Category: Personal

  • You know when you’re stressed when

    Want proof that I can’t blog? Here it is. Found this in the local paper. Felt emailing it would be a waste of email, so decided to post it here for all to see (is anyone seeing?).

    You Know You’re a victim of exam stress when:

    1. Random Shah Rukh Khan movies begin to look like top-class entertainment.
    2. Your favourite pastime is tearing up sheets of paper
    3. Your daily vocabulary is reduced to: crap, damn, hell, bloddy, goddamn.
    4. You shoot stapler pins all over the room just to see how far they go.
    5. You sit blankly at your table, staring at the same sheet of paper for half an hour.
    6. Your diet consists of 3 Cs: coffee, choclate and Crocin
    7. You pray for floods, heat strokes, strikes of teachers and the death of G. W. Bush; so that exams are postponed or cancelled.
    8. You read the “love messages” on the bottom panel of MTV to de-stress
    9. You do chapters that aren’t in the syllabus
    10. You find yourself incredibly fantasising about Goa and Lonavla
    11. Approximately four times a day, you feel like running away from home and selling coconuts in Kerala

    By Mudra Mehta of NM College, as published in JAM. Go there for more fun articles.

  • Ideas Welcome

    I have been trying over last week to get out of books of philosophy and religion.I tried reading books by Stephen King et. all but no use, at least till now. Any ideas and suggestions are welcome.

    I went to the IIT Techfest 2007. With their money, I could’ve done better. But, that’s just selfish me getting all envious and jealous.Will try to blog more over this week, if possible.

  • Happy New Year

    I know I am about a fortnight late, but what the heck. Happy New Year.

    New Year was spent in Kerala. What was I doing at midnight? Sleeping. What else? So, I forgot about resolutions and stuff. Let’s see how the year goes without resolutions. The weird header art has been removed and replaced.

  • Traffic Jam

    The condition of the world today is like a huge traffic jam on a single road in the middle of the desert. Going off the road is the equivalent of getting killed. On the road, everyone wants the other to move and have different solutions for how to get out of the traffic jam and everyone wants to implement their idea.

    Having one fellow unravel the whole traffic jam is useless, since he does not know the situation ahead. Having several people sort out the traffic jam is also useless, since there is bound to be difference in view points. Let’s see how we get out of this traffic jam.

    Hint: abandon your cars, take a cycle and go home.

  • Lok Sabha TV

    The Parliamentarians of India now have the whole nation watching their conduct on live television. Lok Sabha TV broadcasts live Parliamentary debate during the Parliamentary session and at other times has interviews with MPs, political parties, analysis programmes etc. This is the first 24-hour channel dedicated to the lower house of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha and it is supposed to be the first of its kind.

    This has a very fun aspect of it. You can either see serious debates in Parliament or you can see how money is going down the drain.

    What is the expectation? People will see the MPs wasting their money on certain issues and when they return to their constituency, question them. I am yet to see the MP from my region in Parliament or maybe, its because I don’t watch LS TV that often.

    My nine year old brother who still does not understand Parliamentary democracy thinks that its a huge classroom with a teacher. He asks me why the teacher does not check their homework. I just don’t know what to answer.

    FYI: There’s also a Rajya Sabha TV. But LS TV is a 24-hour channel.

  • Seeing Experiment

    Before reading the whole post, look at the theme header image and tell me what your first instantaneous reaction was. Done? Now read on.

    Shirin started this off. She wrote a post about seeing and believing and that got me thinking of doing a seeing experiment myself. The two are not connected. I asked two people to look at the theme of this blog and for their immediate reactions. Both said along the lines of:

    “peaceful…beautiful…snow”

    Three guys and three girls, just for balancing out gender probabilities. Just 1 because I don’t have the cash to carry out a world wide survey. I compared what they said with what was my first reaction to this theme.

    I don’t know if they brooded over it and looked properly. But, I looked at it for about 5 seconds and this what I thought:

    “Battle field…Deserted battlefield”

    Why? Because I didn’t have time to take a look at it properly, I thought the clouds was smoke. The snow suggested winter. Winter is generally associated with death. That’s all I thought and what I said was: “Battlefield…Deserted battlefield”.

    I meant a just abandoned battlefield. Somewhere, where a battle has just taken place. Odd.

  • Problems in India?

    India may be doing well economically. But, what’s happening to the social structure?

    1. Trouble in parts of Maharashtra.
    2. MLAs trashing the WB assembly.
    3. Union Minsister convicted of murder.

    Where are we headed?

  • Welcome to the all-new Parallel Spirals

    I deleted all the previous posts since they’re basically not the best of my writing. I will remain offline till 2nd December, 2006. But, you will see on the timestamp that the date is: 25-11-2006. This is thanks to WordPress.com’s timestamp edit feature.

    I plan to limit myself seriously in this all-new blog. This is an attempt to make blogging a more productive experience. Feedback and comments are always welcome.

  • Stories Worth Following

    The CS Monitor‘s report on India stepping up ties with Africa, in the face of China doing the same. Don’t understand why they do this. The national interests of India and China can’t be the same. If Africa benefits, good for them. If India benefits, good for us. But, if India is going in just to compete with China, it’s bad strategy.
     
    MS to reconsider it’s China Policy from BBC News.

    Rice traders and environmentalists have warned the Government of India against experimenting further with genetically modified crops .No news report in CNN-IBN. Have to check their website though…

    GoodNewsIndia has several good articles related to agriculture practises and re-invigorating ancient water pools – at a time when it is being said that wars will be fought over water.

    Last but not the least…India’s mission to the moon…oh! did I say India’s manned mission to the moon?

    Glad to be here…

    I probably won’t be blogging for the next couple of days…have to make some arrangements vis-a-vis my studies…exams getting closer…winds getting colder…brrr…and no @#$%^& announcemnt from MU….hmmph…

    Hindustan Times has introduced a practise of providing the email ids of people writing the stories – the reporters – this is a wonderful concept and I hope other newspapers follow the example…

  • A nuclear-less world

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com/. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on Ocober 16, 2006 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    The whole world takes all its nuclear explosives and gets rid of them. A thorough search of the Earth is carried out with satellites to make sure that no evidence of nuclear energy is left on Earth. All Uranium, useless to Earth and useful only to nuclear energy is also packed and taken far away into space and explodes. The world is then rid of nuclear energy.

    What a lovely scenario to contemplate. But, not so possible in the next 10-20 years. Nuclear alternatives, it seems are necessary for the coal dependant economic powerhouses of India and China. Until you have effective and useful alternatives to coal and as cheap,nuclear power would be very hard to get rid of.

    But, if it is eventually got rid of, won’t all the good stuff – like nuclear medicene, go along with it too? Who knows what other hidden purposes Uranium can be used for?

    Think about it.

    If there is a perfectly scientific explanation to this, kindly send me a link in the comments section. I’m too lazy to search on the Internet or do research on what I think? If you want to make this a PhD thesis, go ahead.

    ===
    listening to:
    birds leaving after hearing the children shouting…