Month: July 2004

Because that’s what us slackers do.

Oohhh.. what does thiiis button do?

I am feeling exceptionally creative today. Not like I used it, but I do plan to. Just populated some huge TODO lists with what I should do with my time when I’m beginning to feel bored. And did I mention I had 4 writing projects (It’s cool to call them that. I just mean I’ve been doodling a lot lately.) on my plate?

No?

Well here’s a sneak peek at one of them. “Sex (or lack thereof) and the Small Town”. It’s my treatise on relationships. Since, you know, who better than I to write about something like this. This is just a teaser, and evil comments can be kept to yourselves thank you. Nice ones are more than welcome.

BFTP^*

Now, you’ve all seen movies haven’t you? I’m pretty certain a good chunk of you’ve seen at least one movie from my part of the world. The storyline is usually fairly generic:

  — Hmmish guy meets desireable woman.
  — He’s instantly smitten (expected, considering she’s very desireable).
  — He professes his undying love for her. She’s like, “Oh, hmm.”
  — He pursues her while she is unsure (expected, considering he’s hmmish).
  — <Insert random deterrant to a happy ending here. (Usually girl’s evil dad.)>
  — But yet our hmmmish guy will circumvent all that and more to win her heart. She will finally admit that she likes him too and they will live happily ever after.

Fairly generic, with the usual variation being directed toward the trivial things – like the country in which the movie is shot or the number of songs in the movie… stuff like that. If real life were close, random generic guys would have some clue as to how to go about their lives.

Never once in their fishing story lines does it ever involve:

  — Intelligent, funny, caring, beautiful woman falling for quite ordinary guy. (Note reversal of direction from generic storyline above.)
  — Feeling comfortable enough to tell him so. (Again, note reversal of direction from generic storyline above.)
  — Getting him all excited and euphoric. (Note difference in response from generic storyline above.)
  — Feel so insecure about their own fishing selves to feel they aren’t worthy of reciprocation. (?!?)
  — Leave the scene. (?!?)
  — One abandoned normal guy remains. (Note extreme difference in end outcome.)

How the fish does random normal guy know how to deal with it? If it happened once, it’s some freak one off occurance. If it happened again, is our average guy some sort of weird freak who’s destined to forever experience this sort of behaviour?

God damn it people. You’re intelligent, caring, funny, attractive, independent… at least acknowledge that someone could see all this about you.

Maybe I should quit whatever it is I do and become a movie story writer or a director or something. This way I can make generic-average-guy-movies which real generic average guys can actually relate to.

^*BFTP – Blast from the past. This is just a buffer purge, like so.

It’s funny how brains (well, my brain anyway) seem to process information while we’re asleep. I’ve had 4-5 of the weirdest dreams over the past week or so. There was this one time, when this Chinese lady called the lab and we “talked” for about 8 minutes without either of us understanding anything the other was trying to say. It was quite freaky. That night I dreamt, strangely enough, that my mom’d become south-east Asian. Don’t ask how, just did. And I step out of bed to figure out I can’t communicate with her. See? Weird.

Then there was this other time when everyone around me starts arbitrarily speaking <insert south Indian language I absolutely abhor here> (and I hate it for so many reasons, some more rational than others. I didn’t actually say its name because … *shudder*, it gives me the heebee-jeebies just thinking about it.) Of course, when every single person in the planet talks it now, I’m left all alone and not so much lonely as insanely irritated.

It’s not always about language things like this. I was talking to this one woman who studied in multiple fields, and that night I think I dreamt about trying to do too much intellectually and being unable to cope. They weren’t the exact same subjects of course, but I am pretty certain that conversation was where the dream-weirdness stemmed from.

And every single time I get one of these, I wake <insert “in cold sweat” for effect here> to figure out it’s obviously just a dream. But more importantly, I wake to find an annoying roomie doing one of the annoying roomie things they do.

HOW FishING HARD IS IT TO KNOW WHICH ONE’S MY BATHROOM?
HOW FishING HARD IS IT TO KNOW IT ISN’T POLITE TO FINISH ALL MY MILK? AND NOT TELL ME? DO YOU KNOW HOW FishING HARD IT IS GETTING CEREAL BACK INTO THE BOX FROM A BOWL?
HOW FishING HARD IS IT TO KNOW PLAYING MUSIC AND TV AT FULL VOLUME AT 4 AM IS FishING RUDE?
HOW FishING HARD IS IT TO KNOW THERE’S AN OFF SWITCH ON THE AIR CONDITIONER? IT HAS AN OFF STATE BESIDES “INSANELY WARM ROOM” AND “INSANELY COOL ROOM”. TRY SWITCHING IT OFF IF YOU’VE MADE IT TOO WARM OR COLD. IT’S NO FishInG FUN FLUCTUATING BETWEEN 40 AND 100 F CONSTANTLY.

