On a High after giving the Dec2009 CSIR when we all got back to Pune in Jan, all the whole of bioinfo batch wanted to do was: Masti. January seemed to be dedicated to it. The batch went to an overnight trip to Vasota. Considered by far the best by many, not me though. The guys next went to Purandar Fort. One of the cheapest and definitely the most spontaneous of our treks. Not satisfied yet, our next trek was to Dhak Bhairi. The most toughest trek ever and that is a unanimous opinion. By now we all had got our guides and projects. Buried somewhere within the GBs of Pics that we took, was our Literature Review which we were supposed to be doing. But hell May was far off, who cared about the project anyways? :)
Next came Feb. We took the first Sunday off from trekking. Bad decision: in the evening we guys got robbed at gunpoint by Somya at Chatuhshrungi. What a start to the month. Bloody ended every damn plan prematurely, before we even thought of it. It was a bad bad experience. Well in any case it put an end to all our masti. Everyone came right back to their ground states, I infact went into an underground state not being able to bear the loss of my Corby!! Feb went off with rounds of police stations, people, contacts, hell we even got to talk to Somya through a contact in a desi bar. Said he had sold our phones coz he needed 2 laks.
March came and i applied for my passport. On Holi the good news came that Somya had been caught by the police and they had recovered our phones. Man the joy and happiness of it all. That was a gr8 holi! Like the first Fri of every month, this one had already been taken up by Wangikar Sir. I had a lot of preliminary data processing to do. On top of this the police tells us to get orders from the courts to get back the phones. March went in courts and coding.
April started and i started to actually code on the real algorithm of my project. I thought I could finish it in 2 weeks. The rounds of the courts and police stations continued. I kept on coding. I took a whole month to write down 750 lines of code and it ran terribly. It was slow, it was buggy, it was bad coding. By mid april i was supposed to get my passport. But Hell it had gotten stuck in the Police Stn! More rounds of Police Stn then. But we got our cell phones back finally :)
With May the temperatures started getting really oppressive in the Lab. I Optimized my code so that it ran like a sports-car. It was lighter - 450 lines and faster. Time had come to run it on my whole dataset. This was also the time when all my interviews were gonna take place and the sem end theory and practical exams were scheduled as well with the Project presentations. Unfortunately the class performance was so bad that the project presentations were shifted to Jun end. Which was good :) May was a crazy crazy month. I literally jet setted my way about Mumbai Pune and Bangalore for PhD interviews. Whats worse is that i failed in all of them :(
June: I finished up whatever was my project. The results turned out to be bad unfortunately. Next scheduled was a trip to Bangalore for IISc interviews. This was a do or die moment for me. The story of how i did it is for another time and place but point is i DID it :) After that when i came back to Pune for the Project Presentations there was just no looking back. I had gotten the passport cleared as well by "donating" stationary to the police stn passport office. But atleast i did not have to pay money upfront in this corrupt country of mine! June ended MSc ended, a chapter of my life closed, a part of me remained back in Pune, the rest of me walked on.
July was the Month of Meeting Everyone. Met all the old friends. Relaxed at home cause the future was secured in IISc. July 28th touched Bangalore! New chapter started!
August. New place, new people, new food, heck even new clothes thnx to mums insistence. Pankaj was the only thing I already knew about IISc and am glad he was there. Made new Friends. Realised that again I had got a gr8 batch. Went for trips. Weekends at Ashwins. Exploring Bangalore. Meeting up with long lost childhood friends in a city stranger to all of us. The best Freshers ever!
September, broke the shell completely, lost control completely, exams came, i failed completely! On top of that personal complaints against me by A**HOLE profs with bloated egos coz of plugged A**HOLES. Was a bad time towards the end. To the rescue came Friends from Pune. It was time to go back to my roots. Go to a place where i could just be me. Turned out the name of that place was Urli Kanchan, a small village 35km from Pune off the Pune-Solapur Highway.
October: thats how it started, In Urli Kanchan. One of the most unforgettable nights ever. The night was crazy. No other word for it. 7 bikes, a field, more than 6 kilos of food, liters of a potent drink, 5 deg Cel, one small bonfire and 11 guys. After I came back from Pune I knew everything was gonna be just about fine.
November came and with that exams. Ones which I couldn't fail, infact a few in which I had to do exceptionally well. A month of some cold calculations and hard work regarding exams. A month also of the One Plunge taken with the eyes closed without gauging how high the fall was, how deep and cold the water was. And mid Nov! a gamble which paid off. Probably an event which has already changed my life forever ahead! Exams came in, I just gave em. And the ones in which i needed to, I just DID. Again!
Dec: This month had FAMILY written all over it and that too in BOLD! Came back home. Drove to Ahemdabad in the brand new SX4. The best car i have driven till date surely! Came back drove to Mahabaleshwar. Relieved some of the FYBSc Botany memories. This was the most offbeat vacations with the family. And now in the wee hours of the last day of this great great year, this blogpost.
