Reason #53 for a parallel universe

Did you stop and think, when you were young and the world seemed like a place that could be whatever you made it to be, did you think about what your actions would mean? Did you realize that just because you wanted to follow your own nose and not turn around and look at what other people were up to, the world would forever be divided? Sure, people can and do talk across the divide, nothing can stop that, but wouldnt the world have been an easier, prettier place undivided?

Tell me, why did you have to bring Endianness into this world?


P.S. If you cant answer the big philosophical question, at least tell me this. Why why why do bit fields have to care about it too? Couldnt you at least have left the children untainted?

P.P.S The only saving grace in it all is that you gave it a cool name. Even though it confuses things up as hell. But then, cool was never supposed to be convenient.

(written after the third time the author chased down packets that wouldnt show up, only to (re) discover that the IP header has bit fields that Endianness will mess up).

Here, have a biscuit

It started out as comfortable silence. After all, we have known each other for 7 years now, this blog and I. However now, it threatens to become indicative something deeper. I'm beginning to question if there is anything i can say to you, blog, given that 90 percent of the people who know you also know me. Lest i go too deep into the question and find answers i dont like, let me tell you about my latest gym.

- Its pink. Yes.
- It doesnt have a treadmill.
- Just as i was about to get onto this one machine, the instructor asked me, finger on the ON switch, with urgency and abruptness and utter lack of context only justified if the fate of the world depended on my answer, if i was married.
- At the end of the workout, I was asked to thank the almighty for something i didnt quiet catch, but i suspect might be something more substantial than a good workout.
- The notices around the gym? Pink. One such notice says in soft pink tones that the management can and will break your bloody locker if you dont take you damn stuff out.

But, but. Its different. And that might just do the trick for me.

To,

To some September born: I am more sorry than i can ever tell you.

To other September born: Happy Birthday! I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gives me, seeing you get old!

To one i hope will be September born: I'm waiting!

To the government: Gimme my money. Dont make me fill forms for it. Please?

To the sutradhaar: Wake up!

To my bhai: Let me tell you how birthday gifts work. Your birthday, you ask, i get. NOT your birthday, you ask, i ask you to get, you forget, i set deadlines, they expire, i set new deadlines, they expire, we build a graveyard for the expired and the dead.

To my 12 year old nephew: No, i am not adding you to my professional contacts on LinkedIn.

To me: %$#^&@**#

Monsters Inc

She'd seen it just once, the monster in the cupboard, but it had been enough. She'd kept away. It hadn't been easy. A cupboard was precious, it was supposed to contain bits of your life, neatly arranged. This one not only ate up the space on its inside, but also a healthy bit of the outside. Bits of her life lay scattered in her room, with nothing to be found when she went looking for it.

Finally, after a lot of time and life and negative space and dreams of courage and victory, she decided it was enough. Yes, monsters were huge scary things that devoured, but if that was how it had to be, at least she wouldn't have to clean up this mess. And if not, well, she had the cupboard for life!

As she stood with trembling fingers on the cupboard handle, she realized that life had once again played one of its little jokes. She'd actually be disappointed if there was no monster.

Bang bang bang

If i had a fully loaded gun, all 6 rounds at my disposal, here's what i'd shoot. After, of course, a long winded speech describing the how, the why and dazzle all with the sheer genius-ness of my evil.

1. My leg

For disrespecting the powers of Vitamin D. For being the most high-maintenance part of my life. For the dull pain that makes me want to pull it out and throw it at people with good intentions.

2. Good intentions

Gah. Enough already! No no, i'm not talking about your good intentions, your good intentions are all good. But in general, they are choking me.

3. My head

For accommodating only two types of computational machinery.

Boolean circuits - hard-coded sections of my brain that give an instantaneous answer to a set of inputs, no feedback, no adaptation possible.

Infinite loops - that consume a lot of brain power but generate no answer.

The Universal Turing Machine would be so glad with my head. The halting problem, at least this once, will be no problem. (Ok fine. Just a joke. Laugh. Dont punch holes in my theory)

Not so long winded after all. Guess the movies have taught me something after all. Now, Looks like i've only managed to find 3 things to shoot at. I'm going to use two bullets on each, just to be sure.

