Can You Hear Me Now?

Please say it ain't so

2011-08-14T08:32:00.011-04:00

Facebook and its friends are wonderful, they really are. They help us to know who is dating (or breaking up) with whom, who secretly always wanted to be a farmer or mafia warlord, and who likes cats. However, they also bred the mindless urge to "like" and comment on anything and everything. While "liking" stuff can lead from hilarious moments ("My girlfriend broke up with me"; you liked it? I always knew you liked her) to irritating situations ("Flight delayed for 6 hours, feel like punching someone"; "what is there to like about my flight being delayed?) to potentially offensive ones ("sad day: my dog drowned and died"; like? you insensitive bastard!), my beef is more with the comments, which are sometimes so awesomely stupid, that I really feel those should be considered a crime against humanity and banned.

Consider the ubiquitous situation of seeing a friend's wedding pictures. It is another matter that I got to know that (s)he is getting married only via facebook, and when I asked how long (s)he knows his/her to be soul-mate, I realized they have barely met. Well, nothing wrong in that, people are busy, and have no time to look for partners, and parents obligingly did the needful. So far so good. The wedding happens, with all pomp and pageantry, and in this ultra-connected world, it does not take long before unofficial and "official" wedding pictures start populating our newsfeed. Those who knew congratulate, those had no in-linking that a wedding is at the works, express surprise, and then congratulate the couple nevertheless.

Fair enough.

Then comes a comment, "nice couple". Well this is like saying "cute baby", when it is known that all babies have to be cute. Contains zero information, but I can see why people can get emotional seeing their dear friend finally getting married, after complaining for years about their single-hood. I'll let that pass. Next comes, "made for each other" or "perfect couple", or one of the variants, which makes me cringe. Well, first of all, these two individuals did not know each other a week back, and a series of (happy) coincides resulted in them being an official couple, so as an outsider, I can not see how another outsider can infer such message from that picture. May be they will live happily ever after, in that case that statement will make sense after twenty years, or may be they will call the cops next night, in that case the commenter should be lynched publicly.

At this point, someone can argue that it is not a big deal, and may be it is not intended to be a factual statement. Well, then why make it? You do not make such a hollow statement at your work, or anywhere else. Why leave your otherwise working mind at the kitchen when you login to facebook?

Then there are paranoia. A rabid African giraffe has kicked a guy in the butt because his tee-shirt that said "I have facebook, I dont need a life", so we need to share the post to all out thousand friend's wall, and tell them not to use facebook for 2 days, when all we should do is not wear such a tee-shirt. Even the kid who makes that tee shirt in a slum in Pakistan knows giraffes do not like that color. Get a clue, folks. No one is grabbing any information you have not provided, posting something on hundred others wall would not reveal the name of the secret crush (but if that person is one of those hundred, (s)he will know you are a retard).

There are ways to control how much information you share with whom. Not perfect probably, a tad inconvenient, but better than coming across as a "404", as they said in older days.

Good job, Bengal.

2011-05-14T21:52:00.006-04:00

For some background, please see this post.
I am euphoric that my prediction came true, and in what fashion!

Finally the mighty has fallen, the citadel has not only been breached, but demolished. And this is unlike any other election I have ever experienced, this is not just a mere change of regime, this is intensely personal, and no, I cant be magnanimous in victory. The pent up anger of years would not allow me to. I always hated you if you are a CPIM sympathizer, and now I will say it on your face. That is, if you still want to show your face.

Make no mistakes, I am never a communist sympathizer. But curiously, that has got very little to do with my intense dislike for CPIM. It is impossible to explain to anyone else who have not been through that: how we grew up seeing the systematic politicization of all spheres of society, and consequent victimization of those who were not supporting them. I do not believe this happened anywhere else - everywhere a strong opposition ensured that the ruling party was voted out if they did not live upto the promise. In Calcutta this was probably not so prominent, but in districts, fear and favor eliminated any sort of opposition presence. So either you were with them, or you were literally victimized in every possible way without any avenue to protest. This was way before Singur and Nadigram happened, when being anti-CPIM started becoming fashionable. Growing up in north Bengal in eighties and nineties, it was hard not to see this blatant abuse of power, and persecution of the non-followers. Of course if this was a relationship with benefit for you, you would keep quiet, no matter what your conscience would say. Otherwise, you just grew up bitter, with the party, with those shameless backbone-less people all around you.

Thankfully I never stayed in those villages, where people daring to support the non existent opposition were physically abused, tortured or killed, or if they were really lucky, made social outcasts. Thankfully I was never the homeowner, whose home was forcibly taken and made into a party office. Thankfully none did any horrible things to me, and I could escape Bengal. But being in close proximity to the education sector, I could also see how they completely controlled and destroyed it.

From primary school headmasters to University vice-chancellors, all the prime positions went to party supporters, qualifications no bar. People with awful academic record got appointed or promoted ignoring people with much better record. It does not seem a huge deal taken in isolation, but when this becomes all pervasive, the overall quality of education suffers. Already the outdated school curriculum and abolition of English in primary schools crippled an entire generation, and then meritocracy was several discouraged by handing over the higher education to a bunch of handpicked party followers. Student unions were the breeding ground of party cadres, so opposition were ruthlessly dealt with with local hoodlums roaming free on campus - so ruthlessly that in places like North Bengal University, no election was needed. I can go on all night long, and still would not cover the full spectrum of atrocities.

No escape from this made it suffocating. Seeing people close to you affected made this personal. For years, all we could do was dream, that such a day will come. I do not endorse violence, but when I feel this much hatred toward anyone remotely saying a good word for CPIM, I can also see people who suffered disastrously will try to get revenge. Payback time, folks!

I hope Mamata goes on to become a successful chief minister, but even if she is not it would not and should not demean this feat. Single-handedly she bought the regime down, even after being written off and derided repeatedly. Her methods were not always the most sophisticated, nor was she most media friendly (before making fun of her for English, remember that she is a product of the government education system), but hell, she got the job done. She deserves all the accolades and more. If you have a problem with her, then just step back and think why you never had a problem with how things were going so far, and you will realize what the term brainwashed means.

Hah, how I loved when they hoisted Trinamul flag in Alimuddin street.

Pilot for a day!

2011-05-09T18:00:00.005-04:00

Those who know me, also know how obsessed I am about anything related to flying. I fly often, read airline blogs, visit frequent flier forums, listen to channel 9 on United (where you can hear the wonderful conversation between the pilots and the ATC), love looking for cheap airfares in my spare time. But I have always been a passive passenger, never got best seat on a bird. Well, until now.

To all fairness, it was this cute little two-seater aircraft, and the gentleman beside my did everything so that I could live to tell the tale. However, the thrill of seating at the control, observing the little details in action as the little bird took to the skies was itself an experience.I was even allowed to make a 180 degree turn once we were up there, of course under strict supervision. The light plane shook a bit as we took off, but otherwise it was a smooth, fun ride.

So what was this all about? I signed up for an half an hour flight simulator training, and half an hour flying lesson in Cleveland's lakeside Burke airport. It rained all week, but the weather was perfect, and after a little wait, I was adjusting my headphone and the seatbelts. And surprisingly, it did not look so complicated - the interactions with the controller sounded just like I am used to hearing on United's channel 9, the controls look familiar after the brief time at the simulator, and the cramped cockpit was not too uncomfortable either.

I wish I could say I learned a lot, or it gave me a better understanding of pilot;s job. Not really - nothing came as a surprise. Not that I would want to do this toy flight again. But like many things you want to do once in your lifetme, this was that type of an experience. Hard to describe why it was special, but it was indeed.

Picture of the day (bike way to CERN from my place)

2011-04-19T10:23:00.002-04:00

Goodbye, faded red?

2011-04-16T07:32:00.005-04:00

Failed governments get thrown out in the elections. Corrupt politicians go to prison. Dictators are forced to step down. Regimes change. Everywhere, except in West Bengal.

I am on the wrong side of thirty now. If I was a football player, I would probably consider retirement. And yet, I have not seen any other party in power in West Bengal except the party I prefer to term Communism redundancy advocacy party (henceforth will be referred to as crap). An entire generation of Bengali's grew up, went to school, went to college, found a job, started a family; while the same crap ruled. The remarkable part is, West Bengal is neither a heaven on earth as this kind of total allegiance to crap will indicate, nor it has a dictatorial system. Crap won democratic elections. So many of them, that I lost count.

The obvious question is why, and unfortunately there is not a clear non-partisan answer. Part of it is like how the reservation system is implemented in India - so called backward castes were treated terribly by your great great grandfather, so the dumb guy living a palatial house next door with a backward-caste-lastname will be picked ahead of you for admission to a college or for a job. The previous government did some unmentionable bad stuff, which our generation only heard about, but that meant they can never ever be voted back. To all fairness, crap did some good stuff for rural folks yeas back, but simultaneously they systematically politicized the whole society. People in high posts all over the state became political appointees. People needed to be crap-sympathizers to get jobs or promotions. Effectively west Bengal became crap monopoly. Fear and favor ruled. Opposition parties had no effective existence - their candidates could not enter their constituencies. In polling booth after booth in rural areas, crap got close to 100% of the votes, sometimes more.

One has to give credit where credit is due. I am sure it was no mean feat for them to control every aspect of the society so efficiently. But as they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They grew arrogant, and the pressure to keep their loyal followers happy was growing all the time. They needed low skill jobs, and crap also had to keep rural folks happy. Mediocrity ruled, teaching of English in schools were abolished, computers were shunned. That crippled an entire generation, who could not compete in national level. Exodus of students to engineering colleges down south became commonplace. Those who could afford, learned English anyway. The class difference was ironically used as a tool by crap to paint a picture of elites against us. The state which lead in education and innovation lost its aura, and those who succeeded did not because of the state policies, but in spite of them.

Imaginary enemies were invented and blamed for all ills. Amazingly people fell for it too, or pretended they did to keep crap happy. All the non-developments were blamed on the central government, all the dissidence on CIA and USA. Periodic strikes were organized against them, even when the central government was supported by crap, the ridiculousness of which was somehow drowned in mass hysteria. Unions and unionized workers became powerful, so powerful that they started dictating the terms to the factory managements. Those who tried to comply with the outrageous demands could not afford it long. Those who did not were termed as "America-r dalal" and violence ensued. Net result was the same though - closed factories. That militant unionism spread to all sectors. In universities, non teaching stuff proudly claimed "Aamrai to sob chalai", in government offices, there was no impetus to get work done, or even come on time. The whole mentality was turned into an "us versus them" scenario, where "them" were conveniently defined according to the situation. Anyone could block the road, burn buses, beat up the station-master, occupy or encroach on a land, and still claim to be a victim.

I do not know if the alternative will be any better. Honestly, I do not care, and that is not because I am living away. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I see a real chance of crap being cleaned in this election. A change is desperately needed to get rid of this well entrenched arrogance propagated and used in all these years. I hope that happens.

P.S - these are all intended to be factual statements.

Picture of the day (just before landing at Geneva Airport)

2011-03-25T07:55:00.001-04:00

My day with a Mustang

2011-03-17T01:07:00.004-04:00

I arrived at Eugene, Oregon late in the evening. Tired after traveling for almost 24 hours from Geneva, I just wanted to pick up the rental car quickly, find the hotel and crash. So when she offered me a free upgrade to a SUV, I politely declined, I had no intention of driving a gas-guzzling beast for no good reason. But I could not say no when she offered me a Mustang next. I just made sure it was not red, and luckily it was shiny silver.

I have never driven a Mustang before. In fact, coming to think of it, the fanciest car I have driven before was Toyota Prius. No matter how ugly it is, I loved how it did almost 50 miles a gallon. But Mustang was different animal altogether. It has this sexy look, and the pickup was super smooth. That actually got me worried, since I knew I will end up speeding without even realizing it.

A quick day trip to Corvallis was all that was planned. That would not have done justice to this creature, so we decided to drive upto Mary's peak, a nearby vista-point. The drive started off quiet innocuously, and soon we were going up the hill on narrow winding road. Some patches of snow materialized n the sides, nothing to perturb us. We kept going. And then, before we could start looking for a corner to turn around, we got stuck in snow. The wheels would keep rotating, without us moving an inch. Thankfully it was not dark yet, but the situation seemed hopeless.

As we tried to assess our options, a pickup truck appeared from behind. With snow tires and four wheel drive, that ugly car was could go where our sleep beauty could not. They drove repeatedly over the ice, making a track for us to go back down, but in reverse. Going backwards, with almost an out of control car, on a curved road is not fun, and soon enough, I over-steered, getting stuck in the snow again. Out only hope was to somehow get back to the tire tracks again, and roll back another twenty yards or so, where we could tun around. The friends with the truck had left by then, but another good samaritan stepped up. It was his idea to pile up deadwood under the tires to let them have some traction, as I stepped on the gas to move to ever so slightly, and managed to be back on track after three attempts. Physics in action, but a Ph.D in physics does not prepare you for this!

That was enough adventure for the Mustang, before it went back to the airport parking lot.

Picture of the day (Multnomah Falls, OR on a rainy day)

2011-03-16T19:40:00.002-04:00

Swiss Bank Initiation

2011-03-03T13:25:00.004-05:00

So I am a proud owner of a Swiss bank account now. After being refused by UBS because of my American passport, I went to the postoffice next door at CERN, and voila they opened an account for me. Now I have been pointed out, rather unkindly, as I may add, that only the poor people in India open bank account in postoffices. However, in Geneva, a lowly postdoc is among the poorest of the society, so I cant really complain.

After signing a simple form saying I am allowing IRS full access to my account, they bright yellow card arrived by mail. Then a password for online banking. Armed with both, I tried login in online, but failed miserably in the first step, and it appeared one of the subsequent one involved using a machine. I went to the ATM, as I thought that would be the closet approximation of what one would mean by a machine, but turned out I need a PIN (which is no the online banking password, fair enough) to do anything at the ATM. Soon enough though, I received the 6 digit PIN. The fun was just beginning though.

Next I received this strange creature in my mail, with a long set of instructions on how to login to my account.

I was given an 7 digit ID number (which is of course neither my account number, nor printed anywhere on the card, and the browser can not be set to remember it) which I have to use to login, using the previously received password. Then the next screen will will spit out a number as , which I have to enter in my device to generate the one time access code. Using the device is not trivial, after inserting the card, I need my PIN (I have not figured a way to change it so far), then only I can enter the first number to generate the second one. Now I am in. I thought may be this was the first time setup, but no, every single login will involve this multistep fun.

They really take their security seriously.

Sound of Silence

2011-02-27T23:45:00.001-05:00

ATLAS control room is awfully quiet at night, all of us at shift are intently staring at room full of monitors, spitting out plots, and color coded status of detector components. There are about a dozen of us, but I barely know who the guy at the next desk is. When I think about the shifts at CDF control room years back, it was very different. There were only 4 of us, but we chitchatted, cracked jokes, shared food. And then there were alarms, very audible ones. For anything unusual, animals barked, trains whistled, elephants roared, and water flowed loudly, accompanied by a mechanical hard-to-ignore female voice. Those alarms were as much a part of the CDF control room experience as anything. I miss them in ATLAS.

That brings up an interesting question, the importance of sound in situations where it is not strictly necessary. I was watching the superbowl on a French TV channel here - the same plays, the same pictures, but with the commentary in French. Worse, the commentators seemed to be sitting in Paris, so the crowd noise was real muffled. Somehow I could never get the feel of excitement associated with such a high profile game - a closely contested one too, and I am convinced it was the lack of usual "football sound". How often have we realized were speeding driving a super-smooth car with no sound? Sea beaches do not feel like sea beaches without the roar of the sea, specially so at dark.

A while back, I had an interesting discussion with a friend about the effect of dialogues in performing arts in general, especially in movies. Her argument was, the story can still be followed without understanding the conversations, and a movie in a foreign language without subtitles should be equally enjoyable. I disagreed, saying the cultural references are often integral to the storyline, and without understanding the dialogues at all will be a serious impediment to enjoying the movie. A movie like " Big Lebowski" is dependent fully on dialogues, while "The Last Tango in Paris" is not." What is your take on this?

A travelogue without pictures

2011-02-21T16:26:00.003-05:00

My camera and laptop are my constant travel companions. This time I ditched both for my short dash to Dresden, since this was just a trip to bring my belongings to Geneva. Nothing remotely exciting can happen, as I told myself, and no point in carrying more stuff than absolutely necessary. While my cute little Nookcolor did not allow me to miss my thinkpad much, the camera was sorely missed.

That was not because of the day long bus ride from Dresden to Geneva. To all fairness, this was my first long roadtrip in this continent, and while the scenery as we entered Switzerland was pretty, nothing was spectacularly new. The highways looked as boring as US freeways, with Mcdonalds' sprouting up in the middle of nowhere. The rest areas had the same look and feel, except one big difference. US is not just the "land of the free", but also the land of free restrooms, while here every usage involved paying.

But I digress. The day before, I flew to Dresden, and nothing seemed unusual till we landed there. The airport was full with police helicopters, and I suddenly remembered that was some kind of demonstration day for neo-Nazis. That thought slipped away somewhat as I boarded the train to the city center, and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw after arriving at the main train station. It was full with police, all in full gear. All the exits were heavily barricaded and guarded. I still thought it is just a preventative measure, but then I was told no public transit is running. No tram, and no taxis. Undaunted, I stepped out, and it looked like a battlefield. Shouting mobs contained by police barricades, armored cars, circling helicopters overhead. All the main roads were hopelessly blocked, hoping to contain the neo-Nazi marchers, with friendly policemen and women warning me of Nazis. Soon it became clear there are not only Nazis, but a battalion of anti-Nazi protesters too, and it was not obvious which group was which. They also sat on the main roads and tried to block the right wing folks, and the police had a tough time to keeping them apart. Later reports put number of neo-Nazis at about 4000, while the protesters were about 5 times larger, but its hard to get the global picture standing in the middle of it. Ironically, the more damage was done by the the protesters, setting trash cans on fire, and provoking confrontation (an aside: they should really learn from Calcuttans how to burn things. This looks pathetic, we burn buses and trams with much less ado). I had to walk all the way to my destination, taking many detours, before a good samaritan offered me a ride at the very end. The city was tense till late evening, with most shops closed, and random groups of people walking around.

Too bad I could not get any pictures. You do not get to see such a mayhem often.

Horrors of house hunting in Geneva

2011-02-15T14:15:00.005-05:00

No, I have not found one yet. I have serious doubts if I will ever find one.

So I landed up in Geneva a couple of weeks back, eager to start working at CERN, where all the action in our field is. All was great, except the small problem of finding a place to live. To all fairness, I heard it is a non trivial task, but I could not have found anything until I was here. After sorting visa issues, I started looking around.

Geneva is a beautiful city, and very international. While that feels nice, the presence of all the international organizations and the associated workforce is the main source of housing problem. In last ten years, for example, CERN has gone from an European lab to a truly international one, with a huge American presence. Unfortunately the housing market has not kept up with this population explosion.

That makes house owners and renting agencies the king in this skewed market. For each available dwelling, people apply. From my limited experience so far, I realized that putting together this application is no less harrowing than grad school application. They ask for copies of the work contract and pay slips, to be sure than that I will be here and can afford to pay the rent. Of course proof of identity and valid residence permit is required, as a document called "attestation de non poursuite" (obtained after waiting for an hour in a government office), which effectively proves that none is pursuing me for non-payment of rent or any bills (Is not the US credit history system wonderful?). One also wanted a letter of recommendation. I gather many people here also have a template for it, saying the applicant is among the top 5% of the renters, whatever may that mean. And then there is the application form itself. Usually in French, it has such probing questions like why I want this place. Next time I will answer because I have not found any other places - not sure that bare truth will exactly help me.

