Doomsday part II

Continuing on the end of the world prophecies, we are having weird erratic weather pattern all over the world. Yesterday France took a hit. There is a forecast that t winter State College might encounter both record high and record low temperatures!
And then there is a hypothesis of aggression of Vermiform Appendix.

Obama's presidency's first term ends in end of 2012. Is that another indication?

Catching up again ...

I needed some boost to thaw the frozen blogging part of my brain. Gaurav has this hypothesis: in winter people blog less because it is winter.

Then yesterday I received this magazine with the advertisement that reminded me another ad jingle from India; and I felt it is time, just write something.
First I was surprised to seen Devnagari in a magazine like this in US. But if you think deeply, it not unexpected. Growing population of Indian and Chinese technologist is not a new fact. No wonder use of Devnagari or Han characters will become more and more common. In fact someone was telling me the other day, that Indian English is going to dominate American or British English in twenty years! Let linguists research on those issues. The fact is Indian English is very common now, so is Hindi. First time I went to New Jersey, the first full sentence I heard when my friend parked the car, was a Hindi sentence.
But more surprising to me is the tone of the advertisement. Is this an indication of slow cultural invasion ...

'Kya aap close-up karte hain ...?'

Now, the news that made my day ...

Finally one more item from my wish list is going to be crossed out. 'Hair' is returning on Broadway from Mar 31, 2009.
Let the sunshine in ...

Coming back to life

It takes time to get used to the fact that I have landed in India. Reality seeps in slowly. I was getting cues at various levels, right from the beginning of the flight, which got slightly delayed because of some un-put-downable passengers; then the messy arrival lounge - after one month of Mumbai massacre, Mumbai international airport still looks so casual! It is now under renovation. Dimly illuminated, shabby arrival lounge is sure not going to make any positive impression on anyone and this is one of the main, if not the the busiest, port of entries to India! Cues continued - experiencing the driver's respect for traffic signals on my short journey through Mumbai traffic between international and domestic airports; semi-dark, dirty, water-logged rest room of Kolkata airport, and then everyone talking in Bengali ... I sure am back in India. The moment I joined the airport leaving traffic in Kolkata, I realized why New York City seemed so familiar after coming from the tranquil State College. Cars honking at each other, jumping signals, pedestrians crossing the roads like the acrobat maneuvering on the trapeze, hawkers shouting at the sidewalk ... life in a metropolitan city is basically same everywhere, be it New York or Kolkata. I was a bit scared to cross the road even at the zebra crossing as cars continued to rush in even on red light! Distance between two cars were hardly two meters - drivers have a very strong sense of proportion, visual measurement skill and sense of size of the car they are driving, otherwise it is impossible to drive in roads here.

But with all its apparent haphazardness, chaos or disorder, there lies an amazing current of vitality and vigor. Life in a city like Kolkata needs an enormous amount of life-force. Life in cities like State College seems so clockwork, so boring now. Being in Kolkata forces me to be alive, awake!

Snow white State College

“A clear, frosty night. Unusual brilliance and perfection of everything visible. Earth, sky, moon, and stars, all seem cemented, riveted together by the frost. Shadows of trees lie across the paths, so sharp that they seem carved in relief. You keep thinking you see dark figures endlessly cross the road at various places. Big stars hang in the woods between branches like blue lanterns. Small ones are strewn all over the sky like daisies in a summer field.
“We go on discussing Pushkin. The other night we talked about the early poems he wrote as a schoolboy...”

Was it coincidence that I felt like finishing the rest of 'Dr. Zivago' tonight and stumbled on this?

Well, not Pushkin, I was thinking of Elliot while walking my way back amidst the vast snow-white field. The yellow street lights, half covered foot steps on snow, deserted roads ... all felt like a déjà vu from childhood. Weird!

