Indian Ameri
Friday
(Long time no rant) The Title
Drained, Depressed, Dejected, Differentiated - First time in several months, that I am taking my research-non-break time to post a blog. The reason - Am in the extreme state of the 4D's as mentioned before.
Just came from a 2 hour long group meeting, and I am drained coz of it. I am depressed, coz my advisor informed the whole group that he will be leaving back to Lex early on Friday just to save some $ on his wallet. He is sure to miss my presentation in the much awaited annual conference, and this time, I have results to show for potential discussion with my peers. I am dejected, that he considered my request to postpone his flight as a childish need. And finally I feel differentiated, coz among the 5 Grad students and 1 post doc, none cares about my results, none know what I work on, and most of all none seem to be interested for a discussion like the way I do with them. It's going to be another lonely year, talking to a bunch of pre talk interested people, who eventually assume that my research is too high for them to critic, and decide to leave the questions to the 'Being-the-chair-I-need-to-ask-some-question' Chair of my talk session.
PAUSE..... THIS IS WHERE I LOOKED UP AT THE BLANK TITLE BOX OF THIS POST AND THINK
"Long time no rant" an apt title. A slight amount of smile rooted out of my bunny teeth, and my mind was filled with joy. The joy of "Crap! You're trying to rant for something so stupid? Can't believe that I mumbled inside for this cheap situation"
A few seconds into some thought, (and of course that painful, insolent, reckless, confident asshole named Conscience) made me realize that I've just had a stupid time lapse into normalcy.
Being different is actually my advantage, I realized. While my colleagues are working on the macro scale studies, I'm revolutionizing the same concept at the nano level, and for sure I am bound to face some tonne of a problem.
Dejection on being called a needy child by my advisor, does prove that I am childish (Though, I should be yelling wooo hooo, I'm still a child, the situation demands I'm a lil mature. So getting back to the mature kinda post :D). With my work-space turned into a swamp of novelty research, and gaining confidence and respect from my advisor, I am bound to represent not just my work, but the whole lab coz I know what everyones working on, and their conceptual basics too.
Depression - I just had some balance in life. It is good that I can attain depression in work related stuff. Though, I'd been the school kid who was 'el perfecto' in the 'Cow gives milk' essay, with respect to personal agenda, I guess, I can truly worry about other things in life too. Now, that's a hard finder in my current attitude of approach.
Drained - Dude! It's obvious. You went through two consecutive days of 7 hour sleep cycles. You're detoxing from the previous work-fun load.
[I am not behaving too optimistic, am not getting over confident over my immediate ventures, not dreaming over things in the air, I am not the normal type I can be - I am just renaming myself "Different"] [Oops! No fun during work time. Bak to the Control Deck]
Just came from a 2 hour long group meeting, and I am drained coz of it. I am depressed, coz my advisor informed the whole group that he will be leaving back to Lex early on Friday just to save some $ on his wallet. He is sure to miss my presentation in the much awaited annual conference, and this time, I have results to show for potential discussion with my peers. I am dejected, that he considered my request to postpone his flight as a childish need. And finally I feel differentiated, coz among the 5 Grad students and 1 post doc, none cares about my results, none know what I work on, and most of all none seem to be interested for a discussion like the way I do with them. It's going to be another lonely year, talking to a bunch of pre talk interested people, who eventually assume that my research is too high for them to critic, and decide to leave the questions to the 'Being-the-chair-I-need-to-ask-some-question' Chair of my talk session.
PAUSE..... THIS IS WHERE I LOOKED UP AT THE BLANK TITLE BOX OF THIS POST AND THINK
"Long time no rant" an apt title. A slight amount of smile rooted out of my bunny teeth, and my mind was filled with joy. The joy of "Crap! You're trying to rant for something so stupid? Can't believe that I mumbled inside for this cheap situation"
A few seconds into some thought, (and of course that painful, insolent, reckless, confident asshole named Conscience) made me realize that I've just had a stupid time lapse into normalcy.
Being different is actually my advantage, I realized. While my colleagues are working on the macro scale studies, I'm revolutionizing the same concept at the nano level, and for sure I am bound to face some tonne of a problem.
Dejection on being called a needy child by my advisor, does prove that I am childish (Though, I should be yelling wooo hooo, I'm still a child, the situation demands I'm a lil mature. So getting back to the mature kinda post :D). With my work-space turned into a swamp of novelty research, and gaining confidence and respect from my advisor, I am bound to represent not just my work, but the whole lab coz I know what everyones working on, and their conceptual basics too.
