Infatuated

It has been a while, but I still remember the days I spent with her. The excitement and expectation before meeting her every single time. The general longing for that extra time, that extra few hours, minutes, seconds, when I would have to leave her. It has been a while, but I still remember her, long for her. And when I see her with another man, somehow, I do not feel jealous of the other man, but just really miss her.......

To be honest, it was no first-sight-romance. I really did not want to go to the place where I first met her. I just thought it was too expensive and not the kind of place I generally hang out at. But my friends convinced me, and so I did. As it turned out, this place required a dress code, so I had to suit up. I personally feel dress codes are just a way of discriminating against people on the basis of their taste, but thats a different discussion. But so I donned a suit. And after I got in, I met her. At first I was not impressed. And she would just keep blowing me off. So I would just ignore her and hang around. But once in a while she would just tease me: eye contacts, a slight smile when she looked at me, and I would dive right in. She would keep tossing me all over the place. At one point, I just got fed up and asked her why she was being such a bitch and would not give me a chance. I think I heard her say "patience boy, patience". "Patience, huh", I thought, "well why not." When I had to leave, I said goodbye to her. Somehow, I did get a way to get in touch with her again. It is at that point that I decided that I would like to see her again.

I knew where I would find her, so I just went to meet her again. I had a good feeling about it, everything was perfect, the timing, the situation everything. But, she just wouldn't show. I waited for a while. Spent most of the time bull-shitting with my friends, all the while, keeping an eye out for her. There were moments when I thought I saw her, but you know how these moments end. That day, I just decided to head back, but was more determined that before to see her again. And I did.

Oh I remember that day. Very well. I went looking for her, and yeah, she was there. That day, the whole place was rocking, everybody dancing and playing around. I saw her, but even getting to her was tougher than I expected. It took some time and a lot of pushes and shoves, but I did make it to her. And instead wasting a single moment, I just grabbed her hand, took her to the dance floor, and let ourselves loose. And somehow everything fell into place. The matching moves, the thrilling speed, the rush, it was awesome. Then the song ended. But the night did not. That night seemed like those people on TVs talk about. There were other girls hitting on me. I would flirt with some, play around with some, and crash and burn with some others. But I would always keep looking for her, the girl, who gave me a chance to feel the passion in her. Sometimes it would be hard to keep up with her, but that did not stop me from trying. By the end of the day, I really did not want to leave. But she was getting tired and so was I. And we said our goodbyes.

You can imagine how things went from there. The infatuation, the craving when you are not together, the being-all-over-each-other when you are. The annoyed friends who are fed up of waiting for that extra five minutes when you could be together. The five minutes which would then become ten and result in an ultimatum of having to walk back home. You know how it goes. This is the annoying part of the relationship - annoying to everybody else but you. I rather not get into anymore details.

But that had to end. And end it did. I had to leave town. And I told her that. The last day I saw her, you could tell she was definitely not pleased. I hoped for her mood to pick up. I managed to get a couple of smiles out of her, but those did not last long. Not long enough for either of us to have some fun. I had no other option but to leave town, and I was hoping she would understand. But if hopes were pennies, poor men would be millionaires. So I said my goodbye. With no promises of staying in touch, of meeting again in six months, nothing. Just a goodbye.

But I still remember her. The times we had. And I know we will meet again sometime. But until then, I will just feel bad seeing her flirt with others, having completely forgotten about me. I will just keep remembering her 4-5 foot high 50F waves behind me while I am paddling frantically to catch a ride on one of them back to the shore.

Sweet Disposition

"Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think."

- Emma Goldman

I feel like I have made the same mistake. I was too eager to condemn the current state of affairs, the fickleness of the current human nature, mis-utilization of all that is available to us. I guess I was trying to feel good about myself by showing that most around me are plain dumb. But come to think of it, as a society, human have nothing but progressed.

We have phones more powerful than the computer that took man to the moon for the first time. We have come so far from the medieval ages, where the most common job was war and conquest and hence death and disease for even the meager luxuries, to now when we live with hundred-fold more luxury by just working at a job which just requires us to sit on a comfortable (sometimes customized lumbar-support-whole-shebang) chair and look at a small screen and push paper around. Most (at least in the developed and developing world, we are getting to there, albeit slowly) can provide for our family without having to kill, pillage or rob. We, as a species, have progressed so much. For the times when conquest and colonies were common occurrences to now where the people of Tunisia brought down the 23-year old reign of a dictator to give power to the people and get real freedom. If you think about it, the current situation in Tunisia is the kind of inspirational stories which make you hopeful in the otherwise usually-facepalm-inducing stupid-stuff-people(mostly men)-do chronicles of human history. (Sometimes I feel I should start adding references to these post but its just too much work for lazy-me).

But that said, to be honest, Tunisia will now invariably go through a stage of political turmoil while the world watches. And it is hard to decide how anybody should intervene if they should in the first place. Take the case of Cote d'Ivoire where the UN and a coalition of African nations are trying to facilitate a peaceful transition of power (from the current president who does not want to give up his position to the new one who is supposedly won the latest election and hence has been put under house arrest by the current president - the details are still sketchy, please read the story at a reliable news source). But on one hand, parts of the population is pleading the world for help, a counter propaganda is going on which claims that it is a French conspiracy which wants someone in power who can be a puppet to the French government and let France take advantage of the resources of Cote d'Ivoire. Although at first sight, this does seem like a bunch of bullocks, I would not be surprised if there was some amount of truth in it. So what is the best way to deal with the issue of helping a country - how, how much, when do you stop helping, how you stop,..., so many issues. Once you poke your hand, it might be a very sticky situation.

As is apparent, I have been listening to the news lately. And since nothing much has been happening in my life (other than the usual), I do what I like best. Giving my opinion about everything I have heard. But during this flow of information into my head, I came across a story which really made me happy. It was about how Brazil (the now 5th largest economy, one of the largest democracy, overall emerging world player) was on the brink of economic collapse with 40-50% per month only a couple of decades ago and was saved by this bunch of 4 guys. And the most amazing thing about the story to me was that this was a group who were in graduate school together and came up with the idea when they were all doing their Ph.D. And this idea pretty much saved Brazil. So moral of the story to me - Ph.D.s save the day. People who say that doing a Ph.D. is useless can suck it! Although, if you think about it objectively, where else could the idea have come from? Most finance ministers are not economists themselves. They function with their posse of smart people.

Enough said, I am just happy to be living in a time when I can hide in the womb of graduate school and still feel good about myself and garner respect from others. People will always do stupid things, I just need to learn that for every person doing something stupid, there are more people not doing that stupid thing, and as a species, we are doing lesser and lesser stupid things.

