Home alone

The time has passed quickly after we got back from Chicago. All the mates who share apartment with me are gone for the break and I'm home alone! Living alone, cooking alone. :(
Although it can be argued that I am not among the extrovert living beings, I am more used to seeing people around me.
Not much to get started till 10th, the day we start the lab group meetings. I am not very sure of how long I will stay in the group but I will have to go to the meetings anyway.
When you chose advisor what is more important? What are you working in or who are you working with? Obviously second question will haunt you to desperation if you ignore it.

Btw since it is new year new year wishes to all of you. Although there was nothing new this new year

Cold

Caught cold in the windy city. Fever is okay now. But still having some throat infection. The medicines are of no use. Even the doc said I'll have to endure for 3-5 days. Just sitting idle at home.

End of it

Finally the eleventh semester of life and first at UMN has ended. With only 2 courses at stakes it was not very difficult that way. But I had other things to worry about and those things did not end the way I would have liked them to end. In fact they did not end with me failing to pass the oral qualifying exam. I am taking it again next semester. I seriously don't know what more is left for me to prepare for the content of the exam. May be I will change the subjects this time and study something new instead of repeating old stuff. And may be practice thinking-on-your-feet. Answering on paper and on blackboard in front of people can be very different things.

Anyways that was the end of it. Good or bad. All things must pass. I will do whatever best I can next time. And also I will be TA for two of the courses and no research work next semester as direct repercussion of the above result. But that might be a blessing in disguise. How? I don't know. Just waiting for next semester to end. And let some haze clear out.

Anyways that was it. It has ended. And the next one has not yet begun. Caught between the semester tomorrow is a nice day for roadtrip to Chicago with 4 other guys. Starting in the morning and then coming four days later. I seriously don't know what are we going to do this many days. Chicago might not be worth 3/4 days of visit. But going with a group so let it be. Accidentally I will be in Chicago during Christmas which is a big day in USA. Until I return I will not write so Merry Christmas people. Folks in Minneapolis are disappointed that it is going to be non-white xmas this time. Thankfully it hasn't snowed much yet here.

Last days

It is last few days of the semester. Everybody seems to be looking for the vacations. What have I to look for? An exam on Tuesday and then cookie exchange party with the lab group members. I am not sure what to expect from next semester. Or the coming break. I so desperately wanna nail the final day on Tuesday. But thereafter? Oh and I have a question. Can I bring along cake instead of cookies in the cookie exchange? Cake is a lot easier to make.

Poster & suicides

Today I had a poster presentation and it was not as bad as I thought it would do. Team of 4 we did not start off on time but then slogged a bit in the end to reach there. It was not outstanding but it looked more than over-a-weekend project. As a matter of fact we worked quite more than over-a-weekend.
The results although wrong looked feasible :).

I am reading this report on suicides at IITK. I will post a comment by Director Prof. Dhande: "We are all very concerned about what is happening. Though there are number of factors that are responsible for academically linked suicides at IITs, these can be curbed by systemic reforms. The council is not an insensitive body and I am sure some of these reforms will come up for discussion at the meeting." And now here are some of the suggestions by different fact finding committees setup after each suicides: "replace ceiling fans with pedestal fans in hostel rooms, eliminate single rooms from hostel, jam the cell phones or slow down internet speed."

Suicide rate at IITK is 10 times the average of suicides rate in north India. Also a peculiar thing about the state-wise suicide rate is that the southern supposed more educated and well-off states have much higher suicide rates than norther 'poor' states UP, Bihar. So, statistically speaking, if you want to live DONT STUDY!

