Sidharth Jaggi's most excellent adventures

Whoa!

2006-04-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

Confession -- one of my previous posts wasn't strictly true. Even when I was composing it, I felt mildly uneasy about the liberties I was taking with the truth; taking statements made by a person who was only the faintest zephyr of an acquaintance many years ago out of context to make for a funnier post.

Well, I got called on it. Literally. Turns out, on googlewhacking for this person's name, my blog entry was the only hit that came up. And this link was discovered by this person's mommy. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from the offended party (who'd looked up my cellphone number off the net), who in the sweetest possible manner asked me to remove the offending article.

And so I did (well, edited out all parts pertaining to this person).

Of course, none of this makes any sense to you. Which is as it should be.

Let this be a lesson to all of you funny-post-writers, you taking-liberties-with-the-truth-and-damn-the-worlders. The truth will come and bite you in the ass. Aided by Google.

All's well that ends well...

2006-04-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

... all right, folks. It's been a wild and enjoyable ride, but it's time to take a break from this blog before it becomes yet another chore. It'll probably still be updated, but much less frequently, and only when the mood strikes -- it'll work for me, rather than me for it.

Here's something to fill the void...

[Post on an egroup of friends last night. Said Nisha about Sam...]

Maybe it's the case I'm working on right now [1], maybe it's the lateness of the hour; but it occurs to me that we on this list have our own version of a great American revolutionary: Sam Anand, *almost* a brewer and a patriot.[Replied Sam...]

Heh? Please to enlighten. Closeness of name to Sam Adams? I don't have long, brown hair. I would look positively gay if I did. Question for class discussion: was Sam Adams gay? sam. (not Adams. Not, I say.)[Which inspired...]

> Question for class discussion: was Sam Adams gay?

http://jaggi.name/man_legend.jpg

--
Sidharth Jaggi

"Never doubt that a small group of concerted fingers can change a
photograph -- indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

I was at the gym a few minutes ago...

2006-04-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

(... I now look like this)

Huffin' and puffin' I bench-pressed 95 lbs, and the guy after me (whom I spotted) did 150 no sweat. Still got a ways to go...

... we got to talking, and it turns out the man does theoretical computer science, and I'd actually seen his advisor (Santosh Vempala) talk about some of his work. Good stuff, and Santosh is a good speaker, so I'd enjoyed those talks. Quirky, but that's de jure for CS theory (much more so than in the significantly stuffier environs I inhabit), and the enthusiasm about the work shone through it all and made it worth watching. That's the thing about mathematicians -- they know they're not getting paid to spin or be useful -- they're getting paid to look pretty. Or rather, do pretty... research.

Anyway, this reminded me of a talk I attended this afternoon. This was a crypto seminar; I had been warned about the crypto seminars by Sudan (the one with the Sudan algorithm -- his name's Madhusudan...) -- he'd told me that they really dig in at these talks, ask questions like it's nobody's business, actually understand stuff; you have to be a man to give a talk there.

I saw what he meant -- the speaker, an extremely good sport, on top of his game, a man with a brilliant Colgate smile, and obviously expecting this grilling, spent more time fielding questions throughout the talk than actually speaking. Related problems were explored, sharp questions were asked, naïve questions were asked, bad jokes and multi-lingual puns were made, tongue-in-cheek slides a la Seinfeld were shown, people laughed, and in general people had a good time. It was fun.

This is the world I've been entering, bit by bit, these last eleven years. It's very different from the external, non-scientific world's image of theoretical research. It's populated by a wide spectrum of people -- sure, there's some people who're... socially challenged reclusive eggheads, but there're also some of the most charismatic, knowledgeable and finger-in-every-pie sort of people I've ever met. It's also a lot more social an activity than people imagine -- much more research happens between people than happens in a single mind -- "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

I also couldn't help but contrast this talk with one I attended yesterday by "the thinking man's Tom Friedman" (which is how he was introduced by the host). A sad underutilization of my time -- he said nothing really new, had no real insights. But in comparison, the most significant difference was really the one that always exists between talks in soft sciences and harder sciences -- in the latter, if you understand it, you walk away with a replicable, undisputable, truth; not a subjective opinion, but a honest-to-god absolute truth. The truth can be "useless" in almost every sense of the word (most research is, and if I'm honest, much of my research is), but that's not the point -- it needs to be judged by it's own internal standards of beauty (and in my humble opinion I've been lucky enough to stumble across some really pretty results in my research).

Now you, reading this, gentle reader, have either experienced the numinous when you understood a beautiful truth, or you haven't. And it's sad, but true, that most people haven't experienced the beauty of a fundamental truth that arises from internally consistent logic (rather than having spiritual roots; I'll grant you -- those moments can probably feel similar).
Which is kind of frustrating, because so many people are missing out on so much.

Some popular science books, shows, and movies do try to tackle this and communicate the camaraderie of people who commune with truthful ideas -- Proof, Numb3rs, Contact... but
even the best of these can't help but sortof skip over the hard parts, the parts where the essence of the matter, the ideas, are involved. They deal more with the interactions between the people doing science than with the science itself. Quite understandable -- science is unforatunately a chore to people, and has little place in entertainment.

Other works -- the thinking man's science types... Cosmos, Gödel, Escher, Bach... are enjoyable reading, but they have two flaws -- however much they profess otherwise, they already aim at an audience which is already familiar with the material to some extent, and also, they often miss out on the human aspect of doing research. By the human aspect I mean more than just the historical treatment of a few stars -- I mean the environment in which ideas are generated. I mean something along the lines of that talk I attended today.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the highlight of this post. Here's my solution -- a fictional account of a graduate stude... an apprentice alchemist working on the advanced theory... repeated additions (i.e., multiplication), at the Peloponnesian Institute of Technology and Science. He's worried about where his next free dolmades will come from. He has deep conversations about his work with his hovel-mate, who's working on repeated subtractions. He's afraid of the visiting scholar from the QUranic Institute of Technology, this venerable old sadist with the mind like a scimitar and a tongue to match, but whom his master has tasked him to speak to and learn from...

I could go on and on, but the idea here is to base everything around a problem which is simple enough (multiplication) that everyone already understands it to a reasonable level of approximation, and can follow the convoluted process of many bumbling fools blundering around discovering ever more efficient ways of doing it, with ever greater insights into related problems and resulting in a finished, polished product that school-kids can learn by rote. This is what research feels like, and even the best and cleanest ideas by the smartest people (say for example Newton's Law of Gravitation) have hidden nooks and crannies that their discoverers don't realize, have a cleaner exposition, a proof, a formulation, implications for other theories, all in all, an iterative approach that only infinitestimally slowly converges to a place in The Book.

Miscellanea

2006-04-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

... not miscellania.

Huh. Who'd've thunk it?

"With great power comes great responsibility"

2006-04-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

-- Benjamin Parker (a.k.a. Uncle Ben)

I was just sitting in my underwear sewing my torn shorts, eating curry pizza, and watching the movie Spiderman... (Apologies if I just ruined your appetite with that mental image, but then that should teach you to read blogs while eating, shouldn't it?)... and I wondered, why is it that I'm watching this not-particularly-good movie?

One theory about comics (and I suppose, by extension, the related graphic novels, movies, video games, etc) is that they pander to our escapist tendencies. Surrounded by the drudgery of the dull-gray world, it helps to immerse oneself into a fantasy world with excitement and adventure. Also, there are no moral ambiguities in comics, good (usually) triumphs over evil; an admittedly satisfying feeling. Another theory, proposed by the famous comicologist Michael Novotny, goes like

"Later as I realized that I was gay I read them for a different reason. Because, in ways that maybe were not intended, these superheroes were a lot like me. You know, at work they were meek and underappreciated. They were the guys that never get laid... [students laugh] And when they're around other people, they can't let anybody get too close for fear that their true identities would be discovered. Within all the villians and the monsters and the evil forces that are trying to destroy them somehow they're survived. Even the one thing that can kill Superman, one thing against which he has no immunity, kryptonite, ultimately you know that he'll survive that and he'll go on and save the world. I believe the same about us. That's what the comics have shown me -- that despite everything, we'll survive. And we'll win."

(Season 2, Episode 6)

In other words, projection.

All fine and dandy, but not really the reasons I allowed two hours of my life to vanish watching that pap. (If you must know, I don't like the movie 'cos of the soppy love scenes -- I grew up watching Spiderman every Saturday 1715-1745 (go figure, Doordarshan programme scheduling logic follows a different axiomatic system (need to change my writing style -- I'm in love with putting too many nested parenthetical remarks -- I think it'sa function of my thinking style)), and Spiderman would never have gone so mushy).

No, I think the real reason I've re-fallen in love with comics and their associated world-view in recent years is because they are the unselfconscious myths of our century. In a world where successful realist fiction must be internally aware of itself, where cheesiness is to be abhorred like the plague by us uber-mature rational individuals, where portraying the complexities of human nature has replaced moral absolutes as the driving force of storytelling, comics remain one of the few mediums which still provide a framework for being able to make a statement like the one that is the title of this post, and get away with it alive.

Think about it -- use "with great power comes great responsibility" as a quote, and everybody recognizes it; comics (and I suppose ad jingles) are the Iliads of today.

The eye-opener vis-a-vis comics as a medium worthy of respect came for me when I read the Sandman series some years ago.

After a couple of days of reading the series from end to end (ten books ("graphic novels") in a row) I posted this slightly frenzied email to a group of friends

______________________________

Subject: Days of little else...

... but reading Sandman. Neil Gaimon. Graphic novels. Brief Lives. The Doll's House. Season of Mists, A Game of You... and the rest.

Find them. Read them.

Others have judged them worthy of great praise, as do I.

Chacko wrote - "I find it increasingly difficult to waste my time with anything but excellence." Or something like that. Not a waste of time, Chacko.

A man needs excellence, and truth, and artistry, and all things similarly worthy to reassure himself that existence is not pointless ("If there be such Beings that walk this Earth proudly, then who am I to desire Oblivion?"). This is work which does not disappoint.

There is art which does not need to hide behind artifice. This are epics which have the strength to stand up to mimicry. There are dreams that are true enough that one is not ashamed of dreaming them. This is such work.

Others have judged this worthy of great praise, as do I. At this moment, tired, exultant and happy, brain-twisted by the works I write about, it is the least I can do to join in the paeans...
______________________________

The books really are worth it. Other favourites -- Alan Moore's Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (only the books -- the movie was crap), Art Spiegelman's Maus, and most particularly, some of the Batman collections (particularly the Frank Miller ones).

Even non-afficionados of comics will acknowledge the riveting power of the Dark Knight -- the excellent recent movie Batman Begins was unmistakably noirish, but with all the grandeur that a 67 year old myth embedded in the collective psyche (not to mention a humungous budget) can evoke, and some correspondingly unforgettable lines. One of these lines made it as the epigram of my thesis (more on that in a later post).

To be sure, there are other works that manage to pull it off. Off the top of my head, amongst recent experiences -- O Brother Where Art Thou, V for Vendetta (I haven't seen it yet, but friends I trust uniformly attest to its excellence -- oh, wait, that too is supposed to be based off a graphic novel, isn't it?), some of Dylan Thomas's recordings of him reading his own poetry... but already we're venturing out of the realm of the zeitgeist of the masses. And then again, perhaps the Greek myths never were part of the firmament of the masses psyche, but the butterfly effects of those myths still live on. As will the giants we've created these last hundred years...

So where does all this leave me? With a sewn pair of shorts, a plate that needs to cleaned of curry powder and pizza crust, a DVD that needs to be returned, and a hundred floors to be climbed as part of my current exercise regimen. Good night, and good luck.

Addendum

2006-03-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

... to the previous post.

I was wrong. That whole idea was wrong. And so was the one of the next day, and the one of the day after.

However.

I, now, today, have a proof that works. And it's even more elegant than the previous one seemed.

At least, I think I have a correct proof.

However, a colleague also believes it.

Which means that either I'm a convincing demagogue, or a genius.

Either way, I win.

And off to debauchery and slothfulness.

Begging forgiveness from a neglected love

2006-03-29T04:21:00.000-08:00

Heart of my heart, my darling, my love, forgive me. I nearly forgot you.

You know how it is -- remembrances of thee come at ever longer intervals -- always with that pang of guilt, but never with sufficient passion to jolt one into action. The minutes merge into hours into days, and as each memory of our last tryst grows fainter the mind wanders through thoughts of other, more immediate, mistresses. My fickle lust craves to jam every waking moment of my consciousness with images of their newer, younger, more nubile and seductive charms. You are a known quantity, the contract read from page to small print, the zeta already solved for -- the excitement of the newer hunt moves these loins to greater vigour than pallid memories of you could ever.

And yet, and yet, dear blog, you are a love I return to. I'm sorry for ignoring you this last week and more -- kiss and make up with a new entry?

Yes, what a week it's been, what a week. I've been here, there and everywhere, doing this, that and the other with her, him and everyone. A trip to Princeton to greet old friends, sit in on a conference without registering, and just in general hang. New research ideas, new ideas in life, possiblities in the job market, biking, several parties, older friends rediscovered, learnt a bit more about newer ones -- spring is in the air.

Gosh, where does one even start?

As always, somewhere, anywhere, as long as it works.

So, here's a little bit about my research life. Fascinating reading for most of you, doubtless, but do tarry a while -- I promise there will be no equations.

To begin with an anecdote -- I was at this conference in Japan, talking with a woman working at Sony Corp. She'd done her Ph.D. in pure math at Cambridge (the UK version), and was now working on more applied research in Tokyo. I was, as always on these junkets, gloating about how sweet grad student life was, and asked her if she didn't miss that?

"Well, you know how doing math is. It's a full-time profession, 24/7. You're constantly thinking about something, and it's exhausting. At least with this job anytime I'm not at work is time I have for myself."

"So what are your usual working hours like?"

"Well, I normally start at 0900, and stay until maybe... meh... 1900 or 2000. Oh, plus, of course, there's the 1.5 hour train commute each way."

You know, sometimes I envy her...

Naaaaaah, just kidding :)

Though, really, when an idea grabs hold of you, and you're convinced you're right, and you're this close to solving it...

... but haven't yet, and that last idea failed but the new one which replaced it has promise, and if only everything would line up correctly in your mind it'd be a truly beautiful edifice which people would look at and contemplate with awe (with some reflected glory on the architect, of course, and in those lovely interludes that you think you've licked it you devote considerable amounts of your (you allow yourself to think because of post-coital bliss) considerable brainpower to just this type of kissing oneself on the back of your neck), but (n-1)/n of the time the ugly-but-always-honest monster of truth rears its head from underneath the corner of the rug you'd shoved him under while you were fighting these battles with other beasts in your mind; meanwhile, of course, it's just this ugly mess you can't bear to write down on a piece of paper even though it'd help you organize your thoughts -- you dream about it, you obsess about it, you blank out in the middle of conversations, you lose contact with friends and the outside world, you fight your solitary fight for something that really only you and a few other solitary people would possible ever care to care about. You grow to know the woods because you've been lost in every nook and brook, multiple times coming from multiple different directions. You love yourself, you hate yourself, you wonder why life is worth all this trouble -- even stupid ditties are easier to get out of your head than this obsession.

Why do you do it? At some prosaic level there's papers one must write to get a career and so on, but that line of motivation sucks your soul out -- hopefully you do it because it's a truth that you find beautiful, and it deserves to be discovered. And at the end (if you reach it) you look back and wonder -- how could I have conceived of this thing larger than myself?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am currently in that pleasant interlude between thinking I've nailed a difficult problem with an elegant solution, and discovering a flaw in my reasoning. The reason for the optimism is, more likely than not, really just because it's morning, and as always I'm in that gentle halfway house whose windows are half-fogged with sleep, but is teeming with ideas that spent the night waiting to be let out. It's been a couple of weeks I've been fighting this mental battle of epic proportions (and little consequence in the grand scheme of things). These things happen maybe a few (fingers on one hand) times a year, and they're what makes it all worthwhile. Afterwards there needs to be a long dark teatime of the soul, with much debauchery and mental slothfulness.

There -- now I've gone and exposed part of my true current state of mind. Go ahead and make fun of it.

Another weekend bites the dust

2006-03-19T19:26:00.000-08:00

And what a weekend it's been...

As usual, Sat morning was windmill time at Ben's lab in Harvard. On the (official) agenda, to test our KICKASS magnets' field lines so we know how large to make the alternator's stator coils. On the (unofficial) agenda, to play with iron filings and KICKASS magents. Got some really pretty pictures, much nicer ones than the ones you can find online, but 'til Ben uploads his pics, here's one stolen from the net to whet your appetities

As suspected, our magnets are KICKASS.

In the afternoon cooked up tons of (too many tons of) fried rice to use up the veggies rotting in the fridge, so I'd be free of kitchen duty the rest of the week. (Of course, had totally forgotten I'll be out of town Tues through Friday for a conference, so now likely the cooked leftovers will rot.) Was juggling three pans at once when I got a call from my soon-to-be first Hospitality Club guest, Jonathan Tel (author, traveller, philosopher). He's arriving tomorrow, and will stay Monday night with me; sounds like an interesting person. Will post an update if I don't get my throat cut. Aww... kidding, mom ;)

Yesterday night went with Ian to an MIT Wind Ensemble concert.

The performance of William Schuman's piece George Washington Bridge, written about... yep, the George Washington Bridge, was prefaced by a 15-minute lecture, complete with equations, on the engineering marvels of the bridge by a Civil Engineering graduate student.

Only at MIT.
Well, I suppose also at Caltech.
Or one of the IITs.
Or...
{sigh} it's a geeky world I inhabit...

As for the musical content, it sounded good to me, but that should be taken with a pinch of salt -- I am semi-tone-deaf.

This morning it was time to head off to a lecture on water resources management organized via video conference from the Technion by the Hibur. Reasonable talk, but much more fascinating was the technical competence with which the organization (barely a couple years old) is run. Must find out more about its history...

And then I was off to catch the St. Patrick's Day parade in South Boston. The usual suspects -- about three thousand bagpipe bands and a never ending stream of cops and firemen. Jollity prevailed, helped along by green beer. The most surreal part of the parade, though, had to be the Vader's Fist marching by us...

Bewarned -- crappy blurry cellphone pictures of Darth Vader and storm-toopers wearing green hats.

The thought going through my mind was vis-a-vis an op-ed piece on Friday's edition of my favourite comedy show, the O'Reilly Factor, about how the city of Boston refused to let a lesbian group march in the parade, "Why do gay groups not understand that the St. Patrick's Day Parade is no place to display any kind of sexuality?"

Left early, to come back, flex my sleeves, and do my taxes. Done. all done. And after poring through about 20 different forms, schedules and information sheets (not exaggerating for once), came to the conclusion that I owe the US and California governements no taxes for the year of 2005. Yippie yay.

Of course, still had to fill out endless forms so I'll get my withheld taxes back.

Took a break to go check out this program I heard about at NEU, their Carnevale's International Gala night. Essentially, an international variety show. Very... vivacious. What the lacked in professionalism, they more than made up for in general enthusiasm. Oh, and booty-shaking :) Such a different atmostphere from MIT/Harvard. Also seems extremely diverse and international -- that Carnevale business takes some serious doing.

