Chandu ke chacha

I have a cousin, who is really cute. She must have been 10 years old when this incident happened. I was visiting India and I happened to have a camcorder handy. I saw that this cousin dances really well and I recorded her dancing to the tunes of a couple of songs.

I was particularly impressed by her. I wanted to dance and have fun too. So, I asked her whether she could teach me a few steps and whether we could dance together to a song and capture it on film. We both were very thoroughly excited by the idea. She selected a song "Chandu ke chacha" for the dance. (This song is based on a tongue twister. )

She showed me the steps in the dance and we started the training in earnest. Half an hour into the training, I realized that this was a bad idea - me being a bad dancer and all - and I wanted to opt out of this business. My cousin, though, had different plans and she refused to take a no for an answer. I had no choice but to continue practicing and eventually, we did dance and capture it on film.

I am now grateful to my cousin for having forced the issue. I had a lot of fun dancing with her. My friends who watched this had even more fun, I suspect.

Reflections of 2005 - 2

Tsunami and other natural disasters: Technically, the tsunami was in 2004. Yet, I am inclined to count its effect in 2005 as well. It seemed like the number of natural disasters in 2005 were unusually high. I wonder if this is the perceived effect of a better-connected world. Or are we more disaster-prone? If the latter is the case, is it our doing? At any rate, the Atlantic hurricane season was the busiest on record. Is global warming playing mischief here? And the case of the colossal Mumbai rains seems to have been worsened by encroaching of the banks of Mithi river.

Some people ascribe these disasters as god's way of telling us to mend our ways [sic]. Being a doubter, I am inclined not to believe this explanation. (These disasters aside, I strongly believe that we need to mend our ways.)

Response to these disasters: A great test of a society is how it reacts to these disasters. Does it take care of the affected? It does not seem like the US lived up to its expectations. The president himself admitting to serious lapses in the federal relief operation does not bode very well.

While the tsunami did mobilize a show of support and a lot of donations across the globe, my friend, who is involved in running an orphanage made a poignant point. The donations to the orphanage reduced because people diverted their contributions to the tsunami-affected. I am not trying to blame anyone here. Merely making a point. Please do not consider this a rant.

Reflections on 2005 - 1

Well, the end of the year is around the corner. The next few posts will be about the year that went by and the good, the bad, and the ugly incidents that happened during the year. I am a die-hard optimist. So, let me begin with the good ones. I would very much like to not go past the good incidents of the year. Sadly, however, there are bad and ugly incidents that have to be mentioned, for completeness.

Wikipedia: Wikipedia is an excellent website that I have spent countless hours reading about stuff I had no clue about, learning about things I was interested in but did not how to collect information.

Summer trip to India: My trips to India in the past have been in winter and I had not had mangoes (the good ones) in the past 4 years. This time around, a summer trip to India solved the problem and I tried my best to compensate for this by eating lots of mangoes. Thankfully, my stomach cooperated.

Mangoes aside, the trip itself was particularly entertaining and enjoyable. I reconnected with a lot of acquaintances. I was particularly impressed meeting Prof. Dhamodharan, who has worked on rain water harvesting (RWH) and on a project to convert kitchen waste into manure at my alma mater. More about the RWH project here.

Travel: I do not like traveling much. However, I enjoyed most of the traveling I did this year. And, believe me, it was a lot of it. In 5 months (January to May) I had visited Longmont (CO), New York city, New Jersey, Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Venice, Verona (both in Italy), Boston. Phew. And then I topped it all with an India trip. After this, I decided enough was enough and I stayed put at home, skipping an opportunity to go to Adelaide. This can wait.

Summer@NJ: This was the second summer I spent in NJ doing an internship. I enjoyed my stay there thoroughly, thanks to the excellent set of friends I made there.

To be continued...

Eye care

During my graduate studies, I would spend a lot of time staring at a computer monitor, either doing research or reading up about something exciting online. I realized that this called for some eye care measures and I called on my friend, philosopher, and guide - Google.com - to rescue me. Google threw up a few interesting links. This link caught my eye. While the jal neti was beyond me, I decided to do the eye exercises recommended at the end of the article and the pranayama. I did it for a few months. During this period, one of my friends, KB, happened to drop by at home and asked me whether I practiced yoga. I answered in the affirmative and proceeded to show him the eye exercises.

Cut to six months later. As has been the case with me, I had lost steam in doing the eye-exercises and had abandoned doing them regularly. KB dropped by again and happened to mention the eye exercises. After our last meeting he had talked about the same eye exercises with his mother. His mother had some problems with the eye like frequent watering of the eyes and irritation in the eyes and had been visiting an optometrist. His mother decide to give these exercises a shot and by the next visit (probably a couple of months) there was a marked improvement. So much that, the optometrist merely inspected her eyes and asked her whether she was doing any eye exercises.

I was pleasantly surprised when I heard this incident. I realized that these eye exercises were powerful and I decided to do these regularly. I can vouch for their efficacy at a personal level. In another incident, my friend R was complaining about irritation in the eyes, thanks to watching the monitor incessantly. I pointed out these exercises. Lo and behold, it took him a mere week or two to achieve a turn-around.

I have been doing these exercises for something like 2 or 3 years now and now I end up doing these exercises 4-5 times a week. I wonder whether there is any scientific study assessing the benefits of these eye exercises. Well, if there is not any, then it is probably a good idea to undertake one of these.

