Thoughts. Organised Chaos.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

Few things in life ensure an automatic grin like watching the crowds go wild at a live early 60s Beatles performance. So, here's a New-Year's-And-Revival-Of-This-Blog post that makes me smile, and maybe you too. Happy New Year!

New addition to my kitchen

2010-02-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

I am soon going to be the proud owner of an immersion/hand blender. Cannot wait to try out all the soups that I have thus far avoided, so as to not dirty more than one bowl while cooking! I'm definitely still a minimalist when it comes to cooking, but this seems like a nifty and useful tool, which can easily be tucked away even in my tiny kitchenette!
Watch in action here:
http://www.kitchenaid.com/flash.cmd?/#/product/KHB100OB/

An ode to fruit

2009-08-26T23:25:00.000-07:00

I had been feeling rather cranky the past few days and today I realised why - in my quest to be diligent, and study, and do nothing else, I had neglected to buy fresh food! Thus, since Monday I had subsisted on frozen food, that was perfectly edible, even palatable, but was quite inadequate. So I went on a spree of buying fruits and vegetables and came home and pigged out! There is such joy in a beautiful bowl of fruit! I feel fortunate. And healthy again :)

Back to studying.

But before I go, here's an 'Ode to Fruit' by Louise Chapman:
http://www.tigweb.org/express/panorama/article.html?ContentID=4238

Sharing some Coldplay love

2009-08-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

Have you heard "Life in Technicolor" and "Strawberry Swing" yet? Do!

Summary of an evening

2009-05-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

I had a most wonderful evening! I spent a considerable amount of time at the neighbourhood bookstore and (of course) bought some books. Since I'm trying to minimize my negative impact on the planet, and resource consumption is a big part of that, I'm trying to buy used books whenever possible. So, I was delighted to learn that half this bookstore hold used books, and the other half holds new!

So here is what my reading list looks like right now, in addition to the books I am already in the midst of (White Castle - Orhan Pamuk, Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi, Where have all the leaders gone? - Lee Iacocca, Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy). Also, this month in our book club at work we're reading 'A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier' by Ishmael Beah. It looked like a compelling story, and I am looking forward to reading it. I will write short reviews on all once I am done and feel inspired enough to!

Then, to top it off, I accidentally invented a salad that tasted amazing! See the recipe here:

http://hithertocluelesscook.blogspot.com/

I must thank my co-worker who insisted that salads were delicious even when self invented, because of whom I decided to experiment with the ingredients. Also, I was very hungry, and my stove seemed to like to stay warm but not get hot! I'm still figuring out my new cooking appliances. Seems like the stove and the oven like to mull over things before kicking into action, so I'm going to have to plan my cooking around their slow starts! Ah, life's little challenges.

100,000 Fireflies

2009-05-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

My current favorite song, I have my sister to thank for it! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvSY4NYkySM

The Tap Project

2009-05-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the toughest challenge faced by many in the world today is the lack of access to safe clean water and adequate sanitation. Statistics such as "1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2 billion people lack access to safe sanitation" don't always provide a meaningful and compelling message. I found a video and a UNICEF project that was very well made, and I thought I would share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0zBxDFg7YM

Tulips for my Purple Soul

2009-04-15T22:51:00.000-07:00

2009-04-14T00:41:00.001-07:00

I seem to be drawn to doing things when I have more important things to do. Like reading a book I have been meaning to get to for ages, when I have an exam the next day, or cooking when I should be doing my taxes, or blogging when I should be asleep, or sleeping when I should be writing, eating when I should be packing, or watching a movie when I should be eating.

Netflix is astute!

2009-04-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

It tells me I like 'Feel good movies with a strong female lead'. :)
Haha! I am always amazed at intelligent websites.

'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham

2009-04-11T01:35:00.000-07:00

Last month I finally read 'The Hours'. I have loved the movie for years, and have watched it several times. I wasn't really expecting anything from the book, but I was wonderfully surprised. The writing is beautiful, and the descriptions vivid. The reason I wasn't expecting to be swept away was because I knew every scene, every dialogue from the movie, I expected my visalization of the book to be pre-set. I thought that when I finished the book, I wouldn't have anything more in my head, than the movie. However, Michael Cunningham is such a talented writer, that I found myself not thinking about the movie at all, but re-creating his book in my mind as I read it! I couldn't help but think of the same actors that played the characters, but every scene was unique and very good!

A couple of excerpts at random that I particularly enjoyed:

Clarissa crosses Eighth Street. She loves, helplessly, the dead television set abandoned on the curb alongside a single white patent leather pump. She loves the vendor's cart piled with broccoli and peaches and mangoes, each labeled with an index card that offers a price amid abundances of punctuation: "$1.49!!" "3 for ONE Dollar!?!" "50 Cents EA".!!!!!" Ahead, under the Arch, an old woman in a dark, neatly tailored dress appears to be singing, stationed precisely between the twin statues of George Washington, as warrior and politician, both faces destroyed by weather. It's the city's crush and heave that move you; its intricacy, its endless life.

The neighbourhood was once the center of something new and wild; something disreputable; a part of the city where the sound of guitars drifted all night out of bars and coffeehouses; where the stores that sold books and clothing smelled the way she imagined Arab bazaars must smell : incense and rich, dung-y dust, some sort of wood (cedar? camphor?), something fruitily, fertilely rotting; and where it had seemed possible, quite possible, that if you passed through the wrong door or down the wrong alley you would meet a fate: not just the familiar threat of robbery and physical harm but something more perverse and transforming, more permanent.

It's been a while.

2009-04-10T00:24:00.001-07:00

I suddenly want to write again.

A Beatles Memory?

2008-09-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

Do you have a memory associated with a Beatles song, album, movie, or anything associated with the Beatles? If yes, check out www.magicalmemorytour.com.
They're doing a study of memories and how people retrieve them. You have a chance to add to their study database.

Libraries

2008-08-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

I was asked a few months ago whether I thought libraries were necessary anymore in this age of the internet. I was shocked initially, as I cannot imagine a world without them and then realized that one cannot explain the sense of bliss that comes with being in a library - it has to be experienced. I love walking into a large library fully knowing that I will not read every book here. Simply walking in the midst of a sea of alphabetical names...Nabokov, Nabor, Nabors, Nacci, Nacenta, Naff, Nai'an, Nakagami, Napier, Narada, Narayan, Nasatir...some known and most unknown is the best way I know to get my mind to space out and wander by itself. The point of a library is not just that it is a way for anyone and everyone to have access to vast quantities of books and reading materials, although that is certainly reason enough. I would never have room for anything if I bought every book that I read, let along any money left to rent a place to keep them! Humdrum details like space and money aside, libraries offer a haven for people who want to explore new things. It is easy to stroll about a pick up books at random based on titles that catch your fancy, or go with a particular book in mind and find its neighbour equally enchanting. I feel a sense of well being when surrounded by books people so immersed in what they're reading that hours fly by without notice.

I wish we had more money for public libraries in India. I wish more people in the US walked to their nearest library and picked up a book. I find it amazing that public libraries are absolutely free to anyone, and yet so few actually use them! However, that keeps them less crowded for me, so perhaps I shouldn't complain!

2008-08-21T23:28:00.000-07:00

Very short on time, so a blog post in phrases.

Mamma Mia!
Watching Pierce Brosnan sing is a reason to watch the movie in itself. The movie had a lot of whooping noises with several general exultations. It's the ABBA equivalent of Across the Universe and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Dark Knight
Loved it. Some of the best lines ever in a super hero movie- "The City deserves a better class of criminal." and "Do I look like I have a plan??" !

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
An absolute visual treat. Golden coloured screens except for when the shot is in New York. Funny, sometimes laugh out loud, mostly chuckle inducing.

War, Inc.
I watched this movie in a theatre where they serve dinner inside so it was a little distracting because the food was really good! The movie was funny in some parts, but mostly chaotic and bizarre.

The Pacific North West US - June, July 2008

2008-08-06T23:07:00.001-07:00

PhD Comics: The F1 student visa process explained

2008-07-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1033

PhD comics never fails to make me grin! :)

Happy Anniversary to me!

2008-06-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

It has been exactly one year since I started work! Hurrah! It has been a fun and eventful year at work, and it feels like much longer!

Also, last weekend was commencement at Stanford; the first one I attended as alumna. Oprah's speech was good, but not spectacular. She did give out free gifts as I had predicted. No, not a car to everybody in the stadium, but 2 books to each graduate. All said and done, commencement is a wonderful day to be on campus. Everyone looks so happy, they glow :)

What's in your soup today?

2008-02-24T22:48:00.000-08:00

In a fancy Indian restaurant today, I overheard sambhar being described as a thick soup consisting of 35 ingredients! That got me thinking about what they were. Thirty five?! I think it's more along the lines of twenty. However I have no idea what goes into making sambhar powder, as in my house we always bought MTR sambhar powder. Let me get a list started...please add to it if you know!
1. Water
2. Dal
3. Tamarind
4. Turmeric
5.Salt
6.Chilli powder
7.Curry leaves
8.Potatoes
9.Drumsticks
10.Carrots
11. Onions
12. Dhaniya

Stereotypes and more

2008-02-17T00:48:00.000-08:00

Stereotypes are such a joke.
Not everyone who does yoga shuns antibiotics. Not everyone who is from India believes in a God. Not everyone from India speaks Hindi. Not every Indian likes spicy food. Not everybody from famous schools is intelligent. Some environmental engineers think global warming is a joke. There are many environmental engineers who don't recycle, or conserve water. Not everybody single in the age bracket 18-30 is looking for a relationship. Not every woman in a relationship wants to get married. A dancer need not enjoy performances for an audience. Not everyone wants to get over their ex boyfriend or girlfriend and move on. Not everyone who doesn't get into another relationship is pining for their ex boyfriend or girlfriend. Not everyone who goes to business school wants to make pots of money. Actually, not everybody wants to make pots of money. Not everybody finds pointy toed high heels pretty. Opposites attract, as well as extremely similar people. Not everybody who works in the 'tech' industry works with chips or computers.
That got me thinking about what, if any, were eternally true. I think:
1. Everybody dies eventually.
2.Snooty people are annoying.
3. Rich and snooty people who have no clue or are apathetic that millions live in abject poverty are the worst on the annoying scale.
4. Drinking and driving is an awful idea.

