On blogs and stuff

So, I have been in this blogging business for 2 years now. It started out when I was on an internship is some weird ass foreign country where I couldn't speak the language and had no friends (not that I do have now, thats why I blog) and was very desperate and lonely and the whole shebang. Ok. You get the picture? Right, now where was I? The blog thing. So this blogging was some random timepass and the only useful purpose it was to me was that I became one of the first people to get a Gmail account!

*Digression* Getting the email account was the most fun thing. For once, I beat out my geeky compatriotes in the ultimate geek quest. Yeah, I got a cool id as well. *End Digression*

So the basic problem was that I didn't really know that other people blogged, and that you could actually link other people's blogs, and wonder of wonders actually read them. Even if you did read them, I used to think it rude to comment. I was alone in my happy universe. My loneliness was disturbed once in a bluemoon when some equally lonely friend who decided to drop a comment, mostly out of politeness to me. Then sometime last May, during another blah phase, I realized that there were other people in the universe who also blogged.

I also found out that it was socially acceptable to comment on other people's blogs. It was weird that it was A-OK to pour your heart out to complete strangers. Essentially some kind of therapy that comes for 50 cents an hour (to me it's free, graduate students are technically below poverty line, and thus eligible for free internet). You will have a bunch of people therapizing you, and the only catch was that you need to therapize this bunch of people in turn. Now that sounded like a way better deal than the 50$ an hour or so you paid to your usual shrink. So, I realized that I really did need a shrink, and considering my monetary situation, this blogging thang did fit my budget pretty well.

So, I began blogging and reading blogs. And reading blogs. And reading blogs. Yeah, I read a lot of blogs. I started reading so many blogs that I considered going to another therapist to get me off this blogging therapy addiction. Thankfully, nightmares about my bank account force expediated recovery, and now I am in a post addiction 'steady' state. I am still guilty of reading blogs -

- First thing in the morning. When I get up, I don't brush my teeth, I don't check for emails from my advisor which politely say 'Dude you better get locomoting and git some work done!'; I check blogs for replies to my comments.

- During class. Of late, the only thing that I do in class is read blogs. In one way its good, see its an incentive for me to actually make it to class. However, the downside is that, none of the course material actually makes it to me. It makes it through me. Yeah, not so funny joke. Think about it? What do you prefer? The latest scandalous escapades of Hawt Chick 143 or some gyan on the optimization of twice differentiable convex functions?

*Digression* What is slightly irritating about engineering courses is that they make extremely unwieldy conversational material. An English major who decides to pout un-encumbered on Vikram Seth vs Rohinton Mistry is actually going to be considered erudite, cultured and sophisticated. What about me? How many people would want to listen to this really clever thing I did to tie in a hidden markov model and a regressive model? *Sigh* Of course, the upside is that, you can start another company like Google and become quite well off. Not that it will actually happen to me. However you need to keep saying stuff like that to keep yourself going. Its an art. See dude, if you can lie to yourself you need not lie to anyone else. *End Digression*

- After coming home on a Friday or Saturday 'evening'. Reading blogs on 'weekend evenings' is the biggest sign that.....you (no insult, as in I) need a life!!

So, by now you would have got the picture that I read a lot of blogs (apart from a lot of not so flattering things about me). A little while earlier I had done this post classifying blogs. Now, after the ten or so months that I have spent timepassing blogs, I have come to realize that, blogging most closely imitates life.

Firstly, lets see what is need to make a blog popular.

1. The most important thing is that you need to be a chick.

2. The most important thing number 2 is that you need to be a chick. This is incase you didn't understand 1. The key word here is chick. I really do hope I am getting my point across.

3. If you aren't a chick. You need to get everyone to think you are a chick.

4. Once that task is done, to get down to business, you need to get down to writing some scandalous stuff. Scandal usually attracts a lot of attention, and, all the guys who could never have spoken to you in real life, let alone had access to this scandalous information, are going to be on your blog. See, this has presented a legitmate haven for them to pass comments, and actually even get a reply. Make a lot of 'friendship'.

5. Keep repeating 4. and you are home. No not literally. Duh! Figuratively.

Analogy in real life - Paris Hilton is far better known than Warren Buffet. Capiche?

