This came to me in a dream

A dark haired girl ( I recall nothing else) and I were having a conversation.

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Girl: And oh, I know that subject too.

Me: How do you know so much in detail?

Girl: When I pick up a subject or a textbook, I think of myself as the Creator of that subject. If I were to build this or that theory, how would I do it? Most times, there is a correlation between mine and the textbook version.

Me: But won't that take forever?!!

Girl: The very fact that you're asking me that proves to me you've never tried it.

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For some reason, I just recall just this part of the dream. I'll be the first to admit - this quals thing is really getting on me, making me feel insecure about a whole lot of things.

The Nobel laureate

Just before my talk at the ASMS conference, I was chatting with this guy R, when he suddenly gets up and greets a small Asian man. "Koichi! How are you?" That's when it hit me - this was Koichi Tanaka, the 2002 Nobel Laureate famous for his MALDI work. Yup, that right, and he was here to attend this session. My colleague, Paul then asked me - So? Are you nervous? I replied, why would I be nervous? There's only a Nobel prize winner in the damn audience.

Anyway, R finishes his small talk with his "Koichi" and sits down.

Hey you know who that is?

Yeah that's Koichi Tanaka isn't it? He seems to be a very humble man.

That he is. You know, back when he won the prize, he was an instant celebrity in Japan. In a good and bad way. Good because he got to set up his own institute and bad because of all the attention he was getting. They say that there used to queues of people waiting to see him and parents would give him their children to be kissed.

What! No kiddin?

No kidding. The funny part is Koichi hated all the attention so he would hide in the bushes outside his institute to avoid the crowd.

And that picture of the small man hiding in the bushes was so funny in my head that I promptly forgot all my nervousness and gave the talk pretty OK.

Back at home, I was sifting through all the cards of people who dropped by my poster and requested a copy of it. And lo and behold, his card was there with his name, designation, email and everything else. The Laureate had stopped by my poster and I hadn't even noticed him, much less talked to him. Too late, I thought and added his email id koichi blah @ blah to the mass listing. While going through the remaining cards, I found a card of a post doc from the same institute, but the strange thing was that the email id on the card was ditto that of Tanaka's!

I checked again. There was no doubt about it. The email id was koichi blah @ blah. This guy and his post docs had one email id. How totally weird!

Songs and you

Some songs remind me of you. Knowing you, you'd want to know the list. Not that you're romantically hopeless, but lists are your thing now aren't they? But there is no such list. Am sure I could make one, but the songs wouldnt share anything amongst them. See, some songs have just one line that remind me of you, others have a catchy title which I wouldnt have noticed otherwise. Others have simply a tune which my brain latches on and before you know it, am daydreaming. Yet others, and these are rare, are completely on the whole about you. You know these ones. I want to do something with these ones. I either send them to you, lyrcize them for you or I simply pick up learning the guitar so that I can sing to you.

what's scary is

the thought that maybe you're not as good as you thought you were.

The bum area

SLC had its share of bums, as any city does. And since the conference was bang in the middle of downtown, we ran into a few. What was different though was that the usual homeless rules didn't apply. Bums are supposed to be territorial. But here, we found four different guys with placards on one corner on any given day.

I was standing outside the convention center waiting for an old classmate to show up, when this guy walks to me and says - Sir, would you let a man clean the windows of your car? I said - umm, sorry I dont have a car. I didn't quite catch what he said next but he repeated it on his own in a shaking-his-head kinda way so I heard it clearly. And it surprised me. 'It ain't about the car, mister....it ain't about the car'. Great. The dude wanted money but was too proud or something so he made a theme and me the dumb idiot just didn't see the theme, the grander picture blah blah.....Eesh the philosophy!

Another bum somehow slipped inside the building into the poster hall. My friend, FijiMan looked up and was astonished to find this bum staring intently at his poster taking in the print, figures, plots and all.

Hey man, what are you doing here?
Sir? You got some chaaaange?
Er.. no.

The guy proceeded to collect all the empty soda cans from the recycle bin, and stuffed them into his bag.

They must have found him. The security on the last couple of days was pretty high.

The Temple Go-ers

This is a post I've been planning on writing for a long time, but kept postponing for..wait for it..the quals. Now that this shit is going to take longer than expected, there is no use in postponing things any more.