Anyway, now I really should off to bed, so I can get up in time for the breakfast with the visiting Israeli students, do a whole bunch of chores, do some work, think through some theorems I had nightmares about last night (no, really, it happens), go for group meeting and meet my boss, and hang with Jon Tel. All tomorrow. It never stops. And that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh uh-huh.

Looking a gift horse in the mouth...

2006-03-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

I have been mulling over something for a few days. It's been a long, measured, ponderful mull with little to show for it, until the absolutely brilliant idea, the breakthrough, I had this morning.

The issue at hand is as follows. My thesis is finally done (yippie yay!). I'm walking this summer (yippie yay!^2). My family (and then some) will be coming (yippie yay!)^3. To celebrate, my mom wanted to gift me a car... (whaa...???)

My first reaction was to tell her how horrible an idea that was, especially in Boston. Which it is, as everyone around me agrees -- parking is a nightmare (assuming you get it), streets are narrow and one-way, public trasnport gets you most everywhere much faster and with fewer hassles, hellishly expensive, drivers are (if possible) worse than in LA (check out the first link when you Google search for "Boston driving"), and renting/Flexcar is always a possiblity when one needs a car. And, of course, I hate driving.
But then I immediately felt guilty. As I should have. Considering how tentatively mom brought up the subject (knowing in advance my vitriolic reaction), and how touching her wistful tone was. I backtracked, told her it was a sweet idea, and suggested that if she really wanted to get me something, how about something that I'd really like and could use. She naturally asked what this something could be, and I was flummoxed. To my horror, I heard myself say something like, "Well, how about a savings account or life insurance...?"

Not sexy enough, as she let me know in no uncertain terms, and I guess I'd agree. So we finished that phone call with me promising to mull it over and get back to her. And really, it is touching.

And so, I have been mulling for a few days.

The thing is, I'm now at a position that money isn't really a constraint (well, I suppose it is if I want to build a humungous windmill, or to have enough millions in the bank to stop a salaried job and live a carefree life as a hitchhiking Erdös). But really, on balance, my current lifestyle really is as good as it gets for someone of my temperament, for now. The main constraint is really finding the time to do things (one of mom's backup suggestions was of supporting my longstanding wish to backpack through China) over and above the so many other yummy cakes I have in the oven.

I talked it over with friends, who had the usual ideas. Interesting suggestions like a carbon fibre bike (too high-end for my current state), a nice camera (not my thing), a yacht (yeah, right :). And, invariably, "Well, if you don't want the money, give it to me."

Which might have sowed the seeds in my brain as I mulled and pondered and chewed things over. Finally, this morning in the shower... inspiration!

A named Undergraduate Endowment at IIT Bombay.

About the cost of a mid-range secondhand car, it's an amazing bargain for posterity at one of the better schools in the world, and posterity is one of the major reasons we researchers are in the business of research. Dropping things like "awarded the Jaggi Fellowship for Excellence in Academics" in resumes of the younger 'uns gets their feet in doors that might otherwise have been closed a bit tighter (I know this's certainly been the case for me), and hopefully starts an exponential blow-up of paying it forward. And compared to the cost of one of these things at even a second-tier school in the US, and the likely cost even a few eyars on in India, this thing's a real catch.

What would be really ferpect would be something like the Studenski Award given out by the Caltech Y, on whose awards committee I sat on while I was down there. It's "awarded to a Caltech undergraduate who has reached a cross road in life and would benefit from a period away from the academic community in order to obtain a better understanding of self and to explore possible directions for his/her future." Something non-traditional like this would, I think, be a nice addition to a campus that seemed to be beginning to buzz in interesting manners when I last visited.

Not being greedy here -- not asking for my own Endowed Chair for myself, named after myself :)

So, how about it, mom?

Mazel Tov!

2006-03-10T23:13:00.000-08:00

To: jaggi@mit.edu

Shalom and Congratulations!

You've been selected as a trip participant in the second annual Hibur
Leadership Delegation! This means that you'll have the privilege of
visiting the Technion for a subsidized, 10-day trip in late May to meet
fellow students on the other side of the ocean, and learn more about
science and technology in the State of Israel, in addition to attending
videoconference lectures given by leading scientists at both institutions
and establishing pen-pal relationships with your Israeli counterparts.
It'll also be a great opportunity to meet and interact with other students
at the Institute like yourself who are passionate about these same issues.
____________________________________________________

Tha'srite folks. Yon Jaggi is off to the Promised Land.

Wha...where...WHY... you ask?

The Technion, a.k.a. the Israel Institute of Technology,

is one of the premier academic institutions in Israel. Its stature is comparable to that of the IITs in India, and MIT (and Caltech, if only people knew about it :) in the US. It's also got some pretty sharp researchers, especially in my field of research. My office-mate, Gil, suggested I apply for the Hibur's Leadership Delegation. Essentially, it's a group that tries to foster MIT-Technion relationships.

Normally, I wouldn't qualify 'cos I'm not a student, but because of the special circumstances -- possiblities for academic collaboration, my being a non-Jew (which, lending diversity to the group, is actually a good thing), but most of all my demonstrable enthusiasm for utterly random stuff -- I'm off to Israel, boyos.

IIT, CIT, MIT, IIT -- hmm, I see a trend here...

This'll sound corny, but after reading all those Leon Uris novels (Exodus was a particular favourite) and Collins/Lapierre's O Jerusalem, this'll be quite a thrill...

Shalom.

Word coinage du jour

2006-03-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

Bruner.

No, not as in the brilliant though depressing science fiction writer. As in, the meal you cook yourself when you're planning on working out of home that day since you woke up late and it's cold outside and they're predicting 12 inches of snow, and besides there's a deadline looming and you don't need the friends and distractions you've collected for yourself in your office area, and you'd like to eat something good but cook a bit too much, so you eat brunch, and save the leftovers for dinner.

I'm guessing that's not making it into the OED anytime soon.

Anyway, I just threw together the wilting veggies in the fridge with whatever spices seemed to go with them, and voila, my favourite dish, Le Cari Arbitraire de Jaggi.

I'll have to make sure this doesn't become a habit...

And here's my other apartment-mate, Chandler See, eating my curry,

while watching Tom and Jerry (no rhyme intended).

Just another day doing research/in grad school...

On how being a geek can save you from excessive radiation

2006-03-01T09:34:00.000-08:00

What a week it's been thus far (and then some). As my office-mate Gil would say, Oy vey. But that's fodder for a later post... this one's a quickie.

My wisdom teeth starting acting up the day I defended my thesis (shows the fundamental inter-connectedness of everything). But my Pasadena dentist didn't seem very thorough, was a gold-digger, and worst of all, insulted my mommy. So I said adieu, and just grin and bore it until it all got better.

Except that they've started bugging me again. So I dropped by the dentist (the dentist here was extremely professional and personable, and to my pleasant surprise MIT Dental insurance is actually quite decent so it may not end up costing me an arm and a leg besides the wisdom I'd be glad to be rid of anyway).

Except, she wanted to get an X-ray done. Which I'd forgotten to dig out of my still unopened boxes of paperwork.

Except, being the geek I am, I'd actually scanned them in, with the vague thought of using them somehow on my webpage.

If I die a horrible death in a flaming wreck of a car-crash, you can now identify my remains via my teeth.

Oh frabjous day

2006-02-25T05:41:00.000-08:00

I woke up today to an unreasoning joy, and it's taking me up and down and all the way round...
Shaving was a pleasure, and I exploded into a grin looking at myself in the mirror. I thought of the day to come -- playing with the windmill with Ben, thinking up dainty dishes for the dinner I'm cooking for friends tonight, and I hugged myself. I read about photovoltaic cells in the (unasked for and ungiven) sustainable energy book that Ian leaves around (because he knows I'm reading it; part of the pushme-pullyou apartment-mate dance which works beautifully with the right people, or not at all), and looking at the efficiency curves tilting up sunwards made me happy, 'cos of all the smart people doing good work.

Right now, the world can do me no wrong -- I must've slayed the Jabberwock in my dreams.

Intellectual Arrogance-II

2006-02-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

I attended a talk on "Energy Regulation and Policy" at Tufts today. The speaker was Mary Clark Webster (her website should be here, but for some reason is down), a Tufts alum who now runs her own energy regulatory consulting business and now is an energetic globe-trotter.

The first sign that things were not what they might seem was when in the first few minutes, the speaker said something like "... country X produces Y megawatts... do you know what a megawatt is? You're all graduate students, right...?" Silence all round. "It's a unit of energy..."

"So we'll focus on Iraq and Nepal. Does everyone know where Nepal is?"

A few minutes later, "So this table here with the GDPs of various countries... you know, when I was a student here at Tufts, I hated statistics, but everyone had to take the course. But it's really useful to know."

To prove her point about greenhouse gases from inefficient Iraqi power plants, she pulled out photographs... "Just look at this smoke coming out of these stacks. And these. And these. Oh look, this one's BLACK!"

Then there were the photographs of her.

In front of an American tank in Iraq. And in front of several palaces. In front of many, MANY places.

Punctuated regularly with comments about how run-down the infrastructure in the countries she was talking about was {it was - she was talking about Iraq and Nepal}, but, above all, how dirty those countries she was talking about were, {unspoken "tut tut"}. Oh, for Tosin's benefit, she also threw in a few "sigh"-comments about Nigeria...

And so on...

... and then there were the questions.

"umm... I don't know much about hydroelectric power, so this question is probably dumb." {it was. subtext: I'm going to open my mouth and start freely associating, since I want to be noticed so you'll give me a job} "You talked about hydroelectric power in Nepal. Don't they have... ummm... other sources?" {She had said clearly several times that 95% of Nepali electricity was generated via hydel power, which has HUGE hydel resources which are massively underutilized. And very few other energy resources to speak of.}

Response from Mary Clark Webster - "That's an excellent question." {jabber jabber explaining the perfectly obvious} "Sorry for the long answer to that really hard question."

Guy who asked it, Beavis&Butthead-style, "Heh heh, yeah, hard question."

In case it isn't obvious from my above comments, I actually liked her talk. She possibly knew her stuff (she should, she's been in the field 15 years), at least enough to fake it as a black-box oracle. Her facts and figures seemed to be about right (barring occasional gaffes along the lines of "India and and China both produce 100 GW of electricity" - that one's off by almost a factor of three in China's case). It was well-structured from a get-the-facts across point of view. Obviously, she cared about the matter (though in a "Oh! Let me help the poor injured birdie" kind of way). And most importantly, in her area of expertise, that of setting up the bureaucratic organizations that monitor energy with scads of paperwork, she knew her shit. (After the talk, when I button-holed her, she spoke admiringly of the 86 different regulatory bodies that India has for energy matters; the lady may not know enough about the Indian penchant for red-tape babucracy).

And even though some of the audience members were just... blah. Well, hey, that happens at the best of places, and some of them at least looked intelligent.

What scared me was my own reaction to this... impatient with the slightest deficiency (albeit successfully kept just to myself). Sure, these are the sort of people who'll be deciding the same policies that better engineers than me will have to implement, and that really sucks, but I always knew that. No, what scares me is my suddent relapse in interactions with "real" people in the "real" world (i.e., not the geekdoms I've inhabited this last decade). I thought I'd gotten better over the years, more understanding of the fact that most people are just trying to get by, and don't really want to be doing whatever it is they're doing, and so despite the fact that they hold your toothpaste or tooth or appendix in their hand and aren't doing a terribly good job fixing it, it's okay, they'll get better with time, and it doesn't really matter, because there's a crucial minimal set of people who really like what they're doing and do it well, and that's all that matters to keep the world going, and, more importantly, to keep ME going by a symbiotic relationship with their enthusiasm, and that mental energy can be used to gently poke the others that you can help in the right direction and they often end up surprising you in a good way, and that's what matters in the end, that's what it's all about.

Yeah, what scared me was those flashes of nihilism I felt during the talk. Ayn Rand-esque, but without even an Atlas Shrugged possibility of redemption.

Luckily, on the way out I bumped into this competent-looking guy who's doing his thesis on energy issues on Indian, pumped him for information which he had at his fingertips, and I'm back to viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses again.

Gawd - that's a horrible photoshop job, even if I do say so myself...

Newsflash

2006-02-20T09:06:00.000-08:00

This is just in. Sidharth Jaggi and Benjamin Lee were seen trying to make an LED light up by blowing on a wee little whirly thingie.

Yes, folken, we just built our first windmill, using the design (and magents) from here. Previous references to this madcap project can be found here, here and here.

So this baby will (next weekend, when we put the finishing touches) generate all of 1 watt peak power. Now the only thing left to do is make about 2,300,000,000,000 of these (or, increase the wing-span of this one by a factor of 13,200, since power scales as the cube of the wind-span), and the world's electricity problems are solved...

And other excitement for the day - I just discovered this lovely word. Sprachgefuhl. Now if only I can figure out how to use it in everyday language without being utterly unsprachgefuhl-like...

And how was your Valentine's Day?

2006-02-14T22:26:00.001-08:00

I went to my first (and I suspect last)
Boston Young Professional Association soirée.

Is that guy in the background yawning? I surely was. Too crowded to move, too loud to chat, too cruisy to relax...

... so I guzzled down my complimentary drink and sat in a corner, pondering this theorem I suddenly had a great idea about. When a woman finally turned to me and drunkenly asked me if I was alright, I realized it was time to move on.

Luckily, Good Night and Good Luck, which I've been lusting to see for a while, was playing right around the corner, and I happened to have a free ticket in my pocket (on a previous date at that theatre, some random woman in the audience let her phone ring, and as penance the management gave all the audience members complimentary repeat tickets). Serendipity beckons but once, I figured, and bit.

Well-bit in Haymarket, as it turned out.

David Strathairn out-Ben Kingsley'd Ben Kingsley. More of a documentary than a movie, but with the better elements of both; strong factual basis, complemented with an extremely careful but equally minimalist character portrayal. Not quite the happy Disney ending I expected, though; the focus was on the constant fight between the forces of inertia and change, and inertia was not the loser in this movie.

The long walk back was relaxing, and cleared the last of the wine from my head, while I pondered on this, that and the other. Spoke sonorous sounds to myself, and
psyched myself up for the battle of the rest of my life. A mood I'm often in after a fighting good movie or book or thought :)

But the real story of the evening was my apartment-mate's tale to tell. He got back just a few minutes after me, and seemed in high spirits. He asked about my evening (yes, we're quite a couple of home-birds that way) and I gave the one-sentence version of the above. Reciprocated by asking him about his (mis)adventures and broke out into this most amazing grin...

A word or two about Ian.

Not only does he look like Clark Kent, he usually behaves like him (minus the hidden superpowers). Straight-edge, clean-cut all-American kid, sings in the church choir, likes cooking (vegetarian food, even), and runs three miles a day.

... "I had a most... mischevious day." Another dazzling grin.

"Really, Ian? Mischevious?"

"Well, I spent all evening sending Valentines from a whole set of people to another whole set of people who never sent them."

"Really? To whom?"

"My classmates. I sent one from this extremely apologetic woman to the most sarcastic guy in class. Another from an undergraduate to her female TA. Another..."

"... whoa - really?" (As you can see, I was somewhat at a loss for words). "All by yourself?"

"Well, I had a co-conspirator, but mostly by myself. Everyone was wondering who it was. Nobody suspected me."

"Ian, you sometimes surprise me. Gimme five! Come, sit, tell me all about it."

"No, I have to sleep; early class tomorrow. One must pay a price."

Another dazzling grin, and he was off.

I'm touched. At one level, this reminded me of high school. But at another, it reaffirmed my hope for humanity.

And I ask you again, how was your Valentine's day?

Reflected glory

2006-02-08T22:02:00.000-08:00

My mom paints. As in, does paintings. This post is intended primarily to plug for her website, http://indu.jaggi.name, (which you should all visit). Advertising her site (even though she refuses to reciprocate, since she considers the personal touch "unprofessional" :) is little enough to do in exchange for her X chromosome and all that followed.

This post's secondary (but actually real) reason is to crow about a past triumph.

The event where those photographs were taken - Mom's art exhibition.

Which, despite all odds, we managed to keep a surprise from her...

The heretofore untold story of covert operation IJAE (Indu Jaggi's Art Exhibition) follows.

I cooked it up in a flash one sleepy night a few months before my trip home last summer. I ran the idea by my brother and a few relatives, who egged me on. I started the ball rolling by asking my aunt (the person on the right in the photograph above) to manage it. Which she did admirably in my stead (since this was my first trip home in quite a while, mom jealously guarded all my quality time).

Before flying home, I called up friends and family (who had most of the paintings) to arrange for a date for the exhibition and to ask for their help in collecting the paintings in one location.

And of course most of them immediately called mom and started hinting about surprises she'd be getting in the near future.

Luckily, I had an ace up my sleeve. I'd deliberately booked a flight arriving a day earlier then my parents expected me. After the initial shock, mom thought this was the surprise my aunts had been hinting at.

Then came the next speed-bump. I needed to travel about Delhi looking at the venues my aunt had suggested, but any unexplained trips outside the house had to be accounted for to mom; (after the surprise vacation my brother and I had arranged for my parents' 25th anniversary on my previous visit, mom was a very suspicious woman indeed when it came to unexplained trips I made around Delhi...)

Which is where my cycling excursions on the roads of Delhi came in handy.

Exercise, was my excuse. Which had the advantage of (also) being the truth. And, y'know, cycling in Delhi is actually quite fun. You should try it.

Of course, nobody could keep the big secret to themselves...

Mom: Huh - you said you were going to go buy vegetables - that took a long time! Dad: (whom I'd asked to help get some wine for the event) ... I had to go do something for you, but I can't tell you what...

... and on another occasion, phone chat with my grand-dad...

Grand-dad to mom: So, which paintings should we get tomorrow night? Self (hurriedly cutting in while mom had this quizzical expression on her face): Sssooo, how're you doing? Been a long time since I've seen you {and jabbered away}

... and me renting a cell-phone and slinking away whenever I got a call, which convinced mom that I had a girfriend (or worse, a boyfriend) she didn't know about.

Actually, the thing that came closest to giving the whole game away was, after these near-disasters, my extended family's decision to just keep mum about the whole thing. They took it to the extreme of not calling (otherwise they'd "blab all about it"), which mom took as a personal affront "my son's come home after this long, and nobody's even bothered to call and chat with him?" Of course, I'd been having daily conversations with many of them, but how was I to say that? That would have caused
a minor vendetta, but for the skilful diplomacy of my aunt. Who also did an excellent job arranging the whole thing.

And then came the day... we'd have to be out of the house for six whole hours on one of the hottest days in the Delhi summer, so that the paintings at home could be sneaked out. And then arrive at the exhibition hall at exactly the right point in time.

I bit the bullet, and asked mom to help me go shopping.

Well, the long and the short of it is it all worked out, and was quite a wonderful evening. Once again, go check out mom's website, and the art exhibition.

Here's something to whet your appetite.

And now here comes my faithful reader's comment to this post...

A picture well worth a thousand words

2006-02-05T20:48:00.000-08:00

This is Ben and me over coffee, chatting about windmill design, visual filters (the eye detects only magnitudes, not phases - thank you Ben!) and energy horns. Unaware (then) that someone a table over was sketching us, but later bought the sketch from him.

