excuses left,
To ride my bike.

Envying the plants on the other side of the fence

2009-04-26T17:33:00.001-05:00

Why, oh why,
Do I want a garden so green?
I turn green looking at my neighbor's garden,
And my garden turns brown with shame.

Depressed Bird/ Dumb Bird? Suicidal Bird!

2009-04-16T19:03:00.004-05:00

My colleague A- and I, walking from one building to another on-campus, came across a bird. Sort of looked like a pigeon, but we weren't sure. A sitting duck would be a more apt description.

It was on the road, leaning against the edge of the side walk. We walked a foot past it, and it did not budge. Both A and I noticed it, but it did not register in my head till A- said...Woah that is one calm bird. So we stopped. A- touched Bird, but it did not seem to care. No shaking, no palpitating chest.

A- and I circled it twisting our heads this way and that. Was it injured? Was it pregnant? Was Bird suffering from mid-life crisis? Maybe it was just lazy. Maybe it had brain surgery done to it in the lab next door, and had escaped. There were no signs of injury. Very strange. Maybe Bird was just sick, maybe just ate too much for lunch and couldn't move (I know that happens to Phaedrus, but he is human). I also nudged it a bit, and I could swear it gave me a look of utter boredom.

I tried to call a friend who knew about birds (same brain surgery lab ), but couldn't get through, so we were like...okay, guess there is nothing we can do. Sorry, Bird.

Just at that moment, a truck Roared past it. Barely 2 feet away. In fact, we quickly jumped on the sidewalk because we saw the truck coming. Bird did not Move. Not an inch. This Bird was dimwitted ! A crazy, suicidal Bird! That was it. I started pestering A- to pick up Bird from the road and put it on the sidewalk. Since it appeared that I was more scared to pick it up than he was, he agreed.

A- goes and puts his hand on Bird and about to pluck it off the ground, when it takes off and flies away, like any normal self-respecting Bird.

What a birdbrain.

Fighting with Uncle Sam

2009-03-31T22:50:00.003-05:00

It took two PhD students a cumulative of 10 hours to Not complete a federal tax return and two state tax returns over the weekend. Phaedrus and I have to file joint state tax returns for 2 states as we are residents of 2 different states, and North Carolina tax instructions are umm, not very clear. So much so, that even TurboTax did some totally whacky calculations and confused us for another 3 hours. How did that get THAT fraction?...we tried every permutation and combination, till we figured that it had got it wrong as well.

After having taken turns nudging each other awake from falling asleep over the forms, we finally called it quits at 4.00 in the morning, broken and defeated by Uncle Sam. Phaedrus, exhausted, cursing my home-state, had a sound, dreamless sleep; I saw line instructions and arithmetic all night. I woke up and zombied over to the computer and tax forms blindly staring at them for another hour first thing in the morning, before Phaedrus came to check if I had died or something sitting in my chair.

Hilarity

2009-03-05T17:57:00.007-05:00

After a colleague announced to others in a meeting today that I have a "hilarious" blog, I am forced to fulfill the adjective describing this blog. Here goes.

Playing to the Gallery

Surely you do not think me to be a bad piano
A bad piano throws up when one bangs down on it
I only sputter.

You say, I am off-tune?
Is that your fault or mine or his?

On the other hand, I think you shouldn't sit where you are, up there.
Forcing me to be louder to reach your discerning ears.
I am an instrument, you know,
Not a vocal chord.

On the other hand, vocal chords strain more than I am straining.
What would you do then, compare them to a bad piano?
Like me?

Sob.

Invisibility

2009-03-05T17:53:00.001-05:00

You may have heard the news of the cloak.

The cloak - more recently made famous by a privately wealthy school where Harry and the Romulans studied electromagnetics in 400 AD. The school is known for its legendary cigar smoking statue….. captured with its Hogwartian backdrop only in brochures and tourist-clicked photographs. On clear windless days, it is more likely for the statue to be found cloaked by a dimpled brownish orange bouncing sphere, with no wings, and thin black lines drawn across it. The beauty of this sphere, without the color and the dimples, is that it is the focal point of the diagrams explaining how the cloak works…using the black lines to great bending effect.

Surprisingly, the inventor does not have a mane of wild wavy hair and a tongue sticking out. He does not have a cigar, in spite of the tongue not sticking out. He does not have a scraggly white beard and bushy eyebrows, to draw inattention to the fact that his tongue is not sticking out. Why?

But his other-world non-Romulan pate radiates a disconcerting aura of

The Baking Soda that Baked a Bitter Bread

2009-01-31T18:56:00.003-05:00

Today, two loaves of bitterly bitter banana bread later, I discovered that baking powder and baking soda are two entirely different, non-interchangeable ingredients. The recipe called for 3.5 tsp of baking powder, and I put in 3 tbsp of baking soda. Wrong ingredient, wrong quantity.

The bread texture is great, it just tastes like it was soaked in neem juice.

So for all ye beginner bakers, here is a rule:
Short cooking times (pancakes and cookies) need baking soda , which is purely sodium bicarbonate.
Long cooking times and high heat, Breads and cakes, need powder, which is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and cream of tartar. Sodium bicarbonate dissociates pretty fast...and then the cream of tartar takes over.

short and sweet need soda
breads and cakes need powder.

The larger question is what do I do with all this lovely looking, ugly tasting bread?

Crime and Punishment

2009-01-29T15:32:00.002-05:00

The crime of rhyme:
there are only so many.
The curse of its verse:
the jails of deja vous.

Burnt Green Postcards

2009-01-29T15:16:00.003-05:00

Burnt green postcards

I am sending postcards that are going
all over the world,
asking: what shall become of our dream?
When the army of hollow half-cuboidal horsemen
prepare to war with regimented rectangular footsoldiers;
and all that will be left are tree stumps
of burnt sienna
and dried brick-red blood;
when leaf green and sky blue
will all turn to charcoal black?

Maybe then, you cool dude
with your cool swagger and
cool cheap plastic sunglasses
will freeze and think
why you’ve always put
that 100% compostable and fully renewable cup
in the trash.

And you, miss fake thinker,
in perfect pose for a portrait photo
will move and uncomfortably sigh:
neither did I.

