My good luck charm?

Crow droppings. Yes, you read it right. Consider these incidents:
1. School days: My brand new cycle used to be parked in the stand alongwith others'. But most often, only my cycle used to be spotted with crow droppings.

2. College days: My lunch periods used to be spent in searching for a crow free zone. I was notorious for attracting crows.

3. Masters convocation: I was seated in the last row in a hall with very high ceiling. All the parents were seated on a higher level right behind me. In the middle of the ceremony, when we were awaiting our turns, this crow which is flying over us, makes it mark on me, and a collective gasp is heard from the scores of parents seated behind me. In an assembly of 1000 heads, this crow in flight, has to select just me to drop its blessings!

I remembered all this, cos yesterday a crow blessed me again. Again lots of people before and after me were walking under the tree, but this crow had to choose my head. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Ta ra rum pum and hum

Hi all ( at least the ones who still read this blog :-D I too have been a bit slack in putting up new stuff here. Somehow for the past few days blogging was not the fun it used to be. I realised that it has been about I-me-myself in the past many posts and I took a break. Its not as if it has changed but then still, here I am).

Watched Ta ra rum pum a couple of weeks back. Recently, we have seen many low budget movies with not so famous actors albeit with refreshing stories. Sweet, amusing, astonishing, thought-provoking - many varieties of them. Ta ra rum pum jarred on the senses in comparison. Agreed Rani, Saif are established actors but Im sure even they did not know who their target audiences were. Muddled and directionless. Thats what it was. (Spoiler) Saif is a tire changer who meets Rani and falls in love. He also has a penchant for driving fast that lands him into car racing. He gets rich and also spends more than what he earns. (Bit like me. I never go in for instalments but I spend a lot :-D bad habit) has two cute kids and an awesome glass house, He has an accident and his car racing suffers. He loses all his assets and is now poor, this is where it gets more annoying. A blatant copy from Life is beautiful, they pretend to the kids that its all a reality show and they have to win the game. The poverty gets so worse that Saif and Rani miss their meals to save money!! Then after a series of events, Saif emerges victorious/richer and wiser.
Now to talk about the target audience, they were confused whether its the NRIs or the desis, or the kids, or the resident Indians. I loved the car racing sections. I would like to know this, Did Schumacher also win by hitting his opponents, Never watched F1 races before this.
My friends said at the end, that we spent some 100 bucks per head for the movie only to learn that one should never spend in excess and should value money :-D
****
I changed my status from a hostelite to a day scholar last week. I have been eating well, sleeping well, and traveling a lot - 2hrs per day. Mom is trying to rid me of the hostel habits. For starters, Im not regular about eating, I sleep at any vacant place, I dont use the regular things like towels, tumblers, pillows and etc etc. 7 years of hostel living ought to make a mark :-D
If things work out I might be visiting Italy in July. Im already dreaming about Venice :-D Only if things work out :-D

Castles in the air

Chennai got to see a spectacular air show on the 22nd of April on the Marina Beach. More details and colourful pictures can be found here and here.
Since we live quite close to the beach, we got to see the Jaguars and SuryaKirans flying above our terrace at close quarters :-D Too late, we decided to go to the beach and see the show. Thats when we realised that a very huge crowd had turned up to watch the air show.
We got to see the Akash Ganga team (paratroopers) landing from a distance. Unfortunately, that was the tail end of the show. We did get to experience the huge crowd. It was a hassle getting back home.
But a memorable show :-) If watching the aircrafts is this thrilling, how would flying them feel like!!

I submitted my thesis last week and have been hibernating since then.
I watched a lot of nice sweet movies like Honeymoon Travels, Just married, Mistress of Spices, Jo jeeta wahi sikander. Pl suggest some more nice sweet movies that I can watch.

