and then I crashed my bike.

Exactly two weeks back, I took a spill coming down Pagemill road and that is all I know of it because I do not remember any of it. A passerby called 911 and I was admitted first to ER and then to the Neuro ICU of Stanford Hospital .

I remember being in physical pain but for some reason, I was in extremely good spirits. May be it was the morphine. May be it was the fact that all I needed to was sleep. I was in some sort of daze the whole time.

After I came back home, for the first week, I was unusually happy. May be it was the Vicodin. May be because all I needed to do was rest.  The second week, I had to start working and I hadn't expected that getting back to work would be so tough. Two days back, I couldn't  write a few lines of code without the head hurting. It was a massive effort to write one piece of code.

I never thought of brain as an organ that needs to be taken care of. Now I do not bombard it with too many inputs. I enjoy silence. I do not listen to music while working or driving. I do not drink.  I am not going to the movies. Not yet anyways.

Telangana: 29th state in the Republic of India

And I woke up this morning to the announcement of bifurcation of the state I was born in.  Some are elated, some are dejected and many are indifferent.  I could be indifferent but I have been having a terrible few days,  so I am taking vent on something that I cannot control instead of working on the things that I could possibly control.  The escapist in me cannot be put on a leash for a long time.

"Why Telangana?",  I asked Google. It brought me to this site: http://www.telangana.com/why_telangana.htm . It is written by Dr. Jayashanker. One who apparently started the movement  way back in the 1950's and wikipedia says he didn't marry for Telangana. The negativity in each of the answers in that link baffles me.  This is my opinion of his answers for the questions in the page I have linked to.

1. Please define justice. And also if by 50 years back, you mean you as a 6th grader refusing to sing a bloody song, then 15 years back I raised my voice against a plethora of things.

2. It is good that you have identified the problems that plague the region. But instead of fighting directly to solve the problem, you instead said, "Hey, lets get a new state. It takes a lot of money and actually cause some delays in addressing the problem, because you know we need to build this entirely new infrastructure for the new state. But still let's get a new state."

3. I am confused now. What's your point? Yes you have had people from Telangana but they did nothing. Then there was this guy who is from Telangana but not really, because you know he is a 'settler'. And then all these people from Rayalaseema who just had to cater to the rich people from Andhra.

4.  Yes sir, if that skinny kid can have candy so can you.

5. Are you kidding me ?  I was born in Hyderabad and *all* my ancestors, as far as I can trace back to, are from Telangana and I can assure you that those bloody xxx (you can fill in Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar, Malkaseema) are the most cunning, greedy a**holes and their customs are so bloody different from mine.

6. Now I am sure, nobody asked you that question but you asked it yourself so that you can have at least one answer which seems logical.

7. Because this time, we are not separating ourselves from the Madras Presidency where communication was becoming a huge pain in the a** and another language was being forced upon people.

8. Yes sir, we can just continue with our bad habits.

9.  "Telangana people subjected to ridicule wrt language" You need some sense of humor and may be a different set of friends.

10. Now I am getting bored. Refer to 6.

11.  Please show proof for the efforts you made to address the problems with in the framework and why and how you will be able to solve the problems with the formation of a new state.

12. Rulers? Who is appointing them?

13. 'These classes of people won't make any progress in the united AP'. Random assertions.

14. You need a wife.  I am sorry. My logic has failed me after reading your reasoning.

PS: I know you are supposed to not ridicule the dead but if this guy started the movement, I do hate him at the moment. 

The immigrant experience

I finished reading "The immigrant"  by Manju Kapur yesterday. Set in the 1970's its the story of a couple brought together by an arranged marriage. It is not a well written book by any standards. It has the stereotypical dysfunctions of a marriage but what makes it interesting to me is that it has aspects of being just an immigrant, not a married one, woven into the story.

Given the quality of writing, I was surprised to  come across the best summary of being an immigrant in this last paragraph of the book : "Perhaps that was the ultimate immigrant experience. Not that any one thing was steady enough to attach yourself to for the rest of your life, but that you found different ways to belong, ways not necessarily lasting, but ones that made your journey less lonely for a while. When something failed it was a signal to move on. For an immigrant there is no going back."

May be its not just the immigrant who feels that way. May it just resonates with me and I happen to be an immigrant.

Fight on

When people fight over things, there is almost always a negative judgement passed towards it.

When people fight over things, it must mean that they actually care about it. So people out there fighting over a toy,  a relationship, a person, I say I won't judge you unless I think what you are fighting for isn't worth fighting over.