And then i shall become fully headless langdi, and haunt the men's bathroom. Or the women's. How would i ever know.

You change my world

So you find yourself on this planet, see, with this life, and no one tells you why or what. There is you and there is this world and there is all this time, and you have to figure out how best to fill it up. Most people find something or someone of interest to them. They read, paint, draw (which, if recent discussions are to be believed, is not the same as painting), listen to music, watch sports, television, hell maybe even like their job. These are people with read-only access to the world.

Then there is that minority with read-write access. People who change the world, and by change i dont necessarily mean they discover laws of physics or be mass murderers. But simply, people who make the world more interesting for everyone else.

For no particular reason, i'd like to thank some of the people with read-write access to my world. Not at a personal level, you understand, more the sort of people you'd play the 20 questions game about.

In no particular order:

• Simon Singh. For opening me up to non-fiction
  
• Richard Dawkins. For making evolution so damn interesting
  
• Joss Whedon - for firefly. And the image of a lone guy losing to evil studio bosses. But living for ever. Maybe because of that defeat.
  
• Aaron Sorkin. For Studio 60, for a few good men, for the characters, for the writing.
  
• Friends. For making them real people.
  
• xkcd - for making me feel 'in" on an insider joke
  
• Bill Waterson. For Calvin. And Hobbes.
  
• Before Sunrise. For inspired execution of a simple idea.
  
• Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, P.G. Wodehouse. For making me laugh.
  
• ARR - For Aditi.
  
• Chuck Lorre - for The Big Bang Theory, but more for his vanity cards.
  
• Tintin
  
• Batman, Superman. For showing that struggles give meaning to victory
  
• Javed Akhtar - for his words. And his kids ;-)
  
• JK Rowling. For the world that lies beyond platform 9 and 3 quarters.
  
• The Irish accent. I dont know who i have to thank for this!
  

Some observations on my list:
- Where are the Indians? And the women??
- And the complete absence of people who have anything to do with CS, now what does that tell you? That CS needs heroes :P
- People who make me laugh are more likely to be up there than people who make me think.
- Fiction writers strangely dont find much representation. Maybe because while collectively they more or less form the basis of my existence, there is no one writer who i can pick.
- It might seem bit strange to see TV series up there. But these are not merely ones i like. I'm glad they exist in the word i exist.
- It is very likely that a few years down the road i'll look at this list and be embarrassed by some of the names i put in there. A few years ago, i might have put in Ayn Rand, Meg Ryan, Robert Ludlum, Cho (but after Enge Brahamanan, no way) but now you wouldnt catch me dead doing that. No Sir. Or Madam.

Anyone interested in taking this up as a tag? I'd love to know!

P.S. I have almost concluded that i am incapable of writing what i set out to write about. No, really. This post started out by being about how much not being able to remember things sucks. It makes the world less interesting that it could be.

Astronomy (heaven and hell are covered under that, arent they?)

Bhai wakes up six-ish everyday and rushes to the gym. I get to sleep in, most days till after he gets back.

Hmm. I hope the sun has caught up and now rises from the west.

Hmm. If the sun did rise from the west, it'd mean the earth would be rotating the other way? And if that were to happen, would we get to see the dark side of the moon? Or does the earth influence the rotation of the moon too. Damn you Arthur C Clarke for making Space a real thing and our Solar System the place i would most like to go on a holiday to. You know, rent an asteroid, ride a comet. Visit the Jovian moons, Europa especially. What a pretty name.

Hmm. What happens when you damn dead people? Do they get demoted to hell if they've accumulated a certain number of damns? Or are the account books closed once they reach the gates. If they are already in hell, are they fried in oil rich in all the bad fats?

Hmm.

Shit Happens

Yeah. Everyone knows that. Which is why we have been passed on well developed techniques for dealing with it. God moves in mysterious ways, poorva janma karma, every thing happens for the best - whatever be your cup of irrationality. Its supposed to help you accept shit and move on. Not mope around wondering - why me? Why did i miss that step? Why was the exam so hard just this year? Why did that bird have to fly over my head just then?