Movies are a good escape from the real world. I am very close to abandoning my hazaaron khwahishein :-)

Post-mortem! :-D

Hurray my thesis will be submitted in a week, though its 2 months behind schedule. I no longer know why it was so delayed, even when the first draft was ready in Jan. I admit its more polished, but the content is not different from what it was then. Maybe it suffered the same fate that my PhD did. In the quest for a "good solid" thesis, it took me 5 years to complete. Now I don't know what to do with this "good solid thesis". I think I hate it. Maybe I'll appreciate it after a couple of years. Not now.
We friends were thinking that we did crib a lot these 5 years but we enjoyed these days too :-) I have seen many people who are passionate about their work. We were never so. So we found easy outlets when something didn't work like impromptu visits to the theaters, a few fun trips, trying out different cuisines, lots of books and innumerable movies.
Now that everyone is settling down, I still am clueless about what to do next. Sort of waiting for the thunderbolt :-)
Sometime, maybe I'll jot down a few of the crazy things we did. A diary of sorts to say been there, done that.
Till then. have a lovely day :-)

baazigar o baazigar

I was listening to songs from the 90's - baazigar main baazigar, chura ke dil mera, hum aapke hain kaun etc. These songs reminded me so much of my childhood days, leisure days spent in Delhi, Chennai etc. A pen sieve of the kind talked about in the Harry Potter series would have been useful.

I recently discovered spanish-guitar pieces. Fascinating! Do check them out.
I dont know how to share music on blogspot. I know there is a way of doing it, but just dont know how. Someone please enlighten me. I would love to put up few of my finds.

Really bad things happening in Bengal and worser things near Bihar. Its sad that some people's lives are of no value while a nobody's wedding is celebrated in media. Maybe this is what they call de-sensitisation. You either feed the public so much gore that they don't feel a thing when a village is massacred the next time or you feed them trivialities so that they don't stop to think whats relevant and what is not. The news did not bother me much. This is what I meant. Im also insensitive.

I'll get the chance to do a bit of Bharat bhraman in near future starting with Trichy next week. If things work out, Ill also visit Delhi sometime soon. I spent my formative teens there. Will be nice to see that city again :-)
For a girl who had the Chennai border as her boundary conditions, I seemed to have roamed around a lot - Kolkata (twice!), Bombay, Kharagpur, Ahmedabad. I havent seen Bangalore yet (hush hush), nor have I seen Ooty, Kodaikanal, Pondicherry which are the local tourist places. All in good time :-)

I have made n drafts of the chapters already. This will end someday soon. A little bit of patience is required but I seem to have exhausted my quota. A friend called this Hanuman's tail - very apt. Formal writing has corrupted my blog writing as well, blabbing doesn't have the free flow of the earlier days. And I end up being bad at both :-D

A couplet by me - Nosh farmaayiye :-D (pl say irshaad, koi to sune :-D)
kuch to alag ho, kuch to naya ho,
zindagi ka ek naya falsafaa bayaa ho

(Ill imagine the wah wahs :-D )

Hope

I watched Shawshank redemption again this weekend. V good movie.
Tag line : Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing in the world, and no good thing ever dies.

Ill continue hoping :-)
Cheerio.

tic tac tic

I have a piggy bank in which I put the coins collected in a day. I have hoarded quite a treasure this way. It is well hidden as if my sis spots it, she will not fail to ask "kis traffic signal par chandaa ikhattha kiya"
Anyway so today, I absentmindedly put the coins in the wrong box. I realised immediately after I did this, and the first thing that came to my mind was Ctrl-Z. :-D

I wish I could Ctrl-Z some of my impulsive blunders in real life too :-D

Your kind attention please.

Just a few posts back, I was talking about the book by Joanne Harris called Gentlemen and Players. Today, my friend gifted me that book as an advance birthday gift :-D So now you know what Ill be upto tonight! ;-)
Books are the best gift in my opinion. They dont wilt, stay forever, and sometimes its like sharing something that you liked with the other person :-)
Just in case if anyone is paying attention ( :-D ),

1. I would like to own a Longines watch like the one Kareena wears in some ad :-D
2. I would love to go on a world tour. I can also settle for an Europe trip, or an all India trip, or a Himalaya trek, or just some hill station or even St. Thomas Mount if you like.
   
