Random Ramblings of a Benign Mind.....

9:12 - Wake up to the tring,tring(yes,the old-fashioned tring,tring) of the alarm of my cellphone. Ahh...I have 3 minutes more to sleep....that was the idea of setting the alarm to 9:12.....

Have an exam at 10:30, so need to get ready quickly. I forgot to look at last year's exam last night, out of which people say questions are sure to come....so need to do that too before I leave.
See my roommate in the kitchen, and get a rude shock when he tells me that he hasn't made the "cheat sheet" for the exam yet, which I was planning to photocopy and take to the exam. Anyway, he assures me that he will do it in time and since I can't do anything else at this point anyway, I leave it to him. Quickly freshen up and then start looking at last year's exam. I only have the solutions, not the question paper, and can't make head or tails out of it. Anyway,it all looks very imposing and lest it scare me off, I chuck it. Now I need to take a bath before I leave. Ordinarily I would rather sleep for 15 minutes extra than take a bath, but with this hair of mine,which was last trimmed in December, I can't leave the house without taking a bath, or I am likely to be declared a danger to pregnant women and the weak-hearted. Anyway, by the time I get ready, it is 10:15 and I need to rush to the department to get that dratted cheat sheet photocopied before my exam. What happens if there is some problem with the photocopy machine at this point?? I don't even want to think about it....
Get a call from the only other Indian in my class, aside from me and my roomie. He also wants a photocopy of the cheat sheet. Sure,sure, I say. I am sure that we are the only two people in the class too lazy to even make our own cheat sheets. What was that about Indians being the hard-working ones?? And we the graduates of the glorious and incomparable IIT's, who are supposed to be trained to sleep only on national holidays?? Scott Adams,look again...
Anyhow, so I don't get an excuse to blame my luck later, the photocopy machine works just fine and I reach the exam on time with the requisite cheat sheets. Of course, on time means 10:30, the days when I used to reach exams 15 minutes before they start are long gone.
Get the paper. The professor hands them out and leaves the class.No invigilator. People here actually obey the honor code, you see. Except, of course, Indians. No sir, all this "honor" crap is not for us. We've been trained to get the maximum marks, by hook or crook, and that's how it shall be. I've heard of classes where all Indians sit together and solve the paper together when the Prof. leaves the class. The poor Americans don't even say anything. They are too bewildered at our shamelessness. And in saying all this, I am making gross generalizations...so my apologies to the few Indians who actually do their courses honestly. And for those of you who are wondering, no, I myself don't cheat, which has more to do with the fear of what will happen if I am caught rather than any feeble ethical considerations.
Back to my paper. Based on my own evaluation of my preparation, the only thing I think have a chance at are the multiple choice questions, which the Prof. promised would be there,so those are what I go for first.
Ahhh!! What is this? Instead of the promised multiple choice qns., I am faced with "short answer" questions!!! Betrayal of the lowest kind!!!
"Under what conditions would you use the virial equation of state?" As far as I know you used it under any conditions you liked....but apparently not.
I begin to get an inkling of what this exam is going to go like....anyway,I, the eternal optimist, think that those short answer questions are worth 10 points anyhow, I'll score in the other 90.
I go ahead and take a look at the other 5 questions. 3 I have absolutely no idea about. Go for the other two first, do some stuff which makes absolutely no sense to me, but can't do anything else,can I? By the time I finish those two, 1:30 of the two hours of the exam have passed. Look at the other 3 qn.s again. Still can't figure them out. So, in the hope that perhaps she'll accidentally let slip some hint about the question, I go to the Prof.(who's in the next room) and ask her some doubts about the questions. Sure enough, she says that in this question, I want you to use this xyz formula I derived in class. I say,all that's well and good but unfortunately, I don't seem to have that formula in my cheat sheet. She glares at me for the next minute and I glare back unflinchingly, in the hope that she'll back down first and just give me the formula.
As you would expect, it doesn't work and she says that if I don't have the formula, I need to derive it from scratch. I say my customary "Thank You" and leave the room.
Get back and start looking at those 3 questions again. It's already 12:05 and I'm beginning to panic about what I'll do with these 3 qns. in the next 25 minutes. I look at the questions and pore at my cheat sheet and see some symbols in common so, I scribble some stuff down, a differentiation here, an integration there. After I have done whatever I can for those 3 questions, I look at the time again. 12:15. (sigh) I have 15 minutes to pass now. What can I do? I write down some more junk for 15 minutes. "We use the virial equation of state at high temperatures", etc. etc.
Ahh...finally it is 12:30. I look around and everyone is still frantically writing stuff down. I'm happy at the fact that at least they won't be able to complete their papers, which would help me, as grading is done on a curve. The Prof. comes into the room. Sees everyone and asks-"do you need more time?" Everyone aside from me gratefully nods yes. I sit down on the floor and start crying. (Well,not really, that's just what my soul does. My body scribbles some more stuff for 15 minutes).
Time to submit the paper. I realise that I haven't written my name on the answer sheet and I dearly wish that I didn't have to. The thought occurs to me that it would be so much nicer if exams could also be anonymous like those class evaluation forms we fill.
So,exams done with. Strangely, the joy that used to come after finishing exams is totally absent.