Will add more when I can think of them!

...and those who do not travel read only a page.***

2008-01-18T03:29:00.000-08:00

Since I got a little tired of writing the previous post, I ended it abruptly. Here's the rest of it.

10. From Heaven Lake
A lovely read, this is a travelogue of Vikram Seth's travels (mostly as a hitchhiker) through China, and Tibet, with an end goal of reaching Delhi sometime. I loved his travel style, hitchhiking on trucks and living a very non-tourist like life. And yes, he spoke Chinese fluently. I don't believe it would have been possible otherwise. Read this book to enjoy Vikram Seth's writing style, a glimpse into ordinary day life in China in the 80s, and for stunning bits of musings that are true of all travel. When I wiki this book, the lines quoted are the lines that strike me as true for many of us, and I quote them here:
" Increasingly of late, and particularly when I drink, I find my thoughts drawn into the past rather than impelled into the future. I recall drinking sherry in California and dreaming of my earlier student days in England, where I ate dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias. "

11. Maximum City

Having gotten rave reviews of this book from my friends, I honestly expected much better. Perhaps I shouldn't have, but the book ended up disappointing me to an extent. I found interesting to read the sections about the mafia, the funding of the Bollywood industry, the police force, diamond merchants, and other such things that I knew nothing about, but found the writer to be completely daft about water quality, water and sewer issues in general, and life in India. This led to me question how accurate his descriptions about the rest of the book were. I wouldn't read it again, but would say it is worth reading it once to see what the hype is all about.

12. The Golden Gate

The novelty of a novel in verse would have in itself been enough to make me want to read this book. The fact that it's by Vikram Seth (let's all take a moment here to drool and wonder about the wonder of this man) made that a need. And it does not disappoint. Please read. The novel is set in the Bay Area, and revolves around the lives of some central characters, and is entirely in rhyming verse. A true delight for a connoisseur of words.

13. The Namesake

Yes, this is one of several (even the word 'several' is an understatement) works of immigrant angst/emotion/feelings/whatever, and the story has nothing extraordinary in it that couldn't be found elsewhere, yet I really enjoyed the book. Truly did. I am not sure why. I could have been in a very sentimental frame of mind when I read it (and that is entirely possible), or it could just be that it's a simple and honest story, moving and compelling at times, and makes you want to read it all the way till the end, and makes you wish you knew what happens till everyone dies. The movie too, I enjoyed! I think this book is worth a read. The writing is surprisingly different from 'The Interpreter of Maladies', and perhaps this is not surprising because of the fundamental differences between short stories and novels, but if I didn't know that they were both written by Jhumpa Lahiri, I couldn't have identified the writer as being the same for both.

14. The Kite Runner

Spanning between several decades and a couple of countries, the story is about a man with ghosts in his childhood, which was spent in Afghanistan. He sets about trying to deal with those ghosts by revisiting the country he fled as a refugee years ago, and rescuing the son of an old friend who he hasn't seen since his escape. The writing was average, and the story mediocre. I did not enjoy this book much. It was too similar to a Hindi soap opera trying to stun its audience's emotions.

15. The Ground Beneath Her Feet

The story of rock stars and their origins in Parsi homes in Bombay, this tale of love and madness (as in lunacy, not passion) is enthralling and captivates as expected. But something's not quite as right as it was in Salman Rushdie's earlier writing. Don't get me wrong, I loved this book and would read it again. Rushdie is still Rushdie, and the magic of his writing remains, but this book is no comparison to Midnight's Children. Maybe I just loved Midnight's Children too much, and expected to be swept off my feet by this book as well.
An aside: I got to see the street where Midnight's Children is based, and visit the homes that form the centre of the story!!! I got a big kick out of it.

Have you read anything good of late? Leave me a note, and I will check it out!

***The title is one of my favourite quotes of all times.

The World is a Book...

2008-01-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

The great thing about having a long commute to work is the uninterrupted* time I get to read. This precious time was the perhaps the only** thing I missed while I was a graduate student. Over the past six months, I've read books I've been meaning to read forever, re-read old favourites, and laboured through books that I should never have picked up. Some of the books that came my way are:

1. In Spite of the Gods - The Strange Rise of Modern India

I loved this book. Edward Luce writes intelligently about India's economy, politics, castes, Hindu nationalism, the Congress party, India-China, and other little delightfully analysed aspects of Indian life. Since he had personally interviewed most of the 'key' players as a journalist for the Financial Times, I found his quotes believable. His language is simple. Although his prose is not exquisite by any means, the book is an enjoyable read. One never gets the feeling one is being talked to by an idiot. I will definitely read it again.

2. Thief of Time

What can I say about Thief of Time that cannot be said about any Pratchett? Wonderfully irreverent, this is a book that makes me laugh out loud at several spots.Veena and I can go into peals of giggles by quoting bits of Pratchett to each other. The only other author who has the same effect is Wodehouse. Readable a million times over.

3. The Red Tent

I would not recommend this to someone short on time, or usually impatient with writers. This story is supposed to be the old testament, written from the point of view of the women in the story. What it amounts to is basically 'and then so and so and so and so went into a tent for the next 7 days and had sex', or 'when his honour was at stake he killed everybody he could see'. I haven't read the old testament yet, but I have been told it goes very similarly. Thus the story runs true to its inspiration. The one thing I did find interesting was to read about the customs of the times, and to get some of the biblical stories and names straight in my head. Would not read it again.

4.Isabel's Bed

This was one of the several chick-lits I read. Read it to learn about the travails of being a ghostwriter for an infamous celebrity in whose bed died a very rich old man, because he was shot by his wife, a very rich old lady who is also a little crazy. That's really about it. Also there is a Greek man, and a hunk of a carpenter/odd job man, and a beautiful house on the beach thrown in to make things more interesting. Rather sure I will not read this ever again.

5. My Sister's Keeper

I expected very little from this book, and it surprised me. The story is of a 14 (15?) year old who wants medical emancipation from her parents, because she is tired of being her sister's donor all the time. The book raised interesting issues such as rights over one's body, and how old people have to be before they can make their own medical decisions. It also was quite a compelling story, with each chapter written in first person from a different person's point of view. I must admit I was drawn into the characters and the story, and liked the book all in all. I wouldn't read it again, however.

6. Middlesex

I didn't hate this book, but nor did I love it. I got the feeling through several parts of the book that the writer was trying to write clever prose, but it mostly ended up sounding very contrived. There were sections where this did not happen, but they were few. The book could also have raised more issues about gender and sex, however in the interest of writing cleverly, the writer left out what would have been an insightful debate as to what constitutes an individual, and how much of a role ones gender has to do with it. Some portions were vividly well written, but a lot were draggy, and annoying. It felt a little like meeting someone at a party who really wanted you to like them, but at the same time wanted to project a snooty image of themselves. However interesting or clever they actually are, it is sort of already ruined.

7. Tales of the City (and its sequels More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, and Michael Tolliver Lives)

I loved this series as much as I loved Anne of Green Gables as a twelve year old. Which is a lot. The first book introduces a set of varied characters, most of them twenty-somethings, living in San Francisco. Some of them have been living there forever, and some have just moved there. Some of them are gay, some are lesbian, some are bisexual, and some are transsexual. Most of them live as tenants in a house on Barbary Lane, with their landlady Anna Madrigal ('a grand animal' indeed!) The books follow these characters lives through the gay pride movement, the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, the Vietnam war, the Beatles becoming The Beatles, John Lennon's assassination, the Jonestown massacre, and their own personal trials and tribulations. A lovely read. Highly recommended. Oh and if you like Laura Linney, watch the television series based on these books.

8. Seabiscuit

This book was the biggest surprise of all. Actually a book of history, it reads like a novel because of the nature of the story. The story of a horse, and of the times it lived in. Times that were fast changing because of the automobile revolution, and the Great Depression. Supplemented by photographs, the book is a long (and gripping!) account of the career of Seabiscuit, and horse racing in America. I started off knowing absolutely nothing about racing, and ended up knowing enough to be able to appreciate how unique Seabiscuit actually was. I haven't watched the movie yet, and the book hasn't compelled me to. I have however read this book a couple of times already, and would highly recommend it as a way to learn about horses, and the early 20th century in America.

9. An Assembly Such as This - A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman

A ghastly disappointment. Pride and Prejudice seen through the eyes of a Darcy that is stupid, and sappy, it made my Austen-loyal heart figuratively weep. Readers beware, this is part 1 of 3, and I haven't read the other 2 parts yet. Some might argue, that I might be averse to any interpretations of Pride and Prejudice, being so in love with the original. I beg to differ. I am one of the few lovers of the book who also loved the BBC miniseries, and the Keira Knightley version ardently. Unfortunately I saw where Matthew Macfadyen got his lines from. While he has the pizazz to carry off the slightly sappy and dreamy Darcy, this book adds stupid to the mixture and ruins everything. Please do not read unless you're a Pride and Prejudice freak like me and just have to read it.

*Except when Udit gets off work the same time I do (this is rare, one of us almost always stays late) and we're on the phone, or when a fellow passenger strikes up a conversation, or when I'm practising a pitch about our non profit for someone, or when I want to space out and stare at the rolling Californian hills, and then the un-bustling city of Oakland, or when I'm making one of my lists.

**Well, I missed having money too, but one gets used to foraging for free food, and wearing old shoes.

2007-08-30T21:17:00.000-07:00

What's your favourite Beatles song?
Mine's been 'Hey Jude', 'Across the Universe', 'Till There Was You', 'From Me to You', 'Penny Lane', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Yesterday', 'When I'm Sixty Four'.

2007-08-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

Armistead Maupin is the Wodehouse of my 20s.

2007-08-15T23:39:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't forgotten about you. I've just been very busy. Really.

