The Cool Sun

Apple Restaurant

2012-01-27T00:33:00.001+01:00

I was at a dinner ‘party’ this evening. Some meetings/conferences happening at the office and the guests and we went together for dinner.

It was a really terrific restaurant. Funnily, they had everything there apple-related. On the walls, there were artificial apples hanging. At the entrance, there was a HUGE machine which could juice hundreds of apple in a go. Their wifi-netword was “Apfel-net” (Apfel is the German word for apple).

And yes, it went much further to the following level.

They had even the toilets done with apple themes! How about that?

And well, the dinner was mostly fun. One of the guys wanted to try out the eggplant dish, because he liked all about it, except the eggplants! So, he asked for it without the eggplants. (this stupid joke got repeated enough that I was royally bored with it)

Every one in the group had some special demand regarding the food. The waitress, was extremely accommodating and very friendly. Needless to say, I *really* liked her! :)

The service was excellent and the food was fantastic!

(Some day I should take my SO to this restaurant.)

And, at the end of the day I became a savior too. One of the guests hadn’t checked in the hotel and the reception was closed by the time we reached and his reservation wasn’t of much help. With my German skills, I managed to secure him a room without trouble.

So, it was an altogether very nice evening.

And I am sooooo tired now. So this is good night from me.
Signing off,
Sands.

Time to worry (high time)

2012-01-16T07:47:00.001+01:00

It is high time I left Google products. It is getting scary.

As Romney (wasn’t it) said, “Corporations are people too” (lol), and the G-person knows too much. I wouldn’t want my SO or sister or mom to know about me as much as Google knows.

I should slowly escape. They’ll have all data on me so far, but should reduce the further flow. The gradual transition has started… very slowly.

Signing off,
Sands.

PS: Inputs?

Ok, Judge me now.

2011-11-27T21:20:00.001+01:00

Most of us are uncomfortable when ~~(it looks like)~~ someone is judging us. Well, we use the term “judging” only when the evaluation is not the way we desire. But when it comes to others, most of us aren’t reluctant to judge (of course, when it is our “assessment”, it has to be good, right?)

On Thursday, we watched the latest installment of Twilight saga – “Breaking dawn – part 1”. I was not planning to, when I got out of office. But then she suddenly had the idea and we headed to the theater near home. (And watched it in German)

It easily qualifies for a spot in the bottom ten movies of all times. Still it was good that we went, for, she was extremely happy that we went for the movie.

So, there you have it – a good reason to judge me. If that’s not enough, I can also tell you that I’ve read the whole saga – I wanted to know what the fuss was about and failed to find the cause for the fuss.

Signing off,
Sands.

This shall not be the case

2011-11-23T10:13:00.001+01:00

Not being regular, here on the blogosphere, is not the way to go. I should get back to writing. And I think, yes, I will.

For a long time I wasn’t sure why I am not writing. Two major things coincided with the downfall of the frequency of posting and like any other idiot, I assumed that one of those was the reason for my lack of writing. (I know, correlation doesn’t equate to causation)

Apparently, it appears now, something else, of which I was oblivious, was (and is) the real reason.

The situation would not change for at least 6 more months. But I have already taken long breaks and I should get back to writing.

Here is my attempt to break the long break. More will continue…. soon.

Signing off,
Sands.

Heidelberg (rain (motor (bike))) trip.

2011-08-08T20:33:00.001+02:00

“This year we didn’t have a summer; Next year we may have one” – forecasted my colleague this morning.

So very true – the summer didn’t have any sun. There was a day in July when I had to turn the radiator (room heater) on.

After the frustrating rainy months, we decided to make a trip to random places. Incidentally, I came to know at that time that an acquaintance lives in Heidelberg (just 110km away from home).

Saturday – about noon – we started. The forecast did say about overcast and showers. Well, as long as it is typical German showers (drizzling) we don’t care. The plan was to go straight to Wiesbaden and then ride by the side of Neckar river through Mainz – Oppenheim – Worms – Mannheim and reach Heidelberg.

Time (and we) flew till Nackenheim – where we decided to take a little detour to a mountain-top church.

But before reaching the church, we stopped by the side of the vineyards. From the roadside, the vineyard(s) stretched till the horizon.

The grapes were tender. But that didn’t stop us from having some though (sour grapes). Making photos weren’t a part of our plan – just ride and ride and ride. So, all we had was the iPhone and she did take some pictures anyway.

Note: A curious thing – in that region, almost every village has the name ending in “heim”.

So, here I stand by the side of Rudra – that’s how the bike is called.

(I am not supposed to publish any ‘long haired’ pics. But I am going for a haircut in 2 days, so I hope to use that as an excuse for putting this online.)

It was then it started to pour – almost like never before in Germany. We simply got drenched. We cancelled our ‘food plans’ @ “Worms” – cool name for a city, eh? Went straight to Heidelberg.

The rain came again – with all its might – during our way back home. It was foggy all around (and great sound effects from lightning/thunders). It took almost double the time to reach home. After the rain, I was starting to worry that she might fall off the bike of some hypothermia or so.

Needless to say, I was extremely cautious, we reached home all safe and decided: “Never are we getting back so late. If we are on bike, be home before it is dark”. The experience really did scare us (and prolly taught a good lesson too). :)

I’ll be flying to India by the end of this month. So, for another bike trip, we’ll have to wait till the end of September – when I am back gain. Hopefully, we’ll have some good weather then.

Signing off,
Sands.

Factoids

2011-07-01T08:23:00.001+02:00

Life is really nice. There are, now and then, small tensions of life. But really smooth life is. For some time now, I had totally cut back on social gatherings and stuff.

I am totally back to watching documentaries - just finished Secrets of Super Brands - really nice set. Reading books has taken backseat for now, but I read more magazines.

BTW, The reason I came over here now is to share two little links. I found them both during my morning reading. Here they are..

a) Incent - a back formation
b) Half closed or half open? (you'd have to recollect your math-notation-skills for this)

And now, I am gone after wishing y’all a LOVELY day and a wonderful weekend.

Signing off, Sands.

I am ashamed! :P

2011-06-14T08:43:00.001+02:00

The day, today, has been so far (it’s not even 8:30 in the morning) really eventful.

I was up at 5:20 to take and see off MG to/at the railway station. On the way back, while speaking to mom, I heard about some unpleasant news.

Then when I reached home I was stinking – for I had cooked+had Asparagus last evening (asparagus and Holland sauce – wow it was, but the stink next day is intolerable).

And after a real detailed shower I headed to office.

Before I proceed, some info: Last Monday when I took my cycle, it had flat tyre. Not a very bad one – if I pump it full, the pressure stays easily for half an hour or so.

I have all the necessary things to fix it, but I didn’t. There is even a cycle repair shop at two minutes distance from office. I didn’t take it there.

My solution was to carry around a pump. The pump became – more or less – a part of my cycle itself. (Have I told you that I never lock my bike? so, if someone wanted to steal it, now is the time, they get the bike and the pump – the full deal).

So, today, when I reached work, Mr. MusclyCalf (he plays football a lot) came to my office and offered me this. (Yes a tool kit to fix the flat tyre).

And said, “I’d been seeing you do this pumping business every afternoon when you go for lunch and in the evening when you go home. You could use this to fix the flat tyre”.

I felt a bit ashamed. At the same time I was quite happy too, for we have a quite family like atmosphere at the office! :)

And I guess, this means that I come of as a person who doesn’t take things offensive. (or an idiot). I believe it is the former! :P

Signing off, Sands.

Censorship on Fences

2011-05-24T08:38:00.004+02:00

Indian government doesn't want Indians to see/know the boundary between India and its neighbors as perceived by the world. Indian gov. either is sure that their view is the only right view or doesn’t want people to know others’ points of view. Sad.

The image is Economist's apology/note to Indian readers, for the censorship India enforces on its print edition. Funny right? "We think, our Indian readers can face political reality".

For the real deal of the fence problems, go here. (I think Economist is a little partial towards India - perhaps the love of democracy and all are the reasons.)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: By the way, you'd see LOL and OMG in this blog now on as they're proper English words now. (yeah, as if my English is so proper).

Here I am, Are you (still) here?

2011-05-12T13:28:00.000+02:00

Well, a little post to prove to myself that I haven’t forgotten how to blog. With win-live-writer and all, it is quite easy to blog – all it takes is a single click to open it, then type in the matter and hit “publish”. Yeah, I still remember.

I am not giving any hollow promise that I will be regular here again (as if you guys are still hanging in here to read what I write). In any case, all I want to tell is that life is taking such turns which I thought it never would.

Anyway, I am off again. Before I go, I wish you a wonderful day and give you this little flower - (someone said: Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower) – you find the sunshine and freedom by yourself.

Signing off,
Sands.

Time for me

2011-02-06T23:34:00.001+01:00

I generally have a mental block to say that I am tired. I like to be energetic all the time and almost always I am energetic too.

But last week, at work, I felt kind of exhausted. The work is really enjoyable and I put in my 100%, and towards the end of day Thursday, I felt like I was burning myself out. Then for some reasons, I didn’t have enough sleep of that night and Friday, afternoon, I felt really burned out.

So, I spent the two days of weekend to rejuvenate myself.

The weather being good, I went out on a very small/short bike trip… by the side of the river flowing near my home.

Sunflower looks like this in winter! :)

I was not the only person who enjoyed the weather..

On the way, there was a stable! (with three horses)

Now I am all set for the coming week – during which I know, I have to finish loads of work.

Taking the weekend for relaxing, leaves me with so many unread RSS feeds, non-replied emails and unfinished “letters” and other business – all of which I hope to catch up (and finish) in the coming days.

Wishing you all a lovely week ahead..

Signing off, Sands.

Go with the winner?

2011-02-01T23:04:00.001+01:00

I read the following in “The Hindu”

It is obviously in our interest to be on the right side of the new forces that will emerge to prominence in Egypt. They will remember who supported them in their hour of history and who sat on the fence.

I am not a diplomat, I don’t know a lot of such things, but with a little bit common-sense (which I think I do have), I think that the author would be on the side of a rapist if the victim doesn’t have a way to get the justice (or in other words, the rapist is in power!).

Well, this issue need not be like an assault on a person. But then, I would think we could refrain from being involved rather than being just opportunistic. (Should India support a military coup against a democracy if the military side is going to get the power?)

I don’t think that a newspaper shall promote any article like that. Sure, the rest of the article might say something totally different. But.. honestly, I didn’t read it with much care, after seeing the above.

In case you want to read the opportunist article, go here.

Sands.

PS: In this specific case, people seem to be right and they also seem to be having a better future. But the latter shall not be the reason to support them.

Live life… King Size

2011-01-16T22:39:00.001+01:00

Life is beautiful… It’s been a long time since I sat back in my relaxing-chair and said this. But now, I am actually sitting back in my ‘relaxing chair’ and relaxing to the core.

I guess, I could enjoy a real good massage though… my muscles all could enjoy some stress-relief. Well, that’s now a little too much to ask.. and a little less probable to come-by.

Life’s been good. The “thaaLam” (rhythm is the equivalent word in English, but not quite right) is restored. Now, I am living life… yeah, KING SIZE. Just for one and only one person me, why do I need so much of luxury? I don’t know, but it is good to be so. Perhaps, all I miss in my little home is a small fire-place – you know? – just to complete the picture.

So, after spending a little fortune, I set up a new home. All I need now are some guests. Or may be some girls whom I could bring to show-off! :P

Having a nice respectable place for books, was a must. Initially I was satisfied with some “billy-look-alikes”. But how can that be good enough?

So, another trip to IKEA helped me get these nice two Expedits.

As you can see, there are still some books near the dining table, in the old shelf, looking for better place.

Well, again, it is more or less a dead investment to have a glass-top dining table, when I prefer sitting in the couch and eating while watching something.

Still, you know? No compromises..!

Hmm… pretty much the most happening place in the apartment. Reading or talking or watching something happens always on this couch. Why not, dinner too.

I’ve always wanted to just put some wonderful books on the couch-table for the visitors to read … not exactly to read, but to turn pages and have some factoids. And here I have nothing less than “Information is beautiful” – a wonderful (beautiful) book, full of factoids.

Now, a little place for the serious me.

It’s been quite some time I had normal “snail mail” correspondence, which I MISS. Hmm, it is mostly computers there, but they are not the priority stuff, but the pens and ink are.

A lot of papers from the past 3 months (letters/notices/last-warnings to send something) are all lying nearby, needing attention – which they all will receive from me, soon-ish.

And here, finally I introduce the latest addition to my living room which makes it a small home-theater.

Yes, one little projector. I sit in the couch and watch documentaries or films or anything of my choice. It’s a bliss!

Now, some of the things here just don’t sound like me at all. I always want to have posh settings, but you all know that I get bored quite easily. Investing so much time, money and effort in an apartment isn’t like me. What is the point doing all this, if I would get bored with the apartment soon?

Well, the answer is there in one of my older posts. For the new-comers: wait and see.

Signing off, Sands.

Lazy Goose, that I am

2010-12-16T08:28:00.001+01:00

I am being extremely lazy… Whether it be cleaning my room, doing laundry or replying to my emails… I am not doing!

I go to office in the morning and try to do kickass job (which I think I do) and get back home to my medium-comfortable-couch… and spend the whole evening on it.. sometimes reading… sometimes watching some old sitcom.

I think, this is the effect of having the feeling to relax for a couple of weeks after the PhD. I have to get up from this. I have to start being active (you see, I am starting to get back to blogosphere)

But all the same, even when I tell this, I think I need to do NOTHING for the coming few weeks.

Perhaps my friends are getting angry at me…. for I don’t even properly reply to their emails (or pings/calls).

When I look back, this is what I see

April : finishing the thesis and submitting it.
May : Submission needed me to stay away from teaching during the first few weeks of teaching, catching up with it.
June: India, the dark chapter of my dad’s demise
July : Backlag from June (work-wise and also the emotional drag)
August: Finishing the semester work + catching up the pending work
September: Finalising the thesis, defense, the logistical things
October: India, orchestrating relocation and stuff … WHOLLY packed.
November: New city, new life, new work, relocation

And December, I am here, starting to relax! I hope hope hope that my friends do understand when I am taking this month completely off. Unless someone REALLY needs me for something, I am just out from this world for sometime. (I stress this point of friends, because I feel a “little” guilty)

So far, I am enjoying the job. It’s nice to have time-limited working hours, unlike uni. which was more or less flexible – meaning it took a lot of my “mindspace”. But I have to see how long will I like this… I like multi-dimensional way of living… mixing things up.

Life’s good! Great food, great place to live, ample entertainment…. I am more or less living a little dream – a world where I live without much constraints…!

This is/was a quick post… will be back with more on current affairs and what I think about “life” in general! :) [also, that would be proof read]

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Lethargy is awesome… but I need to get up! :P

Winter is here and I am a carpenter

2010-12-09T23:52:00.001+01:00

Oh well, so many things happened in life during the past 6 months..

I am not in Munich anymore; relocated to a small town near Frankfurt.
Not anymore a PhD student, but a “responsible” security expert! :P
Living in a single WHOLE apartment instead of a member of a shared apartment.
And such…

All about those will be written as time goes by, in my future posts. This post is mainly for a few photos.

After moving in to the new apartment, I had to have some new furniture. So, I decided to make them… yes, I bought the ‘raw-materials’ and tools and started making some.

Working with chisels and saw wasn’t as easy as I had imagined - mainly because of the noise (I didn’t want to annoy my neighbors)

The first two photos are of “something” I made for the kitchen.

Every single time I took the chisels, I was reminded of Perumthachan (and his son)

Here is a small thing I built, and fixed on the wall… and a foldable table. I knew, I didn’t want to move it around.

So, it is fixed, but one can fold it back when not needed.

And now, I shall show you some pics from this years snow.

Two cycle tracks on the snow and the city’s yellow light on it.
	How would I go without leaving footprints? ;)
On my way to office…!
	I am still on my way…
I have to cross this little “river”. :)

Well, that’s all my dear fellows.

You all have a lovely time! Till very soon,

Signing off, Sands.

Shall shine again…–as Dr. Sadanandan.

2010-11-01T22:06:00.001+01:00

I haven’t written in a long time. This is not going to be a long post either.

This post is just to let my readers know that there was some reason for not writing (for being busy).

The reason is that, I am now Dr. Sandeep Sadanandan and the transition from Mr. to Dr. took quite a bit of work. (Plus some personal reasons)

Now, I am back to normal speed of life. (Even though so many things happened in the past 2 months or so)

Expect me to be regular again.

Signing off, Sands.

A bunch of things–half baked.

2010-09-21T15:51:00.001+02:00

Listening to “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away”. How lovely a song it is!

“I don’t know” is a good answer when you really don’t know what is being asked/discussed. Don’t you think so? At least I do.

But many prefer to give half-baked ill-informed answers/opinions when they are asked something. And guess what? that drives me mad. I don’t claim that I know everything about anything I know.

I know only very little. But unless I am quite sure, I won’t be commenting about anything. Oh yes, there are human errors everywhere – I am not above/beyond them either. So, I do cut some slack for everyone. (who do I think I am?)

But when I hear half baked ideas and see half assed effort to be informed, I react badly. Especially when the hard-earned facts and irrefutable logic are ignored. Perhaps I should mellow down a bit.

This blog doesn’t really follow a theme. But lately, I am writing a little too much about atheism and “free-thinking”. Before we go there, I’ll give you some updates.

After my “Bookshelf Dilemma” post, I decided to get an e-book reader and have it in my hand already. Yes, an amazon Kindle. So far, I have liked it a lot. All the same, I should say that I haven’t read even one complete book in that. But since my vacation is to start next week, I am keeping my reading postponed till then.

A few days before Kindle, I had bought an iPhone too. I am quite satisfied with that gadget as well. I am quite pleased with it.

NOW, coming back to ignoring facts and going with ill-informed opinions. This is perhaps why, I cannot understand “creationists”, the reason I don’t understand superstitions, or blindly religious people. Well, apparently, people simply refuse to think…., which is so sad.

Anyway, today I am not going to talk/write about beliefs. I shall just share some lovely videos I came across.

Deconversion

Thanks to Pramode sir, for bringing this (Deconversion) to my notice.

For a good laughter

Then, there was this debate I saw online – whether church is necessary or not. It is a playlist of 5 videos – worth watching.

Now, to an entirely different topic: Vegetarianism. I became a vegetarian, more than a year ago, and stayed so, faithfully. The choice was mainly philosophical and there was a small part of the question which I hadn’t answered. During my vacation@home, I think I will be revisiting the whole issue – all over again.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Sometimes you don’t know – “whether you like the person because of his ideas or you like his ideas because you like him” (my example is Stephen Fry). Something similar is – “Do I like those parents because I like their kids or do I like the kids because I like their parents?”. There is a malayali family in Munich which I simply adore – parents and two little girls.

PPS: It was Keralasamajam’s Onam celebration on Saturday and I (and MG) painted something for the stage. Here they are:

The Bookshelf Dilemma

2010-08-29T14:38:00.001+02:00

My bookshelves are sort 0f overflowing and I am buying more and more books as time goes by. I don’t know how I would manage to move all of them while relocating to another city or even a country. (The picture shows a part of my collection two years ago … lazy to click a present one)

That is where an ebook reader (eReader) comes into picture. Shall I go for one? or not?

