Footprints

With you.

2011-02-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

I fly, and become the Wind.
I write, and become the Verse.
I swim, and become the Water.

With You, I let go.

Mandar.

Turn

2010-06-19T07:41:00.003-07:00

Come back, Love.

That Stranger smiles at you for an everlasting second
and the Cafe Owner chats on for a long minute.
The Piano feels you for that green hour.

The Sun ogles all day,
the Moon sees you all through the night,
and just that other week, Love,
the New City visited you for a whole eight days.

Fleeting Friendships fill a few endless months,
that Sleepy Town takes up years and some more
and the Faraway Land a dragged-on decade.

I wait and dream
of seeing all of you, with all of me, all our life.

Come back.

-Mandar.

Of Discoveries and Graciousness

2010-02-22T18:08:00.004-07:00

The Origins initiative at ASU has brought many great talks on campus. A recent one was especially interesting to be at - “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species” by Sean Carroll. Following last year's Darwinfest, this was a sure treat.

Sean Carroll laid before us the happenings of what he calls the first Golden Era of Evolutionary Biology through a beautifully unfolding story. His vivid descriptions of the discoverers, their voyages, their passions, their successes and failures had the audience glued to the seats.

Before, during and after Charles Darwin's time there have been numerous well-known and not-so-known naturalist explorers, who have collected information, data, specimens in remote landscapes throughout continents. Sean focused on two of those who probably came the closest to Darwin's discoveries in evolution. Three of them together ushered the first Golden Age of evolutionary biology: Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace and Henry Walter Bates. They had a lot in common: all three were contemporary young naturalists Englishmen when they set out on their long journeys of discoveries in the quest for solving the problem of origin and variations in species. They shared a close relationship as friends and fellow explorers.

Some 17 years after Darwin had set out on the Beagle, Wallace and Bates headed out to the Amazon basin. After a year of exploring the forests together, they split ways. Wallace stayed in the Amazon basin for four years collecting insects, birds, animals and other specimens, meticulously making sketches as he went along. In July 1852, he embarked for England on the brig Helen. After twenty-eight days at sea, balsam in the ship's cargo caught fire and the crew was forced to abandon ship. All of the specimens Wallace had on the ship, the vast majority of what he had collected during his entire trip, were lost. He could only save part of his diary and a few sketches. How must have he felt looking at the sinking Helen, taking all the reward for four years of tremendous effort literally to the bottom of the ocean! Saved and safely back home, his love for exploration did not let him sit back - he went straight for the Malay archipelago, and spent eight years collecting over 125,000 specimens. Now that is craziness.

Bates too roamed around near the Rio Negro for a total of eleven long years, sending back 14,000 species back home, 8000 of which were thitherto unknown to science.

The Wallace-Bates pair exemplifies herculean tasks single-handedly carried out by the naturalists of the past centuries. Without modern luxuries of air travel, communication and medicine, they braved the rough seas, hostile jungles and wild animals to find the answers to the troubling questions of their times. Their stories are truly remarkable, and sources of inspiration for budding scientists and explorers.

Wallace's contributions include the "Sarawak Law" (1855) and the discovery of the 'Wallace Line' - separating the occurrence of placental mammals of Asia and marsupials characteristic of the Australian continent. What Wallace wrote about variation of species in Feb 1858 was the same conclusion about the variation in species, in fact in very similar words, as Darwin had written (unbeknownst to Wallace) in March 1857.

Sean went on to tell us about what he thinks is the Second Golden Era of evolutionary biology - this very time of ours. Long back, Bates had written "I have seen the laboratory in which Nature manufactures her species".. now, clad in white coats and sitting in biohazard labs, scientists all over are taking the genetic approach, trying to reconstruct evolution with the help of the DNA.

To end, Wallace's admiration for Darwin is clear as he writes to his friend Bates, in what has to be one of the most gracious letters in the history of science. The magnanimous Wallace goes: "I know not how or to whom to express fully my admiration of Darwin's book. To him it would seem flattery to others self praise;- but I do honestly believe that with however much patience I had worked up & experimented on the subject I could never have approached the completeness of his book,- its overwhelming argument, & its admirable tone & spirit. I really feel thankful that it has not been left to me to give the theory to the public. Mr. Darwin has created a new science & a new Philosophy, & I believe that never has such a complete illustration of a new branch of human knowledge, been due to the labours & researches of a single man." [Find here the original letter and the transcript].

"..single man"! how graciously Wallace gives Darwin huge credit, even when he had developed the theory of variation in species independently, and published joint papers with Darwin. It is on the shoulders of such giants - who care about nothing but finding things out - that we stand, and shall remain forever grateful to.

Jumping around in Conclusionistan

2010-01-22T12:12:00.001-07:00

An interesting learning lesson came my way when I was carrying out an experiment in our laboratory the other day. I work with highly porous materials, with as much as 90% porosity. The instrument injects nitrogen gas into the sample, and by looking at how much gas is adsorbed at increasing pressures, it determines the average pore size. The instrument starts plotting the volume of adsorbed gas against the corresponding pressure and keeps adding points to it as the pressure rises. The size of the graph window stays the same and the scale of the graph changes as data points are added. That day, I had a sample with a particularly low porosity. I started the test as usual, and was surprised to see the successive points plunging south instead of going up. I aborted the test, and started it again. The same thing. How can we have less gas adsorbed at a higher pressure?

Confused, I called up the company and they told me to let the test run its course. I did, and looked at the complete isotherm plotted out, with some 60-odd points. Only then it dawned on me – I was looking at too few data points, and hastily aborting the test. Since the material had a low porosity, the initial readings were comparable to the error margin for the system, and hence they were all over the place. Once the readings got significantly larger than the error, it all made sense.

In retrospect, the lesson was not new. I remembered someone I know who holds that she can sense or predict details of a stranger’s personality merely by a couple of encounters. She would not necessarily need to meet the person face-to-face, not for too long in any case. A few minutes spent online on the instant messenger would also suffice. She would then summarize that person in a line or two. She is not the only person I have met who quickly jumps to conclusions.

It is quite contrasting to what I have always thought. I am not a big fan of summarizing people, places, incidents or the whole world even in a thousand words, let alone a line. That is not how I sense how much I have learnt about them. On the deathbed, even if I am not able to summarize and generalize no part of life, experiences, I would feel alright. I am not here to label people, things and happenings and put them in various boxes.

The imagery I have in my mind is of fitting a curve to the data points gathered. Our interactions with a person give us multiple data points. Knowingly or unknowingly, we do start fitting a curve to it. What I have been able to do quite a few times is to resist the temptation of fitting a curve to the first few points. I would just let them stay as they were - scattered or otherwise - without ignoring or forgetting them per se. Through this I would be able to keep myself from drawing hasty conclusions judging the person and from having my mind cluttered with prejudices. I have had to set aside some things which I strongly disliked at that particular point, and could thus learn to give the person some leeway – a benefit of doubt, if you will. This also had the advantage of carrying minimal baggage about people and incidents with me and keeping me away from always expecting a certain kind of behavior from people or certain kinds of outcomes from situations. How many points should I have before I start drawing a curve through them – is very subjective, and will evolve with me. I call it ‘generalizing with care’.

Over short durations, we observe merely the variance, or at best a combination of the variance and the measurement or the reading. As Nassim Taleb elaborated in Fooled by Randomness, our brains continuously look for patterns (faces in the clouds, the rabbit on the moon) and our emotions cannot understand the difference between the readings and the errors. We suffer pangs of pain when we see the (local) variations from the ‘expected trend’. People who look too closely at the data get burned out by the randomness. “For an idea, age is beauty”: there is probably a golden mean for when one should start looking at the data and draw conclusions.

SighLab

2009-05-18T22:11:00.001-07:00

.. and this cold winter morning
I finally realize you've gone.

The gas sensors still detect love in the air,
But the IR doesn't show that bond, and,
I don't see l'amourium peaks on the NMR.
The kissing magnets now laugh at me.

The weighing balance still fluctuates,
Like it would when you walked by.
The lonely stain-studded labcoat still hangs in there,
The safety glasses still give me that soulful look.

The sonicator hums your name,
But the litmus turns blue all the time.
The esters have all but lost the fragrance,
And forming gas doesn't bubble through happily anymore.

The furnace doesn't warm up to me anymore,
And the only void the porosimetry shows
Is the one you left behind.
Only the pycnometer knows how heavy I feel.

.. and the amaltash outside sheds golden yellow tears.

The long and short of it

2009-01-02T21:04:00.002-07:00

For me, 2008 was the year that started with a trip to India, and ended with another one. In the eleven months that passed in between, I was busy reading, traveling and chatting away. I could spend a lot of time following the elections in the US, reading news columns and articles, watching speeches and interviews. I could read a few good books too. Apart from the two trips to India, I made some 6 outings in the US - familiar LA in March, scenic Northern Arizona and flashy Las Vegas in May, idyllic Ohio in July, scenic Colorado in August and chilly Baltimore for Thanksgiving.

When I wasn't doing that, I managed to get a little work done. On that front, this year was really like a big STOP sign. I had to wait for months for three of my instruments to come in. Now all the wait is over and it's time to get some real work done.

Though I am not a big fan of one-liners put forth with an ambition to sum up the whole world, there are times when I fall for them. They may come from the experts, or otherwise. One such occasion was when I was talking to a friend about short-term and long-term economic policies and decisions. And then I said, "For me, there is no long-term. You cannot keep doing different things in the short-term and expect different results in the long-term."
This is obviously nothing different from the age-old wisdom about how 'you'll keep getting what you have been getting if you keep doing what you have been doing'; or the famous quote by J M Keynes - "In the long run, we are all dead". Original or not, sometimes you just like the way it is put.

Currently reading - "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb.
Find a good talk by him here - 'The future has always been crazier than we thought'.

The Separation(?)

2008-08-25T09:39:00.002-07:00

The Separation of the Church and the State - one of the lessons we got as school-kids - is conspicuous by the lack of it. This is nothing new, here are just a few more recent revealing incidents:

On the official website of the Governor of Maharashtra Shri S C Jamir, the page detailing his profile opens with a long introduction to his religious beliefs and activities - quite unnecessary, I think. :-|

In the US, Rick Warren interviewed the two Presidential candidates back-to-back, and he did it as a pastor. Had he done it simply to hold a conversation with the two candidates, it would have been understandable. But no, he did it as an evangelical pastor, in a church. He says he is interested in the candidates' understanding of the role of the Constitution. So is this the Church quizzing the State ?! WTH !

The Democratic Party Convention in Denver has kicked off. In a political convention, they are holding out-of-the-place things like 'Faith Caucuses'. The party, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, is "trying to make political peace with God and wants voters to be comfortable not just with the policies of their president, but his spiritual compass, as well." huh?

(Be)longing

2008-06-03T10:44:00.002-07:00

For many of us, the legal status both in India and the US is that of a non-resident. We're Non-resident Indians back home, and Non-resident Aliens in the US.

Guess I'll have to wait a bit to become a Resident Indian again.

We the Children

2008-05-30T10:17:00.011-07:00

When We are born, We are
Neither theists nor atheists,
We are without any biases
Neither racists, nor sexists.

We aren't born as bigots
Nor crazy about any 'ism's,
With no preconceived notions
All unaware of the schisms.

We weren't given a choice
Coming into this world
We were tagged and labeled
With whatever you loved.

Truly free, peaceful world
Is all We're really asking
Where We sing our own song
And make our own painting.

A world where We are shown
Diversity, not Differences
Connections, not Boundaries
Blissful Peace, not Silences.

Mandar.

What's in a name?

2008-05-25T21:16:00.003-07:00

SLOW - it's far from what it appears to be. It stands for Stanford Learning Organization Web. Doesn't sound sluggish now, eh?

NSF - academia can never get enough funds from these guys. No wonder they stand for Not Sufficient Funds!

Food!

2008-05-23T15:02:00.002-07:00

Till I was about 19, I had never eaten meat. Nobody in my house had, either. My mom is a pure vegetarian. In fact, she has nausea - she cannot even handle the smell of raw eggs while making a cake. Dad used to eat meat, but he gave up, as my mom doesn't. But cool as my parents are, they never told me what I can or cannot do with such issues, they left it to me to decide what I wanted to eat or not eat.

I started eating meat with my college friends, first to try something new, and then continuing as I liked it. It was mainly chicken, sometimes fish. I tried beef once too, but didn't like it.

Sometimes there were debates - the typical vegetarians vs non-vegetarians versions. The veggie people argued with animal rights and painful killings on their side. The other group talked about how we cannot differentiate between the pains that a plant goes through and the animals go through.

"Well, the plants do not have a nervous system, so they cannot feel pain."

"That's what we know as of now. Our basis for substantiating the existence of pain or the lack thereof is based on the notion that one needs a nervous system for the same - what if there is something about plants which we do not know? And hence one cannot distinguish between the plants and the animals, and thus meat-eaters or not, we all inflict pain on those living things. So you cannot support eating vegetables, and not meat."

Personally, I thought both had a point. Not all of the argument on either side made sense. I liked meat and considered it as my personal choice to have it. It is not that I was unable to imagine the pain the animals may be going through, but it somehow never came to such a level as to stop me from having it in a restaurant. Maybe because I never really saw how they were treated. Maybe I was only focusing on my taste buds.

........

But then, all the news about the acute food shortage started pouring in. It was there in more than 30 countries! Not that I was unaware of any hunger/ malnutrition issues earlier, but I simply did not link it with my food habits per se. I could see it when we did not get any rice on our trip to the huge Costco store here in Tempe.

And then I came across a couple of articles on the food crisis, changing food habits and the emerging meat economy of the world: The Last Bite in the New Yorker and Carnivores Like Us in the Seed Magazine. This got me thinking. And then I also remembered the "10% Law" regarding the energy transfer in a food chain that we had been taught in school.

As it looks, three main forces are competing for the agricultural land we have: The production of food grains for the human consumption, the production of fodder for the animals to feed on, and the production of 'bio-fuels'. (Well, there is the fourth one - using this land for non-agricultural purposes. That's scary!)

As more humans start eating meat, we would need more grains and fodder - to feed those animals. And it seems that we have to make a conscious choice about the distribution of existing farmlands and grazing pastures. We certainly cannot afford to create more of them by bringing down whatever remaining forests we have. Re-distribution of farmlands means having to regulate our consumption of meat (and food-grains, and bio-fuels too).

In such a situation, it is not a personal choice anymore. It's plainly a matter of "Can we, as the human race, produce these many vegetables and this much meat to keep our demands met?" This is a practical issue, a ground reality. This is not about "should we eat meat or not" or "are our intestines suitable for meat consumption at all?" or "how do you know that plants don't experience pain" or religious conceptions or "morals and ethics".
Hunger is something I can understand and feel about much more than those things. And now I will be able to make my choice in a much better way.

Good for me.

All I need is reason.

2008-05-23T11:37:00.006-07:00

I have come to know something about myself, to the point of verbalizing it. But an example first.

All my life, I was used to the squatting position for evacuation. In the Occident however, I adopted the sitting style. Then I came to know that in the squatting position, the puborectalis muscle is relaxed, straightening the rectum. This helps in faster, easier and complete evacuation, along with some other benefits. (I do not want to suggest looking up random websites for such facts, but would rather send scientific journal articles to someone curious). No one back home told me this. Anyhow, after learning about it, I have reverted back to my earlier habit.

For all I know, if I understand and agree with the logic behind a certain thing, I do it. At times, I actively seek the reason too. But if I am not convinced, I can be as apathetic as ever.

Three Tiers

2008-05-23T10:08:00.005-07:00

While in college, I had a theory about the people we interact with outside our families.

They can be grouped in three tiers:

Tier-I is made of all the people with whom you share a platonic relationship. They are acquaintances and friends.

Tier-II is made of those we are interested in - in a romantic way, people we have a crush on. For some, this tier could be composed of more than one person at a given time; for others it may be the case of on(c)e-crush(ed)-at-a-time.

Tier-III is that special person - the one you look at as the prospective life partner. More romantically, "THE one". You are madly in love with this person. There is nothing negative you can see about this. Never. You are in total awe, you are into it - to the fullest.

And this was the observation: when somebody from Tier-II moves to Tier-III - that's when you "fall" in love - the other people previously in Tier-II (if applicable) move to Tier-I.

Now all you can think of is the one in Tier-III. And whatever awkwardness you had while interacting with the other previous Tier-II people goes away like magic! You are in an elated mood all the time (well, almost). When you acknowledge what you feel, and better still - convey it - it gets nicer! You almost get a high from being honest and frank about your feelings, and you take pride in that.

And most importantly, things become crystal-clear.. for me, clarity is beauty.

Window and Mirror

2008-05-15T20:37:00.005-07:00

The Day is my window
To the world outside,
The Night - my mirror
That I have inside.

The Day is about work
And all the commotion,
The Night is a pause
A quiet introspection.

In the Day I run away
Like a fawn in the woods,
In the Night I come back
To the blissful moods.

Daytime I spend with
High pressures and valves,
Come Night I vent out
The mystery resolves!

All day long I look out
For how much and what,
Who, why and how cook
In the Night's dark pot.

I memorize in the Day
All that I must remember,
Can I forget the hard-to-forget
In the Night, I so wonder..

-- Mandar.

iQuote

2008-05-01T13:43:00.008-07:00

When I read the famous quote by Wilde - "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." - all it occurred to me was that that was also a quotation. I couldn't have cared less.

My younger brother once preached: "What is important is the quotation, and not the person who said it. - by Milind."
"Unless it's I", I added. Dad chuckled, and mom reminded us that we would be better off listening to what she said.

Anyway, not since long, I have started building my own arsenal of quotes.

Here are some quotes by I .. or is it by me? (ah, here is one!)

