going home in a week... (less than!!!)

i got the last bit of visa related paperwork done today. so, in theory, my visit should go smoothly as far as visa related issues are concerned. of course, experience has taught me that theory and reality may be distinct, especially when any disparity between the two is painful to oneself. (Apart from the principle of uncertainty the only other principle/theory I believe in is Murphy's Law.)

I've been watching Koppel's The Republic of Capitalism on Discovery. The intricacy of the machinations of Life flummox me. I doubt that there will ever come a time when a theory will be developed that correctly models our world and has any predictive value. Our world has an incredibly rich and largely indecipherable history that would be crucial to the formulation of any theory aspiring to understand the Universe. Not only that, but it is impossible to achieve the individual-level resolution that would be required. The past is irretrievable and the present is quickly turning into that irretrievable past.

Time is a true bitch. You get older and don't even realize it. You let your ambitions and dreams stagnate while you get caught up in the minutiae of life. You miss the big picture that you cling to so desperately. It makes a fool of you and subjects you to watching your parents age. There are few things that I can imagine being more painful. Probably watching your own child's health suffer. I don't have first hand experience in that department, but I miss Vinnie terribly and so I think I have some understanding of what people go through.

I'm dealing with my thesis. I'll be frank, working with my boss is taxing my patience to the utmost. This is pretty bad. But, there is the eternal adage that comes to my aid - "this too shall pass." Boy, I can hardly wait!

I've been re-evaluating my goals. I think I want to become a professor who inspires students to consider teaching. However, I will settle for a teacher who is fair and capable of adequately teaching the material at hand. Also, I want my research to somehow connect with the energy crisis facing the world. My other thought is that I could use my sabbaticals to spread education in remoter pockets of the world. I am definitely against evangelical approaches to "modern" education, so I hope that it would be a quid pro quo sort of deal where I would learn a lot and impart some useful modern world skills.

gtg..

it's true... life will smile for you...

life will smile for yoouuuuuuuuuuu..... *the axwell version of things...*

i've been reading answers.yahoo.com... its interesting to see the difficulties that people face and need help with. its also interesting to see the progression in technology and how so many fundamental processes of society have evolved. from writing to an expert at your local newspaper with a question, we've come to the age where you have an audience reach out with a response.

its great to see obviously silly, provocative questions being taken super seriously. sort of reminds me of the academic research arena.

feeling pretty relaxed at 12:20am. been reading a lot of what ails others and makes me realize that i'm not insane in overanalyzing things. i've been working harder at growing a thicker skin and not taking things so seriously. i think the saddest part of this process is having to accept a certain degree of cynicism in my general outlook to accept that some people are unpleasant/useless/generally a lot cause not worth even an iota of one's time. take for example my disastrous superviser for example. every day when i go to campus, i just remind myself constantly that i am not going to be led by a logical person, that i will be underappreciated and in all probability verbally/mentally abused by someone who is so inconsiderate that he doesn't even realize it!?!?

BUT... my salvation awaits me this december. he is a tool to help me get where i want to go. and beyond question, the man has taught me to not underestimate myself in the future and to not settle for less than what i want.

it's true, life will smile for you..

Stories like this ... *sigh*

http://www.slate.com/id/2193851/pagenum/all/#page_start

I don't know if the guy is making this up. I am sure it happens. It takes all kinds to make this world go round. If you replace Brutus with an uninterested, incommunicative, brilliant but workaholic sheep, then I'd be Leonore ...

*sigh*

good thing i have my hemorrhaging thesis - takes my mind of Brutus.

I agree with most of this article.

http://www.slate.com/id/2190872/pagenum/all/#page_start

I feel miserably that sometimes my friends are deprived of an opportunity of eating at their favourite restaurant to accommodate me. I am really grateful, though, that my friends are not jackasses who are inconsiderate.

The blurring of journalistic lines by the media concerns me. A website like slate may be confused by some as a definitive news website. The distinction between editorials and straight up news pieces is vanishing; reading a few articles at the beeb will show you that some of their writers now tend to write blog style articles that aren't distinctly marked as blogs/editorials.

