Necker Cubicle

I was not so active in blogging for quite some time and the popular rumor that it is because I have got a life now, is completely false. I am as lifeless as always.  For people who have read my earlier blog posts would know how difficult it was for me to deal with girls in high school. It was similar to Raj from The Big Bang Theory. My first break through with a girl happened just after tenth standard. I received a letter from one of my classmates after tenth. I was not really surprised; I always believed in the power of silence!

Soon after the Board exam results I received a letter from Afsna Moosa. The content of the letter was simple; congratulating me on the results and attaching her mailing address and an offer to continue as pen friends (e-mails were an expensive way of communication those days). And I went, “Oh she has a crush on me!” The letter (crush!) made sense as Afsna was also a quiet girl and she never talked to guys (or never had the nerve to). So, it was natural that she found me interesting (like poles attract or something like that). Of course, I preferred a letter from Ziuna but a bird in hand is worthier than a better bird in the bush! (Ziuna is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen and she was my classmate)

My life became hell when my dad and brother found out about the letter. They made fun of me referring Afsna as my girlfriend. She was a fat girl with big glasses and I did not want her to be called as my girlfriend. And to show that the letter means nothing to me I threw it in the garbage! (ya ya..  i was an asshole).  The next two years, 11^th and 12^th, were too hectic and I never thought of Afsna (there were Preethy, Lakshmi and Nalini to think about).

Years later, during my second year B-Tech days, randomly one day in Mens Hostel, we started sharing our experiences in the domain of “Love”. There were experts with first HAND experiences with schoolmates, aunties and maids who made the hair in our hands stand up and dance like Hrithik Roshan. Then there were the prophets of true love who were still crying about the lost love from fourth standard. But most of the guys were pathetic, who only had left hand experiences to share. The conversations somehow reminded me about the letter of Afsna and I decided to get in touch with her.

I tried everything for the next couple of months to get some contact of Afsna Moosa. But nobody knew her details. She was not in Orkut (it is an ancient social networking technology which was used mostly by Indians and Brazilians), none of my schoolmates knew her number and the original copy of the letter was destroyed. The motivating factor was the feeling that there exists a girl who has a crush on me. I was sure that I wouldn’t reciprocate with the same feelings but what is wrong in talking (cough cough.. flirting).

Centuries passed and couple of months back I saw Afsna Moosa in the suggested friends list of Facebook! I immediately friend-ed her and noticed that she was married. I was excited to find her online and she accepted the friend request immediately. We chatted for 30-40 minutes and there were lots of catching up. I was expecting her to ask about the letter and why didn’t I reply. But it seemed like she has completely forgotten about it. After around 30 minutes I decided to bring up the topic myself by saying that I lost her letter while shifting and lost the address. And she replied, “Which letter?” I was stunned. I reminded her about the letter and she said, “Oh, I sent letters to everyone in the class and none of them replied.” That was it. The girl whom I thought had a crush on me crushed the 10 year old myth out of me! Life is unfair!

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I believe that there is God! Manu Joseph had written an application to Vatican for the post of Pope in the latest issue of Open Magazine. Minutes after reading the article, I got a pingback message from a blog! A blog which reviews latest news (!?) has hyperlinked my previous article. They were writing about Manu Joseph’s job application and hyperlinked my review on “Illicit happiness of other people”. And guess what they linked my blog article to - “JESUS CHRIST”. Thus, my divineness is exposed once again (hyperlinks can be considered as modern day revelations, can’t we? Its just information without a physical body or presence of information in various physical bodies :-/).

PS: Readers who address me with “Oh Lord”, will get special mentioning during my dinner with Father.

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Serious Men, by Manu Joseph was one of the most interesting novels I have read. Just when I finished the book, couple of months back, his second book got released. My friend, Nirnaya, gifted me the book “Illicit happiness of other people”, last week and I finished reading it today.

