Lazying around

Its been almost a week since I finished my exams . Haven't been upto anything great lately . Get up late , watch movies , eat , watch online videos , eat and then sleep again . Thats been my daily routine for quite some days now . I hate to be in this kind of lethargic inertial state , some how I have never come to like this lazying around much . Back home holidays used to mean meeting up with relatives and friends and there always used to be some extra curricular activities to pursue ..
somehow all of them seemed to lost in oblivion now . I have work to do for my prof but after 4 months of slogging I just do not want to see the face of that lab again and so here I am sitting in the house doin nothin ...
I guess all of us have these days of nthiness ..they are there to tell us the importance of the days where there is work to be done and goals to be achieved . a life without goals could be so boring and worthless ...
Holidays have thier own goals to ..they are there so that we can pursue stuff we usually do not find time to attend to ..its time to tend and nurture our hobbies ...and relax ..some times when you have been workin for so long ..relaxing can cause you considerable amount of guilt ..but we need to realise that every single person is entitled to their share of relaxation and it is not a crime to relax ..one thing we need to keep in mind is that "the mind" needs to refreshen ...we should not confuse and put the mind to sleep instead ..the latter happens when we do not pursue our alternatives goals during the holidays ...

I sometimes need these blogs to put things into the rite perspective for me ...and this one surely helped..

Overwhelmed ...

Have you ever cried because you were so happy that you were just too overwhelmed by your happiness . Today was such a day for me . I recieved a hand made card from my sister all the way from Guwahati rite in time for my bday . First thing I never expected to get anything from anyone back in India . Secondly the fact that my sister had the time to make a hand made card for me inspite of her exams and sports meet was just too much for me . It has always been that I somehow have never put in the effort to give my sister a nice gift but with every coming year she just makes my bday more and more cherishable ..N on this day I feel I am just too damn lucky ..awesome sis , wonderful parents and great friends ..what more could a person hope for ..!!!

Play while you work..

Do you find your work like a play ..how different is your life from 9am -5pm from the 5 pm - 9 am life ..here is a excellent article on how to make your work ..your play ..

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/New_way_of_learning/articleshow/690639.cms

A lot of us slog the whole day ..thinking we are doing a lot of work ..but ultimately what happens is that we are really tired but the productivity has been almost nill ..what we need sometimes is a break ..take a 30 min break and you will be raring to go again ..and if you enjoy your work ..life will just be a series of breaks ..while you work it is a break from the your extra curriculars and the extra curriculars are a break from work ...so life becomes just a serious of playful games..

Restrooms...

Well thats quite not a topic one writes about but then wats life without a pinch of comedy in it ..infact we spend so much of our life in the restrooms that they sure deserve to be written about ..

Actually when I started thinkin about this post it was supposed to about aeroplanes and their cramped seating spaces ..i actually flew to St.Louis just yest to spend thanksgiving at my cousin's place . ..got into one of these domestic airlines which have hardly leg space ..even to get to your seat you have to walk sideways ..added to that if you have a fat lady sitting beside you who just cannot fit into the space provided ..there are quite a lot of adjustments to be done ..

Coming back to restrooms ..a note of caution.if you suffer from a minor case of claustrophobia like i do ..or better put if you are a lover of free spaces ..do not use the restrooms on board a domestic flight until you absolutely need to ..there is hardly any space for you to fit into ..particularly for a country like USA which has so many obese people ..(also US is a equal opportunity employer you see !!)..i had a hard time imaginin how we would get the fat lady beside me out of the restroom if she got stuck in there ..
perhaps we could use a planning algorthim which would give us the optimal steps to take her out ..!!

Ya well so restrooms haan ..people just tend to ignore their importance ..i think back home we loose a lot of efficiency because of the lack of proper restrooms ..along with issues like primary education , poverty and health care I think our government should also tackle the issue of setting up proper restrooms ..that should we lead to significant improvement in our GDP ..:-)

Verbal diarrhoea

My dad often used to say that I have verbal diarrhoea , I may be a chatterbox but don't exaclty have verbal diarrhoea ..you mite be wondering what all this is about ..ya so this article is not about the diadvantages and advantages of me being a chatter box .:-) ..its basically about VD ..so wat exaclty is VD ..here's my definition ..using a load of words ..complex ones and unnecessarily twisted ideas to make sentenes sound erudite ..when actually the thing can be explained in a much simpler sense with far simpler ideas ...

A major part of the academia suffers from this disease ..just one look at the IEEE papers and you can easily make out that..( i will surely put in some examples here as and when I come across them ..) ..
In my undergrad there was this author I wanted to sue..coz he wrote a book using all this hi -fi language and I just could not figure out what he meant to say ..Intially I thought it was my ignorance but later on I figured out the way that book was written it was not meant to be understood ...
I read a lot of books and what I have found is that a piece of writing is even more profound if it can convey great ideas with simple sentences . There in lies the prowess of the writer ..To write complex stuff using complex sentences implies that even the author has not understood the concept in its completeness .

One more clan of people who suffer from this disease is present day teeenagers ..ya well other people too ...basically people who talk loose ..they do not value the meaning and implication of the words they use ...Abuses have become everyday slang these days ..coz thats supposed to be the in thing ..but what these people dnt realise is that words can coz a lot of damage ..actions just coz physical damages which can be recuperated over time ..but words linger for a long while ..
words are a very imp representation of oneself and thats how they should be valued ...