2007-05-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

I start work in about 3 weeks, and I'm rather excited about it! I'm going to pour my whole being into being a good environmental engineer. I'm also going to cook for myself on the weekdays so I don't eat junk, and don't spend all my money away, bake so that I can eat lots of cake and my house smells nice, read on the BART everyday during my daily (considerable) commute, go for a run, stretch everyday, and learn Spanish. Also I have resolved that the following are to be done, hard though they may seem now:

1. I will write in my journal everyday, after I start work.
2.I will not be late.
3.I will not mope about San Francisco being far from Portland.
4.I will take lots of pictures and update my Flickr page often.
5.I will read the news everyday.
6.I will stop eating so many Triscuits. (Gosh I'm so addicted!)

If you know me and I'm not doing any of the above please remind me of how strong my resolve was.

My new city..

2007-05-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

I've moved around a lot growing up, so moving day isn't looked at as a strange and scary phenomenon. In fact, after spending some time in a place, my mind automatically wanders to where I should move to next. Of late, my erstwhile itinerant mother has come to tsk tsk this aspect of my personality (among other aspects, such as my un-domesticability, or refusal to be akin to a chemical precipitate and settle down), but what to do, we are like that only.

Anyway, here's my new home. Isn't it pretty?! For those of you who are familiar with it, isn't it amazing how you can see right down Market St all the way through the financial district, to the Bay?

2007-05-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

Does association with people change us? If it doesn't, does it mean they have no impact on us, and if so is that relationship meaningless?

If you're going to San Francisco...

2007-05-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

Looking for a nice apartment (read: nice defined as in a neighbourhood where there haven't been over 5 breaking-in-and-entries, or a handful of car thefts, or a couple of assaults in the last 90 days) that I can afford (Hah. Yeah right.), has been an agonising process. But today I saw them!! Three apartments that I actually loved. Imagine walking into a house that you can just see yourself live in. And whoop with joy at the prospect !! (But only internally because you don't want to appear over eager) This is what happened not once, but thrice today!

Something I noticed about the nice apartments I've seen in San Francisco- they have character. And possible stories. And idiosyncracies. Sometimes they're bright pink, or olive green, or have large bay windows with streaming light into your bedroom, or a little nook behind the kitchen for no reason, or a house built along a long corridoor, or a surprise garden and yard, or a windy balcony. I haven't really seen this in the South bay. If I'm wrong, (and I hope I am because I feel a pang of Stanford annoyance whenever anyone calls South bayers boring), I'd love to know where these awesome places are!

p.s: If you're wondering about the title - Scott McKenzie.

Umm..

2007-05-07T16:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29690

A rant post in itself, and also in memory of all those that didn't get posted..

2007-04-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has applied for an H1 visa this year might either agree or disagree with me on the following. These are my views on this situation, and the reason why I have them down here is because this is my blog. (It's funny how a lot of people forget that the ownership of a blog belongs solely to the writer and not to its readers!). I wonder why I am even stating that at the outset of this post, or rather at the outset of my resuming writing on this blog, but since I felt like it,it's there. Anyhow, on with what I wanted to write about today.

The desperation with which people react to the possibility that they may not work in the United States irks me to no end. Yes it's true that perhaps yours or my plans to work with the company one has decided to work with may not materialise in the long run. Does this mean that ones life is now meaningless? I have heard, over the past two days, ridiculous statements like 'We're screwed because we're from Stanford and our graduation date is on the 5th of April; if only it was 20th March or something like that.' That someone can even think of reducing their graduate school experience to the date on which their degree is conferred on them is so preposterous!

The mad rush in getting H1 visas is understandable to me, that you'd like to get your paperwork on time. But the despondency I see in people around me is so totally unwarranted! What is the absolute WORST thing that can happen? You, or I, will not get a work visa to work in the United states. Nobody is dying, or falling sick, or anything awful like that.Yes it will take longer to pay off student debt, yes it might even be that you cannot get your perfect job in India, or whichever other non U.S country you chose to work in next, but is that the end of the world??!

People are employable in a number of different ways, and an advanced graduate degree from an institution like Stanford should make one even more useful, and applicable in more situations than one was 4 or 5 years ago!Everyone I have met at University is so wonderfully talented in so many different ways, and to have these same people sit around sighing about the visa situation gets on my nerves. Gah complaining and whining is such a waste of human energy!

Resolve.

2007-02-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

I have decided to write more often.

Things I often think of writing about but do not end up writing about because I feel it wont come out just right are:
*drumroll
(but in no particular order)
1.Why the environment should be everybody's concern
2.Climate change
3.Al Gore
4.Totto Chan
5.Why grad school at Stanford is amazing
6.What does one look for in the perfect job?
7.Hyderabad!
8.The Hours
9.Pride and Prejudice (again)
10.Ayn Rand
11.Trees
12.My trip to Nicaragua
13.Development work in the world

Not half a world away anymore..

2006-12-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

After a year and a quarter of grad school, I'm finally going home tomorrow!!!

While on the one hand I cannot believe I have not been home in that long, it also strangely feels like I've known my Stanford friends, and this campus, forever.

Tomorrow is going to be the longest day in the history of my life..I can hardly wait! A whole month of friends and family, many dosas at eat street and more, eating chaat at random bandis, fab india kurtas, wearing open sandals and not having my toes freeze in the process, weddings, junk jewellery at shilparamam, and driving my trusty car! College and school reunions, formal and informal, meeting old teachers, bumping into random friends at restaurants and hang out places, kbr park, fresh juice at the stall next to it, chocolate pastry at baker's inn, the chocolate pyramid at prasadz, view point and secret lake,Helix sessions, sleepovers and girly movie nights, travel by train and bus, watching movies with intervals, television, my bean bag, my purple and white and pink wispy curtains, my gorgeous rocking chair, pretty blue wall, dazzling orange backdrop against which to watch the sky turn a myriad colours every evening, lazy mornings with the Hindu crossword, filter coffee, and silly jokes that you just have to be there for.

In short, I'm coming home! Call me at my old home number if you know it, or mail me to meet up!

2006-10-30T21:46:00.000-08:00

An article my dad sent me today about how pachyderms could possibly recognise themselves in the mirror!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000708_2.html?nav=rss_nation/special

I think it's fascinating! I know that my dog would not recognise himself in the mirror. He'd get awfully mad at seeing some other dog at such close quarters in the house. And jealous at seeing some other dog cuddled up with me or my sister.

How much does the test say about consciousness though? Not much, I think.

A quick search on the internet yields another interesing article..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1869580,00.html

2006-10-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

Unmoved and firm, the earth
lay around the tree
in the morning.
A grad student day
passes by, and by
the glow of a street light
the yellow leaves now lay
in soft and excavated earth.
Yet the tree remains-
despite being the pivot of
the construction zone,
fuelled by wealthy philanthropists
that my university is noted for.
Its leaves fall just as before.
Is it unbothered of the change
around it, or does it
resolve to not change in
the face of a changing world?

2006-10-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

Salman Rushdie said very aptly, and in my opinon very wittily, that atheists are obsessed with god. I would include agnostics too. To think about something and chew it in one's head, read about it, mull it over some more, and then decide that one does not believe in something takes a lot more effort than believing something without thinking about it. That said, I must add here that I do know of many people who have given considerable thought to their faith and still continue to believe in it.
Having talked to many, many, many people of many faiths (as I said, I'm obsessed with why people believe in god, and religion), I see that in the end, after all the rational thought and logic, it boils down to faith. In the end, after all the discussion and the logic trees and the various implications of each assumption are deduced, it becomes a matter of whether you buy it or not.
And I don't. I haven't seen a convincing enough argument to.
The lex parsimoniae (or the law of succinctness, commonly known as Occam's razor) says that complicating things beyond what is required often loses some of the truth. That is, the simplest explanation that assumes the least, is the best one. Thus, to explain the world, I find the simplest solution to be that there is no divine purpose, there is no heaven, nor hell. We exist because planetary conditions evolved such that organic molecules could be created out of inorganic ones. And the inorganic ones came from the Big Bang. Yes, there comes a point where given today's information, we cannot yet explain everything about when the universe began, but the best explanation is not provided by god. God and religion are not the simplest explanation - chance is.

Mr. Darcy

2006-10-09T04:39:00.000-07:00

I have often wondered about why so many of us fall madly in love with Mr.Darcy. He is rather arrogant, foolishly quick to judge, carried away by emotion, quite sappy at times, and conversationally rather challenged! Even the many of us who crave conversation, and cannot keep quiet to save our lives, persist in this infatuation with this brooding, sombre, and tight lipped man who wore tights and other most unflattering trousers!
Are we, as ardent fans, as frivolous as Elizabeth Bennet - liking him for his money? I would think not, as what do we get from this fictional money anyway? I think a more plausible explanation is that a lot of people fall for the brooding sort anyway, and Darcy epitomises that whole category of guys. Then of course there's the turn-around-and-fall-in-love-with-everyone's-favourite-Bennet-sister-of-them-all factor to be considered. Honestly, nothing makes me like a guy more than when I like the woman he's in love with!
A slightly tangential thought- does every generation grow accustomed to the prevailing Darcy? To me Darcy is best played by Colin Firth. Macfadyen fell too easily in love with Elizabeth, didn't come off as the haughty and snooty aristocrat that Darcy is supposed to be, and all in all was too 'nice' to be Darcy. But will the regular 12 year old today think Macfadyen plays the perfect Darcy? Are we getting softer and softer on him with every remake of the story?
I loved the character played by Macfadyen in the 2005 make of Pride and Prejudice, I just don't think it really was Darcy.

There's such a lot of world to see..

2006-10-05T02:32:00.000-07:00

One year has flown by and while a lot has happened in it, I still feel like not much has changed. Oh yes, there are more people, more places, more things known, learned, some forgotten, friends made, friends lost, books read, movies watched, new food eaten, new flavours tasted, new habits learned, mountains climbed - some literally and others metaphorically, disappointments, successes, boredom, excitement, all were dutifully present. But I still feel like not much has changed. In me. Or the world.

I love believing these online tests :)

2006-07-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

Your Birthdate: April 30

You have the type of personality that people either love or hate.You're opinionated, dramatic, intense, and very outspoken.And some people can't get enough of you - they're totally addicted.Others, well, they wish you were a little more reserved.
Your strength: Your flair
Your weakness: If you think it, you say it
Your power color: Scarlet red
Your power symbol: Inverted triangle
Your power month: March

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

2006-07-11T19:54:00.000-07:00

Reality: I live in a world where I've had to make (too often) a phone call to a friend's cell phone, hoping like crazy the call gets answered, so I know my friend's ok. It's becoming common place to quickly recall people's schedules and modes of transport, to rack ones brains for phone numbers not saved in the contacts list, and the gut wrenching minutes/hours of not being able to reach the person.
Hope everyone you know is doing ok. I wish I could say the same about everyone in general, but obviously that's not true.

