How I survived the weekend...

It was not a usual Sunday morning. It was bright, the sky was blue and in the far distance you could hear some birds singing or it could be the sound of fast running cars on some highway. I made plans to actually do something fun instead of sitting on the couch and watching movie. So I went to a friend's place with another friend. That was kind of a mistake.

As I said the weather was great, therefore, I was also in good mood and I got carried away in this good spirit and last I remember is that I was having swimming lessons from my friends or at least that's what they were calling it. If I am not mistaken there were at least three attempts on my life. First, they took me to the water. Second, they ask me to do the breathing exercise in the water and they took me to deep end of the water (which was almost 5 feet deep). Finally my intention of staying alive overpowered the evil will of my friends to kill me and I came alive from that frizzing hell.

I would not be writing this blog if that was all for the day. Their next attempt on my life came in terms of a kind invitation for lunch. We went to a nice Indian restaurant and they kept stuffing me with all those apparently delicious dishes including my favourite aloo pratha. By now I began to think that there is a traitor among these friends who is providing others with all the crucial information about me. There was a plan 'B' in case 'the lunch' plan fails and that was taking me to sea. This time I was determined to say no, no matter what.

Good decision but these people were no amateurs. Contrary to my imagination they had a plan 'C' as well. That involved a bigger and more complicated setup. That involved a giant centrifuge. They lured me into taking a spin in one of them. I am sure that centrifuge is used to separate the red blood cells and the while blood cells in elephants. I dont know how I survived but I know that If I were not careful enough my brain would have come out through my nose.

After this fatal attempt, I think they kind of gave up on me. That attempt was followed by a particularly uncomfortable ride back to one their apartment where I was interrogated and after a huge labyrinth of chitter chatter I was allowed to return to my home. After returning home I thanked my noodle and muffin god and went to bed.

That night I had one of the most horrible dream. I saw that my socks were hanging outside my room while it was raining.


Sasriyakal

(Indeed my socks were outside my room while it was raining)

Wonder

I wonder why,
I wonder why,
I wonder why I wonder,

I wonder why,
I wonder why,
I wonder why I wonder.

Richard Feynman,

 the most useless physicist ever :)

Can we live without Google?

The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Internet : Can we live without Google?

The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Technology : On the Net, a scam of a most scholarly kind

The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Technology : On the Net, a scam of a most scholarly kind

Flat tire/tyre

Its Saturday, it means sleep till late, get up, have tea, go to the living room, sit on the couch, get up go to the bed room, free fall on the bed, get up in an hour, repeat the routine. By lunch time when you start feeling hungry take your car go to market buy chicken and chips, come back, watch BBC Sherlock and enjoy the lunch. This is not the Sheldonian calender. It is what most of me do. But as we all have known, this is not a perfect world and I got to face the reality the harder way.

I was coming back from the market after buying my ritualistic lunch when I felt strange vibrations. My eighth sense told me something is wrong but I thought I will look into it once I am home. Reached home and I saw the horror. One of my car's tire/tyre was flat. Damn it. My first flat.

Look up the internet how to change the flat tire. Its easy. Looking up the internet not changing the tire. Instructions for changing tire:

1) Put the jack a**
2) Remove the thing which used to look like the tire
3) Put the thing which still looks like tire
4) Remove the jack a**

Not too bad. Easy to follow. One question though. Where do I find the jack? Ohh its in the boot of the car. And see what else I found, its the new tire. Wait a min, it says temporary fix. Ok we will worry about it tomorrow.

Next problem, where do I put the jack. It took me almost 30 mins to find out the right spot. Lifted the car. Started unscrewing the tire. Damn it, I have to do it while the tire is on the ground. Lower the car, unscrew the tire (not fully though), lift the car, remove the flat tire, put the fresh tire (the temporary fix) and voila we are ready to rock.

Its already half past four in the evening. If I wait little longer I might straight go for dinner. All the glorious plans are ruined. No Sherlock, no coffee at the corner cafe, no searching for latest trailers on youtube. But I guess this is the lesson for the life. Never change your own flat tires.

Shabba Khair

Sandeep K Goyal

Comedy of Errors

Some of my close friends know me very well. They know that I cant spell any word longer than three letter, with hundred percent confidence. Thanks to the spell checks on almost all computer applications that I am able to write these blogs.

I don't know why it happens but I often spell 'with' with 'withe'. I have wasted a lot of time on the word 'waste'. I sometime spell it 'vaste' some other times 'wast'. Receiving the wisdom from Somdeb made me realize that I am almost always wrong in spelling 'receive'. Its almost always 'recieve'.

It was tough to spell 'though' though I could spell 'tough' very well. May be that was the problem, I used to interchange them  absent mindedly.

The problem is/was not just with spelling words. I often interchange the words in well known phrases. For example, 'tongue of slip', 'thought of trains'. Fortunately, the problem never came to the point that I misspelled single letter words. Though when I first came to Matscience, Chennai, one of the prof asked me to write 'm' on the board and I asked him "can you please spell it for me?". (In my defence, the south Indian pronunciation  for 'm' is 'yamm'. So I was confused why is he asking me to write some meaningless word on the wall.)

Anyway, the point of this post is to advertise an interesting website I stumbled upon today. Its called 'Common error in English usage'. I hope some of you (whoever is jobless) find some use of it.

Live long and prosper!!!

Life

Door sahil aa raha tha nazar,
bas pal bhar ki doori thi,
hum use dekh paa rahe the,
woh raat bahut andheri thi,

apne saath chor gaye,
kashti meri doob gayi,
woh raat bahut andheri thi,
woh raat bahut andheri thi,

apne yaad aane lage,
hum bhi muskurane lage,
muskurana sikha humne,
gam bhulana sikha humne,
hum phir chal pade raste par,
manjil nazar aane lagi,
apno so milne ki,
chahat rang laane lagi,

yaad woh karwan aaya,
kuch khusiyan kuch gam bhi laya,
woh saare gam woh saari yaadein aankhon ki chilman par bas chap jaane lagi,

woh mera antim din tha,
aakhir sahil paa liya humne,
saare arman poore huye,
bas aankhein mund jaane lagi,
bas aankhein mund jaane lagi.