"Good morning Grandpa, whom are you looking for?"
(to the good old Academic Advisor of our school, when I didn't know him, and he was on his weekly round. He went on to become the ultimate terror factor in our six wonder years at school.)

"I was caught being honest."
(describing the time when my friend overheard me conveying to a girl my love for her .. yeah, just her.)

And these are the ones when I turn philosophical, after two ounces of coconut water:

"We want to stay away from regret more than we want our dreams to come true."

"It is better to be hated for what you are, than to be loved for what you are not."

Cherry Blossom :-)

2008-02-25T09:59:00.006-07:00

It's spring time! Well, one might say it's still to come, but look what Henry Van Dyke had said: "The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month."

I start off on my lovely red mountain bike in the morning and lo and behold! Look who's standing in its full glory - the Prunus avium for the botanists, Wild Cherry for someone like me, and local Sakura, for all the poetic hearted :-)

Ecstatic, I stop by, and take a closer look -

And then I think of those midsummer afternoons, when we would get our tongues all red from savoring those little red fruits.
It's beautiful :-)

Condissioned.

2008-02-24T11:27:00.003-07:00

I made this using Photo booth and Comic Life on my MacBook. And no, I don't write with my left hand, neither was I posing that way. It's how I look in a mirror.

It's the way Photo Booth takes pictures. It is something like a camera + a mirror. I looked this up and found that it effectively acts like a mirror first, while composing the photo, and then it seemingly captures that mirror image. One can flip it too, choosing Flip option in the Edit menu.
I tried it out, and saw that it still keeps showing the mirror image while composing. If it was to only show on the screen what the camera was seeing, it would be confusing because our image would move towards right when we move to the left and vice versa.

Dow ?!

2008-02-22T10:17:00.009-07:00

Had a discussion with some of my senior friends about Dow Corning's new plant coming up near Pune, and the protests (1, 2, 3) against the same. It went like this:

Greetings,
Adding my twopence worth here (my replies follow the italicized statements/questions):

* "Dow, along with many other companies, have provided us with world-class products that have for sure improved our lives (a major plus point)."
-- Who is this "us"? City-dwellers, financially well placed people, right? What about the local people who will be suffering from unclean air-water?

* "Dow, has also created many many jobs around the world."
-- Dow and many more companies offshore their facilities outside the western world, because here they have to follow minimal or no emission control measures. The money they save here is enormous. And that's how something researched in India and/or produced in China can be sold in the US and European markets for just a few bucks. The real cost of the production is not paid by the consumer there – rather it is paid by the workers and locals at the production site, in terms of having to put up with polluted air-water.

The job-creation Dow or others do, is a side effect. My point will be clearer when you think why they come to India at all (everything is cheaper here – including the labor, and they can make the place as dirty as they want, and still get away with that).

* "Dow's R&D in Pune is one of the rare examples of R&Ds of multinational companies in India in chemical sciences."
-- Agreed. But at the expense of what? Let's not confuse between the means and the goals. Achieving a better, healthier, cleaner lifestyle – for all - is the goal, and everything else is secondary. So if some of our means are going to affect us badly (either in near future or in the long run) then we should be thinking twice. What if we do create all these luxuries, but while doing so ruin our environment so badly that it's difficult to enjoy all those? It's not far-fetched, it's happening. Remember "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson, which created a stir and eventually led to banning DDTs in the US? Many countries still use it!
Do we really want all those flashy products and comforts at the expense of environment and human health? Really?

* "Dow, along with many other companies, have produced "war-related" chemicals/materials/products (why only blame Dow?)."
-- It's not about blaming. It's about taking the responsibility of your actions. Remember the famous case of silicone breast implants in the US? Thousands of women faced the ill-effects on health, even cancerous growth. It was this very Dow-Corning, who eventually lost the lawsuit and had to pay huge penalties for the same. Are you saying you are sure that Dow will properly clean up whatever waste it creates? What are they going to do about the landfills, the lakes and the rivers in the area, and the polluted air? Do they have a zero-emission policy?

* "Dow acquired UC decades after the tragedy, hence has nothing to do with that."
Well, this is agreed upon. Dow cannot be blamed for the Bhopal episode. But we have seen Dow's behavior earlier, in many cases. You want to believe they will be all good here in India?
(By the way, for those who haven't yet, visit this: http://www.bhopal.net/ Check out the current status of the place and one will be shocked to find that the traces of the disaster still loom over those parts of the city. Now when one company acquires another, it acquires all its liabilities too! What is Dow doing now in Bhopal?)

* "When there are adverse results, who owns them ? answer could be :the LOCAL people have to sacrifice."
-- Indeed.

* "When there is profit/good name who receives them ? answer could be :the people sitting outside India get them ?"

-- And also some wealthy Indians, sitting in their cushioned sofas in huge gated urban communities, far away from the real situation outside.

* "Perhaps US rejected it because they do not want the first thing to happen?"
-- Quite possible!

* "Solution could be, why not to give them some deserted land? Why near pune-chakan where an international airport is being planned."
-- (Why am I reminded of Nehru's statement of giving up a 'deserted land' called Tibet when the Chinese attacked ?! )

But let's not get all emotional here. Well, even if you give them a so-called 'deserted land', the groundwater is going to be polluted. The air is going to be filled with harmful emissions. There are going to be landfills for the toxic effluents. What about those?
This 'deserted land' of yours can be a neglected agricultural land of some village, or a deforested area. If given proper attention, it can grow food! Let me not get started on the status of 'pseudo-excess food' we have in India.

*".. issues put forward here are confusing. I cannot understand , whether the issue is against ALL TYPES OF LARGE SETUPS or is it against ANY MORE INDUSTRIES IN PUNE or is it against ANY PROJECT WHICH DOES NOT HAVE GRASS ROOT ASPIRATIONS AND PARTICIPATION or is it against any R &D FACILITY WHICH DOES NOT HAVE NOBLE OR ALTRUISTIC MOTIVES or is it only against DOW CHEMICALS? Frankly, I am confused."
-- Isn't it a combination of all ?

* "You may have some valid points, but no clarification about what is Dow going to do in Pune (chemical plant, i.e. pollution or not). I think this is the key point we need to explore on."
-- What would be your best guess - about Dow Corning - a chemicals company? It wouldn't take too much to explore what they are going to do there.

We first let them set the plant up, let them pollute, and then oppose them - that's surely not the way it works. We have to put forth our concerns right now! Let Dow answer them. If they are really not going to pollute, (which is possible if they want to conduct research on say plants or rocks in Western Maharashtra), they will obviously come out and give an explanation. Why not let them do that part of the talking?

You must have heard/read about McDonough-Braungart's work on Cradle to Cradle design. This is McDonough's talk on TED. Please listen to him!

I will also urge all of you to spend next 21 spare minutes you have watching this: Story of Stuff.

An update:
*"You haven't got a clue what a chemical plant is and what an R&D for chemical industry is! Most of all you don't even know who Dow are and Dow Corning are! I am a chemical engg. and closely follow these companies, so I don't need to take a wild guess to find out what they do! Have you ever seen a chemical industry's R&D?
Let me wait till the people protesting this project come up with facts and the real points against it.
By the way, has anyone been to Sahyadri Dyestuffs ever? Please do so, to see real pollution caused by an INDIAN company!"
-- Okay. Point taken. So here I am, waiting for more inputs.

-- Mandar.

A Zebra World.

2008-02-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

Six of us walk into that restaurant. Seems as if the whole town has turned up there at lunchtime. We stand in the line, shifting our hungry stomachs from one leg to the other.

Five get killed in the tribal war in a Kenyan slum.

"Hi, what would you like to have today?" asks a canyon-wide smile.
"One large please."
Stuffing my bowl with all the noodles, rice, vegetables, mushrooms, fruit pieces and different sauces, all I think about is a good lunch.

In Guatemala, a 20 year-old boy is having his lunch - first in the last 5 days.

We get together at a table. And jokingly talk about how all this food is going to make us sleepy.

In rural India, a farmer's family sleeps, starved.

I am done with my bowl, and I look around. Two of my colleagues are unable to finish their lunch, so they buy the 50-cent doggie bags and fill them up - to go.

And here in the richest country of the world, they sell you your own greed.

Diff'rent Strokes - II

2007-11-11T11:17:00.001-07:00

That's a two-stroke, 80 cc, 3.5 hp engine on my mountain bike. I bought it online from Kings Motor Bikes. They had promised to send an instruction manual, but instead sent a small note on an even smaller piece of paper saying all the instructions are online. Anyhow, two of my room-mates with good mechanical aptitude and I put that on there. We test-rode it, and within a few minutes the crankcase cracked and a piece came off, and the idler wheel followed suit. The engine has something written on it in mandarin I believe.

Overall, it's fun riding it, though it makes more noise than miles. Other poor(?!) cyclists on the road yield with great care expecting an overtake stunt when they hear you coming, but you don't really zoom past them.

You get all the attention, and you go very slow. Sounds like a ramp walk. Not exactly my idea about going to the lab, but what the heck?

It's fun :)

Diff'rent Strokes - I

2007-11-11T10:47:00.001-07:00

We all used to gather at my uncle's place in the summer vacations, and have great fun together [heavy understatement]. Sometime then, I had watched a few episodes of this amazing TV serial. I was very much of an ignorant kid then [and some things just don't change!], with my mouth busy eating or talking or snoring; and I did not pay much attention to what's coming out of that idiot box. (they ought to name it as idiots' box, I think). But a few gems did come out, and this was the one I rediscovered a few days back, when one of my good friends mentioned it.

This weekend, I watched many episodes and thoroughly enjoyed it. Little Arnold, 'big bro' Willis, sweet sis Kimberley, Mrs Garrett and 'dad' Mr D - aren't they a fun lot? It was very refreshing to watch them all together, with good humor sprinkled all over the 20-odd minutes. I had ROTFLOLs when Arnold would go 'watcha talkin' 'bout Willis?' =))

Apart from all the comic family fun, the show does make strong statements with respect to prejudiced people. At times, it gets emotional and they get the message across very clearly. As far as the bottom-line is concerned, the title song speaks it all:

Now, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
A man is born, he's a man of means.
Then along come two, they got nothing but their 'jeans'.

But they got, Diff'rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff'rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff'rent Strokes to move the world.

Everybody's got a special kind of story
Everybody finds a way to shine,
It don't matter that you got not a lot
So what,
They'll have theirs, and you'll have yours, and I'll have mine.
And together we'll be fine....

Because it takes, Diff'rent Strokes to move the world.
Yes it does.
It takes, Diff'rent Strokes to move the world.

Fantastic!

Catharsis

2007-11-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

He ventures out in the cold night
Only to listen to his heartbeat,
To see what his eyes can't see
And to make the picture complete.

He wanders alone, but not lonely
In nooks and corners of his mind,
He finds himself as a little kid,
Of the ignorant, blissful kind.

He fumbles and mumbles to himself
He slips and flips and he wanders,
But still continues his spelunking
In the cold dark deep deep caverns.

He finds some fear, some lust and
Bumps into hatred and regret,
He discovers his own vices around
And things he wanted to forget.

Then he decides to purge them all
To rid himself of the nemesis,
He realizes his Self, the purest
And thus begins the Catharsis.

-- Mandar.

Fifty words

2007-10-31T20:39:00.000-07:00

A boy got on the bus and sat next to him.

The boy struck a conversation and cracked jokes... he smiled, stealthily.
The boy hi-fived him .. he responded, looking around, embarrassed.

He came home, washed his hands with anti-bacterial soap.

That boy's skin was different. It had too much melanin.

[My first attempt at a 50-word story.]

Gapminder and more!

2007-10-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

You've rarely seen data presented like this. Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world" using extraordinary animation software "Trendalyzer". It was developed by his Gapminder Foundation, which he co-founded with his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna.
Trendalyzer makes it easy and fun to analyze trends; converting statistics into interactive graphics. In March this year, it was acquired by Google to be scaled up and to be made publicly available.

I came across one more of his talks titled "New Insights on Poverty and Life Around the World". This again is a really interesting one, throwing light upon worldwide trends in poverty, life expectancy etc. Prof Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. And - believe it or not - to convey his point that "Impossible is possible", he swallows a sword at the end of this talk!
This was perhaps the best talk I have watched on the net. I liked the way he made his points, his humor, and most importantly the way he emphasized on economic development as the means/tool, and health-culture-environment as the goals to be achieved. the attempt to question the binary notion of the world - nice. not to forget the the importance of contextualization of solutions - generalizing with care.
Thanks, ted.com !

I recommend watching both these talks. Also, have a look at www.gapminder.org and/or http://tools.google.com/gapminder

Talking about statistics around the world, I cannot but remember Freakonomics, which used the lens of economics to look at various issues, and dug deeper. On www.ted.com, there was this one more interesting talk by economist Emily Oster who talked about What we really know about the spread of AIDS - an interesting take, it's worth watching.

And while we are on AIDS, have a look at what another economist has to say about STDs: "More Sex is Safer Sex" - an article by Steven Landsburg. This economist has some 'different' articles on his name - for example this one on "Why parking your car is environmentally more destructive than driving it".

nirvanashatak / aatmashatak - Adi Shankaracharya

2007-09-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

Long back, in school, we had learnt this "nirvaanashatakam" written by Adi Shankaracharya. I think the teacher had also tried to explain the meaning a little bit. I am still thinking about it. Swami Vivekananda had written the literal meaning in English, which appears in Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Posting the same here.

निर्वाणषटक - आद्य शंकराचार्य

मनोबुद्ध्यहंकार चित्तानि नाहम्
न च श्रोत्रजिव्हे न च घ्राणनेत्रे ।
न च व्योमभूमिर्नतेजो न वायु:
चिदानंदरूप: शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम् ॥

I am neither the mind, nor the intellect, nor the ego, nor the mind-stuff;
I am neither the body, nor the changes of the body;
I am neither the senses of hearing, taste, smell, or sight,
Nor am I the ether, the earth, the fire, the air;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute —
I am Shiva, I am He.

न च प्राणसंज्ञो न वै पञ्चवायु:
न वा सप्तधातुर्न वा पञ्चकोष: ।
न वाक्पाणिपादौ न चोपस्थपायु:
चिदानंदरूप: शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम् ॥

I am neither the Prâna, nor the five vital airs;
I am neither the materials of the body, nor the five sheaths;
Neither am I the organs of action, nor object of the senses;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute —
I am Shiva, I am He.

न मे द्वेषरागौ न मे लोभमोहौ
मदो नैव मे नैव मात्सर्यभाव: ।
न धर्मो न चार्थो न कामो न मोक्ष:
चिदानंदरूप: शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम् ॥

I have neither aversion nor attachment, neither greed nor delusion;
Neither egotism nor envy, neither Dharma nor Moksha;
I am neither desire nor objects of desire;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute —
I am Shiva, I am He.

न पुण्यं न पापं न सौख्यं न दु:खम्
न मन्त्रो न तीर्थं न वेदा: न यज्ञा: ।
अहं भोजनं नैव भोज्यं न भोक्ता
चिदानंदरूप: शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम् ॥

I am neither sin nor virtue, neither pleasure nor pain;
Nor temple nor worship, nor pilgrimage nor scriptures,
Neither the act of enjoying, the enjoyable nor the enjoyer;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute —
I am Shiva, I am He.

न मे मृत्युशंका न मे जातिभेद:
पिता नैव मे नैव माता न जन्म ।
न बन्धुर्न मित्रं गुरुर्नैव शिष्य:
चिदानंदरूप: शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम् ॥

I have neither death nor fear of death, nor caste;
Nor was I ever born, nor had I parents, friends, and relations;
I have neither Guru, nor disciple;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute —
I am Shiva, I am He.

अहं निर्विकल्पो निराकाररूपो
विभुर्व्याप्य सर्वत्र सर्वेन्द्रियाणि
सदा मे समत्वं न मुक्तिर्न बन्ध:
चिदानंदरूप: शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम् ॥

I am untouched by the senses, I am neither Mukti nor knowable;
I am without form, without limit, beyond space, beyond time;
I am in everything; I am the basis of the universe; everywhere am I.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute —
I am Shiva, I am He.

My first time of .. you know .. ;)

2007-07-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's right. A few nights back, I had my first one. But I swear, it didn't mean anything to me. I had eaten too much that evening, and I was kinda down, and it just happened before you could say 'bike-lock'. In fact while doing it I was not really thinking about it in 'that' way. I just want to say that nothing has changed. I am still me. And I am so sorry, I promise this will never happen again!

But I can't help but let the complete truth out.

One fine evening, I ventured out on my lovely red mountain bike to a nearby grocery store. It wasn't too much of a pleasant ride, all thanks to the heat here (how about 38 C at 10:30 pm?)
Well, so I go in, pick up all the stuff I want. Coming out, I start to unlock my bike only to find the key broken and the lock jammed. Oh man, I am doomed. All terrible things come to my mind. Maybe I have to get a locksmith here (and how on earth was I going to do that?), spend more than what I ever spent on the bike itself and still thank him for doing that for me. Maybe I have to get the lock cut - somehow. Or, worse - I would have to cut the lock myself and if the police saw me doing that, I would have to end up in jail unless I could prove that this indeed is my bike. It can't get worse that that I felt, thus ending that awful chain of thoughts.

I called up my roomie, and asked him to get me the spare key. He did get me one, just to a different lock altogether [:P] So I biked back home on his bike and got the right key. That didn't work, and I started considering other options.
I had seen how some locks work and how you could pick them with pins and stuff. I didn't remember it too well, but thought I could give it a shot. So I went into the grocery store, and asked the lady if they have something like a hairpin. A real sweet lady that she was, she actually gave me the one she was wearing. O, that was so nice of her .. I owe her one. My attempt at opening that lock with the pin was all in vain. It was getting late, I had to be up early and working full time the next day. I decided that I would get a hacksaw from my lab and cut the lock open. So I just left the bike there, and started back home. The sweet grocery-shop lady asked me if I really thought the bike was safe to be left there overnight. I said, "I can't get it out. If somebody can, it's theirs!" I can't tell in words how bad it hurt when I said that.

