Talking Science

I don't like scientific, technical writing. Period. 

Apart from the fact that everything has to be accompanied by a proof which is enough to discourage disorganized article-readers like me it is amazingly boring. I read articles at train stations and due to the chronic absence of stapler at my desk, I sometimes leave half of my reference on the dining table. Then when I come to work I always have a pathological longing to write about the parts that have been left on the dining table. 

Scientific writing for me is like dressing up a beautiful gypsy woman in a black work-suit. Make her wear pointy heels even though she is used to walking barefoot on the grass. There is no room for being quirky. 

I remember when I first got my solvents to experiment with, one of them had a "strong repulsive odor" ( yeah that is how I have to describe it). Initially, because it had a long chemical formula which was a bit of tongue-twister, I labeled it "the stinky IL" in my lab-book.I got so used to that name that I mentioned it by mistake in one of our supervisor-student meetings and Les, my supervisor was genuinely amused. 

I get criticized time and again for my writing style which incorporates more freedom than it should. I try to keep it normal though.

These days since I am writing up for a report I keep thinking of boring words on my way in and way out. Simple rules like replacing the word "explore" with "investigate". I tend to have more "compares" and "evaluates" in my mind. I am off reading Calvin and Hobbes for the past two weeks and I invest my time reading NewScientist over lunch. 

Honestly though, sometimes technical writing is a bit too pretentious. It is a bit bewildering when someone fills an article with something like,"It is highly unlikely that this theory of randomization would not appear to agree with the other three theories published on the matter". I honestly hate the use of the word "highly" and "unlikely" together just to top it with something like "would not" later. 

You feel like saying, "Oh come on dude! Just say that your stupid theory agrees with everything published before! I am on a serious caffeine dosage here!" 

I think one of the most serious impediments in the enrichment of the knowledge database of PhD students is the resistance offered by phrases like "juxtaposition of associated variables" or "aberrant variations in the conductivity of ionic solutions". I know the meanings of all these words ( reading up for GRE never goes waste) but when they combine in those kind of poisonous combinations, the result is always soporific. 

I have also observed that it does not matter how funky your work actually is as long as you can go on and on about it in combinations of above mentioned words, everyone thinks you are the reincarnation of Einstein. 

The best way to describe the physical appearance of my dissolution experiments for example, is "Poo from a dog with a tummy upset". Of course this is stretching it a bit too far I know but when I write it down I have to say, " the end result of the dissolution experiment is a dark brown low viscosity fluid". Now anyone would remember it more the first way than the second. 

When I get a nice infra red peak I feel like calling it , "beautiful, slim peak at 1700" but instead I have to call it attenuated or sharp. 

It is one thing doing experiments and another writing about them! For in the lab, you always see people talking to their reactions. 

"Look at my HPLC data!! Isn't it absolutely gorgeous? Aww you little funny peak there! How cute you look in this clear background!"

Or sometimes when something is not happening,"Come on you little piece of S***. Turn brown!! That is what I want!!"

In the end however, as much fond as you are of all the little reactions that you make,when you write it down it turns just as tasteless as the paper that it is printed on!

God help me finish this report!!

Leela and Mayah

I keep coming back to Osho all the time.
I read this story in one of the Alpha to Omega books by Osho which talk about the teachings of Patanjali.
Once Bodhidarma went to China and the emperor of China went to see him. He went to him and said that his mind was really restless and he wanted have a peaceful mind.
Bodhidharma asked him to bring his mind first with him. When the emperor heard this he said,"Don't be ridiculous. My mind is with me. It goes where ever I go".
To which Bodhidharma replied, " Okay so you are certain that your mind is inside you. Now I would just like you to point it out to me. Just close your eyes and show me where it is and I will make it peaceful".
The emperor closed his eyes but he could not find his mind. He realized that it was actually a process not an organ. He opened his eyes and told Bodhidharma that he could not find it.
Bodhidharma smiled and said," It is at peace as long as you can't find it".

