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 ..:-)