Yet Another Blogger

Prague .. and this isn't a travelogue!

2012-01-18T18:18:00.000Z

subtitle: Praha - the place where you go 'wah wah'

I went there some months ago, but ADD has prevented me from archiving it anywhere except for some pictures uploaded to Facebook. Really, with these smart phones with cameras, that is not much of a task. On the other hand, the fact that I actually did take some photos is quite laudable :P. Anyway, coming to Prague, here are some bullet points -

^ Everyone (irrespective of whether they actually have been there or not :P) claims that Prague is breathtakingly beautiful. Well, I can assure you that those claims are well founded. Those who have been there as tourists also claim that the centre is just a huge mela of tourists. That I can assure you, is also well founded. Having visited in the off-season, I actually shudder to think how it is during the holiday season. The only people you find in the centre of Prague are either tourists, guides, or people selling something to the tourists. And the streets are lined with (apart from 'places of interest') only restaurants, cafes, souvenir shops, and other places for tourists.

_ The visual highlights like the castle with its palaces, the statues lined ancient bridge, clock tower, central square, cathedral etc are all expectedly dazzling. However, every building in the centre appears unique and attractive in its own right. A trigger happy photographer would never be able to stop shooting if not for the constraints of time, disk space and patience of his/her companions. There are also a plethora of museums, dedicated to the various personalities and art forms there, any of which I haven't visited :P.

$ There were also many ultra-modern buildings, some dancing away in the lights, albeit outside the city centre. The metro + tram network is quite efficient and takes you everywhere, including to the top of the castle-hill. And in that area, is also the Czech version of the Eiffel Tower. Having seen the japanese version and also the original, this one didn't have much going for it except for the fact that it is actually possible to climb or descend all the stairs :P. Nearby, however, was this unexpected attack of metallic zombies in an otherwise unremarkable area.

£ If you eat like a local, the food is quite cheap and very very filling. The local aka non-tourist-focused pubs and eateries are quite charming. However, one thing I didn't manage to figure out is whether, after entering a place, you wait to be seated or you just pick an empty table. Oh, and the Czechs do love to announce everywhere that it is around here that the real beer was created ;).

€ And I spotted 'Cafe Coffee Day' outlets and I couldn't convince myself it was the real one. It was quite astounding that I had come across one in Vienna which I later checked online to find that it was their only outlet outside India (apart from Karachi). But Prague too?! Yeah, they apparently recently opened in Prague as well! They need to make me their international ambassador as I seem divinely capable of spotting their outlet hidden in any corner of Europe :P.

# The most fascinating aspect of Prague for me were the small, almost unnoticeable quirks abound everywhere. Like the railings of a very small bridge covered with padlocks with no apparent explanation, or the statue of Churchill in a desolate corner next to the British Consulate, or an Absinth speciality shop playing Pink Floyd very loudly on an otherwise serene and posh looking street.

Oh and if you are harbouring plans of being an unscrupulous ruler or official in Prague, be prepared against defenestration ;).

old year post

2012-01-02T07:27:00.000Z

2011 was supposed to either a dull year or an year of upheaval ... but as with most such rather extreme predictions, it was neither, but lay somewhere in between. There had to be several cute changes obviously :P. From automatically learning how to eat with chopsticks (as that was the only means of survival there) to starting to cook pasta regularly (no idea why I never tried it before!), to learning to drive and managing to get a driving licence, there have been several step ups. And some step downs as well I suppose which I conveniently don't bother to recollect now :P. In any case, the major highlights maybe listed:

- Finally started writing .... and then stopped ... with the hope of resuming/restarting soon.
- Prepared sincerely and then had to stop ... and was left at a point where all directions seemingly lead nowhere in particular :P.
- Got involved and then somehow stopped .... short-lived fun better than exasperatingly long?
- Got seriously sick again and trying to stop... it's a war to end all wars! ;)

Enough about mythalez, what about the world you ask? Well, 2011 was a year of discontent. In both the political and economic aristocracies. So what about 2012 then, you ask? Don't ask me, ask the Mayans :P

Ungarnished

2011-12-03T23:52:00.001Z

£ - It has been a long time since I permitted myself to ramble instinctively. And truthfully. Without having to obfuscate the sentences so as to abstractify the content. I don't remember when I stopped writing for myself. Well, I still do, but I write for the superficial self, not the subconscious one. Actually, I barely write at all. Just dragging it along, with a post a month, just to convince myself that it is not dead, as yet. Barely holding onto the innate ability to spew out typed words without having to consider them rationally. That is a contradiction, right. If it is an innate ability, I don't have to try hold on to it. It is not going to disappear. But then, how can you be sure? What if it does? What if you sit down one day and realise you have been left bereft? What would you do then? Read books, any books, well written books, books in which words are sewn together in such fascinating ways as to arouse both joy and awe symbiotically? Read them all with the prayer that some such magic spawned by someone will unearth that buried aptitude to just let the words flow and semantics emerge without having to create them.

£ - I always did believe, that real art is not created by the artist. It is not made through a lot of deliberation and holding a conference in the mind. It is actually, just uncovered by him, or her. The artist would not be able to say how and why it came about. It just did. He was fortunate enough to discover it and present it to us. Or she. The best artists are mere couriers.

£ - Isn't it exasperating that English, despite all these years of evolution and assimilation of languages from around the world, has still not managed to provide us with a gender-less third person singular pronoun? Seriously, how hard can it be. A small collection of some three-four letters, perhaps only one of which would be a vowel, would save us from the danger of appearing sexist by using just 'he' or pedantic by using 'he/she'. And of course, also protect us from appearing as if trying too hard to be different, by using just 'she'. I would suggest 'ghe'. Not too hard to pronounce, yet the sound is distinctive enough to avoid any confusion with 'he', 'she', or 'we'.

£ - Do you ever look back and wonder how far we have come? Do you turn around and ask yourself, how did I jump over that fence? When did I run cross that farm? How come I didn't realise I was swimming when I crossed that river? They say (yes, the proverbial 'they') that things look much harder when you stare are confronted by them as compared to when you actually overcome them later. But have they ever looked at the vice versa bit? Have they noticed that often something that has been done, is actually so impossible that it could not have been imagined, had it not actually been done?

Stepping out of a spiral may apparently unleash an unnecessary profusion of ungarnished thoughts.

"Watching"

2011-11-25T12:33:00.001Z

tick-tocking silently, a hand marking the seconds
lazily, his eye chases it round and round
the other eye shut, as a resting dog
in his brain, not a thought could risk being found

the register lay open, pages unbothering to flutter
half empty chai glass having an identity crisis
his unpolished shoes lording over the desk
still air competing to be stiller as the sultry sun is.

Then the sand whirled into dust, the gate rattled
wheels scarred the path with a noisy engine throb
his legs swung over to the ground as torso raised itself
he saluted at attention and trembled a “Salaam Saab!”

galli galli mein kirrkett!

2011-11-09T23:25:00.000Z

Cricket. India. As a child, when you have finally managed to learn how to walk and are running around the house to exercise your new found mobility, inevitably, a hollow plastic stick will be thrust into your hands and a plastic sphere will be thrown towards you. And you swing your arms. In your mind you are mimicking the very actions that you have seen some brown, white and black men do on the television, day in and day out. All this happens within the confines of your home. In my case, I think it was the terrace of our joint-family house at that time. Or perhaps it was the big partitioned room that served as the flat for my family.

Soon enough, I graduated to small locally made wooden bats and rubber balls. And to the sprawling post-office campus next door to our house. In Berhampur, our house was bang in the centre of the town - with the the police HQ on one side, the central post office on the other, and with the bus station opposite our house. There was also some sort of a stadium beyond the bus station, but we, the common public, were never allowed into it. Anyway, the post office with its vast unused paved areas was my own stadium. Played there with brother, the couple of cousins of my age, whenever they visited, and eventually with some school friends. Occasionally, though, an enterprising shot would go high and far enough to hit a glass window somewhere, leading to a clang, a shout from within the building, and a dash by us to vanish from the crime scene. Some other times, without even having caused any damage, some bloke (possibly just been humiliated by his boss [snigger] ) would come out of the offices and order us out of the premises.

We obviously needed alternate arrangements for these periods when the post office was out of bounds. And that's where divinity helped :P. Oh I didn't mention right; opposite our house on the other side, was a catholic church (yep, there were roads, pretty busy main roads on both sides of our house). It had a lush green lawn lying vacant on one side (not the cemetery side :P). This lawn would become our playground for some period, until usually the church is taken over by some sort of event (weddings perhaps?), with no regard for the sporting needs of the surrounding community. Then, we would sneak back into the post office, rightly continuing the cycle.

The other town that was enthralled by my galli cricket during this period was Tenali - whenever I went to visit my grandparents. Depending on where my cousins lived, we would either occupy their front yard or their rooftop. Always preferred the front yard; playing on the rooftop was more of a stair climbing exercise rather than any fun. Any mishit or a wild shot by someone overcome with emotion would have to be followed by first locating where the ball fell on the street, and then going down three levels of stairs to the road to retrieve it. Sometimes, the ball would conveniently rest in the open flowing drain. Retrieving it on such occasions involved some dexterity of using two long sticks as chopsticks to pick it up from the drain and then rolling it around on some nearby sand to dry it up. The ends we had to go for a few hours of cricketing enjoyment!

As I moved into the teens, I graduated to bigger cities - Chennai and then Hyderabad - and also to true 'galli cricket'. Yes, at the first house in Hyderabad, I used to play on the street in front of our apartment. It was very limiting though. Only straight shots were allowed. Any slight angle on your shot, and you have likely lost yet another ball. Soon, however, we moved to a different apartment, and clearly a much better one, as it provided two options for playing areas-- the vast square behind the building, which never had any traffic or the basement of the building itself (which was actually for vehicle parking, but a side of it was left unused; this side also got filled up with dirty rain water every monsoon season). I loved playing in the basement the most. Mainly because it was only conducive to my favourite version of the game with all fielders closed in, and airy shots that directly hit the low roof being declared out. Hence, one ended up being 'technical' :P

Anyway, most of the games of the teens were played in what can be called grounds. The most frequented one being the one pretty close to home. We (me, my classmate, his brothers and some of their neighbourhood kids) would have regular and quite serious matches against the kids of the adjacent 'basti' (slum). With hard taped tennis balls (rather than the rubber ones), sticks for stumps rather than stones, and all the field around the bat being in play (rather than just the area down the wicket), this was a close to proper cricket as I would have hoped then ;).

Cricket wasn't a frequent activity while in IIIT (not for amateurs like me that is :P). Of course, there were the occasional games on the lawns of the hostel all of which invariably had to end with losing the ball in the surrounding hedges. Only towards the end of the years there, did some of us amateurs also start playing on the main sporting ground. I actually preferred the lawn over the ground though. The lawn with its fast paced game, unexpected events and close-in bantering was definitely more fun than the more sober ground version.

And then the lands where cricket first developed - South England! Ironically, though, there was no regular cricket for me here. Was put off by all the formal games happening all around-- everyone belonging to some or the other club team and dressing up in the whole gear paraphernalia as if going into battle :P But there have been exceptions, of course, involving a 'galli' style version of the game. The first one has been well documented here by a great reporter called mythalez :P A couple of games over the years at the same location followed. However, the whole career spanning over 2 decades came to fruition in September this year, when I had been finally persuaded to play a proper game; to make up numbers for the flailing village team of my ex-supervisor for their second last game of the season. Even managed to get a pair of white, crickety trousers for the occasion! But then, of course, the match had to be rained out. However, patience is the key to playing cricket they say ;). So for the final game of their season, I turned up again, and this time, we did get to play! Wearing those pads and gloves left me completely bewildered for a while though. Sensibly, did not try putting on the helmet too! Not needed either as we were playing some local church team who didn't seem any better than me :D. And soon I got into the groove and started playing decently. And then, soon enough, got out :P. Thus, I made my debut in the formal game of cricket. Perhaps, that was also to be my last game ..... who knows! (any comparisons with Dravid's T20 career are welcome ;) )

Awake ... and this is October

2011-10-12T16:16:00.002Z

»» Okay, this would be my first post on the new upgraded version of Blogger. This upgrade should have happened many years ago. While others like Wordpress and Tumblr reached the moon, Blogger was still building a boat to cross a river. At least, finally now it has managed to catch up with the others. Oh, and why did I persist with this dinosaur-like blogging platform for so long, you may ask. I can only attribute my dedication to Blogger to my laziness and the reluctance to change my blog URL. Anyhow, google has finally deigned that Blogger needs to be improved, and lo, behold, it has!

«« Why haven't I posted in September? Oh, in case you haven't noticed, over the past year, I have been striving to at least post once a month. And I have managed to maintain the trend. Until September of course. My excuse? I was to wake up when September ends :P. Okay okay, that is quite a cliche now :P. Truth be told, it didn't cross my mind until towards the end of September. And then, surprise of surprises, I was so caught up with work and other activities, that I barely had time to sit down and procrastinate. Of course, such rare busy'ness does bring out my inherently awesome writing abilities. But in this case, they were being put to task for writing the research papers rather than inane blog posts (this shouldn't be construed as a claim that the research papers are extremely important :P ). In the end, I decided to let September pass by without a blog-post rather than forcing out a pointless, mediocre post (clearly, the same reasoning doesn't seem to hold for October).

«« Working with the real world is way more painful than meddling around with things that only exist in simulations or in the abstract domain of mathematics. And this real world pain arises out of two things: hardware and humans (or replace 'humans' with 'unaware', to maintain consistency :P). Hardware works or doesn't work as per its fancy. When it works, you start frantically figuring out why it is finally working, and before you make any progress, it would stop working. Then you spend time figuring out why it worked initially. The cycle continues until you replace the hardware and begin a new cycle or, you replace the task and not need the hardware :P. And as about humans, they are erratic, irrational and afraid of everything. They might exhibit these essential behaviours through an assortment of other annoying characteristics...

Does the above sound like I might be a supporter of the creation of the Matrix?

5 years and still procrastinating ;)

2011-08-30T14:19:00.000Z

Okay, so I have officially completed 5 years of stay in the UK now! Well, to be honest, given the number of trips to India and elsewhere, and their duration (the longest being 73 days!), I guess my actual total amount of stay in the UK might be tending towards 4 years rather than 5 :P. Nevertheless, I have been resident here for 5 years and that does call for an introspective, philosophical, and enlightening blog post with a dash of self-deprecating humour and generous dollops of heart-warming, feel-good factor....

Just kidding :P.

So the question now is, given that I have survived here for 5 years, which is closing onto my record for the longest stay in any one locality since I was a teenager (yes, I specialise in breaking obscure trivial self-set records like this), it might be a good time to move on.

Where to, you ask? As a famous professor at IIIT-H used to say whenever posed with a half-decent question - "I don't know, you tell me." Yeah, I am in the folly of looking for change just for the sake of change. Perhaps, just to make life a bit inconvenient; getting too comfortable here :P.

At this point, I can either talk about my possible options for moving out, or go all nostalgic over the past 5 years or I could just ramble about the city of Southampton. And as we have already established that I have no clue where I should or can move to, and nostalgia has decided to abstain, I guess we are reduced to talking about the wonders of the city of Southampton.

Only that, it has no wonders :P. Nevertheless, one cannot find fault with it for its convenience. And now, given that I am a veteran, its familiarity. Of course this familiarity is restricted to just one long stretch of the city, ranging from the airport, to the university to the docks. The east and west parts are almost as mysterious now as they had been all those years ago.

Anyway, I have been in UK for these many years, right. So there are other places that are also a bit familiar now. For example, there is London, some parts of which have been visited very often - the nested example being Heathrow say :P - another would be Winchester where I 'officially' 'work' (note the multiple quotes :P). Some others in UK would be Oxford and Edinburgh, yeah the really nice cities.

Outside UK - any place that's been visited more than once, apart from India obviously (and unfortunately, airports don't count)? Germany, France and Switzerland. But in terms of cities, I guess only Geneva has that honour :P. Yeah, I can extract more such obscure, pointless data about myself which would be of interest to no one except my biographer. But then, that might be the sole purpose of mythalez's blog!

after dusk

2011-08-25T16:27:00.000Z

under the dark moonless sky
with the cold wind grazing on
he shivered with the leaves
and the hours kept passing by

a rodent nibbled his toes brazenly

his leg twitched but stayed put

at least someone may have his fill

so some life may survive this debris

his back resting on overgrown roots

the benevolent tree barren, oblivious

his remaining eye sought any light;

time to give up on all life pursuits?

the darkness was now the only friend

his eye shut itself to seek the clarity

with the truth realised, calm engulfed

he had had his way, now the end beckoned.

I was browsing through the list of drafts and came across the first stanza, written and stored sometime in 2007! Felt compelled to take it to some conclusion and show it daylight (ironically :P)

The places where I was a 'Westerner'

2011-07-31T22:17:00.014Z

The trip happened more than 2 months ago. I should have written about it at least 2 months ago. But given that my blogging ability over the last few months has been extraordinarily absent, I didn't even bother until now. What more, the whole blog birthday ritual that I go through every year (for example) also escaped my notice. Sorry blog that I missed your birthday :(. Obviously, 7 is not a lucky number aka year for you :P. Anyway, to make up for it, I shall temporarily repeal my law of "no images on the blog" and post a 'picturesque' travelogue this time! Here we go--

Hong Kong. My first doubt was whether it is spelt with the space or without. Also, everyone knows that Hong Kong has skyscrapers. But did we know that it *only* has skyscrapers? I mean, there are no normal buildings anywhere. Really! Perhaps, they refuse planning permissions to any building having less than 25 stories.

The great skyline along the water makes for a great light and sound show if you stand on the other side, that is the peninsula rather than the island. But I wasn't mightily impressed by the show. Perhaps because we could barely see much due to the perennial fog.

Well apart from that, they also have a giant Buddha. Hmm .. perhaps they have a minimum height restriction on any construction. Gondolas take you to the hill top with the Buddha and a monastery that makes a good and unusual vegetarian lunch. However, if you queue up on a sunday, you will be in the queue for 2 hours. These queues will actually be trafficked by policemen as if the humans were vehicles on roads (am serious!). Anyway, we just took the bus to reach the place and returned via the gondolas. Of course that also gave us great and complete views of the Hong Kong airport from which we had a flight to Taipei in an hour or so.

And that obviously brings us to Taipei. Our hotel and the conference centre were both next to the famous 101 (Yeah, the fog followed us all the way to Taiwan).

If Hong Kong had a few temples, Taipei had one every street. Okay, that's an exaggeration, one every three streets perhaps :P. They also had a similar density of night street markets. Often at the same place. The street markets are extremely lively and full of stalls where you can get 'interesting' food ;). Even in general, seeing the number of eateries abound, their affordability and their 'busy'ness quotient, I was sure that Taipei residents do not dine at home at all!

The traffic system in Taipei is also interesting in that, at many traffic junctions, vehicles are only allowed to go straight at the lights. So scooters and bikes wanting to turn left/right cross over to the adjacent road much like pedestrians. However, the best part of the traffic junctions are the pedestrian lights. The green man accelerates his pace as the deadline approaches until he is practically running and then suddenly turns red. We were speculating whether that metaphorically denoted a blood splattered 'run over' man ;). Well, you can also cross roads in the underground subways, where you will be 'watched'.

Disclaimer: the above photo, featuring me and some cctvs was obviously not taken by me :P, do thank ss2. After the conference, we moved on to Taroko Gorge where we spent a few days with the local indigenous people in their resort - nice cottages where we could wake up to the most scenic mornings possible.

Went on a few hikes, didn't fall down the cliffs and pulled ourselves up by chains and had loads of fun.

We also wanted to do the famous 10 hour hike but that was not allowed by the authorities as they deemed it too dangerous due to the approaching typhoon. Yes, you read it right, I did mean typhoon. All we could console ourselves with was to go to the end point of the hike and take pictures. And then jump over the barriers and take pictures from the bridge which was out of bounds :D

We followed that up by visiting places like Tainan (the ancient capital but which didn't have much of note apart from a few Dutch relics) and Jiufen (a village on a scenic route and with touristy markets). Visiting Taiwan was surprisingly good fun. I hadn't expected to see that much of scenic beauty in such a tiny island. Also unlike Japan, it was easy to communicate with the people there; many people especially youngsters spoke English, though with an american accent ;) and even those who couldn't speak English were extremely friendly nevertheless. Hong Kong, on the other hand, just seemed to be made for the rich and every one else was trying to sell you stuff, ostensibly to become rich themselves :P.

2

2011-06-17T22:33:00.003Z

Do you ever feel such that you have this great urge to write - write something, anything - but are unable to? No words form in the mind, let alone a topic coming to the fore. The mind is not even calm enough for a few seconds so that you could gather a semblance of concentration for any productive activity. Yeah, I know, I am just elucidating the meaning of being 'restless'. But this is more specific; the context here pertains to writing. Maybe not just writing, but saying, communicating. I can see that I am not doing such a good job of communication right now. Too many commas floating around. Too many jumps in the content. Too much repetition of 'too'. Too many flaws. And too many sentences in this one paragraph.

