Karma.

I don't know if I am biased and my mind is inclined to see things in a particular way, although they may not be so, but recently life has been teaching me a lot. Its like incidents are becoming practical lessons, and I have been learning the hard way. I am the burnt child that is dreading the fire now. However I hope this does not last long and life gives me lessons a bit easily, coz if this goes on, it'll play on my mind real bad, as it has been these days. This is got to end.

Peace of mind, concentration, punctuality, over-confidence.... incidents are teaching me so much about them. I have been through harsh lessons of reality and have been rudely awakened and set straight. I sure hope that I take the lessons for good and improve.

I am beginning to believe in karma. What you do is what you get return. I thought I'd never say this, with all the belief in God's story for all and destiny earlier. But things change.

Maybe I think a lot for no reason.

~/*$^*)(%#@!

Alfred : "Why do we fall down Master Bruce?
So that we can learn to pick ourselves up again.."

Bruce: "Haven't given up on me yet?"

Alfred: "Never!"

---- Batman Begins....

Profound.

Quote of the.... well before i find the next one.....

Douglas Adams is awesome. Hitchhiker's is like the best book ever.

Just why is he so good ?

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

- Douglas Adams

Thats exactly why.
:)

Time

I am about to cross a threshold in life in a couple of days time. I will no longer be a teen and according to the average life expectancy, one-third of my life will be over. I am saddened by the thought that I will no longer be a teen, and as I reflect I think I havent done everything a teen should do [;)] .... but then you can always stay young, coz its always all in the mind....

Anyway, as i have been pondering over this, many different thoughts came to my mind. We are living in a wonderful time. I always believed that we are among the lucky generations to live and exist in two different millennia... but that is merely a statistic, defined with a random reference frame in time. But metaphorically it means a lot to mankind in our generation. Coz we live in a rapidly changing time... where things move fast and life is cool. Just think about this. Few hundreds of years back, life did not really move, things must've been so slow! Its obviously relative to today, everything's relative. But then things were the same over long periods of time. The world was disconnected and people were very much confined to a small area.. except maybe for people like Alexander, who, well, were exceptional and thought 'out of the box' as they say in those times. It would have been much more boring as compared to today, I feel. I bet most of us will agree.

Today its absolutely amazing. The very fact that I can communicate with a person thousands of miles away is incredible. Heck, I also know what music he/she is listening to and what track he/she just played (www.last.fm ). Its cool that a band playing somewhere in Western Australia influences me and makes me head-bang to their tunes. They might not even have heard of a place called Mumbai in a country called India :).

Something like this must've been unheard of in the past.

Besides, things change so fast. When we (I mean people aged around 19-20 currently) were kids, things were so much different than they are now. Computers were not popular, we were among the first to be experimented upon by the personal computer concept, and boy did the experiment turn out well. We saw cellphones take over the world. We saw and used the Ipod first. We search on Google and Wikipedia. Its us that really relate to all this, people younger are ignorant / kids / a bit irrelevant, and people older, well, they belong to a few years back. Not that they are left out of the action, they've seen change as well, maybe more than us. So, maybe this applies in general for people who have lived when the millennium changed.

And then there's more to see.... since changes are so rapid. I think that we will be the only ones to see so much change, since for people before us things were nascent and didnt advance as they do today, and for people that come after us, well, then a level of saturation will be reached and things will move slowly again. As for us, we will see artificial intelligence. We will see global warming. We will see fuels run out and alternative fuels developed. I hope we see teleportation :).

As I listen to 'The Who' I wonder, would there be another better time to live in. Maybe the 60s-70s when The Beatles, The Who, Led Zep, Deep Purple etcetera were active and kicking ass!

Maybe there wont be a better time to live in.
So live!

Traveler........

I just used a cool application on facebook.....
On a map you had to mark the cities you have been to....

And my tally as of today.... i.e. 17th September 2007 is

61 cities in four countries...... India, USA, Mauritius and Singapore.......

Lets hope there are a lot more to come..... and soon.......

61 cities in 20 years....... thats 3 a year.... Cool statistic!!