I go to meet this glassblower chap to ask him to make some tubes I need for my "research". I haven't been able to meet him for the past 3-4 days, because this guy leaves by 3 PM, which is before the time I usually reach my department. So, I think that today is a good opportunity to do so.
Reach his office, find it locked. Ask around, people say he's gone for lunch. I've had just about enough. Start to head home to catch up on my sleep. Before I get on to my bicycle, I switch on my mp3 player which starts up with Pink Floyd's "Sorrow". Apt enough.

The sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land
Plumes of smoke rise and merge into the leaden sky:
A man lies and dreams of green fields and rivers,
But awakes to a morning with no reason for waking
He's haunted by the memory of a lost paradise
In his youth or a dream, he can't be precise
He's chained forever to a world that's departed
It's not enough, it's not enough 

A Oscar Wilde quote a friend once sent to me floats unbidden into my head...

Each man kills the thing he loves,
by each let this be heard,
some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!

I think that considering who sent it to me, it couldn't be more ironic.

I reach home. Have messages waiting for me wishing me best of luck. Alas,too late. As soon as I come online, am bombarded by messages of people asking me how my exam went. Poor things, they mean well. Reply as politely as I can. Check my email. An email from the library informs me that a book that I needed to prepare for the exam I just gave is now available.
Do you believe in omens?? The first thing I got after coming to UMich was my ID number, with which I am identified by everywhere. The last 3 digits of my UMich ID are 666. That should have told me something about things coming up.
But,well, not really. These numbers really can't mean anything. I have about 7-8 chips in my lab on which I do my experiments. They are numbered. I do experiments on all of these, and the only chip I have got results on is numbered 13. I have done different experiments, multiple times, but they only ever work on chip number 13. Then 13 can't be unlucky, can't it?
Oh, by the way, I broke chip number 13 a couple of days back......

That's it. It's been three hours since my exam got over. I'm going to sleep.

The return of my first love.....
Hmmm........Hmmm..........Ok, I have absolutely no idea how to start this blog so this will have to do.
In fact, this blog owes its existence to a friend of mine who has been bugging me to start blogging again.

