A Random Walk

Any ideas on, how do you do a random walk in real life? You do what we me and Dylan did yesterday. We wanted to go for a walk and didn't know where to go so we decided not to decide anything at all and leave everything to chance. We started from Alex's and on each intersection made a totally random decision on which way to go :), that's a random walk in real life and it was fun walking without purpose and no destination.

It's been almost a month and a half since I wrote here last that's because I have been keeping quite busy and sadly I don't fore see any respite in the next few days. Writing something was on my list for almost a week so I decided I should take some time out and write something..... anything.

Talking about anything, yesterday was a good day. I had a poster presentation and had to stand next to my poster for three and half hours which almost succeeded in breaking my back, fortunately the presentation got over just before the breaking point. Then we went to the "goat", had coffee and the free pizza at Alex's :). The Tradebot guy who sponsored the pizza was a nice one. I guess Me and Dylan were the only guys there without a resume. PhD students are so easily satisfied, they don't need no jobs, all they need is free pizza :P. Then we did the random walk thingy untill we ran into AJ and the broken car (unrelated events :P) and we talked about the "Rat Attack" in northeast India. That was something I learnt yesterday and I had no clue whatsoever about it. A cycle which occurs every 48 years. Every 48 years millions of rats come, no one knows from where and destroy all the crops. It has an interesting reason which I leave you to explore. After the discussion I went back to the lab and actually worked for sometime till I decided to call it a day and head home and guess what I met Jeremy on my way. Actually he wasn't in my way but you know you sometime have that urge to poke a mad bull and see what it does :P. I kinda like talking to him and listen to how a conservative Christian’s mind works.(..and you thought I had had enough of conservative Hinduism) Well God is one of my favorite topics and I can't resist talking about it. Every time I talk to Jeremy I learn something. How to be patient when someone is talking so highly of something you have zilch beleif in and then how to coerce them into your way of thinking. Was too tired after that so went home listened to Jason Mraz ... I love the geek in the pink live version..had dinner and slept ... to wake up the next morning and write this post. :)
Have fun everybody !

Busy Busy

I probably am one of the greatest mismanager of time ever with the gift of making an ok schedule, the busiest ever. The last two weeks have been busy, but only because I wasted most part of them doing nothing. In fact I was doing something, I was thinking about working and about how busy my schedule is, and all this thinking makes me so tired, it makes me want to fall on my bed and snooze, maybe watch a movie, to be refreshed again to start thinking about work. Its actually a vicious cycle, I see a lot of work, then I see how little time I have, I panic, waste my time panicking and the result is even lesser time for work. In the end everything is left for the last minute slogging followed by a system crash. But, the next two weeks are going to be busy, seriously!! There is a never ending list of red flagged tasks, and a deadline almost every day. Thinking about work!!! PANIC ATTACK!!!! Looks like it’s going to be a long slog this time and no time for crash. GOD SHAVE ME! .... that's coz I can't find time to shave myself. The funny thing though is, now that I don't have much time,there is so much to write about :|. I'll write it all one by one, for now what I want to say is
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US, YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE, MAKE YOUR TIME.!!!! dont know what that is ;), keep guessing and wait till my next post.

My sweet little child

As I had promised,I would be back with a couple of posts better than the last one. Here is the first one,Hope its good.
(Credits* :: Peeyush for insipration :))


Lying in your cradle
you shine like a star
I look at you
and then I look at the sky above
the darkness of the sky
and the emptiness inside
the prisoned thoughts then come out
as tears from my eyes.

Far away at the horizon
where the sun used to be
is the murky shadow of lies
which I refuse to see
the innocence of the race
has been crushed by its own stride
O my sweet little child
theres a bad bad world outside

Everyday I fight,the demons inside me
Tired and withered, not loosing my tenacity.
The burden of confidence, that I carry with me
and my own expectations,on the verge of insanity.
It tears me apart,taking down the ego.
Killing the love,and killing my soul.
I see you sleeping as I sit close to you
rocking your cradle,I see what I've accrued
Some things,which need to be taken care of
but i promise the sun
will always shine bright on you
Sometimes I may be gone,coz I don't know if I'll get through
But my sweet little child.
I'll always be there for you.

The one with nothing in it

So I woke up early today. Not to study but to find new ways of spending time. As usual the first thing I did was to have a cup of tea. I have a small, lazy, dormant brain and tea helps me unclutter it and free up some space. Well, I just want to avoid saying I am addicted. So this fine morning I decided I should have an account on topcoder. Although I am just an average programmer but I want to see how do I compare against other people. That was one thing I did today and then I decided I should revamp my blog a bit, so I added my profile ( I read this somewhere, that if you have a profile on your blog, people connect to you while reading. Really? I don't know but no harm in just putting the profile up there.) and I also added the reactions below every post, so now everyone who thinks what a waste of time this blog is, can rate the post as CRAP. I also wanted to change my blog template but couldn't find one which could do justice to the theme of my blog. If anyone has a nice template please post a link in the comments, and ya my dear readers please post your comments, makes me feel good when I read them :). I'll be back soon with a couple of nice posts and not a filler like this one. You can go ahead and rate it crap :). Till then take care.