Hope floats (fueled by Radiohead)

I am an optimist, or used to be. But I feel my faith is being questioned. At least in one of the things I believe in. I was (note the past tense) a firm believer that people are good by default. That everybody wants the greater good - that on a flat playing field, with nothing much at stake, people would chose to do something which would benefit others and themselves (maybe in the short term, maybe in the long run). Or even sacrifice something small and insignificant to do something for others. Given what is at stake is not that big. I used to believe that people chose to be selfish only when they are given a choice between themselves and others, and the thing at stake is something significant (while writing this, I realized that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy and the folly of my initial belief in people). I have come to realize that people would always be selfish.

I do not claim to say that something is always right or wrong, but given a particular set of circumstances and enough knowledge*, and a set of choices, you can always figure out the best choice with a certain amount of surety. It is like an optimization problem in mathematics where your circumstances are the known rules and lemmas of mathematics, set of choices are the constraints on variables on which you are trying to optimize. The knowledge can be analogous to the gradient information of the functions involved in the optimization problem. The best choice is the one which gives you the optimum. But while I was writing this analogy, I realized I have managed to refute the very point I was trying to make. I was trying to make the point is that all sentient, reasonable and knowledgeable human beings, we can always make the best choice (because there is one best choice). And I was trying to make it analogous with the optimum in any optimization problem. But in practice, optimization problems are really hard to solve. And even if you solve it, you can not say if its the best possible choice (or that nothing better exists). Only a very simplified version can be solved relatively easily and something can be said about the optimum. So a common way of solving other kinds of problems is to approximate the original problem with this simplified form (and this somehow suffices in some cases). And so I have come to realize that there is no one best choice in some cases, and sometimes we (human beings) approximate the given situation to something overly simple and then make the "best" choice. So screw this analogy.

The point I was trying to make is that in most situation, we know what is the "right" thing to do. But as human beings, we choose to be utterly selfish or just plain dumb. And over the last few days, I have come to realize that most people are selfish (not a surprise), effing stupid, utterly fickle and I hate them. This does not mean I am going to get myself a gun and start firing in a grocery store (not that there are enough bullets to take out every stupid person and in the end I would have to take myself out as well). This feeling of hatred implies that either I am jealous of them or feel superior to them and that I always do the "right" thing (for example, this second point is what I feel is the cause of strife between religions of uncannily similar origins like Islam, Christianity and Judaism). But its neither of them. This feeling of hatred is not so much like the feeling between two parties. I hate people for what the world has become. And it is the people in it that have caused it. As V from V for Vendetta put it,

"How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

Now to what is wrong with the world. I will explain what it is, but first I will try to list somethings which I do not consider to problems for the world (or even a country):

1. Increasing unemployment, increasing government control and "the overly liberal movement" is not taking the country of USA through "its darkest time in history". Obama is not a messenger of death, neither was George W. Bush and nobody deserves a Hitler mustache. Hitler was one. Anyone in the presidency of US who could come close to Hitler would be Andrew Jackson (read Trail of tears). But the funny thing is that the people of the country (or who claimed to be the people of the country but were all immigrants) considered this migration of the 'savages' (the true people of the country later known as the USA) a great victory for Jackson. He is put on stamps and coins, nobody draws a Hitler mustache on his face. Actually I should not have ventured into the amount of hypocrisies present in this country. This is a topic of a complete post in itself. But what I am trying to say is that this is not a "dark period" for this country. If you want capitalism to play(and hence less/no government control over the economy), you cannot hold the government responsible for the unemployment rates or economy.
2. The strife in the Middle East - it is just a gang war between two religions over which gang gets a particular hood to hang out in. And all the religious reasons are prehistoric and easily insignificant to a sane individual not biased by religious people. he only reason no body is probably giving up is because the other one wouldn't - no better than a sibling strife over a toy! This issue cannot and will not be solved until the real problem of the world is solved.
3. There are many more examples - but I want to get on with the point I was trying to make

The problem with us is (its kind of hard for me to put it in words) this loss of perspective. This lack of proper prioritizing (so to speak). This habit of believing what you see most people do just because deciding for yourself is so much harder. I agree that if most people are doing it, there is a good reason why that is the case. But a bunch of well placed propaganda machines might be able to obtain the same result. Thinking about all this is filling me up with so much despair and concern (or it might just be the massive amounts of caffeine I am on right now), it is hard for me to explain what it is I am concerned about.

It is a very common occurrence to see people speed on a highway, going 15mph higher than every body else around you and tailgating every vehicle in front of you until they let you overtake them. This, in itself, is fairly common (do not get me wrong, majority are sane law abiding drivers and not ridiculous pricks like them) and immensely concerning. Its not like that they do not know that it is unsafe to drive like that, for them and people around them. (lets not get into using your phone while driving - people never learn from others' or even their mistakes). But what do these people do with that 10 minutes they save in an hour long drive. They spend it on facebook, updating their status saying how some dude would not let them overtake in the carpool lane (even though you should not have been in the carpool lane to begin with). What is concerning is that nobody thinks twice about how ridiculous this kind of behavior is. It just blows my mind. Priorities man, priorities!!!

Even this notion to be courteous to everybody by default seems to be lost on everyone. My understanding is that almost all religions somehow teach that, but somehow this is the most often forgotten lesson. Be courteous to others. And what do people do in the name of religion, prosecute supposed outliers. Why does it matter to me that the person sitting opposite to you in the library is homosexual and likes to/prefers to/can only have sex with someone his own sex. It is his own belief and people are entitled to it. It is not affecting you in anyway, nobody is going rape you - infact rape is more common (and mostly exclusive) among heterosexual males. Maybe that means we should condemn all heterosexual males!!! As if being courteous to strangers is too hard, some do not even extend it to people they know, people who are your own flesh and blood. Parents disown their own kids because they are gay, or marry outside their religion (I hope my dad is not reading this). Why? It is somehow like an individual does not define himself/herself, but what credentials they carry with them (color, ethnicity, religion, ....). What is wrong with us? Why are we doing this? Why are we being so utterly stupid and fickle? Can't we think for ourselves? These things are not even so hard. Is it so hard to decide what is more important, your relationship with your own child or stick to certain beliefs about some in the society consider "wrong".

This argument can be turned on me saying that murder is something that society considered wrong, but you should not condemn your child for committing murder. To this I would say that first, this is where the point about thinking for yourself comes into play. The same set of arguments used for sexual orientation cannot be used for having murderous instincts. Secondly, murders are to be considered with the situations they have been committed in (read murders in war, murders under self-defense, serial killing). There is no blanket solution for all problems.

Another example is the recent drive by Wikipedia for donations. People are ready to spend $20 to watch the midnight show of the newest edition of the Harry Potter series. But when you ask the same people to donate that same amount to Wikipedia, they look at me confused and blank-faced, asking me why? And these are people who use it at least 10 times a day. It is not that anybody is asking you to donate something for a completely selfless act. This is you who is going to benefit from it. This is most selfish act than other charities. Priorities man, priorities!

