January 24, 2011
1) How not to be a good experimental physicist.
2) How not to be your teacher’s pet.
3)How not to be your bosses’ favorite employee.
4)How not to be a good boyfriend.
5)How not to be attractive to girls.
6)How not to be healthy.
7)How not to make your parents proud of you.
8)How not to be successful in life.
9)How not to be good at sports.
10)How not to be a A student in school.
11)How not to be an Astudent in university.
12)How not to like yourself.
January 4, 2010
The last ten years passed really fast. It did something to me, it turned me from a self depreciating aimless,clueless 15 yr old to a focused and slightly wiser man of 25 years. You may think all is for the good, but it never is. As I analyze what I have lost and gained over the last ten years, I think the pros and cons balance each other.
I have a well defined idea of what I want in life and how do I go about getting it. Is this a blessing, this great capability of choosing and following one’s own dream? 10 years ago, when I was a clueless 15 yr old dozing to sleep with a smile on my face fancying the girl I would one day meet, I did not care how many hours I slept,I never had insomnia,never dreaded as days passed because I was not achieving my personal targets. Even though I was the class clown, had hardly any respect, never wooed a girl, I was enjoying the ride, I knew great things would come. My hopes were infinite and the dreams soared high. Nothing could hold me down.
As I graduated from high school, reality hit me harder than most people. By 20, most of the dreams I had never came true. I never got into IIT, never had a girl friend till I was 22, never was as popular as I was in high school. I realized, these were not dreams I had, just some image of what the ideal life should lie ahead. I was hoping endlessly while being protected by a bubble of security in high school. Painfully as the years passed, I slowly learned to adapt my dreams to set more realistic targets. They say teenage years are hard but I think my young adult phase was the toughest in the my life. Faced with bitter and harsh reality I suffered from disillusion, insomnia, low self esteem and the worst of all depression.
Life was not all sunshine and rainbows as I had expected. I was the happy go lucky guy but the world hates that guy and crushes him down to such a state that he cannot dream anymore. I am afraid to say that I have lost the ability to dream, the ability to think about the far future and expect all wonderful things. You learnt that once you did not get into the IITs and later the IIMs no body including your own parents stop respecting you. When the people closest to you give up on you, its just hard to go ahead. You spend the rest of your life in silence working hard just to convince them that you have also made it on your own in your own world.
It was easy to make people laugh in high school, with your jokes and practical jokes but then you realize its close to impossible to make a girl go out with you. You are neither tall, nor that good looking, nor does your major offer an immediate glamorous job. You think you knew all about relationships from watching “Friends” but thats a very bad mistake. You see how ugly relationships can get with fights, cheating and mental warfare.
When you are 21, you think all hope is lost. The world as you know it is gone and maybe a lil alcohol will help because hey, it does help to to have a anxiety less sleep once in a while. Now this goes on a lil too much and soon your panting while trying to catch a bus or puking the whole day because you drank too much the night before. Someone gave you the stupid idea, that it is realistic for a medium height indian guy with no money at all to meet girls at a bar or a disco.
You are 22 now and completely disillusioned. You have mostly given up on everything and you try everything harmful possible. You are neck deep with education loans and you think that what you will do after graduation will have nothing to do with the education you had. Everything falling apart, your grandparents are growing old and dying and you regret that you did not have the time to go and tell them how much you loved them. You hardly get any sleep at night, anxious about your future. You are weak,fat,insomiac and in simple words sad.
You decide to take a long walk by yourself and decide twice about life. You think about the advice your parents gave to you when you were a kid that hard work was necessary for everything and not always the fruits of the labor will come immediately. You resolve in your mind that you will try harder, not seek refuge in drinking and try to make an effort to improve your life. You decide to do whatever it takes to make a complete turn around. In a little corner of your heart, there is still some hope that things can be good.
Soon things start changing for the better. People recognize your efforts and praise you and respect you. You are not panting anymore, you are fit and efficient. The girl of your dreams starts taking a fancy to you and before you know it she is your girlfriend. You are the job you dreamed about as a kid when you were making cameras out of shoe boxes and pinholes. You are 25, you can dream again all you needed was a little hope, some determination and 10 years to learn about reality.
November 5, 2009
I hate myself. I have lost the discipline.I cant even get myself to sit down and write down a single blog entry once a month. So much has been happening everyday and I dont even have the time to sit down and type it all.