Arre bhai desai

No I am not talking to someone with the name desai. It’s the way I like to pronounce desi, with the “i” as in shine. There is a reason behind this and the reason is that I am confused, I am confused why is ‘i’ not just ’i’ but sometimes ‘a’ and sometimes ‘y’. A great man once said, English is a phunny language and he got it absolutely spot on, at least for us the desis. Till the time I was in india I was quite happy with my English, I knew that I was one of the people who make India the largest english speaking population in the world (we also make india the second largest population in the world),I believed I had a neutral accent, and I used to have no difficulties making people understand me. That’s true for all of us. The trouble starts when the desi lands in amreeka and it starts with your name. I have a two syllable name “vimal” which I believe is not very tough to pronounce and so I fail to understand how can people not get it right. First day in the university, first class and the professor calls me vymal (again vimal but with an i as in shine), which was kinda funny, but I don’t have any problem as long as you can identify me with that name, so for the professor I am vymal. Unfortunately that’s not the end of it, people keep messing my name up sometimes I get called vamal , sometimes vimol and sometimes vimaahh, Embarrassing. But that’s okay because I don’t want to correct people everytime they make a mistake. Like one of my friend’s mother in law, she struggled with pronouncing my name for like ten minutes and finally we decided she would be calling me Jack. That’s just one side of the story, as much as it bothers us, it’s also embarrassing for others when they mispronounce our name, like this one time, a lady in a class was trying to explain something, she wanted to give an example and she asked a student what was his name. “Sanskar” he said. Now then, if vimal is so difficult you can imagine sanskar. After struggling for some time the lady gave up and apologized.

Now that you have come to terms with your new names, you want to go out to eat. But it’s not as easy, for some weird reason amreeka has turned all the world’s logic on its head. The innocuous cheeseburger is not what it says it is, it actually contains beef, certainly a no no for desis. You want to pay for what you had at the restaurant? The bill here is called the check and the currency note is called bill. San jose is actually called San hose-ay. Rubber is not eraser but something entirely different. The desi is Kompletely Konfuzed now and he wants to talk to people. To his horror however clearly he speaks he can’t make people understand him. Initially he resists but he has to give in and start speaking with the amreekan accent, he speaks with a heavy voice and tries to drag every word as long as he can. Every sentence is littered with more “like”s than actual words. The “Damn” becomes ‘Deamm’, ‘Focus’ becomes ‘fokis’ and “r” now comes on with a rolling sound, but that’s not all, he is so excited about the new accent that he starts picking whatever accent he comes in contact with. American, British, Mexican everyone of them. The desi is becoming kool but now the people around him are confused, why does this guy speaks every word with a different accent. By the time the desi realizes this, it’s too late. He is speaking crap and he can’t go back to his Indian accent. It’s not all about the accents though. Things are a little tougher for those of us who weren’t very attentive in the English class at school. A few days back a friend of mine, was telling me an incident how a guy was pronouncing veggie like a wedgie and how funny it was. Little did she know that I didn’t know what the difference was. A general apathy towards the use of prepositions is also one of our characteristic so many of us have a voice mail which says “ I am not able to pick your call right now”. These sort of things keep happening with us and there are two ways to look at these. One is to think that everyone is trying to pick on you, the other is to realize that this is what we are and how we are then why not just enjoy ourselves and enjoy our desi-ness. I always see the lighter part of it. If nothing else then my desi-ness is at least good enough for a laugh or two.

P.S I am a desi and I love being a desi, it is just a funny recount of my and my friends’s experiences and has to be taken lightly. If at all the D-word and the post in general is offensive to you, then be my guest.

Amrita

It was a bright sunny morning I remember. I'd woken up early and decided to go for a walk. With no prescience of what was to follow I stepped out. There was the early morning chill in the air, but the sun was making it pleasant. As I was walking across the neighboring park, a girl sitting on one of the park bench caught my eye. She had a face so pretty that I haven’t seen before; I kept walking and kept stealing glances making sure she doesn't catch me staring at her. Her hands were folded down resting on her lap, her untied hair flowing with the breeze and she seemed to be staring at the trees in one of the corner of the park, she looked so engrossed in those trees that she didn't seem to notice anything else. I had passed the bench and left her behind when I decided to turn back and get a final glance. She was still looking at those trees; she looked on without blinking an eyelid. I looked at her, then at the trees. My failure to find anything interesting in the trees made me curious. I wanted to talk to this strange girl. I made sure that that my footsteps don't make any sound, I went near her and was taken aback when she said hi."Hhh How did you know I was here", I stammered, partly surprised, partly ashamed of being caught staring. "It’s okay, sit down". Still concentrating on her trees, she continued, "you know, there is a fabric in the nature, it’s over our heads covering all of us. When you were looking at me, I felt someone pulling it away from me. I felt it slipping off my head and that's how I knew somebody was here". I sat down on the bench beside her, still figuring out what she had just said.

