Auguries of Ignorance

Vida.

2009-02-13T09:16:00.000-08:00

"What? Me? You looking at me?"

I looked away. I had completely forgotten that I had been staring at the man for over 10 minutes now. Scratching my leg and lifting it up against the tiled pillar of the Metro Railway platform, I put my right index finger on the tip of my nose, closed my left eye and tried looking at my knuckle. Through a quick squint to my left I could see a group of school-girls giggling, probably amused by my madness; another group of people were coming down the stairs, seven, eight, ten, fourteen people, hurrying, hardly glancing ahead. Everybody was running. Everything was moving. I saw the crumpled paper glass and the coke that had spilled from it, still having my left eye closed and looking at everything through the focus of my knuckle. It was my .270 caliber rifle. My 35mm camera. My shot at life. Or vice versa.

Our house got sold. Today. I was the witness. It's funny how people still can't pronounce my name and get tired at the third try. It still amuses me.

My dad is still in the hospital. I heard the doctors say among themselves, "He's taking a pretty darn long time to die. You watched Mar Ardentro? Huh? Argentinian, na?" I smiled. Spanish, I whispered to myself. Spanish. I held my dad's hand today, he still can't feel anything, but reports say that the efficiency has increased by a percentage. Pretty darn long time to die ...

People have come out with amazingly new ways to get into MIT. Look, ma, a hack!

Me and Miyuki are together. She is probably sleeping right now.

This is my last night at my home. I am leaving it. After nine years.

I saw Babel. It had me speechless for a complete minute after Gustavo Santaolalla's Bibi No Aozora played during the end credits.

The train in which my friend was crashed. He is safe.

Somebody tapped my shoulder and I turned around.

"Do I know you?"

I smiled. Do I?

My Stanford Roommate Essay!!

2009-01-03T02:55:00.001-08:00

Dear Roomie,

As you plan on spending the next four years with me, know that I’m completely harmless and don’t bite. But I am characteristically insane. I love mathematics. I am funny. Oh yes, you can call me a joker too, I really wouldn't mind that after The Dark Knight. I also prefer to work in my head rather than putting down everything on paper. I do a lot of physics, both theoretical and applied. I like making circuits, though blowing them up is more fun. I can mimic actors, non-actors and people who fall into neither group. I can't spell too well. Yes, siriusly. I love looking up at the stars and drawing my own constellation patterns. I also love wasting time doing nothing, when doing nothing encompasses everything from reading comics, surfing IMDB, Wikipedia or GoogleMaps or watching Numb3rs or singing songs off-key. That's nothing? Yes, go fight with my mom. I love playing with LEDs. Yes, they are a fetish, but you were not supposed to know. I dream a lot. Everybody tells me not to, but thank goodness I never listened to my mom when she taught me to be obedient. I breathe movies. I even eat, sleep and drink movies. I am curious. I just have to know everything. I love cricket. I love coffee. I love cake, chocolate and everything filled with calories. I like taking pictures. I can't draw parallel lines. I can't open shampoo or sauce packets with my fingers, I need scissors for that. What else? I love life, smiles, joy, a pleasant breeze, my next door neighbor, the sun's rays on a winter morning, the rippling sound of a river flowing by, a child's laughter ... for me, life is one big adventure, fun-filled, thrilling and inspiring. Oh and I love my mirror too, it makes me look much more handsome than I think I really am. I look forward to staying with you, and hope you turn out to be as crazy as me, or maybe more!

Yours truly,
He-who-must-not-be-named

Evolution!

2008-08-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

So, I have been thinking a lot lately, taking a break from those electric circuits, graphs and all other "fuzzy" things that I have been tied to for quite some time now. I had always thought that we should do better in looking for the answers of our own origin than go space-hiking. My idea had been - "If you don't know your own back-yard properly, there's simply no use going glancing at your neighbor's houses." Of course, I had been a bit retarded and narrow-sighted. A lot of thinking and referring to publications has led me to contradict my earlier views.

As you must be knowing, stars and various space bodies contain a lot of organic molecules, the same molecules that make us the intelligent, powerful, complex and beautiful creatures we are. And like the majority of things there is no co-incidence or the Hand Of God at play here. It seems (and it is) that we have, literally, descended from the stars, we are a part of this cosmic extravaganza - we are the children of the cosmos. So, now it makes sense to me. The answers to our origin lie in the stars, it's there in the endless vacuum of the cosmos. Someday, maybe, we will find it.

OK ... so back to my non-emotional self. Evolution, as is generally perceived, is a funny little thing that Nature does to check which creatures are worthy to be with us on Earth and which should go to hell. Very true. This is called Natural Selection. Consider it like this, all life-forms that you see around (and the ones that have become the wallpapers of your desktop) are Nature's experiments. She does all the stuff- mix-n-match and twist-n-turn, to see which life-form can stay and which can't. So, all extinct life-forms are nothing but experiments of Nature that have failed and had to be discarded subsequently. But that's just one face of the coin. Do humans, the most intelligent life-form, the most complex, the most exquisite, have no role to play in this combinatorial game? Oh yeah! Sure we do!