:)

P.S. Life has returned to the boring mode.....
Stumbler, Facebook, Orkut and Last.fm to the rescue!!!!!!!

Discovery

I have realised two things in life......

1. I am hopelessly addicted to Music

2. Lectures can kill.

~

Creativity?

Recently I was asked to be creative and write. Twice. And I realised that I am not really creative and I certainly can't write. Write well that is. I just stared at the topic given for more than half the time allotted and then finally struggled to finish it and hand over the paper. So I was all shabby and ended up cooking up and writing sheer nonsense. Its quite amazing how people manage to think and write (well) about some arbitrary, random topic given to them in a small amount of time. I can write only what I feel like writing and what I have been thinking about for a long time. So blogging suits me just fine. But its really a good exercise to think about the topic given and try to put your thoughts into words.

The topics that I was given were very nice and thought-provoking to say the least, and although I struggled, I enjoyed myself a lot. I hope to write something on my blog about the same, although due to my laziness, I am really not sure whether I would eventually end up writing (or rather typing) at all. So in case I ever feel like posting my opinions on those topics again... or for that matter you do, then here they are for memory.

The first one was at the college fest of St.Xaviers called Malhar. I was given a picture in grayscale and asked to paint the 'world' in a single colour and its shades and of course justify why I choose those colours. To add, without fail, that no offense to any religion,race or group was tolerated. :)

The second topic was today and that I really enjoyed. I had to choose between two...
1. Explaining what sound is to a deaf person.
2. Playing an Indian politician and pleading for mercy to Satan in hell.

I chose the former, although I wanted to choose the latter, but couldn't make it as wacky as I wanted to. The former is really something to think about and I really want to write about it in detail again sometime, since I was time constrained. I ended up writing 2.5 pages explaining Music to a deaf person, comparing the sense of hearing to the sense of sight and drawing parallels.

I'll follow it up later....
Tuh-tah.

Addition: (3-Jun-2008)
I won the third position in the institute for the second essay! Guess I am not that bad after all!!

Great movies.....

I have been a movie freak and have watched too many movies for my own good. Can't really understand how, those who do stay away from movies, do it. Anyway, if you are reading my blog, which as always is a rarity, here is a list of some very good movies... in no specific order.

1. The Lord of the Rings franchise : Is there a series of movies so wonderfully made? No! Its almost perfection....

2. Memento : It baffles you and holds you captivated till the end. Isn't that what you look for in a movie? But then again many movies do that, so what's special with this one? Well unlike most others of the same genre, it does not fall flat down on its face after it ends.

3. The Butterfly Effect : Wonderful concept portrayed very very well.

4. Gladiator : The best movie that brings the past alive. Period.

5. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind: Cool. Kate Winslet is awesome. Really.

6. Lost in Translation : The perfect romantic movie in my opinion. Perfect portrayal of emotions. And Scarlett Johansson is hot.

7. Pan's Labyrinth : The perfect fantasy maybe. A fantasy in a realistic setting is unheard of. Well, this one is. And although its in a different language, it really captivates your mind.

8. Requiem for a Dream : It left me with a sick feeling. Which even gore like SAW didn't. Wouldn't want to watch it again. Although good and maybe perfect.

9. Gone in 60 seconds : I know its rated low. But in my opinion one of the most adrenalin pumping movies ever. And I love cars.

10. Liar Liar : The perfect comedy. Absolutely awesome.

A memory maybe.... for me later to reminisce about the movies I liked when i was a teen.... :)

Really?

I just noticed that i do use the word 'really' far too often.

I really need to cut down on the usage.

Oops I did it again :P

Cliche

Phenomenon.....

Some things really confuse you. You really don't understand them... however hard you try. No, I am not talking about rocket science or anything.. those things are meant to be not understood.

What happened was this. I was a bit groggy and tired after 30 long hours of travel. Flying by air is really very very annoying and uncomfortable. Sure its fast and everything. And you do get lots of food. But still, sitting tied to a really uncomfortable seat with no leg room is painful. Even if you are given dozens of on-demand movies to compensate for the same. There's really a need for the next great innovation in travel. Something like Teleportation. Or even Floo-powder. (No I am not a fan. Its just all around.)

