golb

Macro Physics

2012-01-27T17:23:00.000+05:30

Why do we do the things we do? What are we doing when we do the things we do?

Lately I've had an image of the entire universe as one physical/chemical reaction. We are part of this gigantic multi-pronged reaction just happening. Just like H2 + O => H2O, this reaction is apathetic, completely unaware of itself, non-judging, non-feeling: it just happens.

The picture I have is that of blobs of particles protruding from a flat space and toucing, interacting with each other. These blobs of particles are us, or animals, or any complex union of particles.

Because that's all we are. A bunch of particles that like to stick together.

People usually attribute a "soul" or "spirit" to the observer that is within us. For me it has become obvious that thoughts and the identity of "me" are also manifestations of this gigantic reaction.

Thoughts <= neurons firing <= electrochemical reactions <= basic physics

What I'm trying to say is, all the shit that we do is just like a simple event happening because of basic laws of physics, albeit at just a much much bigger scale.

Its hard to imagine it because we all naturally keep our sense of "self" disparate from the our sense of inanimate objects. Once we get over that infatuation, its easy to see humans and animals and everything for what they really are: macro particles interacting according to the laws of physics.

Again, when I say "interacting according to the laws of physics" we tend to picture two things colliding, or a charge moving through a field. The next step in seeing what I see is to get over this delusion and understand that me writing this and you reading this are all ultimately caused by physics. My decision to write and your decision to read are not something independent of simpler chemical reactions happening in the universe. Of course, I say "simpler", but the reactions don't have any understanding of simple or complex. As always they just happen. No judgement, no feeling. Period.

The dimension of time

2011-09-28T02:22:00.001+05:30

I was reading Dracula on my new smartphone, waiting for 2pm when I would have to go to class. And as is usually the case, after reading a few pages of anything, I felt sleepy. I tucked myself in under the sheets, closed my eyes and tried to catch some shut-eye. But, as always, the mind wanders and this time it wandered on to the nature of time.

My blog has been reduced to an outlet for my weird thoughts off late: weird thoughts I believe are worth preserving.

I suddenly had this picture of 4-D space! Something that is very hard to imagine and harder to put into words. Time was just like space; stretched out in both directions, orthogonal to everything else. It was easy to picture this because I already believed that everything is predictable. What happens to anything and everything can be predicted. This would in turn mean that the direction that everything and anything would go in, was all already known. That is when I saw time as something stretched out, something on which we are travelling in one direction.

This spawned another thought. Just like in the spatial dimensions, there must be such a thing as momentum in time. Momentum in time would make something go along the time axis in the same straight (time)line! Everything I see seem to have this momentum, because everything I see is moving ahead in time. Which means some event gave momentum to all things in the time dimension. And it appears that, since everything is moving along time at the same speed, that everything has some "m" that is equal for all things. The "m" would be the equivalent of mass in spatial dimensions: something that determines how fast a thing moves in time when it is "kicked".

But it seems we havent yet figured out how to create these "kicks"; ie, change our momentum in time. This also means that if at all we figure out how to kick ourselves in time so that our momentum is reversed, we would not be "aware" of it. Because "awareness" stems from temporally spaced firings of neurons. If we manage to kick ourselves in time, we would simply reverse all that neuron firings and go literally, "un-aware".

I wonder if I can write down some equations with t in place of x and see how it pans out. Like:

"P" = "m"x(t2 - t1)/ ("t2" - "t1") or some shit like that.

Hmm, what is "t" here? With respect to what is time changing? I donno! I have to go to class!

Addendum:
When I said "things seem to have the same momentum in time" I made the mistake of defining "things" with respect to spatial dimensions. That is, a book is a "thing" because it is separate from other things wrt to 3D space. But in the dimension of time, it must be something else that defines what a "thing" is. So in that case, it obviates the necessity of every"thing" having had the same "m", because wrt to time, everything that is disparate in space is still just one thing.

Come to think of it, I guess Einstein had an idea of what it was! It must be something related to velocity since things that have a velocity wrt to another experience differences in the flow of time. But wait, velocity here is defined in spatial dimensions, and I defined a "thing" as something moving in 3D space again! WTF... its all so frikkin entangled!

FIRST POST WHILE DRRUNK!!!!!!!!

2011-02-12T23:44:00.002+05:30

KOOONICHIVAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I just had a revelation. mmm make the "i" capital baaaaaaaaaaka. "delete the g in the"... baaaaaakaaaa.

soooookkkaaaaa. the reveleation is:- i look at things and abstaract it to tits simple for,. But others somehow are able to see the details and the troubles that go into that "thing". I am not. I abstract. I assign a pattern. My brain "ore no brain" is too abstracting!!!! WTCFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF Idecided to write this blog... so that i dont forget this revelatio...... huuhhh i m surprised that i can spell revelation in this state. BUTTTT ' daaakedooooo" i've had to correct the spelling of everything else!!!!! hontoniiiii bakkkkaaa theskaraaaaa......... oreee............

