On my first Thanksgiving (and the giddy pleasures of throwing money around)

This Thanksgiving break was all about being crazy. The first few days were about rallying support from my friends for the impending Black Friday madness. After having worked in credit card fraud and account hacking for more than a year, I have always associated Black Fridays with midnight escalations about machine learning models going haywire. I have only heard of doorbusting- people trampling over each other to get deals. I wanted to be one of those crazy people too though I don't really have to try.

In my course work, I study this very interesting concept called Mental Accounting. It is about how people create different pockets of accounts in their head that would justify their spending. Much of Black Friday is about how retailers screw with people's head and make them re-adjust these mental accounting pockets. There is also something called time discounting, where people over estimate the utility of the product that they buy. In fact, it is amazing that there is an entire branch of science to see how retailers can make money by messing up the weaklings' heads.  I will leave the digression for a different post. Interested folks can read this very influential paper here

Despite the fact that I am aware of the evil machinations of these deals, I am totally okay with them retailers screwing up with my head. It reminds me of an interpretation that one of my professors talked about in his class and I could totally relate to. When people sold Britannica Encyclopedia (the physical hardbound ones), they weren't selling Encyclopedias; they were selling hope, pride of having a smart kid around in the house and a brighter future that the encyclopedias, which were destined to be unopened, promised. In a non unrelated way, I willingly let these retailers seduce me with their wares, the bargains and the promise of a better life that comes along with owning a pair of fluffy earmuff. Ok, before I meander further, let us say that the monster inside me was fanned and prepped up during the week by the mass emails and the red tags on these emails, not to mention the other factors such as months of anticipating and actually abstaining from Amazon. I unleashed myself in the malls of Pittsburgh.

If only I can track how many resolutions I made, and failed on the day. My knees went weak and my ears went to the happy hot stage (that generally happens in the quizzes) when I was in the mall full of 75% off deals. To cut the story short, it was a long night of pretzels, Oh-so-glorious, wonderstruck shopping and my endorphin splashing the roofs of all the shops I went to. I remember this block from Tintin and the Cigars of Pharaoh.

We spent the night in JC Penney and Macy's cleaning out the shelves. I can attach a pictorial evidence, but I shan't for reasons that will remain undisclosed. 

The second part of Thanksgiving was spent working like a demented person. I started at 10 PM Friday night and didn't realize that it was 5 AM the next day. I was just following hunches and digging data feeling like a detective. This has never happened in history (the working hard part, not feeling like a detective part) and hey, academic work can be this cool! There is something so pleasurable in working hard. And the best part in this is that, unlike shopping, there is no aftermath of guilt. I have been uber productive in the holidays that I took some time off today to write.

Actually, I should also take a moment in the last few hours of Thanksgiving break to think about things I am thankful for, just to live up to the spirit of the holiday, if the spirit of the holiday is not just shopping.  I am actually thankful to cool Orwellian paper titles that put me on track to this wonderful adventure, to people who were once strangers, their continuing kindness and incredible support. Also, here is a wish to more of the non-quizzical, non-black Friday, but, academic "happy-hot-ear" moments that just make me grin into hours after they happen. 

Surprise surprise

On the other news today, The Happy Page took my idea and illustrated the following :-)

Sort of inspired from this :-)

And this is one such sunny spot

Of easy wind and downy flake

After days and days of waiting for snow, here it is. A couple of weeks before, I was almost sure that it was snowing but then it melted before it hit the ground. I assumed I was hallucinating after three cups of coffee.

Nevertheless, it is here, it is incredible and I haven't stopped smiling since morning. I was looking for an unsuspecting victim whom I could thwack with a snow ball from the back. I found one later in the day and he was not pleased. One off the bucket list though.

Snow is sort of fluffy which is surprising because I imagined it to be like grated ice not unlike the snow cones. Now I know why Robert Frost  called it the "downy" flake.

I can't *wait* to build a snowman and have an actual snowball fight.

If you see someone near CMU jumping up and down and singing off key, it should probably be me.

I had to abandon this perfect snowball that I made in the morning!

Quora question: What did you do when your parents left you at home alone?

Obviously, I had a lot of things to say on this topic. (I have already written about some of the stuff here in this blog)

I spent a considerable amount of my childhood at home alone. The story goes that my school started at 7 AM and it got over by 12:15 PM. This meant that my parents had to put me on the bus by 6 AM which also meant that they should be up by 5 AM. My mother thought it was too much of a bother for five hours of school which, in her opinion, was not teaching me anything. I bunked school at least 3 days a week. Both my parents worked and being a single kid, I pretty much spent all my time at home.

This was pre-internet and pre-exciting TV channels. We had cable TV (which was anyway introduced only in late 90's) but I somehow I never liked cartoons (I didn't understand the accent in which the characters talked ). My parents were voracious readers and read quite a bit in Tamil. No one was really interested in watching TV in my house and therefore, for the lack of better things to do, I started reading, crazily. My school had a wonderful library and I checked out tons of books every week whenever I went. I wheedled the librarian into giving me more books than it was normally allowed.

Madurai is not a big place. There weren't too many people who read, let alone children's books written by arcane authors. Only my grandfather read English books in the circle of people I knew . He harped on the classics of his times and snorted derisively at my taste. Due the distinct lack of a recommendation mechanism, I discovered all the books that I loved by myself and that helped me try out a lot of things before I started appreciating good writing.  It was only after the Internet came about, I discovered how popular Enid Blyton, Herge(not technically an author), P.G.Wodehouse and my other favorite authors were among others who liked reading and I felt a strange kinship with the world.

Apart from the time I spent reading, I used to paint, collect stamps, sew clothes for my dolls and cook clandestinely because I was not allowed to switch on the stove. For some time, I was even interested in clay modeling. Basically, I learned to keep myself super occupied and when my parents came back home in the evening I had tons of stuff to tell them about the exciting happenings of my day, that was exciting even within the confines of my house. After the Internet came to my home in 12th grade, things changed massively- well, even with a dialup one could do so much. (I nostalgically observe a minute of silence for the creeps of AOL/Yahoo chatrooms at this point. A/S/L, anyone?)