True Yoga is the situation of no-mind.

The life of a common man is such a farce. There is a mess of present to deal with. Thoughts ranging from,"Is my milkman adding water to the milk?" ( Excuse me for this metaphor for I do not remember seeing a milk man since I was six!) to "I think I should get a better car than my best friend". We are fed up with so many small things all the time and then in between all this chaos there are moments of joy. When we come home from a tiring day at work and our kids show us what they painted at school. Or walking home hand in hand with our beloved ( even though we fought about being hypersensitive just last night).
Then there is tomorrow. The glossy, scented tomorrow that is almost certainly going to be better than today.
All of this is created and pre-lived and relived by the mind and we can't even point it out!
If my knee hurts, I know exactly where the pain lies but when my mind hurts I can never really figure out where to apply my Tiger Balm!
So sometimes, walking back home under a nice starry sky, I find myself secretly wishing that it would be so much better if I did not have a mind!
Everything would be easy. I would not "mind" most of the things that I usually "mind".
It is such a surreptitious word! You don't realize how much you use it unless you put it in quotes. :)

Most of my Western friends here think that this whole idea of no-mind and not chaining yourself to tomorrow is full of inertia! The West is ambitious ( they always have their armies ready to invade!). They can logically explain to you why it is essential to keep moving ahead in life ( by finding better jobs, better homes and better women for yourselves!). It all makes sense. It is true but all this mathematics is a function of mind again! Like some nasty mathematical functions, mind goes in loops as well. Money loops, Power loops and Sex loops.

I really appreciate the word "Mayah" that the Indian philosophy has given us. I like the words "Mayah" and "Leela" alike. Mayah is the illusion that we have thrown ourselves into with our minds.
It makes everything seems logical and right. All our chases are justified ( even though it is an oil chase in Iraq neatly labeled as "war on terror"). Unless we pull ourselves out of it we do not realize what a mirage it is and the only way we can do that is by being without a mind for a while.
"Leela" on the other hand is a nice and happy word. It does not have the kohl-lined-gold-dusted black eyes of Mayah.
If Mayah is the evasive beauty ( that is about seventy five percent silicon), Leela is the little girl that runs up and down the steps reciting a Sanskrit poem for fun!
Leela is the rabbit that jumps out of the magicians hat.
Mayah, is really God's Leela just to keep his little kids busy with something to do! Only some of them realize that they have been given balls of wool to play with and I think Patanjali was one of them!

Disillusion

The author of this blog is (supposed to be) busy gearing up for a "show us what you did with our money for a year" report. Sincere apologies for not being regular!

Over a long period of about ten years, I had confirmed that I am among the top two percent when it comes to "interesting" people. There are certain basic things that you need to be very confident about ( without sounding like a big show off) and being an interesting person is certainly one of them. I should specify that I mean interesting in all the absolute form and not like a substitute for saying, "This word is a polite way of barfing".

I am also confident about other things without any doubt or fake humility. For example,I know I am fit. I know that I know enough exotic words in English to freak out an average Australian. :)

However, sometimes you come across one little moment in your life that makes you wonder if you have in fact all these days been  living an illusion. Not that it really matters for I believe that life is an illusion anyway! Most of my "certain" conclusions are God's "Joke of the Day". 

I must confess though that I am not particularly proud of this disillusion. 

I went into my stats class one day ( equipped with skillfully "made" up jokes on the probability theory) and began my lecture. Twenty minutes into it ( As I was firing away at sixty words per minute) I saw my student phasing out. I thought it was just one of those paranoid imaginations of mine and went on. Ten minutes later I saw him look down for a while and then jerk up as though he had just realized that he was supposed to do something. Then every five minutes later he would jerk again and it took me about three sets of these kind of jerks to realize that he was trying to ward off sleep. It was an outright insult! 

So what if I am talking about mutually exclusive events! Isn't that interesting when I tell you little (sad) stories about blondes and brunettes belonging to two mutually exclusive sets??!!