RSS

Due to certain unavoidable circumstances I could not update the blog on time..:-) ...last friday went to watch a documentary movie on the RSS ..( Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh)..

First thing that struck me about the documentary was that it brought back memories of India ..stayin here you get so used to the place that you hardly realise that you are away from India ..it seems like you are still there ...then we saw the roads , autos , people talkin in the bihari english ..:-)..made me feel nostalgic...

Now coming back to the movie.. .the movie basically potrays RSS as a fundamentalist Hindu organisation ..the director uses his characters in a very directed manner to get his message across...the characters opposing RSS are the high society thinking class people and the other facet is just shown by some lower income not very intelligent people who get into RSS ...so that itself makes the argument lopsided in the beginning ...

The initial part of the story shows how the people in RSS were all brainwashed to go and break the Babri masjid ..the sad part of it is that no one seems to regret it ..the argument that they use is that anyways Muslim's dnt need a place to worship ..that Babri is the sacred place of Hindus and its nthin wrong if they want to put up their holy shrine there ..so the muslim's should give the place back to the hindus..

Why dnt these people understand that its not the place but the feeling which makes the difference..whatever happened was history and lets just let it be ...
The RSS people actually think they created History when they broke down the temple and they are actually proud of it ..

The movie shows RSS leaders as preaching hatred of other religions instead of love for our own religion ..it shows RSS leaders making really degrading comments about christainity and islam ..
This is how terrorism is bread i suppose.. by preaching hatred ..rather than love ...
This is not what hinduism is all about ..it is one of the most tolerant religions on earth ..and if the RSS wants to uphold Hinduism it better concentrate on making people retain their tolerance..

The movie also shows a very human face of fundamentalism ..little children are reared into this ideology ..the children go there only to play but these subtle messages which are put into their head then stay with them life long ..

It ends with glimpses of the Godhra carnage ..which acc to the director is a organised attempt by the RSS to take on the Muslim massses..

I agree the movie is lopsided in its argument but then it has some degree of truth too..the beauty of hinduism is in the fact it is all encompassing ..fundamentalism doesnt fit into its scheme of things ..and we should all strive to keep it at that ...

Teaching

Got my mid sem papers today ..My prof wants us to redo the paper and submit it again . His main emphasis is on the fact that we should get understand the course material well ..so during the exam maybe due to some time constraints we may not have been able to solve the problem but that doesnt mean we should not be given the chance to understand it well and do it .

The education system here in the US amazes me alot ..I have seriously come to like it a lot..you dnt need to mug anything for the exam coz the emphasis is on the fact that did you understand stuff or not ..so get all the books and papers you want to ..refer to them and solve the exam ..there is no question which requires you to write pages and pages of unrelavent information ..just conceptual questions ..

The professor here take up their jobs coz they love teaching and they do make sure that they are really good at it ..

Writer's block

Days of inactivity at the blogger has created a void in me ...ppl around me are getting worried too ..that smthing's wrong with me that i m am not writing my blog ..actually i am stuffering by something called the writer's block ..so i just decided to pen downs some random stuff just to get me goin ..

So if i look around as to what is it that has touched me in the past few days ..its the camaderie of the Erie street people I stay with . Yest was Shiva's bday ..he along with the people around took so much pains to cook a lavish dinner for all the 15 of us ..even on sunday the girls cooked up really good meal for all of us ( with the spices specifically reduced for me !!!)..this act of pure selflessness is what touched me ..each one of them could have gone their own way ..saying that have work to do ..and just cooked for themselves ...these ppl smtimes make me feel like a really selfish person ..

Love

Went to a american couple , Bob and Karen's place for dinner yest as a part of the cultural exchange program . Had a wonderful time at their place . These people have been hosting international students for a long time now and they have had people from many countries to their house . Each item in their house belongs to a different country . They went to India last year and the amount of curiosity and enthusiam these people have was simply amazing . Karen has read some 20 books on India in the past 6 months since her visit to India . There was so much warmth in the home that not for a sec did we feel that we were at the place for the first time . We discussed everything from philosophy to marriages , caste system , world history ,poverty,social service ,music ,books , food , parent -children relationships in context of both of our countries. It was truly an enlightening experience .

But what struck me the most about Bob and Karen was their love for each other even after 30 years of marriage . While Bob was driving us back home , the excitement in his voice when he talked about Karen was similar to a man newly in love. He said his wife still continues to amaze him even after 30 years of marriage . I always get amazed by the fact that people manage to live with each other for so many years and still dnt get bored of each other . What is that still attracts them to each other ? How can one keep reinventing oneself all of one's lives?

Karen said she wanted to go back to school and learn about world history coz so much has changed since she last went to school . Her enthusiam was contagious .

They looked almost 20 years younger than their original age coz of their enthusiam ..never once in our conversation did I find a generation gap or a mind block between us .

The 2 things that I learnt yest was about the Eternity of love and that life becomes boring and uninteresting only if we let be ,or else there is never a dearth of excitement which can be gained by "Living LIFE" .

Complicated

Was listening to the song with the same title as above by Avril Lavigne .