I'm rambling. I found two excellent songs by one outstanding artist this weekend -
Artist : Axwell
Songs : I Found You and Its true

Yay!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7465141.stm

Idiots in power piss me off!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7460767.stm

--> instead of spending money on alternate fuel technology, sink money into drilling off-shore. won't yield much, but gives you political momentum..

speaking of idiots in power - the prince of darkness is making my life hell... i am not going to let him control my life.

I love this shirt!!

http://www.bustedtees.com/shithappens

Iron Man!

Wow!! What an awesome, inspiring movie! It makes me so proud to be an engineer! And I'm soooo glad that they picked Robert Downey Jr. if he can bounce back from all the trouble that he has been in, then I can bounce back from my poor academic record... :-P

Kravitz understands me... thinks/feels like me...

Acoustic version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P750Xyt6uU&feature=related

Commercial version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCpu20WxF4k&feature=related

As long as I'm breathing... I'll be waiting..

The conviction that I feel on a particular subject scares me. I'm a commitment-phobe of the nth degree and the fear that this decision induces in me is akin to riding down a really steep slope on a bike with failed brakes...

Contrary to everything my friends/family may think about me I take a lot of risks in my life. I have put money, figuratively, on people/ideas that no one would trust. I did it because I believed the payoff would be worth the risk and right now I feel the cost of inaction is higher than that of action. So, I'm taking the meager action that my situation permits and I am hoping that the celestial gears will click and that he who needs to wait will wait.. and see me when I need him to.

It is tough to manage or come to grips with a situation where all your efforts/hopes/desires/dreams really don't count. In controls speak, its when you let your system with marginally stable poles launch into its response with the hope that your extremely low gain inputs will affect the system and guide the poles to stability eventually.

I believe that if nothing else, courage of conviction will give you that peace of mind which lack of action never could. So, I hope that the universe doesn't hate me enough to thwart my machinations and that it lets me win just a couple of the next few rounds and lets me be happy for a short interval of time...

songs that i like...

The Black Keys

Album: Attack & Release

Song: Psychotic Girl

Gnarls Barkley

Album: Odd Couple

Song: Who's Gonna Save My Soul

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89911762

Why NJ truly deserves to be considered an armpit.

Whilst snooping around my highschool group on orkut (haven't been there is an eternity) I noticed that a certain horrible female, boy I'm trying really hard not to use the word BITCH, but its too much effort... the BITCH that made my life in highschool hell is in NJ, making it a true cesspool of human scum.

\calmer - BITCH! \happier for having gotten that off my chest.

All this time.. and Robert Miles is still awesome...

I heard Robert Miles' Children on my Last.fm account and I must say that his music has something so calming in it that it ought to be bottled and sold as cough syrup. What an interesting thought, if we could categorize music as pharmacological products based on their effects on us, I wonder what the results would be for some of the more ecelectic genres of music. Ofcourse, all the amphetamines and psychotropic elements will be reserved for the dance/trance/electronica/ambient folks, but what about rock? Or hiphop? Or Kate Bush?

I'm 25 now! A little apprehensive, but mostly ready to take new challenges head on.

Speaking of Aussies... the Tennis Open...

is going to be awesome!! I really liked this kid Cilic from Yugoslavia. The way he outplayed and really outclasses Gonzalez was truly impressive. I was rooting for Grosjean (he's kind of hot) in his game against Blake; kudos to Blake, though, for recovering from being 2 sets down.

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Now playing: White Town - Your Woman
via FoxyTunes

Hooray!! India beat the Aussies!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/7197539.stm

Times like this, I wish I was back home to experience the drama and elation!!

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Now playing: White Town - Your Woman
via FoxyTunes

what doesn't kill you wiill make you stronger...

that's what my advisor told me when i broke the news to him that i made a b+ in my linear controls class. i do this awesome thing of suppressing my anger and releasing it gradually, in short bursts. its about the most passive aggressive thing ever, but its the only way that i know to deal with contentious issues. i'm extremely angry with both my professors this semester. i assess them to be C- professors. (i'd grade them lower, but this is graduate school, any lower and they'd be out of schoo! ;-) ) its a huge let down to be taught by anal mathematicians who take the beauty of the theory out of the subject by focusing only on the wheel cranking. i mean, i sat there asking one of them for like 45 minutes, "i understand the math involved in making a stable observer, but where is the observing happening?" and the ruddy dude could not elucidate! wtf!!
(in his defense, he's a newbie prof. and apparently a career mathematician who should not be let lose in an elec. engineering faculty, but whatever..)