Why have I written this post and why are you wasting your time reading this, you might wonder. In fact, am sure you will wonder now. Well, the simple answer is that I just had to write something, put something out there. I have been meaning to write the travelogue-ish post about the trip to the Far East, but I just haven't managed to get the mood yet. That is mainly because I haven't had much free time in the last few weeks. Yes, I know, that might sound unusual for me, but it does happen sometimes. Note that I am not complaining that I was busy with 'work'; that would be a lie. I had quite some work, but I am never that busy with work anyway. I think I feel proud of the fact that I can claim to be never overwhelmed with work, a contrast to most people, who moan about being busy with work all the time. I just think it is the most easily accessible excuse they have for not doing whatever they ought to be doing if they were not supposedly busy like that. Moaning about being busy also frees them from the guilt of not doing those other things. Ascribing the blame onto some inanimate and abstract entity like work, frees oneself from any accusation of being scared or lazy, thus allowing one to continue wallowing in the inertia of routine.

Meanwhile, I think perhaps I should stop rambling here and go to bed. After all, I have a 'busy' day tomorrow! :P

Unnoticed

2011-05-30T20:37:00.004Z

Cars push through, drains overflow.
Some shutters down, some rise,
scenes fly past the busy eyes.
But do you see, he who goes slow?

Trudging along on his battered shoes.
Listless hands and a muddied face,
an antithesis to the surrounding race.
Carrying a pallid soul and many a bruise.

Alone he walks but isn't an only one.
Every turn, bodies stumble, souls die;
you may see them lying on the wayside.
But no time to spare; busy you are ... in your run.

On an unrelated note, the next post has to be on the trip to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

a meta posta

2011-04-26T14:42:00.006Z

It's been a while since I rambled here so I thought I might as well pay a visit (yeah I know, it is a free service) and contribute a few more bytes to the overflowing interwebs. So here I am. The question now is what do we talk about. Rather, what do I 'blah' about.

£ Shall I put forth a comical satire about the 40 minutes of nerve-wracking driving I had to do to pass my driving licence test? I am pretty sure that getting a driving licence in the UK is the hardest compared to any other country. In addition to the theory test, the video game test (yeah it is a video game - you have to stare at videos and click upon seeing hazards, and the points you get depend on how quickly you clicked - literally, a video game!), the actual driving test has to be fault-free. Only some 'minor faults' are allowed - that is, a slight jerky start and so on. Any actual mistake and you are deemed fail :P. Anyway, yeah now I have a UK 'full car driving licence'. I wonder when I will get an Indian one. The challenge there is not passing the test, that is easier than I can imagine, but actually staying there for the duration of 1 month that is compulsorily needed between obtaining the necessary learner's licence and giving the driving test.

$ Or perhaps I should talk about my forthcoming trip to Hongkong and Taiwan? Oh yeah, this shall be my second visit to the Far East after my first ever international trip (infact, first ever flight journey), which was to Japan. This trip (or junket as some like to call it) consists of 2.5 days in Hongkong (which is actually a transit stop on the way to Taipei) and then 13 days in Taiwan. So all together this would be my longest ever 'phoren' trip. Only to/in India have I had trips longer than 12 days. For people wondering what I will be doing for so long in Taiwan, the first week will be spent in Taipei, where the daytimes will be spent at the conference center (which is conveniently situated next to Taipei 101). Many trips and activities are expected of the second week. The most exciting of which can be this (even if you have been annoyed by the previous links, do check this one :P)

€ Or perhaps I should talk about something else. Err .. wait .. what? You want more? Don't be greedy now, blog. Go post yourself! :P

Walk not the usual way

2011-04-08T09:02:00.003Z

Have you ever tried walking with your eyes closed? Perhaps on an wide empty path, where there is no real danger of bumping into anyone or anything?

£ The first 5-6 steps are pretty easy – the mind remembers what lay ahead and believes that it is on track.

$ The next 10 steps or so are the hardest – the mind is no longer sure of your progress. It feels that you are about to hit something any moment. It is worried that you have strayed off the path and are treading where you are not supposed to.

€ The steps after that are not easier again – the mind gives up on bothering about where you might be headed and just relaxes to enjoy the experience.

Do we sleep walk through life?

Imposing an emotion to coerce a verse

2011-03-14T08:17:00.000Z

Adopting nonchalance of a veteran,

disguising eagerness, expectations,

and the nervousness of possibilities

Allusions a plenty, kindled by the support squad

Details suppressed, mystery enhanced for all

Excited restless self, imagining the prospects

The exterior restraint, but a mere facade

Unprecedented, an accomplishment extraordinaire?

To fulfil the dream- your naive mind's flirtation

Had striven the self, selfishly, seeking not pleasure

but your profusion of joy, unbridled twinkle of your eye,

and the sweet dollops of your eternal appreciation

The success, you do acknowledge and share

Yet, arrogantly, in vain, I await your gratitude

'No true benevolence there!' rightly says your attitude :P

[tch tch .. I really seem to have the lost the little ability I had for this form :-s]

At the extremes ...

2011-03-06T16:56:00.003Z

I am tired and thirsty. While striding towards my boarding gate at the new, swanky terminal, I pass by a small kiosk selling snacks and drinks. Having walked past, I stop, re-evaluate my thirst and decide to get a drink. So I turn around and approach the kiosk. There is no one there. A few knocks on the counter produces a shop-keeper. I name my choice of drink but he seems confused. As the cooler opens outward anyway, I calmly pick out a juice bottle and place it on the counter. "35 Rupees", he says. I open my wallet and realise that I have only one '10' and one '20', and some '500' notes. I look up to hand over a 500 note and this time there is another one at the counter- a girl, she looks at the note, tries to smile and says, "a smaller note would be there with you?" "No, I only have 30 or this", and try to hand over the note. She persists, "but I will also not have 5 in change." I wave my hand in response and shrug, "fine, take 40." She reluctantly takes the 500 note.

At this, the guy is about to open a jar of some chocolates in order to offer one to me, in return for the extra 5. But she taps his hand and says to him "nahin, isko mat dena" (no, don't give it to him) and hands over the change of 460 to me. Taken slightly aback, I walk away with my drink, satiate my thirst and wonder- did I actually manage to appear like a rich conceited brat to a shop-keeper? Wow, now that's a new achievement :D

****

I had already been snubbed by 5 auto-wallas. None of them seem even remotely interested to go where I needed to be taken. Quite surprising as I want to go to a busy area, not some remote corner of the city. On top of that, the early afternoon sun was trying its best to burn us all up. I hail down another auto-rickshaw and shout across the street, "City-centre mall, Banjara Hills." I cross over to his side quickly enough to hear is response, "60." It was a bit too high. "Arre, 40 ee ekkuva" (40 is more than enough), I argue. He shakes his head, "akkadanundi malli khaali ravalsuntadi, andukane 10 kalipanu" (I will have to return empty from there, hence I merely added 10). I couldn't agree with his logic at all, "Mall adi! akkada kuda dorakaru ante inkekada dorukutaru? sare 50" (That is a mall, if you can't get customers even there, where else will you get? let's say 50). Perhaps, my bargaining skills have taken a beating and he refuses to negotiate. So I end up agreeing to 60 and jump in.

Through the middle of the journey, he has to break very hard, and just about manages to avoid hitting a guy who suddenly jumped out of a running bus, right in the middle of the road. On resumption of the travel, the driver starts complaining on how it wasn't his fault at all. I completely agree with him though also alert him that one always has to be extra careful when over-taking city buses on the left, as people tend to jump out suddenly like that. Soon our conversation moves over to other things. Eventually, at the destination, I hand him exactly 60. He looks at the bunch of notes and asks, "enta?" (how much?). "60", I reply, trying to guess his thoughts and bracing myself for an argument in case he demands more. He smiles and says, "50 chalu" (50 is enough) and returns 10 back to me. How often has an Hyderabadi auto-wallah taken the initiative to reduce a fare already agreed on?

2+7<->9+2<->11

2011-02-10T19:19:00.003Z

J'ai vingt sept ans

Yes, yes this is the ritual post for 9th Feb every year. Yeah yeah I know, today is the 10th and I am late by a day. But that's not my fault. Blame it on the old age :P.

Anyway, this appearance today is just to remind you all, but mainly my poor blog that it hasn't been forgotten. Just that it did not figure in my things to do in the previous few weeks. But from now, it shall be different. Or so I hope :) There shall be more posts-- more stories, more ramblings and maybe even more genres!

Okay let me start now .....

Hmm .. aah well .. maybe some other day .. not in the mood today :P

Amsterdam - Copenhagen - Hannover !!

2011-01-03T10:37:00.001Z

Yes, three cities-- visited Amsterdam in August, Copenhagen in October and Hanover in November. Also went to India in September, and a couple of other trips too in these months but those have nothing much to write about :P. So let me talk about each of these three cities in turn. Yeah, my travelogueing skills are depleting by the day and hence I need to have travelled to at least three different places to be able to produce one substantial post :P.

AMSTERDAM: Hmm, let me see, what do I remember about this city? It was the city with the most canals/streams that I have ever been to. And if you are asking- no, I haven't been to Venice yet. Boating around on those canals seemed to be the favourite activity of tourists. With most roads neighbouring the canals, and innumerable bridges criss-crossing them, it is quite pretty in the central city area. And that is also where you will find the famous 'coffee shops'. Some of them, especially those on the main roads, are obviously set up for tourists. However, those in the back alleys seem to be the proper ones, having a genuine feel to them, and the stuff you get there is pretty strong too ;). Also if you are strolling around in the city-centre, you will at some point, find yourself in the centre of the other notorious attraction, the red-light district, having no clue how you got there. And it is literally, a 'red light' area.

As Amsterdam is reputed for its art museums, we had to visit some. Van Gogh museum had unnecessarily long queues, so we didn't go in. The other museum next to it, the main one- Rijksmuseum, is mostly under renovation. But we did manage to see some really nice and grand paintings in the little area open to visitors. The public transport system, mainly based on trams is decent. Finally, have I mentioned the bicycles? Biking is the first nature of the Dutch, walking might be second :P. There are bikes everywhere, and at the parking areas, there are such huge piles of bikes, chained and locked, that I really wonder how one would manage to find his/her bike among the hundreds and hundreds of bikes mashed together.

COPENHAGEN: If bicycles form the image of Amsterdam, cycle-paths are the lasting memory of this city. They are unique because they are not just the usual coloured strip at the edge of the road that no one cares much about. Rather, the cycle-paths in Copenhagen are raised platforms on the side of the road, much like footpaths/pavements. So yeah, the roads appear really wide. They contain the traffic lanes, then a raised platform for the bikes, and then a proper pavement for the pedestrians. And if that is not enough, at the bus-stops there is an additional raised platform to wait and board the buses! Of course in some places, exiting the bus might leave you standing on the bike path and before you realise it, there will be cyclists whistling past you, silently cursing at these tourists who can't step away quick enough :P

Actually, it is a wonder why people even bother to use bicycles here. The transport system is pretty convenient and cheap, though a bit confusing. They have the metro, a non-metro train system, and buses and more. A ticket is valid on any many of these within its validity period. Okay enough about the transport. The city is really neat and well-maintained. Architecture is a mix of both old and new. There don't seem to be any cheap places to hang out though, only posh restaurants. Did I mention how expensive the city is? Well, it's Denmark after all.

HANOVER: What's special about Hannover you might ask. Well, I don't know apart from the fact that it has cheap and convenient flights from Southampton. Actually, it didn't end up being that convenient for me anyway, as the flight was delayed by 3 hours, and when it finally reached Hanover, I was held up at the immigration for an additional hour as the immigration officer found me, my visa, and my reasons for coming to the city suspicious! So the highlight of my trip might have very well been in the first hour of landing in the city, as I was escorted out of the arrivals by two machine-gun totting, tall, hefty, bullet-proofed security personnel ;).

The central market area of the city, containing the railway station, the cathedral and big shopping malls is nice to walk around. Oh, and it has an area, marked by a statue which acts as the commonly recognised meeting point in the city-centre. You can find quite a few people standing there waiting. The 'Rathaus' contains four miniature depictions of Hanover- one showing Hanover as it was in 1689, one showing the 1939 version, one the 1945 version, and finally the current one. The 1945, post World War II depiction, is stark and disquieting; all of the city is just debris with only a couple of buildings left standing here and there. When we were there, there was one marriage party exiting the building, and another preparing to enter. A procession of weddings ;).

Well, that's all about these three cities. Who knows where I will go next. And when!

PS- did you expect some mention of the advent of the new year, the new decade, the new era blah and blah? Well.....

Glimpses of a day

2010-12-09T16:22:00.008Z

Another day, the sun wakes up a little later than yesterday, the air exerts a bit more chill today, but the clock is still adamant to alarm at the same time. She curses as she bolts right up on the bed. The covers slide down the smoothness of her skin and she shivers with cold, the coldness of her dreams. Also the thermostat might need to be turned higher. She looks around to locate the source of that annoying screaming buzz of the alarm and brings down her hand swiftly to end it. Of course the ritual will be repeated again tomorrow. But for now, there is silence. Aah, the silence! How easy is it to just grab the pillow and wander back into sleep. Resist the temptation! She bends forward and holds her feet, her legs still stretched out. Hence the curve of her back is now almost horizontal, pressed tightly against her legs, the lower spine pushing against the skin accentuates its presence while the upper half is hidden by the curls of her hair.

...

She is jogging to the tram stop. The pavements are being stocked up by the fresh produce of the day, dripping water all around as they are moved out from the trucks. She sidesteps the workers, the boxes and the puddles with equal ease, without any visible slowing of her pace. The smell wafting from a bakery reminds her of the buttered toast lying abandoned in her kitchenette as she dashed out of the house. As she approaches the junction, she manages to catch sight of the approaching tram. Instantly, the jog turns to a run, and a flash of beautiful mass rushes up the street, coming to a halt just as the tram also does.

...

She looks at the watch. It's just been 20 minutes since she last looked. 3 more hours left to the end of the shift. She glances at the two kids fussing about in the store. Their mother is outside having a puff, perhaps to snatch away a few minutes of relief from her kids. They do seem to be troublesome. They had already picked up a whole lot of packets from the shelves and after giving a glance or two, placed them haphazardly at the nearest available space; only coincidentally would the new shelf belong to the same category as the packet. They had also knocked off a part of one of the displays. Her favourite display, the one that took her a whole shift to build from the basic blocks. Yet she has been sitting there passively, nevertheless, observing them continuously. Hopefully remembering all their actions, because once they leave, she will have to go about and re-shelve all the toys in their rightful places and also restore her master display. For now, though, she is just watching. And hearing her rumbling stomach, complaining about its neglect. Not a morsel today and it is already past lunch-time. Have to wait until the shift ends to get hold of any food. And now, she is just half-way through it. Why am I even doing this? Yeah, it is the usual time of the day for the introspective thoughts. Is it worth it? She gets up to dust away these nagging doubts and busies herself by righting the wrongs, of the kids at least.

...

Her tram is winding its way through the bustling streets. With the shops starting to down the shutters, more people are emerging onto the roads. Despite it being quite dark, there is no sign of any stars appearing in the sky. Maybe some clouds, maybe the bright street lights. She occasionally looks at this scene through the window, as a necessary change from sifting through the library book and her notes, preparing for the assignment tomorrow. She also thinks back to the afternoon. She had to rush to her class directly from the store because the manager delayed her after the shift, discussing his plans for the forthcoming Christmas sale. As a result, she didn't have the luxury to go home or freshen up. She looks at her clothes, crumpled slightly, and aches to be home soon and be able to relax in the shower. Nevertheless, she would have been an artist's delight, especially those dabbling in portraits. Her beautifully-cut face is complemented by the studious look given out by the glasses and the concentration-filled eyes behind them.

...

On the bed, staring at some youtube video, her hand is mechanically feeding her the rice from the little bowl in her lap. Plain rice with a dash of salt and lemon. She was drained of all energy to have been able to cook anything else. Quite a catch-22 this is, sometimes- you need the energy to cook food, but you need the food to gain the energy. She reaches out for the clock to ascertain that the alarm is set, just to be safe in case she dozes off, as she oft does, with the laptop running, the half-empty bowl on the bed, the glasses astray, and the dreams abound.

Just another day after all.

I write because I can't !!

2010-12-04T01:47:00.003Z

Lost track of life.
It's running away from me.
I chase it, I gasp behind it.
It appears, it teases and it hides,
tempting yet beyond reach.
Why don't I take control?
Why don't I bend it to my wishes?
That may be possible, but what are my wishes?
What if I bend it one way and turns out, other side they lay?

There is a lake that shines,
It glitters but it is shallow.
Inviting the beauty around,
it glows with an enchanting halo.
Drawn to it are all of us,
but we reach and muddle it
only to be caught in its whirlpool of unhappiness!

Those beyond capture might grin,
and even ridicule the apparent silliness
Yet someday, caught up in the same quagmire,
they seek help from the same mocked
and expect to be saved and delivered
because all they did was laugh and yet somehow, apparently, admire!

Once dry and on firm ground,
they might act as if all sound
and justify their actions and the eventual resolutions.
But we all know and so do they,
what happened is not causal or explanatory
Fate and destiny are but mere words for incomprehensibility!

A world in white

2010-12-02T08:51:00.003Z

The world has transformed. And it is all running in slow motion. The bus is moving forward slowly, slow with circumspection, even though it is not obstructed by the usual traffic. The long queues of cars at the traffic junction are now replaced by just a couple of them. Even those few don't rush through the green light as in regular 'rush hour', but cross gently, as if strolling on a leisurely afternoon. The absence of the usual cacophony of speeding cars is almost unsettling.

A few huddled figures in dark coats can be observed, bent slightly forward, tiptoeing despite their hurry. Dark dots against a vast white background. Seems like everyone else has relented to the serenity and made themselves scarce, so as not to disturb it. All at the same time. Those left behind are trying to be inconspicuous with their quietness and restrained movement.

The flakes are dropping from the sky with the assurance of being preserved after the fall, buffered by those colleagues who have fallen before them. Without any need for urgency, each one is managing to have a decent look around and marvel at how together they have managed to transform this usually drab place into some kind of a pristine beauty. The snow flakes come down gently, perhaps in allegory to the slow moving world around them. Or is it the other way round? Has the world slowed down to mirror the unhurried fall of this snow?

"why art are you?"

2010-11-14T11:11:00.003Z

This is a desperate attempt to placate the blog and persuade it not to abandon me. Yes, I am referring to Mythalez's blog. Given the recent inactivity, it has been feeling neglected and was making threatening remarks about moving out. I, of course, ridiculed her threats, mocking her by asking where she was intending to go. I even pointed out that if she did move away from me, Mythalez, to another author, would she still be called Mythalez's blog? I was thus, so arrogantly complacent. Of course, on one relatively calm day, she informed me that she had started planning our separation and has been actively browsing the blog-world for a suitable replacement of me. Before I could start off on another of my mocking rants, she calmly informed me that even after our separation, she would still be called Mythalez's blog, and therefore, her new author would be ordained Mythalez. That's when it hit me! With this separation, I would not only become blogless but also nameless! Whoever owned Mythalez's blog would be called Mythalez. I would just vanish. Much like Doctor Who, you know! The new guy becomes the doctor, and the old one turns into a mere question- who? Okay, I apologise for the trite attempt at humour, but coming back to point, I have decided to act before it is too late. Hence this post.

Now, coming to the actual content of the post rather than the motivation, I could have written about Amsterdam or even Copenhagen. In fact, I do need to write about them. But instead of making the effort of writing an articulate personalised description of these two famous cities in Northern Europe, I have plumped for a much easier genre-- an abstract post that outwits itself in its abstractness. Without this confession, it would seem that a great deal of thought and philosophy went into this post, and that it is open to great deal of interpretations, the best of which would be the author's. All that, my dear reader friends, is just a myth. Every abstract post is abstract because it essentially has no substance :P. No, I didn't mean that, that way. Let us just say that abstract posts are like neutron stars-- you know they are there; they aren't pretty or bright, but they are dense and heavy. More importantly, you do get gravitated towards them, quite strongly ;). So here we go-->

Indulgence you are. Exquisite indulgence. The outer clothing with the smooth combination of colours and the slight glitter tries its best to compliment the beauty it is veiling. With gentle persuasion, slowly emerges the elegance personification with the finely cut features emphasizing the slimness and the delicious delight contained. The multiple layers are snugly fit together, their differences imperceptible unless a part is broken off rudely. Perhaps the layers allude to the taste, the way the sweet and the bitter flirt in the mouth? Only if one is fortunate enough to experience, that is. And the other layer, the mysterious flavour, intangible and indescribable, yet, or maybe hence, holds the most attraction. Every intimacy, reintroduces one to ecstasy but also leaves with a nostalgic bitter after-taste. Something that would turn to melancholy if not for the reappearance and the re-indulgence another day.

Can never get enough of you, my generous slice of 85% cocoa! ... Hmm .. well .. finally, I seem to have used an actual metaphor, I guess? ;)

My name is Red

2010-10-04T00:03:00.002Z

I was walking swiftly. I don't know why though; there was no reason to hurry. The appointment with the doctor was after an hour and that's just the minimum you know. I was also starving, but I walked past the fast-food counters and kept walking. Aah, the irony. They have fast-food centres with the greasy burgers and oily chips in a hospital, where the original cause behind most of the illnesses of its patients is obesity.