*Digression*
Jon Stewart : Which is the only Hilton you can get into for free?
Answer : *Loud cough with a few hiccups and a sneeze*
*End Digression*

We know that in real life, for every good looking girl, there are 1 (or two?, if it's one of those nasty egoistic types) 'friends', 10-20 admirers and whole lot of stalkers. Now using the principle that there ain't nothing like a free lunch, and that you can seldom have the cake and eat it too, if and when you decide to be 'attractive', you should be prepared to attract everything from lions to locusts. So, the downside to this whole attention thing is a swarm of psychopaths with a whole lot of free time and a whole lot more 'advice'. This is where the therapy thing goes wrong, because the cardinal rule is that you pay the dude 50$ an hour to listen and not hurt feelings and stuff. He deserves the money. Anyway, my point is, once people stop listening to you and start saying mean things, its almost like you are paying (for your internet connection) to be traumatized.

Paris Hilton Analogy : When she decided to become famous, did she realize that every tabloid is going to report the fact that she has lost her..mind..errm...cat.

So, finally, which are the blogs that nobody reads?

- Mine.

What does that mean?

- I am Warren Buffet.

Vida es perros

And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."

A couple of weeks back one of my brother's friends from school Jay Ramesh died in a motorcycle crash. He was driving back from college in his motorbike, got hit by a car overtaking on the wrong side of the road and died on the spot. He was 21. Another classmate, Rohan Raghavan, riding pillion with him was seriously injured and is currently in hospital. Though I didn't know them personally, we were in the same school for god knows how many years. Jay was this short scrawny looking kid 2 streets away my brother used to touch for notes.

When Jay started out in the morning would he have known that sometime in the afternoon he is going to be lying in a pool of blood on the road? In one way, I think its good he didn't know it. It was a relatively painless event for him. The real reason why death is hated is because its one of those things that puts those connected to the person through hell. His parents are going to live the rest of their lives in the shadow of his memory. They are going to make up all kinds of absurd stories blaming themselves for what happened. It's going to take them years to even come to some kind of terms with it. A random event they have no control over is going to be the master of their lives.

It becomes so difficult to accept that a person close to you has died. I happened to go to Jay's profile on Orkut, and I still saw people posting to his profile, "Dei, Ferrari has won da" - in some hope against hope that they would get a reply. It is almost as if all the signs are there - his profile is there, there is his photo, and ya he scrapped me a week back, so I am sure he will reply.

My grandfather died a few months back. I was in the US at that time. I had been putting off calling home to India for a few days, and had finally decided to call home on the day that he died. I hated myself for it. I felt I should have called him earlier. Maybe he would have felt better about life. I could have spoken to him one last time. Heard his voice. It was some consolation that I had been in India a fortnight earlier. It would have been very difficult for me if I had not gone in the summer.

When I did finally go home in December, I couldn't believe that 'Tata' was no more. It felt like some elaborate trick that everyone was playing on me. In your mind he is still there. There you are sitting in the hall. Its 12:00. You can hear the gate creak open. You half expect him to walk into the hall, "white shirt-white pant", with his trademark "How are you boy?". You walk into his room. You don't see him. Ok, he must be shaving in the bathroom. You open the door expecting to see him there but you don't. You call up the office. Madhu picks up the phone. You half want to say "Tata irukalla" (Is Tata there?), hoping that he will pass the phone onto him and you will hear his familiar voice. The ghost never leaves you. You go to Landmark. You have been there countless times with him. Its so weird to not go there without him. Sometimes, you half expect him to walk up behind you, with his familiar "Finished boy?", then he will go through the books that you want. Most of the books will make the cut. You go to Woodlands. You remember eating breakfast with him there.

You walk around the house. The chairs, the verandah, the terrace, his chappals, his dresser, his almirahs of books all have stories to tell. You remember the time you got him to bowl to you at 3 in the afternoon. You remember the time when you took all of Pati's vessels into the garden and 'cooked'. You remember seeing him stand at the gate waiting for you to come back from IIT class, at 11 in the night. You look at his room, and remember the time you tied him to the grill when he was sleeping. You want to go to Tata House because you feel safe in the memories. You don't want to go to Tata House because you are going to be brooding about him for the rest of the evening. You hate seeing Pati alone. You can't believe Pati is alone. If Pati is there, Tata must be there - somewhere. Maybe he is late from office. Maybe he is reading in his armchair in the verandah. Maybe he is in some room somewhere.

You go through his things. You look at his old photos. You look at photos of your grandfather, grandmother, mom and uncle. Young and confident. You look at all the photos that he took with you in G. K. Vale. All kinds of memories come back. You feel like a lot of time has passed. You could never have thought that this day would come. It has. It was always a day in the distant future. It isn't any more. He is gone but you are the one left suffering.

