The 11th Month:Sprained leg and other ways God loves us equally

Lately my WordPress account is just being filled with drafts….ideas which came and never materialized into anything solid to write about. I almost have more drafts than actual posts.

Im sitting at home with a banged up , bad ankle sprain. Inspite of the lack of will or motivation I had decided to join my working mates/fellow researchers on a night out in a favorite club (St.James) drenched with Whiskey cokes and some serious guy talks which basically came to fornication stories and ex girl friends.But somewhere along the night , in the techno room I stepped down from a platform and didnt land right and twisted my ankle bad. So last two days I have mostly been in pain and feeling kinda invalid because limping doesnt go well with my personality.

I did pass the famous Phd Qualifying exam with a passing rate of 40% this time apparently. Before I had even taken the exam I had estimated a passing rate of 70 to 80%, I would have freaked out real badly if i knew the real passing rate. Anyway ,,…its not like I know anymore physics than before but just that, I simultaneously revised most of the physics to appreciate it as a whole and not bits and pieces of it.

I am so confused about the expectations of the future. What are we really working for, what are we living towards, is tomorrow gonna be any difference….is there any thing good we can expect from the future? I sometimes talk to my friends who have perfect well paying, holiday giving jobs and perfect relationships and somehow I feel I am way happier than them because they are so sick of their perfect life. The only reason I dont go into a relationship is because I have to start behaving respectfully and I ll end up being all bored out of mind and suffocated as I see my youth being drained away into the sinkhole of a conventional relationship.

Life is all about freedom. You dont have to worry about where you go, what you wear, what you say, who you hate , who you love. And as soon as ur in a relationship, all this just goes away. My friend says people do good after 3 failed relationships. First one is usually the dream one where you are trying to be your servile best to please the girl you are with because your too glad to be with her. Second one, you r too macho because you were hurt by your last one. By the time of the third one, you don’t really care anymore and thats when you dont care thinks work apparently. So one more relationship to go through for me before it works out.

Obama becomes the first black president of the US. Honestly I was not too concerned about the campaign but later part of it became irritated by the Obama fan club because it seemed that people were just supporting Obama because suddenly become cool and hip to support him. What was Gun n Roses Tshirts in the 90s have become Obama tshirts now. People reaching in their hollow insecure selves trying to find a belonging and a spirit of self esteem by supporting him. Personally I thought Mc Cain was a pretty good candidate and he should have won way back in 2000. He is just too old now and Bush and Sarah Palin let him down.

I liked the latest bond movie. I like what a hard ass Daniel Craig has made Bond to be,none of the fluffy roger moore stuff anymore. Its pretty good to see Bond at the top of his game. I really liked the new bond girl, she is probably the only one with lots of self esteem unlike the others.

 

Hyperfine Structure,Begging Grovelling and Headless Mannequin Fetish

My friend K got dumped by his gf a year ago. He recovered from it, but the pain manifested into outlets like obsessive guitar playing and mannequin fetish. Yah you read it right, thats why I put it in bold. Well there has always been times when we might have stopped at a mannequin( im kidding) and walked away disgusted with ourselves because we have come down to this. But it was something when my friend stopped at Suntec City to examine a headless bikini wearing mannequin. How cruel has life and love been to him that he has been brought down to this(he has a serious retro porn addiction too now… ). I could totally imagine him 5 years down the line dragging headless mannequins to dark alleys and having his way with them. Poor Mannequins!!

I have spent the entire last month studying for my Phd qualifying exam. Topics included 7 different super tough physics books with topics like Quantum Mechanics, Atomic Physics and Classical Mechanics which would even make Rambo cry. Well I am done with the exam last friday and with Gods grace(evangelist nowdays) I ll pass. Most of you who had physics in our final high school years must know about the atomic structure. But did you know an atom has a gross structure, a fine structure, a hyperfine structure , zeeman shifts crossover peaks and whole lot of crap. Thursday night in a very dark comedy moment I realized that for my exam I have to learn for one single exam what physicists have toiled to find out in the last 100 years.Anyway I have more appreciation for physics way more than I had before and lets see if i can make a career out of it.