I got an "admit" from CMU... but its in spring 2012 .... dammmmmmn nnnn,...... "hontoniiiii baaaakaaa theskaraaaa .....oreeeee...." .........

Y am i doing this.... why why whwy whyh why whwyh whyhwyh wyhy whhyh wyhy7why hwyhwyh wyhwyh wywhywhy???/
?/
?/
?????

I WISH.... AYGGGGGGGG WAT THE F IS THE POUINTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT>L
....

omiai ... sodeskaraaaaa.... omiaaiii .. she.... willll havee.....

FUCK ME.....

hpeless ..... i am ....see pu an "o'onm hope baaaaaaaaaakaaaaaaaa .... u even miss spelt all that ....... ahoooooooooo!!!! ........

publkihh/""" or not to publish??? " whose gonna read anyway ..... himanshu?

haaaaaa

Simple pleasures of life

2011-02-05T12:31:00.000+05:30

1.) Putting on a freshly ironed shirt on a cold winter morning.
2.) Gulping down a glassful of cool water after having a big satisfying meal.
3.) Taking a piss, suddenly realizing that your bladder was really full, taking a deep breath and gently exhaling while you let it all out, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah". Golden \m/

Weird shows

2010-09-09T12:22:00.000+05:30

This show called the price of truth or some shit ...

Why cant people see that the choice before the person is simple.

If he lies, he loses the game and everyone knows he was lying and he did indeed do some embarrassing stuff!

If he tells the truth, he gets the money and everyone gets to know the he did some embarrassing stuff.

Subtract above two arguments and what do you get...

Tell the truth and you get money ...

So then why the heck is there "suspense" in the show? Why is there so much drama?

The tango of Capitalism and Communism

2010-09-05T12:19:00.000+05:30

One breeds sentiments for the other.

The movie "Reds" :- the old man who said "people who try to take on the problems of the world are either too well off or are too disturbed to tackle their own issues." and "even Jesus Christ could not take on the troubles of the world... He got himself crucified for trying!"

Addendum:

I had this little post saved as draft for a while now. I have forgotten why I started it in the first place. But I thought I would put down some related comments and publish it...

So, the tango! Yes. My thoughts on why each policy tends to breed support for the opposite. In one word: inheritance.

Inheritance of capital from parents to children seems to be a central problem in capitalism. Even though the person who created the capital deserves to reap its benefits (I'm a free market capitalist here), I am against the practice of giving all that capital to someone simply based on genealogy. This breeds sentiments for communism in the working class. And rightly so, since whatever did the heir do to deserve all that good stuff!

In communism though, one person has limited opportunity to break free from the norm and cash up on a unique idea. This too is wrong! Ownership should be defined by whether or not a person truly created the capital. I am reminded of Gringotts goblins here! JKR says in Deathly Hallows that goblins define ownership of an object by who actually made it.

So what I am proposing is a hybrid system, something evolved, something that takes on the best of both and is immune to the diseases that plagues either. A system where parents do not try to shower the fruits of their labour on their children and where an idea is uniquely owned and allowed to be unceremoniously utilized for personal wealth. How naive! I'm talking about going against our evolutionary instincts that drive us to protect our own off-springs and ensure the survival of our selfish genes. Fat chance! As I said in an earlier post, the world will remain screwed up till the notion of power is bred out of our species.

Undecided..

2010-09-03T11:23:00.007+05:30

Driving into an area full of people from a different community was never supposed to be unsettling to the liberal/atheist that I am. It was an unpleasant surprise when the queasiness set in as I navigated the back allies of a colony so blatantly communal. The polarization was obvious; the ethos clearly advertised. I found my way out after a while, and I started thinking... why? Why did I feel that way? Of all the people I have met, I was so sure that I would be the last person to be afflicted with communal identity.

It was the instinctive nature of my feelings that gave away their origins. In the end the incident served only as a reminder of the fact that we are all slaves to the neurotransmitters that frolic in our inner brain. (A fact that I have ardently espoused, but, obviously the knowledge having no effect even on myself!)

As I drove back to my apartment, I imagined how 100,000 years ago, an ape who accidentally ended up in the territory of a foreign tribe, who just happened to have the genes to tingle his "spidey sense", could have avoided conflict, survived and passed on those genes to me. It was simply the safer choice. TED talks catered to a guy who said that humans beings were too successful too fast, and evolution is yet to catch up. The vestigial effects of long antiquated environmental factors still control every decision we make.

