Funny Very Funny

Another graduate student haiku. I don't know what the silly thing means but it sounds really deep and meaningful. So, haiku it is.
Apartment,
Department,
Advisor,
Budweisor.
Actually, Google informs me that Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. Here it is.

How to write Haiku
In japanese, the rules for how to write Haiku are clear, and will not be discussed here. In foreign languages, there exist NO consensus in how to write Haiku-poems. Anyway, let's take a look at the basic knowledge:

What to write about?
Haiku-poems can describe almost anything, but you seldom find themes which are too complicated for normal PEOPLE's recognition and understanding. Some of the most thrilling Haiku-poems describe daily situations in a way that gives the reader a brand new experience of a well-known situation.

The metrical pattern of Haiku
Haiku-poems consist of respectively 5, 7 and 5 syllables in three units. In japanese, this convention is a must, but in english, which has variation in the length of syllables, this can sometimes be difficult.

The technique of cutting
The cutting divides the Haiku into two parts, with a certain imaginative distance between the two sections, but the two sections must remain, to a degree, independent of each other. Both sections must enrich the understanding of the other.
To make this cutting in english, either the first or the second line ends normally with a colon, long dash or ellipsis.

The seasonal theme.
Each Haiku must contain a kigo, a season word, which indicate in which season the Haiku is set. For example, cherry blossoms indicate spring, snow indicate winter, and mosquitoes indicate summer, but the season word isn't always that obvious.
Please notice that Haiku-poems are written under different rules and in many languages. For translated Haiku-poems, the translator must decide whether he should obey the rules strictly, or if he should present the exact essence of the Haiku. For Haiku-poems originally written in english, the poet should be more careful. These are the difficulties, and the pleasure of Haiku.

More.

Funny

Ha!

Rationality

Man is a rational creature. He loves to reason. He loves to analyze. Pick apart. Dissect. Elaborate. Remember how you spent 4 hours picking apart something that happened over 30 seconds. Wasnt it outrageous? Most of the complexity that you introduce into the event did not exist at the time the event actually occured. It did not have a reason. Maybe it did, but you werent aware of it at that point of time. So, thats not the reason. 'Yeah, he should have seen the off swinger' thing makes perfect logical sense he should have but he couldn't. Capiche. C'est bon.
One of the typical situations to which this self-torture cum masochism applies is decisions. Whats a decision? You have some information, some course of action to be taken and you have options. The first 2 are ok, the problem comes with options. With options - confusion, delusion and collusion. Ok. Ok. No collusion. So, there are some pros and cons that stick out with each course of action and you choose one after some careful though.
Now, what about after a decision after it is made. Does it make any sense to look at it? No! Why? You are making a judgement of the situation based on your evaluation of the situation at that point of time. It is based on the information available to you at that point of time. Actually, I doubt if there are any investment bankers reading this. They have perfectly understood the concept of information. A trading decision might be based on all kinds of statistical modeling and high end math but it is impossible to be perfectly certain. There is some inherent error. The idea is to get into the picture as much information as possible, if possible (preferably) information not available to everyone. Buy Microsoft stock in 1982. Buy Amazon stock in 1992. Stay miles away from Enron. How would it be if you knew it right then and no one did. Both aspects are important, if you didn't know you wouldn't buy it. If everyone did, everyone will, or actually Microsoft won't sell it (as Microsoft knows it as well). Slightly complicated point.
So what is the conclusion of all this? It is meaningless for you to say 'Oh yeah man, I should have done that'.You can only take comfort in these 3 things:

• I tried to gather as much information as I could
• I looked at all the information I had gathered
• The choice I took did justice to the information and my needs at that point in time. I was convinced.

You need to (better) face the consequences of your decision but you aren't actually responsible for the consequences being the consequnces.
The guy who had loads of fun in college says he should have worked. The guy who worked hard in college says he should have had some more fun. The guy who was nerdy says he probably shouldn't have been so nerdy. The guy who partied every night says maybe he should have hit those books. The guy who decided to go for an MBA thinks he should have gone for Ph. D. . The guy who gets into IIT feels he should have chilled out in life and had one hell of social life like the B. Lit. guy in Loyola. The guy in Loyola feels jealous of the guy with the IIT stamp and 'major' career prospects. Without realizing that.. . In final judgement, I feel such talk is meaningless. You made a decision then, based on your evaluation of the situation and your needs then. Just embrace it and if you need to act differently now, do so, but do not regret a decision made.
PS: I know people love sports. But please don't read between lines. Pretty please. :D

Hmm..