So after collecting all these materials from a bunch of people, they select one. Positive discrimination is blatantly in effect, so families and women get preference, and single guys like me are rarely picked. So many of the people from CERN end up sharing houses. Now after living alone for all these years as graduate student and postdoc, I am not very thrilled by the idea, and I do not exactly think my living habits will endear myself to prospective housemates. The other option remains getting a room in a house. I seen one, a window-less room in a basement of a house, sharing a common entrance with the family living there, who did not seem to get the concept of flexible working hours and omni-present deadlines. That was not cheap either.

I lived in a spacious house, minutes away from the my institute and the train station in Dresden. Here, a place one third of its size, will probably cost thrice. If I find one, that is.

My Krakow Experience

2011-01-27T16:18:00.005-05:00

Working in Dresden for past couple of years had presented me with the unique opportunity of exploring the somewhat under appreciated eastern Europe. After a while, all the cities do look annoyingly similar, but it it does not take much effort to observe how historical background has shaped each city's character uniquely. It is never possible to get a complete picture in weekend trips, but as they say, something is better than nothing.

Krakow in central Poland was my destination last weekend. Like most of the east European cities recovering from communism, it also has a deep disdain for the Russians. The leftovers from socialist era, however are still there. The most prominent were the so called milk-bars, the highly subsidized canteen style eateries, where we had excellent and cheap perogies. Food is generally cheap, and most people spoke some English.

Sandwiched between mighty Russia and Germany, Poland always had a difficult existence, suffering aggression, conquest and persecution. Pretty it was, with the usual assortment of imposing churches, castles and palaces, but also with the somber reminders of terrors of not too distant past.That is where I spent most of my time. They are undoubtedly depressing, but also in a strange way makes you appreciate life more.

The German occupation during WW2 , and subsequent brutality were the dominant theme of the two places I visited in the city. Jagiellonian University, which is one of the oldest universities in the Europe, and the museum housed in the enamel factory of Oscar Schindler. Nicolas Copernicus and Pope John Paul II are probably the two most famous inhabitants of the city and they both studied at the university at different times. It was forcibly shut down during the German occupation and a group of professors were arrested. The next destination was Oscar Schindler's enamel factory, made popular by the Steven Spielberg movie, which was also filmed here. This has now been turned into a permanent exhibition depicting the condition of Krakow's inhabitants, both Jewish and Polish, during the Nazi occupation. This is a not a typical museum, rather gives one a feeling of walking down the streets while everything unfolds around him, thanks to original video and audio recordings, photographs, and the carefully designed exhibition space. We are forced to confront the horrors of life under Nazi occupation firsthand, and to put it mildly, it was not pleasant!

However, that barely prepared us for the mass murder fields we were to visit next day. The adjacent cities of Auschwitz and Birkenau were the location of the largest WW2 era concentration camps. Not much remains now at Birkenau, where most of the "evidence" were destroyed by the Nazis while fleeing. Still the occasional pits and chimneys, and the barbed wire fences serve as a jarring reminder of the cruelty. This was the place were trains packed with prisoners arrived, and many of them were led directly to gas chambers. The rest were crammed in stable-like shades, where not many survived the utterly pathetic living conditions. Walking across the snow covered eerily quiet landscape, it is hard to imagine that men can be so cruel. While top Nazi leaders were certainly driven by ambition and ideology, the foot soldiers were merely doing their job. And to most of them, this was probably just another job - what perhaps required an incredible amount of de-humanization of the jews.

The Auschwitz camp was much smaller, with closely spaced barracks. Nothing apart from the cruel fences, and the gloriously inappropriate sign "Arbeit macht frei", would make it stand out . Many of the buildings house exhibitions now, some showing how people from different countries from across the continent were brought it here, and some showing the condition of the camps. The sheer scale of the Nazi effort is mindbogglingly depressing. Torture almost lost its meaning, and death was cheap. It was an "industrial" revolution of a different kind.

Some pictures are here.

Is going back the new way forward?

2011-01-15T15:52:00.003-05:00

We all have been subjected to this all important question at some point or the other, whether we intend to go back to India after "finishing" our studies. Some answered honestly, some gave more of a politically correct answer. Some said they do not know. But as it was a purely speculative question at that point, and none had to give a "final" answer, so what we said did not really carry a whole lot of weight. We knew we will cross the bridge when it came to that, unless of course we were pushed out into the water.

Undoubtedly that has happened to people. Some lost funding, some did not clear their qualifying examinations, some had personal issues and had to go back. I am not talking about those forced departures. Suddenly I am seeing a lot of my contemporaries from India, doing well in US or Europe in academics, deciding to go back in their free will, often abandoning their current positions. I also have examples of my family members or other senior folks who went back, again mostly in their own accord. Is there a generation-independent common thread in these homecomings, or individuals just acted according to their own personal situations?

The one underlying thread is always taking care of family. None of our parents are getting younger, and being in the same timezone rather than a long flight or two away is certainly more comforting. It is also true that for some, industry jobs in India are as good as what they would have gotten over here, minus the hassles of visa, green card and immigration lawyers. But for people looking at academic positions, is India equally tempting? Or is it not about career, but more about security? Priorities changed, or it never was about loving the work?

Career is always a very selfish pursuit, and uncertain too. In spite of working our backside off, while ignoring social obligations and family responsibilities, there is no assurance that we will ever get a permanent academic position in US (or in Europe, for that matter) which we will like. Specially for those of us in fields, where supply far outweighs the demand, we spend years as "postdocs" before even thinking about permanent positions. That is essentially like waiting in a queue, without knowing what it is at the end. So after unsuccessfully exploring all possibilities, if you still like what you did all these while (and realize that you not really good for anything else!), and going back gives you an opportunity to continue in academics, albeit in a slightly more frustrating setup, it does make perfect sense. The money is not so bad either nowadays.

However, many are going back much earlier. Yes, there is a glut of faculty positions in India now, after all these new institutes were created, but did we work hard all these while just for a safe job? We survived hard deadlines and meager graduate student salaries, not because we knew there is a job waiting, but because we enjoyed what we were doing. Few do research which changes the world or wins Nobel prize, but just being a small cog in a big wheel is no less motivating. And truth be told, the academic ambiance in a random American university is usually better than that in a random Indian university. Research is more streamlined, there is less political interference in everyday matters, and the professors are more respected in the society. Without exploring that option, and actually comparing if staying back can be better for a career in research, bolting for a safe job appears a bland cop out to me.

Now of course there is the other stream of thought that, it is obligatory for homegrown Indians to go back. A foreign country can never feel like home, and one should not spend one's life abroad, uprooted from the familiar surroundings, and not getting fully integrated there. This may have some merit, but in that case, it would rule out most of India for me. I would feel more of a stranger in Chennai without knowing any Tamil rather than how much I feel alienated in US, where I even though I cant speak like them, I can understand what they speak. Another school of thought goes that since our education in India was essentially subsidized by tax payers money, we owe it to take our skills back. Without going into a long argument on whether higher education should be free, I would say that knowledge transfer in today's connected world does not necessarily require continuous physical presence.

I do know if I will get an academic job here. I do not know if I would like one a few years down the line. I do not know if in that case I prefer going back and get an academic job there. What I do know is this, that whatever I do, it will be driven only by career aspirations at that point, making sure I enjoy doing that. That has always been the primary motivation, and abandoning that will make all these years meaningless.

A trip back down the memory lane

2011-01-08T07:54:00.002-05:00

"As I passed through the gates, the blistered hands of nostalgia gave my heart a good squeeze and I realized you miss shit times as well as good times, because at the end of the day what you're really missing is just time itself."
— Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)

About two years back, I left Gainesville after obtaining my Ph.D. That is how it was supposed to happen, and five and half years were indeed a long enough time spent in that little big college town. However, somewhere down the line, it just did not remain just another place where I spent a few years of my life, rather became my home, the place where I felt I belonged to. First time in my life, everything was mine. Not just that I started earning money for the first time (no matter how meager graduate student salary was), and spent as I wanted. I traveled all over the place, bought a car. All the successes were mine, and all the failures too. Then I moved to Germany. No matter how enriching a cultural experience this was, and how much work my career benefited, I could never bring myself to say I am from Dresden. I stuck with I work here.

I craved for a chance to go back. Finally everything worked out for a quick trip down there. As I drove in the town late night, I almost ended up heading to my old apartment. Apart from a few new parking lots, everything looked the same, just like how I last saw them. The physics building still felt like the second home it was, only my office did not have my name any more. It was not just me, others also had trouble realizing that they last said "hi" to me in the corridor two years back, not yesterday. The guy who bought my car was kind enough to let me drive it again, and except for the fact that the interior looked much less messy now, I felt just as familiar sitting there. Many people left, but those I did meet, helped me to feel at home. I dined at Satchel's Pizza, the unique Gainesville landmark. I stepped inside the "Swamp", knowing little that the Urban Meyer era, which in a lot of ways defined the identity of "our" Gator nation, is about to end. I drove down to Cedar Key, the nearest seafront, which holds so many memories from those days gone by.

And then I was gone again.

Making America's Roads Better

2010-12-30T12:29:00.004-05:00

Years back, when I was buying my first car, someone warned me about all the additional expenses that I am going to incur. Among the other mundane items like insurance and repairs, he mentioned, traffic tickets. As a hesitant driver in a new country, I did not pay much attention to that then. Five years down the line, I definitely know what he was talking about.

I am not talking about occasional red light jumpings or parking violations. Those are part of life too, but much rare, and immensely avoidable. It is actually quite incredible. that for a country known for its orderly and law abiding society, speeding is not looked down upon at all. The posted limits are taken as just suggestions by most, from celebrity popstars to Nobel winning physicists. As for mere mortals like us, it may make otherwise boring drives thrilling, or make up for the lost time, but mostly we speed because we can. As my friend claimed after getting a $300 citation for going 22 miles over limit, the people speeding should be rewarded, not punished, since we know what we are doing. The real hazard on highways are slower vehicles, which block the flow of traffic and make things chaotic. No truer words were ever spoken.

I was caught 22 miles over limit once too, but the fine was much less. It was a sleepy village among the cornfields in Illinois. and I was in a real hurry. So not being recreational speeding, that does not count. However, all the other times, I speed strategically, following the old adage, never go alone. The other speeding cars are your best friends, and friends never let friends go far away.

Of course, nothing can be full proof. Driving down from Jacksonville airport to Gainesville, one passes through small towns of Waldo and Baldwin, and outsiders tend to speed by them, not caring about what seems artificially low speed limits. And mostly they get pulled over. The main source of revenue for those towns are traffic citations.

But thankfully, that idea has not caught on. I was driving back from Grand Canyon on this one lane Arizona highway, and that was the craziest collective speeding frenzy I was part of. A bunch of cars were going probably over 90 mph on a 65 mph zone, crossing slower traffic going into the opposite lane, and then kind of camped on the other side, occasionally coming back to let poor incoming cars pass by. One of those crazy cars came almost face to face with a police car in the other lane, and in any other place, he would have been pulled over for speeding and aggressive driving. Here the cop blinked his red-blue light once, backed off a little to let that car (and the five others behind him!) to merge back in, and went by.

This was also in Arizona, my highest speed ever, and dedicated to all the friends and strangers who speed, making the highways better places to drive.

You cant fake this picture!

Gold does glitter!

2010-12-21T09:26:00.003-05:00

Life as a frequent flier is not always fun, contrary to what the movie "Up in the Air" showed. Waking up at odd hours, traversing timezones, forgotten cellphone charger or medicines, every little annoyance adding up. And when the unpredictable weather and random flight cancellations are factored in, it is almost a perfect recipe for disaster. I see all the people stranded on their way to or out of Europe in last few days, and I realize I could have been one of them. In fact, I was, briefly in Berlin, before I was accommodated in a nice hotel, provided with food and was put in a direct flight to US next morning.

All because once my original flight to Cleveland via Zurich and Toronto was canceled, I could stand in the infinitely shorter rebooking queue for first and business class travelers, and get a seat in the direct flight to Newark next morning. If I were in the general queue, with a million people, I would have never made it. That's what happened n Paris last year, when I spent all my day standing in queues, and my night sleeping at the airport. I was a lowly "silver" then, in Delta frequent flier program.

Now after flying over 50,000 miles (when all said and done, I will end up flying almost 75,000 miles this year), I am "gold" in United, and what a difference that made. Flying back to Dresden via Frankfurt last time from US, I was stuck in an utterly chaotic snow covered Frankfurt airport. But instead of standing in endless queues, I could queue up sitting inside the lounge, and spend the night at airport Sheraton, before getting a first class train ticket for next morning, all on Lufthansa. Yes, lounges are nice with free drinks, internet and relaxing ambiance, and domestic first class upgrades are fun, and it is cool to see my bags coming out first, but the real benefit of having "status" is how you get treated in case of these irregularities. To use a borrowed phrase, that is indeed priceless.

A German Graduation

2010-11-16T04:55:00.004-05:00

Writing this post from a "world" I have never experienced before. Lufthansa lounge at the top floor of A concourse, Frankfurt airport, with abundant luxuries. Free food and drinks of all varieties, internet, a piece of paradise tucked away from the all the chaos.

In a world which is trying to become more and more uniform every day, unique local traditions and customs feel like breath of fresh air. Yesterday I was fortunate to see one of our group members get her Ph.D, and while that it by itself is a fantastic occasion, what followed next caught me by complete surprise. After the presentation, the mandatory faux-suspense wait while the committee deliberated inside (an aside: turns out in Germany, there are also grades associated with a Ph.D degree, and that probably took most of the time)once she stepped out of the room, she was put in a dolly, designed as a funny take on her time here. Turns out on an April fool,s day years back, she jokingly asked her advisor for a cot in her office, and there it was, the dolly was designed as a bed, replete with a pillow! To reflect her incredible work ethic, a model computer screen was put on, along with a alarm clock showing 2 am. She was working on detection of this particle called the Higgs boson, decaying into some other particles called Tau leptons.
So, of course cutout of Greek tau and H was all over it, and her graduation hat was designed like a Mexican hat, which is a popular representation of how Higgs bosons interact, and there was little white ball depicting the Higgs inside her hat too. She sat in the dolly, a beer in her hand, and was pushed around the campus by enthusiastic members of the group, her advisor included. This was completely new for me, and so much fun!

Here is a picture from the evening:

Anyone seen any other funny graduation customs?

Looking back at the choice I made

2010-11-12T04:46:00.007-05:00

Disclaimer: this was written as a response to a question from a very good friend, if this reads too trivial and personal. may be it is. Also, no disrespect meant to any one making any career choice, the opinions expressed reflect my personal bias.

Why are you doing what are you doing? I guess this is one of the most frequently asked question to those of us who are considered not doing a "real job". While I discussed about why I love doing what I am doing years back here, the other question would be, how did I end up doing it. My usual answer is that I ended up doing physics because I was not good at anything else, which strangely does not satisfy people at all.

One tends to think that career choice is a huge decision. May be it is, but as a teenager, it is hard to have that broad global perspective. Our decisions are mostly shaped by what we see happening all around us, in a very local scale. Although in high school essays one writes one wants to be a doctor when one grows up because they hate to see poor people suffering, I have a sneaky feeling that they want to be doctors either because the white coat looks cool in movies, or after reading Robin Cook novels.

I grew up in a very liberal (my parents spent considerable time abroad) yet conservative (in the sense that choosing a non-traditional career was not an option) household in the outskirts of a small town. We were not strikingly affluent, but all the basic luxuries were all there, and fortunately money was never something which influenced my career path. Like all the nerdy kids, I liked mathematics and sciences, but I also found history entertaining and geography enchanting. It is remarkably satisfying when you actually get to set foot on the places you read years back in those books, but I digress. I have to admit that while I liked reading books, of all colors and flavors, I could never find much logic in studying literature, which essentially involved critically dissecting the nice pieces and taking the fun out of them, or memorizing rules of grammar, which is merely a human convention.

My dad is a Ph.D physicist, and so were a few other uncles. My mom studied history. So that possibly helped to shape my initial interest. However, as I approached that inevitable point where I had to decide my "future", there were few other considerations too. Bright (and not so bright) kids left and right were desperately studying engineering in the hope of landing an "easy" software job, and at that impressionable age, that sounded tempting enough. In fact the accepted convention in those days was that the best minds study engineering and medicine, leaving the mediocre kids who could not get through to either study science and humanities subjects. I was fortunate to have been acquainted with computers from an early age, so with my limited (but certainly better than others who wanted to study computer engineering without having the faintest idea of what it is) exposure, I thought that may be a fun subject. But then I was told that you get to use computers in a lot of other disciplines too, and I was happy. Plus studying computers at a good place involved going through some pretty competitive, demanding but dull entrance examinations, and I was not sure if it was worth the hassle. (For the record, yes, I did take those exams, and yes did not get through to where I would have wanted, but at that point I already had my mind made up.)

It is hard to pin down a moment when and how I made up my mind to study physics, but I will try. Many people think, somewhat mistakenly, that I ended up choosing physics because of my family influence. While it is certainly true that there are/were some highly talented and acclaimed physicists I got to talk to, and my dad is an amazing teacher, something so easily accessible and "everyday" does not influence you so much. May be it did subconsciously, I do not know. However, a couple of things happened the summer before I had to decide. I ended up in a summer camp kind of thing (organized by the excellent people at JBNSTS), where toppers from different schools in North Bengal and North-East India gathered and we had short courses on advanced topics. The professor who taught physics, more specifically very beginning quantum mechanics to these bunch of starry-eyed kids was superbly motivational, and we were mesmerized. The class would start in the lecture hall in the afternoon, and at some point, when the lecture hall needed to be locked up, we would just shift to the adjacent cafeteria, and he would continue. Most of us fell in love with physics. Practical considerations meant not all of us taking up physics, but even now when I talk with someone from that group, they fondly talk reminiscence about those lectures. Around the same time, I happened to stumble on this book by James Gleick based on life of Feynman and I just could not put it down. I read though it, all five hundred plus ages in one go, and that was it. As an adolescent you need someone to idolize (Bill Gates for my computer science friends perhaps?), and no matter how cliched it sounds, he was that man. Of course other mundane things helped, that I actually did not get through to those engineering colleges where a lot of people around me expected me to go, but I had good enough grades to get through to perhaps one of the best undergraduate program in physics at that time, and incidentally the aforementioned quantum mechanics
teacher was a faculty there.

As a very young kid, I had a fascination for trains, like all kids do. Once a train driver waived back at me, and that made my day. I thought I wanted a to be train driver. Alas, that never worked out, but as a high energy physicist, I am going places afterall!

The unknown perspective

2010-11-06T08:34:00.001-04:00

We all read about that incident in our morning newspaper. Uttered a few sighs, commented about the what could have been. Then we moved on. I was haunted by the nightmare for a while, and I still vividly remember the scene.

It was a lazy weekday afternoon in Kolkata. Mexico was playing US in a world cup soccer game. As a passionate sports lover, there was no way I could miss that game - but also needed to go my university which was at the opposite end of the town. Fortunately, Kolkata metro came to my rescue, as they were showing the games live at the stations. So I watched the first half in Belgachia, took a train to Rabindra Sadan just as the halftime ended, and stood there, watching the game. People walked by, sometimes asking the score, sometimes obliviously. Trains kept passing by. Nothing distracted me.

Then it happened. I still do not know what made me turn around, and first time in my life, to witness death firsthand. The upper body of a man, stuck between the train and platform, was being dragged by the train screeching to a halt. For a moment the world stopped, the sounds seem to come from a parallel universe. I could not bear looking on. The story did come out the next day, and no, he was not attempting suicide at the metro tracks like countless other morons do, he just slipped and fell at the most inopportune moment. Sometimes there is no way to come back.