I went to work the next morning, told my supervisor about that whole thing, borrowed a hacksaw and a few extra saw-blades and prepared myself mentally to cut the lock open. That was not before my supervisor briefly mentioned about seeing a news on how people had picked bike-locks with pens. I didn't take it seriously, though. During lunch, I googled for 'bike lock picking' and found people doing it with Bic pens! Then I was all charged up - excited at the idea of picking the lock myself, with a Bic pen I found in my bag.

Now I could not wait. My supervisor left early that day, and so did I, went straight to the grocery shop praying for my bike to be still there. Thankfully it was. I looked here and there, all around, only to find a couple of stray customers who cared to shop at 2:30 pm in that hot sun. No one is looking, I said, and took out my pen to pick that lock. I found that the pen was too small for that thing to work. Shit.

I needed a breakthrough now. I was bent upon not cutting the lock with that hacksaw. That would have been too much of an activity, which would have increased the entropy of the universe even more. I left that one for others.

I looked at my old broken key - and it _did_ look like a pen - with a hollow body! I was thrilled. I put it in, turned it a few times and - lo and behold - one end of my U-lock started coming out. I repeated my efforts and there it was - almost done. Then I borrowed a hammer from a nearby shop and could easily break it open! I had actually picked a lock! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My bike was free :) Pictures of me cutting through that thick hardened steel with a poor looking hacksaw, getting drenched in sweat and probably even caught by police, ran before my eyes. I smiled to myself and said "that ain't gonna happen now!".

Just when I was getting finished, a lady approached and said in a hushed tone, "If the police sees you doing that, they will take you in."
"Excuse me, but it IS my bike." I said in self-defense.
"Yeah, but it happened with my brother-in-law too. He was breaking open his own bike lock, the police saw it and they put him in jail!"
After this, it didn't take me more than 7 seconds to flee that place ..

From all this, I learned two lessons - always keep your bike lock in good condition. And yeah, whichever part of this world you go to, women won't ever stop giving you unnecessary details [;)] [:P]

[Dedicated to the-grocery-shop-lady-who-gave-me-her-own-hairpin :)]

Literal

2007-07-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

I am feeling like I am back to reading good stuff. In past few months, i read some real interesting books - both english and marathi. Liked most of them.

I started with oh-so-fat 'The World is Flat' by New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman. On dusshera last year, I had bought myself the 2006 expanded edition of the same. It took me a while to read it, partly because I always googled about some interesting stuff I found in there and noted down a few key points as I went along. All in all, it's an account of how the Phenomenon of Globalization started, what all were the factors fueling it, how and in which forms it is apparent today, and what could be the new challenges, problems we may be facing as it happens. The book is not technical, it's a rather historical account of a global phenomenon by a journalist. It can help you to get a bird's eye view of last 20-odd years, many technological advancements - including communications - and help you get a bigger picture of things. Like me - those who are not students of computer science-electronics - can get an overview of some key technologies developed in those areas which have helped the process of globalization.
When I come to think of it, flattening is the process whereby there is equal availability of opportunities - of learning, innovation and business. How one actually uses those is a different matter. I think Friedman has put forth this theme very clearly - the world is getting flatter, the playing field is getting leveled. 'Horizontal', 'collaborative' are the keywords here. He also discusses some growing issues in this flattening world.
One can't help but stop and think about what Herb Caen once wrote: "Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle; when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

After I was done with this exciting account of the whole world, I turned to a small corner of it - Afganistan. On a recommendation by a friend, I read Khaled Husseini's novel 'The Kite Runner'. I didn't even know what a 'kite runner' was. It's the person who 'runs' the kite - fetches it after it has been cut down by another kite in a kite fight game.
I loved reading this novel. So much that I finished it in a day. It's a touching and disturbing tale of two childhood friends - from two very different socio-economic backgrounds, but friends nonetheless. There is a very nice portrait of pre-war Afganistan, through the eyes of a school-kid. The characters vividly portrayed. I really liked the way the writer has brought forth his little world and the simple childhood joys. Then things change - there is fear, there is betrayal, there is running away from responsibilities. There is regret, deep sorrow, and fleeing away from Home, as refugees. There is, in the end, a redemption.
The writer builds the life of Hazara people in front of our eyes. I felt it was all thought provoking - as far as purity of mind, honesty, and loyalty to one's own people is concerned. As far as the redemption part goes, I couldn't help thinking that we can make things right, but we have to do it then and there. Delayed justice is no justice.

This was the next one I took up, on my roomie's recommendation. It's "Sophie's world - a novel about the history of (Western) philosophy". It is originally written in Norwegian, by Jostein Gaarder. I read the English translation of the same. Well, the title of the book says 'History of Philosophy', but in fact it talks only about the Western Philosophy, ignoring that there were philosophers of the Orient too, except for a few mentions in the book.

For someone who has not read philosophy in a formal way, this might be a good start. The writer has nicely written about many philosophers - right from the pre-Socratics to thinkers of 19th and 20th century, including Marx, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Sartre. One gets an overview of all these 2500 years of western philosophy. Sadly, the technical and scientific details presented in some portions, especially about Copernicus-Galileo-Newton are far from flawless. But that could be ignored. The discussion about all these philosophers is very nicely woven into a story of one - in fact two - teenage girls. There is a UN soldier, and a mysterious philosophy teacher too. And the most beautiful part is - this book itself is there in this story! - something I have never seen earlier. It's really nice, I think. The writer has made it interesting through twists and turns in the little story - otherwise it could get pretty boring reading about scores of philosophers and their thoughts without giving up.
There is a similar book - Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, which some of my friends have recommended to new students of philosophy.

Life Lessons

2007-06-11T07:24:00.000-07:00

-- "Location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore, India, my home town.

By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the next morning, and I could not eat because I had no local money. I slept on the railway platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the Sofia Express pulled in.

The only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy. I struck a conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the travails of living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by the young man who thought we were criticising the communist government of Bulgaria. The girl was led away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated. I was dragged along the platform into a small 8x8 foot room with a cold stone floor and a hole in one corner by way of toilet facilities. I was held in that bitterly cold room without food or water for over 72 hours.

I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard's compartment on a departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul. The guard's final words still ring in my ears -- "You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting you go!"

The journey to Istanbul was lonely, and I was starving. This long, lonely, cold journey forced me to deeply rethink my convictions about Communism. Early on a dark Thursday morning, after being hungry for 108 hours, I was purged of any last vestiges of affinity for the Left."

this was none other than N R Narayana Murthy, speaking at pre-commencement lecture at Sterns School of Business. the whole speech is here.

-- i happened to read about another very interesting personality - Dr Keki Gharda. In 1965, he started his company in a small rented shed with a drum as a table and a carboy for a chair. Over the next four decades Gharda Chemicals has repeatedly flummoxed multinationals like Sandoz, Bayer and Hoechst by making their products at a fraction of the cost through technological virtuosity. Read an interview here.

are we turning plastic ..?

2007-06-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

ever wondered where does all the trash thrown away end up ? in landfills and oceans, yeah. but here's something you would want to know - it may as well reach back to you, right inside your body!

Except for a small amount of plastic that has been incinerated - and it's a very small amount - every bit of plastic ever made still exists.

a few days back, i saw this Trash Animation, and found myself in more shock when i happened to read this article in BestLife magazine.

see for yourself !

A realization ..

2007-06-07T10:57:00.001-07:00

in the month of March, i felt i learnt something, and could verbalize it too :

It is better to be hated for what you are, than to be loved for what you are not.

Ronald DeLorenzo and his 3-D Powerpoint

2007-06-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

This semester, i got to attend an interesting talk. mainly meant for schoolkids, it was a popular chemistry talks. let's keep aside the question how i ended up there, and focus on the speaker. Ronald DeLorenzo is the Department Chair at Dept of Chemistry, Middle Georgia College. he is an interesting speaker, who raises many questions during his talk and answers some of them. it's mostly basic school chemistry, which unfolds through simple real life examples, incidences, anecdotes. he had a way with the audience for sure.

he also uses his 3D Power Point - the beta version. this is a very powerful technique of conveying the situation and various processes to the students. i had expected to see a piece of software, and i was completely bowled over when he used cardboard, chalks, duster, table, chair in the room to create stories, explain situations and simulate experiments. thats what he called 3-D powerpoint, jokingly! a very interesting concept, i thought.

he talked about some real interesting things.
the inflatable underwear which were used in America had some funny side effects. when people wearing such underwear got into aeroplane cabins, which were not maintained at exactly the same pressure as ground, but a little less, the air in the underwear would expand and things happened. [;)]
the government has laid out rules that icecream should contain no more than 15% air. companies make good use of these 15% allowance. and it is easily seen that it helps to have an icecream factory at a lower level, say sea level, and sell the icecream in towns high up in mountains. [:P]
he also told about the CO2 disaster which happened in Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986. CO2 dissolved in water came out due to volcanic activities, and killed several people and cattle. read more about it here.
you may find many questions and their brief answers in his interesting short essays here. and one could read the online version of the textbook that launched the Applications and Analogies column in the Journal of Chemical Education here.

all in all, that was one talk i accidently ended up in, and enjoyed a lot :)

Camping Trips :D :D

2007-06-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

i have always enjoyed being outdoors. be it a forest trip, a mountain hike, boating in a lake, a long drive ..

in the month of May, i made first two of my 'real' camping trips here in the US. they turned out to be real good trips after all, and i will always remember those moments :)

at the time of the first trip, i had rented a car, without any plan as such. so i actually gathered 3 more friends, and we set out for the mountain town of Sedona - a couple of hours drive north of Phoenix. this was a 1 day 2 nights trip. since we decided at the last moment, we could start off only by 11 pm, and it was not before 2:30 in the night that we finally reached the campgrounds. then we set up the tent, cooked delicious food [:D] and then slept. the next day we went out into the town, hiked in the nearby mountains, crossing the small river a few times. that was real fun. in this trip, i did all the driving.

in the next trip, we covered a part of Northern Arizona. this time we were 9 of us, and we had rented two cars. we first went to Woods Canyon Lake (in Tonto National Forest) - the same place i had been to, in September last year. camped there in the night, after having a real good dinner. aroud midnight, we went out again - in a bright moonlight, to the lake. we had water melon there [;)] and then moved on to the valley. this sight was really amazing. we were standing on a cliff overlooking a vast valley. the moon was shining bright in the sky. the valley looked like a huge lake of mist and fog. we were simply awestruck at that sight. this was the same cliff i had been to, a few months back. far below, we could see only one house with a light in it, and a small portion of the nearby road got lit whenever a truck/car passed by.
in the morning, we went up to the lake again, came back and chilled out, played poker sitting in the tents. then we moved on to Payson - a nearby town, and from there went a few miles west to camp near the Blue Ridge Reservoir. all this area comes in Coconino National Forest, just like Sedona. our campground here was right on the edge of a steep mountain slope. in the evening, we hiked down there into the jungle. that was great.

on the third day, we went up to Grand Canyon, and had a nice time there too. but we only got a couple of hours there. we entered from the South Entrance, watched the beautiful sight from the South Rim, and then proceeded to the watchtower near the East Entrance. from this side, the view was very different, and really amazing. we could see the Colorado River too ! this was simply great, enjoyed every bit of it :)
while coming back, i drove for a couple of hours. at one point of time, i was the only one awake in our jeep [:P] driving down those winding mountain roads, with favourite music in my ears was sheer joy ! :D

[photos uploaded here and here.]

Divine Music

2007-06-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

as far as music concerts go, this semester was sure a treat to the ears. i got to attend four - two excellent violin concerts, one hindustani classical vocal recital by Pt Sanjeev Abhyankar, and an evening with singer Hariharan.

my room-mate listens to a lot of carnatic music, and in the last 10 months or so, even i have listened to that a bit, and really enjoyed. he once took me to a violin concert - organized by SPIC-MACAY in the ASU Campus. it was a carnatic duet, by Sangeeta Kalanidhi Shri M. Chandrashekharan, and his daughter Smt G Bharati. i really really enjoyed being there. they played for almost 3 hours! it was simply great. the music was beyond words, and brought out the inner innocent smile out on our faces. it was truly blissful.

Shri Chandrashekharan is performing for last 60 odd years, since he was 11, and has accompanied numerous stalwarts in carnatic music. he is also a vocalist, and he presented some vocal pieces during this violin concert. a recipient of awards like Sangeet Natak Academi Award, he is someone without the mortal eyes we have, but with a divine insight into the musical world.
his daughter, Smt Bharati, is a great vocalist, dancer and instrumentalist - someone who performs all the three equally proficiently. she has performed around the world as a carnatic vocalist, as a Bharatnatyam exponent and as a soloist on violin.
they were accompanied by Shri Guruvayur Dorai, the mridangam maestro, who is performing for last 63 years (!!!) and is among the most sought after mridangam players by leading carnatic musicians.
Shri Mahesh Subramanian was on Kanjira, adding to the fun.

all these artists made our evening truly wonderful.

if all of this was not enough, i got to attend one more violin concert the same weekend. that one was by Aishwarya Venkataraman - a 14 year old who held us all motionless for 3 full hours with her mesmerizing performance. she is a child prodigy, and began her training at violin even before she was 3. then she started learning under the tutelage of T N Krishnan - a living icon in Classical South Indian Violin, considered one of the finest south Indian violinists of all times, and widely regarded as Yehudi Menuhin of the East. this is what you call "blessed" !
while continuing to play South Indian Classical Music, Aishwarya has started training at the famed Berklee College of Music - at 13 years of age, she is the youngest person accepted into this four year college.
listening to her was a matter of sheer joy. enjoyed every bit of it :)

in these two concerts, i got to listen to small pieces of performance by the accompanying artists - when they displayed their mastery over their instruments, and also performed jugalbandi with other artists. at that time, the main artists (violinists in this case) did not participate. the accompanying artists were given separate time to present a piece. this, i got to know, is called "taanee aavartana" meaning a separate, stand-alone musical piece. i had not seen such a thing previously, in any Hindustani Classical Music concert.

the concert by Hariharan was held in the Mesa Arts Center. i did not like that one too much. he presented a few Ghazals, some of his popular Hindi film songs, and also his Urdu Blues pieces. i did not get a good impression of those Blues pieces, they did not seem coherent. i do not know much about the musical forms, but those songs did not catch my attention. overall, it was an okayish concert.

the one by Pt Sanjeev Abhyankar was truly magical, enjoyed it so much ! i have written about it in my marathi blog. i am at loss of words to even begin to tell how blissful it was :)

Flashback : the semester : Spring 2007

2007-06-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

i came back from my LA trip around 7th January. following 3-4 days were far from normal. i got really homesick :(

then the new semester started. i enjoyed all the three courses, also sat through another interesting one on electrochemical sensors. this semester too, i worked as a Teaching Assistant as i could not find a Research Assistantship. there was not much of a workload this time. i was a co-TA for a junior year lab. the students there were a bunch of fun guys, had a nice time. on the last day of the lab, i took them out for lunch too.

this semester went really fast. didn't even realize when it was Summer. exams got over by the second week of May, and by the fouth week i started working on a project with ANBC - Applied NanoBioscience Center, which is a part of the BioDesign Institute at ASU.

one thing i really enjoyed doing this spring was driving :) i rented cars a few times, roamed around the city. in January, in fact on the day of Samkranti, we went to a Ganesh Temple in Maricopa, about 45 miles down south from Tempe. i got my driving license in March, and then made a road trip to LA. this was a one week visit. we first went to San Diego, picked up a friend, and then drove to LA. it was fun driving on the freeways, around 100 miles an hour at times ! i still remember the strenuous 2 hour drive from SD to LA.
i had my b'day celebrated with friends, in LA. we went to a nice pizza place, and they got me a real nice cake. that was fun, and i felt home :)

in the first week of April, we moved into a new apartment. this one is on University Drive - which passes through ASU campus. i like this place a lot. it's really close to the campus, on the main road, right in front of Hollywood DVD rental shop ;)
this apartment complex has a cute li'l lawn maintained. in that lawn, there is a nice gazebo too, with a few chairs. we friends sit there, have a chat, or just feel the breeze and relax. this place has lots of trees, and it is really peaceful here. we have huge windows facing east and west, and i enjoy the morning and evening sunlight :) we also have a patio, which i plan to use for reading books sitting in a bean bag. that plan is yet to materialize.

now it has been more than 10 months here in the USofA, and i feel settled down :)

Flashback : Dec 2006 - California !

2007-06-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

well, actually the whole blog IS a flashback, right? dunno why i am calling all those out-of-chronological-order posts as flashback posts.

whatever.