Here's to Bombay- I love you, dear city; please come back to being yourself.

How to know about Esoteric Pandora in 6 steps.

2006-06-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

Having been tagged by Laasya, and we being kindred spirits and not having ever not done something when the other person said "hey, check this out", and so on and so forth (*high five!), here goes:
(Oh and if that double negative was too difficult for you to handle here are some tips
1.Don't drink so much
2.Think logically, and in steps).

6 unusual facts about myself

(obviously ones that are strange enough to be unusual to most people and yet not that strange that people will not feel comfortable with me in the same room :p)

1.I love using double negatives. Actually not, but I just had to say that after my double negative delux edition above. I like playing with words, as you can see. I love words.
2.I love eating plain rice, and ice cubes. I also love tons of other food, but these are my favourites.
3.My strongest crushes/attractions/falling in loves have been with fictional characters.
4.I love buying stationery, sweets, books, jewellery, and fruit. In no fixed order. I have phases of favouritism.
5.I keep in touch with all the people in my life. Some more than the others, but all nonetheless. I like to.
6.I have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell.
7.I don't like sticking to arbitrary rules like "6 things unusual".
8.I love being unusual.
9.I always imagine how it would be to leave a place, almost as soon as I get there. The day I actually feel a little bad about leaving the place, I know I'm beginning to feel at home. Yes, that is the way I gauge it.
10. I like watching reruns more than watching things for the first time.
11. I never get sick of some movies and books, just like I never get sick of rice or dosa.
12. I can pick the perfect tamarind for myself off a tree.
13. I don't think of things as virtues or faults. I believe every trait could be either, depending on the person who has it.

Ok..and I tag Veena, Payne, Venkat, Partha, Subir, Anisha, Shanswam, Cheery Cynic, Aditi, Somik, Becky, Appu to do it. And if you don't want to, then don't.If you don't want to because it's a "public space" (make scary noises at this juncture) then send me your answers privately! I'm curious to know what you think is unusual about yourself. Oh and people I have not tagged, please feel free to do this and send me a link!

So what's good about the caste system?

2006-05-31T21:46:00.000-07:00

The fact that a headline such as Role reversal: Brahmins seek low caste jobs is not considered offensive disturbs me.
A popular news source claims that it is 'ironic' that Brahmins seek jobs as sweepers in the Lucknow Municipal Corporation.

Why is it considered ironic? Why, in today's world, do people still believe that ones caste determines what career one must choose? And if they don't believe that, why and how is it ironic?

Only when we stop asking people which caste they are from, will this ridiculous problem end.
Look at Race Blind for inspiration. I truly believe this is the most easy and quick solution.

Gender bias - a ubiquitous phenomenon

2006-05-31T21:35:00.000-07:00

I have an amazing flatmate, whose work ethic continues to inspire me every time we talk. Pursuing a doctoral degree in ecology and evolution, coming from a mathematics background, gives her a wonderfully different perspective on what she studies. So we were chatting this evening, as I ate bhel puri made by her (she's also an awesome cook!) and she was telling me what she had been upto the past few days. So it turns out that she'd been reviewing a paper for a journal (a paper on ants, which she's a stud in:) ), and because of the fact that a lot of her comments were largely technical, the authors of the paper automatically assumed her to be a guy!
"We thank Reviewer #4 for his insightful comments on our blah blah"

To read and experience vicariously

2006-05-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

http://knownturf.blogspot.com/2006/03/streets-stories-strategies.html

For all those out there who haven't had it happen to them.

Read the comments too.

What's noticeable is that each and every comment to that post is a mini blog post in itself. Reading about, or talking to someone else's personal experince with street harassment always elicits personal stories from people.

Spring is here, and Stanford is as pretty as ever

2006-05-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

I realise that I become far too attached to places. I have only a year left here, and I miss it already, a year from now.

Plagiarism

2006-05-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

The recent controversy over Kaavya Viswanathan's book 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, got Wild, and Got a Life' having passages directly lifted from Megan McCafferty's books (Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings) has re-asked the more metaphysical question : Is any thought truly original?
(It re-asked it in a rather circuitous manner, starting with phrases like 'literary inspiration')
If all of our thoughts and ideas are influenced by everything we read and see, are we still capable of original thought?
Why, yes, an amalgamantion of different ideas, or a twist of various nuances can lead to a different take on the same thing. But what about a completely un-thought thought? Does it exist?

I know that depending on whether I last read Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, Gerald Durrell, or Roald Dahl, my instinctive funny retort to anything varies in flavour and language. I distinctly remember Jhumpa Lahiri categorically saying that she stayed away from reading while she wrote her books, because she found herself following a certain language or style. (Obviously this makes me feel less idiotic, because I adore Jhumpa Lahiri's work and think she's genius)

If Rowling had lost the plagiarism case against her (Nancy Stouffer claimed Rowling lifted Harry Potter from her book's theme and character of Larry Potter), would it have made 'Harry Potter' any less important, and any less of an influence in people's lives today?

When people brainstorm, the idea is to build on other people's ideas, as well as come up with your own. Isn't all of science based on using what is already known to further that which is known? Then what is the problem in the world of contemporary literature? Is it only a matter of credit not being given where due?

Does it affect anything at all, that the works which have been copied weren't that popular? Has any really popular work been re-written, or been written a sequel to, that was as popular as the original? I haven't read the sequel to Gone with the Wind but I heard (from my Mom:) ) it was terrible.

I just searched the internet for sequels to Pride and Prejudice and to my absolute surprise they exist! Not one, but TWO!! Ok, enough of this post, I'm finding these books.

p.s: To those who don't know me and might wonder at the abruptness of the ending of the post, Pride and Prejudice is one my absolute favourite stories ever. Enough said.

2006-05-05T23:36:00.000-07:00

I have amazing moments of clarity in which even if everything doesn't make sense, atleast it makes sense that it doesn't. Documenting these moments of clarity doesn't always help, because the epiphany often comes with a certain experience, and transscribing it in a journal, or a blog, takes away its epiphany-ness.

Yet, as long as the scribbled something reminds me of what I discovered, it serves it purpose! (The purpose being my epiphany not being lost to myself!)

2006-05-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

2006-05-05T02:13:00.000-07:00

HAHA the genius who created http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=331
is going to be on campus tomorrow! Yahoo!!!

most important day of the year!

2006-05-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH YOU'RE 18!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT!!!!!!!! *shock*

:)

happy birthday to you,
happy birthday TO you
happy BIRTHday dear veena
HAPPy birthday to you!

*hug*

2006-05-04T10:27:00.001-07:00

Grave injustice is being done to the poetess, she says, if I don't blog about this.
I agree! :)

So here's the email I got a couple of hours before the clock struck midnight on my birthday:

A masquerade awaits you ... someplace you know not yet.
Till midnight fair maiden - you have to finish your quest.
A crucial task is upon you
as for your party you must bring
food to feed the hungry
and refreshments akin.

But where do these goodies lie?

Aaaah! Thats your quest
Before midnight you must find - food to feed the rest.
They're hidden around the school so large - in places far and near
find them you must - for us you hold so dear.

Clue #1Your search will bear fruit
when you help those marooned.
the key to your success lies with you.
(when you get there ask an old friend for advice.)

I clapped in *glee* and my excitement knew no bounds! I had one of the most awesome birthdays ever, THANK YOU ALL!!!! Love you people!!!! :)

2006-05-01T20:23:00.000-07:00

The great thing about my 22nd birthday was that it was an entire weekend! :)

Saturday was my birthday in India, where I was born, thus it was my real birthday. But since I now live here, Sunday was my birthday according to the calendar! What an awesome thing!

Birthdays are the best times of the year! Even when I was a little kid I could never sleep properly the night before my birthday in the sheer excitement of the fact that that the next day was THE DAY. I find it very strange, and a little sad, when other people do not get as excited about their birthdays. Aren't they missing out on something of their own volition?

Incidentally, an observation, with the advent of orkut and facebook, the number of people who say 'happy birthday' increases so drastically! I love it!

2006-04-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow isn't promised to anyone.

2006-04-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

To work, to work, is the chant
of all grad students, whether studying Bentham or Kant.
Assignments on time, all extra problems done
Else the point of having come here seems undone.
The lectures, discussions are dinner and lunch
Sometimes nothing works, and it's only a hunch
that tells me there's a point to this all,wait and see
Too busy now to just be.
But then comes a day just like today
and everthing seems to be going my way
or am I just looking at things the 'right' way?

2006-04-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

'Something Good'

The sounds of music reach me through the air
As I stride back home armed
with a Peppermint Mocha.
My neighbour whistles it as he heads out
to his lab? Perhaps
he will pass the protestors on his way.
For peace they chant slogans and sway,
undeterred in the face of opposition-
a burly guy with a large stick and a gun.
The band's out to have , as usual, some fun;
and generously give out chocolate icecream to passers by
who are just done with homeworks and meetings (TGIF!)
and gaze at the crowds with mild interest
shielding their eyes against the bright blue sky.

2006-04-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

I, a prosaic writer, am bored of prose. Well, of writing it, atleast.
So I try my hand rather sloppily at poetry. To be totally honest, I didn't try my hand at it. As I doodled with words on notepad, it sort of just drew itself.

Listen up.

2006-04-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

The following news article disturbed me

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?slug=Madurai+hostel+intrudes+on+teenage+privacy&id=86169&category=National

In short, a hostel in Madurai is more concerned about things that aren't any of its business (its wards private lives) and least bothered about things that are its business (sanitation facilities offered to its wards).

The question that really bothers me is this - Why does someone put up with it? Do they have no other hostel nearby? Is there no alternative? Isn't the poorness of service and invasion of privacy of this hostel a business opportunity for people to have better hostels with clean bathrooms and surety of privacy?