And I,
A de-clawed tiger
A de-olfactorized dog
A blinded vulture,
will smash into these empty spaces
bathed in paraboloids of jaundiced yellow,
and wait and wait
for a timid teal, tapir or tadpole
to come splashing down these
meandering ways again.

On Earth

2008-12-08T21:49:00.003-05:00

On some child soldiers in Liberia, as told by Janet Sumo
Pure evil staring in your face
No reason or cause
Except that they like it

On Self Righteousness
I am both right
and great for being right

On the life of Draupadi, with her 5 husbands
Closed loop relay race

On all living things non-human
They are going to heaven.

On Global Warming
Burn to heat

On Time
Gone.

On endangered species
Going going...

On extinct species
..Gone.

On Historians
Gone...going going.

On Earth
I am.

On Thoughts
Gone awry.

Who moved my mail?

2008-11-20T00:46:00.004-05:00

Sweating it out in the gym this morning after a 2 week hiatus, I found that I had landed in front of the TV screen with the local channel WRAL. Amidst news of an annual book sale at Wake County (300,000 books up for grabs) and the world's largest annual spaghetti dinner (organized by the Greek orthodox church interestingly enough, not the Italians) in Fayetteville NC and other earth shaking news, I was especially taken aback by news of a mailman in Raleigh NC who didn't deliver the mail, but instead buried it all in his backyard for years and years.

Now, the first thing one would think of is that here is one person who really hated his job, and had a lot of secrets he wanted to keep underground, pun intended. But wait, Mailman Steve buried only junk mail. So he was a human spam filter, how convenient! Except that the folks did not have any control over his filter settings, which is not very convenient ( I missed the Macy's One day sale, yet Again, Dammit!). His explanation was that his health problems were getting in the way of delivery and so he decided to filter out the junk mail hoping nobody would notice. I suppose the lawyer did a good job, because no consumer wrote back to support the litigation other than a single one who in fact supported Steve's actions. It also helped that he has been a model citizen otherwise. End result: He is got off with probation and community service. And if you look at the latest quarterly reports for USPS, you will see how it could have helped his health. For 48.3 million pieces of domestic mail delivered, 23.2 million pieces came from what is termed as standard mail, which I presume is junk mail (it is not first class or priority or express or periodicals or packages). But here is the other catch: the absence of junk mail would kill the postal system financially. Apparently, the US postal system has been surviving (inspite of continuing losses on the balance sheet) thanks to revenue from junk mail, what with the use of phone and email for me to get in touch with my friends and family. So what is one to do?

Steve's case is still better than other postal carriers in the past who just buried or stored ALL kinds of mail. Both Vickey Warner from Middlebury, Indiana and Jill Hull from Howell Michigan stated that they were ovewhlemed, delivered as much as they could and just could not deliver the remaining on time. Thousands of pieces of mail remained undelivered.

If you are already not agonizing over whether the last letter from your grandmom is just delayed or buried, consider Robert of Tennessee and Robert of Alabama both of who just stole the mail. How is that different from the previous instances? Umm, they opened it too. Took out cash, gift cards and prescription drugs and other goodies and gave them as Christmas gifts to their families.

Think of all the other possibilities: SS numbers, CC numbers, telephone numbers and what have you in your mail. Who is to say that some very corrupt mail carriers are not responsible for identity theft?

But don't let a small bunch of not-really-epitomes-of-virtue give a bad name to the larger set of stellar, conscientous workers called the postmen (and postwomen). I am ready to vouch for mine.

And who is to say that tomorrow your inbox may not get hacked?

Coming out of Aestivation

2008-11-03T21:58:00.002-05:00

The title only refers to the blog, not me.

This summer and fall has been super busy, not necessarily productive, but very event-filled, hectic, stressful, fast-paced and what not. When too many things are going on, writing is like molasses in an open upside down jar: nothing comes out. Too many stimuli coming in the way of a creative outlet.

At the risk of sounding as though I am writing now because I have less to do (quite the contrary), I am making a renewed attempt to write more regularly without making it a function of my "busy"ness. While I have now started frowning at the idea of multitasking (though I used to claim particular expertise in the area till yesterday), the concept of time-division multiplexing seems to be more attractive. Multitasking really isn't what it sounds like. Your brain is not working on two things at the same time. It is actually rapidly shifting focus back and forth on those multiple tasks, giving neither its due. So, instead of 3 minutes of email, 2 minutes of staring at your report to get your train of thought started, distracted for another 2 minutes with another email service, 1 minute of lunch, 5 minutes of wondering what was your train of thought with the report, another 2 minutes of lunch; 2 more minutes of wondering why you hadn't received a reply to your last email yet; and feeling that you are able to work on writing your report, checking email and eating lunch at the same time, you have achieved nothing. The report is still on the first paragraph, lunch is sort of halfway swallowed, and while no new emails came in for all that checking you did, you did email an RSVP to Friday night's party.
Well, I'm thinking of going back to the good ol' middle school timetable, and see if I can finish my report in 30 minutes, check my email for the next 5 and go out, sit on the park bench and eat my lunch for another 10. Let's see if I can use this strategy tomorrow. In the meantime, snoozing and writing especially don't seem to to adapt themselves well to the multitasking concept. I opt for my first time slot from the TDM scheme to accomplish slee...pi..nggggggggggggzzzzzzz

A "Mean"ingful Conversation

2008-05-30T10:24:00.005-05:00

A Meaningful conversation:
A: Yesterday I saw a squirrel that had got squashed on the road.
B: Oh, that is really sad. I wish squirrels had more sense. They are such cute creatures. It breaks my heart.
A: Ya, but that's the law of nature. There is always life and death.

A more MEANingful conversation:
A: Yesterday I saw a squirrel that had got squashed on the road. Its teeth were all jutting out in a hideous permanent grin.
B: Ya, it would be the thing you non-vegetarians would do. Examine even a squashed squirrel on the road that closely.
A: Oh ya, and you vegetarians , you grass eating people. You guys are not any better.
B: You carnivores, so did that squirrel on the road look edible enough for you?
A: Well, I am not sure about that, but there was plenty of grass on the sidewalk that you cows would most readily chew on (makes faces resembling a cow chewing cud )

A Meaningful conversation:
Y: So I heard from S that you are thinking of selling your car to her.
Z: Ya, it is a good car. I just bought a newer car so I need to sell that one.
Y: I am sure you must have kept it in very good running condition. I wouldn't expect anything less from you.
Y: Yes, I am passionate about my cars, and I think it would be a great car for her too.