But sometimes there is, and that is perhaps the most glorious thing about life. We all had our share of misfortunes, and mistakes. We love to say they altered our lives, but that is the probably one of the worst vague generalizations one can make. We never knew to begin with how life would be if certain things did or did not happen. I am sure that I would not be doing what I am doing sitting on a dull Saturday morning at Dresden, if I did not join Florida in fall 2003, that much is clear. What is completely unclear though what would have happened if I got a chance and joined another university in US, or a research institute in India. I would not have met the same people or traveled the same road, but would that have been more or less rewarding? We do not know the answer. We have no way to find out.

We know we want to read this book, or watch that movie. Perhaps visit that place. I want Florida to win all football games every year. We probably also know how the results of our work would look like, although research by definition is probing the unknown. But beyond that, we do not know. And like the kid holding the raffle ticket in his hand, and imagining the endless possibilities, we prefer it that way.

No adventurer knew what lay ahead. That would have defeated the purpose.

Eastward Ho

2010-10-30T09:15:00.003-04:00

The ruins of Roman and Greek civilizations draw hoards of tourists to Europe, and quite understandably too. Seeing ancient history, which we read in high school textbooks, right in front of our eyes is fascinating. However, we often tend to overlook momentous events in recent past, mostly because it is hard to grasp the significance of them when we are not directly affected by it. Living in Dresden, and traveling through Eastern Europe, I came face to face with this "modern history", and it is no less fascinating than those majestic ruins.

Growing up in the 80's, even in faraway India, we saw grainy images broadcast by the state-run TV channel. Nicolae Ceauşescu being overthrown in Buchares. Tanks on the streets of Moscow. Tearing down of the wall in Berlin. Apart from providing overtly-generalized coffee-table discussion on why communism is a failure (and also teaching me the word "coup d'état"), I dont think we gave them the due importance. The whole communist block crumbled down, ethnic conflicts ensued, resulting in formation of new independent countries. These were not merely geographical or political realignments, as I have been repeatedly realizing. In my recent travel to Budapest, it appeared that the most commonly used word together with "communism" was "terror". They upooted all the communist leader's statues from the city, and dumped them in the misleadingly named memento park A friend has experienced how in a German train, harmless looking Russian ladies were almost interrogated during a routine ID check. In a Czech shop, the salesman was horrified to learn that certain parts of India are still ruled by so-called communists.

Life in communist era was bad for sure. Food was hard to come by, luxuries were rare except for the top party functionaries, and everyone lived in an environment of constant fear and suspicion. Telling anything against the party lead to unpleasant consequences. But also, everybody had work and a place to live. Should not that count for something? Asking my friends here who formerly belonged to the east, I got mixed responses. Unification was not all good, someone's parents lost their low skill jobs, and they had a hard time integrating with the more competitive westerners. The quality of life eventually got better, but may have also created a problem of identity for the older generation. World can rarely be painted with one color.

Budapest was pretty, Bratislava was nice too. The charming old town architecture sits uneasily with modern glass-facade buildings and McDonalds. One of the attractions in Budapest was the underground labyrinth, decorated with faux-history artifacts and replica paintings. The most prominent feature in Bratislava skyline is the ugly UFO-like bridge, standing just across the medieval castle. You can use Euros in Slovakia, but you have to carry wads of local currency in adjoining Czech republic and Hungary.

In some years, before they all look and feel the same, a visit to these places is as interesting a historical tour as any other.

Why this means nothing to me!

2010-10-13T11:15:00.003-04:00

I am tired of this. Year after year, it is the same story, since I have moved away from Kolkata.
This time of the year, wherever you see a few Bengalis discussing something, it must be about the pujo. You cant escape it offline. You cant escape it when talking to a friend.
You cant even escape it on social networking sites. I am getting sick of this.

And before I appear as another suddenly-homesick Bengali, that is hardly the case. I can perfectly understand why people there will be excited about the biggest festival of the year. You must be excited when you are forced to make multiple forced voluntary donations, have to fight with millions of people to reach anywhere or enter a restaurant, and have the unenviable pleasure of listening to non-stop free music loud and clear from the adjoining pujo pandal.

However I see no reason why I would be excited. Or anyone living in any part of the world, where pujo means nothing. And no, I do not count the social get-togethers organized in these parts. The whole point of a festival is the ambiance, the surrounding. Seeing everyone around you having fun. In spite of all the inconveniences, that is why we want to go back to Kolkata this time of the year, although whether we will be able to survive the crowd is an open question. But I digress.

I am an atheist, so the religious part of it does not mean anything to me anyways. I suspect that is true for a lot of people, pujo is a social occasion, not an overtly religious one, no matter what the name suggests. The social aspect is completely missing here - no matter how hard you try to recreate the environment here. It is either you meeting up with all your friends, which you do once in a while anyways, or worse, an awkward gathering of complete strangers. A festival can not happen in isolation, and more importantly, it cannot happen without a buildup. You cant getup one fine morning, see your scheduler, get dressed, and go to a pujo. Even football games in Florida had more buildup, more expectations.

All festivals are critical functions of the surroundings. That is why pujo means nothing to me sitting here. Now, please stop asking me how I am spending my pujo. And, no I am not interested in listening to how was yours, or hear dhak on youtube. I see everyone working around me.

First impression of Mexico City

2010-09-28T13:18:00.003-04:00

Landing at the Mexico City airport past midnight, all I wanted to was reach my hotel and not get robbed or shot in the process. Not so fast, as the immigration guy kept staring at my passport for a while, flipped over the pages repeatedly, smelled it, made a little mark with his pen and wiped it off, and finally disappeared asking to "wait me". A more senior looking official emerged and and asked if I have another form of ID. I guess they were just confused why an Indian looking guy residing in Germany is holding an US passport. Strangely though, they never asked me why I am here.

The city is huge, and remarkably like any big Indian city. It is not just the crowd, or the crazy traffic or the tasty streetfood, but the character and smell of the city, so to say. It took us over an hour to come to the university from the center of the city, a distance of barely 5 km. The university apparently has 300,000 students, which is about 6 times that of a large public university in US. Overwhelming, to say the least.

Large crowds everywhere, be it at the metro or at tourist attractions. Everything from (cheap) spicy food to handicrafts being sold on the streets, or in the little carts. People singing or playing musical instruments and asking for money, or asking for money anyways. Mexico City is as lively and vibrant place as I have ever been to. The museum of Anthropology does a remarkable job of portraying the unique amalgamation of "Indian", Mayan, Aztec and Spanish culture that the present day Mexico is, apart from having an amazing collection of sculptures and relics recovered from the ruins.

I read all these scary things about the country. May be that is true elsewhere, but here in the city, I never felt unsafe. You do see armed cops and blinking lights literally in every corner, but no hint of any danger lurking.

Latest national park traveled: Yellowstone

2010-09-24T08:56:00.004-04:00

National parks are quintessentially American. Ever since landing up in US in 2003, I have been to a small fraction of them:

Cuyahoga Valley (spring break, 2005)
Smoky Mountain (summer, 2005; fall, 2007)
Grand Canyon (Winter, 2005)
Shenandoah (fall, 2007)
Everglades (winter, 2007)
Yosemite(winter, 2007)
Petrified Forest (summer, 2008)
Acadia (summer, 2010)
Yellowstone and Grand Teton (fall, 2010)

When we think of natural attractions, mountains and seas are usual suspects. However, these national parks are unique in the sense that many of them present totally unusual vistas. Everglades certainly comes to mind - it encompasses the huge swampland of south Florida, an unique but fragile ecosystem. It is not terribly attractive if you want to travel marking the attractions on a map and then connecting the dots, but if for a few hours or days, you want to escape the "civilization", and just enjoy the vast wilderness and nothingness, that should be your next destination.

Yellowstone happens to be the first national park, where it all began, and no less unique. I have been up, close personal to a live volcano before (Mt.Etna, Sicily), but the sheer natural activity in Yellowstone is unlike anything I have ever seen. Spotting animals, (we did have some luck with seeing a bear and wolf/fox) hiding in the vast meadows or wilderness, is a favorite pastime, and whenever we would see a bunch of cars pulled over to the side of the road, we would slow down and ask, what do we see here? Easier to find are the Elks, we saw a herd of those relaxing in someone's front-yard. Bisons are omnipresent, often lazily crossing the roads holding up traffic.

However, you need no such luck or persevere to enjoy spectacle nature has laid out. Not only you have the geysers of all sizes sprouting hot water skyward in regular intervals, but also you have the strikingly colorful pools dotting the landscape. The old faithful is perhaps the most known, "faithfully" erupting at predicted intervals, but we were told that it used to go up higher in older days. Was not everything better back in the days when gas was 10 cents a gallon, airlines served food and immigrants did not flood the country?

That is just one of the countless geysers though.They seemed to pop out from everywhere, even from under a river or lake, a clear manifestation of the unseen activity underground. And when they subside, they form those pools. Combined with the metal particles, teeming microbe life renders surreal colors to those. At dusk, in the fading sunlight, the whole landscape transforms into something magical, the veil of smoke magnifying the colors. There are also some stinking muddy pools full of sulphur, bringing back memories of chemistry labs.

The pictures are in my facebook profile (apologies for not cross-posting them into picasa, but I am running out of virtual estate there).

Language, the final frontier

2010-08-27T19:40:00.002-04:00

Austria one week. Italy next week. Back to Dresden for a couple of weeks before coming to Toronto. US next, with a Mexico trip coming up. At which point all the different languages get mixed up in your head?

It is mostly my fault. I envy people who can speak multiple languages, but I am too lazy to learn new ones. I joined a beginners German course after moving to Dresden, and even the presence of a couple of Russian beauties were not enough sustain my interest.

I realized I could survive with pointing at stuff in stores and restaurants, and for everything else, there was Google translator. Not that it was perfect, and worse, it is non-commutative. So translating a phrase from English to German, and then translating back to English would probably not give you the original phrase back. A while back I was laughing like crazy in my office, reading a (Google translated) mail from our chair admonish the students for not attending a seminar, and asking where did they all die.

Then there is my friend, who made a complete mockery of one of my hard(ly) learned German phrases. "Ich habe eine fragen" means I have a question, and its really useful to get the attention, before I can start rambling in English. She thought it sounded for like "itch hobe ei frog er" (with apologies to my non-Bengali speaking readers). Or this Indian guy, first coming to German was utterly confused why every female was named "frau" (equivalent of Ms.) or why everyone was asking him to choose ("tschüss", means bye).

However German is generally not so bad, you mostly get what is spelled. In French, you mostly do not get what is spelled, most letters are silent. And in Italian, no matter what is is, it needs to be accompanied by animated gestures. And then there are subtle differences too. I found out that there is no difference between "create" and "do" in German, everything is "made" You make babies as well as exercises. However they do have different words for free (indeed free) seats and free (costless) pizza. And German sentences can end with "or", which is apparently a polite way of asking someone, if you want to go to the movie "or (not)"?

Amusing, yes. But intimidating too. I walked upto a bus ticket counter in Toronto and realized I can actually use a complete English sentence.

Only if everyone spoke the same language.

Snippets from my sojourn through Austria and Sicily

2010-07-31T11:10:00.017-04:00

In the summer of 2007, still a graduate student, I came to CERN for a summer school. That was my first glimpse of Europe, and after the school was over, I did a solo Geneva-Zurich-Rome-Pisa-Florence-Venice-Paris-Geneva trip, walking all day, spending nights at cheap hotels or taking night trains. A lot has happened since then, I graduated and moved to this side of the Atlantic. I have visited many exciting places, but most have been in tandem with academic trips, or weekend trips someplace with or to someone I know. While these have been great fun, nothing beats the sheer excitement of multi-destination semi-backpacking trips. So when this long-lost friend, proposed this trip, I was thrilled, and we spent days and weeks planning every detail. It certainly lived upto all the expectations, and I got to relive that first Euro-trip again, with someone who has never been to Europe before.

Some of my lasting memories from the trip, in no particular order.

Cinematic connections: First part of the trip took me to two cities associated with two of my favorite movies. Salzburg was of course the setting for "Sound of Music", and Jesse and Celine walked the streets of Vienna in "Before Sunrise". We did accidentally find the bridge they so memorably crossed.

Train on a ferry: The train from Rome to Sicily crosses Strait of Messina on a ferry. At Villa San Giovanni station, the train is split into 3 parts, and each is pushed into the ferry, the lowest deck of which has 4 set of tracks. At the other end in Messina, the tracks are aligned to the ground tracks again, the coaches are retrieved by an engine coming in and joined together, and the train rolls out.

Czech obscenities: Not their fault really, but the Czech word for exit is remarkably similar to the word for copulation in Bengali, my native language. Oh well.

Small pleasures of life: Walking all day through the charming streets of Prague on a hot sultry day, we were thrilled when we found people enjoying the water spray from this sprinkler in a little garden. Finding our way back to it at the end of the day, it was still on, and as people passing by giggled, we literally drenched ourselves. Pure bliss.

Sushi-coma in Vienna: After having a fill of Schnitzels, we stumbled upon this place advertising running Sushi. With a double-decker conveyor belt running by the tables carrying everything from cold sushi to warm dishes to fruits in small colorful bowls, in endless loop, it certainly felt like heaven. After two hours and countably infinite number of empty bowls in front of us, we walked out of the place in a trance like state.

Horse-steak in Sicily: for only three bucks, nonetheless. While I loved it, my friend completely freaked out and ended up having a large chunk of watermelon for dinner. For the bravehearted, the next item in the menu was lamb guts.

Freezing point is, really freezing: We ended up visiting ice caves near Salzburg in our summer clothing. Climbing up and down 700 steps inside the cave, often with icy winds made us sweat and freeze at the same time!

Train amenities: The Czech night train from Prague to Vienna had a shower. Never before I showered on a train. And the Hungarian train taking us back the same way had an outlet for electric shavers. Evidently shaving is a big deal for some men.

Music tourism in Vienna: In every street corner, people dressed in strange costumes would try to sell you concert tickets, and they simply would not take no for an answer, rather keep asking insisting that in the city of music, you must be at these highly acclaimed concerts in the royal palace. Incidentally, these "popular" concerts never seemed to sell out. Amusing at first, major irritant soon after.

World in black and white: It could as well have been the surface of the moon. At Mount Etna, everything has been devoured by lava, and the landscape is starkly black with white smoke coming out from live craters. A surreal feeling.

Nothing beats Florida beaches: Heard a lot about Sicily beaches, and while they are nice, most of them are strips of gravel. Not the alluring soft sands of Florida.

Seacaves in Syracusa: A boatride in Syracusa took us to these amazing little seacaves. Very local, very pretty.

Catastrophe in Catania: While walking on the cobbled streets, my friend ended up with a twisted ankle, and a bizarre sequence of events followed, culminating in me pushing a wheelchair around in Munich airport. Found out that German emergency healthcare is order of magnitude cheaper than US, and I now have a new-found sympathy for the mobility impaired people.

Aftermath

2010-07-09T18:12:00.004-04:00

Disclaimer: this post is about the world cup, but not really.

Its a story of before and after, and the dramatic fortnight in between.

I realized I am in a unique position before the world cup began. I grew up watching football in India, which became soccer once I moved to US, and fußball when I came to Germany. But in spite of the excitement it generated in India, and the metamorphosis of people to Brazilians or Argentinians during that particular month, we never really had any stake in the championship. It was exactly opposite in US, where few people cared about the tournament, although I get a feeling that has changed this year.

But in Germany, the involvement was real. Although before it all begun, the expectation was not very high from this very young team. The first dramatic victory over Australia was treated almost as a pleasant surprise, and the subsequent defeat against Serbia made people cynical again. Then they sneaked by Ghana, and all people wanted was to win the "war" against England.

As they say, one game changes everything. That emphatic win, albeit with the English "no-goal", made people believers, and the systematic destruction of Argentina started the discussion about winning it all. The often dull, workman like German style was gone, and the fluent attacking game, complemented by the usual accurate finishing became a delight to watch. Even I found myself subconsciously rooting for "Die Mannschaft".

Rooting for a sports team (and getting disappointing) is nothing new for me. That Javed Miandad six off Chetan Sharma shaped our psyche, and every meek Indian capitualtion in cricket brought about national mourning. It turned more personal after I became a "Gator", and we were royally pampered with a pair of national championships each in football and basketball during my stay there. For all my non-American friends out there, that is a big deal. Wild celebration after all those championships at university avenue till wee hours of morning remain one of my fondest memories from my Gainesville days

So I was secretly hoping for an encore. Too bad, it did not happen. But what really surprised me was the sheer classiness of the people here. In Florida, we hated losing. We were fiercely partisan. Opposition players and coaches were ridiculed, called by profanity-ridden-names. Even when we were thoroughly outplayed, the crowd honestly believed we are one big play away from turning it around. People were not merely upset after the loss, but they were intensely angry. We would never acknowledge that the other team can play better. The Monday after, campus would be in mourning.

I was expecting something similar when it looked inevitable that Spain would score. I was watching the game with an enthusiastic, flag waving, vuvezela playing, obviously patriotic crowd by the river in a giant screen. Everything that moved was decked in German colors. Spain scored, and the crowd just went quiet. And they remained quiet, with occasional desperate "Go Deutschland" cries. And then it was all over. The crowd dispersed methodically, strangely emotionless. To all fairness, if before the start of the tournament, they were told Germany will reach the semi-final after crushing England and Argentina, most would have gladly taken it. But still, it felt eerily calm, considering the magnitude of the occasion.

Hell, when LeBron James ditched Cleveland three days later, more people seemed more upset.

Just when you start to think you have seen it all, you realize you have not.

Freedom from the mob!

2010-07-04T15:34:00.007-04:00

It was roughly a year ago I got into it. A world of violence and crime, robbing and killing. I made new friends, who helped me to expand my activities, but a lost few, who could not tolerate it. It was fun while it lasted. Like all good things, it had to come to an end. So today, I obliterated my criminal associates, and claimed back my life.

Rather my facebook page, from complete strangers I added to play Mafia Wars. But facebook is life, right?

I never liked virtual games much. In the early MS-DOS days, I liked playing this game called paratrooper, where you had to protect your anti aircraft gun from a continuous flow of air dropped enemy fighters, wonder how many of us remember it? Games came and games went, but most were either too involved, or needed extremely quick reflexes, and I sorely lacked the patience. And at a deeper level, I realized losing against faceless machines made me depressed, while winning did not bring any great joy. Wins count only when someone right here is actually humiliated and bloodied, not when a little popup on screen says you won. No wonder I never developed a taste for online gaming too.

Racing games were slightly better, where I competed with myself. I actually liked them for a while, trying not to finish at the dead last position was surely a challenge. I gained a firsthand idea about how hard it is to drive around a F1 circuit. And I first got introduced to the gorgeous pacific coast highway via Need For Speed, and the curves did seem that treacherous when I first did the drive years later.

So, I was skeptical when I signed up for Mafia Wars. Make no mistakes, it is not a role playing game, no matter what the name and the actions suggest. It is purely a strategy game, where you have to optimally use your resources. That is the aspect which got me hooked, although the part where I had to add hundreds of strangers in my facebook profile was a bit disconcerting, But, as the popular saying goes - there is no such thing as a free game, and the developers simply wanted to expand their business. I can not really fault them for doing that.

It did not really require fast reflex, well not much anyway. But it needed one to login often, as time was effectively the currency in the game. So for almost a year, no matter where ever I were, I would go online and keep up with the game. I tried to time my gameplay so that I do not lose much when I slept, or took a train or flew. I had to turn on my laptop sitting in workshops and meetings, to makes sure I do not l miss anything, and then I would see the guy sitting in front of me is doing the same. Mafia Wars did become a phenomenon, with every other person you know on facebook seemed to be playing it, and spamming your wall with meaningless posts. There were online forums, with veterans and newbies discussing strategies and rumor, I made sure I did not miss any discussion. I liked the social aspect of the game, knowing that you are dealing with real imperfect human beings made the game not just a game, but more part of a lifestyle. If I played it anymore, I could almost have claimed it to be my profession.

