Musings

My Understanding on the Hindu stand on existance of human beings.

2006-10-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

At the beginning there was only one. The complete the omnipotent. Then there was a will for individualism inside the one. To complete the will of individualism a thought arose and manifestation took place. This was the beginning of the multiverse. The precurser which eventually led to the big bang and creation of this universe.

Eventually the individualism took hold of parts and they broke off as individual souls (are separate and yet part of the total). This caused the starting of the living beings in this multiverse. Yet teh consciousness not very strong and it manifested itself in the form of very primitive beings. May be what the scientists describe as RNA based life.

But then there was a constant struggle towards improved consciousness as the concept of `aham' got evolved, till the humans evolved. This manifestation was the epitome of ``aham'' and yet allowed the individual soul to realize that there was more than just the ``aham''. This realization would eventually lead to the destruction of ``aham'' and lead to remerging of the indivdual soul into the singular cosmic being without any individualism.

Yet there are enough souls at any point to keep an alternate unvierse running. So while the manifestation was the will cosmic being it was done not to satiate him for he has no need of satiation. He is beyond need and want. Yet the individuals that developed inside of him wanted a separate existance. In order to satiate that need for separate existence manifestation was nesseciated.The human manifestation appears when the manifestation has reached a certain consciousness.

In conclusion there was no explicit creation of human beings or for that matter any living being. In modern scientific terms. A huge source of energy got converted to matter, as the complexity of this matter increased from simple protons to hydrogen atoms to preliminary carbon based life forms the consciousness (overall complexity) grew to the level so as to give rise to living beings.
As the complexity increased the level of consciousness got raised and we eventually evolved. Hindu scriptures say we are the epitome of evolution, and have the capability to realise that we are but a inseparable part of the initial source of energy that transformed into this Universe.

Why men are happier

2006-09-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

My first plagiarized blog.

Your last name stays put.
The garage is all yours.
Wedding plans take care of themselves.
Chocolate is just another snack.
You can never be pregnant.
You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.
You can wear NO T-shirt to a water park.
Car mechanics tell you the truth.
The world is your urinal.
Same work, more pay.
Wrinkles add character.
Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental -- $100.
People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
You almost never have strap problems in public.
You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
Everything on your face stays its original color.
The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
You only have to shave your face and neck.
One wallet and one pair of shoes one color for all seasons.
You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.

One of my favourites couplets

2006-09-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

Yunan-o-Misr-o-Roma Sab Mit Gaye Jahan Se
Ab Tak Magar Hai Baki Naam-o-Nishan Hamara
Kuchh Baat Hai Ke Hasti Mit’ti Nahin Hamari
Sadiyon Raha Hai Dushman Daur-e-Zaman Hamara.
- Allama Iqbal

This truly applies to India. Attacked for eons, subdued and punished, it has always reinvented itself and come on top. The underlying dynamic core based on Hindu philosophy added to by Buddhist/Jain beliefs, Sikh gurus and Islamic Sufis and modern scientific method has made India a truly unique country. A country capable of change, adaptation and survival.

What you need to realise about India is that there is alwasy a revolution around the corner, and yet the pace of change is slow. Eons of evolution has taught India that prolonged voilence has never been to its benefit and that sudden changes are of detrimental. So India moves like an elephant, slowly but steadily. It can be goaded or intoxicated to get some more speed out of it, or shackled to slow it down. Yet in the end it will move at its own liesurely pace.

The next century belongs to India.

Who is winning?

2006-08-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

In my first blog with a political motive, I am touching on a topic that is plaguing mankind today.

Is civilization winning against anarchy.

Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists at this point are dictating how the world should live. Fear pervades the lives of people world over. As soon as people get accustomed to one level of security another attempt to subvert the security measures happens and more security measures are enforced. While I am not complaining about the security measures (I am infact happy about those as they are keeping me alive), but does it not show that the terrorists are winning.

The main aim of the terrorists is to terrorise people. In doing so if they kill a few people it is icing on the cake. The cake in itself is the terror in the minds of people. I first came to US in 1999. At that time air travel was so hasslefree, you could actually come and drop your loved ones right at the boarding area, the security lines were not 2 miles long. The amount of fear these terrorists ahve generated has put the civilized world on the backfoot.

In India a person is afraid in traveling in local trains in Mumbai, is afraid of going to their favourite temples lest they be the next targets of another deadly and despicable terrorist attack.

The terrorists are winning for they have terrorised the people. Their aim is acheived.

I have heard a lot of liberal Muslims time and again claim two things:

1. This is a reaction of the persecution of muslims in the middle east, and in Kashmir and as long as these issues are not resolved such incedents would keep happening.
2. These terrorists are not true Muslims.

My answer to that is:
1. A lot of Hindus have been killed by Islamic terrorists trained in Pakistan. How many Hindus do you see taking up arms and doing similar acts in Pakistan. This line of reasoning is completely wrong. In going for this line of reasoning you are condoning such acts instead of condemning them. Such acts are inexcusable.
2. They claim they are the true Muslims. They are the ones that are broadcast all over. It then becomes the prerogative of the Muslims to make sure that such elements are either completely sidelined by the others or are coverted to true Muslims. As long as they are Muslims their actions will be counted as actions of Muslims. Not all Muslims might agree with them but that does not make them non-muslims.

To the various world goverments:
It is high time the fight is taken to the terrorists, rather than waiting for them to plan their next attack. Burning questions that need to be answered

1.Where does the money to buy all the arms they have come from? Is there a way to stop the flow of that money?
2. Who provides these terrorists with arms? Are the big arms manufacturers not guilty if their arms end up in the hands of terrorists?
3. Who are the patrons of these terrorists? Can they exist without large backings from various governments?
4. What is causing these people to take such extreme steps? Why is that all of sudden such fundamentalist view of the world is becoming so popular? Has globalization magnified the differences in the various parts of instead of flattening them?

I dont claim to have the answers, for I am but one person. I have my ideas of what the reasons are, but not answers for sure.

One thing that I am sure of is that it is high time the war is taken to them and that is why I supported Israels move into Lebanon, but how to do it I am not sure. The questions need to be answered but whether we have the courage to answer them or not would determine who eventually wins.

We are in a midst of war. A war between liberals and fundamentalists, a war between civilization and anarchist. We need to make sure sane thinkers and civilization wins.

I hate flying

2006-08-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

Before I came to the states, I had heard about how on time the trains and flights ran. Alas how my images of US were shattered. In the past I have had to wait for trains for hours on the end and the one time I was late by 5 minutes the train left on time.

But this is not about trains. This about my recent trip to Atlanta. My flight back from Atlanta was supposed to take off at 7:00 and get me to Champaign at 7:45 (it is a 1 hr 45 min flight but with the time difference it is just 45 mins). When I reached the airport at 6:00 pm and started checking in I was told that the flight is delayed by an hour. Well not enough time to go back home so I decided I would wait at the airport while my brother and sister in law went out shopping from the airport (they had a 3 hour plan for buting furniture for their new home). I decided I will stay at the airport play a game of CEASER 3 (a really old game) on my new IBM laptop (battery life of 5 hours). At around 8:00 the screen showed another 15 minute delay. It continued till at one time there were 2 flights that were supposed to take off from that same gate at the same time around 9:40. I decided I would like to know what was going on and went to ask the flight agent. From what I could peice together, the flight crew that was supposed to come had been delayed due to a storm at their airport. Since they arrived late the flight was delayed. Also since there was lightning in Atlanta and we had to walk on the Tarmac to get to the flight we could not go till further clearence. After that the flight the other flight from that gate was boarded at 10pm. Then an announcement came that our flight crew needed to be changed (the other it seems had actually not arrived). This caused an additional 30 minute delay and we boarded at around 11 pm. Well I thought atlast we will start flying but the flight did not budge. Apparently due to the 4 hour delay in the flight the Air Traffic Control had bumped our flight out of the list and the flight had to be reinserted. Another 30 minutes. Finally we took off at around 11:30.

I remember my parents had to wait around 5 hours for a SW flight but they got a 200$ flight coupon as compensation. I hope delta has the good sense to do something similar to keep their passengers. But I am sure that hope would be in wain.

Another paper deadline

2006-07-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I have written a blog. I would like to say I was busy, but my co graduate students would know the truth. I have become a master at procrastination, and at this point am even procrastrinating on procrastination. Well enough about why I havent written for a long time, and on why I am writing another one.

I am actually at this point waiting on a draft revision of a paper that I have given my advisor to go through. The paper is due today midnight, so I am hoping I will get the revised paper sometime soon. I am sure the paper would look very different from what I wrote in the paper before, but hey that is the norm in grad school. That is part of the job description of a good advisor. They know better what sells and what does not, and since I would prefer to have a paper published rather than not, I am more than glad to accept all the revisions.

Since I had time to kill while my advisor was slaving away on my paper, and I had already launched a 2 hr job, I thought why not just write another blog. As always I am hoping and praying for this paper to get selected, but as usual have braced myself for a reject. The bad thing is that right after the deadline I also have another journal version of another paper that I need to submit withing a matter of a week. This would meen a bit more work.

Well signing off and hoping that my readers would also pray for my paper to be accepted.

Parents visit

2006-06-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I am mentioning anyone except myself in my blogs. Guess who they are? Who else but my parents.

Well they visited here for almost two weeks. The bad part was that they had to go to New York for part of their visit.

Well it was still a lot of fun. My mom cooked some cool dinners. Dad gave me pointers on how to improve my research ;). Moreover they got to meet my boss Dr. Mike Folk and my thesis advisor Professor Marianne Winslett.

Well they finally left on Friday and my life has gone back to its boring self. Work, work and then some more work. But I enjoy it.

Back in Champaign

2006-05-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Am back in Champaign. Seattle trip was hectic. Every day I would go to sleep after 12:30 and wake up before 6:30. Sit through 8 hrs of meetings on Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday just walked around for a really long time. So overall it was pretty stressful.

But it was also a lot of fun. I got to see a Norwegian Independence Day parade in Ballard. It was very interesting with marching bands, jokers, and dressed up people and a motorcycle show by Seattles finest. Then we had a really nice Grilled Salmon dinner at Sandy and Todd's (our hosts) place. Well then I had to go to Yogesh's place for another dinner. Enjoyed it too, had a long chat with Yogesh.

Final night was spent with a dinner at Vikas's place and then dessert at Dillitante's dessert place in the Capital Hill area. Ram came over and then we went out and reminisced a lot. Staying at the campus, I had never realized how much time had passed. But meeting all of these old friends made me realize how old I was.

But coming back to the campus made me young again. So I am a happy young senior graduate student. There are so many contradictions there that I can not help smiling.
Signing off with a simle :).

Trip to Seattle

2006-05-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

Well I have finally arrived at the famous city of Seattle. For long I have planned to get to this city but always managed to find a reason not to come.

As usual I slept through the entire plane ride except the period when the breakfast being served. I woke up had breakfast, pulled out me laptop. Didnt even open it and slept over it. The stewardess had to wake me up before the landing to shove my laptop infront of my seat. Even after doing that I conked out. Woke up when people started moving.

Vikas was there to pick me up at the airport. We had Lunch and then he dropped me at the Pike street Market. I walked around the market a bit and then headed to the Seattle Center. Went up the Space Needle Tower. Was a really nice view (but 14 bucks, they should have student discounts like those in Europe.). Then went into the Science Museum (was for kids mainly but I still enjoyed it. Grad students are mostly kids.) Saw an IMax film on Greece. Was pretty nice. They recreated the Parthanon using computer graphics (actual use of some CS research).

Am going out right now with Robin and plan on dinner with Yogesh tomorrow. Oh and yes I have 2 days of work ahead of me.

Summer as a Grad Student

2006-05-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

Another summer has arrived. For most students it is time to enjoy, go on backpacking trips through Europe, have a wild time.

But for us graduate students it just means that we have to work at a higher rate. No courses are taken during summer, and hence we the only thing you end up doing is research. The amount of work goes up. It is good, for during the semesters we have to attend talks, go to courses, and do a lot of stuff except research. Summer gives us a time to do active research.

See the graduate student in me comes to fore. I still cant think of doing anything in the summer except research. I started this blog blaming the system. But the fact is that as a graduate student I enjoy summer more not for the good weather, or for the excursions. I enjoy it because it gives me a greater chance to do good research.

The curse of being a grad student.

Post Prelims Joys

2006-05-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well the prelims seems to have been a very good thing for me. Professors seem to take me a lot more seriously. I think there are really just two milestones in the life of a PhD student. The first is the Quals exam, and the second is the Prelims Exam. The defence actually marks the death of the PhD student. Or rather I should say that it marks the rebirth of the Graduate Student as a fully functioning member of society.

Before the Quals exam a graduate student is treated like a baby no one wants. The student moves from project to project working with seniors (if he is lucky to have a senior enough professor to have enough seniors in the group) or just working on endless list of ideas that your professor gets. Once you are done with your quals you get enough respect that actually people start listening to you. But after the Prelims you are at a point where you can actually see the end of your graduate life. That is the point when you clearly see the golden cup of Thesis Defence. Before the prelims you can see the halo around the cup, but the actual cup cannot be seen due to the fog of research. But once the prelim is done the Cup can clearly be seen, you only need to walk to it and pick it up.

Another free trip

2006-05-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

I went to sleep today at 1:30 and woke up at 9:30. I might be challenging fate, but would still go out on a limb and say that I am over my jet lag. But now that I am over the effects of one trip, I have been drafted into the plans of another.

Have plans to go to Seattle from the 16th to the 19th May. I am sure that this trip will not lead to that strong jet lags. The time difference is just 2 hours as opposed to 8 hours between Rhodes and Champaign. The good thing is that the trip resolves around writing grant proposals for Bioinformatics project. Both are things that interest me very much. Training in writing grant proposals will come in handy in later stages of my life, and bioinformatics is a great, interesting and challenging field to work in. We will have two days of meetings to formulate the report for Stage 1 and write the proposal for Stage 2.