A more MEANingful conversation:
Y: So I heard from S that you are thinking of selling your car to her.
Z: I just bought a newer car so I need to sell that one.
Y: Is this what you do to your friends? Sell them your old crappy junk?
Z: Of course not, it would then become Their old crappy junk. I keep the new stuff.
Y: I wouldn't touch any mechanical thing that belonged to you with a 10 foot pole. Heck, you can't even walk out the room without walking straight into a closed door first.
Z: Well, I am not selling it to you. And I am tired of you teasing me.
Y: What are you going to do about it?
Z: NOTHING!

Oooooh. Nothing like MEANingful conversations to spice up your day.

PS: These conversations are inspired by perfectly true events.

Awake and African Violets

2008-04-25T12:47:00.003-05:00

As of now, I have been awake and working for 27 hours. Didn't know I could do it. When push comes to shove, sure, I cry a bucket-full of tears and then run to the finish line. Deadlines, deadlines, how I love them. But I cry first.

But there is a silver lining to all this. My African Violet, suddenly started to bloom for the first time after I bought it from the store 2.5 years ago. When I pampered it, it got spoilt. When I left it to the dogs (I mean aphids) it decided to rebel and produce the purple flowers I have wanted to see for years.

Ok, back to writing another report (while hoping that the Azaleas get some inspiration from the AVs...and my simulations do too...though for sure I cannot wait another 2.5 years!)

Whizzing through the Big Easy, or "The Irony and the Ecstasy"

2008-03-24T00:15:00.003-05:00

Phaedrus and I had been planning for over 3 months to visit New Orleans together during my Spring break, if his abstract for the APS meeting/conference to be held there got accepted for a presentation. But, alas, I had to wrap up looking at the Crescent City in a day and return to work, because I had been working on trying to get results for a conference abstract submission myself, that was due the end of that week.

To the tune of "Oh Susanna":

I come from North Carolina
As sleepless as can be
I am going to Louisiana
My true love for to see

I was working all night
Ere the Saturday I left
Still wondering
With a sigh

Could I get some results,
And catch my flight
For my deadline
Was a week nigh

Oh DRC deadlines
How wicked can you be?
I come from Carolina
And go to the Big Easy

I still decided
That I would go
Coz some progress
I thought I'd made

And planned to not wait
Till Wednesday
But come back
On Monday instead

The night I reached
I was still tense
Coz my lasers
had not lased

Bourbon St was fun
(and so was Hubby Dear)
but new plane tickets
whizzed in my head

While Maison played jazz
and showered beads with pizzazz
All I could think of
Was This

If we got too late
with my new flight plans
My DRC deadline
I'd miss

So we booked a new ticket
For me to be back
Much earlier than we originally
projected

And that I wouldn't even wait
For Hubby dear's talk
Certainly got me
dejected

We came back to our hotel room
After a night of fun
And said let's
look at our email

And there those emails sat
Mocking me, having caught me
Hook, line, sinker
and Pail.

DRC deadline's been
extended
By not a mere week
But two.

And they think I deserve
a break from work
And hoped I'd seen
My Big Easy plan through

And another email
with my new confirmed flight
on good ol'
Travelocity

Thank you so much for
booking with us
We'd be glad to help you
In a jiffy

And thus the irony
And the ecstasy
Of a planned trip that was
Cut short

Was the sun this hot
That I froze to death?
Crescent City, Don't
you cry

Oh dear Big Easy,
Oh Don't you cry for me
For no matter what,
I will be back for more
bonhomie and chicory.

Thank you, Mr. Bus Driver!

2008-03-05T04:20:00.002-05:00

Today I missed the last bus (C1-East-West) that goes close to where I park my car. This was at 2.00 am in the morning (okay so it is 4.40 am now!). Another bus, (C4-West-Central) came by the West bus stop. I asked the bus driver if there was another C1. Nope, he said, the last one left 10 minutes ago.
So I got onto this bus. It would come close to the original bus stop, but not quite; I'd just need to walk a little more. I was all prepared to pull the bell to what I thought would be the closest stop to walk from, when the bus took a detour from Central after dropping off passengers, and went onto the very street my car was parked on. Now I didn't know why he did that but it really looked like he was planning to go in a different direction...more like East, instead of looping back to West according to the bus route. "Sir, sir, my car is parked right here, so it would be great if you could stop drop me off here." "Oh,you inquired about going east, so I thought I'd drop you there and then get back to my route!"
We are not talking a small car or van here...it was an entire honking(!) bus that took a detour off it's regular route to drop of a student who had missed her last bus.
Thank you, Mr. Bus Driver!

Mistakes, mistakes, and how to avoid them in the first place (yeah, right)

2008-02-28T00:06:00.003-05:00

I have been having a hectic time working on my research, mainly in the clean room. Do I have results to show for it? Umm... not really. That also depends on your definition of results. But I have been making a lot of mistakes, occasionally making me feel quite stupid. However, I have also been learning a lot. I think the equation is working out somewhat to
2 x knowledge - 1 x feel stupid = 1 x wisdom (net gain!)

A little bit of introspection led to the following "net wisdom" about mistakes in the clean room (and probably life in general :-) ):

1. You cannot avoid mistakes (...unless you avoid working altogether, and besides you and I are also not God)
2. You don't become stupid as a result of a mistake (I went about telling all my lab mates about this really stupid mistake while etching my lasers...because h^&*, I have etched these things a hundred times and I have never done something like that before. Most of them looked at me and said, "Hey I hadn't thought of that...I'll watch out for it!" )
3. You can avoid the same mistakes (mostly)
4. If you think you are making unnecessary or the same mistakes, it is usually one of only two things:
a. You are in a hurry (My devices don't like being hurried. If I do hurry, the looks they give me make me want to curl up and die, and plus...it is unsafe to hurry when working with such a festival of nasty chemicals)
b. You did not think the process through, and started working without a plan (I put negative contacts on my lasers without doing enough research on the new photoresist I was using...the contacts looked like nice fluffy pillows instead of rectangles. Sure, that's what I wanted to do next: bury my face in a pillow)
5. Don't fret. Learn and move on. See the humour, and Chill. (My colleague ZZ said one researcher's bad laser is another researcher's good photo-detector....heh heh heh)

It's been working for me the last few weeks. Wish me luck in keeping it that way.

