Winter Break 'Things to Do'

Watch
------------
Transporter-3
Yes Man
The Curious case of Benjamin Button
Tropic Thunder
Pulp Fiction (again)
Sin City (again)
Insomnia
Once upon a time in America
Donnie Brasco
Memoirs of A Geisha
The Others (again)
The Big Lebowski
Valkyrie
Frost/Nixon

Eat
-------------
Burrito
Cheese Pizza
Taco
Chelupa
Panang Rice
Gangheree
Yellow Curry
Cranberry Bagel
Veggie Burger
Sambhar & Rice (twice and yummy)
Idli, Vada & Sambhar
Veggie Wrap
Biryaani (twice and yummy)
Mediterranean Sandwich & Tomato Soup (with bread bowl)

Drink
---------
Margarita
Margarita
Margarita
Margarita

Do
-----
Sleep
Take Photos
One of the above three activities

Coming back to life

Watching Jodhaa-Akbar in PVR gold class with his girl-friend was a dream come true. A movie was always the part of an ideal date. Watch the second show of a classy movie in PVR gold class, pack some tasty Chinese and go for a long drive on a car. She obliged for the first part. She doesn't like Chinese and he doesn't have a car. They left after watching the last song. The climax fight wasn't worth the time (she thought). She has been working late these days. Some stuff to wrap up.

Driving at 90kmph on the inner ring road is always fun. Especially on a seven-year-old splendor with the ipod playing to its max volume. But the speed limit plummets down when she is there. As he started driving back, he wondered how it all started.

Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein - RHTDM

He met her at the blind date contest during Oasis 2001. They lost the contest as he was not sure what her favorite color/movie/song were. But he knew something for sure. He likes her. Sudden break. Phew. That lady in Honda Civic, surely drunk, took a sharp left turn in-front of him on hosur road. She asks dreamily something like "What happened". He says "Nothing. You relax.". She could not catch up on sleep of late. Damn bangalore traffic. Damn frustrated bangalore traffic.

Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe - DCH

An occasional 'hi' gave way to a periodic chat. The casual conversations gave way to the regular discussions. The more he met her, the more he knew she was the girl. Both were 19 then. She is already dozing off on his shoulder as the bike cruises at a constant 40kmph; no signals for a long stretch. Rather he would not care to obey them now. Her hair fluttering in the wind. Its fragrance stills makes him dizzy. The static roar of the wind plays the lullaby as the smooth ups and downs of the road rocks the cradle for the sleeping beauty.

Gori gori - Main Hoon Na

Each of the places on the way hold their own importance. The inner ring road, the airport road fly-over, the 100ft road, the corner house, the leela palace barista, the CCD, the Windtunnel road, the Amul icecream shop. Each one of them.

Tum se hi - Jab We Met

They are 24 now and they had to be just friends. Something was not right about the whole thing. The parting was imminent. She is going abroad for her masters and he was shifting job to another city. Both are moving out of bangalore. Bangalore days were the best and the worst days of their lives. Both belive whatever happens, happens for the best. Life is smarter than us humans and chooses the best (always).

Coming back to life - The Division Bell

Time travel -II

What determines the mood of a person? I think just the following:
a) Food
b) People
c) Music/Movie

Our brain (hats off god!) groups files in sets of folders. You try to access just one file among them, you inevitable pick the entire folder. Some association among the files. But the same file can be part of multiple folders. Something like the song Coming back to Life of Floyd being part of 'All time favorites' as well as 'Make her listen these' playlists.

So as you lead your life, you slowly build up a huge database of feelings. What are feelings? I feel happy/Down/High/Low what ever. Its exactly this - The precise level of your hormones - (I know I've mentioned it in one of the earlier blogs). Nothing else. For guys there aren't many where as for the ladies there are innumerable. And the infinite combinations of them. Well thats why the guy doesn't 'Understand how she feels' always (Well, after a while he does say 'I understand how you feel' but I bet its just a statistical observation). So coming back to the point. How are food/music/movies/people/touch influencing the mood. Simple, they set the hormone level.