Set in 1990 Madras, the story is about the quest of a journalist, Ousep Chacko, in search of the reason to his cartoonist son’s (Unni Chacko) suicide.  A major section of the book deals with Ouesep’s attempts to untangle the riddle named Unni (and his death), through his friends and cartoons. After all the Holmsian thrills, the story ends with an amazing twist.

The book is very entertaining with hilarious random events, crazy characters, funny but thought provoking ideas and events that you can relate to. Manu Joseph draws the picture of 1990 Madras fantastically. The irreverence towards religion is presented in such a humorous way that even my deacon roommate finds it funny.  An excerpt from the book goes like this

The strongest booze in the world is found in Kerala. It is called “Missiyah” (Jesus Christ). You’ll rise only on the third day!

One interesting thing I noticed about the story is its similarity with the malayalam movie Kadhavasheshan. The main plot of a curious person trying to figure out the mystery of a suicide is the same. I even think that one can draw some parallels between the way people discuss about the dead friend(in the movie and the book). Unni (from the book) and Gopinath Menon(from the movie) are similar in a way. Both of them are different from the rest of their types. Gopinath Menon is touched by human suffering and Unni by human behavior! Anyways, the similarity with the movie has not diminished my reading experience with the book. I will definitely recommend this book (And his first book, Serious Men).

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One of the milestones as a Ph.D. student is to clear your qualifying your examination. In our University we have to clear it within first two years. It is basically letting the school know that you have identified a problem in the literature and it is worth spending time, trying to solve it. It is an important milestone because your stipend will be held if you have not completed the exam. Anyhow, I cleared the exam and the school thinks that it is not completely out of their interest to retain me here..

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Every semester we end up having some undergrad students joining us to do their final year project. It is such a pain to discuss computer science with most of them. Pramode Sir, tussi great ho, for doing this (taking the infinite stupidity from students) year after year. I am surprised by the ignorance of final year computer science/engineering students. Some instances,

1. Have not heard of lex or yacc.

2. Compilation is the process of pressing the “build” button. Thinks that c program runs in its raw form in the processor.

3. Surprised when told that jmp instruction has different opcode values based on the type of jump.

4. Thinks you can add assembly instructions in C-program (no, he is not talking about inline assembly)

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Lately, some of my path breaking ideas have been copied by some stupid American sitcoms and I have no way to prove that the ideas originated from the best brain of this millennium. So, I decided I will start posting all the innovative ideas I have, in areas I have no clue about (of course, it includes computer science), here in my blog (where else?).

Alien generator:

This is a futuristic device. Anyone who wants to make this, have to wait till they solve the mystery called TIME. Once the faster than light (or FTL as they say in Battlestar Gallactica) travel is achieved, when traveling through space and time is something like cycling to the stationery store for a maggi, this can be made.

According to SETI, we now know that there are around 1235 earth like planets in the Universe. Definitely, once the time machine is made, we can go to these planets looking for aliens. Don’t worry if we end up not finding any, that is when the alien generator comes into picture.

Alien generator transports micro organisms to these planets, 5 billion years back in time. And BANG!! Go back to all these planets and you’ll be surprised to see what evolution can do!

Controlled Schizophrenia:

Psychological disorders, as they are called, in most of the cases are not disorders. They are just different from others. I will say the current method of curing the patient out of it is bogus!! Instead, we should find how to make use of that state. Teaching the patient about his disease, or I will say ‘power’, and how to control it completely like any other emotion in our brain will be revolutionary.

Let us take Schizophrenia. A schizophrenic patient experiences hallucinations and delusions. She starts hearing voices and seeing people. Agree or not, humans love hallucinations; look at the amount of drugs and alcohol taken, the success of harry potter. If you are still not convinced then look at the existence and thriving of religion. So, assume, one can control his state of schizophrenia. This means he can get hallucinated at his wish. Isn’t that great? You are waiting in a queue for hours and there is ” The Beatles” around you singing just for you. It is as real as anything else for you and no one else will even know!

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This is the best birthday card I ever had!