Does someone want a business idea? Build better hostels. Even in Mehdipatnam, in Hyderabad, where many of my friends stayed during their undergraduate education, hostel complaints were rampant. Isn't it possible to provide better living conditions for the women who are building their careers and their futures by studying, and/or working so hard?

A column by Barkha Dutt of NDTV

2006-03-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

Barkha DuttThursday, March 16, 2006

Swimming in the sea of India's cultural complexity has taught me that I can no longer carry my agnosticism lightly. Time has convinced me that my resistance to institutionalised religion is the defining character flaw of the progressive elite; a discordant note in an otherwise full-throated symphony; a disconnect so deep that sometimes people like me are just left watching from the side lines at the tumultuous fight for India's future; spectators, not participants because we speak the language of disbelief. But there are times, I am grateful that I am neither Hindu nor Muslim, but just a devout skeptic. Right now, is one such. Despite the lonely corner non -believers like myself inhabit, I am reasonably confident that the ordinary Indian is as mystified as me by the hysterical debate that has consumed our media these past few weeks. The theme song, actually it was a duet, went something like this-Hindutva is simmering under the surface, waiting to leap out from the political grave into the warm embrace of a new life; and "moderate Muslims" must speak, not just speak, they must shout, scream, holler, be heard, so that there is no "backlash." Apparently, the horrific twin blasts at Varanasi have given all this the force of an emergency. If I were either Hindu or Muslim, I would be deeply insulted at the generalised and simplistic assumptions made about me, my intelligence, and most importantly, my faith. On the evening of the blasts, Renuka Narayanan went on NDTV and said "Varanasi is to Hinduism what Mecca is to Islam, this is the seat of Hinduism that has been attacked." I can still feel the slight shudder that went down my spine. The stakes seemed so high. Gujarat 2002; New Delhi 1984, has made us forever fearful. The fear isn't entirely misplaced; every terror attack, especially those targeted at the nerve centres of faith, pushes us that much closer to the edge; to the precipice of polarisation. But the argument lapsed into absurdity, when the politicians began talking. If the Varanasi blasts were a consequence of the UPA's "minority appeasement", then how does one explain the shadow of terror that tailed India during the NDA regime? From Kandahar to the Parliament attack? If the blasts were a result of this government being "soft on terror" then how does one explain that there is no empirical difference in the level of violence today, when compared with last year? And has a shrill BJP forgotten that Atal Behari Vajpayee's lasting legacy is the creation of a peace process with Pakistan and a peace initiative with Kashmiri separatists?Bihar was proof that the NDA is a combative, shrewd political force that the UPA cannot afford to be complacent about. But surely there was a lesson in it for the BJP as well- another state won not on the strength of religious mobilisation but on the promise of change. Even the complex caste arithmetic could not save a Lalu Prasad Yadav; clearly identity politics could only travel this far, if governance and development were not equal companions on the journey. So no matter what the public opinion pundits write (and I suspect, even the BJP's master strategists may just have lifted the idea off the edit pages), I would argue that in the absence of an extraordinary event, religious identity is now more the EX-factor, than a decisive, intangible, X factor; Hindutva I think has served its time and outlived its political utility. All generalizations are a gamble, but I would take the risk and say that Middle India (as distinct from both the fundamentalists and the liberals) wants to travel down the Middle Path; the age of shrill rhetoric is over, Indians, are increasingly impatient with extremism of any kind, in any faith, Hindu or Muslim.I'm pretty sure that the ordinary Hindu, angry as he or she may be about the assault in Varanasi, and before that, Ayodhya, will also find L K Advani's Rath Yatra disingenuous and unnecessary; a poor caricature of himself.I'm equally sure, that if I were a Muslim in India today, I'd feel under siege; claustrophobically caught between those who claim to speak on my behalf, and those who are demanding that I must speak up as a "moderate." Lost in the cacophony of argument is the clarity of exactly what we are asking them to speak up against. If it's about the politicians like Haji Yaqoob Qureshi, the minister in Uttar Pradesh who dared to declare a reward of Rs 51 crore for the Danish cartoonist's head, Muslim after Muslim that I have interviewed has condemned him and asked that he be removed from the state government. It's a non-Muslim chief minister who continues to keep him in public office. It's India's party in power, the Congress, that continues to maintain a shameful silence on his utterances; the same Congress that will use textbook rules to secure a vindictive expulsion of Jaya Bachchan from Parliament is conveniently inert when it comes to Qureshi. And it's the Marxists, who need to march with Mulayam, who are silently looking the other way. So aren't newspaper columnists framing the question incorrectly? Sure, there is a conspiracy of silence, but look who is not talking.Or is it the anti-Bush protests that we are alarmed by and object to? Apparently the worry is that Indian Muslims are joining hands with the Global Islamic Community, if they march against Bush; that this heralds the ominous arrival of Political Islam at our doorstep. But isn't this a wildly insecure, and mostly hysterical reaction? First, the protests spoke for a fragment of Muslim opinion, and it would be presumptuous to assume that the protestors represented 14 million people. Secondly, so what if they don't like Bush? Why isn't their right to protest legitimate? This weekend, on We the People, a cross section of Muslims made the same point: to oppose George Bush's politics in Iraq is not the same thing as opposing a nuclear deal that's clearly good for India. To lose that distinction is to question the patriotism of the Indian Muslim, not just a dangerous argument, but also a deeply offensive one. Mehbooba Mufti from Kashmir summed it up when she said the cause of an Independent Kashmir had been championed by Islamic militants from as far as Sudan and Afghanistan, but never by an Indian Muslim outside of the valley. Are we becoming like the United States? Fearful of minorities? Alarmed at their assertion, superior and scornful about their conventions? Unable to see them as anything but the "other?" Finally, are media clichés the biggest disservice at a time like this? What or who do we mean by a Moderate Muslim? Mohammed Ali Jinnah was barely a believer, hardly followed the Quran, but created Pakistan. So who is "moderate" enough for us, and who sets the benchmarks? The day of the blasts, I got a call from a member of the Muslim Personal Law board, scared and worried about a "backlash", wanting to condemn the blasts on national television, so that nobody misunderstood their response. The subtext is clear. Fifty-nine years after India was born, in a country where there are more Muslims than there are in Pakistan, we are still asking Muslims to wear their nationalism like an identity card; we are still asking for proof of loyalty. This is not their failure. It is ours.

Eh?

2006-03-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni fears the introduction of women's property rights in Uganda will prompt marriages 'without love, and only with inheritance anticipation'.

What about right now in Uganda? Can't women marry men for property and not for love? How does passing an act giving women equal property rights make it more likely for that to happen?

Lucky me

2006-03-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

I think I can say for sure that I have the nicest friends in the whole wide world.
They can make me go from feeling absolutely miserable and cranky to positvely chirpy, and give me a stomach ache from making me laugh so much!

I want one!

2006-03-22T21:38:00.000-08:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146923853181774&q=apple+screen

Special thanks to Prashant and Rahul for telling me about it!

From the United Nations Human Development Report 2004

2006-03-22T17:39:00.000-08:00

Interesting statistics. Cannot write about them right now, but please do take a look at the numbers of the world in recent times!

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_HDI.pdf

Law of entropy?

2006-02-27T00:18:00.000-08:00

A re-hydrated and cooked dehydrated carrot just doesn't taste the same as a real one.

2006-02-15T23:07:00.000-08:00

What do I miss the most about India?

1.Fruit that smells real.
2.Markets that smell of the produce they sell.
3.Speaking different languages to the same person on the road and being understood perfectly.
4.Not having to think twice about eating out.
5.Chaat.
6.Sambhar.
7.Traffic.
8.Honking.
9.The clothes. The fabrics. The colours.The prints. Tie and dye. Kalamkari. Khadi.Cotton.
10.The smell of tea. Actually the smell of chai.
11. The smell of wet mud. The smell of the rain.
12.The myriad hues of the sky, sometimes violently purple and orange and pink all at the same time.

What will I miss the most when I leave Stanford? - Speculation.

1.The crisp, clean air.
2.The beautiful 'postcard perfect' sights that accost me around every corner.
3.The smell of wet wood chips strewn under trees.
4.The ubiquitous tortilla chips and salsa sauce.
5.The names of the roads.
6.The trees that turn red in the fall.
7.The clean roads.
8.The main quad.
9.Public bathrooms that have soap in their soap dispensers.

Snapshot of my life

2006-02-12T22:41:00.000-08:00

To be returned by the 3rd of April.
Looking forward to the days of eternal, benevolent, pretty sunshine, to curl up on a bench under some tree, or in the main quad, or on some random lawn with the above.

Don't be stupid, EAT.

2006-02-12T20:23:00.000-08:00

This post is for all the grad students out there. Eat. I'm not kidding. It's important. I know we tend to forget that, and our stomachs grow unaccustomed to food, and get really surprised every time we eat anything, but the point of food is that it is fuel. I know it seems like a waste of time, to buy groceries, cook, or even just go to a restaurant and eat, but we have to!
I know that this post will seem ridiculous to all those who live at home. Or to those who have a cafeteria or a mess that caters to their nutrition. But to all those who live on their own, who have to take care of their own meals, you know what I mean. You're going to die if you don't. And not dramatically; you're going to wither and then die.
So don't ignore those telltale signs - spots in your vision, waking up with a hurting knee, ankles that seem to get twisted for no reason, showers that leave you unconscious, colds that never go away, colds that visit every 3 weeks, skin peeling off your hands and legs, lethargy, sleepiness, sleeplessness, not feeling 'yourself', depression, missed periods, terrible mood swings, loss of short term memory, listlessness, indecisiveness, apathy, 'crazy behaviour', extreme irritation for no good reason...
(All these are symptoms that have been experiences by the grad students I know here..none are made up)

2006-02-11T16:34:00.000-08:00

Blogger seems to have had some problems. It made some people's blogs disappear entirely, leaving no trace behind. Luckily for me, only a couple of my posts went missing.