Don’t I love the “physical feeling” of a book? The smell of it?
Don’t I love the sight of the books in the shelf?
Don’t I love to tell my guests to “pick that ‘green’ book from the third row from top of the shelf on right side” and then tell them to read something from it. (You know? -- just to spice up conversations and such!)
Am I not simply proud of my collection?

An eReader would kill all this fun. So shall I not get one? But then I’ll be missing the technology train. (Which I never missed with netbooks, smart-phones, iPod, iPhone, etc.)

All the bullets above add up to less than 10 percentage of what I love about books. What I want really is the content. So, wouldn’t it be great if I can carry around my collection in a little handheld device? (claiming to give the perfect-reading-feel)

I don’t know. I was (am) quite confused about it. What if I don’t like it after the investment? Wouldn’t it be a waste? What if I do like? Won’t I move away from the good-old-smelly-books?

I spoke with a fellow-reader (RG) and she recommends to take the plunge. I have nothing to lose. And if I don’t like the device, I can give it to someone. Yes, sounds reasonable enough. Still… but… Hmm…

So, take the plunge? or not?

Signing off, Sands.

PS: The title of this post is shamelessly taken from this post @ Within/Without, which provoked my eReader thoughts.

Sweet and bitter somethings

2010-08-17T12:24:00.001+02:00

This month had been so far a book-month. I finished the whole twilight series in the beginning, then I finished “Superfreakonomics” – which is a nice, slightly thought provoking book.

And yesterday, I went to the bookshop (well, not that I don’t have enough unread books in my collection). I went to buy “The last lecture” for a friend (N^th copy of that book I was buying). And I bought a book for me as well (you know Tyler Cowen of MarginalRevolution? – his Infovore book)

While in the train back home, I sat opposite to a lady who was reading. I took the new book, opened it and inhaled directly from the pages… it felt so good - the pleasant smell of the new book. I looked up to see that she was looking at me and smiling. I smiled back, and knew that we had the ‘reader-to-reader’ rapport between us.

If only she were in my age-league, I could have had a bit of flirting flow! :P (I soooo wanted to know which book she was reading – try “Judging a girl by her cover”, slate magazine)

Today, in the morning, I was standing near the letter-boxes. The post woman was delivering letters/cards, and I thought I’d like to have that card she had in her hand. And guess what? She put it in my letter box!

The moment she moved, I took it and was just very happy! And as the sender asked me to, I did feel very much bear-hugged!

Now, the bitter things: Why do people put their close ones through guilt trips to make them do things against their own wishes? It is being used by so many people, and comes in different flavours – that disgusts me.

Why don’t people follow the minimum manners of removing the hear/ear-phones while speaking to someone? Why can’t you simply remove your tainted-glasses while talking to someone. Don’t you think, looking into the eyes is an important part of any conversation?

Why do people simply go ahead and use someone else’s computer, without asking? Don’t they know it is called “personal computer” and the meaning of “personal”? (Applicable to books and other things too)

And finally, why am I being so touchy? ;)

Signing off, Sands.

Light weight post..

2010-08-05T11:40:00.001+02:00

I was with muggle-girl, in the train, when she remarked about our co-passengers – “Why do they all look like they’ve lost ~~something~~?”. I looked around, and it was so true. Except a lady with her kid (and us too), EVERYONE in the train was so gloomy. Why oh why?

It was just 10 in the morning.. not that they are all tired after a long day’s work (not that any excuse can be entertained). I wanted to get up and shout – cheer up people, cheer up!.

(On a different note: have I mentioned that Beatles songs are great? Yes they are - listening to them now. I’m happy just to dance with you..)

Have you sometimes, while flipping through a book/newspaper, felt that you saw a word in a page, even when you didn’t [have time to] read?

Then you have to go back and hunt the whole page for that word, and will be surprised to see that the word really did exist in the page?

I had a similar moment in the morning. I thought I saw some Indian word in the ad, which I saw for only a split of a second on the info-screen. I had to wait till the ad was shown again.

And there it was – Shiva. What are “Cosmos” and “Shiva” doing in an ice-cream ad? I looked it up and figured that the words represent the Indian meanings and it’s the model’s name.

Remark: I happened to look at these words, instead of her cleavage????. Am I that boring?? (Well, she’ll be disappointed ;) )

Then, I walked straight to my “chocolate-drink” kiosk. I did my usual trick for impressing the cashier-girl, which is spinning the coins on the table – not many cashier girls were ever impressed though. Today it was a cashier-boy and he was royally impressed. I took my drink and walked away quick!

Well, readers, the last few posts were a bit heavy for my blog. Hence the light weight post today.

And, I am gradually getting back to normality – hyper-activity and such.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: That (beautiful) lady was showing off her iPad and I was properly ogling both.

Indian Supremacy Theory..

2010-08-03T15:10:00.001+02:00

Recently, I had a conversation with Eva Maria – a German lady who is staying in Kerala and collecting data for her doctoral thesis – “Resistance of regional-medical-systems against globalisation/allopathic medicine – in the light of naturopathy in Kerala”. I took a while to grasp what she’s doing and the scope of this post doesn’t cover that. :)

She told me, when she visits some villages in Kerala, they tell her – “Kerala is the best place on the planet [to live]”. On asking back which all places they know to have such an opinion, they say, they haven’t ever been away from their cute lovely villages. So much for “informed opinion”.

I wonder, how many proud mallus know that the Kerala-tagline “God’s Own Country” itself is not original. [LINK]

And you know what? Indians tend to make this “we are the best” comments about almost everything [Facebook-Group].

To make it worse, we cannot even accept a bit of criticism. Once, in a group, I was telling [non-Indians] about some flaws and faults of Indian system, when this friend from Bihar told me [shouted] (in Hindi) to stop telling about the bad-things back there.

No society is going to grow if they cannot accept their own flaws and discuss with others to see their blind spots.

WE ARE FLAWLESS attitude spans from culture to technology. Indian culture is the best EVER. Home grown technology beats everything else (Remember Ramar-Pillai?).

A word about Indian culture – the colours, variety of food, festivals etc. are some of the best of it.

At the same time, don’t tell that a system where women are second class citizens is good. I simply won’t be able to understand the “goodness” of a dowry-based-arranged-marriage-family-system. Let’s not even talk about the caste-based classification of people.

I am not exactly patriotic; It’s your choice to be or not. But don’t let patriotism blind you. Please don’t.

And my dear Indian readers, if you still think we are the best, see where India stands in these global ranking systems: Satisfaction with Life Index (India:125), Quality-of-life index (India: 73), etc. We are not exactly at the top of these lists, are we?

So, there must be something which we are not doing right. (And others doing it right?)

There are many great things about every place/system. It is the same with India too – lot of great people, things, places, traditions, etc. But please try to have informed opinions; and be open to criticism.

And wouldn’t it be the best if we know what our faults are and get the best from wherever we can? Life will be happier, world will be a better place to live.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Also, don’t think that this “attitude” is completely Indian, for I have seen people who say their system is the only good system around (have you spoken with newly-imported-Chinese students?).

PPS: People who are proud of the age-old beliefs/traditions/customs would shamelessly say that the hard, non-bendable, non-criticisable rules in Qur’an were written for 6-7th century A.D, and are not applicable now. (But that argument doesn’t apply to own faults, right?). Having majority support, or having been functional for ages shouldn’t support any system. Let changes happen, for good.

Earn it mates... Respect I mean [4]

2010-07-24T00:19:00.003+02:00

If you want to be treated well/respected, then first learn/start to behave well and respectable!

I have been using my motorbike quite often lately and riding is great, fun, lovely etc. But other bikers irritate me a lot.

Bikers want to be treated like cars, to have that much parking space, but they just don't behave well. When there is a traffic jam, they take all those small narrow paths and get to the front of the jam and get their way.

Having a motorbike is not the licence to go beyond the speed limits; it is not the licence to overtake where you aren't permitted to. But they all do.

How do you then expected to be treated well by other motorists? And we, the ones who actually follow the rules have to share the bad-image you create.

No offense to youngsters, but they seem to do it the most - and they wear the least amount of protective wear. God only can save them - meaning, they cannot be saved! :P

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Tomorrow, we'll read about Indian-Supremacy-Theory!

Mission Accomplished.. [3]

2010-07-22T23:50:00.001+02:00

So, in such a big university like Technical University Munich, students came asking for my course, and we offered it, I did the course and finally conducted the exams – ALL on my own. And I feel really great.

When I look around and see the opportunities my colleagues/friends had, in comparison with me, it feels even more great!

All what remains now is evaluation and I’ll do it tomorrow, and that will be the end of this semester work! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!

And, it rained today - heavily. When it did, I went out in the rain – after quite a long time. There is nothing which is as good as walking out when it is pouring cats and dogs!

Hmm, this daily blog for a month is going to be a little hard! Let me see! :)

Signing off, Sands.

God or No God? [2]

2010-07-21T18:38:00.001+02:00

It’s an age old decision to never take part in theism/atheism argument.

Personal experiences tell me that religious people tend to react badly (emotionally too) if something hurts their beliefs – well, they have something to lose, if the argument doesn’t favour them. (Why should I do it?)

It must be true with non-theists too, but they are in general more open (or at least aren’t too sentimentally attached to non-theism – of course, they have only a God to gain; nothing to lose.)

Obviously, a very hard decision to follow. Lately, I had been following some bright blogs [Greta, mal-bright] and they made me a bit edgy when it came to God.

To add insult to injury, after my dad’s demise, I am even entertaining the thoughts of militant atheism. Read WikiLink.

Yesterday (late afty), I did get into one such argument. My opponent challenged me that she’ll break my arguments one by one in the evening. Luckily, there wasn’t any argument. Lucky, because such arguments usually don’t reach an end, and I am very good at hurting others’ beliefs.

All the same, I prepared a LIST of thoughts/questions which could be used in such arguments. Most of them aren’t even explained well, each point is simple a tip of a huge iceberg.

You could read them, use them, answer the questions if you want. If you take it very serious, you could even copy paste them to an editor, answer them and send them over to me.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: For your benefit, I copy paste the thoughts/questions here! :)

What is God?

Everything?

Surveillance camera?

Concept to help the weak??

Cannot even define??

What does he/she do?

Creation? - why think a complex thing got created from nothingness, than the simple universe created itself?

Taking care of things? - look around at the state of affairs.

How do you prove?

Russel's Teapot? - teapot going around sun, between earth and mars. The one who claims its existence should prove it.

Flying Spaghetti Monster. - we were all created 5 minutes ago. Just that our brains were filled with long lasting memories.

Invisible Pink Unicorn… :)

If he/she does exist, what is the big deal to prove it?

Why should all questions be answered?

What if a lifetime in not enough?

What goes wrong if a Question is not answered? (should we be satisfied with a wrong answer than none?)
The magic I don't understand is a miracle? or not? Why can’t we take that time will show it to us slowly, but now it is unknown.

God of the Gaps? Shrinking God?
This argument has the form

There is a gap in scientific knowledge.

Therefore, the things in this gap are best explained as acts of God.

This is not based in logic. It is simply a statement of pessimism about the future progress of science.
The God is shrinking. ¹

Does God interfere with normal life/mortals?

If yes, why all these atrocities?

If no, think about praying.

is Life = God?

I could be wrong; So could you be.. right??

Faith = without proof? (axiom?)
I refuse to accept something without a proof. You believe in something without proof? Because someone said so? How can he be right? (Flying spaghetti monster and teapot)

How about other religions? are they wrong too? Just your religion is right?

Does majority/minority matter? – if yes, people who don’t believe in your faith is MORE than the ones who do .. and it is true for EVERY religion. If no, never say atheists are less in number.

I see a bear and a lion hugging each other here. Am I hallucinating?

What if I see God in my dream? How is it different from normal dreaming?

Do miracles happen? Coincidences? (Have you heard the word probability?)

Could the scriptures be wrong?

Why life is so hard if they have everything in there?
All it takes is read the scriptures up and have a good life?

Why dedicate life for science? Go learn the scriptures – well which religions’ ??

Scriptures are finite, Unknown is infinite. How can we have infinite knowledge in finite scriptures?
(I know examples of mistakes in Indian scriptures - esp. in Astrology/Astronomy. Not to mention church’s reaction to heliocentric system.)

(When science makes mistakes and gets it corrected later, they simply accept it without fighting.)

Why most logical thinkers are Atheists?

You deny N Gods, atheists deny N+1. What’s the big deal?

Are all Gods the same? then why do religions contradict? Why doesn't he/she step in and make people understand and make the world a better place? (have you heard about the tower of Babel?)

Why natural disasters? Did/Do all those people deserve same treatment at same time?

How does praying help? Isn’t it as bad as bribery? Does god need reminding? Can he not simply know your wishes? why utter them?
If praying doesn't help...why pray?

Footnotes:

¹Down through the centuries, science has eliminated a great many of its gaps. People who had used the Gap argument were embarrassed, since their God shrank in power with each new scientific advance. For example, after the work of Galileo and Newton, it was no longer thought that angels pushed the planets across the heavens.

A more recent example is the argument by some Creationists that complex molecules (such as amino acids) could not have arisen by natural processes on the early earth. Hence, life could not have arisen by natural means, and God must have miraculously created these chemicals while creating life. The chemicals were part of a Purpose.

The basis of this argument was a gap in scientific knowledge. This basis fell apart when molecules (including organic molecules) were detected in interstellar space by astronomers. The argument came further apart when amino acids were found inside the Murchison meteorite. Apparently the basic molecules of life form naturally in some quite harsh places, and there is a way for vast quantities to have arrived intact on the early earth. So, their existence has Purpose only to the extent that the entire galaxy does.

Punctuality? (does that exist?) [1]

2010-07-20T21:58:00.001+02:00

Hmm.. first post of the monthly series happens to be a cribbing post!

Waiting long for someone (something) can practically drive me crazy. Of course, there could be reasons – the train didn’t just come, or the bus was late – which could be entertained.

But something worse is that, the late-comer did (does) know about the delay, but the person who’s waiting won’t be informed.

Why don’t they give a call and say, “Hey, I’ll be these many minutes late”. That would give me (or the waiting person) the chance to make better use of time. [Isn’t my/his/her time valuable?]

First of all, be punctual – it is not THAT hard. Many people do that quite well. Even I, such a lazy bum, have been doing it for the past 10-15 years.

Of course, there were times when I was late; and whenever there was telephone connection, I have informed the other party.

Now, it is 7:05, I am still waiting for someone who told me that we’ll meet at 6:45; I haven’t heard anything yet. Luckily, I am at home.

Give or take 5 minutes… other than that, being late cannot be tolerated, without proper ‘letting-me-know’. It feels like my time has NO value.

Making someone wait is like not respecting his/her time (and that person him/herself).

My time is precious; Your time is MORE precious : let this message sink in us.

Signing off, Sands.

New Moon – yes, Twilight:2

2010-07-19T16:48:00.001+02:00

Warning: I am seriously considering about a month of daily posts. (All will be small and short (hence sweet and beautiful too)). Not decided yet. All it would take is getting up early, publishing a post, and starting the day. Are my readers with me? Ready to endure?

After coming back from home, I started reading “Accidental Mind” – concerning brain-theory/neuroscience – mainly because I wanted to know more about what happened to my dad’s brain.

But I figured soon that it was not the best book to read at that time. If you read non-fiction and have tears because you relate those theories to your life/near-n-dear, then it is time to put that book down and pick some light-weight reading. Mind needs time to heal.

Without reading/finishing even a book in 3 weeks, I was also starting to feel bad that I am not doing anything useful in life.

So, what could have been lighter/better than vampire stories? :)

So, after a loooooong time, I finished a book – New Moon by Stephenie Meyer. Don’t give me that look – I know, it is teenage stuff. But I wanted to know what is this big drama about “Edward Cullen” – vampire. (Had read the first book in the series a few months ago – and found it ok.)

I think the book is Ok, even though I fail to see the reason for such a hype. Girls are screaming with joy on hearing the name “Cullen”; but, to my eyes, he never looked like a decent hero. Never mind, next time someone talks to me about twilight, I can speak authoritatively.

For one thing, I like to have the privilege of saying – “I know what I am speaking of, I have read that”.

For another thing, it wasn’t too bad a book.

Anyway, just thinking – whether I should take the next one in the series? Or take a break.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Mind teeming with thoughts…. will have to sit and structure them.

PPS: A little thanks to RG for Twilight introduction. :)

Double standard alias Patronising…

2010-07-12T14:05:00.001+02:00

My long absence here – you know why, if you read my last post.I have made up my mind to come back here and be regular all over again. The show must go on – right?

Personal freedom – I stand for it, I support it, I advocate for it. I tell others to fight for it, if necessary.

“This is how I live, that is how you live; You live your life and I live mine” – I totally get this.

In most of the cases, I act so too. But sometimes, I think I am adding one more line to it – “Anyway, my way is superior. You could be like me.”

Now I am not so clear whether I give such a vibe too often/strong. But in general, I have an attitude that my way is better and I am happier than the average Joe.

I like to be RIGHT. But I shall not deny others’ right to be right, right?

As RG once pointed out, I like to “feel good about myself” than the average Joe. That’s all fine… as long as I don’t force it on others.

Perhaps, I am not doing it a lot. But lately some incidents make me (re)think. And isn’t that something I should pay attention to? Yes, it IS; So, I will.

Thanks to the ones who brought it to my notice; Apologies to the ones who suffered my superiority complex. ;)

I’ll live my life and you figure out yours; and feel free to kick my ass if I interfere with your way! (Hmm… I won’t hesitate if you interfere with mine) ..

On a different note, I am afraid of the time when the picture here becomes true – some day!

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Dedicating this entry to the one who helped me see the issue better.

PPS: Was reading THIS (the real trigger).

PPPS: Blogging is very good to get your thoughts structured. Reason #1: it won’t talk back to you when you are half way through your conversation. :)

Life will never be the same..

2010-06-21T14:00:00.001+02:00

Every incident changes life. But some have more gravity.. don’t they?

With such an incident, I have become the “man of the house” : a transition from ‘responsibility-is-optional’ state to ‘responsible-for-a-family’ state.

Not that I feel crushed under the pressure. It was anyway bound to happen at some point of time… (perhaps 20-30 years down the lane though).

The transition was testing… Being angry at the system.. which delayed medical treatment to him for two hours… anger was the dominant emotion.

Moments of irrationality… even when I knew I was irrational, I continued to be irrational for sometime.

Now when I look back, it is strange that I broke into tears.. thinking that he was alone in that long, narrow box in the mortuary.. I knew, it was just a body; I’ve never believed in soul. Still I considered that body to be a person. Irrational? or too emotional? (are they the same? ;) )

Saw and experienced quite a lot. More than anything else, saw the real faces of some people.

How can you trust someone who is nice to you but not to others? Even though he shows the nice face now, the knowledge that he has two faces destroys the trust. Doesn’t it?
Thanks to the ones who were just there when I couldn’t afford to break down. If nothing else, I’ve at least made some GREAT friends.
I also figured it out from experience – why do people believe in God, heaven and such. It is some sort of escapism…. which guarantees peace of mind. [By the way, I am, now, more inclined to militant atheism, than ever before.]
The complexity, loopholes, pitfalls and defects of the bureaucracy were well revealed. Corruption and bribe – unbelievable!
…
Not to mention the heights of turmoil+agitation.
The list goes on and on and on..

If I am as observant as others say I am, I must have known him better than anyone else. And with that I should say, he was a good man, a very good man, a great dad (of course, not faultless). His absence won’t create a practical/financial/similar void…. but a void which can never be filled with anything but him.

He’d have been happy to know that hundreds of people came to have a final look at him. (I myself had royally underestimated his popularity)

Anyway, the show has to go on; time will heal everything... I get a new role in life and I’ll try to play it well. As I told him just before lighting the pyre, I’ll make sure to live a life which’ll make him proud. And will be there for my mom and sis.

(again irrational right? do I need to promise that I’ll be a good man? Am I not trying to be so even otherwise? Anyway, let me have some cultural/traditional things in me… can’t hurt too much)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Funny that, I hope/wish that nobody has to go through what I went through, even though it was on of the most teaching and revealing experiences in my life. (Am I that selfish? ;) )

Rant + Something special… :)

2010-05-18T15:26:00.001+02:00

It’s been quite some time since I came to blogosphere. I had a few good reasons for taking the break. To start with, I was quite busy. And I won’t bore you with the details of my busy-ness.

But before I get into the normal blogging, a little bit of rant. If you don’t want the RANT part, skip the next 4-5 paragraphs.

Why do some people want others to want something? Why are people supposed to do some things? Why does the society expect people to follow specific paths? Why don’t many people have the courage to stand up and say “I do this, for I want this”?

Now, I don’t have anything against parents. In fact, my parents have always given me enough freedom and whenever I thought I wasn’t given enough, I’ve simply taken it. (of course it has hurt them sometimes, but in the long run they’ve figured that my decisions have only made me (and in turn them) happy)

But, many parents create a restrictive atmosphere. And guess what? many a time, the reasoning is “what would others think?”. Who gives a damn about what others think? (As you can see, it’s the society which controls parents’ minds)

My dear fellows, when you want something in life and someone else says that you are not supposed to want it, but you are supposed to want something else, just know that there is NO SUPPOSED TO crap. Just stand up and claim what you want. Claim your freedom and personal space and independence. And feel good, in fact, great about it. [read PS]

After all, there are only two types of people – the ones who care about you and the ones who don’t. The ones who care about you will be happy when you do what you want and are happy. The others, they don’t care about you and why should you care about what they think?

It seriously hurts when people just don’t realise this and make their own lives miserable! :(

But as I always have said, there are so many GREAT people on this planet to compensate for the idiots who make life miserable for others (and themselves). And I am glad to have such friends to whom I can rant after I see/talk-to the aforementioned idiots.

Now, what kept me busy all this while? I won’t tell you about all those.

But I can definitely tell you what is keeping me busy NOW.

I bought a bike – a pretty good strong lovely one – Honda CBF 600 (S). It’s been named “Rudra” (the name is being disputed though).

(600 CC, 77 BHP, 4 cylinder engine. Max speed 220, I’ve clocked only up to 155)

And this bike is my response to my own old post “Green with envy”, which itself was a response to a post in Necker Cubicle. Many thanks to Daniela who is the motivation/inspiration and who is worried that my mom would hate her for making me a biker! :P

And here is the stereotypical rider on his bike. (picture taken in front of the computer-science/mathematics department building)

Of course, I am extra careful about riding. As my professor said today - “he is an adventurous fellow”. While loving the adventure part, I know I shall not cross the line separating adventure and stupidity.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: There are people who stop your from what you want because they can see the risks involved. That is reasonable. But “what others think” is never a good enough reason.

Yahooooooooooooooo! and Pony Tail.

2010-04-22T15:24:00.001+02:00

Last Saturday, in the morning, I received an email from a bachelor student – asking whether I am offering the course I did last summer. I didn’t reply immediately.

In the afternoon, an email from another student. And I started wondering!

On Sunday morning, I had an email from Professor, asking whether I wanted to offer the course. It seems he also received a few emails requesting my course.

Sunday being a busy day for me, I couldn’t do anything about it. I just said, I would LOVE to… for I love teaching.

We did the paperwork to get the course approved – on Monday; and published the details on the webpage – on Tuesday.

Now a word about it. The course is “Python for fine Programmers”, a simplistic course. An elective course. No one needs to take it, and it won’t fill anyone’s credit requirements.

And still, I have 12 students… and only two of them are there for credits. The rest came because they want to learn, they heard about me. (And it is going to be some work.)

Preparing the lecture (material + presentation)
Finding out reasonable problems. I want a new set of them… no reusing of last years problems
Solving and coding them before I give them to students
Evaluating the code they all submit. (12 evaluations could take quite some time)

I went to professor to report and he told me “Sandeep, you’ve become famous. Students are asking specifically for your course”.

Isn’t it great? What more can I ask for?

And another dream is coming true as well – I’ve always taught Algorithms/Programming kind of courses. This semester, I am tutoring Theoretical Computer Science – the core thing. Yaaaaaaaaaaay!

Hailing from a small normal village in Kerala, I am offering a course in one of the BEST universities in Germany (Europe). I feel good, very good indeed. :) :)

As the icing of the cake, now, I may even look like a solid geeky, useless, crazy, academic, for I have a little pony tail – very short indeed.

Now, to add the rough edge to it, I am going to get something next week. And something else the week after that.

I’m all excited! Yahooooooooooooo! Juhuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Signing off, Sands.

PS: And pony tail reminds me of Tony. He’s getting married in less than 2 weeks from now! Happy for him. :)

Some little nothings

2010-04-16T14:48:00.001+02:00

To explain the principle of relativity – that, time is subjective – a friend gave this example. Relativity can be explained by the way two people perceive time – two people standing on both the sides of a toilet door – one waiting for the toilet, one using the toilet. [thanks to Vivek]
~~~~
(When I was very young, my mom had told me that time flies when you speak to a lovely person, and time drags when the conversation is boring – and that is the crux of the thing. And I seem to like the toilet example now)
~~~~
If I were a chemistry teacher at high school, I would teach “irreversible process” with an example of toothpaste. Once you squeeze it out, there is no way to get it back – that is an (almost) irreversible process. Right?
~~~~
If I am were math/computer-science teacher, I’d use the same example to explain One-way functions which are easy to do one side, the other way around is not so easy! :)
~~~~
I recently read a small passage in a (malayalam) blog where the author says he envies some groups of people. So do I, envy such people …
- who can sleep when mosquitoes are attacking
- who can talk while watching TV
- who can work[@computer] while listening to songs
- who can read while having lunch/dinner/food
- who can telephone while driving
  ~~~~
The Easter/Vishu celebration is on this Sunday and as usual I’ve invited 4 friends – Jo, GrübMäd, Lud and a MuggleGirl. But this time I’ll be busy compering and I hope they’ll take care of themselves. I’ve always wanted to take RG for this function, but never could make it. Anyway, I am looking forward to Sunday.
~~~~
My apartment mate from Greece: I like that chap. He’s intelligent, knowledgeable, arrogant and aggressive. If I look at him and say “if you’re looking for trouble, you’ve come to the right place”, he’d easily say - “oh yes, I am looking for trouble”. Nice confident chap… but I cannot help foreseeing the chances of we having clash of titans. :)

Well, that’s all for now. And I’ll get back to my work.

You all have a wonderful time, a great weekend.

Signing off, Sands.

A disappointing post.

2010-04-12T01:01:00.001+02:00

This is a post which I had been wanting to write with all the time it takes. It’s a book-review post – of three books I finished recently and which I very much liked.

But in these times of time-crunch, I am not sure whether I can do enough justice to the books, not sure whether I can give due respect to them. (Having not enough time guarantees that I won’t be satisfied with the post, and hence the title).

Pygmalion: George Bernard Shaw.
The lady of the Camellias: Alexandre Dumas, Fils (Junior).

PYGMALION: About a phonetic expert in London (1910s) and how he changes the life of a girl and his own. I shall not reveal the plot, for I hope – at least one of my loyal readers would read the book.

A wonderful play – witty and thought provoking. How can you not like a book which this in the preface?

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

While reading it, I found myself, during breaks, taking the book and going to Johannes to read some dialogues to him. (I hope, he wasn’t much bored ).

The heroine’s dad gives some of the funny and thought provoking ideas. He does question the status of the society. On asking why he (the dad) doesn’t marry his missus, he goes:

DOOLITTLE: Tell her [missus] so, tell her so. I’m willing. It’s me that suffers by it. I’ve no hold on her. I got to be agreeable to her. I got to give her presents. I got to buy her clothes something sinful. I’m a slave to that woman, Governor, just because I’m not her lawful husband. And she knows it too. Catch her marrying me! Take my advice, marry Eliza while she’s young and don’t know no better. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry for it after. If you do, she’ll be sorry for it after; but better you than her, because you’re a man, and she’s only a woman and don’t know how to be happy anyhow.

Doesn’t it so well show the ‘hardships’ of a man before, and of women after, the marriage? ;)

I can go on and quote more. But I better get to the next book. I humbly request you to read this book. It’s a short one and won’t take more than 3 hours.

THE LADY OF THE CAMELLIAS: A tragic story of a courtesan (and her liaison with a young bloke) set in mid 19th century Paris. If you have watched “Moulin Rouge”, then you have seen a VERY loosely related version of the original.

The book surpasses the movie by all means. I would recommend the book at least all my male readers.

Have you ever written a letter to your beloved and regretted for having (or not having) written something? (I have)

Have you ever refused to accept that some of her actions hurt you? just because your ego won’t let you admit that you, the super-human, were hurt? (I have)

And a thousand similar things happen while you are in love. Many a time I felt that the author had seen my mind when I’ve been through the pains of love.

Have you been “possessive”? (I haven’t)

He: "You are right," I said, letting my head sink on her knees ; "but I love you madly."
She: "Well, my friend, you must either love me a little less or understand me a little better."

I went “wow” for the reply. If you don’t get the feel when it is out of context, I am sorry! :(

It’s a beautiful book. It won’t change your life or anything. But there are some profound thoughts here and there. I think, it is more about the style and speed of narration which makes it nicer.

Life is pleasant, my dear fellow; it all depends on the colour of the glass through which one sees it.

Even though I insist my male readers to read the book, female readers would definitely like it too. Won’t you want to know why we men are sometimes so stupid (especially when in love? ;) )

Third book : JANE EYRE – this would (could/should) take a whole post. Being too late, I shall go to bed, postponing Jane Eyre.

The loyal readers who reached here, who cared to read the non-proof-read, non-structured post, are special to me. :)

Signing off, Sands.

A fine film; Cults (of non-normal people)

2010-04-08T00:01:00.001+02:00

Disclaimer: Late night post – no proof reading – read at your own risk ;)

After a wonderful day, I reached home with a decision that I’ll finish some work before sleeping. Without even touching any work, I cooked (and ate) a wonderful dinner - “Penne Arabiata, with loads of cheese”. And watched a film – a fine film after a long time from Malayalam film world.

I had read the novel a few months ago and was waiting for the film to be available. A historical-detective story, narrated in a very different way. The actors have done a good job. Some bit of initial days of communism in Kerala, the socio-communal situation, power of feudal lords etc. are captured quite well.

We all dreamed of changes in the society. We changed, the society didn’t. The dreams remained always as dreams, without ever being materialised.

So said one of the communist-characters in the film. I don’t know whether it was meant for a message to the viewer about communism or not. In any case, my views are in sync with the message.

Hats off to the makers of the film.

~~~;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

Holmes, QI, Blackadder, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Hitch Hiker’s Guide, etc. are some (non-tech) stuff I am so passionate about. I was avoiding Blackadder, for I knew it had all the potential to get me addicted but I did watch all the episodes over the weekend and my fears came true!

Am I falling prey for these cults? And when I look around, no normal person is following these things with such passion. RG and MG are the only ones who are into all (or a subset) of these and neither of them is the so called normal person. (Not counting the two Tamil Girls who are HP + LOTR fans)

Whether I am falling prey or not, I thoroughly enjoy each and every one of these great stuff. It’s time to re-read HHGG again. I recommend these to my readers as well.

I like people with passion.. Passion gives energy to do things, passion makes one patient enough to get things done, passion gives one enough tenacity. And the passion in one thing will reflect in other stuff as well, and would make life better. (if you look closely, they are geek-characteristics)

Anyway, I didn’t keep the word I gave myself – about the work. I’ll go to bed and get up early and cycle to uni. in the fresh morning air.

Good night and signing off, Sands.

PS: I didn’t tell you about my ‘lady of camellias’, did I? I will, very soon.

PPS: Two days ago, I found spelling and grammatical errors in BBC in a row of two days! Totally unacceptable! :(

Simple reasoning (and again pictures?)

2010-04-01T08:18:00.001+02:00

An excerpt from Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’ (which I am reading now and enjoying very well):

PICKERING: Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed]: Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?

Of course, moral codes and empty-stomachs cannot co-exist.

But the well educated and well doing, rich enough people? Shouldn’t they be at least honest? I am not talking about white lies – but serious hiding of things.

And it hurts when it is someone who’s close to me. Even when the dishonesty is not towards me. The idol breaks!

Would people do wrong, if they knew for sure that they won’t be exposed? I guess, many would. But isn’t there a conscience to which one is answerable?

‘Economy of life’ itself is a good reason to be honest. To lie – book keeping of who knows the truth, who knows which version etc. – is expensive.

Trustworthiness, integrity, credibility – one can never exaggerate their importance. Who am I to demand that others should be honest and trustworthy? I could only suggest, but the choice is ultimately theirs.

With a quote from Bernard Shaw himself, I shall wind up my write up.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my Weinheim/Heidelberg/Heppenheim trip – some towns in the south-west Germany.

Windows to heaven

House-couple at the hillside

My tall-hostess and her parents

Towers of the fourth castle I visited in 3 days

The so typical and beautiful ‘fachwerk’ houses (townhall).

First flowers of the year.. we are still waiting for the spring here in Munich.

A little boy to keep the windows open :o

Every street-lamp has a story painted on it and a detailed account of the story at the bottom.

Signing off, Sands.

Poems, from my melancholy

2010-03-24T12:11:00.003+01:00

A few words for you my dear
To tell thoughts from my heart
The future looks so very unclear
Thinking of it pierces me like a dart

Unclear it may be, but I fear it not
And what I fear, that matters not
And you who matter, I have not
Will we be together, I know it not

For a long time in my life, I never dared to let feelings flow as they wished. It scared me to let me be in bad mood.

But now, raw feelings of passion, love and pain do easily engulf me and leave me helpless. Have you ever held your love in your arms, so close, so near… but knowing that it is not as close as you wish for – words which could describe that feeling don’t exist and never will.

Yeah, the feelings, especially in some situations, leave me helpless, but never hopeless.

They say, most men don’t ever get in good-terms with their emotional side. Fortunately, it seems, I don’t belong to the ‘most men’ category (not an overnight development, of course).

I am glad – so very glad. I believe, these experiences (experiments?) with life and feelings and emotions, make me a new and better man.

Anyway, above was just a set of rhyming lines by me. But below is a real good poem to capture my feelings – by Emily Dickinson.

If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

Hmm.. I should get to my usual self. Not that I am not enjoying every moment now. But enjoying this melancholy won’t get my day’s work done.

Y’all have a great day!

Signing off, Sands.

PS: One never ceases to have great experiences in life. And, be wonderful or painful, they make the life worth living.

Home away from home; and pix

2010-03-22T01:45:00.002+01:00

After being away from Munich for four days, I am back.

During the course of the past few years, I have become capable of being very comfortable - wherever I go. But, visiting and staying-with RG is more than just being comfortable – I do feel ‘home’ with RG – feeling myself.

I could even dump my clothes as it pleased me – without giving a second thought on should I behave like a ‘guest’. A home away from home. :)

The only sad thing is that I felt very much at home that I was taking salt/tea/etc. from Chris (room-mate) without asking. (of course, informing him afterwards)

I even managed to break two wine glasses within 2 days. :P

We had plans to go to a few cities in France. After going only to Strasburg, we decided to ditch France and to tour only Saarbrücken. Being lazy, and talking, talking and talking, we ditched Saarbrücken too.

Truth be said – I was very glad to be confined within those 4 walls and to have a part of the bed to sleep on. We had a lot to catch up since our last meeting. And we just had lovely time.

Know what? Many people add value to our lives. But a few of them.. – they altogether multiply the value of our lives.

This post is dedicated to RG. :)

And here are some pictures from Strasburg (France)

Cute little girl from the play-ground.

The city-centre.

The railway station

Another view of THE railway station

Five roads join here

Waiting for the spring

‘FRENCH WINDOWS’

The strange tree

The photographer in me was awakened :P

Inside the church

Coloured glass is wonderful, isn’t it?

Better to see this way than being burnt.

Grotesques @ the church

This creature’s scientific name is ‘adorable’.

Aren’t these shoes adorable? :)

Signing off, Sands.

Happy B’day… :-)

2010-03-16T01:55:00.001+01:00

The champagne was hidden in my own fridge and I didn’t know. The gifts were kept in my room – I hadn’t seen them.

It was the best B’day celebration so far. (Hmm.. I don’t celebrate b’days generally).

Some pictures:

The candle and gifts – arranged in my room when Konstantine distracted me.

Book, some Indian photos, a lovely poem by Tagore, and Champagne! :)
Isn’t it good?

Hmm… Cake #1….

The cake for my colleagues. Yet again Yummy!

Now, this was lovely. Turn the handle to hear the music. I was so shocked and surprised and pained when I heard my favourite Elvis song flowing from it.

I was touched.. I still am. I was practically speechless.. words failed me.

I became “Gadgadakantan” as mallus would say.

This post is of course dedicated to GM.

Signing off, Sands.

Trivia: 1, 2, 4, 7 and 14 are the factors or 28. And these numbers add up to 28. Hence 28 is a PERFECT number. As D says, 28 could be the perfect age too. :)

First Sketches

2010-03-15T09:39:00.001+01:00

I had been thinking about taking the brushes and colours for sometime now. I haven’t touched them since last July or so.

Have always wanted to do colour pencil sketching. I know, I am by no means good. Of course, I have my favourite red-rose and bamboos which are quite easy. Hopefully, in a few months I’ll learn some tricks of the trade.

In any case, I took the pencils, and sketched while watching some dokuz. Naturally, something HOT and SPICY. ;)

The best part is, you need only a sketch book and 3-4 pencils and just 10-20 minutes for such a simple thing. Isn’t that cool? I have to move to more complicated stuff though.

Other than this, beautiful things are happening in life. To an extent, painful things – which are still lovely and great in themselves. At the moment a little too busy to express such things in words. Will try to do some day.

Signing off, Sands.

For a change…

2010-03-11T14:31:00.001+01:00

This is not a place for spreading negative energy, which I never do. Instead I post and ‘broadcast’ news and details about my great mood, excellent spirits etc.

But… Today…

I am a bit confused. Or may be slightly excited in the negative side. Three very important things happened between 9:45 and 11:00.

Nothing bad at all. But each of them with such great gravity – life changeable events. Hmm… Shall let you know eventually.

The funny thing is, only good might happen and I am possibly getting anxious for nothing. But why not! I am at least enjoying a novel feeling.

Now to the good side. I was speaking with MusicGirl and the conversation turned to ‘hot guys’; and I asked her about how she finds me – HOT or NOT.

Guess what? A full 10 for personality. Good score for height; she praised my eyes. Sense of humour too is one of my strengths in her opinion. But I lost points for my ‘dressing sense’ (or lack of it) and my unruly hair; she doesn’t like my teeth either.

I am glad that the plus-es were character-related (except eyes) where as the minus points are ‘repairable’. (Not to mean that I intent to).. In any case, I am not HOT enough for her. ;)

This would be the time to read about Endowment Effect – for I am thinking positives are more important, and the negatives are insignificant. (would the knowledge of Endowment effect, make my feelings void of endowment-effect?)

Signing off, Sands.

Women’s Day and Snapshots from (my) life..

2010-03-07T14:00:00.001+01:00

Just some time ago, a friend emailed me:

.... and by the way, today is world women day. My whole newspaper is talking about feminism and men's emancipation. I'll give it to you after having finished, ja?

I am curious about it. In any case, I’ll read it and report here.

Off topic: Have I mentioned that I like it when someone suggests/gives me something to read (which they liked, or think I’ll like?). It shows care and concern and of course is a proof that I was in their mind while reading it. Isn’t it a lovely thing to feel cared for?

As a person who has more female friends than most people, I have had many chances to talk about women’s problems and let me make it clear, I am on women’s side. I have mentioned it a few times and also have given some links. I don’t want to repeat them here.

In my personal experience, there were/are more male-idiots than female-idiots. And some of the male-idiots even excelled in being so. So… you know?

Note: I do hate those moments when feminism goes “MAD/WILD”. I and D sometimes have discussions about it.

Anyway, I make use of this occasion to ask all of you to work towards a world where everyone is free to do anything he/she wishes, without being judged or looked down at, where everyone has equal rights, equal protection etc. etc. (irrespective of gender/race/creed/anything)

And now, I bring your attention to some snap-shots from my life:

This is how Ethiopian food looks like. (at least in Blue Nile, the Ethiopian restaurant in M)

Typical Kerala Food (called Puttu)… But nobody has ever made Puttu in McDonald’s cups. We didn’t have the right utensils.

And yes, it did come out pretty well. (Was too dry to swallow though) :P

The newest member in my room. What would I call her? I might call her “Grübchen” (means dimple)

This is the entrance to my room. A flowery welcome.

The Red-Corridor from where I enter my room.

This is what I see from my window. Just a foot away from my feet, it is snow. And what you are seeing there is my Flower-Patch. (Should i have flowers in there? or vegetables?)

This is how he (Sun) goes down on her (Earth). Of course, Euphemism is deliberate.

And yes, the snow melts gradually.

This is what I see when I wake up in the morning. It is this light which wakes me up.

Mannequins, in the nearby shopping centre. This photo was taken when some group of idiots were making issues in India about the nude-mannequins.

During Xmas time, xmas trees were being sold like hotcakes.

While I was in the hospital, this was the view from my window. Great and all, but it was very dull for me to look out.

Like I started, I end with the same friend who sent me the email. Here is her cat, lying on her legs. She (the cat, “L”) was very comfortable lying on back, on that soft quilt. (I apologise to L, for the unexpected camera-flash).

That was all my dear friends. My busy day/weak is ON and I am in a quite good mood. You all have a wonderful time too.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: My Malayalam blog readers would see the same photos there too. Perhaps with more details of the images.

Absent minded? Irresponsible? Bored Sky?

2010-03-04T18:46:00.001+01:00

It has been happening a few times lately that when I come out of uni (office) in the evening, I have forgotten to wear my shoes. I walk into the cold and say .. “oops, now I’ll miss this train” and go wear my shoes.

Once I am in the institute, I remove my shoes and wear some sandals (a lot comfortable).

Too absent minded to remember it in the evening?