3. I would love to have a home theatre system. Imagine - sparsely furnished room, a very comfortable plush diwan, snack of the moment ( I like and dislike snacks seasonally), and Lord of the Rings trilogy playing on the home theatre system.. Some other comparable fantasy will also be welcome. Or just full size Sharukh in DDLJ :-D
4. Lots and lots of books.
5. No worries just laughter and smiles all around.

6-1000on. Many more wishes but then Ill try fulfilling them myself :-D
1000on+1. Oh how can I miss World peace :-D

I will wake up soon.. 5 minutes pl

Hi all :-)
I have been quite lethargic after the marathon sessions and had almost zero interest in almost everything. So much that my colleague says I have transformed into a guest physicist!! Ok well I stopped short of telling him that I have been that for the past 3 years or so. Outcome: I have a deadline for submitting a paper tomorrow and I have not yet started working on it. Im praying for miracles. He he thankfully I still believe in miracles.
I saw this nice movie called Tum Bin. psst psst Priyanshu's eyes were nicer. I generally fall for nice eyes and sweet smiles. Anyway the song of the moment is
Koi fariyaad tere dil mein dabi ho jaise
toone aankhon se koi baat kahi ho jaise

har mulaqaat pe mehsoos yahi hota hai
mujhse kuch teri nazar pooch rahi ho jaise

raah chalte huye ye gumaan hota hai
wo nazar chup ke mujhe dekh rahi ho jaise

Women gossip. Men gossip harder.
And I totally detest men who gossip maliciously (if you get what I mean). Had an encounter of this kind recently with a couple of them and ughh I find it hard to respect them now.

Saturday qualifies as a weekend. Yes thats not the accepted norm for a graduate student. But a weekend for me means the liberty to work as I wish and spend time as I wish. Many a times I have ended up taking a day off on Saturday and working on Sundays. So I really hate it when people assign tasks on weekends. Atleast courtesy demands that they let me know well in advance so that I reschedule my plans.

Indibloggies nominations are up. I was excited to find some blogs there that I track quite sincerely. I ended up adding some more to my stuffiread list too.

A lot of debate goes on about India shining and not shining. Another aspect of this debate is the youth of this country. We have achievers and then we have the roadside eve-teasing romeos cum college students. Arent those the ones who later end up being unemployed! Why cant they learn from their seniors' plights. Its a darned nuisance when they sing and create a ruckus in the buses. Its definitely not cool.

I think Ill work from tomorrow.
Have a good productive week ahead :-)

How rich?

In my thesis work, I talk about a rich phase diagram that we obtain. My friend today asked me how rich is the phase diagram really? :-D
I think its very very rich as I have spent 5 best years of my life studying it. I could have done so many things instead and reduced the count on the khwaahishein list. So its priceless isnt it! And what price! My confusions have increased manifold at the end of it. Two conflicting ideas in these couplets

Tadbeer ke dast-e-zareen se taqdeer numaayan hoti hai
Qudrat bhi madad farmaati hai jab koshish-e-insaan hoti hai
------
Haathon ki chand lakeeron ka
ye khel hai sab taqdeeron ka :-)

but I guess the order in which they should be remembered matters.

Yahooo Ill be done with my thesis talks tomorrow. One more month of toil and Ill be out.

Of late I have been getting negative feedback from my blabspot. I wish I could put a for-friends-alone firewall on this blog. Im sure there must be something.

Books in my kitty (lots actually :-D )

1. Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
2. Sherlock Holmes ( This edition has illustrations too, I have never read a Sherlock Holmes before so this is my introduction to the legend)
3. St Claire by Enid Blyton ( I still love them :-D )
4. Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (Im told that this story is heartwrenchingly romantic. I have saved this for tomorrow night :-D )
5. Some book by Valerio Manfredi (Last Legion author- LL had a gripping narrative so hoping for something similar in this too)
   
6. A couple of M&Bs (nothing more refreshing!! One can switch off the brains and enjoy them. )

Snippets

• The whole of Chennai is teeming with mosquitoes. These dheet mossies are resistant to Allouts too. So a tough time with them.
  