Take this. You listen to Dil Chahta Hai or RHTDM songs and suddenly you 'feel' nostalgic about your hostel wing (and probably the tasty chola batura in RBM mess!). You watch Swades and remember the day you made job (just because you happen to watch it the very next day). While accessing one file, you pick up the entire folder. This sometimes results in hallucinations. Not just visual. Olfactory as well. How many of you guys feel faintly that you smell your gal's fav perfume when you browse through old college pics or read some mails while rummaging through the inbox.

Well. Try it. Recreate just one (hopefully something strong) scenerio and see how you feel the hallucinations. So, its just the hormones. So, its easy to time travel.

Time machine

Mr. H G Wells, you have spend nights writing about an intricate machine that can take you back and forth in time. I have done very simple to achieve about half of all that. Just rolled my thumb over my ipod and closed my eyes. Jodha-Akbar songs just got me back to that wonderful/painful/joyful/sorrowful first quarter of 2008. I open my eyes and realize that Wesst Kinara (West Coast for the mango ppl) is far far away.

And the limitation that intervening in the past would take me to a different parallel universe (with possibly different outcome of events) still holds good. Einstein & Hawking would become furious otherwise.

Three Quarters & Chinese

That's a nice Chinese restaurant in Bangalore. In the middle of church street, next to Amoeba etc. And the best part is that they have a witty name. They claim to serve three quarters of chinese menu and one quarter of Awadhi menu (Lucknowi - for the tyros to the gastronomical world). Their biryanis and kebabs have earned a reputation for themselves as a real treat (comes second only to Hyderabadi Dum Biryani !)

Well that's not the point. The point is that Quarter is an important denomination in US currency. Get a ride from UCLA to SantaMonica beach, make a phone call to your girlfriend (and I've seen ppl banging their head after doing that), do your laundry etc etc. So  that's the first quarter.

Quarter is a key thing in the california graduate education system. You fall down in Fall, shiver and curse yourself in Winter ( & buy a mac out of frustration & 'making most out of xmas sales') & Eventually Spring back in Spring. That's the second quarter.

Quarter is a significant portion of my house. That quarter of bedroom/bathroom/kitchen/hall for which I am the boss. Surrounded by brat frats. All they care about is Pop, Party & Pussy (no offence really to those amazing greek fraternities). That's the third quarter.

The fourth quarter is the chinese (and japanese, taiwanese, koreans, malaysians, indonasians etc etc...as you see my limited knowledge of geography). You find them all over LA. Customs & Immigrations, Parking lots, Research Labs, Pingpong tables & Everywhere else.

Well, as I finish a quarter of my life, I hope to embrace these other quarters into my life with heart wide open. 

US & USA

My journey to umreekaah started on a pretty glamorous note. Happen to bump into Tollywood's hot chick (Well! Not the latest, Really.) Illeana D'cruz ( http://www.idlebrain.com/movie/photogallery/ileana-pokiri.html ) at Mumbai Chatrapati Shivaji Airport. Took auto/photo-graph etc :-D (ob da!). Well there wasnt anything glamorous for a while after that. Sleepless for a night, we (krishna & me) finally boarded the flight. There was "Indiana Jones" followed by Red-wine, then "Kung-Fu Panda" followed by White-wine and finally "Sarkar-Raj" on the onboard entertainment set well punctuated by short spells of sleep. The 'toast' to america never happened all this while :-( Eventually reached LA, got picked up by a senior and was dropped at another's place.

Had some tough time on day zero night figuring out the inversion in the switch, the absence of the 'MUG' & the ready-made rotis.

Day one was going to campus, getting ID card, opening bank a/c (and talking to that moronic personal banking officer who 'actually' wanted to know what I plan specialize in), having a look at the dingy den that my roommates called an appmnt (for $1800 pm wohow!). The whole thing wasnt atleast as big as my swanky studio in bangalore. Then it struck to me that am in LA. Apart from this another thing struck me. Jet Lag + Fever! For two days there was a three second delay in my neuron network. Imagine having your head enclosed in an airtight glass container & you hear your voice after a delay of three seconds (approx the same round trip time LA-HYD-LA taken by your voice over a phone line). Your vision isnt doing great either. You try to reach for the dish tv remote, crash into the water jug which 'came in your way' & realise it after three seconds. Two days out of calender.