I cannot talk anymore. It is just too depressing. It is like when you are running so fast that you are completely out of breath and trying to breathe so much at the same time that you cannot breathe anymore. That is how my head is feeling with the amount of thoughts going on in there.

I don't know man, I will write again once I figure out how the glass is half full.

Do what you love, love what you do

It just sucks that real life is just so non-dramatic. A dream run of an underdog team in the football world cup does not end with a spectacular goal by the opposing team, but rather with a set piece goal; a gruesome world cup final does not end with the goal of the tournament, but rather a pretty ugly goal which can be contested to be because of a lack of an offside call (well I still believe that); a country is not rid of apartheid by one inspirational speech/service of a single individual (not withstanding that it does point the country in the right direction). Real life is just normal (for the lack of another word).

After certain discussions with a good friend of mine (more regularly than my friend would actually like), I have realized that a lot of change in this world are a process rather than certain key incidents that we see in our history book (or rather the way I have perceived history). In retrospect, these said incidents appear to be the most crucial, the cause of the change - whereas, I have come to realize and believe that these incidents are rather an effect of the whole social process that brought about that change. These incidents are just inevitable part of that process and I have confused the effect of the process as the cause of the process.

I would like to cite historic incidents to validate my hypothesis but I do not have my historic facts straight and leave it to people who actually know them. Much of my hypotheses is based on my own discussions and a science fiction series written by Isaac Asimov called the Foundation Series. Having said this, I certainly realize that my hypothesis just appears to be part of a science fiction, but I feel the point raised in those books make a lot of sense - or at least provide a justifiable perspective of viewing the world.

The main theme is the fact that social change is a juggernaut - albeit a slow one, and a single normal individual (stress on normal) can rarely change its course. The greatest leaders of history are rather individuals who were at the right place at the right time and managed to realize this fact, and at best let the change run its course. So with that analogy, you would think that Mahatma Gandhi wasn't necessarily the reason for India's independence, but rather that he was that individual (among others, I am not trying to demean the contributions of others by just picking M.K.G.) who said that the change is happening, that a country is ready to demand its independence back - he was not the reason for the independence, rather someone that the process picked up to be the face of it - if it weren't MKG, it could have been anybody else. In a similar fashion can I pose the whole case of segregation and its abolition thereof in the USA and M. L. King just being that one individual who the process picked out as the person history looks back to. The social change was bound to happen.

That brings me to that great point that my friend keeps making. We grow up to these achievements of these chosen ones. This makes people like me (with a big ego) aspire to be "great" individuals. But we forget the fact that individuals do not make a whole lot of a difference to the social process - especially if you spend all your time aspiring to be great. The important thing is doing what you are passionate about - much like the Blackberry ad campaign - Do what you love, love what you do. Only then will you do great at your work and a lot of times that work is ground breaking (for lack of better words, since I hate using such extreme rhetorics). As my friend said "Charles Darwin did make a big contribution as an individual, but he did not go to the Galapagos Islands to change the world, rather he was passionate about learning and seeking knowledge".

Filler

Over-analysis - I do that a lot. And in my continuing effort of overanalysis I somehow felt an urge to tear the guts out of a James Blunt song - whose songs generally seem to be heart wrenching storied of unrequited love. However, my analysis runs the risk of not understanding maybe a lot of common phrases having standard meanings.

"Goodbye My Lover"

Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.

So probably the couple just broke up and the guy (lets call him Joe) is trying to figure out how much of it is his fault. I think it is normal - people try to figure out what went wrong and what was their fault (or at least they should). Then Joe starts thinking about how he started dating her (lets call her Callie). When he says "I saw the end..", it can mean two things - either he was so into her from the beginning that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, or he knew that this was a relationship just destined to end. I will attempt to follow both story lines -

1. Since he was so into her, he also felt that he didnt deserve her - so he thought he managed to trick her into falling for him too and so he "had won". And then he tried to keep this up as long as he could.
2. He feels that Callie was always blinded (by maybe a previous relationship or something else) so the relationship was destined to end - so he tried to make the best of what he could (but here the "won" part doesn't seem to fit in)

It may be over but it won't stop there,

I am here for you if you'd only care.
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your hand.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.

Here Joe seems to be talking about how into her he is and how they grew really closer. I guess if you are together with somebody for a significant amount of time, you get dependent on that person, you get addicted to that person. I did not quite understand the blinding part. Maybe its related to the second storyline:

1. The blinding part doesnt make sense here except that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Callie because his love for her blinded him and he was so addicted to her that he wanted her for always.
2. In the alternate story line, Joe might be retrospecting on the fact that even though he knew that the relationship was destined to end, he was blinded by his love and he couldn't see that obvious truth anymore and started getting used to her and addicted to her. Against all his proper judgement.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer and when i wake,
You can't break my spirit - it's my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be

1. This part actually just seems to be fit into the first storyline (the spending rest of the life together line). Joe might be telling Callie that by breaking up with him, she just woke him from his sleep and took his dream (to spend his life with her) away. So now all he is wishing from her is to have a fond memory of him.

I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile.
I've watched you sleeping for a while.
I'd be the father of your child.
I'd spend a lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine.
We've had our doubts but now we're fine,
And I love you, I swear that's true.
I cannot live without you.

1. But here Joe just gives into his feelings and can't stand to live without Callie and just begs her to be with him and come back to him. And I speculate that they probably got back together because they"'re fine".
2. Although in the alternate story, Joe might be trying to say that he got really into her and wanted to spend his life with her, but she did not want that and that might be a possible cause of their breakup. And now post breakup, they are learning to live without each other and he is getting "fine" without her and so is she. Because I would imagine that after any breakup, even if you do not want to get back together and you never meant to stay together for long, you do feel a void without that person, because you did love that person and that means a lot.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

And I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I'm asleep.
And I will bare my soul in time,
When I'm kneeling at your feet.

1. Here Joe probably is saying that now that they are together, he feels normal again. And soon he will propose to her.
2. However in the alternate storyline, he might be saying that even if she is gone, he still dreams of her and he is hoping that one day he will beg her to take him back.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.
I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.

1. This just makes sense in the secondary storyline where they are broken up for good where he feels empty inside without her. He was so dependent on her that without her he feels completely incomplete (oxymoron I think)

In any case I just feel that if I read through my analysis I can probably find many holes and probably merge both the storylines into a single one and have the consistent story. But I don't feel like, and the reason I wrote this is because I just wanted to see if I could still write.

Inceptron

"You're waiting for a train; a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't be sure. Yet it doesn't matter - because we'll be together."

Obviously another Nolan movie is out and I have to obsess about it. But I do not understand why Inception is advertised as "Your mind is the crime scene", whereas it contained one of the most heart-wrenching love stories of this decade. It is selfish but at the same time so heart warming - the quest to keep your love alive even though the object of your affection is gone. It is an instance of pure love!