• Big Brother made top news for a few days and died down. Much was said about Shilpa being a B-grade actress, Goody being the uneducated and her educational trip to India. Hope she doesnt end up hating India in the process. A bit of gandhigiri will do the job here I guess. But then wasnt too much importance given to a publicity stunt! Im sure an average Indian settled abroad faces much worser slurs. Thats why I believe India is for Indians. We are immigrants elsewhere. Lets start respecting our own people first. Respect from others will follow.
  
• My number is registered with KBC :-D Im waiting for the computerji to select my number and Sharukh here I come :-D My friends say even if I reach the hot seat, Ill be tongue tied there as Ill be busy drooling non-stop at him. Nazron mein bhar loon main thoda :-D
  
• I hope my prince charming better hurries up or he will really miss me :-(
  

Something something

Hello Im back after a long hiatus.
This new year started with gory killings (kids for godsakes!!) and a shameful hanging. Yes Saddam was a dictator and a murderer but the way his death was publicised just like the n# of reality shows around, was disgraceful. Noida killings is a horror saga thats still on, as bits and pieces of innocent kids are still being unearthed (or rather fished out). Gives one the shivers. Im sure an execution in this case is too fast and too easy a death for the fiends. They deserve something worser.

Back to me, I was off for a Kolkata trip, a nice and memorable trip actually. Had fun and did some work too. Met old friends and made new friends. You know research may be monotonous, mundane stuff but it sure has its benefits. There is some amount of prestige involved in being called a scientist or a physicist. And then I love learning new things and Ill hate to miss all this just because I have to follow conventions. Oh I hate it all... sighhhhh

Movies watched meanwhile: Kabul Express (it rocks, good cinema); Umrao Jaan (Agreed Ash looked gorgeous but I had to ffwd much of it, didn't everyone (except a few) sound artificial speaking Urdu, come on its not tough!! Its called a meethi zubaan and certainly should be an effortless task for a multicrore movie); Maine pyar kyun kiya ( Timepass); Baabul (Sob sob); Something something (Tam movie which was something something)

And oh yet again - When will I get out of this infernal place!!! and which other infernal place am I heading to!!! And oh cant I just ffwd my life!!!
So much for a new year arriving with a bang :-(

PS: IM NOT TB. TB is someone else. IM JUST T who is actually called something else.

Take 2

2nd draft = Expand the 1st draft by 3 times.
(Take a deep breath. Its no easy job. )
Im starting to think that cooking 3 times a day is easier :-(
Anyway today's phdcomics says this
I got pissed off yesterday by a fellow who was doing the thinking for me, whether Ill earn in dollars, euros or pounds next and then took offence when I said tata to him pointblank. See my patience is hanging by a thread! My next occupation is not decided and people have been worrying about what Ill earn next!!! Are they this jobless!!Anyway everyone to their own pastime.

..

A friend once said to me "Dont say yes when you want to say no". I have not learnt that yet and I often get disturbed because of this very same habit.

A very crude draft of my thesis is ready :-D Im bad at technical writing. My 10 page reports undergo 5 revisions in general. Im gearing up for 5*6 revisions now :-( :-D.

My latest obsession

Thats my laptop :-D

Acer Aspire 5550 series.
Centrino dual core.
1.25 GB RAM.

Runs like a dream. Im keeping my fingers crossed though against any mishaps :-)

Wish me luck :-D
Now hazaaron minus one khwahishein left ;-)

Gut feelings

Ahh I feel as if something is constantly digging in my stomach. Hunger might be a culprit though dinner was not so long ago but its a gut feeling that its something besides that. Im not old enough for heart attacks rt!! :-D I have a long lifeline anyway :-D
So with all this here-a-dig-there-a-dig, its an early night for me. The day just passed by with nothing much done though I was doing something or other all the time. Time flies and progress crawls.

