Keys and how to lose them

I went through a harrowing experience today, a description of which, though redundant, will probably make interesting reading. So, read on.

I'm an all or nothing guy since I keep all my keys in the same bunch. (It's much easier to take care of). That makes sense, provided, of course, that the keys are not lost. If you lose the bunch, then all the advantages disappear. You're locked out of your apartment, you mail box, your safe and your office.

I'll start at the beginning, usually a decent place to start. This approach causes minimum obfuscation.

Noticing a certain blobbiness and rotundity in my general aspect, I decided to shed a few kilos in the recreation center. So, I went in attired in those exercise trousers which have shallow pockets that, when loaded with keys, act like springs. So, when I was making a fool of myself by sweating on the exercise machines (for no-one plays any game with me yet), the spring sprung to life, so to speak, sending the key tumbling Nor' Nor' West, presumably. I continued the toil blisfully unaware of this bereavement.

After switching to another type of machine (I like to delude myself into thinking that I am exercising all the parts of my body), suddenly, a feeling dawned on me. There was no jingling feeling in my pocket. (My mp3 player made sure that I was deaf to the outside world for all practical purposes, so the lack of a jingling sound would not be expected to register.) It was a feeling of icy emptiness. No keys.

I haunted the library a few minutes before this expedition to the rec-center. I reckoned the keys could have been dropped in the library. But the weather gods decided to do exacerbate the situation. They sent a cold front accompanied by a squall line over me. Rain was raining. A few more agonizing mintues were spent (eating cookies that tasted like, well, radish) in the rec-center. Finally, a trip was made back to the library. A thorough search was conduted within the library. No keys. And the female at the counter said "Sorry. No one turned in any key". She did not sound as if she was really sorry.

A disappointed me found my way back home. I rode my cycle back slowly. I stopped by anything shiny on the way, thinking it was my key. No luck. No key. I was tense. Worried. I had one of those headaches. I had had lofty plans of completing homework. That wasn't going to happen.

Luckily, my roomie was at home, so I did not have to sleep outside the house, I reckoned. I found my way in, had some dinner and turned on my laptop (worried about that too, since I had walked in the rain with the laptop on by mack).

Then, as an afterthought, I decided to call up the rec- center and see if they had my keys.

They did. Some good samaritan probably turned them in. A relieved self will collect the keys from them tomorrow.

Some measures have to be taken to make sure the keys don't lose themselves again. Should I swallow them and vomit them whenever required? Better suggestions are sought.

Deforestation and its discontents

A rather disturbing trend has started to emerge of late. Professors who teach a course repetitively become so proficient in that subject that they believe that text books would just flow out of them. So, they spend a lot of time (putting research on the back-burner) on their masterpiece. After years of toil they come up with a book, and spring it on their unsuspecting students in class.

Now, here comes the sad part. They work their heart out for their book, they spend a lot of midnight oil and portable hard disks on it. They treat their manuscript like their child. And they refer to it extensively in class. As a matter of fact, once they’ve written the book, they just stop preparing for class and just copy what the book contains onto the board. If you challenge them, they are very likely to say, “Don’t talk to me like that! I wrote the book on Mechanics!”

The sad part with professors who write the books is that

1. Their exams become very predictable. Problems very similar to those on the last few pages of the book have this uncanny tendency of ending up on the exam question paper. This means that the average student (the unromantic meticulous grade-craving low life that we all associate the term student with) follows the path of least effort: works out only the problems behind the textbook.

2. In my opinion, course work is all about referring the different textbooks and comparing ideas. But when the teacher imposes his (or her) book on the student, the necessity to research just dies.

3. Often the books would not have been published. Which means, the students become guinea pigs. The professor just says “Refer to Section 12.3”. And the student has to labour through the section (provided as “lecture notes”) in a .pdf format. Needless to say, it’s filled with typos. And when there’s typos in differential equations, confusion furthers its foray into the life of the unfortunate student.

At IIT, I can cite a couple of potentially decent courses ruined by textbooks. We did a course on Measurements. The professor used to parrot his book in class. The book, though a very decent treatise, assumed biblical status for the course. Which meant, of course, that it was the be all and end all of everything the course had to do with. And as a result, the exams became one of those recital sessions that we tend to associate Hollywood with. Self, taking a principled (a fancy word for lazy?) stand secured self’s only non-drawing D in this course.

And then there’s Fluid Mechanics. Back at IIT, the person in charge of the course wrote a book.

Wait.

Book?

At any rate, it had pages and some printed characters, which made sense to some optimists. Needless to say the course was ruined – the book was mediocre, the class was worse. And the professor would keep harping about work he did half a century ago. A pity, for Fluid Mechanics, when taught appropriately is a spiritual experience.

I have taken a few years to recover from the ill-effects of that Fluid Mechanics course. I think I am fine now. The FM course here at A&M is fantastic, though the professor in charge of this course has also written a book, proving beyond reasonable doubt that there are exceptions to every rule.

Why deforestation? I must clarify here. The title has been inspired by one Mr. Kartik Srivatsa, who is currently confusing his clients as a Business Analyst with McKinsey&Co in India. He used to use the term “deforestation” as a euphemism for “publishing”. (He viewed the tendency to publish with cynicsm). Apparently, the paper you publish on comes from some rain forest, which has been deforested.

A proud day for India

Let's celebrate.

This is one of the happiest days for India as a nation.

The US had to remove Saddam Hussein from power by force. Wars had to be fought to get rid of Hitler and Mussolini. Kim Jong it just won't budge. The Mughals and other kings raped the common man for centuries on end. Repressive regimes usually plant themselves and refuse to go. But things are different in India now.

We got rid of Indira Gandhi when she was throwing her weight around. And now we get rid of Laloo Yadhav. Laloo Yadhav sat on one of the most resource rich, potentially prosperous, fertile lands on earth, and personally reduced it to a rubble. Bihar is now akin to sub-Saharan Africa despite the fact that the Ganga flows through it. Corruption runs rampant. Casteism is taken for granted. If there is hell on earth, Bihar is it. Or, was it! The people have spoken. The tyrant is OUT.

We're not what Russia was. We won't kill the Laloo clan. Their skeletons won't be found in a cave a century later. We will let them exist their hedonistic existences. We just won't let them run the country again. We're a mature democracy. We are tyrant proof. Thus proven.

We still have to contend with him in the Railway ministry. But we figure, we can altogether avoid him by flying more often. Did you ever wonder why the aviation industry was doing so well all of a sudden? Because of Praful Patel's panache? Or because of that aura of disgust that anything to do with Laloo carries with it?

Strange Weather

For an Indian who is used to sweltering heat, deluges in the Rainy season and relatively balmy winters, the climate of the USA has come as a shock. It's not the the cold that surprises me. It's not the heat in summer either. It's not the occasional heavy rain. That was expected.

But what surprises me is the severe weather here. The weekly tornadoes, the monthly hurricanes, the lightning strikes, the flooding, the blizzard type conditions up north and the wind. All these conditions are alien to me. India by comparison has it easy - save a few really heavy downpours and a extremely hot summers, we really don't experience too much harsh weather in India. Not too many tornadoes, no extreme wind, relatively less hurricanes. Floods, though common are relatively rare in comparison with the US.

But what I find really impressive is the weather information system here. The weather channel does an excellent job of forecasting; its forecast of a cold front hitting College Station was off just by 15 minutes! And the tornado and lightning warning systems are excellent. Hurricanes are forecast with accuracy by experts. For instance, the Paths of Hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Wilma were estimated with accuracy. Houston was advised to evacuate in time for Rita: and the hurricane came really close.

Thunderstorms are tracked on the TV. People know about storms and tornadoes very well here. US does have severe weather, and as a result, Americans are probably the best prepared in the world to tackle it.

Another questions pops up. Does US really have more severe weather than India? Or is it because of lack of proper monitoring systems in India? (For proof of this, visit www.weather.gov and www.imd.gov.in and compare.). We, after all, back in India do keep losing fishermen to the sea and cities keep flooding. Cyclones come once in a few years. And Bengal gets tornadoes. Extreme heat is common.

But I don't think the Indian market, as of now, is sophisticated enough to justify launching a weather channel type enterprise in India. Firstly, if it's the monsoon, it'll probably rain. If not, it'll probably be hot. The only forecast needed is the intensity of the monsoon and the advent of the monsoon. These are somewhat long term predicitions, and I am sure that they are fraught with more error than immemdiate forecasts such as those made by the weather channel.

So, a caterpillar might be as accuate as any weatherman when it comes to making a long-tem perdiction such as how cold the winter will be, or how many hurricanes are expected next hurricane season. After all, it would know the best, for caterpillars are baby butterflies. And almost everyone knows of the proclivity of the average butterfly towards producing hurricanes. That's what I love about weather. Chaos. Long live, O' non-linearity in Navier-Stokes! You makes life worth living.

They've read my blog in Japan

Remember my post about a cool blanket that you can sleep under after you put it in the fridge during the day? (You can find that post here). They apparenlty loved it in the land of the rising Sun. They've extrapolated this ingeneous idea. Actually, they've taken the mirror image of this idea, if I may.