However, not all my friends who have tried this have had success stories. One of my friends has abandoned the eye exercises, complaining of an ache in the eyes. But, personally, I have not had any trouble over the past year or two.

A visit to the optometrist

This incident must have happened when I was 10 or 12. It was a common belief among my acquaintances at that time that bespectacled people were smart. My elder brother has spectacles and at some point I got sick and tired of hearing about my brother's purported smartness and decided that I needed spectacles to be on par with him in our sibling-rivalry. I tagged along with him when he went to the optometrist for his annual visit.

After the optometrist was done with my brother, I went in and sat on a chair. I had visions of a bespectacled me acknowledging the compliments from all and sundry. This reverie was broken by the optometrist, who pointed to a chart with letters in different sizes and asked me to read them out aloud. Oooh, challenges. I love them. I read out all the letters. "Piece of cake," I told myself, "now I get my spectacles."

The optometrist looked pleased and told me, "Son, you have good vision. You do not need spectacles." I was devastated. I had been cheated. The rules of the game were not fully and clearly explained to me.

I had to think fast. What were the other symptoms my brother complained about? I was walking out of the room when a brain-wave stuck me. I turned around and stammered, "B-B-But, I have , ah, irritation, ahem, in my eyes." The optometrist looked concerned. He inspected my eyes, giving me a glimmer of hope, only to dash them promptly. With a flourish of his hand, he conjured up a small bottle and told me, "Put two drops in each of your eyes, twice daily."

I walked out of the room, only to lock eyes with my bespectacled brother, who seemed to be mocking at me. Aaaargh!

Languages

I know a German-Irish couple who have a son. The German talks to the kid in German while the Irish mother talks to the kid in English. I felt that this was quite commendable on the part of the parents to make an effort to teach the kid multiple languages. I believe (without much scientific evidence and only from experience) that every language has a unique thought process associated with it. A language might express an idea quite succinctly and clearly while another language might express the same idea in a very indirect manner. Take for instance, karma in Sanskrit. English originally did not have a succinct way of describing karma and it borrowed the idea form Sanskrit. So, knowing multiple languages seems like a good idea since it enriches the available thought processes.

I am quite competent in four languages, English, Hindi, Konkani, and Telugu. I can read, write, and fluently speak in all of the above languages, save Konkani. (Konkani does not have a script.)

My mother tongue is Konkani and we speak Konkani at home. I was brought up in Hyderabad where Telugu and Hindi are the languages in use. English of course serves as a lingua franca, which was taught in school. Of course, Telugu and Hindi were also taught in school.

I also happen to know a smattering of Kannada and Tamil. Kannada because my parents were originally from Karnataka and they knew Kannada. Any secrets at home would be exchanged between them in Kannada if my brother and/or I were around. So, it was of paramount importance for us to learn Kannada to the extent of understanding it, which we did. :)

As for Tamil, I stayed in Chennai for 4 years and picked up only the phrase "Ennake Tamil teriyaade" which means "I dont know Tamil". Only later did I have a Tamilian roommate who started off by showing me Tamil movies with subtitles, and once I got addicted to Tamil movies, would screen movies without subtitles! It was a very effective way of teaching me a language. additionally, I am in a large Tamil crowd here and have picked up a fair bit of Tamil.

Besides, human languages I have been quite interested in programming languages as well. I do not program much but whatever little I do, I try to do in C. I am quite fascinated by C. One of my most treasured items is an autographed (by both the authors) copy of the book on C by Kernighan and Ritchie.

Netiquette

Adarsh (All names changed to protect provacy. I have been dying to use this phrase since childhood. At last!) pointed out to me that most people do not follow etiquette when writing emails, triggering a few reactions.

I was astonished about a few things.

* That there is an etiquette for something as seemingly trivial as posting emails.
* That I did not foresee there being an etiquette.

On hindsight, it appears pretty obvious that any social interaction would also involve an etiquette and I was more astonished by my foresight failing me. I made a mental note to hunt up some so-called netiquette rules and tips.

Netiquette involves a few "obvious" rules that make life easier for the recipient without much additional burden on the author. My apologies for not providing any links from this blog to read more about netiquette but a google search should do the trick.

Why do people write blogs? Why do people spend time writing about their feelings which are displayed then to other people whom the authors do not even know? Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to write a blog and see if it provides me with interesting and enriching experiences.

This is pretty much the first time that I am writing my thoughts out for the rest of the universe to read into (the part of the universe that is caught up in the web). As a result, I see myself going through the process of erring, realizing my follies (with help from readers like you), and finally making up for it.

A bit about myself and the background I come from. I am originally from Hyderabad, India. I call Champaign, United States my current home where I am continuing my studies. I am a socially out-going and a (usually) cheerful person and like to have company. I like animals in general but I am particularly enthralled by cats and dogs.

I find great joy in learning new activities and it has been routinely the case that I invest time in learning an activity only to abandon the activity when I am comfortable with the activity only to pick up a fresh activity. Juggling, swing-dancing, playing musical instruments like tabla, mbira. There have been some exceptions to the rule like swimming and I am thankful to life's little mercies in this regard.

I also like to learn about new things and spend a lot of time on the Internet, in general, and on Wikipedia in particular fuelling my hobby.

Do drop in a line, if only to say hi whenever you feel like it.