Chill out whatcha yelling' for?
Lay back it's all been done before
And if you could only let it be
you will see
I like you the way you are
When we're drivin' in your car
and you're talking to me one on one but you've become

Somebody else round everyone else
You're watching your back like you can't relax
You're tryin' to be cool you look like a fool to me
Tell me

Why you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me frustrated
Life's like this you
And you fall and you crawl and you break
and you take what you get and you turn it into honesty
and promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it
no no no

This song is approriate manifestation of how we unnecesarily complicate our lives ,trying to live up to the society , the people around us ,every other tom dick and harry we meet all along our lives. For a moment just forget about them and be yourself . The best problems often have the simplest solutions . Our lives can be many more times more simple if we throw out these unnecessary complications from it .

The Goal

Since I have been using this blog as a medium for introspection , I should start using it as a means to find out what I really want to do in life . As of now I am not sure as to what I want to do with my life . The challenge of living up to new hurldles each day , using analytical skills each day is wat keep me going as of now . I am not too much bothered about wat are the objects of application of these skills of mine are , it can be helicopters or it can as well be people. But where is it that my real passion lies . I have been asking myself this question almost daily for 3 years now but I have never stopped to listen to the real answers I get coz they do not go very well with wat I have presently set out to do .
I want to do a masters in psychology or social services , work for a social service organization but wat everyone tells me is that I can manage to do that along with my main job and that I have the talent go ahead and do a Phd or work as a manager in a company and make some good money .
There was a time in my life when I used to be really ambitious I wanted to achieve name , fame everything . I used to get afraid of my own ambition sometimes as in if I failed to achieve all this wat would I be like , would my entire life be wasted .
I dont aim that high these days , I just have immediate goals as of now , my present is wat is important to me ,neither the past or the future . It saves me a lot of unnecessary worrying .

I still lack a direction though and its high time in life that I have one . One thing I am sure of that to go any one of such directions will require a huge sacrifice on my end and am my ready to give up the security and surety of my present life to follow my passion is wat is to be seen.

Rejection

Got my ai project( the research I am doin basically rite now ) graded today. It said " Ok project ". I had been expecting the comments to be Good or smthin coz that was wat my prof had said about my intial draft . Was terribly disappointing ...I exaclty dnt know wat went wrong with it or wat was in the project of others of that they got comments like good and exciting .
At times like these I feel really lost among the hordes of highly talented people around me , everyone here has smthin to his/her credit . I have doubts as to whether I will be able to achieve the task that I have set out to achieve at this place . The clouds of failure loom large .

The terrible optimist that I am , I am sure I will not give up but then I do have my bad times and even a elastic band looses its elasticity if pulled too hard and too often .

ps: Mom ,dad ..i am fine ..dnt call me up thinking i am too worried or tense ..:-)

Division of species

People who have read Ayn Rand must be aware of the distinction she makes about intelligent people , people who run this world ..and dumb people who are parasites on the forementioned class ..till now i thought this was only a philosophical aspect of life ..but acc to the following article it seems genetics is also headed this way ..check this out ..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6057734.stm

Watch the Time fly out the window ...

One can actually sit and watch time fly past him and crib about the lack of time or actually take time in ones hand and use it the way one wants too ..

When I was in my undergrads I used to get time to do loads of stuff ..play , study , social work , dance , read ..etc etc ..I used to look at a lot of my working friends and cousins and they used to always complain about the lack of time to do any extra curricular activity . I thought maybe when I get to grad school life will be the same for me . I will have no time to have fun , play etc etc ..

Now I am in grad school and I realize I still do have time to pursue a lot of interests . I go to the gym regularly , have fun with friends on weekends and still have a desire as well as the time to do more stuff apart from academics .My friends ask me ..How do you find time to write a blog so often ..? So is it that I study less as compared to others. Well maybe ..but thats how much I can manage too...i need a break ..and all these extra curricular do fit in well into those breaks ..
So what I am trying to drive at is that nobody lacks time in this world ..you just need to decide what you want to use your time for ...you may not want to go to the gym now coz you want to sleep ..but in the future this 1 hr you did not spend at the gym will convert into 3 hrs with a doctor ..

You decide what you want to do with your life ..some sacrifices now will surely reap rich dividends later on in your life ...

Work Smart

Scored 95/100 in the DSP assignment . Remember the one which I had almost flunked last week . So have I suddenly grown intelligent or did I work harder than I did on the earlier ones ..as a matter of fact I put in lot less effort for this assignment .

A "geek" friend of mine gave me some timely advice . Its not just about working hard or how intelligent you are . If you have made it this far you surely have some amount of intelligence . Its all about working smart . Thats what I did , went to the ta ..got hints on how to proceed on each problem and what was it that he wanted from each problem . I found that the problems I have been putting in so much time trying to decipher could be done with very little effort coz the ta himself was not giving so much thought to them ..and to my surprise I figured out that people who were much more dumb than me but smart enough to take the route mentioned above were scoring really high .."Give as much thought to the problem as the Ta wants you too .." :-)...

Snow !!!!!

Had the first snow shower of the season today ...it was simply awesome ..the soft flakes of snow fall on you with a soft slush and the wind makes it appear like beads falling on the ground ...all around you are millions of white beads wrapped in between the red and yellow fall leaves ....
Every day in this place is nature's delight ...I miss not being able to share this beauty with the people back home ...

