I am hungry

Indeed..
Well you should have guessed it, the new site for today is related to food. Growing up Enclycopedia to me meant that tome of 26 books that came in hard bound cover.. and that which I spent hrs ogling into trying to improve my knowledge about the world..

And now here I am..again transgressed into that fascinating world of encyclopedias.. though with
some flavour... Yes the site I present to you is "The worlds biggest Enclyclopedia of FOOD!!!"
http://www.practicallyedible.com/

Now, how cool is that...

The site is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate.. It has a range of cuisines from Italian to Jewsih to Mexican.. However Indian Cuisine seems to be missing... (and they call themselves the worlds biggest encyclopedia...)

Neways a lots of interesting tips are offered as one browses through the site ...

Though I did not spend too much time in getting to know what this site has to offer, which I pretty much am sure is a lot... I sure would like to recommend this site worth exploring for one of many mouth watering dishes in the world of Gourmet food.

bored of reading

Ok theres only so much that one can read at any given time.. especially true of my wife who hates reading..

Everyone knows the virtue of a good read..
However what if you want someone to indulge in this passion, but who has no interest what so ever..

Thank god there is webspace to cater to these group of people..

http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp

Yes as the name suggests one could find books in audio format and the good thing about the site is its free ( well if you want to pay for better quality you have that option too). I tried playing sherlock homes on my PC at home with cable modem installed, at the free price of 8kbs. The site mentions that the quality of this size file is just bearable, and how true are they! However if one is willing to shell out $ 6 per book for excellent audio quality, I will definetly recommend the site, especially given their huge library of audio books.

Check it out. The site for today from Becker in Me!

Ever Wondered

Yes have you ever wondered, how does the Zip code of your home address compare to all the Zip codes around the country in terms of say, cost of living, the average household income, the average taxes, the median age group, the cost of a house, or just say the crime scene.

Heres the answer to all your questions:

http://neighboroo.com/

The name gives it all (well almost..) A wonderful site to look into if you ever are planning to move to a new neighbourhood. It never hurts to know the neighbourhood a bit better.
With the google earth Zoom like feature, and a search bar, you could almost get the zip code of your interest and get answers to a lot of interesting and important questions about the neighbourhood of your interest.

Check it out...its very cool

One more cool link

Ok todays going to be the link for shopping and bargain hunters

1. http://www.coupon-codes.us/

Try the link above.. It basically hunts the net to look for coupon deals on all things one can imagine. From Apparels, to Food and Cooking to Travel to even Jewellry and collectibles.

What I did not like about the site is , when one clicks on the link for coupons one is interested in, The site opens the link in a new window nehhhh...hate when that happens..
but for deal hunters its a mini pain to tolerate when savings are compared

New theme for blogging

ok its been aeons since I last made my blog entry..
since then I have moved on from being a PIG (poor Indian graduate) to PIPD (Poor Indian Post Doc).. ok not so poor but still.. you know.. i am still in school doing the same old thing.. research...

With that modification, I thought I should make one more change...and that being one to my blog..

Since Stumble upon happened to me.. I have landed upon so very many interesting and fun and informative sites, that my bookmark page is almost full and i can no longer keep a tab on what is where on my bookmarks page..

so I have turned to blogger.. to not only report my new findings on sites that I land on through stumble but through all other medium of information ...

To begin with.. well, I should point you to my home on the web:
Some information: The site is http://ebdl.bme.ufl.edu/~stalathi. It has information on me and what I do for living. In addition whenever I get chance I put up stuff related to what I enjoy besides work.. Collection of my photos...tits and bits of information on stuff relevant to me and in general to all you out there... (still at this stage working on the site)

For today, I have 2 useful links that I discovered (through Readers Digest) :

• celltradeusa.com :
  Summary. This is the site for those who are stuck with their cell phone contracts. This could be the saviour. Here you can register for free and then if you want to get out of contract you could search for potential buyers of your phone with the contract.Once you enter the details on the site and what your need: Get IN or Get OUT, potential buyers start contacting you and then for a fee of $19.99 you get information on the potential buyers with whom you could trade the contract and phone.