December was a crazy month for me. had a real great time with friends.

i first went to Milpitas in San Jose, to meet one of my second cousins. this was my first trip to California. spent a day there with her family. she has two cute kids. enjoyed chatting with all of them. we also went on a short trip to San Fransisco. saw the famous Golden Gate Bridge, enjoyed an awesome sunset there :) Before that we visited the Fisherman's Wharf. that part of the city looked very lively. i bought chocolates at a Ghirardelli shop there. Boudin Bakery stands proudly among the newer buildings. we also drove on World's Most Crookedest Street! that was sure fun. the sight of the Bay Bridge and city roads from that place was amazing.
on our way back we had a nice dinner at an Indian buffet place.

after spending a day in Milpitas, i took a flight to LA. this plane was a 48 seater, the smallest one i have travelled in. the flight lasted about 75 minutes, but it seemed so long! i cudn't wait to meet all of my friends in LA !
my UCLA friend had come to pick me up. another friend from CSU had also come the same day. we all met at the airport, and took a cab to USC campus.
the next 4 days we spent inside the house - always chit chatting, cooking, sleeping off, singing songs, sharing happy/sad/funny moments and experiences. it was a real nice time :) we didnt go out at all. and moreover, we were not bored with us just four lazy bums spending days together in a room. that was amazing :D

i spent 15 days in LA. this was sure one of my most memorable trips. we saw the USC campus. frequently had coffee in the Starbucks right outside.
we went to san diego for a day too. enjoyed the Water World there. and after a fabulous dinner, went off to watch Pursuit of Happyness. man, i loved that movie !
in LA, we roamed around and went to Santa Monica beach, Venice beach, the Universal Studios, and the much-talked-about Sunset Drive. enjoyed all those little excursions, clicked numerous pics, talked and talked until our mouths stopped - only for food.
on the new year's eve, we had a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant. one fine evening we went to a really good mexican restaurant, had great food, and then went up to Grove Theaters and watched an okayish movie named The Holiday.
On our last day there, we made a small trip to Venice beach, went into the waters, got wet .. that was hell of a time spent there. watched a very beautiful sunset :D won't forget the couple i saw there.

[photos uploaded here and here]

Flashback : Oct-Nov 2006

2007-06-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

while talking to a friend a couple of days back, i realized i haven't written anything about so many things that happened in last 8-9 months. there were some really nice moments i will always cherish. lemme backtrack a little and go back to October 2006.

* The Halloween Night
the first and the only time i had heard of Halloween back in India was while watching sitcoms like FRIENDS and How I Met Your Mother. when i went to Michigan, my aunt told me more about the festival on the last day of October, when people dressed in wierd costumes to scare the evil spirits away. children go out asking for candy - door to door. that's called "trick-or-treating".
we friends didnot dress up in wierd clothes. we just put on our wierd enough tees and jeans, and roamed around on Mill Avenue. this was probably the first night i experienced pub hopping with my merrymaker friends. since i didn't drink, i spent the whole time oogling at beautiful-sexy girls in those pubs. and when i was utterly bored i would look around at the Halloween costumes people were showing off. somebody was Jesus, somebody a Turtle, someone a Native American Woman, and someone a robot. it was a crazy night. people were coming in and out of pubs in truckloads. this was probably the most crowded night i have experienced here till now.
[Link to the photos here.]

* Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon Trip :
this one was one more good trip i did with Friends of Internationals (FoI) group. Sedona is a small town, surrounded by thick forest and red rocked-mountains, about 125 miles north of Phoenix. the small town is really nice, attracts loads of tourists, and is expensive too, as one would expect. we went hiking in the Oak Creek Canyon. the trail keeps going up the mountains, and if you really keep going - may be for a day or more - takes you to Flagstaff. it's a very beautiful place to make a hike. when we went, we could see the Fall Colors. not unlike the FoI group, i made some more new friends - this time from the Czech Republic. also had a nice time again with the European friends - the couple from Austria, and Zaine, Svetlana, Simone, and others. this was about 3 hour long hike, thoroughly enjoyed it :)
[Photos here and here]

* The Thanksgiving Dinner with the Jones Family
sometime in September, we (a friend Sachin Sundar and I) got to know the Jones family in Tempe. they were our 'international friends'. they are a great family to be with. Laura, the mother, is a full time student too. she is very talkative and a kind lady. her husband Dwyane runs his own business. they have three sons - Richard, Matthew and Jonathan, fondly known as Ric, Mat and Jon. in the month of september, we went with them to enjoy pizza and wings (there is this dish called "buffalo wings" here, spicy by American standards. it's a chicken dish actually, and i am yet to figure out why they call it 'buffalo wings'). Richard's girlfriend Janine also joined us all. we ate a LOT that evening. after the dinner, we went go-carting, at the Phoenix Race Factory - an indoor go-carting place. that was real fun. after that we all played pool, and we weren't bad at that. pool is like a 3-D carrom, i thought. since there is a ball instead of a flat disc, the third - z - dimension comes into picture too. that was one hell of a night we enjoyed with the Jones. could not thank them enough for that.

Thanksgiving was one more thing i had come to know through the sitcoms. dinner with the huge turkey seemed a great thing.
the Jones had invited us over to their place. well, these guys have a late "lunch", really, that day, and call it the Thanksgiving Dinner. this time the grandparents also joined us. since the Jones were having their house remodelled, we did not have the dinner at home, instead we went to a special Thanksgiving Buffet. man ! there was SO MUCH FOOD !! i went crazy. and devoured almost every dish they had. there was turkey, duck, salmon, soups, drinks, salads, and desserts :D we stuffed ourselves, and came back home, played Scrabble, where i got to kick some ass, and then returned. that was a great day-out !

"I Can".

2007-02-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

Got to read a few poems by Edgar Guest. Found them simple, and inspiring.

Like :
(from "It Couldn't Be done")
Somebody said that it couldn't be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it";
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

Or,

(from "Equipment")
Figure it out for yourself, my lad,
You've all that the greatest of men have had,
Two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes,
And a brain to use if you would be wise.
With this equipment they all began,
So start for the top and say "I can."

Look them over, the wise and great,
They take their food from a common plate
And similar knives and forks they use,
With similar laces they tie their shoes,
The world considers them brave and smart.
But you've all they had when they made their start.

Read more poems by him here.

Random Links

2007-02-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Lately I have not been posting here on Footprints, rather contributing to Power of THREE.

Thanks to some friends, and some googling, got some nice links, videos etc in last few days. Will post here, partly for archiving purposes.

*A nice article about TATAs: "TATAs : a new kind of company"

*The Prophet of Garbage
Joseph Longo's Plasma Converter turns our most vile and toxic trash into clean energy—and promises to make a relic of the landfill.

*A lecture by Paul Hoffmann, on the mathematician Paul Erdos:

*A very nice article about Wolfgang Pauli : it's long, and worth reading.

* Cool clouds turn light to matter!

* Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates

*Pirates of the Silicon Valley

*Valentine Day Pains

*Warren Buffet's interview on CNBC.
I was amazed by how different he is. With a personal worth of over $42 B, he is a very simple, straightforward, happy 'young' man at 76. not to forget the ethics. He has donated a whopping $31 B to Bill-Melinda Gates Foundation.

*The iPhone introduction presentation by Steve Jobs.
you can find it here : (the second link, "iPhone Introduction").
It is a thrilling product. Steve Jobs has skillfully brought together great names like Yahoo, Google, Cingular, AT&T .. the CEO of Apple Inc (now it's not "Apple Computer Inc" anymore), in casual sweatshirt-jeans-sports shoes, gives a brilliant presentation too !

*The Extra Degree of Effort: The 212 Movie

*Take Colgate-Palmolive. The company needed a more efficient method for getting its toothpaste into the tube -- a seemingly straightforward problem. When its internal R&D team came up empty-handed, the company posted the specs on InnoCentive, one of many new marketplaces that link problems with problem-solvers.
A Canadian engineer named Ed Melcarek proposed putting a positive charge on fluoride powder, then grounding the tube. It was an effective application of elementary physics, but not one that Colgate-Palmolive's team of chemists had ever contemplated. Melcarek was duly rewarded with $25,000 for a few hours work.
Read more here.

*Timings of a few Hindustani Classical Raagaas
And some good info on Thaats.

Happy New Year !!

2006-12-30T14:25:00.000-07:00

Newton and The White Bird of Absolute Truth

2006-10-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

Was discussing about great scientists with my roomie the other day. Newton's name was bound to come in. he was one of the foremost intellectuals of all times. he left his footprints in just soo many various fields ranging from mathematics, physics, fluid dynamics, and many more.

Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke written in 1675, said: "If I have seen further [than certain other men] it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." His reference was to his dependency on Galileo’s and Kepler’s work in physics and astronomy. it is great to see how a great scientist appreciates this cummulative building of human knowledge.

While at IIT Bombay, i got to listen to a talk by Chemistry Nobel Laureate Allen MacDiarmid. (incidentally, he was the first Nobel Laureate visiting the institute). at 79, he is a young enthusiastic personality. his research included discovery of conducting polymers. in his Nobel Lecture, he told a story - in fact a variation of few sentences from the book "The Story of an African Farm" by Olive Schreiner. It went something like this:

(From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 2000, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 2001)

The story concerns a young hunter who, in his youth, heard about the great white bird of "absolute truth" which lived at the very top of a high mountain far in the east. He had spent all his life seeking it without success - and now he was growing old.

The old thin hands cut the stone ill and jaggedly, for the fingers were stiff and bent. The beauty and strength of the man were gone.

At last, an old, wizened, shrunken face looked out above the rocks. He saw the eternal mountains still rising to the white clouds high above him.

The old hunter folded his tired hands and lay down by the precipice where he had worked away his life.

I have sought," he said, "for long years I have labored; but I have not found her. By the rough and twisted path hewn by countless others before me, I have slowly and laboriously climbed. I have not rested. I have not repined. And I have not seen her; now my strength is gone. Where I lie down, worn out, other men will stand, young and fresh. By the steps that I, and those before me, have cut, they will climb; by the stairs that we have built, they will mount. They will never know those who made them, their names are forgotten in the mists of time. At the clumsy work they will laugh; when the stones roll, they will curse us; but they will mount, and on our work they will climb, and by our stair! They will find her, and through us!"

The tears rolled from beneath the shriveled eyelids. If truth had appeared above him in the clouds now, he could not have seen her, the mist of death was in his eyes.

... Then slowly from the white sky above, through the still air, came something falling ... falling ... falling. Softly it fluttered down and dropped on to the breast of the dying man. He felt it with his hands -
- it was -
- a feather.

Making your own way ..

2006-10-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

I just love reading the quotes by Henry David Thoreau. Here is one more by him:

Che Guevara and The Motorcycle Diaries

2006-10-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

I remember hearing about Che Guevara while in school. he did not figure in the history books i read, but there sure were some passing remarks by my teachers and seniors. i never went ahead and found out more and almost forgot about him - till, one fine day, one of my senior roomies showed me the film - The Motorcycle Diaries.

it's an amazing and very very moving film, to say the least. i loved the shooting through picturesque latin America, and a desire of going to these places sprang up. the movie, as it turns out, is much much more than a 8000 mile journey two friends make, a large chunk made using a beat-up motorcycle, which they fondly called "The Mighty One". the journey becomes a life-changing one, one of self-discovery for the two friends. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, (better known as "che Guevara" - this "che" is not a nickname or something. it's Argentinian's way of saying what US guys say as "dude", i gather.) and his friend Alberto Granado take on a journey to discover Latin America that they had never seen, they travel and empathise with people they have never met, they work amongst volunteers in the Leper Colony in Peru. before they know, their lives are changed - forver.
in the movie we get to see a large spectrum of emotions and the types of situations. there is love, physical challenges, agony, pain, poverty, oppression, fun .. amazing combinations ! i felt like going on a roller-coaster ride. surely one of those movies i will never forget :)

What I was reading recently..

2006-10-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

Recently i read two interesting books:
"A PhD is not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science" (~100 pages) by Peter Feibelman. the author, who is himself a successful scientist offers great pieces of advice on scientific careers. he talks about choosing a doctoral advisor, carrying out research, establishing contacts with other researchers, issues concerning work as a post-doc, professorship and getting tenured, working in an industrial or government run research lab etc etc. apart from all the career paths and their intricacies, he also gives suggestions on giving good presentations, writing scientific papers and even writing research grant proposals as a professor or a scientist. this small book is a good read, and surely gives graduate students a hint of things lined up for them. rather than just reading, this book should be 'used'.

The second one was "Idea Factory: Learning to Think at MIT" (~300 pages) by Pepper White. It is about his experiences at MIT during his two years of graduate studies to become a mechanical engineer. more than that, it is an account of how he was - slowly but in a definite way - taught to 'think', at the world's most celebrated technological universities. he writes, in much detail, about his professors, the courses he takes, the peers, the research project he works on, the student life in the institute and also some dark sides of the story - a very very busy, tensed academic campus life full of cut-throat competition which literally kills students.
being a graduate student myself, i could relate to various things discussed in the book. i sure found it a good one. in some cases, it may also prove to be a motivational read for the budding engineers. "what you study here is not what matters. what MIT will do is teach you how to think" - the institute lives upto the promise of a professor Pepper met in his initial days.

Movies ..

2006-10-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

i have recently gotten into watching lot of hollywood movies. i also joined a nearby hollywood library. and have found Harkins Theatres just across the campus.

mentionable ones include the doors, v for vendetta, invincible, and the illusionist. all with different concepts, actors, settings, times - as if a part of spectrum.
last weekend i watched some seven movies. some good old favorites and some new ones. i went down the memory lane while watching life is beautiful, love actually, notting hill, what women want and 'there is something about mary'. felt as if i was on a movie marathon. just so that these werent enough, i watched a French movie named "love me if you dare" and the newly released "Departed". loved both of them. the French movie was a delight, with a very different concept woven into a love story. Departed - a cop story was a treat too.

books as well as movies, take you into a whole different world. they allow you to experience - though vicariously - what others have experienced.
my breadth and depth in literature and filmography is equally short. i would love to go through more of both. what i really love is first hand experience. it cannot be compared with anything. it is indeed a great teacher. books may be great teachers too, if they fulfil a criterion Henry David Thoreau set up: the writer should have lived upto what he has written. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

The Lake Hike

2006-10-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

more than a month ago, i enjoyed [understatement] going to a lake hike. woods canyon lake is a beautiful place, at a couple of hours drive from Phoenix. we were to go around the lake, through the jungle, enjoying the views. someone told - u will take more than two hours, which seemed an overestimate looking at the size of the lake in front of us. but when we started, we realised - the lake IS indeed anything but small; having "branches" like fingers of a palm stretched out. it was fun to go around that scenic water body. we were with the Friends of Internationals group, and our company was literally beautiful. so many graduate, undergraduate students - from Afganistan - China - Kazakstan - India - European countries, and even Canada. loved that circle. we became instant friends. traversing the lakeside in small groups, we chatted along, laughed, took photographs like crazy. it was a pure joy. kodak moments :)

after the hike, we all went to a restaurant on Mill Ave, P F Cheng's china bistro. i ate the whole "Great Wall of Chocolate". remembered the chocolate avalanche we used to have back in Mocha :D

that was indeed a great day out. i have the pics uploaded here.

JUST DO IT .... !

2006-09-30T23:00:00.001-07:00

  

(By an unknown author) - 

 Too often we are scared.
 Scared of what we might not be able to do.

 Scared of what people might think if we tried.
 We let fears stand in the way of our hopes.

 We say no when we want to say yes.
 We sit quietly when we want to scream.

 And we shout with the others,
 when we should keep our mouths shut.

 Why? After all, we do only go around once.
 There is really no time to be afraid.

       JUST DO IT ...  :)

Evening @ A Mountain

2006-09-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

it's not a mountain.. it is "A Mountain" (Aye-mountain). it's a hill, just outside ASU campus, with a huge yellow "A" painted on it. we roomies (karthik, supreet, anil and yours truly) went there yesterday evening. it was a nice walk. here are some pictures :

ASU campus:

Lights reflected in Tempe Town Lake:
(Not a perfect photo - my hand was a li'l shaky)

ASU Campus again !
(This is what you get when you move your cam. i liked the patterns)

An amazing quote ..

2006-09-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

had read this like a year back, and this quote still haunts me:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

A colourful evening

2006-09-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

i was all alone, standing on the terrace of my apartment, looking at the setting sun. i turned to my back and looked below, to get this view:

then i looked ahead, at the setting sun. in some time, it hid behind the trees and the buildings around ..

i came back, and slept on the sofa. interestingly, thanks to the twilight, our white blinders of the window took different colours ! couldnt help but capture those hues ! :)

Thinking different, acting smart ..

2006-09-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

i got to know of these interesting things, mainly from a professor in our department. felt like posting abt them here. well, some of you would know this stuff .. but what the heck!

* Mirror up !
once upon a time in a hotel, the manager got many complaints about the elevator being too slow. the customers had to wait a lot, which made them lodge multiple complaints. the manager ordered the engineering crew there - make the elevators go fast!
they had these options:
# increase power of the motor
# reduce the maximum load allowed
# use stronger cables
# use a lighter elevator
# build another elevator - may be from outside of the building!

all of the solutions were quite expensive, and would take many days to implement.
the manager, however, thought differently - instead of choosing from any of the above, he decided to fix mirrors on the inside of the elevators, and also on the front side of the doors on each floor. people got engaged looking at themselves, they no more got bored of the waiting, and the complaints reduced!

* Hyatt Regency Hotel Accident in Kansas City, 1981.
In this hotel, originally, two skywalks were designed to hang, one above the other, from the ceiling by six suspension rods. Because of difficulty in fabricating, the plans were changed to allow the second-floor skywalk to hang from the fourth floor walkway instead of the ceiling. This grossly increased the stress on the welded steel box beams that made up the higher walkway, leading to the collapse. Read the news here. It is easy to see the importance of careful design.. attention Civil engineers and Architects!

* San Fransisco Golden Gate Bridge - an accident which didn't happen!

Golden Gate Bridge is a very famous structure in San Fransisco, and the people are very proud of this creation! As a part of celebrations on the 50th anniversary of this bridge, the roadway was closed to vehicles for "Bridgewalk 87". on that day, some 300,000 people walked on the roadway. this was the single largest load ever carried by the bridge. the roadway flattened out under the weight. engineers were busy making calculations to see if the bridge would handle the load, while the authorities - very carefully - guided everyone to get off the bridge. people cooperated, and no one suffered any harm. it was a windy day, and the bridge bent under the load, some cables did let go, but the bridge did not break. it turned out that the bridge was designed to be very flexible. it could swing amazing 27 feet and flex 10 feet under a huge load. this is surely an example of a good engineering design, not to forget the discipline displayed by the people of San Fransisco.
Hats off to them!