Its November already in Singapore with rains creating havoc everyday. As usual I am forgetting to take an umbrella and my miserable schedule of working 11 hrs a day forced me to go jogging through rain and storm at 10 at night. Its quite an experience thought, running at night, rain hitting your face, you wondering if the rain is bad for your ipod and suddenly you run into the street without looking and a car screeches to a halt several cms away from you.
I have never been much of a “social” blogger. I never did anything to make my blog popular except for adding relevant tags. There was no desperate commenting on other people’s blog hoping they notice or adding people to my twitter or my blog roll. Which ever comment I got was from people who were actually nice enough to read it on their own.
August 6, 2009
Singapore prides itself in the high standards of living it offers its residents; it prides itself on convenience, efficiency and cleanliness. Living in Singapore is hassle free, non chaotic and mostly incident free except for little things here and there which are worth mentioning.
1) Early Morning Buses (7 AM to 9 AM):
Singapore is one of the most densely populated nations in the world. It is a city with a population of 4.5 million which is quite large considering it is more than the entire population of the country of New Zealand (fun fact: Sheep outnumber humans and rugby players in NZ 20:1) . You can feel the brunt of the population when you need to take a bus on any weekday morning. Buses pass by you, too full to pick you up. When you finally manage to squeeze into the bus into a crack small enough to fit a very thin Chihuahua, you realize the suffering just started. There you are, early in the morning, instead of being all springy and fresh, compressed between school bags, shopping trolleys and holding your breathe because your sure the guy in front of you did not shower in a hurry.
You look into the distance and see an empty seat (equivalent to seeing a Unicorn in the middle of Orchard Road) and you leap for it. You are stopped mid air by something which resembles an umbrella which delivers a agonizing poke to your shin. Your vision goes hazy from the poke and the fact that your heavy bag is pressing on some important artery and cutting out the blood supply. You have just been poked by an old Aunty, the terror of morning buses. They get on the bus in packs armed with umbrellas to poke you and the shopping trolleys to run over your feet. While you are howling from the pain, like a swift ninja, they occupy the remaining seats. When my vision finally recovered, I noticed a fast moving blur and then a Chinese lady in her 70s appeared on the seat.
2) Taxi Drivers in Singapore:
Somehow I prefer quiet rides when I take a taxi. When I am spending a few extra dollars, I wish to leave the chaos and bedlam behind and enjoy the air con in the taxi while lying in a semi comatose state barely held vertical by the seat belt. My day dreams enhanced by the warm sunlight streaming through the trees of Clementi Road is suddenly interrupted by a “Kaise Ho?”. I look outside to reassure myself that I am still in Singapore. Did the Malay taxi driver ask me how I am doing in Hindi? I conjured up my best Hindi (Hindi has never been my strength, barely passed it when I had it as third language) and could come up only with an “Accha”. He showed off his knowledge of Hindi which uncomfortably was slightly better than mine. In spite of me trying to discourage him by mumbling some reply, his enthusiasm only grew. His next question was “Are you from Poonjab?”. At five feet seven inches in height (Std deviation: 2 inch) I would be undoubtedly be the shame of Punjab. Luckily my drop off point was close and I left the cab with 7 dollars poorer and a Hindi lesson.
Taxi drivers in Singapore have stepped in my little paradise (my mid morning intoxicated state) and offered me financial advice, relationship advice and career advice. The fact that I chose a DBS Credit Card, I went to Bali and chose Physics for my career maybe because of a cabbie’s advice rooted in my subconscious.
3) The 5 Cent Coin
I hate the 5 cent coin. If there was such a thing with no purpose whatsoever (Reality shows, Sarah Palin and Scientology belonging to the same category), the 5 cent coin will top the list. It is never there when you need it, and it’s always clanking around in your pocket or wallet when you don’t need it.
What if the 5 cent coin was never there? Is there anything in Singapore which costs 5 cents? If you are kidnapped, your parents cannot pay off your ransom in 5 cent coins. Your piggy bank will turn slim on a low calorie diet of 5 cent coins. Try paying off a cabbie with 5 cents coins and he will drive you to the nearest mental institution or police station.