Every time he tried to fight sleep I remembered how much time and effort I had taken to make this lecture more interesting and it indeed was! At least in my bathroom mirror with toothbrush in one hand! 

One hour into it and I became really depressed all of a sudden. I had this massive cloud of sadness looming over me. I asked him to go out and get a coffee. He didn't even let me finish the word coffee. While he was on a break, I found myself googling the words "probability" and "fun" together. The results were too complicated for me to understand and actually figure out what the fun part was. So I decided to stick to my practiced version. It is funny how when you are teaching, time flies and when you are being taught it goes at a pregnant snail's pace. So even before I could finish figuring out what to say next he was back which meant hope in capital letters. So I went on for about thirty minutes more and realized that coffee had no effect on his alertness. 

When I finally got out of the room, I could not find my way back to my desk because my eyes were fogged with self-doubt! 

Honestly, am I that bad? Is everyone around me fooling me? Am I being used without my knowledge for a reality (?) show? 

Although he did say before he left that he was playing video games on play station all night ( which is a legally accepted excuse in universities these days) I still found it hard to accept that someone could be so innocent about sleeping in a one-on-one tuition. 

I felt like I had taken an exam and I knew I was going to fail even before the results were out ( I know that feeling very well but I think this feeling was worse) .

I walked around with a long face for two days but I had to pull myself together for my next class. I did. This time I had to teach "History of Life on Earth" and I tried to relate it to everyday life by using this .

We had a laugh but it was still difficult to keep him entertained. 

So I have one less illusion to deal with now. I hope God compensates me for this one soon. Maybe by making me realize that I can actually swim three kilometers in an hour! =)

Blogger's Block

I have been getting emails and phone calls from people because I have not posted anything new in a long time! I must accept that all the extra work that I have recently taken up has made my writing take a back seat and also whenever I really do get time, it is hard to get inspired. 

I think to be a good writer or a poet, you have to be either extremely rich ( complete with a butler who brings in meals while you write melancholy sonnets for a fictional lover) or extremely poor ( where words are a way to get distracted from a dwindling bank balance). When you are somewhere in the middle like me, life is full of little challenges but completely devoid of the one big struggle that makes you famous. 

I remember a story from my childhood. I was a really timid kid. I used to be scared of not completing my homework on time or even something as silly as a dance exam that I was not well prepared for. Before every exam I used to get nervous and paranoid. In one of my fits of unreasonable fears, my grandfather ( who is I guess the most well-read man in my life) recited a poem in Marathi. 

It was written by an apparently ambitious, young poet. In his poem, the poet was planning to turn the Earth over ( I really don't know what the point is in doing that since it is a sphere), bringing the Heaven on Earth ( I guess we could all do with this, but if we can get the same feeling in two beers what's the point again?) and he was going to stop the Chakra ( wheel)  of  Time to get what he wanted. My grandfather sang it in his glass-shattering voice trying to reinforce some confidence in me. It worked for a while and I calmed down. Then I asked him who this poet was. Ajoba narrated some of his other ( equally ambitious) poems and said that the poet should have lasted longer because he died at the age of twenty four from tuberculosis! 

I think that day I made up my mind about not writing anything that could turn out to be ironically funny after I die. 

Poetry is a complex molecule. It can only be synthesized under an intense emotional atmosphere. So my current lifestyle that comprises mostly of events like buying a second-hand fridge, finding a new flatmate, filing in an annual progress (?) report, making sure I have enough vegetables in my diet and teaching a reluctant student 'History of Life on Earth' is hardly conducive for poetry. 

I was never really a soap-opera person. So weaving intricate extra-marital affairs is also out of question. 

Humor however was always my domain but humor is like the Yoga of writing. 

Unless you breathe well and relax, you don't really get good at humor. It takes a lot of contemplation really to be able to bring out the funny side of life. 

So unless I relax, I don't think I will be able to get over this Bloggers's Block! =)

Why I started teaching.