HD Sam
NETRISCA. Sirian werebull. Female Gnaar. Scythian witch-harpy. And of course uranium filled cannon balls. Ring any bells? Thats right! Sam is back. More "serious" than ever... in all 1920x1080 HD glory. The blood is more real. The body parts strewn on the ground and splattered on walls are more detailed. The werebull now glistens with HDR and bloom lighting under the harsh Egyptian sun. An all new engine (serious engine 3) renders the same old foes and the same old environment, but with enough texture detail to fill up 1GB of GDDR5 memory! Splurging on a 5770 didn't seem too bad an idea to play this baby... (the raise and bonuses helped of course :P). Living up to its age old tradition of efficient rendering, the new engine pumps out 60FPS (limited) on ultra settings on the mainstream card! The game still excels at churning out tonnes of pure, unadulterated FUN. Can't wait to see if Sam still tucks the giant cannon neatly into his back pocket!

"Aaaaaaaaah yourself........ Uh Oh", still brings a smile to my face.

HD Ugh-Zan-III... your days are numbered... :P

V
Voila! In view a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity is a vestige of the vox-populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such will one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it is my very good honour to meet you, and you may call me V...

I just wanted to write down this beautiful piece of cinematic dialogue somewhere. Kudos to Hugho Weaving for his flawless delivery!

Raindrops are falling on my h....ehh feet!?

2010-03-27T02:19:00.007+05:30

Amidst hues and cries about the unrelenting heat, I made it home today, only to find my parents complaining about the heat too! No one seems to remember ever having such a long, continuous stretch of scorching hot days in Kerala.

"Where are the occasional summer showers?"

"Why is it that it hasn't rained since last October?"

"The clouds that do come do not result in rain,they just end up making the air stuffy... Why?"

A multitude of questions, that everyone was asking, and nobody had answers to...

"Who is John Galt?" was my unspoken answer.

Amma had thoughtfully left a couple of windows in my room open before I went to bed.

A train journey that took FOR EVER, followed by a 3 hour roller coaster ride that is offered by the K.S.R.T.C for Rs. 47, had me beat. I read a couple of pages of Atlas Shrugged and my eyes where going out of focus. I thought I saw a flash outside the window... lightning? Maybe... no sound of thunder though ... chee ... ahh well... I let the pages slip along my thumb.... and shut my eyes.

.
..
..
...
....
.....

tat-tat-tat ....

tat-tat-tat ....

Something cold and wet pricks my left foot...

I wake up from my semi-sleeping state .... a drop of water? What the ...

And then there was the smell... that fragrance that has oft taken centre stage in Indian poems and prose (somehow they were all popular with the CBSE :P) ... parched earth getting to satisfy its thirst...

What had fallen on my hairy footballer legs (remember who else had these? :D) was a single rain drop... the kind that sneaks in through windows all alone...

Outside, the tat-tat-tat crescendoed and then..... it was pouring!

And, for the first time in a long time... I FELT ....something .....

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I wish.... ah well.... wats the point ....

(I had to blog before this feeling left me! So I ended up writing two)

Will arrive shortly on platform number.... 3...(or not)

2010-03-27T00:43:00.009+05:30

Littering, coffee, chai, shouts of "Cooouufeee" and "Cha-cha-cha-chaaaaiiiii", littering, stench, people, tonnes of steel, hawkers, blind beggars, singing beggars, blind singing beggars, blind singing married-with-2-children beggars aaaaand of course.... littering.

(I've shamelessly pilfered the above style from J. K. R. :P)

Indian Railways... what a NIGHTMARE!!

Or is it??

Yes, it stinks. Yes, its dirty. Yes, its crowded. Yes, its [n number of negatives].

But, there's something about a train journey, a special charm, a presence, a sense of... u-can-think-about-weird-shit-now, that has always succeeded in overclocking my memory and CPU.

Maybe its the tiny quirks we observe in random people, maybe its the rhythmic percussion under your feet, maybe its the sudden flashes of objects that catch your eye outside the window...

A questionable instinct

The train was delayed for 2 hours today due to "track work" on the Kottayam route. Stuck inside a stationary metal tube @ noon on a humid summer day in the middle of nowhere without even a hint of the slightest breeze... u tend to think someone is out to getcha!

And that is EXACTLY what I thought! (For a second.... :P) I was attributing an unpleasant experience as retribution by "someone" for some wrong I had done to that "someone". And how was it that I had wronged him? By not believing in that "someone's" existence of course!

Voila! An atheist had 'hit' upon the idea of GOD!

I was amazed by how naturally that deduction had come to me. It was like I was programmed to think that I would be punished...

Observing current trends, the more adverse the conditions, more the number of people who flock to religious leaders.

Humans seem to have an innate answer to why something bad is happening to them. "I am being punished because I did something wrong."

Coupled with the classic post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy, this instinctive answer would then lead to conclusions about what was the "wrong" that we had done.