I love these semi-regular meetings with Ben - we think along very similar lines, but have enough differences that bouncing ideas off each other is always extremely stimulating. This weekend, my brilliant idea was on hydrogen energy storage (the problem is that hydrogen, though it has a very high energy density per unit mass, has a very low mass density per unit volume at standard temperature and pressure which results in an overall fairly low density per unit volume; for static solutions (read - NOT transportation), the solution is to store it in a variable volume container at a variable depth underwater, so that the pressure differential across the walls of the container is minimal - you can even use the compression energy of the hydrogen as a secondary energy storage device, sort of like using compressed air; perfect as a buffering solution for offshore wind power-generation, say on unused oil rigs, where access to deep water is directly available, and the problem is a power-generation scheme which is highly variable in output depending on the vagaries of the wind). Ben had his own... Oops - geekiness threshold about to be breached for this post. To be continued later or on some other forum.

Anyway, brilliant ideas aside, there are friends one cherishes, and Ben is rapidly (re)becoming one...

A Jaggi by any other name

2006-02-05T09:23:00.000-08:00

One of the advantages of having an unusual name is that it sticks in memories. (And not just people's memories, either. Fr'instance, see here, here and especially here.)

Those of you who know a bit about Indian names might say that Sidharth isn't uncommon.
And you'd be (almost) right. I was named after this guy here,

... just having narrowly avoided being named after this guy here,

... but that's another story for another time. The thing, is, though, that due to a spelling mistake my name has but a single D in it (instead of the usual "sidDharth"), which results in the really cool fact that my name anagrams to HARD SHIT (which was used to full effect in the first few minutes of my thesis presentation).

Also, a liberal interpretation of the Sanskrit etymology of my name means that I am a theorem-prover, which is really quite apt. (Siddh = justify, arth = truth. One who justifies the truth = one who proves theorems. See?)

But really, this post is more about my surname rather than my Christian (cross that) Hindu (cross that...) Atheist... let's just say my given name.

How many Jaggis do YOU know? Likelier than not, just me or someone related to me. That's kinda how it was like for me when I was growing up. Even Delhi, the homeland of Jaggis, had only a page or two of Jaggis in the phone-book who weren't relatives.

Except the Jaggi Butter Chicken-walla right outside Priya cinema.

Or, of course, this guy.

But that was before I started Googling. A search for "Jaggi family Genealogy" yielded this gem

{Begin excerpt}
JAGGIS IN INDIA ARE KNOWN TO HAVE COME TO INDIA OR SPREAD OVER THE WORLD FROM WEST ASIA. NOW SOME ROOTS HAVE BEEN TRACED TO TURKY OF THEIR EARLY PRESENCE A FEW CENTURIES AGO. IN THE WAKE OF THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH PROBABLY IN PAKISTAN AS HIMALAYS BEING THE PLACE OF ORGIN OF HUMAN CIVILISATION,THEY SPREAD ALL OVER FROM THERE.
{End excerpt}

Hmm. Really?

Anyway, I Googled some more and discovered that ninety percent of the Jaggi web-presence (and even now well over half) was based on the Swiss Family Jaggi.

Which was perfect, 'cos I was about to go to Switzerland on a conference, and so randomly emailed a bunch of Jaggis saying something like "Hey there! Your last name is the same as mine. Let's meet up!"

To my surprise, one of them actually responded.

Martin Jaggi, then a math undergrad at ETH Zurich, offered to take me around Switzerland for a day (would've loved to hang out longer, but the man had to go to some climbing competition - he was on the Swiss national climbing team and I believe he's currently ranked reasonably highly in the world. We Jaggis are an illustrious sports family. Consider, for instance, Karin Jaggi, sometime woman windsurfing world champion...)

At any rate, it was fun, and we're still occasional pen-pals.

And that, I thought, would be the end of my pseudo-genealogical endeavours. But Jaggis the world over continually surprise...

Out of the blue, a few while ago I got this email...

_______________________________

Olá, Não sei se compreende português, mas...
Meu nome é Anderson Jaggi, e na verdade desde pequeno queria saber a origem do sobrenome jaggi e nunca soube porque meu pai nunca soube responder. E queria perguntar vc que tb tem esse sobrenome se sabe a origem, e até quem sabe temos grau de parentesco, antes de descobrir aqui no orkut, não sabia que tinha outras pessoas com esse sobrenome pq até então não tinha visto ninguém com o mesmo sobrenome que o meu.
Abraços.

This message was sent by Anderson Miranda Jaggi to Sidharth
________________________________

Luckily, for some random reason I used Google Translator instead of deleting the message out of hand. Turns out, there's a Brazilian branch of the many-tentacled Jaggi clan.

________________________________

Olá, I do not know if it understands Portuguese, but... My name is Anderson Jaggi, and in the truth since small jaggi wanted to know the origin of the last name and it never knew because my father never knew to answer. E wanted to ask vc that tb has this last name if it knows the origin, and until who knows has degree of kindred, before discovering here in orkut, not wise person who had other people with this last name pq until then had not seen nobody with the same last name that mine. Abraços.
________________________________

Some emails were exchanged, facilitated by Google...

________________________________

Olá, Then you he is Indian, works with what!? What you it makes there in
India....
I wait that let us continue to keep contact, who knows one day we can in
knowing them personally, after all we can be relatives.
We still go to talk on some subjects.
One I hug friend. Anderson Jaggi (Brazil)
________________________________

So maybe the online translator messed stuff up, but did he just offer to marry me? Anyway, it's too late now - I'm part of the Orkut Jaggi Brazilian family now.

One last tale to wrap up this Jaggi saga.

The perspicacious among you might have noted that Jaggi is a homophone for Juggy. And the salacious among you might have seen The Man Show. Featuring the Juggies. In particular "Juggies on Trampolines". (Depending on where you work, those last few links might Not be Safe For Work).

Some would have dismissed this as unfortunate happenstance. And so did I, until this series of conversations.
________________________________

Self (to Greek ex-landlord): Oh, so you're Greek? One of my best friend's last name is Greek.

Ex-landlord: Really? What's his name?

Self: Maltezos.

Ex-landlord: {gentle grin}

Self: What's so funny?

Ex-landlord: Weeeelllll... in Greek, Maltezos means man with large boobs.

.
.
.

{few days later, conversation with George and his dad, who happens to be in town}

.
.
.

Self: Mr. Maltezos. My landlord just told me your name means man with large boobs.

Mr. Maltezos: NO NO NONONONONO! It means Man from Malta. See - Malta, Maltezos.

.
.
.

{next conversation with ex-landlord}

Self: You told me it means man with large boobs. But Mr. Maltezos just told me it means man from Malta. Which makes a lot of sense.

Ex-landlord: {gentle grin in full force} Weeeelllllll, it COULD mean man from Malta, but where I come from, it usually refers to this breed of goat from Malta with large boobs....

________________________________

Coincidence that my friend and I share the same name? I think NOT.

How many angels can dance at the end of a sentence?

2006-01-31T23:37:00.000-08:00

After work I was walking along the street, and, as sometimes happens, a random phrase popped into my head and I mumbled it out loud to myself before I really heard it. "I am as a god among angels."

Well, clearly, humility isn't a problem I face, but really, in this situation what I found odd was the context. I wasn't particularly happy with myself for any reason at all (no, I wasn't sad either). If you must know, I was thinking about how to get to the talk by the wind-power guy.

The obvious answer is it had something to do with the application materials I was mid-way through writing (a research statement (yes, it's finally done and sent off - NOW I can start working on the harder project - the homeless person challenge) in which much effort went into making myself seem excellentemundo, and the best thing since turduckens besides). Wokay, maybe the good ol' subconscious was pokin' some fun at me. But once I get onto the slippery slope of the-subconscious-did-it, there're so many other beguiling explanations.

Like the one involving the fact that I was going to attend a talk where I'd meet a whole bunch of like-minded people, some of whom were extremely competent at what they did (building windmills). Which I did. Only at MIT. (Or Caltech :) And the wonder of this place is such this happens on a daily basis - I literally walk among the gods of men - the people who are the best at what they do. This is a feeling I've had a few times here, but no, at that point in time it wasn't in my gut, where it'd have had to have been to explain that phrase.

Here's another one - it was kind of pretty right then, light snow on the ground crunching beneath my feet. I was ensconsced in my thick black jacket, and so were this couple who'd just walked past me arm-in-arm, and there was this sense of choreographed loneliness in a crowd. Like the scene from the City of Angels, the sound of the song of which might still have been running in my head (don't quite remember what I was listening to in the office). Again, probably not (too contrived).

And then why the phrase itself? I was pretty sure even as it wormed its way into my superconscious (yes, I obsessively navel-gaze and was thinking about it even then - it isn't just YOU, gentle reader, who gets subjected to this swill) that it wasn't something I'd heard in that form before, and a Google search seems to confirm that. Sure "[X] was as a God among men" is a common phrase, but what in my convoluted cerebrum elevated that last word to angels? And surely even my egotistical self wouldn't insert I/me/myself as the subject of that sentence?

But maybe it is all of these things, and others I haven't yet thought of. If my conscious brain could think of all this in the couple seconds I had before I had to take evasive action to avoid bumping into the bike heading toward me, it's entirely likely that the other sub-cerebellar 80% could do much more in hiding.

And WHY am I using obscene numbers of electrons to generate this? Well, I just think it's fascinating. I think the phrase has pizzaz, and creativity, especially in my business, is such a precious thing.

Thus endeth this ramble.

PS: This sort of post is why I don't advertise this blog (much :) It feels like home and I do whatever here, so it feels good not to have to live up to expectations...

The homeless person challenge

2006-01-29T14:44:00.000-08:00

The other day my apartment-mate Ian and I were talking about some random biological stuff. I don't remember how it started, but I do remember parts of the conversation -

I (Ian): ... I think viruses are pointy.

Me (Me): Pointy? Why pointy?

I: Well, they have to get into the cells somehow, don't they? I always imagined they poked {punctuated with a finger jerk} their way in.

Several of my own comments were equally inane, and it was pretty clear pretty soon that neither of us knew what we were talking about.

It was a strange feeling.

I mean, I know I don't know everything (just a while ago I was chatting with Parmesh, who was feeling gossipy about which famous Indian was having an affair with which other famous Indian, and I was clueless, and happily so; he was charmingly disappointed).

Still, having spent ten years sequestered with eggheads, there's a subconscious (and sometimes not so sub- either) arrogance in me when it comes to "intellectual" matters. Especially science. There's a feeling of "I only need to apply myself a bit and surely I can reason out the basics myself", a sense of entitlement almost.

Of course, whenever I run against anything where the basic science is just so strange as to defy intuition (read, for instance, string theory), or deals with systems so complex that underlying physical principles can't be used to bootstrap up understanding (read, for instance, biology).

So there I was, feeling like Jennipher (one way to reduce air pollution is to eat less gaseous materials (which, btw, isn't necessarily as off-the-mark as you think)).

Perhaps this was in the back of my mind when the next day I randomly decided to give poor Ian an unsolicited tutorial on RSA cryptography. It's totally out of his field, and honestly, his interest, but I figured that he's a smart cookie and surely my enthusiasm would win the day.

Comme-ci, comme ça, as it turned out. The sharp edges of the cookie caught onto the basic idea quckly enough, but started crumbling under combined disinterest and my overenthusiastic too-much-information approach to teaching.

Kinda a bummer, given I'm writing my teaching statement for some positions right now.

Looking at my woebegone expression, he said the usual cheer-upper. 'Not my field of expertise.' I was like - dammit - I should be able to generate that understanding and enthusiasm in you. Dick Feynman said, “If you can’t explain [an idea] so that a freshman could understand it, then you don’t understand it.”

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
Albert Einstein

Gratuitous quotes aside, it was clear that I need yet more practice communicating clearly.

Thus was born the homeless person challenge.

I: If you can explain your research to a homeless person without him asking you for a dollar, I'll give you a dollar.

Me: Deal.

While I don't expect any homeless people to be reading this blog, I'll give it a first shot here. Watch this space...

Glowing...

2006-01-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple months, and in particular over the last few days, a surprising number of people I know actually complimented me on my writing on the basis of this blog. Surprising only {grin} because I haven't really gone out of my way to advertise this page since I still feel like I'm finding my way around language which is neither meant to communicate face-to-face, nor be something intensely personal, but something in between. But still keeping it real for the most part.

Good. My experiments in playing with words are paying off. Now all that remains is for someone to be impressed enough to offer me a million-dollar book deal, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and/or his/her virginity, and then it'll all have been worth it.

In the meantime, since I'm feeling lazy, here's a cross-post from an email I sent to an egroup I belong to. I'm posting it here mostly because I wrote it late at night a couple days ago when I was kinda spaced out, next morning went back and reread it and actually liked it. Like I've said before, sleep hormones are my personal LSD.

Appending the thread to this post, including two emails from friends which got me started. You'll need to read at least the Omelas link to get context.

_______________________________________________________

> Abraham Thomas wrote:
> >
> > Read this:
> > http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972----.htm

> > Do you think people should give away large sums of money, as Singer
> > advocates?
> >
> > Now read this:
> > http://teacherweb.ftl.pinecrest.edu/crawfor/apcg/Unit1Omelas.htm

> > Do you think people should walk away from Omelas?
> >
> > If your answers are NO and YES respectively (as most people's are), then
> > are
> > you being consistent?
> >
> > Or to put it in somebody else's words: how can it be right to sentence
> > hundreds of children to painful deaths to keep one person moderately
> > happy,
> > but not right to subject one child to misery to keep a whole society
> > ecstatically happy?
> >
> > t.
> >

--- In sindar@yahoogroups.com, Sameer Siruguri wrote:
>
> My answers are NO and NO, so I am in the clear anyway.
>
> Even if they weren't, I think the juxtaposition is unfair because it sets up
> a situation fraught with uncertainties with one defined by certainty. If I
> absolutely know for certain that this one kid's sorrow will ensure my
> society's happiness, of course, I will let him suffer.
>
> In the other case, we don't absolutely that giving aid is not a good
> solution in the long-term, or that the money I give will eventually reach
> the intended recipient, given the faulty mechanisms we have today. In the
> face of this massive uncertainty, most decisions will be morally equivalent.
> Something about the long tail here, that I don't have time to address, as I
> have to run to catch my train...

Sidharth Jaggi to sindar

Hmm - my answers, really, would be maybe and maybe. unlike sam (or sa-mirr as he would have some of us call him :), i don't know that i view either situation as absolutes (in omelas, what do I care about society? i'm a selfish being, and perhaps it matters more to me to do whatever makes me feel good in the short run (common human reaction anyway), which might go any of at least three ways. besides, change can be a good thing - eden'd get frigging BO-RING after a while. and as for the bengal famine article, if you read to the bottom you read the foot-note about how it was resolved (if you didn't already know) - not a black-and-white answer)

if you try phrasing the scenarios in strictly logical terms with absolutes instead of situationals, then, of course, i'd cry "cheating", 'cos you're dealing with reality, where emotions matter.

shades of gray, gentle(wo)men, it's all shades of gray in my pre-kodachrome world.

btw, i think that LeGuin (as usual) has done a brilliant job capturing a mood, a single "moral". except i'm not quite sure what.

where could the story have gone, if she'd spent another few pages and made it into a book? maybe it'd focus on the person who eventually disturbed narnia? (mixing fantasies, would (s)he be naïvely brave like frodo? or all-knowing like gandalf? any which way, the elves' days were done. maybe it'd be aragorn, not gormlessly fading away when his deed was done.) or maybe it'd concentrate on the secret autobiography
of the child, an all-knowing machiavellian jesus who knows the value of visible suffering in holding societies together. how about the point of view of the few nameless travellers, leaving a christian heaven to enter a hindu life... for one turn of the wheel? maybe it'd be a reality show-style peek on religion, and the dynamics of an agnostic adult embracing an unprovable faith. maybe it'd be a behind-the-scenes monologue by the inscrutable being who set it all up (more philosophy professor than LeGuin, but still).

day-um, it'd've been a good book.

hmm - is it... messed up that I identify so much more with the fantasy situation than the real one?
--
sidharth "morally ambiguous, and off to bed" jaggi

______________________________________________________

You may or may not have been interested in the ethics discussion (if not, think of it as a character-building exercise). But surely LeGuin's Omelas took your breath away?

I always KNEWED I should've been a novelist. I can see the NYTimes review now - "Obscure post-doc steals someone else's idea and writes inscrutably obfuscated fantasy novel combining pop-cultural references with half-baked philosophy."

Motivation

2006-01-24T21:12:00.000-08:00

I just got this email from a friend/reader-of-this-blog (who can identify himself in the comments section if he so wishes)

__________________________

Your friend , who solves rubic cube in record time, was on tonights show with Jay Leno tonight. He got to unhook five bras too( which were on 5 freaking hot girls). I gotta learn how to solve a rubic cube! Thought you would like to know.
__________________________

What can I say? Like I always said, being geeky is COOL. Thank you, Ashton Kutcher, for your social experiment.

Is it just me, or is there a resemblance to Tyson?

Today

2006-01-19T19:58:00.000-08:00

... was just another day.

I went for a post-doc council meeting, attended a talk by the guy who helped build the computer that went to the moon on the Apollos, reviewed a paper, a talk on Lithium ion batteries, research jib-jab with office-mate, and then I was going to go for a change-ringing session (the traditional British style of ringing church bells)...

(I LOVE IAP!!!)

... but I remembered Beauty and the Geek was on, and I promptly returned home to dutifully become a couch-potato for the first reality show I've ever watched.

It features (amongst other people, all insignificant) the studly Tyson Mao.

How do I love Tyson - let me count the ways...

... in a Chinese class we were both taking, the man suddenly got up and announced that he had $200 worth of two-dollar bills, and anyone who wanted to exchange more conventional notes for these was welcome to walk up and do so. All for the good cause of increasing odd (well, in this case even, but you know what I mean) denominations in circulation.

... his skit for that class that we had to shoot with a video-camera involved him running. And running some more, and then some more again. For many minutes.

... in Avery Hovse, at Caltech, where I briefly stayed, he moved in the same time I did. There was some random tiff where some random guy made some random assinine comment, and Tyson decided to take up arms. He emailed everyone saying something along the lines of - I'll announce on national television how petty Avery Hovse is. And then you'll all be sorry. (Btw, I note that on TV he's often wearing his red Fleming Hovse sweatshirt, and on the TV show discussion board, there were people asking where you could get those - to earn the right to wear one you have to burn down your parents' garage building a rocket-ship, sweetheart, just like a Tech frosh did).

... in case you didn't read the caption in that picture, our man holds a world record in speed-solving a Rubik's cube blindfolded (or rather, held the position, but just lost it by a fraction of a second).

As I've said to him... I wanna have his babies. But before that, I'm rooting for him. Join in the prayers - on the WB at 8pm, 7pm central.

If the above wasn't enticement enough, here's another reason to watch the show...

Update: Our man WON the karoake competition on the second episode, wowing the crowds with, yep, you guessed it, his Rubik's cube solving abilities...

