Meat loafs

For past few days I have been watching Bollywood songs and noted very interesting patterns in the current bollywood movies. All the old horses, I mean heroes, have six packs. All the young horses, again I mean heroes, look like horses. All the heroines are stick figures wearing bare minimum clothes required by the society. All the six packers are also following the heroines in that particular case. I mean, they are also wearing the bare minimum. If it was upto either of them (heroines or six-packers) they won't be wearing anything. Most probably that's what is going to happen next time I will get a chance to watch the Bollywood. No clothes. There are no acting skills anyways. So they have to show what they have, I guess.

After a few hours of watching current bollywood, I had to run back to some oldies. It's simply amazing how beautiful the heroines in that era were and how beautifully they can act. For example this beautiful song.



So refreshing after putting up with so much crap..

Pain

At times I wonder if anyone really understands the pain someone else is going through. If you express any concern ever, all you get in return is a lot of pep talks. You know talks about how everything will be alright and how we shouldn't loose hope. But really, all those people giving all these optimistic speech, how the hell do they know that things won't get worse? How they know that something good will come out of it? What if it doesn't improve?

And at times, all these pep talks make things worse. At times you are so consumed by the pain that you are not even thinking about what is going to happen next. All you need in those time is someone who can empathize. Someone who understands. No speeches. No false hopes. No optimism. Just someone who understands the pain that's consuming you.

Yeah, yeah I know. All those pep talkers are just being a good friend. It's the way friends are programmed. It's their job and blah blah blah. But at times pain needs understanding and not speeches.

P.S.: Guess credit crunch is getting to me yet again. Nothing to worry, I should be back soon.

SHOCKED

As I have confessed time and again that I have lost touch with Bollywood main stream. So I had no idea about the movie or surrounding gossips when I started watching Dostana today evening. Only thing I knew that it starred two of my bollywood crushes: John Abraham and Abhishek Bachchan. Also some hints about them pretending to be gay in the movie.

I got the shock of my life towards the end of movie when JOHN ABRAHAM KISSED ABHISHEK BACHCHAN. I didn't know that about the movie. I am not sure what upsets me more - that John Abraham kissed someone else or that someone else kissed Abhishek Bachchan. Either way, it was a devastating moment for me. Right now I am in process of recovering from the shock and will soon be in the process of trying to mend my broken heart. They should have a warning signs for such movies. Please pray for my poor heart. :(

P.S.: BTW, today is John Abraham B'day. Just FYI.

I, Robot.

Hehehe.

(from webcomic)

Famous

Want to be famous, try out: photofunia.com. I spent last 2 hours making myself famous. :)

Facebook status

A friend of mine wants to strangle the person who invented math!

A friend of his has humbly offered to kick the said inventor in the shins while he strangles.

Please warn the inventor, if he isn't already dead.

P.S.: 1. I did my undergrad in Maths. It's my moral duty to side with the inventor. (I need to justify my stand as a lot of my friends will be more than a willing accomplice for the aforementioned strangulation).

2. This friend of mine is taking Partial Differential Equations (pdes) this quarter. The final's week starts tomorrow. I sympathize with him but can't overlook my moral obligation.

3. I have started liking the new version of Facebook, especially the 'comment on status' feature.

Americanized

Recently I took an online survey on the difference in perception of intelligence between American and South Asian. It was part of data collection for someone's research. The questions were ok, like, do you think intelligence is something we are born with or can be it acquired with hard work, do everyone is born with same amount of intelligence? etc. Towards the end of the survey, there was a question that intrigued. It asked:

How much Americanized do you consider yourself to be?

It has been on back of my mind ever since. How do you define and, more importantly, measure Americanization? Well as far as definition goes, Meriam-Webster says:

Main Entry:

Amer·i·can·ize

Pronunciation:

\ə-ˈmer-ə-kə-ˌnīz, -ˈmər-, -ˈme-rə-\

Function:

verb

Inflected Form(s):

Amer·i·can·ized; Amer·i·can·iz·ing

Date:

1797

transitive verb
1 : to cause to acquire or conform to American characteristics 2 : to bring (as an area) under the political, cultural, or commercial influence of the United States intransitive verb
: to acquire or conform to American traits

However, I haven't found any measure of the term. Seems to me that it's pretty subjective. If you ask my Grandma, or for that matter few of my cousins, I am completely Americanized as I can speak fluent English and live alone. But if you ask someone who grew up here, I am still clueless. Like the other day my room-mate and I were watching news and there was a piece about O. J. Simpson. I had no clue about who he is and my room-mate reaction was how can you not know O.J. Simpson (Apparently he was a famous footballer in 70s who killed his wife in 90s).

