Ideal Life

Slog on the weekdays, on my own firm, and win some amazing projects, however still managing to play soccer everyday.
Friday night: A break from work or any taxing sports. Just hang out with my friends with beer, or occasional liquor in a nice bar, probably playing pool.
Saturday: I wish I had a band and could practice, but in any case do some office work followed by some relaxed flute practice with couple of other music enthusiasts and ofcourse play soccer.
Sunday: Go to a temple/classical music concert with family in the morning followed by preparing for work on monday, unless there are any other plans with family (so pretty much a family day).

I realize that the only thing going right for me is the friday evening schedule. Therefore as an optimist, I believe I am atleast tending towards such a life.

HAPPY DIWALI TO ALL the DESI READERS:)) I am missing my family extremely and really wish that I get to be with them atleast in near future during all such occasions.

Post-Midnight blues

Is it just me and my roommates or does it happen with everyone that any discussion about life starting after 12:00am lasts for the whole night, with none of us feeling any bit sleepy at all? Quite surprising how philosophical everyone gets in their thinking, and also quite frank about their lives. Be it career talk, or the standard gossips, things are analyzed from a completely honest and different perspective at such times. Damn!!! one such nights yesterday, always feels quite sucky the next morning when you ponder over retrospectively.

Junket -- That's the word I am looking for

A few hours ago
I ordered two tacos "to go"
But since it was free
I wanted to eat three,
that put me thinking
about the word for such hoodwinking.
It was something in barrons or kaplan easy to forget
for ppl who take a trip on someone else's budget.
Junket it was
and yeah that was the cause,
why I tried a medeterranian cuisine
or got picked up in a limousine.
It feels great when all you can spend is paid,
except for expenses of getting laid...
when you dont have to think about money
and get out of your cave of parsimony.
And now I guess people get to know
why I publish every time I want to get away from the snow.

Decision making

Many a times you are in a soup while asked to make some critical decisions. One such situation of dilemma which I think every graduate student gets into is about waking up early in the morning.
Such an analysis if performed independant of constraining factors like, deadlines, meeting with advisor etc... can really turn out to be an interesting one. Especially in cases like when you have to make the decision to get out of the bed to attend a boring class or take up the challenge of dragging your a@@ out of your comforter to start your day for the good of humanity (that is if your research is any good at all :-p). Such catch22 situations are the ones that test your determination in life and probably your control over your senses. It probably also reflects the degree of regularity in your life. Well, all that said, I tend to think of all the possible reasons under my comforter to miss even the most important of the meetings of mine, and have so far managed to get away with those. The only time I had real trouble since the begining of my graduate life was over my internship at Intel, where I had to wake up at 8:00 amd every day and that's probably the reason why I love grad school much more than work life. Hope each one of us grad students suffer with such an syndromme of irregular life and are enjoying it at its best. I know many of my CSE freinds who are the classic examples of the so called irregularity :))

How I felt when it rained !!

As a kid in Delhi, rainy days used to wonderful. A group of us tiny toddlers use to hang out and take shower in the rain, irrespective of sexes :-p, and wet, we arrived aback into our houses, to hear the pleasent scoldings from mommy. My school till grade 5 was not the best ones... and we used to infact get off some days due to excesssive rain water stagnation in school and that is when we, as kids, used to thank lord Indra for his divine powers of shutting down schools.

But then slowly, it became PITA, when I changed schools, and I had to run for the bus on a rainy day. Sloshy roads conveniently helped me getting myself extremely dirty before getting to school, and I used to be quite pissed about that. However during, grade 11th and 12th, nothing really mattered to me much, since, all I really cared about was my scores at the JEE test series, I doubt if it rained, even if it did, I do not really remember.

Rainy days in IITM used to be good fun. We had this wonderful field behind our hostel, Sangam , which transformed into a pool, all set and inviting us for some cool water sports. Well, us innovative IITians, took up that enticing challenge, and invented this game called, Water Rugby . Inspite of the recurring casualities each time we played the sport, we used to get a turn out for the game sufficient enuf to form three teams of 11 each for that sport. So, those days were not really very bad.

Well, now cutting it right here, I come to the the present day scenario, when I despise rain as terribly as never before. First, it creates an extremely dull mood, as if calling me to sleep all the time. Second, keeps me away from one other religion of mine than hinduism, namely, SOCCER. Although no to take at all away from it, it does wash my car, though creates a higher probability of an accident or skid.

As, I look over the few paragraphs above, I find my likes and dislikes for the rain so completely cyclic. That gives me a ray of hope that I would love it sometime, hopefully in near future, walking and getting drenched in rain with somone besides me who absolutely loves doing so :-p. Signing off on a dull rainy day from Pennsylvania :(.........

Are the prophecies coming true ??

Was I not reading news regularly or is it just offlate that we are experienceing tons of hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural calamities ? Often wonder if all the prophecies from the bible, the Gita and from couple of other prediction pundits, about the world destruction are coming true!!!
I am just hoping that mother nature is working on a wonderful strategy of wiping off the scum on this earth, like the terrorists in kashmir, the bush constituencies, god knows who next.
BEWARE TOTTI!!! dont pain people with AOL!!!

But, in any case its quite alarming to witness an increased number of natural calamities in recent times, well the humans indeed are misusing planet's resources miserably. I am glad that point5 's paper bachao andolan is going good and really hope that each of us makes such small changes in their lives to do some good to the planet :)

Intellect of Society

I have often wondered and discussed with balls on this issue, " Do movies really reflect the intellectual level of the society ? ". The thought was kindled, when I watched this amazing movie called Gajini , which had some concepts borrowed from one of my all time favorite movies, Memento. As the movie ended and I managed to get over with admiring the extremely wonderful effort of the movie director, I was pondering over the same question once again while driving to my department. I have always been amazed by classics like, the Mememnto, Usual suspects.... and some movies as complicated as Mulholand Drive (atleast I bulbed completely over the movie!!), which makes me really think that, such movies, if appreciated by people, shows a clear fact that the society is much more intellectually sound. It simply looks impossible to even think about the future of Indian cinema ever tending towards such classy hollywood efforts, and above that, getting the right accolades from the society. Feels really sad if the type of movies appreciated by people are really the typical mass masala movies, which actually looks quite distressing when looked upon with the correlation between the movies and the intellectual level of the society. Really hope that some of the really talented directors of Indian cinema get the people out of this quagmire all the contemorary movies are getting them into. Well I believe the movie makers should really not think about what people want out of the movies, but convey what they really want the people to think. Before I sogn off!!!

WE ARE!!!!!..... PENN STATE.. really excited about tommorrow's game.. hope we win it