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 .