reverie

And pray, did you know?

2009-11-21T04:02:00.003-05:00

"On a wing and a prayer"?

-The phrase popped into our head after me and my friends were done with our first exam of our endsemester session. :-( Seemed a queer sounding phrase given its meaning; and ended looking it up for its origins.. Interesting one, it turns out:

The phrase originated with the World War II patriotic song Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer (1943), by American lyricists Harold Adamson and Jimmie McHugh, which tells of a damaged warplane, barely able to limp back to base:

The Original Song by the way goes as below:

One of our planes was missing
Two hours overdue
One of our planes was missing
With all its gallant crew
The radio sets were humming
We waited for a word
Then a noise broke
Through the humming and this is what we heard

Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Though there's one motor gone
We can still carry on
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer

What a show, what a fight, boys
We really hit our target for tonight
How we sing as we limp through the air
Look below, there's our field over there
With just one motor gone
We can still carry on
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer

Source: www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-a-wing-and-a-prayer.html

too much?

2009-06-12T18:24:00.001-04:00

(Oh, btw, this post was written, when interning in Canada this summer)

Was at the lab the other day, working on something. A friend of mine had his laptop along, and was checking out videos on youtube. Turned out he was having a look at video showing Chinese trains being so overloaded that security personnel on duty have to use all their might at stations to push people into crowded trains.

Asked me "is this how its in Mumbai too?"
Me: "there should be video's of the mumbai rush hour on youtube, search for it"

Types in the key words "mumbai rush hour" into youtube search, and the first video, of a train coming into vasai station pops up. Has a look at it. "OMG!! hey Nader, come here! look at these Indian trains- No Doors!" "oh wait, that's coz when they get full, people can hang on the outside, and yet travel!" "OMG! OMG! There are people jumping into the running train! Indian's are Supermen!"

Me:"couldn't expect any better with the population of that city being perhaps half that of this country"
dood: "Half that of this country?! you kidding me?! This country is the second largest in the world! "
Me: "Check it out on Google" which we did.

Score: Mumbai:13 Million Canada:33 Million

dood:" OMG OMFG! But wait, are Mumbai, Bombay and Maharashtra the same?"
Me: "nope, Maharastra is the state. Mumbai is the capital of the state. Bombay and Mumbai-same thing."
Nader: "What's the population of Maharashtra then?"

recall Google again

Score: Maharashtra 96 Million Canada:33 Million

dood: "Oh my god! that's a state in India with three times the population of this country??!"
As incredulous, as that fact was to him, I told him of Uttar Pradesh.

Nader : "Utah-are- Pradesh? Google it"

Dood googles.

Score:

Uttar Pradesh: 190 Million Canada: 33 Million.

"Oh my god! that is crazy! Where do all these people stay?! That is now 6 times the population of this country! One single state? You're kidding me" Dood was shaken white now. For the last bit of curiosity, we checked the population of Uttar pradesh against the most populous countries in the world.

Rank:5. Period.

Dood found it too much to take. "Crazy man! I still can't imagine this"

Too shaken, dood walks off with enough for the day .... "Indians are supermen"

Britain's surely got talent!

2009-05-04T07:29:00.000-04:00

Watch Susan Boyle perform on Britain's got talent, the song 'I dreamed a dream' on Britain's Got Talent. Touching rendition of the song from the musical 'Les Miserables'. By the way, Susan's 47 and unemployed. According to Amanda Holden , a judge on the show, "Susan's the people's winner, before the show's even begun!" No wonder then, that the above linked video of her performance on the show, received 50 Million hits in a time of less than 3 weeks!

Until, there comes along another guy, a pizza delivery guy, who sings another song from the same musical, and blows the audience! Have a look at Jamie Pugh performing on Britain's got talent.

Nice stuff!

2009-01-24T07:40:00.000-05:00

was 11.00 pm on the 20th of Jan..
yup.. the time according to IST at which Obama started his first presidential address.. I absolutely admired the speech.. with all the right emphasis on equality, unity, and a spirited outlook in times of economic gloom.. .. the speech was simply fabulous.. had me drifting into imagining, the day when this country would have a leader who would set the same principles..

short lived..

short lived was that flight of imagination.. My uncle changed the channel on the TV, and the next channel... was busy broadcasting news on the Begaum issue.. where marathi's and karnataka fight it out for who the belgaum district really belongs to- all apparently over the contention that belgaum has a large marathi speaking population. Violence, agitations.. etc etc.. over a relative non issue?..

compare that to what was happening half way round the world.. in the states.. boy! we have a long way to go..