You would think people change. You would think people become kind. How much sense does it make to talk trash about people whom you last met 7 years back and you probably aren't going to meet again in your life. None. Is it just me or are these people crazy?

Double guessing

You know there is no joy to this world like nice juicy speculation concerning another person. Especially, if this speculation JUST holds true under the known facts but has very 'interesting' implications.So, when I decided to come to India for a few weeks at the end of my internship:
People in the US assumed:

• I am coming to see gf lady (yeah, right)
• I am coming to get engaged (no, thank you)
• I am terribly homesick. (not really, but I dont mind going home)

People in India assumed:

• The stuff assumed by the US people. Since, they don't know my status in the US there were some additional assumptions.
  
• I have been kicked out of university. (possible)
• I am unemployed and scrounging in India for a job.(possible)

But, till now I have been looked upon kindly by the University and immigration authorities. I thank allah and assorted gods for that.

I, Je, Ich

I have been having some time. Some time to think. When one has time and not much on mind, one wanders to the self. Most good analysis stems from trying to find the answer to the right questions.But, since you never know what is right you just ask, and ask, and then decide. Or ruminate.
Basic format:
Questioning word followed by I Me Myself followed by event, feeling etc
Questions as such are rarely positive. So some basic categorization for the sake of clarity.

• self-piteous - if you are the soft kind- why am I such a failure
• self-hating - for the tougher types- i am such a loser- more direct and hurtful
• self-indignant-How can this happen to Me? Me Me!

Stuff like self love is also there. But that tends to be more direct and less rhetorical.
You should have got the picture I am trying to paint. Ok. Good. Now.
A couple of questions come up to me reasonably often is:
Why is that I hardly see myself as others see me? To most people (unless I am in a particularly foul state) I come off as smart,successful and reasonably cool. But, to me, no way. I guess I set expectatations up so much that I am destined to failure and frustration. So, in the end I feel disappointed that I didn't get too near my goal, yeah but the damn thing was somewhere in the upper atmosphere so what do you expect.
Why is it that I end up doing things that are intrinsically tough? Not tough. But painful. Like masoshism. Fun no. Do I do it because it's tough, because it's a challenge or because there is something worth it in the end that is better than taking the not so tough and easy to understand clear path. I thing tough taking up interesting challenges adds spice to life. What about challenging people? No ! Bah. Keep them away from me.

Well..

• Intern over. Didn't go too bad.
• A couple of weeks of fun await me.
• Back next semester. Some junta from IIT coming. Good crowd. Good fun. That is the hope.
• Do some work. Get the derrier moving.
• Make life more interesting. If next semester repeats I could be classified as 'vegetable'.
  

Physics, Maths etc.

Yesterday, I visited my friend in Princeton and probably met more smart people over 24 hours than I have in the last 22 years. He is doing very-hard-math-and-physics and has a lot of friends that do very-hard-math-and-physics. I got a nice guided tour of Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Study. If you didn't know, the IAS was expressly created to attract Albert Einstein and other prominent European scientists after the war. I also saw the house where Einstein lived, the place where he worked etc. Interestingly, I had visited his home town of Ulm in Germany last May during mon tour de europe.
So this guy was showing me around the Institute for Advanced Study, when we came across this middle aged man in Khaki shirt and half-pants sitting on one of the sofas. My friend knew the man, so I was introduced to him and we shook hands. Then, the two of them start discussing their work. The discussion was a little animated and the middle aged man excitedly went across the room, tore out a piece of paper and began to play with it to explain a concept to my friend . What really struck me was his childlike enthusiasm for what he did. No ego, no conceit, no contrived aura of grandeur. Nothing out of the ordinary except that the guy was Pierre René Deligne, a fields medal winner. The fields medal is the highest prize in Math, awarded once in 4 years (as opposed to the relatively easier Nobel Prize that is doled out every year). I kind of expected him to be all ego and conceit, that makes one want to go, 'Okay okay, you got a Nobel prize, so what?'. I was so wrong. It brought to mind some of those unfortunate souls that one sometimes runs into in life, you know, with this hugely misplaced sense of superiority. They should probably get in touch with the Fields Medal winner closest to them.
I also met bunch of my friend's friends, totally in awe of their talent and all, but sometimes it's not worth being so smart and talented. I sometimes felt like I would rather be with people who laugh at silly things and speak on mundane topics. I had at one time entertained thoughts of (actually regret about not) being a Physicist but it's bloody scary. I am glad I didn't go down that road. Computational biology is works for me.
To end it: A physicist's understanding of relationships.
This should give you an idea :D.