Tackled the quals… face-off with life!

Finally I have managed to tackle the quals with confidence I cannot imagine in myself! Now, hopefully the record matches the rhetoric and I get to clear it. I have to start packing to the India trip but as lazy as usual and keep postponing it. What’s weird is that I am not in panic mode right now regarding the biggest step in my life: my wedding. It’s like I am on cruise control and perfectly Zen with it. All will be revealed in another few more days…

Yay! I am now a Humanist!

I have been toying with the idea of joining the American Humanist Association for quite some time but I was hesitant to meet new people and pretty leading a monastic life. So I started reading up on Humanism and finally built up the courage to joining AHA. There is a local chapter (interestingly, the meetings are held in a church but I spoke to the convener and he told me that it was done in a sense of irony) and I will be meeting them every second Wednesday. Basically it is to discuss about progression of human values, but my reasons for finally joining an association is purely selfish: I longed for a company having intelligent discussions. I have never met anybody who has been a freethinker after Honey, Donut, and Fatboy left so life was pretty much miserable. Something which influenced me a lot too was this book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion and his documentary “The Root of all Evil?” So I encourage whoever might be reading this to take a look at American Humanist Association, where there are no penalties for believing in Reason.

So it goes…

It has been a depressing week overall. Not counting the work I have done (or the lack of it). Then, as Jon Stewart put it right, the world got a lot greyer and little less interesting. I guess I must be in the wrong generation or something. Sometimes reality just sucks. How much ever you are a realist (or a pessimist as my significant other would put it) you would refuse to believe death would not come to all. Especially to someone like Kurt Vonnegut.

In the aftermath of the V-Tech shootings,  I was wondering about the purpose of existence (when I should be working). It struck me that the most significant feeling I had was apathy. I guess I got it before anyone else gets it after a year or so except the families of the victims for whom the world would seem a lot less interesting to live in anymore.  So it goes…

One thing which is resonant of the book, Slaughterhouse-Five which I can connect with the shootings: The Tralfamadorians who live in four dimension, the fourth one being time, which gives them the ability to travel in their past or future of their lives. As Vonnegut says, “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes…’“

So that’s the word.

PS: The last time I posted was in December 2006. I am such a slacker

Philosophical Awakening

The last few days I was reveling in the company of a few of my labmates and one thing was clear: that my tolerance level for stupidity has hit the bottom. My ability to look at things in a simple perspective has completely vanished. Some nights ago, I was discussing about world politics in large with an American perspective (it was midnight and we had nothing to do) and one of them remarked that former American President Ronald Reagan was the best president this country ever had as he bought down an “evil empire” namely the Soviet Union. I was perplexed at most of the comments he was making that Reagan had the balls to call a spade, a spade. I questioned his view with a simple question which he could not answer: “Isn’t that actually over-simplifying certain issues and ignoring a lot more?” to which he replied whatever the means the end justifies it. Then the topic shifted to how the rigid caste system had brought downfall to India as such, to which I replied “The essence of class struggle is the primary shift in Socialism. Infact the modern democracy is a socialist idea being equal representation”. He was stumped for a second and then replied that “Communism is an evil totalitarian regime which needed to be wiped and unfortunately America today was in the grips of communist conspiracy”. I felt that this absurdity did not warrant a reply. I mean, look at Enron, Worldcom and a billion other failed initiatives. Does that in any way sound like Commie to you?

Anyway, the point being that it is not the question of who is superior. “Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there would be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there’s always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don’t have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Socialist one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in happiness, poor in happiness. Rich in love, poor in love. – Enemy at the gates (cited due to  “qui tacet’s” concern)”. In the grand scheme of things, even a utopic world is bound to fail due to every human being’s greed and innate selfishness. Like how any average American would think that he would be recognized anywhere in this world because he is American. What happened to the values? What happened to decency? And what happened to accept, acknowledge and respect another person with a different belief?

So I despair….

What goes?

Here I am sitting with dread,
On the keyboard my fingers spread,
Waiting for my work to be done,
Boredom seeping through to bone.

