I have moved

I have moved all my blogs to http://kousik.wordpress.com/. The reason, is simple: I started liking wordpress!!

So see you at the new site:

http://kousik.wordpress.com/

Update your bookmarks accordingly, please!

~ Kousik

A sleepless night

I have a meeting this morning and I am still fully awake and writing this blog . I could not but sleep late because I could not get the stuff that I was working on done in time last night. As a result, when I was trying to get asleep, the things that I was doing was running through my brain. On top of that, there was a constant warning ringing in my head: Sleep now, lest you'll be late in the morning. And I'd lain awake for last couple of hours just trying and praying to fall asleep! It's not the first time that it had happened to me!

I often suffer from a sleeping disorder for my bizarre habit of waking up with an empty stomach very late at night if I sleep early. To add to it, most of the days I just go to sleep late (around 2AM) either because of not being able to finish my day's work on time or for doing some online research for my blog (or just casual surfing). Either way I make myself awake for a big chunk of time at night. I can manage waking up at least on time in weekdays , but in weekends and in breaks it becomes just awful.

I have found quite often that I am more productive while I work at night. Just a music and the quietness of night were all that I needed to straighten a lot of the entwined mess of theory in my research. But I don't like the idea of sleeping all day long just to keep working at night. Yet I'll be sleeping for the most part of the day today after the meeting is over. :-(

Once I read in a novel that if you don't sleep at night you'll be able to focus more the next day. I didn't buy that, though!

Destiny

It's my destiny that I've started to write right here, right now! If I have not been writing this post at this odd hour of night, it also would have been my destiny. But since I am writing this I am destined to write this!

You do something because it was your destiny, you don't because it wasn't. You had thought of doing something and actually did something else, because latter was your destiny! Look at the funny part: what you do is your destiny (so they say)!! The very idea of destiny precludes the possibility of an alternative destiny by definition!


What is destiny after all?

Let's pull out some definitions:

i). Destiny refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. It is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed natural order to the universe. (Wikipedia)
ii) (1) the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events. (2) The power or agency that determines the course of events. (Dictionary.com & Merrium-Webster)

So, do I believe that somebody already set me up for being awake so late and write up this darn blog? Who is he (He?)? I don't know of anyone who can have such enormous power (oh, except that so-called God Almighty). Since I can't think of anyone else then it must be Him, isn't it? Such a simple deduction ...... Why am I burning my oil then? (Am I insomniac? May be!)


Why destiny?

When we don't find any reason behind something we say that it was destined to be like the way it has been. So it is, after all, the lack of enough reason (or enough knowledge of the background) that gives way to destiny. John became a doctor because he was destined to be a doctor! We overlook his perseverance and call it his destiny. Jane didn't get the job because not getting the job was her destiny. We forgot the fact that she probably was not qualified enough (or else, she didn't lobby as much as others did)! Because what we do becomes our destiny. Funny, eh?


So, what's your destiny?

(Hint: It's stored somewhere in His file cabinet *big grin*)

Some fun with chemistry for three hours

Chemistry can be fun too! You don't have to generate brilliant colors or create popping sounds to make that happen.

There was a chemistry demo for kids today at the Post Oak Mall conducted by one of our professors. As a part of my teaching assignment I was asked to be there. At first I thought it would be a waste of time standing there for three hours (I even wanted to withdraw my name). But it was real fun being there. It was fun watching kids enjoy the simplest of the scientific facts. Take poking a balloon for example: can you poke a balloon without popping it? The trick is: poke at the points where it is not stretched enough (for example near the place where you put the knot), the latex will always try to hold the hole tight; and in this way you can put a chopstick through a balloon. Kids also found it funny when they saw how dry ice can be used to create fog or how a rusty iron ball being hit by another ball wrapped up with aluminum foil can cause sparks (Thermite reaction). There were other nice demos as well, for example creation of tornado and fountain (using just two empty bottles of soft drink!). Everything was so simple that you won't need a chemistry lab, expensive chemicals or clumsy apparatus to perform those. They were so simple that you can explain everything to your grandmother. And that's what I liked most.


Modern science has grown so much that it is very difficult for the common people to grasp even a piece of it. The cleft between a common man and the scientific world has gotten so huge that neither side can keep up with each other easily. Frankly speaking, I won't be able to explain my research to my grandmother.

A bus journey

I got onto a wrong bus tonight while I was coming back to my apartment!

There is a special bus, N11 ("Midnight Yell"), operated by the university for the students living in the North Gate area. It was started as a precautionary measure in response to the several attempts of assault on international students at that area at night. Earlier I used to ride my bike but after having my foot injured, I don't know whether I still can do it. So, nowadays in the morning I take the regular Number 15 bus ("Old Army") to get to the campus and N11 while I return in the evening. Being a special bus, N11 stops for you when you raise your hand or drops you off wherever you want to get off (of course it has to be on the route).

