Yeah, you know I cant have a single grape, and similarly, I cant have a single pet, the size of grape...So my new pets.
I am now a proud owner of an aquarium. It has right now 4 gold fish ranging from $7 to $0.26. Now you might wonder how the heck I did end up having an aquarium and actually managing to stuff it up with a range of gold fish. To begin with, it was always in the back of my mind. Growing up I had an aquarium, in my grannys house.. I had seen the weekly rituals involved in cleaning the aquarium, and the process of actually maintaining it.. For sure, was pain in the butt. But what the heck, I loved the entire process...
My neighbour , Shantu, was enthusiast about animals.. He had a pet Dog, a pet Cat, and for some time even a pet Rabbit, that too in Mumbai...Imagine, a family of 6 people living a miniscule, 300 sq ft apartment with all the additional burden of extra family members. But Shantu was up to them and for sometime he even managed to have his own aquarium. I used to go with him to local fish shop in Andheri, where I grew up....
It was fun to look at all the fascinating variety of fishes, and assortment of worms that go with them as fish food. Though, being too young to be technical about maintaining an aquarium, which I now learn is a form if science in itself and actually one can publish original articles...Shantu did pretty well.
In UCSD price center, a food court on campus, they maintain a huge, I mean huge aquarium, the capacity of which easily would be on the upwards of 250 gallons. They have an assortment of tropical fish in there.. I will clarify what I mean by tropical
soon. So as you see it all summed up pretty well for me to do something about having my own aquarium.
To the initiating, here are some tips about how to go about setting up your own aquarium and what to look for in the initial few weeks of proud ownership. No wonder if one decides to venture into this, beginning is with google. Yes, heres the link to wonderful website which is all about aquariums, Aquarium Info . Ok so if you go through the website, a few things will immediately stike you. The guy for once has pretty decent knowledge about aquariums and assortment of fishes that go with them.
However my own research into it lead to some varying answers. First of all, as it is suggested there, I agree that it is better to have a fish tank rather than a fish bowl, if one really wishes to decorate his/her apartment with the amazing little creatures of water. A decent 10 gallon glass fish tank with all the kit, which would involve a filter, a lamp, dechlorinating liquid and a Ph maintaining solution would cost around $25-$30 in Walmart. Petsmart, which specializes in everything that is animal is probably a better place to look for such beginners kit. However, Walmart does have best deals as usual.
Once the kit is bought, one has to decide where to keep the tank, how high above the ground should it be and should it be kept on any ordinary table. A 10 Gallon tank when filled with water will get darn heavy. So it makes sense to have a very sturdy and really strong table and a safe corner in the house, away from direct sunlight.
The kit that I bought came with a very decent instruction manual, following which for a change dosent require a PhD. Neways, the tank should be set up in a safe corner of the house with filter mounted and the tank filled with tap water. Yes using tap water at normal room temperature should be ok. One has to take care though to dechlorinate the water using the solution that comes with the kit. Let the filter run for a day or two before you decide to venture into the store to look for your pet.
For beginners usually, as I found out, having Gold fish makes sense. The reason they are better pet for amatures is, their maintainance is easy. The water temperature for them is usually, around 68-72 degrees farenheit. So tap water at room temperature should be usually ok. That eliminates the need for heater. Tropical fish which I mentioned earlier require heater, as they thrive better in temperature range of around 78-80 degree farenheit. Gold fish in wild can live upwards of 30 years (an esstimate I got from talking to a few people in Walmart and Petsmart and Pets People). In captivity, they can easily live upwards of 10 years... So they really have a long life. That again is a boon for beginners, who do not really want to invest into pets that would die say in a week. One can buy gold fish ranging from $0.25 to anything upwards of $20 -$25. As I have seen the higher price is usually for big (by size )gold fishes..
The rule of thumb which actually I liked and kinda makes sense is an inch and half sized gold fish per gallon of water. That said a 10 gallon tank can easily hold 3 to 4 small gold fish. In india, one gets live worms as fish food, which for sure are better. But in America, I would guess they would have 'N' rules and regulations against worms killing and given the technological advances, one can buy, variety of fish flakes with detailed description of protein and vitamin contents. There are even fish pills available for the enthusiast. I also found medicine pills for fish illness.
