Blue Litmus

It happened in a bus today. My team mate and I were returning home after putting in a good day’s work at a Brazing unit somewhere outside Madras. The only seats available were on the last row, under the rear window panel. We were a bit uncomfortable, so we asked this old cracker, sitting alone on a seat in front of us that was meant for two, if he could swap seats. He refused before we finished requesting and turned the other way, I thought we heard him mumble something. I moved to the seat next to him, and he began saying something about the seats at the back row reserved for “ladies.” Then began a monologue, where he expressed his disgust at the whole idea and how women misused the feature. He related an incident where four men had occupied the seats and three women had come aboard, one old woman and two in their 30s perhaps. One of the men offered the old lady his seat while the others sat. The two women blatantly asked the other men –”Does it not occur to you to get up and offer your seats to us?” He then asked, facing me , what the ‘ball-talk’ was about equality, and if women wanted to be equals all the time, how about having only as much right to seat as a man? The only thing I stood by was that reserved seats for women on a public transport was not a sign of modern society, and neither is it a sign of a growing one. They should just have two seats reserved for the physically challenged, that’s all.

The man then went on to talk about his work, a machinist at a well known manufacturing firm. He was cribbing about not having an air-conditioner at work. The whole time we just waited to learn where he’d get off. I finally asked him about it, and soon enough his destination was in sight. Any longer and my friend in the back seat would have probably exploded. He got off and my friend took his place next to me. Our destination was about forty minutes away, we napped. Phew!

Our slightly lazy superhero commutes on a bicycle, and loves it. Its funny that flabby people would rather use a fixed bicycle at an air-conditioned gym than ride one out in the open, and feel the wind, and the distance, and the effort.

Meanwhile, yes there hasn’t been an effort to type out a post, but there was an article(as promised) which was posted a month or so ago. You will find it in the “Showers” page, look closely, there are sub-pages in there. Its a take on the whole pointless task of classifying and separating things and people alike, and is also music to my comrades– the Mathematically dyslexic. Its perfectly alright to hate all of Mathematics. Haven’t you heard of Kurt Godel? Google him. I can’t believe he is missing in all math texts, but then I can. What we see and read about in textbooks is just mass hypnosis. The mathematical community didn’t think it would be right to change all the rules so suddenly, just because it was pointed out so late, so they omit all talk about it. How different are they from those that tagged Galileo a heretic?

Yes, this page is going to be updated only once a month hereafter, unless (confound it!) something I fancy should come up, uncertain as these things are.

The time finally came, for us to select electives that we wish to study in the semester to follow. There is some politics involved here. From about 7 possible electives offered, the class is allowed to pick 3, one that will be common to the class, and the other, a choice based on whether the paper chosen has at least 25 students wanting it. So, can you imagine what went on in my head when Operational Research received only about 12 responses? A sizable, limited IQ section of the class opted for a visibly mundane paper on Maintenance of Machines, which is best left to people wanting to become foremen or supervisors at a manufacturing unit. This abominable section of the classroom has the student representative amongst it and knowing what kind of people these uneducated leaders are, this person was volleying for Maintenance of Machines. I wasn’t able to tolerate this misguided utilitarianism, its the reason this state of Tamil Nadu and much of this country is what it is.

Temperatures rising all around, other folks that were for Operational Research needed the paper as an added advantage for higher learning. I went around the department speaking to staff concerned with allotting us electives and the effort has been well rewarded. Now, Maintenance of Machines doesn’t even figure in the list. Its me against the classroom. A classroom of 50% or more clots with no scope in Engineering and the rest of us slightly more passionate folks.

Meanwhile, I just downloaded several eBooks. “Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, “The Special and General Theories of Relativity” by Albert Einstein, four Wodehouses namely “Love Among Chickens”, “My Man Jeeves”, “Right-Ho Jeeves”, “Mike and Psmith”.

Right-ho Jeeves is the funniest Jeeves story I have read, second only to Ring for Jeeves. I could send these to anyone interested.

toodle pip!

It has been 3 months and 2 weeks without an update (I changed the template if that’s any consolation..) I am now in the penultimate semester of my undergraduate degree course and it is already showing promise of being an eventful semester.
Let me begin with a traditional overture (an interesting look at my new set of lecturers..ahem..professors).
One guy is so unbelievably boring and annoying, at the same time; He is lecturing on a supposedly problematic paper, but he goes on and on and on, slowing down time. Some folks in class fell asleep but he wouldn’t tolerate that either, he walked across to the dormant section of the class and woke them all up! What a nuisance…”Wake up and listen to this new lullaby.”!?!?
Quite in contrast is another chap, fairly youngish. He doesn’t care if students sleep or go yap-yap-yap. The problem is that as the yapping grows louder, so does he. Its that sharp and loud voice he has that irritates and stresses out the inner ear percussion. We haven’t understood what he intends teaching us, so his method is anything but effective.
Computer Integrated Manufacturing is an interesting and well established field of study, the prof comes well prepared for the lecture, but we students are not. There are these long pauses that activate the sleep system and just when the curtain falls, he starts off from where he’d left. Its quite the ordeal sitting in class.
We have an electronics paper also, and this guy is just up our arses the whole time. He talks fast and doesn’t stop till the clock signals close of play. By the time he’s through, we’re out of breath. Phew!
Wimbledon 2007 ended on a happy note with Federer taking the honors as expected (like anyone has a chance). He teased Nadal in that final set when he faced 5 break-points in two successive service games and came out stronger. When Nadal couldn’t make much of it, he took the match beyond Nadal. I liked Soderling’s psychological tricks in his game against Nadal. Nadal was just furious. Nadal pulls his shorts out of his ass-crack after every rally and Soderling deliberately imitated this disgusting act with Nadal watching, now that must hurt. Hehehe.
A large group of monkeys have started to live on the college campus. They are multiplying as well. The college management decided to set up cages to trap them. Surprisingly, these cages have a couple of tomatoes for bait (and the whole time I thought they liked bananas!). The cages were around for a few weeks but now they’re gone (the cages I mean, the monkeys remain). I guess they must have found some staff member trapped in one of the cages trying to steal the tomatoes. I mean, my God!
Have you ever been assaulted by a large monkey while you were just minding your own business? huh? No? Then you probably don’t know how I feel.