Depression - I just had some balance in life. It is good that I can attain depression in work related stuff. Though, I'd been the school kid who was 'el perfecto' in the 'Cow gives milk' essay, with respect to personal agenda, I guess, I can truly worry about other things in life too. Now, that's a hard finder in my current attitude of approach.
Drained - Dude! It's obvious. You went through two consecutive days of 7 hour sleep cycles. You're detoxing from the previous work-fun load.
[I am not behaving too optimistic, am not getting over confident over my immediate ventures, not dreaming over things in the air, I am not the normal type I can be - I am just renaming myself "Different"] [Oops! No fun during work time. Bak to the Control Deck]
Thursday
Twist of Fate
Three weeks later, today I had the longest undisturbed 7 hour sleep. And what is so worthy about this sleep? Well, "I had a Dream". What's so special about this dream? Well this dream was realistic. What's so realistic? Well, I dreamed of conversing with this girl who always seemed beautiful to me. What's so good with this girl? Well, the only way I ended up conversing with her was because she showed a twisted swollen ankle. What's so good about her ankle? Well, if she had not had that twist, she would have never stayed for me to join the walk. What's so interesting about the walk? Well, I can go on and on and on. But I woke up from the dream as my roomies alarm blared. I smiled at myself and thought, "Early morning dream. Guess it's gonna come true"
Six hours later, as I sat on my couch holding my left swollen twisted ankle, I realized, "Ouch! This isn't the way, the dream is supposed to work" :(
I wish at least the walk will work in the future....... :D
Six hours later, as I sat on my couch holding my left swollen twisted ankle, I realized, "Ouch! This isn't the way, the dream is supposed to work" :(
I wish at least the walk will work in the future....... :D
Wednesday
Second in Command
(Listen to this as you read)
As the question of "Should I be worried?" kept bouncing in the interstitially pressurized head of mine; as my hands were busy regaining its sensation under the hot tap water; as my eyes viewed its reflection of a blank stare; as my heart composed its tune to the forthcoming diffidence; as my lips suggested a flatline of an impossible dream; I heard his instant saying, "You'll win it over"
When weakness is seeked; and vulnerability is to be realized; When defeat is at the brow; and success seems impervious; When difference seems indifferent; and goals seem of just dreams, He troubles me with his advice.
I fricken hate my conscience..... ;)
As the question of "Should I be worried?" kept bouncing in the interstitially pressurized head of mine; as my hands were busy regaining its sensation under the hot tap water; as my eyes viewed its reflection of a blank stare; as my heart composed its tune to the forthcoming diffidence; as my lips suggested a flatline of an impossible dream; I heard his instant saying, "You'll win it over"
When weakness is seeked; and vulnerability is to be realized; When defeat is at the brow; and success seems impervious; When difference seems indifferent; and goals seem of just dreams, He troubles me with his advice.
I fricken hate my conscience..... ;)
Thursday
:)
At times I wondered, when would my 'motivation in some form' pause in life and what would I do in that interim. But seconds ago, I just ended up seeing my own spark.
A week ago I wished, "I can be also a kid with the umbrella". I was wrong. "I am already the kid with the umbrella"
Some moments are not to be forgotten. That one minute with the under grad Don Jhonson is one, I'll cherish all my life. May peace be with you all....
A week ago I wished, "I can be also a kid with the umbrella". I was wrong. "I am already the kid with the umbrella"
Some moments are not to be forgotten. That one minute with the under grad Don Jhonson is one, I'll cherish all my life. May peace be with you all....
Wednesday
Narty
When it comes to leading a fun life under extreme work stress, I rule my own kingdom. Somehow, I get so charged up that my creative thinking goes beyond imagination. Here is a gist of two funny things I did over the week (Been lately extremely busy with some goal driven research:D)
Incident 1: After extreme brain crunching research, I decided to take a break by visiting a very old buddy of mine at his home. The times when he heard about computers, they were the size of a football stadium and so, he never was good with his new table top PC. He uses it to e-mail his grandson and other family members, and most of all, uses it to copy the photos into cd's. Recently, one of his niece' daughter gave him a circuit city gift card which he used to buy an external DVD to save the memorable videos into DVDs. Unfortunately, we discovered that the writer had issues of not able to close the DVD holder (and thanks to the gift card, we ended up not getting a replacement). He was extremely depressed, not coz of being stranded from writing the videos, but mainly coz, he hates throwing new polished stuff (it's also an object of his grand daughters memory).
