It is good to be tentative...

Let us take the classical example of giving a test; you think you have done well in the exam, and you analyze your performance, and form a judgment; lets say you think you have done well, your friend asks you about your performance, and you like to be a straight-forward person, and you tell him that you have done well; some one from the class asks you the same, and you tell him that you have done well... Now when the results come, and if you have actually done well, good for you; On the other hand, imagine what happens when you have not got what you expected to get - there could be many reasons for the same: you could have made a silly calculation mistake (which you overlooked in your judgment), you could have assumed something to be correct while it was wrong, etc; Now the friend who knows you might give you the benefit of the doubt, and believe that you have made a genuine judgment error; however the other class mate could think that you are a show-off...Now imagine that such instances happen over and over again; your friend could stop believing in what you had say - your words might lose the credibility in even other matters which are not related to the exams or coursework. All this while, you always wanted to speak your thoughts out and the result - you have lost your credibility because you made judgments about things which can't be judged as white and black; So when you encounter such a situation it is always good to be tentative, and discreet in telling others about your hopes and judgments - Don't give in too much, or you might be at the risk of being judged, at the same time, don't go in for the negative strategy at telling the opposite of what you believe - that will also end in you losing your credibility!

This day, that week...

Mood: Concentrated.. just three weeks left in the semester
Looking forward to: next IPL match :)
highlight of the week: IPL has begun, and I am betting with some of my friends.. I have won 18$ so far :D :D and haven't lost any ;)
low of the week: having a sneezing allergy.. it is irritating to get up at 4 in the morning for a sneezing routine.. have been taking anti-histamines.. hoping it will become better
new thots: want to live alone in a city downtown, and thinking of trying it out in SFO
old thots: eat healthy and eat regularly
food: tried hummus and meat spread in a Mediterranean restaurant (they make a different version of the indian chole too.. :)), but i am terribly missing home food.. want to have rasam, kootu, appalam
latest addiction: Twitter

Love for the American Coffee

Things you said about someone comes back to you when you least expect it, and makes you wonder why did you ever say those things in the first place..

Here is one instance in my life:

8th-9th std: I used to constantly preach my mom and dad about how they spoil their health by taking to three cups of coffee a day, and how a day couldn't pass without the help of the caffeine.. My school correspondent keeps repeating the adverse effects of coffee every opportunity he gets, and I took his advice and re-telecasted it to my parents..

Now: I have so much work to do in grad school, and not a day passes without drinking at least one cup of coffee, and one of my colleagues pointed out how i am letting myself get addicted to the caffeine, and then it hit me, and i got the taste of my own medicine - ate my own words

But you know, its such a lovely feeling to have a cup of freshly brewed american coffee with little milk and about three spoons of sugar, and when the weather is as good as it is today, it is one of those sweet little pleasures which I am not willing to forgo just because i preached against it once..

so, be careful when you advise someone ;), if you take someones advice and just pass it on, you are more likely to chew your own hand :D

This day, that week...

Mood: Guilty (Have wasted a lot of time, and there is loads of pending work!)
Looking forward to: Getting to SFO for summers :)
music: Nalam Vala from Marupadiyum and the Mom song :D
highlight of the week: when Govind (my director) sent a very nice mail
offering me an internship position
low of the week: Acted very silly with my room mate
new thots: Wanted to buy a wireless head phone with good noise cancellation
haunted by: a strange feeling of void, and lack of clarity of what i
want to do (career wise) - this thot keeps coming back
food: I love the Sriracha Thai hot sauce.. it goes very well with
rice/noodles.. If you go a thai restaurant, look out for it!

South padre, here we come..

After a lot of drama around the much awaited trip to South Padre islands, we are finally leaving tomorrow for a good three days at the beach :)
There is a lot of hype about the place, and expectations are sky high; I will come back and retell all my experiences - so wait for it ;)

"you stink!"

Body odor is a big turn off for me - I am sure it is for all of you out there;
So I have this colleague of mine who stinks literally and I avoid a conversation whenever possible, but in those odd times, when we need to exchange pleasantries, and whats-up's I find myself in a very tough situation to hide my uncomfortable feeling and keep a straight face during the conversation. I don't know him well to tell him directly..

In a similar situation, when one of my friends had a bad breath, I used to give him mint whenever i met him, and after three times he got it, but because he was a friend, i could ridicule him and get out of the odd silence..
but I can't buy deos and give him...

I wonder if there exist a euphemistic way of letting the other person know.. Any one who can help me out here?