Tech @ IIT- Bombay

2008-12-12T14:56:00.000-05:00

Technical Activities at IIT Bombay are quite a deal.. they're frequent, see a lot of enthu freshie participation.. and are a fun activity. Then again, there's that talk about some "technical activities being the 'T' in 'IIT' " so ubiquitous among students on campus who pursue Tech (short convenient campus slang for the whole "Technical Activities" deal :P ) activities with all the enthusiasm.

I was writing my Resume, just last month, and I did have quite something to write under the Tech extra- curricular section, which surprised ppl around.. can't blame them really.. on two counts, a) they're into Tech, and b) I look like the last person who'd do Tech :-o

I thought it would be interesting , penning down some of the events, when I was .. well kind of.. 'active' on the Tech scene in the Insti (for the uninitiated, this is another campus slang for Institute)

Two separate situations I thought, formed my opinion about tech stuff here.. One was our first competition, in the insti.. the problem statement was simple.. making a machine , that uses only potential energy to complete as many rounds around a centrally placed pole, ofcourse, while staying within a certain radius range.

We were a team of 4 students working on the contraption.. well.. four of us, with no clue where to start, and what to start with.... Brain-stormed for an evening, and decided to come up with a semicircular body that would be fitted with the engines of the push back toy cars, embedded in thermocol frame.. .. that brought us to the designing part.. thats when things actually got bad... cutting the whole contraption , to keep it within the size allowances, and outside the inner radius ranges .. the theoretical guy among us came up with kinematic equations to describe its motion, and possibly help our design.. equations did you say? Equations?.. you mean theory?.. That was what our Tech mentor probably first thought looking at our equations of motion of the semi circular thing.. that look .. on his face.. well was probably that of blasphemy towards tech!.. I mean whoever heard of 'theory' being used to make a practical machine.. "Heheh Freshies!"

that brought us back to our drawing board..and to our lil games of cricket, we played using machine tools :-o .. one guy in the group got pretty resourceful, he built another machine for the same competition, from the waste we generated, trying to build the first machine...!

the second one was nothing more than two wheels stuck to a small plywood plank, with a stone tied to it, to make it heavy enough for its tyres to grip its road. It didnt have an energy source yet.. so wasn't supposed to run in the competition anyway..

Skip to D-day!

A mess!.. yes thats what we were it... the semi circular thermocol thingy.. umm
it actually broke into two parts.. cant blame the thing.. it was thermocol after all.. though, i would blame the unknown guy who unknowingly sat on our machine! x-(

A lot of cellotape, and a little testing later, the machine was well.. not exactly ready to smoke the competition.. but .. atleast capable of locomotion :-o

Ahh but misfortune strikes.. it falls apart just before our run is to commence at the competition :( We take a half an hour time out.. It takes us 5 minutes to figure out , the machine is beyond repair.. .. then Brainwave! We decide to run the second plank on wheels machine by attaching the first machine's engine to it.. .. doesn't work out:(

Last ditch plan?..go to a toy shop outside Main Gate, buy a toy car, strip it, attach engine to our plank on wheels.... all within half an hour.. (I made this possible, getting to the shop and back on a cycle.. which lacked brakes. .. so your shoe ended up being your brake shoe :( .. and banging into trees an only way of stopping ! )

and Results? Plank on wheels: 4rth place in Competition ! :D

Aah the Arbitrariness of tech.. The godess of tech had revealed herself to us freshies in all the incomprehensible glory...

A winners treat later.. tech was still as unpredictable to us as before.. a pure matter of luck :-o
... and was so to be.. this wasn't the last we saw of the unpredictability.. It was Shaastra.. but thats a whole different story.. For a better story.. ask the 3 guys in my wing trying to make a micromouse since first year.... thirdies now that they are..

Terror trail through the Torah

2008-12-12T14:42:00.000-05:00

well.. coincidence?.. ofcourse.. but what a heck of a coincidence :-o
click on the pic to enlarge

Starry eyed

2008-12-12T14:21:00.001-05:00

I was at my hostel xerox shop the other evening, when I overheard the following conversation.. Well, I was kinda taking my time printing some document, so the guy next in line had nothing much to do, other than strike a conversation with the guy at the counter at the Xerox shop... Turns out, that day the xerox shop waala, had a young boy, not rich in anyway of the word, aged about 12 yrs perhaps.. definitely not more ; to help him out at the shop. The guy, waiting at the shop, decided to strike a conversation with the little guy.