Well, eventually the inevitable happened. Work caught up, and my continuous traveling meant the game had to take a backseat. And to "popularize" it even more, the developers introduced new features, which made the gameplay more and more dependent on others. And just like that, I grew out of it.

Being part of the imaginary mafia was fun though. Certainly more fun than growing virtual crop in virtual farms.

It is all your fault, ladies

2010-06-27T17:37:00.005-04:00

The issues change.

In high school, friends complained about getting low marks, or getting bullied.

In college, it was mostly about getting treated unfairly by members of opposite sex.

And then we grew up. The pet gripes changed. Two body problem is certainly ruining the world, no doubts about it whatsoever. Also insensitive husbands, unsympathetic mother-in-laws and male dominated society are to blame. While each situation is unique and a generic oversimplification is unfair, I say this to my oppressed sistren, mostly you are at fault. You waited, and just let it happen to you.

It is always about who has the position of power. In Indian context, an arranged marriage and subsequent loss of financial independence effectively hands the power over to the husband. Once he is allowed to be the provider, he has the control, and quite rightfully so. Complaining of subjugation at that stage is pointless. A disproportionately large number of Indian women think their career is expendable when they enter in a matrimonial relationship. Now of course everyone would not have a very successful, or even a happy career, and that is often the excuse. That is however, beside the point - financial independence can do wonders is times of crisis. And generally for the morale.

The problem is deeper than that, of course. Many (not all, thankfully) Indian men marry because they want someone "at home", as clearly evident by the matrimonial advertisements in newspapers. In that case, obviously a woman having a job would not fit the bill. Now before one starts blaming men as the chauvinistic pigs, look at the mirror. Why these men are getting a steady supply of females willing to act as maid servants? I am no economist, but evidently the law of supply and demand holds. As long as a man can get someone to cook his dinner, wash his dishes, and generally clean after him everyday, with some free sex thrown in, why would he not take it? Why would anybody not take it? He is not to blame. If the supply was cutoff, marrying actually meant marrying a real person for these guys, sooner or later they will get used to it. Like in many other cultures - men do not get to completely dominate domestic dynamics, because women can easily walk out of the door, carrying only emotional baggage, but not worried about food, shelter, and what the neighbors would say.

But we Indians, do it strangely, We want the best of both worlds. We want to be traditional yet liberal. We force them into marriage which require them to quit their study or job. We expect them to sacrifice for the sake of family. And then, inexplicably, we want them to be happy too. They try. When after trying hard, things do not work out, it is too late for them to take a stand. No sympathies, mate - you brought it upon yourself. If you are taking s***, because you are allowing him to get away with it.

(To my Indian friends) Why "you" are not a Brazilian?

2010-06-26T06:07:00.004-04:00

I like tragic heroes. Be it in literature or sports, and so the Dutch football team has always been a personal favorite, helped in no small amount by the exquisite crisp football they play. They play like world beaters one day, and lose to an unsuspecting opponent the next day, never really fulfilling the promise they show. Tragic indeed. But what would be more tragic? If I buy an orange shirt, run around my neighborhood with a Netherlands flag, celebrate each their win as "our" win, and when they inevitably lose, pick a fight with someone who denigrated "my" team in anyway.

Oh wait, is not that a majority of Calcuttans (and others from subcontinent) do? Replace Netherlands with the Brazil or Argentina, and during the World cup, you would like think Calcutta is an extended suburb of Rio or Buenos Aires. Except, that it is not. And you make a complete fool of yourself.

You may think dividing the world up in so many countries is purely artificial. However, since that is indeed the case, national identity is synonymous with national pride. Be it for the smallest country playing in the World cup, who would suffer humiliating defeats and go out, their supporters would still be passionately cheering for them till the last whistle. That is why club football is different from international games, or in US, professional sports from college sports. You can be a fan of any club or professional outfit, although in most cases, they loyalty is geographic. However, you can not be a citizen of another country, or somehow be affiliated to a college, unless you are actually one.

I get asked if India is playing in the World cup a lot. While that is embarrassing, at least now I have another team to support, since I have an American passport. I hear all sorts of snide remarks from Indians, starting from who cares about football in USA to they are lucky to win. Well, my friend, this team is at least in the world cup (just an aside, the US soccer federation chief is of Indian descent) while your team is not. No, your team does not wear yellow or striped white-blue colors.

I know you will get angry and hurt hearing that. You have no affiliation/attachment to another country, where you are neither living, nor were born. Liking their football is one thing, but identifying yourself as one of them just betrays your complete lack of national pride, and identity. Whether or not you can sympathize with street children playing the game in rags in Brazil is completely irrelevant here, since they are not unique to Brazil (why not support Ghana then?), and the national team players are hardly underprivileged. You are unlucky that your teams sucks, but that hardly makes you a Brazilian. Even a pseudo-one for a month. Brazil winning is not you winning, it is still they winning. Hard luck.

Helsinki and Tallinn

2010-06-21T08:29:00.007-04:00

Helsinki is an interesting city. Not terribly unique, considering I have been to many European cities, but it has its way of imposing its will on the visitors. That is in spite of the fact that most locals I interacted with speak excellent English, certainly a welcome change from Dresden. However, despite the similarity in language with the Germans, the mindset did not seem German at all. Trains and trams were running late routinely, instructions were often vague, and worse, buses did not announce stops. The name of main train station seemed different depending on which tram or train you are coming by, and many of the other stop names were either too long or had too many vowels (and magically ones got added or subtracted overnight, I am sure), making them indistinguishable from each other!

So navigating all that, I finally find my hotel. I was slightly perplexed by the fact that the Finnish(?) word for elevator sounds suspiciously similar to the word for peeing in Bengali (well, with a million languages in the world, you will end up with such coincidences occasionally, like the Czech word for exit reminded me of an unmentionable sexual act in Bengali, but that does not stop one from noticing).

But the bigger surprise awaited me. At midnight, this is how the conversation went between my friend and me:

Me: You realize that this place is WEIRD?
Friend: Yes, its still not dark.

There you have it. At midnight, there was still light outside, like it is early evening. I have seen sun setting late in Paris and Geneva, but now I knew why Geography textbooks in high school mentioned these parts of the world as land of midnight sun. I dont think I ever saw complete darkness in my short stay there - and my friend says she did not either, inspite of staying up late a couple of nights. That is both good and bad when you are a tourist, good because you can start the day late and still have enough time to explore the places, however you miss out on the night pictures.

Few pretty churches and palatial structures adorn the city, the touristy part of it is remarkably small and walkable.

The most popular area is certainly the market square, an open air market adjacent to the waterfront. On a weekend morning, it was abuzz with people buying useless but tempting articles, and eating delicious meat pie and freshly fried fish. I bought a plateful of fried "vendage", and within minutes had to duck for cover from a bunch of mean looking seagulls hovering above - clearly having and eating your fish required some alert maneuvering.

Next was a short boat ride to Suomenlinna, a former sea fortress, mostly in ruins now. It was still nice to walk around the island, following what remained of the fortress wall, with canon carelessly lying around, and a distant view of the archipelago.

For the first couple of days, it seemed like Finnish food is like Canadian food, as in nothing is local. Eventually we did find interesting local eateries, and I added a new meat in my list, reindeer.

Olympic stadium and the tower was another popular attraction, however the stadium was all dug up. The infamous nude statue of Paavo Nurmi was right there, as advertised.

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia was only a couple of hours away, and I was not about pass this opportunity to visit a new country. The charming old city part maintains its distinctly medieval character, surrounded by crumbling walls and empty watch towers.The cobblestone streets and towering church towers made it a joy to walk around.

We had our lunch at this restaurant called Olde Hansa, which is old, and the the whole decor makes it look even older. The food was good, albeit a bit costly.

And then it was time to head back, by this huge ship! I have never been on a ship which resembled a hotel, a mall and a resort at the same time!

More Pictures here.

A hate letter

2010-06-08T10:16:00.002-04:00

I liked playing chess as a kid. I played with other kids, and with a program with ran on MS-DOS. I would not claim that I was very good at it, but it was fun nevertheless. Then I learned that chess can be learned. I bought books, memorized different types of openings and strategies. I spent hours playing with myself. I won more. But every loss hurt more too. And somewhere down the line, the charm went away.

My feeling is, the same thing is happening with photography. I never wanted to be a photographer. I do not claim myself to be creative. I just liked taking pictures, playing around with each frame. Sometimes they came out nice, sometimes not - but there were never any expectations. With effectively unlimited memory cards and a backup battery, there is no limit to the number of photos you can take. Law of average dictates that out of a hundred or thousand tries, some would come out good. Digital camera and online photo sharing meant friends and strangers started seeing those, whether they wanted it or not. Some liked some pictures. Hell, one even won an "honorable" mention at the university organized photo contest. Of course I was happy and proud. I did not even enter the contest next year, or the years after, only because I could never remember the deadlines. Another landed up in CNN iReport. Taking a photo for me was never about entering a contest or gathering praise. although if they came as a byproduct I was too glad to bask in the glory.

Somewhere down the line, people started asking questions. Why I am not switching to a digital SLR. Why I do not use photoshop (it is another matter that most use illegal pirated version, which they should not be using at all) or post-process the images. Have I thought about reading about photographic techniques, or planning to enroll in courses. I held out. No digital SLR for me, because I am broke. I have no time to edit pictures and no inclination to readup technical details. And when I looked around, I saw people using fancy cameras and pirated softwares posting dull pictures, and garnering praise. The praise did not bother me so much, as did the general attitude that a costly camera must imply awesome pictures. In this era of artificial human interactions, what else one can expect!

When you do something spontaneously, it is mostly fun. When the same things starts becoming too technical, and you feel the pressure of expectations, the fun starts dissipating. I get asked often if I am not "tired" of studying. People identify studying as something they were forced to do as a kid, not as something you do because you want to know how nature works, or how you can positively affect human lives. Nothing forced is fun. Competitive activities can be fun, but mostly because you enjoy the competition and derive a pleasure out of vanquishing opponents.

Anyway, I finally gave in. I should be migrating from my high-zoom point and shoot to a micro 4/3rd interchangeable lens camera soon. I am hoping it is worth the money, and worth the hassle of learning a new technology. Otherwise, another hobby would become a victim of peer pressure.

More politics, very regional

2010-06-05T14:05:00.003-04:00

Dipthought's final thought on the recent municipal elections: in the world we grew up, none ever waved an opposition flag in the vicinity of Alimuddin street. That just did not happen.

The most striking image from last Wednesday? Precisely that!

From Calcutta Telegraph, 3rd June.

Why I support the Arizona Immigration law

2010-05-24T14:56:00.004-04:00

Essential disclaimers before I start. I have not suddenly veered to the dark side. I still do not watch faux news. I voted for Obama, and will do it again. And I am a brown skinned male, very much look and smell like an illegal immigrant.

But I support this law. Or better, I do not oppose it.

It is not a perfect world. This law is not a perfect solution to immigration issue. Or any issue for that matter. And let us face it, this is more of a deterrent to scare potential illegal immigrants away, rather than pack and ship them across the border. I wish that was the case. but we have to many watchdogs worried about human rights violation, effectively negating the possibility. And then also, we have no idea it would work.

Still I think it is a step in the right direction.

Illegal is illegal. They should not have the rights and privileges legal residents enjoy. Now the definition and moral interpretation of the term may vary, but I'll stick by the current laws here. And whether one likes it or not, most of them are brown skinned, accented English speaking folks. Profiling may be morally reprehensible, but show me a better solution, please?

Most of the dissenting voices are worried about that. And the requirement of carrying an ID. Here is Germany, we are supposed to carry our passport all the time with me, whenever I step out. I have been asked to show my ID, politely but firmly many times in train stations, in trains, at the airport, when Germans walked by peacefully. Do I feel violated or discriminated? Hell I do. But then again, its their country. Its their law. I am free to leave if I dont like it. I am told this is the case in most of the Europe. Carrying your ID is not that big a deal, specially if you have one.

Once in Munich train station, I was asked for my passport. I was attending a conference, and did not have my passport with me. I explained this to the guy, he listened to my explanation patiently, looked at my conference badge and the ATM card I had with me, and allowed me to go, with a reminder that I should be carrying my passport. These guys have a decent feeling who is an illegal and who is not. They are not going to arrest every Id-less Indian/foreign grad student in Arizona, contrary to the fear mongering propagated by certain people. They have better things to do.

Protesting for the sake of protesting is not a justification to oppose this.

Travel Titbits

2010-04-18T11:45:00.002-04:00

Back to what I do best, talk about traveling. However, rather than talking about how wonderful my last few trips were, and making many jealous, I will try to talk about how my outlook and preferences have evolved over the years.

Let us start by a uttering a simple word, which often prompts strong opinions from people I know. Greyhound. Well, not the dog (that would indeed result in a strong reaction from me, I am mortally afraid of dogs, any shape, size or color), but the inter city bus service in US. I know people who are terribly afraid of riding without even having been to the bus station, and then people who traveled cross country with it. My personal experience is mixed. They often do not have the best routes or timings, and mostly the bus stations are not in the best part of the town, but they actually run on time, and I never felt they are unsafe. A disproportionately high number of colored people causes some concern for some people, but that is a result of the socio-economic condition, and the the fear is more racial myopia then anything else. So verdict? I probably would not use Greyhound, but that is because driving gives me more freedom. But if someone is not driving, Greyhound is an excellent option, and cheap too.

I did ride Greyhound, and slept in Greyhound stations, when I could not drive. Not that I particularly enjoyed that, but money was the strong constraint there. It still is, however I have actually become more particular about my itineraries now. I never liked early morning flights, but now I actively try to avoid them. I would drive a a couple of hours to the next big city to get a cheaper flight, now I mostly would pay a little more but fly from Dresden, rather than Berlin. I can survive using a shared restroom in a backpackers hostel, but a room with a private shower is probably what I would end up booking. I am spending the money I do not have, but when you travel so much, these little comforts add up to feel you less jaded.

More so, when I travel solo. Sometimes it is by choice, sometimes not. Academic travels are by definition solo, but then there are trips I just make. Many people find it weird, or maybe downright scary, that one can go to a nice place alone, and enjoy, but it is not as awkward as it sounds. There are of course fancy restaurants and operas probably one would not want go by themselves, but walking around a city, hiking to an old castle, or even exploring a museum can be done alone quite efficiently. And at times, that gives me complete freedom to plan (which I love doing!), without worrying about what others may or may not like. Often I have got stuck with incompatible traveler companions, and I would much rather go solo.

A year later

2010-02-15T18:31:00.001-05:00

Exactly one year back, on a snowy day, I landed here in Dresden. Without knowing any German in a completely German town, from a diverse environment of an American campus town to a strikingly non multicultural town. I did not feel I belong here.

One year down the line, it is a good time to revisit that question. More importantly perhaps, now I can try to figure out the intangibles which shaped my perception. Lack of local language skill does affect my judgment significantly in all fairness, but fortunately as a physicist working in an international collaboration, it has barely any impact on the work.

Most people, when trying to draw the contrasts between the two sides of Atlantic, cite the widespread availability of public transit as a good thing here, or the lack of open grocery stores on Sundays as a bad thing, and I am equally guilty of such assertions. While these on a superficial level indeed are very true, and significantly dictate ones lifestyle, more interesting would be look at where these, and other differences are coming from. The US lifestyle is built around the concept of individual space, and minimal restrictions. Passports are "checked" at the airport, not "controlled" as in most of the Europe. While one can argue that both are the exact same exercise, the clear distinction in the name does betray the different philosophy at work. The reason grocery stores are not open 24/7 because some laws mandate that people working in those stores need that time off from work - but it does not consider that some people might actually prefer working overnight or during the weekends for the money. The food court beside my institute has a couple fixed dishes everyday, and with fixed sides. No, you can not have fries with Gulash, they are only served with fish today. Too many things are too fixed.

These remind me of airport security persons in India putting a stamp on your carry on bags while passing through screening, and then inspecting it before boarding, The whole exercise is totally pointless, since one can not enter the boarding area without being screened. May be this was a necessity in the older days, but now somebody just need to realize the absurdity of this measure, rather than just following the tradition. Too many European norms are like that, once they made sense, but stopped evolving with time.

I should give credit where it is due. Public transit is useful, but never can be a substitute for personal cars. However, the extent the whole system is designed for conservation of resources is admirable. Grocery stores do not hand out plastic bags for every three items, in fact they do not give one at all, unless you pay a nominal amount for it. That forces people to reuse bags and not to throw them away indiscriminately as I did back there. Disposable cutlery and crockery are rarely used - and again. that is not only to look classy. People do not grab paper napkins in bunches, and the lights in my institute building are all switched off at night.

After a year of struggling with a new culture and a different worldview, I would say I am glad I decided to come here. It has been a learning experience, not always a smooth ride, but given me a different perspective about many things I took for granted over in the states. Life in Europe is certainly more charming, but deep down, I would still prefer the familiarity and predictability of American life.

Oktoberfest!

2009-09-28T19:08:00.003-04:00

For the first time in life I regretted not knowing how to dance at all. Pretty girls in prettier costumes were almost inviting us to join them, and thousands of people dancing, and we somehow resisted the temptation. It was great fun nevertheless.

I always thought Oktoberfest is only about beer drinking. I was so wrong. Drinking beer is much more of a serious business, specially when served in the units of one liter. And then it triggers the largest organized mayhem in the world, a surreal experience which is impossible to describe in words. You have huge tent like structures, each holding thousands, perhaps more. Once you get in there, and start drinking, time stops. There is music, and people dancing everywhere, between the benches, on the benches and on the tables. The difference between friends and strangers become blurry, and it feels like a dream. That is of course helped in no small measure by the presence of girls in attractive dirndls (which is probably the single best invention since the wheel, same can not be said for the male lederhosen though), plenty of them, wherever you look. They are not shy, rarely choosy, simply out to have a good time. Alcohol is a great leveler. And surprisingly, in spite of so many of people completely drunk and totally tipsy, the whole ambiance is unbelievably clean, or so it felt.

Then there are things you can do apart from dancing the evening away. There are scary rides, with you being thrown around violently in random directions and suspended upside down. I am not sure what made me try one of those, the alcohol or the curiosity, but simply thinking about the experience making my stomach churn now.

The scale of the whole thing is mind boggling. Someone told me that the population of Munich is usually a million, but it becomes at least five or six times that over the duration of the festival. There were Australians, British and people from literally all corners of the world, young and young at heart, all coming down here to have perhaps the time of their lives. It is commercial of course, things costing more than usual, and very touristy too, but none of them overshadows the celebration part.

Take a bow Disneyland. This is the happiest place on earth. By far.

Some moments captured here.

Lively Lisbon

2009-06-29T07:12:00.019-04:00

I thought Lisbon would be like most other European cities. pretty but predictable. Pretty it was, but not in the usual made-for-tourists way. It had shades of San Francisco (hilly and and a bridge strikingly similar to that what-is-the-big-hype-about-Golden-Gate-bridge), Rome (charming old structures) and possibly Calcutta (dripping with everyday life). Between the attractions, there were run down buildings, narrow alleys going and up and down dramatically, clothes hanging outside, smells of fishes being cooked, locals hanging out at street corners. Somehow all the imperfections actually makes it all the more charming.

I set out with no clear plan in mind. The overwhelming landmark is the castle (Castelo de São Jorge) at the top of a steep little hill, but rather than climbing all the way up there, I boarded the cute tram #28. It meanders through the densely populated mini hills and the valleys that make up the city, navigating the dramatic slopes precariously, barely wiggling through the narrowest of alleys, passing by the river Tagues, often presenting striking views.

In addition, there was music. Fado is the traditional Portuguese music, soulful songs of love and heartbreak, probably originated in the bygone era of lonely sailors. There were musicians performing live on the tram (link to a recording), as a part of summer festival, with locals spontaneously joining in, vastly outnumbering the tourists.

Hopping out of the tram I walked randomly across the almost maze like Bairro Alto, zigzagging through the cobblestone roads and inclines. And when my feet started complaining from all the climbing, there were these lovely elevators, one going up along a metallic cage (Elevador da Santa Justa), another more like an antique streetcar (Elevador da Glória).

The suburb of Belem was next. The much advertised monastery (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos) was indeed grand, and contained the tomb of Vasco da Gama, who would always have a special place in Indian history.

Standing across the road was the monument to all those brave explorers and discoveries, and a big world map showing the glorious days of the Portuguese domination, from coasts of America to Asia.

The adjacent tower of Belem has a forlorn aura about it, overlooking the river with boats passing by, headed to the sea.

It is interesting how British and Portuguese (and the Spanish, of course), so different in every other respect, ended up conquering so many distant shores. I may be totally wrong, but my feeling is, while the British were more of resource hunters and their reminiscence is one of pride, Portuguese legacy is more of the adventurous spirit, and exploration.

The Berardo Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was rather small, but worth a quick visit. I also dropped by the Museu da Electricidade to have a look at the world press photo exhibition going on there.

I had no idea what awaited me when I headed to Sintra next morning, an UNESCO heritage town half an hour away from the city, The bus climbed up the hill up from the station and stopped at the ruins of Moorish castle (Castelo dos Mouros).

I always wanted to a visit a real, once functional European castle, and this was it!

This is probably one of he most underrated attractions I have visited for a long while. While I must admit that not too much has survived the time, the remnants are definitely worth the short hike. I walked along the ramparts, climbed up to the towers, overlooking the vast expanse and the stunning Pena Palace at a distance.

The Pena Palace itself was royally gorgeous and more colorful than Disney, and offering nice views of the rather dull National Palace and the lovely Monserrate Palace down there.

Lisbon was lively no doubt and, but Sintra captured by imagination, a living testament to the tales of yore.

Finally to this tiny coastal town calld Foz de Arhelo, for the actual physics workshop. This is Atlantic from the "other" side. And it feels so much more virgin than from overtly commercialized Florida. My hotel room is on a cliff, overlooking the mouth of a lagoon meeting the ocean, and I can hear waves roaring all night. Pure, unspoiled sand and water, a fantastic landscape.

Any trip is not complete without sampling local food and drink. I was asked by a friendly waiter if I want the "beef" of pork or cow -I ended up going with the pork, crisply fried succulent pieces. However, this is a seafood lovers paradise, fresh fish, octopus, squids abound, all fresh and rather affordable. All these years I thought of Sardines as somethings which originate in those tiny cans, and it was a revelation to devour big shiny and tasty Sardines. How would I go back to those cans again? Pastel de Belém is the famous local creamy and ultra sweet pastry, and yummy. Sangria is plentiful and cheap. This is a country where Port wine came from, and while I am no wine connoisseur, the ones I sampled were aromatic and full.

The disconcerting eeriness of being thirty

2009-06-09T17:01:00.010-04:00

There are things in life you expect to happen. And then there are things you should expect, but never really do. Like turning thirty. Birthdays are generally meant to be happy occasions. One day to celebrate and remind people of your existence. Not for me though. Not anymore, certainly. Growing old is such a scary idea, and thirty seems like somewhat of psychological barrier beyond that I can not just ignore age as just a number. In all these years, I could think of myself as the naive young one, all the carefree mistakes, casual omissions, the general attitude of being irresponsible had that grand excuse. At thirty, I am not sure if one can still claim that(but I am going to try nevertheless). Human lifetime is incredibly short and insignificant when one looks at the grand scheme of things, the and by that benchmark, thirty possibly means I have used up a significant fraction of that. I am mortally terrified of being old, and there are so many things I have not done or experienced. However, rather than start getting upset about those now, let me try to get some transient satisfaction by listing some of things I am proud to have done. This is of course, an incredibly random, and entirely biased list, with no logical order and I am sure I am forgetting more equally memorable events, after all, as some study said, memory starts to decline from around this age.

I have lived in three different countries in three different continents.

I visited so many places. Although I am tempted to, I would not name them all here. But very briefly, major city/cities in 7 different European countries (Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, England, Belgium, Czech Republic, with Portugal coming up), and major attractions in 34 mainland American states (plus Washington DC). I have driven along along the pacific coast highway in California, seven mile bridge over the seas connecting Miami to Keys in Florida, and from Florida to Chicago crossing the country. I have taken the incredibly scenic golden pass express across Switzerland, saw the pope in Vatican, got my portrait sketched at Montmartre, stood across the prime meridian in Greenwich, saw Mont Blanc right in front me standing at an altitude of 3842m, stayed inside the fort in Jaisalmeer, gambled and won (albeit a small amount) in Las Vegas, just to name a few of the incredible travel experiences.

I have a Ph.D in Physics. Some random estimates suggest that only about 1% of world's population holds a Ph.D. So that indeed puts me into an elite fraction of the population. (And while on that, I consider myself privileged to have Rick Field as my thesis advisor. I could not have had a better supervisor.)

I have been associated with the world's current (Tevatron in Fermilab) and future (LHC in CERN) highest energy particle collider experiments. To non physicists, it may not appear that big a deal, but the LHC turn on is truly an once in a generation opportunity.

I participated and gave talk which was reasonably appreciated in one of the premiere conferences in our field, Moriond at La Thuile.

I was awarded as the best graduate student while in Florida for distinction in teaching and research.

I have experienced the perhaps most incredible and significant political event of modern US history, the election of Barack Obama as the president, up, close and personal. I have also voted in India, so that makes me a participant in two of the world's largest democracies.

I have accumulated enough frequent flier mile to move in to "silver elite" status in delta skymiles, and also had a free India roundtrip ticket.

I have heard Joan Baez sing live. Twice.

I participated in the inaugural "University Challenge India" quiz show on BBC, hosted by the amazing Siddhartha Basu.

I have tried rock climbing and skiing. It is another matter that I faired miserably in either.

By last count, I have collected close to two hundred refrigerator magnets from all the places I visited.

I have seen the space shuttle discovery blasting into space, once at daytime, once at night.

I have eaten alligator, horse, frog, rabbit, ostrich meat (with kangaroo coming up, hopefully soon) among the more unusual ones.

While at Florida, I have lived through two basketball and two football national championship runs. The basketball team was perhaps the best college basketball team, ever. Again to all not acquainted with American college sports, this is unprecedented. (and I was once on the same flight with Al Horford.)

I have won an award for my photography, and one of photos was featured on CNN ireport. While by itself, neither is that big a deal, it is not everyday I get appreciated for being creative.

And, despite being a bitter loner most of the times, I had been amazingly lucky to know and come close to some wonderful people. And wonder of all wonders, someone agreed to marry me too. I have to compliment Saswati for her incredibly courageous decision!

Physics and more in Moriond

2009-03-19T12:06:00.012-04:00

Physics conferences tend to follow a certain pattern, lots of talks throughout the day, some social interactions in the evening and may be a weekend excursion to a tourist attraction nearby. But what happens if the whole conference is an excursion by itself? That is what Moriond conferences are - tucked away in this a French/Italian Alps ski resort named La Thuile, the afternoons are left free for skiing and enjoying the breathtaking scenic beauty, and we are spoiled with awesome and exotic lunch and dinner.

And by the way did I mention that this is a gathering of some of the best workers in the field, and as they jokingly say, you can even talk physics while skiing!

Skiing I did try, that too for two days. But to put it in a very respectable way, I am not in the best physical shape, the only part of the body I exercise regularly are my fingers, and that shows. On first day, I learned it is deceptively difficult, certainly not as smooth as seen on TV. It is hard to move with skis on when not on a slope, and its even harder to stop when you are on one. There are techniques though, but then again, we did not learn walking or cycling in a day either. Next day was super exciting, if I may say so. Accidentally I took the wrong ski-lift, so rather than landing on the top of a gentle practice slope, I ended up on the top of the mountain, with only steep "expert" slopes to go down. The ski lifts are apparently used for one way traffic, they do not allow you to get down - so I had to be rescued and brought down to the nearest cable car station by a snowmobile - those things do move fast going downhill! Quite an experience indeed. This place is a skiers paradise.

However, the view going up the mountain on that open ski-lift, which is effectively a hanging bench, and where you can not get on without your skis on, was out of the world, and possibly worth all the trouble. Too bad I could not take any pictures.

Other highlight of my stay so far was having horse-steak for dinner. It was different, a bit dry, reasonably delicious and I never knew people ate horse before. This was also my first talk in front of a hundred plus audience consisting mostly of experts, and I think it went rather well, from the the questions and the general reaction.

Munich Moments

2009-03-19T11:07:00.013-04:00

As they say, high energy physicists are travelers. I realized that very well after joining Dresden - in the first five or so weeks, I have been spending three of those away from my new home. The first one was at CERN, mostly for meeting collaborators and taking care of paperwork needed to officially join ATLAS. Since I have been in Geneva before, I did not really try to explore the city much.

Next trip was Munich. Physics-wise, I have no idea why I was there, since it was the German Physical Society meeting, where most speakers felt it is their sacred duty to give the talks in German. But that was a convenient excuse for me to skip the sessions entirely and be a "tourist" again! Munich is like other German cities I have seen - with an semi-old part of the city with majestic buildings, skyline dominated by churches and lots of modern developments.

However, I have known Munich from my childhood days for 1972 Olympic games, partly for the then unprecedented gold medal haul by Mark Spitz, and mostly for the terrorist attacks and subsequent death of the Israeli athletes, which perhaps changed the character of sports forever. Unfortunately, when I landed up in the Olympic park, the whole area was closed due to some renovation going on.

I still however passed by the very simple memorial plaque and that was the end of my brush with history. Or so I thought. Next night, I was invited by a Max-Planck Institute physicist at his place, and it turned out they live in the erstwhile Olympic village, and more significantly at Connollystrasse 31, which was the exact same building where the gruesome events took place. Max Planck Institute apparently bought that building and made it a housing for physicists. It was an eerie feeling visiting that building at dark, and this would remain my overwhelming memory of this Munich trip.

I did the other usual touristy things too. I stood there in the heavy falling snow to watch the Glockenspiel, where little figures come out of the church tower and perform their little mechanical "dance" routine.

I climbed up to the top of "Alte Peter" church and savored the nice view of the city.

I spent half a day exploring the Deutsches Museum, apparently world's largest science and technology museum. I had the succulent Weißwurst sausage, and crunchy but delicious pork knuckle, all washed down with plenty of Bavarian beer.

Funny or Sad?

2009-03-07T14:50:00.004-05:00

While catching up with Indian news at NDTV, I came across this:

It apparently links to some website called Voice of Bengal, which wants to sell digital cameras and wants Bangladeshi immigrants to leave.

Very interesting.

Ten Random Facts about Dresden

2009-03-03T07:10:00.002-05:00

1. Its just not lip service, people are really environmentally conscious. Trash needs to be separated out in glass, paper, plastic, biodegradable waste etc, you rarely see plastic use and throw cutlery and use of paper towels is almost non existent. Grocery stores do not give plastic carry bags - you have to pay extra to get them. And you even get cash back by returning bottles.

2. May be because this was East Germany before, but everything is utterly methodical. For example I was given this form, where it literally says, go and meet this Professor, say hi to him and get the form signed by him. But that also means...

3. Everything involves too much paperwork. And in a fixed progression - you cant cant get a mobile phone unless you have a bank account, which you cant get unless you registered your address with the authorities, which of course can not be done until you have your apartment lease contract in hand, and for that you need to find an apartment!

4. That brings me to the business of finding an apartments. Yes, there are plenty of them, and yes they are reasonably cheap. But one crucial problem - they generally do not come with anything. And by anything, I mean that. Nothing in the kitchen , just some water pipes and wires sticking out. One has to buy and install the "kitchen". meaning the burner, fridge and all that is needed. Most apartment buildings are tall, dull structures, with hundreds of units inside, another Esat German legacy. I was even shown a refurbished apartment complex built from an old army barrcak, with long corridors and depressing ambiance.

5. However, one good thing is public transit, specially coming from a place here it was very limited, to put it mildly. Buses run on time, in fact you can almost set your watches by them. They have dedicated lanes and turning signals.

6. The food is not so fantastic though. Its mostly some form of sausage or potato, or often both. Like a sausage immersed in a thick potato soup. Which is not so bad the first time, but gets boring after a while. But then again, so does Wendy's double cheeseburger!

7. This is a tremendously non-multicultural society unlike I was used to. People of color are rare to find, and people actually stare at you if you are brown (or black, I would assume), not always in a bad way, but still!

8. There is quite a number of Neo-Nazi sympathizers here. Or so I hear.

9. Dresden is apparently called the balcony of Europe. I'll soon find out why. It is also the sister city of Columbus, OH. I do not want to find more about it. *Sigh*

10. Its completely different to be a tourist in a place where virtually no one is expected to understand your language, and to actually live there. Just saying.

My first view of snowy Dresden from my 17th floor hostel room:

Update...

2009-03-03T06:40:00.000-05:00

Blogging took a backseat, while other matters had to be taken care of. I finished my Ph.D, and dedicated it "All those who kept asking when I would be done". Really I did. Before that I needed to find a postdoctoral position, and after a frantic, often frustrating few months, I got an offer from Dresden to join their ATLAS group, which I gladly accepted. Then came perhaps the hardest part - convincing myself that I actually want to get married. I am not actually sure that I succeded, but like a true physicist, I figured a real experiment is the best way to figure out. So that happened too, although in a very non traditional way, in the presence of a few close friends. Then I had a month to make a trip back home, after two years. Finally came back to Gainesville to bid goodbye to my second home, and it was not easy. Calcutta is my original home no doubt, but Gainesville is where everything was mine. It was my apartment, my department and my office space, I bought my car - the sense of familiarity, attachment and belonging to that little big campus town had been too great. It was hard to let it all go, but as they say - life is all about moving on.

Reflections

2008-12-23T11:09:00.003-05:00

Time indeed flies fast. I still vividly remember the 2003 fall evening I landed up in this little big campus town. Fresh into an alien land, adjusting to a new culture, so far away from my friends and family, with my awkward accent, it sure was a challenge.

Physics was not the only thing I learnt over the next five or so years. Staying up late in first few semesters, working on those lengthy homework assignments, taught me that that a lot of physics would be drudge work, training for the future. Research has been much more fun, although I realized it is almost impossible to make that ground breaking fundamental contribution, which we all dreamt about when we first decided to do physics, ignoring the temptation and allure of engineering and potentially big money . It has turned out that most of us are rather like cogs in a big wheel, making small (and hopefully somewhat significant) contributions to the big cluttered landscape. But I have also concluded that, this is what I want to do,
and by some fantastic coincidence, the next few years would be incredibly exciting time in our field.

Gainesville has definitely grown on me in all these years. People have been amazingly nice and kind. Once I left my passport in the department, the day before going on a month long India trip. Darlene Latimer and Chris Scanlon came all the way from their home on a Friday night to retrieve it, so that I did not have to miss the trip.

I have lived through what probably has been the golden era of Gator sports. I have first time voted and actively participated in a landmark presidential election. I have traveled all across the country (so far been to 35 states) and beyond, both for academic and pleasure trips. Now, driving up on I-75, when I see that little green sign saying Gainesville is near, it feels like I am about to be home.

And, after this wonderful journey, I would be moving across the Atlantic to Germany for my postdoctoral work. To a new country, without knowing the language, away from all the wonderful friends I made here. Déjà vu?

Published in UF Physics monthly newsletter, Proton, with a five year old mugshot of mine!

Voted for change, and the country did the same.

2008-11-07T14:36:00.000-05:00

One of John McCain's last campaign rallies was in Roswell, NM. May be he was hoping for some alien intervention. Sadly that never came - and we all know what happened next.

People have run out of adjectives to describe how historic and overwhelming the night was, and so I would not even try. It was my first time voting in a general election here in United States, and the process was mostly painless and filling in the bubbles made me feel a bit nostalgic. Networks called Pennsylvania early, with Virgina, Indiana and North Carolina very close, we never got a chance to get worried. It was effectively over (time to change the Orkut/Facebook/Gtalk status messages!) and Florida has lost the bragging rights of being the decider. We met a bunch of screaming supporters in downtown and watched him speak at a noisy and cramped bar.

It never felt close on election night. The primaries were more entertaining. And I have to figure out how can I live without all the polls, rumors, debates, speeches and analysis keeping me occupied.

Voting for Change, in Gainesville

2008-11-03T22:23:00.006-05:00

So finally the first Tuesday after the first Moday in November is upon us. By this time, tomorrow, we should have a clear sense of where the night is heading for. As an avid supporter "for change", I hope that means whether its a narrow victory or a landslide for Barack.

I have been following politics for while, back from my days in India. The issues and the candidates interest me, for sure. I do have decently strong opinions about those. But what fascinates me more is what happens at the background - the tactics and strategies, the opinion and the exit poll, and in generally the things shape the outcomes, unbeknown to the general public.

This election offered plenty of those. I went to a Joe Biden rally on our campus yesterday. It was my first time willingly in a political rally, ever. And i also got to "meet" the now famous "Obama-bot", a moving robot with glowing blue eyes carrying Obama banners, made by UF students. While all that was so much fun, I noticed far more interesting things. I saw a disproportionate number of people wearing "turn Texas blue" shirts. It has been happening in all across the country - volunteers from Illinois swamping Indiana and Ohio, from all the southern states congregating in Florida and from Arizona going to Nevada and New Mexico. While I dont know if they can pull off wins in all these key states, it just shows the remarkable ground game Obama folks have put together. I read reports that in Ohio, they have calculated the number of votes they need block by block, precinct by precinct, and there are people in charge of making sure of that. Well, it is surely a bad year for republicans, but that does not take away the credit of building perhaps the most exhaustive ground organization in history by Obama folks. And just in case things do not go right, there are five thousand lawyers standing by in Florida, which has been jokingly called the largest law farm in country right now.

May the best candidate win, as long as it is Barack. That would be the easiest choice for me on the ballot.

And that is me with the "Obama-bot" on Sunday at the Biden rally.

2008-10-18T03:09:00.002-04:00

Congratulations Ganguly.

Good Ol Times Are Back in Bengal

2008-10-09T01:45:00.002-04:00

My profound apologies to my nonexistent international readers. I could not resist commenting on this Singur-Tata-Mamata drama.

When I was growing up, this same bunch of people, who has been in power for an eternity in Bengal, opposed computers in particular and industrialization in general. They called it the US conspiracy to rob the youth of their jobs. We listened. After all, anything going wrong in Bengal was the fault of the imperialist Americans, when the central government could not be blamed. Again we listened. It felt slightly cliched when they supported the central government but still blamed them for all the ills. But then again, we were so used to it by then, we still listened. And of course the big bad Americans were sitting right there, staring at us, sniffing at every opportunity to harm the hard working Bengalis.

So how did they keep all these enemies away? By sheer people power, of course. Any thing you do not like, assemble a mob, pelt stones at random directions, set something totally unconnected on fire and block traffic for hours. It obviously worked, since the idea gained ground. Soon, we were swamped with gifted holidays (read strikes) and a chance to play cricket on the main thoroughfares of the cities. One has to notice how cricketing fortunes of Bengal improved from then on. The police never tried to stop any protesters (unless they were from opposition parties, who by definition were anti-people and pro-American) - and anybody even thinking about defying them, willingly or by some compulsion, met with violent consequences. All was well. How I miss those peaceful times.

Now this poor lady. She is only trying to learn from history. Only way to connect to the people of our state is evidently to cause chaos and disruption, and oppose industries grabbing land. And now, no wonder, she is being blamed as a part of a bigger conspiracy by Americans.

I do not know much about the exact details of the land acquisition process and fairness of the compensation. I do not know if it was good agricultural land.

But sitting in the land where Americans are still a majority, I do know this. Americans care a damn about whats happening in there. And I have a sneaky feeling they never did.

A Tale of Walls

2008-10-05T01:03:00.004-04:00

From the dusty grounds surrounded by the crumbling walls at the erstwhile Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, to a city still trying to come in terms to the fact that the wall is not there - my one day visit to Berlin was indeed exploring what those walls meant to the psyche of an entire generation of people.

Someone at Hamburg told me, by heart Germans are Communists. I am not sure if I agree with him, but Berlin is the closest I have been to a former Soviet territory. Today, all the symbols of a booming capitalist system are jostling for space with countless memorials and leftover nostalgia from the pre-unification days - and somehow I felt that robs Berlin from having a distinct character as a city. The wall is very much alive in the collective consciousness, from thousands of pieces (or so claimed) of it sold in every other souvenir shop, to "follow the wall" tours designed for history-thirsty tourists. It would probably take a while for the wall that is not there to become truly history, and before that Berlin would still be defined by that. The most popular landmark is the Brandenburg Gate, followed by a free climb upto the dome of the former Reichstag, from where again, you can see the Brandenburg Gate in all its glory and trace the path of the wall - going through the strangely constructed but eerily calm holocaust memorial at the heart of the city, all the way to Checkpoint Charlie, with people comically dressed up as commies putting commemorative stamps on your passport (for a few Euros, of course).

There is also this huge green patch at the middle of the city, somewhat of a New York city central park. I did not get enough time to explore all the churches and museums, some impressive looking, some not so. But where I did get a chance to go to was this concentration camp an hour away from the city. It was not as big or notorious as Auschwitz, but to see the barren grounds surrounded by high walls interspersed with watchtowers, houses with no windows, divided in how-can-those-be-called-rooms and the weirdly emotionless execution pit, the horrors of those days do seem up, close and personal.

The photos are, as always in my picasaweb album. I also had a chance to explore Hamburg, which is a nice harbor city, and Lubeck, which has a unique skyline with old churches and the castle-like entrance, and famous for Marzipans!

Germany - 2008

When you are in Germany...

2008-09-16T16:21:00.006-04:00

You get this, in plain text when you type www.google.com:

We can't provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we're called Google Mail here instead.

If you're traveling in Germany, you can access your mail at http://mail.google.com.

Oh, and we'd like to link the URL above, but we're not allowed to do that either. Bummer.

For general information about Google, please visit www.google.com or www.google.de.

And here is a screenshot. Notice the difference?

My take on Sarah Palin...

2008-08-30T10:38:00.002-04:00

In her own words:

And in the words of her supporters:

No fear of flying

2008-08-28T18:01:00.000-04:00

Like the song says, I have been pretty much everywhere. I should rather say, I have flown to everywhere. Starting from the bumpy ride from Atlanta to Gainesville in the propeller driven apology of a plane to huge Boeing or airbuses for coast to coast or transatlantic sojourns, it has been a long ride, in the true sense of the term.

And like all folks who pretend to be geeks, I love to find out how things work. No, not how that giant metallic structure stay afloat midair, that is trivial. Rather I love to know what goes in behind the scenes. Some of my experiences in all these years, not always exactly pleasant though, helped untangle some mysteries. I would take this chance to bask in the glory of my acquired wisdom now!

"Taking over the plane" : Not as alarming as it may sound. The first time I encountered the phrase when having missed an earlier flight, I was trying to get a standby seat on the next flight five hours later, and the agent at the gate told me she can give me a seat only when she takes over the plane, which would happen an hour or so before the take off. Then I learnt before that, the check in counter controls the plane. I was trying to book a flight within a day, and I could not get a seat assignment, either online or by phone. They simply said, the airport has taken over the plane. So that is that.

All those "special" seats: United has premium economy seating, with a little bit of extra leg space, and they try to sell it to you before the flight. The best way to get them? In a full flight, just do not choose any seats. They would be forced to hand them out eventually- I managed to fly on those quite a few times without paying an extra cent. Same with Northwest, they charge for those spacious seats at exit rows, and often times try to force people to buy them so that they can seat together. Again, traveling solo has its own advantages and checking in late often means they have no choice to give an exit row seat to you. Feels less like a herd of cattle packed in.

And finally, "Channel 9": The only reason I love United. For those uninitiated, channel 9 broadcasts the communication of the pilots with the control. Again, there are different controls taking over the plane at different times - starts from ground control who directs it till take off, then to successive "centers" as it flies by and finally to the ground control where it lands. And it is so much fun listening to the exchanges. All the code names and jargon's, how I love them. It also gives you a sense of power, listening to the instruction to turn right by some degrees and then actually feeling it turn or the warning of "weather" up ahead and then seeing the seat belt sign come back to life. They have intersections in the sky, and routes precisely documented by altitude and angles. And on ground, its pretty much like the traffic on roads, "follow the heavy American jet" or "stay close to the pack". Fascinating stuff.

Travel Companions

2008-07-26T12:39:00.002-04:00

Well, I wont mind some. While time and money are the usual suspects, too many trips have not happened due to the lack of people. And, as I have learnt in the had way, its better to travel alone than to end up with a bunch of people not ready to spend at all, or too worried about the comforts of life.

But that is not what this is about. I remember back in India, when traveling back and forth between my home in Siliguri and my university in Calcutta, we used to scan the reservation charts pasted beside the train doors, and would be excited to find any teenage female names around. It is altogether another story that we would rarely end up talking with them. I am not the most talkative of persons unless I know the people around, and that extends to public transits too.

However, on occasions here, I have ended up having conversations with some bizarre people in plane. I ended up beside a drunk musician from New Orleans when going to Chicago for the first time in the winter of 2004, and it was entertaining, for lack of a better word. Initially what started as his not so polite rant about the airline not allowing to carry his guitar or something, turned into an interesting, albeit slightly incoherent conversation. He talked a lot about New Orleans, and this was well before Katrina. He talked about Jazz music, and asserted that only Chicago and New Orleans has good Jazz - which is probably true. The thing I remember him most for is, however for none of the conversations we had. It was my first time landing in a big city after dark, and the view of Chicago from up there is simply awesome. They always go anticlockwise over the lake and the downtown, and from the left side of the plane, where we fortunately were and he allowed me to look out, you can see the most perfect grid, tiny squares after tiny squares. Then comes the lake and as the plane turns around towards the ultra compact downtown - you can almost identify each individual building. Night landing in Chicago is always spectacular - of course, you have to be sitting at the left side, as the guy told me. Rightly so.

This summer, I was coming back from Phoenix, AZ and the route was already absurd - flying up to Minneapolis, MN and then coming down to Orlando. That is the price you pay when you get a cheap ticket nowadays. We were delayed in Minneapolis, and to avoid weather, they flew all the way southwest toward the the direction of Omaha, NE before continuing southeast. So it added an hour or so more to what was already a needlessly long flight, and I so did not mind too much when the guy next to me started talking. As it turned out, he has spent some time in Bangalore, and written poems about India. It is always fascinating to hear about India from a different perspective, so it was all great till then. However once I said I am a physicist, he started talking about all the conspiracy theories - UFO sightings to his belief that the Pyramids were built by aliens. He suggested me books and websites - it did get boring after a while, but he simply would not stop. I never knew people so passionately believed in those.

The poems were nice though.

How do you feel when you do something for the last time?

2008-07-23T01:41:00.005-04:00

(Disclaimer: This post is by no means influenced by recent observations that most of the posts here are either travelogues or my political rants. They would be back)

A couple of years back, I visited Siliguri, a pretty little town known more as a getway to Darjeeling. This would have been no story, except for the fact that I grew up there and this was perhaps my last trip there for a while. My family moved away from Siliguri since then and there would be no reason for me to go there now, especially when the India trips are usually so hectic.

Growing up in suburbs was fun. We lived away from the town, inside the university campus, in a way isolated from the world. Kids were kids then, and the pleasures of life were simple. After coming back from school - we would circle around the campus in our cycles, talking about immensely forgettable stuff. We played Badminton and Table Tennis with an intensity as if the winner gets to play in the Olympics. There were occasional pranks of course, and flare ups, as all kids do. Growing up introduces its own complexities and we were no exceptions. The random cycling excursions were not so random anymore, and new words like "planned coincidences" started creeping into the vocabulary. It was all nice and clean though, even when the hidden emotional turmoils were not so. The evening outings took new meaning and became more personal than group activities. And they also became an outlet for me to vent my frustration arising from different unrelated reasons. The open roads and presence of very few automobiles meant I can cycle as fast as I wanted, "speed limit" was an unknown phrase then. It was a great way to unwind - too bad I cant try it here.

Eventually, we all moved away from out little world. But we all carried some of it with us, wherever we went. I still prefer living in suburbs compared to a big city, and when very upset, drive to this place just out of Gainesville, which somehow feels far from all civilization, turn of the engine and just wait in the absolute darkness till I feel better. When I went back to Siliguri, I brushed of the accumulated dust of years from my once shiny black cycle and realized it is no good to ride anymore. My sister's cycle still worked, so I took it, rode around all those places which have so many memories associated with them. It was like traveling back in time. I went past my old place, traced and retraced my old routes, stared longingly at empty balconies, received a royal reception at my old primary school, ate a "Singara" at "Savitri Sweets" and finally when it was all done, the enormity of the moment descended on me. This is something I would do never again. I would never ride a cycle through North Bengal University campus. Never again in my life. Not just because I wont probably ever get a chance, but also because it wont mean anything anymore.

The moment has long been gone.

2008-07-19T21:53:00.002-04:00

Which began as a very promising summer, turned out to be a majorly disappointing one. May be I would go into all that sometime, or may be not. However, I am back.

Question of the day: Why the nuclear deal is bad for only Muslims, according to a big array of politicians? If it is bad, then it should be bad for everyone, I would think. Why no one has the guts to use that s word, which would be used every time the word Hindu is used in a sentence?

Judging a Science Fair

2008-03-09T16:29:00.001-04:00

This was something I had never done before. Never as a kid I built one of those toy models and never as an adult I cared to look carefully at them. A week or so ago, I had the opportunity to judge the Alachua County Science and Engineering Fair, where kids from local middle and high schools put of their projects. On stake was invites to the state fair - and it was amazing to see the amount of effort and enthusiasm those kids (and in most cases their parents or teachers) put in.

The day started off with me looking at some of the "Physics" projects - and they ranged from super methodical to interesting to downright stupid. The winner in this category had toy cars of different shapes and sizes in a homemade wind tunnel and looked at those affect the wind flow. It was a pretty neat idea, although not the most conclusive way of looking at that particular problem. Another girl measured how high a dry and wet soccer ball would jump with varying amount of air pressure - again not terribly innovative, but one has to give it to them for the effort. On the other side there were projects where one kid after a lot of measurements concluded that dark colored liquids absorb more light than light colored - oh well, is not that what "dark" exactly means? Then there were politically correct projects, where this guy basically hooked up his dad's generator with some load and ran it till it exhausted 5 gallons of petroleum with different octane ratings and concluded which variety is more economical.

After lunch, it was time to branch out to different areas - and I came across some of really eye catching, albeit useless projects. One involved making a dog smell different foodstuff and record how it reacted. Another one played different sound tracks to a chicken and saw which one got it scared. There was one project where a guy poured different brands of carbonated soft drinks on animal tissue, and predicted comparatively how harmful they are depending on how much the tissue is dissolved. Only one problem though - it also got dissolved in distilled water.

I did not have to judge those though. I was pretty impressed by this project where a photo sensor, depending upon how green the leaves are, automatically started watering the plant. I was not at all impressed where they tested different fishing lines strength - how much weight it can support before they break, and they had no clue how all that would change inside water. I am no expert on fishing, but I always thought there must be some water involved, right?

Many of the projects, across the disciplines, involved comparing commercial products. How long different brands of candles burn, how strong different sunscreen or detergents are or how different cameras reproduce the color spectrum. While these are interesting, I am not fully sure if I would call them projects in the sense of term.

Overshadowing most of those, was this 8th grader, explaining how she made silver nanoparticles and looked at their properties. Wow. I am not sure if I can pull that off even now!

Deja Vu?

2008-02-16T22:18:00.007-05:00

My first peek at US presidential elections was through "Wonder Years". Like so many other things, it portrayed the everyday America life through the eyes of teenagers. A lot was happening in 70's America, and the keen interest I developed for that exciting period of this countries history may began from those daily half an hour time spent with ever adorable Kevin and Winnie.

Coming back to politics, this episode portrays how a super enthused and motivated Winnie joins the campaign stuff of George McGovern's 1972 presidential bid. He was in many ways like Barack Obama of today - hugely motivating, big appeal among the younger crowd and definitely the anti-establishment democrat. He was anti war and wanted troops to be withdrew from Vietnam. He lost a few primaries, including Florida (which then counted!), but picked up enough delegates to win the nomination at the convention. Sounds eerily similar?

I hope not. In November, against Nixon, at that time he suffered the second worst defeat in history. He won only Massachusetts and D.C, losing even in his home state South Dakota. While I strongly believe that in this day and age, the same fate would not befall on Obama, I am slightly worried about his cult like status now. A win would be a win, and great for the country, whichever way it is achieved, as long as it is fair. But I do not trust the republicans would play a fair game, and my respect for the Senator from Arizona is getting less by the day.

That night, after McGovern lost, Winnie and Kevin realized that life is bigger than an election and all the behind the scene activities we don't know about. On a November night, nine months from now, when all the votes would be counted - no matter who wins, we would learn that all over again.

Until then, Go Obama.

Quick Thoughts!

2008-02-06T13:11:00.000-05:00

Not a perfect night - would have liked closer races in NY/NJ/CA and not a blowout loss in MA. But winning 13 out of 21 states, with NM so close, does help the campaign in the long run.

Baez for Barack!

2008-02-05T02:28:00.000-05:00

Joan Baez came out in support for Barack Obama this weekend. Here is her letter to the editor in San Francisco Chronicle.

Leader on a new journey

Editor - I have attempted throughout my life to give a voice to the voiceless, hope to the hopeless, encouragement to the discouraged, and options to the cynical and complacent. From Northern Ireland to Sarajevo to Latin America, I have sung and marched, engaged in civil disobedience, visited war zones, and broken bread with those who had little bread to break.

Through all those years, I chose not to engage in party politics. Though I was asked many times to endorse candidates at every level, I was never comfortable doing so. At this time, however, changing that posture feels like the responsible thing to do. If anyone can navigate the contaminated waters of Washington, lift up the poor, and appeal to the rich to share their wealth, it is Sen. Barack Obama. If anyone can bring light to the darkened corners of this nation and restore our positive influence in world affairs, it is Barack Obama. If anyone can begin the process of healing and bring unity to a country that has been divided for too long, it is Barack Obama. It is time to begin a new journey.

JOAN BAEZ

Menlo Park

I love my favourite singer even more.

My endorsement for Barack Obama

2008-02-02T23:51:00.000-05:00

I resisted the temptation of writing this post for a while. I was cynical, like most Americans, if Barack Obama can even stand a chance of being the president. The conventional wisdom said no way. His Iowa win was followed by losses in New Hampshire and Nevada. She had huge leads in opinion polls in most states - 25 percentage points, 30 percentage points or more. She was virtually assured to win the biggest states.

I am following politics for a long time - the dramatic rise of BJP in Indian political scene, the night of 6th December 1992 - which changed the politics in India forever, the remarkable speeches by Vajpayee and much more. Never ever I have seen such an inspirational leader like Obama, nor I have seen such an amazing outflow of support in such a short time for one person.

State after state, the leads for Hillary are shrinking. The states where Obama had no chance would all come into play this Tuesday and after. Opinions polls do not mean that much just by themselves - but when viewed along with the spontaneous endorsements by established democratic leaders and popular unions and big newspapers across the country - it is impossible to ignore the momentum Obama would still not win all the states - but he would be more competitive in New York than Hillary would be in Illinois and leave with a huge chunk of delegates from California. That says a lot. It is not everyday that registered republicans come out in the support of a liberal democrat.

Watching his speeches almost brings tears to the eyes. I always liked motivational leaders, mavericks, who think out of the box and have the courage to follow that up. We saw Martin Luther King only in youtube and read about John F Kennedy in history books. Somehow, in some way, Obama is a leader in the same spirit. History will judge how much he would succeed. But this is very clear - this is an incredible moment in history - whether Barack gets the nomination or not - he had a made millions a believer in politics again - which happens so rarely.

And incredibly, this is personal too. I know I would never be a politician, would never run for a public office. However, from the day I read in the history books that only someone born in United States can be a president, I always felt proud that one day I can run for that position. Of course I knew I would never. But when I see a non-white guy, with a funny name, whose father immigrated from Kenya, and having no political background, running from president, something tells me inside that achieving something and dreaming about it in this country may not be so improbable after all.

2008-01-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

How the politics has changed...

2008-01-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

I was reading a piece contrasting Barack Obama's presidential bid to that of Jesse Jackson's in 80's, and this line kind of stuck out. However, since Florida's Democratic primary counts for nought, I started concentrating a bit on the local races, the ones for Gainesville city commission and all that. This would be my first time voting in Unites States, after expressing my opinion in different Indian polls a few times. Obviously the Democratic no show dilutes it significantly, but looking at those local races and trying to decide, I realized how the decision making process for me has changed from Indian elections.

Back in India, there were mostly no decisions to be made. Either we opposed a political party vehemently, or supported it wholeheartedly, and that rarely had very little to do with that party's stance on issues. That carried over from campus polls to the parliamentary polls, with everything in between. Most of the times, we did not even need to know who the candidates were, we just looked at his party affiliation and voted. I plead guilty of the same offence, that's how I voted for candidates mostly, without knowing who they are or what are their qualifications. Only once, in college poll, I realized I cant stand the guys who were opposing the party I oppose, so left the ballot blank. But other than that one aberration., it was never a decision. And I know its true for most people back there.

To my surprise, I realized, here I am looking at each candidates stand on issues that affect me. Let me give a real example - for a city commission seat, for which I am going to vote this Tuesday, there are three candidates. One is an ex-business owner, tauting her long involvement and experience with the city and her goals are to be selective about giving tax break to developers, improving the the bus system, decrease neighborhood tensions between long-term homeowners and student renters. The second one is a professor of economics and government in a local college, and his main aim is to invite emerging businesses, such as biotechnology and clean energy research firms in the city, and is counting on the support of the student population. The last candidate is also a successful local entrepreneur, and have pretty much the same goals, attracting high paying jobs to the city, promoting social programs for the needy, like vocational training and affordable housing, and being careful in giving tax breaks to companies.

Funny thing is I do not even know who who comes from which party- although I am sure it wont be too difficult to find out. Rather I chose to focus on the agenda. All of them have sensible platforms - but I was tempted to go with the third guy, probably because of his social programs for the needy bit, since homelessness is becoming a growing problem here, and as we all know, that breeds crime. But I saw he proclaims that his vision is to would turn the city into the next "Orlando, Jacksonville or Tampa", which are the nearby big cities. That immediately turned me off. Why? I like Gainesville to be this little big campus town, not a frantic big city where campus is just a part of it. So that reduced my options, and I decided I would go for the professor, partly because I am biased towards those in academia, and partly because I don't trust entrepreneurs. That is probably not the most objective selection, but at least I decided based on who they are and what they want. That's a big change by itself.

(With input from Alligator, the campus newspaper.)

Thanks!

2008-01-23T16:05:00.000-05:00

Before writing my next post, let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who took time to read my last post.

Thanks to those friends and strangers who thought my "dissenting" viewpoint made sense and supported that wholeheartedly. I am glad that I spoke for all of us, who think that blind or passionate activism does not bring about solution to every problem. The odds of me getting shot in Gainesville, FL is no way correlated to some other Indian getting shot in Durham, NC.

