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Sunday, July 5, 2009
Addicted
Jobs are queer things. At one level they are like the push that keeps the wheel of your life turning over; at another they also wear you down by their stolid monotony. Most people find ways to keep themselves distracted and thereby motivated to continue working. The proactive ones seek thrills in endeavors outside their office, but for most others it is a matter of numbing their senses, be it momentarily, and escaping from the reality.
For me it all started when I arrived in Pittsburgh for an internship. It was a new city, with new challenges, but hardly any familiar faces. From the onset I knew it would be challenging to resist the temptation, but I was determined to fight it out. But very soon the glitzy labels in the stocked coffers began to take their toll on my resolve. And as I saw my colleagues gulp it down over lunch and at work, I found myself involved in debates with my conscience. Slowly that little voice inside me grew faint until it was no longer audible. I stopped resisting.
Now, I am addicted. I need it early in the morning and one before going to bed. There is obviously one to wash down lunch and if the opportunity presents itself, another one at dinner. Heck!! I keep one close to my bed should the craving be unbearable in the morning. I have it on my way to work like the most nonchalant of American habits whilst reassuring myself that I am burning off whatever I am gulping down. I know that excess of anything is bad for ones health but I am beyond the point where such platitudes invoke any feeling of guilt. I plan to stop when I get back to Atlanta but it seems that is just a reassurance to help me sleep at night.
I guess admitting it is the first step.
Yes. I am addicted to coke.
For me it all started when I arrived in Pittsburgh for an internship. It was a new city, with new challenges, but hardly any familiar faces. From the onset I knew it would be challenging to resist the temptation, but I was determined to fight it out. But very soon the glitzy labels in the stocked coffers began to take their toll on my resolve. And as I saw my colleagues gulp it down over lunch and at work, I found myself involved in debates with my conscience. Slowly that little voice inside me grew faint until it was no longer audible. I stopped resisting.
Now, I am addicted. I need it early in the morning and one before going to bed. There is obviously one to wash down lunch and if the opportunity presents itself, another one at dinner. Heck!! I keep one close to my bed should the craving be unbearable in the morning. I have it on my way to work like the most nonchalant of American habits whilst reassuring myself that I am burning off whatever I am gulping down. I know that excess of anything is bad for ones health but I am beyond the point where such platitudes invoke any feeling of guilt. I plan to stop when I get back to Atlanta but it seems that is just a reassurance to help me sleep at night.
I guess admitting it is the first step.
Yes. I am addicted to coke.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Up Swing !!
Caution: This post involves significant amount of self-eulogizing and back slapping.
The last few months have been extremely taxing both emotionally and physically. It seems my fortunes have finally turned a corner. The first good news of the week came in the form of the mail that our FOCS paper had been accepted. For a paper that was written over two nights after being reprimanded by V, I think it did pretty well. We have been asked to merge our presentation with another paper but the papers remain separate. Sweet.
Next I got my Nikon D40 during the week, and a whole bunch of accessories that I had shopped for. Basically I have received one package every day of the week [bag, camera, polarizer, SD card, Vijay’s book]. It is always nice to walk in to office and see a nice package waiting on your desk. I went to Mount Washington today to try it out and was really impressed by its handling and interface. I waited 3 hours for the sun to set so that I could take a picture of the Pittsburg downtown and it didn’t disappoint me. I will upload the pics tomorrow after some post-processing.
Oh, and there was also a baseball game thrown in, my first TGIF bash, and my first successful code review. Phew!! Seems like some one up there had been saving it all up.
The last few months have been extremely taxing both emotionally and physically. It seems my fortunes have finally turned a corner. The first good news of the week came in the form of the mail that our FOCS paper had been accepted. For a paper that was written over two nights after being reprimanded by V, I think it did pretty well. We have been asked to merge our presentation with another paper but the papers remain separate. Sweet.
Next I got my Nikon D40 during the week, and a whole bunch of accessories that I had shopped for. Basically I have received one package every day of the week [bag, camera, polarizer, SD card, Vijay’s book]. It is always nice to walk in to office and see a nice package waiting on your desk. I went to Mount Washington today to try it out and was really impressed by its handling and interface. I waited 3 hours for the sun to set so that I could take a picture of the Pittsburg downtown and it didn’t disappoint me. I will upload the pics tomorrow after some post-processing.
Oh, and there was also a baseball game thrown in, my first TGIF bash, and my first successful code review. Phew!! Seems like some one up there had been saving it all up.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Anger
There are very few things in life that can be understood so well that they can be classified and printed as chapters in CBSE text books so that innocent kids can learn them for their bored(my apologies for that) exams. I am proud to say that I have just added 'anger' to that list. Having spent the last year with a bunch of guys from south India discussing the properties and characteristics of numerous functions I am compelled to present my findings in a pseudo technical form. Anger can be best explained by the following five functions.