Guy: " तुम यहाँ क्या कर रहे हो ? "
Boy: " स्कूल को छुट्टी है, इसलिए यहाँ आया।"
Guy: " स्कूल कहाँ है तुम्हारा ?"
Boy: "गुजरात। "
Guy:" फिर इतने दूर क्यूँ आया ?"
Boy:" पिताजी कहते हैं, अगले साल से यहीं स्कूल जाऊंगा।"
Guy:" क्यूँ ?"
Boy:"मुझे इंग्लिश सीखने को मिलेगी। पिताजी कहते हैं इंग्लिश स्कूल में पढूंगा तो बहुत बड़ा बनूँगा "

Well thats all I heard.. before I finished my printing stuff, and left.. but glancing over what I heard.. .. something's right somewhere.. (all stories of child labour aside)..may be the message of education is finally getting somewhere in India.. though a little skewed, a little incomplete, and with a little fallacy here and there... getting somewhere..

Philosophical encounters of the 3rd kind

2008-02-20T04:18:00.000-05:00

"I think therefore I am", save me from this line!!.. Rene' Descartes utterances have been resonating through this division of the Philosophy course at IIT for the last 2 months. Personally I find the course wonderful. Its a refreshing lecture in the midst of an average weary day at college :) .Depends on ones taste, but i find it interesting to analyse all the ideas of the dead and gone, who had just enough time in life to say one cracker of a sentence like "esse est percipi" or "Tabula rasa" or for that matter the one at the start of this article, sentences on which i bet , atleast a few might have made a living out of decoding such lines for their daily bread! :-o

My friends' attitude towards the subject, is an interesting read;) and an interesting chronology. The subject really got big on us when we tried to figure it out for the mid semesters,and the subject revealed itself in all its royal glory and incomprehensibility....
picture this out of one of the online notes:
Here's Aristotle with one of his gems ;)
SUBSTANCE:

It is neither predicable (sayable) nor present in anything as an aspect or property. – Aristotle

And here goes the explaination in the notes:

Aristotle’s notion of substance suggests that substance is the essence of a thing, which is not present in any of its properties. Because properties are sayable – they can be expressed in words. Ex, being a horse – the essence of horse is different from any particular horse. A particular horse shares the essence of being a horse. They do not have separate existence. Only substances can remain self – identical through change. All other things are accidents of substance and exist only as aspects, properties or relations of substance.

Try figuring that out , 12 hours before the exam and you get our situation!.. .. some of my friends had to particularly get over the problem of remembering the greek names they weren't used to..(they'd rather have to deal with something in hindi)

No wonder, In the whole of their philosophy, their Aris'totle' has been renamed the 'totla' :) and Protagoras , as 'dinosaurus'.. convenient they say it is.. I wouldn't disagree ;)

Another problem when its 11hrs before the exam is this, when you come across statements which no mortal on the face of the earth can put a finger on and say , here's proof its true/false!
Picture this:
According to Spinoza, “Substance exists in itself and conceived by itself.”
Now what substance is being talked about?.. well i have the least idea, it didnt occur in the notes you see :P .It gives me a feeling , he might have chuckled "take that , humanity (sadist laugh)!" when he came up with that. :P

The latest in the string of ideas for cracking the philosophy riddle ,is apparently something i hear from my friends conversation(the guy was in mood to drop some serious knowledge(he'd just done well in the paper distributed that day), and we were at the recieving end)
"We study Philosophy from the Oxford dictionary, it helps to write long answers you see.Pick a tough word from the notes, learn its definition, and use the dictionary to write its definiton in 10 different ways in the paper.".. well the guy scored > 90% marks this mid-sem.. so..

Then came the phase where this fascination reached greater heights... when muh friends realised, such cryptic pearls of knowledge made such great status messages on gmail chat.. and those pearls seemed everywhere :-o .

Needless to say, things get murkier , as things move to metaphysics, and discussions of space and time! My point:" Medieval philosopher St. Augustine had written: What is time? I know what it is. But if someone asks me what it is, I cannot explain.".(Now i didn't make this up)I'd love to use this line to explain my predicament when faced with a question in the question paper the next time..:P.

Battling through the vast muck of the text: 50 quotes , 8 Chapters, and umpteen philosophers later, here's my favourite :... its by Jean Paul Sartre
"Man is condemned to be free" .. yeah!