I have my eyes set on something and I hope I do something to realise that goal.
I was listening to Abida's Raqs-e-Bismil collection and Ill post a few lines from there
Zaahid ne mera housle-imaan nahin dekha
Ruq par teri zulfon ko parishaan nahin dekha
..
Kya kya hua hungaam-e-junoon ye nahin maaloom
Hosh jab aaya to girebaan nahi dekha
You have to listen to her to appreciate this. She creates the mood for you. My feeling. I like her ghazals better than her qawwalis and mind you they are brilliant too. Bulle nun Samjhavan aayiyan is my all time favourite.

My insomnia is cured now. You know how? I have just reconciled to the fact that I get sleep only at 2.30am. So my rhythm has adjusted to 5 hours of sleep. Quite enough I guess.

I get so angry at people sometimes. Everyone has problems but why spoil everyone's mood for that !! Im done with pleasing people.

Psst psst doesnt it feel good when you solve some problem!! And especially when some other guy failed to do so. Im not that great with s/w. Today some Mac techies had come over to sort out something,. They failed and I sorted it out :-D Yesssss :-D They were showing off so much (all bluffs, you know how s/w engineers (or engineers (period)) behave rt! As if they wrote the code for the elegant universe (flamebait :-D)). That made it much sweeter. I was one step short of sticking out my tongue to them :-D
Gawd am I vain !! ;-)

Tamannaz trivia

* Recently discovered the ghazals sung by Nayyara Noor. Her voice has a soothing old world charm. My favourite so far is Ae jazba-e-dil gar main chahun..

* Chennai's auto-drivers are notorious and ever annoying. One rarely finds an auto-driver who quotes the right price and is decent and polite. My time-tested way to deal with them is to apply the policy Tu nahi to koi aur nahi sahi, koi aur nahi to koi aur sahi. Believe me it works.

* Reading Bartimaeus trilogy's final part - Ptolemy's gate. I get time for this late at night so Im burning the midnight oil these days. :-D Stupidly, I read the end. Curiosity kills the show :-(

* Slowest part of the day- afternoon from 1 to 4pm (time drags). Fastest part of the day- night-time from 8pm to 12am (time flies).

* Doing nothing ramzan-ish :-( Me a very bad girl.
God-willing I'll reform before its too late. I find Eid joyful only when Ramzan month is like it should be, but then nothing is normal in my life these days. Im looking forward to the normal days :-) Mom's iftaars are awesome affairs and I havent eaten a single one this time yet.

* And hey my work is interesting these days :-D

Miffed and hmphh-ing

1. My cycle is missing :-| I had not seen it for the past 3 weeks and when I checked today it was not there. The security people have been nice to me and they are my last hope. Its only a cycle but it was the first thing I bought with my fellowship and was quite attached to it. sob sob.
2. Dosai in mess. Believe me I hate them by now. And instead of fruit salad, they served cut and mashed bananas. Yewww. The mess servers think they are as clean as a baby and so shuffle and massage the food stuff and serve it to us. Tomorrow's breakfast is also repulsive. They call it uttapam but looks more like the things they feed an elephant. Fat and raw at core.
   
3. To leave physics or not to is the dilemma and the first tentative step away has to be taken by tomorrow evening. I dread talking to my advisor about it. But whats gotta be done gotta be done. I wish I could see my future. I will even be very grateful if there is somebody out there who knows who I am and what I want and makes the decisions for me. I no longer know myself what to do :-D

On the bright side, Im reading a nice sweet novel by LM Montgomery called Emily Climbs. Its the second part of the Emily series and very cute. It has a third part too. I think its called Emily's Quest. Plus my friend has bought the second part of Amulet Of Samarkhand so more of Bartimeus awaiting me :-D Thats a djinni with an attitude haan!!
Plus weekend is not far away :-) These days I even love the food I cook :-D Homemade food is the mantra. Once upon a time I used to hate eating and wished for nutrition capsules.
Thats why people say watch what you ask for.

Weekend plans

You would say "why should this interest me ?" Valid point :-D In a way Im sharing with you whats up here if it matters even a bit. Also, let me use this space as a log for once so that I can check back on Monday how well I did. So here I go...