~~~

I wanted my Indian license converted to German one. Applied, did everything, passed the test. But then realised that I’d lost my Indian license. It was gone. When I went to India, I applied for a duplicate and did receive it.

As it was no matter of urgency, I didn’t go get the license until two days ago. Surprise surprise surprise: I has submitted my Indian one along with the application. What an idiot I am/was to forget it and go through all those hassles!

Or was it just being irresponsible?

Good thing is that I have the same photo in both my licences now.

~~~

In the 1986 film, the hero sings :

“Oh my dear moon, don’t go. I am your sky and will be there for you ever. Even if you leave me, I’ll keep you close to my heart/thoughts”. (Video below)

In the 2009 film it has become :

“The very same moon everyday, the sky would be bored. Be a wife or a knife, I want the best!”. The song is of course about partner.

That is how love or attitude or perspective has changed? Interesting! :)

One could and would listen to the old song a million times. The new one irritates you the third time you listen to it.

If you are a south Indian and don’t know this song, don’t ever come to my blog again. Well, last chance: listen to it and if you don’t like it, don’t come to my blog anymore.

Signing off, Sands.

Random randomness alias AVIYAL-ised mind.

2010-03-03T11:57:00.002+01:00

~~~~

From the info-screen at the tube-station: The world is full of plastic. Every square km of the ocean has thousands of pieces of plastic. (very small ones that the creatures devour and die – so sad).

I am wondering why no one foresaw it. Was it that hard?

Perhaps is was not easy to foresee. So, are there similar things happening around us, which are going to threaten life on planet as plastic/glo-warming is doing now? Are we oblivious to it?

~~~~

Does any one of you (or do all of you) watch out or be vigilant when you are at the train/bus stop and a train/bus approaches? Just being careful that no one plays a prank at you by pushing you and the prank goes wrong? [there was once an incident in Munich]

Do you think about the chances of a truck reversing when you are behind it? …. and keep vigil?

When you bike/drive, do you look below the body of a truck for legs to see if someone is going to jump in front of you?

Am I just being ~~very~~ too cautious? or paranoid? I am not afraid or anything.. but you know? Invest one cent in being cautious and you’ll save in millions (peace of mind). [Or am I just ~~too~~ ~~old~~ wise? ;) ]

~~~~

Lately, I am quite busy. But I am trying to give time and care to dear ones. Just not wanting to compromise. I couldn’t help my mom a lot with something she needed. But I think I did help her (enough). :)

Perhaps I’ve a slight restriction on social commitments. But in general, I MAKE time for the ones I care – whether to send good morning mail/card or to pamper them when they are down.

Am I performing well? Is that how one grows into a better person? Being a good family man? Would I manage to perform well if I had children (who would be invaluable and to whom I’d give so much of time)?

Hmmm… I think, a long way (still) to go.

~~~~

Why would a break-up be the end of everything between two persons? You fell in love because you found each other GREAT. Wasn’t it so? A break-up is merely a decision – to not share lives. But the niceness, greatness, friendship, etc. all should be the same. Right? One may take a while to get over the pain.

But afterwards? How could you act as if the other person never existed?

Break-ups are hard. I might have faltered when I went through it/them. But in general, I’ve tried to be good. But some people surprise me (by stupidity?) or (can they just not get a grip?)

~~~~

I think the charm of winter is gone along with the melted snow. It is just grey, cold and wet – not that it bothers me a lot. But I am sure, I am ready for the spring. Looking forward to it.

~~~~

As I said, quite busy my friends. I thought it better to write a few random things (in brief) than a single topic expanded (lazy, less effort).

Have a good day, week, month, time-in-general.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: The plastic story reminded me of Underground Fluffers (from Wiki) : Fluffers or Fluffies has been used as a name for workers on the London Underground who would clean hair, dirt and dust from the tunnels at night when no tube trains run.^[1] The work was often done by hand by female workers.^[2]

Valentines’ Day and the Girl@Disco

2010-02-21T12:42:00.003+01:00

I may have written earlier that I don’t give much importance to days like ‘new year’ or “valentines’ day”. But that has never stopped me from taking part in celebrations.. or even making it an occasion to make someone feel special.

I pay attention to small details and I haven’t (yet) failed to make the special (ones) feel special.

But there is one person whom I should (and I do) consider most special: “myself”. (Call me a narcissist now)

As I do always, I treated myself with a book. Of course, wrapped in RED. :)

I haven’t started with the book yet (except for the two paragraphs in the first page). I am ~~advised~~ ordered (;)) to take the book seriously, read it thoroughly, without missing the hints, enjoying the characters developing etc. Looking forward to reading it (soon-ish).

The next day Jo, Lu, ‘she’ and I went to a party/disco. I took a break from dancing and stood next to the bar.

A girl approached me smilingly (of course, she wanted something). She asked me whether she can have a gulp of beer from my bottle. I smiled and gave her the nearly-empty bottle. When she returned it after taking a mouthful, I gestured it was for her and she looked surprised.

I asked her whether she wanted a beer (the only thing I ever said). She said she didn’t have money (why should she say that?). I bought a her one. She thanked me, hugged me and then I walked to my friends.

Was I being too nice? or too naive? Who cares… as long as I felt good about what I did?

Signing off, Sands.

PS: On a different note – my hair is getting compliments. The people who even ‘hate’ men having long hair seem to like me. Wonderful.

……………………………………..

2010-02-12T19:11:00.001+01:00

For a change, I was in a not so great mood towards this evening. Some thing missing feeling.

Anyway, I came home and met my apartment mates and I don’t know how, I am back to good mood. Great.

They both (Johanna and Constantine) are asking me to share that thing which I am smoking… (they don’t believe it when I say I don’t :P )

There is something in the back of my mind - disturbing me … something lying deep down there. I know what it is.. but it needs to wait a bit before I get to the problem.

In any case, I’ll go cook some yummy food. And have a wonderful evening.

Signing off, Sands.

Another unstructured post

2010-02-09T16:17:00.001+01:00

After so many days, today my mind is slow. I very much needed this slowing down to be able to sit and work on some algos/proofs.

Don’t we sometimes have ideas which are slippery and too big? By the time we grasp and get a grip on one end of it, the other end slips away. When you are working with algorithms and abstract-data-types and face this issue, it’ll drive you nuts.

Übrigens, my dance lessons are going great. I have improved by leaps and bounds. I still cannot dance without counting – so much for the non-multi-processing, single-core processor brain.

The moment I stop counting and start ~~flirting~~ talking with my partner, I make mistakes. At least, that leads to laughter. :)

In a few months I hope to become a pretty good salsa performer. Then comes Tango.

Hey, I bought a bicycle – an MTB. I don’t have any photos yet, but believe me – he’s beautiful. Silver, strong and well-groomed. After not biking for the past 16 months or so, I am loving the idea of biking. This time, I shall be a bit more careful and will buy a helmet before I start biking.

Did my Indian readers notice that many of the recent songs are multilingual? Kollywood is doing an excellent job there – Tam/Gult/Malayalam mix – pretty neat, I’d say.

There are two songs here which I am more or less addicted to (in the recent time). My favourite lines below (no translation can do enough justice). Don’t bother the video, the lyrics/text is what matters.

Thuli Mazhai

sel sel avalidam sel - endrey kaalgal solluthada
sol sol avalidam sol - endrey nenjam kolluthadaa
azhagai manathai parithu vittaley

(Uncontrollably in love – the lines portray it well… don’t they? Hats off to the lyricist)

Oru Punnagai

eppadi en manam ippadi aanadho
appadi ennathaan unnidam ulladho

(I like the idea of saying: she’s a simple normal girl, and I love her for what she is.
Instead the old idea of she’s this, she’s that and blah blah blah)

Of course, I know that the post is not very structured. But as I said in the beginning, I was having some thought-structuring issues with some graph-heap-list-sorting-recursion-idea-slip (not to mention n, k, log_n, log_log_n etc.).

The main reason for the post itself was taking a break from those variables. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: I also seem to be in love with this Cat-Stevens’-Song from Harold and Maude. One could listen to a KUTTY-song even though not soooooooo great.

Island Express

2010-01-31T23:15:00.002+01:00

Had a very proud moment – when someone tapped my shoulder as I was out yesterday and told me that I am one of the best tutors/teachers he’s had in the uni.
Had a very funny moment – when someone said “It’s not you… it’s me” to me – I have heard that only in films (lover saying to lover). It was funny to have such a filmy situation in life. Of course, the situation was ‘romance’ related, but definitely not a break-up or heart-breaking event. :)
Had a “Wow, I’m getting old” moment - Having 20+ year old memories… I remember, not understanding the significance of the fall of USSR, Berlin Wall – as a 7 year old. Unbelievably enough – I remember the day IndiraG died. Many of the people I know weren’t even born then.
Had many cinematic situations in life – too many of them to describe.
Had an “Am I really nerdy” moment – when I was standing in the dance class and when the teacher said about walking in circle and choosing a partner, I thought about Josephus problem.
Had another “Am I nerdy” moment – when I was trying to picture an N-dimensional space related question, while watching a TV program, which was trying to make fun of it all.
Having “Why am I so happy” moments – especially while listening to songs. And almost all hours when I am awake.
Having “What is wrong with me” moments – when I find snow and winter so cool, but not cold; when I am with German friends who are shivering in the cold and I am just normal.
Had moments of laughter – when different people said that I look like Alan_Davies, Prithvi_Raj (in Island Express), Zakir_Hussain, a famour Opera Singer, or someone from Spain/Latin-america – all because of my curly/spiral hair.

Additional: Falling in love is a very complicated and lovely thing to happen, a very frustratingly sweet thing to happen.

My readers may get a bit curious… and I’ll let you stay curious. Or you may very well give wings and freedom to your imagination.

Signing off, Sands.

Winter; The other anthem.

2010-01-27T13:05:00.001+01:00

I am loving it. It seems that my body also has accepted the winter. So far, there had been only one day on which I thought “hey, it is cold today”.

And to make it even better, I never really caught even a cold. Neither did I have stiff neck – which used to happen a lot nor did I have slight headaches.

Lately, I am walking a lot at night – more than usual. Walking in the snow-covered sleeping city on a cold winter night is very enjoyable.

All you need is some decent warm clothing and a wonderful state of mind to enjoy the walk. My black mantel, red shawl(left), woodland shoes and on top of all my cowboy hat (above) – we make a good team. :)

Even though I prefer walking alone, it is sometimes good to have someone by your side. You can claim that the city is yours. If it is a lovely she with you, you could even claim the city for yourself and offer half of your kingdom to her. She’s bound to like it when treated like a princess. :P

Topic Change: Your tune and my tune join to make OUR tune. (Remade)

Perhaps there is only one song which has its lyrics in 14 languages. And that is possible only in India. With her diversity in languages and culture and stupid caste systems etc, India need(ed) some national integration effort.

The song which was made for the same is the very Mile Sur Mera Tumhara which every Indian of our age knows. Even now, it gives me goosebumps when it reaches its climax (despite my non-patriotism : Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam).

And now they have remade it:

The Other Anthem

~The Original One~

~~NEW: Part One~~

~~NEW: Part Two~~

Some of my observations/questions:

No woman from Kerala? (are mallu guys really chauvinists? Even the old one didn’t have any Kerala women)
The skiing bit – I liked it
Muscle flexing Salman – pathetic
Old one’s theme was pride and unity. In the new one, it is more about “We are strong”. (the next version will have the theme arrogance, for sure)
I was afraid that they left SRK out, until he appears at the end with Swadesh style.
Less cricketers than expected?
Too many instruments – doesn’t it make it less sing-able by us? - Toms, Dicks and Harrys (or Tamannas, Dagnis and Harinis?)
Too long? who has the patience to watch/listen to it for 16 minutes?
I think, they could have had a clip of SoniaG.
I don’t think the new one is great. Okay-dokey, that’s all.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: I am afraid, I am flirting a lot lately! Some write up about my dance classes sleeps in the drafts. To publish or not to publish?? :P

Simple Nothings

2010-01-25T08:58:00.001+01:00

Woke up earlier than usual – some bad dream I think (cannot recollect the details). My room was too warm and couldn’t sleep afterwards.

I am sitting here with my tea and listening to some Ilayaraja hits. I need some soft-melodies to slow me down – and what could be better than Ilayaraja’s music and SPB’s or KJY’s voice? (Not to mention the beautiful lyrics)

A hectic day ahead.
You all have a wonderful day. :)

Ilayaraja + KJY

And of course a great week too.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Here it is – one of my favourite songs: ---===>

What am I? (or Am I bad?)

2010-01-21T13:42:00.002+01:00

According to the age old saying, I am what I eat!

Then I should be a terrific, amazing fellow. Because I have a very healthy and tasty diet. I am a decent cook and most of my friends are great cooks.

According to what I (want to) believe, I am what I read!

In this case, I should be a modern, classic, and witty man. I do read from a wide range of choices. Books, blogs, news – I read all these with such a joy!

According to some Malayalam saying – my friends define me!

That should make me even more wonderful. Because there are times when I even wonder whether I deserve such great friends.

But… But……..
Some people are saying now – I am what I wear!

That suddenly makes me an old fashioned fellow who is unaware of what is going around. :(

(old fashioned indeed – who else has 14 handkerchiefs in a world where every one carries around little napkins?)

All I care about clothing are cleanliness and comfort. Conforming to the norms was never in my blood – my parents also don’t really believe in conforming to the standards. But I lack something which they have – the thought that “what would others think/say”.

So, armed with the non-conformance and not caring what others think, I am stuck with the most comfortable wear, which might be less fashionable. I’ve been to Opera/Ballet/etc. wearing jeans, t-shirt and sports shoes.

People may frown now! So what? Beauty or fashion is only skin deep. What I care or what I want people to care is a lot deeper than that. And I don’t buy much stock with the superficial ones.

I am not saying that one shouldn’t care. You have got only one chance to make the first impression. Your attire shows how much you attend to the fine details of daily life. So, it has its own significance.

Wear comfort wear and style is bonus. But don’t go for clothes which are too tight around <wherever> and pinches your <whatever>.

Anyway, two of my friends are bent up on making me an Armani! They are going to fix my wardrobe insufficiency. God help me! (and the Goddess of lottery could help me too – it’s expensive).

Lately, I find myself complying with my demanding friends. So, within a month, they are going to take me for shopping!

Anyway, I came up with something which I shall not dare call a poem. Still, here it is. :P

Am I what I eat, or what I drink?
Am I what I read, or what I think?
What I eat, drink, read or think
None of these is anything junk

Am I what I wear, or is it my style?
Or is it more about my lifestyle?

Some seem to care about what I wear
And now I know why some do stare
If you thought that I was not aware
You're wrong, the reason is I don't care

Imagine a world a different world
Where clothing is to fight heat or cold
Oh my friend, you need not be told
That it would be a lot better world

So, with that little torture, I put my pens down. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: How often do you speak about Oscar Wilde? Very infrequent, right? Should you see it a coincidence, if you buy an Oscar Wilde book and the next day a friend tells you about him/his stories? May be not a coincidence at all, for such things seem to happen a lot.

Google and Tiananmen Square

2010-01-15T01:23:00.002+01:00

I asked my Chinese apartment mate's opinion on the present Google vs. china issue. The conversation became interesting and we soon moved to Chinese communist government, people's freedom and related things.

Guess what? – that girl hadn’t even heard about Tiananmen square protest! Didn’t even know that something like that ever happened. So much for the freedom of press in China. Not that we thought it was a paradise on earth.

The Johanna joined us and fuelled the talk about communism (Poland and communism go well together, right?)

Almost 3-4 hours of nice discussion(s) about so many things – all in German. Until the new fellow from Greece joined us (he can’t speak German yet) and we started speaking about German (in English).

I am in love with the situation at my shared-apartment. Five multinational, multicultural, multilingual, multi-faculty (department@uni) people living in harmony. All are more or less equally clean/dirty and not so strict about roles/rules - life is easy that way.

Anyway, I was planning to make a picture post. And here it is. All the photos are from my nocturnal walk from Friday night. I was in good company – my own – I enjoy being in my own company, to let my thoughts wander, and nobody to bug me! :P

Lovely piece of cake from Coffee Fellows!

My golden pen and moleskine book – always in my pocket – for recording random thoughts! :P

Snow on chairs… Midnight @ Munich centre.

Decoration @ Coffee Fellows.

And the next picture is from this evening: I came home and saw this notice.

Do you see that? German, English and Chinese! CHINESE! The Chinese population is quite big here and they have it on the notice. Pretty good! (Request: Please do read the English text )

Good night and signing off, Sands.

Load heavy loads

2010-01-11T20:08:00.001+01:00

I would so like to gloat/brag about the wonderful weekend I had. I also can go on about how energetic I am and about my excellent mood. Instead, I shall tell you what I plan to do with this teaming energy.

I am going to load myself with so many things…

Thesis work – needless to say how hectic it (c/w)ould be
Teaching (exams are getting close)
A French course (starting soon, longing for it since long)
Continuing my dance course (starting today, now since I am healthy)
Reading/Films (also some random trip to somewhere?)
Quite a number of spieleabends / meet-ups in the pipeline

(spieleabend means evening-gatherings and having games/fun/etc)

It’s going to be fun for the coming two months. But don’t worry, I’ll have time for all of you.

My sleep is going to suffer a bit.. but that’s ok. My sleep control is not that bad.

I’ll get back to you soon…. going to the dance school. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: You all have a wonderful time. :)

Grrrrrrr

2010-01-08T12:37:00.001+01:00

I am angry.

I went to the doctor to remove the stitches/thread. The doctor’s assistant did the job so pathetically that there are still a few pieces of that plastic thread inside my body – which can be neither seen nor removed easily.

That stupid lady started doing it wrong and I told her this is not the way to go. She ignored me and continued. There were 6 different places where I had stitches. In the first five, she did only one – JUST ONE – the way it had to be done. All the rest, there is some half-one centimetre plastic thing in my body (forever?).

When it came to the last one – which is TWO INCHES (5cm) long thread, I realised she’s going beyond the limits of stupidity. I forcefully stopped her and asked for someone who knows the stuff.

This stupid arrogant lady was sure that she needed to cut the end of the thread… doesn’t she know that a cut is stitched not only at the ends, but also where the cut is? The thread is all inside… you don’t see that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

The doctor came and pulled the two inch thread easily. And guess what, the assistant didn’t even show a bit of “oops, I am sorry” feeling. She still hung on to the “I know it all” attitude.

Only because the doctor is a nice one, I didn’t shout (after all, what good is shouting?). Doctor looked into the wrongly-treated-cuts and said “I cannot do anything right now. But when(if) it starts to hurt, please come back”.

The turning to the assistant she said – “I’ll have to show you now how it is done.”

A small thread won’t kill me, I know. But I am wondering – how many patients would have had such ordeal with such stupid assistants?

I happen to be a quite healthy person. Except for accidents, I never went to a doctor in past 3+ years. But I know enough of the German health care system (personally and through friends). And German healthcare system simply sucks – for the simplest reason that many of them don’t know what they are doing!

I can’t imagine the plight of not so healthy people in this country, who have to depend on this system often.

Today’s incident was just another silly incident in the list of stupidities I’ve seen – and triggered this rant. I shall not let this spoil my day. I think of making a big issue of this whole thing. People in healthcare shall not be assholes. They should know what they are doing.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Probably the post wasn’t very coherent after all. I don’t bother to sit and edit to make it more coherent.

Where should you have born?

2010-01-04T13:34:00.001+01:00

How do I always get very nice apartment mates? Audrey, Osman, Ludmila, Redgirl, Hooman, and finally the Chinese girl – all of them are very nice. Especially when I consider the fact that I am not the cleanest person, I am indeed very lucky.

All the Xmas vacation, the Chinese girl was my company. Not that we spent a lot of time together, but did speak a lot. A very friendly, talented young girl – plays violin, flute and piano, sings well, paints very well, cooks terrific, very organised and sweet. (And learns programming/java from me)

If you want to be hard working, learn it from the Chinese. I could have born there, then I would have been at least working if not hard-working. :P

Sometimes I feel that I should have born here in Europe. It is just the opportunities and facilities available here. Even a small fraction of it is not in India. Lucky that I was born into a decent well-to-do family.

Anecdote: A friend of mine, fell in love with two guys. She said - “G is German and K is Indian. They seem mostly equal financially/morally/functionally/etc./etc. K had to fight all those lack of opportunities and social stigma to be as good as G is, where as life was lot easier for the German. Hence I should choose the fighter”. And she did.

My dear (third world) readers, you and I have made it against all those odds. Could have been great(er). But still we deserve “Hats off!”. And most of us are full of energy too. I am not talking about just career.. but life as a whole. Even though we may not have had many hardships, we’ve seen enough.

The post became longer than I wanted.

I am not a make-resolutions-for-new-year person. But yesterday, for no reason, I folded all my clothes clean and kept them arranged. Won’t be a bad habit to follow. Will be a hard habit to make? Let’s see! :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: “Grow-your-hair-long-league” gets new members, valuable ones. :)

PPS: Nice.. girl, her eyes and so is the SONG. Song of the week.

“Me Time” and Christmas Presents

2009-12-28T21:01:00.001+01:00

After about 5 weeks of quite busy schedule, I am grounded at home – that too all the dear souls are away: Berlin/Cologne/Poland/Egypt/India.

After getting back from the hospital, except for the Christmas day, I had total “me time”. (Thursday was the best – for I was not alone, but I could be totally myself ).

I had/have time to reflect, to philosophise, and also to have some entertainment.

You know what? We all are afraid of uncertainty. The thought “what will happen?” simply eats up our mind. We end up doing stupid things to escape from this uncertainty. We want control over time and things – even the bad things happen to us should happen at the time we choose to.

Funnily enough, as we fear uncertainty, we are afraid of certainty too. We are so scared to commit, for we want to keep all the doors open. Even while believing in ‘Nine doors open when one closes’, I think that sometimes it is stupid to let the one-door close and look for the other nine.

Many a time you realise, much later, the value of what you let go… but the damage would have been done by then. Choosing a profession/job, committing to a partner, etc. fall into this category. If you know Malayalam, you may read it here in my Malayalam blog (some of my stupidities :P ).

Anyway as I said, I am enjoying my time. I finished 3+ seasons of the well celebrated quiz programme “QI”. Amazing stuff.

Speaking of time, did you see that watch in the beginning of the post?

That is a gift I received for Christmas. Isn’t it lovely? Even when I have doubted about the lack of practicality of pocket-watches, I’ve always wanted such things. Hmm.. I am all for ‘finer things’ in life. :)

As usual, I bought gifts for myself. Global warming advocates may bark at me, but I do get the books gift-wrapped when I buy.

Being attracted by Stephen Fry, a book from him and the first one of the Twilight saga – to know what it is.

So my dear friends, I wish you all a happy new year.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Health recovered 90%.. I can walk without any external help.

PPS: A smile for you for reading till here. :)

PPPS: There is a packet waiting for me in the post office. I think it is a gift too.

Painfully uncomfortable and uncomfortably painful.

2009-12-22T16:10:00.001+01:00

The title captures my state of affairs at the moment. But that’s ok…. I already walked with that pain… you know? I walked.. W A L K E D…. without the steel reinforcement :) :)

I don’t like it when people do something to me without letting me know. I am not at all scared by any of these medical procedures. I am even curious to know how all these things work – hence I want to know what is being done.

After giving me the room yesterday, I was asked to strip.. until naked. The nurse went out, I stripped and lay myself inside the blanket. After a short wait, I was taken to the the surgery department where I was moved to a tall-stretcher. I could remember the last time I was there. It was cold and they gave me green warm blankets… yesterday too.

Afterwards, I was transferred to the room where I was asked about 10 questions last time. Yesterday there were only very few questions…

Do you know what is that I hate the most? Pasting that ECG thing without shaving the chest-hair. Grrrr… when they peel it off, the pain is unbearable if the hair wasn’t removed. And my chest is hairy enough.

She pasted the ECG thing, connected me to the computers, gave me a mask and said it was oxygen (Sauerstoff in German) and I started breathing it. At the same time something was entering my body through a needle....

…..BLANK…..

Had I known that I was being slowly put to sleep, I could have keenly observed for the feelings… Missed a chance..

Anyway.. after a few hours I woke up and asked for steel rod first. I have carried it more time than a mom carries her child. :P … So I should ask for it just like a mom would for her baby… right?

(It is long… more than a foot for sure. (near the tip, I can see my flesh and blood still there…))

Once I was brought to the ward, I made calls to three or four people (mom incl.). The surprising thing is that I don’t even remember what I told them.

I should think that those calls were involuntary than deliberate. As if I was programmed to call the ones I care about (or the other way around). I just don’t remember what I spoke… amazing isn’t it?

I had lunch… which I could not recollect by any means except that it was tasty – another magic of sedative.. :)

Slept – woke up – slept – woke up…. by 5-6 in the evening my memory and brain really rebooted. By then the painkiller also had worn off. Oh boy, it was some pain. But that’s fine…

Without pain, I’d move a lot and the healing would be slow. But for the record: the pain is uncomfortable and the discomfort of not being able to move is painful.

A few words about the nurses (male/female): I am just wondering how can they be so sweet. Especially the physiotherapy nurses – the male nurse is so friendly and extreme funny… the female one is extremely sweet instead of funny.

So, that’s where I stay now. Looking forward to the visits this evening, to the planned xmas celebration, etc.

I already finished a book from the list from the previous post. :)

Signing off, Sands.

Funny/Queer Feeling.. :)

2009-12-20T23:01:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow morning at about 7:30+ I am to walk into the operation theatre … (hmm… probably I will walk only up to the anaesthesia room, there on they’ll take me on the rolling cot)

I haven’t asked anyone to accompany me. Do I need to wake him/her up that early in the morning? My friends would come to the hospital, before I am awake again.

It is a routine surgery (one to take the steel rod out of my leg). I would have chosen for a local anaesthesia though. Yet another full body anaesthesia – that’s what I am going to have. I guess, things would be just fine this time, unlike the last year’s mess up and ICU stay.

I have to do some packing now (for the stay in hospital), then clean up my room a bit. When I come back, a couple of guys are going to be visiting me regularly. My room is a ‘living’ proof for second law of thermodynamics (“Chaos will increase automatically”) and I don’t want them to witness it.

I am not tensed or worried about the surgery. But I have some kind of weird feeling about choosing to go alone for a surgery. Crazy.. ah? (The word funny in the title is the equivalent of Komisch in German which means more like “queer” than funny)

All the same, I am looking forward to the bed-rest time. I have to finish a few books and also start-and-finish some before the vacation will be over.

Lord of the Rings (only part 3)
Anna Karenina (last one third)
H2G2 – re-reading
A midnight murder story (Malayalam)
Yayathi (Malayalam)
Das Parfum (150 pages more to go) (German)
Richtig Leben mit Ge.Wei (German)

That would do for two weeks. I shall write more here, after the surgery and all.

I am all excited about being healthy again. Afterwards, I can do anything and everything I want to do. Lovely prospect.. isn’t it? :) :)

Signing off, Sands.

Mixed up (Avial)?

2009-12-14T11:31:00.002+01:00

I shall start with some small complains – my room is totally messy, I have to do laundry and get things in order… and so much of other work to do too. I had been pretty busy lately and I still don’t feel I have done something solid. Grrr…. (you know the feeling?)

One thing I am glad about is that I read about 6 books in the past 3 weeks or so. Surprisingly, all of them were good.

I had been invited/joined by friends for the past few days as Christmas is at our doorsteps and everyone wants to celebrate. I didn’t have enough time to put a post itself – so you know I was really busy. My other blogs are going through a period of draught (fault is indeed mine). Perhaps I need to put a cap on my socializing.

Leaving aside the little complains – on the whole, life is beautiful. Even the snow is here – can life be not beautiful then?

For some reason, the books all were pretty romantic. “A heart to hire”, “French Lover”, and “The owner of my heart” : the ones which have love/romance even in the name itself. (the heart ones were malayalam)

After one of the ‘heart’ books, I wished – if only someone dear to my heart knew Malayalam well enough, so that I could read it out for her.

Then, I read “Dildo” (malayalam) and “Disgrace”. Don’t bother about the name “Dildo”, for it is not what you think it is. It is a well crafted pulp-fiction of six deaths in a completely new style of narration, which I could even call ‘post-modern’.

It would take a lot of my and your energy and time if I am to write reviews.

Hmm… I know, this post is a bit of mess.. just as my room is. Some post is better than none… no? Just to make sure that you all won’t have to miss me. :P

Signing off, Sands.

Song of the moment: Uyire ennuyiril vanthai… Uyirukku uyire thanthai…
Meaning: Love (you) came to my life; gave life to my life, made it lively…
(Had been listening to it for the past 10 days or so… as if I’m addicted)

Zweiohrkücken (Two Eared Chick)

2009-12-08T21:14:00.001+01:00

It is the title of a new German film. I like romantic comedies by default. I had been seeing the trailer of this film since ever and had wanted to watch it. (I like the heroine too).

It was a spontaneous impulsive decision to go for it tonight – asked Daniela and Johannes, both were more than willing to go. :)

I won’t bore you with the details of it even though it was a very decent film. I must have missed some of the jokes, but I still had enough to laugh.

Oh boy, after the film I had even better time. Last train had left. We walked through the sleeping city…. it was slightly drizzling… After Johannes left us, we kind of planned to walk all the 5-10 kms. But with the busy schedule for morning, we chose to hail a taxi.

After Daniela got down at her place, I had a small chat with the taxi driver (on my way home). A very nice German fellow. Who said there is racism? Of course there is discrimination based on language, but racism - I fail to see.

BTW, Whenever I go with my friends – film/restaurant/anything, I simply pay from my pocket without worrying about splitting the money. I take the option of splitting the expense if and only if it is really a big amount.

Earlier, some of my German friends had a problem with not splitting. Either I pay, or you pay – we don’t split (at least I don’t) : that’s what I say. Now they also seem to be accepting it. Come on, it is only a few Euros and I know that money is only as valuable as it is – not a knut (penny) more.

If I can happily spend my valuable time with you and speak out my thoughts to you, I can easily buy you that ticket/lunch etc. too. Asking about splitting would hurt me.

A lot to write about how happy I am off late. Just plain happy, energetic and excited… I myself keep wondering “Am I smoking something to be ‘high’ all the time?” :)

Well, dear people, I’ll go finish reading “French Lover” and then rewind the film in my head and S L E E P.

~~~

Have you experienced things which you could call neither dreams nor thoughts?I have, I have them almost every morning lately.

Being a _very_ sound sleeper, real dreams are unusual to me as I don’t remember any. But, recently (during the past 3 months) I dream about the same person every morning… In the early hours of morning, she exists in the dream-thought-mixture… Earlier it was painful, now she is a sweet-habit of mine. :)

After watching Zweiohrküken, I wait for tomorrow’s early morning hours.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: In the supermarket, my mouth watered at the sight of chillies. I bought a bottle of them just to eat/chew like that. (unfortunately, they aren’t as spicy as I wanted them to be) :(

Silver Lining…

2009-12-02T08:44:00.001+01:00

The sky was cloudy and the city was gloomy for the past two days. I was as usual happy and energetic though. When others said “it’s cold”, I said “pleasant”. Still, I wanted the sun.

When I woke up today, the sky was clear. The sun was not yet out. Of course, I volunteered to welcome him. :)

Sitting at the kitchen window (which faces east) and reading (while sipping my tea) has made my day already. As to what I was reading, you’ll know soon.

I sat there, I saw the contrasting dark sides of the buildings in the east and the bright sides of buildings in the west – illuminated by twilight.

Through the street rushed people to the railway station… starting their day. Moms brought their kids to the kindergarten on the other side of the street. I’ve always liked to sit there (3rd floor) and observe those little people walking through the street.

My flatmate, came out from the shower with long curly wet hair and made her tea. A bit plump, she is quite well shaped, in fact, more than well shaped. She standing there and making her breakfast was another treat for my eyes. (I can go on explaining )

You can imagine how much I would have read.

By then, the tops of the west-buildings were starting to shine. Sunlight started falling through the gaps between east-buildings.

A few minutes gone and I saw the tip of the sun …. above a building; it quickly grew into a big fireball in the sky.

It casted a sharp shadow of me, which looked like a monster behind me, on the wall.

I got up from the chair, closed the book, put my cup in the sink, got back to my room. Now starts my busy day. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Looks like, today is going to be a sunny day. Of course, why would he hide behind the clouds when I have guided him to rise. :)

Eventful / Festival Days… @ Kerala

2009-11-25T07:48:00.001+01:00

After ~24 hours of sleeplessness (14-hour travel included), I landed in Kochi on Saturday morning. Within two hours after reaching home, I found myself driving to IJK. That was how I started with my little trips…. and there are still dozens of places to go to.

I should first tell you about IJK. Did I ever tell you that we are an acronym family? We have acronyms for the places (other stuff too) we often speak about: KDK, IJK, TCR, PKD, EKM etc are nearby cities which we have abbreviated. Oh yes, IJK is IrinJalaKkuda. An outsider might find conversations at home cryptic.

There are some more ‘special characteristics’ at my home – for eg. we practically never ring the bell when we get back home, we identify ourselves with a specially tuned whistling. Or sometimes with a quote from a 2000 year old Indian legend/epic/story…. (story of Kalidasan).

And we hold LONG discussions too – about anything and everything – for hours and hours. The picture here shows where we four (mom, dad, sis, me) sit together. The chair on the right front corner is mine… I prefer to sit on the marble steps though (where I am sitting now) :)

So, back to the IJK trip. Don’t you guys know that Kerala is supposed to have this cultural harmony? On the way, there was a festival in a church – I had to go past the procession and I took some pictures. And obviously, I was asked to donate some money. (again obviously, I managed to slip out)

It is typical to decorate the stems of plantain (Banana plant) with colour papers and flags – as you see here. They have it in front of every single house…. – for a couple of kilometres.

And of course, there was sugarcane – something which I hadn’t seen like this in long times. All these together made me a bit nostalgic.

Then on Monday, there was a festival at a (nearby, Hindu) temple. The main thing about this festival is that, people take tall decorated towers on their heads and rotate. I have some pictures of the towers here … Not many though..

As usual, I went there with my dad. I had some meeta-paan which gave me more memories than sweetness. Look at the meeta-pan guy with this collection of betel leaves. :)

There were many road-side shops selling snacks/toys/bangles/balloons/what-not.

Empty, tender coconut shells, something left out after a long hot day. :)

Ok guys, I am extreme damn busy these days. I should have expected it during a short visit after a year’s absence. I am thoroughly enjoying it, even though my plan to sit at home and read/relax wouldn’t happen anytime soon.

So, I sit here and look out to the green universe around my home (picture shows what I see) before I start my day’s business.

You all have a wonderful time too.. :)

I’ll go to the river and have a bath now…. Life can be a bliss – you know?

Signing off, Sands.

PS: The post is for my German friends who might never have seen these kind of things in life.

PPS: Song of the moment : “I swear to you, I’ll always be there for you” (Bryan Adams … I’ve not listened to it in long time)

In the middle World….

2009-11-20T23:12:00.001+01:00

Disclaimer: In a hurry. Unpolished post.

So… what is this middle world? – Dubai. Almost every time I go through Dubai, I have a special post. Every time I fly, my mind goes to a special state which I cannot even start to explain. Perhaps it is the transition or the mind from one setup to another.

And Dubai is the middle world.

I am being pulled by both the different worlds – India and Germany. Two contrasting worlds…

Two days ago, I had a small argument with my mom about my long (not very long actually) hair. She hasn’t even seen how it looks… but she was sure that I don’t have to go home without having a haircut.

After the argument, I needed a few minutes to cool down and I went down to the main hall in the department building. I met an old student (winter 2008) of mine. The second or third sentence she told me was “I love the way your hair looks”.

You see the contrast? This is so silly a thing and that was the difference in the responses. There is another topic where the contrast is even worse – marriage.

My mom Vs Ewelina (on finding partner) – that comparison shows me how different these worlds think. Obviously, both are concerned about ME. My mom of course more concerned.

Before I board the flight, three highlights of the past week:

A whole film theatre and only two persons in there – I, and the girl with whom I went (Not a date). As someone said – all the most romantic situations occur when you are not in mood for a relationship, or when you are not with that person whom you want. :( .. I wished for another person!
The dinner @ an Ethiopian restaurant with D. The very best kind of food and wonderful conversation. They had to finally kick us out to close the restaurant. :)
Every single time I go somewhere, I meet people I know. Today too: Mani was with me in the same flight – someone who is more than an acquaintance. My acquaintance circle IS big… :)

I once again failed to give words to the mixed feelings in my mind. As some closing quote, I’ll paste a long SMS I received last night.

Lieber Sandeep, es war ein sehr schöner Abend mit dir und ich freue mich auf den nächsten. Ich denke an deine Reise und an deine Mutter und ich glaube ich möchte sie gern kennenlernen... Mir geht so viel durch den Kopf über die Menschen, ihre Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten. Und alles passiert auf demselben kleinen Planeten!! Wie deine hochverehrte Mutter, wünsch' ich mir, dass du zurückkommst! Du lebst im Moment in zwei Welten :) Alles Liebe, D

Dear Sandeep, [niceties]. I think about your trip and I would like to meet your mom. The thoughts about differences and commonness between people are going through my mind. All these happen in this small planet. As your mom wishes to have you back, I wish too for your coming back. At the moment, you’re living in two worlds…. With Love, D.

That sums it up my dear fellows.. I am living in two worlds. I am trying to make the best out of both the worlds, both the cultures. But as they say: no pains, no gains.

The next post – from India.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: No proof reading. Kindly forgive my mistakes.

PPS: The translation is not the best.

A day @ A Government Office

2009-11-17T20:09:00.001+01:00

German bureaucracy is much more complex than almost anything I’ve ever seen. Even an Indian, who has seen red-tapes, will go crazy. Today I spend my entire day @ a government office.

My lowest point: when I reached the counter after “standing” in the queue for one HOUR, I was told that they were closing the counter, and was instructed to come in the afternoon. I asked - “would I have any advantage for having stood here this long?”. She smiled and said NO.

Anyway, in the afternoon, I bypassed the queue and went straight to her. Fortunately, she remembered me and gave me the waiting number.

Oh yes, I was waiting in the queue to get a token which tells me how long more should I wait. Amazing… isn’t it?

After that, I could SIT and wait – just another 2.5 hours… oh yes, I could have watched a whole bollywood film (if only they had played it in the office).

I’ll spare you the details of the real complicated stuff. The details of waiting is enough for now.

My high point: Finally, after the main business, I had to wait in front of another office (10 minutes until they put seal on my documents). There one could sit/stand/walk etc.. because they call your name. There I was walking in the hall and saw some beads on the floor.

I and three little kids (~5 years old) played with the beads.. hitting the beads against the wall, trying to catch the bouncing bead and etcetera and etcetera. After 7 hours at an office (and running around from one door to another), that was nice thing - for a change. :)

But I have to tell you, it is just the system which is flawed. The people with whom one has to deal are very good, very friendly and helpful. A bit less cheerful though… (that’s a German thing ;) ).

Anyway, now it is cooking time. I’ll go cook something (tasty) and gobble. :D

Sometime, I should write a post about the troubles a VERY hungry vegetarian has to face in my university.

A post about PLANT-torture in the university is in the pipeline too. When/Where do I have the time to write all these? And where do you have the time to read all the junk I write? But that’s not a reason to stop coming here… keep reading and give me comments.. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: And all these happened to me not because I was not prompt at doing my things. This is what all those 100+ people went through in that office today. The Visa office is never the best, but it was never SO bad as today. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Hrmpf….. Grrrrrr…! :)

PPS: Isn’t life sweet…?

Two States and Three Mistakes: Books

2009-11-10T02:01:00.001+01:00

Big questions are confusing me lately. Questions about life/goals/career/etc. I wouldn’t go in depths about them here (at least here in this post).

The final thing I needed, to be officially-confused was Chetan Bhagat’s last book : Two states (the story of my marriage). And, no, the confusion was not about marriage. (clue: I want to eat “chaat”)

Two States (The story of my marriage) [Author: Chetan Bhagat]

I laughed out loud, in my room, and also in the train..
My eyes were a bit moist (only one single moment)
I was made to stop and think…

It was just a novel! I found myself folding the corners of many pages, which is not my thing. Some flaps had to be folded at both sides because the other side too had some gem in it.

Is it the very small bit of Tamil-Brahmin in me? Or the ex-IITian? Or just someone who knows the crazy-love? Or someone whose parents have similarities with the parents in the story? Or someone who knew the pain of such a break-up? Or is it because of a heart which misses Chennai?

Which of the above connected me with the story? I cannot say… a mixture of all these, probably. A story of meeting someone in the canteen/library, be friends and then fall in love etc. etc? – that sounded very familiar.. hmm… from my life?

A North Indian boy and South Indian girl falls in love, and the troubles they face and solve – before their marriage becomes a reality – the theme is so simple.

But, the book very well exposes the racist view inside Indian society. We laugh at it because we know it IS true. It shows the divide between South/North India. It shows the perspective of a North Indian, about south India. I would give 90% marks for his observations and the remaining 10% is deducted because of over-stereotyping.

The first three fifth of the book was pure fun and fast.

Eg. Making fun of Tamil… :) [excerpt below]

…..First, the sign in every shop was in Tamil. The Tamil font resembles those optical illusion puzzles that give you a headache if you stare at them long enough….

The next one fifth gets a little serious.

Son, …..…… I have learnt you are involved with a girl in Chennai…... We should choose the girl for you, not you…

….

Forgiving doesn’t make the person who hurt you feel better, it makes you feel better. (The author stole these words from me, perhaps) ;)

It felt like he stole more than a little thought from me. After the break-up, when the hero went from Delhi to Chennai, just to meet her and when she refused to talk to him, I almost thought of suing the author for stealing from my life!

It was the Dad-Son part which moved me.

“My son needed help”… my father said……
“How did you know?”, I said.
His eyes met mine, he said, “Because I am your father……. …… ”

My dad has done something of the sort for me - when I was going through my lows, I don’t even know how he knew what I needed – that too when 5000 miles separated us.

I would recommend this book to any Indian. Quick and fun read. For another review – see what Smita says.

The Three Mistakes of My Life

If you are still reading… good :) [Bravo :) ]

After reading the above one, I realised that I had missed his third book. Guess what? it was available in German-amazon. I got it yesterday and finished it in two straight sittings. :)

But definitely not as good as the other one. For one thing, this was so predictable. Since it was not as great, I’d skip writing the review. :)

I am now back to Thursday Next’s third book. The main problem is that I fail to concentrate while reading it. I want to read this one, but the thoughts associated with this book… .. … …..

Anyway, that could be my next book.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: I ordered a book from amazon, all I paid was 1.35, where as the postal duty would have been 1.45. Can that be possible? How amazon does that?

Dark keys to craziness

2009-11-09T09:53:00.001+01:00

After the “Geek Week”, some of you might know what kind of keyboards I really like. After I got my new keyboard, I was just waiting to have a relaxed/lazy weekend for the following… :)

Key-plucking was half way through when it occurred to me that I could document it.

Here are my tools:

Now the towering keys… :)

And the keyless keyboard..

Finally, the final product… :)

Even otherwise not many people have found it very comfortable to use such huge and ergonomic keyboard. Now this one would drive some to craziness if they have to use my keyboard. :P

(I had to do this ASAP because it was German layout, slightly different from the international one and as someone said in facebook, “naargh... different keyboard layouts are quite annoying..” and I was starting to get really annoyed)

Have a nice week all of you.. :)

Signing off, Sands.

Codename: MusicGirl… alias MG.

2009-11-07T00:20:00.003+01:00

Having moved back to the city, my slightly-suffered social life is blossoming again. I had the first visit from friends and the first movie night. (Watch the film August Rush, you will like it.)

Since morning, I had been really wanting to have a decent bear hug. But didn’t know whom to ask. I put it in my status message.. someone gave me e-hugs, wished me luck.

(I felt, I was acting like a kid… but who cares?)
(would’ve been awkward to be hugged by a man)

I had known all day that Ewelina and Daniela would visit me in the evening and would take care of me. I just asked for a long hug and got more than I wanted. :) :)

It is funny, you know? 4 of my friends here were quite close with me even earlier. But there was some connection missing at times, because I had an inhibition to open myself up.

Then something happened at the end of August and they stood by my side when I needed. The missing thing was established and all turned A M A Z I N G.

A different topic: If you are doing computer science (theoretical) or maths, you should be a girl…. otherwise, life can be really dry.

During a party at my chair, I observed the umpteenth time – we are all <16> males (plus the secretary). Oh boy, life can be so dry without ‘birds’ in your office.

Last week, during the course organisation meeting too, there were only two girls in the 20 member team.

The strength of women in CS/Math departments is less than 5%.

As a gender-equality-advocate and as a single-unattached-man, I find it important that more women come to the field.

In this post I am more of the latter though.
I, at least compensate with many female friends outside the university! ;)

That brings us to the title : the latest potential female friend is code-named “MusicGirl”. Someone who’s quitting doctoral studies in physics and going to learn music. She’s slowly giving me introduction to western classical music.

A girl who could very well do stand-up comedy. Amazing verbal skills, very rich vocabulary and sharp/snappy dialogue delivery too.

And a beyond-acceptably-rude user interface. But a real sweet heart.

It does take balls to quit doctoral studies (Extraterrestrial Physics at Max Planck institute) and go to be a singer. Hats off to that courage.

Finally: Either I am a too nice chap (which I doubt ;) ) or people are treating me much better than I really deserve.

OR I have some rosy glasses!

Whichever be the case, most people are just very nice to me.

The only plus I see in me is that I am VISIBLY happy – ALWAYS!. (anyway, no complaints against most people treating me well ;) )

Signing off, Sands.

PS: If you are indeed a girl in the aforementioned departments, you’ll be frustrated beyond belief, because … <i’ll let you guess>. :P

Relocation, The baby I killed; and Anecdotes

2009-11-01T17:52:00.001+01:00

Relocating is an act which I have become an expert of, in the past few years. In the last 20 months, I have relocated 4 times. More than a dozen times in the past 5-6 years.

I have become such an expert that, I woke up at 10 in the morning and before 9 in the evening, everything was packed and moved to the new place, the old place was cleaned and the room was white-washed as in the contract. :)

Missed my white-washing companion! :(

By the way, this relocation is going to cost me all the fun I have on my way to Uni. Now on, I’ll see only the dark/grey inside of underground tunnels instead of the things you see in the pics here! :(

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don’t be shocked when I say I killed my baby. You’ll know more if you have ever heard THIS Tamil song (go to 2 min 9 seconds). (if you don’t know Tamil, read on).

Two days ago, I woke up and decided to do it: shave my moustache - my constant companion for the past 5+ years - something which I had always pampered as if it were my baby. (Spontaneous decisions are fun, aren’t they?)

Every math problem, every algorithm about which I thought about had taken a toll on those bristles (I pull them while thinking).

I couldn’t recognize myself afterwards. Most people say I look better. Two of them even said that I look much younger now! (22 years old – apparently, that’s when I started growing it)

No photos for a couple of months! :P

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I played a small Mr. Holmes yesterday. I moved in, went to the kitchen and one of the apartment mates was there. I offered my hand and said “Hi, I am Sandeep”.

She hurried, took a towel, wiped her wet hands, shook my hand and said “Hi, I am J”.

I said, I am from India and after a small pause - “And you are from Bonn, Right?”

She opened her mouth. Then closed.. then opened again.

I said - “you are wondering, how I know that. I shall tell you later”. Then I went to my room. :P (Curiosity kills ;) )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He sat against me in the restaurant. For the first time, he opened his heart:

Sandeep, I am confused. I had told her that I will always be available for her. She is still unmarried, single – what shall I do? Shall I go to her and talk?

Obviously, I didn’t know what to say. But it was strange to see a friend in the same boat. I was fearing that I will never get out of <you-know-what> :( . Stupid me?

Love is amazing right? It sometimes gives you this pain… still you love to love. Still you think/dream about that person obsessively. How long would it last? Who knows?

Ok guys, you get me in a weak moment. I’ll go get a cup of tea and enjoy a nice evening, and prepare myself for the hectic weak ahead.

All the same, I am having a lovely time of my life. I just am teeming with energy and excited ALL the time. Just lovely! :)

Signing off,
Yours truly,
Sands.

PS: The pictures are copyrighted to me. Of course.

Tongue Tying Charm : feeling stupid

2009-10-26T20:46:00.001+01:00

Have you ever had a strange feeling/experience of stumbling-bumbling while speaking with some people? Something like your tongue is tied? or your brain is turned off? Making mistakes with something you know very well?

When I was in Microsoft, I experienced it. Whenever I spoke with Neo (only with him), I made mistakes, even with simple/silly things. I don't know why, but it just happened.

Then I experienced the same a few months ago. Can you believe that I got 'mutually exclusive' and 'independent' events in probability theory mixed up? I also made stupid remarks concerning regular expressions. (picture)

In fact, regular expressions, probability theory etc. are MY topics and I KNOW them well. Still…

Being with this person sometimes froze the technical part of my brain.

And finally, now something strange is happening - which tops all these. I met a person about a month ago, and I make so many mistakes (English) when I talk to this X. Silly, sillier, silliest kind of mistakes. Yet again, it riddles me.

Yesterday, I had to travel with X; and during the 20+20 minutes, I was being corrected. Not so surprisingly, X enjoys my company very well. :( [Who doesn't like to pull someone's leg :) … What went around came around ]

Some common friends remarked: finally there is someone who could make Sandeep silent. What a pity! :(

Do these people know some tongue tying charm? Or brain confusing charm? Well, if that be the case, I need to learn some defence against dark arts.

After meeting X, I have become an ardent fan of Mark Twain, because Mr. Twain had said - "It is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are stupid than to open your mouth and remove all the doubt".

Why don't you share your experiences? Or are you a fan of Mr. Twain? :)

Signing off,
Sands.

PS: I know that Attractive Women Make Men Temporarily Stupid. But that theory is applicable in only one of the aforementioned cases.

PPS:

Insider Joke for Tamil people: I got a Bulb while correcting X.

Been there, Done that..

2009-10-20T14:45:00.001+02:00

I am too young to say something like the title seriously. A long way to go…. But… I would invite your attention to last October.

My research had, for some wonderful reason, got stuck. It appeared as a dead end. To add insult to injury, my funding was over too.

I seriously considered dropping out. Then… BANG…accident! Broken leg, damaged lungs, ICU, hospital, a month at home, partial mobility.

Cold winter, no income, bad health, bad-state-of-research. My house owner wanted me to move out (his relative came to stay).

Savings got over, debts GREW. Then hit the global financial crisis.

None of these was good to happen to anybody – but all those hit me more or less simultaneously.

As said in Malayalam, bad things came together. I didn’t complain, I said “Schaumamal” (let’s see) and started to face them. I wasn’t very cool about it though.

Health recovered 100%; crutches became unnecessary to walk; research opened new doors; funding was re-instated (better than earlier); debts were cleared; started saving; winter was over and the skies cleared.

Situation improved. Research started showing the symptoms of reaching a shore. I passed the German exam; drivers’ licence; became a part-time translator for German-Malayalam; some friendships got solidified, it all started blossoming again.

In between, I was struck by one of the worst blows (personal). Even though I faced everything above cool, this one rather shook me strong. A novel painful feeling. Even that phase is passing or rather over now.

Why all this now? The good and bad things during the past one year helped me to have a better outlook. I empathise more. This Friday marks the first anniversary of that accident, which I consider as a starting point.

Now you know, how am I able to take most things light and to see the positive side of everything. Been there, done that helps :) That doesn’t mean I don’t attach seriousness to things.

Should I call for an accident anniversary celebration?
[Deathday Party? :) nearly headless nick]

Bad things aren’t necessarily bad, they teach you a LOT.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Perhaps this post sounded too much of bragging. If it did, so be it. :)
PPS: Post dedicated to KBCL123.

Snowing and the going Autumn

2009-10-15T15:12:00.003+02:00

It is snowing outside – very slightly though. The weather changed almost overnight. Even though it is cold everywhere, I am teeming with energy. (rest of the post is perhaps unrelated).

“Whatever you do, don’t cut your hair, it looks lovely” – so said Ellen. My long pampered dream of long hair is becoming true. People are starting to notice that I have non-groomed curls. :)

“It looks very nice” – so said D. But….. most of my Indian friends are dead against this. Why oh why!? (Because I look like a rowdy? or a crazy man? ;) )

And my recent favourite thing is a black-hat. I love to wear that and my long black mantel together. Again – I am hearing very contradicting notes of appreciation. Someone said - “You have a cool hat”. A lady said - “It looks horrible”.