Windmills and chocolate

2006-01-18T20:11:00.000-08:00

Or better yet, chocolate windmills

My handiwork at today's IAP Chocolate Sculpture Workshop

I guess you could call them alternative sources of energy... in the windmills of my mind.

Self-indulgent post

2006-01-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

There are good days and bad days. Today was a good day. While we're at it, it was a good weekend.

ISIT paper submitted. Yes. Finally. Done. After two revisions this weekend alone. And very well-written too, even if I do say so myself. Stuff almost competely unpacked, room kinda set up (the three things needed to make my life perfect - lamp, nail-cutter and key-ring, all obtained), books stockpiled in office, bike reconstructed and fixed, biked five miles back from Medford, groceries stockpiled and tofu-potator burgers cooked and fed to apartment-mates (thereby leading to hour-long conversations and ice broken), random little thingies bought, exercise room access obtained and exercised in, various post-doc applications for next years sent off.

And not all grunt-work either. With some new friends, went ice-skating Friday night, followed up with dinner at a fairly reasonable Chinese vegetarian restaurant, and
clubbing at a hip-hop place the next night - pleasantly drunk and thoroughly danced out. Bladed two miles each way in the rain, umbrella in hand, to lunch with a friend, Ben Lee, also a Caltech alum...

... whence we started our windmill design project.

Preliminary camouflage over, we come to the ulterior motive, the meat of this post. Yes, my friend and I have decided to build a windmill.

Resolved - it'll be a vertical axis windmill.

We hope to get permission to build it on the top of Tang hall.

Dimensions are still in flux, but the goal is to have this baby generate some serious power. Enough to power, say, a flood-light, which could illuminate, oh... maybe a beaver cutout...

... suitably placed. Sort of like a beaver-signal.

Why beavers? Well, 'cos beavers are nature's engineers. And also mascots for both Caltech and MIT (engineering schools both).

Okay, now that beaver bit's convinced you it's all a joke. But no, really, there's lots of reasons to build a windmill. Good reasons.

Such as that it's been ten years I've been doing electrical engineering, and I've yet to come down from my ivory tower to actually build anything. Dammit, I haven't even touched a soldering iron. So, part motivation is to actually be an engineer.

Why a windmill? Several of you know I've become more and more interested in Energy Issues (capitals deliberate) over the last couple of years. More on this in later posts (and there's lots to say - fascinating reading/hearing, especially as more and more people get involved now that energy prices are beginning their inexorable climb upwards). Involving myself in a relatively simple, tangible renewable energy project seems like a good way to get some hands-on exposure.

Also, this post-doc position, short-term though it is, is almost exactly the right duration for a project like this. Spend the winter months designing, and in the spring start construction. MIT is a good place to be doing it too - zillions of resources and interested/capable people.

But the most important reason is probably... just because.

Yep, a good weekend.

Life as a Metaphor for Cartoons

2006-01-11T00:13:00.000-08:00

This last week, busy, busy, busy. Making myself at home in various ways, and making a home for myself.

It's fun meeting new people, and charming the socks off them.

At times, it's been frustrating, dealing with little nitty gritties.

On the flip side, it's kinda fun exploring the whole new setting.

On the whole, it's really stimulating, what with all the activities of IAP going on.

Paper submission deadlines had me all tangled up for a while, but it's resolved.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here. Why do I get ten years of drinking from the fire-hose...?

(All graphics in this post shamelessly stripped from Sinfest)

Statistics look back, but hope looks forward...

2006-01-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

"... so much to say,
Open up my head and let me out little baby."

Yep, it's been a while since I've posted. This is both cause and effect. Effect first - there's just been a lot going on (ISIT deadline looming ever closer, paperwork for post-doc, moving/unpacking, the not-quite-wedding, and so much more...) And as for cause - the itch of not having written for a while means I'm at it when I really should be sleeping :)

Well, here's today. Which is worth recording; as much as yesterday and hopefully as much as tomorrow.

First, a throwaway impression I had while riding the New York subway. I was sitting there and suddenly had this massive feeling of Swim. Just in terms of ape-man to homo sapiens sapiens to Indians to me-desi to me-now riding the subway.
Took a look around the carraige, and saw people who were the city. The kids travelling to hang someplace. The Angela Lansbury-lookalike who mini-curtsied to the door getting in, bobbed her head as she sub-vocally spoke to herself, and expressed quite complex emotions with her eyebrows to no-one in particular except her knitting needles. The dour MTA train driver napping (hopefully) on his way home. I'm a city man; people-overdose, as it does on occasion, left me with a sudden unreasoning tingling feeling of Joy, personal version of the Lewis concept.

What am I doing back in NYC? Spent last night at my cousin Kapil's place in Manhattan. Here in town 'cos friends (lets call them G and S) were supposed to get married today. I say supposed to, because they instead got married last week, at 10 minutes to midnight on New Year's Eve. In a hospital room. Where his fiancée's dad was semi-comatose (he passed away the next day; he was terminally ill - his disease had taken a very sudden turn for the worse). Also, corresponding deep crisis on G's side of the family.

Yes, it kind of sucks, if you look at it that way.

On the flip side of it, which is what my friends chose to show the world, it was good that it could happen while it was still possible for him to be involved.

They proceeded to turn the ceremony into a blessing of their wedding. It was quite tastefully done. The combined Korean, Greek, Cuban and Belgian families congregated in the beautiful Columbia University chapel

and various people speechified.

Actually, I found the styles of elocution interesting. The young 'uns -- various siblings and cousins -- mostly (with one notable exception) sort of stepped through their prose with almost an embarrassed air. The act of speaking words with the potential of power seemed.. blasé... well, not really, but there was almost something furtive in how they went through prepared speeches without the sonority the occasion seemed to demand. Maybe part of it was because of the speaking in a place of worship - these people are my generation, and presumably have conflicted feelings mixing their likely atheism/agnosticism/self-awareness with childhood memories of worship-and-awe and being acutely aware of the complications of the situation.

And then there was the talk by G's uncle from Cuba, a pastor who "was not a disciple of Castro, and so would talk only briefly...." Now there was a man who knew how to speak. And how to take full (and unfair :) advantage of the echoing sombreity the chapel's acoustics offered him.

He started off with words on how statistics show that the institution of marraige is failing, divorce rates are up, and so on. At which I was like... whaa? you don't use S-words at a friggin' wedding speech. But it turned out the man had a point. A good one.

"... Statistics look back, but hope looks forward..."

"... Your choosing to hope, to show your love with formal vows of commitment, means more to us and to God than the statistics of the past."

And then in the remainder of his short speech he went on with variations on the theme, as pastors tend to do. While I pondered...

... I envy people their faith. Not that I wish to have it; there's no way back from my extreme self-centred atheistic relativism short of a complete re-evaluation of everything I believe in, and not really a desire to go there. I mean, I have this personal religion (which is essentially what atheism (unlike agnosticism - the only non-religion) boils down to) which works fine for me. But the comfort that people (smart people, people I respect, included) get from a bed-rock of faith to stand on seems to resonate with a fundamental need of people. That really is the reason it all works, and however much I rail about the pitfalls of organized religion, I can't really grudge people that.

And the pastor knew that. Not cynically, but because he believed, he drew on this common acceptance of basic actircles of faith and traditions to project a message of continuity, hope in the couple and thereby faith in humanity.

The same message is something I myself totally identify with, though not the framing of it (not least because I haven't had to endure Sunday school ad nauseum). But, to put the message in my own terms would require me to start from scratch, and such an uplifting message would require a whole huge infrastructure. Especially since in my "logical" construct everything is relative, including good and evil. For other people to identify with it would be hard. And frankly, it's not a very evangelistic belief system. Since everything is relative, implicitly there's no reason that this belief system that works for me would work for others; perhaps more importantly, it really isn't important to me that other people think the same way.

Which is another way of saying that evangelistic religions are probably here to stay.

Even S's drama-psychotherapist friend E, who started off for a friend's benefit a description of the... sermon, for want of a better word... with the disclaimer that it had a "Christian-centric heteronormative bias" felt the power of the message. E is a person who, despite being with P for five years and currently carrying his child, refuses to get formally married 'cos of complicated reasons, one of which being society's ideal of marraige as opposed to her own views on commitment.

Heteronormative. That's a good word. And even better word-structure. Desi = Hindinormative. Manhattan denizen = rich-normative. Seinfeld = funny-normative.

Why this particular ramble today?

Carl Sagan wrote an excellent novel Contact, which you should read instead of just watching the movie (which isn't bad). The book has pretty much the only version of a belief in a higher being that I might be able to identify with... if certain conditions are met. Read the book :)

Anyway, in the book, the protagonist, a scientist with a Ph.D. from Caltech, is being interviewed for the position of emissary of humanity to the all-powerful alien civilization and is asked about her religious beliefs. Honest to a fault, she admits to being a atheist. At which point she's asked the perfectly reasonable question "How do you expect to represent the 97% of humanity who believe in a higher being?" And she has to shut up.

It gets mighty lonely sometimes.

In Memoriam: A trip well-travelled

2006-01-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

Over 10,000 miles travelled, 45 days spent, 50 friends and family members met, 4 babies kissed, 27 states passed through, 19 towns/cities/one-horse-stops stopped at, 2 colds survived, 33 posts blogged, $3000 saved via a USA rail pass, cumulative ~ 200 hours spent on trains, 40 hours extra due to trains being late. Confided in strangers and bosom buddies. Danced with collies. Attended a book-club meeting to discuss A General Theory of Love. Heard the pain of death through a locked door and saw a tarantula. Ate many, many garden burgers and rice laced with chicken stock. Saw a city in a new light and fell in love with it all over again. Folded an old year into tissue paper and rolled out a new one.
Dreamt up wind-mill designs (watch this space) and plotted world-changing strategies. Discovered Moldova has no Indians. Lived poised between gentle moderation and wild extremities.

And now it's time to move on and stay put. I've reached Boston and have already started putting roots down - doing paperwork, getting drunk, making new friends and reacclimatizing to old ones for the long haul. And so, I have this to say to you, Sidharth Jaggi of yesteryear...

To sleep or not to sleep

2005-12-27T23:53:00.000-08:00

It's getting on 0300 and I need to get up at 0700. Just finished reviewing a paper, and could start working on another one (rare burst of work-directed energy, propmpted by deadline pressures). Or I could sleep (the single cup of coffee I had six hours ago has to wear off sometime). Or I could go through some more of the awesome Batman collections my cousin has. Or I could work on any number of little projects that need doing - updating my résumé (that's Dr. Jaggi to you, heh! :), reviewing my brother's, sending off my applications for my next positions (yeah, it's kinda weird, I haven't yet started this one and already have to think about the next one, but that's the way the academic cycle works - interesting positions start coming out in the fall, with deadlines often in Jan/Feb - I might stick around in Boston for more than a year for all I know, but still...)

Hmm, maybe instead of anything vaguely non-pointless like any of that I'll just ramble on in yet another blog entry.

So that's what I'm doing. While in the background I'm copying 5 years worth of emails from my lab server onto my laptop. It's one of those almost-totally-but-not-quite automatable tasks; every once in a couple minutes I have to go back and tap a couple keys.

Which is extremely distracting. Not just 'cos it breaks a chain of thought, but because I rediscover long-lost friends, lost causes, fruity ideas, little spats. It's like having an iPod-style shuffle-your-past button clicking straight into my past. See, I'm kind of a squirrel when it comes to emails. I have about 20,000 emails I've saved. That's about 10 emails a day. That's actually quite a lot, when I think about it; it's really a pretty good cross-section of my life, especially considering so much of it is spent hunched over a keyboard.

Here're results of a random walk. There're the Nimbus 2003 emails. Then there's the email about the roller-blading lessons I was giving a desi friend (a case of the one-eyed leading the blind). And then {blushing} those emails to this woman I had a crush on {blushes are about the terrible compositional quality of the emails, not the content - of course not...}

Of course not everything makes it into this vast vat of bits and pieces. Fr'instance, I just deleted a year's worth of work intentionally - top-secret grad-student honour code committee stuff. More pertinently, things that for whatever reason never make it into electronic media. Such as what's actually been occupying me mentally for the last twelve hours, but there's no way I'm committing to anything as permanent as electrons on bits of silicon, 'cos the core of it is not my secret to share. Or even just silly , random but worth-remembering memories, of hikes and bike-rides done, restaurants sampled, concerts listened to, songs which made me cry, the times when I smiled knowingly at myself in the mirror... you know what I'm talking about.

Okay, still and all, lots of material for future biographers to smack their lips about. Why do I keep stuff, most of which is essentially junk? Well, started off 'cos a person-who-shall-remain unnamed dug out some random email I'd sent a year previously to prove this person's point in an argument with me. This impressed me enough that I resolved to do the same with my own emails; after all, it costs nothing, and with the nifty search technology built into modern mailboxes, it's all good stuff.

Which gets me to thinking, what next? Will my equally geeky kids be walking around with a personal video(/holo?)-cam switched on 24/7 to record every single bit of their life just because they can? Which they can then date-mine with nifty almost-AI-level algorithms which can search for relevance in sound (easiest, though still pretty hard), images (much harder) and video/holo (hardest) like google does for text-based material right now?

All those emails I've sent have certainly improved my writing skills; though possibly at the expense of social skills I could have developed more (not that I ain't already a charmer ;) This is already an improvement from the previous generation of geeks who'd get their hands dirty and greasy actually building stuff. Will tech-obsessive people 30 years later actually be (gasp) the most socially sophisticated, having spent so much time crafting the perfect holo-mail (holocams don't lie - you can't just act cool, you have to be cool)? Slashdotter for president?

How about advertising in that information-saturation age? Something will have to pay for all that information-gathering and analysis; quite possibly the Google model where they do all the hard work in exchange for us giving a fraction of our brain-power to that there ad being played subliminally, under the voice message being piped through the ear-piece from which we get input from our ring-'puter. And how will Google access our private information? Via Googlebots, of course. Follow that link (which is the same as this one) and read the short (very short) story. Go ahead - it's funny, and I'll wait.

{break while I took a gentle introspective shower}

What media will actually support such high-data-rate requirements? At the storage-device end, we'll probably have those nifty tera/peta-byte capacity 3-D optical media I was reading about. For transmission through the ether, imagine our own little MASER beams following us around from high-altitude balloons or satellites - no interference to worry about this way...

Okay, that last idea, though perfectly explainable, was poorly enough explained that probably made little sense to anyone whose brain-waves aren't exactly in phase with mine. Which is a good cue for me to stop writing this futurama crap and go do something productive.

Only about 2 hours left now before I'd have to get up anyway. May as well read Batman...

Quick music request

2005-12-23T16:20:00.000-08:00

So. I just got a $15 free music coupon from my old boss, the Evil Empire. Redeemable only from the MSN store (of course) only until New Years (of course).

Now. Considering I've got a gazillion illegally downloaded songs to go through (which, actually, I'm kinda conflicted about, having come to the conclusion over this trip that I believe in copyright, though not in intellectual property), this seems like a drop in the bucket.

Still. Instead of spending time making these difficult decisions, thought I'd ask readers to send in (comment/email) reccos. Only criteria - all different artists. It also gives me some feedback on my readerhsip numbers ;)

Happy

2005-12-23T09:18:00.000-08:00

Alcohol doesn't do it for me - I lose motor control and fall asleep without ever feeling that 'buzz' people rave about. Pot doesn't do it for me - pretty much the same. Even morphine the times I've been hospitalized was more unpleasant than anything else.

Coffee, music, isolation, and sleepiness, on the other hand...

One Starbucks mocha superimposed on not-quite-enough-sleep and I'm soaring like an exaltation of larks. Listening to music that vibes with it. Reading the latest Iain Banks novel, periodically interspersed with obsessive RSS-newsread quickies. Fingers trembling with the caffeine shock. Sensory overdose. In case you haven't already guessed, I'm currently high.

To begin with, the iTunes shared music in this grad apartment complex at Princeton is much much better than the swill that Techers seems to listen to (almost entirely Japanese gaming soundtracks, it seems like at some times). The last few pieces I've listened to include a bagpipe version of Amazing Grace (gotta love that sustained bass drone), a Dave Matthews demo tape with a raw, earthy version of Crash, and Billy McLaughlin's Fingerdance (can't believe I'd never heard him before). Hope the MIT grad complex isn't a reprise of Tech - I've gotten thoroughly spoilt these last few days here.

But more than for any other reason, I've been holed up in this room for the last two days without seeing another human being, reading Iain Banks whenever I'm not trying to work. The man in brilliant at what he does. Which is quite varied, but here I'm talking about his SF. I'm currently going through The Algebraist (bewarned - link has spoilers).

Here's what makes his writing really enjoyable to me. He successfully combines all the elements I really enjoy in SF&F - the space opera duke-and-nuke-it-out escapism, a healthy respect for at least a veneer of geekitude without the sterility of... say... Niven, a very British sense of humour apparent in every element of the universes (and occasionally multiverses) he constructs while not going utterly overboard like the good doctor often does, a thoroughly well-crafted and richly imagined world which demands the wilful suspension of disbelief, and ever-so-alien lonely protagonists whose tragedies I can actually empathise with.

Here's an example of a passage (atypical Banks, in that it steps out of the box, but still brilliant). Context - the main character, Fassin, is sharing a drink with his beyond-filthy-rich ex-friend Saluus in his house, which is held up by a gigantic fountain in a crater lake. Not that the house matters, other than it's a throw-away idea that's just pretty damn cool...

___________

They drank their drinks. Cognac. Also from Earth, long, long ago. Far, far away.

Fassin got swim.
'Oh shit,' he said, 'I've got Swim.'
'Swim?' said Saluus.
'Swim,' Fassin said. 'You know; when your head kind of seems to swim because you suddenly think, "Hey, I'm a human being but I'm twenty thousand light years from home and we're all living in the midst of mad-shit aliens and super-weapons and the whole fucking bizarre insane swirl of galactic history and politics!" That: isn't it weird?'

___________

The man's books are packed full of this shit, and still manage a compelling story arc. Go. Read. I'm Swimming off to Nassau road to replenish coffee supplies.

Old Endings and New Beginnings

2005-12-22T15:59:00.000-08:00

Here's a slight rework of an email I just sent out to a whole bunch of people I met/talked to recently on my tour about my commencement. All y'all are also invited to come on over, if that fits with your summer plans.

______________________________________

Hi all,

Each of you has either promised to make it for my commencement, or to try to, or I'm hoping you will :) It's shaping up to be quite a party, so here's an early planning email.

So, the big day is Friday, June 9th, 2006. Some of you have expressed disbelief that such a large contingent as I'm hoping will show up for me will actually be allowed entrance - read the page - "FREE; no tickets or reservations required"

It'll be held outdoors in a large grassy area. Since the graduating call is really small, everyone/all family/friends usually fit in here...

The buzz around the campus was that the speaker might well be Thomas Friedman, NYTimes columnist (won't know for sure for another few months). That's either a strong incentive or a strong disincentive for you to attend, depending on whether you empathize more with this review or this one.

Besides the commencement itself, there's a whole host of other parties, etc which happen on the previous day, and the day itself. Here's last year's schedule, which will likely be the same as this year's, can be found here.