• Jellyfish.com:
  Summary: Site for shopping online and making money. Find a product through the site, make a purchase, and share the commission received by jellyfish from the merchant .

Apprentice

Its been long since I wrote my last blog.
Quite a few interesting issues crossed my path during past 8 months but, some how or the other, I could not gather myself to the task of reporting it here.
Yet another very interesting issue came up yesterday. Its about the show Apprentice, running on NBC hosted by Mr Donald Trump, the real estate baron. Yesterday night was the finale of the event where in out of 18 contestants, final two competed against each other, in a managerial task, for the coveted position of an apprentice at Trump organizaiton.

Randal Pinkett, and Rebecca Jarvis were the two final contestants. Undoubtedly, Randel by education by exprerience running a real business, by age and even by stature (hmm..) was better than his rival Rebecca, a 23 year old, financial journal reporter. Donald Trumps final choice of Randel was without doubt perfect. But heres the twist to the tale.

If any one has followed the show over past couple of months, one would have easliy realised that Rebecaa, with her broken ankle, in the second week of the show, with a smiling face all through out, with her calmness under stress, with her true loyalty backing her team in the final task, with her foresight in understanding the bigger picture overlaying a given problem and sheer charisma, was upto Randel in terms of being Trump Apprentice. Trump, as would have possibly elected the 2 of them for 2 huge projects he has currently undertaken.

All through out, it was sort of clear that, Trump would declare, Mr Randel winner and hire, Ms Rebecca along with Randel. But in the end, after declaring Randel the winner, Mr Trump, posed a question to Randel, "If you were me, would you hire Rebecca also ?". Surprise Surprise, the answer from Randel was, "Mr Trump, the show is apprentice and not apprentia, there should only b e one hiring". What the F*** Mr Randel I wonder!!!

Agreed that the the show is apprentice, agreed that you were the brightest amongst the contestants, and agreed that u deserved the accolade and the moment of glory. However, why in the world would you be so selfish, and egocentric so as to deny another bright candidate an oppurtunity.
Infact, the two jobs that Mr Trump announced earlier, were out there for both of u to pick.

I still wonder what logic other than self centric mania, would have made Mr Randel a MIT graduate
make such a statement and deny a well deserving candidate her share of the glory.

My new Pet (s)

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!!!!

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.

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."

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"

sharukh

I have a few friends who abhor Sharukh so much that, whatever the case might be, they are extremely skillful, in finding faults in all of his performances, stressing a few trademark remarks, that his acting is monotonous, he infact is not a real actor, he overacts too much and much much more.
I recently had oppurtunity to watch two movies back to back of Sharukh. One is the recent, Swadesh, about a young indian, working for NASA in USA of A, who for the love of country and his life, decides to leave behind all the comforts in life and truely follows his heart back home, swadesh.
The second movie, an old one, which probably released like a year back, and one that I had watched earlier, Kal Ho Na Ho. Amazing performance by Sharukh, in the movie. After the movie, I had heard many a people sarcastically remarking about the prolonged ending and that how much time sharukhs character in the movie takes to die...that quite a few people were bitting their nails and praying hard enough that he dies and the movie ends.

However seeing the movie for the second time, I actually realised how elegantly Sharukh has portrayed the character of a dying man, with love for life and all that life represents. It was brilliant depiction and i shud say comparable if not better performance of character played in late seventies by Rajesh khanna, in the movie Anand.

Sharukh carried the entire movie solely on his wonderful performance. There are a few suttle cheap dialogs in the movie, which, for the second time if one watches the movie, come to light. For example, in the scene where, Sharukh gives Saif an ear phone to train him to woo preeti zinta. He says, "Ise Kan me dalna", and Saif interprets, "ise Kh... me dalna", and reiterates, what sharukh just asked him to do..
Second in a scene, where Saif comes with his father to preeties, home, to formally ask for preeties hand in marriages, he says, "....painter mere hool ko bhi paint karega" and the small kid erupts into laughter..The flow of the movie does produce its effect and one cant help but laugh.