The Japanese government is urging women to consider wearing a thermal bra; an undergarment that should be placed in the microwave instead of the fridge that I wanted to stuff my blanket into. Apparently the motivation is as eco-friendly as I had originally envisaged: saving energy. The bra uses a 'gel', which one can interpret as a layman term for a phase change material.

It feels nice to see one's idea put to use. But alas, I put the idea up on a blog, which makes it as public domain as, say, a - well, I can't think of anything offhand, everything being so copyrighted and all, but you get the gist! I should have patented it and made my millions of dollars by selling it to the Japanese.

[The author is under the delusion that he has something do to with the aforementioned under-garment. Let us humour the poor guy. He's got nothing much else going on for him, anyway.]

What I like about America

I have been quite guilty of badmouthing my host nation until now. I understand that it is only a matter of time before some so called "redneck" spots my blog and tries to get me deported. So I'd better come clean. There are some things I like about the USA, and I shall proceed to enumerate them.

The Colbert Report:

Stephen Colbert is a self proclaimed National Treasure in here. And you can't get him on TV legally in India. Watching bootlegged versions is possible, but one can enjoy it only with some background in current affairs. To really understand the depth of this man's analysis, one needs to see the news first.

How Cheap Everything Is:

Compared to India, everything is cheap in these supermarkets. Especially food and consumer durables. Anything that does not involve labour, I guess. A large bottle of Garnier Fructis is only $3 here! It used to be 100 rupees in India. And even gas (petrol, back in India) is way cheaper here. Though the Average American will have a tough time believing it.

Wireless Phone Deals

India might have the cheapest wireless in the world, but India does not have free calls after 9 at night. And it does not have free calls from Mobile to Mobile.

Carpeting on Floor and Room without Dust

Since the house is air conditioned, there's not too much of a chance of dust accumulating. The wooden shelves in my room have only a 2mm cover of dust now. In India, that wold have been 6mm. (But there would be a servant maid to clean it).

No Servants

Labour being so prohibitively expensive, you might as well pay yourself to clean your house. Or not do it at all. Guess what I chose? There will be no irksome servant maid knocking at the door early morning to do the dishes.

Privacy, Safety

Save a rougly weekly racism incident in this college town of 60,000 there are very few safety issues here. Houses do not have grills on windows. The only things that get stolen on a daily basis are the cycles.

Really speaking, one of the most impressive things I find about America is respect. Everyone commands respect here. You are taken seriously if you have something important to say. You are given all the opportunities that you might ever need to succeed in reseach, from massive libraries to wireless internet on the campus.

I hope Indians too start respecting each other in India in the near future. That's one thing we should learn from these Americans. Though, of course, it might be a socio-economic problem, which can only be adressed when the standard of living of Indians improves in India. Well, basically, I hope that happens soon.

American Pragmatism?

Americans are obsessed with how "pragmatic" they are. How easy everything is. And how difficult and complicated every other place in the world is.

But in my opinion, there are certain things in America that seem to have been designed by the most confused minds on earth.

People have ten fingers; ten toes. So, they like the decimal system. They usually rate things on a scale of 10. Alas, not all people. Americans are still obsessed with amazingly arbitrary units. Twelve inches make a foot. The person who dreamed that up probably had twelve fingers. And then, there's a yard. The only entities that they seem to rate on a scale of ten is their women.

While we're talking about units, certainly, the farenheit scale comes to mind. Water freezes at 32F. Boils at 212F. Why? It seems like Farenheit just selected a scale while blindfolded. And America follows it like rats follow the pied piper. People who use to Celcius scale are looked at the way worms are looked at. (i.e. frowned upon)

We just won't talk of ounces, fluid ounces, cups, british thermal units. But let's talk about horse power. Did the person who came up with this term think that all horses are identical? I mean, sure, food in all Subways and McDonaldses taste identical everywhere ..... standardization .... but do all horses have the same power? Come on!

Now. Foot ball. I really haven't seen anyone kick a ball in that game till now. All they do is bash each other up silly. Should it not be called wrestling instead? But no, wrestling in America is all about skimpily clad women introducing ghastly individuals who fake pain and insult each other (as well as the spectator's intellegence) on the stage. It's more of a soap opera than "wrestling".

And what about calculating CGPA on a scale of 4? Why 4? Why now pi or e, while we're at it, making things as complex as possible? Wonder why America is still so much at the "cutting edge" of technology. Wonder why the rest of the world lags behing so much. I mean, with so much inherent obfuscation here, shouldn't there be lots of accidents? But yet, this is the only nation that sends rockets to Mars.

The Americans think they are "pragmatic" when they are actually more confused than, say, the Indians or the Russians or the Chinese or the Japanese.

