Falling sick

I've been holed up in my house for more than 3 days now.4 days blacked out of life. My daily activity were reduced to bare minimal - eat, sleep, bathe and web-surf. Thankfully life is returning to normalcy little bit and I worked from home couple of hours today. Hoping to drop by office tomorrow for a while if I feel comfortable.

Falling sick is so irritating. You are held down by your body not by your will. Feeling of helplessness looms and you are at the mercy of imperfect human doctors. I might sound robotic here but that's how I feel about falling sick.

Well, this rings a bell that I should take even more cautions approach towards health and diet. I should not take my immune system for granted. Passing years will not benefit it.

Some post

This is a random post. I was bored and wanted to write. So just posted this.
But now after writing that first sentence I have a topic to write. Randomness. Chance.
It is such a wonderful thing. Although arguably there is nothing truly random. What we see as random is result of complex causal link inexplicable by human knowledge.

"The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair."
--Joker

Anyway, on a different note this morning I developed terrible sore throat and it's getting worse. I think I know what it is because these babies keep coming back. It is funny because yesterday we were talking about flu and how if you have flu in holiday season you can pass it as a special Christmas gift :P
I hope it is not flu. probably because I'm sleeping late these days. I need to reset my sleep cycle at least 2-3 hours early.

UPDATE::
After 2 days it was actually viral flu. I'm down with cold and fever. Fever is gone for most part but I still have terrible sore throat, congestion and cold. It has been two days now. I did not do anything on weekend and also missed work on Monday. Let's see how much more it takes. I was also supposed to go to a family dinner for X-mas but now it seems unlikely that will make it. Flu sucks :(

Quote of the day

Quote of the day:

"Sometimes I just stay in office late because I don't know what to do if I get off early."

Quite lame... :\ I know.

My laptop has been giving me problems lately. For some reason the screen just goes black pseudo-randomly with the CPU running intact. I tried to find the solution and it seems like the graphics driver is problem. Whenever it tries to use video acceleration the screens shuts off. I tried to fix in by re installing different operating system(s) but it gives the same problem with linux mint and ubuntu.
CentOS  7 could not connect to wifi so I can't test there. I had pretty good run with ubuntu but it just doesn't seem to work now!
Finally I decided to get a new one and ordered a Lenovo. And a 23" monitor.

On Life and Death

As we live on earth we see it full of life all around. Sometimes when you stop noticing it life will brush against you and show its omnipresence. So will death.

Death is as much a reality as is life. Yesterday I wished an old friend on birthday and the email reply was "Saurabh my father passed away on 1st December". It took me a while to comprehend and think of what to reply. I cannot imagine how my friend will be feeling at this point and whether there is anything I can say to make feel better. I am very bad at handling such situation. If I remind death is reality of life that would just seem harsh statement. I cannot ask them to forget their loved ones. I cannot make them stop being sad by cracking jokes. All I can do is just talk to them and offer my help if any.

I cannot stop wondering how sometimes facing death would let us appreciate our lives and how much we should be thankful just to live to see another day. It comes as a stark reminder of how futile our attempts at so called future planning may be. And how our sense of 'ownership' of things we 'own' is more ephemeral than we thought. As they say - Kafan mein jeb nahi hoti (Shrouds do not have pockets).
So the eternal truth still remains that all things must pass. A while ago I posted something after my cousin died and I can't help but re-write the same thing:

"Only certainty in the life of one that has been born is death. All other events have only finite probability of occurrence"

Thanks

We usually have potluck at my place for thanksgiving every year but this year was different. It was a feast. Thanks to my hosts in Chicago. It was a real treat for a dinner lasting several hours with wonderful people from all over the world. I would never forget it.

I worked a lot to make it to my APS presentation. I have that little feeling of accomplishment even though it doesn't signify much. I also finished a small painting. It's a simple one but it's a start.

This seemed like a break in such a long time. Including the trip to SF trip it was almost a week out of office and now I'm finding hard to concentrate. But I have no choice but to get back to work as soon as I can gather my focus back which has to be very soon! I have some year end self-targets to meet. So here is what Robert Frost would like to say about my situation:

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep.

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep."