Indian Ameri

Well, it's one of those crazy days of night life, and I'm in a 10 min mood to pen an observation.

From the past 3 night outs, this is what I observed - Within the first one-third of the total time spent in writing a research article, I bite my pen. The second phase's onset is indicated by the sucking of the ice-cream void spoon from falling over the rapidly typed keyboard (while the real carrot flavored ice cream melts on the side). The transition of the hunger phase to sleep deprived yawn phase is ribbon-cut with the lips sealing to hold on to a journal article ready to be referenced.....

The lady version of Bahara is turning out to be a Kosher..... Back to tapping toes, slow head-banging, and typing taals!!!

Little failures of life, little guilts of taking choices, little messes in promises, little reminders of the forgotten past, little memories with meaning, little falls in thought, and little more of the many faults that define us make us believe that we are only humans.......

Knowing the existence of such profound simplicities make us look like villains.......

Still continuing life make us believe that we are in fact Little Heroes.........

An exciting finish to a weeks Friday schedule, a conference for the learning tooth-fairies, and the early spring break for the other students. These along with a few other uncontrollable events left me with the option of fixing a dental evaluation appointment only for the 19th of March. While, the 'mard'/man in me did not cave in to the 'dard'/pain (I still don't understand where/from whom I heard this dialogue from, but it's giving me some cheer faces), somehow on Tuesday the pain took a trip to hell. After hardening eight chewing gums in a span of six early morning working hours, I had no other option, but to get admitted in the ER.

At least that was what the original plan had been. With the barcode of a name wrapped around my wrist, things seemed optimistically certain of getting alleviated. Two hours later, with nearly giving up on the last bit of self-control to not pull every hair of the scalp, I asked humbly to the ER nurse, "I've been here for two hours. Is the doctor coming?" After counting every bit of hair I had plucked of sheer pain in my imagination twice, I went again and enquired, "Ma'am, it's been four hours......" Walking back in agony, I started doing the 'expecting dad'. For every ten to and fros I traveled I checked the wall clock and it seemed like time had snail juice written all over its path.

Seven brutal hours later I walked to the shift over nurse, bit the plastic bar code wrapped around the wrist, pulled it, set it on the window gap of her counter, smiled, and said, "I guess my teeth is all fine now. I can chew good" and pointed my finger to the bar code. I finished with "Please cancel my emergency off the schedule. Thank you" and exited. Suffering on the edge along with a few partial things I witnessed took evasive action in such a manner. The severity in pain though should have been the reason for keeping me insomniac on bed, the guilt of such an act kept me awake. Thanks to it, the happiness of donating blood the number of times more than my age the next day all dissolved into a painful fever. Ended up watching this again. Hopefully the fever doesn't hold me from going to this on Friday (Would be 5 yrs in a row).

Today, a mail from the hospital came in regretting that their standards of service could not suit my emergency needs. "My foot!" was the instant remark in my mind considering the fact that they treated really sick, old, and really young people the same way - by letting them wait and suffer till they are Grey enough for an Anatomy of more insurance money. (This is the fifth time I had been in the ER and I've seen too much shit) Too bad, they had close ones comforting in their sickness and holding on to this brutal concept of an ER in the US.


Anyways, the things I found in the seven vital hours of thoughtful food are
1. Pandora can be loaded with Indian songs (old ones too) and I've listened to this like a few ten times submerged in oblivion.
2. Moment before walking off to the nurse counter #1 - I had realized that the biggest advantage I had with the tooth ache was, 'I had full control over my #1 vice'. Heck, I was ready to test it further instead of rotting here.
3. Moment before walking off to the nurse counter #2 - "I'm getting old and I need something to rely on" buzzed from Pandora's rock channel and I decided I'd better start relying on self if things stay this way for a long time.
4. Moment before walking off to the nurse counter #3 - The person second next to me in terms of admit was a sick kid. He waited for the fricking same seven hours for no treatment. And I decided to contribute a push by simply walking off.