At Stanford I've been having an interesting education. Of late it's been technological, theatrical, and spiritual. Technological is obvious, as I'm studying engineering. Theatrical, because of 'Action'. And spiritual, because I'm a part of a religious discussion group every Tuesday where a group of us from different religions (there's Prof. Howard- a "practising Buddhist", Ibrahim and Haytham- "sunni Muslims", Chris - a "protestant", Somik- a "Hindu", Glen- a "pentecost parish priest", Rahul- an "orthodox Syrian Christian", Thomas - "brought up in the traditonal protestant church", Jeanie - a "Catholic", Aditi- a "liberal Hindu", and me- a "curious agnost". The quotes indicate the introductions people gave themselves). It's a fascinating discussion that always ensues, starting from the historical perspectives of things, getting down to the theological aspects of it. Just knowing what each of the introductions meant was a great learning experience in itself!

This comes at a very opportune time for me, when I'm trying to decide on whether there is a god, and whether religion helps at all in anything.

I'm also attending a Vedanta class every Sunday, which follows my yoga class. It's a fascinating discussion group, again, where the philosophy of Vedanta as written in Vivekananda's essays is read out and discussed. I'm quite happy to note that out of the zillion questions in my mind, some have been asked by a lot of people, who have thought a lot about them. I"m trying to see if the answers they came up with answer any of my questions satisfactorily.

I'm so glad I'm at Stanford right now !

Happy Chinese New Year!

2006-01-28T22:24:00.000-08:00

The first thing I heard this morning from Lan as I groggily made my much needed cup of coffee was that it was the Chinese New Year's Eve. After the whole day of doing those things I do, I get online, and find this Chinese prediction for my year ahead. It starts with a little description of me (a Rat) and I think it's pretty accurate! (except for the first line:p)

The rat is known for its easy-to-get-along-with nature. Hard-working and thrifty are its other qualities. Those born in the year of rat have a tendency to be generous only with those they are fond of. On the surface, rat people may appear reserved, but beneath the veneer they are bright, happy, sociable and cherish their close friends, associates and family. If you are born in the rat year, the year ahead is all about consolidating your position at work, being flexible and open-minded in your approach. Success is yours for the taking; however, your perseverance will be tested at times. Handling contingencies with professional guidance and instinct will be the key to achieving your dreams this year. Those connected with the media or entertainment industry move towards fame and recognition. Love life is interesting for the single and searching. You find true love and a compassionate mate during November-December. You enjoy good health.

Sounds good to me! :)

Further along the different perspective

2006-01-28T21:33:00.000-08:00

A different perspective

2006-01-28T21:30:00.000-08:00

Water starting to freeze (as seen through polarised glass)

(A picture I took at the Exploratorium in San Francisco)

World's 10 Most Powerful Women

2006-01-19T18:25:00.000-08:00

http://inhome.rediff.com/news/2004/sep/02sld.htm

An interesting article..

2006-01-16T23:29:00.000-08:00

Women leaders make strides around the globe
By LISA HOFFMAN
Scripps Howard News ServiceJanuary 16, 2006

- The global glass ceiling of government cracked a bit more Monday, with the inauguration of the first woman in history to be elected head of an African nation.
The swearing-in of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Liberia's new president came just a day after another historic moment for women - the election Sunday of Michelle Bachelet to become Chile's first female president.
And in elections in Finland on Sunday, Tarja Halonen, the first woman president there, took 46 percent of the vote in her re-election bid. She will now face a runoff, but Finnish political experts say she is expected to win handily over two male opponents.
These results cap a remarkable three months for women world leaders, which began in November with the election of Angela Merkel as Germany's first female chancellor.
To Isobel Coleman, director of the Women and U.S. Foreign Policy Program at the Council of Foreign Relations, the emergence of more female leaders stems in most part from an increasing number of women working their way up the political ladder in many countries.
"Over time, you see them rising," Coleman said.
But while the victories boost the presence of women in seats of power, females remain a small minority in the world's top jobs. In the past 100 years, fewer than 50 have served as heads of state, according to U.N. statistics.
Today, excluding monarchs and other hereditary rulers, women lead just 11 out of 193 countries, the United Nations says. (The tally includes Bachelet, who will be inaugurated in March.) That is two less than in 2002, when a record 13 were in charge of countries.
That total could be matched later this year. In Peru, candidate Lourdes Flores stands about even in the polls with her main opponent in the April 9 election. And in Zambia, candidate Edith Nawakwi predicted last week that she will become the second woman elected president in Africa when her countrymen go to the polls later this year.
Here's a look at the 11 top women leaders:
- Sirleaf, elected Nov. 8 in Africa's oldest republic, was educated at Harvard University and served as her country's finance minister. First lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, herself mentioned as a possible U.S. presidential candidate in 2008, attended the inauguration in Monrovia.
- Bachelet is a pediatrician and a single mother who was jailed and tortured during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. A Socialist, she had served as Chile's defense minister.
- Halonen is also a single mother, as well as a lawyer. A former foreign minister, she is heralded for her common touch and her vow to protect Finland's welfare state.
- Merkel is a former physicist who grew up in the former East Germany; she is also the country's first chancellor from that region. She had been a member of parliament and, later, Germany's minister of women's issues.
- Helen Clark, of New Zealand, became the nation's second woman elected prime minister when she won the post in 1999. A former university political-studies professor, she has championed world peace and disarmament.
- Mary McAleese, of Ireland, also followed a female predecessor, Mary Robinson, when she was elected in 1997. Once a college criminal-law professor, she was the first president to come from Northern Ireland.
- Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was elected president of the Philippines in 2001, is the daughter of a former president and was once a student at Georgetown University. She previously headed her country's garments-and-textile export board.
- Begum Khaleda Zia, the first prime minister of Bangladesh, is serving her second term as prime minister. The widow of a president assassinated in 1991 and a grandmother of three, she won her latest election in 2001.
- Vaira Vike-Freiberga became the first woman to head an Eastern European country when she was elected president of Latvia in 1999. Re-elected in 2003, she attended college in Canada and formerly taught at L'Universi de Montreal.
- Luisa Diogo was appointed last year to be the first female prime minister of Mozambique. Formerly the nation's finance minister, she holds a master's degree in economics from the University of London.
- Maria do Carmo Silveira was appointed prime minister of the tiny West African country of Sao Tome and Principe last June after heading the oil-rich nation's central bank.
(Contact Lisa Hoffman at HoffmanL(at)shns.com)

What is the point of education?

2006-01-16T23:26:00.000-08:00

Having just come back from yet another ASHA* meet, I find myself trying to define the purpose of education. Perhaps I should explain the context before saying anything further.
ASHA Stanford decides whether a venture is 'suitable' or 'deserving' of funding or not, on the basis of several criteria such as the sincerity of the people involved, the attainment of previous goals, the number of people to be benefited, and the sustainability of the project (whether they have a long term plan or not). However, when we start to vote on the feasibility of funding a certain proposal, invariable the question of 'What do the students plan to do with their education' comes up.
Does the measure of the benefit of ones education include what one does with it in tangible terms? (Such as get a further college degree, or find employment, or teach others) Or does/should the benefit of education be looked at more in terms of the change it brings to the life of the person as a whole? For instance, in India, statistics have shown that when the mother has received education (even to a very primary level), the chances of the children being sent to school are far higher. Statistics have shown that mothers of daughters who were themselves educated were far less likely to pull them out of school. Education in rural India has also shown to improve general conditions of health for the entire family as a whole. Most NGOs focus on 'educate the woman of the house, she will educate the rest' policy and it seems to have worked!

To me, therefore, the education of little girl children is not futile even if they don't attend school beyond the 7th Standard. Even if a little child/ adult who's never been to school before attends a little bit of school, even if it is to learn how to write their own name, it isn't futile. It's one small step for them, and a giant leap for the community/country/world.

I think Epictetus was onto something when he said 'Only the educated are free'. What troubles me is that even though people all over the world say 'Oh yes education should be a fundamental right', I don't think adequate measures are being taken to make that happen. We need to spend more on books and teachers and schools, and less on guns, spies, bombs.

*ASHA is an organisation that raises money for the funding of organisations that help educate under-privileged children in India. It has several chapters all over the United States (in most universities and prominent areas such as the Bay Area)

Does the end justify the means?

2006-01-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

What do you do when your logic tells you something shoudn't work, and it does? What do you when your life, in your frame of reference, tells you the answer to something is ( ) and it turns out to not be ( ) at all? Does one need to change the frame of reference or word the question better? Shouldn't the laws of logic and reason take you to the correct answer always?

If you disagreed with the method, but liked the conclusion, is that ok?

Driftwood

2005-12-29T22:54:00.000-08:00

Is home where the heart is, or is it where the pay cheque comes from and gets spent?

It's 1:30 in the morning, why can't I sleep?

2005-12-22T22:30:00.000-08:00

I did not have jetlag when I reached the United States. I fell right asleep at night as I was supposed to and got up in the morning. However, I still feel like I'm on California clock here in the East Coast!

I guess it's true, I sometimes do lose the bigger picture in the details.

15th December

2005-12-14T13:24:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Mummy!! :)

Will you FINALLY comment on my blog? Be anonymous if you like and I'll bet you ANYTHING I'll know it's you! :)

Love,
Me

2005-12-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

A general feeling of bonhomie prevails. Everyone has exams, and is too stressed about them to stress about anything else. A perfect time for anyone to come out of the closet, break up with people, dye their hair purple, get dressed up and have breakfast balls.

Good times prevail at 39-101 A.

Duh.

2005-12-09T23:11:00.000-08:00

In the land of opportunity everything seems to be made idiot proof.

Seen on coffee cups : "Careful.The beverage you are about to consume is extremely hot."

Seen on roads : Stop signs. For no reason, you're supposed to stop.

Seen on roads : Yield.

An advertisement: We are the best brand of ----- because we are the best.
(Or something inane like that..)

However, a bottle of 'smart water' that my professor gave as a gift to all his students today was interesting.

On bottle :

you hold in your hand a bottle of vapor distilled, electrolyte enhanced water. once you remove the cap and tilt the bottle into "drinking position," water will begin to flow through your body, purifying and rapidly rehydrating you. if you find the idea of being purer and moister disturbing, please place the bottle back where you found it and continue on your dirty, arid way.

Einstein was right..

2005-12-09T22:58:00.000-08:00

Of course I didn't need to tell you that.

The quarter is almost over, only the loose ends are left to be tied up- exams.