We don't care about the Britishers any way. They are more or less another state in the USA, as are the Canadians. The French are busy burning their country up, and the Germans are busy doing something absolutely trivial the roundabout way with utter precision and elegance. And there's almost no Australians around in this world.

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This post is not to be interpreted as racism. It's just humour. I'm just trying to vent my frustration, having looked at inches, feet and BTUs while grading the Thermodynamics course here at A&M. I respect Americans, Germans and Britishers. I haven't seen any Australian yet. I'm not sure they exist. So, I'll probably respect them once I confirm their existence. I think there's just Kangaroos down there.
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Awaiting a Perfectly Normal Beast

This post isn't going to make sense to many. It requires you to have read Douglas Adams' fifth hitch-hiker's guide story, Mostly Harmless. The story is relatively rare, but nonetheless a gem. Read it, you won't regret it. For the less fortunate, I have tried to summarize the pertinent parts of the plot.

I feel like Arthur Philip Dent did when he was stuck on a deserted planet (whose name escapes me for the time being) making sandwitches for a nomadic tribe - after having saved the universe. He became quite an expert at making the sandwitches. Nothing to feel proud about, of course. Obvioulsy, he was feeling depressed and under-utilized. And he got out of there only by riding the annual stampede of the perfectly normal beast.

Life here seems to be like in a hole. I have no social life worth the mention. Work is not challenging at all. And I am getting fat, eating and watching TV. Walks are rare. Recreation is rarer. Friends are scarce. Life seems to be running low on excitement. And for a person like me, that is the worst it can get. At 23, wasting away in this hell-hole. No car. No mobility. And that snobbery that being in IIT inculcated in me. The only meaningful conversations I have now-a-days are with Radha when she calls and we do not fight!

A silver lining, perhaps like a herd of the perfectly normal beat approaching, is the fact that Research seems to be around the corner. Once I get started on research, which I anticipate I shall in the next month or so, ennui shall be, hopefully, replaced by a hectic schedule.

So, I await the herd of the perfectly normal beast. Or the armadillo, considering that I'm in Texas. Riding an armadillo will probably not be as unattractive a proposition as riding a bull or a rhino. That's how I pictured the perfectly normal beast to be im the magical moments that I was reading the book.

Math Miseries

The most agonizing moments of my life have been spent pondering over frivolous mathematical nuances. I have this tendency of complexifying the simplest of mathematical axioms - and this leads to extremely long hours on a table trying to comprehend math.

What my friends at IIT could solve in a five minute sitting, it takes me days to do. This always scares me a lot. Why am I so incompetent when it comes to algebra? It's not just algebra. If I am bad at Algebra, then I am a disaster at number crunching. If an exam contains a problem that requires the use of a calculator, then my heart literally sinks. I might as well forget about the points. In my long history of exams, I would not have got more than 5% of the answers right. Uncannily, my method is almost always correct. I am thankful that almost all the exams that I have written have had partial grading. If they had no partial grading, I would probably be repeating almost all the courses at IIT.

I would surely have lost a few grades due to this rather irksome habit of mine. This has impacted my life more than anything. Courses in which I was performing real well have ended up as Bs and Cs because of this pathetic tendency of mine.

But this is not my only anti-academic tendency. There's this extremely steep learning curve. I am one of those students who likes to "guess" what the teacher is about to teach in class by intuition. As long as I am able to do that, I do really well in the class. But if that fails, then I might as well as forget about it. If I don't understand something in class, then that information is never going to enter my head.

This used to be a bother early at IIT, where half the information used to dissipate. I remember miserable hours staring at Elecrtromagnetics in my first year at IIT. Just because the teacher was no good, I still am very mediocre in the subject. And that certainly is not due to lack of trying. I failed to get a fundamental philosophical understanding of the subject. And when I don't get a feel of the subject, I just don't do well.

I am far from the perfect student. As a matter of fact, I am perfectly foul. Actually, that's exactly how I feel when I am not getting something right. When I make mistakes in these things, my blood starts to boil by default. I usually try to avoid people when I am in this mood. But that does not always work out.

Radha called up today when I was in one of my worst ever personal crises. I was unable to do something absolutely trivial. Suffice it to say that the conversation did not go too well. Looks like I will have to pay for my incompetence in more ways than one tomorrow morning. But what am I to do? I would like to paraphrase one of my fellow idiots: "Stupid is as stupid does".

[The author is a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M.]

Idiots Run the Net

I'm no programming expert, but common sense tells me that spammers are not a particularly intellegent lot. The reasoning being, that if they were, then they would be working on String theory or something. So, it defies all logic to do what Yahoo mail has been doing of late.

After you labour over a message and click send, you cannot rest easy. You don't get that oh-so-pleasing "your message is sent" page anymore. You get something which looks a lot like a nag-screen. It shows you a distorted jpeg (or gif?) of a word and then asks you to enter it. Quite a good idea to keep spammers out, it reckons.

