Waiting !

I dislike waiting. I'm sure many dislike it too. Waiting for a reason feels a little better. In the sense, for example, you know someone is going to be late (because they were civil enough to inform you about it). So it kind of reduces the pressure on the mind about what is happening and you are aware of the fact that you need to cool off for a while. 

What doesn't feel good or right for that matter, is when you don't know what you are waiting for. Christmas maybe :-S. Like two days ago, I asked my boss if we should proceed with the dissection? He, of course, shares a lot of enthusiasm for work (something I will talk about at length some other time). His quick reply was "yes why not". Then he started staring into his computer. I vellaofied in his cabin for sometime to see if he would jump out of his seat. He didn't seem like he would. Now he is the boss, so I didn't even feel like asking him why he was still glued there ! Worse is, it went on like that for another hour. I kept hopping in and out of his cabin. Still nothing was moving forward. I kept resuming to my quarters in the common lab. The problem is I need to know! I must know if it will take time, or we are not going to do the work, or he is busy, or he forgot and needs to be reminded, etc. A little more waiting and I'm sure one could have seen steam coming out of my head. Actually, if that were true, I wouldn't have been a water balloon that I'm right now :-P. I felt like a kid who was promised a cookie from the jar on the topmost rack and I'm waiting for it to be handed down to me. Not understanding what was the delay for and therefore greedily and expectantly looking at the person for some level of enlightenment on the whole situation. That is how I felt :-P.

I don't understand this constant need to know. It is the same with almost all the things I do. I need to know. If I don't then I go mad, angry, irritated, feel dumb, get bored, try calling friends, ask around for help, do all sorts of haath pair maarna and then finally implode! If at this point someone questions why I hadn't approached the person to start work, I get bombarded into smithereens in my surreal head ! Bottom line, I HATE WAITING!

List of things I wanted to be as a kid - news reader, interpreter, pilot, doctor, actress, architect, writer, journalist, teacher, dancer, painter, ............ a lot more !
The funny (or true) thing is, I still want to be some of these, but why is it that I must only chose one and stick to it ?
I repeat my favourite word in english language or the most used in my case, "WHY?" :-S

Disturbia !

I was wondering how some events disturb you while others don't. Like there are some emotions that take over all of your time and energy and also douse your mental enthusiasm for things. It really is a waste of energy put to bad use (evolutionarily speaking). Because if you look at it, it doesn't really solve anything, doesn't help you to lift your spirits, and other positive things of the kind. On the other hand, it makes you go languid, lowers your efficiency, DISTURBS you mentally, etc etc. Mostly you are engrossed in a mental monologue, dappling images and recollections from past events, ......@%&Y*(I)_O! And Voila, what do we end up with ? Nothing.

I remember one of my professor's lecture where she said that we come up with solutions when we sit quiet. That is when we ruminate best and our evolved brains also work best when we relax and try to be quiet. With other matters clogging the mind, uljhan ko suljhana becomes difficult seemingly.She gave a classical example of a monkey experiment. I found it pretty interesting. So that does explain why people resort to being reticent when troubled with such events. But, are most people thinking of solutions at this point is something that is highly debatable! 

Come to think of it, I was wondering how there might still be some level of mental evolution that must be silently doing its own work. Probably, like Darwin claimed, it is the ones who adapt the best who survive and not the rest. This probably at some level can be explained in terms of patients who find it tough to break out of their shocks/traumas. Or those who have undergone a life changing experience(a negative one) and are unable to adjust to the new environment.Those who are unable to adapt and move on.

Whatever the reason, I think disturbia must be recognised as a lethal weapon. Once you find yourself approaching it, its time to fight against it and do everything in your power to extinguish it. Trapping yourself in it might become like a bad habit. You will not be able to get out, even if you wanted to.

Might not be one of the best things I wrote. But it surely is something I consider seriously very often. It matters to me, and therefore it is on this page :-)

Four Legged Freaks :-)

While I was talking to CBag today, I came up with a supplement to an existing "maybe it is so" theory in my head. The other day I got to escape from work a little early than usual. NW and I made a stop at a regular chai-dukaan. I buy chai when I enter the gates and just before leaving the gates. That is my regular. So, in honour of my useless routine we approached the shop. That is where it all started !