I am done now. I needed that.

In a bold and daring move to eliminate the backlog in pictures I’ve taken but not uploaded in the recent past, I spent a whole 15 minutes making the Ann Arbor Summer and Art Fair :: 2004 album today.

Mmmm.. preetty colours. Enjoy.

(I decided to work inverse chronologically. Apart from the community service set, this is the most recent.)

And I’m hungry.

I’d made this stupid tomato/basil sauce for pasta a few days ago and it turned out very sweet. No, not awesome and yummy, sweet, as in the taste. And like the genius I am, I don’t taste these things when I make them. You know, because I am so cool and never get such things wrong. So, the last time I made spaghetti using this, it turned out waay more sweeter than it had to be. I went hungry that evening. Today, to sort of offset that, I went overboard on salting the pasta water, and the final result was everything was waay too salty.

I’m retarded, and hungry. I wish I had a bag of popcorn the size of me right about now.

Anyway, none of that is pertinent to what I wanted to say. I was talking to S a while earlier, and it dawned on me (for like the third time) I’m finally going to move to my own place. She was going on and on about how great it is, how messy you can be, the freedom you will have, and a lot of other fun sounding things. However there was a tinge of something in the tone that indicated there was an unsaid “but” attached to all of that. It’s like, you’d have this and that… but you’d be alone and it might not be as fun as you assumed it would?

I am getting a little queasy thinking about it. I know I want this. I at least know I want to try to change. What’s the big deal? It’s not like any of this is irreversible. Or is it?

In related news, I just sorted out accounts with a bunch of old housemates. Things are looking good. Except, the way we (don’t) do the calculations, it just seems to everyone that they’re losing money. Ah well.

The new and improved grad school FAQ is up. I’ve already gotten feedback from one of the newbies telling me it’s “useful enough” but “too arrogant”. Since he is “very much sure you too would have done mailing when you were in my situation”.

And by “done mailing” I presume it means I mailed people for help when I was applying.
1. Erm no, I didn’t.
2. What’s with the tone you ungrateful b*?

In much happier correspondence news, I received my first ever mail (no, not e-mail, a package) from Germany today. Complete with a hand written letter from the woman. Quite sweet.

I cut out the section [~ 3.1 MB] of the recently released History of Doom video that appealed to me the most. This is yet another reason why id rocks. They understand the mindset of the obsessed-gamer type. We probably have no lives, but we have feelings.

In related news, I’ve swapped the ATI Radeon X800 Pro for an overclocked nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT on the components list for the new rig. I know I swore off nVIDIA “for good” when they ruined 3dfx, but recent benchmarks have resulted in me selling out.

Yes, I am weak.

Last week was awesome, in an almost-tedious sort of way. I had something (arguably fun) to do every single day. Which is very different by my usually boringly-predictable life standards. Either I’m noticing opportunities I’ve previously failed to notice, or stuff that didn’t happen before has recently started happening. Either way, it feels nice, but I’m still quite certain I cannot maintain things at this intensity for too much longer. Being a hardcore geek type has quite a bit of inherent social phobia/anxiety attached to it, and I’ve had my quota of trying to dissipate its effects, for now.

So this week it’s time to slow down and rest. By which I mean get back to work in the lab.

Oh, and when someone tells you “Have you met <insert name here>? You ought to, you’d like her.”, how would you interpret it? And how would you respond to her?

Update: After much talk, I finally started on it. Maybe this will quiet the newbies a little.

Not a very talented one, but a painter none the less. No, not the Rembrandt kinds, the kinds that given a wall and suitable supplies can give it a relatively uniform colour.

It all began with a rather innocuous e-mail forwarded by our favourite incessant-forwarder, Louise. The original mail was from Ryan, a grad student interning at the ECIR, advertising an opportunity for community service and looking for volunteers.

Of course, I look at the mail and go, why not? and register to lend a hand. (Apparently, there were other such events prior to this, but I’d failed to notice as I wasn’t in Ann Arbor until recently.) Anyway, the work itself wasn’t at an old age home (as I’d earlier assumed), but at elderly people’s homes themselves. It was part of a “keep people in their homes” effort of a group whose name I should know but don’t. This was in a part of Detroit that’s predominantly Hispanic and (consequently? apparently) neglected.