I actually am able to correlate the character of sharukh in the two movies, with the character of Miles played by Paul Giamatti, in the recent hit, Sideways.
Correlation in sense that, life is not pretty most of time, but outlook is what matters.
How one carries oneself through life is what people remeber in the end and
small goods, even if it is say, allowing the old man in grocery line to checkout first, is very very important. It gives one a sense of self and actually is more satisfying and happiness enducing than many more materialistic joys in life.

Neways, I think I thoroughly enjoyed all the movies, mentioned above and yes I for sure think Sharukh for all his weaknesses , still is one of the best actors hindi movie has produced so far.

Blame the Machine

What do I mean by that, well.. isnt it true that whenever when ever we are into something really important, very technology that enabled us in the first place to do what we are doing and probably is really important at that moment in time, gives up on us. Like, say for example, I am working on an application deadline and suddenly it turns out that the charger of my laptop just gave up on me.
I realise that when, suddenly the laptop starts bliking, prompting me to switch onto AC power asap..

What!!!!wasnt I on AC power all the time.. how did this happen and then I scamper here and there trying to save the work onto some portable media and hope that I have back up machine to continue my work in office...
As it turns out, the day is just bad...Network in the office is down and the way the server is configured, down network implies one cannot even log onto ones own machine....

What does one do in such ocassions.. Can one really be prepared for the unexpected...Have we reached a point in life, that dependence on technology for mere survival has become so important that if things go wrong, one is just stranded midway, gasping Why ME????

Being in sciences, and research, most of ordinary days, are spend reading journal papers...
Gone are the days, when there used to be archieve of journals in the library and one had to climb on those, wooden stairs, to reach the Journal archieve on the top most rack.. The glamour of actually researching to get the research article is lost. With the recent scholar.google.com and the pubmed website, all one has to know what key word in the field one is looking for and with correct mention of the period of publications and any more of minimal information, without even knowing the actual source of material, one can lay hands on any god damn article one pleases. In some sense one can also retrieve classics from yester years, and I say in some sense, simply because, the actual work is probably hanging on some museum wall, surrounded by impenetrable enclave, like 1959 paper by Hodgkin Huxley on ion channels on cell membrane, or Black Scholes paper on Option pricing model or Lorenz work on reduced version of Napier Stroke model, which was first published in some obscure Weather journal, and is now, the most prominent, feature of any fancy work related to chaos or say 1905 series of papers by Einstein on
Brownian motion and photoelectric effect and Special relativity...

Each of papers mentioned above spawned an industry of work in itself.. All I had to do to get these classics was, Google it!!!

Some how, the charm of hard work and the satisfaction of being able to lay hand on something priceless is lost, may be many people will argue against it and to be true, convinience is what man strives for and now that I have it, I want the old days back...

Neways, I was prompted to write here today was as I began, life sometime just sucks!!!
In such times, the only saving grace is a nice book in hand and soft pillow under head.

Outrageous

I am prompted to write here, simply because I heard this audio file, related harresment of Indians, working in call centers, by some radio jock on his show.
Audio File

It is very well known now, how outsourcing jobs to indian companies have enraged quite a many americans and we are in some ways accostomed to the rallies protesting such outsourcing. However, never in my 3 and 1/2 years of stay in the states have I ever experienced any kind of racist behaviour or any sort of discrimination against Indians and in general any brown population. This is a country which cherishes meritocracy and if ur good u will find a way to succeed here, no matter what background u have and no matter where u come from in the world. I have grown to love america simply for this reason. However, it was a shock for me when I heard the above audio.
Its been in the press now for sometime, the harresment of indian callcenter workers by callers here, but this is just too much.

I am happy to know that there was wide spread protest by indian community here, an apt response to such behaviour. In this country no one will tolerate such nonsense.
However I am not very happy with the punishment levied on that jockey, who supposedly has been suspended for a day.

i hope such events will not happen again, it will only tarnish the already bad image that Americans in general evoke around the world. To this end, I would also like to mention about an incident that happened in France, told to me by my friend.