Winners vs Losers

Who is winner ..how is he/she different from a loser ..here is my definition ...
A winner is a person who loves himself/herself ...it means that they care for what happens to them and wat is that they are doing to better themselves ...he ( taking he as default from now on ..:-) ) believes in his ideals and is willing to stand by them..doesnt easily compromise on them ...his life is continous process of introspection and betterment coz he believes in outdoing himself every day ..that is the challenge for him in life ..
making the most of the life ..he gives importance to only those elements that he finds are fruitful for him ...everything that one does ..having fun , studying , cooking is an investment for him in himself ..all these things teach him something .. in short a winner is a person who is comfortable with his own self ...others opinions about him do not matter much to him ..coz he knows himself ..he only values the opinions of the people he think are worth considering ...doesnt get bogged down by illogical constraints of the society ...

on the other hand you will find that a loser will always crib ..he will want to place the blame on everything around him rather than just taking charge of things for himself and then going about how to solve them ....losers want attention ..they want people to sympathize with them ..tell them they are very nice and hence give a false boost to the ego of the loser ..they need constant reassurances ..

Losers are parasites who will always want to cling to winners , try to gain their assurances but the self composure of a winner is what they lack and they try to get a part of it by clinging on to them ..by trying to enter their good books ...what they dont realise is that this is all in vain ..a the spirit of a winner cannot be sucked out by them until and unless they take charge of themselves and start building up on thier own ...

Enthusiasm contd....

http://download.fischeredit.com/UMN_KARE_SEP29/KARE_ROBOTICS.mov

Check out this link guys ..thats my ai prof for you ...he is really cool guy ..n his classes are so much fun ..

Enthusiasm can be contagious


Who said Phd makes ppl boring and dull ..you gotta meet my professor here ..one meeting with my prof and all my cells get recharged no matter how boring my day has been..

Professors here are so excited about the research that they are doin and its very easy for that enthusiasm to rub off you ..every prof here talks about loving the work you do ..my prof will repeatedly ask me ..do it only if you want to .do you like the work ..wat is your view ..every single person is accorded so much importance ..the fact that i am younger and less experienced than him hardly makes a difference ..if i have a good idea thats wat matters..
I walk into his office ..say hi ..talk as if i am talkin to a friend ..and he is all ears for my ideas..

We complain about lack of time..look at these profs ..they take classes ..do research ,look after research of the students under them .attend conferences ..find time for playin games and social life too ..its amazing how they can fit so much into a single day ..

Fire in the jungle ..run run run ...

I wrote about my room mates penchant for chairs earlier ..it would not be fair if i do not mention the havoc i m causing in the house ...

Now wat is happening is due to my carelessness i have as of now melted a plastic plate , a spoon , cutting blade and a lid along their edges ...wat actually hpnd was that i was cookin smthin on one of the burners and left these articles on the the nearing burners and eventually a part of them melted before i could realise ...yest was the latest one..a lid was kept on one of the burners and i accidently turned on the burner below it ...

Junta who is reading it may not allow me into their kitchens if they come to know of this ..but guys the situation is not that bad ..i m tryin to avoid such circumstances to the fullest hopefully your house will not be a victim of my carelessness ..:-)

Shock no 1

Got my dsp assg marks today ..got 48/100 ...I am actually rite there at the bottom of the class. I sat befuddled throughout the entire class . I just could not come to terms with the fact that I was at the bottom of the class . Being at the top of the class acads wise has come easily to me all my life and I had quite complacently started to believe that , that was how it will stay all thru ..but then I got this shock ..i tried to look back at some instances where I had come out of situations like this but then I realised that it has never been this bad . This was a entirely new challenge to me and now it is upto me to see if i can live up to it ..

What excites me though is the fact that I have a bigger challenges to live upto every single day in this place ..when i was applying for ms ppl were like.. why do you want to go there ..lead such a hard life ..wat is the use ..you have a job a intel ..join it ..and have a nice and safe life here ..

But a nice and safe life is not wat I want ..I want to stack myself against challenges like this and put a test to myself and see if I have learnt life's principles the rite way or not ...I did not come for ms with big dreams of becoming a scientist and winning the nobel prize ...my major drive was that the work I had done during my B.tech did not satisfy me ..it was all very superficial ..i wanted to work hard on acads ...that is wat i am getting to do now..

On most of the days i will curse the amount of work load and my lack of intelligence to cope with it ..but then on some days i surely feel that the effort will be worth it in the end ...

4/10/06
realised rite now that i had skipped a problem for 15 points ..which means that i will well have been in the class avg if had done it ..:-)..but courtesy the shock i actually spend my enitre day yest studyin the subject...

There is light at the end of every dark tunnel

As every day in this place goes by I come to believe this statement more and more . When I came I was put up all alone . I was the only person who was not put up at some senior's place . I used to curse my luck for having been thrown in such a place . All the other ppl stayin at the other side of the university were having so much fun . I had no aid , no job.. nthin watsoever.

I could have sat dejected and cursed my luck but I decided to explore the university for this is the place i m going to spend a long time at . Courtesy those early days spent exploring the univ I know a lot more about the univ and the place than ppl who have stayed here for a long while . In the process I came to love and appreciate the place I am staying at and that is very important coz once school starts life becomes so monotonous and you hardly stop to look and marvel at the place around you.