Would that mean if I don't fight over something, I do not care for it? I just think I care for things which go above and beyond it.

They ask me, "How do you do it?"

I get that quite often being eternally single. I say its easy and not so easy at the same time. Coffee for the days, some endorphins for the evenings, alcohol for the nights, a few interesting people around and being a bit crazy helps.

Hey girl

" Write every day. Not every other day. Not tomorrow. Not after the party. But before. The more you write, the more comes out of you. If you don't give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive."
say Ethan Hawke. Not Ryan Gosling but a better version.

From being hung over to being extremely drunk

I guess that's what happens when I force myself to be too disciplined for over two months.

Started with MIT Sloan school of management's conference on the Digital Economy and ended with me passing out in a car. Actually started with me being hungover and ended with me passing out in my friend's car.

Grand Hyatt - blue bottle's cappuccino - rally pad - connor - rafael - Afterlife - ritual roasters - wild side west - Lexington - Elbo room- the bar beside the cat club - 6NDR309's backseat - the forgotten purse - the knock on the window - the opening of the door - a few long seconds and that my friend is the end of the night.

Well the missing parts are the car that I left in the city and the parking ticket that I found on the dashboard the next day.

The outsider's perspective

I have been thinking about the outsider's perspective for a while now. Can we make a broadly general statement about the outsider perspective?

I initially asked myself "Is the outsider's perspective always positive or negative in certain situations? If so, what are the situations?". Take relationships for that matter. When they fail in particular. The outsider's perspective, it seems to me, is always negative no matter what. Or affairs. Or really may be that is the case when anything goes wrong according to the societal norms. The outsider usually fails to empathize with the situation. Sympathize, maybe. The outsider perspective could be all positive about a person's abilities. And that positive perspective could be just wrong.

This led me to ask myself again: " Is the outsider's perspective that of just ignorance?" Not all the time, right? We go seek an outsider's perspective to find our blind spots. Don't we? One might argue we don't ask an outsider but we ask a friend. Nonetheless, the outsider is known to have an unbiased opinion. So the outsider's perspective is not always that of ignorance.

This leads me to the question "When should an outsider have a perspective and when should he/she not?"

The power of habit

So,  I have been reading the power of habit by Charles Duhigg. I have been against self help books all my life but I should say this book changed my perspective on the genre. After being dumped and doing an intensive survey on being dumped and having a bit more experience in the 'dump and get dumped' cycle, I came to the following conclusion. (Disclaimer:  It could change). Every experience that you have been through, every emotion you have felt,  every mistake you have made have all been experienced, felt and made before. Not once but many many times.  I guess that is obvious when you think rationally but I am sure we are the most irrational when rationality is what you need the most. I am not saying one should not experience life as it comes. All I am saying is when you do and something happens that you do not understand, these books could provide a good insight into what happened.

All habits have a pattern: cue -routine -reward. Changing habits is most effective when try to change the routine while keeping the cue and reward the same. To make the change long lasting,  you need belief, in yourself or a higher power. It helps if you have company.
Then comes the pivot habits. The one habit which could bring a change in a lot of other aspects.
In my opinion, the theory seems simple but what is essential is recognizing the cues and the rewards we are seeking. 

How do I seek to incorporate this into my life?

Simple things.
Make my bed as soon as I wake up.
Brush my teeth before I go to bed.
I have the habit of eating before going to bed, in bed and in between my sleep. The cue is me being ready to go to my bed and read or watch some television. The reward obviously being filling up my moderately full stomach. Having a cup of nice hot tea everyday. That is going to be my routine.
Write one reaction paper every day.

So that's my list:
  - make my bed.
  -  write one reaction paper every day of the week.
  - brush my teeth before going to bed.
  -  a hot cup of caffeine free tea before going to bed.

The reaction paper a day is a bit over ambitious but lets see how it goes for a week at least. 

No Excuse this time

I have a new data set.
I have a good team working on it.
There is no excuse this time around.

Nook and the reading experience.

 

Thanks to my cousin's Nook and a depressed state that lasted for 3 complete days, finished two good books.  Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Both are stories of great suffering and how the protagonists pull themselves through extremely difficult situations. 

I have intersected the PCT on two of my hikes and met a few amazing people actually doing the PCT. After I finished the book, I looked around and found a copy of the PCT guide in my book shelf. I want to hike the California part of the PCT at some point of time in my life. I think before I attempt to do that may be I should go on a few week long backpacking trips and see how I feel. I think what captivated me was the way Cheryl put her emotions out bluntly. The way she explains her self destruction. I think it takes a lot of courage and solitude to analyze one's self destruction which is what she attempts to do in the book. Whenever I try to analyze something that has gone wrong with me, my mind just shuts down and refuses to cooperate. 