Surprisingly, I usually don’t see these external things about people. It would take a long time before I would notice that someone is wearing glasses. Or stuff like that. It surprises me that people see what I do.

Tell me, should I buy a long black umbrella? or a red one? My heart is with red, but a black one might suit my outfit better! (Since when am I concerned about outfit?)

BTW, yesterday, I reached/finished a very important work-related milestone. :) :) :)

From the edge of the cornfield on my way to Uni.

Oh my dear ones, summer is gone and even fall seems to be losing her beauty. The pictures in the post are the ones I made today on my way to Uni. (Today was practically a judgement day for me, So I wanted to come to uni. very relaxed. Ah yes, good you asked. The judgement was good – better than what I had thought :) )

Some flowers on my way: Just for you! :)

Remember? I once told about the poles in front of the computer science building with powers of two? Today I finally took a picture of one of those. I hope you can see it clearly enough.

After many hectic days and judgement I am going to take a free evening. A trip to the city, a walk in slight snowing, a cup of hot chocolate, my favourite places in the city. And so on. In case I didn’t mention earlier, I am relocating in two weeks – yes AGAIN! :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Lips are cracking! :(

Link Story (alias Puranam)

2009-10-08T14:20:00.004+02:00

Life revolves around links. One can even coin a phrase - "You are what you click".

We communicate with links. The sound "Remind me to send you that link" is heard very often. They take up lot of our time; some of them enlighten us, some of them distract us.

I am someone who cannot multitask. For the same reason, catching up with links takes up a chunk of my time. When I say hours, don't be surprised.

Today was a typical day and as usual I came across a set of links. Here I have a snapshot of the collection (a few of the nice ones). I am sure that you will find some funny; some informative and some waste of time.

The day started with a dictionary service - I wanted to find out the meaning of "Klitschnass". Then I caught up with some informative/thought-provoking blogs [eg. Gurukulam, Chinthyam (both Malayalam)]

By then my daily link delivery system beeped (email): a friend had sent me links. Perhaps she thought I am not happy enough in life - hence HowToBeHappy - 10 tips to be happy.

There was also a link to Nearly Headless Mike - a chicken story.

Obviously, I didn't disappoint her. I sent her the link about a mental disorder which I think I have - Dunning-Kruger-Effect. Well, I atleast know people who have it. I also sent her XKCD619 to retaliate for a flash-link.

Afterwards I went to count hits on my blog (which is good lately - strategies). But it was later I found out that HITS = How Idiots Track Success. :(

During a quick chat, I send RG a link to a handy plug-in for Vim - Pydiction.

Finally, I went to mark my attendance at StackOverFlow - programmers' site.

I don't bore you with the details of where I found out that my university is the 55th best in the planet (THES), nor with the regular links in my daily-breakfast-bookmark-folder or technical ones.

Now tell me, don't you understand why I say I don't have enough time? :p It does take time for a healthy and tasty diet.

Have a good day, fellows. I have to tame a Python which has been eating my head for the past few days.

Tail Piece: Recently, I had had encounters with two self-proclaimed multitaskers. The truth about multitasking is that it s*cks. Read MORE.

An excerpt: "We believe we can surf the web while talking to our kids/spouse/lover/co-worker. But we can't! (Not without a hit on every level--time, quality, and the ability to think deeply)" - thinking about the situation I faced that day, I smile now (reading the excerpt). :)

And people say that I am overconfident? ;)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: You aren't angry at me for too frequent posts, right? It happens usually either when my days are very productive or very nonproductive. Luckily, it is the former now.

Bonus: You are awarded a free pass to Bibliomania for reading till here.

Can I borrow them for a lifetime?

2009-10-07T01:16:00.010+02:00

Yesterday I was in one of the very famous, old restaurants in Munich. I have been there earlier too. Pope Benedict 16 used to go there when he was a student.

It was a fun evening. :)

I was the only non-german in D's birthday party. Against me was a geek (Boreland C compiler team member) and by his side was a lady who wasn't very good at Mathematics.

Eg.: Average life expectancy in Germany is about 80. Since some people die at 20, there must be people living till 140 (average of 140 and 20 is 80). This was her doubt/argument.

The geek and I tried to explain – without success. All she agreed with was that I can do fast arithmetic. We laughed our ass off through the discussion.

She also gave a ‘great’ explanation - why less AIDS in Europe than in Africa?. The geek dared to call her dumb; I clarified her doubt and she was finally happy with it. I don't dare to get to the details for the fear of using adult literature terms.

This discussion wasn't lacking any fun either. With the right group, double meaning can be fun. :p

Mind you, the conversation was in German. Amazing right? That day has come when I sit with 8 Germans and have decent conversation in German. Integration has gotten a lot faster............

...............Last week, while helping a friend with relocation, I was shown a set of never-used-headphones.

“Can I borrow the headset for a lifetime?”. (Shameless me?*)

I have them now. Noise cancelling model (MDR NC40) from Sony. Amazing man, amazing. Someday, I will buy one.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: For some reason, I had to pull the last post.

*: Not that shameless, the story will be told later.

MT.V, Films and Blues

2009-09-29T00:53:00.002+02:00

Disclaimer: Follows the trend baby!

Blues: Oktoberfest is a feeling, it is a celebration of mind. Someone from Kerala would understand the importance of such festivals. Such crowds are so inevitable part of the culture and I love it.

The first noticeable item from this year’s visits is that I was checked by the security. Of course, an Indian/Pakistani looking guy with non-groomed hair and a week’s beard has to be checked.

Oktoberfest has proven to me how good a sharp shooter I am. In the shooting stalls, I manage to hit 10+ of the targets in 12 tries. Of course a cowboy has to do it well, Right?

Had I been a caveman, I’d have managed to get enough food for my family alias “harem” ;).

Of course, there are small prizes* for sharp shooters. All the pictures show the fruits of my shooting skills. Some fruits are with friends who accompanied me.

A funny incident happened this year while waiting in the crowd at the entrance of the tent. I and D were waiting and a guy from Sweden was there too. He started chatting (flirting) with D.

Initially, I was not paying much attention to them since a lovely girl had taken me for a wall to lean back on. She being pretty pretty and since her neck smelt lovely, I didn’t want to push her away. Why spoil something we both enjoyed? ;)

So, this guy was chatting up D and I eavesdropped. The conversation had gone to 19th century European history and Nordic religions to a level that D just wanted to escape from there. As I chose to enjoy the girl’s leaning on me and D’s frustration, we waited for a couple of minutes before going off to a table.

Perhaps that was the moment he was looking for – he kissed D goodbye. Started with cheek-on-cheek, then slowly worked his way very close to lip-to-lip. D ran for her life and I laughed heartily. Saddism? ;)

The Swedish guy was well educated – that was D’s only relief!

You know? D is my eldest friend and youngest one is C. D’s age is more than twice of C’s. Nice!

If I start to write, then there are so much to write about Oktoberfest. Owing to the fear of taking too much space and time, I get to the next topic: films.

Indian film industry (Hindi) seems to be making amazing films. It is a shame to Malayalam film industry that they have forgotten to make any good films. Is there any film nowadays which could be kept next to “Black”, “A Wednesday”, “Kaanchivaram” or “Satya”? Damn good films boy! Damn good!

The final section of the entry could be intensive. ;) MTV : M T Vasudevan Nair.

The intensity of tender feelings and the tenderness of intense feelings – who captures it in very few words better than MT. Vasudevannair? Off late, I am (re)-reading his books and oh boy…, it is pain, nostalgia, warmth, pleasure, sadness, melancholy and everything put together in a few words.

He describes situations which make us unable to know what to feel or we lose our ability to know what we are feeling. It is worth learning Malayalam just to read some of the literature.

If I happen to have two daughters, the second one might very well get the name Vinodhini. Or perhaps this could be the second name of the first one.

Signing off, Sands.

*: One would need a fortune to get the largest bear as Randy Pausch says in the last lecture. It is more money based, rather than skill.

BMW F 800 R

2009-09-25T11:11:00.001+02:00

Disclaimer: Long post, baby!

Engine: 800 CC, 87 PS, 65 kW.

No no, I don’t own this. I just happen to do my bike riding lessons on this one.

I have had a fair share of bike riding back in India. Of course, I was not much of a dare devil (I still live to write this), but I have done enough crazy things. Still, all the bikes I’ve tried are the Normal 100CC, Victor, Splendour and CBZ.

This one cuts them all. Amazing power! Almost double the power of the car I used to drive back home, double the power of RedGirl’s car here. It is just waiting for the slightest movement of the accelerator, to FLY - F.L.Y! SEXY is the only word to use.

I was a little concerned about doing a motorbike license lesson with a steel-rod-reinforced leg. From one point of view, my fears were right. From another point of view, they were pointless. I shall give you a glimpse of how it works here – as opposed to how it works back home.

First, my teacher was just testing how well I do by default. Apparently, I seem to have impressed him. Before taking me to the *EXERCISES*, all he wanted was getting used to the new clutch. (Proud me)

Exercise 1: Ride the bike between traffic cones kept in a line, 3-4 metres apart. Through the left side of one, then the right side of the next… and so on. The bike should go like a wave.. zig-zag motion. @30kmph. In fact, it was mostly a cake walk.

Exercise 2: Now the cones are 1.5 – 2 metres apart. @walking-speed. Crazy man, crazy! The monster wouldn’t let me control. But well, managed within 3-4 tries.

Exercise 3: The first exercise, @50kmph. Wow! The bike should swing between each of the cones, and it should be made possible with the movement/oscillation of my torso. Lovely, isn’t it? But trust me, it wasn’t as bad as I thought… :)

Exercise 4: It is as in the picture. I come from the left bottom corner and then ride as the green curve… without touching the cones. Now, that is to be done at 50kmph. The width of the strip is about 1m and the left side cone is about 1m away from the strip.

The drill is to make sure that if some a**hole opens the car door when I am on the roads, I should be able to twist and turn and save my life. It wasn’t that easy in the first two times. Then it fell into place. :)

Exercise 5: The same as the above exercise, but now the cones all come CLOSER. And I should come with 50kmph and put a sudden break before manoeuvring the bike. Cool, isn’t it?

Exercise 6: I loved this simplest one. Come with 50kmph, apply a SUDDEN brake. My instructor told me that, the bike has all the security systems installed, so don’t worry. Apply BOTH the brakes.

(I don’t know whether he forgot that he told me a few minutes earlier that if I brake too much with the front brake, I’ll see my body some 10 metres away from the bike. I’ve known that all along though :))

Anyway, I did it and two times the back of the bike came up in the air. Cool.. I’d always wanted to do that.. never did on a motorbike. With normal bicycle, yes, I’ve done all this circus.

On a whole, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But the classes tell me how risky it could be on the roads and are preparing me for that. I wish we had such system in India – a rigorous training session.

Looking forward to what more to come in the next classes. Now, don’t think that my instructor has nothing to do. He is keeping on scolding for even the slightest little mistake I make – even the speed at which I apply the clutch. (I am surprised that he observes all of it). I might have to unlearn some of the stuff I taught myself about a decade ago.

Ok guys, it was a long post. I don’t know whether you read till here. Life’s good. Things are getting a rhythm. Reading quite a bit, watching films, documentaries. And above all, EATING great food. I lost about 4-5 kg during the first 6 of the last 8 weeks (stress, you see?). Now I have a regiment of great Indian food (self cooked) to bring my weight back to 70.

And my work? Good you asked. It is going nice. It is going pretty great, NEAT. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Reading in 2.5, Programming in 3, speaking in 4 and films in 5 – different languages. Who said I am not a linguist? ;) :P

PPS: You need to tell that this was a good post. :)

Two, Three, Similes and Words

2009-09-21T12:14:00.009+02:00

Two's a company, three's a crowd.. so goes the idiom.

Saturday, I had best of both worlds. Started with watching a Tamil film in Munich with many friends around; then with two friends to the Oktoberfest - wonderful time.

It is hard to find people who don't bore you within an hour. Not many have new things to talk about for hours. Not many people are good at beating me when it comes to blabbering. ;)

After the fest, I and this friend (no-boring, talks more than I do) went to THE vegetarian restaurant, after 3 hours of non-stop walking, covering atleast a dozen kilometers and atleast a dozen different topics. Some people are just very nice. Hmm... well, we call them kindred spirits?

On a different note: Malayalam literature, and mallu conversations are filled with similes and metaphors - funny/serious/thought-provoking/pathetic/good/bad/weird, all types of them. Here are two for you, and I let you choose the adjectives for them ;)

Advising someone in love is like filling a punctured tyre. (or blowing a balloon with a hole)
Like the warmth stays on the chair after the person has gone, her memories stayed in his mind for ages after she left. (kitschy?/serious?)

Finally, something about a wordplay. Last week, I was trying to assign two adjectives to every person (girl) I know. And I came up with the following.

Bright and Strong; Cute and Sweet; Smart and Witty; Sweet and Caring; Intelligent and Understanding; Independent and Able; Gorgeous and Homely; Complex and Weird; Stupid and Arrogant.

After believing that I did a good job, I asked someone for two adjectives about me. The first one she said was "difficult". :p

I thought, I better stop asking than hear "arrogant", "pushy", etc. as the second one. :P

Signing off, Sands.

Arm Chair Journalism? (Indian news)

2009-09-18T11:11:00.001+02:00

If one looks at the Twitter page of Mr. Tharoor, it would be very clear how difficult is news-reporting in this age – IBN Report. Simple copy-paste of tweets and using some words to cement them together?

Is this what you call arm-chair-journalism? or Cafe-square-journalism – sitting in an internet cafe, sipping a coffee and reporting? (on second thought, I feel a cigarette would be better instead of coffee in a journalist’s picture)

Oh, no! I am not against any of these. Just wondering whether the cost is clear enough for a lazy fellow like me to start news-reporting. (I had seen all the tweets last night… well before the report. My bad, I didn’t send an article to IBN).

Signing off, Sands.

PS: “ST tweets sorry” would have been better than “ST says sorry”. :)

Books, 250, Abbey Road (studios).

2009-09-14T10:16:00.001+02:00

To start with, a few words about : (a) The Reluctant Fundamentalist, (b) Juliet, Naked.

I wouldn’t go into the details of authors or other trivia. I don’t even consider myself as a great reviewer. To do justice to the first book, I’d say that I very much liked the style of narration. I really appreciated the ideological transition of a man, which is well captured.

At least it changed my prejudices against the books about Muslim world (of course it matched some of my prejudices about the content. But it was by no means boring). Would I recommend it? YES!

The other book, by Nick Hornby, was good. But it didn’t meet my expectations (who the hell am I to set expectations?). It was less witty than High Fidelity (the author’s first book), but with some repeating elements from it. Of course there were moments when I simply laughed out loud and moments when I fell silent (thinking).

If I don’t consider the less witty part, it was fine. Would I recommend? Maybe.

Now, do you know that this is the 250-th post in this blog? Long ago, when I started, I wouldn’t have imagined anything like this (am I a man without a vision? ;) Someone even said that I am short-sighted :p).

There are still a couple of people regularly reading – even when I have stopped visiting many blogs. Lovely! :) Thanks guys.

Topic Change: A few weeks/months ago I wrote about my new addiction (Beatles). I recently watched a documentary about them – BBC is doing a lot of stuff about Beatles (off late) – just superb! And I am more into Beatles now. :p

I had wanted to write a lot about Beatles and some of my favourites (Yesterday, Love me do, Yellow Submarine, Something in the way she, You say yes, and so on and on). But ran out of time and sizelimit of a post.

Well, talking about High Fidelity and music tracks is something of a coincidence. You’d understand it if you have read the book. May be it is a call to make lists like : my “Top 5 posts”, “Top 5 music tracks”, and so on. ;)

I can even start a top-five-tag in blogger. Can I not?

Signing off,
Sands.

Juliet, Naked : Nick Hornby

2009-09-11T11:04:00.001+02:00

Today, I intend to break my word and also to trick you. But before that, I shall offer you something for a bit of celebration. You may have either some chocolate cake : the German way, Or some Payasam/Kheer: the Indian way or BOTH: be international! :) [Once there was an inside joke about chocolate cake(s)]

Breaking my word: because this post is no book-review as promised. Something else came up.

I passed the German drivers’ license test. The examiner even said that the second half of the 45 minute test was really good. I think, I have all the reasons to gloat, because I managed this with just 8 driving lessons. It is heard to be a not so easy thing to get. And DAMN expensive too. I am practically on top of the world.

You know what? It is a very painful thing to be (almost) on top of the world and missing her (more because of the happy moment). The mended heart feels crushed, and it hurts deep inside even when I should be euphoric. Had the story been different, I’d simply have rented a car and driven to her the very next moment I get the license in hand.

Well, I’ll get over it, sometime. :)

I wanted to write about some paradigm shifts in thought; my arguments against philosophy in general; and also my new take on stupidity. Later..!

Apparently, today I wouldn’t be in a mood to work (too excited). Will catch up with some sleep; Learn some songs to be performed tomorrow on stage (for the Kerala community Onam celebration).

And will read “Juliet, Naked” – the latest novel by Nick Hornby. Bought it yesterday mostly ‘just like that’. I finished about 60 pages last night itself.

Well, that was the tricking part. Who wouldn’t want to read a post with “Naked” in the title! ;)

Signing off, Sands.

Another quickie (kutti quickie)

2009-09-07T19:20:00.001+02:00

Small pleasures in life are very enjoyable. Some happen in train – like

Little kids smiling at me (especially when I play hide and seek with them)
Or a granny who acknowledges my gesture when I make more room for her to her comfort and finally she smiles and waves while getting out of the train…
Or even the sweet girl from the other side of the aisle who smiles when she catches me ogling! :p
It is also great how I still manage to confuse drivers at Zebra crossings. All wait and look at each other before I realise, I shall go first! :D

Life is beautiful, amazing, wonderful. Gained years’ experience, but feels much younger during the past few weeks! :)

Signing off, Sands.

Notices: Next post is mostly a book(s) review post; Finally I am writing again in my almost-abandoned-German-blog.

PS: I am being too frequent lately. Depression made me more creative. maybe? :)

Tongue of Slip; and first vegetarian fight! :)

2009-09-06T00:32:00.001+02:00

I am in a good mood. The past week had been good in terms of things happened around me. Even inside me, the broken heart is mostly nursed back to a decent state, if not the bestestest shape.

To start with: I passed the German proficiency test – with good grades. I cannot say with flying colours. But for the less than 20 hours of effort I’d put in, it is damn good. My friend who prepared for two months was jealous because I scored better! ;)

I had some catching up with friends to do, and I did exactly that. Celebrated Onam with some of them; Went/Partied with some other; Made a trip with some other to Austria.

To the real thing: On Thursday, I had my first argument/explanation about vegetarianism. I hadn’t wanted to argue, but I did it just fine.

Yesterday, D asked me to explain my philosophy to her. She’s considering to become a vegetarian. She wants to know whether I have any compelling reason to offer. I might get my first ‘victim’ soon! ;)

Slip of tongue? Well, I’d call it a mistake. (The real slip of tongue is too much to write here :P )

It so happened that, yesterday, I was in a pub with 4 ladies.