So you see, there is amazing mishmash of stuff out there for your fish not to get bored of same food. The next most logical question is how much and how many times should one feed fish. Gold fish are very adapting. If you feed them more, they will eat more and vice versa. I therefore would suggest to begin with feed a pinch of flakes once daily. That prevents the filter from being clogged of extra food remaning in the tank. It also prevents some nasty chemical reactions in the water evoked by remaining food. The rule of thumb here is, feed as much as fish can finish in a few minutes time.
Finally tank cleaning. Once a week one should take care to replace one third of tank water. No need to remove fish from the tank. There is something called gravel cleaner, that one can buy for around $7. It is very useful to remove all the gunk in the tank resulting in one weeks time.
As it turns out, the room freshners that one can buy in any supermarket are not good for fishes. In my experience, if the the room freshner is on for a long time, the fish die. I still couldnt figure out how exactly the room freshners affect fish, but my initial investment on 3 gold fish turned sour one day when I left my apartment with room freshner on in my room. In the evening, when I returned my room was freshened up but , the fish tank had 3 dead bodies. I have stopped using the room freshner since. So far all my pets are hale and healthy.
So you see, with few tricks and tips under the belt it is easy and great fun to own an aquarium....
Happy aquariuming you all!!!!
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Lets Talk Sex
What...in open, how colud we ? what will mom say, father will kill u!!!
This is what we as indians hear, growing up through our adolescent lifes.
But you know, kids are ingeneous when it comes to sex. They figure out ways and means to figure out, what exactly masturbation is, how to do it, whether is it indeed harmful ,where does a baby child comes from, what the weird yet the most amazing feeling of orgasm, is and the means to acheieve that. There are many a night outs, in bed under the bedsheet, with night lamps, us reading books on what is socially unexpectable and each kid on his own resorting to, most often unsavory means, to look for the answers to the universally true fact of life. Various forms of sexual diversity, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, monosexuality, are still unknown even to common adult healthy man in indian society. A country of Kamasutra,The art of Love, is engulfed by cultural norms enforced upon people by hulligans calling themselves, the savior of traditional east from the rotten influence of the west.
The point I am trying to make here is, is India today ready for movie like Kinsey. Amazing portrayal of one mans passion with sex and science. He tried in very orthodox american society of early fifties, to do something which I am pretty sure, still is impossible in India. Dr Kinsey, or Proc as he was called, did pioneering studies on
human sexualilty, opened the eye of the world to the most bizarre out there and enabled the western world to associate with the natural.
The movie for me personally was a shock and I believe, most of us will feel extremely embarassed to even think watching this movie in front of our parents. Surprisingly though even when each of us at my age and staying in US for soemtime now, have come to accept, and know and associalte sex with form of natural biological fact of life.
However, for sure every one on his own has to figure out the solution to conflict between, the natural desire to satiate ones biological needs, and confer to societal norms and come up with some metric for love , based on personal bias or more precisely wiring in the brain, tuned up by experiences growing up.
It might be disturbing in some sense, after all we are indians, but I recommend Kinsey to understand what really sciene and passion is all about.
This is what we as indians hear, growing up through our adolescent lifes.
But you know, kids are ingeneous when it comes to sex. They figure out ways and means to figure out, what exactly masturbation is, how to do it, whether is it indeed harmful ,where does a baby child comes from, what the weird yet the most amazing feeling of orgasm, is and the means to acheieve that. There are many a night outs, in bed under the bedsheet, with night lamps, us reading books on what is socially unexpectable and each kid on his own resorting to, most often unsavory means, to look for the answers to the universally true fact of life. Various forms of sexual diversity, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, monosexuality, are still unknown even to common adult healthy man in indian society. A country of Kamasutra,The art of Love, is engulfed by cultural norms enforced upon people by hulligans calling themselves, the savior of traditional east from the rotten influence of the west.
The point I am trying to make here is, is India today ready for movie like Kinsey. Amazing portrayal of one mans passion with sex and science. He tried in very orthodox american society of early fifties, to do something which I am pretty sure, still is impossible in India. Dr Kinsey, or Proc as he was called, did pioneering studies on
human sexualilty, opened the eye of the world to the most bizarre out there and enabled the western world to associate with the natural.