Anyway, I was walking, my pace throttled by the crowds in the corridors, when my shirt's sleeve felt wet. Yeah, it was full-sleeves but folded a bit. I looked at it there was a big wet blob. Strange, did the ceilings leak in this hospital too? But then, at that moment, even my arm felt wet. I slowed down and rolled up my sleeve to check. Most of the lower arm was red. Almost dripping. An unusual sort of red really. Almost like a bright red paint that's been diluted. Watery. Damn. What was the cotton doing? Oh, I also had to be careful while moving my hand so as to not let the liquid slip off and mar the squeaky clean floor. Back to the cotton, it had absorbed enough to become a dark red. The surrounding tape, holding it in place, was still there. I had stopped completely by now. I turned around abruptly. The busy people, hurrying behind me had to suddenly stop; they almost bumped into me. They stared at me, I guess expecting me to say something on the lines of 'sorry' or 'excuse me'. But I just stared back defiantly. Then they noticed the bloody hand. With rising levels of alarm, they parted and gave me way.

I started briskly walking back to the blood test centre at the pathology department. Obviously, the nurse didn't do the best job ever and it's only fair that I give her a chance to rectify. The streaming groups of people in the corridors, walking in all possible directions, noticed me coming towards them, noticed the red, and politely got out of my way. I went past the fast-food counters, the main reception area and onto the other side of the hospital. At this moment, I wasn't even bothering to go around the people. I was brazenly jogging and expecting them to get out of the way, which they did. Of course, I still had to go around stretchers on wheels and patients on wheel-chairs.

I turned left. Then right. Left again. The corridors were flying past me now. Thankfully, the direction signs were abundant. Otherwise, people in a hurry like me, would end up going in enough circles to faint. Finally, I reached what I remembered to be the second last corridor to reach the pathology dept. I pushed open the door blocking my way and faced an elderly patient in a wheel chair being pushed by an orderly. But I didn't even hold the door open for them. I rushed around them and turned the final right. Now, I slowed my pace to quick strides and entered the blood test centre. It was just as full as when I had left some minutes ago. But this time, I didn't take a token and wait. That would have been silly. I strode confidently past the waiting room towards the room where the booths are; where the nurses take the blood samples. I could hear murmurs from the other waiting patients. The corner of my eye even gathered a girl nudging her boyfriend/husband/brother/friend-whoever and pointing me out. The couple standing next to the entrance to the other room quickly moved aside on seeing me. As I stepped inside, the nurse standing close to the entrance, presumably the supervisor, looked over at me calmly and made her remarkable observation- "You are bleeding". I grinned. That's what I do when I am somewhat embarrassed. She then looked over her shoulder and shouted, "Angie! Can you please re-bandage this gentleman?" Without waiting for approval from Angie, she pointed me to a chair, with a nurse standing next to it. I guess her name was Angie. I went over. She asked me to keep my arm raised and then proceeded to wipe and clean my arm. She removed the soaked bloody cotton and tapes and wiped more, now around the area from where all the liquid was coming out. The place where another nurse had just poked me a few minutes ago and drawn out bucket-loads of blood. Anyway, this second time, the nurse stuck much larger cotton balls and tapes, and quite firmly too.

With all that done, I was asked to wash my other hand which had also been reddened as I was using it to hold this arm away from people on my way here. The nurses then enquired whether I had also left my bloody marks on the floor anywhere. Anyway, soon after, with my freshly bandaged arm, very clean, smelling of that familiar hospital odour, and with the stained sleeves rolled up, I walked out of there. On my way past the waiting room, I noticed a few more murmurs and 'pointings' towards me by the other waiting patients. Aah, I was the highlight of their morning!

Update on books read

2010-09-19T18:28:00.000Z

Thought that it is time to post an update about the latest books read. So this is it.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk: I wanted to read 'My Name is Red' but I found this one. As it seemed big enough and deep enough to keep me occupied for some weeks, I picked it up. Well, it took more like a couple of months to finish actually. No, it wasn't bad. Far from it. The writing is filled with beautiful imagery, very evocative and compelling. The description of the snow especially and the snow filled city especially, doing justice to the title. Of course, a lot more justification is uncovered as one progresses through the story. Based in a border town of Turkey called Kars (I guess it exists?) and mostly about the protagonist's trip to it. The protagonist, called 'K' is a famous poet, a friend of Pamuk, the main narrator, though the story is from the point of view of K. It places his personal tryst with love, caught up in the clash between the Islamic population, the staunchly secular military and the confusion of the coup led by a previously-famous theatre personality. Yeah, it all happens in the novel.

The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth: The reason I wanted to read this is because I admire Vikram Seth's poetry. And because this is so unique- written in verse! And because it is about 20-something adults, with jobs and stuff, trying to make sense of their loves, desires and hates while struggling against the irrationality in the minds. Initially, it is great fun to read the story in the perfectly rhyming verse but as one progresses deep into the story and identifies too much with the characters, one concentrates more on the story and less on the style ;). Before, reading I wondered how the author would be able to fit in dialogues (it would have seemed unnatural to find the characters rhyme their speech right :P), but he did it expertly. Normal sentences, break across the lines of the stanza such that the rhyming scheme is maintained immaculately. A book definitely worth reading.

e: A Novel by Matt Beaumont: On the topic of unconventional novels, here is another one. Quite a unique one at that. It is composed entirely in the form of office emails exchanged between some employees of an advertising firm in London. Set in a 2 week period coinciding with a major bid for a Coke campaign, the book is hilarious from the first page. The bitchiness, the absurdity and the false-sincerity that goes on in an office is aptly captured. In short, it is a book one cannot put down and wishes that the story would go on forever. Kudos to the author's ingenuity and style. If you do get to read this, I am sure you would agree that the most hilarious mails are from the Finnish CEO who isn't even supposed to feature in the story ;).

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig: A mostly non-fictional book about philosophy and stuff. I heard a lot about it for far too long but resisted reading it. Eventually, it has been forced down my throat and I had no other choice but to read it. As it says after the dedication page of the book, it is not very factual about Zen, and not very factual about motorcycles either ;). It is told in the form of the narrator talking to us while on a bike trip across US with his son and a long-time friend couple. But the trip description is only a facade for launching into the philosophy of the author about 'Quality'. These vignettes of wisdom are called 'Chautauquas' (the main new word I learnt from this). And there is another stream that runs in between these two, giving us insight about the past of the narrator, who is actually the author of course. No, it is not at all confusing :). And composed this way, the book is much easier to read than had it been all talk about philosophy only. Anyway, the book will definitely make you think.

Johnny Gone Down by Karan Bajaj: On my recent trip to a book store in Hyderabad, I was amazed to see how 'popular Indian literature' has exploded over the past couple of years. There seem to be hundreds of books written by young Indian authors for young Indians. I guess these books fill in the long-existing gap of Indian English novels for pure pleasure reading. To get a taste of it, I picked up this one because it was the cheapest (50% discount on a MRP of 100!) and I had read good reviews about it. It is a fast, gripping story on the lines of Shantaram and Forrest Gump. But being very short, it is not convincing enough. Nevertheless, good enough to pass time on a lazy afternoon :).

I have also recently read compendiums of short stories - both fiction and non-fiction - but one cannot really talk about them in the form of a summary. All I can say is that they were fun, usually more fun than a novel. :)

"Lashing"

2010-09-01T04:20:00.001Z

Dejected is not what she would have called her state of mind. Dejection suggests a cause. Hers is deeper. Doldrums would suit the description of her condition but she didn't like that. The metaphor about a stagnant ship in the middle of the Atlantic somehow did not reflect the despair and melancholy that has been pervading everything about her in these times.

She was in another of her endless supply of pensive moods but the irritation in her eye was distracting her. Finally gathering enough energy she rose, walked over to the mirror and looked at herself. Not really, she avoided looking at all of her face and so moved closer to focus on her mischievous eye. The problem was pretty obvious- a single miscreant black eye-lash had escaped from its position and was poking her eye instead. She carefully pulled it aside. The dissident eye-lash now calmly lay on her thumb. Just then she remembered. It is obviously silly but why deny an opportunity for hope? So she closed her eyes, wished, opened them to look at the gentle eye-lash and softly blew at it. It didn't budge. She was about to try harder when she suddenly recollected that the eye-lash is supposed to be blown away from the palm for the wish to take effect.

Slightly relieved, she placed it on the her palm and repeated the process of wishing with eyes closed. Then she blew at it to send it away into the realms of magic. But again it did not budge. She blew harder. And harder. And even harder. Every attempt increased her anger manifolds. After 4 attempts, she was disgusted with the whole affair and vigorously shook her hand to escape from the clutches of this vicious betrayer. But the eye-lash clung on obstinately. She threw up her hands in anguish and walked off in a huff.

Apparently, it isn't so easy to regain hope ... ;)

a rolling stone feels no mass

2010-08-28T17:12:00.004Z

I forgot to post my cursory post here that I am going home to Hyderabad. Okay okay, I know I keep doing too often to even mention it in the blog anymore. Still, here it is: I am at home now and will be in this 'state' for the next 3 weeks! Today also marks the day I first went to UK .. so completed 4 years now! A bit of an irony that I am in India while announcing this :P.

Oh and by the way, don't appear friendly and knowledgeable on flights and airports .. otherwise, you will be besieged and not allowed to use the free wifi in peace! Now that this is done .. what else do I write about? How about that post I thought I could try?

\begin{abstract}
How long was I staring at it? And how did I manage to hold my gaze and that posture, without any support, for so long? Or was it long? After all, normally it doesn't take more than a minute to figure out a bus route from a clearly delineated map even in a strange city. Perhaps the person sitting nearby and giving us that look of disdain would know how long it's been. Obviously, I can't ask. So I try to sit down without making my state too apparent. But how will I know?
....

Wait, wasn't I just involved in an lucid discourse about what's wrong with .... uh oh .. what was the topic of the discussion? And what was my take on it? He doesn't seem to have been talking at all. So who was I discussing with? The only thing I can think of now is to conduct the 'time-test' again. I ask him what he thinks the time now might be. The last time we checked it was 1am. "2am? 2:30 perhaps?" he guesses. I check and it is 1:05am. He is as nonplussed as I am. I should conduct this test again after say, 10 mins or maybe an hour. If I can tell which is which.
....

I can see them. I can feel them. They can feel them too. But they can't feel them and hence, so can't I. Too many pronouns in there? The hands, they are clearly holding onto the legs. I can see that. And the hands, they can feel the legs. So that's what they are doing- holding onto my legs. And my legs, they are nicely bent at the knees, around the bench. The feet are pleasantly planted on the ground and I can feel that. But the legs, they are oblivious to the hands that are visibly and tangibly on them. So where is the disconnect? Is this the 'out of body' experience people keep expounding about? If so, it's nothing fancy really, just kind of lame :P.
\end{abstract}

at the front of my mind...

2010-08-13T22:26:00.005Z

£ Celtic radio in the background ... why? no idea .. I was browsing through the options and this caught my fancy ... sounds very pleasant too!

£ Spent the whole day today feeling lost. Attempted to do many tasks. Mainly because I was in the office during the 'regular hours' and several different long pending works pleading for attention. But I couldn't stick to any of them. Tried to start each of them and failed at each of them. So left them all for another day ... a better day.

£ Thought I will watch a movie in the evening, perhaps 'Atonement', perhaps 'There will be blood' (those are two of the movies on my pc yet to be watched, waiting patiently for more than a year now). In the end, didn't watch either of those.

£ Will I be able to complete this post before the laptop runs out of juice? Just a few minutes left. Yes, the power cord is a bit far away from the sofa and am too lazy to get up now.

£ Just realised that I should savour tomorrow as it will be the last weekend I will be spending at home in Southampton for a while. The next such Saturday will mostly be the last one in September.

£ No more thoughts left. At least no more that could be extracted, dusted off and polished to coherence.

Letters struggle in places,
Words grudgingly together
Forming, deforming phrases
But meaning? Whither? Wither.

Strange Acquaintances!

2010-08-04T09:43:00.003Z

People generally complain about their inability to remember names or being unable to associate names to known faces. I think I suffer from the reverse. Names are not a problem but I don’t seem to remember faces! Or the other explanation can be that people find my face very memorable ;) while I dont find their’s so :P. Often it happens, that I am walking (mostly around the university), not really lost in my musings, and I find someone coming towards me and staring at me. Just as our eyes meet, the person lets out a “hi” or simply that ‘smile of recognition’. And no, I am not confusing it with that ‘smile of courtesy’ that strangers may occasionally deign to bestow upon each other. Anyone slightly familiar with the British politeness can easily tell them apart :P. Anyway, even if I am caught unawares, I tend to instinctively respond with the ‘hi’ or smile respectively. And we cross each other and continue on our paths.

Having assured them falsely that I do reciprocate their recognition, my mind immediately embarks upon the challenging journey into the recess of its memory to uncover the facts. Did I actually meet this person before? If I did, when? where? Who is this person? And so on. More often than not, after the tough mental expedition, I manage to remember the details.

Like that one occasion when I realised that the girl who smiled and hi’ed as she walked past had met me only once before, that too almost a year ago! Or that other guy, who I come across often, waving, hello’ing or just smiling, to which I respond of course. Evidently, we knew each other. But I couldn’t remember how. After 4-5 such incidents, in which I also acted as if I was in a hurry lest he attempted to make conversation too (oh the horror! :P), I realised that I had indeed met him a couple of times, 3 years ago in my first few months at Southampton, during induction sessions etc. But not always do I manage to recollect. There was this other girl a few weeks ago, whose face first registered recognition, then transformed into a smile. Just before we crossed each other, she even let out a “hey”. I was very certain I didn’t see her before. I actually contemplated turning around and enquiring how she knew me, even at the risk of appearing rude. However, my bus arrived and I chose the conservative option and got in instead. Despite racking my brains over and over, I haven’t been able to place her. But then, her’s wasn’t an easily forgettable face either-- lip piercings are not that common still. Or maybe, the piercing was a new addition, thus making recognition tougher ... who knows! :)

Sense

2010-07-20T00:11:00.005Z

Gliding in light, end to end

Vast expanse of wasted stage

Oblivious of those in attend

He swirled and swung in rage

She watched in fright and awe

Discovering emotions raw

Her eyes followed him in capture

Rest of them only listened in rapture

His brilliance easily perceived

String and tune he deftly weaved

Lifting them to bliss ephemeral

And then glimpsing sorrow eternal

Music, the violin and he were one

Deaf she, absorbed all though heard none

with this, the month long voluntary hiatus of the blog ends ... an 8+6 poem on 'request' is here! :P

2191 days = Bloggie Birthday!

2010-06-16T20:58:00.001Z

6 years gone ... yes .. 6 .. and the blog is still alive .. it's active! When Mythalez started on this day in 2004, he was pretty sure it would die out in a couple of months, if not weeks. So join together and celebrate the birthday of the longest running blog that I read .... yep, that's this! ;)

Customary details [to indulge in some narcissism :D]:
- 6 years.
- 72 months but only 2 out of those do not contain even one post. Maximum number of posts in a month is 17 (Sep 04 and Jul 09)
- 365 posts [coincidence?] = 349 published, 16 drafts [including this one].
- innumerable comments. Innumerable because I never counted them, not because they are infinite :P. But I notice that almost all of the comments in the earlier years have disappeared, until mid 2006 :-ss . A terrible blogger bug? [anyone who wise-cracks saying there were no comments until mid 2006 will be duly punished in unimaginable fashion!]

This blog has perhaps seen 3 template design changes over this period of 6 years. But no URL or title changes unlike most of other such long running blogs. A stolid blog :P.

not a ps: last month was quite eventful for my first ever two blog-friends (though, we were friends even before we started blogging :P). Argentyne got married 10 days ago, and SKP got engaged 25 days ago.

See ye all again next year .......

./mythalez

not worth the time :P

2010-06-08T21:50:00.003Z

He had been ignoring it. He realised it as soon as he paid attention to it. The sound had been faintly audible, in short bursts, for a while now. But he had subconsciously chosen to ignore it. Not any more, though mostly drowned out by the general noise of music, traffic et al., this faint jarring noise annoyed him the most. So he set down to investigate.
---
They both were like two 16th century armies facing each other, ready for attack from either side of a vast field. His artillery was just waiting for the opportune moment to strike. The other side had a different kind of weapon, a hidden one.
---
What a load of rubbish .. what was I even trying to write! If I was writing on paper like in olden times instead of typing on this laptop, I would have torn off the sheet, crumpled it into the tiniest ball possible and thrown it as far as possible, even hoping that it hit and annoy someone on its way to oblivion. That's because, whatever words and sentences I manage to manufacture seem pathetic. Ironically, I am writing this post to complain that I am not able to come up with even one decent sentence for the whole day today! Writing a small 4-sentences mail, whose content was somewhat clear, whose importance was questionable anyway, took me a good part of an hour. I just seemed unable to start a sentence, leave alone be able to reach the period aka full-stop in the end. And now tried to start writing a post to compensate for the failures haunting me for the whole day, and guess what, it just proves that I haven't been in any illusion ... I just can't come up with anything worth-while today ...

Yet, I post .. the audacity!

when you can't sleep tonight ...

2010-05-31T01:13:00.000Z

Some days are meant to have a post written. The feeling does not leave you. The occasional restlessness, the frequent fidgeting, the rampant attention deficiency are all omens of such days. But because of the attention deficiency, you tend to not focus on it and try ignoring it for the whole day. And then you go to bed, an hour passes, and you realise you haven't fallen asleep yet. So you wake up and complete the movie that you had left midway because it wasn't good enough to deprive you of sleep, ironically. After staring blankly at the end credits, you try to go to sleep, again. This time it just takes a few minutes for you to realise that you are wide awake and staring at the tiny little green LED of the smoke detector attached to the roof. Wonder why it is green, shouldn't it be red instead? Anyway, this time you get up and switch on the laptop and not the TV like the previous time. Climb back into bed with it and start typing whatever comes to mind-- end up with this paragraph and whatever comes next!

Clear first drops fell
onto the cracked
mud; parched hell
of summer conquered |

Yellowing fruits snatched
and sold in bunches
at markets; devoured
at homes in lunches ||

While elsewhere,

Orange rays lingering
well past dinner to
constrict nights; limiting
sleep hours to very few |

Grey dark clouds gather
auguring drizzles that
bring back cold; rather
than those few days of warmth ||

Singles needn't starve on Valentine's!

2010-05-23T09:14:00.004Z

Another story on the same lines as this and this, but with different protagonists. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, but definitely the last of this kind :P ...

All of a sudden, he found himself alone with her. Their mutual friend had deserted them somewhat abruptly. She, that is, the mutual friend, had looked at the time and was alarmed that she might be late for her dinner-date. It was 14th of February after all and she was quite a popular person. Unlike him. With these thoughts running through his head, he turned to her-- the one who was still there. They weren't exactly strangers, but hadn't known each other for the time needed to be called friends either. He looked at her, half expecting her to disappear in an instant as well. On the contrary, she smiled at him and asked, "I'm hungry, want to get something to eat?"

Though she had moved to this city a few weeks ago, she still wasn't completely at ease. Change is a complex thing. The transition from new to routine happens suddenly but imperceptibly. Anyway, right then, she was also being assailed by the hunger pangs. As she asked him the question, she looked around. They were in some unfamiliar part of the city-centre, unfamiliar to her at least. "Err, yeah okay," he stammered. They resumed walking. She assumed he knew where they were going. She considered specifying what kind of food she preferred and ask his choice as well. But she didn't have to.

"You don't eat at those kinds of places, do you?" he asked, pointing out the Burger King up ahead. They had just turned into a main street. Being February, it was a cold and dark evening, shops were closing and many people were scurrying home, or elsewhere. The apparent melancholy had no effect on him. Instead, walking along with her, he was slipping into a buoyant mood. "I try not to, too greasy, you want to?" she asked. "No, no! Just kidding, though I do eat at such places sometimes," he admitted. "Yeah, you don't have to worry about the fat," she reminded him. "And you would rather prefer some rice with lemon instead?" he attempted to tease her. "Definitely," she declared with a grin. He beamed, wanted to continue the talk, but nothing worth-while occurred to him. Suddenly, it did. "What about some Chinese?"

Is it a random suggestion or did he actually remember, she wondered. The answer was obvious when she looked at him. She replied in the affirmative, just to confirm. With that resolved, she expected them to change direction, or walk somewhere decidedly. But they seemed to continue rambling along. "It might be hard to find a decent place anywhere today," he remarked. "Uh oh," she mumbled though she thought of saying, Well, we can at least try!

She didn't seem pleased with his forecast, so he hoped they find a restaurant soon. He was the local among the two. He was supposed to know where to take her, but he wasn't sure. He recollected only that there were a few restaurants up ahead. And soon enough, they chanced upon one. "What about this," she asked. "Have never been here, haven't heard either," was all that he could say. They went in, only to be faced with a long flight of stairs and a longer queue of people waiting. With not even a pretence of hope there, they left immediately. He stepped outside and turned around, just in time to see her walking out of the door as well. The light might have played a part, or maybe the mood created by the ambience inside, he was struck by her looks. Of course he had considered her pretty and even hot, ever since he first saw her, but this time it was something more. That angular face with the heart-warming smile was enhanced by the playful curly hair; some of those dark brown curls were flirting with the forehead. He stood there, rooted for a few seconds, just staring at her. Or was it minutes?