The other exciting part of it is, I have never been to Seattle, so this gives me a chance to visit the city for free. Also I have many friends in Seattle whom I havent met in a long time, and will love to meet once I am there. So overall I am looking forward to this visit.

Jet Lags and Free trips

2006-05-05T02:14:00.000-07:00

I have been back at Champaign for 5 days now and am yet to completely get over my jet lag. In the past 4 days I have gone to sleep at 1:00 am on Sunday night to wake up at 7:00 pm on Monday; not slept the on Monday night; gone to sleep at 10:00 pm on Tuesday night to wake up at 7:00 am on Monday, a false feeling of having overcome the jet lag. On wednesday, I came back from the lab at 5:00 pm, and dont remember when I fell asleep. I woke up at 10:00 pm, went again to sleep at 1:00 am on Thursday, to wake up at 7:00 am. On I finally managed to keep myself awake till 10:00 pm yesterday but am awake now typing this blog (local time 4:15).

This is very new to me, as in my many visits to and from India I have rarely had any jet lag. This time the trip was to Rhodes Island in Greece. Boy, it was enjoyable. Somehow I had managed to get a research paper published in a respectable conference, IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, and had gone there to present my paper. I got to meet many important and interesting people, hang out with my co PhD students from many different Universities. The people I hung out most with were Avery Ching from Northwestern, Amitabha Bannerjee from UCD, and Adam Oliner from Stanford. I dont mind repeating that the trip was great.

Getting back to the theme of jet lags, my time in Greece wasn't free from them either. I got to Rhodes at 9:00 at night on Tuesday after an amost 27 hr travel trip, had dinner with Avery and went to sleep. I conked out immediately, but not before calling the hotel reception for a 7:00 am wake up call (wanted to attend the Key note speech at 8:30). The next morning I was wide awake at 4:30 ( a huge jet lag for someone used to going to sleep at 1:00 am and waking up at 9:00). As if my attempts at getting some more sleep werent failing badly enough, a rooster in a farm right next to our Hotel (it was a 5 star hotel) started crowing at 5:30. Any dreams I had of going to sleep for a couple of more hours were completely gone by then and I was wide awake. The good thing was I able to watch some Greek TV (which was well Greek to me, but the soaps seemed equally corny) and replay of World Snooker Championship matches (something that I thoroughly enjoyed). Well the tradition continued and I woke up every day between 4:30 - 5:30 even the last day. That day I checked out at 12:00 pm Greece time (4:00 am Champaign time on Saturday), went to the Rhodes old town. Then went to catch my flight (Olympic Air), leaving the hotel at 9:00 pm (2:00 pm Champaign time). The flight as usual was delayed and took off at 1:00 am. Through a circiutous root that took me to Athens, Paris, Cincinnati I got to Champaign at 10:00 pm, traveling a total of 32 hrs. Now this was one tiring journey with very little sleep in the planes. I dont know why I wasn't able to sleep in the flight this time around. Usually as soon as I sit on my seat in a plane and the plane starts moving I just conk out. I do not even recline my seat. I rarely feel the plane take off, and wake up only when the thrust of landing hits me. But this time around I just wasnt able to get any real sleep. But well, did I tell I thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Now that the rantings about jet lag are over let us hear about the free trip. For the first two days I stayed at the confrence site, attended 6 different sessions, including the one where I was presenting my paper. People seemed to like the idea and had a few questions to ask. All the key note speeches were enjoyable. The conference center did not have internet access in the rooms, only the conference lobby having internet access. As soon as the sessions would break, all the delegates would connect to the internet, speeds we were getting were about a 1 KBps. Have I told you I enjoyed the trip thoroughly. The food was great, people friendly, and I got to stay at 5 star hotel for free (my advisor sponsoring the trip).

On Friday I finally managed to get out, and went to Lyndos one of the ancient Greek city states. The trip was a part of a tour organized by the conference (though it cost us an extra 30 Euros). Went there with Avery and Amitabh (Adam's talk was in the afternoon so he could not make it). Caught up with Sameer there, and ate some lovely crapes. Bought a few gifts for family. Came back that afternoon and attended Adams talk. Went to dinner with the other three (despite staying there for 4 days I ended up eating at only two restaurants outside of the conference hotel). Finally fell asleep at 4:00. Got up early, got ready had break fast and browsed the internet for some time, I was having such strong cravings for the internet that I decided not to go to any of the sessions, and enjoy a much better internet access. In the afternoon I went to the old town of Rhodes (an World Heritage site). Finally got back in the evening, had dinner alone at the beach (met Dr Subhash Saini there). Took a few beautiful pictures. And finally returned to the Airport.

To see the pictures of beautiful Greece go here.

Finally here

2006-03-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

I have finally done it. Created a blog spot for myself. I hope I am regular in keeping it updated.