musings

vacation...finally

My summer came and went, and I didn’t feel a thing! This has been a very busy summer. What with getting tenured and promoted, I thought I was going to catch a break, but not really. No rest for the wicked!

Its finally happening though…it begins today and ends sometime this month. The details are blurry, or smudged at best (The GIMP says so, anyway).

I need therapy...

My mother and mother-in-law have twisted my arm into making me subscribe to desi channels Zee TV and TV Asia. I have not seen such trash in a long time, although I don’t watch TV very much, so I cannot judge effectively. I realize that there is plenty of trash on basic cable, so Zee TV or TV Asia are no better (or worse).

What I don’t get is why do people pay to get such grief delivered to their living rooms? ...other than one’s arm being twisted by one’s mother[-in-law].

After hearing those ads for Ajmeri Baba and Peer Syed Saheb, I really need therapy.

definately administrate seperately...

Something look quirky to you? Maybe it is the spelling…

Google returns over 3,100,000 results for seperate (the wrong spelling) as opposed to separate (the correct spelling) which returns over 131,000,000 results. About 23 % of the posts use the incorrect spelling. You get the picture. Same goes for the terms definately, and administrate, as opposed to definitely and administer. The third example is more of a creative spelling. Administrate perhaps looks a bit more cool?

My spelling muse will occasionally kick in and make me hesitate on a word every now and then, but you see, the gift of spelling was beaten into me (more like caned, actually) by Catholic nuns at St. Ann’s High School, in Hyderabad, India. where I went to school and learned [Queen’s] English. I am told by many others that the mode of training (i.e. the cane) is largely the same at mission-driven schools the world over.

Anyway, I digress. I find it very interesting that over time what is considered to be a misspelled word may get so much acceptance, that it will show up eventually in the vernacular.

Damn tourists!

I was at the Beach Chalet, for a quick bite to eat. The Beach Chalet is largely a tourist trap. This was my second or third visit. I overheard a man (with a very large, odd-shaped nose) at the next table about how the Japanese internment was necessary. I just couldn’t help but overhear his argument. He said it was necessary to take all the ethnic Japanese and put them away, for they would probably get killed on the streets by other ethnicities.

Perhaps he should be placed in a cage labeled “Proboscis Monkey” at the San Francisco Zoo. Keep him safe and off the streets.

Jerk.

Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Calvin Klein...

What do Heisenberg’s principle, Schrödinger’s cat and Calvin Klein’s cologne have in common? They were all talking about the same thing!

Heisenberg’s principle states that we basically disturb matter if we try to observe it. To see an object, light (a large collection of very tiny objects called photons) has to bounce off the object, and get into our eyes. The bouncing photons make an image on the retina, which we perceive as vision. Now, if you were to try to look at an electron, the photons needed to bounce off the electron must reach your eye. However, the electrons are so tiny, that they absorb some of the energy of the photon, and get displaced, thereby not being where we might see them. In a nutshell, Heisenberg said, you can’t observe without changing the nature of the ‘observed’ object.

Very well, so how does Schrödinger’s cat fit in all this? Schrödinger proposed that if a cat was put in a box with a mechanism to kill it using a poison gas at some point in time [it is a lot more complicated], we cannot determine the fate of the cat without opening the box. If you open the box and the cat is dead, then did your ‘observation’ kill the cat? Does your interference with the environment in some way change it?

Then comes Calvin Klein. Has a cologne called ‘Be’. Not do, not think, not change, not observe, but just ‘Be’. While Calvin wasn’t trying to impress any sub-atomic fairy or a metaphysical muse, the product aptly captures what many have been trying to say. Just be. Don’t try to change things. Don’t try to know it all. Every time you try to perceive the world around you, your five senses will inevitably muddy the picture. So, just ‘be’.

Is it 2006 already?

Mercedes Benz has announced the completely redesigned M-Class, its SUV line updated for 2006. Right now, it is the second week of April…of 2005. We haven’t even crossed the tax deadline. Couldn’t Mercedes Benz actually wait for maybe the mid-point of this year, say, June-July, and then announce something coming out for next year?

Perhaps, the software industry could learn a thing or two from the auto industry and release software on time :-)

sheeple

Sheeple are people who behave like sheep. They need to be herded and led to pastures to graze every day. Sheeple have no desire to think for themselves. They don’t lead. They simply follow.

Krishnalila at the Charlotte airport...

We were on our way to Atlanta from San Francisco. We had a stopover for a couple of hours at Charlotte, North Carolina. What a chaotic airport! Crowded counters with several dissatisfied customers, all wanting to go home. Many airlines had cancelled their flights, and on top of that, they wouldn’t tell us the real reason. All you got from the US Airways people was that the plane hasn’t come in yet.

After a few minutes of running back and forth, I resigned to our fate of being stuck there for a few hours. I put on my head phones, and started listening to one of my favorite albums: Krishnalila, by our good friend, dj Cheb-i-Sabbah. What a great effect! I couldn’t hear the chaos anymore. Instead, it looked like a funny silent movie, with people running around to the beat of ‘Maname diname’ and ‘Rupa tujhe deva’ and the aroma of Cinnabon. What fun! Now I take my head phones and my music player (Palm Tungsten T3 + Aero Player playing Ogg Vorbis formatted files) everywhere I go.

A moving picture is worth ten thousand words.