I have nothing to write yet everything to say. When you start thinking back, why do you stop going forward? Is it really possible for someone to forget the past and move on? I find it difficult yet I have moved on. What exactly do I want in life? A house, a car and a bank balance? I crave for something yet I do not know what it is. I guess this is what loneliness is all about. So how does anyone find a way to go around this? I guess there is not a way at all.

An Inconvenient Truth

As mentioned in my previous post, I watched a docu by former VP Al Gore, “An Inconvenient Truth” about global warming. It is interesting to see how in the last 20 years we have done damage not even possible in 10,000 years of human civilization. I may not have liked Al Gore a lot, but I appreciate his efforts to push the USA to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. I mean states like Alabama do not even have emission check policies. It’s time that a wider awareness is created among people as their future depends on it.

Finally!

I finally got myself t0 posting something! Man, has it been so long? So much to catch up and so little time. I watched an interesting documentary today “An Inconvenient Truth”. But I gotta hit the sack tonite so will update tomm.

Hasse Verpacken! Aber keine Wahl. (Hate Packing! But no choice.)

I did not realize that I had got so much stuff from Arlington which needs to be taken back. I have to credit Harini and mom who did the packing both ways. Most of the time I was like a retard not knowing what to take and what not to take. Anyways, how the hell could you make explosives from liquids and hide it in like shaving cream? Apparently you can! I mean what is the world coming to? I think this whole Freedom of Information in the Web has taken a new twist. I remember the case where a 13 year old geek once threatened to blow up a city in the US from obtaining blueprints of a thermonuclear device on the Web. I respect the right to free speech but there has been no checks and balances in the free world. I would like to debate with someone on this.There is so much information on the Web that can be used for insane purposes. Read Lexfoam which has the consistency of shaving cream. There has been no solution for asymmetric warfare, and I don’t know whether there will be any. It is a deplorable fact that in the name of God, civilians are being targetted. And these “terrorists” are hiding behind their civilian lives so it makes it difficult to identify them. Hmph!

Speakin’ of terrorists, I better get back to packing otherwise my mom would not hesitate to whup my ass. I think the next post would be about my exciting flight journey (hopefully not!) to Arlington.

Packin’ up

Roughly 5 days for departure back to Arlington and the rat race. The stay till now has been idyllic bordering on lazy. 4 months has whizzed by. My hon told me it would be more difficult to leave home this time and she is true. I thought I was detached and after some time came to a conclusion that Arlington was home, but now I know that there can be no other home than Chennai. And I have gotten so used here that now I have to change my lifestyle again. Most of all I am gonna miss my mom and dad, Pradeep and Lassie (his Lab and my first girlfriend), Nitin and Rajesh. Today I was looking at old pictures and it was nostalgic. Now it is depressing though…

Anyways, I am trying to obtain “The Catcher in the Rye” – JD Salinger. Unfortunately, that’s one classic that I never got around to reading. Also, trying to get “Motorcycle Diaries”. I mean, being an ardent follower of Che, not having the DVD is one serious shortcoming. I have to upload the photos I took but am too sleepy now. I have loads of work to do tomorrow.

Tschuss for now

Woah, long time since I blogged…

Hmmm, the last few days has been really interesting. I don’t think I have ever shopped this much in my life. I have been going up and down shops looking for bargains etc. My mom can tackle any hard nosed salesman with ease. I mean her bargaining skills are way over the top. I just stood there with my jaw dropped open and looking like class 3 idiot.

It has been almost three weeks since I wrote something. But in between I had to go to Hyderabad to get my dad’s bi-monthly checkup on DBS. The doc adjusted the pacemaker and tweaked around. We got to stay with my aunt’s former student, Dr. Senthil. He is a Cancer specialist, oncologist for your geeks, in Nizam’s Institute. He has a wonderful family, his wife Dr. Sirisha an ophthalmologist and his nice kid Siddharth. The stay, though a memorable one, lasted only a day and half.

I met Venkat’s mom and dad. It looks like Venkat is going to be uncle soon.

I  will be taking some photographs of Chennai and will be posting it in this space.

Till then

Tschuss