Somehow my spidy sense glowed the bulb over my head, and I ran to the garden he had been maintaining for years, and brought a couple of flowers and sand. I took, one of his medication water plastic cups, threw the sand in it, planted the flowers and with a big smile gave it to him. As expected, he threw me a puzzled look. I stood in a lanky stand at ease position, and necked my head towards the new broken DVD writer. It took me nearly a whole minute, cranking my neck, moving my eyebrows, mumbling Mmmmm Mmmmmm, Hmmm mmmmm, etc to make him throw a wide smile of "Good idea lad". He placed the cup of flowers in the DVD drive and we just managed to convert a broken DVD writer (drive) into a cup holder. I had a good stress relieving smileful walk back home.
Incident 2: This one's the naughty part (you'll call it crazy). On a weekend night (say around 3 am :D), I managed to hitch to Walmart in sleepwalk. After getting my stuff, I realized that I'd been under a work schedule and I had no fun the whole day. So decided to become naughty. I took a pack of AA batteries, walked to the watch section, put batteries in four of the alarm clocks, set the alarms to 3:16, 3:19, 3:22, and 3:30 am, kept them at separate shelves of the clock section and continued my shopping in the nearby sections. As the alarm set off, this middle aged man came and turned it off. Three minutes later, again he had to come to turn it off. He gave a suprised look. Three more minutes, and he brought his friend and both looked as if they just witnessed an aparition of a ghost. The best thing was, 8 minutes past my waiting, I saw the night manager, also examining the clock section. I was so naughty that I set my alarm in my cell phone (nearly the same ring tone) and did shopping beside them. As the alarm in my cell went on, I waited till all three of 'em turned to me with their "Another alarm?" look, and I turned it off and said to them, "It's time to work. No more fun for me" and walked to the counter to finish my shopping with a big naughty smile.
Though I feel bad like the sheep who cried Wolf, somehow, I am still smiling on being playful. What can I do? The level of business is getting 'ALARMingly' taxing :D
Off the incidents: I am meeting a hell lot of strange men, and it makes me wonder how strange am I to them. I had survived an entire week with $24.74 (Not a miser, but just been extremely occupied with work). Did a full theoretical online course on glass blowing. Now all I need is a few hundred dollars to pratice it in a shop about an hour away from my place. Very well, nothing much interesting to mention. Basically, am self-swamping for a shift to the fifth gear soon.
Incident 1: After extreme brain crunching research, I decided to take a break by visiting a very old buddy of mine at his home. The times when he heard about computers, they were the size of a football stadium and so, he never was good with his new table top PC. He uses it to e-mail his grandson and other family members, and most of all, uses it to copy the photos into cd's. Recently, one of his niece' daughter gave him a circuit city gift card which he used to buy an external DVD to save the memorable videos into DVDs. Unfortunately, we discovered that the writer had issues of not able to close the DVD holder (and thanks to the gift card, we ended up not getting a replacement). He was extremely depressed, not coz of being stranded from writing the videos, but mainly coz, he hates throwing new polished stuff (it's also an object of his grand daughters memory).
Somehow my spidy sense glowed the bulb over my head, and I ran to the garden he had been maintaining for years, and brought a couple of flowers and sand. I took, one of his medication water plastic cups, threw the sand in it, planted the flowers and with a big smile gave it to him. As expected, he threw me a puzzled look. I stood in a lanky stand at ease position, and necked my head towards the new broken DVD writer. It took me nearly a whole minute, cranking my neck, moving my eyebrows, mumbling Mmmmm Mmmmmm, Hmmm mmmmm, etc to make him throw a wide smile of "Good idea lad". He placed the cup of flowers in the DVD drive and we just managed to convert a broken DVD writer (drive) into a cup holder. I had a good stress relieving smileful walk back home.