That restaurant did look nice and well decked up, thinking so, she strode ahead with renewed purpose, wanting to find another one. But where was he? Not finding him next to her, she turned around, only to catch him hurrying up to her. She almost asked what had held him up. But the sparkle in his eye distracted her, or was it his glasses? She couldn't say. "There will be a few more ahead," he said reassuringly. But soon, his eyes were looking at something beyond her. Wondering what was so attractive there, she turned around and found an Italian restaurant with no visible waiting customers. With tacit consent, they entered. It looked quite romantic, all the tables were set up for two, with soft lit candles on them, populated by gently conversing couples. The crystal was glittering too. However, the somewhat Italian looking waiter who approached them, turned them away as soon as he learnt they didn't have any reservation. Perhaps it was time to reconcile to the fact that they won't be able to eat at any decent restaurant, she wondered. "These Valentine's day specials! Crazy eh? Every place seemed fully booked," he said, interrupting her thoughts. "Yeah and no one cares about poor single people like us," she complained too. Encouraged, he went on, "And they also pay such exorbitant prices for the same kind of food as any other day, this day is such a fad!" "Hmm," was all that she said in response. She didn't find Valentine's day annoying, at least not as annoying he was making it out to be.

Walking ahead, they came across a vendor selling flowers on the side. They both were observing him and also looking at the flowers as they moved closer to the shack like stall. He latched onto another conversation starter, “Flowers are also a big business on this day, right?” “Yeah and I think I will end up eating some of them if we don’t find any food soon!” she replied. They halted right in front of the stall and gazed at the colourful scented display. She started off soon enough and he tried to keep up. But his looks lingered on the stall. His thoughts were racing, Damn! I should have bought some flowers for her! What was I thinking? In fact, why wasn't I thinking! He contemplated turning around and getting some. But then he feared it would be too deliberate. Perhaps even awkward? Send unintentionally strong signals? It would certainly be incongruous with his on going projection of being a guy who is not the ‘mushy-romantic’ types. While the debate raged on, they were moving farther and farther away from the stall. He wished that time would stand still for a moment and permit him the leisure to decide. Alas, he felt they were too far away now and he could only rue the missed opportunity. He vehemently and silently cursed his absence of mind. It’s no easy task to be all normal and attentive with the girl and, at the same time, come up with ideas and make these instantaneous decisions, he complained in his thoughts, justifying his inaction.

They tried a few more restaurants, mostly Chinese, as they went along. From every one of them, they were quickly thrown out, not literally of course, politely rather, intermingled with some pity sometimes. Finally they found one which seemed to have vacant tables. As they entered, they were greeted by a gust of perfume. The restaurant was going for some kind of a pink decor, everything was pink, various hues of pink. She was sure she even noticed a few pink heart-shaped balloons floating around! An overly grinning waitress came up to them and offered to show them to a table. He looked hesitant. Detecting some uneasiness in him, she asked, "Do you want to eat here?" "Err, can we go somewhere else?" he asked, in almost a pleading tone. She wasn't sure why but they left the restaurant anyway. Once outside, he took a deep breath and explained, "The scents were just too strong in there, almost suffocating!" She laughed and approved the observation, "It was a bit too tacky." "There should be some more on the street ahead," he told her. They continued their search. Meanwhile, she mentally replayed the incident, particularly his discomfort in there. It was amusing. But it also made him more real, and endearing. She barely knew anything about him, apart from what her friend had told her. From her, she had gathered that he was the nice guy types, but would he make interesting company? She hadn't managed to learn much about him on the few occasions they met previously either. Today might be different, she felt.

They were now onto a busy road with a few cars and even a couple of buses passing by. There were a lot more people on the street as well-- mostly couples. He wondered whether they did the right thing by leaving the previous restaurant. This quest for food was just taking too long. He glanced at her, maybe for the millionth time that evening. The cold had made the tip of her nose reddish, reminding him of Christmas and making her look cute at the same time. He tried to remember if he was ever out with anyone prettier than her in vain. They were walking along silently. He had to say something. He always found sustained periods of silence, absence of a continuing conversation, awkward, especially when with a girl. To remedy the situation, he began, "So, did you do anything special on previous few Valentine's?" She paused to think. He was surprised at himself, pleased too, for having veered the conversation towards her and her life rather than general inanity. "I don't know, nothing special last year, before that also, mostly at home," she answered before adding, "And you?" "Nothing spectacular with me either, generally stayed at home like a good sulking single," he answered with a sheepish grin. She smiled and continued, "Yeah, it's not a good day if one is single, like us." He agreed, "All these couply people make us singles feel awkward!" After a few paces, he resumed, "In fact, this might be the first occasion that I am having dinner outside on this day!" She laughed and then reminded him, "But only if we do manage to find some place!"

They continued the walk-talk. Quite a few minutes went by before they came across the next restaurant. It was Chinese again. She sensed this should be it and looked at him expectantly, wondering whether he had anything to say about this one. "I have been here before, it's a nice place," he stated, "Let's see if it's possible to find a table." They went in and, this time, stayed in for some 100 minutes. Despite being forced to follow the expensive Valentine's Day special set menu, they liked the food. During the dinner, though she had no such intention, she ended up talking about her country, the government, her political beliefs and then moved onto things related more directly to her life. Yes, their conversation was mostly about her than him. She wondered a few times whether she was boring him but he kept asking her questions. She easily identified that he was trying to employ the common technique, 'make it all about her so that she finds it interesting'. She didn't mind. Perhaps, he was actually listening. He was definitely looking at her, engrossed. Being showered with attention isn't such a bad thing after all, she reminded herself. Also, in spite of all the focus on her, she managed to learn a few things about him too.

Done with the dinner and the subsequent formalities (they split the bill, he knew she wouldn't let him pay all of it), they stepped outside, into the cold street. He turned to her, wanting to say something, worried that this might be the end of their evening. But say what? She broke through into these extensive discussions within his mind, using her faintly dimpled and slightly toothy smile, and asked, "I promised to meet some people at a nearby bar now, would you like to come?"

Notable books read during the long long vacation

2010-05-15T11:59:00.000Z

As it states here, i had read quite a few books in my long long vacation of 70 days. So finally, let us get cracking on them!

Harry Potter by J K Rowling: I am referring to the last book in the series. Yes, yes I admit I have read all the previous books, and it was because of that sole reason, I finally read this one, mainly to bring a culmination to that than any genuine interest. I would say it ended on very expected lines. The author could ventured out of the safe zone and been more radical, after all the sales or popularity wasn't in question irrespective of whatever she might have written!

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman: Brilliant read. Wholly recommend, and all such plaudits. It is absolutely hilarious, a bit satirical, quite a bit farcical and entertaining throughout. While the general comic level is maintained throughout, many a time, the reader will laugh out loud, and laugh again. The fun comes from the ingenuity of the writing, the plot and the absurdity of it. The plot is too twisted for me to talk about here. What I would say is, just start reading it with a blank mind :P.

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh: I was recommended this author and this book a long time, and the wait was worth it. Not often does one come across a first-class India-based science-fiction novel. The multiple time-lines in which the narration takes place adds charm without confusion. The characterisation is really nice and every word in the whole book seems perfectly in its place. A very smooth read indeed.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett: The first time I tried to read this book was when I was 12 or 13 years old. And failed miserably to understand anything. Actually, that was also the time I had a brief and unsuccessful affair with 'Brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawkings (of course, I did read it and also understand most of it later, much later :P). Anyway, coming back to Godot, I re-tried to read it this time and realised it wasn't straightforward at all. It is quite open to interpretation. It is also so short, almost like a short story! I think the story is a good metaphor for inertia and stagnation in life :P. And yeah, the mystery remains, who is Godot :P.

The Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man by John Perkins: How did I end up reading a non-fictional book? Well, I found it in the house, the description was captivating, and the topic, very interesting! It is about something we suspected all the while. How the big companies and governments of big 'aid-giving' countries like US make highly exaggeration predictions, convince the poor governments to take loans as aid and then arm-twist them to extract their resources and garner their support in the international arena. The author was involved in one such organisation that convinces the governments to take aid with fantastic predictions on what the aid will do, for 20 years. Initially, the book is engrossing, but starts getting a bit repetitive later on. As with all such books, it could have been shorter and more to the point :P. However, the experiences of the author in various countries ranging from Indonesia to Ecuador made the reading worth it.

The Writing of a Novel by Irving Wallace: You want to start writing a novel? How about reading a book on how one particular famous novel was written, by the author of the novel itself! Yeah, so Irving Wallace narrates on how he wrote his novel, "The Prize", which is a story set against the Nobel prize background. He takes a chronological approach, starting from how he got the idea for the novel 20 years prior to writing, how it was lying at the back of his mind, when he actually started working on it, how he did the relevant research, the actual writing process, getting stuck, moving on, followed by the editing and revising. He even talks about the response, the critical reviews, the sales and the movie deal! And the appendix of the book contains a brief summary of the novel itself. A true insight into the workings of popular novel-writing.

Cat O nine lives by Jeffery Archer: The only short story collection of this author that I hadn't managed to read until then. Though not as ingenious as 'Twist in the tale' or '12 Red Herrings', the charm of these stories lies in the fact that they are all true (except a couple). These were stories that Archer collected from his prison mates while he was in prison. The book shows how, often, reality is stranger than fiction :).

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai: I didn't think I would ever read this book. It had been gifted to me many years ago and I felt it was yet another of those Indian-immigrants-to-western-world's child's lost identity and stuff. Something like "Namesake". But it wasn't! Mostly based in Kalimpong, the descriptions help you live in those misty surroundings and see the story for yourself. The plot contains a few subplots, but all nicely linked together. It is mainly about a teenage girl living with her grand-father and their cook, their few neighbours, the cook's son who is an illegal immigrant in US and the girl's tutor who is caught up between love, rebellion and poverty. No, no, it is not as serious as I make it out to be. The plot is also based around Bengalis caught up in the Gorkha-land rebellions in those times.

Identity by Milan Kundera: I wanted to pick up another Milan Kundera book (after "The Unbearable lightness of being" and "Immortality"), and chose this one because the back-cover description did not reveal much and it was the cheapest [yeah, my book selection ethics are pathetic]. Once again, the writing went into depth about the characters, their emotions, their illusions and their actions. What I particularly like about his stories is the way he highlights the prevailing irrationality of human behaviour. Another books that provides some insight into the mystery that is the human mind. What is different about this book, is there are no deviating narrations or subplots and more importantly, the climax is quite ambiguous.

Reading right now, that is since the past month or more :P- Snow by Orhan Pamuk.

Hola España

2010-05-09T14:11:00.003Z

It is indeed a very good place to visit. Even before landing there, the first thing that catches one's attention is the strange kind of farmland visible from the air. It consisted of unending rows of infinite length of bushy type trees arranged equidistant from one another. After due debate, we concluded that they must be olive trees. Yeah, welcome to Spain!

Landed in Madrid airport. It is huge. Well not as huge as Heathrow I guess, but huge nevertheless. The newest terminal and its sub-terminal are really long and can make you walk from one end to another if you are unlucky with your flight's boarding/arrival gate. The slightly unsettling aspect was that the when you get off the plane, you end up in the departures lounge! Anyway, took the underground/metro to the bus station and then a long 5 hour journey to Granada.

Granada: Situated amidst snow capped mountains, it is a very unique city. Unique in its looks- many roads are lined with orange trees lush with enticing oranges dangling from them and one of the main and busiest road has a very large pavement in the middle containing benches, life-like statues and fountains. Its culture is unique too, with an excellent North-African influence in the Moorish architecture. In fact, different styles of buildings can be seen in different localities. The most famous is the Alhambra with its palaces and gardens. Queues to buy its limited tickets for the day start at 6am (while it actually opens at 8) and can have around 300 people waiting in it. Of course, the nearby and slightly hidden ticket machines only have small queues of 25-30 people. That is the way to get in! Since we were there during the Easter week, we could witness the famous processions taking place. Another wonderful aspect of Granada is the free tapas that you get with your drinks in many of its bars. This means that you don't really need to buy dinner separately. And yeah, if you do, the food tends to be really good :). For souvenirs, the best place is the extremely colourful area next to the cathedral containing hundreds of small shops called Alcaciera.

Sevilla: Easter time is the time to be in Seville. Hence, we couldn't get any affordable accommodation. Yet, it is a must-visit city, so made a day tour from Granada by a train+bus journey of 2.5 hours each way. Large scale preparations for the evening processions were going on. These start from the various churches in the city to converge at the cathedral and then go back again. The cathedral there is definitely the biggest around, and contains a very tall tower. Ramps instead of stairs let one reach the top pretty easily to gaze at the whole of the beauty of Seville and identify the other famous monuments ;). One of these that we did visit was the bull-fighting arena. Learnt the history, the method and the madness behind it all. Didn't see a fight though, very gory and expensive it would have been! And once again, the bars and tapas around the cathedral are sufficient for some other needs ;) And how can I not mention the beautiful riverside, where we can lie down for eternity?

Barcelona: The city famous in so many ways and loved by so many. The main street- La Rambla has to the liveliest street I ever saw. Next to it was the old quarters with some majestic buildings, cathedral and many museums. We did go to the Picasso museum and finally, I now know about his life, somewhat about his art, especially when it transformed into being crazy ;). The other absolutely unconventional art that you can find in this city is the architecture of Gaudi. The most famous is the Sagrada Familia and is still under construction. Its look, from the outside itself, is amazing, the intricate statues and stories being told and the occasional colourful fruits is a unique combination! Some of his other buildings seem plucked out from some fantastical lands. Apart from these, there is the Plaza Catalunya with its majestic fountains, lights and people, parks and statues everywhere, the beach with its perfect blue waters, the irish bars alongside the tapas bars and the italian restaurants alongside the spanish ones. We also visited Camp Nou and admired the greatness of Barca F.C ;). Just outside the city, the background is filled again with mountains. The metro is very modern and the library of the university is very old. I was shown some books which were more than 500 years old! That was in between the two talks I gave on the same day, on the same topic, to different audiences :P. And most places are signposted in three languages- Catalan, Spanish and English, in that order.

Madrid: The capital, but nothing much to see other than the palace and an extremely modern -looking cathedral with a style very different from the general European ones. Lots of art museums as well, containing extremely expensive paintings from all regions and eras in Europe. Madrid is also the place for nightlife- lots of plazas, each of which is surrounded by bars and clubs. These clubs only start getting crowds after 2am or something! And again, many spanish style bars with free tapas.

Toledo: Just 30 minutes away from Madrid, on the superfast AVE trains, is this world heritage town. The old part is situated on a big hill, jam-packed with quaint buildings and very narrow, cobble-stoned roads. They are too narrow for cars but the cars still strive, inching forward slowly while the pedestrians flatten themselves alongside the walls to let them pass. The inclines are so high that, often, rooftops of buildings end up being next to other roads! This is a very nice place to visit and walk around, for half a day. A must visit if one is in or around Madrid. The different style and feel of the place makes it worthwhile. Each and every building looks good, old and fascinating.

Spanish food, as is known, contains a lot of meat based varieties. Nevertheless, the spanish omelettes are delicious and can be had anywhere, as a slice or as a whole. There are also several other different types of Tapas to satisfy all kinds of taste-buds ;). As for the drinks, Sangria and Mojitos are ubiquitous and often come with free tapas to munch on. Lots of American tourists will be found, much more than any other place in Europe that I have been to. British tourists, settlers and influences were expected anyway. To sign off, better not choose the overnight bus journey from Granada to Barcelona, some experiences are not worth having :D.

Gracias. Adios.

in pursuit of pursuit

2010-04-11T16:41:00.000Z

Absurd! it's a strange entity
teases and mocks, promises
flirts around but never kisses
fake or a twisted reality

Desire! isn't a painful joy?
whimsical, shaky, powerful
sneers at beauty when attainable
yet pleads as it turns unavailable
oh! what a wicked ploy!

Joy! an ephemeral paradise
peculiar, puzzling its appearances
arbitrary, capricious its causes
is there a more devilish vice?

words at night late ...

2010-03-21T03:38:00.002Z

Tick-click, tick-click reinforces the absolute silence. A far away accelerating car can only emphasize the absence of life around. Street-lights reflected by the yet-to-evaporate drizzle are a reminder of the darkness above. The regular cycle of the changing colours, red-amber-green-red, mark not the futility, but the wait for someone, something, with hope that their existence will be acknowledged. The idly lying guitar points to the abandonment , the tall glass facade, to the achievements hollow. The heavy blanket, to the coldness abound, the tapping keyboard, to the thoughts profound.

Tick-click, tick-click, time still passes by...

222 = 11010 ... and we have a job!!

2010-02-16T21:48:00.000Z

Base 2 and base 3 clearly present the progress over the last year, the end of a revolution, around the sun of course ;). Yeah, am sorry for coming up with my mandatory birthday blogpost a week late, but then, I am not idle anymore :P. Anyway, on this momentous occasion, what should I talk about? Why not my new, in fact, my first ever employment? Yes people, I finally got employed, just before turning 26 :D. And I have quite an unique job description ;). Before we delve into that, just to be clear, I have tried my best to remain jobless .. but it's just too tough .. had to acquiesce at the end :P. The process of getting this job, by itself, is a fascinating story ... will be willing to reveal in a more personal setting (in chats I mean :P) and not here ...

Anyways, the job title is 'Research Engineer'. I shall be working in the same field (multi-agent systems aka a part of AI) as my PhD which is also my specialisation in BTech. I am employed by a company, which is sponsoring a research project with my former research group at the University where I did my PhD. And the company has no expertise whatsoever in this field. But it is quite a leading one in its field, which is totally unrelated to my research field. Oh yeah, I am now supposed to be working on this project that the company has with the University. So I am attending project meetings at the University with my former group mates. And I am also attending related meetings with the few members in the company who are overseeing/observing/helping the project. My university group mates call me the company spy, and the company might be considering me as the university spy. Yeah, I now lead the life of an double agent (or double double agent?). In a week, I am spending 3 days at the company office and two days in the university lab. And not doing much work in either places yet ;). Can reverse the ratio too, if I want. "Matrix" was always a good example of my work (as cloning 'Agent' Smith would certify) :P .. but now I think I shall nickname by job as "Matrix 007"

Notable books before the long long vacation

2010-01-25T08:07:00.003Z

There are quite a few books I read in the last 2 months, which was basically at lot of free time interspersed with trips and sudden bouts of action, and quite a few of them are worth a paragraph or review if not pages of accolades :P. But before I was to embark on to fulfill this necessity, I checked out my earlier posts labelled 'reading' and found that I haven't showered the same justice on my earlier reads. So, let me rectify that first:

Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham: A somewhat humourous, somewhat satirical take on authors, fun to read but not extraordinary ;). However, while reading it, I remember getting tired of the description of the activities of the old-gone Victorian British era individuals. Perhaps, I was more in mood for a more modern setting.

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams: The last in the Hitchhiker's series (I think!), containing the same elements which now somewhat getting repetitive, having lost their ingenuity. But then, also absolutely hilarious in bits.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding: It is not so well renowned for no reason. On the lines of Animal farm, but more brutal in depiction. Scary for the optmistic readers filled with the-world-is-heaven type of outlook but funny and satisfying for the cynical types like me :D.

The song before it is sung by Justin Cartwright: This novel is based on the historical story about the attempt to assassinate Hitler by some anti-Nazi German leaders. No, it is not the book that the not-well-made movie Valkyrie is based on. Coincidently, I had just finished the book (took many months given my lack of dedication towards reading in that period) that the movie was released. Of course I didn't bother to watch it. Anyway, coming back to the book, it merges the account of an historian trying to piece together the life of a martyr involved in the attempt and at the same time trying to sort out his jumbled and painful life. The book is gripping in parts. Only.

Immortality by Milan Kundera: Now, we finally come to the best book of the lot. In fact, I feel one of the best reads I have read. Milan Kundera is a very different kind of author. His narration of the story in his 'novel' is mixed with his own views and thoughts about the behaviour of the characters. It is as if he is sitting on the chair next to you and telling you a story while also indulging in a somewhat philosophical conversation with you. And his insights into human behaviour and emotions are extraordinary- the seem like a revelation but ring so true that you end up agreeing completely with him and admonish yourself for not having understood that before. Especially in this book, he intermingles his main story with several other small stories whose connections are obvious only later, and also with accounts and discussions about a few well known figures of history, ranging from Goethe to Hemingway. The whole book has a 'wow' feel to it, though some might get annoyed and be uninterested in the frequent diversions to the above mentioned discussions ;)

Okay, enough for this post, the several books that were read during the vacation will be written about in the next post!

Eternal Enigma

2010-01-16T19:17:00.000Z

Always an enigma.

flatter, flutter, words, eye-lashes
beckon, beguile, looks, smiles
indulgent, innocent, cooking, demanding
generous, gregarious, charms, gifts
unrestrained, unabashed, caring, flirting

prolonged, perceptible, quiet, distant
unanswered, unacknowledged, calls, changes
rising, realising, aloofness, distress
frequent, foment, ignore, bore
insipid, impede, meetings, passions

A whiff of that, a hint of this
Always an enigma, She is.

changing fiction

2010-01-02T18:41:00.003Z

I came here with full josh to blog about a particular topic and enlighten you all with the revelations. Alas, I hadn't even typed a complete sentence that the facade was removed and I realised that all my enthusiasm was misplaced and that the idea was foggier than Delhi airports on winter mornings. So what do I do instead? ;) .. I write the following. Wonder what such couple of paragraphs of stories are called!