I'm not disputing that this will keep spammers out. It surely will. But I am not so sure about the distortion. When the words are in an image format (jpg), the spammer will have to employ OCR or other edge detection techniques in order to enter the word automatically. If he has the time, resources and in the intellegence to conjure up a code to do that online, then his abilities could be better used in helping realize Einsiten's dream of unifying relativity and quantum mechanics.

So, for yahoo to use distorted alpabets in the jpeg, according to me is inexplicably stupid. Or we wonder, is Yahoo! in cahoots with eye doctors? I had to strain my eyes to no end in reading the "distorted" alphabets. Next time onwards, Yahoo will probably ask us to evaluate an integral analytically and enter the solution before it lets us send mail. Talk about pains in the rear.

Negative Absolute Pressure

Fantastically improbable as the name does sound, this is not the realm of science fiction. It does exist. I have it from a usually unimpeachable source. It must be true. And true in a world where negative absolute temperatures don't need to be true.

Let me elaborate. Just a few blogs ago I was discussing the mind-boggling simple mindedness of some of the classes here. So, after deriving the Navier Stokes, we decide to work on hydrostatics. If learning the Navier Stokes were like learning the alphabet, then hydrostatics is like the parents having sex to have the baby. I just cannot emphasize how preliminary this is.

I won't take any names now. I don't want to single out anyone here - that would be politically incorrect. But I will have to quote this incident in order to rid myself at the frustration that the instructor usually develops within me. (especially when he says "I am giving a very high level talk here!". High level for kindergardeners, I suppose.)

So, we're doing hydrostatics today. I was going through the motions, with the help of a Starbucks. A certain inscription on the board caught my attention in the duration of the class. P = Patm - rho g z. When informed of this disaster on the board, the instructor quickly pooh - poohed it by saying "Energy is a scalar. Its sign does not matter". So, temperature is a scalar too. We're at 295K right now. Or -295K, after all sign does not matter. No wonder, it's been getting cold of late.

Back to the talk in class. In essence the deeper you go under water, the lower the pressure if the class were to be believed. Nobel price material?

This is a hitherto unknown fact. Surely, there are applications. Instead of spending millions on vaccuum pumps, all researchers need to do is go for a swim and perform experiments. And what about getting one of those air - turbines in a pipe communicating with the bottom of the sea? We'll get elecricity forever.

Pseudo-science?

But let's be honest. The instuctor is a very good teacher and he is indeed doing a very thorough job in the class. The class is quite high level: he is talking in terms of tensors - and cetainly not undergraduate level. And though I don't see eye to eye with him teaching hydrostatics after deriving the N-S, he surely has a very coherent idea of what to teach. I have a lot of respect for his classes. I only wish his assignments were more challenging.

One city at a time

For a change, humans are not their own biggest pains in the neck. God has become the number one pain in the neck for humans of all races and nationalities all over the world. God has become the ultimate equal opportunity offender.

Not content with killing people through means such as diseases and accidents, he (or she or it) has decided to take out cities as a whole, one by one. I can remember how be destroyed Acheh in Indonesia recently by means of an Earthquake. And then the conscequent Tsunami killed millions in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India.

Then came Mumbai, with 100 cm of rain in one day. Yer another city that GOD destroyed. And then he decided that he had enough of Jazz and obliterated New Orleans. As if that was not enough, he took out Muzaffarabad in Pakistan. And now he is destroying Bangalore and Chennai.

And of course, he kept on destroying Florida before it had time to rebuild.

If got were a nation, he would be one filled with craters created by Nuclear bombs. Thank god, god does not exist. Or else humanity would have destoryed him (or her or it?)

The Death of Imagination

When I was in India, I thought that the American University system would be fabulous. I thought that an American university would celebrate intuition. Would celebrate creativity. Would celebrate imagination.

Of course, I was in for a rude shock. I was raised in an atmosphere at IIT where asking challenging questions was considered good. Professors (bar a few unqualified ones) were in general enthusiastic about answering these questions.

I'm taking three graduate courses here at A&M. The classes here, in comparison to those at IIT are, well, pathetic. Students are spoon-fed by professors; challenging questions are answered in such a way that I get the feeling that they are frowned upon. Everything is worked out in class. Assignments are so mind numbingly simple minded that the ennui of solving them forces mistakes out of you.

I am really surprised that this mediocrity culminates in 'cutting edge' science. I have now become extremely cynical. I am sure that if cutting edge comes out of this place, then it must be a joke.