Anyway, the point is I spent a very significant portion of my childhood, at home, alone. I loved it, though it (obviously) had major repercussions. Till date, I simply cannot work from desks and prefer to work in my nightclothes and from my bed because that is how I used to study or get any work done -by being a blob- as no one was around to chastise my weird ways. Things got slightly better after I lived in a dorm during undergrad and later, when I had room mates - but I used to love the all the little moments when I had the place I called home, to myself.


There is one particular reason why I love Calvin. Except for the figment of Calvin's imagination, Dad, Mom and the occasional kid he plays with, there aren't too many characters in his childhood. I resonate with this sentiment so much.

Happy Page

My urge to write becomes astronomical only when I have two tests, a gigantic assignment and other important stuff that I have been trying to get to. Hence, I would like to write about a recent discovery of mine on Facebook. It is called the Happy Page (website here). People around the world write to these guys who illustrate in a meme like fashion on what happiness means to different people.

This page is sort of addictive to flip through and see how many of the pictures I can relate to.

My favorites are

And the best

If I read some of my early posts from my college, I sound like a completely messed up person (not to  mention the gazillion grammatical errors and mortifying writing). I seem to have focussed entirely on being contentious. Some of these issues are so irrelevant that I do not understand how they riled me up to write such torrential amount of garbage in the first place. I seem to have wasted oh-so-much time in my undergrad and learned random stuff (like how to solve cryptic crossword puzzles) just so that I can get into the finals of a random made up event in an even more random cultural fest at some college.

Nevertheless, here I am, almost as depicted in the picture, wise enough recognize the follies of my squandered youth. As JK Rowling says, I guess there is an expiry date to all the anger that you feel towards the world at large which is pretty much the underlying theme of undergrad days. These days I don't even pick up fights on Facebook. If that is any sign of maturity, I attribute it to the copious amount of character building that happened between January and up until I came here.

All this renders a zen like quality to my sleep deprived self that I have started finding happiness in

1) Nice sunny spots to work from
2) Daylight at home
3) Figuring out things on whiteboards
4) Better still -walls made of whiteboards which I accidentally found out in a building on my campus
5) Days without feeling a sleepy haze around my head
6) Being a blob on my bed on Saturdays
7) Remembering where I last left my spectacles (and keys, and ID card..)


and most important of all

which is all this blogging business is about.


Now, I really really have to do something about the homework.

Quality of Mercy

It is one of those days when I feel incredibly dumb and yet so good at the same time, to be in a place with extremely talented people. Part of it comes because of this class I take every Wednesday that requires me to read long papers on experiments that folks at decision sciences conduct to study human behavior. Today was my turn to present in the class and I had to look at experiment that measures altruistic behavior in people. In the experiment, the authors put a person in front of a shopping mall who rings a bell but doesn't explicitly ask for a donation. In another case, they put a person who rings the bell but explicitly solicits donation. They also repeat this with two solicitors. 

They find out that people when asked, give 75% more donations than when they are not asked. Also, 30% of the people avoid the door where the solicitor is standing and choose the door where no one is standing when they see that the solicitor explicitly asks them for money. They do not avoid a door where there is a solicitor who does not explicitly ask for a donation.

So basically, the authors are list various reasons to figure out why people like to help others and how a verbal "ask" creates a feeling of empathy that makes people give money. But it looks like people go out of their way to avoid a situation where they will be asked for a donation. So it is not the act of giving that people avoid as much as the act of being asked. They still don't know why people do that.

All through the time I was put together the presentation, I was thinking how profound this concept was and that I was actually studying this with the academic rigor that was expected out of me.

I was also thinking about Portia's monologue in The Merchant of Venice, in which she implores Shylock to show mercy on Antonio

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd? Academic literature thinks otherwise. :-)

However, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the kindness of people who never knew me when I sought their help. And somehow that makes me believe in the quality of mercy, more so now than ever.

P.S: I titled the presentation with the same title as this post.. 

The Age of Pencils

I find the American practice involved in writing out the homework very funny. For one, you can turn in homework by tearing the sheets from your notebook. Better, you can write in pencil- even in grad school.

I find this funny because we typically quit the pencil business at about fourth class. Starting to write with pens is a sort of coming of age ritual in India. The pencil hangover continues for a year or two, mainly as a back up to the "Hero Pens". The pencils are usually spotted as sidekicks nestled alongside an array consisting of a primary pen & back ups including a ball point pen.  Ball point pens have always been looked down upon with an unjustified derision. The anti-ball point league comprising of admonishing mothers and caring fathers criticize that these pens encourage their offsprings to write fast and thereby symbolize their inattention to important stuff like handwriting. Work, like worship should be painstaking and it ain't work if not written with a well tempered Camelin ink pen.

 The school days progress and before we know it, life thrusts us upon us, a geometry box. Multiple times during this phase, we fathom the use of the oddly shaped triangular things in the geometry boxes.

Mysterious triangular component

After this, science gets split into Botany, Zoology, Physics and Chemistry. Social becomes History and Geography. We start prefering bags that are more vertical than horizontal. Then comes the denouncement of lunch bag/box and the ubiquitous "snack boxes". As a direct result, all of us have had at least one instance of our tiffin boxes leaking their contents in our school bags. One can almost always catch a whiff of stale curry or curd when a friend opens his/her bag. Note that these are bygone days. Odor free school bags are marketing tag-lines for Tupperware "Executive lunchboxes".

After this phase, cometh the log books. We then start using the mysterious triangular objects in the geometry box, the way the Lord meant them to be used. This almost signs the end of school and perhaps the wisdom obtained from the swathe of colored pens we carry to our board exams, makes us feel enormously ready for the world.

