actuality.log

I’ve not been posting regularly, but that’s not because I haven’t been writing. Some random unrelated bits.

— I’ve been making some intellectual breakthroughs and I think I am at a critical tipping point. A point where hand-holding isn’t needed anymore for me to understand and do things. And that’s a sweet feeling.

— I decided to travel half the world away to see them play, but now they’re playing in my own backyard. Now it is quite clear I want to travel more than actually see them play, so travel it is.

— I just got past Fire Leo in Viewtiful Joe. My fingers hurt quite a bit from playing this game (review soon), and I must stop typing now.

This post is a continuation of yesterday’s. If you haven’t read that one yet, you probably should. Unless of course, you are a big fan of just randomly reading stuff and not particularly keen on following along.

Now that I’ve given you substantial motivation for all of this, I return to our topic of immediate interest — the argument. After the Egypt leg of the journey, my parents had planned to (and did) proceed to other parts of the world so that they could catch up with some old friends. I don’t see the point of catching up, or even that of old friends, but I knew this sort of thing is important to them, so I encouraged them to go ahead and do whatever made them happy.

And so were sown the seeds of confusion.

When I was later talking to her about how the trip went, after all the details about Egypt had past, I began to get annoying information (slowly at first, and then turned into a flood) about random people — like where they are in the world and what they’re doing. Since I knew some of these people as a kid, it was implicitly assumed I was curious to know where they are in the world at the moment.

No, I am not the least bit curious. In fact, I had forgotten the existence of most of these people, and haven’t wasted a moment of my life thinking about any of them. So at some point in the conversation, rather abruptly, I said something like “Would it bother you if I told you I honestly don’t care?”. And when she said something like “No, it’s not a problem”, my obvious response was, “OK, please stop. I don’t care”.

It’d have been cool if I’d shut up at that point. But nooo.

“Don’t you get it? I don’t know these people. They are not my “friends”. I haven’t maintained contact with them in over 10 years. The ONLY reason I ever got to meet most of them, and play or whatever, was because they were your friends’ kids. I do NOT WANT to waste my time listening to details pertaining to where they are in the world today or what they’re doing. Or how happy they are. Or whether they’re intellectually capable of handling their uni. Or whether they’re married. Or…

Because, quite frankly, I just don’t care. And I don’t even see why I should.

Catching up was important to you, and I didn’t object. I was happy you were happy getting to meet them. NOT CATCHING UP is important to me, can’t you see you’re forcing me otherwise?”

At which point things just started rolling even more downhill. Come to think of it, it wasn’t really as much of an argument as me getting terribly annoyed and venting. It sort of reminded me of the other such times. Times when I’ve blown up hearing stuff like so.

“Oh H, why don’t you go work out or hang out with your friends or something?”

Hello, as easy as that may sound for you folks, it is FRICKIN’ HARD for someone like me. I just don’t “make friends and hang out”. It is an arduous process for me. It takes time, years. And even then, there is a good chance I might not get near the point you apparently reach within minutes.

The moral in all of this being, parents, if you have a kid who sees the world from an extremely different perspective from the way you do, please don’t attempt to mould him to what you know. Just realise he’s evolved past you and bow to his glorious way of going about things. For his way is definitely better. That’s what evolution is about, isn’t it?

We’ll soon return to our (much sought after) regular “In grad school…” programming. Honest.

My parents just got back from Egypt. They had a splendid time and got to see and do a lot of different things, along with that cruise down the Nile they’ve always wanted. It’s gotten them so excited, my mom’s written these detailed travelogues and dad’s sent me all these pictures. Other people who’ve read these travelogues tell me what a wonderful writer my mom is (oh why did I get the wrong half of the genes?). I wouldn’t know, for I, the evil son, haven’t made the time to read them yet. Of course, it’s not like I’m busy at all, I’m just so damn lazy.

However, this post has nothing to do with any of that.

If you remember, I’m the one who convinced them to take time off and do this. I paid for all of it. I even bought them the camera that took all those pictures. I, the poor student, sacrificed things like 400 channel cable, and a rusty set of wheels, so they’d have fun. It’s all me. Me me me ME!

However, this post has nothing to do with any of that either.