A caveman who used to observe the rising sun for a few days, forgot to do it one particular morn. His hunt that day was awful... and his instinctive answer to the question "why?" would be "I did something wrong and I'm being punished... but what did I do wrong?... hmm I did forget to observe the sun this morning, mayb I shouldav looked at the rising sun .... hmmm the sun must be something/someone powerful ... he must have punished me!"

Having this answer programmed into us seems to answer why humans invented God. But why is this answer programmed into our brain in the first place?

Power is always abused

A train journey always makes me think about industry; seeing so much steel all around, the sight of goods trains leaden with cement, coal and petrol, and of course the labourers toiling in the sun.

And the general compartment of this train of thought was... capitalism vs socialism.

We all know that communist Russia failed. And that "communist" china, is not really communist. Kerala too has a pseudo communist government (at least till the next elections). The sudden shift in political legacy is apparent immediately after crossing the border. CITU, KSU, KCU...[26Cx]U - banners, flags, posters and slogans bearing these alphabets adorn every unclaimed wall.

The corporate world (read U.S) has gone to great lengths to demonize the word "communism". The blind belief that communism = evil among many westerners is a pristine example of how easy it is to brain wash millions of people, if one has the position, the power and the opportunity. (Religion being the other example). Today, communism is synonymous with a totalitarian government, curtailed rights and KGB. What most people don't realize, is that communism, when first coined, represented something exactly opposite.

Kerala is plagued by frequent strikes and violent demonstrations. Every tiny issue is aggrandized and senselessly argued upon. The irritating fact is that opposing parties oppose the others opinion, simply to remain opposed! Every union, every association, every party wants the "needs" of their members to be put in front of other's. Any change, any project, any investment can be, and will be fought upon. And I ask, "what has gone wrong here?"

Answer: Rights.

Surprised? :P. Yes, rights. Rights that people of India have. Rights that give people a very sought after delicacy...... called POWER.

What's this? A liberal that condemns people's rights?!

Does that mean I support a totalitarian government and curtailing of rights? Of course not! What I want to say is, power is ALWAYS abused. In Kerala, the people outside the government have power, and they abuse it. In erstwhile U.S.S.R, the people in the government had power, and they abused it. So then, who should have power? The answer, I feel, lies in the power of power. Power has to be made powerless... meaningless. The very idea that someone can HAVE more power than someone else has to be non-existent.

Now you are gonna label me as an anarchist! But, think about it. In a world ruled by anarchy (again I am talking about the common perception of anarchy... think looting and pillaging) there still exists inequality of power. The looters and the pillagers have the strength, the numbers, the power to do as they please. This is again simply a practical demonstration of the statement - "power is always abused".

A world where power is meaningless. But Marx had already thought about such a world. And he named the politics of such a utopian place... communism. And the stepping stone to this world was conceived as socialism. Thing is Mr.Marx, human beings are too young to give up on the idea of power. Your world will remain a dream world, till nature presents a process of selection which favours people who do not NEED power to survive and the idea of power is naturally BRED OUT of the human race.

Arrogance

2010-02-07T19:43:00.003+05:30

Humans are arrogant. At least, they have a notion of what arrogance is, but they always attribute arrogance to individuals, small groups and not often to the entire species.

But it's one of those evolutionary traits. The idea that "we" are the center of the circle is, very motivating, powerful in its ability to drive our instincts to "protect the species".

The events that culminated in the writing of this particular post are in themselves a "bloggable" set. In fact, why don't I do justice to these events and set this post chronologically right.

I was watching Inuyasha (an anime about a half-demon and a human high school girl. (Yes, I watch this stuff :P) ) with the original Japanese audio and English subtitles, when I realized that, while the characters in the show referred to different kinds of demons with different sounding Japaneses names, the subtitles simply showed, "demon". I was quite intrigued by the extend to which demonic mythology had been classified and named in Japanese culture.

So, I headed over to that haven for hypochondriacs, that refuge for information-denied net surfers, that repository of (unconfirmed) human knowledge, wikipedia, and set out on a quest through the dark and mysterious world of Japanese folklore.

Yokai, oni, tanuki, kappa, tengu, kitsune... it all made sense now.

"Oni (鬼?) are creatures from Japanese folklore, variously translated as demons, devils, ogres or trolls. They are popular characters in Japanese art, literature and theatre.

Depictions of oni vary widely but usually portray them as hideous, gigantic creatures with sharp claws, wild hair, and two long horns growing from their heads. They are humanoid for the most part, but occasionally, they are shown with unnatural features such as odd numbers of eyes or extra fingers and toes."

What struck me in the above paragraph was the word "humanoid". It was in no way an unfamiliar word (being that most of the "quests" that I've done have happened in the realm of Azeroth and WoW), but this time it struck a nerve!