Jet Lags turned into Lets Jag. I woke up finally. Next two days are again out of calender as I went out for house hunting. Its still on. I am skipping all the routine stuff about what ppl write about us of a (neat roads, smooth traffic, courteous ppl, cereals for B/F etc etc).

I can't say it was a smooth landing in US. But it wasn't rough either. The desi seniors are pretty helpful (they dint charge me for that broken water jug & dint finish my mom's ravva laddoos), the univ building is awesome & the mild sunny weather with cool pacific breeze - Fantastic. Probably a beautiful place to watch the sunset sitting in your own sea-facing duplex flat. Smiling. Reassuring yourself why its great to stay single till you are 30 & rich.

So, lean legs!

"In mythical ages, sages had a single minded
devotion in pleasing the gods.
Their efforts were however, sometimes, grounded
by beautiful apsaras and dev-kanyas.

In modern days, grad students toiled
round the clock in pleasing their mentors.
Their efforts are however, always, foiled
by lovely ladies.

Walking slight fast wearing tight shorts;
Smiling rosy bright during cosy nights."

-An UCLA grad student (Circa 2008 A.D)

What is Sexy?

Sexy. It is one of the most thrown around words of this generation. (Ofcourse, after 'Gen'. A universal one word answer to any question. Could well be a boring replacement to Sexy for all these questions).

Q: Hey dude, how was the movie 'Dark Knight'?
A: Sexy mann.

Q: Hey machan, how is the Masala dosa?
A: Its Sexy da.

Q: Mama, how is the latest chiru song ra?
A: Sexy undi ra baabai.

Q: Oye, tera iphone kaisi hai?
A: Bahut Sexy hai yaar.

Guess there isn't a definition of what being Sexy is. And god knows what it has to do with the three letter word. So, I pondered a while on what does it take for anything to be called sexy.

First, is being sexy about meeting the expectations? Or exceeding them. Second, are the expectations realistic or do they have significant dosage of fantasy.

In the case of things, almost always the sexy thing lies in the midway. You know that your fantasy device is a good decade away, but what you have in your hand is something which shows promise. You would want a 5 MP SLR quality camera with Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS, dual-touch screen, media player (which plays all damn formats in 3D surround sound and HDTV clarity) & all those fancy features (Yes Mr.Bond, we do have Satellite Missle Control & for the ladies version, we do have a Virtual online make-up assistant as she smiles at the camera). All in a small box. Oh yeah!! it should be able to send & receive voice calls. Mr Graham Bell & Scarlett-O-Hara would be proud to call this gizmo 'Phone with the mind'.

But what we get is an iphone. Still we call it sexy.

Sexy music calls for different faculties. Subconscious mind probably looks for mathematical patterns when ever it listens to sound. It could activate the pleasure center in the brain if it finds a definite series or a neat signal which could be harmoniously split into specific frequencies (we all unknowingly thank fourier this way). Its no surprise that a melodious vedic hymn in the praise of Lord Krsna also contains value of pi to 32 decimal places. With this universe full of patterns & signals, comprehending a speck of it takes you one step closer to god and no wonder music is a straight forward path in understanding the divinity.

MS Subbulaxmi probably doesn't know Mr. Fourier; Nor does AR Rahman or Harris Jeyraj. But they do tune-out sexy music.

Food can be sexy. A perfect combination of the acids & bases available in your mom's kitchen is guaranteed to bring out the wholesome feeling in you. It gets sexy when the taste buds are excited in the right proportions at right times (and you thought Cooking and Math never intersect! How about a subject called 'Culinery Calculus'?). Those grandma recipes getting passed on from generations are nothing but the counter-parts of solutions to the Quantum electrodynamics or collected papers on Nonlinear physics.