For me, the waitress there looked as though she was from Philippines. I even mentioned this to one of the birds with me.

The conversation was going just fine. But when the waitress came, I asked her where she came from.

“Singapore” - I was happy that my guess was not too bad/far-from-reality.

But one of the birds around me screamed - “He’s sitting with 4 mädels and he asks where the waitress is from”. A smart fellow would have kept the question for later! ;) :P

I was NOT hitting on her. I was just wanting to know whether my ‘origin-locating-skills’ were in tact. (well, the waitress was a REAL hot one though ;) )

Signing off, Sands.

PS: mädels means girls (local language).

Five, Five, Five and Five.

2009-09-02T16:35:00.001+02:00

It’s now five years since I came to Germany. When I turn back and look, there are so many great things happened in life. I should rather take a backwards journey – days/weeks/months and years..

The past 5 days! Unbelievable! I went through a hard break up. A sweet, amazing, wonderful she and I were together. And it culminated in a hard break up. :(

Of course it hurts. But if I am to borrow words from someone, “I am getting on with my life”. :)

I cherish all those wonderful great moments, I think and smile(?) at the shattered dreams. At least, I know that I tried - to get it working fine. That’s what I wrote it all backfired (in my last post). Or may be my attempts weren’t good enough. As Gita says - “Just do your duty. The right thing will follow”.

The past 5 weeks were perhaps worse. Living with a volcano inside you is kind of uncomfortable! ;) But now since the eruption is over, things can settle… all I need is a little bit of time to cool off. (Remember: non-existent spoon)

But the past 5 months were great. Amazing… travelled a lot in Germany. Did nice great things. Day-dreamed a lot, and lived some of them too. :)

That brings me to the 5 years. If I am to sum up all I’ve gained, then it is : Friends and Experiences.

Quite some great friends – all from here - Indian, German and Polish friends. Funnily though, my apartment-mate, from Iran is getting close enough with me. We are at different poles with some touchy subjects, but despite of the differences, we communicate/converse a lot openly.

He is one of those special fellows who can easily kick my ass and give me a gem of experienced-advice. Someone like the good old Guru/Sanjay@IIT. I like such people, they teach you a lot in two words. :)

Gained loads of experiences. To start with – had relationships, travelled to many places, met great people, teaching/conferences/mentoring/etc; Grew up into a better person - I should say. I would surely say ‘better’ – because I have been learning things. :) [and I know what an a**hole I was long time ago ;)].

I know, still a long way to go. But happy to have started and been through it for five years successfully.

Last but not the least – made money! (But I don’t have any savings yet! High time to start).

Signing off, Sands.

PS: This post is dedicated to all those wonderful people who make life lively. :)

# for number; and an Angel.

2009-08-31T11:00:00.001+02:00

How many times have you done something with your best BESTESTEST of intentions and it went totally off the mark because you failed to account for the strength of Murphy? Well, not many times for me, but now yes.

The problem is that when it happens, it backfires/bounces back with such a force that it shatters you top-to-bottom, completely as if you will never be able to recover from it. It causes physical pain to your heart! :(

Well, it doesn’t come without some positive sides. For starters, you at least know that you TRIED and I think that matters. Another thing is, you get another instance of “Been there, done that”.

So, the above happened to me and I am just simply shattered/devastated. As they say, the play has to go on.

……………………………..EOD.

I had to be at the railway station (still am) in the morning. I am an extreme optimistic person who trusts every single soul, who believes in the good of people. Not many people have disappointed me. People are by default good.

But there are some people who have made me feel that I underestimated them.

So was the lady at the counter. She was simply an angel. Perhaps because I am in a bad shape, I perceived her to be extra good? I don’t think so. She was indeed a very sweet nice amazing person. There are many such people.

Fun: Kamalhasan is teaching someone “Hindi Kavitha” - “Jawani… diwani… … blah blah blah Satyam Shivam Sundaram” in my iPod. (What better thing can I look for in this tight corner of life ;) ).

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Have you noticed that it is not so easy to type with cold fingers?

(First) Names with “L” and “Y”

2009-08-29T00:48:00.001+02:00

Tell me, how many names do have the alphabet “L” in? Quite some I would say. But if one has about 7 friends here in Germany, (all girls, with whom he could openly speak more or less anything) and if 6 of them have “L” in their names, I would consider that a bit of coincidence.

And he recently met a long lost friend, refreshed the friendship – and surprise, she has two Ls in her name! :)

Now, the alphabet “Y” should be even rare. But 3 of the 7 girls have it in their names. Am I analysing too much? May be a sleep could do me good. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: The “he” in the story is yours truly himself.

PPS: Only two male friends; none have any “ell”. ;)

I : Not funny! :(

2009-08-21T23:20:00.001+02:00

Why am I not able to write any humorous posts in English? I think, my Malayalam posts are funny enough, with a pinch of good humour. I am not a funny person as such, but I am not very boring either. I might blabber/repeat, but not very boring.

Perhaps I should try to write funny posts here. I might want to start with translating “I and my sixpack” (I still read and enjoy the humorist in me) or “Physics, dog and me” or “Gult-girls and gold-game” from my other blog. Let me think seriously… (err.. funnily).

If I don’t try, who knows what a great loss it would be for English literature! ;)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Beware!! Fun coming soon … in the pipeline.

Python and Parenting

2009-08-18T01:49:00.001+02:00

I spoke with her some time ago… after a long time… She told me about her plan to leave her child with her/his parents and go back to UK. A 5 month old child.. poor thing to be away from own parents, I’d say.

Two days ago I had a conversation with Anair – about things varying from nano-technology to gossiping. One topic we talked about was parenting. People are not unaware of the importance of it, but they just don’t seem to put things into practice.

Well, no one is perfect; no one can plan everything; parenting is no thing to experiment. But two normal decent intelligent parents would/should be able to help each other, in bringing up the child(ren) well. Help each other when the other one takes wrong measures etc.

Of course, I don’t want to be a parenting freak; I would not be. But I think it is very important to think about it. Remember? - “Failing to plan X is planning to fail X”.

I have a friend who had to stay away from his parents all through his childhood and unfortunately but predictably, it didn’t turn out really well.

At the same time I have a friend who had a stay-home dad and he has turned out to be mostly fine. :) [Cannot lie any further mate ;) ]

I had mentioned here a long time (18 months) ago about my stay-home-dad interests. Of course, if I participate in bringing a life to this world, wouldn’t I want to be participating in helping it grow just fine?

Bed time stories (i have a huge collection of them in my mind); not being able to answer those “why” questions (look at this BBC article); teaching small little things (my old post) : would childhood (courtesy: RG) and parenthood be complete without these?

I find this as a matter of responsibility even though it might be laughed at as “wuss”-ness.

So where does python fit in here? It is funny though. A couple of weeks ago, I bought at Python programming book for kids. I didn’t read all of it. I did take some material from it and taught my students – 6th semester computer science students learning from kids’ programming book? :)

It was not just for kids, any newbie could learn from it, although recommended for 8-14 year olds. I had wanted to write a review for it, then was too lazy.

In a world where people even think about including python in parenting (a bit too much right?), it is sad to see that parents would leave children away. Of course, I know that they are not doing it very happily.

Their circumstances are not the best. Still I feel sad…. feel sad for the small little girl. And that little girl happens to be my niece.

Signing off, Sands.

PS: I have confusions about the timing of the post. Never mind.

PPS: I should perhaps take a small break from blogging? 10 days?

Next Thursday Next

2009-08-14T18:02:00.001+02:00

Today’s post might look/sound a bit artificial… because of some not so great mood of mine, but my blogging is regular. Isn’t it? Long-story-short-version is that I was an asshole for some few days and it peaked and backfired. Now I learned (am learning) a lesson and will be less of an asshole in future.

As a child, I had been lucky enough to have heard a few stories told by my dad (rare event). If he were a writer, he would have turned out to be a fantasy/fiction fellow. Because, in his stories, there would be cats hailing taxies driven by rabbits and stuff like that. He being inherently a funny person, his on-the-fly-made stories used to be funny too.

The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde should be in the same genre. Pretty amazing stuff. I read two books of the series and really liked them. The rest are in the pipeline. But now in a small break (sigh).

The protagonist is a lady – which in itself is nice. The narration is in first person – again, I mostly like that (remember “To Kill a Mocking Bird”?). And the story is unbelievable, yet amazing. Imaginable, yet incredibly rare kind of imagination.

The heroine goes into the world inside books and interacts with the characters in there. The characters come out to the real world and interact with people here. There is time travel, singularities and all such fantastic stuff.

And the topping – it IS funny. But it assumes the reader to be aware of lot of stuff. I cannot recollect the details now, but I remember reading a small conversation from the book and then laughing out loud. Then I realised that no one would even understand the joke if he/she hasn’t read some other book.

So you see? you need to have some general-literary-knowledge to thoroughly enjoy it. (Not that it is non-enjoyable otherwise). And I don’t claim that I have loads of it. I might have missed out some nice stuff owing to my ignorance. :(

I would recommend it to the ones who’d like to read some good books.

BTW, After writing here about reading/improving German, I didn’t really put efforts in that direction. Now, I am heading to the city to buy one book – “Das Parfum” – suggested by a couple of expatriates in Munich.

Signing off, Sands.

Additional:

A small thing which I forgot about the books is that, the author wrote his first book at the age of 40. So… I still can hope. :) (I remember about an author who had his first novel at the age of 54. Coincidence – even that was told by my dad!)

Geek Partner

2009-08-06T12:38:00.003+02:00

This is just an impulsive post. But definitely about some idea which I’ve been pampering for quite some time. And about being too frequent here: this happens to be MY blog and I decide things around here.

Let me claim that I would be counted as a geek. Or at least I am on the geeky side of the spectrum. A geek of CS/Math… and among those, I think I even have a good enough range of general reading as well.

I have received emails/links which say why a geek would be a good partner for you . That was just fun stuff… OTOH, they were not completely senseless.

I have always put thoughts into being a great partner myself. I kind of realise now that, yes, geeks definitely would make very good partners (of course they aren’t perfect).

Well, why would geeks make better partners? The simplest reason is that we think about finest details – closely. And we work to get those finest details fine – religiously.

The major drawbacks are:

We happen to mess it up (royally) when it comes to expressing/reading feelings, emotions and stuff like that. We are not used to doing so.
We offer advice – tons of it. And guess what? We HATE being advised.

I don’t deny that these problems are of gravity. But hey, that’s mainly all about it and how it is. The rest is fine I guess – we usually tend to be understanding, caring. (perhaps too much of caring *evilgrin*)

Geeks ARE well informed about stuff. And anytime we mess up (human you know?), we try to improve on it. We are the ones who love to be efficient and better, the ones who are ready to put efforts to get things working (well).

A partnership is no different. A lot of hard work has to go there if things are to work fine.

You could say that it is like writing a device driver (or an OS itself) – you don’t get it working fine first. There are general principles – but you need to fine tune it if you are to achieve good results. There is going to be enough bugs in your plate, you work on it and debug them. Yes, we do it.

Being the guys who learn Vi and Emacs (sometimes, just for the heck of it), No one would ever doubt our love to have things simple and smooth and efficient; No one would ever doubt our patience and tenacity. If you ever do, look at the learning curves of these things.

Trust me on this: the thoughts and efforts being put to each and every thing, every single person should hunt for a geek – as his/her SO.

It is funny the way and the time I reached this topic. Today, I witnessed (just now and it triggered the post) a big geek discussion about (geek) partnerships.

And the timing: Especially, presently, being in love, I have been putting thoughts to “how not to be a messy lover”. I did get loads of food for thought.

Life IS good.. (GREAT)… isn’t it?

Signing off, Sands.

UPDATE: After someone’s query, opening up the post for comments. I don’t know what I’d have to hear/read … after writing stuff like Vi/Emacs is simple! :) (Not to mention the other stuff)

Expensive, Hard and Fun.

2009-08-05T16:48:00.001+02:00

Three hundred Indian Rupees – that’s what I spent for getting the Indian version of drivers’ licence. (Well, I had it cheap, some others would have spent more)

I have spent about 700 Euros till date – for the same, but the German version of it. I should account for another 700 Euros – at least.

If you do that math, you can see that it is already more than 100 times expensive. Wow!

Now, is it worth that much of money? I guess yes. Back home, we don’t have any rules per se. Many a time, it IS the will-power of the drivers which decides – who gets the road first. Keep away from accidents, do whatever you want to do – this is all what we do. If others want to be safe, let them keep away from me. (Can you not see it in the first picture?)

The rule of ‘drive on the left of the road’ has changed to ‘drive on what is left on the road’. (courtesy: someone) [Look at the picture on the left: Is there any space ‘left’ on the road?]

I would call it “aggressive driving”. I was glad to be one of those who always managed to be the first one to get the road. I had never gone against the rules which existed there. I have almost always obeyed the signals, one-way-traffic, etc. I was just FAST and RASH.

[one might want to read : Rude Drivers Reduce Traffic Jams ]

In Germany: One has to follow the rules – very strictly. And there are gazillions of them (sample on the right side). Each and every single one of them are quite logical and very sensible. The problems I face are mainly:

My teacher is a typical Bavarian person with strong accent. (hard to understand him)
I have driven a LOT in India and the whole system is in the wrong side. (loads to unlearn)
I have chosen to do everything in German - (despite of the possibility to do it in English)
I am in a city where traffic is definitely more than the average – even for German standards

It is a big Paradigm Shift – as far as I see. A total change in philosophy of driving. I have to unlearn a lot of stuff. And German words do bamboozle me at times. (The final picture shows the result of following the traffic rules)

Altogether – loads of FUN. :) Challenge is fun. Isn’t it?

One should go and live abroad (at least for sometime) – far from his own culture and get into the foreign culture. Then he would discover himself better. He might have frictions with the people, there would be things he would find stupid in them, and they in him. But at the end of day, it will pay off.

People from his culture may not like him for the change. But he himself would be content about himself, would be able to accept different things, would be open to things; would definitely mess things up – but, much less than others. :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: Don’t you think, given the amount of chaos on Indian roads, we have very few accidents?

PPS: I forgot the links from I copied the pictures! Not able to link to them. Oops!

Multifaced Me and Contradictions.

2009-07-30T00:16:00.002+02:00

“Sandeep, du bist wahnsinnig” – she says that to me - often. It means “Sandeep, you are crazy”. She also says “du bist lustig”, which means “You are funny”. This is a friend from Poland.

Another friend says that I am very clever, intelligent and smart. :)

Someone else says that I am a little nerdy, still a cool guy. :D

There is someone else who thinks I am a very helpful person who would be there when any kind of help is needed. Wow! :P

A person who spreads positive ideas/emotions, a positive person – yet another comment – hence the name of this blog.

Someone opined that I am a person with a heart made of stone – an emotionless person. Hence the name of my Malayalam blog.

And the latest comment I heard is – I am the second most emotional person she has ever met. Of course, this comment made me smile and think simultaneously.

The strange thing is that the last two opinions - ‘stone hearted’ and ‘emotional’ person – contradict* each other. And apparently, these comments come from two people who know me well.

So, what am I actually? A real fake? ;)
Multifaced isn’t it? :) (Everyone has many faces)

One cannot show emotions to everyone, especially in a world in which being emotional is seen as a weakness ;) … Can I tell others that I cry while watching films? (well, I just did say that. Didn’t I?)

It’s been running in my mind for the past few days that, when someone crosses a threshold, ‘the circle of trust’ as said in “Meet the parents”, that person gets to see you in a different light. And it takes a little while before that person’s eyes get used to the new light.

Naturally, I haven’t heard about any bad face of mine [no diplomatic person would want to say that to me. :)] except from two dear fellows that I am an idiot/&^&^%/%$@#^! ;)

Signing off, Sands.

* – Not really.

PS: I need to slow down with blogging. Three posts in a week?

Wake-up Calls

2009-07-27T14:35:00.002+02:00

I had been growing very absent-minded and very much arrogant, lately.

Just got two wake up calls – one each for the aforementioned issues.

Fortunately, no permanent damage done. So fine. No need to cry over the spilt milk, but I am not spilling milk anymore.

Perhaps I forgot the principle of “Never underestimate anything, and Never overestimate yourself”.

I got to get SERIOUS.

Signing off, Sands.

First time now

2009-07-25T19:25:00.001+02:00

It’s now more than a month since I turned a complete vegetarian. There were of course one or two or three times when I really wanted to eat meat. It was always “sauer-/schweine-braten + semmelknödel” which I wanted to eat (some German yummy dish). My mouth did water by the thought of it.

20-plus years of non-vegetarian life won’t go away so easily, right? That too I was a pure-non-vegetarian!

But these two-three times, all I had to do was think about my causes (anti-torture, anti-unnecessary-pain), my mouth stopped watering and the thoughts brought me back to the world of reason.

I am going strong with my cause and decision. If you can successfully pull it through for a month, then it can be done well for life.

And today, for the first time, my vegetarianism is causing a little bit of inconvenience to a friend who has invited me over - for dinner. When I called him to remind, he had to change his plans a bit. (Here is where I think about what my mom says, to which I agree that one should be ready to accept and adjust to whatever his host has to offer, so that no discomfort is caused to the host. A bit of a sad thing it is, to cause inconvenience)

I regret the inconvenience, but dude, this is me, you got to cope with it! :)

Signing off, Sands.

PS: The very same way I used to be addicted to Brian Adams in 2005, Elvis Presley in 2007-2008, now it is Beatles for 2009. And the song of the day/week is:

Something in the way she moves,
Attracts me like no other lover.
….
…. … believe and how.

I also love the “While my guitar gently weeps”

PPS: Going off from internet for one or two days.

Bottle with two necks

2009-07-24T16:46:00.001+02:00

A year ago or so, I was at the first neck of the bottle. I am talking about the language bottle. I could understand most of the conversations in German, but I couldn’t have been an active partner.

Time flew and I came out of that neck to the world where I can speak German. A million thanks to those two ladies who helped me a lot. Apparently, along with my skills, the friendships too grew stronger. Perhaps we were learning to express ourselves better.

Now, I am stuck in the second neck. I can manage to speak if I choose to. But my talkative nature is non-existent when I enter the German world. I don’t want to get stuck here, you know? Something like I want to talk, but I don’t want to.

If I want to be active in group conversations, then I need to start with single partner conversations. My principle (from IIT days) about languages is acting like a small hindrance.

I don’t like to choose a language because I can learn it better. I choose the language more comfortable to both the persons, so that the conversation is of higher quality.

Unlike past years, many many Germans happen to speak English and then my aforementioned principle makes me speak in English. Should I hunt for people who don’t speak English? or should I rethink about the stubborn principle?

Whatever might be the choice, I am going to be a good orator in German too. Wait and see. Let me get out of this neck as well. I might want to start with some books. Should I look for suggestions? or simply choose for myself? Or newspaper?

I am not setting a deadline for myself. But I am going to put this thing on the top of my list. Then, in a few months’ time, I am going to start with French.

I don’t like this post. I am in a little melancholic mood. Still, since I wrote it, I let it stay.

I wish you all a great weekend.

Signing off, Sands.