Comfortably dumb

This is a song sung by a PI when he caught his student fabricating data...

comfortably dumb


hello, hello, hello
is there anybody in there?
why hide if you can hear me,
is there anyone in lab?

come on now,
i hear you're spinning down
i saw your crappy stain,
come on, get up on your feet again

relax?, (yeah right!)
i need some primary data first,
just the basic numbers,
can you show me where it curves?

there is no stain, you are deceiving
a distant spot apprears on the quadrant
they are only coming through in gates
your cells glow?, but i cant see what you're saying

when i was a grad, i had an experiment
my hands felt just like two pipeting tools
now i got that feeling once again
i can't explain, you would not understand
this is not how i am

You have become, comfortably dumb



Ok,
just a little photoshop-trick
there'll be no more graaaaaaant
yeah, i can be a little prick

can you publish?
i dont believe its looking good
that'll keep you going for the year,
cmon its time to work

there is no data, you are procrastinating
a distant hope in your experiments,
you are only coming through in waves,
your lips move, but i cant hear what you're saying

when i was a grad, i caught a cheating kid
out of the paper of his PI
i turned him over, so he's gone
i sure put my finger on that now,
the kid is gone, the papers gone

you have become, comfortably dumb

At the mountain top

Once upon a time, there was a breeze - a delightful, warm gust of air - the Wind
He decided to embark upon a journey - to the tallest of all the mountains he could find
He met the Sun along the way - they became the best of friends
Warm breeze flew through the trees and it was paradise they wished never ends
The Sun and the Wind - seemed unseparable
But the Wind's determination to reach the peak was undefeatable
So he left the Sun alone to continue his quest
Atop the high hills and through the dense forest
As he saw the peak within reach, his joy grew
He sped towards the top, passing mountains as he flew
Exhilarated by his feat, he looked around - victorious and proud
All he saw was cold ice till the horizon and a single black cloud

Home - in a more literary sense

I was in Richmond, CA for a week for some training. And during that week, i realized that i had finally accepted LA as my home. The whole week there, i was a bit uncomfortable, being in a new area, living in a motel. Sleep at night wasnt as great as i normally have. My flight to LA got delayed by an hour, and i was feeling something which i havent felt in a long time - desire to get back home soon. I practically ran form the gate to the airport arrivals area. And when i finally reached home, i felt a sense of security.

Its been almost a year since i moved to LA. But the sense of belonging to my current apartment wasnt quite there. But it is now - too bad that i will move out in a year's time.

Then i realized that how much home, i mean the place you live in is connected to your sense of belonging. In the years that i lived in the 'wada' in Shaniwar Peth, that was my home - until we shifted to a temporary new apartment. The new apartment, for some reason, did not invite that sense of being 'home'. It wasnt until we shifted back to Shaniwar Peth - in a new apartment built over the same place - that i felt this was it. Curiously, architecture wise, or floor plan wise, i liked the temp. apt better - but it wasnt home. I would have thought that being there for three whole years will give me a sense of belonging there - but no, it wasnt quite that way.

And now after almost a year in my current apt in LA - it is home.


As they say - home is where your heart lives - mine lives in Shaniwar Peth, Pune and Westwood, Los Angeles - both places are now 'home'

If only

if only i could paint,
i would have turned my thoughts into colors,

if only i could sing,
all my worries would be songs

if only i could dance,
dance of joy it would have been

if only i could compose,
melodies and harmonies would be my life

if only i was a poet,
my poems would present my agony and my ecstasy

with the longing to express 'me' in these forms, limited only by the inability of my self,
i write these words, since words i can write..

Writers Block

I am facing a writer's block since my last post, well since my post 'black and white' . I have no blog-worthy idea in mind. Even if i have some idea, i am too engrossed in other things so i forget about it in an instant. Moreover, for some reason, my English is going from bad to worse. I think its the American effect. The spoken English (day-to-day) is so bad (read grammatically inaccurate) here, that my english is getting affected. And i think that is adding to my block.

I am writing this blog as a solution for writers block. Shilpa told me this once... When you are suffering from writers block, just write anything that comes to your mind. So i am doing exactly that.

For the past few days, i have been wondering whether doing a PhD is ever going to earn me money. I see my friends here, mostly doing MS, getting jobs already and earning twice as much. Now i am not saying that what i earn is not enough. It is enough, it is enough for me to pay my rent and live comfortably. But its not exactly big bucks. So i am reconsidering PhD, but i know that this reconsideration is shallow. Inside, i know that i want to do a PhD. So there is no question about that.

