Curious Observations of a Random Kind

1. My CS batch in IIT had 30 students. There were about 120 undergraduates in my department across all the years. There were about 180 in my hostel. There were about 400 across all disciplines in my year, about 2000 across all the 4 years. I knew most guys in my branch, my hostel, and some random people through this and that. Lots of people - atleast by face. Here in UIUC, the CS department takes in about 300 undergraduate and 100 graduate students each year. The department has atleast 1500 students as a whole. The university has atleast 25,000 students on it's rolls. I know about 20 people here. I meet about 5 on a daily basis. Sucks no. I fully agree.

2. I had a couple of situations over the last week that has called on my mostly lacking diplomatic skills. When someone asks you for your opinion on something should you be tactful or truthful? Tact saves the awkwardness but borders on being dishonest. Thus is life, but you might not be actually appreciated for being truthful. So, it's a vague situation to be in. What I actually, ended up doing is telling the truth and 'buffering' it, you know, that's how it is for everybody so it's ok.

3. 95% of my meetings with acquaintaces go like this :
Me: Hi
Acq: Hi
(some hi how are you talk)
Me: So, whom do you work with? What do you do for your research?
This previous question can be replaced with:
What courses are you taking this semester?
Where did you intern this summer?
What are your plans? MS or PhD? Tech or Non-Tech?
Acq: Blah
Acq: (Same question rephrased to me)
Me: Blah.
You have no idea how ingrained you are to this. I am wondering if it is always like this. Do certain sets of people keep talking about the same set of things. Maybe some people discuss Vivek Oberoi and Aishwarya Rai. Maybe some discuss cricket. Maybe some discuss good movies. Being in the last bunch would be fun.

4. The Indian Graduate Student's association had an introductory session. I was part of the organizing committe (Yay. Don't worry, you don't need any qualifications. Actually, the basic criterion is you shouldn't have any qualifications. If you did, you wouldn't be there. Ok. Forgive me.).We had a Mr and Mrs Utsav (that's what our org. is called - Utsav).
We had an attitude questionaire and one of the questions were:
'Whats a good line for an alien you meet in a bar?'
Some 3 guys wrote.'Aaja meri gaadi mein bait ja'. 50 cent has a song whose title means the same thing. But, it's not so politely phrased. It's not too tough to guess though.
Another question was:
'Say something bad about yourself'
This question was in jest. Just to see if you can say something bad about yourself. One girl actually wrote 'Nothing'. Heh. I just found something.
Another was a fill in the blank:
'Johnny johnny yes papa...'. You had to fill it in with some nonsense.
One of the replies was hilarious. '..hack into my email account no papa'.

5. There is a Professor in CMU, Eric Xing, who has done 2 Ph. Ds. One in Biochemistry and one in Computer Science. No, he didn't as a friend of mine says 'time multiplex'. For those non-geek souls, that means he didn't do both at the same time. Like pick a cunning thesis topic. He did one after the other. After. I was wondering how one could possibly motivate onself to do that? After, one Ph. D. itself I will be like 'Whew!'. One more a? No no.