They're an excellent opportunity to schmooze, eat little delicate finger-food thingies, and meet the people in my life, if that sort of thing is what you want. Most of the events require no reservation, except the graduation banquet on Thursday night (which I highly recommend), and the commencement luncheon on Friday (which I highly dereccomend - the Athenaeum is a really nice place to eat and be overawed by wood-panelled luxury, but not on Commencement day - we should eat there the previous day or the next - on commencement day I'd recommend everyone going out someplace nice). In a few months I'll send out another email asking for RSVPs for both. Of course, the main event is the Friday morning commencement activities, which require no RSVPs, and if you can't make it for the others, that's fine. Also, if you're willing to slum it out a bit, I should be able to help with accomodation at friends' places.

Details of past commencements (including videos of the ceremonies and the progammes) can be found here.

Since most of you'll be coming from out of town, you may as well stick around for the weekend and do something fun. This is LA, after all, and if you don't have to actually live there, it can be pleasant. It'll be summer - open-air conerts, beaches and the easy life will beckon. I'll leave you to explore those possibilities yourself, but here are some excellent opportunities just a mile or two from campus.

Old Pas is a pleasant shoppingish area by day, nightlife hotspot by night.
The Norton Simon is a world-class art museum
Huntington gardens, libraries and gardens are a must-see cultural stop.

Dayum - with this many people counting on me (and this email is just being sent to non-Techers/alum friends), I'd better get back to correcting those thesis typos so I can actually walk during commencement next year :)

So I lied a little bit

2005-12-19T19:03:00.001-08:00

Actually ended up spending this last Saturday and Sunday in Philadelphia with friends. Specifically, Abhra a.k.a. Bong (as in Bengali, not 420head), IIT Bombay friend in whose currently-vacant Princeton apartment I'm presently holed up, and his girlfriend Liz.

There was always the possibility of it degenerating into another "Remember that..." sorta thing, which it did, kinda ("Remember that IIT prof who gave hand signals when turning while walking, and the other one who went on a hunger strike since his students cheated?", "Yeah, and remember that giant pencil sharpener you put on the 10 foot IDC pencil?", "Mess food was BAAAD."), but mostly, it was Abhra and Liz snuggling up (oh so cute watching two I-don't-take-no-bullshit people get all fuzzy-wuzzy :) and me blading around Philly

hence this pic of the tree's shadow on the wall, which reminded me of that O'Henry story - you know which one.

Or, when talking with Bong, wondering how two such different people ended up such good friends.

Exaggeration aside, he and his irascible caustic wit was probably one of the strongest influences on my life at the impressionable time when I was an undergraduate. He'd grown up tut-pseud in south Bombay, and while I wasn't exactly a Delhi yokel, I did have corners sticking out in all four dimensions. This was all complicated by his frustrations on being in IIT, which he didn't mind venting on anyone nearby, and me going through a three-year chirpy phase compounded by the discovery of truly atrocious puns.

Our first conversation could very well have been something along the lines of

"I'm from Delhi. Oh, you're from Bombay? That's nice - it'll be nice having a local friend."
"I hate Delhi-ites. Maybe I won't hate you."
"Whoa - that's extreme. Maybe it's the atom bomb in you. Getit get it? Bomb-A? A-bomb?"
"I think I will hate you."
"Hahaha - you're so funny."

That pretty much set the tone for the remainder of our time in college.

I seemed to get some masochistic pleasure playing the fool to him fulminating about my patheticness (patheticity?). What did I get out of it? Well, he was obviously pretty smart, had opinions about everything, and was in general interesting. Just slightly... dangerous to be around, which probably added to the excitement. In the end, it ended up making me more confident of myself; one had to be, to stand his sometimes vicious attacks. Taught me good-natured self-control. Also provided a healthy counter-balance to the artsy crowd I was hanging out with. What did he get out of it? In the "Remember that..." mode this time around, I asked him exactly that. He replied with a compliment, "Well, you can be irritating, but you're smart and interesting. I don't really hate you."

We've met several times over the last five years. I've become more comfortable with myself, confident enough to stand up to him. On his part, he's mellowed considerably.

And yet, that old chemistry...

"Hey Bong. Help me connect my laptop to your Princeton LAN. I need your MAC address. Haha - pun - see - you have a Mac iBook, and also have a Machine Authentication Code..."

Deep sigh through clenched teeth.

Update: (email from Abhra Mitra to Sidharth)
I like the post.... And while the facts are all wrong the essential spirit is captured.

If it's Sunday, it must be Princeton

2005-12-18T08:05:00.000-08:00

So here's the deal, folks. The trip is basically over. I'm going to be hold up at a friend's pad in Princeton, NJ for the next week or so, working on a paper for ISIT - deadline looming. Will eventually stop by Boston sometime around New Year's, though will be back in NYC weekend of the 7th of Jan for my friend's wedding.

But this here blog is fun stuff. I see no reason why it can't morph into something else. Since I will no longer live a peripatetic life, I expect the excitement level and random-stranger anecdotes to reduce in number. Since it's kinda sneaky talking about people you actually know behind their backs, it'll likely just me practising my raconteur skills, or sounding board for wacky ideas...

Anyway, don't say you haven't been warned.

Mostly up, slightly down

2005-12-15T19:59:00.000-08:00

A fairly busy day, but in a mostly good way.

Let's see - started off with me meandering down Fifth Ave (Oh, I'm currently in Manhattan - did I say that?) to the Canadian consulate to get my visa. There's this thing about being in NYC - the pizza is thinner as are the people, and life is good.

Anyway, in a good mood reached the consulate, spirits raised by a couple of close encounters with the cabbies (yeah - that's what's so attractive about new york, just like B'bay - the ruddy rude vivacity - the city has life, and isn't afraid to flaunt it). While I was completing my form, a black guy walked over and gently asked me if I could help him. I mechanically replied in the negative ("I mean, c'mon - panhandling within the consulate?"), but then noticed he had money sticking out of the thick sheaf of forms he was holding. Turns out he was a citizen of the Ivory Coast, basically illiterate, and to boot had little English (despite having lived in the sates for 19 years). Ssssoooo I jumped right in, inflicted my two years of half-forgotten French on him as I filled out his form for him. Damn, but it felt good. Almost made me want to be a rural Indian postman... {wild exaggeration as a paragraph ending literary device}

Then the second high point of the day. Since Kunal and I were planning on meeting up in Montréal, I started sniffing around for host on Hospitality Club. For those of you who haven't noticed the link to it on the right-hand side of this blog, or haven't followed the link, do so.

Here's the short version - online group with approx 100k members in 200 countries, and the basic premise is MAH - Mutually Assured Hospitality. If you're planning on visiting someplace for a few days and need someplace to crash, or just someone to hang out with and show you the sights, call up a member in that city and likelier than not that person will extend some form of an invitation. Of course there's no obligation to offer hospitality, but people are members usually because they're open to the idea. For those of you who mentally cringe at the thought of complete strangers hosting you or visiting you, there are some quality control features. For one, there's an eBay-style feedback tab which allows you to see what other hosters/hostees have said about the particular person. For another, the amount of personal information you divulge to the world in general is completely controlled by you, and the website acts as an intermediary. For instance, you can choose to keep your phone number and email address hidden, and in that case anyone wishing to contact you would have to send an email via the website - this would slow down communication, and likely reduce the success rate, but that's what you pay for greater privacy. And lastly, it's expected that you share your passport number with hosts/hostees, which allows them to do some form of background check on you if they so desire.

Having said all that, you either still hate the idea, or totally love it. I know which category I'm in, and as to you others, all I have to say to you, with all the scorn I can muster... "Wimp!" :) Even seriously, the cost-benefit analysis seems totally positive to all involved - even more than the free aspect of it, there's the whole aspect of this idea enabling like-minded people who're interested in travelling and cross-cultural experiences to meet. An enormous amount of volunteer work has gone into making the concept work, and I think it's an awesome implementation. For instance, if you've checked out the website, you might have seen the links to the
ambassadors, who're basically on extended tours bringing the idea to people around the world.

I'd intended using it for the first time during this trip, to have some off-the-trakc adventures (say in Fargo, North Dakota, or someplace equally remote - someplace I'd never been beore and likely never would again). But, time is short and there were so many friends I wanted to meet.

At any rate, long explanatory detour aside, I used it for the first time this morning to hit up a really friendly looking couple in Montréal, to see if they wouldn't mind me and my brother, Kunal, piling on for a few days. Despite expecting it, I still ended up feeling very pleased when it all effortlessly happened - had a brief chat with the guy, and it was set up.

And then the minor downer - Kunal backed out at the last moment. Has stuff to do, too short a trip to be worth the long ride, and last-minute tickets are expensive. All valid, but still...

Considered going by myself, but wouldn't be the same. I too should be writing that silly paper, and working on fixing those typos in my thesis

Luckily, my Chindian nephew is the cure for all downers. Ended up spending the evening making paper Christmas ornaments for Casey to hang on the tree, and just listening to him babble. Very relaxing, listening to a kid jabber absolute drivel - kind of puts research, work, and grown-up-stuff in general in perspective.

Tomorrow, or the day after, I'm likely off to Boston. Watch this space...

Hello, good-bi

2005-12-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

Parts of my journey have taken me through some of the more (and most) conservative parts of this country, the red states and the red parts of blue states, the rich 'burbs and the po' downtowns, the smaller towns and the larger-than-life Texan cities. In each of these places, as in the most tree-hugging baby-killing of places, I've met people of every kind, of vastly varying political dispositions and private temperaments. But still...

... let's do this slowly.

Yesterday I got off at the Rochester station. I probably looked mildly like a rucksacked hobo - unshaven, and was unkempt having travelled on the train overnight. Not to mention my two backpacks smothering me on both sides, and my travel-creased clothes. Hmm, maybe that also explains a bit of Miss Congealed Anality's shortness with me. Anyway, this guy with a cup of coffee chatting with the station master looked at me, and slightly turned his body so as to shut me out from his world-view. I asked the station master whether he knew how to use public transportation to get to the University. He looked blank, and pointed me to a stand in the corner where there were bus schedules. Usually people in train stations are great with bus/train tips, but this is upstate New York for you, I guess - a column I read in the local newspaper waxed eloquent about the columnist's wonderfully batty friend who was {gasp} taking buses everywhere instead of driving. Anyway, I looked for a bit, but without any understanding of the city couldn't get started. I asked the coffee-guy if he could help me get my bearings, tell me which neighbourhood I was in so I could figure it out, to which he bluntly replied, "No, I can't help you." I started explaining I just needed to figure out how to get started, but he interrupted saying "Why don't you just take a cab?" and turned around again.

At any rate, I did figure it out. Spent a pleasant night at Weiji's, and got to the station well in advance of my eight-hour late train (let's not even go there this time :) This morning (which actually menas right now) when I got into the station, coffee-guy was in essentially the same position. Probably works at the station. Gave me a passing glance, "Guess you found your bus after all."

"Yep, it was fun. Why don't you try it?"

"Naw, I don't take buses." And stalked off.

Now that little bit of mild nastiness has more than been compensated for by little kindnessesses by strangers (not to mention the much larger ones of friends) on this trip. But still, I really have no idea what about me in particular aroused that sub-surface hostility. Not that it's lost me any sleep - I can deal with jerks - but it got me thinking. Of course, it might just be that coffee is bad for his stomach and makes him grumpy, but he hasn't realized that in forty years of drinking it. Still, bear with me as I speculate. One possibility is preconceived notions he may hold against 'people like me'. Maybe he had his job outsourced to India, which is why he's hanging around in a low-paying Amtrak job, and doesn't like brown-skinned people. Or, he doesn't like politicians who take his hard-earned taxes and piss it away on services like city buses for those losers who inhabit the crime-ridden downtown three blocks away. Or he's got a twenty-six year old long-haired pot-smoking lazy son hanging out in the People's Republic of Berkeley, disrespects his father and has just told him he's a pansy.

I'm not saying I'm not guilty of the same. When I was in that bus-stop I was busily applying mental labels to people like dipsomaniac, or street crazy, or lethal killing machine I wouldn't want to meet after dark. Still, I like to think that at least I try to be open-minded, or at least manage a decent facade of one such.

'Cos, more and more, as I've grown emotionally I've found prefabricated solutions to life often don't fit my feet, and had to find my own ways of making peace with life. This in turn often means that while I'm struggling internally with the implications of my choices, I simultaneously have to deal with making other people comfortable with them. This has become tiresome, and so I feel like saying to everyone - just deal with it. Deal with me as you find me.

I won't pretend it's just me that faces problems like these, but dammit, at least I do, so I'm gonna crib about it, and for whatever underlying reason impels your desire for life you're gonna read this and see where it goes.

So, for example, I don't like the concept of cars. The idea of a metal can spewing fumes and consuming a temendous amount of natural resources merely to exist and transport me strikes a raw note in the deep dark Calvinist in me. And so I've lived five years in LA without a car. (Okay, alright, I confess, driving also used to scare the shit out of me. Especially in India. But I swear I've got that out of my system, so this really is the reason. Honest :) You want to hang out with me? Deal with it.

My last long-term relationship was with a Taiwanese (note - not Chinese) woman. All you repressed Indian folks, including those my generation, deal with it.

While we're on the subject of Indians including those my age, would those of you who have no clue whether I'm single or seeing someone stop asking me when I'm getting married before you know whether I'm seeing someone? Asking that question in that situation is arse-backwards. Think about it. And for what it's worth, I'm currently single, comfortable with that, waiting for the right person, a steady relationship and other things besides before the M word is likely to be an issue. Oh, and for the last time, I'm not planning on sticking around for a green card and McMansion - there's other stuff I want to do while I'm young. Deal with it.

And, finally, the basic reason for this piece. I'm bisexual. Many of you already know this because I've told you face-to-face (which is how I've preferred to do it thus far), but for those who don't, deal with it.

Well, okay, let me help you through this one :)

If you don't know what bisexual means, look it up. The dictionary is usually a good place to start.

Here are some questions people have asked me.

Myth: Do you have sex organs of both sexes?
Fact: To the best of my knowledge I have only male sex organs. Read the dicktionary, dumbkopf.
(Well, no, I haven't actually been asked that to my face, but I can read what's on your mind. Don't deny you wanted to ask that ;)

Myth: Were you sexually abused as a child?
Fact: I had a uniformly happy and blissful childhood, straight out of Noddy.

Myth: So does this mean you need to have both a girlfriend and a boyfriend simultaneously?
Fact: Exactly as much as straight folk need to have two girlfriends or boyfriends simultaneously.

Myth: This means that you can date anyone in the world (jealousy detected).
Fact: Just like you can date that cute lesbian if you're female (jealous in return) or sexy guy if you're male. Actually, under the reasonable assumption that gays and lesbians are equal in number, everyone has the same odds. Do the math. Except of course, since I cannot be dishonest in a relationship that requires trust, I can't date people not comfortable with my sexual identity (vast majority of humanity) (more reciprocal jealousy) (actually, scratch that jealousy).

Myth (mostly held by gay people I know): True bisexuals don't exist.
Fact: I do, therefore I am.

Myth (held by both straight and gay people): You're going through a phase.
Fact: It's a pretty loooooong phase.

Q: Are you a top or a bottom?
A: That's none of your damn business.

Why am I coming out in this manner? Well, over the last few years I've become more comfortable with myself in many different ways, and slowly I've come out to close friends, then friends, then colleagues, and finally family. This blog - well, fr'instance, when I started writing this particular piece, before it morphed beyond all recognition, it was going to be a sensitive and thoughtful commentary on how there are good people on both sides of the political divide (such as... umm), and that it's hard to pigeonhole people (such as the gay Republican I chatted with in Texas, who wanted to put up a barbed wire around the state to keep out the 'undesirables'). I started writing, mentally making a note not to include that last anecdote, when suddenly this last shred of anonymity ("only people I tell face-to-face should know" was my last rationalization) seemed trivial enough that I'd rather tell and get it over with.

Here's why people come out. It's a relief. You no longer lie to people, including yourself. You feel cleaner. You can then go on and deal with other, more meaningful challenges of life, and only have to deal with prejudice when it shows up, instead of it being a 24/7 background process.

But since I just read an excellent book on psychotherapy (Schopenhauer's Porcupines", Deborah Luepnitz), I delved a little deeper mentally, and here's a more visceral reason for this particular piece at this particular point in time.

So back in the day when I was firmly in the closet to the world in general, there was this woman who was dating an acquaintance. For reasons unknown she took a liking to me and started mothering me (cooking tips, dancing lessons, and so on). She then broke up with this guy, took it really badly, and was an emotional train-wreck. She'd had horrible, horrible things happen to her in life, everything was happening right then to her, mentally and physically she was collapsing. A bunch of her friends,
including myself to some extent, helped her pull through. She slowly recovered, took Chu-hsin (whom I'd just started seeing, and who knew about me) under her wing, started seeing someone else. All was well, except on several occasions (such as when she dragged both Chu-hsin and myself for a pedicure/manicure) she'd make obnoxiously homophobic comments. It kind of fit her WASPish upbringing and world-view, so I wasn't too surprised. But still...

That personal impact of homophobia started something bubbling in me, and over the next few months I finally started coming out to friends, all of whom were uniformly supportive of me personally. Whatever their personal feelings were they kept to themselves, or better yet, would discuss would me.

One day she came to me emotionally wraught again (the thing with the new guy wasn't going so well). I ferreted out of her that she had cash-flow problems, insisted on lending her a bit of money to help out with the rent. I also finally came out to her.

I've never seen her since, and phone calls and emails have gone unanswered.

What bothers me about this whole thing is neither of the thoughts that might lurk in your mind. We never had a thing going between us; we neither of us was the others' type. And no, the money can't be it. In her world-view, not returning it would be a sin, and that's... well, I guess it's a sin. Not that it matters - it was a small amount, and if she still can't afford it I'd rather lose the money than someone I thought was a friend.

A lasting effect of this has been a personal intolerance of intolerance in particular, and the religious moral majority in general. My personal experiences of orthodoxy versus progressiveness, my travels through rural California, Texas, and upstate New York, probably threw this whole thing up.

Post with something to please everyone...

2005-12-13T17:54:00.000-08:00

... or no-one.

POST THE THIRD: ATTACK OF THE VERY BLURRY PICS

This being a record of the drool-worthy contents of the Seattle
Science-Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. To satisfy the geeks among you.

The actual Jurassic park velociraptor model. Remote-controlled.

Starships Enterprise

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle was lookalike (the real ones would have pizza in the mouth)

E.T. at home.

BBBs and BEMs.

Who da man? Yo-da man

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This is the control panel of the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701. Small buttons for a large task - the mind is humbled.

Storm trooper. I always thought they looked too pure in white.

Two opposing petitions, circa 1970s, signed by prominent SF&F writers. One supporting the US effort in Vietnam, the other against it.

How history loves a refrain. Consider, fr'instance, Ray Bradbury vs. Orson Scott Card currently (no guess who's pro-Iraq and who's anti-)

I swear it's actually a lovely skyline. Especially from the Bainbridge island ferry, if your nose doesn't freeze taking the shot.

