Anticipation

Alright, so I promised another blog in the month of February and I am keeping it. Though I don't really know how many are even following my blog anyway. If only there was a way to let me know, like writing comment/critiques. So, if you are reading it, do leave a comment, you lazy asses.

Anticipation, something we undergo on a regular basis. Some of them are little things and some are big ones, like an up coming interview or game(for athletes) or a date or a presentation or an audition(for actors and actresses) etc. You make all the preparations, study well for the interview, practice hard for the game, groom yourself for the date etc. As the moment starts closing in, the nerves come in, a lot of things run through your mind, like what will happen, you start ANTICIPATING, what if this happens, what if that happens, etc and when the big day finally arrives you could even break a sweat on a 20 degree weather.

After the event begins, it can go two ways (1) the nerves could continue, your mind could still be thinking a lot and everything could go south or (2) you stop thinking, fall in sync, enter into a zone, nothing except the task at hand matters, you perform better than you knew you can and everything goes better than you anticipated. If it goes the first way, well there ain't much you can do but suffer through it. But if it goes the later way, hmmmm, its such an amazing feeling, you can't put it in words. After the event is over, then you think about it, you run it over and over again in your head, thinking about the great answers you gave, the perfect plays you made, how charming you were, how well you demonstrated etc.

At the end...........

huh, I dont know how to end this blog. I am a little lost. That's how I have been off late.

Never mind, I dont know why I wrote it. I dont know why I am posting it. Anyway it's not like a lot of are reading right? or are you??? /:)....... Lemme know :D

Initial and Boundary Conditions

OK... so I cheated the last time around. Well cheated not in the sense you dirty minds are thinking....:D I kinda din't really come up with something good to write in the month of January......Actually a lot of ideas did come into my mind but I was too occupied with other stuff and could not put them on here. Anyway, here is the blog for this month.

When I was in Sophomore year of college, a friend of mine(Nitesh Pandey) was taking a Humanities class and in that his Prof. has asked them a question which he brought it up to me. "See how we can tell the position, velocity of a body(don't get all Heisenberg) if we know the initial conditions of it. Can we do the same for human beings as well?" Meaning, given the type of a conditions a human was bought up in, can we predict how he/she would behave in certain situations or what he/she would become in the future etc. For some reason, I remembered it last month and ever since wanted to write about it.

I agree with the Professor to a certain extent, i.e. depending on the initial conditions meaning how someone is raised, the environment someone grew up in, plays a major role in what that person makes of himself/herself. But that is only to a certain extent. As he/she grows up a lot of other conditions start interfering in the behavior of the person. For instance the people around him, the situations he/she comes across everyday, etc. These are like the boundary conditions. They do play a major role in shaping the behavior of the person. But unlike in the case of the Boundary Value Problems that we deal in Finite Element Analysis etc, we can actually change the boundary conditions. What I mean by that is, the boundary conditions that we come across are changeable, all we need to do is stretch the boundary, fight right back, turn them so that they favor you.

I know its a lot of random stuff I blurred out, but I hope you get it. Like I said, there has been a lot on my mind lately. Hope you forgive me for that. :D

P.S. I promise another blog in this month. Until then, Ciao.

Technically

This is also a blog entry....:)

P.S. I am a little too tired to write a blog and have to only an hour left to fill the quota for this month. So here it is...:D

Wishing

On the eve of yet another New Year, I have this thought, tomorrow is going to be THE(Valentine's Day could be the other, but there are some morons who think Valentine's Day is a evil holiday) day of the year where almost everyone in the world "wishes" almost everyone they know or meet a Happy New Year. Anyway my thought is what's the whole point of "wishing" exactly. I mean, I understand the literal meaning of it. But just because someone "wishes"(no matter how honest they are), does it make your year a Happy one? How much of a difference does it make in the amount of happiness that you receive in the year to come, if one less person "wishes" you. Instead people should be saying, "Hey, let me know if in anyway I can help you make your year, heck why just the year, say make your life a happy one". I know it's a really long statement to say, but at least that would make sense. Though it's the Cynic in me speaking, but that's the thought I had today. So here I am, NOT wishing, instead informing you that if there is anything at all, that I can do to make you happy even a little bit, do let me know. I will do my best.

See you next year all!!

P.S. This is another of my blogs which I wrote in a hurry to fulfill the quota for this month.

Love and Driving

Ok! So I decided to write at least one blog every calendar month and today being the last day, I have to write something. So here it is, some random thought that came into my mind. Don't read(if at all anyone is reading that is) too much into it.

A good friend of mine once told me something that was told to him by his father. "While driving, if you are 100% you are only 50% safe". It totally makes sense. You could be as sober as you can be, you could be the most attentive driver there is, you could have the reaction time of a hockey goalkeeper and yet if the other guy is a drunk, with an attention span of a 2 year old and has a reaction time of a elephant, you are bound to get into an accident and there is nothing you can do about it.