Good news and Bad news

2008-02-19T21:29:00.002-05:00

How good is good and how bad is bad?

Here is some good news and bad news since the beginning of this year:

Bad: A shooting in the neighborhood
Good: It wasn't me, and it has awakened the grad students to work with the univ admin to bring about some changes (let's install more lights, let's run more buses)
Good: It made us all introspect and be grateful and connect to each other in ways we never had before.

Bad: Some armed robberies
Good: It wasn't me, and we are having school mixers to let people know their neighbours (no you don't need to report that person as a suspicous individual hanging around the complex at night, because it turns out he is your next door neighbor you is studying starlight or something)

Bad: A paper submission got rejected. All three reviewers thought it was unworthy of the journal (How dare you?!!!)
Good: If they had accepted, then I would have had a bloated ego, and hey they say we can still submit to a "lesser" journal. Now that counts for Something.

Bad: I caught a bad cold and cough.
Good: 4 friends came to check on me over the weekend, and kept me supplied with hot beverages and curries to clear my congestion. I felt like a spoilt princess.

Bad: Looks like I am going to miss another conference submission deadline.
Good: I am working really very hard (or so I think)

Bad: I gained weight.
~~Good: I could have gained more~~ Bad: I Gained Weight!
~~Good: Ummm...Maybe I'll exercise now~~ Bad: I GAINED WEIGHT! :-(

Scene it before?

2008-01-07T15:39:00.000-05:00

The scene was a culmination of every cliche associated with profs, grad students and undergrad students from times immemorial.
Time and Date: Second week of December, 6.00 pm.
Place: Our research building atrium. The stairs are in the center. All floors have study tables that look down to the atrium.
Scene:
Atrium all lit up, nice live jazz music, fancy gourmet food (chocolate covered strawberries, sit down dinner and the works). This is the faculty holiday party. Light laughter and pleasant chatter can be heard.
4 ragged people walk in from outside, red-faced and cold, clutching paper bags. Aha, graduate students! They have walked for 20 minutes and stood in line for an hour to get a $6 burrito for FREE at the newly opened Chipotle. They walk through the party, look at all the fancy food, sigh and go up the stairs.
Suddenly they smile when they look up.

All the study tables are crammed with undergrad students, with Red-Bull by their sides, cramming hard for next day's final.

Life is better again.

Stepping into a Jewelery store

2007-12-15T12:42:00.000-05:00

I stepped today into a jewelery store,
Of diamonds and pearls and opals.
Of mother of pearl flowers, wondrous pure
Glinting and teasing and beckoning

The light was not coy,
One could call it harsh,
No shadows to speak of,
No mystery suggested.
No subtlety of décor
No strategic positioning
Of lone precious pebbles
To heighten their value.
Placed in clustered abundance
As if their togetherness
implied their existence.
Yet the cold crystals
Swathed in strong rays
Seemed more delicate to touch
Than the wispy green
On which they were displayed,
Strange, considering,
The whole scene looked like
a fuzzy jade sculpture.
A master worksman surely
Had wrought such magic
Into such tiny bits of nature.

Afraid of irreparable damage,
With a trembling hand,
I reached out to touch
one lone sparkling icicle.
It dissolved into nothingness.

And I smiled:
The joys of frost on a
Sunny winter morning.

Paradigm

2007-12-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

DP just provided me with the idea for this blog post. It was based on an email I wrote to him about Phaedrus liking midwestern winters, and me absolutely hating them. Just matter of fact-ly, I wrote to him, amongst other everyday things:

"He loves snow...because he thinks of snowball fights and snowmen...I hate snow, because I think of digging the car out of snow and icy driving conditions."

He wrote back, with the same phrase, now in quotes, and added to it, "This is a good example of paradigm." One would say that the paradigm shift is quite obvious, but I am glad he pointed it out, because I wasn't really thinking in terms of a larger picture. I was just talking about the reasons for loving and hating snow. Think of how many conflicts could be resolved if we just listened to another's reasons.

On the other hand, I did find a poem I had written about the first set of flurries which came on Christmas eve, a particular year. I am surprised I can't romanticize it any more. Why am I not posting it here? It was very heavily influenced by poetry I had been reading at that time, very middle-school-Britsh-poetry-textbook written by-a-child-admiring-nature type. Very substandard. But, I did find a better one (still of the same textbook genre, I warn you), which I'll put in a future post.

Which now makes me think, that even a change in paradigm from a personal point of view can be situational. I am quite sure I hate snow, and that I hated it, because I swore at nature every morning taking the car to work. But I like the seasons in North Carolina better, so I believed, in retrospect that I really hated Indiana winters. But I found not one but three poems on winter.
It seems that every feeling seems to take an exaggerated hue when you look at it in retrospect. And a change in paradigm is more glaring.

Watering it down

2007-12-01T18:47:00.000-05:00

What is it that Americans lack that Indians have?
That's easy...
Germs? Malaria? Poverty? Population? Dirt? No toilet paper? Cheap labor? Beggars? Cold cold....You are thinking too Third World, but think more of one of the items I just listed.
"A sense of culture (whatever that means)"? Fakirs? Snake charmers Learn Geeta in 21 Days. "It's a way of life, you dummy, It is NOT a religion"!! Naah.
Arranged marriages? Saris? Still cold.
Aha, the Taj Mahaal! Nope, Think everyday life.
Traffic? Mumbai locals? Autorickshaws? No.
Curries? Chillies? Chapatis? Spices? Chai (Real Tea)? Lauki? Oh well.

What Americans do not have is the humble red/green/blue/white/black/grey/transparent plastic bath mug.