What do I take away with Unbroken? The value of human dignity!

Next up : The power of habit by Charles Duhigg.

 

Drafts

My blog consists mostly of just drafts. Thoughts of mine which I am just too embarrassed to share. What's the point of having a blog then. I am what I am and this is what I think. So here come the drafts:

Reasons to tie the knot:
We debate why do it? and never come to a conclusion.

'Coz its happier. Is it really?

Why do marriages in India work more than that in the US? Do they really?Aren't most of the people really unhappy most of the time or are they really happy?

In "non-arranged" marriages , when people marry for "love". Are they really marrying for love? or are they fooling themsleves?

Is companionship synonymous with love? If not, why not?

When making bad decisions is no longer acceptable: 

Bad decisions lead to good learning experiences. But the learning experiences need to stop at some point. At the very least as a continuous sequence. I want to make a good decision for a change now and see it bear fruit.

I am scared. I am scared I am not doing the right thing. I am scared for most of the time. But there are a few moments which are just beautiful.

It is time:  

When I think it was better for me that it happened, I love you.
When I think I would have been better off with out it, I hate you.
No matter what, you will always be someone special . Good luck and good bye!

Candid Moments: 

Once in a while I keep thinking I should quit doing my PhD and then without even me seeking out, some talk with some person happens in the lab and I stay on. The talk with the Brian Jo one summer night and the one with Carlos tonight.
Carlos : Research is something that cannot be not learnt.
Brian Jo : Even if I were I were in the industry, this is what I would find myself doing in the night. So why not do it full time.
I really like these people.

Happily Married Li(f)e: 

I guess it is just full of questions.
Is it worth analyzing is the first question? Yes.  I love my Family. Yeah, I used to fight with my sister all the time when I was a kid but I love her none the less. I never want anything bad happening to her. I love my parents. They love me unconditionally even though I am sure they hated me at some moments when I was a child and might hate me in the future when they realize that I haven't exactly stuck to the family norms.

Happy being unhappy: 

I think I have gone too used to being unhappy or thinking that I am unhappy that I think I am unhappy when I am not unhappy. I just typed the above sentence without erasing a single line and its amazing how I haven't used the word happy even once. Show's my affinity towards being unhappy?

It might be hard to believe from what I just typed above but really, I am a happy person. Or should I say, anything but an unhappy person.

Illusion

Among the many illusions that we do not really realize in life is the one that being in a relationship makes a person happy.
First I thought being in a relationship makes a person happy once in a while and miserable the rest of the times. Not true. It's just that when you are not miserable, you just think you are happy. Really there is nothing to be happy about.
Not being in a relationship, you are happy most of the times and miserable once in a while lamenting the fact that you are not in a relationship. Really there is nothing to be miserable about.

Heights of first world problems

Pandora wants me to donate money to buy a prom dress for the underprivileged children who dream to look beautiful on the prom night. Yes, I am in the US of A.

Something to cheer about

No more polio in India !
That's a relief.  The older kids in my neighborhood had  a very bad sense of humor and told me that I wasn't given the vaccine for polio when I was young. I sort of believed that shit and was scared for quite some time despite my parent's reassurance that they had given me all the vaccines that were to be given for a child !
 

First regret of 2012

I was just browsing through Jure Leskovec's website. Came across a project in the course that he taught last quarter, Social and Information Network analysis. Network alignment without using the graph alignment software packages available out there. I never seem to choose the right courses, do I ? I need to stop making bad decisions. It's time I start making the right choices.

Clarity

A single moment can bring so much clarity and the clarification of thought seems contagious. Clarity in one aspect seems to bring clarity in the rest.

I had the option of giving in. It was wrong for me. I realized. The realization liberated me, for the moment at least.

That's a good number

Sisi :  Enjoy the time that you got. You can do whatever you want with your time.
Me :   But I have always had all the time I wanted.
Sisi :  You are a grown up now. Its different.

Just a few days, I told a friend that I was truly happy. How happy am I?  Well, I am not really sure. I seem to be pretty happy for lets say 80 percent of my time. Now that is a pretty good percentage I should say. 

Again, isn't  happiness just a perception?

Russian followers

My blogpost stats suggest that I have a wide audience from Russia and Canada and none from India. Given that only a select few friends know about the existence of this blog and I don't write about anything of relevance to the general public, blogspot stats are spurious.

One year of madness

enough said.