------
It reminded her of that time. Generally on such occasions of remembrance, unfailingly, she pauses. Closes her eyes, sighs, and tries to get back to whatever it is she was distracted from. Not this time though. It had struck like a sudden strong gust of wind, leaving her breathless, metaphorically. She relented and let her mind wander to those bygone times. That glitter in the eye and that sunshine of a smile. Those flirtatious moments with him had always brought out the best in her. Days were amazingly beautiful then, or so it seems now. No matter how much she rationalises, and in spite of all the scepticism that she attempts to imbibe, those times still seem wonderful. He was wonderful. That's what hurt her- 'was'.

The change might have been gradual, but certainly wasn't a smooth curve. She believed it happened in steps. One fine day, she no longer found the conversations charming. And there definitely was a particular party wherein she no longer found his eyes seeking hers, no exchange of smiles across the room. Then on another, she no longer felt admired by him. She also clearly remembers that evening when she was bored and lost, and wanted to speak to someone, but he wasn't the first choice anymore.

Had he felt the change happening to? She didn't know. But she knew that even now he was still there for. Even after all this 'cooling-off' period, he seems always ready to meet her. Or even just to talk to her. She knew that she only had to mention it and he would instantaneously be available and provide companionship. She wondered if he hasn't yet realised that things aren't the same between them anymore. But then, he has to. They no longer talk daily, in fact not even weekly, rarely meet and that too only as part of a group.

She still wanted that guy whose very thought seemed to put a spring in her step. But the person she desired, no longer existed. People change with time. She has. So has he. But she still seeks the one whom she knew in those times. Just exactly as she knew him. Not the new him. She sighed again.
----

new phase .... new look?

2009-12-25T10:35:00.003Z

Yes, the look has changed. One fine day, I mean yesterday, I suddenly felt vexed with the blog. I decided to blame all my "writing blocks" and "writing droughts" on the blog. Life has changed, at least it is in the process of transformation, so why should the blog persist in its old dull look. Today morning, all the energies were gathered and focussed on this miscreant blog. Hence, the makeover.

Well yeah, life is changing, isn't it. The times are changing. Eh, no! I am not referring to the 2009 to 2010 change, the new year concept is so blasé. We are referring to the changes in circumstances- the progress from a student to a doctor to a jobless unemployed person. And we are revelling in the new situation. Me and my doctor self are enjoying the leisure immensely. Nevertheless, it is strange that even in such circumstances of having absolutely nothing to do, there are so many things to be done, that requiring a todo-list doesn't even sound like an exaggeration. Incredible are those atoms that make up tasks, works and such kind. Their ability to appear spontaneously, expand indefinitely and fill up any vacuum can only be comprehended by those victimised by it.

Anyways, any comments on the new look are welcome, any calls for the old look are prohibited. Any suggestions for improvement will most probably be politely ignored ;).

the royal land of the kings ...

2009-12-15T12:34:00.003Z

The first couple of travelogues on this blog, composed some 5 years ago, were about some trips in India. After that I have blogged about Japan, UK, various other places in Europe, flights back to India and all that, but no trips within India itself. Well, because I never went on a proper trip inside the country. Until now. I am not sure how and when I decided that I should visit Rajasthan, but it lodged itself strongly in my plans of what to do in the 'unending' vacation after PhD and it happened ... yayy :).

Jaipur - Pink city, first planned city by an Indian, and other such known accolades. What struck me most were the huge roads and relatively sparse traffic (relative to the cities like Hyd/Blore of course). Only the old city area is crowded. It is also the area that is most pink ;), has lines and lines of small small shops selling all the traditional stuff in the old fashioned way! The city does seem to make an effort to retain its pink hue. The famed 'Hawa Mahal' can only be gazed while passing by on the road and it only stands out only because of its unique design. So is the palace in the middle of the lake - no entry for us mere mortals. It is beautifully adorned with soft (somewhat pinkish?) lights during the night. One place which is more welcoming is the Amer fort (pronounced as Aamer but strangely, spelled as Amber in English :-ss). It has recently started a "Sound and Light show" to narrate the history of the fort and Jaipur and so on. Was pretty good, but since the fort was so majestic and the Rajputs so frightening, there were no wars or attacks. Hence the show concentrated more on the cultural aspect. Thus, wasn't as pulsating as the one in say, Golconda :P. Also had some awesome local food aka "world famous food of Jaipur" thanks to our local host and his knowledge and car :D.

Udaipur - Many many lakes abound inside and outside the city. A beautiful palace in the middle of the central lake and a much grander palace on its banks. The 'city palace' as it's called is huge. I guess, one of the highlights is the crystal gallery of the King which displays such ornate glassy stuff that you begin to wonder at all that grandeur, and at the point of amassing them :P. The other supposedly must-visit places in the city are not really must-visit. But they are advertised by all and sundry ranging from normal auto-wallas to the day-cabs to hotel receptionists. There were two highlights for the time in Udaipur. One was the gondola ride to a hilltop from where we could gaze at the whole city, including the palaces, as the sun set and the lights came on dazzling. The other was an unexpected trip to a lake outside the city and the subsequent meandering treks in the hilly growth along the lake. The lake was absolutely serene and the only other living beings we encountered were three swans!

Jaisalmer - Golden, brown, Golden hue of the sand. It was all golden golden! This quaint place was definitely the best looking part of the trip. The whole place was built using only yellow sandstone! Saw a few Jain temples and also a memorial for warriors which contained several of them set together. And then went on a drive of 40Km to the 'dunes'. Arrived at a resort kind of a place, managed by the local villagers, who took us to the sand dunes on camels. Yeah, a camel ride to the desert and return for some performances by their local artists followed by sumptuous Rajasthani buffet. And then we were planning to camp in the desert, in the dunes, in the dark, stare at the sky, shiver in the cold and sleep with a bonfire. But the organisers persuaded us not to, since we were the only people daring to do so, and it was too cold for them to organise it for us. They even returned our extra payment for the camping, and instead took us on a night-time desert safari on a jeep. On our way, we came across many deers and the ride transformed into almost a deer-catching effort. Despite the various tricks and clever tactics of the driver, the deers were too quick and too alert for them. I didn't know that deers populated the arid regions! And peacocks too, so many of them in the wild! In fact, camels were the ones not to be seen in the wild - all of them were domesticated :P. When we had a bonfire in the middle of the 'safari' the starry night sky was just magnificent. I don't remember the last time I was able to see so many stars in the night. Let us all pooh pooh the light and air pollution of the urban areas :P. And then, there was the fort of Jaisalmer. It majestically looks over the town and is all golden as well. It also houses lots of people who live in there and sell souvenirs to tourists amid other activities.

Jodhpur - It's tries to be blue, all blue. We were there just in transit. The city attempts to be blue and many of the buildings are painted blue. But doesn't look all that natural like in Jaipur or Jaisalmer. Also quite hilly around the borders with a huge fort on them. Quite a bustling city compared to the tiny Jaisalmer :P.

Throughout the trip, we visited quite a few Jain temples. It was the first time I had visited them and was an interesting experience to see how different yet how similar they are to Hindu temples. All the cities are surrounded by hills, upon which forts have been built. The food in any place is devourable, and the 'pyaaz kachoris' are just irresistible. Also, with so many Marwaris and Jains abound, non-veg food is a rarity in the state ;).

Vacate ... vacant .. and now going home!!!

2009-11-22T00:27:00.000Z

After complaining about it for almost a week, on thursday, I had set upon the task of clearing my desk/drawers/shelves in the lab. And, it was pretty easy. It mainly required throwing away several kilos of printed paper into the recycling bin. These pages were basically versions of my various papers, reports and thesis filled with the supervisors comments. I don't own any books in the lab and haven't stored anything much there either. So, all my stuff from the lab eventually fit into a single small backpack. It mainly contained the binded final version of the reports and thesis.

Thursday evening had the so called farewell party with my labmates and was awesome :). Oh, and how did feel to have been vacating my desk? Not very pleasant perhaps, after all, it had been somewhat my home for 3 years! Yeah, my actual house did change over this 3 year period, but my desk and my lab had been a constant...

And in 10 hours, begins the journey home! In an Airbus A380-800, that is the huge huge double decker plane :D! And with that, officially begins my joblessness vacationing period of 70 days at least. Well, not that I have done any semblance of work since the thesis corrections. It's mostly been partying and partying :D.

And now, we move onto a completely different topic. Since, I am finally trying to ease back into my voracious reading mode, here is an interesting extract:

=====
"You are now bored of talking to me now and you will let me pass unhindered"
"Gosh, good try. But I'm afraid I'm not. Actually, I'm going to eat you"
"You aren't scared of limes, are you?"
"I am frightened of nothing!"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing"
"Are you extremely frightened of nothing?"
"Absolutely terrified of it"
"You know, I have nothing in my pockets, would you like to see it?"
"No, I most definitely would not", and then he disappeared.
=====
Nothing matters. It most definitely does!

The above extract is from the novel I read this week "Anansi boys" by Neil Gaiman ... its a somewhat farcical, somewhat fantastical kind of comedy. Let's say, a non sci-fi Douglas Adams kind of a book.

ages ago, how did i blog?

2009-11-16T02:25:00.004Z

As most of the earlier posts on this blog would attest, I used to write (to be understood as 'type'; when will these two words become synonymous rendering pen and paper into antiquity?) without any particular topic in mind. I used to ramble, falter, and continue to blabber. More often than not, the title would precede the post, even though, neither it and neither I knew what the post would end up containing. Those were the days that I didn't have to think for a post, I just had to login, click on new post and voila, the post sprung up, though, it might have been quite meandering and direction-less. But, one cannot hope to forever possess such skills. Nowadays, most of my posts start with a purpose in mind- perhaps to blog about a trip or an incident or about any such topic. Of course, the occasional abstract post and ad-hoc fictional paragraphs do make an appearance in the blog, but only seldom.

But that's not it, there are more frightening afflictions plaguing us. Lately, I have often felt the mood to ramble, to set upon a voyage of abstractness, sail across streams of incomprehensibility and type out my mood aka feelings, with gusto, in a language that is clear to all but rarely understandable to anyone. Yet, I haven't been able to do so. By the time, I am all set to start typing, I realise that my fingers have gone numb, the thoughts had fizzled away and the mood had become indecipherable. And, the post remained un-created. It faced, not a discerning audience (that's you readers, revel in this 'platitude' :P), but the ignominy of being deemed silly before it even had the chance of being born to argue its case.

Thankfully, this post suffered no such fate. It wriggled itself out into the world and is now left at its mercy. merci.

tag tag .. post for no reason

2009-11-13T23:32:00.000Z

Oh, did I say I don't do tag-posts? But then, there are exceptions, especially when ordered by agentyne in her post which was followed by a tweet as well ! Though, let me warn you, this one has too many points .. way too many!

Notation: £=yes, $=maybe

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink $$ [bought everyone I 'know' a drink] :P

02. Swam in the actual sea [I should learn swimming properly, first!]

03. Climbed a mountain ££ [in Scotland .. even blogged about it, I think]

04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive [should first learn how to drive :D]

05. Been inside the Great Pyramid

06. Held a tarantula

07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone

08. Said "I love you" and meant it

09. Hugged a tree

10. Water-skiied

11. Visited Paris ££ [posted about it too]

12. Watched a lightning storm at sea

13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise ££ [those times at IIIT]

14. Seen the Northern Lights

15. Gone to a huge sports game

16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa/Qutub Minar $$ [been to the Pisa tower, but didn't have time to walk up :( and at QutubMinar, walking up wasn't allowed then ]

17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables $$ [does coriander count? :D]

18. Touched an iceberg

19. Slept under the stars ££ [quite often when I was young and we used to experience all night power-cuts :D]

20. Changed a baby's diaper [and don't want to, either !!]

21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon

22. Watched a meteor shower ££

23. Gotten drunk on champagne $$ [the drinks included copious champagne, but didn't solely consist of it :P]

24. Given more than you can afford to charity ££ [but then, I won that amount as a prize, in a hard fought competition by the way, so was okay :) ]

25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope ££ [wasn't mine]

26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment

27. Had a food fight [what does this even mean? fight with food or fight over food? :P]

28. Bet on a winning horse

29. Asked out a stranger ££ [no story there, didn't succeed :P]

30. Had a snowball fight ££

31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can

32. Held a lamb

33. Seen a total eclipse ££ [aah, those young "inquisitivish" days]

34. Ridden a roller coaster ££

35. Hit a sixer that won the game [just wish I did]

36. Danced like a fool and didn't care who was looking

37. Adopted an accent for an entire day

38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment ££ [often often :D]

39. Had two hard drives for your computer ££ [of course .. what's 7 years education in computers for, anyway? :P]

40. Can name all 27 states ££ [always can .. rock at Geography .. Su will testify :P]

41. Taken care of someone who was drunk ££ [quite a fun activity it is :D]

42. Had amazing friends ££ [what do u mean, "had" !!]

43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country ££ [refer to some similar point above to understand more details :P]

44. Watched whales $$ [tiger sharks should also count right?]

45. Stolen a sign/damaged public property

46. Backpacked in Europe ££ [do you actually need proof? :P]

47. Taken a road-trip ££ [in europe, of course]

48. Gone rock climbing

49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach

50. Gone sky diving [would have said yes, had this been 'gliding' :P]

51. Visited Kashmir

52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love ££

53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them ££ [it still counts, even if it was during a conference right?]

54. Visited Japan ££ [ofcourse :D, first trip abroad ever :D]

55. Tried to make a buffalo move when it sat down in front of your car [rofl]

56. Alphabetized your CDs [I dont have CDs !!]

57. Pretended to be a superhero [why to pretend? :P]

58. Played 'Antakshari' in a public place and sung really loudly without caring about the onlookers.

59. Lounged around in bed all day ££ [more times than I would admit :D]

60. Played gully cricket ££

61. Gone scuba diving

62. Kissed in the rain

63. Played in the mud

64. Played in the rain ££

65. Gone to a drive-in theatre

66. Visited the Great Wall of China

67. Started a business

68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken

69. Toured ancient sites ££ [how much ancient? but am sure I have visited places ancient enough :P]

70. Taken a martial arts class ££ [for a few months in school; all I learnt was the colour ranking of the belts :D ]

71. Played a video game for more than 6 hours straight ££

72. Gotten married

73. Been in a movie [no because they didn't select me, said I looked too young :P .. am not lying! it's true !!]

74. Crashed a party

75. Gotten divorced

76. Gone without food for 5 days [am sure I would die, I have no food reserves in my body anyway!]

77. Made chapatis from scratch ££ [yes yes]

78. Won first prize in a costume contest

79. Ridden a gondola in Venice

80. Gotten a tattoo

81. White water rafted

82. Been on a television news program as an "expert" $$ [well, I was interviewed by TV crews regarding my 'sci-fi' achievements and did appear on TV, though not in a panel or something! ]

83. Gotten flowers for no reason [never got flowers even when there were reasons! :P]

84. Performed on stage ££ [quite a few times, once I even had a 'double role' since a person playing another character failed to turn up and I knew all the dialogues/scenes since it was my script anyway .. ahh those school days :D]

85. Been to all states in India [this is a toughie!]

86. Recorded your own music $$ [a single song counts? without instruments? only lyrics and tune!]

87. Eaten shark and preferred roadside 'bandi' food [would always prefer bandi food compared to any sharks anywhere!]

88. Kissed on the first date

89. Gone to Thailand

90. Bought a house $$ [it's just a plot of land and well, I did pay for most of it ! :P]

91. Been in a combat zone

92. Buried one/both of your parents

93. Been on a cruise ship [I guess small ferries don't count :(]

94. Spoken more than one language fluently ££ [some wouldn't agree about my fluency but then, they are just too finicky]

95. Performed in the National Day Parade in New Delhi/your city

96. Raised children

97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour

98. Passed out cold ££ [quite a few times, a weak fainting child I was!!]

99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country ££ [Austria is exotic enough!!]

100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over ££ [well, moved to another country and started a phd .. am sure that counts!]

101. Walked the Howrah bridge

102. Sang loudly in the car - with the windows open - and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking

103. Had plastic surgery

104. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived

105. Wrote articles for a large publication $$ [will school and IIIT magazines count? :P]

106. Lost over 10 kgs $$ [lost 7kgs in 2 months :P not that I wanted to!]

107. Held someone while they were having a flashback [flashback? what's that? I need clarification!]

108. Piloted an airplane $$ [engine-less plane aka glider counts right? and also that I had the instructor sitting just behind me, doesnt matter?]

109. Touched a stingray

110. Broken someone's heart [now now, why would I do that?]

111. Helped an animal give birth

112. Won money on a TV game show [not that lucky]

113. Broken a bone

114. Gone on an African photo safari

115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears

116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol $$ [to shoot balloons? :D]

117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild

118. Ridden a horse $$ [it was less of a ride and more of a stroll :P]

119. Had major surgery

120. Had a snake as a pet

121. Spent the night at a railway station $$ [airports count as well I guess!!]

122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period ££ [very often, very very often :D]

123. Spent the better part of your life outside India $$ [define "better part"]

124. Visited all 7 continents [one of my to-do things in life :D]

125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days

126. Eaten kangaroo meat

127. Eaten sushi ££ [in Tokyo and absolutely hated it!!]

128. Had your picture in the newspaper ££ [on one ocassion, most of the local newspapers had my picture :D]

129. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about

130. Gone back to school [ as a reunion? :P]

131. Parasailed

132. Touched a cockroach ££ [it touched me!!]

133. Eaten fried ice cream ££ [didn't like the coconut covering though]

134. Read 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' [tried and failed miserably]

135. Selected one 'important' author who you missed in school, and read $$ [missed most authors in school anyway :P]

136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

137. Skipped all your school reunions [used to go when I used to be in Hyd!]

138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language ££ [it is not so hard! Japan taught me that :P]

139. Been elected to public office $$ [this is too long and controversial to talk about here :P]

140. Written your own computer language [that would be crazy]

141. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream ££ [yes yes I did]

142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care [what is that?]

143. Built your own PC from parts $$ [I chose the parts but someone else put them together :P]

144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you [me and art? rofl ! ]

145. Had a booth at a street fair $$ [fairs in schools also count? :P]

146. Dyed your hair

147. been a dj

148. Shaved your head $$[I love my hair, but my hair was shaved when I was 3 or something, not with my consent though ]

149. Caused a car accident

150. Saved someone's life [no, but my life has been saved often :D]

whoa .. managed to finish this epic-tag post .. so, am i also supposed to tag someone now? baah, no one really blogs much anymore ... sad state of affairs!

post-defence ramblings + abstracts

2009-11-13T02:03:00.000Z

./restart abstractness
[about to start] ctrl-s [long break] ctrl-q [memory blank] [vocabulary found wanting]
just a simple question: did you ever get anything right at the time that you desired it most? or has it always come late, too late that you no longer cared much about it?
Or is it the other way round? Those that you don't manage to obtain become more and more desirable, and those that are on their way lose their attractiveness such that by the time you actually get them, you have lost most of the interest?
Either ways, it's a pity, "ain't it so"?
#ctrl-c

Oh! by the way, I felt like rambling the below few bits, a week after my PhD viva .. but never really got down to posting the post .. anyways, here it is [was written on 4th or 5th nov ]

A lot of people in the lab are apparently aware of me and my name. People who I never thought knew my name (and hence couldn't have really figure out who passed their defence just through the mail announcement) are coming up to congratulate me. What can I say, some people are more popular that they thought themselves to be :P.

Almost a week of partying .. finally ends with monday of work. Oh yeah, I still have some work left, namely, the post-viva corrections that ought to be done for the final hard-bound submission. Monday was spent in work from like 11am to 11pm (with breaks ofcourse :D) And then a rigorous tuesday evening of work .. and voila, they were all done! and then after ratification from the examiners+supervisors, will have to give for the hard-binding which will take 7-10 days!! No idea, why it should take that long !!

Dr. Mythalez

2009-10-27T13:16:00.003Z

The PhD post!

The past three years basically came down to this.
In fact, the 20 years of my education comes down to this- "Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science" aka Ph.D. ;)

So, herewith, the author of this blog should be addressed as Dr. Mythalez. :P

a post just for the sake of it.

2009-10-22T23:00:00.003Z

a post about disjoint unrelated whatever-comes-mind topics:

Electric showers are like M$ Windows. Very simple UI but assume that the user is stupid and only give him/her limited easy to use options. Manual 2-tap showers are like Linux. Smartly designed and gives the user the power to configure it just as he/she wants it to be.

I think I am finally getting tired of the blah concept. Yeah, I still believe that everything in the universe is just blah. But that belief doesn't get one anywhere. Of course, there is actually no point in going anywhere, since everything, as I had just reiterated, is just blah. But again, life doesn't seem very worthwhile if there is nowhere to get to. After all, given my attitude and given the social environment that I have been exposed to over the years, I need to be running towards something. And that something should look worthwhile enough, at least from a distance. All that this abstracty rant basically boils down to is this- I need a goal. The next goal. The goal towards which I can start my run, again.

Oh, by the way, is this what 20 years of "education" is going to culminate towards?

Oh, another by the way, it seems quite fun to act aka behave so as to leave someone guessing, slightly confused, somewhat puzzled and caught up in anticipation ;).

Cyprus - sun, sea and blue sky

2009-10-08T15:13:00.001Z

To find a relevant conference in Cyprus was quite a surprise. And it was quite at the right time with the right focus as well. However, even after the paper was accepted, a lot of issues cropped up, some arbit, some crazy, that continually questioned the trip.

