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