As has been happening for a while now, I woke around 4 AM and did whatever it is I do. Got into “work clothes” (since we were warned they might get dirtied) and rushed off to the bus stop around 8:22. Which I thought was good since I had to be there by 9. But noooo. Buses that run every 20 minutes don’t leave at 40 minutes past the hour. So, since I missed our friend at 8:20, my next best bet WAS AT NINE. Not wanting to be late, I set off on foot. Yes, I was still late. (Let the record show I reached only 12 minutes late. Hey, it was relatively far away.)

Some damage control and a half-hour long car ride later, we were at this social service group whose name I should know but don’t. Once we were described the tasks, scrub down and repaint a bathroom or lay a cement porch, we were asked to decide what it is we wanted to do. Some shaky hand-raisings later, the groups were formed, and we were off to Mrs. “Name I should know too but don’t”‘s home to paint her bathroom.

Typing is too much work. I’ve had a hard day. Well, not really, but I’m just lazy. A few annotated pictures will have to do.

Ryan, with his (eventually not really necessary) wheelbarrow crushed into his trunk (bungee cords and all) as he readies to transport part of the “porch-fix” group to the home that needed its porch to be fixed. I wonder if it’s safe driving being unable to see behind your car. Anyway, no one got hurt. (Actually. Someone did apparently. One of the women got bitten by a dog and was rushed off to a hospital. That’s all I really know, and that everything is really fine.)

Our group, driven by Roger, ended up at Mrs. “Name I should know too but don’t”‘s home, and were introduced to her bathroom.

We soon got to work. Here are members of the team laughing while trying to fake struggling-to-open the can of paint like I asked them to.

Since we trust our painting skills so much, (after totally cleaning up the existing coat) we needed all surfaces not required to be painted to be covered with paper. Remember people, this makes for easy cleaning. (Another thing that makes for easy cleaning is to watch while the two Shivas do the cleaning.)

A subset of the happy team at lunch break. Happier still cause it was a break, and there was lunch.

After some relatively quick goofing off, things got busy again resulting in the final product. (Hmm. Looking at it now, that window needs a lot of work still. Ah well, there’s always a next time.)

Since the other group wasn’t finished yet (claiming their work was harder), we

left Mrs. “Name I should know too but don’t”‘s home to find the other guys (conspicuously sans injured woman) hard at work at the other place.

Since they were busy, us slackers decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood. Resulting in observations weird

and interesting. (Now I know I want 300 steps to my porch when I’m old. I can’t stand steep steps.)

Once everything looked fine there,

we headed back home to be greeted by extreme traffic.

Delayed just an hour and a half or so over our original schedule consequently, we reached Ann Arbor. Of course, I happened to notice the cutest balloon poodle ever during the bus ride back home.

It was a lot of fun. I will do stuff of this sort whenever they pop up and I’m able. Hey, I’m not uni-faceted.

But hey wahgnube, you aren’t in any of the pictures. I don’t believe you were really there or touched paint.

Oh, really?

How about the fine droplets of paint on my glasses’ lens (which isn’t going away, scarily). Irrefutable proof I say.

or the blob on my shirt?

There, are you happy now?

This turned out to be a rather hectic week, socially. Yes, by my standards. And I think I have handled it rather well so far. Yes, by my standards. But I’m pretty certain I can’t sustain this regularly. In like, you know, life.

Fun is work. Work is evil.

The weekend is shaping up quite unusually also. I’ve got this volunteer work thing for all of tomorrow at an old age home in southwest Detroit. And if I get home in one piece (yes, I said Detroit), there’s this barbecue thing on Sunday.

Yipee, activiteee. *Shudder*

One more from the art fair. For no real reason.

I just made a most embarrassing goof up involving mistaking the reply button for the forward button on my e-mail client.

Why the hell do they have to be so close? Why the hell do I have to be blind?

D’oh D’oh D’oh!

*Turns beyond red*

Today was rather different. Spent most of the morning reading at home, and all evening at the art fair. It was waaay more crowded than I remember it being last year, and I was spending most of my time trying to find spots where people concentration was minimum while attempting art fair bingo!

Arguably, the most fun part of the day was at this one stall. Being an engineer/scientist type, there is a pretty good chance your life lacks colour. Everything’s usually in black or white or occasionally, the odd shade of grey. That’s about it. And here was this talented woman with all her pictures super saturated with brilliant colour. I was immediately drawn to it all wide eyed and started bugging her, Beverly, with the usual questions. “Oh, what’s this?”, “How did you achieve that?” … sort of general thing. There she was, (apart from being all creative) all patiently explaining things with a smile. Now I know how it’s done. Not like I ever plan to attempt anything of the sort, but it’s nice to know stuff.