Trust me. Nothing can get sexier than a well prepared Dum biryani, masala dosa, bisi bele bath, Paneer butter masala or Rosogulla.

Dark Knight was indeed a sexy movie. Few can disagree (Few=females). Movies depicting tragic history (like in schindler's list) in a graphic way or those dwelling in a fantasy world with real emotions (ala LOTR ). Like those showing utter terror using innocent characters ( Mr. Norman Bates in Psycho) or dealing with the variations of human psychology (One flew over ..or Forrest Gump). Most of them evoking the deepest of the human emotions.

Many disagree, argue, fight over what makes a movie sexy. I could not find a common denominator among Hitchcock's thrillers, Martin Scorsese's influential films, Hrishi da's art works and K ViswaNath's Classics (Sorry Yash Chopra & Karan Johar, romantic movies are nice and warm but cannot be tagged Sexy). I give up and leave it for the audience to decide.

For human beings, leave aside the most stereotyped physical definitions of being sexy (exaggerated Shoulder-to-waist ratio for men & magic 36-24-36 vital stats for women), and the 'Golden Ratio' for facial beauty ( which says we all pay homage to Mr. Fibonacci when ever we are on the prowl for mating). Being sexy is thought to be as a matter of attitude these days. I think its again a culmination of fantasy and reality. Someone could be pictured with some charactersitics. Being sexy is that person actually having them all. What seems sexy to me might seem 'whattt?' for you. Whom you consider 'god/goddess' might not evoke any emotion in me.

For a man, the wife could be traditionally sexy when she is clad in a Kanchipuram Zari saree after a ShiKakai head bath, her long hair wrapped in a wet towel and heading for Suprabhatam. For this lady, it could well be her man, hearing the sound of her anklets, jumping onto her from his lethargic Filter-Coffee-sipping-Hindu-Newspapaer-reading pose to take a whiff of Mysore Sandal off her shoulders. Or as western as his woman in a white negligee with a red wine glass in one hand; Jazz playing in the background and the other hand inviting. And for her it might be a neatly shaved man in tuxedo reciting shakespeare willing to do a waltz jig.

Tomes of stuff can be written about this topic. All points to just one sentence. Reality meeting fantasy. The fantasy could as well be the almighty. Appreciating his brilliance in creation. We all try to understand universe through the sexy things around. All I can conclude is Sexy is the closest description of god.

Do minat

My travel from bangalore to hyderabad has become jinxed of late. On one occasion, I had to survive sharing the aisle of an a/c volvo with a bus cleaner having homosexual tendencies. But on last friday, I got the adrenaline rush of my life in last two years racing against time to catch my train to hyderabad. I have become an addict to the high I get through doing things/reaching places just in time. Be it chasing movie tickets on friday nights or racing on my seven year old splendid splendor to sneak in through the DRDO gate (to my home) that closes at 9pm.

But as I said earlier, the mother of all such highs was felt on last friday. I had planned to start from office at 1:15pm to catch the kachiguda express at Yeshwantpur departing at 4:10pm. Thanks to the thousands of e-mails I had to send to 'close' a few things, I started from office at 2pm. I thought may be I over estimated the time and felt comfortable enough to get onto a city bus to shivaji nagar instead of a direct autorickshaw to Ypur. The bus reached shivaji nagar terminus at around 2:55pm. Last time (on a non-friday!) it took me 20 mins from shivaji nagar to reach Ypur. Even with 2x deration, I would still reach by 3:45pm (assuming 10mins for catching the bus). I managed to catch a bus at 3:10pm and somehow got a seat to sit. Its already 3:30pm and the bus is stuck in the sea of vehicles. I felt stranded and decided to take an auto rickshaw to mitigate any risk of missing the train.