10 hrs later - Disappointed of how boring and same my alter ego was to the original me in my dream (nodding in disbelief)
Lunch - For the first time ever I hated the favorite French dip from Arbys coz the tongue has grown in admiration to self cooking (Colacassia fry, Bhindi masala, Palak Paneer, Malai Kofta, Fish Fry and Mango Sambhar in 1 week of home rest).
Now - The chemistry between desi senior lab members and Gori sisters of the lab is so bad that I am tempted to write a 2 page report on the obvious potential blunders of an hypothesis, the qualifier taking grad student has proposed. Hell, with it! I am sending it to the boss with a note that let him do the talking/discussion with the student. Guess, it's really big time to scoot from the current lab.

Today wasn't like any other day. In spite of going through all the technical sites and forums that satiate my daily need for current information, there was this "indomitable" hunger for more. Mr. Grey Matter started to generate questions on anything and everything that needed an answer. Finally, my mind set straight on one important question - "Why the fudge do they use a silver wrapper for chewing gum?" (Hey, life's big questions need a break too :D). All the various attempts that even involved calling the 1-800 number of Wrigleys provided me with no answer.

A break from this bheja fry was evident and so a skim through my work schedule was made just to fit a walk to the univ bank. With every chew of the early-taken chewing gum, every blocked issue in the mind started to seep out. Eventually, the acidity of the thought-burden increased along with the juicy gum flavored salivation. As I crossed the most fluid-dynamically challenged model of a gusty path between two buildings, I retracted back into the product of intellectual aggravation for emotional dampening.

As I fiddled through the pocketed contents of my sweat shirt, I felt the silver wrapper. Cloaking the lost-in-translation-extremely-dried-and-rigid-gum with the wrapper, I searched for a trash bin. There, standing in bold black was the bin. Was it the univ's awesome basketball season or was it mere deviation from normalcy, I don't know, the involuntary head amalgamated a series of serious issues with the ever so undependable physical ability into a final wager equation that had an If Not command.

If I can throw this silvery trash exactly through the bins rectangular side opening, then so-and-so would happen. If not, then I'm very well screwed. Forgetting the wind velocity as a vital parameter, I gulped the instant the shot was attempted. As my eyes focused on the twinkling wrapped ball of gum shearing its way through the wind, I felt "Uh Oh!" A milli second later, my heart leaped with joy like a munchkin celebrating the birthday in Chucky Cheese. The ball passed rimless through the opening. "Instinctively both my arms were going up in celebration". But then.... my 1 million watt victory face-bulb fused into a frown as I saw the piled up trash inside the bin repelling the ball to the other side. Like a neutron squeezing its way out of the nucleus and the electron cloud for instigating a chain reaction, the silver gum found its way through the opening on the other side of the bin. And the instigated chain reaction was, "Was it If or If-not? Crap! Both occurred"

Instead of the unsatisfied mind playing tricks on guessing a solution, a void formed inside me. The only way it got filled was by a sudden surge of extreme happiness. And the reason for this glee was that the whole random event was silly. The rest of the bank job was; as the Italian from Malta would phrase - "Piss in ze 'ead" :D


Here's another silly hit - Today marks the fourth anniversary of me making a living in the hall [9 different apts and never had a room for myself or a bedroom shared with someone else. Never complained, and so feeling extremely content. Interesting warm memory - Exactly 4 yrs and 1 day ago I spent the cold winter night sleeping on a park bench. How silly!! =)) ]

(A sillier comment 24 hrs later - I might try this song on my next karaoke night. And I'll bow to all those ppl who can sing this song without any tongue-twisting-blabber....)

A few activities in life are pursued for the mere sake of being occupied. And once, such an event becomes a routine, one is bound to skip a day or two in the advent of a silly activity. Blessed I was today, that the silliness at hand was worth enough to not worry about skipping the routine.