Down but not out

Im down but not out. Failing the exam once seems difficult to bear partly because I am not conditioned to handle academic failures. Things have become a little bit complicated but I will sort it out. Only thing that I did not expect was the kind of support from my advisor. It does not help when hours before exam your advisor says that you do not have understanding of subject and (s)he is uncertain of supporting you.
It's just a bad phase which I will get over.

peom

लहरों से डर कर नौका पार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती।

Im getting kind of used to the winter way of life. It is not as bad as I thought it to be. Although there is awefull lot of the same is left. Five months of snowy winter ahead!
We already had one snowfall and expecting next one soon. Im using bus instead of bike in the chill. We did our last biking tour on Thanksgiving Thursday. It was fun. Three of us on 23 mile ride. And the bagels with egg. Yumm!

[Updated profile]

Thanksging

Arguably second most celebrated festival in US of A. It's about giving thanks to everybody. So here I go. Thank you Mom and Dad. Thank you God. Thank you all my lovely friends.

We have 2 days in semester holiday (which is scarce in this country) and don't have nothing much to do with them. Although I would have liked to go out somewhere but I didn't. Partly because of the big exams Monday and rest of the week and partly because I don't know how to drive. :)

It is a funny world. You don't know where it is headed but still you have one of your own. I too have a world of my own.

I dont wanna publish this but I will. Just for the fun of it.

In praise of idleness

In the shaky economic conditions around the world, with occupy movements everywhere and wars for power in many nations, it would be nice to reflect on this essay by Bertrand Russell. I read it today. One can only wonder how wonderfully has he argued in favour of idleness. The starting first few paras seem to be on lighter note and take you into hilarious state. And then he starts talking about how, although funny, these things about leisure and work make sense to compare. And just when you are enchanted by the flow of sequentially convincing arguments he will sneakingly pass a statement somewhere that modern machinery after industrial revolution have made it possible for us to do less work, which was something I could not buy. But as he explains his case well to justify the statement if you are flexible on your definition of 'work'. His example of manufacture of pins is presented very well. Although it doesn't work that simple. And the reason is that we haven't let it
The last para concludes that if we learn from idleness then how wars can be prevented because then all of us will have plenty besides the face that lazy people will not be willing to fight :D. He talks about war more than once in the whole essay which is understandable considering the timing of the article; it was published between the two World Wars. All I want to say that it is a very nice read and his discussion of work vs. leisure fits very well in today's society where the 'work' is virtue-ed too much and 'leisure' is considered to be bad for ones life. I can make the above statement with authority because I have worked in corporate for a year and most of my friends are still there. I will quote few lines from the text and hope it serves as a motivation to read the full text. Even if you get bored and dont read full text read the first few pages because they serve as humour and the last few pages because you need it.

'I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man's noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.'

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.

The notion that the desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made everything topsy-turvy.

Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad.

[Find full text: pdf version, html version]

It has been close to a year since I started this whole writing-on-me business. The post in retrospection looks so apt. I how I feel some stuff when I think of what I felt at a later time. Does that happen to most of us? May be if I'm not a unique, endangered human species, which in all probability I am not.

Cometh the winter

The big exams are around the corner and I seem to have dropped back in the preparations it seems. Anyways I have a weekend. Hopefully I can use saturday and then go biking on Sunday. Probably the last biking tour of season before Minnesota gets buried in 'the white'. The wind outside has started to kill. Winter chill is setting in. Forecasts say that 11 Nov will be the first snow. Oh how I hate the winter but now there is no choice. Biking on the snow can be killer. Waiting on bus stops is so damn bad. The bright side is there will be ice for skiing. May be Sunday will change from cycling day to skiing day in the coming months :). Welcome to the infamous Minnesota winter.

On Thursday (was): A birthday treat from a friend and Malaysian cuisine! \m/

Hard way

Some times I like to do it the hard way. There is no reason for it. Is it okay to do it sometimes? I dont know. It really pushes you to the brink sometimes to the limits of frustrations. But somehow it seems ok when you wind up everything and what they call connect-the-dots.

Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali to all of you. Hope you guys are celebrating this day live-on not video-conf.
Ate a lot of cookies in the department seminar today in the name of Diwali sweets. But to my good I have befriended a very nice guy who knows to cook all kinds of sweets on his own. So I got one full sweet box tonight. I am obliged to him for innumerable times he has offered pineapple halwa, sweets, cakes.