And I feel that is what a lot of people are actually looking for. But in that case, you might get obsessed about the idea of perfect love. And any relationship you subsequently have is a quest to perform inception of the idea of perfect love for you in the mind of your partner.

Anyhoo, I think I recently saw a Level 2.5 dream. It involved me being in my friends place meeting my parents and then falling asleep in my dream (yeah I remember that part of my dream vividly) and then I remember lying on a couch in a theater watching a movie (so I assume this was the level 2 dream), and I was in the movie too (hence 2.5). That's when my mind just realized and said "what the fuck! Is this some leveled dream shit?". And after that I remember nothing. Nothing interesting, but totally weird.

My sister gave the best explanation for Inception - like recursion! And that made me think what other things I do in my daily rituals that are similar to some programming technique or construct. Obviously I have not thought about it much. Otherwise, it would really easy to find examples.

Eating breakfast reminded me of LIFO stack. How so? I generally gobble down my breakfast at breakneck speed. This involves stuffing a bite of bagel, a piece of pineapple, cantaloupe, omelette and roasted potatoes at the same time. I never realized how automatic it had gotten until one day, while I am chowing down the mouthful, I get a weird shock when I bite on the pineapple piece having forgotten ever putting it in there. Thats when a bulb lit over my head and I realized I eat like a LIFO (last in first out) stack. Except in case of eating, it is more like last in first in.

(....continuing after a day..)

Back to Inception. Another line I like from the movie is "True inspiration is hard to fake." But isn't true inspiration hard to make too. Getting a truly original idea in itself is so hard that most of the time I am blindly looking in all directions (I know this line is so epic I have to say it again - blindly looking in all directions) that if somebody enters my subconscious and just nudges me in any direction, I will happily accept it as my idea - obviously only if it is something I consciously want and like. In fact the want is probably absent, because if it were there, the idea would have incepted itself.

On that note, how do you perform inception or extraction from yourself. As in there are so many things/memories in our subconscious which we are not aware of consciously. But if we want to dig in it, it would be cool to be able to explore your own subconscious. But in that case, the secret belongs to your subconscious whereas your conscious self is the extractor - so you might run into yourself, which might be interesting.

All in all, as it is obvious by now, I loved the movie :-) .

The memory remains

"Moments are temporary, memories are forever"

After some thought, I realized that Dorian Gray, poor Dorian Gray, is actually a victim. He did nothing wrong (in my book at least). He was made into a photograph, and he did what a photograph does - stay the same forever (mostly). I do not get it why he is declared to be a bad guy.

Look at it this way. A good photographer waits for a moment, a fleeting moment, a moment where everything in the universe seems to fall into place (at least in his/her eyes). He (or she) waits and then he/she sees it, and when he/she does, the moment gets captured in the camera and then us mere mortals can see that moment, which is long gone, again and again. And only then can we see what the hunter saw - the moment (although sometimes I can't even see it after looking at it for a long time). The photographer made the moment into a memory.

But what about the photograph itself. People come by, look at it,appreciate it and at times pretend to appreciate it. But after the crowd has passed, what happens to the picture? It just stays the same. It can do nothing else. And that's what I think happened to Dorian. People admired his beauty for sometime, but after that he had nothing to do. Out of desperation (and possibly boredom) he started to indulge. Was is right? I do not know. He could have possibly used his eternal youth for the greater good. But he was made into a memory of a moment, and the memory of a moment although eternal, the moment itself is still momentary.

P.S. This was not where I was trying to go with this post, but here I am.

Earth Day

This is an easy post, courtesy Dave Matthews Band:

Mother, father please explain to me
Why a world so full of mystery
A place so bitter and still so sweet
So beautiful and yet so full of sad, sad...

Mother, father please explain to me
Why forests march to desert speed
While snowcapped mountains melt away
What do we tell our babies, when do we say, oh

Mother, father please explain to me
How a man who rocks his child to sleep
Pulls the trigger on his brother's heart
He digs a hole right to the middle of this storm of hatred

Mother, father please explain to me
How it could be so this world has come to be
A precious balance in between
Such cruelty and such kindness please

Mother, father please explain to me
How this world has come to be
Unequaled in her blessings, oh, I see
Unbridled hatred so extreme, please tell me

Mother, father please explain to me
How this world has come to be so
Twisted between time and dreams
Oh, mother, father please explain to me
Oh, what's all this talk about?
All this talk about it
Spinning down, down, down, down, down
All this talk about
Endless words without
Nothing's done

Mother, father do you know
Why one man's belly overflows
Another sleeps in hunger's bed
Oh, we trade our world for a piece of bread

Oh Mother, father please explain to me
How this rare world's come to be
A place so full of color yet overflowing
Always in black and white
Drowning in the waters of our...

Mother, father please explain to me
How this world has come to be
While still blessed in all the things we see
Such a sad, sad home for you and me

Come out, and hold,
Come on out you
Come on out you
Come and save yourself

Come on out you
Come on we're taking the water
We're taken the water
We're taken the water
But you know
We got the freedom
We got the freedom

There's no God above
And no hell below
Oh, it's here with us
It's up to us
To keep afloat

How this sweet world has come to be
Oh to keep afloat

Mother, father please explain to me
How this rare world has come to be
Oh, let the blue planet
Let the blue planet

Mother, father please explain to me
Mother, father please explain

Confuscious

I was a firm believer of the notion that education is a possible way of solving most if not all problems persistent in the present world. Emphasis must be put on the word was. My basic premise was that if people were taught science and mathematics, they could follow logic to get to the correct course of action. When I say correct, I basically mean globally optimal to that person and others. This assumption in itself is so flawed that I do not need to explain it. But rest assured, I will. I also believed that even if people were not taught about science, but even the basic doctrines of religion (any one of them), they would learn rudimentary lessons like being nice to your neighbors and respecting others. I believe that religious teachings are also a valid part of education. Now allow me the freedom to assume that every religion has the aforementioned lessons somewhere in there.

Since I am reading/writing so many academic research papers, I can't compose a wholesome story in which all my points and digression sit perfectly (also I suck at writing essays). So I am just giving a point-wise explanation of everything I mentioned earlier.

Following logic (as defined by mathematics): Working towards local optimality, or your own/your family's personal gain will lead to a crazy world where everybody is completely selfish (and it might be one extreme form of capitalism). Trying to get to a global optimality would imply everybody donating money to the needy and never wasting it by going to GAP or NIKE stores. Obviously global optimality does imply that you yourself have enough for yourself (there has to some notion of enough - bare minimum and some conservative maximum after which you donate). So you wouldn't be suffering for others, but it might lead to a world where there might be people who might slack off because they know that others would help them. This is obviously against the logic of obtaining global optimum because if you are pursuing that, you would never slack off. So technically, the logic of trying to obtain global optimal appears to me to be sound. But it might appear to be an extreme form of socialism. But if everybody pursues global optimality, eventually everybody would have enough to live without any physical hardship (I am not claiming they would be happy, because human satisfaction and happiness evades any attempt of formalizing it with logic). So what I infer (or actually previously inferred) is that logic does solve a lot of the problem. But it wouldn't and I will explain that later.