I worked on a term paper back in IIT on buoyant turbulent flows. And here, I am doing a course on how to derive the Navier-Stokes. To the non-initiated, it's like learning to write like James Joyce and then re-learning the alphabet. So far the only creativity that I have been upto in the USA is blogging. And if you've read my recent plots, you'll realize that I must have lost my creativity somewhere. Lost and buried it.

There is no challenge anywhere here. Everything is spelt out in class. The only challenge is organizing oneself!

I saw a Simpsons episode long ago when Lisa Simpson thinks that a sudden dumbening [sic] process has beset her. It would not be too far from the truth to say that something similar is happening to me. Only, Lisa discovered, to her delight, that she was okay towards the end of the episode. Is there a happy ending for me?

Thank God for the fact that I will probably opt for research hours next semester. Hope that will be better. Life is unliveable without challenges. And of course, there's always the Catch 22 silver lining: living this challenge-less existence will be quite a challenge.

Light and Dark

If ignorance were darkness, there is none of that here in the USA. The land is bright, even at night. Lights are on even when no one is in the room. Not just lights. Even air conditioners. Pretty ironic that darkness symbolizes ignorance.

Is the American not aware that his cheap electricity is not actually due to his own hard work, but due to him living on a large and rich land? If the American believes that everyone is born equal in the eyes of God, then he should either allow the poor to enter his country and shear its resources - or allow himself to be taxed in order to provide the third world with some of his resources.

But who said the world is fair? The rich are more powerful even in this modern era of democracy. The rich control the money; they fund canditates. All the poor can do is vote. The rich control the media. They help the poor man in making up his mind.

The rich man thus formulates policy such that the poor man pays him his hard earned money as some sort of implict tax. He achieves this by a mechanism called monopoly. The rich corparations team up and capture the market either by cartelization or by blatant monopoly.

Is there any incentive to believe that modern trade is based on principles of actual justice that everyone seems to claim to follow? Does any of the negotiating sides have any incentive to actually argue for the poor? The poor are the weak, the impotent. Their political clout is minimal.

Why should the American stop consuming resources? This is not a moral question. Though he claims to believe that the world is equal - he knows at the back of his head that he is superior. He has more resources at his disposal. And there's nothing anyone can do about it. The American Way is entirely unsustainable for the entire planet ... you'd need more than 4 planet earths for its entire 6 billion people to live like America is doing now.

Common sense tells us that the American is lucky. (And if anyone tells me that America is where it is only because of Hard Work, then I would surely compare their IQ to that of a chimpanzee to the advantage of the latter). It is not his fault that he is so well off .... and, actually America is quite a geneorous nation - come to think of it! I am not criticizing America. I am not criticizing anything here. I'm just trying to answer these age-old questions to myself: why is America so rich. Why is India so poor?.

But the future holds hope. Some of the American resources are coming to India, incidentally. And they are doing so over the internet. I'm not talking of the credit card theft. I'm talking about BPO. American money is coming to hard working Indians all around the world.

And of course, this resource scarcity means that a little more resource independence can be perfected in India. If sunlight ever becomes an economic resource, then India could easily become a superpower. Solar energy. Suppose biomass is an answer to the energy crisis. India wins again.

India faces a bright future. Soon shall come a time when we in India shall not care about turning off the light - nay - the solar A/C!

The Vending Machine Mafia

You can't throw a stone without hitting a vending machine in America. And in this connection, I would encourage you to throw stones. The more vending machines you hit and destroy, the better. Throwing stones at them is not an act of violence like the authorities would have you believe. Let's look at it this way. Suppose some robber came by and tried to abstract your hard earned cash from your pocket, would you or would you not give him one where it hurts? Extrapolate that logic to the vending machine.

For the vending machine is nothing but a lowly crook. What it might lack in the terms of a rough voice or a firearm it makes up in finesse. Not only does it charge astronomical rates, but it just usurps your cash. As plain as that. No one knows whether you got your grub or not. But it's got the cash. A thief is always in danger of getting caught. If you start bashing up a thief, the strong arm of the law would come by and give you a pat on the back. But if you start bashing up a vending machine, the strong arm of the law will consign you into one of those dingy rooms they call 'cells'. Talk of double standards.

People in search of the perfect crime need not look any further. The vending machine is pure evil. It is excellence in crime; something gangsters like Al Capone in the old days here in the USA and Dawood Ebrahim back in India used to strive for. For the only one in danger of arrest is the victim.

Just the other day, a tired self decided to get a Coke in the Rec-Center, after pretending to play badminton. A dollar was inserted into the machine only to see a robotic arm travel up (oh, so elegant), try to drop a bottle into a carrier - but there was only air, and come back. I was supposed to get a drink. But I was one dollar poorer. Daylight robbery.