Humanoid! Why didnt we call ourselves "Oni-oids", to put it into better perspective for non-anime buffs, why dont we call ourselves chimp-oids, or orangutan-oids. It might seem a very silly argument to blog about, but hey! this is my blog.

It is the arrogance of the human species that is reflected in the fact that, we name other beings with reference to ourselves and not the other way around.

We are but animals, intricate and sublime it may be, but the clockwork of physics and chemistry that make us what we are, are no different from what defines the existence of other species.

Losing my religion

2009-12-31T01:00:00.003+05:30

Yeah... its a good song by REM...

But I had lost my religion long before I first heard this song... :P

I guess it aaaall started one day when my science teacher (4th grade or 3rd?? I dont really remember) taught me that the earth was very very veeeery old, and that it took billions of years for it to "cool down" and become habitable, and then she mentioned something called "evoltions" or was it "ivolution" :P.

I remember a pic of this old dude with a fluffy white beard and simian features giving me the stink-eye from the pages of the text book, which in turn was right on top of this very weird pic of a chimp slowly losing body hair and straightening its back... eventually becoming an unshaven bloke with a club in his hand... (It was funny how each ape-man was mid-stride ... scrupulously covering his privates with his thigh :D)

I went home and questioned my mom...

Me: Ammaa ... wasnt the world created in a week or something... didnt Yahweh create adam from sand and eve from adams lower rib...

Amma: Of course daa... didnt u learn that in Sunday school?

Me: Yeah... but my science teacher said man started to stand up... and not be monkeys or something... and she said the earth didnt have water for billions of years... she is a christian... didnt she learn the bible!

Amma: (she had this look in her eyes, like she wanted to say "I was afraid of this") Umm well ...------ (Amma turns towards my sis... calls for backup...) DIIII SOWMIEEE!

Cheechi: Whaaat!

Amma: Come here! Help me explain ---- (turns bak to me)

Amma and Chechi: (finishing each others sentences) Daaa ... u must understand... the bible is like... a story... its not meant to be taken literally... when it says 7 days... it doesnt LITERALLY mean 7 days! It probably symbolizes how things started and slooowly came to be what it is today.

Me: (To self) Not to be taken literally?? What does that mean? Y is Amma so unsettled by this question? Is she afraid I'm going stop believing in God - be a bad person? Paavam Amma... she's..... wait a minute did she say "probably symbolizes"? Isnt she sure? Does she not believe? That Sunday school teacher taught that people who did not believe in God are not good... they will suffer in hell! No! Amma goes to church every Sunday... She is good... Its ok... Pheew! But am I good? I am questioning the Bible... I know I shouldnt... but... mmm

When I look back upon this tiny little incident NOW, I realize how efficiently "the system" had manipulated a child, molded him, put their ideas in his head and how efficiently they had covered up any leaks in case the child wanted to think outside the box. The manipulating, molding, leak-fixing properties of...

FEAR....

Worst is the leak-fixing... making the child afraid to question what he was taught... drawing a circle around some stories and made-up theories and asking him to be afraid to put a toe outside...

THIS... is were my atheism takes a sour twist and takes on the shades of antitheism....

THE JOB

2009-08-05T09:15:00.002+05:30

This is my first post as a salaried person. Thats right! This free spirit has been shackled in the dungeons of corporate greed. Well, should I say greed? Mmmm... may be not, this company has quite respectable principles.

Nevertheless, it is still a "company", and I do genuinely feel constrained. I guess that is the norm.

Sundeep had shared a cartoon about how each one thinks he is the only one who thinks in a world of job-obsessed "automatons" aka "mindless sheep". I used to think the same way, that I was the only one thinking about anything worth thinking about : the universe, human spirit etc. But now I know, each one is thinking about something, although some may be thinking if Rakhi Sawant is actually gonna marry the winner of a show... Well I wont judge, each one with his/her own ideas of what is important. :D

There are several proverbs in malayalam that highlights the fact that, a human, cannot change his/her underlying uniqueness. Most of them are meant to be derogatory, but I find even those to be positive.

"Naaya nadukadalilum nakkiye kudikkuvollu" -- Even in the middle of the ocean, a dog will still drink by LAPPING the water

This one is meant to be an insult, but... to a dog, its simply a fact, a statement. The dog will probably think... "Well... duuh" and roll his eyes.

Yesterday, I wrote a module to bridge an old intra die communication protocol to a new one. After confirming the waveforms were as expected, I called it a day, and left work. In the lift I started thinking about how we spent so much time trying to mold something old to still be functional with something new, something better. We try to bridge the gap between two very different things, instead of choosing a side! And then I smiled in my head. Shackled and constrained I may be, but, I still remain the same old me. This dog, is still lapping up the water, even in the middle of the ocean. Yeah!