But, leaving aside shit that is generated by the randomness that is this universe, there is shit that happens to you for a reason. I dont mean The Alchemist type reasons, the universe is trying to send you a message crap, i hated intensely disliked that book. The day i find myself quoting non-sarcastically from it will be the day that i die. Ahem. Coming back. Shit that happens to you because you did something or said something or should have done something. Shit that you can somehow link back to you. Shit that you can and should learn from.

Sometimes i find myself in such a hurry to move on that i fail to differentiate between random shit and causal shit. I rationalize, i look for excuses, i find them, i move on. Once i've convinced myself there is nothing i could have done, its all pretty simple. A shrug and its done.

And now, because i've just realized that this is exactly what the Serenity Prayer says, and says much better, i paste it here.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Its the little things

Today at work this little one and i did something that if i'd seen someone else do, i'd have walked around all day with respect in my eyes. Its funny now, because today i'm both the respected and the respecting. As the little respecting girl i'm all awe and how did they fix that and i'd have never thought of it. As the respected, i know it was nothing more than perseverance and luck and open eyes. I also know:

- The more bored you are with your work, the more other people's problems will call out to you.

- Two heads are better than one. They think differently, but most importantly they make it fun. By which i dont mean to tell you to go Zaphod, although that might be kind of fun too.

- Victory needs an audience. Of a specific kind. Without which it seems incomplete. Insignificant. And this place has set the bar for the right kind of audience impossibly high.

If i had the source code

Do you have things that fall into "things you cannot change" category of the Serenity Prayer, you are wise enough to know it and yet you helplessly rage against it? There are many, now that i think of it, but the one i want to rage about now is the necessity of having to be dropped home if it gets late.

I hate it. Having people escort me halfway across town just because i decided to stay out late, no matter that they do it willingly, no matter that i'd have done the same if the positions were reversed, no matter that they tell me my company is worth the trouble (and i am vain enough to believe them). In fact i'll go all dramatic on you and tell you that late nights are when the chains of womanhood are most keenly felt.

What would the world be like, if i had the source code? It'd be an extended IITK campus, where time is just a number. Where the best memories are made at times considered unsuitable in the outside world. Where the only danger you face at night is an overly curious night watchman wanting to know which hostel you belong to.

Only, there'd be a little more wind.

Some people i tell you. Impossible to please!

It struck me (again) when i was watching the Aman ki aasha ad on some TV channel, how easy it is to manipulate our feelings. Get the right words, good music, and you can make people feel anything! Granted, getting these two right is not easy, but its possible is my point.

Take the Delhi 6 ending for example. Remember the cringe worthy heaven scene at the end? What should have happened is that it should have left a bitter taste that should have spoilt the ending, if not the entire experience. But no, all they had to do is play Arziyan (Maula Maula) after that scene and i walked out of the hall inexplicably happy and content.

Or take the Aman ki aasha thing. With lyrics like

Nazar mein rehtey ho jab tum nazar nahin aatey
Yeh sur bulaatey hain jab tum idhar nahin aatey

you dont stand a chance! I felt like calling out to the people across the border! Dont get me wrong, i have nothing against them, but i know them not from Adam. I've heard the whole"we are the same people" argument, but that has never made me feel nostalgic, yes nostalgic about the good old times, which is what the song manages to do.

It irritates me. I dont like feeling like a puppet - play the right strings, get the right emotions. Oh but i do love the words! What i will have to do is to take the words, look at them from far far away, nod my head and say - hmm, they do fit beautifully into the context, all the time being very careful not to let them touch me. So much fun.

After a trip to Landmark...

Existential crisis, existential angst, the unbearable unfairness of being or even plain old boredom, there is very little a good book cannot block.

And sometimes, that is all the cure there is.

Attack of the withdrawal symptoms

Like Sunday evenings arent bad enough by themselves, i am having to battle severe withdrawal symptoms. These stem from three causes and in decreasing order of potency are:

1. The end of Sports Night
Another Sorkin series discovered on youtube. The man can write and how! Someday i'm going to meet him and hit him on the head head for ruining conversations for me. Nothing will ever match up. The series, its not perfect, its preachy in parts, people are too nice, but they are in my head and. Will. Not. Get. Out. I dont know how authors do it, i just dont. Live, sleep, breathe their characters for years and then move on. I finished the show in a week and yet i sit here feeling like someone has died. Like lots of people have died.