He seemed to be an energetic young man, but his auto was like an old patient; coughing, wheezing and ready to die. I was about 5km away from Ypur and we had 20 mins. The count went from minutes to seconds. It was only at 4:02pm when I saw Ypur address boards. There was a sweaty mix of tension & excitement in the air. The auto-wallah took me through hazaar nooks and gallis and out of nowhere, Ypur railway station appeared in front of me. I had just two minutes to go and I had to let go of the 40 rupees return change he owed me. "Thank you thambi, chillara nuvve pettuko" (Thanks bro, keep the change). With two heavy lugs, a porter's helping hand was definitely relieving. When I finally believed that I made it, my greedy self re-appeared and started haggling for 10 rupees. Blimey, I had just 100 rs notes on me. He was ready to walk away with one of those notes (and I didn't want to repeat my lines "Thanks thambi...."), when for the first time I felt happy giving away 10 bucks to a eunuch (and getting back 9 ten rupee notes!). 4:10pm it was and I heard the signal and felt the chugging of the train.

Phew, my mind was blanked for a minute. My coopey was entirely a non-telugu set. I wondered if I boarded the right train. After having a peek at the next coopey I saw an old man reading "Swati- saparivaara patrika" and thats when I confirmed that boy its the right train. Rest of the journey went on fine, reading 'Afghan' (hollywoodised version of apna "DON"), playing with a cute 2 yr old kid and chatting with an 'IT' engineer from hyderabad. Even this time fate had its way and no F[21-25] in my coopey. Wonder how long thats gonna continue! Anyways that was that.

Why we laugh?

"So this suggests strongly it's hard-wired in the brain and this raises an interesting question. Why did it evolve in the brain, OK, how did it evolve through natural selection? When you look at all jokes and humour across societies, the common denominator of all jokes and humour despite all the diversity is that you take a person along a garden path of expectation and at the very end you suddenly introduce au unexpected twist that entails a complete re-interpretation of all the previous facts. That's called a punch-line of the joke. Now obviously that is not sufficient for laughter because then every great scientific discovery or every "paradigm shift" would be funny, and my scientific colleagues wouldn't find it amusing if I said their discoveries were funny.

OK, the key ingredient here is, it's not merely sufficient that you introduce a re-interpretation but the re-interpretation, the new model you have come up with should be inconsequential, it should be of trivial consequence. It sounds a bit abstract so let me illustrate with a concrete example. Here is a portly gentleman walking along, he is trying to reach his destination, but before he does that he slips on a banana peel and falls. And then he breaks his head and blood spills out and obviously you are not going to laugh. You are going to rush to the telephone and call the ambulance. But imagine instead of that, he walks along, slips on the banana peel, falls, wipes off the goo from his face, looks around him everywhere, and and then gets up, then you start laughing. The reason is I claim is because now you know it's inconsequential, you say, oh it's no big deal, there's no real danger here. So what I'm arguing is, laughter is nature's false alarm. Why is this useful from an evolutionary standpoint? So what you are doing with this rhythmic stocatto sound of laughter is informing your kin who share your genes, don't waste your precious resources rushing to this person's aid, it's a false alarm everything is OK. OK, so it's nature's OK signal."

Picked from Reith Lectures 2003 on Emerging Mind by V S Ramachandran, world renowned brain scientist

They are available (both text/audio clips):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lectures.shtml

Heisenberg uncertainty principle and possessiveness.

The observer effect is often conflated with the Hiesenberg uncertainty principle

"In science, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observing will make on the phenomenon being observed. For example, for us to "see" an electron, a photon must first interact with it, and this interaction will change the path of that electron. It is also theoretically possible for other, less direct means of measurement to affect the electron; even if the electron is simply put into a position where observing it is possible, without actual observation taking place, it will still (theoretically) alter its position."
(Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect.)

Exactly, same phenomenon happens when you get a little possessive about anything/anyone. Instantaneously (as early as the laws of physics permit), the object which is being possessive about knows about the obsession and deviates from its original trajectory making it difficult for the obsever. Hence, the only way to guess that the object is on track is to just close the eyes and not make a measurement. May be this is called 'maya' (illusion) in hindu mythology. You can imagine it only with closed eyes, the moment you open your eyes the 'maya' is gone.

What makes my day

For many a smile makes their day.
For me its the smiley that makes my day.