Then, all of us enter an engineering college and acquire a drafter.

Drafter

I remember these drafters distinctly because I had borrowed a discarded one from a senior  and arrived to the Engineering Graphics class, quite pleased with myself, about the amount of money I had saved on the drafter. It so happened that the drafter had been discarded for a reason. The handle and pretty much anything that was supposed to move was rusted and jammed tight. I tried so hard to unscrew the rusty handle and irked everyone in the vicinity with my loud  grunts. The professor was not pleased. The next day, in a sudden stroke of inspiration, I thought of pouring coconut oil over the screw hoping that it would lubricate the parts better. It did help me move the handle but I ended up having huge circles of oil stains all over my A2 sheet. It is a miracle I passed the subject.



Engineering education also ensures that we get to feel self important by using grown up instruments like  "polar" and log graph sheets, "pro-circles", Z and star transform tables not to mention the multitude of HB pencils.

That's pretty much all the stationery we typically use, sans the boring ruled and unruled notebooks. Maybe later we all buy a file for our job interview and a "harmonium folder" for a visa interview.

Stationery usage in Indian schools emphasized on presentation & handwriting which is tied to the probability of scoring better in tests. Here, I see that the emphasis is on organization. I have never seen such a selection of tools. There are page tabs, file tabs, filler papers, folders in various forms- much fancier than the "harmonium" ones. I was fascinated to see a lot of multicolored paper sticking out of a classmate's book. It looks like these guys mark the important pages with different colored papers which are made especially for the purpose of marking important pages! There are label makers and rolls of labels for the label makes. There is stationery for purposes that you would not have imagined existed before.

After all, necessity is the mother of invention. In all the days of using a geometry box, have you ever thought that life will one day unravel the mystery of those triangular things in the geometry box? We should all live in the hope that maybe, one day, we will discover the purpose of ink erasers that never erased anything as much as tear out our beautifully scripted homework. 

Here is to cooler stationery and huge discounts at the local Staples.

This post was written on a coffee induced vigor.

Zen Pencils

In the recent days, I have become a big fan of Zen Pencils. This is basically a comic which takes up quotes, speeches, songs, poems as its themes and gives a wonderful interpretation in the modern day context.

This week's comic is particularly close to heart because it has taken up Bill Watterson's commencement address at Kenyon College and has converted the speech into a beautiful, poignant comic with Calvin and Hobbes evoked very subtly in all the boxes. For a person who can quote Calvin and Hobbes verbatim, it is a carnal sin when people attempt to create a modern day version. It sullies the collective wisdom of a five year old and his tiger and worse it makes Calvin to grow up. However, I was completely blown away by Zen Pencil's interpretation which while quoting Watterson, takes us through his life hinting Calvin all along but never saying so.

It is beautiful. Do check it out here. Do look out for the Dinosaur & the author's daughter holding up a gun. I definitely know the sheepish look.

There were two pieces so profound that it worth adding them here.

Finding what you like is definitely not easy but is definitely allowed. It just reminds me of a day this February when I went to buy milk and returned home devastated that I had been buying the same milk at the same super market every weekend and nothing in my life was changing the way it should be. Just to figure out what I really wanted to do took me so much time and to get there, and to "will" things to happen was a brutal, masochistic process. Whenever I sit in some awesome class chuckling at what the witty professor just said to get his point across, I tell myself that it was worth it.

When people ask me why I didn't start my PhD right after college, I often wonder what I can tell them.  How do I explain that these things cannot be planned. I cannot really explain why I like doing certain things in a certain way leveraging what I can do best instead of trying to be good at something I don't like but people expect me to be. I cannot explain how important it is for me to be excited about what I do and even now, I feel it is okay to go back and forth until I get it right.

Sometimes I don't even know who or what we are running up against. When I see some of my classmates from middle or high school on Facebook, I wonder why we all squabbled over who got the first rank or won a stupid Math quiz. Life averages us out eventually. Our definitions of happiness varies so much that it is stupid to make us all stick to arbitrary timelines and measure us all with the same success metric. After a point, the value of 12th standard marks, CTC, GRE/GMAT score diminishes to insignificance. At this point, I see people envying each other only on the quality of life apparent on their social media feed- the fun things that they get to do after work, the biking trips, exotic vacations and so forth (given the assumption that most people consider all work to be boring as everyone codes for someone else) - which is rather sad.

Ok, time to get back to work. Hope you enjoyed the comic as much as I did!

Hardbound and Huggable

It has almost been a month since I landed in Pittsburgh. I brought with me from Madurai 76 Kilograms of luggage and incredible heat and humidity, to boot. Ever since I came here, I have been moaning about how hot this place is, while people around me smirk and ask me to hold on to my thoughts. Though I know why, I cannot bring myself to believe that Pittsburgh can get cold. It feels as bad as Madurai- the sickly heat and the sweaty aftermath.  I am just getting used to the fact that one has to clean the house by oneself, do the dishes, and assemble every piece of the furniture that gets delivered. I have also been wandering around- figuring out the streets and acquiring a taste for American coffee.

The other stuff to get used to is that one has to pay for coffee. And for food. And heck, even for a soda! My heart bleeds in buckets every time I swipe my card in an infernal machine. I have not paid for a soda in the last three years. Nor for popcorn, and nor for any comestible that the land of magical food offered me for three glorious years. A week before, my friends took me to this Indian place saying that it has one of the best buffets in Pittsburgh. When I stepped into the restaurant, I squawked in despair for the buffet was smaller than the buffet one would get at Google on a Sunday afternoon. I suppose it is safe to assume that my days of rhapsodizing about the heavenly Masala Dosas or the crispy onion pakoras and the infinite pani puris is finally over. I can almost hear my friends, who had to endure my prandial showing off on Facebook, clapping their hands in glee.