Yesterday, I spent approximately 45 minutes on, what else, Google, and I could not find a single American store which understands the term water mug, plastic bath mug, bathing mug, plastic bath cup which translates into a plastic container with a handle, and sometimes a beak that is used with a bucket for bathing. Why did I spend a perfectly lovely Friday evening searching for this on the net? Well, all I was trying to do was submit a water saving tip to our university's water conservation website in the wake of the drought we have here in North Carolina. All I wanted to inform them is that bathing with a bucket and mug allows me to use less than 5 gallons of water per bath, and since I wanted to make it useful, I also wanted to add links to where you can buy a bucket and mug. Eventually I gave up, and just sent them a link on "How to take a Bath in half a bucket of water" (The instructions are such that I almost fell of my chair laughing...I didn't know it was such a complex task). And to top it all, I found another website, by an Australian who came up with the oh so original idea of bucket bathing, that he was featured on Australian National TV, no less.
It seems to me that in-1492-when-Columbus-crossed-the-ocean-blue, he landed in the new world with a bath tub and a shower head, and taught all the barbarious, pagan Indians that taking a bath should either feel like sitting in a swimming pool or standing out in the rain.

As for me, I have my own big white-with-grey-specks plastic bathing mug imported right from the shops of Shaniwar Peth, Pune, India, hand-delivered lovingly to me by my mother, along with the dried curry leaves and special home-ground bhaji masala.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I know about and Love hot showers and bath tubs. But I also know what it takes to have only one community municipal tap which has water coming out for one hour at any time from midnight to 5.00 am, with the holler by a neighbour "Paani aala!! (Water has come!!)". Out come the buckets and storage drums and miscellaneous utensils, for bathing water,water for the plants and drinking water respectively. We learnt to respect water.

So when my county here in the US has only 59 days store of water left, I know what to do, thank you very much.

Marryin' and Trippin'

2007-11-21T12:53:00.000-05:00

A lot has happened since the so-called one year anniversary of the hear-and-dare blog. So here is part of what I have been up to.

Lotstodo and Phaedrus

went on the Great Indian Trip (covering 4 states and a union territory):
2 international flights
7 domestic flights (Indian + US)
3 train journeys
6 jeep journeys

and attended their and Lotstodo's sister's Great Indian Weddings, across three Indian cities:
9 pre and post wedding ceremonies
2 wedding ceremonies
4 receptions and
1 party

not to forget Lotstodo's wonderful friends in the US who threw not 1 but 2 parties for her:
1 bridal shower (Surprise!!)
1 wedding reception in the woods

And then I came back home and went to school the same day and wrote a research(!) report for my advisor. Wedding? What wedding?

And a year later...

2007-04-23T19:08:00.000-05:00

It's been a year since my first post on April 23rd last year. An interesting coincidence is that this is my 23rd post.

Should I be nostalgic?
Should I reflect?
What didn't I know then, that I do know now?
What did I know then, that I don't know any more?
What has changed?
What hasn't?

The yellow clean room is just as intimidating.
Yet familiarity breeds contempt.
The leaps are in infinitesimal quanta.
The results are pin pricks, not resonating thumps.
The progress I think I have made may just be that: thoughts.
I think I know now why they call it the doctorate of Philosophy.

Here's to the next post. And the cabbages and kings that go with it.

Marriage musings

2007-04-18T19:35:00.000-05:00

Forgive me, but this is a real cheat post.

So Phaedrus and I are getting married, and going back to finishing up our respective PhDs in our respective corners of the country for the next couple of years. And people ask, so when are you moving to his place after the wedding?
Me?
Why?
People haven't heard of weekend marriages it seems. Or house-husbands, or career women or gender equality ...
Ok, well, this is more like a bi -monthly both-working marriage. It's worked this far, dunno why it shouldn't after repeating some vows or circumambulating a fire ...
Plus at least for now I don't have to clean up my Mess (see earlier post). Heh heh.

Mess

2007-03-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

My good friend Gsat suggested I put up some of my poems on my blog (well, not that she's read any other than those I put here :-) ). Considering that this blog is entirely made up of odds and ends, and also a pretty good place to fullfill narcissistic needs, I decided to post here, one of, what I believe, were my "literally" most witty poems written when I was living in an efficiency, in a not very effcient manner.....

14 – 15, March 2003

Mess

It needs a certain degree of finesse
To create the veritable perfect mess
Very few the talent possess
To create a complete havoc, no less.

Yours truly, is a master of the art
Of a cleaned place being the immediate start
For a premeditated pandemonium, as part
Of an inane effort to appear extra smart.

The smartness is evident in the reasons that abound
First, the mess helps in muffling outside sound
(No matter if the physics has basis or ground)
The abundant absorbents cause sound waves to be drowned.

My personal favorite, is the second reason,
This is ongoing cleaning for the end of the season
Or the beginning, or middle, as would please’em.
Cleaning process implies that mess will be some.

The most effective is the one of utter business.
One look is sufficient for you to guess
I am most importantly busy, yes?
No time to reorganize the mess.

Having looked at the purported cause
Let us examine the contents of chaos
Which vary from the elegant to the gross
With money-back warrantee for dropping jaws.

An acrobatic act of book and bundle
Positioned tactically to trip and stumble.
Cultivating colorful clothes to generate a jungle,
Adds a telling touch to the general jumble

Through clothes and papers, navigating your feet,
Is not really considered all that neat.
Better still would be for your derriere to meet
Miscellaneous poking objects on the seat.

It certainly provides vocal variation
Appropriate to the apportioned aggravation
As a bonus, it also creates quite a sensation,
For you and those around your station.

Print and pajamas and poky pins
Are still rather mundane things,
What really makes a mess is hidden beings
Like pet mice or snakes with molting skins

Creative chaos needs an element of surprise
This is where these hidden pets take the prize.
Guaranteed to raise people and cries.
For smaller the animal, greater the shriek size.

A distinguished looking mess is rather implausible
Without electronic storage media that is impossible
To identify or trace or give up as loss-ible.
Many orphaned disks and tapes make this possible.

A hearty havoc is beyond compare
If you add empty bottles of beer
Strewn with abandoned care,
In the path of the mess-see-er.