2. The end of Hyperion series
He makes you work hard for the first hundred pages or so, but man, is it worth it! Its about a group of "pilgrims" on their visit to the Shrike, a killing monster or avenging angel depending on which religion you come from. Each pilgrim shares his/her story of why they are going to see the Shrike. One (well, okay, two) book with so many stories, each so powerfully written. The book has more than its share of unexplained scientific jargon and a million things you are expected to accept and move on, but the end ties up the loose ends better than i've come to expect from a science fiction novel.

3. The end of my almost two week long vacation
That i had to take otherwise my leaves would have expired. And i took because i havent learnt to ask - so what. I've rediscovered that i handle change quite okay. I dont miss office on my first day of holidays. From day one, its like i've always lived the holiday life. And tomorrow when i show up at work, it'll be like i never left at all. Its only the transitions that bum me out. A lesson that should give me courage to face bigger changes in life that i'm running away from because of the fear of transition. But doesnt.

Its nine o clock on a Sunday, too early to sleep, too late to start something new. I feel empty inside.

And now for some unseasonal corniness

''Can you really have friends in office", my cousin asked me as he was leaving. He will be out of college in 6 months. While i was thinking, awww, another kid all growed up, he added, "I mean, they can only be colleagues right?"

I had a sitcom style flashback in which i went over all the "moments" with people from both my first jobs. Well okay, it was only a couple of moments then, but now that i have all the time in the world to write and you, apparently, have nothing better to do, i shall elaborate.

Or not. There is corny and then there is corny. Enough to say that work people, and this is going to be a really long sentence, in spite of my best attempts at ignoring them with silence, jokes and frosty nosed stares, barge or politely knock their way into my life and demand to know what the hell am i doing with it, thus providing much needed moments of introspection and shame, which i hope will someday add up to me getting off my backside and doing something. They bring good ideas beyond work to life, i cannot tell you how satisfying and empowering that is. They read my books and on behalf of my books i am very grateful. What a waste it would be if all of a book's life was about being read by me. Just me. Imagine the size of that existential crisis! If i cannot give them quality, i can at least do quantity!

Its been over 5 years since i worked in the same workplace with the folks at my first first job and so i can safely say its not a same-place-same-time kind of relation. So i told him, "YES, you can have friends in office. I dont know about your second/third job, i suppose it will get difficult as you move higher, but at your first job, you will find friends."

Talking about the weather

Since i havent classified anything in a while. I've often tried to slot the people in my life into two groups which i shall name fair weather friends and, rather imaginatively, foul weather friends. Not in any way related to the usual sense if any, in which these terms are used.

Fair weather friends are those with whom you like to "hang" in fair weather. When the going is good, they make it better. You enjoy the same things, you laugh at each other's jokes. They are the ones you miss during the good times.

And then there are foul weather friends. People you want when the going gets tough. Who encourage you, advise you, motivate you or just listen. The world feels a lot less worse when they are by your side.

And then of course are the people who defy classification. The people who carry your weather with them. They can make the sun come out on a rainy day. Or cause thunder showers in summer. The ones who evoke such strong reactions from you, you wish you knew why.

My goodbye present

Thats it. My last "girlfriend" is getting ready to leave the country. To whatever/whoever is responsible for this exodus, i'm telling you, i wont let it be. Do you hear me? My people in England, France and god knows what all places in you yes yay, beware. Someday i'll come to each one of these countries and get you all back to mine.
Where i shall as usual continue to not keep in touch, but thats neither here nor there. I want my people in my country!

About TV, mostly

(She gets back to blogging after months and all she has to write about is Television. Talk about living vicariously.)

I havent seen any Star Trek other than the latest movie (and that too for apna Spok), but this had me nodding along. Science fiction is supposed to be about how a different plant, different technology, different species makes for different societies with different rules. Having a story and making technology fill in the blanks is just doing it backwards. And i went around being shocked at this obvious-once-pointed-out deception and how people stood for being thus strung along until bhai made me see that is is exactly what all the medical series that i so love to watch do! Tech the tech. House, Grey's Anatomy, all of them. House at least its excusable. There House is the hero and the medicine, however clever it may be, is just the background. Its about how twisted House is and how it affects everything and everyone around him. And they dont wing that, they dont tech House just to neatly tie up an episode. However, now that he is becoming less twisted, i wonder if there is any justification to keep watching. Grey's Anatomy is supposed to be about how medicine and working is a hospital shapes people, makes them who they will turn out to be. And they set out all the drama and totally wing the medicine part.

