Tag: gallery

I’ve missed writing

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I’m going to keep this brief because I am not in an environment (or a frame of mind) that’s conducive to writing. Also, I know that the entries over the past weeks haven’t been the most enthralling, but I give you what I can.

After over five years, I stepped into a “barber shop” earlier this week. It’s not like I’d let my hair grow into an unmanageable mess in the interim, but for years, I was getting it done in places that referred to themselves as “salons.” Now I know why: Men don’t know how to cut other men’s hair.

But that’s not an important story, for supposedly my hair will grow back. Or the rest of it will fall off, or something.

What is important is something else that happened over the course of the week. Since I’d received a work permit to legally pursue employment in this country, I had the option of reinstating my salary as a grad student while I pondered my future employment prospects (since I do some work for my uni bosses from time to time anyway). When approached about this, I declined, quite enjoying my “free bird” status. You see, I don’t need the money right now, and I’d much rather idle guilt-free instead of getting paid… and feeling guilty about idling.

Regarding my future employment choices, I seem to be my biggest stumbling block. Even so, I intend on finalising my decision by the end of this month. I just wish I were as enthusiastic about science as I have been about colour over these past weeks.

Coloured flour

For geeks and stalkers

This isn’t something I wanted to bring up on the journal, but I’m going to anyway because I’ve been starved for content.

My computer behaved splendidly for the better part of the last year-and-a-half. Through the many drops and liquid spills and exposures to frigid colds, it’s been my steady workhorse allowing me to get a lot of work done. With it, I’ve actually managed to wrap up my grad school research and compose my entire dissertation over numerous tireless nights.

But recently, it’s all been going awry.

A couple of months ago, shortly after the release of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), I installed it on my laptop replacing the venerable OS that preceded it, Tiger. And that, as far as I can tell, was the beginning of the end. You see, one of the hallmarks of my computer was how stable it was. No matter how much abuse it was put through, I could go without rebooting it for weeks, and every time I closed its lid amidst working on something tedious, it would cleanly suspend and resume to exactly how it was when I later opened the lid prepared to continue working.

That was the story with Tiger.

With Leopard, these uptimes dropped from weeks to hours, and suspend-and-resume was now about as pleasant as tugging in the wrong direction after getting a pube stuck on your foreskin. At one point, I became so paranoid about losing work that I stopped suspending it entirely. This might not seem like a big deal to some people, but it’s a huge deal for me, as I like to work when I want to work—not when my computer intends on cooperating with me.

A self portrait using the MBP

But hey, its web-cam still works wonders!

There is a lot more to this story, which does get worse—like the primary programs I need for research don’t compile or work on it for esoteric reasons—but I shan’t bore you with the details. I’ll just leave you with my forced realisation that moving to Leopard was a dumb move.

Stars among us

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Emerging from the south of my country, moreover so from a city and community rife with anti-Hindi sentiment, it’s not surprising that I hadn’t seen a single Hindi movie during the course of my entire life. All that changed a couple of days ago, when my kin dragged me along to a screening of Taare Zameen Par, a quaint little feature with a moving social message.

Hindi movie ticket

It’s because of this heartwarming message and the wonderful acting all across the board that I’m willing to overlook the fairytale ending, the needless random breakouts into song and dance, and the overly colour-saturated cinematography, to proclaim that it was a very moving and delightful experience; something which I had least expected.

I can heartily recommend this movie to anyone who’s curious about what Indian cinema has to offer (it screens here complete with well-written English subtitles) though I recognise that it isn’t even remotely representative of the standard fare, to anyone who knows someone with a learning disability or mental handicap, or to anyone who’s experienced a certain very third world mentality I try hard to rally against: That if you’re not the absolute best at what you do, be it anything from not scoring at the top of your class in an inconsequential test in first grade, to not earning the most amongst your peers upon completing your education, you’re an utter failure.

In summary, if you belong to any of those groups, please try it. You won’t be disappointed.