You can get ankle sprain while jogging, running, playing and so on. Did someone ever get ankle sprain while studying? I did yesterday when I was studying for exam and having an apple for breakfast. The trash can was some stairs up and with the book in one hand and apple core in another fell down the stairs somewhat. Slight ankle sprain. Not much

exam

How does it feel when you fall behind in schedule. It feels like not to make scheduled task ever. Whatever. I need heads out of computer and heads-in on books. So much to plan. So little to turn out. How could I change!

I had exam after almost 2 years. Two months shy of two years. But it was good. The exam. Not me in the exam. 2 out of three questions.

Finally after much hunting and speculating I have my advisor and research topic in place. I will be working on thermochemical reactors to produce fuels from Solar energy. I hope we make this technology work some day and make it cheap. I am fed up with oil debate of all kinds.

Bar

Bar in America = Railway platform in India.
Except with a lot of sleaze. Or with a lot of 'freedom' in an another perspective which lot of us would like to have. Interestingly they call them The Library. Best trick for teetotallers that I learnt online and which matches my taste was to ask the bartender for 'non-alcoholic non-carbonated drink'. And the closest I got was lemonade which happened to be carbonated. And it did not match my taste for sure. No mock-tails, no soft-drink in the menu. Heck! Wrong bar for starters!
I liked it for the same reason as I like train journey. It is so rare to see crowded places in USA. When I recall my initial days, it would look like Section 144 in our place. This is the second time I saw this large crowd in this country. (First was in the state fair). After an initial interval T it became more monotonous than lively. So I was kind of bored and enjoying both. And sleepy too. So teetotallers should not go to bars or should not stay after time T.

On an unrelated note Rahul Dravid said in an HT interview: "I try not doing things that I’m not comfortable with."

Very well said

“If you are never scared, embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take chances”


"If you have embarrassed yourself and are going to laugh about it someday, you might as well start today.”

Busy living

Four weeks pass by quietly since the semester started. Did nothing much really. Attended all the lectures.
I will tell you what. I wrote that previous line last few weeks and then stopped writing. Now again only changed two to three, then four. I didn't mean to change it to four.

Two bike trips, as many movies in theater (at University), a lot many assignments. Suddenly lots of things are happening. It is good to get busy living. Better than having nothing to do. I've also bought a new squash racquet and pair of shoes. Saturday is squash day. Meanwhile studying a lot too. And watched a movie named Dasvidaniya, which reminded me of my own list at 43things.com.

Eleventh one

I had half a score of them already. And it's yet another academic semester of life. This one is towards the so called highest level of education. At the time of writing I feel that I am among the very few opportune people who have a chance to reach this level. What percentage of people back in our country get to go to high school? and then undergrad school? and then grad school? And then another grad school?

Anyways, the point is I am studying it bit too far :D. The semester has only started and I feel like its going to be hectic workload. Professors here have the habit of giving non-copy-able assignments every week. And coming with master's degree I am supposed to take oral pre-Ph.D. exams right in first semester which means November end! So its 3 more subjects for orals.

So far the start seems good. Haven't started studying much :) Place is very campus like. Like the one I had been previously. But unlike in many aspects. Lots of bars and drunkards around. A walk to campus from my home on friday or saturday night tells the tale. A particular Saturday night while returning from university, two un-shyly dressed, drunk girls proceeded towards us and mumbled something. We were waiting for walk signal at lights. Luckily we got the pass just then and started walking hurriedly. Recollecting, they were asking 'Is chilly billy open tonight'? Chilly billy is half blocks from university main entrance. Anyways the point is there are many drunkards around. And they love to throw bear bottles from the cars. So we have punctured tyres following week. So you see being rich doesn't solve the problems. It only changes your problems.