Swalpa Adjust Maadi

I keep comparing humans with circuits all the time. Sometimes the parallels drawn seem so significant to me. I go ahead and force some parameters of a circuit to a person. Lets take some very basic parameters. Any one who has done a basic networks course would definitely agree that any circuit can be approximated to a second order system (two pole systems rings a bell??). So there is a dominant pole frequency and a non dominant pole frequency. They sorta give an indication of what your response would be to a change of inputs. Ofcourse we assume the change in the inputs is within some boundary conditions such that the system behaves in a linear fashion.

Ok am done with the circuits part (couldn't do away with: second order system, pole frequency, linearity. sorry!) of it. Coming to the fantastic feature of human brain. It has hundreds of such systems in parallel and the pole frequencies can be different for each system. Each system is associated with the various objects in his/her life (eg: cricket, sudoku, music, ex-lover, current-girlfriend, future husband whatever). So, the theory is "nothing is permanent".

When the environment around you changes (a new job, flat, friends), humans have this capability to adjust. No matter what the change is (again within the boundary conditions), we adjust to it. Its just a matter of time. Sometimes, it takes few seconds (dim light in a conference room), few minutes (bad odour of shoes), few hours (change of body cycle..jet lag), few days (those moments with buddies who are no longer around), few months (you are married!!), few years (you are still married!!) to adjust. Life always changes our surroundings so that our brains do not get used to the comfort level and are constantly challenged. It comes with the tagline "Swalpa Adjust Maadi" (Adjust a Little, please in kannada).

Common cold, loved ones & pinkfloyd.

There is nothing common about common cold. Apparently there are a hundred viruses that can cause it and thats precisely what makes it the world most infectious ailment. I was reading about it yesterday (after three years of relationship, corner house betrayed me by gifting me common cold wrapped in HCF jr, Cake fudge & Brownie fudge) and bumped into some interesting ways of treating cold.

I believe we have a capability to cure any disease just by thought process. For a change, its the thought that counts here. The way we feel is entirely governed by hormones (that explains the complex mind of a woman: 2 hormones drives the emotions of a man as against 8 in a woman!). Digressing a bit, man is like a digital inverter, yes or no is what he knows. Where as a woman is like a carefully biased 10-stage rail-to-rail (you know the moods swings dontchya?) opamp. You know there is something wrong but can't figure out straight away which stage screwed up!

Anyways anyways...hormones decide the mood! Agreed? Taking it further, any state of being is entirely governed by the levels of hormone at that point of time. Theoritically, it is possible to recreate the same emotional state if the hormones hit that combo again (doesn't it explain how you get nostalgic about your college crush when you flip through the albums or happen to smell her favorite perfume).

So, common cold again! Talking to loved ones (family or friends) and listening to music (the ones which you've listened & liked the most) apparently provides a relief to the jammed nose. Talking helps as it makes you feel that you are cared for, that sense of bonding jacks up the 'feel good' factor. Listening to music gets you into a nice comfortable zone. Both these are proven to rev-up your immune system and eventually beat up the cold virus out of your body. Now you can breath without hearing that low frequency beats from your nose followed by aaahh (sign :-) ).

Acknowledgements:
1) CP, for blogging that none of his regulars are blogging.
2) Ammi's calls.
3) Pink floyd & DW tracks.
4) Psenti sem photo album

Neena! cookingaa! Deevudaa!!

Never knew there are two schools of thought: Milk-first & Milk-last. Read on for 'A Nice Cup of Tea' by George Orwell.
http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm

'Find-out-from-Mom-how-to-prepare-these' List:
1) Dum Biryani (naah, not flavoured by MDH masala)
2) Doosakaaya Pappu
3) Paalakuura Pulusu
4) Gutti Vankaaya Kuura
5) Tomato Perugu Pacchadi
6) Beerakaaya pacchadi
8) Sambhar
9) Mukkala Pulusu

Let go.

Let go of the sand from your clutched hand.
Wait for the gold to fall into your hold.
For, the sand that slipped is somebody else's beauty to behold.
And the gold you await will be yours without being told.