The movie for me personally was a shock and I believe, most of us will feel extremely embarassed to even think watching this movie in front of our parents. Surprisingly though even when each of us at my age and staying in US for soemtime now, have come to accept, and know and associalte sex with form of natural biological fact of life.
However, for sure every one on his own has to figure out the solution to conflict between, the natural desire to satiate ones biological needs, and confer to societal norms and come up with some metric for love , based on personal bias or more precisely wiring in the brain, tuned up by experiences growing up.
It might be disturbing in some sense, after all we are indians, but I recommend Kinsey to understand what really sciene and passion is all about.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
GPS for the unknown
We all in research community know , and wonder how people actually did any work before google. I know its an exaggeration and may be my love for google is speaking here..
But to give you an example heres, what I found at Dictionary.com :
Google :
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine
Example: She googled her high school boyfriends.
Google has entered english language jargon as a verb, to be used as synonym to verb search.
To add to my fascination, now google has bunch of new services available to ease our life even more. There is so called, scholar.google.com. Its a matter of pride to type ones name here, (well if ur new to research anyways) and get list of papers (published) ranked in order of number of citations it has received and many a times direct link to the papers online version from the publishers site. The matter of ease with which one can now do search for the journal articles is amazing. One only has to know first few words of the title or the author and the context and more often than not, google will find the article one is looking for. No wonder, this google service is aptly described "Stand on the shoulders of giants".
The next amazing service is local.google.com.
I am in the mood to eat, etheopian cuisine today and wonder where the nearest Etheopian restaurant is located. Comes in local google. All one does is type in Etheopian Restaurant, and your postal code, up comes the nearest restaurant offering ehteopian cuisine with detailed address of the place. Till like few days ago, one had to take the address, go to mapquest and get driving direction to the desired location. Google has now minimized that effort for you even.
Last week, google released the latest service on their menu. maps.google.com. This is where the title of this entry comes in. Try some search on this new service offered by google. It has insanely close resemblance to GPS navigation system, we are so used to see on those, sci flicks. One types in any address, and pops up the location on a map, zoomed in close up to the place. Then the browser prompts the user to answer whether is it the start or destination address and appropriately pops up a window to type in the requisite address. Say I type in my start and destination address, and la behold u have the shortest route, connecting the two points.
It reminds me of the famous travelling sales man problem and I wonder if I type in multiple destination, what output the page produces. I wonder whether is there some cool genetic algorithm running in the back end, trying to optimize on the shortest route. And infact I wouldnt be have ikling of surprise if that is so.
Neways, as I always say, "Discovery is stuff not found on Google."
But to give you an example heres, what I found at Dictionary.com :
Google :
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine
Example: She googled her high school boyfriends.
Google has entered english language jargon as a verb, to be used as synonym to verb search.
To add to my fascination, now google has bunch of new services available to ease our life even more. There is so called, scholar.google.com. Its a matter of pride to type ones name here, (well if ur new to research anyways) and get list of papers (published) ranked in order of number of citations it has received and many a times direct link to the papers online version from the publishers site. The matter of ease with which one can now do search for the journal articles is amazing. One only has to know first few words of the title or the author and the context and more often than not, google will find the article one is looking for. No wonder, this google service is aptly described "Stand on the shoulders of giants".
The next amazing service is local.google.com.
I am in the mood to eat, etheopian cuisine today and wonder where the nearest Etheopian restaurant is located. Comes in local google. All one does is type in Etheopian Restaurant, and your postal code, up comes the nearest restaurant offering ehteopian cuisine with detailed address of the place. Till like few days ago, one had to take the address, go to mapquest and get driving direction to the desired location. Google has now minimized that effort for you even.
Last week, google released the latest service on their menu. maps.google.com. This is where the title of this entry comes in. Try some search on this new service offered by google. It has insanely close resemblance to GPS navigation system, we are so used to see on those, sci flicks. One types in any address, and pops up the location on a map, zoomed in close up to the place. Then the browser prompts the user to answer whether is it the start or destination address and appropriately pops up a window to type in the requisite address. Say I type in my start and destination address, and la behold u have the shortest route, connecting the two points.
It reminds me of the famous travelling sales man problem and I wonder if I type in multiple destination, what output the page produces. I wonder whether is there some cool genetic algorithm running in the back end, trying to optimize on the shortest route. And infact I wouldnt be have ikling of surprise if that is so.