Disclaimer: I am no economist, just took some economics in high school and that was more that 10 years ago.

Following religious teachings: I do not have much knowledge about any religion. I was born a Hindu but I do not claim to know much about Hinduism or any of the doctrines or traditions. So obviously I have no idea about the other religions. But for some reason I thought I could write about religion, but right now I am stumped. Whatever I was thinking of writing seems to be just my instinct and intuition, and have no empirical evidence to back them. So I shall just state my conjectures:

• The fact that any group of people decided on following some religion (here I am using the word religion in a way which is not common - I am also considering any doctrines and traditions any small tribe somewhere as religion too) implies that the set of rules (I am also simplifying religion to be a set of rules - the general case can tackled once I figure out what else encompasses what they call religion) would lead to overall good to the whole group - kind of a global optimal on which every body agrees upon. Obviously I am wrong when I say that some religion begins like that - and you have religions all around where the "keepers" of the religion end up bending the rules for their advantages. So here I ended up refuting myself.
• So I shall not talk about religion anymore, I can just hope that all religions begun with the notion of having a set of rules which would maintain order in a group of people and hence obtain some form of optimality.
• Obviously satisfying a smaller number of people is easier than satisfying a larger group. Classic optimization problem where adding more constraints generally makes the solution of the problem harder. So when some religions reach a much larger scale, more number of people are unsatisfied (since it is probably impossible to consider everybody's situation).
• This leads to people expressing their discontent in different ways, or completely submitting to the rules over their own satisfaction.
• But then, as I mentioned earlier, is the presence of the 'keepers' who might twist or misinterpret the rules for their own good.
• But my point is that even here, if everybody aimed towards the global optimal, the keepers would never be selfish, but rather change the rules to help out more people.

But after enough digression, I get an opportunity to say what I wanted to say all along. As long as people have choice, they can choose to not pursue the global optimum. They can choose to just do what's best for them (in the short run maybe) and not care about others. For example, education helps nothing, people still drink and drive - even the smartest and most educated of us. Generally the only reason people don't drink and drive is not because they think it is dangerous to them and others, but because they are afraid to get caught. I know this is a small thing, but this is just an example of people exercising choice over reason. If you think about it, there are many other examples you can spot happening all around you. But the problem here is that there is no way you can have a globally optimal world without people with free will.

Well I guess the only solution then is to change education in a way that everybody chooses to pursue the global optimum. Because even now there are a number of individuals who choose to pursue some form of the global optimum. Since choice goes both ways :-).

The Flow

"All is not lost, everything is left to be got"

I believe that when somebody falls in love (whatever your equivalent for it is), you do not fall in love with a person per se, but rather with an idea of that person or a perception of that person. It is not that whatever you think you know or believe about the other person is false or wrong. A significant part of those beliefs are generally true. At least in the beginning. Obviously love starts with attraction, hopefully mutual and there are possibly multiple intermediate stages. I do not have any idea about any of these, I am just trying to relate something I realized over time. So after the beginning, you start spending time - together or apart.

If together, you start learning about the other person, changing certain previous perceptions (good or bad) and adding more facets to your idea of the other person. You can think of it in a statistical learning theoretic sense. As you obtain more and more samples, your final estimate of whatever you are trying to compute changes a bit here and there, but it generally converges (at varied rates - sometimes you find out immediately and sometimes it takes years) to what the other person actually is around you. So obviously the longer you are together, the better you start to know that person (duh!). And sometimes (or most of the times) as you get closer to true value, you realize that this is very different from your idea of your prospective partner. In that case, you either compromise and settle for a "weak learner" (something or someone in this case which is at least close to what you want more than half the time) or you move on. In my opinion settling for a weak learner is generally done to avoid going through the whole learning process again and again and the fear that you might never get a "strong learner" (your soul mate :P ) and the hope that, just once in a while, the other person (the weak learner) will be what you always wanted, and those moments should be enough. And who knows what you truly wants. Since your perception about others are so skewed, there is no guarantee that your perception of yourself is even remotely accurate. Hence, this can be thought of as a double learning problem - you learn about yourself and about the other person simultaneously. The more you sample, the more you know what you might truly want. But if you settle early, you stop learning. Consequently, your perception might not change after that, so you might never know if you actually wanted something else. So you would be satisfied with your weak learner. I guess ignorance is bliss!

However, if you decide to move on, you might feel like you are back at square one. But I believe that you are not - you learn more about what you truly want or what actually is really compatible with you. So you have made some progress towards finding your strong learner. But you do have to start at the beginning to learn about the other person. In fact you start at negative, because it might be quite some time before you actually are with some one new.

Now occasionally, after the beginning, you end up spending quite some time apart. And having a long distance relationship (or some thing even less serious) might have an inherent problem which I will try to justify by drawing an analogy from machine learning. If you have this other person in your life, but you are far apart from each other and see each other only occasionally in the beginning of your relationship (or whatchamacallit). But that does not mean you do not think about that person. You think of the all the time you did spend with that person, all the happy fun experiences. The problem here is that you made the cardinal mistake in machine learning. You learn over and over again from the same sample set. You do not get yourself new samples because you are not spending any time with the other person. So you might think you have a good idea of the other person, and many a time, you think that you like that idea of the other person. But the problem with any learning model trained too much on the same example set is that it does terribly on a new sample set. What it means is that when you do see this other person again and spend some time with that person (still thinking that you have a good idea of how that other person is), if the person does something which is something out of character for you (since you have never seen it before), you are terribly shocked. Shocked because this concrete vision you had in your head does not accept this new behavior. If you were together, the vision would be molded over time, hence generally more flexible to new behaviors. But when you are together only momentarily with extended gaps of absence, you just think that everything is wrong. However remember that this line of inference is mostly valid if you have been having a long distance relationship from the beginning itself. If you have spent quite some time together, the aforementioned line of logic does not necessarily hold. On the other hand, I do not claim that long distance from the beginning would never work - using some great and fortunate sampling techniques and settling for a weak learner are one of the many possible routes to a successful long distance relationship.

But at the end of the day, you have to be a risk taker to find yourself a strong learner. If you want to that is. I mean it is quite possible to live meaningful, rewarding lives without ever pursuing your strong learner. I mean, just think of Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa (if you do not like my examples, just go with it and try to see the point than the specific examples). I do not think they ever spent any time looking for their soul mates, they spent it in service of others or maybe to the service of a higher idea. Just think about how much time a person spends in trying to woo a partner or in spending "quality" time with a partner. If only some one spent that time in doing something creative or helpful you would get so much more man-hours towards something that is more fruitful to the masses.