1. The Dirac function: People with such a profile are generally very placid and amicable apart from short but violent bursts of furious rage. Refer figure for details.
2. The sine curve: These are very predictable souls the derivative of whose anger is also just as predictable. Averaged over a long period of time they are neutral.
3. The martingale: The most erratic of all functions. The anger curve has no derivative at any of the points and is therefore totally unpredictable.
4. The constant: We don't run in to such people in subway or in the metro. They exist only in Chinese monasteries or as heroes in Hindi films.
5. The exponential function: this type of people get angrier with age until they shoot the crazy clown in the spring fair and are hung. For further information contact Andrew Symonds.
Of course my mother has an alternate classification as good anger and bad anger, but it does not involve any graphs or derivatives and is therefore not a significant contribution to the state of the art.
1. The Dirac function: People with such a profile are generally very placid and amicable apart from short but violent bursts of furious rage. Refer figure for details.
2. The sine curve: These are very predictable souls the derivative of whose anger is also just as predictable. Averaged over a long period of time they are neutral.
3. The martingale: The most erratic of all functions. The anger curve has no derivative at any of the points and is therefore totally unpredictable.
4. The constant: We don't run in to such people in subway or in the metro. They exist only in Chinese monasteries or as heroes in Hindi films.
5. The exponential function: this type of people get angrier with age until they shoot the crazy clown in the spring fair and are hung. For further information contact Andrew Symonds.
Of course my mother has an alternate classification as good anger and bad anger, but it does not involve any graphs or derivatives and is therefore not a significant contribution to the state of the art.
Pushkar's Eleven Rule
It is marriage season in the Tripathi house hold these days, with two eligible bachelorettes in the family. When I was in Delhi last month I made the following observation. The critical mass for any family gathering is three; once this threshold is reached any conversation will invariably veer towards marriage.
With marriage being the topic of most conversations I rapidly found myself being sidelined from all discussions and had the time to make this second remarkable observation. There is far too much emphasis on the bride and the groom being of comparable heights. Of course this concern is somewhat justified, since it would be inconvenient not to have the bride and the groom in the same photo without the help of a foot-stool.
The official reason purported by the higher authorities was that people of the similar heights look better together and are likely to have similar progeny hence making for splendid family photographs. Shrugging off my inclination to believe everything that my elders tell me, I have come to the following conclusion. [Hold on to your pants for this may shock or surprise and you may even think that I am crazy or inebriated. I assure you I am fully in my senses and haven't had anything to drink in the last hour.]
This is an evil plot that is two millennia in the making. I think our forefathers intended to divide the whole of humanity in to two sects, the tall ones and the not so tall ones. Some sort of divide and rule. If tall people continue to marry others like them they are more likely to have tall kids. The same holds for the vertically challenged ones. We could end up in a situation where the entire mankind has diverged in to two subspecies. Then USA would declare that being short is against the ideals of democracy and use this as an excuse to invade a Muslim country.
At the risk of being branded a pariah, I would say it makes more sense for tall guys to marry from among short ones and vice-versa. This would ensure that their offspring are of acceptable height. I would even go to the extent of proposing a rule. For the lack of a better name let us call it the Eleven Rule - the sum of the heights of the bride and groom should be exactly 11 feet. This way they have the best shot at having kids who are normal by today's standards. Of course having a generation which is roughly 5.5 feet would also help control the variance in future generations. This seems perfect.
For those who haven't met me, I am 5 feet 10 inches tall and am looking for some one who is exactly 5'2". Interested ladies should leave a comment.
With marriage being the topic of most conversations I rapidly found myself being sidelined from all discussions and had the time to make this second remarkable observation. There is far too much emphasis on the bride and the groom being of comparable heights. Of course this concern is somewhat justified, since it would be inconvenient not to have the bride and the groom in the same photo without the help of a foot-stool.
The official reason purported by the higher authorities was that people of the similar heights look better together and are likely to have similar progeny hence making for splendid family photographs. Shrugging off my inclination to believe everything that my elders tell me, I have come to the following conclusion. [Hold on to your pants for this may shock or surprise and you may even think that I am crazy or inebriated. I assure you I am fully in my senses and haven't had anything to drink in the last hour.]
This is an evil plot that is two millennia in the making. I think our forefathers intended to divide the whole of humanity in to two sects, the tall ones and the not so tall ones. Some sort of divide and rule. If tall people continue to marry others like them they are more likely to have tall kids. The same holds for the vertically challenged ones. We could end up in a situation where the entire mankind has diverged in to two subspecies. Then USA would declare that being short is against the ideals of democracy and use this as an excuse to invade a Muslim country.