When I first got into grad school, there was a good chance I’d have to spend a lot of money, at least initially, and I did. Considering exchange rates and what not, my first few months here were a dent in my parents’ life savings. Whether it was a serious dent or not is not the point, I’ve had a strong urge to just… return the sum. Since it’s obvious they won’t take a cheque, I have had to figure out various other devious ways of returning it. Enter plans for trips around the world.

But, as you might have guessed, this post has nothing to do with any of that either. As I was talking to my mom when she got back, we got into a (relatively big, by my standards) argument. That is what this post is about.

<Begin Background>

My parents are social people. They have friends — ranging from the many not-so-close to the few close ones with whom they hang out and do real stuff. More importantly, meet often, and talk. My dad knows multiple languages and various dialects, and will automatically switch to what is native to a place he’s at and always attempts (and often succeeds) to blend in with the locals. All in all, I’d say they care about/like being around a lot of people and a lot of people care about/like being around them and they just fit in to the whole social scheme of things.

Oh, horror of horrors, I, am their son. I have minimal social skills, almost no friends, no confidantes, can barely speak one language (and stammer when stressed), don’t really care about anyone (and most of the world feels the same way about me), never blend in, and always remain a rogue outside social circles. Again, it’s not like I’m antisocial, I’m asocial. I don’t hate people, I just quite enjoy doing my own thing.

Needless to say, this teeny conflict of personality types often results in fun exchanges, where each side has no idea where the other is coming from.

</End Background>

To be continued…

With all that talk about Indian things, I went home that evening having this weirdly undecided urge — on the one hand, I wanted to connect with something back home, and on the other, I wanted to get away as far as possible. Usually, in moments like these, I pick the obvious middle path — do absolutely nothing. But the other evening I decided another middle path involving watching two movies, Unbreakable and Bend it like Beckham. The following are some thoughts.

Unbreakable was a lot less retarded than Signs. Either that, or I am a much bigger fan of comic books than I am of crop circles, or Mel Gibson. To Unbreakable’s credit, it had a simple and quite brilliant musical theme. And it stayed just about constant throughout the movie — the same 7 or so notes. That was good. Unfortunately, extrapolating the curve that’s set up from the Sixth Sense through Signs all the way to The Village, I am quite certain The Village will absolutely suck.

On a more pleasant note, I absolutely adored Bend it like Beckham. It was, cute, funny, quite real and a lot more, all at the same time. I laughed. A lot. A couple of dialogues that struck me as particularly poignant. Both of the following are paraphrased, of course.

Women in a locker room in various states of undress: So Jess (the main character, Indian origin, female), what would your parents say if you brought home a white man?
Jess: Oh, no, it’s out of the question.
Jess: And a black, NO!
Jess: And a Muslim, DEFINITELY NOT!

————

Jess: I like Beckham.
Tony: (Male, Indian origin, main character’s good friend) I like Beckham too.
Jess: Yeah, no one can bend it like Beckham.
Tony: No, Jess, I really like him.
Jess: Uh, you mean?…
Jess: But you can’t be, you’re Indian.

Indian men can be gay. We’ve evolved to a point where we use PRODUCT IN OUR HAIR, but can’t possibly fancy other men?

I bought some new hardware for a computer at work. Said hardware needed some random cable to work. Said cable costs some 8$.

Like a fool, I order the cable from Dell, since the computer is from them, and psychologically, people around would feel better if only “Dell certified” things end up in the box.

Shipping costs for said cable is over 8$, even on the most basic option Dell provides.

Dell, in some fucked up business move, uses DHL to ship said cable.

Retarded delivery boys (girls?) at DHL will not mention when they are going to show up the next day to try to redeliver once they’ve missed you, other than to say “PM”. Nice move geniuses, now all I have to do is wait for you from 12:00+ PM in the middle of the fucking afternoon through 12:00- PM in the middle of the night.

Obviously, said delivery company misses me all three times.

Since said delivery company is such a big shop, their nearest “pickup center” is a couple of cities away.

I call to try to ask them if they’re willing to ship it from their pickup center to my home, for a nominal fee.

They say, of course, for a nominal fucking fee of 15$.