4) Mustafa Center:
Mustafa center is the representative of everything “Un-Singaporean”. It is noisy, chaotic and has salespeople trying their best not to make a sale. Located bang in the middle of Little India (For Harry Potter there is Voldemort, For Neo there is Agent Smith, For Orchard Road there is Little India), surrounded by shops blaring loud Hindi music, it sells everything from Chapattis to spacesuits.
Ignoring the fact that is a glorified warehouse with sour faced sales staff, the shoppers really bother me with their attitude. While rest of the world goes to a beach, a zoo, a restaurant on weekends, Indians in Singapore treat shopping at Mustafa as a family outing. Ranging from ages of 2 to 80, they are all there in full force armed with prams and trolleys clogging up the narrow passageways. Occasionally you see a three year old girl prancing around while her pram is being used to transport packets of rice.
I would like to propose a three lane system for faster movement inside Mustafa. Leftmost lane is for senior citizens and children on prams, center lane is for fast moving adults with trolleys and the right most lane is to overtake(if necessary) to grab the last carton of Amul milk.
Things worth mentioning:
TV Mobile: Few years back, someone decided to put television on buses and TVmobile was born. Apparently listening to music or reading a book is not a productive way of spending you time traveling, but staring glassy eyed at a screen with uninteresting programs is. You try to avoid it but it catches up to you. I had tried not looking at the screen, but the distributed speakers in the bus manage to penetrate even the best of noise reduction headphones. There you are like mindless zombies watching programs who you never watch in any other situations. Programs like a drama series called “Red Thread” where the protagonist, a blind man, is wearing a watch. The programs become more and more bizarre as the hours roll by. I was on a Night Ride bus on the other day at 1 AM in the morning and they were showing a German cooking show where they make a broccoli cake.
General “Over planning” of Singaporeans:
Singaporeans are serial anti procrastinators. Who wouldn’t when you have the internet, 3G mobile, AXS machines, SAM machines and all other modern technology to help your paranoia? I, the serial procrastinator, am a victim of circumstances in this country. Being late to take action, I never managed to get a ticket to a concert, a ticket to a weekend movie and lately, a good lesson time for my driving training (this is also because I was too late to prevent my Indian License from expiring). The Driving center booking is the epitome of the booking habits of Singaporeans. Classes two to three months have been booked in advance and I always end up getting the undesirable late night session. There I am driving blind as a bat in the night while the instructor ironically asks me to check my “Blind Spot”. The booking habit will become such deep rooted in the future that grandparents will be booking driving tests for unborn grandchildren. When a child is born, he/she will be presented with a birth certificate and the booking statement for his Basic Driving Theory test.
July 11, 2009
Its been a while since I had typed my last blog entry,6 months I think,might be even more. People say I have softened, and my old blogs have the “angry single hopeless man” sharp edge to it which they enjoyed. I think I had not written anything in a while, partly cos I have few things to complain about and also because I really havent had the time to sit down and type a long entry. So its july now when I am probably making the first entry of the year.
I was always afraid I would become one of “those” guys in a relationship. Indian guys in a relationship lose their hair faster than a person receiving chemotherapy and start developing a tyre around their waist which is filled with anything but love. I was afraid to be one of those unhappy guys standing with the “please lord,lift me up now” face next to their girlfriends at a sale where their significant others keep goin through identical shoes. I was afraid to adopt teddy bears and chocolates as the currency of love where real emotions have been forgotten for a long time.
Well none of these have happened. Im doin so well that after 7 months, I finally get time to update the blog.I have managed to keep myself the same as I was before, exercise and work even more just out of the scare that relationship might change me a bit.
2004, Thomas Friedman had talked about in my university about his book ,”World is Flat” and the wonders of a globalized world where optical fibers have created a revolution shrinking the world. Now when we are feeling the brunt of the Globalized world where a recession caused by actions of a greedy “Haves” are kicking the rice bowls of “Have nots” around the world and where a disease like H1N1 cannot be contained because of millions of people fly to and from locations around the globe.
I am not too scared about swine flu. My immunity is pretty good and I usually dont hang around in public places full of sneezy strangers anyway. Its good that the panic initially created had died out and people have accepted that fact that its not the most dangerous of all diseases and things have to handled calmly. Although the name, “Swine Flu” might be a misnomer, it would have not been such a big deal in a non globalized setting. A pig handler in mexico would have roamed around in a radius of a 100 miles maximum infecting people in it. But with globalization some of these people in the 100 mile radius are boarding flights to europe and asia spreading the disease. Basically instead of running around freaking out that Armageddon is here, we should just accept it as a con of globalization.