Singh is King, but Sachin is the best

I am having a thrilling time out here.. watching India score 392 against NZ in the third one day at Christchurch...
Man, what innings did Yuvraj play; the batting powerplay did the trick for India, and I attribute it completely to yuvi - He is the most powerful batsman I have ever seen - I have decided, whenever I get the next opportunity to watch an indian cricket, I am snatching it with my both hands just to witness yuvraj's power hits..
But, it was sachin's day today - a solid and disciplined innings, he cut real loose after his 150 thou, and I thought he would beat his 186, if not for this muscle-pull; I don't know about you, but to me cricket means Sachin, and to witness his 163 is my idea of a great saturday evening :) Kiwis are yet to start their chase, but I bet we have already sealed this series - that brings us to Dhoni - Dhoni's midas touch continues... :) it seems according to some astrologer, Dhoni could face difficult times post June this year.. But I am confident, even if India goes through a bad phase, Dhoni has it in him to pull the team back up; there was this one shot from Dhoni today, where after hitting the ball for a six, he didn't even look up to see where the ball is headed; it was like he already knew that the ball is headed over the boundary line.. that tells a lot about Dhoni's character; He is no doubt the Mr.Consistency for india at the moment (with an average of close to 50!)
These are best times for Indian cricket - a solid foundation is being set for the 2011 world cup, and I am looking forward to more such enthralling matches..
Lets all take a moment here and sing - Jai Ho! (Not the congress slogan, but the original ARRs) :)
May the victory me ours. Jai Hind!

Its that time of the semester..

My friend calls it the blood-pressure-week of any semester.. Mid-sems are around the corner.. assignment submissions due in almost all courses... I am already burning the mid-night oil.. and there is a craving for sleep.. Getting one-two extra hours of sleep is a luxury, and when indulged in, is promptly followed by a feeling of guilt :D
So friends it is that time of the semester.. next 10 days - two mid terms, two assignments, one project proposal, and a pending RA work.. If I work religiously from today, I can emerge victorious - that means no giving in to temptations, no over-sleeping, no tennis (I know thats the hard one), no long phone conversations, and most importantly no day dreaming.. I have decided to put off watching FRIENDS or any other soaps till then..

So all you readers out there, wish me luck :)

Now onto crazy wish..

Crazy wish no-8
I always wished that I knew magic, and the wish got intensified when I read Harry Potter.. Now I want to be able to know magic, and use it in the Muggle world ;) For instance, I would conjure a spell which will tell me exactly what I need to do for my assignment (if not doing the assignment all by itself :D), in addition to giving me the understanding of what I would have learnt if I had done it myself.. :D yes, I want the cake and eat it too... :) aah.. If this wish comes true, I would stop having crazy wishes, because I know I can fulfill all of them with this one ability :)

anyways, time to get back to rotations and translations in my Graphics assignment..
stay happy you folks
ciao..

wat a saturday!

Its been long since I chose to be jobless, every other day i will have worked at least for 4 hours.. today is the day :)
Had a long dreamy sleep ( had a wonderful dream :D ), got up and caught with three episodes of Fringe (Man, what a series it is turning out to be!), followed by some recaps of Greys Anatomy, and a couple of episodes of FRIENDS..
But the best part of the day was the evening when I went to play Tennis.. It was a solid three hours of play, and we played 6 sets and I won 3 :) :)
My body aches, but my mind feels so thrilled - it reminds me of my 8th std summer holidays when I will be out of the house from 7 in the morning to 8 in the evening, except for the food breaks... We used to play all possible card games/ carrom in the morning, and loads of cricket in the evening, and a few games of video games thrown in between... All of my friends in the colony were present, as in none of them went to visit their relatives.. it was one hell of a summer, I am sure most of my friends cherishes even now.. I have the same feeling as I used to have back then when I get back in the night - peaceful, elated, and satisfied for having had a great time :) :) :)
Now I am off to a treat!
God, don't envy me so much :D :D

So, what did I think about Oscars...