So the theory was about dogs and infants. Yes, my theories of  "relativity" on the evolution of behaviourisms run through far and fewer animals in between :-P. As we were buying our chai-biskoot, one of the stray dogs there came after us. No not to bite us baap. But it did the doggy ishtyle cute stuff - wagging its tail, running around us restlessly, the pay-attention-to-me-don't-I-seem-like-I-need-your-petting look. We tried to shoo it away, but it persisted with the look

NW assumed it that it might be hungry. So, the sweet thing that NW is, she bought a few biscuits to feed it. She tried feeding it. It took it in its mouth and then quietly placed it on the floor. Then it continued with its paapum look again! We both tried talking to it, eat the biscuit doggie, look look biscuit doggie, etc etc. It finally sniffed at it in the floor and then ate it up. We had to do the same cycle for the remaining biscuits. Put it in its mouth-the dog puts it on the floor-looks at us expectantly again-we tell it to eat-the dog eats it off of the floor-then back to putting biscuits in its mouth ! uffffff........!

How does this have anything to do with infants ? Is that what you are asking ? Well, while this whole episode was happening, I suddenly remembered what my dear chuhiya friend told me a few days ago. She said that no matter what plate you put food on, kids will throw it on the floor and then eat it off of the floor. Never do they eat food shareefly from the plate itself! God only knows why that even occurred to me ! Maybe my mind is working like google now a days. Tightly to remotely related stuff are getting gathered up in a few pages of my mind ! Anyways, lets reel back from the diversion, the infant is where I was. So I wondered if its the same with dogs too, eating off the floor I mean. :-D After a brief thought I let go of it, rubbished the thought and headed towards home.

CBag was talking about the exact same thing today. About how dogs don't eat when you hand them the food, they would rather eat/lick stuff from the floor! Some coincidence this, thats what I felt. Right then the supplement that hit me was, you know it could be true, if you think of it. Dogs eat from the floor, infants do so too. Dogs have four legs, infants have four legs(considering the fact that they can't stand upright themselves, so that makes them four legged things). Then I thought OMG, these are the four legged freaks, no wonder they behave alike ! :-P CBag laughed of course, I tried laughing but went off into the comic cloud hovering above my head to think about it for a few seconds. Then I left it at that.

Yes yes, besharam thoughts have no boundaries, they move away while to try to reach the end, they are like the horizon ! Works just fine for me therefore ....ahahahaah ! :-D

Holidays !

The other day when I was sulking about the bike, as I was walking along a long road I indulged in a monologue about "why me ?". It suddenly reminded me of this cartoon strip that has gone viral on FB. It basically reminds you of the fact that while god is on his duty to protect you, there are some stones that even He might miss. Sounds very biblical I'm sure. Every time I read something spiritual or something about god through some or the other source I have noticed that the saying returns to me in a few days as a situational event.

Its not only about reading, my evil brain comes up with some sort of strange intuitions too. Like I might stare at a completely disconnected person and think "sometime I might get to know him/her very well" and it does turn out to be true. This one time I had a very rigid feeling that a particular question will definitely be asked in an entrance exam (mind you, the syllabus for this test might as well be called "everything under the sun") and it did !! Or I might talk about a person for some reason and then think "naaah.....I don't think I'll ever see them" and tadaaaa, I see them the very next day or even worse ON the same day !!!!!!!!

But sometimes I think of good and positive things too. For example, I might  feel lazy and not start an experiment thinking it might not work today and then some or the other technical problem would have arisen later during the day proving the thought that "good only I didn't start my experiment". Most recent example would be of this desire to somehow get a few days off from work so that I can pay heed to my laziness more than usual. Voila ! I have four holidays straight starting from tomorrow ! Hip Hip Hurray ! :-D

No No No ..... I'm not suggesting that I'm psychic or anything, I'm far from all that ! Wanted to share the fact that it feels strange to witness such events and then go "I thought so ! " But it also makes me laugh at myself thinking, inspite of thinking so I still managed to make a gobar ganesh out of myself !

Murphy's Law ??!!

Most times when I used to be one of the early-to-class-shareef-bacchis, I always wondered about how people can walk themselves into a class that started an hour ago. For most parts of my life, I have been like that, until recently of course. There are times when I have reached a class in time when it reaches its closing as well :-D Yes, that besharam I have gotten !

No matter how early I wake up and try hard to reach a particular place on time, something or the other goes wrong and I end up being late. In fact the earlier the target to reach, the late-er I get :-D. For more than a week, I have have been literally falling out of bed to reach on time, and each day I would have boarded a bus with normal sign boards but taking sudden unexpectedly horrifying and lengthy routes and therefore delaying the want to reach early desire :-/. So today I geared up the courage to ask the bike to my father (after the damages I have done to the bike, I have gained little sharam in asking for it again :-P ), of course he handed me the keys without saying much. Ahh! the feeling of riding the bike, its the only thing in the world which I have control on, I can equal its speed to my mind's swiftness and in some strange way it calms me :-P.