For those who missed the not-so-subtle link above, here’s her gallery. (Because it’s fun to stare at pretty things.)

All of which eventually resulted in me buying my first piece of expensive art, “Charlotte’s Web”, from her today. No, not expensive as in expensive. Expensive as in expensive from a poor grad student’s perspective. Anyway, in all my crowd concentration minimization floating around, I kept running into patches of flowers on the grass. Here are a couple of the pictures I took.

And so it begins. I’m finally making the time to upload pictures taken during my trip to India. Here’s a teaser, sarees.

Sarees – Bring out the cross dresser in you.^TM

Pretty much spent the whole of my afternoon-evening out with S and J arbitrarily hanging, drinking and eating. Pretty sweet. The town is preparing for its annual art fair which happens over the next few days. So everyone’s all excited and running around all active-like setting up stalls and that sort of thing. It’s colourful, getting crowded, and very lively.

And remember the time I flipped when I serendipitously ran into papers citing stuff I’d co-authored? It was definitely cool to see my name in someone else’s bibliography. Something similar, but a lot cooler, happened to a portion of our group when they were in Austria a while earlier. There was this group from Spain, who’d picked up some of our pre-published stuff from Cornell’s arXiv and done all sorts of cool stuff with the framework we’d set up. Sure, they were apparently working with simplified material models and what not, but long story short, they had some very cool computational things going with our math. Something along the lines of a model which involved a broken bone, and stem cells being introduced. Through the computation, these cells find their way to the general area where the break is, differentiate and deposit material resulting in healing.

All of that within our framework. A problem totally unrelated to anything we’re working on and not tweaked-for at all. It “just worked”. And that makes me all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Of course I don’t know all the details since I wasn’t there myself to grasp all the specifics. But it feels good. I am pretty certain it would have felt even cooler if I’d experienced this in person. And where was I during all of this? You guessed it.. in India.

Not like I’m complaining or anything.

And there I was, sitting doing whatever it was when I happened to notice one of my housemates carefully powder his back and slowly slip on a loose shirt. Of course, I had to pass a “delicate darling back” comment. And he goes, “Don’t kid man, this hurts”. I’m like, “Huh? What does?”. And then he turns around to show me this black and red tattoo of a woman’s name and a broken rose. Apparently, he’d gotten it a couple of days before I returned here.

Woah. It looked cool and all that, but then I was curious as to what’s the story behind all of this. So a little probing resulted in him telling me this person was his ex. How much a 19 or so year old Indian male could have gone through with someone to refer to her as his ex, I don’t know, but apparently she was his ex. Religious differences (he being a Hindu and she a Muslim) resulted in parental pressure to split up.

You know, because they’re different species and all that, and their children will be poor misfit mutants otherwise.

Anyway, the deal here is how passionate must you be of something or someone to go about bearing a couple of weeks of physical pain and having a permanent reminder on your skin what it/they mean(t) to you? I don’t think I can do such a thing. I mean, this person’s supposed to be someone you should try to forget right? What about closure and all that. Forget closure, what about other people who might show up in the future? Won’t they ask questions? Why unnecessary hurt and so on?

As in, oh honey, I love you now, but I loved her then and this thing’s permanent, deal with it? It’s just a name.. INSCRIBED PERMANENTLY ON MY SKIN.

And the weird part is he isn’t doing this to prove anything to anyone either. Apparently not too many people, and especially not this ex, know (and will know) about it.

You know, this reminds me of when people write stuff on wet concrete or attempt to engrave things on the barks of trees? It’s like they’ve figured things probably won’t be that way forever, and they’re trying to take a snapshot on a medium they assume is more permanent. It’s not like your little heart drawing on that concrete slab is going to be eroded away anytime soon.

Isn’t it just enough to tell someone how you feel? Is all of this really necessary? Forget tell, isn’t it enough if you know?

Speaking of snapshots and people, I’ve heard enough of the “wahgnube, you ought to start taking real people in your photographs”. I’ve begun reading a most fascinating book. Watch out world, I’m getting there.

Anyone care to model? The only qualification you need to have is to be a little patient. I know I suck at this, but will improve. Humour me. You never know, it just might land you this big modelling gig. Either way, you still get some compensation. I’ll take you out to a cup of coffee or whatever it is you fancy.

And I just realized I was wrong in blaming different computers for my inability in putting things down. It has nothing to do with computers, it just dawned on me that I got most of my thinking done in the shower. Long shower, elaborate post. No shower, no post.

Or a picture gets uploaded.