I am a confirmed caffiene junkie.
Every morning as I get down from the train, I take hypnotic steps towards the coffee shop on the bridge. All the coffee-shop owners around the University know me by my first name and some of them have also started talking to me in Hindi now. When I pay them, they say 'Shukriya' in a cute Australian accent. I never add my weekly coffee expenses to know how much money I spend on coffee a month, only because the answer would leave me unnecessarily guilty.I like ignoring that number although I have a faint idea of the neighborhood it falls into.
Anyway, it so happened that they decided to cancel the casual jobs in the laboratory due to budget concerns and I lost my second job. I was brought down to being an authentic poor student living on a scholarship and gradually reality began unfolding herself in the form of depleting savings in my bank account.
So every time I stopped for a cup of mocha or cappucino I used to feel horribly guilty.
There is a sane inner voice inside that used to say," Stop drinking coffee. You don't need a second job if you do". I never listened to it though. Every morning,I used to decide that I would walk past the coffee shop without buying coffee but somehow my shoes took a left turn on their own and my hand pulled out my little coin purse from my bag and the residual guilt was taken care of by the bright "How are you going?" of the coffee guy.
I actually began looking for a second job so that I could have my coffee in peace. My friends asked me to apply in the same coffee shop as I fit the bill of a really chirpy coffee girl. I took it really seriously and mentioned it to the coffee shop owner the next day but he very gracefully turned me down saying," Oh I would love to! All you have to do is get a coffee-making certificate by attending a full time course worth $900". So all my imaginary free coffees were flushed down the river.
I desperately wanted to do something outside the campus. I imagined myself as a waitress,a subway girl, librarian,part-time writer ( get paid to write!!) and sometimes in my greedy reveries even a casual bus driver ( Thank God for not granting it). However most of these exotic fantasies turned out to be happy miscarriages and I was thrown on to the usual PhD student path. I printed my resume out and applied for a tutoring position. After a long painful wait ( that was assauged by regular doses of extravagant coffee) I was appointed a tutor and assigned statistics.
Initially enthralled by the absence of guilt first thing in the morning, I jumped on to all the statistics books I could lay my hands on in the library. However soon I realized that to cope with teaching and research at the same time, I needed some extra caffeine everyday and I had happily assumed that my students would never ask any difficult questions.
Now I am almost always stuck in the university till late at night and people find me walking into walls trying to multi task by walking and reading for my next class at the same time!
I am glad that coffee lead me to take this up. :)
Had I listened to the sane voice inside I would have never found out the joy of teaching.
As a student, I would never go through everything like I do now and sit down with my calculator to go over the silliest of all formulae and sometimes I amuse myself with the metaphors I come up with to explain boring concepts like 'standard deviation'.
I went through a really nervous night before my first class ( and it was worse than going for an exam). I spent hours in front of the bathroom mirror reahersing my opening lines and I bored almost everyone in the lab by doing trial runs of my first lecture on them.
As a result my Mondays and Fridays have come frightfully close to each other and weekends are full of lab-work. Now I do not feel guilty about buying coffee but I am really worried about a whole bunch of other things! What can I do? This is life. All of this just for a cup of coffee!! ;)

Happily Free

What does freedom really mean? 

I read this really interesting article in the Times of India a few weeks back about freedom. 

The wheel is considered to be one of the ground breaking inventions that man has ever made. It took us places and it still does but we would not like to have wheels without brakes! 

Imagine getting a cool sports car that goes from zero to a hundred and fifty in a couple of seconds but does not have any braking system! 

Even the wildest and the most inebriated drivers would not like to have something that does not stop! 

I think after the first few speeding tickets, freedom becomes more of a choice to stop than the choice to go on! 

It makes me very proud sometimes to stand under the Australian sky and say that I am free to do whatever I want! However at times when I am faced with too many choices, I call up my mom and cry on the phone. It is really funny to see yourself in  both the roles. There are moments when you think that life should have just come as a set menu. It would not be so exciting but at least it would be secure. 