Backlog

Its been almost a month, I couldn't find enough time to put together a train of coherent thought to post. I kept on making bookmarks for interesting piece of information, I thought worthy of writing about. But couldn't write...
So let me clear the backlogs by just posting the links here:
India loses four children every minute ...
Greedy Chinese companies tainting the babyfood ...
If there were not McCain, there would not have been Blackberry ...
Daily routine for a grad student ...
Studying is a stressful and frustrating work ...

Done!

End of the world ...

God was pissed off and so he brought forth a catastrophic flood to eliminate mankind and start over.
Equally pissed off was Brahma, and then he did the same thing.
So was every God in every culture

Archeologists and historians say, not everything is myth. Deluge had swept the world and changed the course of history and evolution.

Apparently, be it Gods or be it Nature, flooding is the easiest way of getting rid of a rotten civilization. Just like washing a bowl of rotten curry. No wonder "righteous" men, sorry, persons in every decade had been foreseeing Doomsday deluges to wash away all the sins of mankind in the then near future. And the people around the world has already began preparations for latest Doomsday!
Now lets think what's happening around the world now. Catastrophic flood in India, UK and US (well, not flood in US but a series of hurricanes and flood in Haiti). So disaster has struck all part of the world at the same time. Don't you get the feeling that the Doomsday is nearing? Not yet?
OK, so let me tell you one more thing. Some "guys" are trying to simulate the creation of world. They are trying to play God. So why God won't be pissed off again?
The days of our lives are over ...

There are never a dearth of skeptics. I came across this piece of old news while reading an article on CERN's ground-breaking experiment, the largest physics experiment of the century, may be the most important, too. The lawsuit is probably a very good example of what and how an idle brain works!

An interesting comic strip from user friendly on April 01 is below.



The interesting discussion here reminded me of the old Kingston Trio song "Merry Minuet".

Google again

Just couple of months ago when that privacy law suit against Google was underway, the official Google blog had this post, explaining why Google prefers to be lean and why it doesn't hesitate to drop their name from their front page to accommodate the privacy link without increasing the word count. So much for lean and thin. Now they have nine extra words there to promote Chrome, which was "open source and free" browser with Google having virtual royalty-free full access on every damn thing built on it!

No harm done!

Rain rain go away ...

It was drizzling thoughout the day just like back in India ...

Wandering off

This movie can spin off a movie like "The Guy Who Kills His Fathers"! Its like a FPS video game with a fake story line. Assuming people want to see things they fantasize about in movies and considering that this is a hit, why people love killing others? So much of violence, mindless violence. Video game-ish. I wonder why did I ever go to watch this 'Fruit of the Loom' (credits Benny) movie. I wish I hadn't 'Wanted' it. Violence reminds me, they say Japan had a very high rate of youth violence. Its decreasing now. But still there are urban camouflages being sold in Japan (by the way, read the comments here, funny and thought provoking). And that piece of news is picked by NYT in such a manner that it seems a regular trend in Japan. This is not just a stray case of filthy reporting. Take look here. I used to think that only our Bengali regional newspaper spins story of a mountain out of a mole as they used to write things like how last night's kabab affected Ganguly's play today! But making a story seems to be a universal reporting trend. Well why not? After all with so many companies in news business and so much of competition, news makers are really in demand. And for no reason that reminds me an old chinses verse ...

Most men, bringing up sons, wish for them intellect;
But I by my intellect have had a life-time of fauilure.
I would only desire that my child should be simple and dull,
That with no ill-fortune and no troubles he may attain to highest office.

The Washing of the Infant - Su Shih
Trans. by Robert Kotewall and Norman L. Smith

Have you ever stopped and wandered?

The Fisher King in me

Half of the year passed by.
I planned to do so many things ... Nothing has been achieved yet, nothing has been seeded. A sense of getting old and incapable of creating anything new grows day by day. The days pass by doing mundane works. All quiet on all fronts. No new light, no new shine, no new hope.
Is it summer that makes me sad? Its summer with occasional surprising rain, reminds me

"Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour." ...

Am I like the Fisher King in his Waste Land - impotent yet hopeful of contributing and proudly protecting futile legends?

Inspiration

Dyuti sent me link to this video.