£! Paper: On all my previous paper uploads, spread over 4-5 yrs?, I was very cautious and made sure it was perfect and satisfied all the formatting, protocols et al. This time, had to be an exception. The organisers complained to me about the camera-ready version (the version that is actually published in the conference proceedings) not fitting in with the requirements. I had forgotten to include the keywords and my bibliography style was all wrong! Okay, okay, I admit it was a easily rectifiable issue.

£! Hotel: Okay, next step to going to a conference would be registration (which was easily accomplished, thankfully) and accommodation. As there was no online form provided by at the conf. website, I first called up the hotel. They asked me to send a mail with the details. So I did. No response. More than a week passed! I mailed again. No response! I got tired and called them. The person complained that their servers had some problem but assured that my room will be reserved for me all right (since he recognised that I had called earlier as well). But another week or so passes and I still get no confirmation. The conference dates were inching closer and I started worrying that no places might be left at that hotel. So, I called again and this time the right person picked up, the one who is responsible for room bookings and she got it done in a few minutes .. whew!

£! Flight: Found the most suitable flight and gave the info (a clear printout) to the group secretary to make the booking for me. He got it done via a travel agent, as is the norm. All fine except that my name on the ticket had a typo. So, I had to pray that the security at Heathrow and again those in Cyprus do not notice the discrepancy in the names on the passport and on the ticket/boarding-pass.

£! Visa: I luckily had Schengen visa until beyond the conference dates, so I felt relieved that for once, I won't have to run around consulates. But, I did make a fatal assumption- that Cyprus was part of the Schengen. I did remember seeing it in countries list of Schengen and assumed that was it. Just 3-4 days before the flying date, Su aka Pseudeone questions me about the visa and I assure him that I have everything under control. Then, just to be sure I check only to recoil in horror! Though, Cyprus signed the Schengen agreement it apparently did not implement it yet! Which meant, that a separate Cypriot visa is required to enter Cyprus!! I was flabbergasted. Then I did more research and found a few websites including some consulates of Cyprus that stated in confusing jargon that residents of UK countries holding a valid Schengen visa and having visited other countries using it, are allowed to enter Cyprus. But then, did I qualify? Will I be allowed?

Cyprus looked quite familiar. In many ways, it was similar to India. Ofcourse, they too were under British occupation for a long time and have a similar sunny climate. All this meant, that everyone knew how to speak English (not necessarily perfect but easily understandable English). Every sign/notice/hoarding displayed the matter in atleast two languages- greek and english. The structure of the buildings were as modern and as ventilated as those in India. In fact, if you were just given a snapshot of some buildings without including any people, you can be easily fooled into believing that it belonged to some Indian town! Yes, it was quite in contrast to the rest of Europe that I had been to. Generally buildings seemed to be modern construction with open plans letting in lots of air, containing balconies and terraces and such kind. Next to the roads would be dry open sand and rocks and not wet mud covered with grass or concrete like in western Europe.

Cyprus is a popular tourist destination. But you would mainly find British and Russian tourists only. Infact, apparently lots of Russians have moved there and settled permanently after the breakup of the Soviet Union. As I was told, these Russians accumulated money during the communist era and brought it all with them to Cyprus when they left after the end of the Union. Thus, all the hotel menus list the dishes in three languages- Greek, English and Russian ;)

Another similarity with India would be the unending political problem of the division of Cyprus, invasion by Turkey and all that. Rings a familiar bell? :P

It is a very expensive country. Yeah, it is much more expensive than even UK. And very touristy as well. Oh, and there are a huge number of Bangladeshi and Pakistani immigrants who work in these touristy hotels. It was quite surprising but then when you think about it, not so much. English is the language spoken and hence they are employed, and hence they migrate for a better lifestyle :P.

Now, we can get down to specifics of my trip :P. The conference was in this 4-star beach resort and thats where I stayed for 4 of the 5 days. It was very posh. The poshest hotel I have stayed in until now, ever! It had its own private beach, 3-4 restaurants, a couple of more bars and so on. And all that extravaganza made sense as we realised that many tourists seemed to just stay in the hotel for the whole week and so. They would just lie by the beach, swim for a bit, lie a bit more, use the swimming pool, and lie around more, while using the dining facilities around. They never ventured out to do the other touristy activities like sight-seeing :P. Ofcourse, most of the tourists were basically old retired rich people. And then, there were a few other kind of tourists. British couples, along with their families and friends, who came all the way to Cyprus, to this particular resort to get married by the sea, on the pier. Everyday, a wedding took place there! Insane!

For the first 3 days, when the conference was being held, I couldn't do much other than enjoying my room or by the beach in the evenings. On the last day however, a friend (from the conference) and I hiked for 2 hours along the beach to reach an archaeological excavation of what is supposedly the oldest city/port of the country called Amathaus. Oh btw, We were in Limassol- the second largest city of Cyprus, after the capital.

The second last day, I was picked up from the hotel by the family of my friend aka ex-housemate, who is originally from this city [lucky me ;)] to be taken to their place. That's where I spent the weekend. My friend wasn't there obviously (she being in the UK and all) but her parents were excellent hosts and showed me around the city, the castles, the ancient town nearby and all that. That evening, another friend (cousin of my ex-housemate) came by to take me to her house and also show around a bit more of the city.

The last day, I left early to go to Larnaca, another city, the one which contains the airport and went around a bit, enjoying the marina and all before flying back to Heathrow.

So, is Cyprus worth visiting? Definitely yes, if you want a relaxing break by the sea side. The intense blue sea is serene, the waves are gentle, the air is refreshing and the food is good. Most of all, it is completely hassle-free. Except for public transport which is practically non-existent. Everyone there owns a car apparently, so rent one if you want to go around a lot :P.

and we go home again!

2009-09-23T00:40:00.002Z

the typical trip:

£ as usual, book the flight tickets less than a week in advance. and book them right immediately on the same day that the decision to go home was made.

£ as usual, go home for a little more than 3 weeks.

£ as usual, have a really strong reason to go home. this time being, having nothing to do after submission of the thesis :P

£ as usual, blog about it just the night before the flight ;)

PhD thesis submitted !!!

2009-09-15T23:46:00.001Z

i don't remember since when i have been waiting to announce this, and write a post regarding it. definitely more than year! yes, people everywhere and nowhere, the PhD thesis is now sealed and desposited for 'examination' aka 'viva' aka 'defence'. this procedure involves professors both internal and external to the university grilling me regarding all aspects of the thesis and beyond for as many hours as they choose. my supervisors would be just mute spectators in the room. the examiners apparently tend to question both the higher purpose of the thesis (like why it is significant or novel) and also the minute details (like how and why this particular parameter was chosen). anyways, since this is scheduled for end of october, I pretty much have more than 40 absolutely free days staring at me :D .... yipppe !!

\begin{bragging}
£$€ - 123 pages of PhD thesis [quite on the smaller side but as is said, the smaller the thesis, the better and more precise it is ;) ]
€£$ - 3 years 14 days [would have been much less than three years if not for the vacations my supervisors and I have taken over the past 2 months]
$€£ - consumed approximately £37,000 as stipend and more than £40,000 was paid as fees on my behalf by the school to the university [yeah, it is a strange system :P]. also several thousands of £s were spent to provide for my various conference attendances ;).
€$£ - considering the problems and ill-health faced over the last many months, the fact that i still managed to complete on time deserves applause :P
£€$ - there should be more points to brag about, definitely. but i don't seem to be able to recollect them right now :P.
\end{bragging}

okay, now that we are done with this, let us evaluate my current position:
%& am jobless and workless and thus not even being paid a penny by anyone.
&% am going to become homeless soon as I have decided to give up my room/house at end of this month.
%% have no job offers yet, haven't actually applied anywhere that i might want to, don't even know what kind of job i would like.
&& ................. ...... .... .... .... .... [intentionally left blank to represent several points ;) ]

fine, now let the celebrations, packing+storage, travel etc etc begin !!

print .. bind .. submit!

2009-09-14T16:25:00.003Z

so, after 20 days, we revisit the thesis process.

in the meantime, that is, while Nr was reading the thesis version, i was busy doing other things, also going to Cyprus, attending a conference, presenting a paper, enjoying the calm sea and so on. and i return today to find his commented version on the desk.

and no real comments! even the abstract which i expected to be mauled had only one word-change suggested! working on these comments took less than 30 mins. and I was ready with the thesis version to be submitted!!

ofcourse, i had skipped writing the "acknowledgements" section until now. even Nr pointed out that atleast something should be written there ;). and so i manufactured one in a hurry and voila!

here we are, with the ready pdf .. for 5 copies to be printed, bound and submitted!

and that will be done tomorrow ..... !!!!!

day49 - day50 pretty nifty!

2009-08-26T23:45:00.000Z

day49 - tuesday - put up the appendix graphs and describe the results and why they don't matter, hence why they ended up in the appendix intstead of the main part.

day50 - do the small itsy bitsy changes that were noted down in the process over the last 50 days but never acted upon. and ofcourse, write the abstract .. finally! and done!!

the second version of the thesis is now ready for your perusal :P.

so the statistics:
£ around 125-130pages depending on how i compile it.
£ 50 days of procrastination + work + weekend
£ 35 posts of this blah!

next post might arrive when Nr and Nj look at this version and suggest any final changes..... am sure they will, especially for the abstract .. it is quite amateurish ;)

day43 to day48 - all posts are late :P

2009-08-24T22:24:00.003Z

day43 - revised chapter 5 aka Empirical Evaluation ... had to battle with lots of justifys, whys and why-is-the-graph-so warriors .. tackled them all except for the easy one requiring a figure to explain how a parameter works ..

day44 - revised chapter 6 aka Conclusions/FutureWork .. the earlier version of future work was somewhat massacred by Nr, but his questions did help in the process of raising it from the ashes again :P. the last paragraph has been left out .. apparently, world peace, cure for cancer and time-travel arent enough .. we need more wider and general direction for future work as well .. will work later when in the zone ;)

day45 - the example for chapter 4 .. something that has been delayed for so long .. and we find what? that a somewhat preliminary version already exists in the minithesis .. it is just a matter of copying and updating it .. and so we do .. not much of a task at all !! and follow that up with revising all the figures that demanded touch ups and the new figure that was left out yesterday.

day46 - saturday .. what do you expect?

day47 - sunday .. why do you even bother?

day48 - anti-appendicitis = generating graphs for the second part of the appendix. also generated input and started running the final set of experiments for this set of graphs. also took a look at the abstract that is to be written and gave up for the day.

\begin{abstract}
It is all blah!
\end{abstract}

day42 - the bolt and the blue

2009-08-18T23:18:00.002Z

soon the day will come when this blog will tire of these pathetic thesis posts and rebel against the author. it will not let him login, not let him add more of his asinine daily commentary onto the burgeoning web. it will try to banish all those incongruous posts and hope to go back to its original state of bliss. and it might fail and fade into oblivion. or i might finish with the thesis before the blog loses patience with me. let us hope for the latter :P.

revision of chapter 4 wasn't tricky. well, almost. all of it was done except for the example part. yes, we are back to struggling with the infamous examples. we need to extend the running example to explain this part of the thesis as well. i knew it was coming, even while i was writing this chapter and consciously ignored to add the example. and now i will have to do it .. tomorrow?

also started the revision of chapter 5 aka Empirical Evaluation. most of the comments seem to be "why" or "justify". blah, i say.

day41 - on the run?

2009-08-17T22:55:00.002Z

i took a skewed weekend break, that is, friday and saturday and half of sunday. no, i didn't sincerely go to lab on sunday afternoon, but i did make attempts towards work and revise some of the second chapter aka Related Work. however, i was being too lazy and too smart for my own benefit and skipped most of the tough comments and tackled the straightforward bits only.

that meant, my work today turned out to be much larger than it looked. the morning was anyway devoured by references for the camera ready version of the workshop paper. an annoying issue i cant care to elaborate :P. and the afternoon, this chapter was revised to what i now hope is 'almost' perfection'. and attention can now be focussed on chapter 4 aka Adaptation.

day37 - spruce

2009-08-13T23:20:00.000Z

finally, we have the pleasure of creating a new directory. and copy files carefully and lovingly :P. yes, the work on the next version of the the-sis has begun!

and i chose chapter 3 for the honours. it had the least number of comments and Nr had even praised it. yeah, it is an extremely rarely occurrence of Nr appreciating my writing. in fact, anyone's writing i think ;).

also, didn't have to stalk Nj for his set of comments. luckily, found him in a nearby bay, discussing something with some student and waited patiently with a keen eye for him to get ready to leave and then caught his attention and then put forward my demands :D.

done with chapter 3 and then turned the attention to chapter 2 aka Related Work. it is always the most hated part of anything i write. somehow. even just revising it seem to be quite annoying :D and that made me quit for the day.... lagging quite behind in the revision process

day36 - dealing with the appendix

2009-08-12T22:03:00.003Z

hey .. that rhymed so naturally :D

so the not so particularly important glossary was made proper. the other part of appendix that are those no-value-adding results. you see, sometimes while describing an experimental setup, i claim that i am showing results with these parameters only and not those because their results are also similar. thus, i was doing the good thing of not adding redundancy. however, these redundant results need to be included in the appendix for the sake of completeness and to prove that we weren't fibbing and being lazy :P

also, i can now start the revision. but where are the comments of Nj on all the chapters? haven't received them yet. should i start stalking him now? ;)

day35 - refine to refer

2009-08-11T23:53:00.001Z

due to the post-chapter-completion-lethargy disorder, my feeble attempts towards work were mostly futile.

the only saving grace was that i managed to clean up the bibliography, and cite the references in the proper format now .... was using a stop-gap arrangement before ;)

tomorrow, we shall 'gloss' the thesis :P

day34 - back with a wham bam?

2009-08-10T22:29:00.002Z

finally, after 20 days, i am back to the great task of continuing the thesis writing. the last chapter awaited. given that it had been effectively postponed for 3 weeks, it kind of deserved some respect. or so we thought. but less than 5 hours after i sat down to tackle it, it was done. there it lay in front of me, staring expectantly at its own fate :P.

the first part of the chapter was the "Conclusions", which was basically a summary of the summaries of all the chapters until then. wasn't too hard to write. the second part is the more interesting "Future Work". i wonder why we need that in a thesis. do i really intend to continue working on this topic beyond my phd? also some not-so-well-acquainted-with-research might question, if you do have future work, how come you are already done with your phd? :P. Nr had advised me that the future work should be written such that it is not too close and too small to the thesis contributions. otherwise, we would be making the task of a nagging examiner easier and he/she would question why this future work is not already part of the phd thesis ;).

anyway, i looked to Su aka nikheel for inspiration and he suggested the "cure for cancer" and "world peace" as two probable tasks that i might consider listing as part of "Future work". i also wanted a third task. he suggested "warp speed", whatever that meant. but i felt that "time travel" would be more suitable. as you see, once time-travel is solved, there will never ever be any need for listing any future work as all work of the future can be easily obtained by travelling to the future. thus, the problem of "Future Work" can be resolved once and for all, if only someone takes up my suggestion of "time-travel" as future work ;)

oh, by the way, the last chapter has also been sent to Nr and Nj. tomorrow, might be the day to work on the glossary, refine the references, and ponder about the appendix!

temporary break

2009-07-23T20:58:00.002Z

no, i did not miss out posting about this yesterday. there was nothing to post! thesis writing has been put temporarily on hold. so we stop this phase at day33. next phase might begin after 2 weeks!!

until, the blog will be back to its normal duty. that would mean rare posts and completely non work related posts :P.

day33 - was completely work free!!

2009-07-21T22:36:00.002Z

and not really my fault. due to other appointments, only managed to go the lab in the afternoon. and soon thereafter, had to leave the lab for other appointments :P. so no work.

oh, by the way, there is a problem regarding the expected submission time for the thesis. yeah, writing it as quickly as i seem to be, doesnt seem to help much in the long run. that is because, i will be taking 2 weeks holiday starting next week. and soon after i am back and all set to work on draft-2, Nr will be on vacation for 2 weeks. So, he wont be able to read my draft-2 until he returns at the end of august. and since i will be on vacation next 2 weeks, i wont be able to give draft-2 to Nr before he leaves. so, all in all, the chances of submitting the thesis before september have almost evaporated now. but yeah, according to Nr's estimate, the work required to be done from now on until the submission time of the thesis needn't be more than 3weeks !!

but since, we dont have overlapping 2-3 weeks until september, there is no point, is there? :P

day32 - chapter five has gone live

2009-07-20T20:29:00.002Z

i surprise myself with my sincerity :P. as i ought to, read through the results section in the morning. edited the simulation parameters section. generated good colour version of the graphs and then went through it all together and then mailed to Nr and Nj.

what to do next is the question? one chapter is remaining - the "Conclusions and Future Work". Future work? what should i write in future work? i don't intend to do any work in the future. and i dont expect anyone to extend this work for the future either ;). even if someone's wants to, he/she can go make up his/her own research questions. why should i blabber something now for his/her benefit? notice how i have painstakingly used both genders while referring to this hypothetic future researcher? given the extremely "large" number of women in cs research, i guess am being a bit too hopeful :P.

i had a look at another thesis's last chapter to see what should be written in these concluding chapters. it was huge, 15 pages long. my main meaty chapters are of such length. even, if i dedicate a page to every section in my thesis, i won't end up with such a big chapter. anyway's will look at this chapter work later.

so instead of that, considered writing the appendix, basically a glossary of all the terms. also considered making a camera ready copy of the workshop paper. yet, did nothing. completing the chapter seemed enough achievement for the day :P

day31 - experimental fun

2009-07-17T23:08:00.002Z

chapter 5 = Empirical Evaluation

it's all there in the journal paper. why not just copy paste and forget all about it? oh yeah, increase the size of the graphs. somehow bigger graphs mean better graphs? and what about the tables with the other results? make them bolder ?

oh yeah, so this is the second last chapter.. to talk about the experimental setup, the parameters for the simulations, the simulations and then their results. and finally, why the results are the way they are. somehow, it has always been very easy to explain the results. particularly its vagaries, the uneven flows and all that. can always find a convincing excuse for any surprising bends or turns ;)

so yeah, more than half of the chapter was done on the day in just 3 hours. all of it could have been done in another couple of hours .. but who bothered!! :P

so, to finish the chapter and to move onto more complicated things on monday

day30 - time was thrifty?

2009-07-16T22:26:00.002Z

whole day was taken up by other work related activities ..
not my fault !!!

day29 - next chapter in line

2009-07-15T23:24:00.001Z

proof read and sent over chapter 4 to Nr and Nj.

no more work could be done today or can be done tomorrow due to other assignments.

whoa, that sounds very very formal eh? :P

day28 - chapter 4 has no more weight

2009-07-14T22:30:00.002Z

chapter 4 = Adaptation.tex
the tentative chapter 5 has been scrapped and put into chapter 4 as another section!

and the initial part of the chapter also written today, diagrams modified and everything done. all this took just 3 hours today.

was supposed to be proof reading it now, but too sleepy. so this blogpost ends now.

day27 - chapter 4 has begun

2009-07-13T22:46:00.002Z

and then we have some days, in which i start working soon after i reach the lab, and the work gets quickly done, and no procrastination at all except for the sleepy period after lunch, and all the expected work for the day gets done much before the time you expected it to be done!!

the day started with the decision to vanish chapter 5. well not exactly, but to merge it with chapter 4 so that now my thesis will have only 6 chapters. and of this merged chapter, more than half of it was completed today. ofcourse, it mainly involved merging and copying from minithesis and the journal paper, but still it was work and was done well. yes, am a glad soul for the day :P.

for a brief part, had to look at my code to identify the exact utility functions i was actually using. that was a scary time. i think i am quite relieved that i won't have to deal with this code anymore :D. that says a lot about my programming etiquette eh :D.

so, can we finish chapter 4 tomorrow? remember, by the original scheme, this would have meant finishing both chapters 4 and 5 ;). oh the funny part of this incomplete chapter 4 is that, i have finished the second half of it. the first half is actually waiting for its turn :D

para-fiction - title?

2009-07-12T21:52:00.003Z

She was absolutely uninterested. But she really didn't have much of a choice. Being forced do this favour for her friend, she sat there with a fake smile trying hard to hide her boredom. Her friend was already lost in the 'oh-so-cute' narrations of the guy. This guy was, in fact, the actual reason behind her being subjected to such torture. In short, her friend was interested in this guy and wanted to meet him, so dragged her along to make the rendezvous look less conspicuous. Now, while her friend is continued to be mesmerised by the guy, his attitude and his lofty boastful stories have started to not just bore her but even annoy. And to add to the misery, the friend of the guy, who was supposed to join them, failed to turn up. She had agreed to tag along with her friend on the sole basis of the promise that there would be a fourth person to keep her company while the two soon-to-be love-birds got lost in their own cooing. But that obviously hasn't happened. Now, what is she ought to do? She certainly had no interest in being the third wheel and had tried making up an excuse and leaving, but they stopped her. They said that the fourth person, the missing guy, might turn up any moment. According to her, that moment might never arrive. In fact, now she wasn't even interested in meeting this guy who, by his absence, submitted her to such agony. As she kept getting more frustrated, she realised she was no longer in any mood of making small talk with a stranger and decided there was no point of her waiting anymore. So, she got up and announced her departure with a curt goodbye. She turned around and bumped into someone. Mumbling a sorry, she hurried away. The person looked mystified. After striding away a few paces, she suddenly stopped and turned around to look back. What if the person, that she bumped into, turned out to be the missing friend that she was waiting for all this time? He wasn't. "Not everything happens like in the movies", she reminded herself shaking her head and went home.

day24 - no work and so no bore ;)

2009-07-10T22:45:00.000Z

........................

day23 - example has been set free !!