For the subtle hint of gory and gross
So that there is no doubt that you are the boss
You may want some mustard to tactfully toss
Or add a dash of ketchup and sauce.

The making of a monstrous mess depends
Entirely on the accumulation of odds and ends
That the seasoned mess maker with her life defends
Any rent in which she dutifully a-mends.

Thus enlightened on chaotic component
With due justice to reptile and rodent,
The art of good mess is a power potent
To manipulate alike any foe or a friend.

Should anyone complain a bit
See the scene, and throw a fit
Tell you how much they abhor it
Tell’em This is My Mess, I Adore it.

More Spring in my Step

2007-03-24T23:37:00.000-05:00

Spring forward,
Miss a step.
Fall back,
On your Back.....

Ouch!

Back and Forth

2007-03-24T23:06:00.000-05:00

Some dead leaves just do not want to leave
Yet, spring will not spring back their green.
Brooding over past fall follies, they grieve
Not making way for the young, yet to be seen.

Green leaves of summer, your time is spent
Brown, still clinging, what good can you do
For a bud, you are no replacement
For a tender shoot, no match are you.

Fighting the seasons, to no avail
Wanting past times of proud and tall.
Brightness fades, light always pale
Spring will always give way to Fall.

Disappear, for betters to take your place
Give way to the sun, let the birds sing
The darkest spots can still then hide an unborn face
Fall will always give way to Spring.

And, so what's the point?

2007-01-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

Keeping the phone down, after a long debate/discussion with Phaedrus on the rapidly changing nature of technology, fashions, tastes, needs and the increased disposability of goods, the gear wheels of my brain and mind still kept whirring, refusing to die down. Much like a ceiling fan running even after being switched off, assisted by some invisible, yet gusty gale.

Quite winded, (no pun intended), my thoughts turned to the fact of Need and Want and Action. Why do we want so much, when do do not really need it? Why do we want to be rich, and famous and beautiful and knowledgeable and well read and learned and well-quoted and published and cited and married and virile and fertile and wise and charitable and philantropic and powerful and amiable and loved and loving?
Eventually we shall die. Then, what's the point?

It's not like we shall be around to see if our great grand kid turns out be an Einstien (and even then, what's the point?), validating our choice of genes, or that that 2 room shed turned into a 5 floor hospital (all those patients eventually die too), thanks to all the funds we raised.

This is not to say that I am turning into some pessimistic deadwood or a selfish prick. I feel attached to my loved ones and charitable to my fellowmen, and I want to listen to music and admire a painting. I feel the Need to Do and Act, and Want to do it. I worry about parents, pets, paise and publications (and that's not an exhaustive list). All a race against very finite time, with a very different finish line, one which does not have "the other side", to look back and exalt. It's amazing, isn't it, that we do what we do so that we can hopefully feel elated for that very short period between having run much of the race and now seeing the finish line? Of course, people might disagree and say, well, the joy and fun is in the running, but its not like you can reflect nostalgically on it once you are done with it, coz heck, you are not around! If finally it is dust to dust, then , again, what's the point?

Very literally, as Tennyson wrote, Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.

Death is not supposed to be dark and ugly and like a black hole. But it sure seems so.

I promise my next post will be more cheerful!

Done For

2006-12-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I took, what I think will be my last graded "final exam" ever. And no, I didn't finish with a bang...it was more like a whimper. The worst exam I ever took. Made me think of all the exams I had done badly starting, from believe it or not, grade 2, right up to last year, and I could find none to match yesterday's disaster.

So much for quantum mechanics. So much for being terrified of it first, that I dropped it last year. So much for reading as much as I could to get over my fear of the subject. So much for my loving it at the beginning of the semester when it answered many questions I always had, and when it helped me as I prepared and read extensively for my qualifying exams. So much for hating it as the semester progressed, because both the teacher and the book somewhat lost track. The prof rushed at Mach 3 speed, and the book became denser than the Dead Sea. And then yesterday happened. When I was not done with classes, but done for.

Arrgh

2006-11-14T02:56:00.000-05:00

Studying (band) splits,(energy) gaps, (electrons and) holes, (hydrostatic) stress, (biaxial) strain, (thermally induced) mismatch and tension, repulsion, scattering, bombardment and very short lifetimes.

How can physics not be stressful??!!! :-(

Back from "French Canada"

2006-11-03T16:13:00.000-05:00

Back from Montreal, a place surprisingly more French, and more European in general than I had expected. More than once I ran into people I had trouble communicating with. That I was okay with. More than once I ran into snootiness, bothering on rudeness, that i had been warned about. That I was not okay with.

Did I enjoy the sights, the scenes, the scents, the cuisine? Oh yes, I did. From my first introduction to McGill with students in red swimming trunks, and nothing else on (and this is November) to the tropics of the Amazon at the Biodome de Montreal, from a $6 poutine at Patis Patata on Rue St. Laurent to a $28 cheese ravioli (worth every cent) at the Hotel Europea on Rue Montague. From the powder blue gold star spangled ceiling of Basilica de Notre Dame to the crutches and candles at St Joseph Oratorie. From a metro station named Pie-ix, which sounded very suspiciously like a male body part in English to my woefully French-untrained ears, to archaeological digs at Pointe-à-Callière, which is all about the French history of Montreal, not about the natives who were there before them (why do they even mention them, I do not understand).
By the way, the above was accomplished in a day, as I was in Montreal for a conference at the Hilton Bonaventure (huge plastic flower arrangements, no less), but that is another story.

Hmm

2006-10-28T01:23:00.000-05:00

Is theatre ,and art in general, necessarily, deliberately, inherently complicated? Or is it that I am a simpleton?
I suspect the latter.
I went for Ratan Thiyam's Nine Hills One Valley yesterday, and was very confused, Not to mention that I do not understand Manipuri. The overhead translations were woefully inadequate, with 5 rapid emotive sounding dialogs being translated into one tame explanatory subtitle.

So, is there hope for the world, or are we doomed even if the wise men of yore give us new directions? Or have we become so helpless that we cannot take responsibility for bettering our own lives? Time is a demon! I do not really agree. I think we demonize Time. It's our fault.