Does all that analysis and resulting realization mean that i'm going to stop watching? Heh. I'll just be a little more ashamed doing so, but shame i've made my peace with a while ago.

Let me now tell you about an ant and a grasshopper. It takes its time but winds its way back to TV, i promise. So, I am the ant. Not so much the hardworking bit but the hoarding stuff for cold winter days bit. And Bhai, he is the grasshopper. All about instant consumption, living as if the future will never come. And you know what? It never does! Never does he go around starved of TV stuff to watch. Never have i been able to gloat about my hoard of serials to be watched while he is getting bored out of his wits. Have they gone and gotten rid of winter and not told me about it so i keep hoarding like an ass? Does the entertainment sun really shine all the time?

Really? You can see the clothes??

I didnt "get" Kaminey. Not the brilliance. Not the cleverness. Not even when they were pointed out to me. The small things did not add up to something majestic, they just remained small. I'm still not sure why he made the movie.
I shouldnt care but it sort of pisses me off that i seem to be the only one.

The one thing i did get is the song.

Aah. now that i've said that, you can begin to shoot me.

I might have been in love before, but this time its real

Of course its a TV show. Studio 60 on the sunset strip. Has only one season, all of it on youtube. The gigantic idiots at the network that produced show took it off air after the first season because, well, because they are gigantic idiots. (I need to learn stronger words to express my disapproval, i do.) Its so awesome, i cant tell you but let me try anyway. Its got Mathew Perry, and much as i love friends, Matt, the character he plays on this show, is what i will think of him as from now on. Okay, maybe half Matt half Chandler, its that good. But, he is not the best thing about the show (Danny Tripp is). The best part is the writing. Its clever, its funny, it... sparkles. I can see how terrible i am at doing justice to it, just help me out and watch the pilot, will you?

I looked up the guy creating the show, Aaron Sorkin. And what do you know, it looks like i've been a fan of his writing without even knowing it was his. A few good men and The American President, both movies with dialogs i've loved. Looks like i will have to watch The West Wing after all!

Warning: Based on what I've seen and read, it looks like he likes to create incredibly nice characters who think nothing of staking their careers on their principles in the most perverse of situations. If they did it in real life, they wouldn't have much of an ass left after life was done kicking it. If such (seeming and probably) naive behaviour bothers you, try to forget that it does while you watch the show.

To give you a sample of how much i love it, here is a scene from episode 14. Danny and this one person (in the most cliched of romantic comedy tricks) are locked up on the roof. They've been trying to get out but cant until the episode is over. They wonder (being big shots) how come no one has missed them. Towards the end, this guy Cal comes up on the roof to switch something on and finds them here.

Cal: J, Danny you guys are here!
J: Yeah
Cal: We've been looking for you
Danny: Yeah?
Cal: (a tad defensively): Yeah!
Danny: Where?

Totally unfunny on paper right? I've seen that clip 300 times and each time I've laughed at Danny's belligerent Where.

So if you ask me, what did Bhai get you from Germany, I will not show you the pink miniature skateboard with wheels key chain that he mooched off someone who got it for free with something and then i mooched off him, i will not show you the 300 black shirts he got for himself and then tried to push on me insisting that they were my size, i will say he got me Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Be kind. Do not rewind.

You think you are over it. Its all locked safely in the past,. No, not locked. It used to be locked when the past was too close to the present to be left unguarded. But now, with time and the distance that comes with time, the lock has become redundant. You rarely venture there and even if you do, the layers of dust make the memories sufficiently hazy to not mean much. It surprises you sometimes, you understand what people mean when they say life goes on.

All it takes is one silly photograph on someone's Orkut album for the floodgates to open. You are not even in the damn photo, but you are there.

And the funny part is, i knew this would happen. I'd be walking the hostel corridors, on my way to my room and i'd grin about the fact that someday i will look back at this totally unremarkable moment with more longing than it deserves. Turns out i am as wise as i think i am.