'Various'

2006-09-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday afternoon: lunch with my friends from Kazakstan, with we discussing Hindu way of life.
Thursday evening: latin salsa dance class.
Friday morning: preparation for the Concrete project for MSE 100 (first year materials science) students. i made some 4 concrete bars. felt like a labourer working in the sun. it was fun.
Friday noon: still drenched in sweat, discussing entropy with my thermodynamics professor.
Friday afternoon: as a teaching assistant, planning a hands-on session for the freshers.
Friday evening: sleeping, exhausted.
Saturday morning: volunteering at the Hacienda Healthcare Center, Phoenix.
Saturday afternoon: correcting some assignments. TA work ! and then sleeping :D
Saturday evening: watching the movie - Invincible. roaming on Mill Avenue and then bike-racing with my friend on our way back home.
Sunday morning: day-dreaming :)
Sunday afternoon: TA work - with the concrete bars !
Sunday evening: salsa at Club Red :D enjoyed the cha-cha show too ..

it was so much of a variety in these 3-4 days. felt great :D

Golden Moments ..

2006-09-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

This is a golden post in more than one sense.

* this is the 50th post in this blog :D

* i am writing here to share my joy with all my friends - i got my first paycheque this wednesday. And my scholarship-cum-extra grant followed the next day ! (well i won't disclose the amounts here. what does it have to do with this joy ? :P) .. i felt sooo nice :)

this is to my first paycheque ! cheers !

Yes .. ! Johnny Lever ! :D

2006-09-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

yes, i did meet him. here in ASU. on friday, i was going to my Advanced Thermodynamics lecture, and there came Johnny bhaai, on foot, accompanied by a few others. i was .. speechless ! i cud barely say hi, hello, nice to meet you and stuff .. we exchanged pleasantries, and he was gone! a moment later i realised i had a paper and pen, and this was the moment to use it outside the classroom. i ran upto him, and took his autograph. this is it :

A Parent's Tears ...

2006-09-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

I am working as a teaching assistant for Prof. James Adams. he has this beautiful poem pasted on his door -

A Parent's Tears ..

A life more than lonely,

A soul more than empty

A heart that is only

The place where you hold

The love and the moments

Your mind has forgotten

From days not remembered

And stories untold

Love me a little,

Thats all i ask.

Can letting your heart feel

Be so great a task ?
Someone else hurt you

And time after time,

Though i am not the thief

I now pay for the crime.

For each day we live

There are questions

unanswered

And answers unquestioned

Far worse, I suppose.

Oh, what shall become of

The words never spoken,

The tears never shed,

And thoughts no one else knows ?

If I could remember

The secrets once whispered

And promises made

Long before I was born,

Then I would know the reason

For what life has shown me,

For all that I praise

And for all that I mourn.

Look in my eyes and fall into my soul.

Come, take my hand.

Let two souls become whole,

Show me the reasons

And teach me the rhyme,

Weaving the threads of our life into time.

-- Dr Cindy Schneider

mother of children with autism.

The Grand Canyon Trip ..

2006-09-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

On saturday 26th, Ben Joseph's "Friends of International Students" took us to the Grand Canyon. this is one of the best trips i have recently had. (i am saying "trip", coz i want to exclude the treks. they r amazing :D)

Grand Canyon is an amazing place. it's huge, it's awesome, it's magnificent, it looks mysterious. the canyon, the Colorado river, the red hued cliffs, various shapes you can imagine formed out of the rocks, the barren mountains, the clear blue skies, the trees, the birds .. it's all unique. simply amazing. i tried to capture some of these with my camera. here is my collection.

we were 50 odd students from different countries - India, China, Germany, France, Spain, Kazakstan and few from US. it was so nice to talk to them, to know about their backgrounds, their cultures, their food, languages. i tried learning conversational Kazak and Russian. they were amazing people. thoroughly enjoyed this varied company. there was a huge group of students from Mumbai too. i didn't stick with Indians all the time, rather went out and talked to as many new people from different countries as i could. while coming back, i travelled in the van with the Mumbai gang. we enjoyed singing good old hindi songs. when we were returning from the canyon, the Ganesh Festival had started in India. thousands of miles away from home, sitting in that van, and travelling along US interstate freeways, only thing we did was to wish each other happy ganesh chaturthi :)

salsa salsa ... !

2006-09-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

DAN - 194 - Latin Salsa I.
yeah, that's another course i am taking this semester at ASU. (for those who are unaware, ASU is voted as US's best party school and one with the "hottest" campus - it's not just the temperature here, it's the babes ! ;) )

i have this class each thursday, from 7:30 to 10 pm. there are some 100 people in there, more than half are girls. they rotate, and we guys always get a (fresh ;) :P) partner to dance with. it's fun. i met some amazing, cute, beautiful girls there. loved it :D

the instructor - Brenda Smith is a charming lady, who teaches in an interesting way, her talk peppered with good humor. in this course, we are also 'required' to go to a nearby salsa club and practise dancing at least 8 times this semester.

Of welcome parties ..

2006-09-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

there were many welcome parties, get togethers arranged in the first few days here. enjoyed that thoroughly :)

very first was the graduate school welcome on 16th. there was good food and drinks, a live band performing, many organizations in the campus introducing themselves, and a lucky draw, in which i happened to win 4 movie tickets to Harkins Theatres :D

on 19th, i went to meet one of our family friends - our grandparents were neighbours in Pune. it felt so nice to meet after 10-12 years, and that too on the other side of the globe. her husband works at Intel. we had good chat, good food, watched the movie Guns of Navarone. when we went out for a drive, i had a look at the Intel building, from outside. Intel has two manufacturing plants near Phoenix. the two plants put together do everything from Si wafers mass production to chip making and the packaging.

in one of the malls, i went to a shop called Brookstone. they had an amazing range of innovative products. it was interesting just to have a look at the variety and the ideas. there was a massage chair, in which you sit and select the massage mode, and enjoy :D there were self standing covered hammocks, clocks connected to satelites, digital photo albums which can be put on your table, combo lamps, coin sorters, and many more. there was a huge TV remote and the line read : Easy to use, hard to lose !

on the evening of 25th Aug, we had an amazing welcome party, arranged by Friends of International Students, at the house of the founder director Ben Joseph. Ben came to Phoenix back in 1970, as a student. he knew very little English at that time, and there were not too many people around to help him. his experience stimulated him to start this organization in 1983. at this party i met many international students - from China, Singapore, Austria, and Kazakstan. there were some Indian students too, few here for their undergraduate studies. Ben's family members were all there. it was a party with nice people, friendly atmosphere, not to forget good food. we all will remember it forever :) Thanks, Ben!

there is another nation wide organization - International Students Club. their Phoenix branch had arranged a huge party for us on Sunday 27th Aug. we went to this large house, with a larger lawn. there were around 250 people in this party, including new international students, organizers and volunteers. we had amazing time here. met so many new people, had good food (again! :D). played some fun games too. and to top it all we were entertained by famous fiddle player Peter Rolland, with some traditional western American fiddle music. we got to listen to Bonaparte Retreat (British Highlanders are said to have played this tune, when they defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo). he also played the tune of Battle of New Orleans. a cowboy himself, he greeted us with "Howdy!" and made us jig to his amazingly beautiful tunes. he was a jolly old man, earlier a professor at ASU, and was accompanied by his daughter for some time. what i liked the most was the "Home on the range" song ..

Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day ...

the moon was up in the sky, the weather was lovely with a cool breeze flowing .. what an evening !

International Students Office at ASU also threw a party for us on 1st Sept. there were fun games, drinks and pizza. they also put some popular numbers and students danced to the tune. after that, i went out with my Kazak friends. we roamed around a lot, chatted, had good food (:D) and came back late in the night.

Of orientations ..

2006-09-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

as new graduate students, and teaching assistants, we attended some orientations here at ASU. they were all very well organized. and proved to be helpful.

on 14th and 15th Aug, we had the orientation for teaching assistants (TAs). they covered many topics of common interest, including work load, handling extreme cases, sexual harrassment issues. they emphasised the importance of a job of a TA. there was a session to demonstrate to us ways and styles of conducting a class/tutorial. there were small games we could conduct in the initial phases, in order to make the students feel at ease. i feel it would be great if IITs also spend some time and effort on TA orientations like these.

earlier, there were these two materials departments here at ASU : CME (chemical and materials engg) and SEM (science and engg of materials) .. now the chem engg dept is a separate one, and the two materials related parts are combined to form our department - now the "School of Materials"(SoM). strength-wise, this is the third largest Materials Science Graduate Program in US. the new department also conducted graduate student orientation on 17th. the department chair - Prof. Mahajan addressed us in the beginning. we were told about the PhD and Masters programs, the program requirements, the courses and our duties as TAs / RAs. we also visited some labs and had a look at some facilities. ASU sure has one of the best electron microscopy facilities in US. research in semiconductor materials, will also be counted among top 10 places.

the International Students Office had arranged a mini-orientation. they informed us about some immigration formalities, and applying for Social Security Number. as we were already employed as TAs in SoM, we quickly got all the formalities completed and went to the SSN office in Mesa - another suburb of Phoenix. our SSN should be with us by the end of this week, hopefully.

one thing was very noticable in all these orientations. they were well planned, and they made sure we were informed about even the minute details well in advance, which really made things easy. they would always hand us many info sheets, pamphlets; and seldom did we have to ask questions. everything seemed very clear. appreciated :)

The Handlebar Helpers ..

2006-09-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

the third day was nice. we got a bus pass for ourselves. for ASU students, bus service, called the Valley Metro in Phoenix and its suburbs, is free. with that bus pass, we went to another of Phoenix's suburb called Scottsdale.

this was a truly amazing experience. there is an organization called Handlebar Helpers. they teach assembling bicycles, mainly to school children. there are after school training sessions, and when a school kid works in their shop for 30 hours, he or she gets a cycle as a gift. they also sell the assembled bicycles at very low rates. i got one for myself at $30. it's a red mountain bike, and the right brake is for the rear wheel, unlike the bikes in India. it has everything new, except the frame. (in Tempe, one sees a lot of auto and bicycle thefts, so anyway i didn't want a new flashy looking bicycle.) we then put the cycles on the front rack of the bus and brought them to the campus. (that's a nice thing - each of the buses here has a rack or a stand for 2 or 3 bicyles in the front).

in that shop, i met an old man - David Olsen. he was 84, and working in that cycle shop. we got into talking and he told us that he was a pilot in world war 2. he had been to karachi, when they used to fly with supplies. this fellow was very friendly, and it was nice meeting him there :D
(a few days later, Handlebar Helpers had set up their desk at Memorial Union - a central place at ASU. i went there and met David again! he did remember me pretty well, and jokingly remarked about me looking like i had grown taller :P)

First couple of days ..

2006-09-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

on wednesday - 9th aug - we started early, went around looking for some apartments. but could not find any. we attended International Students Orientation. also went to the library and had a general look. we met our graduate coordinator, registered for the courses. i have taken 3 courses in this semester - 2 core (advanced thermodynamics, structure and mechanical properties of materials) and 1 elective (design of engineering experiments - an industrial engineering elective). apart from that i will have my Teaching Assistantship duties - officially 20 hrs a week (and pretty less, unofficially ;) )

ASU campus is not very huge. its little bigger than iit bombay campus. it has a lake nearby, and a hill (called the A mountain - it has a huge yellow "A" painted on it).. this ASU Main campus caters to 45,000 students from different backgrounds - science, engineering, languages, social studies, law etc. ( ASU has 3 more campuses in Phoenix: the Polytechnic Campus or East Campus in Mesa, the West Campus and the Downtown Phoenix Campus - which has opened this fall. all these put together make up for more than 60,000 students!)

everywhere in the campus one can see different cacti, desert plants, palms. builidngs are good. there are some well kept lawns too. also, there are more than 10 museums or art galleries displaying plant life, art forms etc. they also have a small planetarium. (well i am yet to see all of these, but i will sure visit these places soon) ..

Off to Phoenix ..

2006-09-03T18:41:00.000-07:00

After my fantastic trip in Michigan, i spent the next two days or so in Troy. had a nice time with my uncle-aunt and my cousin. we went around a bit, in the city of Troy. this was the first time i experienced the shopping in US - going through huge malls - with Wal-Marts, Meijers, Sears, McDs, Radio Shacks, Home Depots and Circuit Cities .. shops full with variety of products, and there always seemed to be some or the other sale going on. "back to school", "end of summer" and likewise, they had invented names for those sales. the scale seemed huge.

on the 8th of August, i flew to Phoenix from Detroit, by NorthWestern. it's a four hour journey. this was equally boring, just like my flight from India to Detroit. before noon, i set my foot on the Arizonian deserts. volunteers from Indian Students Association at ASU had come to pick me up. i was to study and stay near ASU Main Campus, in a suburb of Phoenix, called Tempe (pronounced Tempee). it's a short drive from the Phoenix Sky Harbour International Airport to Tempe. i have one of my iit bombay seniors here, and i went to his place. my friend from iit madras - karthik - was also temporarily accomodating himself there. we had little idea at that time that this is going to be our home ! (a couple of seniors from this apartment were leaving, so it turned out that we guys can move in there permanently. so the place where i spent my first night in Tempe was indeed my home. )

on the very first day we got ourselves the ASU id-cards (called "sun cards") and opened a bank account too. (i just put $ 25 while opening the account, at Arizona State Credit Union. the interest rates are 0.75% for the savings account and 0.25% for the checking account!)

while we were going around, it was very hot outside. and we were walking from place to place in that scorching sun, from 2:30 to 6 pm. it did drain us out. we were fast asleep after some dinner-like thing, our minds flooded with so many things. the next month was going to be very different, interesting, refreshing, and yes - very fast.

My Michigan Trip - III

2006-09-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

5th Aug: It was a fine saturday morning. we were staying in that beautiful cottage in the forests of Munising - where the Hiawatha National Forest is situated (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had written an epic verse named "The Song of Haiwatha". it describes a legend of Hiawatha and his mate, Minnehaha. those interested in folklore, should read Hiawatha's strory! i haven't read it, but i've heard it's interesting. but apparently, there is little connection between Longfellow's hero and the historical native american personality Hiawatha).

we had our breakfast, and soon we were on our way to the Pictured Rocks Boat Cruise.

it's a breathtaking 3 hour long cruise along the shores of Lake Superior. the crystal clear blue green waters of the Lake have created masterpieces of colors and rock formations, found nowhere else in the world. this boat cruise, which is over 50 years old now, is an unforgettable experience of seeing these incredible formations up close.

the 37 mile cruise passes points such as Lovers Leap, Grand Portal, Miners Castle (in this
second pic), Indian Head - many of them are described in legend and lore by the captain of the cruise. the boat cruises closely and slowly enough so that one can take photographs.

after the cruise, we had our lunch, and went back to our cottage. in the evening, we grilled chicken, corn, hot dogs. it was simply great! :D loved that. chatting, singing songs we spent the time. liked that laid-back evening.

the next day we woke up, and after heavy breakfast headed to Tahquamenon Falls National Park. most of this area is undeveloped woodland without roads, buildings or power lines. central attraction of this park is the beautiful waterfall on the Tahquamenon River. there are two parts to this - the Upper Falls (which is a large waterfall, with a drop of 50 feet and width of 200 feet), and the Lower Falls (which is a few miles downstream. it's actually a series of five waterfalls, cascading around an island.)

we reached Troy later in the evening. it had really been an unforgettable, simply amazing trip. thanks to everyone who made it possible ! :D

My Michigan Trip - II

2006-09-03T02:22:00.000-07:00

So there we were, back on to the roads - headed towards Mackinaw City. This place is located right where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. this is where the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is connected to the Upper Peninsula - by the Macinac Bridge.

The light gleams on my strands and bars
In glory when the sun goes down.
I spread a net to hold the stars
And wear the sunset as my crown.

David Bernard Steinman - the chief engineer who worked for the Macinac Bridge - wrote these lines, in "the song of the bridge". (this is an interesting personality, by the way. he worked as a designer and engineer for numerous bridges built in USA, Thailand, England, Italy, Canada etc. he was a professor of civil and mechanical engg. he also opened his own design firm. and he was a poet too !! )
when Macinac Bridge was completed, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. now its the third longest.

we visited Old Macinac Point Lighthouse at Macinaw City. from the top of the lighthouse, one gets an amazing sight of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan and the Macinac Bridge.
there is the keeper's room still preserved. the kitchen there was so nice, it had a refrigerator too ! this house seemed very cute.

i went ahead and stepped into Lake Huron. the day before, we were in Lake Michigan, today i was visiting another Great Lake. i had seen Huron on my way to Detroit. and now i was standing on its shore.

after visiting the lighthouse, we travelled across Macinac Bridge, to enter into Michigan's Upper Peninsula. got a magnificent view while crossing the long suspension bridge. Saint Ignace is the point of entry into the Upper Peninsula. from there, we went straight to Saute St Marie (its a French name i suppose, pronounced "soo-say-mary"). this is where Lake Superior and Lake Huron make a connection. actually, there is a level difference between these lakes. earlier there was a waterfall at this place, Lake Superior being at a higher level. ore used to be transported using these lakes, but it had to be taken out on ground at Saute St Marie, because of the waterfalls. then they destroyed the waterfalls, and built gates there. they are called Soo Locks. for example, a vessel going from Lake Huron to Superior is taken into the locks, the gates are closed, water is filled, the level rises and then gates are opened to allow the ship into Lake Superior. there is a heavy water-traffic at this place. here is where one can also see gates on the Canadian side. (in this aerial view, on the left is the US side, on the right are the Canadian locks.)

we did some shopping and eating at Saute St Marie, and then started off to Munising - our home for the next two nights. it was heavenly :D

its a long drive, and we enjoyed every bit of it. before sunset, we were there in the cottage - in the thick forests of Munising. this area is kinda lonely. very very quiet. it was amazing in the woods. we quickly unloaded the car, and made ourselves comfortable in the 3 bedroom cottage. it was nicely furnished.

later that night, two friend-families - Arkatkars and Khakhars joined us. it was nice to know them. Sameer Khakhar is an actor .. he had in fact done a role of "khopdi" (the drunkard) in the old hindi television show "nukkad".

all of us kept chatting for long, while listening to some good old hindi songs. it was fun. at around 2 am, we went to sleep, excited about our coming day - we were going on a cruise ! :D

My Michigan Trip - I

2006-09-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

Four days, more than 1100 miles, awesome places, amazing people .. it was indeed a great trip ! (Have a look at the photographs here, as you are reading this blog entry.)