Today while walking down the Spence street (the road which passes by the chemistry department) toward the N11 bus stop I saw a bus coming and I hailed for the driver. The bus stopped and I got on board. No sooner had the bus started moving, I remembered that I did not look at the bus number and soon enough realized that it was not the one that I intended to get on. It was a regular university bus going in a totally different route and it would not stop wherever I wanted it to! I recollected one more fact: the bus did not stop to pick me up, it was just a normal stop! So I thought, 'What the hell: let's enjoy the ride'! Enjoy the ride with an empty stomach and a headache? Do I really want it? Before I had an answer I was far away! At last, I got back to the campus bus terminus ("Trigon") half an hour later only to find that N11 does not leave from there! So I had to walk all the way to the Zachery Building where N11 stops for about ten minutes to pick up passengers!

The driver asked me, "Had a long day, eh?" Yeah, indeed!

Climbing up!

It's easy for me to climb up the stairs and I find it difficult to get down!

Hey, I'm not bragging about myself here: that's the truth about me now! Well, I am not talking in a metaphorical sense, it's rather literal! In fact, I, like everyone else, always find it's much easier to fall than to rise in life! I was actually talking about "climbing stairs" in its true sense. About a month ago, I cut my right foot just above the heel and possibly injured my Achilles tendons severely while I was in India. I was carried here by a wheelchair and was not able to walk until last week. Now that does not sound cool, does it? I still have problem walking without limping somewhat. I have not had a single injury so severe before this and I know how it feels to be a lame. Once I was walking down a street with my crutches to look for an autorikshaw while I was in Bangalore when I was accosted by a beggar who asked me: "Is it what you were born with or because of some severe accident? Is it permanent?" I knew she will be unable to walk for the rest of her life: she did not have anything called a leg beyond her knees. Her words made me shudder: Is it going to be with me till the day I die? The doctors did not give me any indication about the tendons being ruptured. What if they were wrong? What if they didn't pay proper attention to the tendons as they had focused on the cut instead? I was scared like hell!

I had a stop-over of twenty two hours in Heathrow and with this leg it was not possible to stay in the airport that long. Neither was it possible to look for a place to stay for the night of my own. The British Airways ground staffs were very helpful: I found myself in a nice calm hotel before six in the evening! I landed in George Bush Intercontinental in Houston at around four in the afternoon. Outside it was freezing with a temperature of negative five degrees Celsius: the worst in the year. It was drizzling and there was a warning for ice. A friend of mine had agreed to pick me up from the airport but under these circumstances it was not possible for him to come. With ice on the road and no traction whatsoever, it was too dangerous to drive. My friends who live in the North often laugh at me when I tell them that our university remains closed when the temperature drops a couple of degrees below the freezing point: because negative five degrees is the highest that they see at their places! They are quite used to seeing snow and hardly the ice on the road. I payed two hundred and eighty bucks to get myself driven to my den by a taxi.

Two days later I visited the university health center to see a doctor regarding my foot and the first that he checked was if my tendons were OK. And he did not think they were OK! Omygosh, I'll be limping for the rest of my life! He referred me to a specialist in tendons. The specialist found there is nothing wrong with the tendons, except a few of them being injured. What? I asked him if I should be able to walk. He assured me that I'd be fine. Thank God! But when? "A month, give or take a few weeks". Hmm, that's going to be long. After couple of weeks I found that I can walk but with a little limp and I cannot go down along stairs! I am still waiting to get better!

Dhoom 2

SPOILER ALERT: You may lose interest in watching the movie if you proceed!

I went to watch Dhoom 2 yesterday. In case if you are not aware of it: it is a sequel to a hit bollywood movie, Dhoom. The original Dhoom starred Abhishek Bachan as an angry young cop and John Abraham as a dare devil thief, but in the sequel Hrithik Roshan replaced John. The strory in the new movie, I think, is crap. I was wondering all the time in the theater if there was a story at all. The director, Yash Chopra had some big trouble in organizing his thoughts, I guess.

Aryan (Roshan) is a geek and he steals not because he needs but because he knows he can! He always has the latest electronic gizmos handy. Moreover he is a master of disguise and his training in martial arts and fire arms makes him invincible. He takes stealing as a challenge and steals what seems impossible: take the theft of the crown of Queen Victoria, as an example. He leaves his trace behind to let others know it's done by none other than him. He always leaves hints for those who he thinks is capable of guessing his next move. Assistant Commissioner of Police, Jay Dixit (Bacchan) who believes that the power of a cop lies in his brain and not in the trigger of a gun, was able to correctly decipher the next target of the great A. But inspite of all the precautions, a diamond, an antique from the Taj Mahal was stolen. You got to see how he stole it: it was amazing and so was his disguise. I really started feeling this was going to be a great movie.

I probably had forgotten that I was watching a bollywood movie after all! At the scene of the second theft there came the former Miss World, Aishwariya Rai with her new 'hey-I-too-got-stuffs-to-flaunt" look as Sunheri who apparantly wanted to become a partner of the great A. At this point everything started getting messed up. Bollywood-style love-story creeped in and the movie lost its sharp edge. Well, after that there were some great stunts and some great shots taken in picturesque Rio de Janeiro. And that's it! Uday Chopra was a joker and I don't know why Bipasa Basu (in a double role!) was in the picture except giving the starving desi population a feel of babes in bikini. The only person worth mentioning who did his job perfectly was Hrithik Roshan. He was perfect for the role of a thief who is smart and dangerous at the same time.