So don't work your stuff
Because I've got troubles enough
No, don't pick on me
When one act of kindness could be
Deathly
Deathly
Definitely

People aren't dumb you know

Donkey : Where is this fire breathing pain in the neck anyway?
Shrek : Waiting for us to rescue her.
Donkey : I was talking about the dragon Shrek.

Shrek, The Movie

Wafa Sultan speaks.

Normad

Oh well, for the first time in a long time I have broken the 'week' rule i.e. one blog post every week. It wasn't that I couldn't blog - I could have. As a matter of fact, I did write a rather long-winding nostalgic type post. However, after having written 1000 words, I realized that I had barely started - there was way too much stuff popping up in my head. Needless to say, organizing it into a semi-coherent train of thought was a nightmare. So, that post still lies in my draft archive. Maybe one day when I get around to re-editing it, it will see the light of day. Lets see. What has been happening for the last 2 weeks?

- There was 'unofficial' St. Patricks Day on March 3rd. The 'official' St. Patricks day is on March 17th, which is the last day of college before spring break. So, the basic idea is to keep drinking from 6 in the morning till late in the night. Everyone on the main college street was soo drunk that the entire place was smelling of beer. There is a long list of 'quotable' events, but shall pass. Also, I heard that 3 people died of alchohol poisoning. I don't know who they are, but I can guess how it had happened.

1. Get smashed
2. Throw up
3. Forget that you threw up and get smashed again
4. Throw up even harder
5. Forget that you threw up 2 times and get smashed again
6. Oops..dead

- I am doing this interesting psychology type course. It is quite fun to do a course which for once doesn't have

1. An equation
2. A programming assignment
3. A highly skewed student distribution (Ok, I am not going to explain what that means. You need to think.)
4. People talking some un-intelligible techie garbage. *Digression* One of the most painful experiences as a CS graduate student is this jargonization to death. It essentially happens when you are caught in the clutches of some random acquaintance who mistakenly assumes that you might be interested in his research project/ latest gadget acquistion. The death part comes in when you strangle him. *End Digression*. Technology is a necessary evil. You need it, but it's best not to talk about it unless you really really have to. Its like that other thing.

So, for a change, in the class of 25 there are exactly 3 engineering/science/math type people. Timor, Mike and me. Timor is this guy from Belarus with an outrageous Eastern-European accent. Mike is this cocky guy of possibly Irish descent. The rest of the class is from Psychology , History, English etc. Also, most of the students are undergraduates, which gives the class a very different feeling. Firstly, it doesn't feel as sober and serious as a graduate class. Secondly, it isn't as sober and serious as a graduate class.

So, as the only 3 engineers in the class, very often, it falls upon us to explain all things 'technical'. Also, for once we are looked at with awe. See, being an engineer isn't so bad, if you can escape the confines of your environment and show-off to non-engineers. Ok, so, there was this once when the word 'lever' was used in this vague touchy feely sense that only MBA/psychology types are capable of doing. So, our instructor to get the class involved, asks one of us to explain what is a lever. So, Mike goes something like this -

' In physics, a lever is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to multiply mechanical force. It is based on the principle of moments.'

He actually made it sound even more complicated. The whole class was staring at him with its jaw dropped.

Anyway, there was this other section where we were to pair up to have a discussion. So, I paired up with Timor, and everyone paired up with someone else - except this girl sitting to my left. I think she goes to the tanning saloon a lot, because she looks errm...cooked. Seriously. Anyway, she got left out, and since she was the only unpaired person, she had to be put into a group of three. I don't think she really liked that because, in all seriousness she goes, " I really don't like threesomes, I would prefer to just do it with one person.". Then the instructor says, "Is there someone who you would really prefer to do it with?" Actually, I made the last part up, the instructor didn't - the whole class just burst out laughing!!

So, as part of the discussion Timor and I had to practice our co-operational skills by discussing whether a hypthetical child of ours should be sent to private or public school. Private schools are better but expensive. Public schools are free but can be bad at times. We had a limited amount of money. The idea was for us to throw around a number of ideas and reach a consensus. One of the key requirements to solve a problem correctly is to be able to clearly identify what are your exact expectations from the situation. So, when we realized we had a limited amount of money, it struck us that we did have some money after all! We could go on that cruise we had been thinking of for such a long time!! Thats what is called thinking out of the box!

There are still more fun anecdotes. However, people, I am going to sleep now.