Eventually once my room mate came back I realised I was really in luck to have such an understanding room mate ..had I been somewhere else dunno how many probs I would have had. I soon found a group of really mast gult people around my place too and now I get to have more fun than my friends who stay at univ avenue ( the place where I wanted to go to earlier ) ..


People started to get aid or jobs all around me . I was upset for a while but then I some how had a deep hope inside that one day things will work out for me too . Then thanks to Shiva ( a friend of mine ) ..i got a job at ADCS .. a well paying easy job ..a good start I thought .
I met with this prof in aerospace , who does some really cool work on trajectory planning for unmanned air vehicles . I decided to take the plunge and work with him for free . Though it meant taking 3 grad level courses , a 20hr job and a project , i thought i will manage .
And now I get to work with one of the coolest profs I have known on smthin really interesting and to top to it all ..he is payin me some form of compensation starting today ..so now I dnt have to work on that on campus job .

I still dnt have aid to pay for my tution but what I have is a belief which grows stronger by the day that there is always light shining at the end of the tunnel . Just be true to yourself and never loose hope is the moral of the story .

There is another big thing that I learnt from all this ...everyone has problems but the day you stop enjoyin our life and things around you... life ends there ....so always take time to step back and marvel at nature at its best .

Dandiya nite

Finally managed to make it to the dandiya nite , organised by the gujarati association of minnesota. Seriously guys this place just doesnt feel like some place outside india . There was a flood of indians all decked up in their fineries ..each trying to outdo the other .

Finally got to wear a salwar suit after a long time and ya got to dance ..Danced like crazy for a long while . It was great fun.

Work like crazy on assg all thru the week and dance till you drop on sat nite ..this is life man..!!!

Some sane person gave this answer to the unending spam mails that we get daily ..


I want to thank all my friends and other unknown
people who have
forwarded chain letters to me in 2003, 2004 &
2005 and 2006.

Because of your kindness:

I stopped drinking Coca-Cola after I found out
that it's good only for
removing
toilet stains.

I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting
on a needle infected
with AIDS

I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using
deodorants because they
cause
cancer.

I also stopped answering the phone for fear that
they may ask me to
dial a
stupid number and then I get a phone bill from
hell with calls to
Uganda ,
Singapore and Tokyo.

I also stopped drinking water outside for fear
that I will get
sick from
the rat shit and urine.

When I go to parties, I don't look at any girl,
no matter how hot she
is, for
fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me,
then take my kidneys
and leave
me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.

I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce
account. A sick girl
that was
about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times.
(Poor girl! she's been
7 since
1993...)

My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did
the free passes for a
paid
vacation to Disneyland.

Made some Hundred wishes before forwarding those
Dalai Lama, Ganesh
Vandana,
Tirupathi Balaji pics etc..

Now most of those "Wishes" are already married
(to someone else)!

You can add your own notes based on your similar
experience and send
them to
your friends.

If ORKUT deletes my account, it doesn't matter
BUT PLEASE DON'T SEND me
"Orkut is
deleting accounts: Due to sudden rush..."
Otherwise I'll delete my
E-Mail
account!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you do not send this e-mail to at least 913760
people in the next 10
seconds,
a bird will shit on your head today at 6:30 p.m.

###############################################
Give me a break!!

Our very own chair museum

Location : Apt #308 , 419 Erie Street

It all started with a decent looking couch i got into our totally unfurnished house coz my roomie thought we should have some furniture ( picked up from street ..apparently thats what everybody does here ..) in our house ...The couch would not fit into our drawing room cum kitchen so we had it rather put in our bedroom and now so both the rooms have their roles reversed . That was about the only furniture in the house before my roommate came back from her internship .

This is where the fun starts ..we need a table to keep our stuff on ..but actually wats happening is that my roomie finds is a chair every time she is walking back home and she just cannot resist picking that up . So we had a single seater couch first which we picked up all the way to the last room on the second floor from the street across us ..( dnt ask us about the cramps we had that day ) ..the next day i come back i find a chair in the bathroom ..ppl actually thought we sit and brush :-) ..( it was kept there to be cleaned ..which did not happen for 2 weeks ..) ..next came in a wodden chair and i have news from her rite now that we have a sexy little chair waiting in the apt ..i m damn sure our teeny weeny apt can no longer take any more chairs..but then you cant just help it if you are staying with a chair enthusiast like the one i do ...

ps: my roommate wanted me to add this ..its me and only me who uses all those couches and chairs ..c how well we complement each other...

Grad life

Want to know how life is at grad school? ..check out this comic strip ..nothin could be more approriate ..written by a bunch of really creative people at stanford

www.phdcomics.com

Mafia

Found out this really cool game out here . This game involves a mixture of psychology and debating skills . In all great fun to pass time on weekends ..

Check out this link ...This game is supposed to have originated at princeton ..

http://www.princeton.edu/~mafia/rules.htm

Now thats what you call a sunday

Inspite of all the homework i had on my head ..i decide to push that aside for a while and enjoy the place and my weekend

I went to jog on 4.5 mile jogging track by the missisipi river in the morning ..you have the crystal clear river on one side and trees with their fall colors of green , yellow and red on the other side ..then when you stand under the bridge on the river and look around you ..you come to appreciate the nature's bounty ...if possible i would just live in a shack by the river ...

ps: i did not jog on the entire track ...just walked most of it ..