We started on 2nd Aug, at around 6 in the evening. i was with my uncle and aunt, and my cousin Sharang. it was a beautiful evening sky, and i enjoyed this road trip very much. long straight freeways, looking as if someone had taken a straight edge and drawn them on green patches of fields and forests. it rained too, for quite some time. i kept looking at droplets falling on the side windows, and then tracing a near-horizontal path.
we straight went to Traverse City. at about four and a half hour drive from Troy, located on the south-eastern shore of Lake Michigan, Traverse City is a beautiful place. we stayed in Best Western Four Seasons Motel. it was already night. we had dinner, and slept.

the next day, after a (good heavy :D) breakfast, we headed straight to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. we could get all the info at the Visitor Center. (there are these "visitor centers" at all the tourist places, which give you info, maps, passes and tickets if any.) it was a nice drive - through the forest. one can wait in between .. there are small rest areas and spots for taking photographs. the place is beautifully maintained. very clean, serene.
on the shores of Lake Michigan are these "sleeping bear dunes". the sand dunes, look like sleeping bears from far off, and hence the name.

the view of Lake Michigan was unforgettable. i am unable to describe it. i was awestruck at the sight. the blue - of the skies and of the lake - was amazing.

dont go by the picture - this is not the actual lakeshore. it was more than a 450 feet deep, steep climb down to the lake.

mesmerised at the beauty of the Lake,
we continued to the dunes. we did climb a small dune too - that was fun ! there were so many people, playing in the sand. parents and kids, friends, couples - the sight was amazing. it cheered us up, and in a good mood we proceeded to the lakeshore. pained by the heat, we straight plunged into the lake. the water was amazing. and it wasnt salty, obviously, enjoyed playing there. the lakeshore wasnt really busy, it was kinda lonely and very scenic, in many ways ;)

located in the Sleeping Dunes National Lakeshore, there is this Sleeping Bear Point Maritime Museum - a restored lifesaving station where visitors can see how the gallant men of the U.S. Life Saving Service risked their lives to rescue shipwreck victims on the stormy Leelanau coast. The museum includes displays about the history of the Life Saving Service and daily life at an isolated rescue station, and interpreters often demonstrate some of the equipment used in rescue operations. the volunteers working there were jolly old men, who took some kids with them and demonstrated whole of the resuce exercise. it was so much fun !

after enjoying the demos, we headed back to Traverse City. enjoyed eating at McDonald's. we had an amazing evening coming along - a two hour sail in Lake Michigan. we sailed in a schooner called Manitou. this was an amazingly beautiful evening. the lake, the sun, the cute couple on the schooner, the jolly crew of Manitou - i will never forget it. we helped the crew to put the sails up. what more, i got to steer the schooner for more than an hour ! (remembered proportional and on-off controllers as i did that :P) .. the captain was a fella named Captain Dave. i chatted with him and some other crew members. they served us dinner too.

this was truely a beautiful day - in all senses. enjoyed it thoroughly. in the evening, we went back to the motel, took a dip in the pool there, enjoyed the jacuzzi :D then we had dinner and we were soon fast asleep. the following day, we were to head for the Upper Peninsula ..

A month later ..

2006-08-29T17:45:00.000-07:00

For me, it's been a month here in the USoA. Quite an amazing time spent. To my delight, met so many new interesting people, made new friends, visited so many new places, took pictures -with my camera and my mind .. it was awesome ! :)

one thing - the distance doesnt seem so much ! i am talking to family, friends back in India quite a lot on the phone, chatting with them, emailing them about my experiences, sending them some photographs .. it just doesnt feel like i am on the other side of the globe ! sitting at the computing commons at ASU, i am listening to Jasraj, and i feel at home. :)

i went to Mumbai on 30th July evening. it rained heavily when we were on our way. enjoyed it thoroughly. the flight was at 3 am - Mumbai - Frankfurt - Detroit by Lufthansa. the journey was a loong one, and i did get a bit bored, coz there was no interesting company. i have discovered an extension to Murphy's Laws. the age of person sitting next to you is at least thrice the age of all the damsels in the flight. my plane journey was no exception.

the first part of the journey was from Mumbai to Frankfurt. took nearly 8 hours. as it was middle of the night, i was already sleepy. Lufthansa have a good sense of humor it seems. at about 4 am, they put on a hindi movie - Taxi Number 9211. had to watch it :P

i had a five hour long hault at Frankfurt airport. i was all alone, had nothing much to do, than to go check out the huge airport. it's fun going around. i checked my email too - but had to put Euros there ! (i was expecting a free internet access as there is on Changi Airport, Singapore). when i was bored more than being tired going around, i made myself comfortable at a lounge. there i met a guy from Azerbaijan. honestly, the only thing i knew about this country was its name. that guy was studying at the school of mines in Denver and was on his way there after a holiday. we two chatted for a long time. killed time talking about studies, food and languages. when it got dull, we took a stroll. it was good. funny thing was, this fellow had not only watched a couple of Hindi movies, but he clearly remembered names of Mithun Chakraborti, and Raj Kapoor. (he sang the tune of "aawaaraa hun" too!). the latter was not that unexpected, looking at his fame in USSR.

the next flight was a boring one too. took more than 8 hours of journey, and i wasnt asleep. i had a guy from Serbia as my fellow passenger. he was working with Ford, in Detroit. as many would be knowing, Detroit houses three american giants in automobile manufacturing - Ford, GM and Chrysler. he told me about Serbia. about the overall condition there. and also about the 1991 USSR breakdown.

i reached Detroit at 4 pm. took me an hour to get out, after clearing customs and immigration. my aunt had come to pick me up. we went home - to Troy - at about 40 min drive from the airport. this was the first time i saw the freeways. also had a look at Ford's corporate office building.

i didnt sleep until it was 10 in the night. woke up next morning at 9. no jet lag.

we were to start our michigan trip in two days .. and i was very much looking forward to it.

a gala time together ..

2006-03-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

It was the job treat - all my teammates in Techfest 2005 who got a job, treated TF '04, '05 and '06 teams in a fundoo resort on Madh Island. it was a nice time spent.

many of my friends enjoyed the booze. it's always fun to be with drunk friends. they talk out loud and true, they shout, they cry, they hug you and kiss you. [thankfully, on your cheeks else god save you :P]

we danced like hell thnx to the DJ there. dancing is the best part of such a party. some popular hindi or english numbers and you just kick it off. if it has some punjabi song, then nothing matches the mood :D

Someone said, 'to dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.' how true !

of sunset and the sea

2006-03-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

nowadays, we friends always go out somewhere on weekends. this time i suggested Hanging Gardens - i had been there as a kid, and i remember getting excited to see the awesome view of the Marine Drive from there.

after visiting the garden, (which by the way, is built over three reservoirs which store 30 million gallons (!!) of water pumped here for cleaning, before being supplied to Mumbai), we went straight to watch the sunset. this another lil green place, right on the shore is called Priyadarshini Garden. it indeed offers a great view of the sunset. fully enjoyed it :)

i have always loved watching sunrises, and sunsets. add sea or a lakeside to it, and i am in the clouds :D

[Photo courtesy: Ameya Bondre aka Bond]

:D

2006-03-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

yup, that's me. photo courtesy : Nikhil Rao. Thnx buddy ! :*

a beautiful morning.. :)

2006-03-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

yesterday we enjoyed looking at the blue sky - it was really nice. couldnt stop staring at it for minutes ! that blue was so very pure - my favourite blue .. :D i just wanted to fly up there.

and yes - it's raining today. it's a very very beautiful morning :)

this is what i am seeing standing
in my balcony ..

The clouds have come low ..

Sky looks so beautiful .. :) it's green outside .. the wet ground, the drenched trees ..

Mak has ditched going to LnT today and he is happily
asleep ;)

A musical evening

2006-03-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

:)
Coming back from a musical evening with none other than Padma Bhushan Prabodh Chandra Dey - better known as Manna Dey :D It was indeed a delightful time spent - filled with popular old numbers, written by masters - Sahir Ludhiyanwi, Shailendra; with a golden touch of composers like O P Naiyyar, Madan Mohan, Shankar-Jaykishan, R D Burman .. and to top it all, he also performed Dr. Harivanshray Bachchan's Madhushala !! Simply amazing ... laagaa chunaree mein daag, aye bhaai jara dekh ke chalo, sur naa saje ... it was a feast. He became sentimental and nostalgic while performing songs like Madhushala.
"jahaan man rahe, wahin hai kinara" he quoted, while performing door hai kinara from Saudagar (1973).

The 85 year old singer also presented one Bengali song - the nostalgic Coffee House, about the old Coffee House on Chittaranjan Avenue in Kolkata. Though I could not get the words, it sounded sweet. Manna Deyji also presented some very famous duets like pyaar hua ikaraar hua hai, ye raat bheegee bheegee; with Sushri Sheela Verma.

Witty compering by Premchand Khurana sahab was really amusing :D He was a jolly old man, very young at heart. Loved him. We had our tea-break with him saying :
raam raaj mein doodh mila tha, krishna raaj mein ghee,
is raaj mein chaay milee hai, phook-phoonk kar pi !

About being young at heart, he said :
sookhe hothonko paanee de, bahte dariya ko ravanee de,
jo waqt se pahle hue hain boodhe, allah unko firse jawaanee de !

Commenting on short hair of another lady comperer from our institute, he went :
budhaape mein har cheej ultee dikhtee hai,
laila 'dikhtaa' hai to majnoo 'dikhtee' hai,
tu bhee thodaa jaam pi le aye jaahid,
nashe mein kaneej raanee dikhtee hai .. ;) :D

It's not about the bike

2006-02-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading the amazing autobiography of Lance Armstrong. "It's not about the bike" is the story of his very very inspiring battle against all odds - displaying his courage and will. It is the story of a man who fought cancer, rose up from deathbed to become a world class cyclist again - proved it by winning le Tour de France - probably the most strenuous, gruelling sporting event on the face of the earth, lasting for over three weeks. And he didnt do it just once, he won it for not less than six times !

I salute him, his spirit and his never-say-die attitude. And my salute to his mother Linda, who taught him the most important thing in his life - 'Son, You Never Quit'... and he didnt.

The honesty and straightforwardness with which he narrates his story is awesome. Loved the way he puts things - in a very frank manner. He may not be modest but he knows what he is talking about. "Cancer was probably one of the best things that happened to me", he says, "I learned a lot through it, and was a changed man after that."

I won't say more about it here. Some things are more to be felt, experienced; and less to be talked about. It's not only about the book.

The movie week ..

2006-02-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

Had my midsemester exams last week. had just three papers, so it wasnt really the exam week. it turned out to be a movie week, instead. watched some six hindi movies.

Zinda, Bluff Master, Fire, Water, Apharan and Taxi Number 9211 - all different, good in their own way. was nice :)

i was very very upset to watch the movies Fire and Water. Deepa Mehta sure has shown the truth - something which is happening not very far from us. and it hurts to know it's still the reality. 1947 Earth was another such deeply moving one by Deepa Mehta.

why? why?; i thought; people behave like that ? leaving all their compassion, love and tenderness aside..? without giving it a damn to what and how others may feel .. ? why be dishonest, cruel and inhuman, and carry others along with oneself down the road to the hell ? why ? .. i am at loss of words to describe my heavy heart.

"being better and better human beings" - this can very much be our goal in life. it's more like a process - an unending one - and a very beautiful one at that. i am going for it. anyone game ?

lalkaar ..

2006-02-21T22:33:00.000-07:00

recently, i watched the movie rang de basanti. liked it. picturization is good. music is nice, something different. lyrics of songs fitting to the youthfulness and the mood. at times the lyricist has also used a mix of hindi and english words, and it gives it a gen-next feel. the movie is unrealistic, exaggerated. but i think thats no crime. it's a movie after all. sometimes, you have to use exaggeration to make people listen to you. it succeeds in getting the viewers think about some issues. "no nation is perfect, it has to be made so." cud be one of the take-home messages.

there is a ghazal in that - a very famous one - written by the great Ram Prasad Bismil. in the film, atul kulkarni recites the same. felt like posting the lyrics here:

sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab humare dil mein hai,
dekhna hai jor kitna baaju-e-qaatil mein hai ..

karta nahi kyun doosra kuchh baatcheet,
dekhta hoon main jise wo chup teri mehfil mein hai..

aye shahid-e-mulk-o-millat main tere oopar nisaar,
ab teree himmat ka charcha gair ki mehfil mein hai ..

waqt aane de, bata denge tujhe aye aasmaan,
hum abhi se kya bataayein, kya humare dil mein hai ..

kheech kar laayee hai sabko qatl hone ki ummeed,
aashikonka aaj jamghat koocha-e-qaatil mein hai ..

-- Ram Prasad Bismil.

[ literally: mulk-o-millat = the regions and the nation;
jamghat = crowd; koochaa-e-quatil = killer's lane]

prasoon joshi, the lyricist for the movie, has written another beautiful piece of poetry [not a ghazal, by the way], on the same theme. this comes as the song "lalkaar" .. have a look:

hai liye hathiyaar dushman taak mein baitha udhar,
aur hum taiyyar hain seena liye apnaa idhar,
khoon se khelenge holi gar watan mushqil mein hai,
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab humare dil mein hai ..

haath, jinmein ho junoon katate nahi talwaar se,
sar jo uth jaate hain wo jhukte nahi lalkaar se,
aur bhadkega jo shola saa humare dil mein hai,
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab humare dil mein hai ..

hum to ghar se nikle hi the baandh kar sir pe kafan,
jaan hatheli pe liye lo badh chale hain ye kadam,
jindagi to apni mehmaan maut ki mehfil mein hai,
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab humare dil mein hai ..

dil mein toofaano ki dolee aur naso mein inqualaab,
hosh dushman ke udaa denge humein roko na aap,
door reh paaye jo humse dum kahaan manjil mein hai,
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab humare dil mein hai ..

-- Prasoon Joshi.

New.

2006-02-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

recently while talking about his boring routine, one of my friend told me a trick his friend suggested. "Do one crazy thing each day" .... :)

i would say: "Do one thing different, or differently; each day. Do something new." yes, it's the keyword. thinking something new, different, unique. and not stopping at that, but going ahead and making it happen. really, i have started to respect those who do this. more i see of them, read about them, i feel inspired.

read about gapingvoid the other day. it's about a new, fresh "expression" by Hugh Macleod - cartoons drawn on the backside of business cards. in article named "How to be creative", he shares the tips which have worked for him. would quote a few here, and recommend one to read the article him/herself once.
so here are some good tips i found in there :
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. (realised the same when i visited the annual exhibition at J J School of Arts today, thanks to one of my friends who'a a student there. so many expressions - through paper art, paintings, photographs, designs, sketches, calligraphy, 3-D models .. it was indeed a treat to eyes. a very vivid show of vast spectrum of ideas the students have.)
Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
Sing in your own voice.
Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
Power is never given. Power is taken.
etc.

i remember being really thrilled when i read the lyrics of the advertisement by Apple - titled "Think Different". One may find the complete lyrics here- interwoven with a few desktop pics. its amazing.

one of my favourite professors once said, "You cannot become a leader by copying." he gave an example, saying if you want to become as great a vocalist as Pt. Bhimsen Joshi or Pt. Jasraj, you cant do that just by following their path and copying them. you have to be different. appreciated :)

a dedication

2006-02-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

this entry is dedicated to Mr. Anand Mahindra - Vice Chairman and MD, Mahindra & Mahindra. a business leader. a good speaker. a visionary. a harvard graduate - in film-making. a dreamer. a very straight-forward, open hearted man. frank. honest ... :)

he was here at iit bombay, to interact with us, as a part of the leadership lecture series organized by the school of management. he spoke about his experiences. shared his thoughts. told us about his dreams - those which have been achieved and those which are yet to take shape.

indian business, he says, has been doing and should continue to do three things:
taking up tougher and tougher challenges;
standing up with self-confidence to prove to ourselves and to the world that we are second to none;
and being innovative.
the third one, he says is the key power Indians have which can be and has to be used to a much greater extent. "we, unlike China, may not have a low cost per unit output as our advantage; but we should instead go for low cost per unit of invention" ! an abstract new concept, which has set me thinking.

narrating incidents from his own life, he told us that we should start looking for solution to a problem from our own backyard - many a times we ignore what is happening in the neighbourhood and keep searching all over for simple answers.

"we haven't understood how a leader is made, and the quest for knowing the answer to this is very interesting", he added. "a leader should always be open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new people and new opportunities. he should learn to give people under him enough space to operate. simultaneously, he should also understand when to step in and intervene. "

it was an inspiring talk indeed. gave us some insight and made us think.
thank you for being here, Mr Mahindra.

winds of change ..

