A "Mean"ingful Conversation

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

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"

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!

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)

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

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?

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

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

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

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.