For the first time in my life, I watched the Oscar ceremony of the 81st Academy awards. First thing which struck me was it was very ordinary or it seemed so while watching on a television.. Being used to the over dramatization of the filmfare awards back in India, I felt Oscars didn't have even an iota of drama.. They came, they posed, they collected the awards and they left.. The Speeches were boring at best, except for the Kate Winslet and Rahman speech(note, a bias here.. & more on that to follow :D) the others were very very plain... I think we Indians need more glitter/sensationalization to feel thrilled about who is going to get what.. One good thing was there were very few advertisements, back in India I would have lost my patience half-way thru going thru the same set of ads again and again..
Now to the defining moment - when ARR's name was announced, there was instant joy in our living room, all of us thumping and whistling.. it was a fine feeling, and the immediate instinct was to turn on to indian news channels to see how they are sensationalizing it.. :) You know how it was when India won the T20 championship; I was glued to the TV for a good 8 hours, listening to the reporter say the same news again and again, as if I was part of the victory, as if I contributed to the victory, as if I was receiving the cup.. the feeling was the same yesterday.. I kept turning to rediff, cnn-ibn, ndtv to see the pictures and celebrations..
So I believe ARR has started a trend, and am hoping to see more indians take home the golden ladies (as one of my close friends suggested that we would see Mani ratnam and Kamal Haasan getting the awards in the coming years)
To the awards itself, they were largely predictable, hardly any surprises.. Kate winslet was nominated more than once before, and she was sure to win this one; so was heath ledger, which was an unmatched performance.. Sean Penn again was an expected choice.. I haven't watched many of the movies yet - I want to see The Reader, The Curious case of Benjamin Button, The Changeling(this one specially for Angelina Jolie)
And the fillers were pretty ok, especially when Beyonce shook a leg, it became more interesting :D ofcourse Hugh Jackman is a lucky baskar..
To summarize, "Ella Pugalum Iraivan oruvanukke" was the highlight of the 81st academy awards, and I hope its just a beginning of the Indian internationalization :)

Musings of an entrevue preparation...

I have an interview tomorrow, err, today.. its 4 AM, and my preparation for this interview is quite amusing.. :)
I saw the entire Oscar presentation, I watched 10 episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S and slept for a good three hours in the afternoon...
I am wondering whatever happened to the interview-fever? Back in school days, I remember waking up my mom in the middle of the night to confess that I haven't studied anything for the next day's test, and not having been able to sleep because of the fear, so I ended up putting a night out and doing well in the test as well.. So Growing up has its follies I am sure..
The root cause for all this is the reasoning that keeps popping in my head -
"What is the worst that could happen?
okay, I won't make an internship...
so what?"
Is it plain laziness for not putting in the effort to achieve what I want, or is it because I am not wanting enough? I don't know.. but, I feel strangely confident of doing well in the interview, but that confidence is purely based on gut-feeling and not preparation.. I guess I will know the results of my intuition in another 6 hours :)

UPDATE: I sucked big time in the interview, and I do feel bad about it.. so I guess its plain laziness that has made me lose this opportunity, and also this is the first interview (out of five) where I have felt that I did a poor job - in that sense there is some learning in the least...

minimal effort maximum gain

I believe (or used to believe) that a recipe of a success formula must have some aspects of the "minimal-effort maximum-gain" (MEMG) paradigm.. It is in essence a variation of a win-win formula you know, except that in a win-win paradigm two explicit parties are involved, while it is implicit in the MEMG case; While we see a lot of cases of win-win, I hardly find instances of MEMG... but if you say ideal properties never exist, win-win is also in some an ideal property right?

I was thinking about some practical examples where applying the MEMG method will work... As a student, the most immediate association comes when you do an assignment or prepare for an exam.. the MEMG formula can be applied like - Minimal time spent for preparation yielding maximum marks; (let us assume that "time" here refers to "dedicated time", as in you can't account the time where you work and watch a movie in parallel :D)
Now comes the contradicting paradigm - "The more time you spend the more you learn" - of course this doesn't imply the more time you spend the more you score, because there is a given upper bound for your score. (Clearly life is full of such situations, and each person lives a different life based on which point he strikes a balance)

Then I took to another example - all the ready-to-eat foods, and even the simplest of the recipes.. If they are easy to make, they either compromise on the nutrients or taste, again a need for a trade-off.. I am looking for an example with "no strings attached"

Although I have given just two examples, I am tending to believe the MEMG paradigm belongs to the matrix world ;) (I must mention here that my math-logic professor will give me a clear zero for my reasoning)

So to prove that MEMG is not an ideal property, can we point out a single instance in life, where MEMG applies? If not, is it because humans are natured to vary the levels of contentment in life, which is one of the mayas of leading a mortal life? Could it be possible that the key to finding an answer to this question could attain us moksha? :P ;) Or am I not seeing something which is right in front my eyes?

Tell me what you think!

PS: I found that there is no word called 'natured' in English dictionary, but i believe there should be one, it seems like a natural way to verbify the phrase 'by nature'; but I agree 'verbify' is too much to ask :D :D

crazy wish no.7

I want to be part of a NASA mission and experience anti-gravity!!!

crazy wish no.6

To experience death and come back and tell the whole world about what happens when people die!

:)

Dreams...

Dream is not what you see while you sleep, it is what that doesn't allow you to sleep :)
nice one naa? I have not had such dreams in a while.. but i day dream a lot!