This week, all the girls from the postgrad room here had organized a "girl's night out". It started with four of us getting lost and going round in a loop around the motorway because none of us could read the map right! Anyway, when I was chatting with all of them I realized how powerful and free women can be. One of us has been traveling around since she was seventeen. Originally from Latin America, she traveled her way around working for various organizations from Mexico, Sweden and a few other countries finally settling in Australia. It fills me with respect and dreams when I see someone like her. At the same time, all of them thought and spoke out of their obligations as mothers and wives. Some of them had left their babies in daddy's care just for this special night out!

Sometimes, just because you are scared of losing your freedom, you miss out on some of the happiest experiences of life. This is when freedom really ties you down. 

I think being free is a big responsibility in itself. Where you have to constantly think of the consequences of your actions and how your life could change because of the choices you make. Some reactions are irreversible and more often than not it leaves you less innocent! It gets you bored because there is nothing new that you could try! It makes you old sooner and it puts this huge burden on your heart that I cannot even describe in words. 

You need a very flexible ego to be happily free. :) 

Being without one is even better for it makes you look at your sixes and dot balls with equal ( or no) passion. :)

It helps and it hurts but if you just know when to stop, I think it is a beautiful journey!

Biff :)

I have bought myself a 5 movie ticket to the Brisbane International Film Festival .

Although it is not as much fun as it used to be even in the national film festivals in India, it has been a really nice experience. 

The way an Indian reacts to the word "movie" is different than everyone else. Movies are just like the languages in India are, full of flavor and entertainment. 

We watched  a documentary by Brillante Mendoza that follows an ordinary family in the slums of Manila taking care of an orphan until he gets adopted by a wealthy family in the US. It was as easy as being with all the characters. The concept of being a "foster family" was portrayed with complete frankness and fluidity. It made me smile and cry in various places and it also made a mark in my mind because of the uncanny resemblance of the slums to the ones in India. The contrast where you can see high rise buildings going up right behind the abject poverty in the slums makes you think of Mumbai. 

Amongst the four that I have already watched, I loved a Spanish documentary titled "The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab". This is a really intensive expression of a Spanish chef preparing for something that can be called "The Olympics of Chefs" - The Bocuse d'Or that is held annually  in Lyon( France).

The contestants are supposed to work with Chicken, Fish and a King Crab and make delicacies that please a panel of jury. The best gets the award. 

It was really amusing to watch "food" which is a really trivial issue ( especially for poor graduate students) turn into something that challenges every tiny amount of energy you have!

The rehearsals were hilarious when Jejus ( the lead actor) cooked as though he was cooking in the competition and was reviewed by a panel of Spanish chefs in his restaurant. Every time he has to face a different kind of criticism. Sometimes the sauce is not good enough, sometimes the skins are too thick. They ridicule his sense of art and in the end even criticize the tray that he is supposed to use for the competition. 

The competition in itself is a big event with people from all the participating countries cheering on with flags and banners. 

Since it is a documentary, Jejus does not win the competition in a dramatic Bollywoody way! He comes ninth and happily goes around showing everyone that he is the ninth best chef in the world! 

I really liked the idea because it is refreshing how movies can be made on anything and everything under the sun and still end up entertaining us. 

Being in this festival also gave me the satisfaction of watching movies back to back and actually feeling good about myself because I was "doing" a lot of "culture" :).

It also reminded me of Pather Panchali, Bhuvan Shome, Umbartha, Anand, Masoom, Doghi and a lot more that has gone into me while I was in India. :)

I did miss the typical crowd that you find at such fests in India. A lean man in a khadi kurta with Kolhapuri chappals and a godforsaken shabnam bag. Who smokes every time he goes for a coffee between the breaks. And the graceful middle aged woman draped in a cotton saree with a big bindi between her brows! 

Nonetheless I am glad it made me think of all of this!!