2006-02-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

Change, they say, is the only constant thing. i can feel it these days. with just 3 months of my stay left in this institute, i am already dreaming a lot about the days to come. the days which will bring new opportunities, new experiences, new challenges, new doors and new roads - the ones not travelled.

read about a few inspiring efforts. one of them is the Bharat Uday Mission. they have a mission of building a great nation. all this effort started in 2004 at iit kanpur. these young people are dreaming of a change - for a powerful, developed India.

this one is a consulting firm - in Social Development. calls itself Green Earth Social Development Consulting Pvt Ltd. these days they are into organizing a walk - through many villages. thats an amazing attempt to go, visit and understand the situation in the drought affected villages, and contribute towards betterment of the same. you can find the padyatra updates here, they are really interesting and thought-provoking.

here are Delhi street kids banking on each other, with a 13 year old banker and even younger orphans - almost all of them being street-dwellers and rag pickers. these guys, through their Bal Vikas Bank, are helping each other to take a step towards a better tomorrow.

one group of students, passed out from iit bombay, has started a firm which does some political consultancy ! i was amazed by the novelty of this idea. they are very young, and i guess amongst very few well-educated people who are doing such stuff here in India.

.. i am always reminded of the Vision 2020 our respected President has chalked out. we all have to work hard, work together with a strong belief to achieve that. just that, we have to act now. coz now is all we have.

thodee masti thodee yaaree ..

2006-02-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

having a great great time with friends these days.. we have a leisurely timetable this semester. so we get a lot of free lecture slots. then its time for masti - going to canteens, getting a cup of coffee or tea - and idling away with dear friends. nothing beats this. bond, nadya and me keep going to the panipuri walla outside iit at least twice a week. CCD, Mocha, pizza treats, pastries, ganne ka juice, andaapaav - all to add to that. not to forget late night trips to the hostel canteen. for parathas, chinese bhel et al [:D]

this weekend we went to marine drive - on bikes. enjoyed a lott. nariman point, girgaon chowpati. it was awesome. here is the bird's eye view of that area - thanks to Google.

The trek and The fest

2006-02-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

:)
thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed one trek a couple of weeks back - to siddhagad. it was seven of us batchmates, on the sunny day of 26th jan.
the earlier night, all of us wingies went to Nikhil's place in Santacruz, made ourselves a dinner - had a great time. something like 1:30 am, makya and me got back to the insti. i straight went to h13, to get a short sleep of some 3 hrs, before we headed for the trek.

halfway up, in a tiny village we had our lunch. captured those li'l village children playing there.
in any trek, i enjoy two moments the most - the one when you are at the top, and you enjoy the view; and when you are back on your way, ready to get into the bus, and you look back at the peak where you have just been to bidding you good-bye. such a joyous feeling ! :)

a few days before this, worked a bit for our techfest. my fourth and last year of experiencing it first-hand. learnt a lot in this year too. crowd flow. security. tackling the 'extra' city policemen - they kept demanding something ! a new experience :P ;) they say, when you experience something new, you "grow" younger .. ! couldnt have agreed more.

Pleasures ... :)

2006-01-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

A good-morning, bathing in warm sunlight.
Reading an interesting book sitting on the side of a lake.
Feeding a puppy.
Good poeetry. be it yours [;)] or be it Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib's shayari.
Chatting with a friend.
Getting an email from a good old pal whom you considered lost.
Taking photographs.
Roaming around in the city.
Listening to a very fitting music. Fitting your mood. or, you fitting your mood to it.
Your local train arriving just when you reach the platforms - and you being able to catch it.
A cup of tea with friends, at 1:38 am. Hostel canteen rocks.
Getting up in the morning only after the alarm goes n times. Mak and me just keep waking up each other, before one actually gets up and kicks the other.
Writing a piece of poetry .. well, and getting a few compliments from friends.
Idling away with your dear cousin bros and sis's.
Eating out.
Attending an interesting lecture.
Cycling in this beautiful campus.
Reading one of the best blonde jokes.
Feeling calm and quiet, inside a crowded bus, going through mumbai traffic at 6:18 pm.
Feeding a beggar on a busy city road.
Train journey - alone. or, whatever.
Trekking.
A sunrise. A sunset - alone.
Just sitting on a beach, laying on the sands, or playing in the waters.
Experiencing serenity in a temple.
Smiling at little slum children as they wave at you when you pass in a local train.
All day-dreaming.

and the list continues.

... i want to move from pleasures to happiness. from happiness to bliss.

IBIS and Poems

2006-01-16T00:36:00.000-07:00

Last year while working for Techfest, I got interested in Accessibility issues and various technologies involved therein. Recently, heard about the "talking bus stops" in Scotland. Trials of a pioneering new system providing spoken information at bus stops about bus arrival times have gone live this month. The three-month pilot will allow vision-impaired bus passengers to use Brailled buttons to listen to information from the Intelligent Bus Information System (IBIS). A similar scheme using special handheld devices to trigger spoken bus information is already being used at 70 bus-stops in Bristol.

Hit upon this poetry archive. Has sound recordings of a wide range of English language poems read by their authors, with recordings from as early as 1932 ! . Compiled into an archive by a charity co-founded by UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.

A poem begins in delight, and ends in wisdom.
-- Robert Frost

buildings, books and blabber ..

2006-01-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

the other day manu- my younger bro and i went to VT with one more friend. we roamed around, looking at old buildings in the Fort area, fabulously glittering in the lights.

buildings, architectural works have started interesting me, especially after i roamed around in Singapore's Business District. that was great fun. and i slowly started appreciating the architecture. it's nice looking at old buildings too - they have something to say about the past. for more than 12 years, i have myself stayed in a 100 year old waadaa (a typical housing pattern in Maharashtra and other places). that was a wonderful experience. more about it sometime later.
i showed manu and his friend the famous Bombay House - headquarter of the TATA Group. i have seen this building from inside too. here is an old pic. even the SBI building looks great at night. and all those around the Horniman circle offer a nice view too.

i wont call myself a true bibliophile. i have loved books, but my reading is not extensive to the extent i would like it to be. i have read some good books, though the number is small. on the streets of Fort, we met Bablu Bookwala - a bengali fellow who sells old books on the streets. he talked about books very enthusiastically. told us about many good ones, suggested which ones are a perfect read for us, and which "heavier" ones we may postpone ! he was real nice fellow to talk to. "you have to grow up a bit, and should be capable of thinking deeply before you pick up books talking of philosophy", he commented. "well, the most important philosophy of life is How to earn" he added, "You have to learn to earn first!"... i had read Alchemist, Tuesdays with Morrie and Jonathan Livingston Seagull; got them for manu and took Freakonomics for me :D

also, from Dadar i got a couple of books: including maunaachee bhaShaantare (literally means something like "sounds of silence" .. remember that Simon and Garfunkel song ? we had once performed it in an inter hostel competition :D .. a beutiful song, by the way .. liked it soo much !)
haan, so i got "maunachee bhaShaantare" by a young Marathi poet Sandip Khare. loved the book - its a collection of 50 odd of his poems. he is too good. i have met him in person too. a frail, short fellow, who is an engineer himself, left all of it to become a poet - or because he is a poet, and a unique one at that.

the other day i watched Amelie. awesome. loved it :D

read this quote by Gilda Radner:
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
I think i can feel this. :)

updated my photoalbum too. you may have a look at it here.

Two giants

2006-01-03T23:02:00.000-07:00

Recently, I got to read about two great personalities - Jamshedji Tata and Vikram Sarabhai. both gigantic in vision and passion for their work.

got an opportunity to visit the archives maintained by TATA Steel at Jamshedpur. simply awesome. a very very inspiring collection of letters, stories, photographs, news cuttings - all displaying the legacy left behind by the great visionaries.
it was indeed a challenge creating a steel empire in India, well before independence. that was the time when the British ridiculed the efforts by an Indian to set up a steel plant. jamshedji saw a dream, laid down the idea, showed the path, and against all odds, his successors made it happen. Jamshedji passed away in 1904 - when the site for the steel plant (where Jamshedpur stands now) was just finalised. i got to see the very well structured letter written to him by Dorabji Tata - his son, reporting about the same. very methodic. its interesting to see such small habits of great people.
with 93 companies (!!!) in seven business sectors, TATAs have sure maintained a high quality of products. they have always had great feeling of responsibility towards the society where they work. it is again a legacy left behind by Jamshedji who had a third of his property reserved for a research institute in India, which later came up as Indian Institute of Science. People talk about "corporate social responsibilities" - TATAs have done it. way back in 1930s, they had insurance policies for their workers - another example of their originality and vision.

the other giant I said was Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai. A truely multifaceted personality - a physicist, a space scientist, a businessman, an educationist, a visionary of Indian space program, a true connoisseur of arts, very understanding husband and a great father - a complete gentleman. i was awestruck to just look at the list of various institutions he established. the number is well beyond 30. and the list includes - National Physical Laboratory Ahmedabad, IIM-A, Sarabhai Chemicals, Darpan Academy for Performing Arts (which he established with his wife - eminent dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai), space centre at Thiruvananthapuram which is now named after him; and many more.
as a student, he was recommended to Oxford by a Nobel Laureate, named Ravindranath Tagore, and he was guided for his PhD by another Nobel Laureate whose name was Sir C V Raman ..!! truely "blessed" .. what else may one say?

Dynamic December ..

2006-01-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

ya, it was indeed so.
31 days, 6 cities, more than 7500 km of train journey - full of excitement, learning, new friends and catching up with the old ones.. enjoyed a lot :D Saw not less than 7 sunrises from the train, four of which were consecutive !

10-17 dec @ jamshedpur
i had gone there to participate in the indo german winter academy. had a nice journey from mumbai to tatanagar. in AC, you get down from the train as fresh as you boarded (well, almost). slept a lot. savoured oranges :D

jamshedpur is a nice town. we stayed at the graduate trainee hostel (GT Hostel 4) - for trainees at TATA steel. the hostels are pretty decent. mess facility is better than what IIT mess has  ;) 
our sessions started on sunday. we had an opening ceremony followed by two general lectures - one by prof chaco jacob(meta iit kgp) and other by sanjay mittal (iitk). 3 professors and 5 german students from the university of erlangen had come. prof durst (flu mech) prof munsted (polymers) and prof h ryssel (semiconductor materials).

our group had 15 students in all. we had some good presentations. enjoyed
them. didnt sleep at all :D especially enjoyed prof ryssel's presentations, and discussions with him during the tea breaks and lunches. learned a lot from him. he is 65. full of enthusiasm. he is a very friendly person. and from whatever i listened to him in these 5 days, he must be a good professor. he is director of a fraunhaufer institute in erlangen.

i will really cherish these 5 days. students had come from 5 iits and a german institute. i found many of them quite cool and quickly made friends. especially some guys from iitd, iitg
and kgp. we had fun time together.
we also visited TATA steel plant. it is awesome. i have seen ispat's plant at dolvi. it has 2 million tonne per year capacity. tata plant has somewhat less that 5 MT/year. they will reach 7 MT/year in a couple of years. TATA steel has been ranked one in the whole world for producing
quality steel cost effectively. we visited the TATA archives maintained here in jamshedpur. its an inspiring experience. i was astonished to see the legacy left behind by JN tata, dorabji tata, jrd tata and the like. it's a must-visit at jamshedpur.
we also went to the jubily park once. enjoyed the laser and water fountains show here. its nice.


18 Dec @ Kolkata
had to put roshogulla in my mouth to be able to come out with the typical bengali pronunciation of the name of this city. the city is cool - at least it was so for a casual one-day observer like me. saw the trams. enjoyed rides on those rickety buses.
on 17th night, we stayed at IIM with my cousin, and roamed around the city the next day. victoria memorial, indian national musium were nice.

then went to Kali Mandir at Dakshineshwar and also to Belur Math. Great places, where great people stayed once.

came back home after a looong train journey. one of the few in which i got bored. got only one new friend. shared a biryani with him :D after he got down at tatanagar, i was alone. resorted to sleeping.

20-22 dec @ Pune
these three days were great too. i was back home, enjoyed it thoroughly. once again with my mom-dad and bro, felt so great. its a nice cosy feeling. i love it. enjoyed the homely (and outside) food too :D met up with some old friends. called many.
saw "raam ke naam" by anand patwardhan. made in 1991, this documentary focuses on how politically motivated issues are created and followed. was a great learning. it sure kept me thinking - i still am.
the next day watched the new marathi movie - "dombivali fast". picturizing reaction of a middle class man to the so called "system" all around us. this movie is good coz it makes you realise many things, sets you thinking. the further action, obviously, is upto you.

25-29 Dec : Kanpur-Delhi Trip
one of the greatest outings i have had. hats off to my friends who planned it and made it happen. so great to have such friends around :D
iit kanpur is a nice place. with a huge, well kept campus. beautiful. well maintained lawns, and the peacocks - saw them as many times as we see the dogs (on four legs) at iitb.
we visited the wind tunnel facility there. it reminded me of the one at NAL Bangalore which i had seen some 5 years back. but we missed the gliding session :(

delhi was great too. i went through the city for the first time. we chatted, sang, cracked jokes, ate, roamed around, clicked pics, leisurly passed the time. visited the good old Red Fort. chandni chowk. visit to akshardham temples was simply great. i find myself at loss of words to describe it. will only say that some things are to be experienced, to be felt more, and talked about less. it's one of them.

came back to bombay meri jaan on 29th night. enjoyed the year end with my cousins at thane. we were having misal (a popular chat-like dish) at midnight ! hehe .. then they said the whole year i would get to eat such tasty food :D

Treks ..

2005-12-09T03:16:00.000-07:00

right from the school days, i have enjoyed hiking and trekking. in our school, there used to be no 'picnic' as such. no buses-coming-to-the-school-gate, no cosy seatings, no lovey-dovey songs, no sweet-nothings. instead, we used to go to treks in sahyadris - thrice a year. in those 6 years, we had many memorable treks - and it continued after that. i remember numerous times when we gathered at some city bus station, early in the morning - all excited about one more trek - ready with shoes, those back packs, with snacks and water bottles. making our way through the crowd and getting into the bus frequently proved to be tricky. being a small guy, i was at times pushed in from the emergency escape window at the back to secure seats for my dear friends. it was fun.

those hills and mountains make you feel different. they make you realise your physical limitations and how much you can stretch them. not only they show you their vast expanse and make you contemplate on how huge this world is, but they also get you thinking about yourself. you start finding out - about your own self. it's a discovery. i have experienced this. :) i think one should keep going to the mountains as and when possible. they sure make our vision broader, our hearts larger, our minds clearer.

recently i enjoyed some three treks with my cousins. Lohgad, Malang-gad and Irshalgad. i had not even heard about the third one. that's a good one day trek - and relatively easy at that. have a look at the pics here. there is a small town called Chowk on Panvel-Khopoli road, some 17 km from Panvel. one has to get down at Chowk and make his way through the huts and small houses to the base of Irshalgad. on the way, one sees the matheran plateau and Chowk dam on the right. there is not much greenery around.

more than half way up, there is Irshalwadi village with some green patches. though the ground water level is not bad, the soil quality seems to have degraded, and farming is not profitable. not even half of the 40 families living there indulge in farming. we soon found out what they do to make their living - they brew liquor. many of them had the licence too. again the same story : destruction of the conventional farming practises - which are surely the base of the rural economy - and producing liquor for towns and cities far off from their world. all for easier money. :

Valuing life ..

2005-11-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

Today while I was on my way to Powai from Dadar by Mumbai's EMU local train, a sad incident occured. our local train ran over a lady at Ghatkopar station. I do not know if that was an accident or that person wanted to finish her life.. whatever the case, that thing made us all feel low for a moment. there was an unusual silence. the body was immediately removed, taken to the platforms. and in less than a minute, the local train set ahead - onward ! we could not stop !

this is Mumbai the megapolis. even after knowing all the logical and practical reasons, i could not stop wondering sadly about the way it goes here. on a positive side, there is no "attitude" in people here, and i respect them for that. they simply cannot stop, whatever happens. it goes on and on. this city is always up.. you cannot be idle here - it wont really let you sleep !

in this huge city, nearly 24000 families stay near the railway lines - in their huts. and many of the huts are dangerously close to the railway track. this is just an example. i could go on. the question that comes in mind is "how much do we value the life of our own citizens?"

in economics, they define what is called as "value for life" as the cost of reducing the average number of deaths by one - in that sense it's a marginal concept. if we really care, we should also look into the "value of life" - in the social and philanthropic sense.

what's success ?

2005-11-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

Like many of us, i have tried to ask this question to myself, and thought over it for long. for me, the answer has invariably involved "satisfaction". satisfaction of having made a great try, more than achieving something. satisfaction of taking people along with you, rather than a cut-throat competition culminating into hard feelings. satisfaction of having made a difference, rather than only criticizing. satisfaction of having created something excellent and not mere destruction. satisfaction of having done something new rather than following some beaten path. satisfaction of having helped someone by rekindling his/her self-confidence rather than having dry sympathy. this, i feel, is success.

my dad always says -' i dont mind your bad performance, but you should never fail to make the best try' ... i would never forget it.

Once, one of my professor flashed this transparency in a lecture :

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people;
and the affection of children,
to earn the appreciation of honest critics,
and endure the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden path, or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived.
This is to have succeeded.

This poem is many a times attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. But a good site on Transcendentalists says that it is not by Emerson but Bessie Stanley. Whichever the case, I feel the poet has put it well in the last line - if even one life has breathed easy because i lived, i wud be happy and rest in peace :)

This is (another) one from Bessie Stanley:

"He has achieved success who has lived well,
laughed often and loved much;
who has gained the respect of intelligent men
and the love of little children;
who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
who has left the world better than he found it -
whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty
or failed to express it;
who has always looked for the best in others
and given them the best he had;
whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction."

when our professor showed us the poem, we were all taken aback ! we didnt expect any of our engineering professors to talk about things like this in a regular technical lecture. he went on to ask us - what do you people think success is ?

our interaction with Prof. Parag Bhargava took a turn that day. personally for me, he had already made an impact right in his first lecture, by passionately talking about industries and entrepreneurship. this was one more side of his persona we were seeing. couple of days later, we found ourselves talking to him for no less than 3 hours, forgetting our lunch. we discussed about a lot of things, of our dreams, what budding engineers like us should do, and all..
in a few days, Srijan started. this is a group of enthusiastic students in our department, who come together to learn, share ideas, create something good and make a difference. through Srijan, we want to explore, experiment, and learn - to dream big. i hope this continues and becomes stronger in the days to come.