P.S:
a) For people who know that they are the charachters in this story, and they are being quoted, all i have to say is "No its NOT YOU!" .. any resemblance to anything dead or alive is purely coincidential...x-)
b)If you cant read the text in the image at the start of the article, click on it to open it in a new window to enlarge it.
c) To all you guys up there: Rest in peace, no offence meant. :)

Signing off-
Avi

Light Math @ IIT

2008-02-17T04:34:00.001-05:00

This post was written in my freshie year, but stayed as a draft till I found it yesterday..

Well, it was my afternoon class of mathematics, and the prof is finding it pretty hard to keep students awake.. he decides to shift from the topic, to the topic of current research in mathematics... he tells students about Tao..... a mathematician somewhere in japan, who is just prolific at publishing papers on various subject.... the prof decided to ask the class"How do you think he does it?".. a sleepy student just managed to wake up to quip, audibly enough for the class to hear it.. "Sir, HE isn't INDIAN!".. the class had a laugh.. and the prof didn't have anything to reply to that comment.Wonder if that comment had a link with the mindset that prevails in IIT among students, with respect to science...the comment did strike a chord in the class..

manus ruckus!

2008-02-16T12:42:00.000-05:00

Living in mumbai for the last one and a half year has brought to me many an interesting insights into the way mindsets work...Being hardcore a goan that i am.. its a given thing, that my default mindset is the "susegad" one .i.e an attitude that says i don't have a worry in this world thats gonna make me hurry! :) and living in mumbai has been a welcome opportunity to adjust to a new one.. One where time is the most precious commodity at ones disposal... A big shift from the former mindset.There's a lot i could go on about.. what i've picked up in subtle way out of living in IIT and being in mumbai.
So, what gets me talking about the city and goa?
Well my attention grabbing piece of news was the latest piece of violence to affect the city.. The storm over the identity of the marathi manoos.. and his right over the land of mumbai, and the political agenda's of a few parties, manifesting itself as the violence against North Indians.
I'd assume one knows about the chronology of the events.. and the reasons thereof....immediately followed by central leaders bellowing about threats to national unity..
Its a valid point ..An Indian is an Indian ,no matter which part of India he travels to. It's the identity that glues us together in times of need,in face of patriotic fervor and confronted with threats, the boundaries separating all of us need to, and do fall. So where does the story of the regional identity start?
I'd rewind my thoughts to Goa .. to a time a few months back, and the SEZ (Special Economic Zones) 's were proposed..
The benefits to the nation enormous:
5 digit number of jobs being created per SEZ
Mushrooming Infrastructure
Wealth creation
Ideal location near a port city

But where did the plan end up?
In the dumps.

Why?
The local population could have filled in only about a thousand or two of the jobs,and the prospect of the rest of the jobs being filled in by non goans, moving into the state with their families presented a picture grim enough to the locals, which reached its negative peak at the new year time, with agitations, marred by sporadic violence,and tourists being warned to leave goa.

It all boils down to the question of a Identity..
Face it.. any person , would like power, power to make a choice, power to see things turn out the way he wishes.
Now in a democracy like ours where the power rests with the majority, one better have tastes that match the majority for ones wishes to come true
A local population thats been endemic to a place, has similar customs,beliefs,and sentiments.. and it reflects in the demeanor of the State Executive. The layman therefore sees his beliefs rarely ever upset.
Factor in a situation where this lay person is swamped by non endemic population with substantially different tastes in all walks of life.. and many of them a nuisance to him /offensive or an irritation. And thats where a scary thought starts.. where the person out of xenophobia goes overboard in preserving his identity. Political sharks ofcourse come into play here in fanning this sentiment.. and what you get.. is what you see.. in the streets of a supposedly tolerant city like mumbai.. soo much for the line"nothing unites men better than a common hate, not even love"
So where's the way out?
I think its a responsibility sometimes one forgets when one is in another part of the country.. that to be accepting of the local culture of that area. A courtesy you may say..
but a necessity i insist!
Yes we are still all Indians.. But we are a unification of diversities..
where i see this violence ending.. and all the unending conflicts that seem to be plaguing the country.. is perhaps in the acceptance and respect for this diversity..
The diversity we proudly say is the heart of our unity... when we learnt the line back in school
"Unity in diversity"

wher it all begins

2007-11-02T10:50:00.000-04:00

its probably the song scientist /coldplay that i listened to that makes me start this blog...,...
here's where i start.. dunno where ill end.. so guess...lets keep it goin till then...