P( 0 < P < 1 ) = 1??

2009-06-24T01:40:00.005+05:30

I have this philosophy that nothing in this universe has a probability of absolute 1 or absolute 0. Doesnt it seem right?? I mean,

P(me suddenly teleporting to mars) != 0
P(u completing reading this sentence) != 1

But, consider this statement.

"Nothing in this universe has a probabilty of 1 or 0."

Now, what is the probability of this statement being true??.....

ie P(0 < P < 1) = ??

If it is 1 then it is 0. :P

That is, if the statement is true, then it is false....

So it must be 0.

Which means there ARE things with P = 1 or P = 0 .... right?? But that seems so wrong! But I just found an example of one!

YTF cant I go to sleep thinking of sheep jumping over fences or some such... why, why, whyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Sights & Sounds

2009-06-19T18:33:00.003+05:30

As I crossed the Karnataka-TN border near Hosur, I started thinking about the futility of trying to remember stuff that I was seeing on the road. Funny writings, sign boards, ads anything that is worth mentioning to yourself in one's alone time. Anyway, by the time I was well into TN territory, I had quite a few sign boards that I wanted to mention on my blog. So, I kept repeating them in my head, adding new ones to the playlist as I saw them.

I think signs like the ones I'm about to mention were designed to kill the enthusiastic adventurer in you ...

1.)

2.) Death is natural.

You shouldnt cause it.

3.) Lane discipline gives long life

4.) Use your eyes. Do not lose them.

The next one was written behind a small van.

5.) Drive carefully. Childrens inside.

Ive forgotten a few.

Oh yea, of course....

"Kottayam 83km"

BRAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEE

CRASSSHHHHHHHHHHH

"Any time now ... that car is gonna run over me.... any time now .........'

"??Where??"

"Ok get up...... woooooo all black :P ...... "

"OUCH!!!"

LOL

Round Molecules

2009-06-05T03:24:00.002+05:30

I see bedsheets crumpled ... the curves which are so difficult to replicate in a painting or sketch... But y? Am I thinking of the nights when I will watch her sleep?? But she has her back turned to me... that cant be a good sign .... hmmm ....

I search, and I search .... cursed with spells of insomnia ... when I feel like dropping down into that vortex of nothingness ... I want to spin and spin .... arms outstretched....

I wish I was schizophrenic ...

"You dont realize you had somethin, until you lose it" ...

What if I do realize what I have. Does that mean I wont lose it? No, it means .. I have already lost it.

LOL, realizing something you have is already lost. I want to laugh out of the agony.

Do I think that looking at shapes in the clouds is cool? I guess I do. Everything is evolutionary though. All that an animal does is based around a few instincts. So what is my instinct? I'm a male of the species. My instincts should all be directing me to procreate. Is that all that I actually, truly feel? All these layers on top of it, simply there to mask it out. But why? Wouldnt it have been more effective if it was just there alone. What is the USE of having so many feelings?

I guess it just is. I am cursed with this consciousness which is forever doomed to THINK. If all of my thoughts, all which I have had, could be erased, I would be free. I would become nothing. This constant buzzzzzzzz is the worst.

What do these things that I 'see' when I close my eyes mean? Why am I seeing a metal device, like a valve, opening its flap downwards. It looks so well machined. Grey.

I can explain everything! Everything! I can always think up a REASON for why something happens. It sucks. It kills the mystery.

What the FUCK was this post about? I dont care for an answer.

Namdroling journey

2009-05-23T08:23:00.003+05:30

A bike gives u an un-paralleled sense of freedom ... and now that I have one, I can capitalize on the "I want to get lost" feeling sometimes...

It was on such a whim that I decided to journey to one of the largest tibetan settlements in India ...Namdroling ....

So that I can remember how much I used to act on whims when I'm older ...

1:45 am : Feeling down and out ...
1:46 am : Remembers Korrapati and Gokul talking abt Tibetan Monastery
1:47 am : Google maps ... "Tibetan Monastery, Karnataka" .... 2 results... "Show all results"..... 60+ results.... most are in a spot near Kushalnagar in south western karnataka....
1:50am : Get directions A: Forum Mall, Bangalore B: Kushalnagar .... distance 239km apprx travel time (by car) 4 hours 18 mins .... oooookkaaaaayyy ....(gulp)
1:52: OK ... set alarm for 5:30am ... draw route on piece of paper....
2:10 am: sleep...
5:35am : Go

Fact : The bangalore-mysore highway is simply AWESOME ... its like ...

Stretch of four lane road in front of campus x n times
Bougainvillae growing on the divider ... cows eating the flowers, thorns, leaves and all ... looooong and winding curves .... banked in places .... 100kmph turns are easy here... Speed bumps are there of course to bring u back down to earth (sometimes quite literally)

Stopped after abt an hour of continous riding to take a few snaps of a jasmine farm ...