My parents are perfectly lovable people, and there are many things I admire about them. Dad is very practical, methodical and hardworking and is a does-everything-for-you kinda guy whose opinions are respected throughout the family. Ma is a kind and sweet lady, loves the heck out of us and always looks for positives doing her on-the-other-hand kind of analysis which sometimes is irritating, but well meant. They're are both pretty pious people. Which is OK as such, except when it comes to going to temples.

Especially to Guruvayoor.

Guruvayoor is a famous Vishnu's temple about 3 hour drive from Cochin. It's a big place and almost always packed. There are long queues, and the temple doors close very often so the river of people just wait there in queue for their chance at seeing the deity. I just want to make this more effective so the gist is this - you wake up , you travel for 3 hours, you spend a good 2 hours or so (if you're lucky) in a bullying queue, you get all of 30 secs to actually stand before the deity before you've shoved away, and you travel back for another 3 hours.

My parents approach this trip like a military campaign. The date is set months in advance. And as it approaches, many more details are set including the best time to leave. Many scenarios are run through in both heads, involving traffic, the calendar (if there are any special pujas that day), what to do with irregular closing times of the temple doors and such. When the day comes, they are up and about with energy, both praying that everything goes smoothly that day. My mom has this theory which goes something like this - you have to be 'blessed' to go pray there without any hold ups. If there is a huge crowd and big delays, it is a challenge that must be faced and surpassed with patience.

So the moment the car reaches, both of them have this look in their eye that I just cannot describe. They hurry on to the main entrance. A quick stock of the crowd situation is taken, and then we split up - mom goes to the ladies queue and me and dad take our place in the general queue. And then the wait starts. Sometimes it's really really bad, especially in December where we wait two hours outside the temple before we wait another two hours inside the temple. But doing this for them is OK, so I do it. However, on a good day, when all of India's one billion don't show up together, we get it done in relatively quick. But 'quick' is a misnomer because by then, trust me, you're beat from standing, suffocated from the crowd, irritated at the pushing and pulling and just plain fed up.

Anyway, you are thankful it's all over and you come around and see your mother waiting for you. And then you see the look in her eyes and you fervently wish you don't hear the following words. - 'That was quick wasnt it? I think we have time to do it one more time'

One more time? You try and reason with her. You say - look we had a good one, we're all 'blessed' and stuff so let's count our 'blessings' and leave. Now. No effect. You try and take a stand, Nope you're not coming for one more round of body beating. That's when the emotional stuff starts. First it was 'Look, you come only once in a couple of years and you make this much fuss' but lately it's been the even more dangerous 'you come in a couple of years home and I want you to do this please? This is very important to me. Do I force you to do anything else?' Eesh. And so you're back there in the line, cursing yourself for the stupid blessings comment and for not taking a stand.

And this is not just me. My aunt once went to Guruvayoor one December, saw the long queue, prayed from outside and left, perfectly content. When she mentioned this to my mom over the phone, there was silence. HG got caught in this recently where my mom declared that everyone was afraid to come to guruvayoor with her. HG felt really bad and went in a second time.

On the way back they analyse all other scenarios in which things could have been worse, and decide they had it easy. I gape at them. But they ignore me. They are genuinely happy, face lit with joy and calm alike. And you shrug it all away. Well if it makes them this happy.

I once asked my dad some years ago whether he in his youth ever questioned religion. He had this confused look on his face. The thought had never occurred to him. I smiled, at least he's got a view he sticks to.

The fat bastard sang

and I could do nothing but listen. Every fiber of me wanted to go at war with him.

Fuck you, you piece of shithole. Logic is not fucking part of algorithms. You know what is fucking logic? Logic is fucking logic. And just because you got your PhD in fucking logic does not mean you try and push it into every scope of every exam that you give. Especially when you don't include any of that in your syllabus. Go to war with you? Shit..I got better pride than that. You're impenetrable aren't you? You've got tenure and everything is allright. Doesn't matter if you don't publish shit or got no one to work for you. No one respects you. You hear me? Well of course you don't cuz this is a blog that you will never read. And am not about to yell this at your face. So this shit is all pretty pointless.

But..

Bring it on fucker