Next Year: Jan is gonna start with a Bang called Honda Dazzler! Life is gonna be sweet. And like Calvin says: The Days are Just Packed!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Cocktails and Dreams
I have no idea why I put that as the title. Except that theres a feeling associated with that phrase. Its from the Movie Cocktail starring Tom Cruise in which he is a bar tender and he dreams of opening his own bar one day; which he does eventually and names it 'Cocktails and Dreams'. The phrase has always evoked a success-content-happiness-bliss kinda feeling. The kind I am feeling now. Life has become one long stretch of euphoria interspersed with satisfaction and I am gonna savor it for as long as it lasts.
1st sem in IISc, the first 4 months have been a whirlwind of course work, assignments, exams, failures, successes, late nights, early morning boring lectures, new friends, movies in library, dominoes orders, tp with tp gang, CSIR jhol and what not.
I have started getting my stipend. Will buy my own bike next Jan. Hopefully. Finally.
Life next year is gonna be just awesome.
I realised i have never blogged about IISc before. Maybe sometime later i'll tell the story of how i made it to IISc.
1st sem in IISc, the first 4 months have been a whirlwind of course work, assignments, exams, failures, successes, late nights, early morning boring lectures, new friends, movies in library, dominoes orders, tp with tp gang, CSIR jhol and what not.
I have started getting my stipend. Will buy my own bike next Jan. Hopefully. Finally.
Life next year is gonna be just awesome.
I realised i have never blogged about IISc before. Maybe sometime later i'll tell the story of how i made it to IISc.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Maruti Omni-E 1998 (Dec-14)
First Day: It was a saturday (I think) and Sis had won some competition in school (extempore?), Mom had a half day, I was at home as well, Dad comes in, says : Lets go for a drive..! And we were like - in whose car? And he says he just bought a new car!! Hellooo??!!! :D
And tomorrow that car is gonna move on to its new owner, a car dealership.
I don't know what to say, feeling really melancholic about it.
When we bought the Omni, we were the only people I knew who had a Van. Mom was always asking WHY are we buying an EIGHT seater vehicle which is most commonly seen as a taxi? She still doesn't know the answer, but am sure she stopped caring long back.
There have been so many events where that car was central to the outcome.
I still remember the day when Dad had beat the shit outta me when I had refused to wash the car. And the time when he drove it like Schumi from Ruia to Colony because I had forgotten my documents before admission.
The trip to Goa - dad drove all the way alone, no other car could have been more comfortable with the space we had. The trip to Nagaon with JD, Kamlesh. And to Lonavala with JD, Kamlesh and Vidhi.
It was the car in which I learnt to drive. Dad taught me. I had none of the Balaji Motor Driving School bullshit. First Lesson, lasted for 15 min. I learnt - start the car, put it in first gear, move ahead, stop, put it in reverse gear, go back, stop. That's it. Definitely come a long way since. Guess I passed my driving the test when I drove the family back from Nagaon on a learners license.
Ferrying all the relatives from Dadar and Churchgate Stn to colony. Driving to Kharghar to see our new home under construction. Picking up Sis and her friends from the Stn everytime it was raining. I remember a crazy drive in a flooded Belapur when the water was so high all brakes failed and the floor carpet had gotten wet. The drive from Kharghar to Colony when the engine overheated near Nerul. The one time it punctured the tyre near Sion Circle.
It may have been a grossly under powered car, with bad suspension and huge body roll and no AC and whatever. For all its worth it was a car which always delivered what was asked of it. It was an awesome car. And apart from all this it gave our family 12 years worth of great memories.
And tomorrow that car is gonna move on to its new owner, a car dealership.
I don't know what to say, feeling really melancholic about it.
When we bought the Omni, we were the only people I knew who had a Van. Mom was always asking WHY are we buying an EIGHT seater vehicle which is most commonly seen as a taxi? She still doesn't know the answer, but am sure she stopped caring long back.
There have been so many events where that car was central to the outcome.
I still remember the day when Dad had beat the shit outta me when I had refused to wash the car. And the time when he drove it like Schumi from Ruia to Colony because I had forgotten my documents before admission.
The trip to Goa - dad drove all the way alone, no other car could have been more comfortable with the space we had. The trip to Nagaon with JD, Kamlesh. And to Lonavala with JD, Kamlesh and Vidhi.
It was the car in which I learnt to drive. Dad taught me. I had none of the Balaji Motor Driving School bullshit. First Lesson, lasted for 15 min. I learnt - start the car, put it in first gear, move ahead, stop, put it in reverse gear, go back, stop. That's it. Definitely come a long way since. Guess I passed my driving the test when I drove the family back from Nagaon on a learners license.
Ferrying all the relatives from Dadar and Churchgate Stn to colony. Driving to Kharghar to see our new home under construction. Picking up Sis and her friends from the Stn everytime it was raining. I remember a crazy drive in a flooded Belapur when the water was so high all brakes failed and the floor carpet had gotten wet. The drive from Kharghar to Colony when the engine overheated near Nerul. The one time it punctured the tyre near Sion Circle.