So, now comes our part, which is really great! It is called artificial selection. Just as Nature picks and chooses which life-forms can live and which can't, we select life-forms that are most beneficial to us and discard the rest. When I say discard, I don't mean that we go on a rampage, destroying everything that has no use to us. (Actually we do the same, but in a more subtle way) What we do is promote and aid the reproduction and propagation of life-forms from which we can derive the most. For example, corn in ancient times was never so beautiful to eat, in fact it was "scrawny" but lo! don't you love corn today? 'Cors you do! Because we have promoted and propagated the evolution of corn just to suit us well. So much so that corn can't even reproduce without our help. We have done the same things with cows, dogs, sheep and many other life-forms. So, evolution is incomplete without us. Way to go!

The advice: Please, for once in a while, immerse yourself into the study of Nature. I agree that your computer, robot or circuit is great and of huge practical value, but just once in a while do fall back and give Nature a thought. You will be amazed at its beauty, complexity, interconnectedness ... it's a perfect symphony, a grand orchestra, not to be missed at any cost!

The conclusion: Our Earth isn't special at all with the O2 atmosphere, optimum climate, availability of water. It's just that we and the other organisms are so well adapted to our environment that we think that our Earth is special and one of its kind in the entire Universe. Remember, life-forms in other distant planets maybe thinking the same thing!

Cheers!

Bouts of Randomness

2008-08-02T21:37:00.000-07:00

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost." - Gustave Flaubert

It's a funny feeling, you see, to be in love. You need to reconsider the situation every ten minutes. Life suddenly starts feeling beautiful. You back no longer hurts. Your eye no longer hurts. Oh, I know what it is - its an anesthetic! What?? Bloody no! Its gotta be more subtle than that ... then again ... you always account for variable change. Nevermind.

I guess love is like an analog signal, much moved from the mundane digital signals of everyday life! And its a funny function at that. Keeps on going up, up and up. And suddenly you are too high too fall! But fall you do. Fall you must. Then again, even the fall seems awesome. So, if you have come back from a hot, sunny day and switched on a fan you know what love is. Its similar!! See, as the fan-blades start revolving slowly, there's heightened excitement! You feel so damn good!! And then when the fan has taken full speed, and its been there for some time, you feel What? That's It? Gosh, now this is getting boring .... Well, sorry for the crude example!

So, OK don't mind this post. The title is self-explanatory actually. And yes, remember - you don't fall in love ...... you rise!!

Ah keyboard, oh my keyboard!

2008-07-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

Now, now. That's no fetish of mine! But my keyboard has been my great partner during all these years of my eating food with it. A bit of info: I eat my food (normally) watching something on my computer, mainly movies. So I finish a 2 hr movie in about 6 days. That's 20 minutes of feeding my keyboard everyday.

And look at it, it's so thin now. :(

So, after about 4 years of feeding and preserving the rarest bacteria and germs underneath those keys, I decided it was time for a bath. And there I was with isopropyl alcohol, a vacuum cleaner, a cotton cloth and a shiny little key-pick(used for picking out keys from their bases). First thing I did was dabbing the cloth in CH3CHOHCH3 and happily putting it on the keys as Highway to Hell played on the Media Player.

Shout. Curse. Mother. I hadn't unplugged the keyboard!

So, I took out the oddly shaped violet plug and put my monitor to sleep.

So, one by one like the scene from Oldboy, off went all the keys. And mind you, you slid the key-pick under them, pushed upward a little and they flew off (I even calculated the trajectory for the backspace key, another day ....). So, you had to be highly careful. And I was. I had "directed" my sister to watch the keys as they flew and bring 'em to me. Two candies and job done!

The first key was the spacebar. Thriving underneath it, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Whole families of Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It was so beautiful! No wonder I had developed a chronic cold.

So, with lots of pain and tears, I gently rubbed those families. There were tears in their eyes. They looked at me, cried, prayed but I couldn't help them. So, out they went into they ruthless stomach of the vacuum cleaner. It was his day. And then organic chemistry took over.

My keyboard looks new. It feels so alien. What would I do without the bacteria? I feel so lost. Where is my dirty old friend? This ultra-clean thing doesn't make any noise. The spacebar works perfect. I never have to use the on-screen keyboard.

I solemnly swear never again to clean my keyboard.

Goodbye, blue sky!

2008-07-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

Well, it was always gonna happen. I knew it. I wanted it to happen. All of us. But what I didn't know was that, how much it would hurt when it did happen. I feel empty now. A sense of ... of deprivation. You know that feeling, you feel you can reach out, stretch as far as you can to reach for it, but it goes away. You scream, you shout. But it just keeps receding, a twinkle in its eye, a smile on its lips. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friends.

My meeting with God ...

2008-07-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

I've met god across his long walnut desk with his diplomas on the wall behind him, and god asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of spiritual unique specialness? Can't I see that we're all manifestations of love?

.... and I am thinking ....

I look at god behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but god's got this all wrong. We are not special.
We are not crap or trash either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

And god says, "No, that's not right."

Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach god anything.