This blonde girl goes to ticket station and is asked by the French ticket collector about her destination, ofcourse in french. This blonde american couldnt understand french and she told the guy in english that she couldnt understanf french, the response she got, shockingly, "So, I cannot help u then". My indian friend close to her was watching this incident unfolding and he had to intervene and speak to the ticket collector (ofcourse in english), to help this blonde american get her tickets. Surprisingly enough, this indian friend of mine dosent know french and he managed to survive in france with english pretty decently.

So there does exist discrimination against americans outside america in some way, I only hope americans in general realise this and take all measures to prevent such discriminations in this country, if for nothing else, to avoid any more 9/11s.

On books

Read recent blog by avi on his thoughts on Pride and Prejudice. It instantly reminded me the character of Meg Ryan and her love of Miss Bennet in the movie, "U Got Mail" and how passion of one person can induce others to follow the suit.
On the topic of books, given that nowadays, life is pretty relaxing, I have had good fortune to read a few very interesting books. The Diary of Young Girl, Anna Frank being one of them. Quote from the book "I trust in luck and do nothing but hard work", seemed to have stuck in my mind. The book is about this young girl at the tender age of 13 years being forced to go into hiding with her family in Nazi Holland, during the time when Hitler almost was on verge of conquering the whole of Europe. Anna is a very intelligent girl for her age and all her emotions being stuck up in a small hiding villa, upstairs of her fathers former office, are poured out in a diary which she maintained through out the period she was in the hidding until the day, SS found the family.

The other book I have read is "Train to Pakistan", by none other than Khuswant Singh.
It is a tragic story of a very laid back village, at the border between the newly formed country of Pakistan and India, finding itself in the midst of all the massacre and killings that followed partition of India in 1947. The protagonist of the plot, Juggat Singh, the gunda of the village, finds himself entangled in the chaos follwing the killing of the village landlord, and how he manages to save his pride and love and in the end his sacrifice resulting in 100s of lives being saved.

2 more recent books that I had fortune to read are by the same author, "Mitch Albom",
Tuesday with Morie, which I just happened to get and the other very recent book by him, "5 people we meet in heaven", which I saw while I was loitering at Kansas airport the other day. the prologue to the book seemed to enchant me and I ended up shelling 20 bucks at the book store. Am right now into the book and it simply is enchanting. As Amy Tan puts it, "its a novel u will devour when u fall in love"
and being very close to that, thats exactly what I am doing right now.

kansas

3 weeks ago, had someone told me, I would writing a blog titled kansas, I would have laughed my hearts out. True, the word has some significance in my circle of friends. Number of my friends have spouse/the significant others, living in kansas at some point in their lives. Though kansas was as far for me as far is say antartica. Neways here I am sitting at Kansas city airport, waiting for my flight back to San Diego. What has life in store for u, u never know. Live life by the day, is the message I am taking with me from here. It has been wonderful experience over last 2 days of my stay here in Kansas city, for a change trying real hard to speak in my mother toungue, Marathi, whose domain for me somehow had always been restricted to moms and pops and me. It was refreshing to get to eat puran poli, made at home, in this foreign land. Thanks J^2.

Got to go now, time to fly back.

´Castle

The seemingly amusing title for this article is stirred by my current visit to one of the modern old castles in Bavarian Germany, about 1 hr drive from Munich. Ringberg castle as it is called, is located at the foothills of of Bavarian alps, mountain peaks covered in snow, akin to icing on the cake, on the northern end and a beautiful lake on the southern end, much similar to experience of cold winter evening in Srinagar, Kashmir, the Dal lake. The only thing missing though were those beutiful kashmiri damsels in their canoe, selling flowers and kashmiri kishmish.

The setting at the castle is amazingly romantic. Though the history of castle is quite amazing. It is a monument commemorating the idiosyncrasy, originality, and remarkable single-mindedness of two men: Duke Luitpold in Bavaria and his friend, the alround artist, architect and interior decorator, Friedrich Attenhuber. This castle dominated the lives of thsese 2 people to a point that it became an obsession for both. Surprisingly, none of the most popular reason like love of dearest or say, defence of territory, were the reasons for building up this castle.