The other day, i read about Mammen Mapillai- the man behind MRF. Truely great, inspiring story. Fighting against three big international players in the tyre industry including Dunlop and Goodyear, this man created an empire, to become the major manufacturer in India. A story of triumph of an Indian Entrepreneur against all odds. Hats off to him ! Mammen must have felt really satisfied at the end - so in my eyes, he was a successful man :)

...

2005-10-30T02:46:00.000-07:00

This happened just today.
There was a small butterfly in my room - just flying around, sometimes resting on the wall, sometimes going to the closed window pane. after some time, i noticed that it was constantly hovering about the window pane, as if to escape. that is no way to do it, i said, and i caught it thinking i will let it go through an adjacent window which was open. i did catch it - but it fought back and escaped, only to leave fragments of its tender wings in my hands. i caught is gently again, and quickly set it free through the other open window.
then it suddenly occured to me that many a times life _is_ like that ! you are trying to do a certain thing in a particular way, and even if it doesnt seem to be working, you do not let go. Then something takes you farther away from that. you resist the change with all the efforts. but then suddenly something else works out for you and you say "oh, so whatever happened, happened for good."at times, one may feel an invisible force, inducing a change. one must accept the change and go ahead, i think.

A (virtual) comeback !

2005-10-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

Could not / did not write anything for almost 3 months. hope this is really a comeback. :)

Well, it is very very nice when you know what do you want to do in your life. i am feeling it. finally, after all those thoughts i have discovered what i love. but before i say that thing, let me lay the background for the same.

whenever one takes up anything - a mission for example, he/she has some motive in mind. there are reasons _why_ one is doing that. subsequently, as the person proceeds with his actions to achieve what he set for, he needs a guideline. just like a lighthouse for a ship in the vast open sea. or like those stars for the night travelers of the deserts. care should be taken that his own actions - the short term and long term ones, do not contradict each other. they should be coherent and consistent internally. at least thats what a rational individual would look for.
i came across a line of thinking described by one person. he says : get your ideology clear, set your ultimate goal in its light. then in that light, write your long and short term objectives. your policies and programmes should be chalked out in the light of all these, not to be contradicted with any one of the above.

i think that the ideology part is a very important one - but it has many many layers. someone may want to stop at a point, others may want to ask questions and fathom deeper to define their ideology. it all depends.

i have set my ultimate goal as becoming an excellent entrepreneur - in all respects. while deciding on this, i went through the above mentioned chain of thoughts and now i can very much verbalize it : i want to start, own and run manufacturing company which produces products of global standards. we wont mind producing stapler pins - but we will do it to the level unmatched in the world. i have made the decision, and now i am left with no doubts. i feel nice and focused :)

have been looking at things and trying to do as much observation, reading, meeting people in this respect. things will take shape at the right time, i believe.

they say,
"To believe is to know that every day is a new beginning.
It is to trust that miracles happen, and dreams really do come true."

I believe.

60 years after

2005-08-06T05:35:00.000-07:00

In 1945, on the same day, a B29 aircraft dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Nagasaki was targetted in 3 more days. 60 years have gone past. Japan has grown to be a great technological and industrial power not only in Asia but in the whole world, competing with the mighty Europe and the US. Read more about this here.

Read this quote somewhere a day back :
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King
Thought-provoking, eh ?

Happy Friendship Day ! :D

arbit

2005-08-04T02:29:00.000-07:00

One may visit this link and experience one of the greatest optical
illusions. Also, try if you can crack this.

For those who still haven't, check this out : http://maps.google.com/
It shows regions of the world via their Satellite link. So one can visit
Google Maps, click on "Satellite" (top-right) and search for a location of
choice. Try something like “10 Mkt Street, San Fransisco” You get an
awesome view !! (Explore the links on the right ..) Check out the “Get
address” link ..it rocks. (But they have not mapped whole of the world.
You can easily find driving directions for locations in the US, though.)
For info, have a look at this.

Read about a miraculous fight against cerebral palsy :
She is Vallari Karmarkar, recently won Preranaa Awards, by Doordarshan.
Her website was launched a month back.

language and poetry

2005-08-04T02:22:00.000-07:00

Many of us listen to hindi and/or urdu filmi songs, but don't know what the words mean. Here is a good Urdu - English dictionary. Very easy to use.

Those who want to know more about gazals, may visit this. (nice info. short and easy to understand. next time you listen to a filmi song, you can make out - if it is really a ghazal or not.) People write ghazals in many languages - including marathi and english.
For marathi people : Who has not heard the name of first ever marathee shaayar - Vaa. Vaa. oorf Bhausaheb Patankar ? [Interested junta,read his "Urdu Shaayaricha Nazaraana"] Have a look at a few pieces of his work on this page.

For all those who want to interact in marathi - enjoy the poetry, discuss about various issues, share your experiences - www.manogat.com is the place to be. (unicode characters - too simple to write here.) Also check out www.maayboli.com

Einstein and Feynman

2005-08-04T02:15:00.000-07:00

"Time" has listed all the heroes and icons of 20th century : one century - 100 remarkable people.
Leaders, revolutionaries, artists, entertainers, innovators, scientists, thinkers, heroes and icons .. AND - person of the century : none other than Albert Einstein - the man who completely changed the way we looked at the world !

Who has not heard of Richard Feynman ? One of the most awfully iconoclastic personalities we know; winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded for his contribution : Quantum Electrodynamics; he was undoubtedly one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century. Books, memoirs, stories, photos, links, letters, videos - find all this here. Also check out the videos here.

three stories i liked ..

2005-08-04T02:09:00.000-07:00


The other day i had a look at this :
3 generations of a digital chip `made in India'


June 27th is a day to remember Helen Keller - she
was born on the same day,way back in 1880, in Alabama.
Here is an excerpt from a book about her --"In a sunlit,
sound-filled room, the deaf-blind Helen Keller sat 
inconsolably beside the deathbed of Annie Sullivan,her
teacher and virtually lifelong companion. Annie had died
minutes before, and Helen was consumed with grief. Annie 
had been more than her friend; she had been her "other 
self" - the woman to whom she owed her very life. Fiery,
intemperate, and above all, indomitable, it had been
twenty-one-year-old Annie, a dark-haired Irish orphan 
raised in a poorhouse, who had transformed a wild child 
who smashed plates and kicked people into one of the most 
celebrated women of her time, an embodiment of hope and 
courage to millions of disabled people around the world."
If you want, read more about Helen Keller here : 1 2 3

You know about the biggest property deal in the history 
of our country ? It took place on 20th june : 17-acre Mumbai 
Textile Mills at Lower Parel being taken by a delhi based 
real estate dealer for a huge sum of Rs 702 crore ! Almost 
all Mumbai mills are being sold at similar prices. Big 
commercial complexes and 5 star hotels will be coming up 
there soon. (we already have the ITC Hotel Grand Central 
Sheraton in Parel, which was formally inaugurated in Jan 
this year).

who is Henry Viscardi ?

2005-08-04T02:04:00.000-07:00

Henry Viscardi Jr; an advocate for the disabled who created Abilities Inc., organization that helped the disabled find jobs. He himself ran a factory - all the employees were 'disabled' people. Viscardi himself was born with stumps for legs.Died: Roslyn, N.Y., April 13, 2004.

One of his books is translated into marathi, by Ravindra Desai. It is titled as "haat naa pasaroo kadhi" -- worth reading. you will finish it in a day. A man, who doesnt have his legs, and has (obviously) never 'walked' till he was 25 years old, gets artificial legs. He goes on to establish a company run by similarly disabled people (he doesnt even call them disabled - he calls them 'differently abled' !) A great story which happened in 1950s, in US. You may want to read more abt him here.

MyDesh ..

2005-07-31T00:59:00.000-07:00

something like a week ago, i came back to this lovely campus. it's all so green and nice.

we have a new prof in our department. he is quite enthu abt manufacturing and especially entrepreneurship. needless to say, he is sure to become my favourite prof this sem. we had a great discussion on friday.

the other day i heard about 3M - the innovations based company. they have a very wide range of products. a six sigma company themselves, they boast of numerous innovations and developing cutting edge technologies. A 3M tradition known as the "15 percent rule", encourages 3M researchers to spend up to 15 percent of their own time on projects of their own initiative, stimulating unplanned experimentation and innovations.

yesterday, i was at a talk on "Teamwork" arranged by research scholars forum at iitb, as a part of their "leadership lecture series". the speaker was Sarah Bolle, a project manager at Dell in the US. she was indeed an excellent communicator. it was more of a discussion rather than a monologue, thanks to the speaker's skills. really enjoyed being there.

read about distinguished editor and journalist Behram Contractor the other day. he was the famous columnist 'busybee'. was interesting.

i dream about what i call as the "Sci-tech campus". not only in iitb, but in any technology institute. i think it would be a great campus to be at - where people wonder and think about, create and implement newer and newer scientific-technological knowledge. i was always enthusiastic about tech activities, but especially after my practical training ( i saw a whole new world and i thought about this a lot over there) i am totally in for it.
through science club, i for sure look forward to take a small step in this direction. any person becomes the way he thinks the whole (or most) of the day. students here should be thrilled by and motivated for creating technologies.
also, absorbing new technologies is very crucial. how many iitians, after their graduation go back to their professors and ask :" sir, give me a couple of technologies you have developed. i will make use of them and produce good quality products." unless someone does this some day, the technologies developed in such institutes are going to remain on the paper.
the culture is missing somewhere. it's true. call it the effect of changing times, attitude problem or anything else. doesnt matter. i am very much aware that this kind of culture cannot be 'created' in a day or two - but we can start. and we have.

IOC and the skyscrapers

2005-07-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

Last wednesday i had a great time. my friend from iit roorkee - subir aka mota, and i went to the main business district of singapore, having a look at numerous high rise buildings. we went to singapore's parliament, the high court and many others. it was great ! we used to go into every other tall building, look at the tenants list - many a times to find big companies having their offices there. it was simply thrilling. We walked a lot that day, took some 300+ pics. you can have a look at my pics here. one may also look up this webpage to know more about skyscrapers in singapore, most of which we have visited.

When the international olympics committee (IOC) met at singapore to decide on the host city for Olympics 2012, we were right outside the building in Raffles Place. Felt nice.

In the evening we attended public lectures by Nobel Laureates Carl Wieman and Steven Chu at the Dept of Physics, NUS. Had a great great time there. Steven Chu talked about the legacy Albert Einstein has left behind and made us realize all the difference it has made. He actually took all of Einstein's works one by one and explained them in such simple a style, that we felt it's sooo crystal-clear when you hear it from the masters' mouths. One great physicist, a nobel laureate himself, talking about the best scietific mind in the 20th century - was amazing feeling. for those who dont know, albert einstein has been declared the "person of the century" (for 20th century) by Time.

ICMAT 2005

2005-07-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

Last week i got a wonderful opportunity to attend the international conference on materials for advanced technologies (ICMAT 2005), in singapore. i attended various sessions for 3 days, and it was great !

In the morning, we used to have plenary lectures by eminent scientists.
On first day we had Roald Hoffman - an author, a poet, an artist and if this wasnt really enuf, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1981) , talking about "Molecules - waiting to be made". He illustrated mental construction of many 2d, 3d structures with various examples.He then went on to explain how one predicts the properties of these molecules and figures out possible methods of making them.
As a remark, he said we want to make "reasonably varifiable predictions". He also mentioned about magnetically ordered organic polymers, which are paramagnetic in both liquid and solid states.
His friend - Paul Preuss (a writer) described people digging to the centre of the earth, in one of his novels. He didnt know of any material of required hardness. He, a friend of Hoffman, came upto him and asked whether such a material existed or cud exist. He also wanted it to be a berillium compound. Then Hoffman thought of a SiO2.BeF2 .. but this turned out to be not-so-hard one. Hoffman later published a paper on these findings and the name of Paul Preuss appeared in the author list !

On the second day, i attended plenary lectures by Steven Chu (Nobel Laureate in Physics, in 1997, for laser cooling of atoms) and by Subra Suresh (head, dept of materials science, MIT). And on the following day we had Danis Fichou and CNR Rao.

As a part of centennial celebrations of NUS, it conducted a Nobel Laureate Public Lecture Series. On the first day, it was Steven Chu, talking on biological systems and their relevance to physics, and the energy crisis. Next evening we were in for a treat - two Nobel laureates talked to us about their research, their experiences, their visions and dreams. They were Carl Wieman (Nobel in Physics, in 2001, for demonstrating Bose-Einstein Condensation) and Roald Hoffman. They thrilled us - to say the least. Incidentally, Wieman is very active in physics education and has created excellent resources on the web ( have a look).

Apart from the plenary and the public lectures, i attended many symposia related to my area (nanomaterials in electronics). i didnt get all of that, but it was certainly enriching.

those were amazing 3 days for me. for the first time i attended any international conference, and got to listen to 7 lectures in all by nobel laureates and many more scientists. And it has sure set me thinking. what difference that has made - only time will tell.

Malaysia Trip

2005-07-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we had a fundoo two-day trip to malaysia. once in singapore, we had decided not to lose this chance to visit Kuala Lumpur(KL) - obviously, the Petronas Towers was THE thing on our minds ..

we ( 5 of us - me, jainy - my roomie here, sainyam gupta aka lord, anurag gosavi aka batlu and sandeepan aka dilli ) started off on friday night. went to singapore-malaysia border, completed the formalities. This city in Malaysia - Johor Bahru is right across the small creek. From the Larkin bus station in JB, we got a bus to KL. It was the same scene as it would be on any big bus station in an Indian city. The same hustle and bustle, the same yelling by the agents to catch some passengers, and people looking around and trying to get the best deal out.

KL is 5 hour by bus from JB. In the bus, i met a lecturer, who was working in an engg college near KL. he was from India - a tamil fellow. we chatted a lot - he told me about his job and about malaysia in general. he clearly told me to be very careful and not trust the people there ! hehe ..

after long, i could somehow sleep. when i woke up, we were already at KL. we got down and asked for directions to the Petronas towers. Finally we cought an LRT (a local train in KL) and reached petronas early enough to be first in the queue for the visit to the Petronas skybridge. That was an awsome view. We were at world's tallest twin structure and second tallest structure !

From there, we went to the KL tower. it is on a hill, and quite tall too - so you get a nice view of KL and of petronas towers. you have to pay some 15 ringets, but thats fine.

after this, whole day we just walked through the markets - very crowdy. it was indeed a sunny afternoon - and we didnt have any place to rest. so just got into a MacD nearby and had some coke. jainy and dilli got some watches - was a good deal.

in the night we took a bus to Mersing - a small town on the east coast of Malaysia. this is some 6 hour journey - so we were at Mersing at 5 in the morning ! we were feeling sleepy and made us comfortable on the pavement on the seaside.
watched a beautiful sunrise that morning, and then got into the speedboat to Tioman Island. It took us somewhat more than an hour to reach there.
the view was simply amazing - blue-green clear waters, which we had probably seen only in pictures and movies, hills and small houses hidden in the lush green forests - it was great !
we did enjoy a lot on the beach - did some snorkelling too .. it was fun :D
it started raining in the afternoon and the nature around became all the more exciting ! the clouds over the hills reminded me of those trecks in schooldays.
we had some burgers, and set out again. returned the snorkelling sets on our way back. took a ferry to Mersing at around 3. This trip back to the main land, which took almost 2 and a half hours, was unforgettable. we stood or sit on the deck all the time, watching the open sea, the sun, the waters sparkling and the hills on the small islands. it was so sweet. it rained again and we enjoyed that to the fullest :D

from Mersing, it was a simple, uneventful journey back to JB and then to singapore. stepping into singapore, we had tioman island on our mind - the petronas was long gone! we had travalled for both the nights, saving some bucks and our precious time.
we felt very much safe and comfortable while back in singapore - especially after our boring and painful time in KL. one simply cannot compare the kind of comfort in terms of infrastructure this city offers to any other place. it is always clean, neat, predictable and safe here.

on our way back to NTU campus, we talked and talked about tioman .. and it rocks :D

The very first one..

2005-07-12T04:50:00.000-07:00

This is not really my very first attempt at blogging. i had tried that more than a year back, and i gave up. thanks to some of my friends, i am starting it all over again. whatever, i hope i keep blogging.

Had a wonderful afternoon yesterday. went to singapore zoo with a friend - yes, on a working day .. coz i dont really have much work here. ( actually the scene changed today and my guide has given me a deadline)
We didnt have much time at hand, as compared to the vast expanse of the zoo, still we managed to have a look at and appreciate the wide variety of fauna it hosts. and the lake there is tooo beautiful !
This zoo is supposedly one of the best in the world. It boasts about being an open zoo - there are no cages at all. You only have simple, small trenches in between you and the wild animals. One interesting thing we came to know was - actually crossing all those heigh/deep trenches is not beyond the capacity of the wild creatures. but they are groomed in such a way that they never even try to come out. i remembered The Matrix. The animals here do not know what they are capable of, and this is the only reason they are still confined there. Once they come to know what they can do, they will be off ! and we will miss the excellent zoo here.
On sundays, many nature lovers from singapore come to the zoo and voluntarily offer you small trips through the zoo. they have many nice pieces of info to tell us, and they dont even charge a dollar ;)

In the night, had a nice discussion with my roommate, on President Kalam's vision for India and what youngsters like us can do to realize that dream. Yash, our friend from IIT kanpur, joined us too. We concluded that we have to believe in our dream - thats the first step ! :D