It may have been a grossly under powered car, with bad suspension and huge body roll and no AC and whatever. For all its worth it was a car which always delivered what was asked of it. It was an awesome car. And apart from all this it gave our family 12 years worth of great memories.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Water
We know it is important, we know it is crucial, we know it is indispensable and yet we remain irresponsible while using it.
I can harp on and on about how it is important to conserve water, make sure that potable water is available to all etc. etc. except that I fail to identify with anything that has to do with people anymore. I mean at least in India do what you want but people are just not gonna improve. Fine the government never really made dams or divert water to areas which are perennially under drought, but what did the people do? They are just as content making the women do the walking and getting the water.
What interests me though is the chemical itself. The molecule, their collection, its properties. For example I was left amazed that the IR spectra of pure liquid water is not yet explained. For a molecule which is so simple, this is mind boggling. And what about the very weird physical properties? Expands on cooling, expands on heating as well!!! Weird melting and boiling points and so on. And that too so neat 0 as freezing, 100 as boiling (is this coz of the scale itself?? I dunno!!)
But something of even more interest is the structure that liquid water has. The molecules are always in association with on another via hydrogen bonds and thus liquid water isn't just loosely packed water molecules but instead a proper dynamic lattice of water molecules. This has huge implications in protein folding. No one quite knows exactly how a protein folds and attains its native structure. I have a few ideas of my own on this, one of which involves lots of water molecules..!!
I guess like last year, my this years Blog Action Day post is also defeating its own purpose, but then if this has gotten me back to my old blog then the purpose is served, at least for me!
I can harp on and on about how it is important to conserve water, make sure that potable water is available to all etc. etc. except that I fail to identify with anything that has to do with people anymore. I mean at least in India do what you want but people are just not gonna improve. Fine the government never really made dams or divert water to areas which are perennially under drought, but what did the people do? They are just as content making the women do the walking and getting the water.
What interests me though is the chemical itself. The molecule, their collection, its properties. For example I was left amazed that the IR spectra of pure liquid water is not yet explained. For a molecule which is so simple, this is mind boggling. And what about the very weird physical properties? Expands on cooling, expands on heating as well!!! Weird melting and boiling points and so on. And that too so neat 0 as freezing, 100 as boiling (is this coz of the scale itself?? I dunno!!)
But something of even more interest is the structure that liquid water has. The molecules are always in association with on another via hydrogen bonds and thus liquid water isn't just loosely packed water molecules but instead a proper dynamic lattice of water molecules. This has huge implications in protein folding. No one quite knows exactly how a protein folds and attains its native structure. I have a few ideas of my own on this, one of which involves lots of water molecules..!!
I guess like last year, my this years Blog Action Day post is also defeating its own purpose, but then if this has gotten me back to my old blog then the purpose is served, at least for me!
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Professor Index
I realized that very few people actually have the power to stop time in its very tracks..!! And all of them are College Professors.
But how do you quantitate the power of such people? So here is an index - The Professor Index, which is the ratio between Real Time : Apparent Time
Professor Index = Real Time/Apparent Time
Real Time is the duration for which the lecture was actually held.
Apparent Time is the time you thought the lecture went on for. Analogous to Feels Like Temperature.
The index is most accurately measured for a real time of 45 minutes because that is the average attention span of most individuals.
The higher the index the better is the professor.
Professor Index > 1 ---- Very Good -> Excellent -> AWESOME -> Start ur Own Religion
Professor Index = 1 ---- Good -> Fairly Decent
Professor Index < 1 ---- Bad -> Very Bad -> Pathetic -> Die -> Kill Me
This post was actually inspired by the man who is so powerfully strong in stopping time that his Index touches Avogadro's Number albeit in the negative power of ten.
Every morning from 9 onwards (till 10 real time) he stops time infinitely and I am left asking the question 'what am i being punished for??'.
But how do you quantitate the power of such people? So here is an index - The Professor Index, which is the ratio between Real Time : Apparent Time
Professor Index = Real Time/Apparent Time
Real Time is the duration for which the lecture was actually held.
Apparent Time is the time you thought the lecture went on for. Analogous to Feels Like Temperature.
The index is most accurately measured for a real time of 45 minutes because that is the average attention span of most individuals.
The higher the index the better is the professor.
Professor Index > 1 ---- Very Good -> Excellent -> AWESOME -> Start ur Own Religion
Professor Index = 1 ---- Good -> Fairly Decent
Professor Index < 1 ---- Bad -> Very Bad -> Pathetic -> Die -> Kill Me
This post was actually inspired by the man who is so powerfully strong in stopping time that his Index touches Avogadro's Number albeit in the negative power of ten.
Every morning from 9 onwards (till 10 real time) he stops time infinitely and I am left asking the question 'what am i being punished for??'.
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