I have been waiting for this rush of happiness and emotion ever since I came here. You know, the general introspection, looking back and ahead sort of thing that I tend to do when there are big changes in my life. However, the old heart seems to have turned cold. No amount of rumination, or why, even the gorgeous view of Pittsburgh from Mt.Washington could elicit tender feelings.  I kept wandering by the university store looking at the Carnegie Mellon T-Shirts and the other related paraphernalia which generally possess the ability to kick me up into a state of blissful frenzy. Surprisingly, even a clearance sale on CMU T-Shirts did not have any effect on me. I gave up thinking that I have quite some time ahead to pledge alliance to the Tartans and that the rush of happiness would find its way in the upcoming years.

Today, I happened to go the library. I have always associated college libraries to be these drab buildings filled with outdated Engineering books half of which one was not allowed to borrow.  College libraries reminded me of  moldy dungeons and didn't rank high up in the places I would tend to hang out in. Therefore, I didn't give this library at my university too much of a thought except to go in there to scan/print stuff. Today, I was looking up some books when I stumbled across a whole shelf of Marios Vargas Llosa. This is when I noticed that they had a whole shelf of Gabriel Garcia Marquez too. Around the corner, there were collections from Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and what not! They had Rushdie, Rowling and almost three shelves of P.G Wodehouse. And this is just the beginning.

All of these books were so resplendent in their regal hardbound covers unlike the cheap flimsy copies that all the libraries my life possessed. This, is the real deal. E-books come and go, but hardbound is forever. Almost. These books are a sheer pleasure to hold and more so to read. I realized that I could borrow about fifty of them at a time (and pretend that I owned them), which is something that I could have never done back in India. I checked out about half a dozen today and came out of the library grinning like a cat. 

I was meaning to go back to my apartment. Instead, I plopped down on the lawn, under a tree, luxuriously stretching my legs and have been reading under the August morning sun ever since. Just as I started writing this, I thought it would be appropriate to mark the occasion of feeling peaceful for the first time in ages, with a photo of the huge sunny lawn that lay across me. Very instagramable memory, I must say.

Somehow my faith in goodness, life and the immense possibilities that it beholds, has been restored. 

Black Calico bound textbooks

When I was at school, my father developed an ingenious, almost patentable way, to tamper proof my textbooks. First, he would place a cardboard sheet on top of my books, drill tiny holes along the edges and stitch the books with the cardboard. He would then append a layer of black calico on top of these sheets and let it dry for a day. The usual brown covers would go on top of this calico layer. Then came the labels after which my father would use transparent plastic covers as the final layer of protection. This was a back breaking job and my father would spend two three days on this while I waltzed in and out of the house supervising the operations with insightful remarks such as "Oh, not that green dinosaur label on my Maths book! I was saving it for Science".

Now, one would wonder why my father invested so much time on my books. I am sure much revered documents like the original copy of the Indian Constitution or why, even the Magna Carta would probably not have four layered covers. At this point, I need to elucidate my mother's beliefs on the Indian educational system. To keep it short, she didn't believe in it. This meant I occasionally popped in and out of school for writing a test or for a quiz or when I had to go to the library to check out my Enid Blytons for that week and that was it. I was at school hardly three times a week and I very rarely went to classes thanks to the quizzes. This methodology worked wonder on my social skills, of course, but I loved it when I was at school. My mother would rather have me at home reading a novel than go to school and be bored all day.

My school didn't mind my erratic attendance because my grades were always super good and frankly, they didn't have a choice as they couldn't really complain to my parents. I suppose it was better not having me around rather than getting caustic post cards from my mother pointing out flaws in their teaching methodology.

Tangents apart, this meant I never really attended any classes and learnt most of the stuff by myself. My mother coached me until 5th grade (to see that I was actually doing something) and my father had to help me a lot with Math well into my high school. This also meant I really had to read the textbooks myself, multiple times- not just the questions at the back of the lesson, but every word inside. As much as she did not believe in trivial things such as attendance, my mother used to go Nazi on me when it came to marks.

My mother would advise me to consider my books like yet another paperback and finish them in the summer holidays so that I had the entire year to goof around. Apparently, this is what they used to do when they were kids and which is apparently how my uncles aced everything they ever did. I used to point out the flaw in her otherwise impeccable logic that I was anyway planning to goof around all year and books were not going to stand in my way.

When the tests loomed before me, I had a ritual - For some unfathomable reason I would watch my books carefully for a week or two. I guess it was more to acclimatize my visual senses to the mere existence of these books. Two days before the test, after a lot of maternal insistence and revoked reading privileges, I would render a melancholic moan not unlike that of our friend Myrtle. I would sniff at the book suspiciously, look at the print size, admire at my father's neat stitches and then decide to take a break. Post the "break", I would potter around filling ink in my pens, getting my scented erasers out and arranging my pencil box.

At this point, my mother would have that vein throbbing dangerously on her forehead which would hurriedly drive me back to my desk. After opening the book to say, "Classification of animal kingdom", I would sigh and count the number of pages till the end, hold the pages between my thumb and forefinger to gauge the thickness and utter one more moan. This is when my mom would go bananas, snatch the book off my hand and throw it across the room telling me, not in subtle terms, what a waste of her time I was.

I would sullenly retrieve the book and read the damned chapter on how the members of Phylum Coelenterata procured food and reproduced. If all went well, the books would lose their plastic shield in a month and be reduced to the bare calico in 3 months. In three months, all my books looked uncannily like the book of judgement what with the gloomy black calico portending a year full of tests. Books before the tamper proof era had to be replaced three times in a year which is why this rigorous protection mechanism was established. One would ask why my books were not hard bound - that's because I refused to carry such heavy bound books to school, even for the meagre 2-3 times per week and my parents loved me so much that they had to invent a lighter weight option.