From MIsc

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When Ram asked if I am interested in visiting Mcritchie reservoir, he gave me the impression that its a small walk around a pond and I said yes. Bloody heck, a reservoir is huge!! We had to walk 10kms around the reservoir, and I was not prepared for that. I was wearing a jeans pants and a full sleeves t-shirt! Anyhow, I was clueless about the kayaking plan after the walk and to be frank I was not that much interested. See, anything that wears out my energy is something that does not appeals me. But I agreed to do it as everyone else was planning to and I should admit that it was an awesome experience. A short summary.

1. I fell into the water (actually jumped into it, so as to raise the spirits of other fellow paddlers)

2. Paddling was not as hard as I thought it was.

3. My partner had previous kayaking experience and gave me a crash course in kayaking.

4. Even though I was the only one dripping in water when we started, by the end everyone got wet. Thanks to Ram for splashing water on everyone

From MIsc

P.S. Why do people think that I have some paddling experience because I come from Kerala ? Yes, We have backwaters in Kerala. We have coconut trees too, I don’t know how to climb those.

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I was at a girl’s place yesterday at 4 am, not sleeping, making her scream for God. Before your nasty minds mend stuffs, let me make it clear; I was debating a girl about religion. It started by around 12 midnight . The funny thing about religious people are that everyone of them have their own set of crazy ideas and their own custom made religion. So, even though you hear the same old arguments there will always be a couple of new crazy ideas.

The night can be summarized as follows:

Evolution of her thoughts on “mind” during the argument

Mind exists (not just brain) -> Brain is the root of mind -> Mind is just a subset of brain and I started with that view (!!)

Her views on God

I am 100% sure about my God -> I respect others believes -> Saibaba may be God!

Her prediction about me and my response

She predicted that I will turn to God one day, during the times of fear and the example she quoted was my son having a terrible disease (what an elegant way to sell her religion :P). And I made her agree that she might turn to Saibaba one day even though she is convinced that Saibaba is a fraud.

The sad part

She does not realize that when she stands for A and also for not A in a duration of one minute, she is loosing the argument.

PS: The heading of the post is from one of the talks of Christopher Hitchens.

It will happen to all of us, that at some point you get tapped on the shoulder and told, not just that the party’s over, but slightly worse: the party’s going on — but you have to leave. And it’s going on without you. That’s the reflection that I think most upsets people about their demise. All right, then, because it might make us feel better, let’s pretend the opposite. Instead, you’ll get tapped on the shoulder and told, Great news: this party’s going on forever – and you can’t leave. You’ve got to stay; the boss says so. And he also insists that you have a good time.

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This is the third time this week that I am sitting to write a blog. Last two times, I thought, “If I am writing something, why not finish the conference paper than the blog article”. That was the evil side of my brain talking; here I am at the end of the week with an incomplete conference paper and no blog article.

The last blog was a depressing one and I don’t want the person who visits my blog the most (namely me) to see it every time he visits the blog. Hence, this article. I am not sure if I told you guys that I started going for Yoga.

So, after successfully dropping gym, swimming, jogging, badminton and archery, yoga is the latest activity. I am sure it will be joining the club of “droppers” soon but this time it wont hurt much as it is completely free. Can you believe it? FREE. Yoga is something which sells like Kim Kardashian’s tape (or hot pancakes for the innocent souls) in a first world country, everyone wants to learn it, and here is this group which teaches it for free.

The group is called Nikam Guruji Yoga Kutir, and they have 13 centers in Singapore and all the instructors are volunteers. The center was started in Singapore by one of the students of Nikam Guruji sometime back in 1990’s. The second good thing about this group is that they don’t bring in the spirituality myths too much during the class. That was a complete disappointment for my friend who thought he can levitate by yoga. He stopped soon after hurting his neck trying to stand upside down (sheersaasan). In Malayalam we have a  proverb, irunnittu kalu neetanam, which means sit before you stretch your legs. This friend of mine, who is also a mallu took it literally and stretched his legs upside down after sitting!! Since I understood the proverb properly, I decided to train myself to sit properly before I stretch.

That’s all for now. Will catch you up with more sprain stories soon!

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