• Work. I start writing my thesis this weekend. This does not mean I am ready to wrap up. I am working on the last problem and we had tried this with our last publication. We wrote up what we think is the conjecture, worked it out, drew conclusions. So we find and then write out what we find in parallel. Saves time and avoids vain meandering. So wish me luck :-)
Status on Monday: not yet started :-(

• On my PC, I have SUSE 9.3 installed. This is a superb OS. It has an equivalent feature for every application in windows. Looks cool too. But its so slow that I lose patience by the time the terminal opens. So I plan to install Ubuntu. Since the initial installation of Ubuntu is just the core package, it saves space and is faster. We can customise it to our liking. Ill try it out and see for myself. More on this on the Ubuntu webpage. Here is what wiki says about Ubuntu. Done and and it rocks.
  

• Will change this damn keyboard.. hmphhh Ill end up with hardened fingertips otherwise something akin to hobbits hardened feet. Yoohooo my fingers seem to fly!
  


• Meet an old friend. That means catching up on what happened in the past 2 years in her life. That also means watching Home Alone in OAT for the nth time. I am sick and tired of that movie. I guess the company will make up for all that. She simply dint turn up :-| meeting was at 4 she calls up at 5 says cant come. People should keep their appointments or tell b4 hand.
  
• Browse through a book store. I have to get a farewell gift for a friend. I am planning on getting The Count of Monte Cristo. I had loved the book but do you think its a worthy gift? I hope I dont end up buying something for myself. Hazaaron khwahishein par jeb khali. well almost.... Well this was linked with the meeting and so not done :-|
  
• Sleep :-) Blisssssssssssss (The razacsss in Eragon-Eldessst speak like thisss.. draw out the s as in a hiss.. ssssneaky ssscary ) I had the worst weekend in this regard. no sleep at all. not even at nights. stayed awake till 4am just like that. Everyone protested against my trying out pills. so last night i took some cough syrup :-D People have suggested that I instead try the real boozing. he he not that despo yet.
  
• Not miss any of the meals. I tend to do that on weekends. Always prefer sleeping to eating sambar rasam. 2 breakfasts and 1 lunch skipped.
  
• Avoid the naked guy on campus. No Im serious!! There is a psycho roaming around here without his clothes. Apparently he apparates only in front of girls. Even the lady security of our hostel has seen him.. he he she is a nice gentle aunty with high moral values :-D Hope he gets caught soon cos there have been rumours that he chased a girl down a spooky deserted lane. Chennai heat has severely affected him. tut tut.
  
• And then generally chill out and not get worked up. Ahoy weekend here I come :-D
  

Have fun :-)
Now u see how bad I am with resolutions!!! Thats why my new year resolutions also dont work out :-D

My wonderland

I had once mentioned my dream of a cosy library.
I saw one such place today. The setting was different but equally charming. This house was on the 4th floor. Faces a lake. And a room in this house is alloted for books. A cosy chair and a plush deewaan was added to make it every hardcore bookworm's cosy nest. And the collection there was mind-blowing. They are also avid readers and since they have piled up this collection over a span of 25 years, it was my fantasyland. I had read some of the books and I wanted to read the others :-D So you understand why i was so excited.. some day ill have a house like this. hmmm dreamzz unlimited :-D And they lent me Orwell's 1984 :)


Amulet of samarkhand was very interesting. A cute djinn in it. Its a trilogy so looking out for the rest.
Memoirs of a Geisha was too good. Collector's piece. I dont mind reading it again after a few years.
Want to read Rushdie's Midnight's children. Heard a very good review of it.
Also want to read the Satanic verses (I said this earlier)... heard a review of that too.


Saw Pirates this friday. Slimier, funnier. Understood half of it. Depp as good as ever. Wil see it again sometime and understand the rest of it :-D And there's a 3rd part... And it seems Davie Jones is a mythical character. I mean stories abt him exist. Wil research this in greater detail.

Want to see Omkara.., saw interesting reviews about it..
Heard that Gangster is a good movie.. will watch it after my assessment.

By the way my assessment on 1st. Wish me luck :) Its at 9.30 am. I hope I reach the dept by that time... imagine if the panel is made to wait for the student !! Wish me greater luck :-D
Goodnite!