In short, finding your soul mate is not for the faint hearted, but then "love" might be overrated. If it were not for the survival of the human kind and people were not that goddamn sensitive about sex (the activity), the world might have been different - for better for worse? How do I know?

Blackberry Toast

Hungry?

VNC (dont know why it is YVR) ahoy!

"The easiest way to lose something......is to want it too badly"

But how will you get it if you don't want it badly enough to do anything to get it. Firstly, there might be many others who want the same thing and if they want it more than you do, chances are, you are going to be the one quoting "If you love something, let it free. If it comes back, its yours, if it doesn't, it never was". Victory does not come to those standing on the sidelines hoping for the ''right'' thing to happen. There is nothing wrong with hoping for the best, but if you are not going to do anything, you need to be prepared for the worst.

That being said, there is no way I can relate this to my trip to Vancouver and Whistler.

The Vancouver trip was actually mostly a trip between Hyatt Regency and Le Soleil, barring some mis-adventures out into downtown Vancouver looking for food. The first night was interesting because I managed to pull my friend up to the bar and club district to go to a club where a band was playing live reggae. But other than the music and the noticeably better ratio (of boy is to girl or men is to women) in the club, there was nothing exceptionally good in that club compared to any club in Atlanta. So the music ended at 2 in the night, putting an end to my night, which lasted for another 5 hours, after which I had to get up for the conference.

Now lets not talk about the conference, except that it was a lot of information and by the time my night ended at 12 in the night, I was so exhausted that I again slept at 2 in the night. Tuesday lunch was interesting because we went to this sushi place and I enjoyed the sushi (not that I have ever hated it). But my opinion might be biased by the fact that everybody who knew that I was going to Vancouver told me to try the sushi there.

Lest I forget, I should mention that for my flight from Toronto to Vancouver (which was around 4-5 hours), I was sitting next to this girl (name forgotten) who was very enthusiastic about telling me everything there is to know about the country of Canada. And since I am an awesome listener, I entertained her, and by the end of our conversation, even she confessed that she was exhausted. And everything I learned about Canada from her seemed strikingly different from the Canada I know from the very educational series South Park. Surprised?? Even I was! But in the end, I had learned everything from how the global warming was affecting the permafrost in arctic Canada to the First Nations citizens of Canada (the US equivalent of Native Americans) to the reason why Quebec was trying to secede from Canada and how that crisis was averted by a brilliant Prime Minister of Canada (whose name I conveniently forgot). I also learned so much about Vancouver that I surprised my friends in Vancouver when I was telling them about Vancouver and they knew that I have never been there before. I tried to convince them that I had not read the Wikipedia page on Vancouver but to no avail.

Back to the conference and sushi. Nothing exciting happened on Tuesday and Wednesday except that I went for a pizza at 12 in the night with some locals from the University of British Columbia. Well nothing exciting happened there either, except that the pizza was really tasty (or I was really hungry, or both). So having spent 3 days in Vancouver and done nothing touristy, I decided to skip all conference sessions on Thursday to go to this well-recommended Stanley Park. It was a pretty place, albeit too small for what it was trying to be (which I am not sure of either). But that is where I experienced the high point of the Vancouver trip, where we came across this frozen lake. Being boys, we got down to breaking the ice by throwing huge rocks on it, but the ice was way stronger than we expected, and eventually we gave up and went on.

That evening we headed to Whistler on a bus and after 2 hours, reached our destination. The next 2 days there was really awesome for me because that is when I learned to love the snow and hate the ice. For some reason, I decided to skip all workshop sessions to just go snowboarding. First day I decided to take a lesson, and that was a really smart decision because I managed to learn some of the basics to finally be able to enjoy snow boarding. Our group was really diverse. The instructor was Japanese. The rest of the composition was a Swiss dude and his South African girlfriend, a British Couple, and Australian bloke and me. Pretty diverse, and I found it really happy how so many different people come together for a common purpose. Not that any of them were different in any way other than their way of speaking in English.

But both days of snowboarding involved a lot of falling. I could not sit without discomfort until 2 days ago because falling hard on your bum on hard ice is not fun. I even had some pretty bad falls on my knees and shoulders, but luckily I am still up and running without any serious injury (touch wood!!). Lets just say that I was lucky and the instructor taught me well enough for me to make sure not to get hurt too bad. As an achievement, I managed to ride all the way from the top of the mountain down to the village, albeit on a beginner trail, but all the way through the mountain nonetheless. And this is something I am going to tell anybody and everybody I meet, because I am proud of it!

But the maximum action happened when I was trying to get back from Vancouver to Atlanta. Some flight delays, delayed luggage and all that usual stuff. Nothing I feel like talking about unless I was writing this blog while I was on some airport waiting for my flight.

Lets just say, I went to the conference to learn about Machine Learning, and ended up learning only about snow boarding (I hope my advisor is not reading this post!)

Back to the lesson of this post. I can see so many ways I can spin this trip to fit what I said in the beginning, but I shall not waste either of ours' time and stop here.

The Incomplete

"Tears stream down your face,

When you lose something you can't replace"

- Coldplay, Fix you.

Sometimes you just do not have any control over it. And you cannot reason yourself out of it. Maybe you are not losing something at all. Its there, just a bit farther away. Maybe you are not losing something you can't replace. Or maybe you are losing something that was never yours. So technically you are not losing something at all. But the tears roll out all the same. Unexpected, uncontrollable.

But strangely supportive. It feels like these tears are that friend you can always rely on. Whenever you have this barge of feelings that overwhelm you in any way, this friend is there to take the pressure off you. Whenever you are at this airport bidding farewell to somebody you are really really close to and are hurting deeply, or when you miss somebody dearly, or when you are so happy to see your loved one after ages, or even when you are watching this really tragic movie. Your tears are there for you. Even when you are completely alone.

I have completely lost track of what I was thinking when I started writing this post, but I guess I will just put up what I have right now.

Water - 1 Me - 0

Woke up one Sunday morning. Decided that I should go kayaking. Luckily I found a buddy to go with. And after driving around for 30 minutes, we reach this kayaking place where we rent our kayaks and they give us a ride to the river (in this case being the Chattahoochie, and pretty calm and shallow river and on that day was full of a lot of fly-fishermen). To give some premise, I should mention that I have never kayaked before in my life, and any kind of boating I have done is a really sad attempt at canoeing once. But that does not mean I was at all scared about kayaking. All the while I was thinking "How hard can it be? And what is the worst thing that can happen? I fall over and then I know swimming so I will be fine. I dont even know why they want me to wear these life jackets".