Umqombothi is an African beer. And Yvone, the singer is one of the most famous African artist. She's often called princess of Africa. African music are very rich in percussions and the rhythm is simply amazingly vibrant. Apparently this song was used in opening sequence of Hotel Rwanda. It seems this is one of the biggest hit songs of Africa.

The funny part will reveal is when you listen to this video:

Its a Bengali band - Chandrabindoo performing a Bengali nonsence-rock.
I have no qualms with someone "copying" someone else's music, It is hard to differentiate between copying and getting inspired! Inspirations are always welcome, if you acknowledge your inspirations very good; if you don't, well, you are insecure and scared of your own capabilities! Anyway, this is not about copying someone's music.
I appreciate Chandrabindoo for their urban, satirical and nonsensical lyrics. But this time the first line of their song phonetically matches first line Umqombothi in an uncanny way! I mean, being a Bengali if I listen to Umqombothi, I'll hear the first lines of the song as "Brahma Janen, Gopon Kammo ti" ... and this is such a weird Bengali line, it can spun a beutiful nonsense poem in the hands of a good lyricist. I wonder if that's how this song worked for Chandrabindoo!

We MaDlamini

Uph'umqombothi (3x)

Verse
I work hard every day
To make my beer
(Umqombothi)
Wake up early every morning
To please my people with African beer
(Umqombothi)
I make sure the fire burns
To make my beer
(Umqombothi)
My special beer Umqombothi
(Umqombothi)
Is African beer

...more

Random reflections on rice, recession, rumor ...

So there is a global food crisis, huh?

Its really hard for people like me to feel what a food crisis is, because we or our immediate acquaintances, honestly, never faced it. We read about about old stories of famine, starvation and hunger. How does it feel when you have money to buy but still starving? Probably situation will not be like it used to be in old days. Food price will sore high but we, the middle class, again will not be starving. There will be deaths ... but how's that gonna affect us! More so when you are here in US. Famine in US, huh ...
Arijit forwarded this news-piece. Its almost known fact that average rate of obesity is much higher comapred to world standard among US citizen. So if major grain producing countries stop export average US citizen is going to be healthier.
I stumbled upon these news flashes (Gmail Webclip is good!) on the same day ... India is expecting rise in food production whereas the global food crisis is pulling the price up. Isn't that good for Indian economy? Vicky was telling, "we don't care, if everything goes bad in America, we won't be looser, we can always go back to India". At least in India we won't have any rice shortage. Indeed!
The other day, Anamika came and informed that someone has informed her that Sam's Club is stockpiling rice and won't allow anyone to buy more than four bags of rice. Weis and Walmart has also started rationing rice. Sam's Club is usually the place we buy rice from. I informed Subhashis and Prashant. They might have already informed others. So now everyone is running to Sam's Club. No wonder there will soon be a shortage of rice, not only because of stockpiling by Sam's Club, but mainly because of overstocking by us! Eventually even before actual crisis of rice is started, State College is gong to suffer from it. That is how the dynamics of essential commodities work. Its major driving force is the un-put-downable rumor. By the way, we haven't yet gone to Sam's Club to buy our four bags!

And then there is recession. Couple of months ago there was huge debate whether US is already hit by recession or is going to be hit. How does it matter for commoners? They are already suffering ... prices of food has gone up drastically from last year. Every month thousands of people are getting sacked from their job, banks are merging ... it doesn't matter whether its officially recession or not. Still the presidential candidates are getting millions of dollar as donation from who-knows-whom for their campaign. The lawyers and financial advisers seem to be little busy as they are advertising more and more with promises to help reduce debt. I don't know how can one avoid their debt so easily, but apparently there are lots pf people who need them. This economy runs on credit. And oil. Every morning starts off with the breaking news of oil price reaching record high. But at least in State College I don't feel any decrease of number of cars running. The summer has set in, I expected a rise in number of bicycles with this oil price hike, but not really. In fact I see more sports car and gas-guzzlers more as the semester nears the end!
The recession - it is not so hard for us, but still it hurts. Amit was lamenting that day, when he came to US he had to pay Rs. 48 for each dollar and now when he sends money home, he only gets Rs. 38 in return. Well, Indian economy is doing good. But shall we feel good about it or be sad that we are actually being able to save less than we had hoped to? The world is too complicated.