2009-07-09T23:15:00.002Z

am too tired now to blah much on this post. did work all day, without distractions (chatting doesn't count as a distraction) or procrastination. so, a few points

a reasonable, sensible looking, hopefully passable example scenario has been come up with, explained in all the relevant places with all the required twists and turns in the introduction and the third chapter.

the said example has been accompanied by xfig aided eps+tex files aka diagrams to display the twists and turns more effectively.

second version of the introduction aka chapter 1 and first version of the organisation modelling chapter aka chapter 3 have been sent over to Nr and Nj. Nr is only supposed to look at chapter 3 while Nj is supposed to look at both as he hasnt looked at chapter 1 earlier. so its 2nd version will be commented by him only. or so is the plan.

now i sleep. have a meeting with Nr and Nj in 10 hours.

day22 - time for examples to brew

2009-07-08T21:35:00.003Z

so the main job for today was to come up with a proper compelling, all aspects encompassing example of an application system that would require my model and then the adaptation methods to make it perform its tasks better. anyway, given the complicated system that i deal with, any example tends to be long winded and abstract.

and my extraordinarily poor exemplifying skills and strong exasperation towards such tasks make this job even harder. anyway, thanks to a labmate, who threw some ideas at me as i appeared to go bonkers with irritation, i think i have a reasonable example, just enough to gain a grudging okay from Nr. but then, i didn't write it up in the introduction or in chapter 3.

the day passed away before i even knew it. some days are short lived .. they just rush past you as if they are frightened by the night and don't want to risk being caught by it. did that make sense?? :P

day21 - writing is not much fun

2009-07-07T23:02:00.003Z

the mornings are generally delayed with the "catching up with the world" activities otherwise known as web-browsing to keep the self up-to-date, though it doesn't really matter. then the left over task from yesterday is attacked intermittently between all the chats.

and so, the pseudocodes were achieved using the not very confusing, but certainly a bit confusing algorithm style in latex called algorithm2e.sty. don't ask me what the 2e stands for, go and ask the author! with that, chapter 3 was all done except for the several examples that ought to be given. they are present in the older minithesis version but are now obsolete and have to be suitably enhanced. did i mention before that i hate giving examples? one of the examples of the activities i hate the most is providing examples.

so, instead of doing the thing i hate, i turned my attention to the comments and questions of Nr on chapter 1 aka Introduction. of course, several of them pertained to the examples that had been given in there and their apparent lack of "compelling factor and convincing abilities". and most of the other remarks had me go 'aaarggh' (that is 3 a's) with exasperation. of course, when acted upon, each of these remarks have the hidden ability of making the text clearer and more straightforward.

however, some remarks are just too painful and i wish dearly that i could ignore them and that they would disappear into oblivion. but that will not happen. even if i ignore just one remark and send back the improved draft to Nr, given the robotic mode that he uses while reading his student's drafts, he will make the same remark again even though he needn't remember having made it the first time. his robotic reading algorithm is quite deterministic in these aspects!

but then some comments have to be ignored for sanity's sake. like, just next to where i defined 'self-organisation' by copying the definition from a well known paper, italicising it and citing the source, his comment reads- "what is self-organisation".

oh yeah, i have finished version 2.0 of Introduction by working on the comments. except for the examples ofcourse. okay, so make it version 1.4 ....

day20 - it is all a bit 'haunty'

2009-07-06T22:35:00.003Z

so started work a bit more sincerely today. and to reward my sincerity, the progress was painstakingly slow. started work on chapter 3 aka Modelling Agent Organisations aka Agent Organisation Framework and so on (yet to decide on the title). almost all the the work today involved following steps:

€ read a section/subsection from minithesis and corresponding part in the workshop paper
€ copy from workshop paper and paste in the file (file is basically a copy of the chapter file from the minithesis).
€ modify as and where required.
€ ignore and sidestep the paragraphs refering to the examples and highlight this fact and the pending jobs with some eye-catching CAPS and ====s.
€ repeat for next section/subsection.

all of it is done except for the examples and the pseudocode for the algorithms. the examples will take a lot of time, a lot lot of time. especially since, am yet to come up with a nice, strong convincing scenario to use as a basis for all the examples in the thesis.

at home after dinner, started working a bit on the introduction chapter by trying to answer the questions and justifications asked by Nr. gave up soon enough, having been flustered and exasperated with an increasing air of helplessness. ;)

day17 + weekend = ?

2009-07-05T21:05:00.002Z

decided not to go to office aka lab on the friday i.e day17. convinced self that i will try to get some work done from home itself, atleast the easy parts of chapter3. but what do you know, as is invariably the case, never got round to even making attempts to work. not my fault majorly. most of the time was consumed by the wimbledon semis.

saturday or day18, i managed to revisit my code, specifically the input generation part, that had been lying unwanted and unattended since march, when results for the journal paper were obtained. and after reminding myself of what files did what and how, which i tend to forget with time, ran them to generate input. later on, copied some of the relevant simulation files and started some runs as well on that input. why am i running experiments now, you wondering? (you should wonder, incase you didn't bother to yet). i had just been silly and sincere to suggest that some graphs can be added (in the appendix) to the already existing ones just to backup the claim of the independence of results from unrelated simulation parameters.

and on sunday, finally opened the OrgModelling.tex file and completed two sections. both of which were basic copy paste from the workshop paper, with very little editing required. when i came to the part which required some actual work, the tennis finals got underway and thats it. blame roddick and federer for using up my afternoon.

day16 - chapter three is to be?

2009-07-02T21:14:00.002Z

took me more than a couple of hours of sitting at the computer to copy create OrgModelling.tex file. ofcourse, the supporting files were copied from the minithesis and the recently submitted workshop paper. the relevant part in the journal paper is not required because that is superseeded by the workshop paper. anyway, copying these files and staring at the new file is the only work done for the day....

day15 - adieu to literature review

2009-07-01T21:11:00.002Z

so finally, this pestering chapter has been done for now. fitted in two papers of my external examiner in some way - no criticism but stating how it is not particularly useful in my context. also wrote up the paragraphs surrounding the major sections - you know, those that state what the sections contain and then summarise what the section contained :P. also wrote the final summary section of the chapter.

then compiled them all using the proper thesis formatting, the correct cls file and all. i had compiled and sent the earlier chapter using some random article format, but Nr is insisting he gets to look at this stuff in the correct format only. by the way, the dvi to pdf and the ps to pdf converters on my fedora are screwed up. they always tend to push up the contents and make the top margin almost disappear. i hate them, still use them, by hacking the cls file.. tch tch

gave this chapter a read through and sent it over to N{r,j}.

day14 - chapter2 is almost seen

2009-06-30T22:45:00.002Z

did not put many hours into this work today. yet the amount of work accomplished with respect to the hours put in is pathetic through an objective observation. but then, trying to summarise papers precisely into 2-3 sentences while also specifying why they aren't sufficient for what you seek is not easy.

yes, most of these additions were discussed in recently written papers, but those discussions have to be expanded upon. at the same time, i strangely came across a few papers that i had read but forgot to include in my recently written papers, but at the same time are relevant in some ways. so new stuff had to be written afresh. while writing about such new stuff, i also came across more stuff that is somewhat relevant and to be included. one such paper actually cites my workshop paper :D. i didn't know that any of my phd papers had any citations yet. but apparently they do!

and the final task involves, properly citing the papers of my prospective external examiner. can't afford any kind of slip up there. shouldn't criticise too much, if at all, and definitely not on a false basis. but at the same time should be clear on how it fits with what we seek and how related/useful it is, if at all, for us. have left this last task for tomorrow.

day13 -- ominous, it has been!!

2009-06-29T22:02:00.004Z

no work was done over the weekend i.e day11 and day12 keeping in with the low expectations.

started relating the work by reading through the chapter2 of the mini-thesis written 15 months ago and modifying it where required, which wasn't much. ofcourse, a few references have to be added and discussed, but these were present in the recently written papers, so it isn't particularly hard. precisely, the reason why this has to be the easiest chapter to write now.. ofcourse at the time of writing the minithesis, this was one of the hardest chapters to write.

stopped towards the end of the chapter, where most of the additions have to be made .. yes, once again, i leave the toughest part of the work for the next day!

oh yeah, Nr came back to me with his comments on the "Introduction" or chapter1 and they were many... very very many .. and given that it was just a merger and composition of already written/published/approved introductions, it is amazing that he could still manage to come up with so many questions. the "unending deathly spiral of reviewing" as has been proclaimed by skp. it seemed like a deliberate action on Nr's part to further dampen my already dipping enthusiasm .. yet i persisted and shall persist! so say we all ;)

day10 - next chapter when?

2009-06-26T19:07:00.001Z

yeah, "chapter1 - introduction" has been all written, read and sent over to the N's.

now i feel a bit silly to have procrastinated 3 working days and 1 weekend for a job that eventually got done in 2 days :P.

today, in the little time that i did spare for the thesis, proof-read, refined and sent over the chapter1 and then accumulated the relevant files for chapter2 - "literature review" or "related work" or any other suggestions for the name?

day9 - chapter one is fine?

2009-06-25T21:58:00.003Z

let's make this short. yeah, so the chapter one is all written now. will have a read through it tomorrow sometime and send it off to Nr and Nj.

the sections remaining from yesterday, took much more time than expected. what do you know, it is not so easy after all to succinctly put down your claims towards "advancing the state of the art" and demanding a PhD :P. another tricky part was where i ought to list my papers, produced during the phd, and point out which one details which particular contributions. it so happens that one of my papers is completely unrelated to my research topic, yet i didn't want to exclude it from this listing (especially given that i do not have many publications anyway ;) and this one is an award-nominated one! ). so, with some trickery of words, i managed to add it at the end of the list.

remember how i was a bit worried that the general length of the introduction of the theses i looked at was more than 12 pages while what i had from my minithesis was just 4? well, now that i look at the size, it comes to 11 pages! no, i did not make any effort towards the size. formulating the chapter properly and putting in the requirements, contributions etc itself made it so long!

next focus will be chapter2 = "literature review" or "related work". i doubt that i will start it tomorrow :-s.

day8 - chapter one .. almost done

2009-06-24T22:33:00.002Z

since the structure of the introduction was made somewhat clearer by yesterday's hurried activity, it was much easier to start work today... and i did!

began at the beginning and started playing around with the sentences and paragraphs that have been sourced from various earlier written material. had all of those files open as well. every sentence that i had to place, i would end up reading its original file to understand the context and then move it accordingly. so, it was more like a game, a sentence arrangement game. i don't think i wrote any sentence afresh!

also, created a few sections to make the progress of the motivation part of the chapter much more streamlined and effective. but i do wonder whether this kind of division into sections will pass the "Nr test" (Nr = primary supervisor). so the introduction basically contains a lot of paragraphs initially which give a motivation to the work of the thesis. next part is the 'requirements' section which precisely states what all we seek or what the objectives of the work are. that is followed by the 'contributions' section which lists what you have achieved, also including the papers published and making a case for why you deserve a PhD. and then the last part desribes the thesis structure, which i had already written yesterday.

so yeah, i was midway through the requirements section when i had to leave today. the initial motivation part is all done and that is also the toughest and is more than 3/4ths of the chapter anyway. and even if none of you believe me, i was actually so involved in the writing that i had to drag myself out and forcefully save/close the file.

once it sputters to a start .. the rest is a strong smooth flow ;) .. lets hope that starting the next chapter won't be as tough.

day7 - finally get going

2009-06-23T23:17:00.002Z

- okay, i only had a couple of hours to spare for thesis writing today. unlike yesterday, when i had the whole day at my disposal and did nothing, i did make use of these 2 hours today!

- starting trouble is always the toughest to overcome in my case. once i start, the work proceeds at a much smoother pace until that part ends and another part (like the next chapter) has to be begun. and the process repeats. desperately need ignition sparks which are generally provided by impending deadlines.

- to overcome this menace of "non-startery", i decided to focus on the easiest section in the introductory chapter-- "Thesis Structure" describing what the rest of chapters of the thesis contain :D.

- with the little momentum that was gained and the little time that was remaining, i decided on the structure and flow for the introduction chapter, and copy pasted the relevant parts from the papers/minithesis in the required order. so, they should all be edited, connected and made sensible and coherent now.

that's all for today. oh, the rest of the day was spent in the hallowed city of Oxford!

day6 - _________________

2009-06-22T15:31:00.001Z

day4 and day5 were weekend, so no progress was expected.

day6 = today = no work what so ever. don't ask!

day3- Introduction.tex

2009-06-19T21:54:00.003Z

I was advised to begin from the beginning. Not the very beginning i.e contents, abstract or acknowledgments :P, but from the first chapter, which is the introduction. but how do you introduce something that is yet to be created? so, you look at how others have done it. got the chapter from the guy mentioned in the previous post, lets call him Ar. But his phd is a bit diverse, that is, he has worked on several problems and is tying them together. i do not have such issues. my thesis has a single focus only. so, had to look at a thesis which is as empirical as mine, along with having a single primary topic. and so i did. both of these "chapter 1"s scared me. the smaller one was 12 pages long. i had a look at the introduction from my minithesis (or 18month transfer report) and it was just 4 pages. and i have no idea how to 'introduce' the thesis any differently. how my 4 page introduction from the minithesis is to be extended. a lot more motivation, with an example perhaps and a description of the method, which was lacking then (since it wasn't created then!). anyway, it was too overwhelming for me to continue anymore for the day! so that's it.

don't expect me to do any work over the weekend, so don't expect any posts either.

day2 - directory

2009-06-18T21:41:00.003Z

almost forgot that i have to post today. one of the reasons for that might be because of the amount of work i accomplished today ..... as it is tending towards zero :P.

the closest i came to work on the thesis was to consider creating a directory. typed in mkdir 3-4 times but cntrl-c'ed on all occasions since i couldn't come up with a name for the new directory. 'thesis' seemed to bland and ordinary.

oh yeah, the other thing i did manage to do is request a friend (colleague!), who is about to submit his thesis (he had started his phd 3 months before i did), to send his first chapter. yeah, the 'introduction'. it is of course the most difficult chapter to write and the most important as well (dont expect many, if any, readers apart from the supervisors and examiners to read beyond this chapter :P). looking at his introduction will also give me an idea of the protocols to be followed, especially the way Nr would prefer it. these will include how to list the publications, how to list the claims of the thesis and so on...

day1 - deadlines before we start

2009-06-17T12:48:00.002Z

it is just past lunch, but i am already logging my efforts towards the thesis for today? well, that is because i know for sure that i won't be doing any more thesis work for the rest of the day.
what did we accomplish:

£ had the meeting with the primary supervisor (lets refer to him as Nr from now on), the secondary supervisor (henceforth referred to as Nj) was away to some conference and hence wasn't present.
£ discussed prospective completion dates = sept?
£ the chapter division of the thesis = 7 chapters, as expected
£ prospective internal examiner = the same one who examined the minithesis and the 9month reports
£ prospective external examiner = Nr suggested one guy (whom he knows to be a reasonable person in this regard) and asked me to learn about him and state if I have any "violent objections" regarding him.

special announcement - blog bday - phd thesis bday

2009-06-16T21:52:00.004Z

first of all, let us all wish 'happy birthday' to mythalez's blog. it is 5 years old now!

i started this blog 5 years ago, on 16th june 2004, on a bored afternoon during the summer vacation at IIIT, as a silly undergrad :P. that summer vacation was also when i took my first tentative steps towards research in computer science, by working in AI via doing a NLP project and starting a multi-agent systems project.

today, 5 years later, quite coincidentally infact (trust me, it wasn't planned at all!), i submitted my 'intention to submit thesis' form. this form is ought to be submitted some 2-3 months before you intend to submit your PhD thesis. well yeah, i am yet to start writing it, but we, that is me and my two supervisors, hope that it will be done in 2-3 months. so, given this coincidence of today being the blog's birthday, i have decided to relate the two in some way.

i think writing a PhD thesis is once-in-a-lifetime occurrence generally (ofcourse there are a few crazy people who do more than one PhD) , and therefore it might be worth logging the process. hence, from today, i will be blogging on a daily basis and narrating all that i have done on that day towards my PhD thesis. and this painstaking blogging chore will be maintained until the thesis is submitted!

so, here we go-- today, i submitted the 'intention to submit thesis' form. [the end]

not a ps: mythalez of twitter fame had announced a competition for the 1000th tweet and the winner was to be commended in this birthday post. so, stand up and applaud vandz for her winning contribution-- "everything in the universe is just blah" which is in fact mythalez's own quote that she reused to participate. so, she won mainly due to the cleverness of her answer and not because no one else participated seriously :P.

thoughts ...

2009-06-11T21:34:00.003Z

after more than a year, i started reading a book, any book. it is a very well-known novel "immortality" by milan kundera. regardless of that, i realised how much i missed reading. due to the perennial paucity of time, i managed only 40 pages, nevertheless i was so utterly engrossed and filled with thoughts as if the inner being just woke up again from deep slumber.

of course, the author is amazing and his insights are mostly of the 'wow' kind, but its not just about that. i realised i had forgotten to think. caught up in the grinds of the quickly passing days filled with something to do or postpone all the time, i haven't been giving enough time to the so called inner self.

as i have heard before, one's thoughts are one's most private and quintessential belongings. most inseparable and absolutely unobtainable by others. at least for now, until technology finds a way i guess :).

buda pest wien wachau along danube

2009-06-07T08:13:00.002Z

Okay, finally we shall talk about my 10 day trip to central Europe. The purpose is archiving and not entertainment :P. First stop was Budapest where the conference was held. And yeah, the conference was awesome. Well, it is the most important conference in my field and this time I had some proper papers to present :D. And one of my papers got nominated for the best student paper award. Of course that paper has nothing to do with my PhD. Of course, we didn't win. The results were announced during the banquet (which was on a boat cruising along the Danube river ;) ) á la the Oscars or something. Also, my work got noticed by most of the bigwigs of the field. Yeah, they all know me, and my research pretty well now :P. And it was funny when I looked back and realised that I had applied for a phd under some of these profs back then. And now, they discuss my paper with their students in their group meetings and all :P. So yeah, pretty good conference. My room in the hotel was not just a regular room. I was staying at the conference hotel itself and had booked a single room just like the others. But some of us (including me) got a single apartment instead. So, it had a huge living room, a big bedroom and a well equipped kitchen as well!

Buda + Pest:

A city with quite a character. Almost all buildings in the centre are grand and majestic in some sense. And they are interspaced with grey, dull, communist era towering blocks. The Danube river divides the city into Buda and Pest and hence, quite a few bridges around. The sights across the river are the best. Definitely a city to visit. The hilly part i.e. Buda has the castle and really tall green hills while Pest is crowded like a any big city is. Pest is where most of the action is.

If you go out to dinner in Budapest, it will end up taking you 3 hours. Food wouldn't arrive for at least an hour after you order. True, this is valid in any restaurant there, guess it is an Hungarian policy or something! And when the food does come, it is huge. Really really huge portions. And very very heavy as well. The size of the starters there will easily beat the main course sizes in UK or rest of western Europe :P. Apart from the local language, German and Russian seem to be as or even more popular than English, going by the language in the menus. The nightlife there doesn’t end until late morning :P. Everyone seems to drink and smoke a lot. The most known hangout place is this placed called Godor which is an open area that was to have been the foundation for a big building. But the building plan was scrapped and it ended up being the centre of the nightlife there. There are some islands on the river as well which are also mostly abuzz all 24 hours of any day! By the way, the city also seemed to contain the most good looking girls in comparison to the other places in Europe that I have been to! Eastern European exoticism I guess?

Of course, English is not common there and Hungarian is bewildering to comprehend :P. Tickets for buses, trams or underground can only be bought from some ticket centres around and it is not easy to buy them. Ended up travelling ticketless for most of the bus and tram journeys ;). Also, the currency exchange is ridiculously confusing with 1£ > 300 Ft, so we were carrying notes each worth 20,000Ft and so on! The escalators of the underground system must be the fastest ever. The underground is pretty deep under the ground as well :P. In addition to general sightseeing, went to one of the famous 'baths' there. The really hot 80-90 C saunas are a very interesting experience. Especially when you jump into cold 16 C water immediately after that. It is supposed to be good for the skin, though it felt more like a shock+awe venture :P. Budapest also contains the second largest synagogue in the world in addition to other attractions.

Wein:

From Budapest, two friends (call them S and K) and me went to Vienna (or Wein as it is called by the natives :P)! Why you ask? Because, it was the closest must-see city. Skipped Bratistlava in favour of spending more time in Vienna. And it is worth it. Awesome city in many senses. Cultural centre, it does seem to be, with lots and lots of events happening and museums and theatres etc. around. Every building in the centre of that city deserves to be photographed. Amazingly grand architecture with rich carvings everywhere. Even the roof in a Burger-King place is artistic! Transport is easy with the really simple and modern underground system along with the trams. Too many tourists (like me) everywhere though. Some of the area around the Danube has been converted into a tropical island atmosphere with even an artificial beach! Also visited what might be one of the most famous apartment buildings in the world. It is quite unique looking, designed by a well-known artist claiming harmonious living with the nature and so on.