Anyway, question still remains: How Americanized am I ? In order to answer that question, I decided to make a list of traits for each category. Here they are:

American Traits:

1. I have started understanding and following the American news. I have always been bad with remembering celebrities: Indian, American or otherwise so that doesn't count (still I know Paris Hilton though I might not be able to recognize her).
2. I don't follow Bollywood any longer. I do love watching movies so I have switched to Hollywood for that.
3. I have a car and I drive it quite a bit.
4. I work-out and eat healthy (though I am not sure it falls in American Category...there should be a California or rather Bay-area category for this.).
5. I have a calendar to remind me of different appointments.
6. I floss every night.

Indian Traits:

1. I kinda follow Indian news though not the way I used to.
2. I still like old Hindi numbers. I don't have patience for English songs.
3. I still have a bike and love to bike. I don't do it as often due to my schedule.
4. I still like Indian food and usually eat that.
5. I don't balance my check book. Ever. That's one concept I can't get used to.
6. My dentist lives in India.

Well that's all I can think of. Seems I have equal points in each category. May be I am 50% American and 50% Indian. Like half-n-half. At least now I know. Next time I should be able answer that question.

P.S.: I am just procrastinating. I have the last HW submission tomorrow and my code isn't working. I can't figure out what's wrong (Everything is by the book, I have checked at least 15 times) so I am just taking a break...

Silver Lining

I have been looking for one silver lining for Vista and finally found one. It's called Mahjong Titans. I spent last few hours playing that. I need to work and write that stupid code yet again. I can't make myself work. So I found a new way to procrastinate.

Someone please make me work. I need to submit my work by Monday noon! Guess I am not sleeping tonight or tomorrow. It's so unfair. I finished 3/4th of my work already. Why should I have to do it again? WHY?

Far-sighted

Ever since this quarter started, I had been chasing this book. It is recommended book for one of the courses I am taking. They had 2 copies of that book in the library, hence the instructor put the book on reserve. What it means is that you can issue the book for exactly one day. If you don't return the book on time, fine is pretty hefty. So I had been issuing the book for a day whenever I needed it. In view of current economic crisis, I refused to spend $100 on a book that I will use for only 3 months.

Now my current crisis started as this is dead week (week before finals). It was impossible to track the book. I had been going to library everyday for past week trying to get hold of that book with no luck. Today the crisis turned to panic. I have to submit the last HW on Monday. I was running out of time and I was in dire need of that book. So I tried to track down friends who might have the book. Finally found someone who took the course last year. But she lent the book to another common friend. So I knocked his door. He told me that he lent the book to my office mate. So I came back to my office and found the book I had been hunting for days, on the desk next to mine! Just my life...

Just a note to say...

I HATE VISTA

I started working with Vista about four hours ago and it has crashed twice in middle of my work. I LOST MY WORK YET AGAIN. I lost my work TWICE today. It's 4 AM in the morning. I am finally going to sleep. Will deal with this tomorrow...

My new lens

Got a new lens today. Very excited about it. Here is the first picture using the lens:

More to come soon.

P.S.: It's 3:08 AM. I had a very long day. Can't write much...

A very Personal Obituary

With great sorrow I inform that my best friend, Shivani, died earlier today. She was my first laptop. She has been with me for past 28 months. The cause of death is still unknown, however symptoms matched the infamous disease "The blue screen of death". The attempts to revive her were fruitless and since I let my manufacturer warranty expire, we couldn't get any professional help.

I last recorded her sweet memories (data backup) in late November. However, I couldn't finish the recording due to lack of time. I regret it very much. Only if I knew that it was my last chance to save those memories. I was never given a chance to say Goodbye to her. I was half way through my project for my class when this happened. I never had a chance to back up the project and hence have to start from scratch on a Vista machine.

