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

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.

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?

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

That was easy.

Help! Neverending days of Summer!

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.