Austria is famous for its cakes and desserts and deservedly so. Did the standard touristy thing by having this cake at the hotel of the person who invented it 170 years ago! Ice cream shops are abound. Maybe, they have a rule that every person should be able to be within 5 mins walking distance to an ice cream, you know, something like a fundamental right! Dinner here is served much quicker :P. Managed to have the dish called cheese fondue which is basically bread that is to be dipped into melting cheese and consumed :P. Actually, next to the place where we had this, there was a 'Cafe Coffee Day' !! One of the few franchises outside India. However, it called itself 'Coffee Day' by ignoring the 'Cafe' part of the name.

Went to the opera in Vienna! I guess, there can't be a more fitting place to see an opera than the grand opera house of Vienna. It is after all the centre of all such artistic things! We paid just 4€ for our tickets while the highest priced tickets range around 300€ ! Of course, with these cheapest tickets, which are sold only 80 minutes before the show which you need to queue up for, we get no seats. So, we actually stand and watch. We went in mainly with the idea of seeing the opera house from inside, see what an opera is all about, and leave in half an hour instead of staying for the whole 3 hours of the opera. But we stayed till the end! The one we watched is called Don Giovanni, one of the most famous ones and it was awesome. Hilarious, entertaining and lots of fun. Thankfully, we had English subtitles to read as there were small, personal screens displaying the subtitles in front of every person. Now, I know what opera is all about :D. A tick mark against one of the things to do in life, I guess.

Wachau valley:

Went on a day trip to nearby area which is popular for its vineyards and fantastic views of hills along the Danube. First, visited a vineyard + wine making facility where they gave us a tour explaining the whole process and some wines to taste. After that we had a plan to take the ferry from that place along the river to a town farther away, but we missed the ferry due to this vineyard experience. We were then recommended to hire some bicycles and ride all the way to that town along the river, cross the river and ride back from the other side. Sounded great and so we set off at 5pm. We had to return the bicycles at 8pm. We went leisurely, stopping too often to take pictures of the beautiful scenery and visiting souvenir shops on the way etc. And thus, by the time we arrived at the other town and crossed the river, it was 7pm! So, we had to cover the return journey in half the time. And so, it was disciplined cycling with just one break in between. The cycle path was very convenient and extremely well marked.

We returned exactly at 8, just in time to hand back the bicycles before the place closed and before the driver's license of S was lost forever (he had to give it as a security deposit for the cycles). The cycle trip was 35 kms in total. I guess that is equivalent or more than all the cycling I might have done since coming to Hyderabad 13 years ago!

Dead exhausted, we were walking back slowly to the station to catch the train back to Vienna. On the way, we stopped at the tourist information centre which was closed, but with a free phone outside to call hotels/hostels for booking accommodation. S mistakenly dialed a place while playing with it and was not able to cancel the call. So, the people at the hotel picked it up and S just innocently asked them what time the last train back to Vienna was (It helped a lot that S is German). And they actually searched online and replied! The last train was in 10 mins and we were quite far from the station! So, we ran and ran and caught it, again just in time. And given that we were already exhausted, it wasn't an easy task at all. Just the fear of missing the train kept us going I guess.

The adventures of the day didn't end there. We reached Vienna at 10:30pm and were famished. But what places serve food at that time? Almost none! We had to scour the city centre for an open place and found one at 11:25pm. It was supposed to stop taking orders at 11:30 and close at 12. So we had one of the quickest dinners ever. Yeah, we could have gone to some McD kind of place but we wanted some nice proper food after all the hard work we had put in for that day! And after the hurried dinner, we had to somewhat rush to catch the last underground train back to the place where we were staying. Actually, we weren't in a hotel, we rented a furnished apartment for those 3 days as it was coming to be cheaper and better than a hotel.

Danube is an impressive river, quite blue and fast flowing. I enjoyed the trip a lot but it did come with a price— contrary to expectations, Budapest is not cheap at all and Vienna is expected to be expensive anyway.

regular stuff that i never bought!

2009-06-01T20:03:00.005Z

as i was tweeting about my new mp3/fm player being the first ever music player that i have bought, i realised that i haven't bought many regular accessories/instruments that are found with most people, even including me. so, as a means of procrastinating work and making the imminent deadline tougher to meet, i shall now rant about the stuff i never bought :P

£ laptop: never bought one. the one i have been using since the past 2 and 1/2 years is a tiny cute 11 inch, 1.3 kg weighing sony vaio that had been abandoned by my supervisor almost 4 yrs ago and went out of production around that time as well! ofcourse i also have a desktop at home which, again, has been brought from the lab! :P

£ fuel-powered vehicle: never owned one. infact the only vehicle, of any kind, i ever owned or bought was a bicycle 2 years ago. and that has been lying unused since 1yr 8 months :D.

£ camera: never owned one either. all the photos of my various trips have come about from others cameras or, rarely, from my mobile phone.

£ mobile phone: coming to mobile phones, i never bought one either! not that i don't have one. i have been using mobiles since almost 5 years. the first two mobiles were handed down from my brother (advantages of having a electronics-wise-spendthrift big bro ;) ) whenever he bought a new one for himself. the third and current one, which i have been using since 2.5 years was obtained for free with a service contract :P. the contract has ended a long time ago, but i never bothered to upgrade to a new phone either :-s.

£ video-games player: never had any of any kind! so, no PS or wii or xbox or gameboy or whatever for me. ever.

£ wrist watch: in fact, not just a wrist-watch, i surprisingly never bought any kind of time piece for myself. i have used quite a few wrist-watches, at least until mobiles made them almost redundant. the first one that i had as a kid was, again, handed down from my brother when he graduated to more fancier ones :P. the second one was won by me through some newspaper slogan writing contest. ironically, that had nokia branded on it! and that was more than 10 years ago! perhaps they entered the indian market by sponsoring my prize :P. the third one was won by me at an inter-school quiz contest. the fourth one, which i still use on flights (since mobiles need to be switched off) was given at RoboCup2005 in japan. no, this wasn't the prize, this was given to all participants. but i guess, direct utility wise, it has been more useful than the glassbox prize that i won :P. finally, the other wrist-watch i currently possess has been gifted by my brother (not handed down this time! :D)

£ music player: yeah, never owned or bought any kind of music player. never bought a tape recorder or a cd player or a walkman or an ipod and other appley stuff or a mp3 player or even a simple radio! until now. finally, have a tiny mp3/fm player. the ageing mobile phone, with a dying battery, will not be used for music-on-the-move anymore!!

oh yeah, next post has to be about my recent awesome trip ... has to be ... but will it?

ass u me

2009-05-29T21:08:00.003Z

this started out as random fictional sounding sentences being typed out and ended up as this short story without having to revise anything already typed out.

She looked down. Staring at the fine crack in the wood of the table was her attempt at being inconspicuous; invisible rather. Didn't work. He walked up to her and stood just beyond the other side of the table expecting her to look up. She refused until he actually called out her name. With a fake smile, she acknowledged his arrival. Despite how much she wanted, she couldn't possibly feign surprise or alarm or make an excuse to avoid his company. After all, they had fixed this appointment mutually.

He immediately sat down, initiated the inane pleasantry-exchange and also ordered coffee for both of them, without asking her what she would like. Of course, she always preferred coffee and he knew that, but still, he could have asked her. She might have changed. But obviously, he didn't expect her to have changed. It was these kind of assumptions, that he made, that irked her. What aggravated her most was that, without exception, all of his assumptions were always correct.

They immediately got down to the business at hand. The coffee arrived. Though, she really needed it, she ignored it. She had to prove him wrong, just once. There wouldn't be another opportunity and without that, there would be no closure. She did manage to suppress her temptation and the coffee went cold and lame. However, to add to her intense exasperation, he didn't even notice it! He just went on and on without taking a second to observe how she was doing there. He just assumed she was keeping up with him and was all fine. Of course, as usual , he was right and she was doing just fine. But that didn't help with her point-scoring aspiration at all. If he doesn't even notice that she hasn't drunk her coffee how will he assume that he made a wrong assumption? Nevertheless, in a strange and weird way, this callousness of his got her the closure she desired. If he couldn't even bother to notice his mistake when obvious, though fake, attempts were being made to point it out to him, it no longer mattered if he did indeed commit a mistake, did it? Since, evidently, he wouldn't have cared even if he did. With this realisation, she smiled. He looked up at precisely that moment for her approval and assumed it, because of her smile. Mistakenly.

Her smile evolved into a laugh at the tease that fate is. He was nonplussed. His facial expression remained so as his head crashed into the table widening the crack in the wood. She now proceeded to put on her act of shock and alarm by screaming frantically. He was completely silent, without a heartbeat, having made an assumption, one too many.

the post to be written

2009-05-26T18:20:00.003Z

tap tap tap
tap away to glory
zap zap zap
words appear in flury
are they sound? are they precise?
or lead to the article's demise?

my mind is roasting merrily with all the blah blah that i have written and am still writing, geesh this scientific research "literature".

the actual "incoming" post about the trip to central europe will be "forthcoming" soon, very soon ..... very very soon .....

twisted and the straightforward

2009-05-04T14:16:00.003Z

the straightforward part:

- was not able to use the free 45 min wifi available at the hyderabad 'international' airport because i did not possess an indian mobile number.
- almost all the people that use british airways flights between london and hyderabad do so only to go to the united states. out of the 300 or so people from the flight (yes it was completely packed), less than 20 turned up to collect baggage at heathrow! the rest of them obviously went on connecting flights to yamareica.
- my body seems to find it pretty normal to migrate from 43 celsius to 13 celsius; doesn't even notice it.

and now for the twisted aka abstracty part:

- unusually, faster beats have a cause that is not psychological or situational but physiological.
- silence screams. the screams bring forth the difference and painfully underline the current preference.
- helplessness is not a good state to be in. when you end up in the state, you are also too helpless to be able to change it and have to wait for external forces.
- halting the struggle might sometimes be good; releases the pressure, eliminates the expectations and invalidates the calculations.
- but without struggling, nothing can be hoped to be achieved. luck is not a factor.
- smaller views are essential for day-to-day progress but their objects are known to be insignificant in the grander view.
- what was supposed to be significant loses its esteemed status suddenly because it is revealed to be too dependent on fluctuations that might be beyond control to be dependable enough to attain significance.

in the end, they are all excuses. some useful, some not.

less than a day in advance

2009-04-11T00:58:00.002Z

the last two times i went home to hyderabad, the trip was decided just a week in advance. on the day it was decided, the tickets were bought for a flight some 7-9 days later. ofcourse, the first time, it was my choice, while the second time i had no choice.

this time, i decided today afternoon. called home. called my supervisor. booked tickets for tomorrow afternoon. checked-in immediately. and went to sleep. only to wake up at night to pack. and now to blog.

this time, there was no search involved for cheap tickets. it was quite straightforward. just choose BA which recently started a direct service to hyderabad, the price is equivalent to what it was for my trip last year at this time.

and so off i go .. or here i come?

rant can't warrant

2009-04-09T12:41:00.003Z

it is expected and normal to not have an idea what you want to do in the long term. ofcourse, this term 'long term' refers to like 10 years for some, 4 years for some others, and less than a year for people like me. but that is okay. what is disconcerting is when you can't even seem to be able to decide for next few weeks or so! well the blame can be put on the fact that among the two choices, one is more practical but not helpful, while the other might be helpful but not practical enough. so, in fact, there are no options. there are no pills. no blue pill, no red pill. what can you do in such a situation?

borrowing from the lexicon of a friend who used to blog often and chat very frequently, 'bwas' and 'bwas' are all that can be seen around sometimes. by the way, even that friend seldom blogs now and almost never chats. coming back to the point (yes, there is always a point or more to such abstracty posts :P), when no possible routes to resolution can be identified, it's not easy to believe that the end will be good and soon.

for other points, as mentioned above :P, it is nice to start watching a random movie on the television which is not even in english (but subtitled ofcourse) and find it thoughtful, entertaining and actually awesome! without passion, there is no pressure? and finally, if blogging is like open-to-everyone mail, is twitter like open-to-everyone instant messaging or chat?

The War of Ills

2009-03-29T13:17:00.004Z

based on an incomplete true story!

The Colonel (Col1): [strides up to his regiment standing at attention and screams] Attention! The day has come. The day that we have been prepared for. The day to show our worth. The day to attain glorious victory in battle and obtain salvation. Today, we shall see real action. Our services have been sought to help a beleaguered nation. So what if we are mercenaries! We still fight for the good and aim to vanquish the evil! And that is what we will do today. Be ready for transportation in 10 minutes! Dismissed!

The first regiment enters the nation to find it in huge turmoil. At their first rendezvous point with the Lieutenant General of the local military:-
Lt. General of local military (LGLM): Colonel.
Col1: General. [they shake hands]
LGLM: We appreciate your quick response. As you might have noticed on your way here, our great nation has been invaded by foreign groups of uncertain origin. It seems to have been quite a covert operation as they have spread themselves around without being noticed. Now, they are creating havoc. Our great nation is under siege. Our forces are being stretched to their limit to overcome this menace. We hope your refined expertise will bolster us and help us defeat these foreign invaders.
Col1: Of course General. You will be pleased to know that our reinforcements will be arriving once every 12 hours.
LGLM: Indeed. Here is a dossier on the current situation. Godspeed!
Col1: Thanks!

Col1 at a strategic meeting with his captains:-
Captain1: The situation is grim, Sir.
Col1: I know.
Captain1: The local armed forces are battered. The invaders have complete hold in many regions.
Col1: I know.
Captain2: However, the local military has tremendously increased its production of soldiers.
Col1: I know.
Captain3: Still, it is not enough. Also, the quality degrades with increased production.
Col1: [snaps] Perhaps, we should focus a bit more on our own strategy! The main concentration of the invaders seems to be here, in this region. [points in the map] The red zone. Our regiment should break up into small units and target these areas. The subsequent regiments will obviously devise their own strategies, depending on the situation then. Now, get to work Captains!
All Captains: [in unison] Yes Sir!

Getting some free time, Col1 leans back and ponders about this nation. It seems to have come to a stand-still. All work and productivity has ceased. But, no holidaying either. The whole nation seems to be waiting, anticipating something to happen. Expecting him and his regiment to make it happen. Though he doesn’t have to interact with the locals directly, he is aware of the responsibility and trust placed on him. He sighs wondering whether his team and the subsequent ones will be sufficient and strong enough for this war.

Captain7 briefing his unit inside their target area in the red zone:-
Captain7: Remember to distinguish between the locals and the foreigners. Try not to harm the locals! Also, focus more on destroying the regeneration capabilities of the enemy rather than killing them individually. Once they are unable to divide and multiply, they are as good as dead. Finally, remind yourself constantly that you have been created solely for this purpose. Now, disperse and attack!

Soldier1 and Soldier2 are back to back and firing in all directions. Suddenly, Soldier2 stops firing:-
Soldier2: Halt! Haaalt! [Soldier1 also stops fire]
Soldier1: What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you are injured. That is impossible.
Soldier2: Of course am not. These parasites can never harm us! But look at who you are shooting! You have killed so many civilians. And also some local soldiers! You are doing more harm than good dude!
Soldier1: Aargh, man! It is so tough to differentiate between them all. They all look almost the same to me!
Soldier2: Focus dude! And why are you not using your sensory visors? Those will help you identify the targets.
Soldier1: Oops, oh yeah! Okay, now let’s get back into the game!
[They start firing again]

A couple of days have passed. Back at the rendezvous point, Colonel of the 7th reinforcement regiment (Col7) arrives and is briefed by Col1:-
Col1: Most of the previous regiments have focussed on the red zone. However, many of the invaders have infiltrated to various parts of the nation via the extensive and intricate transport system.
Col7: Isn’t the local military also spread out all throughout the nation using this transport network?
Col1: Indeed, that is how they function. Their production facilities are spread out somewhat over the nation. Their purification facilities, energising facilities are all in different regions of the nation as well. But, it does not seem to be sufficient. The local military has become weaker by this war and barely able to hold itself together. They need our expertise even in the non-critical areas.
Col7: Okay. My regiment shall disperse itself into the transport network and try spreading as much as they can. Hope the following regiments will do the same too.
Col1: Yeah, I will suggest the same to them too.
Col7: Well then, all the best. [they shake hands and leave]

Soldier1 and Soldier2 are still firing around in the red zone. Suddenly, Soldier1’s rifle goes silent. Soldier1 nudges Soldier2, who also stops firing:-
Soldier2: What’s wrong now?
Soldier1: I ran out of ammunition. [he is white faced]
Soldier2: Uh, oh! Does that mean, this is it?
Soldier1: I guess so.
Soldier2: But how come you finished yours, while I have so much left?
Soldier1: That is due to the aggression my friend. [he smiles weakly]
Soldier2: So, I guess it is good bye then?
Soldier1: Yeah, off I will go. I will get into their transport system and flow towards salvation! The purpose of this life has been achieved! Whoa, I actually feel relieved now!
Soldier2: All right my friend, all the best with your future lives! Adios!
Soldier1: Adios!
[then he leaves by stepping into the transport network and moving with the traffic flow]

After many more days:-
Col7: I think most of the invaders have been destroyed. We are reaching the end of this war.
LGLM: Yes. We have been gathering reports from throughout the nation. The invaders are largely in disarray with just a few pockets of them showing any resistance.
Col12: My regiment has dispersed into small groups and spreading all over the nation, using your extensive transport network obviously, and trying to mop up these remaining few invaders.
LGLM: Yes, yes. All of our soldiers are also doing the same. Let me tell you that our great nation is extremely grateful to you all for your expertise and support in tackling this menace.
Col11: Lt. General, as you know, many of our soldiers still have ammunition left. So, they will stay behind in your nation until they eventually waste away. You can make use of this opportunity by organising training sessions for your military by our soldiers. If our soldiers successfully pass over their expertise to your military, then you might not need us the next time these kind invaders attack your nation.
LGLM: Indeed. That process is already under way in several regions of our great nation. It has been a great pleasure working with you all. [there is a round of salutation and everyone departs]

--- The End ---

[ fill here with music from a war movie of your choice ]

Credits:-
Regiments of the Mercenary army = Tablets of Ciprofloxacin
Local Military = WBCs aka White Blood Cells aka leukocytes
Foreign Invaders = Evil Bacteria & Parasites
'Great' Nation = body of Mythalez
The Red Zone = the stomach area of the 'nation'

Afterword:- This is based on an incomplete true story because the actual story is yet to reach its climax. And, capitals in the alphabet are found in this post because this is a piece of 'literature and was written using a text-editor.

why? are you a snail?

2009-03-14T16:51:00.003Z

so, the question is why am i blogging at such a painstaking and atrophying rate these past few months. there must be some reasons eh?

for one, life is going smoothly and pretty quickly, thereby not letting me think up of any worthless matter-less matter to add to the mess of the interconnected garbage spewing conglomeration. although, there are train-loads of uncertainties abound, some about the present, some about the immediate future, and some more about the time after that, those are being recklessly pushed out of sight and imprisoned in dark places.

ofcourse, i can't just blame myself, can i? the main culprit is twitter, which satisfies me with the illusion that i am writing something and contributing at least a part of what i should to the burgeoning mess mentioned above. it's all a ploy i say, a ___________ ploy!! (readers are encouraged to re-read the sentence by filling up the blank space with their choicest adjective).

being enlightened, i often repeat that twitter is no substitute for blogging. but i seem to exhibit my human-ness by not adhering to my own announced principle...

anyway, now let me get back to my shell, its cosy in there :P (yeah, emoticons are allowed to contain capital letters).

just because it's been a while

2009-03-04T20:14:00.002Z

yeah, almost a month has passed since the last post, but then it doesn't matter, does it?

many a ideas came by and then went away before i could catch hold of them.

i seem to be at a loss for words. abstraction doesn't seem to be effortless anymore. perhaps it is because of all the 'precise' writing that scientific papers require?

so what should i talk about? the few movies that i managed to watch or the many many more that i ought to have watched but haven't?

the book that i borrowed from the library 2 months ago but whose first page is still waiting to be discovered? or the many other books that were gifted to me over the past year which have been patiently waiting for their turn, in a line on the only filled shelf in my room?

or the busy days that seem to pass by in a hurry, but each day lingering long enough to proclaim that nothing much was achieved in it?

the excitement intermingled with the doldrums? the anticipations coupled with the ennui?

and on a unrelated note (not that most of the statements above have any clear relations within them), i realise i haven't been blogging much about my work, my phd, or my life here ....

why? perhaps because it is all good with nothing much to crib about, yet not extraordinary enough to entitle a discourse?

i guess this will do for now and for a while?

25: star 'stuck'

2009-02-09T00:22:00.002Z

on this 'only once in a lifetime occasion' of completing 1/4 of a century, i was asked to write down a 'quarterly report'. and this is what i came up with:-

oh! sparkling star on the sky found,
i spend the night with you.
with screeching silence, darkness abound
only your light breaks through.

oh! shining with no purpose any,
glowing by fusing nuclei.
not very apart, you and me
being but knowing not why...

-----
and then i felt this is good enough to be a song! and a tune appears for it almost automatically! hence-

readers' assignment: create a tune for this verse, sing it, record it, upload the file somewhere, and post the link here as a comment ;)