And what of the vending machine that took $1, realized that it was sold out, returned only $0.95? And I thought coke made its money only through sales! And what about the time I tried to get a chewing gum, only to see yet another robotic arm carry air? Surely, I have every right to feel upset. Quarters do not come cheap in the USA.

I know what I'll be in life. I'll be a vending machine operator. I also pledge to donate generously to the tune of a few billion dollars in case a natural disaster hits any part of the world.

Turbulent Times

Fall is more or less here. I almost froze on the way back home from college. Quite a difference from those miseries at Chennai. Now I know what martensite feels like. These sudden changes in climate surely harden you.

Weak esoteric puns aside, life is chugging along rather rapidly. This post is being posted on my own brand new Dell Laptop with music out of my brand new Bose music system. And when I think of my 'job' here as a TA, I just get the feeling that I am ripping off the university and doing so in a grand way - all I do is 'grade' and here I am floating in material goodies that I could only fantasize about a few months ago.

I am mediocre when it comes to course work. My performances here are inexcusable. I have no right to make so many mistakes here. There is no reason why I should get only 75% in assignments here. I am sure I will screw up even if all I have to do is to reproduce the alphabet.

Now that I have my laptop, the public (which, I surely hope consists of others besides penis enlargement specialists and insurance salesmen) may expect posts more often. And thanks to the trusty wireless card, you can expect posts from airplanes and other modes of transport. There's always some unsecured wireless internet connection. And I might just be unscrupulous enough to exploit it.

A conclusion shall be effected now; for yonder lies a bed that needs to be lied upon. The sandman is awaited - to take red eyes where they belong.

Andhra's New Capital?

I was down at the NASA center in Houston, Texas. (Obviously, in the public area). And guess what the first words I heard there were. Behen Chod! And a little while later, all I could hear were Entira Babu and Alage. I never really believed that there were so many Indians in America. But this little field trip into the heart of the US of A was proof of the fact that the Indian infestation here was not only complete, but all-pervasive.

For in the space station, there were more saris than shorts and more bindis than Tatoos. The space center resembled not a symbol of American prowess in science and technology - but a Hindu temple. People speaking in some Indian language or the other: but usually Telugu.

Such is the case not only in Houston - but even in the serene town of college station - which houses, yet again a sizable proportion of Indians (who are students here at A&M). Like me. Hindi expletives are more likely to be encountered on the road than English expletives. As a matter of fact, I've heard more Hindi expletives than English!

Almost 20% of the instructors here are Indian: and more than 25% of the graduate students (especially in Engineering) are Indian. Some of the biggest names here an Indian: deans, professors, professionals, you name it! And almost all the convenience store clerks (who peddle porn!) are of south Asian Origin. All pervasive indeed.

Perhaps, when they decide to change the captial of Andhra Pradesh, they could think of a city in Texas. Perhaps Houston.

I've begun to realize that brain drain from India is as real as you and me. But surely, it cannot be emotion that stops people from leaving India. Emotion can be overcome - I know, because I did it. Human selfishness does it. But in the future, things will be different. After all, if prosperity can be had in India, why would anyone want to come here! Certainly not the climate, India (especially Nasik where my parents are) is a gazillion times better. Brain drain will stop only if the excessive government controls stop in India.

Take this for instance. When we complain about low internet speeds in IIT, the Dean says "You're here to study!". When we try to organize some relief work (for, say, and earthquake), they shout at us. But here: they have internet connections even in classrooms. Access to labs is easy. And yahoo messenger (an enemy of Indian authorities) is pre-installed. Class rooms are air conditioned.

Overcoming the emotional barrier to working seems all the more easy - given the excessive controls in India. As a matter of face, it often is a frustration with Indian red tape (I've posted about that before!) that leads people away from India.

A tennis ball

I'll hate to break the unofficial rule that I have been attempting to observe throughout the blog. I had declared a moratorium on posting personal matters on the blog: no point in putting the readers to sleep, I said. After all, this blog isn't intended as a substitute for valium. But you will understand that the current circumstances are indeed extenuating: I've got a couple of hours to kill right now - and If I don't keep myself occupied by blogging, the ennui would force me to commit suicide. (More fodder for an insurance related comment?)

I don't know if you've seen a tennis match. It's a match in which two well built people keep smashing a yellow ball at each other using netted sticks (like the ones we see people swat flies with). I always wondered what the ball felt like. I mean - hit here, hit there - surely can't be too good for the morale of the ball. But I believe that I am beginning to appreciate the sentiments of the ball - and I am beginning to empathize with it - the way my course and my assignments are being swapped around.

