Travel Guide- NYC

New York. Songs have been dedicated to it, movies have been made around it- comedies, thrillers, dramas that revolve around it's subways, gangs, financial district....but, all this is no substitute for experiencing it.
What I like about NYC-
1) The atmosphere- lively and animated. Go to Times Square to see what I mean. Most of the theatres are situated around it so you can catch a show while you are there.
2) Restaurants and bars- It's a city that is famed for the number of restaurants that it has and rightly so. You get restaurants that fit every wallet and every palate. Go to Greenich Village/Soho for the bars and nice restaurants. 9th Avenue has a lot of restaurants too.
Things you should do in NYC-
1) Go up the Empire State Building. I actually made the mistake of taking the Chrysler Building to be ESB. Well, it's a lot more distinctive. You should go up the ESB for an amazing view of NY. You can see right from Wall Street to beyond Central Park. You can hear the sounds of the city as the buildings pump them up into the sky. It's great.
2) Take a cruise around Manhattan- For 30$ you can take a 3 hour boat ride around the island of Manhattan. You can see the different parts of the city, Brooklyn, the Bronx, the Statue of Liberty, the UN etc. etc. The list goes on. The boat director gives a very good account of the history and growth of the city. It gives, you a feel for the city, and beats trudging around grumpily in the sweltering heat.

Philosophical Ramblings

Follow your dreams, you may not be for the better once your dreams come through, but the joy is in the means . If it doesn't work out, just let it go.

Songs & Movies

A list of random songs that are good to listen to for a sound night's sleep:
Ode to Joy by Beethoven
Anything Dire Straits
Anything Beatles
Anything Clapton
Things U2 that aren't too fast.
A few movies that I watched lately:
Annie Hall by Woody Allen - Great comedy! Cereberal, sophisticated and extremely funny!
Mr and Mrs Smith - One of the best movies I have seen in recent times. It's amazing how the have perfectly interleaved a marital dispute into an action flick. It's hilarious! It rocks!
Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick- An insightful satire on the Vietnam war.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Hilarious British comedy!
Monty Python and the Life of Brain - Hilarious British comedy!
A few movies that I plan to watch soon:
Dr Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick
The Graduate - It's a movie starring Dustin Hoffman. It's supposed to be based in the University of Pennsylvania. The fact that I am interning in Phili and actually stayed there for a week makes me want to see it more.

Quotes and Random Jokes

Half the world's problems are caused by women, the other half by men.

Half the world's problems are caused by women, the other half by grad students who want to get out of grad school

Ring ring...
Hello. You have just come to heaven. God is busy right now, so you could leave a message so that he can get back to you or you can just go to hell!
-Moi

I like to read and collecting and making up quotes and random humor so here are a few I came across today. Well, if you are my friend, and you decide to read this I challenge you to play this game- a conversion just using quotations. Next time we chat, we can try it out. Of course, you
can use any source of quotations. Duh! You don't need to know anything by heart!
E.g.
I am feeling down today =>

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,

Shakespeare(Antonio in the Merchant of Venice)

Some other random quotes.

Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.
Mario Puzo (The Godfather)
And then kill them presumably :D.

Careful what you wish
Careful what you say
Careful what you wish
You may regret it
Careful what you wish
You just might get it
Metallica (Song 'King Nothing')

Forgiveness:
There is no revenge as complete as forgiveness.
Josh Billings

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
Hunter S. Thompson

How time flies..

I was just caught up in a moment of nostalgia.
How time has flown- 4 joyful years in IIT went by in a flash.
I can't believe I have been in the US for almost a year now. Seems like I arrived yesterday!
Another interesting comment I came across (by a friend in my CS class newsgroups, not too tough to guess actually):
Your life is like a Karnaugh Map. The greater the number of don't cares, the better your final expression. Or put otherwise, choose what you wish to remember, and choose what you wish to worry about.

Gsk

Well, life is very different working for a Pharmaceutical Company. For, starters I wear formal clothing. And, most of the people know little to no computer science. Which is good for me as I can learn a lot of Biology. My boss looks ok, would like to get my project done fast and move on to some research. Which is just fine with me! He doesn't seem to be a typical industry guy, he is more of an academic. He is Biology+CS major with a Ph. D. from UCLA with one year of post-doc experience. He worked for a while with a biotech startup before moving into a more stable job with Glaxo. He seems to know a lot about the industry and trends as such. He was telling me all about the drug development process, for the first time I feel like I am getting a real hands on perspective of what's going on.

The solution to the worlds' problems

--Common sense. Actually, any kind of sense would do.
--Most of the world's problems were and are caused by overinflated egos. Defend your position simply because it's your position. The real facts don't matter.

Semester Over Intern Begins

Whew! The semester is over. All the tension, anticipation, confusion has ended, the grades have been announced and I got A's. It was a semester where I somehow felt that I didn't do any work but to look back I learnt quite a bit. My algorithms course was good, the homeworks were a lot of work but I think it really cemented my understanding of the subject. I learnt some pretty interesting techniques like randomization. By introducing a little bit of uncertainity, you may get an answer that might be a little bit off, but you make things a whole lot faster in the process. I think I feel a lot more confident when I need to design an algorithm for a problem.
The other course that I did was Data Mining. I kind of felt that the course isn't too deep on fundamentals, it simply uses some existing statistical methods to analyze large amounts of data. A lot of it is similar to AI/ developing statistical models/ separating data statistically. I did some work in Bionformatics, it wasn't too technical a project but we are seeing if we can get some biological results and hopefully a publication. Data mining is an emergent area in Computer Science, so this course gave me a decent area of what's going on in it.
So, in conclusion it's been a decent semester- not too productive, not a total waste either. Hopefully, I can kick things up a bit next semester. I am done with most of my course requirements so I really want to take courses that interest me.
I leave for Philadelphia on the 19th of May with my internship starting on the 23rd of May. So, I have about a week to cool off before I leave.And, I might be heading back to India for a month in August so I am looking forward to that as well. I should make the most of it!