Are you a guy/gal who holds a job which you feel is too good to be true? Do you think (due to some of your good karma) the pay you get is way more than you deserve and more than you work? Is your “job” actually the time you spend between the two coffee breaks and lunches? Turns out this miracle which happened to you was a consequence of your bumbling boss who just hired you, not because they needed you but maybe cos they needed to have certain amount of people in the team so that they can bill more. Turns out the first person who is goin to be retrenched first is you. Dont blame that the world is unfair because you lost your “job”,it was unfair when you got job.
March 2, 2009
Slumdog Millionaire
I watched Slumdog Millionaire before it officially released. Although a good movie with a good story and a reasonable cast(all adult cast) and a very enthusiastic Anil Kapoor, I was wondering if it was worth all the hype. Call me a cynic but if “Amar Akbar Anthony” was made by a british director and given such publicity, I would have believed it would have won Oscars. Atleast the song sequences were better than the “jai ho” railway station dance. Only people worth mentioning about the movie is the child cast who were natural and incredible. Dev Patel looks ok as Jamal and his British accent creeps in subtly. Anyway I ll try to be washed over by patriotism and be proud of a movie which most critics call “poverty porn”. Apparently the word “porn” is being used in ways unfamiliar to me.
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Benjamin Buttons
If I would be really honest, I would think “Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons” would be one of the most boring movies ever made and the sheer bodycount in the movie puts Die Hard and Rambo to shame. Although both Benjamin Buttons and Forrest Gump are basically southern dull guys (Brad Pitt didnt look his brightest), I would say Forrest Gump’s life was way more exciting than Benjamin’s. Buttons managed to be so boring that I fell asleep only to be woken by my gf and a loud Filipino woman crying when he dies. Gump went to vietnam, caught shrimp, ran across America, met John Lennon, Buttons did nothing expect look sad.
I have gained 10 kilos over the last 3 years so I have decided to eat fast food to lose weight. Im trying a so called famous “Subway” Diet where lunch consists of a 6 inch sandwich and dinner is a foot long. I am not surprised that Subway sandwiches have hardly anything in them cos even my toothbrush tastes better than them. Anyway I ll try to stay committed to my Subway diet inspired by a story of a man called Jared who lost 245 pounds eating subway. I guess if u eat such “Fat Free Taste Free” food, you ll give it up anyway. The Veggie Delight has been at the cause of many suicides and words like “Parmesan Oregano” and “Honey Mustard” have been mentioned in many eulogies.
February was apparently the month for love cleverly portrayed by companies to sell over prized stuffed rag dolls so that deluded girls would molest them and bouquets of flower which die in 2 days to remind us that life is very transient. The month ended up with majority of the male population ending up with spiraling down bank balances as result of gifting over prized colorful vegetation and cocoa seeds prepared with udder secretion of cows to the female population. This is even jazzed up with even more colourful words like “You complete me” (what are you a jigsaw puzzle with your gf the last piece), ” You had me at Hello”(Yah I am that desperate). Anyway apparently after a lil research, I discovered a formula for the propagation of love. So you are already in “love”(definition: stage of hallucination where extra effort is needed to continue in that state),what is the formula to maintain it?
The answer lies in two things, Valentines Day and Geometric Progression. Definition of Geometric Progression is “
In mathematics, a geometric progression, also known as a geometric sequence, is a sequence of numbers where each term after the first is found by multiplying the previous one by a fixed non-zero number called the common ratio. For example, the sequence 2, 6, 18, 54, … is a geometric progression with common ratio 3. Similarly 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25, … is a geometric sequence with common ratio 1/2. The sum of the terms of a geometric progression is known as a geometric series.
Thus, the general form of a geometric sequence is
“So if you start with ur first valentines day gift to be 20 dollars(a=20) and you choose your r=2, next year your gift should be 40 then 80 then 160 and so on. This continues till it reaches four figure which is like the price of an engagement ring and thats when you propose. If you are not keen to marry, I would say start with a low priced gift of $2 to $5 because your r is mostly fixed at 2. 
Guys eager to get married start with $ 50 which is a good amount, a balance between your eagerness and modesty.