Time has whizzed by, and yet so much has happened that it seems like an eternity since I came here. Things feel like they've been this way forever, like this state of perpetual stress has been a constant. It isn't healthy, I guess. Maybe if I learned to manage time better I wouldn't fret about things so much! I'm sure everyone I know who is reading this is nodding sagely along.

I've never felt like I've known so much before, and I've also never felt like I've known so little before. Is this the 'knowing that you don't know' wisdom that I read about ( was it in Sophie's World?)

:)

2005-12-01T20:29:00.000-08:00

What fun to have done that!

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E555C-4387-1237-81CB83414B7FFE9F&sc=I100322

We have what we're looking for..

2005-11-27T15:09:00.000-08:00

An interesting workshop I attended last week (titled "Thrive as a woman in Science and Technology") taught me an interesting and important fact of life. That we have what we're looking for. Well, maybe not 'have', but that the act of looking for it brings it to us. Like in the Wizard of Oz.

The speaker was an eminent physicst who has worked with issues of women in science all her life. She presented concrete facts and statistics which bring to light the very apparent fact that the stereotypical view of 'women' doesn't allow for most people to conceive of them as scientists and engineers in the present world. At the end of the workshop, she passed around a little bag (which she called Dorothy's bag- from the Wizard of Oz) filled with qualities. She said that grad school is frustrating, depressing, and often would seem futile. She asked us to pick up 5 qualities each ( all qualities being ones that scientists/grad students would need in this world), pin them up on our wall, and remember that even though we may feel like it was the end of the world, and there was nothing great about us (at times..:p), each of us (by virtue of being where we were) had all the qualities in the bag.

I know it's only psychological (come to think of it, what isn't?) but it made me feel a lot better about myself!

Perspectives

2005-11-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

While generally feeling sorry for myself (which I'm not proud of having caught myself doing) for a plethora of reasons, I chanced upon an engraving on the wall of the Memorial Church.
I am sure I have not faithfully narrated the little story verbatim; I ask forgiveness from the Spirit of Accuracy for the inadvertent errors.

"A wise man once went to a village, and all the villagers asked him to solve all of their problems. He thought about it for a little while and then asked all the villagers to pick a rock, mentally place their biggest problems inside the rock, and throw the rock into a large pile on the ground. He asked everyone to concentrate on their rock, and thus their problems, for a few minutes. Then he asked everybody to pick up any rock they wanted, and whichever rock they picked up, those problems would then become theirs. Everybody picked up their own rock.

Think about whatever problems you are facing. Would you really trade places with anyone else in the village/world and thus trade problems?"

I found myself chuckling in a sudden burst of clear vision. I wouldn't trade problems and places with anyone else in the world. Boy I'm glad I'm here!

What's the problem anyway?

2005-11-27T10:11:00.000-08:00

So many things I want to do.So less time.
So many courses I want to take.So few credits I'm allowed to take.
So many labs I want to work in.So few hours in a day.
So many degrees I want to earn. So few of them I want to pay for.
So many things I want to eat. So less time and energy to make them.
So many books I want to read. I'm getting there.

Theme Song

2005-10-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

I think the theme song of graduate school should be Everybody Hurts by REM.
Of course that's not the song I hear in my head (I couldn't get any work done then!), but if someone made a movie about graduate school, this should be the background music or something like that.
Let's put it more efficiently: The underlying score of a possible movie made on graduate life should be ..

Reason for post:
1. I'm not entirely sure.
2. It doesn't really matter if I can't articulate why.

The Fourth Reich?!

2005-10-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

Interesting article I read off Tarun's blog.
(Link on my blog)

http://www.newsgateway.ca/America_The_Fourth_Reich.htm

I'm not sure what I think of it entirely yet..I do agree that there are definite similarities between Fascism and Bushism.But looking at it objectively, there are similarities between lots of other governments too. I also agree that money is the driving force behind it all. But is Bush propelled by a strong fear of the extinction of the 'American Way of Life'? Is that a valid and justifiable fear that he is entitled to have? Or is he just bored and hence wanting to play with planes and bombs? But the article does hypothesize some very implausible ideas. I'm not ready to believe that September 11th was staged.People died.I cannot imagine why a government would want to stage that and kill all those people. I attended a memorial service for those who died on Sept.11th, and we had the sister of one of the fire fighters who works at Stanford come and speak.It was heart wrenching.
I'm not even sure of what I think is right at this point of time.All that I'm really sure of is that to kill is bad.

The interesting thing though, is that I have met so many people here who are very clearly against the current policy of the government of the United States. It's sort of like when Chandrababu Naidu lost the AP elections, and everyone I knew couldn't understand why.Well they could understand why but couldn't really believe it.
Even in classes here we get subtle ant-White House-isms on and off..is that just because I'm in university in California (and universities are the hotbeds of unrest/revolutions/dramatic changes historically speaking)? My friend from Berkeley says that it's so boring and cliched how they always are anti-institution regardless of what institution it is. I wonder if things will get clearer in retrospect.

The Irony Of Life At Stanford (Globalisation?)

2005-10-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

My Chinese flatmate learnt yoga, and I learnt Tai Chi.

To state the obvious, it's been a while.

2005-10-04T22:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog,

To write until now was hardly a possibility.
I've moved home, moved life, moved country and it turned out to be an even bigger deal than I thought. You know sometimes when you anticipate something a lot and then it happens and then since the anticipation was so high the real thing kind of falls flat? Well that didn't happen here! Of course I was well prepared; all the details ironed out to a neat perfect crease. But nothing really prepares you for something that's never happened before!

After a careful examination (yes, very lab like) of my state of mind and a careful observation and analysis with a bunch of people going through the same thing, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. Geography does matter.
2. The mind knows how far it is from home.
3. Different is different.
4. Skin colour does matter in some situations.Even today.
5. Learning here is so much in just being here, and surviving here. It's way beyond the classrooms and labs.
6.Having smart people around is such a joy!It makes life easier!
7.Food is important not only for energy but to feel happy and not miserable!
8.People matter.
9.A familiar voice is a familiar voice.

After writing these things down it seems to me that everyone knows all of them theoretically, (and I did too!), but knowing them knowing them is a different ball game altogether!
Which brings me to football.No I haven't figured it out yet!And I don't know when I will.But I did do some of the following typical American things :p

1.Ate breakfast in a diner.
2.Ate waffles and hashbrowns.
3.Had coffee at Starbucks.
4.Shopped at Walmart and Target and Safeway.
5.Paid by credit card for a nominal amount of money.
6.Filled 'gas' at a gas station.
7.Took out the 'trash'. Nobody here knows what a dustbin is!
8.Had a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast.
9.Had pizza at a typical little Italian place called 'Gino's' in San Francisco.

Gosh.The cliches are so thick I can hardly believe it's my life!

And, interestingly enough, people still go oooh Stanford even at the local Walmart where Stanford students are a dime a dozen.

Ok blog, those were random thoughts that I just thought I should put down.

Until next time, goodbye.

A Suitable Boy

2005-09-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

My cousin is head over heels in love with a boy. I think it's cute.She can't stop talking about him! She raves about how perfect they are for each other, about how he's so sensitive and kind and generous. She can't stop grinning all day. And she certainly can't help but relate everything she hears and sees to him!It's actually rather funny because my sister and I can't help but grin and laugh once in a while (in a very well meaning sort of way) and she feels sort of sheepish every time she catches herself going on another Gautam's good qualities trip. He even noticed her new girly shoes! Way to go Gautam!:)
I do think they are sort of 'fated' to be together. They grew up a lane away from each other.He used to play cricket right outside her house!

The funny thing is, it's an 'arranged marriage'!

A quiz

2005-09-06T23:26:00.000-07:00

I love taking what could be called rather silly online tests on all kinds of things; some very inconsequential, and some not so inconsequential. From these tests (taken over several years) some of the things that I have learned are that I am The Chosen One, that if I were in F.R.I.E.N.D.S I would be Phoebe,that the colour of my aura is emerald green, that in my past life I was a leopard, that my special gift is being able to talk to animals, that I use my left brain more than my right one, my celebrity soulmate is Sting, that the man of my dreams is a secret agent, that sunny orange and licorice are my flavours, that my signature colour is sterling blue, that I am a visionary philosopher, that my lucky number is four, that I am a mountain dog, that I am a Hippie Chick,and that 'my type' is Mountain Man. Anyway, it's always been a vague sort of things in my head, to write a test of my own. So here it is :

How Well Do You Know 'Serendipity'?

1. What is the name of the book that Sara sends out into the universe, bearing her name and phone number?
2.What is Sara's last name and number?
3.What is the name of Jonathan's fiance in the movie?
4.What is the denomination of currency, on which Jonathan sends out his name and number?
5.What is Jonathan's address?
6.How much does Dean, Jonathan's friend, pay for the red roses he buys for his girlfriend Courtney?
7.What does he say the Greeks asked when a man died?
8.By how many minutes can the return flight to New York be late, so that Jonathan does not miss his own wedding?

Results:
8 correct : Congratulations! You have watched Serendipity enough number of times and closely enough to come under the best result category possible!
7 - 5 correct: Well done. You know it well too.
4-2 correct : You know it somewhat.
1 correct : Can do much better!
0 correct : Pathetic!

Notting Hill

2005-09-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

I've watched Notting Hill over a million times. Besides the fact that it's a very sweet, cute and funny movie which does its job, which is basically to make me 'feel good', it also has several bizarrely strange things in it which really make me believe, and I have truly believed it for some time now, that the movie was in fact made for me.
Some of the reasons I think so are:

1. William Thacker (played by Hugh Grant) owns a book shop.Not just any book shop, but a travel bookshop!That's two of my favourite things rolled into one!
2.The first book Anna Scott (played by Julia Roberts) picks up in William's bookstore is one about San Francisco. I'm going to SFO.
3.The movie that Anna Scott is acting in, when she meets William Thacker, is called HELIX. Some people know what I'm talking about.
4.It's set in space.Space was my first fixation.Actually second.The Famous Five were my first.
5.I didn't know who Leonardo di Caprio was until the Titanic. William Thacker probably still doesn't.
6.When jilted by love, William describes his feelings to Spike (his Dutch flatmate) by saying that it's as if he's opened Pandora's box.
7.I can't see without corrective lenses.
8.I use 'git'.Often.
9.My mother calls me all the time.
10.I think Jane Austen is 'gripping', as does William.
11.A bunch of people are doing Tai Chi in the park, in the last scene of the movie.