Incident 2: This one's the naughty part (you'll call it crazy). On a weekend night (say around 3 am :D), I managed to hitch to Walmart in sleepwalk. After getting my stuff, I realized that I'd been under a work schedule and I had no fun the whole day. So decided to become naughty. I took a pack of AA batteries, walked to the watch section, put batteries in four of the alarm clocks, set the alarms to 3:16, 3:19, 3:22, and 3:30 am, kept them at separate shelves of the clock section and continued my shopping in the nearby sections. As the alarm set off, this middle aged man came and turned it off. Three minutes later, again he had to come to turn it off. He gave a suprised look. Three more minutes, and he brought his friend and both looked as if they just witnessed an aparition of a ghost. The best thing was, 8 minutes past my waiting, I saw the night manager, also examining the clock section. I was so naughty that I set my alarm in my cell phone (nearly the same ring tone) and did shopping beside them. As the alarm in my cell went on, I waited till all three of 'em turned to me with their "Another alarm?" look, and I turned it off and said to them, "It's time to work. No more fun for me" and walked to the counter to finish my shopping with a big naughty smile.
Though I feel bad like the sheep who cried Wolf, somehow, I am still smiling on being playful. What can I do? The level of business is getting 'ALARMingly' taxing :D
Off the incidents: I am meeting a hell lot of strange men, and it makes me wonder how strange am I to them. I had survived an entire week with $24.74 (Not a miser, but just been extremely occupied with work). Did a full theoretical online course on glass blowing. Now all I need is a few hundred dollars to pratice it in a shop about an hour away from my place. Very well, nothing much interesting to mention. Basically, am self-swamping for a shift to the fifth gear soon.
Some things Change and Some things Don't
As the sharp pain crept through my spine, I woke up to see my nephew, kick me to occupy more space. He reminded me of myself, trying to push my dad out of his bed, so that I can have the queen bed for the king. Well, it's been long gone with the past, but life had been challenging and fun filled. Two hours later in the lab, I get a call from dad, "XYZ called" Pause... (My mind jutted, "Not that a'hole. What trouble has he got me into, this time?")
Dad: Heard that there is a career fair in your Univ.
Me: Yup (Crap! XYZ, am gonna kill you buddy)
Dad: You going for it?
Me: (trying to finish the topic) Nope. I've got another year to graduate.
Dad: Ok
Me: (Okay. Here comes the, 'You need to go and see how it is done, so that it would be easier next year, blah blah blah)
Dad: I know what you are thinking. But this time, go with your plan. Don't waste time on such things. Just get that post doc of yours.
Me: (------------------ No words. It was something different) (Trying to break the pause) Awesome DOsome.
Dad: (sound of a confident proud smile) Is he sleeping? (he - My 2 yr old nephew)
Me: (Sigh.... Back to his famous grandson.... What else can I do?) Yeah, just screwed my power nap. What's with both the grandson and grandpa? You guys always wake me up during my power nap.
Dad: (A wide smile and a slight sound of giggles) Nothing much. Just making sure that you don't oversleep.
Blah blah blah blah.....
Somethings change: Dad stopping to push me with his ideals and principles
Somethings never change: Like I not sitting for a job (Good ol' CTS, TCS and SCT days :P)
Somethings can't change: XYZ - a'hole. Wait till I get my hands on you next year.
Off the change: Last weekend, yet again, I witnessed "putting soap" "keeping ice" kind of life in an industrial training. I wonder, why people become so pathetic, just to safe guard their future. Is this what survival of the fittest is about? Called my mom's niece (What is she to me? Cousin?), after 3 years and after 40 minutes of cool, fun, slapstick talk, from nowhere she started to cry. I couldn't stop laughing coz she reminded me of my MOM... =)))). Told this to mom, and guess what - she started sniffing and sobbing. Dad and I had a boisterous share of tummy aching laughter. (Yes, when it comes to seeing my mom cry am a big sadist :D). The great Dhadha retires after the current series. I am going to miss him.
Reason for this post: Though things are going in the happy-fast lane, somehow, I feel a lil queasy with my recent goals. I guess, I might be lost for a while just to achieve something I aimed for ages. Don't know how many friends, family and happy fun I am going to miss, by this decision of mine.
Dad: Heard that there is a career fair in your Univ.
Me: Yup (Crap! XYZ, am gonna kill you buddy)
Dad: You going for it?
Me: (trying to finish the topic) Nope. I've got another year to graduate.
Dad: Ok
Me: (Okay. Here comes the, 'You need to go and see how it is done, so that it would be easier next year, blah blah blah)
Dad: I know what you are thinking. But this time, go with your plan. Don't waste time on such things. Just get that post doc of yours.
Me: (------------------ No words. It was something different) (Trying to break the pause) Awesome DOsome.