But as Bhagwad Gita says, whatever was created will be destroyed one day. Life can't stop at death. Hence I move on and start working on my project yet again. Meanwhile thanks for your condolences and pray that I finish my project on time.

The loving memories of Shivani will be with me always...

P.S.: 1. In honor of Shivani, I have named my new laptop Shivani II.

The Top Brass

So it's happening again. Another bail out under consideration. And yet again the CEO of these companies are drawing millions in salary and benefits. I know Ford CEO Alan Mulally said that he will work for $1 salary but I don't think that's going to happen.

Honestly, I don't have a problem what a private firm pays it's employee or it's CEO or anyone. It's their money they can do whatever they want. But I have a problem when these guys come and ask for public funds. Why should I pay for such ridiculous salary when my own salary is not even 1/100th of their salary? And worst part: if Congress says no, thousands of people will loose job while these guys will be given the golden parachute. How is that fair? Who are these people and why are companies pay them so much? How do companies justify these salaries and benefits? Even the private firms are answerable to the Board of Directors and their share holders, aren't they? So how do they approve of these salaries? And it's not that these so called "top brass" are putting their life in line to save the company. I can't think of any other reason for getting paid so much.

May be it's my inherent weakness in Economics that I am not able grasp about all this. Or may be I don't understand capitalism. But I doubt that any of these can logically justify these salaries.

P.S.: I think, the credit crunch is getting to me. The constant news about business shutting down. The never-ending bail out plans. I feel like everything around me is collapsing and I can't trust anything to make a long term decision. I am not sure whether I will get a job if I graduate. In short, I am scared. I know recession is a normal economic cycle. The trouble is there is nothing normal about current crisis. It is worse than the Great Depression. And that one lasted a decade. No one knows when will this one turn it's wheel. Everything is going from bad to worse to worst. Did I mention I am scared?

Wrong Intelligence

For some unknown reason (Honestly. I don't have any logical explanation), I was watching the last interview of first couple, George and Laura Bush, on ABC News today. The interview was conducted by Charlie Gibson.

I don't expect you to go through the torture of listening to him so here is the excerpt from his interview that caught my attention:

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

Now let me put it straight. As I understand this conversation, Bush would have been happy if Iraq had WMDs (Weapon of Mass Destruction) but not if the intelligence has rightly informed him about absence of any (Actually you would need to watch the interview for his expression at that speculation).

And here I thought that would have been a much better option. The US army wouldn't have lost so many soldiers. US wouldn't be center of World criticism. So much money could have been saved. All the pluses. No Minus. But if he hadn't plunged US in a war then he wouldn't be a Republican President now, would he?

P.S.: I think this was part II of the interview. The interview transcript is here. The page on which the above excerpt is here.

Why so excited?

I don't get why all the ads about going out of business sound so happy and exciting? Are they excited to go out of business or are they excited that they will be selling their merchandise at a lower price (which, by the way, is rarely true). Or are they excited for us, the customers, who will buy their merchandise at a lower price? I am not sure but I would surely want to find out. What is so exciting about 'Going out of business'?

Vista

Yep I succumbed under pressure and bought a new laptop. I am latest in the list of people who hate Vista and are compelled to use it. Ever since I purchased this laptop, I have been trying to find someone who actually likes Vista. And I don't mean people who think it's alright but someone who actually would prefer Vista over XP.

Does anyone heard of any such person?

P.S.: I think I might have said some time back that I would rather switch to Mac instead of buying a Windows Vista but it was when I thought that I will buy my next laptop when I am earning. I am still a poor grad student who can't afford Mac or related softwares..

Procrastination

I have been good this quarter. You can tell that by number of post I wrote this quarter. I didn't procrastinate enough. I started working on my HWs the moment I got them. I took three classes (excluding my Karate class which I took for credits as well). I did some research too. And I have been trying to exercise daily as instructed in Karate class.

But last week things changed. I didn't do anything. Honestly. I was supposed to finish two HWs and work on my research. I didn't. After a long time, I am putting things for last moment. Unfortunately those last moments are approaching fast and now I am panicking and still procrastinating. Seems finally I am back to my old ways...