Love is much the same in a way. You could be sweet, caring, honest, straight forward, willing to make a big fool of yourselves and head over heels in love with someone and express it to that person, but if she/he doesn't feel the same way about you, there is nothing and absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Like I said, i wrote this very little thought so it may not make much sense. I promise to come up with a nice and interesting topic for the next month.

Weaknesses

The other day I was watching a extremely short lived Sci-Fi show called Bionic Woman(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0880557/) in which this woman(Jamie) has an accident and looses both her legs and her right hand. Her bf being a cutting edge Research Surgeon in Bionics(obviously), replaces the lost limbs and parts of her brain with Bionic limbs and neurons. This gives her super strength and agility, but only in the replaced limbs. During a fight with another complete Bionic Woman(Sarah, played by the hot and cute Katee Sackhoff), Jamie faces the problem of having only one strong(or as they refer to is, "Bionic") arm, which makes the other normal (human) arm as her weakness. Now if she never had the accident and never got the new "features", the other arm would never be called as a weakness of hers.

The metaphor which is more often to to refer weakness is Achilles' Heel. Now, from what I have read and seen in movies, Achilles is a well built man(though mythical) and I am quite sure that his heel is probably stronger than the best of the best. But because of his mighty strength else where, it's considered his weakness and turns out it was a fatal one in deed.

So, is it our strengths that make our weaknesses visible? or Do weaknesses exist to balance out the strengths?

Chance Encounters

Chance Encounters, Life is full of them. The friend whom you haven't seen in years, runs into you on the subway, which you very rarely take; You pass by a used book stand which is on a route which you had to take because of a construction work on your usual route and find a very rare book which you always wanted to read; winning a lottery on a ticket which you had to buy because the news stand guy did not have enough change or as Mr. Bogart put it "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine". Not all of them are good as the examples above. But when they are, they make the day better, sky brighter and life worth living. Here are two chance encounters that I want to share, which are similar that of Mr. Bogart's.

(A) The year is 2003, the date Jan 4th, the location a Train (AP Express) from Hyderabad to New Delhi. Even though the tickets for our(8 of us) trip back to college for the Spring semester were booked more than a month in advance, we were surprisingly wait-listed until the morning of the journey. When I reached the train station, I was surprised to find that there were hell a lot of students(like 10-15 times more) on the platform, than the usual . Then I got the answer for the mysterious puzzle of not being able to get a confirmed ticket though booked well in advance. It is that a different college students (apparently too many of them) are also taking the same train on that day.

Anyhoo, we finally get to our seats(which are not all together by the way), we see that there are some seats in our cubicle(a section of 6 seats) taken by the students of other college that I mentioned and surprisingly all girls, Woohoo (give me a break I was 18). After a while of awkwardness, we all got introduced to each other. Among them was this cute girl who surprise surprise started a conversation with me, WITH ME. Asked me if she knew me from some where. I was like, I would know if we had met before (because she has this sweet smile on her face that no one could forget). And so it began, the most memorable train ride that I ever took. We ended up exchanging emails (well it was 2003 and we dint have cell phones yet). We kept in touch, became good friends. I started to like her and wanted to be more than friends, but unfortunately she dint feel the same.

(B) The year 2008, the date Nov 10th, the location Starbucks @ AstorPlace, NYC. I have been having some money problems and had to take up a tutoring job in addition to my job on campus. So I get a assignment to tutor Statistics to a Nursing student at NYU. That afternoon I had an assignment midtown which ran a little late, so I texted the student saying I am going to be late by 10 mins. She replied back saying it was ok. When I reached the Starbucks(which is my favorite Starbucks location in NYC), I couldn't find her right away. So I called her and finally saw her sitting at a table all obediently and cute as always, with the curly hair and a smile on her face. I introduced myself and sat down across the table. She said "I never had a tutor before, how does this work?" I said, whatever she wants to do is fine by me and I asked her "Do you want to learn the subject or just get a good grade?"(I always think of asking my students that question, but that was only time I ever asked anyone that question). She said "Wouldn't you get a good grade if you learn the subject?". Right then and there, I liked her for the way she thinks. I liked the interest that she has shown during that session. We had 7 more sessions after that and the more I knew about her, the more I liked her. I also got to know that, lucky me, she has(had then) a bf. She had almost all the qualities that I wanted a girl to have and also (though she doesn't know yet) we seem to be very much compatible in a lot of ways like two halves of a medallion. Though I haven't seen her since Dec 16th 2008, we still keep in touch and also she is single now(knock on wood). So being an Eternal Optimist, I am my keeping fingers crossed.

Though the first of my Chance Encounters did not end the way I would have liked, I am sure and confident that the second one will(hey, a guy can dream can't he?).