At the risk of being branded a pariah, I would say it makes more sense for tall guys to marry from among short ones and vice-versa. This would ensure that their offspring are of acceptable height. I would even go to the extent of proposing a rule. For the lack of a better name let us call it the Eleven Rule - the sum of the heights of the bride and groom should be exactly 11 feet. This way they have the best shot at having kids who are normal by today's standards. Of course having a generation which is roughly 5.5 feet would also help control the variance in future generations. This seems perfect.
For those who haven't met me, I am 5 feet 10 inches tall and am looking for some one who is exactly 5'2". Interested ladies should leave a comment.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Me likes....:)
It seems my only blogging activity over the last few months has been in response to tags. So here is another one, this is a response to Moti's tag.
Things that cheer me up when I am down.
1. Sport. There is nothing like getting your hair wet and shirt soaked when it comes to getting over your pain. If I look back at various sports that I have picked up, apart from cricket of course, most can some how be attributed to times when I wanted to vent my stress. I started playing badminton to cope with the stress of preparing for JEE and racket-ball and squash came on my sporting resume after my brake up.
2. Another thing that really helps me unwind is writing. I have been lazy about posting stuff on this blog but have been very diligent when it comes to writing. It is not just the emotional rants but things like poems, stories, puzzles; they all help me clear my mind. If Microsoft ever decides to honor the most loyal 'notepad-supporter' I would be a top contender for the award.
3. Cooking. Yes that is true, I enjoy cooking a lot, though my roommates would testify that a lot of my experiments don't turn out right. I guess it is the joy of creating something that others can enjoy and appreciate that I like about cooking. Things dal and sabzi are not that gratifying. What I really enjoy is making new dishes; like there was the time when I made pulao for a potluck. That was immensely satisfying.
4. Mathematics. I know that I am truly happy if I am thinking of math. That is what I have thought about over the last 4-5 years and it has become a part of me. There have been times when I have gone to bed thinking about a problem and woken up after dreaming about a solution. I generally keep a list of puzzles and problems to work on during my free time, and working my way through the list makes me feel good. When I started doing this sometime in my first year at IIT, the objective was to chew through the list as fast as possible to reach the state of "know-it-all" inactivity. This has ceased to be the case now.
5. This is probably the easiest of the lot. I call up my friends when I am depressed. Very often I find myself unable to really share the reason for being sad but even talking to others about unrelated things makes me happy, and gives me the courage to fight my inner-devils.
I have a theory as to why these things work. Taking time off by the way of cooking, blogging, chatting helps to distance myself from my troubles. This serves to bring them in to perspective. Of the very few things that V (my advisor) has taught me over the last year is that when you have a problem and you keep looking at it like this (holds his hand close to his nose) then you are confined to a very small solution space, it is only when you let it go (stretches his hand out), that you are able to look at the bigger picture and find the solution.
Things that cheer me up when I am down.
1. Sport. There is nothing like getting your hair wet and shirt soaked when it comes to getting over your pain. If I look back at various sports that I have picked up, apart from cricket of course, most can some how be attributed to times when I wanted to vent my stress. I started playing badminton to cope with the stress of preparing for JEE and racket-ball and squash came on my sporting resume after my brake up.
2. Another thing that really helps me unwind is writing. I have been lazy about posting stuff on this blog but have been very diligent when it comes to writing. It is not just the emotional rants but things like poems, stories, puzzles; they all help me clear my mind. If Microsoft ever decides to honor the most loyal 'notepad-supporter' I would be a top contender for the award.
3. Cooking. Yes that is true, I enjoy cooking a lot, though my roommates would testify that a lot of my experiments don't turn out right. I guess it is the joy of creating something that others can enjoy and appreciate that I like about cooking. Things dal and sabzi are not that gratifying. What I really enjoy is making new dishes; like there was the time when I made pulao for a potluck. That was immensely satisfying.
4. Mathematics. I know that I am truly happy if I am thinking of math. That is what I have thought about over the last 4-5 years and it has become a part of me. There have been times when I have gone to bed thinking about a problem and woken up after dreaming about a solution. I generally keep a list of puzzles and problems to work on during my free time, and working my way through the list makes me feel good. When I started doing this sometime in my first year at IIT, the objective was to chew through the list as fast as possible to reach the state of "know-it-all" inactivity. This has ceased to be the case now.
5. This is probably the easiest of the lot. I call up my friends when I am depressed. Very often I find myself unable to really share the reason for being sad but even talking to others about unrelated things makes me happy, and gives me the courage to fight my inner-devils.
I have a theory as to why these things work. Taking time off by the way of cooking, blogging, chatting helps to distance myself from my troubles. This serves to bring them in to perspective. Of the very few things that V (my advisor) has taught me over the last year is that when you have a problem and you keep looking at it like this (holds his hand close to his nose) then you are confined to a very small solution space, it is only when you let it go (stretches his hand out), that you are able to look at the bigger picture and find the solution.
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