Only good thing is that the semester is over and, and ... and I don't know what!

Honk for ...

Sometime around Apr 20, when Hillary visited PSU campus, I was walking to department and saw few girls at a busy corner of downtown with placards saying "Honk for Hillary". I heard three to four honks as I passed by.

Yesterday I had to spent sometime on downtown waiting for someone. As I sat at the Dunkin Donuts shop opposite in the busiest part of downtown I noticed some elderly persons standing near the main gate of PSU with placards for peace, 'stop the war', 'stop developing weapons' and 'Honk for Peace'. Cars passed by fast. And as I spent almost fifteen minutes there I heard four to five honks.

Guess American president takes priority than peace.

Mid-life crisis!

You start with an honest eagerness to learn and contribute. When you are just halfway through it, suddenly the world seems so flat, so boring, all the talks starts to fade away, you start to loose your grip on reality. You look at the time and find that you are just only half-way through. You feel sometimes frustrated on your failure to cope up like the rest out there. You doubt your competency. You just get blank, empty. You don't understand a single thing. It seems a long time but when you again look at the watch only few seconds have passed. You try to think about good times, but your thoughts become confused. You feel like dropping out of this boredom, doing something interesting than this, but at the same time you feel guilt. Then at a time the strong urge to do something interesting overcomes your guilt. You discard the reality and delve into your own world. You don't care for the others anymore and let your dreams come true. But as time passes by and nears the end, you suddenly snap out of your state and realize time is up and you can not go back! You have wasted the entire middle third of your and probably others' time. You repent, at least sometimes.

But the class is already over and you have slept through it like always. You wonder why, at all, you have taken this course. I know you don't want to sleep through it, but can't help dozing off as the class nears the halfway just like some can't help their self doubt as they enter mid-life crisis!

Sunshine on my shoulder ...

It was a long cold winter.

Its so easy to blame on the weather, as if I didn't blog because weather ruined my mood!
Yes, true that there were plenty of dull days when I woke up under a cludy sky with chilly wind or occasional drizzles and felt so spiritless that wished if I could sleep again. But there were some good sunny not so windy days, too. Its great to see the bright sunlight in the morning. Had I not experienced day after day of overcast weather, I could nto possibly realize the warmth sunrays carry!
Officially spring has begun couple of week ago. But today I felt the spring. Its been keeping sunny for last couple of days, but today was different. I don't know why. I skipped the class, walked my way to the lab smelling hitherto unsmelt fragrance of spring coming out of dry green grass. Its a different smell. Just as the smell of first rain has a different flavour, so has the smell of first spring day. Everything was bright and colorful and cheering.
I sang a tagore song to my way to the lab ... 'Who will take me out, breaking locks of my captivity...'
My lab is a closed room, not a single window. Lets get out of this room, at least for today's sake ...

Christmas Chronicles

Let me list down what I did in last 12 days.

• Watched movies: Au hasard Balthasar, End of Summer, Cleo from 5 to 7, An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, Children of Paradise and Water Horse
  
• Posted reviews of Au hasard Balthasar, End of Summer, Cleo from 5 to 7
• Wrote fishy chapter of survival cookbook
• Finished editing of Quine
  

...
I can't remember any other thing! Did I spent the whole holiday week in doing nothing? I didn't do much of work in my research or academics, didn't went out to anywhere.
Lets change this lazy habits from the coming year!

The Progress!

Some official said after the test,

"At the same time, I want to stress that the action of this weapon does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one."

Do you wonder what it is? What breakthrough weapon Russia had made that doesn't pollute the environment - the eco-friendly weapon? It is what they call "FATHER OF ALL BOMBS"!