"I am sorry I've been watching you for some time and I can't help but ask why, you are staring at those trees"."Which trees?" "Those” "Ah, those trees. How do you know I am looking at the trees"? "I just figured that because there is nothing else to look at there.” A slight wind was blowing and one of the strands of her untied hair had landed on her right eye, without bothering to remove it she continued "What if I say there are no trees at all there?"

I sensed the conversation was leading up to something, "I walk past those trees every day, I know they are there" I answered. "Then, close your eyes, thinking that the trees are not there". I don't know why I was following her, but I was, I closed my eyes. A few moments later she said, "Now forget that you ever saw those trees, unbelieve your eyes". I did what she said, I was curious like a small child, in the anticipation of learning a secret. I erased the memory of the trees completely from my mind. "Now can you find out if there are trees there?" Here I was completely lost, and as soon as I started with "What are you ..." in a very calm voice she said "You can".

The calmness of her voice settled me down a bit, and I started with the exercise, how could I know the trees were there or not. I couldn't see anything and I was finding it hard to concentrate because of all the noise around me. There was the sound of a school bus as it went past, a little child was crying at some distance, footsteps as somebody just jogged by, more footsteps, they sounded of school kids in a hurry, some children were on a swing, which was making a squeaking sound, a vendor seemingly very proud of his vegetables was shouting at the top of his vocal chords, finally some hustling of dry leaves, but they were of somebody sweeping them, no signs of a tree. I tried to listen everything again, concentrating hard. A slight wind was blowing, starting and stopping intermittently, every time it blew it would make a hissing sound in my ears, but there was another sound which I had missed earlier, every time the wind blew, there would be a sound of leaves, and this seemed to come from a distance, this certainly was from the trees. My eyes still closed, a slight smile spread across my face, not from the fact that I had found out the answer, instead I had found the question out. Things don't stop existing when we close our eyes, but with our eyes closed we need a different way to find them. Sometimes there are things, situations, feelings which don't present them to us in an obvious way, but that does not mean they are not there, they are there, we just need to find them out."Amrita Let's go", a little boy's voice, brought me back to earth. The little boy helped the girl stand up, held her hand and led her away. I watched them go, and drifted into the thoughts of this strange episode again, when an annoyance on my ear disturbed me. It was her strand of hair, which had broken off. I picked it up, blew it in the air and walked away.

My Love/hate relationship with water

P.S: The post is totally symbolic, you might find it difficult to understand if you can’t relate to the symbolism, although it does make sense when taken literally too. I would be glad if people who it is written for can understand it.

I thought I hated water to my core, until one day when it touched me. Water in all its forms leaves an impression on me, gives me something to think about, sometimes I like it, at some other times I don't. Ironically I hate the touch of water but the three most important people in my life are water.

To start with, I hate water, because it makes me look up my brain and use it. I hate when it slowly starts soaking me. I am a Capricorn what else can I do, I hate changing my state, but once I am completely drenched. I start loving it, I like it when it tunnels down from the temple to the feet, making me fall in love with it, the way it is all over me, engulfs me in my each and every thought, water and water everywhere so much so that after one point the earth becomes the water.

The first time water touched me, I made every effort to escape. The first drop which fell on my forehead pinched me and went right inside and touched my heart. I don't know whether it felt good or bad, but it was different, mesmerizing in a way. Like the children of Hamlin, I swerved and swinged to the pied piper, but soon my stubborn self woke up and refused to get soaked. Water tried hard, tried time and again and by the time it succeeded it had already given up. I was soaked but dry, and that is precisely what I don't like. It exhilarates you when it splashes you but it’s gone too soon. Give me persistence, I won't mind if it’s not too spectacular. As luck would have it, water touched me again, perhaps to teach me one more lesson. You know howsoever you may like water; you can't hold it, you have to just let it flow and come to you. You can hold it in your palm but the moment you try to close your fist, it’s gone, and so it left me soaked and dry again. I thought I knew water by this time but it showed me a completely different side, but one thing was common, it made me walk away, then brought me back to fall in love with it and then walked away.
Water water everywhere not a drop to drink.