Dad: (sound of a confident proud smile) Is he sleeping? (he - My 2 yr old nephew)
Me: (Sigh.... Back to his famous grandson.... What else can I do?) Yeah, just screwed my power nap. What's with both the grandson and grandpa? You guys always wake me up during my power nap.
Dad: (A wide smile and a slight sound of giggles) Nothing much. Just making sure that you don't oversleep.
Blah blah blah blah.....
Somethings change: Dad stopping to push me with his ideals and principles
Somethings never change: Like I not sitting for a job (Good ol' CTS, TCS and SCT days :P)
Somethings can't change: XYZ - a'hole. Wait till I get my hands on you next year.
Off the change: Last weekend, yet again, I witnessed "putting soap" "keeping ice" kind of life in an industrial training. I wonder, why people become so pathetic, just to safe guard their future. Is this what survival of the fittest is about? Called my mom's niece (What is she to me? Cousin?), after 3 years and after 40 minutes of cool, fun, slapstick talk, from nowhere she started to cry. I couldn't stop laughing coz she reminded me of my MOM... =)))). Told this to mom, and guess what - she started sniffing and sobbing. Dad and I had a boisterous share of tummy aching laughter. (Yes, when it comes to seeing my mom cry am a big sadist :D). The great Dhadha retires after the current series. I am going to miss him.
Reason for this post: Though things are going in the happy-fast lane, somehow, I feel a lil queasy with my recent goals. I guess, I might be lost for a while just to achieve something I aimed for ages. Don't know how many friends, family and happy fun I am going to miss, by this decision of mine.
Rising Fall
When the grasp on the coffee cup becomes too rusty and hard, I understand, it is time to consider the weather as "Winter's started" And with every winter comes a new shower of early dehydrated leaves (Am using this 'dehydrated' word a lot). Pre winter jitters are a fun part of the season at least in my case. Once more, while I wear shorts for a walk to the lab - it turns out to be below 10 Celsius (4 years and still I don't know what range it is in Fahrenheit :D) and when I wear full sleeved rugby Tees, it is a grill.
With every fall comes lil' moments of fun. Moments like, you turn into a kid and run towards a pile of dry leaves, kick them as hard as you can, then as you enjoy the shower of leaves, on the corner of the eye you catch a glimpse of the University leaf blower fuming steam through his ears, and you walk beside him as if nothing happened, and smile at the way you just avoided the mob of leaf blowers (well, it happens a lot in my case).
Somehow this years fall is bringing with it a few more tricks on its own and along with it 'a true sense of motivation' for my post doc options. Somehow, I feel that I'm entering into the 11th hour crisis mode which eventually to my past satisfaction has always guided me into the right direction.
The new route to the lab from my home, though extremely short, is turning out to be a path of enormous fun coz it runs through the backyards of several houses. I am starting to like the hang of it (yeah, I truly despised this new route, which lacks fun in watching people walk by and across you) to a level that, I managed to cross the traffic laden road (the only 15 seconds I get to watch the road) every single day in under 10 seconds (never waited for the walk signal to turn green :D - trust me, there never had been a day, that I made it uncomfortable for a car driver to wait/brake for me to cross).
Anyway coming to the reason for this good mood post (in spite of 7 hrs of sleep in 52 hrs and more to come), today I just witnessed something worthy to share. The late 20's creche/kinder garden/really really small children lady teacher took a pile of fall leaves (of course from the pile gathered by the leaf blower), and threw it all over half a dozen children who can't even utter a complete sentence. While, the entire public of fall students din't even bother to notice it, I enjoyed the sight thoroughly. The kids just had fun like they always used to do. And to add to it, I din't even feel partially sad for not having my camera (or my bro's new SLR which he insists on not lending me - he din't even tell me about it for two months after the purchase =(().
I don't know why, but while all the guys are a lil sad about the winter making all the hotties wear ankle length pants and hiding their clevages with sweat shirts, I am just waiting for the campus kinder garden children to wear fur of multicolors in the angelic snow, like they always used to do every year.
Now to the real fall: Today I saw my best friend/ex-roomie have his first experience of "Life comes at you not just fast, but zipping fast" In his shower time of 10 mins, his car got towed ($140 to retrieve it), got a ticket in TN ($105 - speeding on a slope) and the mastercard moment was - we both laughed on the fact that "Easy money in, easy money out", as he was given 2 grand for moving charges into the new job and place. Guess, it's time for me to stop writing anymore in sleep mode..... I'm high on adrenaline....