Thanks to a friendship I was initiated at several months ago, a responsible dad called me on an emergency. Clad in sweat pants and an AC Milan Tee, I had to tackle a 6 yr munchkin with her 4 yr old brother for the next four hours. Although, most of the fun activities of baby sitting involved a certain amount of gyration with me being the pivotal center and they being the centrifugal weights, the tired souls (including me) had their moments by listening to stories from an inexperienced wizard (When was the last time I told a story to Jay? And did I ever tell him a magical story?). A boy initiated food fight (For Pete's sake, who the heck invented spaghetti?) followed by a girl initiated pillow fight (Bless the soul that found cotton and who stuffed it into teddy bears) made my job easy to put the tired ones to bed.

As my focus shifted from the card pyramid to the hypnotic tik tok tik tok sound of the wall clock, I heard him cry. Running upstairs, I figured out that Mr. Munchkin had wet his sheets. Thanks to the help from his sis, we changed him into his other pajamas. 'Look who's talking' comments with them informed me that he is scared of darkness and does not like his door to be shut at nights. Was it the nightmarish cookie monster he imagined from his closet, he was in no mood to sleep or make me go away. After consenting from both his parents, I dressed them up for a walk. Yes you heard it right, I took them on a walk around the neighborhood past their usual bedtime.

A lil princess carrying a pinkish umbrella about her size on one side, a bubbly candidate of a warrior having his head underneath a transparent raincoat hood, a short road lit by sodium vapors on one side, a greenish pined garden on the other, a slight drizzle of 11 degree C rain, the road filled with a mosaic of puddles, and of course, the warrior and the princess clasping on to my pinkies with their hands, and finally, laughing at me for getting drenched in spite of a tugged family sized umbrella was a heaven in guise. After all the splashes created by the jumping beans got messy, we reached the corner.

As the road beyond the intersection seemed darker, I went crouched at the warrior. After one of those special on time Man to Munchkin talks, I saw him unclasp my hand and started running into the dark. As I and the princess covered the space we gifted him in the first place, we saw him smiling wide with the childish grunt of happiness he sounded. Then I asked him, "Where you scared XYZ?" He replied, "(Nodded his head in agreement)But, but.... Then I jumped up and down, up and down the water. Then Buzz shot the monster with my laser (and he pointed his left forearm)" The lil princess radiated with a girlish giggle as she understood for her age that our plan worked. I smiled back at her. I walked through heavens door one more time and we reached back home.

I snugged the warrior along with Buzz on his side and also gave him Ironside Transformers to keep near him. As I walked out to put the princess to sleep, Mr. Kemp Jr asked me to shut the door. I couldn't be happier than that moment. But, yet again, I was proven wrong as Ms. Carla Jr radiated yet another girlish giggle and made me tuck her into her bed. After a dinner of the baby sitting highlights over left over spaghetti and meatballs, I thanked Carla and Kemp on dropping me back home.

I entered my apartment to see several drunk guys dancing to this. The rest of the late Friday was spent on controlling a few insolent babies by using their controlling factors (Restroom mirror, Puja room, and the most common factor of all - a call to the girl friend) =))

Several lessons we teach to kids are the self lessons we need to remember. I guess, I need to listen more to the elder me being a childish myself. :D

Whew.... With 8 out of the last 10 weekends being spent on trips and holidays, the self-posted work load (substantiated by the drop in the interim chat history) finally gets a break for some normalcy in the atmosphere tonight. Anyhooo, before the title of the post is outlined briefly, a few things I noticed in the central vacuum of the concentrated work hurricane are

1. All with the exception of just I (me/I, who cares!!), say that with 3 papers, 1 book chapter and a technically sound batch of nanocharacterization and synthesis methods under my belt; I am all set to go good with getting a post doc position. How come I'm the only one remaining over-cautious/over-achieving? Difference between Idiotic and Craziness is to be outlined.

