The Rediscovery

This is one of those rare days when I feel like writing something .... anything .. and I want to write about my rediscovery of geology. I love geology and with every rock I hold in my hands, every mountain i see, every stretch of barren or fertile land, flowing or still water, melting snow it seems to grow. I wish I could be a geologist. That doesn't mean I don't love being a Computer Scientist, especially now that I am learning to like math and learning to see how beautiful it can be, but the earth fascinates me.

Just finished the book "Earth in 100 Groundbreaking discoveries" and it was captivating. The way our earth has come into existence, the way it functions is just mesmerizing. The most fiercest natural powers, the volcanoes the plate tectonics, the ice, the ocean which have terrorized people over all the history are in fact the powers which sustain life. The vast time scale makes us so insignificant in the grand scheme of things but more on that some other time.  Last few days have been entertaining and enlightening in this aspect, so much so that after hiking illegally on protected islands, swimming in the ocean and getting bitten by poisonous fishes, the next thing I want to see is the lava lakes of Kilauea in Hawaii and Erta Ale in Ethiopia.

On a different note Lucky Ali's Aap Per Arz Hai is well just beautiful.

History repeats itself

Once again I am waiting for the results of all those engineering entrance exams as eagerly if not more as I was waiting for them 9 years ago. The same goosebumps, butterflies in the stomach, fingers crossed. Reliving every moment of that anxiety and uncertainty.

Stories from the road - 1

Woke up to the sound of waves of the bay hitting the rocks and sun peeping from distant mountains. We had breakfast and saw that the west wind was slowly dying. Finally time to go out and do something. We decided to hike up to the Angelitas. Wow! the hike up to the mountain didn’t look too much of a problem from the ground but boy was it difficult. Even more so with the scorching sun and no shade. We made it to the top after about 90 minutes of hiking. The view of bahia from the top was breathtaking, those last 90 minutes of sweat and exhaustion totally worth it. Once on the top we decided to dig out a geocache. It was a difficult one but after half an hour of hunt we finally found it. Had food and water and came down. Coming down was much easier. Once we were back we decided to find another geocache, this was an easier one, hidden in a boat and only took 10 minutes.

                The next thing we did was set up a network between two of Dylan's neighbors. This was fun and we used walkie talkies to communicate between the sites :D. One of the neighbors offered us Sting ray burritos, my first experience of unusual food. It was a little different but totally edible :P.

               For dinner we went to a taqueria and I had the best tacos of my life yet. Came back played the game of life watched Indiana Jones and went to sleep to wake up another beautiful day.

Rambling

Rambling: A long meandering talk with no specific topic or direction.

If I write a blog entry everytime I think about writing one, I would average about 30 per month. Right now it's less than 1 per month.

I am making good progress on my research. All I need now is magic.

There is a tiny wild flower in front of my house. Its the harbinger of spring, grows at the same place at about the same time every year ( or at least the two years I have seen it there)

Euphoria's The Road is awesome.

Euphoria's Kaise bhoolegi mera naam is awesomer. At one point of time, the song constantly kept playing in my mind for 4 days non stop. Even while I was sleeping.

Indian bowling is not as weak as it is made out to be. Still very capable of loosing the world cup.

My randomness is very carefully planned.

Interference must die.

The one with the new year

Bye Bye twentyten. Not a very nice end to an otherwise fine year and a poor start to the New Year. Reason ... I am lazy and forgetful to an extent not forgivable and I am no Sachin Tendulkar to start the new year with a ton.. This year though is promising and I already have my list up, a relatively short list. I hope this year gets better as it progresses and that I fulfill the promises. Cheers!

Andaaz aaj shayarana hai

December ki is sardi mein, 

jab thandi thandi hawa chali.

Hawa chali to ek kitab khuli.

Yaadon ki kitab, khwabon ki kitab,

thodi anban, thode jhagde,thode pyar ki kitab.

Kitab ke panno mein chhupakar, 

rakha tha ek gulab.

Gulab ki pankhudiyon ke niche tera naam nikla.

Tere naam ko dekha, 

to aankhon ke samne se,

apne ek ek pal ka karwaan nikla.

In palo ki kadiyo se, 

ulajhti sulajhti chali gai do kahaniyan.

Hawa ki sihran ne bataya,

kaise in kahinyo se apni kahani bani .

December ki is sardi mein, 

jab thandi thandi hawa chali.

Update

Finally an update :). Have been seriously busy all this time and if you're following me you would notice every time the adjective before the term "busy" gets more and more elaborate. This time I have been seriously busy and I am loving it. I have a direction and I know I am making progress. Personally a few things are shaping up and fingers crossed hopefully they will culminate into something really nice. Its always a good feeling when you have a goal and you know what you are working for rather than just languidly following a shiny object.

                A few things happened over the last few days. I finally took my first step towards learning LaTex. I wrote whole of one my homeworks in it and it was fun and am also trying to learn Beamer. :) . Before that I wrote a report on spyware for one my classes. I really enjoyed working on it and also learnt quite a few things. I have posted some interesting excerpts from that report on my other blog here. Hopefully it will be useful to people .In between all this I also gave a talk on Mahatma Gandhi at Dylan's church. While preparing for the talk I found a very interesting fact about Mahatma Gandhi. He wasn't a particularly good public speaker and this gave me a lot of heart :P .Thomas Jefferson again wasn't a very great public speaker but both of them went on to become leading public figures of their time. So people like me who fret at the very idea of speaking in front of an audience have history to look upon.

As I have said before and I reiterate I am really bad at concluding things so I'll just finish this one abruptly too. Adios!