Only a thousand words

2005-12-13T17:32:00.000-08:00

POST THE SECOND

I wake blinking the haze from my eyes, then realize it's not the fog of sleep but the vapour rising from the stream by which our train is passing. We are in Western Montana passing through a river valley, and the land around is a composition in green and white; fir-clad and snow-bound.

It truly is otherworldly beautiful. The train feels like it's gliding, supported by the mist. Sunlight lances through and through the branches of the christmas trees in their wedding finery, and sparkles off the icy sequins decorating the gossamer-ghosts of the trees with no leaves. The trees up on the ridge form mini-peaks of their own, capped in white and back-lit by the sun.

I scramble for my cell-phone camera, and then remember that there's no way I'm going to be able to capture any of this with that cheap-ass digital-zoom-only toy.

Which is all for the best, considering my long-held policy on not taking pictures myself (mostly stuck to, except when I lapse). It started off when, as a kid, I discovered that silver nitrate was the light-sensistive compound used. I knew that silver was expensive 'cos mom had laughed at me when I asked if our cutlery was silverware. Using the well-developed faculty of reason that set me apart from lower forms of life (especially the other kids who went to my school), I decided that the cost of silver was high because of shortages due to all the camera-trigger-happy people around me, and that I for one wanted no part of it.

Image reproduction techniques have advanced much since then, and so has my understanding of economics, and the scarcity of certain heavy metals in the earth's crust. However, I still resolutely refuse to carry a camera. (Cheap-ass digital-zoom-only camera phones don't count.) Let me try to explain why.

This current rationalization started with, of all things, a Reader's Digest snippet I'd read. (Yes, this is the same journal that insisted that Chinese doctors injected mercury into the brains of second children.) In it, the person was ranting about how, when he tried taking a photograph of a spectacular moment, he never really noticed the moment itself in all the scrambling to get the perfect picture. He bemoaned
progress in general, and photography in particular, for ruining the pace of life. He then tritely summed it up by saying that after all, a picture is only worth a thousand words. His article wasn't quite; I remember counting, and feeling disappointed at the opportunity he'd missed.

On the face of it, his argument is kinda specious. Fleeting moments are really hard for amateur photographers to capture, so that can't have been what he was cribbing about. And the sturdier, more stick-around-for-a-while kind of moments - well, surely you'd have enough time to point 'n click, revel in the beauty of the moment, and
suck a lollipop besides. If you've got your beady eye stuck in that peep-hole all the while the turtle tap-dances for you, well then, you're just plain greedy, and you got what's coming to you.

But on thinking a bit about it, I notice the difference in my behaviour when I'm a camera-carrier as opposed to when I'm camera-free. In the one case I'm constantly jockeying for position, analysing angles, lighting, distances and positioning. Photographs are unforgiving scross-sections of the space-time cone; they're either representative of your mental projections, or are not. In the other case, I amble without an agenda, and store in my own amiably fuzzy memory my own personal impressions of the event. And just like the fishermen's tales about the ones who got
away, another decided advantage is the power to exaggerate.

Not that I have any objection to other people taking photographs - more power to them, and if they forward them to me, how sweet of them.

And now, to end this under seven hundred word rant, here're some Seattle pictures.

Little slice of death

2005-12-13T17:26:00.000-08:00

POST THE FIRST

I have a hidden super-power. Anytime, anyplace, anyhow, I can fall asleep if I choose to.

This has decided advantages in the unlikely situation I was to confine myself voluntarily for a couple of days at a stretch in a rumbling shaking box with no means of lying horizontally, with nothing to do except stare at the drunked sod behind me or the pregnant-seeming-fat lumberjack in front, surrounded by mind-numbing silence periodically punctuated at all hours by ethereal announcements by crazed pantry stewards with little English and equally little to offer a vegetarian.

Well, actually, I have to say it isn't really that bad. I mean, all the above is true and does happen. But still and all, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. After all, I can sleep.

I've rediscovered Zeno's paradox. Here's how my version goes.

Hmm, I'm still half-asleep, after sleeping in this neck-bent position for twelve hours. Shall I get up? And do what, I wonder... Let me think about that a bit... Nope, still no ideas. Hey, lookit that, another half-hour has gone by. So if I lie like this for another hour, I'll beat my previous record. Oh, there's the announcement for lunch - maybe that's a reason to get up? Well, if I didn't get up for breakfast, I really shouldn't for lunch - wouldn't be fair.

And so it goes, when I'm on the train. Good stuff. Try it sometime.

Pre-penultimate grouse: Oops, I did it again

2005-12-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

A twelve-hour train journey. Three hours late. Damn I'm good.

Well, so that wasn't particularly surprising. Of course, this time round I'd
planned for the contingency that the train would reach Buffalo too late for me to stop over and get my Canadian visa today (the consulate closes at 1100 hours). So with incredible foresight I booked multiple train tickets (covering three different timing scenarios). I also ordered a taxi to pick me up from the train station, in case the train got there just in time (it did - under an hour to consulate-closing time).

The unashamedly stereotypical Sikh cab-driver made small talk with me ("My Punjabi is actually better here in Buffalo than it ever was in Chandigarh... damn US government - blood-sucking leeches... want to listen to the local Punjabi radio station?") while I nervously checked my watch. I prodded him, and tires screeching (theme of this vacation, it seems), we reached with a few minutes to spare.

And then, of course, Miss Congealed-Anality at the embassy refused to give me a visa 'cos she wanted a "real" piece of paper attesting to my impending MIT employment, as opposed to the email which had everything.

Oh well. The one major advantage of every aspect of this trip being thrown together at the last moment as it has, has been that if one thing doesn't work, that's an opportunity to do something else instead. I hopped onto the next train to Rochester to spend some time with Weiji Ma, the most interesting Chinese-Dutch string-theorist-turned-neuroscientist guy with a passion for Chinese rural development that I know. We just spent a couple hours face-time expounding to each other our latest pet projects, and it feels good to be with someone not shy of unabashed enthusiasm again.

Other trip trivia.

This second round to Chicago was all about family - family feuds and fond remembrances. The most fun part, though, was playing anti-gravity device to my cousin's two and four year olds. I (literally) drove them up the wall, a la Spiderman. I suspect I'll be getting large painting and reupholstering bills from my cousin, though. About these kids - normally I'm not one to go goo-goo ga-ga over cutesy-pie pictures, but this one of my adorably vivacious... nephew..., I guess (damn, I'm old) Rohan...

Wokay, since I finally have a net connection on my own laptop, here goes with earlier rants written on the trip from Seattle to Chicago.

Amtrak confirms it: it's me

2005-12-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

Six hours late yet again.

I asked the conductor if this was usual. "Oh no, most of the time we're right on time."

"Really? Each of the five trains I've been on these last three weeks has been at least 4 hous late."

"Yeah, well, the snow kind of slows us down. Jams the signals, have to do it manually. Also makes braking harder, so we can't go fast."

"I see. But, this train was three hours late just starting out. And the trains I took to, and out of, Texas, and the trains before and after me were also late, as the other passengers were telling me, and..."

"Well, sir, I'm sorry, but there's really nothing I can do."

This time round, though, the train was tastefully late. The views I got of western Montana, and would have missed due to darkness if the train had been on time, oooh la la - to die for. Well, not quite, but at least worth a couple hours of tardiness.

Addendum

2005-12-03T02:44:00.000-08:00

Last little business of the night.

As requested by a friend, I now have a site-feed. It's also available under the links bar on the right.

wokay, off to bed.

Pretty pictures

2005-12-03T02:31:00.000-08:00

POST THE SIXTH, OR IS IT THE SEVENTH?

Ride from SF to Seattle, through the Cascades. Snowy, forested. Truly lovely. This post's for mom.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Freight train to nowhere.

Huts for Union Pacific staff

Klamath Falls station

Snow on water, fire in the air.

Sun and snow.

Writing on the Wall

2005-12-03T02:11:00.000-08:00

POST THE FIFTH

Watercolour on paper, Paul Hance, (2001)
A tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks.

On public display on a wall in the public library in Mountain View, CA.

Our Miss Brooks is the name of the painting.
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward is th name of the poem.

The text (punctuation mine - I've tried to preserve the spacing).

Say to
them -

Say to the down-
keepers,
The sun-slappers,
The self-soilers,

The harmony-hushers,

"Even if you are not
ready for day
it cannot
always
be
night."

You
will
be
right,

For that is the
hard
home-run.

Live
Not for battles
won,
Live not for the
End-of-the-song.
Live
in
the

Along.

-- Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks, (1917-2000), poet, was the first African-American to win a Pulitzer prize.

"Our Miss Brooks" was a popular radio show, which successfully crossed over to TV.
Eve Arden played the comedy role of Connie Brooks, English teacher at fictional Madison High School, a smart and sharp-witted, but ever-likable, character.

Paul Hance is an artist who " self-describes the major body of his work as Progressive Naive".

Diverse Drivers

2005-12-03T02:07:00.000-08:00

POST THE FOURTH

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are arriving at our destination. Please make sure your tray tables and seats are in the upright position. If the Old Navy store is your final stop, enjoy your stay. Otherwise, you can catch a transfer to the 30, 45 and 51 right here on the kerb."

Some bus drivers make the ride really pleasant - they go out of their way to be helpful, chat, point out landmarks and share with you the little insider secrets of the city. Others, like the one before the wannabe-pilot, snarl at you for being a nincompoop when you ask for directions and spoil the mood of a perfectly good, if somewhat blustery and rainy, day.

Others have more complex personalities.

There was the one in Orlando, Florida, way back when I was presenting at the world's first International Harry Potter Symposium (but that's another story). I got onto the bus to the train station just before it pulled away, flustered and fully loaded with multiple backpacks, and as always, short of change. The lettering on the token machine said clearly "PLEASE CARRY EXACT FARE - BUS DRIVERS DO NOT CARRY CHANGE." I must've looked really high-strung, thinking I'd miss my train; the bus driver pulled out his own wallet, asked me how much change I needed and where I needed to get off, and asked me to sit down just behind him so he'd warn me in good time, all in this pleasant, grandfatherly voice.

The driver was evidently a regular on the route - he chatted up everyone who got on and off, and most seemed to know him. A few stops later, a reasonably well-dressed young white guy, a bit out of place in that poor Hispanic neighbourhood, asked the driver through the open doors, "Hey, does this bus go to the Galleria?"

The driver cupped his hand to his ear, "What?"

The guy repeated his question louder, and the driver, repeated, louder, "What?"

Slightly frustrated, the would-be commuter started repeating his question when the driver interrupted, "Yes, it goes to the Galleria."

The man started getting on, and the driver put the bus into gear and jolted the bus a foot forward, doors still open. The guy looked at him disbelievingly, "What the fuck?" and tried to get on again. Again the driver moved the bus forward a wee bit.

"FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!" shouted the guy, and the driver chuckled, gave him the finger, closed the doors and drove off. The man pounded the side of the bus and cussed, which only made the African-American driver, and several other black guys sitting in the bus laugh. The driver and one of the commuters started talking about "white trash."

A couple stops later, two young Hispanic kids got on, and started paying their fares. The driver stopped them, in his avuncular voice asked them how old they were, and told them that kids under 17 only needed to show their school IDs to pay half-fare. They said they didn't have their IDs, and he waved them in, and told them not to forget the next time.

And then there was the one from a few midnights ago, when I was alone in the downtown Oakland Amtrak station (none too pleasant at the best of times) waiting to catch a bus to Berkeley. The bus arrived at the stop, and the driver, a big, mean-looking hunk of African-American muscle sauntered out and stood with his back to me.

"Does this bus go to Berkeley?"

Almost imperciptible nod. Not quite sure, I ask again, and he responds with a short growl that sounds vaguely affirmative.

I withdraw, and stand in a corner recovering my courage, then try another salvo.

"When does the bus leave?"

Silence. Then, reluctantly, he snaps, "Fifteen minutes."

About ten minutes later, he saunters back to the bus. I start to follow him, but he gives me a cold, cold look and shakes his head. Gets back into his seat, and closes the bus door.

Five minutes later, the bus door opens, and I get in with some trepidation. The fare is $1.75, and perenially out of change I only have dollar bills, but there's no way I'm asking him for help breaking a dollar bill. I sit back, and only really relax after some other passengers get on at the next stop.

"Errm - I'm new to this place - would you mind telling me when we reach University Avenue?"

Due consideration given. "Maybe."

Asshole.

Suddenly I realize that I forgot to ask for a transfer. And there's a sign in bold red letters proclaiming "TRANSFERS GIVEN ONLY AT TIME OF PURCHASE OF TICKET." And I'm out of dollar bills.

Fuck it! Enough of his bullshit.

"Excuse me. Could I have a transfer please?"

We're waiting at a traffic light. He slowly turns around. Obelisk glare. "What?"

"Could you give me a transfer please? I forgot to ask for one when I got on." I blurt out.

"Why do you need one?"

"My friend, he told me... he's far away, I need to change buses... 51 does still run this late, doesn't it?" I'm babbling slightly, but determinedly.

"BIG mistake. My friend, you made a BIG mistake."

"... what... ?"

And then his face split into the widest grin, he hands me a transfer, and says, "I'm just messing with you, man." Smiles appreciatively at the backside of a woman who's just gotten off, gives me a wink, and chuckles. And he's still chuckling when I get off the bus, shaking my head and grinning.

Old Friends

2005-12-03T02:02:00.000-08:00

POST THE THIRD

This one's for the friends/relatives I've met/wanted to/will meet on this trip. They're a major reason for the trip in the first place.

San Diego, CA - the Braun House gang - Ravi Palanki, Shachi Gosavi and Sony John Akkarakkaran. The first stop was a very pleasant start.

Calipatria, CA - Mark Bourland - one meets the nicest people on planes.

Houston, TX - my uncle (well, uncle's brother) Jawahar Malhotra, and his able-bodied ABCDEF (European French) sons Stefan (Sanjay) and Jeremy (Gyan) Malhotra put up with my foibles and were in general just totally really extra nice. Also, Prashant (Dingaling/Prashtrash) Raghavan at the Baylor College of Medicine, for the squealing-tires drop-off to my trainbus.

College Station, TX - Anxiao (Andrew) Jiang for giving me full run of his pad despite his not being there. Hopefully he'll forgive me for the graffiti party I threw at his place. Alex Sprintson for being a most attentive host during my academic visit.

Austin, TX - Neerav Bipin Mehta for remembering in the nick of time that I was visiting. Anoop Iyer - ex-bike ride buddy - first he puts off the Chicago meetup 'cos of hurricane Katrina. This time round his excuse is a (thankfully minor) car accident. Dammit - the man will do anything to not meet me. Sriram Vishwanath, who'll
hopefully check his mail sooner next time.

Chicago, IL - My cousin Rajiv (Tinkoo) Jaggi and his family Pamela, Tanay and Rohan Jaggi, all of whom now have websites on http://jaggi.name Puneeta, my cousin and proud mommy, and her family Valentine, Karuna Aunty and Dev Uncle. Shashi aunty as always, the godmother. And my cousin Meena, for secrets shared. Bhashyam
(Baddy/Adi) Aditya, Kellogs inhaabitant who let me be an Adi-vasi. Tina DeBrass nee Masters, old family friend - missed her this time round. Hopefully will catch her on the return trip.

Omaha, NE - Turaga Kalyan (TK) Kiran - mah man is equally comfortable sock-deep in blood saving lives, and showing me Omaha's zoo after 26 hours on call. Old rivals can turn into good friends.

Berkeley, CA - Manjunath Krishnapur - math dicussions about torii, political compasses and doughnuts - hmm - there's a theme here.

San Francisco, CA - Sameer (Sam) Siruguri. What can I say? The dude's SMOKIN'!

Mountain View, CA - Sitaram (Miyer) Iyer sitaramiyerspeaksveryfastandtypeswithhistoes and Mother Hen Anindita (Nin) Dasgupta (soon-to-be Garg)

Seattle, WA - fair-weather (Seattle summer) friends and confidantes Pradeep Shenoy and Perur Venkatesh (Venky) Krishnan Iyer, and especially Samuel Zinner and his partner Walt Mason.

Redmond, WA - past mentors Philip A Chou and Kamal Jain, and ex-officemate Yunnan Wu.

Vancouver, BC - Shahraz Kassam - extraordinarily generous to a total stranger. 'Spitty won't get my visa in time.

Chicago, IL 2nd pass - Arvind Giridhar, Sujay Sanghavi - I've visited their single-Starbucks hamlet often enough; they'd goddamn better show their faces in the big city this time round.

Albany, NY - Weiji (Whee Ky) Ma, the most vivacious Chinese-Dutch theoretical physicist/neuroscientist I know.

Toronto, ON - Kunal Jaggi. Brother-in-exile.

Wappingers Falls, NY - Chu-hsin Liang - for a lovely past and an amicable future.

Long Island, NY - my beshtesht friend George Maltezos and his wife-to-be Suzy Kim Lee.

New York, NY - my cousin Kapil Mathur and his lovely wife Julie Lam, and their son Casey, the cutest Chindian of all.

Boston, MA - Journey's End - Nikhil Mittal/Manisha Jhunjhunwalla, also known as Keepers Of My Boxes. For this and doubtless future kindnesses I owe them much.

Subway Conversation

2005-12-03T01:59:00.000-08:00

POST THE SECOND

Back in Chicago, I was to meet my cousin at the subway stop but was a half-hour early. Since it was snowing, I decided to get off a couple stops early and stay underground and spare my still-Houston-attuned body unnecessary temperature shocks.

Soon enough, a black guy sidled up to me and asked me if I had a dollar. In the hardened way that comes naturally to one who grew up with Indian poverty all round, I turned up the volume on my iPod and resolutely refused.

"I really need a dollar for a transfer."

"I'm a student, travelling, and I need all the money I have."

With extravagantly polite gestures, "I really don't want to cause no trouble..."

... and now I was wary. There were other people on the platform, but far away and all studiously avoiding the situation. I turned off my iPod and, as discreetly as possible for what is essentially a flash-me object, tucked it away.

"... See, I need to get to County to meet my probation officer by five. I really need to, otherwise I'll be in deep shit." Hands still clearly visible in a peaceful gesture.

Mentally cursing myself for just having withdrawn hundred dollars from the ATM, I drew out my wallet, and, with deliberately slow motions, gave him a dollar bill.

"Hey thanks! Season's greetings. You a real good Christian... You Christian? Or, how do you say, Hindi?"

Wondering if this would be a problem, "Umm, nope. I'm an atheist."

This tickled him pink. "Whoa! A good samaritan who's an atheist. I mean, that's good. I respect that. You know, you really helped me out here. I need to take the train to the last stop, and then change to the bus to the County. And I didn't have no money on the train, and I was like, Oh man! So I thought I'd get out and ask."

"County...?"

"Yeah, County!"

Blank look.

"County jail, man. You know, where they lock you up?"

I mumbled something noncommital like, "Oh, I see."

"Yeah, I've been in and out of jails since I was eighteen. Never violent stuff, though. Always, like, y'know, stealing cars, drugs, stuff like that. But if they catch me now, I'm on probation, man, it'll be baaad."