Thanks to those who did not quite agree with my calling the petition futile, but were ready to have a sensible dialogue. We should always agree to disagree without casting aspersions on the other person, which is unfortunately too prevalent.

And finally thanks to the abusive gentleman who is threatening me with dire consequences for my "insensitivity", without showing his face. You are too insecure to come out in the open, or lack the courage to put your across point or the lack of it publicly. Is that all you can do? I pity you. I really do. Get a life!

It does not make sense...

2008-01-21T23:48:00.000-05:00

Incredibly sad? Yes
Immensely disturbing? Definitely.
Something "we" need to do? No.

That would be my summary reaction to the murder of this Indian graduate student at Duke and the subsequent rants and ramblings. Reactions have varied from unfair generalization (Indians are being targeted), to a more paranoid version of that (There is an organized effort to kill Indians) and to absolute paranoia (I don't feel safe anymore in my apartment). While the killing of two other Indian graduate students in Baton Rouge, Louisiana roughly a month back contributed to this paranoia, a little sanity check would convince us otherwise.

Crime happens. A Senegalese graduate student of University of Chicago was shot dead in November. Now should we conclude that someone is after international graduate students? A University of Georgia graduate student is missing for two weeks and is suspected to be dead. Now is it a conspiracy against graduate students at large? I see them as unrelated local crimes. They were just at a wrong place at a wrong time. A burglary gone wrong. A gun abuse by a drunk or a drug addict. All of us living here know that all parts of any city are not created equal - there are elements who you would not want as your neighbor, to put it mildly. However, international graduate students often end up living dangerously close to those areas, sometimes because its close to school or most of the times its just plain cheaper. Sometimes the security is reassuring, like my friend in Baltimore has automatic security alarm installed, sometimes its not, as apparently this guy from Duke was a victim before, from the stories we hear.

The reactions have been predictable. The shock and grief are inevitable, and I know some folks who knew this guy personally. While sadness is genuine, we have to understand there is not much we can do. Of course we should be alert while walking back alone late at night, but who is not? It means nothing to the deceased to fill up his Orkut scrapbook with our messages and it certainly a total wastage of time and energy to draft futile online petitions. It is a local law enforcement issue, unless proved otherwise, and not a threat to any community in general. A foreign government has no say gun control issues of this country, however insane they may seem to be from outside. All Indian government can do, and I am sure would be doing with or without a petition is to push for a fast investigation. Another pet peeve is, it has not given enough media coverage here. True enough, on Saturday, it was not in the headlines, but it happened late on Friday and Saturday was a big day in politics, with a couple of states having presidential caucuses and primaries, so no wonder it was not headline news. Since then, I have seen reasonable coverage of it and no signs of a cover up, as alleged by some.

The killing does not make sense. So does not the reactions of most Indians around me.

Tebowed!

2007-11-28T22:05:00.000-05:00

On my way to the department this morning, walking past the Shands building, reading about Tim Tebow's Heisman chances in the Alligator, I looked up and saw the man himself. Right infront of me, sitting in a bench, talking on his cellphone. He looked like, oh well, just like Tim Tebow!

They have a whole website on Tim Tebow facts. Here is what I would add. Other quarterbacks fake the hand off and throw the play action pass. Tim Tebow is so good that he fakes the run to himself and throws!

Baltimore Get together!

2007-11-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

First it was planned to be on Thanksgiving. Then we realized that is too costly a time to fly. So we had our undergraduate friends, accompanied by their significant others (me being the sole exception, still holding on to my freedom!) getting together at Baltimore the weekend before.

Time flies so fast. I still remember the days at my Calcutta home with these folks, getting drunk and talking nonsense. And waking up next morning with a bad hangover. Those never felt like any special occasions. Now, to spend a weekend together, some of us have to fly halfway across the country, worried about missing work, shaky finances and flight delays. And unlike those days, speaking Bengali is a luxury for a few, as their better halves are from different parts of the globe. So the simple pleasure of talking in Bengali probably is a big enough attraction for them. And then there are those favourite stories about how one guy was thrown out of a pub at Miami or another got almost molested by an eunuch at an Indian train, which would be repeated and repeated at every gathering and never be old. Those old jokes. Calling each other names. Remembering the old crushes. Thinking what could have been. And looking ahead to mostly uncertain futures.

Back in JU days, during our trip to Lava, a scenic, mostly unexplored hill station near Siliguri, I remember a couple of these guys playing cards sitting inside, too lazy to venture out. So I would think for us, waking up to hit the road early in chilly mornings, after understandably not much sleep, was an achievement. We drove through Shenandoah National Park, explored Luray caverns and landed up in Washington DC. And on a personal note, I took an afternoon off, drove down to Silverspring Maryland, met a good old friend, and got my picture taken in front of the Hospital where I was born.

This is all of us in different moods. (Opens in the same window)

And these are my random clicks-

My newest adventure!

2007-10-28T15:22:00.000-04:00

As they say, its never too late to learn anything new, Which is of course a damn lie. When I thought it would be good idea to learn swimming being in Florida, I was told I would have to put my whole head underwater for a significant amount of time. That may sound trivial, but for someone who almost got drowned in a five foot pool in a water theme park, it is a deal breaker. Then I know of someone who tried to learn cycling at a ripe old age, and started riding into one disaster to another - and lucky to be surviving without breaking anything. (Other than the cycle perhaps!)

So it came as a surprise to me when I enrolled for this rock climbing course. May be I remember missing out on a similar opportunity at my undergrad days or may be I wanted to find a easy way to lose weight. Whichever it was, it did not take long me to find out that climbing is not for me. That was in-spite of the instructor being impossibly encouraging and friendly, most of the classmates trying to make me feel I am just a little away from succeeding, and the presence of this really attractive girl in the class. And she was a powerful climber too - should I say a joy to watch? But there was also this never married lady of my mother's age, passionately putting much more effort than I was and this unrelated gentleman of a similar age who was once a gymnast. Others were, if nothing else much more athletic than me, and even with all the emphasis on technique and stuff, at the end of the day raw strength matters. And that is not one of my forte, since primary use of my fingers are for tapping computer keys, not balancing my entire body from the edges.

It was fun though. We started of with climbing walls with lots of footholds everywhere and being held by a rope - which I know now is technically called rappelling. As days progressed, the walls tended to have less footholds, and the alignment of them made life more and more difficult. Then we tried what they call bouldering, where one moves almost horizontally across the walls, balancing on uncomfortably spaced out grips and edges. Then there were roof climbing, resembling Spiderman like traits, which needless to say, I did not even try.

I am better off running at treadmill. If I do anything at all, that is.

Simply bad english?

2007-10-27T21:54:00.000-04:00

"Hw z lyf?" wrote my not so little cousin in my Orkut scrapbook. It took me a while to realize what exactly is she asking. I see someone wishing everybody "vry hpy pjo". Someone else says she will "tlk 2 me tmrw". What the hell is going on?

I can see everyone is very busy and working their backside off. However, I do not see how they cant be so busy to spare a few moments to write down the vowels. Oh wait, all these comes from sms language, which I am told the main form of communication nowadays. I was trying to explain to someone over there in Calcutta that the primary use of a cell phone is talking. She vehemently protested, pointing to the menu of her handset, and sure enough, messaging was above talk there. I have to give it to them, as punching those tiny keys at breakneck speed to compose a message sure requires a special skill set, and that possibly needs getting rid of those vowels. However, I would tend to think big enough computer keyboards should make the language slightly more respectable, but alas, its not so. Using acronyms have been part of instant messaging lingo from time immemorial, as we all grew up with LOL and BRB. However, dropping vowels randomly and condensing words arbitrarily is not exactly the same thing and I would argue that makes it look ugly.

When I first started chatting, way back in 2000, I refused to use Bengali in English script. I felt it looked ugly. Over the years, mostly due to peer pressure, I have reluctantly started using it. Sure it makes things more informal - but it also results in funny misinterpretations, like "Ashole" (actually) like Asshole or as my YM prompts me to search for Kobe Bryant when I type "Kobe" (when). I very much doubt if I will start using vowel-less non-english for communicating though!

Best of times, worst of times...

2007-09-30T02:26:00.000-04:00

Blogging is a habit. And like all habits - the trick is to keep doing it - even when life is too mundane or too hectic. I tend to stop scribbling in either of these two scenarios - which makes me lose whatever regular readers I have - and then it is doubly difficult to get their attention back.

Borrowing Dickens classic quote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" around here. A colleague of ours killed himself and a stranger I barely knew died . Let me not go into details of any of these - at least not yet. May be with time the it will be be easier for me to come in terms of those.

And then this couple I know here had their first child. He looks incredibly small, and he mostly sleeps, frowns, cries and sleeps again. It is amazing the range of emotions he expresses with one single action, crying.

Now we lose to unranked Auburn at home. What a stunning upset. That is one loss too many - as for the repeat national championship aspirations. I hope we can salvage the season, which in all probabilty would be my last one here in Florida.

The mandatory "Football" post!

2007-09-04T01:07:00.000-04:00

The best thing about fall is undoubtedly football. And for a school like ours, the defending national champions, the expectations are immense. On a day which saw that historic upset loss of Michigan, our offence looked mostly sharp, Tebow showed that he can throw, and pretty accurately too. The young defense needs more work to be ready for the gruelling SEC schedule, but after losing almost all the starters, we always knew that would be the area of concern.

This would probably my last football season as a Gator. Amazing how fast time flies.

And still staying with football, for those who does not appreciate how big its down here. Quoting one of the ESPN (or was it SI) columnist - I loved these lines.

The quality of life in the South is dependent upon good college football. Local economies, race relations and collective psychological health all would suffer without it. Sweet tea would not be as sweet. Fried chicken would not be as crispy. Country songs would be even sadder. If SEC football were mediocre, the South might as well be back in Reconstruction.

Different Physics-views!

2007-08-16T20:30:00.001-04:00

I still remember that day. There was this conference organized by our department at Jadavpur University and it featured talks by some big name Physicists, none perhaps more famous than Ashoke Sen. We were in our undergraduate days then - all dreamy eyed budding Physicists, and of course we attended all the talks, no matter how much we got out from them. And then we got hold of the famous man himself, asking him mostly naive and inane questions, which he patiently answered. Then we wanted a group photo taken with him - he was slightly embarrassed, but still obliged. That made our day - and for a long time that remained, and perhaps still remains a prized snap for us.

Kolkata Physics was mostly like that - all sweet, no sweat. At least for us. The only method of solving problems was to stare at them for a while and then writing out the solution - working out pages full of algebra was not "elegant". We honestly believed that every problem should have a simple and intelligent solution - others are not worth bothering about. The best way of doing Physics labs was to do the experiments without touching the apparatus once. And picking and choosing what we think we should read. Quantum Mechanics and Special Theory of Relativity were exciting - Optics and Acoustics were not. Electronics was simply not Physics, and instrumentation was below our dignity to talk about. Any self respecting Physicists should work on Theory - at least we all wanted to. Well, may be all that is a slight exaggeration - but one gets the picture. Physics was supposed to be elegant and big Physicists to be worshiped.

It did not take long after coming to United States to realize that attitude would not really work. While real Physics still may be beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, to reach there one has to do a lot of dirty work. Working and reworking through obnoxiously long and ugly calculations and learning stuff which have very little Physics in them. And somewhere in the process - we lost that respect for the big and famous. Its not that I would not appreciate someone who is a great teacher or gotten some good results - but they would still remain mere mortals, as fallible as the guy next door, when they are not talking about Physics. I would not go to a colloquium just because some big name Physicist is talking, unless I have some amount of interest in what he is talking about. I would not go and talk to him just because he is so and so, unless I actually have something worthwhile to discuss.

I do not want to make a value judgement here. This summer, when I was in CERN, there was this bright kid from my undergraduate school, and he is working for his Ph.D over there in India. And I was almost feeling nostalgic - looking at him getting overwhelmed by the big shots - clicking photos, dying to talk to them, hanging onto every word they said. I could see how we did the same thing years back - and I could also see how we have cultivated this attitude of casual irreverence. The sense of wonder is still there - but it has been mostly replaced by what for the lack of a better word I would call professionalism. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is that what "America" did to me or was bound to happen anyway? I do not know.

755

2007-08-05T00:41:00.000-04:00

Oh well. So? Whatever!

Hazardville!

2007-07-31T18:42:00.000-04:00

Travelling southbound on Interstate 91, just crossing into Connecticut from Massachusetts, came across this not so inviting town.

You know you are in Princeton when ...

2007-07-30T17:06:00.000-04:00

... the security guard talks about Physics, Philosophy and (Satyajit) Ray, and asserts that he is ready to bet a thousand bucks that Higgs would not be found at LHC.

For the uninitiated, Higgs Boson is the till date elusive, theoretically predicted absolutely essential particle that Physicists are hoping to discover at LHC (large hadron Collider), world's highest energy particle collider being built at CERN at a cost of multi billion dollars.

Claim to fame of APJ?

2007-07-27T14:09:00.000-04:00

Amidst this Pratibha Patil bashing, I read this piece of news where her predecessor, APJ Abdul Kalam, asked him to be referred as Professor, not Ex-President and was wholeheartedly applauded. Please not be mistaken, I am equally disgraced by, as other conscientious citizens, to see a complete stranger (Yes, I do follow Indian politics pretty well, and no, I have never heard of her before) getting to occupy the highest constitutional post in our country. However, I am slightly surprised by the attention and reverence "Prof. Kalam" is receiving - so I tried to dig a little bit deeper. As for his academic career, he specialized in Aeronautical Engineering from Madras Institute of Technology - which basically tells me that he was an engineer.

Then, Dr. Kalam made significant contribution as Project Director to develop India's first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully injected the Rohini satellite in the near earth orbit in July 1980 and made India an exclusive member of Space Club. He was responsible for the evolution of ISRO's launch vehicle programme, particularly the PSLV configuration. After working for two decades in ISRO and mastering launch vehicle technologies, Dr. Kalam took up the responsibility of developing Indigenous Guided Missiles at Defence Research and Development Organisation as the Chief Executive of Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP). He was responsible for the development and operationalisation of AGNI and PRITHVI Missiles and for building indigenous capability in critical technologies through networking of multiple institutions. Anyone who knows a bit about big scientific or engineering projects, would tell you that individual achievements are minimum in these endeavours. It cant be "he" who actually "built" anything - he was most probably in the supervising group. Good job, Mr. Kalam - but I don't see what is so special in these.

And I also take issues with why he would be referred as "Dr. Kalam" then. Because, apparently Dr. Kalam is one of the most distinguished scientists of India with the unique honour of receiving honorary doctorates from 30 universities and institutions. Now someone please tell me why getting honorary doctorate from a zillion places would make one a "distinguished scientist". Should not it be other way around? Aerospace engineering is not some exotic subject, nor I can see him doing any ground breaking scientific work, that he deserves an honorary doctorate, and then being famous because of that. His teaching experiences are minimal too, and so he being recruited as professor directly at Anna University is somewhat odd too.

Rest of his achievements before becoming the president? He was the Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister and Secretary, Department of Defence Research & Development from July 1992 to December 1999. During this period he led to the weaponisation of strategic missile systems and the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in collaboration with Department of Atomic Energy, which made India a nuclear weapon State. He also gave thrust to self-reliance in defence systems by progressing multiple development tasks and mission projects such as Light Combat Aircraft.s Chairman of Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) and as an eminent scientist, he led the country with the help of 500 experts to arrive at Technology Vision 2020 giving a road map for transforming India from the present developing status to a developed nation. Dr. Kalam has served as the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, in the rank of Cabinet Minister, from November 1999 to November 2001 and was responsible for evolving policies, strategies and missions for many development applications. Dr. Kalam was also the Chairman, Ex-officio, of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SAC-C) and piloted India Millennium Mission 2020.
If ones notices, all of them are administrative positions, mostly political appointment. I simply do not see how and when he becomes an eminent scientist. It seems like he is more an example of a person being at the right time at right place than the icon he is made out to be.

(All of the facts are quoted from the the Abdul Kalam official page.)

Happy Birthday!

2007-07-23T00:07:00.000-04:00

Hundred and fifty posts in a couple of years - thats just under one and half posts per week. When I started off blogging exactly two years back, I could not trust me enough that I would keep blogging for a while, leave alone for two years. Although not a lot of people read it regularly, and even less actually leave comments, some do, and my thanks to all the visible and invisible readers. This blog turns two tonight, and I now I have grown quite addicted to the concept of blogging. As for the birthday gift, I already got it one.

To Be (In Europe) or Not To Be!

2007-07-18T14:03:00.000-04:00

Since coming back from CERN last month, this is one question I have been asked too many times - and like every other "important" question I face, this one has no clear answer. And the choice is not mine anyway. I will probably land up wherever people are kind enough to offer me to work with them. Just for argument's sake though, here are my thoughts.

The short answer would be Europe is scenic, but US feels like home. I do not know whether this is what four years of America did to me, but that is exactly how I felt after coming back. May be its the language. Or just the familiarity with everything so weirdly American. Probably a combination of both.

In Europe, I was a tourist. Everything felt alien to me. And as a tourist, that is precisely what you want. US is mostly predictable for me now - even when I go to someplace totally new here, I pretty much know what to expect, and the overall scheme of things. Exploring a new culture is definitely a learning experience, but to be a part of it may be a little too demanding. Funnily, I have heard people presenting the same argument while moving back to India from here, and I now get the point. Familiarity does not always breed contempt.

Growing up in India, where aping 70's US culture was the coolest thing for the teenagers, and now eating at MacDonald's is the idea of a family dinner, and then coming straight to US, I never saw a worldview where US is so insignificant, people are so nonchalant about USA, as I saw in Europe. And that was a welcome change. In India, we go overboard to cater to the needs of the American tourists, and at a very superficial level. The first class coach in the intercity express from Agra to Jaipur had 110 volts American plug points only. While that was helpful for me, I still think its a disgrace. In Europe, there are hoards of America tourists everywhere, but none really cares, and they struggle to find their way around, like everyone else. Of course people are in general helpful, but that's true in general, not like in Rajasthan, where "Foreign" tourists were always given a warmer reception, to put it mildly.

While these things are what I liked about Europe, precisely these make the idea of staying long term there a bit uncomfortable. The center of gravity of world science has not yet shifted back to Europe, consequently getting a job is still easier in USA. And the general perception in the community mirrors the old saying - out of sight is out of mind - it is easier to get American jobs ( "jobs" in the very broad sense of the term, anything from a post doctoral position to an appointment in a research lab, or even in industry) if one applies from US.

Academically, CERN presents an incredible opportunity roughly at at the same time when I think I would graduate. The much anticipated LHC, world's highest energy particle collider starts taking data, and for anyone in the field, that is the time to be there. However, since I am an absolute non expert of hardware, and pretty much what I need to do can be done remotely, there is no acute need for me to be there physically, although people do that all the time.

So I guess the ideal "job" would be one where I would be still based in US, but would get to travel to CERN often. The best of both worlds.

P. S - I must acknowledge one of my "blogger friends", for suggesting that I come up with a post on this.

"Physical" Traveling

2007-07-17T10:42:00.000-04:00

There are not too many perks for a graduate student here. Traveling on academic purposes is one of those rare ones - and I am having an excellent summer by that yardstick. First was the now well documented Europe trip - and it was primarily a summer school in CERN. Within a couple of weeks after coming back, I rushed to Fermilab Chicago, for a presentation our internal collaboration group meeting. After spending the weekend in Chicago, and catching up with some old friends, now I am at Princeton, NJ for another summer school.