Dude, there was a reason I was not blogging! I felt that I didn't really have anything to write about which people would be interested in reading. So, if I bore some of you with this blog, you know who to blame. Of course, if some of you like it, the credit still goes to me- after all, I'm the one writing it...
Anyhow, enough of that. Back to business.
Since I can't figure out what to write about in this blog, I guess I'll just have to write whatever comes to mind.
As a tribute to the guy who's making me write this blog in the first place, I'll start off with cricket.
After coming here, my interest in cricket, which was already waning in India, had drastically reduced.
But recently, there has been a sudden upsurge due to a combination of factors. First of all, I was lucky enough to stumble across a website that was offering the India-England series for 10 bucks. And however much the passion for cricket may have dwindled, this was a deal too good to resist.
Of course, the URL crickettv.ath.cx raised doubts about the legality of the enterprise, but, in the end, who cares? :)
So, I purchased the series for 10 bucks, and even those we split among 5 PIGS(for the uninitiated, PIGS= Poor Indian Graduate Students, in which I use poor in every sense of the word).
So,after many months, I and cricket met again. Thankfully, my cricket gods, who had been enjoying an extended vacation for the past few months, got their act together pretty quickly, and chose to bestow on me four consecutive India wins. Of course, coming off such a long rest, their performance wasn't spotless, and they had a major failure when they got Sachin Tendulkar injured. Ah well....they'll improve with time I suppose-hopefully Sachin will be back after the Windies tour.

As for the series itself. The Indian team has been performing pretty consistently in ODI's for some time now which augurs well for the upcoming World Cup. (It's pretty amazing how cricket WC's, which happen once in 4 yrs., always seem around the corner. Seems just like y'day when the whole bunch of us in the IITK Audi were egging on the rain in the WC final). For once, the Indian team has a pool of players that can be called on to perform when needed.
A lot of credit for this goes to Chappell, who came to coach this Indian side under a fair bit of pressure, having taken over from Wright, who had done a pretty fair job himself. There was a huge media circus when the coach was being chosen and Chappell's proposed "hi-tech" methods came under a lot of scrutiny. Especially when our resident joker Mohinder Amarnath(he has a history with the work "joker"-if you don't know what I am talking about,look it up) proudly displayed his inability to handle computers to contrast it with Chappell's. I mean, I can't figure out what he's so proud about in that. Using computers and data analysis sort of stuff is an added asset Chappell had, it's not like that's the only skill he had(compare his record with that of Amarnath's and you'll see what I'm talking about).
Anyway, after all this, Chappell has come in and done a great job. One thing he has brought into this Indian cricket team is professionalism. The thing that I admire Chappell most for is the way he has dealt with Ganguly. Chappell and Ganguly were supposed to be all chummy and Ganguly is supposed to have played a hand in Chappell's appointment. But when it came to choosing the best team, Chappell wasn't reluctant to kick Ganguly out. Hats off to him for that. But that's all I'll say about Chappell...for more about him...look at the blog "It's all about the game" in my blogroll.
So,back to the games. The good thing is that the new guys are putting up their hands and doing the work. Dhoni, for all his unorthodox batting, has amazingly climbed to number one in the ICC ODI rankings. You keep thinking that with his technique, bowlers will sort him out soon enough, but thankfully, it hasn't happened yet. And Yuvraj, is (finally) making the transition from a "talent" to a "performer". Add to that the emergence of Raina and possibly Powar(I still have plenty of doubt about that though), and India has a nice core of young guys. And of course, I have neglected to mention Pathan who's been a major part of the Indian team for some time now.Apart from performing consistently as a swing bowler, he has also been making a substantial amount of runs up the order, giving the "think-tank" the flexibility of playing with the batting order when required.

All these things make me think that perhaps, by the time the World Cup comes, India will have a side with fairly young players, but these players will have had a fair amount of experience.
Having said that, let's see how many of these guys actually make it to the World Cup. When new guys come in and perform, there's always this feeling that they are going to make it big, but somehow, a lot of them fall by the wayside.

Enough about Indian cricket. Now, about me. I have started playing cricket here in Ann Arbor!!! This is about the last thing I imagined myself doing in Ann Arbor.....but as they say, life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans...
Anyway,it's a lot of fun. Granted, I usually just stand around and escort the ball to the boundary when it comes near me, but still, it's fun, I tell you.

Well, I think that this much is about enough for one blog....I think that another one should be coming up pretty soon...till then, ciao!!!