Photographites has moved to a blog of its own, that should turn into an art gallery some years from now.

Click Here to Navigate.

…and other gymnasium accounts for the doin-nothing-right-now reader. All these are true accounts of people I know and I have not exaggerated any of them. I shan’t be mentioning any names so as to protect identity and prevent embarrassment(‘cos one of these is my own). Without further adieu…
“The guy made me do 4 sets of 10 barbel movements with 20 kilograms of effective weight. I felt great afterwards until I reached home and hit the shower. I realised that I could not rub soap on my chest, my biceps were so bloody stiff.
The “guy” in mention is the trainer of course, and our case now does 25 kg barbels in a closed room so no one has to hear the screaming or for that matter watch the grimacing.

“I couldn’t climb down stairs, walk, or run after four different leg exercises. Not to mention that I couldn’t sit in a slow controlled way or even try and get up. My quadriceps were hurting. Must be those abominable squatting exercises with a load of 25 kilos on my shoulder exclusive of my own weight.”

Then there’s this guy who does bench-chest presses with 75 kilograms effective free weights. He had this to report.

“I sometimes hear a ‘click’ on my lower back when I walk. My wrists are numb so I’m not able to judge how much I’m twisting the throttle on my motorcycle and I think I broke my brother’s hand when I shook it yesterday. And some lesser known muscles under my chin hurt when I laugh. I suspect its those funny facial expressions that I make when I’m ya-know pushing myself.”

I have not seen this guy for about 2 weeks now. I suspect he’s changed timings or is at a local hospital. There is this large lady who’s been at the gym for at-least 3 months on a weight reduction program. She’s lost only time so far. The trainer was as nonplussed as she. He asked her to get some medical tests done—she probably has a thyroid problem is his hunch.

Moving away from the gymnasium some 35 odd kilometres, at my college, we are quite pained by one paper in particular called Heat and Mass Transfer. The former head of the department engages the class and I must say, its nearly as productive as the one-and-half hour bus journey to the institution. All the seniors are celebrating their final days at college. The men showed up in “traditional south-Indian” apparel, which basically is a white single bed-sheet folded around the hip restricting normal walking movement. Running of course is out of the question unless you’d want to be an amusement.

A very eventful 3 weeks went by. We got to see the Oscar winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” and if politicians and other dumb rich men world wide still don’t get the hint, its time to kill them all. They’re just lucky I don’t own a gun with a bore as wide as the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

That thin layer of atmosphere is thickening because people go around in cars…alone, just because they can afford it. In 50 years or less, there’s going to be no water to drink, then we can all see what these idiots can afford. Everyone below the age of 50 must use public transport or car-pools. This should be made a law, because unless that is done, people think that they should just live their wretched lives and have as much fun as possible. Knuckleheads!

Moving on to the microscopic level, to things that concern me, Ashok Leyland came to our campus and picked me from a possible 60 and some post-graduate students. That’s where I am headed after I graduate. Must have been that biofuel project that I am doing, and my performance in their “stress interview” as they call it.

Fellow bloggers will be proud that I too have a month missing in the archives. Its been a long break, one that I am glad about. A quiet holiday at home transformed in to a series of one-night-stands at various places. So, after about four christen-our-crib-with-fusion-music performances, I am now back in college to begin cramming for semester 6.

The new article has been posted in ‘Passing Showers.’ Its called “Interrupt” and only because I didn’t quite know what else to call it. Happy reading!

As for regular posting, there should be something after Diwali sometime.

Just thought I’d do something before there are missing entities in the blog archive. The promised article is still in drafting; been way too busy. Which also leads me to think that I probably started this thing only because I had a lot of time on my hands(in hostel).

But the first two years of this Engineering syllabi were not as demanding as it is now. Meanwhile, I changed the template. WordPress guys have been gifting these quite regularly, and I have been switching to newer, more elegant ones ever since.

North Korea is proving to be a bit of a handful for the United States. I quite like it. So the North Korean leaders have also taken some hints from our man Ahmedinejad , who said in an interview that Bush must change his foreign policies. The world cannot see his stature diminishing on a regular basis like it is now.

If 98.4 F is the normal human body temperature then 100F is the threshold to normalcy, proper response to stimuli, and functioning of the human body. I know. I lived with that for three days last week.
It began in a bus ride back home from just another day at college with just a mere throat infection that I have never had in the last 20 years. Never thought I’d hate the bus so much. I don’t remember a damn thing of that journey, just that I was glad to get off and hit the sack.
I made it to college the next day, and it grew back in the afternoon. This time the medic at the college gave me a Dolopar. This stuff is a lifesaver. Its a paracetamol-caffeine combo with a punch, although the concentration is comparable to a Crocin (500mg). Kept me going for the rest of the day but it didn’t solve the throat infection. Some anti-biotics have taken care of that. Amidst this fracas, the college’s Mechanical Engineering Department (that’s us) had another edition of its Technical fest and it was a grand success compared to last years’ mayhem. We finally had the right guys on the job.

Oh I completely forgot about my latest set of Professors and lecturers. Let me not waste any more time.The best one we have this semester is our Machine Design prof. He is loud, clear and doesn’t mix up the fundamentals. If only he’d wear his pants a little lower…at the waist atleast. Very jovial fella and we keep him in good humor.