There I was humming "I feel good....!" in my head and headed towards the class that I was already running late to. Suddenly this evil thought runs in my head "what if the bike stops somewhere on the way?" I jerked off the bad thoughts and told myself  "shub shub socho". What do you know, it did stop and three people tried kicking it to start but in vain. The situation reminded me of an old poem's lines that I found strikingly interesting from the day I first read them :

Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill ;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil.

 Thanks to the whole situation I ended up going late to class by an hour precisely, my teacher and I shared a chuckle and I seriously walked in and sat quietly for the following hour. But wait, the story doesn't end there. I decided to follow Fast track's tag line "move on" and started out towards the next place I had to reach. I took an auto to reach early, forgetting the fact that these attempts are but futile with respect to me :-) and ting ting ti ding, I reached late by an entire forty five minutes of time :-P !! Shalini tussi great ho ! why great means, remember unlucky Brahmanandam in one of the movies?  I felt exactly like that :-D

He said She said :-)

She was sitting on the computer and for a change logged out of the social networking sites and decided to pretend about doing something useful and started checking out classical journals related to her work. Staring at the screen she was imagining about how great it would be if she could sleep somewhere for an hour. 

He walks into the lab like the Id ka Chand :-P. Sits beside her and starts the computer. The hi-hellos are done. While he is waiting for the computer to start, he stares into her computer and laughs. She feels "helloo.....what just happened", but out loud she says "what happened Deepak, why are you laughing?". He says "Haahahahaha.....Whenever I see you, I see you working on your project in an engrossed manner" and continues with the laughter. She thinks, "muhuahahah...little does he know about me and reading, its more like reading? aur mein? kabhi nai :-) ". In a few seconds she remarks "where do I work or read man, half the time I spend in the buses only" and both burst out laughing :-P .

I want to eat cheese cake :-D !!!!

Got the chance to have some amazing Russian Salad today and cherries too :-D !!!
Food is one of my favourite things in the world, in akka telugu ishtyle "bhojana priyam" hahahahha ! There are times when I want to eat because of hunger but the thought of food doesn't let me feel like eating and all the other maddening confusion in the head follows. Finally when I do decide to eat it doesn't really satiate my stomach and there I go and get myself in the same situation in another 3-4 hours again. It is therefore important to mentally have this feeling of sat-ai-ty after eating, haan haan that what my paatshaala's maastar used to say. 

I think I will fall asleep while I'm sitting with this laptop itself :-P. I know I know, when do I not feel sleepy right :-P In any case, the best part in the course of a meal at bangalore for quite sometime used to be this cherry-cheese-pineapple served on ice, delectable is the word and I shall not say further.

Computational Modelling of Emotion Dynamics ??!!

We had this talk on how to simulate patterns of emotional dynamics. The talk seemed quite interesting honestly, I switched off for most of the parts related to mathematical equations etc. But I did get something out of the talk. In fact my strategy of attending talks are primarily to understand something new or to listen to something that I know of or interested in or to acquire knowledge of what certain areas of work involve. Basically if I can at least learn one new idea or an information that might as well be the size of a single sentence then I feel that my time has been put to some good use. 

Most parts of the above talk went over my head :-D But that is fine. I was happy about the whole concept and what this Post Doc was working on. The question is simple, can we model the dynamics of emotions experienced by a person? Now people have done some amount of work in this regard, the only difference being that most works have concentrated on the initiation and the aftermath of certain emotions but there have been no studies about the processes that occur once the emotions are triggered. Now, I wondered how such a study would help, The examples suggested ranged from being able to write books that fits with the emotional curve suggested to elicit the appropriate or pronounced responses in the reader and other clinically useful stuff.

But by the time the talk came towards its end (it almost seemed like it would not because of all the debate that arose from the beginning itself), I felt that maybe such studies at some point will die their own natural death like the cloning studies. Of course, I won't deny the fact that cloning is completely different from studying emotions, but it will for sure instigate a similar response from the general public. No matter how useful the tool might be in using to treat patients struggling from psychological problems etc, it can still be used to predict responses of a regular person who might raise "invasion of privacy" issues. But when I thought about it carefully I realised that it would probably take another 3-4 decades or even more (or a lot less) to capture something as complex as emotions (which by themselves are quite elusive to categorize ) into a simple curve ! I will of course be happy when John comes up with some level of promising studies while I continue to know him, sometimes I can't but feel happy about how exciting science can get like a true geek :-P But who cares really, I feel happy and as I walk out I feel like I got a large dosage of mental boost, optimism, new ideas and revision of the fact that "yes, anything is possible" which is the most important of them all :-D !!!