Recently, I found out that i can listen to radio on iTunes. I found out that there are thousands of radio channels i can listen to. There are 3 hindi channels ! I can listen to all kinds of music on the radio. Its a great thing and i am thoroughly enjoying that.

I am also planning to buy a bike, not a motorcycle, but a regular bicycle. My roommates bike was stolen from campus, so we dont have a bike to use. This is a prob only on weekends, where i used to take the bike to the lab. Now i have to walk :(

I am also growing concerned about my lack of excersize. I am hardly doing any physical excersize nowadays. And that is showing its effects. I should start excersizing regularly.


So.. after this post meant to be a cure on the writer's block, my resolutions are:

Complete the PhD
Listen to radio
Buy a bike
Start excersizing.


Its sunday morning at 845 am, and this is Alok Joglekar. If you are reading this, you are the reader. The block is taking over us and i am your only hope. We will find a way to fight the block and we will survive. This is Alok Joglekar, signing off from the blog.



p.s. I watched T4-salvation a couple of days back.

A short note on a scam

I was looking for an apartment in L.A. a couple of days back. For starters, i looked up a few offers on craigslist Los Angeles. I found this unbelievably great deal on one of the links. It was a 2b/2bth house for $1100 / month. (The usual is around $1600 / month in here). I did not believe the deal and scoffed at it as someone being either incredibly stupid / trying to rob people's money.

But, just to see what happens, i emailed the guy about the house. I get a reply from an address ending in *.fr (someone who is registered as a french guy). The emails says (in short)

'I am Richard McNeish, a voluntary missionary, who has transfered to west africa and my wife has transfered to UK. We want to give our place to someone trustworthy and who will treat the house as their own.. etc etc ... blah blah blah. Unfortunately we can not show you the house. So we will send you keys by DHL once we get the deposit of $500 and first month's rent of $1100. etc etc'

First of all, it sounds so fishy, that the first thing i did was a google search on 'richard mcneish'. The first hit i got was someone's blog entry and a comment on it. The comment says

'I want to know if anyone out there in Ilasamaja, Nigeria knows a man by the name of Richard McNeish, aka Pastor Mark Buckner aka Rev Daniel Tamayo. If you do, please its very imperative that you contact me at xxxxxxx@yahoo.com. This man, unfortunately, is a scam artist that likes to rob people's hard-earned money who serve the Lord. Please donot hesitate to leave me any information on this person who will be sought and prosecuted.'


Just an amazing experience which highlights
- How sneaky and kniving bastards people can be. Thieving people under the name of god.
- Amazimg power of internet and google.
- Also, amazing potential of internet to be used as a frauding tool.


Anyway. In short, that was the experience.

Black and white

Once upon a time, there was a white canvas who fell in love with a paintbrush. Out of many canvases, the paintbrush chose this particular one. Things went on well and their love was blooming. The canvas felt lonely without the brush and the brush without the canvas.

One fine day, after visiting an artist's house, the brush thought that the canvas is too blank, too white. The brush told the canvas 'my love, why not add some color to your life? I would very much like to see a colorful canvas'. The canvas agreed to it (albeit against its own will), for, it loved the brush dearly. It went on and allowed itself to be painted with some colors, and it thought, 'may be, i do look a bit better with the colors'. The Brush was also quite content with the now changed canvas. However, it did not match the elegance of the artist's paintings, so the brush was left unsatisfied. Days went by and the canvas got used to the colors. The brush had kept its feeling of not being satisfied to itself, but after a visit to another artist's place, slowly it started expressing itself . The canvas was initially reluctant to get any more colors, but because it loved the brush so much, it agreed to get more colors on itself. And so, it did. This went on for a while. Every once in a while, the brush would ask the canvas to get more color and the canvas would eventually agree and get itself colored.

There came a point when the canvas started looking black with all the mixture of colors. And then the brush told the canvas 'my dear, you have too much color on you. Have you thought about getting some white paint? It may add a different hue and you will look less dark and more colorful.' The canvas reluctantly agreed to this too as it did not want to lose its loved one. But, this time, the result was that even after getting a white paint, the canvas still remained dark. All the colors in all these time had turned the canvas black and there was no way to be white again. No matter how much he tried, the most it could do is to appear slightly grey.

The brush was retrospecting one day and it thought, 'Does the canvas look better with the colors? or was it much better when it was white? Did the colors make the canvas lose its own self? These colors probably disfigured the canvas for life. May be the canvas was better without me and i without the canvas'.

And so the brush moved on, eventually found a new canvas. And the canvas was left black and no brush could make it white again.