Friday, December 16, 2005

What am I?

I have scrutinized my character with the most powerful magnifying glass that I could find. Here are my findings. I did not like what I found. Quite frankly, the findings appall me to a degree I have seldom been appalled to.

What am I?

A Hypoctrite

This is blatant. Did you know that I was against settling abroad all throughout my life until that final year at IIT? Guess where I am right now. As abroad as I can be. And guess what? I convince myself saying "I love engineering research. They don't do that in India.". A saving grace, of course, is that I want to go back home after the PhD. But how much value can I give to the word of a confirmed hypocrite?

I don't eat meat because I don't want to be cruel to the animal. I don't want it to suffer because of me. I don't want it to die because of me. So far so good. But lots of cows have laid down their lives for me. I have leather jackets, gloves and belts. And I have the gall to wince when I go to taco bell or something and see meat all over. Shame on me.

A Pain in the a$*

I have this postively irksome tendency of launching into sudden flurries of very very mediore humor (if you can call it humor). [Observe how the hypocrite has Americanized his spelling]. I have been at the receiving end of distressful looks from members of all ages and sexes. Damsels become Damsels in distress when I inflict my company on them and start speaking of chickens, roads and the like. They await their knight in shining armor (yet another Americanism in spelling?) to come and rescue them from utter disgust and ennui. And really unfortunately for some, the tormentor is the knight.

An Idiot

Of course. A forgetful idiot. Keys have been lost at all places (and good samaritans have existed at all places), right from the Space Center in Houston to the Rec-center at Tamu. Girls have been stuttered to and blushed about. Minuses have been occasionally replaced by plusses, causing a ten billionfold errors in order of magnitude estimates. (This happened last year when I read the viscosity of a praffin as 4.0 E+6 instead of 4.0 E-6)

A pompous fool

This of course can be established by reading some of the posts in this mostly self aggrandizing blog. Vomit bags are a necessity while doing so.

A Person with an inflated ego

Have you ever heard me talk to people? To quote on of my strongest critics (Mihir Mysore), I have this tendency to "put people down". Yup. I do. Oft inadvertent. Though, I have been trying to contain this rather disgusting habit. I am (was) often rude to auto - drivers in India. I even showed some the finger just because they were "rude" to me. * I am always sure I am right and that the world is wrong. I'm not a nice person to know.

A bundle of contradictions

No. On the contrary, I am not.