February 16, 2009
2009 feels different. Landing in Singapore did not feel dreadful as usual, I did not feel like a sleep deprived zombie ready to be plunged into a cauldron of pain and boredom aka experimental physics. I felt lighter having completed all my coursework, all my qualifying exams and having a good project to work on. I had a gf who pretty much makes my life a million times better. I actually for the first time embraced 2009.
Having a gf in the same city as you are is a whole different ball game. If your choice has been good, the quality of life improves several fold. No more watching movies alone, no more sundays in Bras Basah looking at guitars, no more hang outing with K so much that we felt like a gay couple. Watching movies alone is fine, but watching chick flick alone sucks because when the lights come on after the movie you don’t want to be spotted as the lonely hopeless romantic, so you kinda predict that the movie is ending and u duck before anyone sees you. I tried that for “27 dresses” but ended up missing half an hour from the last part.
Initially its a challenge to balance the gf and the movie and takes time to get used to it. Like when I was first dating Niki (thats my gf’s name…to avoid confusion she is indian…rajput) and we went to watch “Yes Man”, I ended up watching nothing and cant remember anything from the movie. But lately I have practiced hard to focus on the movie, inspite of having an incredibly attractive gf beside me and succeeded in appreciating “Underworld 3″. I did fall asleep during “The Incredibly Boring Case of Benjamin Buttons” but got awakened to a Filipino lady crying beside me towards the end of the movie because supposedly it was sad.
Niki is apparently a descendant of a warrior class called the Rajputs….which is the brunt of most of my jokes. The hot headed warring Rajput blood has been diluted over generations to give us gentle Niki, who has to sleep every night with the stuffed Piglet from Winnie the Pooh. Surely that would have scared the Mugals, a stuffed toy yielding female at the battle field. Rajputs have been portrayed in history books to be sword yielding fierce warriors, but never shooting arrows. It was no surprise when me and Niki went to this archery place in Suntec city that a matchstick armed fish eating bengali like me did better than her. I sure if there was a sword fight she would win. Also the Rajputs originating from Rajasthan didnt have much experience with Sea food because when on 14th feb we decided to have a 1 kg crab for dinner, Niki pulled at one of its leg with such inexperienced force that it went flying across the restaurant hitting another patron in the eye.
These last few months with Niki has been great. There has been dancing, singing, drinking breezers while standing in the sea and a lot , lot of messaging and eating. Its cool to hang out with her on the beach during weekends or catch a movie or dinner with her.
Being with her I have ended up with nothing to complain about, thus hardly any blog entries the last few months. I am struggling to find things to complain about so to have stuff to write about.
January 31, 2009
I turned most of the photos I took in Calcutta to B&W because b&w suits well for street photography. Also black and white has the capability of turning any drab photo into a masterpiece. Here are the steps to do it in Photoshop.
First lets start with the original and the transformation.
Original Picture:Victoria Memorial Calcutta
Post Processing: Black and White
1) Open the original photo in Photoshop. Go to adjustments and desaturate the image first.
After Desaturating
As you can see it just looks drab and so its not enough. People think turning on the black and white mode of the camera also would produce an amazing black and white photo, but you will end up with something like this.
2) Open curves. Adjust it. The curve should look like an S . you can open Curves by pressing Ctrl+M.
Adjusting Curves
As you can see the picture is starting to pop. The curves adjustment is enough to make you pics pop.
3). If you want more, you can play with the Shadow/Highlights and then your picture would be complete.
January 27, 2009
Final HDR from 1 Single JPEG
Sometimes you are stuck with a single JPEG file and regret not taking several RAW’s to make an HDR. All hope if not lost, because if you play around with a bit of Photoshop and Photomatix, you can make a HDR like looking photo in no time at all. Of course it wont have really much of a dynamic range because the information is not truly there.
Step 1. Open the original file in Photoshop.
Original Image
As you can see its a really dull image taken from my camera from the car. Its a single JPEG with nothing special work done on it.
Step 2. Play with the curves to create an over exposed and an under exposed shot.
Adjusting Curves to create underexposure
Once you have do this, you shall have an underexposed and overexposed pic which look somewhat like this.
Overexposed Shot
Underexposed
Step 3. Open the 3 different exposures using photomatix, play with the tonal ranges and voila you’ll get your fake HDR.
November 26, 2008