Im still torn between the Blackberry and the Iphone. Well technically Im not torn its just I have a Blackberry curve already. Its like blackberry has quite some functionality but its boring and not fun. Its like being married to someone who is sober and wont let you do kinky stuff with her and also comes with a QWERTY keyboard which means she takes care of you and cooks every sunday. But on the other had Iphone is the like hippie carefree sex in the living room kinda girlfriend you can have. So do u want to give up the dedicated sunday lunches and regular loving for sex in inappropriate places like trial rooms in the mall. Another thing is that blackberry already costs me 30 bucks a month and I ll need 56 dollars more for a iphone.

I like Katy Perry’s “I kissed a girl, I liked it” because its the only girly song you can sing too without having lines like “he lied to me,tore my heart”. Anyway as usual I like someone and she does not like me back. I should see someone about these cases of un reciprocated love I face all the time. Well she has to work out issues with her ex bf. I wish I was an ex bf sometimes, ex bfs have all the fun because inspite of leaving they still have one foot left in her …….. I tried to be an ex bf once, but i became a terrible mistake, swept under the rug, never to be brought up again unless blackmailed kinda secret to my ex.

I like the way rejection can change a person. In the beginning you are this self confident guy with nothing to lose, thinking she is totally into you. The problem is the criteria I use is her laughing at my jokes, which even as a physicist I say is a very very slim indicator heavily bolstered by my never ending optimism. Then you realize she is not into you and then u panic and then ur down on your knees negotiating how dating you could be good for her. Lately I carry knee pads along with me because you never know when you have to go down and start begging. And all this transformation from a confident chappie to a begging groveling loser takes place in a week like some make-over show run in reverse.

 

Geek2Geek:The 3 point rule

The 3 point rule for evaluation of a relationship or getting a gf

So we have improved, matured and become better in convincing women to go out with us. We get at least one date a month(hopefully…touch wood) and we like most of them. Some of them we like a more than others. So one fine Saturday evening when your friends are busy and you realize you are pushing mid twenties and a girl friend wont be such a bad idea. Now before you want to choose one of these nominees to be your girl friend you should evaluate all conditions before hand so you don’t get rejected.

Since magazines like New Scientist is coming up with scientific studies of compatibilities between men and women and what kinda men women really go for, after a lot of discussion with my friend in a Starbucks on a friday evening, we came up with the 3 point rule.

Now lets evaluate a person(man/women) using a scale out of 10 in the fields of looks and intelligence. A woman will date a man (guaranteed) 3 below her in looks and 3 over her in intelligence. If you actually know a couple where the guy is better looking than the girl, its not gonna work. Similarly for a couple where the woman is smarter than the guy, she will just go for some more smarter guy.

Imagine a hypothetical person is honestly 7.5/10 in looks and 8 in intelligence. He should go for a hypothetical 10.5 or 10 in looks and 5 in intelligence when he is evaluating a girl.

I guess this is because that usually guys are not much of the determining factor in the relationship. Women feel insecure if their bf is better looking than them and specially dumber than them.

This means good news for us who are in the 7-9 range in looks cos when we are going for a gf we should not be afraid to reach for the stars.

 

The 13 minute blog entry

Doing a PhD is tough, there I said it. No more bravado, hiding the pain and acting like the tough guy saying,”Its not that hard.”  Hit hard with possible a accelerated case of comatose tiredness and the  scary  thought that my organs are failing,  I just cant get enough rest to  rejuvenate myself.

Its another of those tuesday nights when I feel, “Is it only tuesday ?”.  Anyway  there are tons of things inspite of this tiredness that cheer me up all the time. Like the new phd student, a girl who wore those tiny tiny shorts in the lab and was soldering and then a blob of solder fell on her leg and burnt her. Ok I know it sounds mean but it is also funny, she could have just worn long pants like I always told her to.

Im gonna 24 soon, its like almost 1/3 of your life is over, (75 because im an hypochondriac), and I look back, I kinda got everything I wanted in life .(now I am talking like a person about to die). Every little wish I had, I got it now. When I was in high school fighting over one piece of meat (sound like a dog) during lunch break, I would go back to the class imagining me eating a juicy steak.  Now I can eat that all the time, how many times I want. I wanted a car with automatic gear shift, I have it now. I have 2 desktops at work one at home and a laptop. I have an MP3 player, a blackberry,  a nikon d80, an xbox, LCD tv. I was in relationship with the best girl I ever thought existed.  I have everything I ever want and I ll but the iphone 3g next week.

Anyway 13 minutes is up, the time I allocated for this blog.