Keeping that apart, we stepped into Mumbai, India, immediately soaked with sweat. Everything was strikingly different and I could'nt help but comment upon everything thats better there and not here. Still coming back was not as bad as I had thought it would be.

So we geared up for the excruciating four hour drive back home to Pune... on the "expressway". We could'nt but help admire the capped driver who was adept at driving in the strikingly difficult, indisciplined traffic conditions in Mumbai, for a minute forgetting that a month back we drove on the same roads. Its really amazing what a great difference a month away from a daily routine can make.

Anyway, as we made our way from the bustling Mumbai to the expressway, the driver suddenly realised that radio was boring, switched the stereo, much to my relief. Coz radio is really boring. You wish you could stick a sock up the jockey's mouth.

But I had not seen it coming. Which is pretty sad, since it was quite obvious from the driver's cap. If you haven't already guessed, the record playing was Himesh's signature collection. I was never a fan, but not a hater as well. I always believed that the guy is talented, and that he should only stop singing and give others a chance. However, all that changed. For good.

The car's windows were open. And maybe the driver was hard of hearing as well, coz he raised the volume upto 21, which is really loud. The first song started with music which was pretty good, before Himesh's nose got into the act. And that was that. What followed was really painful and frustrating. And the driver seemed to enjoy it. How one can do that is hard to understand.

I mean, how can one like someone who sings like THAT. Whatever was playing were hardly songs at all.... and all were similar. All with the repeating words, the ooooooos and the aaaaaaaas. I really wanted to punch the driver in the face and smash the car stereo. Then I thought it would be so much fun to the same to the man himself. :)

I drew parallels with other phenomena like those of Mithun or Rajnikant, more popular with drivers and rickshawallahs. But then again those guys have talent. Gunda was awesomely brilliant... and so are Rajnikant's antics. But Himesh?

My Ipod came to my rescue... however even with the earphones in my ears, it was hard to hear the songs over his pounding voice. Thats when my neck cushion from the air travel helped. Sure, i looked like a fool trying to block my ears with the earphones from the noise outside. But i really did not care. Could I have just told him to reduce the volume? Apparently not.

It was really ironical, with the songs my Ipod played.... it was set to random shuffle mode and the first song it played went like this...

Please could you stop that noise
I'm tryin to get some rest

- Paranoid Android, Radiohead

Couple of songs later it played..

Can anybody stop this thing?
Before my head explodes
Or my head starts to ring

- High Speed, Coldplay.

That was nice. Echo.

And then Fader came to the rescue. Front fader on, switched off the back speakers and I was at peace with my Ipod, although still groggy and sweaty and tired.

Memorable to say the least.

I still want to punch the man in the face. And maybe knock off his cap. That would be fun.

Long Overdue

I am long overdue for posts....
Those will come in due course of time...

But just wanted to put this up.... :)... before anything else....

"God is Incorporal, Divine, Supreme, Infinite, Mind, Spirit, Soul Principal, Life, Truth, Love."

Pessimism....

Pessimism, cynicism.... seem to be my traits...
Whatever...

Just stumbled upon a few quotes on the matter....

'Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.' - G.B.Stern

I might be of some use after all... :)

'Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.' - Philander Johnson

Optimistic pessimism. Awesome....
Better

'Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'

I feel like shouting out. Loud. But cant. Its 2 o' clock in the night and the world around me is asleep.

I know that no one reads this blog. the lack of comments shows that. but i like shouting out here... blowing off steam.... coz this is the only place to do it....

Life is FUCKING unfair.

Material Man.........

A recent article I wrote for my departmental magazine........

The next multi-million dollar superhero movie sequel is scheduled to be released this year and I am sure you can’t wait. Well, neither can I. I don’t think there’s anyone among people in our generation who haven’t followed superheroes over the years, and personally I am a huge fan. Be it Batman, Spiderman, Superman, The Hulk or our very own indigenous Shaktimaan, all superheroes have basked in the spotlight and enjoyed all attention. Its obviously because of the great things they do, and the great powers they have.