Came back and courtesy some good gulties out here got to go on a trip to duluth and gooseberry falls ..we rented a SUV ..now that was damn cool ..remember the ford fiesta we saw at mayfair and just walked past it ..i actually got to sit in it ...
the drive was awesome ..empty highway ..trees and then one of the biggest lakes here in america ..the lake superior on the other side ..went on to the gooseberry falls ..the water was like freezing ice ..i just cant guess how it will be in the winters ...

had some crazy veg food , buns , vegetables and white sauce ..it tasted yuck..!! the indian spices are great man ...

but that was quite some way to spend my sunday ...

Countdown to the winter

The minnesotian winter is world famous and i thot i ought to write down my thoughts along with the approaching winter .

So lets start from today onwards
Sept 20th ..Temp 4 C Windchill 4C
This is fall ..you are not supposed to call it winter out here . You get wear something called fall jackets which are actually sweaters back home in india . If u look outside the window you can hardly make out if it 4 C or -25 C . So wat you need to do is to get up every morning , check the weather update and then decide as to wat the appropriate dress code should be

More soon...

This was supposed to be a countdown to the winter ..
Oct 2nd ..Temp 28 C Windchill 26 C
This is how unpredictble it can get here . It feels really hot rite now ..People who were coming around in all there fall jackets and long coats have suddenly shifted to shorts and t-shirts today.. The coming week is supposed to be like this and before we know the temperature would have fallen down to 0 C

Ok so winter has finally arrived
Oct 11 ..Temp 2 C Feels like -4 C Expected snow showers
I havent mustered the strenght yet to go out and check it out for myself....

Aloo tikki....

After 4 years of having to eat UEO( Unidentified eatable objects ) courtesy Nakul bhaina at the hostel mess ..this place seems to be a bliss ..first thing you dnt have to wait for the clock hands to show 4.30 etc before you rush to the mess to find to your utter dismay that you will just not be able to eat what is being offered..and even if you manage to do so there is a high probability e that you may feel more hungry than what you ever had before or sick enough as to want nothin else .....potodo tarkari , boiled aloo , dalma are all now a thing of the past ...
i have landed in paradise in terms of food ...i get to eat food when i am hungry ( though grad life puts some constraints on when you can actually find time to eat ..) ..ice cream , chocolate milk , biscuits , bread , juice , milk and cereals ..i just love it ..and the fact that we cook at home .(.given our financial constraints :-) )..just adds to it all ..pulao , tomato rice , dal fry and ya before i forget ..curd( ask south indians about the importance of curd !!) ..the basic point is all this is edible ..given the decent cookin skills of my roomie and me...
to top it all we tried our hands at aloo tikki yest ..complete with dahi and chutney ..that was quite something ...

ps : somethings mentioned above may give you the feeling that i am pretty well off ..to correct the notion before it gets out of hands and you stop thinking about sending me a gift :-)..I M NOT ..i just have money to eat good food ...

Control Systems !!!!

This is for all my undergrad friends ..remember how much i used to hate control sys back in coll ..my encounters :-) with Mr.Dan and Pramnik are well know ..well all off them sprouted for boredom and desperation that bore out of these classes ..and guess wat guys all i m doin out here is control systems ..i m taking a control sys class and workin under an aero prof on the control of uavs ( unmanned air vehicles ..) ...no vlsi , no wavelets , no communications ..no idea how out of all things i landed with control sys ..
basically it started with the wish to please a prof to give me aid ..and then i decided i sure wanted to give a second try ..
and the fact the both of my control profs look real cool ..one of them even has that smooth italian accent to his english just gives me that extra leverage needed to get on with this mamooth task that i have undertaken..

ps: i have by now completely bored my roomie with the tales of my escapades @nitrkl ..guess we had too much fun guys ..missing nitrkl...

My first Job

Got a job at a call center here at tthe U . Pays an amount sufficient enough to take care of my living expenses .

Today was my first day at training. I am supposed to listen to the conversations as of now .
All my memories of being rude to the call center guys came back flooding to me . This is a really hard job man . Trying to explain something to people who cannot be for sure called the smartest people around ...you want to shout how dumb ..but you better not do that when you have a job at stake ..

So let us all take a vow to be nice to the call center people coz they really work hard to keep our lives easy ...