While at college, I would happily walk into Ukkadam shops with my syllabus book and get the cheap Prentice Hall (for sale only in the Indian subcontinent) books while my father paying happily for the books, like he always had. I never used xeroxes like my fellow CITians did because I needed those big prints on off-white sheets and the book had to feel voluminous enough in my hand. Spiral bound xeroxes with their deathly pallor and tiny prints put me off more than the drab VLSI content in them - not to mention the unpleasant feeling of spiral coil poking me at unexpected moments.

At college, I again had a ritual. I used to stack up all my books in a huge pile and beam at the prospect of knowledge I was to glean from them that semester. I would then read the preface scanning for signs of witty remarks. I would then put the book next to me on the bed and sleep partially on it for a week to get used to the feeling. In this period, they would serve as a laptop stand, you know, as a heat dissipating agent.

One such stack in my final semester

In short, when it comes to text books, I am a tough nut to crack. No one moans and groans like I do when it comes to reading books that are plain textbookish in their own old fashioned way. I relish interesting material, interactive lectures and witty books-  stuff I can laugh at, like Tanenbaum's Operating Systems, Computer Networking and this other Electronics book. This is why, after a lot of failed attempts at conventional reading, I had to order a copy of what is called as "A cartoon guide to statistics".  It is good they have a clientele like me who like to consume knowledge through pictures. Reminds me of the good old days of calico books and dangerously throbbing veins on my mother's forehead. This is also a good reason to completely switch to Coursera and Udacity which is probably the best kind of education I have had. Really, I had tears in my eyes after I watched classes from this Calculus class.

P.S: I started this out as a tribute to world book day but ended up meandering quite a bit and had to change the title :)

24

Been writing this blog ever since I was 17 and I have written a post on most of my birthdays. Keeping up with the tradition, on a rather tiring day, here we go.

Birthdays don't feel any different anymore, there are no milestones. I get to eat cake everyday :)
 

I hope I get to go by the year following the two principles.

 Phil Dunphy

Green knees and make life go "whaaat"

Dedication Post

I started this out as a post in Facebook, but decided to blog as my days at college deserve one more post. It is dedicated to one of my best friends.

Happy Birthday Bhageshvar Mohan.

There are a thousand admirable things that makes him the man of action that he is- I have never seen someone so doggedly determined, so street smart and oh, so precocious, right from the first year of college. We spent hours lamenting incessantly about our circumstances- but he always pulled things together and gave hope to the rest of us in our gang, that things will eventually work out.

But I really need to make this dedication about food here considering how much of our gang's time and money was spent in the pursuit of good food.
 

Srivatsan Varadharajan, Bhageshvar Mohan and I would often take bus No.2 during weekends, to the railway station about 10 KMs away from my college. The tiny street opposite to the station beheld Geetha Cafe along with other shady looking restaurants. At Geetha cafe, we used to immerse ourselves in the Brahminical joys of Paruppu Rasam and More Kozhambu while watching Bhagesh polish his plantain leaf with clinical precision. 

We would then slowly waddle back, sweltering in the midday sun, into "CS meals" to have lemon soda. We would then walk up till Gangotri where the coffee guy would make one medium strong and one extra strong/extra sugar coffee for Bhagesh and me, while Srivatsan would have his ginger tea. Sometimes, we sauntered off to "Chocolate room" with its pricey food, just to have coffee (the cheapest thing on the menu) and bitch about the rich kids around us who had so much money to afford such expensive food.

On really long days, we would take the Gandhipuram bus, get down at Women's Polytechnic and would arrive at Krishna mess with gusto. We would consume plates and plates of Ghee Pongal/Kolaai Puttu/Vadai/Pesarattu  before we started our tales of woes. We would  drown the sorrows of labs, records, hostels and the other associated miseries of our 19 year old lives, into the Godlike sweetness of Kalkandu (Rock Candy) milk.

And about a zillion times during the course of college, we had our meals at Anandas replete with Vathakozhabu and Keerakootu. There was Thatha, of "thatha mess" who used to read my Computer Communication exam question paper right after the exam, with more interest than I had shown during the exam. It was at this time when Bhagesh used to order a  tea from Royal Bakes for five bucks and spend hours piggy backing on the Wifi from the internet cafe above. At this point I have to interject that he was one of the first in our gang to have a phone that actually connected to Wifi. It was this phone that I used to incessantly check my inbox for Google results.

 Occasionally, Chandru would accompany us, but he was too attached to his Paati's filter coffee to come with us all the time. Ela was one of the other guest appearances in our entourage.

RHR idly shop with its famous podi onion oothappams and Jigardhandas made malfunctioning circuit boards and the "outputs" that never manifested, much easier to deal with. Dosa Plaza, Agarwal sweets for Vada Pav/Pani Puri, Boomerang, early morning coffees at Caramel before mock CATs, podi dosa at Aaryas Peelamedu, Chandini for Paneer Butter Masala, Annapoorna Sambar, Rasagulla at Chowpatti at Big Bazaar- We hand picked our meals.We even ate in hospital canteens. Many an evening was spent at GKN hospital canteens, some in Arvind eye hospital and a few in PSG Hospital. This would gross out Chandru and many of our other friends who never understood how people can eat in hospital cafes for pleasure.

We made our own money to finance our food exploits, something I am proud of until today. We scraped work, attended arbitrary quizzes, talent shows (:-|) and heck, we even wrote content for websites. Till date, I can never look at Abercrombie and Fitch without getting nauseated. In our second year, we wrote so much bullshit for this website that sold A&F. Bhagesh had a flair for stocks. Can you think of a 19 year old boy staking all his college fee in Satyam stocks when it hit 1 Rupee and selling all of it the next day when it hit 3? He did that and it paid for our gang's Ghee roasts for the next 6 months.

I am not going into the depths of our loyalty to Jenney and how much we contributed to its growth. It is heart wrenching to write about the food in Coimbatore, despite being drowned by food at Google.

 I have a bunch of other things to thank Bhagesh for - for being such a willing partner in crime and for putting up with our gang's eccentricities and sometimes egging our madness on. I can never forget the day we whipped up a business plan sitting at "Royal Bakes", on a tissue paper and actually pushed it till the finals at this ruddy competition in CEG- just in a day. One just needed to ask Bhagesh to execute plans to perfection. During Brahma (our quiz club's national level contest), we raised nearly a 1,00,000 INR in less than two weeks, bang in the middle of recession when our regular sponsors backed out. I still smile when I think of Chandru describing Bhagesh's haggling tactics with Stanley, the backdrop vendor for Brahma. 

To think back, we were a bunch of geeks (still are), each obsessing about the future and making grand plans with no idea on how hard it was going to be. But I guess we were never boring. We were always in the thick of things and cooked up very interesting schemes for the heck of it. Hey, we even built a robot for money. We were probably the only bunch from college who went to Goa, with all the "Goa!" fanfare, hated the place instantly and ended up searching for Pure-Vegetarian restaurants; the most exciting time of the said holiday was  rushing back to BITS Goa hostel from Colva beach so as not to miss the Boondhi Raitha at the college cafe. It is like this. Equate Boondhi Raita to the cardboard box

 But we had each others' back and pushed each other through what we thought was important at that time. CIT would not have been same without these guys. 

As they say, you are an average of your five best friends. I am.

Again, here is to Bhagesh and to better food for the rest of the year!

  

Ferrari Ki Sawaari

Today I watched this brilliant movie called Ferrari Ki Sawaari. The other Boman Irani movie I have seen before is "Well done Abba" which was again, amazing. As far Ferrari is concerned, the movie's story line was simple but hilarious. Every character was so accurately portrayed. The Mumbai that they showed in the movie looked so clean and beautiful unlike the Mumbai that I have seen. I want to gush about it more, but then it is around 1 am and my adjectives tend to be limited at this time of the day. I am kind of going through an epiphanic phase, lately. As I was watching the movie I found a bunch of pertinent takeaways that I thought would be worthy enough to jot down in this journal of mine.

• There are a lot of hardworking people who badly want a lot of things to go their way. It is important to acknowledge them while evaluating personal miseries
• There are a lot of unfair things that can happen to good people. The true meaning of growing up, so I am told, is to move on
• If someone gets something that we want so badly want means that they wanted it more and they worked harder than we did
• If certain things were meant to happen in a certain way, we cannot tweak them to suit our convenience
• There are good people in this world 

End ramble.

Year end post

Working on a social network, a new one at that, is an *incredible* experience. The type of people I deal with/see online (pretty much every one mentioned here), the kind of problems that come my way, and the sheer awesomeness of working with some of the brightest and the coolest people I have ever met, makes working in Google+ the best thing that happened to me this year.

The most important thing that I have learnt this year is to consciously work on not letting small stuff get into my head and wreak havoc - decisions that I cannot influence, situations I have no control over, lost keys, crashing Excel, last minute change of plans and trolls who find fault with my grammar on Facebook statuses. It seems so much easier to get by the day without holding an active grudge or without 'willing' certain things to happen.

This year I worked on fretting lesser and on giving myself occasional breaks. I  bought great shoes and literally gave them a good run for their money. I averaged at least 20KMs a week and did 4-5KMs even on the tiredest of days. I realized cooking calms me down in an almost therapeutic manner- cooking and games like this where one sets up a restaurant and runs it. I wore my spectacles more often and got lesser headaches.

I indulged my whims and got a nice massage almost fortnightly. I alternated between masala tea and filter coffee. I made my days by eating absolutely delicious Ada Pradhaman/ MysorePa/ plum cakes at work.

As always, it is great to have a bunch of friends, old and new, who nudge me on to the nice, joyful, "embrace thy life" path whenever I slip into the whiny and paranoid mode that just makes the lightness of being, unbearable.

2012 was *nothing* like how I desperately wanted it to be. However, it turned out to be pretty cool and perhaps much better than how it could have been. I think I shouldn't really bitch about the universe and the grand schemes it seems to have plotted against me, considering how bad things could have been right now.

All that said, I have no expectations from me or from 2013. Hakuna Matata.

Pleasures of anticipation

My colleague and friend who had just taken up running was planning to buy shoes. Egged on by my relentless rant about running injuries, he switched his mind from the low end Fila shoe he had been pursuing in Myntra to Asics. Since we don't get fancy gait analyses done in Hyderabad, he and I started reading up extensively on what shoes one should buy and how to analyze one's gait.

We found out that Reliance Footprints were the only retailers of Asics in India. Since the store was located so conveniently opposite to our community, we spent about 2 hours analyzing shoes and talking jargons like professional runners and thereby irking everyone in the vicinity. We were smirking at other people who were randomly buying the likes of butt toning shoes without knowing their feet type, pronation and heel strike. We were amazed how people buy shoes for 7000 Rs because the lady in the poster who was wearing them looked good. It appalled the researcher in us as we had spent more than two days doing gait analysis to the rest of the team.

This is when we realized how our middle class upbringing had imbibed a deep sense of optimization within us. We were both talking about how much research we put into when while buying anything slightly higher than our threshold of normal expenditure. For example, my entire office knew that I was going to buy a scooter as I had asked advice from everyone I knew. I researched day and night on automobile portals which is probably why I gape at people who walk into car showrooms the day they decide to buy a car and come out with one. The anticipation & the torture I put myself through to perfect the deals I get and the amount of reading I do before I buy stuff, make the experience of buying anything insanely satisfactory.

 Recently, I read an article about a research that talks about what makes a person happy. Apparently, it is not so much the money as much as experiences and how anticipation makes anything far more enjoyable. Experiments show that waiting for something and working hard to get it made it feel more valuable and more stimulating. I can completely empathize with these statements because like most of the children in Madurai, I was brought up in a performance based reward system. There weren't malls to walk into and then come home with a pair of Nike shoes. I used to grovel on the ground begging my mother to buy me a box of poster colous or this really fancy Ballerina Barbie complete with comb and a change of dress. My mother would hint that if I got a 100/100 in quarterly exam I might be considered for a packet of Artoons sketch pens. For the next two months, I would live the dream. I would spend the waking hours thinking about the pens and make a mental list of things I would do if I got those sketch pens such as how I can decorate the first page of my rough note, how I can touch up on the labels on my books with a little flower or basically flaunt them at the girl who already had the pens. Life would look 1000 W brighter with the sketch pens.

I would promptly not get the agreed upon marks in that very important quarterly exam which stood between me and a much better life the sketch pens promised. This used to make me cry in buckets and my parents would see me getting down from the school bus with swollen eyes. I would moan so much in misery that my parents used take pity on me and get me the damn sketch pens anyway. I have never gotten anything I asked for immediately though. I didn't get the Barbie too. My mother got me a much fatter and an Indian version of Barbie, Barbini,with lot of curls which looked not unlike the doll that kills people in Child's Play.

Barbini, still around, with the Pyjamas I painstakingly sewed for her during my fifth std summer holidays

It took 98% in my tenth board exam to be considered for my first computer. It was never really about whether my parents could afford anything I asked for, as there weren't anything that was unaffordable in a place like Madurai. Not like now, when my little cousins converse in Reebok, Puma, I-pod, Galaxy Tab and Park Avenue and eventually end up getting super disappointed if their bags are from Roshan. In my time, Roshan bags and Bata shoes were practically luxury goods and it took many a fiery elocution contests to transcend to that level!

I guess the next generation will never know the drastic difference in the quality of life that possessing a phone (with a manual lock over the dial-pad), a computer, an internet connection or going on an one week tour of Bombay (for which your entire family comes to railway station to bid farewell), brought about.

Thanks to globalization, deals and mostly my credit card, I succumb to the perils of online shopping more than impulsively than a wiser version of myself would approve of. But thankfully, this is restricted to clothes. For sporting goods, watches and bags that I keep looking at, I would show up in analytics tools as the customer who proceeds to the checkout with a full cart and closes the window at the last stage. Thus, I become the victim of re-marketing as all the goods on my abandoned cart  show up on every damn website that I open thereafter, begging me to reconsider their charms.

 These days I make a conscious effort to get back to the  anticipation based approach to happiness. This way I can rhapsodize to my heart's content and relish the vision of owning something a hundred times even before I own it. Hang in there Jabra Bluetooth headphones, there are only 30 KMs of running every week, six more months of ruminating and a full marathon for me to be worthy of your possession!

That kid in the Bharathiyar costume

 Airtel Super Singer is a show that has always irritated me so much. It is not so much because of the drama as much as the not so subtle hints my mother gives me on how useless I am in general. Now that I am not at home, it becomes incredibly convenient to watch it on you tube as you can watch a 4 hour show in less than 40 minutes whooshing through all the " I am so excited Sir", "It is an honour Sir" and the quitessential "Eendra Pozhudhinum Periduvanukkam" bits of the beaming parents.

Whenever I watch this show I always think of this kid who came in dressed as Bharathiyar

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQxO2i2e6Bg#t=06m14s

This cracks me up so much every time I see it. It reminds me so much about my own childhood. One, for the way the kid skips around with the poetry (Barathiyaar namma Baarathiyar), two, the fancy dress. On more than numerous occasions, I used to perform gigs like this.I used to be Tiruppur Kumaran in all the Fancy Dress Contests as the role involved minimal dressing up. We borrowed a Kurta from this neighbour's kid. My father would fashion a Khadi cap using a pillow case and with a kajal mustache, I became Tiruppur Kumaran. I used to *exhude* confidence, snort derisively at kids coming in much elaborate get ups such as the complicated Hindu deities (Ardhanaadeswarar, comes readily to mind) or the standard cotton sareed, Mysore-Sandal-talc-on-pinned-up-hair Indira Gandhi types. I would swoop in and do my very passionate speech about the flag and get back to reading Famous Five. This fetched me many, many accolades such as the Barathiyar Kavidhaigal/Sura's quiz books/Thooku vaalis (that were later polished and given away as wedding gifts). I constantly wonder how my parents hunted down such arcane competitions, allowed me to skip school and promptly reported to duty for the said competitions with flasks of hot water.  After we exhausted places to use Tiruppur Kumaran, we had to find a high ROI get-up that suited the general fieriness of my mother's speeches. We used Vanjinathan for a couple of places and then switched to a general mode of "Indian soldier". Again, we used random pieces of junk we could find around the house and thus I became a soldier in a navy blue raincoat and clutching the flag that *had* to be present. I suppose that was the last time I did a fancy dress.

 Speaking of a wasted childhood, I should bring in our musical adventures at this point. My mother's music stemmed from the fact that her best friend used to sing "prayer songs" at all occasions at her office which would make her go green with envy. This is when she decided that her progeny should become the prayer song singer, her own perception of prima dona, which is how all this started.

When I was in primary school the biggest deal of the year was the zonal cultural event at my mother's office. When I was in first standard, I did something so similar to the Bharathiyar kid. When they announced the results, I was  amazed and indignant that they didn't give me a prize that I proceeded to bite the chief guest (incidentally the Chief Post Master General) who was giving away participation certificates. My terrified mother had to get me off his arm and console me saying that I had won. Eventually, I ended up participating for the next five years in the same competition in carnatic, light, folk music,key board and mono-acting category.

 My mother's idea of good music was based on public opinion as she didn't have a clue and neither did I. She thought the "swaras" people sang were incredibly neat and lot of people seemed to say "Waarey Wah" when kids sang them in competitions. She urged my music teachers to teach me songs only with swaras. After they refused, we decided to do it our style. I used to randomly make up ga-ga-ma-ma type swaras  regardless of whatever song I was singing with a flourish at the end.