Moving his hand toward his jacket, "I have some squares on me right now. You probably wouldn't want some, would you? A fine man like you probably don't smoke... naw? Okay, fine, fine."

"Yeah, like I said, never for violence. Well, except this last time. I got into a fight... Aw man! You won't be-LIEVE this shit. I was living with this broad, really sweet broad. Ummmmmm." Rocks his hips gently but suggestively. "You know, a real fine pussy. You know what I mean? Pussy. I had this regular job, and stuck with her. You know, trying to do the right thing. And then I got into this fight. MAN! So fucked-up! It wasn't even about *MY* girl. I got into a fight about this OTHER girl. She wanted to, YOU know!" winks at me. "But, I was like, No. I mean, just trying to do the right thing. One pussy is sweet, two is sweeter, but man, just trying to do the right thing."

"And then the bitch went and cried to her man. Said some lies, and HE came after ME. So I had to hit him. Then he went crying to the cops, and he was like "Officer, this man assaulted me!" Man, that wasted two WEEKS of my life. Luckily, the cops, they were good. They told the judge that the other guy was a trouble-maker. They'd told me they would, and they did."

"Oh, here's the train. You getting on? No? Waiting for the other train? How's my hair? Good? Good. Thanks for the dollar, man.

I am a rock

2005-12-03T01:55:00.001-08:00

POST THE FIRST

Had an interesting conversation with mom last night. I was describing my lightning visits of friends in the Bay area, and how people change as a function of time until they're almost unrecognizable. With that insight that someone who knows you well occasionally displays, she said I sounded "sterile".

And the more I think about it, that's exactly right. For the last few months, as I've been mentally withdrawing from Tech, and in particular during this trip, my emotional detachment really is most accurately described by that word. In many ways it's a conscious decision - a determination not to get involved in anything or anyone too deeply while in this transient mode. Partly I suppose it's motivated by my break-up
with Chu-hsin, which at least to some extent was occasioned by the whole long-distance thing, and so I don't want moh-maya to impinge. Not just in terms of relationships, but also friends, personal belongings, favourite places, the whole deal.

As with anything, there are pluses and minuses. On the positive side, it's been a very cleansing experience thus far. I swoop down on some buddy or relative, spend a few short but sweet hours or days with them, and having exchanged memes, move on. It's light on the soul, but the experience is rich and rejuvenating, especially
since familiarity has no time to breed. It also, to quote mom again, produces "equanimity", and peace. I just found a fatal flaw in a proof of a theorem I've been hoping to prove for over a year, and thought I'd finally nailed. The only way I know how to do research, or in general do anything significant, is to get emotionally
involved and stake some fraction of my happiness on it. And so, normally, something like this would put me in a funk for a few days. But now, or at least right now, I'm like "Meh! {shrug}".

The downside of the above, of course, is that I LIKE being emotionally involved. The highs I get from an achievement really are what make life worth living. Not that I'm suicidal right now, of course not. Just that the food tastes blander (no, it's not my cold) and the roses don't smell so sweet (that's not my cold either).

On the third hand, this blog is giving me actual pleasure. I enjoy spending time mentally structuring, composing, and fine-tuning some of the entries (the ones not entirely geared toward my single faithful reader, mom :) Besides being a keepsake of this month for myself, it's been a catalyst for finally breaking through my writer's block. And the main lesson I take from writing for it is that I write better, or at least feel better writing, for audiences (and theoretically, at least, this blog has one :)

Well, anyway, I guess I'll just have to jump right into the cause (whichever), come Boston, and then all will be well (and also not so well) again.

Yes, it is me

2005-12-03T01:53:00.000-08:00

The train was four hours late getting into Seattle (reached past midnight). This time round, it had nothing to do with two freight trains in front of us getting stuck in snow three feet deep.

This time round, I was extraordinarily verbose on the train ride. Here comes the barrage of posts I'm going to upload...

It must be me

2005-11-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

There's no other explanation for the fact that every train I've been on has been over five hours late getting in.

Of course, the freight company Union Pacific owning the rail lines over which Amtrak travels, and them prioritizing freight over passenger trains, and them ripping up the second set of rails on most routes (something about maintenance costs) has nothing to do with it.

I heard from an engineer deadheading on the train that the only reason Union Pacific still keeps Amtrak in some semblance of life is 'cos employees of both companies are in the same pension plan, which the govt heavily subsidizes (for Amtrak).

Gratuitous pic of the day - the scene in Winter Park, Colorado, right around where they shut off the heat for a while on the train.

On another note, continuing on the previous post, here's a little something I wrote on the train...

Okay, so it wasn't quite as much of a blood-bath as I claimed in my last post. Apparently the surgery resident I overheard has a bit of a reputation for... exaggeration. And I kinda got carried away.

Still and all, there was something ghoulish at my friend's attitude to the whole thing. See, here's how I would take it if I'd just spent more than a day awake working, and suddenly I had blood-spattered trauma victims to operate on, some with multiple gun-shot wounds, one with a bleeding ventricle in the heart for which I'd have to cut open his chest without anesthesia to do a cardiac massage and try clamping the leak, after which he died anyway - I'd be shaken at the very least. My man, on the other hand, could be best described as exhilerated. He got to perform procedures that he would rarely otherwise have been able to. As a fellow resident said to him, "You really hit the jackpot."

On the gripping hand, I guess while my surface reactions are squeamishness at the gore of it all (not that I saw it, but the descriptions alone make me feel sick... there's a good reason I didn't join med school), and also at his clinical detachment from the outcomes of two of the cases (death - I heard and saw the reactions of family members wailing release), but a day on, what sticks the most is the pleasure he derived from his work.

A bit simplistically (call it sleeplessness), I'd called it selflessness a while ago. It's probably more accurately described as pure selfishness, in an Ayn Rand/Howard Roark kinda of way. The kind of animal joy he seemed to be experiencing is something I feel only occasionally, like when I've proved a really good result, or experienced something (maybe triggered by a movie or book or conversation) that was like intellectual manna. Basically, done something I'm proud of at a personal level.

I have the pleasure of knowing several people whom I call friends who seem to have the capacity to experience such passions, and, more importantly for me, to share them. People handle their passions differently - some recuse their lives in the hands of a Higher Being, other throw themselves into Family. I suppose there are many paths to the Buddha , but the people I enjoy hanging out with the most are the ones for whom Joy is least cloaked with externalities; the act is enjoyed in itself and not tempered with the outcome. I feed on their emotions; it's a personal reaffirmation that there's a reason to live, and I'm not alone in thinking so.

While it's not a rule, such people seem rarer in the real world than in the ivory tower I inhabit; rarer with age than with youth; rarer back home than in the States. And yet, lookit where I'm going...

All hell breaks loose

2005-11-27T05:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently last night there was some sort of gang war in Omaha, and suddenly the ER is swamped with gunshot victims. A zombie-like resident who walked into the surgeon residents' lounge I was napping in/waiting for my friend in - "I've never seen trauma deaths in the ER in my three years here, but last night we had two and the other hospital had four."

Brimful of Asha on the 5

2005-11-27T02:20:00.000-08:00

The nice thing about trains is that the tracks cut through communities and expose a cross-section of a country, like a river canyon gives one in the know a glimpse of the lump of rock we all live on.

Frinstance, rubbish heaps seem to be popular rail-track companions the world over.

But of course one often sees pretty little houses sitting just so by the tracks, and can play a hasty voyeur into the unselfcounscious lives of people lulled into ignoring trains by their metronomic regularity.

Here are some other horribly grainy Patel shots on today's journey from Chicago to Omaha, mostly for my Mom's viewing pleasure.

The backward Chicago river, as seen from the L.

Chicago Union station - Grand Central with a growth hormone deficiency.

The Iowan portion of the bread-basket.

Anyway, to continue a thought alluded to in an earlier post. On the train, the gentle rocking motion once again put me into a mind-free-floating trance. I have a theory about the peace I get on trains, and in motion in general. I think it acts as a surrogate for my own busy-bee existence. As long as the powerful locomotive is doing such sterling work, puffing along at a clipping pace and making tracks,

it feels like I myself don't have to. I recuse myself from existence and sashay along in double-quick time. There are few alleviants for my general restlessness of the soul, but train-travel is a powerful one.

Of course, when I get off, the impulse to be doing something is redoubled... and so this blog is being written at 0200 hours. From, as it turns out, the surgery resident's lounge in Creighton University Medical Center. While my high-school buddy, whom I've come to visit, is in the OR, saving people's lives. After 30 hours on call, he's going to take me to the zoo, before putting me back on the train to California, so I can sink back into my stupor.

So, that leads to two thoughts.

One, there's no way I could ever do the sort of stuff Turga Kalyan Kirna, and my mom, and all those other docs do. In the good ones, there's this selflessness that goes way beyond the call of duty - that part I could at least aspire to emulate, and really want to. The really hard part is the immediate control over someone else's life. I'm more a long-term slow-and-steady-change sorta guy. Of course, my aversion to pain, blood, needles and gore does also go a long way in disqualifying me.

The other, of course, is that I need to get off my ass and focus. All this big-tent learn-and-it'll-all-be-useful stuff is all very well, but my restlessness can and should be channelled into larger-scale projects than I've dared attempt thus far.

Thus resolved.

These demanding fans...

2005-11-24T20:05:00.000-08:00

... they're never satisfied.

"I think you need to update your location more often..."

You try updating from a train from which even mobile service is spotty 'cos you're stuck in the middle of rural Mississippi, and you're running 6 hours late. Ended up missing Thanksgiving dinner - pulled into Chicago around 1900 hours.

One not-entirely unforseen advantage of the enforced relaxation on trains - gives me lots of time to ruminate. But more on that later - right now I'm tired, and there's more than enough easily recounted anecdotes and not-so-pretty pictures.

Reached the train station yesterday with minus one minute to spare, tires screeching. Luckily Amtrak standard time is similar to Indian standard time (though a bit more extreme). As it happened, the first leg of the journey was via bus (a bus deputed as a train) to the Texas-Arkansas border. The driver immediately put on some extremely irritating Disney crap to shut up the squawling kids, so I put on my headphones and caught a bit of the country-side.

Who'd've thunk it - East Texas is actually fairly green.

Mystery mean Texan machine on the truck bed. Tank tread, a long boom with a mean sudarhsan-chakra at the end.

Train when it finally arrived at Longview, Texas.

Those them there are the skyliner carraiges.

... and this is how it looks from the inside (next day).

Other random incidents.

An Indian couple chatting on the phone "Oh, excellent service. just slightly slow." Utter contrast to trash-talking granny (of whom there were several clones on this trip as well).

A 16-year old playing poker with his siblings, the oldest of whom couldn't ahve been over 10.

In the lounge, white teen/tween reading a book, black dude of roughly similar age ambles over looking for company.

Black dude in midwest, presumably chicagoan accent - "What're you reading?"

Other guy in Texan accent - "Oh, the Bible."

Silence.

Friendly laugh.

"... there's this story in Ecclesiastes about this guy who was searching for happiness, then realized that really only God matters to him.

...

"And then was happy..."

...

"It's a really cool story." Forced laugh.

Black guy, "... Huh! That's cool. Errm - I'm hungry - I'll go get something to eat..." and scurries away.

Here, there, and everywhere

2005-11-23T07:01:00.000-08:00

whoa - crazy busy last couple of days. Drove for an academic visit to Texas A&M, squeezed in a trip to Austin to meet friends, and spent all of yesterday just plain talking about research. Really looking forward to taking the train out to Chicago today - at least I'll be able to get some sleep.

A&M. Interesting place. Was greeted in town by a huge sign on a water-tower saying WELCOME TO AGGIELAND - if I'd had the time and a can of blue paint, that would've read JAGGIELAND today, and my sorry ass would be in rotting in a stockade with ROTCs jeering at me. Apparently got a big brigade of very respectful cadet students - they even have a general who reports to the president of A&M.

The CS and EE departments are huge, and hiring like crazy. I believe Engineering alone is looking to hire over a 100 new faculty over the next few years, so if you're in the market for a family-oriented environment with good primary schools and far (but not too far) from the madding crowd... {end sponsored ad}.

There was this weird moment when my host, Alex, introduced me to two other faculty as the loon who'd just visited a maximum security prison before A&M, and they both were like, "yeah, the maximum security prison *I* visited was..."
Guess there's something about us young faculty wannabes that attracts us to the dark side.

Wokay, off to brunch downtown Houson with a friend before Amtrakking out. Dammit - won't have time to catch the latest Harry Potter.

Trash-talkin' granny

2005-11-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

Shorter post than the last one, I promise. For that one I had a train journey to kill and culture-shock to recover from. Not to mention a train that ended up being six hours late...

... which was why the trash-talkin' granny was sssoooo pissed. "Damn this #$@!#$% rail-road. Six HOURS - what sort of business is this? And just one cigarette break since Los Angeles. And those sleeper cabins - I'm suffocating in them. I swear I'm going to get off in San Antonio and drive from there." This morning she was still there, bitchin' away to no-one in particular. Of course, after all those trips on Indian Railways I found all this terribly amusing, and my grin didn't improve matters.

The train journey was relaxing. Got on at Palm Springs

The train station was this unmanned shack in the middle of the desert, right next to the humungous Palm Springs wind-farm.

After running around like crazy on terra firma, it was good to have some enforced relaxation. Plenty of leg-room, a lounge car with humungous windows looking onto the hourly changing scenery (from the Mojave desert

to the semi-arid land cattle ranches in West Texas, to the surprising lush land with old-growth forests around Houston. I totally vegged out, listened to music, saw the movies shown (surprisingly good ones, like "March of the Penguins" and "Batman Begins"), and did absolutely no meaningful work.

My uncle (actually, my aunt's husband's brother - is there a name for that in Hindi?) dragged me around Houston. A very small-town feel to it (it actually has a Main Street which sortof functions like one), but of course everything is Texas sized. The Mexican restaurant we went to had absolutely *nothing* vegetarian, right down to the rice being cooked with chicken stock.

Anyway, next couple days are gonna be kinda busy - will be driving to College Station to give a talk at TAMU, and also stop by Austin to meet friends. Blog updated as and when.

Oh, Marena just forwarded a couple of nice pics she took of my front door in Avery, back at Tech.

Then-tentative itinerary. Since then much firmed up - my next stops after Houston/College Station/Austin are Chicago for Christmas, a day in Omaha, on westwards to SF, up to Seatle, back east to Chicago, and then Toronto just before my pass expires.

IMPERIAL VALLEY: A MONOLOGUE IN TWO ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE

2005-11-19T12:10:00.000-08:00

Any factual errors in the following are entirely my fault, in trying to reconstruct 24 hours in an environment quite outside my normal orbit purely from my memory. This was written on the train from Palm Springs, CA to Houston, TX.

Everyone's counting the days

ACT I

"This is BRAWLEY!" shouted the Greyhound driver, and booted me out at a nondescript small-town corner around dusk. This was Main Street, Brawley, in the Imperial Valley, thirty miles from the Mexican border, and the only shop around which seemed open was a car battery store.

Luckily, Mark was right on time to pick me up; I gratefully dumped my 50 pound backpack into the back and clambered into the front of his massive hulking pickup truck. He suggested stopping by his favourite bar before going out for dinner; I was all for the small-town experience, and we went.

A few words about Mark Bourland, recently promoted Chief Deputy Warden of Calipatria State Prison. In a single word, pleasant. Unlike many well-built men, he's unassuming and gentle conversationally; what he does say is usually worth listening to. The twelve hour plane ride to India spent chatting with him was... pleasant.

Which, on the basis of my single day there, is also the word I'd use to describe the Imperial Valley. Mile after mile of flat cattle-feed farm uniformity, dotted with bales of hay to be compressed into cubes 18 inches to a side and shipped to Japan to feed Kobe cattle. Not that there isn't enough local cattle ranching - when the wind is right (or wrong, depending on your point of smell) you can smell them from over in
Calipatria. The area is famous for its Calipatria sweet onions - huge white orbs of hamburger veggie heaven. The claims to fame of the town itself are, firstly, at 174 feet below sea-level, it's the lowest incorporated town in the western hemisphere, and secondly, it has the tallest flagpole, coincidentally also 174 feet. The bar we stopped by, the Alamorillo (sp?) is the only smoking bar I've seen in California.
They have cook-your-own steak nights twice a week, apparently the biggest steaks you've never seen in your supermarket. Most of the small group of regulars over there is farmers and contractors, which is why Mark and a few of his prison employee friends like it there. Everyone knows everyone else.

One of Mark's friends at the bar, a month and a half away from retirement from the prison, was looking forward to his new life in a spring-break town in Arizona, where he'll be working as a pasty
applicator. Obviously the job nomenclature was a favourite trap for newbies like me; on seeing my quizzical expression, it was explained to me what a pasty was (stick-on half bra), and the two primarily preferred means of "applicating" were graphically demonstrated. The conversation naturally segued from there into whether Mark was going to take me to Miaow Miaow ("Oh no, not there") or the Cleopatria ("Certainly not!"). Extraordinarily similar to high school :)

My abnormally low tolerance for alcohol meant that one Ultra later I was already buzzed, which gave Mark an excuse to leave early. I think he wasn't sure how comfortable I was there. "The O'Reilly Factor" was no longer playing on the radio as we drove for dinner to the newly refurbished Beers 'n Burgers, where some of Mark's motorcycle riding buddies were hanging out. The conversation meandered over Mark's recent trip to India ("those crazy drivers... crowded... so noisy... Taj Mahal was lovely... amazingly green countryside"), his impending move to Mississippi ("housing is really cheap there") and the previous two weekends ("I was the chili cooking competition judge two weeks ago - terrible cooking, and the exchange-student get-together last weekend had a rodeo - I think some of the kids thought we were being cruel to the animals").

Soon enough it was time to head home. Mark fed his cute little Maltese dog, showed me the photo album (addressed "To Dad") of one of the kids he'd hosted as part of the student exchange program he participated in (picture of kid standing in bodybuilder posture, with caption "just like muscles, only smaller"), we watched TV, and I went to bed.

ACT II

The morning TV traffic report on the LA freeways reminded me how close we still were to the coast. The top story in the local newspaper was the Farmer of the Year award. Had a headache from lack of sleep (wake-up was 0600 hours) and, quite possibly, a minor hang-over; was going to be one of those days. On the way to work, saw the Calipatria High School basketball team on their daily four-mile run.

Mark talked about his job. Loosely paraphrased - "I treat people with respect, and expect respect. I call them sir or mister. Some people consider this weak. The prison riots, some officers - I don't want to say they got what's coming to them, nothing justifies violence against another human being, but some people take pleasure in using their authority over others."

Calipatria has one of the most well-defined city limits I've ever seen. On one side of the road bounding the city at the north there's bales of hay and signs of life, and on the other side nothing. Except, a discreet distance away, the prison. The State Prison is far and away the largest employer in the town - over 1100 people directly employed, and over 4000 maximum security prisoners, twice what the prison was designed for. Plus smaller numbers of minimum security prisoners, and INS... oops... sorry, DHS detainees. Twelve guard towers on the perimeter, of which only two
are manned, and have armed guards. Three concentric fences - two 10 foot barbed wire fences with a 12 foot electrified fence in between, tall enough that it would be hard to cover it with anything to climb over. The electric fence used to kill a lot of birds and small animals and the local animal rights groups used to give a lot of trouble until, just "... like everything else, like toxic ponds, the animals learned to stay away". The electrical engineer in me wondered whether there could be a simple circuit which would only trigger current on a capacitance change corresponding to a large mammal...