I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

2005-08-31T16:29:00.000-07:00

I remember a school assembly on a windy day long ago.A Thursday morning. Mrs.Rameshwar Rao's assembly.Where she talked and we listened and chipped in.It was in the old library where once hung the painting with three rather vacant women.In three different coloured sarees, their heads covered.I think the painting was shifted to her house in later years.
That day she talked about truth.About how it was important to tell the truth at all costs.How there was no situation where a lie was warranted or justified. "Is there?", she demanded of us. For a while there was a silence.For some it was a thoughtful silence.For some it was the sort of awkward silence that doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end. For me it was of the former variety.
A little hand rose up from one of the front rows of bent backs and folded legs. I know of a situation where the truth isnt justified the owner said.A stifled gasp cum giggle sort of emanated from somewhere.Shantamma's voice boomed over my thoughts."You DO?"
"Teacher, suppose we go to somebody's house for dinner, and they ask us if we liked the food, then we have to say 'yes' no matter what!"
Shantamma laughed and laughed till she almost had tears in her eyes and I'm sure a stitch in her side.
I agree with that kid.
Shantamma did too.
I wonder if she still holds Thursday assmeblies about truth.I wonder if she appended her tenet.

2005-08-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

My favourite movie changes every time I see a new movie I like. Well, it does for a day or two.And then things get readjusted in the list. There it is.

These are a few of my favourite things...

2005-08-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

I love things. I really do. I guess I could call myself 'materialistic', but that has a rather negative connotation. It seems to imply I don't care for anything but things. That isn't true. But I do love things. I love buying, most, in the following order:

1. Books
2. Sweets and icecream
3. Stationery

Books, obviously. The crazy high one gets on having a bunch of unread books that you want to read is simply undescribable if not experienced personally. And then to have them around the house is like having bits of your brain and bunches of your thoughts hard bound or paper backed in pretty paper.
Sweets. Hmmm. I think one has to walk into a large sweet shop, and sample everything and buy lots of things sampled.And then eat everything. I believe my personal record is that I've eaten half a kilogram of jelebis all by myself while reading The Lord of the Rings. The best part is that I hadn't even realised how much I'd eaten until my mom called home and asked if I had eaten anything at all. I said, "Huh... what?" And then said "Oh!Yes of course!"
And icecream. Well. :) I'm trying to wipe a grin off my face as I write this. Unsuccessfully.
Stationery! I love paper!! Endless possibility of the school term to come, infinite opportunity to produce a genius work of art, scribbles and doodles that about 5 years and two schools later transport one to the exact moment of class that made one laugh so hard, all rolled into one. I think a fresh notebook is like a new day. Not just a new day that starts off at 8:30 and continues on like yesterday or the day before. But a new day.

Fact.

2005-08-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

Many guys I know foam at the mouth at the injustice of 'Women's Reservation'. How can you scream that you're equal and then demand benefits you ask.

1. Because girls were born equal. But many aren't raised equal.
2.Because many girls are expected to be 'stay at home' mothers and wives, despite the fact that they were as good, if not better than their husbands at school.
3.Because after an interval at a theatre, somebody touches your ass while you make your way back to your seat.
4.Because television soaps extol the virtues of not being 'career minded'.
5.Because you get flashed by gross old men.
6.Because so called 'regular educated guys' still raise their eyebrows when they hear of a girl topping an engineering class.
7.Because in some houses, the wife eats only after her husband.
8.Because in some houses, a vague uncle has more of a say in a child's life than the mother.
9.Because some families will still prioritise a girl's 'marriage fund' over her 'MS fund'.
10.Because the sex ratio is badly skewed.
11.Because a Dalit girl is not allowed to ride her bicycle to college.
12.Because female infanticide and foeticide is rampant in today's society.In all financial strata.
13.Because if a guy screws around, he's being a guy.And if a girl screws around, she's bad.
14.Because in most movies, the hero's name appears before the heroine's name.
15.Because the US has never had a woman president.

And before I get comments on how I must have been abused as a child, or how my psyche is damaged by my not being loved, please know that I have had a perfectly nice childhood and I feel very well loved .And comments on my not knowing any nice guys or further comments on my perhaps tumultous relationship with my father can also please be discarded before posting.None of that is true. Thanks for caring anyway.

Confusing Science with Non Science

2005-08-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I watched a documentary on the National Geographic Channel with growing horror. It was about how school students in some state in the US wanted Creationism to be taught in their Science class, as an 'alternative' theory to evolution. I was flabbergasted as to how and why any country could even entertain the thought of teaching unscientific thought in a SCIENCE class. I watched as student upon student addressed the 'Board of Education' with very well written speeches, amidst claps from their peers and parents. The students beseeched the Board to be 'well informed' of the various theories of life, to not be inundated by only one theory, to be allowed to make an informed decision (MAJOR EYEROLL).

I was greatly pleased today when a friend of mine told me about the Pastafarians.I laughed out loud and then snorted and chuckled through the entire article . Basically, a decent chap called Bobby Henderson, distressed by the Kansas Board's decision to teach 'Intelligent Design' in a science class alongside evolution, came up with an alternative theory of the beginning of the world. According to Bobby, the world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. LOL. Read the letter Bobby wrote to the Board here.
For more information on Flying Spaghetti Mosterism, look here. You really should look.It's hilarious!

I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage.

Oh and this too. Laasya see this one especially.

An article by the editor in chief of Scientific American, with 15 answers to creationist nonsense. Relevant.

Is time slow or fast?

2005-08-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

In exactly a month I'm going to be somewhere else. In exactly a month I'm going to be with thousands of people, most of whom I have never met before.
I'm going to be studying Environmental Engineering at Stanford University.
Someone once told me, a few weeks ago, that I should document what I feel and think these last few days, as they'd be an interesting read in the future for myself. I usually do document my life in my journal, and I suppose now in my blog, somewhat.
I feel nauseatingly homesick already, without even setting a foot out.
I have atleast 10 different lists of 'things to take' and 'things to do' before leaving.
I already have had nightmares about being on the way to the airport with most things on my list not ticked off.
I was extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely excited, and now I'm somehow not. It's like the lull before a storm I guess. I'm just silent inside.Sort of hollow, really.
I have been plagued with brief flashes of instances of second thoughts. Should I really do this? What's my alternative?
Can I survive? Will I want to live like that?
Am I abandoning my country? My family?
Will my dog think of me?
Am I smart enough?
Am I going to be the dumbest person on campus?
Am I wasting money? A whole LOT of money?
Am I a people person?
Will my relationship with the people I care about change in a month?In a year?
How much will I change by going there?
Is it worth it?Really?
Am I going crazy? Is this torment completely unwarranted? Is it 'torment' or am I over dramatising to myself?
Is over analysis a real thing?

Whatever I decide, or think, this month is going to get over just as fast or as slowly as any other. I'm not travelling at the speed of light. I wonder if anyone will understand the previous sentence. Or the post. Or the point of it all. Or life.

*Sigh.

Towards equality..

2005-08-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

Any society that has any form of discrimination is troubling. Any society that has discrimination against women is even more troubling as women are about half the society! Old Hindu laws that did not have equal inheritance rights always annoyed me in today's world. (Here's how it worked: Most people had a lot of children, say n. So statistically, they were likely to have n/2 boys and n/2 girls. Now assuming that the family had m amount of assets in total, the inheritance per child should have been m/n. Instead it was 2m/n for all the boys and zero for the girls.Terribly unfair I agree.When the girl married some random boy, his share of his inheritance was also hers, by marriage. Therefore, girls inherited from their parents in law while guys inherited from their parents. Ridiculously stupid I agree, makes more clean and logical sense for everyone to inherit from their parents. However, that's how it was long ago. This is what I have been able to deduce after talking to a lot of people about this.) In today's world, these unjust inheritance laws translate into very obvious discriminations such as Reliance Industries. Our dear Mukesh and Anil get 30-30% (I think those were the numbers) while their sisters got 5% each!Five percent????Phgggrrrttthhh.
HOWEVER, NOW that we have the Rajya Sabha passing with great majority the equal inheritance bill (the new and improved Hindu Succession Act), things are moving towards a more fair and just society!Yay!
Also coming up is a bill to check domestic violence against women! Yahoo! Go India!

Happy Independence Day, 15th August, 2005

2005-08-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Energy security leading to energy independence is certainly possible and is within the capability of the nation. India has knowledge and natural resources; what we need is planned integrated missions to achieve the target in a time bound manner. Let us all work for self-sufficient environment friendly energy independence for the nation.
Jai Hind.May God bless you all.

Those were the closing words of the President's address to the nation on the eve of the Independence Day. It is great that both the Prime Minister, from the Red Fort, and the President, have stressed on the importance of 'energy conservation' and the various aspects associated with this (efficient production and usage, environmentally friendly+cost efficient methods, non dependence) today.

We are the largest democracy in the world. We should, through our collective will and power, exercise our right to make responsible and intelligent decisions, to make a better, safer and cleaner country, and eventually, world. I think I am fabulously fortunate to have been born right here, right now, and to be learning what I am learning, as the time is just right to implement various methods and ideas in this endeavour.

I wonder why a lot of people feel pessimistic about the future, specifically in the national sense. I most certainly don't. I have seen and met the 'today' and 'tomorrow' of our people, and I must say that we are an amazingly willed lot. There is the will. And therefore there will be a way.

There are things that drive each one of us. It is my belief that when the drive stems from a desire larger than just self, then the universe helps in every way possible. So let's pool in our collective talents and energies and ideas and resources, in all of our lives, to further better India and by an extension, ourselves.

For anyone who needs a little spark of inspiration, watch the NDTV advertisements that have been regularly aired on TV lately. I love them.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

2005-08-01T22:25:00.000-07:00

I do not like to post other people's words in my blog, as it is my personal work of writing.I therefore do not post lyrics of songs, quote large passages verbatim from books or other such like. However, the following speech says exactly what is dear to my spirit, and what I believe in with every cell in my body. This speech deserves an exception.And so here it is.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.