Never say Quit

One day I decided to quit... quit my job,
my relationship,
my spirituality...
I wanted to quit my life.
I went to the woods to have one last talk with God.
God, I said. Can you give me one good reason not to quit?
His answer surprised me...
Look around, He said. Do you see the fern and the bamboo?
Yes, I replied.
When I planted the fern and the bamboo seeds, I took very good care of
them. I gave them light. I gave them water.
The fern quickly grew from the earth. Its brilliant green covered the floor. Yet nothing came from the bamboo seed.
But I did not quit on the bamboo.
In the second year the Fern grew
more vibrant and plentiful.
And again, nothing came from the bamboo seed.
But I did not quit on the bamboo He said.
In year three there was still nothing from the bamboo seed.
But I would not quit.
In year four, again, there was nothing from the bamboo seed.
I would not quit. He said.
Then in the fifth year a tiny sprout emerged from the earth.
Compared to the fern it was seemingly small and insignificant...
But just 6 months later the bamboo rose to over 100 feet tall.
It had spent the five years growing roots.
Those roots made it strong and gave it what it needed to survive.
I would not give any of my creations a challenge it could not handle.
He said to me.
Did you know, my child, that all this time you have been struggling,
You have actually been growing roots
I would not quit on the bamboo.
I will never quit on you.
Don't compare yourself to others He said. The bamboo had a different
purpose than the fern.
Yet they both make the forest beautiful.
Your time will come, God said to me.
You will rise high
How high should I rise?, I asked.
How high will the bamboo rise?, He asked in return.
As high as it can, I answered
Yes. He said, Give me glory by rising as high as you can.
I left the forest and bring back this story.
I hope these words can help you see that God will never give up on you.
Never Give up - just keep the faith!!!!!

Artificial intelligence ..

This is my chosen specialization for masters ..so on and off you will be getting a lot of info regd this ..

Had my first ai class today and there was a very interesting notion which i would like to put in ..ai has always been thought to be the branch of computer science which mimics humans in their behaviour , the way they think , walk etc ..and acc to Professor Nikolaos this is major impediment in the functioning of ai...ai tries to mimic human behaviour considering the fact that humans are superior in every aspect . There are certain circumstances wherein if you dont mimic the human way of doing things and use some other strategies you may find out that the device works better ...

Failures of ai

As i proceed further new and interesting relevations about ai are coming along my way ..it is the more of the failures of ai rather than the success of ai that interest ..there was a time of excessive optimism in ai where in it was believed that ai would change the face of the world in ways similar to wat the computer or the internet have done but ai seriously fell short of these predictions ..many companies which were formed as a result of this optimism went bust ..the ones which managed to stay shifted to different lines ..so now the question is whether all the research and work which goes into ai ..is it all worth it ..are we not better of we the earlier systems we had ..well the ques has no clear cut answer ..ai rite now has too much of unpredictiblity to it ..we are not 100% sure of a systems response ..so we cannot use ai to systems where human life is at stake ..aerospace or biomed etc ..
well as for the use of ai in gaming , entertaiment and intelligent interfaces is concerned ..that is a good field to venture into coz the risks involved are not as huge and ai does offer quite a lot of interesting features to these fields..

Japan - The Fifth generation revolution
Another factor that interests me is the fact that Japan has made significant strides in terms of implementation of ai as compared to the usa ..it is as of now almost 5-6 years ahead of usa in tems of usa ..which incidently is the birth place of ai ...i read a very nice book by feigenbaum written in the 80's which warned researchers in usa about the fifth generation drive being undertaken by Japan and the consequences it would have ..but i guess at that people back in usa were to disappointed with ai to consider his warnings and the result is that rite now usa has lost out in the race to japan..

Control Systems vs AI
Remember KKM's aversion to all the ai methods being used . It seems this phenomenon is quite wide spread .Met my controls prof today and he was pretty surprised as to why am I taking the AI course . Acc to him ai is just a bunch of high expectations low result field . He says there is a point uptil which human intution can be used to solve a problem after that systematic methods lead to far greater results which we cannot see at the first instance . AI just basically relies on intuition and so cannot achieve any major results .

Hindi TA ..me ..???

This is fun guys ..had an interview for the hindi ta(teaching assistant ) today ..told them i had experience of teaching school kids hindi ...what a joke ..:-)

nyways there i was being interviewed by 2 ABCD ( American Born Confused Desis ) professors on my experiences and excerpts on hindi ..
first ques..Q: so where are you from?
A: Sir i stayed in jhansi for almost 20 years

Q: Name a famous literary person from jhansi
A: no idea ..i know mahadevi verma is from up ..:-)

Q ..you have heard about maithali sharan gupt ..he is from jhansi
A: Ohhh
.
Q: Write down the hindi vowels and consonant
A: ( Ab lag gayi waat )..yaad hi nahin aa rahein the alphabets ..kuch to likh diya ..geman shayad :-) ..ta , tha , vala line hi bhool gayi likhna

Q: How will you teach hindi to a bunch of american students
A: (Phada maar diya answer main ...)...i will teach them sounds , pronunciations , words etc etc

Q: How is hindi language different from english ..wat do your appreciate about hindi
A: ( Phada again ...) ...hindi is more expressive than english etc etc..

Q: (Final blow ...) ..write a 5 line essay on your experiences in minneapolis ..
A: ( How the hell do you write minneapolis in hindi ..) ..maine to yeh shaher karke likhke kalti mar liya ...

One heck of an experience nyways ..imagine me ..i used to hate hindi at school ..had a big celebration when the 10th board hindi exam ended ..and here i was making them believe i m one of the biggest proponants of hindi language ..:-)

Aid @ MN

People back home keep on asking me about my aid situation ...so decided to make it clear for once and all ..when i was leaving home i believed like everybody does that i will get some form of assistantship as soon as i get there ..or if not surely after the first semester ..

I did not understand the implications of it right then ..now that i know i would like to make it clear to people who are planning to come later on ...coming un aided can be quite a scary thing.