2. Every significant step from the academic/career perspective of life (right from choosing Engg/Medicine, under grad Alma Mater, jingling job/wise grad apps with their subcategories) brought its own pre-goosebumps and post-air punches. Heck, they even came with their scares of a foggy destiny with a road lesser than less traveled. Although, I (/even we) went through the heat, the past now seems to be passed like a sharp knife cutting through soft butter (the heat being the accelerator). What seems different of the so called one more big step in life from its predecessors is that, the new one has a "relative deadline". There is no specific date for a final exam/interview call/visa date/24 hr crisis meet as such. Either I can set a deadline and risk getting into the big schools or extend my plans and glee out into the famous work achieving schools. A relative deadline relative to my (including personal) requirements is needed urgently.

3. With points 1 & 2 nearly zombifying me into a serious workaholic (for paltry reasons of "This might well be my last chance to see what's important for my career in life"), I've decided to take things the simple and effective way - Chilling balances working (Time to boost that chat history back to original averages with some catch-up). So, here's a new attitudinal blogpage - I see solitude in observing a distant destiny blocked with an upstream-effort-needing ocean. Solitude gives rise to my planning.


And now for the real reason for the post - Switching from career targeted life to diagnostic personal life: (With the sibling and his family starting first conversations of settling in India once and for all, I'd got nothing to loose)

Statement A - I found the right girl......
Statement B - I also found, that I am not the right guy for her.....

Situation - Both statements were used (in under a couple of minutes) at both my parents during their two different 'quality-time-on-the-phone-with-son-alone' times.

Stmt A brought a great deal of grief to mom, while dad was all excited (and proud too :D ).....
Stmt B brought extreme sadness to dad (marked by a minutes silence), while mom had a transition from "I am sorry" concern to "I still have a chance to find him a girl" hope.... :))

After a day of leaving them alone to talk among themselves, I used statement C "It was all a joke :) " to curtail their plans to give me some space.

Now the real question is, The joke's on me/'em/the joke?


Here are a few tunes that seeped a flood through the dam of concentration
1. Once by Caleb Kane
2. Honey, Let me sing you a song by Matt Hires
3. Stockwell Road by John Matthias &
4. Aunana Kadana from Leader

In the industrious PhD world of sighing knowledge, panting wisdom, and choking faith, a few challenging quirks are needed to provide the resuscitative breather. While, the intensity of such encounters deplete with experienced years of occupied life, the satisfaction of completing an opportunistic rare feat is cascading. Okay!! I guess, it's enough that I finish my introductory mumbo-jumbo punch philosophies.

Today, from an odd incident, one of my old under grads saw me discussing seriously with my advisor. My casual half hour lunch in the grad lounge was time enough for the under grads to approach me and remind me that I have grown too professional in the past few months. A consoling survival-of-the-fittest discussion bombarded inadvertently into an inelastic collision. $5 bet on the table from each, that I call my advisor 'buddy' in front of a representative under grad within the day and that he should not respond with a question mark in his face. A reliever from the routine in disguise is what the challenge seemed to me. Challenge accepted!!!

1:30 pm - Group meeting: I knew that my advisor with his lunch schedule today in particular, would be coming early to the conference room to open it up. I, along with the representative, arrived a couple of minutes before my advisor. As my advisor walked along the corridor towards us, I said, "Nobody is here Dr. H***."
Dr. H: Nobody????
I: (Using the opportunity to the maximum extent, sighed, and went.....) NOooooooo (paused, smiled short and........) Buddy(ieeeeeeee)!!! (This was strong, and lucid in pronunciation).
Dr. H: They should be here. Let's get in (and he punched the code in the conference room door).
I gave a successful smile back at the ug representative and continued into the conference room.

An hour and a half later, I was counting $30 from the under grads, whom I promised to join (and pay their entry) at Baker 360 for the night. So it's tub-thumping night I guess.

Off the challenges in life: