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Work Life Worldly Matters

On Bandhs and Strikes

I’ve started taking a liking for these, actually. A peaceful morning. Devoid of most traffic on the roads – except for buses. And because of that, the buses get a chance to run on time, too!

In other news, Babylon 5 is a good show. Vishnu recommended that I watch this show and I’m liking it a lot. In one of the episodes, there’s this surveyor who takes contracts to survey planets for various purposes and ends up at a mysterious place called Sigma 957. Suddenly, Sakai (the surveyor)’s ship encounters something never heard of before. Not in the database. Her ship loses almost all its power and leaves her exposed to a lone death – until the troops G’kar had sent for came to her rescue. G’kar had earlier warned her not to go there stating that it was a mysterious place and that Sakai would be better off not going there.

When Sakai returns and tells G’kar of what had happened:

Catherine Sakai: While I was out there, I saw something. What was it?
G’Kar: [pointing to a nearby flower] What is this?
[Upon closer inspection, an insect is visible.]
Catherine: An ant.
G’Kar: “Ant”!
Catherine: So much gets shipped up from Earth on commercial transports, it’s hard to keep them out.
[As Catherine is talking, G’Kar carefully picks up the ant.]
G’Kar: I have just picked it up on the tip of my glove. If I put it down again and it asks another ant, “What was that?”, how would it explain? There are things in the universe billions of years older than either of our races. They are vast, timeless. And if they are aware of us at all, it is as little more than ants…and we have as much chance of communicating with them as an ant has with us. We know. We’ve tried. And we’ve learned we can either stay out from underfoot, or be stepped on.
Catherine: That’s it? That’s all you know?
G’Kar: Yes. They are a mystery. And I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the universe…that we have not yet explained everything. Whatever they are, Ms. Sakai, they walk near Sigma 957. They must walk there alone.

And here we are. Calling out for a national bundh because of a petrol-price hike. And me enjoying the peace due to it.

Categories
Anime Books Personal

Updates as of 3rd June, ’10

It’s been a really long time since I last blogged. My attempts at living a moderately disciplined and occupied life has been quite a success. That would mean a major change in lifestyle from my college days.

Recent updates include:

a. moving to a newer apartment near Powai lake in Mumbai.

Moved in with my former (first one at college) roomie – Koushik Mandal(!) and his department-mate (and my batch-mate from Hall3), Sidhant Dash. They’re cool folks (barring Mandal’s mandalism at times). Each of us were living with other non-IITK, non-Y4 batch folks earlier – this was the primary criterion that prompted the move for each of us.

b. managing to read fiction.

I read ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ – a collection of short stories and ‘Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World’ (novel) by Haruki Murakami. He’s a Japanese author and I read the English translations of these. The last fiction I read before these was Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Dr. Roger Ackroyd” four years ago! I’ve been a passive consumer all along – anime, movies, TV dramas, you know, the kind that don’t require the mental weightlifting as in the case of active media – books.

In a recent Wired article, two abilities were distinguished – “The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively.” Being the kind of person who’d been chasing after Google search results until recently, I might’ve adopted the former as my dominant mode of thought and maybe reading “larger” material might improve the situation. Not that this is primary motivation to read- just that it’s a welcome throw-in that comes with it, I guess. Looking forward to another Murakami piece – ‘Kafka on the shore’.

c. weekly anime-sessions.

Vishnu, Karan and I meet up on weekends trying to catch up with anime. I haven’t been able to watch anime like I used to in the past year. But these weekly sessions are fun.

We’ve been watching ‘Aura Battler: Dunbine’, an 80’s show, it’s about 49 episodes long and I think we’ve reached 38 episodes through!

The past 3 weekends I’ve been introduced to the new ‘Dr. Who’ show and I’ve found it a really good British sci-fi show so far. I’m usually wary of insanely long shows – long as in several seasons over the years. For one, I fear getting really sucked into it and wanting to watch it all or read it all. The same reason that keeps one away from, say, ‘One Piece’. Maybe I should stop being such a “perfectionist”.

Categories
Personal

Updates as of 16th Mar. ’10

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an “updates” post so it looks like I’m going to have to recap quite a bit.

First off, today marks two months of my stay at Mumbai. It’s been an interesting experience in as far as the passage of time is concerned. I feel a lot busier than I used to and I think that’s a good thing. I’m beginning to make fuller use of the day unlike my (extremely) lazy days at college a year ago. Interestingly, today also marks the Hindu new year in the Western and Southern parts of the country (unsure about the rest).

And more interestingly, yesterday the GATE results were announced. Although I had registered for it, I didn’t appear for the exam. I was convinced I was way under-prepared and I took off to Mumbai. My juniors at IITK got their scores: Shashank did surprisingly well (99+ percentile), then it was Praneeth followed by Surya. Going by the numbers they’ve scored and the first-hand report on the sort of importance Theory of Computation holds in this paper, I’m slightly better informed now (would’ve been more better informed if I actually wrote the exam!) and this gives me more direction towards what to prepare for by next year’s GATE.

Rachit, a former wingmate of mine, flew from his Uni in Paris to Mumbai on 1st of March for a short detour homeward and then onto his new job at Paris. We had a reunion of sorts: Mandal (puts up at Kandivali), Kanodia (somewhere in Navi Mumbai, Ghansoli IIRC), Saurabh(!), Rachit and I. We had a good time and went down to Churchgate for what would be my first encounter with “Bademiya” – a smallish outdoor eatery specialising in primarily non-vegetarian food. It was busy. Really busy. But good too.

And last weekend was a weekend out with Mitesh (who so gracefully came all the way from Pune), Rachit (who had just returned from visiting his home), Saurabh, Mandal and I. We met on Friday, had a good night and the morning Rachit left to fly back to Paris. We had a good time on Saturday – watched “Alice in Wonderland” in IMAX! – Followed by another visit to Bademiya (Mitesh’s first visit).

I quite liked the movie. Before the actual movie started, a bunch of trailers (2D and 3D) were shown and boy is the IMAX 3D experience going to get big or what. Must thank Avatar to kick things off in India. Really. I liked the white queen in the movie. The movie was so sparkly and all, could be thought of as a *cough*acid trip*cough* (not that I know). It’s a must watch, really. It’s amazing how novel experiences can really brighten up our minds, raising our bars of satisfaction every time we confront something new.