Once there was this competition in Tamizh Isai Sangam where I was singing "Pazhani appanin Padamaravel" with my usual improptu swara making. This old guy who was the judge threw his hands up in despair and said loudly to his fellow judge "How do they let these people inside" while my mother seethed with anger holding the hot water flask!

 Once there was an eating competition in one of these "events" and I thought with gusto "Aha! This plays right up in my alley!". Rules were simple -The person who could eat the maximum number of Murukku in 5 minutes won. I rolled up my sleeves and got to business. I was in a staggeringly clear lead when my frontal incisor which had been shaking precariously till that day, decided to fall. I was devastated that I lost something like an eating competition.

There were shows that we used to put up from the dance class. There was this gypsy song where I was the male gypsy called "Singa" in flaming red costume and was paired up with a girl who was, obviously, "Singy" and who wore my refurbished Gujarati Choli. It was a number about social evils which the dance teacher decided on after finding me rigid as a rod to do any "Snake Dance: which was the first choice. I did this same gig for about a year in so many places and then we chucked it as it was too much trouble to dress up with no particular reward in sight.

These days when I see my apartment kids participating in dance or music shows that they put on for every damn festival, I keep remembering my childhood filled with such incredible Tom Fooleries, the bundle of useless certificates from Ilaingar Narpani Mandram/Kalaivani Maadar Sangam and also the associated memories of the kid in the Bharthiyar dress!

Hyderabad Marathon and Sphoorti!

I have never been an athlete. In fact, I have never ever been to my Physical Education class all through school. I guess I couldn't make an effort because of the dozen respiratory diseases I had - Chronic wheezing, bronchitis, tonsillitis- you name it, I had it.  I never really made an effort knowing I was much better off in quizzing, debating, erm, even painting and music.

However,when I was in college, I discovered how much fun running was. I jogged (and still do) at a snail's pace, walked in between my running bouts, and yet, I did run. This is when I got fascinated by people who run Marathons. Considering my track record and genetic predisposition to get bored with anything, running a Marathon is the highest level of discipline I can achieve in my life. 

My running history is not great; nowhere near some of my friends' IronMan, SFO/Mumbai Marathons. I have never even felt the need to compete in an event that involved sports. However, this time after a putting a lot of thought , I have signed up for the Hyderabad Marathon where I will be running a Half Marathon.

It is an insane 22.5 KMs and Hyderabad's heat is bound beat anyone down (Here is a wish that they have Marathons at night :D). The route extends from Lakdi-ka-Phool (Near Hussain Sagar) to Hi-Tech city. I leave it to the people in Hyderabad to digress.

Since I am running, I thought it would be nice to support a cause. At least, this commitment will get my butt out of the bed and motivate me into practicing.  I am supporting this NGO called Sphoorti who provide shelter and educate about 140 destitute and orphaned children. I have pledged to raise Rs.5000 for these kids in 57 days. It is not a great amount, however, it might buy these children food for day. Please contribute in this page. I couldn't think of a nice personal message when I signed up, but do make a difference! Remember Rs 300 is the tax you pay for a dinner in that over priced restaurant and yet, despite what we think, Rs 300 will actually buy food for 10 children. And all you Americans, if you have been in India/ are from India, you will know the Indian definition of "destitution". These are kids who are really, really poor and in some cases, are rescued from unspeakable conditions. We are yet to have anything called Child Safety and what you contribute will definitely make a difference. ( Also, a dollar is equal to Rs 55 which should give you more reasons to contribute :-) )  I just realized that Rs.5000 is only 91 USD!

I think Google matches your contributions. I will update this page once I confirm the same with someone at office.

Joy of doing nothing

It has been months since I had a weekend at home doing nothing. Either I had been away or meeting people, or shifting houses or constantly worrying about something. I finally got to spend one weekend at home doing nothing and actually thinking about nothing (probably I was too tired to do so). The forthcoming weekends are going to be filled with activity as I go from one metro to another meeting folks.

My latest visit to the US was filled with longing to return back home mainly because of the number of unfinished things here that required my presence to be finished. In a series of quickly progressing events, I shifted home, bought a bike (motor one). The new apartment is brilliant what with a vista view of the Tennis court from my bedroom in the tenth floor and 2 huge pools to swim in.  Since the giant window in my room faces the east, I get woken up so very early in the morning. The "thwangs" of the balls hitting the centre of the tennis racquet is a very relaxing and a pleasant sound. It gives me a sense of satisfaction that someone is actually playing good tennis. On a side note, I was wearing my Google Cricket League shirt around in my US office and I had to assure one of my team-mates that I did not play in the league and had signed up for it to get the T-shirt. When I was asked what game I played, I laughed and said that my childhood was spent in music, dance and keyboard classes than learning to play anything at all.  Awesome tennis court mandates I give another shot, but my last tryst with the said game was not at all  assuring, especially when the 4 year old kid who joined the classes with me progressed faster than I did. I don't think I can pick up anything with complex control or co-ordination *now*, which is why running seems to be the most uncomplicated athletic pursuit.

 I also have a new dogless jogging track to run and I have been either running 5 KMs every day ever since I moved in. This walking/running business is so soothing, except that I keep expecting a dog to appear out of nowhere because of past experience. For example, today, I mistook a very frisky kid  and a football to be dogs from a distance and actually jumped off the jogging track.

 I have also learnt to float on my back in the pool. Whenever my swimming instructor shouts "chin up, chin up", the following picture (Ophelia by  Everett Millais) keeps flashing morbidly in my mind.

Some more pictures of the apartment and then I will be off. (Click to see the full picture)

Looks even better at 5 am

View from my window (Park is called "Central Park" :D)