Got lost near Mysore ....ended up in Infosys Campus (the grey building DOES look space age)
Fortunately, couple of northi IT professionals were there to point me in the right direction (albeit in choppy english :P)

Having left the famous highway .. I was apprehensive abt the condition of roads the rest of the way ... My fears proved grossly misplaced ... SH88 was just as good as Sh17 (just 2 lanes tho .. 4 wuldav been overkill ... traffic is virtually nonexistant...) .... blazing on I reached my destination in just over 31/2 hours ...

I knew i was in the right place coz every which way .... there were tibetans ...

Took 30 mins more to get to the monastery ... deep in the settlement ....

Of phrases and showers...

2009-04-29T09:02:00.008+05:30

Today morning, when I was having a shower (ok... not a "shower" per say since the shower doesnt work) ... somehow, I ended up thinking abt the cool phrases/sentences that I had seen/heard. Like on previous occassions of my mind wandering to this particular subject, the immediate after-thought was "Ive GOT TO write them down somwer"... and then ofcourse was the picture of me reading them in my l8r life and smiling .... But... as always when this "ghost" of a thought went bak down into the waters... I was thinking "Naaa... I cant carry arnd a diary all the time ... and I frgt these phrases pretty soon after I've "engraved" them in my mind" ...

BUT WAIT!! NOW I HAVE A BLOG!! And this is EXACTLY the reason why I started one!! So that I can write watever... That is wat this post is abt ....

I'll put down anything I remember now ....

"No Cannes do" --- TOI article heading abt some film that didnt make it to Cannes!

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going (home) " --- BREAD "allegedly" a cliched joke in BH4.

Brian from Whose Line is it Anyway playin the dating game while wearing different hats... He is wearing a miner's hat (the one with an attached flash-light)

Brian : "I cant date u bcoz I'm a minor"

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. " -- Upneet's Stat msg ..LOL

"Gr8 example of how too much of a good thing is bad; 'awesome' is good, but 'awful' is bad!!" ------ GWWSIFI2Y

"Congress shows DMK no Karuna" LOLOL -- TOI article on Manmohan refusing DMK more cabinet seats.

11th August 2009
"Do you think movies should try to spread social awareness?" -- SMS poll question on the TV channel ZOOM. Just shows the kind of channel it is... stupid.
.....

.....

I'll keep pushing this sentence down as I add more...

ICHI

2009-04-20T13:45:00.004+05:30

Aaaaahhh .... that feeling. No work, boredome, knowing ur mind is gonna drift off into hostile territory if u stay idle... A hundred thousand uncorrelated things floating around like pale ghosts beneath the surface of a not-so-calm lake that u desperatley wish had more surface tension to prevent their intermittent escapes.

Having accomplished the first thing that I wanted to accomplish with my first blog in the above paragraph (Write something vague and mysterious so that when I and other people read it l8r, I'll come off as a cool person) .... let me move on.

Having accomplished the second thing that I wanted to accomplish with my first blog in the above paragraph (come off as an even more cool person) ... let me move on.

Ok this can go on forever. (is forever correct?? is it for ever?? Darn ghostly shapes!! Go down! Down I say!)

I want to write a para for the person (rather the first post of a person) who imbibed in me a sense of ur-not-living-life-the-carpe-diem-way...

In her post she mentioned about words that held a special charm for her, rhapsody, bougainvillae, quintessence ... and I thought... here's someone who has put down the "carp" that goes one in her head... for wat?? For the simple reason that she felt like doing it. Thank you fatlady... Honestly I had read your first blog entry a couple of months back (butler wanted me to read his, I followed the trail .. thats all)... and I've been thinkin abt starting one ever since... Today I've enf ghosts jumping up from beneath the surface to make a reasonably good post.

What a gr8 feeling when u put ur music player on shuffle and even if the probabilty of ur favourite song being played is inversely proportional to the number of songs in the list.... and still, the lifeless, un-intelligent, robotic, black (0) and white (1) gadget somehow jumps to ur favourite song!! I ended up with a smile on my face and a fleeting feeling of affection for my phone that surpassed the norms of human-machine emotional attachment levels.... as it subtly converted compressed 0's and 1's to Slash's awesome solo

Speaking of human-machine emotional attachments, y is it that I love the life-less piece of metal and plastic that gets me to office on time more than I love most human beings??

musing 1) Is it because it lets me travel without the hassle of public transportation in bangalore... (which involves me having to put one hand on my butt-cheek(s) expecting a sneeky hand down the back pocket)??

musing 2) May be its the 180ccs of fuel-air mixture that is ignited by two spark plugs with ...well ...machine like accuracy and timing...chunking out the raw power that I feel when I open the throttle a quarter of an inch??

musing 3) The times we had... just the two of us... the places we have been to... the sites and sounds we have experienced... the near death experience that we had..??