 

Random Updates as of 5th September,2008

*   I am very tired….je suis tres fatigue….I have been working too hard averaging 12 hrs a day and its getting to me….I am in charge of this atom chip project and its a pain in the ass when you are doin it all by urself…on top of that there is the scientific advisory meeting(people who fund us) and things have to squeezed out….I havent had time to go out to even watch a single movie….

* I am obsessed with two songs by Jason Mraz…….”Im yours” and “Lucky” , I tried singing them myself but someone told me to stick to research.

* I am still obsessed with Tina Fey, I watched the movie “Baby Mama” just because of her …there was Greg Kinear in the movie which is never a bad thing, because he does do his parts well….but I wouldnt say much about the movie….as funny goes…Zohan is the funniest movie I have seen in a while with Humus and Disco breaks….

The girl from zohan is very very pretty….Emmanuelle Chirqui or something…..

* People should try the ten day mental challenge thing….its just that for the next ten days you would force yourself to think positive inspite of everything…..and then it will become a habit and come naturally to you…also another thing I have found useful is planning the day ahead the night before using google calendar…..

* I am gonna get a  inflation compensation package of 300 dollars the next month….Planning to buy an Iphone 3G with it…its hard to be in singapore without gps(yaahhh right)

* I cant be bothered with the US elections because it has completely lost its merit with the addition of Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska….I think Mc cain would be a stronger and better president but just that he is too old and Sarah Palin might end up being the president which wont be a good things…Im not sure how long the Obama magic will last but it might be enough to make him win the elections….

* I have completed 1.5 yrs of my PhD and still have another 2.5 yrs to go..It should be like a celebrity make over thing…the before and after pic…..in 4 yrs how I will change….

 

First Video Blog:Wednesday 20/08/2008

My first video blog on youtube….lets see if i can do more

 

Borderline Quaterlife Crisis Syndrome(BQCS)

I am almost 24 and absolutely clueless about life. I don’t belong anywhere, I don’t have pictures labeled “Good Times” and I did not have any belonging which I miss. I have taken life as it came, good, bad and really bad. I am not overtly patriotic, political,religious,sentimental or nostalgic. I really have no clue how my life turned out to be the way it is and no clue what is going to happen next to it. I am not sure about anything except that I have to complete my Phd in 3 years. Where I am going to live, who am I going to live with or what I am going to do are pointless questions to me because there is nothing you can do about it. I guess I am just suffering from Borderline Quaterlife Crisis.

Why is it so difficult to dream when you grow older? Or on the other hand why does everything happening to you feel like a real long dream. Only thing I remember distinctly was going from first grade to second grade. After that was a superfast nightmare which is still going on and I have no control over it. Things are spinning out of control, you are in places you did not plan to go to, people you knew for so long are growing old and dieing, you feel like a stranger in your old city when you go back. This is really a time of my life when I feel like I have no control over how life is just slipping away at a super fast pace and I have lost the power to dream.

Life is feeling like an endless quest for greener pastures. Once you are there you realize there are too many cows there already and you don’t feel special anymore. All we are doing is an endless run to be special, to be different. True that one day we will look back and see what we have achieved but it will also come with an immense sense of loss from the things gone while we were struggling with our heads down. You feel you are growing older and whatever you have achieved now is still not enough and you have to keep on going. But in course you have to leave behind the people you love, in case my grandparents whom I cant meet more than once a year, you remove all emotions from your life because you don’t have the time to grieve when you are hurt. You keep suppressing all this pain and keep moving on because this is what life expects you to do. I really don’t know when this floodgate of emotions will open and I really have to face my own feelings. Now its easy to suppress all the hurt and pain and replace them with anger . Anger is easy to handle because all I choose is one innocent victim and a reason to just vent all my anger on them. This is wrong but thats all I can do to keep on functioning. Sometimes I wish life came with a manual so I knew how to handle situations.

 

Where do you get your Ya Ya s to survive?

Its a uninteresting tuesday night Im sitting on my desk with a 1000 page atomic physics text book open at my side. Im distracted, de motivated and although Im not particularly upset , I just cant make myself read the stuff although I know i desperately need to. Its just Im out of Ya Yas.

“Ya Yas” as my dictionary puts is the things we get kicks from. I don’t know how other people survive but I really need kicks to keep on going. And on the unhappier side of the week Im out of it.

Day started uninterestingly with my atom chip experiment with me stringing optical fibers from one optic table to another. I attended two talks today, one extremely relevant on atom chips by Bjorn and another on simulating quantum mechanics with electronic circuits in microwave regime. I came back home but simply cant go on with the studying because I just don’t feel good.