I have been here before. But now as a pseudo-insider, Princeton does look classy, and the Institute of Advanced Studies (made famous by Einstein, among others) classier. Among the speakers there are some really big names of the field, and its not too hard to see legends around. This is really isolated from the rest of the world though - nearest civilizations is half an hour walk away, with virtually non existent public transportation.

Magnetic Attraction!

2007-07-09T00:29:00.000-04:00

A mini Statute of Liberty. Five dancing Korean dolls. A miniature Gondola. Two colorful Venetian masks. One showing the Declaration of Independence, another the first draft of the Constitution. A half coffee mug from Minneapolis. A beautifully hand crafted shell from "She Sells Seashells" in some Florida beach. A little one looking exactly like a piece of Swiss Chocolate. A moose head from Massachusetts. A maple leaf from Vermont (or was in New Hampshire?). A Cuckoo clock from Geneva. A miniature wooden guitar from Nashville. Ones depicting Grand Canyon, Smokey Mountains, Amish Country and much more.

These are among the over hundred refrigerator magnets I bought from pretty much all the places I travelled to in last few years. Some people buy shot glasses, some by tee shirts as souvenirs. I collect magnets. One side of my fridge is so crowded now, that I have to think of some other place to put them. Any suggestions?

And then there are the humorous ones. I picked up one from Charlotte airport years back, which said, "I had a life once...Now I have a computer and modem! ". When I started blogging later, it seemed the ideal description. Another proclaims, "Being organized interferes with my creativity" - if you visit me once, you would know how true is that. And today, stopping at a nondescript gas station on my way to Tallahassee, I just could not resist picking up this. (With all due apologies to the creative people at Verizon...)

Europe Travelogue Part 7: Paris

2007-07-04T15:06:00.000-04:00

I have been to so many American cities in these years, but Paris was so impressive - the whole city has an aura associated with it. And different neighborhoods are so diverse, but never out of sync, and they fit in gloriously to give an unique character to the city.

One can call it the city of museums. Apart from the better known Louvre or d'Orsay, there are innumerable ones spread all over the place. I could only spare half a day for Louvre, and a couple of hours for d'Orsay. Everyone now knows about Louvre thanks to that book and the movie, and it indeed is as glorious, if not more. Mona Lisa is surprisingly small, and the center of attraction. Taking photos is not allowed in the room, but people click on incessantly, while guards try their best to refrain people from doing that. Each section can take hours to explore fully, if one wants to even glance through the details - which was not obviously possible for frantic trip like mine. The all to famous glass pyramid at the entrance, to be very frank, looks kind of gimmicky, but at night, it glows softly, resulting in a nice ambiance. D'Orsay is a treasure trove for impressionist paintings, and a local artist suggested me to visit it even before Louvre. He was probably right. It is much smaller, built in a old railways station - and the settings reflect that fact. The galleries are lined up with creation of modern masters - and gradually it doesn't seem that small after all. Another museum I hurried through was Center Pompidou, which is a weird building with a weirder front facade and weirdest objects of art inside, like a glowing red rhinoceros.

And then Paris is also a city of magnificent architectural landmarks, from quite old to not so old, from the grand Notre Dame to the chic Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel tower glows at dark - brightening up the entire skyline. The view of the thriving Champs-Élysées and the city beyond that from the top of the majestic Arc de Triomphe is an experience by itself. There are huge palatial buildings, often with golden domes. There are sculptures on the streets, St. Micheal's statue at Latin Quarters was one of the more interesting ones I saw. And the infamous red windmill at the not so inviting night club district is a landmark in its own right.

And finally, Paris is also a city of culture. There are used book stores on the sidewalk, artists at work in the open air at Montmartre, which is little hill inside the city. There artists offer to get your portrait done, and after a while I could not refuse. The proud painter pointed out that even Picasso started off with making portraits on these streets, so with some luck, he too can get there. The people in general was very helpful, the old couple at the overnight train from Venice, was very enthusiastic about making me well acquainted with their beloved city. On the streets, I could always find someone to give me directions, and once I did not even had to ask. An old lady, seeing that I am struggling with the map, stepped up and asked if I need any help in crisp English. The metro network is really helpful too, the trains are very frequent - the only awkward part sometime is the connection between different lines, often I had to walk miles through the underground maze, going up and down multiple times, just to go from one line to another in the same station, shown by just a dot on the map. One of the lines, the newest one is fully automated, with no human driver on the train - one can stand right in front and see the train speeding through the dark tunnels!

Switzerland was all about enjoying the stunningly scenic vistas, Italy was about getting a feel of history - Paris was just soaking in the sights and sounds of wonderful city, a perfect blend of past, present and future!

The photos are in my picasaweb page, as always.

(This concludes my weeklong frantic Europe backpacking trip experience. However, I was in CERN for a couple of weeks, and ended up going to Geneva all too often. I should post my CERN and Geneva experiences sometime soon.)

Europe Travelogue Part 6: Chamonix

2007-07-03T22:36:00.000-04:00

This was a day trip from Geneva even before I started out for this week long trip of mine - but somehow never got around to post it before. So this slight anachronism, and a break from cityscape.

Chamonix is a little village in the valley just under French Alps, and the Aiguille du midi cable car takes one upto a height of over 3800 meters, from where snow covered peaks seem just so close. Just to give a perspective of that height, Mont Blanc, standing next to it, with all its majestic glory, is only around 4800 meters tall, and Mount Everest is 8848 meters, so the cable car (and a little elevator ride) indeed takes one at significant high altitude. And from there, its completely a new world, with pure white snow all around and peaks rising up from everywhere.

The other exciting ride is the Montenvers train to Mer de Glace glacier. Initially the train, climbing up through narrow winding tracks took one right upto the glacier. Then the glacier receded a bit, so they built a cable car to take one down to the glacier. However, the glacier receded further, and now one has to walk a while to get to it. This is probably the cleanest signature of global warming I have ever seen!

The photos are here.

(I would be wrapping up this trip with Paris next)

Europe Travelogue Part 5: Venice

2007-07-03T00:46:00.000-04:00

Venice would not have been much different from any other Italian city, if not for the canals and life along them. The city is almost entirely dependent upon them for transportation - there are water buses which ply in fixed routes, water taxis which can be hauled to go wherever one wants, and then there are the Gondolas. While prohibitively expensive, they look very inviting in their glamorous decor and royal ambiance. They take one around a tour of Venice, starting from the main Grand Canal to the narrow lanes and bylanes - passing under little bridges connecting big old houses and palatial buildings. Somewhere on the way, one passes under the bridge made famous as the "Bridge of Sighs" by Lord Byron - passing from the courthouse to the prison, apparently the prisoners last time saw daylight from that bridge. Rialto bridge, giving a pretty good view of the Grand Canal is another well known landmark.

The centre of Venice is undoubtedly the St. Mark's Square. The impressive basilica is the major attraction, and one can get a birds eye view of the square and the city and the little islands from climbing up the bell tower. The square itself is full of pigeons, and they don't hesitate to sit on people's palms if tempted with food.

Venice wrapped up the Italy part of my trip - and it was onward to Paris then. The Venice pictures, like all others, are in my picasaweb album.

(French Chamonix, a beautiful little village, in the foothills of Mont Blanc, is next)

Europe Travelogue Part 4: Rome

2007-06-30T09:20:00.000-04:00

Rome reminded me a lot of Kolkata, but its unquestionably more gorgeous. This was one of the few cities where I stayed for more than a day, and that meant I could do more that just rushing from one attraction to another.

Like any other Italian cities, the skyline is dominated by cathedral domes. But unlike most, Rome has much more than that. The all too famous Colosseum and the ruins of the old city around it it probably leaves the most lasting impression. The Colosseum itself is huge, standing right in front of it you realize no photos or videos have quite prepared you for the experience. Sadly most of it is ruins, or looks like going to crumble any moment, and the repairs look horribly out of sync. And it is, like every attraction in Rome, is overrun with tourists. To really appreciate Colosseum, I guess one needs to step back, stand still for a while and let the mind wander around to past - the time when Roman empire was in its full glory, but the jostling and posing-everywhere-for-photo crowd would hardly allow you the serenity to do that.

The other most known symbol of Rome is obviously the Vatican. While the basilica is impressive no doubt, I was fortunate enough to land up on a Wednesday, when the Pope holds his weekly mass. So it was incredibly crowded, and had to wait an hour or so in that expectant crowd to catch glimpse of him for a few minutes far down the hallway. Then I had to rush to the Vatican museums, partly to beat that crowd and partly to spend a good amount of time there before it closes in late afternoon. I would not even try to describe sheer grandeur or the intricate artworks which fill up the place, and the masterpiece is Sistine Chapel, where you reach at the very end. They say taking photos is not allowed inside, and people keep shooting anyway - but I guess world would have been a better place if people stopped thinking about photos (they do a very poor job anyway) and just stared at the ceiling. Standing there, it seems almost surreal - and unbelievably difficult to believe that one man could ever create something like that.

There were other cathedrals of course, often with exquisite artwork, Pantheon is one which immediately comes to mind. There was a castle which offered pretty good view of Rome skyline from the top. There were the countless Piazzas, which are the squares, bursting with people and shops selling "gelato" (pretty much our soft ice cream). And there was the made-famous-by-the-movies Trevi mountain, among other interestingly shaped fountains.

The flavour of the city is distinctly historical. It is so historical, as I am told, that whenever they try to dig up tunnels for extending the underground metro (the network is pretty limited, to put it mildly), they end up discovering another archaeological site! And walking around the narrow brick lanes and bylanes, you realize how insignificant our all too beloved "America" is - a hundred or so years does not even compare with a few thousand years of history and a thriving early civilization. The whole Rome is a vivid souvenir of those bygone days.

My pale efforts to capture that feeling is here.

( A different kind of city, Venice is up next)

End of an "era"!

2007-06-29T20:23:00.001-04:00

I interrupt the scheduled programming (the travelogues and the photos) for a moment to salute perhaps the greatest "team" in college basketball history ever. They won two straight national championships, the second one forsaking the money and glamour of the NBA to stay back in college, which is rarity in this day and age. And three of them got picked in top ten of the NBA draft last night, which never happened before. Two more got picked in second round later, making five players drafted from same college only second time in history. Making history was something they thrived upon, and we were fortunate to witness that happen right in front of our very eyes in University of Florida. I, along with the entire gator nation wish them all the success in their professional careers, but their legacy in Gainesville would remain intact no matter how much they achieve later.

Thank you guys. It had been a fun ride.

Europe Travelogue Part 3: Pisa and Florence

2007-06-29T12:51:00.000-04:00

I initially planned on spending a full day in Florence (which incidentally is called Firenze there, slightly confusing if one does not know it beforehand!), but a train strike in Italy disrupted my plans a bit, and I ended up doing Pisa and Florence on a single day. That of course did not do justice to Florence (Pisa just has the leaning tower, so an hour was more than enough), but at least something was better than nothing!

Italy does not feel like a typical European country in many ways, rather reminded me of india, not only for the history part - the train strike for a day, too many people everywhere and not at all organized, long lines for train reservations or entering any muesum, hugely overpriced stuff near tourist attractions. In fact too long a line prevented me from going atop the leaning tower in PIsa, and resulted in me hurrying through the world famous Uffizi gallery in Florence a couple of hours. Like any other Italian city, Florence skyline is dominated by cathdrals. Walking through narrow roads, suddenly the enormous Duomo cathedral opens up in front of you, and the sheer size of it is almost unbelievable. There are others too, some of them are equally impressive - but somehow the first sight of Duomo left me awestruck.

The photos are here.

(I expect to post the "eternal city", Rome tomorrow)

Europe Travelogue Part 2: Zurich

2007-06-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

Geneva was just a half an hour bus ride (An aside, buses are wonderful in Switzerland. They run perfectly on time, very frequent, they have dedicated bus lanes in every major streets and nobody ever checked my tickets!) from CERN, and as a result I ended exploring Geneva quite well. After landing in Zurich, and walking around a bit, it felt strangely similar. Geneva is built on the either side of river Rhone, which opens up in huge lake Geneva, while in Zurich, the main city is on either banks of river Limmat, which empties into, guess what, in lake Zurich. Both of them have a charming old city part, with narrow winding cobblestone paths and grand old churches. Climbing up the church towers gives a pretty nice bird's eye views of the cities - and for a better view there are nearby mountains, a cable car ride to La Salève in Geneva and a short train ride to Uetliberg in Zurich. The significant difference is while Geneva is mostly French speaking, Zurich is completely German.

The main street of Zurich is Bahnhofstrasse, which runs from the station to the lakefront, and its lined with tempting shops, both big name brands and local variety and bank buildings. Walking towards the lake, I crossed the famous Cafe Odeon, where apparently Lenin spent a lot of time plotting the Russian revolution. Going the other way, I pass those churches and enter the old city part - which seemed a world apart from the modern part. I sat by the lake for a while, watching the sun going down - and came back to the station for my overnight train to Rome.

The pictures are here.

(And do keep checking back for more. Next up is Italy)

Europe Travelogue Part 1: Golden Pass Express

2007-06-27T13:29:00.000-04:00

When it became clear that I would spend a few weeks in and around Geneva in summer, I knew I would have to explore Switzerland beyond the cities - after all those Hindi movies have built up an image of incredibly scenic country for years. The easiest way seemed to take a scenic train ride - and the Golden Pass Express appeared like the logical choice, in terms of the route and time.

Staying in US for last few years, I was actually a bit sceptical of the freedom of exploration offered by a train ride - but it did not take long to realize that sheer futility of that. Almost each place the train passed through can constitute an entire vacation destination - and to cram it all in a day, the train does a wonderful job. It starts from the side of Lake Geneva in Montreux, slowly climbs up passing lush green valleys. And all of a sudden, almost from nowhere, snow covered mountains appear in sight. It stops for a while at Interlaken, where one can take a cable car up to the top of a little mountain and get even more stunning views of snow capped peaks. Switzerland is full of lakes, and they just keep passing by. There are tiny villages, dotted with little houses and tall churches. We stop briefly at a station, where the other side of the platform ends in the lake - where else you would see a train station which is also the lake access? The huge panoramic windows of the train is a photographers delight - but after a while I started getting a feel that it is impossible to capture the sheer magnitude of the unfolding panorama in little frames.

So the pictures barely tell the story, and I am afraid they do not do justice to the stunningly scenic vistas we passed through. But they are here anyway.

(The plan is to post the travelogues/photos by parts, not always chronologically though. So keep watching this space for frequent updates for a week or so.)

Back home in USA

2007-06-26T07:08:00.000-04:00

It feels more like "Back home in heartbreak USA", as the song goes. After three frantic but exciting weeks in Europe, one of them spent entirely travelling through incredibly scenic Switzerland, unbelievably historic Italy and undeniably magnificent Paris, America does seem pale in comparison. While how attractive a proposition it would be for me to move there eventually is still an open question, at this point I am simply in love with Europe!

Pictures (have to sort 5 gigs worth of photos!) and stories (before all cities get mixed up in my head) coming soon.

Just an update

2007-06-16T17:01:00.000-04:00

I had a wonderful day at French Chamonix today, seeing Alps (Mont Blanc) from up close and personal. I apologize for not posting those stunning snow capped mountain photos or a detailed travelogue today. I am beginning my grand Europe tour by taking the scenic Golden Pass Express from Geneva (Geneva-Zurich-Rome-Pisa-Florence-Venice-Paris-Geneva, thats the plan for now) tomorrow. I do not expect to be online at all before 25th June.

2007-06-12T16:53:00.000-04:00

I just realized that I am going to spend my birthday in the birthplace of internet.

Having fun at Lake Geneva!

2007-06-11T16:30:00.000-04:00

The most visible Indian contribution to CERN!

2007-06-10T16:16:00.000-04:00

... Or at least thats what the standing joke is. This big Nataraja statue stands right between the main building and our hostel.

Another view at night.

Random Observations

2007-06-08T16:32:00.000-04:00

This place is almost surrounded by mountains, reminds me so much of Siliguri, a little town on the foothills of Himalaya, where I grew up.

Its almost 10 pm now, and its not completely dark outside yet. Its kind of eerie to go to sleep when its not "night" yet.

Public transit system is excellent here. And so far, in no train or bus, my ticket has been checked. I am not sure if this is usual(and people are indeed so honest) or its just a streak of coincidences.

A six hour jetlag is infinitely worse than an eleven and half hour one. Any clue why?

Its really difficult to survive here without knowing French. My ultra limited vocabulary of "bon jour" and "merci" is hardly of any real help.

Despite being the land of banks, this place is amazingly cash friendly. I have not carried around and used so much cash in ages.

Buying Swiss Chocolate or Knife is more complicated than it should be.

Switzerland is ...

2007-06-06T15:53:00.000-04:00

... in the first approximation, scenic, friendly and costly.

First Glance of Europe: Picturesque Geneva

2007-06-05T13:59:00.000-04:00

The famous "flower clock".

The giant "water-jet" rising from lake Geneva.

City Streets.

And city artwork!

Bird's eye view from an old church tower.

Mountains on the other side.

A game of Chess!

Modern side of Geneva.

Food served with "patriotism".

And the all familiar suggestion.

On my way to Europe!

2007-06-04T11:29:00.000-04:00

Blogging from Jacksonville Airport waiting for my flight to New York and eventually to Geneva ...

It has been a frantic last couple of weeks. After spending a better part of my time being on hold and trying to get hold of some live person to talk to in national passport information center telephone helpline about my ten week old American passport application, (yes, I was born here) and being assured that it would be in my mail soon, nothing happened. Then got in touch with my local congressman's office, they tried their best to help, but nothing happened still. With only a few days left before my travel date, I had no choice but to drive down six hours to Miami office.

Due to a change in travel regulations, there is a huge rush for passports now and the agencies are just not equipped to handle this overwhelming demand. There were hundreds of people lined up outside the office, around the block from early morning and just getting to talk to someone ressponsible was taking hours. Having gone through a similar experience in Passport office in India, it did not feel much different. And it almost seemed hopeless after first day - there was some complications with my application, but they worked with me next day to get my passport just in time in my hand. That part was indeed impressive, in spite of the general incompetence of a typical government agency, when I could get to deal with a real person face to face, she went out of her way to help me out. I doubt if that would have happened in India!

Next post will be from Geneva, hopefully.

2007-05-28T02:22:00.000-04:00

Acknowledgement: Memorial Day MySpace Comment Graphic Codes

W-A-I-T-I-N-G

2007-05-26T23:21:00.001-04:00

Yes, for eleven weeks. It better end soon.

The "Dream" Act

2007-05-19T11:53:00.000-04:00

There are a few ways to be a part of the great American dream if you are not born an American. You can study hard, go through the the incredibly uncertain procedure of applying to the American universities from abroad, get through with some luck, get financial support from the school with some more luck, and land up in the land of opportunities. Then struggle in an unfamiliar land to successfully finish you degree and hopefully get a job - which would eventually help you to become a citizen after lengthy intermediate phases. The other way would be to get a job here, or at least pretend to, and then hope to get lucky in the "great h1b visa giveaway lottery".

Or you can just immigrate illegally. At least that is what the "Dream Act" (The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, in short, coming up in Congress soon) named so appropriately tells you to do. In a nutshell, it says if your parents immigrated illegally, but you do not have any criminal record (immigrating illegally is certainly not criminal any more) and if you went to high school for a certain period here, you would be considered legal resident. No luck factor involved. You can then join the army - I am sure they need more people to maintain world peace. Not just that, you would be paying discounted in-state tuition if you go to college. What is so bad about that? Most of the Americans from different states or "legal" non-American students do not get to pay in-state tuition automatically. So moral of the story is, immigrating illegally is not so bad after all - in fact it may lead to some "dream" rewards later.

Somehow, just a year before the presidential elections, the theme sounds all to familiar for us, used to seeing politicians hell bent on handing out preferential treatments to certain sections of the people arbitrarily. No points for guessing where the eerie similarity is.