Ok, so I am realy blabbering here. Bottomline being, that the deeper political, sociological philosophies being expressed went over my simple head, so I stuck to enjoying the accompanying music compositions from some exotic Indian instruments, the grace and fluidity of the rich Manipuri dance-form and some of the exotic sword wielding martial-art type sequences.

Time and politics can wait.

"Presenting" my best foot forward

2006-10-25T18:03:00.000-05:00

All I have been doing in the past two weeks is reading papers, and more papers, and more papers, and putting together, hold your breath, a 12 minute-12 slide talkfor a conference in Montreal next week. Who knew that it could take so much effort to do that, to have a background, or at least pretend to have background knowledge for every figure, every word, every bullet point.
Last night, I got onto Googletalk for the first time, so that I could communicate real-time with one of the authors for this paper I am presenting.
Getting online, got one of my former colleagues in the company I worked at to ping me. And he was surprised that I was spending so much time on this presentation, knowing that I could whip out reams of such material for training and clients at the drop of a hat.
But this is different. No one has done it before. Here one is not trying to teach or market. One is trying to Prove oneself. It is Personal.

2006-08-19T18:42:00.000-05:00

A very next day post! I must really be thinking, introspecting, retrospecting, inspecting...um not the last one, I guess I got carried away with the spect-ulation.

Mean-imp has been nagging today. Mean-imp made me look up rather random things on the internet. Horrible things, unspeakable things....things that whisper of change and challenge. When, when when, like the good old nosy "aunty" in my neighborhood back in my hometown, in her voice filled with pseudo-concern, will I settle down?
A vagabond, a rolling stone, always searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I stick to nothing for long and nothing sticks to me for long. Aha, now I know, I am a piece of teflon! Ooops, sorry DuPont, not teflon, I am a piece of polytetrafluoroethylene. Thank you, mean-imp, for summing up my life. I sure feel useful. Hmmmphhh.

Random thoughts and statements

2006-08-18T11:43:00.000-05:00

1. The JIT (look at previous post about Just in Time) conference paper did get through. An acceptance email directed to a Dr. ____ (yours truly) was sent to me a couple of days ago. Now begins the struggle with understanding what was written in the paper to talk sensibly about it. Heh heh.

2. The clean room has been re-christened as the mean room. It has not cooperated with me in the last two months. I hear its HF-drunk (HF stands for Hydrofluoric Acid, you moron, not High Frequency or Hands Free or what have you) voice taunting and mocking me every time I walk in. Everytime I look into a microscope, a banshee-like wail (or is it a witch's cackle?) penetrates the soporific drone of the equipment.

3. The mean-room is also called so, because it causes me to ponder on the Mean-ing of my life. While I wait for things to bake, boil, spin, pump up and pump down, this little imp or angel (I haven't figured out which) inside me, Mean-imp-fully (so I guess I decided it is an imp) keeps tapping me to draw my attention, and then keeps saying "What are you doing? WHAT are you doing? What ARE you doing? What are YOU doing? What are you DOING? You Fool!"

Poetic Inspiration

2006-07-24T20:26:00.000-05:00

There was a period, between December 2001 and April 2003 that I was on a creative high, spouting poems at the drop of a hat. The creative stream ran to a trickle, and finally stopped with one last loud sigh in December 2003 when I wrote a long, funny poem about my workplace and company, which Was funny because at least 20 of my colleagues laughed when I read it out, and it did not sound like they were laughing out of politeness.

Now, more than 2 and a half years later, the best that I was able to come up with while sniffing and rubbing my nose with the back of my hand this morning before leaving for school, is this two liner:

A cold, and lack of paper tissue,
Definitely creates a nasal issue.

Oh well.

Potato Farmer

2006-07-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

That is one of my new epithets.

When Piyali came in Feb, she saw that some of the potatoes in the kitchen had sprouted rather vociferously. Not wanting to get rid of them, she put them in a small
styrofoam box with water. The plants were growing, but the potatoes were rotting and creating a stink. A month ago, we removed the water, cut off the rotten parts and put in soil (still in these small styrofoam boxes). Ever since the plants have been looking sorrier and sorrier till they totally dried up. 2 weeks ago I decided to get rid of the plants all together and use the soil elsewhere, and digging in, I found baby potatoes! Some are an inch across, and many are a little more than a centimeter.

Yesterday, I "harvested" four tiny potatoes from my 1 square-foot field. Today, I am going to eat food that I grew myself! If not PhD, then PF. Not much of a variation from earlier undergrad years during exam time: if not an engineer, then a vada pav (potato-fritters and buns, a Very popular fast food)cart owner.

Just In Time

2006-07-08T08:28:00.000-05:00

Two days ago, I redefined the concept of Just in Time. We submitted a prospective paper online about a minute before the deadline. Do not ask me how it came about to be so. It was about the baby I did not know much about (but my colleagues at the other university did). This race to the finish was a result of an overlooked mailing, an unreceived email, different time zones, miscommunication, very tight schedules, politics, strategy and a lot of, and I mean a lot of last-minute head-scratching. My pulse rate was double even 15 minutes after I finished the submission.

Unfortunately, the very fact that we got it submitted does not mean that I am happy and everything is hunky-dory. As always, anything last minute means that there is compromise on quality. And since I was the last person in the chain before the paper got in, the buck stops with me. Oh well, if the paper gets accepted then all is fine, if not, then I really hope I do not make the big mistake, of being reactive, of getting defensive and passingon the blame. On the other hand, maybe even before we get a decision, I could just go ahead and pre-empt the situation by giving all the reasons why it may not go through. Something to think about, eh?

Cleaning up

2006-05-24T12:41:00.000-05:00

This past semester, my desk looked like, pardon the cliche, it had been hit by a hurricane. I am not saying that it is the worst that a work desk could get. Presuming that a tsunami is worse than a hurricane, the neighbouring office has a desk that looked like it had not very successfully weathered the former.

I cleaned up today. Summer cleaning, if you will. I now have my papers in their respective file folders, color coded and all. I have only my latest research work sitting in a neat pile at one end. And even neater, not to mention higher pile of scratch paper at the other end. I actually have place for keeping three laptops if need be, instead of only a half. My stack of study books that were tottering alarmingly at the edge of the desk (a complex phenomenon worthy of a PhD topic in gravity and mechanics, and what have you) have now been safely anchored (on three sides!) to the shelf.