First thing you spend all your time scouting for aid or spamming profs when you should be enjoying your first days at the univ and getting to learn more about it ..

Secondly even after you get aid ..if it is not in your area of interest ..it is not worth it ..coz you spend a lot of your time doin smthin ..which given a different circumstance you would have devoted to your area of interest..

The good part of it is you learn a lot of living life the hard way ...which would surely be a plus ..

India explained

Ever tried explaining the Indian caste and dowry system to a chinese ? That is exaclty what we did over dinner yest . A bunch of us i.e indian students trying to explain the implications of caste system in modern India to a my friend Yunli from China over dinner .

But how do you explain the deep implications that caste system has over our minds to a person who has never been exposed to a notion like this . Why have we after so many years of independence and education not been able to ward off this stigma of caste system from our minds .
She asked us all a very simple question .. How do you know a person's caste ..? If a person travels very far from his native places and changes his name ..no one will be able to know his caste then rite ? Seemed logical but how do we tell her that caste is something which we are born with ..we cannot just cut it of from us like the umbical cord ..it sticks to us until death ..

Even now educated youth in India believe in commanding hefty sums of dowry ..where does all our education go then ..

all our stories of our increasing gdp , outsourcing etc ..will be a sham until we cannot address all these basic issues that plague us ..

Cleansomarathon ....

So what did i do on my first sunday before school starts ...

laundry @ 2 $ ..i could have cleaned alteast clothes for 4 months in rkl for that rate ...and if i had used aritra's skill at making the made wash a bucketfull of clothes for 15 rs..tab to kehne hi nahin ..

this was just the start ..the altruist that i am i decided to help one of my friends clean up her place before she moved in ..to our utter dismay the earlier residents of the house had not considered it worthwile to throw away a month long of cooked , uncooked , overcooked food before they left .

so there we were with all kinds of fungi and algae surrounding us and we did our best to make it habitable for humans ...but this was just the kitchen...the inner rooms were even more of a mess ..
decided this was enough for the day and headed back home to have my dinner ...

Philosophy

The one thing that has kept me grounded is philosophy . I have been lucky enough to have read books which have been a source of quite strength for me even before and after coming here.

Noteworthy among them are "The letter between father and son " - V.S.Naipaul and Siddhartha - Herman Hesse , which i actually just finished yest .

For long I have searched for a sense of peace within myself ..freedom from the hundreds of thoughts which pass through one's mind every instant of time..

its not as easy task of course ...but this time I have decided to give a serious try ...the place and the tough life here make it easier ...

will be writing on this more soon ...

my first pic @ usa

Crazy americans ...

Bhai kaun likhna sikhata hain in amros ko ...they hold a pen so awkwardly ...handwriting to horrible hota hain ...

aur haan how can i forget this ..har cheez ..howdy , thank you , bye , have a nice day .bolna to compulsory hain ..intially i used to wonder are these people as a whole a very happy community or are they too artificial ...

still havent found an answer to that though ..i think it mostly artificial ...no doubts it feel good though ..a stranger on the road will always smile at you ..

and the no of choices these people have ..can drive anyone crazy ...1% fat , 2% fat , fat free , whole milk etc etc etc ..this is just to buy the milk ..if you have to buy an entire list of groceries u can very well imagine what a tough job thats going to be ..

the first time i went shopping i just wanted some nice biscuits ..and what do i have there ..some 100 varieties of biscuits ...
just give me a sweet one i said ..thats all i want...
they just dnt make life simple out here ...not to complain about the cut vegetable and boiled rajma though ..:-)

4/9/06.

my first brush with racism ..dunno if you can call it exaclty that ..got into a bus wearing a top which had sanskrit verses on it ..a lady just looked at me and said where the hell did you get this top ..you should be kicked out for wearing a top like this ..i just did not know wat to say ...
my guess is that the lady was doped or smthin ..but if she was not ..why was she so cross with me ...?

5/9/06

got to know why the lady got so angry at me ..she mistook the symbol to be a nazi symbol ..and americans are very anti - hitler ..she took me wearing the top to mean that i supported nazis ..

decided to respect their feelings and not to venture into wearing that top any more ...

Beauty ...

The first thing that struck me about umn was its natural beauty ..the place has a sense of contentment and ease to it ...

the river flows at it own leisure ..the architectural splendour of these buildings has a timelessness about it ..the strains of the grand piano can put all your troubles to rest ...people dont run around this place ..they have the time to look around and marvel .....i said to myself ..if ever i wanted to be in a place ..it had to be a placelike this ...

Destiny

My science and logic did not permit me to believe in destiny . I believed everybody creates their own destiny by their own hands and to believe that your future is already written down for you , is to wash your hands of the hardwork you need to do to create your destiny .

But why am i writing this all in the past tense ..have a stopped believing it ..no i guess ..

but i ya ..with every day that passes by ever since my gre process started i find it more comforting to believe in destiny ..it saves me worries about the future..

intially i was worried whether i would get my passport on time or not ..then whether i would get a good score or not ..if i will get an admit or not...what about the visa ..? tickets..? and now that i m here ..i need to worry about getting an aid or not ...
but somehow along the way i came to believe that something somewhere is written for me ..there is silver lining of hope at the end of this dark tunnel ..and all i need to do is make the most of this darkness ..coz it is only now that we learn the true meaning of light