I cant really find an instant feel good solution right now. The Hell boy movie last week did not work and the wedding on sunday did nothing to help it. Hopefully the Dark Knight movie releasing on thursday would do it for me. I have decided to ease on other shallow sources like alcohol and flattery from girls. Trying to lead a good life is really tough. Im out of things to make me feel good. On top of that the summer writers break at hollywood has resulted in all the sitcoms  halted at episode 17 or something.

Hopefully running tommorow will give me a kick followed by dark knight on thursday will help me survive the week. This is what life is for me one movie after the other to just keep on going.

 

Geek2Geek:7 Simple ways to be happy in this world

Don’t fall into the low productivity whirlpool:

Im sure you had those evenings where you had the nagging feeling that you have not achieved nothing during the day. You started with a perfect routine with all the tasks lined up but somewhere you got side tacked and it all went downhill from there. So you decide to make an effort during the evening to catch up but whatever you do, your mind cannot just concentrate because of your guilt and its soon 1 am and you have done nothing. This goes on to 2am or sometimes 3am and next day you wake up feeling like crap and not get anything done again.

To get rid of this problem,start early and get a big chunk of the work done so that you can spend the rest of the day beaming about it and feeling proud of it. Achieve something everyday at least.

Plan how you meet people:

Always keep something to look forward to. When you are meeting friends throughout the week dont keep them all on the weekends when you sometimes get all the work done. Distribute them like put one on tuesday to deal with the early week blues, one on thursday to deal with the “man wat a week” blues and on Saturday to deal with “You wont believe wat happened this week” conversations. As you keep these well distributed there is hardly any chance of you feeling lonely.

Get some exercise:

This is the best way of being happy. Experience the “runner’s high” this is when you are almost crossing 2.5 km. Come early from work twice a week and just go running. Half an hour later when ur drenched in sweat and panting your mind will be clearer and way more relaxed than ever. Running guarantees a good night sleep, a flat stomach, clear mind and a “can do” attitude. It is also a completely inexpensive way of being fit and happy at the same time. If you have more time and you want to look good, hit the gym. You ll be fit,happy, clear, energetic and cheerful all the time.

Always have something to look forward to:

This is what drives me. I always have something to look forward to. Be it a new tuition center I am trying to set up, be it a new girl I am seeing, be it the new french class I m going to or looking forward to join Muay thai, I am excited to get up everyday and enjoy life. As a result, I have learnt a bit of french, learnt salsa and learnt photography. Only way of getting out of the monotonous life is to have new things to look forward to. If they dont come naturally(because they never do), you have to force it. You have nothing to do on a saturday, go and teach a class of under privileged children.

Do not commit to a relationship unless your sure of her/him:

Most of the woes and most of the visit to shrinks take place because of relationships gone bad and people trying to mend a broken heart. I have been through that myself and it takes quite a while to recover from it. But I think people should go through that atleast once as it is a part of growing up. Going through it is an invaluable experience.

When your not sure of the girl/boy ur dating dont commit. 99% chance it wont work out. You have to have a gut feeling that it should work not think like “ok maybe i can change her” cos that never works. Till then fill up your time fleeting from one casual date to another. Its perfectly fine morally if u date several women casually and break no one’s heart. So just dont get into relationship because your lonely and she is pretty.

Enjoy your everyday activities:

Enjoy getting up, enjoy the taste of the coffee in the morning(thats why dont drink black), enjoy the cold water against ur skin when you take ur shower. Enjoy the bright day when you walk to the bus stop. Enjoy the reading material (for me usually the newspaper and the occasional economist) on the bus, enjoy staring at the pretty ladies on the bus.

Enjoy your lunch,enjoy the delicious spicy tangy food your eating, enjoy drowning the sharp bite of the chilli with a sip of fizzy coke. Enjoy an afternoon coffee after that. Enjoy goin back home in time and finishing ur work and sticking to a routine. Enjoy falling asleep reading a book or watching a sitcom.

Enjoy a cold fizzy tasty double hop beer twice a week, enjoy a delicious fatty lamb chop or delicious kebabs in a buffet. Enjoy sitting in a huge movie theater with a popcorn and diet coke and enjoying the fizz of the coke after a mouthful of popcorn. Enjoy the thrill waiting for the movie to start, when you have been waiting for it almost a year.