In the twilight years of his life, the duke decided to donate the castle to scientific community of Max Plank institute, which supposedly had enough money to accept this grand gift as one can easily imagine the cost of maintaining the castle in this modern world. However as it turns out, I think this is one of the few best things that academics has to offer. Max Plank society in Germany now owns this castle and it is used for the purpose of retreat by many Max Plank labs all over Germany. It is in this context that I had this wonderful oppurtunity to experience the life of castle.

Amazingly the castle is extremely modernised to the point that it has a central heating unit, wireless lan, music room filled with all the hightech gadetry, excellent conference room for holding lectures, amazing library and all the facilities that a scientist in modern era need to work.

I wonder how many places in the world such as this exist in the world, wherein the modern is so well integrated with the old and in a sense, resulting in a unique ambience, one can only describe by being part of it.

Gutanmogen Danke: From Germany

The few words that i have come to learn in my couple of days stay in germany are mentioned above in the title for this blog. They mean, Good day and thankyou.
The german friend of mine at my university told me that Munich is a very modern and rich city with strong western influence and that i will have no trouble getting around knowing zilch german.
How wrong was he. Today I made my first visit to main place in Munich called Martinplatz. Thank god, they had travellers info on the web at www.munich.de and thankfully they had an english version too.

So that helped. I got a vague idea of where the happening place in munich was and how to get there from the country town I was located in at MPI.

Few striking things to mention, Mercedes Benz E class is the taxi in the city. One sees only mercs and BMWs, well every one know that the heed quarters of Beamer is in munich and for sure on roads one glimpse at all the running cars and the fact is confirmed.

The main center Town Hall resembles somewhat like Gate way of India, upscaled like 100 times.
There are all these, wonderful prehistoric structures intermingled with modern. Walk a few blocks down the town hall and one gets to see the very familiar Mcdonalds and nearby a Burger King.
Actually it brings a sensse of relief to see something familiar, knowing I will know exactly what I order and what i get. Neways being in a bavarian capital, the motivation to eat authentic bavarian food was much much stronger and I strawl along the malls and all the posh shops that reminded me so much of down town La Jolla, the richness of place is enough to deter a person from entering any shop and window shopping is the only option remainning. That with the current slump in dollar value against Euro makes things look much more on the expensive side.

Neways Munich is also a ciy known for its Museums and today i vistied my first museum in Munich. Compared to others that i have heard, this one, 'The Toy Museum ' was much smaller. But come on a Toy museum ..whats that??? I did manage to shell out 3€ for the ticket and entered the museum. In some sense it was a disappointment. Majority of toys belonged to the category of soft toys and in that almost all were bear. Small bear old bear child bear, bear from early 19th century bear from a guy donated to the museum who had it for 80 years and was worried, his death woud also mark the end of his favourite toy of yester years....
Walking around the city I managed to find a lot of bavarian restaurants, but how different is it from America, wherein as you enter you yre ushered to seating place. Here a person entery and finds himself a place to sit. The menu is kept on the bench. Unfortunatley it is in german. It happened to me like four times. I entered a restaurant, waited a while for a waiter, no one turns up, i go to one of them and he starts speaking in german. I try to tell him ''I dont know no german' but he just keeps on going. Disaapointed I leave.
Finally Mcdonalds it was, I had the known McChiken Burger, a HeigenDaas Ice cream from near by Heigen Daas store and decide am done for the day.

Well thats that for my first trip alone to downtown Munich...If i am say so.

-s

girlfriends and all that

Very very interesting..
In past few days i have come across more than a couple of instances of people in my circle going out on dates and or making progress in terms of more serious relationships and all that...
For example my office mate, went on and send a flower to some class mate of his, hand made by him using oregamy...that resulted in him having a date and him now getting a chance to flaunt his italian cuuisine skills to the fairer sex.
In other instance very very good friend of mine is making some progress in his search for that some one...Dont want to say more, and am crossing my fingers and wishing all the best to him..
In yet another instance, this flatmate of mine found some hot chick on his trip to tijuana and now hes having dinner date fixed.
Finally, as it turns out most of my frineds here either have girlfriends, are married or engaged. A friend of mine pointed to me that amongst all us, I am the only loner remaining....
Started me thinking, man is it time for u to find some company, some fairer sex to hang out with...The answer came sure enough fast and easy..
No, am better the way i am now and as Becker woud have put it, change is not good for health. I guess my time will come soon too.
Neways, for now I am happy to see people around me having some great time

Movies based on books

Is past one week I have seen 3 different movies, belonging to 3 different genre, the only thing tying them together is, each is derived or is an adaptation from written work, from Homers "Illiad", to Asimovs series of books on Robots and a best selling novel "The Notebook" by Nicholas Spark.