Neways, as I always say, "Discovery is stuff not found on Google."
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Life is beautiful
I am going through a bad phase in life.. recently laid off, in debt and depressed..I have a rich friend somewhere in the city. I think of that friend of mine, who actually was love of my life, in bygone days, now married to some rich city man..
I wonder, should I visit her and ask for help. Will she help me. Will it look good on me. Am I doing the right thing. So many questions fly by my mind.. Its impossible to restraint myself..
I finally decide to visit her. I see her, in her house full of antique furniture, drapped in silk saree, and am in awe of her affluence. How could I, present myself as a nonety, to her, a lady, living a life of luxury and richness and bliss and comfort.. My cell phone rings right then. The cell phone actually given to me by my high school friends wife, while my stay in the big city. This gives me oppurtunity to brag in front of my ex, as to how, I flurt with my secretary, who stays in the city to take care of our huge enterprise. I tell her everything that is not..and hear from her everything that is..
She then leaves the house, to get me hot lunch. She tells me all the servants are out and she has not cooked a meal in long time... so the need to actually get food from outside. Suddenly there is knock on the door, some random guy enters the house with the intention of using the restroom, and starts talking about the affairs of this ex.
I learn from him that actually my ex, is in a state far worse than me.. The house full of furniture is actually owned by some furniture renting company. The house that she is staying in is actually owned by him and that he has not received even a single pie of rent for past 10 months and how in couple of days, my ex with her alcoholic husband will be on road.
I give the loan money that I had borrowed for my work, to this landlord and ask the man to give her and her husband some leeway. She comes back, with hot puris, and continued deception. I pretend to listen to all of her stories about her splendor...
I come home, taking adieu from her. In my raincoat pocket I find a letter from her.
Covered in the letter are some of her jewellery. She tells me, I should have asked her for money which I was in so need of..she tells me, had she been my wife, wouldnt have I approched her. So here she was giving her jewellery to help me out of my dire strait..
The movie ends..
Yes the above sketched plot is from very recent movie, Raincoat, starring Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Dewghan... excellent insight into human psyche, telling us that being in love implies lying and smiling even when the heart is breaking..
Simply awesome...
To end with what Gulzar says
"Kahin ye hawa ka jhonkha tha, jo deewar par lagi, taswir ko teercha kar gaya"
I wonder, should I visit her and ask for help. Will she help me. Will it look good on me. Am I doing the right thing. So many questions fly by my mind.. Its impossible to restraint myself..
I finally decide to visit her. I see her, in her house full of antique furniture, drapped in silk saree, and am in awe of her affluence. How could I, present myself as a nonety, to her, a lady, living a life of luxury and richness and bliss and comfort.. My cell phone rings right then. The cell phone actually given to me by my high school friends wife, while my stay in the big city. This gives me oppurtunity to brag in front of my ex, as to how, I flurt with my secretary, who stays in the city to take care of our huge enterprise. I tell her everything that is not..and hear from her everything that is..
She then leaves the house, to get me hot lunch. She tells me all the servants are out and she has not cooked a meal in long time... so the need to actually get food from outside. Suddenly there is knock on the door, some random guy enters the house with the intention of using the restroom, and starts talking about the affairs of this ex.
I learn from him that actually my ex, is in a state far worse than me.. The house full of furniture is actually owned by some furniture renting company. The house that she is staying in is actually owned by him and that he has not received even a single pie of rent for past 10 months and how in couple of days, my ex with her alcoholic husband will be on road.
I give the loan money that I had borrowed for my work, to this landlord and ask the man to give her and her husband some leeway. She comes back, with hot puris, and continued deception. I pretend to listen to all of her stories about her splendor...
I come home, taking adieu from her. In my raincoat pocket I find a letter from her.
Covered in the letter are some of her jewellery. She tells me, I should have asked her for money which I was in so need of..she tells me, had she been my wife, wouldnt have I approched her. So here she was giving her jewellery to help me out of my dire strait..
The movie ends..
Yes the above sketched plot is from very recent movie, Raincoat, starring Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Dewghan... excellent insight into human psyche, telling us that being in love implies lying and smiling even when the heart is breaking..
Simply awesome...
To end with what Gulzar says
"Kahin ye hawa ka jhonkha tha, jo deewar par lagi, taswir ko teercha kar gaya"
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