So I get into the water and start rowing. Turns out that rowing is not that hard, but making sure you are going in a straight line is not my cup of tea. I spent most of my first few minutes being sideways. I was like I was unwillingly 'drift'ing on the water. And while I was trying to figure this out (with my buddy laughing her ass off at my inability to kayak), I managed to go and get myself stuck in some shallow water on some rocks. Not knowing how to get out of there, it took me around 5 minutes to get out of that mess, all the while holding back my partner. Finally, after going downstream sideways for a while, I finally caught up with her. But I still couldn't figure it out. All this while we had other kayaks, canoes, and even tubes overtaking us because I was so ridiculously bad at kayaking. I think I was even slower than what you would be if you are just drifting downstream.

But after a while and some tips from my partner, I start to get a hang of it. I start going in almost a crooked straight line. So I start going forward. We even managed to overtake few of the canoes and the tubes. I keep growing in confidence. I would kayak fast, and then would turn around and drift backwards waiting for my partner to catch up. Really stupid move, and I will figure it out later the hard way.

So then from somewhere, we hear a rapid coming up. I didn't even think to worry about it. I decided to lead and get into the rapid first. But for some reason I decided to enter it sideways, and within one row overturned and fell into the water. My first instinct was that everything is fine, I will just get back up on my kayak and keep rowing, since I still have my row with me, let me just hold on to the kayak. In one second I realized that the water is freaking cold, and that there is no way I can hold on to the kayak or the oar and I let go of both of them. I couldnt even handle myself as I tumbled through the rapid, unable to get a rapid footing on any of the rocks, bumping my knees and ankles against them. I did grab my shades and a shoe but was screaming and gasping like a girl all the while. So bumping and bouncing I finally make the shore, having lost my kayak, oar, water bottle, a shoe, a spare t-shirt I kept with me and my self esteem. But I was amazed to see my partner save my kayak, oar, shoe, water bottle while going through the rapid herself. It was just awesome. Then she brought my stuff up to the shore where I managed to get out of the water, all soaking wet.

Now I grabbed all my stuff and got ready to start kayaking again. I got on the kayak somehow, took five strokes, hit a fallen tree in the water and tipped over and fell in the water again. This time the kayak and the oar didnt go too far from me, but I lost my shades, shoes, and water bottle. My partner picked out the shoes and the water bottle from the water, but the shades were never to be seen. A bit frazzled now, I start kayaking again. And luckily the river calmed down completely and it was all easy going from there.

But after sometime I heard another rapid coming up and my heart started beating fast again. When I saw it, I realized it was less half of the previous one and the previous one wasnt even a rapid. So I again decide to lead, but this time make sure that I enter it straight on, all the while mumbling "please dont fall over please dont fall over please dont fall over". Luckily I survive this one and then till the end, it was all smooth rolling.

After we got out of the water, my partner said she asked if I am ever coming back to kayak, and I said "hell yeah". In fact, in retrospect, I am glad I fell and then survived, so this way I have this story I can tell people instead of me just saying "Oh I kayaked for 3 hrs". But I guess all my false notions about kayaking are gone and next time I hope I will be more attentive and hence better.

The light that shines on you

I got myself a ride on a space ship once. I took off from the earth's surface, easily acquired escape velocity and was out of the earth's gravitational pull pretty quickly. Once out of the earth's atmosphere, I got to see beautiful starlit nights (in space every time of the day is a starlit night). It was really beautiful. It is not something you can ever see or experience from spending your whole life on earth. You have heard from people that the space is beautiful, but you never could imagine how beautiful it is until you are already there. Along with that, you get to experience the zero-gravity life. It was all good and it was something you would really like to experience, and I was lucky enough to actually do it.

I decided to fly to the moon. I landed there, stayed for a while, looked around. The craters, the clear skies, the blue planet, the bright sun - I saw all these things and it was all new. Not necessarily awesome, but a new experience nonetheless. But I did not want to spend my whole space trip on the moon (I forgot to mention that my trip was actually limited in time). So I decided to explore more of the solar system and headed towards Mars.

I didn't feel like exploring Mars too much, so after orbiting around Mars and both its satellites once, I headed towards the asteroid belt. It was really intriguing, small particles flying around each other. Flying a ship through it was really a great thrill ride for a thrill seeker like me. Almost through the belt I was deciding my route towards Jupiter, I see a comet entering the solar system. It was really bright, and attracted me towards it. But I was in a way intimidated by it. I obviously wanted to visit it, but I thought that it was a big bright comet and I didn't have the capability to land on it.

So, having decided to go against my heart's wish, I kept flying towards Jupiter. But somehow, as I was heading in that direction, I got closer and closer to the comet. That made me feel better, but I stuck to my route. So as I was orbiting one of the satellites of Jupiter, the comet sent me a message saying "Hi!". I was excited to hear from the comet. So I replied back instantaneously. And then we started talking - while the comet was still flying towards the sun and I was flying through the satellites of Jupiter. But we were just talking once in a while. General hi, hello and how's it going.

Then when I was just about to exit the orbit of Jupiter to head for Saturn, the comet asked me "I am going for a drive around the sun. Do you want to take a ride with me?" I was really surprised and glad because I never thought the comet actually noticed me. I always thought that the comet talked to me out of common courtesy. So I grabbed the opportunity and decided to make the most of it. The comet was actually really friendly and not at all as intimidating as I thought it was. I landed my spaceship on the comet and went out. I was always so insecure about my abilities, that I was surprised to find out that the comet was actually even remotely interested in spending some time with me. But from that time on, time seemed to just fly.

So forgetting about my plans. I just kept going with the comet. The thing is that we were not doing anything special. We were just hanging out, looking at the stars, listening to music on my iPod, stuff like that. When we were close to the earth's orbit, we also caught some satellite television and watched some TV shows and some football. And all this while we completely lost track of time. We flew from Jupiter , all the way past the asteroids, past earth, Venus and even around the sun all the way to Uranus. We even passed really close to Neptune's ring, but we were just too busy doing nothing to notice it.

The comet told me about its life. How it has been through the darkest parts of the galaxy all alone and also through really beautiful and bright star systems. The comet told me how every thousand years it crosses the Orion Nebula and that it is just beautiful. We went through all its photographs in all different parts of its orbit. It was really overwhelming to know that a comet like this which has been all over the galaxy and seen the most amazing views can still be interested in spending time with me. Maybe the comet was the most sweetest thing and took pity on me when it saw me going around the solar system all alone and decided to give me company. And for that I consider myself super lucky.

But like every thing, this had to come to an end. We had just crossed the orbit of Venus and flying towards earth's when I had to get off. It was hard to let go off it. I just wanted to with the comet while the comet flew through the galaxy and even just to be with the comet. But I knew that I had to get back to my life. And the realist inside me got the better of it. We said our goodbyes and headed our ways. Obviously the comet couldn't come with me to the earth. It had places to go, things to see, dark places to light up.