The 3 movies I am talking about are,as you might have guessed by now, Troy, starring Brad Pitt as Achilles, an adaptation from Homers Illiad (ok its not a novel per se, but a poem), I-Robot, starring Will Smith as skeptical Policeman, in futuristic world of NRC(National Robotics Company), wherein robots are as human like as possible, with 3 basic laws of robotics governing their behaviour, an adaptation from Asimovs books on Robots. I have read some where though that that this movie has been boycotted by fans loyal to Asimov as it bears but very little resemblance to depiction of Robots in Asimovs work.

Finally The Notebook, poignant love story set in late 1940s of America in a small town called Seabrooks in North Carolina. Few things about this movie that amazed me are, miniskirts were common even then, kissing and open exhibition of love making was not uncommon then too..Apart that it is a story about an old man (james garner) reading to a story from his faded notebook to an old woman (Gene Rowlands) in a nursing home, about couple of young kids from different social and economic backgrounds, meeting in a carnival, falling in love and the eventual, triump of love.
The interesting thing was, as we entered the theatre, there were a couple of young women outside with paper napkins in hand, asking people to carry one as they entered the theatre.

Did I like these movies. You bet I did. Each one had its own unique quality about it.
Troy reminds me of the grandness of wars fought in years gone by, similar epics from hinduism are Mahabharata, which as a child I watched on TV every Sunday morning.

I-Robot, gives one the feeling of being in the hightech world of corporate america, wherein technology wonders are every where for everyone to see on daily basis.

Finally, Notebook is class apart, delving into psyche of human emotion. Excellent balance of History, Science, and Psychology for intellectual minds to chew on.

Addiction

What is addiction ?

"An addiction is a compulsion to use a substance or persist with a certain behaviour in order to feel good or to avoid feeling bad"

The above quote in the first link that I got on google while I was searching for "Addiction what is it ? "
Lets analyse what the above statement has to say:
It says "persistent behaviour or dependence on certain substances in order to feel good and avoid feeling bad"
It define addiction as mean of doing good to self in order to avoid doing bad.
Is it true though ?
I would say, if a person is addicted he does what he does because, the habit or the behaviour is beyond his control. The feeliing of being addict is the feeling of guilt, the feeling of being helpless, lack of mental faculty to be in control of the situation and finally succumbing to the pressures. Its a kind of a circular situation of the addict knowing his problems, him trying to overcome it and in the process being dragged into the hole more so.

What are the most common addictions that people have in day to day lives that seem not to harm them on short term but, are thought to be unhealty on longer time scales.
Cigarette smoking,the extreme case would be chain smokers, people who smoke atleast a pack a day, that would make a approximatley a cigarette every hr and 15 min. Alcoholism, the extreme case of that would be people who are inebriated almost all the time, people who cant see themselves stopping with just one peck on any given ocassion. Gambling, an addiction whose consequences I have come to see on first hand basis every single day growing up as a child. Extreme case involves, people unable to control their urge to squander their hard earned money every single pay day, with some days being good when the addict wins, with the odds of loss being just too high. But still the gambler gambles, in hope to beat the odds and rise to the ocassion.

Then there are some serious maladies, like being addicted to drugs, worst amogst those being, LSD, Cocaine, Marijuana, and such "recreational drugs" as they are called, belong to the family of drugs which affect the CNS directly. They induce the feeling of short term euphoria, and are kind of drugs to which a person becomes strongly addicted, as define by his complete loss of control to avoid the use of drug.

Why do people get addicted ?

An interesting question. The answer to which many a times lies in social structure of our society.