Prbbly its the 3rd...

The other day, after leaving a boring day at the office, I was speeding along on inner ring road when I saw a host of red lights in the distance... Oh! Im supposed to slow down and stop now! OK... after coming to a stop behind a ferrari-red maruti suzuki swift... I turned off the engine and crossed my arms and squatted into a more comfortable upright position.

Traffic!! Its always the same... A guy on a 220cc with a hot chic on his pillion... an old chap on a bajaj scooter, caught in a desperate balancing act with his accelerator... trying to keep the engine running, IT pro's on everything from a 20 year old yamaha 135 to a BMW/merc-clk, a middle class family in a white maruti 800.... everyone, from the hot chic to the CEO, impatient, cursing, honking....

And I look up... and I see one of the most beeeautiful scenes that nature has to offer... beams of orange-yellow sunlight in the waning hours of day... sneeking out thru rain clouds in the heavens... Ive always found this scene ...divine... other-wordly may b... I lift up my visor and smile ...like a retard... not caring for the fact that the hot chic is prbbly thinking that Im some kinda loon......I take in this little piece of serinity... and a let out a deep.. cleansing ..haaaaaaaaa....HONK!! HONK!! BEEEP!!

Here we go again... as the light switches from yellow to green... I think abt the opportunity for a small moment of peace that was offered to EVERYONE... and felt a little good abt myself for being one of the few who latched on to it! :D

I think I've opened the gates of a dam!! Things I wanna write about keep popping up... In the interest of carpe-diem I'm not gonna stifle the flow... So here goes!!

Damsel(s) in distress
What is it about a girl struggling to do something that can possibly hurt her physically that opens up this.... this.... fountain of care and wanting-to-help in a guy like me?? Most girls are shrewd to know that certain guys have this weakness... and feminine instincts do not let them pass on an opportunity ... and mind u ladies.. we are fully aware of this fact... yet we still end up soldering that piece of PCB... burning our own hands in the process and feeling good about ourselves!! Damn that primitive cerebrum!!

Roja to metallica
That gadget again!! It jumps from "chinna chinna asai" to "MASTER!!" ... changing my mood from open-green-meadows to wacking-guitar-on-floor...

Music... another gr8 mystery... even music follows the laws of mathematics (yeah Im a geek)... But, it has to strike that balance ... not follow it strictly... but follow it well enf to be still explainable with a couple of averaging and median calculations ... "so close no matter how faar" ..vanny!! music explained in one line!!

Sakura at NPL
May be its bcoz fatlady had mentioned extensively in her first post her musings at PS1... May be its bcoz I'm jobless right now at PS2.... watvr ... but, this word "sakura" .... is something that holds a special charm for me (sorry fatlady for plagiarism)

Sakura = japanese for cherry blossoms. When a cherry tree blossoms it sometimes completely covers ALL of the green of leaves ... a perfect blossom!! And they fall down gently like drizzling rain when a breeze blows (my knowledge is based on a couple of jap movies and a handful of anime ok).... and although I never saw one at NPL, Delhi... there was a day there when I realised I wasnt looking hard enf!

Everytime I would encounter a mention of "sakura" in a movie (read Last Samurai) or Anime (read Samurai Champloo) I felt ...well...I donno disappointed mayb... that nothing with that level of beauty and serenity attached to it existed where I lived... (this was like 1.5 months into the 2 month PS1 program) .... yet one fine morning as I was walking along the boulevard leading up to the front doors of NPL... something fell ever so lightly on my head. Hoping that its not the excrements of one of the numerous birds that inhabit the ancient trees, I gently feel what it is that is on top of my head... Turns out to be a petal ... a yellow petal... from a tree that was FULL of yellow petals!! So much yellow that the green of leaves was simply non-existent... and I remember SAKURA!! Although sakura blossoms are rose/pink the sight was just as beautiful... and as a light wind blew ... more of it started "flowing" down .... and I stood ther with my arms a little outstretched in front of me ... looking up... only to be interrupted by a scientist with a wry smirk on his face who passed by and snorted (at me mayb??) Shame on him!!

As I hopped up the stairs to the front doors, I started wondering... where was this tree before?? Why didnt I see it for 1.5 months?? Was it always like that?? Or just today?? As I dug deep into my memories... I realized I simply did not SEE this tree... It was always there .. and since the seasons hadnt changed since I was there, it must have been flowering since the first day I was there... but y 2day?? Answer... I wasnt looking hard enf...

Mayb this is enf... If I write more ... Ill miss my lunch ... and I feel like doing nothing again... so chao

PS: ichi means 1 in jap :P