Be online as minimum as possible:

The internet is the cause of majority of our depression. Its the constant emails which keep on coming and facebook which depresses the hell out of most. Go out take a walk, watch tv. People have forgotten the beauty of changing channels. I know u can download everything but the concept of changing channels is so uplifting, its like walking from one lively jovial room to another(except cnn and bbc which depress the hell out of anyone). Live like the 70s, dont stay online much, read a lot, meet people, go out to eat and watch tv.

 

What Indian Parents expect of you….

As a middle class Indian child in the 80s and 90s in India without the economic boom and those days where people drank coffee only at home and not in some fancy cafe, your parents make you believe the world is a real tough place. Strangely they also do have very high expectations of you due to some irrational sparks of genius they might have seen in you as an infant. Here are what they expect of you(this list is not completely mine and my friend Kaushic also contributed to it…some of it may not have been even expected of me since my parents gave up on me early)

1. Holidays are for studying: Unfortunately when I was a kid, people had not started taking the term “Holidays” or “Vacation” seriously. School did not help either in because in its infinite wisdom used to put a test just after the holidays. The school i went to had thursdays and sundays off. Till I was 16, thursdays and sunday mornings were for mugging up history and geography. I got so disgusted studying “revolt of 1857″ or “Vasco da gama” or how “There was a great bathhouse in Indus Valley” that my history marks always touched 40s. Later when I grew older these only two days off transformed into dreadful dark moments of mugging up organic chemistry. Unfortunately our parents never realized that these 2 days in the week are for having fun. Well then there was the added horror of holiday homework (350 sums) for sumer holidays attempting to turn us into einsteins and the horrible essays trying to describe your trip.
2. Misery….good….fun ….bad!!: Somehow in the struggle to struggle against other struggling students , fun (which is the essence of childhood and happiness) is frowned upon as a really bad thing. Parents like the matrix make us believe “Fun is for later when you are established in life”. So basically when you are 35 (average age an Indian parents believe that their son is established), your have started balding, you have a drinking problem and you have a nagging wife with a credit card and a kid who seems he wont even make it to secondary school, you are supposed to “have fun”. I actually believed (after the intense brainwashing) the more miserable I am , the more successful Ill become. This is made worse by stories of the guy next door getting up at 4 am to study everyday. I mean which over achieving dick gets up at 4 even before the crows to study “The Human Digestive System” or “Soil Erosion”.
3. Life is one bootcamp after the other: Remember the first time you were dragged into a drawing class with a drawing book bigger than you. That started it all and did not stop for the next 16 years when your parents realized you will never be Picasso. But these traumatic 16 yrs are filled with drawing class, singing class, violin lessons, guitar lessons , cricket lessons and the very traumatic swimming lessons where you are in a toxic pool with 200 other kids(30% of whom are puking or peeing discreetly into the water). If they only realized that their kid is only become the standard guy like their father whose only occasional exercise is picking up the remote control and complaining about carpal tunnel syndrome they can might as well relieve us from the torture we go through.
4. Life is about becoming an Engineer and then getting an MBA degree: I was made to believe that I was most suited to be an engineer. So was 60 million kids in my generation who knew that engineering is the only way to a respectable life your parents can be proud of. My parents still think I should have studied computer science worked in tcs and had a safe and secure life(aka feel like takign a gun and shooting myself as I redundantly do the job as a database “watever”). MBA degree even leads to a greater glory and that when your dad even comes and says “Im proud of you.” The problem is out of the 60 million indian kids in my generation there are possible 10 thousand seats in respectable places and the rest just die trying.
5. Be asexual till you get engaged: Having a normal sexual urge before you are engaged is a crime and having urges when you are teenager is punishable by death. Same as all the fun goes, we are expected to have “fun” only when we are established. A man kinda reaches his sexual peak when he is 15 years old but they expect you to wait for at least 12 yrs more when you get married to a woman who will only have sex with you on alternate saturdays . And flirting is only approved after youa re engaged.
6. Be friendly to a shit load of relatives: Consequence of our bloody high birth rate is that we have tons of relatives and there is some lame ass cousin getting married to some unfortunate girl and thus a terrible wedding to go to. You cant go to a wedding and be yourself(specially me) cos you will let down the entire family if you eat too much, talk too much ,breathe too much or do any bloody thing you do everyday. Then there will be this huge huge crowd of old people you dont even know and who wont even rememebr you. I have aunts goin “so your in class 12 now is it??”.