You see, personally, I am stuck in a rather ridiculous quagmire. But I'm not worried. I know the ending is happy. I was supposed to work as a lab instructor here. And, (I can see Peter smiling somewhere), the department overlooked the fact that people had a Fluid Mechanics course coincident on the same time slot. So, they moved the Fluid Mechanics class so that it coincided with my lab. Since I do not have some of the more desirable qualities that people associate Scrodinger's feline with - I was withdrawn as a TA from the lab. So, here I am - stuck literally - with no lab to go to. The professor who was supposed to assign me to someone. He said I'd grade. Ah, well. Less work - more time for courses. Can't be all that bad.

So, the upshot of the whole thing is that I have in excess of an hour to kill and I am running low on inspiration on how to. I reckoned I'd spend the time on blogging - but I type way too fast. I killed just ten minutes. Ideas to kill time would be appreciated: Ideas, anyone? (Now, I don't want any insurance related comments, mind you.)

So, in conclusion, you know I'm a tennis ball right now. Neither here not there. I'll tell you one person who'll agree whole heartedly. Dad. He was always quite emphatic that I was getting rotund (FAT) to the extent of getting spherical. Well, I am a sphere now.

On cooking for oneself

Good morining. This will be a quick course on how to cook for yourselves without getting that strong urge to commit suicide that most male self-sufficient people are accustomed to. It's not as difficult to do as it sounds; but just to be on the safe side, discard your knives and ensure that ceiling fans which are convenient to hang yourself from are removed from your house.

Now that you have discarded you knives, you would think that the choice of vegetables that you can consume has drastically gone down. Not really! A simple procedure is outlined here: follow it and you won't regret it!

BITE THE RAW VEGETABLES! Bite them and spit them into the container! That's as good as cutting them - and you don't risk the tetanus from a rusted knife! You might experience some issues in biting some more exotic vegetables which are harder: and meat. But the only solution is to drink more milk. Milk has calcium and is good for the teeth.

Cleaning dishes is a pain. So, we'll make it a lot easier for the person who does the washing! We'll put the detergent in the food. What we cook will suck anyway, so the average person will be unable to make out the difference! So, take some vim or whatever it is that you use to clean the plates and put them in the food. You could fry it in oil if you want or just season your food with it. A welcome benifit, of course, is that it helps keep your stomach clean too! Plus, after eating think you won't want to commit suicide - you'll probably be dead already.

Here's a recipie that you might be interested in. Take some bread - put it in the blender - take some raw carrots and some honey - take some indian spices - put them in the blender too - what the hell - take some olive oil while you're at it. Now, I give you the opportunity to choose any food item - that goes in the blender too - then heat the blender in the oven. Pray that it does not melt - and then run it.

Try eating the cockaroaches in your bathroom. It gets your food bill down - and it sure as hell reduces the cost of exterminating the damn things. They can either be boiled and eaten - or just crunched. It depends. If you like potato chips, you'll like the latter. If you like french fries, you'll like the former. People accustomed to eating mangoes - like those in India can scoop the insides of the roach - leaving only the exoskeleton. The latter can be pickled. Ants can be made a meal of too.

Just remember, you don't have to eat this. There's the other option to. In other words, do or die.

A Post from the Western Hemisphere

There's three kinds of people that others make fun of. Blondes, Sardars and Aggies. When I was born, I checked the color of my hair. I wasn't blond. I checked to see whether my dad wore a turban. I wasn't a Sardar. Just when I thought I'd never really be made fun of, I found myself in Texas A&M university, pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. I'm an aggie now. So, if you catch me looking at orange juice, it's only because it says 'concentrate' on it.

I'm in the heart of Aggieland right now: and it is impressive. My life has been some sort of gradient since sixth grade: I went to something only optimists would call a school; then to a hut they called 'junior college'. And then I went t0 IIT Madras - a place which is as impressive as they come in India. IIT Madras is awesome in its own right - and I fell in love with the library there. And now, in Texas A&M, things are just double the size of what they were in IIT! The library is MASSIVE, to say the least. And if I am not wrong, I'll probably find some playboys stacked under the 'culture' section somewhere.

One thing that struck me as mighty impressive about the USA, is how polite everyone is. Everybody, from the customs officials to the librarians have been nothing by polite and helpful. It's amazing what a good salary can do to people! Everyone's friendly here: howdys are interchanged almost all the time - especially in the university.

As of now, I'm on foot and that's a negative. Distances here are large. Period. If I need to get to class from my room, I'll need to walk for half an hour. Cycles have to be procured. And procured ASAP. Riding a bike to a grocery store will still be an issue: some sort of parasitic existence will have to be envisaged. I could piggyback on my aunt!

That's a posting about life here in College station. An impressive place. I have no Idea why they make fun of us Aggies. Maybe I'll wait and find out.