A clean slate, a new leaf, a blank piece of snow white paper. A green grassy plain where you can see into the oh- so- distant horizon. That is what my desk, my daily "karmabhoomi" (place where one fulfills one's duty) looks like. No desk can look more uninspiring than mine does at this moment. The Rosetta stone would not have shaken the world of egyptology if it were a clean slate. Ramanujan's notebook pages wouldn't have packed the same punch if they were neatly type written, double spaced, instead of being handwritten blue over red (or red over blue....I forget which). And the allure of the Great Plains can be but compared only poorly to the dark mysteries of the Amazon.

In the interest of the creative faculty, and an inquring mind, I hope that the sterile environment of my desk does not last more than a week. Read about Feynman and the cyclotron in the book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! . I rest my case.

Moonrise moonrise

2006-05-18T14:45:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, after a really tiring move from one apartment to another, Phaedrus, Piyali and I drove down to Wilmington, a beach town in North Carolina.

After circling the city in smaller and smaller spirals, we finally reached our hotel at 8.00 pm at night. Too later to do anything or go anywhere, other than a pub, which is no good because, hold your breath, I do not drink, and the smoky interiors really gets to my head and brings out all my violent instincts...not something you want to risk on a vacation intended to be peaceful.

So we chose to drive down to the beach anyway. It is wonderful, this thing called the ocean. Keeps pounding away relentlessly and deafeningly, and miraculously still sounds soothing. It was quite dark by the time we reached. The only light was from the pier next to us. Just enough to light up the waves lapping the shore. But in the distance one could still see the horizon. Two different shades of very inky blue. And while we just kept staring into nothing, we saw an orange blob that looked like a buoy. But it wasn't bouncing up and down, it just kept coming up. It took a while for it to trigger in our heads that it was Mr. Moon putting up a nice show.

I know that the moon looks big when it is close to the horizon, but this was Huge. A mottled bright rust colored moon that seems to be painted. Except that paintings do not move, exude a soft glow, and dance in a shimmery reflection off the surface of a choppy sea. We tried hard to capture it on our digital camera, our rudimentary skills with it not really helping the situation. But we finally gave up on wrestling with technology, sat on the white-gray sand, and enjoyed nature's sound and light show.

We got a baby, but don't know what it is!

2006-05-18T14:34:00.000-05:00

So that is what my professor had to say about these supposedly fantastic test results that this other university raved in their email about.They were based on those samples I had been slaving over before the exams began. And well, we only know how to make this thing, because someone else is worrying about the theory.

Our group meeting after those test results were emailed out was the funniest ever.
Big Boss: "What is fantastic about these squiggles in these plotted results?"
Minion: "I don't know. I thought you knew. I only Made the stuff".
BB: Long drawn sigh. Then laughter: "Heck, I thought you read up so you could tell me."
M: "Ummm. Uh. Uh."
BB shakes M's hand and says: "Well, if they think these squiggles are pathbreaking, then why should I doubt it! We got a baby, but don't know what it is!"

Exams over

2006-05-05T22:39:00.000-05:00

The perennial Damoceles' sword hanging over the hassled, overworked, under appreciated student has been temporarily removed.
Exams for this semester are over. Whew.
Back to outer space starting next week.

Delegate!!

2006-04-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

Today, I am very very angry. Angry at people who do not know how to delegate and manage stuff. Who run about helter skelter trying to do everything, be everywhere. Be the one-man army, the sole standing hero. The supervisor and sweeper and thus... neither. And finally, when the show is over, say, "See! we pulled it off!", and count that as experience. But never learn anything from it. Be too irreplaceable, too inexpendable. Be the three rungs of the ladder instead of the carpenter who fixes it.
"If I could offer you only one tip for (being) the future manager, Delegation would be it". (This line is parodized from "Everybody is free to wear Sunscreen"by Baz Luhrmann. Read the lyrics to this song here).

The potion works!

2006-04-25T13:34:00.000-05:00

Heh heh heh !!! :-) I managed to get that magical moment where I could see my newly created device under the microscope. So, the spell is created. Next step is to see if the spell works.

Well, so I shipped this out to the other university, and the proof of the pudding will be in the t(e)sting.

Glad to be back to rainbow hues, and natural sunlight...the regular earth, ....till a few more weeks. The weather is really warm here, and everything looks bright and the trees look so green, and the sky couldn't be bluer. You'd think I was falling in love! And all I did was make this itty-bitty thing that is just about the size of my little finger nail. Phaedrus would wonder, coz I told him I hated this stuff, but see that's what it is.....I like the end not the means ;-)

Alpha to Earth

2006-04-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

April 23, 2006. Either it is going to be a go-down-in-my-history date, or just another day. Sitting in the fabrication (clean room) of my university. In a clean room gown, and nitrile gloves (typing with gloves is not much fun, really), face mask, hair cover and goggles. Waiting for the final step of my fabrication process to run, patiently expectanct, or more truthfully Very impatiently awaiting the fruit of my 6 hour labor. Well one, cannot do much about the analogy to chilbirth. When you Make something, it really is your baby , isn't it?!
The sterile environment of the cleanroom occasionally does make you feel like you are out of this world. The light is all yellow, so even glancing out of the double paned window makes you feel you are on Mars, or Jupiter, or wherever the powers-that-be claim life exists. The lone PC with internet connection helps to drive you back to reality. The white clad beings similar to me move about silently, differentiated only by their height and girth and eyes. Focussing hard on the work at hand, almost desiring themselves to see the microscopic features of their work by the naked eyes. Did this really work? Is this really there? All this stuff that I am magically seeing here under the microscope, is that really all there on that tiny chip? One can have done fabrication ad nauseum, but the tightening suspense of seeing a perfectly device under the microscope, as you move from a small magnification to large...couldn't be beaten by the nerve-racking moments of a prime time who-dunnit on the idiot box. Well, let me go check what the status is, the concoction that I am boiling....of frog's blood and newt's eyes, whether it turns my lead to gold.