It is a fuel-air explosive massive vacuum bomb that first spreads the explosive wide in the atmosphere by a small detonation and ignites the atmosphere by the second detonation creating a very high temperature and powerful shock-waves under which 'all that is alive merely evaporates'!

So it leaves no harmful byproduct, no soot, no radiation even no biotic organisms that may contaminate the environment in future by trying to live its life!

The breakthrough progress in the history of mankind!

Culture shock

Its been two weeks now. And I am coming in terms with the situations. The things are different here. The culture, lifestyle, socialism - everything. To be honest, the society seems more organised, more professional. Thats the good part; but that makes them more self-conscious and to some extent more conservative in the thinking process. I mean, they are so organised that they don't need to use their brain for everyday situations, and thats why they become dumb if life the daily routine goes little astray. Overall, I must admit its better to be organised.
The most striking part for me was traffic. India you never think so much of traffic rules. Especially in places like Pune, Mumbai, following traffic rules may sometime causes accidents, because nobody ever obeys them. But here the story is just the opposite. The cars stop at a stop signal even if no one is around. In India if you are confident, you just cross the road dodging the traffic, forget about zebra crossing or pedestrian walk signals. But here if you do that, or rather, I feel guilty in doing that because the traffic is so so so organised and law-abiding.
Second thing that is different is what is called freedom of an individual, i.e., no one is bothered what you are doing, may it be public place, but is is your choice. No one will poke his nose unless you are doing something awfully wrong. And if you ask for help, they are ready to help. May be this is the characteristics of a small college town. Things are different in big cities, as my friend Benny was telling. Thats what I like about small towns - the homely-ness. This weekend I went to Cleveland, OH. And I liked it. An old city, big city. Old buildings, little shabby buildings. People are more casual; they are walking down the road on shabby, or rather commonplace attires, wooden houses, brick roads, and so on. It looks like it has a root. But State College is a mixed culture. Most of them are students. If you take a cross section of the streets, you will found most people are dressed carefully and consciously. They are always busy, and little more populated than a town like this should be. This town seems more urbane than it should be.
But overall, I like State College, after all this is going to be my home for coming few years.

There's many a sleep ...

More than two months have passed after the last post and by that time I've learnt what the good old proverb really means. I have left my old job and jumped into something, which I thought was sure to get. But, as I mentioned... till the final day I was unsure whether I'll be able to launch my new career. As a matter of fact I was jobless, uncertain and stressed out for more than a month as one after another petty problems came up on the formal path. Now I'm an expert in all Passport and VISA hassles (Yes it had something, sorry everything to do with foreign travel)!!! Any problem in these front ... I have the expertise. Even I was seriously thinking of opening a VCS aka VISA Consulting Services if I don't get my VISA in time and be left jobless in India! But things have clicked finally.
Now I have made the first sip from the cup.

Lonely Runway

For last couple of weeks I was at a remote place on official field duty, so remote that there was nothing in the ten kilometer radius of the guest house. The place where we used to go to work was again five kilometers away form guest house. Every morning a car used to come to take us to the field. When we returned from the field it would have been 8pm in the evening. So boring, so hectic the days were, that either we would be found slogging in the field or sleeping in the guest house.
Only good thing was a runway! We had to cross a deserted runway on our way to our site of work. Years ago it must have been full with activity, now the concrete slabs of the runway has cracked giving way to saplings. There is nothing all around, only trees and bushes and the runway lying between them.
Last day when we finished our work early in the afternoon, I started walking along the runway on my return to guest house. Everybody else were waiting for the car to come. As I walked and walked along the almost-two-km-long runway I was getting engulfed in it. A plethora of sights of sounds hitherto unnoticed came to my senses; chirping of unknown birds, insects; sunset on the horizon, group of birds flying back to home, few birds looking out for their prey in the cracks of the runway ...
I remembered one of my favourite songs. I never realized how real the imagery of the song could be. But this runway gave me that feeling. The lyricist must have been in a place like this.