But, have you materials scientists ever wondered what a superhero would do if we weren’t there? The question seems surprising, yes, but its true that a superhero does depend upon the strength and properties of materials for his/her stunts. Consider this… what would Spiderman do without his webs? Or how would Wolverine from the X-Men survive without his ‘adamantium’ skeleton?

Let us take the case of Batman. Materials are extremely indispensable for a superhero like him who has no inherent superpowers, but relies only on his gadgets. Take for instance his cape. The cape incorporates Nomex, DuPont’s fire-resistant, retardant material and Kevlar, DuPont’s bulletproof fiber which gives it its inherent strength. The cape is also specifically designed (by materials scientists) so that the fibers in it realign when an electric current is applied to it and the cape transforms into the shape of a bat’s wings. This allows Batman to fly or glide. A number of other gadgets from his utility belt, like his grappling hook that allows him to scale vertical walls, employ materials like titanium for the hook and Kevlar for the line.

Spiderman, too, as Peter Parker, designs mechanical shooters for his adhesive based web-fluid which is a shear-thinning liquid, i.e. a solid until subjected to shear rendering it fluid, related to nylon. On contact with air, the long-chain polymer knits and forms an extremely tough, flexible fiber with extraordinary adhesive properties. The web line’s tensile strength is estimated to be 120 pounds per square millimeter of cross section. The 300 pounds per square inch of pressure in each cartridge of the shooter is sufficient to force a stream of the complex web pattern an estimated 60 feet. All of this is nothing short of a materials science marvel!

So the next time you ever watch a superhero movie, I am sure you will wonder and think about the materials behind the awesome superpowers. And who knows, maybe you will be the next Peter Parker, inventing your own new cutting edge material and becoming the next big superhero!!!

The Day.......

17th March.............

"You think you are fuckin smart ?
I was fuckin there when Metal came to India.....
I was fuckin there when Iron Maiden came to India......
Were you fuckin there? "

\m/
Heads Banged....
Smoke Rose.....
Dickinson Climbed.......
Eddie Walked Across.....

And I was there................

Lets see where we end up..........

Here's what Answers.com has to say

hi·a·tus
n., pl. -tus·es or hiatus

A gap or interruption in space, time, or continuity; a break.

Thats exactly what this has been.......... a long one too.........

“We are likely to be disconcerted by . . . hiatuses of thought” (Edmund Wilson).

So true.
The Thesaurus says....

'hiatus'
noun

break, gap, interim, lacuna, void.....

Lacuna......... rings a bell.............
Oh yeah......... Lacuna Inc. The company which erases memory.......

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jim Carrey. No Oscar. Oscar. The Departed. Non deserving. Me. Bored. Everyday. Same. Nine Inch Nails. Cutter. Ripper. Jack. Fight Club. Consumerism. Economics. Freakonomics. Arbitrary idea. Innovation. Intuition. Descartes. Cogito ergo.... Matrix. Nebuchadnezzar. Hanging Gardens. Wonder. Internet. Blog. Mine. Firestarter. Age of Empires. History. Michael Jackson. Black or White. Colour. Yellow. Coldplay. Gwyneth. Apple. Ipod. Mp3. Winamp. Current track-U2-Hold me..... Batman. Black. Pearl Jam. Bread. Mess. Mess. Room. Solitude. Boredom. Yawn. Sleep. Early. Never. Late. Tomorrow. Day. Night. Dark. Fear. Horror. Vampire. Fangs. Snakes. Plane. Fly. Time. Clock. Wall. Pink Floyd. Pulse. Heart. Beat. Dance. Trance. Spell. Harry Potter. Scar. Lion King. Disney. Cartoon. Calvin. Newspaper. Sudoku. Japan. Kung Fu. Belt. Orion. Star. Twinkle. Nursery Rhyme. Poem. Alexander Pope. From Eloisa to Abelard. Eternal Sunshine...............

And we're back !!!! heeheee..............

What the hell?

I just wrote such a big post and blogger gobbled it up. Just lost it.......... SHIT!!!!!!!!!
Screw you..............