After I landed on earth, I still heard from the comet. I would sometimes take a peek at it through a telescope and we could send each other some messages. But now, as I am seeing it fly out of the solar system, I am wondering if I will ever see that comet again. I certainly hope to, and I will certainly wait for it to come back. This is a certainty that it will come back, just that I will never know if I will ever see the comet again until I see it. Till then I guess I will have to be content thinking that I was one of the many lost souls this comet lighted up. And believe me when I tell you, this comet was one bright one and you will have no idea how many parts of the galaxy this comet lighted up. I just feel honored to meet something like that.

The balls they keep rolling

Sitting here in my lab on a Friday afternoon 30 minutes before our group meeting, I feel so sleepy (nothing new about that) that I thought the best way to do something productive is to try posting something on my blog. It has been 3 weeks since I left the paradise called `Google Internship' and came back to grad school (or what some others call Hell, although I would beg to differ). Looking back I must say that life at Google was pretty luxurious, free food and no hassle of making food or cleaning dishes or cleaning up after yourselves. But the thing is that even though it has just been 3 weeks, I do not miss it at all and have happily gotten into the grove of my usual motions of waking up and putting a bowl of milk in the microwave and a pan on the stove with my eyes still half closed (mind you it does not mean it is really early, generally it is like 10 in the morning). And I finally wake up halfway through my cereal just in time to make sure I do not burn my eggs. And I must say, I do not miss the ease and availability of food there. But what I do miss are the great friends I made there, people with whom I used to have lunches and dinners and then go out for drinks. And I miss playing soccer every monday and wednesday evening and at times on friday afternoons. I made a lot of friends and acquaintances on the field (I hope I made some friends though).

And at soccer I was amazed to see so many people so talented at it. Such great ball control, great passes, great vision. It was really fun playing with them. And then I met people who never gave up, people with broken ankles who would still keep playing for the love of the game. After duct-tapes and wraps and ankle braces, they would jump on to the field and be awesome as usual. Looking at all these people, I felt so inadequate and useless. But I am just glad that I was allowed to play with them. Reminds me of my time in undergrad when I used to play with some other really talented people.

The thing is that I have played football long enough, but I still suck at it. But that is true for swimming for me too. I have been in a swimming pool since I was 5. You would think I would be some amphibian. But alas, I am a slower swimmer than people who have swam for less than a couple of months. I am sure there are a whole bunch of 5 - 6 years old kids out there who are quicker than me, and the only reason I might be able to beat them (if I can that is), is because of my longer stroke length and height. I guess I can never get better at swimming or football ever. Nor can I ever figure out why.

Sorry for digressing. So yeah, as much as I used to enjoy football at Google, I am back to playing water polo here at Tech. And as usual, it is painful as shit for me. But I do enjoy it, I just don't know it yet. And if only I could swim faster, I could have been more useful for our team. So my point being that even though I miss a few things from the summer, I am really glad to be back to my life here in Atlanta.

Now my meeting has started so I might have to get to the point of this post in another post. Later!

Confusion

Hungry at 2 in the night in San Francisco is not something you want to be. However, if you are hungry, eating some random hot dog being sold by random chick on some random street corner is probably not a good idea. You know what is worse - eating two of those at that. Well in my defense I would say that it seemed like a really good idea at that time. I immensely enjoyed the hot dogs a lot and felt really good after eating them. But, obviously, I learnt my lesson when I had to visit the rest room five times the next day. Without going into further details, I would like to say that even though this should be a lesson enough for me, I have a feeling that placed in the same situation again, I would probably make the same decision again. Probably explains why my sister calls me a hard headed dumb-ass (mind you I am removing a lot of expletives from the this title).

Well this was probably the most memorable part of my past weekend, because the rest of it was mostly sleeping. Endless shameless utter lethargy. Oh yes, I did go kart racing. And after racing continuously for 15 minutes, I was just hoping that the race would just end because it was really strenuous. Made me wonder how the Formula One racers would keep on racing for 90 minutes at much higher speeds, much higher g-forces and thousand times more stress. But when I was thinking about this, I started thinking about how I am thinking. Call it meta-thinking. Made me think how full of myself I am. Just driving a kart for 15 minutes, I started relating myself with Formula One car racers, people who have dedicated their lives to racing, and are the top tier of racing in the world. Oh well, I guess the whole thing is about trying make ourselves feel better about ourselves instead of seeing ourselves as utter failures.

But then I do not think much of introspection. So moving on. This summer I have been really really disappointed with the movies that came out. I am not an avid movie watcher, but being bored here in this small city of Mountain View where you do not have too many things to do, and having a movie theater 5 minutes from the my place made me catch almost every movie that came out this summer. I think that is also a reason why I came across so many movies where I just wanted to shoot myself. I mean it started off with a movie like Star Trek, which I liked a lot. Not being a big fan of the original series or the movies, I utterly enjoyed this movie. But then after that, it was all downhill. But I think the movie that broke my heart was Terminator Salvation. I mean seriously. You call that a movie. It is a bunch of out-of-place action scenes stitched together. At least the new transformer movie tried (emphasis on 'tried') to get a story in. But Terminator Salvation! I mean every 5 minutes of non-action scenes, you would suddenly have machines show up from somewhere and then explosions. And if that was not enough, an attempted rape scene in the middle of nowhere and the subsequent courtship between the two characters. Reminded me of the really tacky mid-90s Hindi Bollywood movies where the protagonist saves a girl from getting raped and so the girl decides to let the guy have his way with her. And to top it all, you have Mr. Batman after some throat infection treatment shouting "We are all dead!" every 10 minutes. I know that it is just a movie, like it or forget it. And I agree that I should not go this ballistic just because of a movie. But it really broke my heart. And as if the movie didn't piss me off enough. I hear more and more people telling me how they liked the new terminator movie. SERIOUSLY! I have to count till 20 to stop myself from punching them in the face.

And you know what I am most confused about. I cannot figure out why I care so much. It is just a movie. A crappy movie, but then it is not the first crappy movie I have seen. In contrast to this, I enjoyed the new transformer movie (I still do not remember its full name). But that is mostly because of the extended footage of (hot-hot-hot-hot)^100 Megan Fox running in slow motion whereas everybody around her is running normally. (Just so you know, she is coming in a new movie called Jennifer's body, after seeing whose trailer, I feel it is going to be all about her being nude in it, which in my opinion is going to make her lose a lot of sexy points) I mean why would you give the whole world what they want from you so easily so soon. You should play your cards right and save your ace in the hole for the right time. But maybe she does exactly that in this movie. I will only know once I see it. But I am confused, why would somebody give away that one thing that makes them sexy.

But yeah. Before I completely forget about what I was talking about regarding the movies that came out this summer, I want to just say that most of them sucked. Period.