from an A- to a B+... boy, its been a long journey these past few months. but, at the end of the day, i'll take my advisor's advice and leave it be. as he would say, all's i gotta do now is wait for the other shoe to drop and see how i did in nonlinear controls. *sigh*

i don't care... worked too hard and too long to care about the results. its time to get done with my own grading so all my obligations for the semester are done with. i love seu jorge from zissou's soundtrack, he has such an earnest voice. i think the langour in his voice is kind of sexy! :-P

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Now playing: Timbaland - Apologize
via FoxyTunes

*Evil laugh* Mwahahhahahaha...

Tis a wonderful invention, is technology... especially the internet... it lets you see so many things...

I logged into my LinkedIn account to realize that
a. apparently they now log visitors to profiles...
b. someone i used to work with very closely, that i didn't have any personal interest in except for the fact that he basically carried me through my work, has quit the job! he takes with him a colossal store of experience and knowledge.. and the evil entity that i worked for is surely severely crippled due to his desertion. (though they put food on my plate for a few months, i rejoice in the thought that my friend has moved to a happier life.. to a job where his efforts are appreciated and his initiative is justly rewarded)

someone else from the company had spoken to me about the rats jumping ship... and it seems. that the ship is sinking still and the smart rats are making a run for it... i hope for my friend's sake that he sees the wisdom in jumping ship as well and finds greener pastures to move on to.. and soon.. life is short!!

i finished a final today. it was an evil class that made me extremely unhappy. i don't like it when i have to play a game where the odds are inherently slanted towards everyone else but me, and my little band of laggards. games like that are no fun!

tuesday, though, is a totally different ball game! tuesday i'll be tested in a class that gave me a fighting chance of being top dog.. *cheesy soap opera music*... and this coming tuesday.. we'll find out... will she maintain her A- or will she manage to bump it up to an A... or... *extreme orchestra music* will she drop to a B or worse!!!!

I'm insanely in love with David Guetta's Baby when the lights go out... (Garraud & Rister remix, in particular). I really wish that I had a friend who was into this sort of music here. Then we could go to a club and just get lost in the beat. I loved this club called Masquerade in Atlanta.. it was fabulous...


I am taking a break from final mania today... hooray!!!

thanksgiving is in the air...

life is hectic... in spots... it is piecewise continuous in its hecticacity, actually... (i know hecticacity isn't a word... i'm a rebel... i make up words..)

life is also oddly unsatisfying... i am unbelievably enamoured by Lifehouse's Storm.. i long for a feeling of security, comfort and support... but at the same point a couple of weekends ago, i learnt one of life's most telling lessons of all... that what your heart and head tell you at a given moment don't necessarily reflect your true feelings.. rather, your true feelings are subject to fluctuation and to ignore this reality is to leave oneself vulnerable to painful revelations further along the road that lead up to the.. "what the fuck was i thinking" moments in life.... (i had one of those during said weekend.. and since then have been gradually reeling in the shock of it... amazed at how wrong i was in the past... at the same time, its opened up a lot of old wounds and confused me anew on some matters that i was finally starting to bury..)

soo, i guess what i'm saying is... that i'm confused and unhappy... but at the same time, i realize that all of this is ephemeral and fleeting...and that soon i won't feel this way... that's just how life rolls...

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Now playing: Alice Deejay - Got To Get Away
via FoxyTunes

just one word to capture what i feel right now....

FUCK!!

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Now playing: Lifehouse - Bridges
via FoxyTunes

Easier to be...

I have been listening to the new Lifehouse CD... I love First time and Easier to be... the dude has an amazing voice!

2:44am and I still haven't solved a single question...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvaUCRVYhz4&feature=PlayList&p=99C0153EC59D4C6C&index=9

This is a song from my Charleston days. I'm really tired... and my brain is really tired... the world swims in circles.. and I can't solve the similarity transformation. :-(