All in all, I’ve almost decided to cut my losses to just the original 8$ + morethan8$shipping and let them have the fucking cable.

When you’re Indian, and in grad school (or anywhere else in a foreign country for that matter), people can come up to you and ask you the most annoyingly-cluelessly-hilarious things. Case in point, last afternoon I was lunching with a bunch of guys (yes, new territory there), few I knew quite well, and few others I met for the first time. Things eventually ended up being — we all talking about, analysing and giving advice to one of the chaps who was having relationship trouble.

Is this a big deal?

Not if it’s a bunch of women doing the exact same thing.

If it’s a bunch of guys, hell yeah it is.

Guys don’t talk about things, they “deal with it”.

Long story short, random hot dance partner was throwing herself at this one guy, and he, in a rejecting-her-sort-of-way, said something akin to “No, I just want to dance”, and now she hates him and treats him like dirt. He doesn’t like being treated like dirt. Of course, the funny part here is — HOT chick was throwing herself at him, HE rejects her, and SHE’s supposedly the crazy one. (“She’s crazy” was his rejection reason.)

And no, none of this has to do with our central story. All of this was just a fun aside.

Where was I? Ahh yes, I, an Indian in an American university, lunching with folk usually clueless about how things are outside their little inward looking circles. Out of the blue (as usual?), someone brings up the caste system. Usually, they know very little and it’s some very generic thing like, “Does it exist?” (of course, not really realising what it entails). But this time, they had some half-correct ideas of the mechanics of the thing, and the questions were more direct. For instance, “Which caste do you belong to?”. Erm, hello, 1. It doesn’t matter 2. You wouldn’t know what to make of it if I told you. With much pestering, I say OK, fine, I’m from the Priest/Teacher/Intellectual class — for lack of a better way of putting it across. The response sort of stunned me. “Oh, so you’re a Brahmin. Aren’t they like the highest rung of the ladder?”. Woah, dude. 1. How much do you really know? and 2. What’s any of this to you?

Things move on, and I figure out this group knows a bit about all these things (more than I do?), and then things get to the next level of complexity. “How favoured are you because of this? I mean, is it easier to get a visa and such?” Hello, the frickin’ visa thing’s handled by YOUR PEOPLE employed by YOUR GOVERNMENT. I doubt they know the specifics enough to make informed racist calls. “What caste is (insert one of the people I work with here)? Would it make a difference if you both knew and you were of a higher/lower caste?”.

And that was when I had to politely change the topic. No, things don’t matter. Few generations ago, people paid a lot more attention to all these details, for now, I barely know anything. Let alone being able to “see a guy on the street”, figure out his social place AND consequently discriminate for/against his interests”. Much to my chagrin, this change didn’t take us too far, and dropped us at another hot favourite, arranged marriages.

This <sarcasm>smooth</sarcasm> transition occured when there was talk about where caste figured in terms of mate selection, of course.

I will not bore you with the details, but I ended up explaining all of it roughly like so — No, it’s not that you’re totally in the dark as to who the woman is or where she’s from. You get to meet, hang out, find out if you like her and such. IF you’re willing to assume 1. Your parents want best for you and 2. They know what they’re doing and will do the right thing (1 is usually most probably true, 2 takes a lot more faith on the child’s part) THEN you let them try to look for someone who’s in some sense “compatable” with you. Intellectually, socially, culturally, (or what ever other “allys” they/you want to add here). They’ll do things like get in touch with her family and figure out where they stand on all these things (where, by all these things, I mean “the guy”), and then take it from there if everyone seems to think it’s a good idea. After which it is probably obvious how things follow.

When I was done with all of this, all of what I said was brilliantly paraphrased by one of them in a way everyone got it. “So… if you’re a 7, they try to get you to meet a 6-8.”

Yes, precisely.

Wherein another insightful person chimed in, “But what if you’re an 8 and YOU actually like a 4?”

Bingo, again.

These now-not-clueless folk know exactly how the system works.

And why it tends to break.

And I.

When you’ve been in grad school long enough, like some people I know (hint hint), certain things become extremely clear. For instance, it is obvious that beyond a point, the ability to cope with intellectual challenges that crop up has nothing to do with “completing” this long and arduous journey. It is just a big endurance test, and there are times when all roads look like they’ve been paved with extremely hot jagged rock, just because. The trick, of course, is to not lose sanity, remain calm, and ride out the storm until you come out victorious.

By victorious, I obviously mean not mad, and not completely bald.

During this quest, one ends up looking for motivation to hang in there from the oddest of sources. That random gorgeous woman who works a couple of labs down the hallway, for instance.

I hate it when my motivators get married

 
to other people.

There was some confusion earlier as to what I was trying to say in those plots, so here’s an explanation. This acts as an answer to comments and e-mails, and is part of a series of posts where I delve into aspects of my life in grad school.

Plot 1, for the ideal drone, is sort of obvious. A task is given, and the worker starts on it right away, and finishes (reaches 1.0 on the “fraction of task complete” ordinate) well before the deadline. As any ideal drone ought to.

Plot 2, the one for the real drone, is most representative of reality, as the name suggests. The worker doesn’t do anything for a while, and as time moves along (s)he slowly begins to start (because (s)he gets tense/feels guilty/fears repercussion of missed deadlines/has some sense of responsibility/…) on the task. Very slow at first, this pace of operation increases as the deadline draws nearer. Eventually, the task gets done with a little time to spare, in case minor changes need to be made on it before the final deadline.

Like I said, this is the kind of thing most normal people would do. The “deadline” seems to act like the stick-end of a carrot and stick motivator scheme. It works for most people, obviously. If you refer to Anita’s comment, what she described was an extreme variant of this curve. A sort of limit where the curve tends to a steep step.

OK, and then there is the third curve, the one that describes how I do things. Primarily, the thing to realize is I am not particularly driven by “deadlines” nor do the specifics of the task themselves matter to me. A normal person’s “end” is the completion of the task. My end is not. The task is just a means for me to learn something along the way. It in itself means little to me. I start, like the good boy I am, as soon as the task is specified. But, unfortunately, I don’t do what it entails, but any random thing I choose. There in lies the problem. Initially, the curve looks like it’s going toward 1.0 on the ordinate, but before you know it I’ve branched off into my tangential paths going about doing whatever it is I deem useful and potentially relevant, or just fun. (e.g. I’m asked to solve a problem, say, find the value of this field at this time. I’ll wander off into things like whether the theory governing this class of equations fails if time flowed backward. Seemingly random, but sometimes profound information can be gained by conscious lateral thought. Which, to the casual observer will appear to be me slacking off.)

This is what I mean by negative work. Of course, once I get all my grounds covered, all my little tangential bits (which take a lot more time and effort and usually are far more insightful than the ideal drone’s linear path) begin to add up to what looks like me going to complete the task. Of course, since the task and deadline meant little, I frequently miss deadlines, and post deadlines end up doing a lot more than what was originally asked for, because now it matters to me — I’m having fun learning.

Therefore, if you’re looking for someone to responsibly carry out a task, I am a huge potential risk. I don’t respond to order or structure, I need a lot of leeway to get going, I will do just about anything along the way and I don’t even guarantee completion.

All I say is, given this framework, I can come up with something better than you’d imagined, but I might not either. I might just be wasting your time.

Totally unrelated, if you still aren’t hooked on Coupling, here is a sort of representative sample dialogue that might change your mind.

“I need breasts with brains. I don’t mean individual brains, obviously… I mean, not a brain each. You know, I like intelligent women, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere… I think breast brains would be over-egging the woman pudding. ‘

— Jeff – Coupling – THE GIRL WITH TWO BREASTS

Click here [PDF] to read.

It’s funny. If you don’t find it funny, you’re not smart enough.

I’m staring at my potential schedule over the summer, and I’m tired already.

– Sometime end April, my “Preliminary Exam”, where I officially become a PhD candidate
– June 1 – 3, 2005 – A talk at a conference at Baton Rouge, Louisiana
– June 14 – 17, 2005 – A talk at a conference at MIT, Massachusetts
– June 22 – 26, 2005 – A talk at a conference at Vail, Colorado
– About 10 days around July 2 (because that’s when they’re playing) in the UK – Manchester, UK
– July 24 – 28, 2005 – A talk at a conference at Austin, Texas

There’s fun travel, and there’s this. Sheesh.

Like I’ve been mentioning at points, I have a bunch of ideas toward a new comic series. Unfortunately, I can’t draw. I thought I could fix it by reading a little as to how the real artists and animators do it, and it turns out some of them first form a clear reference sample of all their characters in various situations (poses, emotions), and them use those as standards, as needed in the story.

Easy enough, one might naively assume. I decided to attempt an as-yet-unnamed character based on Amy in (my favourite, by far) Scary Go Round. Here is our “Amy” look-alike giving directions.

After a bunch of attempts, it is clear. I cannot draw. Notice however, strict adherence to “rules”, like the rule of thirds. The head, the torso and the legs are each a third of the total height of the character.

I am my complete lack of surprise.

(This is a guest opinion piece. Whose? It doesn’t matter. I may or may not agree with the words that follow. If you find them offensive, you have no concrete reason to hate me, because I probably didn’t agree with anything said. All occurences of “I” below are used by our mysterious guest commentator, they don’t mean me.)

It was unbelievably cold. It was late, and I still had a hard night’s work ahead of me. I decided to tank up on food and drink to fuel me through the challenges ahead^*. It was then that I saw it, a lone poorly published news paper. Curious, I peek into it and read a most intriguing article about standardised testing, and coloured people. The only thing that was common between my beliefs and the article, was that tests were hate-worthy.

It began pleasantly enough, building a case as to why standardised tests (and I extrapolated that to tests in general), are evil. How they fail to truly measure the intellectual capacity of the testee (I don’t really know if that’s a word, but that hasn’t stopped me from using such before). It then branched off into a slight history lesson dealing with the origin of tests as a measure of intelligence. All was fine, until that point, where the author emphatically exclaimed all tests were formulated by people forward (rich, white) in society, and how the tests were biased to suit their ends as a result. He then proceeded to explain how today’s tests, such as the SATs have been derived in some form or the other from these original tests, hence “inherently” biased. In order to support his claims, he spouts statistics pertaining to how well forward (rich, white) people do in comparison to backward (poor, black) people — how most results always seem to claim (say) 89% of the blacks are morons. He went further establishing a correlation between income and scores, as in quantitatively stating how an increase in parental income of so much results in so many more points on such and such test.

Then, by his insane logic, all one needs to do to ace any test, ever, is to be born/adopted by billionaires (who’re white, of course). Anyway, moving along because things don’t stop there, there is more.

There is a class of people, called the somethings (I should know the word, but it’s late, and I’m tired to look it up) who honestly believe some classes people are “inherently better” than other classes. Furthermore, they will go to extreme lengths, like trying to exterminate all the “weaker sections” to rid the world of all their evils — stupidity, poverty, forced prostitution … . Think Hitler. Now, according to our author friend, all this testing business is some sort of giant conspiracy involving people of this sort to establish the social hierarchy they desire — as biased tests imply poor scores for the black people, poor scores imply a lack of earning potential, lack of earning implies poverty, and poverty, by definition, leads to poor test scores repeating the vicious cycle.

Enough, that’s about all I can take.

You know why tests are bad? They’re bad because you cannot test “how much or little a kid learnt” over months and years in something like a couple of hours. And even given more time, you definitely cannot really test them over a broad enough spectrum to honestly evaluate how much they know. They’re bad because when you’re young, you should be out playing and exercising your creativity and curiosity, not cramming for some algebra test. They’re bad because they have so much riding on their outcome, that some kids cannot take the pressure (one no kid should ever be subject to in the first place) and end up cracking. They are bad because they attempt to force kids to learn in a very unnatural way. Kids are inherently curious, infinitely creative and naturally absorb anything thrown their way. The only inhibitor here is you forcing things down their throats threatening consequences of a bad test score.

Tests are not bad because some sets of people do them worse than others. It’s the same test. It is just as hard for everyone. If one set constantly does worse than the others, there is only one explanation — They are inferior, intellectually.

I will not go as far as to say, and therefore do not deserve to exist.

I’m too lazy to bag my own groceries.

^*Instead, of course, I ended up writing most of this piece.