As required by the form I'd had to sign, I was NOT IN BLUE DENIMS.

Mark's first order of business was paperwork. Number of people reporting for work, inmates, (over a hundred came in the previous day and about ten left), inspection sheets, and so on. A report from the Chief Medical Officer about a problem inmate. Mark shows me the interview sheet "... I'm only asking that someone do something about this pain of mine... fucking Jews {Mark: the CMO is Jewish}... why don't you just bend me over and fuck me in the ass without greasing me..."

Mark then took me around and introduced me to various people. The pasty-applicator from the previous night was there, and he proceeded to tell Mark's female secretary about how I'd been let into the joke the previous night. Introductions were also made with the warden ("good choice for a first stop") and various other prison officials.

It seems Mark had told a fair number of people about me and my visit. The CalTech-Ph.D.-MIT-post-doc cachet seemed to carry weight. The number of times I was introduced via that, or as a rocket scientist, got embarrassing, though it was flattering that Mark thought the better of me because of that. I was mainly surprised at least several people seemed to have heard of CalTech.

The legal department is kept fairly busy. Inmates have the right to sue the prison and its officials. During Dia de los Muertos (the Mexican Day of the Dead, when one honours ones ancestors), the tortillas which tradition dictated should have been served were mouldy, and so Mark ordered them replaced with corn bread. He got sued for that.

The records department (it was called something else) was choc-a-bloc with files. There was a significant heft to the number of pages a single inmate accumulated during his stay there. It all came down to points, explained Mark. Anyone with over 59 points automatically got transferred to a level IV maximum security prison like Calipatria. As a prison official, he had the power to add upto 360 days to someone's sentence (administrative time), transfer people between lower and higher security
prisons, and move exceptionally troubling inmates to ASU (I forget the expansion of the acronym - essentially, it seemed to be the rough equivalent of solitary confinement, except without the solitary part, and some of the confinement part - civil rights requires some time out of cells for everyone).

The education department dealt with periodic instruction for prison officers. A particularly catchily-titled course was "The Code of Silence", an 8-hour court-mandated course on ethics which everyone just loved. One of the education officers and I got talking - his son was just crazy about MIT, and would be disappointed to learn that in my humble opinion CalTech was better. He thought that there were definite possibilities for information technology in prisons.

It was then time for the twice-weekly meeting of senior prison officials. The warden obviously runs a tight ship - a well controlled meeting where everyone knew what was expected of him and her. Vacation plans, maintenance work, the upcoming move to crowd prisons even more (some prisons were using gymnasiums as holding areas), how to handle the medical care of the "fuck me in the ass"-prisoner, several disturbances
in some of the other of the 33 California prisons with 160,000 inmates were among the administrivia discussed. Mark tells me that when he started in the prison service in 1983, there were 12 prisons. Inmate numbers have gone through the roof, especially after the "tough-on-crime three-strikes" proposition California voters passed. He doesn't like it, for all the usual liberal weenie reasons (I'm not saying he is one :)

As Mark had to handle a tribunal for the ASU prisoners, I was handed off to the able care of an officer I'll refer to only as S (since I haven't asked his permission to post this). The first stop was the infirmary, which was basically like a hospital with extremely locked doors. The next stop was the euphemistically acronymed R&R.

"I'm guessing that's not Rest and Relaxation?"

"Nope. Receiving and Release," replied S.

Every inmate entering and leaving the prison needs to pass through that concrete block, where they are processed. Belongings are organized and packed or stored, and so on. Essentially, a warehouse, and a busy one. That day another large number of inmates were being moved in and out.

S walked up to an inmate and asked
"How's your motion? Not got no motion no more?", to which the inmate sullenly remained silent.

S says of another person in R&R. "I used to be with this guy all the time, but then there was something about an inmate's broken arm. Don't know what that was all about - my memory's all hazy..." Laughs.

We watched as inmates were being taken off from a bus that'd just come in. One of them had a shiner. the driver told S "He says he bumped his eye on a file cabinet." Laughs. "We like those file cabinets. Less paperwork for us. In school you tell, you get into trouble. Here we encourage you to tell. We'll protect you if you tell." Laughs.

"What was that business about the motion all about?", I asked later.

"Anyone can file a petition to look into someone's personnel file. Mine's squeaky clean. Lots of complaints, but nothing on my record.

"They don't like me.... I'm what's called a necessary evil.

"There was a prison riot this August. Twenty-two officers ended up in hospital. Several fights broke out in several different places. I myself spent three minutes fighting for your life, you know how long that is. They tell me I was hit on the head with a crutch - don't remember that - do remember the punches though. There was an officer slashed to the skull."

"Do you have any weapons?"

"Only my baton. Honestly, I prefer using my knuckles."

It was time to tour the ASU. To enter the building required showing my visitor card to an armed person on the second floor. Rows of cells leading out from the center, with a narrow yard at the end. "Used to call them dog-runs, but ACLU doesn't like that."

"What do inmates get sent here for?"

"Dealing in drugs. Getting in fights. Rapes. Murders. Stuff like that."

"How long do people stay here?"

"Depends on ICC. There's an inmate who's been here five years. Killed a man."

Tight schedule. S wants me to see the knife board before we tour the mainline (cell area). He has to do something else, so temporarily hands me off to another officer who takes me past the mail readers and telephone monitoring equipment into the office containing the evidence room. Someone's carefully constructed a display board containing various examples of knives made by inmates - the board is used for training purposes. It's quite astonishing in the variety of materials used, and
inventiveness in construction procedures. The handles of plastic toothbrushes have been sharpened against the concrete floor into sharp points. The handles of cabinets, made of thin aluminium, are ideal - they pass through metal detectors, and can be sharpened into deadly weapons. Razor blades from disposable razors are melted into toothbrush handles. Styrofoam cups used to be standard issue, until it was discovered that any styrofoam object held over a heat source (such as lighters or bulb sockets), melts into blobs which can be rolled like play-dough when still warm, but when cool is hard as wood. Now the plastic objects are made of a plastic which crumbles in heat. Pieces of wire shaped into arrows, tipped with the blood of a HIV+ inmate, used as a dart to hit officers or other inmates.

"We need to account for EVERYTHING! We ask for hair shears to cut hair with back. If the inmate refuses to, we need to do an extraction - two officers in riot gear + two more + two inmates in a cell. Can get quite crowded in a 9x6 cell. Easier in the ASU - less personal property."

"You need to be part of a gang in here, otherwise you're totally defenseless. The gangs in here control the ones outside. The messages are written really small, wrapped in plastic, shoved up the ass, and passed to people about to go out."

S and the other officer show me a video of a prison riot. "Hispanics and blacks in the yard. See how they're all going to the restroom, suddenly. You can see it coming. if they're standing around the edges, no-one exercising, you know there's going to be trouble. And because of civil rights laws, there's nothing we can do about it - we have to let them out into the yard, where most of the violence happens." Suddenly fights break out. "The officer up there had to fire some warning shots into the
ground to break it up."

We walk over to the yard of a mainline cell.

"The inmates are like cockroaches - they get stabbed fifteen times, get up and walk out. If I were to be stabbed fifteen times, the only way I'd be outta here would be in a stretcher. It's something to do with the will to live, determination."

"Why are there no free weights?"

"The California legislature removed free weights."

"Why? They were being used as weapons?"

"Well, yeah, but mostly 'cos police were tired of putting scrawny 170 pounders in jail, and watching 220 pound giants come back out. Not an ounce of body-fat. Sheer muscle. A whole generation of extremely fit criminals on the street."

A phrase I often heard was "being on program." This meant, I think, a certain routine to prison life. Due to the recent riots, Calipatria was out of program, in lock-down. In fact, this was a relatively frequent occurrence at the prison. It was designed as a "program level four", an experiment. This means, apparently, that the basic architecture was designed as a level three prison would have had, meaning less fences, less control. This, according to S, was the main reason why things often spun out of control. For instance, having the main line area in a level four prison as a 270 (i.e., with a two hundred and seventy degrees of vision for the armed guard on the second level) was a bad idea. A better design would be a segmented 180. Much more regimented, compartmentizable. Ditto dining areas. Instead of the exterior entrances, there should have been a narrow entrance with armed guards in the level above.

S said, "I've been in law enforcement twenty two years; eleven here. It's too late for me to change horses in mid-stream - the money is good and it's hard to get that kind of job out on the street. I just put in a pool in the house. The kids, the mortgage. People come in to work here without knowing what they're getting into. That's bad. I know you're not, which is a good thing. A whirlwind tour of prison is the best kind of prison tour there is."

We enter main line. The first thing I hear is a whole bunch of cat-calls and smooching sounds - presumably I'm being welcomed. There's a sign requiring face-plates for all prison officers, so inmates don't spit on you. S goes into more details about the prison design, but I'm tired, my head is aching, and I want out. Besides, it's time for me to go to where Mark is holding ICC, and soon he'll drop me off at the bus-stop.

We get to where Mark and four other officers are going through cases. It seems very cut-and-dry, no-one jumped acrosss the table at Mark, as he's said has happened a couple times when an inmate didn't like his decision. Everyone knows the routine - the prison officers, the guards, even the inmates. Surprisingly, the question that's most often repeated pertains to timing - when will I be released/transferred/go to court? One would think that that's the part everyone would know best.

Mark takes off early to drop me off, deputizing another official to take over the board. My bad - when I was planning the trip there were intricacies about Greyhound bus timings and stations I didn't realize, which is why I need a ride at an inconvenient time, and I appreciate him playing soccer-mom.

While we're checking out of the prison, the guard asks Mark, "How many days?" "Two hundred and twenty one," comes the pat reply.

EPILOGUE

On the trip to the bus-stop, I ask Mark what other people who tour the prison on his invitation remember the most.

"Not the inmates, or the cells or anything like that. The doors closing behind you... I take all the kids I host on a tour of the prison. Some think we're too harsh on the inmates. Others, in particular the East Europeans, Russians, and Turkish kids, think we're too soft."

We talk about life in the Imperial Valley. "Friendliest people I ever met," says Mark. "I needed to move stuff, and this farmer I knew loaned me a truck, trailer, and driver. We have the pilots from the Navy's Blue Angels over for dinner all the time. I was on the city council a couple of terms, and even mayor for a bit."

"How was that? Must have been quite different from the structured regimen at the prison?"

"Oh, the amount people can talk about trivial stuff. And there was excitement during my term too. The sheriff - he was mixed up in some nasty nasty business. I was about to report him to the prosecutor, when he answered a call on his own cellphone, and the guy shot and killed him and his own mother."

We drive past a huge white pile next to a small factory. "That's a mountain of waste from the sugar-beets. It ends up in animal food."

"How safe is it, in these small towns?"

"Very safe. So many people connected with the law nearby. There was a burglary near my house, the burglar tried cutting through a prison official's yard, who jumped on him and held a gun to head 'til the police came."

We reach the bus-stop, and Mark sticks around to make sure I get a ticket. We say our farewells, and I sincerely invite him over if he's ever around Boston or anywhere in India.

I'm on the bus to Palm Springs to catch the train that I'm on as I write this when the border patrol gets on and politely checks everyone's IDs. This is, after all, not too far from the Mexican border, and I'm surrounded by Hispanics on the bus. For an instant I feel a pang of anxiousness as I pat my pocket to make sure my passport is on me - there is an unpleasant similarity in this experience with that of the prison
officials checking me every so often this morning.

I wondered how to write this particular entry. For some reason, it seemed important to me to hold on to the memory of the day. I had no idea why I'd wanted to tour the prison, and I still don't really, but I'm glad I did. I finally decided to do a core-dump of memory, staying as close as possible to a faithful rendition of events and not trying to fit it in with the "style" of the blog. Of course, Mark will probably also go over this entry, and hopefully this will withstand his scrutiny.
My opinions are rarely injected, though perhaps simply the choice of what to recount from a very packed day is a significant editorial decision in itself.

Despite the very one-sided view I got of life in prison, it's clear that the story to take away from this is no "Shawshanke Redemption". The particular contrasts in the lives of people running the prison and those in it is eerie. (Another minor coincidence - "March of the Penguins" is playing in the background as I write this, with Morgan Freeman reminding me of Red.) I see similar depersonalization in mom as she treats her patients.

Being in academe and in particular being a student, one gets used to levels of personal freedom that are unique. All us students talk about going into "the real world". For some it's a chance to make some money, be treated like an adult, and explore what opportunities such a life-style affords. Others, like me, happily spend as much time as possible in the sheltered, almost cloistered environment of our ivory
towers, trading off opportunity and money against not having to work your ass off, security and intellectual freedom. For very few of the people I've spent so much time with over the last nine years, however, does "the real world" mean anything even remotely like what it does to the residents of the Imperial Valley, whether voluntary or not. I suppose that's what this Amtrak trip, and my repititive wanderlust, is
about.

Mark outside Calipatria State Prison

Working vacation

2005-11-17T02:24:00.000-08:00

Dammit, planning a "fun" time is so much WORK! I've been on the net the last few hours just working out the nitty-gritties of my next week or two. And now to round up a long workday, I have to entertain you with nonsensical rantings. Someone had better be reading this, else I'll hunt you down, every last one.

At any rate, my next week or so is clearly planned - I leave San Diego (my current location, and the first stop of SJMEAA) tomorrow for Calipatria, visit the prison Friday morning and catch a train to Houston in the afternoon. Really looking forward to that part - a nice long 36 hour train ride. I always could sleep for arbitrarily long periods on trains. Something about the rocking motion, I suppose. The only minus is, this being Merkin-land, the vast majority of my co-travellers are going to be retirees - the only people with enough time to travel long distance on trains. Which will probably mean interesting conversations, but little eye-candy (my baser side, for once, insisted on honesty).

Though there's always the unexpected to look forward to. On the train ride over to SD, 10 minutes before disembarking struck up a rather surreal conversation with a gamine young thing. I'd shifted seats to get closer to the door, and was listening to a particularly cute Andrew Bird song on my iPod and so was lost to the world. Suddenly she leaned across and asked me to read what she'd scribbled on a couple of pages. A stream-of-consciousness potpourri which bounced all over the place, with ups and downs and all-the-way rounds. Seems she'd had an extreme day, and wanted to decide whether to live a happy life or a sad one. In the manner in which extreme strangers can sometimes exchange intimate secrets, we did. Before I knew it I was off on the platform holding a sheet of paper with her email address, and wondering whether or not to jump back onto the train and make my own "Before Sunrise".

Took the easy way out, stuck around on the platform and waited for Ravi to pick me up. Which, all things considered, wasn't a bad decision - it was fun meeting the old Braun house gang again; shy Ravi, exuberantly flighty Shachi, and the irrepressible Sony.

Anyway, all good things must segue into hopefully better ones. And so to end this particular ramble, here's the next batch of grainy cell-phone pictures.

Union Station, Los Angeles. Long journeys begin with but a single Mountain Dew.

Vacation Road, Paradise Island, San Diego. That's the life, or at least the name for the life.

What's cookin'?

2005-11-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

It seems that a rite of passage necessary for graduation is to be able to meaningfully answer the question "How does it feel?" Actually, graduation's been a ten-ton mastadon on the horizon for so long that there's no feeling of being there yet. One sees it coming from way off, and resigns oneself to the fact that all good things must come to an end; the actual trampling underfoot/riding the howdah passes by almost unnoticed in the hullaballo. Of course, there's also the little matter of the thesis corrections.

Graduating as an undergraduate from IITB was way more intense. It was the first home away from home; there was a much keener sense of loss, and a much more titillating sense of adventure on the horizon. The world was an abyss, and also mine oyster.

That is not to say that I haven't had the same feelings now, just that I've been aware of them coming, and so taken evasive action to blunt the lows. Unfortunately, by comparison it also lowers the highs.

Still and all, I have to admit that every so often something entirely unexpected slips through my carefully constructed armor. Such as the "DR. SIDHARTH JAGGI" nameplate that our group's secretary, Shirley Beatty, gifted me as a going-away present, and as a result of which I was walking around the whole day with a soppy grin on my face.

On my door

Where does one go from here?

2005-11-12T05:46:00.000-08:00

First stop on SJMEAA (Sidharth Jaggi's Most Excellent Amtrak Adventure) - Calipatria State Prison.

Why? Well, on the flight to India a couple months ago I was sitting next to someone who was going to Delhi as a student exchange programme liason. This is something he does in his spare time - for his daytime job he's an assistant warden at aforementioned prison. (Name withheld to protect privacy - even the website lists, of the 1143 people who work there, only the warden's name. Of course, finding a prisoner's name on the website is not a problem). We had a pleasant conversation for much of the 12 hour leg from Frankfurt to Delhi - I gave him a list of touristy things to do in the city of djinns, and he invited me over for a guided tour.

George claims that in the event of a prison riot, if you're taken hostage, it's official US government policy not to exchange you for a prisoner's freedom.

At any rate, it will be informative to see the living conditions for almost 1% of Americans at any given point in time.

Western materialism

2005-11-08T22:20:00.000-08:00

As a past flame told me, Hindus go through four stages of life.

1. Brahmacharya "This stage begins when a child enters school at an early age and continues until he or she has finished all schooling . The goal is to acquire knowedge, build character and learn to shoulder responsibilities."
Actually, the word means to be celibate. Yep, that certainly describes most DCBA grad student life.

2. Grhastha "This stage begins at marriage..."
'Nuff said.

3. Vanaprastha "... ascetic or hermit stage of life.. begins devoting more time to study of scriptures, contemplation and meditation."
What can I say - life of a theorist.

4. Sanyasa "... the final stage of life in which an individual mentally renounces all worldly ties, spends all of his or her time in meditation and contemplation and ponders over the mystries of life... part company with one’s family and become a mendicant..."
... a perfect example being train travel in one of the richest countries in the world.

So obviously my sense of timing is all wrong; maybe that has something to do with my being an atheist.

Anyway, the point to all this is that over the last few days I've been packing up my material belongings in preparation to shipping them half-way across the continent. And as I ponder questions such as "Do I really need a full dinner set so I'm ready to entertain as soon as I reach Boston?" I realize that all my basic survive-and-thrive needs are really minimal. I've just given away a sweet set of speakers, my brand-new folding bike, and so on. I'll be travelling light (a backpack and my blades); I'll ship a few small boxes with essentials ahead of me. After all, it is a fresh start; starting with a light stomach is good for the digestion.

I'm proud of li'l ol' mendicant me.

Of course, when sanyasa means parting with one of my 400 lbs worth of books, that's going too far - they're all going with me.

And so it begins

2005-11-08T17:07:00.000-08:00

Moving to a new place; a fresh start, a a different life. Closer to the real world, less shielded from the frenetic pace of life.

What better way than to spend 30 days on Amtrak trains? I start in Los Angeles on the 15th of November, and zig-zag my way through this country, blogging every so often.

Wish me luck, and drop me a line.